Parasite remains my fave film of the festival
Yay, I just got tickets for this at the Mill Valley Film Festival!
(One of the programmers follows me on Twitter and asked me if I was interested in being a volunteer screener for them. None of the many shorts I watched and rated got picked--they had over 2000 entries--but it turns out you get a bunch of vouchers for tickets to the festival for your trouble.)
I know ScarJo is canceled and all, but she is excellent in Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story, which is a movie about divorce that manages to be both funny and absolutely heartbreaking. Adam Driver is her counterpart and he is even better. Musical theater folks would get a kick out of the scene where Driver's character sings Sondheim and aquits himself very well indeed. I can see the movie netting multiple acting Oscar noms, original screenplay and possibly even best director and picture. I am putting my kittens on it nabbing the People's Choice Award, which is a good barometer for the Oscar season.
This is showing at MVFF but it is a "spotlight" film and my vouchers didn't work for it. :-(
Dolemite Is My Name: Eddie Murphy plays the title character, who is sort of the father of blaxploitation. A really fun underdog triumph story. Murphy is splendid in it.
So I was actually thinking of seeing this, or
La Verité,
the new film by the Japanese director who did
Shoplifters.
It stars Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, and Ethan Hawke.
In other movie news, I saw both
Hustlers
and
Ad Astra
this week.
Hustlers
was very fun and well directed.
Ad Astra
was very pretty to look at but very much a slog, with far too much voiceover.
I can see the movie netting multiple acting Oscar noms...
Only if Netflix decide to release it in cinemas, which I'm not sure they have any plans to do at this point.
Only if Netflix decide to release it in cinemas, which I'm not sure they have any plans to do at this point.
I can't imagine they won't give the latest Baumbach a least a limited release. And I'm pretty sure they would at least make sure to screen it in L.A. to qualify. Isn't that why they are trying to buy the Egyptian?
I feel obligated to see Ad Astra because my frenemy from middle school is in it and we recently reconnected. It's going to be World War Z in Space, isn't it? All about Brad Pitt's character's personal manpain, with the threat to humanity's survival as a secondary backdrop?
I'm still salty about World War Z and want someone to make the movie that book deserves: a Ken Burns-style mockumentary.
I am on my 5th (!) and last screening of the day and basically running on fumes. Tomorrow is the last day with 4 films, including Kore-eda's The Truth and Knives Out (!) thanks to TIFF throwing in an additional screening due to the high demand. They did this for Parasite (twice), Marriage Story, Waves, Bad Education and The Two Popes, in addition to Knives Out. I cannot remember TIFF ever being this generous with additional screenings.
Only if Netflix decide to release it in cinemas, which I'm not sure they have any plans to do at this point.
From what I hear, Netflix plans on 3-4 weeks of theater screening for Marriage Story before putting the film on streaming service in December. The movie is playing in every single big festival, which tells me Netflix machine is 100% behind its awards campaign. It's gonna be wack, since Driver notoriously hates doing press and Johansson cannot seem to open her mouth without putting a foot in it.
Vonnie! I AM FILLED WITH ENVY!
Thanks for all the advance reviews, Vonnie! You've got fantastic taste and it always helps to find new stuff.
So I saw Brittany Runs a Marathon this week and I thought it was really very charming. Brittany is a hot mess and she shoots herself in the foot but you want to her to succeed, and she does too, but she doesn't quite know what "to succeed" means and it hurts to see her fucking it up. But then it mostly works out.
I really liked Jillian Bell, and the rest of the cast, and I hope it does well.
Also it's pretty inspirational.
