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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 12, 2020 20:43:40 GMT
Looks harrowing as well as morose. Looks good. Ben Affleck's whispery voice is annoying, though.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 12, 2020 20:59:55 GMT
I know you meant Ben's more talented brother Casey.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 12, 2020 21:45:38 GMT
Yes ~ thank you!
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 13, 2020 14:30:18 GMT
Today I saw the Saudi movie The Perfect Candidate by Haifaa al-Mansour. Her first Saudi movie Wadjda was better, but I understand what she is doing. Although she now lives safely in Los Angeles, it is clear that she wants to make things better in her home country; which apparently is not yet perfect. But this must be done with extreme caution to avoid being banned, so this movie is extremely bland and attacks no one, even though it implies that it might be better if certain old fashioned ideas changed a bit. There are certain throwaway lines that are quite significant in Saudi society, such as when a little campaign rally is organised for the men (by video conferencing of course, since a woman must not speak in person before an assembly of men). A male friend of the protagonist has recruited people to attend, and Mariam, the candidate, asks as she surveys the crowd "Isn't that Madame so-and-so's chauffeur?" The friend replies that yes, that's what he was doing, but now that women can drive, he has nothing to do. Anyway, there are a number of little incidents along the way and no (spoiler!), she does not win her election to the municipal council -- this is not yet about to happen in the real Saudi Arabia. Maybe al-Mansour's next movie will be a little more hard-hitting.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 13, 2020 17:18:10 GMT
One of the reviews that I read about this movie said that the director was "inching rather than sprinting" to make her point, and that is exactly the case.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 16, 2020 20:09:20 GMT
This evening I went to a premiere of Mignonnes (English title: Cuties). It's a disturbing story about the hyper sexualization of pre-teen girls who want to copy everything they see on social media. The protagonist is a girl from from a very devout Islamic family of Senegalese origin, but of course she is very very attracted to what she sees the other girs doing at school.
Interestingly enough, the entire movie was filmed in the 19th arrondissement, and the director Maimouna Doucouré grew up on Boulevard Macdonald in the 19th. And the premiere was held at the UGC multiplex located precisely on Boulevard Macdonald. The movie has already won awards at the Sundance festival and the Berlin festival.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 16, 2020 22:29:21 GMT
Wow. Something like this should have been made around 30 years ago, when all this scary crap started.
As far as quality, it looks like a beautifully made movie, and the girls seem so natural -- not actressy at all.
Did you see any part of the movie being filmed?
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 17, 2020 2:53:37 GMT
No, I didn't see any of it being filmed, but I certainly could have since there were many scenes in the Buttes Chaumont, the Parc de la Villette, on the petite ceinture and along the canal.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 17, 2020 11:48:46 GMT
Well, it shows two kinds of scary crap; the hypersexualisation that can also wind up attracting very young girls to the sex trade and related activities, and the rise of extremist Islam (and other religious extremism)that allows pubescent and teenage girls no freedom whatsoever. And the role of older women as patriarchal enforcers.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 17, 2020 13:59:56 GMT
What was really scary is that the director said that she did not invent a single scene. The girls in this movie were 11 years old when it was filmed, and in one of the scenes, the main character Amy (Aminata) was really pissed at the world (she had lots of reasons to be). She pulls her underpants down and takes a picture of her vagina (no, the audience does not get to see this) and then she posts it for the whole school to see. In real life, the director said she knew of 11 year old girls who had taken such pictures and charged a fee for boys in their class to see them.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 17, 2020 15:42:20 GMT
Here is the director of the movie, Maimouna Doucouré.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 17, 2020 18:21:25 GMT
I was really upset with one brief scene. Are the grown women, including her mother, rubbing acid or something in her face to disfigure her? I really don't want to see that, though I know such violence exists. And not only in Afghanistan.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 17, 2020 19:08:31 GMT
No they are just trying to purify the poor girl "because almost all women get sent to hell" after straying from Allah's rules.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 17, 2020 19:30:54 GMT
Maimouna is utterly lovely.
The two evils of hypersexualisation and exploitation of very young girls (and sometimes boys) and religious fundamentalistm feed each other. There have been quite a few films about ultra-fundamentalist Judaism recently; don't know whether there have been many about nutty "evangelical" Christianity, by which I don't mean the Christian addition to the Hebrew Bible but the sects that shore up Trump, Bolsnaro and other shitheads.
