Floyd D Barber
AV Clubber ![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star_skyblue.png)
The Train I used to Drive (not me driving, though)
Posts: 7,598
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Post by Floyd D Barber on Jul 20, 2024 21:32:00 GMT -5
Ron Howard Voice Today on twitter I actually saw someone post some focus group audience notes from Topaz’s teat screenings. Everyone’s first comment was basically “I don’t believe Hitchcock made this, if he did it would have been good.” Upvoted for "teat screenings".
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Post by ganews on Jul 20, 2024 22:22:17 GMT -5
Ron Howard Voice Today on twitter I actually saw someone post some focus group audience notes from Topaz’s teat screenings. Everyone’s first comment was basically “I don’t believe Hitchcock made this, if he did it would have been good.” Upvoted for "teat screenings". Howard Hawks movies?
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repulsionist
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Post by repulsionist on Jul 21, 2024 15:32:45 GMT -5
The Mansion of Madness (1973)
Alternately titled House of Madness (UK) and Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon (US), this Mexican film comes from a member/associate of the Panic Movement, Juan López Moctezuma. The Panic Movement, referring to the idea of Pan, sought to reveal new horizons to humanity's consciousness through shock theatre. Founding members were Alejandro Jodorowsky, Roland Torpor, and Fernando Arrabal.
Cinematographer of Jodorowsky's first 3 films, Rafael Corkidi, does the camerawork here, and many stagings of shots have a similar feel to The Holy Mountain or El Topo. Also, a number of producers for Madness provided input to the first 3 Jodorowsky films.
Before I introduce the hidden principal of this collective that produced a visually stimulating adaptation of Poe's "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether", I'd like to explain a bit about Poe's story. Written parodically in reference to Dickens's serials for social justice and topically the sanatoriums of the early 19th century, the story as film becomes a thought provocation regarding life under autocracy. That said, the film does closely align with the characters and plot of the Poe story. Perhaps one of the first stories to utilise the plot device of: "A madman running the madhouse."
The real gem of the film is artistic advisor and set/costume designer, Leonora Carrington. British-born-and-raised, naturalised Mexican whose work in Surrealism recently yielded her being the most valuable British woman artist with a sale earlier in 2024 for some umpteen million pounds. Carrington probably had more influence over this film than received in a first viewing. After looking at her work more closely and doing a quick investigation of recent articles, the beginning and end procession of the film matches many themes of her work. Costumes, particularly the during the rituals, closely follow many of her artistic expressions. A foundation to Carrington's work is her time in a Spanish sanatorium. While she produced well-regarded works of Surrealism prior to her asylum stay, the sanatorium/asylum subjected her to assault, false imprisonment, and torture. The reason for her stay was an unraveling ensuant to her lover/partner, Max Ernst, and his arrest in Vichy France.
As a result of this viewing I'll be searching for her 1974 novel The Hearing Trumpet.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Jul 24, 2024 11:45:31 GMT -5
Booksmart (2019)
It's taken me years to convince the wife to watch this, as she was always afraid that it would be cutting and mean-spirited against the overachiever types like she was in high school. I think what finally tipped her was someone comparing it to the good-natured-ness of Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar. What had originally put it on my radar was a review describing how Kaitlyn Devers' character is openly gay and literally no one else in the movie cares; it's a non-issue. That instantly rocketed it to "must-see". Anyway, it's a pleasant if unchallenging comedy but the principals are all quite good--Jessica Williams and Mike O'Brien are both worth the price of admission. Ms. Goblin particularly loved the flamboyant theater kids as she grew up in a very arty, theatrical family.
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on Jul 24, 2024 17:45:20 GMT -5
Ron Howard Voice Today on twitter I actually saw someone post some focus group audience notes from Topaz’s teat screenings. Everyone’s first comment was basically “I don’t believe Hitchcock made this, if he did it would have been good.” No longer looking forward to this! ...well, maybe a little.
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
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Post by repulsionist on Jul 25, 2024 14:56:54 GMT -5
Decline of the Western Civilization (1981)
My son, who did not watch this film, has been taking a higgledy-piggledy tour through Spheeris's non-doco work with recent viewings of The Little Rascals and Wayne's World. I decided to expand my tour through the woman's work by watching this after some 30-40 years seeing it, initially.
