list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

It's been a very courtly period in film and TV between The Crown, Bridgerton, and now this fictionalized & microscopic account of Lady Diana later in her life while the catastrophic reality of being a royal had begun affecting her mental health.   Up close and personal, Spencer is perhaps a bit too intimate, largely biased, and without doubt strictly from Diana's tortured perspective.   What we get is a painful, somewhat warped fable about a life that was neither real nor false, and a cautionary tale about desiring a fairy princess existence.

 

Another one of those end-of-the-world films where some celestial object is going to crash into the Earth (this time an interstellar comet broken apart into hundreds of pieces). Probably the most notable member of the cast is Morena Baccarin (of Firefly fame). The story is mostly about a family struggling to get to a bunker built at a U.S. military base in Greenland designed to withstand a nuclear war. I'm a bit critical on the science used in this film, but won't go into it due to spoilers. The family dynamics and the struggles they are dealing with may seem over the top at times, but I feel Baccarin and Gerard Butler do a fairly nice job in their roles. I like this one better than Deep Impact and Armageddon. Overall I would give this 7.5/10, maybe even 8/10.

One of the more bizarre films I've watched in recent months. This is about a black telemarketer that develops a "white voice" to succeed at his job and is given the opportunity to climb the corporate ladder but at great sacrifice to his loyalties to his co-workers who are organizing a labor union and his girlfriend. The movie gets more and more bizarre as he discovers his boss is making horse people to replace the labor force and eventually comes to the realization that there are more important things to life then power and money. A nicely done surreal satire/black comedy on corporate power/poorly-treated worker relationships and the dark side of capitalism that has many parallels in American society. Fans of Gilliam's Brazil might like this. 8/10

It's not what you'd think from that summary and it heads in an unexpected way. Really well acted too and the young boys playing the brothers were excellent. 8/10

The production and effects are fine but the story and action is less than stellar....and it's too long. 

Angelina Jolie phoned in her part and is wasted in this minor Marvel entry.

5/10

Licorice Pizza by Paul Thomas Anderson (2021)

Rather disappointing actually, especially compared to the masterpieces he's made before. A basic love story that he tries to make extraordinary, but the treatment is not enough going over-the-top, or just too much, to make it (in)credible and/or sufficiently entertaining throughout. Not bad, but there's much lacking of his special treatment that he gave to his earlier films. Is it because the actors are not of the same caliber as a Daniel Day-Lewis or a Philip Seymour Hoffman or a Julianne Moore...? Maybe. I'm not convinced by this film.

Madres paralelas (Parallel Mothers), Pedro Almodóvar (2021)

Saw this one already in December, and it is worth mentioning here... If you like the films of Almodóvar then don't hesitate to watch this one. It has maybe not the strength of Volver, Hable con ella or Todo sobre mi madre, to name just these, but it is a great film. As always, the cast and actor direction are very solid. Another splendid role by Penelope Cruz, this time accompanied by the as much convincing Milena Smit, and several solid second roles. The script might look a bit "artificial", combining the story of mistakenly exchanged babies with the Franquist history of Spain, in the hands of Almodóvar it becomes a convincing film. Recommended.

Another Netflix movie , this one starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a 911 police operator who has to deal with an abduction of a women by her partner (voiced by Peter Sargaard although you never see him) . I do like a lot of a Gyllenhaal films (including of course classic cult film Donnie Darko) and this one doesn't let down. Great performance from Gyllenhaal and the story is more interesting than I expected rising it above the 'popcorn movie' that it might otherwise just have been. Another plus for me is that it runs to 90 minutes only but that all is needed (other film makers take note!) 9/10