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Sir Kodiak
May 14, 2007




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR0SDT2GeFg

The newest film from Denis Villeneuve, director of Incendies (2010), Prisoners (2013), and Enemy (2013). He's currently filming Story of Your Life, a science-fiction film, and was announced as a director of the unnamed sequel to Blade Runner. He's working with Roger Deakins again, as he did on Prisoners to wonderful effect, so reports that it's a visually stunning affair are entirely believable. It's a first script by Taylor Sheridan, better known as an actor from Sons of Anarchy and Veronica Mars.

The film follows Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow, Looper) as an FBI agent working near the US/Mexico border as part of a joint task force hunting a drug lord. The cast also includes Benicio del Toro (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Wolfman), Josh Brolin (The Goonies, Hollow Man), Victor Garber (Legally Blonde, Alias), Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead, The Wolf of Wall Street), Daniel Kaluuya (Skins, Black Mirror), Maximiliano Hernández (The Americans, Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice, Changeling).

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Rageaholic
May 31, 2005

Old Town Road to EGOT

This is probably my most anticipated film for the rest of the year after Star Wars. Prisoners and Enemy were both incredible. Denis Villeneuve has a real defined style that's captivating to watch. I was excited for this from the first time I saw the trailer, and recently I've been hearing nothing but good things about it, so I'm anxious to see for myself how it turns out.

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


I saw this last week at TIFF and it absolutely blew me away. Definitely my movie of the year.

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy
This is my favorite film of 2015 so far and here are some posts I made about it in the GenChat thread. The spoilers are mild and the scene descriptions are vague, but since this isn't wide yet I'm still putting up tags.

quote:

I wanna get these out while they're fresh in my mind, so here are two things that I especially enjoyed about Sicario. Since Villeneuve and Deakins are such beasts when it comes to visual storytelling, I'm going to stick to smaller-scale cinematographic points and leave larger thematic concerns for either a later post here or maybe a Sicario thread if one gets made.

1) Early on, from the time Kate first meets Alejandro to the end of their trip to Juarez, the two of them spend a lot of time very physically near one another (e.g. on the plane, sitting a few seats apart in the briefing, in the back of the same convoy vehicle) and speaking to one another, but it's very rare that they're in the same shot. When they are, it's typically in a brief moment of reaction to an apparent danger, showcasing Alejandro's ability to see through the situation compared to Kate's relative caution and naivete. When they see the bodies strung up, Alejandro already knows their fates had nothing to do with 'punishment' or reprisal, and he's already sick of the driver's poo poo. When they apprehend Guillermo, he knows that the place for violence is still miles and miles away. It's only when they're about to get out of the cars and open fire that the camera lingers on the two of them together for more than half a second, because their perspectives are finally merging

2) Later in the film, when Matt is about to take the team on a raid into the tunnel, the camera makes sure to spend a lot of time drinking in the gorgeous sunset landscape (was this the series of shots you were mentioning in your earlier post?) before the Delta guys put on their helmets and become a pack of horned demons fading into the land, seeping into it, infecting it until it's transformed into some alien planet lit in grainy green or unearthly grayscales (the movement all felt off during the thermal cam sections - could be a different framerate). Aside from being an incredibly clever visual trick, it recalls the earlier scene where Kate views the post-Guillermo violence in Juarez through a pair of binoculars, the camera briefly taking her perspective. When we're in a temporary pseudo-found-footage mode like that, it's suffusing the scene with a sense of violence in the wake of lost control

quote:

The thing about the first-person predator-vision is that both times it happens our viewpoint character is still Kate, and soon enough the camera makes a point to illustrate her alienation from that mindset. She jerks around the binoculars, startled, in response to the explosion in Juarez. She quickly takes off her thermal/night camera in the tunnel. She can only immerse herself in that world for so long.

trip9
Feb 15, 2011

This was a great film, and Deakins absolutely killed it with some of his shots. A particular favorite of mine is the shot of the plane shadow traveling over the landscape.

Hostile V
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

I was sold on this movie from the teaser poster alone.



Like I'm not gonna lie, I am a total loving sap for a really good poster (which is why I proudly have The Thing 2011, Doomsday and It Follows framed and hanging up at home) and I will proudly own nice posters for movies that are terrible (case in point: I have a Chernobyl Diaries poster and the best actor in that movie is a wild bear) but I am loving the simple look of this teaser. A tunnel with inlaid mazes, the slow tarnishing of SICARIO, and a suit-clad explorer about to journey into the dark and unknown looks really really rad.

