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Watched The Amateur last night, fairly fun spy flick. Nothing ground breaking other than the central conceit that Rami Malek never actually becomes good at anything good. I wonder there was something in the editing here as there's a Jon Bernthal character in it who you feel is going to do something but he doesn't really appear in the film for any real purpose. Just felt odd.
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Apr 13, 2025 18:27
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Crocobile posted:Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989): Oh, ok. Another huge movie that I hadn’t directly seen but had experienced through references & cultural impact. It’s… a cute little movie for kids I guess. George Carlin is in it. It just sort of washed over me. What are your Big Boy movies for Adults
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Apr 13, 2025 19:18
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In the middle of Public Enemies right now and yeah here I am in another surprise Mann film and thinking I need to go find all the rest and watch or rewatch all of them. So many fascinating camera choices, music choices, ways of framing a scene. I just saw the investigator getting shot in the apartment hallway at 40m and it was a blurred-out shot of the guy in the foreground and somewhere in the back of my mind I thought "Hmmmm this is a Mann film, where did I just see this being used, oh yeah Collateral OH SHHIT" and then a guy in perfect focus popped out of a room down the hallway in the background and shot him.
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Apr 13, 2025 19:53
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I rewatched the Final Cut of Blade Runner recently and, for all its flaws, the film has a genuinely visionary quality. There is something extraordinary and even transcendent about it. It is like a dream in a genuine way. I say "for all its flaws" but even its weaknesses seem somehow to contribute to the overall effect. BR2049 is a cool-looking genre film which is at its best when it's repackaging ideas from Her, and falls apart once Harrison Ford shows up. It's a shame he didn't turn them down; the film would be stronger if it cut all its direct ties to the first one.
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Apr 13, 2025 20:26
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TV Zombie posted:I am entirely too dumb for The Green Knight. I needed to read some explanation of what was going on, to understand that this was more than just a quest by Gawain. It's about Ego Death. Edit: The clif notes version is that The Green Knight itself as a title refers to both inexperience (being green) and also the obligation of a knight to serve the realm (and it's people) above themselves or their own desires. This is embodied to an extreme in Arthur, who as the once and future king is spiritually tied to the realm. The realm is beat to poo poo, so that's why Arthur is beat to poo poo. But his sacrifice in this moment will create the foundation for a brighter future that Arthur will one day return to lead the people into. Gawain, as the nephew of fabled King Arthur, is both desiring of and intimidated by the grand destiny he believes lies ahead of him. So he has put off the rites of passage that would grant him knighthood much longer than is normal, because he thinks it has to live up to the legends of the knights around him. This is why everyone keeps saying he's almost too old to be a knight. Gawain is more worried about what kind of knight he thinks other people expect him to be than what kind of knight he wants to be and what being a knight means to him. The low behavior we see him engage in - tavern brawling, cavorting with prostitutes, etc - is only disqualifying of knighthood in his mind. But it also distracts him from making difficult choices or reckoning with his place in the world or his aspirations. So his mother, Morgana (Morgan le Fay), summons the Green Knight in order to force Gawain's hand and provide him with a suitably legendary rite of passage (while ensuring that her son becomes the heir to the throne). But it backfires because Gawain's ego gets the best of him - he wants to posture and give himself a suitable legend worthy of the other knights, and in doing so fails to embody the virtues of knighthood. The subsequent three trials are opportunities for Gawain to show his true character and embrace knighthood on his own terms. Each trial represents a virtue of knighthood, and he kind of muddles through the first two and fails the third. That final failure forces him to confront his own doubts, reject the expectations of others, and accept that death is inevitable. What people will remember of him is not his martial prowess or his legendary deeds but his character. He doesn't need to go chasing adventure, there are plenty of things happening all around him that he could contribute his strength and ability towards (this is the point of the opening scene - an adventure literally right outside of Gawain's window that he completely overlooks because he is so mired in his own concerns and distractions). The ending represents Gawain having achieved knighthood through putting the needs of others and his obligations to the realm ahead of his own fears or doubts or pride. Obviously the Green Knight doesn't kill him; off with your head is a pun in this case. The Green Knight is both dismissing Gawain to return to Camelot and reminding him to avoid falling prey to the same egotistical whims in the future. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Apr 13, 2025 |
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Apr 13, 2025 21:13
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BR2049 is a dreary and overlong movie with really bad pacing, an absurd script and subplots that go absolutely nowhere. It sucks rear end compared to the cinematic efficiency of the original Blade Runner (any version).
