|
Post by kerouac2 on Jun 19, 2023 5:36:47 GMT
It's not a bad movie.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Jun 19, 2023 13:44:15 GMT
We’ll try to get another DVD WITH subtitles.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Jun 23, 2023 13:03:20 GMT
Who You Think I Am starring Juliette Binoche is indeed “not a bad movie”. She portrays a 50 year old divorced woman who falls madly in love/need with a much younger man who she met under false pretenses on the internet. A couple of plot twists near the end keep it interesting. While at first it seemed there were no subtitles on this French film - and no button in the DVD menu to turn on subtitles - a helpful guy at the library suggested we go into the menu of our DVD player to enable subtitles. We have never had to do this before and were skeptical, but sure enough, there was an option to select language for subtitles that was set to off. Switched it to English and voilà, subtitles appeared with no further tinkering with menus on DVD. Odd that this one movie is the only one this problem cropped up with. And we watch MOST films with subtitles, even English language films.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Jun 23, 2023 13:44:25 GMT
The young man -- François Civil -- was a relatively unknown actor when he made that movie. Now he has suddenly become one of the top actors in France and starred in the new Three Musketeers this year (won't be out on DVD for quite some time probably). One movie that I would recommend starring him, because it is very different from your typical French comedy/romance, is The Wolf's Call. It's a military submarine thriller so very definitely at the opposite end of the French movie spectrum.
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Jul 16, 2023 20:17:08 GMT
The Proms are on the BBC atm...so far they've been brilliant. This evening we've had Pekka Kìusisto (violinist and conductor) and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. The first piece was a bit alarming....Andrea Turrodi's Birds of Paradise wasn't to my taste..but they belted out Beethoven's first symphony.
The interpretation of Vivaldi's four seasons is 'interesting'...with a folk musician Ale Carr..folk music is being sort of woven into each movement. I don't know if I like it but it's very entertaining.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Jul 17, 2023 0:09:44 GMT
Watched an oldie from 1963 this week: Day of the Jackal. Really good film about a fictional attempted assassination of Charles DeGaulle. Lots of intrigue and action and suspense. This film aged well.
Another oldie we watched this week was one of Mel Brooks’ comedies that was a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock. High Anxiety. More of a rip-off of Hitchcock, I’d say. Cloris Leachman vastly overplayed her evil nurse role and most of the jokes and gags elicited only a weak chuckle if that. This film did not age well. If it was ever good. I much preferred his Young Frankenstein which we also watched recently.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Jul 21, 2023 22:09:28 GMT
I saw the end of Battleship. Never seen something so stupid. How dare they make such scenarii ? Inept.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Aug 5, 2023 6:39:19 GMT
I almost never mention movies that I see on planes. One reason is because I've usually seen them before, or else it's something that I didn't really want to see in the first place and I abandoned it en route. I think the last one I mentioned here was that Top Gun crap which I had successfully avoided at the cinema but to which I fell victim on a 12-hour flight.
Well, I actually saw 2 worthwhile movies on my latest 12-hour flight. It is no easy feat these days to even choose a movie since there are at least a hundred on offer. I confess that I scrolled past at least 40 Vietnamese movies, all of the usual Hollywood junk, also 3 French movies that I had already seen and didn't need to see again, and I finally settled at random on the Japanese movie A Man. I had never heard of it and now that I have looked it up, it isn't even scheduled to be released in France until next year. What made me give it a chance was because the title was so boring that I knew there had to be something intriguing behind it.
Indeed there was. Rie has been married to Daisuke for 3 and a half years. They met when she moved back to her hometown after a tragedy. She had lost one of her two sons to cancer and divorced her husband just because they could not get past the suffering. She took over the stationery store of her parents and met her new husband when he bought art supplies several times. They had a daughter, and the stepson fully accepts Daisuke as his father.
But Daisuke works as a lumberjack and is killed by a tree he was felling. The plot thickens.
Lawyer Akira who is working on the succession discovers that Daisuke is not the man who died. That man usurped his identity for unknown reasons.
That would already be enough of a plot, there is also the life of Akira. He is a 3rd generation Korean-Japanese and still faces constant racism. There are big demonstrations all over Japan about getting rid of the Korean scum, tightening the immigration laws, stripping away nationality and sending them all back from where they came. Yet Akira feels 100% Japanese. So he slogs along and identifies the dead man who was just trying tn break all connection with his father, a serial killer who is rotting away in prison. Naturally, the father hates Koreans, too, and makes sure to say horrors to Akira every time he is interviewed in prison.
Very uncomforatble movie that shows that racism is the same in every country.
