The thread for movies that aren't going to get their own thread but are still in theaters

Jumanji 2 was fun.
I really like Aquafina and she does a way better Danny Devito than Dwayne Johnson.
The master is definitely Jack Black. His switch from the jock to the popular girl was so fast and on point. He should seriously teach a master class.

fangblackbone wrote:

Jumanji 2 was fun.
I really like Aquafina and she does a way better Danny Devito than Dwayne Johnson.
The master is definitely Jack Black. His switch from the jock to the popular girl was so fast and on point. He should seriously teach a master class.

Yeah, I thought Dwayne was doing a pretty good Devito until she showed up. These two Jimanji movies have really made me appreciate how good of an actor Jack Black really is.

Saw Little Women on Monday. What a beautiful film and the fact that Greta Gerwig hasn't been nomianted for the Oscar is a crime. I haven't seen any of the films that did get the nod but I find it hard to believe they couldn't find room for her.

Spoiler:

That scene where Beth dies, the way it is shot and the difference between the warm and cold colour tones between her suriving as a child and then dying as an adult. My god, I wanted to frame it and put it in a museum.

onewild wrote:

Saw Little Women on Monday. What a beautiful film and the fact that Greta Gerwig hasn't been nomianted for the Oscar is a crime. I haven't seen any of the films that did get the nod but I find it hard to believe they couldn't find room for her.

Spoiler:

That scene where Beth dies, the way it is shot and the difference between the warm and cold colour tones between her suriving as a child and then dying as an adult. My god, I wanted to frame it and put it in a museum.

I saw this for a second time last weekend. On second viewing I was able to more appreciate how brilliantly each scene transitions to the next. How they're connected in story, theme, etc. while differentiated in subtle, beautiful ways.

It's absolutely brilliant. One of my favorite movies and I'm gobsmacked that Gerwig wasn't nominated for an Oscar.

I don’t get to the cinema much due to childcare but I took some leave to go and see the lighthouse as I love the vvitch. All I can say is wow, I’m still processing it, cinematography and sound design is out of this world. Which I could justify seeing but again at the cinema as I doubt it’ll have the same impact on home viewing. It really felt like an epic myth playing out in front of you.

It also contains the most indelible character that Willem Dafoe has played since he was Sgt. Elias in Platoon. And that's saying a lot.

IMAGE(https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSbzhcUs0r7H1I_SFUP9UULuYR5d0sLRTXKRHyKuGsulfVRWSrP)I Watched The Emperor of Paris. It was rather good. Some relationships surprised me which usually isn’t the case.

I pulled a double feature today of Parasite and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

I had seen Parasite before and was intensely curious to see how it held up to a second viewing. I've had my fair share of films that delighted me on a first viewing but failed to stand up to a second.

Parasite is not one of those films. It's a beautiful and intricate film that doesn't waste a single frame. It's one of the best movies I've seen in the last decade. Maybe ever. It's a masterpiece.

As for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood... I know there's a certain cadre of film buffs who will sneer at this, but: I just don't get it. It's a technically well-crafted movie with the depth of a thimble. I was impressed by the production design, and there was one scene that delighted me with its cleverness, but the film taken as a whole doesn't add up to anything. It just feels meaningless.

It's not a bad or offensive movie. But after its nearly three hour runtime, I can't do much more than shrug. If I were putting together a list of the year's best pictures, it wouldn't even make my shortlist.

I haven't really been wowed by a Tarantino film since Pulp Fiction. I kind of think he needs someone to rein him in a bit sometimes. He's brilliant but his films are all over the place.

I still think The Hateful 8 is a fantastic film.

Haven’t seen OUATIH, but, I wonder if Bad Times at El Royale the better take on what seems to be similar themes. It is definitely Tarantinoesue, but instead of trying to be the most Tarantino-like, it ends up having a lot more depth to its story than you get from most Tarantino, which I thinks excels in style more than substance.

