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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jul 15, 2020 16:41:30 GMT
I haven't been to the cinema since I went to see Rocketman with my niece 2,000 years ago (approx). Jeff and I tend to only go to see Harry Potter or Star Trek films. So not been for ages....all our cinemas are still closed anyway so it isnt a problem really...
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 15, 2020 17:23:53 GMT
They're very much stil struggling in France. I am very lucky that my normal place (the one with 27 screens) is still operating at its normal times starting at 9am, which is my preferred time. Most of the other cinemas in Paris are opening only around 16:00, which is my bedtime (just joking), which goes to show how bad the situation is.
I saw there was a big protest in Belgium, which has decided that masks must be worn even during the film. I could do it if I had to, but it would b annoying. As from August 1st, masks will be required in all indoor locations in France, but I am hoping that cinemas will still be spared when you are sitting in your isolated seat. After all, it is safer to watch a movie than to be at a restaurant with a mask off.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 20, 2020 17:43:14 GMT
Among the movies that I have seen in recent days, two of them impressed me considerably.
Abou Leila is an Algerian movie that takes places in 1994, during the terrorist period. A seasoned cop goes on a road trip with a strange colleague who is heavily medicated and unpredictable. The second guy apparently has information about the terrorist Abou Leila, but absolutely nobody believes him except maybe his colleague. But that's not the real point of the movie -- it is definitely a road trip movie where people from Algiers discover the strangeness of the Sahara in southern Algeria. I also found it interesting that everybody they encounter knows instantly that they are from "the north" but I did not have the tools to know why. The accent? The clothing? Something else?
But then the movie becomes even stranger and you can no longer figure out what is really happening and what is a hallucination or a nightmare. Were those children really chopped to pieces? Did those other people in the desert really exist? Lotfi, the seasoned cop, considers the other guy (unnamed) to be his spiritual little brother and does everything he can to protect him. The other guy has a lot of medicine to take and often pukes his guts out, but he seems nice and docile. The whole movie is a mystery, and that's what I liked about it.
The other movie waa the ultra stressful Danish movie Exit (original title: Cutterhead). It was perhaps even more stressful to me, because it takes place in a subway tunnel boring machine, and since I have been in one of them, I knew exactly how it was set up. However, this Danish machine was not nearly as nice as the one I visited in Paris, so I'm not sure if I would have gone on the tour if I had seen this movie just beforehand.
Since it is a suspense movie, obviously the people get trapped after a mysterious incident (fire?). The protagonist is a woman reporter who is perhaps a bit too headstrong. She is a real pain in the arse when the engineer makes her and the Eritrean worker follow strict protocol. Naturally things get worse and worse and more claustrophobic. I was reminded of the unbearable movie Buried with Ryan Reynolds, where I almost had to walk out. Anyway, not everybody survives, if anyone.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 21, 2020 19:48:23 GMT
The Argentinian movie Las buenas intenciones (The Good Intentions) was quite bittersweet. It's about an aging slacker, divorced with 3 childen who love him and whom he loves, but he is a total fuck-up, no job, always late, car broken, only junk food for dinner, etc. His ex-wife tolerates him but has moved on with a new guy. She announces one day that she is moving to Paraguay with the children. Her new guy has family there and promise a better job. The children have mixed feelings, especially the eldest daughter. The same movie could have been made in just about any country in the world, but I was happy to learn a few new things about life in Argentina.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 22, 2020 15:34:32 GMT
Finally saw a new American movie today, which is an anomaly since all American releases have dried up. It seems that the main distributors cannot bear to release some of their movies in the rest of the world if they cannot be shown in New York and Los Angeles at the same time (And yes, on the report I saw, those were the only two cities that counted for the distributors; the rest of the United States can go fuck itself.).
So I saw The King of Staten Island, which was only released on VOD in the United States. Judd Apatow has enormous street cred in Europe, so a new movie from him was greatly awaited. Unfortunately he was only able to promote it by telephone or Skype instead of the usual junket. I knew that the movie would make me cringe a bit since Pete Davidson always makes me cringe, even on SNL. It's another slacker movie, but these are not respectable slackers like in yesterday's Argentinian movie. These are stoned-all-the-time wastrels going down the drain.
And yet there is a sort of redemption at the end (except for all of the friends now in prison where they belong), so I approve of the movie.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 24, 2020 20:05:40 GMT
Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive is a strnge little Israeli movie about a guy, Ronen, who comes across a Jerusalem tour group one day which is glorifying his street, Jaffa Street, with stories about Edumund Allenby who captured part of Palestine in 1917 and who is apparently still revered by some Israelis for removing the area from the Ottoman empire.
Ronen's own Jaffa Street, where he was born and raised, happens to be the street in Israel which suffered the greatest number of terrorist attacks and bombings during the 2nd Intifada. So he decides to start alternative "terrorist tours" of his street. free of charge. He starts off with just two Japanese customers but before long his tours become very popular, particularly since they are free of charge.
He has to deal with his dependent and demanding father, his sponging roommate and best friend, and a love affair. He poses for countless selfies with his tour groups and also gives little prizes (candy) to the tourists who can find the commemorative death plaques.
