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Post by berkley on Apr 24, 2024 23:21:31 GMT -5
Last week I saw a really excellent Australian crime movie called Limbo. It's about a detective working on a newly re-opened case of the disappearance of an Aboriginal girl 20 years ago in an isolated town. He gradually becomes involved with lives of some of the people he meets in the course of his investigation and this slowly opes up the social/racial problems underlying the crime and the situation in general. This is a very low-key film, but very well made and performed: all the actors do a great job and the atmosphere and pacing are finely tuned. It's shot in black and white, which makes for a very stark visual experience combined with the harsh Australian scenery.
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Post by berkley on Apr 27, 2024 15:00:02 GMT -5
Yesterday evening I caught La Bête, starring Léa Seydoux, directed by Bertrand Bonello. This was a quite fascinating science fiction movie, one of those things that's hard to describe without giving away more than I think would be conducive to appreciating it in full. I can say that there are three story strands, on that takes place in the early 1900s, one in 2014, and one in 2044: there's no mystery made of them, it's clear pretty early how these stories are related to one another, so I don't think that should be a spoiler of any kind.
My personal reaction was that the 2014 narrative didn't grab me as much as the others: it doesn't start until I think well into the 2nd half of the film and felt a little too drawn-out to me, but it is important to the overall narrative. So I wouldn't say it's a flawless piece of work, but still a must-see, IMO, for anyone interested in SF movies or films in general. I'll definitely be looking for more of Bonello's work, this being the first movie of his I've ever seen.
One more thing - I've complained recently about certain performers being under- or mis-used by film-makers (e.g. Gemma Chan in The Creator): well, Bonello really gets the most out of Léa Seydoux in this one. I think she's in nearly every shot, she's hardly off the screen for a minute. So she is very much the star of the show and has a lot of work to do to carry all the interconnected storylines. Her main co-star is also impressive - an English actor named George MacKay who reportedly learned French specially for this rôle (I thought he did very well in both French and English, and Ill be curious what RR thinks or any of our other French-speakers if they see this film). Guslagie Malanda was also really good in a part that I wish had been a little bigger as the relationship between hers and Seydoux's characters seemed to need more space to develop.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 28, 2024 17:02:02 GMT -5
Judging from the trailer only, Mr. MacKay does a very credible job; he sounds as if he's quite comfortable with the language. Like, say, Queen Elizabeth.
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Post by berkley on May 25, 2024 0:51:53 GMT -5
Judging from the trailer only, Mr. MacKay does a very credible job; he sounds as if he's quite comfortable with the language. Like, say, Queen Elizabeth.
Yes, I was surprised when I read afterwards that he learned French only for this movie - I would have guessed that he'd been speaking much longer than that and had studied it at school. I think a UK-English accent, or a certain kind of one, can sound nice when speaking French. I remember a character in Truffaut's Day for Night (Nuit Blanche), the husband of Jaqueline Bisset's character, who also spoke French that I thought came across nicely even though it was in a marked English (British) accent. Anglo-Canadians like myself don't do as well, to my ears.
I hope you get a chance to see La Bête as I'm curious to hear what you think of it.
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Post by berkley on May 25, 2024 1:08:49 GMT -5
Tonight I saw a really unusual movie that I think every film-fan will want to have a look at, especially if they're curious about things out of the ordinary: Aggro Dr1ft, directed by Harmony Korine. Visually unlike anything else I've seen in its use of colour - nothing looks "normal", everything is like something out of some weird infra-red scanner filtered through who knows what else - and the sound, script, and acting are only slightly less odd.
The most ordinary thing about it is the basic premise and plot: an assassin hired to kill a gang lord of some kind. But the treatment of this set-up is so original that I don't think anyone will mind. I'll definitely want to see it again, as I didn't catch everything on this first viewing. My one criticism would be that even though it's only 80 minutes long, there's a longish middle section where it drags a bit as far as the narrative goes. Visually it's never boring, but as far as the content as opposed to the treatment or presentation goes, that middle third or so felt to me like it could have been tightened up just a little.
But perhaps I'll feel differently next time I see it - it's the kind of movie where you get the feeling that you're not going to catch every nuance on a single viewing. I now have to go back and look for Korine's earlier films - this is the first one I've seen.
