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
Same with stuff like Spotlight.
Watched this twice in the last two weeks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So it isn't just me....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.
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.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
So it isn't just me....