Finally watched Velvet Buzzsaw on Netflix
Soooooo disappointing.
Mostly because they had the makings of a good movie. But it never felt like they really knew which way they were going. Is it a satirical look at pretentious art ‘industry’, or a horror flick? Great cast, beautifully shot, but it could not commit to either. As satire, the horror detracted from the bite of it. As horror, it just wasn’t fleshed out enough to be truly creepy. It seems like such a great premise.
Here’s a better Emergo effect:
My latest five:
Apollo 11
Excellent documentary about the first manned mission to land on the Moon. Some amazing footage, including stuff I was surprised not to have seen before (I’ve watched a lot of Space Race documentaries over the years but never knew that Johnny Carson attended the mission’s launch, for instance). And even though you know how it’s all going to end, there are still some white-knuckle moments. I was glad to see that JFK is given proper - and moving - credit for having set the national goal of a Moon mission in the first place.
Warm Bodies
Clever, funny zombie romance (!) with some not-so-subtle parallels to a certain well-known Shakespeare play.
Ready Player One
An sf movie about global VR and the future of the Internet. It’s fun to spot the pop culture references (The Iron Giant, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Halo, Back to the Future, King Kong and many others) but, for all its frantic action, the movie felt a bit flat to me.
Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People
Good but not great documentary about the immigrant-turned-megapublisher and his enduring commitment to muckraking and the free press. Hadn’t known about his feud with Theodore Roosevelt before.
Leonard Soloway’s Broadway
Terrific, very funny documentary about a legendary Broadway producer, now 90 but still sharp as a tack. The movie is nicely divided between stories of his past triumphs and flops, and his present-day efforts - tireless, stubborn and often profane - to turn a musical about tap-dancing into an Off-Broadway hit.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (on Hulu). This is a 2016 film from Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok, What We Do In the Shadows). A big hit in New Zealand, and very well reviewed on RotTom.
This resembles a live-action version of Pixar’s Up! Crusty older guy — Sam Neill — has a wilderness adventure with a chunky, neglected boy. Interesting camera work, lots of humor, good doggies, numerous catchy modern songs on the soundtrack.
My wife loved it and is recommending it everyone. I’m more like, “A- or B+”, but it’s something that few people will actively dislike.
MotW: Locating Silver Lake. (Warning: It’s actually “Silver Lake adjacent”. ;))
A guy in a bad place after college graduation* moves to LA where he meets some interesting people and, unfortunately, some “interesting” people. Rather than spend a lot of time with the first group, he ends up spending way too much time with the later. Movie ensues.
Josh Peck plays the guy. Only seen him before in one episode of TBBT where he played Stuart’s rival comic store owner. He has an almost lispish way of talking. In some ways he reminds me of Ryan Gosling. Definitely can do sad and pathetic which was needed at times here. But some more range was required at other times.
He is a “writer” who doesn’t write. Mopes around. Gets advice (good and horrible) from people. Etc.
Finn Wittrock plays the leader of the “interesting” group of people. I forgot to mention the sleazy cop he plays in my review of If Beale Street Could Talk. Also fully dives into sleaziness here. He’s just a little bit “too good” at playing these types of people.
Aubrey Peeples a member of this group who becomes the obligatory Female of Interest. Haven’t seen her anywhere before except on talk shows. Does a nice job at first but then her character sort of fizzles out.
Amaury Nolasco and Valerie Cruz are the two main characters for the ordinary interesting group. Both do an excellent job. Warning: Nolasco sort of plays the “Magic [del]Negro[/del] Hispanic” character.
Of course, we all know the Obvious Rules of Life that this movie violates:
If you’re in a bad spot, do not move to LA.
If you do move to LA, do not hang out with “interesting” people. Stick with the interesting people.
Do not pay 6 months rent in advance in cash.
Give it 3.5 typewriters. (Hmm, I’m noticing a trend.)
Going all the way back to the original “Ocean’s 11” and the brilliant “Topkapi,” I have loved a good “caper” movie, in which a merry band of somewhat ill-matched thieves get together for that one big heist. Unfortunately, King of Thieves is not that movie. Even with octogenarians Michael Caine and Tom Courtnay among the leads, this film was a disappointment. Though based on real events, there was no real tension, as the heist was almost ridiculously easy. Yes, they later turn on each other, but since none of the lot are particularly sympathetic characters, you really don’t care about them and actually begin rooting for them to be caught. And there were just too many tired incontinence and fart jokes, and an abundant use of the “f” word, to lift it beyond the level of a geriatric cliche. It’s what I would call an evening’s entertainment, worth watching for a bunch of fine actors picking up an easy paycheck, but if you’re not a fan of the heist genre, nothing to recommend it.
Last night, sated with food and wine, I remained on the couch throughout the entire showing of “Prometheus”. That’s my excuse, and I’m not proud of it. Prometheus was absolutely the worst movie I can recall sitting all the way through.
Some scientists go to space, searching for “the Engineers”, some aliens who possibly created the human race. Pretty much all the people on the ship are jerks. The aliens are dead-ish? but still wanna kill kill kill kill. My favorite Really Stupid Part: When they’re on the alien planet, some guy does a scan and decides the air is breathable, so he takes his helmet off. Within a couple of moments, that guy’s not dead, so everyone else does it too. :smack: Yeah, oxygen. That’s the only possible thing you might have to worry about on an alien planet.
Watched “The Pledge”(2001) for the first time and as with most Jack Nicholson movies was enjoying it. The ending really didn’t work for me though and having a quick look at IMDB reviews it looks like a lot of 1 star reviews agreed. I certainly wouldn’t knock it down that much but I’m surprised at how many 8-10 star reviews there were. Maybe one of those movies that a few more viewings might modify my opinion.
