Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684299 times)

philip918

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3190 on: February 18, 2019, 11:37:58 AM »
Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

This was nice.


Shoplifters (2018)

Wasn't sold in the opening couple scenes of coordinated shoplifting between Shota and Osamu. But I was hooked by Sakura Ando's look when Nobuyo makes the decision not to return Yuri to her abusive home. Ando is the real highlight and would easily have made my Filmspots Best Actress ballot. She's earthy and warm and gives a nuanced, but much more laidback performance than I'm used to seeing in Japanese films. She is simply great.

I was also taken in by the textures of the film. Especially in makeshift family's cluttered home. Colorful pots and pans and containers stacked in the kitchen foreground, old paper walls, the lush greenery of the garden in the background. Gorgeous stuff.

It winds up being a powerful examination of family - chosen and biological.

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3191 on: February 18, 2019, 09:36:42 PM »
However imagine the film without Mushu. 
Which is the plan for the live action version, and it does seem like a radically different film. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I'd rather Disney try and end up with Maleficent than not try and end up with Beauty & the Beast.

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3192 on: February 18, 2019, 10:17:27 PM »
Happy Death Day 2U (2019)
★ ★
Following a clever first film, this one gets the tone all wrong. Instead of a campus slasher the bulk of the film is a riff on 80s/90s teen comedies. (Instead of failing to avoid the killer, Tree kills herself in increasingly silly and flippant ways that go against the fact that these deaths are causing lasting damage.) The identity and motivation of Babyface is just decoration, which makes it a disappointment for anyone who liked the horror and mystery of the original.

Jessica Rothe once again makes the most of every moment she's involved in and there's a nice twist that this new timeline is less about her father and more about her mother (a better actor than her spouse). The rest of the cast is competent at best. Rachel Matthews as Tree's sorority BFF and Steve Zissis as the clownish Dean are both terrible and given too much to do.

FLYmeatwad

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3193 on: February 18, 2019, 10:17:37 PM »
Most of the Disney live action stuff, I think, has been better than the original. Except maybe Jungle Book, though those are both not great for different reasons. But are they really taking Mushu away? That guy was fire.

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3194 on: February 19, 2019, 07:29:21 AM »
Alita: Battle Angel

Like in relationships, sometimes in movies you look back and see the red flags that should have given you warning along the way that this wasn't going as well as you wanted. In this case our introduction to Alita is as an advanced cyborg brought back into function by a cybernetic doctor (Christoph Waltz). She has lost all memory of who she used to be, we get a goofy scene where she doesn't know what an orange is or how to eat it (I was a bit confused about her need to eat at all considering there doesn't seem to be the appropriate plumbing to deal with it)...but she has otherwise fully retained the English language (even though she is Martian). That's not how amnesia works, that's not how any of this works.

The second red flag was that within seconds of being introduced to a superficially age-appropriate boy, she becomes infatuated and that drives an infuriatingly large amount of the plot. Like, I do see the benefit of having her be more than a robotic killing machine, so that she can love and perhaps even long for physical affection could be useful, but it all feels too cheap and easy here. In any event, the world here is a shattered one from a war centuries past. The one surviving floating city, seemingly the only place on Earth that isn't an impoverished/lawless hellhole, is the dream of many that live on the surface. But we learn so little about this destination that it fails to have any class implications. So much of that mystery is just teased for a potential sequel.

As much as I really wanted to like this, the more I think about it the more it falls apart.

Shoplifters

An average Koreeda film is a very good film indeed. He is able to do more with slight wrinkles in the mundane than pretty much anyone. Here we watch a fairly placid day to day of a family...only this family is patched together odds and ends and relies on bits of shoplifting to supplement various other sources of income. Exploring similar ground as Like Father, Like Son, this considers biological family versus families of choice, with conversant comparison of legal and ethical duties the characters face. Well observed without quite having the moment that puts it onto another level.

