Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 48

his work is so perverse that it's either ignored or loathed by a lot of folks, i feel like. but, yeah - i think his films provide a wealth of interesting potential for feminist analysis

 

Man, I watched it twice within the first 8 hours of owning the disc lol.

 

Moonlight.

Everyone see this film, if you can. If you can't, wait for it to release on iTunes and then see it. The power and importance of it simply can't be understated.

Re: the earlier discussion of Chiron's transformation into Juan 2.0: I definitely think it was on-the-nose but at the same time it really did make sense that he would adopt that persona as a means of hiding his true self, especially considering the turns his life takes after the end of Part 2. I didn't take it so much as he was modeling himself after Juan because he wanted to, I took it as he felt like he needed to continue hiding his homosexuality and so Juan's portrait of aggressive heterosexuality/masculinity was the only/most effective reference point he had to work with.

 

The issue comes from more that the actors chosen for the two characters look comically similar to each other when teenage Chiron did not. For a few minutes, most of the audience thought it was Juan.

In a lot of Asian cinema, they would have literally used the same actor to play a separate character to highlight the ways in which we repeat the lives of others. Jenkins mentioned being influenced by Three Times, which has two actors play three different characters across multiple time periods to highlight the universality of our experiences. That might have been too weird for American audiences, though.

 

I don't know, I got right away what Jenkins was going for (or, rather, what I felt he was going for) despite the fact that Trevante Rhodes and Ashton Sanders don't look alike at all. And if Jenkins really was influenced by Three Times (which I wasn't aware he said that), then it was very intentional for him to cast the role of adult Chiron the way he did, no? I felt like it made sense from a thematic/character/plot standpoint.

A.A. Dowd put it well in his review for The A.V. Club: "But watching Chiron, the main character of Moonlight, change from a bullied 9-year-old boy (Alex Hibbert) to a gawky teenager (Ashton Sanders) to a quiet, muscular man (Trevante Rhodes), it’s easy to believe we’re seeing the same person throughout—the same shy and taciturn kid, uncomfortable in his own skin, living in his own head. The actors don’t look much alike, but they create a continuity of performance: a whole person in spectrum."

 

I got very excited when I saw Jenkins mention Three Times as a prime influence on Moonlight. What a film that is.

 

It is a minor point in an otherwise great film. I have said it multiple times before, but everyone who liked Moonlight should try to see Jenkins' previous film, Medicine for Melancholy. It was very rarely seen but it has some incredible moments of empathy and understanding.

 

For me, the phone call and the coincidence of them both being on the beach were a bit too on the nose. I get that they were essential to the plot, they just didn't feel as natural as a lot of other parts of the film.

 

Watched Blood Simple tonight, really loved it. M. Emmet Walsh is a lunatic and played the perfect part. So many wonderful shots throughout the film. The opening with the headlights, the neon lit bar scenes, the tracking shot over the drunk, the bartender's Converse dance after he puts on The Four Tops, the entire ending scene. A very, very strong first film from the Bros.
I'm still missing Barton Fink, O Brother, A Serious Man and Hail Cesar! out of their decent work. Llewyn Davis remains my favorite. I need to rewatch No Country as I don't remember being in love with it.

 

I still need to watch that one. Only one I haven't seen.

Barton Fink and A Serious Man are essentials.

 

I still need to see Blood Simple, Hudsuckers, and sigh I know Raising Arizona

 

I wonder if there will be a Criterion of some more of their films, I don't think Fargo has a decent BD release, right? I've been putting off buying their stuff until they get some solid releases. I do own Lebowski like, 5 times, though. And Llewyn Davis twice.

 

I would like to see them do The Man Who Wasn't There.

 

1. The Big Lebowski
2. Fargo
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. No Country for Old Men
5. A Serious Man
6. Barton Fink
7. Miller's Crossing
8. Raising Arizona
9. Burn After Reading
10. The Man Who Wasn't There
11. Blood Simple
12. Hail, Caesar!
13. True Grit
14. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
15. Intolerable Cruelty
16. The Hudsucker Proxy
17. The Ladykillers

 

Edge of Seventeen was good. Really close to Perks of Being a Wallflower or Me and Earl and the Dying Girl both in terms of quality and tone. Well, the clever quips are a bit closer to Easy A and Juno, but nowhere near as meme-able as Mean Girls. I feel like teen movies of the 21st century are becoming more and more emotionally complex, which is a good thing. I can't remember the last time a teen movie was rated R; Edge of Seventeen made full use of its rating: it had quite a few swears that all felt very natural, and it dealt with sex in ways I think were a bit more realistic, or at the very least, more mature, than Easy A and Juno. Hailee Steinfeld's character is at times almost as unlikable as Thomas Mann's in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which I thought was refreshing considering how Ellen Page, Lindsay Lohan, and Emma Stone were all so likable in their respective films. Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, and Kyra Sedgwick gave good performances, obviously, but I was surprised by Blake Jenner's performance. Edge of Seventeen doesn't deal with depression as overtly as Perks of Being a Wallflower or It's Kind of a Funny Story, but it's there, just not at the forefront. I like how well the movie juggled the relationships she had with all the other characters as they became more and more strained because of how she is; her relationship with her brother (Jenner's character) especially stood out. The movie did have the trope of that one really understanding teacher mentor character, but other than that, I think the movie does a good job of avoiding a lot of genre conventions. Shoutout for having an Asian in the cast who's not the stereotypical high school math nerd, and who's actually a love interest! (The rest of the main cast is so, so painfully white, but that's kind of a problem that all the aforementioned films have)

I was going to have a list of teen movies of the 21st century I've seen, but I already mentioned all of them in the review.

I still need to see: The Spectacular Now, The Fault in Our Stars, The Duff

Any other recommendations?

 

Kings of Summer

 

Zootopia was really good. Beautiful animation, very funny, obviously great script and message for children. It's still a step below anything Pixar puts out, but I really liked it.

 

I LOVED Edge of Seventeen. People are saying it's one of the best teen movies since Hughes, but it's better than a few of Hughes's, too.

 

I don't much like the Coen Brothers. I liked Fargo a lot, and No Country was better than expected, but mostly I don't care about their style and I think their movies, despite certainly having a range of characters, are pretty one note in terms of humor. I just never find myself caring about the stakes, or finding them particularly funny or enjoyable. Do need to check Barton Fink and Blood Simple though.

 

Think Zootopia is on level of Pixar tbh. Some Pixar movies are bad or average in comparison to Zootopia.

And The Spectular Now is great.

I haven't watched movies in quite a bit. Haven't really felt like it.

 

As others have pointed out certainly Sixteen Candles with Erwin

 

I suppose I would put Zootopia over something like Cars, but still under anything like Toy Story or WALL-E.

 

Blue Ruin - 6/10

The first third of this movie was really great but after that it becomes much less interesting. There wasn't any suspense in the last 60 minutes and I didn't really feel that gripped by the plot. I guess that's the problem, after the first 30 minutes, there's just nothing interesting about the story anymore. Most of the questions I had up to that point had already been answered and there was nothing left for me to be invested in. I'm surprised at the high level of praise this movie received, it's nothing special imo.

 

Burn After Reading is way underrated

 

Loved Nocturnal Animals. A few flaws but overall mostly worked really well for me.