Dude Rates Movies

Ok this is a nice plot resolution. I succeeded in spending my life so far without having it spoiled, and I'm grateful for that. Still feels cheating that Harry doesn't (need to) die. Dumbledore should have thought twice before planning to get him killed when it was ultimately revealed not to be necessary. Not quite a good testament of the judgment of a so-called master wizard.

The deathly hallows animation was nice.

New plot technique: Dumbledore withholding information until it's convenient for narration that he tells the rest.

Snapes be like: "I'm the half-blood prince muahahah." Me: "So what you annotated a book."

I hope that when the movie was in theater and Dolores Umbridge gets taken by the centaurs everyone cheered and applauded, because I did in my living room.

I really liked the themes of propaganda, school control, etc.

Why didn't Voldemort make a Portkey out of some random thing right at the beginning of the movie to take Potter's blood without all the convoluted scheme of making him win the Triwizard Tournament?

The best cinematic episode of course, under the direction of maestro Alfonso Cuarón

I see they took the expression "out of a hat" literally.

I forgot how much the Harry Potter universe is rich. You are bombarded by so much stuff and magic and whatnot. The movie is quite enjoyable.

The editing was chaotic and it put me a bit off. Story is meh. Jodie Foster is good, of course.

This is a very interesting movie, carried by an excellent performance from Claes Bang.

Absolute bamboozle of an ending, which I smelled after the first 45 minutes. But it has the quality of having left me with a lot of questions and wonders about nuclear doctrines, strategies, and technicalities. I spent some time after watching the movie researching those subjects with great curiosity.

And I reached the conclusion that the general asking the president to retaliate without even having attributed the origin of the single-missile strike is an absolute madman.

Story gets bizarre at the end when they start the ad for the new Alpine. Good entertainment overall!

Who would you choose for a wife:

1. A woman you obviously don't love and you're willing to abandon on your wedding day because of new information.

2. A cheater.

3. A good friend who has secretely loved you for years.

The answer at the end will surprise you!

Other than that it's a pretty alright romantic comedy.

I didn't know that Bossy Brucy suffered from chronic depression. And that Born in the U.S.A. was an unexpected by-product of therapy-by-music.

This, unfortunately, follows the usual biopic formula, trading the usual addiction issues with depression.

Sidenote: This is making me afraid of The Social Reckoning, because Jeremy Strong, no matter his disguise, clearly cannot act any other character than Jeremy Strong acting like Jeremy Strong.

The plot is going around in circles, and relies very much on the chit chat between the characters. And in spite of the actors all being very good, this was not good enough to sustain my full attention.

Very refreshing to see something that authentic and raw. In comparison, the modern "formula" of horror movies feels too esthetic, and keeps you at distance with the action and characters.

As amusing and fun as I remembered it. Really cool flick!

The M stands for MoMA.

I mean anyone who buys this doll in a first place definitely has mental problems.

Paul Thomas Anderson has one peculiar cinematic mind.

A Sorkinist exposition of a resistance group, a GTA-like chase in the streets of Sacramento, Coenesque meetups of a white supremacists fraternity, Leonardo Lebowski tripping around in his robe, a Tarantino-pop playlist of old tunes to introduce characters and time gaps, 30 minutes of the same few piano notes to keep us in suspense of a long evasion, skateboarders parkouring on rooftops over a backdrop of civil insurrection, an Hitchcockian high-speed chase in the desert.

What the fuck did I just watch.

If I was serious and close-minded, I would say that Paul Thomas Anderson should hand over the writing to a professional screenwriter in order to give a more solid skeleton to this pile of cinematic raw power. To give a punch to the humorous dialogues which didn't quite hit my theater with waves of laughter, to trade the romanticization of domestic terrorism as a play against fascist America for a more mature analysis of the situation, and to deepen the character development of those few funky characters I know barely anything about.

But who am I to stop what appears to be the work of an undeniably passionate mind who has an unbounded motivation to fire up in all directions. This was sufficiently entertaining for it to be good, and definitely peculiar enough for it to be an object of curiosity.

The only good things are the Italian cities. Otherwise it's a really poor-made movie. At several times I was under the impression of watching a cheap French TV production.

The crushing of the balls really is in sync with the transition from raw thriller to telenovela.

Cute movie.

Still rather enjoyable but there is a drop in quality in comparison to 1 and 2, mostly due to the fact that scenes are shorter and more frenetically edited together (contrarily to the previous installments which properly took their time) and also the bizarre blending of the supernatural with the human with the occultist witch.

