Last movie you watched (Page 84 of 85)

That's worrisome, 'cause I had pretty high expectations for First Man.

While the "conveying an experience" thing usually works for me in Kubrick movies, I didn't like Dunkirk very much. It's impressive on some levels (especially considering the moderate budget), but it was hard to connect with it. Nolan tried way too hard to be Kubrick and I like Nolan when he's Nolan.

Yeah, I also just saw FIRST MAN, and that opening X-15 sequence is ear-splitting. I swear I heard squealing pigs in the sound design. It was visceral as Darth says. It's probably the most appropriate use of shaky-cam I've ever seen, and I normally love the smooth Fincher/Cuarón style.

Yeah, Armstrong was notoriously private/shy/introverted. A closed-book. And a lot of those Right Stuff era astronauts were a little bit on the spectrum. So Gosling's understated performance worked well. No high-fiving 'need for speed' swagger here.

Just like the Darwin biopic, CREATION, it risked swamping the interesting story with a father-dead daughter subplot.

The movie is not a conventional narrative - more a series of vignettes. The Gemini 8 launch was all POV from inside the cockpit. Hardly any glory/money shoots in the entire movie, which is an odd choice i.e. the director chooses to keep the focus on Armstrong, yet doesn't give him much to emote to. He just bottles everything up, or shrugs off big news like the announcement he'll be leading #11 (received as he's washing his hands). He could have just been told he's got to empty the bins before knocking off for the shift - same reaction.

The moon descent sequence was great with the fuel gauge, looming crater, boulder-field, alarms, etc. Talk about keeping your cool. Balls of steel. What a heroic age. Just what's needed in Trump era.

P.S. And you DO see an American flag on the surface. Conservatives should shut the fuck up about their 'not enough flag' whinging. This is a movie that should appeal to both sides. Can't believe even this has to be politicised. I suppose if there had been an extended sequence of flag-planting in slow-mo with saluting and swelling music and rubbing out a load over it, then the left would be complaining about fascistic hyper-patriotism. It's not that kind of movie.

What a mess...

Venom feels like a B-movie. No, not like a post-Alien monster flick that uses B-movie tropes very well (The Thing, The Fly etc.); like an actual B-movie from the double feature era - a quick, low-budget sci-fi schlock nobody cares about. Clearly nobody cared about Venom's script; it has no identity of its own. It could have been a Deadpool-esque dark comedy about demonic possession or schizophrenia, but it looks like someone (the studio?) insisted on making it more of a generic comic book movie about saving the world. The result is a confused hybrid not unlike Venom himself. Tom Hardy's performance stands out, but that's not unusual - he's always good, even in crappy movies (his Shinzon makes Nemesis almost bearable).

You're not gonna miss anything by skipping it.

The meet-cute first act is sooo good, but after that it dives into a heap of cliches, trading in potential greatness for competence. Still, a lot to like here, especially in the performances—Sam Elliott's impact in just a few minutes of screentime should be enough to get him the supporting Oscar, and Cooper and Gaga are both excellent.

The songs are a pretty mixed bag—after months of hoping this wouldn't be the next La La Land, sigh—but Gaga's voice is a punch to the throat. If nothing else, take three minutes out of your day and listen to her performance of "La Vie en Rose"—it's her first number in the movie, and god damn.

Last edited by Abbie (2018-10-24 20:20:57)

Didn't log this the day I saw it, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Dearly hope it's not the Coens' last movie, but it feels like if it were it would be totally fitting. Each of the six segments seems to serve as commentary on a different facet of their career, and more than ever the brothers seem to be actively engaging the critics who claim there's nothing more to them but cruelty. Not that there aren't plenty of moments of cruelty in the movie, mind—some of them slapstick, some of them crushing—but that's not anything projected onto the world by the Coens. That's just the world, like it or not.

Delbonnel's photography is gorgeous—it's the Coens' first movie shot on digital, and while at some points it can get a bit plasticky the colors and landscapes are awe-inspiring. (Caught it at a local theatre, where Netflix allowed it to play, and am very glad I did.) And Burwell's score is as masterly as ever; he might be the most underappreciated film composer we've got working.

Ranking their films has been a meme passing around film Twitter as of late, so I'll do it seriously here just 'cuz (save for Intolerable Cruelty, which I've yet to see). Apart from The Ladykillers and to a lesser extent The Hudsucker Proxy, they've yet to make a bad movie, and have made at least 11 truly great ones. Helluva batting average.

Last edited by Abbie (2018-11-20 05:10:01)

Not nearly as brilliant as The LEGO Movie, but still pretty good. Smallfoot is a movie ABOUT SOMETHING, which cannot be said about many other modern animated flicks.

(It turns out that independent thinking is the worst threat to the children nowadays. I'd like to thank all the crazy right-wing trolls on the Internet for manufacturing this ridiculous controversy - without it, I probably wouldn't have heard about this movie )

I haven't seen Storks yet, but the rest of Warner Animation Group's filmography is quite promising, they actually can become a solid competitor to Pixar.

Perhaps we should start a company "Long Badass Coats" dot com. Because I need one as well.

How would Bumblebee fare in a double-feature with Real Steel? Didja ever see that one?

Fifth watch, because if Die Hard is a Christmas movie then this is a New Year’s flick, dammit.

- - - - -

So. This is my favorite movie of all time.

Barry Jenkins put it this way: “PHANTOM THREAD is just exquisite, an unfiltered work; a sublime object. Object in the sense that, when viewed from different angles, in varying moods, it reveals more and more of itself, other emotions and, for a film overrun with aesthetic objects, deepened ideas.” This movie is many things. It’s a horror story, a romantic comedy, a psychological thriller, a Gothic melodrama, a love letter. It’s delightful, chilling, hilarious, unbearably sad. It’s Vertigo by way of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, or Punch-Drunk Love by way of Gone Girl.

Jonny Greenwood’s score is on a whole other level from anything he’s done before—sinister, aching, operatic. The film grain’s diffusion of the image renders everything as though it were shot through lace. Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps go for each other’s throats with their acting, the former as excellent as ever and the latter a revelation.

I’ve thought about this film every single day since I first saw it in January this year. I suppose you could say it’s haunted me. But, as Reynolds Woodcock would say, “It's comforting to think the dead are watching over the living. I don't find that spooky at all.”

Mostly harmless. Don't expect any particularly intelligent and groundbreaking statements about the Internet's influence on our lives. The product placement is pretty obnoxious at times and the story isn't very impressive, but it could have been worse. At least it doesn't feature Patrick Stewart as a talking turd.