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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 17, 2022 16:39:30 GMT
Yes, a movie called Moneyboys is about exactly what you think. But since it is a Chinese movie, there is no way that the story can unfurl as it would in occidental society. The director is Sino-Austrian (his family moved from China to Austria when he was 13). It is very unlikely that he could have filmed the story in China, even though there are no shocking sex scenes, so he did it in Taiwan.
At the beginning, there is a very pleasant love story between two guys, even though their profession is questionable. But things go very wrong after a bad customer. Fei is injured and his boyfriend Xiaolai goes after the culprit. Major injuries and prison time follows for the Xiaolai while Fei disappears.
So the story starts 5 years later. Fei is still a hooker, but he goes to visit his family back in the village, since he has been supporting them with his money. His sister accepts him and the father pretends to. Fei loves his grandfather who is nearing death and doesn't even recognise him. At a family meal, after the hypocritical questions about "when are you getting married and having children; you're 29 years old already," the uncles finally let loose because they know what he has been doing.
He pretty much flees, but he is soon followed by his childhood friend Long. Long is not gay, but he is willing to enter the profession just to continue to be friends. This is awkward.
And then one day, he comes across his first love Xiaolai again, who walks with difficulty with a cane because one of his legs was destroyed by the thugs of the past. Xiaolai invites him for a meal, and Fei encounters his wife and 3 children. Hearts are broken. Life goes on.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 18, 2022 18:53:44 GMT
The French used to be excellent at a terrible trick -- they would sell movies as being a comedy, particularly in the trailer, but when you go to see it, it all turns suddenly serious and often tragic. They have been doing this less in recent years, but I was happy that Trois fois rien (Three Times Nothing) used this trick again. I am not a big fan of most French comedies, and I went to see this movie mostly because it fit with my schedule and not because it was on my priority list.
It concerns 3 homeless men living in the Bois de Vincennes. Two of them have been together there for 7 years, but a third one is added at the (free) municipal baths when one of the guys accepts to look after the new guy's dog while he takes a shower since obviously animals are not allowed to enter. The two original guys are an alcoholic who drinks malt liquor starting the moment he wakes up and a Quebecker who had a breakdown, causing him to lose his job, wife and children. Already a bit difficult to imagine how you can make a comedy out of this unless you enjoy laughing at the downtrodden. The third guy is very young and very stupid. He is an orphan who was placed in a bunch of foster families, some shitty and some nice, but he discovered that what he enjoyed the most was running away and being caught. One day, nobody came after him because he had reached the age of 18.
Anyway, the basic plot is that the 3 of them validated a lotto ticket and they won a substantial amount. The first two don't believe it at first because not all of the numbers that they always played came out, but it is the new guy who paid for the ticket and filled it out -- incorrectly. It is the incorrect numbers that were drawn.
But the problem is that they can't receive the winnings without a bank account, and they can't open a bank account without an official address.
Okay, obviously solutions are found, but it doesn't take long for everything to go to shit. Good movie.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 22, 2022 7:06:24 GMT
A Plein Temps (Full Time) is a thriller, but not a 3 Days of the Condor type of thriller. There are no spies and no car chases, just a single mother working her arse off. She gets up before dawn, makes breakfast for her children, cooks pasta for later meals, irons some clothes, takes the kids to the lady who takes them to school and picks them up... And then she dashes to work during a transit strike. She is head chambermaid in a luxury hotel where everything has to be beyond perfect. And even though she makes beds and scrubs toilets at top speed, she also has to check the rooms of her colleagues and fix any mistakes. She used to be a marketing executive, but the company closed 4 years ago, so she is reduced to this. And she still has to plan birthday parties and try to see friends. It is a nightmarish existence but one that we all know is the real life of a lot of people. So the suspense is -- will she survive? Laure Calamy won best actress at the Venice film festival for this role.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 22, 2022 7:29:28 GMT
In 1905, at the age of 17, seminarian Bruno Reidal killed a 12 year old boy that he barely knew and cut off his head. The movie Bruno Reidal is based on the eleven 28-page school notebooks that he filled with the story of his life at the request of the psychiatric examiners. The urge to kill overcame him starting at age 5 when he watched a pig being slaughtered at his parents' farm. He was also very religious, so he fought the urge with compulsive masturbation up to eight times a day and also with hard schoolwork. All of the other kids were better off than he was, but he received 7 awards for the quality of his schoolwork. You can tell this from the quality of what he wrote -- it is poetic while being very matter-of-fact, describing his daily life, nature, his family... But you never lose sight of what is going to happen at the end.
