Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate it | {Insert Appropriate Seasonal Greeting Here}

[Osprey]

I'd like to take a moment to applaud the use of "bifurcated" in a film review.

 

[kihei]

radically wrong thread

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Mr. Klein. This Paris-set identity mystery set on the verge of the Holocaust is perhaps an odd choice of a movie to watch for someone whose beliefs were on the losing side of the 2024 US presidential election. Told a friend that's what I am doing and his text response was "JFC dude." But ...

I actually found the movie to be pretty cathartic. Alain Delon's Mr. Klein is a cold opportunist, profiting on the artwork and possessions of Jews forced to flee Paris becuase SOMETHING is coming ...He is not himself a Nazi or a direct collaborator, but he operates and profits from his willful ignorance of the things going on around him. I found the ending to be incredibly fitting and, honestly, satisfying. Active supporters of fascists and passive enablers like Klein always believe the horrors will stop before it gets to them but this movie shrewdly spins a compelling story that builds to the question ... what if it doesn't?

 

[Bahama Mama]

Funny movie,lots of laughs.

 

[kihei]

Mr. Klein. This Paris-set identity mystery set on the verge of the Holocaust is perhaps an odd choice of a movie to watch for someone whose beliefs were on the losing side of the 2024 US presidential election. Told a friend that's what I am doing and his text response was "JFC dude." But ...

I actually found the movie to be pretty cathartic. Alain Delon's Mr. Klein is a cold opportunist, profiting on the artwork and possessions of Jews forced to flee Paris becuase SOMETHING is coming ...He is not himself a Nazi or a direct collaborator, but he operates and profits from his willful ignorance of the things going on around him. I found the ending to be incredibly fitting and, honestly, satisfying. Active supporters of fascists and passive enablers like Klein always believe the horrors will stop before it gets to them but this movie shrewdly spins a compelling story that builds to the question ... what if it doesn't?

I think that may be Delon's best performance.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

I think that may be Delon's best performance.

I think I agree

 

[kihei]

Pedro Paramo (2024) Directed by Rodrigo Prieto 4B

Pedro Paramo is based on a highly influential Mexican novel of the same name. What makes the novel important is that it introduced the style of magic realism to fiction and influenced Nobel Prize winning Columbian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera; Of Love and Other Demons) who took the form to majestic heights. Fulfilling a promise he made to his mother on her deathbed, Juan attempts to find his father, Pedro Paramo, in a remote deserted village that he finds is populated totally by ghosts. It is through these different figures that he learns the extent to which his father was a brutal tyrant. The movie incorporates his strange journey through the village with flashbacks that show us Pedro's story.

So here's the rub. While the story sounds interesting, the way that first-time director Rodrigo Prieto (Martin Scorsese's current cinematographer) presents it is dull and boring. I was tempted to turn the thing off. There was just a bare minimum of scenes and visual touches that enabled me to continue watching. Part of the problem is that Prieto doesn't always know how to frame a scene, but a bigger problem is that there is nothing magical about the realism on display whatsoever. We just slog along, Prieto telling the story devoid of any emotional resonance or dramatic interest. If I learned that Pedro Paramo had been directed by an AI, it wouldn't have surprised me in the least.

Netflix

subtitles