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  #31  
Old 10-27-2021, 06:39 PM
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Lol well we not only seemed to have seen different movies, we seem to have read different books.

Brian Herbert’s perspective is a humanist one but his belief is that history nonetheless returns to medieval tribalism and despotism.

Hence Paul’s dilemma in the book between revenge and the “wild jihad” that leads to the massacre of billions across the galaxy. His fault in the book is that he believes he can possibly defeat his enemies and steer the future away from the holy war — a despotic delusion.

But the MOVIE does not visualize or dramatize this dilemma. I would argue that it celebrates his choice. The only hint at this choice in the movie is when he kills Jamis—after his vision suggested an alternative future in which they became friends. However, that’s bogus because Paul had no choice—it was, in fact, Jamis’s choice. I defy anyone to tell me why he makes it based on the movie alone (it’s clear in the book). So where in the movie does Paul make his fateful decision? Why? How is it expressed?

One more point: Denis Villeneuve used to be a master of using motifs to achieve a climactic gestalt—the tattoo in Incendies, Guernica in Polytechnique, the scary designs in Prisoners, the monkey figurines in Sicario.

What has happened to him?

He attempts this with the recurring cris-knife gift-giving, the return to Paul’s grandfather’s bull-fighting death. But they all lead to nothing.

I think if he had defeated Jamis with the cris-knife using bull-fighting technique, it would have tied those elements together and could have dramatized his betrayal of his ancestors. Instead, those motifs are reduced to insignificance. Mere Easter Eggs—as the kids say.

And the movie looked like a video game. Puke.
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"They love each other so much, they think they hate each other."

Imagine paying $1000 to hear "Don't Dream It's Over" instead of "Go Your Own Way"

Fleetwood Mac helped me through a time of heartbreak. 12 years later, they broke my heart.
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  #32  
Old 10-27-2021, 10:56 PM
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Army of Thieves (Matthias Schweighöfer)

.@netflix releases @MSchweighoefer @ZackSnyder #ArmyOfThieves—a prequel to #ArmyoftheDead. It is so effectively romantical. The secret of the safe unlocks the characters’ and the culture’s origin stories. Hence, the film’s essential primer on Wagner’s Ring Cycle: education + fun.

ETA: More on #ArmyOfThieves: Note how @MSchweighoefer cracks safes—he plumbs the depths of its design and then LISTENS. Just as the safe-cracking encourages us to listen to Wagner, each tumbler click visualizes mental “clicks” connecting designer, characters, culture. Rhapsodic.
__________________
"They love each other so much, they think they hate each other."

Imagine paying $1000 to hear "Don't Dream It's Over" instead of "Go Your Own Way"

Fleetwood Mac helped me through a time of heartbreak. 12 years later, they broke my heart.

Last edited by TrueFaith77; 10-31-2021 at 08:44 AM..
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  #33  
Old 10-30-2021, 04:20 AM
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17. Last Night in Soho, grade B+ = I really enjoyed this film. It’s a very stylish horror, mystery movie. The acting is great, and so is the music. There is also a really good twist ending. I didn’t give this a higher grade because It wasn’t really scary but it’s still a good little horror film.
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  #34  
Old 10-30-2021, 05:50 AM
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Of the 55 new movies I’ve seen so far this year, here’s the 11 movies of 2021 I *hated* in declining order (from bad to worst):

  • Dune
  • Judas and the Black Messiah
  • Malcolm & Marie
  • The Little Things
  • I Care a Lot.
  • The Guilty
  • The Many Saints of Newark
  • The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It
  • Woman in the Window
  • Halloween Kills
  • The Suicide Squad
__________________
"They love each other so much, they think they hate each other."

Imagine paying $1000 to hear "Don't Dream It's Over" instead of "Go Your Own Way"

Fleetwood Mac helped me through a time of heartbreak. 12 years later, they broke my heart.

