Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 51

Eastern Promises, featuring Aragorn's penis and sestra Helena's disembodied voice.

I guess I liked it enough to not regret the $3 I spent on it and the space it'll take up on my shelf. I can appreciate a good crime drama, but it's not really my go-to kind of movie. Despite the violence, it's a pretty quiet film, like, literally, when you compare it to something like The Departed where every gunshot is so jarringly loud it made the audience in the theater gasp.

All of the performances were pretty good, except for maybe the kid in the beginning, unless I missed something and his character was actually meant to be somewhat mentally challenged. Of course, Naomi Watts and especially Viggo Mortensen stand out. His character is so complex, and he manages to convey all of it.

The interviews in the special features made it seem like one of the primary intentions of the movie was to portray trafficking. While that was certainly the catalyst for the story, I think, for better or worse, Mortensen's character was so intriguing that it drew attention away from that. I didn't expect the reveal that he was undercover, but it so perfectly, almost too cleanly, explained why he was doing good guy stuff as a bad guy. I do like that you're never really given the backstory behind his motivations.
I think the blood and violence was meant to be shocking. I was pretty desensitized to it, though. I do appreciate how the movie really tries to make you think about violence itself, how it can be either a bad or not so bad thing depending on what's being done, who's doing it, and what their intention is.

This is actually my first Cronenberg. I guess A History of Violence is the logical next step, since Mortensen is in that as well and it also sounds like it lines up thematically.

 

I believe that donkey movie is Au Hasard Balthazar

 

No, pretty sure it's Shrek

 

It's absolutely Shrek

 

oh yeah it was shrek, my bad

 

Au Hasard Balthazar is the better donkey movie.

 

mmm chek the box offices cause shrek actually crushed it

 

More Academy Awards too. I guess I was wrong.

 

and on a deeper level it taught me to believe in myself and not to listen the names people call me

 

Shrek 1 and 2 played In Competition at Cannes.

 

Onions have layers

 

everybody loves parfait

 

it's in black and white. did you forget that?

 

Au Hasard Balthazar probably doesn't have any Smashmouth songs in it either.

 

That's kinda "oh...cool" for the first one. Appalling for the second.

 

The French New Wave's most famous films are Breathless, The 400 Blows and Shrek

 

the Shrek The Third hate in here is appalling

 

more like Shrek the 1st casue thats still what it came at the box office
THEBIGGESTOPENINGDAYFORANANIMATEDFILMATTHETIME
IMTALKING

 

you win again, Ian

 

Does anybody like Joao Pedro Rodrigues? I just watched To Die Like A Man, which was pretty incredible. His latest, The Ornitologist is the festival film I've been thinking about the most in these post-TIFF months. Planning on watching The Last Time I Saw Macao this afternoon.

 

To Die Like a Man was great, and The Last Time I Saw Macao was good as well. I was not even aware it was the same director until now, though.

 

I just finished Macao. It starts to lose steam in the last 20 or so minutes when it becomes more plot focused, but it's brilliant otherwise.

You should keep an eye out for The Ornithologist. It's the closest thing I've seen to a Pasolini film outside of Pasolini's own work.

 

Saw both The Edge of Seventeen and Manchester By the Sea tonight.

I'll start with Manchester, because I have less to say. Writing and performances are all as good as everyone has said, Affleck and Lucas Hedges were so good. I need to check out Lonergan's other films, I've had them on my hard drive forever. I feel like not as many people have touched upon how truly funny the film is, which was a major highlight for me. I don't have much more to write about that someone smarter than me didn't already put down. The brilliance of the hospital gurney scene after the fire cannot be understated.

The Edge of Seventeen blew away all of my expectations. Sure, it follows some pretty predictable beats and Woody Harrelson's character is completely unbelievable, but it was so refreshing to watch a teen comedy that felt real and without any of the snark or meta bullshit that fills the screen recently. There were numerous moments throughout the film where I perfectly pictured myself in the space of the main character, her anxiety and frustration and awkwardness. The scene at the party, in particular, felt very real. I think that this film was unfairly overlooked and should be seen by more people. Steinfeld really impressed me, was not really a fan of her before this. Hayden Szeto was fantastic as well, stole every scene he was in. Very cool to see a male love interest of color in a relatively major motion picture. Hopefully we'll see him pop up in more

 

The Edge of Seventeen: Really loved this movie. I was very excited to see it and it definitely met my expectations. The acting was great and I loved that it was very comedic but also very touching with a great message. Totally can relate to it and as the person above me said, I could definitely picture myself in the place of the main character. It's disappointing to see it not doing so well and not getting much recognition. I don't see movies too often but I would definitely put this as one of my favorite movies of 2016. I'll give it a 9/10.

 

Oh, that reminds me, I watched The Duff a few nights ago and never got to writing about it. It's... not my favorite teen movie of the last sixteen years. It's more in the vein of Mean Girls and Easy A. Mean Girls was so funny that many of its memorable quotes became internet memes. Easy A tried to duplicate that, and while it wasn't quite as funny, it instead hit on something surprisingly much more fulfilling emotionally. The Duff was somehow less funny than Easy A and less poignant than Mean Girls. I did enjoy it quite a bit, though, and I admire how it brought social media and cyber bullying into the forefront, a very fitting move for something coming out of the 2010s. As much as I love Ken Jeong and Allison Janney, they felt pretty out of place, and it didn't help that Bella Thorne (who I've never seen in anything before) and even Skyler Samuels (who I loved in American Horror Story and Scream Queens) were completely wooden, but at least Mae Whitman is super charming and her character was somewhat relatable. While Mean Girls and Edge of Seventeen are, to me, perfect entries to the genre for completely different reasons, The Duff fails to really excel in anything, but at least it isn't particularly bad, either.

Watching The Duff, I was kind of surprised when I heard songs I recognized from recent Fall Out Boy and Tegan and Sara. The soundtrack for The Duff, like the film itself, seems like it tried to be trendy and mainstream, with songs from The Chainsmokers, Nick Jonas, and other artists I'm not familiar with but I'm sure people a few years younger than me are. It had more of a pop sound, whereas the soundtracks for Edge of Seventeen and Perks of Being a Wallflower featured a more indie-rock sound, and those two films were much more emotionally charged. I feel like I'm digging myself into a hole by implying that mainstream pop music can't be used for emotional scenes, but what I'm really trying to say is, you can sometimes tell a lot about a movie by looking at its soundtrack.

For example, the Suicide Squad soundtrack was trash.