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Post by liebkartoffel on Jul 13, 2020 9:59:17 GMT -5
Palm Springs is really, really good, one that manages both the βcomedyβ and βromanticβ aspects and somehow nails the latter even better than the former. Someone pointed out that Sambergβs roughly the same age as Bill Murray was in Groundhog Day and found it hard to believe, but itβs not so weird to me given that Bill Murray already looked old in his late twenties on SNLβjust different kinds of faces (beyond almost everyone looking kind of older back then anyway). But that he still puts off a kind of youthful air while looking older and a bit tired worked really well for him. I would never have thought of Samberg as a romantic lead but he truly is here. I also really liked that the repetition wasnβt part of some supernatural reality play, either, just something they stumbled into. Makes the romance feel more real, I think. Second the love for Palm Springs! Thirded. I appreciated how adept the movie was at doling out details and respecting the viewers' intelligence in figuring out what was going on. My only wish was that they had spent a little more time with them just goofing off and building a relationship before the heavier stuff in the third act. So...was that grandma stuck in the time loop too? She said something cryptic about Sarah "leaving" at the end.
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Post by Superb Owl π¦ on Jul 13, 2020 10:02:33 GMT -5
Second the love for Palm Springs! Thirded. I appreciated how adept the movie was at doling out details and respecting the viewers' intelligence in figuring out what was going on. My only wish was that they had spent a little more time with them just goofing off and building a relationship before the heavier stuff in the third act. So...was that grandma stuck in the time loop too? She said something cryptic about Sarah "leaving" at the end. I have questions about that and the JK Simmons tag at the end. But they smartly didn't dwell too much on how it all worked.
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Post by nowimnothing on Jul 13, 2020 13:56:43 GMT -5
I have questions about that and the JK Simmons tag at the end. But they smartly didn't dwell too much on how it all worked. I didnβt even catch liebkartoffel βs one, but it makes perfect sense. Also kind of surprised with the JK Simmons tag, but maybe itβs some kind of chain reaction starting from Niles? For a hot minute I thought that the twist would be: That everyone or almost everyone was in the loop, they had just had time to adjust and decided to let it play out. The grandma was definitely in the loop in my mind though. Which raises the question, "Would you stay in the loop if you had a choice." Immortality plus a consequence free life in exchange for loneliness and a lack of meaningful connections. Most would want to get out I think, but the math works out different depending on your age and whether there is another in there with you. There is a good chance that J.K. Simmons was not going to be able to walk his daughter down the aisle anyway right?
It never really said how Niles got started in the loop. Did he leave the wedding for a hike and stumble upon the cave? I imagine this one would be much harder to guesstimate how long each of them was stuck in the loop than Groundhog Day. Niles may have forgotten his job but he did not forget his dog. He says that he had sex with Sarah at least a thousand times, so that we have to figure many years, probably decades. It had to take Sarah another year at least to learn quantum physics.
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Post by Superb Owl π¦ on Jul 13, 2020 14:06:53 GMT -5
I have questions about that and the JK Simmons tag at the end.Β But they smartly didn't dwell too much on how it all worked. I didnβt even catch liebkartoffel βs one, but it makes perfect sense. Also kind of surprised with the JK Simmons tag, but maybe itβs some kind of chain reaction starting from Niles? I mean dinosaurs [/spoilers] kind of indicate that the loop had existed there a long time?
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Post by ganews on Jul 13, 2020 19:37:59 GMT -5
No I wasn't allowed to go back to work, I just forgot to post
Isolation week 17 movies
Roman Holiday It's pretty neat to see an on-location movie shot in places I myself stood not three years ago. Dalton Trumbo, author of one of my very favorite books, wrote this screenplay; I ought to make it a goal to see every movie he wrote, since I've already got a few. Audrey Hepburn is made of light. At first Gregory Peck seems all wrong for this role - you want the rakishness of Cary Grant or Clark Gable, as had been done before. Plus of course Peck always seems like your dad, and he and Hepburn are 13 years apart. The whole way I'm rooting for the barber who has no ill intentions whatsoever. But then the noble ending, and the fact that he *doesn't* get the girl, means Peck is just right. It's all very sweet, a private secret and untainted memory, they even give her the pictures to remember it by. Peck's character walks away and lets it just be. Forty-one years later this scene was recreated in the movies by John Travolta, also coming off a dream date with a beautiful woman acting strangely naive, looking in the mirror and saying to himself, "...go home, jerk off, and that's all you gonna do." American Culture, everybody.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother No not Mycroft you wise-acre, the movie makes it clear from the beginning it knows who that canonical character is. Gene Wilder plays the title petulant (in addition to writing and directing), and he goes by turns through dickish, wacky, and restrained madness. It never works very well, unfortunately, or grows beyond the blended-up Blazing Saddles/Young Frankenstein reunion you might uncharitably assume. Not even to lower-tier Mel Brooks. At least now you know where Marty Feldman's IMDB picture came from. Gene Wilder puts the same effort into his accent as the also-set-in-England Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which is to say none.
