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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 2, 2019 19:55:54 GMT
It does make it look more interesting, yes.
Too bad you didn't see a dubbed version & thus avoided Leslie Mann's voice, which should be against the law.
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Post by rikita on Jan 3, 2019 0:07:56 GMT
the word loveling sounds a bit like it is supposed to be a "direct" translation of the german word "liebling" (which means darling, but literally is loveling). is it a word in english?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 3, 2019 4:47:13 GMT
It was an unknown word to me, but I found this:
noun
A dear or lovely creature; a darling (frequently as a term of endearment).
Origin
Early 17th century; earliest use found in Joshua Sylvester (d. 1618), poet and translator. From love + -ling.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 5, 2019 11:29:33 GMT
As I was squirming through White Boy Rick, I could only thing "only a French director could have made this movie" -- and that is indeed the case, because it ticks every single box of what fascinated French cinephiles think about the 1980's drug underworld, often gleaned from other over-the-top movies that (I hope) exaggerated everything that can be ugly about America. I have not yet visited Detroit, but if that's what it was really like during its low point, I just don't see how anybody survived. Rex Reed loathed the movie so much that I find his review priceless: Someone Microwaved Matthew McConaughey and Now I Feel DirtyIt is in total bad faith, and it is clear that he prefers to watch Hollywood films with shiny happy people. But Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie as Matthew McConaughey's parents.... perfect!
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 5, 2019 19:24:48 GMT
I didn't watch the trailer all the way through, but loved the line, "Put some clothes on -- we're going for custard!"
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 13, 2019 19:26:56 GMT
French comedies are rarely exportable, and I don't mean that they are bad, but they just are not completely funny. Many of them start with totally comedic situations, but they move on to dramatic or even tragic climaxes.
Premières Vacances is mostly a comedy. Two people who have met on Tinder decide to go on holiday together. She was planning on going to Beirut with her usual friends and he was stuck in the usual family rut of going on vacation in Biarritz? So they decide to go somewhere midway between the two locations -- hey, why not Bulgaria? Yes, Bulgaria is just as much of a joke in France as it is in most countries, but is that a fair evaluation? The woman is the more intrepid traveller, so she sets up an Airbnb in some weird village. It's supposed to be a seaside location, but the waterfront is at least 800 metres away. The host family is as one can imagine in a comedy -- not the sort of place where you would want to stay. The guy decides they need to move on, so they follow two Israeli tourists who say they are staying in a sensational place. Yeah, I guess. It's a sort of vegan hostel or something like that... They finally end up at a Bulgarian "luxury" resort (imagine Bulgarian luxury) and things start going nasty... It is quite well done, probably a bit more realistic than a lot of people would like, but that's what you get with French comedies...
Les Invisibles is also sort of a comedy -- you don't want to think of it as a drama, but the situations portrayed are quite dramatic. It's about a refuge for homeless women and the main thing about it is that all of the homeless women are real homeless women. They are funny and sad and totally authentic. The most important thing is that the majority of them are trying as hard as possible to improve their lives -- but not all of them, because this is real life. It is difficult not to have tears at certain times.
El Angel is the true story of an Argentinian killer in the 1970's. No real idea of what motivated him, but he seemed to enjoy himself. There was a bit of ambiguity about his sexuality. In any case, his friend Ramon did not seem to have any problem servicing friends who had certain desires. It appears that he killed at least 11 people before his final arrest. Most of the killings seemed to be quite casual.
In My Room is a fascinating German movie about a subject that has been done many times already -- one day the protagonist wakes up and everybody else on the planet has disappeared. He's a television news cameraman, not a very good one. Once he accepts what has happened, he seems to like his new life where you don't need to wear clothes. There are some animals around, so he has chickens, a goat, a horse. He even manages to set up a hydroelectric thing to get power. The inevitable lone woman shows up -- both wonderful and distressing. They get along, have plenty of sex, but...
You always wonder how these movies are going to end. I am not going to tell you.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 15, 2019 18:58:57 GMT
L'heure de la sortie (international title: School's Out) is quite nerve-wracking. It's about a substitute teacher in an exclusive private school. His predecesssor jumped out of a window in the middle of class. He is the home room teacher of the most gifted pupils, and half of them are horrible. They are clearly up to something, but what? He spends a lot of time spying on them, and everything becomes creepier and creepier. These kids are very weird and beat each other up voluntarily, simulate drowning and walk on high beams at the quarry where they could fall and die at any moment. It is certain that something horrible is going to happen at the end, and it does...
