Which movie did you watch today and how would you rate it?

[prideandfall]

Knives Out: 6ish/10

per me, who is not remotely familiar with the whodunnit genre and who doesn't give a shit about it: it was fine... seemed a bit shallow, and there was no mystery to the issue of who did the crime, and isn't there supposed to be? cast of fine actors all getting a paycheck, and nothing about it was stupid or annoying from either a nerdy nit-picky armchair movie reviewer (ie the plot, themes, etc) nor from a technical standpoint as someone who understands how movies are made.
an enjoyable but forgettable popcorn flick.

per my friend i saw it with who is a huge fan of agatha cristie and clue and this whole genre in general: it was a lovely homage to like 20 different movies and the genre on the whole with a lot of great little twists to the form, it was an utterly delightful and charming little addition that type of movie that focused on the human drama element instead of centering on fakeouts and red herrings over who did the murder.

 

[angelo]

The Mule, 5/10; A Clint Eastwood production which is why I watched it. Stars Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper and some other well known faces. This movie was disappointing, not one of Clint's best efforts. It's the tale of a very elderly horticulturist with family baggage who somehow gets recruited as a "mule" to transport drugs across the states for a Mexican cartel. There is nothing interesting in the movie and it lacks the usual wit for a Clint Eastwood movie. Some scenes seem contrived, hurried, poorly laid out and out of place.

Agree. Very disappointing Eastwood movie. My thoughts were that he has lost his magic touch.

 

[angelo]

Happy Gilmore. Another Adam Sandler stinker, which some critics say was his best effort. Perhaps if you're a golfer you may get a smile or two but that's about it!

3.5/10

 

[TSwizzle]

Chinatown, 6/10; Set in 1930s Los Angeles, stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, directed by Roman Polanski who also plays a minor part. Nicholson plays the part of PI Jake Gittes who is suckered into exposing a city official's affair and he stumbles around following leads as to what the real motive behind him being hired. It's a plot about control over access to water in Los Angeles and the San Fernando valley based loosely on historical events of the time. The movie has nice cinematography and is very well acted. But it takes its sweet time getting to the root of what is going on and the ending is a bit unrealistic. I'm not sure why this movie is held in such high regard, it's ok but most of the time it's pretty slow.

 

[prideandfall]

Joker: 4/10

bit late to the party on this one, it'll probably be out of theaters in the next week and i had no intention of ever seeing it, but the GF randomly decided she wanted to see it, so off we went.
it's... fine? mostly?
it felt like several moderately good ideas executed in the worst way humanly possible, squandering all the potential in a miasmic soup of half-assed concepts.
listing off exactly why i feel this way would involve A. major spoilers, and B. just picking apart the entire movie, and this isn't my film blog so i won't waste everyone's time an unwanted wall of text.
the end point is simply that i was not very impressed with it but constantly felt like i almost could have been if it had been better made.

 

[angelo]

The Irishman A Netflix film directed by the one and only Scorsese. Starring a bevy of fine actors, including my favourite gangsters Joe Pesci and Al Pacino. Highly rated by the critics as well.

9/10

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The Irishman - 5/10

It’s a Scorsese gangster movie. That’s it. If you typed “Scorsese gangster movie” into an automated script generator, you’d get this movie. If Scorsese used stock footage and deleted scenes from his previous gangster movies, you’d get this movie. All the acting and writing were well done, but there was absolutely nothing non-generic about it or anything which would particularly stick in your memory a day after you watch it.

Also, the movie is three and a half hours long. It is not a three and a half hour long movie. Theatres generally make directors cut out the dead weight to trim the run time, but clearly Netflix did not make him so this and he left it all in and there were long chunks which did not need to be there. I cannot think of a single point in the film where if you fell asleep for half an hour, you’d miss anything at all about the plot and the guys who did Return of the King could watch this and complain about the overly long epilogue. It needed an editor.

If you’ve seen a Scorsese gangster movie, you’ve already seen this one. It’s not particularly bad, but not any kind of stand out either.

 

[Ford]

A Leaf of Faith 6/10

I've seen it before, but watched it again recently. It's on the Netflix, and is a documentary about Kratom. It's an herbal remedy that's been used in Southeast Asia for a very long time. A member of the coffee family that has some analgesic effects, appears to have few side effects, and has helped a lot of people wean themselves off of opioids and opiates..