Yes, I know that it was intended to purify the girl who had strayed from God's path (Allah is simply Arabic for God), and Arab Christians also pray to Allah) but the last scene looked very disturbing.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 17, 2020 20:02:21 GMT
Well, it shows two kinds of scary crap; the hypersexualisation that can also wind up attracting very young girls to the sex trade and related activities, and the rise of extremist Islam (and other religious extremism)that allows pubescent and teenage girls no freedom whatsoever. And the role of older women as patriarchal enforcers. You are right, LaGatta. I only hope that everyone who sees this movie thinks about how everything that society lets slide or that it shrugs and accepts affects young people -- girls and boys both. The overt hypersexualization of girls we witness today wasn't a factor when we were growing up, but many of the attitudes and expectations that were present weren't all that healthy either.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 18, 2020 1:05:00 GMT
Sadly, I found a horrific example of the Evangelical (and far-right Catholic, though I think these are Evangelicals) version of this misogynist crap. A ten-year-old girl, raped by her uncle since she was six, who probably fell pregnant as soon as her menarche. Disgusting. www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/brazil-protest-abortion-recife-hospital No suprise it's in Bolsonaro's Brazil.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 20, 2020 15:51:08 GMT
I saw the strange little Mexican film Mano de obra today. It's about workers building a large luxury house and being totally screwed over by the people with money. The brother of one of the workers dies in an accident, and the people in charge refuse to pay any indemnities because they say that he was drunk, even though he didn't drink. The owner of the new house, still uncompleted, also dies, and he had absolutely no family.
Little by little, the workers and their families begin to squat the house. It all starts out fine, but then they squabble over people not paying their share, using too much water or electricity... There are at least 15 people living in this huge house. They pay quite a bit of money to a lawyer who claims that they can legally claim the house and cannot be evicted. Things turn out differently.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 20, 2020 23:34:40 GMT
I'm awaiting what Bixa has to say about it...
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 21, 2020 3:21:58 GMT
Well, Kerouac saw the movie, but I have not. I did of course watch the trailer, which I can say absolutely captures Mexico. I also watched an interview with Luis Alberti, the lead, and boy is he different from his part in Mano de Obra -- very sophisticated, rather "Mr. Hollywood".
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 23, 2020 16:08:41 GMT
Today I saw the Danish movie En helt almindelig familie (A Perfectly Normal Family) about the father of two adolescent girls who announces that he is a trans woman. It quickly skips forward to after the operation in Thailand, and the girls have adjusted to the situation to varying degrees, but it is a very difficult age to accept such a situation even though all of the extended family and friends take it in stride except for a few of that eternally nasty category of sub-humans: teenage boys. What is particularly disturbing in the movie is that the father is quite tall, so she stands out as a woman and also the voice has not really changed. No really dramatic situation crops up in the movie, but it left me feeling quite uneasy, which is probably the whole point, since you try to imagine how you would react in a situation like that. I can't say that I really liked the movie, but it is very certainly worthwhile.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 24, 2020 2:38:59 GMT
It does look worthwhile, and certainly well made. The younger girl seems so genuine! I don't believe you ever watched Transparent, did you? Since the trans woman in that show is played by Jeffrey Tambor. you can well imagine that I thought the Danish dad in the trailer was a raving beauty by comparison. (Jeffrey Tambor is brilliant in his role, I must add.) One core difference I can see between this movie and the tv show is that the children in Transparent are all adults -- a very different situation from the Danish movie. One source of discomfort for me while watching the trailer -- and I know this is judgmental -- is that the father's decision seems exceedingly selfish.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 24, 2020 18:18:56 GMT
I'm not sure how I had missed Inherent Vice when it came out in 2015. It was most definitely released in France, but it might not have played for more than a week or two. Also, I did travel a bit from time to time, so sometimes I missed a movie for that reason. But it was playing today on the big screen -- one day only -- and when I saw that it starred Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Benicio del Toro, Martin Short and all sorts of other people, I knew that I had to see it, especially directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. I worried a bit over the 2h28 running time, but it turned out not to be a problem.
Really an amazing movie, a sort of cross between Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood and The Good Guys. I would almost venture to say that Joaquin Phoenix deserved an Oscar more for this movie than for Joker.
