Luc Besson | Lucy

 

Lucy is very interesting. It's punctuated with quack science like Darwin's Origin of the species (partially usable but just one chapter) and gravity (bring me a graviton). Other than that it seems to drop a lot of occult knowledge such as infinity being the only reference/narrative framework and the declaration "we never die", during the Paris chase scene.

Nice to see Old Boy's Choi Min-Sik in it and Syriana's Amr Waked.

It's got lots of holes in it to cover American Studio Execs who don't have much experience of the world but Scarlett Johansson is terrific. Such a shame she supports the Anti Semitic occupation of Palestine.

I have a Luc Besson story in Japan to share if anyone asks me one to one. 

Mommy

 

This movie eluded me for so long. I downloaded the wrong languages, my media player wouldn't sync with the dialogue, the subtitles I downloaded didn't work with the version of the movie but I finally cracked it a few nights ago.

I opened the latest the file I had downloaded and pressed play and it was in Spanish. Oh well it's not meant to be I thought again, but then I noticed the subtitles option had three options including French and English.

Mommy is a great movie with powerful character portrayals. It also taps into a subject that is increasingly an issue in the Western world where the state can kidnap your children. As vaccines become mandatory, and other privacy and human sovereignty intrusions take place, you can expect more people dealing with legitimate support issues on their own rather than go anywhere near the educational indoctrination and purposeful medical intoxication of the state with prescribed drugs for conditions that are sky rocketing without anyone asking why.

Sing Street

Sing Street is a recommended movie. Despite the plot cliches (growing up, escape from boredom, bullying, teenage romance etc) it still delivers on being a delightful movie that should appeal to all Gen X who grew in 80's Britain.

Flat Earthers will note there's a scene in the 52nd minute where our hero peers East across the water from Ireland and declares that from 30 miles away, on a clear day, just after the rain, when there's no dust in air "you actually see the mainland of Britain".

According to this calculator the mainland is 486 feet below the horizon because of the curvature of the earth.

 

A Pidgeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence

One part Camus' L'Etranger mixed with Lars Von Trier's Dogville, the other part Milan Kundera's "Die unerträgliche Leichtigkeit des Seins" mixed with Erasurehead, A Pidgeon Sat on a Branch reflecting on Existence is exactly the kind of Swedish movie I like to watch.

If you like it sparse, dry and believably comic with lots of philosophy and reasons to see it again after finishing it the first time, this might be for you. It's a foreign movie that is possibly a good reason why moderately massive mainstream Islam needs to rise up against it's fundamentalist forces instead of sitting on its arse and letting the string pullers destroy what's left of art worth keeping in Europe.... and Persia.

There are no smartphones in this movie. They don't exist.

Robert De Niro speak candidly about "VAXXED" censored at his own film festivalz

Every celebrity is allowed to take a counter view of the agenda. Just one counter view. The rest they tow the line.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Such a delight when a movie is so charmingly produced as The Grand Budapest Hotel. The casting is spot-on and attention to detail in each scene above even some of the finest produced movies. Anyone else think Ralph Fiennes is the spit of Michael Fassbender?

Birdman

If you like Twitter. You'll love Birdman.

It's the kind of movie I was raving about to anyone who would listen after watching. 

It's a work of art but don't forget, a celebrity is not necessarily an actor and vice versa.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

My memory is playing tricks on me. I suspect I haven't seen this film since it came out 10 years ago, and yet I immediately recalled watching a movie where a girl with blue hair is engaging with a guy on a bus or a train like in the above scene in the first few seconds of the movie. 

Maybe it was Blue Valentine?

How strange and self referential. How annoying I can't remember.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a very good movie premise if you can't remember what it's all about. 

The deprogramming scenes go on a little too long (for me) but they're very much like LSD trips or at least like my LSD trips, where beginning, middle and end are hard to sequence.

Fargo - 1996

Fargo is another first class movie by the Coen Brothers from way back in 1996, when cops didn't shoot people for fun, beat up women or do steroids before jerking off in the mirror wearing paramilitary gear and watching snuff movies.

This movie is worth watching for the art direction and soundtrack alone. The homely American types portrayed in this video can still be found in the USA's less populated regions, but by and large they tend to get their information from the corporate media so they're charming but increasingly brainwashed about Muzlims, NATO, Israel and all the usual suspects the military industrial complex needs to demonize and smear.

Unusually Steve Buschemi isn't the best character in the movie though at the time he was one of the most well known.

Being John Malkovich

Being John Mlalkovich is well worth watching again. Catherine Keener is just superb and the cast is all quality. 

Great scriptwriting, creative storytelling, quality acting....What more do you want? They don't make movies like this too much and for me it worked well off the big screen though I'll never forget walking out of the cinema after watching this 14 or so years ago.

Michael Cimino | Heaven's Gate

A few weeks ago I noticed Oliver Stone used a short but unforgettable scene from Heaven's Gate in his Untold History of the United States Documentary series. 

All my life Heaven's Gate has been a byword for movie flops even though Michael Cimino's The Deerhunter is one of my favourite movies.

