Oh man I want old Jamie Lee Curtis to mentor me in her ways so badly
its the first thing I point to when I express confusion that anyone who saw it didnât realize it was a satire
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Oh, I treid watching âAnonâ a couple of weeks ago. I didnât finish it. It has a reasonably interesting gimmic/idea. But the execution is so totally plain and dry, there is zero tension and nothing is interesting. I was super bored and could barely pass interest, even when a decent idea was actually on screen.
I watched a couple more Rachel McAdams joints.
Spotlight, I thought it was really good. Its very low key. But lets the subject matter carry the weight, with expertly unfolded sequencing in the screenplay. Liev Schreiber and Mark Ruffalo in particular, are standouts. I think Ruffalo got nods for some awards. But Schreiber, although much less screen time, is kind of extraordinary. Rachel McAdams is in it. but her role was minor.
Southpaw: Very little about this movie steps outside the formula you might expect. However, the execution is really good. I have always liked Jake Gyllenhaal and he does a really exceptional job, here. The casting is quite good, really. But as good as the co-stars are, Jake really carries it all further. I also thought Rachel McAdams did a really great job as well. Her role is a little different from the usual, due to a few lines later in the movie, which give some important context on her relationship with Jakeâs character. I liked this movie quite a bit. Its biggest problem is that the title of the movie is from a few seconds which were really artificial.
The A Wrinkle in Time movie: I am a huge fan of the book and have read it a few times. I havenât finished the movie yet. So far, its a major flop. I actually donât care about specific changes. What I do care about is that the execution so far is really poor. Charles Wallace is terribly miscast. Effects look low budget. Makeup and costumes look low budget. Opra wasnât even with the other actors when her scenes were shot and you can tell something is off (that she isnât acting with anyone) and sheâs never really on screen with other people. When is sort of is, its done by cheap looking composited shots. I seriously cannot believe how bad this is so far.
I watched You Were Never Really Here last week. (I had to wait because of course it wasnât in theaters where I live.) Immediately afterward, I felt that it had been perhaps a little too sparse, though I found many scenes striking. But some parts that didnât really stand out at the time have stuck with me, such as the singing taxi cab driver. And I like the way that a lot of the violent scenes are not really shown so that you have to reflect on other things. I appreciate how messy everything is, in contrast with the tidiness of something like Taken.
Also, I watched Hereditary the other night. Although it came across as a sort of game of guess the influences, I thought it was decent. I donât want to say entertaining, since it was quite unpleasant by design. Iâm afraid that this might be one that I like less the more I think about it, though. One thing that I do appreciate is the depiction of what itâs like for someone who has accidentally done something with serious consequences, in the immediate aftermath. Thatâs real horror, there. Another film that I thought did that well was The Aura.
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Starting an epic kingdoms quad feature:
Troy, Alexander, Kingdom of Heaven, and guy Ritcheyâs King Arthur movie.
Never seem any of em. All special/directors cuts, if available.
Hey Orlando Bloom is in Troy. He canât be in two movies!
The Raid 2 is not as good as The Raid: Redemption because itâs focus is way too spread out even for a two and half hour movie. But as a basic brawler it does the job well, if gorily. I sort of wish they expanded on Deaf Hammer Lady and Baseball Brawler a bit more because they just sort of show up as big henchmen without much fanfare, individually wreck shit up and then are spent against the protagonist.
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I saw Hereditary tonight. I went in knowing absolutely nothing about it. From the theater it was showing at and the friend who invited me, Iâd assumed it was a regular mainstream horror movie. It was not.
It starts as a very grim but captivating art film and steadily turns into a horror movie as it goes. The accident scene @wourme mentioned was the best part of the entire movie. It reminded me of a weirdly similar scene in Paranoid Park, an underrated Gus Van Sant film I liked a lot. Like in Paranoid Park, most of the movie revolves around the lead-up to that scene and the aftermath of it. But this movie is not content to just explore feelings of guilt and grief. Itâs got cosmic horror to get to.
The ending is pretty cool. It reminded me a lot of the ending of another recent A24 art-horror release, the VVitch. But I kind of liked how this movie took that kind of ending just a millimeter further.
Like Wourme, I do feel like the more I think about the film, the less I like it. The movie is kind of less than the sum of its parts, it doesnât 100% cohere. But I would still absolutely recommend it. I havenât felt that tense in the theater in some time, and there are individual scenes that will stay with me. The long, lingering, horrible shot of the rotting head, oh my god.
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Oh, and it has an exceptionally cool and confusing opening shot too. Itâs like they got David Lynch to direct just that shot and then go home.
congratulations on this unendurable sequence
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Iâm personally offended that youâre not including the Antoine Fuqua / Clive Owen King Arthur movie in this
(but seriously watch Centurion instead. Itâs not a super great movie but I appreciate it for turning the âvaliant soldiers wander too far into the dark land of savagesâ trope on its head by making the exotic dangerous foreign land Britain)
EDIT : Just looked this up on IMDB and check out what is listed as âIncorrectly regarded as a goofâ
Shrug has been busyâŚ
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Yeah, Troy was REALLY bad!
I mean romans havenât ever really been my focus but Iâm still feeling pretty owned right now tbh
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Troy is a miserable fucking movie. The perfect Iliad cast (except Helen, who the hell was that lady), wasted.
are you talking about the Brad Pitt one? Itâs Diane Kruger, who is great (in other stuff, I guess?)
She is Bridget von Hammersmark, the german actress/spy, in Inglourious Basterds
She was great as Hammersmark. To be fair, she barely had a part in Troy and all of it was bad anyway.
I liked Deadpool 2 but felt bad because it killed a woman.
Just pretend every sentence following this ends with âbut it killed a womanâ.
It had less jokes than the first but I laughed a lot. The post-credits sequence should have gone on longer. I had a good time with it. More Domino plz.
One thing I really liked about Hereditary was that, in the end, all that happened was just to make people some money. Usually these sort of things have unclear reasons and it was refreshing to see such a simple explanation
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well he did go back and fix it in the end!
and I laughed pretty gd hard at the mock credits sequence âbrought to you by⌠YOU KILLED HER??.. in association with⌠WHAT THE FUCK?â. Iâm a bad person