Behind The Candelabra (a story of Liberace starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon) 3/5 I got a little misty there watching it.


Nat King Cole: Afraid of The Dark (documentary) 3.5/5 Again got very misty eyed.

[Edited 2/16/17 11:57am]

Sexton is our art student.

swiss army man - the opening is great, but the rest of this movie fell a little flat for me, & it ended up feeling like a junior varsity version of a kaufman/gondry/jonze film. not to say it's poor; more that it all felt a little too self-consciously quirky. 3/5.

Academy Award-Nominated Live-Action Short Films 2017:

Mindenki / Sing (2016) - Inspired by a true story set in 1990s Budapest, 'Sing' follows an award winning school choir and the new girl in class who just might uncover the ugly secret behind their fame. 3.5/5

Silent Nights (2016) - A volunteer at a housing shelter falls for an illegal immigrant. 2/5

Timecode (2016) - Luna and Diego are the parking lot security guards. Diego does the night shift, and Luna works by day. 3.5/5

Ennemis intérieurs (2016) - During the 90s, Algerian terrorism reaches France. Two men. Two identities. One battle. 3/5

La Femme et le TGV (2016) - A touching story between a lonely woman and a TGV train driver. 4/5

sexton said:

Academy Award-Nominated Live-Action Short Films 2017:


Silent Nights (2016) - A volunteer at a housing shelter falls for an illegal immigrant. 2/5

I have to ask, why'd this one score so low?? You're usually so generous with ratings, unless it's terrible.

thekidsgirl said:

sexton said:

Academy Award-Nominated Live-Action Short Films 2017:


Silent Nights (2016) - A volunteer at a housing shelter falls for an illegal immigrant. 2/5

I have to ask, why'd this one score so low?? You're usually so generous with ratings, unless it's terrible.

It was stupid. If you see it, I'm sure you'll agree.

sexton said:

Toni Erdmann (2016) - A practical joking father tries to reconnect with his hard working daughter by creating an outrageous alter ego and posing as her CEO's life coach.

A late addition to my top ten films of 2016--and a much better 160+ minute viewing experience than Scorsese's Silence. The birthday party scene is a must-watch. 4.5/5

An American remake starring Jack Nicholson and Kristen Wiig is already planned. Ugh.

correction in the guardian february 8th amending their article on the toni ermann u.s. remake:

https://www.theguardian.c...-will-make

[Edited 2/16/17 19:20pm]

damosuzuki said:

sexton said:

Toni Erdmann (2016) - A practical joking father tries to reconnect with his hard working daughter by creating an outrageous alter ego and posing as her CEO's life coach.

A late addition to my top ten films of 2016--and a much better 160+ minute viewing experience than Scorsese's Silence. The birthday party scene is a must-watch. 4.5/5

An American remake starring Jack Nicholson and Kristen Wiig is already planned. Ugh.

correction in the guardian february 8th amending their article on the toni ermann u.s. remake:

https://www.theguardian.c...-will-make

[Edited 2/16/17 19:20pm]

And that wasn't even part of the aforementioned birthday party scene! It looked more like cupcakes to me and it happened much earlier in the film. This is another movie I'm recommending to you, damosuzuki. I admittedly found that entire cupcake exchange to be hot.

I Am Not Your Negro (2016) - Writer James Baldwin tells the story of race in modern America with his unfinished novel, Remember This House.

The subject matter is potent on its own. I don't feel the need to add anything there. I will say though, that I was very impressed with how striking and vibrant the movie looked using primarily black and white footage and visuals. Combined with the message, it made for a very intoxicating package. Already one of the best movies of 2017. 5/5

[Edited 2/17/17 9:39am]

sexton said:

damosuzuki said:

correction in the guardian february 8th amending their article on the toni ermann u.s. remake:

https://www.theguardian.c...-will-make

[Edited 2/16/17 19:20pm]

And that wasn't even part of the aforementioned birthday party scene! It looked more like cupcakes to me and it happened much earlier in the film. This is another movie I'm recommending to you, damosuzuki. I admittedly found that entire cupcake exchange to be hot.

i am definitely going to catch it whenever it makes its way here. it takes a while for movies to make their way to the arctic tundra sometimes.

