Movies Serious Movie Discussion

[Rimbaud82]

The Wailing (2016)

Un-fucking-believable, honestly what a film. I had this downloaded a few years ago but for whatever reason just never got around it. What a fatal error in judgement. This film is unbelievable! An undeniable modern classic that makes effective use of classic horror tropes in a uniquely Korean setting.

Very much a slow-burn, but Na Hong-jin delivers the burn in expert fashion. It opens as an intriguing crime drama centred around a series of brutal murders in a remote Korean village. Very much in Memories of Murder territory, or Zodiac for a western parallel. Lots of rain. But very quickly the film morphs into a riveting, sprawling folk horror which transports the viewer into a dark and enigmatic world of shamans, ghosts and demons. I’d be lying if I said I understood everything on first watch, but I wouldn’t say the film is confusing either per se. It’s just operating on another sort of folkloric level, I certainly had to think about some things afterwards. Makes absolutely incredible use of atmosphere and setting. Highly, highly recommended!

 

[Rimbaud82]

In the Earth (2021)

A startlingly intense hallucinogenic folk horror from Ben Wheatley, in which he pairs a timeless spooky story of why you should be wary of the deep, dark woods with the residual unease of the Covid pandemic. It’s not about Covid, but it takes place during an unnamed pandemic which is very obviously a parallel. I think this is a bit of a return to form for Wheatley, as he returns to familiar territory which he previously tread in Kill List (2011) and especially A Field in England (2013).

In the Earth follows Martin Lowery, a scientist who ventures into a remote English forest in order to join up with a research expedition studying it’s unusually fertile soil. The camp is a couple of days hike into the wilderness and so Martin is guided by Alma, a local park ranger. As you might suspect, things do not necessarily proceed according to plan. Local folklore tells of a malevolent woodland spirit called Parnag Fegg, perhaps a story invented to frighten children into being careful in the forest, or perhaps something more…

The film delivers an unsettling blend of the occult and gruesome body horror, set in a frightening landscape in which witches and madmen lurk in the woods. Yet for all this talk of folklore and ancient spirits, the protagonist is a scientist seeking out a research facility. Like all the best folk horror, In the Earth is concerned with finding the limits of human knowledge when faced with some unknowable horror, and in portraying scientific arrogance against the mysteries of nature. It is in these liminal spaces between science and magic, and between rationality and rite, that Wheatley finds real terror.

Perhaps not a film which delivers anything approaching total coherence, but as a sheer cinematic experience it more than makes up for any narrative failings in my mind. Definitely one to see in the cinema. I don’t think the dizzying visuals and dread-laden soundtrack would have the same impact at home. Certainly seems like it will be a decisive one, but personally I loved it. A chilling folktale filtered through a bad DMT trip.

 

[Rimbaud82]

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Decent drama about a group of predatory real estate salesmen. The film follows the fortunes (or lack thereof) of four salesmen who are faced with some interesting motivational tactics from the head office. They are informed that in one weeks time all except the top two will be sacked. This has less than the desired effect and leads to some increasingly desperate measures. In effect it’s a film about corporate greed and toxic culture in microcosm, and about the shifting power dynamics within this office.

It has its roots in a Pulitzer award-winning play of the same name from 1984 and you really do get that impression throughout. It is absolutely the dialogue that carries the film over any other element. Narratively I found it a bit repetitive and plodding to be honest. But in fairness what dialogue it is! All the actors fling themselves headfirst into their performances. Certainly, there is a lot of swearing. But once again, what swearing it is. Al Pacino calling Kevin Spacey a “fucking cunt” will live long in my memory I have no doubt

Smile Orange (1976)

Jaimaican comedy about a smooth-talking hustler and his various schemes and escapades while working as a waiter in a tourist resort. Our main man, Ringo, fancies himself as a master in the arts of seduction and spends most of his time planning ways to part rich Americans from their money. When not on the run from his baby momma and her brothers that is. The film very effectively satirises the racial dynamics of the Caribbean tourist industry. It does feel rather low budget (probably not helped by the poor quality print I watched) and certainly doesn’t stand up to something like The Harder They Come (1972), but a witty enough film that’s enjoyable in it’s own right.

Babylon (1980)

Absolutely fantastic film which gets at the very soul of the vibrant reggae culture of 1980s South London, capturing the experiences of young Afro-Carribean British men with a rawness and gritty authenticity. The story follows a DJ called Blue and his experiences. He works a dead-end job at a mechanics, but his real passion is his up-and-coming Dub reggae ‘sound system’ called Ital Lion. These young men seek some sort of release from working-class tedium through their music.

As the children of primarily Jamaican immigrants, reggae music acts as a kind of cultural lifeline, a source of inspiration which connects them back to their ancestral ‘home’. Yet while their West Indian roots offer inspiration, there is also a tension. As one Jaimaican character jokes - “Where you think you are, Trenchtown? This is Brixton”. The fact remains that they are British, not Jamaican. Despite being born and bred in the country they are faced with socio-economic deprivation, endemic racism and xenophobia from their white neighbours and the police.

Thatcher-era London becomes the very embodiment of what Rastafarians refer to as “babylon”, the corrupted world of capitalist oppression and colonialist cruelty. The film is so effective in the way it captures the righteous anger, rage and alienation of this generation of black British men, building to a powerful crescendo. The ending is absolutely perfect. Highly recommended!

 

[Rimbaud82]

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Liked the sound of this, but found it a bit too stuffy and dated. The story is about the unearthing of some strange fossils during excavations made as part of an extension to the London Underground. The scientist who made the initial discovery believes the finds to represent an early human ancestor, but the subsequent discovery of an even more mysterious object raises suspicions of extraterrestrial origins…

It is very much science fiction, but the plot does somewhat lean into folk horror (which is how it was recommended to me). We learn that the area around this pit, known as ‘Hobb’s End‘ has been a site of supernatural disturbances since Medieval times. Local folklore claims that the bombed-out houses opposite the Underground station are haunted.

I have seen a lot of praise for the film online as an ‘intelligent’ sci-fi. I’d only go along with that if Dr Quatermass running around and jumping to sweeping conclusions based on very little evidence counts as intelligent. I didn’t find it particularly thought-provoking, and as I found all the other elements rather antiquated it didn’t really hold my interest. This ‘68 Hammer film is a remake of a 50s BBC series. Perhaps the series has a bit more time to develop the themes in a more meaningful and organic fashion. I didn’t think this was able to.

Perhaps I’m being a bit unfair to it. I mean it wasn’t necessarily bad, and maybe I should appreciate it more within its context but ultimately just wasn’t for me. A bit boring.

 

[Rimbaud82]

Deerskin (2019)

Saw this in the cinema the other night. To say it’s a bit of a weird one would be an understatement. The film concerns a mysterious loner named Georges (Jean Dujardin) and his apparently spontaneous purchase of an extremely expensive deerskin jacket, a jacket which seems to possess strange mystical powers. We follow Georges as he becomes increasingly obsessed with his new jacket, descending further and further into violent psychosis. Very much a bizarre comedy horror, while at the same time acting as an amusing meta-commentary on the nature of film-making.

The film is surreal in a light, restrained sort of way. The plot is obviously totally absurd, but the film itself is actually rather quiet and restrained in it's tone. Well, for the most part. It starts off slow...very slow, I think a lot of people will lose patience with the whole thing to be honest, but slowly but surely you find yourself getting sucked into the wonderfully deadpan oddness of it all. Probably in large part to the performances of Jean Dujardin and Adèle Haenel. This absolutely bizarre plot is played completely straight by the pair of them, and they have a real on-screen chemistry together. Just wonderful oddness.

 

[revoltub]

The Wailing (2016)

Un-fucking-believable, honestly what a film. I had this downloaded a few years ago but for whatever reason just never got around it. What a fatal error in judgement. This film is unbelievable! An undeniable modern classic that makes effective use of classic horror tropes in a uniquely Korean setting.

Very much a slow-burn, but Na Hong-jin delivers the burn in expert fashion. It opens as an intriguing crime drama centred around a series of brutal murders in a remote Korean village. Very much in Memories of Murder territory, or Zodiac for a western parallel. Lots of rain. But very quickly the film morphs into a riveting, sprawling folk horror which transports the viewer into a dark and enigmatic world of shamans, ghosts and demons. I’d be lying if I said I understood everything on first watch, but I wouldn’t say the film is confusing either per se. It’s just operating on another sort of folkloric level, I certainly had to think about some things afterwards. Makes absolutely incredible use of atmosphere and setting. Highly, highly recommended!

Man I've been trying to get everyone to see this.

The more I think of it, "slow burn" can be a pretty subjective description, obviously. I've seen a lot of people refer to it as such and I have too. But the more I think on the film I'm not sure it's really slow burn.

