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Another Ghostbusters is on the horizon.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
It looks like it takes up from the end of Afterlife and continues with the new crowd and the surviving members of the original. 
In March. 

I have a love-hate relationship with the horror genre (most of it's crap, I'll readily admit) and for some reason pretty much all memorable movies I've watched lately seem to be horror or horror-adjacent. Two in no particular order:

-The Girl With All The Gifts. One of the few zombie genre movies that I find actually disturbing - actually, the only one apart from 28 Days Later. It takes aim at issues such as what does it really mean to be human and who has the right to do what in order to live. Definitely recommend.

-M3gan. The basic idea has been done before (think Chucky meets Bladerunner, with clear Black Mirror influence and references to multiple movies), the final third or so is standard issue, painting-by-numbers Hollywood, none of the acting is more than adequate - yet it contains some rather spot-on social commentary. A traumatized, orphaned child gets food and so on but other than immediate material needs the adults are all are barely going through the motions (and the parents don't seem to have been much better). The grandparents, once they lose the "contest" of custody, forget about her altogether, the aunt who "wins" uses her as a guinea pig to advance her own career and is too busy to deal with even actual physical dangers, and the therapist/social worker doesn't bat an eyelid. M3gan (a robot) herself is "raised" in pretty much the same way - she knows nothing about the world other than what she learns through an orphaned child (herself seemingly raised by screens) and through wholly unfiltered internet access with zero adult guidance. The only parenting shown apart from absentee parenting is permissive, enabling parenting of a bully who is unsubtly implied to be a sexual predator.

Chiming in to say I loved The Girl with All the Gifts, the novel, even more than the movie.

I mentioned The Girl with All the Gifts to my husband thanks to your recommendations, and apparently he already watched it without me! I think he must have asked if I would want to watch it, but I guess it didn't sound like a top choice for me, so I said go ahead.  He liked it very much and is interested in watching it again, though. 

This weekend was Shrek, The Prestige.  Neither of us had seen Shrek in years, and it was still pretty cute and funny.  The Prestige was one I kept hearing about, but neither of us had watched that one before.  I think that since it came out at the same time as The Illusionist, and neither of us are really into magic, we had both just avoided both movies.  In case you have not seen it, this one has Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as rival magicians and is a pretty dark story of obsession and revenge.  As they explain right off the bat, the prestige is the third part of the magic trick that provides resolution.  I loved this movie.  I just thought it was really well set up and executed and left me with a lot to think about.  I had read that you need to watch it several times, and I think that's probably true.  There were a few things listed in the trivia that I had missed, and I want to go back and see how those are actually introduced.  I also found out after that it's a Christopher Nolan film, and now the amount of artistry and intrigue makes more sense.  Maybe I heard about it recently on one of the podcast episodes talking about Oppenheimer and other Nolan films.  In any case, I'm really glad we watched it and look forward to doing so again sometime.

Quote from: ab_grp on February 25, 2024, 12:13:55 PMThis weekend was Shrek, The Prestige.

These DreamWorks sequels are getting out of hand....

Quote from: FishProf on February 25, 2024, 02:22:55 PM

Quote from: ab_grp on February 25, 2024, 12:13:55 PMThis weekend was Shrek, The Prestige.

These DreamWorks sequels are getting out of hand....

Ha! That movie would be something to behold.  I don't doubt that it might happen someday.

Quote from: ab_grp on February 25, 2024, 12:13:55 PMI mentioned The Girl with All the Gifts to my husband thanks to your recommendations, and apparently he already watched it without me! I think he must have asked if I would want to watch it, but I guess it didn't sound like a top choice for me, so I said go ahead.  He liked it very much and is interested in watching it again, though. 

