I think there's a LOT to unpack in The Social Network. I teach it in my curriculum with The Great Gatsby. If I get a few minutes and the inclination I may ramble about it
Saw Midnight Special last night. After having just finished Stranger Things last week, watching something else well done in a similar genre was a lot of fun.
Liberal Arts and Frances Ha were pretty much what I expected them to be. Nothing really surprising about either of them. I was really excited about these when they first came out, I knew what i was getting myself into and I enjoyed them enough, so I don't understand why I'm mildly disappointed. I'm guessing it's because I liked Happythankyoumoreplease and Greenberg so much more. These just didn't resonate with me as much. It's nice to see Elizabeth Olsen in not-an-Avengers-movie, and it's good to see Greta Gerwig in anything. Oh, and pre-Star Wars Adam Driver was a surprise. Josh Radnor does kind of play the same character in everything.
The story is convoluted, a bit cliche, and uninteresting, and Fincher doesn't do a good enough job of focusing on the more interesting characters (or maybe mostly just Lisbeth) rather than the ridiculous investigation. Its unclear why he felt the need to remake the film. I can't remember why I watched it, I don't think I heard anything good about it.
i think Batman Begins and Inception are my favorite Nolan movies. also until this discussion i didn't realize i've seen so many Fincher movies - fight club, panic room, dragon tattoo, social network
i'm not great at reviewing so apologies for this. i watched a bunch of DC animated movies this month. Wonder Woman, Batman: Assault on Arkham, Batman: Under the Red Hood, Justice League: War, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Justice: The Flashpoint Paradox, and Justice League: the New Frontier. i think Assault on Arkham and The Flashpoint Paradox are the best of those. they're all very good and worth watching. i found Red Hood a little predictable at times (sorry!), and i honestly hated steve trevor's portrayal in WW, but other than that not much to complain about, really loved all of them. loved all the snarky jokes by Batman and Green Lantern, and the conversations between them were the best. and the witty and silly jokes by The Flash were fun as well. just really love Barry Allen basically. i'm watching Batman the Animated Series now and it's awesome ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh and i loved being able to see Green Lantern's origin story in New Frontier. honestly knew nothing about him before that. IDK I just love DC's characters and their stories a ton. it's a shame that, for the most part, the live action movies have been...well..yeah.
There's something remarkably more human about DC characters that I feel Marvel misses out on outside of Spiderman and X-Men properties
Swingers First time watching it and I found it highly relatable. A few great scenes and an awesome Rat Pack-esuqe sequence - loved that. I give it a 8.5/10
Hell or High Water is definitely assembled from pieces of other quality movies (Heat, Slumdog, High Sierra, No Country for Old Men) but I liked it a lot nonetheless
Sausage Party - 7/10 i think i've given this comedy 'crew' the same score on all of their movies! Their movies are always decent, but with their grand ideas it's unfortunate that they always end up only decent. This Is the End, Pineapple Express, The Interview, and now Sausage Party....the plots for all of these are fucking amazing! It's great to see these type of comedies being green lit, but I just wish they were........ funnier. A ton of pot jokes, sex jokes, which is to be expected, but for me what got the most laughs were the dumb food puns. The over the top visuals of food being 'slaugthered' and other than that there wasn't anything overly hilarious. I kept thinking how much better this would have been if Matt Stone and Trey Parker were behind it. i guess it's as good as one would expect "sausage party" to be.
Everybody Wants Some is ultimately kinda pointless (deliberately) but I'm not sure I've seen a movie better at shooting the shit dialogue and bro-y camaraderie. Just so watchable
Moonrise Kingdom is such a delightful pleasure to watch, I was smiling the entire time. I didn't like Rushmore for some reason, but I like Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox a lot. I really appreciate this kind of humor, and the story is quite heartwarming as well. I thought the extended panning shots mixed in with the short still shots of Balaban's narration was really well done. Loved the music. I think the children actors' performances were quite good. I just found out Jason Schwartzman is related to the Coppolas whaaat.
With Rushmore, Max's arc is somewhat less interesting than Blume's. Anderson does a lot of non-verbal work with the character; the way he cries during Max's play about Vietnam and jumps up to clap after being slow and lethargic the entire film is very poignant. Max growing and accepting the limits of his friendship with the teacher is fine, but the film underdevelops the trauma he is hiding from his dead mother. We see his embarrassment at his working-class roots, but a later Anderson film would have had flashbacks to a mother character.