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Post by Jeremy on Nov 20, 2023 18:12:57 GMT -8
One aspect of The Killer I did appreciate was Fincher's efficiency in keeping the story under two hours. I know this sounds like a routine complaint at this point, but I watched both Zodiac and Curious Case of Benjamin Button over the past few weeks, and while I liked both well enough, either could have benefited from some thirty-odd minutes hacked from the runtime.
I did not expect to become more receptive to super-violent horror films over the years, but in general my tolerance for blood and gore has improved. (Although there were still a couple of moments in Thanksgiving that forced me to avert my eyes.) Still prefer to avoid the horror films with exploitative sex/nudity; I have no interest in checking out Eli Roth's Hostel films and whatnot, for example. To that end, one thing I did appreciate about Thanksgiving is the almost complete lack of sexual material from the original trailer.
Haven't seen the other Grindhouse-inspired films, but I am still holding out hope for Edgar Wright to make a feature-length version of Don't.
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 29, 2023 7:43:01 GMT -8
Saw Bottoms, the new high school comedy from Emma Seligman that's being pitched as "feminist Fight Club" or something along those lines. It's one of the year's funnier films, thanks in no small part to the cast. The two leads, played by Rachel Sennott (a rising talent in comedy, having already stolen the show in Shiva Baby and Bodies Bodies Bodies) and Ayo Edebiri (who has been popping up everywhere lately), are quite funny, and Seligman (also Shiva Baby) keeps the story moving quickly and efficiently. The film earns its R rating with regards to language, although thankfully it keeps the raunchy humor below Superbad levels. It also delves into surreal comedy during its third act, in a tonal shift that seems a little abrupt and doesn't entirely work - reminiscent of Barbie, though Bottoms is quite a bit more stable and focused overall.
Also belatedly watched The Whale, which is not particularly interesting on a narrative or visual level (it's quite obvious this was adapted from a stage play) and is filled with the sort of rambling pseudo-religious commentary that seem to be part and parcel of Darren Aronofsky's work. But it's at heart an actors' movie, and the performances - from Brendan Fraser particularly, but Hong Chau and Sadie Sink as well - are top-notch. Understandably polarizing with both critics and audiences, but I found the strengths outweighed were greater than the weaknesses.
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 2, 2023 19:03:52 GMT -8
Watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny on Disney-Plus (before I cancel the service, with the $2-a-month deal up). It's fine. Just a pro-forma Indiana Jones movie: nothing more, nothing less. Not particularly inspired, but decently watchable. The way some described it, I expected Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character to be nagging Indy for the movie's entire runtime, but aside from a little sassy banter here and there, they mostly just....get along? I know, I know, she's totally a Mary Sue, because she drives a motorcycle at one point, and even punches and elbows (gasp!) a few henchmen a couple of times, but hey, Indy's 80 YEARS OLD, so someone needs to pick up the slack here and there. Regardless, it's certainly not on the level of Raiders or Last Crusade, but to me, it's no worse than Temple of Doom (which has a much more annoying female lead) or Crystal Skull. Good production-design, competently-staged action, serviceable script, generally solid performances. Also, Antonio Banderas shows up in a relatively insignificant role, for some reason (heh), which popped me.
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 2, 2023 19:15:28 GMT -8
Watched Past Lives, a modest little art film about two childhood Korean friends who are separated when one immigrates to North America, and reconnect via the Internet 12 years later, before meeting up in person another 12 years later, years after the female lead has married a Jewish man in New York. It's a simple. elegantly-told story about cultural differences, and reflections on fate and emotional longing.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 3, 2023 9:11:02 GMT -8
I saw Past Lives a few weeks ago, and yeah, it's an uncomplicated but well-told romantic drama with three strong performances at the center. The use of alternating languages in the script to emphasize the cultural divide (similar to the recent Anatomy of a Fall, with English as the "other" language in both films) was also effective and well-done. Impressive work from a first-time director.
