Let the Sunshine In. Claire Denis. 2017.

Hey! Denis! It’s a movie by my favourite living director! Sort of. I mean, I really liked Beau Travail and… the other movies, but I’ve been really disappointed by a couple of her most recent movies, like that gruesome vampire/cannibal movie she did er probably ten years ago.

After watching about ten minutes of this, I’m starting to wish this was about a vampire, because it seems to be about a woman with the shittiest boyfriend ever and I wish she’d just kill him? And I’m shocked (SHOCKED!) that Denis is doing the stunning woman/dumpy guy thing. I thought that was like over. There are good-looking men. They exist. Some of them are actors.

But let’s continue watching! Less typing! Denis!

[time passes]

OK, I WAS WRONG.

The movie is nothing like I wrote, annoyed, after the first five minutes. It’s brilliant.

It’s a kinda free-flowing, not very plot-heavy, associative movie. It’s mostly about… Binoche being amazing on the screen, and the cinematography being riveting. I mean, that’s it. It’s a magnetic viewing experience.

Some of the conversations seem aimless, but you feel that it all kinda makes sense. It does, however, start flagging about sixty minutes in, when it gets obvious that there’s no structure here, and nothing is really going to change in any way.

But then there’s the last scene, which I am unreasonably exited about! OK, I have to do something that I hate to do: Actually mention plot! Eww!

Binoche visits a… sooth sayer or something… played by Gérard Depardieu, for his only bit in the movie… and he says stuff… AND THEN THE TITLES START RUNNING! WHILE HE”S TALKING!

I know it’s not reasonable to be excited about something like that, but while watching it, it just felt so right. The entire Depardieu/Binoche scene seems totally improvised, and Binoche looks like she wants to crack up but then keeps it together, and it’s magic. With the titles.

I know, I can’t explain, but that little thing kinda echoes the best scene in movie history, that last scene in Beau Travail. It just seems like the inexplicably correct thing to end the movie with.

This is not a perfect movie, but it’s brilliant.

Rope. Alfred Hitchcock. 1948.

I started watching this on the plane from San Francisco, but I didn’t finish it.

Let’s watch the last half.

I really like Hitchcock, of course, but while watching this on the plane, I was kinda… er… bored? Is that the word? Bored? Is it?

I think it is. The movie seemed to me more like a sophomoric exercise than a… movie? Perhaps the problem is the less than riveting performances by the two murderers?

I know, I know, blah blah no cuts blah blah. But it’s just a showcase for scenery chewing, and watching the last half of the movie doesn’t convince me otherwise.

Perhaps the documentary footage on this bluray will be enlightening.

The screenwriter explains the problems translating the original play into American:

The trouble was, when you translated the English dialogue, it became very homosexual. Unintentionally.

Or…

Oh, right! The Stewart part was supposed to be done by Cary Grant! That would have made more sense. But Grant turned it down because of obvious reasons.

Oh oh oh! The writer didn’t write the scene with the initial murder! So the tension in the movie would be whether there was a body in that damned chest or not! That sounds like a much better movie!

Replicas. Jeffrey Nachmanoff. 2018.

Hey! I haven’t seen a proper movie in a while.

Jamie Zawinski summed this up as:

Replicas: Oh Keanu. Why. Things were going so well. Why. Why. Why did you make this.

So I had to see it.

It’s about Keanu, doing his best to play a scientist transferring dead brains to artificial bodies. And then his wife dies. Guess what Keanu tries to do!

It’s not a good movie.

I briefly wondered whether this was a zero-budget movie, all made from plywood and good will, but it can’t be: There’s some expensive-looking computer graphics, and, well, there’s Keanu. And according to imdb, it cost $30M to make, which just seems… unlikely. There’s hours and hours of this movie happening inside small static sets with a small cast, and it’s hard to see where they spent that money.

Unless it’s all on those computer graphics. And Keanu.

I guess… from one point of view, the plot kinda makes sense. I mean, saving the family and all. But keeping it all a secret from them is deeply creepy and doomed to fail, so it’s… a bit… WTF.

Everything about this movie is just a bit skeezy. I mean, even the details. So many “manager” apps. And I want that on my phone: Make the rest seem a bit out of focus when I get a message.

I did finish this movie, but it was a hard slog. There’s like no redeeming qualities: The cinematography is… there, the acting is bad, the story is ridiculous, there’s no humour, the twists are obvious.