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Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684095 times)

Corndog

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2370 on: May 10, 2018, 12:24:07 PM »
Life of the Party (Ben Falcone, 2018)

Melissa McCarthy has found great success in the world of comedy over the past decade, and has proven that she is more than capable of leading the cast on her own. Her brand of humor is rather unique, as well as a little over the top, brash, and self-deprecating. She certainly doesn't have a problem making fun of herself, or at least her image, even after having lost quite a bit of weight in recent years. In Life of the Party she once again teams up with husband/director Ben Falcone to craft a comedy about a mom who put her dreams in the backseat for the benefit of her husband and daughter. This feminist comedy is exactly the type of thing McCarthy excels at and should be doing. So then why is so little of it very funny? Well, I guess we should focus on the real laugh out loud moments instead.

Deanna (McCarthy) has been a loving and supporting wife and mother for two decades, asked to put her dream of becoming an archaeologist on hold so her daughter Maddie (Molly Gordon) can go through school and her husband Dan (Matt Walsh) can, well, do whatever it is he wants to do instead. After dropping their daughter off for her last year of college, Dan tells Deanna he wants a divorce, which initially upsets her a great deal until she decides to finish school once and for all. Joining her daughter on campus, Deanna becomes the sorority mom, becoming close friends with Maddie's friends, while also embarrassing her a great deal. Deanna's new lease on life is a rush, all the way up  until a great, hilarious plot twist threatens her great relationship with her daughter.

This movie is all a bit silly, and it never takes itself too seriously, which makes that silliness work, at least somewhat. As I said in my opening, McCarthy is very over-the-top, but it mostly works here. The main problem with the humor here is that its very inconsistent. Sometimes it lands beautifully and will garner a hearty laugh, while other times it seems to miss completely, while I was left completely silent in my seat. The two best examples of this are two scenes in particular, one which works better than anything else in the movie, and the other which feels like a waste of time and space within the movie. The time waster includes Deanna delivering her oral presentation in class. It's a perfect example of physical humor gone bad. It's not only excessive, but it's also excruciatingly not funny. On the other hand, the scene that really works, really works.

And not only is that scene hilarious, as it involves a rather untimely encounter while Deanna is out to dinner with some of her "adult" friends, but it also delivers the crucial plot twist in the film, which propels the plot forward to its ultimate conclusion, and gives the shenanigans which led up to this point a little more context. Comedies are tough, especially when they are hit or miss. Life of the Party is really a fun time, until it isn't, until it is again. And I really think there's a thoroughly entertaining movie under this, perhaps one which involves both Maya Rudolph, as Deanna's best friend, and Gillian Jacobs, as an older sorority girl just experiencing college after an 8 year coma. They were the two best secondary characters in the film, but found themselves far too often sidelined in favor of a few other gags and characters whose presence was not nearly as welcome.

The daughter, Maddie, played by Molly Gordon, is particularly underserved. She doesn't get many (if any) moments to herself, instead relegated to reacting and often cowering as a result of her mother's antics. For a film that is very pro-female, celebrating the independence and pursuit of female dreams, I found it unfortunate that Deanna's presence seems to run over Maddie throughout. That the two eventually bond is nothing organically delivered. In fact, most of the film feels rather like manufactured life lessons. I would much rather a strong story built around at least somewhat believable characters doing at least somewhat believable things. Oh, and perhaps a slightly more consistently funny film. For what it is, Life of the Party ends up being fine. It's fine. It has laughs. But it's not one calling me back to revisit for really hardly any reason at all.

★★ - Didn't Like It
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Corndog

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2371 on: May 10, 2018, 01:45:50 PM »
Terminal (Vaughn Stein, 2018)

The great thing about the underseen independent film is that it can take chances. With huge mainstream big budget pictures, studios are forced to cater to their audience, who is expected to fork over huge sums at the box office to make it a hit. As a result, these blockbusters films, and looks I love them as much as the next guy, have to stay within a certain box, or they risking busting, which could result in financial disaster given their often huge budgets. The drawback, then, of the smaller independent endeavor is that the chances taken by these ambitious filmmakers don't always work, which often means that some of the most underrated and underseen films of the year come from this bag, while some of the truly awful films are also sprung from these deep recesses. With Terminal, writer/director Vaughn Stein most definitely takes some bold and ambitious chances. Some of them work, but largely the film is a dud.

