Just wanted to say that I love the first film mentioned in this thread. No matter what other people say, Wes Anderson is a genius to me.
I saw Drive (2011) recently. It’s no wonder why it got rave reviews. It’s a beautiful, visually appealing film but I was mostly captivated by the storyline. It really plays well with the eyes and the mind. Some think it goes a little overboard in some parts, but I think it adds to the storytelling. I especially like the elevator scene actually. Don’t miss out on this Nicolas Winding Refn flick.
I watched How it Ends on Netflix the other day. What a waste of time that was. And what’s with the review stars on Netflix? The don’t reflect the quality of the movie, that’s for sure.
Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind - the bio-doc on HBO. I really enjoyed it. It’s pretty much your standard biography. I didn’t really learn anything new, except for the details of the illness he suffered at the end of his life, but a thoroughly enjoyable watch - touching at times, absolutely hilarious (as you would expect) through much of it. Recommend.
*Baby Driver *- I liked it, although I was expecting something … idunno, different. Going in, all I knew was that the songs were integral to the scenes, synced, timed, defining the tread of the film, and all that. The first scene definitely delivers, but that gimmick, for lack of a better term, pretty much faded away for me. Yes, the music is well synced which gives the film an artier feel (augmented by the arty visuals as well) but when all is said and done, I just enjoyed it as a decent crime-driving-action flick.
Either way, I forced my family to watch it with me and the general consensus was, “Jack always makes us watch the weirdest movies when he comes over.” Such is my burden.
Anyway, after I had tied them to their chairs, glued their eyes opened and forced them to watch Baby Driver, I let most of them go, but I made my father re-watch the 1975 *Rollerball *(previously reviewed in this thread) with me. I can’t get enough of that movie.
Just saw that too, and I agree with your assessment. Oddly the reviews focused on the character development, which I thought was fine for a disaster movie. It was a little hokey–Man trying to impress tough as nails father of his bride to be–but serviceable for this kind of flick.
I had two main problems:
[spoiler] One, I am very tired of the “Society breaks down and our inner monster is unleashed” trope. People aren’t going to turn into monsters within a day or two of a disaster. People help each other. Really. Between Chicago and Seattle there are countless self sufficient communities that would work together to pool resources and try to figure out what was going on. And law enforcement isn’t just going to disappear.
Two, What the hell was the disaster? I like the idea of two people caught up in the middle of something, seeing an apocalyptic sci-fi event from the ground up, instead of from the perspective of generals and NASA, but what the hell was it? It felt like a mystery novel where you never find out who did it. No one has any idea what happened. There’s no information anywhere. They showed people using shortwave radios. Surely someone would know something. It was cheap writing.[/spoiler]
Watched Dr Strangelove this afternoon. It’s a favorite of mine but I haven’t seen it in many years. There are some funny sight/prop gags that I didn’t remember; the stenciling on the bombs that says “Nuclear Warhead-Handle With Care” and the binder in front of General Turgidson (George C. Scott) in the war room with a label that says “World Targets in Megadeaths”.
My mom picked the movie last night and she chose Marshall, the 2017 biopick of Thurgood Marshall starring Chadwick Boseman (his fourth turn in bio-pic land (Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Floyd Little)). I suppose the film could have been titled Marshall and Friedman, for it doesn’t cover Marshall’s entire life but his involvement in one case, in which he was forced to sit as a silent second counsel while Sam Friedman (Josh Gad, who did a terrific job) reluctantly conducts the trial.
I didn’t really know about this movie go in. That is, of course I know who Thurgood Marshall was, but I didn’t know they made a movie about him - and I didn’t really know many details of his life beyond the fact that he was civil rights attorney who wound up on the Supreme Court - there are a lot of little details not filled there. At any rate, it’s a decent flick with some fine performances, but it suffers in direction. It seems this is Reginald Hudlin’s first feature, having been busy previously directing TeeVee. There’s nothing horrible about his style, it just seems kind of pedestrian. It very much feels like a TeeVee show rather than a big screen flick.
All in all, I recommend it, if you’re willing to gloss over a few plot points/editing issues and a handful of poorly delivered lines. The big-hitters in this movie do indeed swing large, but some of the lesser characters seem a little phoned-in.
Byt the way … seeing that “Zimmerman Back in the News” thread reminded me. At the end of Marshall, there’s a scene leading into the credits where Thurgood Marshall meets the parents of someone he’s going to defend at the train station. It was Trayvon Martin’s parents in a cameo.
I pegged it right off the bat - “holy shit, I think that’s Trayvon Martin’s parents!” said I - mostly because Mr. Martin has one line and he couldn’t have delivered more woodenly if he literally had a stick up his ass, so I knew he wasn’t a professional actor. That and I sort of recognized his bald head and beard from when he was mistaken to have been in Childish Gambino’s This is America video. A complicated pop-culture route my synapses traveled to be sure, but I called it, damn it.
The tale of a woman at the center of the New London, CT eminent domain case a few years back.
Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn are the most well known cast members, each on opposite sides of the tale.
Overall fairly decent. The problem is …
The problem is … the story is just too depressing. The state helping a business to take other people’s homes, all the while subsidizing said business. (And when the subsidies ended, the business moved away. Nice.)
These public development corporations are scary. Private but with the abilities of the government. And you have no control over, no vote or anything.
And the left/right bias of SCotUS went the opposite of what I thought it would. What the what???
I’m just a movie watching fool lately (I wish I’d cut the cord earlier).
