12 Angry Men Following the closing arguments in a murder trial, the 12 members of the jury must deliberate, with a guilty verdict meaning death for the accused, an inner-city teen. As the dozen men try to reach a unanimous decision while sequestered in a room, one juror (Henry Fonda) casts considerable doubt on elements of the case. Personal issues soon rise to the surface, and conflict threatens to derail the delicate process that will decide one boy's fate.
Brand new Danish film (in English) starring Ben Kingsley that opened last night, Backstabbing for Beginners (Dobbeltspil) inspired and based on the memoirs of the aspiring Danish diplomat and whistleblower Michael Soussan who, at the age of 24, lands his dream job as a program coordinator for the UN.’s Oil for Food program but then suddenly find himself thrown into a post-war Iraq, where government agents are fighting for the country’s oil reserves...I did not read the autobiography but it's an interesting movie if you like to know more about how diplomacy and corruption works hand in hand ... It's written and directet by Per Fly manily known for his highly acclaimed trilogy about the lower, middle and upper class in Denmark, The Bench (Bænken, 2000) about hitting rock bottom, Inheritance (Arven, 2003) about the Danish upper class and the last film of the trilogy, Manslaughter (Drabet, 2005) ... but here is the trailer for Backstabbing for Beginners : Michael Soussan's 'Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy' book trailer :
Marcella - Former London detective Marcella Backland is devastated when her husband leaves her and their two children. He is head of Legal Affairs at DTG Construction, property developers effectively controlled by the Gibson family. When Marcella is visited by a senior detective on the murder squad seeking information regarding an unsolved, 11-year-old case of a serial killer who seems to have become active again, Marcella returns to the murder squad. She enters a world of online dating, prostitution, and the dubious dealings of her husband's employers while trying to save her marriage. Really not even close to being a great show by British standards. Go ahead and skip it.
Last Flag Flying (2017) Dir. Richard Linklater A middle-aged widower who has just been informed that his 21-year old Marine son died in Iraq tracks down two of his own war buddies - one an alcoholic bar owner and the other a Pastor - with whom he served in the Marine Corp in Vietnam and asks them to accompany him whilst he retrieves his son's body for burial. Both men agree. As they reconnect after three decades apart, they find out that all of them have changed a lot but all three of them also still carry the scars of their own war experiences. Very enjoyable film, largely due to the three excellent performances by the leads. Bryan Cranston has the more showy of the three characters and thus stands out, but Carell and Fishburne are no less great. Carell especially does a good job at portraying the quiet pain his character is enduring. Fishburne starts out as the foil for Cranston's character but gradually starts occupying the film's moral center.
We'll Meet Again - (1982) London Weekend Television Watched some this on Sunday morning - period drama style mini-binge style. Interesting to look back at such a big prime time production from 1982 which I watched I think in NZ 1983. Thirteen episodes makes it much more than a mini-series but the show was planned for only one season. It's reasonably high budget for English shows of the era with lots of war kit, convincing airbase and liberal use of WWII stock footage from the airwar. What hasn't aged well is some of the acting. The male characters are very wooden and the strong female cast steal the show - especially Susannah York. Lots of the "Yanks" are played by non-american actors and I think that goes someway to explaining the OTT accents But the hammy characterisation, e.g of Italian Americans, is pretty jarring, which is not something I remember from the time. Obviously 1982 was only 39 years on from 1983 so maybe the perspective is more accurate than it seems of "brash yanks" but looking back 35 years on from the show and 74 years on from 1943, you realise how much the world of TV production moved on! Although set in the war era and ostensibly focussed on the war, the show mainly digs into the archaic class structure of pre-war England, confronted with the modern American boys. The women are the real stars - with the english men away - leaving behind the old and the young which was a liberalising time for women but overall the show doesn't say much that would be considered edgy these days. Maybe it was a bit more risque in 1982. Probably best watched as soap!
Quite liked it. Hadn't realized going in that it was entirely about the Pentagon papers-- thought it would carry through Watergate too. And oddly for me, I loved Streep's performance, which I think hasn't happened since "Manhattan"-- and not Hanks'. Thought his was perfectly believable and consistent, but unlike the real Ben Bradlee. But I thought it should fulfill Speilberg's objective, to give millennials a feel for what that time was like.
Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018) Dir. Sam Liu Batman returns to Gotham after a foreign voyage to find his city terrorized by Jack the Ripper. His nightly forays into the city yield little result in stopping the killer and the one direct confrontation he does have with the maniac turns out nearly disastrous, if not for the help of an unlikely ally. But is Batman looking in the right direction to find the murdering psychopath? Another entry in the D.C. animated universe. A stand-alone version that has Batman in a Victorian setting. I thought this was very well done. I'm not sure how faithfully it follows the 1989 comic book of the same name, but I found a lot of the ideas and references clever (which include the World's Columbian Exposition and the Ferris wheel). The voice acting is for the most part quite good, with Bruce Greenwood as Batman, Anthony Head as Alfred and Jennifer Carpenter as Selina Kyle.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Dir. Taika Waititi Thor returns to Asgard and soon reveals Loki's treachery. Together with his brother and with the assist of another superhero, he tracks down Odin. Their father informs them that his time is running out and once he is gone, their sister Hela, Godess of death, will be released from her prison and descend upon Asgard. Thor faces off with Hela and loses, ending up on a strange planet where an individual by the name of the Grandmaster runs a tournament in which he pits warriors from all over the Galaxy against each other. Thor will be his latest contender for the title of Champion, whether he wants to or not. One of the rare times in which both the nature and content of the many positive reviews were entirely accurate. This is a terrifically entertaining film, mostly because Taiki Waititi chooses fun over drama at every turn. He's the kind of director who has not one but two sequences set to Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" and who is probably still asking himself 'Please sir, I want some more'. Even his cameo role is incredibly entertaining and funny. The one point of critique this film seemed to have gotten is that by choosing the laugh at almost every junction, this film has the dramatic grativas of an episode of "Jackass". But why on earth should a Thor film be so serious? More of this please! The cast was great all around, but special mention to Cate Blanchett, who has possibly provided us with the sole truly memorable villain of the Marvel cinematic universe here (pushing Michael Keaton's Vulture to a distant second in my book) and Jeff Goldblum. "Wouldn't it be fun to put Jeff Goldblum in a Marvel movie and give him the freedom to go all Goldblum?" is the most inspired comic book related casting decision since someone said "Hey, wouldn't Aubrey Plaza make for a great unconventional villain?". Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to listen to "Immigrant Song" again.
Sunset Boulevard, (1950) d. Billy Wilder. Great movie, with some seriously appropriate over-acting by Gloria Swanson, good work by all the principles, and a brief apearance by the future Joe Friday, Jack Webb, looking about 17 years old here. And noteworthy cameos by C. B. DeMille, Buster Keaton, and Hedda Hopper.
This fine picture had the misfortune of competing in the same year as All About Eve, losing Oscars for Picture and Director it probably would have won. Swanson lost to Judy Holliday (Born Yesterday), Holden lost to Jose Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac), Von Stroheim lost to George Sanders (All About Eve), and Olson lost to Josephine Hull (Harvey). Billy Wilder went after Mae West, Mary Pickford and Pola Negri for the lead. They all turned it down. Gloria Swanson was recommended by George Cukor. This photo from October 14, 1960 of Gloria Swanson standing in the midst of the soon-to-be-demolished Roxy Theater in New York City was one of the inspirations for the Stephen Sondheim-Harold Prince musical Follies. A ruin amongst the ruins...
Crooked House (2017) Dir. Gilles Paquet-Brenner Private detective Charles Hayward is called to the house of a recently deceased business mogul on the request of his granddaughter, due to her suspicion that her grandfather might have been murdered. The man in question, a Greek immigrant who became independently wealthy as a self-made man, shared his mansion with a collection of relatives whom all appear to have one thing in common: each has a potential motive for the murder. The more he learns about the individual members of the family, the less clear the mystery appears to become. Based on a Agatha Christie novel of the same name, which I never read, I thought this adaptation was well-acted, but it didn't really appeal to me in the end. The things that dragged it down for me were the lack of likable characters (I suppose Glenn Close's character is the closest thing we get) and the eventual resolution which was obviously meant to be shocking but which I interpreted more as somewhat ridiculous.
