All is True. Great film, a little too long. So intense it could be Long Day's Journey into Shakespeare. Judi Densch and Branaugh are fantastic.
As I said, a very nice pleasant movie. It was made on a 9M budget and two weeks in took in under 5M. So all is not good for this movie, pitty. Seeing that this afternoon. I thought this was a really excellent movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Currently just under 48M after two weeks. Planning on seeing it tomorrow. Saw Booksmart yesterday. Can't seem to find any figures with regard to the production cost, but it appears that it is doing very disappointing at the box office with only 8.7M. From the Director: “Anyone out there saving ‘Booksmart’ for another day, consider making that day TODAY,” Wilde wrote to her 1.7 million followers. “We are getting creamed by the big dogs out there and need your support. Don’t give studios an excuse not to green-light movies made by and about women.” I think these kind of comments are in very poor taste for many reasons. First to say, go a see a movie because it was directed by a female smacks of sexism. And she even go on to state that we (the theater going audiences) should not give the studio's and excuse to see movies made by and about women. So, it this movie were made with the rolls reversed and was made by men and about men and it failed to hit at the box office, then would a male director make these kind of remarks? To me, Wilde is being totally unprofessional. Her movie has every opportunity as every other movie. People didn't go to see it, oh well. People also didn't go to see The Sun Is Also A Star. That is just they way the movie industry works. Catherine Hardwicke directed Miss Bala, it was produce for 15M and brought in 15M. I went to see it and it was a good action type of movie. I went to see it not because it was directed by a woman, but because I think that Catherine Hardwicke is a good director (who also was the director for Twilight). People also are taking exception to Wilde addressing the competition “We are getting creamed by the big dogs out there and need your support." With those taking exception to her criticism of Aladdin because it features "people of color". In Wild's defense, I don't think this people of color thing had anything to do with her comments at all. She was creamed by the "big dogs", which in this context, meant Disney. If Lion King had opened in Place of Aladdin, would she be insulting animals? All of this kind of thing is stupid and juvenile. A movie should be judged by its own merits and not by who directed or is appearing in it.
Saw it yesterday. I think the cinematographer should get an Oscar nomination. I'd dead serious - it was brilliant work. Almost all of the action was in long, unbroken shots. Gene Kelly said that dance should be shot showing the full height of the human body, and action is the same way. Far too many directors try to cobble an action film from a bunch of close-ups and rapid-cut editing, trying to create excitement in the editing room. But this director and actors took the time to learn all these moves (reportedly more than five months of training) so they could do all of this live on the set. They acknowledged that ammo runs out.
Saw four films yesterday: John Wick 3: Parabellum. It's set in an alternative universe where NYC has thousands of hired killers and virtually no policemen, and crime is more highly organized than governments. Godzilla: King of Monsters. I didn't have high expectations and it failed to meet even those. It made Armageddon seem like a good movie. Rocketman. Taron Elgort did a terrific job as Elton John. None of the songs were in the correct place in the timeline but it was so enjoyable that it didn't matter. As an old sound guy, loved that they found all the period-correct mics, speakers, amps and mixers (will be interested to hear from musicians if they got all of those right as well.) Booksmart. Wanted to see it again and the time worked out.
Can either of us name five female directors working today? You might have a point if half of all films were directed by woman, but that is not the case.
Sorry... I don't care if there are male director's, female director's or monkey director's. Either you make a good movie you don't. Don't do the gender guilt trip thing. I don't go the movies because the director is of a particular ethnic background. I will go to see movies because I like the director and don't apply any other attributes as a condition of supporting that individual as a director. In this case, the movie is not really being judged as if it is a good or not good movie. You and Rotten Tomato's critic's liked it a lot. Of the currently playing movies at my AMC, I preferred Aladdin, Godzilla, Avenger's Endgame, The Sun Is Also A Star, A Dog's Journey, awarding Booksmart and Pokemon: Detective Pikachu in a tie for last place. But these are just my preferences on what constitutes a good movie. Whether or not any of these are a success at the box office or not, has not bearing on whether or not I would endorse any movie. In the case of Booksmart's director, Wilde, she is not even speaking about whether or not Booksmart is a good movie, she is just telling anyone who might listen to her to go see it because it failed to attract the box office revenue that she expected. “Anyone out there saving ‘Booksmart’ for another day, consider making that day TODAY,” Wilde wrote to her 1.7 million followers. “We are getting creamed by the big dogs out there and need your support. Don’t give studios an excuse not to green-light movies made by and about women.” Her comments are totally tacky and unprofessional as a director. I would never even consider going to see any movie that she might direct in the future. I'll through my support to people who effort to make a good movie, which is what I go to the theater for. I don't go the the theater for charitable reasons, I go for entertainment.
