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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 29, 2019 19:16:16 GMT
Yesterday I saw the rather pathetic French comedy Made in China. This said, it is the season for pathetic comedies that people on vacation seem to love. It's about a young Parisian of Chinese origin who is pressured to renew ties with his father, whom he hasn't seen for 10 years. It's because his girlfriend is pregnant and she thinks it is important for the child to have authentic family ties. Okay fine, but most of the movie is devoted to just showing Chinatown, even an excursion in the Tang Frères supermarket. This is probably great for a lot of France which will be discovering places like this for the first time. Other little quirks of Chinese culture are also presented for the same reason, to the point of overdose. The protagonist Frédéric Chau often seems to be discovering Chinatown as though he had never been there before. I found it really tawdry, even though I approve of the underlying message of a melting pot culture.
Today I saw the almost unbearable Golden Glove by Fatih Akin. It is the true story of a serial killer in Hamburg who killed 4 women in the 1970's. He was an ugly alcoholic who preyed on ugly old prostitutes in a disgusting bar called Golden Glove. He cut up the bodies and stashed them in various places in his apartment which stank to high heavens even though he had car deodorizers dangling everywhere. It has a -16 rating in France and apparently it was the first of Fatih Akin's movies to receive an 18 rating in Germany. He would generally try to rape these ugly old alcoholics but he couldn't get an erection and would kill them out of spite. The closing credits show all of the real pictures of the killer, the victims and the flat, so even though it felt as though Fatih Akin was going too far in his depiction of the situation, no he wasn't. Very difficult movie to watch.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 2, 2019 14:34:42 GMT
La femme de mon frère (English title: A Brother's Love) is a movie from Québec about Sophia, a somewhat mixed up young woman who moves in with her brother Karim temporarily. He accompanies her to an abortion clinic, and he starts a relationship with her doctor, who is quite appealing. As the brother and the doctor become closer and closer, Sophia is becoming more and more jealous at having her brother stolen from her. Frankly, it took me a while to warm up to the story because I found their lives and their conversations too boring -- probably too much like real life. But the situation grew on me after awhile, especially after the introduction of the Lebanese parents. And yet I can't really say that the movie goes anywhere.
Teen Spirit isn't as bad as the trailer made me fear. But the story is exactly what you expect -- poor farm girl on the Isle of Wight loves to sing, enters one of those television competitions, struggles with problems, but guess what happens? Yes, you are correct. But Elle Fanning was totally charming and she has a good singing voice. It is harder to believe that she is a Polish immigrant, even when she (grudgingly) speaks Polish with her mother. Still, it isn't total trash even if I would have rejected the scenario immediately, or at least after the first 30 completely unbelievable events.
Posledice (Consequences) is a tough Slovenian movie about bad boys in a detention centre. Andrej is a nasty piece of work. He doesn't get along with his parents, doesn't go to school most of the time, gets in all sorts of trouble. He even refuses to fuck the local slut which enrages her to the extent of accusing him of trying to rape her. This is the last straw, hence the detention centre in which quite a few of the guys are even worse than he is. But he is tough enough to earn their respect, so he becomes friends with the bad ones. Unfortunately, they can leave on the weekend, which does not seem to be a good idea. Andrej joins the others in beating up people for 20 euros and other such crap, but it keeps getting worse and worse. But he has a tiny degree of morality remaining and gets increasingly upset with these occupations. So he rebels at last, probably too late. And Facebook is a very evil thing -- nobody should ever use it.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 3, 2019 11:20:49 GMT
So, I went to see Peter Parker's European Holiday (aka Spider-Man: Far from Home). Obviously it was entertaining and great fun of course to see Venice, Prague and London destroyed. Jake Gyllenhaal in the Marvel universe is just weird, though, and since Peter Parker is purportedly 16 years old, I don't understand why everybody is pushing him to be in charge of the Avengers -- clearly he is not ready. One interesting plot twist is that the 50% of humanity that got obliterated in Infinity War are now 5 years younger than the other 50%, which plays hell with not only high school but also marriages. Anyway, surprise surprise, Spider-Man triumphs in the end although the teaser for the next movie shows that he is going to be in deep shit. No appearances by any of the other major characters this time, so it all seemed a bit depopulated.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 4, 2019 17:42:21 GMT
