movies What's the last film you watched? And rate it!

Woah I'll have to check that out! fam recently added 3 premium sterns to the poolhouse.
Godzilla, Jurrasic Park, and Avengers, they're WAY more fun than the old ones from the 80s.
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.
 
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.
 
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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):

1695197101250.jpeg

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:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

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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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.

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 you do a great job of setting the context.
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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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.
He did, indeed have a lot of them - both stories and gentle suggestions/recommendations based on his experiences as a lawyer & a judge.

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.
 
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Unhinged - Road rage film with a fat russle crow sitting down the entire time.

yup,lol :yes:. 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.

00363-2930878319.png


"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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I rather liked The Pope's Exorcist. Dudes, people get old. People tend to get heavier as they get older. It's the nature of things. Crowe was always on the pudgy side. Not so long ago I saw an indie or a foreign film with a very similar premise. Not able to recall its name. I couldn't help but wonder if the Hollywood filmmakers had seen the earlier, smaller film. It was pretty decent too. The ending of TPE pulled it over the finish line for me, more-or-less.

Jeruzalem. Rated C-. Its production value is quite high. But it suffers like so many horror films from its dependency upon its characters being dumb, dumb, so dumb…and selfish, and immoral, and shitty, and irrational. Oh, and there's an unforgivable, cheap little twist near the end I won't spoil beyond that, but shame on them. Still, if you're a horror film or a zombie film fan it's probably worth at least one watch.

Devil's Workshop. Rated C+ to B-. Kind of a decent little horror film. I liked the actors. Timothy Granaderos is very appealing. Radha Mitchell is great as ever. Emile Hirsch is a standout who needs more work, screen time, and accolades; check out his work in Never Grow Old. Damn, given that's it Halloween time, also check out Autopsy of Jane Doe, a stellar horror film.

Meg 2: The Trench. Rated C+. It's a dumb and somewhat fun monster flick. Emphasis on the dumb, but not as dumb as Jerzalem. They spent a lot of money on it, so that helps.

Inside. Rated B. Arthouse film. It kept my interest, despite its barebone premise and set. Dafoe is simply one of the top actors ever.
 
I also watched The Meg 2. It was missing a lot of what made the first movie....... adequate.

To actually review the Pope's Exorcist, I thought it was a fairly generic 2 star movie. I did enjoy it, but I think it was just good to see Russel Crowe again. While the role was one of a strong and intense person doing dangerous work, I couldn't shake the feeling that he looked..... happy. It was as though he was actually pretty happy with his life, and was really enjoying making the film, and was only giving a basic effort to actually hide that under the character. I didn't actually mind that much. The whole exorcism thing has never made even the remotest amount of sense on any level, so suspension of disbelief wasn't as much of a consideration as usual.

Ok, so to close the book on all exorcism plotlines in the future, I don't believe that 100 foot demons with unlimited power step across worlds to inhabit small children so they can lay in bed and thrash around. Actually, I just don't believe in demons. Even if one was to casually accept all that, or listen to some insane justification of why that should be a thing, this multi hour process where some guy comes out and repeats magic phrases to the demon until it leaves, is both dull and nonsensical. Ok, I'm a pan dimensional member of a supernatural army that exists within a lake of fire older than time, and having made the questionable decision to imprison myself within the weakest 5 year old I can find, my master plan is to invade the mortal realm, unless...... someone repeats a sentence several times? It just feels like these demons are rather easily stymied. And why wouldn't a demon simply posses the president of a nation, or a general, you know, someone with the ability to defend themselves from perils such as a guy shouting phrases at them? I'm just not sure that the basic logic here makes sense.

Also, if people could stop making heist movies, that would be great also.
 
The American Cinematheque reopened the oldest movie theater in Hollywood
after a 3 year renovation restoring it to its original 1922 look. They opened with
"The Killer" the new film from David Fincher.

Nothing special about the movie. Great cast, great directing but a paint-by-numbers
plot. Erik Messerschmidt's photography is excellent. It just all seemed so dark and
moody - yes, that's Fincher. An example of VO working well. I would recommend it
to anyone who likes Fincher.

However, the "Ultra Cinemetheque 70" that is going on has given me the opportunity
to see some great "oldies" projected on 70mm. Wild Bunch on Thursday, 2001 tonight
(Friday), Aliens on Saturday, Lawrence of Arabia on Sunday and Alien on Monday.

I'm so glad to have this theater and this programing back in Hollywood!
 
Blue Beetle

Available on MAX so i checked it out... really, surprisingly bad.
The LEAST FUN superhero movie ever made.

