Watched Suspiria 2018
Have you seen this?
Good. You are better off than me.
A bad remake of a bad film. Tilda Swinton playing 3 roles, sucking at all of them. Dakota Johnson looking delicious but Christ on a cracker, she can’t dance OR act. Chloë Grace Moretz is completely wasted.
A horror movie that commits the worst sin that a horror movie can. It’s dull. They could have easily shaved 40 minutes out of it. Dream sequences. Oh, God, so many dream sequences…
Just saw John Wick: Parabellum.
I got restless about half way through. Interestingly, watching a dude shoot people in the head every five seconds gets boring. At least for me.
I think it peaked about 15 minutes in after the stable scene. That was funny as hell. I’m not sure if this movie was supposed to be funny, but it was definitely funny sometimes.
I’m not sure why I keep seeing these movies. I think when I saw Keanu saying “Guns. Lots of guns.” in the trailer I got excited.
I’m not sure how I missed “V for Vengeance” all these years. I watched it today and realized that it could have been made yesterday, as the theme is just as relevant. In fact, it’s like it was written for what is happening in the world today. Creepy.
^Are you sure the “V” wasn’t for “Vendetta?”
:smack:
Just superb. Tense. Beautifully photographed. Remarkably acted.
My god. I want to see it again.
Set around the days of a HS graduation.
Two (well, one actually) seniors discover that they’ve wasted HS by doing all the right things to get into good colleges, etc. So they try to make up for it in the usual One Epic Night to catch up. Yawn.
The standard series of weird stuff at weird places ensues. Yawn.
Right, I don’t see how this is 97% at RT. There’s just a ton of run-of-the-mill stuff for a movie of this type. Plus the fact that the two leads are supposed to be very smart but act like idiots for most of the movie is a noticeable problem.
There are some funny bits mixed in here and there. Warning: lots of foul language. But that’s okay.
In particular Maya Rudolf’s voice bit on a affirmations tape at the beginning is perfect. All such tapes should be like this.
Directed by Olivia Wilde so Jason Sudeikis has a part and that means a ton of other SNL-related people are involved.
It appears that the HS seniors are all 22+ in real life. Anyone surprised by this? One of the “teenagers” is Carrie Fischer’s daughter Billie Lourd, age 26. And she’s not the oldest.
Beanie Feldstein from Ladybug is the main of the two leads. She’s also a much better actor than the other one and this affects the movie.
Lisa Kudrow has a small role and is wasted. C’mon folks, give this amazing actress some real work. Have you not seen The Opposite of Sex?
Give it 1.5 phones with dead batteries.
**Echo in the Canyon
** a nice, but not essential, documentary on “the Laurel Canyon Sound” of the 60’s. Some insights into the Byrds, Mamas and Papas, Buffalo Springfield, and Beach Boys (David Crosby reveals the real reason he was dropped from the Byrds: “because I was an asshole!” :D) plus the interplay between the British Invasion and the LA scene. A lot of the music is from a tribute album/live show by modern day performers (a nice turn by Cat Power included).
Photograph -
A touching film about a poor Indian photographer of tourists and a middle class accounting student in Mumbai. The plot revolves around his sending her photograph to his grandmother, who wants him to get married, as his fiancee. When she decides to visit to meet the couple, he has to find her and persuade her to pretend to be his girlfriend. Hijinks ensue- well, no they don’t. In an American rom-com remake, hijinks will ensue. In this film a slow romance and consideration of class, poverty, and growth occurs. The film moves at its own pace, which will probably put off some viewers, but those with patience will be rewarded, though they should not be surprised that there isn’t a pat ending (either up or down).
On my “absolutely recommended” list for this year.
The Tomorrow Man -
Blythe Danner and Joh Lithgow in a romantic dramedy about the relationship between a (seemingly) normal widow and a “prepper”. Worth seeing for the acting and obvious chemistry between the leads, but it really fails to stick the landing, IMHO. If the director had lost the last 30 seconds of the film it might have made my absolutely recommended list, but as it is, I still enjoyed it for what it was.
I also saw Booksmart and I thought they managed to take a fairly worn plot (nerds on the last day of school need to get to “the big party” and break out of their shells) and populate it with winning characters (there are no “villains” to be overcome), a few hilarious situations (keep an eye on Gigi, is all I will say), and though it may not stick the landing, there is only a bit of a hop on the dismount (when Mags Bennett’s protege, Loretta McCready, is involved, you know she’s going to do something badass, and Kaitlyn Dever does not disappoint).
A new Netflix movie Rim Of The World. Got about 20 minutes in before giving up. Not because it was bad, but because I was clearly not its target audience.