Performances all still great. Really didn't remember how much Claude Bessy orientates the film. But, everyone who's in front of the camera does have something illuminating to say; the lighting during the interviews helped.
Darby's presence and performances were so lunatic. Morris and Hetson are so, so tiny. Greg Ginn and Thurston Moore are like brothers from other mothers. Alice Bag is a powerful performer; "Gluttony" sounds terrifying in this film. I had completely forgotten Phranc was the guitarist for Catholic Discipline. Ving, Scratch, and Philo are unlovable dirtbags. I duly appreciated John Doe's simultaneous tattooing and thoughtful responses to questions. Exene's performances were mesmerising.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Jul 29, 2024 15:01:30 GMT -5
Via the American Cinematheque’s 70mm festival:
I recently got a 70s Alessi stainless steel fruit bowl from Rochester-based eBay seller—I thought it was funny because it’s a very sort of 70s-stylish thing and Rochester is not where I’d think to go for that sort of things, but Kodak definitely drew interesting people there (at one point the majority of Fiat X1/9s—eccentric little angular roadsters, of a similar sort of 70s-chic—in the States were registered in Rochester and Huntsville, AL—Kodak and NASA). Part of that legacy of Kodak-engineered-and-funded good taste is the George Eastman archive, which sent two 70mm prints to LA’s Egyptian Theater:
The Last Emperor. This is one of my favorites but also the first time I saw it on the big screen. It’s one of the most beautiful, and having lived in Beijing there’s something great about seeing it so big. While there’s one wide shot where you can see the a bit of smog (even back in the mid-eighties), a clear sky in Beijing is like nowhere else—I don’t if it’s something about the latitude, having the right small proportion of dust to somehow scatter the light into a different sort of blue, or what, but it’s always good to see. By the time I lived there the big bicycle commutes were a thing of the past, and while it’s only a shot or two the bicycle rush hour scene has a push on the big screen that I didn’t expect but still felt familiar from the auto-centric Beijing forty years later.
fine performances from everyone—it drives home 80s-90s Hollywood racism that we wouldn’t see a lot more of these actors, though there’s a weird world where John Lone follows up his multiple-global-awards-nominated performance here with decades playing Lt. Cmdr. Data (maybe he cashes after the first season along with Denise Crosby). I’m also surprised Wu Tao, who played 15 year-old Puyi, didn’t do anything more. There’s a bit of an easter egg in that director Chen Kaige plays the turbaned, ethnically-ambiguous Imperial Guard captain (thinking of my ex who wanted to learn about her similar ethnic-minority-in-China heritage only for ancestry.com to report she was “100% East Asian”). And hey, it’s Peter O’Toole in 70mm again, less pretty (hard to believe it’s only 25 years between them!) but if anything more dandyish (I actually wore a dress shirt and sport coat to this—a good thing, too, the theater was cold!).
I don’t know if Puyi’s sexuality was general knowledge at the time—as bad as it sounds the straightwashing of Puyi is one thing makes him more relatable. The guy’s life was truly bizarre, sociopathically cruel on an interpersonal level only to learn empathy in his forties and fifties (and by all accounts he was actually rehabilitated, even if it wasn’t as nice a process as depicted here). I’m not sure of the zombie Manchu emperorship was really that much weirder than the various moribund early 20th century European nobilities, but I think inserting mutual desire into Puyi’s marriages is good for the film.
It’s odd they translate one historical figure’s name as Eastern Jewel, which is a literal translation of one of her Chinese names—though I guess it makes sense given the way her character assimilated her background as a Manchu noble into Japanese militarism. The actual person—wikipedia uses Yoshiko Kawashima—is fascinating but I think The Last Emperor’s version hits closer to how most of us would react to actually meeting her: blib and bratty, like any other reactionary. Some of her lines might sound cartoonishly evil without the knowledge that the Japanese were, in fact, that bad. It’s also another gutsy performance from Ryuichi Sakamoto, a war criminal like in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence but arguably more chilling since there’s no psychosexual level underneath like in that film, just pure racial supremacism.