The doctors decided that he was indeed mentally ill, so he spent the rest of his life in an asylum, where he died at age 30. Amazing movie.
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Post by mickthecactus on Mar 22, 2022 7:33:35 GMT
Do you ever watch cheerful films? Fluffy clouds, baby ducklings, that sort of thing?
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 22, 2022 7:37:16 GMT
I saw both Paddington and Paddington 2, not to mention Encanto, and wrote about all of them here.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 22, 2022 19:11:32 GMT
Did you see 'alors on danse ?'.
A buddy movies from i saw.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 22, 2022 19:15:03 GMT
I almost went to see it today... and then I didn't.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 22, 2022 19:16:11 GMT
Same here on Saturday.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 22, 2022 19:31:23 GMT
It is still on my list, but now it will have to compete with all of the movies being released tomorrow.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 23, 2022 11:12:38 GMT
Back to the genre of "migrant movies" which I mentioned a while back. The lighthearted La Brigade (The Kitchen Brigade en anglais) is about a sous-chef who leaves her cushy job after being disrespected by the celebrity chef for whom she works. She needs another job quickly and ends up accepting the job as chef in a foyer for undocumented migrant youth. She is horrified by the kitchen and perhaps even more so when she is told "they love ravioli; just heat it up and they'll eat it." You know that she is not going to settle for this and she ends up creating a professional kitchen with these lost boys who just need something to do besides playing video games. The heartwarming apprenticeship with enthusiastic helpers ensues. The movie gets kind of lost in its last part, but I always give bonus points to movies that have their heart in the right place.
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Post by bjd on Mar 23, 2022 12:12:41 GMT
I got the movie program for my local cinema today. They are playing Alors On Danse but it has terrible reviews.
I am leaving early tomorrow morning for 5 days and, unfortunately, tomorrow afternoon they are finally showing something I would love to see -- The Blues Brothers from 1980.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 23, 2022 19:08:19 GMT
I know that Alors on Danse is not supposed to be a great movie, but I'm sure you've noticed that I am not always selective for quality. Not to mention the fact that I often find myself in disagreement with the reviews.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 25, 2022 16:15:07 GMT
Ambulance is so over the top that it gives a new meaning to the term, but anybody who has ever seen a Michael Bay movie will not be surprised. More vehicles are destroyed than in the Ukraine war so far although there is no deathcount, so it's like watching it on the Russian news. I'm surprised than anything is still left standing in downtown Los Angeles. My main complaint about the movie, besides it being a stupid disgusting piece of shit, is the excess use of swooping plunging camera effects, as though Superman filmed everything with a GoPro. Obviously, it is impossible to be bored, but 2h20 is still overdoing it for a car chase.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 25, 2022 16:52:23 GMT
De nos frères blessés ("Of our wounded brothers" but apparently the English language title will be "Faithful") is a true story that takes place in Algiers in 1956, at the beginning of the Algerian uprising. Fernand Iveton is a young communist (when I arrived in France permanently in 1973, the communist vote in elections was still higher than 20%) born and raised in Algeria in a communist family. However, he meets his Polish wife in Paris, and she returns to Algeria with him. He is not a huge activist but participates in a lot of political meetings. When thing start heating up, he is arrested and tortured, something which the authorities deny of course. The medical report says "it is impossible to determine when these injuries happened " -- meaning not in detention. Anyway, to make a long story short, he is accused of heinous crimes and sentenced to death. An appeal to the Minister of Justice François Mitterrand is not successful. In any case, he was the only Algerian of European origin to be guillotined. (And in the back story, this was partly to appease the Americans. They were upset at the French debacle in Dien Bien Phu and were pressing the French to decolonise as quickly as possible. Since the French really wanted to keep Algeria, they claimed that what there were doing in Algeria was "fighting communism." Fernand Iveton paid the price.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 26, 2022 16:30:26 GMT
Nobody Has to Know is a Belgian movie filmed in Scotland (95% in English) about a Belgian man living there who had a stroke and completely lost his memory. He doesn't know anyone anymore and he doesn't even know if the friendly dog in his house belongs to him. But he takes the situation pretty much in stride and goes back to the farm work that he was doing. Everybody is pretty nice to him even if there are some awkward moments. Ah, but one day his memory returns and not everyone has been completely honest.
