Movies Rate and Discuss the Last Movie You Saw v.16

Black Coal, Thin Ice (China, 2014)

Neo-noir mystery film set in a wintery Chinese city in 2004.

Zhang is a traumatized former police detective who is now a pathetic drunk barely clinging to a security guard job.

Zhang bumps into a former police colleague and finds out that one of his old cases is active again. Despite no longer being a cop, Zhang starts to follow and investigate a woman named Wu who works at a drycleaning shop and has ties to 3 murder victims. Zhang becomes infatuated with Wu and the line blurs between his investigation and his personal interest.

The film incorporates many noir film tropes; washed up policeman, twisty plot, moody atmosphere, and a (potential) femme fatale.

The plot is murky and convoluted. Zhang is a flawed but charismatic protagonist. Wu is eerily quiet and reserved. The film embraces the frigid temperatures and the environment bleeds into every scene. The violence, when it comes, is abrupt, naturalistic, and brutal.

Overall, it is a good film and an interesting Chinese take on neo-noir film.

As an aside, apparently the literal translation of the Chinese title is "Daylight Fireworks" and that is a 10x better title than what they went with for the international release.

Rating: 7/10

 
ufcfan4 said:
The Big Short

Second time watching it and I really enjoy it. It's an entertaining movie that happens to also be very unsettling. I won't lie, there are certain more intricate aspects of the subprime mortgage crisis that I still can't wrap my mind around. And the cute cutaway cameos to Margo, Bourdain (RIP), Selena Gomez, etc. don't exactly make it much more clear. If anything, it made me want to read Michael Lewis' book to get more details. Still, the essentials of the plot are easy to digest and I thought the cast was uniformly good. Bale and Carrell gave the best performances. I'm not sure if Carrell had the most screentime or just had the most commanding performance, but I think he was in the best scenes in the film- when he and his team go to Florida and speak with Billy Magnussen and Max Greenfield as the mortgage broker bros, interrupting the presentation (Zero! There is a zero percent chance that your subprime losses stay at five percent). He really conveyed righteous indignation well in his performance.

Bale is almost always great and I thought he did a really good job despite not being in much of the film. McKay did a good job of having Bale's initial efforts contribute to the motives of the other principal characters. It almost struck me as similar to the film adaptation of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. You have the first part of the movie focus on Chuck Yeager because his action facilitates the rest of the plot, even if he is no longer central to the action after that.

It's a well-made, effective film. I found some of McKay's stylistic touches a bit distracting, but I thought they worked better in this film than in Vice.

8.3/10
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Everyone in this film was so damned good. It was weird respecting Jeremy Strong's character so much and then detesting him in Succession. Yeah, yeah, acting, but whatever.

Have you seen Margin Call? I've seen both of these films a dozen times each. Also Moneyball which is another must see that I cannot stop watching. There's a short list of films I watch multiple times, like these and Dark Waters, Spotlight. I'm probably going to watch Dopesick (TV series) again this weekend.
 
Loiosh said:
Watched this twice in the last two weeks.
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Yeah it is one of very few movies I have seen 3 times from the last 20 years or so. Along with stuff like Wind River, Sicario, etc. It is surprisingly rewatchable given the pacing and subject matter.
 
BisexualMMA said:
Yeah it is one of very few movies I have seen 3 times from the last 20 years or so. Along with stuff like Wind River, Sicario, etc. It is surprisingly rewatchable given the pacing and subject matter.
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Fucking hilarious, I just recommended and then re-watched Wind River and Sicario.

There are scenes from Wind River I watch all the time on YouTube.

Every single scene from Moneyball is a great video on YouTube.
 
Anyone else have trouble deciphering dialogue in movies on tv? It's almost as if the actor is mumbling or the sound is turned down sometimes. I have no problem hearing anything else on tv though. Sports, news network programming, etc.
 