I have great nostalgic affection for Goonies, but I have heard people who come to it late as adults just find it full of loud annoying kids doing a bunch of dumb things. It’s hard for me to separate my love for it objectively. However, my assessment of Rim Of The World is that same kind of reaction - full of loud annoying kids doing dumb things. It’s unnecessarily crude, its pacing is way off, it’s by-the-numbers character archetypes. Bleargh.
Watch it if you’re twelve. Otherwise best leave it be.
Aladdin (the live-action remake). Compared to the 1992 animated version, it holds its own quite well. In some aspects, it’s better – less of the parrot. In others, not so much (the villain, primarily). No one compares to Robin Williams, but Will Smith does a perfectly fine job as the Genie. Recommended, if you liked the original.
Watched Zodiac (2007) on Netflix. It covers decades of investigation of the Zodiac serial killer, starting in the
late 1960s. Usually when I watch a movie about a real event, or a real person, or a film “based on real events”, I get a little annoyed by Hollywood style alterations to to the facts. Zodiac is, apparently, famous for not making stuff up.
It’s kind of a mixed blessing. There are characters - local law officials - who show up multiple times but never get serious character development — they just provide or deny information. Jake Gyllenhaal is the lead actor, and Mark Ruffian #2, but Robert Downey Jr. was the third lead and I’m not sure he added much to the story, but apparently he had some interactions with the serial killer.
Gyllenhaal seemed a little too “spectrum” to be completely believable as a political cartoonist and a writer, but, going by the film’s rep for accuracy, his portrayal might have been spot-on.
Roger Ebert was impressed by the realism of the newspaper office scenes.
Good film, unique, interesting oddities, good period soundtrack that uses Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man as effective framing music. I’ll give it a weak A grade.
Mortal Engines was a lot better than I expected from the reviews and poor box office. It wasn’t perfect, it was quite derivative in fact (there’s one sequence that’s a carbon copy of Star Wars) but that didn’t stop it from being entertaining, and quite spectacularly beautiful. The CGI looked a lot better than it did in the trailers.
It did fall down a bit in fleshing out secondary characters. Clearly we were meant to care about them when they meet their fates, and in the books I imagine there was plenty of opportunity for that; The casualties of adaptation, I guess, but it felt glaring at times, and weakened certain side stories.
There’s something about Steampunk that doesn’t seem to resonate well with audiences. Despite its niche popularity with the nerd crowd, especially cosplayers, it just can’t seem to catch a break. Even when they have really good stories, admittedly not always a guarantee, that doesn’t seem to be enough. It’s a shame, as Steampunk is one of my absolute favourite aesthetics.
Time for another Aussie flick: Ladies in Black.
Tales of some women working at an upscale dept. store in 1959 Australia.
Of the cast, the only one I recognize is Julia Ormond as the elder lady. But I should have recognized Rachael Taylor from various US TV shows.
Part of the story involves native Aussies vs. “reffos”, refuges who had been in Australia, in some cases, to have grown kids. (So having Ormand in the film works well.) Some “us vs. them” attitudes plus the usual 50s women as 2nd class citizens that is barely challenged.
Not really much of a story. Things end so predictably that it nearly ruined the film. But taken as a period character study it works very well. You just have to look past stuff like the “take off her glasses and re-arrange her hair a bit” and “turning a blah dress into a winner” tropes.
Give it 3.5 salamis.
You may also recognize Angourie Rice, who has done a number of American films. Although Julia Ormond may be listed higher in the credits (although I’m not sure if that’s true), the film is more about Rice’s character. Ormond may have been listed higher in the credits because she has a long career behind her.
Last week was an Aussie retro film. This week a futuristic Aussie one. I am Mother. (One of those films Netflix buys and slaps their logo all over it.)
A child is raised completely by a robot, alone, in a special bunker in a post-something dystopian future. Hillary Swank is the only on-screen person I know.
A thread was started about it so I put my review there.
In short: Wished I watched something, anything, else.
I finally saw A Star is Born with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga and I have to say, I was a little underwhelmed. I managed to miss it in the theaters and I rarely rent anything streaming, but it just showed up on HBO Now. I was excited to finally see it. Then … blah. It didn’t really go anywhere or say anything.
I was familiar with the previous versions though I don’t think I’ve ever seen the entire 1954 film and I’ve seen the 1976 version but not in a million years. So I guess I didn’t have a perfect understanding of the entire story arc but it didn’t really go the way I thought it would. I thought Lady Gaga’s performance was really top notch but her character’s new found fame didn’t come across as very new-found to me. I know it was supposed to be a meteoric rise, but it just seemed to go from integrity-laden singer song-writer to comfortable with back up dancers too quickly. I was also a little taken aback at Cooper’s character cleaning up right at the end before taking that hard turn. Speaking of which, I think the entire film should have ended about ten minutes before it did. Garage door closes … roll credits.
