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Syd
Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:30 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Tomb Raider is quite an improvement over "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" (which I liked, partly as a guilty pleasure) and its awful sequel because it has really good action sequences, and because Alicia Vikander is its star. She's playing it much younger than Angelina Jolie did. I'd estimate the character as being around 20, extremely intelligent but all too human, fearful, brave, vulnerable* stubborn and missing her daddy, who everyone wants to declare dead but Lara thinks is still alive.

Since she is unwilling to claim her enormous inheritance, she has to scrounge for money even as she's off to save the world. Interestingly, this leads to one of my favorite sequences in the film, with Lara playing the fox in a bicycle game of Fox and Hounds. Her joy in this sequence is infectious.

Well worth checking out.

*There really should be a scene with her treating the black-and-blue marks over every inch of her body, but at least we get one with her father sewing her stitches. And she does wear bandages through much of the movie.

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gromit
Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 4:36 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
I liked I, Tonya.
It's entertaining and a bit wacky with unusual characters and a wild underlying true story. It's a strange choice to make something of a black comedy out of domestic abuse and a hard-boiled mother jealous of her daughter. But it mostly comes off.
In a way, it reminded me of 3 Billboards, which also depicts an uncompromising mom in whitetrashville.

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gromit
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 12:24 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Didn't like a thing about The Shape of Water, including the poetic but not relevant title. The cartoonish villain was the worst part -- he's racist, mysogynist and cruel to the creature -- followed by the clunky dialogue. Also, for such a top secret project they seemed to have exactly one security agent who was determined to lone wolf it (did he even have an assistant?) Yeah, there were some police/armed guards but they were just background wallpaper.

It's funny I was pretty sure that Shape of Water would win Best Picture, because it sounded like a well-made odd but safe choice. If I knew it featured a mute woman (symbolism?), a gay male, a black friend, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon as the ultimate outsider, I would have been certain it would win.

It looked and felt a lot like a Jeunet and Caro film, especially intentionally artificial color scheme and odd lighting choices.
It often felt like an elaborate Disney film.
The Richard Jenkins character was the only mildly interesting part of the film.
Well, I'll try to see what other folks said about it, but I didn't like it at all.

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bartist
Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 6:42 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
I took Shape as an allegory, so I didn't much mind the holes and warts. I didn't see that much Disney in it, unless Disney has recently upped their brutality, bathtub masturbation and frontal nudity. Octavia Spencer apparently walked directly over from the set of Hidden Figures, to confer more Oscar worthiness and tough love. Yeah, I was fairly meh about it in terms of plotting. That's how it is with most fairy tales.

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gromit
Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2018 10:29 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
I thought it was allegory too -- just of the dumbest and most obvious sort.

My Disney reference relates to how one side is completely good, the other side bad -- unlikely heroic misfits v. well-trained uber-authority figure. And you know pretty quickly, that the good side will triumph and the bad guy will get his comeuppance. There's really no suspense.

I would have preferred if they left off the subplots, such as the Russkies, and focused more on the science approach to the creature and the weird central romance. That is, more attention and emphasis on the sea creature. As it was the creature was fairly boring and oddly uninteresting in the film they made. They chose to focus on capering around and Cold War intrigue, instead of the unique aspects of the film, that they've captured this manlike fish creature, and that a woman becomes romantically involved with it.

I also didn't like how incurious the film was. They never seemed concerned with what the creature ate, how it would interact with other aquatic animals, whether there were other such creatures, etc. Even little things annoyed me, like why would you give and keep giving hard-boiled eggs with the shell on to a sea creature.

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bartist
Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2018 7:47 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
We wondered about the eggs, too.

I don't see Del Toro ever going in a true science fiction genre path. As you say: incurious.

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billyweeds
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 1:15 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Did not outright dislike The Shape of Water, but thought it was just okay and not at all deserving of the statuette. And although the villain was a caricature, the fact that he was played by Michael Shannon helped enormously. Shannon is golden.
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Ghulam
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 2:41 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY
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Didn't care much for Shape of Water. Liked I Tonya a lot.

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Ghulam
Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 2:51 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY
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Armando Iannucci's "The Death of Stalin" has some good laughs but does not have the sustained zaniness of his "Veep". Steve Buscemi is delightful in the role of Nikita Khrushchev.


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gromit
Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 10:02 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Stalin is on my hit list ...

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inlareviewer
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:13 am Reply with quote
Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS
Have avoided The Shape of Water ever since The Singing Dancing Shrink said, "It's green. Very green. A green movie."

Well, that, and the trailer, which suggested Dancer in The Dark meets Creature From the Black Lagoon by way of Cocoon, or sump'n.

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gromit
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 3:36 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Green & brown

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bartist
Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 10:25 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Ghulam wrote:
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Didn't care much for Shape of Water. Liked I Tonya a lot.

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Tonya was the rare sort of film where it was described to me, my first thought was ugh why would I want to see that, and then later I am leaving the theater certain it's the best film of the year. Liked it far more than 3 Billboards or the H20. Faulkner defined fiction as a tale of the human heart in conflict with itself, and I Tonya delivered a fine exemplar.

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gromit
Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 4:37 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
I picked up Phantom Thread knowing nothing about it. Turns out it's a type of film that bores me considerably. I just wasn't interested at all in the slow unfolding of a vague romance between a fussy boring guy and a smirking woman with an annoying accent. Seemed the kind prestige picture that Ralph Fiennes or maybe Jeremy Irons would be in.

For some reason the sound bothered me. I didn't like the rather cliched score. Alma's accent was irritating. And DDLewis' mumbling was irksome. A few times I had to rewind and turn on the subtitles. Though after a while I wasn't invested enough to bother. I was so disengaged that a number of scenes looked like scenes being filmed and acted.

Just not my kind of film at all.

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gromit
Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 6:06 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Death of Stalin is an odd film. It felt jarring the first time the top echelon of Soviet leaders started acting like bumbling squabbling fools. Then things settled down. But it kind of gets caught between farce and history without either satisfying. I'm not really sure who the film was intended for or why it was made. I think I would have preferred a straightforward history. Or a more zany farce. Maybe this was supposed to be a Russian Dr. Strangelove or something.

A few good ideas weren't really presented as well as they could have been. Some of the farcical moments came off, some didn't. I might like it better on 2nd viewing, but not sure i'd rewatch it.

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