Let's All Go to the Movies

TheBandit1 said:
A self-loathing rich liberal that can go to Antarctica because you are confused about your difficult life of doing nothing so that you decide to go to Antarctica with a bunch of privileged dipshits?

Hell, now that I think about it, I’m about 90% there.

Still:

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I didn't like it. Found it very average. I've seen some really shitty movies this year though.
 
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TheBandit1 said:
Where’d You Go Bernadette - 1/10

What the hell, Linklater? Christ, this movie was awful. I can’t remember the last movie I hated this much. What a worthless movie. I hated every character. Not a redeeming one in the bunch.

Fuck this fucking movie.
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He’s made a lot of bad movies lately. It can’t be that surprising.
 
Knives Out: This felt more like an ode to whodunnit movies and did such an excellent job offering something for serious movie nerds while spoonfeeding the audience just enough breadcrumbs to push the plot. Ana De Armas and Daniel Craig had exceptional on screen chemistry, plus Craig's ridiculous exaggeration on the southern accent was a constant source of laughs. Seriously thinking Ana De Armas will be one of the definitive movie stars of this generation.

The most satisfying part was the overall political message: it was dead on with the satirical commentary on wealth and immigrants. Definitely see this in a packed theater.

Greatly enjoyed a bunch of spoileriffic plot points:
I had a good feeling Marta was a red herring without her even knowing, but revealing that immediately in order to send the plot into a reverse game of Clue was an even better play for setting up an effective final act. Plus the whole concept of playing go, where Marta was playing to make beautiful shapes rather than playing to win and then expanding that mindset out to the overall plot.

I love Edi Patterson in all her other roles (Vice Principals and The Righteous Gemstones) and her whole role of riffing on "the butler/housemaid did it" cliche was brilliant

And of course the politics. Lost count of the microaggressions on Marta and there were SO many satisfying bits skewering capitalism and hypocrisy: multiple obvious running gags like NOBODY knowing where she was from or everyone saying they wanted her at the funeral but got outvoted, the son in law talking about immigrants and handing Marta his plate (after pointing out the fact she's an immigrant), how the SJW daughter of the influencer lifestyle guru ended up the one to point out how Marta's mother is undocumented, the "$1 million loan" to the oldest daughter and how basically the whole family was the butt of the joke on "building something from the ground up"
 
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The Irishman - 7/10

Some great performances and an exceptional script are enough to carry Scorsese's latest mob epic through the distracting de-aging CGI and a cumbersome middle third into a very watchable 210 minute movie. I easily sat through the whole thing without so much as pausing for a bathroom break so now I'm a certified cinema lover. The fast moving first hour helps in that regard and the third act, which could really be recognized as its own movie, is a captivating reflection on a conflicted man's life choices. But the middle hour-ish slogs through laying the groundwork for the obvious conclusion.

The powerhouse supporting performances from Joe Pesci and Al Pacino were the highlights. Pesci's should get many well deserved nominations as it's one of the best I've seen this year. The de-aging really did a number on De Niro's performance though. At best, it made him look like a 40 year old cartoon rendering of himself. The close up reaction shots resembled a hideous chimera in some godless dream world, its eyes lifelessly staring deep into your soul like the most terrifying demonic depictions or Tom Hanks in The Polar Express. More importantly, it doesn't convey the passage of time necessary for the story. Too much suspension of disbelief is needed.

Marty's usual entertaining as all hell dialogue is here in abundance but there's so much of it, The Irishman will probably need a few viewings to catch all of the gold. Look for Hoffa's opinion on how to dress for meetings and a later conversation on acquiring a fish as prime examples. Pacino definitely gets the most fun lines.

If you like crime epics, this should hit all of the marks. It's self reflective in ways you normally don't see from the genre. A refreshing mob movie.
 
LurchingBeast said:
The Fanatic - 1.5/10

The Fred Durst directed and John Travolta starring The Fanatic exceeded all of my expectations of awful. It's achieves the level of bad that can only be reached when a filmmaker truly believes he is doing good work despite everything pointing to the contrary. There is pointless narration and terrible acting all around but most of it is so bad you can't help but let out uneasy laughter.

John Travolta makes some motherfucking decisions with his performance. He plays the obsessive fan with a very dubious portrayal of a mental handicap, specifically Aspergers, which makes the humorous moments of bad dialogue feel gross. Knowing that Travolta's own son, who passed away as a teen, was autistic is just another layer of WHAT THE FUCK. For real, this is his first line in the film:

Devon Sawa plays the "antagonist" (I use quotation marks because it's never clear who Durst thinks we should root for), a two-faced, big name actor who rides around with his son in his mid-price luxury car LISTENING TO LIMP BIZKIT. I'm not fucking joking.