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Post by htmb on Mar 26, 2022 18:07:31 GMT
Did you like the film?
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 26, 2022 18:21:43 GMT
Yes, it was nice but nothing "special." I particularly liked seeing an isolated, muddy, desolate Scottish island. One wonders how people grow so attached to such places. One of the principal farm chores was pulling dead sheep out of the muck to dispose of them. If you weren't doing that, you had to dig new post holes for more fences.
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Post by htmb on Mar 26, 2022 18:27:18 GMT
Not much of a farm boy, are you.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 26, 2022 19:02:02 GMT
Gad. If I had to be around Michelle Fairley, I'd lose my memory on purpose. I'm probably the only person in the entire world who was pleased about the Red Wedding.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 3, 2022 8:29:32 GMT
I have liked most of the movies by Cédric Klapisch (The "Spanish Apartment" trilogy, Paris, Back to Burgundy, etc. including some episodes of Call My Agent). His latest movie En Corps really disappointed me, but it's obvious what went wrong. He has been making a number of documentaries about opera and ballet and he clearly wanted to make a fictional dance movie. So he hired a real ballet star and a real famous choreographer to be in the movie, neither of them actors, and he concocted a story about an injury and slow convalescence. He gave some minor roles to some of his regular actors in subplots that proved to be of no interest, and he clearly fell in love with a sort of artistic residence inn in Brittany that he really wanted to show. No, no, no, it just didn't work. The opening dance sequence was lovely but also too long. He just did not know how to moderate himself this time. English title: Rise
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Post by bjd on Apr 3, 2022 9:11:56 GMT
That makes me feel better. I missed it when it played here the other day.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 3, 2022 19:08:55 GMT
I had no intention of going to see Morbius. But yesterday after a long walk, I ended up right in front of a brand new cineplex (which had just opened one day earlier) at precisely the time of the first show. Smelling new paint and upholstery into which nobody has yet farted is always interesting, so I was sucked in. (I will repeat once again that I don't have to pay to see these movies.) Actually, there was another detail that intrigued me. This movie lasts only 1h47 which is highly unusual for a Marvel movie. Those things are usually last at least 22h20 if not more. What if they had actually cut out all of the boring bits?
No such luck. Not only was it boring, but I didn't understand much (not the first time). Okay, somebody dying of a blood disease might be desperate enough to inject himself with vampire bat blood but what on earth happened next? Why wold that make you grow pointy teeth and a devil face? And why would this condition disappear again? There were super powers as well -- incredible strength like the Hulk and the ability to jump over skyscrapers or whatever like Spider-Man. And even if you fall 70 floors to the ground, you are never really injured. Cool.
The special effects were crummy, very blurred to give you the impression of speed but also to make it impossible to see anything clearly. On top of that, there was not just Jared Leto suffering from the vampire effect but also Matt Smith.
And yes, human blood was required to keep them healthy. What a total load of horse shit!
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 4, 2022 15:01:10 GMT
I don't really mind when the movies begin to dry up as the Cannes film festival approaches. It is when the distributors try to empty their drawers with all of their leftovers. Some of what is released is still good, but most of it can be ignored. However, I will confess that a couple of seemingly interesting movies came out, but in the spring I am a lot less in the mood to see things that last two and a half hours. So I have not seen the Italian movie Freaks Out about circus freaks under Nazi occupation, who may have supernatural powers but I don't know without having seen the movie. I also skipped the Japanese movie Aristocrats where a young woman approaching the inexcusable age of 30 is pressured into meeting possible suitors by her rich and traditional family. It is quite likely that I will end up seeing this anyway if it stays on screens long enough.