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya The final film of the genius Studio Ghibli director who isn't Miyazaki. HBO Max gives us all kinds of Ghibli movies and apparently Crunchyroll, but this was only available as dubbed. And thank goodness, because otherwise I never would have heard James "Sonny Corleone" Caan do the English voice of the father. Beautiful animations that aren't quite like any other anime you've seen, usually minimalist but not always. Sort of a confusing tale; what is the gold and fabric for if not to give a noble life to the princess? (Which she hates, and who wouldn't.) Pretty messed up that the childhood friend is eager to run away with her seconds after we see him hand what is evidently his baby to his wife, which is confirmed after he wakes up alone. Good English casting but we really should have watched this very Japanese story with subs.
Saving Private Ryan Another pillar for the America's Dad statue, which surely would be incomplete without including Hanks as a soldier. The battle scenes are still brutal. It's amazing how people were in this movie, including character actor Leland Orser - if you were making a movie in the 90s and needed a guy to be freaked out/traumatized/shell-shocked, he was your man. The real story of this movie is not the title mission/character, but the arc of the translator corporal and the stance on killing POWs. To the movie's disservice, it's not clear what that stance is other than "war is hell". The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Much better than The Caine Mutiny and the origin of Bogart playing a crazed paranoid. His character is such a complete degenerate, stupid, greedy, and hypocritical. Besides being a great movie, this gave us two important legacies: the Bugs Bunny cover version (which I knew as a kid), and Howard the old-timer dressing down his hobo partners and dancing in their faces. And in the end, there's nothing to do but laugh. Nice to see the Mexican character actor I knew from The Big Country appear as the yellow-hat bandit.
Frenzy I didn't even know Hitchcock made movies in the 70s. This is a nasty English crime film full of nasty English people, and it's only interested in showing two things: naked women's bodies, and intentionally-nauseating English food. (Not that the English have a stomach for good food either - a margarita is presented as a stomach-turning foreign drink.) The English justice system is also presented as terrible; maybe do the tiniest bit of investigation before the trial next time. Richard Bucket from "Keeping Up Appearances" is there to be an amiable but self-interested English husband, a casting he was evidently born for. In summary, the English are terrible.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Jul 13, 2020 20:30:44 GMT -5
No I wasn't allowed to go back to work, I just forgot to post
Isolation week 17 movies
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya The final film of the genius Studio Ghibli director who isn't Miyazaki. HBO Max gives us all kinds of Ghibli movies and apparently Crunchyroll, but this was only available as dubbed. And thank goodness, because otherwise I never would have heard James "Sonny Corleone" Caan do the English voice of the father. Beautiful animations that aren't quite like any other anime you've seen, usually minimalist but not always. Sort of a confusing tale; what is the gold and fabric for if not to give a noble life to the princess? (Which she hates, and who wouldn't.) Pretty messed up that the childhood friend is eager to run away with her seconds after we see him hand what is evidently his baby to his wife, which is confirmed after he wakes up alone. Good English casting but we really should have watched this very Japanese story with subs. Isao Takahata is amazing. He also did Grave of the Fireflies (AKA one of the best, most gut-wrenchingly depressing movies you'll never want to watch again), and Only Yesterday, quite possibly my favorite Ghibli movie. Princess Kaguya is gorgeous, and I'd definitely recommend watching the sub, if you can find it.
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LazBro
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Posts: 10,181
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Post by LazBro on Jul 13, 2020 22:13:57 GMT -5
Add one more to the hype train for Palm Springs. A fun version of a familiar idea. Really funny, really sweet. And only 90 minutes long. God bless'em.