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy
I have that poster pinned to the wall of my desk at work, it owns

trip9
Feb 15, 2011

drat that's a really good poster, and is also indicative of how good the movie is.

corn in the bible
Jun 5, 2004

Oh no oh god it's all true!
I'm glad we finally got a sequel to Cousin Eddie's Island Vacation

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
I have a bunch of thoughts about this movie but mostly what I'm thinking is that I really want to see it again.

justlikedunkirk
Dec 24, 2006
It's a very good movie! I feel like this is where Villeneuve needs to stay as a director. He's much better pulling off this sort of straightforward prestige genre stuff than he is with other things. Blade Runner is a good choice for him.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours
If he stays where he is, he's going to end up as Christopher Nolan and that would be very dull.

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

mostly what I'm thinking is that I really want to see it again.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

One of these days we gotta catch something.

Shoombo
Jan 1, 2013

justlikedunkirk posted:

It's a very good movie! I feel like this is where Villeneuve needs to stay as a director. He's much better pulling off this sort of straightforward prestige genre stuff than he is with other things. Blade Runner is a good choice for him.

I super disagree. Enemy is my favorite of his because it actively engages in magical realism and surrealism. The best parts of his movies is when they dispense with realism and become weird and metaphorical.

This movie was visually great, and had some of the magical stuff I like from Villaneuve, in that it follows Emily Blunt as she enters this strange world with incomprehensible rules, but I had problems with the script. Some of the characters, especially Emily Blunt's, felt weak, and I would have loved some more agency.

I just got out of an advance screening, so I still need to do some thinking on it, but I liked it despite whatever issues it had.

Immortan
Jun 6, 2015

by Shine
This looks like it has a No Country For Old Men vibe set in 2015.

Immortan fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Sep 23, 2015

not trolled not crying
Jan 29, 2007

21st Century Awezome Man

Immortan posted:

This looks like it has a No Country For Old Men vibe set in 2015.

This is what it felt like at times. Maybe it was the cinematography, locations and subject matter, but there was that feeling. One of the most interesting films of the year and yeah the visual storytelling was really well done and of course everything was beautifully shot. I'm sure some people are going to come out of this saying Alejandro was one the coolest characters in a while, but no, he was the coldest. For all the horribly brutal stuff happening in the movie, most of the time I was like "yeah I can see where they are coming from, it is what it is". There is this underlying intensity throughout the film, even in the scenes where "nothing" happens and when poo poo gets real, it's really rough.

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

Happened to catch this during a sneak peek recently, so going in mostly blind, and I was really impressed. People have already (rightfully) praised the visuals, but I'll add that I also liked the sound as well. That deep bass pounding really helped to ratchet up the tension without being too on-the-nose about it.

For anybody considering this, I'd say it's a movie that's really best seen in a cinema rather than anywhere else. Not because of any particular visual effects or anything of that sort, but rather because sitting in a dark, quiet hall with no distractions is great for letting the oppressive and tense atmosphere really get to you. If I'd seen this at home or anywhere familiar and comfortable I don't think it'd have left as much of an impression on me as it did.

trip9
Feb 15, 2011

While Sicario is the vastly superior film, did anyone else get The Counselor vibes? Probably because of the setting and cartel stuff.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours

trip9 posted:

While Sicario is the vastly superior film, did anyone else get The Counselor vibes? Probably because of the setting and cartel stuff.

Absolutely.


Come to New Jersey for a matinee. Stupid NYC theaters don't do matinees.

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy
What, like Newark? Point me at a theater and I'll figure out how feasible it is to get there. I'll also look into buying PMs I guess so that this thread doesn't become Hundu and Jenny Talk Logistical Details with Occasional Sicario Chat

Snak
Oct 10, 2005

I myself will carry you to the Gates of Valhalla...
You will ride eternal,
shiny and chrome.
Grimey Drawer
Can someone tell me how the title is pronounced? Hard or soft 'c'?

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy
Hard c.

EDIT: I don't think anyone says the title within the movie, though? I'm just going off Narcos.

