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Post by lugg on Oct 15, 2016 21:20:18 GMT
I saw Inferno earlier today,
Complete tosh; but enjoyed the location shots in Florence, Venice and Istanbul- visually stunning.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2016 21:34:16 GMT
I'm looking forward to smirking through Inferno. Not until November 9 in France.
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Post by lugg on Oct 15, 2016 21:38:24 GMT
You might grimace a few times too K2
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2016 21:46:13 GMT
Oh god, I just saw the Inferno trailer. I had no idea they made another one, please, someone put Tom Hanks out of his misery.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2016 17:28:51 GMT
Jack Reacher 2 is silly trashy fun. I would never want to pay for seeing such a thing, but with my unlimited movie card, it just becomes a guilty pleasure.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2016 15:06:28 GMT
The Accountant - incoherent mayhem with Ben Affleck as an autistic killer. Autism kind of suits his limited acting abilities but not enough to save the movie.
Hacksaw Ridge - Great bloody fun that makes Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line look like the teddy bears' picnic, which is only fitting for an antiwar movie promoting pacifism. I always have to look up Andrew Garfield when I see him in a movie -- Is he American? Is he British? Actually he is both, with a parent of each nationality. To further muddy the water, he was born in Los Angeles but grew up in Surrey.
Réparer les Vivants - a truly magnificent movie about a brain dead young surfer whose heart is transplanted into a woman on the verge of death. The actual heart removal scene is heart wrenching for the spectators as well. I was extremely pleased to see Tahar Rahim playing a 'normal' role instead of having to play the token Arab.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2016 12:29:26 GMT
So, I went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I'm not sure what I think of it with its weird homosexual sub-plot and its S&M belt action, but most of all, it makes it seem as though magic is dying out by the time Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts because the magic in 1926 seems much wilder and stronger... or is it just that the special effects got out of hand, as they so often do these days? Eddie Redmayne plays a pretty weak character, so he had better get more of a backbone in the next movies in 2018 and 2020. Nevertheless, I did not get bored in spite of the 2h20 running time.
Adapting the names according to local languages is a bit disconcerting in film adapatations, though. Hearing the main character called Newt Scamander in the original version but seeing that he is called Norbert Dragonneau in the subtitles bothers me.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 22, 2016 7:02:57 GMT
I finally caught up on "some of that American stuff" which has been out for awhile.
Inferno is totally outlandish as expected, but it has very nice travelogue style footage of Florence, Venice and Istanbul, so it was pretty to watch.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is quite convincing in Snowden, especially if you have already seen Citizenfour. Oliver Stone is as heavy-handed as usual with the political agenda, but that is perfectly fine with those of us who mostly agree with it. Probably a little too much time was spent on the love story content, though, in the usual attempt to widen the appeal.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 22, 2016 16:48:09 GMT
Most interested to see your takes on Fantastic Beasts and Snowden. I was on the fence about FB&WtFT because of that boredom thing and Snowden because you know -- Oliver Stone. However now I will put both of them on my must-see list.
