House of Dynamite. One of those movies that creates suspense using close ups and claustrophobic situation rooms. The premise is someone shoots a nuclear missile at Chicago and the movie goes through three narratives leading up to the same point the President has to make a decision whether to retaliate.
Brits play some of those most prominent Americans including Idris Elba as the President and Jared Smith as Secretary of Defence. Gabriel Basso, aka The Night Agent, is again a government personnel. He might want to start diversifying his roles lest he be typecast as government guy for the rest of his acting career.
With the current political climate you can't but imagine in the back of your mind what would happen if the 47th President and his administration would do when faced with the same situation. I'm guessing Secretary of Defence War won't do the honourable thing that Jared Smith does.
The Materialists. Fun but predictable rom-com (not super rom and light on the com) with the three main actors phoning-in some pretty two dimensional characters 7/10
A Merry Little Ex-Mas. A woman in a small town who gave up being an architect to be a handywoman and a man who is the local doctor decide to break up. They'll still do family things together but they're going to see other people. He picks up a younger British girl. She goes out with the local Christmas tree vendor/male stripper/snow plough guy/etc.
At the end of the movie I figured out the mother figure was Alicia Silverstone. She is definitely not wearing anything that flatters (what's left of?) her figure.
You could have seen 15 minutes into the movie when Silverstone meets the new girlfriend that they were going to end up together again. I just thought that the two Britishers would get together after being dumped.
Michelle Pfeiffer is an under appreciated mother who goes all out to host her adult kids, grandkids and husband every year for Christmas. When she gets tickets for everyone for a holiday show and they forget to drive her because she was across the street at the neighbours she gives up trying to host the perfect annual Christmas.
Most of the movie is Felicity Jones and Pfeiffer where the oldest daughter wants her own traditions and some narcissistic attention but the mother doesn’t want to stop and let go because she doesn’t want to be irrelevant. It all ends on a TV daytime talk show so you know it is profound and deep.
Pfeiffer is doing dark arts to stay attractive. Denis Leary is 68 and looks 68. Felicity Jones is 42 and looks like she is going to get more wrinkles quicker than Pfeiffer.
We watched the new Knives Out last night. I’ll preface be saying I thought the last one was boring, but this was a fun little old-timey Agatha Christie style whodunnit. Daniel Craig’s character is fairly two dimensional, but just a prop for the story telling anyway 7/10
It has Kiefer Sutherland as a washed up Hollywood action star whose last gig is in Britain doing live panto in a small town. He's a lousy father. He drinks too much. He trashes a public Christmas event he was hosting as VIP. After making a fool of himself he decides to jump into a Christmas tree. He gets imprisoned for being a public drunk. There's a court scene. I thought at that point this is maybe an autobiography.
It ends with him doing the show with the penultimate song being Katy Perry. So light and frothy even Justin Trudeau would like it.
Okay that’s it. No more ridiculous seasonal movies. Ryan Eggold, the playboy son of a ski resort owner, joins the family business and as his first act okays the hire of a Santa played by Alexandra Breckinridge, a single mother who got laid off and needs the money as well as the employee perk of enrolling her daughter into snowboard school for half price. Eggold loves the Santa and Breckinridge the woman with whom he bumped into at a record store. Until of course she can’t play both characters and the secret is revealed.
Nuremberg was excellent. Stellar cast and tight script. The trial scene was a let-down, but overall a great film that’s sure to sweep the Oscars next year
I must be old. I still remember Toni Collette and Kate Winslet as hot starlets from the late 1990s.
Helen Mirren plays the dying mother from cancer. She gets hospitalised and opts to stay there rather than go back home to die in palliative care. It is a hell of a way to die since her bowel is blocked by the cancerous mass. They say she won't survive Christmas so her family brings Christmas to her. The 4 kids then make peace with their parents and between themselves. And the grandkids do some of the entertaining. The husband played by Timothy Spall gets drunk, goofs off but that's his way of dealing with his dying spouse.
For me it was a bit too close to home to enjoy.
Speaking of ageing actors and actresses. Timothy Spall was the photographer 23 years ago with Tom Cruise in the Lost Samurai. Tom Cruise is 65 and still doing Ethan Hunt. Spall is 68 and now playing grandfather.
That Knives Out movie is a bit much for me. I wasn't a big fan of the church story. Sometimes I feel like the movie is letting Daniel Craig do whatever anti bond he wants to do and all the other actors and actresses just come along for the ride. The last scene where he suddenly bangs out Phantom of the Opera on the church organ is a good example.
After the Hunt with Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri (aka Sydney from The Bear). Julia Roberts is a professor looking for tenure at Yale. She's trying not to rock the boat to get it. Still looking really good at age 58 so much so she keeps getting sexual attention from faculty peers and even a student. debiri becomes that student from hell who tries to frame everyone.
The movie has a serious problem with pacing. A lot of the scenes are let's put these stars in a room and see what they do but because the director isn't getting the intensity and emotion let's add some music when the story is most dramatic.
The problem is all the characters are incredibly narcissistic. They're literally unlikeable. Every time something bad happens to some other person they turn the whole thing back to them and how they were the ones that had to cope with <insert relevant trauma/experience>. I hope Yale isn't really like this. It looks like a cesspool.
The movie revolves around a lone Ahmed who uses a teletext service to do anonymous phone calls with whistle blower clients under threat from the companies they are taking down. Lots of burner phones, go to a public place, CCTV, that type of movie.
I haven't seen Lily James since Downton Abbey. She looks roughly the same which is a good thing for an English girl. She becomes a client and they grow fond of each other as Ahmed starts violating his no contact with the customer rules. There is a deus ex machina plot twist at the end that is not very believable.
