Edgy MD

I like Thompson. He puts up RBI numbers that outstrip his rate stats. I don't necessarily conclude anything there, but it bears watching.

If you believe our thread, Dunkirk wasn't particularly engaging filmmaking or history. One user loved it, but apart from the rating, he or she hasn't said what was the appeal. I thought Their Finest was twice the picture, but I don't think it received any Oscar attention.

Walk with me, my two-star companion!

You know it.

His interpretation of the character was a real departure from the Peter Sellers version.

I didn't get the buzz for this movie at all. Perfectly OK for a first time out, but so much of the script and direction projects that it's ... the filmmaker's first time out. I mean basic stuff is betraying them, too, like the room sound didn't match from shot to shot. Plot elements were left to die off mid-film. What happened to the depressed priest? To the gay kid? She seems intent to not tell just another Catholic school story where the characters are one-dimensional cutouts set up for cheap and easy laughs, and that's great. But she isn't above falling back into just that with a few hapless characters (the substitute director for the second play, the assembly speaker). So the tone shifts weirdly and abruptly to something that seems to come out of a different film. I like that the protagonist isn't another precocious wunderkind. She's dumb and does dumb things in a way that even smart teenagers do (both of her boyfriend choices were doomed from the start), and that kind of makes up for the fact that the star is of post-collegiate age. But I count at least four times that she's just self-centeredly cruel to somebody, and she more or less gets forgiven each time without gaining enough self-awareness to avoid doing it again. I guess that makes it more realistic, but it keeps a real narrative arc from developing. I think it gets a little extra love for being budget-y art house fair but having a young, near-A-list leading lady deigning to lend it her credibility. (After Brooklyn, she probably has an X-Men role or something being pushed at her.) About a third of my theater was inhabited by true believers, guffawing at every turn, just a little too early, indicating that they were repeat viewers. Is this what it's like at Hamilton? On the way out, I found an abandoned handbag at the end of my row. I tried to turn it in to somebody but the theater was staffed by beautiful art school students who were all I didn't know there would be decision making in this job and weren't sure who should take the bag. So my wife tried to find a responsible manager in the house, while I waited at a point of egress. All I remembered of the woman at the end of my row was that her date had long legs. (I tend to get up to pee more than your typical moviegoer.) So that's what I was looking for — a woman without a handbag who had a date with long legs. Imagine my joy when I spotted JUST SUCH A COUPLE. "Excuse me," I said, "Did you misplace your handbag?" She briefly gave me that, "Are you actually cool enough to be talking to me? How nice am I really obliged to be here?" look. It was brief but I recognized it, before she followed up with a terse, "No." I doubled back to find my wife, who hadn't yet connected with management. We thought about going through the purse to find some ID while we waited for a minute or two, when that same bagless woman came back in and asked me "Was that bag gray?" "Yeah." "Then it is mine. I didn't think I had brought it." We turn it over. No, "Thank you." No smile. No nothing. She scuttled on out to her boyfriend waiting on the sidewalk in his skinny jeans with an artful boredom. We had felt a wallet and a phone in there. My wife would rather lose a lung than a handbag. But this young Ladybird fan escaped her transaction with uncool me as quickly and as coldly as she could. I had gone to the trouble of staking out a point of egress looking to find her! I probably shouldn't factor this experience into my assessment of the film, or should I?

Teenager spends her senior year at a Sacramento Catholic high school rebelling, experimenting, and clashing with her mother. Perhaps the first nostalgia movie set in this century. [fimg=400:3547axsk]https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81prIZTJ9JL._RI_.jpg[/fimg:3547axsk]

"It’s a movie that’s mere existence is infinitely more amusing than any of its jokes." — IndieWire

And the Central New York location. I don't know if the fictional town of the movie was actually set in CNY (most sasquatch sitings are associated with the Northwest), but it was shot in and around Hamilton/Colgate. It also borrows sequences and plot turns from Jaws.

