“I Origins” (2014)
I have seen this movie for a few times already and I love to rewatch it with friends.
Some rating here I Origins (2014) - IMDb
It combines scientific and spiritual aspects. Give it a try. I do enjoy this one immensely.
Just the noteworthy ones over the past couple of weeks:
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
What can you say about one of the great pop voices of the twentieth century? This documentary isn’t exactly a warts and all portrayal, but Linda Ronstadt didn’t fall (very far) into the traps that provide juicy details for those Oscar bait biopics. If you love her music, it does cover most of her career (leaving out the Cajun phase late in her career and the bluegrass one early on). It does highlight how important her Mexican heritage really was to her, how sharp and insightful her takes on the music business were (especially given the giggly on-stage persona she had between songs), how genuinely generous she was to her fellow musicians, and how much control she was able to take over her career in an era when the record companies molded, pruned, and exploited artists to a great extent. In the end, the saddest thing was that she is ultimately a singer who was not focused on fame, making a lot of money, or creating “art”. Her entire focus was to be able to sing songs she enjoyed with family, friends, and musicians she admired, and that has been take away from her.
If you’re a fan, the film will reward you with some insights and facts you probably don’t know and if you aren’t a fan, maybe it will show you why we fans raise her up above other pop/rock voices of the 70’s.
Hustlers
Apparently loosely based on actual events, this is a largely by the books slice of life portrayal of the women of the strip clubs, their trials and tribulations, and how they get their payoff. Jennifer Lopez shows what a compelling performance she can give when provided the right character. Constance Wu is ostensibly the star of the picture, but she has a harder time with a character that goes through massive changes from the beginning to the end of the story. Critics have talked about the view of the a strip club through the “female gaze” and this is a strength of the film. For example, the scenes in the Champagne Room don’t arouse so much as they repel and make one uneasy. The movie does suffer from the standard weakness of this type of “Hollywood” portrayal, in that despite the strip club setting, nudity is sparse, and none of the top billed characters ever strip down past bra and panties, yet command thousands of dollars from their clients.
Worth seeing for the performances and the slight twist of view from the performers standpoint. Look for buzz about Lopez come Oscar time, but don’t be surprised if there are no nominations for this film.
Freaks
This year, along with Fast Color, this is an example of what can be done with “small” superhero stories (no spandex, no humongous CGI budgets, no shoehorning of “canon” to appease the fanbase). I enjoyed the orchestration of tension and reveals in a sparse story that still manages some significant worldbuilding. The performance of the child actress that is the center of the story is particularly noteworthy.
Recommended. If you like Logan and especially if you like Fast Color, I’d recommend seeking this one out.
Monos
I’m still absorbing this one. Absolutely recommended. End-to-end tension that just keeps on going. You know where this is going (Lord of the Flies territory) but can’t look away. The cast is uniformly excellent and there are no “background” characters in this ragtag group of rebels(?). I’m not sure there is any overarching lesson to be learned here, and it certainly doesn’t give a damn about where anyone fits on the social justice scale. It is just a superlative story of people whose fate is inherent in their character and how that fate plays out under stress and fear.
Very much recommended if you don’t mind subtitles and don’t need stories without loose ends.
Dipping into the documentary pool: Jakob Dylan’s Echo in the Canyon. The musical life north of Hollywood in the 60s.
Some really great old clips. Some “modern” people doing homages to the old tunes. Interviews. Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas, Lou Adler, etc. And a Ringo.
I am amazed by the singing capabilties of some of these people. Just knock your socks off.
Dylan (“You have to be more specific.”) has a real focus on two things here:
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The movie Model Shop. Made in the late 60s in LA. It’s the official style guide if you want to do a Mad Men detailed movie set then. Dylan even drives around in the same car that the guy in the movie did. In the same places. That’s … obsession. Not sure why so much is devoted to it here given the lack of musical connections.
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Neil Young. He interviews Crosby, Stills and Nash. Shows old clips, etc. But apparently couldn’t convince old Neil to show up. Typical. The closing credits show Neil thrashing on the guitar in a studio. Young is the ghost in this little play.
Well, not counting Tom Petty. Wow. That’s something to watch now.
Very nice. Good subject. Etc.
Give it 4.5 12 string Rickenbackers.
Now dying to see the Ronstadt movie.
Watched The Lincoln Lawyer over the weekend.
Really good movie. Wow, what a cast. Matthew McConaughey, William H Macy, Bryan Cranston, Bob Gunton, Marisa Tomei. Story is not that original, but it was well acted and well paced.
That’s so good to hear, I’ll give it a try. Sometimes I’m hesitant to see a movie if I loved the book… actually, now a series of books. Which get increasingly meta, as Mickey Haller is recognized as “Ain’t you that Lincoln Lawyer they did the movie about? Gotta say, you don’t look anything like Matthew McConaughey.”
Huh, and today I learned it’s based on a real guy!
