Last Movie Watched Thread

For a half a second I thought you were referring to the Alexander Payne movie and wondered how in the world it warranted two sequels of which I'd been completely unaware.

I've been rewatching the Best Picture nominees by Goldderby's odds of least likely to most likely to win Best Picture as of three days ago. Here's what I have so far, tomorrow is Jojo Rabbit

Ford v Ferrari


Little Women


Marriage Story

No worries! I was just amusing myself with the thought of George Clooney's continued adventures in lightly comic Hawaiian melancholy. 

You know how usually picking a near-future date makes a film looks laughably inaccurate when that date comes closer to passing? This isn't one of those times.

Had an inadvertent double feature of films examining labor and capital issues in corrupt industries on their way to irrelevancy. 

Blue Collar (1978)
Despite interest in the subject, I'd put off watching this one for years because I generally find Paul Schrader's films as a writer/director to be overly simplistic and self-serious. This one, his first as director after making waves with the Taxi Driver screenplay, is more fulfilling because it allows some levity in the story of three frustrated Detroit auto workers (played by Richard Pryor, Yaphet Kotto, and Harvey Keitel) trying to stick it to their incompetent local chapter by robbing the headquarters safe. However, the latter half falters a bit in trying to shift to modern tragedy mode and some of that Schrader sermonizing comes out. Pryor was never a great actor and his attempts to portray a man in ethical crisis ring false, leaving Keitel to have to bring the dramatic heavy lifting in a role that's not really written for it. Still, a good late-70s glimpse at Detroit's economy running on fumes and how the system divides people who should be fighting together. 

The Man in the White Suit (1952)
One of the Ealing Studio comedies starring Alec Guinness. I'd seen a couple of Ealing movies (Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers) and they're funny but so steeped in British class culture that they were a bit hard for this Yank to relate to. This one has a somewhat more universal story of a chemist who, after several attempts working after hours to develop an unrippable, unstainable fabric, succeeds and throws the industry in turmoil. The scenes of the fabric mill barons in a tizzy are very amusing (I particularly liked the character of Sir John, the geriatric lord of the industry) but the film also cannily indicts the laborers who are similarly united against any change to their industry. Like Blue Collar, an evocative portrait of an industrial capitol (Manchester) on the wane and--though I'm not extremely well versed in British film of the time--the humor seemed more slapsticky in a modern way than I was expecting. Definitely can be seen as an allegory for how we continue to prop up moribund industries like fossil fuels despite environmental, economic, and logical sense. 

Watched The Va-Vitch again on Saturday at a friend's movie night. Four of us had already seen it, and the other four hadn't. I liked it far more this time around. In my initial viewing three years ago, I was immediately put off by the baby being killed and was angry at the movie the whole time because of it. Since I knew about it ahead of time now, I was able to appreciate it a bit more. Creepy, and the various misunderstandings between Thomasin and her family made a lot of sense for pushing them all to blame each other for what was happening.

Now I'm annoyed though that I may have to someday watch it a THIRD time, to look for the apparently hidden eyes and faces in the background as one of the other repeat viewers mentioned?

Furie (2019) - I kind of love that Netflix is home to so many films in the “lady who used to be an assassin/gangster/hitman but gave it up for a nice quiet family life only to have to put her skills to use one last time when someone fucks with her family” genre since that’s my absolute favorite genre of movie. Overall storywise, this was a pretty generic revenge film. The fights were really well done and surprisingly Veronica Ngo’s character got roughed up WAY more than the average revenge flick action hero. It’s kind of wild how many times she gets decked in the mug in this movie. I mean generally in this sort of movie people just tear through whatever nefarious foes they’re up against but here every fight felt as if the heroine was on the verge of defeat which made the fights all that more entertaining.

Joker

Yeah no I couldn't get through it a second time. Man is beat down by life (or society or rich people or who the fuck knows because the people behind the camera don't) and loses it and does Joker stuff. Congratulations, please enjoy your Oscars.

The Irishman

"I heard you taint blouses"

I think it's awesome that this movie is three and a half hours long. Movie after movie gets hacked up and edited down to be more easily digestible, and Martin just rolls up like "I have a 200+ minute mob epic and I used really expensive deageing technology that... mostly holds up". To watch The Irishman you need to devote a full afternoon to tackling it. And yeah, it's rare to find a movie with the craft, the performances, the scale to sustain a three hour runtime. But this movie is fucking awesome and I can only hope for more creators with the ambition and free rein to tell a good three hour story.

I wish they'd do more Timmy Time. I loved that show almost as much as my daughter did.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

2020 is off to a strong start. I love this movie so much! The characters are colourful (literally and figuratively), the action is well-choreographed and bonecrunching (literally and figuratively), the story is frenetic and winds all five protagonists around and into the arc of Black Mask seizing control of Gotham's underworld. And it's really funny! And really fun!

It is incredible that this movie was spun off the utter trainwreck of Suicide Squad.

Vox Lux

This one didn't work for me. It's sort of two movies. A young actress plays a shy 15 year old, who is budding pop singer after rising to fame after surviving a school shooting, and who starts to see what it takes to succeed. Then, just as she's recording her first music video, 9/11 happens, it jumps ahead to 2019. Now Natalie Portman is playing the singer now as a brassy broad who cannot stop talking, has substance abuse problems, is deeply narcissistic, and for some reason suddenly has a really strong (New England, I think) accent. Also, now the actress who played the singer in the past is now playing her daughter. And she has an older sister who is played by the same actress in both time lines. She mostly looks the same, although it's hard to be sure because she is always in a goddamn medium shot until 2/3rds of the way through the movie. Jude Law is there, too as a sleazy manager. He doesn't get aged up either in the 18 year time jump. Anyway, terrorists somewhere in the world killed a bunch of people where mirrored masks like the ones worn by the back up dancers in the first music video. That seems like it will be important and it is in that a journalists asks her about it but then it doesn't. The last 10-15 minutes are concert footage with Portman kind of clumsily dancing and lip-syncing to some forgettable Sia songs that would be better if they had anything to do with the themes of the movie but they don't. Then it ends. Nothing is resolved. Nothing comes of anything. I didn't like it.


Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

Look, my buddy from college came over and wanted to watch this. We used to watch Kevin Smith movies back in the day and enjoyed them. I'm not really going to defend them. They have their place, I guess, for teenage boys in the 90s. Still, this one is the worst I've seen from Smith (I don't think I've seen anything since Clerks 2 which I don't remember much of except he made Rosario Dawson say "ass to mouth" a bunch). The plot is basically Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, a move that the movie knowingly winks to you about. A lot. I mean, they actually have the characters turn to the camera a look at the audience knowingly, several times. So meta. Really, the movie has nothing to say. It does try to cram in some stuff about fatherhood, but really who cares (strangely Jason Mewes is kind of effective as an actor in a couple of times when he has to explain to his daughter who he just found out about that he is a fuck up). Anyway, lot's of cameos from people from his previous movies including a jarring Matt Damon bit that they must have filmed in 10 minutes and just jammed randomly into the movie. I guess it helps if you've seen all of Kevin Smith's movies, listen to Kevin Smith's podcast, and just generally know a lot about Kevin Smith. Most of the "jokes" are just references to his other media. I guess this was crowd funded, so I suppose this is just giving the middle-aged Smith super fans what they want. Otherwise, it's just terrible and lazy.

Is Once Upon a Time in America in that top tier? Because that one’s in my Netflix queue but also I think like four hours long or something.

Explain the premise of this flute-o-phone.  The rest of the movie seems pretty unessential, but I am intrigued by the flute-o-phone.