This is purportedly a comedy. I found it pleasant.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 24, 2020 20:08:42 GMT
Here is a considerably longer clip for anybody interested. What is strange about it is that 95% of these scenes do not appear in the movie but they are extremely relevant for anybody who has actually seen it.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 24, 2020 20:42:05 GMT
Since the Argie film premiered at TIFF (Toronto Interational Film Festival) which sadly for me pretty much took over from the Montréal one, there is a good chance that it will be screening here. It is the form of Spanish I understand best, as there are so many Italian intonations.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 25, 2020 15:30:14 GMT
I thought that Madre was an excellent Hispano-French movie. It's about 75% in French and mostly takes place in a French Basque resort town. In the prelude, Elena, the mother in question receives a phone call from her six year old son, who is on holiday in France with the estranged father. But the little boy is lost, doesn't know where his father has gone, and there is a stranger coming after him...
Ten years later, Elena is working in a tourist restaurant on the beach, where she moved ten years earlier, after the disappearance of her son. Nothing is specified, but one can suppose that she went there after her son's disappearance and searched for him. And searched and searched and searched.
She is with a new nice guy, also Spanish, but they have not yet moved into together although that is what he wants. One day she sees a teenager in a surf group and he looks exactly how she imagined her son would look at this point in his life.
After a few awkward encounters, she begins an intense relationship with the boy. His own friends think she is pretty cool for a 39 year old woman, but his parents are not as enthusiastic. Part of the suspense of the movie is whether it will turn into a Macron-Brigitte situation because they really want to spend more and more time with each other.
I found it really gripping and was not disappointed by the end or the rather long (2h07) length.
The TIFF trailer makes it appear to be unbearably suspenseful since it only concerns the first 10 minutes of the movie. The French trailer opens up more horizons.
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Post by bjd on Jul 25, 2020 15:46:20 GMT
That was filmed in the Landes, maybe in Seignosse from the look of it.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 25, 2020 15:50:58 GMT
Yes, you are right. It was actually filmed in Vieux-Boucau. But I noticed that the local architecture was still Basque.
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Post by bjd on Jul 25, 2020 15:51:55 GMT
Yes, you are right. It was actually filmed in Vieux-Boucau. But I noticed that the local architecture was still Basque. Right next door.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 25, 2020 20:44:31 GMT
That actually looks like a film I'd like to see. Is any Basque spoken in it, or just French and Spanish? If it is screened here, it will most likely be at the Cinéma Beaubien where such films are most often shown. Not far from chez moi.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 25, 2020 21:04:57 GMT
I may see Radioactivity, as the subject interests me, though would have preferred for it to be in French and Polish.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 25, 2020 21:11:10 GMT
That actually looks like a film I'd like to see. Is any Basque spoken in it, or just French and Spanish? If it is screened here, it will most likely be at the Cinéma Beaubien where such films are most often shown. Not far from chez moi. It is just in Spanish and French.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 29, 2020 12:34:08 GMT
I felt the need to see a trashy comedy today so I went to see Terrible Jungle (the original title planned was Welcome to the Jungle, but that has already been used at least 4 times in the past). It's always nice to see Catherine Deneuve getting down and dirty, especially at age 76. She goes looking for her son in French Guiana, where he has gone native in a tribe and has no intention of returning. Gold panners, Asians selling guns and drugs and quite a few deaths by machete, things that all comedies need.
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Post by lugg on Jul 29, 2020 18:14:51 GMT
I watched the trailer in part just to see Catherine Deneuve - how I hope that I look as well at the age of 76
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 30, 2020 16:34:03 GMT
Today I saw the extremely depressing French film Tijuana Bible, filmed in Mexico in English and Spanish. It's about an ex-Marine drug addict living in total filth in the worst imaginable area of Tijuana, and everybody he associates with is the same. But he gets involved with a young Mexican woman who is looking for her brother, also an ex-Marine. If one is to believe the movie, Tijuana is full of Mexican ex-Marines and other U.S. military who were deported for various infractions, with no hope of returning to the country that they served. In fact, the first scene of the movie is filmed on the Mexican side of the huge border wall.
