Truly Scrumptious :revolving_hearts:
This is the first time I've rewatched this since it was my favorite movie when I was 5. It's better than I remembered.
(Though I had no idea it was 2 ½ hours long and had an intermission!? Was I really that patient at 5? I was also today years old when I learned the Vulgaria storyline (which makes up ¾s of the movie) is a fictional embedded narrative that Potts makes up for his children and not the original plotline. Also, the Child Catcher scared me to death for YEARS.)
The Chitty Chitty Bang Bang / James Bond connection:
- The original book was a children's story written by Ian Fleming for his son. (Fleming is the creator and writer of the James Bond books).
- The film is produced by Albert R Broccoli, who co-produced the Bond films series.
- One of the supporting actors (in addition to Benny Hill) is Gert Fröbe, who also played Auric Goldfinger in the movie Goldfinger.
- Previously Ken Hughes, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang director, directed the original Casino Royale, a spoof of the James Bond character.
- Ken Hughes also co-wrore the screenplay of Fleming's book with...Roald Dahl.
Seen on Tubi.
Like feeling at home in a party you wish you hadn't been invited to.
Taxi Driver is such a strong film that it actually created a type of person. Arguably the birthplace of modern cinema.
This was released on my first birthday, so I grew up watching it on network TV and looked forward to seeing it every year. If Christmas is happiness, tradition, and joy, then, for me personally, this is the most Christmas movie of all time.
I don't like olde timey movies and I don't like romantic comedies, but Roman Holiday reminded me of the best parts of my past and let me forget the worst parts of my present.
I have an affection for Audrey Hepburn that borders on the unhealthy. She personifies for me all that is good and pure in life, and thus all that is pure and good in cinema, as cinema is life.
And, my God, that ending!
This film is the best parts of my childhood rolled up into one, delicious, sweet thing.
Like skinny dipping in a lake of summer, I love every party of this.
Like a concussion grenade, All Quiet on the Western Front is breathtaking.
Perfect acting, script, and music...sure why not? But all of that delivering a strong message wrapped in the best cinematography I've seen all year? Unbelievable.
My biggest cinematic regret of 2022 will be not having the chance to see All Quiet on the Western Front in IMAX.
Literally one of the cinematic highlights of my entire year. I have always adored the 1986 Bertrand Tavernier film Round Midnight... and today I was able to see it on the big screen for the first time in my life.
I'm giving this film 10 Fs, though it may have one or two (extremely minor) flaws. But you see, Round Midnight is tattooed on my soul. It is so deeply ingrained in my DNA, so much a part of me that to say anything bad about it is to something bad about myself and, to be honest, I like this film more than myself most of the time anyway.
The first time I saw Round Midnight (on VHS in the late 80s), I thought it was about jazz. The second time I thought it was about addiction, the third fandulation, then parenting. After the fifth time, I realized it was about jazz, it had been about jazz all along because jazz is about all those other things and more.
Like the first Christmas you're old enough to remember, The Truman Show is a defining moment in happiness.
Everything comes together to create the perfect film. The writing is intelligent, inspiring and innovative. The brilliant concept is explored thoroughly without ever becoming mundane or boring.
The directing is on point from the opening credits which are the credits for The Truman Show (the TV show, not the film) to the ending which isn't unnecessarily long with a drawn out denouement.
And Jim Carey not only absolutely understood the character to his depths, but he also knew exactly how to communicate him to the audience.
I'd seen The Truman Show on video and loved it, but Paris just re-released theatrically so I was able to see it in the cinema and my God... it was a gift I'll never forget.
This isn't the film we deserve, it's the film we don't deserve because none of us mere mortals deserve anything this good.
Razor fine script, flawless directing, breathtaking cinematography, stunning special effects... Everything comes together in a way that best demonstrates what an art good cinema can be.
The Dark Knight is not just one of the best super hero movies ever made, but one of the best movies ever made period.
The Elephant Man has many layers (interior / exterior beauty, human nature, voyeurism...) and each one slices my heart like a fine scalpel. This heart wrenching film of what men will do for and to each other grabbed me from the first scene and squeezed so hard I left the cinema exhausted and drained.
_The Elephant Man- reminded me of my own ugliness, yet gave me hope that there's better things in store. I'm going through some difficult times at the moment and that I could forget about some of that shit so completely for 2 hours is one of the reasons I love cinema so absolutely, and this film in particular. Lynch holds up an unflinching mirror and forces us to look at our own deformities, and then dares us to accept them.
Every time I watch this film, I find new ways to fall in love with it.
The most sincere show I've ever seen.