Zen Noir (2004) A detective goes to investigate a murder mystery at a Buddhist temple only to find there is no mystery. And no murder. And no detective. Not a normal movie - it's extremely affected and theatrical, and there isn't really a plot per se. It starts off more noir, of a type familiar to anyone that has watched Bugs Bunny cartoons, and then gets more zen as it goes. It put in my mind some questions about the balance of contemplating life and living it, and has some emotional moments (although as I've said I consider myself more manipulable than the average movie viewer). Just don't go in with any sort of expectations, because it will probably disappoint them. Which is kind of zen, I guess.
When We First Met (2018) Dir. Ari Sandel Noah goes to a Halloween party and through a happy accident he meets Avery, a charming girl he is immediately attracted to. They spend what he believes to be a great first date together, only at the end of the night he finds himself thoroughly 'friendzoned'. Three years later, Avery is engaged to be married to the 'perfect' Ethan and Noah still hasn't gotten over his infatuation for her. By accident, he discovers a way to travel back in time exactly three years. He uses this to relive his first date with Avery and change those aspects of the night he believes to have caused the lack of a romantic outcome first time around. Naturally this process turns out to be much harder than it initially appeared to him. A Netfix original rom-com. I wouldn't say that the screenplay got the most of what was a fairly basic premise to begin with. Alexandra Daddario is a very charming performer, but I was once again confronted with the problem I have in regard to Adam Devine's acting style: fine in small doses (think "Pitch Perfect") but increasingly annoying in a film in which he is required to be in nearly every scene. After a while his tics start to truly stand out, enough to become a distraction. Shelley Hennig, whom I hadn't seen in anything else before (as far as I can remember), was a minor revelation in the "sarcastic best friend" role.
"Dragon Blade" is a Hong Kong-produced film about a Han-era legion of troops and a lost legion of Roman soldiers somewhere on the Silk Road in eastern China. I could either write about it or hope that @spejic watches it instead. We could hardly look away - hadn't meant to watch it but seeing John Cusack as a Roman legionnaire overacting the hell out of his part (chained up + eyes put out + fire all around was very . . . impressive) and matched by Adrian Brody - couldn't hardly look away. Phenomenal in some tough-to-define way.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017) Dir. Kenneth Branagh Through a chance encounter with an old friend, Hercule Poirot ends up on the Orient Express out of Istanbul. On the train, he meets a varied set of passengers, one of them a shady business man who attempts and fails to hire Poirot for his protection, after he admits he fears for his life after having received several threatening letters. As the train is passing through Yugoslavia by night, the man in question is murdered and shortly thereafter an avalanche briefly halts their progress. Poirot uses the delay to try and solve the crime, but each new detail he learns further confuses him as to the exact identity of the killer, or killers. Decent Agatha Christie adaptation. A lot of was made of Branagh's choice of mustache. I thought it was just over the top enough to be a bit distracting, but otherwise he does better than I thought he would in embodying the character, especially his smaller personality traits as well as his famous OCD. I still came out believing the made for TV David Suchet adaptation was slightly better than this. Not just because I grew up watching Suchet as Poirot, but also because I genuinely think that was a great adaptation with a cast which was arguably just as good or perhaps even better than the ensemble gathered for this theatrical feature: Jessica Chastain, Toby Jones, David Morrissey, Barbara Hershey, Hugh Bonneville, Marie-Josée Croze, Eileen Atkins and even the likes of Elena Satine, Denis Ménochot and Serge Hazanavicius in some of the smaller roles. Still, Branagh's work was good enough that I would likely return for the announced sequel to this film, an adaptation of "Death on the Nile".
Justice League (2017) Dir. Zach Snyder In the absence of Superman, Batman takes it upon himself to fill the void as best as he can. With the arrival of a new supervillain by the name of Steppenwolf, an ancient creature that wishes to collect all three so-called mother-boxes, to combine them and - surprise surprise - use them to destroy the world, he finds himself confronted with the limits of what a man like himself can handle on his own. Bruce Wayne with the assistance of his ally Diana Prince manages to gather a group of superheroes (some of them reluctant to help) to face this new threat. But can they get the job done without the missing Kryptonian. This was critically panned and even though I thought it was marginally better than expected, I don't necessarily believe anyone deserves any particular praise for that. Almost all of the enjoyment comes from Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman. D.C. really lucked into casting an actress who is perfect for the role and who has a charming screen presence as Diana that makes even otherwise forgettable scenes shine. Joss Whedon at least understood that she is meant to be the star of this film, at least as much as Batman is. But apart from Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman as well as another enjoyable Themyscira segment, this film is incredibly forgettable. If the question as to whether this ended up becoming a Zach Snyder film or a Joss Whedon film after Whedon finished the movie following Snyder's departure due to a family tragedy wasn't yet answered: it is definitely more of a Snyder film. None of the Whedon humor really works. In fact, this might be the least funny thing he has ever written. This is especially a problem for Ezra Miller's the Flash, a character that was obviously meant to be a source of comic relief but who has only been given forgettable and at times borderline cringe-worthy lines. Perhaps the funniest thing about the entire film is the obvious CGI where they had to hide Henry Cavill's "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" mustache. That was a nice bit of trolling by Paramount Pictures/Viacom.
