I was engaged with the courtroom stuff and definitely enamored with the performances. It made me think of Spotlight, which I wasn't as wild about as most people, though it was still good. While this definitely leans harder into sentimentality, which I normally don't love, it worked for me and I like it around the same as Spotlight.
Arrival - 9/10 Man, what a film. Definitely a best picture nominee, goes above and beyond typical sci-fi fare. Cannot praise the script and directing enough. GO SEE IT.
Arrival - 9.5/10 Denis Villeneuve once again has made a brilliant film and for the second year in a row has made easily one of my favorites of the year. Brilliant performances, stunning visuals, great score, expertly shot and even though it deals with complicated ideas they don't leave you feeling baffled but invite you to look at the ideas and think heavily on them.
Just wanted to plug, I got to write about Certain Women for Chorus and that's pretty cool to me. Certain Women • chorus.fm
I rarely get to the movies anymore but yesterday I left the Cavs game at halftime and was lucky enough to catch Moonlight at a 9:25 showing. It shows a huge fault in the film industry up to this point that it is so original in the main character at the heart of the story, which was compelling in its own right, but beyond that it is put together with excellent craftsmanship. Its told in three parts, and the first two are mostly a unique coming of age story without a single wasted scene. Part three had a Wong Kar-wai vibe to it and was a very effective closing. Good stuff, makes me miss going to the movies.
My only two major issues with Moonlight are the decision to keep the surrogate family in the storyline after the revelation about Juan's job and the way that Chiron ended up looking just like him. His transformation would have been more effective to the audience if both of these were changed.
I agree, I had similar issues about his transformation, but I was able to look past this because the diner scene was so damn good and really became the focus of part three for me.
Being that Juan was his only older male role model (as far as I can recall, it's been a month), I think it makes a lot of sense that he models himself after him.
It was probably the best sex scene in recent cinema. It treated the adults in the audience like sexual people who can relate to the dual feelings of satisfaction and doubt after a sexual encounter.
Modeling makes sense, but it looked like they were doing a prequel of Juan. We all model ourselves after people without our genetic makeup going with it. It was too on the nose.
I think it was also partially going to prison probably changed him, I imagined that was where he started working out and working on "not being soft"
Yeah. I was thinking on it more after posting. It makes total sense in the character development but I agree that it's a bit blunt.
Saw Jason Bourne recently... was a bit of a disappointment. Some decent action scenes, but nothing we hadn't really seen before. The story is meh, i genuinely stopped caring about 20 minutes in.
I appreciate it more now, didn't really get how cool it was that Kat loves Bikini Kill the first few times
That is pretty common. It is not a coincidence that almost all of his films are led by female characters.
Spectre - 6.5/10 - Pretty great camera work, some cool fight scenes...but the overall story was extremely lacking. The twist was so lackluster that it really took away from the film. Sciario - 8/10 - The Del Toro show. Very interesting and arresting. Ghost in the Shell - 9/10 - Some of the dialogue was a bit wordy and still (as it usually is for anime), but it has fantastic visuals and pacing. Very concise storyline as well. Could be a very cool live-action film, but hopefully they maintain the quiet thought provoking passages, as well as letting the visuals breathe. Show, don't tell, will go a long way in this adaptation.