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| bartist |
 Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2023 8:11 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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bartist wrote: War Pony is a fascinating story of coming of age on the Pine Ridge. Solid first film from director Riley Keough. Partly filmed on the rez, with some non-professional actors among the cast. Good double feature with Chloe Zhao's The Rider, which was praised here a few years ago.
(doible posted because of the "no posts exist" annoying page break) |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2023 10:11 pm |
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Barbie was more subversive than I had expected. Mattel signed off on it and apparently stayed out of Gerwigs hair during production. A cynical part of me wonders if some new product line will shoot through the roof from all this. Existential Ken, perhaps.
The last line will surely be remembered in future movie trivia challenges. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2023 10:48 pm |
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bartist wrote: Barbie was more subversive than I had expected. Mattel signed off on it and apparently stayed out of Gerwigs hair during production. A cynical part of me wonders if some new product line will shoot through the roof from all this. Existential Ken, perhaps.
The last line will surely be remembered in future movie trivia challenges.
I'm sure to see it at some point, but I've had an aversion to too much pink since "Funny Face." On the other hand I adore Margot Robbie, who, in real life, is anatomically correct (via The Wolf of Wall Street.) I'm not as sure about Ryan Gosling. Robbie is a great actress, so I'll probably see it to get out of the heat.
I didn't like Ladybird all that much, but I loved Little Women, from which I would have expected Saoirse Ronan in this film. But Greta Gerwig is a very good director so I''m interested, though it is very pink. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2023 7:26 pm |
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Had a choice between pink and blue movies for my birthday. I chose Blue Beetle and was reasonably satisfied although I do wonder how big an audience this is going to find. Jaime Reyes is Hispanic from a large and rather odd family (his grandmother shows unexpected skills from her days as a revolutionary) who accidentally comes in possession of an alien artifact in the form of a scarab which chooses him for his next host, enabling him to form a suit of armor with numerous special effects and the ability to create weapons. He has, naturally, to fight the evil leader of the corporation (Susan Sarandon (!)) who wants it back and her right hand man who has a prototype that imitates the scarabs ability. Her niece, Jenny, stole the scarab and becomes the love interest for Jaime. I don't think she appears in the comics. She's played by Brazilian actress Bruna Marquezine who seems to be new to American cinema though she's been acting for twenty-three years, starting at the age of five. Very pretty. I liked her and since there will be sequels, I'll see more of her.
Most of the other actors are veterans of Latin American cinema, of whom I recognized Adriana Barraza who got an Oscar nomination as the nanny in Babel. She is a major actress and director in Mexico. |
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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: Mon Aug 28, 2023 10:12 pm |
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| Apparently I'm going to be inflicted with the trailer for the next "Trolls" movie whenever I go to the movie theatre. I have to close my eyes when it comes on. Not interested at all in a prequel to "The Hunger Games" but am slightly to "Wonka". (Perhaps because I've never seen either version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".) Looks like a long autumn. |
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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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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2023 10:57 am |
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Wait... Susan Sarandon plays an evil CEO? Unusual casting there. Might have to see.
And...Happy birthday, slightly belated.
btw,
The pinkness of Barbie is not too whelming, and a fair amount of the story takes place in the RW with its wider palette. And Ken's search for identity, trying a fairly toxic male one on for size along the way, is amusing. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2023 10:03 pm |
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The review you've been waiting for: Barbie. Ive been waiting for the crowds to die down, and succeeded, since there were about six people there. (And to stop thinking of "Think Pink" from Funny Face. No, I didn't sing that during the movie. But maybe I should have.)
The movie is actually pretty good, often clever,and downright hilarious in places. It's helped by having the very talented Margot Robbie in the title role, and she's perfectly cast. Ryan Gosling as Ken is almost as good and has more of a chance to show off. Actually there are dozens of Barbies in the movie including the President, the entire Supreme Court, lawyers, doctors, etc. As the tagline says, "She's everything. He's just Ken." Which is the theme of the movie.
Because Ken is just a background character in Barbieworld, which is a stifling matriarchy unless you're one of the many Barbies. The Ryan Gosling character seems to be the first Ken while Margot Robbie is the primordial Barbie. (Allegedly there were several other actresses considered, which they always say, but Robbie was a producer and I can't imagine casting anyone else in the part.)
Anyways, Margot's Barbie is in the middle of one of the Barbies' girl nights (there are no Kens' boys nights) when she suddenly says discouraging words, and the party stops until she recovers. But it gets worse the next day when she does not wake up happy, the nonexistent milk she pours is sour, and worse, her feet, which always make her stand on tippy-toes (reflecting Barbie Dolls of the time who wore high heels--apparently including Malibu Barbie on the beach) now have their heels on the ground. Clearly something's awry in the Barbie universe, and she consults with a Weird Barbie (a victim of toy abuse) and is informed that she has to go to the real world (Los Angeles, so semi-real) to find the girl who is losing her faith. Ken (her Ken, there are many) stows along because he's infatuated with her, but she doesn't reciprocate the feeling. Actually, I see no evidence Barbie is capable of love in Barbieland.
