movie diary'17
Call my ass FX, ‘cause I got the movies
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- DirectorRyûhei KitamuraKoji HashimotoShûsuke KanekoStarsMasahiro MatsuokaRei KikukawaDon FryeGodzilla's fiftieth Anniversary project, in which Godzilla travels around the world to fight his old foes and his allies plus a new, mysterious monster named Monster X.recorded off El Ray. possibly not the weirdest Godzilla movie, but definitely the most "extreme". An elite force of mutant soldiers have trapped Godzilla in Antarctic ice, but must free him to save the world when invading aliens unleash an army of kaiju across the globe. Our mutant heroes engage in crazy Matrix-style fights and cross the globe in a submarine that can drill through the Earth's crust. All this craziness is invigorating for a bit, but quickly grows numbing and dull.
- DirectorLes BlankStarsKid ThomasAllen ToussaintBlue Lu BarkerA look at the spirit of New Orleans. First a funeral: Allen Toussaint explains that you arrive slow and cut up afterwards. Then it's food, with a lesson in eating crayfish at Frankie and Johnny's. Next, a St. Patrick's Day party: New Orleans celebrates holidays on the streets. Then it's preparation for Mardi gras, with roots in slave days, when slaves gathered on Sundays to prepare for the one holiday they could celebrate. The Wild Tchoupitoulas society makes Indian costumes to honor the help Indians gave slaves. At Mardi gras, we're with this society parading, singing, and partying. We end with the annual parade for St. Joseph, the saint of the people. More music, dance and ritual.recorded on tcm
- DirectorM. Night ShyamalanStarsOlivia DeJongeEd OxenbouldDeanna DunaganTwo siblings become increasingly frightened by their grandparents' disturbing behavior while visiting them on vacation.netflix disc
- DirectorJeff NicholsStarsMichael ShannonJoel EdgertonKirsten DunstA father and son go on the run, pursued by the government and a cult drawn to the child's special powers.netflix disc 2/9/17
- DirectorAnthony MinghellaStarsMatt DamonGwyneth PaltrowJude LawIn late 1950s New York, a young underachiever named Tom Ripley is sent to Italy to retrieve Dickie Greenleaf, a rich and spoiled millionaire playboy. But when the errand fails, Ripley takes extreme measures.Netflix disc 3/9/17. rented... last frickin August
- DirectorAlexandre AjaStarsElisabeth ShueJerry O'ConnellRichard DreyfussAfter a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the area's new razor-toothed residents.syfy on demand. insanely gory even in this neutered for tv version, but lacking in characters we care enough about even to despise. very dodgy visual effects; the opening, in which Richard Dreyfus inadvertently opens up a whirlpool leading to an ancient subterranean lake, looks like a Roadrunner cartoon.
- DirectorChad StahelskiStarsKeanu ReevesMichael NyqvistAlfie AllenAn ex-hitman comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters who killed his dog and stole his car.nflix dvd
- DirectorKenneth BranaghStarsLily JamesCate BlanchettRichard MaddenWhen her father unexpectedly dies, young Ella finds herself at the mercy of her cruel stepmother and her scheming stepsisters. Never one to give up hope, Ella's fortunes begin to change after meeting a dashing stranger.subjugated to this nonsense after it was recorded by the wife off of Starz or some such. These rehashes are terrible. I'll allow one exception, which is last year's "Pete's Dragon" remake. Disney, stop doing this *beep* Your animated films are your legacy, and remaking them with cheap cgi cheapens that legacy.
- DirectorJemaine ClementTaika WaititiStarsJemaine ClementTaika WaititiCori Gonzalez-MacuerViago, Deacon, and Vladislav are vampires who are struggling with the mundane aspects of modern life, like paying rent, keeping up with the chore wheel, trying to get into nightclubs, and overcoming flatmate conflicts.on vacation, re-watch with friends off Amazon video, who properly enjoyed it
- DirectorJeff NicholsStarsMichael ShannonJoel EdgertonKirsten DunstA father and son go on the run, pursued by the government and a cult drawn to the child's special powers.off hbo 7/3. Previously watched on dvd, which was a frustrating experience; glare on the screen obscured the image no matter how dark the room was, and even with the sound up all the way the dialog, minimalist by design, was a frustrating mumble. I fret a lot about proper presentation, and I hate it when movies are cropped, but this time at least I wasn't struggling to see and hear the movie.
