Movie Review Thread

[Phoebe]

She became famous because of the movie and its infamous scenes like this one, and apparently neither enjoyed nor was prepared for such fame. Her image was forever set a certain way because of this. She was right to be worried about what the scene would be like but felt she couldn't refuse to go along with their idea.

[Phoebe]

I have seen a few movies over the holidays and one of them was not Pedro Almodovar's new movie, but I do look forward to seeing it as soon as it comes through the maze of rental possibilities! A nice man gamely attempted in the Atlantic to defend Pedro against perennial charges of sexism and exploitation of the women who populate his movies, by explaining that Almodovar's own gay sexuality means that he's personally identifying with his female characters and such, and... well, there were reasons. Suffice to say I do not think Almodovar's women require any such defense. His women are amazing, astonishing, hilarious, tenacious, gritty, sexy, bored, inventive, and everything you'd possibly want in female characters in a film. When I was a younger woman, I didn't know it was possible to be a woman the way that Almodovar obviously saw it was possible. One can only surmise that he really, truly listens to the women in his life and therefore permits his characters great freedom, and in this way, like some divinely-inspired rhapsode channeling the voices of goddesses, he shows us honest, beautiful, mind-blowing vistas of Woman! The women in his movies offered ways of understanding incomprehensible realities in life and lit a path to becoming the kind of woman I already was and wanted to be. I really cannot see why any of that inspires charges of sexism or requires a defense; it makes me think people must not understand or like the very essence of my own feminine nature, if they think Almodovar's women require a defense! So thank you, Atlantic reviewer, but don't trouble so much over this non-issue.

Anyway, that said, I recently watched two crap movies and one good one, in addition to Rogue One in theatre. The crap ones were called Blue Jay and Not Another Happy Ending, and the good one was called From the Terrace.

Not Another Happy Ending is ostensibly a romantic comedy featuring a gal from Dr. Who with beautiful auburn hair. My kids immediately noticed her Dr. Who connection and I was like, eh? Here, she plays a writer. I have no fears about "spoiling" this idiotic story. She's struggling to find a publisher, and at last an ugly, grouchy French editor agrees to publish her first novel. After this editor helps her edit the book, in a dynamic and artistically satisfying process represented by a meaningful musical montage, her debut is a smashing success. In the midst of her newfound fame, she begins dating the chump hired by a movie studio to screenwrite the book. The chump is played by the hot dude who played Desmond on Lost, which is a problem because in this movie he has to be a chump, and you're thinking, nope, that's the hot dude from Lost. Anyway, the ugly, grouchy French editor is now our romantic hero. Alas, before publication, he changed the TITLE of our fair author's book, an unforgivable crime that has caused her to be very angry with him. This is the conflict in their as-yet-nonexistent romance. She still owes his company one more book, but she's having trouble finishing it because - aha! - if she finishes that last chapter, she won't have any further excuse to see the grouchy French editor! Her subconscious is fighting with her superego or something, you see? A lot of what we do see is represented by musical montages - at least four, but I may have lost count. A movie with four musical montages has four too many. Our heroine's book was about her father, and you decide not to turn off the movie only because the middle explores more of their relationship and gives you faint hopes something better will emerge from the story. You're wrong to have this hope. The movie isn't going anywhere good. The chumpy screenwriter eventually is dumped for changing the book's ending for the movies, thus clearing the way for the ugly French editor, who has been doing senseless, meddlesome things nobody can understand. It takes a fucking LONG time to resolve things, always in completely stupid and non-charming ways. Spare yourself the agony of enduring this dreck. One Star.

That brings us to another movie the highlight of which was frantically clicking ONE STAR afterward on Netflix: Blue Jay. I was eager to check this out because I love the guy who plays the lead, Mark Duplass, in his role on The League. He also wrote this script, so I figured we'd be getting something deeper and wittier than the standard "two highschool sweethearts randomly reconnect in a grocery store aisle" setup would indicate. Well, it was more complex, sure, but in a bad way. These people are not funny and they are so, soooo awkwardly WHITE it hurts. They have a lot of issues. They never got over their issues back then so they're going to dip into them now. As the viewer you get to experience all of it in excessive detail. It's very honest, even as both of them are having a hard time being honest. It's very laid bare, even as they're both faking it. I assume there are people out there who have deep and meaningful conversations like this, I have no idea. I felt kind of dirty afterward, like I was sleeping on the couch when these people unexpectedly showed up to hash out their issues, but instead of calling attention to my presence I accidentally fell back asleep (which really happened at one point), and now I'm trapped on the couch listening to very boring shit I don't want to hear about their personal lives and it's way too late to let them know I've been here all along. You're just laying there, hoping it will end and they'll leave and then you can go back to sleep. We literally have to watch them rub each other's scalps at one point, I shit you not. Dude needs to stop writing scripts and concentrate on the League and all will be forgiven. Also he should watch some Almodovar movies.

