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| jeremy |
 Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2014 11:28 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| What Billy said - I just couldn't manage it in less than 800 words. |
Last edited by jeremy on Wed Aug 13, 2014 6:38 pm; edited 1 time in total
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I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 9:48 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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I enjoyed Chef.
Preferred the set-up -- the first 30 minutes or so -- more than the rest which becomes more standard fare and less interesting. But the whole film was good. Bit of a pat ending, but at least wrapped that up quickly.
Scarlett is good in a small role. I liked how they made her look hipsterish. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| knox |
| Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 10:39 am |
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Joined: 18 Mar 2010
Posts: 1246
Location: St. Louis
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bartist wrote: Oh my god. No, really, I laughed.
100FJ set off my twee alarm, and I've grown more twee allergic in recent years.
Waiting for Boyhood to get here, but a lot of indie film bypasses the Hills, so can't get my hopes up. On the other hand, we just had a record-breaking flash flood, I had to buy a submersible pump in order to pump out 4000 gallons from the cellar and FIND the original sump pump which had stopped working, and that's just one of many experiences that should form the basis of a great movie....or suicide note...it could go either way.
Hey Bart. I don't think easterners connect, except through the filmic arts, to the true western experience of nature. Can still remember being a teen, in WY, living up a canyon and the sometimes absolute lack of warning. Storms are so sudden out there....the saving grace, I guess, that they are over quickly, too. If you get too far west for tornadoes, then it's range fires, flash floods, and winds that knock you down if you're wearing a puffy jacket. It's funny how you miss that. Have thought about retiring back to that area. We were near Gillette, about 90 minutes from your neighborhood. I remember going into Rapid and up the skyline drive to that cement dinosaur. We drove through in '72 and saw some of the aftermath of the terrible flood that scoured out all the old Victorian houses and killed several hundred people. Just glad they turned that area into a park and didn't let any more houses be built there. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 10:53 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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For sure. There are still a few east of Founder's Park, but they are mostly on pier foundations and fairly far back from the banks. You're right about the suddenness. I've met people from back east who imagine water rising, people organizing and tossing sandbags, etc. Maybe they think the "flash" in flash flood is hyperbole. The hardpan soil doesn't absorb water very well.
Haven't seen a film in theatre in 3 months. Afraid to break the drought with "Lucy," but GOTG sounds fun. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 10:58 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 5:49 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Did we digress too much? Maybe it was kind to delete. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 12:12 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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“La Femme Nikita”; “Leon”; “The Fifth Element”; “The Transporter”…You have to overlook a lot, but I’ve always enjoyed the work of Luc 'slick' Besson; amongst other things, he is a great choreographer of violence. As his self-appointed lawyer, I’ve always resisted the charges that he is “all style and no substance,” on the grounds of “so, what?” and, occasionally, “you’re missing the point,” followed by some stuff about “staying on the surface”, “postmodern irony” and, most persuasive of all, “I enjoyed it, so nah!” That said, I think he’s been dialing it in for a while now and, as with Tarantino, my heart sinks each time he announces a new project that sounds pretty much like the last one.
Admittedly, when I went to see his latest film, “Lucy”, I was already harbouring a grievance about his heavily trailed use of the tired (and false) trope of people using only 10% of their brains, but I tried to put that behind me, for old times’ sake and to get the most from the $15 I paid to see it; $40 if you count the glass of vin ordinaire and the taxi…It was raining.
Hey, Australia; any cinema I go to in New Zealand will serve me a decent wine in a proper glass. The Hoyt’s at Chatswood, where I saw “Guardians” doesn’t even do coffee. They’ll sell you fizzy water with various flavoured syrups or ordinary water at ($6 a bottle) accompanied by either popcorn or a selection of sugary or salty snacks. For fuck’s sake, even MacDonald’s makes an effort to give people some healthy or adult options these days. I would complain, but it’s not fair to harangue the frontline staff; though occasionally, I do give out world weary sigh. The Orpheum, a refurbished Art Deco cinema in the salubrious environs of Cremorne, likes to consider itself a bit more sophisticated, but they’ll still only let you take a wine into the auditorium in plastic cup that resembles something you’d be given in a hospital for drinking stuff out off or putting stuff into. And the wine they served didn’t taste much better than either. Are they worried that I’m going to glass the girl sitting in the row in front because she won’t get off her bloody phone or through it at the screen in disgust…Though in either case, I think a good chance of a jury deciding not to convict on the grounds of being provoked beyond reasonable tolerance. I see that cinemas are now specifically requesting people not to text or message during the film. Even if the sound has been muted, it is really, really distracting. All they need to do now is ban those wrappy, rusltly, crunchy snacks they let people bring in…Oh yeah. I have griped about this before?