The film as a documentary isn't great. The person who made it was a weight lifter who became a "film-maker," and his style and in particular his narration is grating. That said, he gets his point across. America is in the grips of an opioid epidemic, and what if there were a safe, natural alternative that provided a similar level of pain relief without the horrible addiction?

Full disclosure, I've used Kratom, so I'm a bit biased. I've not suffered the level of pain that some of the people in the doc have experienced, but I do have an addiction problem, and this stuff is...helpful. I'm very close to introducing my mom to the stuff. She's elderly, has hip and back pain that's making it difficult for her to get through the day, and if this can provide some relief to her as well..?

 

[spikepipsqueak]

20 minutes into A Long Way Down. This could be good.

 

[TSwizzle]

Bohemian Rhapsody, 7/10; A biography movie about Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen. It's a decent movie to watch but a bit clumsy at times as it tried to pack in a larger than life character into a 90 minute movie. There really wan't anything in the movie that was new information about Freddie and there was definitely some liberties taken with the story told versus actual events. The movie ends on Queen's immense performance at Live Aid back in 1985 and the scene is quite good.

But can never live up to the actual performance.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

I enjoyed that one, and just watched Rocket Man, which was a completely different treatment of a star musician.

The Elton John pic was more imaginative and much rawer.

 

[Ford]

But can never live up to the actual performance.

I don't even know where to start with this. There were so many challenges to this performance. By some accounts, Freddie wasn't anywhere near 100 percent vocally that day. Awhile back I watched a video where an opera singer breaks down his performance and shows how it's clear he wasn't operating on all cylinders as far as his voice was concerned. Plus it was during the day. A festival before sundown is a harder gig than a festival crowd at night. Plus there was no Jumbo Tron, not much of a light show, none of the usual stuff we now associate with a great concert stage show.

And yet, Freddie absolutely owned that massive crowd. People tend to focus on Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are The Champions, but the real gem here is Radio Ga Ga. I'm biased because it's my favorite Queen song and I spent most of my adult life working in radio, but that point where he's got the whole of Wembley clapping along with the chorus? Jeez that's amazing.

A funny thing happens when you get up on stage in front of massive numbers of people. You've got this moment where you either get them, or lose them. Granted, I've only been in front of maybe a tenth of what was there that day, but even 10 or 15 thousand can turn on you on a dime. You've got nothing but yourself to keep them, and Freddie did so much more on that day. He had that arena in the palm of his hand.

I haven't seen the movie, but I've seen clips of that scene recreated, and it doesn't even come close. It can't.

 

[TSwizzle]

David Bowie: Finding Fame, 7/10; A documentary about David Jones/Bowie's struggle to find fame. I'm a bit of a Bowie fan and was aware of some of his earlier work but just in passing. This documentary probably doesn't uncover anything a true Bowie fan didn't already know but for me it was quite interesting. It covers Jones/Bowie's relentless struggle to be a success and famous at something. His early efforts at being a singer/songwriter/musician/performer are (in my opinion) quite dreadful. "The Laughing Gnome" for example. His singing style was basically copied from another well known performer of the early 60's. The documentary has input from former band mates, lovers, childhood friends, relatives and industry people that worked with him. He had many attempts and failures at breaking on to the music scene and it's quite remarkable that he never gave up. The documentary ends at the point when Bowie effectively retires Ziggy Stardust which was the level of fame and success he had been striving for. He of course went on to bigger success after that but at the time, it was quite a gamble and a bit of a mystery to his fans and his band mates who suddenly found themselves out of a job.

 

[angelo]

The Irishman - 5/10

It’s a Scorsese gangster movie. That’s it. If you typed “Scorsese gangster movie” into an automated script generator, you’d get this movie. If Scorsese used stock footage and deleted scenes from his previous gangster movies, you’d get this movie. All the acting and writing were well done, but there was absolutely nothing non-generic about it or anything which would particularly stick in your memory a day after you watch it.