More of the same. I like it.

Very nice horror movie. Lots of chilling and suspenseful scenes.

A nice movie, but all of it is just really childish, which is not my cup of tea.

All space scenes are fantastic, in particular the docking scene.

It gets more "meh" whenever the plot thickens.

No matter how inhospitable Earth become, migrating the species to another fucking galaxy is clearly bound to be order of magnitude more complicated than making whatever necessary adaptations on Earth. "Oh no there are sandstorms let's go to another planet instead"

There must be second-order effects of mastering gravity that makes all existing assumptions shaky. You can't just throw it in there like that.

My man understanding what in the hell is happening in this black hole and the rules of the games in 5 minutes straight, like he trained for black hole diving all his life. All the plot resolving in those 5 minutes and we being the spectators of this non-sense just expected to admit it.

Did he just flip a screen to reveal a mini whiteboard on which he diagrams how he's gonna parallel park to a back hole?

Re-watching an A+ is a bit of a stressful experience: What if it's not up to the experience I remember?

I am relieved.

John Wish on vacay.

An overwhelming flow of jokes coming to you for the whole duration of the movie. In my humble opinion, only some of them actually funny. What I find interesting, is that they hired Lorne Balfe for the music, who is the actual composer of the last installments of the Mission Impossible franchise. He just needed to compose his usual action music style for the music to be a parody of itself!

All great things: Directing is pretty neat (this on-board camera during the police chase had me thinking that this was curiously very good). The plot with the multiple narration lines is pretty neat too. Some scary moments, and an actual story behind those. And some fun comic reliefs. I had a very good time!

It was a pleasure rediscovering this classic at the theater. The sets are wonderful, the mise-en-scène masterful, and it's really gripping from beginning to end.

A nice movie and an excellent duo of Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant. Simon Helberg also is pretty fun as a side character.

I remember seeing this movie at a younger age, and already liking it. Seeing it with a more adult perspective makes it even more interesting! A true classic of cinema.

Fun little movie, with a brilliant cast.

This has been quite some time I have abandoned the superhero productions, no matter whether they come from Marvel or DC. To me, they had long forgo the touch of a Sam Raimi's Spiderman or a Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, trading the classical, real-world-compatible depiction of a strong character for a fantasy-land full of ugly CGIs, dark worlds with magic stuff, and cheap gags.

Three years ago I tried my time with The Batman, which was a very good surprise. And this year this Superman appears again as another good one.

First of all, Clark Kent / Superman is simply super likable. He's emotionally vulnerable, doesn't take himself too seriously, and has strong ethics. He even has a dog, which he cares about! Props to David Corenswet for carrying such a nice role.

Second, the movie does a wonderful job at finding the proper opponents to his mighty powers. The true fight between him and Lex Luthor is one of reputation to the world, which does not get resolved by sheer force. And even when it comes to sheer force, the fight scene are well through out, and, of course, spectacular.

Then there is the reverence to the original Superman from Richard Donner: the text effects on the credits and the reprise of the famous John Williams theme. Good stuff!

And finally, the special effects are so good. Top notch photo-realistic CGIs, crazy powerful momentum effects in the fight and flying scenes. What a spectacle!

Of course, there are still some imagery that is not to my taste. All this weird and dark stuff happening in the pocket universe, this woman with her weird nano-particle stuff. Here you still feel the new-era fantasy stuff creeping in. But I can manage.

James Gunn is simply doing too many right things with this super-movie to pass on giving an A rating. 🦸

I thought this was interesting until the intrigue hands over to self-pity, where it becomes a bit dull. Great facial acting from Audrey Hepburn at the end; very poignant.

We are far from the elegance of the Spielberg's Jurassic movies: un-charismatic characters with random backstories, CGI sets and ugly orange sunsets, predictable and easy plot lines, lack of absolute gut-wrenching suspenseful scenes.

BUT, this was actually a pretty decent action flick overall. There is not an over-use of useless verbiage. The plot goes on very well, and we have some nice dino action. I had much fun watching this!

I thought it was particularly well written, although the stalking bit is certainly a big creepy. Nice Sunday flick.

I don't know what type of low-key acting is Dakota Johnson trying to pull, but she just looks like she's not even trying to act at all.

On the story side, the big problem is that the personality and alchemy with Pedro Pascal is not explored at all, and all we get is "sorry we're not compatible", without understanding why. The why provided by the movie is that matchmaking shouldn't be superficially based on metrics and facts, but on a deeper meaning of connection, which the movie completely fails to explore.

