What Movie Have You Seen Today?

General General Movie Discussion
1853

Barbie

So I watched this one with my wife.

Full disclosure: I think I had a Ken doll as a child, and my big sister had a Barbie, so we sometimes played together with these. But I remember I preferred my Action Team dolls and their deep sea diving set, ruining it in the bathtub.

In addition I have seen some films by and with Greta Gerwig, without being really impressed by them.

But I do love Ryan Gosling’s work, so that was an intro for me here. Also, Will Ferrell can be extremely funny in my mind.

The albatross around this film’s neck for me was its mega success. I recognize that the film is well made, it is grabbing the zeitgeist, it filled a gap in the movie offering this year, and it does play to the balcony so nobody can not get its messages (however obvious and old hat they are). But does it work as a comedy?

Not for me. It is a series of vignettes, flimsily held together. And Gosling-Ken is the only real funny ingredient, but even he is wearing out his welcome soon.

Maybe the clash between Barbie world and Real World was not handled imaginatively enough for my taste. The plot was like an afterthought and barely there. I wanted a better story.

1 billion dollars and counting? For this film?

Not justified at all. But mass audiences did think so.

Yes, I am a straight white 54 year old guy.

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1854

The stage musical has the same problem. The recent revival received an entire new book, and it did not solve the problem. In this version, Arthur and Guinevere are equals and a power couple, and the song lyrics in some instances work against the new book.

My favorite telling of the Arthurian story is LANCELOT DU LAC (1974), which I believe to be Robert Bresson’s greatest film. The sound design alone puts it in the realm of the sublime. There is a marvelous new Blu-ray from Gaumont now out. It is a go-to disc for me when I need to be reminded/reassured what cinema can be.

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1855

Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

As a big MI fan, I was excited for this. Mission Impossible has been on an insane winning streak, with each entry being better than the last. However, I think this time it just doesn’t quite live up to Fallout. It’s too long and the stakes don’t feel the same and it doesn’t end with the Infinity War gut punch. The stunts weren’t quite on par with the insanity we’ve seen in previous MI films (though, someone needs to stop Tom Cruise before he actually kills himself making one of these). I enjoyed it for what it is. But where Rogue Nation is a much better version of Spectre, Dead Reckoning falls short of the greatness of No Time To Die (though the story actually has more in common with Skyfall). I’ll still be excited for Part 2, but with slightly lower expectations.

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1856

The Killer (David Fincher, 2023)

This is so old a genre staple it’s morphed into its own subgenre, the killer whose clients come for him to leave no loose ends. Seen so often we can recite the story’s beats blindfolded:

-job goes belly-up (or not)

-‘colleagues’ start appearing on the doorstep

-cleanup goes belly-up

-hero goes on a methodical revenge tour

All the more surprising how Fincher here quietly changes the settings on a trusted clockwork mechanism to make us complicit in a familiar scenario, yet keeps audiences just enough off-balance to sow the seeds of doubt in us about how exactly events will unfold. Not in the general direction but the details and subtleties of this particular iteration.

Fassbender’s nameless killer (whose chosen aliases are classic sitcom characters from the 70s) is a cold blooded professional after the Delon/Samurai pattern, intentionally not patterned on Bond or any form of glitzy extravaganza. In fact, his character wears a ‘German tourist’ uniform intended to scrub his image from the recollection of witnesses. And while it’s debatable whether this uniform is as innocuous and unsuspicious as he hopes it certainly helps defining the character’s method and dedication.

Fassbender is once again outstanding in depicting a character given entirely to a defined calling, one of his particular strengths to hint at passion from a point of restraint. He’s probably not going to have a future in romcoms. But as long as there are parts for coldly calculating killers (or ethically challenged androids) he’s got a defined range of roles that are ‘his’.

THE KILLER has a select few scenes that are just a pleasure to follow, the stakeout, the Florida encounter with ‘the Brute’, the whisky flight with Tilda Swinton. Aficionados will just love these moments while more casual viewers may be pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere.

