The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part One (imdb | rotten tomatoes): meh.
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Cover photo by Mike Mozart, used under Creative Commons license
Category: Movies
I sense a theme
In which I watch films with numbers in the title and featuring slightly-over-the-hill assassins: 3 Days To Kill (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and Taken 2 (imdb | rotten tomatoes). I don’t even have anything to say; they were both crap.
I guess I need to rent The Expendables 2 now. *shudder*
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Cover photo by Straw Dog, used under Creative Commons license
“Oh my God, it’s the slutty Oompa Loompas.”
We squeezed in a few more movies over the past week, two of which had an unintentionally common theme.
The To Do List (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was about Aubrey Plaza, a high school valedictorian, attempting to become sexually experienced before college while working as a lifeguard at her local pool. It was very dirty, and very funny.
The Lifeguard (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was about Kristen Bell, a former high school valedictorian, attempting to reset her imperfect life while working as a lifeguard at her local pool. It was a little funny, but also clumsily serious.
Edge Of Tomorrow (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a surprise. I figured this was another paint-by-numbers Tom Cruise sci-fi whatever, but when I saw the 90% RT rating we decided to give it a go. It was actually really good: entertaining, clever, funny in parts, interesting in its WWI and WWII parallels (the “Angel of Verdun” felt like a mashup of two iconic WWI battles, for example), and Emily Blunt is just…*wistful sigh*. Really, though, you should see this.
On a separate but movie-related theme, we stumbled into something yesterday by accident which we wish we’d discovered earlier: the Bell Members Lounge at the TIFF Lightbox. All these years as contributing members and no idea that quiet little oasis is up there, far from the madding crowd. But we know now.
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Cover photo by Robin, used under Creative Commons license
“You two are the most fucked up people I’ve ever met and I deal with fucked up people for a living.”
In between work and travel and whatnot we’ve watched some pretty good movies lately:
- Neighbors (imdb | rotten tomatoes) made me laugh out loud a couple of times on the flight from Vancouver to Toronto, so it had that going for it. Seth Rogen’s always good, but Rose Byrne and her potty mouth were a nice surprise. So was Zac Efron, actually.
- X-Men: Days Of Future Past (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was better than I thought it was going to be. Dark, super-dark. Especially the future parts. Great execution of a crossover for once. Plus the Quicksilver scenes were very well done.
- We didn’t watch Agents Of Shield so I think we missed some lead-up to Captain America: The Winter Soldier (imdb | rotten tomatoes) but it didn’t need it. It was still a bad-ass action movie that sets up the next several Marvel movies nicely.
- We saw Gone Girl (imdb | rotten tomatoes) in part because I will automatically see any movie David Fincher directs, and in part because it got such great reviews. It was pretty good.
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Cover photo by bubbletea1, used under Creative Commons license
TIFF #4: Corbo
Today was the end of our stunted TIFF14 adventure: a subtitled film from Quebec called Corbo (imdb | rotten tomatoes | tiff). Turns out I actually know very little about the early days of the FLQ, so I found it fascinating. And beautifully shot too — it had a texture to it and evoked the 60s so well. Uh, at least, what I imagine the 60s looked like. It didn’t always move quickly, but it never seemed to drag either.
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Cover photo from the TIFF website
TIFF #3: The Drop
I don’t know what we were thinking, really. One of the TIFF picks we made this year was for a screening of The Drop (imdb | rotten tomatoes | tiff) on the day it went into wide release around North America. At least it was in the Princess of Wales theatre (our first time there) so it felt like a big deal.
And hey, the movie was really good. James Gandolfini was terrific, but Tom Hardy — as usual — stole the movie. He’s the new Marlon Brando.
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Cover photo from the TIFF website
TIFF #2: Ned Rifle
A week-long hiatus in the middle of TIFF has made it feel like the festival s barely happening. I’d almost have forgotten if my news feeds hadn’t been filled with exact details of celebrities ambling down carpeted sidewalks.