Also, the movie is three and a half hours long. It is not a three and a half hour long movie. Theatres generally make directors cut out the dead weight to trim the run time, but clearly Netflix did not make him so this and he left it all in and there were long chunks which did not need to be there. I cannot think of a single point in the film where if you fell asleep for half an hour, you’d miss anything at all about the plot and the guys who did Return of the King could watch this and complain about the overly long epilogue. It needed an editor.

If you’ve seen a Scorsese gangster movie, you’ve already seen this one. It’s not particularly bad, but not any kind of stand out either.

Did we watch the same movie? If there was one complaint it was that in general I hate flashback type movies, but in this movie it was well executed. Agree about the unnecessary length of the movie also.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Just watched Fast Colors the other day. Really enjoyed this take on magic in the modern world. I had never heard of this movie, and just stumbled across a trailer while I was on the cruise, but never caught it on the TV.

Link to trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tySUZIiXObc

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The Irishman - 5/10

It’s a Scorsese gangster movie. That’s it. If you typed “Scorsese gangster movie” into an automated script generator, you’d get this movie. If Scorsese used stock footage and deleted scenes from his previous gangster movies, you’d get this movie. All the acting and writing were well done, but there was absolutely nothing non-generic about it or anything which would particularly stick in your memory a day after you watch it.

Also, the movie is three and a half hours long. It is not a three and a half hour long movie. Theatres generally make directors cut out the dead weight to trim the run time, but clearly Netflix did not make him so this and he left it all in and there were long chunks which did not need to be there. I cannot think of a single point in the film where if you fell asleep for half an hour, you’d miss anything at all about the plot and the guys who did Return of the King could watch this and complain about the overly long epilogue. It needed an editor.

If you’ve seen a Scorsese gangster movie, you’ve already seen this one. It’s not particularly bad, but not any kind of stand out either.

Did we watch the same movie? If there was one complaint it was that in general I hate flashback type movies, but in this movie it was well executed. Agree about the unnecessary length of the movie also.

Ya, there were no scenes that were bad, just a lot that were unecessary and served to drag the story out, as opposed to adding to it. There wasn't a significant difference between De Niro as a young man, De Niro as a middle aged guy or De Niro as an old man. It was just a gangster doing gangster stuff and then he did some gangster stuff again and later on he went and did some gangster stuff. Each one of the scenes were good, but they kind of blended into the other scenes which were just like them. If you took half of them out, you'd have pretty much the exact same story, so the different scenes don't particularly add anything to the movie, despite them all being executed well. Contrast that with some of his other work like Casino, which had close to the same run time, but had a lot of different tones and styles to differentiate the various parts of the movie and kept it fresh the entire time.

Additionally, there weren't any scenes in the movies which particularly stood out. Other films that he's made have had iconic scenes which were incredibly memorable and stuck with the audience over time. Things like "You talking to me?", "What do you mean I'm funny?", "I never went down", etc. Ten years from now (or even ten days from now), is there anything you're going to particularly remember about this movie apart from "It was the first one done on Netflix"? That's not to say that any of the scenes in the movie were bad, they were just ... kind of generic and similar.

 

[Wiploc]

Additionally, there weren't any scenes in the movies which particularly stood out. Other films that he's made have had iconic scenes which were incredibly memorable and stuck with the audience over time. Things like "You talking to me?", "What do you mean I'm funny?", "I never went down", etc. Ten years from now (or even ten days from now), is there anything you're going to particularly remember about this movie apart from "It was the first one done on Netflix"? That's not to say that any of the scenes in the movie were bad, they were just ... kind of generic and similar.

I'm reminded of something Jack Nicholson once said. Something like, "If you want me to be in your movie, and it has three great scenes and no bad scenes, I'll do it."

I think The Irishman was missing the three great scenes. I enjoyed it, but see no reason to ever watch it again.

 

[angelo]

The Irishman - 5/10

It’s a Scorsese gangster movie. That’s it. If you typed “Scorsese gangster movie” into an automated script generator, you’d get this movie. If Scorsese used stock footage and deleted scenes from his previous gangster movies, you’d get this movie. All the acting and writing were well done, but there was absolutely nothing non-generic about it or anything which would particularly stick in your memory a day after you watch it.

