Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 96

Cool, thanks for the suggestion! A 200 minute martial arts film is quite a commitment haha. Maybe on a rainy sunday...

 

Darkest Hour was really bad. It is bad enough how people pretend Winston Churchill was anything more than a racist monster who "saved" Britain thanks to Hitler's incompetence, but the time-honored tradition of wild overacting and hamming it up to win an Academy Award is alive and well in the main character.

 

Watched the new Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie. Could’ve been 40 minutes shorter. It was not memorable.

 

Starting February as I ended January, I watched Sammo Hung's Eastern Condors from 1987. Shite.

A lot of the Hong Kong action stuff I love is because it's basically Buster Keaton films with Kung-Fu. Let's drop Jackie Chan off a 70 foot building for laughs, then let's do it again etc. This is, let's do Rambo 2 with Kung-Fu, which is quite a downgrade.

It also deeply suffers because it's shot and edited like an American film. Most of Hung's stuff, he'll use a lot of long-takes during the combat scenes, so we'll have a minute or two shot, with no cuts and a beautifully choreographed scene. In this we have; kick-CUT-guy falling backwards. It's the sort of thing you only miss when it's gone, there's no rhythm and it's a complete waste of the talents of the performers. Waste of time.

In full fairness to this film, I couldn't find a HQ version in Cantonese, so I watched an American dub, where all the voice actors sounded like Tommy Wiseau. Not ideal.

 

If you like it, Come Drink with Me is a good companion piece.

 

I am showing Saving Private Ryan to my students today. It is pointless to revisit critiques of the film; what I find interesting as the film gets older is how the cameos lose their power. No one in the class is familiar with Ted Danson or Paul Giamatti; a handful recognize Bryan Cranston as "the guy from Breaking Bad", while Vin Diesel is the one they all recognize, even if they don't believe it at first. I showed Marie Antoinette earlier in the year, and no one but me thought it was funny that Rip Torn was walking around as Louis XV.

 

My kids would not even recognize Cranston

 

It is only a few. They all know Hanks "the Forrest Gump guy" and they recognize Vin Diesel when I point them out, but that is it.

 

I'm impressed by the knowledge/interested a few of my students have in film/music, but I have yet to meet anyone anywhere near as interested in film as a lot of my friends were in high school. The kids in film club talk through most of the movies and only show up because they like the teacher that hosts it.

 

They are completely silent and pay attention during the war scenes, but when the actual dialogue/plot takes place they talk over it. It is very frustrating.

High school was when I really started getting into film. I wasn't watch foreign films or anything too abstract, but I saw The Royal Tenenbaums, Lost in Translation, Punch-Drunk Love, and a few others my first two years of high school. My students mostly only care about memes or PUBG.

 

It's Fortnite now dork!

 

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral - 7/10
In Syria - 8/10
Colossal - 7.5/10
The Pelican Brief - 6/10
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales - 3.5/10
Breakdown* - 8.5/10

* = Rewatch

Overall a solid week and got started on films I own which I have yet to review on Letterboxd with the superb Breakdown though In Syria is film of the week in terms of first time viewing.

 

Beautiful Creatures (2013).

It was was on Netflix and me and the wife needed something to watch. Romantic gothic fantasy about two high school aged kids that fall in love, get told not to, but they do it anyway. He's normal and quirky, shes quit and reserved and a witch. Like a cross between The Notebook and Twilight or something. Too bad it didn't fare well at the US box office. I would like to see a sequel, but I don't want to put in the effort of reading the books.

I enjoyed watching it and had fun with it. Brought back some old, whimsical, young love nostalgic I guess. Glad I watched it. 7(8?)/10. Not a critical rating. Just my enjoyment factor.

 

This looks so much more interesting than the actual film. I want to see this lol

 

This is crazy to me. These are high school kids, right?

 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I work with some college aged kids and they don't know who The Beatles are... so fuck me.

 

I'm turning 27 and I didn't know who The Beatles were until I was dragged to go see Across the Universe. My parents were refugees who came to America as adults with one hell of a language barrier. I learned how to play guitar by looking up tabs for Sugarcult and Jimmy Eat World, so when people came up to me and requested something like Stairway to Heaven, I was like "huh?"

 

I saw Graves of the Fireflies last night, which was completely beautiful and completely heartbreaking. Setsuko's death was clearly coming from the very beginning, but the impact was still crushing. The voice actress for her was so well suited to the role, and really helped endear you to the character. What I loved about it specifically was that unlike other war films, these children aren't outrageoulsy heroic - they're just children making bad decisions and having fun running about at the beach. The film captures the horror and the mundanity of war as a civilian wonderfully. Animation was beautiful too.