This weekend was Shrek, The Prestige.  Neither of us had seen Shrek in years, and it was still pretty cute and funny.  The Prestige was one I kept hearing about, but neither of us had watched that one before.  I think that since it came out at the same time as The Illusionist, and neither of us are really into magic, we had both just avoided both movies.  In case you have not seen it, this one has Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as rival magicians and is a pretty dark story of obsession and revenge.  As they explain right off the bat, the prestige is the third part of the magic trick that provides resolution.  I loved this movie.  I just thought it was really well set up and executed and left me with a lot to think about.  I had read that you need to watch it several times, and I think that's probably true.  There were a few things listed in the trivia that I had missed, and I want to go back and see how those are actually introduced.  I also found out after that it's a Christopher Nolan film, and now the amount of artistry and intrigue makes more sense.  Maybe I heard about it recently on one of the podcast episodes talking about Oppenheimer and other Nolan films.  In any case, I'm really glad we watched it and look forward to doing so again sometime.

I love the Prestige. As much as I ride for Inception, if I had to choose I'd probably say Prestige is Nolan's best film.

RRR (2022, Netflix)

Clocking in at just over three hours, this movie from the biggest stars of Tollywood (yes, you read that right) is simultaneously a musical, an ultra-violent action film, a historical epic, and a romantic comedy. It is a totally ridiculous and over the top blockbuster, and yet entirely sincere, never stopping to wink at the camera or deliver a snarky one-liner. It is the most entertaining and sensational film I can remember watching. I only wish that I had seen it in the theater - preferably a theater in India.

Grade: A


May December (2023, Netflix)

This comedy/psychological thriller/meta commentary on method acting is a lot of fun, if you can get past the subject matter. And the three lead performances are all top notch - after making a bunch of forgettable Thor movies, Natalie Portman decided to remind us that she is the most talented actor in American film.

Grade: A

We watched a couple Amazon Prime movies this weekend.  My husband had sent a list of the movies coming out in March, which made me wonder what was already on Prime and available for viewing.  We have run out of DVD movies that we're very amped up to watch.  Anyway!

Red (2010): Bruce Willis is a retired black ops agent and finds himself up against some trouble, so he rounds up some of the old gang (starting with Morgan Freeman) to do battle.  It seemed to start off a little slowly but is a pretty fun movie.

Margin Call (2011): Zachary Quinto works as a risk analyst at a Wall Street firm and ends up finding an issue that could lead to big trouble for the firm and for all of Wall Street (and many Americans).  Hint: it has to do with mortgage-backed securities.  Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, and others all play roles in addressing this issue over the course of a day or so.  It's a tense situation, and I think the acting is pretty good.  Despite having read about this issue a thousand times, I still tend to lose my grasp of it.  I wish they would explain a little bit more about how it all worked and what the immediate implications were.  The Big Short went into a lot more detail that is not needed here, but some refresher on leveraging and the timing involved would have been helpful.  Still, a good business thriller, if there is such a genre.

Train to Busan (2016).  It's Gong Yoo's little girl's birthday, and he needs to take her to visit her mother in Busan.  They go by train.  The train becomes a train full of zombies.  Apparently, there has been a national outbreak of zombieism.  By this description, it's hard to see how the film can go on for nearly two hours.  However, it's about much more than zombies.  Korean directors do not seem to pull punches, and I really appreciate that.  I read something about a plan to remake this as a train to New York, and I really hope they don't.  It was a very intense horror movie and also emotional.  We were planning to watch the season 1 Broadchurch finale after.  I was almost looking forward to that show as lighter fare, if that tells you anything.  Anyway, this was a very good movie, and it was also part of my devious plan to get my husband to agree to take advantage of watching more foreign films this month on Prime (including I Saw the Devil!).  He really wanted to watch this one, so I think we're a go.

"Golda" (2023) on Kanopy

Just to note that The Prestige was originally a novel by Christopher Priest. I was staying with him for a bit while he was writing it, and he showed us clips of the various current famous stage magicians and showed us how they did their illusions. Not always at all how you would expect.

Also to note that I thought Margin Call was great.

