Sex and Lucia (2001)

Whimsical, sensual, tragic, implausible, and beautifully filmed and acted. Paz Vega was darn near revelatory, but she was aided by strong performances from Elena Anaya in the second act (as Belen) and Najwa Nimri in the final act (as Elena). A warm treat for a cold day.

,25

[Edited 1/16/18 14:46pm]

[Edited 3/15/18 9:30am]

Valerian And The City Of a Thousand Panets

Its a visually stunning picture, a great story and with a little more care regarding the plot Valerian could run into a saga in time. On the whole very enjoyable and well woth watching... 7/10

.

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) with Eric Bana & Rachel McAdams. It was good, but a few plot holes. 7/10

Wilson (2017) with Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern. A quirky sleeper movie that had an endearing story. 8/10

The Informant! (2009) with Matt Damon. It was a bit long-winded, but a very interesting backstory. 6.5/10

Train to Busan- Great film, I wasn't expecting much, but I was wrong. Wonderful movie, and the ending was heartbreaking. 4.5/5

Things To Come (2016)

If there were a more ideal movie for philosophy majors, I don't know what it would be. Isabelle Huppert is wonderful in this absurd (and I say that in a complimentary way)midlife drama.

214 said:

Train to Busan- Great film, I wasn't expecting much, but I was wrong. Wonderful movie, and the ending was heartbreaking. 4.5/5

i liked that a lot, & believe i rated it as a 4 or 4.5 as well when i watched it last year.

i actually watched its animated prequel 'seoul station' about a week ago (currently streaming on shudder if anyone else uses that service). it's fine, completely watchable, but it's not half as good as 'train...' and i wouldn't call it an essential companion to the original at all. 3/5

beach rats (2017) 4/5

a bigger splash (2015) 4.5/5 (extra 1/2 star for using popol vuh on the soundtrack. you can never have too much popol vuh)

xxy (2007) 3.5/5

20th century women (2016) 4/5

mansfield 66/67 (2017) 3/5

two-lane blacktop (1971) 3.5/5

ernest & celestine (2012) 4/5

[Edited 1/17/18 13:06pm]

damosuzuki said:

214 said:

Train to Busan- Great film, I wasn't expecting much, but I was wrong. Wonderful movie, and the ending was heartbreaking. 4.5/5

i liked that a lot, & believe i rated it as a 4 or 4.5 as well when i watched it last year.

i actually watched its animated prequel 'seoul station' about a week ago (currently streaming on shudder if anyone else uses that service). it's fine, completely watchable, but it's not half as good as 'train...' and i wouldn't call it an essential companion to the original at all. 3/5

What do you think about that devastating ending?

214 said:

damosuzuki said:

i liked that a lot, & believe i rated it as a 4 or 4.5 as well when i watched it last year.

i actually watched its animated prequel 'seoul station' about a week ago (currently streaming on shudder if anyone else uses that service). it's fine, completely watchable, but it's not half as good as 'train...' and i wouldn't call it an essential companion to the original at all. 3/5

What do you think about that devastating ending?

it had slipped my mind, to be perfectly honest, so i just went back and watched the last 15 minutes or so again. it's really great stuff. definitely a huge cut above what you'd expect from these sorts of films.

mustang island (2017) 2/5

to date, the presence of macon blair in anything has been a reliable indicator to me that you're going to get something good if not fairly great. i'm going to call this an anomaly.

i found it dreary, a bit cringe-inducing at times (not in the good 'get out of your comfort zone' way) and i thought the jokes were not funny or imaginative.

little shop of horrors (1960) 3.5/5

the virgin spring (1960) 4/5

[Edited 1/18/18 17:01pm]

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) - A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter's murder when they fail to catch the culprit.