Seeing a film that's won the Palme d'or at Cannes or Best Picture Oscar is like drinking a bottle of ridiculously expensive wine: with every sip you ask yourself over and over again if it deserves the price. Fortunately, Parasite is so good you won't be drinking very long because you'll be drunk on its power soon enough.
A film that crosses genres so many times it leaves a permanent mark, Parasite is a clever story performed wonderfully and directed to perfection.
BlacKkKlansman is an undercover film, because beneath its brilliant sheet of light-hearted biopic lurks a dark satire of racism, all lives matter and Trumpism. It will sneak up on you with its dated 70's feel and then grab you with its arresting pertinence to contemporary issues. Watch this film or be doomed to repeat it.
BlacKkKlansman is so good that I forgot it was a Spike Lee film. More seriously, it even outshines 2006's Inside Man and the closing newsreel sequence literally had me sobbing in the cinema (my over-the-top emotional responses are just one of the many reasons I always sit in the front row). Not only one of the best films of the year, this is clearly the most important film of the year.
This film is not the bloated body of a drowned rich person washed up on the beach. This movie is not the coroner cutting into the cold, colorless corpse of a wealthy man now destitute in death. Rather, Triangle of Sadness is the sharp scalpel mocking the polished skin it slices into as it peels away wealth of blubber to expose the absurdity that lies rotting beneath.
This satire of the affluent may not be the most accessible or the most subtle takedown of the rich (oligarchs and influencers included), but it is far and away the most skillful and entertaining.
I haven't seen all of the films competing at Cannes in 2022, but I don't need to for me to say this is clearly the winner. (And for those who will complain about the vulgarity of the dinner scene, let me just say, "Exactly!")
Revenge is a classic 70s style rape & revenge flick like a renovated muscle car that doesn't run on story but on cool - and the tank is full.
The director (Coralie Fargeat, writing and directing her first feature-length film) throws herself on the scene like an unpinned hand grenade and blows the screen away. Reminiscent of Tarantino, she can elicit winces as well as laughs (her 80S synth pop reference to Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive tho!) and make every body count.
The actors are solid and the female lead (Italian actress Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) is totally believable as the bad ass with a nice one. See this film before the backlash kicks in!
A pleasant surprise. Great premise, strong acting and high production value... The story loses focus in the third act, but not too late to garner 9/10.
I loved Loving Vincent. The plot is interesting (a young man delivering a letter from the late Vincent Van Gogh to the painter's brother, Theo, winds up investigating the circumstances around the artist's suicide), but the story is only half the story. The real reason to see this film is the animation. Billed as "The world's first fully oil painted feature film", Loving Vincent takes Van Gogh's best known art works and breathes life into them by weaving them into the scenario. As a fan of Van Gogh, the visuals for this movie left me breathless and will stay with me for a long while. One of the best films of the year.
This is the film I wanted to see when I saw Greengrass's July 22.
If you want to make a movie about a mass shooting, and you want the audience to feel what it's like to strive to survive, you film it in one single take and you film it in real time. Basically, you film it exactly like Utøya: July 22.
U July 22 follows one young woman from the start through to the end of the mass shooting that took place on July 22, 2011 in Oslo, Norway, at a youth summer camp on the island of Utøya. The technical expertise required to make the entire film in one take and in real time boggles the mind, but creates a sense of immediacy that pulls the viewer into the story and traps them there.
The film's weaknesses (a couple of scenes feel like filler and others fall into cliché) do little to reduce the overall impact of U July 22, especially when the director (Erik Poppe) chooses to film in Norwegian and to never reference the shooter by name. Utøya is one of the most unique, powerful and authentic films you will see this year.
Like the diry movie RJ wanted to make, X transcends the genre.
I saw this originally on SVOD but when it (finally) came to Paris -- one day after Halloween and on only one theater!? (why does France hate Ti West / A24?) -- I leaped at the chance to see it on the big screen and holy fuck am I glad I did.
West's directing here is flawless. I was already a fan of his work after his 2013 found footage flick The Sacrement, but X is next level.
The are edits like the lemonade scene, juxtaposing sex and death. There's the Chekhov's alligator, the amazing angles, the mini-flash forwards, the (sometimes subtle, sometimes overt) references to classic horror like Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre... A true delight for the eyes and mind from beginning to end.
What I appreciated as well was how West held off on the gore until the third act, which adds a sense of drama to the film and makes it more than just another slasher flick. Still, when he goes there -- and he goes there hard -- the gore is gasp-out-loud good.
X is not only the best horror film I've seen this year, it's the best horror I've seen in years.
From its opening minutes, Jojo Rabbit held me in an embrace so tender I watched the whole thing with a lump in my throat, no matter how hard I was laughing.