Apocalypse Now. I wasn’t sure about this, but since I’d recently seen A Streetcar Named Desire why not go for a bit more Brando? This is one I’d only seen in AP English after we read Heart of Darkness. In the beginning, with the layered images and dissolves, someone in my class shouted “oh god it’s so seventies” and I have to admit that stuck in my head and I almost laughed during the opening. It’s good, I know I praised being more formally adventurous and expressive in editing in the last of these little summaries I did, and I stand by that, and the editing and visual storytelling of Apocalypse Now is great, but sometimes something just sticks in your head.
This is a real movie for voices, too. Neither Sheen nor Brando really have traditional masculine-hero voices. Dennis Hopper and a couple of the sailors, man, they really got on my nerves, man. I forgot how funny/absurd Kilgore was and how much of that was because he was so specific instead of just having an absurd demeanor (apparently Kilgore was inspired in part by Ariel Sharon, who went swimming in the Red Sea during the Six-Day War). It’s also legitimately exciting to watch, which sort of works in its favor as “anti-war” in that you can feel why they unleashed all that firepower even if you can see it’s plainly wrong.
This is also a wholly American movie—the Vietnamese or Cambodians (well Filipinos) don’t really matter. I think that works here, though, as the Americans are using southeast Asia as a place to live out their own narratives (and avoids the narrative dehumanization of the locals that Chinua Achebe read in Heart of Darkness, even if the behavior from the film’s characters is inherently dehumanizing). Kurtz’s and Willard’s falls aren’t from their removal from modern Western civilization, it’s a way of living out its possibilities in a way that would be “unsound” outside the realm of fiction.
Patton. Given such conflicts as in Ukraine I couldn’t help but think about all the machinery in Apocalypse Now, like everyone was masturbating with the equipment they really wanted to stick into the Fulda gap. Here we “finally” get our war in the Mediterranean and Europe, authored by Coppola in a movie that’s, if not pro-war, at least pro-warrior (another contemporary tie-in—having seen what tank battle’s like via Nagorno-Karabakh footage it’s easy to see how the slapped soldier ended up that way, even before considering we now think that sort of PTSD reaction’s probably in part the response of micro-tears in brain tissue, a literal physical injury). It’s a straightforward classic, and hey another Streetcar toe-in with Karl Malden!
This one wasn’t from Rochester but, via corporate consolidation, the Disney archive of all places. It’s kind of funny because I first saw the earlier parts of this movie as a little kid, late (or at least late by five or six year-old standards) at night with my dad, and it was one of those “oh, this is what grown-up entertainment—and actual war—are like” eye-opening and mind-expanding moments.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Jul 29, 2024 15:22:56 GMT -5
Watched at home: Robocop. Sometimes a couple of movies, even have different ones, have just enough in common that you’ll be watching one but knowing you’d prefer to be watching the other. This is the way Robocop and Total Recall are to me— Robocop has its virtues but I’d rather be watching Total Recall. I do really enjoy Ray Wise and especially Kurtwood Smith in Robocop, though. Ray Wise comes across as a basically too-old juvenile delinquent, a real “dad what are doing?” feeling. Smith’s Boddicker is just odd as an underworld kingpin—a great, classical villain performance from a guy who looks like he should be in an office job, which I’m sure was part of the point. Le Choc. repulsionist did you recommend this one to me? I’m glad I was able to find it, and I give it credit for doing something different—assassin Alain Delon wants out of the business and ends up investing in a turkey farm (a real one, not some kind of rustic fantasy) run by Catherine Deneuve and her husband, resulting in an odd mix of early middle age love story with assassin thriller as Delon disposes of people his trying to rope him back in. It’s an awkward mix, though, with the romantic drama pacing overwhelming any fun we’d get from the pulp action, but it’s one of those movies I’m glad exists even if I didn’t think it was necessarily all that great. The Great Train Robbery. This is a fun one, and surprisingly saucy for a movie that was a favorite in elementary school (maybe it was late enough that I at least had an understanding of the sexiness). The common criticism is that the wind-up’s too slow, but I think it works, and whatever the case it’s absolutely worth it for Connery’s real, full-speed (unintentionally, no speedometers on nineteenth-century steam locomotives) top-of-train action. I don’t think there’s such a thing as “full Sutherland” because Donald Sutherland was too good an actor to go too deep into a persona, but if there were such a thing I think he’d be at full Sutherland here (also enjoy him reading what were clearly intended as Cockney lines in his natural accent—the real Agar spent years in the US so it actually kind of does make historical sense).