That brings us to From the Terrace, a really awesome movie with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (who looks like my mom, when she was that age, except for the platinum blonde hair). Paul Newman is, as you know by now, hotter than the earth's core. It's almost disturbing in this movie - no, it is actually very much disturbing - because Paul Newman's character has massive Daddy issues AND Mommy issues, and therefore is quite sad in his soul. It's one thing to have an angry or resentful or sly or cunning or righteous Paul Newman, but it's a whole other deal to have one who is deeply sad in the soul parts. It's upsetting: here the man is dead and on the screen he's acting in a pretend story, yet you in 2017 are viscerally, tooth-gnashingly distressed because his character is unhappy! I can't say anything about the plot because the spoilers would really spoil some things. I found it absolutely shocking. The script is quite sexist and full of screwed-up ideas, not to mention shockingly bawdy jokes from 1960. Apparently it's a poor adaptation of a much more complex and less screwed-up novel about the dealings of fancy East-coast upper crust types in the post-WWII period. I'm not sure I'd want to invest time in the novel in case it turns out to be just as sexist and screwed up as the movie. Anyway, the characters are immoral, messed up, confused, and everything that happens is just plain wrong. But the movie is really good and Joanne Woodward is terrific as ever. Paul Newman takes off his shirt at least once - after that point I was sort of dazzled blind and have no clear notion what else we may have seen of him.

[Phoebe]

Saw Finding Dory. It was OK. Kids wept piteously. Too many chase type scenes. I don't much enjoy chase scenes no matter the context. The mere suggestion of a cartoon fish having short term memory problems fills me with the most indescribable frustrated, hollow despair.

Had stomach cramps, could have influenced impression of movie. Kids getting good grades. Some work success. Beyond that? Ugh. It is like the world stopped making dark green and low G. And it's all still there and still OK but no more dark green or low G ever again. Why? What was the point? It's all forever lost. Even Dory finds home again.

[Phoebe]

Journey to Greenland

Recent Netflix movie. I have been fairly pleased with recent Netflix shows so I gave this a spin. I feel totally betrayed. It promised everything and delivered NOTHING. I felt promised beautiful scenery. Well, kind of. We did kind of get that but not even like you would think. Not even that much. I felt promised not just one but TWO hot French guys and maybe some others sprinkled in the mix. Wrong. Nobody of any hotness level whatsoever in this movie. Nothing. Dead, zip, zilch, cold. I felt promised some kind of insight, learning, or story. Wrong, there was no story, no insight, nothing much really. It was mildly humorous. It operated on a pace that usually does something for me, I like slow movies about people out in the middle of nowhere doing nothing much. Normally that's my thing. But this did not deliver.

[Phoebe]

Grease

Wow, a person really figures out exactly how many bad sexual double entendres are in this movie when watching it with one's children. Wow. So many. And Buffy understood every single one of them and said, Wow, this movie is so much better than the stage musical because finally you understand what is going on in the plot and there are so many sexual double entendres! Nope, nope, nope. This wasn't really how I remember it happening. I remember being 11 or 12 and a lot of Bonne Bell Lip Smackers and a lot of having to act out the parts of both Kenickie AND Danny because nobody else was willing, those snots. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Luckily I think a lot of it sailed over Chloe's head and Jim spent the whole time building a fort (i.e. enthusiastically wrecking my bedroom's cleanliness).

[Ronster]

Dad's Army

I watched it and liked it not because it had merit, but because of the actors. It was predictable. It was campy. It was fun and forgivable.
Starring:
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Toby Jones
Bill Nighy
Michael Gambon and others

Plot summary:
A Nazi spy has infiltrated a small town in England in WWII and the "Home Guard" made up of the old and unfit are tasked with finding the spy amidst their own fascination with the lovely Ms. Winters.

[poorpete]

The Music Man, for all it's nice songs and fun, is unartistic in comparison to the other musical classics of that era.

West Side Story came out a year earlier, you'd think they'd course-correct and at least feature some interesting camera work. Instead this really plays like a staged play.

[buckett]

John Wick: Chapter Two

It owns.

