The 2nd Cap USA was often a bit boring, despite a not uninteresting story.
I do try to avoid this topic since I track movies on letterboxd, but since we have a few folks from the tiny mid-European countries in here I just wanna say I just watched The Broken Circle Breakdown and thatās a fuckinā great movie (Belgium).
I wrote a review of it a week or so ago, and wrote that it was okay, not bad, but not such a fuckinā great movie (like everybody was saying in Belgium)
Review is here (in Dutch, but thatās very close to Deutsch):
I still donāt understand a word of it 
Really?
Half of it is easily understandable, the other half is more or less guessable.
nope, I call it 90% gibberish and 10% German words 
I guess it depends where you are in Holland or Flanders, in some parts of Holland, but especially in Flanders, dialects are really strong. My wife grew up in West-Flanders (region of Bruges) and when sheās having a conversation with locals (for instance people she grew up with) I have a lot of trouble to understand what theyāre saying.
In Germany there are of course lots of dialects too, but most people have two ālanguage registersā : they speak the local variation among each other (frieds, family) and turn to hoghdeutsch to foreigners
Ok on the danger of getting off topic, I do speak at least three variants of German plus English and I studied linguistics, I still canāt make much sense of dutch :)))
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But a sentence like this: āhij is rationeel en gereserveerd, zij is emotioneel en impulsief ā¦ā
āEr ist rational und irgendwas, sie ist emotional und impulsivā
but otherwise ok, more than half of it is more guessing than knowing, but a tendency is recognizable.
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Gereserveerd is the English āreservedā in the sense (Dictionary.com)
āformal or self-restrained in manner and relationship; avoiding familiarity or intimacy with others:
a quiet, reserved man.ā
ZurĆ¼ckhaltend (I think German also has āreserviertā)
Yes, reserviert, I should have guessed it.
Watched a fistful of Jean-Luc Godard movies over the weekend.
On a somewhat different tack, I watched another couple of MCU pictures: The Incredible Hulk (Leterrier, 2008), Iron Man 2 (Favreau, 2010) and Thor (Branagh, 2011). Iron Man 2 was as good as I remembered it (I know Iām in something of a minority in liking that movie) and Thor was as weak. I didnāt think quite as much of The Incredible Hulk this time around though, alas. Perhaps the plodding disappointment of Ang Leeās Hulk (2003) made The Incredible Hulk look better than it was by comparison at the time.
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THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO (1985, Woody Allen)
Unlike many other fans of the director, Iāve never been a great fan of this movie and my opinion still stands after all those years. Mia Farrow is a waitress who spends most of her time in cinema, watching the same movies over and over again; one day her fantasies become reality when her favorite actor steps forward, off the screen, into her life.
Sounds like an intellectual challenge for a director like Woody Allen, but surprisingly little is done with the interesting premise. Instead of a witty study of identity and the essence of fantasy and reality, the film rather plays like a romantic comedy. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but the problem is that the movie is a) not too funny and b) the comedy eventually turns out to be a tragedy. Itās also (like for instance Zelig) too much a one-trick poney, a great idea but not great enough to sustain a feature length movie. It would have worked much better on a shorter format.
Well-made, well-acted (Jeff Daniels - not really my favorite actor - is perfectly cast here) and easy to enjoy, but I expected more of it then, and still canāt shake the feeling that it could have (should have) been better.
6,5 out of 10
Iām a big fan of Allen (Iāve seen around 35 out of his 45 films) and if not counting Whatās up Tiger Lily? which isnāt really a movie at all, Purple Rose has been my least favorite. But Iāve noticed few times when talking about Allen that itās usually the favorite of those who donāt like Allen that much.
Most likely in the first half of my Woodymeter.
You never know with comedies, especially when theyāre made by Mel Brooks, but this oneās still crazy after all those years:
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One of my favorites, would probably be in my top20.
Watched Captain America: The First Avenger (Johnston, 2011), The Avengers (Whedon, 2012), Iron Man 3 (Black, 2013) and Thor: The Dark World (Taylor, 2013) over the last few days. IM3 has its moments but itās overlong, really. I found CA:TFA to be a surprisingly good picture when I first saw it and itās only improved over time. The Avengers was a movie I thought was overrated at the time and Iāve liked it less as timeās gone on but on this occasion, I rather enjoyed it. I donāt know if itās because I was finally able to let go of the multitudinous and cavernous plotholes and take each set-piece at face value, or because itās a movie which works better in close context with its MCU relatives, or because mrs.caress curled up with me and took a genuine interest in the movie (no doubt helped along by her vague crush on Mark Ruffalo); perhaps it was a little of each, but it fared better with me this time around than it ever had.
Thor: The Dark World was actually worse than I remembered it, and is definitely the weak link in the Marvel Cinematic Universe IMHO.
The Executioner (1970 Sam Wanamaker
Blond or brunette you choose
Iāve watched a few things lately, this one in particular caught my attention, I always liked the easygoing style of Peppard, and the original A-Team series now stands at guilty pleasure level, was once a long time ago by now, a favorite of mine.
The executioner is not your typical glamorous seventies spy film, which in the end is not a bad thing. Peppard plays a British spy that was raised in the US (pretty clever), that gets enveloped in a complex double cross spy story.
The plot has no real surprises, with some twists among the film, that made the narrative hard to follow, even with some long action scenes, but I did enjoyed the end and the start, with the story being told in a long flashback.
Filmed in location in London Athens, istambul and in Corfu, the typical spy affairs are all there, among some familiar faces with the rest of the cast like usual character actor Oscar Homolka, Joan Collins and Judy Geeson.
I liked the film because itās actually pretty heavy and unglamorous stuff, something that at the beginning I was not expecting, with the cast and premise, undoubtedly I was supposing more Bond than Palmer. In the end the reason I liked this one, might be the main problem with the Executioner so many plot twists (I lost the count of the double crossing spies), that you almost forget the action scenes and what is happening.
Not a classic but still one to watch for old time sake
Judy Geeson, Joan Collins and 1970 London are more than enough reasons for me to watch this one. Iāll have to seek it out. (If I donāt already have it. Must check the pile again)