Jayhawker wrote:

I wonder if Bad Times at El Royale the better take on what seems to be similar themes. It is definitely Tarantinoesue

Not really, it doesn't have the finesse.

Tarantino doesn't change his style or format. He uses the same 'frame' to wrap different stories around it. Folks are going to love the new story or hate it, but there are few that can come close to matching the 'frame' that he creates.

Having thought about it overnight, I think I'd have gotten along better with Once Upon a Time if Rick (DiCaprio) had seemed more like a character and less like a cartoon. He has an interesting story: he's an aging TV actor who gave up his most popular television role to pursue and unsuccessful career in film, and now he's coming to terms with the fact that he's likely at the end of his career and of dwindling use to Hollywood. That's good stuff!

But Rick is so cartoonishly depicted (in how he's written and how he's played) that it's challenging to connect with him on any meaningful level. I ended up appreciating his storyline in the same way I do stories in most video games: not valuing their actual depiction or execution but the conceptual underpinnings.

Sharon, meanwhile, doesn't get the cartoony treatment of Rick but feels equally underutilized. The film doesn't seem to have much for her to do except to be someone so sweet and vivacious and wonderful that the tragedy of her murder is at the forefront of the audience's mind. (This isn't a spoiler. I think everyone knows that the real Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson family.)

Margot Robbie at least gives a great performance with the limited amount she has to work with.

But Rick is so cartoonishly depicted (in how he's written and how he's played) that it's challenging to connect with him on any meaningful level. I ended up appreciating his storyline in the same way I do stories in most video games: not valuing their actual depiction or execution but the conceptual underpinnings.

Have you seen a lot of TV westerns of the 50's? Sure some stand above the rest but it may as well be cartoons for middle aged men.

I haven’t seen it but I'll say I’m not surprised a DiCaprio performance would be described as “cartoonish”.

fangblackbone wrote:

Have you seen a lot of TV westerns of the 50's? Sure some stand above the rest but it may as well be cartoons for middle aged men.

I have, actually. And while you're absolutely right about the shows themselves, I would expect the actors to not be equally cartoonish off-set.

muraii wrote:

I haven’t seen it but I'll say I’m not surprised a DiCaprio performance would be described as “cartoonish”.

He does trend a bit that way in general, doesn't he?

I have, actually. And while you're absolutely right about the shows themselves, I would expect the actors to not be equally cartoonish off-set.

That is fair...

Watched Code 8 which is a x-men heist movie. The mutant registration act has passed and people with powers are being hunted by robots.

Ok this isn't really a x-men movie but boy did they want to make a x-men movie. I liked the movie but it wasn't very good. Green Arrow is in this and he only has one acting style. The acting all around is nothing to write home about. The story is interesting and touches on real world issues like being replaced by machines and being able to afford health care. The movie was pretty low budget but they did good with what they had.

Oh Han is in this but he isn't fast or furious. He is all about family though.

A remake of The Toxic Avenger is in the makes. I loved those stupid movies and the cartoon was cool and dumb also. Probably will be a big failure.

I saw Jojo Rabbit this morning as part of a showcase of Oscar Best Picture nominees. I should say up front that I went into it expecting to dislike it. The marketing for the film had leaned heavily on the idea of it as a kind of broad, wacky comedy about a boy and his silly imaginary friend who happened to be Adolf Hitler.

It looked like another step in the long defanging of Hitler and Nazism. An extended ironic riff that dares you to be the one who doesn't get it, like a feature length version of that awful Overlord meme. There's an argument to be made that making Nazis silly robs them of their allure and their power, like laughing at Pennywise the clown. But there's a danger there that in making Hitler and Nazism funny, you also make it safe and accessible. Jojo Rabbit looked like it was on the wrong side of that line.

And in its first scene, it certainly seems to, as ten-year-old Jojo and his imaginary friend Hitler hype themselves up for a Hitler Youth weekend camp where Jojo will become a man. It was exactly what I expected it to be.