Last edited by TrueFaith77; 10-30-2021 at 06:01 AM..
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  #35  
Old 10-31-2021, 12:02 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TrueFaith77 View Post
Of the 55 new movies I’ve seen so far this year, here’s the 11 movies of 2021 I *hated* in declining order (from bad to worst):

  • Dune
  • Judas and the Black Messiah
  • Malcolm & Marie
  • The Little Things
  • I Care a Lot.
  • The Guilty
  • The Many Saints of Newark
  • The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It
  • Woman in the Window
  • Halloween Kills
  • The Suicide Squad
This is not a great year for movies, however, the movies expected to win awards haven't been released yet.
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  #36  
Old 10-31-2021, 02:00 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jondalar View Post
This is not a great year for movies, however, the movies expected to win awards haven't been released yet.
Not a great year - true. But it’s been a good year with 25 terrific movies I’ve seen this year.

Oscar-bait movies are never good anyway.

I do hope the new Terence Davies movie comes out this year.

That could shake things up.

It’s called Benediction.

ETA: Now slated for 2022 release.
__________________
"They love each other so much, they think they hate each other."

Imagine paying $1000 to hear "Don't Dream It's Over" instead of "Go Your Own Way"

Fleetwood Mac helped me through a time of heartbreak. 12 years later, they broke my heart.

Last edited by TrueFaith77; 10-31-2021 at 08:43 AM..
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  #37  
Old 11-07-2021, 01:30 PM
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SPENCER

Pablo Larraín luxuriously mounts the Princess Di biopic SPENCER as a Kubrickian psychodrama about eating disorders and self-harm, in which the threat of “sandwiches” proves as ominous as “Tuesday” in THE SHINING. Unfortunately, the film fails to recognize her rebellion as an extension of self-destruction, conflating her duty with a scheduled wardrobe labeled “P.O.W.” and celebrating her lack of fidelity with a hat brandishing “O.P.P.”
__________________
"They love each other so much, they think they hate each other."

Imagine paying $1000 to hear "Don't Dream It's Over" instead of "Go Your Own Way"

Fleetwood Mac helped me through a time of heartbreak. 12 years later, they broke my heart.

Last edited by TrueFaith77; 11-07-2021 at 08:38 PM..
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  #38  
Old 11-07-2021, 03:15 PM
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18. Eternals, grade C - = huge disappointment and the first MCU movie that most critics dislike. What really ruins this movie is the structure. it’s full of flashbacks and feels like the director didn’t know how to tell the story. The movie keeps flashing back and then forward and it’s just weird. The story is also overly complicated and the movie is very long winded. The director won the Academy Award for Best Director last year so everyone was expecting a pretty good movie, not this thing. It’s a mess. There are some good fight scenes and neat creatures in it but not enough to make up for the storytelling.
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  #39  
Old 11-13-2021, 06:46 PM
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LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE (Eleanor Coppola):
Eleanor Coppola explores the existential malaise and triumphs of her bourgeois female characters in PARIS CAN WAIT and, now, the three short stories of LOVE IS LOVE IS LOVE (characters toast “to us and people like us”). Through thematically intertwined tales of infidelity and regret, understanding and forgiveness, she ultimately achieves spiritual—cathartic—revelations (“beautiful secrets”). Not just truthful, it’s honest. Coppola roots her life lessons in an essentially Catholic tradition and grounds them in class-specificity (FaceTime dinner dates, retirement-age boat picnics, and housekeeper-catered secular rituals). She structures character development as relational through complexity and surprise, narrative as confession and reconciliation. Through this process, Coppola extends irony into a metaphysical perspective—a prismatic expansion of Diane Lane’s prayer in PARIS CAN WAIT. She reveals in dramatic form and in the cinematic distillation of reality an enduring presence of Love as assured forgiveness, but also the necessity of perseverance (the secret to a happy marriage? “Never getting divorced”). Taking a confessional approach—“creative non-fiction”(?) transformed into compassion—Coppola elicits from her actresses moments of grace almost worthy of Rodrigo Garcia. Most poignantly, Cybill Shepard’s politically challenging monologue encapsulates the spiritual toll of the sexual revolution through its nearly iconic perceptual reality—a benediction for the modern woman.
__________________
"They love each other so much, they think they hate each other."

