Movie Review Thread

[poorpete]

52 By Women 2020 #7 - Selma

Shows the mix of political and personal skills and failings that led and complicated the civil rights movement. Sat there, enthralled, often in tears, often inspired. Often see Jesus in MLK in many ways but in this time in one way particularly: this film is about him coming to terms with having a cause you'd die for. We see him conflicted, in one amazing scene, one where all signs were that he was safest, where he was the most scared and shaken. A human portrait of a hero.

Ava does a great job with the actors, and her best work is composing shots around people in conversation. Her action scenes are ok, they could pack more of a punch, but then again, there are plenty of punches to the gut already.

Left me with a question for myself, as I was inspired and all, and believe in the cause, what was accomplished, what needs to be maintained, and what progress is left to be done. But have I, again conflating with Jesus, shirked my responsibility to take up the cross?

[buckett]

[poorpete]

Definitely! I think her humor and storytelling is on my wavelength, so I hope her other films live up to this one.

Speaking of the opposite, I got 20 minutes into Claire Denis' "High Life" (on Prime) and decided it wasn't my bag. And to defend myself, there are plenty of male directors whose films don't work for me and I avoid, so this is equality to say the same for this depressing slog... I may try again in the future though... but maybe with one of her more acclaimed films.

52 By Women 2020 #8 - Clueless
Wow. A lot of songs from 1995 in this one! Wow, Paul Rudd. Maybe he's never aged, but maybe he was always a 50 year old trapped in a 25 year old's body. Anyways, this was an interesting film to watch immediately after Parasite, as class is often clearly on display. It's very funny, very silly, very witty, Alicia is a great comic actress here, the film punches up, hugs up, but in the end, it just wants everyone to be happy. Wish I watched this 25 years ago.

[poorpete]

52 By Women 2020 #9 - The Seduction of Mimi

Last time I saw a Lina Wertmüller film was in high school, when I watched "Swept Away..." on Bravo back when they'd show a random foreign film once a month. At the time, I really disliked it. I hated both characters, who had no redeeming qualities, and didn't find it funny or thought-provoking beyond the class issue which is front and center. When Madonna's remake bombed I felt my opinion was redeemed. After watching Mimi, I'm wondering if I should give it a second chance. Mimi is wild and funny, and throws punches at everyone in society, but particularly most punches are thrown at capitalism, toxic masculinity, and the mob. Mimi is a hilariously awful man, he has no redeeming qualities. He's weak unless he feels safe to be strong, but he never has the upper hand. We see him make 100 terrible decisions and still hope he gets redeemed, we are pulled in to this seduction just like the women in this film do. We see him get beaten up for bad and good reasons, mostly for good reasons, many times from women who he done wrong.

The film advances plot while making jokes and commenting on society, and all done with deft cinematography. All you can ask for in a satire. Loved a tiny little scene, where the goal was obviously how far gone Mimi has from his warm relationship and socialist ideals, as she asks where in their bedroom she should put the oversized portrait of Lenin.

[Phoebe]

Loving these reviews - I want to see most of these, except Clueless because have already seen and seen again, excellent fun movie.

[poorpete]

52 By Women 2020 #10 - The Adventures of Prince Achmed

A silent, at-times-slow, but visually stunning animated epic by Lotte Reiniger, the oldest surviving full-length animated film, predating Snow White by over a decade. It's interesting how most animated films for children aren't considered art films, even though they are made completely by art, but this one definitely fits the bill, as the animation is in a distinct, purposeful, and original style. My previous knowledge of silent animated films is , by the great comic artist Winsor McCay, which is pedestrian compared to the craftsmanship seen here.

That said, I have nothing to say at all about the characters (except some designs get pretty close to modern-day offensive) and the story (a beauty to watch but modern-day boring). There's a fun harem scene that features a same-sex kiss, for humor, but still surprising to see in a film a century old. But over all, what happens is expected. Achmed is a hero. He goes on adventures. That's about it. I'm not sure my kids will get much of anything out of it.

I'd suggest maybe check out her great shorts first, both silent and sound, that can be found on Kanopy, Criterion, and YouTube, and see if piques your interest, before sitting down to watch this for an hour plus.

Eg. Cinderella is neat for it's opening featuring Lotte in stop-motion...

[Ronster]

Midway - 2019
If you have seen any of the bigger shows on Prime or Netflix you will recognize a host of actors in this WWII story of one of its most significant battles.
Lots of action and intrigue. You get to see a lot of what went on in the Intelligence Department starting before Pearl Harbor. Not a documentary and I am sure they fleshed out some of the people a bit, but there was a lot of historically accurate events portrayed.