My one last pet peeve is this - I was under the impression that Bradley Cooper is a pretty good guitar player, but that didn’t really come off in the film. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t really him playing the more intricate stuff and he just seemed a little too herky-jerky to come off as the best guitar player his brother could find in the state.
I’ll probably watch it again.
I saw three movies today (triple feature!).
Late Night
I went to the morning matinee of this one, mostly because Mindy Kaling was slated to appear for a Q&A after the early afternoon showings, and I wanted an uncrowded theater (and didn’t want to attend a Q&A if the movie stunk).
It definitely doesn’t stink. The actors alone assure this. However, the script, while it does a few new twists on “the outsider comes in and save the enterprise through pluck and resourcefulness”, it never feels like a real look at putting on a late night talk show (think Emma Thompson as the female version of David Letterman). But there are some laughs and the heartfelt ending seems mostly earned, so I will be happy if it makes some money for its backers.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
I saw this one because while I was buying my tickets for Late Night, I saw that there was an opportunity to buy a ticket for a late afternoon showing of the third movie in my triple feature. So I looked at what was available (and I hadn’t seen) to fill the three hour gap (with time for lunch) and this film fit the bill.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is this year’s Blindspotting, though along gentler line with a dash more surrealism thrown in. For those who despair at the misrepresentation of their city in the movies, this one is an authentic look at a specific slice of the City by the Bay. I enjoyed the movie and found all the characters engaging and a bit unpredictable. It’s really a specific story about specific people, so it doesn’t hammer you with broad lessons to be learned. I’m not as high on this film as I was on Blindspotting, but I enjoyed my time with the characters and the storytelling.
Wild Rose
The reason for ending up in a triple feature. The official release date for this film is later this summer, so when I saw a single showing of this in the late afternoon in the kiosk listing, I took a look at the seats and there was one available in a great location, so I went for it. (The screening turned out to be only 3/4 full, primarily because it only popped up on the theater’s site today, nothing about it in the prior weeks).
I loved this movie. While the overall narrative arc is well trodden (character with drive and talent wants to make in the music biz but keeps getting in her own way), the setting (Glasgow), the music biz (“country music” as the lead character keeps correcting those who say she sings “country and western music”), and the self-sabotaging behavior (which never crosses the threshold of “how could you do something that stupid!”) comes across as fresh. Couple that with some great performances (though Julie Walters, who gets billing of a lead, is in a supporting role that doesn’t allow her to stretch) and some terrific musical performances and we have a winner.
The lead, Jessie Buckley, is a revelation (at least to me). A fiery performance coupled with some great singing of some iconic country songs (as well as a few new ones). She has some great pipes.
And I know her musical performance wasn’t a matter of autotune and editing magic because as the final credits rolled, Jessie came down to the front of the theater for a 10 minute Q&A and a 15 minute mini-concert of some great country music (Born To Run*, Guilty, and Country Girl, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar).
Definitely on my absolutely recommended list and please see it on something with a good sound system!
*Before sitting down too write a smug note telling me Born To Run is not a country song, please reflect on whether you have any knowledge of good country music in general and Emmylou in particular. Born To Run is not only a country song, but a great country song!
Rocketman, the Elton John biopic. I was a bit skeptical going in because our local movie critic hated it (he’s definitely an outlier, on this one). The music is not chronological, by any means: it’s not “and then I wrote…” kind of a story. But it is a very very familiar “rock star descent into drugs and alcohol before hitting rock bottom, turning around, happy ending, roll credits” story. It’s OK.
Earlier I wrote on The Miseducation of Cameron Post. One of two gay conversion movies that had come it. Realized I should have seen the other one instead. But I needed to wait a while to “cleanse the palate” so to speak.
Anyway. Time for Boy Erased. This time a boy going thru this nonsense. “Based on a true story.”
Note: not an Australian movie like some of my recent ones. But Australian-ish. With Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe as the parents. (Although neither was actually born in Australia.)
Fairly decent movie despite having the usual “events” that are apparently required in such a movie. A good amount of tense drama. Reasonably well done.
Kidman plays it nicely understated. Crowe isn’t a major figure in the movie until near the end but then gets his time to shine. The “boy” is a generic boy.
Give it 3 Bible thumpings.
I just watched Satan & Adam on Netflix and thoroughly enjoyed it.
It is a documentary, 20 years in the making, about the musical duo that makes up the title. I had never heard of them and it is one of those movies best watched without knowing much.
Some terrific blues and a really attractive score.