I don't know Paul Anderson as an actor, but my investigations have revealed that he is actually British and was one of the main characters of Peaky Blinders.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jul 31, 2020 14:02:01 GMT
I saw an awful French comedy today. There are really quite a lot of them. But I found it interesting that there were two relatively famous actors in supporting roles clearly just making money to pay the bills, but the young unknowns in the principal roles (the movie was about sex when you're 15 years old, but in a French movie they actually do it instead of going the American Pie route) were definitely good enough to use this as a calling card for their future careers.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 3, 2020 20:46:32 GMT
Today I saw the Korean movie Beasts Clawing at Straws (simple French title -- Lucky Strike). Definitely not for the faint-hearted. It's about a big bag of money and all of the desperate people who want it -- criminals, losers, cheaters, hookers, etc. They don't have many guns in Korea, but they have plenty of knives, so just about nobody survives. Excellent.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 6, 2020 18:26:35 GMT
Would it be as bad as I expected? Yes Greenland was. Gerard Butler was not saving the POTUS this time and he was not even saving the world, since it was the end of the world. Lots of nasty pieces of a comet ("from outside the solar system" which is supposed to explain why nobody knew about it). Terrible special effects worthy of my old category of "cheap ass Canadian TV movies" and no logic about anything that was happening. I will not start on the details, because that would last for hours. Every single detail is incoherent.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 7, 2020 13:46:09 GMT
I was VERY impressed by a number of aspects of the Italian movie Il Campione. It's about a young football star at the AS Roma, Christian Ferro, who has everything -- a huge luxury villa, a fleet of sports cars, an Instagram influencer girlfriend with 500,000 followers -- all of the most important things in life, right? What is sad is the number of young people who would reply yes to that question. He has a bunch a "friends" who sponge off him, playing video games on his mega TV all day and night. Anyway, he goes a little too far -- too many car accidents, too many fights in clubs, too much bad publicity in magazines. The owner of the club devises a way for him to redeem himself, or else he will be kept on the bench for the rest of the season. He must have a tutor who will teach him all of the things that he didn't learn when he dropped out of school. There will be an exam every week and at the end of the season he will sit for the Italian baccalaureat exam. It's all just a publicity stunt, though. They interview countless applicants who are all fawning and flattering and finally choose a guy who has never heard of him.
Obviously they get off to a bad start, and obviously things improve from there. If one must find fault with the movie, it would be because the plot was too predictable and yet it is the sort of story that I want to be predictable. I loved it.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 7, 2020 13:58:10 GMT
Yes, very predictable, but I very much want to see that film, though the calciatore really is a little jerk. As many are, earning 3 million euros in their teens.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 7, 2020 14:11:34 GMT
The young actor Andrea Carpenzano really impressed me. I had to look him up to reassure myself that he isn't really like that.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 7, 2020 14:17:07 GMT
To make one more comment about that movie, there was one detail that I found extremely clever. The teacher is ultra frustrated with the young guy's resistance to learning, but he sits in on a training meeting one day where the player draws diagrams and explains the game plan brilliantly over and beyond what the coach was saying. So the next day the teacher draws diagrams and explains the "game plan" of World War I -- and of course it works. "I think you might be dyslexic." "What's that?" "It makes absolutely no difference."
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Post by fumobici on Aug 7, 2020 15:32:24 GMT
I was VERY impressed by a number of aspects of the Italian movie Il Campione. It's about a young football star at the AS Roma, Christian Ferro, who has everything -- a huge luxury villa, a fleet of sports cars, an Instagram influencer girlfriend with 500,000 followers -- all of the most important things in life, right? What is sad is the number of young people who would reply yes to that question. He has a bunch a "friends" who sponge off him, playing video games on his mega TV all day and night. Anyway, he goes a little too far -- too many car accidents, too many fights in clubs, too much bad publicity in magazines. The owner of the club devises a way for him to redeem himself, or else he will be kept on the bench for the rest of the season. He must have a tutor who will teach him all of the things that he didn't learn when he dropped out of school. There will be an exam every week and at the end of the season he will sit for the Italian baccalaureat exam. It's all just a publicity stunt, though. They interview countless applicants who are all fawning and flattering and finally choose a guy who has never heard of him. Obviously they get off to a bad start, and obviously things improve from there. If one must find fault with the movie, it would be because the plot was too predictable and yet it is the sort of story that I want to be predictable. I loved it. Ha, I watched that a year or two back in Italy. It was OK, but I'm tough grading movies.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 7, 2020 16:04:06 GMT
IMdB says it was released in April 2019 in Italy, August 2019 in Brazil and August 2020 in France. Unfortunately, it hasn't been on real screens in other countries yet.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 11, 2020 16:32:09 GMT
Voir le Jour is a very interesting "woman's movie" as opposed to a "chick flick." It is about the maternity unit of a hospital in the south of France, so all of the patients are women and most of the caregivers are women, too. Babies are born, not all survive (the newborn death rate in France is 0.1%), everybody is overworked, exhausted, and even though there are some personal issues, it isn't at all the same as in Grey's Anatomy or those other series.
At the premiere last night, the woman producer, woman director and and women stars were all there and extremely appreciative that the audience was there in spite of all of the constraints. ("We were afraid that it might be empty.")
There needs to be more movies like this instead of gangster shoot-em-ups and all of the other male dominated movies.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 11, 2020 17:24:43 GMT
Yes, I certainly want to see that, but also Il campione, though the subject is obviously male-centric, except for the mandatory WAGs.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 12, 2020 17:23:45 GMT
Casey Affleck's Light of My Life took about a year to finally make it to France, probably because it is total box office poison, but now that there is not much available, what better than a virus movie?
Almost all of the women in the world have died, but Casey is trekking through the dystopian wasteland with his daughter disguised as a boy. That's because women are viral poison or, if they aren't, well, men are men.
It is a very morose movie, but it is a very morose situation.
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