Those who are fans of pinball will enjoy it more ... As a light romantic comedy, it worked so well. Perfectly cast characters and a small indie film you probably never heard of.
movies What's the last film you watched? And rate it!
- Thread starter GerryLovesU
- Start date
Went to the movies, to a theater, for the first time since pre-pandemic, at the little local one-screen theater. I was going to see Barbie, having read around enough to think it might be worth it. But it was too late; barbie had come and gone. But since I had already bought a bag of twizzlers, I went in anyway and saw Obese Greek Wedding 3.
Around half way in, I found myself instinctively reaching, for a moment, for a remote, to see how much longer the thing had, and to jump ahead.
It's one of those gap movies, in which the Rotten Tom audience score is more than twice that of the critic's: sentimental nostalga, I think, v taste. From the reviews I bothered to look at, the best quip was from Robert Abele of the LA Times: 'It’s a rom-com both com-less and rom-less."
But who really cares; the film is not worth picking on, and it is kind of a nice success story for Nia Vardalos, an indie writer who hit some nerve some x years ago.
So 3/10--mostly harmless.
Around half way in, I found myself instinctively reaching, for a moment, for a remote, to see how much longer the thing had, and to jump ahead.
It's one of those gap movies, in which the Rotten Tom audience score is more than twice that of the critic's: sentimental nostalga, I think, v taste. From the reviews I bothered to look at, the best quip was from Robert Abele of the LA Times: 'It’s a rom-com both com-less and rom-less."
But who really cares; the film is not worth picking on, and it is kind of a nice success story for Nia Vardalos, an indie writer who hit some nerve some x years ago.
So 3/10--mostly harmless.
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The year is 1967. Some music from around this time: The Beatles' Sargent Pepper, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, the Doors album. On TV: Batman, Star Trek. Movies: Sound of Music, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate. I mention these for cultural context, as things most of you should be familiar with. My point being that what follows is not ancient history.
In the beginning of 1967, it was against the law in 16 states, in 32% of the country, for a "white" person to be married to a "colored" person. And in June of that year, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on these "anti-miscegenation" laws, in Loving v Virginia.
Nine years earlier, police had broken down the door of Richard and Mildred Loving, had dragged them out of bed, and had taken them to jail. The Lovings were, shortly afterward, convicted and sentenced to a year each in the state penitentiary. Those sentenced were suspended, for 25 years, provided that they leave Virginia and never, together, return.
This history, here, because I just watched the movie, Loving, again. Reviews of Loving are mostly reverential, but frequently tepid. Many found the movie too slow, too understated. The guy in the New Yorker compared it to an earlier movie, Mr. and Mrs. Loving, with Timothy Hutton as Richard. He said that that movie had some humor, some sex, and was more of a movie movie. The thought was that Loving could have been more dramatic.
There is a thought that some dramatic license, in telling real-life stories, is fine, is even necessary, to make the story into a real movie-type movie. But any dramatic license, in this story, would have been misguided. And as far as I can tell, there isn't a hint of it. There is documentary footage of the Lovings, and Joel Edgerton as Richard, and Ruth Negga as Mildred, are real, and are brilliant. And other characters--the ACLU lawyers, Richard's mother--look and sound astonishingly like their real-life counterparts, as they deliver lines straight out of recorded record.
For the drama, for the story as it is told here, we need to understand Richard. And we do. We need to see Mildred understand him. And we do. We see that she respects and loves him for what he is: a profoundly decent man. We see her, a rural Virginia girl, deciding that the city of their banishment, DC, is not a place to raise her children, away from their extended family, playing in streets instead of fields. We see her dealing with the ACLU lawyers, as Richard sits silently by. We see her dealing with reporters and cameras, in a way that Richard can't, with quiet grace. And we see Richard, frustrated, overwhelmed, but, guided by his love for his wife, deferring to her. This is drama enough for me, and it is beautiful.
Nothing in this film seems false. Everything is, as far as I can tell, sourced. For example, we see a Life photographer, played by the fantastic Michael Shannon, surreptitiously snapping this famous photo (watching Andy Griffith on TV):
We might like to see stirring courtroom speeches, but we don't need them for this story. We would like to see Richard more engaged, more defiant. But he wasn't. We would like to see the Lovings marching in the streets. But they didn't.
We would also like to see the crackers get theirs, and they do, they will, but only in time, in history, The written judicial opinion of Bazile, the original sentencing judge, denying a petition to vacate that conviction, lives on, will live on, forever:
Anyway, yes, for a few, the movie is tedious. For me it is perfect. It is a movie I will return to again and again.
