Movies you've seen recently (Part 1)

Cafe Society
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We went on a bit of a pre-awards binge this week.

Marriage Story. I was not looking forward to this; it felt like eating my vegetables – it was going to be a depressing slog through family in turmoil. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it (and the surprisingly upbeat ending.)

Dolemite Is My Name. Bailed out after an hour. A big part of that hour was devoted to Rudy Ray Moore’s comedy routine – it might have been more enjoyable if said routine was actually funny. (YMMV, of course). I couldn’t suspend disbelief enough to get past the feeling of “Seriously? People paid money for recordings of this act?”

Jojo Rabbit. Absolutely blown away. I think it’s my favorite film of the year. Literally: you’ll laugh, you’ll cry.

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Mel Brooks was at the podium of an awards ceremony the other day and took the opportunity to highly praise Jojo Rabbit, even calling out the director for his accomplishment.

My most recent movie was Uncut Gems, which I saw on Saturday at my local multiplex. I was kind of surprised to see it listed, as I thought it was a Netflix release, and they’re not usually at the big national chains. (I looked it up after; the movie was released by A24 in the US and Netflix everywhere else.) It was really good and Adam Sandler did a good job in a dramatic role. Oscar-worthy? I don’t know but he was good.

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Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.

Wow. Just wow.

Fun fact: did you know that for $80 in the 1960s you could get a share of a house with 2 other people that was right on the Santa Monica beach?

Bonus pts: Waddy Wachtel. Another fun fact: he was in the band on The Poseidon when it flipped over. Of course there’s that non-fun fact …

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That new Jumanji movie- I forgot what it was called.

And I just watched The Naked Gun for the first time with my brother and father a few hours ago.

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Despite having little interest in the topic and loathing the star, I watched Judy over the weekend, presuming it would be Oscar-nominated. Very glad to see this morning that it wasn’t time completely wasted, unlike when I watched Midnight in Paris for the same reason.

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Finally watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Tuesday night. Enjoyed it very much, feels like Quentin may have finally grown up a little. I still don’t want him grubbying up Star Trek, though.

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Has there been any talk of Tarantino writing or directing a new Star Trek film?

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There was, but he’s been backing off that talk lately.

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Tarantino won’t be directing the next ST movie, at least: Star Trek 4 | release date, cast and plot details | Radio Times

My latest five:

The Gallant Hours
James Cagney plays U.S. Navy Adm. William Halsey during WWII and not long after, at his retirement. The 1960 B&W movie’s more about the burdens and loneliness of command than exciting naval action, and is structured almost as a documentary, but even on those terms, it’s kind of blah. Cagney did look a lot like Halsey, though.

Scary Movie 3
My only defense is that a friend insisted I see this. It’s a crass, uneven but often funny spoof of several movies, including The Ring, Signs, 8 Mile and The Matrix Reloaded, among others. Anna Faris is adorable and funny as the oft-endangered heroine.

Little Women
The umpteenth remake of the beloved book is actually pretty damn good (still not sure I like it better than the 1994 Winona Ryder version, though). A great cast, smart script and beautiful setting and costumes. Have to admit I never quite bought that Jo and the professor had actually fallen in love.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
I saw it with two of my sons, and we were all underwhelmed to varying degrees. I liked all the callbacks to earlier SW movies, enjoyed the interplay between Poe and Finn, and the sfx and alien worlds, but thought it was really implausible (even for SW!) at times. A disappointing end to the third trilogy, I’m sorry to say.

The Remains of the Day
A quiet, remarkably compelling character study, all about English reserve, unexpressed love and devotion to duty. Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson are magnificent as a butler and a housekeeper at a stately home in the years leading up to WWII; their aristocratic boss gets into trouble for appeasement of the Nazis. Nominated for eight Oscars but, alas, won none.

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My daughter and I went to see *Underwater *this weekend. It seemed a cool little *Abyss *meets *Alien *type thriller from the trailers but after the fact I see why it only got 6.1 at IMDb. Looks like it got a Tomatometer of 50 and and audience score of 61 at Rotten Tomatoes, which tracks.

It has virtually no exposition. The credits feature an impressive dive down to the ocean floor as we see the expansive and futuristic drilling rig - which is more of an undersea space station attached to a drill. In fact there’s a whole campus of structures and tubes and all sorts of shit 6 miles down. As soon as the opening credits finish, Kristen Stewart makes some enigmatic speech that doesn’t relate to a single other thing in the movie and then BANG! … something goes wrong and it’s a survival movie. The first act is all crawling through rubble, solving oxygen problems and escape planning. The second act introduces the … things. That’s where it went a little around the bend for me. It was trying really hard to come over as something close to hard science fiction, but there just too many obvious physics problems that make you strain yourself, suspending your disbelief. And then your forced to deal with a crew of goopy mermen who want to eat you whole.

