Movies Talk

robinhoodie

I watch a ton of movies, but keep it to myself mostly, so if I am willing to share something understand it is with the highest of recommendations

A tense thriller about the difference between those who play at violence and those who live in violence with a brutal anti-colonialist bent. Go in knowing nothing more than the John Carpenter vibes this trailer give you.

It’s free to stream on Kanopy https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/bacurau

yeso

great movie well said

xhekros

There are several great films I watched lately (The eternal daughter is one -although I think it’s not the best Joana Hogg may have done-, Orlando is another), but Nainsukh, while not being the best of them, is one of the most interesting. The film is a biopic of an Indian painter in the 18th century, and what’s really striking is the playfulness with perspective and that cinematic feel in which Amit Dutta plays with the depth of field, generating contrast between the paintings and the images filmed. I think the film tries to deconstruct and represent what Nainsukh was creating in its most fecund period and sometimes it gets it really well and it hooked me at times, and the lens help a lot in that.

KennyL

Here is a mega youtube playlist of 275 Siskel & Ebert shows.

Gaagaagiins

We watched Hamlet 2 tonight. Idk how Steve Coogan managed to portray someone teetering on the verge of a manic breakdown with every line so well.

Felt a little limiting, though, in the sense that it’s a work about a work-within-a-work that can never really portray the work-within-the-work as deranged as its premise sets up. Never mind that it’s trying to manufacture a work-within-the-work that is so-bad-it’s-good, but the movie its using as a vessel isn’t supposed to be bad at all. But, it was just aware of its own absurdity enough that it was successful.

I think one of the best things I can say about it is that only a weirdo freak like Steve Coogan who is capable of bending the interpretation of reality towards his will (and thus towards the will of comedy) it would have been a godawful slog. You can see Amy Poehler almost fumble it, even. But maybe I’m just being a hater who has never seen an episode of Parks and Recreation, and never will, God willing.

rejj

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/studio-ghibli-hayao-miyazaki-final-film-trailer-marketing-1235507079/

Japan’s Studio Ghibli says it will release no trailer and no promotional materials whatsoever ahead of the release of Hayao Miyazaki’s final film How Do You Live?

…I’m fine with this. I’ll go blind in to Miyazaki’s last piece.

Cheddahz

went to go see raiders of the lost ark on the big screen yesterday and wow, what a perfect movie

fortninety

BTW/FYI…

Oh, and I obviously wouldn’t even think of doing a “best of” without including you know who…

HeavenlyHalberd

I just watched Shin Kamen Rider and it was absolutely excellent. It is exactly what you would imagine when you hear “Hideki Anno reimagined the original Kamen Rider” and I thought it was brilliant and both a love letter to the original series while also feeling like its own thing that reinterpreted the original in really interesting ways. It was so well paced it felt like two hours hadn’t actually passed and the camera angles and shot were so stylish and well directed, plus it had amazing action scenes that still felt like an OG Kamen Rider fight but with the budget on a modern big film. I had to see this one in a theater because I love Kamen Rider in particular, but I despite having much less experience with their original series, I am curious what Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman are like and this weird little shared universe Anno is building between these three plus the Evangelion Rebuild films (also gotta watch those, love the original series).

YongPop

HeavenlyHalberd onefiftythree
Shin Ultraman rules. I watched it 3 times in a week when it first came out, I just wanted more of it.

saddleblasters
I consider myself a Koreeda fan. I was having a really bad day one time and just randomly went to the cinema and they were showing Our Little Sister and it had a profound effect on me, I’ve loved him ever since and think Still Walking is an all time great. I absolutely hated Broker (tbf I tend to have an extreme reaction to films that are middling, it’s worse than it being bad imo). It did really feel like a superficial choice to make it Korean, one of the strengths of his earlier works was the connection to Japanese culture through food and he tried to do that here by having lots of Korean snacks etc but it just feels like a diff setting for a rehash of films he’s already made before. I wrote this after watching it https://letterboxd.com/nthnmllr/film/broker-2022/1/ which highlights my biggest issue with the film.

onefiftythree

Shin Godzilla kicks a lot of ass. Been meaning to check out Ultraman myself

saddleblasters

I watched Broker last night. I’d been wanting to see it for awhile since it’s Koreeda, a director I enjoy, working with a bunch of big Korean stars. After watching it though, all I really have to say is that it was ok.

I guess one of the things I liked about his other movies was the detail and specificity of the setting. Even if they had plots that in abstract could be set anywhere, they were in essence critiques of Japanese society, and really existed in a world of particulars. Maybe making a movie that takes place in and is entirely about people from another country makes it harder to do that particular kind of film.

It’s weird, because it’s not like I actually know anything about Japan. His other movies could be a completely imaginary Japan that has nothing to do with the reality, and I would still enjoy them. I guess it’s the specificity rather than faithfulness to real life that I enjoy – but specificity is much harder without a lot of knowledge about real life.

