Looking to take the kiddos to some movie tonight. Anybody see Maleficent Mistress of Evil? Weird split on Rotten tomatoes with critics hating and fans loving.
Turns out Booksmart really needs its own thread. I haven’t laughed that much at a movie in a long time. Very touching, too, even if the story itself was pretty predictable after the setup.
The trailer for Benh Zeitlin’s follow-up to Beasts of the Southern Wild looks really great!
I honestly didn’t think I’d go for something like this if it was just described to me, but damn I’m on board
Watched Tully on Tom’s recommendation. Was not expecting naturalistic-Mary-Poppins, but I liked it.
Saw The Farewell and Peanut Butter Falcon this week and highly recommend both.
(If you plan to see Tully, don’t click the spoilered text.)
Ah, great way to put it! I was thinking of it more as a maternal take on Fight Club, but I like yours better.
-Tom
I don’t know if this is technically getting any sort of proper theatrical release, but I saw it in a theater tonight, so:
First Love, a Takashi Miike film. Fucking great, would recommend if you can figure out how to see it.
Kind of part crime thriller, part comedy. Despite the title there’s not really much in the way of romance. Basically, a junior yakuza concocts a plan to steal some drugs from his clan with the help of a corrupt policeman (the subtitles said meth but it’s white powder so I think that’s probably wrong), because they’re about to get in a gang war with the local triad and he wants to be safely in jail with a nest egg waiting while they kill each other. The drugs will be transported to the apartment of a local affiliate who’s keeping a drug-addled young woman locked up there as a part-time prostitute for repayment of her father’s debts. She’ll be blamed for the heist and killed by the policeman (or the yakuza guy). Except…the cop and the girl run across the protagonist, a young boxer who’s just been told he has an inoperable brain tumor. And things fall apart real fast when on a whim he tries to help her out. (This may not sound funny, but trust me, it is frequently hilarious.)
I really enjoyed this! It really benefitted going in blind. BIG recommend for fans of Bong Joon Ho’s Mother.
Just came back from an Early Showing of Knives Out.
These are typically not my sought after kind of movies, but I actually enjoyed it more than I expected, a lot more the Oriental Express (new version). It’s kind of ridiculous, Daniel Craig has an accent I couldn’t stop noticing, and for once I managed to keep track of almost all their names. Good times.
Got to see this in the theater just now:
It’s aggressively insane. I loved it. Just…what.
One of my favorite details: One of the leads “gives birth” to a soccer ball that is named Twilson (because Wilson is Tom Hanks’ baby, you see). In the end credits? “Twilson: Wilson Hanks”.
Hey, Beck Bennett! I love that guy. Not enough to actually watch SNL, but I do like him a lot!
Wow, you weren’t kidding. I got about halfway through Brittany Runs a Marathon last night (it’s on Prime Video now), and it’s interesting how things that are comedic in the trailer and completely not in the movie. There’s a moodiness, heaviness to the whole thing with what they’ve done with the sound and the editing. Also big kudos to this actress, for how much she manages to look miserable no matter what is going on in the scene or what lines she’s saying.
Yeah, see I think the trailer implies more of a Rebel Wilson affair, and it’s not that kind of movie, like at all. Heavy is a great word to describe it, very… human. It’s kind of a hidden gem, and now that Prime has it I am curious if others will respond to it. I think that might be the other word I was looking for… the response to this movie is probably the make or break for it. If you connect real well, it’s a surprisingly good, but if someone bounces off the characters, doesn’t establish that connection, not sure it works at all.
Almost every character has some sort of impact, even the ones that have minute engagements with her say on the train.
I’ll totally see it, mainly because I’m a big fan of Jillian Bell. I mean, I say I’ll see it, but what I mean is I’ll stick it in my queue and probably in a couple years I’ll stumble on it again and go hey, what’s this? And then I’ll watch it. Probably.
My wife and I saw it and liked it very much (and I posted about it in the Prime Video thread). One interesting thing that happened after our viewing is that my wife posted her opinion about it on Facebook, and one of the first responses to her comment was someone saying that they started watching the movie and felt like the filmmakers were fat-shaming (for those who haven’t seen it, it’s very much about her journey and though she does lose a lot of weight, I don’t see any shaming going on).
There are times I just don’t understand the world.
Sounds like they didn’t finish which is a shame because oh what nearly 70 percent through there is a very large woman who is a part of some important key moments, and that person is important to Brittany’s growth but also shines herself.
I loved that scene and the payoff. Easily made the movie worth watching, along with someone finally letting Jillian Bell carry a movie. But overall, I thought it was kind of schmatltzy and too obvious, like the sort of thing made to ingratiate itself to a Sundance jury.
Also, the title is a spoiler. I’m going to have to stop knowing the names of movies before I see them.
-Tom
Ha. I wish this weren’t so true! Knowing the setting ahead of time really ruined that last Willem Dafoe movie for me!