Tag: three sentence movies

There a few not-perfect things* but overall, this movie wormed its way into me and hasn’t left. As the flashbacks and present day alternate, understanding unfolds.  The story is tragic, everyone agrees, but can a person come back after tragedy?**

Cost: $6.00
Where watched: Hollywood Theater with S. North

*At one or two points the music swells too much and pushes things into melodrama; there are things that don’t make sense plot-wise; there is a weird driving scene that begins with snow-on-the-ground-like-February then suddenly we’re in rain-falling-like-April then snow-in-the-countryside-like-February.
**Also, huge props to Lucas Hedges.  At this point we all know Affleck, Williams and Chandler will knock things out of the park.  Hedges is the linchpin in this ensemble and this movie would have failed without his nuanced performance.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/manchester_by_the_sea.html
Jeez-o-Pete do I hate this poster.  Looking at it, it seems like it’s about Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck, but don’t go to this film looking for them to be sharing a lot of screen time.

This isn’t a musical to go to for the singing and dancing, because Stone and Gosling–delightful as they are–aren’t really much of either singers or dancers.  But it is a movie to go to and get caught up in the sparkle of the musical motion picture itself–the sets, the acting, the story.  The whole thing was so mesmerizing, I found myself clapping after one scene, completely forgetting I was in a movie theater, not a Jazz club.*

Cost: $11.50
Where watched: Regal Fox Tower, on opening night. Because I couldn’t wait for the matinee.

*Also, my hometown of Boise is mentioned several times,** at an important point in the movie.
**Note that they do not pronounce Boise like the natives do.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/la_la_land.html

 

The Hollywood Theater showed this in 70mm, so it was the really big screen.  The colors were great, the music was great, and the volume of the dialogue was very very quiet.  It was so quiet that it seemed as if no one in the audience (not even the children) moved for the entire run-time, so great was our straining to hear.

Cost: $14.00, which was refunded when the theater figured out what happened.  Thanks, Hollywood!
Where watched: Hollywood Theater

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1959/sleeping_beauty.html

I’ve been living under the impression that I would have to wait for George Lucas to die before I could see this only-screened-on-TV-once feature.  But it turns out that this is the third year the Kiggens Theater has shown this film.  Now that I’ve seen it, I will have to spend the rest of my life un-seeing it, because it’s a terrible, terrible piece of the Star Wars world.

Cost: free
Where watched: Kiggens Theater with Matt

poster from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52RtCocVUzo

I liked that this was a sci-fi film that dropped me in and I had to make sense of what was happening.  I liked the performances, especially Joel Edgerton.  Everything isn’t explained–I had several days of, “hey, but what about…?” which added to the good cinematic experience.

Cost: $1.50 from Redbox
Where watched: at home with Matt

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/midnight_special.html

This film does more with close-ups, facial expressions, and small gestures than it does with dialogue or action.  It could have been slow, but this was beautiful to watch.  Includes many small moments of joy.

Cost: $8.00
Where watched: Living Room Theaters

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/loving.html

What Matt remembered about watching it in 1997: eh, it was fine.  My review: eh, it was fine.  It’s one of those action films that maximized their location budget, so there is a lot of  good lookin’ international scenery.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1997/peacemaker.html

Stephen Dorff’s blankness combined with Elle Fanning’s kind precision was magical.  On the one hand, he’s a guy who seems to shuffle from place to place as he’s told; on the other he’s a man spectacularly lacking in substance.  As he floats through life, the movie things are quite meditative and pretty, and I really liked this film.

Cost: free from library. (This was one of those movies I’ve probably borrowed five times before I finally watched it.  But it was good when I did.)
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2010/somewhere_ver2.html
I picked this version because it was the DVD cover, but with words in English.

Manages to pull of a miracle of movie making: Juliette Lewis as a character who doesn’t bug the crap out of me.  Aside from an excellent performance by Uma Thurman as a needy woman just looking for love, this also featured a romance between older people (Gina Rowlands and Ben Gazzara, both excellent).  This is one of those movies that I kept thinking about after.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home.

poster from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterical_Blindness_(film)

I’m not one of those Americans who is all gaga over India, so it wasn’t India that did it for me.  Instead, the story of an arranged marriage and the family preparations for the wedding sucked me in.  The colors in every frame were gorgeous, and there was so much glee throughout the film,* but what really won me over was the depth of love felt among the family members.**

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

*I’m thinking of the scene with the women singing and the big Bollywood-style dance sequence as well as the smaller wedding between two minor characters that took place during the big wedding.
**I rarely see such matter-of-fact, gentle love portrayed in movies.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2002/monsoon_wedding.html