Movie Thread

Saw Mary Queen of Scots last weekend. Multi-layered and well-acted. Great leads in Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie, with Guy Pearce and Jack Lowden doing extremely well in supporting roles. I know quite a bit of English history and Lord knows we've seen enough of it with The Tudors, The White Queen, Wolf Hall, and other offerings, but I'll admit I can't drill down to the subterranean level so it's difficult to tell if the tale of the dueling queens rolled out quite this way. It's slow, but moving and thought-provoking.
 
50PoundHead said:
No one seeing any movies?

Saw The Favourite last weekend. Dark, dark humor with splendid performances from Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone. If Colman isn't nominated in one of the best acting categories, the awards system should just be junked. She's been a solid supporting player in both movies and a lot of British television and she is phenomenal as Queen Anne. Stone and Weisz are excellent, but Colman is a cut above.

I watched First Reformed on Amazon Prime the other day and while it is difficult to say it was an enjoyable experience, it's a very heady meditation on a lot of issues and Ethan Hawke does very well in the main role. Paul Schrader can create these tortured characters that are painful to watch (see Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver as an example) and it's probably a challenge for an actor to portray that complexity without becoming tirelessly maudlin.
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I’ve been catching up a bit with semester projects and student grading over. Saw The Favourite and loved it—though I’m a Lanthimos partisan to begin with.

Saw both Ralph Breaks the Internet and Holmes & Watson on Chrimbus for a John C Reilly mini-marathon. The former was a decent sequel, but still lacked the buoyancy and energy of its antecedent; the latter was not as bad as the deluge of abysmal reviews suggest, but still felt lazy and farted-out. Upshot of the latter is it did convince me to rewatch Step Brothers to get a good Ferrell/Reilly taste back in my movie-mouth.

Not sure what else to screen before my break if over in two weeks. Have a decent blu-ray backlog, though, and nothing jumps at me from the proper cinema except Vice, which I’ll make a point to catch.
 
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Christian Bale really totally becomes Dick Cheney in Vice. Storytelling is similar to what McKay used in The Big Short. It's obviously biased, but it's a great refresher on what a pair of d*ckheads David Addington and "Scooter"Libby are. Not enough of John Yoo to make it a trifecta.
 
Agree with you on Holmes and Watson. Doesn't reach the comic heights of Step Brothers, but it's in the same strata as Talladega Nights. Reviewers must have been expecting something more Shakespearean. The romantic subplot was a bit wasted, but I could watch Rebecca Hall all day long.
 
The trailer for Dark Phoenix did nothing to assuage my concerns for the film. Simon Kinberg is a first time director, looking at his list of writing credits, the best things her wrote were some episodes of Star Wars Rebels and Days of Future Past. Other lowlights include, X-Men the Last Stand, 2015's Fantasic Four, XXX: State of the Union. Guy writes bad action films almost exclusively. Maybe I'm wrong, but the film seems disjointed and bad and that's just from the trailer. Some scenes seem almost re-shot from X3.
 
zitothebrave said:
The trailer for Dark Phoenix did nothing to assuage my concerns for the film. Simon Kinberg is a first time director, looking at his list of writing credits, the best things her wrote were some episodes of Star Wars Rebels and Days of Future Past. Other lowlights include, X-Men the Last Stand, 2015's Fantasic Four, XXX: State of the Union. Guy writes bad action films almost exclusively. Maybe I'm wrong, but the film seems disjointed and bad and that's just from the trailer. Some scenes seem almost re-shot from X3.
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Marvel cant get their hands back on this quick enough
 
Captain Marvel is real fun. It isn't perfect but it's a really good film. I think not knowing anything about Marvel makes things more interesting as I'm sure my girlfriend and her father were more entertained by the way the movie twisted and turned.
 
I agree zeets. Fun movie. I only have an arms-length understanding of the Marvel canon, but Mrs. 50# and I (although likely being the oldest people in the theater) thoroughly enjoyed Captain Marvel. I was skeptical that Brie Larson could pull off an action-hero role, but she did so with flying colors.
 
50PoundHead said:
I agree zeets. Fun movie. I only have an arms-length understanding of the Marvel canon, but Mrs. 50# and I (although likely being the oldest people in the theater) thoroughly enjoyed Captain Marvel. I was skeptical that Brie Larson could pull off an action-hero role, but she did so with flying colors.
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Brie Larson has incredible range. She may be one of the more underrated actresses around right now. Sounds silly calling someone with an Oscar underrated but there's not a ton of people who can shine in drama, comedy, and blockbuster films. THis wasn't her first foray into this, she was quite good in Kong: Skull Island despite the silly material she was working with.
 
Cold War was great. Still need to see Roma (though I just watched the unrelated Fellini film of the same name the other night).
 
Us is really good. Peele is great about jam packing themes and references into a film. I mean **** the amount of stuff they crammed into the film made you forget things they touched on earlier and referenced later.
 
zitothebrave said:
Us is really good. Peele is great about jam packing themes and references into a film. I mean **** the amount of stuff they crammed into the film made you forget things they touched on earlier and referenced later.
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Great movie. I just love that he sprinkles levity here and there in his films to keep things from becoming too dark. Like you, I love the way he ties everything together. One has to really pay attention throughout the entire film.
 
Bj1133 said:
Thanks to the AMC app crash I won’t be seeing the movie until Sunday now instead of tonight. Only 3 days wait but still, it’s gonna seem like forever.
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yeah I'm at a midnight showing tonight that had like 2 seats left. I somehow have to not spoil it for the next 13 hours
 
Saw Phantom Thread last night. What a DDL film it was. Very much driven by him. PTA took a back seat but still told the tale he wanted to. Interesting film WIll be sad if it is DDL's last film as it's the twilight of arguably the best actor of all time.
 
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