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Apr 13, 2025 21:26
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I was too dumb for Green Knight too, but it looked fun!
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Apr 13, 2025 22:17
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A Minecraft Movie - This is weird and typically “intentionally weird” falls flat but the marriage of a very very committed cast and a remarkably lazy plot styled as an isekai LOTR / minecraft story works OK. It’s more violent and meaner than I’d expected. I took my 7yo and it didn’t worry her but I can imagine other kids getting a bit shook by some of the skeleton/zombie/pigmonster stuff. The stuff outside of the MC world is way better than it should be, the few denizens of the lovely Idaho town we meet are fun, particularly the principal who gets a pointless side plot that’s kinda the best part of the movie.
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Apr 14, 2025 11:42
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TV Zombie posted:I am entirely too dumb for The Green Knight. I needed to read some explanation of what was going on, to understand that this was more than just a quest by Gawain. It's remarkable how much it's just the original story laid out visually. Your confusion has been shared by people for centuries.
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Apr 14, 2025 16:08
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Crocobile posted:The Running Man (1987): Fun as gently caress but I wish there was more actual running and stalking. Would have been better if the Running Man sections were shot more like a slasher/horror movie. Instead they just introduce a new wrestler with a fun gimmick and Arnie kills them almost immediately. Edgar Wright is directing the remake due to be released this year and I love the actor, he was great in Hitman and Twisters, but I believe the story starred a black guy and it's funny that Hollywood is determined to not have that be reflected on-screen.
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Apr 14, 2025 16:13
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Shageletic posted:It's remarkable how much it's just the original story laid out visually. Your confusion has been shared by people for centuries. It loving rules
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Apr 14, 2025 16:48
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Green Knight is one of my top flicks of the past decade for sure. A pitch-perfect coming-of-age story that dispenses with all the tedious nonsense that litters the category. It's just all lovely, hilarious, and enigmatic metaphor for the trials and tribulations of going from being young and dumb to growing the hell up (thanks mom)
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Apr 14, 2025 17:24
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Heat - Watched it due to this thread but I just didn't care for it. It's just too over-stuffed with underbaked characters. The action is great and the cat-and-mouse stuff is well done, but the attempts at characterization felt one-dimensional and bogged down the overall package. All Quiet on the Western Front - Also bounced off of it. It felt like something you'd show to a high school class to shock them about the horrors of war but there's not really much to grab on to aside from the visuals. On a technical level it's amazing, but all of the characters are superficial abstractions of ideas, so there's not much weight beyond the shock of all of the carnage.
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Apr 14, 2025 18:05
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500 Days of Summer man this film really seems to get some people worked up. A film about a dude who has really rigid ideas about exactly how a relationship should work trying to date a girl who doesn't. Summer's revelation at the end seems at odds with the closing narration, so I'm not totally sure what the film's angle on destiny vs coincidence and whatnot is but other than some inevitably cringy 'new couple get up to outrageous hijinks at Ikea' stuff I thought it was pretty solid - its got some decent laughs, and there's the odd truth bomb here and there, in particular Summer telling Tom that no-one can give him what he is so desperate for.
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Apr 14, 2025 21:42
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I haven't seen 500 days of Summer since it came out, but I really liked it. I thought the split screen scene of what he expected from a party vs what actually happened was really effective. I still think about it sometimes.
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Apr 14, 2025 22:25
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tonight I watched Australia's answer to hip late 90s young adult slashers, CUT (2000) about a group of college kids trying to finish the final act of a horror movie aborted 12 years prior when the star murdered the director. But perhaps some films are better left... cut... (because a murderer will murder the crew) It was pretty fun, but it's no SCREAM, much more Urban Legend or Slaughter High. Still, very charming for a low budget slasher with a delightful Molly Ringwald appearance. They did their best getting some oopy goopy kills out of the microbudget but there are some... rough edits. Also, the premise doesn't make a ton a sense. There's a logic to it but it's pretty goofy. But hey, I wanted a goofy horror movie and I got it.
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Apr 15, 2025 03:40
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Y2K had its moments, but was confusing overall. It felt like a movie written by people with similar, but different ideas of what was funny. It all didn't connect together, and when it almost did there was a perceptible change in comedy, or how the in-universe Y2K worked, etc. that took me out of it. Some plot threads were introduced and then dropped almost immediately. There were serious moments undercut by Kyle Mooney, Tim Heidecker, or a celebrity guest star. About the only thing it did interesting was have a couple of "best friend" characters die... but that just made the ending sad instead of a comedic "all the main characters and their loved ones lived happily ever after, the end". I mean they trot out the best friend's mom to hear how her son died, that should be something traumatic as gently caress for all involved, and it's just totally flat. There's a reason teen horror slashers don't bring out grieving parents unless it's a plot-relevant funeral scene. Then the main guy's crush runs outside like she's looking for someone, but then as soon as he steps outside the tone completely changes and it's like they just spotted each other as safe for the first time. Really weird, there must have been a lot of cuts and this is what was patched together.
