The Bookie

ha, I had no idea there was a Ben Hur remake. the RT description is even more hilarious

Imperium 6/10 Daniel Radcliffe as an FBI agent going undercover with white nationalists. He was actually very very good and the two main supporting actors were decent, but everyone else was sub par and it kinda dragged every scene down into mediocrity. I would much prefer to see something like this as an HBO series since it was the smaller details, the coded language and recruitment methods etc. that were more interesting than the stereotypical action/thriller main plot.

13th - 9/10 Ava DuVerney's documentary on the prison complex, involuntary servitude and police militarization in the US. Pair it with HyperNormalisation & Before the Flood and you've got a succinct doc trilogy for 2016.

Don't Think Twice - 4/10 I was expecting a movie about an improv comedy troupe to be, well, funny, but it was mostly sentimental sweet group dynamic stuff. Still good for the inside view on a little subculture, otherwise completely forgettable. The Monster Really generic horror, did not finish. Ouija - Origin of Evil 5.5/10 I guess this is the prequel to some other horror movie I never saw, and is apparently terrible, but this was alright. Not really all that scary, but fun in the retro style of The Conjuring and House of the Devil.

Arrival 8.5/10 Rock solid intellectual sci-fi, I'll take it. Reminded me of The Abyss minus the over dramatics and needless action subplot. And it's got a good 'twist', but it's not really a sudden twist, more like a gradual realisation that some scenes aren't what they seemed. Already want to re-watch. The fly-in scene when you first see the alien craft - part of it is in the trailer - but the full longshot was astounding - with the music it made me feel slightly sick, but in a good way, if that makes sense. I'd be curious (but am too lazy) to go back through this thread and see my reviews of Villeneuve's movies over the past few years. I bet they're all 8.5s. He's stuck right there at very very good not quite tipping over into truly great. After this I think he's doing the Blade Runner reboot, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

Suicide Squad 2.5/10 Clean-up in Aisle Snyder 2.4 of those points went to the first 30 min of the movie, where it actually seemed like it could be a whacked out joyride .1 for when the croc dove into the subway, I liked that although I didn't really see all the fuss about Jared Leto's thing - I'll take hammy over acting in something like this any day over Will Smith and his painful turn - it was like they were holding Jaden at gunpoint just off camera forcing him to 'act'

Denial 6.5/10 Legal drama about a holocaust denial case in England in the late 90s. Very dry & technical. Interesting for the historical aspects, forensic proof of Auschwitz, and legal tactics differing between UK/US. But bland. Oh so bland. The Witch 9/10 Took 5 months for my nerves to settle, time to re-examine this. Held up, and was even better now that I was looking to appreciate the set design, lighting etc.

Eat That Question - Frank Zappa in his own words 8/10 Completely bare bones as a doc just a collage of interviews and live performances. Only one that I'd watched before was the old Crossfire incident,

I think that's just to maximize the nostalgia factor. Did you read Porno, Irvine Welsh's sequel? Looks like it's loosely based on that (Begbie getting out of jail, Sick Boy owning a pub, The Gang Makes A Porno) and that definitely wasn't a retread.

Surprised me actually. When I first heard they were making this I thought it would be like a lot of other reboot type things that I avoid completely for fear of ruining the original. I watched this earlier with low expectations but it looks great. I don't know that they'd be gunning for awards with it anyways - or do you mean in the sense that it it's coming out in that new year wasteland dumping grounds for the big studios? If so, I think it's more likely that they're taking advantage of that and dropping a movie like this that'll get everyone in the 30-50 age group off their butts and down to the theatre out of nostalgia alone.

oh baby

The Infiltrator 5/10 Feel like I've seen this one 20 times before. Brian Cranston as a customs agent going undercover after Pablo Escobar. At least they focused more on the money laundering - banking aspect as opposed to War on Drugs stuff. But it was no Big Short, didn't do a great job of explaining the ins and outs, just a bunch of confusing scenes of him meeting with bankers in vague cities. John Leguizamo was awesome. Stole every scene as the classic cop who lives so long undercover he becomes openly addicted to the life.

Full documentary 'Before the Flood' is streaming free on yt until Nov. 6th. It's a National Geographic doc hosted/narrated by DiCaprio on climate change. Watching it now. Fantastically depressing/10

Better Call Saul, Also Mike While We're At It - season 2 - 7.5/10 It kinda feels like two different shows that happen to take place in the same city now. Saul with his law story and Mike doing the Breaking Bad prequel (to be fair I thought his character was the high point of s.1). I really thought they'd tie them back together by the end. Also, while I appreciate the artistic choices of the long shots and montage scenes, eventually it becomes filler of sorts. For ~46 minute content not a ton would happen most episodes. But, complaints aside, still enjoying it moment to moment, episode to episode. Odenkirk appears to have gained a bit of confidence in his acting Both stories are worth following. And they tightened up the plotting compared to s.1 - I really didn't like the turn it took in the finale. At least not getting around to watching it so long means I don't have to wait a year to continue.

Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face) 8/10 Some old french horror movie I decided to watch on youtube after coming home late last night a little wobbly. Frankenstein type theme - mad surgeon experimenting in his basement. Beautifully framed and shot, couple of squirm inducing scenes I won't be able to unsee. Fun!

Faults 9/10 This came ouf of left field, off the radar, and through a solid wall. From a couple of years ago. Starts like a low-rent Coen Bros homage then drifts into one of the weirdest locked room psychological thrillers I've ever seen.

The Purge Election Year 4.5/10 Why do I keep watching these. I retain nothing from them except a few static images. This one at least did have a couple of impressive long shots, or seemed to, it was probably cgi trickery but it was well done. The metaphorical hand is so heavy that it transcends being a metaphor - I think they were just like, hey, let's do our version of the current election!

Picnic At Hanging Rock 7/10 Australian movie from the 70s. Unsettling, slightly surreal. I guess based on a true story? Heard the name before but didn't really know what it was about. 4 girls wander off during a trip to a local mountain, one returns screaming, another is found passed out, the other two disappear forever. Sexuality is the obvious allegory but it felt more like an lsd metaphor with their weird acts/comments atop the mountain. Also brought to mind The Witch with the theme of colonialism butting heads with the wild landscape on the edge of the new world. I liked the more dreamy first half, but it dragged and turned into a conventional mystery soap opera in the second edit NYT has their original long review of it Screen: Australian Hawthorne Romance:From Down UnderBy VINCENT CANBYPublished: February 23, 1979 Don't Breathe 2/10 Don't Bother. Was better when it was called The People Under The Stairs.

Watched a 3hr bbc doc that just came out called HyperNormalisation. I've watched a previous doc by Adam Curtis so I was a little prepared for it. Very rambling, all over the map, all encompassing take on 40 years of recent history. In this case, starting with a pair of events in the mid-70s (New York banks issuing bonds to the city in exchange for more power over civic decision making and Kissinger sparring with Assad in Damascus) and follows those events spiralling out up to the current day. Heavy focus on the US, Britain, Syria and Libya, but generally just a wandering exploration of all kinds of global power structures as they change with the times. There's a techno strand running through it that rings very true of how the internet has morphed more and more into a walled garden / echo chamber / feedback loop. I don't even know how to approach rating something like this. I don't completely love it from a documentary analysis, the style/feel changes and the content is everything and the kitchen sink, and some of the narrative leaps were suspicious. But treated as a big info-dump of sorts there's endlessly interesting tidbits and stories and historical connections. Some very surprising and fun music choices too. trailer better description from the guardian the other day https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/15/hypernormalisation-adam-curtis-trump-putin-syria

Read a couple be Delillo a ways back, Jones Street and White Noise, but I didn't get the hype. They were alright but no motivation to read any more. If I were to try another probably Underworld, that's the one I've heard the most praise for. Currently I'm reading the Souther Reach trilogy - weird, too weird to try to explain, but from the New Yorker review:

Hell No

^should've gone for WolfCop! Broad City s3 8.5/10 Didn't quite rise anywhere above season 2 but stayed perfectly consistent with it. To me they're the freshest comedic duo since Key & Peele.

Amanda Knox 8/10 I didn't follow this case at all when it was in the news (mostly tabloids, apparently) - the American exchange student in Italy who was accused of murdering her British roommate in some kind of drug/sex party gone wrong. I'm always hesitant to form an opinion on something after just seeing one side of it, but in this case more or less all the parties involved are present to tell their side of the story, and it comes off as a pretty shameful abomination of justice. In particular the Italian prosecutor, who seems to develop all of his theories and conclusions from dreamy moral scenarios, and the British Daily Mail journalist who first rushed the sex game theory into the public imagination, hang themselves a little more every time they're on screen. As a doc, well made, not flashy, tight editing. Really liked how they would overlay one person speaking with a shot of the person they're talking about quietly staring at the camera. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/movies/review-amanda-knox-documentary.html

---------------- The Witch is like It Follows and Kumiko the Treasure Hunter last year, showing up a year earlier on imdb than rt. Guess it's like a difference of festival premiere vs. general release.