“The basic premise …is that a busy criminal defense attorney works out of his car – a Lincoln Town Car – instead of an office; he is incessantly on the phone, as he is chauffeured between court appearances by a former client working off a legal-fee debt… the character is based on a real person: David Ogden, a Los Angeles attorney”.
I’ve seen a few lately ranging from unremarkable, to friggin’ weird.
Avengers: End Game - I rewatched it last night. It was fun again.
*King of New York *- on the recommendation of a friend. He loved it. I thought it was shit. Christopher Walken is a drug lord who just got of prison. Then he kills people for ninety minutes and dies in a car.
The Slammin’ Salmon - a Broken Lizard joint. I loved Beerfest. I thought Super Troopers was ok. Super Troopers 2 was stupid. The only other Broken Lizard movie I’ve seen is Club Dread which I thought was god-awful. So I’m not sure why I call myself a Broken Lizard fan. That said, this one was pretty good. Much funnier that* Super Troopers*. Yes, it’s kind of* Waiting* in just a more upscale restaurant but I liked it. The late Michael Clark Duncan is hilarious as The Champ
And then there’s Bone Tomahawk - holy shit, this one isn’t for the faint of heart, or stomach. A western, starring Kurt Russell who goes after literal troglodytes - here a cannibal tribe of cave dwellers - who have kidnapped a young lady. Very gritty and disgusting … I won’t even go into details. I actually thought it was pretty good, but damn, don’t be eating anything greasy while you watch it.
Just for the record, I always pronounced it bAHker.
Once every few months we watch a movie that’s really nice but for some reason is going to basically disappear without a trace, to be barely seen by anyone.
Auggie is one of these films.
“Auggie” is short of Augmented Reality. Richard Kind (a great schlub going back to Mad About You and Scrubs appearances) is given augmented reality glasses at his retirement party. The glasses provide a “companion” to talk to, called Auggie (cf. Siri, Alexa but with video).
Kind gets into a really close relationship with Auggie which causes problems, of course.
The tech is more than a little magical. E.g., Auggie automatically knows what Kind is thinking due to sensors in the frame by the ears. But you can roll with that.
What I found best about the movie (besides Kind’s perfect fit in the role) is that the story kept going along with nice little bits that I didn’t see coming. (All too often I know the exact way the 3rd act is going to go based on the first half of the 1st act.) Over and over I was pleasantly surprised by interesting things happening. There’s a richness to the plot without any real filler.
A pretty good movie that few will ever see. Shame.
Give it 4 lifeguard chairs.
Yesterday Girl - 8/10
Wow. I’ve been on an Eastern European binge, and was a little surprised that I stumbled upon one in German, but it caught my attention quickly. It’s considered avant-garde experimental, stylish, art-house, but don’t let this push you away. It’s also a great story, one I’ve never seen in a movie, a character who is a kleptomaniac (which you find out in the first 20 seconds), but it’s just so great, and she’s great. She wrote, directed, AND starred. For some reason I thought of Vincent Gallo and “Buffalo '66” and then I just find out she also did everything herself, like he did. I also found out that they both never made any other movies that were given any attention, but I’ll look.Both movies are also very good, without being pretentious, no waste. I hate when the counter-criticism of watching paint dry is defended as “artsy”.
Oops. Her brother is Alexander. She is Alexandra. Damn, that changes so much.
Started watching Bohemian Rhapsody.
We stopped about 35 minutes into it, just when Freddy is surprised by the kiss from…whoever that guy was.
Big fan of Queen. The band members do a good job…but it just doesn’t ring true to me.
We will continue to watch but I do not have high hopes.
I watched *Limitless *last night. Starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro, I really liked it. I feel like I’m the last person on earth to discover it. I actually had started to watch it sometime last year but I fell asleep and never caught up with it. I thought that effect of “swooping” through the streets of New York fish-eye style was pretty cool. The story had some issues and there were a few plot holes (like why did he borrow money from the loan shark in the first place and then once he had it why didn’t he just pay him back the following week and be done with him?) but I thought it was pretty enjoyable. I mean Cooper and De Niro are both amazing actors and they really don’t disappoint here. I could use a few of those pills myself because I didn’t really figure out that every smart guy in the movie was hoarding his own stash until late in the flick.
Yesterday Girl (1966) – I think its online, too… 8/10.
Glad you liked it! It’s one of my favorite movies of the century so far. Here’s a previous thread about it: Limitless film (spoilers after OP) - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
My most recent five:
Into the Storm
Brendan Gleeson as Winston Churchill, leading Britain deeper into WWII and later looking back after his 1945 electoral defeat. Pretty good.
Blade Runner
Saw it again, this time with my youngest son, who hadn’t seen it before (and liked it). Still a great movie and deservedly an sf classic.
Labyrinth
Having long heard about this cheesy Eighties fantasy David Bowie/quasi-Muppet movie, thought I’d check it out. I dozed off. Meh, although Jennifer Connelly is luminous.
Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes
Documentary about the legendary jazz recording label - founded, bizarrely enough, by two expatriate German guys in 1939. Great music throughout, with some interesting thoughts on how jazz endures and reinvents itself for every generation. A must-see for any jazz fan.
