#think somewhere dir. sofia coppola and then more

[deadpoetsmusings]

Aftersun (2022) dir. Charlotte Wells

[marredbyoverlength]

Super-Roundup: June and July 2017

I was out of town during June Roundup Week, so I pushed it all into this super-roundup.  Buckle up.

The Mummy (2017) Dir. Alex Kurtzman. Starring Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis. For a cynical cash-in, The Mummy had a lot of cool ideas. I liked the history surrounding the evil mummy, and the monster-hunter group led by Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe), and even parts of the silly conclusion. There’s probably a good movie in there somewhere. But alas, those good ideas were stifled under a thick, grey blanket of unfeeling money-grubbing. Why is Tom Cruise in the film? Because Tom Cruise Makes Money. Why is every shot the same dull grey color? Because the Marvel and DC movies are grey, and those movies Make Money. The film isn’t bad exactly, but it is soulless. 5/10.

The Book of Henry (2017) Dir. Colin Trevorrow. Starring Jaeden Lieberher, Naomi Watts, Jacob Tremblay. A true cinematic disaster, magnificent in its ability to fail in ways I never dreamed possible. What begins as an inane precocious-kid flick rapidly morphs into one of the more baffling movie plots I have ever experienced, all while clinging to a totally inappropriate feel-good tone. Ever wanted to see a movie where Sarah Silverman kisses a preteen boy on the lips? This is the film for you! 2/10.

Baby Driver (2017) Dir. Edgar Wright. Starring Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Kevin Spacey. Nobody shoots action like Edgar Wright. Baby Driver is a fast-paced, high-energy car flick with a surprising amount of heart. It gets a lot of mileage out of its terrific supporting cast, especially a deranged Jamie Foxx and a slick Jon Hamm. Sometimes the dialogue gets a little hokey, and the ending stretches credulity, but overall it’s well worth the watch. 8/10.

Okja (2017) Dir. Bong Joon Ho Starring Ahn Seo-Hyun, Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal. A semi-entertaining story about a girl and her genetically-engineered superpig. I guess this is supposed to be satire, but I’m not sure who it’s directed at. Is this anti-corporatist? Pro-vegetarian? Anti-GMO? Its total lack of focus leaves it with a toothless The Answer Lies Somewhere In The Middle message barely worth the film it’s stuck to. Not that there aren’t funny moments—Paul Dano is especially great as an animal rights revolutionary—but they don’t add up to much. The film has way more ambition than intelligence. 4/10.

I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore (2017) Dir. Macon Blair. Starring Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood. Macon Blair’s directorial debut is a lot of fun and has some impressive flashes of style: one scene stands out in particular, where a painkiller-addled Melanie Lynskey watches a garish reverend lip-sync the soundtrack. But these stylistic efforts felt constrained, or maybe unconfident, which makes sense for a first-time director. Worth watching just for Elijah Wood as Lynskey’s weirdo neighbor. 7/10.

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) Dir. Jon Watts. Starring Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Jacob Batalon. Easily the best of the MCU movies for a simple reason: it’s consistent. Spider-Man is a fun IP, and Homecoming is a fun movie, nailing the inherent humor of a high-school superhero. And Michael Keaton’s Vulture is a strong contender for Best MCU Villain (though I think Ultron still beats him). But while the film hints at some interesting class-conflict themes, it instead centers on an underdeveloped coming-of-age story that left me wondering what Peter actually learned. 7/10.

The Beguiled (2017) Dir. Sofia Coppola. Starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst. A creepy Southern-isolation aesthetic and strong performances from the entire cast, especially Kidman and my perennial favorite Elle Fanning, aren’t enough to save this movie from itself. It’s a character-driven movie where the characterization is inconsistent, making it difficult to care about anyone, much less divine a sense of purpose from the film. The last act in particular feels totally out of nowhere. 5/10.

Dunkirk (2017) Dir. Christopher Nolan. Starring a bunch of interchangeable white guys and Mark Rylance. This is Nolan’s best movie in a long time, but boy was I still bored stiff.  Between the film’s confusing temporal structure, its cast of indistinguishable actors, and its allergy to characterization, it’s difficult to figure out what the heck is going on in any given scene and even harder to care about it. But the film deserves praise for its stunning visuals and flashes of something approaching emotion. Nolan is at his best when tethered to reality. 4/10.

Atomic Blonde (2017) Dir. David Leitch. Starring Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Sofia Boutella. Very cool, to the exclusion of all other substance. Charlize Theron is a great action hero wasted on a character and story with no depth. But it’s entertaining, despite its lack of ambition, because of the wonderfully choreographed action sequences and visual sense of Cold-War paranoia. 6/10.

A Ghost Story (2017) Dir. David Lowery. Starring Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara. Absolutely beautiful. If you can swallow the premise (Casey Affleck is a ghost wearing a bedsheet with eyeholes), you’re rewarded with an emotionally gripping extended visual metaphor of enormous power, exploring grief, loss, and the very human habit of tethering emotions to places and things. But don’t go to this movie expecting a plotline. 9/10.

