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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.
Oscar’s are this Sunday. Now, I know most of you guys don’t watch movies and have likely only seen a couple of this year’s nominees (EEAAO and Top Gun would be my guess for the movies watched), but I am curious as to how you guys would rank the Best Picture nominees this year. Here’s mine (paranthesis is my Letterboxd rating):
I watched The Invitation. I am a big enjoyer of horror movies, but this was very "meh". There is an opening scene and I think the movie actually would have been much better if it had been omitted. Similarly, I think watching any trailers does the movie no favours.
Spoilers abound.
The opening scene tips the audience off that this story is likely supernatural, but the entire feel of the first act beyond the prologue is one of "oooOooO we don't establish what's going on! Is it supernatural? Is it just a creepy british family? Is it a weird racial thing? Who knows?!?" We do. We know that it's supernatural. There are other winks to the camera as well - the butler is named Renfield, for example - but it's pretty obvious early on that the nobleman is Dracula, Evie is going to be a bride, and that weird shit is happening. I think every note that the movie hits is one that almost everyone will see coming.
That said, there are a few things that were actually pretty good. The set design and costuming is chefs kiss fantastic, the camera winks are fun, and Cousin Ollie played by Hugh Skinner is perfect. Actually, the casting itself is all very good; each actor does a good job with what they were given. I don't normally talk about the attractiveness of celebrities, but each of the Brides and Dracula himself are all exquisitely beautiful in the ways that they need to be for their roles. The "is it actually a thing about race?" question is not explicit - an acquaintance of mine didn't even think about it as racial, but thought it was just about being American - but I thought was not particularly mishandled.
I think in a nutshell that last phrase is the main issue. The entire movie was not particularly mishandled, and that's not exactly what people are going for when they make a movie.
Perhaps it's because the movie I watched just a few days before was Promising Young Woman, (my thoughts here), which is a really bad pairing for this movie, but overall, even as an enthusiast of the genre, I'd give this a 6/10 at best.
If you want a better movie that released around the same time and has metoo undertones, give Barbarian a shot.
I loved Barbarian. Probably my favourite part...
spoilers
is when Justin Long's character goes downstairs and finds the tunnel and he's just excited about the extra square footage of his house.
Not to start a whole other thread, but I just watched The Banshees of Inisherin. I felt about this movie almost exactly the same as I felt about Uncut Gems, about which I wrote this about three years ago.
This probably spoils some things about Uncut Gems and Banshees
This is another movie that I endured and did not enjoy. I did not like or identify with any character. There was no point at which I was happy. I recognize that some of the items were blackly humourous; I did not laugh. Colin Farrell was a phenomenon - I already think he is a brilliant actor, and this was amongst his best work, and his painful self-questioning was well done. Brendan Gleeson is one of my favourite actors, and the madness, resolve, and complexity of caring for Padraic were perfect. This movie is exquisitely, almost painfully beautiful, both the photography / cinematography by Ben Davis, and the direction by McDonagh, who is a brilliant writer and director.
But there was not a moment in this movie that sparked any joy in me, and I would not watch it again. If you want a movie that is a two hour ode to the dissolution of happiness, and what it feels like to struggle with depression, depravity, and Nice Guys™, then this is it. 9/10, almost perfect, almost completely not meant for or made for me.