The Bookie

Moonlight - 9.5/10 Powerful stuff, and pretty damn close to a perfect film. I'm glad I knew barely anything going in other than a vague story about coming to grips with sexual identity in Miami. The poster makes a lot more sense looking at it now. And the music! Really hope there's a soundtrack for this, I want it all, stat. edit found this on the music http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1377-director-barry-jenkins-on-the-music-that-made-moonlight/ Even before that, how did you decide that you wanted an original score rather than simply a soundtrack? I just always knew that I wanted to have an orchestral score for the film. And it was really beautiful because we didn’t even have to test that theory. Most of the source cues I wrote into the script, but I didn’t write, “Now we have score here.” So it was a really organic process, over the course of post, watching the film with Nick and deciding when and where we were going to have score. And then using those three themes, figuring out how to augment around those. When we very first started the process, even before Nick sent over his original music, he made a playlist, without me telling him to. It had Southern hip-hop and orchestral chamber music—UGK, 8Ball & MJG, OutKast, but then also Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. Even at that most early stage, I knew I wanted to blend these things. One of the pieces he sent over in that first draft was that Mozart piece that we use in the film to open the scene where the kids are playing football. I always knew that that was what it was going to be. The shape it was going to take, I wasn’t sure of. And that’s when the process got super fun, because we started chopping and screwing the orchestra. When I first met Nick, I was describing to him what chopped and screwed was, because he hadn’t heard of it. Because how’s a guy from New York who went to Harvard’s gonna know what chopped and screwed music is? But maybe, who knows. I’m not going to judge people who go to Harvard. Or are from New York. So was he like, “wow”? I don’t know if it was me or him who said it first, maybe me as a joke, “Yeah, I mean I want to have a score, but you can’t chop and screw score, can you?” And he was like, “Well, why couldn’t you?” And so when he sent over this playlist, I took a couple of the Mozart and Beethoven pieces and put them into Final Cut Pro and slowed them down, like 75 percent, and said, “You know what? This $&!# ain’t too bad.” When Nick heard it he said, “Yeah, it’s kind of weird but it’s not too bad. But I can do it better.” He really, really dug deep. He found ways that we could lower the octave but retain the register. We were really sort of dialing it in throughout the process. We were taking analog instruments and putting them in as well. It was so &^@#ing fun, man. There’s some $&!# that’s not even in the movie because, you know, we got aggressive with it. Some of the bass was just ridiculous, man. It was beyond. Joy - 5.5/10 Signature David O Russell style flourishes but his characters & emotions are way past stale. Felt like I could predict the 'good' and 'bad' arcs of the film after ten minutes. And how long am I supposed to spend caring about a mop? Not this long.

^ Lights Out is just a long version of the web short by that Swedish dude ponysmasher. You could watch his entire output in the time of that feature and I bet it more satisfying. They work best as quick bite jump scares.

Hunt for the Wilder People 9/10 Well, that was just delightful. As if I need more motivation to sell all my possessions and move to New Zealand.

I'm really curious for LaLaLand cause I also hate musicals (think the closest I've ever come to really liking one was Once, but it's not a traditional musical) but on the other hand Whiplash was one of my favourite movies of the past five years. And come to think of it Whiplash was also sort of a non-traditional musical. Anyhow. Think I set a new personal best for turning off a movie - approx five minutes into something called 'Arsenal'. Only wanted to watch it because one of the reviews on RT said "It's early, but 2017 has a strong candidate for worst movie of the year!" I was hoping for laughable bad, but this just looked annoying/boring bad. All I saw was the grinning face of the douche from Entourage (no not that one, the other one), a couple of kids biking around aimlessly, then a mustachioed Nic Cage torturing someone. Ctrl-Q/10

American Honey 7/10 Loved it as an ultra-current dreamy arthouse fauxdoc in Middle America Hated ir due to the frequency of Shia showing up. It was like there was a mandate in the script that every twenty minutes he makes animal noises and dominates. Annoying.

@GLASSJAW yeah I kept looking at it intrigued but the reviews just weren't selling it to me, based on that though I have to give it a watch. 3 hrs of nasty, comin right up.

