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| Ghulam |
 Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:24 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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gromit wrote: Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Is this good, worthwhile?
Thoughts?
Middling good.
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 4:58 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12889
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Ghulam wrote: .
Unlike his earlier "Get Out", Jordan Peele's new horror film "Us" is full of metaphors and symbolisms that do not add up to any coherent theme. Good cinematography but not an entertaining movie.
I thought he had a lot of good ideas that he pulled off and it is genuinely creepy, but yeah, it needs more coherence. I hope Peele paid his actors double. I had difficulty understanding Lupita Nyong'o when she was doing the creaky voice, though that's kind of the point. |
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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: Mon Mar 25, 2019 6:32 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Syd wrote: Ghulam wrote: .
Unlike his earlier "Get Out", Jordan Peele's new horror film "Us" is full of metaphors and symbolisms that do not add up to any coherent theme. Good cinematography but not an entertaining movie.
I thought he had a lot of good ideas that he pulled off and it is genuinely creepy, but yeah, it needs more coherence. I hope Peele paid his actors double. I had difficulty understanding Lupita Nyong'o when she was doing the creaky voice, though that's kind of the point.
I had no trouble understanding Nyong'o. I also thought Winston Duke was the perfect comic relief, the inspired variation on "sitcom dad" that this movie needed. Nyong'o is Oscar-worthy, and the scares were earned. I think anyone could find their own way into the metaphor. To me it was clear this was about the polarization of America in the era of tRump, but that's me. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 5:37 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12889
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| I've got some hearing loss, which makes a difference. I didn't have any problem with her normal voice. |
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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: Tue Mar 26, 2019 5:18 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Syd wrote: I've got some hearing loss, which makes a difference. I didn't have any problem with her normal voice.
I too have hearing loss and often miss dialogue in movies. But Nyong'o? No problem. Weird. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2019 10:39 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6944
Location: Black Hills
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When did you join the Blue Man Group?
My eyes! |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2019 12:15 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2019 12:41 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| Pretty cute. I miss music videos and the good old MTV..... |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 10:30 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Please Stand By. Dakota Fanning as an autistic young woman trying to submit her Star Trek script.
Has anyone seen this?
I nearly picked it up, but went with a complete unknown, Dave Builds a Maze instead. No idea yet if I made the right choice. Or why I made the choice I did. |
Last edited by gromit on Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:23 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 11:17 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6944
Location: Black Hills
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| As a Trek/Orville fan, and someone who has worked with autistic clients in a social work job, I guess I'd go with the former. Not that I have anything against Dave or his aspirations towards maze construction. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 12:32 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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I have pretty limited interest in Star Trek.
But I do like Dakota Fanning.
I get the impression Dave is either going to be quirky fantasy fun or a complete turkey. I don't think there's going to be any middle ground.
The cardboard maze he makes in his living room becomes a real labyrinth to a fantasy world of his mind or somesuch. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 10:11 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12889
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Went to see Hotel Mumbai without checking to see what it was about or reading any reviews. (Okay, I knew it had something to do with a Hotel which was either in Mumbai or named after that city.) If you'd like the same experience stop reading now.
The hotel is the luxurious Taj Majal Palace Hotel in Mumbai (aka Bombay) and it's about the terrorist attack in November 2008. Actually, there were a bunch of simultaneous attacks in Mumbai, but the movie concentrates on the hotel siege. Very violent and tense film. Stars Dev Patel, Armie Hammer and Anupam Kher.
One thing I'm curious about is why the Indian special forces took so long to deploy when there had been equally violent episodes in Mumbai over the years, some of them by the same terrorist group. |
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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 Mar 31, 2019 2:55 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Vice is fairly good.
It follows a recent template of serious topics for low-attention viewers, by trying to make things fun and lively. So instead of Margot Robbie in a bathtub, we get a Brit-accented waiter at a fancy restaurant explaining extraordinary rendition, enemy combatants, the purpose of Guantanamo, etc. It's reasonably clever and amusing, and becoming familiar.
Because there is a lot of ground to cover and the film wants to maintain a tight focus on Cheney, the 2nd half of the film seems like W Bush Admin highlights. The whole early part of the Iraq War where Rumsfeld became this weird elderly sex symbol of machismo didn't make it into the film. I didn't really care for Carell's rather goofy portrayal of Rumsfeld. Bush is also portrayed as irrelevant and easily manipulated. At one point Rumsfeld asks if Cheney wants Rummy fired or Bish's kid does. I really doubt they were referring to the President that way at that time, deep into his presidency.
The film also takes the easy out by portraying these people as just money grubbing and power hungry and completely amoral and unprincipled. Unfortunately I think a lot of rightwingers really believe in the rightness of their viewpoints. But the film shows Scalia and Addington and Yoo as just smart-asses wanting to show off their legal chops.
It's all fairly well done. If a little heavy handed. I suppose if I hadn't lived through it and knew more than the film contained, I'd be more impressed. I just thought they missed a few opportunities. Like to emphasize how a gov't lawyer can write a memo and that legal opinion can be relied on to interpret and subvert the law. In this case the torture memo. Instead the film went with a more facile approach with various top politicos saying that the US doesn't torture so if the US does it it isn't torture. Which is such a tautology and simplistic circular reasoning that even a dolt like W Bush in the film could poke holes in that. Or the film has Powell complain about 5 factual errors in the UN speech -- that he apparently hasn't seen until he walks in the room to deliver it. But the film missed a chance to mention the specifics -- the fake Niger yellowcake memo, the aluminum tube fraud, the mobile biological lab fiction, etc.
I thought the first half was more successful than the Bush admin 2nd half. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 5:51 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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I've been salivating to see "Diane," Kent Jones's independent film starring the perpetually underrated great actor Mary Kay Place, ever since it debuted to over-the-moon rave reviews at film festivals a year ago. Well, finally it opened (I saw it on On Demand) and I'm sorry to say it's quite a disappointment.
Place is predictably wonderful in perhaps the first leading role she's played since her show-stealing breakthrough in "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" a generation or three ago. And she's supported by a great cast including Estelle Parsons and Andrea Martin. But the story, which begins promisingly as a beautifully directed look at the humdrum existence of a group of folks in a small Massachusetts town, turns pretentious and even a tad confusing, as time periods get telescoped and narrative jumps prove difficult to digest.
Even Place's performance, which never loses a beat, gets a bit lost in the shuffle. I'm glad I saw "Diane," but once again am gobsmacked by the critical adulation. Director Jones runs the New York Film Festival. Were critics star-struck by his position? Hmmm. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Thu Apr 04, 2019 4:49 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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| I thought Us was stupid. And I hardly ever say that about a movie. I thought Get Out was brilliant. Us was boring and repetitive. It started out very well. I can relate to a girl being scared in a “House of Horrors”. But when the doppelgänger family appeared in the driveway the film just became a drama about who’s going to kill first. So what? |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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