Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

Post by W »

Yeah, Tenet isn’t great. Convoluted and everything is so loud you can’t understand the dialogue half the time. One guy mumbles while another speaks through a mask and at the same time there’s a loud tone.

It makes very little sense at times for the above reasons.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Words on Bathroom Walls 3/10

I went into this movie knowing nothing about it...and I should have kept it that way. Basically, it's a higher-budgeted version of a movie you'd see on Freeform with better actors than the failed Disney stars you see in those movies. Also, the way the film treats schizophrenia is how you'd expect an adaptation of a YA novel would: ham-fisted and manipulative. I'm not sure how this got a wide theatrical release who it's nothing more than a lazy Sunday afternoon when there's nothing on kind of movie.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Relic 7/10

One of the better newer films using the common theme of haunted houses, focusing on a mother and daughter who come to visit an ailing grandmother who seems to be suffering from dementia but her issues are much more complicated. The concept is simple but the end result is a cut above, with strong direction and a performance from Emily Mortimer that makes it classier than the typical movie released by IFC Midnight. It's not often that you see a film go from playing exclusively at drive-ins into your local arthouse but it makes for an interesting experience.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Tenet 3/10

Intellectual Michael Bay, I mean Christopher Nolan, creates another big and loud film that has little point or purpose. It's simply an excuse to blow things up, with a complicated and often nonsensical plot involving time travel and art heists to string them together. With a much longer run time than Nolan's previous overrated film, he only gets more self-indulgent as the film goes on. This could have been an hour shorter and not lost a thing.

I have a feeling that COVID only made this film more desirable to see. In a non-COVID world, I think a lot more of us would have seen through the eye candy.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Buscemi2 wrote:
September 7th, 2020, 4:26 pm

I have a feeling that COVID only made this film more desirable to see. In a non-COVID world, I think a lot more of us would have seen through the eye candy.
Which is why Nolan created COVID

We're through the looking glass, here, people.

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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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WHISTLEBLOWER SIX KNOWS TOO MUCH. IT WAS NICE KNOWING YOU PAL.
BRING BRENDAN FRASER BACK TO THE BIG SCREEN DAMN IT
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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I mean he had to be obviously trolling conspiracy guys when in Tenet they crashed a plane into a pentagon shaped building.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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The Personal History of David Copperfield 9/10

A very pleasant surprise from Armando Iannucci, who is not the first person who you would expect to adapt a Dickens story, with a great cast, colorful visuals, and a general feel-good vibe in a time that could one, both on screen and in this COVID world. While a lot of other Anglophile-aimed movies spend their time being indulgent and piling on the eye candy, this film actually gives appeal to those annoyed by the constant emphasis on royalty and pandering and focuses on how things really were...and making it funny in the process. Sure, you've still got what to expect from a Dickens adaptation but it's much more than that. I wish that this film had gotten more attention but I guess that Disney had to push that X-Men movie instead.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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If it helps you at all my screening of New Mutants was beaten by my screening of Copperfield 2 customers to 1.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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You Cannot Kill David Arquette 9/10

We are truly living in a golden age of wrestling movies. The way you could describe this documentary is that it's part Beyond the Mat and part Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, going into the life and psyche of David Arquette, former WCW champion as part of the promotion of Ready to Rumble back in 2000, returns to professional wrestling and actually takes it pretty seriously. And the end result is a fascinating and often funny portrait of the trials and tribulations of a 46 year-old man punishing his body and mind and cheating death, all to win respect from a difficult fanbase. Arquette is also perhaps one of the most likeable subjects in a documentary in recent memory and watching him be himself on-screen makes you hope that he gets a comeback into movies soon. The film also shows that you're never too old to follow your dreams.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Next batch


Wildland: 7/10
It's basically a Danish version of Animal Kingdom. But it's told very well. A teenage girl who loses her mother in a car crash ends up with her aunt's family, who turn out to be criminals. The story is told economically and convincingly, which you don't always see in a debut feature. Very much recommended.

La Llorona: 6/10
Not the Conjuring spin-off but a Guatemalan film about a corrupt politician hiding from an angry mob in his house, with his supportive family. The film uses the old folk myth by introducing a new maid who acts rather strangely. While not particularly scary, it tells the myth well, and there's something compelling about watching a dictator's family slowly realise how horrible he truly is.

Spree: 6/10
While the critics bashed this, it's actually an amusing satire on Gen Y and their insistence on every action working towards gaining followers. So this story is about a loner who drive a taxi and wants to kill people to get followers. There's not much more to the premise, but it's amusing enough to carry it.

Bad Tales: 6/10
A fucked up Italian film set in a small suburban area following a group of children and how their parents, particularly their fathers, fuck them up. It's darkly comic, or maybe just dark, and at times too loose to feel it has much of a point. But it's provocative enough.

Undine: 5/10
Another myth, this time the mermaid myth of a creature who can be a woman only if she's in a relationship, or else she must return to the water. What we get is the story of a woman who breaks up with a guy, ends up with another, and then disappears. And there's a good 30 minutes of talks about the architecture of Berlin.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things: 6/10
Like Mulholland Drive, but from the miserable mind of Charlie Kaufman (well, adapted by, at least). It's a weird, somewhat interesting tale of a woman going to her boyfriend's family house, hiding the fact that she wants to break up with him. But the film's reality becomes undone, nothing quite as it seems. For me, the reality behind the facade was pretty clear about an hour in, so the film took way too long to get to its end point (including a 20 minute car journey that's largely unnecessary), which really hampers the enjoyment of the film's atmosphere.