.

i am probably going to be able to catch 'the salesman' on the weekend, though.

This thread has gotten way too high-brow for low-brows like me. Therefore, I'm going to see "Fist Fight" this weekend to even things out.

aguirre, the wrath of god - watched it twice, in a row. partly because it's filled with some amazing images (the beginning & the end especially) and scenes that i think may have put lives at risk, & has a great soundtrack by popol vuh (you can never have too much popol vuh), and partly because i think this film, more than any other i've ever watched, might speak to the pitiless indifference of the universe to human concerns. maybe. at the very least, it scratched an itch in me.

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5/5

[Edited 2/17/17 17:10pm]

damosuzuki said:

aguirre, the wrath of god - watched it twice, in a row. partly because it's filled with some amazing images (the beginning & the end especially) and scenes that i think may have put lives at risk, & has a great soundtrack by popol vuh (you can never have too much popol vuh), and partly because i think this film, more than any other i've ever watched, might speak to the pitiless indifference of the universe to human concerns. maybe. at the very least, it scratched an itch in me.

.

5/5

[Edited 2/17/17 17:10pm]

Oh, I need to go back to some Herzog-Kinski-movies sometime...

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7/10. It's stupid, but I like it. Good role for Reeves and good action scenes.

morningsong said:

^ I saw a doc about him a long time ago.

do you mean you saw a doc about kinski? was it possibly this film (same one i mentioned in a post on this thread earlier)?

Phishanga said:

damosuzuki said:

aguirre, the wrath of god - watched it twice, in a row. partly because it's filled with some amazing images (the beginning & the end especially) and scenes that i think may have put lives at risk, & has a great soundtrack by popol vuh (you can never have too much popol vuh), and partly because i think this film, more than any other i've ever watched, might speak to the pitiless indifference of the universe to human concerns. maybe. at the very least, it scratched an itch in me.

.

5/5

[Edited 2/17/17 17:10pm]

Oh, I need to go back to some Herzog-Kinski-movies sometime...

i've watched plenty of herzog's docs, and i've watched a lot of his interviews (i could listen to him talk all day), but i'd seen nothing else outside of nosferatu until this week. if i can make my schedule work, i'm going to try to watch fitzcarraldo or even dwarfs... tomorrow evening.

the Maneater---2016 french....exc religious movie

damosuzuki said:

Hidden Figures (2016) I really enjoyed this film, it had a great cast, story, score and a great message. I give it 5 out of 5

Academy Award-Nominated Documentary Short Films 2017:

Joe's Violin (2016) - A 91-year-old Holocaust survivor donates his violin to an instrument drive, changing the life of a 12-year-old schoolgirl from the Bronx and unexpectedly, his own. 3.5/5

Extremis (2016) - Witness the wrenching emotions that accompany end-of-life decisions as doctors, patients and families in a hospital ICU face harrowing choices. 3.5/5

4.1 Miles (2016) - A coast guard captain on a small Greek island is suddenly charged with saving thousands of refugees from drowning at sea. 4/5

Watani: My Homeland (2016) - Having lost her husband, a mother makes the heart achingly painful decision to leave her homeland of Aleppo, in search of safety and a brighter future for her children in a small town in Germany. 4/5

The White Helmets (2016) - As daily airstriks pound civilian targets in Syria, a group of indomitable first responders risk their lives to rescue victims from the rubble. 4/5

camerperson - a collage documentary made up of footage from different times & parts of the world.

at first feels like a burroughs cut-up exercise, scatter-shot left-over material thrown together. in most ways, it doesn't add up to anything, provide any satisfying conclusions, yet it still makes an incredible impact, because it's all just real life. it's like a documentary version of richard feynman's statement that we're lost in an indifferent, mysterious universe without any purpose, living lives of chaos & humiliation & occasional panic & the odd pleasant moment. in that sense, cameraperson takes on the shape of every life, & i think it could become an all-time classic. 4.5/5

I already have watched Arrival, to me the story is just plain stupid, it does not serve nomination for Best Picture of The Year.

