Dude Rates Movies

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Beating Hearts
A
L'amour ouf
Gilles Lellouche — 2024
Adèle Exarchopoulos, François Civil, Malik Frikah
Saturday 14 December 2024 📽️

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.

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Loose Cannons
E
Mine vaganti
Ferzan Özpetek — 2010
Riccardo Scamarcio, Nicole Grimaudo, Alessandro Preziosi
Monday 9 December 2024

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

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The Room
F
Tommy Wiseau — 2003
Tommy Wiseau, Juliette Danielle, Greg Sestero
Saturday 7 December 2024

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.

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Notre Dame on Fire
B
Notre-Dame brûle
Jean-Jacques Annaud — 2022
Samuel Labarthe, Jean-Paul Bordes, Mickaël Chirinian
Sunday 1 December 2024

No comment

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Heretic
C
Scott Beck, Bryan Woods — 2024
Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East
Saturday 30 November 2024 📽️

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

Hugh Grant is excellent in this, though!

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Moulin Rouge!
B
Baz Luhrmann — 2001
Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo
Sunday 24 November 2024

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.

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Gladiator II
D
Ridley Scott — 2024
Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal
Saturday 23 November 2024 📽️

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.

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Ratatouille
B
Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava — 2007
Brad Garrett, Lou Romano, Patton Oswalt
Monday 18 November 2024

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.

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Here
C
Robert Zemeckis — 2024
Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany
Sunday 10 November 2024 📽️

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.

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Monsieur Aznavour
B
Mehdi Idir, Grand Corps Malade — 2024
Tahar Rahim, Bastien Bouillon, Marie-Julie Baup
Saturday 9 November 2024 📽️

Classical, but nicely done biopic about M. Aznavour. I had a great time watching it, and learnt a lot (hopefully truthful things, as I can't find a French equivalent of History vs Hollywood).

This cut from Parce que tu crois to What's the Difference was fire!

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The Substance
B
Coralie Fargeat — 2024
Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid
Saturday 9 November 2024 📽️

This joins Don't Worry Darling in being a rather nice episode of Black Mirror in movie format. Except with a Cannes touch to make it artsy and particularly weird. I don't understand how this got Best Screenplay at Cannes, considering how unsatisfying the details of the plot are, but I guess Cannes is more interested in extended metaphors (If you do too much fillers to try to look young, you'll end up looking like a monster, and people will make fun of you.) than in compelling storytelling craft.

Ultimately, I didn't understand the maneuver the movie was trying to make. (To denounce Hollywood obsession with youth and beauty, let's film a lot of young ass shaking.)

I enjoyed the references to Kubrick.

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Juror #2
D
Clint Eastwood — 2024
Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, J.K. Simmons
Friday 8 November 2024 📽️

The story is well told and had me hanging all along, but I find the main character infuriating and cannot think about the movie without getting upset.

We don't see him experiencing guilt about having killed someone. He is only focused on the transactional aspect of the justice system and strategy about avoiding jail. Doesn't he have issues with the fact that he apparently can't be trusted to drive without even realizing whether he killed someone or not? Doesn't he think about the life he has taken? He seems fine avoiding any sort of accountability if that's what will ensure he does not go to jail. Then when he realizes throwing someone else in jail is the only way, he does so, argues that because he is a well-dressed white suburban father his life if fundamentally more worthy than a ex-gangster, and goes home to play with his baby, fully knowing that someone else is in jail instead of him. The guy is a PSYCHOPATH. And the movie is like "hurr durr look those are morally interesting questions about justice, the system is obviously not perfect tadadadida."

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When Harry Met Sally...
C
Rob Reiner — 1989
Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher
Saturday 2 November 2024

Guy who is convinced that a man and a woman cannot be friend tries to be friend with a woman. The unpredictable ending will shock you!!

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The Parent Trap
C
Nancy Meyers — 1998
Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid, Natasha Richardson
Saturday 2 November 2024

Cute movie. The beginning was a bit too childish, and the end a bit too dragging. One aspect I found interesting is how The English one is more easily spotted than the Californian one. Because it's easier to fake being sophisticated (when you're laid back) than to fake being laid back (when you're sophisticated).

