ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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On 6/17/2019 at 2:25 PM, I_smell said:

Everyone's talking about Chernobyl, but I just feel like... it must be really, very sad, right? I don't wanna watch a whole show about something so terribly sad!

 

I've had a blu-ray of Get Out on my table for weeks and I finally watched it. I purposely avoided spoilers for this.

It was a good concept, it's very contemporary, I respect it and I bet it really clicked with a lot of people. It's big on sub-text, and really invites you to look into it. It's a very cliche thriller though! I didn't expect how straight-forward the film was, it's a new idea applied to the very familiar frame of a movie where a spooky killer is getting everyone. That's fun, but I guess I expected it to be something more surprising.

 

Oh well! I still liked watching it. It's not pretentious, the film speaks its' message loudly, and couches it in a nice popcorn flick deliberately. I can see why people were excited to check out Us next.

I've been avoiding spoilers for Us like you avoided spoilers for Get Out but my impression is that Us is much less of a straightforward movie than Get Out.

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Booksmart is maybe the best movie of this year so far. The way it avoids cliches and stays funny throughout is almost miraculous.

 

Also, a recommendation to NOT see: Midsommar. What potential this movie had, but ended up being quite shit.

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Can you tell us (with spoiler tags if necessary!) why?

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Sure. Firstly, the casting choices. If you know Chidi from The Good Place, they actually cast the actor to play basically the same character here. All the characters are very one-dimensional and I didn’t really get their motivations to do certain things.

 

Secondly, even though they are going for a very overexposed look knowingly, it still comes off as cheap amateur cinematography at times, as if someone got the camera settings wrong. And the visual effects during some trippy sequences are super lame IMHO.

 

Thirdly, there is no tension or increasing creepiness. From very early on, we know that SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG and until the end the feeling remains the same.

 

Patrick thinks similarly in more detail

 

[edit] Regarding the last point, this may be one of the cases where having seen the trailer ruins the movie experience. I think because the trailer gave a very specific expectation of where this story was going and then besides some details the movie followed it pretty closely. So if you haven’t seen the trailer and don’t want your expectations ruined, don’t read the spoiler:

 

I was pretty much expecting The Wicker Man + Hereditary and I think that’s what it mostly was although I won’t spoil whether the ending matched.

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Also just remembered... somewhere in the movie a local man points to a person in a corner as the keeper of some tradition. One of the main characters (a visitor) responds with a surprise by asking "The disabled?" (the person had a disfigured face)

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Watched a few movies on the plane to/from China recently

 

Aquaman

Better than I was expecting.  Some really good action set pieces.  The plot's kind of loose but good character portrayals for the most part.

 

Hellboy

David Harbor did a good job but everything else was lacking.  The plot is all over the place, it lacks the whimsy of the Guillermo Del Toro films, and I really couldn't care about any of the characters.

 

Captain Marvel

It was fine.  I don't have a lot to say that's not just diving into the MCU.

 

Into the Spider-Verse

Really enjoyable, though the art made my eyes hurt a couple times.  Not that it's bad, it's just hard to focus on.

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One thing I learned today that I thought was pretty wild, was that in Into The Spider-Verse they animate Miles at 12 fps at first, as he learns to handle his powers. As he becomes more confident, they start animating him in 24 fps to give a better sense of his newfound grace and power. Such neat animation storytelling!

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 Yeah, they also specifically animate him out of sync with his mentor initially. Then they sync up literally and figuratively through the course of a particular sequence. 

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I finally got around to watching Eighth Grade.

It's something I've had on my list for a while because it's written and directed by Bo Burnham, a stand-up comedian writing a movie for the first time. I remember seeing this guy making Youtube videos when I was 15 (and he was 15) where he would make funny, rude songs. They were silly Weird Al stuff, but they were often heartfelt and visibly desperate as well.

A few years later he had a couple stand-up specials that lauded vulnerability. It looks a little melodramatic now, but I was in that headspace at the same time, so it really worked on me.

 

Anyway the movie is good. I've watched a couple teen-drama movies on Netflix recently (Sarah Burgess Is A Loser, Dumplin') and they're very plastic, corny and predictable. I also don't like Black Mirror because it's so loud and ham-fisted with how it skewers modern technology. Eighth Grade feels more authentic in what it's like to be lonely and unsure today. The big villain in this kid's life is just a spread out cloud of little failures (often just PERCEIVED failures) that she's not equipped to process, and the small victories are very endearing. The kid is nervous about going to this pool party, but it's presented as just a bunch of wet kids and a cheap stereo in somebody's garden. I like coming to this genre with such a down-to-earth, lived-in perspective.

