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Post by pantsgoblin on Jul 1, 2024 13:35:15 GMT -5
Coming Home (1978) Despite Hal Ashby fandom, I'd avoided seeing this out of antipathy toward message movies...and I was right to do so. Struggling to find anything interesting to write about this fashionable angst that manages to waste even a performer as unpredictable as Bruce Dern. Yeah, I know the famous sex scene is historically important for feminism and disability. The film's surprisingly hard to find now and not on streaming anywhere due to music rights. It's mildly curious to hear this soundtrack from the very dawn of the Classic Rock format when people presumably wouldn't open their wrists and might even welcome hearing "For What It's Worth" or "White Rabbit" again. TCM yesterday? I appreciate the invite, but not all of us have that ability.
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Post by Lurky McLurk on Jul 3, 2024 12:02:02 GMT -5
Star Wars (1977)
(It's pretty obscure. You've probably never heard of it).
Version we watched was a DVD of the original cinema release, and going from this to Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, with its clunky, portentous title and crap CGI cluttering up the screen is basically everything wrong with the franchise. This though, by itself - leaving aside what a dreary fucking slog "Star Wars" writ large turned out to be - this is fucking great. Fantastic, kid-friendly sci-fi/fantasy action adventure mashing up bits of Kurosawa flicks, Saturday matinee serials, Dune, The Dam Busters and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I don't recognise. The cinematography is first rate and as a film it communicates so much to the audience through visual language. The acting's just what it needs to be for the material - the younger leads keep it light for the most part while Cushing and Guinness bring the gravitas. And the script, for all its "you can type this shit but you sure can't say it" reputation, has a tight, three act structure, is really good for narrative economy and gives just enough shading to the world the characters inhabit. None of this later habit of explaining the shit out of everything. "General Kenobi: years ago you served my father in the clone wars" is exactly 100% of what the audience needs to know about Kenobi's former status and authority and Leia's relationship with him. And that line plus the stuff about Luke's father fighting alongside him is all we ever needed on the clone wars too.
It's not perfect. After the opening sequence the pacing in the first act is a bit slow (this was the bit where my kids got a bit distracted. From halfway through though it was all rapt attention). There are a handful of noticeable continuity errors. It's looking to set up a sequel a little too obviously. Some of the characterisation's a bit inconsistent: is Han someone who prefers a straight fight or does he drop his shipments at the first sign of an Imperial cruiser, and is Leia British or not? It is an outrage that Chewie doesn't get a medal at the end.
All in all though, the whole thing's like a soufflé. It all ought to be a big, stodgy mess, but with a chef who knows what they're doing it's airy and light and delicious.
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on Jul 3, 2024 16:26:53 GMT -5
![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYjdiNjFjMmEtN2FhZS00MTg1LWE0OTctZGU3YzFlMGQ1YWI0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjA5NjIxNDU@._V1_.jpg) Accidentally made a double feature with the last movie I watched, of black and white movies where characters talk about the benefits of pairing coffee with cigarettes. This time it's Peter Falk, telling an angel how nice it is to pair the two things together. This is my second Wim Wenders experience, after Paris, Texas, which recently blew me to smithereens. I've been thinking about scenes from it for...months now? It's one of those "can't get it out of your head" movies. Wings of Desire may yet reach that status but it was a little harder for me at first blush. It's more self-consciously Profound and Poetic, but it does get to real profundity and poetry too. My expectations were a bit off. I thought it was about angels watching over people in Berlin and then hanging out with Peter Falk for some reason, in black and white. That's more or less true, but it's not all in black and white. And the basic fact isn't just that angels are watching us, but that they can read all our thoughts. In a way, the black and white picture relaxes our eyes because the soundtrack is a sensory overload. Every character is thinking! There are so many voiceovers! So many streams of consciousness! Ack! For almost all the movie we just...follow the angels around...as they eavesdrop on people and express a sort of helpless, unknowable empathy. The plot, when it comes, is: one of the angels wants to descend and become a human, to feel what people feel, to experience what we do, to see colors and taste things, and not deal with the frustration of immortality and omniscience. Also, turns out Peter Falk used to be an angel too. (Fact!) The theme that made me feel like a teenager having Big Teen Thoughts is the symphony of various people's thoughts, the "sonder," the sense of wonder that all these different consciousnesses are all around us. But the theme that felt more adult, more mature, is the fact that knowing everything when you can't change anything is a burden, something to escape from. That seeing all, or living through all, isn't something to be desired. Wenders is such a romantic. He really wants everyone to love life, appreciate the little things, reach out to others. I haven't seen Perfect Days yet but that sounds like the ideal companion piece to this. ![](https://pics.filmaffinity.com/play_for_today_home_sweet_home-489109477-mmed.jpg) An early Mike Leigh TV movie, Home Sweet Home. It's got all the bones of the future Mike Leigh greatness: unobtrusive, naturalistic observation of working-class people going about their lives; melodramatic Big Life Event subject matter handled with seemingly no awareness of how melodramatic it could be; and plenty of comedy notes folded in to keep you going. (Like one character's nonstop dad jokes, or a social worker's house visit, where she opens a door and says, "This is where you keep all your junk? Nice!") The plot is: three guys work at the post office, and the camera follows them around. That's about it. One of them is separated from his wife and daughter. One of them has an irritable marriage to a woman who calls him stupid (and sometimes sleeps with guy #1). And the third is the perfect, lovely Timothy Spall, playing a near-complete idiot. (He doesn't even get the dad jokes.) They make small talk at the office and deal with relationship problems at home. Leigh movies are so intimate, so close to and affectionate for their subjects, that they feel like you're making friends. And they don't try for ingratiation or friendship in the way that some directors do. (I like Rian Johnson but he really wants to be liked.) The result of that, and the stylistic neutrality, is that he can handle a lot of Big Issues while still making you feel hope. Even in this, ya know, TV movie. Next I need to watch a movie with a capital-p Plot!
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Jul 5, 2024 9:05:33 GMT -5
Challengers
Was I meant to find either of those men attractive?!
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Jul 5, 2024 14:04:58 GMT -5
MrsLangdonAlger I’m not sure if I find Faist hot-hot but I think there’s something about the total physical-persona package that’s really appealing to me (feel bad for the insane diet they put him on to bulk him up—as a thin guy I’ve never been able to build any real muscle no matter how hard I tried). O’Connor’s face really matches some wealthy-but-destitute people I know, it’s uncanny. My family (except me—sister working remotely to stay with my parents) decided to watch. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere my father has Lewy body dementia, and one of the things the condition really affects is sequential tasks and that goes with his viewing habits, where he prefers more regular stuff (movies or TV he’s seen a million times, sports), most of which still aligns more with boomer dad taste. I was surprised he gave it a try—he didn’t like it, though I couldn’t help but laugh that his main takeaway was that it was “unnecessary, I didn’t want to watch an ad for Stanford.”
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