|
Post by htmb on Aug 13, 2016 19:57:36 GMT
I have always liked Colin Firth. Can't stand Jude Law.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2016 15:18:40 GMT
Train to Busan pretty much makes sure that you won't nod off during the movie. Korean zombies are much friskier than their occidental brethren, but zombies always have a few convenient weaknesses. The Korean ones don't know how to open a door and they are pretty helpless in the dark.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 20, 2016 16:07:52 GMT
Oh great. Now I can't open this thread until it goes to page 51 and I won't have to see that horrible image.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2016 21:50:27 GMT
It's just makeup, you know. The movie is considered to be "comic horror" because it is so extreme. One of the funniest scenes is near the end. You just get a tiny glimpse of the beginning of it in the trailer -- the zombies are chasing a few survivors in a locomotive. The first ones grab the locomotive and then the other zombies hang on to them. At one point, the locomotive is dragging a carpet of at least 200 zombies across the rail yard.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 25, 2016 20:33:21 GMT
Nerve is not at all what I would consider to be a good movie, but it makes quite a few pertinent points about loss of all privacy to social networks and mob behaviour on same.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2016 17:22:34 GMT
Today I saw the Singaporean movie In the Room (French title: Hôtel Singapura) which was a definitely eye-opener regarding the evolution of Singaporean cinema. Over the years I've seen maybe 10 Singaporean movies, which is already pretty amazing since it is a tiny country that produces very few movies. The fact that many of them have been exported out of Asia indicates that the country aims for high quality. This movie is actually a collection of six different stories that all take place in the same room of the Hotel Singapura. The first one is in black and white and takes place just as the British Empire has surrendered Singapore to Japan. A British man tries to persuade his 'very close' male friend to come with him when he is evacuated. The friend says that Japan was a major customer of his family's rubber plantation before the embargo and that he is sure that things will go back to normal and that there is nothing to worry about. We are told nothing more about what happens next, but Singaporeans know perfectly well what happened. All of the stories are about sex over the years, wild rock band orgies, overdoses, and a couple surprising stories.
In one story a beautiful woman is getting dressed in her magnificent gown. Her lover arrives and helps her zip up the back. He asks her if she is worried about tomorrow, and she say not at all. She pours wine for both of them. "Are you stilled allowed to drink?" She says that yes, this is the very last drink and then she will respect the hospital rules from that moment on. The man is still clearly upset. "Are you sure about the surgeon? Do you really think that this is safe?" She replies calmly, "He's the very best surgeon. He's been doing this for years. I'm the one getting my cock cut off, so you should calm down." Well he is not calm at all, and of course passions run high at times like this. "Don't worry, it will still be there, just on the inside and not on the outside." So he lifts her dress and pulls down her underwear and gives her one last blowjob.
There was also a story about a young man who is a virgin. He is very much in love with the girl he has brought to the room. She seems to love him, too, but frankly she has physical needs and is pretty much of a slut. After they have retired to their twin beds, she goes out again and returns with a one night stand. As they make passionate love, the poor virgin masturbates alone in his bed. His friend tells him, "you can watch if you want." Later when the other guy has left and the girl is passed out drunk, he finally crawls on top of her and does his business in about 5 seconds. So romantic.
All through the movie, there is a sort of ghost man who watches all of these people over the years. He never says anything but often has a smile, sad or sardonic, on his face. The hotel declines and at the end it is a flophouse with bunk beds for derelicts. In the final scene, the camera slowly pulls away from the building in ruins. It is now embedded at the bottom of a super city of the future with huge towers, whizzing transport and bright lights.
This was all really fascinating but mostly because THIS IS A SINGAPOREAN MOVIE! -- the country has some of the strictest censorship in the world, even though it has relaxed somewhat in the last 10 years by creating a "no one under the age of 21" classification. Even though IMDb says it was released in Singapore, I suspect that it was trimmed a bit for local audiences.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2016 12:57:36 GMT
°° Voir du Pays - (France-Greece) French troops returning from Afghanistan stop for 3 days in a luxury resort hotel in Cyprus for debriefing. The women soldiers have somewhat different memories of the combat missions than the male soldiers. Tensions builds and ugly things happen. Directed by two sisters, one of whom wrote the book on which the film is based.
*** Jeunesse - (France-Portugal) A young man desperate to do something with his life get a job as third mate on a rusty old tramp cargo ship. The other crew members have been sailing for along time and are not impressed by various events, such as tossing the body of an African crew member overboard after his accidental death. It is an adaptation of the short story of the same name by Joseph Conrad.
* Eternité - (France) I was really expecting a lot from director Tran Anh Hung who had made the magnificent Scent of the Green Papaya but this was pretty boring. It follows the destiny of 3 women (Audrey Tautou, Bérénice Béjo, Mélanie Laurent) from different generations of the same family over a century. Lots of births and deaths, but I found it pretty boring. The saving grace is the lush photography.
