movie thread for 2021, copying hazz and chuggo. about to watch the first movie and will report back

THE BEGUILED (2017) - aka Female Gaze: the Movie. Liked it a lot. Absolutely beautiful looking, and really interesting jackknife from amusingly horny to incredibly tense 3/4 of the way through

FAIL SAFE (1964) -- shout out to @HarryVale for the exquisite Criterion Blu-ray of this. Remarkable and tense, obvious companion to Dr Strangelove but doing things very differently. V gripping and scary even 55 years later

MOANA (2016). Really enjoyed it; laughed a lot of times. Absurdly beautiful and visually inventive, also I felt clever spotting one of the voices was Jemaine Clement

yes I've reached the "obnoxiously pointing out actors" stage of my life and I'm not even 40 yet. i am desperately trying to resist it

1917 (2019) - v human performances from young central cast elevate this movie beyond character and dialogue writing that's almost a bit too sparing. beautiful to look at also, though at times the over the shoulder perspective makes it feel like watching someone play Uncharted

MISS CONGENIALITY (2000) - I got a few laughs out of it, more chauvinism on-screen than I expected. Didn't buy Michael Caine's character's change of heart which seemed dictated more by convention than anything that happened to motivate it. Sandra Bullock is of course wonderful.

POSSESSOR (2020)

Possessor was the kind of movie Christopher Nolan must think he's making. Gorgeous, slick, thrilling blockbuster feel, but able to tackle grimy, difficult, challenging ideas about the mind and the self.

I hesitate to rush to compare with David Cronenberg but it's impossible not to. Brandon Cronenberg definitely has his own grammar and syntax, but it is absolutely working in his father's traditions. Possessor is, on one level, like eXistenZ polished to a hypodermic point

This is a film that isn't just "clever for clever's sake", showing off the physics homework while feeling utterly hollow (e.g. Interstellar). The haunting of the central characters by this situation is as emotionally illuminating as it is deeply disturbing

A major formal commonality with Cronenberg Sr's work is that it does not ratify a single point of reality. We are as uncertain as the characters are what is the "real". It's not like the Matrix where people "tunnel" in and out of the obviously fake world. Reality is unclear.

The thing is that while the truth of reality is unclear, the emotional truth is very clear. That's why it works. There is a strong emotional dimension in the movie that is realised through good writing/direction and a remarkable hybrid/gestalt performance by the two main leads.

I think this film will stay with me and I'll have a lot more thoughts on it tbh

SAINT MAUD (2019) - V absorbing and strange. Extraordinarily unhinged central performance from Morfydd Clark. Reminded me a bit of Take Shelter in how it oscillates between depicting the delusions of the protagonist and a more conventional reality, using a similar visual syntax

I CARE A LOT (2021) - Loved this. Rosamund Pike is incandescently charismatic, you just can't look away from her. Dinklage great looking like a murderously intense Jack Dorsey. Incredibly cynical and darkly comic vision of America, but also very recognisable

Great account of someone who thinks they're in full control getting chomped by a bigger, angrier fish. Though it had a slightly weird soundtrack, and something about it felt like a movie from the 90s, like a better, less wacky version of one of those knockoff tarantino films

I don't see how this works without someone like Rosamund Pike in the lead role. Her character is a sadistic monster by all measurable standards but my God Pike's glamour, magnetism, and charm are overwhelming.

lol there's loads of weird videos by gamers slagging this movie off, i don't think i care to know why

HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) - Jesus Christ, i feel like i saw a 3 hour film compressed into 90 minutes. Also was kind of distracted the whole time when I realised it contained this gif

SHOOT EM UP (2007) - i laughed a lot of times. the cuts and zooms, the Decker-ass visual effects, etc. completely silly

THE SISTERS BROTHERS (2018) - strange and charming and oddly profound at times, driven by very charismatic performances and a real eccentricity. Constantly sets up Western hard man and other tropes to skew and puncture them

Liked how the characters all occupied different points along the spectrum between "civilisation" and the bloodshed that underpins it. Joaquin Phoenix at the sharp end, unapologetic; John C Reilly, a killer who buys a toothbrush...

... Jake Gyllenhaal, part of the violence but wants to keep it at arm's reach (and already knows his way around a toothbrush). The Commodore, who lives in a big house and funds the dirty work from a distance, virtually unseen

it resists a pat reading because it's in some ways a zany picaresque with only the loosest of enabling constraints. but the destruction, pain, and trauma, and seeing characters finding (or not finding) the capacity to live in a world that dangerous...

... provides opportunities for those characters to drift and react organically and convincingly through a really interesting range of moments. anyway i liked it

WHIPLASH (2013) - even better than the first time i watched it. Just one of the best films ever made about music, as well as an incredible depiction of obsession and a deluded, destructive kind of masculinity

A STAR IS BORN (2018) - it's very much a well-oiled machine, very well-constructed and very able to do what it clearly sets out to do. Lady Gaga is really good in it and all the music stuff is pretty convincing. It's no The Bodyguard though

like, at no point does this film provide any surprises. it goes along an extremely familiar path, trundling towards an inevitable conclusion. but it's very watchable as it does so

it feels like the kind of movie tho that won't really stay with me in any meaningful way. i feel like I've already forgotten that i watched it

i will say this: it was s billion times better than the scabby, cynical dirgefest of The Greatest Showman

SOUND OF METAL (2020) - Frank but sensitive view of the process of accepting profound personal change. Riz Ahmed just a phenomenal, complex presence, charting an oscillating path from terror and anger to acceptance and peace. Never becomes Inspiration Porn either

The cochlear implant stuff was also a revelation to me. I've only ever seen it represented by viral videos of babies smiling etc, and the film does a lot of work to try to remedy this reductive view with a more complete representation of the reality of that technology

BAD TRIP (2021) - A few big belly laughs from this one. Didn't feel mean spirited. A bit of a throwback to Jackass etc but in a good way. Great fun and also weirdly wholesome and reassuring in how frequently bystanders just wanted to help out