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Anora
B
Sean Baker — 2024
Mikey Madison, Paul Weissman, Lindsey Normington
Friday 1 November 2024 📽️

Pretty good mix of drama and comedy. I particularly liked the unhinged character of Toros (played by Karren Karagulian). I admit I found the main character, Anora, a bit stupid (She mocks Ivan's proposal when he proposes, rightfully so, but then reacts like a surprised deer when Russian guys come up to deal with WTF this marriage is.)

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[Rec]
B
Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza — 2007
Manuela Velasco, Ferran Terraza, Jorge-Yamam Serrano
Thursday 31 October 2024

Still scary enough.

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Megalopolis
F
Francis Ford Coppola — 2024
Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel
Sunday 20 October 2024 📽️

Megalopolis is a bloated mess that feels like Francis Ford Coppola handed a blank check to ChatGPT and said, "Make me a masterpiece." The result? A pretentious, self-indulgent disaster that could've been directed by an overzealous art student with too much cash and zero oversight. Hollywood should take note — AI-generated scripts are looming, and Megalopolis feels like the first casualty.

The film reaches its creative low when Nathalie Emmanuel wanders through a heap of random scraps and hallucinates a perfect city. I'm convinced Coppola wants us to hallucinate that we're watching a masterpiece when, in reality, we're stuck with this pile of incoherent garbage. It's a prime example of what happens when a director is left unchecked, à la Terrence Malick post-Tree of Life—except even worse.

Visually, the movie is downright ugly. The sunset-yellow hues, overused in the cheapest blockbusters, create a nauseating backdrop. The acting? Atrocious. Even good actors deliver performances so stilted and awkward that you start to wonder if the director was asleep behind the camera.

The plot? Characters do random, nonsensical things. By the end, you'll be drained of your time, your patience, and your will to watch anything Coppola touches ever again. Megalopolis? More like Megacoppolas, because this movie is an ego trip that never should have left the driveway.


Source: https://chatgpt.com/share/671556d3-c174-8003-87ae-d138c6d8fef6

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The Exorcist
B
William Friedkin — 1973
Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Linda Blair
Saturday 19 October 2024

As unhinged as I remembered it. There is a charm in the classicism of the movie: exposition, development, resolution; one scene at a time.

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Smile 2
B
Parker Finn — 2024
Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt, Lukas Gage
Saturday 19 October 2024 📽️

I've never seen that much density of scary stuff in one movie. This is hysterical. Very neatly directed, including several impressive long takes, and overall splendid craft from beginning to end. I also noted the sound design/mixing which was "powerful" somehow. This was quite the experience watching all of this in a packed theater.

My only problem with it is that I didn't like the end of the movie, which was a big letdown for me. The end implies that quite a big chunk of the last part of the movie was hallucinated (not exactly sure from where it started being all fake), which I don't find as interesting as an alternation between reality and hallucination, with at least some kind of link to reality that the character would be able to hold onto in order to fight the hallucinations. Without that, we're just watching a pure descend into madness, which is artistic, I guess, but not narratively compelling, in my opinion. At least not as compelling as what it could have been.

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Session 9
E
Brad Anderson — 2001
David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, Paul Guilfoyle
Saturday 12 October 2024

Why is this shit rated 6.4 on IMDb?

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Late Night with the Devil
B
Cameron Cairnes, Colin Cairnes — 2023
David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss
Saturday 12 October 2024

Original format, good execution, moderate scares. Enjoyed the experience.

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The Apprentice
B
Ali Abbasi — 2024
Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova
Friday 11 October 2024 📽️

The movie basically has two parts: A first one where Trump is young, (relatively) well-meaning, a bit naive, and gets his crook education from a ruthless lawyer (Roy Cohn). And a second one, after an ellipsis, where he has basically became the Evil itself and is a definitive scumbag. I think a more gradual progression would have been a bit more interesting from a character development standpoint (as I guess it have been in reality).

