gandorb said:

a star is born (2018) 3.5/5 i was supposed to see beale street tuesday night, but the temperature took a bit of a dip, & decided i didn't feel like walking an hour to the multiplex in -30 wind chill. so i went off to the 2nd run theatre to catch this instead. and it's good! certainly not the kind of movie i like in general, but i can't really fault anything in it, except that it feels a bit surface level, like we never really dig into these people. but the songs are good (again, not to my taste, but my taste won't gross $200m), and the ending is genuinely moving. i'll never watch it again - hollywood musical romantic tragedies will never be my go to - but i certainly don't regret seeing it.

anna and the apocalypse (2018) 3.5/5

scottish zombie christmas musical.
with all that going for it, it really ought to be the most perfect movie ever. unfortunately the best songs are front-loaded & it doesn't quite maintain its anarchic energy all the way through. it loses a bit of steam in the third act in particular.

still tons of amateurish fun though.

gandorb said:

damosuzuki said:

enemy (2013) 3.5/5

left me flummoxed, but in a pleasant, head-spinning way that makes me want to dive into message boards to see what people make out of this in a way that i haven't since...mulholland drive, maybe.

not that i think this is on that level of greatness, but it is weird & spacey & intriguing enough that i might watch it again tomorrow night.


green book (2018) 3.5/5

it's perfectly fine. it's funny & warm, & while it occasionally flirts with being cloying, it's hardly the worst offender among oscar friendly films you're likely to see any given year. there is nothing wrong with it, other than the fact that it felt a touch too perfectly programmed. it's competent & heartwarming & has enough not too overblown but overblown enough moments to win a slew of awards, i'm sure.

also has very convincing music scenes. i'm assuming digital effects were used to show ali playing. maybe if i looked closely on a rewatch i'd see the seams, but it sure looked perfect last night.

ReL Green Book, it sounds like your heart wanted to like it more but your mind wouldn't let it! That damn mind ! I succumbed to this movie but have had that happen to me while watching others.

i probably sounded a bit too cynical above. i genuinely enjoyed green book. i guess i just found myself pushing back against it because nothing in it surprised me, caught me off guard. when they enter that bar at the end...well, we all knew what was going to happen. and it happened - and it was fine. it was really sweet & fun, but it was indeed exactly what you knew would happen.

it's the kind of movie that would make god say 'well wasn't that just lovely' while the devil would vomit in disgust. my mom would love it, no doubt.

2045RadicalMattZ said:

onlyforaminute said:

damosuzuki said:

gandorb said:

ReL Green Book, it sounds like your heart wanted to like it more but your mind wouldn't let it! That damn mind ! I succumbed to this movie but have had that happen to me while watching others.

i probably sounded a bit too cynical above. i genuinely enjoyed green book. i guess i just found myself pushing back against it because nothing in it surprised me, caught me off guard. when they enter that bar at the end...well, we all knew what was going to happen. and it happened - and it was fine. it was really sweet & fun, but it was indeed exactly what you knew would happen.

it's the kind of movie that would make god say 'well wasn't that just lovely' while the devil would vomit in disgust. my mom would love it, no doubt.

I agree whith all of that.

Green Book (2018) - A working-class Italian-American bouncer becomes the driver of an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.

This is an extremely pleasant film, however, the Hollywood award formula used to make it was very clear. 4/5

[Edited 1/18/19 9:18am]

2045RadicalMattZ said:

onlyforaminute said:

Would you say one can understand Glass without seeing Split? I had no idea Split was connected to Unbreakable though ive tried to watch it a couple of times the subject matter is really disturbing to me so i blew it of. But if its a package deal then i guess i have to deal with it.

Yeah, I'd think so. All you'd have to know is that the guy has ' SPLIT ' personalities and it'd go from there. Maybe not the characterization n all that. But i understand its kinda love or hate with audiences n these movies. One thing i CAN say, is that the film (when i saw it) came with a statement that he'd intended the SPLIT guy to be in unbreakable but it was pulled out. But that's all on the net anyways so it's no spoiler. I dug it. Dunno how well it'll do.....and I'm no barometer. That "Freddie/Queen" flick is STILL making money despite being a jumbled mess and being full of shit with the WORST dialogue I've heard since an Ed Wood film. So. ...go figure

Ok, I watched enough to understand he has multiple personalities but I never got the whole "supreme" abilities vibe from what I saw so I was wondering how much info I might have missed.

Ugot2shakesumthin said:

Beautiful Boy (Amazon) - 5 out of 5

A mild spoiler alert!

There is no way I can be objective about this movie, whatever that is. My biggest fear in life is that one of my children will get addicted to hard drugs and that there won't be a thing I can do about it. I so identified with the father character - flaws and all- that it made the movie seem like a documentray of my worst nightmare. The only way that this could have struck me this way is that the performances by Steve Carrell and Timothy Chalamet were so spot on. Chalamet follows up his wonderful work in Call Me by Your Name with another beautifully natural performance. Gandorb, I mean Steve Carrell, was totally immersed in his character. For some who don't identify with the subject matter, the movie may come off as plodding and predictable. For me, it seeped deep into my soul. Radical accepance is the hardest thing to do!!!!!

