cinematic catching up
Jan. 1st, 2018 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twoelevenjust before thanksgiving, we saw a curious double feature: murder on the orient express and thor: ragnarok. we enjoyed them both, especially MotOE. it's been adapted for cinema, but still works just as well as the novel, and the cinematography is wonderful.
dïe überblønde has read the novel many times, so she knew the answer to the mystery -- unchanged from the original -- and i was about a half-hour behind the Great Detective. i think that had i been reading it, it would have gotten the solution. i had most of the pieces, but was a little slow putting them together.
T:R is, like all the fine extruded superhero cinematic product from the empire of the rising mouse, a good example of its kind. it's otherwise not especially memorable.
then i had myself a very jewish xmas: two movies and chinese food. :) it wasn't quite a double feature, because i saw darkest hour on erev $mas, and star wars: the last jedi on avarice day.
i really liked DH. it's not oldman's best performance, but it's damn good. there's a couple of scenes critics said don't work; they really don't.
SW:tLJ tries really hard to break new ground, but struggles under the weight of better predecessors. it's also struggling under the weight trying to do simply too much damn stuff -- some of which is completely unnecessary -- and ends up overlong and fragmented as a result. tighter editing and clearer thinking would have patched up (or written out) some of the movie's plot holes.
on the good side, a couple of plots move along nicely, and a few characters actually grow and develop.
yesterday, i saw brimstone and glory at my local arthouse theater. it's a documentary about tultepec, mexico's insane annual pyrotechnics celebration, which supposedly has something to do with some saint or other. vast amounts of effort are put into building two different sorts of pyrotechnic extravagances, along with incredible risks taken both making them and celebrating lighting them off.
while the movie gets a bit carried away with its super-slo-mo and out-of-focus shots at times, it works well.
of the bunch, i'd recommend seeing MotOE and BaG in theaters. (BaG has a tiny release, so finding it in a theater might be challenging.) it wouldn't hurt to see DH in a theater, but there's nothing about it that cries out for the big screen. T:R can be watched on your favorite video purveying service, as can SW:tLJ, though perhaps with an itchy fast-forward finger.
dïe überblønde has read the novel many times, so she knew the answer to the mystery -- unchanged from the original -- and i was about a half-hour behind the Great Detective. i think that had i been reading it, it would have gotten the solution. i had most of the pieces, but was a little slow putting them together.
T:R is, like all the fine extruded superhero cinematic product from the empire of the rising mouse, a good example of its kind. it's otherwise not especially memorable.
then i had myself a very jewish xmas: two movies and chinese food. :) it wasn't quite a double feature, because i saw darkest hour on erev $mas, and star wars: the last jedi on avarice day.
i really liked DH. it's not oldman's best performance, but it's damn good. there's a couple of scenes critics said don't work; they really don't.
SW:tLJ tries really hard to break new ground, but struggles under the weight of better predecessors. it's also struggling under the weight trying to do simply too much damn stuff -- some of which is completely unnecessary -- and ends up overlong and fragmented as a result. tighter editing and clearer thinking would have patched up (or written out) some of the movie's plot holes.
on the good side, a couple of plots move along nicely, and a few characters actually grow and develop.
yesterday, i saw brimstone and glory at my local arthouse theater. it's a documentary about tultepec, mexico's insane annual pyrotechnics celebration, which supposedly has something to do with some saint or other. vast amounts of effort are put into building two different sorts of pyrotechnic extravagances, along with incredible risks taken both making them and celebrating lighting them off.
while the movie gets a bit carried away with its super-slo-mo and out-of-focus shots at times, it works well.
of the bunch, i'd recommend seeing MotOE and BaG in theaters. (BaG has a tiny release, so finding it in a theater might be challenging.) it wouldn't hurt to see DH in a theater, but there's nothing about it that cries out for the big screen. T:R can be watched on your favorite video purveying service, as can SW:tLJ, though perhaps with an itchy fast-forward finger.