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Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684461 times)

FLYmeatwad

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3630 on: July 03, 2019, 11:46:31 PM »

It even had penis! So brave.

Which? Midsommer, Happytime or Spidy?

Definitely the first one, and I'm sure the second in some sense, though I don't remember. Did see Happytime in theaters though, and I agree that it's fine.

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3631 on: July 07, 2019, 09:27:26 PM »
Vox Lux

This is kind of an embarrassing film. A tonal and narrative mess that ends with a solid 20-30 minute concert by the worst pop star you've ever seen. Celeste (Natalie Portman) exploited being the victim of a tragedy to catapult a pop career. Cut to Celeste deep in her career where any decent part has completely vanished. We've gotten a lot of these takes on the manufactured pop star so much, including the Miley Cyrus centered Black Mirror episode. Portman may be a far superior actress, but Cyrus is substantially more convincing playing the role. Part of that is owing to whomever was responsible for the music. Cyrus' songs felt like something I'd hear on the radio, Portman's feel like what someone with utter contempt for mainstream tastes would make pop music out to be. Also relevant to this comparison is A Star Is Born (which I passed up rewatching on HBO to watch Vox Lux). Celeste has the manufactured aspect of "Ally," but with Jackson's substance abuse issues. I don't know, it's all just bad and I should have just rewatched A Star Is Born.

Watched this on the plane and liked it more than Her Smell, which took 15 minutes of this and went 135minutes with it. That said, Bondo's opinion is corrborated. Not remembering the trailer or reading reviews, the set-up jolted me. I really liked the actress playing young Celeste and her sister. Couldn't believe the film went so long without Portman, but once she enters it starts going off the rails. I'm not sure she did any work to give the smallest impression that she's the same character. They try to bridge the gap with narration, but Portman signed up for a very different film. There's a good idea about the effects of a terrible tragedy over a long period of time, but that's only approached and never confronted. Jude Law does some of his best character work.

As for that concert finale - and I can't believe the film ends on 20 minutes of that - I was wondering if the show was bad because this was meant to be a comeback for Celeste and the film was showing she no longer has what it takes. That's probably giving them too much credit.


I also saw Hellboy (2019). Really bad. Like 6 episodes of a Netflix series, all made by different writers and directors, and then edited down into a single movie. However, it is also still better than Her Smell.

Junior

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3632 on: July 07, 2019, 10:19:03 PM »
Lol, makes me want to see Her Smell even more. It can't be as bad as all that!
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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3633 on: July 08, 2019, 02:18:16 AM »
It's not that I didn't understand that the entire aim of Her Smell was for Elisabeth Moss to play a character you want to run from, it's that the creative decisions took it so far I couldn't understand why anybody might want to stay around her so I wanted to get away too. The final section finally takes a new approach and reframes the character with some interesting insight, but that's after 90 minutes of unrelenting toxicity. The pre-Portman section of Vox Lux is mostly quite good, but when you combine it with Portman's character it all seems tonally incoherent. This is compounded by Portman's performance which is either shallow and surface or a portrait of a rock star who only knows how to play everything at the shallow surface.


Hellboy is - and this may be hard to believe - more entertaining. Pure and simple. I'd rather try and figure out all the pieces of story threads that make up the new movie, and this one film has more loose threads than the entire Pirates of the Caribbean series. I find that more pleasurable than Becky Something self-destructing.

philip918

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3634 on: July 08, 2019, 12:04:03 PM »
Watched a few movies on the plane this weekend. Ended up skipping through all of them.

Amazing Grace (2019)
Only of interest if you want to watch one of the greatest singers of all time perform at the height of her powers. The moment Aretha opens her mouth I was in awe. As a concert film it's very good. Not much to it in terms of a larger story or drama.

Apollo 11 (2019)
A rocket launch and shots of Mission Control will never fail to move me, and the 70mm footage and some of the cinematography throughout is incredibly striking.

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Much smaller in scope than I thought it would be. The street scenes are filled with people who looked like they wandered into the shot. The first future I've seen filled with cargo shorts and polo shirts. As a big Speed Racer fan there was a chance this could have worked for me, but I just didn't find any of it very engrossing or exciting.