I still wouldn't call it an unqualified success. Initially the mystery is intriguing; where lots of scifi pummels the audience with exposition, Nichols never tells us anything extra, conveying a lot of information in short scenes without a lot of dialog. The magical little boy is just a bit too precious, and he ultimately comes off as a big trope, especially after he is healed by the sun. Still, the film is anchored by a powerful performance by Michael Shannon, the father of the boy, and his struggle to give his son a better life is a moving story. - DirectorAlan ParkerStarsBob GeldofChristine HargreavesJames LaurensonA confined but troubled rock star descends into madness in the midst of his physical and social isolation from everyone.Off tcm. 7/18.
- DirectorEvan GoldbergSeth RogenStarsJames FrancoJonah HillSeth RogenSix Los Angeles celebrities are stuck in James Franco's house after a series of devastating events just destroyed the city. Inside, the group not only have to face the apocalypse, but themselves.8/18 on demand, in censored form.
- DirectorKaryn KusamaStarsLogan Marshall-GreenEmayatzy CorinealdiMichiel HuismanWhen a man accepts an invitation to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife, the unsettling past reopens old wounds and creates new tensions.streaming, with numerous technical difficulties. excellent thriller
- DirectorLana WachowskiLilly WachowskiStarsEmile HirschMatthew FoxChristina RicciYoung driver, Speed Racer, aspires to be champion of the racing world with the help of his family and his high-tech Mach 5 automobile.A big, splashy cartoon with one-dimensional characters, this did not have a lot of replay value. I absolutely loved it in when I saw it in theaters. However when I rewatched it on a home theater projector incapable of high definition; without a crisp image, the weird synthetic sets and backgrounds seem like those of a bad video game. Abandoned halfway through due to buffering problems.
- DirectorMichael AptedStarsNoomi RapaceOrlando BloomToni ColletteA CIA interrogator is lured into a ruse that puts London at risk of a biological attack.streaming. implausible and convoluted thriller. Rapace is an intelligence agent who finds herself embroiled in a deadly conspiracy. An intolerably smug Orlando Bloom is a thief who partners with her to find out who framed her and stop a terrorist attack.
- DirectorEvan GoldbergSeth RogenStarsJames FrancoSeth RogenRandall ParkDave Skylark and his producer Aaron Rapaport run the celebrity tabloid show "Skylark Tonight". When they land an interview with a surprise fan, North Korean dictator Jong-Un Kim, they are recruited by the CIA to assassinate him.After turning doomsday into farce in This Is the End, Rogen and Goldberg turn their satirical gaze toward a more pressing apocalypse, of an impending nuclear war with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It's funny, and perhaps a bit unnerving, but these guys just seem to keep making the same movie, one shaggy, violent stoner comedy after another. Randall Park is very funny as Kim Jong-Un, and though the character does embody a lot of the contradictions we see in the real-life Kim, like voraciously consuming western media while threatening war with the US, there's not a true attempt at verisimilitude here. That goes for Franco and Rogen, too, whose characters aspire to be serious journalists, but they're so inept that they don't seem capable of putting on their own tabloid tv show, much less surviving a mission for the CIA.
- DirectorCassie JayeStarsCassie JayePaul ElamAttila VinczerThe Red Pill chronicles filmmaker Cassie Jaye's journey following the mysterious and polarizing Men's Rights Movement. The Red Pill explores today's gender war and asks the question "what is the future of gender equality?"streaming. a dudes whining about feminism and bewailing their lives in a fascist matriarchal alternate universe. abandoned due to being intolerable. in lieu of a review, why don't you just read about Men's Rights hero Paul Elam's personal journey https://www.buzzfeed.com/adamserwer/how-mens-rights-leader-paul-elam-turned-being-a-deadbeat-dad?utm_term=.ns0ppDEQWG#.lvoggl4V3G
- DirectorPaul VerhoevenStarsMichael DouglasSharon StoneGeorge DzundzaA violent police detective investigates a brutal murder that might involve a manipulative and seductive novelist.Verhoeven's infamous skin flick is a Hitchcockian fever dream. seen streaming on netflix
- DirectorPeter StricklandStarsSidse Babett KnudsenMonica SwinnChiara D'AnnaA woman who studies butterflies and moths tests the limits of her relationship with her lesbian lover.caught this streaming on netflix on its last day of availability. A fascinating and madly stylish study of relationship. Knudsen and D'Anna are lovers in a world seemingly without males. When Knudsen, a revered entomologist, isn't collecting butterflies and giving lectures on cave-crickets, she is playing the dom in their sadomasochistic sex games, forcing D'Anna to clean the house and punishing her for any lapse or disobedience. The kinkiness of the sex, the baroque set design, and the gorgeous cinematography lend flavor to a simple, if ultimately rather tricky, question: how do two lovers with very different lives and interests make their relationship work?