I mean, a lot happens before the big finale and a lot of good scenes. You have

Spoiler

the shaman battle, the opening scene with the demon japanese guy. When they visit his cabin and find his creepy shrine. The insane zombie scene, etc.

Which of course leads to that great fucking scene in the cave at the end. But imo it's more of a horror epic than a slow burn film.

But honestly it wasnt until after I thought about the films for a while that I realized how much cool stuff actually happens.

I agree with the memories of murder comparison on the early part of the film.

 

[Bullitt68]

I know that I'm late to the party, but I watched two movies that impressed me more than anything that I've seen in the last year or two: A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place II. Holy fuck were those two films amazing. I have so much respect for John Krasinski, that dude is a legit talent both in front of and behind the camera. Such incredibly tight and economical storytelling and such extraordinary craftsmanship paired with an inspired premise and tremendous emotionality. I literally don't have a bad word to say about either film. Every creative decision was right and executed flawlessly. And I literally couldn't get the films out of my head. I watched them both back to back multiple times and spent like a week thinking about them. In past classes that I've taught where I've had to pick screenings to go with lectures on sound, I've used Eraserhead and Midsommar, but from now on I think that I'm going to use A Quiet Place. Of all the spectacular things about both films, the sound design stands out as some of the best in the history of cinema.

Before the new teaching term starts and I get buried under an avalanche of work, I just wanted to pop in here and mention the films that have impressed me the most in recent memory. I hope all of you guys are good and enjoying what you've been watching.

 

[Rimbaud82]

Pig (2021)

Just opened in the cinemas here so thought I’d go see this one without knowing too much about it. Pretty damn good on the whole. Certainly a bit off-kilter but that’s practically a requisite for a Cage film these days. Very restrained for Cage though, tonally very different to the usual hamfests. Great performance I must say.

Plot wise we’re talking something like John Wick, only instead of a badass assassin Cage is a grubby loner who lives in a hut in the Oregon woods and instead of a dog we have a pig. To be fair it’s definitely the cutest pig I’ve ever seen. Cage’s character is a truffle hunter and his pig is a truffle pig, we quickly learn what a high stakes profession this is. When his beloved pig is stolen from him he returns to Portland in a quest to get her back; in the process he is forced to confront his own past.

Some of it is a bit daft and I wasn’t sold on it at all through some of the middle sections, but by the end it absolutely did win me over. It has a warmth and emotional depth that I wasn’t quite expecting. I compared the plot to that of John Wick, but that’s really only on paper. In a sense Pig somewhat subverts the tropes of ultra-violent revenge thrillers like that, even though it deliberately takes that overarching structure. We are expecting that, but the worst thing Cage does to someone is cook them a wonderful dinner. Memories hurt more than punches seemed to be the consistent theme.

All in all a bit unusual, but a surprisingly touching take on love and loss.

 

[Rimbaud82]

I know that I'm late to the party, but I watched two movies that impressed me more than anything that I've seen in the last year or two: A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place II. Holy fuck were those two films amazing. I have so much respect for John Krasinski, that dude is a legit talent both in front of and behind the camera. Such incredibly tight and economical storytelling and such extraordinary craftsmanship paired with an inspired premise and tremendous emotionality. I literally don't have a bad word to say about either film. Every creative decision was right and executed flawlessly. And I literally couldn't get the films out of my head. I watched them both back to back multiple times and spent like a week thinking about them. In past classes that I've taught where I've had to pick screenings to go with lectures on sound, I've used Eraserhead and Midsommar, but from now on I think that I'm going to use A Quiet Place. Of all the spectacular things about both films, the sound design stands out as some of the best in the history of cinema.

Before the new teaching term starts and I get buried under an avalanche of work, I just wanted to pop in here and mention the films that have impressed me the most in recent memory. I hope all of you guys are good and enjoying what you've been watching.

Damn that impressive huh. Still haven't seen either of them.

 

[Rimbaud82]

The Green Knight (2021)

It’s Christmastime at the court of King Arthur. Gawain, his young nephew, sits at the side of the aging King, surrounded by scores of legendary knights. Into this auspicious hall enters the imposing figure of Green Knight, bearing a massive axe and a branch of holly. He poses a bizarre festive wager: Who will strike him with a single swing of a blade, and then, a year and a day hence, accept a blow in return? Of all those present, young, unproven Gawain is the one to accept the terms of this absurd game...

I absolutely love Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, so I’ve been buzzing for this film ever since I first read they were planning an adaptation of the original poem. Well in adapting the story David Lowery definitely manages to make it his own. Of course, a huge portion of the plot is his own invention so that’s not necessarily surprising, he basically fills in the blanks of the original story with his own interpretation. What is literally a single stanza of the poem, becomes a large portion of the adventure between the two bookends of the Green Knight’s entry and the follow-up a year later at the green chapel.

As the film reminds us in one extravagant title card, what we have here is “A Filmed Adaptation of the Chivalric Romance by Anonymous.” The act of translation inevitably alters the original text, something which is doubly true when it comes to translating medieval poetry to the modern screen. In general I would say that most of the changes worked well for cinema. Perhaps the film sacrifices some of the more enigmatic or ambiguous aspects of the original poem, but that’s not to say it reduces it to stock fantasy stuff either.We’re certainly not dealing with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings or something, but a hallucinatory odyssey, full of Medieval weirdness. It very much taps into the spiritual and symbolic aspects of the story, but in a way which perhaps better fits the cinematic format.

The film particularly hones in on the acute feeling of mutability and human mortality present within the Medieval original. In the process Lowery moulds and subverts the grand chivalric ideas of Arthurian romance - duty, honour and so on - into something more modern and relatable to our own lives. His Gawain is something close to Shakespeare’s Hal; far from a fully formed Knight, he is a young, flawed individual who prefers drink to duty. He longs to acquire the honour and prestige that he associates with Knighthood, but without the effort. Yet his acceptance of the Green Knight’s preposterous challenge forces him to contend with his failings, and with the impermanence of his life.

I wouldn’t say that I loved it quite as much as I was hoping I would, but overall I was still very impressed. Shame I didn’t get to see it in the cinema. There were certain elements which I absolutely loved - particularly those scenes which actually involved the Green Knight himself. Ralph Ineson is fantastic, and the design of the Knight himself I think perfectly captured the power and symbolism of the character.

 

[ufcfan4]

The Conversation (1974)

You know when you see a film that you've watched before, but it's been so long that it's almost as if you are watching it the first time? I saw The Conversation when I was a kid and I'm sure I was too young to fully appreciate it. I remember thinking it was a solid film, but I doubt I grasped much of the nuance. This time around, I was thoroughly impressed with the film and the slow-burn nature of the tension that Coppola and co. create. This is a film that really fits into that notion I have of 1970s movies- taking narrative risks and experimenting with dark themes and questionable protagonists.

I really liked Hackman's performance in this film. It's such a different character than most of his iconic roles. Where Hackman is usually sort of larger-than-life, confident, intimidating, his character Harry Caul is a guy who just wants to do his job and then live a private, anonymous life. The irony being that his entire career, where he is highly lauded as one of the best in the field, is about violating the privacy of others through wire-tapping and surveillance.

I love that scene where he berates John Cazale's character for speculating about the nature of the conversation that the couple they are recording is having. He is hell-bent on divorcing himself from the outcome of the work that he does. He is riddled with guilt from a previous job that led to murders, that he must try to convince himself that he is exempt from the consequences of his efforts.

Coppola and the technical crew do a great job of gradually ramping up the suspense as the film unfolds. Interestingly enough, it was when Caul shows up at the hotel where Frederic Forrest and CIndy Williams are staying that I immediately began to remember moments and scenes before they actually happened. Some things stick with you...

It's an effective film that is thematically interesting and very unnerving.

 

[ufcfan4]

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Decent drama about a group of predatory real estate salesmen. The film follows the fortunes (or lack thereof) of four salesmen who are faced with some interesting motivational tactics from the head office. They are informed that in one weeks time all except the top two will be sacked. This has less than the desired effect and leads to some increasingly desperate measures. In effect it’s a film about corporate greed and toxic culture in microcosm, and about the shifting power dynamics within this office.

It has its roots in a Pulitzer award-winning play of the same name from 1984 and you really do get that impression throughout. It is absolutely the dialogue that carries the film over any other element. Narratively I found it a bit repetitive and plodding to be honest. But in fairness what dialogue it is! All the actors fling themselves headfirst into their performances. Certainly, there is a lot of swearing. But once again, what swearing it is. Al Pacino calling Kevin Spacey a “fucking cunt” will live long in my memory I have no doubt

Great cast in that one. I thought everyone played their role to perfection and really sold the dreary, dire, cutthroat nature of the business. I liked how Pacino's Roma was Mr. Cool throughout but then absolutely loses it on Spacey when he thwarts the deal with Jonathan Pryce.

