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I saw 'Motherless Brooklyn' last night, I took a bit of a punt on seeing it but it was enjoyable.
I don't know the novel but Edward Norton (who wrote, directed, co-produced and stars in the film) seems to have kept only the idea of the central character being a private eye with Tourette's, gutted the rest of the plot and moved it from the nineties to the fifties to tie in to a noir vibe and a very thinly disguised real life corrupt city official in New York.
It ended up reminding me of 'Joker' (though a very different film) in that it's carried along by an dominant central performance, score, cinematography and production design that gives a a great feel of period New York.
The co-stars are stronger though; Gugu Mbatha-Raw is fantastic and Alec Baldwin, Willem Defoe, Bruce Willis and Bobby Cannavale all give their usual reliably good performances. Baldwin doesn't play the bad guy as Trump but some of his lines are clearly Norton hitting out at Trumpism and they ring true about current British politics too (one speech had me turning to my wife to say "Trump" while she said "Boris" to me at exactly the same time).
It appears to be a critical and box office disappointment and could lose a few extended scenes but a worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours plus.
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I finally watched Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. As I feared, it didn’t really do anything for me. Some good performances and some nice scenes - like the one where Dicaprio is talking to the little girl. The soundtrack was good, but nothing surprising or memorable.
It doesn’t really have a plot. There are a lot of allusions to past events that are never explained. Nothing really happens until the end and all that really happens is based on a random coincidence. Perhaps I would have liked it more if I didn’t know the ending going in, but I’m not sure.
I suppose it was about the “dark side of the 60’s counterculture,” but not really, and besides, that’s been done to death. I didn’t learn anything new. It was sort of about an actor whose modest star is fading, but WGAF? It makes Bruce Lee out to be an asshole for no reason. It occasionally has voiceover by Kurt Russel that didn’t add much and just felt tacked-on and lazy.
And the last bit was needlessly violent and disgusting and overall it just didn’t add up to much.
I just don’t get Tarantino. Critics love him but it all seems so empty to me. It’s style and violence that never seems to have a worthwhile point. I’ve seen most of his films and the only one I remember liking at all was Inglorious Bastards because of Christoph Walz. And maybe Jackie Brown. But I haven’t seen that in a while. I don’t rate Pulp Fiction.
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Yeah, see you already disliked it walking in, so it was never going to work for you. I loved it going in, and also did coming out.
Tarantino films are generally character studies, so the 'much happening' isn't really their point. They're generally about people ambling through life and how their decisions affect them.
As for what it's about? The golden age of Hollywood meets 'new' Hollywood would be my guess.
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But I don't see how their decisions affected them at all. Brad Pitt's character apparently killed his wife, but they don't show that or explain it. It doesn't seem to matter at all. Nothing matters. Margot Robbie's character doesn't do much of anything at all except not get murdered, which is the point, I guess. But that was lost on me because I already knew about it.
There wasn't much about it that was particular to 1969 except the cars, the music and Sharon Tate/Charles Manson. It's supposedly about old Hollywood and new Hollywood in that era, but not really. It doesn't really explore what was going on in Hollywood in the 60s/70s. It's about a guy who was once on a dumb western show and thought he was a star, but is now only getting secondary parts because that's just how it usually goes. That could be a story in any era of Hollywood (or probably even theater in the 17th century. or whatever) It's the premise of Bojack Horseman, for example.
And I actually think the universality of that part of the story was its strength. My favorite scene is where he's talking to the little girl and concludes with "you'll understand in about 15 years." That was devastating and very effective.
But that had absolutely nothing to do with the Charles Manson/Sharon Tate stuff. I would have liked the film a lot more if it had jettisoned the Manson/Sharon Tate stuff completely and just made it about a guy who was on a western show in the 50s fading into obscurity and kinda dragging his buddy/stunt double down with him. It could have actually shown all the stuff in Italy rather just tack on some lazy voiceover. That would be a much better film and wouldn't require seeing people killed by a dog or flamethrower.
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- Mar 2008
- 9764
- Tyne 'n' Wear (emphasis on the 'n')
- Dundee Utd, Gladbach, Atleti, Napoli, New Orleans Saints, Elgin City
Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View PostNew season of The Expanse has dropped on Amazon. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.
Obviously reading first gives you a chance to analyse the screenwriting choices/changes- which were quite substantial in the last Expanse season.
David Strathairn wasn’t as good at patois as Jared Harris, was he?
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Got to hand it to Michael Bay. He's the master at what he does, which is very specific. 6 Underground stars Ryan Reynolds, doing his Ryan Reynolds thing, so it's also kinda funny. Though Bay's editing — brilliant as it is for action sequences — doesn't serve dialogue well at all. The extended opening scene has a coke fuelled energy (not literally... but... umm... quite possibly) that verges on incoherence for someone of my vintage, but it really is a small masterpiece. The movie stops dead in it's tracks when it attempts sensitivity however, fortunately that's only for about five minutes total so I don't know why they bothered really. Watch it. There's absolutely no chance you'll fall asleep.
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Originally posted by danielmak View PostI fear that Ken Burns' Country documentary is going to spend so much time setting up internal immigration in the US, changing historical racial dynamics in the south, and other foundational historical changes that the 1960s and 1970s honky tonk stuff is just going to get no attention. Either way, I've mostly enjoyed the first two episodes. I have no idea if this is or will be available outside the US, although folks familiar with that infamous Swedish pirate ship who are interested in country music might know how to find the series.
The most interesting thread for me has been Burns' returning to the two sides of the country music coin: church going music and rambling/honky tonkin' music from the very beginning.
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I finally went to see Ford vs Ferrari (Le Mans 66 in the UK) today. I was properly impressed - despite Christian Bale’s inconsistent accent, and despite him occasionally channeling his inner Jeremy Clarkson when showing how happy he was in a fast car. It was a really entertaining, fun, well made film that at no point bored me despite drifting well over two hours and despite being about motor racing, which I basically have zero interest in. One of my favourite films of the year.
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I too semi binged Expanse S04. Burn Gorman chewed some scenery there, eh?
It’s my least liked of the books (too much dirt, not enough space) but they carried it off very nicely. Can’t wait for S05.
in other news, His Dark Materials has been consistently very good, which is nice. And I have season 7 of Letterkenny to finish. It’s lost a lot of its bite and freshness and the set piece conversations feel a lot more like set piece conversations now as opposed to genuine one-upmanship. Still pretty funny though.
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