Talk About Movies: Part 4

finally watched the unbearable weight of massive talent

trailers made me think it'd be the greatest film ever made

massively let down but was expecting to be

still good and enjoyed, but feel like it was so close to hitting the player/swimming with sharks/being john malkovich/adaptation kind of breakthrough overly meta film within a film kind of thing and just fell flat

saw it was a team who were had lots of writing experience but never before in film which made sense - looking forward to seeing their future stuff

7/10 - enjoyable, has some incredible moments, but just falls flat

Oppenheimer hit Amazon Prime and I watched it lst night.

Uhg! I hated very second of it and thats 3+ hours worth of seconds. Typically I turn crap like this off but I felt obligated to watch due to all of the accolades. To sum it up a very long, very boring, non linear mess.

I love the story of the bomb but this aint it. Fat Man and Little Boy was great, the TV show Manhattan was great, this wasn't any of that. Not sure what this was but for my tastes it certainly wasn't worth the 3 hours I will never get back.

If you haven't read The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, please do so immediately.

edit: also review Thank God for the Atom Bomb, by Paul Fussell, which I had assigned previously.

Apologies, my tone was unwarranted in that post. I just found it hyperbolic that a relatively minor storytelling detail could ruin the whole movie for someone, especially when there are other important details that very much explain Blunt's character's motivation and personality.

Blunt acts as the moral compass for the audience in this movie. I think you can find male characters who serve a similar purpose - Huey in The Boys for example.

I also think Blunt's character is a representation of the lack of respect women are shown in male-dominated fields. Brolin's character basically choses her as he think's she will be easy to manipulate. So I don't think it's the movie being disrespectful to women, the film is a depiction of how society views and treats women.

At the conclusion of the movie, Blunt's character comes across as the most competent, grounded and rational of the protagonists. But we need to go on a journey to get there, and that's the purpose of the movie. If she's competent, grounded and rational from the start, it's a pretty bad movie, albeit one that perhaps better satisfies the criterial of "realistic".

Really enjoyed this. Seems like it would be a pretty difficult movie to make due to not having intelligible dialogue. Really an interesting idea to make a movie with this type of plot as well.

It's impressive how without any discussions there's still a good amount of character development, and growth as both a team and individuals.

There is a lot you can get from primitive communication if you try.
See this National Geographic video showing how archaic humans may have sounded.

https://youtu.be/9MDF68rM3VM?si=I_F36e3n...

Lol that was great.

Shoot, with the JFK talk i couldn't help thinking about the OKC bombing, there's a lot of questions there too

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any good sources you can share?
I am not very well informed on this subject always thought McVeigh and Nichols admitted to everything but I always love reading/watching this kindv stuff I know there was some discussion of their affiliations with some white supremacists groups but have yet to fall down this rabbit hole.

elrazor,

no worries no hard feelings or offense taken and to spare this thread any more of my great walls of text probably best for us to just disagree on this point and like I said to biggerboat I agree with you on most of everything you say with regards to their goal for the character and her arc, my beef is just with how they went about it and I think I've written more than enough to explain my thoughts so I'll just end by repeating once again that it didn't ruin the movie for me like I said I've watched it more times than I can keep track of and will undoubtedly watch it a whole bunch more times and maybe at some point I'll be able to just sit back and not yell at the screen during the epic bridge showdown for her to stop being such a cowardly b****.
😆

Carol, directed by Todd Haynes, is based on Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt that Highsmith published under a pseudonym.

The movie has a great look and really captures NYC in the '50s. The story is about an upper class woman, Carol, played by Cate Blanchett, and her relationship with a younger woman, Therese, played by Mara Rooney, who works in a department store. Carol has had a previous affair with another woman, and Carol's husband, played by Kyle Chandler, knows all about it. The husband, upset by this new affair, tried to seek sole custody of their daughter. As a response, Carol heads West with her new lover, but eventually rejects her to avoid being separated from her daughter. That's the bare bones of the plot.