That said, not everything works for me in this film. The killer’s choice of music fails entirely to convince me, but that’s probably just me. Wardrobe’s choice of hat though - no doubt deliberate - threatened to pull me out of the tale repeatedly.

Having lived as a kid in Munich in ‘72 and seen the footage countless times since I struggle to accept anybody inside the security business - or any conscientious civilian for that matter - would not immediately get suspicious when confronted with an outfit that screams Terrorist!!!. That’s something I wished Fincher had left untouched. I get it’s probably deliberate. But it was a mistake.

Anyway, overall quite liked it.

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1857

Lancelot du Lac is definitely one of the best Arthurian films (not that there are many good ones). It’s also a relatively faithful condensation of the 13th century Vulgate Lancelot prose romance, one of Malory’s sources for Le Morte D’Arthur. The only other first-rate Arthurian films I can name are Eric Rohmer’s Perceval (a delightful adaptation of Chretien de Troyes’ verse tale of the first grail knight) and John Boorman’s Excalibur, which attempted the impossible task of cramming Malory into two hours but made a valiant effort. I was very disappointed with the recent adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, both in its second-hand stoner imagery and the unnecessary liberties taken with the core of the story. There’s also an earlier adaptation where Sean Connery plays the green knight but I’ve heard it’s a low-budget clunker.

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1858

I had no idea about this. Seems there are volumes of the translation. Thank so much R.

Agreed.

Again, agreed.

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1859

Oppenheimer

Well made, acted, shot and edited, and Nolan, no question, is a great director.

But I think this time he made a weird choice, focusing on Oppenheimer‘s quest to be recognized as a brilliant scientist whose creation was taken away by the government.

The result is tons of dialogue which, while shot and acted very well, IMO is not what should be front and center: his shock at what he unleashed.

Yes, there are moments of this, especially his speech in front of his colleagues and co-workers.

But the most terrifying and terrible consequence of any nuclear explosion - decades or even centuries of radioactive pollution and destruction of human lives - is only mentioned in passing.

Sure, one can argue that Nolan did not want to make a film about the devastation of nuclear bombs.

But making a film about the inventor and using three hours for it, using the time without showing the impact is almost trivializing the subject.

Also, why three hours if the film only touches upon many aspects of Oppenheimer‘s life without choosing one to really concentrate on? For me it felt as if he wanted to cram everything in, fearful of boring someone, therefore jumping ahead again and again.

But the connection to these people got severed, IMO, and while the movie always held my attention, it was mainly because I was hoping for more engagement.

Especially in a time when nuclear bombs seem to be viewed as „tactical“ possibilities, it would have been important and necessary to explain to a mass audience what radioactive pollution really means.

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1860

I quite enjoyed it. Flew by for me.

Well paced IMO. No small task in that.

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1861

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956)–restored in 4K and with Perspecta sound.

I saw the film at Film Forum (NYC) tonight, and my high estimation of it has ascended even further. Both image and sound have been restored, and it is like seeing the film for the first time. If it plays near you, rush to see it.

The films feels like Hitchcock’s attempt to make a Douglas Sirk movie in his own style. He lets the interplay/bickering between Ben and Jo play out at length, with the payoff being in the Albert Hall sequence when McKenna arrives. We cannot hear what they are saying, so Jo may just be filling her husband in, but there is also the hint that there is bickering going on as well, which enriches the scene.

The sound is better as well–I never realized Louis Bernard’s dying words were supposed to be heard. And the carrying of Jo’s singing up the stairs combined with Tomasini’s editing is superb. I always felt a slight letdown after the Albert Hall sequence, but the dark, burnished interiors of the embassy, and the better sound, made the whole sequence work on a deeper level than it had before. The connection between the efforts of Jo McKenna and Lucy Drayton to save Hank resonate so beautifully now.

