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Post by ganews on Apr 21, 2024 19:46:23 GMT -5
Civil War (2024) What exactly are the political schisms at play and what's motivating the death squads? Stop asking this question, because it's not important! This is a story about journalists that just happens to be set in an America much like ours with a provocative title and an expy of the most divisive president in modern history. There is no reason to think that this is just equivocation designed to avoid turning away dollars from movie-goers of all political affiliations. The director has made this clear in multiple interviews. If that's not good enough for you than you are a foaming partisan. Or so I have been told. |
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Post by liebkartoffel on Apr 22, 2024 7:13:18 GMT -5
Asteroid City (aka Wes Anderson's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead): Why yes, I am, in fact, a millennial of a certain age and this, indeed, my shit. It was a forgone conclusion that I would like this movie, because I like Wes Anderson movies and Wes Anderson is incapable of not making a Wes Anderson movie, but I buy the argument that this isn't going to win over any new converts. It has all the Andersonian hallmarks: it's fussy, it's mannered, it's deadpan, it's twee, and it's navel-gazey -- except this time all that is wrapped up in at least three layers of meta-narrative. It's not just a movie, you see; its a movie about a television show about the making of a play about a grieving father and also aliens. I think it's all about the lengths we go to distance ourselves from our grief and/or find meaning in life, but I get each why more than a few critics rolled their eyes and tossed up their hands. For my part, however, it's all just so charming. Plus it's fun to play "spot the Wes Anderson repertory player/soon-to-be repertory players"
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Post by pantsgoblin on Apr 22, 2024 8:04:07 GMT -5
Civil War (2024) What exactly are the political schisms at play and what's motivating the death squads? Stop asking this question, because it's not important! This is a story about journalists that just happens to be set in an America much like ours with a provocative title and an expy of the most divisive president in modern history. There is no reason to think that this is just equivocation designed to avoid turning away dollars from movie-goers of all political affiliations. The director has made this clear in multiple interviews. If that's not good enough for you than you are a foaming partisan. Or so I have been told. Broadly selling your movie in interviews is one thing but, yes, at just 20 minutes in Kirsten Dunst's character says "don't ask those questions because you'll never stop" so I guess she's even more of a defensive mouthpiece for Alex Garland than I realized. |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Apr 22, 2024 17:30:01 GMT -5
One thing that’s worth mentioning is that war reporters often end up extremely taking very partisan stances in civil conflicts (most visibly now Ukraine, but even happens in relatively “distant” multi-sided ones such as Syria).
I am a long time not-really-a-fan-of-Garland and I’m likewise relying on second-hand accounts, but people I know who are connected to the field in some way described it basically “frustrating” and said it was obvious his main military advisor was a SEAL because the degree of war criming was more than you see in most actual civil wars.
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Post by ganews on Apr 23, 2024 7:53:21 GMT -5
just 20 minutes in Kirsten Dunst's character says "don't ask those questions because you'll never stop" At least they accurately depicted 21st century journalism! |
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Post by Nudeviking on Apr 24, 2024 1:05:29 GMT -5
Reefer Madness (1936) - The first half of this movie is just 40 year old dudes in suits, some of whom are supposed to be high school students, greeting one another. They then start smoking weed and all hell breaks loose! They run over dudes in their motorcars, cheat on their girlfriend with a weed floozy, commit a sex crime, do manslaughter, frame their buddy for murder but worst of all their grades start slipping and they miss the ball in a tennis match but upwards of three feet! Just say no kids unless you want to get framed for murder and have the jury speed run Twelve Angry Men in their rush to convict you.
The Big Doll House (1971) - A gnarly-ass women in prison film that’s elevated by the fact that Pam Grier is in it. Would have been a perfect flick if there was more Pam Grier in it but alas it was an ensemble cast so she’s sharing screentime with five other women (plus random villains and Sid Haig as a fruit vendor). The rest of the cast is fine but none of them are Pam Grier.