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Floyd D Barber
AV Clubber ![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star_skyblue.png)
The Train I used to Drive (not me driving, though)
Posts: 7,598
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Post by Floyd D Barber on Jul 30, 2024 0:14:15 GMT -5
Wicked Little Letters 2023 Delightfully foul mouthed movie about a bunch of poison pen letters sent to the upstanding members of a small British community in1920, the scandal they caused, the attempt to railroad a boisterous Irish woman for sending them, and the efforts of a few of her friends to find the real culprit. Great movie, entirely worth watching just to hear the hilariously profane letters read aloud by Oscar winner Olivia Coleman and others.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Jul 30, 2024 9:19:17 GMT -5
The Handmaiden (2016)
If you're only familiar with Park Chan-Wook's gonzo "Vengeance Trilogy" as I was, then this at first seems too staid and well-mounted for him. Fortunately, his enfant terrible tendencies start poking through by the time you get to Part 2 of this labyrinthine, 2.5-hour marathon. It's an adaptation of a 2002 novel set in Victorian England but here transposed to '30s Korea under Japanese occupation; captivity being both enervating and liberating is the main theme here. Though I'll generally prefer Park's fondness for sadism and torture in down-and-dirty Oldboy mode, this was an intriguing bit of cognitive dissonance in seeing those perversions in such high tones. Well made sapphic sex scenes didn't hurt either.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Jul 31, 2024 13:09:21 GMT -5
Arctic Convoy. Pure meat-and-potatoes Norwegian World War II suspense…or it would be if our lead character, the ship’s first officer, weren’t so loathsome. Sure he’s traumatized by being torpedoes last convoy, but he wants to turn tail in what’s as close to a pure good-and-evil struggle as can be found, mostly makes wrong decisions, and keeps the captain (injured in a German attack) drugged on morphine so he can take command and turn the ship back. That’s kind of evil! He does “save the day” in the end, as in he has an idea that rescues them…from a situation they wouldn’t have been in if it weren’t for the uninterrupted string of tactically and morally wrong judgments. It’s not really a turning point for the character, though, and another one point-blank says “I supported your idea, not you.” A rare case where the characters end up more self-aware than the writers, they really needed to figure out a real arc on this one. Otherwise it’s a pretty cool (ha!) movie, though, and good representation for us dark-haired, kind of ugly Scandinavians.
A.I.: Artificial intelligence. I’d never seen this before. Although the nineties (now-)retrofuturism’s part of the appeal, the uncanniness of this film feels very ahead of its time, anticipating Glazer, even, in tone and characterization (especially in the first third, which you can tell is the original SF story). It’s amazing how Osmont and Law can be live-action uncanny, and how Osmont loses that and becomes more human as the film progresses. It’s truly impressive acting and directing.I also love how Jude Law’s “ideal” ladies’ man scans as a bit gay, truly a idealized kind of heterosexuality designed with a specific type of customer in mind and something that reminds you there’s none of the risk that comes with an organic man. The organic kids are pretty believable, not really evil, just not fully able to contextualize David, who lies in an uncanny space between thing (the chubby kid at the pool party, for instance, doesn’t really intend any malice even if he doesn’t treat David like a human—which he isn’t), friend, and rival. Hey, Brendan Gleeson’s great, too (Chris Rock’s cameo is so Chris Rock it briefly jolts you out of the movie, though). ACTRESS is too cute as well, hard for this adult viewer not to read something Oedipal into her and David’s relationship.
You can really tell Robards is Lauren Bacall’s son when from certain angles, too, the spacing of his eys just jumped out of me.
I actually don’t think the film—at least pre-ice age—was neither Kubrick-esque nor maybe aspects of the pre-ice age felt a bit Spielbergian (and his raw craft and ability with child actors specifically). It’s a good third thing, which is to Spielberg’s credit. but it really felt distinct.
It think it’s pretty well-documented that the full story is what Kubrick was originally working from, and it actually doesn’t surprise me so much—he had a lot more range than people appreciate. Spielberg does fall a bit into Kubrick aesthetic homage in the end—hard not to think of Bowman’s trip across the universe during across and into the glacier. There’s a definite thematic echo of Bowman’s simulated environment as David returns home, too, but that’s a thematic rather than aesthetic commonality. The far-future robots are very Spielbergian, though I think it works. I thought of an observation in Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World, where he notes that the general profile twentieth-century alien sightings—lithe body, large head, dream-like state—echoes descriptions medieval and early modern visions of the Virgin (you can really see this in some early Dutch painting). That’s a mythology Spielberg dips into, and while I think he knows the feelings described I don’t think that extra level of conscious analysis is intended.
