Original Movies (not sequel, not reboot, not spin-off)
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Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan (2023) directed by Farhad Samji
Action, romantic comedy. Story about a buff, heroic big brother who is a father figure to his younger siblings finding love and having to fight many bad guys (with much blood spilled) to protect not only his own family but also his new bride's family. Very typical Bollywood, many good looking people in big dance numbers. Not a lot of social commentary. You might miss some jokes for not understanding Hindi and not reading the subtitles fast enough, but words are really not that important to follow the plot. It's a nice pop corn flick, good entertainment.
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Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023) directed by Kelly Fremon Craig
Coming-of-age drama, adapted from a novel from 1970. Story follows a middle school girl dealing with faith and puberty. Not having read the book, I don't know how closely the movie adheres to the book. The movie itself is fine, very competently done. It feels dated to me (cannot blame it, it's adapted from a 1970 novel after all), not detecting much of more contemporary sensibilities. I suppose this is one those films where you will like it more if you like the original book more, and you'd be more indifferent it you are not already familiar with the original book.
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Polite Society (2023) directed by Nida Manzoor
Action comedy drama. I like this one. It follows the story of a Indian teenage girl in the UK, one with an overactive imagination and wishing to be a stuntwoman, somehow getting the idea that her big sister is being forced to give up art school to go into an arranged marriage. Thus starts a series of kung-fu action shenanigans as she tries to rescue her big sister from that fate. This is not the first film about Indian immigrant angst or about Indian teenager coming of age, but this is the first that incorporates lots of kung-fu action, in that it is fresh and new. The action sequences are quite respectable too, and inspires new, interesting aesthetics when performed in elaborate, colorful Indian saris. Highly recommended.
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Somewhere in Queens (2023) directed by Ray Romano
Nice little family drama. Warm, thoughtful, many established actors giving solid, respectable performances in the film. Story about a family with a son very talented in playing basketball but also extremely introverted. The son falls in love than breaks up with a girl. The father, fearing that the son will lose a college basketball scholarship, started meddling. Everyone ended up learning some new life lessons and gaining some new perspective on life by the end. Nice, warm and fuzzy, commendable performances, but ultimately not all that special.
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Fool's Paradise (2023) directed by Charlie Day
Satire, comedy. I like this one. Tells the story of a mentally challenged man bumbling through show business and briefly brushed by politics. A lot like "Once Upon A Time in Hollywood ...", the plot goes all over the place yet don't really go anywhere. It impresses the sense that the whole world is mad and only the mentally challenged protagonist is the sane one living through the mad, mad world. Use of brain optional -- you can think about it if you want to, but you don't really have to to enjoy the movie. This movie is something different, yet still entertaining. Highly recommended.
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Master Gardener (2022) directed by Paul Schrader
Drama. Story about a reformed white supremacist who found redemption through gardening. The gardener works for a graceful rich woman who later turns out to have a dark side. The rich woman's poor, mix-raced niece got thrown into the mix early in the movie, who then drives a lot of the plot. It's a complex story that does not always make sense. In the beginning I almost gave up on the movie for what I perceive to be bad acting and bad directing. But then it got better (or I got more used to the directing style or the aesthetic of the movie). This movie is certainly different, maybe even thoughtful (or it tries to be, I think).
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About My Father (2023) directed by Laura Terruso
Comedy, drama. Story about working class Italian American and his immigrant Italian father spending a a weekend with his wealthy fiancée's family. Trite tropes about supposed cultural clash that do not really go anywhere and not that funny anyway. Not that the actors don't try hard enough, but there just isn't much in the material for them to work with.
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You Hurt My Feelings (2023) directed by Nicole Holofcener
Drama? Something about a couple (who have been married to each other for a long time) overhearing each other saying unflattering things about each other's work to other people, hence feeling are hurt, that then takes various twists and turns to resolve. Not a lot of there there.
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The Machine (2023) directed by Peter Atencio
Comedy. I like this one, surprisingly a lot more than I thought I would. Story follows a stand-up comedian telling jokes about his experience with Russian organized crime when he took a trip to Russia as a college student. The comedian's story attracted the attention of a Russian mob boss that then led to the comedian being kidnapped to Russia. The comedian's father also shows up attempting to save the comedian. Within the Russian mob family, the mob boss' children are also busy trying to hurt one another as they vie to inherit the mob family from the sick, aging mob boss. The comedian and his father got caught in all this. Hilarity ensues.
I expected laughs, this movie delivered. I did not expect much heart or emotional tug, but the movie delivered those too, in spades. That elevated the movie from comedy into something quite a bit more.
The mob boss' daughter started out really cold, giving out that stereotypical assassin ice queen boss lady sort of vibe. She gets slightly warmer as the movie progress. But at the end she cracks two killer jokes that floored me. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, completely out of character for her, yet somehow fits so brilliantly in the movie overall, her last joke is like a bow that wraps up the movie nicely.
Highly recommended. Heck, watch it as a Father's Day movie with your adult children.
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Sanctuary (2022) directed by Zachary Wigon
Psycho drama? More like a two person play than a movie. It involves two people playing psychological domination games, a business man paying a professional to do so. It's about people playing psychological games, so lots of contrition in the plot. Nice ending, but most the rest of the movie felt like a waste of time.
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@89th and @Aqua-Letifer how do you feel about Ax stealing your movie review format? I feel you should get a cut of the revenue from this thread.