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Post by pantsgoblin on Apr 24, 2024 7:52:12 GMT -5
The Big Doll House (1971) - A gnarly-ass women in prison film that’s elevated by the fact that Pam Grier is in it. Would have been a perfect flick if there was more Pam Grier in it but alas it was an ensemble cast so she’s sharing screentime with five other women (plus random villains and Sid Haig as a fruit vendor). The rest of the cast is fine but none of them are Pam Grier. Jack Hill also directed Haig in Spider Baby, a fun and surprisingly rough horror flick from 1967. Switchblade Sisters is well worth a watch, too. |
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Post by Floyd Dinnertime Barber on Apr 24, 2024 9:53:49 GMT -5
The Big Doll House (1971) - A gnarly-ass women in prison film that’s elevated by the fact that Pam Grier is in it. Would have been a perfect flick if there was more Pam Grier in it but alas it was an ensemble cast so she’s sharing screentime with five other women (plus random villains and Sid Haig as a fruit vendor). The rest of the cast is fine but none of them are Pam Grier. Jack Hill also directed Haig in Spider Baby, a fun and surprisingly rough horror flick from 1967. Switchblade Sisters is well worth a watch, too. Spider Baby really is delightfully weird and features Lon Chaney Jr doing a great late career job. Apparently it was a bit of a comeback for him. The story I read was that he had to promise to stop drinking during the shoot to get the job, and after reading the script he liked it so much he agreed. You can tell he was struggling, but he gives a sympathetic and somewhat nuanced performance considering the bizarre story. It's worth checking out. |
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Post by pantsgoblin on Apr 24, 2024 11:02:54 GMT -5
Jack Hill also directed Haig in Spider Baby, a fun and surprisingly rough horror flick from 1967. Switchblade Sisters is well worth a watch, too. Spider Baby really is delightfully weird and features Lon Chaney Jr doing a great late career job. Apparently it was a bit of a comeback for him. The story I read was that he had to promise to stop drinking during the shoot to get the job, and after reading the script he liked it so much he agreed. You can tell he was struggling, but he gives a sympathetic and somewhat nuanced performance considering the bizarre story. It's worth checking out. As many film scholars have noted, Lon Chaney Jr.'s alcoholism is likely why he was so effective at playing The Wolfman. He definitely knew something about turning monstrous at night and not remembering the next day. |
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Post by liebkartoffel on Apr 25, 2024 7:38:34 GMT -5
Across the Spider-verse: Watched this a couple of weeks ago, but don't have much to say beyond it's good and I liked it. Like most sequels it's the first movie, but more, but for once that's a good thing -- to the extent that I can forgive it being basically 100% rising action and ending (spoiler for a near-year-old movie) on a cliffhanger. I really wish I'd seen this on the big screen, if only so I could've spotted more of the details and easter eggs packed into every scene. (Loved that new-father-nee-sadsack Spider-Man was reading How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk).
Belle: This was a pretty decent anime movie about a girl overcoming her grief over her mother's death by masquerading as a pop diva in a massive Second Life-style virtual world. Unfortunately, this is also a half-baked retelling of Beauty and the Beast (specifically the Disney animated Beauty and the Beast) for no goddamn reason, and the film repeatedly yanks you away from the genuinely charming slice-of-life scenes to once again attempt to get you interested in the mystery of who the virtual "Beast" is. Mostly the film struggles to jam roughly 1.5 movies worth of plot into a two-hour runtime. The virtual world in question is both over and under-explained, and the film is disinterested in examining the implications, e.g., of a massively popular platform (5 billion users!) suddenly taking up so much space in people's lives, of how fame is made and broken in the social media age, and how and to what purpose this platform was created in the first place. This movie is sitting on a 95 Rotten Tomatoes score and received 14 minute standing ovation at Cannes, and C and I both had a very Michael Bluthian "...her?" reaction. It does look really nice.
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Post by WKRP Jimmy Drop on Apr 27, 2024 12:08:58 GMT -5
Ok I remembered the music being out of place, but I did not remember the opening theme of Ladyhawke being quite so egregiously bizarre.
