Dude Rates Movies
Beware, this joins the ranks of War of the Worlds in having a misleading marketing campaign about war when it's actually a more intimate and artsy movie — in this case a road movie. I re-calibrated my expectations quickly enough to enjoy it as what it is, which happens to be pretty good.
We get to see a roadshow of scenes ranging from somewhat mundane to highly stressful, but constantly accompanied by a backdrop of war. Those who expect an action movie will need to wait for all this US-under-war imagery to pass by to enjoy the finale — a very well-crafted depiction of urban warfare.
The story and character development is certainly not revolutionary, but just solid enough to hold this thing together.
Special props to the cinematography (quite beautiful, on point for the subject matter) and the incredible sound design.
It's okay entertainment but I didn't like the homage to Titanic when they decided to drag the movie by going to save people underwater. Also you're in desperate need of a globe if you think Hawaii is on the way of a flight from Vegas to China.
I thoroughly enjoyed Pride & Prejudice (book and Wright's movie), but following another Jane Austen story just feels like you could produce an infinite amount of such stories by just randomly reconfiguring the gentry social graph and add some random twists and turns here and there. I guess in the gossip-centered world of unoccupied XIXth century women, every such combination is a story worth telling.
Dunno why I rated it C first time. Holds solid even on a second viewing.
Unless you consider Adam Driver's constant long face "character development", or watching sociopaths torture prisoners "entertainment", there is no value in this movie beyond being a filmed Wikipedia article that has traded depth for bad taste.
I remember watching this as a teenager on the cathodic TV upstairs and being captivated by it. It was a time I had taken a pause on my teen-targeted blockbusters diet to dig a bit into "gems" from well-known directors, and this one certainly occupies a special place in my movie education.
Watching it again reveals to be dragging at times because much of the tension is especially relevant for a first viewing, but it's still a very solid flick.
I remember being underwhelmed when seeing it in the theater, but when you expect nothing more than fun and a good story, it's actually real good.
The raid scene is rad as hell. Overall very solid espionage movie.
My mind was kind of lost in this festival of utterly ugly green screens and CGI, rendering more a dream-like world than anything tangible I could hold onto. It doesn't matter how great the actors are when they just deliver their phony lines in their phony world for their phony stakes. I guess it's possible to connect with this kind of narrative style, but I can't.
I guess there is a metaphor in there about the powerful vs the people or whatever. But my rule is that you first need to have a compelling surface-level story if you want me to go deeper, and all I saw was teachers' drama at the school next door.
Somewhere there is a kid whose favorite movie is this one. Maybe the next S.J. Clarkson!
I wonder whether Anthony Hopkins is playing rather passively or actively. Maybe this wise old man demeanor is just the way he's and he's naturally fit for the role, or maybe he's actually acting mindfully, in which case it's yet another display of his sheer talent.
Anyway don't forget your tissues, because this hits right in the feels. Beautiful story.
I don't really know why focusing on this specific segment of Ferrari's life and work. Seem pretty forgettable to me. As usual, rather weird seeing actors imitating an accent to compensate for the fact that they're non-native (this is more of a casting problem rather than an actor's problem, Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz are pretty fine anyway).
First time I see Jeffrey Wright playing what seems to be a legitimate character and not a walking stereotype of a character as in Westworld or The Batman. Very refreshing! The story sometimes appear a bit disjointed with its different subjects (family drama, professional drama, love drama, etc), but it still lands on its two feet, with a clever take on its main storyline, and a few good laughs in there.
Two things that really bothered me were:
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Everything is rushed. The rythm of the narrative arc is not consistent with lil' Timothée growing from desert stranger to <spoiler>master of the Universe</spoiler>. The rushing is made pretty obvious by the number of little things that left unexplained (the spy who gets carbonized), that surely are well developed in the novel, but that the screen-writers decided to just have 20 seconds of. This should have been a mini-series.
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The power dynamics and war strategies are either inconsistent or not well-explained enough for me to understand. The Fremen are very well-armed and technologically advanced; this is not asymmetric warfare. They can even pretty much destroy everything by riding giant worms. Why are they acting as weak undercover resistant? Then suddenly a change in Harkonnen leadership makes the Harkonnen know where the Fremen are and bomb them? (The previous leader already wanted to go full genocide.) In retrospection, it makes me wonder why the Atreides could be defeated in one night if even the Fremen are that good. Or, for that matter, why battle on air, water, or desert, is relevant at all, since all those guys have giant spaceships all over the fucking planet. Why are we watching people fight with swords on the desert?
