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Post by kerouac2 on May 1, 2024 17:14:33 GMT
Border Line (French title) or Upon Entry (English title) is a tension wracked airport drama which takes place almost entirely in the immigration holding tank of Newark airport. Since I have been put in it in Miami and JFK at various times (they don't like me), I can confirm that the look of the room is 100% authentic.
Spanish dancer Elena and Venezuelan urbanist Diego who live in Barcelona have obtained immigration visas to the United States. But they are both nervous and this is confirmed when they are pulled aside by the American immigration authorities for additional interrogation. Have they done something wrong? Are they hiding something? The officials confiscate their phones and laptop for verification while the agents ask numerous intrusive questions about their lives. Oh, this isn't going well.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 2, 2024 15:25:53 GMT
I had a feeling The Fall Guy would be not good (perhaps because I had read a few reviews?), but I really didn't expect it to be so terrible. An awful screenplay (incoherent), bad acting (because you can't act well if the screenplay is terrible), and just overall bad cinematography. They spend US$125 million on this piece of shit, and there is nothing good about it at any time. It should sweep all of the Razzie Awards. Naturally it is full of stunts, explosions, chases, people going through windows, falling or jumping off roofs, beating each other up, flaming cars, crashing cars, rolling cars, disco brawls, crashing helicopters... Absolutely everything has been done so many times over the years, and this movie did not find a single original new surprise. The city of Sydney was photogenic as usual, but that was not at all sufficient to make it a worthwhile 2 hours. I was happy to have chosen the normal movie rather than the 4DX version which was proposed at the same time, because that would have been a total waste of extra money to be tossed around for no good reason.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 3, 2024 10:45:39 GMT
The Dead Don't Hurt (Jusqu'au bout du monde in France or Hasta el fin del mundo in Spain) is written and directed by Viggo Mortensen. Viggo is a Danish immigrant and Vicky Krieps is an immigrant from Québec in the far west. They meet in San Francisco and find each other compatible, so that's taken care of. The story goes a bit back and forth in time, childbirth, brutal killings, corruption and cruelty and death by disease. Vicky's character is a srong minded woman who fears nothing, very rare for most westerns. Also, about half of the movie is in French.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 3, 2024 19:52:36 GMT
I would love to see that. It looks as though Vicky Krieps alone would make it worthwhile, not to dismiss Viggo Mortensen, of course. There looks to be genuine chemistry between them in the trailer.
Is it a movie from any one country? I looked it up & got this:
Release date May 31, 2024 (United States) Countries of origin MexicoCanadaDenmark Languages EnglishSpanishFrench Also known as Hasta el fin del mundo Filming locations Durango, Mexico Production companies Talipot StudioRecorded Picture Company (RPC)Perceval Pictures
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Post by kerouac2 on May 3, 2024 20:53:07 GMT
Well, Viggo clearly can't get an American producer, but a lot of the rest of the world likes him, so he managed to get enough financing for his project. It didn't look like it cost a lot of money and westerns shouldn't cost a lot anyway.
Vicky Krieps is always amazing, and I enjoyed that Viggo did a Danish accent, which probably wouldn't have been difficult for him since he is half Danish and speaks both Danish and French fluently. The one thing I wondered a bit about (but it didn't disturb me one way or the other) was that Vicky Krieps had just a very slight Québec accent some of the time and I doubt that anybody has any information from back then about when the specific Québec accent developed to be different from European French. As the only international star from Luxembourg, she can do just about any accent she wants in French, German, English, etc.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 3, 2024 22:23:01 GMT
I was accepting it as the actress's natural accent, since I didn't know where she was from. She sounds like people I know from Quebec.
But re: when European languages in the new world became different from their versions in Europe .......... I believe you can assume that any US & (probably) Canadian accent in a given language is one of the older variations of that language. People in the new world brought their ways of speaking with them and, with no mass media to keep them in tune with the old world, those versions are preserved in some fashion to this day, even as the mother tongues back in the old world evolved differently.
One obvious case would be Cajun French, which was brought to the new world by people from the rural areas of the Vendee region of western France when they began to settle in Nova Scotia in 1604.
It is said that the way people speak in Charleston, South Carolina is probably similar to how Shakespeare spoke, for instance. Some elements of US English are considered archaic in England -- calling the two in a card deck a "deuce" for one. Appalachian speech is an obvious instance of an older way of speaking English persisting into the present. I imagine anyporters from Canada could cite other examples.