Nor did I remember that the Bishop is also Falken from WarGames.
Man, the fight choreography is so, so bad. And all the swords and armor is so SHINY wtf
Still great fun though.
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,690 
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Post by repulsionist on Apr 28, 2024 16:50:54 GMT -5
I Watch Films With My Kids, Alright! Geez, The Things I Have To Do
Blades of Glory (2007)
Heder plays with Will well enough. Golly but the CGI in this is "Beyond The Uncanny Valley of the Silly Walls".
Super Mario Bros Movie (2023)
I do become annoyed at how easily films like this, Trolls, and other family animated type cinema manage to reap rivers of tears from me. All the nostalgic dog whistles I could see and hear brought me little moments of weeping followed by upset that the creative co-operative managed to do so. Great flick. Black won Bowser. Taylor-Smith deserved her crown. Pratt and Day did good stuff. Key was a great Toad.
The Casagrandes Movie (2024)
Hard meh with a dash of "oh well, goodonya".
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Post by pantsgoblin on Apr 28, 2024 21:22:43 GMT -5
12:01 PM (1990) A quality Kurtwood Smith anchors an intriguing, 27-minute time-loop curio that hits many of the same beats as Groundhog Day but three years earlier. Free on Youtube in less-than-high fidelity though the top comment is the director giving it his blessing. It was apparently produced for a Showtime short films series and led to a feature-length adaptation that, judging by the trailer, looks irritatingly whimsical.
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Apr 29, 2024 21:15:01 GMT -5
I really enjoyed Challengers for the most part, though I’m not so over-the-moon as others, mainly because the ending doesn’t work for me. For a film that makes so much of tennis-as-metaphor I do wish there was more use of, well, tennis-the-game-as-it’s-played rather than just a sense of intensity and faults/point scoring, though obviously the tactics and strategy of a high-level match would be hard to do with actors. Still it did much, much, so much better for a sport I actually play with than Ferrari (road rallying).
They are good actors, though. Faist really is sort of instantly likeable, really a movie star in the sense of “oh nice, Mike Faist!” even though he’s a good actor. I was really impressed with Josh O’Connor, though—seemed familiar to me but didn’t realize until after that it was from the also-quite-good La Chimera. He’s much more chameolonic, and really sells his character’s mix of physical progression and stunted character.
The characters also graduated high school the same year as me, was weird to see, made me feel younger rather than older actually.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Apr 30, 2024 1:26:20 GMT -5
^^^ I've been waiting for La Chimera to appear on Hulu. I want to see that one.Hulu still has a deal in place with Neon, so I really hope it his there. I missed it when it came to the indie theater here. Feels like it is taking a long time to hit streaming. Amazon Prime still says "Coming soon". Hopefully sometime this summer.
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Post by Prole Hole on May 1, 2024 8:42:03 GMT -5
12:01 PM (1990) A quality Kurtwood Smith anchors an intriguing, 27-minute time-loop curio that hits many of the same beats as Groundhog Day but three years earlier. Free on Youtube in less-than-high fidelity though the top comment is the director giving it his blessing. It was apparently produced for a Showtime short films series and led to a feature-length adaptation that, judging by the trailer, looks irritatingly whimsical. Quality Kurtwood Smith is just Kurtwood Smith - he's just never bad in anything. |
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on May 2, 2024 20:40:03 GMT -5