Imagine paying $1000 to hear "Don't Dream It's Over" instead of "Go Your Own Way"

Fleetwood Mac helped me through a time of heartbreak. 12 years later, they broke my heart.
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  #40  
Old 12-24-2021, 02:31 PM
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19. Spider-Man, No Way Home, grade A-, = my only criticism of this movie is it is too long. Other than that, it’s pretty much perfect. The movie sets up the MCU Multi-Verse and it’s actually a very important movie to the MCU. The plot is complicated but understandable and there are excellent action scenes which feature multiple villains. This is one of the best MCU movies. Watch it in the theaters.
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  #41  
Old 12-27-2021, 09:15 PM
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20. West Side Story, B = this movie is directed brilliantly and it is great to look at. However, I couldn’t wait to get out of the theater. I felt the themes of the movie were dated and I just couldn’t get into it. I’ve already seen the original West Side Story and know the songs and story. The remake bored me.
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  #42  
Old 12-27-2021, 09:20 PM
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21. Nightmare Alley, grade D+ = Style over substance. Great art direction but lousy story and plot. Huge disappointment. The most overrated movie of the year. The movie is about Carnival workers but somehow managed to be boring. Skip this one. It’s only getting some good reviews because the director won an Oscar.
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  #43  
Old 12-29-2021, 11:29 PM
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22. Ghostbuster Afterlife, grade B = This movie was a lot better than expected. It reminded me of Poltergeist and The Frighteners from 1980s. It has a genuine 1980s feel about it and the movie just works. It's very nostalgic and the special effects are decent. The problem with the movie is that everything is pretty good but nothing is great. The original Ghostbusters do make an appearance.
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  #44  
Old 12-30-2021, 04:38 PM
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#TheNineWorthies - 9 Best Films of 2021
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/johnd...ovies-of-2021/

1.Shoplifters of the World (Stephen Kijak): The soundtrack of songs by The Smiths—the greatest band of all time—both expresses a day of revelations for its characters returning home from freshman-year at college—a primal experience—while the narrative analyzes the music of The Smiths (and all pop-music enthusiasm), so that the band’s sub-cult subversion and compassion revitalizes hetero rom-com ritual and creates definitive Myths of young adult self-discovery

2.Zack Snyder’s Justice League (Zack Snyder) / Army of the Dead (Zack Snyder) / Army of Thieves (Matthias Schweighöfer): Zack Snyder’s Autumn Cycle confronts private grief (the primal familial scene of impotence in Army of the Dead) but expresses it as a universal longing repressed within the culture (the burial of the safe-maker in Army of Thieves)—and then fulfills those films’ primers on Wagner’s Ring Cycle and their redemptive sacrifices through the awesome spiritual spectacle (Good and Evil, Power and Love personified) of Zack Snyder’s Justice League—the very existence of which is a modern-day miracle

3.Summer of 85 (Francois Ozon): Ozon deconstructs narrative and p.o.v. while simultaneously achieving high melodrama and ravishing romanticism—a real tear-jerker—by so completely intertwining transgression-and-sentiment that the year’s most cathartic scene (see the title of the film’s source material) leads to gay reckoning with mortality and earns existential hope—Ozon finally synthesizing the influences of Hitchcock and Rohmer to create his best film (so far)

4.Asphalt Goddess (Julian Hernandez): MVP Alejandro Cantu’s soaring camera and graphically striking compositions affords operatic largesse to Hernandez’s gay empathy and the majesty of Tragedy to the economically and sexually oppressed female barrio gang members whose unfulfilled longings twist the value of loyalty and their own feminine instincts into murderous betrayal

5.Saint-Narcisse (Bruce LaBruce): Philology 101(a) - LaBruce piles on sexy taboo (twin-cest) on top of kinky taboo (lesbian-cest) and pop history (from The Rolling Stones’ Stick Fingers to De Palma’s Obsession and Carrie) to interrogate Western culture’s central myths—classical-Greek and Catholic—and uncover its kernel of truth (and cinema’s essence in montage)—destructive narcissism replaced by the social imagination of gratuitous Love

