| Author |
Message |
|
| gromit |
 Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 2:49 pm |
 |
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
|
bartist wrote: this fine movie, which works as a buddy story, a romance, a legal thriller, and an existential parable. Four for the price of one.
I thought it tried to do way too much and as a result was overlong. That and those two absurd plot contrivances in the legal thriller main story turned me off.
I just watched the Brazilian film Vidas Secas (1962). Very much in the neo-realism mold. A poor family tends to cattle among the scrub brush, eking out a living, while dreaming of better, and subject to the whims and indignities that others heap on people of their low station. The family dog plays a fairly large role (and later the doggie actor even went to Cannes and had pics taken with Sophia Loren). We even get a few point of view shots from the dog's perspective. Good casting all around.
The only complaint is that the post-dubbing isn't that great and kind of distracts at times throughout the film. But an interesting film about rural life/poverty. The film prof on the extras said it has been called the Brazilian Grapes of Wrath (though now I forget if he said that about the book or the film or both). |
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
  
|
| Syd |
| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 10:31 pm |
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
| I now have the 4M movie from Netflix and am working up the courage to watch it. |
_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
|
| Back to top |
|
| bartist |
| Posted: Sun May 06, 2012 12:26 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
| Myrtle Marianne Mildred Maureen. Or something like that. |
_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 12:22 am |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
|
| The Iron Lady is better than what the reviewers said. A remarkable story told through the reminiscences and hallucinations of a recently widowed old lady. Meryl Streep is marvelous. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 5:36 am |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
|
Ghulam wrote: The Iron Lady is better than what the reviewers said. A remarkable story told through the reminiscences and hallucinations of a recently widowed old lady. Meryl Streep is marvelous.
Agree that Streep is excellent. Otherwise disagree violently, obstreperously, and often. The Iron Lady resides on my all-time-worst-movie list. It is an outrageously superficial biography, lazily told in every way. The fact that Streep agreed to do it in such low-rent circumstances is slightly disturbing. The fact that she won an Oscar for it prompts another kind of outrage. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 11:16 am |
|
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
|
Billy says, "It is an outrageously superficial biography, lazily told in every way."
Perhaps someday a biopic of Margaret Thatcher will be made. This one is just an onrush of memories and hallucinations of a recently widowed old lady with Alzheimer's disease and with a magnificent past. She misses her husband immensely and refuses to let him go. It has been made empathetically and intelligently. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| yambu |
| Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 3:22 pm |
|
|
Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
|
Why did they have to make Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris a clone of his director? Is Allen going to spend his latter years recreating himself onscreen?
There is lots not to like, including the bland performance of the elusive vamp, who was given not a single worthy line.
Purple Rose of Cairo was terrific. This was a bore, I'm afraid. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| bartist |
| Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 5:52 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
| If he wants to recreate himself in the frame as a young man, he's got to delegate. Unless there are major breakthroughs in gerontology. I liked the cast so much it subverted my objectivity in any appraisal of the film. The Hemingway guy did a good job, and I found other things to like, but it was overall Woody Lite. |
_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| marantzo |
| Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 6:44 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
Disagree with both of you. First of all Owen Wilson's character was unlike any Woody Allen characterization I've seen. Secondly, it was an almost perfect fantasy filled with interesting characters from the past. Well done portraits of these famous people and also very funny at times.
I enjoyed every minute of it and the ending wrapped it up with pleasurable emotion and style. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Syd |
| Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 8:19 pm |
|
|
|
Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
|
Martha Marcy May Marlene is played surprisingly quietly most of the way for a film with such harrowing subject matter. Elizabeth Olson plays a teenage runaway who joins a cult that seems to her to be at first a welcoming hope, but gets sucked in, raped with the assurance that it's a gift, then gets really sucked in until she flees to her sister (Sarah Paulson) and her husband. But the cult's lifestyle has become ingrained within her to the extent that she can't fit into society, and the trauma has left her paranoid.
Resemblances of Patrick (John Hawkes) and his cult to the Manson family are not coincidental. Hawkes is an amazingly creepy actor when he wants to be.
Worth seeing, especially for the performances, but a bit too low-key, which does make it all the more effective when Martha has a panic attack.
Her sister is hosting a party, which already has Martha on edge, when the bartender looks familiar. But what really sets Martha over the edge is that the bartender says his name is Mike. When members of the cult answer the phone, the women use the fake name "Marlene Lewis" and the men the fake name "Michael Lewis." Occasionally the sound builds up till it's like nails on chalkboard.
Not as good as Winter's Bone or Frozen River, with which it's been compared because of the unusual strength of the central performances. |
_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Thu May 10, 2012 11:39 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
|
Yeah, Owen was a Woody stand-in. And had dull moments of gawking in actorly surprise. His wife and family were one-dimensional and dull. Lazy writing.
The two moments I liked in the film:
- at the art museum, Owen interrupts and explains who Picasso really painted in the picture in question
- Man Ray hears Owen's absurd, impossible predicament and .. identifies with it!
I also like simple devices such as a car coming by at midnight transporting one into another world, even if it wasn't too imaginative. And the Hemingway characterization was good.
Otherwise it was sort of wispy Woody-lite. |
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Fri May 11, 2012 5:14 am |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
|
| The AV Club described Midnight in Paris as "a nice movie for nice people." An appropriately condescending designation. I kept hoping something really funny would happen in the old Allen tradition. Like Owen gets his stuffy fiancee to actually walk in the rain with him and they both get pneumonia. At least the surrealists were funny. |
_________________
You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.
-Topher |
|
| Back to top |
|
| bartist |
| Posted: Fri May 11, 2012 8:56 am |
|
|
|
Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
|
Quote: Resemblances of Patrick (John Hawkes) and his cult to the Manson family are not coincidental. Hawkes is an amazingly creepy actor when he wants to be.
Hawkes is just an amazing actor. He often plays super-nice guys. He can cover the whole moral spectrum. I didn't think the film was "a bit too low-key," though I know what you mean....one man's low-key is another man's "quiet intensity." |
_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri May 11, 2012 9:05 am |
|
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
|
| I actually liked MMMM better than either Winter's Bone or Frozen River, both of which I considered well-intentioned and very interesting, but somewhat blah. MMMM was creepy and disturbing and memorably scary, which puts it in front for me. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| knox |
| Posted: Fri May 11, 2012 11:42 am |
|
|
|
Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
|
| Frozen River was anything but blah. I'd rank it side by side with 4M. Both offered intense and disturbing experiences with top tier acting. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