Because of that, Krieg's decision to not go full-bore accent seems a solid and practical choice.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 4, 2024 4:50:20 GMT
I was accepting it as the actress's natural accent, since I didn't know where she was from. Since the trailer makes a point of being only in English so as not to scare off certain people, Krieg's accent in English is probably her own. It is during the dialogue in French than you can hear a bit of Québec accent.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 5, 2024 12:41:09 GMT
Petites mains ("small hands" basically meaning "minor staff" in big companies) is inspired by a true story, the famous (in France) Ibis Hotel strike of July 2019 which lasted 22 months at the second largest Ibis hotel in France with 704 rooms, in Paris. The originating reason for the strike was that the owner (Accor) subcontracted all new hires for cleaning and a few other things to another company. The concerned workers no longer had any of the advantages of working directly for Accor (uniform paid for by the company, meal indemnities, etc.). This wasn't the first strike of its kind because there was an 87 days strike and the Park Hyatt Vendôme and a 111 day strike at a Holiday Inn in Paris. It was all considered a discriminatory situation against black mostly African women with precarious work papers who had to put up with whatever they were told.
I'm sure there are still problems like this, but these 3 cases were resolved to the benefit of the workers and have remained engraved in public opinion. One of the African maids from the Ibis is now an elected representative in the National Assembly on a far left list.
Anyway, this movie tries to be mostly light-hearted while still giving an important message. It takes place in a luxury hotel (Accor would have probably brought a lawsuit for defamation if it had looked like the Ibis.), where work is actually tougher than in a more economical hotel, and the pay is no better. Besides the people who pay 8000 euros a night often being disgusting slobs, the maids don't just vacuum, change the sheets and clean the bathroom, but they have to do things like wipe down the baseboards in case there is some dust and arrange the bathrobes perfectly so that the name of the hotel is displayed. And they have about 15 minutes per room to do this.
So, the plot of the movie shows a lot of comraderie in difficult situations but also some bickering because there are never enough vacuum cleaners to go around. The strike has already started, but the picketers downstairs only number about 15 or 20. The most basic maids cannot afford to lose even one day of salary. There are also some obscene situations like the employees' Christmas dinner. It is reserved for full employees only and not for the subcontract employees. They are offered overtime to stay around to clean up after their semi-colleagues with whom they get along most of the time, but the meal goes on forever with no regard for the women who have to clean up.
Well, the strike finally grows, and management still totally refuses to negotiate. The strikers decide they need more media attention, so they organise their own fashion show in front of the hotel during Fashion Week. So management finally cracks. We never find out exactly what advantages the strikers have gained because the movie ends then. In terms of the real world, though, the Ibis employees finally did get full Accor contracts.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 5, 2024 15:32:28 GMT
Un p'tit truc en plus (A Little Something Extra) is a movie that certain people might find extremely inappropriate or at the very least totally politically incorrect. The 'extra' thing is the chromosome that causes Down Syndrome.
Fleeing a robbery, a man and his son end up unexpectedly at a summer camp for adults with disabilities. The man passes himself off a the carer of his son. All of the people there are authentic disabled people and they are amazingly direct about everything. "Don't listen to that retard, he's crazy." "Go fuck yourself, faggot!" Etc. The residents unmask the "disabled" son very quickly. "You're not a retard!" But they like him and promise to keep his secret even if they don't know why. Later on, it turns out that absolutely everybody knows the truth because the secret has spread secretly. Meanwhile, there is a love story, maybe more than one. The father as "carer" goes out of bounds sooner or later because the situation is just too difficult for him to adapt. But some of the people find him more appealing for that. The meditation times are decreed to be only for queers, and football is much better.
The disabled actors were all so authentic that it brought tears to my eyes.
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Post by mickthecactus on May 5, 2024 15:44:28 GMT
A couple of films I could watch. With sub titles of course....
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Post by whatagain on May 5, 2024 18:37:01 GMT
Looks interesting. There is a small scandal as a ‘journalist’ interviewing Artus, upon hearing that he doesn’t drink said he must be a bore since he doesn’t drink. Jerk.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 5, 2024 18:46:44 GMT
That was fake news. It has been explained since then.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 6, 2024 15:34:05 GMT
It is a bit distressing that fucking horrible Philip Morris is still in business considering all that it has done. The United States movie industry tried to take it down with The Insider and Thank You for Smoking but they failed because the movie audience is looking for entertainment rather than depressing reality. So the Franco-Belgian movie Une affaire de principe ( A Matter of Principle) will suffer the same fate. It is based on the extremely documented book by MEP José Bové (who became famous originally for dismantling a McDonald's restaurant under construction). It covers events in 2012 when the EU health commissioner was suddendly forced to resign. José Bové, his parliamentary assistant and a young intern uncovered, with great difficulty of course, the actvity of the tobacco lobby in the EU -- Philip Morris, but also the other world tobacco giants. It is all so complicated and evil that I will not even try to explain it, but these companies paid BILLIONS of euros to get their way and were proud of what they did. Those companies are all still here to poison the world, so the only real victory in the end was the creation of those horrifying neutral cigarette packs now imposed in a number of countries: Australia was the first, followed by France, the UK, New Zealand, Norway, Ireland, Thailand, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Slovenia, Turkey, Canada, Singapore, Belgium and the Netherlands. The United States, China, Russia and India still revel in their tobacco culture. For those of you who have never seen neutral cigarette packs, this is what they look like.