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 17, 2019 14:39:32 GMT
I was expecting to be disappointed by Ben is Back. A lot of critics dismissed it as a tearjerker. Frankly, that is the sort of thing that often attracts me, but my eyes remained dry throughout. But I liked the movie, because it kept going in directions that I was not expecting and frankly that is very difficult to do in a movie that takes place over a 24-hour period. (Searching for a kidnapped dog? Really?) Lucas Hedges was excellent, but since his father directed the movie, that was probably obligatory. Julia Roberts did quite well, but I agree with some of the critics who pointed out that she is too big of a star to be in this sort of movie. It sort of screams "I want an Oscar nomination." At least she didn't wear much makeup and looked far less glamorous than usual.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 18, 2019 13:08:39 GMT
I am still in shock from the Swedish movie Border. It is about trolls, not the internet kind.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 18, 2019 14:55:27 GMT
>>>wow!<<< That looks fabulously watchable. Great trailer, too, as it enticingly pulls back from showing too much.
You say you're in shock -- in a good way? The film got a bunch of awards. Can we assume you concur with that?
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Post by lagatta on Jan 18, 2019 17:41:50 GMT
I'm happy that Pupille will be showing here soon, and at a cinema not far from my place.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 18, 2019 18:08:00 GMT
I see that the international English language title is In Safe Hands. The Québec release is scheduled for 15 February but the only other release scheduled at the moment is Poland on 24 May. But things like that can evolve rapidly.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 21, 2019 11:21:38 GMT
Glass is boring, bad and stupid, just in case anybody wants to know.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 21, 2019 12:21:42 GMT
Glass is boring, bad and stupid, just in case anybody wants to know. I bet Whatagain loves it!
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Post by questa on Jan 21, 2019 13:12:10 GMT
Sounds more like a pane to me...
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 21, 2019 18:01:07 GMT
You cracked me up, Questa, with the way you framed that response.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 22, 2019 20:36:11 GMT
So, today I went to see l'Incroyable Histoire du Facteur Cheval (English title: The Ideal Palace). While it is not a perfect movie, I found it impossible not to be totally moved by it. Of course one of the reasons is because I have actually visited this work of art, as I reported here. Thank god for that, because I would have been renting a car to go there immediately this weekend. The movie follows the creation of the palace from start to finish, which calls for some absolutely remarkable makeup work on the actors. A lot of progress has been made in that department over the years, and in this case I found it totally extraordinary since I know the actors very well and how they look in real life. But the story was much more tragic than I expected. Of course people died more easily in those days, but the number of deaths surrounding Facteur Cheval was completely unbearable, which makes it even more remarkable that he finished his project. The main consolation of the movie was that his work had already become a tourist attraction before he died, so to be recognised by people from all over the world must have been very nice. I'm sure that the movie will attract more visitors, but still, only about 100,000 people a year go to see all of this.
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Post by questa on Jan 22, 2019 22:11:48 GMT
You cracked me up, Questa, with the way you framed that response. I'm so glad you "got it". I'd be shattered if you missed out.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 22, 2019 22:17:31 GMT
Yes, Quest ~ it was transparently amusing. Yaaaay, Kerouac! So glad you got to see it, as I've been eagerly awaiting your review. Good point about how the excellent modern make up is so much less distracting than all that dreadful "aging" that was done back in the 80s & 90s. Anyway, I'm so happy that the movie was satisfying. Right now I'm just thinking drat drat drat that yet another wonderful attraction will be over-discovered before I ever get to see it.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 29, 2019 18:55:09 GMT
Not too many major movies in the last week, except possibly Green Book, which is not all that major in my opinion. Viggo Mortensen was impressive, but I had a bit of difficulty believing that an Italian thug would not be homophobic in 1962 even though he makes a point of saying something along the lines of "I know that big city life is complicated." It was totally out of character. As for Mayershala Ali, he was okay, but I think he is still riding the wave from Moonlight when he was really impressive. (Did you know that his real name is Hershel?) The movie is one of those feel-good things where the Magic Negro teaches the yokel about life, and the yokel teaches his boss about Kentucky Fried Chicken. There is a market for this.