The look of the film is based on the NYC photographs of Saul Leiter, among others. The film is shot beautifully by Ed Lachman. The cast is terrific. The story, a love story, is compelling. The ending of the film is surprising.

I'm not sure that Todd Haynes gets his due here, but he is one of the finest directors working today, one who takes on difficult subjects. He is the modern day Douglas Sirk, another filmmaker who took on difficult subjects shot in brilliant Technicolor.

If you have Criterion, you should also watch the documentary Loving Highsmith.

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Honestly nothing I can truly recommend other than just google okc bombing and go from there.

Since i lived here when it happened I just remember certain things that was brought up in the news and the trial and one thing that struck me was how much the authorities knew about Mc Veigh and Nichols activities before the attack but never really took action.

I kinda got the impression that it was a sting operation that went bad.

Once that idea got into the public eye, suddenly everything about this was redacted and not much info was given to the public.

Throw in a couple of mysterious deaths of law officers and we still never got closure on john doe #2 and as far as I know no one has released the evidence seen on surveillance cameras in the area, its ripe for conspiracy theories.

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very interesting ty.
tho just what I need another rabbit hole to fall down and keep me from sleeping lol.

just got done reading the entire senate intelligence committee report on CIA EIT which was about a million pages and try reading that page by page on your little smart phone screen facepalm.jpeg

speaking of which tho the movie about it called "the report" starring adam driver is fantastic and absolutely faithful to the point of using the actual CIA cables for the dialogue and they're able to make what seems like a very dry unfilmable subject into an almost bourne like thriller without making anything up or doing any of the normal hollywood BS.

the documentary "the forever prisoner" covers much of the same material focusing on abu zubaydah the 1st prisoner lucky enough to get the royal treatment from the CIA and is absolutely fascinating with extremely high production values. it's made by alex gibney so I expected it to be good and it exceeded my expectations. it's available on HBOmax.

I would go so far as to say both films are must watches for any one who wants to consider themselves a thoughtful engaged citizen.

Nice find. I watched this the other night. It is a high quality production and deserves its accolades. The story follows the life of an ambitious, fatherless boy from birth to adulthood in the Netherlands of the 1920s. It is also a puzzling murder mystery which is revealed at the end. The period set designs and costumes are superb. You really get the feel of what life was like at that time and place. It has memorable characters, some are unlikeable and some are honorable. Grade A.

yessss

I know how this one ends...

Use SPOILers pls.

Yesterday morning I watched the 1931 version of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, the one with Fredric March. Had taped it earlier off my mom's TCM cable. Pretty good. It set the situation up very well but got a little sloppy with how it resolved everything imo. I'd seen the 1941 Spencer Tracy one years ago and I probably prefer that one. March was good though, I've always liked him in just about everything. And I was pleasantly surprised to see, looking it up afterward, that he'd won a Best Actor Oscar for this.

We finished Brats. It was interesting but McCarthy seemed a little too affected by the whole thing. Demi and Rob seemed to have a better take on it. Not sure what Emilio was thinking.

Anyway, I've never seen St. Elmo's Fire so we decided to watch it. Pretty lame movie imo. I liked seeing all those "brats" but it seemed like seeing them was the only point of the movie. The only part that really appealed to me was watching the captivating Andie McDowell.

Watched Solaris (1972). To be fair, I only watched this in 15 to 30 minute bits after my wife falls asleep. It's not the best way to watch a movie, particularly a movie like this that I assume you would need to sort of get absorbed into. Seemed slow and a little too, not sure what a good word is - maybe artistic. It didn't really work for me.

boat, check out the Soderberg/Clooney version of Solaris. Think you'd appreciate it.

And watch it in one sitting. You may need more Stanislaw Lem in your life. Consult your doctor.

Both versions are excellent. Tarkovsky's may be more mysterious, though.

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This may be why I like Tarkovsky, but I am not sure.

Just watched Heart of Stone on Netflix and found it to be pure entertainment. Stars Gal Gadot as a super spy type. Totally over the the top action from start to finish. Not likely to win any awards but just a fun action movie all the way through. This was an enjoyable watch.