 

It's not truly mind-blowing, but it felt honest and vulnerable. That was compelling to me, and I appreciate that somebody's out there making stories in this style.

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17 hours ago, Roderick said:

One thing I learned today that I thought was pretty wild, was that in Into The Spider-Verse they animate Miles at 12 fps at first, as he learns to handle his powers. As he becomes more confident, they start animating him in 24 fps to give a better sense of his newfound grace and power. Such neat animation storytelling!

 

I also recently learned that!  It's a neat detail.

 

My favorite bit from Into the Spider-Verse is when Miles and Peter are escaping after stealing the computer and Miles throws a bagel at one of their pursuers.  As it hits the guy the comic sound effect that pops up says "BAGEL"

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I just went to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, if you like Tarantino this is more of that. I was never bored while watching it but I found myself kind of scratching my head. Also Margot Robbie is criminally under utilised in this film to the point where I couldn't understand why they bothered.

 

One nice touch is that because of the Tarantino thing, people show up that are pretty big names to do 5 minutes of work and that worked really well for me as I struggle with other films that introduce 'incidental' characters that are big name actors that are blatantly going to come back later, because the film's budget requires it.

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I finally saw Rififi (1955) and it's a really good movie, but I'm slightly disappointed because I was expecting a masterpiece. And I have a small doubt that maybe I would have seen it as a masterpiece if I had watched it 2-3 years ago before seeing many other classics...

 

Anyway, it seems somewhat derivative of at least these movies: The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Wages of Fear (1953) and Le Trou (1960). Of course, it came out before Le Trou, but I think the latter executed a similar idea to a big chunk of this film much better. And maybe I'm being unfair to it because I saw it after all of these other films, but it just feels too much of a mishmash of different things and there were some sequences early in the film where I just wasn't able to keep full attention on what exactly was being established.

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Just watched Midsommar the director's cut and I said 'Fucking white people' so many times that I annoyed the woman I went to see it with.

 

I really liked it, big, moody, incredibly slow but always engaging. I really like the way things feel wrong from the get go. Also, the boyfriend is a character I loved to hate.

 

So, basically everything tht Erkki hated about the film, I liked.

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As long as we're talking about Midsommar, is it scary in like a "stuff popping out" or "sudden string instruments" or "loud noises out of nowhere" sense? I can't watch movies like that, so if it's that kind of horror movie I'll have to skip it (although I did manage to make it through Get Out, albeit barely). But lots of "horror" movies (AlienJawsSuspiriaThe Thing, zombie movies, etc.) are fine for me. Any chance I could handle Midsommar?

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16 hours ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

As long as we're talking about Midsommar, is it scary in like a "stuff popping out" or "sudden string instruments" or "loud noises out of nowhere" sense? I can't watch movies like that, so if it's that kind of horror movie I'll have to skip it (although I did manage to make it through Get Out, albeit barely). But lots of "horror" movies (AlienJawsSuspiriaThe Thing, zombie movies, etc.) are fine for me. Any chance I could handle Midsommar?

There aren't really many jump scares, none that I recall, but there is a fair amount of very realistic grisly violence, so fair warning for that.

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Lots of creeping dread with one mild jump scare.  Very gory.

 

Just watched Peanut Butter Falcon it was okay but Dakota Johnson needs to stop being in films. Shia Laboeuf does a good job and the actor that plays Zach is great. The problem is that Johnson's character is bot underwritten and she does nothing with it. There are too many side stories that don't pay off and even a guest appearance from Jake 'The Snake' and Mick Foley don't really save it.

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I have resumed my top 250 lists watching recently... Only 22 movies to go on the Letterboxd Top 250 narrative films list. Most of them are between 3 and 14 hours long so I might not get through the remainder quickly, maybe next year. But in the past weeks I saw some good stuff.

 

Aliens (1986, James Cameron) is such a brilliant action film. I had forgotten that I had already seen it and it must be because I saw it as a kid because some images came back to me as memories of nightmares. I think the story actually comes out better in the Director's Cut, which really makes the movie a lot more about motherhood, and maybe I looked at it in a naive way, but it felt quite powerful. The ending is still quite disgustingly good. The images in this film are just so amazing. I want to learn more about what they did for the lighting. I have the Alien to Prometheus box set with some extras so might go through those soon.