Then there was L'Ordre des médecins, an amazingly boring movie where Jérémie Renier (normally an excellent actor) deals with hospital life and is then saddled with the additional complication of his mother being admitted for treatment because she is dying of cancer. Marthe Keller is always amazing but she already did the cancer thing in Bobby Deerfield, and she could not save this movie.
Les Fauves was the latest contribution starring Lily-Rose Depp and Laurent Lafitte. It was another waste of time. It takes place at a campground during the summer holidays. A panther has been spotted in the area, and some people have disappeared, as well as some farm animals being mutilated. The acting is okay, the scenario is lousy.
The Belgian movie Continuer was much more interesting with Virginie Efira and Kacey Mottet Klein. A mother takes her sullen teenage son to cross Kyrgyzstan on horseback, a totally weird idea, so I fell in love with it immediately. Apparently, the grandparents were of Russian origin, so the mother speaks Russian, which helps a lot. The son seems to hate his mother but he loves horses, so that also helps a lot. Obviously their relations warm up a bit after various adventures, but what I love about such movies is always seeing a totally unknown country and culture -- people living in yurts, authentic horse whisperers and a totally incredible capacities to drink rotgut. I always sit through the final credits for such movies because I want to know where they were really filmed. A lot of the scenes really looked like something you could not get a full film crew on site for in the wilds of Kyrgyzstan, and the credits confirmed this -- a lot of the movie was made in Morocco. But I believed what I saw, and that's what counts.
I also really liked the really weird movie Ma vie avec James Dean. It's about a less-than-minor film directors who comes to present his latest movie is the small seaside resort of Le Tréport. Unfortunately, the woman who organised the screening is not there, there is no poster for the movie, and there is a grand total of one spectator. Things clear up a bit the next day -- a least his hotel reservation was made -- but the situation is far from idea. But the projectionist has fallen in love with him, and also the hotel receptionist, so things are getting complicated. I found it all quirky and delightful. I love it when unexpected things happen in non-dramatic movies. It also made me absolutely return to Le Tréport as soon as possible.
Finally, I saw the awful Les petits flocons. A family goes to a ski resort. The mother can't ski because she has phlebitis, so the others go off and do their stuff while she worries about her daughter getting "ski instructor syndrome" which is a common problem in France. Meanwhile, she was a prison visitor and has invited her newly released prisoner to spend the holiday with them. "I did time for killing my dealer." Okay, this already makes the movie less awful, because who on earth would do that? But it's not enough to save the movie, nor is the 15-year-old son who wants to marry his boyfriend as soon as possible (not a problem for the parents except for his age). Limbs are broken, people are lost in a snowstorm as night falls -- all of the usual stuff. It was confounding.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 30, 2019 11:38:55 GMT
It's still January, but I know that I saw one of the most horrifying movies of the year today -- the Swiss movie Pearl about female bodybuilders. Naturally, making the movie required using authentic bodybuilders because there are no horribly deformed actresses capable of doing this. Most of them look like men with a fake head stuck on top of the body, because most of them have totally atrophied breasts that have disappeared into the mass of muscles.
So, this movie is about a competitor called Pearl, trying to be elected Miss Heaven in some antiseptic hotel, which is made all the more creepy because it has plastic sheeting covering most of the walls so that the men and women competing don't soil it with that brown spray they all have on their bodies. Peter Mullan plays the trainer/slavedriver. Pearl cannot eat any food -- just egg yolks mixed with mystery powder. She gets an extra dose of anti-menstrual hormones after an inconvenient trickle of blood comes out of her thong. Pills must be swallowed without water, because drinking water is totally forbidden. As for the drama in the movie in addition to their pathetic lives, a sleazebag shows up with a small kid, 5 years old at the most. Pearl doesn't want to accept the fact that she squeezed out a baby years ago and has never seen it since. The kid says that he was living with his grandmother "but she died so now I'm living in the car with Dad." This is all very inconvenient when Pearl needs to be totally concentrated on flexing and working out. The father dumps the kid, but just for a couple of hours because he has to go off and do a shady deal somewhere. Nobody wants to take care of him, so they try to lock him in a closet, and later on they try to leave him in the hotel baggage room. It just gets worse and worse, but hey, in the end Pearl is elected Miss Heaven. That's what really matters in life, isn't it?