Lemmon might be my favorite performance in that film though. He really makes you feel for that character. The absolute self-implosion when he tries to tear into Spacey after Pacino's tirade against him.

Baldwin's scene/character was not in the Mamet play yet it ends up being one of the most memorable- probably the most memorable scenes affiliated with the property.

 

[Bullitt68]

Just to make sure that Rimbaud isn't always the only one reviewing movies that he's been watching in here, I've stolen some time these first couple of weeks of the new teaching term to catch-up on some new movies (mainly to avoid having to always say no to students who ask if I've seen this or that new movie). My mandate was all first-time viewings. No rewatches. And the scope was Best Picture nominees (plus a few movies that my students always bring up or write papers on as well as shit that has caught my eye and seemed interesting) since 2015. So, to date, I've watched:

Room: This one sucked. I always get annoyed when movies like this come out that are basically just Law & Order episodes done poorly by people who haven't been mastering this formula for 22 episodes a year for 20 years straight, and this just felt like a worse version of an SVU episode minus Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay. And while I haven't seen any of the other Best Actress nominee performances from 2015, I'd be shocked if Brie Larson's performance in Room was really the best one. Again, I've seen countless random TV players do it better. Maybe it's because movies are so special to me, but if in film-form you're not even doing it as well as (forget about doing it better than) TV then what the fuck are you even doing? That was basically my response to Room.

Moonlight: This one didn't suck, but it was very disappointing. The main problem was the script. It was disjointed and all over the place and in a way that cannibalized the emotional impact of what the main character was experiencing. It almost felt gimmicky; it certainly wasn't organic and it certainly didn't help the story. Mahershala Ali was the best part but it felt like he was only there for like 15 minutes plus nothing in his interactions with the main character seemed to be particularly important or profound to where he leaves such a lasting impact. It just wasn't a very good script. I "got" it, but I wish it would've been done better.

Call Me by Your Name: This one sucked. Funny enough, I just watched Homeland for the first time - fucking outstanding series, by the way - so I'd just watched a handful of episodes with Timothée Chalamet. But I didn't care for him as the lead here. Armie Hammer was the clear standout and he gave a pretty strong performance, but the film itself didn't really have much going for it beyond the "progressive" plot that gets applause but absent quality IMO. But I did also get a kick out of seeing Michael Stuhlbarg (who I love in Steve Jobs) and Amira Casar (who I love in Anatomy of Hell) as the parents. Sort of a worlds colliding thing.

Lady Bird: Speaking of Timothée Chalamet, I also saw him in Lady Bird, which I liked but didn't love. The resolution was weak and that really hurt the film, but it was strong in short bursts and it was always at its best when it was mother versus daughter. I didn't care as much for the school drama. The home drama was far more compelling, especially when the father was integrated. (And the father was played by Tracy Letts, the hilarious OTB guy who works at the place Elaine uses for her "standard fake" phone number in Seinfeld who I'm loving see show up in such high-profile stuff as this, Homeland, and The Post and fucking crush it.) But the standout here is obviously Laurie Metcalf. She ignites all the dramatic fire and she really brings in all of the emotion. Pretty uneven but a solid effort.

The Post: Spielberg should just hang it up. This movie was garbage and Meryl Streep is so overrated that Tom Hanks - who's also quite overrated - blew her off the fucking screen to the point where it was honestly distracting how bad she was. Just 10 seconds of Bradley Whitford crushing it outshined her entire role. And then fuck me did Spielberg take a giant shit on what should've been a winning formula. From All the President's Men to The Pelican Brief to State of Play, the journalists-chasing-a-controversial-story thing is practically a sure thing, yet Spielberg made this one so lame and dry and boring that I'd rather watch The Mean Season a thousand times in a row (not trying to shit on it, it just shouldn't even be in the conversation if we're talking about Spielberg taking a crack at the formula) than ever watch this a second time.

Baby Driver: I've had so many students who love this movie and have read several papers about it. I didn't love it, but it was good enough. The main thing that pissed me off was that for a movie that's so music-oriented the soundtrack was fucking awful. It felt like the director didn't want to have to spend too much money on good shit so they just played random shit that they could afford. I also thought that Jamie Foxx was bad casting, Kevin Spacey was phoning it in, and I wasn't crazy about Ansel Elgort. But Jon Hamm did a great job and Lily James was cute as hell. And a few of the car chase scenes were decent. Overall, it didn't seem like anything special to me but it was good enough for what it was.

Green Book: Of the "critically acclaimed" shit that I've been watching, this is hands down the best of the bunch. Not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself from beginning to end (minus whenever the supremely untalented Sebastian Maniscalco took up screen time). Viggo crushed it and Ali most certainly deserved his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for IMO the best performance in the film. I don't think that it should've won Best Picture, though. For as much as I love seeing Spike Lee upset, since he can be such an insufferable tool so often, I do think that while Green Book has the obviously more optimistic and positive, glass half full take on race (i.e. at our core we're all people and we can all get along), BlacKkKlansman was the superior film and was the best of all the nominees. I can throw Spike that bone

Vice: Of the "critically acclaimed" shit that I've been watching, this is hands down the worst of the bunch. I couldn't even watch the whole thing. Peter Farrelly doing Green Book was a stretch, and in terms of the direction it was clear that he didn't have much to offer, but he still provided a solid, meat-and-potatoes film. Adam McKay, by contrast, should really stay in his lane. The Big Short sucked (I don't remember but I wouldn't be surprised if I failed to make it through that one, too) and Vice was even worse. Aside from Christian Bale going all Christian Bale, this movie had nothing to offer.

Marriage Story: This was a big and bloated meh. Not crazy about the script, not crazy about the performances, not crazy about the direction. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't anything special.

1917: Talk about a gimmick. Aside from the one take thing, this movie was entirely unremarkable. None of the actors were compelling, the story was basically Saving Private Ryan just worse, and the gimmick actually hurt the film. Watching them walk out of the trenches for 10 minutes nearly had me tapping out before the film proper even began. Something like Paths of Glory shows you how long takes can be great when used sparingly, and someone like Béla Tarr shows you how long takes can be used to tell whole stories, but more often than not - and literally always in an action-oriented genre like war - slowing things down and dragging things out makes things duller and less intense. 1917 is a case in point.

Knives Out: I wanted this one to be better than it was. It felt like a worse version of Greedy done in Agatha Christie-light style. The biggest problems were the two leads. Daniel Craig was fucking HORRIBLE casting and his performance was terrible, while the girl had zero charisma and did nothing with the role. They needed someone like Melissa Villaseñor, someone who could play sweet and vulnerable but who also had comedic talent (or hell, any talent). But Jamie Lee Curtis was great, Don Johnson was great, and Michael Shannon was great. It was fun seeing all of them mixing it up together. And the plot was pretty clever, though I also didn't like the Chris Evans casting and the heel turn was super lame. Again, I don't really get the love, but it was enjoyable enough.

Promising Young Woman: This movie could've/should've been better than it was. The last 20-30 minutes are excellent, great writing and very clever. But everything before that feels like just killing time until the end. The tone is all over the place and there's never a clear sense of WTF the movie is: Is it a romcom, is it a drama, is it a crime movie, is it a dark thriller, is it a black comedy...? But Bo Burnham is charming enough to carry the movie along while it's killing time, the ending is very strong, and the funniest person in the movie is my boy Schmidt from New Girl who shows up at the end. Not the best, but a solid movie.

Nomadland: Pure fucking garbage. No clue why anyone gave a shit about this movie, much less why the Academy dumped so many awards on it.

Gunpowder Milkshake: What a piece of shit. I want us to progress beyond just clapping because a movie is about homosexuality or has all women and all the other PC shit that is supposed to distract from the fact that the movies themselves suck nuts. I absolutely adore BOTH Lena Headey and Michelle Yeoh and lost my shit when I heard that they were going to be in an action movie together. But wow, what a disappointing vehicle for them. Headey did a lot with her character, she was very compelling, but the plot was so bad and the action was some of the worst that I've ever seen, to the point where the bowling alley fight scene is if not the worst fight scene ever filmed then certainly one of them and certainly the worst fight scene that I've seen in recent memory. Added to which, they did it all stylized and goofy like Smokin' Aces, Wanted, Polar, etc., except it fell completely flat to where nothing that was supposed to be funny actually was funny, nothing that was supposed to be cool actually was cool...it was just bad.

Boss Level: To save the best for last, Boss Level is a movie that you should all stop what you're doing to watch immediately. I mean right fucking now. How I wish all action movies were this original, innovative, exciting, funny, and insightful. An action movie that's as funny as it is exciting and with something to say. Such a clever premise and executed stupendously by Joe Carnahan. And what a coming out party for Frank Grillo. I want to see this dude in everything now. Forget about the absurd physique for a 56-year-old man, he's the first action star to come along with legit Bruce Willis energy since Bruce Willis debuted in Die Hard. He's funny as shit and he's a fantastic bad ass. I'm literally watching everything that comes out from now on with him in the lead. I can't say enough good things about this movie, so I'm going to stop and just tell you to watch it ASAP.

