Movies you have watched in 2021

Invasion (2020). Russian film more interesting in order to see their version of the propaganda sci-fi and action films usually espouse. Given the money they were working with, the special effects are something else. It's part 2 in the Attraction series but they recap everything that happens in the first one so don't worry about it.

I like the prison cooking scene...
 

Tonight I watched KUNDUN (1997), for the first time. No way you could ever guess this was a Martin Scorsese film. I haven’t researched it at all but I’m betting it did not go over well in the US. But it is a very impressive piece of work. I was quite taken with it. It’s a beautiful production and masterfully photographed with an excellent cast. I recommend it. 9,5/10.

(The opening sequence is composed of sand mandalas, as is the closing. Strangely, Eli watched the first 15-minutes very intently, something he never does with films. He’ll watch the first few seconds and then go to his couch and go to sleep. But tonight he sat next to my chair and watched with unwavering attention. Perhaps he is a Buddhist. If so, he is a warrior monk. ...)

I enjoyed that movie. Very different style of picture for S.

We saw Kundun at the theater when it came out. Don't remember much but we liked it.

I was 13 and hiding out in the theater when I saw it but I remember it being a really slow movie. I'm guessing I wasn't the target audience. Scorsese has a couple of films like that one where he slows things down and tries to center on nature, textures and colors. I'm thinking of Silence and that other one with Deniro as a priest in the woods.

I watched "Coming to America" (1988) today.
I hadn't watched it in a long while.
Hilarious.

I guess they are about to release a brand new sequel soon.
It'll be interesting to see how the "cancel culture" receives it.

Watched THE MULE last night. Clint Eastwood. Enjoyable. Clint sure has come a long way from Rowdy Yates. (He’s a 90YO drug-deliverer for a cartel.)

Blond hair and blue eyes everywhere.

I resemble that remark! Hahaha

About 15 years ago, I spent a few months in Idaho and there's some beautiful scenery there. Good people and bad, just like everywhere.

That was a good movie - based on a true story.

Watched DUNKIRK tonight, for the second time. Was very disappointed the first time through. Same reaction this time. A disjointed film with no clear focus. About 330,000 men were rescued from Dunkirk but the director chooses to rely on long shots of almost empty beaches. A line here, a line there. Squads, platoons, companies (maybe that many) but nowhere does he bring our attention to the sheer masses that were taken off the beach. Some really exciting aerial stuff takes up a large part of the film. Superb footage of Spitfires in action. But as great as that was, that was NOT the drama of Dunkirk. The whole film feels small, miniature, constricted. With small, miniature episodes about relatively small events. Entertaining as a film, but a failure as a depiction of Dunkirk IMO. See it, by all means. But don't expect too much.

Nolan had a real problem: How to show the scope and the masses of Dunkirk. No budget for 100,000 extras (and costumes!) evidently. (Where is Cecil B. DeMille when you need him?) But considering some of the wonderful CGI in the aircraft sequences you would think he could have pulled off a couple of longshots showing the massive compaction of panicked humanity waiting to be taken off and THEN done the small-group stuff. The closest he comes is with scenes of the packed mole, but even they don't really come off.  Lots of continuity confusion, too. One scene is in bright daylight and the one immediately following is nightime. The final Spitfire scene, with Tom Hardy as Farrier the pilot, shows him running our of fuel as the hero-civilian yacht captain heads back for England. The yacht arrives in England at night and then we shift back to Farrier, in daylight, finally landing his fuelless Spit on the beach at Dunkirk. Creative transitions, I suppose, but they are jarring and just plain do not work. Such potential, but kinda frittered away. Maybe I've read too much about the actual events to be a good critic of this film.

I didn't like the way it was filmed. Wasn't in chronological order. They kept jumping back and forth. Hard to follow.

Love the original Midway. People don't understand that Midway, even though early in the war in the Pacific, sealed the fate of the Japanese. The Japanese navy never recovered.