Instead I went to see a movie that was barely released at all in France. Most American movies that are released in France come out on at least 20 screens in Paris and perhaps a total of 50 in the Paris metropolitan area. But this one was released on no more than 5 screens about a month ago. In the past, this wa called a "technical release." That means that they don't plan for anybody to actually see it, but a release in cinemas gives a movie a lot more rights and prestige than "direct-to-video."
This week it was down to one showing in one cinema for the whole week, on top of that one to which I almost never go. So I went to see Son of the South, which I had not precisely avoided (but yes a little bit), but since it was complicated to find a place to see it, I had dismissed it from my mind. I confess that I almost never go to see movies about racial segregation in the Deep South in the 1960s since I lived through it and find it unpleasant to see again. But okay, I decided to give it a try.
It didn't take long to understand why this stand-alone screening was taking place. There was a big high school group reserved, and I don't think that there were more than 3 or 4 of us who happened to want to see it independently.
As for the movie, I found the opening scenes rather appalling, because it presents Reverend Ralph Abernathy and Rosa Parks in extremely wooden scenes to set the context for people who don't know it. But the actual real life story of Bob Zellner turned out to be interesting, and the portrayal of hostile racism was something that I remembered well. I don't think I had heard the term "nigger lover" in many years even though it was a term that my biological father used often. The high school students applauded at the end, so the pedagogical aspect was validated.
In any case, things turned out mostly okay in the end even if it took awhile and the police still like to shoot black people whenever they get a chance.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 6, 2022 15:28:04 GMT
The Uruguayan film El empleado y el patrón seemed completely universal to me because even though I was happy to see the little details of life in Uruguay along the Brazilian border, the main topic could happen absolutely anywhere in the world. Rodrigo comes from a comfortable family with an extensive agricultural domain. Carlos is basically a kid from a poor family that will take any work they can find. While their financial status is very different, both young men are in a relationship with women and have a baby So they understand each other and have an affinity for the land and horses and have the same work ethic.
Everything goes well until the accident. But since it is normal for poor people to be afflicted with accidents, Carlos basically accepts what has happened and doesn't blame "the rich" but relations become strained.
I thought that this movie was very worthwhile even though nobody will ever see it. But they might see the remake from another country in years to come. Nahuel Pérez Biscayart is as good as ever, and I was sort of relieved to see him return to Spanish language cinema. As an Argentinian actor, there must be more of a cultural comfort for him rather than in the French and Belgian movies he has made, even though he won a French César award. Of course it must be admitted that this movie is a French co-production as is the next upcoming Spanish movie.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 7, 2022 20:03:48 GMT
Paco Plaza made the scary-as-shit [REC] movies, so now he is back with La Abuela. Susana is a fashion model in Paris, but she was raised by her grandmother in Madrid after her parents died in a car wreck. This seems to happen to the female protagonists of a whole lot of horror movies. Anyway, the grandmother has a stroke so Susana has to go back to Madrid to take care of her. Bad move!
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Post by rikita on Apr 9, 2022 20:45:44 GMT
watched fantastic beasts - the secrets of dumbledore yesterday. first time in ages i saw a movie so shortly after its release (mainly because my brother asked to see it with him). it's not a deep movie or anything, and some parts don't make sense, but the story was better than the second movie i thought, and it was fun to watch, at least for me - i like a lot of cgi and things that are just interesting to look at ... so i had a good time ...
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 13, 2022 18:32:10 GMT
Okay, I have now seen The Secrets of Dumbledore myself. It was still enjoyable because of the characters, but the plot did not appeal to me at all. These movies have become a cross between James Bond plus Mission Impossible, and I really do not think that it was the point when the characters were created (Would anyone have wanted to see Harry Potter as James Bond?).