There's not a single scene in the entire movie where the kid has fun or enjoys being the blue beetle.
WTF DC? How can you be this far off the mark
 
Finally saw @mlesemann 's film

Detours

Took me so long because it felt insufficient to watch it alone!
Especially after Mara helped me out with some writing structure problems this year, I've been trying to get my family to watch it with me.

My attempt at a thanks by bringing some extra eyeballs to her film, but I can't even convince my dad to watch Picard season 3 and he's a lifelong trekkie so that should give you a clue how much pull I have 😵

Honestly it was looking bleak after like 8 months of biding my time, I was starting to think I'd just have to watch it on my own, but the patience paid off and I had an opportunity during thanks giving to put it on.

Mara's last film was surviving family, and Detours is about a father and daughter, so I billed this as a family movie.
And then the opening scene came on :censored:

The opening scene had a tone that matches a "late night comedy" genre and totally caught me off guard
Brother's kids weren't there so it was fine. Watched with parents, grandma and cousin.

All of the jokes landed, seemed like a lot scenes had a button on the end of them that elicited a laugh.
Near the end of the movie I was surprised to see that the cop was north carolina, like damn they're in NC still? I thought they'd be in georgia by now. Then the movie skipped past two states SC, GA and went straight to FL. NBD but something I noticed.

My cousin had a critique of the lighting the morning after the hookup, that it didn't look like the sun and instead had a weird 'bright light' quality.

At the end my mom asked if there was a sequel and she thought there would be a sequel with the dad moving down to FL and them having their lives tg down there. She wanted more !

Great job with this movie Mara :)
 
First: thank you VERY much for watching Detours @sfoster - I really appreciate it and I'm glad you & your family enjoyed it.

Apologies that the opening scene was a bit of a language shocker :)
Tubi does list it as TV-MA - "mature audiences and may be unsuitable for those under 17" - but no one ever looks at that (including me).

My cousin had a critique of the lighting the morning after the hookup, that it didn't look like the sun and instead had a weird 'bright light' quality.
Tip of my (metaphorical) cap to your cousin: the clouds rolled in & it started to rain while we were shooting that scene. We weren't going to have the actress (TONY winner Deirdre O'Connell) any other day, so we had to do the best we could.
Near the end of the movie I was surprised to see that the cop was north carolina, like damn they're in NC still? I thought they'd be in georgia by now. Then the movie skipped past two states SC, GA and went straight to FL. NBD but something I noticed.
Yeah, I hear you and we definitely joked about it, although they were briefly in Savannah Georgia (droopy trees and walking around the town square) and Myrtle Beach SC (Jennifer out for a run and going by the amusement park).

Here's the inside scoop: after we had a rough cut done, we brought it to someone whose opinion we highly respected to get input. He said that it was all there, but the emotional arc was off. It was going up and down instead of changing at the midpoint. After some discussion, I figured out what he meant, and we re-cut from what I knew the mid-point needed to be (Paul Sorvino & the cookies), with the people & the story being happier and more optimistic after that.

The result is that we moved some scenes out of the order in which they were shot - the proper geographic order - in order to make the emotions work better. So some scenes that we shot in SC & GA ended up being used earlier in the movie than where they actually "occurred."

At the end my mom asked if there was a sequel and she thought there would be a sequel with the dad moving down to FL and them having their lives tg down there. She wanted more !

Please tell your mom that I 100% want to make THAT sequel! Now all I need is the money :)

Again - thanks for watching and for your kind words.
 
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An entertaining film from the 90s, IDK if I've ever seen Joe Pesci as a leading actor before.
I'll give it a 3/5, pretty good score for an older film

THE SUPER


FULL MOVIE FREE ON YOUTUBE:
 
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NYAD 4/5

In 2013 a retirement-age woman swam for 2.5 days straight from florida to cuba.
How did I not hear about this??? 2013 was a really dark year for me, maybe I missed it, maybe it wasn't bigger news?

What a tough fucking lady, a lot tougher than I am.


Real Woman:



The Mule 3/5

First time I've seen Clint Eastwood not playing a badass, this time he is a old dude that grows flowers and transitions to drug smuggling.
Good flick, eastwood's still got it.

There's nothing bad about this movie, but also no specifically amazing scenes or reasons to rewatch, but it's good!

Old Dads 3/5

Directed by Bill Burr... Great job! Funny movie, funny cast, and the directing is actually pretty interesting too.
Some of the characters and situations in this movie are so aggrivating to watch, he was really effective with his directing technique.
 
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