Amph What was the last movie you saw?

I can never get on with Kurosawa , I know I'm supposed to like him and I know about all the influences , but I can't say I've ever enjoyed one of his films . There I've said it .

 

Finally went to see It. Definitely and overwhelmingly It's season 1.5 of Stranger Things. Yes, I know season one of ST is built somewhat around an It book part one template, but the movie seems desperate to circle back and eat It's own tail by referencing the hip Stranger Things vibe, particularly with another bravura performance from Finn Mother******* Wolfhard. No one wolfs harder than Finn. There must be some teen Finn Wolfhard cult out there. Hollow out an old tree and build a shrine with candles and that "missing" poster from It with Finn's face on it. That's got to be what it looks like right now on the inside of half a million 8th grader lockers.

 

Love Mifune. Throne of Blood is amazing. I completely agree about your assessment of Toshiro's talents. The man was a great actor. If you've never seen Red Sun or the Shogun series, check those out.

And Captain America Civil War again. I caught so much I missed previously (like, erm, the other Winter Soldiers were already dead by the time Zemo got to Siberia. Uh....) I still have issues with the characters already mentioned and I do not quite buy Zemo doing this simply to avenge his family. Bruhl was playing it too low key considering how much he'd lost, except when he killed the Hydra Colonel who was Buck's Soviet handler. Something a bit more like Alexander Pierce, would have sold me on him. But after seeing Kurt Russell as Ego, every Marvel villain going forward has to prove something to me, big time (though Cate looks like she'll knock it out of Hel.)

And, yes, I bought it today, because First Avenger and CATWS were lonely.

 

Wow. I have never given a single movie of his that I've seen less than four stars. I guess that would make him the most consistent director of all time by my reckoning. I mean, even directors who have done movies I love more than Kurosawa's movies have also done movies that I've ranked lower than four stars. And I've seen a lot of his stuff, not like just three or four. Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Lower Depths, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, High & Low & Kagemusha. I still need to see, at the very least, Stray Dog, Ikiru, Sanjuro, Red Beard, Dersu Uzala & Ran. He's honestly a desert island director for me. If I could, like, pick five directors in order to have their entire filmographies with me on a desert island, he's definitely like two or three for me. I can watch the ones I've seen over and over (I've seen Kagemusha twice and it's over three hours long & the slowest paced of the ones I've seen) and there are still so many to discover.

 

It's masterful. It might possibly be the best film of 1991. Singleton, sadly, has never made a better film than that.

 

Watching the end of Pine Trek while waiting for Discovery to start.

 

Kingpin. I'm not a fan of the Farrelly brothers, but I was lured in by Bill Murray and Woody Harrelson. And while anything with Murray is gold, and the stuff that relies on Harrelson's performance to carry it is solid, the rest of it is typical Farrelly brothers: stupid, crude, and obvious. A few nice touches here and there can't overcome the fact that their comedic sensibility is generally idiotic, full of lazy, broad crap. It's a waste of Harrelson's talents, while Murray, doing his own material, is off in a far better movie. Watch the parts with Murray and then imagine a far funnier movie in between and you'll be fine.

 

Kingsman: The Golden Circle. I have mixed thoughts about this one. I really liked the first film up up until the church sequence, then it just got a bit extreme for my liking. Luckily, the sequel toned it down a bit. It was still very violent, but not in an offensive way. The action was spectacular, but sadly the trailers showed most of it anyway. There were lots of laughs, especially with Elton John. He's an unexpected delight. The music was great. The cast was fantastic. My favourite character was Whiskey, played by Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell from Game of Thrones). Without spoiling anything, I really don't like how they handled his character at the end. It just didn't seem right. There were a lot of things I liked in this film, and there were also some things that I didn't like, but it was better than the first film. 8/10.

 

Delicatessen (1991)
Famous French post-apocalyptic comedy I'd heard of but never seen before now. Very visual, very quirky.

 

The Lion King. It's been maybe a decade since I've seen this film. Watched it with my son and Mufasa's death was still like a punch to the soul.

 

Kingsman: The Golden Circle. I didn't see the first one but I still enjoyed this. I'll watch part 1 if it shows up on TV here.

 

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005)

Don't laugh. I really enjoyed it. Especially America Ferrera's performance.

 

You know I wouldn't have laughed if you hadn't told me not to, right?

 

Captain America The Winter Soldier (2014) because what's another time? Actually, bolstered by the fact that I missed so much in Captain America Civil War (because I was and still am royally annoyed it's not a Cap movie), thought I'd give this one another spin to see if I missed anything; but after seeing this close to 50x at this point, I can say no did not miss a thing.

While it's sadly not Brubaker, Epting and Lark's amazing opening Captain America arc, I think the Russos and cast did a solid job here; even if they pretty much axed the brilliant Cold War origin of the original story which I think is so key to what the Winter Soldier represents to Russia. Robert Redford was perfectly insidious, I finally felt that Scarlet got to play the Black Widow I knew and enjoyed, and Sebastian, Chris and Anthony are fantastic. I was literally stunned when I first saw Sebastian in the WS suit because he looked like he punched his way off the pages. Even with the Hydra tweak, he feels the most accurate comic to screen Marvel character and I love that. Like Civil War, there is a glorious fight scene set piece on the causeway and I still yelp when Steve is blown off the bridge and into that bus. And mumble..awwwwww, when he realizes the guy trying to kill him is his best friend. In that particular moment I think the movie one-upped Brubaker. And how much fun to see Ed Brubaker cameo as one of the Hydra scientists who operates the mind control doodad in that bank vault.