The third act is just ridiculous.

We are ultimately introduced to the Big One. Where the weird things were basically swimming, slightly bigger than humans, humanoids, the Big One is this titanic, gargantuan, Godzilla-sized thing that just made me think … how the fuck did they build that whole huge campus of scientific structures and drills and they never tripped across this thing which dwarfs the whole thing before?

Additionally, they whip through crises way to fast in smokey (but supposed to be water), dimly lit, shaky cam so I really don’t even know how the second two guys died. I’m a little hazy on all the other goners too now that I think about it. And of course, the one black guy buys it about 20 minutes in.

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Osânda- 7.5/10
An ex-convict seeks a quiet life in the mountains, falls in love, and becomes a crime suspect. I think this movie was very good, and I think 95% of the people here would like it as well.
I found one with English subtitles on YouTube (below)

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I watched this too and enjoyed it; I like stories where people make something of themselves against the odds (and it’s a true story).

Agree that I never found any of RRM’s comedy funny, but you have to bear in mind that that style of…poetry, I guess, was a major influence on the emerging rap genre.

Rap music itself has evolved a lot in the decades since, and has also influenced many other genres. Such that even people who hate rap music are still familiar with a level of rhyming and lyricism far superior to what RRM is doing. But we had to start somewhere :slight_smile:

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Night Hunter

Starring
Henry Cavill - looking more like like a homeless guy they got off the street than a cop.
Ben Kingsly - wasted
Stanley Tucci - wasted
Nathan Fillion - wasted…and killed off very early
The worst of Serial Killer cliches. ‘How is he pulling this off? He’s in custody! He’s got friends!’ Cops gets killed, another cop’s baby is kidnapped, all the other cops played for fools…

He has an identical twin brother, also a serial killer. Problem is that one is developmentally disabled, the other is just mean and dumb. Neither mentally capable of outsmarting a preschooler

Supposed to be an ‘edge of your seat’ thriller, but it was too badly shot and paced.

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I’ve seen The Gentlemen, the latest offering from Guy Ritchie.

Pretty good, but a more restrained tone than most of his previous “crime” offerings. More smooth, suave, cold & calculating.

I guess I’d say that his previous movies were comedies, dark comedies, set in the criminal world. The Gentlemen is more a crime/suspense drama with bits of oddball comedy in it here-and-there.

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John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

Alita: Battle Angel

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Yes to The Irishman. Long, but very worth it

We’ve been living in hotels and the other nite I saw The Accountant (Affleck) from the free movie selections. Damn good movie, I’m not a big fan of his nor the genre, but I was hooked to the point of yelling

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We watched “Parasite”, which is up for an Oscar or more. I was dreading it as another “Crazy Rich Asians” sort of thing, but it was far from it. Very well done.

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This was my latest. It was good, not great.

Some nice performances: Hugh Grant as the slimy journalist was a good character for him, Charlie Hunnam was good. I’ve seen him in a number of things as the lead and he never left any impression on me at all, here he was more memorable.

The whole framing device of the story sorta-kinda-maybe didn’t really work, but I don’t know how I would have solved it.

I liked the team of young fighters working for Colin Farrell, with their matching outfits. They are clearly a British cultural class archtype that we don’t have in the states, so that was interesting.

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I watched the live-action Dumbo. It was panned so bad I expected much worse than it was, and I quite liked a lot of it.

It did have fundamental issues, however. It seemed like every emotional beat and sequence that would have had the audience invested in the characters and the story was just skipped over or undermined by poor Direction and Editing. It had nothing to grab me. Too much emphasis on unnecessary plot, not enough on getting us attached to Dumbo and his plight.

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The Best of the Best - the best, worst of the worst, uh, best, bad movie ever. Starring Eric Roberts as a karate guy, James Earl Jones as his irascible coach and Chris Penn, hilariously, as Travis, the guy who hates everybody. The team goes to Korea for some sort of nationally, nay globally, televised (as in, they’re watching the action in a blue collar bar in the states) full contact, someone might die, but gosh-darn it, we all might learn a lesson, Tae Kwon Do tournament.

It is so good/bad that I’m surprised Riff-Trax hasn’t latched onto it yet - or have they?