Loving. 10/10
In the beginning of 1967, it was against the law in 16 states, in 32% of the country, for a "white" person to be married to a "colored" person. And in June of that year, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on these "anti-miscegenation" laws, in Loving v Virginia.
Nine years earlier, police had broken down the door of Richard and Mildred Loving, had dragged them out of bed, and had taken them to jail. The Lovings were, shortly afterward, convicted and sentenced to a year each in the state penitentiary. Those sentenced were suspended, for 25 years, provided that they leave Virginia and never, together, return.
This history, here, because I just watched the movie, Loving, again. Reviews of Loving are mostly reverential, but frequently tepid. Many found the movie too slow, too understated. The guy in the New Yorker compared it to an earlier movie, Mr. and Mrs. Loving, with Timothy Hutton as Richard. He said that that movie had some humor, some sex, and was more of a movie movie. The thought was that Loving could have been more dramatic.
There is a thought that some dramatic license, in telling real-life stories, is fine, is even necessary, to make the story into a real movie-type movie. But any dramatic license, in this story, would have been misguided. And as far as I can tell, there isn't a hint of it. There is documentary footage of the Lovings, and Joel Edgerton as Richard, and Ruth Negga as Mildred, are real, and are brilliant. And other characters--the ACLU lawyers, Richard's mother--look and sound astonishingly like their real-life counterparts, as they deliver lines straight out of recorded record.
For the drama, for the story as it is told here, we need to understand Richard. And we do. We need to see Mildred understand him. And we do. We see that she respects and loves him for what he is: a profoundly decent man. We see her, a rural Virginia girl, deciding that the city of their banishment, DC, is not a place to raise her children, away from their extended family, playing in streets instead of fields. We see her dealing with the ACLU lawyers, as Richard sits silently by. We see her dealing with reporters and cameras, in a way that Richard can't, with quiet grace. And we see Richard, frustrated, overwhelmed, but, guided by his love for his wife, deferring to her. This is drama enough for me, and it is beautiful.
Nothing in this film seems false. Everything is, as far as I can tell, sourced. For example, we see a Life photographer, played by the fantastic Michael Shannon, surreptitiously snapping this famous photo (watching Andy Griffith on TV):
We might like to see stirring courtroom speeches, but we don't need them for this story. We would like to see Richard more engaged, more defiant. But he wasn't. We would like to see the Lovings marching in the streets. But they didn't.
We would also like to see the crackers get theirs, and they do, they will, but only in time, in history, The written judicial opinion of Bazile, the original sentencing judge, denying a petition to vacate that conviction, lives on, will live on, forever:
Anyway, yes, for a few, the movie is tedious. For me it is perfect. It is a movie I will return to again and again.
Loving. 10/10
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I need to re-watch this also - thanks for the reminder. And you do a great job of setting the context.
Here's a bit more real life context:
My dad was in the U.S. Army in 1955 & 1956. He was stationed in Salzburg, Austria first, then Florence, Italy after American troops were withdrawn from Austria. He had already finished college so he got a cushy paperwork job, "driving a typewriter," as he always put it.
Soldiers stationed away from home often meet locals and have a relationship. Some fall in love. Some want to get married. At the time, the soldier needed their commander's permission to marry a local (I think the approval requirement has since been lifted).
Part of my dad's job was to process the paperwork for American soldiers wanting to marry an Austrian or Italian woman.
For Black soldiers, he was only allowed to process the paperwork if they were from a state that allowed interracial marriage. Otherwise, they were shit out of luck. And no, they couldn't simply promise to live in a different state where it was legal.
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, and it makes me like him. And I imagine he told this story, to you, to teach you something important about this country and this world. My mother did this for me, gently, here and there, and it had a great impression on me.
Thanks, Mara. And you do a nice job yourself, telling this story. I love your Dad's quip about "driving" a typewriter. I can imagine he had a lot of them,
, and it makes me like him. And I imagine he told this story, to you, to teach you something important about this country and this world. My mother did this for me, gently, here and there, and it had a great impression on me.
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He did, indeed have a lot of them - both stories and gentle suggestions/recommendations based on his experiences as a lawyer & a judge.I love your Dad's quip about "driving" a typewriter. I can imagine he had a lot of them,
One of my favorite things is when one of my now-adult step-daughters quotes him, as I love that he made such an impression on them (they were 9 and 6, respectively, when they met him). The younger of the two pointed out shortly after he died that in his humorous stories (of which there were many), he was always the butt of the joke.
