Godzilla Minus One. I liked it a lot, but I had perhaps a less empathetic take than some. The movie is as much about PTSD as it is a menacing monster, but I found the writing of the main character and his emotional ordeals so unsubtle and stereotypical that I was more annoyed by him than anything. That said, some of the dialogue from the other characters about a post-military life in Japan was moving.
It might have been something about his acting that didn’t work for me, because a lot of the acting from the other characters was great.
I agree. I’d just add that since it is, after all, a Godzilla movie, a considerable suspension of disbelief is required. That said, they did manage to wrap a decent enough story around it and the special effects were great. Though I was amused at how the “fighter jet” appeared to be a push-prop contraption that sounded exactly like a typical WW2-era prop fighter!
You barely watched the movie if you only got as far as the trunk scene! Which I agree was fairly sleazy, but the guy was an escaped convict, so not entirely unrealistic. I think this is the best perfomance Jennifer Lopez has done. I’m not a big fan of the rest of her work, but she does a good job here. It’s a clever Elmore Leonard story with twists and turns that I found very entertaining. And she does arrest him and take him back to prison in the end.
It also stuck in my memory because there’s a memorable table lamp in the Albert Brooks’s character’s office (I notice interiors). It later showed up on Wolowitz’s bedroom in TBBT.
Takeshi Miike has a new movie and for some insane reason, it dropped onto Netflix with absolutely not announcement, zero fanfare. Strange.
The movie itself is good, but I think my hopes were pretty high since this was a return to horror for Takeshi Miike and in the end, it is just a pretty good movie, not a great one. A killer is killing people like in a slasher movie, but the killer only seems to go after psychopaths. Why?
A very different take on the slasher(giallo?) type movie and I think the final 30 minutes were the best part of the movie. I was genuinely surprised and impressed with how things turned out.
Again, this is on Netflix, but has almost no advertising or marketing around it. Check it out.
I think this is a classic example of a) male gaze and b) changing sensibilities.
I recall all the reviews at the time talking about what a sexy film this was, the chemistry between the leads, the flirtiness of the trunk scene etc. I rewatched it too recently and yeah, that scene is pretty creepy. But it comes off as creepy because we (by which I mean, me personally) are/am much more primed to consider the scene from Lopez’s point of view.
As written, and as viewed by the male gaze, the trunk scene is a chance to spend some quiet time with an attractive women, in sufficient physical proximity that you’ll be very aware of each other’s bodies. Woohoo! The man knows that he’s “a gentleman” who’s not going to take physical advantage, so everything’s cool, it’s just a chance to get to know each other, what could be nicer.
Of course, from her point of view, we see that she’s been thrown in to the trunk of car against her will, and trapped there with a strange man, a violent criminal in fact, who could at any moment decide to overpower and assault here. Terrifying! Even the fact that he seems to be restricting himself to flirting just makes him yet another sleazy guy who thinks every woman owes him the opportunity to take a shot at romancing her, in any situation.
Of course “guy on the run who uses violence/threats to force a woman to help him escape capture, then they fall in love” is an old, old trope (see, Twelve Monkeys, Three Days of the Condor, e.g.) but it comes across pretty poorly nowadays.
Man, I recently watched that for the first time since the 70s, and you aren’t kidding. My juvenile male brain saw that as completely plausible back then, but I did some skipping this time.
Another film that really did not go over well for me.
And honestly, I have a bit of a thing for kidnapping tropes, so it’s not the plot device itself that bothers me, but the way it is done. Trust me, as a writer who writes romance specifically involving kidnapping/imprisonment but who has a social conscience, I have given this a lot of thought. You must first establish equal power before anything can happen. Clooney’s character broke the rule.
I hatedTwelve Monkeys but my friend told me it’s supposed to be a disturbing dynamic, which, fine - but doesn’t mean I want to see it. And we are O for 2 on Gilliam films because I really didn’t care for Brazil. Though at least with Brazil there was some interesting humor to lighten things up a bit. Twelve Monkeys was a joyless slog in contrast.
ETA: I worry with my posts lately I’m only coming across as a hater. I like a lot of movies, I swear! Certain things just push my buttons.
Right now I’m still watching Dune, which is pretty good, but progress has been arrested by Diablo IV suddenly not sucking any more.
Tuesday is my Anniversary and we are taking the day off to see Furiosa. I’m looking forward to that one.
