Movie Review Thread

[Phoebe]

Picture Perfect (1997)

I was going to rent either Nocturnal Animals, Arrival, or another non Amy Adams movie last night. But as it got late and I couldn't figure out the stupid Amazon Prime password, I gave up and decided to watch this crappy movie instead. Yeah, I should have known that it was a crappy movie right at the start. Jennifer Aniston looks like a toddler in this movie, helped along by some ultrathin 90s version of desirable eyebrows. Kevin Bacon plays a kind of jerky love interest in this movie, which is great. Some other guy who looks like an actual infant baby plays the main love interest. For some reason Olympia Dukakis is being wasted as Jennifer's mom and Illeana Douglas is wasted on a role as her buddy. There's no point even talking about this, but the plot involves her accidentally and then more enthusiastically getting involved in a stupid lie about being engaged to someone she's not engaged to, so that she can reap various career and personal benefits. Obviously every part of this is completely unrealistic and stupid. I wanted to stab myself as a punishment for going through with something that I clearly did not have to go through with. I feel like I may even have seen this movie before, maybe even reviewed it before, and somehow blocked it out because it was so bad that I didn't remember I've ever seen it, if I did.

The only good part of the movie is that my husband finally came in and said, hey, is that the one from before Angelina Jolie? Or no, it's Christina Applegate, right? You look like her! I did not know which of these three parts was worse, but it was funny. After I managed to choke out that her name was Jennifer Aniston and ask what he was talking about, he informed me that in his opinion Angelina Jolie is not as good-looking and Brad Pitt should have stuck with this one. Although, he said, Angelina Jolie is clearly some kind of sex pervert and he approves of that, she is also kind of gross and not cute like this one. So there you have it - it was a learning experience all around.

[Phoebe]

Arrival

I dreamed this movie and somehow it became real. I've been crying over it off and on for an hour now and I'm not sure how long it's going to take to get over that immediate reaction. This movie is my everything. The layers are so deep. I watched the first hour and some a few times over, partly so that various family members could be caught up to where I was as they flitted in and out of the room. Then I watched the very end, from the phone call onward, just that one time. My kid had already seen the ending last night and she came in to see what I thought of it, since she felt there was no closure and it was very frustrating. She found me in a messy heap on the bed, bawling my eyes out, and luckily she was there, my child, so I grabbed her and tried to explain that we have to act in the world without fully understanding the import or rectitude of our actions, including when we have children, but I birthed her and here she is. Oh my God, I don't even have the energy to make a white text of spoilers and get into all of it now. All I can say is when you live a whole lifetime feeling that you're being forced into the linearity and specificity of a particular language because you simply do not ever think in that language that is supposed to be your own, when you think of things in a big mass of color and sound all at once, when you struggle to communicate, when you're overwhelmed by existential anxiety, and continual deja vu that gives you more existential anxiety, when you cannot comprehend the suffering of the world, when you cannot understand why people willfully make the suffering so much worse in such horrible ways, when you cannot understand warfare and violence at all, this movie makes you feel at least somewhere out there is another little machine palindrome to make the world a less lonely place. You can go on with your task again; it's okay. Just keep going, even if forward seems anything but forward. Also, of course these wonderful creatures are what they are - well, with seven, but still, what they are. Of course they are. It's borderline spooky - like is solipsism real or do people see straight into my mind or are some of us occupying a single mind spread out in different places? The soundtrack alone just about did me in - the sounds are absolutely amazing. Such sounds! Too much. Beautiful. Overwhelmingly beautiful.

I don't understand, honestly, how anyone can watch this and not be overwhelmed by... life! By all of life itself. How do you watch this and feel like, well, blah de blah, I got no "closure", the science didn't make sense, why would they do this or that thing? No, go back and watch again. The levels of complexity here are astonishing. Every single thing in this movie is here for a reason, and the more I dug into it, rewinding and repeating it, the better. Indeed, I think you're SUPPOSED to watch the movie this way. Back and forth - it ends with the beginning and begins with the end. I'd like to see it all laid out segment by segment - I'm sure they did this, in making it - and see where the middle is and how all the various parts are arrayed in a palindrome. I see it in the first half because that's the part I repeated, but I can't bring myself to watch the last parts again. Maybe tomorrow.