The other movie I watched had just as much if not more to do with racism. I confess that I had avoided Die Wannseekonferenz (The Conference). I had avoided it for months when in played in France. I knew it was a good movie, but the subject was just too distasteful -- the conference held by the top German brass in 1942 about the best way to implement the Final Solution. And it was as horrifying as expected. They cover every detail. Kill the Jews of course, but what is the best way? It would take at least 10 million bullets, lots of soldiers, guns, etc. Might there be a better way? And who should be exempted, if anyone? Some of these people don't even know that they are Jewish. What about all of the Jewish war heroes from the Great War? They could all be put in a retirement home maybe. Half Jews, Quarter Jews... how far should the extermination go? Is it best to kill the children first? It is hard to imagine how all of the actors were able to say their lines with such conviction. Anyway, I'm glad I finally saw it, but never again.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 5, 2023 21:57:12 GMT
Well, I'm just glad you found some light fare so that you could arrive at your destination relaxed and in good mood.
WT actual F??!!!
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Aug 24, 2023 1:58:06 GMT
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Aug 24, 2023 2:20:54 GMT
For some reason, the site won't work for me. It opens, I can see the first movie listed, but when I click on Next, nothing happens. (& why clicking anyway -- what's wrong with scrolling?)
|
|
|
Post by cheerypeabrain on Aug 24, 2023 16:44:23 GMT
It's very subjective isn't it...
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Sept 2, 2023 20:57:23 GMT
THINGS TO COME a 2016 French film starring Isabelle Huppert. Very well done midlife tale. Though we both wondered why this movie needed to be made.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Sept 3, 2023 4:54:32 GMT
I had to look it up to figure out what the original title was. The director Mia Hansen-Løve tends to leave me cold although her last movie One Fine Morning had a lot more feeling in it.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Sept 3, 2023 16:26:20 GMT
And the original title was….?
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Sept 3, 2023 17:30:58 GMT
Un beau matin
|
|
|
Post by htmb on Sept 3, 2023 17:51:25 GMT
This was fun to rewatch:
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Sept 4, 2023 1:26:49 GMT
No, I meant the original title of “Things to Come”
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Sept 4, 2023 2:13:58 GMT
L'avenir
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Sept 4, 2023 7:48:30 GMT
We tried to watch Bac Nord. Basically cops are fed up with being called motherfuckers by dope dealers in a suburb where no police can enter. Then their boss orders them to rescue an official detained at beside the place. To enter they need help of the girlfriend of one of the cops. She wants 5 Kim’s of weed to help. So the cops ransom the druggies who buy weed to build a stock. That is where we stopped. I could hardly understand the girl what with a very heavy nasal marseillais accent and slang.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Sept 4, 2023 9:13:11 GMT
They all went to jail.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Sept 4, 2023 20:49:28 GMT
I watched Crazy Stupid Love on TV tonight and it is still as delightful as ever.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Sept 23, 2023 1:57:14 GMT
Working our way through the list of “flawless” movies, we watched Silence last night. It is set in 17th century Japan and follows two Portuguese Jesuit priests who are trying to find out what happened to a fellow priest who dropped off the radar 20 years earlier. The blossoming of Catholicism in Japan was nipped in the bud by inquisitors who killed Catholics - in a surprisingly creative array of tortuous deaths - who wouldn’t apostacize by stepping on an image of Christ. Though a bit long and slow paced, it was beautifully done. There were parts that reminded me of Apocalypse Now, and also of Fitzcarraldo. Glad we saw it. www.imdb.com/title/tt0490215/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Sept 23, 2023 4:28:48 GMT
Tonite’s off-the-list viewing is Fight Club,a 1999 film starring Edward Norton, a young Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter. Wow. So creative and well done. At the end there’s a scene that immediately told us the film was pre-9/11/2001. www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Sept 23, 2023 4:44:10 GMT
You had never seen it before? It is a pretty amazing movie.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Sept 23, 2023 18:39:18 GMT
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Sept 23, 2023 18:55:29 GMT
It's true that in today's PC era, it would be practically impossible to make such a film in the United States. The only recent film that comes anywhere close would probably be Titane and as you know, it's French.
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Sept 23, 2023 22:58:15 GMT
The set designers - that house! - and makeup artists had a blast with this one!
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Sept 26, 2023 1:47:46 GMT
You Were Never Really Here, another film off the list of well-made films, stars Joaquin Phoenix as a Gulf War vet now working as a hit man who frees young girls kidnapped by sex rings. Well done, but….we kinda felt like we’d seen it before and maybe we had. Or maybe Joaquin Phoenix has played that guy before. www.imdb.com/title/tt5742374/
|
|
|
Post by Kimby on Sept 29, 2023 22:44:32 GMT
Re-watched The Green Mile, with Tom Hanks as a warden in a Mississippi prison’s death row in the early part of the 20th century.
What a lot of heart that movie has! And the setting was really lovely for a prison. Such great portrayals of individual prisoners and guards, and the best performance I’ve seen by a mouse since Mickey Mouse!
If you haven’t seen it, you might need to. Thumbs up.
|
|