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Post by thwhtguardian on May 26, 2024 8:12:21 GMT -5
I finally got to see Dune: Part II today and it was a pretty impressive film that really did capture the feel of the novel. And while I'm glad they;re doing Messiah I'm a little disappointed that Villeneuve isn't interested in doing Children of Dune which was by far my favorite. With how successful the films have been I'm sure WB will want to continue so we may see that book get adapted but with how well Villeneuve has done so far it's just too bad it won't be done by him.
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Post by berkley on Jun 3, 2024 0:06:39 GMT -5
I finally got to see Dune: Part II today and it was a pretty impressive film that really did capture the feel of the novel. And while I'm glad they;re doing Messiah I'm a little disappointed that Villeneuve isn't interested in doing Children of Dune which was by far my favorite. With how successful the films have been I'm sure WB will want to continue so we may see that book get adapted but with how well Villeneuve has done so far it's just too bad it won't be done by him. I really like Children of Dune too, probably my 2nd favourite of the series or perhaps even tied for first.
I only got around to seeing Dune 2 now as well. It's been many years since I read the book and I don't claim to remember every detail but my impression is that this 2nd part played more fast and loose with the novel than part 1 did. I suppose we just have to accept that these movies weren't meant to be a faithful adaptation of Herbert's book in the way that Jackson's LotR movies were, or at least tried to be, of Tolkien's; more of an "inspired by" or "based on" approach. As usual in these cases, I thought most of the changes weren't for the better.
To get the negatives out of the way, the acting was also a let-down: some of it was straight mis-casting, for me: starting with Timothee Chalomet who is completely unconvincing as heir to a ducal House and messianic leader of a planetary rebellion. But that wasn't the entire problem because even Florence Pugh, who usually impresses me so much in everything I see her in, was lack-lustre here. So I suspect part of the problem was a lack of clarity in how some of these characters should be played: there seemed to be no idea that Paul Atreides shouldn't sound exactly like a contemporary American teenager whose biggest worry is whether the girl he likes will go with him to the prom; or that Gurney Halleck shouldn't sound like a California surfer-dude (which he did at times - but not all the time, which makes me think the casting wasn't the whole problem). Or Irulan like a bland, mid-western housewife; or etc.
On the plus side, I thought this was more exciting than the first movie, even though the first section with Paul adjusting to the Fremen way of life and becoming Muad D'ib was dragged out just a little longer than it needed to be, for me. It's along movie, nearly three hours, but I never felt the length (except for needing to go to the bathroom, but that's every movie now, not just the long ones). I thought visually it was more impressive than the first movie - including the desert sequences. The fight scenes, though sometimes still a bit too elaborately choreographed, were much less so than in Part I - no scenes like the one with Duncan Idaho taking down ten Sardaukar all by himself without breaking a sweat.
As so often, I imagine I'm being much harder on this than I would if I didn't like the Books so much and also if I didn't think Villeneuve was capable of much better. But then, David Lynch might be my favourite director and his Dune wasn't a great artistic success either. Maybe Dune is one of those things that's impossible to capture in full and the best we can hope for is that each new version will capture some aspect of whatever it was appealed to us as readers.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jun 3, 2024 18:22:21 GMT -5
I finally got to see Dune: Part II today and it was a pretty impressive film that really did capture the feel of the novel. And while I'm glad they;re doing Messiah I'm a little disappointed that Villeneuve isn't interested in doing Children of Dune which was by far my favorite. With how successful the films have been I'm sure WB will want to continue so we may see that book get adapted but with how well Villeneuve has done so far it's just too bad it won't be done by him. I really like Children of Dune too, probably my 2nd favourite of the series or perhaps even tied for first.
I only got around to seeing Dune 2 now as well. It's been many years since I read the book and I don't claim to remember every detail but my impression is that this 2nd part played more fast and loose with the novel than part 1 did. I suppose we just have to accept that these movies weren't meant to be a faithful adaptation of Herbert's book in the way that Jackson's LotR movies were, or at least tried to be, of Tolkien's; more of an "inspired by" or "based on" approach. As usual in these cases, I thought most of the changes weren't for the better.
