Amph What was the last movie you saw?

Voyage Home was the nearest thing we ever got to a Trek comedy. Why it's more popular than Kahn I'll never know.

 

Remember (2016)

Nifty little revenge thriller with a great performance from Plummer, but it's Landau that shines the most in his supporting role as a retired/dying Nazi hunter. Also, love seeing Bruno Ganz in anything, and his little part was good too.

 

Quoted for Truth. Right there with you, Juke.

 

The Secret Life of Pets
I really enjoyed this. It's funny and the characters are likeable. The Minions short film before the movie was good too.

 

Spoiler

I liked the movie a lot up until that final twist. I think both Plummer and Landau are really good and Dean Norris is great as the Nazi cop. That whole Norris sequence is really fantastic actually. The premise is good and the gimmick of Landau's brain and Plummer's mobility adding up to make them almost equal a whole person together was really compelling to me. Brilliant but crippled; strong but addled. It's a great pairing. But I just didn't buy that final twist. Still a good movie and worth watching for sure and I'm not entirely sure what they could have done otherwise in order to get a satisfying ending. But that twist made me roll my eyes. And I mean the plot was a long enough shot as it was; to find out that Landau's plot was even crazier and less likely to succeed than the original crazy and unlikely to succeed plot stretched things a bit. [/quote]

 

Mad Max: Fury Road

Possibly the best Mad Max film, and I feel very weird saying that. Definitely the funniest. Some of the sped up action scenes annoyed me, and the American accent of the female protagonist was inexplicable, but I forgive these annoyances because everything else is so damned good.

Crap review I know, but how many ways are there to say you loved a film?

 

The Dark Knight - Just as great as ever, if not a little bit better than that because I haven't seen it in a few years, which made it feel fresher. Incredibly visceral and dark(heh) movie, with a pinch of inspiring heroism sprinkled here and there so that it's not completely merciless. Moral ambiguity, complexity, and intensity galore!

 

Star Trek Beyond: They destroyed the enemy fleet using rock and roll. Dirty Dancing wants it's plot back. I'd be satisfied with just my money.

 

I read that as "I fell asleep through this as I usually do with movies I don't care about but spend money to sleep through anyway and rearranged the plot for trolling's sake". But no, you're not getting your money back.

 

Batman v Superman

I saw it first at the movies of course, and now after all the discussion that has been had on the internets, and understanding a bit more all the stuff Snyder crammed into the movie (which to me still stands out as a mistake) I enjoyed it a lot more this time around. We put in the wrong Blu Ray and played the theatrical version instead of the Ultimate Edition, so at some point I'll play that version and see if its even better.

I can't wait for Wonder Woman. I hope its as good as what the trailer showed us.

 

I admit to falling asleep for much of the film. But I'm being sincere, too. There is not a single element of exaggeration or hyperbole here. What I am describing is what happened on the screen, in the most literal sense of transcribing what my eyes saw.

 

So is this how you get to sleep? By watching movies/tv shows? I'm just noticing a pattern here.

 

No. But if a film is not compelling, there's nothing to keep me asleep in a black room either.

 

Yes. In your mostly unconscious state of awareness. Thus, you could be reviewing a dream, ffs. Try again.

 

Others will attest to the veracity of this scene.

Spoiler

An alien woman connects a boom box to the Enterprise's communication systems. She then selects a rock and roll song and they begin broadcasting. The Enterprise flies in front of the enemy fleet, whose ships explode whenever they get in range of the broadcast transmission. They are literally being destroyed by a rock and roll song. This is the climax of the film.

I'm so sorry.

 

Anthony Adverse (1936)

The early romance is so delightful, with swooning so over the top I couldn't help but smile. The sets early in the film are absolutely beautiful.

Claude Rains is an effective villain, naturally.

The end of the duel is a bit eye-roll worthy, but this isn't an action movie.

The joyful reunion between Anthony and his grandfather is very heartwarming, and exceptionally well done. The kid they cast actually did resemble his mother, though I didn't realize it until the resemblance hit the grandfather like a thunderbolt, portrayed naturally by Edmund Gwenn (you might remember him as Santa in Miracle on 34th Street).