I went to the movies the other day with great anticipation to see The Arrival. Gad -- don't waste your time! I love science fiction and I loved the premise of the movie (famous linguist Amy Adams is called in to figure out what the aliens who have just landed are saying). My friend and I both had trouble staying awake during parts, both came out saying wtf, and both felt it was a waste of time. Her daughter, whose taste frequently mirrors mine, loved the movie, so go figure.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2016 19:11:08 GMT
I was completely gobsmacked by the Russian movie The Student today. The French title is a bit more explicit: Le Disciple. It is about a Russian teenager who becomes obsessed by the bible and rejects everything his single mother has taught him and of course his schoolteachers and everyone else. He quotes the bible all thoughout the movie, which helpfully lists chapter and verse on the screen each time. Never forgive anyone, make your enemies suffer, kill people who disagree, etc. One of the teachers at the school dares to oppose him and even starts studying the bible to contradict him, since as we all know, everything in the bible is contradictory. One thing that struck me was that the bible appears to be at least as extreme (and maybe even more) than the Koran if you take it literally. The teacher tries to tell the student that things have evolved in the last 2000 years, but the local orthodox priest tries to "recruit" him instead. Neither is successful. To create even more turmoil, one of the girls at school is turned on by his extremism, and another schoolmate with a limp is used by the protagonist. "Oh, it's so nice that you have brought a friend for dinner," says the mother at one point. "He's not a friend. He's a cripple. The bible says to never invite friends or family to dinner because they might expect the same in return but instead to invite the indigent and the handicapped because they can never reciprocate." (verse and chapter cited)
It is truly horrifying, but it reminded me of the current sub-genre of French cinema about young jihadists. We have been seeing quite a few movies about French teens who have been recruited over the internet to go to Syria and other countries. This indoctrination was exactly the same although the internet did not seem to be involved. There is no specific religion for suddenly becoming crazy.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2016 12:40:19 GMT
Allied : what a load of rubbish! You could put a paper plate on the end of a broomstick and it would give a better performance than Brad Pitt.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2016 14:29:59 GMT
I went to see the Portuguese movie O Ornitólogo, was was certainly out of the ordinary. It's about an ornithologist who has a kayak accident. He is saved by two strange Christian Chinese lesbians (?) on the Santiago trail and who are experts at ritual bondage knots. Then there is the deaf mute shepherd and the very odd disguised midnight revelers, not to mention the bare chested Amazon huntresses who speak Latin. There are times when it is like Heart of Darkness and other times when it seems like The Blair Witch Project, or do I mean Alice in Wonderland? It's in Mandarin, English, Latin, a strange regional Iberian dialect and sometimes even in Portuguese -- but most of the time the protagonist is alone, so there is no dialogue at all. The photography is sublime. Apparently, the director made the film over two different summers, one of which was devoted to filming just the birds.
Oh, and I wasted my time on Sausage Party. I was curious to see how a subject that seemed to me like it might be an interesting joke for 10 minutes could be stretched to a feature length movie. Well, I was wrong -- the joke was only worth 3 minutes rather than 10, and all the rest was pure suffering. Is it really useful to repeat jokes about penis-shaped frankfurters and vagina-shaped hot dog buns 50 times? I think not.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2016 14:51:29 GMT
I knew I recognised the (French) actor from O Ornitólogo, but it was driving me crazy not to remember from where. Got it! The Lacoste commercial "The Big Leap."
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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2016 9:21:18 GMT
I saw Arrival yesterday. Denis Villeneuve impresses me more and more.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2016 15:38:16 GMT
Being a big fan of Hafsia Herzi ever since La Graine et le Mulet (The Secret of The Grain or alternately Couscous in various English speaking territories) for which she won a French Academy Award (and the movie also won Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay), I went to see Sex Doll, which has received what is called a "confidential release" on a grand total of two screens in Paris. (A "small" release gives you about 20 screens.) The title already makes you want to stick your finger down your throat unless you are looking for porn, but the original title of this Franco-British co-production was supposed to be Amoureux Solitaires / Lonely Lovers. That title was far more appropriate but apparently not suitable for unscrupulous distributors.
It's about a young French woman working as a high class prostitute in London. Her friends and family obviously do not know this, because she is supposedly a real estate agent for expats. Her employer pushes her into accepting a kinky gig with an underage girl for a rich father and son. Meanwhile there is a young man who has been observing all of this and who clearly has an issue with what is going on. I found it really well done and a shame that nobody will ever see it, except on video for the wrong reasons.