Snak
Oct 10, 2005

I myself will carry you to the Gates of Valhalla...
You will ride eternal,
shiny and chrome.
Grimey Drawer

Thanks. Since I just found out about this movie over the last week, I am not even going to watch the trailers before I go see it in a few weeks.

trip9
Feb 15, 2011

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Come to New Jersey for a matinee. Stupid NYC theaters don't do matinees.

Saw it at AMC Empire 25 near Times Square at 10:45 Sunday morning. Was Dolby Digital prime with the assigned seating and the rumble seats for only $12.75 a ticket. All the other showings in that theater were $20, so I'm pretty sure there are still matinees, just really early?

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours

trip9 posted:

Saw it at AMC Empire 25 near Times Square at 10:45 Sunday morning. Was Dolby Digital prime with the assigned seating and the rumble seats for only $12.75 a ticket. All the other showings in that theater were $20, so I'm pretty sure there are still matinees, just really early?

"Only".

Jenny Angel posted:

Hard c.

EDIT: I don't think anyone says the title within the movie, though? I'm just going off Narcos.

Get plat. Also, there was a movie a couple years ago, a documentary based on a book I read once called Sicario: Room 164 (on youtube, of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuWrf2gSdb8) He says it plenty. Hard C.

trip9
Feb 15, 2011


Fair enough, I just moved to the NYC area about a year ago so I expect to get gouged for pretty much anything. It's worth it for the limited release films though.

Hostile V
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

Well, that was certainly a grim movie. I liked it and I am glad some of the stuff involving Alejandro was in it, especially near the end, to help remind me that it was a movie and not just something that probably does happen.

This felt a lot like the Anti-Counselor. Both films dehumanize the cartels and turn them into forces of human nature, smart cancers, but The Counselor is a film where you don't come in conflict with them if you just keep away because otherwise they'll just beat you down. In that film, the cartels are just big, alien fish that swallow up the guppies that attract their attention.

Sicario takes a different approach by tying it into the whole nature of post 9-11 nature of American supremacy, retaliation and alphabet departments operating with no oversight once someone says it's okay. Sicario's characters argue that yes, the cartels are a smart cancer. But you beat cancer with chemotherapy, surgery, medicine and it's not pretty. If you can't excise the cancer, the best you can do is just put it into dormancy, remission.

I like how the movie chastises you for buying into this mindset by letting you see the people of Juarez and just how dangerous this view can be when you take a cancer metaphor and apply it to living people.

Other thoughts: casting and acting was fantastic, the pacing is great, it doesn't feel bloated and I really appreciated the shots of the scenery. The convoy fading into the background as Juarez looms and seems to swallow them up as they enter is really great (along with the tunnel raid where they slowly sink into the black horizon of the land) and they do a really good job of getting Blunt and Kaluuya look small compared to everything. And I absolutely loved the part where the Mexicans are giving Brolin and del Toro info because despite everything else, they're treating these guys well and politely because they're just willing to play ball and provide info and they're so relaxed and open and even joking a little.

Hostile V fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Sep 25, 2015

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy
I feel like the most brilliant little knife that this movie twists into the viewer is how Matt has been spending the whole movie framing his operations in the context of getting your hands dirty, effecting real change, and rejecting Kate's half measures. And then when he explains Medellin, it turns out he's been advocating a half measure the whole time. I feel like a lesser movie would've stuck to that narrative of crossing moral thresholds gives you superpowers, but this really recalled Villeneuve's earlier work in Prisoners and how useless Jackman's torture den was.

EDIT: Hundu check your PMs

centaurtainment
Jun 16, 2015
I saw Sicario yesterday...I loved Prisoners and was really looking forward to this, although managed to avoid reading any reviews or seeing a trailer beforehand.

Sicario is the rare movie that is underwritten. People keep comparing it to No Country for Old Men, but that movie had well-developed characters who we learned things about apart from their professions. In Sicario, Emily Blunt's character doesn't have any character traits: she's either confused and passive (sitting outside the office), confused and stressed (smoking cigarettes in her apartment), or, at the apex of her arc, frustrated by the things she learns. Her motivation is unexplained (it's alluded to that she's unsatisfied with leading hostage rescue missions, but we're never even told this outright, much less shown it), as is her sudden objection to the amorality of Brolin's actions part of the way through the film.

