|
Post by bixaorellana on Feb 3, 2018 17:12:58 GMT
Looks like fun!
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Feb 3, 2018 17:36:34 GMT
Dunkirk a bit grim, to be expected I spose. I preferred the 1958 film full of plucky cockneys triumphant in the face of adversity even when facing almost certain death.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 8, 2018 12:19:39 GMT
I saw The Insult the other day. Amazing movie with an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. It shows how a simple (?) insult can spiral out of control and nearly set a country on fire, in this case Lebanon. What impressed me the most about it was that it was easy to imagine the same sort of national reaction in any of our countries that have racial, ethnic, immigrant or other similar "group" problems -- always the "us" vs "them." The woman judge was fantastic and an excellent foil to the excessive testosterone of the two men. Another interesting quirk was that one of the men was represented by a distinguished lawyer and the other party was represented by the daughter of the first lawyer. Talk about a tense courtroom!
I don't know why the trailer is so coy about the actual insult. Here it is: {Spoiler} Ariel Sharon should have exterminated you.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 9, 2018 12:54:25 GMT
The 15:17 to Paris is an astonishing piece of crap. Once it was finally released on Wednesday, the press realised why there had been no advance screenings for the media. It has to make its money before anybody reads a review, at least in France.
|
|
|
Post by patricklondon on Feb 9, 2018 14:59:54 GMT
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 9, 2018 15:09:45 GMT
I thought The Darkest Hour was pretty boring, too, and it had one of the same faults as the Eastwood movie -- it used an hour and a half of filler to build up to one 10-minute speech. The 15:17 was also all filler for 10 minutes of action. You have to sit through a travelogue of Rome and Venice, a clubbing night in Amsterdam, the ice cream flavours each of them chose one day. I can't even complain about them on the "actors who can't act" thread because they aren't actors at all, they are just gun-loving patriotic Americans.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Feb 21, 2018 22:46:41 GMT
we took agnes to the movies for the first time, today - saw the movie version of one of the german classics of children literature, "die kleine hexe" (the little witch, by otfried preußler) - she had gotten the book for her birthday and we finished reading it recently, so it was easy for her to follow, and i thought the movie was nicely made. they strayed from the story a bit, but solved some things nicely (especially since the book is kind of old and thus some points of view are more old fashioned in the book, so they presented them a bit more appropriate to today's ideas) ...
it's about the little witch, who lives in the forest with her raven abraxas, and she wants to dance with the other witches but is not allowed, as she is only 127 years old - she goes anyway and is caught, but is promised to be allowed to dance next year, if she manages to become a "good witch". the question is just, what exactly is a good witch? her aunt has a close eye on her, as she would love for her niece to fail ...
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Feb 22, 2018 0:05:26 GMT
OHHHHhhhhhhhhhh ~ I want to see it! I want to see it!
How did Agnes react to the big screen? Did she talk about the movie afterward?
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 22, 2018 5:09:47 GMT
In a totally different style, I saw the extremely grim Icelandic-Danish movie Winter Brothers. It's about two brothers working in some sort of nightmarish mine/factory where everybody is covered with white powder or sludge at all times so that at any given time, you can't tell if they are covered with snow or just crud from their workplace. Everybody lives in horrible prefab constructions which seem to be held together only by their filth. The brothers make moonshine on the side, mixed with mysterious chemicals stolen from the workplace. It's toxic and sends people to the hospital but everybody seems hooked on the stuff anyway. The younger brother spends all of his free time watching an old military videocassette about how to shoot people. This seemed particularly topical in term of current events in the world.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Feb 22, 2018 7:48:05 GMT
Did someone see the 3rd opus of ´belle et sebastien' ? We saw the first two on screen. Marie was afraid the dog would die so hid through most of the first movie but she liked the second. Thinking of going this week end.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Feb 22, 2018 10:13:05 GMT
Agnes loved it - also because we bought two bags of popcorn (one sweet, one salty). And afterwards, she started planning her own stage production of the story, wondering if certain things (like flying) can be done on stage as well as it was done in the movie, and assigning roles, and talking about the different props and costumes she needs ...