Anthony Adverse as an adult, played by Fredric March, actually does look a little like the actor who played his father in the movie, Louis Hayward. At least, I thought there was a resemblance. I wonder if this was also intentional. I appreciated it, regardless.

The early romance between Anthony and Angela is a perfect example of that cheerful and innocent young love we see in fiction, with the beautiful Olivia De Havilland being perfectly suited for it.

The movie takes a difficult turn when Anthony becomes an African slave trader. Yes, I understand it's a turn to the dark side, with a monk Anthony saved sticking with Anthony in an attempt to save his soul....but Jesus Christ. The hero becoming a slave trader is about as unsympathetic as it gets, it's quite the hurdle. It's made worse by Anthony committing adultery (he's married to Angela) with a slave girl. On top of adultery, if you think about it, relations with a slave is pretty much rape, with the idea of consent dubious at best. The girl is portrayed as "wanting it" badly, and being in love with Anthony's power....that isn't helping.

Oh, ****, where the hell were we? I'm sorry, the slave trader thing completely ripped me out of the movie, and I have to say I never got back into it the way I was before. I was loving it up to that point. After, I struggled terribly to reconcile it for the movie's sake. I know in a tragedy, things are supposed to get really bad, but the hero being a slave trading rapist was basically catastrophic to the movie.

Here's what helped, a lot. Anthony and the movie and the romance had built up a lot of good will for me prior to the slave trading, and that still had some influence. It made me desperately want Anthony to give up the slave trade and go back to his wife. It made me want this desperately, pleadingly. It made me root for him to not have any involvement in such horrific dealings. So, obviously, it was effective to some extent. This was something the PT never achieved in Anakin Skywalker, not for me. That says something about this movie and the way it was constructed, and about the PT.

Anthony snaps out of it (after the death of the monk), learns his lesson (about greed and power, though not much is really said about how he treated his fellow man), turns from the dark side and returns home to find his wife.

Anthony returns home to find that he has a son...and that his wife is Napoleon's mistress (and is fulfilling her desire for a career in singing). Not exactly what I was rooting for, obviously.

We do not get our happy ending. Anthony and Angela are not reconciled. Angela remains with Napoleon, and Anthony takes his son to America.

WTF, ending?

Anthony is shown to be upset at learning that his wife is Napoleon's mistress. Okay, fine. But why doesn't he put that aside? Hey bro, you were bedding a slave girl in Africa while you were gone. I so wanted him to put that aside and ask for her to go with him. My desire for this says something about the effectiveness of the romance.

Angela...is sorta portrayed as perhaps not wanting to return to Anthony. Okay, then. Maybe she wants to keep her career as a singer, and she sorta says as much ("I have to make a living", or something like that). Some of her audience speculate on the jewelry Napoleon has given her, a necklace he refused even his wife...and I was hoping she wouldn't wear it...but she did. This...was disappointing. Angela chooses the glamour of career, fame and fortune over her husband (and childhood sweetheart) and child? This seems like quite the progressive twist, especially for the time, when you would expect all stories to feature women who choose family and her childhood sweetheart. Plus, the hero always gets the girl, right? Right? Not this time.

One hell of an ending, even if I found it personally unsatisfying. Or perhaps because I found it personally unsatisfying, as it took my expectations and desires and went "nope".

Now before you go "omg CT what's wrong with Angela choosing career you misogynist"...remember that I was desperately shipping Anthony and Angela, and that Anthony was the movie's hero and main character.

The film won four Academy Awards, and I can see why.

Gale Sondergaard won the very first Best Supporting Actress as the wicked stepmother I failed to mention, and I can see why, she's basically straight out of a fairy tale.

It also won Best Film Editing and Cinematography, and I suppose I can see why. The lighting was excellent, and really helped those beautiful sets I mentioned earlier pop. The guy who did the editing did the same for A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Adventures of Robin Hood (all with De Havilland), so if you know those movies you know what you're getting in Anthony Adverse.

This movie was interesting enough to make me want to seek out the novel and see how it handles the slave trading and some of the other more difficult subjects.

