her size??

Alien covenant : I loved it, but only because I'm enthralled by everything that involves aliens or predators.

I'd give it a solid 7/10 if you are an Alien fanboy like I am. If you just want to see a movie and don't care for the series, it's probably a 5/10.

I didn't even bother to ask my wife to go with me. She had a spa day with her sister and I immediately went alone to the movie theater. There were 6 other men in the theater with me, alone or in groups of two. I found it rather amusing.

She is very thin in La La Land

So she's too thin to be (or play) a beautiful actress??

Magnolia

Paul Thomas Anderson's ambitious project of multiple stories that are somehow connected. The film takes place over one day in LA, and interweaves multiple story-lines together into something that somehow magically, or by the hand of god, work together. While some of the stories and characters are stronger than others, the whole felt somehow greater than the sum of its parts.

We start with a long intro, explaining a few coincidental stories from history, which leads us into the story of nine characters who somehow are all related. The characters include old and young versions of juvenile quiz show geniuses, two women with different types of drug addiction, two guys in different lines of work who just want to do the right thing, two old TV guys who have a lot of demons from the past, and one Tom Cruise, who plays a misogynistic motivational speaker, in what is quite possibly his best role ever.

The stories all converge at two points throughout the movie, and both are quite unexpected. The first is with Aimee Mann's song "Wise Up," and the second is through an event that I don't want to spoil. Both of them come out of the blue, and both felt quite natural while I was watching. It only struck me as odd once the credits had rolled and I started to think about the circumstances surrounding those two events.

There are so many memorable scenes, and I'll list a couple of my favorites, which I'm sure will be completely different than other viewers favorites just because there are so many to choose from. There's Julianne Moore's pharmacy breakdown, there's Tom Cruise's interview with the reporter, there's Tom Cruise's confrontation at the end, there's Philip Baker Hall's confession, and I could go on. The movie spans the emotional spectrum from sweet and sappy, to heart breaking, to solemn, to scary, and everything in between.

The movie is a journey, and a 3 hour one at that. It is frustrating at times, but never boring. I never felt idled by the 3 hour running length. I was absorbed and captivated by almost every story arc, and even the close misses (the young child prodigy was a bit shoe-horned IMO) helped develop the other stories around it. And did I mention Tom Cruise is fantastic?

I wasn't trying to get super political (and I was echoing a comment from the post above mine), but I think Hollywood has a real body image issue these days.

It's no secret that there is a lot of pressure on young actresses / models to be thin and some take it too far to get a competitive edge.

I could just be wrong about her losing weight, but if a beautiful actress like Emma Stone feels like she needs to lose 10-15 pounds to play a beautiful actress then I think that's a troublesome message to send.

But mainly I just like her and thought she looked a bit better in her other movies.

Ghost World released today by Criterion... this is a truly great comic book adaptation unlike the vast majority of the Comic book/Graphic novel tripe that comes out of the studio's systematically.

Extras are at a minimum on this release and it suffers from a horrid narration second track, but the movie itself is wonderful with a new 4k scan of the original 35mm print.

One cherry on top in the supplements is the complete nearly six minute Jaan Pehechaan Ho musical video instead of the abbreviated version scene on youtube.

This is probably one of my personal favorite comic book movies.

QFT

Excellent review and I agree with almost everything you said. Moore's pharmacy breakdown is maybe my favorite female performance in a scene ever

lol at y'all trying to put Snoop on the defensive for noticing that Stone is anorexic-thin in that movie.

I'd give this an 8 as a film, a 10 for cinematography & a 12 for balls. Not only is it shot in one continuous take, it's done so over 22 (wildly different!) locations. Incredible.

Director Sebastian Schipper filmed three takes on different days and claims the first two weren't good. I'd love to see them. I recommend the film to anyone remotely cinephilic.

I'd love thoughts on this (from people who have and have not seen the film): how many people who watch the film (without knowing) would realise it was filmed in one take? I'd like to think I'd notice but I'm not sure.

A pet peeve is the academy & other awards giving bodies ignoring 'minor films' like this. The cinematography was incredible. I haven't seen The Revenant which won the cinematography Oscar but the work in Victoria was surely more worthy of a nomination than Carol, Sicario or The Hateful Eight (most of which was in a single room FFS!). Similarly no Oscar nomination for Ralph Fiennes's perfect performance as a bon vivant rocket in A Bigger Splash - there's a list of the twenty "best" films of the year & only actors/cinematographers/directors from those twenty films are eligible for an award.

135 minute SINGLE TAKE film? Good god, pretentiousness overload.





Although it should be noted that shooting par on the back nine with a seven iron is pretty cool, unlike pointless SINGLE TAKE films

I really enjoyed Victoria

Sure, it might have been good, I have no idea. But was it good because it was filmed in ONE TAKE? Or was it filmed in ONE TAKE as a monument to the director's ego and skill? Did the fact that it was filmed in ONE TAKE add to the film in any way?



Whoever made this promo image seems quite proud of the fact that it was a ONE TAKE movie.

Yes to all the above.

How much worse would the movie have been if it was shot in TWO TAKES? Probably would have been half as good imo.

Sounds like you have made up your mind but why don't you watch the film & let us know? I think the one take adds to the film. Victoria starts the film planning to wind down the evening after clubbing & ends up ... differently. The one take adds to feeling of claustrophobia, rushed/forced/coerced choices. Would the film work as well if the 135 minute film had one camera cut? Sure .... I can't see that making a huge difference.

How many cuts do you think the average film has? I looked up a study (by a Professor called James Cutting!!) & the number surprised me (Such a clickbaity sentence).

Someone with access to a copy of the film & a basic video editing suite could make a version of the film with multiple "cuts". I don't think they could make a version with the normal 1,000 to 2,000 cuts per film (as per aforementioned link) but one to two cuts per minute would be easy with a little creativity. This gets easier if you add in access to the other versions that were filmed. I would like to see it.

Watched Baywatch

So bad. I knew it was going to be bad, but was hoping (praying?) for a 21 Jump Street influence. But, no. Not funny.

Even Alexandra Daddario in a bathing suit didn't help (okay it helped a little).

2/10

You are completely missing the point.

Read up on cubism, dogme 95, or pointillist. Constricting form has value in art in and of itself.

Well this is pretty much exactly my point, the WE MADE THE MOVIE IN ONE TAKE BRO is a pointless macho publicity stunt. The same or a better movie could be constructed with dozens of shots and no viewer would be able to tell the difference. This is simply an exercise in stroking the director's ego.

Constricting form has value if it is judged to be valuable. It might be very difficult to make a good painting using only pigmented goat semen. I'll bet it's really really hard. Does that make the goat semen painting any better than a painting using, uh, paint? Seems unlikely. ONE SHOT FILM BRO seems like a similar publicity stunt.

It's a technique that in the hands of a great director can lend a different quality to a film or a section of a film..

On the subject of long takes, someone had to post this. What's three minutes of your time?