Anyway action sequences are nice and Denis Villeneuve succeeded in making a worm-riding scene compelling and spectacular (which, let's be honest, had a very high potential for ridiculous-ness). Zendaya could expand her range beyond the constipated face.
It's 2024 and we're having eco-thrillers now. And it's actually well done.
ain't nobody foolin ol anthony hopkins
The subject is pretty interesting, but this is a very poor movie on many aspect. Confusing directing and editing. Dubious casting choices (Chris Rock 😂). Colman Domingo acting is good though.
Pretty random movie, actually. Not sure what the point was, but Natalie Portman and Julian Moore's acting is on point.
Yup. Still incredible.
This movie has extraordinary qualities that definitely make up for the lack of plot: The sound design, which is basically a second movie inside the movie, and which sets up the terribly heavy atmosphere of the movie. The exploration of the psychology of the main characters, and especially Höss' wife, whose attachment to the home seems insane from an external point of view. The amount of research done by the crew ahead of filming.
Among the movies about the Holocaust I've seen so far (although I've not yet seen Claude Lanzmann' Shoah), it is the one that makes me wonder the most about the sheer magnitude and nonsensicality of the final solution. The constant low background noise constitutes the clearest signal of industrialization of death as anything I've seen in cinema before, while the mundanity of unbothered family affairs contrasting with the distant sounds of violence conveys how numb Nazis had became to their own disgusting enterprise.
A haunting piece of cinema that needs to be seen, once.
This movie feels like a nostalgia I'm not a part of whatsoever.
The idea that the whole drama came from "a joke" doesn't really work, since those people just have problems to resolve anyway, starting with anger management as I don't understand why they go off so easily shouting and whatnot whenever some idea appears to be merely displeasing. It's also never really funny.
Random movie with good actors about an interesting story.
What could I expect with Yorgos Lanthimos. 🤷 Seems like it could have been better if it leaned more on the side of the entertaining Burtonian spectacle rather than auteurish whatever-metaphor-that-is-about-patriarchy. This movie drained me.
<spoiler>
You are an upstanding police investigator, and one of your old friends basically confessed to you that he killed an innocent man.
A. Pass him the cuffs to put him in custody, inform your colleagues that you had an off-the-record murder confession, open an investigation into a potential murder case.
B. Do a finger gun to him at the city parade.
</spoiler>
So when it comes to Elvis we have the choice between the feature length TikTok or the feature length unintelligible whisper ASMR.
What an utter and complete bore.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon be like yo this story is interesting let's make a movie about it I'll play the CEO you do the main character.
Feels like Bradley Cooper just having a trip mimicking his idol from archive videos he saw of him. What really is the added value of seeing a concert that was performed for real, only by an imitator this time?
Sam Esmail clearly thinks his shots through; a delight for the eyes. He also knows how to hold tension, although it's often for not so much of a release. <spoiler>And that is unfortunately true for the overall story, whose very intriguing Shyamalesque setup ends up resolved with some Wikipedia trivia in a car.</spoiler> Still had a pretty good time overall.
Girlfriend likes it.
It tries to be complete and ends up being good at nothing. In terms of screentime, it is faithful to the quote that appears at the end of the movie: "France, the army, Joséphine" (with "Joséphine" lasting a bit longer that the other two words): the whole love story with Joséphine takes a fair share of the movie; unfortunately it is really not compelling. The only compelling scene was the battle of Waterloo, which I can't even trust, considering the reputation for inaccuracy that the movie gets.
The man oversells himself on monologue before revealing to be sloppy. Pretentious John Wick wannabe.
Planes on the Dominican Republic scene look like sloppy CGI, which seems problematic coming from Fincher the-guy-with-lots-of-unnoticeable-because-perfect-CGIs.
Don't quite know what is the movie's point. Very Beau is Afraid-esque. Nick Cage is excellent, as usual.