I was going to watch the new Indiana Jones last night, but the family took me out for my birthday (just hit the big three-oh), so didn't have time. Will probably check it out this week.
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 3, 2023 12:21:17 GMT -8
Well, Happy (Belated) Birthday, Jeremy.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 3, 2023 16:32:35 GMT -8
Thanks! I don't usually do big celebrations anymore, but as Tick, Tick... Boom suggested, this was a more momentous occasion than usual.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 3, 2023 19:09:08 GMT -8
Oh yeah, I saw a couple of new releases today.
Godzilla Minus One is a very good (and surprisingly intelligent) monster movie, in no small part because it focuses on a compelling human story, as well as some deft messaging about post-WWII Japan. The special effects are also terrific, especially in IMAX. Easily better than any of the American Godzilla movies, as guiltily entertaining as those might be.
Wish, the film Disney is selling as its big 100-anniversary benchmark, is a notch better than Strange World, but still a bland and disappointing film that never inspires real wonder. The plot is confusing and nonsensical in its attempts to reclass "wishes" as tangible objects, and most of the songs are forgettable, with nary a "Let It Go" in the bunch. (Where is Lin-Manuel when we need him?)
I'll probably write more about these two films later this week; want to get at least one more general article out before I turn my focus to the usual end-of-year lists.
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Post by otherscott on Dec 4, 2023 9:43:44 GMT -8
Went on a slight movie binge over the weekend.
The Holdovers is a stand out movie, and I didn't find it as predictable and manipulatively saccharine as the trailer would suggest. It still hit me plenty emotionally, but in a way that felt earned and with character beats that were always present in the characters, not something where there's "sudden and unearned changes of heart,"
The Killer is a movie I'll forget within 3 months probably, except for the part where Michael Fassbender sets 3 different alarms so he can sleep in a different position on demand. It was fine, but missing a purpose or reason for existing.
Mass was a 2021 movie basically entirely set in a church and relying on the acting talents of Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton and Reed Birney. As you can imagine, those actors are people you can bank on to deliver performances.
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 4, 2023 9:58:56 GMT -8
Godzilla Minus One isn't actually playing at any of my local theaters, I suppose because it's in Japanese with English subtitles. Which is weird, because many local theaters play South Asian films all the time. Vancouver and its suburbs have a very large South Asian population. We also have a large Asian population, but much more Chinese than Japanese.
Re: American-produced Godzilla movies, though the Roland Emmerich film from twenty-five years ago got terrible reviews, most of the more recent ones, including Godzilla vs Kong, have been fairly well-received by critics. Though I'm sure the new Japanese one has more depth and eccentricity.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 4, 2023 14:13:12 GMT -8
Mass was a 2021 movie basically entirely set in a church and relying on the acting talents of Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton and Reed Birney. As you can imagine, those actors are people you can bank on to deliver performances. Wasn't familiar with Mass, but I looked it up and it was directed by Topher from Dollhouse. That's fairly cool. Re: American-produced Godzilla movies, though the Roland Emmerich film from twenty-five years ago got terrible reviews, most of the more recent ones, including Godzilla vs Kong, have been fairly well-received by critics. Though I'm sure the new Japanese one has more depth and eccentricity. Yeah, I've seen all the recent American Godzilla films. They're... fine, mostly. ( King of the Monsters was pretty lame.) While the new Japanese film is certainly deeper than any of them, I appreciate how the American series has learned to embrace its inherent stupidity as its gone on, with Godzilla vs Kong being one of the more spectacularly dumb (in a good way) blockbusters in recent memory. There's also a new Godzilla TV series on Apple TV+, set in the same continuity as the American films (it's a cinematic universe, natch), which I may check out at some point. Though I am baffled as to why they didn't include the name "Godzilla" in the title. Never seen the Emmerich Godzilla, though I may check it out at some point, since it includes like half the cast of The Simpsons.