 Frederick Wiseman made this four-hour documentary at age 93. That it took me this long to watch any of his movies, and that it took him doing the most obvious Food Guy Movie Bait imaginable, is maybe kind of embarrassing. That this was Extremely My Shit is also, like, stupidly predictable. This is very slow and meticulous work, it must be said. For the first hour, the Troisgros father and sons argue about their menus and ingredients, and then there's a long montage of cooks doing prep. The second hour is the dining room filling and emptying for lunch service. The third involves pere et fils visiting various farmers, ingredient sourcers, a cheesemaker, etc., and discussing the eye-popping costs of the wines they need to order. The final hour is dinner. That's it. But - not an original thought here - god damn can this 93-year-old make a freaking documentary. Without a single narrator voice or caption or timestamp or any other signal to the viewers at all, the meticulous cutting and editing do all the work. Sometimes, of course - like when the family is discussing what's in and out of season at the beginning - there is no cutting at all. But then you get to the prep work montage. The genius stroke here is to cross-cut between the prep steps for all the different dishes, so that you're seeing them all unfold simultaneously. You don't watch the chocolate worker do their thing for 5 minutes; instead you get little chocolate updates in between all the other dishes. (Including an ominous pot of lamb brains that are a little like Chekhov's gun: they'll come back at dinner in an absolutely terrifying/gross-looking dish where customers are served two whole brains each. Aaaaaaaa) Wiseman takes so much time to capture wonderful little moments. Papa Troisgros groaning in disbelief at wine prices. His kids getting increasingly annoyed explaining that his ideas are out of season, but then the way he redeems himself with little strokes of inspiration. A scene of cooks frolicking through a meadow to forage, razzing each other and casually flirting. The general manager telling servers about all the customers' dietary restrictions, remarking of one table, "They requested no lamb, no game, no goat, no offal, no quail. I hope the chef's duck dish will prove satisfactory...but I have my doubts." I guffawed. I watched an hour one day, and then the next day it was going off PBS streaming so I had to marathon the last three. It probably is better to treat it like a miniseries and watch in installments, so that the pace always remains meticulous and fascinating rather than growing old. What fun.  Scrolling through Netflix, the girlfriend pointed at this one and said "that looks interesting!" She is not a movie person, she has a short attention span (sigh), watches maybe 5 a year...in hindsight this shouldn't have been one of her 5, because at the end she said, "I don't like violent movies." Literally 30 people die in L.A. Confidential. I guess at least before the last guy died, she was yelling "shoot him!!" This is an extremely well-written, well-acted, well-set-decorated, well-made in every way movie that is still hard to take because it's basically about police corruption and police brutality. You can tell the good guys because they're slightly less bent than the bad guys. The writing is magnificent - I love that the final climactic sequence calls on the two main characters to make Big Moral Choices about their conflicting priorities, textbook screenplay stuff. In addition to the way everything ties together. I also love that the movie has an absolutely stacked cast of people who were mostly not that famous when they made it. Breakthrough role for Russell Crowe? Dang. Perennially underrated That Guy actor David Strathairn? Yes, please. James Cromwell with an Irish accent? Sure! There is a tendency for super violent dark movies to be overrated, in the grand scope of "best movies ever." This is like #125 on IMDb and I saw some online chatter suggesting it as the best movie of the 90s. But, like the best noir, this does engage with both serious social problems and individual personal dilemmas, and how our own choices are affected by our surroundings. Even today, literally this week, like 95% of violent protests are committed by police against nonviolent people who happen to be in the police's way. The memorable imagery and performances mean I can go a few decades before seeing this again.  