Damn that impressive huh. Still haven't seen either of them.

I genuinely do consider them that impressive. Plot and acting aside, they're legit technical achievements in terms of cinematography, editing, and sound. Krasinski is a beast of a filmmaker. Who knew?

The Conversation (1974)

This is one that I've tried to fall in love with but never have. It's always been a bit flat, kind of like Blow Out but on fumes, lacking any real energy or emotionality. If you've seen Blow Out, how do you compare the two? Because personally, I'd take Blow Out every day of the week.

 

[ufcfan4]

Just to make sure that Rimbaud isn't always the only one reviewing movies that he's been watching in here, I've stolen some time these first couple of weeks of the new teaching term to catch-up on some new movies (mainly to avoid having to always say no to students who ask if I've seen this or that new movie). My mandate was all first-time viewings. No rewatches. And the scope was Best Picture nominees (plus a few movies that my students always bring up or write papers on as well as shit that has caught my eye and seemed interesting) since 2015. So, to date, I've watched:

Great post as always. I've seen a lot of these so bear with me-

Room
I thought it was well done but I really do see where you are coming from. I liked Larson's performance though quite a bit. I thought she and Tremblay really sort of held the thing together. Maybe that's faint praise because they are so central to the film that if there was anything positive about it, you would almost have to attribute it to their work. I found them to be convincing as mother and son, which, to me, was sort of half the battle. I also liked the way Larson's character started to become frustrated as she had to unravel the very narrative she had spun to try to give him some semblance of a happy life.

Anyway, those real-life stories that are similar to the events in Room are really disturbing. I read the book by Amanda Berry and Gina Dejesus and it was utterly awful. If they ever make that account into a movie ( I think they've already done one for TV- maybe lifetime but from Michelle Knight's perspective), it would be extremely difficult to watch. That was a terrible ordeal.

Call me By Your Name-

Didn't see it. But I love Stuhlbarg. I heard that he has a monologue which is sort of the emotional high point of the film. I'd probably give it a watch for his work in and of itself.

I did rewatch Steve Jobs recently. That is a terrific film. I love the structure of it and the way that all those different extended scenes are handled. Typical awesome Sorkin dialogue but the intensity and intimacy of the conversations really stands out as well. Love the confrontation between Jobs and Scully. Daniels and Fassbender. Winslet, Stuhlbarg, Rogen- the entire cast delivered in my book. Fassbender is awesome. I really hope we see some more strong work from him. I feel his talents were wasted in those recent X-Men movies (the ones from 2016 and 2018 being really uninspiring).

Lady Bird
It seemed quirky in sort of a Juno-esque way but without all the hipster-ish dialogue. I find it one of those films that I liked quite a bit at the time but didn't really feel the drive to revisit. I'm a huge Ronan fan and think she is typically stellar. But, as you said, Metcalf pretty much stole the show.

If you like Letts (and that Seinfeld scene is a true standout as far as later-season episodes go- You know who's a man? Me. I'm a man. You know who else. Charlie. He's a man...-definitely check out Ford vs. Ferrari as well. Good supporting part for him. I also think it's just an entertaining film. Check out Indignation with him and Logan Lerman as well. While it's not a great film, it has an absolutely awesome scene about midway through between Lerman and Letts. Sort of the same phenomenon as Steve Jobs where it almost feels like a play because of how dialogue-heavy it is and yet how compelling it remains.

Anyway, with Lady Bird, I think it's a good coming-of-age story. It's funny, it's poignant, but it's just not something I found overly memorable. Gerwig is very good though. Letts also showed up with Ronan in Gerwig's follow-up film, the 2019 adaptation of Little Women. That story has been done so many times, but I think that movie is great. Certainly worth a watch. Chalamet is in it too, lol.

The Post-
Haha. I liked it to an extent but it definitely had the generic, cookie-cutter feel to it. All the President's Men is the far superior watch. I'd much rather watch Oliver Stone's Nixon as well.

Baby Driver
Liked it but found it a bit disappointing considering all of the praise. I was expecting a bit more. Hamm was legit, as you said. I also would have liked to see more Bernthal. His character seemed menacing.

Green Book
I'd say I'm on the verge of loving this movie lol and I view it as a great addition to the films that I watch around Christmas. It just hit a lot of the right notes for me. And it builds to that really resonant ending moment with Cardellini and Mahershala. I am just impressed with a good, straightforward narrative done well. There were not many bells and whistles from a technical standpoint, but Viggo's and Ali's performances were so entertaining that you really could coast on that.

BlacKKKlansman was great, too. I thought JD Washington and Driver were awesome in that. But so was Corey Hawkins as Carmichael. Loved the way his speech scene was shot and how he delivered the dialogue. What's your take on Driver overall? I ask because I know you weren't too impressed with Marriage Story as you pointed out in this post.

Vice-
I thought Bale was terrific. Otherwise, it did not impress me. It felt like McKay was going for the same vibe and tone as the Big Short because many people applauded it, but it didn't fit in this film. In fact, some of those somewhat obnoxious cutaways felt so out-of-place to me. Whether it was the Shakespearean dialogue sequence between Dick and Lynn or the roll credits when Cheney realizes he has no prospect of being elected presidents and opts to retire to life as a (rich) private citizen. It just didn't work for me.

I also didn't feel a whole lot of narrative flow to the movie. It seemed to me that the first half was more of your typical biopic and then when you get Addington coming onto the scene and Cheney getting to the White House, it's a completely different film. I didn't dislike it to the same extent that you did, but I definitely agree with your criticisms.

Additionally, I recently rewatched Oliver Stone's W, and it's pretty funny to me how thematically similar the two films are. I did not like that film much at all in 2008, but I enjoyed it more the second time around. Vice and W seem so similar at times that they almost function as companion pieces. That might seem unsurprising since they are covering the same broad strokes of the Bush era, but still I did not expect just how much overlap there is. The big difference is that Bush is the supporting character in Vice while Cheney is the supporting character in W and McKay's film lays the comedic element on more thickly. I'd actually argue that W is a slightly better film, but it has many drawbacks of its own. I do think Brolin did a really good job of channeling Bush without going to into parody.
Other people who have been given plaudits for playing Bush, be it Ferrell or Rockwell, sort of veer more into that realm.

Marriage Story
Pretty depressing and cynical at times. I liked the performances more than anything else.

1917
See, I really enjoyed this one. An effectively employed gimmick, to me, was more than enough. I'm not a big fan of the war genre in general. I think character development typically takes a back seat in war movies anyway, so I didn't mind that the two leads were veritable strangers to us throughout the running time. I just liked the cinematography and the sense of urgency. Dunkirk went for the same vibe though I found myself liking 1917 more, though the former was far more ambitious.
I also find something visceral, unsettling, and memorable about death scenes where you really get a sense of the desperation of the character coming to grips with the fact that he is going to die. Whether it's that sickeningly disturbing scene where Adam Goldberg's character is slowly stabbed in Saving Private Ryan or the scene where Liam Neeson informs a fellow worker in The Grey that he is going to die and holds him and looks into his eyes as he starts to fade or in this film where Tommen Baratheon goes from fear and panic to acceptance.

Kives Out
I thought it was extremely entertaining. Really enjoyed the cast overall. As you said, JLC and Johnson were standouts. But I thought everyone did a good job. I liked Craig and de Armis.

Promising Young Woman
Burnham being so good is actually a pivotal part of the movie. If you had a less interesting or likable actor in that role, then the reveal toward the end of the film would fall completely flat. The fact that Burnham and Mulligan sell their budding romance with such an authenticity really adds some nuance to the film. There are times where he delivers a little joke or self-depreacting humor and it feels completely like something that would be uttered in real-life flirting. So convicning that I almost wondered if he was ad-libbing at times. And if he wasn't, he sold the written dialogue in a spontaneous manner.

I really enjoyed Mulligan's performance. She is a very impressive actress. I really think she is capable of any genre. She hosted SNL around the time of the Oscars, promoting this film, and I thought she knocked it out of the park. She and Dan Kaluuya hosted back-to-back episodes, I believe, and they were probably my two favorites hosts overall of the season.

I think Promising Young Woman is an intriguing film. And it kept me guessing as to what direction it was going to go in. The trailers made me think that it very well might be an outright horror film. I do think the notion that she not only had to get justice and revenge for her friend but also had to let the perpetrator know that she was avenging her was a good bit of depth there. Because she easily could have done what she planned to do without implicating herself or putting herself in harm's way. The fact that she did not enact her plan in that way really speaks to some self-destructive element to her character, which I think was hinted at during different points of the film.