I don’t think it’s intended is the one thing that bothers me about the end. David’s an Adam to these machines, ones that have a sophisticated sense of self and clear ability to invent. I think the movie supports the reading that the ending is a simulation, the Ben Kingsley robot’s explanation his version of a fairy tale (though a straight reading kind of anticipates Interstellar), and a chance for David to finally join his mother in the human experience of death. I’d be more comfortable, though, if that were a little clearer (and, while I don’t think this is supported by the movie at all, I’d prefer it to be an outgrowth of David’s ability to synthesize his memories into fantasy to find a place to fulfill his wants). It’s a legit tearjerker, though, and this movie deserves more than its mixed reputation.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Jul 31, 2024 17:08:31 GMT -5
The Bob's Burgers Movie (chosen over Babies and Mirai): It's...a feature-length Bob's Burgers episode. The stakes are higher, but not that much higher than your typical season finale, and it's pretty much just a big old love letter to the fans. If you had never seen a single Bob's Burgers episode I'm not sure how much you would get out of this but I've seen all the Bob's Burgers episodes and I liked it.
Ramen Shop/Ramen Teh (edging out fellow food-themed foreign films The Lunchbox and Delicious): This was an odd selection. Sometime within the past ten years I saw a trailer, in the theater, for some sort of movie about making ramen, made a mental note of wanting to see it, and promptly forgot the title and any other relevant details. I recently stumbled upon an entry about this movie on a "best contemporary food films" listicle and it seemed to fit the bill, so I put it on our list. Except I don't think it got any sort of release in the U.S., so I'm not sure how I saw a trailer for it in a theater in Minneapolis. Maybe the theater was hosting an upcoming festival? Anyway, it's about a Japanese man reconnecting with his mother's Chinese Singaporean family after the death of his ramen chef father. It's pretty slight--mostly just food porn with some light melodrama to keep the scenes moving. It does touch upon such heavy topics as the Japanese occupation of Singapore during WWII, but it doesn't end up saying all that much. Not there is much to say beyond "well that was a fucking atrocity among a vast series of fucking atrocities." Food looked tasty tho.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Aug 3, 2024 13:39:39 GMT -5
Oddity
Genuinely creepy shit. Great use of a Chekhov type set up, too. They put a lot of love into set design and sound design that really shows. See it in theaters if you can.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Aug 3, 2024 22:02:03 GMT -5
The Shout
Holy shit. I'm kind of furious I was never informed of this movie from all my other folk horror loving friends. Never seen anything quite like that. Someone in the reviews of Oddity mentioned it as a spiritual sibling so I of course had to watch. Glad I did!
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,625
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Post by repulsionist on Aug 4, 2024 14:59:39 GMT -5
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Post by Celebith on Aug 4, 2024 23:39:18 GMT -5
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Was it good? I don't know. I had it on while doing other stuff and it was over before I knew it. I may have seen five minutes of it. Seemed pretty but boring. Maybe I'll put it on again when I can pay more attention to it.
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Post by Celebith on Aug 5, 2024 0:15:54 GMT -5
Apocalypse Now. ... (apparently Kilgore was inspired in part by Ariel Sharon, who went swimming in the Red Sea during the Six-Day War). It’s also legitimately exciting to watch, which sort of works in its favor as “anti-war” in that you can feel why they unleashed all that firepower even if you can see it’s plainly wrong. “ Someday this war's gonna end,” may be the best line, or at least the best delivery, of the movie. There's almost no value judgment to it, just an acknowledgement that this surreal situation is, and one day, it won't be anymore.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Aug 5, 2024 10:04:27 GMT -5
You've inspired me to watch more of his films, if I can find them! I'm still thinking about The Shout several days later.
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Post by President Hound on Aug 5, 2024 15:03:06 GMT -5
Kneecap was pretty good movie on the tyranny of English language and its one of the rare recent comedies that actually had me laughing. The whole romance subplot was underdeveloped with the love interest having no traits besides an ethnic irish/*ulster scot* raceplay kink, but basically everything else worked.