The few trailers I had seen made me think this movie would be funny. And it was often very funny, but I had no idea that underneath the humor, the premise was so serious. Almost every character had this incredible sadness hanging over them. The movie deserves all the acclaim it has received. 4.5/5

I watched the new Blad Runner movie ~ Needless to say I wont be watching it again during the 48hr paid for session !

sexton said:

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) - A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter's murder when they fail to catch the culprit.

The few trailers I had seen made me think this movie would be funny. And it was often very funny, but I had no idea that underneath the humor, the premise was so serious. Almost every character had this incredible sadness hanging over them. The movie deserves all the acclaim it has received. 4.5/5

It was unpredictably brutal. The family scenes were the most vicious.

brawl in cell block 99 - 3.5/5 like bone tomahawk, this has some top-notch gruesome violence & some perhaps questionable moments that might cross lines for some people. unlike zahler's earlier movie, i really felt the running time on this one was far too long. bone tomahawk took its time in the first half as well, but i thought it was really well paced & developed nicely. here i spent the first half thinking 'get on with it, already, please.' still highly enjoyable, & will be an enormous crowd-pleaser for those with love in their heart for 70s exploitation & grindhouse sleaze, but i think it would have been a lot better if they'd dropped 20 or 30 minutes out of that first 2/3s. bonus points for the presence of udo kier.

beginners (2010) 3.5/5

angel's egg (1985) 3/5

winter light (1963) 4/5

it's alive (1974) 3/5

[Edited 1/21/18 10:13am]

'Get Out' -- i finally took time to see why this movie got so much attention... and i cant say i didn't enjoy but very early you can resolve a mystery. you know what was that all about..... so that climax gone too fast... 5.5/10

I, Tonya 8/10

A sad, yet funny look at the Olympic skater Tonya Harding. Amazing acting all the way through. Amazing direction and screenwriting. The way this movie is put together with a wink and a nod is perfect.

For some reason I watched "Face/Off" yesterday. I think it was because I cleaned the house in the morning (before anyone else got up), and the football hadn't started yet. So I rewarded myself with a movie.

"Over the top" pretty much describes everything about it. I liked it better the first time I saw it, about 10 years ago, than I did yesterday. But you know what?

I don't get all this hate for Nicolas Cage. I like him, and have ever since "Valley Girl". The dude named his son after Superman, for crying out loud. Sure, he doomed the kid to a life of "What the hell did you say your name was?" but still I respect the coolness of recognizing Superman's birth name of Kal-El. Better than naming your kid "Moon Unit" or "Dweezil" and yet no one ever holds Frank Zappa accountable for that nonsense!

FACTOID - Nicolas Cage even named himself after a comic book character. His real last name is "Coppola" as in "Francis Ford Coppola is my uncle" but he changed his last name to that of one of his favorite comic book characters, Luke Cage (never heard of him), in order to fend off charges of nepotism. I'm sure that worked exactly like he wanted.

Pretty much every Nicolas Cage movie I've ever seen is just like "Face/Off" - interesting, but not taxing on the brain. An escape, which is what I think movies should be. Weirdly, I have never seen his two most-popular movies "Con Air" or "The Rock", despite those having been shown on TBS at least 10,000 times. I guess I was always busy or something.

What "Face/Off" has that other Nic Cage movies doesn't is....John Travolta! Here Travolta plays his by-the-numbers whacked-out crazy bad guy. He played the same part in "The Taking of Pelham 1..2..3" but played it the best of all in "Broken Arrow". I need to watch "Broken Arrow" again.

If you don't know what "Face/Off" is about, think "Freaky Friday" but with switched faces instead of switched bodies/minds, and career killers instead of a soccer moms and soccer daughters. Also, there are a lot more explosions and blood in "Face/Off" than there is in "Freaky Friday". But other than that, they are about the same.

"Face/Off" should be watched on a couch, with nothing else to do, and preferably on a weekend. Since Cage has been in 91 movies, and grimaces about 13 times per movie, the rating scale here is 1,196 Nic Cage Grimaces = perfection. "Face/Off", if watched as described above, gets 837 Nic Cage Grimaces.