I was also a bit annoyed by how much Roy Cohn's advice (particularly his "three rules") maps so well to Trump's current behavior. It feels too perfect a fit, and makes me doubt the timeline and substance of the "apprenticeship" shown to me.

It still remains a very interesting movie, with incredible vibes of the eras it takes place in, and a masterful acting demonstration from Sebastian Stan.

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Joker: Folie à Deux
D
Todd Phillips — 2024
Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson
Friday 11 October 2024 📽️

This isn't as bad as I expected it to be according to social media.

My gripes with it is that: 1) I didn't expect it to be a prison movie, and certainly not to be a dwelling prison movie. 2) There are too many singing acts disconnected from the main narration (many of them are (day-)dreams), as if it is a Bollywood movie with some random clips in the middle. 3) The ending doesn't make any sense at all.

Although I would say it's a cinematic success in many ways (the atmosphere, the directing, the acting, the make-up, etc), the sum of those high-quality parts unfortunately results in a low-quality whole.

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Alien: Romulus
B
Fede Alvarez — 2024
Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux
Monday 7 October 2024 📽️

There is some nice world-building in the first part, that I would have enjoyed to be exploited more, before it switched to being a scare-fest. It is a very well-crafted movie, with amazing directing and sound design, but as all other Aliens except the first one, it lacks the sort of elegance and tension from the movie that started it all. Still, it has succeeded the feat of making my entire theater collectively GASP (viewers will guess at which reveal). At any rate, that was at least a very nice entertainment.

PS: I recently tried out the video game Alien: Isolation from 2014, and the set design of this opus is exactly like in the video game.

PS2: I heard some James Horner-esque harshly metallic sounds in there. An homage from Benjamin Wallfish to Aliens' soundtrack? (foreshadowing the homage via catchline later)

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Speak No Evil
A
James Watkins — 2024
James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy
Wednesday 25 September 2024 📽️

I know this is an audacious comparison, but the level of tension in this movie is comparable to the one I felt while watching Portrait of a Lady in Fire, except trading seduction with... something else. The directing and acting deliver such a strong intensity out of scenes that would superficially appear mundane. It's all in the eyes, reactions, hesitations, and, ultimately, outbursts. With a touch of madness. A work of art, in my humble opinion.

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The Amityville Horror
D
Stuart Rosenberg — 1979
James Brolin, Margot Kidder, Rod Steiger
Tuesday 24 September 2024

I mean it's all fun and games, but what in the actual hell was this thing we saw in the window from the outside.

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All Quiet on the Western Front
D
Im Westen nichts Neues
Edward Berger — 2022
Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Aaron Hilmer
Saturday 21 September 2024

Having read the book recently, I didn't succeed in having an "independent" reading of the movie. So, sorry, this is an "annoying guy that read the book" type of commentary.

The main aspects that the movie failed to convey was 1) the repetitive nature of exposition to brutality, which leads to despair and PTSD (the movie kind of concentrates the violence in one harrowing scene) and 2) the constant shelling noise (this is just impractical to do with a movie, unless you want spectators to go crazy alongside the characters).

Interestingly, the movie still choose to explore some internal considerations of the main character in the book, about bureaucrats making decisions while having no "skin in the game" about the consequences of their decisions. This is done with no voice-over, but just by contrasting the visuals of war with those of the lavish food the bureaucrats are eating. However, the philosophical consideration about the failure of civilization allowing such atrocities to happen is gone (it was one of the most important aspect of the book for me).

There are some innovations in the movie, such as the scarf from the French woman being passed on as a token of survival (what does it mean?), a side plot about time trouble with the armistice (what?), as well as a particularly shocking choice to end the movie, which, unfortunately, defeats a significant theme from the book, most notably carried by none other than its title (WWI soldiers who came home couldn't really talk to their closed ones about the war, because of the unhealed trauma and also the fact that what they had seen was so outlandishly horrific that people literally couldn't compute what they were saying. So they ended up just saying that nothing was really happening: "all quiet on the western front". This is also presented in depth in Peter Jackson's documentary They Shall Not Grow Old)

For this one literature wins over cinema.