Grandma is definitely in the loop.
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Post by MyNameIsNoneOfYourGoddamnBusin on Jul 14, 2020 7:39:50 GMT -5
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Much better than The Caine Mutiny and the origin of Bogart playing a crazed paranoid. His character is such a complete degenerate, stupid, greedy, and hypocritical. Besides being a great movie, this gave us two important legacies: the Bugs Bunny cover version (which I knew as a kid), and Howard the old-timer dressing down his hobo partners and dancing in their faces. And in the end, there's nothing to do but laugh. Nice to see the Mexican character actor I knew from The Big Country appear as the yellow-hat bandit.
So the bandits didn't recognize gold dust despite the fact that they presumably regularly preyed upon area prospectors? I couldn't get over that part. Still it's a great film.
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Post by sarapen on Jul 15, 2020 7:27:12 GMT -5
Every Ghibli film ever was recently added to Netflix Canada so I finally watched Whisper of the Heart. I will be frank, the only reason I watched it is because I knew Take Me Home, Country Roads figured into the story and I wanted to know why they were singing John Denver in Japan. I still don't know the answer for the John Denver thing, but at least I finally saw the origin of the first lo-fi hip-girl. It was barely one second! Why did the lofi hip-hop guy fixate on this? Or the entire lofi hip-hop Youtube streaming community? Oh, and I suppose the movie was a pleasant story of that liminal time in our lives when we move from the "anything is possible, your dreams will come true!" phase of childhood into the "boy, you gotta like practice and shit to get good at something" realization of the world's constraints in the tween years. Also young love, that's in there as well. The movie was fine, I guess. I suppose I might as well watch Only Yesterday or My Neighbours the Yamadas sometime. They're there, it's hot out, I'm sure I can spare a couple of hours one weekend while drinking a rum and coke.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jul 15, 2020 8:06:32 GMT -5
Every Ghibli film ever was recently added to Netflix Canada so I finally watched Whisper of the Heart. I will be frank, the only reason I watched it is because I knew Take Me Home, Country Roads figured into the story and I wanted to know why they were singing John Denver in Japan. I still don't know the answer for the John Denver thing, but at least I finally saw the origin of the first lo-fi hip-girl. It was barely one second! Why did the lofi hip-hop guy fixate on this? Or the entire lofi hip-hop Youtube streaming community? Oh, and I suppose the movie was a pleasant story of that liminal time in our lives when we move from the "anything is possible, your dreams will come true!" phase of childhood into the "boy, you gotta like practice and shit to get good at something" realization of the world's constraints in the tween years. Also young love, that's in there as well. The movie was fine, I guess. I suppose I might as well watch Only Yesterday or My Neighbours the Yamadas sometime. They're there, it's hot out, I'm sure I can spare a couple of hours one weekend while drinking a rum and coke. My guess is that since this genre of video usually mentions the lo fi hip hop as suitable for listening to while studying, and the girl in the still is listening to music while apparently working on some sort of school assignment, it was deemed a fitting thumbnail for an early iteration of the "lo fi hip hop beats to relax/study to" videos. And after that, the image just became like a signifier of this genre of Youtube video or something? Like, it doesn't seem terribly baffling; I'm assuming that a large chunk of the target audience for these videos would be anime fans, but the person who made the first video using this thumbnail didn't want to choose something that would be instantly recognizable by most potential viewers. But yeah, I just did a Youtube search for "lo fi hip hop" and a sizable portion of the results still contain some variation on this still. Most of them seem to be from one specific channel.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Jul 15, 2020 11:40:18 GMT -5
Every Ghibli film ever was recently added to Netflix Canada so I finally watched Whisper of the Heart. I will be frank, the only reason I watched it is because I knew Take Me Home, Country Roads figured into the story and I wanted to know why they were singing John Denver in Japan. I still don't know the answer for the John Denver thing, but at least I finally saw the origin of the first lo-fi hip-girl. It was barely one second! Why did the lofi hip-hop guy fixate on this? Or the entire lofi hip-hop Youtube streaming community? Oh, and I suppose the movie was a pleasant story of that liminal time in our lives when we move from the "anything is possible, your dreams will come true!" phase of childhood into the "boy, you gotta like practice and shit to get good at something" realization of the world's constraints in the tween years. Also young love, that's in there as well. The movie was fine, I guess. I suppose I might as well watch Only Yesterday or My Neighbours the Yamadas sometime. They're there, it's hot out, I'm sure I can spare a couple of hours one weekend while drinking a rum and coke. Just re-watched Only Yesterday last night, actually. Like a couple of other Takahata movies it's about as far away from a prototypical "Ghibli" movie as you can get--just a sweet, (almost) entirely non-fantastical meditation on childhood and nature.