And can I add how much I love Amy Adams? Ahhh, who else but she could have done this?

[Kyle]

I agree 100% with everything you said about Arrival. SOOOOOOO GOOOOOD!

[Phoebe]

Amy (2015)

I believe there may be other movies about Amy Winehouse, but this one was wonderful. It really gives you a sense of what she was like before she became hugely famous, and provides a much more complicated look at the different problems that beset her and led to her death. The goal seemed to be - and was successfully accomplished - that she should appear as a person no different from any other, who had a particular talent that radically changed her life, and she suffered a number of other things that other people suffer normally, but which in her case were complicated by fame.

[Phoebe]

Watched most of a movie called "Begin Again" thanks to the Keira Knightley movie thread reminding me that it was sitting half-watched in my queue. Autocorrect, in a moment of deep insight, turned that word into half-ass. Yes. A half-ass movie chock full of sexist bullshit (didja know we girls bond emotionally by shopping for clothing that attracts cute boys?) and gruesome musical montages (could this be my most-loathed part of bad movies?) courtesy of a dude named John Carney. The actors here are good actors, John. This was 100% your fault. I can't decide whether the worst moment comes when a pair of supposedly extremely talented young classical musicians are induced to play for free on a record because it's not classical music, or when Keira spoilers... boyfriend played by Adam Levine, or perhaps when the main character finally approves of his daughter's appearance because he deems it purely classy and not slutty, followed shortly by his appreciating Keira's nearly identical attire and appearance for the same reasons, leading to a truly nauseating combination of sexist AND creepy! John, WTF?

I'm not going to bother putting in a separate entry for the movie, "A Perfect Man," the movie I began watching solely because Louise Fletcher appears in it, because I stabbed myself rather than having to go through with watching any more past the point when it becomes clear that his wife is going to impersonate someone else in a phone call, and now I'm not able to write new posts.

[Phoebe]

Blazing Saddles

It's about to cycle off Netflix. It's even better than I had remembered it. Makes up for bad recent movie attempts!

[poorpete]

Phoebe Johnson is right!

Watched "Oh Hello" on Netflix -- I guess it's a filmed play more than anything, or the play slash stand-up special. Anyways, it was very very funny.

[Kyle]

"Shimmer Lake"- a netflix exclusive. Murder mystery told in reverse order by day-- It starts on Friday, then shows Thursday, etc. It was actually pretty clever and had good performances, but it set itself up for a really obvious twist that the movie clearly thought would be surprising- but that I was 95% confident of 20 minutes into the movie.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

Echo Park

I absolutely adore Mamie Gummer and that's why I watched this. I still adore her after having watched it but the movie is not that great. Mamie plays a woman who is avoiding getting engaged to her long-term boyfriend because she's not truly happy. She goes off and appears to be finding a little bit of true happiness with someone else, but then the movie causes them to develop anguish over the situation. I absolutely hated the ending, which I guess is supposed to be all cerebrally challenging to the usual narrative tropes but which instead just pisses you off.

[Phoebe]

Holiday Breakup

I don't know from whence these movies appear on Netflix. Perhaps these are the Lifetime movies everyone mentions? Anyway this movie is idiotic and objectively not of high quality, but nevertheless I thought it was terrific. The two main actors who are struggling with their relationship are both adorable. The struggles they have in their relationship are actually realistic things that real people you know have struggles in their relationships over, as opposed to the massive dramas or deus ex machina conflicts we grow accustomed to in the romantic comedy or drama. This was different in a good way.

[Phoebe]

Lion

Well, spent the last 100 minutes bawling my eyes out. I'm going to go sleep in my 5 year old's room now, assuming sleep is an option. I hope everyone who sees this message can see this movie at least one time in your life.

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

I was so overcome by that point already, and could barely grasp it mentally. Just a stomach-sinking shock. This is one of those stories that stays with you for a very long time and you have to really think about it, so maybe at some point I can wrap my mind around that part of it. I don't know.