Even if you aren't into WWII history it is enjoyable and a few times the "feels" were too much

Spoilers that added a lot to the movie:

[Phoebe]

Mr. Right (2015)

I give it 4 out of 5 stars. An unusual species of romcom starring Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell. Anna is kind of funny and Sam is hotttt like that small crossfit-type body hotness and I am here for the level of musculature. I like him anyway, he is married to a woman vaguely close to him in age and they are a cute pair that reminds me in a way of my own parents, likely because she's taller and he is a similar "type" in some way to my dad as a younger guy. I am not here for Sam's mustache in this movie though, alas, really not a facial hair person AT all. Yuck. But I could look past it!

I was saying yesterday how I really wanted some sort of frothy pleasant show about animal friends or whatever, and was exhausted by seeing too much violence. In this particular movie about 50 people are shot in very graphic ways, plus all the rest of the gratuitous violence, but it's a comedy so all of it is completely corny (a keyword for the movie actually, lol) and exaggerated and ridiculous, and the whole point of it is a silly romance story. The romance part is utterly adorable. So I was like, whatever, I give up, I don't care anymore, I'm rolling with it, hahahahaaa, whatever, if this is what it takes to get a damn corny harmless romcom, then this is what it takes! Not a movie to watch with kids due to constant shootings and stabbings and assaults and faces being blown off, and oh yeah, the F word and its variants are a constant throughout. Ha ha ha, giddy with the newfound delights of our mini-apocalypse.

[Phoebe]

Laggies (2014)

One star, for the hot guy. Okay, two stars but only for him, nothing else.

So I'm on Netflix trying to find a mindless thing to play while doing a stack of paperwork. I click on some category of "because watched..." and start scrolling. I think I scrolled through 218 titles, all bad. Finally I find this one and recall my friend from work said it was funny. Hm, I think, who is in it? The picture is nobody I recognize. The caption on Netflix says the co-star is Ellie Kemper (Kimmy Schmidt, the office, etc), so I think, great! She's hilarious! No wonder my friend liked this.

Well. Well well well. Turns out the lead actor is Keira Knightley, one of my all-time least favorites. Argh! But I've been promised a movie with Ellie Kemper, so... ? No. That's not what it is! And the role they gave to Ellie is some kind of sourpuss straight-woman to be played off, in a few short scenes that merely propel the story for the main character. We scarcely see Ellie in this movie at all, and when we do she isn't given any chance to be her normal amusing self!

So I'm watching, wondering if this is all there is, very Peggy Lee style, when the plot takes a turn that is just SO dumb. Eyeballs rolling out the head, wtf is this nonsense? I'm alternately wincing in pain, frowning, and muttering curse words at the screen because I don't yet know how much worse it's going to get. Grown woman runs out on her fiance and is inexplicably taken in by a teenage girl and somehow avoids arrest when discovered hiding there by the girl's father...

Whoa, wait, hold up! This father is none other than... Sam Rockwell. Sam, who is so hot that, yes, I did in fact replay the scene in the movie from yesterday (Mr. Right) where we are permitted some fractional view of his naked torso. That's how vanilla my desires and thrills are, people - in a world of free access to every kind of porn, you find me ogling one-third of a man's naked back and shoulders! Woooooo!!! FIRE! Okay, so that's where I am in life. I say to myself, I will keep watching THIS shitty movie now too, just in case there is any similar performance involving our guy here.

Oh, fair reader, there was not. We did get to see him being very attractive from many angles, and any doubts we may have had about whether this man is absolutely smoking hot were resolved in favor of Yes, yes he is. The rest of the "plot" of this offensively stupid farce is not worth relating, such as it was. I recoiled in horror, I clutched my knees to my chest, I fanned the air as if to dispel the foul stench of idiocy. I felt ashamed for whoever had written and directed it - both women sensate enough to put Sam Rockwell in another romcom, but so hopelessly insensate as to keep all his torso fully covered throughout. They did style his hair like my husband's and that brought a certain frisson of merger in idea, further aided by other details about the character's life. It was something. I felt a kind of base-level hostility toward Keira Knightley by the end of it, for spoiling the scenes in which we should have been able both to gaze uninterrupted upon male beauty AND to be amused by Ellie Kemper. They should have traded roles.

Finally, the main character is a bad person and liar but we are supposed to believe she is okay, just like that, at the end. Everything about this was wrong and horrid, particularly the foul "moral" and "personal growth" messages. Ugh, cleanse me, I need to go watch some kind of Ingmar Bergman films until my mind is whole again.