*ulster scots are an ethnic group in Northern Ireland, descended from scottish/english settlers. Mostly composed of protestants.
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on Aug 6, 2024 11:32:20 GMT -5
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Was it good? I don't know. I had it on while doing other stuff and it was over before I knew it. I may have seen five minutes of it. Seemed pretty but boring. Maybe I'll put it on again when I can pay more attention to it. This is one of those movies where I saw a trailer for it months ago and then didn't realize it had that it actually came out. Did it get a US theatrical release? Did the trailer have tepid reactions and they just decided to say "screw it" and put it right to streaming? Was it always direct to stream? Did it get a 2 week theatrical release with little interest before going right to digital? Who knows? But it certainly seems like a movie I would watch if I was stuck in a hotel for a few hours.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Aug 6, 2024 20:10:45 GMT -5
Volcano
The movie that posits that if only we were constantly covered in volcanic ash, racism would be over.
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Post by Celebith on Aug 6, 2024 20:26:28 GMT -5
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Was it good? I don't know. I had it on while doing other stuff and it was over before I knew it. I may have seen five minutes of it. Seemed pretty but boring. Maybe I'll put it on again when I can pay more attention to it. This is one of those movies where I saw a trailer for it months ago and then didn't realize it had that it actually came out. Did it get a US theatrical release? Did the trailer have tepid reactions and they just decided to say "screw it" and put it right to streaming? Was it always direct to stream? Did it get a 2 week theatrical release with little interest before going right to digital? Who knows? But it certainly seems like a movie I would watch if I was stuck in a hotel for a few hours. It was in the on-post theaters here, so I assume it was also released in the States and other places. The cast is good, it looks pretty. It seems fine enough, like so many other pretty, forgettable films. I'm sure I watched Red Notice, some other Gal Gadot spy film, which may or may not have had Heart in the title, and The Grey Man, and I'm equally sure that I couldn't tell you what happened in any of them, or why. I'm sure MUW would be better if I paid attention to it, although knowing as much as I do about the actual Special Operations Executive and OSS, I'd probably just be annoyed at the deviations from history.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Aug 7, 2024 11:57:35 GMT -5
Volcano
The movie that posits that if only we were constantly covered in volcanic ash, racism would be over.
My recollection is that there's actually a line of a newscaster saying "Scientists are calling this phenomenon 'lava'" but I might have just imagined it amidst the unbelievable stupidity of this movie.
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Aug 7, 2024 13:20:36 GMT -5
Volcano
The movie that posits that if only we were constantly covered in volcanic ash, racism would be over.
My recollection is that there's actually a line of a newscaster saying "Scientists are calling this phenomenon 'lava'" but I might have just imagined it amidst the unbelievable stupidity of this movie. There is! Also everyone stands VERY close to lava without experiencing any kind of harm from it.
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on Aug 7, 2024 16:50:01 GMT -5
My recollection is that there's actually a line of a newscaster saying "Scientists are calling this phenomenon 'lava'" but I might have just imagined it amidst the unbelievable stupidity of this movie. There is! Also everyone stands VERY close to lava without experiencing any kind of harm from it. My favorite lava fact is that lava is much denser than humans, which means you wouldn't actually sink into it, you'd just float up near the surface, burning!
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Floyd D Barber
AV Clubber ![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star_skyblue.png)
The Train I used to Drive (not me driving, though)
Posts: 7,598
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Post by Floyd D Barber on Aug 7, 2024 22:34:39 GMT -5
A Walk in the Woods -2015
Two old geezers, semi-retired author Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) and recovering alcoholic Steven Katz (Nick Nolte) embark on a hike of the Appellation Trail. Hijinks and introspection ensue. Not a bad movie, not a great movie. It covers many situations one might expect to encounter on such a journey, and a few one might not, such as Nolte picking up a woman at a laundromat and encountering her irate husband. Lovely scenery. It has some great cameos from Nick Offerman, Kristen Schaal, and Mary Steenburgen. Nolte is more fun than Redford, who seems not to know how to relax.
It would make a decent double feature with Reese Witherspoon's far better Wild, which features the Pacific Crest Trail on the opposite side of the country.