I went to a late night screening on the movie's sixth week, only to have a woman with some sort of vertical hairstyle to sit in front of me in the almost empty room. After I shifted one sit left to have an open view, a couple came up and sat directly next to me on my left. When I had made up my mind to shift 2 sits to the right, another couple came to the right to corner me.
After accepting that I was in the fucking Truman Show, I figured that at least I would enjoy the movie, but understood how wrong I was after 30 minutes of it. People transforming into animals and a teenager wandering in the hood to make friend with some bird guy. Even the Wright Brothers back in the day figured out that you need empennage to fly. This bird guy flying with his legs lose is ridiculous and non-believable because of this. How the hell are his legs supposed to be aligned with his body?? Is he the Concorde or something?
I guess there is some metaphor about the transformations of teenagehood in there, but I don't care.
The one shot of the hunters on stilts walking on the cornfield is really great.
I feel that this has frightened me more that it should have, but what can I do?
The movie screams for being a mini-series, especially when some scenes feel rushed in spite of the already 3h30 runtime. I bet there is a 5-hours cut somewhere on Scorsese's shelves.
I enjoyed the minimalism of the movie, seldom using cinematic artifice to build up emotions, and depending on really great directing instead. Contrarily to recent long productions making heavy usage of soundtrack and editing whose result can sometimes feel like feature-length TikToks, Killers of the Flower Moon is all about restraint, and thoughtful dialogues, camera blocking, and acting.
The trio Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone works incredibly well.
Crappy-ass movie with a very original vision of the future. I guess I need to read Huxley's Brave New World.
Does Koreeda have an obsession with parenthood? I have seen Like Father, Like Son, Shoplifters, and this one, and they all seem to be different flavors of discourse on filiation. So far Shoplifters was the only one that really had me hooked (and even overwhelmed).
Incredible casting and acting. Story a bit sluggish at times. Clever point being made, not in your face. 👌
Guy looks like a complete douchebag.
Kind of a discount Scorsese saga, but clearly good enough to have a good time.
Not a fan of <spoiler>the psychological downward spiral the PI is falling into, as it makes, in my opinion, the story less believable overall</spoiler>, but it's a good enough thriller.
Second half should be projected at the MoMA.
Tom Hanks hams it up. Mariana Treviño lights it up. Truman Hanks forgot charisma at the train station.
Kind of a random patchwork of characters, but interesting enough.
The targeted public seems to be conservative old people having some embryo of openness and okay to be taught trans 101.
Movie for 12-years-olds.
<spoiler>They just fucking decided right at the end that they would twist it lol what a magic trick</spoiler>
Similar to La Nuit du 12 (which also won a significant award (César of the Best Movie)): I don't know what separates it from any random trial story, but it's good and somehow haunting.
Heath Ledger's Joker is all the hype, but Nicholson's one is frankly very good too. His craziness wins over his wit, contrarily to Ledger's one, who is so smart it almost feels like the whole Joker persona is an act.
I can say, thanks to my expertise of the American legal system acquired by watching tiktoks of Depp v. Heard, that those lawyers are completely out of hands and not nearly enough interrupted by objections.
Feels like the cinematic equivalent of the work from the great novelists. It is elegant, grand, subtle, wonderfully crafted, and most entertaining at times.
For some reason it looked like a modern adaptation of something like a Greek tragedy or something. Or is this just that high school is a vulgar and childish mirror of universal social dynamics.
Good entertainment, but some of the racing shots somehow look fake-ish.
It lacks a scene where the old master shows a display of his skills.
This was the kind of movies I made in my head when I was 12.
Final scene is nice!
Don't do drugs kids.
It was all entertaining and interesting, culminating to a tear dropped at the moment Barbie realizes that the texture of the real world, including the unperfect complexity of mixed feelings, and the beauty of old age, makes life way more vivid and engaging than a smooth and ultimately dystopian Barbieland.
As I was having a laugh at Ken finding purpose in his discovery of patriarchy, my double steak bacon cheeseburger from Five Guy hit hard, and I soon fell into a coma after which I must have woken up in another, way less subtle movie, in which a women made a discourse about how hard it is to follow-up to the expectations of being a woman, apparently not to open her YouTube channel about feminism, but to make the plot progress in some direction.
