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carrobin
Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 2:02 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Sunday afternoon I ran across "The Island" as I was flipping around between news channels. I didn't know anything about it, but when I saw Ewan McGregor's name, I figured I'd give it a look. The first ten minutes or so weren't too promising, beginning with a dream of seagoing violence, and McGregor waking in a clinical setting where he was being monitored for various physical statistics. He joined a crowd of other people dressed in the same white jumpsuits and went to a room where they waited to be told who had won the periodic lottery to be shipped out to a wonderful place called The Island. The man whose name they announced was so excited and enthusiastic that it was immediately apparent to anyone who's ever seen a movie that the lottery was going to be more Shirley Jackson than New York Lotto. So I stuck with it, and it turned out to be a good ride, mashing up "The Matrix" with a bunch of other futuristic action flicks--at various times I was reminded of "The Road Warrior" and "Person of Interest" and other plots, but all good sources for borrowing. Some nice bits of humor occasionally surfaced in the midst of the chaos, particularly when Steve Buscemi was around to give it a bit of a Coen Brothers twist. As someone who doesn't trust doctors and has Scottish DNA, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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billyweeds
Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 10:56 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Revisited I'll Do Anything, the 1994 dramedy written and directed by James L. Brooks, and found it totally worthwhile again. Starring Nick Nolte in a movie originally intended to be a musical with songs by Prince but revamped as a non-musical, the film tells the story of a wannabe movie star with some solid TV credits who accidentally gets custody of his preteen daughter. She's a total handful, and his career hits some speedbumps, but all ends fairly happily. The supporting cast includes Albert Brooks, Julie Kavner, and Joely Richardson, and they're all terrific--and Nolte is wonderful. The daughter is played by Whittni Wright, whose career went nowhere, but she's okay most of the the time and excellent where it counts. Definitely worth watching.
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billyweeds
Posted: Sat May 18, 2019 5:47 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Finally caught up with "Suburbicon," the 2017 George Clooney-directed take on an old Coen brothers screenplay that was almost unanimously trashed by "professional reviewers" when it appeared but that always sounded interesting to me. Well, it's more than interesting--it's fascinating and really
entertaining.

A noir, a black comedy, a social statement--it's all of these things, and while it's no "Fargo" (it's similar in storyline) it's excellent in its own way. Matt Damon plays a 1950s skeeze, living in the titular all-white community, who's married to a blonde in a wheelchair with a brunette twin sister (both are played by Julianne Moore). Damon has a preteen son, and a black family moves in next door to much consternation. Then there's a death in the family, and mayhem ensues.

Oscar Isaac is dazzling in a very small role which (if the movie had been as well-received as it deserved) would have been an award possibility. The film is suspenseful, funny, and ultimately somewhat powerful. It's streaming on Amazon Prime and Hulu. See it.
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gromit
Posted: Sat May 18, 2019 6:58 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
I was always willing to give it a whirl, but don't think Suburbicon ever turned up here (yet).

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billyweeds
Posted: Sat May 25, 2019 10:08 am Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
Fay Wray, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Barbara Steele are probably the actresses most associated with horror films, but they have a new compatriot in Allison Williams, who has followed up her dynamite turn in Jordan Peele's "Get Out" with another priceless performance in the new Netflix genre item, Richard Shepard's brilliant "The Perfection." Williams plays a former cello prodigy who comes back to her old music school to meet her slightly younger successor (Logan Browning) and her old professor (Steven Weber). Many horrific things ensue, all wittily told and constantly surprising. Williams, Browning, and Weber are all great, and Williams in particular is fast becoming a horror icon. Her dad, Brian Williams of NBC News, must be proud and horrified at the same time.

P.S. Marc Campbell absolutely hates this movie.
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knox
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 9:24 am Reply with quote
Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 1245 Location: St. Louis
Who is Marc Campbell?
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billyweeds
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 2:00 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
knox wrote:
Who is Marc Campbell?


He's an awesome rock musician and entrepreneur who used to be a regular on this forum.
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billyweeds
Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2019 2:03 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City
The new Netflix rom-com "Always Be My Maybe" is the best in that genre since "The Big Sick." It's romantic, hilarious, and occasionally very touching. Well worth seeing--and for connoisseurs of the genre, a must. Among many other things, including a pair of leads with combustible chemistry, it features what may be Keanu Reeves's best performance ever.
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bartist
Posted: Sat Jun 08, 2019 10:50 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
Johnny English Strikes Again might be the weakest of the franchise so far, but I still found something to enjoy albeit as a guilty pleasure. While much of it is fairly lame, it does riff on the amusing theme of an analog man in a digital world....a scene in which our hero trains for a mission using a VR headset offered an unusual device for slapstick. Like Clouseau, Agent English always manages to turn missteps and bungles into useful tactics. Not by means of conscious thought, of course.