Haha. Greenfield was great. It's rare to see an actor who can play completely different sides of the likability spectrum with effectiveness. In this movie, he fit the bill of exactly the type of p.o.s. the script was looking for.

 

[ufcfan4]

This is one that I've tried to fall in love with but never have. It's always been a bit flat, kind of like Blow Out but on fumes, lacking any real energy or emotionality. If you've seen Blow Out, how do you compare the two? Because personally, I'd take Blow Out every day of the week.

Never saw it. I have not seen much of DePalma's work if I'm being honest. I've heard it's great though.

I did watch Tarantino on Rogan's podcast last month and he recounted this story- he said that the studio was adamant against his casting Travolta as Vincent Vega, but he was insistent. He told the higher ups at Miramax to watch Blow Out and if they did not want Travolta after seeing that movie, then they probably were not going to be able to do business together.

 

[Bullitt68]

Just watched Mank. Man, Fincher can make a snoozer. That was a long and boring two hours that felt like six. Other than the scene when they finally show that Joe Mankiewicz was brilliant, I didn't find this one very compelling. I hated the character of Herman and I didn't like how prissy Oldman played him. He was a pathetic, weak little loser who had a movie made as if he were a titan among men. It really didn't play well and, as always, I have no idea what Fincher was trying to say. Why the scenes with Thalberg and Hearst dressing him down? Are we the audience meant to see him as a loser with no balls as Thalberg says or the dancing monkey as Hearst says, or are we to see them as men blinded to genius by ego, or are we to see a complex world with competing wills and egos that can never reconcile...? I have no idea what Fincher was doing, and I have no idea why we needed a movie to tell us that Herman Mankiewicz was a misunderstood genius who was bullied by the Three Stooges Hearst, Mayer, and Thalberg, but I sure wish it would've been better.

Great post as always.

Been a long time so I was due for a mega post. I appreciate you taking the time to run through it film by film.

I thought [Room] was well done but I really do see where you are coming from. I liked Larson's performance though quite a bit. I thought she and Tremblay really sort of held the thing together. Maybe that's faint praise because they are so central to the film that if there was anything positive about it, you would almost have to attribute it to their work. I found them to be convincing as mother and son, which, to me, was sort of half the battle. I also liked the way Larson's character started to become frustrated as she had to unravel the very narrative she had spun to try to give him some semblance of a happy life.

For me, I thought that the kid did all the heavy lifting. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have watched it. That was very strong work for a child actor. He actually would've done well in an SVU episode. But whether it's the kid or the mom (Joan Allen's best work since The Crucible IMO) or the dad (William H. Macy stealing the show by staring in a different direction - it's almost not fair having to share the screen with that guy), it always felt like they were carrying her yet she was supposed to be the film's anchor. I just wasn't impressed.

Anyway, those real-life stories that are similar to the events in Room are really disturbing. I read the book by Amanda Berry and Gina Dejesus and it was utterly awful. If they ever make that account into a movie ( I think they've already done one for TV- maybe lifetime but from Michelle Knight's perspective), it would be extremely difficult to watch. That was a terrible ordeal.

For TV, there's a great SVU episode called Avatar and an even better Flashpoint episode called Planets Aligned that play in the same field. And then you know you're talking to the right guy about Lifetime movies. The Michelle Knight one Cleveland Abduction is helped tremendously by Raymond Cruz, who I've loved ever since he told Ethan Hawke that he's had his shit pushed in big time in Training Day. But even better IMO is Kept Woman with Courtney Ford.

Didn't see [Call me By Your Name]. But I love Stuhlbarg. I heard that he has a monologue which is sort of the emotional high point of the film. I'd probably give it a watch for his work in and of itself.

Yeah, he's not in it much, but he bats cleanup and he does cleanup like a pro in the end monologue.

I did rewatch Steve Jobs recently. That is a terrific film. I love the structure of it and the way that all those different extended scenes are handled. Typical awesome Sorkin dialogue but the intensity and intimacy of the conversations really stands out as well. Love the confrontation between Jobs and Scully. Daniels and Fassbender. Winslet, Stuhlbarg, Rogen- the entire cast delivered in my book. Fassbender is awesome. I really hope we see some more strong work from him. I feel his talents were wasted in those recent X-Men movies (the ones from 2016 and 2018 being really uninspiring).

Preaching to the choir. I have no idea if he'll even see this, but out of respect I've got to give him an @ and credit @theskza for getting me to watch that one. I don't remember the circumstances but I remember it was him. I posted once in here saying that Steve Jobs had to be a top 10 GOAT script, but in the intervening years I've come to the conclusion that it's the GOAT script. Some day, I want to write an entire book on the film and dissect every single interaction Jobs has across the three acts with Lisa, Woz, and Scully.* By far the most emotionally dense and powerful film ever written. If Sorkin ever tops Steve Jobs, I don't know what it'll do to my brain. And I definitely agree with you on Fassbender. He crushed that role so hard and I also hope that he'll get opportunities to do more great work like that and not just spend his days doing shitty X-Men and Alien movies.

*I've already written two essays in which I analyze Steve Jobs, one of which is entirely devoted to the film and specifically to Jobs' interactions with Lisa (https://www.academia.edu/41494034/M...Possibilities_of_Ordinary_Language_Philosophy) and the other of which uses Steve Jobs as an example at the end focusing in particular on the editing (https://www.academia.edu/45582066/A...nley_Cavell_and_Ordinary_Aesthetic_Philosophy). I point this out in the event that you like the film enough to read nerdy scholarly essays completely lacking my Sherdog brand of profanity and gifs

[Lady Bird] seemed quirky in sort of a Juno-esque way but without all the hipster-ish dialogue.

More harshly, I'd say that it's Juno-esque but without all the intelligence, wit, and charm. It was too angsty for its own good and switched too often and too abruptly between lame after school special on friendship and family on the one hand and intriguing coming of age meditation on youth and maturity on the other.

If you like Letts (and that Seinfeld scene is a true standout as far as later-season episodes go- You know who's a man? Me. I'm a man. You know who else. Charlie. He's a man...-definitely check out Ford vs. Ferrari as well. Good supporting part for him. I also think it's just an entertaining film. Check out Indignation with him and Logan Lerman as well. While it's not a great film, it has an absolutely awesome scene about midway through between Lerman and Letts. Sort of the same phenomenon as Steve Jobs where it almost feels like a play because of how dialogue-heavy it is and yet how compelling it remains.

Dude, you're probably the only Seinfeld guy on here who's so keyed into that show that you'd pinpoint the exact scene that I play in my head every time I see him. That line is so fucking funny.



"Me. I'm a man." Seinfeld was such a powerhouse of genius that tiny roles like that are cast with beastly actors who can turn such simple lines into gold.

Anyway, Ford vs. Ferrari is too dumb for me to ever watch. I don't care about cars and I couldn't care less about that story. Even for all of my love and respect for Damon and Bale, I'll probably never watch that movie. Indignation, on the other hand, sounds like it could be good.

Letts also showed up with Ronan in Gerwig's follow-up film, the 2019 adaptation of Little Women. That story has been done so many times, but I think that movie is great. Certainly worth a watch. Chalamet is in it too, lol.

Yeah, I've been looking up IMDb pages as I've been watching all of these new movies and I noticed that Little Women was a strange vector film that brought so many of the same people I've been seeing together. As a Katharine Hepburn fan, I'll never like a version more than the 1933 George Cukor version with her, but I'll eventually get around to that one.

I'd say I'm on the verge of loving [Green Book] lol and I view it as a great addition to the films that I watch around Christmas. It just hit a lot of the right notes for me. And it builds to that really resonant ending moment with Cardellini and Mahershala. I am just impressed with a good, straightforward narrative done well. There were not many bells and whistles from a technical standpoint, but Viggo's and Ali's performances were so entertaining that you really could coast on that.

Agreed with all of this. It's simple and straightforward and everything that it was supposed to do, it did it and did it well.

BlacKKKlansman was great, too. I thought JD Washington and Driver were awesome in that. But so was Corey Hawkins as Carmichael. Loved the way his speech scene was shot and how he delivered the dialogue. What's your take on Driver overall? I ask because I know you weren't too impressed with Marriage Story as you pointed out in this post.

The jury's still out on Driver for me. He hasn't had that performance yet where I sit back and go, "Whoa, now that's a Major League player," but there's something about him that makes me think that he's got that potential. He's never bad, but he's never great. He was fine in J. Edgar, he was fine in Lincoln, he was fine in Inside Llewyn Davis, he was fine in Paterson, he was fine in BlacKkKlansman, he was fine in Marriage Story...but that's all he's been. Just fine. Honestly, the best thing that I've seen him do was the old man at career day sketch when he hosted SNL. If he ever brings that intensity to a role, we'll be in for a treat.

