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Apparently in Japan one can rent substitute people. If one’s father has died one can rent a man from the agency who acts like the dead father. Believe it or not, it’s true & this is what the movie is about. Non-professional actors & the lead “actor” is actually the owner of such an agency. It’s a good movie.




Avoided this movie for decades. Thought it would be horrible. It’s not & I enjoyed it. Streep very good as an Italian woman who came to America a long time ago.




Waited for something - anything - to happen in this movie, but it never did.
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DOG DAY AFTERNOON
(1975, Lumet)



"Well, I'm talking to you. We're entertainment, right? What do you got for us?"

Set in a hot summer day in New York, Dog Day Afternoon follows Sonny (Al Pacino) as he tries to rob a bank along with his friend Sal (John Cazale). However, what is supposed to be a simple robbery goes all wrong, and ends up putting the spotlight on the two amateur robbers, as it all becomes a media spectacle.

Despite the spectacle around them, the film doesn't treat these characters like "superstars", but rather makes an effort to showcase their humanity. Sonny and Sal are not robbers, that much is evident. They're humans, they're lovers, husbands, friends; just ordinary people that are driven to incredible events because of the circumstances around them.

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot and the HOF30.
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DOG DAY AFTERNOON
(1975, Lumet)





Set in a hot summer day in New York, Dog Day Afternoon follows Sonny (Al Pacino) as he tries to rob a bank along with his friend Sal (John Cazale). However, what is supposed to be a simple robbery goes all wrong, and ends up putting the spotlight on the two amateur robbers, as it all becomes a media spectacle.

Despite the spectacle around them, the film doesn't treat these characters like "superstars", but rather makes an effort to showcase their humanity. Sonny and Sal are not robbers, that much is evident. They're humans, they're lovers, husbands, friends; just ordinary people that are driven to incredible events because of the circumstances around them.

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot and the HOF30.
Brilliant movie. Seen it a million times.

As a Roman Catholic myself, this line always cracks me up from Sonny (Pacino): “I’m a Catholic. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”





Re-watch. Loved this back in the day and still did today. It's a real shame it bombed so hard that it shelved any potential sequences.
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1st Rewatch...what can be said about Tom Hanks' glorious Oscar-winning performance that hasn't already been said. Just that a lot of it wouldn't work without Denzel Washington's work as Joe Miller. It's so easy to overlook and underestimate what Denzel does here because he does it so well you almost don't notice. This rewatch also reminded me that this film is not about AIDS. This movie is about homophobia and how it can destroy lives. It's a little manipulative, but the manipulation works with a shout out to Jonathan Demme, who may have created his directorial masterpiece here.



ICE MERCHANTS
(2022, Gonzalez)



"A family drama about loss and family connection."

That is how filmmaker João Gonzalez described his short film for a New Yorker interview. At 14 minutes, this silent short film certainly has to let the images and the music carry the burden of those themes, but it does so pretty well.

Set in a steep cliff where a house is perched, Ice Merchants follows a father-and-son duo as they continuously go through their routine of picking ice, jumping down, selling ice, going back up. It's all shown beautifully through the minimalist animation of Gonzalez.

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot



I forgot the opening line.

By May be found at the following website: IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34694561

The Double Life of Veronique - (1991)

It's hard to remain on the surface level of The Double Life of Veronique - if I speak about doubles, love, music and madness I feel I'm missing the more mystical, almost religious aura this film is completely enmeshed in. Have you ever felt part of yourself die? Have you ever been drawn to something, even though there's no logical reason for it? Have you ever felt alone, even with family and caring friends about? Have you ever felt like you're not alone, when there is nobody around? The way we feel and the direction our lives take is often ascribed to powers beyond our comprehension - and one wonders if we'd be drawn to the same places and people if the timer was reset, and we started again from scratch. Véronique (Irène Jacob) has a double in Poland, Weronika (Irène Jacob) and through their connection we explore what it means to be in tune with the spiritual, and your intuition. Krzysztof Kieślowski does this with his typical flair (he uses colour to great effect), and doesn't feel the need to explain anything to his audience - you have to feel it. This is the very definition of transcendent, and the film itself is something of an enigma with plenty of room for interpretation.

9/10
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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



John Wick 4. I thought the first half felt kinda stale and uncreative and I was afraid the series lost its charm but god damn does it make up for it in the second half. Jesus Christ.