If you attempt to watch this movie any other way, I can't help you.

Lady Bird (2017)

Really good coming of age movie with a light touch, with the most sensitive, accurate portrayal of Catholic school life I've seen in some time. Great cast. Laurie Metcalf should get an Oscar nod. I don't know if it's among the best movies of the year, but it's a darn good one.

.25

Charlie's Angels (2000)

I can't believe that movie just turned 20. Always a fun, empty calories watch.

.75

Charlie's Angels - Full Throttle (2003)

Basically the same movie with Demi Moore.

.5

Velvet Goldmine (1998)

Goodness gracious, what a beautiful mess of a movie.

.25

The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Made fully in Cincinnati. I walk by most of the scenes in the flick. Cool. The weirdest movie ever.

Phantom Thread (2017) - Set in 1950's London, Reynolds Woodcock is a renowned dressmaker whose fastidious life is disrupted by a young, strong-willed woman, Alma, who becomes his muse and lover.

The resolution to the problematic relationship bewteen the main characters surprised me. I also felt this movie was quiet to a fault. Be alert when watching this one. 3.5/5

sexton said:

I watched Get Out over the weekend.

H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T

jdcxc said:

sexton said:

Phantom Thread (2017) - Set in 1950's London, Reynolds Woodcock is a renowned dressmaker whose fastidious life is disrupted by a young, strong-willed woman, Alma, who becomes his muse and lover.

The resolution to the problematic relationship bewteen the main characters surprised me. I also felt this movie was quiet to a fault. Be alert when watching this one. 3.5/5

Loved it as a mood piece. In a weird way it reminded me of Secretary (obsession, control, submission themes). Great acting, score and cinematography.

It looked immaculate and the acting was exceptional for sure. The first third of the movie was a bit of a chore for me is all.

starlet (2012) 4/5 sean baker's pre-tangerine/florida project 2012 film. it definitely shares a lot of the qualities of his two later films, funny & sweet & sympathetic to his characters & unexpectly moving at times. while i wouldn't say it's quite as excellent as what came after, it's absolutely worth a look for tangerine & fp admirers.


christiane f (1981) 4/5 - cute german teenage girl & her no-good friends become heroin addicts. so very, very bleak. funnily enough, i was reminded to watch this film by sean baker. its soundtrack was one of the first bowie albums i bought, and i'd always had the film in the back of my mind as something i'd like to see, but never got around to it until i saw that baker had it listed as one of his all-time favourite films on his letterboxd page.

holy mountain (1973) - don't know how you rate something like this. i've now watched holy mountain 4 times over the years. it never gets less weird.

atomic blonde (2017) 2.5/5 it has its pleasures, but what starts out as a bit of a thrilling rush, with pounding 80s synth-heavy soundtrack (& even a bit of ministry thrown in) and tons of ass-kicking, becomes a numbing headache, because it's just the same same same thing over & over again. this might have worked much better as a 90 minute film, but at nearly 2 hours it became mental novocaine. worth a look for action hounds if only for that undeniably exciting stairwell sequence, but it definitely could have been better.

[Edited 1/24/18 16:54pm]

Today I watched I, Tonya (2018) All the performances were outstanding especially Kingdom's Paul Walter Hauser who played the idiotic chief bodyguard Shawn Eckhardt, his scenes were priceless. Also those ice skating sequences were simply capitvating and even though I loved how they used Devil Woman and Gloria in the film, I just wished that they had included some more songs from that era, to give it a more 90s atmosphere. I found film at times to be funny, enlightening and really heatbreaking. I give I, Tonya a 4.5 out of 5

[Edited 1/25/18 12:03pm]

damn...you know, there's really been a lot of VERY good movies in the past few years. i can't even try to keep up.