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 22, 2018 11:15:17 GMT
Did someone see the 3rd opus of ´belle et sebastien' ? We saw the first two on screen. Marie was afraid the dog would die so hid through most of the first movie but she liked the second. Thinking of going this week end. No, but I saw Les Aventures de Spirou et Fantasio and very much enjoyed it, which indicates that I have the mind of a 6 year old.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Feb 22, 2018 16:26:15 GMT
Did someone see the 3rd opus of ´belle et sebastien' ? We saw the first two on screen. Marie was afraid the dog would die so hid through most of the first movie but she liked the second. Thinking of going this week end. No, but I saw Les Aventures de Spirou et Fantasio and very much enjoyed it, which indicates that I have the mind of a 6 year old. Good to know I had my mind set against since most cartoons turned into movies disappoint me. Mind you Spirou is ok for 6 but Tintin is for the young of 7 until 77.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 23, 2018 7:23:19 GMT
I had a rather surreal experience when I went to see The Shape of Water yesterday. It was playing in one of the largest cinemas of Paris, but yesterday as the spectators entered we saw that there were a half dozen men busily at work in the area between the screen and the front row of seats. The front row was blocked off, and there was tape to prevent people from walking in that area. The men were vacuuming the carpet, which was clearly wet. Of course they left before the movie started. But as the movie played, the front of the cinema slowly filled with water until there was a lake in front of the screen. It was quite beautiful but also somewhat distracting since the movie was reflected in the water, creating a double image. Considering the fact that the principal action of the movie takes place over a large cinema which gets flooded by the shenanigans upstairs, it was quite strange to see life imitating art.
Luckily, the cinema I was in has each row one step higher than the row in front so there was no danger of getting one's feet wet, but I don't even know where the water was coming from. Very mysterious.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 23, 2018 21:03:36 GMT
I was perturbed by Sebastian Stan during all of I, Tonya (an excellent movie). He impressed me almost more than Margot Robbie as her sleazy husband but where on earth had I seen him before?
Obviously I looked him up when I got home and OMG, he is Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier from the Captain America movies! Remarkably versatile and on top of that he is Romanian.
It's funny -- I don't mind major stars being in the Marvel movies since it is good money and pays their taxes but it amazes me to find other excellent actors in minor roles in those movies. For some reason, they seem to be slumming even more than the stars.
|
|
|
Post by mich64 on Feb 23, 2018 23:56:06 GMT
We watched The Post last weekend. I enjoyed it although I had difficulty understanding when Meryl Streep spoke.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 24, 2018 13:21:42 GMT
Phantom Thread did not enthrall me. The acting was excellent.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Feb 27, 2018 23:01:33 GMT
I ended up seeing two Tunisian movies over the past few days. It was a coincidence -- I wasn't looking for Tunisian movies. However, it certainly proves that Tunisia is much farther ahead of other countries in the region in terms of freedom of expression. However, there was one element in both movies that made me wonder just how free the society can be. Both movies were about strong women who did what they wanted, but both of them were widows. This made me wonder if widows have more freedom because they are "used goods" but did not have the disgrace of a divorce.
The first one was Corps Etranger by woman director Raja Amari. A headstrong young woman comes to France on a migrant boat. The only person she knows in France is a former friend of her brother who has become a jihadist. This guy is a rather fundamentalist Muslim as well but not as extreme -- he is a bartender. Anyway the young woman finds work helping recently widowed Hiam Abbass (the reason I wanted to see this movie). Hiam turns out to be pretty much a cougar when she meets the bartender. Trouble!