I also saw Six Shooter, a Martin McDonagh (who I'm still a big fan of) short film. It touches upon a lot of the stuff that he would expand upon in future films, and it's clearly a bit rough around the edges as his first film. Enjoyable as a 20 minute easy watch, Rúaidhrí Conroy is great as a massive Gobshite, and Gleeson is always good value. Feels a lot more like a filmed play, than an actual film, which is understandable considering McDonagh's background.

I watched the short animation, World of Tomorrow recently. It's an interesting concept about time travel and self-identity, cloning etc. Packs a lot of ideas in it's short run. Not superb, but for quite a lofty and ambitious concept, it does quite well.

Struggle for Life / La Loi de la jungle was a fun enough French film I saw the on Tuesday. Basically a "Carry On" film set in Guyana. Two interns find themselves in Guyana, trying to set up an outdoor ski-rink on behalf of the French government. Hijinks and slapstick ensue. Wears out it's welcome a bit towards the end, but the larger-than-life characters and silly set pieces keep it entertaining. Bonus points for a scene where they scalp an auditor, eat his brains and then replace it with cream. Not going to be one for a re-watch, but a fun time.

Finally, I've seen the two Drunken Master Jackie Chan films, one from 1978 and one from 1994. Not a hell of a lot to say about them, they're basically vehicles for showing how impressive Jackie Chan is / was. First one is a bit scrappier with a lot of charm, second one is higher budget, with lots of impressive set pieces and big budget fight sequences. Both worth watching, but not as good as peak Jackie cinema.

That's my February so far.

 

Saw a pre-screening of Game Night last night. Did not enjoy it. Laughed maybe once.

 

I tried to watch Good Time this weekend

I had to stop watching when the protagonist came on to a 16 yo

ughh

 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

I will never look at the kid from Dunkirk the same way again

 

How is it framed? As acceptable behavior?

I haven’t seen it, but from everything I’ve gathered by seeing trailers/interviews, isn’t it sort of the point that he’s a trashy and morally questionable person? The protagonist just drives the story, not necessarily a good example or stand up person.

 

Yeah I mean hes a piece of shit of character and its not like its glorified or anything even if I feel its not done with any sort of tact

I just found it really gross personally and wanted to turn it off

 

I had a Zhang Yimou double bill and watched the absolutely sublime Not One Less and the pretty good The Road Home, both from 1999.

Not One Less, is practically a neo-realist film, filmed on location with a cast of non professional actors, all performing under their real names. A 13 year old girl is the substitute teacher for a class of 28 pupils in an isolated rural area somewhere in the countyside. If she does the job for a month and doesn't lose a single student, she'll make a whopping 50 Yuan. One of her student's disappears and she has to go look for him.

The scenery and cinematography in the mountains are sublime, and the performances of the children in the film are wonderful, particularly the determined yet naive Wei, and the playful, pain in the arse Zhang. There's a real lack of self-consciousness and honest feel you get with non-professional actors, there's no chance of overacting.

There's a lot of opinion about whether the film is essentially a propaganda film, with a very surface level reading of it appearing clearly pro-bureaucracy, displaying the "generosity" of the city dwellers. You can scratch beneath the surface of that pretty easily and see the subversiveness of these scenes quite easily though. I prefer to think of it as a human story, about a stubborn, willful girl determined to find her pupil.

As well as the Italian neo-realist films, it reminded me a lot of the Kiarostami film Where is the Friend's Home, which is an absolute winner of a film. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and would give it my full recommendations.

The Road Home is definitely less interesting in comparison. A lovely little love story, told mostly in a flashback to 50s China. Like Not One Less, also takes place in the rural mountains, involving a teacher.
It plays out in a fairly formulaic way, though it's tender and heartwarming enough.

The shots are beautiful in the mountainside, the film is itself a love letter to rural China (and the food). There's nothing grandiose or "epic" about this, just a simple tale done well. Worth a watch, but nowhere near as interesting as Not One Less.

 

I went through a lot of Zhang Yimou's work a couple years ago. His stuff from when he began in the late 80s through the 90s is incredible. The two you watched are admittedly two of my lesser favorites, but I think he is generally an overlooked director in the West, maybe because the direction he has taken with his later works.