The cutaways to the Mexican cop are ham-fisted and manipulative to the extreme, and are easily the worst part of the movie. Instead of achieving the moral grey area the writer was aiming for, they come across as both a signpost for the end of the movie (we will know the climax has come when this character meets up with the rest of the cast) and a dumping ground for cliches (the relationship with the son was reminiscent of Crash).

That being said, Villeneuve's direction is top-notch, as are the performances. Many of the shots are amazing, especially the ones involving the landscape, and the music in the action scenes is perfect. The repeated motif from Prisoners of finding things in walls was nice.

But even that opening scene with the house of a thousand corpses betrays how unsubtle this movie truly is. Not only do we uncover a memorably haunting charnel house, we then get an explosion outside. No one we know dies, no one seems to care that two agents apparently died, and none of the evidence is destroyed, so no harm, no foul I guess. The worst part is that the opening scene could easily serve as motivation for Blunt's character. Maybe her character is noticeably disturbed by, I don't know, finding two dozen rotting corpses in the walls of a house. Maybe an innocent bystander or a cop she knows dies, and Brolin has to pressure he into "volunteering" with the line about how all of the house she raids will be booby trapped within six months. It would have been a cliche, but at least it would have been something.

PopZeus
Aug 11, 2010

centaurtainment posted:

But even that opening scene with the house of a thousand corpses betrays how unsubtle this movie truly is. Not only do we uncover a memorably haunting charnel house, we then get an explosion outside. No one we know dies, no one seems to care that two agents apparently died, and none of the evidence is destroyed, so no harm, no foul I guess. The worst part is that the opening scene could easily serve as motivation for Blunt's character. Maybe her character is noticeably disturbed by, I don't know, finding two dozen rotting corpses in the walls of a house. Maybe an innocent bystander or a cop she knows dies, and Brolin has to pressure he into "volunteering" with the line about how all of the house she raids will be booby trapped within six months. It would have been a cliche, but at least it would have been something.

Wait, isn't all that exactly what happened?? The explosion and bodies absolutely were a catalyst for Blunt's character, she was definitely disturbed by the bodies (she threw up if I recall), and the whole reason she's with Brolin's squad is that she wants a chance to do some real damage to the cartel and the people responsible, not just keep finding their handiwork and nearly getting blown up doing it.


centaurtainment posted:

Her motivation is unexplained (it's alluded to that she's unsatisfied with leading hostage rescue missions, but we're never even told this outright, much less shown it), as is her sudden objection to the amorality of Brolin's actions part of the way through the film.

I also definitely don't agree with this for reasons above. Also, I can't call her objection sudden in the least, she freaks out after the first mission.

PopZeus fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Sep 28, 2015

bullet3
Nov 8, 2011
This movie is ultra frustrating in the exact same way Prisoners was, where the visuals/audio/tension/performances are so loving good that it feels like you're watching a great movie, except once you get to the end of it you realize it's actually super shallow and the characters were basically non-existent and just puppets to serve the needs of the plot. It's actually kind of infuriating, it's like an imposter of a great movie.

Like, it's not bad, but I don't get how you can have such masterful direction of every shot and every sequence, but not see that the main character is completely useless in this story, and that the supposed twist and message isn't remotely shocking or interesting.

Hand Knit
Oct 24, 2005

Beer Loses more than a game Sunday ...
We lost our Captain, our Teammate, our Friend Kelly Calabro...
Rest in Peace my friend you will be greatly missed..
Prisoners was super shallow?

Last Buffalo
Nov 7, 2011
I loves the tone and style of Prisoners, but it had a terrible, exploitative script with a stupid climax.


The whole film is built around this relatable fear that your child could be taken, and there's this constant threat of sexual violence against children. That's a real thing that happens, and it adds to the tension of the film. What doesn't really happen in real life is a serial killer couple that's "at war with God" and murders kids to turn their parents in atheists or whatever. Also, for a script that wants you to ultimately see Paul Dano's character as innocent, it writes it into a hole. He did it, he took the kids, and actually has some culpability. But because that doesn't jive with the simple themes of the movie ("Torture is bad," "abuse trickles down") it's just ignored.


