What movie are you viewing at the moment?

[neo2008]

BEAUTIFUL BOY





How can a father rescue his teenage son from the abyss of drug addiction when he doesnt want to be rescued?


PRAISE : As father and son Steve Carell as David Sheff and Timothée Chalamet as Nic Sheff are equally outstanding in this sometimes harrowing and numbing film.
David is the loving father who is watching his son decent into a world of addiction but does his best to try to alter his course.It's gripping to watch because both actors really sink their teeth into their roles,that are filled with frustration and raw emotion
Im glad i didnt read the true story before watching the film,because it made the film more effective.
When or should you stop holding the hand of your child who doesnt seem to care that he has become a shadow of himself? When do you stop letting yourself be fooled by your child,who lies right to your face,and addiction begins to effect the lives of your other children?
There's also great supportive work from Maura Tierney as Karen Barbour and Amy Ryan as Vicki Sheff


PROBLEMS : The film jumps around a lot in it's first 40 minutes,so much so it took a few minutes to figure out if i was watching Nic in his semi sober stage ,or selling all of his possessions for his next fix stage.


This film is a strong and sobering look at addiction. Carrell and Chalamet will likely receive numerous and deserving award nominations.

Scale of 1-10 an 8½



FIRST MAN





If you can make a film about a well known part of history suspenseful and exciting ..im all in !!!


PRAISE: Ryan Gosling turns in an embodied performance as Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who became the first man to walk on the Moon during Apollo 11.
He displays Armstrongs no nonsense manner to a T.
A whos who of great character actors turn in fine performances including: Corey Stoll ,Pablo Schreiber ,Jason Clarke
Kyle Chandler,Christopher Abbott ,Patrick Fugit and Lukas Haas.
If you ever wanted to know what it feels like to be in a space capsule,rocket,or simulator here's your chance.The film effectively put's the audience in the seat of all of the aforementioned.
There were some facts presented about Armstrong that i didnt know so i appreciated the inclusion of those facts.
The SFX are nearly flawless couple with great cinematography.
Director Damien Chazelle aptures the fell of the era,with effective moments about the disenchantment with NASA which came from the government and the citizens.


PROBLEMS: There was a bit of a disconnect with some dramatic moments.While some were developed in an effective way,others were only touched on.Something ultra tragic would happen,some brief sadness,and boom on to the next scene or period in time.
For me the flight,training and space scenes outweighed the dramatic ones here and there.


FIRST MAN still deserves to be seen in the biggest theatre with the best sound system

Scale of 1-10 an 8



Bad Times at the El Royale







Seven strangers arrive at the El Royale a shady hotel on the California-Nevada border of course nothing about them is simple or normal

PRAISE : The entire cast does a great job,but the stand outs IMO were:Jeff Bridges as Father Daniel Flynn, Cynthia Erivo as Darlene Sweet, a struggling singer and Lewis Pullman as Miles Miller, a young concierge at the hotel
The film has a slow start but i believe this was purposely done to lull the audience into something seemingly safe and then bang there's an explosion of violence,like a lightning bolt to the senses.
Each character has an interesting back story ,and all come together with involving banter.
One of the highlights of the film is how it throws off the audience about how certain things will play out by using the characters in a ambiguous way.
There are shades of Tarantino throughout but suspense is woven in to give the film some unique moments.
I cant say much more or i will spoil the film.

PROBLEMS: Some predictable turns,and meandering moments.The film focuses on one character for so long it actually became laughable to me and i started to wonder why some of it wasnt cut because this movie really didnt need to be 2 hours and 20 minutes

This was a fun romp that provides enough suspense,twists and turns to put a big smile on my face


Scale of 1-10 a 7½


KINKY




A movie about a couple having kinky sex that's actually worse than Fifty Shades and Trois


PRAISE: Theres not much to review here.Dawn Richard as Dr. Joyce Carmichael gets a rich guy to have kinky sex with her.
Dawn Richard looks great in lingerie,i laughed a few times.This was fun to watch with a crowd.



PROBLEMS: To many moments in which there is no dialogue but just characters glaring at each other.Terrible acting and silly moments.
and the ending.....are you kidding me?!?

Scale of 1-10 a 2

[Reclaimedwg]

The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036868/





After the end of World War II, 3 U.S. servicemen from the same small town return home to find irreparably changes in the families and loved ones they left behind 3-4 years prior.

There is Fred: a U.S. Army Air Corps B-17 Bombardier and decorated Captain who is married to Marie, a woman who no longer loves him. She has also become a very materialistic gold digger while working in shady night clubs during the years of his absence.

Fred also can't find a decent paying job and he is forced to go back to his low paying pre-war time job of soda jerk:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_jerk

which causes financial difficulties and disagreement with his wife who wants to go out every night to nice restaurants and night clubs and party all night.

