Green Book, Cold War, 22 July, and other October/November screenings

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Since my last post, i have seen Leave No Trace (again, and just as good upon second screening), Green Book, Cold War, 22 July, A Star is Born, Woman at War, Can You Ever Forgive Me, and Peterloo.

Leave No Trace is one of my favorites of the year.  It is a quiet, emotional story of a father and daughter, and in a kind, non-judgemental way describes his struggle with ptsd and her growing awareness that their lifestyle is not optimal.  I don’t think it is on the big screen anymore, but it is on pay per view……it needs concentration and quiet to watch -and maybe wine, popcorn, and chocolate too 🙂  Please see it.  It’s my favorite of these.

Green Book is an entertaining true story, written by Peter Farrelly, of Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber fame, with the son of the protagonist.  He intended that it be a drama, and it is, but with many humorous moments, so a crowd-pleaser.  I recommend it also.

Cold War is very stylishly shot.  If you want to see Pawel Powlikoski’s film, Ida, first, it is available to stream for free on Fandor, which you may receive with your Amazon Prime subscription.  It is rentable in many other places.

Streaming – The Rider – I know I mentioned this before, but this film is another 2018 gem.  It is quiet, like Leave No Trace, and takes a while to get going, but you will be SO happy you gave it your time.  Available on Starz and Amazon, it just won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Picture.

The rest of the films in my opening paragraph were fine, but there are many others to get to in the theaters now.

The list of movies to see between now and Oscar time is daunting, but here is my list, in no particular order, and poorly capitalized/punctuated:

border
burning
first man
wildlife
roma
life and nothing more
beale street
widows
boy erased
beautiful boy
bohemian rhapsody
the hate u give
a private war
Front Runner
wildlife
shoplifters
at eternity’s gate
the ballad of buster scruggs
the favourite

The Old Man and the Gun

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The Rafael theater had a member double feature today of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Old Man and the Gun.  I could not sneak out of work at 4pm for Butch Cassidy, but did see the new film, and it was a crowd pleaser.  I have only ever seen BCaTHK on TV, so big screen and those 4 blue eyes would have been awesome, but oh well.  TOMatG was funny, entertaining, etc, and Bob had much more charisma than in his last couple of flix…..so, even though there are about to be a slew of great movies to see, I recommend you go see The Old Man and the Gun.  When you watch Sissy Spacek, know that she totally bugs Chris because he thinks she always looks like she’s smiling.  See if you can watch her and not think of that….I can’t!

Recommendation #2 – stream Unleashed on Netflix.  Unleashed came out a couple of years ago, directed by a Marin guy and friend of MVFF named Finn Taylor.  It has some relatively known actors, and was a very charming story.  I can’t tell you more without spoiling it.

 

Mission Impossible: Fallout

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So, Mission Impossible: Fallout has a score of 86 on metacritic (which is really high for a wide release action movie), and 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.  I told Chris I want to see Blindspotting or 8th Grade, but he won the Saturday night movie pick and we went to the big theater near us and took the plastic 3D glasses.  Mission Impossible:Fallout is 2 1/2 hours long, and action packed the whole time.  There are a handful of scenes that are so action-packed, unrealistic, and fantastic, that the audience laughed out loud at the audacity of the filmmaker and the great CGI.  Tom Cruise did a good enough job of showing personality while racing motorcycles and cars around Paris and London (nice scenery).  There are some amazing outdoor cliff and valley scenes set in Kashmir.  The violence was typical plow through the bad guys, and not too gorey.  If you need to entertain some young men, (or old men), i approve of seeing Mission Impossible: Fallout in the theater.  See it on as large a screen as you can find, with the glasses.

LEAVE NO TRACE

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Watched LEAVE NO TRACE this week.  It was at Sundance last year and was not yet titled….remember the “untitled Debra Granik” movie?  It was very good!  Quiet, beautiful, great acting.   We liked it so much we came home and streamed her first feature, WINTER’S BONE, on Amazon.  That was good too.  Ben Foster stars in LEAVE NO TRACE.  He was also in HELL OR HIGH WATER and was nominated for a bunch of awards for best supporting actor for his performance.  I’m guessing he will show up at Oscar time this year.
THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS is out now too.  We tried to see that at Sundance.  Interesting/disturbing, and worth a watch.
We streamed BRIMSTONE AND GLORY last night on Amazon.  It is about a town in Mexico, Tultepec, that manufactures fireworks and holds a couple of huge, crazy firework shows each year.  It was very interesting, in a shaking my head sort of way, about how they ignore the dangerous aspects of fireworks.  Relevant, since this week 24 people were killed and 40+ injured in a warehouse explosion there.
Saw THE KING…you can skip this one.  The documentary centers around somewhat random people in the back of Elvis’ Rolls Royce, giving their opinion (and you know what they say about opinions) about Elvis’ life and his mistakes.  Most of the people did not know Elvis, and Ethan Hawke was particularly blowhard-ish about Elvis’ mistakes, which I did not appreciate at all (he bugs me maybe most of all).  There was little mention about the bad people around Elvis (namely Col. Parker – drugs), little respect for the way millions/billions of people liked/like his music, and lots of comparisons of Elvis’ career and downfall to the downfall of American culture…kind of a stretch.  See something else.

First blog post

Trying to decide what film to see? Here is what I think about it….

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Puzzle (2018)So, this is my first blog post.  Thank you, Nancy, for setting up the awesome popcorn basket graphics for me.  I need to get my genre pages going, but that is for another time.  Since I seem to have a mental block at beginning this blog, i am going to start with a small activity instead of a master layout explanation of the site, so i can figure out how things post.

Watch this Film!  –  PUZZLE

Last night I saw a very charming movie, PUZZLE, starring Kelly McDonald, who you may have seen in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN or BOARDWALK EMPIRE, and the guy from LIFE OF PI, Irrfan Khan.  The director, Marc Turtletaub and Kelly McDonald were there after the screening for a Q&A and were very engaging.  The movie centers around Kelly McDonald.  Her two boys are just about to leave home as young adults, and she is feeling like she has been serving them and her husband and doing little for her self.  (relevant?  um yes).  She finds that she is very good at crossword puzzles, and the rest ensues.  I won’t tell you the story, because as you know, it’s better not to know.