[Cazmonster]

[Phoebe]

Blind Date (2015) On Netflix

This French (subtitles if you don't speak French) romantic-comedy is about two adjacent apartment dwellers who share one paper-thin wall through which everything can be heard. After a period of hostilities, the two begin communicating through the wall, without ever seeing one another face-to-face. They call each other Machin/Machine. A number of pathetic, trite scenes follow, as they develop a "relationship". The eccentric boy Machin doesn't normally go out among other people because he loathes them, and apparently has been lonely for seven years due to the loss of his former wife/gf. He prefers to sit in his apartment doing math and building strange and complex puzzle-games. Nevertheless, due to his unusual childhood he possesses the requisite insight into music to inform the girl Machine that her piano performances lack feeling despite their technical perfection. After a lifetime of studying piano, you know, she was heretofore unable to grasp the role of feeling in piano performance, but thank god some anonymous man could help, right? Not only that: she literally bursts her buttons and gives us a display of feminine jouissance which had been absent from her innocent life until the psychotic stranger from the other side of the wall set things right. Yes, this is a French film, I know - it's not like I wasn't warned. The addition of supporting cast members - a degenerate but outgoing friend for Machin and a sex-crazed, immoral sister for Machine - does not really help. My God, this movie is stupid. At the same time, it completely destroyed me emotionally and I am now an empty - but extremely decorative! - shell of my former self.

[Phoebe]

The White Helmets (2016)

Watched this movie last night and have nothing worth writing about it. Basically this documents what a group of rescuers were doing to try to save people from bombings in Syria. They pull babies, kids from the rubble. They talk about what they're doing and grapple with the deaths of their loved ones. Be prepared I guess, it's pretty intense.

[El Jefe]

Arrival

Why in the name of Cthulhu did I wait so damn long to see this movie? Easily one of the best examples of cinematography done right in the last few years. The DP needs about a thousand awards here. Solid cast, and they deliver exactly what you need in the non-action sci-fi arena. I'm sure that there's only about a billion problems with the main twist, but I still loved it. The various bits with language (while not exactly handled well in the film, and I'd wager that a fair amount of things hit the cutting room floor for time that should have stayed in)...that was what really sold me on the film. There's a way of looking at language here that reminds me of some of the mind-bending stuff Frank Herbert wrote in the later Dune books. The weird intersection of cultural adaptation of language, and how much that plays into miscommunication.

Loved it. Not matter what Mike might say, I've got nothing to ruin this one for you.

But Snape does die in it.

[Mike]

Loved Arrival as well. Beautifully shot. Wonderfully acted. Unique and thought-provoking story that, yes, is terribly flawed, but only in ways I'm happy to ignore. A strong, intellectual female lead who is always the arbiter of her own fate, even when she doesn't know it.

Stop trying to ruin this for me, Jeff!

[Phoebe]

I love Amy Adams so I'm looking forward to this. She has been nominated for many Oscars and never got one. Honestly not sure why neither she nor Huppert won over Emma frickin Stone.

[buckett]

To anyone who enjoyed Arrival, I also recommend reading the short story it's based on, Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang (you can find a PDF here: although I would just highly recommend getting the entire collection, called Stories of Your Life and Others...he's a great sci-fi writer).

It's a fun read after watching the movie as it explains the ending more scientifically and better fleshes out Jeremy Renner's character.

NOTE: I would NOT read the short story before watching the film.

[El Jefe]

The Accountant - Lots of spoilers

Want to see the best Batman movie? The one Affleck wanted to do? Then don't watch Batman. Watch The Accountant instead. You've got the closest-to-reality (that you can ever really get) version of Batman in Affleck's character. Not quite the resources of Wayne, but enough wealth to make the vigilante lifestyle feasible and mobile. Need a Jim Gordon who works in some degree of reality? Enter J.K Simmons' Treasury (possibly Deputy? Never clear) Director Ray King. The version of Robin and Oracle are both welcome surprises and played incredibly well by their actors.

I don't know enough of the details of life for those on the autism spectrum. I don't know if they did the subject justice, and I'd really hold some doubts that overexposure therapy as practiced in the film is a desirable way to go. And certainly, it's probably not great idea to say to kids "You can be a great assassin!" But it certainly felt like there was a concentrated effort to do the subject justice, particularly in the scenes with the school.

Seriously. This is the best Batman movie you're ever going to get.

Holy fuck, I loved the hell out this movie. I loved it because it has absolutely everything a comic book nerd could want. This may actually be the best idea yet. Stop making comic book movies. Make really quality movies that happen to tangentially tell classic comic book tales. Because high-functioning autistic assassin Batman with just about a million in yearly liquidity works SO DAMN WELL. Way, way better than anything they've put on screen yet. Or probably on page either.

[Cazmonster]

I need to see The Accountant. The autistic traits that he's shown in the trailer are ones that make life different but not so difficult.

[Kyle]

I thought the display of autism was superficial and borderline offensive. I hate the idea that everyone with autism is some kind of savant.

[El Jefe]

[Kyle]