Recently Watched Movie Thread 2017

[nwhoopfan]

My dad recommended "Life of a King" to me quite a while ago. Finally got around to watching it. Starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. (he's kinda been marginalized in Hollywood, but the dude can act!). Really good movie. Gooding's character is just released after a 17 year stint in prison. Estranged from his 2 kids. Having some difficulty finding his way in life. Ends up starting a chess club at the local high school, the kind of school where most kids have no interest in chess. He becomes a very positive influence in their lives, trying to help them avoid making the mistakes he made as a young man. Based on a true story. Very well done.

 

[Dove]

Better Living Through Chemistry

Saw most of this yesterday. Enough to say funny movie. Worth a see when bored.

Sam Rockwell stars as unhappy pharmacist married to a bitch and meets an unhappy rich chick.

 

[nwhoopfan]

If you're looking for something different...

Just watched "Thelma." Foreign film. Danish I think, or maybe Norwegian. Psychological drama, touches on the supernatural and religious. Young woman off to college, seemingly overprotective parents, she starts having seizures and other strange things happen. It seems a bit disjointed, but eventually all the pieces come together. Slow paced, but I found it fairly interesting. Certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Saw Black Panther last night. It's almost done with its run, and my wife and I wanted to see it before the new Avengers comes out.

Overall it was good. The usual silly stuff, and the level of technical advancement in Wakanda was absurd really. It took itself a little bit seriously with the messaging, for a Marvel movie that is. The presence of strong warrior women was a nice positive, and they were just there. Nobody felt the need to talk about it. Likewise the brilliant young sister scientist. Fortunately, the first post credits scene wrapped up on a positive, "we are all one tribe" note. I love the way Marvel adds those post credit teasers for future films.

 

[Yardigan]

I Can Only Imagine

 

[ZooCougar]

Saw Black Panther last night. It's almost done with its run, and my wife and I wanted to see it before the new Avengers comes out.

Overall it was good. The usual silly stuff, and the level of technical advancement in Wakanda was absurd really. It took itself a little bit seriously with the messaging, for a Marvel movie that is. The presence of strong warrior women was a nice positive, and they were just there. Nobody felt the need to talk about it. Likewise the brilliant young sister scientist. Fortunately, the first post credits scene wrapped up on a positive, "we are all one tribe" note. I love the way Marvel adds those post credit teasers for future films.

On a scale of 1-10, how important is it to see TBP before The Avengers comes out?

 

[HuskyHawk]

On a scale of 1-10, how important is it to see TBP before The Avengers comes out?

Until I see the new Avengers I can't be sure. But it's now like the 3rd highest grossing film of all time, and the theater is empty. Seemed easy to just tick that box. I doubt that it's critical. When Black Panther showed up in the last Captain America, you really had no idea of his capabilities. This provides the backstory for all of that. That's all you'll miss.

They had the usual two post credit scenes as well, and the second one was interesting. Didn't reveal much except a somewhat unexpected relationship.

 

[nwhoopfan]

I was mildly curious about "Molly's Game." Just watched it, WAY better than I expected. Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba were both fantastic. Kevin Costner too in a small role. I highly recommend this.

 

[dbmill]

Just watched Three Billboards. Very good, and very depressing in many ways.

 

[dbmill]

Just watched "The Post". Very good movie with a terrific Tom Hanks performance. It's funny, my wife is a reporter, and she was just salivating over all the old newspaper presses and other equipment in the film.

 

[CajunHusky]

I highly recommend "A Man Called Ove"

 

[Dove]

Frozen

No, not the animated kid flick. This one is about 3 kids getting trapped on a ski lift way up high. A little better than it sounds. Just a little. (These three kids don't ski with cell phones in tow )

 

[nwhoopfan]

Saw Hostiles today. Excellent western. Christian Bale is great in it.

Just saw this. Not sure how to feel about it. A number of excellent, understated acting performances. Fairly slow paced, took a while for the story to draw me in. Overall...fairly bleak and brutal, not a happy feel good movie.


I hadn't seen Wes Studi in anything for quite a while. He's forever etched in my mind as his character from "Last of the Mohicans." It's hard to believe that was 25 years ago, I was kinda shocked by how old he is now.

 

[Walker11]

Bone Tomahawk. Slow but well paced Western with a tinge of horror. Good acting (Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins) and beautiful looking. It also contained one of the most unsettling scenes I have ever seen. Between this and Brawl in Cell Block 99, the director really knows how to make me feel uneasy.

 

[Husky25]

Forgot to mention that I finally saw Margin Call. I may have missed something, but considering the cast, it was sort of disappointing. Also (and I'm not in that part of the finance world, but still...), why not sell off enough to get back with acceptable risk ratio parameters, rather than liquidate their entire position? They had been flirting with the line for weeks, even crossing it on a few occasions. Did they really blow through that bad in the span of 48 hours to the point of unrecoverablity?

