By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61470531
Honey Boy - (2019)
I'm often confronted by actors I don't particularly like impressing me with performances and career moves that belie some of their earlier choices. Shia LaBeouf is simply great here as James Lort - a character that is based on Jeffrey LaBeouf, Shia's father. The film takes place during two time periods - an uneasy present, where a 22 year-old Otis Lort - a hugely famous actor - is in rehab after being arrested during a drunken rampage, and a traumatic past when a 12 year-old Lort is emotionally and physically abused by an unbalanced father. That power dynamic - between a son (still a child) with wealth and power and a father who has been to prison for rape, is an alcoholic and suffers from his own trauma - is what makes
Honey Boy absolutely
riveting. The modern-day scenes don't do as much, but it is well worth watching this film just for the scenes between young Noah Jupe and Shia LaBeouf playing a version of his own father. Otis begins to recognize he has some kind of moral superiority to his father, and when he takes into account he's already outshone his dad career-wise he begins to talk down to him - that sends James into a psychological tail-spin where the abuse starts to escalate and both father and son begin to disintegrate. Soon enough, Otis starts to crave the love that all human beings need - something he searches for with a sad desperation. This is a film I really wouldn't mind seeing multiple times.
8/10
By May be found at the following website: http://www.lecinemaestpolitique.fr/i...n-masculine-2/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35327302
The Intouchables - (2011)
I completely ruined
The Intouchables for myself by watching remake
The Upside before it. The former is clearly superior to the latter - but throughout the entire viewing I had the feeling of watching something I'd already seen. I'm never doing that again - it's not something I did on purpose.
The Upside just happened to be on and I watched it. I really don't know why it took me over 10 years to get to this popular French film - and I feel slightly robbed. But it was good.
7/10
By http://www.impawards.com/2020/greenland.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66154663
Greenland - (2020)
Basically a combination of
Deep Impact and
2012, this film is shallow entertainment, but at least it's decent shallow entertainment. I can't really fault it on much, except perhaps an overreliance on melodrama. Towards the end you really have to put in an extra effort to suspend disbelief. Yeah - things get a little unbelievable, but there are some other big budget disaster epics that are far more fanciful than this. Just a family and a planet-killing comet that's due to hit the Earth in 24 hours - a topic that's been explored enough for one to start making "Top 10" lists about them.
7/10