The other night we watched Past Lives, which is a fairly obscure film even though it was nominated for an Oscar this year. It's not bad — a quiet movie in every respect — but I found the script, well, precious. Predictable and self-consciously literary and referential. I said, "Because of that one reference early on, the very last scene is going to be [a certain thing]" — and sure enough, I was right on the money. Of this year's Oscar nominees, it was better than Anatomy of a Fall, but far short of Oppenheimer and The Holdovers. Maybe on the same level as Maestro. I haven't yet seen Killers of the Flower Moon (though I read the book, which was slow), and Barbie is kind of in a different dimension.

Quote from: Hegemony on March 04, 2024, 01:18:14 AMJust to note that The Prestige was originally a novel by Christopher Priest. I was staying with him for a bit while he was writing it, and he showed us clips of the various current famous stage magicians and showed us how they did their illusions. Not always at all how you would expect.

Wow! That must have been pretty neat.  I had looked at the audiobook but hadn't picked it up.  Have you read it? And thanks for the Past Lives review.  I was sorry to hear about Anatomy of a Fall because the premise sounded pretty good. 

Yes, I've read The Prestige. It's good, but if you've seen the movie you know the ultimate thing revealed at the end. He learned a massive amount about magic and the magic business to write it.

In my Oscar-nominee quest, I'm about to embark on Poor Things. I know The Zone of Interest must be very worthy, but my capacity for grueling accounts of history has already been exceeded this year.

Watched Ordinary People (1980) the other night.  Not entirely surprising for a movie that won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor, but it was very good.  Actors acted the heck out of it.

We watched two good movies this weekend, continuing our quest to watch as many free movies on Prime as we can while they're available.  First was The Great Escape (1963), a mostly true story about WWII Allied prisoners of war trying to escape from a German prison camp.  I was a bit daunted by the topic and the nearly three-hour runtime, but I ended up loving it.  My husband had suggested we watch this one because of my fondness for movies in which I can really root for some of the characters and/or against others.  I also appreciated the tone of the movie.  It felt much like Hogan's Heroes, which I found out later was "loosely inspired by" this movie.  It had a very light feel most of the time with an undercurrent of dread.  There was some humor to it, but it was not slapstick.  Hard to describe! Lots of famous actors in this one. 

Last night was Hot Fuzz (2007).  I guess this is the second in somewhat of a trilogy, the first being Shaun of the Dead, which had some of the same actors and same director? I never saw that one, but my husband had seen both.  But I got the sense that there isn't really overlap in the stories.  This was a kind of wacky tale that I really enjoyed.  It was full of buddy cop movie tropes in a very intentional way.  Simon Pegg plays a very competent London police officer who gets moved to some out of the way village because he is outshining everyone too much.  Once he arrives, it seems like the village suddenly has a lot more crime going on.  It's very funny in a way that kind of builds through the movie, and the village mystery is intriguing.  I will try to watch the other two movies in the trilogy at some point. 

Tonight we have the Oscars.  I am curious to see which film takes Best Picture.  My guess would be Oppenheimer.  I have only seen three of the nominees (that one, Barbie, The Holdovers).  I know that a bunch of us have seen various subsets of nominees and was wondering which one people wanted would win and which one they think would win.  A friend of mine has seen all 10 and thinks Oppenheimer has the "whole package."  I was hoping to talk to my big movie buff friend this afternoon but won't get a chance to.  I know she had some catching up on movies to do.  Any thoughts? If no one sees this beforehand, then post-awards thoughts about the outcome are also welcome.  I think this is the first year in a while that I have seen even one of the nominees, let alone three (before the awards)!

Quote from: Hegemony on March 04, 2024, 02:01:01 PMIn my Oscar-nominee quest, I'm about to embark on Poor Things. I know The Zone of Interest must be very worthy, but my capacity for grueling accounts of history has already been exceeded this year.

Did you get a chance to watch it? I am really torn on whether to watch that one based on what I've seen and read.  As for Zone of Interest, one of the podcasts I listened to about the nominees seemed to think that it was quite different from other movies on the same topic (in a good way).  I have heard almost nothing about that movie, though.