The Resident Bitch's Movie Log

Sing (Christophe Lourdelet and Garth Jennings, 2016)
Imdb

Date Watched: 05/13/17
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: A friend gave me the bluray for my birthday
Rewatch: No.

If this had not been an animated movie with cute animal characters, I probably would've hated it. I don't watch American Idol or The Voice or any of the other singing/talent competition shows, because I find them irritating. I also avoided this movie at the theater because it looked a little too much like a musical.

But it was an animated movie with cute animal characters and it wasn't a musical. It was actually quite funny and the animation was rather well done. I genuinely laughed and enjoyed myself. I even liked the music. Granted, it's no Pixar movie. It didn't make me cry and I didn't have a strong emotional investment in the characters, but it was very entertaining.

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Robots (Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha, 2005)
Imdb

Date Watched: 05/13/17
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: I had a friend over and she wanted to watch it.
Rewatch: Yes.

I saw this movie in the theater many years ago and really enjoyed it, so I bought the DVD and watched maybe a couple more times, but I'd largely forgotten it since then. It doesn't have much of a reputation, I never see it get talked about, and probably haven't watched it in a decade, so it was almost as if I was watching it for the first time last night.

And I was in for a treat. The movie is really silly, but it's silly in all the right ways. It's full of eccentric characters and those characters inhabit a wildly imaginative world that often feels more like an amusement park than any sort of normal town. It also features a solid voice cast including Robin Williams, Ewan McGregor, Greg Kinnear, Halle Berry, Paul Giamatti, and Mel Brooks who do well to help keep the laughs coming.

Ultimately though, the story is light on substance or emotional impact, but that's not really a bad thing. Sometimes it's good to just have fun and I had a lot of fun watching this.

Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner, 1990)
Imdb

Date Watched: 05/14/17
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: 13th HOF, My Nomination
Rewatch: Of course.

Dances With Wolves is the epitome of the word epic. With its sweeping vistas, breathtaking cinematography, incredible score, attention to detail, and a story that is at once wonderfully uplifting and terribly heartbreaking, it is a film to be experienced and not merely watched.

Director, producer, and star Kevin Costner brings to his role of John Dunbar a certain charm, curiosity, and sensitivity that serve the character well and remind me why he was once my favorite actor. The other actors also did well to embody their characters with Graham Greene being a particular standout as the intelligent, level headed, and equally curious Kicking Bird. His interactions with Dunbar and with his wife were among my favorite scenes.

There is also a great sense of authenticity to what the film shows. It is not without creative license, historical inaccuracy, and romanticism, but it's apparent that great pains were taken to make everything feel real. The tipis and the costumes were made from naturally tanned and dyed buffalo hide, the actors - who were of different tribes - all learned to speak Lakota, and a herd of 3,000 bison was used in the hunting scene.

But what is most impressive about this film is its emotional impact - both in terms of the feelings it conveys and those it evokes. The writing, music, and camerawork all come together beautifully to capture a sense of longing and of loss - not just for the culture of the native peoples, but for the plains themselves and for the animals that inhabited them.

It also casts a harsh spotlight on the greed, selfishness, cruelty, and waste of the white soldiers and settlers of the time. Watching this film and seeing the frontier and its people through Dunbar's eyes I find it impossible not to feel the sense of disgust that he feels and also perhaps some shame over the history of my nation.

I've seen many people look down on this film because they find it unworthy of the accolades and awards it received (especially in comparison to a certain Martin Scorsese film), but movies like this are the very reason why I love movies. I want to be moved. I want to feel what the characters feel. I want to fall in love as they do. I want to laugh with them. I want to cry with them. And I want to come away from it all with the desire to go back to it again and again. Dances With Wolves does all of that.

Probably my next choice to watch, unless I rewatch my own first.

I gotta see Dances With Wolves again. Feel like I have it memorized but I am probably 15 years removed at this point. I have always loved it. Probably would have been in my top ten if I joined Mofo at age 20.

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Letterboxd

“Except for markf, you’re all a disgrace to cinema.”

I used to love Robots too back in the day when it came out. Haven't seen it in so long though.

You already know I love Dances with Wolves.

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/watching movies for mark f/
MovieMeditation's Cinema Reviews // Film Diary 2015 // Letterboxd Profile // MovieMeditation's Top 50 Horror

I like Goodfellas, but have room in my heart for both. Just like I do for Pulp Fiction and...gulp...Forrest Gump.

I just rewatched it last week. Yeah, it's great.

Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995)
Imdb

Date Watched: 05/19/17
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: I felt like it
Rewatch: Yes.

As much as I love children's animation and Pixar in particular, I've never been crazy about this movie. I respect what it represents in terms of the state of CG animation at the time and how it broke ground for many movies that came later. I also think it's a funny and entertaining film with excellent voice performances.

