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Midweek Movie Free Talk
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
Thanks @cfabbro and @aphoenix for the recommendation.
I watched The Princess Bride and it has such an incredibly charming sense of humor. It’s told in a very deadpan way, but never feels like it’s trying too hard. Cfabbro was right, I have unknowingly quoted this movie before
No prob. I'm glad you enjoyed it. And lol, yeah I think people who have never even heard of Princess Bride before have probably still unknowingly heard at least a few quotes from it, since they're so commonly repeated by those of us who have.
We went and saw Smile last night. Pretty decent horror flick, and jump scares galore! Very reminiscent of The Ring and It Follows in how the horror spreads.
Accepted (2021)
This is a documentary about a private school in Louisiana that boasted a 100% acceptance rate to college for its low-income, mostly minority students. The school gained national attention for a series of viral videos of its students being accepted into Ivy League schools.
The documentary started filming as an attempt at documenting that success, but instead controversy broke, and the documentary captures the blaze and then what happens as the smoke starts to clear.
As a teacher, it was hard to watch. Highly recommended though. My heart breaks for those students.
So I saw two movies in theaters this past week.
Amsterdam
David O. Russell’s first movie since 2015’s Joy. I’m a big fan of O. Russell’s movies. Silver Linings Playbook is one of my favorite movies of all time and The Fighter and American Hustle are great in their own right. I didn’t care for Joy back when it came out. And this one has been getting mixed to very negative reviews.
But I gotta say, I loved it. I thought it was really funny and really beautiful to look at. I don’t get the complaints of the plot being too convuluted or nonsensical. I thought it was pretty easy to follow, there’s just a lot of twists. My biggest criticism of the film is that I don’t think John David Washington is a good actor, he’s fine in this but not great especially compared to Bale and Robbie. His chemsitry with Robbie is also weak. I think Michael B. Jordan (who was originally attached) would have been a lot better.
TAR
What a brilliant film. It’s essentially about a famous composer getting MeTood and then her life goes to shit. It’s really good, I highly recommend it. Unless you can’t deal with monologues that sort of poke fun at “wokeness.” Like there’s a scene where the joke is kind of that a BIPOC student refuses to engage with the art because the composers were problematic.
But really quite incredible piece of filmmaking.
High Fidelity (2000)
Was in the mood for some Cusack and spotted High Fidelity was on Disney+. My wife hadn't seen it, so we're doing it as our split feature this weekend. The first half on Friday. Intermission. Second half on Saturday.
It's been an absolute age since I'd seen it, and I can't explain it. It's like watching it through completely different vision in 2022. I had ideas about how I would feel watching it based off my previous recollection, and none of those feelings were challenging to me. With new eyes it feels so cutting to the concepts of manhood in a past that doesn't feel that far back on the horizon to me.
This is going to be an interesting intermission for me. I'm not even sure we'll end up coming back to it on Saturday as I don't think my partner has found a way into it that doesn't irritate her. More thinking required. Followed by Grosse Pointe Blank.