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| Befade |
 Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2017 4:22 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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I thought her focus on only black and white was a touch of far out humor. I just came back from a visit with a friend in Seattle who drove a city bus there for 30 years. He and a bunch of his bus driver friends loved Paterson. And he grew up in NJ.
While there we saw Dinner with Beatriz. We both liked it a lot. I recommend it for Selma Hayek in an interesting role. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2017 6:48 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6948
Location: Black Hills
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Salma.
So long as Beatriz doesn't spend 2 hours talking with Wallace Shawn, I'm there. I will have to catch it in Omaha, though. DwB isn't going to make it to Outer Mongolia here.
Also a Paterson lover. The film I am most likely to see again within a year after the first viewing. It's just that kind of film. As Gromit discovered. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2017 10:25 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| Salma rubs elbows with the well off john Lithgow. No sign of Mr. Shawn.... |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 8:55 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6948
Location: Black Hills
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billyweeds wrote: Get Out is one of the best horror movies ever, and one of the most trenchant racial commentaries on film. It's also really funny. How many good horror comedies are there?* Jordan Peele has made a masterpiece.
* There's Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D., of course, but how many others?
Just saw this. Yes. What's impressive is that it manages really good comedy AND evokes moments of real horror. I laughed at the reference to "Eyes Wide Shut," and then realized Peele has made something far better and more genuinely terrifying. If I rate movies on the basis of originality in bending a genre to convey a social message, this is the year's best. Wow.
And where you been, Weeds? (edit was to fix typo....call me Tidy...) |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2017 10:42 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Enjoyed I Am Not Your Negro - the narration by Samuel L Jackson worked well. He doesn't exactly try to sound like James Baldwin, but he also doesn't sound like himself, pitching it somewhere in between and keeping it low key and unemotional works for recitation of Baldwin's writings. Baldwin strikes some strong and at times radical positions as part of an indictment of America/white culture. It's also a reminder of how few intellectuals seem to be involved in public debate and discourse these days.
The film starts and somewhat follows Baldwin's planned examination of Medgar Evers- MLK - Malcolm X. But also adds in video of recent racial violence, often with Baldwin's words spoken over the footage. That wasn't always effective, but does make a point how not as much has changed as we'd like. I can understand the connection they are making.
Last year I was listening to a lot of late 60's and early 70's rock and soul, and noticed how much the political commentary from then mirrored today's issues. Like Marvin Gaye singing about "trigger-happy policing." Or songs detailing the surveillance state, such as the Stones' Fingerprint File. Steppenwolf's America/Monster covers a few timely issues succinctly:
Quote: Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost |
Last edited by gromit on Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:39 am; edited 1 time in total
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2017 2:57 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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Sofia Coppola won the "Best director" award at Cannes for "The Beguiled", a remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood starrer. It is set in the third year of the Civil War and tells the story of a wounded Union soldier landing in a residential school for "young ladies" in Virginia. As the condition of the soldier improves he becomes more and more seductive and arouses passions in various staff and students. This is the best performance that I have seen Colin Farrell give. Nicole Kidman is very good as the steely headmistress.
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| Befade |
| Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2017 11:31 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| I like all of Sofia Coppola's films. They are beautifully shot and acted. The subjects are her own. This one was a remake.....but a thoughtful one. Hothouse flowers under the influence. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2017 8:08 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12894
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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The Big Sick is a romantic dramedy with an unfortunate title. Starring standup comedian Kumail Nanjiani as himself and Zoe Kazan as Emily Gordon (Gardner in the movie), it deals with their troubled romance as his parents expect him to agree with an arranged marriage with a nice Pakistani Muslim girl. (Some of these girls would have made him a wonderful wife. The humor is in the insistence by his mother that he choose one of them, but there's nothing wrong with the girls. I wanted to marry a couple of them myself.) Things come to a head when Emily discovers a box with pictures of all these girls and realizes that their romance may have no future.
But then Emily becomes seriously ill, Kumail is the only one her friends know to call, and he has to make some crucial decisions, including putting Emily in medically induced coma, then her parents arrive in Chicago from North Carolina, and they have to make some crucial decisions, too, including whether to accept Kumail. And the infection spreads from Emily's lungs to her kidneys then her heart and her chances of survival get more limited. (The movie is also a medical mystery.)
