What have you watched recently? 3D!

The Scheme - A jaw-dropping new documentary dives into an absurd tale of how the FBI tried to bring down a 26-year-old basketball star scout.

Good watch, Dawkins is a very likable character with smarts at a young age.

Mirani

This is an A24 Drama I saw last night. If your into art house stuff or independent cinema it could be up your alley. It follows the lives of a Korean family in middle America who try to better their lot by starting a farm. I have lived in Korea at one stage so I enjoyed the film more than I might have otherwise. Its a pretty heart warming film about family and the trials and struggles of life.Good.


7.5/10

dubstepper wrote: »

Tangerine: Movie about a new released trans prostitute looking to find her boyfriend who cheated on her while she was in prison. In parallel we see another story about a taxi driving family man who seems addicted to sex with transgender prostitutes. Good movie on friendship and relationships, while moving through the underbelly of LA. While there is a seedy side to the setting, there is some real heart to it.

Available on all4 app. 7/10

really enjoyed tangerine, and his next film was even stronger imo "the florida project". well worth a watch

^
I believe the real story was even worse. Plus, it wasn't the first time the guy had done it.

Stupid people? If the last 4 years has taught me anything, it's that there is an abundance of them and loads of them are all too willing to do "bad things" for "authoritative figures".

Sound of Metal

I really enjoyed this drama about a musician battling addiction who begins to lose his hearing. Riz Ahmed is great in it. Its up there with other films that deal with the horror of addiction and the human suffering beneath it in a humane and realistic way , such as beautiful boy. The acting in it is great , there are no gammy lines , the writing is great. The flipping between the main characters perception of sound and others perception of sound is powerfully used.


8.3/10

Shadow in the Cloud, a Chloe Grace Moretz action horror type thing which is pretty decent.

Just finished watched Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets - a documentary about a run down dive bar in Vegas and it's last day open to the "public" - which is a really a rag tag group of regulars. It just follows their drunken antics and interactions as the day winds down.

It's fascinating viewing, but I'd strongly urge watching it without googling or searching anything about it or the story behind it. Thankfully that's what I did - had I known the story behind it before watching, I imagine it would have been an infinitely less enthralling watch.

Wild Target with Emily Blunt.
Think I lasted 25 minutes.
Pure gack altogether..

'The Freshman'

A comic (as opposed to comedy) movie about a young college freshman (Matthew Broderick) who joins an NYC film school and gets ripped off as soon as he hits the big apple. One thing leads to another and he ends up running jobs for Carmine Sabatini, who seems to be a crime boss (Marlon Brando) that bears an uncanny resemblance to a famous mafia figure from screen. But not everything seems as it first appears to be.

'The Freshman' is a movie that shows how good writing can transform what is a pretty low key story into something great and produce a very rewarding film. It's well cast and everyone goes for it, including Brando, who shows that he could take the piss out of himself and his past work and it's laced with nice moments, like the two college kids (Broderick and Frank Whaley) remarking on Brando's "resemblance" to The Godfather, or Bert Parks singing the famous Miss America song, "There She Is", for a decidedly different kind of pageant.

Broderick is fine in the lead role and is used perfectly as a vehicle for the audience. We experience what he experiences and see the story unfold completely through his eyes. This means, though, that once you've seen the film it can never provide the same entertainment again. Which, in fairness, can be said for a lot of movies I suppose. There's fine support from a load of famous faces, like Bruno Kirby, Jon Polito, Maximilian Schell and the, always-odd-in-everything-he's-been-in, Paul Benedict.

But it's the tight script that brings everything through to the end. You won't be guffawing all the way through it, but it's one of those films that will leave the majority of people completely satisfied.

9/10



'2 Days in the Valley'

An interesting, but flawed story, that basically boils down to a series of events that befall a group of disparate characters who, due to a murder, clash into one another over the course of the titular 2 days.

Made in the wake of the enormous success of 'Pulp Fiction', John Herzfeld's '2 Days in the Valley' lacks that Tarantino touch to move his movie into that area that 'Pulp Fiction' enjoys. It just isn't as "cool" as Quentin's movie and always comes across as trying to be, instead of just being its own thing. However, had it been made before 1994, people would probably have approached it very differently. But seeing as it got the go ahead because of Tarantino's film, it seems destined to be forever darkened by its shadow. Which is unfortunate, as '2 Days in the Valley' isn't bad in its own right.

The characters are all interesting, if mostly grotesque and the story does come together very nicely, for the most part anyway. It's helped by most of the cast being on point, but there's nothing here that you haven't seen them do before. Danny Aiello plays "Italian hood", James Spader plays the same little shit he's played since the early 80's, Eric Stoltz returns as "nice guy trying to do the right thing", Greg Cruttwell seems to be the same person he was in 'Naked' and Glenne Headly appears to be reprising her grift from 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels'.

Elsewhere, there's Teri Hatcher trying to carve out a movie career on the back of Lois Lane and a stupidly sexy Charlieze Theron as a nasty piece of eye candy. Jeff Daniels appears too but has an odd fizzling out that suggests that the writer (also Herzfeld) ran out of ideas for him or the editing process left a bit on the cutting room floor.

'2 Days in the Valley' is certainly an entertaining movie and if you've run out of stuff to watch during Covid lockdowns it's worth checking out. But it just cannot escape its issues.

6/10



'Awakenings'

There's so much schmaltz in Penny Marshal's 1990 film, that it could be bottled and sold to other movies that are desperately in need of it. That's not to say the her movie about catatonic patients experiencing their "revival" in a 1960's Bronx Psychiatric hospital is a bad film, it just doesn't convince fully, despite being well made and, at times, very emotional and heartfelt. But it has a tendency to lay it on a bit thick and that kind of blunts the impact when all is said and done.

Based on Oliver Sack's own book of the same name, it tells the story of encephalitis lethargica patients who became catatonic over 40 years before and a doctor's attempt to "reach" them though a new drug called L-DOPA which was developed for Parkinson's sufferers. Dr. Malcolm Sayer's (Robin Williams) use of the drug has an amazing effect on his subjects who completely awaken from their catatonia.

Of the two main leads, Williams is decent in his role as the extremely shy doctor, who's probably suffering from a few mental issues himself. It's the type of role that he learned to grab with great gusto, once he made efforts to shelve the maniac that made him famous, so the audience knows what they're going to get immediately. On the other hand, DeNiro as the main patient, Leonard Lowe, is fine too and was Oscar nominated for his part which he lost to Jeremy Irons. But, he's also one of the film's flaws in an important way. Lowe is supposed to be a boy in his early teens who was struck down with his malady in 1928, only to be "awakened" in 1969. But DeNiro, as good as he is, never once comes across as a boy trapped in a 40 something's body. He is always far too adult and doesn't seem to possess any of the qualities of a young 13 or 14 year old boy. So, his Leonard comes across as somebody that's only been "away" for a few years and not an entire lifetime. It may come across as an unkind criticism of a generally fine film, but it was impossible to shake.

Two others from the cast deserve mention, Julie Kavner (Marge from 'The Simpsons') provides some normalcy in the down to earth role so did so well and Ruth Nelson is excellent as Leonard's aged mother., who manages to convey all the emotions you'd imagine that a mother go through in such circumstances without ever overdoing it.

'Awakenings' is far from being a bad picture, despite my relatively minor problems with it. It's well done and rewarding in a way that that type of heartstring pulling movie can be and if you're the type to cry easily at stories like this, you'll be well advised to have a box of tissues handy.

7/10