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Apr 15, 2025 04:59
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I just watched Geostorm on Netflix. I have been getting more mileage lately out of watching unambiguously bad movies and assessing why/how they're bad, like... was there an intent at any level to make a good (or bad) movie? Do the creators know it's bad? Is it a bad movie genuinely trying to be good? Are the actors trying to make a good movie out of bad material, or have they read the tea leaves? Is the movie bad because it's boring, or boring because it's bad? I didn't always enjoy this approach and was never one to rent Attack of the Killer Tomatoes etc. back in the day, never gravitated towards Lowtax-style appreciation of campy low-budget SF. Nothing against em, but those flicks generally know they're bad and are to some degree made to be dunked on. Most of the time they're just undermined by their own budget/talent; fun sometimes, but no real mystery there. But we're now in a time where studios will bet tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on a summer blockbuster, and they'll typically do it with every intention of making a good movie. And by "good" here I don't mean award fodder, I mean competent, well-paced, genuinely crowd-pleasing, basically -not- an embarrassment for its creators. Anyway, there are many different kinds of bad. Last summer's Godzilla movie w the evil gorilla riding the dinosaur? Irritatingly bad in a way that insulted me as a viewer. Madame Web? loving gloriously, defiantly bad, the kind of bad you so rarely see anymore, like what the genuine gently caress were they thinking bad. Kraven? Unremarkably bad, stale Girl Scout cookie bad (most of the post-Endgame MCU falls into this category, minus Quantumania which deserves its own tier) All of that is to say that Geostorm is overwhelmingly bad. I can't even get into the details, you can just pick a thing about a movie and Geostorm did it bad. The acting, the script, the story, the FX, the premise, sets, editing. No shelter. Fuckin overwhelming. I often find this poo poo low-key fascinating, and sometimes insightful. It's not just the lovely CGI. 2012 has tsunamis leveling skyscrapers but it's not nearly as bad a movie as this poo poo. Day After Tomorrow has ridiculous mega-tornados to spare and is wayyyy more watchable (tho to be fair, Geostorm does feature its own Person Racing the Cold). Anyway it's bad from every angle. I cannot bring myself to assess whether it's better or worse than the Emmerich Godzilla, but that's a conversation even though they're bad in very different ways. Geostorm is however comfortably worse than Moonfall.
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Apr 15, 2025 08:20
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I have a similar fascination with terrible movies, because (almost) nobody deliberately sets out to make a bad film, yet it keeps happening. The Devil's Candy is a really good book about how one got made, in this case Bonfire of the Vanities, because author Julie Salamon had unrestricted access to everyone at all levels as the studio genuinely believed it was going to be the movie of 1990 and wanted her to chronicle it. Which she did, in agonizing detail.
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Apr 15, 2025 12:07
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Geostorm is the directorial debut of Roland Emmerich's frequent producing and writing partner, and it is a very sincere attempt at making a Roland Emmerich-style disaster movie. It's both much stupider and also much, much more fun than any of the movies it's trying to ape, mostly because it takes itself just seriously enough, while Emmerich has absolutely given up on the "sincere attempt" part. The Core is another dumb, bad, unintentionally fun entry in the genre, though it doesn't take the same big swings.
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Apr 15, 2025 12:36
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Small Strange Bird posted:I have a similar fascination with terrible movies, because (almost) nobody deliberately sets out to make a bad film, yet it keeps happening. The Devil's Candy is a really good book about how one got made, in this case Bonfire of the Vanities, because author Julie Salamon had unrestricted access to everyone at all levels as the studio genuinely believed it was going to be the movie of 1990 and wanted her to chronicle it. Which she did, in agonizing detail. I finally watched Bonfire of the Vanities a few years ago and it was a chore to get through. Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis are hilariously miscast, the tone is all over the place, and any time the movie thinks you’re not paying attention there’s a surprise racist or antisemitic rant.