The Emoji Movie (2017) Dir. Tony Leondis. Starring T.J. Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris. I want to die. 1/10.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) Dir. Marielle Heller. Starring Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgard. Believable, authentic, but ultimately not much more than a run-of-the-mill coming-of-age story. Bel Powley is great as a 15-year-old girl who has a sexual affair with her stepdad, but the rest of the film doesn’t match her personality. 6/10.

Calvary (2014) Dir. John Michael McDonagh. Starring Brendan Gleeson, Kelly Reilly, Chris O’Dowd. Calvary is one of those rare films that manages to balance comedy and melancholy without detracting from either. Brendan Gleeson is excellent as a small-town Irish priest of a wayward flock, and Kelly Reilly is just as good as his daughter (from before he donned the cloth), who struggles with depression. Each individual scene is excellent, and they’re gorgeously framed, but the lack of fluid transition between them makes a thematically consistent film feel disjointed. 8/10.

Mallrats (1995) Dir. Kevin Smith. Starring Jeremy London, Jason Lee, Shannen Doherty. Defiantly juvenile for a film that tries sometimes to be emotionally serious. Where the heroes of Clerks felt like vulgar adults, these characters feel like immature kids. They’re difficult to root for, and the overall amateur look of the film doesn’t give you much to grab onto. But it does pick up a bit at the end. 4/10.

Slacker (1991) Dir. Richard Linklater. Starring: Nobody in particular. Slacker is a series of conversations between mostly unrelated characters in Austin’s early-90’s counterculture. The film is almost purposefully ugly, shot on grainy film with bad equipment, sometimes with the boom mic in the shot. With no characters or visuals to lean on, the film lives and dies by its conversational vignettes. Some are strong: I am particularly fond of the two women who pass out cards from Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies” deck to passersby as an art piece. But others totally miss, including the vignette at the very beginning starring Linklater himself. 6/10.

The Conversation (1974) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Gene Hackman, John Cazale. A film that survives entirely on tension and suspicion, heightened by one of Hackman’s best performances and an all-time great score. But the plot is a little too thin to sustain the runtime, making the conclusion feel abrupt. 7/10.

[turtlereviews]

my personal top 100 influential movies

According to my personal extremely logical and not at all arbitrary rules of selection. Not at all chosen for any measure of quality -- I mean, I think a lot of them are genuinely good movies, but that’s not a criteria I’ve used. These are movies that are part of my internal storytelling repertoire -- a scene, a character, a storyline, a concept, whatever. Some I’ve rewatched loads of times, some only a couple. I don’t think all of these movies have very distinctive cinematographies, but a lot of them do. I like genre way, way more than drama. I like stories and I like movies about storytelling (please note: I consider Blade Runner a movie about storytelling so my definition is possibly somewhat broader than most. Stories are what people tell themselves in order to confirm that they are people). Also I like very stylized violence and bantering!

I watch way too many Hollywood & American movies, but, well. I suspect a lot of these definitely date me. Like, guessing my age based on these is probably entirely possible.

In alphabetical order. I could probably easily go to 150 movies, but I gotta stop somewhere. I got to about 50 movies before I had to think about it, so I guess half of this list is set and half is fluctuating.

Considering doing 100 Books, but that’s way harder.

