Saw “Phantom Thread” last weekend. Daniel Day-Lewis is once again awesome and amazing and sad to think that thi is his last film, beautifully filmed and acted, the fashions were devine and the movie did go in a direction that to me was totally unexpected.
Annihilation
Went in with no clue other than the trailer.
Well cast, script tight.
You buy into the movie and tension…
Makes me want to read the book.
D went to see Annihilation. She had read the book but said the movie was much more frightening. She was surprised at how tense it was to watch and scary in a different way than regular horror movie. She is stressing about grad school decisions. This was a diversion but certainly didn’t make her feel like she had taken a break from chaos. 
Your d needed to see Game Night for some slapstick fun and much needed mindless entertainment.
Zany Rachael McAdams and Justin Bateman with Kyle Chandler, Michael C. Hall and Jesse Plemons to add to the lunacy…
Annihilation had the theater audience absolutely silent and still…no one wanted to get up and miss out…
CBS Sunday did an interesting segment on Mary J Blige this morning. I haven’t seen Mudbound yet but watching this segment makes me want to see it!
I watched a hour or two of Mudbound and found it very slow.
Finally saw The Greatest Showman and thought it was fantastic. Obviously if you don’t like musicals though, it might not be the show for you. Hugh Jackman though…worth seeing just to watch him.
Watched “Get Out” yesterday - absolutely brilliant! Of the 4 Best Picture Contenders I’ve seen (Dunkirk, The Post, Three Billboards, and Get Out), this is my favorite.
Loved Mudbound. It took a while to get into it, but it was well worth it.
Went to see The greatest Showman today. We loved it and I was surprised by that. I didn’t think it was my genre, but the performances were magical.
I finally saw 3 Billboards today. I thought it was great while having some mixed feelings. Definitely, a number of excellent performances. The end is…strange.
I haven’t seen a movie in a theater in a while. I was in the mood for something different recently and a friend suggested a Japanese anime movie called “Grave of the Fireflies.” I’m not particularly into that genre of movie, but I thought hey why not try something new. I wish he would have warned me how intensely sad and emotional it was going to be. So much crying. I mean really hard crying. It was a good movie. Well done, superb quality, it just tears your heart out and leaves it in shreds on the floor. Watch in by yourself unless you don’t mind sobbing profusely in front of your roommate or whoever else might be around. And drink plenty of water so you don’t dehydrate.
There really is no “genre” of movie like Grave of the Fireflies. Studio Ghibli, the great Japanese animation producer, does have several other realistic films – most of its films are fantasy, or have significant magical or fantastic elements – but they tend to be adolescent or young adult coming-of-age stories with happy endings and basically an upbeat attitude. Grave of the Fireflies plays with the expectation that it will fit in that pattern, but quietly and implacably grinds out any element of hope for the protagonists (while, nonetheless preserving some elements of hope for the world).
I don’t really know that much about Japanese cinema, although I’ve seen lots of Japanese movies. Grave of the Fireflies is the only Japanese movie I have seen that really addresses critically the Japanese government (and society) that took Japan into war in 1941. There’s some of that, too, in the recent Studio Ghibli film The Wind Rises, but it focuses on elites, and it more or less avoids the war itself. Grave of the Fireflies deals with the everyday experience of common people.
(If you don’t know anything about it: Grave of the Fireflies is about two children whose mother dies in the American firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, and whose father is off in the navy and out of contact. They slowly fall through the social safety net as the Japanese defeat approaches that summer, and things don’t improve under the American occupation. There are beautiful moments of love and discovery in their lives, but staying together and survival are immense challenges.
All I seem to be watching lately is bits of old movies – saw Butterfield 8 Saturday night – and part of the Graduate Sunday morning.
^^The Graduate is such a classic, Simon and Garfunkel, Dustin? How can you not like it. My soon to be college graduate this spring said she watched it with a group of friends and it appears very dated. They thought it was only popular because of its salacious content which could only have been so for its time. I don’t think so. Love the music, love Dustin, loved it all.
I rewatched it recently and I can definitely see young people thinking it was dated. The thematic content found me thinking it was dated. Music is still great though.
It did feel dated but it has so many great scenes. And a neat car, too.
We saw “The Shape of Water” last week and really didn’t like it much. Knowing my husband’s taste in movies I did not expect him to love it, but I did not enjoy it either. In general, I am a fan of Del Toro, but this was just too bizarre. I also am getting sick of some of the explicit sex scenes I have seen in movies/television lately that don’t contribute to the story line. After we got home, we watched a movie short titled “The Space Between Us”. The similarities are very striking-it is essentially the same story done within a 15 minute time frame.
A lawsuit has been filed by the family of a playwright which accuses the producers of The Shape of Water of copyright infringement.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/shape-water-sparks-copyright-lawsuit-oscar-voting-1087249
“Last Cab to Darwin,” an Australian movie about a man on a quest. The scenery is beautiful (at least for people who like Australia) and the story is moving and funny in turn.
^^ My DH and I watched LCtD last year. We thoroughly enjoyed the humor as well as the scenery as we had just recently traveled to Australia. It was a very poignant film for us since my FIL was suffering through his last weeks of stage IV liver cancer at that time.