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Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Part#: Some High Number +2

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Savi said:
Unless some hidden gems pop up near the end of the year, these two will be very high on my Best of '19 list as well. With Elephant, I expected that, but Portrait really came out of nowhere for me. I wasn't planning on seeing it at first, it was playing at a local film festival last month but only because one of my screenings got cancelled, I scheduled it in last minute. So glad I did. Such a beautiful film, great acting as well, especially that final scene.

I still hope to see Ema this year, High Life I already saw last year and I thought was just very WTF :laugh:

Les Miserables is the opening film of the Gent Film Festival (Belgium's biggest film festival) which starts next week. Think I'll take in about 20 films in total, including LM. So that will probably alter the top of my list a bit as well. Also I think 2019 has already been really, really good so far.
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Try to pick up Hope (Hap) by Maria Sodahl. It is also a "9" by my standards, the equal or near equal of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and An Elephant Sitting Still. While it received unanimous great reviews at TIFF, I'm not sure Hope will even got picked up for distribution in NA as the subject matter was probably seen as too daunting: a woman and her family trying to cope with the fact that she is terminally ill. It has this in common with the Sciamma film: the director never makes a single misstep in a movie that could have gone wrong in so many different ways. It is also brilliantly acted by Stellen Skarsgard and, especially, Andrea Braen Hovig. I'd rate Hope as being in the same class as Amour. If I could buy you a ticket and walk you to the theatre, I would. It's that good.

Les Miserables will get the festival off to a fantastic start.
 
Savi said:
I'm not a big Skarsgard fan and I really didn't like Amour - so this won't catapult it to the top of my watchlist :D Sorry.
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I guess those are a couple of deal breakers for sure. :laugh: I'd still say consider stretching yourself in this instance as Hope is that good. Though Skarsgard is excellent, it's really Sodahl and Hovig's movie anyway
 
Watched the Diego Maradona doc on HBO last night. I'm not much of a soccer fan but I thought it was really good. I recommend it.
 
Joker-Official-Images-Featured-01.jpg


Joker (2019) Directed by Todd Phillips 4B

Joker is like a particularly clueless remake of Taxi Driver with some scenes from King of Comedy thrown in for good measure. As an origin story it seems neither necessary nor particularly helpful. Not much actually happens in the movie except we watch the world be cruel to the already mentally ill Joker. Director Todd Phillips borrows many of the incidents in the film from actual events, events that often carried with them a strong racial charge at the time. Phillips obviously wants the jolt of familiarity but prefers to ignore the racial element entirely; this is like playing around with incendiary material so as to provide the audience with the illusion that the movie is actually saying something, which it ain't. It just ends up seeming like Phillips doesn't have a clue about where all this is going with the result that the movie is simply incoherent or maybe just bewildered in an unintentionally toxic way. Joker is unrelievedly gloomy and gets more violent as Joker's development, such as it is, progresses. What's the message here? Killer clowns are shaped by forces beyond their control? So we should feel some empathy for them? Is this guy serious? This leaves us with Phoenix's performance which is indeed noteworthy though some of these "lost soul" moves of his are beginning to get a little repetitive. In fact if you want to watch a better performance by him in a movie that actually tackles some of the questions that Joker flirts with but shies away from, see 2018's You Were Never Really Here directed by Lynne Ramsay.

 
I've been hearing a lot of people really pushing that whole "Can you believe that Todd Phillips went from making movies like Road Trip and The Hangover to being a serious Oscar-worthy director?" narrative, but between A Star is Born and The Joker, it sure feels like he's still exactly as good or as bad as he used to be-- In fact, between those four movies, I'd probably begrudgingly put my money on The Hangover being the best.
 
Shareefruck said:
I've been hearing a lot of people really pushing that whole "Can you believe that Todd Phillips went from making movies like Road Trip and The Hangover to being a serious Oscar-worthy director?" narrative, but between A Star is Born and The Joker, it sure feels like he's still exactly as good or as bad as he used to be-- In fact, between those four movies, I'd probably begrudgingly put my money on The Hangover being the best.
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Bradley Cooper directed that.
 
The Vault

with James Franco, the chick who was Pensatucky on Orange is the New Black...and nobody else of note.

James Franco is the assistant manager of a bank that gets robbed by a gang led by the Pensatucky chick. The twist: they have to open the bank vault downstairs...which is haunted! Tension ensues.

Saw this last night and I have virtually no recollection of it now. On Netflix now, if you want to misplace an hour and a half of your life.
 