I did not intend to accidentally create a "writer-director Curtis Hanson adapting a crime novel" double feature. Not at all. These movies are 20 years apart! But I signed up for Criterion Channel, this looked fun, put it on, boom, his name in the credits. Know who else's name is in the credits besides Elliott Gould and Christopher Plummer? John freaking Candy as a coworker whose sheer confidence wins over the hot new blonde colleague who thinks it's appropriate to wear - to work - in a bank - T-shirts that say things like "Penalty for Early Withdrawal." This definitely takes a cue from Hitchcock in the blend of juvenile humor (see: those T-shirts), grisly violence (Plummer decapitates someone with a fish tank), romance, and double-crossing suspense and treachery. Also, the characters are smart and do smart things, and the filmmakers expect you to follow along rather than having big blinking arrows pointing out what they did. Gould is a boring, shy, geeky bank teller who rejects the flirtations of women so he can play with his beloved pet fish. He realizes that the weird mall Santa isn't just being weird - he's casing the joint. So when Santa steps up to his register and demands all the cash, Gould is ready. Not to call the cops. To steal all the money himself. Then, of course, all sorts of chaos happens. The bank robber (Plummer) turns out to be generally psychotic, violent to women, and evil. And he wants the cash. Gould wants to keep it. And a coworker (Susannah York) notices something is up. There are definitely a lot of improbabilities to swallow here - most of them to do with how you decapitate someone with a fish tank and dispose the body without anyone noticing, but also how Plummer's villain is able to keep any woman around for long. But whatever. It's fun, it's tightly constructed, and it has all kinds of great little moments. Like the phone ringing and Plummer saying, "Think of a number." Or the amazingly chilling line that's something like "I'm not going to shoot you from here," and the reaction it causes. Or John Candy's Greek (?) wedding. This definitely deserves to be better-known.  After two movies where a bunch of people get murdered, I had to watch a documentary about the making of a movie where they want to push a guy's head through a cabinet, but they're not quite competent enough to pull off the stunt unless they break the cabinet already, first. This 90s Milwaukee doc is about a gigantic film nerd who has absorbed stacks of books about the craft, is inspired to make masterpieces, but can't help producing knock-off Z-list local horror trash. Partly because his "budget" is money he makes mooching off his uncle and scrubbing his uncle's back in the bath. This plays like a Christopher Guest mockumentary, but it's real. The realness has a strange effect. Everything that happens is, objectively, hilarious. Scrubbing his uncle being grossed out by his uncle's giant toenails while his uncle pretends to be a baby saying "googoo gaga"? Objectively: hilarious. His own goddamn brother saying "I expected him to be a stalker when he grows up"? Ditto. His stoned-out sidekick who became addicted to the lottery because it's better than alcohol? Yup. Only, since these people are real, this is all incredibly sad, too. Nobody should be THAT excited that they finally qualified for a MasterCard at age 30 while still living at home waiting for his mom to brew coffee before he gets out of bed. But...ya know...it is also funny. I guess by having this reaction of "I'm watching a great comedy but it's real and even if it isn't exploitative, it's still weird and sad?", I am bypassing both the mainstream reactions to this movie, which apparently are either "this man is sad and awful" or "this man's ridiculous quest is kinda inspiring." But really, I do love this and probably will definitely enjoy thinking about it later, remembering all the best moments, even more than I enjoyed actually watching it. Mike Schank's soundtrack performances unironically are great (RIP). And I will happily join a fraternity of people who quote back and forth to each other about how it's not pronounced coven like oven, and how I want some peppermint schnapps mixed with Sprite, and how that could be used as a science photo. Does everyone have brown gloves??! |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on May 3, 2024 4:25:33 GMT -5
I just came back from seeing Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new film Evil Does Not Exist. It is a real departure, not as immediately involving as Drive My Car or the other Hamaguchi film I’ve seen, Wheel of Fortune & Fantasy. There’s something in common visually—Hamaguchi likes his rural roads—but things don’t flow like like in Drive or Wheel—people take there time to do things, there’s a lot of pausing and awkwardness in the dialogue. The characterization’s rounded but subtle, and there’s an engagement with broader economic, social, and natural forces that’s not there in the more interpersonally-focused Drive or Wheel. I found it very hard to connect with, though—a lot to mull over leaving the theater but less feeling in it.