In the second movie L'amour des hommes, the magnificent Hafsia Herzi is a recently widowed photographer in Tunis. After a show of self portraits featuring her in all sorts of outfits -- hijab, police uniform, belly dancer... she decides that her next show will be erotic poses by young men. This is pretty complicated because most of the men think she is after something else. Meanwhile, she is still living with her inlaws. The mother is an uptight bourgeois bitch and the father is a little too interested in her. Trouble!
Anyway, I liked both of them.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 1, 2018 20:54:02 GMT
Today I saw Lady Bird and even though I liked it, I was a bit disappointed after everything that I had read about it. For me, it was just another "coming of age" movie like dozens I had already seen in the past. It added a few things that would not have been dared in the past like an adopted brother of different ethnicity and a gay character but nothing earthshaking. Then again, teenagers will always be the same (I hope?) so we have all had to go through the same series of crises, tears, resolutions, parental shit, hopes and dreams. I'm sure I was wrong to hope for something different. In any case, the performances were outstanding, which explains all of the Oscar nominations.
Yesterday, I saw a totally WTF movie called Les Garçons Sauvages. I have seen few such experimental works since the 1970's. It's about a group of 5 teenage boys who rape and kill their teacher. She is tied to the back of a horse and seems to have been drowned in their sperm or something. They go to trial and are found guilty (surprise!) but it wasn't a normal trial, more like something out of Harry Potter. They are sentenced to hard labour on a boat operated by an evil Captain. But they escape to a mysterious island where all sorts of weird things happen. The only food they have is fruit that looks like a hairy testicle. Don't think about kiwis, because these things had hair on them that you could comb if you were so inclined. After a certain amount of time on this diet, they start growing breasts and their male genitals fall off. There is one disconcerting sex scene where the equipment detaches during intercourse. But one of the boys is not transformed completely. He only grows one breast and his junk doesn't fall off. At the end of the movie, he becomes the new Captain (since the other one was killed -- I have already forgotten how). The others go home.
Luckily, you have to be at least 12 years old to see this movie in France. I should point out that the 5 androgynous boys were played by women, which would probably explain why they never took their shirts off in the first part of the movie but went around bare breasted after their transformation. It's the sort of movie that I didn't like but I was glad to have seen, because it expanded my horizons a bit. Apparently it has been quite well received in festivals around the world, even though it is not coming to a screen near you any time soon -- or probably ever.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Mar 1, 2018 23:47:22 GMT
Agree completely about Lady Bird.
I doubt I'll view the other movie.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 3, 2018 16:06:28 GMT
Patser (called Gangsta in certain countries including France) is a Flemish movie that is quite an eyeopener when you think of Belgium as being a calm and boring country. It is about 4 childhood friends (3 guys and a girl) from Antwerp of mostly Moroccan origin who have a chance to upgrade their lives by becoming cocaine dealers. Things do not really work out. I wasn't able to find a trailer with English subtitles, but I thought it was interesting that Dutch subtitles seem to be required to understand Flemish.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 7, 2018 14:24:36 GMT
I saw the Spanish horror (?) movie Marrowbone today and enjoyed the unexpectedness of it all. At the beginning, I was rather perplexed by the fact that it had a -12 age rating in France, because it looked like a wimpy British country movie even though they claim they have moved to the United States. Nothing looks British or American, but it was filmed in Barcelona, so who cares, that's not the point. However, most of the story just revolves around 4 children who had to hide the death of their mother so they wouldn't be separated. They need to wait until the eldest son reaches age 21 to be safe. Basically, the family fled the father who was some sort of killer maniac. He is dead now (or is he?) but they still feel threatened.
They live in a big horror movie house (I mean that the layout is incomprehensible with abandoned rooms and other dread inducing areas.). In any case the house is very isolated and has no electricity, which adds to the fun. Life goes on, the smaller kids play, the two older boys look worried. When things begin to happen, you realise that no, this is not a British movie but a Spanish one, because the narrative flies apart and turns into a puzzle (think Pan's Labyrinth or The Others) which only makes sense at the end. Who is alive? Who is dead? Is there really some sort of creature in the attic?