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Lilo & Stitch
C
Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders — 2002
Daveigh Chase, Chris Sanders, Tia Carrere
Thursday 12 September 2024

No comment

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The Rock
B
Michael Bay — 1996
Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris
Thursday 12 September 2024

No comment

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Emilia Pérez
B
Jacques Audiard — 2024
Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez
Saturday 31 August 2024 📽️

Going into this without knowing that it was a musical and about a transgender person was a wild ride! I think it's an incredibly original movie, and a well-done one. There is a segment in the middle that is a bit too long in my opinion.

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MaXXXine
B
Ti West — 2024
Charley Rowan McCain, Simon Prast, Mia Goth
Saturday 24 August 2024 📽️

Who is this director Ti West, that nobody talks about, and who just pays tribute to Hollywood with style and elegance matching what the Oscar usual favorite pets do? Who is this actress Mia Goth, who, in the space of one opening scene, showcases a sheer talent in a mise en abime, on par with similar performances we have seen with DiCaprio or Emma Stone. What is this trilogy, "X", that seems to have stayed under the radar, while being very original, very well-made, and just overall solid and consistent?

I loved the mask fitting scene where Maxine has a panic attack while remembering the events that happened in X. I initially thought it was sort of inconsistent in tone, considering that those events had a sort of "wild" "unserious" tone to it, and it was weird to revisit them with 100% psychological seriousness. Then I remembered that Maxine was a cocaine addict, and figured that those differences in tone might actually represent whether she's currently in a high or in a low.

The main weakness of the movie is the crime plot, and notably when the police are involved, which feels kind of weak. I thought it remained acceptable enough to enjoy it pretty much.

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Forrest Gump
A+
Robert Zemeckis — 1994
Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise
Thursday 22 August 2024 📽️

A real jewel of cinema. It achieves what recent movies like Oppenheimer failed at: a sort of feature-length montage that doesn't make you feel disconnected from the characters and the action. I don't exactly know what the magic formula is, but I guess it notably knows when to land, stop the music, stop the context switching, and just let the present moment be, when it's time for important stuff.

The seams between those "summarized montage" moments and those "present action" moment are wonderfully done, the finest instance of it being the moment in Vietnam when the rain stops and we switch from a montage to real-time action in one single shot, where Zemeckis confirms he is one of the best film blockers out there.

The story (adapted from the novel) is a mixture of an interesting overview of US history and an incredibly original character story. I enjoyed its most unhinged aspects, from the main character being named after a KKK member to him singing at a gospel church with his dumb face.

What a delightful classic I had the chance to rediscover on a big screen. I cannot look at the list of Oscars won by this, and find a single one that wasn't 100% deserved. I might however find some missing ones like Alan Silvestri's soundtrack losing to Hans Zimmer for The Lion King (I admit it's a close one).

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I Am: Celine Dion
B
Irene Taylor — 2024
Irene Taylor
Sunday 18 August 2024

As if Celine performance at the Eiffel Tower was not stunning enough, what we learn from this documentary makes it monumental.

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Deadpool & Wolverine
E
Shawn Levy — 2024
Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin
Saturday 17 August 2024 📽️

I liked the Like a Prayer cover and the traveling tracking shot. I disliked everything else.

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Pearl
A
Ti West — 2022
Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright
Monday 12 August 2024

With hindsight of a second viewing, I'm realizing this is an incredible depiction of a psychopath in the making. The contrast between her cuteness and the danger she actually is, is actually brilliant. This final monologue also. 😙🤌

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Trap
B
M. Night Shyamalan — 2024
Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan
Saturday 10 August 2024 📽️

That's mid-Shyamalan: not bad, not a masterpiece either. Considering its never-ending, multi-climax last chapter, I thought for a moment good old M. Night had us actually trapped in the theater!

