CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Watched in 2021 list
3 years, 7 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Watched in 2021 list
3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Watched in 2021 list
3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Watched in 2021 list
3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Albums Heard in 2021 list
3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Albums Heard in 2021 list
3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Albums Heard in 2021 list
3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Re-Watched in 2021 list
3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Watched in 2021 list
3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Watched in 2021 list
March 17th
Directed by: Emerald Fennell
What a trip. How could a movie that for the entire first hour inspired near hatred from me sort of manage to turn it around by the end? Well, let's talk about that first half. It begins as the most "men bad" movie I've ever seen, literally everyone is over-the-top horrible, and while every situation presented is a very real and serious one, I appreciate the sentiment, but the approach is entirely cartoonish. Maybe that's intentional. The presentation is so strange, especially contrasted with the second half, we have this sort of vignette style, which other than just sort of telling you what the character is about, and slowly cluing you into the main thrust of the story, the events of these vignettes have (mostly) no bearing on where that story goes. In these moments I was ready to call this one of the worst movies I've seen, music, dialogue, acting, story, all bad, to reiterate; possibly intentionally bad. The one scene I liked was the one with the school dean, and I had to try to ignore a lot of bad acting and dialogue to enjoy it.
Now, the second half. It's almost an entirely different movie but we've established our protagonist. I realize those scenes I said had no bearing taught me details that make revelations in this section of the story feel natural. I'm engaged. There is a particular scene involving a licensed piece of music that is entirely iconic and transcends this movie as it's own little piece of art. This movie is very detailed and thought out. I like how this movie never does what you expect it to, but I think people who aren't like me and were enjoying the entire ride would find that ending pretty unsatisfying. I did too, but mostly because I don't think it makes any sense at all. I'm willing to be proven wrong on this.
In conclusion, I think this movie is pretty important, and my reaction to it honestly has me a little shaken. I'm really reflecting on myself, and it's amazing that I went from calling this a turd to the moment I'm in now. I don't feel like I can assign a star rating to this, so I'm going right down the middle. If someone were to ask me my opinion of this movie, well, the more I think about it, the more I think my opinion doesn't really matter.
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3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Watched in 2021 list
March 16th
Directed by: Shaka King
If you're watching all the Best Picture nominees I recommend watching this one BEFORE Trial of the Chicago 7.
So it's another "based on true events", but this movie feels theatrical, I'm sitting here watching this on a laptop but I felt like I was in a theater at times, I got really sucked into the atmosphere. The story here is tragic and fascinating and the director actually DID something with it outside of just portraying events. It's kind of amazing this film is allowed to exist, this is the sort of thing were it made in China or something would just get shut down, this is a tremendous indictment relevant to a systemic problem that is extremely relevant now.
Feels wrong to say this after that but I didn't love this as a movie. It's overlong, a lot of scenes drag, it's got good ambiance but I wasn't engaged most of the time. Lakeith is revelatory though, should be Best Actor but Best Supporting, let's gooo.
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3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Watched in 2021 list
March 16th
Directed by: Aaron Sorkin
I'm asking way too much of The Oscars at this point, but if we could have one year without a "based on true events" movie... I mean the fact there are no direct biopics this year is a miracle but it's tiring. I'm conflicted because I enjoy learning things, and I learned a whole lot from this movie, this sort of film has it's place but I don't think that place is amongst what's considered the best of the year.
Now to talk about this movie specifically, it definitely stands above your average "one of these". I do wonder about the accuracy of the dialogue, if this was taken straight from court records then... well, damn, because it definitely felt too bombastic to be real. I have been proven wrong many times before on such claims.
Sacha Baron Cohen is amazingly terrible, Redmayne is so good that he dips into being bad, and the rest of the cast, I dunno, sure. Nobody feels even remotely real, it's really strange but sort of adds to the overall production, which, is good for some intrinsic reason that I cannot suss out. So, the story is really interesting, the acting is "good", the presentation in general is engaging, but does it have value as a FILM? Thinking about this movie is breaking my brain.
This is a very good movie with important history to tell. Now it's very obvious where the film stands politically so I can't help but think some of this is embellished, which is slightly dangerous but I think in this case, good natured, the focus seems to waver in the end but that's the product of being based on things that really happened. But to your average person who doesn't torture themselves thinking about this shit, who doesn't spend all their time on Letterboxd, this is just a really good movie.
I'm not even going back to proofread this, I dunno what the fuck happened here but here you go.
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3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Movies Watched in 2021 list
March 15th
Directed by: Lee Isaac Chung
I had no idea where the story was going at any point really, which is a good thing as I expected some somewhat predictable story beats to happen, none of which did, nothing really feels like it's driving in a particular direction, just flowing free. While I don't think there was a particular powerful message trying to be delivered here, there were a lot of powerful little moments. Part of me wants to say it's a little bit insubstantial, just a nice movie you watch and forget about, I think it's just because I can't directly relate to the situation, but I do realize and appreciate this is a beautiful little window into Korean culture, and no other of the many Korean films I've seen has given me specifically this.
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3 years, 8 months ago
CD Smiles added 1 item to Albums Heard in 2021 list
3 years, 8 months ago