Movie Thread

[Sun_Worshiper]

Watched La La Land for the first time last night. It seemed very long and very boring. I'm wondering what I missed. I mean, Ryan Gosling is handsome AF, but he can't sing, can't dance, and can barely act. Other than "We don't always get to live our very best lives, but that's okay if we can still be an international movie star or a cool jazz pianist," I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of this movie.

Any insight into my deficiencies (other than living in fly-over country and not caring at all about Los Angeles) would be appreciated.

I saw this in the theater and enjoyed it. I remember thinking Emma Stone was especially great and Gosling was fine although indeed not a great musical performer (he is a good actor imo).

With some distance, it is probably a little overrated and didn't merit the kinds of awards buzz that it got, but Hollywood loves movies about the entertainment industry.

[RatGuy]

Watched La La Land for the first time last night. It seemed very long and very boring. I'm wondering what I missed. I mean, Ryan Gosling is handsome AF, but he can't sing, can't dance, and can barely act. Other than "We don't always get to live our very best lives, but that's okay if we can still be an international movie star or a cool jazz pianist," I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of this movie.

Any insight into my deficiencies (other than living in fly-over country and not caring at all about Los Angeles) would be appreciated.

Ok my theater colleague teaches the movie as an exercise in design, and she says that it's really the final scene that nails it.

My English colleague who teaches film says the movie plays with expectations — if they wanted it to be a musical they would've cast actors that can sing and dance. You're expecting Hairspray after the first scene, but then it subverts those expectations. She also calls it a love letter to the idea of vintage Hollywood, not its reality.

[Sun_Worshiper]

^^^ It is a great final scene.

And I remember audible gasps in the theater when the big reveal towards the end happens.

[RatGuy]

I watched The Dry last night, and it was excellent. Tonight I plan on watching Force of Nature: The Dry 2 which seems like a dumb title even for marketing wonks.

[Hegemony]

We rewatched Gladiator last night, in preparation for Gladiator 2, which is coming out in November. Gladiator was just as fabulous as I had remembered. Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix are both superb. For reasons that are crystal clear if you watch the first one, neither will appear in the second one. The second one also has a clear plot twist (revealed in the trailer), which I think is a mistake, and besmirches Maximus's character. The trailer for the sequel also shows that it has a ludicrous amount of cgi and some ridiculous special effects (the guy balancing on the back of the galloping rhino, for instance). I'm sorry because I hate it when a substandard sequel casts a shadow back on a brilliant first movie, as is the case in about a thousand examples.

[fishbrains]

Watched La La Land for the first time last night. It seemed very long and very boring. I'm wondering what I missed. I mean, Ryan Gosling is handsome AF, but he can't sing, can't dance, and can barely act. Other than "We don't always get to live our very best lives, but that's okay if we can still be an international movie star or a cool jazz pianist," I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of this movie.

Any insight into my deficiencies (other than living in fly-over country and not caring at all about Los Angeles) would be appreciated.

Ok my theater colleague teaches the movie as an exercise in design, and she says that it's really the final scene that nails it.

My English colleague who teaches film says the movie plays with expectations — if they wanted it to be a musical they would've cast actors that can sing and dance. You're expecting Hairspray after the first scene, but then it subverts those expectations. She also calls it a love letter to the idea of vintage Hollywood, not its reality.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on La La Land. My students picked it for a writing we're going to do, and I was panicking a bit.

[ab_grp]

Last weekend, we watched National Treasure (2004) on Friday.  We were just in the mood for some fun action.  It wasn't a bad movie, but of course there were plenty of plot holes and stretches of the imagination.  I had never seen it, so for others who haven't, the main character (Nicolas Cage) has been following in the family footsteps of seeking some treasure alluded to by one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.  Of course, his family's name is a joke to the historians who study this stuff in a scholarly way and who think all the talk of masons and so forth is BS.  Well, Nic actually gets on the trail of this treasure, and he intrigues a hot lady historian enough that she joins him in his shenanigans.  Meanwhile, another hunter of the treasure will use his diabolical means to try to get to it first, no matter the cost.  It was entertaining enough.

Some kind of good karma must have been earned (not sure what I did to deserve it), because on that Friday I also got a notification that Paddington 2 (2017) was now free on Prime.  ! So, of course we watched that on Saturday.  It was a really adorable movie.  With the addition of new players such as Brendan Gleeson, there were plenty of hijinks as Paddington gets set up for a crime he didn't commit and needs some help to clear his good name.  I think it would be hard to dislike Paddington, despite all the trouble he gets himself and others into.  Hugh Grant chews the scenery in his villainous role.  In the trivia, we were reminded of where we had heard that this was the best movie ever.  It was in a convo in a different movie (involving Nic Cage!), and IIRC the characters were high.  Still, it was a fun movie.

This weekend was Date Night (2010) (on Friday and See How They Run (2022) on Saturday.  I had seen the first movie before but didn't remember much of it.  Steve Carell and Tina Fey play a married couple who try to put some vavoom back in their marriage by having a date night.  When they take the table reservation of a couple that hadn't shown, mistaken identity ensues, and suddenly they have unwanted company (bad guys).  It's fun, but it doesn't hit the notes the same as the best of this genre of movie. 

I hadn't heard of the second movie at all, but my husband saw it mentioned somewhere, and it sounded pretty good.  It's got a lot of meta going on.  It's the 1950s, and an Agatha Christie adaptation is being staged (The Mousetrap), starring Richard Attenborough.  There is also work being done to adapt it for the screen, but the director of that movie (Adrien Brody) apparently doesn't get the honey-flies metaphor and makes a lot of enemies.  As the most unlikable character, then, he gets bumped off.  The detectives investigating (an inexperienced constable, Saoirse Ronan, and a seasoned but flawed detective, Sam Rockwell) must try to figure out which of the many enemies committed the crime.  I think that the way it played out was pretty clever, and it was enjoyable to watch.  It might have lagged a bit, but it was intriguing.  I am not sure if I've seen Ronan in anything previously, but she and Rockwell made a pretty good team.  I think the movie could have been better (had good bones), but I'm glad we watched it.

[spork]

Tried watching Oppenheimer last night. Gave up after 20 minutes. A bombastic bore. Please stop with the repeated flashes of light/water as symbols of pathos and quantum physics.