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 6, 2023 23:30:40 GMT -8
It looks like there was a one-week delay on the wider release of Godzilla Minus One, as it begins playing at my local theater on Friday. We'll also be getting the new Miyazaki film, so I might do a double-feature. Keep in mind that apparently the latter is the English version, but they've done pretty well with the American voice casts on Studio Ghibli films for the past while (this one has Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Florence Pugh, etc.), so it'll probably be acceptable. I'll just have to time my sleep patterns accordingly, as I'm working Thursday and Saturday, but not Friday night.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 7, 2023 7:34:53 GMT -8
Yeah, I've got no problems watching the English version of Miyazaki's new movie (my theater will be showing both the dubbed and subbed versions). Animated films are much more suited to dubbing purposes than live-action ones, and all the Ghibli dubs I've seen have looked and sounded just fine.
In terms of some streaming releases I saw this week - May December, the new film from Todd Haynes, is a delightfully cruel and darkly funny character drama about the relationship between an aging actress and her decades-younger husband, told through the eyes of a younger actress "researching" them for a new movie role. It features a trio of great central performances from Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton (the last of whom does an admirable job breaking out of his Riverdale box), and slyly plays with our sympathies and perceptions throughout. It's also a great film about the blurred line between reality and artifice in the performing arts, more successful and less showy in its efforts than Asteroid City. This is probably the first Todd Haynes film I've seen that has made me genuinely curious to check out his older work.
At the other extreme, It's a Wonderful Knife is one of the clumsiest films I've seen all year - and a lesson in why you should not come up with a movie title before a script. It's been a pretty good year for tongue-in-cheek slasher comedies (Scream VI, Sick, Thanksgiving; even Totally Killer wasn't bad), but this film is just a lazy mess, setting itself up as "the deadly version of It's a Wonderful Life" and then doing nothing interesting with that premise. The plot is dull and deliberate, with plot points often occurring "just because." The laughs are rare, and the kills are remarkably unscary and uninspired. The cast is also a mixed bag - Justin Long gets a couple of chuckles as a rich real estate mogul, but Joel McHale is completely wasted as a dour dad.
(Gonna try to avoid any more bad movies this year, partly on principle and partly because I think I've already seen more than enough to fill a Bottom 10.)
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 7, 2023 10:28:51 GMT -8
As cheap, made-for-TV (soap-opera like) movies are amongst my least-favourite things, May December, even as an art film vaguely satirizing those, was always going to face a bit of an uphill battle with me. Portman is very good, and Melton is solid, but Julianne Moore is such a mannered actress that her crying scenes in movies generally make me laugh (whether it's intentional on the part of the filmmaker or not), and even the lisp employed here was, IMO, pretty corny in execution. Aside from those things, though, Moore is mostly good in the film. Didn't really care for the film's score, but I imagine that was kind of the point. Visually, I felt the film was rather middling, but that may have been the point as well. The problem with satirizing or "paying homage to" hacky entertainment is that it's very easy to just become it in the process. May December mostly doesn't do that, but it's touch-and-go at times.
Todd Haynes' critical breakthrough was Safe, with -- you guessed it -- Julianne Moore, a very tense and claustrophobic character-study that makes absolutely no concession to entertainment value. I believe Carol has become his most celebrated work at this point, followed by Far From Heaven. He's a mature, thoughtful filmmaker, but his work certainly isn't for everyone.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 7, 2023 12:01:38 GMT -8
I very much dug the film's score and its soapy undertones, which were almost certainly intentional (the score was apparently adapted from a 1970s British drama called The Go-Between, which explored similar themes of age-inappropriate romance). It's probably not for everybody, but I do love it when filmmakers plumb dark storylines from seemingly cheesy premises. And yes, I'd agree Moore was probably the weakest of the three leads, but her performance was much in line with what the film intended to convey with the character.
Among Haynes' other work, I've only seen Wonderstruck and Dark Waters, both of which were pretty good - and quite distinct - without really leaving a long-term impression. I'll probably check out some of his older films in the coming year.
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