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@Horace said in Original Movies (not sequel, not reboot, not spin-off):
@89th and @Aqua-Letifer how do you feel about Ax stealing your movie review format? I feel you should get a cut of the revenue from this thread.
I don't feel threatened. Reading Ax's movie reviews is like reading a peer-reviewed study on Reggae.
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@Horace said in Original Movies (not sequel, not reboot, not spin-off):
@89th and @Aqua-Letifer how do you feel about Ax stealing your movie review format? I feel you should get a cut of the revenue from this thread.
I'd comment but litigation is pending.
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I guess you could call this a remake, but it's a very original take on the classic story of Frankenstein.
Link to videoSet in present day Los Angeles and told entirely from the perspective of the Monster. After he is artificially created, then left for dead by a husband-and-wife team of eccentric scientists, Adam is confronted with nothing but aggression and violence from the world around him. This perfect creation-turned disfigured monster must come to grips with the horrific nature of humanity.
Very interesting take on the story. In the beginning, nothing is said about how the "monster" is created - it just happens in the lab of Victor (Danny Huston) and Elizabeth (Carrie-Anne Moss) Frankenstein.
Lots of allusions to the classic story (the mob that tries to kill the monster, the little girl, the poor isolated man) set in a contemporary story.
Exceptionally violent and gory.
I'm not sure it brings anything new to the tale, but it's an interesting take, and, in its own way, kind of faithful to Shelly's book.
2 ½ stars. Worth a watch, perhaps, if you're into this kind of thing.
https://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/124226/frankenstein-2015/
Melodramatic at turns, Bernard Rose’s Frankenstein is nonetheless a remarkably affecting piece of filmmaking sporting some wince-inducing gore and extreme violence. Scenes are held together via passages narrated by the monster himself, speaking eloquently and deeply about his and the human condition – but it doesn’t quite fit with the character that we’re watching and his narrative trajectory, especially given the film’s ending.
We already know that Adam’s trial can’t end well, but the key to Rose’s tale is that we, as the audience, can’t help but hold out hope that it will – that perhaps after all this time humanity would have learned to treat the unfortunate with compassion rather than distrust and disgust.
Highly intelligent and deeply wounding, Frankenstein stands as a stark reminder that in these so-called enlightened times, we still haven’t made it that far.
I loved Shelly's book when I read it. Perhaps it deserves another read.
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Reading Ax's movie reviews is like reading a peer-reviewed study on Reggae.
Too funny.
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The Devil's Own
Link to videoShort summary - Brad Pitt plays an IRA terrorist (!) who comes to the US to buy missiles for use against the government. Through a connection, he's given a place to stay - the home of a NYC cop (Harrison Ford) who knows nothing about Pitt's mission.
Contrived and silly. Fun to watch Pitt's Irish accent, and Ford is, well, Ford. Rumor is that Pitt was going to drop out because it was so bad.
Yeah, 1 ½ stars.
Collateral
Link to videoTom Cruise plays the bad guy, a hitman who has to carry out several hits before the night is out. He hijacks a cab to transport him around as he goes from job to job.
Contrived, and not as silly as The Devil's Own, but, c'mon, man! Cruise is OK as the bad guy, and that's unexpected. He does a very credible job. But the coincidence of who the cabbie's first fare of the night is and later events is stooopid.
Two, maybe 2 ½ stars.
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"The Green Book"
A feel-good (mostly true) story about a bouncer ("Tony Lip) from the Copacabana, looking for work while the club is being remodeled, gets a job chauffeuring noted jazz pianist, Don Shirley. Shirley's on tour from New York to the deep south in 1962.
Viggo Mortensen is unrecognizable as Tony Lip (he put on 45 lb), and Mahershala Ali does a great job of faking playing piano.
Small, but very satisfying movie that explores racial animus, friendship and music. Worth the rental.
Link to videoIt’s pure formula, of course. Two men—one white, one black—from polar opposite backgrounds with wildly contrasting personalities get thrown together under unusual circumstances. They learn from each other, change each other for the better and discover that—guess what?—they’re not so different after all.
“Green Book” is all that and more: It also takes place while the two men are driving across the American South during 1962, so it contains multiple formulas at once. It’s the mismatched-buddy road trip movie with a message about race relations, arriving in theaters at the height of awards season and the holidays, just in time to make us all feel better about the world—or at least give us a brief glimmer of hope during this period of political and ideological division. As an added bonus, it also happens to have been inspired by a true story.
But damned if it doesn’t work beautifully for nearly the entirety of its two hour-plus running time. “Green Book” is the kind of old-fashioned filmmaking big studios just don’t offer anymore. It’s glossy and zippy, gliding along the surface of deeply emotional, complex issues while dipping down into them just enough to give us a taste of some actual substance.
The trailer makes it look sillier than it is.
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Elemental (2023) directed by Peter Sohn
Disney animation. Good music, nice enough plot, good production in general. Visual style looks a bit like "Inside Out" to me. Have the usual Disney morals about be/accepting yourself and importance of family and such. Don't the take physics seriously. Entertaining and a good family movies to watch with young kids.
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The Blackening (2023) directed by Tim Story
A black slasher comedy; black as in the cast of main characters is almost all black. Among the jokes is when most of the main characters are black, who dies first? And at the end of the slashing ordeal, the survivors still don't want to call the police -- a play on #BLM, why risk being shot by cops after surviving a psychotic murderer? The survivors called the Fire Department instead, and they suffered some indignities from the FD anyway. Don't take the film too seriously, just laugh along and it's an entertaining enough movie.