I have liked most of Danny Boyle's movies with a few exceptions (A Life Less Ordinary was a real stinker but it can almost be excused because it came directly after Trainspotting, and Hollywood tried to prostitute him.). Other movies were quite flawed (127 Hours or Sunshine), but I liked them anyway. Some movies that I liked (The Beach), the critics were very critical and then of course there was his blockbuster Slumdog Millionaire when Hollywood realised that if they wanted to give him a lot of money to do a movie, they should give him artistic control. Anyway, that brings us to Yesterday, which is not at all a perfect movie, but it seems sincere to me. Yes, it is a traditional romantic comedy, but at least it doesn't follow the most traditional path. It was brilliant to give the lead role to a guy who is not automatically appealing (Himesh Patel) and relatively unknown except to fans of Eastenders. I was surprised that Ed Sheeran had such a big role. Anyway, I suppose the main thing about it was that it was nice to have an excuse to listen to a bunch of classics by the Beatles.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 7, 2019 12:28:15 GMT
Hatzlila (The Dive in English, Un havre de paix in French) is another unhappy Israeli movie. An estranged son returns from Tel Aviv to the kibbutz of his youth, where his mother and two younger brothers still live. The three brothers (brothers in real life as well) are supposed to respect their late father's wish to go together to put part of his body in an underwater cave. None of them wants to do this, but that's beside the point. The point of the movie is to show how grim life can be on a partially abandoned kibbutz. Most of the young people have fled, leaving only the old people. One of the brothers appears to be in charge of security because he has disconnected the air raid sirens because the old people were complaining. Everybody receives bomb warnings by SMS instead. The animals of the kibbutz run around loose, cows, rabbits, donkeys, chickens. It's all mostly empty lots anyway except for the banana plantation. It is of course surrounded by high fences. Every now and then they put up fake cardboard cutouts of soldiers to protect their land. As for the human beings, they are all in testosterone and alcohol overload. Jets fly overhead constantly, bombs explode in the distance and all of the news on television is about Tsahal casualties, military operations in Lebanon, etc. The two older brothers have already done their military service, which they didn't particularly like, but it was their duty. The youngest brother is about to leave for his service but absolutely does not want to. About the only good thing that happens in the movie is when the eldest brother purposely breaks the youngest brother's leg.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 7, 2019 14:47:50 GMT
For someone with such a sunny disposition, you wallow in the grimmest damned stuff!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 10, 2019 17:12:27 GMT
I don't mention most of the French comedies that I see because they are absolutely too stupid, but I enjoyed today's stupid comedy Premier de la Classe. It's about a kid in a tough suburb who is actually at the bottom of his class, but his father thinks that education is important. He never learned to read in Mali, and his 3 other sons have not really been a success, so he places all of his hope in the youngest. The young kid is incredibly intelligent in street smarts but not at all in classwork. When it becomes inevitable that his father is going to be called for a meeting at the school about the disastrous grades, the kid sets up a fake meeting with fake teachers that he has recruited around town and hires a local marabout to pretend to be his father at the real meeting. Naturally he is found out by the only teacher who cares about him, also the most hated teacher at the school and also the secret mother of the girl that the kid loves. (After all, this is a comedy.) And since it is a comedy, no need to fear -- ecerything works out in the end. I was very impressed by the young actor. The actor who plays his father is also excellent but he is confined to Stepanfetchit roles in other French comedies -- well, not exactly but most definitely the stereotypical conservative African.
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Post by rikita on Jul 10, 2019 22:40:59 GMT
I saw the new Jim Jarmusch movie that opened the Cannes film festival. I thought The Dead Don't Die was pretty crummy, but it has a remarkable cast. It is a zombie comedy except for not being funny. watched that today, as i met up with an old friend and she wanted to watch it. i'd have preferred just hanging out and talking, but she was so eager to see it, i didn't want to disappoint her ... i suppose it is because we watched some jim jarmusch movies together as teenagers (which i knew through my father) ... i thought the beginning of the movie was alright, and there were a few parts that made me smile also later on, others got on my nerves ... but some people in the theatre were laughing loudly ... so it is good to read you didn't find it all that funny, either - i was kind of wondering if i lost my sense of humour. i used to find a lot more things funny when i was younger, i think ... my friend asked at some point, if i was alright ...
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 16, 2019 20:43:50 GMT
July is the month when the French go to the cinema the least, so the distributors perfer to get rid of their stock of 'small' movies at this time. Some of them are quite worthwhile, others not to much.