However, I just don't see what others see in it. It doesn't help that it was released during my anti-animation phase or that the first time I saw it I had to watch the Spanish dub (for a Spanish class in high school), but the biggest problem is that it just doesn't move me. Sure, it makes me laugh, but I can only engage with it on a very superficial level. It lacks the magic of some of the Pixar films that followed and no matter how many times I see it, I don't think I'll ever love it.

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P.S. I also rewatched Inner Workings and Moana, but my feelings on those haven't changed and I didn't feel like writing them up again.

I didn't care for any of the Toy Story movies

I actually really liked the third one but I found the second one kind of forgettable. I just don't get the rabid love of them that some people have.

True love for me.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I thought you'd rate that alot lower. Toy Story is good, it's my least favourite of the Trilogy but is still solid.

Bronson (Nicholas Winding Refn, 2008)
Imdb

Date Watched: 05/21/17
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: I got the blu ray for my birthday and felt like watching it
Rewatch: Yes

There's not a whole lot of substance to this tale of the infamous "Charles Bronson," Britain's most violent prisoner. However, there is a lot of style, a lot of violence, and an absolutely mesmerizing central performance.

Indeed this is my favorite performance from Tom Hardy and, no, getting to see quite literally all of him is not the reason (though it doesn't hurt ), but rather because I forget that I'm even watching him at all. He absolutely sinks his teeth into this role, infusing his performance with manic energy and a certain charm and charisma that is at once intriguing and frightening. I simply cannot take my eyes off him from start to finish and it makes for one very entertaining film watching experience.

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Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975)
Imdb

Date Watched: 05/25/17
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: I felt like watching something trashy
Rewatch: Yes

Mandingo is sort of like the Showgirls of the Antebellum South.

Judging by some of the reviews I've read on IMDb and elsewhere, there are people that would have you believe that this is a serious indictment of the cruelty and hypocrisy in the American South during the time of slavery, both in terms of the treatment of the slaves and the inequality of the sexes among the whites.

But it really is a poorly written, even more poorly acted (especially from Susan George), campy AF excuse to portray interracial sex, rape, and incest. But I'm not complaining. Perry King looked great naked. There's lots of boobs for those who want them and I suppose fans of boxing might also find it interesting to see Ken Norton try (and fail) to act. But mostly it's just a cross between a softcore porno and a sh!tty romance novel.

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Drum (Steve Carver and Burt Kennedy, 1976)
Imdb

Date Watched: 05/25/17
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: I felt like watching more trash
Rewatch: No

This is supposed to be a sequel to Mandingo, but it only kind of is. The movie is based on Drum, the novel by Kyle Onstott, which is the sequel to the novel Mandingo (and is among many in the Falconhurst series). However, its links to the first movie are tenuous at best.

Ken Norton returns in the lead - a mulatto slave who is the son of a white madam - but this is a different character than his role in the first film. Brenda Sykes returns as well, also playing a different character. The only returning character is Hammond Maxwell, but he bears almost no resemblance to the Hammond Maxwell of the first film, either in appearance or behavior. We're also introduced to Maxwell's daughter Sophy, who is given little explanation for her existence (the character appeared as in infant in the novel Mandingo but was omitted from the film).

Not that any of this really matters, because the story wasn't my reason for watching either film. I wanted trash and I got it, though even in that regard the film was a bit of a disappointment. The film turned the white-woman-wanting-black-men bit up a few notches, threw in a lesbian scene, and gay male characters (villains ) but still managed to be far less titillating than the first despite the abundance of ti... I mean, breasts.

I don't really like the film Bronson that much but Hardy is great. It's my favourite of his too.

Yea Hardy was great but I was very disappointed in the movie.

I've definitely considered using your avatar after a 'sick burn', it's the best because it seems like you ran away without hearing anything: you just did the off

By 'you' i meant me for the record.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, 2017)
Imdb

Date Watched: 05/29/17
Cinema or Home: Cinema
Reason For Watching: Pirates, also Johnny Depp
Rewatch: No.

I was among the few who actually enjoyed the fourth installment of this series - due in no small part to the absence of a certain actor who made his name playing an elf. So it was not with celebration that I greeted the news of that elf's return to this franchise.

Mercifully, his role is very small and the film keeps its focus on Jack Sparrow and on the new undead villain, played with relish by Javier Bardem. Also mercifully, the film does not linger too long on bland newcomers Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario who play the next generation of POTC sidekicks.

There's nothing groundbreaking going on this film, but I had a good time with it because I wasn't expecting anything revolutionary. It's just a fun action adventurer with some cool special effects and an iconic lead character. It's nowhere near as good as the original, but a fun watch nevertheless.

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