Star Trek (2009)
This is still a really fun movie and is definitely the best of the three new ones they have made. Great cast, well directed, a really fun movie.
I liked Annihilation, for the reasons I stated upthread, but I can certainly see how it wouldn’t be for everyone.
And despite its many eye-rolling moments, I enjoyed the first J.J. Abrams Star Trek, too. A pretty good reboot, all in all.
I just started watching Come From Away on Apple TV+. Technically, it’s not a movie, but a filming of a recent performance of a Broadway musical.
In case you’re not familiar, it’s based on the true story of a small event from 9/11. Right after, North American airspace was shut down and planes ordered to land at the nearest airport. So something like three dozen planes, or 7,000 people, landed in Gander, Newfoundland. That’s almost as many people who live in town. The musical is about how the town hosted and fed these people.
Thanks for posting that. I just watched it and really enjoyed it.
That’s a good read - I’ve read interviews with both Haddish and Schrader recently where he was fairly harsh on her, in particular her instinct to turn everything into comedic dialogue. Apparently he tamped that down as much as he could, which leads to your point, why have her in the movie?
One of my all time favorites that I watch again and again. Like an evening out with an old friend.
Oh, and watched “Worth” (2020) with Michael Keaton and Stanley Tucci. It’s a movie about how the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund was set up to compensate families for the loss of their loved ones. I think it did a good job of humanizing the challenges and flaws of the process.
Malignant - HBO Max
Gist: Well, the last 30 minutes were certainly fun, but the first 70 minutes were quite bland. It was not bad, just not really all that amazing.
Light spoilers first, nothing to entirely ruin the movie:
This movie has a twist and even not knowing that, I…well, I didn’t have it exactly down, but I more or less figured it out. In a way, this movie would have made a much bigger impact if its twist was creative in any way. It isn’t. And because it isn’t, the movie lacks any major turn, shocking moment, or anything that will make the experience much worth it. That opening hour or so is so bland and unoriginal, the last 30 minutes really only make you go “hey, this is kind of fun” when they are intended to be “holly crap, this is outrageous!!!”.
OK, so full spoiler. This isn’t that great a movie, but I will again spoil more specific details.
I thought it was either her that was doing the killings or a cancerous tumor. It wasn’t, I guess, but I don’t think anyone who sees the movie and learns the true “answer” or “twist” will go, “Wow, I can’t believe it.”
However, the fact of the matter is…
OK, so here I will just full-blown tell you a major spoiler and how it impacts the movie:
She has a parasitic twin on her back and it overwhelms her and kills. It DOES create a very fun sequence where she is facing backwards while the twin does all the killing moving itself forwards. The highlight of the movie is the “police killing” scene and honestly, it was worth it just for that.
Seriously, though, it had a very fun extended 30 minute sequence at the end, but the movie was boring up to that point. This is just another in a long line of “leave them shocked at the end so they say the whole movie is good” horror movies.
The whole movie is not good. Ya’ gotta make a whole movie!
This isn’t a new idea. See the movie linked to below. If you don’t want to know about what the spoiler is, don’t click on it. I put it on two lines so that it wouldn’t show the name of it or the picture from it:
https://www
.imdb.com/title/tt0097531/
^ Link not working.
You have to connect the two disconnect bits together as a URL. He was avoiding the link showing up in his post.
As for Malignant, I loved it. I suspect it won’t play well for a lot of horror fans, but Wan is doing a lot of campy things during the movie, some of them I think mocking the horror genre (or embracing it in loving homage). As for what happens later in the movie, I can think of cinematic parallels, but none quite played this way.
ETA: weird, the system removed my quote of burpo’s post.
We were in the mood for something light and cheerful so we watched Letters to Juliet , a supposed romantic comedy where Amanda Seyfried visit Verona where she encounters every possible stereotype of Itallian in overly stylized locations and sets.
Well we made it through 20 minutes before moving to a Netflix show.
This movie as a fully committed Evil Dead 2 or 3 style comedy-horror would have been much better.
Crap, now I want Sam Raimi to remake Malignant and really commit to it.
I didn’t know there was a filmed version. I’m a big proponent of filmed stage musicals.
