Let's Talk Movies #36 - 2020 - Yep it is a new decade

MacMadame

Doing all the things
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58,289
Has anyone seen the re-released Spider-man? Are there enough new scenes to make it worth seeing in the theater or should I wait for it to show up on Disney+?
 

Buzz

Socialist Canada
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37,309
I haven’t seen it yet but would like to see it soon. However the movie is on Amazon Prime and not coming to Disney+ anytime soon. :( ( Unless Sony sells their movie business)
 

watchthis!!

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Has anyone seen the re-released Spider-man? Are there enough new scenes to make it worth seeing in the theater or should I wait for it to show up on Disney+?

I saw the re-release, but didn't see the movie when it first came out. I did check online to see if there were any after credit scenes which I should stick around for. As far as what I learned from that search, there is only one additional scene at the very end of the movie which only lasts one minute or so. It's the blonde girl who does the high school news. Various clips are show from past high school events...all with Peter Parker completely absent. Not removed digitally from any of the photos, everyone is posed as if they were the only people that were ever there. There is no empty space where Peter Parker could have been in the photo. He never existed.

Oh, and there's a poorly filmed introduction with Tom Holland alon with Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire. It seems improvised and is meant to be funny, but none of them seem skilled in improvisation and it's not that funny. Kinda awkward in a slightly sad way.

I was surprised to see that the movie is two hours and 28 minutes long. Wow! At wikipedia, it says the movie is that length is 148 minutes. I'm assuming this is the length of the original release...so the same. Wikipedia discusses the changes:


If the run time is the same, maybe they edited out poorly received scenes and added some "fun stuff"?
 

watchthis!!

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1,774
Who's looking forward to the new movie starring Reese Shearsmith, Charlie Cooper, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Pearl Chanda, Harris Dickinson, Sian Clifford and Jacob Fortune-Lloyd?

These were the name on a movie poster I saw this summer at the theatre. Perhaps these are household names in England?? (Certainly not in Canada.) Weird way to promote a movie. Maybe that's the promotion? :lol:

Luckily for this movie (See How They Run), it also stars Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson, Shirley Henderson and Dave Oyelowo. Surely that's enough star power to not have to go on to list all those other newbies. You would think six should have their names in a larger font on the movie poster rather than having to share with seven others which make our faces go :confused:
 

PeterG

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13,624
Official Secrets is quite a good 2019 with a powerful cast that somehow slipped through the movie-going public's fingers. Maybe there aren't enough car crashes and people wearing superhero outfits in this movie? Keira Knightley stars as Katharine Gunn, who works for a government agency which tracks people who could possibly be a threat to Britain. A memo is sent to herself (and all her co-workers) in regards to finding information on United Nations personnel from countries who are not voting in agreement with the USA and Great Britain to declare war on Iraq. She objects to finding and using information to make countries vote differently than how they feel is right to vote. She manages to get the memo leaked to the press and then things begin to crumble around her.

The themes of this movie are heavy on varying levels, but director Gavin Hood doesn't overdo the anxiety-inducing aspects of this story, so we don't become overwhelmed with the situation this young woman ends up in. Knightley carries the movie very well and in supporting roles we are bless with the presence of Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Northam. Their presence is enough to see this movie, but we also get a smart, crisp script and Hood's top-notch direction.

Trailer for Official Secrets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t64H3S7r4wo
 

PeterG

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13,624
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is a fantastic 2016 documentary about a family-owned community bank that serves the Chinese community in Manhattan. And it’s the only financial institution to face charges stemming from the mortgage crisis in the late 2000’s. As I was watching this movie, I was thinking that I had seen it before. I think this is true, but the movie is so well made that I kept watching. And I think I enjoyed it more the second time. Partly because the topic is basically over my head, so I understood things better this time. And this story is overwhelming on various levels, so a second viewing softened that blow as well.

This movie was nominated for best documentary at the 2018 Oscars and also won an Emmy award. The director is Steve James who was Oscar-nominated in 1994 for the sports documentary Hoop Dreams. James also wrote and directed the drama Prefontaine, which starred Jared Leto and Ed O’Neill. “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail” has a 93% approval rating from critics on rottentomatoes.com and the audience scored it at an 84% approval rating.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUiboO7bLg0
 

Seerek

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5,780
Who's looking forward to the new movie starring Reese Shearsmith, Charlie Cooper, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Pearl Chanda, Harris Dickinson, Sian Clifford and Jacob Fortune-Lloyd?

These were the name on a movie poster I saw this summer at the theatre. Perhaps these are household names in England?? (Certainly not in Canada.) Weird way to promote a movie. Maybe that's the promotion? :lol:

Luckily for this movie (See How They Run), it also stars Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson, Shirley Henderson and Dave Oyelowo. Surely that's enough star power to not have to go on to list all those other newbies. You would think six should have their names in a larger font on the movie poster rather than having to share with seven others which make our faces go :confused:

The one name that did stick out from the first list was Sian Clifford due to her work on Fleabag as Phoebe's sister. And even then, her screentime ended up pretty limited in the film.

Given the genre of the film, I actually think that was an interesting marketing tactic to set up the framework of there being quite the large number of "suspects", but not giving much away as to "whodunit" from the getgo.

Not to give too many spoilers , but Shirley Henderson was so underutilized as Agatha - she was incorporated far too late in the movie to be of any impact, imo.
 

watchthis!!

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1,774
Tina is a 2021 HBO documentary about Tina Turner (also available on DVD). I felt I knew pretty much everything about the singer, so I was only expecting the movie to be a "warm blanket" kind of viewing. Well, relatively speaking considering how tough her life has been. So I was surprised to be surprised! :lol: Some new info in the second half of the movie, some of it a bit shocking. (And the stuff we already know about her life is rather shocking.) So I definitely recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Tina.
 