It stars George Mackay, who was already quite convincing in How I Live Now.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 8, 2018 20:33:57 GMT
I saw The Disaster Artist today. While the movie was technically excellent, I eke no pleasure from the portrayal of embarrassing situations, particularly when they are meant to amuse.
It's strange that this has been ingrained in me since early childhood, because I still remember watching Lassie and being upset every time Timmy did something stupid ("let's go see what's in that big hole") or if Opie on The Andy Griffith Show misunderstood something he overheard.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 9, 2018 22:42:19 GMT
France does not have a great reputation for zombie movies, but La nuit a dévoré le monde ( The Night Eats the World) should help to enhance its status. Poor Anders Danielsen Lie, the sensational Norwegian actor from Oslo, 31 August is the star. He goes to his ex-girlfriend's apartment to collect his belongings. A big party is in progress and obviously he is not in the mood for it, so he goes into a bedroom and falls asleep. The next morning when he wakes up, the apartment has been devastated with blood everywhere. In fact, all of Paris is in the same condition with crashed cars and debris everywhere (this movie was visually amazing). It soon becomes clear that zombies are on the loose, so he barricades himself in the apartment. Over time, he more or less secures the entire Haussmannian building, collecting all of the keys from the concierge's apartment, which allows him to gather enough food and other supplies to survive. Electricity goes off quickly, and then of course the running water stops, too. He covers the roof with vases, buckets, plastic basins, flower pots, glasses, bowls... anything that will hold rain water. He amuses himself making music, playing drums, etc. Unfortunately, the zombies are attracted to any noise, so they are always surrounding the building. There is also a sad zombie trapped in the old elevator cage, and he talks to it from time to time. One day another survivor arrives -- the Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani. (It should be mentioned that France is the refuge for just about all actors who come from countries which do not make enough movies for their actors to make a living or from countries that have rejected them morally.) She doesn't last as long as he would have liked, probably because he shot her in the belly with a shotgun when she got into the building. Anyway, it was excellent. Anders Danielsen Lie might become a bit more prominent this year because he plays Anders Behring Breivik in an upcoming upsetting movie.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 11, 2018 13:34:31 GMT
I saw two very bad movies starring Isabelle Huppert over the last two days -- a French one and a Korean one. Whenever this happens, it tends to shock people, like when Meryl Streep makes a terrible movie.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 13, 2018 17:33:34 GMT
I was quite impressed by the performance of Colin Firth in The Mercy although the film did not affect me as much as if I had been a member of the target audience, i.e. British. It tells the true story of amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst, who signed up for the Sunday Times Golden Globe race in 1968, a solo round-the-world yacht race. He built his own boat, spent all of his money and even signed over his house to the sponsor.
He spent nine months on his boat with all sorts of terrible problems, but since he had bet his entire life on this event, he didn't give up -- he just started lying. He gave fake positions, including record times, even when he had to stop in Argentina for secret repairs. All of Great Britain was enthralled by the press reports. He never arrived, his body was never found.
It is the performance of Colin Firth's career, he who has spent all of his time in movies wearing stuffy suits with a stick up his arse. The movie is not at all perfect, but he is really outstanding.
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Mar 13, 2018 17:53:47 GMT
Deadpool meh....saw it on Netflix. A bit crude, slightly amusing but not really my cuppatea....
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Mar 14, 2018 21:12:56 GMT
Has anyone seen The Death of Stalin yet? The trailers I saw were darkly funny; some say too funny for a film about a guy who caused the deaths of millions of people, but there have been similar movies about Hitler and other horrid dictators. It isn't in cinemas here yet.
As for Tunisian cinema, that reflects the contradictions of the country where on paper women are more equal than just about anywhere in the Arab world, and where there is still a powerful women's movement, but where patriarchy still runs deep, exacerbated by the growth of fundamentalism.