The biggest problem with stage musicals is lack of accessibility. Not everyone can just pop over to Broadway to see them and even if they come to your town, it can be pricey and there may be limited availability for popular shows.
But movie musicals tend to lose a lot of what makes them great. They buff out the edges that were meant to be there. They prioritize big Hollywood names over people who would actually be appropriate for the roles. If the original is sung-through, they replace a lot of it with weirdly stilted spoken dialogue. They take things that are supposed to be a little abstract, sparse, or surreal and make them realistic. And things that are supposed to be huge and impressive and are on stage are much less so when you add CGI as an option.
Nothing can completely capture all the magic of live theatre. But filmed stage shows are like taking a photo of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. No, it’s not the real thing. But you get the idea. Whereas movie musicals are like a photo of a night sky over a village with a tree. It might be a really nice photo and well done, but it’s not the same thing and you can’t really judge the original by it. If you hate Starry Night from a photo of the painting, it’s probably not your jam and that’s fine. But it’s not necessarily fair to judge from the photograph because it’s not the same thing. Same with the abomination that was Cats.
AAAAaaaannnnnnyway, stepping off my soapbox… I’ve resumed my Avengers marathon with Spiderman: Far From Home. A good movie with a very teen-movie feel to it and fun to watch.
Just saw The Alpinist, a documentary about alpine solo climber Marc-Andre Leclerc. If you were a fan of Free Solo, you’ll probably enjoy this one as well, as what Leclerc does is even another level crazier than Alex Honnold (as Honnold even says in the film.) Leclerc does free solo climbs without any ropes on ice and snow. There are many moments during the film that will give you that tingly feet/sweaty palms feeling as he hangs from frozen ice that could break away under his weight at any second.
That said, as a narrative film, the big climb he does in Patagonia that should be so impressive is pretty anti-climactic because he does not want to be filmed while doing the climb. So it’s like “Hey, you know that super hard impossible climb I was trying to do? Well I just did it.”
Still a strong recommend.
You have to combine the two lines. So it’s like https://www.imbd.com/title/tt0097531/ except you have to change imbd to imdb. As I said, I can’t put the actual link on one line because it would be turned into a picture from that IMDb entry which would explain what the major spoiler is.
The Card Counter
I agree with the general consensus on the board that it misses the mark it is aiming at. I don’t have much problem with the Schrader’s plot, but the narrative arcs he uses are a bit weak and I think the movie is miscast across the board (except for Willem Dafoe, but he’s playing a pretty stock character). Schrader either needed different actors (not necessarily better actors) or needed to adapt his screenplay to the strengths of the ones he cast. Not a bad movie, but not particularly recommended unless you are a Schrader completist.
Language Lessons
Almost the definition of a “little” film, this movie was shot entirely on Zoom, using only two actors, both of whom are the writers of the film (Mark Duplass, Natalie Morales) and one of whom directed (Morales), and using their homes (apparently) as “sets”. It’s not a “great” movie and I don’t expect to see any buzz around Oscar time, but it is a sweet, life affirming rom-com take on the human experience. Frankly I felt more involved in the characters than The Card Counter, and left the theater more satisfied. Highly recommended, though you’ll probably have to search it out.
Kate
I liked this one! It does justice to its John Wickian roots (and I know, John Wick owes a lot to Point Blank, which probably has roots in some 30’s or 40’s noir). The plot twists occur on regular, predictable intervals, but the action scenes and the performances really pulled me in. Much like Yakuza Princess does justice to Lady Snowblood, Kate does justice to John Wick. If you don’t like this sort of movie, it’s not going to change your mind. If you do, it’s recommended.
I just watched Kate tonight and liked it. I did not give it my full attention, to be honest, but it was well made and deserved better attention from me. Shame this missed theaters.
I saw this in a theater. It benefits from the big screen.
The one unique benefit of living in LA county is that in order to be eligible for any kind of Oscar consideration, movies have to show in a theater for at least one week in the county (though that requirement was suspended for 2020). Sometimes you have to search the more obscure theaters to find that one theater/week. I also suspect that for films like Kate, Netflix does this mostly to keep on the good side of the actors and directors they work with.
Yes, or I could have put my computer and phone down and paid better attention. It was quite good and will need a rewatch from me to get a real reaction other than “looks good”.