The only other acceptable name for that dog would have been John Garrett

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World 8/10 More 'Zog. His latest, about the internet, artificial intelligence, the general digital world. It's somewhat wandering and chaotic but that's not a criticism, more a natural outcome of the subject matter. There's 10 individual topics covered and each one could warrant (and probably has) its own doc. I wonder if he regrets finishing this just before the US election as some of the subjects brush right up against the fake news and online foreign influence dominating discussion recently. Personal highlight of the film is during an interview with Elon Musk, talking about the idea of building a permanent station on Mars and the difficulty of getting people interested in travelling there - Werner, interrupting: "I would go! I would go in a moment. Give me a one way ticket please!" Definitely, he's hard to keep up with but it's a good problem to have, and I can go a year or two forgetting about him and then have a little treasure trove to dig through. I should check out more of his fiction films, though a lot of them look pretty whacky/cheesy. I've seen Fitzcarraldo, Rescue Dawn and Bad Lieutenant. Anyone watched My Son My Son What Have Ye Done? Michael Shannon's a favourite around here. Looks weird.

Did not feel the urge to celebrate 2016 - instead, Herzog double header Encounters at the End of the World 9/10 Loved every second of this. McMurdo Station and some surrounding outposts in the Antarctic and the various characters that populate them. There's a little bit of everything in here - stunning nature photography, meditative underwater sonic landscapes, captivating personal anecdotes, the mundane day to day of living so remotely. Into The Abyss 4/10 Bit of a departure for Herzie doing true crime stuff and for whatever reason it didn't work for me. The editing seemed to drag and I got bogged down in some confusing details of the story that were never ironed out. It's basically a case study in the death penalty, two guys convicted of a crime in 2001, but only one sentenced to die. I can see why he was interested in the story and sort of see what he was going for but I think it's just a case of a director taking on a project and failing to really crack into the nut. I am glad I stuck with it despite declining attention span though. There's one long fascinating interview near the end with a guy who formerly worked as a 'death administrator' (my own term - I'm not sure what the actual job description is for someone who deals in lethal injection) who had an epiphany moment and quit.

(that's about all I remember from that movie - I think at some point Jaws invades Sea World?)

Does Jaws 3 get better or worse if you watch it at Monty's house? How tall is the ski pyramid? Is this a current or archived picture of Monty? These are relevant to the evaluation of Nocturnal Animals.

Yeah I'd definitely like a second opinion on this one. I feel like I missed something big in the fog I was in (literally don't remember how it ended, just that it was very sudden, like I was expecting a whole other act). There should have been something there to tie the three stories together. Maybe there was.

these were watched through a haze of post Christmas cheer food poisoning, so they might not be accurate Keanu 5.5/10 Handful of actual laughs, otherwise just mediocre and mildly entertaining. It helps that Key & Peele are so likeable. Nocturnal Animals 4/10 Various flavours of trash. There's a cold, postmodern artist story that feels like a glossy soap opera. She gets an unpublished novel from an ex, and the movie spends more and more time acting out the trashy redneck East Texas action story - why, I don't know, it's so boring Michael Shannon can't even save it. And then randomly they jump back to how the two of them met, and it's generic rom-com NYC social drama crap. Where To Invade Next 8/10 Michael Moore is much better served directing with a light, funny touch here. Especially liked the bits on Slovenia and Tunisia, two places I knew very little about.

Blair Witch 2/10 boom mic scrape scream flashlights running through the woods Knew it was gonna be crap, knew I was gonna watch it anyways. If you can make it through to near the end there's one worthwhile sequence, accounting for most of those two points. And how come nobody ever considers that the stick art is a peace offering? Nice, this one immediately went on my hangover list for when I'm in need of the mindless & retarded, or am in such a state - would like to read a good ol' cineplex rant though.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe 7.5/10 Very promising first half with a science vs supernatural set-up, little underwhelming gear shift to more conventional horror. Still had its moments and was overall pretty slick, but it could have been so much more. The ending, in particular, could have gone in a slightly different direction and been much more satisfying imo. But I like the concept they left off with and there's room for a better sequel or series. I'll try to rustle up a top ten list but 2016 has been pretty weak - lots of very good-almost great but only two clear standouts so far - The Witch & Arrival

Bad Santa 6.5/10 Every year I feel like I should probably watch at least one christmas movie but I was getting tired of cycling through Die Hard, Gremlins and Christmas Vacation, so, this. I've never actually sat down and watched it although certain sections were familiar, either from catching pieces on tv or memes on the internet or who knows. Liked it more than expected. They were low expectations though. Usually can't stand Billy Bob but it works in his favour here. May be the ideal role for him. Heard a story a few years ago - the director gave up a lot of cash in exchange for full creative control but the studio pressed him into this cut, and he'd been in a years long legal battle over it, and took to staging guerrilla screenings of his cut in parks in San Fran & LA. Would like to see that if it ever made it out into the wild.