[Phoebe]

Moon (2009)

We all know our machines spy on us, right, but it's still weird to be reminded of it so vividly. I sought a movie for my husband to watch with me, so switched to the "critically acclaimed" list on Netflix. I'm scrolling, scrolling, scrolling... I start a movie called "The Master" and ponder momentarily how great a Humbert we might extract from Joaquin Phoenix, were he able to seem less American and more continental. Then I realized, this movie is Way Too Weird for me even in its first few minutes. Goodbye, weirdness, begone!

I continue scrolling. I click on this Moon title because it sounds interesting. It WAS interesting! I won't give spoilers at all. It was vaguely in the vein of The Martian, but a little creepier, if you will. This creepiness was considerably enhanced by Kevin Spacey playing a voice role. The special effects were not good. If I of all people am noticing that the special effects weren't good, then they really weren't good! Apart from these criticisms, It was a terrific movie and I think many of you here might enjoy it. My husband enjoyed it. I enjoyed it for somewhat different reasons, or at least, The Venn diagram of our reasons would be different. This is because the main actor was in fact (and here's where the spying of the machines comes in, very thematically appropriate for the film) Sam Rockwell. And... I... have now seen this man's unclothed rear end, not to mention scenes of him running on a treadmill, which were so eye-scalding and neuron-illuminating as to seem practically adulterous. But these are strange new times. Did I mention the movie is called Moon? It's ostensibly because they're living in a mining base on the moon.

[poorpete]

I vaguely remember that film! Lots of white, that's about all I remember.

52 By Women 2020 #11 - Seven Beauties

Long time no... wanted to watch sad movies by myself. So I decided to get back into my task and watch the most acclaimed film by Lina Wertmüller, totally forgetting why I maybe avoided this film for so long. First of all, Lina is in top form, directorial-wise. She is at command of tone, structure, and camera. It's a great watch. Now, I was kinda hoping for more comedy. This has the least comedy of all three films I've seen by her. It's the saddest film of the bunch.

What it does have, once again, is a totally savage take-down of toxic masculinity. Our hero, Pasqualino, lives his life in belief that he's held to some higher honor, and that makes him a great man / sex god. Instead we make him make mistake after mistake, always picking the easy-way-out, and always ending up in a worse position then before. It's at-times an amusing failure, but when this all leads to him ending up and trying to wiggle-out of being in prison, an insane asylum, World War II, and finally a concentration camp, the large cost (lasting trauma) becomes clear.

The scenes at the concentration camp, steeped in realism, came nearly 20 years before Schindler's List. I should have read the description! The horror is on full display, as the Nazis wipe out any iota of hope and joy. It's an unfriendly reminder of what human life and suffering can be. Lucky are we, most of we.

[poorpete]

52 By Women 2020 #12 - Mikey and Nicky

Searching for a humorous affair, what could go wrong with picking a film by Elaine May. Well, lucky reader, once again it's a pretty unfunny film. That's again not to say it was bad, it was pretty good, although the editing was at time imperfect (though if it's the fault of the studio which took control or May for not shooting enough coverage, I'm not sure). The film was taken from May, edited by the studio and dumped, only to be re-edited and re-released a decade later by May, which is the version I saw.

Once again, toxic men are at the forefront. John Cassavetes' Nicky, in particular, is a loathsome human, whose anger and selfish humor and sexism and racism leads him to the position of being hunted by the mob at the beginning of the film, to him losing friends, lovers, family, and more by the end. Usually in films, a protagonist on the run from the mob, you root for him. Not so here. His childhood friend, and get-me-out-of-my-jam life-line is Mikey, played by Peter Fauk, whose saving grace is that he is less awful than Nicky. He pretends he's a nice, calm, professional. As the movie progresses, a cat-and-mouse game begins, and we become disgusted and saddened by Mikey too.

There are many scenes, where we learn how broken and off Mikey is. In the last ten minutes, he tells a life event to his wife that you'd expect would have been brought up in the first few months of a relationship. It says a lot about him, and about their relationship, and their true emotional distance.

Although this film is fun to think about, and to discuss here, I don't really want to hang out with the characters again.