I certainly don't understand the ending as well.

This is a "what if such type of character ended up in such type of environment" kind of movie, with gags and whatnot and some little plot, just like Sister Act. And just like Sister Act... not my cup of tea.

Well, this is certainly packed in F1 racing scenes. No false advertisement on that front. I almost felt there was too much of it, even though they were all very spectacular.

I liked how the story plays the Brad Pitt card of an arrogant old-bloke persona. I also liked the level of technical details, from the cars to the driving to the teams' intrigues. I'm not knowledgeable enough to be sure it's accurate, but it felt they made an effort to be so.

This is not a revolutionary action movie, but overall I had a good time watching the flick unfolds, with great racings scenes, catchy electronic music from Mr. Zimmer, a regular joke here and there, and Brad Pitt swanning around.

Pixar's trajectory is the perfection of their visuals hand in hand with the dullification of their stories. They have become an animation factory with a terrific 3D engine.

This one isn't even that bad. I just can't say I will remember it next week...

It got me hooked and I completely lost track of time. By the moment the final scene introduced the transition for the next installment, I was ready for one more hour but got surprised by the end credits instead.

The main problem for me is the resolution of the main plot, where Ralph Fiennes be like "So you've got cancer. I've got an available slot for assisted suicide just right after. Do you want me to schedule it?" which I find completely ridiculous. They could literally have brought way better closure with a few minutes of additional, well-used runtime.

Anyway I didn't know going into this that there were sequel(s) scheduled, so I found it weird that there were seriously world-building the different sub-types of zombies, but now I know.

The editing and music are ADHD-powered as usual for Danny Boyle. Can be repulsive but I can enjoy.

I had a good time.

A true classic. Excellent!

In the space scene at the beginning, they straight out abandoned doing live action and went full 3D movie.

The actress playing Lilo is really good for the role.

Stitch is cute.

Overall I had a good time watching the movie.

I found it surprisingly profound and moving. The middle chapter with the dance scene is really really good. Tom Hiddleston looks like such a nice guy.

I don't know if it's "objectively" worst than the previous movies for some reason or if I'm starting to get bored, but I found it rather dull.

Pretty good entertainment overall. The submarine scene in particular is brilliant.

Cool concept and clever story. Good flick.

I think it becomes interesting once conflict arises in the love story (which takes too much time in the first arc, without much plot), yet this conflict feels a bit forced.

I very much enjoyed the LA vibe and the fanciful, fantasy moments of musical numbers (especially the "dreamed" ending).

Overall a good movie, with some weaknesses.

I'm not even sure I watched the same version than the first time, because I didn't remember this ending. Maybe it was from another timeline...

Feels like a Netflix movie. Nothing really makes sense in the plot. But it's watchable.

As much a movie about blues as it is an horror movie. I actually found the format (1h30 of business plot following by 1h of horror) quite original. I enjoyed the soundtrack, and had a pretty good time watching the movie.

Such a delightful and sweet movie.

I very much enjoyed the musical numbers, in particular Do-Re-Mi which I'm still listening to days after, and which stays in my head, brightening my days and nights.

I liked how the story honors the power of music, first to reconnect a father with his children, then to literally fight Nazism, and at all times, for celebrating love.

The tension in the final act was keeping me on the edge my seat, and the final rendition of Edelweiss, in its context, brought a tear to my eye.

The gorgeous cinematography subliming the Austrian sets further helps the quality of the movie.

I'm not always a fan of old classics, but this one is a really good one.

Solid Disney. The mountain battle scene remains a really great cinematic moment. Epic!

It certainly got me hooked, but I lost track of the plot near the end; people are talking too fast and not letting me think.

That version of asperger hits hard on the life expectancy.

Did not resonate with me.

Most of it is based on the entertainment of seeing Whoopi Goldberg react to the living conditions inside of a convent, which I found very predictable and not really funny.

I preferred the musical arc, which kept a vital minimum of my attention alive throughout the movie.

This was my favorite movie when I was a kid. Decided it was absolute crap when I re-watched it being a young adult. Now landing somewhere in the middle. It is a nice movie, with expectations properly calibrated.

Of course it's marketed as the new movie from the director of Parasite, but this is way closer to the more cartoonish side of the director's filmography (Snowpiercer, The Host) than to its serious social drama side (Mother, Parasite).

I like the serious side better...