2045RadicalMattZ said:

kate plays christine (2016) 3.5/5 scenes dramatizing the life of christine chubbuck, a newscaster who committed suicide on florida tv in the 70s, are interspersed with footage of actress kate lyn sheil interviewing her colleagues & investigating her past.

for the first hour or so, i was completely sucked into this. i loved the way it danced between dramatization & documentary. i found after that it had laid out all its cards & had nothing new to show me, but i still found it an interesting watch right up to the end, when it did something that i thought did not work at all, that felt very false & left me feeling like i'd seen something bold & daring upended by a big misstep.

still a fun, weird, really unique watch.




the life and death of colonel blinp (1943) 4.5/5 funny & sad, endearing & touching, and wonderfully colorful as well. it would be an easy 5 and would have instantly become one of my favourite films if it just wasn't 18 billion hours long.

[Edited 1/20/19 13:36pm]

i caught glass last night. i didn't think it was too good, i guess. it really dragged in the middle to me; wheels spinning, no forward momentum for a good hour. i found the ending & particularly the opening 20 minutes or so fun enough, though it always felt very perfunctory & drab-looking, even in those moments. not a disaster or anything silly like that, but solidly below average in my books. 2.5/5



sansho the bailiff (1954) 5/5 "In medieval Japan a compassionate governor is sent into exile. His wife and children try to join him, but are separated, and the children grow up amid suffering and oppression." there's nothing better than having your heart ripped out & stomped on first thing sunday morning. this is an understatedly powerful film, with an ending that's almost too emotional. i'm glad i saw it, and it immediately leaps to the top of the best films i've ever seen, but, at least right now, i can't imagine ever wanting to see it again. it really is almost too much to take at times.

[Edited 1/21/19 8:10am]

Bohemian Rhapsody 8 / 10

2 low budget scifis both relatively slow paced.

IO 4/5 most movies like this end with a sliver of hope, this one gave hope in 2 different directions. A refreshing change.

Beyond 3.5/5 a flip on a old standard in scifi, maybe everything in the universe isn't out to get us.


Come Sunday 3.5/5 I can't say I'm in agreement with Carlton he's on his own journey but watching the movie I felt something I haven't felt since I was a very small child, it was pleasant and an interesting personal realization.

[Edited 1/21/19 11:02am]

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

As exquisite as it is excruicating, Barry Jenkins once again hits all the right notes with a beautiful film. Easily one of the best films of the year.

.25

ali: fear eats the soul (1974) 4/5 german grandmother strikes up a relationship with a younger arab. life is brutal & cruel at times.

namepeace said:

Last night we watched "The Old Man and The Gun".

Way too much old man.

Not nearly enough gun.

1.5 stars out of 10 stars.

The Old Man and The Gun

good slow-paced farewell movie. It's an old man, so dont expect an Avengers tempo.


Widows

What a dissapointment, i expected much more from this movie. Contains the most uneventful twist in cinema history.

Mortal Engines

Eye candy of the better kind, but a bit too Twilightly.

Close

Enjoyable movie but don't expect anything special or 'wow'.

Polar

Very good action movie of the 'almost superhero' sort - think John Wick etc, killing dozens with eyes closed.


King of Thieves

One of the lesser Michael Caine movies. The original was waaay better.

The Vanishing

Suspense. Good but not 'very good'.


American Hangman

Sutherland-driven vehicle that has its moments. The very end saves it a bit.

King In The Wilderness (2018)

A wonderful HBO documentary about Dr. King which is profoundly intimate and unsparing. And in the process, enhances Dr. King's legacy.

no one might care about this besides myself, but today i learned that the fisheye shots in 'the favourite' (for which lanthimos has taken a bit of flack for being show-offish & mannered) were influenced by convex mirrors that he'd seen in 17th century paintings.

[Edited 1/24/19 12:07pm]

leviathan (2014) 4/5 a man tries to fight corruption in a small russian town.

this may be a facile comparison, but i couldn't help but think of how leviathan contrasts with beale street, which i saw tuesday & enjoyed a lot (also 4/5 from me). like jenkins' film, this is moody & slightly languidly paced. both directors clearly have a talent for making material that would be flat & lifeless in other hands hypnotic & absorbing.

unlike jenkins' film, where he finds some kind of warm humanism among the tough things he depicts, this is a bitter, icily brutal film. where jenkins finds hope, leviathan seems to find only despair in his state's ability to destroy a life.

the slumber party massacre (1982) 2.5/5 girls are slaughtered at a slumber party. famously scripted by feminist author rita mae brown.

despite all the hot air that has been spent on this film over the years on whether it qualifies as a feminist slasher deconstruction, i found there to be very little in this to differentiate it from a standard slasher. if you did a pepsi challenge & showed it to someone without their knowledge of its pedigree, i think there's very little chance they'd be able to notice any difference between this and any other early 80s slasher, aside from the clumsy jokes.

has cute girls, some nudity, & undistinguished gore.

[Edited 1/24/19 13:49pm]

Kevyn Aucoin Beauty & the Beast in Me (2017) and Larger In Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story (2017) I watched both these films and found them very moving and informative. Kevyn was a genius, and the never before behind the scene footage of the top supermodels and his many celeb friends was amazing. I give these wonderful tributes each a 4.5 out of 5

[Edited 1/26/19 2:37am]

Aquafuck

Boooring. DC movies are all boring beyond imagination. They can't lick the heels of Marvel, even if DC is supposed to have 2 out of 3 'greatest' superhero's. They just do nothing with it. Not a lick of humour, not a lick of character painting, fighting scenes that drag on so long while going nowhere, even the effects are not that great.

superheros

That was close

[Edited 1/25/19 2:56am]