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Post by Celebith on May 3, 2024 12:52:13 GMT -5
In which I watch some movies in the period of time between the last time I posted here and this very moment. The Muppet Movie (1979) - The Scott Hasn't Seen (covering the movie blindspots of deranged human being Scott Aukerman) podcast is covering The Muppet Movie next week. Episodes are better if you've seen the movie, but it's absolutely inessential. The podcast is behind the CBB paywall, but if anyone's interested in hearing it, I can probably drop it somewhere. Overall, it's a fun podcast. Movies are chosen from a list by that week's guest, Scott and Sprague the Whisperer (Shaun Diston) discus what they do know about the movie, they watch it off mic, and then the guest comes on and they talk about it. Lots of sidetalk about the nuts and bolts of making the movies, background on the people involved, etc. It's best when they have an absolute fan (or anti-fan) of the movies on to talk about them - the episodes on Mama Mia and Clockwatchers were both terrific, Lauren Lapkus was on to talk about Before Sunrise / Sunset, PFT as Santa Claus di scusses Interview With A Vampire and The Littlest Vampire. You can't go wrong listening to eps on movies that you enjoyed. |
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Post by Celebith on May 3, 2024 12:55:32 GMT -5
Ok I remembered the music being out of place, but I did not remember the opening theme of Ladyhawke being quite so egregiously bizarre. Nor did I remember that the Bishop is also Falken from WarGames. Man, the fight choreography is so, so bad. And all the swords and armor is so SHINY wtf Still great fun though. Rutger Hauer is one of the most underrated actors in movie history. He's good in everything, and everything he's been in has been just a little bit better because he was in it. |
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LazBro
Prolific Poster 
Posts: 10,281
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Post by LazBro on May 4, 2024 23:47:19 GMT -5
A few weeks ago, for movie night with the kids, I insisted on a movie I loved as a kid myself and which you, yes you in the TIF, haven't thought of a single time since you saw it, if in fact you saw it at all. If in fact you're even aware it exists. I didn't have high expectations, but I didn't care. It's a dumb personal favorite, I own it on DVD, and I felt like watching it. Then last night, for her movie selection, my daughter wanted to watch it again!
The movie? 1992's cinematic classic, Captain Ron.
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Post by ganews on May 5, 2024 8:17:58 GMT -5
A few weeks ago, for movie night with the kids, I insisted on a movie I loved as a kid myself and which you, yes you in the TIF, haven't thought of a single time since you saw it, if in fact you saw it at all. If in fact you're even aware it exists. I didn't have high expectations, but I didn't care. It's a dumb personal favorite, I own it on DVD, and I felt like watching it. Then last night, for her movie selection, my daughter wanted to watch it again!
The movie? 1992's cinematic classic, Captain Ron.
Been to Disneyland one too many times?
This movie is the definitive guide to pronouncing "Caribbean".
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Post by pantsgoblin on May 5, 2024 20:00:25 GMT -5
El Dia de la Bestia (1995)
First time seeing since the late '90s and I was a little worried that it wouldn't play as well subbed vs. dubbed, given my memory of its manic tone and pacing. Maybe I'm just smarter now but it was just as entertaining if not more so. One of the great hangout movies--I'd follow these 3 characters to the end of any stupid supernatural crime-fighting franchise.
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Post by Nudeviking on May 6, 2024 22:39:19 GMT -5
Heap of movies (in the loosest sense of the term) were watched. Here are words.
Hardbodies (1984) - It’s always kind of a treat when I watch a USA Up All Night boob comedy and it’s not entirely misogynistic. Here we have a Scotty, scheming beach dude, get hired by a trio of rich guys from out of town to teach them how to pick up “hardbodies” (which seems to be the in-universe term for female townies). It sounds pretty sleazy but Scotty’s a surprisingly decent guy especially for a character in an 80s beach party movie that was produced by Playboy. That’s not to say he’s “woke” by modern standards (he asks if the rich guys are “fags” upon first meeting them) but also stops a sexual assault and consoles the victim afterwards. This probably sounds like a pretty low bar but sadly not one a lot of 80s sex comedies can’t clear as they routinely have their “heroes” commit sex crimes as a goof. Also this is like the second or third USA Up All Night sex romp I’ve seen that has Stacey Q’s band SSQ’s “Synthicide” play during the movie. That song rules and its presence makes this a better movie.
New Jack City (1991) - CryingWesleySnipesMeme.jpg! Ice T bellowing, “I want to shoot you so bad my dick is hard!” Chris Rock smoking crack and wandering down the street with a whole-ass turkey! This is a wild-ass movie where a drug lord (Wesley Snipes) and his gang take over an entire apartment complex to sell crack. Cop (and director of this film) Mario Van Peebles puts together a task force consisting entire of loose cannons (Ice T and Judd Nelson) to bring him down. Overall this was pretty good. The performances were all tremendous and the speed at which this movie unfurls is amazing. There’s not a single scene in the movie where you are more than 30 seconds away from something awesome happening on screen.
