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Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684613 times)

MartinTeller

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3160 on: February 14, 2019, 09:37:35 AM »
I feel like you are overthinking it. The melodies are catchy...you can sing along to them...like, you say sing the shit out of it like it's a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing when the singer is good at it.

I did think the melodies were good, but the lyrics and/or performances ruined the songs.

Thief

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3161 on: February 14, 2019, 12:24:30 PM »
Meh, I barely remember "Colors of the Wind", much less the other songs.

Here's a link to my review on Letterboxd.

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3162 on: February 14, 2019, 12:43:08 PM »

Washington Story (1952)

The film runs 80-minutes, and it feels much longer because there's a full cinematic meal packed into that time. I read a number of sniffy reviews saying how this isn't as good as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which isn't really a fair comparison because so few films are. What struck me immediately is the level of detail in the script so that the congressional committee meetings and backroom dealings look and sound unusually authentic. It's fair to say some parts of this are a little dry if you don't have interest in how congress works. No shortcuts for the sake of entertainment. Even the main bill being debated is a Naval Shipbuilding Dispersal Plan. Hardly sexy stuff, and they never dumb it down to clearly explain what's at stake. That's exactly why it engaged me like so few films do.

The biggest problem with the story is at the heart of its plot. Patricia Neal (never a bad casting choice) plays a reporter working for an openly biased newspaper who wants to write an upbeat piece about a Representative, (Van Johnson, arguably never better). He believes her and agrees to the article even though he has every reason to be suspicious, suspicions proven early on when Neal's boss is found reading through her notes. Like Gwyneth Paltrow in Se7en, the obviousness of that one point cannot be overlooked, but it's more than compensated for by everything else.


I'll repeat that Patricia Neal is her usual amazing. (I'm adding her to my ongoing classic Hollywood Movie Stars marathon,) and I'm ready to take back everything bad I said about Van Johnson. The real scene-stealer though is a character actor named Louis Calhern (Notorious, The Asphalt Jungle), playing a wise Southern conservative who both mentors and provokes Johnson. They fight in meetings, but get along fine outside of them. There's a showcase scene, as fine as any I will probably see this year, where Calhern demonstrates the different styles of persuasive/phony speech his colleagues use. Amazing to see what some character actors are capable of given the chance.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ - Very Good

I like to point out when a film will be considered for my Top 20 Discoveries of the year. This has a good chance of being at the top of the list.

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3163 on: February 14, 2019, 02:28:39 PM »
Re Pocahontas: I will grant you that the excessive vibrato on Just Around The River Bend is bad and holding pitches is an underrated vocal technique. But a bad singer doesn't make a bad song. Ergo Colors of the Wind is much better when Vanessa Williams sings it and everything is better when Bob Dylan doesn't sing it.

Teproc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3164 on: February 14, 2019, 02:52:27 PM »
Vice (Adam McKay, 2018)

A complete failure. Never knows if it wants to be a farcical meta-satire or an angry political biopic, a film about the Iraq War specifically or about Dick Cheney... it also views history in a way that I personally detest, exagerrating the influence of one man to a completely laughable degree... I mean, I'm pretty sure this film makes a direct connectino between the recent California fires and Dick Cheney, which, okay, climate change* and Halliburton can certainly be connected, but I think we can all agree that this particular evil lays at other people's feet than Dick Cheney's. There's also the weirdness of the heart transplant thing, which seems to  imply that bad people shouldn't be treated medically ? I mean, that is an ethical question you can ask I suppose, but this film seems to straight up argue that you should not be an organ donor... thanks, Adam McKay ! Also, the whole thing with his family which seems like a very Fox News way to appear "Fair and Balanced" until it's revealed to be yet another way to belabor the point of Cheney's awfulness. I mean he is awful, fine, but the film has nothing to say other than "everything bad with the world is this guy's fault." Which is not how the world works.

Christian Bale is awful in the young Cheney scenes. In the 2000s scenes, he does a passable impression. Rockwell is fine, it's not his fault the film is written like a bad episode of the Daily Show (the actual reference in my head is Les Guignols, but that wouldn't mean much to most of you here), and Amy Adams is actually good, somehow.

*which is a much better way of describing the phenomenon than "global warming", btw, and not because it's "less scary".

2/10
« Last Edit: February 14, 2019, 02:54:54 PM by Teproc »
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Letterbox'd

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3165 on: February 14, 2019, 07:54:40 PM »
First Man

I objected to someone panicking about the Green New Deal as preposterous by pointing out how preposterous the idea of landing on the moon within a decade was in 1961. The dialogue was not enlightened:




I don't know why they bothered making this film. I mean, it is just about something that wasn't at all far fetched and was totally doable. It's not something crazy like implementing a bunch of technology that is already in wide use in the world, just not wide enough and often not here.

I can't say I found the film that engaging as a whole, it's no The Right Stuff. That said, it will earn my vote for Best Sound. All those creaks and other noises, while stuck in this tiny space at the tip of a big firecracker, captures the precariousness of it all.

