really enjoyed this. Didn’t hit me as a best picture winner, but have to see what else is up. King for sure, great job.
The actors did an excellent job, especially for someone familiar with the characters. no oscar stand out imo.
The discussion was fair and even handed. Would be a great watch and discussion for a class.
I think you said three were well.liked.
Brown was admired, but he was cold, sullen. he wasn’t that accessible. Later violent episodes kept him from being loved. then he became charitable, but was then out of the limelight
and Ali was contraversial before convertion his persona turned a lot of people off, especially so.young. Later he became loved, but not then.
Four years later, 2 dead, one in prison and Brown out of football. Much sooner than that really, I extended the timeline to include Ali
Soul Disney Pixar with Jamie Foxx as a jazz musician who dies unexpectedly and tries to come back to earth to live out his dream. He meets 22 (Tina Fey) along the way. Together they learn about life.
Godmothered Figured while I was on Disney, why not. Didn’t expect too much but it was pretty good in a Hallmark sort of way.
I rerented Tenet Friday and watched with subtitles. I enjoyed it, but like Inception I am going to have to watch it again to start to understand everything that I saw. I finally figured out Inception the 3rd time I watched it and the 4th and 5th times I watched it was extremely enjoyable. I think Tenet will be the same. My Christopher Nolan film watching is 1st time get the big picture and figure out the hook, 2nd time start to notice all the things that now make sense now that I know the hook and begin to understand the real story, 3rd time through I fully understand the story and start to analyze the lesson that Nolan is trying to teach us.
Promising Young Woman starring Carey Mulligan. The trailer is a bit misleading. You think it is about a woman who feigns being drunk to get guys to take her home and then something, possibly real bad, happens to them. Sort of a vigilante tale. Well, the movie starts out there and then as it releases events from the past, it sort of veers a lot. I sort of saw most of the twists before they happened, except for the grand finale which was really worth the wait. Highly recommend.
Ammonite Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan in a period piece set in the 1840s. Kate is a leading archeologist but really is stuck in her small town where there are a lot of ammonites, a fossil of a spiral creature. Saoirse is not well and ends up staying with Kate and her mother to recover her vigor. A friendship develops and then some. Not a very strong ending.
Pieces of a Woman What can go wrong with a home birth, right? Well enough tragedy for the parents to have to deal with. The opening birthing scene runs about 20-25 minutes and is quite intense/disturbing. The way all of those involved deal with it is the remainder of the movie. It starts out quite powerful and sort of drifts away, possibly reflecting the ability to deal with sorrow over time. Ellen Burstyn as the mother is being talked about for best supporting actress.
Don’t Read This on a Plane A woman has just had her third novel published and is scheduled to make a 3 week European book tour to promote it with readings in book shops, etc. However, the publisher has just gone bankrupt and she has the flights paid for but nothing else. The story ostensibly focuses on her ability to survive on almost no money. Her husband is a cook on an oil rig in the North Sea, 28 days on, 28 days off. Her current book is about a woman who has slept with 100 other women and each chapter reflects one of these relationships. Is it autobiographical or not seems to be the question on everyone’s mind. Not a great movie, but I rather enjoyed it.
Also watch The Little Things. Denzel did Denzel, Malik was between bad and horrid and Leto was really creepy good. Agree that the story did not inspire.
The Dig set in England just before they declared war on Germany (1939). A woman (Carey Mulligan) wants to have some huge mounds out in her pastures dug. She has a feeling that something important may have been buried there. Based on a true story, it was pretty good. I got the feeling that the movie was trying to point out the work done by those that got little to no attention after the find.
Space Sweepers from Korea. I really enjoyed this one. A mash-up of many prior sci-fi/space adventure movies, but it still felt fresh. There are a lot of languages in it and I had some trouble in the beginning keeping up with the subtitles, but that didn’t diminish the film. On Netflix and a fun watch.
On Netflix, there was a essay/memoir/something about James Baldwin: “I Am Not Your Negro.”
Takes the words of Baldwin into the voice of Samuel J Jackson, along with videos of Baldwin interspersed with terrible shit that has happened in the past, oh, 0-50 years.
The Killer That Stalked New York (1950) – a woman comes to NY from Cuba carrying small pox. The health community is racing against time to find her while vaccinating millions of NYers.
Nomadland starring Frances McDormand. It starts out a bit like a documentary and that is when it really shines. I think McDormand killed it, but the movie itself is pretty tedious save for the gorgeous scenery out west. Not in my Oscar short list, but it will get a lot of traction any way. Worth seeing as it is good, just not great.