To get the negatives out of the way, the acting was also a let-down: some of it was straight mis-casting, for me: starting with Timothee Chalomet who is completely unconvincing as heir to a ducal House and messianic leader of a planetary rebellion. But that wasn't the entire problem because even Florence Pugh, who usually impresses me so much in everything I see her in, was lack-lustre here. So I suspect part of the problem was a lack of clarity in how some of these characters should be played: there seemed to be no idea that Paul Atreides shouldn't sound exactly like a contemporary American teenager whose biggest worry is whether the girl he likes will go with him to the prom; or that Gurney Halleck shouldn't sound like a California surfer-dude (which he did at times - but not all the time, which makes me think the casting wasn't the whole problem). Or Irulan like a bland, mid-western housewife; or etc.
On the plus side, I thought this was more exciting than the first movie, even though the first section with Paul adjusting to the Fremen way of life and becoming Muad D'ib was dragged out just a little longer than it needed to be, for me. It's along movie, nearly three hours, but I never felt the length (except for needing to go to the bathroom, but that's every movie now, not just the long ones). I thought visually it was more impressive than the first movie - including the desert sequences. The fight scenes, though sometimes still a bit too elaborately choreographed, were much less so than in Part I - no scenes like the one with Duncan Idaho taking down ten Sardaukar all by himself without breaking a sweat.
As so often, I imagine I'm being much harder on this than I would if I didn't like the Books so much and also if I didn't think Villeneuve was capable of much better. But then, David Lynch might be my favourite director and his Dune wasn't a great artistic success either. Maybe Dune is one of those things that's impossible to capture in full and the best we can hope for is that each new version will capture some aspect of whatever it was appealed to us as readers.
Dune is definitely one of those books that I think is pretty darn hard to really capture on film, in part because I think the element that always impressed me about the books was just how full of culture it all was. There were just so many subtle layers to the world that are conveyed in the text which I just don't know how you'd get visually. The beauty of the cinematography in these two films came close to capturing that feeling of place that was so important to the books but it's an imperfect translation. I definitely agree that Chalomet didn't really capture Paul for me, I definitely gave him the benefit of the doubt and hoped he'd find the right level of gravitas but I think he just came across as just a little too foppish. It wasn't so bad that it completely took me out but it definitely wasn't my favorite element. Still and all, despite the flaws they were definitely entertaining films and I think they're probably as good as we're ever likely to get as far as adaptations of Dune go. |
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Post by berkley on Jun 3, 2024 22:32:30 GMT -5
I really like Children of Dune too, probably my 2nd favourite of the series or perhaps even tied for first.
I only got around to seeing Dune 2 now as well. It's been many years since I read the book and I don't claim to remember every detail but my impression is that this 2nd part played more fast and loose with the novel than part 1 did. I suppose we just have to accept that these movies weren't meant to be a faithful adaptation of Herbert's book in the way that Jackson's LotR movies were, or at least tried to be, of Tolkien's; more of an "inspired by" or "based on" approach. As usual in these cases, I thought most of the changes weren't for the better.
To get the negatives out of the way, the acting was also a let-down: some of it was straight mis-casting, for me: starting with Timothee Chalomet who is completely unconvincing as heir to a ducal House and messianic leader of a planetary rebellion. But that wasn't the entire problem because even Florence Pugh, who usually impresses me so much in everything I see her in, was lack-lustre here. So I suspect part of the problem was a lack of clarity in how some of these characters should be played: there seemed to be no idea that Paul Atreides shouldn't sound exactly like a contemporary American teenager whose biggest worry is whether the girl he likes will go with him to the prom; or that Gurney Halleck shouldn't sound like a California surfer-dude (which he did at times - but not all the time, which makes me think the casting wasn't the whole problem). Or Irulan like a bland, mid-western housewife; or etc.
On the plus side, I thought this was more exciting than the first movie, even though the first section with Paul adjusting to the Fremen way of life and becoming Muad D'ib was dragged out just a little longer than it needed to be, for me. It's along movie, nearly three hours, but I never felt the length (except for needing to go to the bathroom, but that's every movie now, not just the long ones). I thought visually it was more impressive than the first movie - including the desert sequences. The fight scenes, though sometimes still a bit too elaborately choreographed, were much less so than in Part I - no scenes like the one with Duncan Idaho taking down ten Sardaukar all by himself without breaking a sweat.