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,635
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Post by repulsionist on Jul 15, 2020 18:59:16 GMT -5
Female Trouble (1974)
Body of Personal, Subjective Analysis:
Because I am now firmly installed in the demographic railed against in many of Waters' acid remarks throughout this work, I certainly felt maligned by lines like:
- βI worry that youβll work in an office, have children, celebrate wedding anniversaries,β Aunt Ida
- βThe world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life.β again, Aunt Ida
- "Can't you just sit here and look out into the air? Isn't that enough? Do you always have to badger me for attention?", Dawn Davenport berating her only child Taffy.
I did appreciate the hard work that went into this. I remain in awe of the Dreamlander aesthetic; its consistency applied throughout the first, erm - uh, working from memory here, 5 or 6 films continues to amaze. I have some reference for what's being lampooned and adored simultaneously.
- Dietrich
- Garbo
- Taylor
- Fassbinder
- Sirk
- Nichols and May
- Duras
The drag work. The set design. The costumes. All of it is wonderful, garish, and somehow inspiring.
Oddities discovered:
I could swear that all the Roman numerals in the credits were wrong. Even on the trailer the date of the film appeared to be incorrect. I did not rewind to double-check.
Observations I hadn't made before:
- Cookie Mueller and Susan Walsh in their high school make-up prefigure goth.
- On two occasions during the high school period of this bildungsroman I thought I was seeing Daniel Ash instead of Cookie Mueller.
- Some of the lighting made them both look like ghouls or corpses - thanks, benzedrine and black beauties (aka Adderall).
- The criminal triumvirate they form with Dawn as leader clearly provided Harmony Korine with some basis of characters for Spring Breakers.
- The dancing during Dawn Davenport's career girl period is blast furnace hawt!
Final remarks:
I cannot tell you all viewing this how many times I read through Shock Value, Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters, and Trash Trio : Three Screenplays. I had all of these books in my personal collection from 1990 - 2000. I read at least one of those twice a year. The migration to things like Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, Gardner's The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, Gould's Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms early on in the following decade was natural, but in the light of hindsight: jarring. Yes, yes, I managed to read stuff like Doofus, Jim Woodring, and other outrΓ© undergournd comics' works throughout the past 20 years, but, I'm just like sayin', yo.
Now that I hardly read more than what's on my phone I grow sad that I have reached a limit. A limit that I falsely blame on being bounded by a paradigm shift I didn't get swept into automatically (physical book to e-book). That I did not find this film as funny as I did 30 years ago when I first saw it allows me to apply some equanimity; however, it does imply loss of spirit that I'm not completely willing to let go of, or accept as gone forever.
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Post by Hachiman on Jul 16, 2020 1:22:44 GMT -5
The thing I really like about Whisper of the Heart is that it takes place in what I assume are completely normal residential neighborhood in Tokyo which is just a cool and authentic glimpse into everyday life in another country and all the ways itβs subtly different. That is one thing I actually really like about the Ghibli movies set in contemporary settings. Even with all the fantastical elements, they are really good at portraying how regular people here actually act for the most part. Most of the other anime movies tend to be too over-exaggerated. Like even something like Ponyo has relatable human characters. You could cut out all of the fantastical parts and still have a nice short film about some fairly typical kid and his mom dealing with a dad who works a lot.
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Post by sarapen on Jul 16, 2020 13:23:18 GMT -5
The thing I really like about Whisper of the Heart is that it takes place in what I assume are completely normal residential neighborhood in Tokyo which is just a cool and authentic glimpse into everyday life in another country and all the ways itβs subtly different. Yes, I very much noticed how the movie foregrounded the varying kinds of urban environments in Tokyo's residential neighbourhoods. And all within easy biking distance.