John Wick 4. I thought the first half felt kinda stale and uncreative and I was afraid the series lost its charm but god damn does it make up for it in the second half. Jesus Christ.
i need to rewatch john wick 3 again before i watch 4th



RRR -


If you've grown tired of or lost your taste for superhero movies, well...Madonna's album from 1984 comes to mind. While revolutionaries Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, whose conjectural friendship this movie depicts, were just human beings, this movie, which portrays the former of being able to nab assailants from angry mobs like needles from haystacks and the latter as capable of outrunning and throwing big cats, will lead you to believe otherwise. As the 45-minute pre-title sequence indicates, the pair begin on every opposing side possible, with Raju employed by the imperial police and Bheem being the kind of tribal leader his position was created to apprehend. After an extraordinary action scene involving a train accident, the pair becomes the best of friends, which leads to Bheem leveraging his pal's clearance to rescue a girl Raju's employers kidnapped from his village. What follows is an epic in all senses of the word in which every kind of bond imaginable - friendship, loyalty, even matrimonial, etc. - is tested, and that is hardly subtle about the enemy that is wholly responsible: imperialism.

If the fact that fans have taken the action and song & dance scenes and posted them on YouTube, made GIFs out of them, turned them into memes, etc. leads you to believe they're all the movie has going for it, think again. I have no qualms about saying that Raju and Bheem's friendship is the best male friendship in a movie since Frodo and Sam's in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'm not sure if their chemistry, the casting or simply their strong acting deserves most of the credit, but I totally bought into the sincerity of their friendship, which in turn makes the moments in which they are at odds so painful that it's almost criminal. It's for this reason why nothing between the "good stuff" ever seems like fluff or filler. I found genuine intrigue in everything from Raju and Bheem's opposing investigations to the revelations of their backstories. The high quality of the craft - especially the cinematography - also makes every moment watchable, and while there is (obvious) CGI - which I'm normally not a fan of - the glorious, not to mention humane purposes to which the movie employs it shut off my nitpicking impulses. Also, regardless of your level of Anglophilia, you are bound to approve of how the movie makes you love to hate its villains. Whether it’s the massive and immaculate presentation of their facilities - one being the Mariinskyi Palace in Ukraine, no less - or how devious Ray Stevenson makes Governor Scott, they approach a cartoonish level of evil, but in the best way.

Since I've heaped so much praise upon this movie, why haven't I given it the vaunted five-star rating? Based on the hype and all the other five-star reviews I've read, I went in with expectations that I’d be seeing one of the best movies I've ever watched. While I wouldn't go that far, I obviously still consider it great, and the important thing is that more Indian movies have appeared on my watchlist and I have viewed some of my favorite moments on YouTube more than once, which is something I rarely do after watching any movie. Speaking of, if you have also done this before watching this, I don't think you have spoiled the experience for yourself. I watched the "Naatu Naatu" scene and have seen many GIFs made from other scenes many times before watching the entire movie, and I had an even bigger smile on my face when I saw them again and not just because of the additional context.



ICE MERCHANTS
(2022, Gonzalez)





That is how filmmaker João Gonzalez described his short film for a New Yorker interview. At 14 minutes, this silent short film certainly has to let the images and the music carry the burden of those themes, but it does so pretty well.

Set in a steep cliff where a house is perched, Ice Merchants follows a father-and-son duo as they continuously go through their routine of picking ice, jumping down, selling ice, going back up. It's all shown beautifully through the minimalist animation of Gonzalez.

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot
Where can one see this?





German-Austrian movie. Lead actress is very good in this interesting movie. Somethings are “lost in translation”, but that’s always the case with non-English movies.




Love this British movie. I can going to re-watch it today. Shot in a single take with no cuts.



Where can one see this?
See if you can check it out here. Access to it might depend on your location (I live in Puerto Rico, so I can't see it on my personal computer, but my work computer registers Texas/US so I can see it on it)

Ice Merchants



John Wick 4. I thought the first half felt kinda stale and uncreative and I was afraid the series lost its charm but god damn does it make up for it in the second half. Jesus Christ.

LOL, I checked out before the second half. Film is long AF. Guess I'll have to watch the rest.



To Live and Die in LA (1985)

First time watch. This was impressive in story and performance though obviously dated. William Petersen plays a Secret Service trying to bring down arch forger played by Willem Dafoe after the killing of his "pardner". The pardner was retiring and had just been bought a fishing rod so his demise was not a shock. After that Chance will break and bend every rule to bring the baddie to justice. If I hadn't known I'd have thought it was a Michael Mann. Great action, quite gory and a fab car chase. Only quibble is that, as in some of his other films, William Friedkin seems to really run out of steam and the end seems quite rushed and cobbled together.