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[Oiled]

Lacking a moderator to delete spam, I'm reposting a couple posts beyond the spam pile.

Small addendum - Michael Lawbender's character does listen to a lot of The Smiths songs, so it's not a total waste.  I ended up watching the whole thing, pulled along in a peculiar way by a slightly hypnotic quality.

Wasn't someone here quoting those great lines about the privilege of sitting beside someone when a double decker bus crashes into them?  Not a big fan but that was my favorite Smiths song back in the eighties.

[Oiled]

I had to bail after about an hour of The Gray Man, a highly derivative composite of several better spy actioners, with Ryan Gosling as a CIA assassin Ken doll who.... it's too boring to even bother describing.

But it was nice to see Chris Evans again as a cheerful black ops sociopath,  he who was so cheerfully obnoxious as Ransom in Knives Out.  Nobody munches on a cookie while delivering snark quite like Evans. 

Which reminds me that The Gray Man also features Ana de Armas, who does a much better job of lying while keeping her lunch down.

 Y'know...maybe I will watch the second hour of this mediocrity.  Maybe fast-forward through the shootouts and linger on any Evans initiated cookie consumption.

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Nope, couldn't do it.  So I tried the pilot of some sci-fi thing called The 100.  Since it concerns dropping all your most obnoxious teenagers on a planet that may be still radioactive post apocalypse, I could only wonder where was this series when I had teenagers.  It could have been so...cathartic. 

There's also something with Jude Law Michael Fassbender, which seems to tread similar turf with The Gray Man.  Rulebender is "The Killer" and this procedural of whacking people and evading manhunts seems about as unfeeling and stylish as most David Fincher films.  The few minutes I sampled suggest a film loaded with bloodsoaked absurdity and Samurai philosophy so consider yourself warned.

[Oiled]

Hey that worked.  The whole spam series was shunted to previous page.

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https://apnews.com/article/movie-review-poor-things-emma-stone-285ed0415197ac538956142691d831ac

Reanimator meets Lady Chatterley?  With Emma Stone?  Looking forward to this at my local moviehouse.  Lanthimos makes interesting movies, though I hope to never see Killing of a Sacred Deer again, ever.
At his best, he channels Bunuel.

[Oiled]

Leave the World Behind is a darkly funny social satire that targets the complacency of our high tech digital culture, and racial prejudice along the way, making clever use of the collapse of civilization trope. I had to click to the information screen on Netflix to determine that this was NOT a Jordan Peele movie. Solid ensemble of performances from Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and Mahershala Ali.

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99 Homes is an engrossing and heartfelt drama about the greed and predatory behavior that is rewarded in the American housing market.  Set in Florida, during the great recession of the late 00s.  With excellent performances from Andrew Garfield, Laura Dern and Michael Shannon that take us far deeper into the human suffering and business-as-usual callousness than the headlines do.  In theaters in 2015, but I think few saw the film in its limited release, so it may reach a larger audience now as it streams on Netflix.  As evictions rise in 2023, its theme seems as timely as ever. 

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  Easter is when Jesus comes out of his tomb and if he sees his shadow, he goes back in and we get six more weeks of winter. 

- Tom Smothers

May he RIP. 

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Maestro is a worthwhile peek into the problems of the musician's life.... but Cooper is not Lenny Bernstein.  Wrong energy.  And script takes liberties with the facts that render something with the ring of...fiction.  I grew up in a family of classical music fans, saw Bernstein perform many times, watched interviews, read biographical material, and had my life of music appreciation and performance (very limited) deeply influenced early on by Lenny's Young Peoples Concert series, so I was definitely a tough room for this movie.  But props to Cary Mulligan, who was simply superb as Felicia. 

[Hairy Lime]

Trying to decide if Asteroid City is a profound meditation on grief and the nature of art or too fucking clever by way more than half. But you can certainly see where the stylistic beats of the Dahl tetralogy come from.

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Wes Anderson and "profound meditation on grief" are not thoughts that usually cluster together in my head.  We're starting to catch up on viewing but still haven't got round to AC, The Holdovers, 4 Daughters, Fallen Leaves, Anatomy of a Fall, Fremont, and a couple others that we had aimed at. 

[Hairy Lime]

Wes Anderson and "profound meditation on grief" are not thoughts that usually cluster together in my head.  We're starting to catch up on viewing but still haven't got round to AC, The Holdovers, 4 Daughters, Fallen Leaves, Anatomy of a Fall, Fremont, and a couple others that we had aimed at.

"Available for free on my current streaming services with me sitting on my ass at home" is my primary criteria of choice for movies these days. Which puts those non-AC movies off my list for now,  and Maestro and Saltburn solidly on it.

[Oiled]

Saltburn, Poor Things, and Killers of the Flower Moon  were some of the others we had in mind.  KotFM has a 3:36 run time that may keep it out of the multiplex here, but the indie theater downtown might bring it.  I note that it is the last collaboration between Scorsese and Robbie Robertson. 

Uncertain about Uruguayan Donner Party (working title: Who's for Dinner?) but it seems to be getting praise as a survival thriller.  And it's free, so maybe after dinner has settled. 

[Hairy Lime]

Saltburn, Poor Things, and Killers of the Flower Moon  were some of the others we had in mind.  KotFM has a 3:36 run time that may keep it out of the multiplex here, but the indie theater downtown might bring it.  I note that it is the last collaboration between Scorsese and Robbie Robertson. 

Uncertain about Uruguayan Donner Party (working title: Who's for Dinner?) but it seems to be getting praise as a survival thriller.  And it's free, so maybe after dinner has settled.

Is that a foreign for us language remake of Alive? I have a firm recollection of a scene where Ethan Hawke's character.is about to trek off in a desperate last ditch attempt to get help. One of the other survivors shouts out after him, "I'll pay for the pizza if you go get it!" and Hawke turns and replies, "Who do you want on it?"

Oddly I can find no reference to that quote anywhere. And the quote on imdb omits the response. I have a feeling it may never have happened outside of my own head.

[Oiled]

Heh!  Society of Snow is based on the same events, but a different source book.  My guess is that Alive took more factual liberties, but haven't seen SoS yet, so it's just a WAG.

Coldest weather here since we moved up here ten years ago, so watching Uruguayan rugby players chew each other out in the Andes sounds like like the perfect appreciate-your-life movie.

The other cannibal movie available is Gladiator.  A joke that works better spoken than read.