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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 28, 2024 21:18:17 GMT
I’d watch that.
Mind you the last time I went to the cinema was for Schindlers List.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 30, 2024 11:45:42 GMT
Un coup de dés (Breaking Point en anglais) is such a formulaic thriller that it might as well have been written using AI. Mathieu and Vincent have been best friends, along with their wives, for more than 20 years. But Vincent has an affair of which Mathieu disapproves. When he goes to get the mistress to back off, he falls in love with her. They have a fling but she goes back to Vincent, who leaves his wife. This is too much for Mathieu who goes to see the mistress again and accidentlly kills her (this always seems to happen). But it is Vincent's wife who gets accused of the crime and locked up. She was just the person with the most motive in the eyes of the police. And then what happens? Who cares?
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 30, 2024 14:43:03 GMT
Kerouac, you apparently go to the movies almost every day and supply a review for each movie whether you liked it or not. Out of curiosity, do you ever go back through the reviews here to refresh your memory of a particular film or for whatever other reason? And since you include the bad with the good, do you come across some of which you have no memory of having seen?
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 30, 2024 14:56:54 GMT
Actually, writing about the movies helps me to remember them; But I don't even write about every movie that I have seen.
Nevertheless, I'm sure that there are some that I have totally forgotten, but it's the same with certain books.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 31, 2024 16:56:10 GMT
I don't often have the opportunity to see Yemeni films, so I was happy to get a chance to see The Burdened.
It's no surprise that it is not a comedy. It's about Ahmed and Isra'a and their 3 children living in Aden. The country is still war torn, and Ahmed has lost his job. Life seems quite lively in the streets and everybody ignores the bombed out buildings here and there. There are lots of militia everywhere, and there are also frequent powers cuts, just part of daily life. Ahmed now earns a little money as a chauffeur, but it is not enough to pay the rent, so they have to move to a shitty dark damp flat that the kids hate. The adults hate it too, but they know it is necessary.
Isra'a discovers that she is pregnant, and having another baby is out of the question. She watches a bunch of YouTube videos and Whatsapp discussion groups to find out what to do. Abortion seems to be legal but there are countless hurdles and so many bribes to be paid. Some paper is always missing or "these two papers have different dates." The local hospital does not look appealing in the least, as I suppose you can imagine. Many of the women, including doctors and nurses, wear burkhas and niqabs. Once they've got all their stuff on, they could be anybody. The doctor finally performs the procedure and tells Isra'a "you'll meet your baby again on Judgement Day."
Time to go home and get on with life.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 1, 2024 18:26:07 GMT
As much as I enjoy Yemeni abortion dramas, tales of destitute Russian wanderers or Chilean genocide, every now and then I decide I need to see what is on offer for ordinary (?) viewers who only want entertainment. So today I went to see Anyone But You, the latest romantic comedy to start the year. I'm sorry, but this was one of the most appalling pieces of trash that I have seen in a long time.
The usual New York young professional couple meet up and are attracted since they are both good looking and have lots of money, just like all of us. They spend one pleasant night together, not even any sex because they fell asleep before it could happen, but the very next morning a simple misunderstanding makes them despise each other. So we know that the rest of the movie will be spent getting them back together.
This is amazingly simple if a bit expensive. They are each attached as a friend or relative to a beautiful lesbian couple getting married soon. Social situations make them tolerate the presence of the other (engagement party, etc.) but allow them to make horrible catty comments at every moment. Just like every normal couple, there is going to be a destination wedding and they have chosen Sydney, which is never a problem to get to, neither the fare nor the time off, which is implied to be just a weekend even though the flight is 16 hours.
Then the Sydney tourist board clearly takes over in the budget department because I have never seen so many aerial vistas of the opera house or the perfect beaches, and naturally the perfect beach house where everybody is staying. Our warring couple finally gets back together with not one but two helicopter rescues.
As for the plot, the dialogue is terrible, all of the jokes fall flat, the acting is atrocious, and I was frankly aghast. The two main characters were not even appealing (even though I had seen the actress in the remarkable Reality earlier this year and she has also been in The White Lotus and Euphoria, so she is somebody...). An example of a comic idea in this movie is to have a huge wedding cake, and of course it falls on the floor before the event. Ha ha ha.
Rotten Tomatoes nevertheless gives it a lukewarm positive rating while the audience score is wonderful.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 2, 2024 16:34:32 GMT
I'm sorry, but I cannot say much about The Zone of Interest because it unfortunately put me to sleep. I have probably seen too many movies about Nazis and they no longer stimulate my brain cells.