But the second scene... The second scene might be the best, most subversive, most clever sequence I've seen all year. It's effectively a musical montage with a decidedly anachronistic song choice: "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles. As the song plays, Jojo runs through town heiling Hitler to everyone he passes, and grainy archival footage plays. It's exactly the kind of archival footage you'd expect to play under a Beatles song: cheering kids, screaming young women, crowds of young people chasing after cars in the throes of ecstatic fandom. But instead of chasing the Fab Four, the kids in this footage (which is real) are trying to get a moment with Hitler.

It's brilliant because by marrying an experience of celebrity that we all know well with one that film typically shies away from acknowledging even existed, the audience is almost unwittingly pulled into a better contextual understanding of Jojo and the world he lives in, one where Hitler is the biggest celebrity around and where every child has been fed the Nazi party line for years.

As the film rolls forward into a classic summer camp vibe with kids cheering for their chance to burn books, practice setting up ambushes, and throwing hands grenades; and collectively drawing a picture of a scaly-skinned Jew with horns, we're reminded that all of this is absurd and horrible but little of it is satire. When the Nazis begin to recruit preteens as combat soldiers and suicide bombers, we can understand how that actually happened.

Because Jojo Rabbit is in many ways about the corrosive effect of propaganda and how the credulous and incredulous navigate living in a world that is described in ways that are increasingly obviously false. And while the movie is funny at times, it's rarely silly and never safe.

In retrospect, I don't envy the team tasked with marketing this film. It defies easy categorization and deals with subject matter that can be explosively offensive if handled incorrectly. The direction they settled on was imperfect and did a disservice to the film, but I'm happy to say that it also doesn't feel like a very accurate one.

I'm glad I saw it, and I'm glad that it wasn't what I thought it would be.

Saw some interviews about it on last weekend's morning shows, with the director and ScarJo. Same director that did Thor Ragnorak, so I want to give it a chance.

But yeah, just from me trying to explain it to my wife while I was watching the TV and she was trying to feed the baby some breakfast, I couldn't even do that right without saying about 3 offensive things and so finally I gave up. It defies categorization.

Saw that during the broadcast. What a voice!

I saw Birds of Prey (and the fantabulous emancipation of one Harley Quinn) - it's a messy, raucous good time. It jumps all over timelimes and convolutes itself to the point of absurdity, but it looks terrific, it's got fun performances, a mad energy, and a good eye for solid, practical action.

Also, holy sh*t Parasite swept the Oscars! The Acadamy made a good choice y'all!

I saw Parasite last night with the family. It's a very good movie. I can't say I really loved it (it's one of those very clinical and symbolic movies where the characters are sort of representations of other things), but the cast are incredible. You definitely want to use the phrase mise en scene a lot describing it.

The Kim's daughter was definitely my favourite character, and the shot of her nonchalantly smoking on the spewing toilet might be my shot of the year.

I rented Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and watched it instead of the Oscars. It was (I assume) more entertaining than the ceremony, but not as good as The Great Escape. It's self-indulgent of Tarantino to deliberately remind me of better movies while I'm watching his movie. But then movies about making movies are by nature self-indulgent.

Alien Love Gardener wrote:

Also, holy sh*t Parasite swept the Oscars! The Acadamy made a good choice y'all!

I was shocked when I saw that. I'm not sure I've ever actually agreed with the Academy's pick for best picture.

I figured that Parasite winning Best International Film was the Academy's way of giving them a win while also robbing them of a win. But then the won the whole smash. I was pleasantly surprised.

I think a lot of people thought that. Good on them. It seems the enjoyment of that movie was incredibly widespread. I haven't seen it but I absolutely loved "Snowpiercer".

Jayhawker wrote:

I'd never heard of her before seeing The Outsider but I adore her Holly Gibney.

She's great in both Widows and Bad Times at the El Royale.