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X
B
Ti West — 2022
Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Brittany Snow
Sunday 4 August 2024

No comment

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Yannick
A
Quentin Dupieux — 2023
Raphaël Quenard, Pio Marmaï, Blanche Gardin
Sunday 4 August 2024

No comment

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Hercules
C
Ron Clements, John Musker — 1997
Tate Donovan, Susan Egan, James Woods
Sunday 28 July 2024

Safe to say that it's a strong contender to Anastasia!

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Longlegs
D
Oz Perkins — 2024
Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood
Saturday 27 July 2024 📽️

⚠️ Spoilers

I found the atmosphere it was happening in too weird and it disconnected me from the movie. Why don't we ever see Harker talk to anybody besides her boss? Why is she working on the floor in a weird storage room? Why doesn't she call the cops when a serial killer actually trespass her home? None of this hooked me and I was already half asleep when Nic Cages was smashing his head on a table.

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Twisters
C
Lee Isaac Chung — 2024
Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos
Sunday 21 July 2024 📽️

I think it missed some wide shots of the tornadoes; in this TikTok and drones era, images from reality have become bigger than those from fiction. https://youtu.be/IEFGKMWYD-E?si=6Og1yjD_7APxmQra

Nice entertainment overall. 🌪️

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Yannick
A
Quentin Dupieux — 2023
Raphaël Quenard, Pio Marmaï, Blanche Gardin
Friday 19 July 2024

No comment

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Yannick
A
Quentin Dupieux — 2023
Raphaël Quenard, Pio Marmaï, Blanche Gardin
Tuesday 16 July 2024

I found it to be simply brilliant. Casting and dialogues are fire.

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Captain Phillips
A
Paul Greengrass — 2013
Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman
Monday 15 July 2024

No comment

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Fly Me to the Moon
F
Greg Berlanti — 2024
Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson
Sunday 14 July 2024 📽️

When you're a conspiracy theorist but not really, but actually kind of a little bit, but in fact not.

French is able to describe this movie in one word: Lunaire

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The Bikeriders
A
Jeff Nichols — 2023
Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy
Thursday 11 July 2024

The rise and fall of a bikeriders gang in the 60s, under the talented eye of Jeff Nichols, with a banger soundtrack, and pretty solid cast. Not far away from a Scorcese saga, but with a raw aspect to it. Oddly captivating.

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The Count of Monte-Cristo
A
Le comte de Monte-Cristo
Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte — 2024
Pierre Niney, Bastien Bouillon, Anaïs Demoustier
Saturday 6 July 2024 📽️

One of the few French high-budget movie that uses the money for good cinema rather than celebrities cameos. It is sufficiently faithful to the novel, keeping the most precious parts as-is, at least to my taste. I was apprehensive of Pierre Niney, but it turns out that he's very good for the cast.

Good movie.

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A Quiet Place: Day One
C
Michael Sarnoski — 2024
Lupita Nyong'o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff
Thursday 4 July 2024 📽️

The cat understood the assignment.

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The Bodyguard
C
Mick Jackson — 1992
Kevin Costner, Whitney Houston, Gary Kemp
Monday 24 June 2024

The dialogues are the worst. The whole Oscar arc got me hooked tho!

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The Watchers
D
Ishana Shyamalan — 2024
Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré
Saturday 22 June 2024 📽️

There is no exact English translation for the French « Ça ne tient pas debout » ("it doesn't make sense"). The screenplay is just very sloppy. Also not a fan of the casting. Liked the scene where they hide while out with the creatures, notably because it initially wasn't clear whether the creatures were facing them or the Coop.

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Inside Out 2
C
Kelsey Mann — 2024
Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman
Saturday 22 June 2024 📽️

Definitely a better experience than the first one, mostly because I could identify more with Anxiety. But I kept reminding me of the same weakness than bothered me in the first one: the underlying emotions are just the same as surface-level emotions; there isn't much more difference between Anxiety being anxious and Riley being anxious. Maybe Inside Out adult edition will bring the concept of introspection into the mix.

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Me Before You
E
Thea Sharrock — 2016
Emilia Clarke, Emilia Clarke's eyebrows, Sam Claflin, Janet McTeer
Sunday 9 June 2024

Some girl who doesn't give a damn about her boyfriend, falls for a paralyzed guy because she succeeded in breaking his shell, is upset when he still wants to die in spite of her cheering him up.