I watched a pair of Japanese new wave films recently:



Woman in the Dunes (1964) - An entomologist on vacation is trapped by local villagers into living with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

I loved it. How the sand was filmed was stunning. It looked like water. 4.5/5




Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) - The trials and tribulations of Eddie and other transvestites in Japan.

Part experimental and part documentary with elements of comedy and even horror, this is one of the coolest movies I've ever seen. 4.5/5

RodeoSchro said:

For some reason I watched "Face/Off" yesterday. I think it was because I cleaned the house in the morning (before anyone else got up), and the football hadn't started yet. So I rewarded myself with a movie.

"Over the top" pretty much describes everything about it. I liked it better the first time I saw it, about 10 years ago, than I did yesterday. But you know what?

I don't get all this hate for Nicolas Cage. I like him, and have ever since "Valley Girl". The dude named his son after Superman, for crying out loud. Sure, he doomed the kid to a life of "What the hell did you say your name was?" but still I respect the coolness of recognizing Superman's birth name of Kal-El. Better than naming your kid "Moon Unit" or "Dweezil" and yet no one ever holds Frank Zappa accountable for that nonsense!

FACTOID - Nicolas Cage even named himself after a comic book character. His real last name is "Coppola" as in "Francis Ford Coppola is my uncle" but he changed his last name to that of one of his favorite comic book characters, Luke Cage (never heard of him), in order to fend off charges of nepotism. I'm sure that worked exactly like he wanted.

Pretty much every Nicolas Cage movie I've ever seen is just like "Face/Off" - interesting, but not taxing on the brain. An escape, which is what I think movies should be. Weirdly, I have never seen his two most-popular movies "Con Air" or "The Rock", despite those having been shown on TBS at least 10,000 times. I guess I was always busy or something.

What "Face/Off" has that other Nic Cage movies doesn't is....John Travolta! Here Travolta plays his by-the-numbers whacked-out crazy bad guy. He played the same part in "The Taking of Pelham 1..2..3" but played it the best of all in "Broken Arrow". I need to watch "Broken Arrow" again.

If you don't know what "Face/Off" is about, think "Freaky Friday" but with switched faces instead of switched bodies/minds, and career killers instead of a soccer moms and soccer daughters. Also, there are a lot more explosions and blood in "Face/Off" than there is in "Freaky Friday". But other than that, they are about the same.

"Face/Off" should be watched on a couch, with nothing else to do, and preferably on a weekend. Since Cage has been in 91 movies, and grimaces about 13 times per movie, the rating scale here is 1,196 Nic Cage Grimaces = perfection. "Face/Off", if watched as described above, gets 837 Nic Cage Grimaces.

If you attempt to watch this movie any other way, I can't help you.

Indeed an amazing movie

Elle (2016)

Suspenseful, odd, gratuitous at times. But that's Verhoeven. Isabelle Huppert is fearless and the cast is solid.

on the strength of Huppert's performance.

The Post (2017) - A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between the press and the government.

It's by the numbers and we all know how it ends, but as someone who has worked in publishing for over 20 years, watching this felt really good. 4/5

sexton said:

The Post (2017) - A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between the press and the government.

It's by the numbers and we all know how it ends, but as someone who has worked in publishing for over 20 years, watching this felt really good. 4/5

out of respect for your 20 years of publishing & years of postings on movie threads, i will not say anything bad about the post. except that i hated it. but i'm glad you enjoyed it!

call me by your name 5/5 - i always blanch a little any time i see someone describe something as beautiful - it just always seems like a soft, hippie-ish thing to say to me - but in this case, what other word is there? i go back to the same reservoir of things i've said about sean baker's movies: this is just brimming with decency & compassion & kindness, & it was perfect.



funny haha (2002) 3.5/5 out of all the indie mumble-core movies i've seen, this was by far the most indie-ish and mumble-ie. pared down to the bare essentials, if that even - somewhat like if frances ha was given a heavy dose of downers - yet i thought it was hugely enjoyable.

[Edited 1/26/18 18:11pm]