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carrobin
Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 10:56 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Flipping around the channels tonight, I ran across "Sabotage" on one of the PBS stations I don't usually frequent. I'd seen it many years ago but didn't remember anything about it except the director, so I stuck with it, and was riveted. Classic early Hitchcock, and the intense suspense made me glad I had forgotten the plot turns. It made me want to see London again--or at least, some old British movies again. (In that old London movie theatre, if possible.)
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gromit
Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2019 10:58 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Saboteur is also good.
I use to mic them up.
Now I've bequeathed that to you ...

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gromit
Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2019 11:35 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
Finding myself in Yeravan, Armenia I went to the Sergei Parajanov Museum, as one does. It was bigger than I expected, and Parajanov worked in a whole range of mediums, so it was also fairly diverse. The Soviets frequently banned him form making films or tossed him in jail, so Parajanov got by making art form whatever he could. There's a lot of whimsy and playfulness. And he makes use of various found objects. I especially liked how he turned an old leather suitcase into an elephant head, to honor a friend's return from India. And in jail he used his thumbnail to etch miniature worlds on the silver foil tops from yogurt containers.

Parajanov thought of himself as a genius and wanted others to think that too. but he also had fun with his vanity. Once he sent some knitted socks to Fellini, who sent him a thank you letter. Parajanov couldn't read Italian, but showed the letter around to his friends at bars and parties exclaiming that Fellini said Parajanov was a genius. And they'd see an authentic letter from Fellini with his signature.

Parajanov had a difficult life. His first wife was Azerbaijan Muslim, and converted to Christianity when she married Armenian-Georgian Parajanov. So her brothers kidnapped and killed her for such heresy. Prompting Parajanov to move to Ukraine, likely to get away from more revenge. In most of his films he immersed himself in a Soviet-dominated culture and made a very nationalistic film. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Ukraine), Color of Pomegranates (Armenia), Ashik Kerib (Azerbaijan), Legend of Suram Fortress (Georgia), complete with elaborate folk costumes, traditional music, etc. Most of these were fairly low-budget affairs. So his films have somewhat of a raw, naive quality, with amazing visuals.

And Parajanov favored visual over narrative and mise-en-scene over acting. He takes this to an extreme in Pomegranates, which is dialogue free. It's ostensibly about the famous poet Sayat Nova, but really about Armenia itself.

I just rewatched Ashik Karib, and there's a wedding of a blind couple. So all the guests are blindfolded too. And on the blindfolds they have brooches or other jewelry sewn on where eyes would be, and it's really striking and haunting. That's the type of surprise and inspired visuals that might pop up at any time in a Parajanov film.

If you are unfamiliar with Parajanov, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors his early 60's film is the place to start. Parajanov was heavily influenced by Tarkovsky's debut film Ivan's Childhood (also worth seeing).

Parajanov was only able to make films again in the mid-80's as the cultural and political thaw began. He chose the site for the Parajanov Museum overlooking a gorge (the Yerevan football stadium is just across the chasm). And it was intended to also be a home for Parajanov. But in 1988-89, Armenia got independence but also fought a war with Azerbaijan and suffered a massive earthquake. So the museum was not completed when he died in 1991. He was just 66, and with lots of support in the newly independent Armenia, his career was primed for a late revival. But the years of imprisonment had wrecked his health.

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Syd
Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2019 7:06 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
Rurouni Kenshin (aka Rurouni Kenshin: Origins), Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno and Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends are the first three in a projected series of films by Keishi Ohtomo (which kind of tells you that Kenshin doesn't die in the third film, though it's also a bit complicated).

Himiro Kenshin fought the shogunate during the wars that established the Meiji restoration in the 1860s in hopes of bringing peace again to Japan. He was the notorious Hitokiri Battosai (Hitokiri means "mankiller" and is translated in the subtitles as "killsword"), but at the end of the final battle, stuck his sword in the ground and walked away. A decade later, he he has resumed the name Kenshin which was given to him by his mentor Hiko. Kenshin's birth name was Shinta, but Hiko didn't think that was a warrior's name.

