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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.
Any sort of movie related resolutions?
I have given myself a watchlist of 52 movies with the Criterion Challenge on Letterboxd, making for a good combination of a reason to watch something that has been on my watchlist for a while already and some completely unknown stuff from the more restrictive categories.
I intend to continue with exploring Italian cinema in basically any form and genre. I also want to get a bit more into Japanese drama films from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
I would also like to dedicate more time to rewatching stuff, and look at some of all the various extra material and commentary tracks on my blurays. I tend to prioritize watching new things, but whenever I actually open up an old favorite with a rewatch and some extra material, it is always worth it.
that's pretty awesome. I might be overthinking this, but where are you finding stuff like The Twenty Least Watched Films?
The original challenge list has helpful links for many of those categories. Like for least watched
sweet. I've been compiling a lot of the stuff into one spreadsheet so I can map out my year. I'll end up putting more time into the sheet than watching
My family was took turns choosing holiday movies last week and I had the pleasure of introducing them to The Holdovers. It's a lowkey Christmas classic, which I'll probably throw on every other year.
On top of that, I saw Marty Supreme yesterday. Not at all what I expected despite seeing the preview several times this year. That alone made it worth the cost of admission.
Spoilers for Marty Supreme
I thought it was going to be more of a sports movie/relationship drama, like Rocky for ping pong. I was quite surprised when it turned out to be a longer, fuller Good Time. I'm one of the few who enjoyed Good Time more than Uncut Gems, but Marty might have the edge. My only issue is that it felt like there were 2-3 too many hijinks. Also, I love a heart-racing thriller with a killer soundtrack as much as the next guy, but I hope Josh Safdie mixes it up a little bit going forward. Oh, and it kills me that Mr. Wonderful was good in this, even if he was playing himself.Does anybody want to talk about:
A Christmas Story (1983): ★⯪☆
Brave (2012): ★★☆
Dead Poets Society (1989): ★★☆
A Separation (2011): ★★☆
Grand Hotel (1932): ★☆☆
Almost two years since I saw A Separation but I called it a small masterpiece in my review. I really liked the characterization of regular people really just trying to do their best, but pushed to their limits by very unfortunate circumstances outside their control.
Yeah, it's one of those "calmer heads should prevail, but you can totally understand why everyone is having trouble keeping calm" situations.
I had a realization during the first scene. At first, it seems like they're breaking the rule of "show, don't tell," but then I realized that they're showing us the main characters' personalities based on their body language, tone of voice, etc. So while it tells you an infodump to explain the premise, your focus should really be on how the two of them are acting.
I can recommend The Salesman from 2016 by the same director which also won an Oscar for best foreign. Not quite small masterpiece level for me but Farhadi has a special ability to get authenticity out of his actors.
I remember when that won, leading up to it Trump had just passed the muslim ban thing and Farhadi couldn't get on the plane as a result of it. Before all that the Palme D'or winner Toni Erdmann was the front runner.
I guess that kind of thing will only get worse as the new travel requirements for entering the US are outright dangerous for foreigners, like progressive film makers from other continents. Perhaps we won’t see many accept best foreign language Oscar’s in person in coming years.
Alright last day of the year. I was catching up on the Globe nominees that blindsided me, so all the foreign stuff (except The Secret Agent which hasn't come out digitally or wide theatrically). Some of it comes from Cannes, and I've learned over the years that I don't like a lot of the stuff that gets hyped up coming out of it. TIFF is more my speed. Anyways here we go:
It Was Just An Accident
The Palme winner. I was reading some of the reactions to this before watching it and they all called it thrilling. Something interesting I noticed is that they mentioned that it was like a play, but in a positive way as opposed to how it's usually used as a criticism when we're talking about movies.
This was so boring. Not thrilling in the slightest. The whole middle half of the film is slow, uninteresting, and the conversations the characters have are repetitive. I don't think it's shot well, I thought it looked a bit rough if anything (they were shooting it in secret so some of that could be explained by this). And I thought most of the performances were actively bad, even if it's in a language I can't understand it just felt off.
It made me appreciate Anatomy of a Fall a lot more since that actually felt like a thriller. I don't know, it feels like people are overpraising this for the political aspects of it.
No Other Choice
This feels like Park is making his version of Parasite. That sounds like a superficial comment since, you know, Korean film. But it does feel like a black comedy/thriller/crowd-pleaser.
I liked this! I thought it was really fun. It gets a little repetitive, but overall I liked it's energy throughout. It made me audibly laugh in a lot of places. Parasite felt more elegantly put together, but this is good, even if the commentary is kind of basic and not as layered as Parasite's was.
Die My Love
I don't like Lynne Ramsay as a filmmaker I've discovered. I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin earlier this year for the first time, and I had watched You Were Never Really Here a few years ago. I have no issue in describing her work as pretentious. One of the most ironclad uses of the word I will use. They're also so slow.
I don't think any of the performances here are great. I think the characters are shallow. This has been a critique for all the films thus far, but it's also quite repetitive with Lawrence being sad and then acting crazy to showcase her BPD and her regret with being a mother.
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
I thought this was good. Not as exciting or as tense as I've heard it described (it got comparisons to Safdie's work for example). But it is good, and it's a good showcase for Rose Byrne who I always thought was underrated. Conan O'Brian was also surprisingly good and subtle in the film.
This is following Die My Love's theme about regretting motherhood. Which has been a trend this decade from female filmmakers (The Lost Daughter being the first one with this theme that I watched). Where there's even a monologue about how they regret having children and they think about how much better their lives would be without them. I'm sure there's an essay in there somewhere.
Doesn't feel like anything major, but solid.
Also, just to put this in a separate post since I do this every year, and every time I do it reminds me of the inevitability of time and the stagnation of my own life. Here’s my most anticipated of 2026.