Movies, July 2017
Aug. 5th, 2017 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI managed not to finish any nonfiction last month, so there will be no post for that (um, except this one). I did see some movies, though.
33-"Fate of the Furious" (2017) (Vin Diesel, Jasen Statham, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Charlize Theron, etc.) - bad guy blackmails Dom into doing evil, including working against his team; but although he doesn't manage to warn his team about any of this (grrr), he does manage to get help. Lots of car crashes, some races in the city, some on ice. This is the one with a fleet of computer-controlled cars used for evil, including making it rain by driving out of 6th-floor parking garages.
34-"House of 72 Tenants" (1973) (available with subtitles and commentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NPkVigLD9o) - According to one reviewer the movie is based on "a stage comedy created in Shanghai in 1945 and set in that city." Mean landlady and landlord enjoy hurting other people, but since this is a comedy, they keep ending up hurting themselves instead. Actually, the whole movie is about the other residents doing everything they can to help each other deal with these two, their crooked cop friend, and other troubles.
Quotes:
"Why didn't you apply for a license [to sell olives]?" "Applying for a license is like begging." (There was lots of bureaucracy involved, so it was very time- and money-consuming, if you could get a license at all.)
"I'm not her real daughter. She bought me when I was nine years old." Yikes!
Firefighters: "Cash equal splash; no cash, no splash. You pay, we spray; no pay, no spray!"
Vaudevillian humor is not my thing. But I did like the part where every time a new character appeared, Chinese characters appear on the screen explaining who was playing that character--this happened pretty much throughout the entire movie.
On culture:
There was lots of inflation.
People lined up at the spigot for water every morning.
There were many forms of monetary exchange: rice packets, gold bars, regular money (yuan, aka yen?) and Hong Kong dollars (much more stable).
Mostly we just saw the courtyard with several windows looking out onto it and a few staircases. We saw the inside of two rooms, the best one and the one where they had stuck a loft bed onto a wall so they could rent to an additional person. We also see the alley.
35-"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" (2014) (dir. Ana Lily Amirpour; Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi), set in "Bad City," Iran - A film noir vampire movie with hints of many other genres. Evil drug dealer/pimp steals non-paying customer's son's car. Then a mysterious woman enters the scene. Actually, I get the idea she never walks alone. I really wished people talked more in this movie. It's like poetry--pretty, but I don't know what it means. I really like that car with the round windows. Farsi/Persian sounds bizarrely like French to me (I looked it up and discovered that it is in the Indo-European family, though it uses the Arabic alphabet).
36-"Colossal" (2016) (Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis) (set mostly in the US, partly in Korea) - Jobless loser party girl gets dumped and moves back to her parents' empty house, where she may or may not stop drinking and may or may not get involved with somebody new, all in a sci fi context. Apparently, I think Korean sounds like Japanese, and then when a giant monster walks the streets, I know it's Japan because that's where those kinds of monsters are found. Wrong! Korea is not safe! The movie was well-done but disturbing (there is abuse in this movie).
37-"Eraser" (1996) (Arnold Schwartzenegger, Vanessa Williams, James Caan) - Witness Protection Program expert has a difficult case when the bad guys are high-tech weapons manufacturers. Basic over-the-top action movie. Parachute-fu, refrigerator defense-fu, computer-fu and use of strategically located sharp things. Very fancy guns. Favorite one-liners: "They missed." And "You're luggage."
38-"Atomic Blonde" (2017) (Charlize Theron, James McAvoy) - Spy goes to East Berlin in 1989 (just before the Berlin wall comes down) to help the station chief retrieve an important list of spies after Russians killed another spy for it. Lots of action and intrigue. Too much violence for my taste, very realistic and painful looking. Also, how did she get all those coats (at least four) and giant high-heeled shoes, let alone all those outfits, into one carry-on bag?
39-"Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" (2017) (Dir. Luc Besson; Cara Delevingne, Dane DeHaan, Rihanna) - There's trouble in the multi-cultural complex that grew from the Soyuz project. The first few minutes showing the history of that project (as seen from the future) is fun. The fighting suit is fun (it has weapons, flying shoes, protective devices, and more). The aliens are interesting, and they aren't even all humanoid, though most of the ones involved in the plot are. I kept wondering why the title included "Valerian" who seemed no more important than "Laureline," though. Then I read in the credits that it's based on a comic called "Valerian and Laureline," a much better title. The sociologist in me was also annoyed by other things. How can you have that many cultures, sharing all that science, and none of it is social science? There is still slavery and genocide and a person who prefers death over embarrassment (especially other people's deaths). And the folks on the paradise planet seemed to not do much all day, yet were super amazingly smart and wise, which I find evolutionarily unlikely.
