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Child's Play Reboot. It ditched the concept of a human using voodoo to transfer his soul to possess a doll for a high-tech doll that has malfunction. I think the whole movie was silly but good. The story is really stressful to watch and kept me on the edge of my seat. Although, it's not a nightmare inducing Chucky that I used to know.
I went to watch "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" and I rate the movie 9 out of 10.
I also saw "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood". I agree with Secret. It's very good -- probably Tarantino's best since "Kill Bill". Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio are appropriately star-like; characters drive around in period cars (1969) and listen to period music (like Snoopy and The Red Baron"). In one excellent scene, fading TV star DiCaprio receives a lesson in method acting from an 8-year-old girl.
I particularly liked the scene in which Brad Pitt laughs at someone playing Bruce Lee. I'm old enough to remember when a great many otherwise reasonable American citizens would argue that Bruce Lee was the world's most formidable fighter, despite my suggestion that they should, "Wait a minute, because he's an ACTOR?"
I also saw "Where'd You Go, Bernadette?" directed by Richard Linklater. Remarkably, Linklater has directed a wide variety of movies (unlike Tarantino, who sticks to the basic theme of Hollywood). "Slacker", "Bernie", "School of Rock". "Dazed and Confused" the "Beore Midnight" trilogy of talk-fests, etc. All are different, but all share a sense of humor and good-natured fun. "Bernadette" stars Cate Blanchett in what is practically a one-woman show, and she's excellent in it. She's half crazy, but talented, witty, beautiful and zany in a sophisticated way. A very good movie.
"Dolor y Gloria" (Pain and Glory) is Pablo Almodolmvar's new movie. It's a colorful trip, exploring art, memory, and life. The movie opens with Antonio Banderas (who plays the Almodovar figure) sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool. Is he meditating? Drowning? The shot goes on and on and I began to worry about the poor man's lack of oxygen.
Banderas (I forget his movie name) is a lost soul. He is afflicted with migraines, back pain, and a constriction of the throat that causes choking (hence the "pain"). He says he is too incapacitated to continue making movies. "What will you do?" asks a companion. "Live my life," says Banderas.
Easier said than done, with all of that pain. Nonetheless, Banderas life resembles (surprise, surprise) a movie, filled with flashbacks, dramas, and melodramas. He lives in a house that looks like a movie set, filled with famous paintings (apparently the house is Almodovar's actual apartment). For a new showing of a 30-year-old Almodovar film, Banderas reunites with the film's star, who is a handsome, ne'er-do-well heroin addict. Banderas experiments with "chasing the dragon" himself, partly because heroin relieves his constant pain, both physical and psychic.
IN heroin-induced flash backs, the child-version of Banderas hangs out with his mother, the luminous Penelope Cruz, and lusts after a young artist (the Banderas character, like the real-life Almodovar, is gay, and one of the melodramatic scenes involves him meeting his lover from 30 years ago). In another scene, life resembles and action-flick, as a knife-wielding hulk slashes his way through the streets near a heroin deal.
The film is about the relationship between memory, life, and art. The dolor (pain) is inseparable from the gloria, however colorful the backgrounds. As the Greek tragedeans knew, you can' t have gloria without dolor.
The Joker - 9.5/10 Loved it. Dark. Left and impression.
The Master - 9.5 P. Seymour Hoffman and Phoenix Rivers are at their best. Plot lacks art, it's not for the masses. It's for me.
Once upon a time in hollywood - 9.5/10 loved it.
The last film I saw at the cinema was Joker, which was not bad, actually.
The last film I saw was on YouTube was Dredd, the 2012 version. Not bad, not as good as Joker, but a lot better than the Stallone version.
In Bong Joon-ho's new movie "Parasite", the Kim family represent the underclass. You can tell, because they live in a basement apartment, and get free wifi only by perching on the toilet. They are literally "lower" class, and later in the film they hide under beds and hang out in an underground bomb shelter.
Fortune smiles on the Kims, though. The son gets a gig tutoring a rich girl in English, and manages to get his sister a job tutoring another child in the family. The father becomes the chauffeur, and his mother the housekeeper (the rich family doesn't know their employees are related). The movie is part social commentary, part con-game-action thriller,, and part horror movie. Each scene has literal and symbolic meaning.
The rich family the Kims infiltrate is a bit nuts: the mother may be a drug addict and the young son likes playing American Indian --the toy arrows he shoots about the house forebode violence.
The movie is a bit too long, but well worth seeing. Apparently the director is highly touted, but this is the first of his movies that I've seen. My mistake. It's excellent.
"Marriage Story" (Noah Baumbach's new movie) is an anti-rom-com. That is, it uses romantic comedy conventions in a movie about a divorce. The lawyers, the sidekicks, and the in-laws are all played for laughs. The divorcing couple (Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson) are more treacly.
The movie opens with each partner's written list of things they love about the other person, which turns out to be part of a mediation for the dying marriage. Driver is a New York avant-guarde theater director; Johansson is his wife and star, who may have an opportunity to act in (horrors!) a TV series out in an L.A. straight out of a Woody Allen movie. Johansson's lawyer is a grotesque (but funny) LA stereotype, and so is Johansson's mother.
The problem: as with the rom-coms the movie satirizes, the leads must be sufficiently charming to make the viewer care about their fates. I'll grant that in real-life, divorcing people lack charm, are vengeful, and act greedily. So what? Why see a movie about that? At least Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary had sufficient charm to make readers care about their awful fates. Johansson and Driver: not so much.
Many thanks Ecurb. Great film recommendations that will while away my spare hours for ages.
That's a good point. We just don't really care about the characters. I felt it was more of the same- Hollywood trying on a new gown over the same old body. There was nothing new there, but it was a good movie. I just wish it was more.
Tony (2009) -- Pretty good serial killer movie, the British Tony is a bit like the American Dahmer, but in this film we don't even feel much sympathy for his victims, as they're lousy people. Of course Tony is a monster, beneath mild manners and poor social skills. It was well made and well acted, not too gross. 7/10
double
Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, ang Hugh Grant, among others. Enjoyed reading the book long time ago, enjoyed the movie as well. Stories of romance and heartbreak of two Dashwood sisters, while surviving change way of life after their father left the estate they lived in to the son from his first marriage.
Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket”
Gotta rewatch it every so often. I’m not sure why. I suppose it suggests something about the duality of man. You know, the Jungian thing.
I saw it in the theater, and I remember Kubrik's obsession with faces -- long, almost endless closeups of strange and interesting faces. He always liked faces (hence interesting faces like Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duval).Quote:
Originally Posted by Sancho
On another note, I'm halfway through "Big Rock Candy Mountain", partly on your recommendation. I've read a few Stegner novels, memoirs and histories before (and like them), but haven't gotten to his most famous (along with "Angle of Repose", which I have read).