There is Homer: a U.S. Navy Petty Officer. He is in love with his childhood friend and neighbor Wilma and she is in love with him too. He told her he will marry her when he returns home after the war but that was before he lost both hands from burns suffered when his ship was sunk in the Pacific, and now uses mechanical hook prostheses. She still wants to marry him no matter what but he is pushing her away: he doesn't want her to end up with him - a disabled helpless man.

There is Al: a U.S. Army platoon Sergeant and a banker by trade before the war. After returning home, he is offered the job of Vice President in charge of small loans by his old employer, a bank President who doesn't want his bank to make G.I. Bills loans to veterans.

Al's 20's something daughter Peggy is also in love with the still married Fred.

Al doesn't approve because no young woman her age should go around making a man divorce his wife even if they no longer love each other.

Clocking in at almost 3 hours, this is a very moving story about how not all of the 16 plus million American men and women who served in World War II returned home to happy lives after the war.

The movie was quite controversial at the time for 2 reasons:

1. it didn’t fit the Government and Media narrative of the victorious heroes coming home from the war to continue life the American way, happily ever after;

and

2. it was also one of the first times a Hollywood movie dealt emotionally and deeply with what was then the controversial and forbidden topic of Divorce.

Intelligently written with smart dialogues, strong characters and many tear jerking scenes, this film won an Academy Awards Oscar for Best Picture of 1947.

It also won 7 other Oscars including Best Director, Best Actor and a never before done nor repeated since:

2 Oscars for Best Supporting Role and Honorary Award to Harold Russell, the only actor to have received two Academy Awards for the same performance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Russell

Russell is a real life World War 2 veteran who lost both of his hands in a training accident and had them replaced with hooks.

This film was also the highest grossing film of the time since 1939's Gone With The Wind, selling over 55 million tickets in the USA and over 20 million tickets in the UK and other countries, which equaled to a gross of over $44,309,982.

Adjusted by inflation, that will be the equivalent of over $573,618,848 today and it still remains one of the top 100 grossing films in U.S. history.

5/5

[mongo630]

Something I have not seen in many years - Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Yes it is silly but is still fun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedknobs_and_Broomsticks

[Reclaimedwg]

Watching the uncut version of an early 1980's Abel Ferrara's thriller about a killer stalking and killing New York City strippers.

It features several now familiar actors and actresses in one of their early theatrical starring roles:

Tom Berenger, Melanie Griffith, Billy Dee Williams, Rae Dawn Chong, Maria Conchita (Alonso), Jack Scalia and even Ola Ray (the actress who played Michael Jackson's date in the 1983 Thriller music video).

[Brecht]

Less Than Zero (1987)



Trailer

Rich boy Clay Easton (Andrew McCarthy) is a college freshman on the East Coast, who returns home to Los Angeles for Christmas. What really triggered his return is a phone call from his ex-girlfriend, Blair (Jami Gertz). Clay soon learns that his best friend Julian Wells (Robert Downey Jr.) has become a drug addict after his attempt to become a record producer failed. To make things worse, he owes $50.000 to his dealer and old classmate Rip (James Spader). Practically homeless and cut off from his wealthy family, Julian has no one to turn to anymore. The only people trying to save him are his best friends, Blair and Clay.

This is one of those films that gets worse by the minute. Awfully miscast, Less Than Zero looks like a dull, synthetic scenery with its people being only part of an 80s cosplay, fulfilling almost every 80s cliché of the consumerist, hedonist 80s rich kid. Robert Downey Jr. is the only one who delivers an ambitious performance but the rest of the leads are ridiculous just as their suits, environment and badly written dialogues.

I don't know about Bret Easton Ellis' novel, on which this was based on, but it seems like it was changed beyond recognition because the film studios felt the book is too offensive. The only properly done job here is the score by Thomas Newman.

[Reclaimedwg]

A Simple Favor (2018)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7040874/

A good thriller is like courting. When you court someone, you don't want to be direct and you want to go slow. Over a period of time, you lay suble clues, visual hints, while being mysterious at the same time to the person you are longing for and when the moment is right, you make the big reveal, the big proposal.

Same for a good thriller: the hidden clues, the visual hints, the red herrings, the twists, the back stories, slowly building up a crescendo until it's the right moment for the big reveal - these are all techniques that have been used very effectively by a few directors in some of the best thrillers ever filmed on celluloid - directors like Orson Welles, Carol Reed, Alfred Hitchcock and John Dahl.

The problem with A Simple Favor is its director Paul Feig and the film's very thin script.

He is previously known for several comedies - most of them starring Melissa McCarthy, and Feif is definitely not Welles, Reed, Hitchcock or Dahl.

I am sure Feig's intentions were good when he made this movie about the mysterious Emily (played by the always stunning and perfect looking Blake Lively) who befriends Stephanie (played by the always cute Anna Kendrick), the mother of one of her grade school son's classmate.