 

Wow. That sounds like something out of the old Macross/Robotech cartoon. And ir was pretty terrible then.

 

Not even

Spoiler

blasting death metal? Just the way some American soldiers did in the Iraq-Afgan wars to freak out their enemies?

C'mon, Pegg.

 

Finding Dory (2016) – Andrew Stanton

My friend Sigourney once said: rescue, rehabilitate, release.

I think it’s safe to say that Pixar has entered their third phase. There was the first phase, which was super-long, where they just kept turning out the masterpieces; then came phase two where they . . . just didn’t for a while. But with Inside Out and now this incredibly strong follow-up to one of their best films, they’ve established that they’re back in the masterpiece business. In this movie, Dory, once again brilliantly given life by Ellen DeGeneres’ fantastic vocal performance, sets out to find her family and its really interesting to see them kind of pull apart Dory’s memory problems and deal with them in a serious way. In the first film, I feel like they were mainly used for comedic effect, but this movie really kind of digs into how hard life has been for Dory with these issues. Albert Brooks is once again great as Marlin, bringing even more world-weariness than he did before. Ed O’Neill is brilliant as Hank, a scheming octopus. Kaitlin Olson and Ty Burrell really land their parts perfectly as a partially blind whale shark and a concussed beluga whale. And a mention for Sloane Murray who is really perfect as Baby Dory. Should I mention that one of the major themes of this movie seems to be the ability of those with physical disabilities to be heroic? Anyway, I really loved this movie. It does a really good job at making you feel the peril and vulnerability of these characters and the expansiveness of their environments. I would need to watch the original again to make a judgment call about which is better, but I’ll say that I think this movie is every bit as good as the original. It’s often hilariously funny and also quite poignant, if not downright sad, but also visually beautiful and, toward the end, incredibly suspenseful. This one really got to me; rollicking, entertaining, hilarious, touching, beautiful and all of this movie flows out of the characters who are deeply human, for all their fishiness. It’s a brilliant movie and one that I’ll openly admit I was very skeptical of. Inside Out, after all, could have just been a one-off fluke and sequels are always dicey, even when Pixar’s doing them. But this succeeds beyond my best hopes. It’s a brilliant sequel and a brilliant film in its own right. Pixar’s back, baby. 4 stars.

tl;dr – engaging sequel is every bit as good as the first film, with great performances, direction and story; hilarious and touching by turns, this one signals that Pixar’s back in business. 4 stars.

More Movie Reviews!

 

YOU SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH.

Spoiler

Although in Macross music merely confused the aliens. And, honestly, if you were an alien, wouldn't you find J-Pop baffling? I find it somewhat baffling right now, and I'm from this planet.

 

I can reassure it was nothing like Macross/Robotech. Because I watched both of those, and liked them.

This was so much worse.

 

Pervert Park A ~1-hour documentary profiling a few residents of a trailer park in Florida that was founded exclusively for sex offenders because they often have no place to go after prison. The offenses range from a guy who kidnapped and raped a 5-year-old girl to a college student who was goaded by police (posing as a 30-year-old woman on Craigslist) into saying he'd have sex with "her" make-believe teenage daughter. The documentary's goal is clearly to humanize the sex offenders and it succeeds. All of those profiled deeply regret their choices (though the aforementioned college student is understandably not as contrite) and are trying to be better-- e.g., going to therapy, group meetings.

Hail, Caesar! A biting satire of 1950's (and modern) Hollywood and the studio system, though I didn't think it was very funny. Certainly didn't make me laugh nearly as much as A Serious Man. Maybe I have to think about this more. There are multiple layers! I liked the contrast between Clooney's Glory of Jesus speech and the bored, annoyed priest telling Josh Brolin to meaninglessly throw out some "Hail Marys." I liked Clooney's wide-eyed enthusiasm for Marxist ideology, obviously having never heard any of it before. I like the cowboy guy just unquestioningly doing whatever he's told and toeing the party line. ScarJo's character seemed out of place. Yeah, very obviously a parody of the Marilyn Monroe/Elizabeth Taylor/etc. type, but she didn't have much, if anything, to do with the main plot.