Trivial observation; she makes me want to have my hair cut shorter, but at my age I doubt my curls are as spectacular as they were 30 years ago. Certainly not as black!
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 14, 2018 22:02:00 GMT
Today I saw the amazing Moroccan movie Razzia. The previous movie by the director Nabil Ayouch was banned in the country (Much Loved) because it was considered to be an insult to Moroccan values. The actress was forced to live in exile in France. That previous movie was about young women in Marrakesh becoming prostitutes for disgusting Saudi millionaires, which is an ongoing situation, even though it might be coming to an end by now. The only reason that the Saudis went to Morocco was because their playground in Beirut was not safe anymore. Now that it is safe again, they have probably returned to Lebanon.
Anyway, this movie has been a smash success in Morocco, which authorised it for reasons of pragmatism. It is still amazingly critical of Moroccan society, but the earlier banned movie became famous around the world precisely because it had been banned -- so they didn't want that to happen again. And then again perhaps the people in charge have evolved a bit. That would be nice.
This movie follows 5 people whose lives come together at the end. It starts in 1985 with a wonderful schoolteacher in the Atlas mountains. The children clearly love him as he explains geography and science. But in Rabat, the government has changed and it was decided that regional languages should be banned. Inspectors are sent to his school and he receives a reprimand for teaching classes in Berber rather than Arabic. "But the children don't speak Arabic." No matter, they must adapt. He tries his best, but it just doesn't work, and there is an observer to make sure that he doesn't speak Berber. (Back during this period Saudi, Qatari and Emirati teachers were sent to replace recalcitrant Berber teachers. They also spread Salafism.) The teacher gives up and goes to Casablanca where most of the movie takes place. Then we are in 2015 with other characters as well -- a young girl who likes girls, a Jew with a restaurant, a young man who wants to become the Moroccan Freddie Mercury, an affluent housewife who wants to live freely while her husband observes everything she does... And Salafism is reaching a high point in the country with demonstrations of veiled women demanding that equal rights not be given to men and women.
It is pretty gut wrenching for progressive audiences. At the cinema where I saw it, the spectators applauded at the end. That is pretty rare in France.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 15, 2018 21:22:47 GMT
The Russian movie Tesnota (Closeness) is really remarkable. It shows a Jewish family in the northern Caucasus in the late 1990's with all of the usual ethnic tensions ("Jews are scum; they should still be making soap out of them."). The main character is the wonderful Ilana, a tomboy car mechanic who refuses to play by the rules of her community. It almost takes death threats from her mother to get her to wear a dress to her younger brother's engagement party. They are very close, perhaps too close since, for example, he feels a need to show her his dick to show that his fiancée is getting a good deal. But then her brother is kidnapped for ransom and the family doesn't have enough money to pay for his release. Going to the police in that area is out of the question. The sleazebag rabbi offers to buy the father's garage for a piddling amount and the parents more or less try to sell of Ilana as a bride to a better off family with a timid son. At the engagement event, Ilana throws a bloody handkerchief onto the coffee table and tells the assembly "I am going to fuck anybody I want in this town." She has just been deflowered by her non-Jewish boyfriend, a husky but gentle guy from an opposing community. In fact, it is she who forces herself on him to get the deed done.
There are some really awful moments in the movie, such as when the boyfriend's drunken group watches a cassette consisting of actual footage taken during the 1999 Dagestan massacre of Chechens torturing and cutting the throats of Russian soldiers. I can confirm that it is unbearable to watch young men begging for their lives and then being killed when it is not simulated. It is already pretty difficult when it is fake. However, it all just underscores how terrible life in this part of Russia can be.
The main thing that impressed me was how embedded I felt in the family. The parents are trying so hard to be good parents and just getting it wrong. The daughter is determined to save her brother and has to oppose her parents' plans every step of the way. Their obsession is to leave the region and move once again, because they never manage to find an area where they can live in peace.
It is a completely gripping story.
|
|