I have the movie soundtrack on disc. Truly great rock and roll.
Only You, the 2018 film.
A really good film that both of us like quite a bit.
Tales of a couple in Scotland meeting, finding love, having issues, etc. Lots of happy wonderful scenes but then also some downer stuff to provide a story line.
The lead actress is Laia Costa who is Catalan and this is put into the story. She is great. The acting in general is very good.
It’s a well shot movie with some beautiful scenes. But then the key shot near the end is done via shaky-cam. Grr. But then again the shot during the closing credits is great.
Also has some nice music here and there. They even throw in a Penny and The Quarters song You Are Giving Me Some Other Love. But they list them as “Penny & The Quartets”. Interesting tale about that group.
Speaking of which, no, the old Platters’ song is not used in the film.
This is writer-director Harry Wootliff’s first feature length film. So a good start out of the gate.
Give it 4 rings.
Snakes on a Plane (2006) - I’d avoided watching this movie because it just seemed like a ridiculous premise from the get-go and I figured it would just be a hacky piece of shit full of horrible special effects, wooden performance and plot lines out of MST3K. And I was right. What a pile of dung this flick is. It’s in *Sharknado *territory. When the boa started swallowing the irritating guy (who you knew was going to die as soon as he threw that dog at a snake) I almost had to give it up, but I was paid off when that same boa with the irritating guy now half-way swallowed got sucked out the window. Anyway … really shitty movie.
The Stuntman (1980) - Peeter O’Toole as a megalomaniacal director who will do anything to keep his movie shooting and anything to get the realest performance he can out of his actors. Steve Railsback is “Lucky”, the fugitive who fucks up a shot while on the run and ends up replacing a stuntman who died. It’s a fine homage to stunt work and to movie making, despite the fantastical nature in which they present both. I remember seeing it a long time ago and I’m glad I watched it again. It’s a cool movie and O’Toole is outstanding as director Eli Cross.
Sing o’ the Times (1987)- Prince concert film with Sheile E. and Sheena Easton and a back up singer named Cat who makes me feel like when I used to climb the rope in gym class. Fantastic show, fantastic music, fantastic performances. Highly recommended.
The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) Some solid laughs, good looking film, the two lead actresses work great together, but they both deserve a better written movie. Almost achieved that perfect paranoia feel (Who can you trust? No one, that’s who!). Mila Kunis in blonde wig is a heart stopper. Watch it once and forget it.
Watched In the Tall Grass on Netflix over the weekend
We enjoyed it. Had a good head-scratching ‘live, die, repeat’, time travel thing going. It was interesting and all the more so because they didn’t really try to explain it.
Patrick Wilson was great. Rachael Wilson was wasted. Well paced, beautifully shot.
Wish a couple more of them would have touched the rock
Thank You for Your Service (2017) - As an Iraq War veteran with PTSD, I remember the first time I saw the trailer for this movie. I had a visceral reaction: I wanted to punch this movie in the face. Because as far as I could tell from the trailer, and the movie’s source material, it was just going to be another one of those movies about veterans, but not by veterans, that purports to show a raw and gritty but sympathetic (I dare say “woke”) portrayal of military service members trying to cope with the trauma of war and reintegration with civilian life, but really it just trots out the same tired, old, tropes about broken, wrecked, and often downright dangerous veterans that gained traction in the popular imagination post-Vietnam, and further perpetuated by post-9/11 films like Hurt Locker and Stop-Loss (two films that I consider to be on par with one another, in spite of what the Academy says).
That said, I finally broke down and decided to watch this movie today, and I’ve gotta say… I was absolutely, 100%, completely right. It’s trash. I shut it off after an hour. The story was infuriating for all the wrong reasons. I’m glad no one saw it in theaters and I’m glad it lost money.
Judy. Completing the trilogy of singer biopics, after Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman.
I liked it more than I thought I would, which I guess is a recommendation? The subject matter is tragic, of course. Renee Zellweger gives an incredible performance – or is it an incredible impersonation? it’s hard for me to tell. But she will undoubtedly garner an Oscar nom.
My local movie critic panned it, solely because they used Zellweger’s voice instead of Judy Garland’s (in his view, making the same mistake as Rocketman instead of the correct choice made in Bohemian Rhapsody.) IMHO unless you have Judy Garland’s voice so imprinted in your brain that hearing anyone else sing her songs is jarring, you won’t care. Zellweger does just fine.
I agree, totally. Obviously, Zellweger isn’t Judy Garland, but who is? I know Judy’s voice like the back of my hand, and it didn’t bother me one bit to hear Zellweger do her songs. She did an amazing job and deserves an Oscar nomination.
I didn’t like the girl who played the young Judy. I don’t think she captured the part adequately.
Even though I was familiar with the events in the story, I was still moved by Garland’s decline from greatness. Very depressing.
And I notice Zellweger hasn’t entirely gotten rid of her squint.
Let’s make it three. Just got home from Judy, and thought it was great. Rene is totally believable as Judy, IMHO. Well done, worth seeing.
Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also directed Okja, Snowpiercer, and the off-kilter, fantastic Mother.
It’s Shoplifters (which I felt should have won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film last year if justice had been served and Roma had won Best Picture) darkened and passed through a filter of class warfare in a society of polarized wealth and class. A brilliant film, with some superb acting, but this director is not to everyone’s taste.