The ending does not make a lick of sense but it's so wild that it fits with all of the other odorous bullshit.

Feels like I need to watch The Godfather tonight to make up for that.
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This is on Prime Streaming for the morbidly curious.

OceanOfMead
 
The World is Yours: On Netflix now. I got in the mood to watch this again after Knives Out since it's another subversive take on a cliche genre and it's a straightforward fun watch. Think the same wavelength as Miike's First Love except with first gen immigrants to France and VERY French humor. Wish I'd remembered this sooner and you'd dig this LurchingBeast - the plot follows Fares, a drug dealer looking to straighten out his life by opening Mr. Freeze ice pop franchises.

His ambition is screwed up by his mother, a professional con artist who gambled his savings away. He's forced to do one last deal and of course, the plan goes wrong and we experience the heist story turned inside out. Besides the overcontrolling mother, you have a mysterious love interest, a sidekick who is obsessed with the illuminati, and two brainless henchmen both named Mohamed who were raised by insta/social media. Multiple plates are spinning throughout the story and it gets to a point where you don't know who you're rooting for, but it remains entertaining through and through.

As the plot gets more zany, we also see the political and social realities of a divided Europe depicted on screen. The core of the plot heavily focused on racism towards Muslim migrants. Every character, including supporting cast members, gets a chance to shine and it's a super fun watch.
 
The Report - 6/10

Steven Soderbergh's usual collaborator Scott Z Burns wrote and directed this procedural about the Senate Intelligence Commitee's report on the CIA's use of torture after 9/11. I couldn't help but think Soderbergh's hand would have lent the movie some much needed stimulation to the 'everything is so fucked' storytelling. Instead we have an angry but very basic, fairly boring take on a dark but important time in American history. Perhaps sensing this, Adam Driver goes way over the top, trying to inject desperate energy into every scene. He's good but a bit too much at times and the cast of a bunch of D.C. caricatures (and a hell of a Diane Feinstein impression by Annette Bening) doesn't offer much help.

On Prime.
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Atlantics - 8/10

The Grand Prix winner at Cannes this year caught me by surprise, dragging me into its languid love story with magical realism and social commentary in abundance. Atlantics raises questions about the migrant crisis and aged patriarchal customs in a genre bending creation you can call African gothic. A young Senegalese girl arranged to marry a rich man falls in love with a poor construction worker, who himself sets off with a group of friends when their boss won't pay them. Some unexpected horror elements sort of take over the story but the movie is never really scary. First time director Mati Diop is one to watch out for. Her cinematographer Claire Mathon (who also did this year's Portrait of a Lady on Fire) does masterful work, filming the ocean so elegantly while also doing some amazing work with lights and mirrors.

Yet another worthy contender for best foreign film this year.

On Netflix.
 
I saw The Souvenir a while back and noticed that it's ending up on some end of year lists...

Please don't listen to the critics. Stay far away. While I guess there are some beautifully shot scenes, it's a painful terrible film that I found no enjoyment in. I'm aware that film is meant to make you uncomfortable, to think about things and try to understand the perspectives of others, but with The Souvenir? Fuck that. It's just a bad movie that I will never understand.

Lutter said:


Netflix theaters! Here we goooo!
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I wish Netflix would purchase The Seven Gables and Guild 45th in Seattle. They're well-loved Landmark theaters that have been shuttered for a few years now while the owners try to find a way to tear them down and sell to developers. There were rumors that Amazon was going to step in and buy Landmark entirely, but that never happened.
 
Mr Gundam said:
I saw The Souvenir a while back and noticed that it's ending up on some end of year lists...

Please don't listen to the critics. Stay far away. While I guess there are some beautifully shot scenes, it's a painful terrible film that I found no enjoyment in. I'm aware that film is meant to make you uncomfortable, to think about things and try to understand the perspectives of others, but with The Souvenir? Fuck that. It's just a bad movie that I will never understand.



I wish Netflix would purchase The Seven Gables and Guild 45th in Seattle. They're well-loved Landmark theaters that have been shuttered for a few years now while the owners try to find a way to tear them down and sell to developers. There were rumors that Amazon was going to step in and buy Landmark entirely, but that never happened.
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The Souvenir was a miss for me as well. I get it, the troubled romance told through the fog of memories, but that doesn't make it any better. It was middling at best.
 