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Floyd D Barber
AV Clubber
The Train I used to Drive (not me driving, though)
Posts: 7,612
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Post by Floyd D Barber on Jul 19, 2020 0:01:15 GMT -5
It's been a rough week. I needed something to unwind to. The Devil's Rejects turned out to be a poor choice for a humorous relaxing distraction, so I wandered around the Roku, checking out some of the many third tier Movies With Commercials streaming services, until I came to Popcornflix Comedies. There I discovered
FDR: American Badass!
IF Franklin Delano Roosevelt's parents had been Sterling Archer and Imperitor Furiosa, and IF Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, and all their soldiers had all been werewolves,
THEN this might have been a documentary called "Drunk History's FDR in World War Two: Written and Directed by John Waters, based upon a book by Hunter S. Thompson, and Produced by Roger Corman for Troma". As it is, FDR: American Badass is demented, bizarre, profane, filthy, and one of the weirdest, funniest, and occasionally most sentimental things I have seen in a long time. They obviously had a tiny budget, but they spent it very well. The cast is wonderful. Barry Bostwick absolutely kills as FDR, disabled by polio resulting from a werewolf bite shortly before running for president. Bostwick does the best FDR take I think I've seen in the movies. Based on what I've seen in old footage over the years, he has FDR's look and mannerism's down pat. His voice is a toned down version of FDR's famous accent, but who cares. The cast is full of great "that guy" character actors, such as Bruce McGill, who plays his friend, confidante, and political adviser, Louis, and Ray Wise as Douglas MacArthur. This History Channel on 'Shroons fever dream seems to have a twisted respect for most of it's characters (except for Adolph, Benny, and Hiro, but seriously, fuck those guys). Elanor Roosevelt gets kind of short sheeted, however. Lin Shane does great work with what she's given, but they skipped over most of Elanor's own well documented badassery. Most of the other characters, no matter how profoundly screwed up they are, are also given hints of pathos and humanity, except for FDR's son James. I can only assume he did something really horrible to the writer's grandparents or something. I want to give a special shutout to Kevin Sorbo's "Abe Lincoln". Just Fucking Amazing.
I love that in the midst of this insanity, the movie will sometimes pause to dwell on some true but obscure bit of history. It educates as it turns your brain to mush.
The special effects are cheezy and cheap, yet also sort of charming. I appreciate the inventiveness of some of them.
I can't even begin to summarize the plot. FDR, Nazi Werewolves, whaddya want, a road map? There is only the sketchiest relationship to any sort of reality in any of this, and a ton of dick jokes, but it's also sometimes unsettlingly true to the spirit of history. It's not for the easily offended, but it's worth a look.
I would strongly recommend an alternate history/timeline/universe/reality movie night with Kung Fury as the opening short attraction, and FDR: American Badass! as the feature. I mean, any reality would be better than this one, right?
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jul 19, 2020 0:23:41 GMT -5
Pass Thru As utterly unhinged and incoherent as all Breen movies. This one might be the most disturbing insight into whatever it is that passes for Breen's ideology, as this one ends with its messianic hero killing 300 million people for the betterment of humanity and then...ascending to another dimension?...while walking through a desert landscape strewn with the corpses of those he's murdered. Highlights include an actress smirking as she's interrogated about how many months pregnant she is while sporting the fakest looking pregnancy makeup of all time, the hero's collection of blankets with comically gigantic holes in the middle, and a lengthy scene at a party for the rich and powerful shot in a greenscreen mansion where Breen loudly asks "Isn't that corrupt?!?!?" every time one of the guests brags about the ways they misuse the levers of power to their own advantage. Were it not for the cast of supporting characters being different in each film, it would be impossible to tell which film any given scene belongs to, and yet his films remain endlessly entertaining in their ineptitude. F+
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jul 19, 2020 0:33:38 GMT -5
Solaris - Everyone says that Tarkovsky's Solaris is one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, that the cinematography is incredible, etc., etc. This movie is not one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, imo. The cinematography is fine for what it is, but it's nothing special, and certainly hasn't aged that well, although I suppose I shouldn't hold that against it. Most of the performances are fairly good. The film explores the themes of Lem's novel with a greater degree of nuance than I'd expected, which is probably it's greatest strength. Overall, it's no masterpiece, but it's a solid film all the same. B
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jul 19, 2020 7:38:23 GMT -5
Remake of Solaris - Wow, that was a much better version of Solaris. The cinematography was amazing; it's a really beautiful film to look at. Good, affecting performances from the cast. And above all, a philosophically challenging and thought-provoking film, that I'll definitely want to return to in the future. Absolute masterpiece. A