Your point might be valid if there were an equal number of male and female directors, but there simply aren't. But we have an equal number of males and females.
Rocketman - which for the most part I loved. It does have some flaws though. I get that it is a musical fantasy riffing on Elton's life with an unreliable narrator (a standard cinematic convention) at its centre and that therefore the songs are illustrating and underlining the narrative or even moving it forward. So it absolutely makes sense for Elton to be singing I Want Love as a child for example but in a couple of places the song choices don't perform that function or make any real sense. Why audition for Dick James with Sad Songs? Why use Crocodile Rock for the Troubadour gig? In the case of the latter it was neither played at the gig nor provides any sort of Greek Chorus for what is taking place in the manner of other songs in the movie. So the moments where the film broke its own rules jarred with me but it is a very minor criticism because the film is otherwise such an enjoyable rollercoaster ride and Taron Egerton is magnificent and utterly believable at Elton.
Rocketman I loved it! I was never a big Elton John fan, but this movie was so well done that I just loved it. It was completely over the top, like the man himself. I loved all the costumes and the song and dance production numbers. I definitely feel I got some insight into Elton, who I never really knew all that much about. I though Taron Egerton was great in this role.
I saw Booksmart today. I thought it was enjoyable enough, but can’t really say I’d recommend it. I thought Amy was the best developed and most interesting character. Although I didn’t find myself laughing all that often, I did think the bit with the Barbie dolls was absolutely hilarious.
I agree, that I also thought that Amy was the most interesting character. I thought the Molly character lacked as much dimension and was stuck in her same routine throughout the entire movie, which got old. I would not recommend it either. As a movie, it did not do that much for me. The Barbie thing was funny, the rest of the movie, not so much. Billie Lourd's character was the most interesting of all of the character's in the movie, totally original and unexpected. The movie is just not believable. I can watch brat pack movies, like The Breakfast Club and find them believable. There are so many coming of age movies that I can find believable. I can't find Booksmart to be believable. Really nothing about it is believable. So I can't buy into the character's. There are two areas that I can't find fault with, one of those being impeccable production values. The other is the timing between the two leads. The both react to each other in perfect synchronization. You would be hard pressed to see any two people onscreen deliver lines the way these two do, with perfect rhythm and timing. You see this from the moment that they first make their onscreen appearances. All ready in it's 2nd week, it does not seem to have found its target audience, what ever that audience may be.
Late Night I love Emma Thompson and was really looking forward to this but I think it fell completely flat. Emma played a completely unsympathetic character, and for a story based around a bunch of comedy writers there was not much to laugh at. A big disappointment.
I kind of got this same impression, sitting through the trailers a few times. I decided that I would pass.
Dark Phoenix. This phoenix didn't re-emerge from the ashes however. It was OK the ending was dumb with all the characters running at her and expecting something different from what occurred with the previous person.
She's one of my favorite movie characters in years. I have no problem with it. The director had the two lead actresses actually room with each other, so they developed a genuine friendship. I hope it gets discovered by young people via streaming.
Last movie I saw was Late Night. I agree with other posters that it was disappointing. It was OK, but I was excited to see Emma Thompson play a lead in a comedy and was hoping it would be better.
Young people are very much aware of the movie. See below... They just do not identify with it being part of their H.S. culture. I would be surprised. The film has already proven itself to be a the opposite of anything that could be termed as being influential. My H.S. class was in 1972. Grease, the movie, was about life in H.S. that took place many years before I was a senior in H.S., yet I, and most of the world, identified it as H.S from that period. The Breakfast Club was back in 1985, more than a decade after I was out of H.S., yet I identified with it, character's in all. Pump Up The Volume (1990) was a 90's H.S. movie that I felt was excellently done and a classic among H.S. movies. I could identify with it. While there were a lot of good teen movies during the 90's, like Empire Records, I don't think that there were that many that were H.S. specific, like back in the 80's. As we went into the millennium, even movies like the Harry Potter series, were identifiable, even though the H.S. was Hogwarts. The movies still portrayed teens in what was identifiable as teens in a H.S. environment. Later, the Twilight Saga represented teens in high school, doing things that were still identifiable as a H.S. experience. It is now well into the millennium and yet, people identified with their character's in a more authentic H.S. environment. Like Breakfast Club before it, it was also location filmed in real high schools. Twilight had a lot of scenes that took place in H.S. The exterior of which (and the gymnasium) were shot at Kalama High School, in Kalama, Washington. They shot the school cafeteria scene at Madison High School, in Portland Oregon. They also shot the Biology lab scene there. From Grease to Twilight, in the millennium, these are believable to both adults and teens as high school experiences, where Booksmart simply was not. I don't think we can say that millennials identify with Booksmart with regard to being any sort of relatable high school experience.
