Last movie you watched......

"Whiplash." Damn, was that intense. The instrumental version of "Miracle" with Simmons playing the Herb Brooks role.

 

Birdman.

What the fuck did I just watch?
Great acting by Norton and Keaton, but what was the point? How the hell was that a best picture nominee?

And what was up with the ending? Please explain that.

Spoilers below ....



























So he did not have any powers, he was imagining, hallucinating... whatever.
But at the end when he jumped out the window, and Emma Stone, instead of looking down, looks up what are we supposed to think?
That she's crazy?
That he finally flew?
I missed it.

 

Clearly. The movie was different, unique and amazing.

 

Yeah, I was on board with it when it seemed like he was hallucinating, talking to himself, whatever. That ending just didn't make much sense in context with what we had seen earlier. I didn't know what to make of it either and it ruins what I thought had been a bold and interesting piece of filmmaking before that.

 

I can't argue with that.
And if it had made sense, I could get on board with it being considered for Best Picture.

 

I got about a half-hour into Birdman before life intruded and didn't get back to it. Don't know if I will.

Theory of Everything. Just an astounding performance by Redmayne. I have no idea how he did it.

Last night watched Song One with Mrs. Novelist. I wanted to like it, but never quite got there. Oh, and good lord does Mary Steenbergen need to get her money back from her surgeon.

Insurgent at the theatre last week. This genre isn't generally my cup of tea but I found it reasonably entertaining.

 

Lucy
I was really stoked to see it. Thought it would be a female version of Crank.
No, not really. Not as much action as hoped.
It was good, but I wanted more out of it.

 

I liked 'Lucy' but not as much as I expected to.

As for 'Birdman,' I really liked it. No bow tied on the end. He's delusional, and I think the end is a glimpse of his final delusion before he shot himself.
Open to interpretation.

 

Ok ... Then explain Emma Stone at the end ... also delusional? Even though there was no such indication in the movie?
It made no sense... This was a high-art version of a Michael Bay Transformers movie. Instead of lots of explosions and crappy story we had great acting with no story.

 

Three Days of the Condor

(On Netflix)

GF didn't appreciate it when I yelled "They're gonna fuck!" about Redford and Dunaway.

Loved the NYT ending:

Higgins: Hey Turner! How do you know they'll print it? You can take a walk… but how far if they don't print it?
Turner: They'll print it.
Higgins: How do you know?

GF says she was very naive in the 70s and didn't understand that the NYT could be gotten to and not print it. Ah, the dirty tricks of the intel community. And the beat keeps rolling along to this very day.

 

Boyhood.

I thought it was a fantastic take on filming, but other than that brilliance, it was a very basic coming-of-age film.

The best scene, IMO, was near the end, when the mom was telling the kids to get their stuff out of their house. They were in some random Olive Garden-ish restaurant and the manger came up to tell the mom what she'd said years ago had impacted him and changed his life.

Maybe it's because my mom was a high school teacher that the scene moved me, but it certainly did.

 

She believed in him, and, on some level, it was all for her -- to be seen as significant in her eyes.