You can really feel that this is an adapted screenplay. It flies over too rapidly over what I imagine is deeply explained in the book. I felt mostly disconnected from the characters, and had some plot elements I simply did not understand (Why does Mickey 18 have a different personality? If personality changes between re-prints, does it mean Nasha just accepts having a "different" boyfriend everytime? This looks significant.).

The worst aspect of the movie is the over-the-top acting from Mark Ruffalo as a whimsical sci-fi version of Donald Trump. He tries too hard.

I still spent a reasonably enjoyable moment, disconnecting my brain and letting the story unfolds.

Rather interesting to see the career of Bob Dylan, which I wasn't knowledgeable about. But it really lacks intensity. The whole movie is like the mono-expression face of Timothée Chalamet: a rather sluggish thing that you watch amusingly advance on its plain way.

I would say there is about 1 hour too much in this movie. The POV concept is interesting, the subject matter deserves our attention, the cinematography is impressive, but the movie is so slooooowwwww.

It takes its time to take off to an interesting plot. Once it flies, however, Colman Domingo will make you cry. Stellar acting performance.

The engrossing opening sequence announces an epic about immigration to the USA post-WWII, and then we get... a story (non particularly epic) about immigration to the USA post-WWII. It is rather interesting (and quite well photographed), but it is desperately in need of moments to give more consistence to such a big shell.

Yet, in spite of the runtime, I never got bored. That's pretty good already.

This movie takes the time to tell its story very carefully and properly. It hooked me from beginning to end, slowly burning through its outstanding cinematography and Ralph Fiennes' very strong presence.

It raises the usual (but always interesting) questions about faith, in a way that is still very interesting to follow for a non-believer.

It is a good demonstration of the power of restraint. When the end goal of the story is so straightforward, the slightest twist is an interesting plot point. When the diction of characters is so serene, the mere raising of one's voice is an event. When the visuals revolve around men being sequestered inside a conclave, a specific framing or contrast is a painting.

The music sounded a bit too dramatic in my opinion, but it was close enough to being a good companion to the image that it's not really an issue.

Good movie!

Still making a 2025 audience laugh 73 years later. That's sustainable cinema!

On the edge of my seat from the beginning to the end. This is really good stuff.

I really enjoyed the urgency of the movie, the attention to details of how TV worked back in the day, and the ethical (and practical) questions raised by broadcasting events on live TV.

It was also impressive to see how talented TV directors, journalists, hosts, actually are. Only matched by the talent of this very movie's crew. 👏

It seems that this movie stayed under the radar, but it shouldn't have!

I thought it was very well written, and somehow deeper than I expected. Overall I felt it was kind of a poetic movie.

I would say that's a strong debut in directing for Eisenberg. The slow zoom into himself during his monologue at the restaurant might be a bit too pretentious (Oscars didn't take the bait), even though the restraint and solemnity of the camp scene definitely shows he knows what he's doing.

Kieran Culkin is excellent.

Very nice tension and suspense, up to some questionable resolution in my opinion. I still pretty much liked the movie.

The cinematography is saturated as fuck, although I get it's intentional.

Blah blah blah blah blah... oscar-performance BLAH BLAH... blah blah blah blah...

Felt it was filmed theater, and was not quite captivated by the plot...

Looks like a very good episode of Black Mirror.

Even though the AI plot is mainly a scenaristic backdrop for what really is a suspense-thriller flick, it has nothing to shy about in comparison to more intellectual science-fiction stories. In the contrary, I thought it was raising exactly the good questions, and brilliantly calculating many clever implications. I especially liked turning the "evil AI" trope on its head. This trope exists because humans project themselves into the robots, as the movie shows.

Had a good time!

I fell asleep before the big final action scene, only waking up transiently from time to time. Each time I opened my eyes it felt like a déjà vu experience where I just had traveled 5 minutes back in time to when I first woke up. It felt like an infinite loop I couldn't get out of. Terrible experience.

Not a great homage to the singer unless you meant to convey that she was making the audience fall asleep. 😴

"Men will motion capture a monkey instead of going to therapy"

A very good surprise!

The monkey thing works oddly well.

I didn't know that Robbie Williams had had such a difficult life, and this adds a lot of depth to his songs. The fact that he's involved in the movie is also a great testament to his character, as this is one hard look in the mirror.

The musical bits are excellent, in particular Rock DJ 🕺

It's really slow... but I can recognize some poetry I guess.

Love interest: "but you are young and never traveled"

Guy: travels and ages a bit

Love interest: "fair enough"

I mean you can't blame the consistency.