33-"Fate of the Furious" (2017) (Vin Diesel, Jasen Statham, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Charlize Theron, etc.) - bad guy blackmails Dom into doing evil, including working against his team; but although he doesn't manage to warn his team about any of this (grrr), he does manage to get help. Lots of car crashes, some races in the city, some on ice. This is the one with a fleet of computer-controlled cars used for evil, including making it rain by driving out of 6th-floor parking garages.
34-"House of 72 Tenants" (1973) (available with subtitles and commentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NPkVigLD9o) - According to one reviewer the movie is based on "a stage comedy created in Shanghai in 1945 and set in that city." Mean landlady and landlord enjoy hurting other people, but since this is a comedy, they keep ending up hurting themselves instead. Actually, the whole movie is about the other residents doing everything they can to help each other deal with these two, their crooked cop friend, and other troubles.
Quotes:
"Why didn't you apply for a license [to sell olives]?" "Applying for a license is like begging." (There was lots of bureaucracy involved, so it was very time- and money-consuming, if you could get a license at all.)
"I'm not her real daughter. She bought me when I was nine years old." Yikes!
Firefighters: "Cash equal splash; no cash, no splash. You pay, we spray; no pay, no spray!"
Vaudevillian humor is not my thing. But I did like the part where every time a new character appeared, Chinese characters appear on the screen explaining who was playing that character--this happened pretty much throughout the entire movie.
On culture:
There was lots of inflation.
People lined up at the spigot for water every morning.
There were many forms of monetary exchange: rice packets, gold bars, regular money (yuan, aka yen?) and Hong Kong dollars (much more stable).
Mostly we just saw the courtyard with several windows looking out onto it and a few staircases. We saw the inside of two rooms, the best one and the one where they had stuck a loft bed onto a wall so they could rent to an additional person. We also see the alley.
35-"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" (2014) (dir. Ana Lily Amirpour; Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi), set in "Bad City," Iran - A film noir vampire movie with hints of many other genres. Evil drug dealer/pimp steals non-paying customer's son's car. Then a mysterious woman enters the scene. Actually, I get the idea she never walks alone. I really wished people talked more in this movie. It's like poetry--pretty, but I don't know what it means. I really like that car with the round windows. Farsi/Persian sounds bizarrely like French to me (I looked it up and discovered that it is in the Indo-European family, though it uses the Arabic alphabet).
36-"Colossal" (2016) (Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis) (set mostly in the US, partly in Korea) - Jobless loser party girl gets dumped and moves back to her parents' empty house, where she may or may not stop drinking and may or may not get involved with somebody new, all in a sci fi context. Apparently, I think Korean sounds like Japanese, and then when a giant monster walks the streets, I know it's Japan because that's where those kinds of monsters are found. Wrong! Korea is not safe! The movie was well-done but disturbing (there is abuse in this movie).
37-"Eraser" (1996) (Arnold Schwartzenegger, Vanessa Williams, James Caan) - Witness Protection Program expert has a difficult case when the bad guys are high-tech weapons manufacturers. Basic over-the-top action movie. Parachute-fu, refrigerator defense-fu, computer-fu and use of strategically located sharp things. Very fancy guns. Favorite one-liners: "They missed." And "You're luggage."
38-"Atomic Blonde" (2017) (Charlize Theron, James McAvoy) - Spy goes to East Berlin in 1989 (just before the Berlin wall comes down) to help the station chief retrieve an important list of spies after Russians killed another spy for it. Lots of action and intrigue. Too much violence for my taste, very realistic and painful looking. Also, how did she get all those coats (at least four) and giant high-heeled shoes, let alone all those outfits, into one carry-on bag?
39-"Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" (2017) (Dir. Luc Besson; Cara Delevingne, Dane DeHaan, Rihanna) - There's trouble in the multi-cultural complex that grew from the Soyuz project. The first few minutes showing the history of that project (as seen from the future) is fun. The fighting suit is fun (it has weapons, flying shoes, protective devices, and more). The aliens are interesting, and they aren't even all humanoid, though most of the ones involved in the plot are. I kept wondering why the title included "Valerian" who seemed no more important than "Laureline," though. Then I read in the credits that it's based on a comic called "Valerian and Laureline," a much better title. The sociologist in me was also annoyed by other things. How can you have that many cultures, sharing all that science, and none of it is social science? There is still slavery and genocide and a person who prefers death over embarrassment (especially other people's deaths). And the folks on the paradise planet seemed to not do much all day, yet were super amazingly smart and wise, which I find evolutionarily unlikely.