Wonder Woman: Bloodlines (animated). A bit meh. Maybe 6½/10. Some really questionable story telling or character development. Silver Swan acting like Octavia on The 100 was bit too on the nose for me (same actress doing the voice acting). Really not liking this animation style their currently using.
 
The Ritual

with some British people confused by the outdoors.

5 English guys in a pub are debating where to go for a Lads' holiday. The pints flow, the conversation flows, and eventually they leave. 2 of them hit a store for more booze when it's robbed by a couple of crackhead druggie types, and one gets his head bashed in to the shame of the other, who hid.

4 English guys are hiking and camping in Sweden on their Lads' holiday months later. They're clearly not outdoorsy guys, but they're there. They pour out a measure of booze from their flask after climbing a bit, then try to find the lodge. And fail. And get stuck in the outdoors, which they don't like. Where does the trail end up? Way over there...? Dammit. Frustration and discomfort start to pile up as one of them messes up his knee, and they have to stay in the old, leaky cabin they stumble across for the night. Oh wait, did I mention there was a carcass in the trees with its intestines removed just back up the trail there? And that it was fresh enough to be still bleeding? Uh-oh. Yeah, shouldn't be out here. Should really, really not be out here. Who the hell is carving those weird runes on the trees? They're probably not valets from the lodge, are they? Crap.

Actually pretty involving throughout. The 4 self-described twats are fully believable as guys lost in the woods. The creepy, creepy woods. Ending falls a bit flat, but it's a decent trip getting there.

Above average horror/suspense flick. On Netflix now.
 
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Saw hereditary for the first time recently. Man was that great. Almost every horror movie nowadays is annoyingly predictable except a few and this might be the best ive seen in a while. Amazing movie
 
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The Joker
3.00 out of 4stars

A great origin story with an ever better oscar nomination worthy turn from Phoenix. Humanizing and sympathy generating for what appeared to be a very innocent almost pure hearted man prior to his insane (or not? :) ) revelation. Before I state the next stuff I will say I hate politics and am 0% political in my life, but I think it brings up some good points on how parts of society treat different/odd good hearted people, how some people endlessly abuse their power/status in society as a "get out of jail free card" and use it to a value ranker to one's life. Morality, bullying, rejection, fairness, equality even, and the old "gap between the rich and poor". As for the Joker, everyone's got a breaking point.

The Witch
2.50 out of 4stars

Felt more like a drama than horror to me until the last act. I get the symbolism and motives and all, which do get you thinking a bit if you didn't already about some religious extremism and practices, but it still felt a little bit underwhelming and repetitive to an extent (on a what's gonna happen to who next level with the most likely lone survivor being an obvious selection sort of thing). PS, you should probably have some knowledge on the old testament/Jesus Christ, witch history, and even Job(which is name dropped in the movie and honestly it felt like this movie could be called 50 shades of Job honestly) to fully understand some of the happenings and actions in this movie.
 
Joker

Joker is a haunting, visceral experience carried by a fantastic performance by Joaquin Phoenix. It’s portrayal of a city going mad, and a man going mad at the same time is pretty great. Cinematography, beautiful. Score, brilliant.

The issue though, is that the story is just too...derivative and bland to elevate this into something truly special. I still enjoyed it, and I think it’s a good movie on its own merits, but a missed opportunity to really make something special here.

7/10
 
OhCaptainMyCaptain said:
Ocean's Eleven - 8/10
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I was about to ask which one, but I just noticed that the original was Ocean's 11. I had forgotten about that naming difference. Anyways, if you liked the remake, you might want to check out the original. I still haven't seen the newer ones, but I imagine that it's hard to top the actual Rat Pack.
 
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Taxi Driver - 9/10

I still don’t understand the comparisons to Joker. I get it in a very vague sense of tone and the main character being a homicidal maniac, but that’s about. Both are great movies in their own respect. But some people had me thinking Joker was basically a shot-for-shot remake, and I just don’t find them all that similar.

Great movie, though. De Niro is fantastic as always, and the ending is one to think about, for sure.
 
Osprey said:
I was about to ask which one, but I just noticed that the original was Ocean's 11. I had forgotten about that naming difference. Anyways, if you liked the remake, you might want to check out the original. I haven't seen the newer ones, but I imagine that it's pretty hard to top the actual Rat Pack.
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Thanks for the heads up. I’ll have to check it out.
 
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