Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

Today I watched Weathering With You and was lucky to get the subtitled version.
It was even better than I expected.
You do have to be able to speed-read in parts because some scenes have two sets of subtitles - one for the dialogue and one for the songs playing on the background...

 

An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935) – Roy Mack

You enter a short film with a title like this with trepidation to say the least and it’s undeniable that the ghost of the minstrel show can’t help but be conjured in your mind. But, in this case at least, the problematic elements of a short film like this take a back seat to the awe-inspiring skill of the performers. This short is just around ten minutes long and it features performances from several African-American vaudeville act. The singers, of which there are a couple, are pretty forgettable, but most of the other performances are genuinely brilliant. In particular, the tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers and an acrobatic act called The 3 Whippets are breathtaking. And the show closes with Adelaide Hall, who does a fairly forgettable song, but then her backing band, The Five Racketeers kind of shoos her offstage and break into a barn-burning rendition of Tiger Rag. Yes, this film does still have a real whiff of racism about it; even when black performers were given chances like this, there was an air of condescension in the white audiences and the white filmmakers. And sometimes that can be overpowering. Here though, the performers’ amazing talents can’t be suppressed and, decades later, their vibrant intensity shines through to create a work of truly magnificent entertainment. 4 stars.

tl;dr – ten-minute short film is problematic, but it also boasts some truly incredible, breath-taking talent that has otherwise been lost to history. 4 stars.

 

Thankfully the songs were still subtitled in the dubbed version that I saw.

 

Good to know

 

Happy Gilmore

My favourite Adam Sandler film. Really funny. Never gets old. 8/10.

"Why you don't you just go HOME? That's your HOME! Are you too good for your HOME? ANSWER ME!"

 

Judy (2019)
Renee Zellweger pretty much brings the house down as Judy Garland in this film that covers the later years of her life; namely her time in London when she was trying to make ends meet getting a recurring gig on stage. Zellweger sung everything herself; and although she doesn't necessarily sound spot on as Garland, she captures her essence in looks, mannerisms, and overall behavior. Garland passed away several years before I was born, but my mother was always fond of her throughout the years.

 

Little Women is pretty good. Much as Louisa May Alcott's Little Women always seems to be trying to crawl its way out from under the influence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, so does Gerwig's Little Women possibly not quite successfully try to distinguish itself from Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice. The latter has a better script and a better cast, and looks better, but Gerwig does pretty well. It's a decent B+ effort, but I wouldn't have nominated this film for best director either if I'd had the chance to do it. I'm all for the Saoirse Ronan/Florence Pugh nominations. I hope they both win. A vote for Florence Pugh is a clandestine vote for Midsommar. And Midsommar is a better romance than Little Woman. Pick a genre: Midsommar is a better movie in that genre than whatever movie in whatever genre you think was good last year. Only the Lighthouse is the better elusive genre movie, and that movie was screwed even harder by the Oscar nominations.

 

Midnight Cowboy. I didn’t care for it. It’s a movie that was groundbreaking for its time, but frankly bleakness has been done much better since, and the whole thing felt silly . . . sort of broad, like a parody of the actual film. The central characters are dull and vaguely ridiculous, Voight as a glib imbecile and Hoffman as a whiny New-York-stereotype grifter. Why do I care about the sad adventures of Idiot McHick and Ratso? There’s nothing likable, interesting, or sympathetic about either of these caricatures. Neither felt real enough to invest in their stupid story. It just didn’t work for me, at all.

 

Watched the Extended Editions of Fellowship of the Ring and the Two Towers. They’re good. And very long

 

They weren't kidding when they extended them.

 

The extended version of Return of the King is even longer.

 

And it has even more endings.

 

Gemini Man

I'd compare this movie favorably to the similar Shooter, so why does Gemini Man have 26% RT while Shooter has 47% RT? The only explanation is that there must be some kind of Wahlberg/Smith handicapping going on. Or maybe it's expressed as a sort of fixed conversion? If Will Smith is considered a unit, and Mark Wahlberg is operating consistently across his films at about 55% Will Smith.

Another theory is the Mary Elizabeth Winstead factor. All Mary Elizabeth Winstead movies bomb, so critics were simply factoring the public response to Mary Elizabeth Winstead's presence in Gemini Man. Shooter's female sidekick is Kate Mara, who has been in Transcendence, Tron Uprising and Fantastic Four, so you'd think that would be a wash.

Unconvincing GGI gimmickry? Maybe that's it. Shooter's gleefully low budget production sets B movie expectations from the outset. You don't have to watch Shooter to know you'd probably have been adequately entertained in a relatively satisfying peak Jason Statham manner. Gemini Man was marketed like an event film but delivered Shooter-level plotting. You really need to see it to understand why it's as bad as it is.

 

Still no Scouring of the Shire though!

 

I've seen all the other versions. The 1994 version has a much better score, but overall, this version is the best one.

 

Am I the only one brave enough to have watched Dolittle on its opening weekend....?

I'm telling you, this is bound to become a bit of a cult hit in a not-too-distant future.

 

The Lion King (2019)
Well I finally got around to seeing this as I borrowed the DVD from my local library. I guess if you've never seen the original animated version you'd be impressed by the story, diversity of characters, humor, and sentimental scenes. But this is essentially a carbon copy of the original movie with some subtle differences. The voice actors have changed, for the most part. I guess it would've been blasphemous to get anyone but JEJ to voice Mufasa again; sort of like the other voice role he's famous for.

Spoiler

The movie is all right; I can't say I had anything overly against it because I liked the original movie. I think the best way to describe the live action version is that it's essentially a National Geographic program set to the tune of The Lion King. And yeah, Pumba is damn ugly.

 

is it a musical?

 

Not really, unless you consider dragon flatulence a form of music....

 

Hans Zimmer does.

 

Is anyone surprised?

 

Watched it this morning. It’s great. But it’s a lot of movie

 

Watched Les Misérables (2019).

I honestly wish it would get the Oscar, though Parasite is the more likely future winner.
This is an honest, no-holds-barred look at police abuse in areas with heavy populations of immigrants of African descent in France. It's thoughtful and provocative. It doesn't seem (to me) to take sides.
If you don't watch it in theaters it will be on Amazon soon enough.

 

The Way of the Gun (2000)
Enjoyed it. Benicio del Toro and Ryan Phillippe play a pair of unemployed gunmen who kidnap a pregnant Juliet Lewis with the intention of ransoming her for big money. It's quirky and violent, and our criminal protagonists are refreshingly lacking in hearts of gold. I get why it wasn't a big hit, but del Toro and Phillippe worked so well together it might have been nice to see them play these characters again.