As so often, I imagine I'm being much harder on this than I would if I didn't like the Books so much and also if I didn't think Villeneuve was capable of much better. But then, David Lynch might be my favourite director and his Dune wasn't a great artistic success either. Maybe Dune is one of those things that's impossible to capture in full and the best we can hope for is that each new version will capture some aspect of whatever it was appealed to us as readers.
Dune is definitely one of those books that I think is pretty darn hard to really capture on film, in part because I think the element that always impressed me about the books was just how full of culture it all was. There were just so many subtle layers to the world that are conveyed in the text which I just don't know how you'd get visually. The beauty of the cinematography in these two films came close to capturing that feeling of place that was so important to the books but it's an imperfect translation. I definitely agree that Chalomet didn't really capture Paul for me, I definitely gave him the benefit of the doubt and hoped he'd find the right level of gravitas but I think he just came across as just a little too foppish. It wasn't so bad that it completely took me out but it definitely wasn't my favorite element. Still and all, despite the flaws they were definitely entertaining films and I think they're probably as good as we're ever likely to get as far as adaptations of Dune go.
I still enjoyed the films, in spite of the things I disliked. Paul Atreides would be a difficult part to play for anyone. Kyle MacLachlan is one of my favourite actors but I don't think he was right for the character either. Along similar lines, I can't think of a really good portrayal of Alexander the Great in any of the movie versions I've seen.
I forgot to mention Léa Seydoux - she was excellent, but her part was so small she was more or less wasted in the film. I'm surprised they got such a big name to play such a throw-away rôle - unless it's a set-up for a bigger part in the next movie? I can't recall her character from the books, to be honest, but I don't remember her being in Dune Messiah. Walken was too old for the Emperor, I thought. Skarsgaard was good as Baron Harkonnen - better than in Part I because he got away from the over-obvious imitation of Brando in Apocalypse Now he gave in that first movie. The guy who played Feyd Rautha gave an interesting performance but I don't think the changes they made to that character were a good idea. It might have been interesting to see that actor take on the Paul Atreides rôle.
I think there's a good argument to be made that it should have been three films. For example, there didn't seem to be quite enough time left for the last section, after the emperor comes into the conflict more directly. But you couldn't really cut too much from the story of Paul and Jessica with the Fremen because that's so important; and you'd couldn't compress it too much either because it needs time to develop and can't be passed over too quickly. If they had gone with three films, they could have ended the first one just a little sooner and shifted the earlier parts of Paul and Jessica in the desert, meeting the Fremen, etc to the second movie, and then the third movie could have been the political intrigue with the Great Houses, the end-game with the emperor, etc - there's more than enough material with all that to make a long, epic film of its own.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 17, 2024 4:24:17 GMT -5
This one still counts as 'new' I guess; anyway, I recently caught The Red Turtle (2016)...
It's directed and co-written by Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit, and co-produced by the famed Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli. It involves a man who - caught in a storm, possibly after a shipwreck - washes up on a deserted island. Initially, he builds several rafts to leave, but each time it gets busted up from below whenever he gets a little farther from the island. He finally sees that it's being done by a rather large, red sea turtle. Not long after he swims ashore that final time, the red turtle also crawls up onto the beach. What happens then gets to the heart of what the story is about (which can be interpreted in several ways, I think). This is kind of like a melancholy fairy tale or fable, and the narrative slips into dreams or dream-like sequences several times. There is no dialogue, just music and the animation is quite lovely.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 21, 2024 3:18:31 GMT -5
Just watched Confess, Fletch (2022) last night...
...and found it pretty enjoyable. It's a good comedy/mystery flick - carried by a really good cast, particularly Jon Hamm in the title role and Roy Wood Jr. as the sleep-deprived Boston PD detective. It's a worthy successor to the two Fletch movies made in the 1980s (yes, those two movies are a guilty pleasure of mine - rare examples in which ere I actually like Chevy Chase in a lead role).
