Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684798 times)

Corndog

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5670 on: March 10, 2021, 11:04:58 AM »
Now is the time to take a risk like Cherry. Without the theatrical release, the thud of a failure isn’t so loud. It’s the difference between Doolittle and Artemis Fowl.

The Gray Man will tell the truth I think. If they follow up with another dud then I think their stock plummets in my view. Cherry was really not good.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5671 on: March 10, 2021, 11:07:53 PM »
The Invisible Man (2020)

That was delightful.

It starts off as this slow burn film where it's all about suggestion and implications but then it eventually doubles down on this being a pulpy horror story and I have to say I think it all works. Is it silly at times? Well yea, but the idea is rather silly and I think if you played this straight for the entire runtime it would be a bit unbearable and full of itself.

Of course, it's ultimately a film about how men continue to gaslight women and how other men dismiss women as being mentally unstable and emotional instead of realizing that these women are literally fighting for their lives. The film literally making visible the toxicity of abusive men which is often an invisible form of abuse in our society. All of this is told from the perspective of the woman and taps into the trauma men put on the female psyche without ever making it feel like it shows women as being weak (I credit most of this to Elizabeth Moss's performance).

I dig it.

My issues with this film weren't thematic, you lay out its themes nicely. It was more about the premise and the action than anything else. It's not terribly fresh in my memory, but I thought the whole invisibility costume was kind of silly, and some of the fights with an invisible person made me laugh. The visceral, siutting-in-the-theater watching stuff. It made it hard for me to take the film seriously. I have a similar problem with superhero and some of the bigger franchise action movies (thinking Mission Impossible and Fast and Furious), although this is clearly operating at a thematically higher level that most of those.


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jdc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5672 on: March 10, 2021, 11:37:17 PM »
Was this really a blockbuster?  I mean, it probably would have been a big box office success without Covid and it did pretty welll all things considering.  But it was only a $7M budget movie which doesn’t lead me to believe it was meant to be a blockbuster, depending on how you define that word...
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5673 on: March 10, 2021, 11:38:55 PM »
I don't know how people sit down and crank out multiple paragraphs on films after every watch. I'd constantly be backlogged. Credit to whoever can do it, though!

Minari
A film with wonderful intentions that comes off flat. It still gets high marks from me, because I love a meditative drama with lots of pretty colors. However, I can't help feeling that I witnessed a lot of important moments without much in the way of editing skill. For such a subtle, quiet film, there are several plot lines that need following, and there isn't much in the way of transitions. It felt a bit like Tigertail in this respect, we're moving from beautiful shot to beautiful shot without getting a beautiful whole. I actually think there could be a three-hour cut out there where the director just sits and ponders this lovely piece of land in the middle of nowhere a little more, and uses its power to take us far more gracefully from one shot to the next. It will seem like a weird criticism to someone perhaps more accustomed to briskly shot and edited pieces, but I value letting the camera roll a little more and cutting a little less, especially in a piece like this.

Nomadland
This one also noticeably cuts more than I might want in a film of this quality, but here, it works. Zhao may flood us with images of Fern in her simple, often mundane activities, but her collage of images always lead us to an actual scene that matters. Character development here is impeccable, utilizing every person we come across to let us know, through words and reactions, just a little more of this person whose whole life was upended when the world she lived in just about literally ceased to exist. It's a delicate story, because we could easily come out more sympathetic than empathetic, but the writing and McDormand's performance are restrained enough to prevent that from ever happening. She's prickly, but hopeful, stubborn and resourceful. McDormand just channels her in one of the more impressive performance you'll see. Loved it.
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smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5674 on: March 11, 2021, 02:34:41 PM »
Athlete A

it is a bit frustrating that this Netflix film will be viewed so much more than At The Heart of Gold, which is over at HBO

This seems to be true. I was reading the Wiki article on Nassar, and Athlete A gets mentioned and ATHOG does not.

I don't recall that either documentary mentioned the 500 million dollar settlement that was reached between MSU and 332 victims. A historically large settlement from a university regarding a sexual abuse case, says the wiki. And by historically large I imagine to mean total, and not the 1 million and change that will be distributed to each victim. It feels terribly low on a per victim basis. I guess that's the sad truth about a situation with so many victims.... at some point a university's pockets, or their insurance, is only so deep. More victims doesn't mean more money, but for the University it's like a sunk cost. They stop needing to worry about more victims coming up, I assume.

Of course MSU isn't the only one to pay a price. Nassar is gone away for good. But I wonder about all of the other sexual abusers mentioned. It's a while before the doc becomes Nassar centric... but there is reference made to abuse cases which don't involve him. I wonder and worry about who else is out there still.

After the Nassar stuff is wrapped up, it was really nice to hear the story of one girl who went on to compete for a college and won national championships two years in a row. And she spoke about how different the culture was in her new program, compared to her days training with for the Olympic team. So it's nice to know that the toxic culture isn't totally normalized throughout the sport. Still, that potential remains. I hope these docs shook the shit out of the Gymnastics world. Early on the doc covers some international aspects of the sport, to give context for where the American program was and how it changed, and who changed it. It makes me wonder what it's like for Gymnasts elsewhere in the world.

I found this to be a good and worthwhile watch, even after having seen In The Heart of Gold.