I got to thinking that Heaven's Gate must have some redeeming qualities. The universal panning of the movie suggested to me that George Patton quote, 'when everyone is thinking the same thing, somebody isn't thinking'.

I accidentally chose to download an 8 Gigabyte Blu-Ray version so it took weeks to complete.

It was certainly worth the wait though. 

The original movie was cut down and shown in sepia to salvage losses, but this newly restored Criterion version is the full 3 hour 40 minute move in all it's glorious colour. 

I can assure you that many of the outside scenes are some of the most extraordinary and breathtaking scenes of America I've ever seen.

There's a lovely review of the 2013 directors cut over here so you can pick up on the synchronicity of the 1% crushing the 99% or even the immigration outrage currently in vogue with those who consume mass media.

The writing isn't always perfect in this film, there are a few things that don't make sense, but all in all this is the best Western movie I've ever seen. 

The attention to detail and film photography is simply not possible in the spreadsheet risk analysis of movie making today. 

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Gomorrah

Gomorrah is the best film I've watched in ages. 

I've got Gigabytes of movies that are supposed to be good, but when I get round to watching them, most don't make the cut and end up on my shit movies blog.

 I don't write these posts to review films, as others can do that much better but I do type up something to recommend them to like minded people and hopefully add some context, because most of the time I'm criticizing brainless Hollywood movies on Twitter.

However if you'd like a sound bite I'd describe Gomorrah as an Italian "The Wire". I'm so grateful quality art and story telling is still around in the film category. 

So little else really grabs me these days in the written form.

Brideshead Revisited

The entire series of Brideshead Revisited  is up on Youtube for the time being. I've just watched the series again for the second time in 3 years and it's completely fresh. I'm looking forward to watching it again in a couple of years when I've forgotten a few details.

Joyeux Noel - Christmas Truce

During the first world war the French, Scottish and Germans took a break from the massacre of trench warfare to meet in no lands on Christmas Eve. On Christmas day they had a football match before resuming the carnage of war, but not before sheltering in each other's trenches from the artillery fire.

The Generals and the Bishops were most upset over the Christmas Truce and charged many of them with fraternising with the enemy or sent them to another front of the war.

Joyeux Noel is a must see true story movie about how synthetic war is. 

Poor, largely uneducated people fighting on behalf of rich white men with the flag as their incentive.

Blue Jasmine

Blue Jasmine is a film about a very beautiful but not too bright woman who is married to a fantastically wealthy womaniser, who cheats on her while defrauding his clients. It's made by Woody Allen who has recently been accused of sexual abuse by an adopted daughter.

Gwyneth Paltrow's acting is, as ever, off the charts. She's extraordinary.

A Dangerous Method

I wish I'd seen this first on the big screen. 

It's that good.

If you like beautifully manicured 1900's-ish clinical psychology with Swiss manicured lawns and erotic wailing Banshees in an opening scene then this movie is for you.

This is my favourite Jewish movie ever. It's better than Jaws and even better than Kramer vs Kramer, but it's not better than Five Broken Cameras which breaks category rules by being about reality shot in the first person.

If a movie is about making you see the world differently, then A Dangerous Method might work out as well for you as it did for me. By synchronicity I watched a Jungian Youtube interview only 10 days ago or so. In this respect it was sweet to see a younger dramatisation of the older gent who wrote about UFOs as a relatively nascent archetype, understood religion and generally fought hard not to always have conditional rules.

It's quite possible ambivalent people will be ambivalent about this movie but I always say take ambivalent people in moderation.

Rush

I'm always on the lookout for movies that capture the seventies authentically and Rush does this better than any movie I've watched to date. It's about Formula One racing and more specifically the competitiveness between Niki Lauda and James Hunt.

The acting is superb and if you like motor racing the direction by Ron Howard is gripping. 

Rush is the Best move of the year for me so far though it was made in 2013.

Dallas Buyers Club

I recommend Dallas Buyers Club. 

Just when I thought Hollywood can only spit out dross movies, along comes a gem with excellent casting, great writing and solid plot development. 

One theme that is made clear in the movie is how big pharma and Government health regulations are unable to escape bureaucracy even when lives are at stake. Their raison d'etre is increasingly invalidated. 

The system doesn't work and when it does it's too expensive.

All based on a true story too. 

Maybe that's the reason.

Thieves Like Us - Robert Altman

I only watched this as New Order had an eponymous track back in the 80's. 

Thieves Like Us takes a while to warm up as some of the red neck banter is more than a little infantile but if you make it past the half hour mark you should be good.

I'm slightly fascinated by Shelley Duvall as she seems so gawky, but as I get older I kind of like that look when she was younger.

Some of the scenes between her and Keith Carradine are very sweet, romantic and touching in ways that are rarely captured on film now.

All Is Lost

As soon as I read the marketing people hadn't backed All is Lost, despite winning rave reviews (HollyWeird™ prefers to pimp low brow propaganda these days) I downloaded it immediately.

Like anyone else I wondered how Robert Redford was going to carry a whole movie with just himself and a sinking boat but he does it, and does it well. 

What a movie to cap a fine acting career. He may still do another cracker but this stands out like a finale gem.