A highly recommended movie, one that will compete for this year’s Best Foreign Film (it’s already won the Cannes Palm d’Or - the first unanimous winner in more than 5 years). But just as I would not recommend a great sushi place to my friends that are not adventurous eaters, I would not recommend it to filmgoers that are not adventurous.
Mr. Klein - Reissue of 1976 French film.
From IMDB:
“Paris, 1942. Robert Klein cannot find any fault with the state of affairs in German-occupied France. He has a well-furnished flat, a mistress, and business is booming. Jews facing discrimination because of laws edicted by the French government are desperate to sell valuable works of art - and it is easy for him to get them at bargain prices. His cosy life is disrupted when he realizes that there is another Robert Klein in Paris - a Jew with a rather mysterious behaviour. Very soon, this homonymy attracts the close - and menacing - attention of the police on the established art trader.”
Very well put together, sort of a Hitchcock / Kafka story, but with a jaunty French je nes se quoi that oddly keeps it from descending into real dread until the end. It’s hard to tell if the film maker was wanting us to see our hero as a naif. Being a charming handsome privileged type who trusts the system to work this all out, he keeps a positive attitude even when faced with ruin. It’s as if he never acknowledges that the French police are just as bad as the Nazis, although that is made clear to the audience.
One weakness was in the clothing and styling, the suffered from the looking like they had one foot in the 70s and one foot in the 40s, which was not uncommon for historical works made in that time period.
Documentary about the major movie studio mogul you never heard about, coincidentally sharing much of the setting of Mr. Klein. posted above.
Whatever you may be willing to believe about Bernard Natan, if you know your film history, the parting shots will feel like being stabbed in the heart. Like the Oscar voters this past year, sometimes it’s difficult to differentiate a good documentary from a good subject. With this one you don’t have to, both are excellent.
Eroica (1958) - 7/10
Forgot I should post this one here until I saw the thread. That tells you something.
Toy Story 4. You know the basics. Some funny/touching stuff here and there but a ton of manic “stuff happening all over the place” crap for far too much of the film.
Some really amazing cutting edge animation in a few spots. So the drop back to less stellar stuff is noticeable. But I guess that have to keep Woody looking and moving like Woody.
A lot of new toys added that in many cases seem like a marketing grab. OTOH, Christina Hendricks shines as one of the new ones. Who knew she could voice act like that? And they managed to have Don Rickles still as Mr. Potato Head using some old material.
The first name in the credits for the original story is Rashida Jones. Yes, that Rashida Jones. Hmmm.
Give it 2 sporks.
Gehenna: Where Death Lives on Netflix
Trailer looked very interesting.
The film was not.
Lance Henriksen literally phoned his part in. His only screen time had him on the phone with another character. Sean Sprawling overacts in every scene. No chemistry between Eva Swan and Justin Gordon. Simon Phillipes tries to act menacing but just comes off as an asshole. The story is light where it should be heavy and heavy where it should be light.
You should probably pass.
Joker.
Taut interesting script.
Strong performances by the leads.
Kudos to the original score- an important element here.
Incredibly SMARTLY shot. The cinematography served the tone per scene, and the moments as well.
I could give two shits for comic book movies.
This isnt that.
It’s a complex character study. Beautifully acted by the leads.
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More Streaming Movies
We watched Whiteout
Takes place at the North Pole.
First off, Kate Beckinsdale gets an underwear\shower scene before a word of dialog is spoken. It serves no purpose whatsoever.
It’s supposed to be 55 below. Water freezes instantly. But we have characters, including Kate, outside with no ski masks. They don’t even look that cold.
It has a standard ‘good guy is actually one of the bad guys’ twists that we saw halfway through the movie.
Kate as 2 fingers amputated because of frostbite. She never seems to have pain because of this. She is literally running around, chasing and fighting with bad guys, both inside and out in the 55 below.
Pass
Also watched Convergence
It had an impressive cast and, for the most part, was well acted.
It started off weird and interesting. Could have been something…
This from IMDB, so it’s not really a spoiler:
This is not apparent until about half way through. Once revealed, it becomes a far less interesting film. And no attempt to explain how a bomb throwing serial killing torturer gets ‘caught between heaven and hell’.
Over the weekend, I crossed a couple off my Oscars list (Witness and The Towering Inferno) and finally got around to watching Mission Impossible: Fallout.
Amok (1934)
Hothouse French drama based on Stefan Zweig’s novel set in the Dutch tropics about a dissipated doctor asked to perform an illegal abortion by a married woman whose husband is returning imminently after a year’s absence.
Taboo subject matter aside, the melodramatic plot and awful male lead performance slowed things down a bit, but the opening featured very nice camerawork and awesome jungle-based production design (including a stop-motion butterfly meeting a carnivorous plant). And topless natives, most especially the doctor’s servant who’s even topless while assisting the doc in surgery. She was great; sadly, she disappears from the story soon after. The climax took place at a club/brothel whose sleazy atmosphere puts any contemporary Hollywood movie to shame in that regard. And there was sporadic avant-garde editing.
All in all, an unusual flick; wish the print had been better.
El Camino: ABBM.
Yeah, did it. Just because. And it reciprocated. Okay, it’s a “movie” in terms of length. Had cameos. But left out many of my favs. Etc.
No real character arc or anything. Messed up Pinkman is messed up Pinkman.
And that person got listed third in the closing credits??? You’re kidding me.
Goodbye, Mr. Forster.
Give it 1.5 Kirbys.