There, spared you the trouble of watching this piece of crap.

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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
C
George Miller — 2024
Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke
Saturday 8 June 2024 📽️

A bit too many things wrong there:

  • The narrative arc is too ambitious, too big in scope, to fit into a movie with appropriate rhythm. Some parts end up rushed, and I think the whole thing should have been a miniseries. This is not as bad as Dune 2 though, because there are still some scenes taking the time to develop proper action.
  • Chris Hemsworth character doesn't work for me. Any important character of the universe is in one way or another charismatic or particularly recognizable, but he just looks pretty random; too young, notably.
  • Some parts of the seams of the plot are weak. Immortan Joe values Furiosa as part of a deal, but when she disappears this is a non-event? Some parts are just barely understand-able.
  • Although overall the action scenes are very impressive (and there certainly are a lot of incredible stunt craft), at times the image somehow looks fake-ish (CGI? The volume?)

I give it a rating in the "positive" side of the range because I didn't get bored and still had somewhat of a good time, but that's a weak prequel.

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Magnolia
C
Paul Thomas Anderson — 1999
Tom Cruise, Jason Robards, Julianne Moore
Saturday 1 June 2024

What a drag. I didn't expect for such movies to bore me more with age, but there we are.

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Volcano
B
Mick Jackson — 1997
Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffmann
Tuesday 28 May 2024

This is Asylum-level badness wrapped up in high budget and famous actors. But there is one thing that makes it highly watchable, which is that it just never stops; there is no stupid chatter, no filler, no boredom, it just goes on and on always with an acute sense of urgency. So it becomes a spectacle in cinematic ridicule, and a highly entertaining one at that. Not sure that was the intended effect, but I take it!

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Mad Max: Fury Road
A
George Miller — 2015
Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult
Sunday 26 May 2024

👍

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Twilight
F
Catherine Hardwicke — 2008
Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke
Sunday 19 May 2024

There is absolutely nothing that works in this movie; a pure demonstration of film-making incompetence and bad taste.

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The Fall Guy
A
David Leitch — 2024
Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Saturday 18 May 2024 📽️

It's hard to find anything bad to say about a movie that is well-made yet doesn't take itself seriously.

The movie opens with Kiss' I was made for loving you to a long-shot of Ryan Gosling getting prepared for a stunt which the character effectively does, and therefore makes you wonder whether this was actually Gosling that did it (since the shot is uninterrupted). I was made for loving you eventually comes back multiple times in the movie in various forms (orchestral, trailer-like cover, etc), and is just one example of the many fun artistic ideas that The Fall Guy has in store, including, for example, a meta-commentary on the usage of split screens, or how psychedelic a fight under influence looks like.

It is quite fun, and hinges on a solid story and solid performances from its leads, including what might surprisingly be the best role of Ryan Gosling, who succeeds in playing a quantum superposition of complete chill attitude and emotional vulnerability (culminating to a remarkably and bizarrely intense scene).

There is of course no lacking of action, with a complete stunt fest. The small bits of making-of shown during the credits offer a glimpse of the logistical challenge that the movie must have been, and proves the grand mastery of the art of crafting stunts from the Fall Guy crew. Bravo!

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Six Days Seven Nights
C
Ivan Reitman — 1998
Harrison Ford, Anne Heche, David Schwimmer
Sunday 12 May 2024

I remember when I was a little boy we watched this movie together some night. Twas fun! From an adult point of view it's not as fun as I remembered, but still okay 🙂

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Intolerable Cruelty
C
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen — 2003
George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Billy Bob Thornton
Sunday 12 May 2024

Moderately good and Coen-esque entertainment. Becomes sort of un-seriously goofy in the second half.

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Manhattan
D
Woody Allen — 1979
Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway
Thursday 9 May 2024

Woody Allen casually trying to expand the Overton window about banging 17 years-olds, ingeniously admitting a zest of guilt in dating a bit too young while the rest of his society doesn't bat an eye. I guess when building fantasy worlds one should follow the same principle as in "never commit more than one crime at a time": the world wasn't ready for teens gangbang, so you have one movie for the 17 years-old (Manhattan) and one movie for the gangbang (Vicky Cristina Barcelona).