Hellboy (2019)
Bad from the jump. Every early scene with the shadowy villains was awful on a level I'm not sure I've seen before. Didn't finish.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2019, 03:41:06 PM by philip918 »

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3635 on: July 09, 2019, 10:20:44 PM »
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013)
★ ★ ½
I've been on a big upswing with Steve Coogan lately, starting with Stan & Ollie and carrying through his hilarious new series "This Time with Alan Partridge" which I binged on a recent airplane trip. I don't know why this wasn't more satisfying. It's packed with a lot of smart jokes. (Armando Iannucci is one of the credited writers.) I frequently thought, "that's really funny," but I rarely laughed out loud. Maybe on a different day this would've worked for me better. It's the type of film I could imagine myself catching 20 years ago and then watching on repeat while the clever dialogue became part of my conversation. Instead, I'm not sure I'll ever watch this again.

valmz

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3636 on: July 09, 2019, 11:35:38 PM »
...and for another take, Her Smell is amazing, and maybe not even insufferable enough to really drive the point home. I mean, sure, you get it quickly, and then you GET it, because you’re stuck in it, but you could GET IT even a bit more so that you can’t shake the feeling for three weeks. But, you know, it’s still great. The final scene is so fascinating...

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3637 on: July 10, 2019, 04:38:38 AM »
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013)
★ ★ ½
I've been on a big upswing with Steve Coogan lately, starting with Stan & Ollie and carrying through his hilarious new series "This Time with Alan Partridge" which I binged on a recent airplane trip. I don't know why this wasn't more satisfying. It's packed with a lot of smart jokes. (Armando Iannucci is one of the credited writers.) I frequently thought, "that's really funny," but I rarely laughed out loud. Maybe on a different day this would've worked for me better. It's the type of film I could imagine myself catching 20 years ago and then watching on repeat while the clever dialogue became part of my conversation. Instead, I'm not sure I'll ever watch this again.
Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge character is like a tropical fish and serialized in a fish tank he eats the scenery like a piranha. Outside the radio studio, in feature length format, he becomes a much smaller fish that almost drowns in the big ocean.
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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3638 on: July 10, 2019, 04:55:53 AM »
Take This Waltz (2011)
★ ★
A minor disaster from filmmaker Sarah Polley. Quirky and stylized during the scenes that most need to be grounded, with inexplicable gratuitous nudity and a performance by Michelle Williams that reminded me she came from Dawson's Creek. The positives are surprisingly good dramatic work by Sarah Silverman (in a character barely sketched out) and Seth Rogen, who is perhaps too charming and sincere for the husband who is supposed to be annoying enough that you understand Williams cheating on him. This is something I would've bought in any other Rogen performance, but not here. He's never been more lovable. Coming off the sincerity of Like Crazy, I'm just confused by the choices here, from the rickshaw to the unprofessional cover of Rogen's cookbook, full of unexceptional uses for chicken.
It is a very underwhelming effort, but I like the scene in the merry-go-round:

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smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #3639 on: July 10, 2019, 03:08:27 PM »
The Girl in the Spider's Web   -   0/10

I wish they would just accept that it's not working. The reboot didn't work. Now here's a sequel to the failed reboot, starring yet another version of the same character. I don't really understand how you have a sequel with a completely new cast, but here we are. Do you want to see Claire Foy with a weird haircut and body art? This is your movie.

I really liked the part where she goes full Terminator 2 off the wharf onto a frozen lake. Motorcycle stunts were always what I looked forward to in this series.  ::)



IT - 8/10

It felt long this time, that's really my only complaint about the film at this point. It could've been tighter.



The Iron Lady - 2/10

Felt like a film that spent 3 days shooting and 300 days being edited together. Is this storytelling or a game of f**king Jenga?



The Holiday - 5/10

Harmless, but also I did not find it very charming.



Leap Year - 0/10

A dad-recommended movie. I'm sorry to say this, but I found it unbearable.



The Salesman - 5/10

A repeat viewing, though I had forgot I had seen it before until about 5 minutes in. It's well done, but too bleak and lacking in resolution for me to get excited about it. The matter of fact presentation also is not a great help in terms of stoking my emotional engagement. But well done.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2019, 03:10:03 PM by smirnoff »