[Phoebe]

Finally recovered somewhat from seeing Lion, enough to watch lousy movies for fun. One of them was Emma, which reminded me both why it is my least favorite Jane Austen book and least favorite Jane Austen-based movie. This also reminds me to see Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was a deeply satisfying book written by someone who really gets it. Anyway, Emma sucks, partly because Gwyneth Paltrow is intolerable in the role and comes across as an insufferable brat, which is not quite what was wanted. The actors around her are pretty wonderful but cannot save it. The whole story is annoying as hell: wiser older man will patronize younger woman he's hot for until she gets whipped into shape properly, and then they can be in love and together. Ugh, Jane, wth?

To cleanse myself I watched North & South for the 42nd time but realized it's another version of the same plot, so...

Then I watched Anna Karenina, the version with Blanche Hatchett. Wow, that's such an example of dementia taking hold that I'm just goin to let it rest. And truth be told, that's a much better name for her than whatever her real name turns out to be once I remember it. Let's see.... Pirates of the Car KEIRA KNIGHTELY. Yep, to my brain, she's clearly Blanche Hatchett. W. T. F. ??? Moving right along... I actually like her in this role for some weird reason. I thought I would hate her in this role, but I LIKE it and I like this adaptation with terrible, idiotic, boyish, foppish Vronsky. This Vronsky is no danger to me or anyone else, but from this detached distance you can finally see that Anna is a flawed but sympathetic person caught in an impossible position, and this is Tolstoy's existentialist Christian angst on full display. When Vronsky is hot you just feel a lot of unnecessary anguish. Levin is also portrayed in this version as the idiot he really is, and Kitty is played perfectly by whatssername, El Jefe's boyfriend's girlfriend. I need sleep.

[akiva]

[Phoebe]

Surprisingly, I really liked this version. I'm not a big Blanche Hatchett fan but she was great as Anna. She did the dissolute, frantic, guilty Anna well, which I hadn't expected. Jude Law was also surprisingly successful as a very grim and somber Karenin. The annoying, emasculated Vronsky was a relief I had not expected. He's someone's idea of superficially pretty and "intense", which worked well. I was under the delusion that Vronsky should be truly desirable but it's far better this way. The movie does all these artsy things with staging - literally, putting a bunch of scenes artificially on stage to represent the public world. I liked this, not sure why. The story is just sooooo terrible, I can see why it would be undesirable to watch any filmed version. In Tolstoy's world, some rather unfair and unexpected shit happens, and then you lose your kids and want to die, or else you're sitting around congratulating yourself for piety when really it was luck. Might be true but why make the reader suffer along too?

[FlameBlade]

The Big Sick

A heartfelt, hilarious movie. Only can recommend it to everyone.

[Phoebe]

Masterminds (2016)

Somewhere along the way I stopped snorting and cackling long enough to hear my husband say this movie was based on a true story. That only made me laugh harder until, what do you know? It's based on a true story! I had expected not to like this movie because it would be so stupid; however, I ended up liking it in spite of or maybe because of its stupidity. Apparently the critics didn't find it funny - you know, bad jokes, blah blah blah. People in silly wigs, which isn't very funny. Nevertheless, the whole thing was funny. Maybe not "watch it again someday" hilarious, but still very amusing. And the true story aspect makes it much funnier.

[WillyGilligan]

The Founder

See the rise of McDonald's focusing on Ray Kroc. Michael Keaton is still on his career upswing and I'm loving every role I've seen him in lately. (Think that's three since Birdman, but still). The film chooses to be pretty honest about the man. I sympathized with him a lot, even with some of the crappy things he does later on. Think it would make a good double feature with Supersize Me or Fast Food Nation as a Pro/Con, but that may just be me.

Baby Driver

Thanks to my night schedules I've had to wait a while to see this, even though my son took his mother to see it opening week. I don't think I have anything negative to say about it. The soundtrack is amazing, the chase scenes are cool, inventive and I was actually breathless for some of them. I can't remember the last time I was that physically moved by action scenes. It also makes me wish I could have seen Edgar Wright's Ant-man. There's maybe a couple of plotholes, but the movie just sails right through them.