Men in Black: International
Not as bad as the reviews, but not nearly as good as the first film in the franchise. Good chemistry between the two leads, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson (reunited after the Thor movies), though.
Watched the infamous Yesterday.
Mostly good but with some terrible bits here and there.
The best: Sarah Lancashire! Oh, you want someone with a real role, do you? Okay, Lily James did a lot better than I’ve seen her in other things, including DA.
Sanjeev Bhaskar is great as usual. He’s Sanjeev Kumar and Sunny Khan!
The worst. Well, obviously having that awful Ed Sheeran is a problem. But wasting Kate McKinnon like that is a pure crime.
The “interruption” running gag wore out quickly. Not done well.
Yeah, no people in the music industry are going to go that gaga instantly over someone singing a bunch of songs that are all over the spectrum. It doesn’t work that way. OTOH, they are so clueless that the “recommendations” they make to songs are terrible.
The music and the core couple story carry this. The rest is just in the way.
Give it 3.5 plastic yellow submarines.
Rambo: Last Blood was the last action movie I seen, and it sucks. It really has nothing to do with Sly’s Rambo character at all, and actually feels more like Taken, in Mexico.
Basically, the original 1982 movie made Rambo into an unforgettable pop culture icon, as did the other '80s sequels. The fourth one from 2008 is good too, but it’s not great.
But this 2019 and supposedly final offering was not at all necessary, and I am worried the series has ended on a bad note.
This is something that bugs me about movies about the entertainment industry (music, movies, and literature) to the point I find it very hard to sit through them (if I even try: Yesterday is one I took a pass on). The idea that it just takes a great song/performance/manuscript or what have you combined with a littljust gumption to last until you get noticed and then you’ll be a sensation (the implication being for the rest of us mortals that if you never make it, it’s because you suck). It’s the idea that the response to “anyone can do it” is “and yet you didn’t” when the reality may well be “you’re more right than I’d care to admit.”
They at least touched on this in the most recent iteration of A Star is Born with Lady Gaga’s line about not getting a record deal sooner because of her nose and all the attention paid to her appearance and the need to put on a show with dancers and pyrotechnics and everything. Because there are plenty of people who can sing, and plenty of people who can write good songs, and really you don’t even need to be able to do either exceptionally well to be a famous singer (not that it hurts to be able to do one or both, they’re just not as necessary as they ought to be). Why? The branding. If you can establish a brand or convince an agent that they can brand you, then you’ve got a shot. If you can’t… good luck getting that YouTube video to go viral. But just know that even if it does, odds are nobody will care beyond next week.
To be honest, I don’t really like a great deal of new pop music at all. Some of the songs from back in 2015 were catchy, but I prefer music from the eighties and prior decades.
The same with modern day films. There’s many old films that are enjoyable to watch again and again, unlike many of today’s flicks that you see once and are instantly forgettable.
Watched 2 horror movies yesterday, streaming.
Belzebuth, touted as a Shudder ‘original’. :rolleyes:
All in all, not a bad film. It started very strong but lost some gas as it went on. The film takes place in Mexico. Mostly in Spanish with subtitles. But then a ‘gringo’ comes in and then it’s mostly in English. The leads accents are so heavy that we preferred the Spanish and the subtitles. They had a great premise about mass killings of children but they couldn’t quite take it the uber-creepy it needed to be. Instead, it fizzled into a standard ancient good v. ancient evil.
We also watched Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire.
General rule, any title that has a colon means it’s a bad film.
Hell House, LLC, IMO, was a fantastic flick. Shown mostly in video that the characters recorded themselves, interspersed with talking heads, ‘documentary’ style, it was interesting and creepy as all get out.
Hell House LLC II was a piece of shit, and a really badly acted one.
But I had high hopes for this one. Like II, it relied on clips from I. Unlike II, it had better acting and more interesting story line.
I really, really, really wanted it to be good. But it was fair, at best. It started off strong, but they tried to tie up loose threads with an ending that made no sense.
Watched Humphrey Bogart’s last movie “the Harder They Fall”. Damn fine performance, especially after finding out how tough it was on him. There’s quite a few films of his that I haven’t seen yet so decided to get a few at a time until I’ve seen them all. Will probably do the same with Trevor Howard.
Killing Gunther (2017) - a Taran Killam joint (written by, directed by, starring). You might recognize the name from SNL, on which he appeared from 2010 to 2016. It’s about a hit man society in which Gunther (played hilariously by Arnold Schwarzenegger) is at the top of the heap, and a team of other pros get together to knock him off. It’s presented as a pseudo-documentary, Killam’s character wanting to document his rise to the top with the killing of Gunther. Gunther ends up making his own documentary about it because it looks like fun. Anyway, it’s a weird, quirky movie that I thought was pretty fun.
Last night I re-watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). I love this movie. The music, and musical performances, are some of the best on film. The ending is wrenching and beautiful and I wanted to mention it because I think more people ought to watch this flick more often.