Godard wrote that TMWKTM was both the most improbable and the most realistic of Hitchcock’s films, and he was right–improbable that the spy plot would unfold as it does, and realistic about a 1950’s marriage where a woman makes/is required to make sacrifices for her marriage and her husband. But in the end, wives will not be silenced by their husbands, even though McKenna gets the last line in an effort to recuperate the image of marriage and family. But the preceding 120 minutes have shown us otherwise.

The film is also blessedly free of the psychosexual subtext that is often part of AH’s work. No obsessions–just a hard, pragmatic look at life. The emphasis on the power/autonomy of women feels like a veiled tribute to Alma, who gave up her career for AH’s, just as Jo has given up hers.

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1862

Fabulous good stuff IMO. Jimmy at his best “everyman” bit. One of my favorites.

In all my travels, I’ve always both feared/wished that I’d be that “wrong place/right time” guy.

For those here, imagine what kind of mischief Gala and I could get into let alone resolve in the scenario minus the child… :thinking:

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1863

:thinking:

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1864

D2 The Mighty Ducks

Yes, I know it’s stupid and dumb, but I enjoy it still and now I get to watch it with my kids.

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1865

Honestly, some of the best films are.

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1866

The Exorcist: Believer

I was really liking it for the first 45mins. I was finding it wonderfully atmospheric. It didn’t feel like anything connected to The Exorcist but it felt like a good episode of The X-Files, and I was down with that.

And then the movie just died. It had run out of story to tell and about an hour of screen time left to kill.

I’m going to go out on a limb and spoil the movie. Are you ready? The movie is about 2 girls who become possessed and an exorcism is performed. That’s it. There’s nothing else to it. There is no deeper story here.

In the first movie the backbone of the movie was the priests’ story - of a loss of faith. The possession was really secondary. There is no such backbone here, and without something similar to hold the thing up it just falls apart.

Actual line of dialog:

Chris MacNeil : “I didn’t actually witness it, you know. The exorcism. They wouldn’t let me.”

Victor: “Why not?”

Chris: “My opinion? Because I’m not a member of the damn patriarchy.”

Saywhatnow?

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1867

It’s just shocking that the guy who couldn’t wrap his head around HALLOWEEN would totally misunderstand THE EXORCIST.

1868

Leave the world behind (Netflix)

I loved Sam Esmail‘s series „Mr. Robot“ and his first season of „Homecoming“.

This movie, despite great acting, however, is a misstep. It‘s all buildup, buildup, buildup, people staring in the distance, then finally a payoff - and then repeat that. Yes, the executive producers know that this is how the world could end, and the verisimilitude of it all is well done. But as a movie, it is simply not enough. It’s all teasing and nothing else, and after this year‘s „Knock at the cabin“ and Jordan Peele‘s „Us“ this story should have been more told more interestingly and surprisingly. And the camera has some shockingly gimmicky transitions which were unnecessary and drawing attention to the filmmaking instead of drawing the audience into proceedings.

Disappointing.

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1869

The Exorcist: Believer (2023)
SPOILERS, as if anyone would care

It really is difficult to wrap your head around just how awful this film is. It took me a few tries to make it all the way through this, but I finally sat down and forced myself to finish it (since I paid for it about a month or so ago), and, quite frankly, I’m not sure that fans and critics have been harsh enough on this film.

Believer is a slap in the face to the film it purports to be a sequel to. And, if we’re being honest, this isn’t a sequel to The Exorcist. It doesn’t really have anything to do with that film, other than assassinating the Chris MacNeil character. That film was about a mother’s love for her child and the lengths that she would go to, in the face of countless obstacles, to save her daughter from the forces of evil. Believer throws this all away on a whim. We’re introduced to a new version of Chris MacNeil (and God bless Ellen Burstyn for returning and squeezing every last dollar she could out of these “filmmakers” for her services), who immediately slaps the real version of the character from the original film straight across the face. We learn that she hasn’t seen Reagan in ages because of the book she wrote about the ordeal from the first film, which angered her daughter so much that she went away and has shut off all contact. This is not the same character from the original and shows why Burstyn would only return after having her salary doubled and a scholarship for her acting school funded by the “filmmakers”.