*** Frantz - (France-Germany) This is the latest movie by François Ozon and his first in German. A Germany family in 1919 is mourning a son who died in the war, but a mysterious visitor is spotted at the cemetery by the dead man's fiancée. It turns out that the visitor is French and was a friend of the son in Paris before the war. Everybody in the village despises the French, but the young man gradually wins over the dead man's family because he is just as sad about the death as they are, and also he warms their hearts with stories of things he did with son in Paris. Of course there is an awful secret, but it is not at all the one that immediately comes to mind.
** Nocturama - (France) A rather weird tale of young bourgeois terrorists in Paris. They don't want to kill people but they do want to blow up symbolic things around Paris, such as the statue of Joan of Arc near the Louvre. In any case, they create total havoc and hole up in a department store by hiding when it closes at the end of the day. A totally surreal night of weirdness ensues.
*** Divines - (France) This won the Caméra d'Or at the Cannes film festival. It follows two young women, besties for life, in their budding career as badass drug dealers in the Paris suburbs. They totally dominate the men who thought they were tough guys, but of course in the end nothing good comes of drug dealing.
** Un Petit Boulot - (France) Romain Duris is desperate and unemployed and gets hired in spite of himself to murder the wife and a small time mafia boss. Mayhem guaranteed.
** Le Fils de Jean - (France-Canada) A young French man receives a phone call from Québec informing that his father has died. He never even knew he had a father (his mother had said it was a one night stand) nor did he know he had two brothers. He decides to go to the funeral. He is met by the man who phoned him, the father's best friend, who warns him that it would be better to keep his true identity secret. For one thing, the two half-brothers are complete jerks, but there are also other things that don't seem right.
*** Hell or High Water - (US) This has been retitled Comancheria in France. It's basically a modern western filmed in the absolute ugliest part of Texas, but it is extremely intelligent and well acted.
|
|
|
Post by chexbres on Sept 11, 2016 18:29:19 GMT
I just saw Frantz, and unfortunately dozed off for a nanosecond right when the "secret" had been revealed. That was OK, though, because it had been telegraphed pretty much right from the start of the movie. I had hoped for more from Ozon than Niney making "les yeux doux" and sighing.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2016 12:38:34 GMT
I went to see Cézanne et moi which is not at all a masterpiece, but it is lovely to look at and well acted. I can see it easily winning best cinematography and best costumes at the next awards ceremony.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2016 18:50:08 GMT
Blair Witch - good trouser shitting fun, but nothing will ever match the original.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2016 5:25:48 GMT
I found Little Men (retitled "Brooklyn Village" in France) singularly unsatisfying.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2016 17:49:07 GMT
Today I saw the excellent Chilean movie Much Ado about Nothing (real title: Aquí no ha pasado nada), the sort of (true) story that makes one's blood boil when you see how powerful politicians protect their families against the little people. Paulina Garcia has a relatively small role after having a bigger one in Little Men. She is always great but her greatest role will (probably) always be the one she played in Gloria for which she won the best actress award at the Berlin film festival in 2013.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2016 21:58:38 GMT
I have always been an Alejandro Jodorowsky fan, but his latest film Poesia sin fin (Endless Poetry) is even more fabulous than usual. It's the second part of his fantasy biography after La danza de la realidad which covered his childhood. This one covers his teen and early adult years with the same fascist father (played by Jodorowsky's son) and a mother who delivers all of her lines in operatic form. When he is in his 20's, he is played by Jodorowsky's younger son, which tends to make everything even more surreal since Alejandro Jodorowsky himself pops up in the movie from time to time as a sort of Greek chorus. It's full of sex and blood and nazis, as well as all of the most brilliant young South American writers of the time. One could view the movie as a sort of "Fellini meets Midnight in Paris" with also shades of Ewan MacGregor in Moulin Rouge. Visually, it is absolutlly sumptuous although it was apparently a financing nightmare, which makes it a Chilean-Japanese-French co-production.
I also saw Soy Nero by Rafi Pitts, the New Wave Iranian director. It is about a deported Mexican young man who manages to sneak back in the United States and joins the army to become a "Green Card soldier." Things don't go as well as planned in the Middle East, though. It's a German-Mexican-French-American co-production. As is often the case with Iranian movies, the story is not completely linear, so you really have to keep a tight grip on it to appreciate it. I did not completely manage to do it.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2016 22:59:12 GMT
Poesia sin fin looks amazing.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 5:17:03 GMT
Here is the totally impassioned request that Alejandro Jodorowsky made during filming since crowdfunding was required to complete it.
This series of films is supposeeed to be five movies long, but he is 87 years old now, and it seems unlikely that he will be able to complete this incredible work. I already want to see the next one, because this one ends on a little boat leaving Chile. "I am going to France to save surrealism!" the young man proclaims as the boat is tossed by the waves. In the real world he moved to Paris in 1953 before moving to Mexico in the 1960's....