Scent of a Woman (1992). All too rarely I get to remark that I’ve seen a real gem of a movie for the first time, and this was one of those rare cases. Powerful, complex, and multi-layered with smatterings of humour, this is a worthy entry in the annals of movie history. I also thought I’d never see Al Pacino in a role that surpassed his stellar performance in Scarface, but he did it here. The film was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, and Al Pacino very deservedly won for Best Actor.
Chris O’Donnell is Charlie Simms, a young man in a prestigious prep school who witnesses three students setting up a serious prank. When it’s revealed that he another student (played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) were witnesses, they are both pressured to reveal the perps’ identities. Both refuse.
The film then shifts to a completely unrelated scenario. To earn some spare cash, Charlie offers to be temporary caregiver to retired Army Lt-Colonel Frank Slade (Al Pacino). Slade was blinded in a freak grenade accident and has become hostile and embittered. Much of the movie follows the two in a New York adventure in which they begin to understand each other and form a close bond, with Charlie’s predicament back at school always lurking in the background.
I will say no more except that Charlie’s school situation, just like other scenes in the movie that seem to come out of nowhere and you wonder why they’re there, eventually turns out to be very meaningful. That’s a hallmark of fine filmmaking.
Very highly recommended. And you get to see, especially in the last hour or so of this more than two and a half hour masterpiece, why Pacino won his Oscar.
It was controversial then and has been since. A number of people felt the film was a bit too mawkish and rote. Many (I’m one of them) thought he shouldn’t have won the Best Actor nod and basically got a legacy nod. He was against Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, Robert Downey Jr. in Chaplin, Denzel Washington in Malcolm X and Stephen Rea in The Crying Game. Pacino turned in a perfectly fine performance, but I’d personally argue that Downey or Washington were both more deserving and some have argued they all were. But Pacino had lost out so many times before (in 1975, nominated for Godfather II, he lost to Art Carney in Harry and Tonto in what many regarded as a legacy win for Carney), the Academy wanted to throw him a bone for a solid, but hardly career-high performance.
It has also suffered in retrospect as many regard it as the moment when Pacino descended into self-parody and started his LOUD acting phase. Which is kinda unfair, as I think in isolation it’s a perfectly reasonable choice. But ‘HOO-HA’ has dogged him ever since.
Adding Condor to my watch queue. I may have seen it thirty or more years ago. I don’t remember anything except what I just read on Wikipedia.
A lot of classic movies have tropes that are no longer acceptable. I wrote a blistering review of a movie over a week ago. The male character was too focused on a dangerous career as a military jet pilot with no regard to his wife and kids. He was considered commendable 50+ years ago. Now, being a good father and husband is more important than chasing adventures and danger.
The Monster (2016). A mostly derelict mother and her daughter have a car breakdown on a remote country road, and are stalked by some sort of beast. Pretty decent for a $3 million budget, and Zoe Kazan does a terrific job, even with some really poor dialogue.
OK, the monster itself was pretty horribly done when you finally see it, but it is what it is.
I think those who regard it that way are completely wrong and it’s more than just a little unfair. The Frank Slade character apparently had a stellar military career and is despondent and embittered over his sudden blindness and has become unhinged to the point of being literally suicidal. Yet we see that he remains a man of principle and generosity, underscoring the tragedy of his plight. It’s no wonder that such a man might sometimes be loud and uncaringly obnoxious, and that’s the character that Pacino portrays so well, IMHO.
I admit that I can be hooked and drawn in by emotional appeal that other critics might resist or even dismiss as mawkish, but to me that’s a large part of what movies are about. It’s why I thought the latter part, especially, of Arthur the King was so great. And the impact of My Dog Skip is such that I can barely manage to watch it, because when the boy grows up and leaves home and the dog, now old and losing his sight, sadly goes into the now-empty bedroom, I see it as a metaphor for the bleakness of life itself. The great critic Roger Ebert was so moved by that film that he basically considered it impossible to evaluate objectively.
Honestly, I can be as well. I get “moist eyes” easily watching a lot of mawkish shit. If others are in the room I usually deflect by noting my allergies and anatomically slightly leaky eyes .
A very bizarre movie from South Africa about a man who gets abducted and overtaken(?) by an alien. He then wanders around having many bizarre, and I emphasize bizarre, experiences. He even impregnates a woman and she has the baby immediately.
Anyway, very strange and kind of trippy. It was OK, but it will not be retained in my mind for a very long time.
If movie paranoia floats your boat, I’d recommend The Parallax View if you haven’t seen it. Holds up pretty well for a 1974 movie. Warren Beatty has a more than usually watchable performance.
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