Mostly I just thought it was a big ol heap of fun. speaking of which: Trollhunter 8/10 No idea what the hell I watched here. A Norwegian found footage black comedy stop-motion conspiracy fantasy? Whatever it was I liked it. In particular the so dry it cracks humour from the actor playing the hunter. "See those?" (Muscox) "Government puts em there. To feed the trolls!"

Train To Busan was fun but I didn't see anything exceptional or unique about it. Mostly just made me want to watch Snowpiercer for the 5th or 6th time. I'd give it a 6/10. Sure but that's nothing new. Romero's ...Of The Dead trilogy was doing all that symbolic stuff, what, 40 yrs ago now.

Awesome. Just got this today hoping to find time to watch this wknd.

Glory Daze 6.5/10 Documentary about the Club Kids in NY in the 80s-90s, and in particular one famous story of a murder / body dismemberment that got a lot of attention. Actually I got roughly halfway through this feeling like it was all very familiar before realizing it was made into a movie with Macadamian Culkin, Party Monster. And I even saw that, although I only remember strongly disliking it. Duh. Anyhow ... the main story isn't really very interesting - basically two guys got into a coke fuelled fight at an apartment and a third guy hit one in the head with a hammer, they panicked, suffocated him, and left the body there for a week and a half before returning to do the deed. I liked the window into the renegade party scene in that era of NY though, and the bigger picture stuff on how Giuliani changed the city's culture. There was also a longer than expected final section following Michael Alig leaving prison in 2014 (17 years in), much of which was dedicated to him learning the wonders of the smartphone. Cute and touching but it lagged.

I finally saw The Warriors this past summer and when I reviewed it here someone brought up The Wanderers, which I had on vhs as a teenager but had totally forgotten. It's good - definitely comes from the same zeitgeist as The Warriors but less comic-booky. the BIG scene the use of sound is encroyable!

Deadpool 6.5/10 If I'm rating just within its genre I guess this is more like an 8.5 since I very rarely care at all about superhero movies. Generally very entertaining and a few laughs (always enjoy TJ Miller), but still I just zone out/find it impossible to focus during the cgi fight scenes. (reading that back it's probably close to exactly what I said when I reviewed Guardians of the Galaxy awhile back)

Kon Tiki 7.5/10 Fun in an old school explorer-adventurer way. A true story I vaguely knew about without details. In the 1940s, a Norwegian anthropologist studying Polynesians developed a theory that they descended from Peruvians using ocean currents like a highway. When he was laughed out of every publishing house, he and 5 friends put together a raft out of the same materials and recreated the journey. Apparently this was filmed in both Norwegian and English, so in retrospect I kinda regret watching the English. There's something about the Anglo-Scandinavian accent that makes it hard to take dramatic scenes seriously. Otherwise, it had that full sweeping suck you in adventure vibe to it, albeit a little over emotional at times. They filmed on the original journey and it won the oscar for best documentary in 1951, so I'm gonna see about tracking that down.

I grew up and learned to drive across the water from you. I'd say after 15 years of living out here, it's a different type of snow. Not that you don't get it in upstate NY, just that for the same reason it rarely snows here, it's completely unpredictable on a block by block basis. The mountains tend to suck in the worst of it and the Pacific air burns off the rest, but when the snow does break through it's all over the map. Winter tires might help a bit but it changes anytime you move up or down a hilll in the city. Anyhow I thought we would be left out of the party here in Vic but we finally got it. Started around 8:30 and went for about 3hrs. Took El Doggo down to the soccer field - he's seen real snow 10-15 times in his 4.5 years on the planet and went El Nutso. Looked like a puppy again, flailing in every direction, sliding, rolling. Of course now it's turned to thick slimy rain, and the temp is supposed to drop below zero in the early morning for 24hrs. The roads are gonna be hell here tomorrow.