You gave The Handmaiden a 6.5?

ploink

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets The plot is basically an excuse to take a tour of Luc Besson's imagination. It's a smorgasbord of aliens and sci-fi landscapes but a narrative mess. Then there's the acting problem - Cara Delevingne is fine but Dane Dehaan is a charisma vacuum. His boyish looks make him entirely unconvincing as a highly experienced, decorated soldier. He's not helped by dialogue that is meant to be witty and charming but is actually clichéd and leaden.

This could have been so much better if Besson had a co-director or something who could rein in his worst instincts and rewrite some of the dialogue. It also needed someone in the Bruce Willis mold to play Valerian, an actor who can make an action hero seem like an everyday man who is in way over his head.

Yes. It's a modern masterpiece (in my admittedly worthless opinion).

Try Jagged Edge if you haven't seen it yet. Fits your criteria perfectly.

Cast includes:

Peter Coyote
Lance Henriksen
Jeff Bridges
Glenn Close
Robert Loggia

Bushwick - 5 very disappointing - could easily have been a 9....

Wonder Woman 5 barely.... - meh....but biased as I grew up as teenager watching Lynda Carter

Rewatched The Twilight Samurai since I was in the mood for a samurai film and it's one of my favorites. Equally as good on the second watch and deserving of its 99% fresh rating.

Really a beautiful story and well told.

Dazed & Confused (35mm, my first viewing) - Decent, obviously can see why it's popular. At some point I'll see it again, and I suspect the whole thing may be better on a second viewing. In the beginning as a noob you aren't familiar with the characters yet, and so early character stuff that other people are laughing at I'm just like whatever. It took about 30 minutes before it clarified into some loose form of a story.

Everybody Wants Some (Linklater's 2016 spiritual sequel) - quite similar except college, 1980, and more time spent on baseball/team. It's almost anachronistic in 2016 because it's yet another movie about douchey sexist middle-class college white dudes. Unless you're going to do something really different with that (Linklater doesn't), you shouldn't be making that movie.

Main character could easily be the same freshman kid from D&C, and one character is very similar to the older McConaughey character (with perhaps better life insight).

It's too long and we've seen these stories before, but it's worth a watch if you're intrigued. Will be interesting to see if it ages well in 5, 10, 20 years.

McFarland, USA, Niki Caro, 2015

Great family film on a high school in middle California - one of the poorest communities in the country - who become a State powerhouse in cross country track. Kevin Costner is the coach and 7 young Hispanic actors play the sons of illegals and pickers who want something more for themselves and their community.

It's in the vein of Rudy, Hoosiers, etc.

Very good.

Got early screening tix for IT. Can't wait.

Harkins theatre chain has $5 movie tix all weekend to celebrate their anniversary.

Might be worth it to check out the films you're on the fence about.


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I just finished watching Yojimbo on filmstruck... it's such a magnificant movie. From cinematic framing to the lighting and from the great twisted morality story to the wondrous masaru satoh soundtrack, the bodyguard is just five stars all around.

I saw Yojimbo in college and really enjoyed it. It was way more gory and focused on the fighting than I was expecting given that it is a Kurosawa film. I don't particularly remember the lighting, but the framing, choreography etc. was all fantastic.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is playing in theaters this week, in celebration of its 40th anniversary.

Wind River was damn good. Heartbreaking.

Haven't seen Mummy, but I'm surprised everyone indicates it's so awful. I loved the first trailer, which was basically the airplane crash sequence. But I've read that even that is meh when seen fully played out in the film.

Nocturnal Animals was excellent in all respects. 'Nuff said.

I really want this movie to be good but am afraid to see it and hate it. Ppl seem to have a wide range of opinions on it.

Either way thx for reminding me, gonna watch it this week

sweet ty.

Agree prob my favorite movie of last year. Gyllenhaal, Shannon, Taylor-Johnson, and Adams were all terrific. Not even nominated for Best Picture, Shannon got the only nom... although I think Taylor-Johnson won the golden globe. Gyllenhaal deserved a best actor nomination, might be my favorite performance by him.

Yup. Just a very well done movie through and through. Renner is an elite actor in my books. Only thing I've seen on screen that made me colder than Fargo.

Talking of comedies I watched The Full Monty for the first time since it's release. What a charming film, I was smiling the whole time. I agree with this review - the film is inconsequential, but it's nicely done and I'm a little surprised it didn't make the BBC's top 100 comedies list (At one time TFM was the highest grossing film in the UK). While Toni Erdmann (59th) is a better, more ground breaking film it's also an acquired taste - I can't imagine anyone not enjoying The Full Monty. In particular I was impressed with how TFM approached the attitude of masculinity - extremely impressive for 1997. Plus there's a homosexuality subplot which is shoehorned in and doesn't really make any sense but for 1997, and set in a working class town, the acceptance of two men dating was nice to see. Plenty of better films out there but thoroughly enjoyable and worth watching.

You make 1997 sound as if it was the 1950s.

Yeah, I saw The Full Monty when it was released and don't remember that being a thing at all. The Bird Cage the year before wasn't even a big deal and it was way more central to the movie.

i really liked wind river and nocturnal animals. last two movies i have seen and i agree with the general thread consensus on both. watching wind river made me want to watch thunderheart with val kilmer. iirc that was based on a murder on native american reservation too...i haven't seen it for like 10 years though and don't remember the plot well i just remember enjoying it on AMC one day

Eh, in 1997 the UK still had Section 28 which prohibited the "promotion of homosexuality" in schools, i.e v similar to the law Russia passed a few years which caused a big fuss. Plus, different ages of consent, no civil partnerships etc. Calling people poofs as an insult was totally standard and showing support for LGBT rights was mostly the preserve of left wing elites. Homophobia was absolutely commonplace. It's not Guess Who's Coming to Dinner but the inclusion of a gay subplot (between characters who weren't flamboyantly homosexuals as in The Birdcage was slightly surprising.