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2016 21:00:22 GMT
Today I saw Aquarius starring the magnificent Sonia Braga. She plays a 70 year old widow who is holding on to her apartment where she has lived a happy life although a ruthless real estate developer is trying to force her to sell it so that he can tear down the building and put up a condo tower instead. She is the last person in the building along a lovely beach in Recife and does not let herself be intimidated in spite of some truly shitty tactics used against her. This is the sort of story that could turn into a revenge drama in the wrong hands, but what is admirable is that it stays civilised and life goes on with birthday parties, sex, family gatherings and nights out with friends. It is a really lovely film.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2016 13:57:07 GMT
Well I went to see peculiar Tim Burton's Miss Peregrine movie. I hope that no parents unwittingly take small children to see it unless they are prepared to explain that, no, monsters will probably not pull out their eyeballs and eat them. I agree with one of the reviews that I read that the special effects take control of the movie after awhile, and this is not a good thing. And Asa Butterfield is dangerously near the end of his "teenager" career now that he is as tall as all of the adults and in any case is 19 years old now in real life. Still the movie was quite a bit of fun and I was relieved when the creepy little twins were briefly unwrapped so I could see what was lurking under the cloth.
|
|
|
Post by htmb on Oct 8, 2016 3:58:17 GMT
This film was great. I wish someone had told me about it earlier.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 8, 2016 4:11:25 GMT
I loved that movie. I posted about it, but over in Small Screen Viewing.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2016 4:58:59 GMT
I'm pretty sure I posted about it, too. In fact, I saw it twice.
|
|
|
Post by htmb on Oct 8, 2016 12:51:40 GMT
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 8, 2016 18:22:48 GMT
Aquarius looks wonderful, as does Sonia Braga. Wow!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2016 19:07:13 GMT
Aquarius looks wonderful, as does Sonia Braga. Wow! I've loved Sonia Braga ever since Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands.... 40 years ago! The theme song became a #1 hit in France. (The full film is available on YouTube.)
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Oct 8, 2016 19:28:29 GMT
I liked her in The Kiss of the Spider Woman (not a horror movie but a political one!).
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 9, 2016 0:25:24 GMT
Ahhh ~ thanks to both of you for reminding me of those two movies. I read Doña Flor & Her Two Husbands years ago, but had forgotten that a movie was made of the book. And Kiss of the Spider Woman is one of those classics that I keep meaning to see. Thanks for the nudge!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2016 19:42:20 GMT
We went to see the remake of The Magnificent Seven and were ever so disappointed I cannot begin to tell you. Boring, no action...why did anyone bother?
We then saw Deepwater Horizon which was ever so depressing albeit very well done and dramatic. It is not so much about the actual event, although that is covered, but, all the during and most especially the aftermath...eiisch..... (filmed at the abandoned Six Flags recreational park here in New Orleans East, rather brilliantly I must say).
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 10, 2016 14:16:49 GMT
I was happy to see Mercenaire today after seeing the dreadful Bridget Jones over the weekend and also a Spanish documentary called Dead Slow Ahead whose title says it all but which was interestingly hypnotic if you like seeing a camera pointed at a wall while you listen to machines in the background. One critic compared it to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
As for Mercenaire, it is everything I look for in cinema -- a subject I haven't seen before, customs that I haven't seen before, people reacting to life in ways that I haven't seen before. It is about a young Wallisian who is recruited to play rugby in Europe, as sometimes happens to Melanesians. So the first part of the movie shows the Melanesian culture of New Caledonia. Except that it was not an urbanised setting, it turns out that the Melanesians have the same problems with violence and alcohol as the Maoris in New Zealand, 2500 kilometres away. The father of the young man is a total drunken brute, just like the husband in Once Were Warriors. After being whipped by his father (leather belt, bloody back covered with welts) and having all of his clothes burned, he is thrown out so he has no choice but to follow through with the trip to France, even though he hates leaving his beloved grandmother, younger brother and three-legged dog Elvis behind.
At age 19, he is ready for adventure anyway, but he is not as big and burly as promised, only 120 kilos when they wanted 140 kilos. So he gets fobbed off on a crummy little rugby club on the other side of the planet, and guess what, France is not all that wonderful. At least people are relieved that he can speak French ("Of course I can speak French. I'm French. Wallis is French.") unlike the local Samoans or Fijians. He has to work part time as a bouncer at a club to make ends meet, but mostly he has to bulk up on poisonous drugs which make him puke all the time... I found this movie absolutely fascinating.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2016 17:16:57 GMT
I found Captain Fantastic unfortunately disappointing. I'm not sure why. Viggo Mortensen was totally earnest, and both George MacKay and Frank Langella were absolutely excellent. Even Steve Zahn impressed me, which is rare. I loved the theme, I loved a lot of the details... but something was wrong.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 13, 2016 11:38:02 GMT
L'Odyssée is not a perfect film, but it is very interesting and has stunning photography that was not faked. It also shows Jacques Cousteau as a quite flawed yet still admirable person. It must have been painful for Lambert Wilson to use Cousteau's awful accent for the scenes in English since in real life he speaks flawless British English. I also found it very interesting to see Audrey Tautou playing an aging drunk. That's the second time this year she has played an old woman (she ended up in her 80's in Eternité by Tran Anh Hung). And Pierre Niney is definitely becoming the wunderkind of French actors below the age of 30.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Oct 13, 2016 13:49:41 GMT
It looks as though it's extremely compelling and certainly exquisitely made.
|
|