Amph At The Movies (film discussion thread)

Before she went on to become a superstar in France, Romy Schneider got her breakthrough role playing Empress Elizabeth in the extremely kitschig 1955 Austrian film Sissi. It was a wild local success, and she did a couple of sequels before eventually settling in France.

My wife and I engaged in a kind of combat by kitschy childhood movies while we were dating. I made her watch Sound of Music, and she made me watch all three of the Sissi films. I'm pretty sure I lost, but now Netflix has a new series about empress Elizabeth, Die Kaiserin. It's beautiful and cinematic but definitely seems to have its roots in the soap operaish Romy Schneider film. Arguably the new Sissi looks a bit like Romy Schneider too or maybe that's just my imagination.

It's sort of an Austrian The Crown with a side of "the peasants are revolting."

 

I mean, Bill Skarsgard is such obvious casting that I kind of don't like it, but it's as obvious as it is because it's kind of perfect, so, yeah, hard to be mad.

 

Going from Anya Taylor-Joy to Lily Rose Depp is a massive downgrade.

 

I don't think I've ever actually seen Lily-Rose Depp in anything.

I would prefer to have Anya Taylor-Joy in this for sure, she's one of the very best actresses working today, but I'm guessing the Furiosa shoot must be running too long for that to be feasible here and if Eggers sees something in Depp that makes her seem right for this project, I'm going to trust him on it for now. Eggers hasn't let me down at all yet.

 

The only thing I've seen her in was Yoga Hosers, which she was terrible in. Then again, nobody came out of that looking good, so it's possible she can deliver a decent performance under the right circumstances.

 

This is one of those movies that definitely doesn't need to be remade, but since most people won't watch the silent original, I am glad Eggers is the one doing a remake.

 

Not even the Herzeg film has what I would call a wide audience

 

With the Herzog film and Shadow of the Vampire with Willem Dafoe, we've already gotten two really excellent variations on the original. I would anticipate Eggers' version also being kind of a "riff" on the original more than a straight remake and I think he could definitely do something really interesting with it. On balance, would I rather have him doing something that's more of an "original" concept, like The Lighthouse or The Witch? If you boil the question down that much, to "original concept" vs "remake," then sure. But this is Eggers, so things are never as simple as they look.

 

RRR launched a FYC campaign for the Oscars.



I think that nominating/awarding a movie like this would draw more positive attention to the ceremony particularly from an international audience, so the movie is probably going to be completely shut out.

 

But... Everything Everywhere All at Once came out this year. Granted I haven't seen RRR yet but I have such a hard time feeling it should be EEAAO.

 

I liked EEAAO, but RRR is the best blockbuster since maybe Fury Road.

 

RRR was like transcendent. The action. The singing. The dancing. The brotherhood. One of the shortest 3 hour movies I ever saw. And Elsa from last Crusade is in it

 

Everything Everywhere All at Once is wildly overrated. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that it’s a fitfully amusing mediocre film praised as if it’s transcendent cinema.

 

Must be playing Hutter, I'd imagine.

 

Just got back from See How They Run. Mostly entertaining, if not wildly so, trifle. The actors here are not so much wasted as just taking it easy and having a fine time. I don't think I've ever seen Ruth Wilson this relaxed and I'm basically cool with it. I have no idea how this plays to someone who doesn't already have affection for the whodunnit genre, but it played pretty well to me since I do. I feel like it had the potential to be delightful and it never quite got there though. The performance standouts for me were Adrian Brody as a loutish American director, Harris Dickinson as a dim-witted Richard Attenborough (though he's a shocking eight inches taller than Attenborough was) and Shirley Henderson in a very brief appearance as a disheveled and somewhat unhinged Agatha Christie. Probably could have been a PG instead of a PG-13 if you ask me; like if they'd taken out one joke and one shot of a large pool of blood spreading around someone's head, it probably would have been. It is, to some degree, comforting to me that a movie like this can still be made and given a wide release.

 

This was my biggest takeaway as well. It’s a very minor sort of movie, fun but nothing special, and it’s nice to be able to just go to the movies on a weekend and see something like that.

Also, Adrien Brody should only play haughty, loudmouthed, irritable louts. He has perfected the art.

 

I don't think he's acting

 

"The time is right for a Barbarella remake" is a pitch I would have loved to sit in on.

 

I like that pitch line, "a story you think you may know, but you don't". I know it's not intended, but it certainly sounds like a dig at Disney's Pinocchio Remake; which followed the original animated version almost to a "T".

 

Well that and I don’t recall any Lovecraftian griffons in the book.

 

i think my experience of the film was probably close to yours, but i was talking about it with a college girl i work with the other day who had a really difficult relationship with her mother growing up, and for her the movie was a much more profound experience. it's possible that it can't be everything everywhere all at once for everyone.