Also, the movie is three and a half hours long. It is not a three and a half hour long movie. Theatres generally make directors cut out the dead weight to trim the run time, but clearly Netflix did not make him so this and he left it all in and there were long chunks which did not need to be there. I cannot think of a single point in the film where if you fell asleep for half an hour, you’d miss anything at all about the plot and the guys who did Return of the King could watch this and complain about the overly long epilogue. It needed an editor.

If you’ve seen a Scorsese gangster movie, you’ve already seen this one. It’s not particularly bad, but not any kind of stand out either.

Did we watch the same movie? If there was one complaint it was that in general I hate flashback type movies, but in this movie it was well executed. Agree about the unnecessary length of the movie also.

Ya, there were no scenes that were bad, just a lot that were unecessary and served to drag the story out, as opposed to adding to it. There wasn't a significant difference between De Niro as a young man, De Niro as a middle aged guy or De Niro as an old man. It was just a gangster doing gangster stuff and then he did some gangster stuff again and later on he went and did some gangster stuff. Each one of the scenes were good, but they kind of blended into the other scenes which were just like them. If you took half of them out, you'd have pretty much the exact same story, so the different scenes don't particularly add anything to the movie, despite them all being executed well. Contrast that with some of his other work like Casino, which had close to the same run time, but had a lot of different tones and styles to differentiate the various parts of the movie and kept it fresh the entire time.

Additionally, there weren't any scenes in the movies which particularly stood out. Other films that he's made have had iconic scenes which were incredibly memorable and stuck with the audience over time. Things like "You talking to me?", "What do you mean I'm funny?", "I never went down", etc. Ten years from now (or even ten days from now), is there anything you're going to particularly remember about this movie apart from "It was the first one done on Netflix"? That's not to say that any of the scenes in the movie were bad, they were just ... kind of generic and similar.

Did you notice Joe Pesci's nose looking like a penis, or is that just me?

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

Ya, there were no scenes that were bad, just a lot that were unecessary and served to drag the story out, as opposed to adding to it. There wasn't a significant difference between De Niro as a young man, De Niro as a middle aged guy or De Niro as an old man. It was just a gangster doing gangster stuff and then he did some gangster stuff again and later on he went and did some gangster stuff. Each one of the scenes were good, but they kind of blended into the other scenes which were just like them. If you took half of them out, you'd have pretty much the exact same story, so the different scenes don't particularly add anything to the movie, despite them all being executed well. Contrast that with some of his other work like Casino, which had close to the same run time, but had a lot of different tones and styles to differentiate the various parts of the movie and kept it fresh the entire time.

Additionally, there weren't any scenes in the movies which particularly stood out. Other films that he's made have had iconic scenes which were incredibly memorable and stuck with the audience over time. Things like "You talking to me?", "What do you mean I'm funny?", "I never went down", etc. Ten years from now (or even ten days from now), is there anything you're going to particularly remember about this movie apart from "It was the first one done on Netflix"? That's not to say that any of the scenes in the movie were bad, they were just ... kind of generic and similar.

Did you notice Joe Pesci's nose looking like a penis, or is that just me?

You look like a penis?

 

[WAB]

Ya, there were no scenes that were bad, just a lot that were unecessary and served to drag the story out, as opposed to adding to it. There wasn't a significant difference between De Niro as a young man, De Niro as a middle aged guy or De Niro as an old man. It was just a gangster doing gangster stuff and then he did some gangster stuff again and later on he went and did some gangster stuff. Each one of the scenes were good, but they kind of blended into the other scenes which were just like them. If you took half of them out, you'd have pretty much the exact same story, so the different scenes don't particularly add anything to the movie, despite them all being executed well. Contrast that with some of his other work like Casino, which had close to the same run time, but had a lot of different tones and styles to differentiate the various parts of the movie and kept it fresh the entire time.

Additionally, there weren't any scenes in the movies which particularly stood out. Other films that he's made have had iconic scenes which were incredibly memorable and stuck with the audience over time. Things like "You talking to me?", "What do you mean I'm funny?", "I never went down", etc. Ten years from now (or even ten days from now), is there anything you're going to particularly remember about this movie apart from "It was the first one done on Netflix"? That's not to say that any of the scenes in the movie were bad, they were just ... kind of generic and similar.

Did you notice Joe Pesci's nose looking like a penis, or is that just me?

You look like a penis?