The term "American movie" is often taken to mean big budget action blockbuster, but this is the most American movie you will ever see. It is as big as the entire country, as rambling as its routes and has all of the heart of the heartland. Just like America, there is no beginning, no middle, no end, just life. No good guy, no bad guy, just people being themselves. If you are looking for a traditional film with characters and scripts and plot twists, this isn't for you. If you're looking for an sincere look at the real America, if you want to hear their accents and feel their roads and smell summer on their skin, then this will take you to the middle of the country for the price of a ticket and 2 1/2 hours of your day.
I'm not going to read any reviews anywhere about this movie because Booksmart is my new best friend and I won't hear anyone talk trash about my best friend.
I've decided to make it my best friend because it's funny and smart and cute and charming and makes me laugh and I feel like I can be myself around it.
Watching Booksmart in my flat (sadly, in France, it didn't have a theatrical release but went straight to Netflix), of course I laughed a lot and even shed a tear or two, but I also surprised myself by cringing out load and fucking applauding and cheering at the screen. Booksmart connected with me on a visceral level and made me feel alive in ways that only a best friend can. So, sorry to all my other friends, but from now on, Booksmart is my #1.
Oh, and please can everyone stop making movies for awhile so that we can concentrate on dedicating all filmmaking resources to Olivia Wilde so that she can continue making movies as quickly as possible until she collapses from exhaustion? Thank you.
Tomboy is your little brother, a sweet, uncomplicated child whose purity makes loving him the easiest thing you'll ever do.
An 11-year-old kid moves to a new neighborhood and when a local girl introduces herself, he tells her his name is Mikaël. Later that evening, Mikaël takes a bath with his little sister and when he stands up to exit the tub... we realize Mikaël is a girl.
Tomboy is the tale of this transgender adolescent and his struggles over the summer to keep his assigned gender a secret from his friends and the girl he's maybe falling in love with.
Céline Sciamma (writer of the brilliant My Life as a Courgette) wrote and directed this film in 2011 with a handheld SLR camera, and in only 20 days. She's getting a lot of attention recently because her latest film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival -- where it won best screenplay and the Queer Palm (and also explains the theatrical re-release of Tomboy) -- but while I enjoyed Portrait... Tomboy is the better film.
Portrait... strives to be 'grand' film with it's historical setting and panorama shots of the coast but it doesn't always reach its mark, often because it feels smaller and more intimate than the pompous costume it dons.
Yet, much like its central character (played to perfection by Zoé Héran), Tomboy knows exactly what it wants to be and reaches it, takes it, and makes it its home. It's simple, honest, and sincere which is precisely Sciamma's zone, and why Portrait felt the same despite its trappings.
The French deal extremely well with the concept of young children recognizing at a very early age that their birth gender isn't their real gender. Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink, 1997) broke ground in this area and remains a must-see in the genre, while Tomboy adds to it with a soul so pure it'll steal your breath.
I was hesitating between rating this an 8 or a 9 and then I remembered the scene where a naked young woman bangs the edge of a thick plate against her head and says, "I'm composing a song for the führer," while blood trickles down her face.
Never Look Away (Werk ohne Autor) is why I go to the cinema every day. Without this imposition, I surely would've let this long German film pass by unseen but, as it is, I witnessed this masterpiece unfold on the big screen in front of me, and now I'm imbued by its magic. German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others, 2007) continues to prove he is a master of his craft, and that English speaking countries haven't totally cornered the market on brilliant directing. Some of his scenes are so poignant they're tattooed inside of me like poems I've committed to memory.
Inspired by a true story (there's an informative, spoiler-ridden Wiki page about the film and its origins), Never Look Away has strong acting, tight plotting and breathtaking directing. I can't guarantee you the same experience as mine if you watch it on your laptop, but I can assure you that, cinematically, Never Look Away is a film in the truest sense of the word.
Open heart surgery performed by an artist. Adèle Exarchopoulos is the bravest storm I've ever seen. A masterpiece.
Like skinny dipping in a blood bath, I was all in.
Ti West took a slightly above average horror film and directed the fuck out of it to make it full of suspense, meaning, and frights.
I know this is getting a lot of comparisons to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but there's a lot of Psycho in it, too.
Easily the best horror movie I've seen so far this year.
Gonna tell my kids this is Wonder Woman 2.
What struck me during the second watch (in the theater, this time) was how incredible the writing is. The set up, scene placement and the intricate structure of the story is part of what makes this film so breath taking. Carey Mulligan is the rest...
Who is the most perfect person in the world and why is it Audrey Hepburn?
Tbh, the film is a solid 4/5, but my infatuation with Ms Hepburn bumps it up a notch for me.
