Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

Moonlight Kingdom I liked it as it was different, very, very different. My favorite scenes were when Sam and Suzy escape into the wilderness. I liked the feeling of two ostracized kids at odds with the world around them...making their 'own world' in the wilderness on a remote island. The whole Scouting bit was cleverly done. Those two made an odd pair! Suzy reminded me of Christina Ricci in The Adams Family...And Sam, the overtly smart kid who's disliked by his own Scout troupe due to his lack of social skills, was annoyingly good. It was fun watching those two misfits interacting as they escaped reality. I just wished there was more of that in the film.

Because after their capture, so much stuff happens, with so many different sets, so many different characters, so much stuff, that my mind glazed over and I was no longer in the film.


I loved the brightly pastel-diffusion look of the film. And I loved the cinema style of 'flying' through house walls and quickly panning to each person as they speak. Visually Wes Anderson is a genius. And the man has amazing ideas for stories his very creative and unique. But IMO he needs to stop writing his own films. His weakness seems to be in developing too many characters and in not knowing when to say enough is enough. Towards the end of the film we get every visual trick that he could muster, which I found distracting and it took away from the story telling of the film.

Still I enjoyed it and I'm very glad to have seen it.

+

The Big Sleep

Next time you watch The Big Lebowski, pay attetntion to all of the parallels between it and The Big Sleep. I read a book that the BFI put out about Big Lebowski and it highlighted all of the ways it is similar. Very interesting.

Hey Gooch, You're just the person I wanted to see! I watched the movie you recommended to me last week. Very! interesting film. I've never seen anything quite like it. So a BIG Thank You for your recommendation!

OK, the review of it is coming up in a few minutes. Oh...a tie in with The Big Lebowski and The Big Sleep? That's pretty cool, maybe I'll check it out again some day.

Director: Brady Corbet
Writers: Brady Corbet (screenplay), Mona Fastvold
Stars: Tom Sweet, Robert Pattinson, Stacy Martin, Bérénice Bejo
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Language: French & English

About: A foreboding tale of the distributed childhood of a young American boy in post World War I France. In 1918 his father works for President Wilson and is helping to draft the Treaty of Versailles. What the impressionable boy witnesses being done in his Fathers house, shapes him to grow up to a fascist leader as an adult.

Review: I'm not sure if this is a French language film with lots of English dialogue, or the the other way around. These days who can tell. What I can tell you is this is like no other film I've seen! I'm not even sure how to describe it. See that picture at the top of this review? That gives you as good as idea as any about what this film is about. Hell I just watched it and I'm not sure what it was about. I do know it is well worth watching!

Minimalist style...for a lack of a better word that's what I'm calling this. The film never gives us a back story or a narrative that explains what is going on, instead it's a very close up look at a strange boy and how the events around him turn him into a strange adult. What I thought was well done is that the film never spoon feeds you a message. That's why I call it minimalist. It shows us events mostly from the boys viewpoint and it does this without giving us any other information. Then in the last scene....don't worry I won't spoil it.....the film shows us the end results by using a filming technique and editing that is 180 degrees different that the entire rest of the movie. It's very unique and I dare say a must watch for any serious cinephile.

I'm glad you liked Childhood of a Leader. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's definitely a hard movie to describe. I liked some of the shots that just showed people gazing off into space/the abyss. They reminded me of Barry Lyndon. I felt like the music was really key. I've seen it slotted as a horror movie in a few places and I think that the music is what blurred the line some between drama and horror.

Yes! the music really helped to set a mood.

Me too and that's a good way to describe it. It's hard to describe really, but different and worth watching for sure. Slotted as Horror, yea I seen that at IMDB and it is so not horror. I mean yes fascism is horror but it shows the childhood of a future leader who becomes fascist. That's why I decided to only tag it as Drama and Mystery. Cool film and thanks for telling me about it.

Director: Matt Osterman
Writer: Matt Osterman
Cast: Brandon Routh, Dane Cook, Caity Lotz, Ben Feldman,Tom Cavanagh
Genre: Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Indie Film

About: In the near future, four would-be astronauts are locked under ground for 400 days in a simulated flight mission to a distant planet. The test is to determine the fitness of the crew and study their psychological effects of long term deep space travel and isolation. The four crew members have no contact from the outside world and can not leave the simulated space ship and if they do their careers are over. As the days pass by some of the crew begin to hallucinate and start to believe one of them is up to no good.


Review: Good idea for a film, but a lot of missed opportunities here. There was so many different ways this could have went. Most of the movie is interesting and held my attention. For a small budget Indie film, this looks pretty darn good and I liked the four actors too. Though one complaint the two guys with dark hair looked so much a like that I couldn't tell then apart at first. Though I could tell who the girl was


This is one of those, what if? movies. You know like what if you were in a simulated space flight, locked underground in a realistic looking space ship with three other people, could you handle it? What would you do if you left the ship and found out the world outside no longer looked like Earth? See what I mean it's one of those movies that make you think.