And what was so important that they had to have Burstyn in the film? Not a damn thing. She’s there for absolutely no reason, other than to give the “filmmakers” an apparent license to bill this film as a part of The Exorcist franchise. Other than her, there’s not a single connective tissue to the original. She shows up, says a few lines to Pazuzu, and then is sent along her merry way to the sidelines, only to be shown in brief cuts for the rest of the film, as though only to remind the audience while they’re watching this crap that this is, indeed, a sequel to The Exorcist.

The rest of the film is just a mess. The climactic exorcism film is just a chaotic mess of filmmaking, with ideas seemingly being thrown against the wall at random to see what would stick. We get several different types of religious figures sitting in on the exorcism, each doing their own thing, in an effort seemingly to be more inclusive and to not offend anyone. It doesn’t work and, instead, just creates a jumbled mess of a sequence that is hard to follow. It’s also an overly cruel scene, with the way it wraps up for one of the afflicted girls, which felt completely unnecessary.

Looking for any positives in the film is a difficult tasks. Linda Blair’s single moment in the film is a highlight, I guess, as it’s the only moment that really causes the viewer to feel any emotion. The rest of this film is just, at its best, a boring slog brought to us by people who clearly had no understanding of the film they are purporting to make a sequel to with this film. And, to think, we’re getting two more of these.

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1870

I think with the less than stellar box office reception this first part received, the green-lighting of sequels may be a bit premature.

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1871

They claim they’re going ahead with the next one, albeit with changes to the sequel to address the backlash this film has gotten. The only way that I can see them fixing it would be to fire David Gordon Greene and Danny McBride from the project, because it was crystal clear from BELIEVER that they do not have any understanding of the source material.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen EXORCIST II, but I may have to go back and give that a watch to see which one of these two films is worse. I have a feeling it might be BELIEVER, but that’ll be a project for another time.

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1872

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

So I did watch it again. And in contrast to „Dune“ which I turned off after the second hour during my rewatch attempt, I absolutely loved „Dial of Destiny“ this time.

What happened?

First of all, the clarity of the image and the brightness seem to have been totally muddled in the cinema I saw this in for the first time. I don’t have a special home theater setup, just a Flatscreen and an old blu ray player, but they both offered a spectacularly different image. What seemed overlit or too dark in the cinema now was probably the way it was intended. Even the sound seemed to be mixed way better now, with the Williams score right where it belonged, front and center.

Also, my expectations were not unrealistic anymore, and I could concentrate on the story, the framing, the editing and the cinematography. And while the deaging still is inconsistent between convincing and computer game, it did not bother me anymore.

Furthermore, what I thought at first the film lacked („the Spielberg touch“) I did not miss anymore. In fact, Mangold imitates Spielberg‘s techniques for the Indy movies very well, and the action scenes are perfectly done. But what Mangold excels in are the character moments, and all the little details he inserts make this not only a very emotionally rich experience but also a well thought out narrative. Some examples: Marion‘s photo on the fridge (wearing the blouse from Raiders, when she will wear a similar one in the final scene), Indy being seriously shocked at the death of the secretary and later of his friends on the boat, the puppet theatre foreshadowing the Archimedes finale while Indy and Helena are unaware of it.

It‘s really a very good Indy movie, but it was crushed by the zeitgeist, kind of like the main character being incredibly successful as an anachronism during the first three films and then reappearing now and being ridiculed for being an anachronism.

There are many other reasons why this film underperformed at the box office, sure. But quality definitely isn’t one of them.

And guess what - I‘m looking forward to watching this one again. And I did like it more than CS. Which I should rewatch also.

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