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| Syd |
 Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 10:48 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12890
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Ghulam wrote: .
"Black Panther" has received rave reviews and is breaking box-office records. The effort by the Afro-American crew is noteworthy and the movie's resonance with Afro-American audiences is the news of the day. The surprising juxtaposition of a technologically advanced African society with fairy-tale dynastic rule may raise some eyebrows. The visual splendor and the super-hero theme are akin to the "extravaganzas" made by some South Indian movie moguls. The results are equally uninteresting.
Apart from that I agree with Syd's assessment.
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There are two prominent characters named Zuri and Shuri and I kept hoping one of them would have a fringe on top. |
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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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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2018 12:11 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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inlareviewer wrote: gromit wrote: inlareviewer wrote: My top five were The Post, Get Out, Call Me By Your Name, Phantom Thread and The Richest Man in The World, all superseded by a number of documentaries that nobody saw.
Which docs?
Wormwood, The Life and Death of Marsha P. Johnson, Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, One of Us, City of Ghosts.
bartist wrote: If nobody saw them, then their titles are unknown....it's related to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
And then, there's THAT. LOL
I gotta see those docs! Inla leads, I follow. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:31 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6944
Location: Black Hills
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Annihilation looks like it might be strongly influenced by Tarkovski's "Stalker." Am hearing the adjective "cerebral" applied to the new film, though I wouldn't have guessed that from the trailer I saw.
The fx look wonderfully eerie. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2018 10:41 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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billyweeds wrote:
I gotta see those docs! Inla leads, I follow.
willybeeds, you as ever make me blush.
Would also add Long Strange Trip, (Grateful Dead marathon doc, may be the best of kind since Woodstock) Faces Places (Agnes Varda and the photographer JR, art movement road trip, unique and mesmerizing) and absolutely Whose Streets? (about the Ferguson protests in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting). There were others I liked a lot but those three & the previous five were at the top of my admittedly light film heap in 2017. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:43 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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Loved "Faces Places". Also "I Am Not Your Negro".
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2018 10:36 am |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Ghulam wrote: .
Loved "Faces Places". Also "I Am Not Your Negro".
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D'accord on Faces Places, so specific yet universal. Truly one-of-a-kind. Have yet to catch I Am Not Your Negro, but it's in the queue. Have heard nothing but good things .
Also long to see LA 92 (the chaotic aftermath of the Rodney King verdicts), Quest (North Philly Afro-American family goes from stumping for Obama to having to endure the installation of The Orange Stain) and Casting Jon Benet (self-explanatory title).
There are numerous others, but there are only so many hours in a day. Frankly, last year was a banner year for documentaries, and I've scarcely seen them all, but pretty much all I saw were excellent to exceptional. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:07 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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I thought The Killing of a Sacred Deer was atrocious. It's hard to think of one aspect or scene I actually liked. The characters are more or less somnambulent, speak in weird formal sentences, in an oddly phrased manner as though they were just mimicking English. And all of that is in the service of banal empty dialogue.
Every character, action, decision, bit of dialogue was weird, off, off-putting, wrong. And it takes a long time to build up a minor current of dread and then ploddingly pursues that. It really felt like a 15 minute plot was stretched out to 2 hours for no reason. I totally disliked the film. For the last 30 mins I found myself laughing inappropriately at the portentous music, the stilted acting, the poor screenplay.
Lanthimos' The Lobster had some of the same issues but at least had a weird storyline that distracted and was used to explain the inert behavior. Sacred Deer was just undercooked and unhealthy. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2018 4:41 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Relayed Deaction Dept.:
inlareviewer wrote: My top five were The Post, Get Out, Call Me By Your Name, Phantom Thread and The Richest Man in The World...
That last should of course be All The Money in The World. Mental dyslexia continues apace. Ah, age. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:02 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6944
Location: Black Hills
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My nom for Cranky Actress award tonight is Olivia de Havilland, for suing F/X for her depiction in a 2017 series ("Feud") calling her sister a "bitch".
At$itW is the one we missed, when it skipped out of town here too fast. My spouse, due to difficulties remembering titles, referred to it as " the ear movie." |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:41 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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bartist wrote: My nom for Cranky Actress award tonight is Olivia de Havilland, for suing F/X for her depiction in a 2017 series ("Feud") calling her sister a "bitch".
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 11:32 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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LoL'd at this a week ago and failed to record. Sorry to leave a bro hanging.
Avoid Red Sparrow. Most preposterous hair bleaching scene in human history. And then she goes swimming in a pool. She should have turned her hair green.
I have not actually seen the movie nor plan to. Am transcribing for a relative who cares about follicular verite, it seems. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 9:22 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12890
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| Annilihation is an sf movie that plays a lot like a haunted house movie, but very slow moving. (It makes Arrival seem action-packed except for a couple of sequences that don't fit in with the rest of the movie.) I like the comparison to H. P. Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space," it's a similar vein except Jeff Vandermeer doesn't have Lovecraft's fetishes. At it's best, it's visually striking and genuinely haunting, but I don't see where the audience is. |
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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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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:12 pm |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Relayed Deaction Dept.:
bartist wrote: My nom for Cranky Actress award tonight is Olivia de Havilland, for suing F/X for her depiction in a 2017 series ("Feud") calling her sister a "bitch".
At$itW is the one we missed, when it skipped out of town here too fast. My spouse, due to difficulties remembering titles, referred to it as " the ear movie."
That just made me snort my cocoa through my nose. LOLOLOL!!!!! EXACTLY. |
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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 2:21 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Really disliked everything about the Russian film Loveless, from the characters, the dialogue, the look, etc. Found it annoying, fell asleep halfway through, woke up for the end, and doubt I'll go back to it.
The characters seemed one-dimensional and shallow/underdeveloped. the pace is slow. Arguments and boring sex scenes frequent. Nothing worked for me or held my interest. Extremely not my kind of film. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2018 9:17 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6944
Location: Black Hills
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billyweeds wrote: "The Disaster Artist" is James Franco's very funny, sometimes touching take on the making of the all-time cult-favorite bad movie "The Room." As delusional filmmaker-star Tommy Wiseau, Franco makes it okay to laugh at mental illness, because he deepens Wiseau's character and makes him understandable and ultimately sympathetic. As the actual protagonist, co-star and Wiseau "protege" Greg Sestero, Dave Franco (James's brother) is stalwart, likable, and just charismatic enough to assure that this is not a one-man James show. It helps if you've seen "The Room" (which I have, multiple times), but it's not necessary. This unique movie stands on its own, and may well develop its own cult.
Having seen The Room, the TDA does indeed aid understanding. Though Wiseau's seeming bottomless bank account remains a mystery. As depicted by JF, he seems to lack some of the basic mental toolkit required to amass a fortune in the US. The weird Eastern Euro accent makes you wonder if he might be a patsy used to launder Russian mob money. That would be a terrible method, of course, given that The Room initially returned only pennies on the production dollar. Fans of Ed Wood will find much to enjoy in TDA. |
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