Dingus: World’s nicest grammar Nazi.
No joke. I laughed pretty hard at that. I almost don’t want to correct it now.
I saw the 15:17 To Paris. . This has been widely panned as Eastwood used the real guys in the incident to perform themselves. I will say that such a critique would be in error, as from what I observed those guys did fine and mostly seemed quite natural.
The real problem with the show was the first half, where they had reenactments of the trio in Middle School and both the acting and dialogue in that part of the film was cringe-worthy and quite bad.
It was interesting as to the steps Eastwood took to show how normal these guys were. They did not excel at anything, they often did not succeed at the things they tried to do. Their trek across Europe was extremely average and uneventful/unremarkable.
When the incident occurred, the gun being jammed is what really saved everyone from there being a real disaster. The one guy did provided medical assistance he had received in his training and did save a life by applying pressure to a gunshot wound in the neck. But the real message was imho they were lucky.
No rubber babies appeared in this film.
Getting awful misty over here, all of a sudden.
Recent Indian movies I’ve seen roundup:
Tiger Zinda Hai: A sequel that didn’t need to exist. The first movie (Ek Tha Tiger) was kind of brilliant in that it seemed like this super-patriotic and jingoistic movie about the Indian Secret Service, RAW, as it thwarted their evil Pakistani neighbours. And yet, it subverted expectations and ended up promoting peace between the two countries. The sequel is more of the same, kind of, except in this case Tiger, the RAW agent, goes into Syria to destroy ISIS, and is of course single handedly able to do so. It’s well made at times, but kind of hokey throughout.
Tumhari Sulu: A story about a housewife who is always brainstorming ideas with her husband and son, who wins a radio contest and kind of finesses her way into potentially getting a radio gig. Only it’s a radio gig for the middle of the night, which involves sounding sexy and talking to lonely men who call in to the radio station. This is an absolutely delightful movie. Vidya Balan is one of my favorite actresses in Bollywood anyway, and this movie is the perfect use of her charm and style. Highly recommended if you’re into slice of life movies that show ordinary Indians.
Secret Superstar: A young muslim girl who lives in a conservative household with an abusive dad geeks out over singing shows analogous to American Idol. She and her mom geek out over them together, actually, and she dreams of one day showcasing her own talents on such a show. She is a good singer, but she knows her dad would never allow such a thing. When her mom gets her a laptop as a gift, she dreams about making it big via Youtube, but if her dad ever found out, she would have hell to pay. So she comes up a solution: she sings a song covered head to toe in a burka so no one knows her identity and puts it on Youtube as “Secret Superstar”. This is an absolutely delightful movie. Aamir Khan is funny as an over-the-top Simon on the American Idol type show. The young actress who is the star is wonderful, as is the actress who plays the mom. It’s a really well done movie. The scene where she finally has her shot at stardom is so tense and so well done, I want to give this movie’s writer a hug. Brilliant, just brilliant.
Lucknow Central: A starving musician who is trying to find a way to success as a musician is accused of murder and railroaded into prison. And there, unexpectedly, he finds a way to express his music in front of a big crowd. There’s a big contest between prisons, and he forms a band of misfits who don’t know how to sing, on the excuse that they’re going to sing good enough to get in the contest and use that to break out of prison. It’s got all the expected beats. Nothing unexpected happens in this movie. But I still found it a compelling watch. Come for the prison break movie, stay for the feel-good realization of musical dreams fulfilled, yeah? :)
Bareilly Ki Barfi: The plot of this romantic comedy is kind of hard to describe. Our female lead falls in love with the author of this book and tries to track him down. But the author whose name is on the cover is not the real author. The real author is kind of a scumbag in some ways, but likeable in others. The guy who put his name on the cover is just a sweet innocent by-stander who has to act like he’s the real author for reasons that are convoluted and even the movie can’t quite convince us of them. But hey, just go with it, because it turns out to be quite fun. Overall the point this movie is making about female empowerment kind of gets lost, but the lead actress is quite delightful, and the movie is quite funny at times. Recommended.