[Phoebe]

[poorpete]

52 By Women 2020 #13 - The Farewell

First of all, this is on Hoopla but always appeared in poor quality that made the subtitles unreadable. Thankfully it's on Amazon Prime, pristine, so as much as you should support your local library, go there to see this. It's was pretty good! The theme, the conflict, is there if you know anything about the film. The question of the film is posed over an over, and it's only answered in the final few scenes. What the film is more about is everything around that question, the differences in cultures, the joys of life, the uncomfortable humor of feeling, and seeing other people feel. How someone's death can change someone, maybe just they start smoking again, maybe much more, maybe much less. It's a beautiful film, and I really enjoyed the ensemble of characters.

52 By Women 2020 #14 - The Loveless

Also on Amazon Prime is Kathryn Bigelow and William Defoe's first film, a warts-an-all 50s biker flick. Moody, purposefully slow, confident filmmaking. No one's a hero in this, everyone is scarred, everyone is a bit awful. Defoe is wild and engaging as always, from the start. It's not essential, dunno if it's saying anything more than everyone sucks, but it's good.

[Phoebe]

Oooh, definitely watching both of these! May have to wait until summer when the violent heat and compensating air conditioning forces us into sluglike indolence, which is a great time to watch movies. Right now we still have good weather! But both of these look really good. I have been following Willem Dafoe with more interest due to his work as a founder of the Wooster group, so it would be really fun to go back and see what his first movie was!

[Phoebe]

Repeat of Jane Austen, Persuasion, the only one worth watching with Ciaran Hines and Amanda Root. Made it a full thirty minutes in before the actual sobbing began; made a fairly decent recovery this time, enough that snot production was a lot lower than usual and I only had to use two tissues! Win. I really doubt it would have that effect on anyone else here, but it's a very well done version of Austen if you find yourself in need of one.

[poorpete]

52 By Women 2020 #15 - Meek's Cutoff
Available on Kanopy. If you are looking for action, excitement, and a heroic victory for the protagonist, this movie is not for you. This might be the slowest film I've ever seen. It takes its time, in a very 2001 way, but even that film had, like, things happen. What happens here is big but small and the victories are shaded with doubt. But that's very much the point here. Purpose: met! When this movie starts and when this movie ends and what is shown (and hidden) in this movie, are all interesting, purposeful choices. One thing this film has going for it, for any film lover, is some amazing cinematography. There's the interaction with the western horizon that would make John Ford proud. There is also some feminist notes in here, which is done well.

52 By Women 2020 #16 - Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Available on Hulu. Now here we go! I've enjoyed many of these films, some more than others, but this is a masterpiece. Everything is great in this film. The acting, the directing, the cinematography, the screenplay, the costume design. It's a beauty to watch and hear. The story is marvelously put together. Certain items, breadcrumbs, scattered throughout are paid off at the end. A perfect ending. Tied up so nicely this messy world. The tragedy and the joy all unite. This is the favorite film by a woman of users of Letterboxd, and there's usually a recency bias with these lists, but... I see it, and for now, I might agree with it. I hope I get to see 36 more films as great as this.

[Zombie]

[poorpete]

52 By Women 2020 #17 - Love and Anarchy

The final of the classic Wertmüller/Melato/Giannini films of the mid 70s. This one is less funny than Seduction, less depressing as Seven Beauties, and much much better than Swept Away. It's more about love and anarchy, more feminist but doesn't feature Giannini as the embodiment of toxic masculinity this time (though he slaps women in the climax, which a betrayal because of being betrayed, but still hard to watch). Giannini has never been more sympathetic, and although he has his issues, is led by a moral code that actually makes sense in wartime. The cast, mostly all-women except for Giannini and a Mussolini underling that is the film's toxic masculinity stand-in, are great. I may watch more Lina Wertmüller in time, maybe try out her 80s films, as I wonder how she grows as a filmmaker, but for now, I'm good. I really wish I had watched either of these films before Swept Away, because maybe I wouldn't have gone 20 years without watching another of her films. But maybe it's commentary would still be lost on the teenage me.... maybe I should give Swept Away another shot...

[poorpete]

52 By Women 2020 #18 - What Happened, Miss Simone

Not content as a recording of praise for particular songs -- "I Put A Spell On You", her biggest hit, only appears behind a montage of her volatile/abusive marriage. Not content as a praise of chart success or record sales. Instead it's a personal look at her journey, through song and image, of her strengths and flaws, with her music, her life, her brain. A test of empathy, as you ache for her pain but then hear some of the truly abusive things she did to her daughter... but then that daughter also is a producer on this film. Truly "warts and all." Director Liz Garbus does a great job giving us that story, of an artist who draws you closer and closer but also, for your sake, you should be kept at arms length from. A close, but don't get too close, look at Nina Simone.