One day Emily asks Stephanie to do what she has always done: pick up her son at school because she is tied up at work in a work emergency.

That was the last time Stephanie hears from Emily and after that, everyone wants to know where Emily disappeared to.

The movie is divided into 3 acts.

In the first act there is a bit of Hitchcockesque going for it but that tension and mystery is constantly interrupted by Stephanie's character, who as a single mom, spends a great deal of time on a parenting Vlog and while doing so, she updates her viewers on the ongoing investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Emily, who is her best friend and also the only friend she ever had.

The second act, the big mystery into Emily's disappearance is revealed and usually if I am watching a well made thriller, I would had said:

"WOW! I didn't see that coming!!"

But unfortunately this is not a well made thriller:

there were no hidden clues, no visual hints, no red herrings, no twists, no back stories, no slowly building tension and crescendo.

So no, I didn't say that.

Instead I said:

"Man! What the Fuck is this? This makes not one bit of damn sense!"

Then during the final act, you pretty much don't even care anymore since you have already been disappointed by the lackluster content of the big reveal.

Lively tries to be a Femme Fatale likes Sharon Stone's Catherine Trammel in Basic Instict, Linda Fiorentino's Bridget Gregory in The Last Seduction, Lara Flynn Boyle's Suzanne in Red Rock West, but she fails to be any of them and in her defense, she is not given much of a very good scripted character to begin with.

Kendrick tries to be the naive single mom who truly wants to know the whereabouts of her so called best friend but she is just too cute to be convincing.

As a dark comedy, this movie fails.

As a suspense thriller, this movie fails.

Even as a comedy which the director has had previous commercial success with the genre, it fails.

The only thing this movie had going for it are the pretty artistic posters,



and 3 well made trailers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbNgGYXNgGM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXLWzAfE0jk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cVlSAD2mRU

I also want to know why so many critics gave this movie so many favorable reviews on Rotten Tomatoes that it earned an 85% Fresh Tomato rating:

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_simple_favor/reviews/

Were everyone of them who wrote a positive review drunk or high or brain dead on the days they wrote them?

1.5/5

[blondifan]

Jindabyne is a 2006 Australian drama film by third time feature director Ray Lawrence and starring Gabriel Byrne, Laura Linney, Deborra-Lee Furness and John Howard. Jindabyne was filmed entirely on location in and around the Australian country town of the same name: Jindabyne, New South Wales, situated next to the Snowy Mountains.
It was one of a rush of over 16 Australian cinema releases that year and was somewhat limited by its "M" rating. However critics praised its refinement and the film is credited as a signal of Australian cinema's maturity.

The screenplay was written by Beatrix Christian, and was adapted from the late American short story writer and poet Raymond Carver's title, "So Much Water So Close to Home". The short story was the basis for a segment in Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993). Carver's story had also been retold in music by Australian artist Paul Kelly in the song "Everything's Turning to White", on his 1989 album So Much Water So Close to Home. Kelly contributed to the score of the 2006 film as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindabyne_(film) < Spoiler Alert

Unique. Although it is oddly typically Australian. I don't know what to say, or what not to say about the ending, or lack of...
'Cept the bastard drives a Cruiser, just like mine..

trailer

[Wendigo]

Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2018)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3053228/



A remake of sorts of George Romero's classic film, it has more than a few nods to the original, including a sex obsessed weirdo who becomes this film's version of Bub.
There are just too many zombie films out there and a remake won't make any real waves unless it has something different to offer, sadly it doesn't, still it's an OK fast zombies on the attack against a military led outpost with civilian scientists looking a cure for the virus.
Ok but nothing really special

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hhFT3vCeko

[Brecht]

Blow-up (1966)



Trailer

Thomas (David Hemmings) is a London-based fashion photographer whose daily routine involves taking pictures of hot chicks, screwing hot chicks and the occasional reefer. Growing bored of a photo shoot, he walks out of the studio and ends up in Maryon Park where he's inspired to take a few shots of a couple. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) notices him and demands that he hands over the film. Thomas refuses and they part ways. However, he is soon located by the woman who is begging him to give her the film roll and after a while of flirting, she is given a different film. Curious to see the result of his spontaneous shoot in the park, Thomas develops the film, making a shocking discovery that could get him into serious trouble.

This is pretty much a film about the spirit of the 1960s. David Hemmings is brilliant as the quickly irritable mod photographer Thomas, especially during the second half when he becomes something like a detective. All this is accompanied by a mesmerizing Herbie Hancock score and by the end of the film, Thomas walks into a Yardbirds concert during which Jeff Beck smashes his guitar.

[Marcsimus]

The Raid and The Raid 2

I love these films, totally awesome martial arts films.