MartinTeller

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3195 on: February 19, 2019, 10:17:15 PM »
Of the Disney films we're binging, Lilo & Stitch is the only one I've seen before (that I can recall), back in 2003. I liked it then, and I like it even more now. I'd forgotten most of it, including everything involving aliens! Stitch remains one of my favorite Disney characters, able to convincingly go from pure destructive chaos to tender and cuddly. There's a lot of slapsticky humor here, but the gags are really solid for the most part. Lilo is a very appealing character as well, and the film earns its touching sentiments about "small and broken" families. I'm almost tempted to check out the sequels (and TV show apparently?) but I'm sure they're probably better left alone. Rating: Very Good (84)

Thief

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3196 on: February 20, 2019, 08:27:01 AM »
Most of the Disney live action stuff, I think, has been better than the original. Except maybe Jungle Book, though those are both not great for different reasons. But are they really taking Mushu away? That guy was fire.

I really haven't been interested in any of the recent live action films. I'm speaking merely from an outisder POV since I haven't seen any, but most of them look just like cheap cash-grabs instead of a genuine attempt to do something new/different with the same story. My outsider appreciation is that it seems they're not really offering anything new beyond the curiosity and technical aspect of doing something that was animated in "live action". That's what I got from the Beauty and the Beast and Jungle Book trailers. My wife did see the latter and thought it was decent, but well. Aladdin's teaser, on the other hand, looked just like crap; and not just because of the Genie. The Lion King looks simply unnecessary (traditional "hand-drawn" animation substituted by CGI animation? okay, so?).

On the other hand, I will say that Dumbo looks somewhat intriguing, in a weird way. Mulan looks like something ripe for a live-action adaptation. I think the story is very "mature", for lack of a better word and could work well. Still, Snow White and the Huntsman looked different, but in a bad way (overblown battles trying to mimic LOTR and similar stuff), so what the hell do I know, right? ::) That's just my rambling from outside the box  ;D
« Last Edit: February 20, 2019, 08:29:09 AM by Thief »

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3197 on: February 20, 2019, 08:49:10 PM »
I had a Bondo of an evening, with apologizes to the people who apparently like these things.

Mid90s

Somehow, against all expectations, Minding The Gap turned obnoxious teen boy skateboarders into a profound meditation on toxic masculinity and cycles of abuse. This is not that film. This film about obnoxious teen boy skateboarders is more of a profound meditation on what garbage people teenage boys are, without even a basic level of common sense to avoid getting themselves killed. Sunburn is the kind of blank character (you can't tell if there is bad acting if the kid never has to do anything *points at forehead*) that I guess the viewer is supposed to project themself into, but why would you want to.

F

Thunder Road

It gets worse. Toxic male's life rightfully falls apart, but thanks to the power of perspective, I guess we are supposed to pity him. Well, I don't empathize with toxic men. Setting aside the stupid "make a scene" scenes that I dislike, this had two bits in particular that irked me. He forces a random teen girl to get out of a car because apparently he is the enforcer of female chastity, even against their will. Then he proceeds to slut shame his young daughter for wearing makeup. Anyway, I certainly wouldn't want him raising a child.

F

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3198 on: February 20, 2019, 10:10:43 PM »
I had a Bondo of an evening, with apologizes to the people who apparently like these things.

To recover I recommend a beer, and Grandma's Boy8)

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3199 on: February 20, 2019, 11:03:18 PM »

White Tie and Tails (1946)
“I went to college, to Art School, to Paris.
Trying to bridge that awful gap between me and Rembrandt.
...It was wider than I thought.”


As a fan of Dan Duryea, I'd heard about this hard-to-find gem for years. Over that time I picked up appreciation (and a crush) for Ella Raines and came to regard William Bendix as one of the most dependable character actors ever. I watch my old time Hollywood movie stars for the comfort of their dependability. This is one of those rare cases where they get to delight me by doing something new.

Duryea (using a more natural, calm tone of voice) plays a butler, and when the family goes on vacation, he uses the downtime to imagine himself as the gentleman of the manor. Calling in favors for connections and expensive meals, he impresses the wealthy with his knowledge of how to get drinks, ties and other social symbols just perfect. This by itself makes for a fine light comedy, and the script often sets up expected situations of him about to get figured out only to find unexpected new avenues that don't drag out the deception.

The three leads are best known for Film Noir, and there are touches within the story: gambling, blackmail, a con, a heist, a double cross. When Raines is introduced, she is hiding a gun and I'm thinking "here we go," but then Duryea picks it up like he's never held one before. Events play out as a slightly screwball comedy with Raines relaxing into her innocent society girl and Bendix bouncing between being the bad guy and Duryea's main ally. A charmer.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ - Good