Great cinematography by the way.

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Peeping Tom
C
Michael Powell — 1960
Karlheinz Böhm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer
Tuesday 7 May 2024

Both the directing (e.g. the "POV" scenes from the camera) and the screenplay (relatively deep psychological thriller) feel very modern for a 1960 movie. I understand that putting the spectators in the bad guy's shoes could be quite shocking at the time, but I'm happy the movie eventually earned recognition.

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The Outfit
B
Graham Moore — 2022
Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, John Gumley-Mason
Monday 6 May 2024

Pretty clever, surely a bit too clever in the end. I like the vibe (and the soundtrack that contributes to it).

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Stranger Than Fiction
E
Marc Forster — 2006
Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman
Monday 6 May 2024

Feels like this should have been a short movie. Nothing really happens.

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Twister
D
Jan de Bont — 1996
Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes
Sunday 5 May 2024

I remember liking this movie when big bro and big sis were watching it. Not quite the same impact as an adult. WTF is this plot with the new fiance. He lets her there like she's a prop or something.

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Collateral
B
Michael Mann — 2004
Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith
Saturday 4 May 2024 📽️

Didn't remember it was that good. Really solid thriller.

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Scent of a Woman
C
Martin Brest — 1992
Al Pacino, Chris O'Donnell, James Rebhorn
Friday 3 May 2024

Would have been a B is not unnecessarily so looooong. Story is good enough, Pacino is on point, final speech is FIRE.

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Infested
C
Vermines
Sébastien Vanicek — 2023
Théo Christine, Sofia Lesaffre, Jérôme Niel
Thursday 2 May 2024

Psychologists: progressive exposition therapy blablablah

Me: LET'S GO KAMIKAZE THERAPY


I guess the rather lame story helped limiting the immersion and mitigating the trauma. The constant aggressive speech from the characters to one another is very distracting (apart from serving the subtext, I guess).

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Sound of Freedom
E
Alejandro Monteverde — 2023
Jim Caviezel, Mira Sorvino, Bill Camp
Thursday 2 May 2024

I went into this blind since it had a good IMDb rating, disliked it, googled it, and wondered what can of worms I had opened.

TL;DR: it's a movie from a company doing "Christian movies" about a guy who fights child trafficking inspired from the true story of a guy who, in real-life, is accused of sexual misconduct by several women. Also, Jim Caviezel lectures you during the rolling credits about how important this movie is to fight child trafficking, and gives you a QR code so that you can donate money.

Anyway, if you like nonsensical editing (or nonsensical story, for that matter), the dullest soundtrack (or dullest everything, for that matter), and long shots of thousand-yard-stare-Jim-Caviezel, watch it!

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The Help
B
Tate Taylor — 2011
Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer
Wednesday 1 May 2024

It's good, but not A-level good.

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True Lies
A
James Cameron — 1994
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold
Sunday 28 April 2024 📽️

James Cameron be writing his screenplay like "so the fighter jet hovers under the crane, and he asks his daughter to jump onto the plane" and then he actually films it. Must be a nice job.

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The Celebration
C
Festen
Thomas Vinterberg — 1998
Ulrich Thomsen, Henning Moritzen, Thomas Bo Larsen
Saturday 27 April 2024

If Dogma 95 is supposed to be about authenticity, then it doesn't work because the tight constraints of its manifesto apparently forces directing towards hyper-stylized camera work and cinematography, which I found way less sober than well-equipped (but cleaner) productions.

Anyway, the story and actors are very good. Christian has only one friend, who is the cook. Those who rally once the tide has turned don't count.

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21 Bridges
D
Brian Kirk — 2019
Chadwick Boseman, Sienna Miller, J.K. Simmons
Monday 22 April 2024

Late-night TV really broadcasts the randomest movies; never heard of this before.