Pauvre Georges! is a Franco-Canadian movie about a French teacher who has moved to the Montréal area and teaches French in a boring high school where the teachers are always bickering. One evening he catches a kid in his house, a harmless prowler who just likes to look around houses without stealing anything. The young man has stopped going to school so Georges decides to make his education a personal project. But the movie spends just as much time watching Georges and his wife slowly break apart, the dinner parties with neighbours which are both funny and sad, the contradictory teaching philosophy of the people at school... I could tell that the movie was trying hard as hell to be faithful to what must be a great (American) book, but it was stuffed with just too many details. And of course the movie proves something that we all know -- you can't save a kid who is doomed.
Cities of Last Things (French title: Face à la nuit) is a rather fascinating Taiwanese movie by Malaysian director Wi Ding Ho. It shows three nights in the life of a retired policeman, told backwards. It starts with his suicide in 2035, then it goes back to when he was a policeman in his prime and it ends up when he was a teenager. Quite disturbing.
Acusada is a Mexican-Argentinian movie about a young woman standing trial for killing her best friend. Did she do it? Her so-called best friend had posted a video of her having sex at a party, and she didn't much appreciate it. The movie is well constructed, but the protagonist isn't very likeable. I suppose that is on purpose because you start not to care if she is convicted or not, but it makes it hard to get super interested in the outcome.
L'Ospite is a deadpan Italian comedy about a man who has to move out after a fight with his girlfriend and goes from place to place to spend the following days -- his parents, his friends, etc. The only problem is that they are all as fucked up as he is. It is quite reminiscent of Nanni Moretti's early films.
Joel is an Argentinian movie about a couple living in icy Patagonia. They have been trying to adopt a child. They were hoping to get one about 4-5 years old, but all they are offered is a child who is 9 years old. They take him, but obviously older children are much harder to handle than young ones. He is a nice kid, even though he doesn't talk much, but the real problems are at school. The parents of the other children want to get rid of him because he keeps telling stories about thug life in Buenos Aires, and they go home asking their parents about cocaine and guns. Joel is actually just telling them about his uncle ("El loco") now in prison but passing off the exploits as his own. What will the adoptive parents do? Especially since they are on a six month trial period and will be reviewed for approval or not. Distressing.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 17, 2019 13:17:07 GMT
The Germano-French movie Roads contains the prime element that interests me in a movie. It is a road movie of discovery, starting in Morocco and ending up in Calais. Two young men, age 18, one English and one from the Congo meet up and travel across Morocco, Spain and France on different quests. They have to deal with a crazy German hippie, Moroccan scammers, border guards, French racists, an angry father... It is not always the most relaxing trip. I thought the casting choices were adventurous -- Fionn Whitehead, the young soldier who was the face on the poster for Dunkirk and Stéphane Bak, a Parisian who was the youngest stand-up comedian in France. After all of this travelling, I was surprised that the final scenes of the movie were in my very own neighbourhood, only a few blocks from my flat. Wasn't expecting that.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 19, 2019 11:52:40 GMT
Since Carlos Acosta has rarely danced in France, I must confess that I didn't even know who he was. But I was quite moved by the Hispano-Cuban movie Yuli about his life, which has not been a bed of roses. His father finds him break dancing with the local riffraff in Havana and makes him go to dance school. He doesn't want to dance, and certainly not there because all of his friends will call him a faggot. Which they do. But his father is both brutal and tyrannical and there is no resisting him.
What thrilled me the most about the movie was all the Havana street scenes, and when the school troupe performed in the Teatro America I was over the moon. Of course now Carlos Acosta is based at the Grand Theatre of Havana, sandwiched between the capital building and the Hotel Ingleterra, so I was thrilled to see that as well. I looked up a bit of his biography, and it looks like his life was much more difficult in reality than what the movie shows. He is played by two different actors as a child and then as a teenager, but he plays himself in modern times.