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I'm really interested in watching Childhood of a Leader. Glad to see you liked it. I've been listening to the soundtrack a bit lately, it's absolutely amazing.

Hey Swan yup! you should watch it, it was very different, very artsy and pretty cool too. The soundtrack was dramatic and really told the story by the music. The ending is one of those, open to interpretation endings. I think you would like it.

400 Days sounds interesting, and I loves me some science fiction. One thing that makes me question watching it is Brandon Routh... I've never really gotten over Superman Returns.

Coincidentally, I just saw something on a science show - wish I had made a note of what show it was because I kept thinking I'd want to watch the rest of it - but it was very similar to the movie described. It was a real life test where people (astronauts I think) were being locked up somewhere here on Earth to study the effects of long term confinement on a group in a small shelter - it was being done in anticipation of a Mars mission. So the plot of the movie 400 days is being carried out in real life right now.

Have you seen Brandon Routh in anything else? I liked him in the TV shows "Chuck", "Arrow", and "DC's Legends of Tomorrow".

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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

"Dear Comrades, it is with extreme delight that I proclaim the virtues of der cinema Good Bye Lenin! The film exceeded all expectations for production quotas. Particularly note worthy is the quickened wit and charm of the leading players. I found the performers outstanding in their acting duties. Der transcript is a work of genius and equally espouses the virtues of family, progress and love of state... Respectfully, Comrade Citizen Rules."

Review: A very cool, unique, cleaver movie. I enjoyed watching it! I'm old enough that I remember the 'iron curtain' and when the Berlin Wall fell. I've always had an interest in the hidden, mysterious world of East Germany. I loved the style of film making and the way the voice over narrative was done with a nod to the past, (which inspired my 'intro letter')

I really liked the actors and that's important to a movie. I instantly liked the characters of the son and his cynical sister and their mom. Alex and his mom really felt like they were real family and cared for each other. I felt like I was part of the movie and was in the rooms and streets of the DDR East Germany along with them.

The movie felt so naturally and was paced just right, not to fast, not to slow. There were so many cool moments in the film that I would have to write a novel just to cover them all. So I'll tell you my favorite.

Alex's friend who wants to be a director, but ends up making spoofed communist news reports for the mom to see, was totally clever! Along with Alex's effort to make his mom's 'world' as it was during the DDR days.

The entire movie is clever in how it weaves the changes that swept East Germany that take place as the mom is in a coma and then wakes up believing she's still in the old DDR and nothing had changed.

I honestly don't know which one was Brandon Routh? I'm guessing that wasn't the girl astronaut. I thought all the actors were pretty good. GBG have you seen this one. I bet Captain would at least find it interesting.

Was that the Bio Dome experiment that was done some years ago in Arizona?

No, I haven't seen that movie, but it sounds interesting. Unlike Capt., I was thinking about watching it because of Brandon Routh. I wasn't a big fan of his when he starred in Superman Returns, but he's great in "DC's Legends of Tomorrow" as Ray Palmer/The Atom.

OK, I just looked up who Brandon Routh was, he was the lead guy, the commander. I think you would like the movie, not love it, but it was interesting. I requested a bunch more sci fis to watch. Including one of your favorites that I haven't seen in decades, Encounters of the Third Kind. Should be fun

Catch ya guys latter. I'm off to watch more about Queen Elizabeth II.

Thanks. It sounds interesting so I added it to my watchlist, but it doesn't sound like it will make my sci-fi list. (Hopefully Close Encounters of the Third Kind will make your sci-fi list. )

No - this was a current study because some groups are really pushing for a Mars mission now - so the people in the study had to live and work as if they are on a several month long mission to Mars. I just saw it either on the Science channel or National Geographic, but was on the way out and couldn't stay to watch it, so I don't know what show it was. I may be wrong, but for some reason I got the idea from the couple seconds I saw that the test subjects were not American.

Don't know if this will make sense, but because I am a comic geek and grew up with the DC superheroes, I don't watch any of the TV shows about them - it's just too painful.

Consider if you read a book that you really liked, and then they made a TV show about it which at first seemed really cool to see the characters you read about brought to life, but then you discover that the TV show had changed everything you cherished about the book or updated the characters to the point where you didn't even recognize them any more - you might end up avoiding shows based on the book.

Yes, actually it does make sense. I watch most of the superhero TV shows with Hubby, and he's like you, in that he's a comic geek who grew up with the superheroes in comic books. He tries to enjoy the shows for what they are, but he also complains about a lot of the changes to the characters, from what they were like in the comic books.

You might want to try watching "The Flash", because that's the show that he complains about the least, but stay far away from "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. because he hasnt stopped complaining about "what they did to the inhumans". (I never read the comic books, so I don't really know what he's complaining about, but I'm sure that you would have the same complaints.)