Movie Thread

[hmaria1609]

Coming Christmas 2021: the "Downton Abbey" sequel
https://tellyvisions.org/2021/04/19/downton-abbey-2-announced-arriving-christmas-2021
Actors Jim Carter and Hugh Bonneville have talked about seeing & reading the script for the sequel at one time or another.

[mamselle]

Yes, I think I saw a Graham Norton sequence when one of them mentioned it.

M.

[spork]

Watched the documentary Knock Down the House on Netflix earlier this week. I liked it a lot -- good depiction of grass roots politics in the USA.

[Hegemony]

Saw "Nomadland." If you've seen the trailer, imagine what you think the rest of the movie will be like. It was exactly like that. It was lyrical and melancholy, and stayed constant in tone.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Lucy the Human Chimp

Lucy was taken in by a human couple (psychologists, running a sort of experiment to see how Lucy would turn out if nurtured in a human environment) and raised as their daughter. Everything went fine until she hit sexual maturity and began destroying their house and scaring off their human friends and family. So the couple decided to integrate her into the wild by taking her, along with her caretaker, to a site in the Gambia that helps captive chimps transition to nature. The film is mostly an interview with the caretaker, Janice Carter, who moved with Lucy and other Chimps into the Gambian jungle, where she lived with them for several years.

This is very interesting subject matter, but the journey is a little slow, some of the reenactments are cringeworthy, and there isn't much on the ethics of the initial experiment or the choice to integrate Lucy (who had never been around another chimpanzee) into the wild. Despite these frustrating aspects I enjoyed it overall and was captivated.

B+

[ergative]

Shadow and Bone

What fun! Really nice visual world-building, and I thought the character interpretations (of the characters from Six of Crows, the only book in this universe I've read) were well done. I enjoyed every minute.

[cathwen]

We just watched The Courier on Amazon last night.  The plot revolves around an English businessman recruited by the  British (MI6) to obtain secret documents on Soviet missile development that eventually led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.  It was gripping the entire way through—both my husband and I were in our early teens when this happened, so we remember it fairly well (although of course, we had no idea of what was going on behind the scenes; probably few did).  Benedict Cumberbatch and Rachel Brosnahan star. 

[spork]

Recently watched two semi-old movies on Netflix:

• Crazy, Stupid, Love, starring Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei, and Kevin Bacon. With such a fantastic cast, you'd think it would be a great movie, but no. The movie's 2 hour 20 minutes running time could have been cut by at least a third and it would have been much better.
• The Whole Nine Yards, starring Matthew Perry, Bruce Willis, Michael Clarke Duncan, Rosanna Arquette, and two other blonde Caucasian actresses (Amanda Peet, Natasha Henstridge) who I thought were actually the same person for much of the movie -- I have a hard time distinguishing between white women and thought one actress playing two roles was part of the plot line. It was an entertaining, mildly amusing comedy: a mob hitman moves in next door to a dentist, and everyone wants everyone else dead. A good popcorn movie that doesn't require any deep thought.

[statsgeek]

We actually went to a movie theatre and saw Raya and the Last Dragon.  So much better than the previews led me to believe.  Disney needs a new preview team; the number of good movies I'd have missed if I didn't go see them "because it'd Disney, can't be too bad" is growing. 

[ergative]

We started watching the 1975 adaptation of North and South starring Captain Picard as Mr Thornton. Bless him, he's trying so hard to do a 'Northern' accent and failing so badly at it.

[ab_grp]

We've been watching more TV series at night but decided to watch a movie last night.  Husband had suggested A Knight's Tale with Heath Ledger.  It was a little dopey at times but pretty sweet and enjoyable.  A fun movie with a good cast.

[mamselle]

We started watching the 1975 adaptation of North and South starring Captain Picard as Mr Thornton. Bless him, he's trying so hard to do a 'Northern' accent and failing so badly at it.

I think I read that book, nit long ago, very interesting.

But isn't he (I assume you mean Sir Patrick?) from the North himself? I thought I saw that somewhere...now I'll have to look it up!

M.

[ergative]

We started watching the 1975 adaptation of North and South starring Captain Picard as Mr Thornton. Bless him, he's trying so hard to do a 'Northern' accent and failing so badly at it.

I think I read that book, nit long ago, very interesting.

But isn't he (I assume you mean Sir Patrick?) from the North himself? I thought I saw that somewhere...now I'll have to look it up!

M.

His Wikipedia page says Mirfield, which is in Yorkshire, so I guess so. But I must say, his acquired Shakespearen ACTORE diction is fighting pretty hard to stay put in North & South. I wonder, then, if maybe he's not failing to do the accent, but his director is failing to let him do the accent, instead trying to satisfy audience ear-expectations of the 1970s?

I'm not from that part of the world myself, so I can't be too snooty about it. But I'll still maintain that, whoever made the decision on his accent in that show, it fails to convince my American ears. His mother's accent is much more convincing--which is funny, because according to her IMDB profile she's London born and died. (By the way, Mrs Thornton from that adaptation is really superb! She stole every scene she was in.)

[sprout]

Anyone else gone back to the movie theaters yet?  I've seen two since getting fully-vaccinated.  Solo so far, since spouse doesn't like horror movies.  Still a couple of weeks to go before anything he wants to see is out.

[clean]

What did you see?

What are you waiting to come out?