 

[Bullitt68]

I thought Bale was terrific. Otherwise, [Vice] did not impress me. It felt like McKay was going for the same vibe and tone as the Big Short because many people applauded it, but it didn't fit in this film. In fact, some of those somewhat obnoxious cutaways felt so out-of-place to me. Whether it was the Shakespearean dialogue sequence between Dick and Lynn or the roll credits when Cheney realizes he has no prospect of being elected presidents and opts to retire to life as a (rich) private citizen. It just didn't work for me.

I also didn't feel a whole lot of narrative flow to the movie. It seemed to me that the first half was more of your typical biopic and then when you get Addington coming onto the scene and Cheney getting to the White House, it's a completely different film. I didn't dislike it to the same extent that you did, but I definitely agree with your criticisms.

QFT.

Additionally, I recently rewatched Oliver Stone's W, and it's pretty funny to me how thematically similar the two films are. I did not like that film much at all in 2008, but I enjoyed it more the second time around. Vice and W seem so similar at times that they almost function as companion pieces. That might seem unsurprising since they are covering the same broad strokes of the Bush era, but still I did not expect just how much overlap there is. The big difference is that Bush is the supporting character in Vice while Cheney is the supporting character in W and McKay's film lays the comedic element on more thickly. I'd actually argue that W is a slightly better film, but it has many drawbacks of its own. I do think Brolin did a really good job of channeling Bush without going to into parody.
Other people who have been given plaudits for playing Bush, be it Ferrell or Rockwell, sort of veer more into that realm.

I only saw W. back when it came out and I don't remember it. Back then, I was a bigger Oliver Stone fan, but I don't even remember my reaction, so I'm assuming I didn't think it was particularly good or particularly bad.

See, I really enjoyed [1917] this one. An effectively employed gimmick, to me, was more than enough. I'm not a big fan of the war genre in general. I think character development typically takes a back seat in war movies anyway, so I didn't mind that the two leads were veritable strangers to us throughout the running time. I just liked the cinematography and the sense of urgency. Dunkirk went for the same vibe though I found myself liking 1917 more, though the former was far more ambitious.

It's not even fair to mention Dunkirk alongside 1917. Dunkirk is the Major League and 1917 is the Minor League. The opening of Dunkirk alone is better than the whole of 1917

I also find something visceral, unsettling, and memorable about death scenes where you really get a sense of the desperation of the character coming to grips with the fact that he is going to die. Whether it's that sickeningly disturbing scene where Adam Goldberg's character is slowly stabbed in Saving Private Ryan or the scene where Liam Neeson informs a fellow worker in The Grey that he is going to die and holds him and looks into his eyes as he starts to fade or in this film where Tommen Baratheon goes from fear and panic to acceptance.

I'm with you on this, I just don't think that 1917 captures it. That death scene actually made me chuckle since the stabbing was so silly. How a soldier gets surprised by a half-dead guy who just got pulled out of a crashed plane, and how the half-dead guy gets the better of him and manages to kill him, is just too stupid for me. I went from not caring about the characters to thinking the dead one was an idiot. I had no emotional investment in him and so I had no emotional response to his idiotic bungle costing him his life.

Burnham being so good is actually a pivotal part of [Promising Young Woman]. If you had a less interesting or likable actor in that role, then the reveal toward the end of the film would fall completely flat. The fact that Burnham and Mulligan sell their budding romance with such an authenticity really adds some nuance to the film. There are times where he delivers a little joke or self-depreacting humor and it feels completely like something that would be uttered in real-life flirting. So convicning that I almost wondered if he was ad-libbing at times. And if he wasn't, he sold the written dialogue in a spontaneous manner.

If you ask me, I'd say that Burnham sold it. Mulligan didn't help the cause. The script was such that while the purpose was to demonstrate that all men are violent pigs who will hurt/rape/kill you, the effect was to make me hate her. So my actual feeling through that whole courtship was, "Dude, you're a thousand times better than what she deserves. Why are you wasting your time and energy on such an obnoxious cunt?" It's a testament to his work that he and he alone overrode that sentiment and made me want to see how it would play out.

I really enjoyed Mulligan's performance. She is a very impressive actress. I really think she is capable of any genre. She hosted SNL around the time of the Oscars, promoting this film, and I thought she knocked it out of the park. She and Dan Kaluuya hosted back-to-back episodes, I believe, and they were probably my two favorites hosts overall of the season.

Even though I just referenced Adam Driver on SNL, I'm quite behind on that show and I didn't see her on it. But I didn't really like her in this one. That's more the fault of the script than her, but other than the scene with Connie Britton I didn't like how unsympathetic and even unlikable she was, especially considering we're supposed to be on her side.

I do think the notion that she not only had to get justice and revenge for her friend but also had to let the perpetrator know that she was avenging her was a good bit of depth there. Because she easily could have done what she planned to do without implicating herself or putting herself in harm's way. The fact that she did not enact her plan in that way really speaks to some self-destructive element to her character, which I think was hinted at during different points of the film.

Spoiler

Meh, I think that this is where the script was the weakest. Self-destructive, sure, but where was the suicidal? She essentially allows herself to be killed, martyring herself for justice. But really, she feels so guilty that she thinks that she has to die herself, even that she deserves to die. The scene with Molly Shannon shows the guilt, but not its depths. For as interesting as the switcheroo is and for as cleverly as the end unfolds, the cost of the surprise seemed to be the depth of the character's desire to die to be rid of the pain of the loss and her guilt in allowing it to happen.

Haha. Greenfield was great. It's rare to see an actor who can play completely different sides of the likability spectrum with effectiveness. In this movie, he fit the bill of exactly the type of p.o.s. the script was looking for.

The hardest that I laughed the whole movie was the way that he did that little hop over the body to jump into bed next to his bro. The second hardest that I laughed was when he bolts at the wedding. He's so fucking good.

Never saw it. I have not seen much of DePalma's work if I'm being honest. I've heard it's great though.

I did watch Tarantino on Rogan's podcast last month and he recounted this story- he said that the studio was adamant against his casting Travolta as Vincent Vega, but he was insistent. He told the higher ups at Miramax to watch Blow Out and if they did not want Travolta after seeing that movie, then they probably were not going to be able to do business together.

It's true that when it comes to his pre-Pulp Fiction work Blow Out is Travolta's strongest performance. But nobody sucks De Palma's nuts as hard as Tarantino and it's always driven me nuts. (Pun intended.) So much of De Palma's career is just him ripping off Hitchcock. No joke, without Rear Window and Psycho, there'd be no De Palma. Blow Out is Rear Window with sound instead of sight. (And Body Double just is Rear Window.) That said, of all of his Hitchcock ripoffs, Blow Out is the best because it's the only one where De Palma didn't stop at imitation and actually made it his own. It also helps that John Lithgow is the shit and he provides a glimpse of what he'd do as Trinity in Dexter so many years down the road. Especially since you dig The Conversation, I'd highly recommend checking out Blow Out.

Speaking of Tarantino podcasts, that dude has been EVERYWHERE promoting his book. His WTF with Maron was the best IMO, but the Rogan one was solid - even though he has no idea what he's talking about with Bruce Lee which was making me scream at the computer - and so was the Dax Shepard. Right now actually I'm going through his ReelBlend episode from his New Beverly from a couple of months ago.

I can't wait for him to start his own podcast.

 

[ufcfan4]

QFT.

It's true that when it comes to his pre-Pulp Fiction work Blow Out is Travolta's strongest performance. But nobody sucks De Palma's nuts as hard as Tarantino and it's always driven me nuts. (Pun intended.) So much of De Palma's career is just him ripping off Hitchcock. No joke, without Rear Window and Psycho, there'd be no De Palma. Blow Out is Rear Window with sound instead of sight. (And Body Double just is Rear Window.) That said, of all of his Hitchcock ripoffs, Blow Out is the best because it's the only one where De Palma didn't stop at imitation and actually made it his own. It also helps that John Lithgow is the shit and he provides a glimpse of what he'd do as Trinity in Dexter so many years down the road. Especially since you dig The Conversation, I'd highly recommend checking out Blow Out.

Speaking of Tarantino podcasts, that dude has been EVERYWHERE promoting his book. His WTF with Maron was the best IMO, but the Rogan one was solid - even though he has no idea what he's talking about with Bruce Lee which was making me scream at the computer - and so was the Dax Shepard. Right now actually I'm going through his ReelBlend episode from his New Beverly from a couple of months ago.

I can't wait for him to start his own podcast.

Oh man the Bruce Lee segments came across like he had a real ax to grind there. I was bummed that they spent so much time on that. For me, it almost was as though he was saying- Look, I don't have a problem with Bruce Lee, but here is my problem with Bruce Lee...

