Memoir of a Murderer (2017) Dir. Shin-yeon Won Byung-Su is a veterinarian who is having to deal with the advance of Alzheimer. This includes the occasional black-out in which he does remember what he did for periods of time. His doctor traces his condition partially back to a head trauma he suffered 17 years ago, which also put an end to another part of his life. Until the accident which caused the head trauma, Byung-Su had been a serial killer. A fact that is unknown to everyone, including his one relative: his young adult daughter Eun-hee. One day, during a collision which was partially caused by his condition, he encounters a young man who appears to be transporting a bloody bag. The man claims it contains the remains of a deer he found on the road, but the killer in Byung-Su immediately recognizes the man for what he is: a fellow serial killer. Unfortunately for Byung-Su, the recognition is mutual and a cat and mouse game between the two men develops, with Eun-hee caught in the middle of it as she too attracts the attention of the young killer. South-Korea has a good track record with these kind of films, atmospheric murder thrillers. Whilst it is not nearly as good, there are some moments that reminded me of "Memories of Murder", which I think is references consciously at both the beginning and the end of the film (people who have seen Joon-ho Bong's masterpiece will know what I mean). It's well-acted and it's most enjoyable in the middle section, when Byung-Su has to tackle with both the potential of having a rival killer to contend with or the possibility that what he has seen is all a delusion and part of his illness. Since we follow the story entirely from Byung-Su's perspective, the audience is just as confused as he is. The film is let down a bit by the climax, which is straight-forward for a film that was pointing in a more complex direction until then. Occasionally visually quite beautiful, especially in the night-time scenes of the country-side around the urban area, which is the stage for much of the main protagonist's journey of self-discovery.
I think several people who post in this thread have seen "Memories of Murder". If you haven't seen it, I couldn't recommend it more warmly.
"Memories of Murder" is a serial killer movie that has very little interest in being a serial killer movie. It has many themes, among them a study of hubris, masculinity and an interesting look into police work in authoritarian states. It's amazing just for doing something completely original with a genre that should have been beyond stale at the time of its release.
Secret Beyond the Door (1947) Dir. Fritz Lang A lonely heiress who is well-off financially but terribly lonely is entertaining the marriage proposal of a lawyer she knows through her brother, a decent man but one who does not inspire a great deal of passion from her. As she agrees to a trip with a couple of friends whilst she weighs her decision, she meets another man during this vacation, an architect with whom she falls in love at first sight. The pair are soon married, but already on the honeymoon he starts to display weird behavior in the form of irrational mood swings. When the return to the East coast to move into his family's mansion, this feeling gets strong, both by his behavior, the atmosphere within the mansion and the fact that her husband already had a family, with a living son and a dead wife both weighing down on her new environment with their presence. But what really unsettles her is her husband's ever more cold behavior and the fact that he is mysterious about a locked room in the basement of which he has the only key. A good film noir that works until the rather weird climax. Though perhaps I am judging the final few scenes too much through a 2018 lens. This is a film some time into Fritz Lang's Hollywood career, so some of his more lyrical visual work is toned down by that point. Not that there are still a few flourishes of that in there, most notably the dreamy opening scene and then the nighttime scene in the forest. Joan Bennett makes for a good lead.
We went to see Jurassic World yesterday. It was 5 bucks per. The last 20 minutes are as silly as any movie I can recall. But it's grossed more than the GDP of the Faroe Islands, apart from their salmon fishing industry.
Haven't seen it, but it's been in the theater-next-door to all the movies and Fathom events we've seen in the past month. So we've heard huge chunks of it.
Obviously, I'm a bit biased, but I think it's quite good. Yes, it focuses very much on the love story and the 89 title run, but given the Hornby material, adhering more faithfully would've required making something like Linklater's Boyhood.
Something amazing that I never realized about the movie I watched over the weekend: Ian Fleming wrote the book on which the movie is based. James Bond and Caractacus Potts: protagonists from the same author. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in case the poster doesn't show.