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5675 on: March 11, 2021, 04:35:37 PM »
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

This seems to be aging nicely. It helps that it's just past the era of brick-shaped cell phones. There's not too much else to date it by. Certainly not Jason Statham, who's less changed over 22 years than even Keanu.

It really all comes together here. The style and the plot. It has the good sense never to marry itself to any one of it's exaggerated forms, but instead fans out a swatch of looks and jumps playfully between them. Sepia noir, montages that are like living renaissance paintings, frames and faces out of a comic book, Dickensian dinge... all in some hybrid of Winchester '73. There aren't a lot of lulls here... most of them you'll miss for having blinked at the right moment.

It's been a decade and more since I watched this last (and first). I've seen a lot of film since then. Films that seemed to want to pull the same trick. Seven Psycopaths, Layer Cake, Lucky Number Slevin, Smokin' Aces... I can't say that any of them really managed it fully. Not as well. Not until Ritchie managed to do again himself with Snatch.

Funny enough, the low point of the film for me is the homage to Fistful of Dollars. There's something I find embarrassing about it. In a film that is inexplicably still cool all these years later, it's that homage that sucks now. It's lame in the same way parodying the matrix became lame. Everything else, everything which was it's own version cool, remains cool. Maybe I just hated how it pulled me out of the moment. And for what?

Heaps of enjoyment here. Solid 8/10... 8.5 really. Okay 9.

jdc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5676 on: March 11, 2021, 05:29:50 PM »
You can do better.. 9.5.

I have both this and Snatch in my top100 and I am trying to think which I prefer, not sure using my top is accurate as a lot of it can be random.  I recently watched Snatch, so maybe try to rewatch this one tonight
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“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5677 on: March 13, 2021, 09:03:03 PM »
March Quick Reviews

Earwig and the Witch Studio Ghibli goes Western with CG animation and a Western storyline. It doesn't go particularly well. C-

Straight Up This screwball romcom very much spoke to me. I don't have the main guy's confusion over which gender appeals to me but can greatly relate to the "heteroromantic asexual" structure of the central romance here. B

Kid Detective Always happy for Adam Brody to get more work. This is an Encyclopedia Brown is grown up and washed out kind of narrative, but the actual mystery wasn't compelling. John Hodgman's Dicktown was ultimately more compelling (and definitely more lighthearted) take on the concept. C

Coming 2 America Only valuable as nostalgia. C+

The Climb An interesting indie dramedy that explores the line between toxic friends and friends who actually tell you hard truths. B

Freaky Fun use of a classic plot device. Feel like it leaves vestiges of each character with their body in a way that influences their swapped actions a little. The slasher's cold open targets fall into typical conservative anti-sex horror but once swapped there's a slightly more of a sense of justification that I'm not sure we'd attribute to the slasher. B-

Capital in the 21st Century I've heard the book has some very good data. This however just seems like anticapitalist propaganda. C-

Ammonite So much of Portrait of a Lady on Fire here...period piece, one woman assigned to look after another leading them to fall in love. But it lacks the chemistry and gender commentary of Sciamma's work, and has sex that leans a little more in the Blue is the Warmest Color direction. I want an animated remake of Ammonite in the style of Animal Crossing. C+

The Social Dilemma On the one hand, I think the narrative flourishes here, using actors/fictional scenes to illustrate the film's point, are good from a cinematic standpoint. They are amusing/entertaining. But it overly personifies AI in a way that makes things a little bleaker. I'm more concerned with the "social media makes us unhappy" aspect than the "they are getting all your data" line of concern. But outside of personal effects, it's really the political ramifications that seem most crucial...the ability to stoke hatred and silo information. Not really sure how much of it is "the algorithm tools are overwhelmingly powerful" vs "a lot of people are dumb." B-

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5678 on: March 17, 2021, 01:19:12 AM »
Cherry (2021)
★ ★
I had to see the Russo Brothers post-MCU victory lap. The story is a LOT like Dead Presidents, but that film knew how to make each change in tone and location build on what happened before. This doesn’t have that glue, so it’s like disconnected short films all starring Tom Holland. Maybe he’s supposed to be the glue, but he can’t do everything. I say that thinking he’s the best reason to watch the film. Great things lie ahead. As for the directors, this is their Goth phase, trying too hard to look dark and edgy. I wish they were doing Ghostbusters. Special Effects and Ensemble Comedy is where they shine.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2021, 01:33:51 AM by 1SO »

Junior

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #5679 on: March 17, 2021, 12:27:17 PM »
The Virgin Spring

Bergman adapts a 13th Century folk song for this morality play about purity, nature, revenge, family, and God. Given the source, it has some pitfalls that Bergman usually avoids, like the trope of women being used as ideological props and plot devices more than actual characters, along with the constantly unsettling equation of whiteness with purity and goodness. But I can excuse Bergman here, at least a little, because this movie is obviously him operating in a different mode from the psychodramas he is known for and tailoring his style for that end. As a folktale, this works amazingly on the level of the image and the visual metaphor. Directors today wish that they could do something as smart and simple to understand as the roof hole/chimney metaphor for the boundary between the self and society that Bergman develops throughout this film. And I literally gasped at the thing that gives the movie its title, so there's that too.

B+
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