The movie also shows the abandoned National Arts Schools project in the outer suburbs. These amazing buildings were conceived by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1961 but fell out of favour in 1965 (not communist enough) and were never completed. But now they have been declared a national monument and may be fixed up some day. They are already a candidate for the World Heritage list.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 21, 2019 12:22:44 GMT
The French distributor decided to split Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Werk ohne Autor into two films rather than the original opus of 3h09, and as far as I'm concerned, this was an excellent decision. After seeing part 1, I was eager to see what happens next, but I might not have gone at all for just one 3-hour chunk, especially since I was not a fan of Henckel's The Lives of Others back in 2006. While that other movie was magnificently well done, I just could not identify with any of the characters. Not so this time. The movie starts in Dresden in the 1930's and continues until 1966. Obviously, there is the war, but that is not dwelt upon excessively, except for the fact that Dresden is there and then it isn't anymore -- just a pile of rubble. One of the main characters is an elegant and cultured Nazi war criminal, Professor Seeband. He actively believes in eugenics and takes the necessary action to purify the race, even in his own family. But the story mostly follows the ageless Tom Schilling (who has barely aged a day since Oh Boy! in 2012) and the love of his life Paula Beer. He is an art student whose beloved aunt helped him to realise what art really is, even taking him to exhibitions denouncing degenerate art such as practiced by people like Picasso or Klee. But he is a good boy and follows the rules of the times. After the war, he becomes a minor star in socialist realism and even gets commissions for huge frescoes on the walls of government buildings and auditoriums. But his heart is not in it. He and his new wife flee to the West in 1961 just before the wall goes up, and he has to learn about art all over again... This movie is apparently loosely based on the life of Gerhard Richter, the most famous German artist of the second half of the 20th century (now age 87). The basic elements of his life are there, but fictional enough to displease him. Anyway, I was enthralled. When I saw part 1 yesterday, quite a few people went to get their tickets for part 2 immediately. I could have done so as well, but I was satisfied enough with the first experience to wait another day for the rest.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 21, 2019 15:54:57 GMT
Sorry, the small screen rarely attracts my attention. Can't really compete with the big screen. And of course I had no idea what the English language title was (not at all like the German title or the faithful French translation -- "L'oeuvre sans auteur") until I searched for the trailer. But bravo to you for finding this wonderful film first.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 21, 2019 16:36:29 GMT
Certainly not. I grew up in a small town and knew that it was total shit in terms of cinema. We had only two reputable places to go, and they got movies about two months after New Orleans. I almost died.
In the modern age, people don't even need to get a DVD to see things, but it will never be as good as a big screen. People who never saw something like Avatar on a big screen in 3D absolutely did not see Avatar. But nobody really needs such things. They just make life better.
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Post by lugg on Jul 22, 2019 19:03:27 GMT
Yesterday I went to see the Lion King with my sis, niece and daughter. We are all huge fans of the original. My daughter watched the original literally hundreds of times , saw the musical and lately has been coaching her class through their end of term production of it, so she knows every word of the script. Apparently the new version rarely strays. I did not really notice because I was mesmerised by the CGI which is really outstanding for example you can see the muscles rippling on the animals as they move and the African landscapes are stunning. Anyway I loved it - the others much preferred the original. For me same, same but very different.
On another note I saw the trailer for Cats - slightly odd and the singing seemed a bit off. Still I will be watching it in December I am sure.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 23, 2019 3:35:34 GMT
I never saw the original, so I could see the new one "pure". Well, I've been seeing a lot of stuff about The Lion King and was wondering what all the buzz was, since I didn't realize a new version had been made. Did they just remake it because there is better technology now?
I know for a fact I won't be seeing Cats unless I die after December and am sent to the bad place. (sorry)
Lion King is not a musical is it?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 23, 2019 3:39:51 GMT
I haven't seen the Lion King, but I did read a number of reviews that were not captivated with the new version simply because the animals look so real. This prevents them from having the more human expressions of the original animated version.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 23, 2019 5:31:41 GMT
Hmmmm. That could be like all those people who say digital music sucks because you can't hear that hiss and the little pops of vinyl.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 23, 2019 5:42:06 GMT
Based on this clip, I understand again why the first one never interested me. The new one definitely does, though!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 23, 2019 6:12:28 GMT
You'll be warbling those songs in no time.
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Post by lugg on Jul 23, 2019 6:39:17 GMT
Haha K2. Yes Bixa there is a musical version of the Lion King too, still running in West End after 20 years or so. I guess the anthropomorphism is much more noticeable due to the CGI and that may be why some dislike it. Anyway some of the children in the cinema must have been seeing it for the first time and they laughed and cried as much as I remember my two doing when they saw the first version .
One of the new songs is very likely to become a hit.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 23, 2019 14:54:00 GMT
Her Smell is an ugly discomforting movie which I did not enjoy, yet it sticks with me. It is about a female rock star, her rise, her glory, her fall, her despicable behaviour, the beginning of redemption. Lots of suffering meted out to everybody around her -- mother, ex-husband, young daughter, friends... More than two hours of unpleasantness. But Elizabeth Moss's performance is amazing.
