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2019 Q2 MOVIE DISCUSSION


RIPPA

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Watched A Simple Favor over the weekend.  Cheesy, glossy thriller.  Don't look too deep into the plot, just enjoy the fun.  I could watch Blake Lively read the phone book.  Not exactly a great actress but don't care.  Anna Kendrick basically played herself.  I was entertained.  6/10.

Also watched The Dirt.  Movie plays a little fast and loose with the facts at times but does a nice job of capturing the hedonism of Motley Crue at their peak.  Played like an R-rated version of a TV biopic but was perhaps a little better than.  I was entertained.  6/10.

And watched Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse a week ago.  Loved the first half of the movie.  Loved the visual style.  Then everything kinda went off the rails with stuff that didn't make much sense and kinda looked like a visual cluster on the screen.  After all the hype, this one let me down.  6/10.

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5 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

F/X is on TV right now

Why have I never taken the time to watch this fucking movie?! This rules. Any time you can get to see Brian Dennehy threaten someone on film you need to. 

I had the privilege to see him on stage once. Just an incredible actor.

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2 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Just thinking about it, @S.K.o.S. should probably get the ball rolling on the '19 Summer Blockbuster thread.  Avengers III, Part 2  tickets are selling out all over. 

I gotta check what I did in past years, but since it's an April movie I don't think it would even be included.

Makes it slightly more interesting if the obvious #1 box office pick is out of the picture.

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Took my daughter (who's 7) to see Wonder Park.

It was a $100 million animated feature that had little to no plot and seemed to be made specifically for people with 2-3 second attention spans.

Spoiler

The "plot" involves an imaginative young girl who creates a theme park with the help of her mother through a series of games before bedtime. But the girl starts rejecting the park when her mother is forced to leave town to get her "serious illness" (implied as cancer) treated. The girl then discovers the park while running away from a math camp bus, and discovers it's being depleted into ruins because she abandoned it due to her mother's illness. She then works with the animal mascots of the park to revive it.

On the plus side, it did promote STEM learning for girls, and the voice acting was decent. But the "adult" plotting seemed to be tacked in at the last minute, was rushed in and out a few minutes into the film, then rushed back at the end to provide closure. Also had that "adults are idiots" vibe throughout the film.

Another annoyance ...

Spoiler

The film is called Wonder Park, but the amusement park is called "Wonder Land" throughout the film. The filmmakers spent $100 million and couldn't settle on a name?

 

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My guess is there's a certain company whose initials are W and D, who have a copyright to the name of that land  (Alice in...)  and they are, shall we say, not inclined to help them out.   

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On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2019 at 6:00 PM, S.K.o.S. said:

I gotta check what I did in past years, but since it's an April movie I don't think it would even be included.

Makes it slightly more interesting if the obvious #1 box office pick is out of the picture.

These are my feelings.   With no gimmie #1, the field will be a bit more volatile.

Whether or not that translates to a better outing for me this year, remains to be seen.

Edited by J.T.
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On 4/3/2019 at 1:06 AM, Curt McGirt said:

F/X is on TV right now

Why have I never taken the time to watch this fucking movie?! This rules. Any time you can get to see Brian Dennehy threaten someone on film you need to. 

Well he is America's answer to Otm Shank.

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Soo.... after Rippa mentioned it in...some thread or another, I decided on the spot to buy a ticket to the showing of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote that happened tonight.

Holy shit am I glad I did that.

I guess I can see the reviewer criticisms about the pacing and plot being uneven, but if some reviewer is really watching a Terry Gilliam movie for pacing and plot, I don't know why they chose to review films for a living.  It's absurd and Fantastic and insane and tragic and totally off its fucking nut, and it's a shame it won't get a wider release (and who the Hell even knows what they'll do with respect to a streaming or hard-copy release, if anything - hint hint, this is where you step in, Criterion).