While Peter Mullan was good and horrible, I was quite impressed by the non-actress playing Pearl and perhaps even more by the sleazebag father. He looked scuzzy and horrible, yet it is the very same actor who played the perfect father in the movie Girl, which I mentioned previously.
The trailer doesn't show much other than gross deformities.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 30, 2019 12:38:47 GMT
I think I shall give that a miss.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 30, 2019 16:53:02 GMT
Thanks for corroborating my suspicions about Green Book, which I can now safely miss.
It always amazes me that people are willing to fund a movie like Les Fauves and that actors surely capable of getting better roles are willing to act in them.
The son in the horse movies seems awfully old to be a teenager, making him even more unlikeable. I was surprised by the scene in a non-American movie that clearly implied "lucky he had a gun". The unknown culture, etc. seems to be the only reason to see that movie.
Ma vie avec James Dean does indeed look amusing.
The only thing I know about extreme weightlifting is from seeing the movie Stay Hungry about a thousand years ago. As far as I can remember, it was presented as a fairly wholesome sport. Pearl sounds like an ordeal to watch, but I'm hung up on the food details. From what little I know, weight lifting as exercise makes it hard for people to gain weight, so it seems as though Pearl's diet would make her collapse and die.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 30, 2019 17:41:29 GMT
She was allowed to suck on an ice cube if thirst became too extreme.
(As for the "teenage son" in Continuer, Swiss actor Kacey Mottet Klein is currently 20 years old, so I would imagine that he was 18 when the movie was made.)
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 4, 2019 18:33:32 GMT
Omar Sy is a big enough star in France that he can make just about any movie he feels like making, even if it has limited box office appeal. So I thought it was interesting that he made Yao, about a big French movie star who goes to Dakar to promote his book. He has never been to Senegal before, even though it is the country of his grandfather. Meanwhile, he is the idol of Yao, a young boy in a village who has a copy of his book that a toubab left. Even though it was partially eaten by a goat, he is determined to get it signed.
Not too hard to figure out the plot -- the boy travels 350km to Dakar by hook and by crook and meets his idol. Omar Sy is so impressed that he is determined to take the boy back home safely... So it is a road movie, with lots of encounters and quite a bit of fascinating information about local culture. It's not at all a "great" movie, but once again it took me on a trip, and that is what I wanted.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 4, 2019 22:50:59 GMT
That looks delightful and yes, a great way to take a trip. I'm always grateful when lighter, sweeter movies like this are well-made. Sometimes it's exactly what you want to see, but you also want something with substance that's not too too emotionally manipulative.
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Post by questa on Feb 5, 2019 7:59:30 GMT
To me that means no animals or children in the story.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 5, 2019 18:45:54 GMT
You're a hard woman, Questa!
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 5, 2019 18:56:52 GMT
I pretty much had to walk backwards to go and see The Mule ("approach while walking backwards" is a French expression). Clint Eastwood has made some excellent movies over the years in spite of himself, but this one did not attract me at all after having seen the trailer about 20 times. Yet the critics said I was wrong.
So even though there were about 3 possible movies left to see from this week's offerings and The Mule was left over from last week, I decided to give it a chance.
Even though there were details that grated or seemed fake, I thought it was pretty good. One thing that is a bit shocking is Clint Eastwood playing a 90 year old man when he is really only 88. It is quite clear that he is still as sharp as a tack (pretty amazing) so when he hesitates and bumbles like an old man, it is really tough acting for him.
As for Bradley Cooper, he is clearly there just to increase box office appeal, because he had absolutely nothing of interest to do in the movie. Good for him for collecting an easy paycheck.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 5, 2019 19:04:30 GMT
I can definitely see the attract/repel aspects of the trailer! Thanks for bringing it to our attention, though, since I would have completely given it the go-by otherwise.
Had to look up where the movie was filmed, as some of the road scenes in the trailer seemed awfully familiar. Parts were filmed in Atlanta and in Augusta -- a highway I've driven more times than I can count.
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