Not a remake – Liam Neeson is Leslie Nielsen’s son, so this is part four (or part ten if we count the TV series). A good joke every minute, can’t ask for more. Made by the same gang that did the Rescue Rangers reboot, weird. Muskian baddie is Danny Huston of Birth, his head thug is Kevin Durand of Resident Evil 5.
I knew this was a famed doc about door-to-door bible salesman, have previously seen multiple parodies of it, did not foresee a scene where a salesman gets lost in a Florida town designed like an Arabian Nights theme park. John Semley: “Sad men with no money bilking lonely housewives with slightly less money for salvation on the installment plan.”
Finally watching this after I meant to have a Mike Leigh double-feature in March but Secrets & Lies knocked me for such a loop I had to postpone this one. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is completely different here, an utterly miserable suburbanite, making life difficult for her family and everyone she comes across. “Cheerful grinning people, can’t stand them” brings to mind Harry Dean in Repo Man, or perhaps the opposite of Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky.
Her son Moses is quiet, bullied, an overgrown kid, gets a happy ending in the movie meeting another human who is respectful to him. Husband Curtley (David Webber of The Avengers) gets a terrible ending, throwing out his back at work then coming home to find her trying to kick him out of the house. Movie centers around a get-together with Marianne’s sister Michele Austin (also her sister in Lies?), whose two daughters have their own work problems but know how to behave pleasantly around family, unlike some people.
Bilge Ebiri in Vulture:
Hard Truths might be Leigh’s funniest film in a long time, but as always, it’s the kind of laughter that comes with an unnerving feeling that something is going horribly wrong … Even at their bleakest, Leigh’s pictures and his people explode with life. Some filmmakers make movies that feel like you could use them to reconstitute cinema if the art form ever vanished. Mike Leigh makes movies that feel like you could use them to reconstitute humanity if we ever vanished.
GdT’s third remake in a row, but excuse me, it’s less a remake of the 1930’s version than a new over-faithful adaptation of the novel. I watched at Movieland, with the new Emma and Yorgos playing next door, on their second victory lap after their smart, modern, oscar-winning semi-Frankenstein. Big physical acting from both men in this, but the superior second half following Monster Elordi can’t make up for a draggy first hour spent with Doctor Oscar. Script mostly bad, but I appreciate some del Toro touches (cool set design, the monster brought to life with a battery vest like a steampunk Iron Man). Did not appreciate the CG wolf fight, can’t recall whether the novel had so many explosions in it.
Tony Leung is a bad cop in Macau whose specialty is smashing people’s hands to pulp, and Sean “Mad Detective” Lau is a tough guy working for one of the two gangs under uberboss Mr. Lung. Better than the same year’s A Hero Never Dies, this is nonstop gangster double-crosses. It ends where all 90s action movies must end: in an exploding box warehouse that doubles as a Wellesian mirror trap, as the killers become each other. They both die unceremoniously, as Mr. Lung arranges to erase both gangs and take the territory for himself, only his undercover man Lam Suet surviving. The girl is PTU star Maggie Shiu, Mr. Lung is from God of Gamblers, and loose cannon Mark was in Peking Opera Blues.
Bad cops:
Bad ass:
Mark with crazy lighting:
“That frog ripped me off. Little asshole, little fucker.” Awkward shithead Tim Robinson gets invited to local rocker weatherman Paul Rudd’s friend group, blows it by being too weird and desperate and needy, loses his wife Kate Mara in a sewer adventure, ends up delusional in a squad car.
Aggro Fr13ndsh1p:
A half-hour cut-up musical about attempting to settle down during the subprime mortgage crisis, incredible.
Billy Woods released the best album of the year, and on the eve of his followup Mercy he surprise-releases a remix album and accompanying video. I had a very good time watching it.
In a blog first, K took a gowillog pilgrimage to Mork’s and brought back this photo:
Think I prefer Luci-Hadz’s bizarre movies where I don’t ever know what’s happening to the ones where a runaway girl hides out on a movie set, ending up as stand-in then rival to the movie’s diva star, the titular Ice Queen. Feels like they’re telling a story but not getting anywhere with it, all long pauses and people staring silently, while that approach seems to work for me if I’m as lost as the characters. Either way, Hadz has conjured another couple hours of splendid images.
Marion Cotillard (only the second time I’ve seen her in the last decade) is our Queen, Clara Pacini the runaway, August Diehl (A Hidden Life) a sinister assistant. The Ice Queen movie doubles as Clara’s childhood storytime and present fantasy world. There’s a crystal / refraction / kaleidoscope theme, the movie’s distorted ending recalling the fever dreams of Mysteries of Lisbon.