The project was announced as 17 Bridges in July 2018

yo they can't actually count or what

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Civil War
B
Alex Garland — 2024
Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny
Sunday 21 April 2024 📽️

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.

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2012
C
Roland Emmerich — 2009
John Cusack, Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Monday 15 April 2024

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.

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Sense and Sensibility
C
Ang Lee — 1995
Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, James Fleet
Sunday 14 April 2024

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.

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Passengers
B
Morten Tyldum — 2016
Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen
Sunday 7 April 2024

Dunno why I rated it C first time. Holds solid even on a second viewing.

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The Report
E
Scott Z. Burns — 2019
Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Jon Hamm
Saturday 6 April 2024

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.

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Duel
B
Steven Spielberg — 1971
Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone
Monday 1 April 2024

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.

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Ready Player One
A
Steven Spielberg — 2018
Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn
Sunday 31 March 2024

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.

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Zero Dark Thirty
A
Kathryn Bigelow — 2012
Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt
Monday 25 March 2024

The raid scene is rad as hell. Overall very solid espionage movie.

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The Great Gatsby
E
Baz Luhrmann — 2013
Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton
Sunday 24 March 2024

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.

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The Teachers' Lounge
D
Das Lehrerzimmer
Ilker Çatak — 2023
Leonie Benesch, Anne-Kathrin Gummich, Rafael Stachowiak
Saturday 23 March 2024 📽️

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.

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Madame Web
F
S.J. Clarkson — 2024
Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced
Tuesday 19 March 2024

Somewhere there is a kid whose favorite movie is this one. Maybe the next S.J. Clarkson!

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One Life
B
James Hawes — 2023
Anthony Hopkins, Lena Olin, Johnny Flynn
Sunday 17 March 2024 📽️

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.

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Ferrari
D
Michael Mann — 2023
Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley, Giuseppe Festinese
Monday 11 March 2024

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).

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American Fiction
B
Cord Jefferson — 2023
Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz
Sunday 10 March 2024

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.

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Dune: Part Two
C
Denis Villeneuve — 2024
Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson
Sunday 3 March 2024 📽️

Two things that really bothered me were:

  1. Everything is rushed. The rythm of the narrative arc is not consistent with lil' Timothée growing from desert stranger to master of the Universe. 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.

  2. 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.

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How to Blow Up a Pipeline
B
Daniel Goldhaber — 2022
Ariela Barer, Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage
Friday 23 February 2024

It's 2024 and we're having eco-thrillers now. And it's actually well done.

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Legends of the Fall
D
Edward Zwick — 1994
Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn
Sunday 18 February 2024

ain't nobody foolin ol anthony hopkins

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Rustin
D
George C. Wolfe — 2023
Colman Domingo, Chris Rock, Glynn Turman
Saturday 17 February 2024

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.

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May December
C
Todd Haynes — 2023
Natalie Portman, Chris Tenzis, Charles Melton
Saturday 10 February 2024 📽️

Pretty random movie, actually. Not sure what the point was, but Natalie Portman and Julian Moore's acting is on point.

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Titanic
A+
James Cameron — 1997
Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane
Thursday 8 February 2024 📽️

Yup. Still incredible.

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The Zone of Interest
A
Jonathan Glazer — 2023
Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel, Freya Kreutzkam
Saturday 3 February 2024 📽️

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.

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The Holdovers
E
Alexander Payne — 2023
Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa
Sunday 28 January 2024

This movie feels like a nostalgia I'm not a part of whatsoever.

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What's in a Name?
D
Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte — 2012
Patrick Bruel, Valérie Benguigui, Charles Berling
Saturday 27 January 2024

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.

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Nyad
B
Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi — 2023
Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, Anne Marie Kempf
Friday 26 January 2024

Random movie with good actors about an interesting story.

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Poor Things
D
Yorgos Lanthimos — 2023
Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe
Saturday 20 January 2024 📽️

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.

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Mystic River
C
Clint Eastwood — 2003
Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon
Thursday 4 January 2024

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.

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Priscilla
E
Sofia Coppola — 2023
Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen
Thursday 4 January 2024

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.