Don Jon (USA, 2013)

Sex comedy-drama written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The film stars Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, and Julianne Moore.

Jon Martello (Gordon-Levitt) is a twenty something Italian-American bartender living in New Jersey. He is obsessed with working out, cleaning his apartment, family, church, clubbing, and pornography. He is so successful at picking up random women at the club that his friends call him "The Don". Perhaps not such an original nickname but these guys are all morons and it is the best that they can do.

Jon begins dating the beautiful Barbara Sugarman (Johansson) but struggles to stop watching porn despite Barbara's insistence that he does so.

Don also meets the eccentric Esther (Moore) at his night school class and slowly builds a rapport with her.

The film has its moments but it goes so hard on the Jersey Shore stereotype that everything else feels diluted. Jon walks around like a little peacock emulating John Travolta in Saturday Night Live. The thick accents and the wife beater shirts and the crazy Italian parents become overkill. The film would have been funnier and more insightful if everybody just dialled it back a notch.

On the positive side, the film keeps to a crisp 90 minutes. This is a film about Jon growing up and learning to differentiate between fantasy and reality. It is not a deep philosophical exercise and 90 minutes is more than enough time to cover it.

There is a lot of talent on the screen, Johansson is gorgeous, and it is funny in places. I laughed out loud when Barbara convinces Don to improve himself by going to night school while he dry humps her ass in the hallway of her apartment building. "You gonna go to night school for me, baby" is not stereotypical dirty talk but if you look like Scarlett Johansson, it works.

Overall, I enjoyed it.

Rating: 5.5/10

 
Yeah. I remember when the trailer first dropped. Looked pretty hilarious. That moment when he’s rocking out to Marky Mark and the funky bunch in his car until someone drives up alongside and he quickly stops. Lol.

But when I watched, it was very much a mixed bag for me. There were funny moments and performances but I didnt get a strong sense of what JGL wanted this to be. Is it a comedy about Don’s habits getting in the way of his relationships? Is it a dramedy with Julianne Moore and her sad past? I don’t know. All I know is it seemed a bit erratic and tonally inconsistent. I thought JGL was, as he often is, quite entertaining though. Great cast overall.

Danza was sort of the scene stealer for me. Very funny. And RIP Glenn Headley. I saw her pretty recently in the great Mr. holland’s Opus. What a talented actress- gone too soon. Kind of funny role for Larson too. Must have been just before her real breakthrough film roles. Johansson was very good, just felt like they could have done more with her character.
 
AFanNotAFighter said:
Anyone else have trouble deciphering dialogue in movies on tv? It's almost as if the actor is mumbling or the sound is turned down sometimes. I have no problem hearing anything else on tv though. Sports, news network programming, etc.
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One day a couple of years ago I started leaving sub-titles on as standard and I never thought about it too much and then I find out that most people I know do the same thing.
 
ufcfan4 said:
Yeah. I remember when the trailer first dropped. Looked pretty hilarious. That moment when he’s rocking out to Marky Mark and the funky bunch in his car until someone drives up alongside and he quickly stops. Lol.

But when I watched, it was very much a mixed bag for me. There were funny moments and performances but I didnt get a strong sense of what JGL wanted this to be. Is it a comedy about Don’s habits getting in the way of his relationships? Is it a dramedy with Julianne Moore and her sad past? I don’t know. All I know is it seemed a bit erratic and tonally inconsistent. I thought JGL was, as he often is, quite entertaining though. Great cast overall.

Danza was sort of the scene stealer for me. Very funny. And RIP Glenn Headley. I saw her pretty recently in the great Mr. holland’s Opus. What a talented actress- gone too soon. Kind of funny role for Larson too. Must have been just before her real breakthrough film roles. Johansson was very good, just felt like they could have done more with her character.
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Definitely a lot of talent on the screen.

I forgot that Glenn Headley had passed away. Shame. Unfortunately I always remember her for 2 Days in the Valley, which is not at all fair to her career.
 