I’m surprised you could narrow it down to just one, with so many to choose from. That movie looks great but is full to the (chest)bursting with supposedly smart people doing stunningly dumb things.
Dr. Flexi Jerkoff (in Flesh Gordon )( Opens door to spaceship, takes deep breath): Good! There’s oxygen here!
Except that Flesh Gordon was supposed to be an absurd comedy.
The thing I love about Prometheus is the way the map guy (who’s supposed to be the group expert in this stuff) uses his magic flying eight balls to map the interior, then doesn’t use his map and gets lost.
Just watched Hide in the Light
It has a bunch of ‘urban explorers’ who break into an abandoned, but security patrolled, orphanage. Therein is the evil little girl and her demon pal who want to ‘play a game’ with the explorers. The little girl and the demon see deathly afraid of light. The explorers cannot seem to get the doors open with the crowbar they brought with them.
We have several scenes where, after a number of their group have been dragged off by the darkness, they are commiserating in a large room. Could not help but notice that there are a number of windows in this room that are not that far off the ground. There is light coming through these windows, enough that it casts shadows. Perhaps you can stay safe in THIS light? Or maybe even USE YOUR CROWBAR TO BREAK THROUGH THE GLASS!!!
A Quiet Place, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt. Krasinski directing. Excellent, tightly directed and edited, well-acted, bite-your-nails movie. Aliens have arrived and they react only to noise. Despite its genre, I could see Krasinski getting a directing nomination.
A Quiet Place was a 2018 film. It was nominated for an Oscar for best sound editing, but it didn’t win. It was very well reviewed and made a lot of money:
Missed that bit.
Finally got around to watch The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I worried that it was going to be uneven. “Uneven” is actually an understatement.
The first bit with the singing cowboy had great humor and gratuitous violence that really hurt it. The second bit had Stephen Root and the best line: “First time?” The third bit was a real downer. Hard to watch. The fourth bit I quickly realized I had read the tale. I thought it was by Twain, but it’s by London. Despite Tom Waits, I like the story better. Beautiful scenery though.
The fifth bit, the Oregon Trail one had an almost completely developed story. So that helped. But still, no, the train boss would have not had acted like that when the real stuff happened. Realized early on that the 6th tale was one of those* kind of stories. So it was just spending time watching until you got there. Yawn.
Give it two and a half pan shots, and that’s being generous to Root.
*Like in Twilight Zone.
A messed up woman with possible parentage issues.
Mainly watched due to the cast. Includes: Steve Buscemi, J. Smith-Cameron (from Rectify), Ann Dowd, John Leguizamo.
Andrea Riseborough as the title character. Just saw her and Buscemi in The Death of Stalin where she played Stalin’s daughter.
Dowd and Leguizamo are barely in it- it’s mainly a 3 person play.
It’s in 4:3 ratio and oftentimes poorly filmed. So a cheap feel to it.
Unlikeable, etc., lead character. So it’s just a long slog to reach the uninteresting end.
Critics love it but audiences not so much. I guess I’m in the latter group.
Give it 1.5 old photos.
Fast Color is a low budget sci-fi tale with a stellar cast (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Lorraine Toussaint, David Strathairn). It uses whatever small effects budget it has well and at the end, sets up future chapters, like any good superhero movie. I found it more satisfying, in a quiet way, than many of the bombastic superhero origins stories of the past decade. Recommended.
Saturday had the annual broadcast of The Ten Commandments. I could easily watch this, but my wife, Pepper Mill, was fed up with the yearly repetition. So I pulled out my DVD of Cecil B. deMille’s original 1923 silent version of the film, complete with Technicolor sequences (which the disc misidentifies as “hand tinted”). It’s an interesting change. We only watched the Moses Leads his people out of Egypt part, not the boring contemporary story.
Theodore Roberts plays Moses as a wild-eyed prophet with outrageous, unruly hair, a far cry from Charlton Heston’s neatly-combed Moses. But the “Gate of Egypt”, with its images of Rameses in his chariot and the Avenue of Sphinxes was exactly reproduced for the 1956 remake from the 1923 original.
An earlier thread about the movie: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=865665
My latest five:
Yojimbo
Classic B&W Kurosawa film set in 1860s Japan. A ronin comes to a small town torn apart by two criminal gangs, and then plays them against each other. Funny, sly and engrossing. The last line helps make for a perfect ending.
The American President
Romantic comedy in which a widowed President falls for a spunky environmental lobbyist. Given all the shared cast, crew and themes, it’s almost like a movie-length prequel to The West Wing. Catnip for political junkies like me.
Witness for the Prosecution
The original 1957 British courtroom drama, from the works of Agatha Christie, focusing Sir Wilfrid, the ailing, pugnacious, Churchill-esque defense counsel. Good stuff.
Witness for the Prosecution
The 2016 remake, focusing Mr. Mayhew, the solicitor who first takes the case. Even better than the original, I’d say - grittier, darker, much more atmospheric.
Headhunters
A crazy good Norwegian thriller about an art thief who steals from the wrong rich guy and then has to go on the run. Some twists and turns that just have to be seen to be believed - two thumbs 'way up.
MotW: Care. A British tv movie about a divorced mother of 2 who is suddenly confronted will a bunch of issues regarding her elderly mother. (And an all too feckless sister.)
Good, but glum, story. Some really good acting by the lead Sheridan Smith and Alison Steadman as the mother.
One frequent thing with British shows is at times it seems like there are only 10 actors in the UK (as Mrs. FtG puts it). But not so many recognizable people here. Steadman’s done some stuff like a few episodes of Orphan Black. There’s the obligatory scene with Molesley from Downton Abbey. And that’s nearly it for us.
Give it 3.5 chips.