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Post by ganews on Jul 19, 2020 21:25:46 GMT -5
Isolation week 18 movies
Cold Mountain At first I was just going to say "watch Gone With the Wind, it's far better, only 85 minutes longer, and only somewhat more offensive". But after I got through the whole thing I'll say "watch the movies that this blended and ripped off: Gone With the Wind, O Brother Where Art Thou, and Of Mice and Men, they're all much better". I had always wanted to see this because I heard Jack White learned to play the mandolin for the role; now it's just a relic of the time he hooked up with Renee Zellwegger. Can't believe Brendan Gleason survived; I didn't know he really played violin and now I like him even more. I could write more critiques but I'm too annoyed. The Rainmaker My second-favorite lawyer movie after My Cousin Vinny, as I said elsewhere on the movie board. Like the latter it uses an inexperienced lawyer to introduce the audience to legal procedures. The movie ends with Matt Damon looking brilliant, when really his achievements were passing the bar, having an experienced partner, and catching a bunch of lucky breaks - his only idea was the jury tampering scheme. The fight with Claire Danes' ex is one of the most realistic to ever be portrayed on film: panic, sloppiness, flopping around, and the uselessness of a gun. Great supporting cast.
The Conversation Keeping on the Coppola train. This is my second attempt to sit through this movie, the first successful. It burns as slow as any burn there is. Gene Hackman never had another role like this, to my knowledge (certainly not the supposed spiritual sequel Enemy of the State where he acts like Gene Hackman, a 100% different character). This could be a blueprint for so many closed-off paranoids. Somewhere there's a libertarian who really loves this movie, and neither he nor the movie ask the question of "if you're too paranoid to have anything or value anything but privacy, what good is the privacy?"
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Post by Hachiman on Jul 20, 2020 0:46:09 GMT -5
Based on the spontaneous theme of films with strong female characters, this weekend the family and I watched.
Brave: As my oldest kid gets older, the family dynamic in Brave becomes more reflective in my life. We first saw this one when my oldest was a a baby and we couldn't get into it really. Now she's almost 10 and we have 2 babies running around causing trouble. That said, there's a lot of small moments that stood out to me now more than then. From the dad grabbing the mom's ass as he walks by, to the way Merida spend a lot of time stewing over her baby siblings, to the struggles of preparing an obstinate older child for their entry into the world. I find myself much more thoroughly on the side of the mom now than when I first watched it. Merida comes off as the villain for me this time with the mom as this victim of a curse, which while unintentional still had a super psychotic motivation to start with. My oldest seemed to pick up on that too, commenting that Merida is pretty mean to everyone.
Black Panther: Hear me out here, this is a very pro-woman movie. Sure, they have a King, but the Queen and Zuri are both extremely capable in their own rights. T'challa's army is entirely composed of women and his ex-girlfriend is a badass spy who doesn't really need him even though she still cares about him. He's advised, helped. encouraged, and saved by women constantly to the point that he really does seem superfluous at times. Wakanda is already in good hands. Speaking of Wakanda, the only place where women seem non-existent was the isolationist Jabari tribe, who seemed to interact with the wider society on a very limited basis. It seems if anything, the role of Black Panther is more of something required as an interface for and guardian from the male-dominated outside world. Klaw's team is all men and the only woman see we around Killmonger barely talks and then gets murdered by him. They don't even explain what ever happened to his mom. There's a ton of themes in this movie, but a strong one is about the need of women in society. T'challa wins his personal battles, but women are the ones that we see win the larger war. I also liked that Nakia had better shit to do than settle down
Charlie's Angels (2019): I actually really liked this one. I wasn't a fan of the earlier remakes but this one was alright to me, maybe because the wackiness of the earlier remakes was dialed down in favor a a vibe more similar to Kingsmen, but I suppose that is just the time we are living in. My wife ended up watching it twice, which was nice since she very rarely gets into movies. I like how this movie had this really strong theme, which they even outright say in the beginning about women either being underestimated or unnoticed, and they use this tactic successfully again and again. They use it against the audience too, which I liked. This was also the first movie in a while that I have seen Kristen Stewart in where I really liked her. Patrick Stewart is very much playing a character that is a live-action Deputy Director Bullock with a bit of movie Picard, but he makes it work. Its problem was that it was kind of stuck in this limbo of being several different movies at the same time. I didn't mind any of the multiple directions they went with so it worked for me, but I could understand how other people would want it to be more consistent.