In Barbieland, there is a myth that the existence of Barbie has not just empowered girls in Barbieland but also in the real world. After all, if you aspire women to be President and Chief Justice in Barbieland, they will surely achieve it in the real world. Barbie is shocked to discover the reality. Ken, who has been accustomed to being an afterthought in the Barbie universe, is shocked to discover that men are dominant in our universe, and, after discovering a life as a beach bum in Barbie's world does not translate into job offers in our world, goes back to Barbieland to transform it into a male-dominated Kenland, with all the knowledge he got from male-supremicist books at the library.
Barbie, meanwhile, discovers that the person who is responsible for her fallen arches is...okay, I've spoiled enough.
The movie has a lot of songs that would be informative if I understood what they were singing (my problem not theirs). I note that Mattel, who must have approved this film, are also villains. (I also note their board has exactly the same number of members as the Barbieland Supreme Court). One of the Midges is perpetually pregnant because the Pregnant Midge was withdrawn from circulation because idiots thought she was an unwed mother. Actually, she is the wife of Allen, Ken's best friend, who is even less consequential than Ken, a point the movie has lot of fun with.
I was skeptical this was going to be a success because I underestimated the appeal Barbie had to a lot of our population, and I was proven spectacularly wrong. The film focuses on the positive and negative aspects Barbie has on our views of women, and does a good job of presenting both. Visually, it's a treat, despite being very pink.
Despite the film, I think Margot Robbie was anatomically correct all the way through. I'm not so sure about Ryan Gosling. |
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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: Tue Dec 05, 2023 9:49 pm |
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Godzilla Minus One is an amazingly good film, taking place in the devastation left by the bombings of Japan during WW II and how the subsequent disarmament left Japan defenseless against attacks by giant radioactive sea monsters. Well, except defenseless for an disgraced kamikaze, a creative scientist, some destroyers and battle cruisers coming in to be scuttled and an innovative airplane. The portrait of life among the rubble of Tokyo is powerful, and this is BEFORE Godzilla takes a holiday. The center is a family made up of the kamikaze, an orphaned woman, the foundling they adopt, and the neighbors who form an ersatz extended family.
If this is Godzilla minus one, does that mean we'll have a sequel, Godzilla Zero? |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2023 12:15 pm |
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| Leave the World Behind is a darkly funny social satire that targets the complacency of our high tech digital culture, and racial prejudice along the way, making clever use of the collapse of civilization trope. I had to click to the information screen on Netflix to determine that this was NOT a Jordan Peele movie. Solid ensemble of performances from Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and Mahershala Ali. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2023 9:51 pm |
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"The Boy and the Heron" is complicated and somewhat biographical, and definitely recommended. This time Miyazaki is playing with our world intersecting with an alternate, created reality, and playing with space and time. Our hero loses his mother at the beginning of the film, but his father marries his former sister-in-law, who is pregnant by the time the movie starts, and the kid, cool at first (although his aunt/stepmother is very nice), but finds himself having to rescue her from another world. This takes place against the background of World War II. (His mother died in a hospital fire.)|
This apparently was difficult for Miyazaki to animate; it took something like six years. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2023 10:50 pm |
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Incidentally, the reason I haven't reviewed Killers of the Flower Moon is because every single showing was sold out except for the first two rows (which would have been a problem for a 3.5 hour movie). And supposedly this is a bomb.
But the reason for this is that it is about the Osage Nation and I live in Oklahoma. Perhaps the distributors need to use their brains for the first time in history, but the movie is gone. |
Last edited by Syd on Sun Dec 10, 2023 10:54 pm; edited 4 times in total
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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 Dec 10, 2023 10:51 pm |
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| Damn it! |
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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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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2023 12:21 pm |
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| We were debating seeing KofFM, too. Hasn't shown up here, but there is a large population of Lakota people here who would probably be interested. There is an independent theater here which has been pretty good about bringing Native themed films here and keeping them around a while, so we'll see. I lived in Osage country until I was 11, the area in southern Kansas the tribe was forced out of in the 19th century when they were pushed into Oklahoma. (Osage country covers a lot of territory depending on the century...they started out in the Ohio valley) |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2024 12:22 am |
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Ferrari tells of a lot of events in 1957 with Adam Driver playing Enzo Ferrari, Penelope Cruz his wife and partner Laura Ferrari, and Shailene Woodley as his mistress Lina Lardi, mother of his son and heir. You notice none of these actors are anywhere near Italian, although that was less a problem than trying to penetrate Driver's and Cruz's faux-Italian accents. (I have a problem with that.) It all centers on the 1957 Mille Miglia, a road race which is held on Italian streets, including some in Rome itself, with Ferrari entering something like six cars, including one driver who had Dodger tickets, and revealing why not only did Ferrari sweep the field but why this was the last Mille Miglia.
It's kept me watching but I never got why I should care about Ferrari and his familial problems. |
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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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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2024 12:25 pm |
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Non Italianness has never stopped Driver - he was Gucci, in House of Gucci. Ford v Ferrari remains my favorite movie in the race genre. I steered wide of Ferrari due to pans, all wondering as you did why they should care.
ETA - probably should say "racing genre" |
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