- DirectorFrank MarshallStarsPaul WalkerJason BiggsBruce GreenwoodBrutal cold forces two Antarctic explorers to leave their team of sled dogs behind as they fend for their survival.off dvr at the in-laws. The expected Disney sentimentality, with eight adorable huskies stranded in a remote part of Antarctica during a harsh winter storm and fighting to survive. Per IMDB's trivia, this is rather loosely based on an expedition where 15 dogs were stranded, of which 2 survived; nobody wants to see that movie, I think it's safe to say. Walker, as their trainer, is a credible presence out on the ice, time and again saving the life of hapless scientician Bruce Greenwood with grit and know-how. But the action hero gets frog-marched back to civilization by his boss after getting a bad case of frostbite, and is forced to leave the dogs behind. For much of the film he goes around browbeating his friends and lobbying bureaucrats to go back and save the dogs, and this is rather less compelling; here Walker comes across too often as petty and passive-aggressive, especially toward the people least able to do anything about his predicament. The dogs are cute, and they carry the film a bit better, but it's not exactly Ibsen.
- DirectorPenelope SpheerisStarsDiedrich BaderErika EleniakJim VarneyNice guy redneck Jed Clampett strikes it rich when he finds black oil. He and his kin move to posh Beverly Hills.Cartoonish rehash of the old culture-clash comedy with a lot of painful mugging from an eclectic and largely misused cast. It's weird to single out Jim Varney for praise, but the man who was Ernest P Worrell is amusingly deadpan as Clampett patriach Jed, and merits an honorable mention in a wretched ensemble. Spheeris' comedies tend to be over the top and silly, but this one doesn't have a charismatic force at the center to carry the story and to find the humor in her anarchic sensibilities, as Carvey and Myers do in "Wayne's World".
- DirectorMike FlanaganStarsCarla GuginoBruce GreenwoodChiara AureliaA couple tries to spice up their marriage in a remote lake house. After the husband dies unexpectedly, the wife is left handcuffed to their bed frame and must fight to survive and break free.ntflx original. Gugino, a housewife left helplessly chained to the bed after a sex game gone awry in a secluded lakehouse, must contend with a wild dog, desperate hunger and thirst, and visions of a skeletal boogeyman as she struggles to survive somehow.
- DirectorBrett WhitcombStarsEmily DoleDee BooherLarry WhistlerGLOW: The Story of The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling chronicles the rise and fall of the first ever all-female wrestling show through the stories of those who lived it.much enjoying Jenji Kohan's new show, so I watched this on ntflx. I was utterly unfamiliar with the 80's wrestling show, but this look at the program is fascinating. The real women of GLOW are such indelible characters. It's thrilling to see them in their heyday, and they remain charming in interviews from the present day.
- DirectorBen WheatleyStarsAlice LoweKenneth HadleySteve OramChris wants to show girlfriend Tina his world, but events soon conspire against the couple and their dream caravan holiday takes a very wrong turn.Sundance on demand. Not, unfortunately, w/out commercial interruption. Good movie.
- DirectorHarry KerwinWayne CrawfordStarsWayne CrawfordJason EversRoberta LeightonLittle coastal town is being terrorized by deadly Barracudas.tedious Jaws ripoff, showcased on the fannish movie show "Svengoolie". "Svengoolie" itself was... not great, a showcase for a bunch of hacky, poorly paced jokes, a confusing distraction from a dull flick. The movie itself soon loses the clumsily staged aquatic gore in favor of a half-baked conspiracy plot, and ends abruptly with its dull heroes cut down in a hail of gunfire.