The rest of the story, which I barely understood (probably because of my coma), does not put men characters (Kens) in a favorable light, as they're all represented as idiots who like to mansplain and who like the Godfather. I assume the movie is smart enough for this not to be sexist, but it didn't engage me enough to try to understand why (sleeping through surely didn't help). No matter the result of this ethical question, the whole shebang wasn't particularly captivating anyway.
I very much enjoyed the I'm just Ken clip though.
Nice enough war movie. Scenes supposed to be intense don't really land.
Alright, good stuff.
What works very well 👏
- Cillian "Now I am become Oppenheimer" Murphy.
- The representation of guilt. Magnificent demonstration of "show, don't tell". The speech scene is brilliant; especially with the public thumping being a leitmotiv of anxiety before the actual scene.
- As a science enthusiast, getting to see different scientists of this era as various characters is like watching new superheros being introduced in the Avengers; very exciting! Although my man Feynman could have been more than an extra. 😢
- The accuracy of the screenplay in comparison to the biography I've read.
- Me having tachycardia during the introduction the scene. Holly shit.
- 3 hours passes by like a bang! 🤭
What works less well 🤨
- First and final act being feature-length trailers. establishing shot of some city CUT TO oppenheimer in his bed thinking about the universe VOICE-OVER you should move to some other city to study whatever CUT TO establishing shot of other city CUT TO weird-ass shot of some sparkly universe stuff apparently made without CGI MUSIC GOES BRRR. Yo please let me breathe, what about you insert some actual scene in there.
- <spoiler>The explosion itself gives no sense of scale whatsoever. All information I'm getting is that it was very bright; there was fire in the sky; light is faster than sound. Feynman's written report in Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman is more thrilling than the movie's depiction.</spoiler>
- The whole atmosphere ignition shenanigans blown out of proportion.
- Einstein just fucking spawning in some front-yard to deliver quick life advice. 😂
As good as any Mission Impossible. The jump is a bit over-teased ; seen this kind of shit done on YouTube for decades now.
One of the best coming-of-age movie out there, even though it stayed under the radar.
- Neat cinematography.
- Excellent acting from lead character.
- Nice cinema references to the theme of immortality (Psycho and The Sixth Sense)
- Nice blending of horror shots into a non-horror movie (or was it?)
- Especially the playful shots that start hard-to-explain and then get explained.
- Excellent sudden and unexpected anxiety-inducing scene.
- Ballsy ending.
Great stuff.
I like the movement of specialized filmmakers crafting video-game-like action scenes with an emphasis on spectacular choreography and tracking shots (The Raid franchise, John Wick franchise, Athena from last year, etc).
Extraction II is a prime example. Stunning craft.
This movie is particularly bizarre, because in spite of its horrendous acting and childish tropes, it has quite a lot of production value (rich sets) and interesting camera work. I abandoned trying to like it, and just took what it had to offer, which miraculously worked to make the viewing non-dull and even funny. At some point I wondered whether I had just destroyed my ability to appreciate movies.
Greatest piece of shit I ever enjoyed.
A story about getting over obstacles. Bim boom obstacle gone, next scene.
Pixar officially on my not-necessarily-watch list. So dull and forgettable.
Why not stopping the crime and let the would-be-perpetrator go (assuming he didn't cross any legal lines already)? They're not arresting them for crimes they didn't commit (but were predicted); they're arresting them for futures crimes they would commit (and aren't yet predicted). If you let them go, you can arrest them again the next time they want to act, since you will predict it again.
Excellent editing matching the narration with bits of Fox's filmography. The man is very touching.
Not great, not terrible.
Well that was depressing.
Interesting but doesn't quite take off beyond the factual.
Imagine the world if everyone has the productivity of Liam Neeson searching for his daughter. Maximum efficiency.
Well that was creepy. Didn't get the point though.
All neat and cute. People from the 50s had class and could danse for sure.
Jean Gabin catchlines all the way.
I had originally planned to never watch this adaptation, considering how much I enjoyed the book (and didn't want to spoil it), but I have been forced. This is an excellent adaptation.
Clint Eastwood be casually watching himself act. This is excellent as long as there is the tension. Once the tension is resolved it delves into sentimental afternoon TV movie.
What the actual fuck now. Joaquin Phoenix is so candid lol.