Gilliam's always been a guy who has made mythological films.  Sometimes those are clear cases, but others, like 12 Monkeys, are maybe a little harder to see, except when you get a glimpse of where it's coming from.  In this instance, there's obviously the role of Quixote, and plenty of people have likened Gilliam to him for even sticking with this movie this long, but I think this is more like 12 Monkeys, where it's another film which forms the baseline myth.  This feels like a giant look inward as much as a look outward, one that disassembles, reassembles, reflects, satirizes everything, even itself - especially itself.  The closest comparison I can think of is 8 1/2, a movie I know Gilliam admires the shit out of, and I don't know if anyone else could have made something so different and yet so similar.

If you're an Adam Driver fan (which I wasn't - at all - until tonight), you owe it to yourself to see this.  

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The Rogerebert.com review I read today along with the rest of the usual pile was really good for it and similar to what you describe, you might want to read it. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-man-who-killed-don-quixote-2019 They also made me verify that I am absolutely positively going to go see High Life. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/high-life-2019 

Meanwhile, you can go to the horror thread to see what I think about their reviewer's thoughts on the OG Pet Sematery

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Since having a Criterion Channel subscription is supposed to save me money by letting me watch things I wouldn't buy blindly, I decided to watch Ozu's Noriko trilogy.

This subscription is not going to save me money. 

I've only watched Late Spring so far, but it's pretty great. I remember one of the people who pushed me towards a broader viewing circle was ohtani's jacket (remember him?), and he claimed that Kurosawa found Ozu to be boring. Apologies to the greatest director not named Orson Welles, but just because it's utterly different from you doesn't preclude it from being affecting and captivating in its own way. Wonderful acting from Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu, and enough dissertations have been written about the cinematography and blocking, etc., that I won't belabor them. The antidote to the decade of Tentpoles and No Tent. 

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Got to second the love for Don Quixote. Gilliam's best for a long long time and definitely reminded me of 8 1/2 too. I already want to re-watch it. Sure Criterion will grab it, Gilliam is one of the directors Criterion loves more than most for some reason, (apart from him being awesome).

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Guest The Magnificent 7

I watched A Field in England. It was up there with Valhalla Rising in the incredible visuals / head scratcher department. Saying whether I liked it or not seems irrelevant. I really liked some scenes or sequences and others had me questioning my decision to watch it. Anyone who tells you exactly what it was about is fucking lying. 

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I just saw "The Greatest Showman" and I freaking loved it. It's no "West Side Story" as far as musicals go, but overall it was great. The songs and dance numbers make up for any thin plot there may be. And that describes tons of classic musicals I love. And Hugh Jackman is amazing. I think this is the first Zac Efron movie I've ever seen, and he's not bad. The troupe is unbelievably awesome, as well.

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Fast Color

Directed by Julia Hart

Starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Lorraine Toussaint, Saniyya Sidney, Christopher Denham, and David Strathairn.

Now out in what appears to be a limited release.  I know it is in two theaters near B'More, but I don't think it's anywhere in the 804 yet.

Edited by J.T.
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On 4/16/2019 at 5:03 PM, The Magnificent 7 said:

I watched A Field in England. It was up there with Valhalla Rising in the incredible visuals / head scratcher department. Saying whether I liked it or not seems irrelevant. I really liked some scenes or sequences and others had me questioning my decision to watch it. Anyone who tells you exactly what it was about is fucking lying. 

I hated it the first time I watched it, yet it stuck in my head and I'd find myself thinking about it months later. I watched it again about a year later and loved it. One of my favourite films of the last decade.

Edited by Swiftian
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Watched Three Colors: Blue this morning. I don't know enough about the language of film criticism to do a good job describing it, so I'll just do a bad job. The film never managed to hold my full attention but never came close to losing it, either. A nice, tight, melodrama where people say words like they're in a movie but all the acting feels natural. The plot was simple, the themes deep , yerI had a harder time following the story and an easier time understanding the themes. It felt like a tragedy shot in reverse order. I appreciated how broadly-observed everything felt despite the film being a total one-woman show. Juliette Binochet is kind of amazing. Another film that reminds me that every movie should be 90 minutes long. This one's 94 and not a second is wasted.

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