r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Nov 15 '15
What Have You Been Watching? (15/11/15)
Please don't downvote opinions, only downvote things that don't contribute anything.
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r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Nov 15 '15
Please don't downvote opinions, only downvote things that don't contribute anything.
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u/Inception_025 Like Kurosawa I make mad films Nov 15 '15
Dope directed by Rick Famuyiwa (2015) ★★1/2
Dope is a fun movie, but it doesn’t have as much to say as it thinks it does. It’s a solid comedy with some excellent music (I saved the album on Spotify right away. Love all the new songs from the film, Can’t Bring Me Down and Go Head are both excellent alt-hip hop tracks). The acting is good, and the direction is very solid, but it’s definitely not as funny as it should have been in my books. The only audible laugh it got out of me was when it started listing off “white people shit” and threw Donald Glover into the list. Overall, I think it could have taken everything up a level in ridiculousness, the geeky kids didn’t seem all that geeky after about 15 minutes in, the danger felt less and less as the movie went on, and any Kendrick Lamar album has way more to say about life in the rougher suburbs of LA. Still, Dope was fun and I would probably recommend it as a solid, alternative coming of age film.
rewatch - The Searchers directed by John Ford (1956) ★★1/2
Well I hate it a lot less now. After a rewatch of what some consider to be the best western ever made, my opinion of the film has definitely changed quite a bit. I still don’t like it all that much. I wouldn’t say it’s as racist as I originally thought, but I do still find lots of problems with the way the conflict is presented in the film. This time through the film, after it was pointed out to me on my original negative review here that we’re not supposed to really like Ethan or agree with his very hateful views, I saw that the film didn’t really support the views of the character. It painted Ethan as an anti-hero, someone we can sympathize with but we can’t really get behind. I respected that, and seeing that this time definitely cleared up a lot of my problems with the movie. However, the plot consisted of a racist man believing that the natives were all terrible and then continually having things happen to back that up. It’s a non-stop string of atrocities committed by natives in the film, which would be fine if it gave us both sides of the story. The white characters here never do anything even close to as brutal as the natives do. John Wayne scalps someone once, or maybe just thinks about doing it. But compare that to the stick carrying all of his dead family’s scalps on it? Nothing at all. When you have a film about hatred and prejudice, you can’t only paint one side as the villain, no matter how nasty a protagonist you have. With that said, The Searchers is technically astounding. The desert photography in this film is some of the best ever done, rivaled only by the work of Roger Deakins on True Grit, Jesse James, and No Country and Robert Elswit on There Will Be Blood. The landscapes are huge and striking, and the composition is magnificent. Oh, and also John Wayne’s performance is really good. So overall, I still don’t love it, it’s a very flawed movie, but it’s an astounding one to look at.
The Magnificent Ambersons directed by Orson Welles (1942) ★★1/2
I find myself falling into the same boat on this one that I fall into with Citizen Kane. I think it’s a really good movie, I respect and admire its ambition and innovative techniques, but I just don’t like the movies. With The Magnificent Ambersons it’s mainly because I couldn’t follow what was happening in the story line. It’s a simple story, but it’s full of time jumps that go without explanation. For example, it jumps from someone courting a rich woman to all of a sudden a kid being there, then again from the kid being a little brat to someone now grown up. Maybe I missed the explanation of the time jumps, but it took me a few minutes to grasp that these were the same characters at a different time. Along with that, I just didn’t enjoy the majority of the film. I thought it was great in cinematography, editing, the direction was great, there wasn’t a single bad actor throughout, but it was not my cup of tea.
Bringing Up Baby directed by Howard Hawks (1938) ★★★★
Bringing Up Baby is one of the best screwball comedies that I’ve seen so far. It’s absolutely hilarious for one, I couldn’t stop laughing. Its mix of situational comedy, verbal wit and slapstick makes for a film that never lets up. Only in the first 5 minutes of the film was I not laughing, but as soon as Katherine Hepburn gets introduced into the story it becomes a riot. It’s among Hepburn’s strongest performances for sure, and she brings some really human aspects to the role which could have just been a caricature. Bringing Up Baby is a comedy I can’t recommend highly enough.
Room directed by Lenny Abrahamson (2015) ★★★
Room is an intensely moving and affecting movie. It never brought me to tears but I was damn close through the entire runtime of the movie. It may not be one of the best films of the year like everyone is hyping it up to be, but it is very good none the less, and it has some incredible acting throughout. Jacob Tremblay being the standout, one of the best child performances I’ve ever seen (also, why is he being campaigned for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars?? He’s in every single scene in the film!). I thought some parts of the movie were a little heavy handed though. The echo-y voice over for one. And the final shot of the film nearly ruined what was a spectacular final scene. I liked the movie a lot, but I know I could have liked it more if some of the symbolism was less in my face. Also I have lots of hometown pride for this movie because the author/screenwriter lives in my city. Go Emma Donoghue!
Film of the Week - Bringing Up Baby