There has definitely been a lull in Bollywood films lately. I pretty much stay away from the Romantic Comedies. Superstar looks interesting, and Dangal made US Netflix so there is a chance it will show up there since it is the same crew. I would think Superstar would generate some controversy.
I did see the Chinese made “Operation Red Sea” which was a Chinese Navy Seals film, supposedly based on a real spec ops operation in Yemen during the civil war there. However, the team is made up of supermen (and one superwoman) and they perform countless missions in a small period of time with no rest and generally no real plan. They also ultimately experience severe losses along the way that would be considered abysmal failures for any special operation. With spec ops, like baseball, even though there is high risk, an error is considered very bad - you are supposed to be better than that.
I would not recommend the film, but the action is very intense and graphic (which surprised me for a Chinese film) in that there are many dead people filmed, missing/losing all manner of limbs…getting shot and blown up in all sorts of ways.
7 Days in Entebbe - Man, I have a big man-crush for Daniel Bruhl, but this was not worth it. I never thought I’d write this, but the story of a terrorist hijacking intercut with an interpretive dance sequence just didn’t do it for me.
My goodness what a great movie. A blood splattering action movie, sprinkled with enough tragedy and melodrama in its beating heart, so when the blood starts flowing it is all the more satisfying. It is one part La Femme Nikita, one part Kill Bill O-ren Ishii, one part Hardcore Henry, one part K-drama, and all parts awesome.
Coherence. A not bad Primerlike. Nicely done comet causes alternate realities film. Recommended.
Dissenting opinion here:
But mostly I’m curious why you put this in the theatrical releases thread. I can’t imagine this movie got any sort of theatrical release.
-Tom
EDIT: And as I noted in that write up, it seems it did get a theatrical release. I corrected my own self! Still, that was 2014.
I considered posting the same two points (quality and release date), but figured it wasn’t worth being a negative Nancy. Anywho, I heard high praise and was not impressed. Watch The Invitation instead.
I totally read your review at the time. My aging grey matter fails me again. Does the fact that I was drinking wine excuse my liking it? :)
This is coming up. I find it of interest because I generally don’t think Melissa McCarthy’s roles have a great deal of variety, but this could be different.
I always thought she had more range than just “dumb comedies”. Glad to see her stretching a bit.
And hey Richard E. Grant! Definitely gonna watch for this one.
and evidently this is about to hit the streets both here and in Nippon
Has anyone seen this movie Mayhem (late 2017)?
It’s kinda hard to explain, rage virus meets office space dark comedy, maybe? But it’s surprisingly a lot of fun. Recommended.
I like Samara Weaving a lot, but I’m more of a Belko Experiment guy.
-Tom
I don’t think we have a Rampage movie topic. It is worse than the critics suggest, and we saw it in 3D because the only showing that worked for everyone was that time since our theater is remodeling and down to about half screens. The only 3D stuff I even remember is falling ash.
Now Dwayne Johnson is fun, but think of the ridiculous hero stuff that made him fun in Jumanji, worked because it was not all that serious; they make it too serious in this one. Then add giant monsters, cartoonish, like seriously cartoonish villains and a guy with an over the top Texan swagger and accent. It’s like they took some action scenes, said these would be cool in a movie, what can we use as filler; that filler is the plot and especially the dialogue. It’s like a Syfy original with a highly paid actor and an actual notable budget. It’s too bad too because I thought the opening was actually pretty good… which just sets you up to expect way more from the movie than it ever delivers.
From the trailer it looked like it was just him in front of a green screen the whole time.
Oh I forgot to mention, if you have kids of the younger variety, maybe not take them to this. The intro is pretty scary, the wolf scenes are kind of suspenseful and scary… I’d put this more in the monster / horror flick than say what Godzilla movies usually give us.