Movie Monday Free Talk
It's Monday again, and that means it's time for Movie Monday, a thread where anyone and everyone is welcome to post a movie review about films that they've seen recently, or just liked or disliked in the past.
If you're wanting to post a review, I'd suggest reading trough Movie Monday: week 1 to read through the rules and what to write, but for the most part I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible.
The two rules that I do have are: So far, the only rules are:
All top level comments should be reviews. (if you have any questions or suggestions on how to do things differently, either send me a private message or post in the discussion thread I linked up above)
No spoilers in top level comments. Ideally any spoilers should be in children comments (with sufficient warning) if you wish to write a review with spoilers, make another comment below your top level comment and write the spoilers there. Anyone who doesn't want to know any spoilers should un-expand the comments at the top before they start reading comments. Hopefully this should allow discussion of both the film and the review without forcing people to see spoilers.
But other than that, happy Movie watching and have a great Monday :)
Coco (2017)
IMDb link
I don't want to say too much about this film other than its one of my favorite films ever made, simply because when I went to see it I knew very little about it and absolutely fell in love with it.
Coco is a Pixar Animated Movie about a boy in Mexico who wants to play guitar. That's all I'll say about the plot, which although was amazing, wasn't what struck me about the film. To me it was the visuals (specifically the colours) and the audio and music that really set this film apart from a lot of other films. And the characters are well written, and the general consensus on the internet is that it has a really good portrayal of Mexico and parts of Mexican culture, although I wouldn't know as I've never been.
As I said, I don't want to go too into depth, but I'm writing this because I don't know a single person who watched it, and most hadn't even heard of it, which is surprising considering how well it seemed to have scored on IMDb. So if you haven't seen it I highly recommend it. This film is, in my opinion one of the best films that Pixar has come up with.
This movie made me cry in theaters, both times I saw it. The music is beautiful and the themes of family and mourning were very relevant to my personal life at the time, so it hit me hard. It really is a wonderful movie, and definitely my favourite from Pixar.
Last night I went through the Michael Clayton director's commentary with Tony Gilroy (writer, director) and his brother John Gilroy (editor.)
This was one of my favorite films of 2007, and tucking into the commentary was a real treat. Tony Gilroy details the writing, financial, casting, and overall production process for his ultimate passion project with some excellent contrasting details from the editor's point of view provided by his brother.
I would say that this is easily one of Clooney's strongest performances. Tilda Swinton is usually unbelievable -- but in this, she is truly exceptional. Sydney Pollack is in full force, which really tips the scales when he's sharing a scene with Clooney.
I definitely recommend Michael Clayton both for the movie itself and the commentary track, if you're into those. The film is perfectly balanced with excellent pacing and a brilliant structure.
I watched Predators with my sister the other night and it was just okay. It had some very cool visuals and gave us a nice little bit of insight into Predator lore, but the characters were so unlikable that it was hard to really get invested. Watch it if you love Predator and the predators themselves, but it's not really worth your time otherwise. I was also a bit disappointed in the gore to be honest, there was only one scene that was as brutal as some of the stuff in the original, and even then, the scene was just an homage to that better movie. The upcoming "The Predator" looks kind of dumb but at least it looks nice and gory, which is what I want out of an 80s action horror throwback.