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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 14, 2017 14:01:33 GMT
What to say about The Last Jedi? Silliest costumes ever!
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 17, 2017 16:41:46 GMT
I know that I am not in the correct demographic to appreciate Girls Trip, but oh my god what a horribly bad movie it is. (Oddly enough, most of the people in the audience were just like me. What is wrong with us?)
Nevertheless, I am happy that lots of people liked that movie in the United States since so few movies are made for that group. I just hope that some day they make better movies to appeal to black women.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 17, 2017 17:43:11 GMT
Indeed! What the hell possessed you? I could barely sit through the trailer for that, and will spare all of you yet another rant on how much I LOATHE the supposedly funny buddy movies (men or women buddies) wherein people are tee-hee baaaaaaad.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 18, 2017 12:58:11 GMT
Suburbicon is one sick fuck of a movie. The Coen brothers should be locked up for writing such scripts.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 22, 2017 12:56:16 GMT
Saw two excellent oddities this week:
A Ghost Story - Casey Affleck has to spend almost the entire movie covered by an invisible sheet with two eyeholes, not to mention living through all eternity. Yet more proof that men just don't let it go even when they should. It is remarkably sad.
The Florida Project - This was directed by Sean Baker who made the incredible Tangerine using just an iPhone 5 and some authentic transgender prostitutes. This time he is at the opposite end of the country to show the seedy end of Orlando and its authentic trashy motel residents. Actually, I found it more depressing than Tangerine, but it is still an excellent movie. I used to get into big arguments with American expats about movies like this, because I would say that they showed authentic American life and of course the expats would claim that this was just the disgraceful margin and that the real America looks like the Steven Spielberg suburbs. Well, guess who got elected president?
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 23, 2017 22:25:03 GMT
Okay, today I saw Jumanji, Welcome to the Jungle. Frankly, I preferred it to the first Jumanji, perhaps simply because the protagonists were not children. Also I was happy to see Karen Gillan again, who played Amy Pond for several seasons of Dr. Who.
This week's major movie, though, was the sweeping comedy-drama of La Promesse de l'Aube (Promise at Dawn) from the book by Romain Gary. It was an exaggerated version of his real life, his obsessive mother in Poland, her demands that he become the greatest writer in the world, Ambassador of France and many other things, including war hero. He did all of them due to his complete devotion to her. He is the only writer to have ever won the Prix Goncourt twice. It is the top literary prize in France and he won it the first time under his own name and the second time under a pseudonym. I thought it was funny that the movie starts in Mexico before going to a flashback. In Mexico, he thinks that he is dying of a brain tumour but actually it is just an ear infection caused by stuffing balls of bread soaked in guacamole into his ears because Mexico is too loud.
Later in life, he married Jean Seberg. And then he committed suicide at age 66, but the movie doesn't go this far. His son Diego Seberg gave permission to make the film on condition that it be made in French (although a lot of the first part is in Polish).
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Post by whatagain on Dec 25, 2017 11:38:38 GMT
MY last movie was indeed the Last Jedi. It put the mind to rest to see a movie based on a script written on a RER ticket.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 26, 2017 12:38:18 GMT
I'm sorry, but Wonder is a sugar-coated turd. I'm still wondering what part was supposed to jerk tears.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 27, 2017 12:55:48 GMT
I saw the amazing Zambian film I Am Not a Witch. A little orphan girl is sitting by the road when a woman carrying a load of water from the well stumbles and falls. She brands the girl a witch, and she is taken off to the police station. The little girl is taken to a witch camp (these apparently really exist in Zambia) and is attached to a ribbon like everybody else in the camp. The ribbons are on huge wooden spools and determine how far one is allowed to walk. Such a young witch is a real novelty, though, so the girl is taken to pick criminals from a line-up of suspects. She doesn't know what to do but gets a lot of advice over a mobile phone from the other witches. "Pick the blackest one." "If somebody is looking at the ground, he is the guilty one." "If someone is staring at the sky, he is guilty." So she just picks someone at random, and the man is arrested. She even appears on television with the Minister of Tourism & Traditional Beliefs, who is actually more interested in selling eggs laid by a hen that he says she has bewitched. However, most of the time the witches work in the fields or break rocks. The spools travel with them to the worksites. Sometimes they are displayed to tourist groups. "The ribbons are to keep them from flying away." This movie had me dumbfounded.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 29, 2017 15:28:30 GMT
Well, All the Money in the World is pretty much a waste of time, except to help remember the incidents of the time. It supposedly cost an extra $20 million to cut Kevin Spacey out of the movie and reshoot scenes with Christopher Plummer (who really seemed much more appropriate for the part). They should have spent some of the money on morphing Mark Wahlberg, though, because he clearly lost about 20 pounds since the movie was originally made.
