Films Recently Watched

I just watched Hereditary. It was great, spooky and deep, lots of layers. 

Watched It Part 2 the other day.

I liked it better than the first one because it was more over the top and it seemed like it knew it was over the top. But my god, those movies are just Marvel movies disguised as horror movies. And they're not doing a very good job at the latter.

i really enjoyed this. tarantino seems to hate what has become of hollywood- best exemplified by a 9 yr old who takes herself too seriously despite barely having any experience (she also hates being given pet names)- and an actor who's in love with the process of filmmaking suddenly finding himself "a has been" as his new roles require him to play under layers of makeup to the point he's afraid nobody will recognize him.

at the same time this is a fetish film about films. there are films within- and lots of conversations about film- and a stuntman that lives behind a film set.

could've sat through another 2 hours of this

a group of strippers begin drugging and scamming wallstreet businessmen who frequent their place of work after the 2009 recession hits and they find less and less ones in their g-strings.

nice attempt at a different kind of heist film- but this is terribly made and terribly rushed (pacing-wise). constance wu looks fooking incredible (must conduct more research on her) and carries the bulk of the film- as does j-lo to an extent; everyone else is just background noise. and even the setting (strip club) gets tired after the same recycling of sequences.

okay at best

  On 11/19/2019 at 4:25 PM, Taupe Beats said:

Even though he was in Tarkovsky's greatest films, this film may have Anatoliy Solonitsyn's best performance.

Edit:  And Shepitko died during production of this film and Klimov had to finish the film on her behalf.

Didn’t know about the latter, wtf, easily one of the most nuanced war films going, seems like the other side of the same coin to Come And See. Ta ver’ much.

just a heads up - The Irishman is now available on Netflix

 #horror, crap film. Funny track from it though. 

Doses & Mimoses

I watched the short film The Fall by Jonathan Glazer (Under The Skin). It was supposedly inspired by Trump's children and fascism in general.

Well, it was alright for what it was. Some very nice shots. It was a bit too much on the nose for my taste.

https://us.thefall.film

The Exorcist III

... this was actually quite good. re-shoots were weird..

  On 11/26/2019 at 4:20 PM, Nebraska said:

a group of strippers begin drugging and scamming wallstreet businessmen who frequent their place of work after the 2009 recession hits and they find less and less ones in their g-strings.

nice attempt at a different kind of heist film- but this is terribly made and terribly rushed (pacing-wise). constance wu looks fooking incredible (must conduct more research on her) and carries the bulk of the film- as does j-lo to an extent; everyone else is just background noise. and even the setting (strip club) gets tired after the same recycling of sequences.

okay at best

 

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I was expecting Showgirls with better acting, but this seemed like a vanity project so J. Lo can feel good about being 50 in a g-string.

  On 11/30/2019 at 1:17 AM, Rubin Farr said:

I was expecting Showgirls with better acting, but this seemed like a vanity project so J. Lo can feel good about being 50 in a g-string.

  On 11/27/2019 at 11:51 PM, jellyrajah said:

just a heads up - The Irishman is now available on Netflix

finally got through this-

it felt incredibly long. there are moments where it's established hoffa was an asshole- but then it keeps getting hammered on and on. some of the characters are also incredibly miscast: eg. pesci as russell bufalino? he looked more like he'd be a capo for russell rather than the old man himself. also- when joe colombo is assassinated, how come that's not shown as a major turning point for all the families? and who exactly was harvey keitel? 

also, despite the de-aging on deniro's face, he still moved like an 70 yr old- so there was a weird look where his face looks like it's trying not to be old, yet his body is betraying him.

i read that scorsese refused to make this a mini series for his own reasons but i feel it would have worked better as such because he seems more interested in the politics of crime and those details get lost when conflated with the various relations of the people involved. 

I really enjoyed The Irishman. Not perfect, but I'll probably like it even more after a second watch. Al Pacino was awesome. 

It's a meta-film (The Irishman). I see it as a film that exists because of all other Scorsese/De Niro/Pesci gangster films, with Pacino added, because he's also a gangster-film legend. It's probably the last film with all these legends in one place and as such has a bigger, broader meaning. That's also why they put so much money into retouching these old farts and why audience turns a blind eye on these grotesque retouches. Because yes, let's be honest, they look kind of smooth, but sound and move like seniors for the whole duration of the movie. But you couldn't put a De Niro's younger face on a young actor's body and call it a De Niro performance.

So, as a meta-film, it's actually quite good. It didn't have the energy of Goodfellas, because it's an old farts' movie, but I was entertained. But I can't imagine how it would look to someone who doesn't have a clue about these old legends and films. It would probably suck. 

As an aside with The Irishman, something I'm curious about from a psychological perspective:  How did DeNiro take to the CGI de-aging idea?

He had to do something relatively similar for Raging Bull but it required a pretty extraordinary effort from DeNiro to pull it off. I would think it's likely a point of pride to him. I wonder how he felt being asked for his character to go through something similar, but without his personal intervention to make it happen.

I'll reserve most of my other thoughts on the film. I did find the Paquin character (and her younger counterpart) to be massively underutilized (and for me, the most interesting aspect of the film is the dynamic between her and DeNiro). And strangely, there were certain elements of exposition (mainly around Pesci) that I felt were not fleshed out, and missing detail is usually not a weakness for Scorsese.

I watched Gemini Man for some reason, it's another de-aged thing, with Will Smith vs an 18 year old clone of Will Smith. It's really terrible. Why did Ang Lee direct this? Clone Smith looks decent in some respects, look at any individual frame and it's hard to tell there's anything weird going on, but in motion it still looks very weird, which is exacerbated by the fact that they increase the clone's speed and reaction times by about 100%, he moves faster than any human possibly could, the action scenes with him in look absolutely ridiculous as a consequence. Maybe this was an attempt to make up for the effect described by a few other people with the de-aged fogeys in the Irishman still moving around like people their age move, but if so they completely over compensated. Not seen the Irishman yet though, so don't know if they did a better job or not.

So Parasite finally came out in cinemas in NL this week. Went to see it last night. Possibly Bong Joon Ho’s best film. Characters are varied and, for the most part, in depth enough, the story, of course, is glorious and  the typically Korean overacting is completely functional. It’s also funny except where it purposely is not.

It’s two hours and ten minutes and it doesn’t feel long at all.

  On 12/1/2019 at 8:37 AM, Candiru said:

I really enjoyed The Irishman. Not perfect, but I'll probably like it even more after a second watch. Al Pacino was awesome. 

Oh god, I have to watch it again? Not sure I can. I found it soooooooo dull.

Watched Ad Astra last night, what a waste of a beautiful looking film, terrible script and lots of dodgy science (the bit through ring of Neptune at the end was particularly dumb for about 5 different reasons).

The Golden Glove was tense-uncomfortable and dudes make up was insane. Grotesque slasher porn to the max.

Radius (2017)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6097798/

idea with the radius thingy was ok, but execution was nay and actors were beh..

Sexy Beast (2000)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203119/

ouchy..very dense..

Just watched Die Hard, one of the best Christmas movies...

I like Die Hard 2 as well, mostly for how over the top it is.  John Amos fighting on the wing of a 747, tough to beat, and William Sadler is always great.

  On 12/5/2019 at 3:45 PM, caze said:

Watched Ad Astra last night, what a waste of a beautiful looking film, terrible script and lots of dodgy science (the bit through ring of Neptune at the end was particularly dumb for about 5 different reasons).

Ha, I think I said it was a wasted opportunity in my... ehm...review.

I didn’t even like the soundtrack and it’s by one of my favorite composers.