Taking place in a slick, neon-soaked city, Terminal follows the intersecting stories of multiple characters, led by Annie (Margot Robbie), an unassuming night waitress at a 24 hour diner outside the train station. She strikes up an unlikely friendship with a dying professor (Simon Pegg) as well as a romance with a contract killer named Alfred (Max Irons). Alfred and his partner in crime Vince (Dexter Fletcher) become entwined by the revenge-laden plot of an unseen criminal mastermind, who appears to be pulling all the strings. Mike Myers, an odd name not heard from in a while, also appears as an eccentric janitor in the nearby train station.

Written as a neo-noir, or rather in this circumstance a neon-noir, Terminal is stylish as all get out. If it has anything going for it, it's clearly the visuals on display, which focus highly on darkness with pops of bright colors, lead by the high amounts of neon signage found everywhere you look. Really the cinematography and art direction is among the most eye-catching and impressively cool work I've seen this year. From a technical standpoint, the film really stands out for its use of style and seduction in telling its story. The story, on the other hand, is largely what lets this film down, despite its otherwise entertaining and engaging cast.

Margot Robbie shows once more she is confident and cool in what amounts to the lead role in the film as Annie. Her interactions with the dying English teacher (Pegg) are probably the best of the film, as she encourages him to live what life he has left to the fullest, or as they discuss the best ways for him to kill himself and end his misery quickly instead of succumbing to the creeping death that follows him around in the form of his sickness. The problem is that's largely a side plot, with little to do with the real revenge plot turning its wheels in the center of this film. And that is where the film falls flat. In what should be a dynamic, ever-changing relationship between Annie, Alfred and Vince, I really hardly cared about whether she really loved Alfred at all, whether Vince was going to turn and kill either one of the other two. I didn't even really care who the kingpin was pulling all the strings. I was invested enough in these characters to even care.

Instead I was drawn in by the visuals, which is the only thing of value I will take from this. Robbie and Pegg are fun to watch too, but this is far from either's best work. When the inevitable twists do come, even without caring much about it, I was not all that shocked, as they are largely telegraphed from a mile away. All in all, Terminal becomes a sub-par attempt at neo-noir, though I certainly appreciate any attempt at the genre at all, especially one with such bright, lush and stunning visuals as this one. With two above average elements in the visuals and a few of the central performers, Terminal merely lacks an enticing and exciting narrative. Too bad the whole concept of making is a movie is telling a story worth telling because Terminal is not a story much worth telling.

★★ - Didn't Like It
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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2372 on: May 10, 2018, 01:52:13 PM »
That was my fear. It sure looks cool in the trailer.

Teproc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2373 on: May 13, 2018, 04:58:19 AM »
Todos lo saben / Everybody Knows (Asghar Farhadi, 2018)

More of a Bardem/Cruz film than a Farhadi one, not because it doesn't resemble his Iranian films, but because it lacks their urgency and ambition. At best you can say it's about small communities and how, well, everybody knows everything about each other, and even when people star living elsewhere they can't escape their roots/family... but there's not much there there, and in the end it's more of a performance showcase than anything else. They're good performances, though (and not just from the three big names).

6/10
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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2374 on: May 14, 2018, 12:10:56 PM »
Insidious: The Last Key

How convoluted is too convoluted? The people behind the Insidious series would probably answer that there can never be too much backstory, too many connections to other films in the series, or too many characters. Most horror movies thrive on intimacy or make a big deal out of menacing crowds (Get Out does both spectacularly, for example), but Insidious: The Last Key piles character on top of character to little effect. I suppose there's something about the transmission of trauma across generations and systems of power, maybe, but the movie doesn't give this idea enough weight to hold itself up among the wash of relatives and sidekicks and ghouls and victims. The only thing I'll give the movie is that it does have a pretty cool creature design, and it even rises above the very silly keys-for-fingers choice that forms the basis of the monster.

D+
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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2375 on: May 15, 2018, 11:51:12 PM »

Revenge (2017)

With some terrific reviews, female filmmaker Coralie Fargeat's rape and revenge film has clearly hit an emotional nerve with some people. What I saw would be indistinguishable from the many male versions of this story, with the possible exceptions of an extremely subdued rape scene and wardrobe for the finale that exploits the physique of both men and women. Both of these are pluses, but that hardly counts as progress.