100 kilos d'étoiles is a very nice but extremely imperfect story of a fat girl who is excellent in science and would like to win a science fair prize of a zero gravity flight in Toulouse. She is overweight for genetic reasons, not because she overeats, but she becomes anorexic in an attempt to become thinner. She ends up the hospital ward for crazy girls and escapes with a few of them, determined to go to the space centre in Toulouse for the science fair. One of the girls is in a wheelchair, another is bulimic and spends all of her time puking to stop her breasts from growing (she has short hair and might be a candidate for gender reassignment), and one is convinced that her life is poisoned by electromagnetic sensitivity and destroys any electrical device around her if she can. Her little brother died of cancer after her father got wifi for the house, and she is convinced that it is the reason. There are conflicts and complicity, but they get to Toulouse (which would never have happened in a realistic movie -- the police would have collected them long before then). The prize is not won, but it's all part of growing up.
I salute the courage of the teenage actress who exposed her body for this -- bulges and stretch marks galore. That couldn't have been easy.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 23, 2019 16:00:13 GMT
I don't have plans to see Her Smell because I imagine it as you describe it. But I had been a little bit tempted because of Elisabeth Moss, who is truly an awe-inspiring actress. She hooked me, along with most of the viewing public, with her role in Mad Men, and went on to a monumental performance in Handmaid's Tale. I think I've only seen her in one movie, The One I Love. She was excellent, but really it was not one of those movies where you say "I couldn't imagine anyone else in that role." More and more it seems that big actors, i.e., movie actors, are moving to television, especially women actors, as in Big Little Lies, which even included Meryl Streep, brilliantly compelling as always. I think Elisabeth Moss is in a fair way to be up there in the Streep echelon.
100 Kilos D'Etoiles does look quite watchable. Do you suppose the overweight girl was played by a real teenager? Ditto the other girls. I've noticed that many excellent teen actors turn out to be young-looking people in their twenties.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 23, 2019 16:17:31 GMT
Oh yes, they were real teen actors, but I am far from sure that they will ever have more of a career in movies.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 24, 2019 19:39:55 GMT
I thought Give Me Liberty was a stunning movie. It is mostly about the Russian community of Milwaukee and is at least half in Russian. Vic drives a minibus for disabled people, but he also has to deal with his grandfather who has Alzheimer's and the various Russians in the local community. Quite a bit of it is close to being a documentary because it shows all sorts of disabled people and how the Eisenhower Center of Milwaukee helps them, but there is also a foray into the black community with various problems. Most of the actors in the movie are sensational even though it is their first performance. I definitely hope to see more of Chris Galust, who plays Vic, in future movies. It was definitely another visit into a world that I do not know at all.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 25, 2019 19:16:27 GMT
So, to my supreme delight, the director's cut of Donnie Darko is on French cinema screens again with its wonderful extra 20 minutes. I have both DVDs, but seeing it once again on a big screen is sensational. I know that a number of philistines never learned to appreciate this movie, but it's their loss. For those of you who have never heard of it, it was released just a few weeks after 9/11 when many people had other things on their mind. But it has grown over the years and one of the thing of note about it is that it is the first box office flop ever to benefit from a director's cut.
Frankly, I like both versins, but it is not impossible that I prefer the original shorter version. The director's cut contains a few more explanations as to what is happening and I really liked have to put the puzzle together myself.
The geeky videos trying to explain the movie make me love it even more.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 28, 2019 19:23:47 GMT
Three more minor movies in recent days, two French and one Catalonian.
La Source is the true story about a Maghrebi suburban young man, Samir, who absolutely does not want to be a plumber like his father who just died in an accident. He wants to be a surfer. the problem is that not only does he not know how to surf, he doesn't even know how to swim. At the municipal swimming pool, he is more or less "intercepted" by the attendant who can see that this guy is going to drown without help. The interesting thing about this part of the movie is that the pool guy is played by Christophe(r) Lambert, to which the years have not been kind. I mean really, this guy was Greystoke, he was Highlander... and now he is just an old man in a very minor movie.