It is also baffling they made the two British stars speak American English. It is set in New York. Two Brit ex pats wouldn't be unbelievable. If it was small town Idaho, then yeah make them change.
There is a side story that Ahmed is a recovering alcoholic. One of his AA friends says if you don't get addicted to alcohol you just get addicted to something else (aka his job)
I liked Relay. Utterly forgettable B grade pulp fun. Same with The Rip. Typical Afleck-DiCaprio good cop bad cop action flick. But I would rewatch just to see the smouldering Sasha Calle.
I liked Relay. Utterly forgettable B grade pulp fun. Same with The Rip. Typical Afleck-DiCaprio good cop bad cop action flick. But I would rewatch just to see the smouldering Sasha Calle.
So Kiefer Sutherland plays himself in Tinsel Town as a washed up star sent to small town England to do a panto and gets into an alcoholic rage that lands him in jail.
Here we have George Clooney...or rather Jay Kelly...America's everyman star, going to Tuscany for a tribute to him with his entourage of sycophants. He begs his father to attend but he comes and goes. He begs his daughters but given he sacrificed being a father to get what he wanted they show no interest. He finally begs his agent played by Adam Sandler. I guess Sandler is sort of in a symbiotic relationship with Clooney. Clooney's character is now 60 and at the end of his prime time career. Every one in public loves him. But he's never happy. There are a lot of flashbacks like regrets from ghosts of the past. It's introspective melancholy. Maybe this is what Clooney really thinks of his own career (less the daughters and the hot Lebanese wife).
The funny thing is when the tribute actually happens - why get Jay Kelly to film his own older movies when you have a catalogue post ER movies that you can use from Clooney himself.
Finally watched Gladiator 2. Had been wanting to watch it with my late father but his vision failed him by the time I could get it streamed at home.
It's like a made for TV junior/light version of the original movie no? A lot of copying and pasting the original movie's motifs and scenes with just enough tweaks to make it seem new in 2024. Some scenes they desperately wanted to recreate but didn't realise without the context it means less.
Why do people fight for the Paul Mescal character? In the first movie, Crowe had the Quintus guy who became the head of the Praetorian. They fought together in Germany. Crowe was the general. There was at least one random soldier who served with him in Vienna amongst the gladiators. He saves the big German guy Hagen who then is indebted to him. There was Djimon Hounsou who was like his twin in the beginning. There were a lot of subtle developments that led people in the under class to respect him culminating in the Maximus chants after he confronts Joaquin Phoenix in the tunnel back to the gladiator chambers. That scene meant something. By the time Mescal says "Hey gladiators fight with me or go back to your cells" it rings entirely hollow because none of this pre-text was done.
Then there's the co-emperors. If Commodus was daft these two are mentally challenged. At least Commodus tried to train and do the Jake Paul version of combat. When these two emperors grab a weapon I almost think they are going to fall, trip and stab themselves by accident. Total armchair emperors.
Connie Nielsen is still cast 20 plus years later as the sex symbol. I'm guessing by her costumes in the movie. Her face and eyes are a bit frumpy in the brightly lit scenes like the colosseum but she looks okay in the dark ones. Why did she come back? In the first movie she was the schemer and manipulator and not just damsel in distress. I even flipped back to the old movie and her voice pitch was lower then. Here it's constantly - help me Pedro Pascal. Help me Paul Mescal.
And finally Denzel Washington replaces Oliver Reed. Literally same back story as Reed, but Denzel asks at one point "What language do you speak? I speak all of them". So Denzel Washington then plays himself from Training Day. Even some of the mannerisms remind me of that. Forget about getting in character for the Roman Empire and speaking Latin. He plays all sides until he gets to be consul.
The movie feels like someone asked ChatGPT - hey what were all the major scenes that made Gladiator so memorable (Strength and Honour!). Let's include those but completely ignore why the story was so captivating because of the little subplots and context put into the original.
Did they just give these two best mates money and go make a movie? It literally has 2 scenes - the stuff in the house and the scene in the armoured vehicle. And then an action sequence in each. The rest of it is just intense close up shots and people talking. I was thinking it would be something deep like The Departed.
I am surprised by the amount of weaponry US police officers are allowed to carry. It's not just a 9mm pistol and a shotgun in the back of the cruiser.
American police started militarising in the early 2000s, when Bush allowed them to purchase surplused DoD stuff and it’s been exponential since.
Metropolitan patrol cops usually have a 9mm and an AR15 in the cruiser. Any sort of detective/organized crime/vaguely special unit will have body armor, helmets and more at their disposal.
Ten years ago ICE wore blue raid windbreaker jackets and carried side arms on their belts. Now it’s all camo, helmets, body armor and assault rifles. The troops occupying Minneapolis don’t look like law enforcement at all.
Housemade is dumb and forgettable. Yes there are plot twists but you they are so abrupt and awkward that it’s nauseating. Sydney Sweeney is terrible but her boobs are briefly visible. Amanda Seifried puts in a solid performance. Good for distraction on an airplane ride, but not much else 5/10
While Sinners leads the nominations, One Battle After Another – Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic about the pleasures and perils of a revolutionary life – feels like a lock for the night’s biggest prize. Anderson’s film has picked up almost every major precursor award honouring the year’s best movie, except for best ensemble at the Actor Awards (awarded to Sinners).
Somewhat aware of all these movies from media coverage - Michael B Jordan playing two characters and Di Caprio. But no idea whether they are entertaining or not.
I thought both were severely overhyped. Sinners is a fun watch but One Battle really didn’t do much for me at all. Sean Penn’s character was about the only redeeming part
