What did you watch on this Cinqo de Mayo week karnalito?(04/29-05/05)

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i saw bridge... when i was a teen, and only have the vaguest memory of it now, to such an extent that it's really a blind spot for me now.

i loved the beginning and the end of the villainess, agree that its propulsive action scenes are on par with the best moments of the raid films (more about them later). but the 90 minutes or so in between didn't completely work for me, wearing me out with too many twists & turns & flashbacks layered over flashbacks. absolutely worth seeing for action fans nevertheless.

it was a slightly lean week for me:

the congress (2014) 3/5 robin wright, playing herself, agrees to sign her digital image over to a company. starts off quite wonderfully, then takes a leap into the deep end, and even after watching it twice i'm really not sure quite what to make of what comes once that leap happens. intriguing setup, but i ultimately found it a bit ephemeral & frustrating, and i suspect there may be less to this than the movie might want you to think, though it's still worth a look if the premise is interesting to you.

avengers: infinity war 4/5 i really liked it. a lot. granted, with all the characters & multiple plots, you could feel the movie getting a bit overwhelmed at times, the floorboards groaning a bit under all that weight, but for the most part i thought it was a blast, & given how many characters they had to shoehorn into this thing I really don't think they could have done much better.

downrange (2017) 3/5 simple as can be: reasonably foxy teenagers get shot by sniper. it will not rattle your cage with its daring & originality, but it chugs along nicely & pushes all the buttons you'd want a horror/thriller to push.

crimes against humanity (2014) 0.5/5 i watched jerzy rose's neighborhood food drive a few weeks ago, & found it fairly amusing. a bit too smug and self-referential, perhaps, but i thought it was witty in places and had a skewed sensibility that i generally enjoyed.

i have since watched two more of his movies, and now am convinced he is the most pretentious & annoying director in american film today. boo.

the raid (2011) 5/5 the first time i watched the raid, i recall thinking it was fun but a bit repetitive. I must have been shrooming at the time. i've since come to my senses, & now recognize the raid for what it truly is: the greatest action movie of all time.

except possibly for the raid 2.

Interesting choices this week, SK. I don't think I've ever seen Bridge, so I'll have to check that one out. The others don't sound like something I'd enjoy.

As for me, the weather has turned nice - finally - so I haven't watched much because I've been outside so much. 😎 However, I have started making my way through Midsomer Murders. With 20 series, it'll take a while to get through them all (I'm on series 3). I like the stories because they have so many twists, but some of the dialog is pretty cheesy, I think. And for me, it's fun to spot actors that I've seen in other British series such as Inspector Morse, Lewis, Foyle's War, etc. 7/10 thanks to the many twists.

Silence (2016) is underrated...

Such a good movie... It takes the reality of faith, doubt, political and moral order seriously... It would have been easy to simply paint the priests as either noble victims or as evil aggressors, instead Scorsese takes a different route and shows us the reality of the very human conflict when political order is at stake and the human struggle of belief...

Silence is kind of mediocre and muddled. In fact Scorsese tends to be kind of vacant, a tad lost even whenever he's not working with his star of choice DeNiro.

Sixteen Candles (1984, John Hughes) 42/100
Festival (1996, Im Kwon-taek) 69
The Whole Nine Yards (2000, Jonathan Lynn) 31
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994, Joel Coen) 52
As Tears Go By (1988, Wong Kar-Wai) 45
The Long Goodbye (1973, Robert Altman) (rewatch) 71
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999, Michael Hoffman) 44
JCVD (2008, Mabrouk El Mechri) 47
Halloweentown High (2004, Mark A.Z. Dippe) 55
La Notte (1961, Michelangelo Antonioni) 69
Julius Caesar (1970, Stuart Burge) 45
A Perfect Murder (1998, Andrew Davis) (rewatch) 56
Dogville (2003, Lars von Trier) (rewatch) 70
The Paper (1994, Ron Howard) 52
Southland Tales (2006, Richard Kelly) 50

Jason Robards and William Shakespeare adaptations.......seem real hit/miss to me (didn't view any good/decent ones this week). Both probably even more wildly varying in quality on the whole than an obvious vanity project like Dogville.