At the movies - From the couch

I liked it…but then again I do like both Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling a lot.

It met my expectations of a easy watching rom-com.

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They were both likeable, and good chemistry on set.

It was also nice seeing some Aussie scenery as it’s filled in Sydney.

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I could not disagree more. That film is and fully deserves to be a classic, and the ending is perfect.

Polanski was a great filmmaker and Chinatown is right up with his best. I’ve watched it several times and it’s always just as good. Try Rosemary’s Baby. And if you can find it, Repulsion.

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Also ‘Cul de Sac’ and his Polish film, English title ‘Knife in the Water’.

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Well there are a whole lot of outstanding films that he made. Those two are excellent, I agree. Knife in the Water was his ticket to Hollywood. One that doesn’t get mentioned much is Bitter Moon, maybe because it was one of Hugh Grant’s first non-comedy films.

A history of violence - 2005 Netflix

A small town regular guy stops a robbery in Jason Bourne style. Becomes famous, then people start thinking he’s some kind of gangster.

It gets 88% on rotten tomatoes, and 7.4 on IMDB. There were a couple well shot pieces, and some violent scenes. But in general I thought it was poor.

Don’t bother 3/10

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Agree. Such a boring movie imo

Also has one of the most uncomfortable looking sex scenes I have ever seen in a movie

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Cronenberg isn’t your average film maker and the graphic novel it was based on isn’t your average comic. It’s a 2005 film and it did a few things that are probably taken for granted in film making now thematically at least. I enjoyed it a lot when it came out and again recently. It’s not meant to be a straight gangster/action film. And if you’re referring to Maria Bello in her cheerleader outfit that’s just plain hot.

This says it better
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005). A Canadian filmmaker, David Cronenberg here resembles nothing so much as one of his fellow countrymen glimpsed in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine , gazing at our land across the lakes and wondering why we’re always so obsessed with carnage. In much the same manner that David Lynch deconstructed the myth of the squeaky-clean small Southern town in Blue Velvet , so too does Cronenberg take a hatchet to the façade of bland Midwestern homeliness. His protagonist is Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), a family man who becomes a national hero after killing two psychos in self-defense. But the exposure brings a stranger to town, a gruff mobster (Ed Harris) who insists that Tom was once a homicidal kid back in Philadelphia. Cronenberg and scripter Josh Olson (deservedly earning an Oscar nomination for adapting a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke) create a dizzying examination of this country’s love-hate affair with brutality, exploring numerous gray areas with the help of a powerhouse cast. William Hurt earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for his hammy (albeit effective) turn as a Philly crime kingpin, but top honors belong to Maria Bello as Tom’s wife, who’s both aroused and frightened by the mystery surrounding her husband’s identity, and Harris, who brings genuine menace to his role as a scar-faced killer.

Well, the first one went from just two adults fooling around to 69 in a nano second. I think the second one was rape, but there were so many bits I wasn’t sure about, that now I’m not sure about that scene either.

The opening sequence was pretty interesting though, with the robbers checking out of the hotel. I had high hopes, but some of the acting and script writing was weird and clunky.

Who has rough almost rapey sex on a hard staircase?

Was just weird

Rapists?

I think it was supposed to be confirming he had turned into the bad guy.

Cronenberg also adapted Ballard’s “Crash”. He has a bit of an interest in the eroticisation of danger, sexual psychology etc. Maybe the black skivvy movie thread for this one?

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Never read Dune.

Watched Part 1 and Part 2.

Both were fantastic visually and in terms of effects and camera work.

The first one , despite being long, and somewhat slow, was very good. They managed to set the political scene - which so much hinges on - without it becoming overly burdensome.

The second one felt simultaneously too long - I was struggling to maintain interest - and too short or truncated - I thought na-Baron was underused and something of a clichë - overall.

The plot ? Well, there are some holes and much of it has become completely stereotypical . But when I look up that it was written in 1965, perhaps that’s not entirely, or even mainly, it’s fault.

I can certainly see a heck of a lot of later books / films / saga in it. Without having read the source material I can’t say how faithful it’s been to Herbert.

I’m not desperate to see part three. But 1 and 2 were fine for afternoon movie viewing.

Dune was/is a fantastic book…subsequent novels dropped in quality as each one was released (imo).

As for the movies…I loved them both…saw them at the cinema so got the full cinematic experience which I think would of made the overall experience better.

I liked the second one more than the first and am looking forward to the third. I actually never read the books but played the computer games as a teenager.

I got 50 minutes into Dune 2 before tapping out last week.

I suspended my disbelief on how dumb the action scenes were (oh, how convenient that the Harkoneen have dedicated melee only soldiers sprinkled throughout their patrols, who happen to be the only ones who get the drop on Chandelier multiple times so he can have a crap fight scene). Visually it was nice.

But Chandelier and Zendaya are both bland, stilted, and bereft of any charisma. They have no chemistry whatsoever. No interest in watching them as leads.

Have to agree, and it got very shouty, Americany in the end also. First one had great atmosphere and a more effective cast.

Just watch for bardem, if you can do it for no country for old men, you can do it for dune

I went and saw A Complete Unknown, the new film about the early days of Bob Dylan in New York with Timothy Chalamet as Dylan and Ed Norton as Pete Seeger. About 7.5. The writers have played around with parts of the chronology and there’s a bit of the typical Hollywood biopic thing of staging Turning Point scenes, but it’s good if you’re a fan of early-career Dylan, as I am. It’s nearly 2½ hours long, but that’s par for the course these days. Probably the best thing about it is that it doesn’t portray Dylan as a nice person and in fact shows him to be a bit of a ■■■■.

If you’re interested in the actual history, Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home is far better.

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