Cachoo

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10,751
I think the best movie experiences are when you are merely passing time and then the film you are watching unexpectedly blows you away. That happened today with "Vengeance" on Peacock. I liked BJ Novak in "The Office" but knew little about him beyond that show. He wrote, directed and stars in this film. Just when you think this film will zig, it zags and then does back flips. I thought it would be utterly predictable with big city sophisticate, small town folk vibes and I was wrong. That is there certainly but this film is much, much more given where we are as a nation at the moment. And one more thing--I never in my life thought I would type this phrase: Ashton Kutcher was brilliant in this film.
 

Cachoo

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10,751
First...think Contact---when Jodi Foster made contact with alien lifeforms using the latest and best technology at that time.
Then think Apollo 13-- when a dire problem had to be solved using limited resources in a lunar module. If you liked those two films or the ideas behind them you might enjoy Cosmos about three British scientists/ physicists out for an evening of sky watching who might have stumbled on the discovery of a lifetime and are saddled with the problems proving a possible discovery. I am not familiar with the cast of four and realized by the end of the film that it needed no one else. Very entertaining and on HULU.
 

vgerdes

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675
I just saw "The Woman King." I can see this winning quite a few awards come Oscars time. Strong acting, gorgeous cinematography and costuming, choreography on the fight scenes was top notch. I found it moving, at times. But there were also times when I found it highly annoying. For instance, the romance between two of the younger characters (not to give away too much of the plot) felt like it was forced in there to create additional drama and 'spice things up.' It was unnecessary and distracting. So while I liked the movie overall, I didn't love it.
 

Cachoo

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10,751
Is anyone paying attention to the marketing campaign for “Smile?” Clever, clever boys and girls…
 

watchthis!!

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1,774
I just saw "The Woman King." I can see this winning quite a few awards come Oscars time. Strong acting, gorgeous cinematography and costuming, choreography on the fight scenes was top notch. I found it moving, at times. But there were also times when I found it highly annoying. For instance, the romance between two of the younger characters (not to give away too much of the plot) felt like it was forced in there to create additional drama and 'spice things up.' It was unnecessary and distracting. So while I liked the movie overall, I didn't love it.

I agree with all the positive things you said about this movie. But I LOOOOOOVED it! Based on the trailer, I wasn't getting my expectations up. (I thought it was going to be a run of the mill war/action pic.) And from your hesitant thumbs up, I lowered my hopes again. So I was surprised to really, REALLY like this movie. I think it stands a decent chance to get Oscar nominations in every category possible. My nomination hopes:

Best Film
Best Actress
Best Director (Gina Prince-Bythewood)
Best Screenplay (Dana Stevens, who also wrote 1998's City Of Angels)
Best Supporting Actress (Thuso Mbedu as Nawi)

...along with Best Score, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Costume Design and Best Film Editing. It will be interesting to see how it does come nomination time.

I loved this movie partly because it succeeds on so many levels. Not just as a movie itself, but thematically it is challenging, but not threatening. It opens up the world of movies to more stories like this and serves as an introduction for more overwhelming topics. And it's about women, stars women, is directed by a woman, written by a woman and produced by a 50/50 female/male production team. And a large number of other big behind the scenes roles are by women. They have all done such a fabulous job.
 

Vash01

Fan of Yuzuru, T&M, P&C
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55,385
On my flight back from Scandinavia I watched Jerry McGuire. I had seen it in the theatre but I was surprised by how little I remembered. Tom Cruise and CubaGooding Jr. were both excellent. Entertaining movie and it was fun to watch our Arizona Cardinals as part of the story.
 

MacMadame

Doing all the things
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58,289
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. It's amazing. I would say as close to perfect as a movie ever gets. They really handled the multiverse stuff in a way that enhanced the movie rather than being a gimmick to cover up the story's flaws. I would say it's more of a movie about familial relationships and dealing with your life choices than it is about the multiverse.

I love the MCU but they could learn a trick or two from this movie.
 

vgerdes

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675
I loved this movie partly because it succeeds on so many levels. Not just as a movie itself, but thematically it is challenging, but not threatening. It opens up the world of movies to more stories like this and serves as an introduction for more overwhelming topics. And it's about women, stars women, is directed by a woman, written by a woman and produced by a 50/50 female/male production team. And a large number of other big behind the scenes roles are by women. They have all done such a fabulous job.
I wanted to love it. And there were parts of it that I did. But it felt as though the writers decided to throw a romance in there because they didn't think the main plot would be a strong enough "draw" without one, which did it a disservice, IMO. It annoyed me enough to sway my overall opinion from "loved it" to "liked it a lot."
 

Jay42

Between the click of the light
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5,051
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. It's amazing. I would say as close to perfect as a movie ever gets. They really handled the multiverse stuff in a way that enhanced the movie rather than being a gimmick to cover up the story's flaws. I would say it's more of a movie about familial relationships and dealing with your life choices than it is about the multiverse.

I love the MCU but they could learn a trick or two from this movie.
It's genuinely one of my favourite movies of all time. Easily one of the best movies I've ever seen. I just want all my friends to watch it and while most of my online friends have, my offline ones haven't and I can't keep telling them how much they're missing out. But they are.
 

MacMadame

Doing all the things
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58,289
I can't keep telling them how much they're missing out.
You can! Don't give up! :lol:

I really do love stories about mother and daughter relationships, especially ones where they are dealing with the daughter growing up and becoming their own person. Also, the idea that being ordinary can be a power too.
 

Cachoo

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10,751
I think "Everything..." will always have a loyal following much in the way "The Princess Bride" does---it will be celebrated on important anniversaries and we might see retrospectives about it one day.
 

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