1) 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Dir: Gil Junger 2) All the President’s Men (1976), Dir: Alan J. Pakula 3) Battle Royale (2000), Dir: Kinji Fukasaku 4) Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), Dir: Benh Zeitlin 5) Big Fish (2003), Dir: Tim Burton 6) Blade (1998), Dir: Stephen Norrington 7) Blade Runner (1982), Dir: Ridley Scott 8) The Breakfast Club (1985), Dir: John Hughes 9) Brokeback Mountain (2005), Dir: Ang Lee 10) Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Dir: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo 11) Casino Royale (2006), Dir: Martin Campbell 12) Casting JonBenet (2017), Dir: Kitty Green 13) Citizen Kane (1941), Dir: Orson Welles 14) Clueless (1995), Dir: Amy Hackerling 15) Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Dir: Jim Jarmusch 16) The Craft (1996), Dir: Andrew Fleming 17) Creed (2015), Dir: Ryan Coogler 18) D.E.B.S. (2004), Dir: Angela Robinson 19) The Dark Knight (2008), Dir: Christopher Nolan 20) The Descent (2005), Dir: Neil Marshall 21) Die Hard (1988), Dir: John McTiernan 22) Dirty Dancing (1987), Dir: Emile Ardolino 23) Dredd (2012), Dir: Pete Travis 24) Evolution (2001), Dir: Ivan Reitman 25) Far from Heaven (2002), Dir: Todd Haynes 26) The Fifth Element (1997), Dir: Luc Besson 27) Final Destination (2000), Dir: James Wong 28) Fjols til Fjells (1957), Dir: Edith Calmar 29) Flåklypa Grand Prix (1975), Dir: Ivo Caprino 30) Furious 6 (2013), Dir: Justin Lin 31) The Godfather part 2 (1974), Dir: Francis Ford Coppola 32) Goon (2012), Dir: Martin Dowse 33) Gravity (2013), Dir: Alfonso Cuarón 34) Grease (1978), Dir: Randal Kleiser 35) Hanna (2011), Dir: Joe Wright 36) The Heat (2013), Dir: Paul Feig 37) Hero (2002), Dir: Yimou Zhang 38) Der Himmel über Berlin (1987), Dir: Wim Wenders 39) House of Tolerance (2011), Dir: Bertrand Bonello 40) Hot Fuzz (2007), Dir: Edgar Wright 41) Infernal Affairs (2002), Dir: Wai-Keung Lau, Alan Mak 42) Iron Giant (1999), Dir: Brad Bird 43) Iron Man (2008), Dir: Jon Favreau 44) The Jason Bourne Identity (2002), Dir: Doug Liman 45) Jupiter Ascending (2015), Dir: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski 46) Jurassic Park (1993), Dir: Steven Spielberg 47) Kill Bill vol. 1 (2003), Dir: Quentin Tarantino 48) Kill List (2013), Dir: Ben Wheatley 49) A Knight’s Tale (2001), Dir: Brian Helgeland 50) A League of Their Own (1992), Dir: Penny Marshall 51) Legally Blonde (2001), Dir: Robert Luketic 52) Let the right one in (2008), Dir: Tomas Alfredson 53) Lilo and Stitch (2002), Dir: Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois 54) Little Women (1994), Dir: Gillian Armstrong 55) Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Dir: Guy Ritchie 56) Logan (2017), Dir: James Mangold 57) LOTR trilogy (2001-2003), Dir: Peter Jackson 58) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Dir: George Miller 59) Magnolia (1999), Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson 60) Mean Girls (2004), Dir: Mark Waters 61) Men in Black (1997), Dir: Barry Sonnenfeld 62) Metropolis (1927), Dir: Fritz Lang 63) Minority Report (2002), Dir: Steven Spielberg 64) Modern Times (1936), Dir: Charlie Chaplin 65) Moonrise Kingdom (2012), Dir: Wes Anderson 66) Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Dir: Doug Liman 67) The Mummy (1999), Dir: Stephen Sommers 68) National Treasure (2004), Dir: Jon Turteltaub 69) The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), Dir: Henry Selick 70) Poirot: Evil Under the Sun (2001), Dir: Brian Farnham 71) The Princess Bride (1987), Dir: Rob Reiner 72) The Proposal (2009), Dir: Anne Fletcher 73) Rear Window (1954), Dir: Alfred Hitchcock 74) Robin Hood (1973), Dir: Wolfgang Reitherman 75) Romeo + Juliet (1996), Dir: Baz Luhrmann 76) Scream (1996), Dir: Wes Craven 77) Se7en (1995), Dir: David Fincher 78) Shaun of the Dead (2004), Dir: Edgar Wright 79) Shrek (2001), Dir: Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson 80) Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Dir: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly 81) Sister Act (1992), Dir: Emile Ardolino 82) Snowpiercer (2013), Dir: Bong Joon-ho 83) Speed (1994), Dir: Jan De Bont 84) Spirited Away (2001), Dir: Hayao Miyazaki 85) Spotlight (2015), Dir: Tom McCarthy 86) Stargate (1994), Dir: Roland Emmerich 87) Starship Troopers (1997), Dir: Paul Verhoeven 88) Step Up (2006), Dir: Anne Fletcher 89) Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Dir: James Cameron 90) Threesome (1994), Dir: Andrew Fleming 91) The Usual Suspects (1995), Dir: Bryan Singer 92) Velvet Goldmine (1998), Dir: Todd Haynes 93) The Virgin Suicides (1999), Dir: Sofia Coppola 94) Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973), Dir: Václav Vorlícek 95) Wadjda (2012), Dir: Haifaa Al-Mansour 96) Weekend (2011), Dir: Andrew Haigh 97) Winter’s Bone (2010), Dir: Debra Granik 98) X-Men 2 (2003), Dir: Bryan Singer 99) Y tu mamá también (2001), Dir: Alfonso Cuarón 100) Your Name (2016), Dir: Makoto Shinkai

[nuwanda-nuwanda]

Elle Fanning has worked with more female directors than some actors have in their entire careers:

I Think We’re Alone (2018), dir. Reed Morano

Ginger and Rosa (2012), dir. Sally Potter

Mary Shelley (2017), dir. Haifaa al-Mansour

I Am Sam  (2001), dir. Jessie Nelson

3 Generations (2015), dir. Gaby Dellal

Somewhere (2010), dir. Sofia Coppola

The Beguiled (2017), dir. Sofia Coppola