71 minute running time, so the perfect length for a 1930s movie. Really interesting one … I enjoyed it and can recommend it. Victorian anti-vivisectionists … Darwin, and good old attempted rape.
Still.
Movies Watched -- In A Lonely Place (1950)
93 minute running time so the perfect length. Yet another weird Nicholas Ray movie, sort of a send-up of Hollywood movie culture, I guess … Gloria Grahame (below) was married to Ray at the time. Like most of Ray’s other movies, this one is hard to characterize … it’s not film noir, and not a conventional drama. Strange guy making strange pictures. Yellow rating.
I like his face.
Movies Watched -- Children of Men (2006)
109 minute running time so about 10 minutes too long … vision of a post-pandemic world … stars Clive Owen and his cleft chin … no new births for 18 years, life on earth slowly dying out. Clive and his chin have to get pregnant girl to safety on some ship at sea … it wasn’t terrible, very violent though leavened by humor … it might even get a vaunted green rating once I review all the movies from 2006. Tentatively a yellow rating.
I’m scared.
Movies Watched -- The Deep End (2001)
99 minute running time so the perfect length, but this was a dumb movie…. Trying to get her gay son out of trouble, but just digging the hole deeper … it turns out the Eastern European gangster has a heart of gold… Tilda Swinton always comes across as a weirdo, her facial expressions are always a little off (which made her so good in Michael Clayton) … sex-tape blackmail, how quaint. This movie is nearly 20 years old! Name-checks Wesleyan and even gets the town right on the kid’s mailer … but he can’t play trumpet. The movie is no good, you can give it a miss.
I want you to stay away from my son.
Movies Watched -- Joe (2014)
117 minute running time so they could have trimmed 17 minutes off, but I liked this one … really good. A lot of people think Nic Coppola is a terrible actor, but it isn’t true, in the right role he can be near perfect. Rural Texas white trash tale, but well done … I don’t know why I didn’t hear about this one before now. Green rating, recommended.
Made by the same guy who did “George Washington,” which I wasn’t thrilled with. The misery and poverty and hopelessness works in “Joe” because it’s ultimately a story about redemption (and a boy’s courage), which wasn’t the case with “George Washington.”
Resigned to his fate…. “Your family's all you got.“
Movies Watched -- Young Adult (2011)
93 minute running time so the perfect length. Charlize Theron not only has great bones, but she’s also really funny — definitely looked great at age 37. This was an unconventional and rarely honest movie … I really enjoyed it. Script written by a woman (no man could have this level of insight). What happens to that pretty, mean girl from high school? Right, she eventually goes nuts (divorced, childless, no career). Gets a rare green rating, recommended!
Rex mostly liked it too … “spinster cycle,” ha!
“You don’t know shit about being an adult.”
Movies Watched -- The Handmaiden (2016)
145 minute running time so at least 45 minutes too long … in Korean and Japanese … dumb story, sort of soft-core lesbian porn from Korea … also has the usual twisted East Asian sicko vibe going on throughout … one scene was pretty hot, but it’s just highfalutin porn among the double and triple crosses … “classy trash” as one critic put it. Way way too long and just … crap. Not recommended.
Moistening the jade gates
Movies Watched -- All The Money In The World (2017)
132 minute running time so at least 30 to 40 minutes too long. Story “inspired” (i.e., they fictionalized the ending) by 1973 kidnapping of JP Getty III, “Paolo,” in Rome … short underwear model Marky Mark inexplicably in another major movie role, this time as former CIA man now Getty fixer, 88-year-old Chris Plummer as JPGetty (plays a good villain), Michelle Williams as Paolo’s mom — haven’t seen her since Shame (which I loved). Italian kidnappers and cops both come across as nincompoops. Not terrible, but also not very good, and just way too long. Yellow rating.
I have no money to spare.
The Call of the Countertrend
William Eckhardt in The New Market Wizards … I have to re-read his chapter from time to time when things start to go awry in my own trading:
“Are there any other natural human tendencies that you think tend to sabotage success in trading?”
“There is what I refer to as ‘the call of the countertrend.’ There's a constellation of cognitive and emotional factors that makes people automatically countertrend in their approach. People want to buy cheap and sell dear; this by itself makes them countertrend. But the notion of cheapness or deamess must be anchored to something. People tend to view the prices they're used to as normal and prices removed from these levels as aberrant. This perspective leads people to trade counter to an emerging trend on the assumption that prices will eventually return to ‘normal.’ Therein lies the path to disaster.”
Movies Watched -- La La Land (2016)
128 minute running time so at least 30 to 40 minutes too long. Mainly watched on ffwd. Stars bug-eyed Emma Stone and Ryan “Mouseketeer” Gosling. A modern-day musical. They’re both attractive people and it looked charming in parts, but it was way way way too long, and for that reason it’s an avoid. Is Damien Chazelle gay? Probably a popular movie with homosexuals despite the hetero romance.
Amy Nicholson wrote a good review: “… the movie is an overpriced mason jar that poaches its artificial authenticity from the past.” … “When they kiss, it’s like an apple colliding with a banana.“
Always a green screen