Third watch is a charm.

The ending makes so much sense, as this definitely feels like a feverish dream/nightmare

The Devil Wears Wish. Painting edition.

I felt disconnected from the movie for some reason. I found the ballroom dance scene particularly beautiful though.

Not my cup of tea overall.

No much original ideas in there (a regular drama), but great execution.

It felt like that kind of slow burning movie where you need to be fully focused and invested on each detail of the scenes to be satisfied, but I failed at the task (notably because I nodded off at times), and found the whole endeavor a bit too long.

What I can say for sure, is that the cinematography in this is STUNNING.

I liked the beginning with the setup of the character played by Sandra Bullock, and the end with the hacking scenes. But the middle, which is very cat-and-mouse thriller, is not my thing. I was a bit bored.

The computer scenes were actually not that bad, and I was surprised by how advanced Internet was back in 1995. Not much less than what we're using it for today (chat, food delivery, online booking, etc), just with vintage cosmetics. The thematic of all our lives being online is still as relevant, and things have only got worse since 30 years ago (!!)

It feels like a significant movie in the context of the history of Internet.

No comment

Is this the Wolf of Wall Street of women? A critique of an appalling business and culture, but told with inevitable glamorization, since viewers, as independent-minded as they want to be, cannot escape the matrix of their societal education.

After the unbearable book, I hoped the movie would bring me a more easily understandable story. Not quite. Wikipedia article it will be then.

I guess Christmas TV movies are like Christmas ugly sweaters: a tradition of ugliness to share in excellent company.

Shows how complex an art making a movie is, and how the "anyone with a smartphone can film a movie now" mantra is off the mark.

A very rich movie, with some acceptable weaknesses.

Richness:

• The directing is full of wonderful ideas and interesting camera-work.
• A nice zest of fantasy such as the Cure clip or the beating chewing-gum
• Cinematography, music, sets, which are all excellent craft.
• The story which actually got me hooked.

Weakness:

• Exarchopoulos does not resemble her younger counterpart.
• Concerting the crime plot, the asymmetry between the very detailed first part, and the rushed (basically 1 montage) second part.
• The ending: the overruled foreshadowing of the opening scene would surely have been a superior ending than the actual wishy-washy ending. Him not using violence because he promised to her means he doesn't deeply understand the reasons for non-violence; her not doing anything with her life means she never actually recovered from her teenage trauma (which took off her the desire to have a project). It's a pretty sad ending, which is pretty unacknowledged by the movie.

I still think it's a pretty remarkable movie.

Looks like a goofy stupid movie, but multiple elements (the good cinematography, the music from John Williams, the thoughtful plot between pigeon lady and kid) show how much "goofy stupid" from 1992 does not play in the same league than "goofy stupid" from 2024.

Sounds like I'm getting old...

TL;DR: Italy is homophobic, and has reached the point where they have comedies about it, just like France and their xenophobic's ones.

So apparently you can foster fascination for utter inanity and incompetence if you have enough money to hold a billboard in Hollywood for a few years, and surf on the viral nature of social media.

No comment

Someone wrote a movie instead of a Medium blog post about theology.

Hugh Grant is excellent in this, though!

I had seen this when I was a little boy (!!), because my big bro and sis liked it. I now realize that:

1. I didn't understand what it was about at all
2. My big bro and sis were showing me things not appropriate for my age.
3. It's a pretty good musical!

I have reservations about Baz Luhrmann absolutely frenetic editing (what the hell), but I guess you need to embrace the style.

Gladiator worked because of the charisma of the lead character, because of emblematic visuals, and because of a strong character arc.

Here we have a lead character who looks like my old boss on some steroids, visuals consisting of a crappy CGI rhinoceros, and a plot focusing on politics.

The movie opens on a perfectly bland shot of a hand holding grains of wheat, to demonstrate its inability to create something as good as the emblematic hand of Russel Crowe fondling with a field of wheat; it ends with literally the music from the first opus, to demonstrate its inability to create something new at all. A perfect encapsulation of mediocrity.

The critic monologue/review is very well-written and had me a bit emotional.

As always when revisiting old Pixar movies, it's interesting seeing the evolution of the richness of their 3D models.

I spent the first half of the movie wondering what the hell I was supposed to hold onto in this collection of vignettes of generational American profiles. The second half has some drama which got me a bit more involved, but even that was rather weak. In the end, I found it to be quite uncompelling. Good idea, moderately bad execution.