DaveA wrote: Fri Aug 04, 2023 4:33 pm

jfv wrote: Mon Jul 31, 2023 3:18 amThen I watched The Fugitive just because.

Have also decided that The Fugitive is more or less “the Friday night fish fry of movies.”

Exactly what I'm thinking. It's a just-hanging-out movie which keeps you engaged but is not intrusive.

An actual "hang out movie" (as I've come to understand the term) tends to be one in which the characters are literally just hanging out throughout much of its duration. Think maybe The Mother and the Whore or Only Lovers Left Alive or Slacker, something in that often-chatty Rohmer-ish vein.

Compared to that fare, The Fugitive is far more kinetic and plot-oriented. I mean, for much of the movie, the protagonist is physically running away from the law (who are never far behind) while also trying to catch the real killer. It's not the stuff of layabouts and idlers pontificating.

But semantics aside, the idea that people can sort of "hang out" while watching it, that it won't demand too much of their mental faculties but still keep them engaged, is true. That it doesn't rub too many people the wrong way makes this so, as there are some titles that purport or aim to be "easy watches" as such but have all sort of problems (narrative, formal, or "philosophical") that end up distracting viewers if not alienating them.

Long flight home.. more movies.

She Said. Wasn’t sure if a movie about investigative journalism would keep my interest on a plane, but I did make it all the way through this one. It was good, but I can understand why it ended up being a box office flop. Fuck Harvey Weinstein.

Dunkirk. Not sure how I missed seeing this one before. There are maybe four or five extremely well-done, riveting scenes worth watching multiple times, but the film was very disjointed in a way that seemed unnecessary. Still, I liked it.. though I have a positive bias towards just about any WWII or Cold War film.

I filled out the remaining 7 or 8 hours with movies I’ve seen before; a couple of the better Marvel films, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines, because robots taking over the world.

I recently saw the 2019 Guatemalan film La Llorona - not to be confused with an American horror from the same year called The Curse of La Llorona. Films aside, La Llorona is an old Mexican folk tale of a woman who drowned her children and appears in the form of a weeping ghost that terrorizes people. It's been made into a film quite a few times, often badly I believe.

The Guatemalan film places the story in the modern day where an ousted former fascist dictator (based on the real life Efraín Ríos Montt) is on trial for war crimes, predominantly the rape and genocide of the native Mayan population decades previously. His family end up stuck in their house with their (native) help due to 24/7 protests outside, at which point he begins awaking to the sound of a woman weeping...
It's not a conventional horror in that there are no jump scares or grisly deaths, but the placement of the story in such an original, charged context, plus the nature of the crimes added with the constant sense of dread and foreboding throughout the film made it one of the most gripping things I've seen in ages.

I watched Class of 1999 yesterday. It’s sort of a remake of Class of 1984 but more of a rip-off of Robo Cop. Totally awful, ridiculous in every way. Five stars.

Turned off Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song after about an hour. The camera work is excellent, and the soundtrack is even better, but the first scene gave me the creeps, and I couldn’t really settle into it. It felt like I was watching for-real child abuse. (Because I was.)

why did garden state push his mom into the dishwasher and she died? like.. that's too stupid ..

some hipsters love that poser reason for pain so art has reason.. ninja? shark? both are vacuum cleaners...

oo feel bad for my shirt.. shut up, save the world

simon birch finally getting a hit in baseball and it hits the beautiful ashley judd milf of his dreams and she dies.. and it's his best friends mom..

it's too sad here's the happy part when timmy from jurassic park is ace ventura as the wonder years


once you kill your best friend who had special needs because he killed your mom.. you become jim carrey, asking your kid about his soccer piss, asking him for some next
hey kid, got any clean urine? daddy needs to take a test..

Fall, about two girls who climb some tower and get stuck up top. Good suspense, questionable dialogue and story. Worth the time I thought.

Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg, 2020): Had wanted to see it for a while, definitely glad I did. Caught it on a plane, but it's available on Kanopy too. Recommended.



Ennio (Giuseppe Tornatore, 2021): Brilliant, exhaustive documentary on the Maestro, with a candid interview serving as the film's backbone. Last twenty minutes or so are kind of lame (featuring silly talking heads tracing contemporary impact), but otherwise very moving and inspiring. Highly recommended.

jimmy spako wrote: Fri Aug 25, 2023 12:55 pm Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg, 2020): Had wanted to see it for a while, definitely glad I did. Caught it on a plane, but it's available on Kanopy too. Recommended.

Caught that on a plane, too. I liked it as well.

DaveA wrote: Fri Aug 04, 2023 5:34 pmCompared to that fare, The Fugitive is far more kinetic and plot-oriented. I mean, for much of the movie, the protagonist is physically running away from the law (who are never far behind) while also trying to catch the real killer. It's not the stuff of layabouts and idlers pontificating.

Probably true everything you say, but my association with that movie is when I had watched 40 Days and 40 Nights (you know the one where the sex-maniac dude falls in love with Shannyn Sossamon during a bet he took to nofap for 40D&40N), and the culminating point of that movie is an extremely tasteless scene which made me kinda sick and ruined all the mood that had been built up. Had to watch The Fugitive to wind down. It was also 12 or 2 o'clock at night at that time - it's that kinda movie too.