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Post by nowimnothing on Jul 20, 2020 7:49:42 GMT -5
Spaceship Earth (2020)
Documentary about the controversial Biosphere 2 project in the early '90s. Most of the running time is devoted to the background of the 60's hippy collective that ended up running the project. I might have been more interested in the details of the two years they spent in there, like the in The Habitat podcast.
But this was still very engaging, especially since they seemed to have a lot of archival footage plus recent interviews of the participants. I would say the documentary is sympathetic to the collective and its leader, but it doesn't shy away from some of the cult-like aspects.
Ultimately the project was done in by being over-hyped, both by the organizers and the media.
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Post by chalkdevil π on Jul 20, 2020 9:46:08 GMT -5
Was temporal vagueness a thing in the late aughts? Does sort of an Archer thing with time periods, seemingly in the 70s or 80s but also set today. Iβve said this before but 80s nostalgia makes me nostalgic for the late-aughts in early-tens, so this was a point in its favor too. Maybe Napoleon Dynamite? That had a lot of 80s, early 90s stuff in it, but also might have been "justified" within the narrative because the characters were supposed to be lower class hicks so they wouldn't have newer things, like cordless phones or CD players?
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Post by MyNameIsNoneOfYourGoddamnBusin on Jul 20, 2020 16:17:39 GMT -5
Was temporal vagueness a thing in the late aughts? Does sort of an Archer thing with time periods, seemingly in the 70s or 80s but also set today. Iβve said this before but 80s nostalgia makes me nostalgic for the late-aughts in early-tens, so this was a point in its favor too. Maybe Napoleon Dynamite? That had a lot of 80s, early 90s stuff in it, but also might have been "justified" within the narrative because the characters were supposed to be lower class hicks so they wouldn't have newer things, like cordless phones or CD players? It was fifteen years ago that I saw it, but didn't that culminate in a dance sequence to a contemporary-ish pop song?
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Post by chalkdevil π on Jul 20, 2020 17:01:02 GMT -5
Maybe Napoleon Dynamite? That had a lot of 80s, early 90s stuff in it, but also might have been "justified" within the narrative because the characters were supposed to be lower class hicks so they wouldn't have newer things, like cordless phones or CD players? It was fifteen years ago that I saw it, but didn't that culminate in a dance sequence to a contemporary-ish pop song? The internet tells me it was a Jamiroquai song from 1999 so, yeah. Other important songs in the film, like when Napoleon dances with the girl from Waterworld and I think the closing song are 80s songs. Looks like you've got yourself some Bette Middler and the Backstreet boys too, so, sure. I guess the idea though it that the movie is contemporary, but has retro elements that would seem somewhat anachronistic, although maybe less in style and more in the vein of "the poor rubes still have VCRs."
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Post by Hachiman on Jul 20, 2020 19:19:06 GMT -5
Was temporal vagueness a thing in the late aughts? Does sort of an Archer thing with time periods, seemingly in the 70s or 80s but also set today. Iβve said this before but 80s nostalgia makes me nostalgic for the late-aughts in early-tens, so this was a point in its favor too. Maybe Napoleon Dynamite? That had a lot of 80s, early 90s stuff in it, but also might have been "justified" within the narrative because the characters were supposed to be lower class hicks so they wouldn't have newer things, like cordless phones or CD players? I'll toss in that before Napoleon Dynamite, Wes Anderson's films until Moonrise Kingdom were also pretty vague about when they were set. Anderson basically came from the opposite direction when it came to justifying all of the anachronisms in his films since most of the characters in his older films were rich and ran in these elite circles. So someone driving an old luxury car, or wearing out of date clothing, or having a house filled with junk from various eras could all be ignored as just something somebody very rich would do. The Life Aquatic flipped it a bit in showing that Steve Zissou was at the end of his career and had money problems, but the fact that he still spent his time participating in these elite explorer's clubs and going to various seaside towns meant that he either didn't care for or have the time to care about current fashion and technology. Plenty of Indie films of the time did similar things when it came to obscuring the era of the film.