LurchingBeast said:
The Souvenir was a miss for me as well. I get it, the troubled romance told through the fog of memories, but that doesn't make it any better. It was middling at best.
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It is so goddamn middling and meandering that I am stumped to see it on Vanity Fair and NYT’s lists. I read their reviews and feel like we watched entirely different movies. They failed at the whole fog of memories thing, too. He’s just a horrible person who grifts the hell out of her, he has no redeeming or attractive qualities that might lure her to him.
 
flexabull said:
Hey movie gurus, (LurchingBeast, air, GhostOfGaspar, whomever else I am missing...) I'd love to see a list of your favorite films of 2019. I have some bachelor time coming up this week and would like to catch up on some movies I have missed.
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I still have so many to see and it's the time of year when the best stuff usually comes out for award season. At best, I can put out a list of movies I would put near the top.

The Beach Bum - I know I talk about it all the time but it's the funniest movie I've seen in years. The best stoner comedy of all time?

Midsommar - Trippy, the blackest of black comedies dressed up as an arthouse horror film. Probably will end up my movie of the year.

Apollo 11 - the best space program doc I've ever seen, told completely through transmissions and NASA footage, most of which previously unreleased.

Parasite - funny as hell, tense, brilliant. Genre bending and manipulative in all the right ways.

Also in the running...

The Lighthouse
Her Smell
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
In Fabric
High Life
Fast Color
Little Woods
The Mustang
As Astra
 
Watched The Irishman. Not nearly as boring as everyone claimed. I think Anna Paquin only had one line because she has a problem of always sounding like Anna Paquin and her accent was all wrong.

And as a Michigander I spent several minutes going over how the neighborhood houses looked right but the restaurant looked all wrong. I have passed the place Hoffa disappeared from (an Andiamo last I checked) a number of times, and while I would believe the area was less built up in the 70s, there’s no way there was a massive scenic drop off behind it. In a 3+ hour movie, this is what I chose to nitpick.
 
flexabull said:
Hey movie gurus, (LurchingBeast, air, GhostOfGaspar, whomever else I am missing...) I'd love to see a list of your favorite films of 2019. I have some bachelor time coming up this week and would like to catch up on some movies I have missed.
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Some of these will be impossible to see because they aren't on any streaming platforms or have unknown release dates:

Parasite
The Art of Self Defense
Knives Out
First Love
Dogs Don't Wear Pants
Synchronic
Swallow
Midsommar
Ford v Ferrari
Us

I still need to see:
Booksmart
Uncut Gems
In Fabric
 
OceanOfMead said:
Watched The Irishman. Not nearly as boring as everyone claimed. I think Anna Paquin only had one line because she has a problem of always sounding like Anna Paquin and her accent was all wrong.

And as a Michigander I spent several minutes going over how the neighborhood houses looked right but the restaurant looked all wrong. I have passed the place Hoffa disappeared from (an Andiamo last I checked) a number of times, and while I would believe the area was less built up in the 70s, there’s no way there was a massive scenic drop off behind it. In a 3+ hour movie, this is what I chose to nitpick.
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I found this really cool. I used to pass the North Avenue Baths building (which later housed Trencherman) every day on the Blue Line.
 
ew.com

Adam Sandler threatens to make a movie 'so bad on purpose' if he doesn't win Oscar for 'Uncut Gems'

Are you ready for 'Grown Ups 3: Fart Camp'?
ew.com ew.com

www.streamingobserver.com

Netflix's Movie Catalog Has Shrunk By 40% Since 2014

Netflix continues to lose movies to competing services, and for the first time, it's losing US customers too. How bad has it gotten? Click to find out.
www.streamingobserver.com www.streamingobserver.com

On that second link - the only reason I still have Netflix is the fact my bank runs a special that let me have it free til July of next year. Gonna keep an eye out for a Hulu ad-free special and likely dumping Netflix when my special runs out.
 
LurchingBeast said:



I found this really cool. I used to pass the North Avenue Baths building (which later housed Trencherman) every day on the Blue Line.
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They chose a place where the front looked right:
byoblikeaboss.com

Andiamo Bloomfield Township - Cork and Journey

Corkage fee for Andiamo Bloomfield Township in Bloomfield Hills, MI. This Italian Steakhouse Restaurant Does Not Allow bringing your own bottle (BYOB), Last update 10-Nov-2023.
byoblikeaboss.com byoblikeaboss.com
 
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