6.White as Snow (Anne Fontaine): Philology 101(b) - Fontaine’s naughty conceit in which a drop-dead-gorgeous woman draws out the affection and goodness of her seven admirers and the fatal jealousy of her mother-figure nemesis reworks fairy tale tropes and symbolism to unexpectedly discern a Catholic (Marian) essence—so fun and beautiful it’s worthy as an addendum to Neil Jordan’s masterpieces A Company of Wolves and Byzantium

7.Sublet (Eytan Fox): At his best, Fox expresses questions of Jewish identity (the search for home and longing for the Other in God) through gay desire and surprising catharsis, which here manifests itself in a tourism journalist and his younger air-bnb host exposing first their deep wounds and needs and then healing them through intimacy

8.About Endlessness (Roy Andersson): The artifice of Andersson’s aesthetic creates hilarious vignettes out of spiritual realities, by which the indignities of daily life take on the gravity of cosmic persecution, amounting to a deconstruction of the most mysterious of icons—the Cross—from the vantage of the film’s opening apocalypse (like a sequel to his You the Living) and the book-ending infinite horizon

9.Annette (Leos Carax): In a year of 30 pretty terrific films, Carax’s enervating and cinematically astounding musical film anchors this best-of list because its climax achieves a jaw-dropping aesthetic coup that pulls together all of Carax’s gambits to express a profoundly moral denunciation that identifies the limits of love and forgiveness for a nihilistic era desperately in need of miracles and compassion

Runners-up (alphabetical): Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude); Casanova, Last Love (Benoit Jacques); Cliff Walkers (Zhang Yimou); Coming 2 America (Craig Brewer); A Cop Movie (Alonso Ruizpalacios); Cry Macho (Clint Eastwood); Dear Comrades (Andrei Konchalovsky); France (Bruno Dumont); French Exit (Azazel Jacobs); Georgetown (Christoph Waltz); Keep an Eye Out (Quentin Dupieux); Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson); Love Is Love Is Love (Eleanor Coppola); Mandibles (Quentin Dupieux); Pig (Michael Sarnoski); Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (Johannes Roberts); Sin (Andrei Konchalovsky); Sin Hijos (Roberto Fiesco); Sophie Jones (Jessie Barr); Together (Stephen Daldry)
__________________
"They love each other so much, they think they hate each other."

Imagine paying $1000 to hear "Don't Dream It's Over" instead of "Go Your Own Way"

Fleetwood Mac helped me through a time of heartbreak. 12 years later, they broke my heart.
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  #45  
Old 03-23-2022, 06:46 PM
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Forget the #Oscars!
Here’s… the 2021 #JohnnieAwards

BEST PICTURE: SHOPLIFTERS OF THE WORLD (Stephen Kijak)

BEST DIRECTOR: Zack Snyder (ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE)

BEST ACTOR: Félix Lefebvre (SUMMER OF 85)

BEST ACTRESS: Helena Howard (SHOPLIFTERS OF THE WORLD)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Nick Krause (SHOPLIFTERS OF THE WORLD)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Elena Kampouris (SHOPLIFTERS OF THE WORLD)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: SAINT-NARCISSE (Martin Girard, Bruce LaBruce)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: WHITE AS SNOW (Claire Barre, Pascal Bonitzer, Anne Fontaine)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: ANNETTE (Caroline Champetier)

BEST FILM EDITING: ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE (David Brenner)

MOST ARTISTIC AND UNIQUE PRODUCTION DESIGN AND VISUAL EFFECTS: ABOUT ENDLESSNESS

BEST MUSIC SCORE: ARMY OF THIEVES (Hans Zimmer, Steve Mazzaro)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: ASPHALT GODDESS (Julian Hernandez)

BEST GAY FILM: SUMMER OF 85 (Francois Ozon)
__________________
"They love each other so much, they think they hate each other."

Imagine paying $1000 to hear "Don't Dream It's Over" instead of "Go Your Own Way"

Fleetwood Mac helped me through a time of heartbreak. 12 years later, they broke my heart.
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