*
Filth* (2013), starring James McEvoy, and a host of Brit/Scot actors you know by face if not by name (Jamie Bell, Jim Broadbent, Eddie Marsan, Gary Lewis, more). This is my kind of movie. Sick. Twisted. The antagonist is one of the worst people you’re every likely to come across, despite a few redeeming qualities. The plot essentially revolves around McEvoy’s character as he a) investigates a murder b) bucks for a promotion c) fucks over all his colleagues as they buck for the same promotion and d) comes to grips with his manifold demons. It’s hard to describe beyond that without a shit-ton of spoilers, or at least several more paragraphs laying out all the disturbing shit in the movie without giving anything away. I recommend it, especially for the Rueben, Rueben-esqe ending.
*
Dead Man on Campus* (1998) - I caught it on the free streaming service Pluto TV. This movie is so underrated. It is also atop of my list of pet favorites. Tom Everett Scott plays a college student (Josh) on academic scholarship, with a career track, who rooms with Mark-Paul Gosselaar, a spoiled rich kid (Cooper) who is only there for the party. Josh is soon sucked into Cooper’s world of parties, girls and blowing off class. Meanwhile Cooper’s character gets the bad news that his father is cutting him off unless he passes. Fortunately, the urban legend regarding a roommate’s suicide and receiving straight A’s as result thereof, is the key to the movie. Hilarity ensues as they try to get the most suicidal student on campus to move in with them, working through a psychotic frat-boy with a death wish, through a paranoid computer science major who is planning on killing himself so Bill Gates can’t steal his brain, settling on emo rock singer who wants to die for his art.
It’s not as dark as it sound and Gosselaar and Scott really hum as a team. I laugh all the way through it. A few other future stars appear - Jason Segal, Allyson Hannigan, Linda Cardellini.
Watched the 2007 film Waitress (with Keri Russel, Cheryl Hines & Adrienne Shelly). It was good enough, but I’m a little surprised by the 90% it gets on that Tomato site.
This was Shelly’s last film - she wrote and directed it as well as acted - and the story of her death shortly after the film was completed is quite sad.
Anyway, we watched it because we have tickets to the Broadway musical that is based on the movie.
mmm
I just saw Extinction on Netflix and I liked it well enough. It was a bit like an extended episode of Black Mirror. Of course as usual I’m in the minority, as every review has called it garbage.
Father of the Year (David Spade stars) was an expected stinker but there were parts I laughed at so to me it was an okay movie.
My 13 year old picked The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassas to watch this weekend. I had never even heard of it and I thought it was a great show. The weekend before that she chose Journey to the Center of the Earth. It was an okay family film, a bit dated which is odd to say about a film from 2008. She’s really in to those adventure type movies right now though and totally got in to it.
Recently saw Coco and Moana and we loved them both. I am not a big fan of kids’ animated movies but Coco really held my attention. Moana was fun and cute and tolerable.
I had *How it Ends *on my list to watch but now I’m not sure I’ll bother.
Recently saw Okja on Netflix. I just love Tilda Swinton’s character as twins Lucy and Nancy. Aside from that, I just can’t get over the story especially how straightforward the Mija the main character resolve her own conflict.
I’ve recently watched District 9 (sci-fi near-dystopia, OK), Lady from Shanghai (I’m a fan of film noir and Rita Hayworth) and The Last Detail (I’d seen it decades ago, but I like Jack Nicholson).
ETA: I just now noted that Hayworth was married to her co-star Orson Welles when they made Lady from Shanghai.
Today’s “stuck on the couch” matinee is How The West Was Won(Blu-ray Cinerama Smilebox version). I wouldn’t call it a “great” film but the restoration looks and sounds terrific.
*Rupture *(2016) - Starring Naomie Rapace, Michael Chiklis, a few others. As stated previously, I’m not really a horror fan but this one sucked more than most. I chose it out of the Sci Fi/Horror section, so I wasn’t completely sure where it was going to go. And that’s the problem with this movie - it didn’t seem to know where it should go. I don’t know how to describe its suckage with spoilering the whole thing, so:
The movie starts out with a pleasant suburban scene consisting of single mom and cute kid make jokey family friendly banter. Cut to single mom is abducted on the side of the road by a group of people - a few thugs and a strange woman. The next hour and a half you spend trying to figure out what is going on. There are lots of scenes of her communicating with other prisoners without seeing them - they are setting you up for the big reveal that it’s her tormenters the whole time. It’s not. But they don’t really make that clear until the end when you’re begging for a twist because the real reason she’s been kidnapped is so stupid. It seems this group of people kidnap people based on some genetic criteria and force them into terrifying situations (she’s afraid of spiders so they play heavily in her torture) to force them to “rupture” thus evolving into the next level of human - a Spock like existence of cold logic and no emotions coupled with grotesque physical deformity. And wouldn’t you know it, she turns out to be the first one they’ve done it to who has remained fertile so soon they won’t have to kidnap people anymore. First, however, she is forced to hand over her son to the collective as well, but he gets away. The End.
After visiting the impressive Harry Potter areas at Universal Studios Orlando, I gave Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone another try. I had tried watching it before.
Watching it for the sets and props and not looking for much action or a very original plot, it was quite an enjoyable movie.
I watched The Shape Of Water. It was nice enough, but bugger me if I can see what all the fuss was about. It was hardly awards material. I didn’t get caught up in the romance angle at all, it was a very weak part of the story.