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Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 683952 times)

Will

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5140 on: October 11, 2020, 07:02:50 PM »
Baffled over why he didn't choose one of the many, many proven Russian actors to play the character. Branagh is doing an SNL skit. It's so jarring from the rest of the cast in the film. And I generally like Branagh too.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5141 on: October 12, 2020, 01:08:38 AM »
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington REVIEW
Got some Capra this vacation right when I needed a little hope and idealism. I know there's a lot more going on here, but that is at the core the highest value of the film to me right now. Of the three I've seen, this is likely my favorite, although It's a Wonderful Life is required viewing every December.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
I'll just copy and paste my paragraph here:
Here we have a Charlie Kaufman screenplay stylized with a juxtaposition between the bright TV game shows and shadowy places Clooney so loves, bringing to fruition the story of a difficult and often gross man whose soul is, oddly, not all that in conflict. Besides his obvious trouble with women, likely brought on by a lack of self-reflection and a bit of narcissism, he fits as both the creator of popular, trashy game shows, as well as a killer. In this regard, it's a fascinating character study, something that might seem a little different if you look at Kaufman's body of work. Yet, it also fits Clooney's, as we're also given a glimpse into the cold war mentality, and the idea that it wasn't the bold and brave America that was fighting communism, but the fascist America that was doing so, which of course we can see more directly in the wonderful biopic of Edward R. Murrow that he wrote and directed, Good Night and Good Luck. I have a tendency to dislike the roles Sam Rockwell finds himself in more than Sam Rockwell, ala Three Billboards of Ebbing Missouri, and I actually think he might be best as this amoral man who lives his two lives with quite similar motivations. Chuck Barris is a scummy dude who might just be a little more complicated than that, and Rockwell captures him perfectly, with an energy that really propels this odd crime thriller through to its end. Although Clooney has been hit or miss behind the camera, this is a big-time hit, right along with the aforementioned Good Night and Good Luck and The Ides of March. Perhaps a Clooney-Kaufman reunion could be something special? Kaufman has been doing some great work, but maybe getting back with Clooney could get him out of his head just a little, and maybe he could give Clooney a good story worthy of a next big feature-length film. But if not, for just having seen this for the first time 18 years and lots of Kaufman later, this is a sneakily brilliant work.
A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5142 on: October 12, 2020, 01:24:13 AM »
Mr. Smith is a well crafted film but I’ll never forgive it for making people feel like the filibuster has ever been good or virtuous.

jdc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5143 on: October 16, 2020, 10:57:01 AM »
The Social Dilemma

Disappointing overall. For one, the entire film seems to be almost meta being delivered to me by Netflix when Netflix is making its money on all the ways the movies it trying to critique.  But I don’t think it raise new issues, maybe the same issues around since Mad Men but with more scare tactics

I get the addiction but that has been happening since sugar cereal and cartoons.  I was more wanting it to explain how we are followed and the results. 
« Last Edit: October 16, 2020, 11:10:42 AM by jdc »
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Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5144 on: October 16, 2020, 01:47:25 PM »
People at work were raving about it today. Maybe a DOCember thing.

pixote

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5145 on: October 16, 2020, 01:59:04 PM »
I thought it was pretty awful, but I also wasn’t exactly sober.

pixote
« Last Edit: October 16, 2020, 02:56:49 PM by pixote »
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5146 on: October 16, 2020, 05:46:31 PM »
I thought the dramatized stuff was bad. Most of it I had heard of before from separate interviews and studies. Still, was good to have it all in one condensed space. I think it'll educate people, at least.

Beavermoose

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5147 on: October 16, 2020, 11:54:48 PM »
Like it's getting people talking about the issues surrounding social media which is good. But yeah the film is meh and the people who are talking about how great it is are probably not going to do anything to change their behaviour.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5148 on: October 17, 2020, 08:16:08 AM »
I've had friends delete their Facebook account after seeing it. I agree it's a mediocre doc but I think it's had an impact and I'm glad it's starting conversations and getting people to rethink their relationship with social media.

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5149 on: October 17, 2020, 03:30:47 PM »
The Trial of the Chicago 7

I don't know if it is the 13 years that have passed since the release of Chicago 10, a rotoscope animation telling of these events, have changed me or if it is a contrast in filmmaking, but I would say I was much more sympathetic here. I'm still broadly speaking protest-skeptical in terms of the efficacy of protest under most conditions, but my level of skepticism of levers of state power have certainly declined in that spell. Aaron Sorkin's star-studded Netflix film is a more exhaustive look at the events and the broader context of the trial, making clear the overtly political nature of the prosecution. Where Chicago 10 had me more exasperated by the behavior of the defendants, which was in many cases I'd say still bad, Chicago 7 emphasizes the judge's own biases. Chicago 7 (at least to my recollection) does a lot more work drawing the philosophical distinctions between the different groups on the left who assembled at the protest. I am decidedly Team Tom Hayden, pumping my fist at his defense of electoralism. You focus on winning power first because without power you don't get to do anything else. But as the characters evolve in the film, there is a certain appreciation of how the various ideologies have a role in a movement.

The cast here is quite strong, with Eddie Redmayne as the more square Hayden, Sacha Baron Cohen disappearing into his role as Abbie Hoffman, and the great Mark Rylance perhaps outpacing them all as their attorney, William Kunstler (though I want to make it clear, not Bobby Seale's attorney). With this being based on real events, it's hard to know Sorkin's influence as the writer. The courtroom scenes in any event would likely be taken straight from transcripts, and Sorkin's work is in selection rather than creation. The line I nominated for best line "You posed your question in the form of a lie" is presumptively not a Sorkin flourish but rather from the actual interview given by Hoffman and Rubin. I suppose one can have some of the same questions about The Social Network, but only a few scenes there were taken from moments that would be on the record.

It all gets down to the fundamental question of the balance of peace and order. On the one hand, anarchy is not an acceptable place to go, and we should not welcome "protestors" who demand truly limitless freedom of expression. Probably reasonable to say no to public fornication. Probably not reasonable to limit the location of a protest, as they did here, on account of not wanting the protestors to be seen. Ultimately, as we see here and as we've seen this summer, the police so often play the instigator of chaos than the responder to chaos because they don't draw reasonable lines. On the balance, this film does seem to craft this moment of history in the right way to speak to the moment, even if it doesn't fully rise to cinematic greatness.

ETA: Upon further research, Sorkin very much did not stick to trial transcripts and reality was mere suggestion. I guess that explains why I like this so much more than Chicago 10. Sorkin's normie liberalism is my lane, and he polishes off a lot of the rough edges of the radicals that I'm not on board for.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2020, 03:57:43 PM by Bondo »