Okay, I'm going to vent here... I read and heard great things about "XX" and watched it on demand on the big plasma with the surround sound kicking...

It was horrible! Completely amateur. Bad direction, bad characterization, failed scares, failed laughs, bad horror genre plot points... and this was a Sundance selection. Wow.

I'm getting more and more disillusioned with the big film festivals when I see that nepotism and idealism based on filmmakers' personaliities letting in crap films. I've seen it happen at SXSW, Sundance, Raindance, TIFF... and then they wonder why it fails hard in the "real world".

But this takes the cake. It's bad. Yet so many reviewers are praising it. But believe me it falls so far below the threshold of good horror, it's undisputable.

This reminds me of a failed Trump press conference that is then evaluated as a success by a Trump supporter. In that case, they say it's a perfect example of him being real and American. In this case, reviewers are latching on to the idea that this is a feminist horror film made be women filmmakers who are festival darlings.

It doesn't matter! This is like a sequence of undergrad film school projects. Even the stop-motion stylized through-line connecting sequence has been done with far better taste and technique. This was like pale imitiation weak sauce. "The Babadook" is so much better a heroine of this ideal of feminist horror.

The first story did have nice cinematography and a nice score though.

214 said:

Ingela said:

214 said:

I already have watched Arrival, to me the story is just plain stupid, it does not serve nomination for Best Picture of The Year.

Amen. A convoluted time traveling space octopus movie. Some reviewers didn't even understand it and praised it because they didn't want to feel stupid for saying that because their echo-chamber buddies reviewing it did. I saw a couple of comical "best-of" lists on Youtube and you can tell as they went over the movie most didn't get it and were only putting it on the list because they felt they were supposed to.

Yet, i enjoyed it.

214 said:

True to my word, I got likkered up last night and went to see "Fist Fight"! Yeah I know - I didn't promise to get likkered up, but you had to know that was part of the deal.

First things first - SPOILERS ARE COMING. This isn't really a movie that you don't see pretty much everything coming 30 minutes ahead of time but just in case you are planning to get likkered up and watch it, I do feel I should say SPOILERS ARE COMING.

The premise of this movie is to inject as many vulgar situations as is humanly possible, and then get two guys to fight. and then become best friends. It's like pretty much every other bully-becomes-my-best-friend movie, except with lots more penis.

Or, as Jillian Bell calls it after telling Charlie Day she wants to boff 30 or 40 male students, "teenis". Sorry, I kind of ruined the funniest line of the movie, but "teenis" is a creepy/hilarious word! Which kind of describes this movie:

Creepy yet hilarious.

The movie is set in the worst high school in America which, it turns out, is in Georgia. It's the last day of school, which we know because some pranksters have rolled out a giant "LAST DAY OF SCHOOL, B****ES!" banner. This is the opening prank of Prank Day. Pranks abound! Most them involve porn.

And for some unexplained reason, this high school also has classes on the last day of school. Dumb! Because the students are going to prank the ever-living bejeebus out of the teachers. Charlie Day gets pranked, and so does Ice Cube.

As we have laid out many times before, Ice Cube is the scowliest of all the Ice characters. He's way more scowly than Ice-T, Ice Tray, or Vanilla Ice. Since Ice Cube's scowliness is not at issue, I thought I'd take this opportunity to explain where I got "scowliest" from and why I think it's so funny.

I got it from Hustler magazine.

Didn't see that coming did you! (No gross pun intended.)

Actually, I didn't get it from Hustler per se, but from a magazine that Hustler publisher Larry Flynt put out in 1998 or so. Back then, we had a president that liked to grab women by the pussy. Kind of like today! His name was Bill Clinton and he had sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky, and then lied about it. So therefore the pious GOP decided he should be impeached.