In a film that's strangely most similar to ABC Family fare, but was actually a cinematic release in 2017, Michael Shannon (usually a support actor but here he is) stars as an amiable general store operator in a failing town who accidentally puts his town back on the map by dressing as Bigfoot. Weird and poorly executed in a way that would make it great fodder for Mystery Science Theater, but compelling in the sort of way that a film is compelling when folks you think should know better all end up trying to carry a hopeless project across the finish line. Broadly references other films—like, instead of referencing a line or two, they cop a whole scene, so what starts out as an Easter egg, becomes a big garish Easter basket. A second feature from Ron Perlman's Wing & A Prayer Pictures, which looks like he founded to bring some jobs to Central New York, so thanks, Ron, even if two of those jobs went to you and your daughter who each play supporting roles. How about you hire fman next time? Now streaming on Netflix, for when you really can't find something else and your curiosity is more powerful than your better judgment. Not that I would know anything about that. [fimg=350]https://i0.wp.com/substreammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Pottersville-poster.jpg?resize=640%2C800&ssl=1[/fimg]

British woman is making a few bob as an advertising copywriter, when the wartime shortage gets her suddenly drafted into helping script a film to promote the war effort. Finding the world of propaganda films to be hamfisted and ridiculous, she takes the bull by the horns, navigating an unfamiliar environment to turn around a shit production just as Britain is turning the war around. In the end, what you get is an old-fashioned picture about making an old-fashioned picture. And hey, it's got Bill Nighy, so you know it's not all bad. [fimg=500:1pvi5ndu]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a4/35/71/a43571c2ca77c4aa40114c77efba6c7d.jpg[/fimg:1pvi5ndu]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Callowness of youth? Edgy MD wrote: metsmarathon wrote: that said, does it not seem a little plausible that in the 30 years since return of the jedi that luke might've taught her even a little bit about how to use the force, and she'd just never taken up the opportunity to go flaunting various jedi tricks? You've got to at least hint at that sort of thing, no? Like Obi Wan's ghosting? Or force choking? I mean, you want hints? We're talking about a series that barely uses establishing shots, and completely eschews scene-setting captions. Obi Wan is a Jedi Knight, a master. As for Vader's choking, that is the hint. That's the introduction of the powers. Folks talk to him of his extinct religion (set up) and he demonstrates its power (establishment). Stuff that follows escalates from there. Super sword play, telekinesis, electro-shock powers. Projecting from the beyond, or floating through space, that's the sort of coup de grace that makes little sense, and offers little dramatic satisfaction, without a prior introduction. If you didn't think it was goofy, then you didn't. I thought it was totally goofy.

Man, that multiple points-of-view and multiple points-of-time made it purty hard to anchor yourself into this. Did Kurt Vonnegut write it?

And why does Rey not seem to give a shit when she messes up all the nuns' stuff?

And of course, because it's Disney, she has to fly exactly like Mary Poppins, even if she's a popsicle.

metsmarathon wrote: that said, does it not seem a little plausible that in the 30 years since return of the jedi that luke might've taught her even a little bit about how to use the force, and she'd just never taken up the opportunity to go flaunting various jedi tricks? You've got to at least hint at that sort of thing, no?

Force, my hairy ewok butt. She's never demonstrated that sort of facility with the Force. You know that. I know that. Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes all know that. The best she ever did was have a psychic phone call or two. And that was Luke calling. She just answered. Hell, Yoda himself never went spacewalking. Anakin/Vader never went spacewalking. Come on, admit it. That was, like, stupid goofy. And apart from copping a look from the early 90s cocktail party set, where does Laura Dern get off making the sacrifice play. That was Leia's move to make. She was supposed to say, "Somebody has to save our skins," launch a kamikaze counter attack, and bow out of the serial a hero. And for all Disney's careful gender and ethnic casting, why is the Resistance suddenly like 90% humanoid? Very little key action goes to any non-humanoid. Chewbacca gets treated like an old handbag, and apart from BB-8 pulling a half dozen deus ex machina plot saves, our old droid buddies C-3PO and R2-D2 are treated as old karma that the serial has to drag along. Even Yoda. EVEN YODA! They tried to touch on the grave and wise side of his personality and they tried to touch on the playful, winking side, and they absolutely got neither. He has a few minutes of ghost time, and he just comes across as a little green dick with a combover. Sheesh. Do I have to write everything?