But I thought so much of the conversation was great. Thanks for mentioning Marron and Dax. I knew he had done Sherpard's (which is a podcast I didn't even know about till recently but he has some big-time guests). I didn't realize he had done Mark's. I will check out both. I listened to Dax recently because he had Cecily Strong on. Since we've mentioned SNL multiple times (Villasenor is very talented and bizarrely underutilized so I'd like to see her break out in a movie role as you indicated she could do), I'll just say I'm a huge fan of Strong and hope that she comes back this season, while also hoping that she gets some bigger signature roles outside of the show since I think she certainly deserves them. But back to QT. I thoroughly enjoy listening to him speak about film. In fact, his references to certain films in that podcast legitimately prompted me to want to watch them. I particularly was sold on a a film that I had no idea even exists, the 1983 remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. The fact that Tarantino described it as the only movie in the 80s that he saw which felt like the type of movie he would go on to make really makes me curious to see it.

I will definitely watch Blow Out in the near future.

 

[ufcfan4]

Just watched Mank. Man, Fincher can make a snoozer. That was a long and boring two hours that felt like six. Other than the scene when they finally show that Joe Mankiewicz was brilliant, I didn't find this one very compelling. I hated the character of Herman and I didn't like how prissy Oldman played him. He was a pathetic, weak little loser who had a movie made as if he were a titan among men. It really didn't play well and, as always, I have no idea what Fincher was trying to say. Why the scenes with Thalberg and Hearst dressing him down? Are we the audience meant to see him as a loser with no balls as Thalberg says or the dancing monkey as Hearst says, or are we to see them as men blinded to genius by ego, or are we to see a complex world with competing wills and egos that can never reconcile...? I have no idea what Fincher was doing, and I have no idea why we needed a movie to tell us that Herman Mankiewicz was a misunderstood genius who was bullied by the Three Stooges Hearst, Mayer, and Thalberg, but I sure wish it would've been better.



Been a long time so I was due for a mega post. I appreciate you taking the time to run through it film by film.



For me, I thought that the kid did all the heavy lifting. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have watched it. That was very strong work for a child actor. He actually would've done well in an SVU episode. But whether it's the kid or the mom (Joan Allen's best work since The Crucible IMO) or the dad (William H. Macy stealing the show by staring in a different direction - it's almost not fair having to share the screen with that guy), it always felt like they were carrying her yet she was supposed to be the film's anchor. I just wasn't impressed.

Great call on Allen and Macy. Didn't see much of them in that but they definitely made their impact. I have no idea why Allen is not in more stuff these days. She is usually quite good.

For TV, there's a great SVU episode called Avatar and an even better Flashpoint episode called Planets Aligned that play in the same field. And then you know you're talking to the right guy about Lifetime movies. The Michelle Knight one Cleveland Abduction is helped tremendously by Raymond Cruz, who I've loved ever since he told Ethan Hawke that he's had his shit pushed in big time in Training Day. But even better IMO is Kept Woman with Courtney Ford.

I did watch the Knight one, as I had read the Berry/Dejesus book around the same time. Very disturbing. Cruz is one of those character actors who has carved out a very strong career for himself over the years. I tend to think that Clear and Present Danger is one of the more consistently entertaining Jack Ryan adaptations out there and that was when I first took note of Cruz. Solid supporting performance. But yeah, Training Day- that sequence is, what, 10-12 minutes of the movie and yet everybody remembers it. I give props to Cruz, Curtis, and the other actor with them for helping to convey the escalating danger that Hawke encounters. That Cruz moment though. Lol. I think the fact that the particular scene is so well done is a testament to Fuqua and co., as it's probably the only portion of the film where the best element of the film, Denzel, is not on screen.
Also, it relies on a far too neat resolution (let's call Smiley's cousin and verify the story) and yet I still find it convincing.

Yeah, he's not in it much, but he bats cleanup and he does cleanup like a pro in the end monologue.

Doesn't surprise me. He's been good to great in whatever I have seen him in.

Preaching to the choir. I have no idea if he'll even see this, but out of respect I've got to give him an @ and credit @theskza for getting me to watch that one. I don't remember the circumstances but I remember it was him. I posted once in here saying that Steve Jobs had to be a top 10 GOAT script, but in the intervening years I've come to the conclusion that it's the GOAT script. Some day, I want to write an entire book on the film and dissect every single interaction Jobs has across the three acts with Lisa, Woz, and Scully.* By far the most emotionally dense and powerful film ever written. If Sorkin ever tops Steve Jobs, I don't know what it'll do to my brain. And I definitely agree with you on Fassbender. He crushed that role so hard and I also hope that he'll get opportunities to do more great work like that and not just spend his days doing shitty X-Men and Alien movies.

*I've already written two essays in which I analyze Steve Jobs, one of which is entirely devoted to the film and specifically to Jobs' interactions with Lisa (https://www.academia.edu/41494034/M...Possibilities_of_Ordinary_Language_Philosophy) and the other of which uses Steve Jobs as an example at the end focusing in particular on the editing (https://www.academia.edu/45582066/A...nley_Cavell_and_Ordinary_Aesthetic_Philosophy). I point this out in the event that you like the film enough to read nerdy scholarly essays completely lacking my Sherdog brand of profanity and gifs

Thanks for sharing. I will definitely give these a read.

Dude, you're probably the only Seinfeld guy on here who's so keyed into that show that you'd pinpoint the exact scene that I play in my head every time I see him. That line is so fucking funny.



"Me. I'm a man." Seinfeld was such a powerhouse of genius that tiny roles like that are cast with beastly actors who can turn such simple lines into gold.

Haha. I love that show. That episode is one of the best of the final season for sure. Really any episode with the late, great Jerry Stiller was an automatic win for me.

The jury's still out on Driver for me. He hasn't had that performance yet where I sit back and go, "Whoa, now that's a Major League player," but there's something about him that makes me think that he's got that potential. He's never bad, but he's never great. He was fine in J. Edgar, he was fine in Lincoln, he was fine in Inside Llewyn Davis, he was fine in Paterson, he was fine in BlacKkKlansman, he was fine in Marriage Story...but that's all he's been. Just fine. Honestly, the best thing that I've seen him do was the old man at career day sketch when he hosted SNL. If he ever brings that intensity to a role, we'll be in for a treat.

There is no doubt in my mind that he is one of the best hosts of the modern era. He just seems 100 percent committed to any given sketch he is in no matter how silly or bizarre.



I am not always a fan of humor where one joke is done to death, but I thought this was hilarious. The sequence where Beck is delivering the line and Mooney is repeating very similarly over and over again got me but then throw Driver into the mix and it gets even funnier.

 

[Bullitt68]

Oh man the Bruce Lee segments came across like he had a real ax to grind there. I was bummed that they spent so much time on that. For me, it almost was as though he was saying- Look, I don't have a problem with Bruce Lee, but here is my problem with Bruce Lee...

And the worst part for me was that I knew exactly what Tarantino read, why he was saying what he was saying...it was just wrong. He didn't understand what he'd read. He kept quoting the Matt Polly biography, but not only am I big shot enough to say that I met that dude (we got him to deliver one of the keynotes at the Bruce Lee conference that I put together in 2018 before I left the UK) and talked about all of that shit with him, Polly himself was saying afterwards that Tarantino was wrong. Ironically, I got into an argument with some knucklehead in the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood thread about Bruce and the stuntmen shit that is the exact conversation that I wish I could have with Tarantino, just sit him down and explain exactly what he's not understanding. Here's the shit that I said, first in response to the idea that the stuntmen hated Bruce and second in response to the idea that Bruce was a diva based on his not wanting to lose a fight to Robin in the Batman/The Green Hornet crossover:

By all accounts, all of the crews that he worked with loved working and hanging out with him on the set. There's a reason that Gene LeBell and Jackie Chan worked as his stuntmen on multiple films: They wanted to work with him.

Furthermore, to add color to the terrible black-and-white picture that you're for some reason trying to paint about Bruce being a "douchebag," here is a good telling of Bruce's time on The Green Hornet from Matt Polly's biography, in which he explains what the problems were at the beginning of shooting The Green Hornet (Bruce had to learn how to choreograph fights) and how they were resolved:

The Green Hornet stuntmen were all veterans of Westerns. “It was a two-dimensional thing where you had the camera over your shoulder,” says Van Williams. “You could stand three feet away from your opponent and swing, and if the guy reacted correctly and the sound effects were right, it looked perfect. Bruce could never get used to working that far apart.” Bruce insisted on close quarters combat. The stuntmen hated it. They weren’t fast enough to react to him, and as a result, occasionally got banged up. “They got to the point where they didn’t want to work on that show,” Williams recalls. “They were tired of getting hurt.” “Judo” Gene LeBell, a legendary pro wrestler, world-class judoka, and the stunt coordinator on-set, was assigned the task of calming Bruce down. “Bruce would hit you in ten different spots and as a stuntman you wouldn’t know whether to grab your jaw and say that hurt or your stomach,” says LeBell. “We did our best to slow Bruce Lee down because the Western way was the old John Wayne way where you reach from left field, tell a story, and then you hit the man. Bruce liked to throw thirty-seven kicks and twelve punches.”