Things are tough, but the young man learns to swim and even gets a lifeguard licence which allows him to work on the south Atlantic coast of France. And he learns to surf. And he goes to Tahiti. It would all be so unbelievable except that it is true. The young man is played by a minor rap star in France, Sneazzy, and I was very impressed by his acting abilities. I looked at some of his videos, and it was instantly apparent that he has wanted to be an actor all along. I thought it was excellent (in its category -- after all, it is just a surf movie).
The second French movie was a sort of screwball comedy, Sun, except that it wasn't all that amusing. It takes place a few blocks from where I live in Little India in Paris. A schemer of Indian origin, Sunir (played by Maghrebi origin actor Tewfik Jallab) suddenly is confronted by the arrival of a cousin from India who wants to become a sitar star. He has heard that his Parisian cousin is a great success (ha ha) and will be able to advance him in his career. The cousin is played by a real Indian actor (actually a stand up comedian) called Aadar Malik. Because of this, most of the movie is in English since Sunir doesn't speak Hindi. In any case, lots of totally improbable things happen, but it is not an unpleasant movie. I think it might be the French movie in which I recognised 90% of the filming locations immediately. It has a feel good ending, which is always nice. And a lot of the music is quite good.
El viaje de Marta (Le Voyage de Marta in French, Staff Only in English) is the story of a Christmas holiday in Senegal. Marta and her little brother are taken to a holiday club in Senegal by their travel agent father (the parents are divorced and this is the first trip with him; usually it is only weekends). Marta is 17 so is obviously sullen and rebels against all activities. But she makes friends by going to the staff area of the club. There is a guy who wants to become a filmmaker in spite of his really shitty video camera, and also a chambermaid who used to work at the bar but was demoted to changing sheets because she was not being "nice" enough with the old European men. It is not a great movie, but it sent me once again to a different world. It is mostly in French with a bit of Catalan.
It's funny because Sergi López plays the father. He was a huge star in both Spain and France 20 years ago. He even won a French César for best actor in 2001, so what happened to Christophe Lambert happened to him as well.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 29, 2019 20:44:57 GMT
Continuing my consumption of minor summer movies, I quite enjoyed the German film 303 today. Impossible for me not to enjoy it -- it is a road movie. Jule has just failed a major university exam and on top of that, she's pregnant but her boyfriend is living in Portugal. She has already bought the abortion pill but doesn't want to make a final decision until she talks with him in person. Meanwhile, Jan is at loose ends as well but wants to meet his biological father in Spain. His ridesharing plan falls through, but he gets a ride with Jule in her old 303. Unfortunately, they don't get along at all and are arguing within 5 minutes. She drops him off but end up meeting up again later at another rest stop. Then they decide that maybe they kind of like each other after all. Belgium, France, Spain.... it's a long trip. You can probably figure out what happens.
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Post by rikita on Aug 5, 2019 8:56:24 GMT
i'd like to see the lion king with agnes (first the old one, then the new one), but she currently says she doesn't want to see it, because she knows the father dies there, and she doesn't want to see anything bad happen to animals. so i guess i have to see the new one by myself sometime ...
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 8, 2019 19:13:27 GMT
The cinematic doldrums of August continue in Paris, but I just keep plodding along, wasting my time.
The Secret Life of Pets 2 - I didn't see the first one, and I went to see the French version of this one, since I like the voice actors who were chosen and it really makes no difference with an animated movie. Every version is dubbed. It had a few good moments but not enough. One thing that is always interesting in such movies is seeing what preoccupies the culture of the country that made it.
Wild Rose - a British movie about a low class Scottish girl in Glasgow who wants to become a star in Nashville. It starts with her getting out of a year in prison with an ankle bracelet. Her mother is fed up with looking after her two kids. Lots of obstacles... and no, she does not become a star in Nashville. The actress has a good voice, but I remained indifferent.
Midsommar - long Swedish horror movie (2h20). Everybody knows that the Swedish are creepy, but when you get them into ancestral rituals, it just gets worse. The horror built up slowly, but yes, it was really horrible. The horror code is respected in terms of who dies and in what order. The movie was filmed in Hungary.
Never Grow Old - Irish-Luxembourg western (filmed in Ireland and Luxembourg) about an undertaker (Emile Hirsh) and his family. Business is a bit too good after evil John Cusack takes over the town with his cronies. I have rarely seen so much mud in a movie.
To take the cake, I saw Hobbs and Shaw today. It revels in its ridiculousness, so I have to give it points for that. However, I fear a bit for the world that so many people like this kind of crap.
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