Toby Jones was terrific as Zola, I almost wished he did go all robot so we could see that version...but oh well.

While I still feel the third act drops the ball in a relatively big way (how can you top Steve finding out the WS is Bucky and Hydra taking over S.H.I.E.L.D.?), there's motr enough in this movie to still bring some big old smiles to my face.

Something I noticed, in my time away from major MCU business, watching this and CACW, the choreographers gave Sebastian and his stunt double some very credible yet wonderfully comic book fighting styles (I know Sebastian trained in Krav Maga for the WS - KM is hands down one of the most brutal modern martial arts styles.) Stan consistently makes any fight Buck is a part of feel a bit real and very dangerous in and around the entertaining Olympic-ish martial arts that Cap unleashes. It is clearly building the fight style around a legendary assassin and that's another reason why I am so happy with the movie incarnation. Oh and I happily squee whenever he uses that swanky arm of his...yeah, I'm still a huge fan of the character.

 

The Winter Soldier is not only my favourite MCU film, but my favourite comic book film. I love everything about it.

 

Where's the love for Sam Wilson? He does an excellent job playing a modern veteran; I totally bought into that. And the way Falcon flies is fantastic. Iron Man is probably faster and more maneuverable, but he does his flying with brute force, while Falcon dances with grace and finesse in the air.

 

On Friday me and my parents Headed off to Disney Springs AMC Theater to catch the Movie IT the movie was great we loved It way better then the Mini Series and it had enough of the book and homages to the mini series to make it worthwhile! I loved the fact It was an old fashioned horror movie that didn't rely on gore but made you jump out of your seat in fright at scary moments. They truly don't make many horror movies like this anymore.

 

Me and my 8 track mind...

I dig Mackie's Sam Wilson a lot. I agree about your consensus about him playing a convincing modern vet. I think the fact that Mackie was so darn good in The Hurt Locker and brought that modern soldier ethic to Sam is wonderful. He got to show off some very cool maneuvers in Civil War in land and air so to speak. I love the idea of the wings (always did.) So, yes, more Sam in the "bird costume" please...

Not so much Falcon was another reason why I was so annoyed by Civil War being a de facto Avengers movie. The core Cap cast are so consistently excellent that I want a lot of screen time with them. Chadwick felt like he fit seamlessly into the political mire of Cap's world, so I'd happily add him to the mix of Chris, Sebastian, Anthony and Scarlet.

 

As memory serves, this is the movie that provided one of the movie quotes I use the most often when Bill Murray's character referenced being on a "gravy train with biscuit wheels." I don't even know how a line that perfect exists.

 

Planes 2: Fire and Rescue Better than the first one, IMO. They brought in some fun new characters, made the story more interesting, and kept up the attention to details that pleases us nitpicky aviation nuts. And they had Patty Wagstaff as a tech consultant!

 

Good Time (2017) – Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie

The Safdies’ last movie, Heaven Knows What, was a successful, but very flawed film. It didn’t have much of a plot; it simply followed a young heroin addict, beautifully played by Arielle Holmes, around for a few days. In Good Time, the Safdies have brought all of the things that most distinguish them and found a way to apply them to an emotionally effecting narrative. Robert Pattinson is basically unrecognizable as a New York thug desperate to bail out his developmentally disabled from a hellish jail. The film has the hallmarks of the Safdies: a punishing unsettling soundtrack, hurried documentary style camera work, naturalistic performance, strange pulsing visuals colors. This all adds up to an intensely immersive cinematic experience and it plays directly to the often pulse-pounding and incredibly suspenseful film noir narrative. As Pattinson’s character wanders the city over a single night, he crosses paths with a variety of striking characters as he struggles to find a way to do the right thing by his troubled brother. Pattinson is absolutely a chameleon in this movie; I don’t know if he’s the best young actor working today, but in terms of disappearing into a character, there’s probably not another one to match him. Co-director Benny Safdie is compelling and striking as Pattinson’s brother. Buddy Duress gives a genuinely star-making performance as a young man that crosses paths with Pattinson via a really bizarre plot twist. The way the film actually takes time out from the main story to let us in on his dilemma is surprising and effective. Taliah Webster is very good as an impressionable young girl that gets roped into Pattinson’s schemes and her last scene in the film is incredibly dark and sad. There’s a level of immersion to this film that really puts us in Pattinson’s shoes and the film is really about a way of life that’s entirely reactive. Heaven Knows What was similar in that it was also about people with no plan, people who only seek what they need at the moment: a soft place to sleep, a small amount of food, a bump from their drug of choice. Likewise, Pattinson never has time to really formulate anything approximating a plan; as he whizzes through these darkened streets, he seems, at every moment, to be doing the only thing he can do. There’s a gripping scene where he’s being pursued by the police and we see from above as he races through a labyrinth of concrete walls, literally boxed in, literally taking the only path he can – he’s been doing this metaphorically from almost the first moment of the film. It’s a movie, then, laden with a certain doomed grimness to it, though there are a lot of surprisingly funny moments. Good Time improves, in every area I found problematic, on Heaven Knows What and if that movie was gripping and compelling, this one is more so. I’d already accepted the Safdies as auteurs with a very personal, strange and unique cinematic vision; now they’re more than that – they’ve taken that vision and made a genuinely great movie. 4 stars.

tl;dr – striking crime thriller establishes Pattinson as an actor for the ages and the Safdies as true masters of cinema; immersive, intense and grim, it’s film noir for a new generation. 4 stars.