The Lift.

I'm a sucker for a heist movie, so this one hit the mark for me. Reminded me of Leverage, one of my favorite shows.

6.5 outta 10.
 
Patrick Jane said:
Fires of Kuwait

It does exactly what it says on the tin. Strangely suspenseful cinema documentary about trying to stop Kuwait from ... well ... being a literal burning hellscape.

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Holy shit, I remember this documentary. I’m pretty sure this was the very first IMAX film I ever saw, back when IMAX was basically limited to documentaries and only shown at like science museums and planetariums. I saw this with my Dad (rip) when I was maybe like 8 years old at what was then known as the Edmonton Space and Science Centre.
 
Master Gardener (USA, 2022)

Crime drama written and directed by Paul Schrader and starring Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, and Quintessa Swindell.

Narvel Roth (Edgerton) is the calm, meticulous head gardener and horticulturist at Gracewood Gardens, which is part of an estate owned by the wealthy widow Norma Haverhill (Weaver).

Mrs. Haverhill asks Roth to train her grandniece, Maya (Swindell), as an apprentice. Perhaps "demand" is a better word as Haverhill appears to have enjoyed a life of giving orders. It is all a bit mysterious as Haverhill has not seen Maya since she was a child and she appears to have been estranged from Maya's deceased mother.

This is a Paul Schrader film and so you can probably guess that Roth, and most of the other characters, will have dark and unexpected pasts that will eventually weigh heavily on their current situation.

The entire film feels like quintessential late career Schrader; a man in his 40's is dedicated to a detailed craft but an unexpected outsider disrupts his carefully cultivated world and the man turns out to have a murky past. Swap in Jason Statham and some bees and Schrader would be 60% of the way to The Beekeeper.

That being said, the film has positives. Edgerton is great. Weaver is weird AF and it works. She was consistently the most surprising character in the film. Swindell was fine but
I did not buy the sexual chemistry between Maya and Narvel at all. Nothing to do with the Nazi stuff. Simply that I did not see the romantic connection between the characters on the screen other than the plot requiring them to fall in love.
.

Also, what sort of name is "Narvel Roth"?

Solid film. I am not sure if Schrader fans will like this more or less than the average audience.

Rating: 6/10

I am not sharing the trailer because it gives away several key plot points.

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i find subs for english-language movies/shows to be super distracting. my gf will only watch movies w/ me if we put subs on & it drives me nuts. i’m also neurodivergent as fuck, so there’s that
 
HenryFlower said:
i find subs for english-language movies/shows to be super distracting. my gf will only watch movies w/ me if we put subs on & it drives me nuts. i’m also neurodivergent as fuck, so there’s that
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They can certainly be distracting. There will be times where I catch myself reading a movie instead of watching. And there are times when the subs don't quite match the dialogue that can take me out of a scene.
 
Another Round (2020)

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It is pretty interesting what this film was able to get away with. Sure, there have been plenty of films that deal with the positive side of alchohol consumption. But those are usually teen or party comedies. This one does it with an extra aspect of drama and maturity mixed in. Especially with Madds Mikkelsen and his mid life crisis state of depression.

So there is a point in this film where you might think the transition from the comedy part to the dramatic part is complete, and we are going to start dealing with the consequences and dangers of the excess consumption of alchohol and the dangers of drinking culture.

And don't get me wrong, we absolutely do. The film can get very serious and somber, especially toward the end. But I have to say, I was pretty surprised how certain story arcs played out and concluded.

Apparently there is an american remake being developed with Leo Dicaprio. But I'm wondering if it will have the balls to approach the subject matter and tone in the same way.

Overall, if you havent seen it and you enjoy black comedies, I highly recommend it. It is a well acted, well done film that gets the dramatic and emotional elements done right, but isnt afraid to embrace the immaturity and fun of it all.

Madds is MVP.

7.5/10 range
 
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