On the other hand, I thought Sicario really worked as a lean, mean story about the structure of the drug war. We get led in thinking Emily Blunt is this kickass action girl. She's a swat cop, she kills people. But as we gradually learn, she knows dick about the scale or the power structure behind this war, and that she is naive and foolish to not see herself as a pawn. I thought this movie worked especially well as a metaphor about the shadow of the War on Terror, and how all the bureaucratic systems have abandoned operating out in the open and playing fair. It wasn't a great script (the mexican cop was def the weakest part), but it was perfect for showing off Villeneuve's skill.

Jenny Angel
Oct 24, 2010

Out of Control
Hard to Regulate
Anything Goes!
Lipstick Apathy
Hundu proposed in the GenChat thread that this works as a spiritual successor to Zero Dark Thirty, which is completely true, but I propose that it works just as well as a spiritual successor to No Country for Old Men.

centaurtainment
Jun 16, 2015

PopZeus posted:

Wait, isn't all that exactly what happened?? The explosion and bodies absolutely were a catalyst for Blunt's character, she was definitely disturbed by the bodies (she threw up if I recall), and the whole reason she's with Brolin's squad is that she wants a chance to do some real damage to the cartel and the people responsible, not just keep finding their handiwork and nearly getting blown up doing it.

I would agree except that the "whole reason" she's with Brolin's squad is that she gets drafted into it. She has no agency in her own story, which, while, I get it, that's the big reveal, doesn't make for a compelling narrative. The scene where she's called into the conference room and "volunteers" is a wasted opportunity: instead of giving her a chance to seem conflicted or gung-ho about the reassignment, she just spits out this very deadpan platitude about "getting the guys who really matter" or whatever and then enlists on the spot.

Her only moods in the whole movie are either confused assent or impotent anger, which, while it works on paper as a metaphor for post-9/11 border security, makes her character on screen very hollow. The audience needs to see a powerful motivation to believe that a cop will go along on what she calls an illegal operation in Mexico (during which she kills a Federalé, an act which, again, would have provided a great place for some character development), yell at her superior about it, and then suit up for the next mission, and Sicario doesn't provide one.

Ugh, and what makes the scene where she throws up NOT character motivation is that there are at least two other cops throwing up in the same yard because they're all nauseous from the decomposing bodies (which, small point, would have smelled immediately, not just once the walls were opened). You can graft motivation onto her character after the fact, but the script just doesn't include it.

I keep seeing comparisons to No Country for Old Men, but there's more tension in that one see with Chigurh in the gas station than there is in all of Sicario put together. Sicario is the non-propaganda equivalent of Zero Dark Thirty, all about America getting poo poo done without following the rules.


Also, "You remind me of someone special to me" is a line that should never be in another movie again.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours

Jenny Angel posted:

Hundu proposed in the GenChat thread that this works as a spiritual successor to Zero Dark Thirty, which is completely true, but I propose that it works just as well as a spiritual successor to No Country for Old Men.

That's a more inevitable comparison, yeah.

Wandle Cax
Dec 15, 2006

centaurtainment posted:


Also, "You remind me of someone special to me" is a line that should never be in another movie again.

What is it about that line that offended you so much?

centaurtainment
Jun 16, 2015

Wandle Cax posted:

What is it about that line that offended you so much?

It's a cliche. There a thousand more interesting ways to write that line.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


To me the story explores the consequences of the right wing fallacy of taking the fight to the drug lords and what that actually entails.

It's clearly a speculative movie, in that it is explicitly stated that elected officials are now authorizing illegal hit squads to do [anything]. The situation on the border has now deteriorated to the point that cartels are burying booby-trapped corpses in the suburban southwest, you can just gun people down at border checkpoints with no legal consequences, and they take captured cartel lieutenants to what amounts to blacksites.

I don't really see it as a criticism of what is actually happening right now, though I won't speak to what amount of any of the stuff going on this movie actually happens.

Anyway, it was good to watch this after the disappointment that was Black Mass. What a difference a plot makes.

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Pedro De Heredia
May 30, 2006

Last Buffalo posted:

Also, for a script that wants you to ultimately see Paul Dano's character as innocent, it writes it into a hole. He did it, he took the kids, and actually has some culpability. But because that doesn't jive with the simple themes of the movie ("Torture is bad," "abuse trickles down") it's just ignored.

I am not really sure what you mean when you say the movie ignores his culpability. Are you trying to say the movie should have presented torturing someone to within an inch of their life with more
'greyness' to it since he wasn't totally innocent?

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