avnermoriarti
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Friends say I’ve changed. They’re right.
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Post by avnermoriarti on Jan 22, 2020 21:25:22 GMT
Portrait of a Lady on Fire.I don't know what to think about this movie. I expected something totally different (although I'm not sure what exactly). It started very interestingly, with Marianne trying to paint Heloise's portrait without her knowing, and ended up as a love story. Actually, it was supposed to be a love story right from the beginning but imo the painting sub-plot didn't help that much. Fine movie with two great performances but nothing more than that. Oh, I happen to know a little French (ok, maybe more than just a little) and realized that throughout the movie everybody was talking to everybody in plural form... A mother to her daughter, the daughter to her servant (!!), the two leads to one another!!!! What was that for? Only out of courtesy? A period thing??? 6.5/10 Could also be ...inclusivity
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Post by stabcaesar on Jan 22, 2020 21:48:20 GMT
Portrait of a Lady on Fire.I don't know what to think about this movie. I expected something totally different (although I'm not sure what exactly). It started very interestingly, with Marianne trying to paint Heloise's portrait without her knowing, and ended up as a love story. Actually, it was supposed to be a love story right from the beginning but imo the painting sub-plot didn't help that much. Fine movie with two great performances but nothing more than that. Oh, I happen to know a little French (ok, maybe more than just a little) and realized that throughout the movie everybody was talking to everybody in plural form... A mother to her daughter, the daughter to her servant (!!), the two leads to one another!!!! What was that for? Only out of courtesy? A period thing??? 6.5/10 That's not plural, that's etiquette/formality. In the past everyone addressed others with a "vous" ( vouvoyer), now it's only used when the relationship isn't egalitarian or when you don't know the person well.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jan 22, 2020 22:45:31 GMT
Portrait of a Lady on Fire.I don't know what to think about this movie. I expected something totally different (although I'm not sure what exactly). It started very interestingly, with Marianne trying to paint Heloise's portrait without her knowing, and ended up as a love story. Actually, it was supposed to be a love story right from the beginning but imo the painting sub-plot didn't help that much. Fine movie with two great performances but nothing more than that. Oh, I happen to know a little French (ok, maybe more than just a little) and realized that throughout the movie everybody was talking to everybody in plural form... A mother to her daughter, the daughter to her servant (!!), the two leads to one another!!!! What was that for? Only out of courtesy? A period thing??? 6.5/10 That's not plural, that's etiquette/formality. In the past everyone addressed others with a "vous" ( vouvoyer), now it's only used when the relationship isn't egalitarian or when you don't know the person well. Even when two people were in a relationship with one another?? Ok, maybe.
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Post by stabcaesar on Jan 22, 2020 22:48:49 GMT
^Yes. Even when ppl are in a relationship. Eg. Sartre and de Beauvoir used to vouvoient each other in their correspondence.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Jan 22, 2020 22:50:43 GMT
1917 - And with that, I’ve finally seen all the Best Picture nominees, and I can finally start forming my lineups for the MYeah Awards! I’ve also got Pain and Glory left, which I’ll probably watch tomorrow night, but otherwise, I can finally draw 2019 to a close.
Oh yeah, and the movie was really great.
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Post by jakesully on Jan 23, 2020 4:45:00 GMT
Sicario ( re watch)- So damn good and intense thru out. I would kill for Blunt to come back for the 3rd one (if it ever gets made that is)
9/10
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jan 23, 2020 6:53:01 GMT
"You keep saying that! It's not helping!"
Death of Stalin is a fucking riot from start to finish.
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Post by Sharbs on Jan 23, 2020 15:58:11 GMT
Double featured my first 2020 releases last night and quite a double it was.
Color Out of Space I had absolutely zero forewarning about what I was in for. I haven't read a single Lovecraft story or seen a Richard Stanley film. This was quite the experience. What if Annihilation had a prequel about the days after the alien entity crashes to Earth and were the first to experience the mayhem. Cage for a lack of a better pun was caged during this performance, but gets unleashed in some the wildest choices i've seen even from him. Colin Stetson's beautiful score really enhanced the proceedings with oozing atmosphere. Neat fantasy, sci-fi and horror trappings that felt natural and fairly balanced. - 8/10
VHYes A film tape that is probably one the funniest things I've ever seen. It was directed be Jack Henry Robbins, son of Tim and Susan who feature in fun cameos. A 12 year old picks up a VHS recorder and tapes over his parents' wedding tape with his shenanigans with his best friend and records late night television after he learns it records direct from the tv. It's mostly sketch comedy, but it expands into this fully formed narrative revolving around family and the pros and cons of spending time/too much time with technology. - 9.5/10
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Post by Pavan on Jan 23, 2020 19:14:26 GMT
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)-
Nice companion piece to Won't You Be My Neighbor, the real thing. Hanks was pretty good and the Academy could've dismissed this as another safe performance of him but glad they didn't. That last shot is a nice touch- 7/10
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Archie
Based
Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
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Post by Archie on Jan 23, 2020 22:28:43 GMT
Doctor Sleep - 7/10
It Chapter Two found dead in a ditch.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 24, 2020 8:18:46 GMT
Too Late For Tears (1949) rewatch ~7-7.5/10 Femme fatale-noir with Lizabeth Scott in a tour de force (for her at least) giving it her all as a duplicitous blonde without the technical acting chops to really pull it off .......which works anyway this time because when she overdoes being sweet ......why can't they see it! This film has stellar acting in it from Dan Duryea and Arthur Kennedy who really sell their interactions with Scott and help her out.......but tree stump Don DeFore is the weak link otherwise you'd have something sort of like a classic-ish here .......if it ended just one scene before it actually does at least. Some snappy lines for genre fans stephen , Viced , Mattsby and just look at THAT poster:
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Post by Viced on Jan 24, 2020 15:16:27 GMT
but tree stump Don DeFore is the weak link otherwise you'd have something sort of like a classic-ish here Not just a lame performance, but a totally out-of-place character that drags the movie down a few notches. Only great thing about this is Dan Duryea... maybe my favorite performance of his. Of course not a big stretch for him and right in his wheelhouse... but what a wheelhouse!