A running theme is Kumail's membership in a standup comedy club, none of whom seem particularly talented, including himself. He's in the process of doing a one-man-show about being from Pakistan, which looks really awful and apparently was.
This has got an appealing cast, including Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as Emily's parents, and Zenobia Schroff and Anupat Kher as Kumail's parents, and Adeel Akhtar as Kumail's brother. (There's another woman who is either Kumail's sister-in-law or sister, but she doesn't say much.) I had problems relating to it at first, but eventually got caught up in it. It's got amusing bits, such as Emily calling for an Uber ride and getting Kumail's phone five feet away. Nice film.
Spoiler: If. like me, you begin to wonder if this movie ends with a dead Emily, all you have to do is go outside and look at the poster, which tells you that the movie was written by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani. Yep, it's a true story with the occasional exaggerations so you have a movie. Zoe looks quite a bit like the real Emily, except for hair color. We see the real Emily over the closing credits. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 1:59 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Interesting.
I had seen the film's name, and completely ignored it because of the dopey, childish name. Didn't know what it was about at all.
A 2 hour run time looks a bit long, but I think I'll pick it up when available. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 10:12 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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R.I.P. Martin Landau, who made a great impression on me when I saw "North by Northwest" for the first time all those years ago. He and Angela Lansbury ("The Manchurian Candidate," you know) have always struck me as somewhat sinister, regardless of their other roles.
Also R.I.P. George Romero, who reportedly set off the zombie mania. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 11:12 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6948
Location: Black Hills
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Romero who always insisted that his shambling undead things were not actually zombies, and were mislabeled as such by others. He did break ground in the trope of interracial romance, in his most famous flick. It was a neat trick: the audience were so scared of the zom- , er, undead things, that they forgot to be scared of mixed race coupling.
My view of Landau was more benign, watching him as one of the good guys on Mission Impossible, when I was ca. 10 y.o. For me, he and Barney were the coolest IMF team members.
Zoe Kazan was great, as Eli Gold's daughter, on The Good Wife. Will look for TBS, bad title and all. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2017 8:16 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12894
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is indeed, as someone said, an epic mess, and I would have liked a bit more explanation at one point, but it's sometimes a glorious mess, and is visually stunning. It should really be Valerian and Laureline and the City of a Thousand Planets, because she is just as important as he is. (The comic series is Valerian and Laureline.) They have a nice chemistry together, too.
It also has the advantages that (1) it's not like anything else out there and (2) Rihanna is bearable, unlike Chris Tucker. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2017 7:36 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12894
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Baby Driver shows that it is indeed still possible to make car chases exciting, as well as have character development in a heist movie. Our protagonist is named Baby and, amazingly, he's a driver for a gang of thieves. However, he is in it to pay off a debt from when he foolishly stole a Mercedes from the boss of a crime ring (Kevin Spacey), and has a wide streak of decency (including supporting his disabled, deaf foster father) and really believes that he can get out of the criminal world once he pays his debt. He even has time to fall in love with a pretty waitress. Baby suffered hearing damage in an accident when he was a kid, leaving him with a severe case of tinnitus, so plays music most of the time to drown out the noise. This also makes him quiet most of the time, though he also demonstrates that he is extremely adept at memorizing what he does hear. It also gives the movie a large and varied soundtrack.
It's nice to see a heist movie done this well, with restrained editing (which makes the action much more exciting--Paul Greengrass please note) and actual characters. The director is Edgar Wright, which is a bit of surprise because he's best known for British comedy trilogy Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End, and the American film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, that is in the same vein. He wrote this one, so he's a multiple threat. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2017 10:45 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| The Big Sick is probably my favorite film of the year....before Get Out. You don't often if ever see a movie romance with a big problem like this one has. It's not the sick problem it's the family cultural difference problem. If your family is going to kick you out if you choose someone from another culture to partner with......how do you navigate that? This film is very realistic in the exploration of this......Syd's spoiler intact. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2017 4:03 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12894
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Apparently "The Emoji Movie" is the sort of movie other movies get compared to. As in, 'As bad as "Girl Trip" looks, it's got to be better than "The Emoji Movie.' |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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