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Post by berkley on Jun 22, 2024 0:46:30 GMT -5
Just watched Confess, Fletch (2022) last night... ...and found it pretty enjoyable. It's a good comedy/mystery flick - carried by a really good cast, particularly Jon Hamm in the title role and Roy Wood Jr. as the sleep-deprived Boston PD detective. It's a worthy successor to the two Fletch movies made in the 1980s (yes, those two movies are a guilty pleasure of mine - rare examples in which ere I actually like Chevy Chase in a lead role). Like so many fans of that show, I thought Jon Hamm was amazing in Mad Men, but I have yet to see him in anything else - maybe this will be my first. I should look up what he's done since the series ended to see if there's anything else that sounds good. I remember at one time getting the impression that he might be trying too hard to avoid Draper-type parts - the handsome guy with hidden depths, or however one wants to over-simplify it into a catch-phrase. But I think he's so good at it he shouldn't turn away from it altogether. I could see him playing Philip Marlowe, for example, if he got the balance between.
I read the first Fletch book way back and remember lking it but not much else, except it wasn't 100% comedy, more a pretty solid detective novel with more comedy than the average hard-boiled story.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jun 23, 2024 6:30:51 GMT -5
Watched The Wrath of Becky (2023) last night...
The trailer really provides you with an outline of the basic plot (and, like many trailers, gives away way too much): a sixteen year-old girl pisses off three obnoxious sexist/racist types in a diner where she waits tables. They follow her home and, among other things, rough her up and steal her dog after bonking it with a baseball bat. It ends up they pissed off the wrong person, because she decides to get revenge - and her dog back - so she tracks them down, and it turns out they are a cell in a large, nation-wide white supremacist organization. Much mayhem ensues. This is a very violent yet strangely satisfying movie. The only part I didn't like very much was a bit at the very end that's possibly a set-up for another sequel (this one is apparently a sequel to a similar movie, just called Becky, which I had never heard of before).
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 4, 2024 23:04:02 GMT -5
Just watched Guy Ritchie's The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare....
The trailer stamps "true story" all over it but it has about as much connection with the "true story" of Operation Postmaster as Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films did with Conan Doyle's stories. Oh, some real names are used and some ships actually were stolen from Fernando Po; but, that is about it.
It's the usual Ritchie stuff, stylized dialogue, "don't give a s#$%" attitude, rebellious characters, use of popular music to add atmosphere and nicely shot, though some choppy edits in action scenes and some quirky characters. It's entertaining enough if you take it along the lines of the average commando mission action movie, like The Dirty Dozen and ignore the marketing that it is a remotely true representation of the actual story. It doesn't even try with factual details and the Germans are pulp Nazis, with the main German figure psychopathic sadist, who just needs a monocle, swagger stick and jodhpurs to complete the look. The raiding force are mostly criminals and anti-authority figures, instead of the actual group of highly trained members of No. 62 Commando, aka The Small Scale Raiding Force, a commando unit under the command of the Special Operations Executive. Ian Fleming is inserted into the SOE, despite working for the head of Naval Intelligence, though he did act as a liason with other commands. They also call the head of the SOE M, despite that be a fiction of Fleming's, for the head of MI-6. In reality, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, the real name of MI-6, was traditionally called C, after influential head Mansfield Cumming, who signed documents with the initial of his surname.
If you know your history, you can play a drinking game revolving around anachronisms and factual errors, such as a German party where officers listen to records of Bertold Brecht, from The Threepenny Opera, despite being outlawed by the Nazi government. Alternatively, you can drink every time someone is shot with a silenced weapon or stabbed with a knife or arrow. The bodycount is right up there with Where Eagles Dare.
It's no Guns of Navarone or even Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; but it is entertaining enough, depending on your tolerance for killing in a wartime setting.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jul 5, 2024 8:35:03 GMT -5
I just finished watching a film that just might hit that francophone sweet spot for you Roquefort Raider : Under Paris or Sous la Seine( I guess us English speakers are expected not to know what the Seine river is). It's a schlocky summer shark fest, and the science is... let's say questionable at best, but there is a lot of fun to be had. |
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