Naturally, the CGI is more and more excessive, but there's nothing we can do about that. The audience wants to be totally wowed by mayhem and destruction, especially in a magical world where the buildings put themselves back together. That at least makes more sense than in Marvel movies where entire cities are destroyed and it doesn't seem to bother anybody.
One thing that amazed me was how much Eddie Redmayne and Callum Turner look like each other. Okay, they're supposed to be brothers, but they looked almost like twins to me.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 14, 2022 15:15:23 GMT
A few years ago, The Shiny Shrimps (Les crevettes pailletés) already tested my limit for gay camp humour, but it had a good heart (similar to Priscilla Queen of the Desert), so I thought is was okay in the end. I never thought it would be exported anywhere outside of Europe, but it appears that there is at least a gay audience just about everywhere, even if a lot of countries try to deny it. You will recall that the first film was about swimming pool friends forming a water polo team to participate in the Gay Games in Croatia. It is mostly a road trip movie (like Priscilla). The fly in the ointment was their coach, a macho swimming star who was condemned to community service for having made homophobic remarks in the media. Naturally, one of the main things in this movie was that he learned to appreciate them.
When I discovered that The Revenge of the Shiny Shrimps (La revanche des crevettes pailletés) was being released, it is not certain that I would have wanted to see it, except for current geopolitics. In this new movie, the team is going to the Gay Games in Tokyo, but they miss their connection in Moscow, one of the most homophobic places in the world, and on top of that, the movie was actually filmed in Ukraine. And it is now a Franco-Japanese coproduction. Impossible not to be intrigued.
Let's not forget that it's a comedy, so the plot is outlandish, but it entered some relatively unexplored movie territory. Obliged to spend a night in a Russian hotel, some of them are too horny to do so and they go out in spite of the orders of their coach, some with Grindr and others with the address of a clandestine gay disco. Well, the disco looks like a lot of fun, but the Grindr guys end up in a gay bashing ambush. "But we're not gay; we do the same thing as you to find faggots to beat up!" One of them is black, so he gets to hear "We used to go and beat up niggers, but there aren't enough of them anymore -- it must be too cold for them. But faggots are easy to find to beat up." Yes, this is a comedy...
Fast forward to all of the French guys getting arrested (the ones in the disco and the ones with the hoodlums). They get trucked off to what they think is a prison but it is actually a centre for conversion therapy. The Russians have decided that is they do this to a group of foreigners, gay foreigners will stop coming to Russia. The virility training and the electroshocks (alternating straight porn and gay porn) are used in abundance... Yes, still a comedy.
The guys who remained at the hotel (including the coach of course, actor Nicolas Gob who generally plays steely eyed police detectives in other movies) have to find a way to free them...
Actually, it wasn't bad and it was nice to see Ukraine in the snow and not destroyed.
The international trailer is clearly meant to appeal exclusively to the 'Priscilla' audience. The French trailer shows more about the actual plot.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 17, 2022 19:07:02 GMT
A l'ombre des filles is a very tough Franco-Belgian movie about an opera singer suffering burn-out. He takes up a temporary mission to give singing classes in a women's prison. Most movies like this will lead us down the path of wounded women discovering new meaning to life through music. No this isn't how it works. These are mostly bad women who have done terrible things (but we never learn what) and their main reason for signing up for this is because they are so bored. And most of them have issues with each other, not funny issues. If there is one thing that is not really believable in the movie, it is basically that the teacher does not crack under pressure. But we are rooting for him, so that's okay. Most of the women have no talent for singing, but some of them do. Then there is the Polish woman who can barely speak French and her main goal is to improve her language skills. There are a couple of arab women, a mean girl who would like to beat up just about everybody... It is not an easy job. On top of that, the women would like to sing pop songs and become YouTube sensations. The teacher has them working on Bizet's Carmen, which they seem to appreciate in the end. In traditional movies, there would be a wonderful prison recital at the end, the women would become friends, and the opera singer would finally be at peace with himself. This does not happen. It is an excellent movie.
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