Speaking of confidential releases, I also saw the documentary Rocco last week. It is about the Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi, who is totally charming and personable if the film is to be believed. He cried more than once on camera about the fucked up life he has led, but I found the most difficult scene to be one with his two teenage sons. He asks them if they have ever seen one of his movies and what they think of what he does for a living. But watching these kids was extremely painful because they were clearly thinking "why are you doing this to us? We don't want to talk about the subject or think about your job and we are hating every minute of it." The documentary itself is quite good and spares our eyes from most of the worst things that could have been shown, but I have a special thought of pity for the person who was diligently mopping the sperm off the floor on the set of one of the movies.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 14, 2016 16:35:39 GMT
Manchester by the Sea is a remarkable move, and Casey Affleck is extraordinary. Unfortunately, the critics have hyped it so much that I actually managed to be slightly disappointed.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 14, 2016 20:39:18 GMT
Thank you. Now I am all over-hyped to see it!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2016 14:14:29 GMT
Rogue One is the usual mix of totally unbelievable crap, but the director was quite talented in pastiching at least 10 other famous movies in various scenes. To boost the international box office, we have a blind Chinese kung fu master (yeah, right), a Mexican and an Indian. However, I don't know how these people reproduce because there seem to be at least 1000 men for every woman on those planets. I actually went to see the 3D version, and there was absolutely no reason to do that -- there was not a single spectacular effect that required 3D. One thing that surprised me was what happened to all of the characters at the end. You generally don't see that in Hollywood movies.
I was additionally amused that you can absoutely ravage a tropical planet with bombs, lasers, missiles and those big stomping walkers and not damage or burn or blow up a single palm tree when everything else is pulverised or in flames.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 16, 2016 17:27:24 GMT
I forgot to mention that my favourite character in Rogue One was an insolent robot called K2. He would slap the shit out of C3PO if they ever met.
Today I went to see Personal Shopper starring Kristen Stewart. Pretty much a waste of time.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2016 12:49:08 GMT
Louise en Hiver is a truly delightful animated film about an old woman who misses the last train from a seaside resort. The town is totally deserted so she just decides to live there in a cabin that she builds on the beach. The things she finds and fishes provide constant entertainment for her and she even meets a talking dog. She also remembers her childhood along the nearby chalk cliffs. Her best friend back then was the decomposed corpse of a British airman, hanging from a tree in his parachute. They discuss all sorts of things. The seasons go by. She turns the village cemetery into a vegetable garden and enjoys taking cold showers in naked glory at the shower head on the beach. One day the dog goes away, but finally he comes back months later, except that he has forgotten how to talk. Not a big problem. On July 1st of the following year, the train returns, loaded with vacationers again.
Some people made the mistake of bringing very small children to see this movie, and they had a lot of whispered explaining to do about various things.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 17, 2016 15:14:59 GMT
To tell the truth, as I read your review I was thinking that I couldn't sit through two hours of an animated movie. But after seeing the trailer, I am quite intrigued.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2016 15:46:56 GMT
Actually, the French have understood the attention span of children (although this is not a movie aimed necessarily at children) and also the endurance of accompanying parents, and the vast majority of animated feature films last just 75 minutes, which is the length of this film.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2016 23:42:54 GMT
I kind of dozed through some of Paterson, but at the same time I liked it. Nothing happens, but it is a nice and tranquil movie about living calmly and writing poetry.
Of course now that Adam Driver has killed his father Han Solo in Star Wars 7 and Golshifteh Farahani pretty much has a fatwa issued against her for her work in French and American movies since she left Iran, it increases interest in such things.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2016 17:02:30 GMT
I saw the interesting Egyptian film The Stream, the Meadow and Lovely Faces on Tuesday about a restaurant family preparing a banquet for a big wedding. All sorts of men were pining after inaccessible women who in turn were pining after men who were forbidden to them, but just like any movie that is centred around food, it was all fascinating. Much Arab cinema has become extremely political and grim in recent years, so it was very nice to be reminded to the light Egyptian films from the classic 1950's where all of the women looked like Ginger Rogers or Veronica Lake and the men all looked like Clark Gable or Errol Flynn albeit often coiffed with a fez. In this movie, a lot of the women now have their hair covered but usually with a sparkly fashion accessory rather than anything truly religious and there are some tense moments due to hard lines having been drawn about what is acceptable or not, but it was a very pleasant movie with humour and music and dancing and plenty of good things to eat.
Then, yesterday I saw Passengers which I also found very interesting but with the usual plot holes through which you could drive a starship. But I like Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.