<spoiler>I don't understand how one could hope to stand any chance against something that can alter your senses and consciousness.</spoiler>
Two things are unstoppable in this world: German clubbers, and Parisian traffic.
This might have been a very very good movie, had they reduced the runtime by cutting all the theatricals for the simple plot.
The whole Paris arc is bonkers.
It's really simple, context commutations produces superficial level of focus. Same reason why I couldn't handle Cloud Atlas. I cannot be in the movie, if the movie is constantly slipping through the fingers of my mind.
I liked the rocks.
Filmed plays are weird.
Perfect feel-good lighthearted yet clever romance for a Sunday night.
Fincher's attention to detail in on another level.
In the dinner scene, when the subway is passing through and shaking the flat, we can hear what might be a ball falling to the ground and maybe bouncing a bit. Later that night, when Mills is discussing the case with Somerset, he casually picks up a basketball to put it back on some furniture.
In the same scene, Mills offers a beer to Somerset, which states his preference for wine. While they're chatting, Mills fills up a regular glass with wine (instead of using an actual glass for wine). When served, Somerset is too focused on his documents to notice the glass. But when the subway passes through again, Somerset goes for a sip and gives a weird look at the non-wine glass containing wine.
I love it.
Pornstars don't sound like the smartest ones of the bunch.
Brendan Fraser looks so kind. The depiction of the physical and mental issue is oddly fascinating, but the melodrama seemed out of place to me.
Forgot to take my nap before the screening.
Samuel L. Jackson is a force of nature. Give this man all the catchlines.
This is the second movie I see in a week in which a character explains the principle of moving pictures (The Fabelmans) and in 2023 which celebrates the virtue of movie-going as an escape (Babylon). And to be fair, the scene-as-tribute to cinema in Empire of Light makes the similar one in Babylon look ridiculous.
Roger Deakins doesn't miss. Olivia Colman is a SUPERSTAR.
A diary of Spielberg's coming of age from the man himself is going to be intriguing for any Spielberg fan, so this automatically got my undivided attention, and appreciation. Still, the movie is a bizarre thing, firstly because it contains anecdotes which, as significant as they might be for the director, can seem out of place for an external spectator. Secondly because Michelle Williams and Paul Dano's acting oscillates between some weird phony play and actual great acting, and, in my opinion, just awkwardly personifies the sensibility that Spielberg tries to convey about his parents (which I obviously never met, so I'm completely talking out of my ass here).
It is said that decent writers write for themselves, but great writers write for the reader. Spielberg spent his career making movies for moviegoers, I guess it's fair enough to cut him some slack when he's making a movie for himself. Good of him to let us peek. (Especially the scene with his high school crush, which gave my packed theater a pretty good laugh.)
Absolute beast of a movie.
Gen Z and Millenials at my screening, giggling when Jack is drawing Rose, and clapping when the credits come. This movie is just cruising through generations like fine wine. James Cameron pulled out some sort of magic formula.
Nice TV movie.
Fascinating stuff and great tension!
<spoiler>Internet says that actual nuclear protocoles are top secret. What makes me believe they're better than what is shown in the movie is that if you have the ability to authenticate orders but wouldn't trust a cancellation, why would you trust the original order in a first place (which is by far the gravest).</spoiler>
Back when Andrew Niccol was a killer screenwriter.
Could Shyamalan just make good movies again?
Me at the middle of the movie: so the morale of the story is that telling the truth and being authentic to people makes your life easier.
Me at the end: wait.
How things evolve at each Spider-Man reboot:
- Dumbness: ↗️
- Feel-Good Vibes: ↗️
- Aunt May's age: ↘️
- Suspension of disbelief regarding Spider-Man going on with his shenanigans in public places (sometimes carelessly removing his mask) in spite of the growing ubiquity of video: ↗️
Tony Stark saying to Peter that if he's nothing without his suit, then he doesn't deserve it, and the callback to that being Peter using his BIG STRONG MUSCLES to lift a bunch of rocks is the dumbest thing. Are the screenwriters 8 years-old?
Chadwick Boseman, Sienna Miller, J.K. Simmons
Monday 22 April 2024
permalinkLate-night TV really broadcasts the randomest movies; never heard of this before.
yo they can't actually count or what