silo hotd
Finally watched The Odyssey. And its VERY much a Nolan movie. Super loud bangs and then inaudible voice lines? Check. Non linear story telling? Check. Almost 3 hours long? Check.
If you love all those things, then you will love The Odyssey. But I don’t.
I watch Oppenheimer in the cinema, and left confused. Watched it at home (where I can control the volume and pause for snacks) and I loved it. I’m sure I will love The Odyssey at home soon
I watched the second V/H/S movie a couple weeks ago and was so disappointed I wasn’t going to bother with any of the others. Got a recommendation to watch the fourth one, V/H/S/94 and damn it was amazing.
Recently watched “Hjem” or Home as it would be called in English. It’s a Danish movie about an immigrant family from Joguslavia and how their search for a brighter future in Denmark became a personal nightmare. It’s semi biographical and based on experiences the director herself had as a little kid, moving to Denmark with her parents. It’s okay. It is about important issues, but fails in a few areas because it wants to do too many things and ends up stumbling over itself.
spoiler
The story begins with an impossible dilemma of a financially struggling family that decides to move to Denmark where the father’s sister lives. However, the sister cannot have the whole family living with her, so the parents decide to abandon their two older sons in Joguslavia and move to Denmark with their daughter, who’s the youngest child.
The movie shows the first year of failed integration, where among other things, each parent agree to illegally marry two random Danes in order to get a quick and easy residence permit. However, the two Danes risk jailtime for agreeing to this activity, and therefore, the parents have to pay them 6000 DKK every month for their inconveniences which of course sets them back financially and makes it more difficult for them to get established in Denmark and bring their sons from Joguslavia.
The system is close to discovering the fraud at one point and it leads the fake Danish spouses to demand more money from the parents, which makes the family more desperate. They also experience getting fired because the daughter calls her brothers at the parents’ work and racks up a 2000 DKK phone bill. Everything is just uphill all the time, until the dad decides to borrow money from his uncle and then everything is suddenly fine? The family moves into a ghetto apartment and bring the sons and from then on the only struggles for them is that the sons hates them an no longer wishes to speak to their parents.
But the Danish spouses are gone, the system is apparently fine with two illegal immigrants who both committed marriage fraud, living in an apartment together when it was established prior, that they were breathing down their necks for the smallest infractions, and apparently the parents have been able to get new jobs, I assume, despite struggling and not being able to get hired anywhere because they didn’t speak Danish…?
It was very weird to get to that part of the movie. It wanted to focus on the emotional trauma of a divided family, but wrote itself into a corner by making the parents’ integration so difficult and impossible, that the plot couldn’t function in this worldbuilding. I also wonder why the father didn’t ask the uncle for help sooner because there were no consequences to him loaning money despite the uncle acting shady and weird the whole movie and giving you the impression that to ask favors from him would mean you’d end up in crime. That was where I thought the story was heading for the dad, and then it just didn’t because the movie wanted to focus on his regret later in life.:::
i am trying to find Fantasy A Gets a Mattress but it seems to be unavailable, which is a shame… (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_A_Gets_a_Mattress) in case anybody knows where to watch it please lmk!
My wife and I went on a Jeremy Allen White Binge. I am tired of Biopics, but damn White has been part of two that are spectacular:
Iron Claw
This is the story of the Von Eric family. The Von Eric’s were a family of WWE style wrestlers in the 70s and 80s. Who claim the have a family curse. Holy shit if you ever want to see a masterclass in acting watch this movie. The performances of the lead actors and actresses in this movie are incredible, with Zac Ephron really shining. White was equally incredible. Like al biopics I don’t know how accurate the movie is, but damn that family that had a rough road of addiction, suicide and accidental death.
Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From NoWhere
This is the story of Springsteen writing the Nebraska Album. Which is one of Springsteen’s most celebrated albums if not his most celebrated album. Again White really demonstrated his acting chops and put his back into this role. You could really feel his character battling depression and losing that battle. The rest of the cast is rounded out by some heavy hitters as well. There are a number of really subtle and great scenes where the movie worked in events of Springsteen’s life that were inspirations for the songs on album.
I had always heard that Springsteen made Nebraska while working on the Born in the USA Album. He would work on Born during the day and would retreat to his rented house and made Nebraska to unwind and to deal with his depression.
One of the things that adds to the Nebraska legend is that it is all Springsteen. He made it all using a four track recorder with nothing but a harmonica and an acoustic guitar and percussion instruments. He would lay down each track independently and recorded it all to a cassette tape. He then put that cassette tape in his coat and forgot it was there for weeks, while working on Born in the USA. He then found it and shared it with his producer and they cut the album.
Anyway, both movies are so excellent and will make you ball your eyes out. Zack Ephron has a really powerful scene with his character’s two sons and White has an equally powerful scene with his character’s father.
Yesterday I did a double feature and saw “The End of Oak Street” and the 10th anniversary screening of “Your Name”.
spoiler
It ended up making a really great double feature, as the climax of both films involve convincing a town to evacuate.