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Post by Mattsby on Jan 24, 2020 16:45:48 GMT
Too Late for Tears - I remember that one great line from Duryea, "Don't ever change, Tiger... I don't think I'd like you with a heart." Always love Duryea in anything - when I watched Lady on a Train ('45) recently, it's a smaller role but he somehow plays it where you don't know if he's the charismatic love interest or the violent villain, and he can pull it either way with one type of grin or look. My fave perf of his is probably Scarlet Street bc that's where I discovered him and was like "Who isss this guy!" Now ya got me looking him up. What's his best starring role? He's really quite good, unexpectedly dour, in The Burglar. Anybody see Black Angel? Duryea as an alcoholic pianist, and Peter Lorre is in the cast, hmmm--
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2020 20:28:29 GMT
Sea of Love (1989) - 8/10
Flat out one of the most purely likable movies of the 80s that I've seen. Way more interesting conceptually than a lot of people seem to think, and the chemistry between the leads is fantastic. Pacino at his most entertaining, for sure.
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Post by Mattsby on Jan 24, 2020 20:46:27 GMT
Sea of Love (1989) - 8/10 Flat out one of the most purely likable movies of the 80s that I've seen. Way more interesting conceptually than a lot of people seem to think, and the chemistry between the leads is fantastic. Pacino at his most entertaining, for sure. One of my favorite movies ever!!! Underrated as hell too - big critics at the time didn't like it (Ebert, Rosenbaum, Canby) and its now 65% RT audience score is a head scratcher bc it's one of the most entertaining of movies. It's sharply, smartly written - and so well acted by Pacino/Barkin whose chemistry and magnetism is sky-high. Pacino, in his most sardonic noir mode, throws in a thousand touches across his perf - dejected, envious, lonely, curious, self-destructive, romantic, obsessed, sexual, scared, a little mad, and funny too.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 24, 2020 20:58:12 GMT
Sea of Love (1989) - 8/10 Flat out one of the most purely likable movies of the 80s that I've seen. Way more interesting conceptually than a lot of people seem to think, and the chemistry between the leads is fantastic. Pacino at his most entertaining, for sure. One of my favorite movies ever!!! Underrated as hell too - big critics at the time didn't like it (Ebert, Rosenbaum, Canby) and its now 65% RT audience score is a head scratcher bc it's one of the most entertaining of movies. It's sharply, smartly written - and so well acted by Pacino/Barkin whose chemistry and magnetism is sky-high. Pacino, in his most sardonic noir mode, throws in a thousand touches across his perf - dejected, envious, lonely, curious, self-destructive, romantic, obsessed, sexual, scared, a little mad, and funny too. Interesting side note - when it opened it was the highest grossing October opening ever - 10 million........the film clearly saved his movie career (usually about 80% on RT and the reappraisal of Cruising/Scarface hadn't quite fully blossomed yet) - if Sea of Love failed you're looking at a guy who may have been in a Dreyfus/Voight position and may have spent the bulk of the 90s onstage only............instead he's our GOAT poll winner It was only his 13th released film (!!!) and in a single scene - the "gun in the purse scene" which is in effect wordless he re-established himself as a world-class actor in that one scene alone.