The Big Short was far more enjoyable.

 

[Waquoit]

I liked Isle of Dogs very much, thought it had a lot of cool stuff. My partner not so much.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Forgot to mention that I finally saw Margin Call. I may have missed something, but considering the cast, it was sort of disappointing. Also (and I'm not in that part of the finance world, but still...), why not sell off enough to get back with acceptable risk ratio parameters, rather than liquidate their entire position? They had been flirting with the line for weeks, even crossing it on a few occasions. Did they really blow through that bad in the span of 48 hours to the point of unrecoverablity?

The Big Short was far more enjoyable.

The Big Short was definitely funnier.

The Director of Margin Call used dramatic license to make the events of the movie occur over about 36 hours. Realistically, that would take longer, maybe a couple of weeks.

Every bank in the world was using a bad VAR model in the third quarter of 2008. Lehman thought they would be purchased until the afternoon east coast time on Sunday, September 15, 2008. Defaults had been increasing since early 2007, but the collapse sped up in August and September 2008.

I would have made the same decision if I was the Jeremy Irons character. Jeremy Irons says in the meeting that other banks would reach the same conclusion and start dumping their crappy loans. Remember his 3 ways to make money speech? Being first is the easiest. They had to be first to dump, because everyone would start doing the same thing soon enough.

 

[Mano]

Gran Torino - It was on the HBO and I hadn’t seen it before so I gave it a go. Not great. Eastwood is fine playing an exaggerated version of himself but the non actors they cast in the other roles were just laughably bad. Not sure why they went that route, totally ruined an otherwise blah movie. Also way too predictable.

 

[Waquoit]

Gran Torino - It was on the HBO and I hadn’t seen it before so I gave it a go. Not great. Eastwood is fine playing an exaggerated version of himself but the non actors they cast in the other roles were just laughably bad. Not sure why they went that route, totally ruined an otherwise blah movie. Also way too predictable.

Yknow, I thought that movie was pretty good when I first watched it in the theater. Looking back, I'm closer to your take. Plus, I watched Le Samouraï (1967) recently and it had pretty much the same ending.

 

[Jaker]

Saw the Avengers this past weekend, it was pretty good,

 

[Mano]

Bone Tomahawk. Slow but well paced Western with a tinge of horror. Good acting (Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins) and beautiful looking. It also contained one of the most unsettling scenes I have ever seen. Between this and Brawl in Cell Block 99, the director really knows how to make me feel uneasy.

I was intrigued so I looked up the scene you were talking about...

 

[Mano]

Yknow, I thought that movie was pretty good when I first watched it in the theater. Looking back, I'm closer to your take. Plus, I watched Le Samouraï (1967) recently and it had pretty much the same ending.

It could have been alright. Eastwood’s performance was engaging enough to mostly carry the film if it weren’t so dragged down by the amateurs that shared the screen with him.

 

[storrsroars]

I was intrigued so I looked up the scene you were talking about...

Yeah... I just read the Wikipedia summary. No thanks. I'd have to be in a pretty sick mood to want to entertain myself with that kind of gratuitous gut spilling.

 

[nwhoopfan]

"Please Stand By" was fairly interesting and well done I thought. Stars Dakota Fanning and several other fairly well known actors/actresses. Fanning's character is a young woman w/ autism living in a group home in the Bay Area. She is a huge Star Trek fan. There is a contest to write a script for a Trek movie. She completes a script but it's too late to mail it, so she decides she needs to deliver it by hand in a couple days in Hollywood. She leaves the group home by bus at first, then suffers a series of misadventures. Some people she meets try to help her, others take advantage. I think it was barely in theaters and hasn't gotten much buzz, but worth checking out.

I didn't end up watching the whole season, but saw some of "The Alienist" on tv. I'd say Fanning has very successfully transitioned to playing adult roles. Don't see her still trying to play high schoolers or college kids.


Almost forgot, while Fanning is really good in this "Pete" the little dog almost steals every scene he's in.

 

[CajunHusky]

Gran Torino - It was on the HBO and I hadn’t seen it before so I gave it a go. Not great. Eastwood is fine playing an exaggerated version of himself but the non actors they cast in the other roles were just laughably bad. Not sure why they went that route, totally ruined an otherwise blah movie. Also way too predictable.

I don't know why but this movie makes me think of "ST Vincent". Bill Murray has done the occasional really touching movie over the course of his career. "St Vincent" and "Meatballs" are two that come to mind. Another movie that does not have Bill Murray but in a similar vein is "Cannery Row". A really humorous movie in a sad sort of way. I told someone I found the movie very funny and they said it was hard to think of Steinbeck as funny but after he watched the movie he said it put the story in an entirely different perspective.