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Floyd D Barber
AV Clubber
The Train I used to Drive (not me driving, though)
Posts: 7,612
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Post by Floyd D Barber on Jul 21, 2020 21:37:22 GMT -5
Maybe Napoleon Dynamite? That had a lot of 80s, early 90s stuff in it, but also might have been "justified" within the narrative because the characters were supposed to be lower class hicks so they wouldn't have newer things, like cordless phones or CD players? Iβve been told that the time warp aspect of it is pretty true to the very rural west (and Iβd guess the more Mormon parts of the rural west especially) in a way that wouldnβt be true for, say, middle-of-nowehere Wisconsin or Minnesota (where Iβve been to a couple of places that definitely felt like middle-of-nowehere, but were still in easy driving distance to small cities, e.g. Appleton or LaCrosse or Sioux Falls, that had enough amenities for them to not really be middle-of-nowehere). Here in southern Illinois, I remember "the 60's" getting here around 1972.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Jul 22, 2020 1:31:27 GMT -5
Maybe Napoleon Dynamite? That had a lot of 80s, early 90s stuff in it, but also might have been "justified" within the narrative because the characters were supposed to be lower class hicks so they wouldn't have newer things, like cordless phones or CD players? Iβve been told that the time warp aspect of it is pretty true to the very rural west (and Iβd guess the more Mormon parts of the rural west especially) in a way that wouldnβt be true for, say, middle-of-nowehere Wisconsin or Minnesota (where Iβve been to a couple of places that definitely felt like middle-of-nowehere, but were still in easy driving distance to small cities, e.g. Appleton or LaCrosse or Sioux Falls, that had enough amenities for them to not really be middle-of-nowehere). My dad grew up in rural Idaho, can confirm.
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Post by nowimnothing on Jul 22, 2020 7:27:38 GMT -5
There is also the invention of cell phones to consider. I think it took a while for writers to come to terms with how cell phones might impact their plot so they muddied up the time period in order to avoid dealing with them. So many movies from the last century would not make sense in a world with cell phones. Writers are still coming up with ways to work around cell phones with the most common cliche being "no signal." But even that is becoming less and less believable.
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Post by chalkdevil π on Jul 22, 2020 9:26:30 GMT -5
There is also the invention of cell phones to consider. I think it took a while for writers to come to terms with how cell phones might impact their plot so they muddied up the time period in order to avoid dealing with them. So many movies from the last century would not make sense in a world with cell phones. Writers are still coming up with ways to work around cell phones with the most common cliche being "no signal." But even that is becoming less and less believable. I always get distracted when a piece of content is modern but seems to not deal with cell phones at all. Like, they are just mostly ignored unless someone actually needs to contact another person. I keep thinking that cell phones/internet are partly responsible for why we haven't moved on beyond 80s nostalgia. Shouldn't the "20 year nostalgia" cycle be putting us in turn of the Willenium territory. I haven't seen any coming of age comedies set against the back drop of the apocalyptic uncertainty of a Y2K party. Or throw backs aping the action style of The Matrix. I mean, I don't want to blame 9/11, but uh, maybe 9/11 taints those memories. For whatever reason, that event seems to defy the passage of time making it an event that seems like it can't be referenced or used as a backdrop in a film without it seeming distasteful or pandering, at least in America. I think even the looming threat of it would darken a comedy if someone tried to set it in 2000. Or maybe it's just because the late 90s popular music was mostly terrible and no one wants a movie soundtrack with Limp Bizkit and LFO.
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Jul 22, 2020 18:10:36 GMT -5
High and Low (1963)
Probably my third time watching it. It was late when I started this film last night. It's a good police procedural. I like Kurosawa. When Kingo Gondo decides to forego paying the ransom it's shocking. Gondo's turnabout is excellent drama. Then, I turned it off. It's unlikely I'll return to it to finish. I know the ending. I enjoyed all the action occurring in two or three rooms of Gondo's tony Yokohama flat. The pacing remains taut. The movement within the finite space follows the pace.
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