Having sat on it for a couple of months Bad Times At The El Royale is a way better movie than Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
It’s also not a movie about being afraid to introduce yourself to your neighbors.
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I got to see Alien in the theater last night. I had forgotten how much of it is close-ups. It’s a good movie.
And I watched Parasite a few days ago. I think I like it the best of Bong Joon Ho’s films.
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What’s this about? I think I had it confused with the one where Jodie Foster is like a post apocalyptic renegade doctor? Which I watched on a plane. It’s called something else though.
it’s about a hotel that is in two states and there are secrets and also it is the 70s.
John Hamm does a fucking awful Mississippi accent. Then there is like a reason for it and I almost forgave the movie then remembered no one has said Biloxi right on film except Christopher Walken.
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buddy parasite is incredible
Vox Lux spoilers
There’s a tweet out there somewhere, which says something like *I’m sure that every single scene of Vox Lux is someone’s truth. But all together, they don’t add up to anything *.
And that’s kinda how I felt. It was almost like a series of vignettes. Only loosely connected as a sort of chronicle of this tragically trajected singer. But most of these “vignettes” felt pretty cliche and lacked any real development or narrative weight for me.
I think the time jump was way too large and they didn’t have enough cleverness to gloss over that fact and keep the viewer connected. I just wasn’t afforded time or the right beats to care about adult Celeste. Especially not a Celeste who has seemingly zero relation to her younger self. This new Celeste, who has basically every single cliche thing wrong with her life and career, all at once. And that’s all dumped in a narration from someone not in the movie.
And there was no arch to any of it. It started and then made a huge jump to something completely different and there was no form to the wave. Huh? What is the point of this story?
I think the movie is way too open ended and lacking much character, to really think anything definite about it. It started pretty strong, but they chucked that out the window.
For me, the 3 most interesting, successful things about the movie are:
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The way young Celeste acts after the shooting. And that seemed to be setting us up for a maybe interesting character. (but they chucked all that)
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The fact that her masks/facepaint are based on the mask/paint etc which the shooter was wearing. And also that her first video’s setting was pulled from a PTSD dreams she was having. But they could have made a better reveal for that. Instead they just did that thing where they tell you about her dream and then show you the video which it inspired, in the same breath. it would have been better if she’d detailed the dream and then we had some time before we were shown the music video. (Also, no character in the movie ever addresses the connection to the shooter himself. And/or where the shooter got his own mask/paint inspiration from. Which might have been interesting stuff to cover. T?he narration does force out a connection to the shooter, right at the very end. But its completely new information with no real connection to the movie you just saw and/or either version of Celeste. so, it didn’t mean anything to me. it just felt like a cheap, desperate attempt to put a sinister spin on things).
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The most clever thing about the time jump, is how her best friend from high school is still her best friend, is now legal guardian of Celeste’s daughter. And then you realize you’ve never seen Celeste’s parents and the fact that her best friend is guardian, says everything about Celeste’s parents.
It did attempt to raise some other interesting topics. But, I don’t think it handled any of them with any sort of success.
The end music show was…terrible? First of all, she sets it up by saying “Sci-Fi anthems” for her new album. A provocative title. And you remember the masks, face paint, and the cover of the movie (mask with facepaint). And at this point, you still haven’t really heard any of Celest’s music. So you wonder what we are in for and are likely thinking it might be something.
And then it turns out to be…very typical repetitive summery pop. With no real sci-fi content.
Then watching the music show, it seems clear the filmakers didn’t know what they were doing, in creating a stage show/music show. It was actually very barebones and shot very tight, probably to try and hide that fact. Had they actually hired a truly talent specific creative team for the end music show, Vox Lux may have slightly redeemed itself as a watch. It seems clear that having Sia write songs, simply wasn’t enough. Especially since those songs had little aesthetic resemblance to what the movie, to what Celeste, suggests.
Who knows, maybe the crappyness of the show was on purpose? Very little about the movie is handled with any surety for the viewer. And for me, it’d be a real stretch to say that was on purpose.
However, these are my opinions and I’m not gonna tell anyone they can’t like Vox Lux.
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if you are, in any way, vaguely interested or intrigued by El Royale, I wouldn’t read reviews of it because they’ll probably spoil the actual connecting tissue of the story and I don’t think that comes in until about an hour in
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Ad Astra is very close to being a bad movie.
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I watched Event Horizon for the first time. I didn’t care for it. Sphere is really similar and from what I remember, also similarly flat.
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of all the movies I loved as a kid and watched over and over and still do rewatch occasionally, Sphere is probably the worst. it is barely competent at best, only salvaged by its excellent cast. what a turkey. i love it though
i have been too afraid to watch Event Horizon again
Parasite is good, only watched version with subs though. Like so often, the less you know, the better it’ll work…
and wow, just saw that, going by review scores on letterboxd, it seems to hit strong in other markets as well.
i knew going into haxan that it was full of fantastic indelible images of witchcraft, but was pleasantly surprised that it was also a call to action about the treatment of women diagnosed with hysteria
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Under the Silver Lake might be the best adaptation of Ready Player One that can possibly exist
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Watched Sogo Ishi’s The Crazy Family last night and it was genuinely disturbing at times. There are a lot of comedic elements in the film but it’s played so straight, no winking or irony whatsoever. Hard to believe this was actually a studio film in the early 80’s
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the hong kong subplot of The Dark Knight, which is all about extradition, plays very weird in 2k19
in general though i do wish ‘grim & gritty serious comic book movie’ had stayed more in the lane of aping michael mann and filling out the supporting cast with tons of b-movie pulp icons–this movie has eric roberts, anthony michael hall, michael jai white, and william fichtner in it. that’s more interesting stunt casting than trying to rope as many oscar nominated actors as you can into leading roles.
i think The Dark Knight Rises kind of ruined the reputation of this movie and Batman Begins, by being the dour slog everyone thought the first two were but were kind of wrong about.
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man in his 30s frustrated that people seem to have forgotten or taken away the wrong lessons from what was in hindsight the apotheosis of a certain thrust of pop culture, news at 11
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i mean, i think my point is these movies would be better if they weren’t trying to be so good. i don’t think tdk is the apex of super hero movies, it’s just surprising in hindsight to see that it plays as this relatively breezy thing in comparison to a lot of the stuff that came after it. like it has more in common with iron man 1 than justice league, but people remember that one as the funny one
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but also you sort of have to think of a movie about a billionaire who kidnaps people in foreign countries as ironic in order to enjoy it, and yet it almost certainly is not
i also rewatched The Dark Knight recently and relatively enjoyed it.
The dinner party scene really doesn’t make sense.
yeah I could never figure out why it was a different lady from the last one, they seemed close