FLYmeatwad

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3166 on: February 14, 2019, 09:47:19 PM »
Love, Simon - This was a little generic in the structure, but coming of age is my favorite genre of film, so I liked this despite that, and also despite kind of hating Simon, though maybe I just don't like the actor all that much. Regardless, I think it does a really good job of capturing the weight of Simon's life and how he grapples with his sexuality and coming out, even if the exact pacing of everything wasn't exactly to my taste. Don't like that they made Martin such a shitty character, because I did like that actor's performance, so I'd have liked to see a ton more from him. I guess I liked aspects of who he played, but couldn't get past how awful he was.

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3167 on: February 15, 2019, 12:02:23 AM »
Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle, 2018)         6/10    spoilery review

A one of a kind story, which actually isn't (wtf!). I followed along with mild interest, which rose to serious engagement from time to time as new intriguing details dropped. With regards to the talking head parts, I got the feeling that the interviewer was covering ground and asking questions that these people had already answered a thousand times before. However when they talked about as toddlers how they would all bang their heads against the wall constantly, that was pretty interesting. The doc kind of floats the notion that maybe this behaviour was a consequence of the separation. It doesn't really go any further... in fact that's kind of the only negative (pre-reunion) consequence they touch on. I thought it would be interesting to hear more about any aberrant, hard to explain behavior, but it didn't come up... maybe there wasn't any. It just didn't seem like they demonstrated how f'd up splitting these kids up was from a psychological/developmental point of view. Most of the difficulty seemed to come from the discovery itself. As much as they were happy to find each other, and how much they felt it explained, and they wouldn't go back to not knowing if they could... it seemed like the discovery was the difficult part to cope with, whereas the childhood consequences were iffy. It's like a "too old to be freed from the Matrix" type of thing.



Minding the Gap (Bing Liu, 2018)         7/10    spoilery review

Jesus, there are some moments in this thing. The one that stands out for me is when Bing is interviewing Kiere's mom about something and kind of oversteps the respect-your-elder, non-of-your-business invisible line. He asks if that man (a guy we hear in another part of the house) is her new boyfriend. It's really innocently asked on his part, he's not being a cheeky punk or meaning disrespect when he asks it, I think it's kind of sweet. But right away you know (and I'm sure he knew and felt it too) that he may have gone a bit far. It's makes for a really funny moment of awkwardness because it does have that innocence behind it. Like "Oops, I may be the one conducting this interview and holding the camera, but now I'm really conscious of being a 17 year old kid speaking to a grown woman". :)) But then in the background the moms new boyfriend says to the mom "you're five minutes is up", and holy shit does that ever change the vibe in the room. Everyone sees the red flag because they've seen that before in their lives. Everyone gets very quiet. There's a whole subreddit dedicated to stuff like this... it's called /r/watchpeopledieinside. It's a hell of a thing to see and to have captured. And so sad, so disheartening. Thankfully that story has a bit of a positive turn around later because that was an incredibly bleak development. I love Bing. I love Kiere. They seem genuinely kind and I think they'll be alright. Zack is sad to watch. It's hard to see a bright light at the end of his tunnel... that's some bleakness that doesn't feel like it'll get better any time soon. In fact I could see the success of this film accelerating his decline. Either he has money coming to him for it (which I think would be a disaster and accelerate his decline), or he doesn't (which I think would make him even more bitter and accelerate the decline in a different way). Hope I'm wrong about that. I enjoyed the overall production... some of the best parts (like the part I mentioned) come from Bing's "mistakes". How he assembles the story, how he interviews... it's all very earnest and I like it even when it's not totally professional. It's a well done doc which I don't think I'll take a lot away from personally, but still appreciated.



Won't You Be My Neighbour (Morgan Neville, 2018)         10/10 cut onions

I don't know if it matters, but I did watch Mr. Rogers growing up. I don't have deep and powerful memories about it, I just know it was one of several shows I sat still for (I imagine that's pretty common). So I approached the doc from a place of vague but fond memories, and an awareness of who Mr. Rogers was. Again, none of that may matter... or maybe it matters a great deal. Anyways, to watch him now, as an adult, assembled in this way, it all hits me a lot harder then it ever did before. Maybe I was just in the mood for it, I dunno. Or maybe Mr. Rogers is one of the great people of our time and this is a lovely tribute him. :)

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3168 on: February 15, 2019, 12:58:55 AM »
Due Date(2010)
★ ½
I knew my luck with this list couldn't hold.

Zach Galifianakis is directed to be annoying as shit, occasionally given some moments involving his recently deceased father to make him likable. Robert Downey Jr. is directed to respond to this by being incredibly mean (including physical violence) until he's overcome with guilt or punished and apologizes. (Galifianakis easily forgives.) The two attempt to improvise laughs out of a premise where I don't want to spend time with either of them.

There is one moment, and I'm glad there's a video so I don't have to describe it. The moment is at 2:20 when Zach innocently takes another sip to get the taste out of his mouth.

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3169 on: February 15, 2019, 07:00:16 PM »
Due Date(2010)
★ ½

The two attempt to improvise laughs out of a premise where I don't want to spend time with either of them.

Even 1 and half stars sounds like too much. :)