I watched Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Kinda fun, kinda confusing- “our” Doc Strange is the only Good guy Doc Strange?
However, the scene where the Illuminati face off vs evil Scarlet Witch shows the maxim
If you’re gonna shoot- shoot, don’t talk.,
I just watched Knives out. Great cast. But what the fuck was Craig doing with that horrible accent? And those cigars?
It’s the best accent for the Shakespearean-esque dialogue. It works even better in Glass Onion.
Craig has apparently decided that it would be best for him to do other accents that his own in movies so he is less stereotyped as being James Bond. He does a southern American accent in several movies for that reason. His accent in his films when he plays the detective Benoit Blanc is supposed to be a Louisiana Cajun one.
Makes perfect sense, the character Bond is always played deadpan, “Bond, James Bond.” so the audience is never sure when the actor is ‘playing bond’. Still, Ewan McGregor can manage accents.
Thanks. I’m not kidding; I don’t think I realized that. I just thought he was…odd, like many movie and book detectives.
Is his character American, then?
I feel like Craig Ferguson right now. He said that in Scotland, many didn’t realize Scotty was supposed to be Scottish. Craig used to say, “Who is this Pakistani man and why is he called Scotty?”
The accent was that bad.
It’s clear that the character is American:
Some websites say that he was specifically Louisiana Cajun, but other websites disagree. It’s not that rare for British actors to do American characters. Three of the main characters in Gone with the Wind were played by British actors, for instance.
I don’t think Leslie Howard (Ashley Wilkes) even tried to pull off an American Southern accent.
Not too sure it was the sadist or masochist in me that had us decide to watch Meet the Fockers, but what a bore of a movie. For starters, what’s with Pamela’s hair - did she decide that she wanted a 1986 Shelly Long do? Were bangs even a thing in 2004?
Also, what made Barbara Streisand (and Dustin Hoffman) decide they wanted in on this? Were they in trouble with the IRS? Did they owe a favor to De Niro? This film made over $500,000,000 worldwide, so I’m assuming all the principles were well-paid for this, but… yeesh, what a mess.
And, movie-wise, why the hell did Pam choose Ben Stiller (a loser) when she had Owen Wilson (a rich man who had brains and cultural awareness)?
The baby saying “Asshole” was irritating, yes, but did the baby need to be in the film… with such a convoluted back story… in the first place?
Lastly, on a personal note, but if you’re in your mid-30s and your fear of your parents is still a driving motivator in your life, grow the fuck up. 
Well, I wouldn’t consider Greg Focker a complete loser, but Pam dumped Kevin probably because Kevin was a complete flake, in spite of his wealth. The third movie, Little Fockers, gets that point across.
I saw him on the Graham Norton talk show last year and he said something along the lines of:
I’m not good at imitating specific accents, and I told them that. They left it to me to come up with something that sounded US southern. I admit I have no expertise or much experience in this.
Knives Out and Glass Onion both had a bit of a surreal and absurdist quality to them. I don’t think an authentically accurate accent was really necessary.
I agree with all of that, and in fact I might have stated my enjoyment of it even more strongly. Which is kind of odd because I don’t usually enjoy action movies unless they have other redeeming qualities.
It’s certainly never going to be an Oscar nominee for Best Picture, but I thought Argylle was entertaining, fantastical, absurd, and ultimately lots of fun. It does more or less require you – as @peccavi said – to turn off your brain – at least, the analytical part. I’m rather surprised at the widespread hate for it among critics – a mere 6.0 on IMDb, and an appalling 33% on RT, but it’s telling that on RT the audience rating is 71%. Such a wide gap suggests to me that maybe sometimes critics feel such compulsion to demonstrate their intellectual prowess that they’ve forgotten how to have fun.
I’ve read that that is the standard view of their accents. Howard didn’t even try to do an accent different than his own. Vivien Leigh was British, although she was actually born in India. She then traveled around Europe with her parents before coming to stay in the U.K. The standard view of her accent in Gone with the Wind is that she sounds like a British person trying badly to do a southern American accent. Olivia de Havilland was British, but again she was actually born in Japan. Her family eventually moved to the U.S. She was the only one who did a reasonable southern American accent.