Last night we kicked off our lone festival-y weekend by seeing Hal Hartley’s closer to the Henry Fool–Fay Grim trilogy, Ned Rifle (imdb | rotten tomatoes | tiff). We saw Fay Grim at the festival eight years ago and expected more of the same. While it lacked the off-kilter camera shots it certainly had the same wry humour and subtle film-long wink to the audience. Parker Posey played a much smaller role here than in her character’s namesake movie, but she was replaced by a equally-if-differently disturbed Aubrey Plaza. Who I’m slowly becoming infatuated with, by the way.
The only things which marred the experience were outside of the movie itself: first, we picked some odd seats at the Winter Garden, such that I sat on a slope which became weirdly uncomfortable after a while. Second, the two women sitting behind us were the kind of people who feel the need to “OH!” loudly at every other scene, or simply say aloud whatever is happening on the screen. “Oh, she’s going to follow him.” “Oh, there’s no more bullets.” “Oh, that’s his uncle.” Ladies, some advice: stay home and watch movies where no one cares about your soundtrack. Or just shut the fucking fuck up. Either way.
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Cover photo from the TIFF website
“It’s not a cursed op. There’s no curses. It’s just Afghanistan, that’s all.”
We watched two movies this past weekend, one surprisingly good, the other shockingly bad.
First up was Devil’s Knot (imdb | rotten tomatoes), Atom Egoyan’s adaptation of Mara Leveritt’s book of the same name about the West Memphis Three. I read that book, and watched all three HBO documentaries, and watched Peter Jackson’s documentary, and pretty much everything else. Not only was this movie unnecessary, it was fumbled from the start. I don’t know what Egoyan was trying to accomplish by messing with Pam Hobbs’ timeline, and the could-have-been-interesting focus on Ron Lax was blown by a wholly ineffective Colin Firth. The movie was stilted and painful and anaemic compared to what came before. Do yourself a favour and read the book; it’s dated, but it’s still the definitive read on the WM3 for me.
Much better, to our surprise, was Lone Survivor (imdb | rotten tomatoes). I didn’t know much about it; the subway posters just mentioned Mark Wahlberg and Taylor Kitsch and so I didn’t have much faith that it would be anything other than a standard war movie. Then, last night, I noticed it was directed by Peter Berg, so that got my attention. A 75% Rotten Tomatoes score didn’t hurt either, so we took a chance. It was actually quite good. Can’t describe it much without giving away important plot points, but now I want to buy the book on which this movie was based.
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Cover photo by James McCauley, used under Creative Commons license
“We’re just like Kevin Bacon.”
Saw Guardians Of The Galaxy (imdb | rotten tomatoes) today. Now that was fun.
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Cover photo by Fated Snowfox, used under Creative Commons license
“To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Last week was an insane week at work. Long hours, very busy, running around. Stressful. So while I heard the news about Robin Williams, I didn’t really have a chance for it to sink in. The guy had been famous and hilarious and manic for as long as I can remember. I vaguely remember watching Mork and Mindy when I was little. I distinctly remember watching Popeye with my dad many, many times…it was, for some reason, one of his favourite movies, and therefore one of the first we ever bought on VHS. I was always amazed by Williams, by how high-velocity he was, how funny he could be at absolutely breakneck pace, and then turn out serious roles with that mania just dusting the edge of him.
Last night, with Nellie out for a work thing I finally had a few hours to myself with the laptop off. I read the Grantland piece about Williams and Norm MacDonald’s story about their first meeting, and listened to Marc Maron’s podcast with Williams from a few years back. And, of course, I watched Dead Poets Society.
I know The Fisher King is probably his peak, but this is the one that always stuck with me. Probably because I was a teenager the same as these kids when I first watched it. I wrote nine years ago about how this is one of the few movies that really got to me, about how I could barely make it through the final scene without tearing up.
Last night I didn’t make it.
Rest in peace, captain.
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Cover photo by Mike Lau, used under Creative Commons license
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 