Streaming on Kanopy. I had seen this film mentioned on several best disturbing horror lists and was curious what it could be about. “A couple with a new baby decide to buy a coffee table.” How is that disturbing? Well Jesus Christ this is one of the most tense and anxiety-inducing films I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t really classify it as horror, more a dark drama but oh it will make you feel bad. I really wasn’t sure what I was expecting the film to be but it certainly wasn’t that!
Just watched “Transformers One”. Probably the best Transformers movie or at least second to Bumblebee. Definitely didn’t deserve to bomb. Funny, good plot, lots of easter eggs and the best fucking thing of all? ZERO humans.
I saw a couple of movies on Hulu yesterday. One was Thelma, starring June Squibb as a 93-year-old grandmother living alone who is the victim of a phone scam (the kind pretending to be from a grandchild who is arrested) but decides to get her money back. Very good and very funny.
Opening 30 minutes is very funny, last hour is not that great. I hadn’t seen this since its release on DVD and honestly, it’s adequate. I wish the entire movie could live up to the opening 30 minutes or so. Jokes run thin, laughs stop for the most part.
Tom Cruise remains fun in this movie, though. Probably one of his most memorable roles.
“Twister” is one of my favorite movies. I tried to watch “Twisters,” but it’s missing everything that made the first one good. I stopped less than halfway through, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish it. Maybe I’ll watch “Thelma” instead.
Sitting in a hospital waiting room 3rd
floor hearts yesterday i comfortably watched 3/4 ths of the movie Cruella, a fun romp gotta watch again to the end.
Also on Y Tin no particular order I’ve watched at least 10Dozen shorts of all the three seasons The Great. Elle fanning.
Not a Hulu subscriber but I’m dying to watch this series. Fucking legitimately
Well, yeah. I mean, I’m not a fan of horror movies but many people are, so if they tell me which of the many films in the Halloween or Friday the 13th series are the best, I’m still unlikely to enjoy them.
I liked D&W and laughed a lot at it, but it really is about 90% fan service. And if you didn’t like the first one (which personally I think is still the best of the three) I’m not surprised you didn’t like this one.
On that note, I saw Gladiator II last night. If you liked the first one, this one hits pretty much all the same notes - start with war, protagonist fights his way to the top, corrupt emperor(s) determined to get him killed, grand fight scenes, conspiracies plotted and foiled, etc etc, and a ridiculous portrayal of Roman history that could make Mary Beard bite through a leather strap in frustration. If you didn’t like the first one, why are you watching this one?
The plot of this one relies on a series of events so unlikely it’s even lampshaded in the film as “fate”. There are lots of clips of Russell Crowe from the first film, so I assume he got paid well for doing nothing new. There are a couple of cameos from
Matt Lucas as the Colosseum announcer, which are briefly fun. There are assorted monkeys, including some CGI ones that probably had some zoologists also biting through leather straps because I’m pretty sure they were mutants.
It’s a fairly long film but it does move along; I wasn’t bored at any point although as noted there was a lot of repeated tropes from the first installment. So watch it or don’t - it is (ironically) as much mindless violence and drama as the Colosseum events themselves were.
We were browsing Kanopy last night and came across Le Samouraï (1967), and decided to watch. A French noir that embraces a bit of slow cinema, starring Alain Delon, whom I’d never seen before (but had heard of). We quite liked it, even if many of the beats and types are now familiar.
This is a good one. Michael Keaton stars as an art gallery owner who finds himself solely responsible for taking care of his two 9 year-old kids. He enlists the help of his grown, pregnant, daughter played by Mila Kunis (who is again very non-Jackie). One of the themes is her feelings about how he is treating his new kids vs. her.
It is just flat out good. Some funny stuff, some serious stuff, etc. It’s one of those movies that I want to watch again, soon.
Some nice little touches. E.g., he keeps mixing up the names of his two, well age-separated, daughters. This is a Real Thing.
Most of the rest of the cast is unknown to me. Kevin Pollock plays Keaton’s business partner. He plays old guy well.
Keaton’s sort of on a run here. Knox Goes Away is a good movie, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice is, well, a popular movie, and now Goodrich.
Give it 4.5 chocolate chip cookies.
One part of the film that particularly resonated with me regarding the pregnancy storyline. At the end Keaton holds his newborn granddaughter for the first time. I held my new grandchild for the first time exactly 3 weeks ago.
This movie may make my top 10 this year and it was a great and pleasant surprise. I think Hugh Grant gives a great performance here, almost Oscar worthy. He’s incredibly gripping and really holds the entire audience captivated.
I also commend this movie because I genuinely had no idea where all of this was going. I love movies that actually make me ask, “Wait…what? What…where is this heading?”
I was surprised. At the end, I thought, “Man, I think I kind of want to see this again in a couple months” and that is a great sign.
WTF did I just watch? I tried, really tried to like this film, but it’s one big train wreck. The premise is “sound” but they had no idea what to do with it. It’s 30 minutes too long and the science is all wonky. Usually Ed Harris showing up for the denouement would save the film - not this time. And that ending, Jeez!
Summary
The last two survivors (Asian girl and 5-year-old Timmy) are going to repopulate the world? From the tundra? I wish the polar bear had gotten them.
It just couldn’t be that bad, could it? What did I miss? I’m losing my mind, that’s it!
::twiddles thumbs::
Another post-war Japan set animated movie(like Grave of Fireflies), this time about Russian soldiers taking over and moving into Japanese towns. A boy forms a close friendship with one of the Russian girls and they are both positive and negative consequences from that friendship.
No where near as depressing as Grave of Fireflies, but still with moments of great sadness, this movie was decent. I wouldn’t rank it as high as Come and See or Grave of Fireflies when it comes to looking at war and its effects on kids, but this was a good movie.
Streamed free of charge on Kanopy. English dub, too.
I saw The Wild Robot last night. It was very beautiful, quite sweet, and I recommend it. Every frame of the visuals managed to look like a painting.
The plot sure did race by at quite a rate, though. I think some of the emotional beats could’ve hit a bit harder if they had some breathing room. I suspect that it fell victim to contemporary attention spans.
