What Did You Rent Last Night?

[Ginger]

Yeah, Kramer vs Kramer was a massive disappointment when I saw it too.

Perhaps this is an unpopular movie opinion, but so was Sophie's Choice. It is built around a very compelling scene/concept that I knew about before watching it, and then I watched a hella long movie that was mostly Meryl Streep lolling around talking to Kevin Kline and looking depressed and doing one of her accents. I may have even turned it off because it was so off-putting because I don't remember most of it. I concede that it might be a brilliant movie that I just didn't give proper attention.

I actively loathe everything about The Deer Hunter, so maybe I'm just not cut out for 70s/early 80s cinema.


I just finished a Julie Delpy movie marathon - Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, 2 Days in Paris, and 2 Days in New York. The "Before" movies are a little irritating in the details, but I always find myself being hit hard by the endings.

The 2 Days movies are really funny, and I would just like to see more of Julie Delpy. I loved her in the early 90s because she was so, so beautiful and now she's a totally different screen presence, but I really like her.

[Mutagen]

On the topic of 70s films, I thought The Conversation held up well. A lot of the themes of surveillance and privacy seem incredibly prescient for a movie made long before the internet. Also, early career Harrison Ford. Hot.

[cubanitafresca]

Just watched Michael B Jordan's "Without Remorse" and have to say it was a fun little action flick. Based on a Tom Clancy book so it had a decent plot, great acting, and lots of great action scenes. I'm not familiar with that particular book and whether there are more with this character. But I won't be surprised if there is at least one more film with the character.

[FiggyPudding]

I saw Tenet on HBO last night. What in the everloving hell was that.

[famvir]

I just watched Tenet. Very Christopher Nolan! I enjoyed it very much. It does require a re-watch. I’ll say no more.

[scarlet]

May 7, 2021 14:56:38 GMT -4 famvir said:

I just watched Tenet. Very Christopher Nolan! I enjoyed it very much. It does require a re-watch. I’ll say no more.

I liked it, too. And, yes, I've seen it a couple times and the second time I 'got' more than the first.

[FiggyPudding]

I had to watch Inception a second time before I got a handle on all the exposition about the levels. I'll probably need to do the same for Tenet.

[laurenj]

I forget which thread we were talking about Wild Mountain Thyme in, but I distinctly remember a conversation about how terrible the Irish accents were, including from native Irishman Jamie Dornan.

It's free on Hulu now so I put it on just to listen and lord, it's terrible. Emily Blunt's accent comes and goes in every scene, she actually sounds fine when she doesn't lean too hard into it, but when she goes full "Twas grand, so it was" it's just godawful. I'm cringing in secondhand embarrassment.

Jamie's accent is obviously not nearly as bad, but strangely, it's almost like he has the opposite problem, he's not letting his accent through enough. I guess too many years of playing Americans, his "acting" voice doesn't allow his natural accent to show.

The story, what I can understand of it through the distracting voices, is also dumb. Feels like they're going for an old-timey love story where they fight most of the movie on their way to true love, but it's badly executed.

Jon Hamm seems to be playing Don Draper with little speeches, but the saving grace for him is that he plays an American so doesn't attempt an accent.

He's also not aging very well, there's a badly lit scene of him on an airplane and he looks jowly and haggard.

[Deleted]

I watched Promising Young Woman last night. I'm really glad that movie was made in 2020 and not 2003, because I think it would have been sold very differently 20 years ago. Now with the culture of Me Too, it's much more complex than just being a "sexy woman going on a rampage" movie the way that Jennifer's Body (a criminally underrated and underappreciated film) was. It's about friendship, how society doesn't take rape seriously and doesn't give trauma victims the support they need, and how "nice guys" can easily fool you, when they are often monsters beneath their sunny, cheery exterior. Casting Bo Burnham as the nice-guy-who-is-actually-complicit was brilliant. All of that, and it manages to be sort of a comedy! The ending is bittersweet but really clever.

Highly recommended. I hope Emerald Fennell makes loads more movies.

[famvir]

MrF and I watched Tenet together last night. The first 2/3 he loved, he thought it was the best Bond movie ever.

We had to break it up in two portions, 2.5 hours is too long if one starts watching at 9:30.

The final 1/3 of Tenet is the Chris Nolan/not Bond portion (no spoilers), and MrF immediately glazed over. He doesn’t want to work too hard at his movies.

I was happy to explain what was going on, but he hated Memento, Inception, Interstellar, so no surprise.