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Post by Celebith on Aug 11, 2024 22:00:48 GMT -5
Borderlands wasn't as bad as reported. I half paid attention to it while doing other things, and it was acceptable background viewing. Thoroughly mid. I couldn't tell you much about what happened. I wouldn't pay to see it, or give it more than passing attention, but I'd rather watch it 10 times than Rise of Skywalker once.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Aug 14, 2024 12:43:26 GMT -5
Pride (chosen over fellow LGBT-themed nominees Paris is Burning and Nimona): A film in the surprisingly common yet highly specific genre of "downtrodden working class Brits put on a show" ala The Full Monty, Brassed Off, and Billy Elliot. This one happens to be based on a true story: about the LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) raising money to support a Welsh mining community during the strike of 1984-5. Like all "based on a true story" films I know it's been streamlined and sanitized a bit--LGSM leader Mark Ashton is portrayed as a gay rights activist who just happens upon the idea of supporting striking miners when in actuality he was a member of the Young Communist League and would've been all about finding opportunities for building intraclass solidarity. Still, it's funny, affecting without ever tipping into cloying, and the cast is stacked with the likes of Bill Nighy, Andrew Scott, Dominic West, and Imelda Staunton.
Wonka (First Cow and Delicious, nominees): It doesn't reach quite the same heights, but I can't imagine hating this movie if you liked Paddington. It's maybe a half-hour too long--the "Willy learns how to read" and "orphan of destiny" subplots could have easily been excised--and both the villains' plot and the half-hearted stabs at social commentary are more confusing than anything else, but it's all still very shaggily charming. I like how they maintain the sense of timelessness (1890-1950?) and placelessness (Amero-British-Germany?) of the original movie, and the songs (by The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon) are all excellent. Chalamet exudes powerful "the most talented kid in the high school drama club who doesn't always know when to turn it off" energy, but it works for something like this. It's unclear how this Wonka, who's all about finding strength by working with others, really jives with the borderline sociopathic, child torturing Wonka of the 1971 movie, but hey, that's just fodder for potential sequels (midquels, I guess?).
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (West Side Story 2021 and Wonderful World of Henry Sugar, noms.): I'd read the reviews and knew what to expect, but it still felt weird that Nintendo was willing to settle for a typical, middle-of the road, post-Shrek, "park the kids in front of the TV" effort rather than something like Wreck-It Ralph. I shouldn't be that surprised, as building strong narratives with real emotional stakes has never been anywhere close to Nintendo's strong suit, but you'd think they'd want their most beloved IP to attract stronger critical acclaim than "eh, it was fine for a kids' movie." I was also surprised at how little typical, middle-of the road, post-Shrek, "park the kids in front of the TV" movies have evolved in the past 20-odd years since I'd last seen one. Still doing those mid-action Matrix slo-mos with the audio slowed down as well, so Mario says "MAAAMMMAAA MIIIIIAAA" in a funny deep voice before everything speeds back up again? That shit really brought the house down in 2001, so I guess it must still be funny now. I see as well that they're still cramming in jarring needle drops so that parents will kind of half-chuckle in an "ah, yes, I recognize that" sort of way. At this point I'm not even sure if they're for parents anymore. At one point Mario is picked up by like a funny 1980s gorilla and they take off in a go-kart and "Take Me On" plays--a song written before most parents in the audience were even born. Ha ha! 80s nostalgia! You know, for grandma! The needle drops are particularly annoying because they detract from the otherwise surprisingly decent score, which includes a lot of clever musical easter eggs from Mario/Nintendo games past. Anyway, it looked absolutely gorgeous, and Jack Black, at least, was having the time of his life, so it's hard to hate on it too much. Plus the bit about Mario hating mushrooms was pretty good. C/C+.
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Post by Lurky McLurk on Aug 14, 2024 12:47:34 GMT -5
Borderlands wasn't as bad as reported. I half paid attention to it while doing other things, and it was acceptable background viewing. Thoroughly mid. I couldn't tell you much about what happened. I wouldn't pay to see it, or give it more than passing attention, but I'd rather watch it 10 times than Rise of Skywalker once. Too late.
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Post by The Sensational She-Hulk on Aug 14, 2024 16:14:59 GMT -5
Deadpool and Wolverine was a very silly and gratuitously violent movie made by and for people with the sense of humor of 12-year-old boys.
I deeply enjoyed it.
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