Just for the record, here is the trailer:
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 25, 2020 10:35:53 GMT
So, I saw Dave Franco's The Rental today. Worst advertisement for Airbnb EVER.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 26, 2020 12:54:33 GMT
Christopher Nolan can be as repetitive as he is pretentious. Tenet did not enthrall me.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 26, 2020 23:41:31 GMT
I hate that kind of film, so not interested, whatever the quality of his performance. Space opera.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 29, 2020 15:57:09 GMT
Space is not involved in the movie, but there are lots of beautiful views of Kiev, Tallinn, Mumbai, Amalfi, Oslo and other places. Seeing the world is one of the reasons that I go to the movies, above and beyond anything to do with the actors or the plot. But I will mention once again that I am paying only 19 euros a month to see any movie that I want in any cinema, as often as I like. If I were paying the normal Paris price of about 11 euros per ticket, I would choose my movies with parsimony.
Today I went to see Cittadini del Mondo (Citizens of the World) about some cranky old men in their 70s who find that living in Rome on their small pensions is no longer suitable, so they start studying other places where they could live more comfortably on their revenue. Cuba and Bali are considered but are not really suitable. Bulgaria is suggested as a great place to get more bang for their euros, but it does not appeal at all (sorry, Bulgaria). Then they find the perfect place -- the Azores. All they have to do is get organised and scrape up enough money for their new lives. However, they spend most of their time drinking wine or grappa and having little barbecues in the courtyard. Nevertheless, they finally figure out what they should really do.
Frankly, this movie did not enthrall me, but I sort of felt the same about one of the director's previous films Pranzo di ferragosto (English title: Mid-August Lunch) about a dozen years ago, even though I preferred that movie to this one. I think you have to be Italian to fully appreciate it, but I am not even sure, because I have seen plenty of little French movies about the nothingness of life, and they are not really any better.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 30, 2020 17:14:21 GMT
I found the Franco-Belgian movie Petit Pays (English title- Small Country: An African Childhood) very moving. It is the adaptation of the novel of the same name by Franco-Rwandan rapper Gaël Faye. Basically, it shows the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi through the eyes of a child. First there is an idyllic time in an affluent section of Bujumbura, Burundi. I loved the depiction of Africa in 1993, the throngs of people, the activity, the filth, the odours, the optimism, the noise... The only thing that disturbed me a bit was that the movie was filmed in Rwanda, and it looked like they had to do hardly anything to go back 20 years i time -- meaning that hardly anything has changed since then.
Little by little, the Hutu and Tutsi antagonisms come into prominence ("All Hutus are liars." "The Tutsi women are all whores.") and it doesn't take long for the massacres to begin. But since the story is seen through the eyes of children, you don't really see much of it, and the main problem is that the parents have separated. But family members and friends are killed, and it becomes necessary to flee. It is heartbreaking because it is all so stupid and has happened so many times in the world in recent history -- people who live together and look the same and suddenly want to kill each other. Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Serbs and Croatians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukrainians... It just never stops.
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Post by lugg on Aug 30, 2020 18:58:22 GMT
I'm not sure how I had missed Inherent Vice when it came out in 2015 ...me neither but |I am on a mission to see it now, thank you.
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Post by casimira on Aug 31, 2020 13:45:14 GMT
Some real interesting flicks on here. Thanks Kerouac for all your input and posting of the trailers. Has Unhinged with Russell Crowe made it there yet? I would really like to see this movie. Years ago, Michael Douglas was in a movie very similar to this, same topic etc. It is one of the only Michael Douglas films that he actually does "act" in. Falling Down, made in Los Angeles, it follows the path taken by a man who completely loses it while in a traffic jam on the Freeway in L.A. Russell Crowe, unlike Michael Douglas is a really good actor.
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Post by rikita on Aug 31, 2020 14:13:27 GMT
went to the movies yesterday with a. and my sister in law and my niece and nephew - for a movie about a character very popular with small kids here (a lot of parents moan about the books, as for grown ups, they are kind of boring to have to read again and again) - "meine freundin conni - geheimnis um kater mau" (my friend conni - the secret of mau, the cat" ... there are some children's movies of course, that contain jokes or scenes meant more for grown ups, but not this one ... still, was good for the kids, as it was not as full of action and thus more appropriate for small kids (except one of the kids in the movie kept saying "babykacke" - baby poo - when angry, so hopefully none of our kids copy that) ...
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