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Post by whatagain on Feb 3, 2024 9:49:06 GMT
I'm sorry, but I cannot say much about The Zone of Interest because it unfortunately put me to sleep. I have probably seen too many movies about Nazis and they no longer stimulate my brain cells. One of your best reviews ! 👌
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 3, 2024 20:09:56 GMT
Time for a weird Belgian movie, so I went to see L'étoile filante (The Falling Star en anglais). It is a crazed plunge into the life of someone who has been a fugitive for 35 years after some sort of terrorist plot. He runs a sleazy bar in Brussels (L'étoile filante). A victim finds him and wants revenge, but the guy finds a man who looks like his double and he kind of traps him into a switch. What he doesn't know is that the other guy's wife is a private detective. Does this really mater? Not really sine the movei makes no sense een though it is pleasant to watch.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 4, 2024 21:16:46 GMT
I thought Argylle would be preposterous but amusing. Unfortunately, it was just preposterous. On top of that, I don't think I have ever seen an action movie where the stunt double for the actress was clearly a husky man wearing a dress and a wig time after time.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 5, 2024 22:43:09 GMT
Ma part de Gaulois is a rather naive but sincere movie about Algerians who emigrated to Toulouse for a better life after independence. Life might be a bit better materially, but they are still not part of French society. But even though the mother is illiterate, she is determined that her children will get a good education and fights against them being sent automatically to technical school like the other Arabs. So we see her struggle through the 1970s with huge difficulty of course. The father is a bit dismayed that his children have become French and don't even speak Arabic. And the son is even all that interested in getting his baccalauréat but he promises that he wil do so if his mother finally realises her dream -- to learn to ride a bicycle. His own interest is music.
And so this is all inspired by the life of Magyd Cherfi, the head of the real life Toulouse rock band Zebda and based on one of his novels.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 5, 2024 22:52:53 GMT
In All of Us Strangers, Andrew Scott is a pretty depressed scriptwriter until he meets Paul Mescal and they fall in love. But something else is brewing -- Andrew Scott goes back to his hometown, which he left when his parents were killed in an auto accident when he was 12. And his parents are there and happy to see him, even though they are all the same age now, about 25 years later. They don't seem terribly surprised and hope he returns to see them soon. Which he does. He even does his coming out, which is just slightly complicated because attitudes were not quite the same 25 years ago. But things don't go too badly, execept that Andrew Scott is really stressed out -- is he going mad? Can Paul Mescal help? Probably not.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 5, 2024 23:07:35 GMT
You saw two good films in a row?! It appears you liked the first one, but don't indicate whether or not you liked All of Us Strangers, which looks wonderful and quite moving. I'd very much like to see the Ma part de Gaulois, too, not least because I just started reading this book, which starts out in Algeria shortly before the revolution.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 7, 2024 21:59:32 GMT
They Shot the Piano Player is a bit out of the ordinary, because it is the true investigation of the disappearance and presumed murder of Brazilian musician Francisco Tenório Júnior in 1976. It contains quite a bit of real testimony by friends and family, strung together as an investigation by a reporter. And yet it is a Spanish animated film. The reporter is voiced by Jeff Goldblum.
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Post by rikita on Feb 11, 2024 11:39:18 GMT
last visit to the cinema is already a few weeks ago, for a's birthday - we booked a room there for an hour to celebrate, and then had an "animation workshop" (the kids drew pictures on film, each kid had 24 frames, and then it was all stuck together and was shown as a short film before the actual movie ... we had a small tour of the cinema, too (just the popcorn machine and the room from where the movie is shown) - and then a movie of a's chosing (she chose something from their archive a few weeks beforehand, and they took it into their official program of the day - there were other people, too, so they also saw the short "film" the kids made) ... she chose the first checker tobi movie (checker tobi and the secret of our planet), as we had seen the second one a few months ago, but had never seen the first one ...
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Post by htmb on Feb 11, 2024 11:48:59 GMT
What fun! Sounds like a wonderful idea for a birthday party. Hoping A had a blast with her friends.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 11, 2024 21:27:42 GMT
How admirable of the movie house to come up with such a fun idea that is also hands-on educational. I'll bet all of you had a great time.
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Post by whatagain on Feb 12, 2024 12:36:01 GMT
A very good idea indeed. Hope Agnes had a lot of fun ! How old is she now Rikita ?
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 12, 2024 15:23:27 GMT
Henry James wrote the novella The Beast in the Jungle in 1903. It is about a man who is certain that he is fated to come to a catastrophic end, so he keeps away from the woman he loves his entire life, even though he encounters her from time to time, and it turns out that his "catastrophic end" is just the fact that he pissed his life away waiting for the catastrophe.
There have been two French movies based, or rather "inspired," by this work in the last year. I didn't even mention seeing the first version La Bête dans la Jungle back in August (at least I don't think I did) because it was difficult to figure out what to say about the mysterious goings-on. It stars Tom Mercier and Anaïs Demoustier and takes place in a nightclub from 1979 to 2004. They basically circle each other at each meeting and nothing much happens. "All talk and no action" but lots of obsession is probably what discouraged me from mentioning it.