It was still interesting to show that J. Paul Getty was the meanest motherfucker on the planet at the same time he was the richest man in the world.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 29, 2017 16:28:44 GMT
I am struck by your excellent choice of the word dumbfounded in your review of I Am Not a Witch. It does seems the only way we could be affected by the premise, the presentation, and the acting, judging by the trailer and your description. I didn't want to look up too much, as I'd like to see the movie and don't want pertinent plot elements given away. I did find this about the director, though, which I found interesting: www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-wales-41766617/i-am-not-a-witch-director-rungano-nyoni-on-wales-and-zambia
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 2, 2018 11:28:57 GMT
I am normally not attracted to historical costume dramas, but L'Echange des Princesses seemed sufficiently perverse to spark interest. It's the story of the sad childhood of Louis XV, age 12, who gets married off to his Spanish cousin, age 4. In exchange, the regent of France ships off his own daughter, a sullen teenager, to marry the son of the king of Spain, a weakling, also teenaged, crushed under his father's influence. The movie goes back and forth between the two households, the little girl playing with her ugly wax dolls while Louis XV looks on perplexed. Then he reaches the age of majority -- 13 -- and has to take over as king full time. Meanwhile in Spain, the son is under pressure to consummate the marriage, but the girl says she'll kill him if he touches her. She likes absolutely nothing, even when the king suggests attending a big spectacle of torturing and killing heretics. ("Do they kill women, too?" "Of course they do. Women are much more likely to be preyed upon by the devil.") The two teens finally have sex, but then the boy gets smallpox and dies. This turns into a race between France and Spain because the first royal family to produce a male heir will rule both countries. Louis XV has no hope of having a baby with a 4 year old wife, so they decide to send both princesses back home. The little girl ended up marrying the king of Portugal a few years later. The French princess got smallpox too, but she survived. But when they sent her back to France, she was disfigured, so they just tossed her aside... Not a very nice world. The movie was good.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 9, 2018 16:09:56 GMT
I saw a cocktail of diverse movies recently.
Darkest Hour -- impeccable acting, but about 20 minutes of material were stretched to last 2 hours. This annoyed me considerably.
Normandie Nue (Naked Normandy) -- a rather charming movie filmed in the Perche. It's about a Norman village, spotted by a famous American photographer (played by Toby Jones - no! - based on the real Spencer Tunick) who wants to photograph all of the residents of the village naked in a field. Since they are having rural problems -- all of the farmers are going bankrupt -- the mayor of the village gets behind the project to put a world spotlight on the situation. This is not the easiest thing in the world to get people to do, but little by little, they are convinced. In real life, the movie production company placed an ad in Normandy hoping for 150 volunteers and got 3000 applications. So of course, yes, at the end of the movie you get to see the old, the fat, the ugly, the normal, the skinny, the unfit, the proud, the timid -- all of them in full glory in the field. It is a magnificent moment of humanity.
No, the trailer doesn't show you the full spectacle.
I also saw the Israeli movie The Wedding Plan (Laavor et hakir) about a woman desperate to get married in the strict orthodox community. Frankly, I did not enjoy it very much because it never strayed from the orthodox rules as though they were worthy of being respected. The woman is dumped by her fiancé 30 days before the wedding, but she maintains her schedule -- she has to find a husband before the deadline because she has gone ahead with renting the space for 200 guests, choosing the menu, inviting all of the guests. Her mother and sisters clearly think she is crazy, but there is no real conflict. The orthodox juggernaut just plunges ahead. It upset me, even if obviously things worked out in the end, without any magic or passion. I don't understand why they even made the movie in the first place.
Warning: the trailer makes the movie look wonderful.
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Post by breeze on Jan 9, 2018 21:16:03 GMT
I'm glad to hear you think Normandie nue has some charm. The Perche weekly newspaper which I read online has been avidly following the filming. It bugs me that the actor playing an American is English; I hope he can at least do a decent accent. The hoopla in the journal Leperche recently was about a sneak preview coming up in Mortagne au Perche, sold out, and yet there's been no news since, which made me think it might have been a total dud. On the other hand, maybe it hasn't come to Mortagne yet.
Unrealistic accents in movies really annoy me. They can't find an actor from that country?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 9, 2018 21:37:05 GMT
Toby Jones is annoying with any accent, and he doesn't even try to sound American. Of course the core group of spectators will not know the difference. It is not a very exportable movie, after all.
But it doesn't come out until tomorrow anyway -- I saw it at an advance screening.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 10, 2018 0:53:15 GMT
Unrealistic accents in movies really annoy me. They can't find an actor from that country? Years ago on late night tv, I saw some stinker wherein Oliver Reed played an American (may have been a cowboy). Ever since, almost any effort by a foreigner to sound American seems quite decent compared to whatever the hell it was Reed thought he was doing.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 14, 2018 19:49:58 GMT
Three Billboards is a truly remarkable movie. The plot has numerous unexpected quirks.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2018 20:24:25 GMT
Three Billboards is a truly remarkable movie. The plot has numerous unexpected quirks. Oh good!!! I have a date to go and see it tomorrow. I've heard nothing but good things about it.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 14, 2018 21:07:49 GMT
Thanks for that. I have a video copy I've been hoarding for when I want something really special.
