Movie Diary
As a drummer, I don't really expect to see many movies with drummers as protagonists, so I got a little excited about Whiplash at the time, and now it looks like Sound Of Metal may also be up for some Oscars as well. It's less overtly about playing drums than Whiplash, but it's also a better movie and I hope Riz Ahmed and Paul Raci get nominations for it. The sound design is really impressive, just putting you in his head when his hearing starts to go out. And I really just got absorbed in the story and put myself in the character's shoes because if I had never gotten serious about wearing earplugs every time I play drums, that would be me, but starting to really experience a little hearing damage really scared me. The movie's a great commercial for earplugs, really, I hope a lot of young musicians see it and it scares the crap out of them. Ahmed and Olivia Cooke's band in the movie, Blackgammon, sounded kinda cool, I wish they'd put out a soundtrack album of their songs.
Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield gave great performances in this, but I definitely found myself wondering why they cast guys 10 years older than the people they were playing and if the story might have gained something from actually having 20-year-old lead actors, but it'd probably be a lot harder to find guys of Kaluuya and Stanfield's caliber and fame level at that age. Historical dramas like this definitely make me want to read up more on the real events, though, try and separate the facts from the Hollywood version a little. One thing that really surprised me was that comedy duo the Lucas Brothers actually co-wrote the movie, they were the ones that came up with the idea to kind of model it after the informant story in The Departed.
I like "Euphoria" a lot less than most people seem to, so I was surprised that I actually thought this movie was mostly better than its reputation. The dialogue definitely made me cringe a few times, but to the extent that it was similar to Marriage Story, I thought it was a much better movie than that overrated crap.
d) First Cow
Usually when people say a movie should be seen in the theater or they wish they'd seen it in the theater, they're talking about a big action movie or something visually rich. But I think I would've enjoyed First Cow a lot more in a theater because it's definitely an excellent movie but there's a lot of stillness and quiet in it and I put it on a little too late at night and almost dozed off a couple times.
e) Wildling
My wife and I got snowed in on our first Valentine's Day together and ate Chinese food and watched horror movies, so that's been our V-Day ritual ever since. But you never really know whether you'll like a horror movie until you see it, and we've picked some pretty bad ones in recent years. Wildling was probably the best we've watched in a few years, though, interesting premise and great performance in an unusual role for Bel Powley. The direction felt clumsy, though, like it could've been a whole star rating higher if the camera work and the lighting didn't feel a little erratic and arbitrary at times.
My son decided to watch the computer animated 2019 Addams Family movie recently, and it was pretty entertaining. Definitely not as funny as the '90s live action movies, but it had a little of the same sense of humor, and Oscar Isaac and the rest of the voice cast were good.
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on Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 12:28 PM.
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