Movie/film suggestions.

@gano , I do not know why I was drawn into The Brutalist . . . but I was. (I was surprised that AI told me that it was not based on fact, thanks for clearing that up.)  As far as DeNiro goes, I think he has gotten better with age, and I’d say the same for Pacino.  I forgot about Glengarry Glen Ross, yes, a great movie, but Heat?  A typical good guys/bad guys bang bang shoot ’em up that although I have been told was based on fact, came off as totally and completely unrealistic to me.  Good special effects and cinematography though.  I’ve watched it once completely start to finish, but have not ever been able to get through another complete viewing.

I like that he is very consistent, no weird embarrassing roles like De Niro would do. 

How about Dick Tracy?

As far as Detachment, what I didn’t say about that was that it had too many unrealistic depictions of events in it to be what I would consider a real good movie, but since I was on a Adrien Brody kick at the time, I threw it in there.  Not a great movie, but an okay watch.

I thought that Lions For Lambs was pretty good.  It had three rotating parallel stories going on simultaneously and a shorter flashback story.  Set in the period a few years after 9/11 while the subsequent middle east invasions/wars were happening, Robert Redford plays a professor in one of the stories giving counsel to a privileged and intelligent but lackadaisical student.  At the same time, in another story. Meryl Streep plays a journalist interviewing a GOP senator with a neocon world view played by Tom Cruise.  I enjoy Tom Cruise when he is out of his usual type cast roles.  In the other simultaneous story, two students (Michael Pena and Adrian Finch) that Redford had in his class prior are in Chinook helicopter over Afghanistan.   The brief flash back story shows the two students when they were in Redford’s class back before they joined the military and there is the contrast to be made.  Redford’s acting was strong in this movie.

. . . after reading your response/reaction, @gano , I engaged in further thought and I still cannot explain why I didn't mind watching The Brutalist.  I guess it struck me the way I imagine some old Russian novel would . . . twisting and dangling in a seemingly pointless and off beat way down seemingly pointless off beat paths, and I guess I just wanted to find out where the paths ultimately would end up.  I will say that I often watch a movie that I enjoy more than once, and I seriously doubt that I will ever watch this one again, but that still  doesn't mean that I found it to be a bad movie.

A couple of observations:  it struck me as unrealistic that the protagonist would be as productive as he was and also be an IV opiate user, but I guess there are exceptions to every rule.  I was left wondering if Zsofia's child was a product of interaction being forced upon her by Harry Lee Jr.  And the whole scene in which Van Buren Senior raped Laszlo left me clueless.  But leaving me clueless generally is not hard to do.

@immatthewj I am curious to anyone's opinion who liked The Brutalist. If I may say, especially yours because you are a very intelligent and strange (in a good way) individual. 

As I said, the second half was painful. Which implies the first half was OK,  for me, even enjoyable at times. The rape was symbolism I guess, I didn't like it but understood it. I am big architecture nerd which kept me going but it wasn't very entertaining on that front either. I wish the proceeds would have gone to save some buildings designed by Bauhaus people like Breuer and his contemporaries. They are actively deteriorating and being sold to build shopping malls in their place, so that bother me more than the movie. 

 I guess it struck me the way I imagine some old Russian novel would

That is spot on because the movie was very Eastern European in many ways. One: the dialogs and language were authentic - despite the pronunciation. 90% of the movie was shot in Hungary if not all. The style, cinematography was also very typical of Menzel, Forman, Jancso, Gothar, and I'd add Kusturica, my favorite but he is a bit less gloomy. Brody's character is spot on, the genius who is always unhappy and revels in his misery - Eastern European to the core.

Thank you for your kind words, @gano ; "very intelligent" is no doubt a stretch, but I am sure "strange" may be appropriate.  Back to The Brutalist quickly:

generally if a movie starts to bore me and does not develop into something that is going somewhere relatively quickly, I don't hang with it very long before I am switching channels.  Therefore I have been thinking and wondering why I sat through two hundred and some minutes of this film in one sitting.  All I can say is that I guess the acting was good enough and to me the plot was believable (considering the historical period that it was based on) and there was something about the dark and depraved nature of the whole ordeal that the protagonist was enduring (and this is what makes me think of a Russian novel) that held my interest.  (And my experience with Russian novels is limited, but the only one that I did read had sort of the same effect on me, but did not leave me with the burning desire to read more of them.)

A successful story usually has to have a protagonist and an antagonist that create conflict (I'd say that they had that base covered) and the protagonist should be one that the viewer or reader truly cares about (or "gives a damn about what happens to him or her" as one critic once told me), and I confess didn't feel an exceptional amount of that. But although I did not feel a tight connection to anyone in the film, it kept me engaged and interested enough  to not turn it off. For me it was quite watchable, maybe even good, but nowhere near approaching great.  For me, anyway.

BTW, have you been following the Karen Read?  Jury is out and from the questions they have sent the judge, the annalists all feel ng on murder 2 is a done deal and the jury wants to go ng on manslaughter but they have some differences on DUI.  And, apparently the way the verdict sheet reads, if they hang on DUI then they also default to hanging on manslaughter?  Seems pretty messed up if that's the way it is, but I do not have a legal mind.  I know a couple of things:  I have no desire to live in Ma. (which is not on the table anyway), and if I did, I'd stay a long way from Canton.

@immatthewj there is a saying: "women hate women". The judge is doing everything she can to put her away. Either that or she is an incompetent judge. Maybe both. It's not looking great for Read, but at least the jury doesn't seem to think she killed him