Salmons recently watched movies

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Hacksaw ridge

Mel's latest outing which I went into with mixed expectations. Got great reviews but then again, not particularly a fan of Mel's directing.
Hacksaw came thru tho, surprisingly well balanced movie that has possibly the best cannon fodder scene that depicts the senseless brutality of war since the opening scene from Saving private Ryan.
Being a Mel Gibson movie - it has a few annoyingly religious moments of symbolism that really don't need to be there (Bleeding palms/ water washing away sins ..etc) but apart from these minor glitches, its pretty damn near perfect for what it is.
8.5/10

Logan

Really more impressed by this than I was expecting. While I do love me some X-men, I'm pretty comfortably at the point of X-men fatigue so, it was nice to see a movie that was whole heartedly part of the franchise but takes it in a completely fresh direction. Much grittier than you'd expect from an x-man movie and much more personal. Very little in the way of special effects and much more focussed on the relationships between Logan and Xavier ..

8.5/10

The great wall

Pretty to look at but - that's about it. A triumph of style over substance with an incomprehensibly convoluted plot line .. complete waste of my theatre dollar

4/10

Nocturnal Animals

Just fucking brilliant - Love Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams has always been solid but in this - she's just amazing. Directed by Tom Ford so, it looks beautiful. No clear message, just great story telling done well

9/10

[Derived Absurdity]

Not sure how The Great Wall's storyline was incomprehensibly convoluted, I thought it was straightforward to the point of boringness. Haven't seen the other three.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Yeah - maybe convoluted was the wrong word.

What I guess I meant they just dropped stuff into the plot without building an actual story with any real depth out of it .. Meteor strikes earth which releases this horde that only invades once in a while - employ the whole "This time they have evolved" trope - the whole hot air balloon thing where everyone jumps into hot air balloons that can't quite manage to stay afloat even tho they have managed to work out a series of defences that clearly require pretty significant engineering..

The over all impression I was left with was that the Story was just a foil for the visuals rather than the visuals serving the actual story.

You should probably see Nocturnal Animals tho - not that I have any real talent at guessing what you do and don't like in a movie, but I think you might just like that one!

[Derived Absurdity]

I've been wanting to see that for months, but I never get around to seeing anything good.

[BruceSmith78]

Nocturnal Animals was really good, but I thought it did have a message: sort of a takedown of the materialistic lifestyle.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Nocturnal Animals was really good, but I thought it did have a message: sort of a takedown of the materialistic lifestyle.

Yeah - that's not what I got out of it at all.

I mean, they clearly made a point that she chose the wrong "Right guy" .. and lived a life of financial success and security while her life with her former husband was one built on love with a financially uncertain future.. But, I didn't really feel that was the actual main point of the movie at all. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the fact that she was wealthy and settled apart from that it came with her living with the wrong guy in a loveless sterile marriage.

What I was more thinking about was the final scene, the ex husband had sent her this brutal story that he named after her.. The husband in the story had his entire future ripped away from him in one brutal act that completely blind sided him and then spent the rest of his days seeking retribution/ justice.. that was his message to her.

She was confused by the message in his story but I think saw this as his way of reaching out to her and asking to catch up .. and it all ends with her sitting alone in the restaurant being stood up by her ex..

So - was this his retribution or did he simply chicken out .. was he setting her up for a fall the entire time just so she could feel some measure of what he felt when she dumped him ?.. Was it a love story or an act of revenge.

Was he right to do that or was he just compounding misery with more misery .. I liked that it didn't actually provide any commentary and left things to just settle in a quiet way.

[BruceSmith78]

It felt like they took several digs at materialistic shit, aside from the repeated reminder that Amy Adams and her mom both chose financial stability instead of following their hearts and they both ended up miserable for it. I think there was something one of the art show employees said, but I don't remember what, and Amy Adams reversed her position about supporting a failing artist because she thought it was the right thing to do, even though it wasn't the financially sound thing to do. And wasn't that opening/credits scene supposed to represent the ugliness of the American lifestyle of excessiveness?

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Hmm - yeah, I wasn't all that sure what to make of the opening title sequence.
The thoughts it evoked, for me personally, was juxtaposing the razzmatazz glitz of flag waving patriotism against the naked reality of actual real life.
Which, I guess you could pull out of that that he was making a point of how different the image we're sold differs from the reality .. but I really have no firm idea how that all fit in - I just found it kinda hypnotically beautiful.

I think that while the movie definitely did make a point of how materialistic/cold/hollow her life had become after choosing the "right" guy as opposed to passion, I don't know that it was materialism that was being attacked rather than the artifice of her life choices. I don't remember the exchange between her and the art show employee .. so there is every chance there are things I've missed or just taken my own thing out of.

Do have to say that for a designer and a relatively inexperienced director (Two films to date) and also when you consider that he wrote the screen play and produced the thing .. Tom Ford is one talented man.