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Apr 15, 2025 12:55
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I'm reading about it now and I apparently always thought it was some torrid southern/western romance epic type of thing, but I guess I was thinking of Legends of the Fall
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Apr 15, 2025 13:05
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Pope Corky the IX posted:Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis are hilariously miscast
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Apr 15, 2025 13:56
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Was Bonfire of the Vanities the movie with the super expensive extreme zoom/telephoto shot of the plane landing with a setting sun, or am I thinking of something else?
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Apr 16, 2025 04:23
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Three Colors: White: This is a bit like a more modern polish count of monte cristo. A polish man, impotent, divorced and set up as a criminal by his French ex wife plots to remake himself and then get his style of revenge. It's a bit of a dark comedy with our less suffering the ironies of life and then learning to take control. I'm not too well versed in the politics of Poland and France following the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet empire, so I had to do a little outside reading on that, but the core idea of differences in west vs east development and power in a relationship still stands out. All the parallelisms are fun (wedding rice and bird poop, subway scenes, suitcase and casket, etc) and the lead is charismatic and funny. Julie Delpy is radiant and lit as such, so I totally get Karol's obsession with her. Supposedly this is the "equality" of the trilogy and here that seems to be explored through inequalities. There's the Polish vs France, money imbalance as Karol starts at nothing in Poland and works his way to be a tycoon, and of course his marriage with Dominique. Notably Karol cannot get it up while they are married. Before he's good, after and during his revenge it's ecstasy for both. Karol goes from hair dressing champion to an impotent buffoon. Only when does outwit Dominque does he seem to gain her respect. It's a bit of a pessimistic view on marriage, but maybe he just wants to say love needs some imbalance to keep it interesting.
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Apr 16, 2025 04:45
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toggle posted:Was Bonfire of the Vanities the movie with the super expensive extreme zoom/telephoto shot of the plane landing with a setting sun, or am I thinking of something else? No. Yes.
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Apr 16, 2025 04:46
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Great Expectations David Lean I detested the book when I read it last year. I found that it married a ridiculous and contrived plot with a tedious overly moralistic and thoroughly strawman filled world. Worse than that though is that it occasionally had some passages that ranked up in in the top percentile of passages that I'd ever read. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to read schlock and then Dickens fires off some bullshit that is going to live in your head rent free purely from the beauty of the prose? It was maddening. Regardless we're talking now of the film which shares similar problems but in a reduced form. The second half especially suffers as neither old Pip, played by a man a decade too old for the role, nor Estelle are anywhere near as good as their younger counterparts. Young Pip for example perfectly encapsulates the young man's shyness and increasing frustration with his coarse and common nature while Young Estelle nails the cold haughtiness of the girl. Other than Jaggers though the rest of the cast ranges from bad caricature, which is actually not that far off from Dickens I suppose, to just bad acting. The whole film speedruns through the novel cutting more and more until it ends without every actually explaining Magwhich's issues and then changes the ending to one that is very Hollywood safe with Estelle and Pip running off together. Certainly there's something to be said for Pip tearing Estelle away from Havisham's influence, but both of the ending's that Dickens wrote rate in the canon whereas this ending doesn't rate at all. All in all a thoroughly unenjoyable experience.
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Apr 16, 2025 06:02
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toggle posted:Was Bonfire of the Vanities the movie with the super expensive extreme zoom/telephoto shot of the plane landing with a setting sun, or am I thinking of something else? Yep https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No2xc_5zd4I
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Apr 16, 2025 10:44
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There's a whole section in The Devil's Candy about that shot and how insanely difficult it was to get. What's funny is that De Palma initially went "there's no way I'm having a shot of a plane landing in my movie" until the photographer convinced him it would be something special.
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Apr 16, 2025 10:58
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Schindler's List A beautiful, cinematic masterpiece. It's a tour of suffering, redemption, and maybe even a dab of hope. I had to stop watching this a couple times this watch because certain parts felt like "maybe this could happen again," what with everything going on right now... Spielberg is still having a lot of "fun" as a director with this film, even if the core of the film is obviously tragic. You get a lot of interesting scene cuts and transitions. You even get a couple of funny moments, most notably to me, which is when Mrs. Schindler asks to be Schindler's only woman, and then it cuts to her on the train. Everyone is acting their rear end off here, and even the despicable performance of Ralph Fiennes' nazi character is enjoyable and gut-wrenching to watch. I know the academy gets a lot of flak for electing and awarding predominately sad films, but this movie really is undeniable.