I might just be projecting, since as a wannabe creative person I constantly feel like I don’t know enough about anywhere to make anything meaningful. I lived in a bunch of different cities in America, and I never really felt like I was “a part of” American society beyond just being a person who sees things he doesn’t understand and makes inane observations about them. Now I’m in another country whose society I definitely have no hope of ever having anything more than a surface level understanding of. So I can’t help but feel there’s a limit to the kinds of things I can say through art.

captain

saddleblasters By virtue of your ability to observe the sense of place in Koreeda movies I reckon you have more than enough insight into the places you’ve lived to express your feelings about them in a meaningful way. Maybe you can’t make sweeping statements “about America” or whatever, but none of us can, we can only hope to touch on what is universal through our expressed observations of what is particular. When I lived in France I had a feeling similar to yours, that I would definitely never have much more than a shallow understanding of the country and its cultural makeup—that remains true but I think it gave me a better understanding of America!

What did you think of Broker’s ending? I try to resist projecting my own values on the film too strongly, but the story left a weird taste in my mouth. Koreeda tries to give everyone a fair shake but I think it’s to the disservice of Moon So-young,* whose feelings as I recall are ultimately dismissed when all the other characters criticize and scrutinize her decision to give up her baby. We are meant to assume, as do the other characters, that what she did is wrong, and to follow her through the movie as she comes to terms with the reality that she abandoned her baby. They all act as though she left her baby in the middle of a corn field rather than at a state-funded adoption center. I mean it’s all complicated, I don’t know much about baby boxes, and I’m just some bozo, but the movie seemed pretty hard on So-young despite its clear intention to be generous to everyone’s perspective.

*(which, this couldn’t have been intentional, but that name is very on-the-nose/funny for an audience reading English subtitles)

YongPop Oh yeah “thank you for being born,” jeez louise

saddleblasters

captain
YongPop

Yeah, I guess I generally agree with these sentiments. I don’t really know what the film is trying to say, if it’s trying to say anything. It feels more like a novelist writing “for himself” in order to explore certain themes or ideas. I feel like the epitome of this is Haruki Murakami writing 1Q84 as an attempt to understand (among other things) the 1995 Tokyo Subway sarin gas attacks and what they say about Japanese society. The result was a bizarre book filled with all sorts of weird ideas that if you explicitly asked Murakami about, he’d probably disagree with. But Murakami is a famous novelist, and anything he writes will at least make some money. If he can get away with publishing his own personal attempts at understanding, he might as well, right?

So I kind of feel Koreeda wanted to ponder the problem of a single mom giving birth to a child she can’t care for. This is a perfectly fine thing to think about, and in fact something everyone should think about – but Koreeda is a director and he needed to make a movie. So he explored that theme via screenplay and ended up with a weird film that broadcasts all sorts of mixed messages that he probably didn’t mean to send. That’s the feeling I get from watching it, but who knows how the film actually came to be.

Anyway, I don’t at all think this is a bad thing, but it’s admittedly a lot weirder when a director does this than when a novelist does, just because the difference in the amount of resource needed to make a movie or writing a book. I think we as a society can certainly afford to give large budgets to a few directors in order for them to use film as a medium for their own personal self expression and contemplation – but the directors who get that privilege tend to be old men who directed with craftsman-like virtuosity a few films when they were younger and then had to just keep making movies. Those aren’t always the people who can best use those resources.

fortninety

K, time for movies once again, and the theme is films that start children that may not be necessarily safe for kids. And first up is something that many immediately think of when recalling a movie from their childhoods that scarred them for life…

Next is some classic 80s police melodrama, featuring crooked cops and endless ammo. Also, everyone is eight years old…

If a cop movie starring an eight year old is not your thing, how about a zombie movie that was written, produced, and directed by a twelve year old?

Last but least is Who Can Kill A Child, and all that needs to be said is best summed up via this review on Letterboxd: “i mean i get it but come on”

Oh, and am also playing that insanely harrowing and ultra depressing anime starring a cute lil sheep from the 70s that you might have heard of; there is no trailer to speak of, hence why it’s not mentioned above. Anyhow, stream starts at the usual time, 8PM EST, and at the usual destination…

yeso

a few Moturn films now available on Tubi

https://tubitv.com/person/545de8/matt-farley

yeso

Master Gardener was kind of silly

rejj

yeso

not worth the trouble, unfortunately

rearnakedwindow

Watched Midnight Cowboy yesterday, which features (and is I guess maybe the origin of?) Insert Credit favorite line “Hey, I’m walkin’ here!”

This is another one of those sad but also funny movies made in the late ’60s about money, sex, the road, the falsity of the American dream…it’s a genre I never really get tired of. Great performances by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffmann as they try to sell sex to rich older women and survive the streets of New York City. Super well-edited, all kinds of great montage/dream/consciousness images flying around. Director John Schlesinger clearly had some serious talent, so it’s a little weird he’s known for this movie and…basically nothing else.

Anyway, it’s a blast AND it will make you feel like shit basically the whole time. Doesn’t get much better than that.

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