Pee ess -- Has anyone here reviewed Lady Bird yet? I watched it & it's a nice enough movie with good acting, but I don't get the critical raves for it.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 14, 2018 21:40:17 GMT
Oh, I forgot to say that I also saw Downsized earlier today. It also had interesting plot twists but I found the ending weak and inconsistent with the rest. I would not have known how to end such a movie either. But Three Billboards blew it out of my memory.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 24, 2018 15:01:02 GMT
I saw The Post today and was very annoyed. Spielberg does intimate indoor scenes excellently, but his crowd scenes imply that he studied cinema in the Soviet Union. They are so carefully composed ("hippie protesters" "women" "ordinary citizens" "journalists in the newsroom") that they just shriek "fake, fake, fake" at me. I know that scenes like this are not filmed by Spielberg himself since movies use assistant directors for these less important scenes, but I would assume that he ultimately approves what was done. Okay, mild rant over.
One thing that intrigued me was that Meryl Streep was outstanding and absolutely deserves her Oscar nomination as usual while Tom Hanks was equally competent in his role and yet it seemed like just the usual stuff, nothing to rave about.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 31, 2018 11:02:21 GMT
Did anybody ever watch the 1993 film Damage with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche?
I say it for no other reason than that my son was in it as an extra (for which he got £50)and he sent me the link yesterday for his appearance. Not 15 minutes of fame or even 15 seconds. More like 1.5 seconds. It was when he was working at Sothebys and they shot a scene there.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 31, 2018 11:18:47 GMT
I'm sure I saw it but nothing about it has remained imprinted in my brain.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 31, 2018 11:59:01 GMT
I believe there was quite a bit of sex in it. Juliette Binoche didn't wear underwear. Surely you must remember it now?!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 31, 2018 13:26:09 GMT
Juliette Binoche rarely wears underwear.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 31, 2018 13:54:17 GMT
Obviously, I have seen about 10 other movies since I last mentioned what I had seen, but this morning's movie really inspired me due to certain current events. Since just about every movie comes out at least a year after it was made (and quite often two years), this was obviously made before the #MeToo people and others brought up all of the stuff about sexual harrassment as well as the ongoing debate about exploitation of the bodies of women compared to men in visual media. Gaspard va au mariage ( Gaspard at the wedding) is about a young man on his way to his father's second marriage. He is a bit estranged from the family but wants to make a good impression so when he encounters a rather strange young woman on the way to the location, he enrolls her to play his girlfriend for 50 euros a day "because it sucks to go to a wedding alone." Things get stranger because it turns out that he grew up at the zoo owned by the family. His father, brother and sister all work there. The mother was killed by a tiger when the children were small. The brother is mostly normal although his girlfriend is a tattoo artist and she herself is totally covered with tattoos. The sister is a bit stranger because she was friends with a bear as a toddler. The bear died and she has been wearing the bearskin ever since. She also seems to have extremely incestuous interest in the prodigal brother. (This movie is a romantic comedy, I should say.) Anyway, what I found very interesting in terms of current mores is that there is quite a bit of nudity in this movie, completely justified by the animalistic themes explored, but it is spread totally equally between the male and female characters. I would say that the men are even more at a disadvantage due to a major scene involving the father. There is a problem with the upcoming wedding because he screwed an old girlfriend and his fiancée does not want to marry him anymore. This has caused an outbreak of psoriasis. He spends his first very long scene in the movie totally nude in a fish tank with those little fish that eat dead skin cells chewing on his genitals. Every character gets equal nude screen time, so there was absolutely no discrimination. No, unfortunately you will see none of this in the trailer.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 1, 2018 20:24:33 GMT
Wonder Wheel. Justin Timberlake forgot how to act. Kate Winslet decided "I'll just be hysterical." I think it will be a relief if Woody Allen's career has come to an end, not because he is a scumbag but because he doesn't know what he is doing anymore. I did like the cinematography and the excessive colours of the place. I went to Coney Island once when everything was closed and it does sort of haunt you, even if only because it is mythical.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 1, 2018 20:51:50 GMT
Well, points to you for viewing the movie. I thought Vicki Barcelona -- or whatever it was called -- was crap, but figured it was fluff anyway, so didn't care. But Blue Jasmine convinced me that thenceforth there was never any reason to see anything else he made.
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Post by bjd on Feb 2, 2018 6:33:54 GMT
Well, points to you for viewing the movie. I thought Vicki Barcelona -- or whatever it was called -- was crap, but figured it was fluff anyway, so didn't care. But Blue Jasmine convinced me that thenceforth there was never any reason to see anything else he made. I stopped at Vicki Barcelona, after seeing many of his movies over the years. There were ups and downs but in the past years it has been downhill all the way.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 3, 2018 16:57:37 GMT
Oh Lucy! is a peculiar and charming movie. A Japanese office lady who never married because her sister stole her boyfriend falls for an odd English teacher played by Josh Harnett. She follows him to California with her sister tagging along even though the sisters hate each other. Chaos ensues.
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