But now Bertrand Bonello's La Bête has been released, starring George Mackay and Léo Seydoux. It takes everything to another level and takes places between 1910 and 2044. This one has plenty of action. In 2044, people's DNA needs to be purged of all strong feelings by delving into past lives. So George and Léa meet in high society in 1910. She leaves her husband but can't give into his passion. Maybe they could have pushed their relations to a new level if there hadn't been the drowning in the fire at the doll factory. In other life, George is a California incel, a virgin at 30, and has reached the breaking point where women must be exterminated for rejecting him. Léa is housesitting while trying to break into a modeling career. We weave in and out of all of this for two and a half hours and I found it fascinating. What I did not find fascinating was the abrupt ending with just a QR code on the screen to see the final credits and also an extra scene, which -- who knows? -- might explain everything.
It turns out that George Mackay speaks French very well and can also do a quite convincing American accent. Tom Mercier has still not shaken his very thick Israeli accent.
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Post by rikita on Feb 12, 2024 23:47:52 GMT
A very good idea indeed. Hope Agnes had a lot of fun ! How old is she now Rikita ? yes, she and the other kids had lots of fun. she is eleven, now ... the movie theater is more than ten times as old, on the other hand, and one of the oldest still in use in germany. it was recently in danger of having to close down, i think due to financial issues, but this could be averted ...
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Post by rikita on Feb 17, 2024 0:15:24 GMT
a. and i watched the boy and the heron today - i thought kerouac had already reviewed it but can't find the post now ... i didn't realize that they were showing it in japanese with english subtitles in that cinema, so it was kind of a new experience for a., in the first half of the movie there is not that much talking, but there were still quite a few words she probably didn't know ...
we both enjoyed it, though i thought it was a bit different from the other miyazaki movies i know (though at the same time also typical, a lot of recognizable things). some very quiet parts and in the beginning, kind of slow moving (but not in a bad way) ... in a's opinion it is not as good as spirited away or princess mononoke but still not bad. i supoose i agree ...
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 17, 2024 3:25:57 GMT
Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most respected directors in the world, but I confess that I was still surprised yesterday at the 9 a.m. showing of his new movie The Boy and the Heron and the auditorium was completely full. Of course, people have been waiting 10 years since his last movie. This time the story begins in Tokyo during the war. Mahito's mother dies in a hospital fire, so his father takes him to safety in the country to live in the manor of his new love. He doesn't really like this place even though his stepmother is very nice, as are the tiny grannies. He even bashes in the side of his head with a rock so he won't have to go to the local school. Meanwhile a mysterious heron has been observing him and ends up leading him to an alternate universe with flocks of nasty pelicans and killer parakeets. A local kid helps him to survive as they work together on his fishing boat. He cleans the huge fish, but the guts spill out on the floor to the delight of the little white blobs (reminiscent of the soot balls in Spirited Away). When the little white blobs grow big enough, they float up to our world to be born as human babies. Then it gets complicated... I found my review, which did not show up on the search function for some reason.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 17, 2024 20:38:44 GMT
I didn't want to admit having seen Madame Web, which I went to see only because the excellent French actor Tahar Rahim plays the arch villain, but the capsule revuews are too wonderful to miss.
And it goes on and on... Looks like the Marvel Universe might be coming to an end...
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 19, 2024 18:10:53 GMT
Vivants is about a young woman who enters a prestigious news programne as an intern and obviously go through hell with the seasoned reporters not taking her seriously. But they slowly learn to respect her. And then the programme is cancelled because viewers no longer want to see bad things.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 19, 2024 18:39:51 GMT
Unfortunately, Christian Clavier is one of the most popular comedians in France, and this has been the case for more than 40 years. The public loves his low brow humour, which every now and then is really funny, I have to admit. In recent years, he made a series of wildly popular films in which he played the wealthy and conservative father of four beautiful daughters. They all decide to get married at the same time, but instead of choosing traditional husbands, one chose an African, one chose an Arab, one chose a Chinese and one chose a Jew. (I continue to be horrified that Jews are still considered to be a separate nationality, but this seems to be a losing battle.) This movie was actually sort of funny. In the next one, the daughters all announced that they were following their husbands to return to their ethnic countries. Less funny, but of course in the end they all stayed in France. I did not go to see the 3rd movie, but I would suspect that it concerned children being born.
So, where does he go from here? The new very popular movie Cocorico (which is the French version of cockadoodledoo to indicate the Frenchness of a Gallic cock crowing) has Clavier as a new character, a winemaking aristocrat who can trace his family back for centuries, as proven by all of the portraits on the walls of his château. The daughter (or is the the son? doesn't matter) has set up a meeting with the other set of parents for their engagement. The other parents are well off, but the father is just a car dealer, not at all on the same level.