A decade later, we meet Kenshin again, and he is carrying a reverse-sword (i.e, one with the cutting edge toward him) and has renounced killing. He meets Kamiya Kaoru who owns a school where she teaches her students how to use swords to heal rather than destroy, and decides to stay with her. However, the man who retrieves Battosai's sword is now impersonating him and massacring people in the service of drug lord Takeda Kanryu, the chief villain in the first movie. Megumi, the woman Takeda has hired to produce the drug, is actually the last member of a family of doctors, and flees when ashe sees the true evil Takeda has unleashed, flees and as rescued by Kaoru's only student, the boy Yahiko, and she is taken in by Kaoru, and Kenshin, who is acquiring a posse. One of these, policeman Saito, has met Kenshin and was not deceived by the imposter.

This of course turns into lots of derring-do, including swordfights, rescues, attempted assassinations, and near-death experiences. Mostly this is very entertaining, though it occurred to me that movie would be a lot shorter if the villains had guns, and sure enough, Kanryu shows up with a Gatling gun. (It doesn't help.) I also figured out that you could use a backhand slice to kill people with a reverse-sword, and this becomes a plot point.

Main flaw is that Kanryu is played awfully, and I don't know if this is due to the actor or the manga the movies are based on. No problem with the other actors.

The two sequels are really halves of a film, and the chief villain is Shishio, Kenshin's successor as killsword, who was betrayed by the Meiji because he was a loose cannon. and left for dead, including being horribly burned. This upsets him for some reason and he swears to overthrow the Meiji and collects a large group of the disaffected and revolts, leading his followers on a killing spree which includes setting Kyoto on fire (hence Kyoto Inferno). Kenshin doesn't like this idea, and, despite his second thoughts about the Meiji regime's methods of doing business, swears to stop Shishio and his cast of villains.

Shishio, now bound in bandages, is a much more potent villain than those in the first movie, and seems determined to leave Japan in chaos rather than set himself up as the new ruler. Some of Kenshin's "allies" aren't to be trusted either, even setting him up as the scapegoat for the murders they ordered.

The last two films are excellent and exciting, and marred only by a talky section during which Kenshin learns the Ultimate Technique from his old mentor. Highly recommended.

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Syd
Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2019 12:25 am Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
I watched "Daughters of the Dust" and is wondering why, in a movie with a lot of Gullah accents, Criterion didn't provide subtitles or captions. It's not as extreme as "Kes" or "Naked" but is a challenge. As near as I can decipher, it really doesn't have a plot, although it's pretty and has evocative scenes. It reminds me a lot of "Man of Aran" and "The Edge of the World," which are genuinely great films, and I'm sure I would have liked it as much if I could have figured out things such as who was related to whom and whether it was genetic or by marriage. Fortunately, one major character clarifies that she joined the family though marriage. (It's also told in a non-linear style, and the narrator isn't even born through most of the movie.)

I really need a diagram so I know how everyone is related. This is a VERY extended family. I have no idea what happened in the last twenty minutes of this film.

One thing that gets me is that this was the first film directed by a black woman that got a theatrical release. In 1991. It's in the National Film Registry because of that, and because it's portraying a way of life that was passing even at the time the film is set (1902), with people on this island wanting to go to the mainland and north, and leaving a hundred years of culture behind for reasons such as not living in extreme poverty. Clarence Thomas was a child of people like those in this movie, and even if you detest him, it's remarkable that he came from extreme poverty with his first language Gullah, and still managed to be a professor and justice.

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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: Fri Jul 05, 2019 2:04 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
I vaguely remember hearing about it a while back.
Will try to find it.
Do any of the extras help clarify the relationships?
Or maybe the viewer is supposed to be immersed in one big sloppy extended family.

I really need to get a new DVd player.
My old one was having trouble reading some discs and most of the remote wasn't working anymore. So I switched to my old, old player, and surprisingly it works fine. But since I hadn't used it in years, I have no idea where the remote is. So i can watch dvd's, but can't change subtitles. Have to get lucky that the English subs are on,for a foreign movie. And more often I get the Chinese subs on for an English language film. I also can't pause for more than around 2 mins, as then the player will go off, and I cna only restart form the beginning. That was one of the best parts of my "new" player, that it would restart where you left off viewing a disc.

Anywho, I have two players that semi-work.
Hate to throw thigns away, but it's time for a new player.
I don't even know where to buy one anymore.
Probably online, which is a hassle since the sites are mostly all in Chinese.

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