Unhinged - Road rage film with a fat russle crow sitting down the entire time 
This has gotta be the laziest performance an actor can give, he was good, he's a good actor, but damn when he isn't sitting in a car seat he's sitting in a diner booth lmao
The writing at the end of this movie completely goes off the rails, the last act is a double offender when it comes to monumentally stupid writing, but the pacing and acting are fun and keeps the whole film entertaining.
This has gotta be the laziest performance an actor can give, he was good, he's a good actor, but damn when he isn't sitting in a car seat he's sitting in a diner booth lmao
The writing at the end of this movie completely goes off the rails, the last act is a double offender when it comes to monumentally stupid writing, but the pacing and acting are fun and keeps the whole film entertaining.
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yup,lol
. And what about this one:
I don't have much of an opinion about it. And I agree, Crowe is a pretty good actor, even here, even in this Exorcist-like junk. Although it always is a little troubling to see time marching on, to see Crowe turn into Orson Wells. But anyway.
(And, parenthetically, for me, one such movie, The Exorcist, is enough--we have our devil-in-the-kid movie, so let's move on. Same, probably, with zombies. Night of the Living Dead is enough. Although to be fair, I don't like zombies, as monsters, much anyway--too lumbering. I'm more of an old-school Frankensteins and Draculas and Woofmen guy. Although the innovation--fast zombies--like in World War Z or Train to Buscan, was pretty cool. But I digress.)
Anyway, Pope's Exorcist was forgettable, and I have, mostly, already forgotten it. But it did kind of weird me out to find out that there really was this guy, this priest, Gabriele Amorth, who was, in actuality, the Pope's Exorcist. He wrote books, performed over 100,000 exorcisms (some over Skype!, lol) and founded The International Association of Exorcists.
I suppose another entry in the "can't make this shite up" file. But whatever.
The Pope's Exorcist. 2.25/10--mostly junk.
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Ah exorcism. I've often lamented not taking a fictional job. They frequently pay more than actual work, and I think they are easier as well. I remember working in a Silicon Valley boiler room and we were all staying late trying to refabricate some algorithm with 20 people combining 120 years of math, science, and programming experience and training. We were making about $200 a day or so, not great. And I went home one night, and Kron 5 the Bay Area's news leader, was airing a segment about a local businessperson with a fictional job. It was a mildly cross-eyed woman wearing about 32 pieces of turquoise jewelry. She was a Feng Shui expert, as certified by another feng shui expert, and they showed her at work.
She went to someone's house and moved the sofa from one corner of the room to another, then gave a deeply intelligent speech about how the cosmos could enhance the inner spirit of a homeowner if they just hired an expert to move their furniture into the correct position relative to the center of the universe. They paid her 5 grand, and at the end of the interview, they asked her how many of these she could do in a day. She said 2-3. I just remember watching that, and realizing that my entire education was pointless, and that I could have had financial security if I'd simply gone door to door selling bigfoot insurance.
So what I'm thinking is, maybe I should quit debugging python code to make matrix math computations more controllable, and just start performing exorcisms via skype. Or maybe go full on modern work ethic and just build an automated webpage where you click on an icon to exorcise your demon, and get billed in monthly installments.
"With one-click Exorcism on my side, getting rid of the demon inside me was easy, and the payment system made it affordable"
And as far as Russel Crowe. He was a good actor. I've seen both of these movies, and it's clear that he's not really putting in the work and focus that he used to. That's ok though. Being at the top of the world and doing an amazing job for 20 years or so is nothing to sneeze at. He was fantastic in a lot of roles, and I especially liked his work in Gladiator and LA Confidential.
She went to someone's house and moved the sofa from one corner of the room to another, then gave a deeply intelligent speech about how the cosmos could enhance the inner spirit of a homeowner if they just hired an expert to move their furniture into the correct position relative to the center of the universe. They paid her 5 grand, and at the end of the interview, they asked her how many of these she could do in a day. She said 2-3. I just remember watching that, and realizing that my entire education was pointless, and that I could have had financial security if I'd simply gone door to door selling bigfoot insurance.
So what I'm thinking is, maybe I should quit debugging python code to make matrix math computations more controllable, and just start performing exorcisms via skype. Or maybe go full on modern work ethic and just build an automated webpage where you click on an icon to exorcise your demon, and get billed in monthly installments.
"With one-click Exorcism on my side, getting rid of the demon inside me was easy, and the payment system made it affordable"
And as far as Russel Crowe. He was a good actor. I've seen both of these movies, and it's clear that he's not really putting in the work and focus that he used to. That's ok though. Being at the top of the world and doing an amazing job for 20 years or so is nothing to sneeze at. He was fantastic in a lot of roles, and I especially liked his work in Gladiator and LA Confidential.
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