Seven Thieves (1960) Dir. Henry Hathaway At the invitation of an old friend and mentor, an American career criminal who has just been released from prison heads to Monte Carlo. Having arrived there, his host, a disgraced former professor, informs him that he has been working on a high-stakes heist on the local casino, which has a possible payday of 4 million dollars, to be split evenly among seven conspirators. His younger former protégé and associate initially has little interest in getting involved in a scheme that has the potential to send him straight back to jail, but he changes his mind after meeting one of the heist crew's members, a night club burlesque performer who acts as a honeytrap to a casino employee. A very entertaining heist film. I can't say that this caper is super-original, but the cast is great all-around and perfectly cast to a fault. Edward G. Robinson chews scenery in the best possible way, Rod Steiger makes a good foil, Joan Collins is very glamorous and Eli Wallach is always brilliant. Michael Dante, whom I mostly know from "The Naked Kiss", is also quite good as the obligatory vault king, who in this particular instance has a bad case of acrophobia. I love the black and white photography. I think the French riviera looks wonderful on film in general, whether it is in color or in black and white. The beach-side scenes and the night time exterior scenes at the casino are especially wonderful.
When I was in fourth grade or thereabouts, the school had a reading program where we got a catalog and could pick books, like three or four for a dollar. I remember getting a biography of Lou Alcindor (the program wasn't THAT forward thinking) and ChittyChittyBang Bang in one order. I liked the book about Kareem, but CCBB was a DNF. As were all the Ian Fleming novels I tried in the 90s.
Yeah, Casino Royale was dreadful, and I only finished it because I was stubborn and it was short. It was slow, lacking in activity, full of baccarat (the worst gambling game ever) and you'd probably have to read the Novels of Gor to find something more misogynistic.
The Catcher Was a Spy (2018) Dir. Ben Lewin A biopic of the life of Moe Berg, catcher for the Boston Red Sox prior to the war, only to be recruited into the OSS and subsequently the C.I.A. as an operative during WWII. Though the movie's focus goes broader, much of the movie's 90+ minutes are devoted to his mission to ascertain how far Heisenberg was away from creating a nuclear bomb, by making personal contact with the physicist in Zürich. I'm not sure if this is a very good movie, but Paul Rudd is such a likable lead and the supporting cast was so great all around - Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels, Guy Pierce, Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson, Hiroyuki Sanada, Giancarlo Giannini to name just some of them - that this is never less than watchable. Moe Berg seems like an interesting character, though perhaps this movie does not do fully justice to how incredible his life must have been.
Coco ~ L. Unkrich Not bad. Predictable, but had the Pixar polish. Kubo and the Two Strings ~ T. Knight Really good. Beautifully animated. Kind of wish they could have had Japanese voice actors. Theron and McConaughy are good, but a bit distracting. I thought it might be a little too scary for my 5 year-old, but he enjoyed it. I would rank it better than Zootopia (the 2016 Oscar winner) and maybe even Moana, though my son loves that movie.
An early biographer said, "Moe Berg could read and speak 10 languages, but he couldn't hit in any of them."
Sunshine (2007) Dir. Danny Boyle A crew of astronauts and scientists are sent on a mission to reignite our dying sun, aboard the Icarus 2, seven years after the Icarus 1 disappeared without a trace. A bit of tension, a bit of madness, some questionable decisions re: mission priority, and that's the recipe for things going all screwy and folks starting to die. It continued upon that track until Act 3, when suddenly a sunshine frankenstein showed up. Really, really weird and misplaced, and changed the film from a well-done sci-fi psychological mindf*** to a horror film. I have no idea why – the wife & I agreed it felt like they just got bored 3/4s of the way through the movie and decided to write a different movie instead. Or they got REALLY bad notes from the studio. The Alien/The Mirror/2001 influences are all over this film, which is 100% worth watching. And because it's Boyle (who I love) and Garland (who I love), it's both well directed and largely well written. But it's truly bizarre how it goes off the rails. Truly, truly bizarre.
A very likable ensemble as well. Including pre-Captain America Chris Evans. But yeah, the weird third act ruins it.
of course "hitting percentage" is technically correct, but it's not idiomatic. my first watching of the World Cup was in 1978, Argentina, and it was Spanish-language TV, since ESPN didn't exist.until the following year, so i learned the terms in Spanish. a throw-in is "saque de banda". what the heck???
I hope you also know "There's no crying in baseball!!!!." Network (1977) d. Sidney Lumet. The blurb says "prophetic." That doesn't do it justice. The combination of News and/as entertainment, combined with reality television (not called that, but that's what the show that follows Howard Beale's hour, about the Ecumenical Liberation Army, a radical underground organization that filmed it's fund-raising bank robberies, seems to be. The writing is sort of 1950-ish, some of the acting comes across as a bit over-mannered, esp. compared to All the President's Men, BUTTTTTT in many ways it comes across as the most realistic, given the way TV news, and TV overall, actually developed.