Much of Luc Besson’s career seems to have been built Jean-Luc Godard,s maxim: “All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.” Although in Besson’s case it’s usually lots of guns and a waif in distress who turns into an avenging angel. The girl in “Lucy” is called Lucy. She is played by Scarlett Johannson, who is suitably pouty in the way Besson seems to like and does as much as she can with the role. She’s not really a waif, but she’s certainly gets pretty distressed when she runs foul of a gang of particularly ruthless, Taiwanese drug dealers - the guns.
The film starts promisingly enough with a tense scene where a 'not yet so -bright' Lucy is cajoled by her sleazy boyfriend into delivering a package (an aluminium briefcase of unknown contents cuffed to her wrist) to a mysterious Mr Jang (Oldboy's Min-sik Choi). Besson signals the manifest danger of this by the intercutting the action with shots of a gazelle being stalked by cheetahs. Reminiscent of similar scenes in “The Counselor”, the symbolism was obvious, but playful fun nonetheless. However, once the scene was done, this particular stylistic device was dropped. Something that I felt was symptomatic of a cynical and lazy film that turned out to be not much more than a series of action vignettes and ‘cool’ ideas stitched together by a narrative thread that was barely strong enough to hold everything together, even for the film’s short, eighty-nine minutes, running time, which was probably the best thing about it.
Without going into too much detail, Lucy ends up ingesting some experimental, mind enhancing drugs and, in an inexplicably short pace of time, develops phenomenal mental and physical superpowers. Many of this film’s ‘utilise your mind’ forbears, like “Phenomenon” and “Altered States”, made the slow and ‘believable’ realisation of these powers a main part of their story, but Besson has neither the time nor the patience for that; he has a wronged, hot blonde babe in the mood to kick some ass. This is “The Lawnmower Man” with tits…on speed, if you’ll forgive me for mixing my drugs.
It might be slightly personal – I have something of an issue with the rising tide of mumbo-jumbo that seems to be inundating the world – but worse for me was that Besson ” seemed determined to prop up his super-heroine b-movie with a whole steaming heap of sub-Matrix, Deepak Chopra influenced, new age nonsense. I appreciate that many good films are built on ridiculous premises. And I’m good with that when they use it as a springboard to take me places. However, I think “Lucy”, featuring Morgan Freeman, in full gravitas mode, took them and itself a bit too seriously.
“Lucy” wasn’t terrible, I just felt that Besson’s flair and stylistic touches – long since widely imitated and therefore no longer quite so exceptional – were neither up to his usual standard nor enough to cover up for the film’s other shortcomings.
**½ (out of 5) |
Last edited by jeremy on Sat Aug 16, 2014 12:21 pm; edited 1 time in total
_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 8:17 am |
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| So the wine was good, but the movie wasn't When I saw Lucy, the movie was good but the popcorn stunk. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 8:22 am |
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The picture of the first scene is too big. Can you make it smaller?  |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2014 9:05 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| Not a Besson fan, but enjoyed the cranky review. Lincoln had one moviehouse with a liquor license, which folded after a year. Not that Nebr. don't like a libation, more the choice of 2nd run films wasn't too good. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 12:21 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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So, finally caught Boyhood, which is quite good but not good enough for the hype that's been generated. Like most Linklater movies, it is not just plotless but unformed. There's literally no thread other than "watch boy age as the years go by" and plenty of scenes that serve no purpose other than Linklater obviously couldn't figure out anything else to shoot. The desperation is most evident near the end when a restaurant manager is introduced who would fit better in a t.v. sitcom than this slice-of-life movie. It also doesn't help that Ellar Coltrane isn't much of a screen presence. He gives a decent enough low-key performance, but he can't hold the screen like a professional, and when someone like Ethan Hawke (who isn't any great shakes as a thespian, but has learned his craft) is onscreen, Coltrane is essentially wiped from memory.
Having said that, there are a lot of good things here. A general unwillingness to divide anyone except the two step-dads into good or bad characters, interesting developments in certain characters and a general aura of good intentions that's hard to turn your nose up at. Without the gimmick, this would never have gotten commercially released, which says something about the crappy nature of current cinema, where superheros and explosions are everything. I can't imagine watching the movie again, but it's more worth seeing than anything else around. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 4:28 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 5:01 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Okay, I get it. Joe and Turan don't love Boyhood. As Turan suggests himself, that isn't enough to change my mind. The movie is sublime in every conceivable way, and one of the best films of my lifetime. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 5:28 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I didn't take Joe's as a negative review, just critical. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 8:45 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| I really liked the film but it doesn't seem to be getting much theater time here. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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