Immoral Tales Apparently, director Walerian Borowczyk specialized in making soft porn arty enough to be take seriously, although his career later declined to the point where one of his last feature length films was an Emmanuel sequel. This one tells four stories of debauchery united only by copious nudity, a perpetually leering camera and occasional seemingly random scenes of large numbers of birds flying. It started out sort of fun and rapidly became tiresome and finally, disturbing.
Three Billboards outside of Ebbing, Missouri (2017) Dir. Martin McDonagh Mildred Hayes, the mother of a teenage girl who has been raped and murdered grows so frustrated with the local police force in her community that she takes out three billboards which effectively call into question their competence and specifically that of the police chief. Her actions raise the tensions within the small town, but no amount of outside pressure makes her even consider relenting. I enjoyed this, but at the same time, I found it to be something of a letdown. Martin McDonagh's career is an exercise in diminished returns for me. I loved "In Bruges", I very much liked "Seven Psychopaths" in spite of its flaws. I think "Three Billboards..." is another small step down. There is still a lot to like here, chief among them two very good performances in McDormand and Rockwell that were rightly rewarded with Oscar nominations (I still think Rockwell was significantly better in "Moon" but I would be alright with him winning for this film). But the writing isn't that great, at least not compared to some of McDonagh's earlier work. The plot is a tiny bit all over the place (especially in the third act) and though there are still scenes in which McDonagh's dialogue sparkles, there are others where it falls a bit flat and is only saved by his excellent cast. I also don't know if it's necessarily a good thing for such an ensemble film to have a recognizable actor in even the smaller parts. On that note, Peter Dinklage's role is more or less reduced to one long dwarf joke and he is too good an actor to bring him on board just for that.
My reaction was similar to yours. Great performances, but it just all felt a little off. As someone who lives in the part of the country where this takes place, the characters didn't feel authentic. Perhaps this is a minor quibble, but for one thing "C**t" just really isn't part of a rural Missourians vocabulary. The script needed another pass or two-- in fact McDonaugh should have had Daniel Woodrell, the author of Winter's Bone and other Missouri Ozark novels, take a look. The black characters are also there mostly to be convenient props for the main white characters.
Agreed with all of this, though obviously you are much better equipped than I am to judge the authenticity of the local vernacular. I can get why directors like to work with familiar ensembles, but I think McDonagh should have been a bit harder on himself in casting this film. e.g. I love Kerry Condon as much as the next "Rome" fan, but to cast her in such a small role ultimately becomes more of a distraction than a boon. He would have been much better served by adding couleur locale in those scenes by casting lesser known actors in those smaller parts, preferably actual Midwesterners.
Agree with nearly all of this --- other than your take on Seven Psychopaths which I didn't really care for. The film was really good until, as you note, the third act, where it sort of veered in several directions, none of them compelling, IMO.
Tangerine (2015) Transgender street prostitute Sin-dee just finished a 28-day stay in jail and meets up with her roommate and best friend Alexandra, who accidentally tells her her pimp and boyfriend Chester cheated on her while she was away. Alexandra forces Sin-dee to promise there will be no drama. There will be drama. I'm always complaining about too much hand-held camera and non-standard blocking, but this movie is completely hand-held and 80% the backs of the star's heads and it really works. It is fantastically immediate, as if you saw a couple of wise-cracking girls in a West Hollywood donut shop and decided to follow them around all day. The parts with Alexandra and Sin-dee together are great. It's like a girlfriend comedy, with sharp dialogue and natural chemistry. But that doesn't make this movie a comedy. It's a tragedy, with everyone living in and around the periphery of this occupation coming to grief.