I partly blame Fargeat's choice of sub-genre, which would have to get so far from the plot requirements to truly empower the female victim it would be unrecognizable as a rape & revenge film. Fargeat plays into expectations with extreme violence, more male gaze butt shots than Suicide Squad and increasingly preposterous actions. Even the acclaimed visual style is more "fresh out of film school" flashy than anything visually subversive. This is closer to the New French Extreme than Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room), and even on that level it's not as feminist as Inside, a battle between two women, one pregnant, which was written and directed by men.
Rating: ★ ★


Corndog

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2376 on: May 16, 2018, 02:03:58 PM »
Deadpool 2 (David Leitch, 2018)

Deadpool was a major hit when it came out in 2016. It was raunchy, it was irreverent, it wa ultra-violent, it was a different way to look at a superhero. Deadpool was an anti-hero, but one well worth liking. Due to its very hard R rating, I can't think of how many times I had to tell friends with kids that it is in no way age appropriate. That being said, it was a rather fun little traipse through setting the superhero movie genre on its head. It was unique, different, pushed the envelope, etc., etc. But while I liked Deadpool well enough, I can't say I came to its sequel with much anticipation or expectation, mainly because, while I enjoyed the original film, the raunchy, violent style which made it such a hit is not typically my favorite style of film, which resulted in Ryan Reynolds' antics rubbing me the wrong way, and therefore giving me mixed feeling about what made Deadpool work as well as it did.

In the sequel, it seems the filmmakers decided to double down on their dirty minds and somehow it seems to work better than the first, perhaps because there's a much better story at the center, one that actually has heart. In the first installment, our hero Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has fallen for Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), and he is ready to make the next step by starting a family. But when some rogue thugs kill her in the crossfire during a hit on Wade gone wrong, Deadpool must find the will go on, and in fact create a relationship with a talented young mutant named Russell (Julian Dennison) in order to save the boy from Cable (Josh Brolin), a time traveler who wants to stop Russell before he causes problems with the future. Deadpool, with the help of his friend Weasel (T.J. Miller), assembles a team to help him take on Cable and save Russell.

I think what makes Deadpool 2 so much better than the first is that is is able to balance what I didn't like the first time around (story) with what makes it so attractive to many of its fans (the raunchy, violent style). While 2 creates a well realized story that includes meaningful character arcs for its three main characters, Wade, Cable and Russell, it's not a film that has to sacrifice any of its authenticity, any of what makes Deadpool, Deadpool, which will be a delight to fans of the irreverent superhero, as well as those hoping to see more than a couple of dicks jokes and some blood spewing across the screen. I made the joke in my head immediately afterword, inspired by Deadpool himself, that the film goes soft, but not limp. Instead it stays hard (R that is), while also adding a layer of sensitivity that makes it that much more satisfying.

Reynolds really assumes this role extremely well, and I wonder how much of the film truly belongs to his pen, as he is one of the three credited screenwriters for the film. I can't think of another actor who could command this character as well as he does. I've also grown warm to the brand of humor, believe it or not, which includes digs to about every pop culture reference imaginable. At first, even here, I was rolling my eyes. "Oh lord, another pop culture reference." But it somehow works. Reynolds' charm in the role just makes it work. And to be honest, it feels like for somethings, Celine Dion, etc., that they're poking fun at them, but it toes the line so wonderfully that I'm also convinced that Reynolds and company truly embrace these reference, and are not just making fun of them. It works. I don't have any freaking idea how, but they make it work.

So the brand of humor is back and just as funny, Deadpool is just as irreverent and violent, but we get this decent family/responsibility/love story in the middle of our Deadpool movie, which like I said rises the film about its first outing. Everything's not perfect though. Take Cable for instance, and the director of the school from which Russell comes, who likes to lord over his mutants in an overtly racist and discriminatory manner. These villains don't entirely work. Brolin is nice as Cable, and his story line has a twist or two which makes for surprising character development, but this is less a movie about Deadpool seeking out the baddie and kicking ass and more about him protecting and trying to save Russell in some way or another, and come to terms of the death of Vanessa. They afford for some touching moments, but ultimately there are some lulls in the storyline which keep this film from being truly spectacular cinema, even if a lot of the jokes are of the true belly busting variety.

★★★ - Liked It
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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2377 on: May 17, 2018, 12:23:31 AM »
As a Deadpool superfan who thinks it's the role Ryan Reynolds was born to play and is very excited for this weekend, what are my odds of disappointment?

Corndog

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2378 on: May 17, 2018, 08:06:04 AM »
I would say low. I would be very surprised if you were disappointed.
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jascook

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #2379 on: May 20, 2018, 11:09:38 AM »
Life of the Party (Ben Falcone, 2018) - 6/10
Lightweight fare more enjoyable for individual comedic performances (specifically Gillian Jacobs and SNL's Heidi Gardner) than for the story itself. A bit too similar to Back to School to stand on its own as original. Yet it does have a certain charm that led to several enjoyable moments. The less said for the truly painful scene involving Melissa McCarthy's character in the midst of an over-the-top fit during a class presentation, the better (although three women in the row in front of me were cackling and howling throughout). Otherwise, good enough for what it is.
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