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

[excreationist]

Good Fortune
Keanu Reeves is an angel who makes a guy living in his car and a rich guy switch lives. I liked how the characters discover how bleak life can be for the working poor - yet the main character had to truly want to live his old life. I really enjoyed it and the social commentary and some humour.
9/10

 

[Shadowy Man]

Saw a Cohen Bros. movie I had missed, A Serious Man. Seems a retelling of the Book of Job, and it jumps from dybukks to quantum mechanics.

I liked it but my friend didn’t. He thought it was too slow. It started slow for me too but then went to zany Cohen overdrive in the second half. 6/10.

Hadn’t heard of this one. I have found the Cohen brothers really hit or miss with me.

 

[pood]

Saw a Cohen Bros. movie I had missed, A Serious Man. Seems a retelling of the Book of Job, and it jumps from dybukks to quantum mechanics.

I liked it but my friend didn’t. He thought it was too slow. It started slow for me too but then went to zany Cohen overdrive in the second half. 6/10.

Hadn’t heard of this one. I have found the Cohen brothers really hit or miss with me.

Yup. It hit with me but missed with my friend. But it wasn’t hitting with me either until the second half of the movie when it went batshit crazy.

 

[pood]

There is a lovely scene in which the protagonist, a Jewish physics professor haunted by dybukks, is explaining the quantum uncertainty principle to a seminar of bored college students. As they walk out on him his nemesis walks down and, against a gigantic blackboard of mathematical equations, grabs him and beats his his head against the blackboard and yells, “I’ve been fucking your wife!”

Talk about your uncertainty principle!

 

[Swammerdami]

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Once again, I have to say They don't make 'em like they used to.

Just in case you don't know, the story is about a baby born as a decrepit old man who then proceeds to get younger as the years go by.
...
9/10

Interesting. I looked this up and says it was based on a short story by Fitzgerald.

I am not familiar with that story, but I am with Time of Passage by J.G. Ballard, which explores exactly the same topic.

I will put this on my to-watch list.

There's an interesting novel by Martin Amis -- Time's Arrow: or The Nature of the Offence -- which uses a different but related(?) trick. The trick is revealed right away, so I'm not spoiling the novel: A powerless narrator inside protagonist's brain perceives and narrates with time reversed. Has anyone else here read this novel?

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BTW: My memory was never too good and in late middle age (or does 76 finally push me over to "old"?) it's gotten worse. I had to watch the trailer to realize I'd already seen A Serious Man.

 

[pood]

Rewatched Amadeus after several years. A cinematic gem but historically wildly inaccurate, so I have mixed feelings about It. I have real qualms about turning a historical character, Antonio Salieri, into a villain when there is no evidence that he was. The movie also suggests that his music was mediocre but again the historical evidence suggests otherwise. He certainly was successful in his lifetime and Beethoven was a student, as was Mozart’s son. I see no reason why you can’t make a movie about Mozart without making shit up and retroactively slandering a real person.

 

[Swammerdami]

Rewatched Amadeus after several years. A cinematic gem but historically wildly inaccurate, so I have mixed feelings about It. I have real qualms about turning a historical character, Antonio Salieri, into a villain when there is no evidence that he was. The movie also suggests that his music was mediocre but again the historical evidence suggests otherwise. He certainly was successful in his lifetime and Beethoven was a student, as was Mozart’s son. I see no reason why you can’t make a movie about Mozart without making shit up and retroactively slandering a real person.

I agree with your sentiments. Shouldn't the producers have placed a disclaimer somewhere in the credits?

Amadeus is one of my favorite movies, but I was never interested in Mozart's bio, and never even wondered about the movie's fact/fiction ratio! (Do I seem like an incurious fellow? I AM a curious guy(!) but I limit my curiosity to darting off in 700 different directions, not 7000.)

I love the movie because I love to listen to the music. (If ONLY listening to Mozart's music without video and a story to focus on, my attention would drift.) I saw a quote by a highly respected mathematician: He calls only three people "geniuses" -- two were perhaps the very greatest 20th-century mathematicians; the 3rd was Mozart. I'm not qualified to judge but I feel that Mozart's music is incomparable.

I find it fun to curate my own personal list of Favorite Movies. Amadeus is in My Top 20, but ONLY because of the music. Across_the_Universe (2007) is a splendid romantic tale which deserves more than its 7.3 IMDB score anyway, but it makes my Top 20 because of its music. 34 Beatles songs, none sung by the Beatles. Bono and Cocker each sing a song, but mostly the singers are the new young actors themselves who sing marvelously.

But I am NOT generally a fan of musicals. Only 3 or 4 conventional musicals make my Top 100 List.