Today I was able to see for myself the incredible Your Name, the biggest hit of the year in Japan. It is an animé movie about two teenagers -- a boy and a girl -- who inexplicably exchange identity from time to time. He is an urban boy from Tokyo, and she is a girl from a boring small village. They wake up from time to time in the other's body and have to learn to live as the other person on certain days. Of course the first thing they do is grope themselves. In fact the boy is constantly fondling his tits when he is in the girl's body because after all he is a teenage boy. But it is more complicated to deal with school, family and friends. However, they soon manage by leaving each other notes and then filing full reports of the "lost" days on their mobile phones. The boy has a part time job in a restaurant with an attractive colleague to whom he is unable to make any sort of advances. But when the girl is in his body, she has no trouble at all setting him up for more... What is amazing about the movie, though, is that this is not at all an important part of the plot, and in any case, the "exchanges" end as inexplicably as they started.
The story moves on into the territory of science fiction, time travel, traditions and the heartbreak of being unable to remember things. The Japanese animé technique with hand painted images is as sublime as ever and proves that computer animation will never completely take over. I am still haunted by this movie hours later.
The music video actually has more interesting scenes than the trailer.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2016 13:51:43 GMT
I devoted the end of the year to capitalism. First the Cambodian film Diamond Island. It is about Phnom Penh being ripped up from the guts and rebuilt into a paradise for the new wealthy classes. Young people grow on the new stuff just like barnacles, even if they are not enchanted with a life on the outside looking in. Anyway, this movie disturbed me enough that I went and posted a question on the LPTT since our friend Hwinpp is no longer available to enlighten us. I did read that the movie played for two whole weeks in Phnom Penh in October and had 3000 spectators, which is an amazing success for that sort of film there. There are only cinemas in the big cities and only the upper classes go to the cinema.
This morning I went to see The Founder about Ray Kroc. Even though it was interesting, I am not sure about the message of the movie. Capitalism is good? Capitalism is bad? It's okay to crush people to get ahead? America is the land of opportunity? Even all of the little factoids during the final credits do not make it any clearer, unless the director's real message was "I'm totally neutral and/or don't dare take a point of view that might annoy one of the largest corporations in the United States." I am not interested enough to research old McDonald's objects on the net, but one thing that seemed unauthentic to me was the rather large size of the drink cups. Even as a child, I never thought a Coke from McDonald's was all that big.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 3, 2017 15:35:44 GMT
Yesterday I saw the Tunisian film Hedi about a shy young man completely dominated by his mother. (The word hedi means calm in Arabic.) She has found a bride for him and also informs him that he is changing jobs in September because she has organised a better one for him. His brother flies in from France to help with the wedding. His French wife has clearly refused to come ("she's not feeling well") and he has no intention of ever returning to live in Tunisia in spite of what he tells his mother. Hedi just wants to live freely and meets a woman on a business trip with whom he falls in love... Totally classic story in any country, but what is interesting is all of the things happening in the background in Tunisian life -- confiscated passports, sudden arrests, demonstrations. The actor took the top prize at the Berlin film festival.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2017 12:15:34 GMT
Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals was just as grim and tormented as his first movie. I liked it.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 4, 2017 16:03:09 GMT
Hedi sounds wonderful. I'm always grateful to hear about movies like that, which I might not come across otherwise.
Many reviews of Nocturnal Animals call it slick or superficial. No?
I've been tempted to see The Founder but am prevented by my groundless prejudice against Michael Keaton.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2017 22:48:38 GMT
Considering the fact that one of the themes was to show how slick and superficial the art world is, I can hardly fault the vision provided by Tom Ford, one of the greatest experts of that world. That probably annoyed quite a few of the critics, because they are part of that world, too, even if most of them are just jealous spectators.
However, the centrepiece of the movie is the crime story inside the story, which is a daring artistic choice and probably not appreciated by all, who wanted just one story or the other but not two (or even three) stories mixed together.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2017 18:40:59 GMT
I was very impressed by the horrific tragedy of A Monster Calls.
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