I have a personal theory that before about 1990, most people in English-language movies didn’t do a very good job of doing the accent of other English-language countries, and most moviegoers didn’t much care. Sometime around then, it became more standard for actors to be trained more carefully in acting schools on accents. It also become more standard to have accent coaches on films who made sure that the actors did those accents right.
Yeah but it is on the level of Dick Van Dykes “cockney” accent. It is just bad.
I know this doesn’t really go here, but there’s no where else to put it and technically it is a (short, silent) movie I recently saw:
@CalMeacham because I know you will appreciate this more than most.
Nyad (2023). About Diana Nyad, who set herself the challenge at the age of 61 to do the impossible: swim from Cuba to Key West, a distance of 103 miles that would take at least 60 hours and probably much more. Stars Annette Bening as Nyad and Jodie Foster as her coach.
You might not think that the subject matter lends itself to making a thoroughly engrossing film, but you would be wrong. This is nothing short of a masterpiece of filmmaking – deeply moving, incredibly well acted, and with spectacular cinematography. It’s not only an exploration of the power of the human spirit, but also of the relationships between Nyad, her coach, and her crew. Bening and Foster both received well-deserved Oscar nominations for their roles. I’m pissed that the film itself didn’t get a Best Picture nomination, which it absolutely deserved. Very highly recommended.
I forgot to add, on something of a melancholy note, that both Annette Bening and Jodie Foster look much older than I remember them, although my mental images were from much earlier films. Age catches up with us all, but I guess the real Diana Nyad showed us that it doesn’t have to slow us down, or as Toby Kieth sang, “Don’t Let the Old Man In”.
I was really saddened to read in Wikipedia that Nyad’s achievement was not officially recognized despite all the witnesses accompanying her:
Her crossing from Cuba to Florida was denied ratification due to incomplete documentation, conflicting crew reports and rules from an organization that did not exist at the time of the swim. Guinness World Records revoked Nyad’s achievement.
Suspiria (1977). I have this one on DVD and have watched it maybe three or four times. I pulled it off the shelf this time to show my older daughter because I thought she’d appreciate it for the same reasons I do. The story? Eh, it’s okay, but nothing to get excited about. Horror, grisly murders at a prestigious dance academy in Germany.
I find the ending not completely satisfactory, but it gives the viewer a conclusion, so no serious complaints. There were places where I wished they could have rehearsed the performances a couple more times and other places where they were fairly good. Technically, there’s a scene that takes place outside with the actors’ hair blowing in an obviously brisk wind, but it sounds like they’re in a recording studio, with no ambient sound whatsoever. That’s distracting. All the more so because the dialogue is an “info dump” that provides backstory that sets up the stuff that happens subsequently, so you want to pay attention.
But where this bad boy shines, in my opinion–and I mean, really shines, enough to make up for any shortcomings and then quite a bit more–is the visual part. And that’s why I wanted to show it to my daughter, who’s a pretty good artist. The set design, set dressing, composition, blocking, lighting, use of color. It’s one of the most visually distinctive films I’ve ever seen. Holy smoke. I usually use Barry Lyndon as my go-to if I want to cite a movie from which you can select any frame at random and have a picture that could hang in a museum. But BL has nothing on Suspiria. Those frames are just hanging in separate sections of the museum.
The only other Dario Argento movie I’ve seen is Deep Red. Although I have no trouble believing it was made by the same filmmaker, it didn’t hit me quite as hard.
Oh, and the daughter’s opinion? She liked it.
Tangerine (2015, Paramount+) After hearing that her boyfriend/pimp cheated on her while she was in jail, a transgender sex worker and her best friend set out to find him and teach him and his new lover a lesson.
For years this kept appearing in reputable recommendation lists for various reasons and on SD threads so my wife and I pulled the trigger last night to decide one way or the other and get the critics off my back.
We loved it. A+. It was a spectacle in a way that only pissed off transgender hookers in South Cali can bring (I guess?). Funny, charming, believable. 5 Minutes into this and you are stuck in this drama like your seated front row of a Jerry Springer taping.
There are some films meant to be watched alone or only with an intimate significant other, this is one. I would not watch this with my children even if they were adults or with nana on the couch. Both would be watching Requiem For A Dream level cringe. But for anyone else, recommended.