 

Just watched A Face in the Crowd (1957, Elia Kazan). This is my second Kazan movie after On the Waterfront and I liked this a lot more. It made me think of films like Ace in the Hole and Scarface from the way it thrusts you into a story that just keeps escalating until something must give. Ok, every story might be said to do that, but in these three it's made very apparent how the escalation happens around and affects one person/event. I think this film deserves to be more well know than it is and today it might even be thought prophetic.

 

The Fifth Seal (1976, Zoltan Fabri). It is an easy to follow film where some men discuss philosophy and steaks at a semi-underground bar during the war and later their philosophy is put to test. I don't want to spoil too much, but it's a film worth seeing and speaks something about the human condition.

 

The Second Mother (2015, Anna Muylaert) is about a woman, Val, who works as a nanny and housekeeper with a rich São Paulo family. When Val's daughter, whom she hasn't seen for 10 years, comes to town to attempt to get into the university to study architecture, her different outlook causes some friction and Val has to re-evaluate her own attitudes towards life. There are some really powerful moments in it towards the end where I really empathized with the mother.

 

Pixote (1981, Hector Babenco) was not on the Top 250 list, but might as well be. I think it was recently restored and was now on Mubi. It's about a young Brazilian boy who gets in with a bad crowd and has to survive in the brutal youth detention system and the criminal world. He just wants to be a child, but nobody gives him that opportunity.

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16 hours ago, Erkki said:

Aliens (1986, James Cameron) is such a brilliant action film. I had forgotten that I had already seen it and it must be because I saw it as a kid because some images came back to me as memories of nightmares. I think the story actually comes out better in the Director's Cut, which really makes the movie a lot more about motherhood, and maybe I looked at it in a naive way, but it felt quite powerful. The ending is still quite disgustingly good. The images in this film are just so amazing. I want to learn more about what they did for the lighting. I have the Alien to Prometheus box set with some extras so might go through those soon.

 

My issue with the director's cut is largely that the addition of scenes on LV-426 before the outbreak ruin the dramatic tension of the first act, but the rest of the changes are golden, I agree.

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I just watched The Death of Stalin and it was this macabre comedy where I was constantly horrified by casualness of human life. Some great performances and I loved that everyone just kept their accents. I think it is Jason Isaac's performance and twang that threw me in a good way. It has inspired me to spend more time looking into Stalin's death and the political upheaval during that period

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Have I recommended Happy as Lazzaro (original title Lazzaro felice) yet? I think it's on Netflix in most cases. It's a very quiet movie so you'll have to be able to enjoy that sort of thing, but if you can, then go for it. It's stuck with me since I saw it months ago.

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I saw The Beach Bum, Harmony Korine's latest film, and it was... fine? Despite Korine's stated motive of making a movie about a lucky dude living a happy and blessed life, it's really not too different from his previous works that figure near-sociopathic burnouts leaving destruction in their wake. Want to see Matthew McConaughey as a stoned pervert without two brain cells to rub together, but seen every other movie where he plays that role? I mean, sure, maybe try out The Beach Bum, although I personally got more out of a couple of the cameos myself (Martin Lawrence and Zac Efron, especially).

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On 23/10/2019 at 1:35 PM, TychoCelchuuu said:

Have I recommended Happy as Lazzaro (original title Lazzaro felice) yet? I think it's on Netflix in most cases. It's a very quiet movie so you'll have to be able to enjoy that sort of thing, but if you can, then go for it. It's stuck with me since I saw it months ago.

Oh yeah, it stuck with me as well. One of the best films I saw at the local festival a year ago. After seeing it, I also immediately went and got hold of as much of the director’s (Alice Rohrwacher) other movies as I could and enjoyed those as well: The Wonders and Corpo Celeste.

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Has anyone seen Ms .45? I don't know, I kind of loved it, even though it's quite dark.

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I watched The Lighthouse a few nights back and I don't know why I did as I didn't really like the director's last movie The Witch. Like everything about his last movie there is nothing bad exactly about it, it just lacks any kind of verve or purpose. It is about two men in a lighthouse and the tension between them. Given the performances and cinematography that should have been enough, but just felt like an empty experience.

 

It is unlikely I'll bother to watch another one of these, and depending on who you are you can take it as praise or criticism, it felt very Lynchian.

 

 

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