“Dry as a desert”? “Just newsreel footage”? It’s footage from many sources, including political ads and Army training films, artfully assembled so that you can follow the story without any added narration.
You do say it’s “pretty good”, but with your other statements that amounts to praising with faint damnation, or something.
I was recommending it to a Doper who just watch something similar and didn’t care for that experience.
It’s well regarded, I agree it’s worth seeing, but I’m working with what I’ve been given here.
Tamerlane, thanks for the Amadeus additional info. I had no idea! Very good to know.
I saw The Atomic Cafe in college and remember enjoying it.
Se7en is brilliant, scary and depressing. All three. The last scene stuck with me for a long, lonnng time. Fincher’s The Game, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl are also very good, although not nearly as unsettling as Se7en.
One thing that the DC of Amadeus did was make Salieri more of a true “bad guy” than in the theatrical cut. The TC made him more of a tortured opportunist/influencer, but the DC showed Salieri having a far more active role in the downfall of Wolfgang. In it’s own way, the DC is far more at odds with history as none of the added scenes had any historical veracity.
Inna wasn’t thrilled that Mozart and the King weren’t “serious” like the rest of the movie, but I noted that Hulce… at least… was doing a fair imitation of a man who was, in real life, short (even for the 18th century), sickly, not very good looking, could be quite irritating at times, and… conversationally… really had little to say about anything other than music/his life/gossip.
Monkey Man
Recommended.
A great debut from Dev Patel, who directed this action movie as his first directorial job. I think the movie is actually a bit slow in parts, but is very enjoyable and features some excellent fight sequences. I didn’t think I would be considering Dev Patel a great action-fighter-guy, but here I am and he certainly does a great job in this movie.
Patel struggled so much to get funding, parts of this movie were shot using GoPros and Iphones and I heard he even put back together furniture destroyed on set so they wouldn’t have to get new furniture.
Art from adversity. The movie turned out really well and is a fun ride.
Definitely check it out.
Streamed Argyle and Super 8.
Super 8 was…not great. OK, but could have been good. Something took me out early. A truck turns onto a railroad track and deliberately plows into oncoming train, causing it to derail. And not just derail, it caused train cars to fly through the air, destroy the train station, etc…but the driver of the truck survives,
I THINK NOT!!!**
Argyle was just plain bad in all respects. Terrible.
You’ll Never Find Me I saw this on Shudder and had never heard of it. It’s an Australian production and takes place in a single location with just two actors. A man lives a seemingly lonely life in his grungy trailer. In the middle of the night, during a heavy storm, a young woman knocks on his door hoping to get a ride. They both mistrust one another and you’re never really sure what either of them is up to. The two actors were really compelling and the suspense is unrelenting.
You couldn’t have been paying close attention or you would at least have spelled the name correctly: “Argylle”. Many critics agree with you, I admit, but I still don’t get the hate for this movie. With a suitable suspension of disbelief, aided by a few martinis or Caesars, it’s lots of fun, IMHO!
Just saw it, and I basically agree with your commentary. It’s very well made, with excellent performances, but I would add the caveat that it’s heavy on violence and gore, for which some of us have lower tolerance than others. According to IMDb, the Korean Media Board forced the director to cut some of the most gory scenes in order to qualify for theatrical and video release. I assume that what I watched was the cut version. I shudder to think what those other scenes were like.
But yes, very well made indeed.
Although I liked the movie versions of Amadeus – both the theatrical release and the Director’s cut (which has him explicitly pressuring Constanze to go to bed with him, and which explains her animosity against him – I really prefer the stage version. In the play, I think you “get inside” Salieri’s madness more, so you can see how his actions are more reasonable (at least within that framework). It also explains how Salieri’s persuading Mozart to base the Secret Society in The Magic Flute on the Masons makes sense (at that point the Masons are financially supporting Mozart, and Salieri wants to drive him to destitution. Having him insult the Freemasons cuts off that support. The movie doesn’t make this clear.).
Yeah I thought Argylle was a lot of fun. It totally did not take itself seriously and knows it’s silly and over the top. I don’t really get all the hate thrown at the film.
I really liked Argylle and found it family-friendly fun. Not going to make my top 10 at the end of the year unless the year is really bad, but I gave it a quite positive review.
This movie is turning into Van Helsing. I really liked that Hugh Jackman movie Van Helsing, but it was really critically bashed when it was released.
Here’s that scene with Constanze and Salieri. And for two other cut or extended scenes, see here and here.
Exactly correct. I remember those horrid cross-over years: I’d show up to shoot a film job. Most people still had 1.33:1 t.v. sets. SOME people had High Definition ( 16:9 ) sets with clunky conversion stuff happening electronically. Then there was good old Academy ratio- 1.85:1.