When you guys get the physics of the bombers figured out, I hope you can explain Leia's magic ride through space.

I hate to pin a film on associations one personality, but we've had bad experiences with Zoe Kazan features in the past and didn't stick this one out past the eight-minute mark. Should we have?

I gave it three, but I switched to two. I'm kind of tired of being generous. YOU be generous, Disney, and stop disguising dumping a whole bunch of everything into the film as story.

Let's just say I find him interesting.

I was hoping this was about Gilbert O'Sullivan. Gottfried is cool too!

You'd probably like it more than not. What I think works best is the frenetic style. From a brief surreal moment where the main character is oblivious to what's happening around her and then sees a man run down the subway steps on fire, she exits onto streets that are familiar but insane. It's unclear what direction the threat is coming from, who the good guys are, or why anything is happening. People are killed utterly senselessly and the pillars of her small home-neighborhood world are falling apart around her. I have little clue, but it's what I sensed that it was what life must've suddenly become in Aleppo. And it put me in mind of how hatefully oblivious people were who rejected the very idea of refugees, saying they should go back and fight for their country. How do you stand and fight in a situation where one day is trips to the deli, swimming lessons, and a visit to your mom's endocrinologist, and the next day is absolutely insane, with a well financed army raining destruction on you from vantage points you can't even see? It's all done with handheld cameras running alongside the actors, with mostly practical effects, one character suddenly appearing, having an exchange with the principles, and then deleted by a sniper shot like they were never there, as the other characters just go on, because they have to. Every death is pointless, which makes it's point. Look for poetry elsewhere. It's like the urban, gritty, existentialist Sidney Lumet street dramas of the seventies, with a broader chaotic war-film scope, more approaching Saving Private Ryan or something. The problem is a search for a message in the script, beyond the tone of the direction. I have my doubts that this urban Red Dawn occupational army could get a toehold in Brooklyn, when New York is wired to the hilt to detect against hostile threats. You may set off a bomb, but digging in with an army is another thing. It's never quite clear how they arrived, either. Plus the film is loaded with an uneasy ambiguity about private ownership of assault weapons. Watch out, those guys loading up on weapons may be planning an insurgency, but hey, you'd better load up on weapons for the counter-insurgency. I'd be more inclined to hole up for a few days. And in this search for meaning, the most stagey moments become the most eyerolling absurd. When a disturbed priest (in the basement of a church that sounds more Pentecostal than Catholic) goes into a batshit crazy monologue, you know the script isn't going to save the day. It briefly tries to make a point about strength through diversity, but abandons that thought mostly as too cute. But the story told with the cameras and tone and utter chaos can keep you glued nonetheless.

When a dippy grad student returns to her Brooklyn home, she finds herself exiting the subway just as a massive invasion of mysterious origin is under way. A hostile foreign power? Domestic crackdown? Domestic terrorists? No clue! Communications are down! She makes her way through the streets trying to get home as soldiers advance and civilians alternate between fighting back, looting, and shitting their pants. But there are no answers, just bullets flying and the borough burning. She is fortunate enough to stumble upon a massively-built Marine veteran and together they try to navigate the streets and try to stay alive and put the pieces together. Now stuh-reaming on Netflix.

Very episodic. Of course, that's sort of how Scandinavian folklore reads. Hørl walked for a bit and was set upon by evil troldes. He fought them off and then slept. The next day he walked on and encountered the Fossegrimen, whose music enthralled him. But he outsmarted the Fossegrimen and then he slept.