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Jan 24, 2020 21:55:48 GMT
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) - Even better than I remembered, now officially a personal favorite I think both this and Silence reveal a lot about Scorsese as a filmmaker (and they're all good things), but Temptation is a brilliant transgressive work while Silence is more of a flawed, beautiful gesture. Temptation isn't so much an inversion as a deepening of the Christian myth. Dafoe as a wild, hesitant, almost neurotic Jesus, crucifier of fellow Jews, with secret dreams of glory and on the lookout for the warm embrace of the flesh: from Judas, from Magdalene. As a proper Paul Schrader protagonist, he's both terrified and lost. The casting of Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton etc. is inspired... they're playing modern men with modern doubts, not 1st century Jews. A great comic moment when Jesus first starts preaching about love: the speech excites their lust for violence instead, and Jesus is dismayed. His alien message seems unfit for both the land and the people; he himself confesses to not understanding it. And there's a memorable thread on the dismissed heroism and sacrifice of Judas, which in the movie appears self-evident. The brilliant last 30 minutes, an eerie mix of familial comfort and life in nature with a dubious guardian angel by Jesus' side--a false yet human paradise--make it a masterpiece. By removing the Church-sanctioned saintliness away from Christ he is elevated beyond apostasy... his sacrifice can only be true if his nature is pitifully human. Scorsese's Christ ends his days in paradise pleading like a desperate animal... and that's part of the beauty of the film. Humanizing a figure like this has a cost, as paradoxical as it sounds. Some of Schoonmaker's all-time best work here: the shots linger for minutes or are gone in a second, but they all stay with you. My favorite stuff from Ballhaus too: there's a shot that goes on for a minute of Jesus carrying the cross and the people around him, where every single face tells a story. His desert looks like lunar surface. And then there's this...
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Post by Mattsby on Jan 24, 2020 22:04:45 GMT
The Perfect Game (1958) 8+ At only 48 votes on IMDb, a very rare gem, a genuinely great Japanese "sun tribe" pic from Nikkatsu studio and director Toshio Masuda (later co-directed Tora Tora Tora). It almost feels like a lost classic, like Japan's go at The Killing but with university students, whose gambling scheme is born out of boredom. The postwar portrait of Japan here is shaped as hypocritically riddled, with side characters struggling alike, and our educated leads and their brutal insouciance covering up a deeply felt shame. The editing is tight with clever intercuts, such as a "rehearsal" sequence that reminded me of Parasite - and the visuals are amazing like the opening roulette wheel esque shot around the leads followed by an overhead shot that frames them as one small, unlucky lot. Also, curiously, one of the guys is mixed race and looks American - he jokes people mistake him for Paul Anka - and he's the one who crosses the line and commits the most unforgivable act.
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Post by Mattsby on Jan 25, 2020 0:42:58 GMT
Sapphire (1959) - 7.5 Went into this blind and there are some pretty big twists right in the beginning that the plots online spoil. This is a well-constructed murder mystery - from its smaller details to its surprising reveals - and from director Basil Dearden another important and likely controversial pic for its time, here confronting London’s racial tensions. Actually I think this is my first Dearden - will look out for more. With restrained cinematography; I liked the drab, misty exteriors as if a perpetual cloud hung over London. And I love the final dialogue exchange... (not a spoiler but gonna hide it anyway) “Cases don’t get solved without somebody getting hurt, you know that.”
“We didn’t solve anything, Phil. We just picked up the pieces.”
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Post by pacinoyes on Jan 25, 2020 11:14:59 GMT
Term of Trial - 1962 - rewatch 7.5+/10Surprisingly, relevant drama about a school teacher that gets dragged down by a bitchy young student and not very supportive wife. GOAT Laurence Olivier, in stupendous form here, in a cast that includes Sarah Miles, Terence Stamp, and Simone Signoret (!) - that is rather pedestrian in direction but couldn't be played better by the cast.......unless you find this overplayed which I don't.....or a bit falsely written ........which I might, a little.
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LaraQ
Badass
English Rose
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Post by LaraQ on Jan 25, 2020 13:05:36 GMT
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Post by Viced on Jan 25, 2020 23:23:32 GMT
What a great script! Probably one of the best pure noirs of the '60s. 8/10
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jan 26, 2020 3:47:18 GMT
Richard Jewell which is my 100th 2019 film. It's fine, but yeah it was basically the black-and-white moral simplicity one expects from Eastwood. He can't exonerate his protagonists without performing a character assassination on someone else, the NTSB board in Sully, Kathy Scruggs here. Olivia Wilde's performance is godawful. Scruggs' sexuality and ambition are framed as negatively as possible, never mind her behavior in the film being completely untrue. For a film out to depict the evils of slander, its depiction of Kathy Scruggs is the pot calling the kettle black.
Hauser on the other hand is terrific. Jewell himself is a fascinating oddity. Kind of a loser with delusions of grandeur. Extolling the virtue of law enforcement while letting the FBI walk all over him. I can't help but wonder if a more interesting take would have been to approach the subject from an outside angle, say from the character of Watson so that the viewer doesn't quite know what to think of Jewell. Those who are familiar with the case will have known that Jewell didn't do it, but a point that the films only hints at but could have explored further is that Jewell was someone who might have done it. Coming at the character from a more outside angle might have made some more room for tension and complexity, but unfortunately Eastwood treats him like a saint and defines him primarily by his victimhood. 6/10
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Post by TerryMontana on Jan 26, 2020 14:34:15 GMT
Richar Jewell - 7.5/10
Very solid movie. Clint delivered once again!
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Post by Pavan on Jan 26, 2020 20:22:41 GMT
Quills (2000)-
Hard to watch due to the unapologetic portrayal of it's themes but it's also worth the trip for the same reason. The cast is aces, especially Geoffrey Rush who totally inhabited the character- 7.5/10
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