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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.
The Phoenician Scheme
I didn't much care for Anderson's last two films, French Dispatch and Asteroid City. But I liked this one a lot. The biggest difference here is that this is one narrative, not a series of vignettes stitched together like the previous two. It shocks me that this has the worst reviews Anderson has gotten in a while. I think it's better looking than FD and AC. It's funnier, and it has actual characters and an emotional center.
It's essentially what you would imagine Anderson's take on North by Northwest. Benicio del Toro is great and Kate Winslet's daughter is phenomenal.
Ballerina: From The World of John Wick
This got surprisingly good reviews. I think it's okay overall. You can tell what scenes are Stahelski's reshoots. I would say only the first 30-40 minutes are Len Wiseman's original film and after that are the reshoots.
Decently entertaining but overall forgettable.
I watched BlackBerry last night and was surprised how much I liked it. I love Jay Baruchel so this has been on my radar since it was initially announced, but I still expected it to be somewhat of a background watch while I did some work. Instead I quickly got engrossed and put away all my distractions until the end of the film. It runs into the usual biopic pacing problems in the second and third act, but it was still very good -- I don't know how many times I laughed out loud, usually at Matt Johnson's goofy sidekick character of Doug or Glenn Howerton's neck vein popping screaming at the top of his lungs at a bunch of nerds who made him a multimillionaire.
I'm gonna get a little ahead of myself and make a top 10 of the rest of the 00s. Here's '05 and '04.
2006
2007
2008
2009
Materialists
I loved Past Lives. But I didn't like the trailers for this. I ended up enjoying this more than I thought I would, but it's not as emotionally resonant as Past Lives was. The directing here is flashier, Song moves the camera more. But there was something more elegant and assured about the lack of camera movement in Past Lives.
The performances here are, all around, worse than in Past Lives. Which makes sense since these are all weaker actors. I'm not sure how Pascal got labeled as a prestige actor but I think he has quite a limited range and is frankly boring here. Dakota Johnson is serviceable, that's how I'd describe her best work in stuff like Bad Times and The Lost Daughter. Chris Evans, surprisingly, gives the best performance of the three. The writing is also weaker, it's not as layered, the dialogue doesn't feel as human. And aspects of the story are clunky and could have been cut.
Overall I thought it was entertaining, but not anything remotely as good as Song's debut.
How To Train Your Dragon
It's essentially a shot for shot remake. But I think it actually works. I think that speaks to how strong the source material is. The performances are good and the visuals are better than what we've seen in trailers. The acting and chemistry from Nico Parker and Mason Thames are really good. I think they're future stars.
Also, this was my first movie experience in 4DX, and I thought it was cool. The movie kind of bills itself as an amusement park ride (in fact it was fast tracked to promote Universal's new Epic Universe). And by god, it's a pretty good ride.