This upset Larry Flynt so in a totally American move, he offered $$$$$$ to anyone that could provide sexual dirt on Republican lawmakers. And boy was there a lot of dirt! So much dirt that Flynt published a magazine laying it all out. Featured in that magazine was a prominent, pious Illinois Republican named Henry Hyde (yes, "pious" was the Word of the Day today on my Word of the Day calendar. Show some respect, don't be so pious!). Hyde was the guy prosecuting Clinton but it turned out that Hyde was not only a serial bonker himself, but he had a whole secret family of illegitimate kids. Awesome! Not for the kids of course, but it was great to see a pious jerk like Hyde get his comeuppance in a national titty-based magazine.

There was a picture of Hyde and in a bit of inspired editing, the caption read: "This is Henry Hyde. He is our jowliest Congressman". Jowliest! Awesome! I never forgot that word and three decades later, when Ice Cube hit my radar, I immediately realized that he was the scowliest of all the Ices!

Here are Henry Hyde and Ice Cube is the first-ever JOWLIEST VS. SCOWLIEST meme:




The best thing about this meme is that I used my mad computer skillz to make each picture the same size. I will update this meme in 20 years if, by some reason, Ice Cube gets jowly as well as scowly.

So scowly old Ice Cube plays a mean-as-hell teacher who takes NO gruff from the juvenile delinquents who are his students. Naturally, they haze him mercilessly and just as naturally, he's too scowly to know what to do about it, other than take an ax to a student's desk while Charlie Day watches helplessly. This lands Day and Cube in the principal's office.

This movie was NOT casted by Karen Rea. As my faithful readers know, Karen Rea is the greatest casting director in history. She finds the best actor for every single part. The casting director for "Fist Fight" doesn't do that. S/he just went out and found people that will make you say, "Hey, that's the guy from Breaking Bad! And that's the girl from Mad Men! And that's the girl that I always get confused with that other girl who's on Saturday Night Live! And that's Tracy Lawrence, who I know for a fact WAS on Saturday Night Live!"

The principal is played by that Breaking Bad guy who was the cop/brother-in-law of Walter White. I think Walter White ended up killing him right after the cop figured out that Walter White was The Meth King of The ABQ. Anway, he's still loud in this movie but thankfully does not have a gun. He makes Charlie Day admit that Ice Cube did, in fact, ax the crap out of the desk. So he fires Ice Cube. Cube gets mad and says he's going to fight Charlie after school.

This upsets Charlie because HE'S THREE DAYS FROM RETIREMENT. Ha, not really! But his wife is THREE DAYS PAST HER DUE DATE and his daughter is FIFTEEN MINUTES AWAY FROM THE TALENT SHOW THAT WILL TURN HER FROM A BULLIED LITTLE GIRL INTO THE BADDEST BITCH IN SIXTH GRADE. So you can see, Charlie has neither the time nor the talent nor the desire to fight Ice Cube.

Hilarity ensues.

Then they fight.

It's a good fight! In fact, it's the second-best street fight I know of. "The Warriors" is, of course, the best. Let's put my mad computer skillz to work and create another side-by-side meme, showing the two main fighters from my two favorite street-fighting movies:

Doesn't that make you want to GET IT ON!!!!! (If you want to GET IT ON!!!!, I have it on good authority that if you go to the Starbucks in North Little Rock, there's a good chance you can GET IT ON!!!!!)

This movie is VERY raunchy. I mean, REALLY raunchy. I never pay attention to these things, but I can safely say this is an R-rated movie. Even if your kids are grown up, I wouldn't go see it with them. You'll feel bad about laughing at the dirty jokes. And so will they.

But you should get likkered up and see this movie! It's the perfect just-before-summer movie, leading us into what I think (based on the preview I saw) will be the perfect summer movie - "Baywatch"! The Rock's Franchise Viagra strikes again. Can't wait to see this one!

Back to "Fist Fight". The plot is pretty stupid but not completely stupid. It's good to see Tracy Lawrence again. The movie has a happy ending for everyone except for the porn nerd who's whacking it in the bathroom stall the whole movie. He never gets a happy ending.

So we must rate this movie thusly:

"Fist Fight" gets 2.75 Happy Endings out of 5 Happy Endings. Which means, you'll laugh hard 40% of the time, and almost laugh hard 15% of the time but your wife comes home unexpectedly. Enjoy!


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[Edited 2/20/17 14:09pm]