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Being Flynn-- Deniro gives a good performance as a delusional bum who tracks down his son and stays at the shelter he works for. Deniro is all comedy in his constant rages and claims of being a "great and classic writer." Ironically, it is his more serious son that eventually makes it as a writer. Comedy, drama. Not too many situations arise. Excitement generated through dialogue. Good writing. Deniro fuels the film for sure.

7/10
 
I finally said fuck it and I am taping The Tree of Life. I keep using it as an example of something horrible in film making and I haven't even looked at it. That's not right.

So I will take a deep breath and give it an honest shot.

It sounds like something I don't like. Even in the rave reviews I have seen, there is something that makes me say, "Ah, so it's completely horrible then." It all seems reminiscent of another Terence Malick film, The Thin Red Line which, despite many positive reviews and a Best Picture nom, I found to be a painfully pretentious pile of steaming crap, not worthy of viewing to the end. I think I lasted something like 40 minutes???

On the other hand, there was a Terence Malick film, The New World, which I did watch to the end. I don't have a lot of strong memories of it but I did watch it. I think when all was said and done it was a mild thumbs up. Maybe.

Anyway, Tree of Life. We shall see.
 
And one more thing. I have reconsidered and changed a previous position.

I said I was glad Meryl Streep won the most recent Best Actress Oscar. My general thinking was that I consider her the best actress of my lifetime - pretty much head and shoulders above the crowd - her talent has brought me great enjoyment so many times - and it is not right that she had been nominated something like 18 times but only won twice. That is not an appropriate batting average for her. Based on merit she should have about 7 Oscars.

It is ridiculous that they have been handing out Oscars to people like Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman while Meryl Streep is around. (Not that Streep should have won over Julia Roberts because that was the year Ellen Burstyn absolutely crushed the field in Requiem for a Dream and Roberts was the beneficiary of one of the worst cases of Oscar robbery ever - and there have certainly been many but it's hard to think of a worse one - it was like the boxing judges at the Seoul Olympics - but it did not involve Meryl Streep - but I digress).

Point being, Streep deserves more Oscars and when she won her third this year I considered there to be more harmony in the universe. But as I re-examine the specifics of it, her role in the Iron Lady was not one of her absolute best and was not the best of the field last year.

Viola Davis should have won for The Help. It was a dubious movie (but then again so was the Iron Lady - even moreso) and, yes, Streep did an amazing Margaret Thatcher impersonation no doubt - but Viola Davis was magnificent. Davis should have won the Oscar.



That is all.
 
Mudcat
I finally said fuck it and I am taping The Tree of Life. I keep using it as an example of something horrible in film making and I haven't even looked at it. That's not right.

So I will take a deep breath and give it an honest shot.

It sounds like something I don't like. Even in the rave reviews I have seen, there is something that makes me say, "Ah, so it's completely horrible then." It all seems reminiscent of another Terence Malick film, The Thin Red Line which, despite many positive reviews and a Best Picture nom, I found to be a painfully pretentious pile of steaming crap, not worthy of viewing to the end. I think I lasted something like 40 minutes???

On the other hand, there was a Terence Malick film, The New World, which I did watch to the end. I don't have a lot of strong memories of it but I did watch it. I think when all was said and done it was a mild thumbs up. Maybe.

Anyway, Tree of Life. We shall see.
Click to expand...

I CAN NOT WAIT for this review.

I expect the words "where the fuck is this going" to be uttered by Muddy today.

My review: If they had stuck to the actual story with the characters instead of the half hour of The Discovery Channel at the beginning and the train wreck of an ending it would have been a decent film. As it stands, you would have to pay me to watch it again. A lot.
 
Knowing me - and I do - and also knowing what I do of Terence Malick's film-making style - I could probably predict that review.

But I will go into it with as much of an open mind as possible and the intention of watching it to the end and the hope of finding something I really like.

I have a life philosophy which is, more-or-less - keep an open mind because even the biggest fokking idiot in the world can sometimes say exactly what you need to hear. It may only be by accident but there it is.

I feel it applies in this situation. That aside, a lot of people really like that movie. Not just drippy critics either - some actual people. Well maybe not a lot, but some.

It's not that I automatically dislike art film. I like some art film.

So we'll see.
 
The 88 Seoul Olympics - specifically with the boxing - had some impossibly bad decisions that went in favor of South Korean boxers. The most infamous would be when a South Korean was declared winner of his gold medal bout after just having his brains thoroughly beaten in by Roy Jones Jr.

And there were other incidents. It was not just poor judgment. It was corruption. Although some would argue it was also payback for biased pro-US decisions in the previous Olympics in Los Angeles. In any case it led to the changes in Olympic boxing scoring that are used today.



Not saying that the Julia Roberts/Ellen Burstyn Oscar situation is an exact parallel. I think there are a lot of subtler voting influences in that situation - combined with a lot of just plain bad judgment.

But it comes out looking like flat-out robbery to me just the same.
 
I gotta say, I don't find Emily Blunt to be epically beautiful. Yes, I would do her and consider it a very lucky day in my life (if we need to revert to that SBR level of discussion of these things.) But in terms of the big picture, I dunno. I have seen her in quite a few things now and I like her work alright. But looks-wise? She's just somewhere in the pack for me.

Something about her teeth/mouth maybe ???
 
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