The young couple has had the fabulous idea to give DNA tests to all of the parents (having collected their DNA secretly beforehand). As the envelopes are opened all hell breaks loose when the truth about their real origins is revealed. Ha ha ha. This is sure to be remade in multiple countries.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 20, 2024 16:22:55 GMT
Quentin Dupieux is a film director who I generally abhor. Yet I see his movies because every now and then there is an unpredictable stroke of genius. Even stranger, all of the top stars practically queue up to be in his movies, probably at minimum wage. It is sort of a badge of honour. Actually, before him there was another French director who made equally bad movies that were completely full of stars, Jean-Pierre Mocky. In fact I even went to his funeral in Saint Sulpice, which was a plot twist worthy of his movies. I sat next to Michael Lonsdale and the French Minister of Culture.
Anyway, Quentin Dupieux's new movie is Daaaaaali! and it is horrible. Full of stars with 5 different actors playing Salvador Dali. it made no sense whatsoever. What next? However, I have fond memories about the movie where two retards of Dumb & Dumber quality find a giant fly and teach it to burgle.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 20, 2024 17:06:41 GMT
It took me a while to work up the courage to go and see Zielona granica (Green Border) by Agnieszka Holland because I was sure it would rip me to pieces, and it did. Movies like this are hard to finance, so even though it is basically a Polish movie, it is a Polish-French-Czech-American-Belgian-German-Turkish coproduction. It is about the despicable period when Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus allowed refugees from anywhere to arrive in Minsk on the fiction that they could cross the border into Poland and "infiltrate" the EU easily. Poland was under the control of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki at the time, a right wing fascist who had no intention of allowing refugees into the country.
Anyway, the movie starts out on a plane from Turkey full of Syrian refugees, notably a family with children including a baby, and also the grandfather. They are optimistic and have set up all of the details to get from Minsk to Poland to Sweden, where they have family. Needless to say, things do not go as planned. A van does indeed take them to the Polish border. A cultured Afghan woman has joined them since there was an extra seat in the van. She also has cash, which is always useful. The van dumps them in a forest in the middle of nowhere (extra charge $300 even though everything had supposedly been prepaid -- the Afghan woman gives the guy 300 euros). They have to crawl through the coiled barbed wire but are still nowhere once they have done that. All of their phone batteries are dead by then.
I will spare you the details, but nothing good happens. Then the movie switches to a story about the Polish border guards, young and inexperienced. The leader gives them a pep talk about the animals trying to enter Poland. "They have more expensive phones than you could ever afford, and they are full of paedo pornography and even zoophilia." Needless to say, the border guards treat the savages the way they deserve. If you followed the news back then, you will recall that the refugees were bounced back and forth across the borders of Poland and Belarus, sometimes five or six times.
Then we follow a group of Polish activists trying to help the refugees in complete illegality and at great risk. They bring food, clothes, phones and medicine into the forest and do what they can, which isn't much. The border guards treat them almost as savagely as the refugees. Next we concentrate on a few activists in a house right next to the zone of exclusion. We are really on the razor's edge here. They talk a lot about how the EU is aware of all of the problems but have allowed 20,000 people to die in the Mediterranean and hundred on the Belarus border, often from the cold or starvation.
This movie is two and a half hours long, and I think that people should be tied down and forced to watch it.
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Post by fumobici on Feb 20, 2024 18:28:00 GMT
The young couple has had the fabulous idea to give DNA tests to all of the parents (having collected their DNA secretly beforehand). As the envelopes are opened all hell breaks loose when the truth about their real origins is revealed. Ha ha ha. This is sure to be remade in multiple countries. This is a solid premise for a comedy movie today.
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Post by whatagain on Feb 21, 2024 10:52:38 GMT
So Kerouac would you recommend going to Cocorico ? I am like you about Clavier and I think is nowadays he is more often than not acting like Clavier…
The only role here he was not overacting was Napoleon, a tv series quite good actually.
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Post by kerouac2 on Feb 21, 2024 13:48:50 GMT
Well, it is low brow humour most of the time again, but you suspected as much. And even bad jokes can be funny sometimes, but I reproach the fact that things are always pushed too far. This is a trademark of French comedy if you think about people like Louis de Funès -- no time for subtlety. Of course, if you think of a lot of American comedies, they are absolutely no "better". Considering the fact that a lot of people just go to a movie to laugh and have no interest in the fine points of the plot, and you have said youself that you prefer comedies, I think you would enjoy this movie.
Once again, it lends itself to possible sequels because all of the characters now have a sudden interest in tracking down their real origins.
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