If you were to show up and be told that you’re shooting 1.85:1 and “protecting” 1/33:1, life would get complicated. If the ground glass showed a common top line ( Common headroom ), at least I had a fighting chance. BUT- as I’d move around with my Steadicam, I’d constantly be looking for bogeys that would creep into the wider frame. Learning to compose moving shots is partially a process of anticipation. If I spend 20 years knowing exactly what is just outside of the frame when shooting Academy 1.85:1 and then am told to also frame for 16:9/ HD, well. Life got complex. Good thing I broke my back in September 2000 and had to step away from Cinematography for a while as the world tried to get it’s shit together…
Shooting “The Shining” in 1.33:1 must have been brutal. By 1977, Academy really was the defacto release aspect ratio for films. His aesthetic choices can be debated elsewhere. Suffice to say, watching “The Shining” in its original form is something I’ve not done since I saw it projected upon release. Not sure I even own a video copy in 1.33:1.
As far as the idea that “this was what his camera equipment was showing him and that’s how he wanted to release it”, let me say this. Regardless of what camera you are using, as SOON as motion picture cameras had a ground glass in the viewing system ( that is, any reflex camera ), you have had the option to stencil or engrave the aspect ratio into it. Kubrick is well known for owning his camera bodies, lenses, support material ( tripods, wheeled heads, etc ), dollies and so on. He would- at his own expense- have all of his camera bodies torn down and rebuilt by Arriflex prior to shooting a movie. His lenses would be checked, collumated, cleaned and so on. Of special concern to him apparently was the “float” inherent in many camera pull-down claw movements. He detested it and worked at great cost to make sure his gear reduced it not eliminated that sense of an image slightly floating up and down/ side to side on the screen.
All of this said, it doesn’t matter what his cameras were “showing him”. He would pick the aspect ratio for creative reasons and that would be the ground glass in the camera body. I’ve held custom-etched ground glasses. They’re kind of magical and rather pricey to have etched. ( High-quality laser etching has altered this ). I shot a job once for EPCOT Center at Disney World. Wider than Cinerama, it was to be three curved screens that wrapped around the audience more than 180º. The ground glass inserted into the viewing system looked, well, a bit like this:
[--------][--------][-------]
My job was to frame the talent and “pass them” from area to area on cue.
Hope this is helpful. And here is a very useful Aspect Ratio tutorial video for the uninitiated.
And this is an actual Arriflex 35mm movie camera ground glass. The overall area of the ground glass is the size of a 35mm frame. The aspect ratio is marked clearly. Not all ground glasses lived in this kind of metal frame for good. The idea of being able to pull the ground glass and replace it with another aspect ratio was common, and the tool to do so was the part of every 1st Assistant Cameraperson’s kit.
Academy ratio is 1.37, not 1.85.
The common nickname for the 1.85 ratio is “flat.”
I think it’s one of the best movies ever made.
I watched American Fiction and enjoyed it very much. It’s not really about what the trailer implied it was about, but I found it compelling anyway and maybe even better for it. I liked the refusal to wrap up the ending in a nice little bow. Very literary. It reminds me a bit of Adaptation in its willing departure from form.
I watched Zone of Interest. I think it is an important movie and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Nothing really happens, which makes it somewhat boring, but also horrifying at the same time, because of what we all know is happening just over the garden wall. I thought some of it seemed far-fetched - surely these weren’t real people and that’s not a real house so close to the camps? But come to find out, those people were very real and the house really was that close to the camps and the level of historical accuracy is quite high. Which just makes it all the more disturbing. It does make you realize that part of the way the Holocaust was pulled off was reducing everything to sterile, administrative red tape.
The only thing is, if the point was supposed to be for us to reflect on ourselves and our own complicity in evil, it didn’t quite land, because I found the characters wholly unrelatable. They were just ghastly people.
Everything, Everywhere, All At Once
Highly recommended.
Second time seeing this movie and it is a lot of fun. Does it go on too long? Definitely. Do I mind? Not really. The whole movie has a really fun vibe while still hitting some of the serious beats it needs to hit to be effective and moving.
If you haven’t seen it, it should be near the top of your list. It is quite the movie and the Oscars it won were well deserved. Not the best movie of the year it came out, but a great one for sure.
I watched this POS last night (it’s been re-released as a movie). The Stranger.
It’s so fucking bad I don’t know where to start. Honestly, the writing is so bad and implausible that you keep waiting for the twist - like maybe its all a dream or a very unreliable narrator. But no, it’s just the worst movie you will see in a long while.
I swear, I’m baffled someone got through 10 pages and green-lit this mess.
Love Lies Bleeding
Not really recommended.
No, it isn’t a bad movie, but it is a disappointment. This movie is the second film from Rose Glass, the director of the very good Saint Maud. This movie was pretty average, to be honest. Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours, but nothing particularly amazing, memorable, or impactful.
A thriller of sorts about a couple that deals with the aftermath of having killed a known spouse abuser. I’m not really sure how much we are supposed to be cheering these two girls on, but their characters really aren’t likeable or impactful enough for us to throw our support behind. Things go from bad to worse and I found myself watching, but not particularly thrilled or engaged.
I don’t know I’ll be thinking about this one too much in a week or so.