[...]

What finally convinced Bruce to modify his [style of] fight choreography was seeing the result on film. The pilot episode, “The Silent Gun,” concluded with a big fight between the Green Hornet, Kato, and the bad guys in a darkly lit underground parking lot. Instead of correcting Bruce, Van Williams and the stuntmen decided to just let him do his thing. The next day they said to him, “Bruce, why don’t you come with us and watch the dailies?” “Oh yeah, I really want to see how that turned out,” Bruce excitedly responded. “That was some of the best stuff I’ve done.” A big group gathered to watch the unedited footage from the previous day. When Bruce’s big scene came up, it was a complete blur. The only way anyone could tell a fight was happening was from the kung fu noises. The stuntmen burst out laughing. Bruce stormed to his dressing room, slammed the door, and refused to come out. After a couple of hours, Van Williams walked over and knocked on the door.

“Bruce, what are you doing in there?”
“I’m very mad,” Bruce said. “I’m so upset I don’t know what to do. I’m just ruined. I can’t do anything right.”
“Bruce, this is what we’ve been trying to tell you. You have to slow it down. You can’t do this stuff that you do so fast that the camera can’t catch it.”

Williams and Lee had a long talk and sorted out what Bruce needed to change. “By God he did slow it down and he really improved what he could do,” Williams recalls. “Once he calmed down on film and stopped jumping around on-set, he got along really well with everyone."

Bruce learned two important lessons shooting The Green Hornet. The first was how to properly choreograph non-contact fight scenes. The second was how to choreograph more contact-based fight scenes: Instead of using union stuntmen, just hire actual martial artists. Hence Bruce's practice later in his career of working with actual martial artists and professional fighters, from Bob Wall and Chuck Norris to Wong In Sik and Ji Han Jae (a practice that has been continued by people like Jackie Chan, who memorably worked with Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, and Donnie Yen, who fought Mike Tyson).

[...]

Actually, the story that you're referring to has to do with the crossover episode of Batman and The Green Hornet in which Bruce rejected the idea of Robin getting the better of Kato. Again, from Polly's biography:

In the original script the Green Hornet and Kato lose the brawl to Batman and Robin. After all, it was their show. But when Bruce read that, he threw the script to the ground and walked off the set. “I’m not going to do that,” he declared. “There’s no way that I’m going to get into a fight with Robin and lose. That makes me look like an idiot!” His complaint made its way up to [William] Dozier, who came down from his office to hear it out. Bruce was adamant: “There’s no way anybody would believe that I would get in a fight with Robin and lose. I refuse to do it. It will make me look like the laughing stock of the world.”

[...]

“Fine it will be a draw,” Dozier decided. “Nobody wins or loses, a Mexican stand-off. Can you live with that, Bruce?”
“Okay,” Bruce replied.

Bruce and Burt Ward (Robin) were friends. When they lived in the same apartment complex, Bruce shared some basic kung fu techniques with him. But Bruce heard that Ward was telling people he was a black belt like Bruce, and it offended him. “Bruce was very popular with the kids, and they were asking Robin, ‘Can you do that thing that Kato does?’ ” Van Williams recalls. “And Robin would say, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m a black belt. Watch this: EEW-WHA-HA!’ and he’d do this little stance, which was a joke.”

Before shooting began, Bruce told everyone, “I’m going to light into Robin and show him how it is really done and then we’ll see how great a black belt you are, boy!” By the time filming started, Burt Ward was shaking in his Spandex. As an insurance policy, he begged Batman’s stuntmen to intervene if Bruce tore into him. Bruce swaggered onto the set with a stern expression. He silently paced back and forth, refusing to kid around with the crew, which was very unusual. “Bruce was always joking and playing around,” Williams says. After some warm-ups, he shifted into a fighting stance, clenched his teeth, squinted his eyes, and stared down Robin from behind his Kato mask. Ward as Robin stood a good distance away and tried to make small talk. Bruce ignored him. Finally, the director shouted, “Action!”

With his killer expression and dead eyes, Bruce inched his way toward his prey. Ward slowly backed away, crying out, “Bruce, remember this is not for real. It’s just a show!” As Kato crowded Robin into a corner, Ward began flapping his elbows and jumping around in a circle. One of the stuntmen in back whispered, “It’s the black panther and the yellow chicken.”

Hearing that, Bruce burst out laughing. “I couldn’t keep a straight face anymore,” Bruce recalled. Van Williams, Adam West, and the entire crew howled at the practical joke.

Note also the part about how Bruce was always hanging out and joking around with the crew.

Bruce had a learning curve on The Green Hornet, but that was like one week of difficulty at the very beginning of Bruce's career as a martial arts star which Tarantino misunderstood to be indicative of a career-long problem with all stuntworkers

Thanks for mentioning Marron and Dax. I knew he had done Sherpard's (which is a podcast I didn't even know about till recently but he has some big-time guests). I didn't realize he had done Mark's. I will check out both.

The Maron episode is the best thing that I've ever seen or heard with Tarantino as far as interviews go. As it happens, Tarantino has been a huge stand-up fan ever since he was a kid and has been a fan of Maron's for years and years. And Maron is such a great interviewer and conversationalist that Tarantino is looser than he's ever been (and he's not one to be stiff anyway) and Maron makes him laugh so hard that I've literally never heard Tarantino laugh like that. It's absolutely fantastic.

I listened to Dax recently because he had Cecily Strong on.

I'm the other way: I've caught Dax on Rick Glassman's podcast but I don't like him enough to want to go through his podcast. The Tarantino episode was the first time I'd ever actually listened to an episode of his show.

Since we've mentioned SNL multiple times (Villasenor is very talented and bizarrely underutilized so I'd like to see her break out in a movie role as you indicated she could do), I'll just say I'm a huge fan of Strong and hope that she comes back this season, while also hoping that she gets some bigger signature roles outside of the show since I think she certainly deserves them.

I'm also a fan of hers. She has a kind of lowkey hotness combined with legit comedic chops. I used to love that recurring sketch when her and someone else would be the drunk bimbos selling shit.

I thoroughly enjoy listening to him speak about film. In fact, his references to certain films in that podcast legitimately prompted me to want to watch them. I particularly was sold on a a film that I had no idea even exists, the 1983 remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. The fact that Tarantino described it as the only movie in the 80s that he saw which felt like the type of movie he would go on to make really makes me curious to see it.

Dude, before I got to film school, my first film professors were Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Any time they'd mention a movie, I'd track it down. Shit like Blow Out, The Bad and the Beautiful, Duel in the Sun, Mad Max, Rio Bravo, A Better Tomorrow I and II, I Walk Alone, it would've taken me a long time to get to those, but Scorsese would talk about shit in that documentary that he did about film history, Tarantino would have characters referencing or watching shit, and that became a checklist for me.

Cruz is one of those character actors who has carved out a very strong career for himself over the years.

I was so happy for him when he got The Closer. That was a super successful show, it's still on all the time in syndication, I'm sure he made bank on that one. And he was one of the most reliable members of the cast and whenever there'd be an episode that revolved around him, it was always a great one.

But yeah, Training Day- that sequence is, what, 10-12 minutes of the movie and yet everybody remembers it. I give props to Cruz, Curtis, and the other actor with them for helping to convey the escalating danger that Hawke encounters. That Cruz moment though. Lol. I think the fact that the particular scene is so well done is a testament to Fuqua and co., as it's probably the only portion of the film where the best element of the film, Denzel, is not on screen.
Also, it relies on a far too neat resolution (let's call Smiley's cousin and verify the story) and yet I still find it convincing.

Best scene of the movie IMO. When they cap Scott Glenn is a close second ("Y'all watching this?"), but that scene is so intense and it seems so clear that there's no way he's getting out of it. But the brilliance is that it doesn't feel forced, it's not a bullshit deus ex machina: His goodness and his refusal to compromise who he is and what he wants to stand for as a cop even gets him out of the worst situation imaginable with some of the worst people imaginable. Fucking brilliant.

Haha. I love that show. That episode is one of the best of the final season for sure. Really any episode with the late, great Jerry Stiller was an automatic win for me.

Yama hama

There is no doubt in my mind that he is one of the best hosts of the modern era. He just seems 100 percent committed to any given sketch he is in no matter how silly or bizarre.

I love people like that. When people like De Niro come through and just go, "You want me to wear what? You want me to be who? You want me to say what? Okay, let's go," it elevates the energy of the show and it galvanizes everyone else in the cast. Even in something like the old man sketch with Driver, or the alien thing with Ryan Gosling, when you have cast members and/or hosts breaking, the "lighting in a bottle" thing with SNL is all about energy, and if the big shots are there for it and are either giving it everything like Driver or are just as amused as an audience member like Gosling, it all but guarantees a classic moment.