Movies Watched -- Louder than Bombs (2016)

103 minutes plus 6 minutes of credits, but felt interminable. Impossible to watch without ffwd. About a woman who’s a photojournalist; [spoiler] she commits suicide by head-on collision, leaving behind husband and two young sons.

Completely disjointed, with lots of flashbacks and dreams, etc. The main story is set three years after the crash. The marriage was troubled. The kids are troubled. Dad is a sort of typically weak Baby Boomer type. The high point happened when Rachel Brosnahan (who played Rachel Posner in House of Cards), a former girlfriend of the older boy, flashes her tits, which I believe she also did in HoC.

Heavy on heartstring piano music … these are issues of educated, upper-middle class white people awkwardly dealing with a tragedy, who really gives a shit? You just want to take all the characters in the movie and shake some sense into them.

Red rating, avoid.

No one cares about Truth, n'est-ce pas?

Movies Watched -- Oslo, August 31st (2012)

In Norwegian. 95 minutes but felt much longer because it’s a talk talk talk movie.

Still on a Joachim Trier kick after enjoying Thelma and not thinking much of Reprise. This movie starred the same kid as in Reprise … this time he’s playing a recovering drug addict from a good Oslo family … there’s a class element to these movies that interests me, but that’s about it. Everyone in Oslo is gorgeous, well, the women are anyway.

It’s another case where the story in the end … it’s just … who cares? Art House stuff. Kid had it all and pissed it away, boo hoo. Loss, guilt, regret, yeah yeah yeah. Not sure why the women all fell in love with him.

There was one scene that I liked where he’s listening in on various inane conversations at the surrounding tables at a cafe, and all his thoughts that life is pointless are confirmed. (One reason I loved living in China was that, even though my Chinese is excellent, I was able to tune out all surrounding conversations.)

Yellow rating if you’re interested in the dangers of drugs or beautiful Scandinavian women.

Look at this tooth, I’m not completely perfect

Movies Watched -- Reprise (2006)

In Norwegian, 107 minute running time but felt much longer.

After enjoying Thelma, I thought I’d watch all the movies Joachim Trier made, and I think this was his first. It’s about a group of young men in Oslo, two of whom have literary ambitions (pretensions), and one of the two has a mental health crisis … it’s about friendship and growing up and growing apart, I guess. I wasn’t super thrilled with it.

They’re rich kids sort of, no visible means of support but comfortable and jet off to Paris for the weekend. They mention the east side versus the west side of Oslo (poor vs. rich kids), but don’t go into any detail. The girlfriend (Kari) is from the east side.

What the hell kind of novel could a 20-year-old kid write? Angst? What angst? It wasn’t badly made, but I didn’t find the story all that interesting. The boring portrait of privileged artists as young men in Norway .. yellow rating.

Blogger Jason Kottke with Scandinavian babe

Movies Watched -- After the Storm (2017)

In Japanese. 117 minute running time so at least 20 to 30 minutes too long. Depressing. Japan a place where the population is shrinking, so it touches on the issue of aging parents, which is sort of interesting… anyway, there’s a deadbeat guy, looks like a Japanese George Clooney, former novelist now working at a sleazy detective agency … he has a gambling problem just like his father did … has a pretty ex-wife and young son whom he neglects, though he doesn’t want to, but he’s just a bum, he can’t help himself.

There’s a touching scene where mother and daughter-in-law commiserate over the rotten guys they ended up marrying, but like I said, it’s just sad, not enlightening. One review I read called it a “sad-bastard movie,” which made me laugh. Avoid, red rating.

The look of a failed marriage

Time to Give a Little to the Kids in the Middle

I dig it….

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Movies Watched -- Thelma (2017)

In Norwegian. 116 minute running time but lots of credits … probably still ten minutes too long, which I could have skillfully cut to get it to the sacred 100 minute mark if I were the editor … nevertheless, I liked this one.

Witchcraft, demonic possession, lesbian love, religious fundamentalism, psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, repressed memories, beautiful Scandinavian actresses, it has it all … and it’s a well-crafted thriller … recommended! A rare green rating from the Chairman.

(David Edelstein wrote that it’s like “Carrie remade by Ingmar Bergman,” which made me laugh.)

So far from the 2017 movies I’ve watched, I can recommend this one, Land of Mine, Graduation, and Wind River.

Lord, save me from these thoughts

Movies Watched -- The Shape of Water (2017)

119 minute running time which means that it’s 20 to 30 minutes too long. Weird one and sort of wonderful. Lead actress was brilliant, never seen her before. Agent Van Alden plays an eviler Agent Van Alden, Larry Gopnik plays a Russian-speaking Larry Gopnik, and Nathaniel Fisher plays a gay Nathaniel Fisher.

Stylized sixties look, reverse monster story (the humans are the monsters), it was darn strange, original even, and I would give it a green rating except that it’s overly long and I didn’t like seeing those familiar actors named above playing their familiar roles, or the violence at the end. Solid yellow rating, definitely consider seeing if you’re into wacky.

Rex hated it. “Not as stupid and pointless as that other critically overrated piece of junk Get Out, but determined to go down trying.“ God bless Rex!

Do Not Tap On The Glass

Movies Watched -- Lucky (2017)

86 minute running time but felt much longer since it’s a talk talk talk movie. I could only watch it at 2x ffwd; it’s about as slow as the hit-you-over-the-head metaphorical tortoise who lumbers across the screen at beginning and end. Harry Dean Stanton is 90 years old here and looks every day of it, an old smoker look (he died shortly before the movie was released). Harry is a now-harmless curmudgeon, crab walking around some dead town in the southwest.

David Lynch also looks about 90 years old and still talks in that weird way he always has. I’m sure that both the writer (an X-er named Drago) and director (Norm Gunderson) thought this was “precious,” a sort of respectful send-off for or tribute to old Harry Dean, but I wasn’t thrilled with it. May appeal to Boomers who are approaching death, but it’s an avoid for everyone else. Red rating.

(Dick Brody also didn’t like it.)

Mourning President Roosevelt

Movies Watched -- Land Of Mine (2017)

In German and Danish. 101 minute running time, so a good length, though I could have trimmed a few minutes off to get it within the sacred 100 minute mark if I were the editor. The story of German POWs (teenage boys in this case) who were forced to clear mines from the west coast of Denmark following the war. A Danish sergeant is their commander (more like a scoutmaster), and he’s alternately cruel and kind … in the end he proves to be merciful and just.

The Danish title is Under Sandet (Under the Sand) which is not as clever as the English title.

I liked this movie. It’s not perfect (predictable at times), and it’s not entertainment or a pleasure to watch, but it’s well constructed and well acted, and it gets a green rating, a rare recommendation from the Chairman.

So far among the 2017 movies I’ve seen, I’ve liked Wind River, Graduation, and this one.

Bist du ein Mann?

Movies Watched -- BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017)

In French. 146 minute running time so at least 46 minutes too long. A terminal illness movie (AIDS, then), not easy to sit through. Combined with multiple homosexual sex scenes, damn near impossible to sit through (bearable at 2-3x ffwd). But the re-creation of the meetings of the Paris branch of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in the early 1990s was sort of interesting, though sanitized/dramatized no doubt. Their organizational abilities were impressive, and their activism paid off in the end, though too late for most of the characters in the movie.

Yellow rating if you’re interested in gay culture and AIDS … red rating (avoid) for everyone else.

Not afraid of a little thrush