Apples: 6/10
Probably one of the best Greek New Wave films. A debut (from Lorgimos's 1st AD), it's about a virus that makes people forget their past. Some have loved ones to help them remember, but this film's hero has no one, so he's given a new life with instructions on key things to do (see a movie, jump in a pool, have a one-night-stand). It mocks what we think is normal, and has an added twist about how we hide from ourselves. Clever.

Shiva Baby: 7/10
An impressive comedy debut feature. It's about a young woman with a sugar daddy, who goes home for a funeral only to realise her sugar daddy is there, and friends with her parents. The brief (77mins!) comedy keeps up the pace, with hilarious and awkward reveals coming fast. The ending is a little forced, but the energy and pace is excellent.

One Night in Miami: 6/10
Plenty of great reviews are coming in, but it's already over-rated. It never escapes its theatricality, whether in the awful production design or the slightly OTT performances. And, as a story there's not a huge amount going on, besides one or two disagreements. Not great for 2 hours. That said, there's something fascinating about watching Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Mohammed Ali, and (to a lesser extent) Jim Brown, all in the same room reckoning with issues of race. The dialogue is strong, even if the direction isn't great.

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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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The Outpost 3/10

I am puzzled by the acclaim this film got. All I got out of it was a cliche-ridden war film that's boring and with very one-dimensional characters and a script that's full of hackneyed phrases and long drawn-out battle scenes used as a "get out of jail" card for when the writers have written themselves into a wall. The film runs slightly over two hours but feels far longer as a result of the long periods where little happens and all of the pandering to the "support our troops" crowd. The documentary footage during the credits was interesting but that's better off as an extra on the DVD.

But maybe I just don't like modern war films.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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The Nest 9/10

I had to go to the podunk suburban theatre that only seems to show big blockbusters (you could hear Tenet playing before you even entered the building) and religious films to see this one but it was completely worth it. Sean Durkin's long-awaited second film is a throwback to 80's adult dramas about a family who is uprooted from New York to the UK as the father believes that he has a sure thing that will put them back into a comfortable life. However, nothing is what it seems and the rest of the family begins to tear apart at the seams as their fortunes, both financially and emotionally, decline. Jude Law gives one of his better performances but the real standout is Carrie Coon as the mother. I've never really given much attention to her work but she gives an Oscar worthy performance as a woman who is in this world that is foreign to her and struggles as her reasons for living evaporate.

It's films like this one that show that there is still a place for cinema outside of the big budget films and that we shouldn't cry that it's all going to be just the same three things over and over in the next few years. One just needs to expand their horizons and be mature about it.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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Save Yourselves! 2/10

The trailer promised a movie about cute little aliens taking over the world. The actual movie is only a few minutes of that and the rest being two insufferable hipster stereotypes that you would never want to spend more than five minutes of company trying to survive a week in the country without technology (while somehow having a "technology is good" theme) only to run into these aliens (that they initially mistake for a piece of furniture). The end result is nothing more than outdated mumblecore that makes sci-fi boring. Save yourself the time and watch the Star Trek episode The Trouble with Tribbles instead.
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Re: Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

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A few recent watches:
The Devil All the Time 7.5/10
As uneven as it is, The Devil All the Time can't be accused of not striving for excellence. Antonio Campos tries his damnedest to paint a dense portrait of despair, corruption and how religion can be weaponized to commit or justify evil acts in two small, poverty-stricken towns on both sides of the Ohio/West Virginia border over the course of 15 years (1950-1965), but the substance that the film is seeking to convey just never quite materializes as it uses its non-linear storytelling approach to zip through character and plotline introductions in an effort to race towards the finish line when all of its moving parts finally converge.

On the other hand, the execution of everything else is pretty much stellar across the board. Campos creates an Southern Gothic-inspired atmosphere that really showcases the ever present grimness of the world these characters occupy, the acting ensemble anchored by a gruff yet subtly heartbreaking Tom Holland as a young man whose entire entire existence has been defined by unfathomable loss and a sickeningly sinister Robert Pattinson as a preacher whose not as righteous as he appears to be shows up in a big way and the few scenes where things stray into pure thriller territory are remarkably intense. While the strength of what it gets right makes it easy to get frustrated about the missteps that prevent it from reaching the greatness that's so clearly in sight throughout the film, it's still an admirable, ambitious attempt to tell a complex story that has more positives than negatives.

Unpregnant 7.5/10
HBO Max's buddy dramedy about an Ivy League-bound high school senior (the always magnetic Haley Lu Richardson) who enlists her former best friend (Barbie Ferrara-who does well in her debut film role following her breakout supporting turn on Euphoria) to drive her from Missouri to New Mexico, which is the closest place to her hometown where she can get the procedure without parental consent- certainly got released at the right time. It may drop the ball with some tacky, contrived melodramatic scenes that are unrelated to the abortion plot and its occasionally overly absurd road movie hijinks that take away from its otherwise grounded nature, but the importance of seeing a film tackle this topic in a lighthearted, easily relatable way and reinforce why the US needs to make abortion more readily accessible at a moment in time where a woman's right to choose is in peril can not be understated.

Tenet 7/10
Nolan got too cute with this one. What starts off as a compelling sci-fi spy movie hybrid with some very impressive action setpieces eventually gets bogged down with bizarre revelations about the villain and an abundance of new wrinkles to the time travel mechanism that drives the plot that are hard to fully comprehend because most of the explanatory dialogue sounds like it was recorded while a fucking jet engine was running (I legit had to read the Wikipedia page after I got out of the theater to figure out about half of what happened in the final hour). It's possible that it could benefit from a rewatch now that I know where all the puzzles pieces fit, but right now I'm very disappointed that Nolan flubbed the landing on a project that had a lot of promise.
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