I think with a lot of sci fi types of movies, you just have to suspend belief in known physics and go with the flow. I enjoy the wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff so am fine with movies that want me to accept time travel or whatnot.
I felt that Amy Adams did a stellar job in The Arrival, and thought the end premise was thoughtful and intriguing. But overall the movie seemed slow and dark (literally as well as figuratively). And I’d hoped for more linguistics discussion! But it is nice, as one review pointed out, that scientists are starting to become movie heroes again (as with The Martian).
DH, DS and I were all blown away by Arrival. We were mesmerized and couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards. I thought Amy Adams was wonderful and all of the linguistics stuff was so interesting and really added something different than we’ve seen in so many other sci-fi movies. We also loved how the concept of time was addressed. All of us are science geeks that have no trouble suspending belief for a good science fiction story.
We’ve been watching a lot of the Hallmark Christmas movies. We joke about the names. What are you watching? The Christmas Something. Christmas in Somewhere. The Something Something Christmas. A few have been good, most are cheesy, but all are perfect for my 80 year old mom who lives with us. She deserves it after putting up with our Walking Dead marathon over Thanksgiving break.
S liked Arrival. Recommended it - so hoping to see it soon.
I think time travel is very hard to pull off, but I’m willing to let it go. In * Interstellar* it was other stupid stuff. They have rockets going off and no one notices. They need to send stuff off from space stations not atmosphere and then the suddenly the space ships can fly in atmosphere after all. They’ve got every reason to be suspicious about certain characters, but no one thinks twice. They touch everything with their bear hands. I could go on and on! No one has noticed the giant waves on the planet before they land. I’m fine with a certain amount of handwaving, blackhole weirdness and faster than light travel, I’m actually quite easy to please, but so many things seemed wrong I began questioning everything.
redpoodles – I’ve been watching Hallmark Christmas movies back to back (trying to write one). And yes, some are REALLY bad. The one set in “Cookie Jar USA” was unwatchable. But some are sweet. They just need so much product.
i’m starting to watch more classics and foreign movies and am enjoying these new discoveries (for me anyway). the best movies i’ve seen lately are
Breaker Morant (immediately shot into my Top 10 all-time)
Yojimbo
Rear Window
Notorious
Strangers on a Train
Le Samourai
The Thing (1982)
The Third Man
The 39 Steps (1935 - early Hitchcock)
Oh, those Hallmark Christmas movies. My daughter likes them so I watch with her, but - yikes. A Christmas Kiss, A Christmas Kiss 2, Merry Kissmas – they were all exactly the same (bad) movie, they just had different people.
We were able to attend a Hitchcock lecture once at USC, in a class D was enrolled in. It was fascinating and talked about the film where Doris Day sang Que Sera Sera to help retrieve her kidnapped son, as well as several other movies.
@Wien2NC wow, Breaker Morant - haven’t thought of that movie in years. Loved it. Though I confess I liked Bryan Brown in *A Town Like Alice * even better.
Speaking of Hitchcock, Vertigo is my all time favorite movie, not the least because of the San Francisco location. (I’m in San Francisco right now, in this incredible corner room at the Fairmont; I can see some of the film’s locations right from this room.)
Thought of another one. Someone mentioned “The Sweet Hereafter”. It was nominated for 2 academy awards.
I liked it, but I found it depressing, which is something I rarely say about a movie and something my wife usually says about the movies I do like I don’t want to discourage people from seeing it, though. I’m obviously in the minority.
I love the director, Atom Egoyan. He had early success, but almost all of his recent movies have been panned. I see everything he does, and I like most of it. My favorite is Exotica, an early one. Sounds dirty, but it isn’t. I loved it.
It has a nonlinear story line. It came out the same year as Pulp Fiction. I wonder if one director stole the idea from the other.
@MYOS1634, wow, a true cinephile. I can’t top that. The best I can do is that I left a bunch of pale sunbathers on the beach one time, years ago, to go see a movie. I was all comfy and entertained in the air conditioning, and they were all roasting on the beach
Well, it’s not always easy to find foreign movies if you like theaters, so a friend and I make it a small trip, once a month or so.
Once we got the schedule wrong and ended up seeing a 3-hour Mongolian film we knew nothing about.