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Post by rikita on May 9, 2024 22:13:14 GMT
The German film Das Lehrerzimmer ( The Teachers' Lounge in englischer Sprache) is quite remarkable and represents Germany at the Oscars in a couple days. It shows life in a totally normal junior high school and it seemed completely accurate to me, even if I only have French comparisons. An incident happens in the school and the staff automatically suspect the student with the most troubled past. This degenerates very fast, with the students taking the other side. The young teacher tries her best to be objective, but it is incredibly difficult. A lot of the staff and a lot of the students turn against her. I am so glad that my teaching experience was very short, but I still have new information often from my friend who still fights the battle for justice in his school, and the news is not good. i've only seen the beginning of the movie, so far, as i then had something to do and haven't had time to continue it, yet - but just a little thing (not that it really matters) - it is not a junior high school, those don't really exist here, but a "gymnasium" (which is a school from grade 5 or 7, depending on the region, to grade 12, and meant for those students who want to go to university later on, which is why some teachers remark that Ali, who is first accused of the theft, might not be able to stay at the school due to his grades) ...
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Post by kerouac2 on May 10, 2024 4:24:10 GMT
it is not a junior high school, those don't really exist here, but a "gymnasium" I know that, but I preferred to just use the closest equivalent to give an idea of the age of the students.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 10, 2024 4:35:41 GMT
Un homme en fuite (a man on the run) is a murky Franco-Belgian thriller that takes place in the heavily wooded Ardennes. It covers two best friends from childhood over three periods -- their original friendship, early adulthood and then 15 years later. The town's local industry (a forge), is struggling, and there is a strike among the remaining employees. An armoured car is attacked and its contents stolen. The "good" friend returns to the town because the "bad" friend is the prime suspect, but he might be dead. Nobody is sure. Frankly, the plot is not fascinating, but the depiction of their forest paradise was excellent.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 10, 2024 4:43:38 GMT
Mondays is a Japanese movie about office workers caught in a week long repetitive trope, just like Groundhog Day. They're at the office and it's the same Monday over and over again. They're a graphic design agency working on a campaign for effervescent miso soup. Their work cannot progress, because every Monday they are back to zero. But they know when the bird will hit the window, when there will be a power outage and other little incidents. They finally determine that the problem lies with their boss. He had been working on a manga but lost his confidence and stopped. Maybe if they help him to complete the manga, they will be released from the trope...
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Post by kerouac2 on May 10, 2024 11:07:53 GMT
The French title is just La vie selon Ann (Life according to Ann), but the real title of this movie ia The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed. It's about a mousy ordinary looking woman in her early 30s. She is into BDSM but not really all that much. She does like to be told what to do by the men she recruits on an app, but they are not into BDSM all that much either, at least most of them. But they all like sex, and Ann is particularly enthusiastic about giving blow jobs. Everybody lives in a boring flat, her job is boring, her parents are boring, the sex is boring and every leisure activity is boring. It's a movie that allows just about all of us to feel that our life is better than hers.
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Post by kerouac2 on May 13, 2024 16:46:20 GMT
Le Tableau Volé (The stolen painting just becomes 'Auction' for English speaking audiences.) is a very interesting study of the European world of the art business. We first see one of the prime auction stars and how he operates. Very professional, and he gets people to make exceptional bids, even for minor items. He has an interesting intern, a brilliant young woman who lies about everything (place of birth, parents, what she did last night, what she likes, dislikes... and dozens of other things). Another major character is the auctioneer's ex-wife who is also his business associate and probably his best friend.
Once we know all of this, a new element is introduced. An associate from Strasbourg has found a lost painting by Egon Schiele in a farm house whose owners know nothing about its value. In the art world, all of Egon Schiele's paintings are already in museums or were destroyed by the Nazis. Finding one of his paintings is astounding. The owners just bought the house and the contents when the previous owner died at a ripe old age. They just left the painting on the wall because it is no big deal.
The Parisians quickly visit Alsace and discover that it is the real deal. Unlike what we would imagine, they have no intention of cheating the owners. The painting will be sold at auction for its true value, which might be 7 or 8 million euros. However, it doesn't take long to discover that the previous owners were Nazi collaborators who received the painting as a gift for 'services rendered.' Modern art was considered degenerate by the Nazis, and they usually destroyed it, but sometimes they handed an item or two out as a tip for people too ignorant to know how horrible it was. The heirs are tracked down in the United States...
And I will stop the synopsis there, because it is really interesting to discover what happens next. Maybe one or two of you will see the movie some day.
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Post by mickthecactus on May 13, 2024 16:58:31 GMT
Ah now, that’s just my sort of film.
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