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Apr 16, 2025 20:32
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Gaius Marius posted:Great Expectations David Lean lol, I remember it being extremely funny when it cuts to older Pip for the first time. The narrator says something like "I was approaching my twentieth birthday" or whatever, and it cuts to this dude who looks like he's in his forties.
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Apr 16, 2025 20:41
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Lobster Henry posted:lol, I remember it being extremely funny when it cuts to older Pip for the first time. The narrator says something like "I was approaching my twentieth birthday" or whatever, and it cuts to this dude who looks like he's in his forties. That's just what life used to do to your body before modern moisturizers and affordable Trader Joe's delicacies
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Apr 16, 2025 21:31
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Don't forget anti-smoking PSAs
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Apr 16, 2025 21:40
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The Departed Scorsese There are great parts of the film but the whole of it feels really sloppy, unusually so for Scorsese who usually has very tight films even when they run longer. Always worth it to see Matt Damon get beaten and shot though.
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Apr 17, 2025 04:22
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the elephant man - like someone dipped an unremarkable stock hollywood feel-good inspirational based-on-a-true-story script in david lynch paint. there's the movie, i.e. the collection of scenes that make up the plot, and then there's the lynch weirdness, and they feel very distinct from each other, in contrast to his other works which constantly play mundane and macabre against each other. it feels so flat. maybe it was more appealing at the time of its release but I was left wanting
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Apr 17, 2025 05:40
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Small Strange Bird posted:There's a whole section in The Devil's Candy about that shot and how insanely difficult it was to get. What's funny is that De Palma initially went "there's no way I'm having a shot of a plane landing in my movie" until the photographer convinced him it would be something special. It's very funny looking up what that guy did after as a career.
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Apr 17, 2025 11:33
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I watched The Ritual yesterday on Netflix, which I started on my mobile phone while out of the house but since most of the film takes place in the rain & the middle of the night, I couldn't see anything. So I gave up after the first 20 minutes and watched the rest when I got home last night. And I really, really wanted to like it. It was well-made and well-acted, and I have a soft spot for Brits who get lost in the woods and encounter strange things (like Dog Soldiers) but this one felt too close to Blair Witch for me to really appreciate it. I did admire the main dude's redemption arc, but the horror of it all felt a little too silly. While the creature's look was cool and his mesmerizing eye trick was neat, I really appreciate horror movies where the violence has meaning (like Get Out or Alien) and isn't just an unfocused evil that kills randomly. There is an interesting subtext, though, since the friend is needlessly killed in a robbery in the beginning and that haunts the rest of the film so perhaps when viewed through that lens it could be considered successful, the shadow being cast by a random murder. It's just a difficult narrative hill to climb, since ultimately so many people have to needlessly die for the main character to have that epiphany. VorpalBunny fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Apr 17, 2025 |
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Apr 17, 2025 20:29
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It's a pity that Bonfire of the Vanities failed as a film because it is classic movie material. Perhaps in a decade someone can have another go at it as a period piece.
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Apr 17, 2025 21:47
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I just came back from Mumu, and all I knew about it going in was it's an unrated Chinese film with a nearly 2 hour runtime. I had no idea the genre, the cast, the plot, nothing - and I am so glad I went in blind. It's a family drama about a deaf man raising his hearing child, and his ex-wife demands custody of the child and for her to be enrolled in a hearing school and enter the "real world" after caring for her father and his deaf friends for so long. To pay for her school and an adequate living space, he becomes a driver for an insurance fraud racket. It was a highly entertaining, engrossing affective drama that hits all the right cinematic beats and has a stellar child actress who anchors the whole thing. It's weepy, it's manipulative in the best way, it's hopeful, it's a film that brings tears to my eyes just recalling a few scenes. I never saw Coda, my understanding it's about a hearing daughter and her efforts to break free from the deaf family that needs her to communicate but that it was schmaltzy and lightweight. This film effectively uses cinematic touches to bring out his deafness, her struggles to communicate with him while growing on her own, and has a pretty progressive message - which is probably carefully constructed Chinese propaganda, but I went with it hook line & sinker. It's up there with Black Bag as my favorite movie of the year, so far. I love finding movies like this, it came out of nowhere and I wasn't prepared for the emotional wallop it served. But in a good way. Sometimes it's true, heartbreak does feel good in a place like this. VorpalBunny fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Apr 18, 2025 |
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Apr 18, 2025 08:23
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Unforgiven (1992) Wow. What a movie. Hackman is so unreal in all his scenes. I appreciate just how real all the characters treat the violence and it's aftermath. It doesn't feel heroic at all.
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Apr 18, 2025 13:40
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