Howard the Duck (1986) - I cannot for the life of me understand why this, of all movies, is often held up as one of the worst movies of all time. I’m not saying that this is some sort of secret masterpiece or anything like that but I’ve seen way worse movies than this that never get brought up in conversations about the worst movies of all time or name checked in songs by Future of the Left about how creatively bankrupt Hollywood of the 21st century is. The performances are fine, the effects are decent for the time and the plot, while nothing particularly groundbreaking, is decent enough and kind of captures the overall tone of source material. I kind of wonder if a lot of the negativity back in the day was due to people assuming that because it was a movie based on a comic about a duck it was for kids and then being angry about there being nude duck boobs in the first five minutes of the movie or a scene where Howard gets a job in a bathhouse/sex club because there’s literally nothing about this that I would hold up as being the “Worst_____ in Cinema” for even the year 1986, let alone of all time.
A Flower in Hell (1958) - Before he was directing Three Ninjas Knuckle Up or being kidnapped by North Korea to direct a Godzilla knock-off director Shin Sang-ok was known as the “Prince of South Korean Cinema.” With films like this I finally understand why he’d be bestowed such a title. A Flower in Hell is a tale of brotherhood set in a camptown populated by “Yankee Princesses” and low level hoods in the immediate aftermath of the Korean War. It’s desperate and grimy film with marginalized characters wandering through desolate fields or loitering around bombed out husks of buildings to pass the time before their next John or their next heist; just doing what they need to survive all of them oblivious to the fact that they’d be happier if they went “to the countryside” like the character Dongshik implores like half of them to at various points in the movie. The plot itself is nothing particularly amazing. The aforementioned Dongshik comes up to Seoul from the countryside to find his older brother and bring him home. He does find him shacked up with a prostitute named Sonya and running scams near a US military base. A love rhombus then ensues as Sonya lusts after Dongshik which drives a wedge between the two brothers (it’s a rhombus because there’s a second sex worker named Julie who has a crush on Dongshik for the entire movie to the point that she asks him if there’s a place in the countryside for her which in this movie is basically a marriage proposal.) There are some heists, a couple dance numbers, a train robbery, and a final showdown in the mudflats before the brothers make peace with one another and folks return to the countryside because the only thing a person will ever find in Seoul is misery and self-degradation. It’s a fact that’s as true today as it was in 1958 when this movie was released.
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Post by Ben Grimm on May 7, 2024 7:40:41 GMT -5
Howard the Duck (1986) - I cannot for the life of me understand why this, of all movies, is often held up as one of the worst movies of all time. I’m not saying that this is some sort of secret masterpiece or anything like that but I’ve seen way worse movies than this that never get brought up in conversations about the worst movies of all time or name checked in songs by Future of the Left about how creatively bankrupt Hollywood of the 21st century is. The performances are fine, the effects are decent for the time and the plot, while nothing particularly groundbreaking, is decent enough and kind of captures the overall tone of source material. I kind of wonder if a lot of the negativity back in the day was due to people assuming that because it was a movie based on a comic about a duck it was for kids and then being angry about there being nude duck boobs in the first five minutes of the movie or a scene where Howard gets a job in a bathhouse/sex club because there’s literally nothing about this that I would hold up as being the “Worst_____ in Cinema” for even the year 1986, let alone of all time. I honestly think this was probably the first example of people who hated the success of Star Wars and really, really wanted to see George Lucas fail. This was marketed pretty heavily at the time as coming from him (though I don't know how involved he was; I think he's only credited as producer). That gave it some hype that it was absolutely not good enough to support; kind of like a less extreme example of what happened with the Phantom Menace (which was both more hyped up and significantly worse as a movie). |
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Post by Nudeviking on May 7, 2024 18:56:22 GMT -5
Howard the Duck (1986) - I cannot for the life of me understand why this, of all movies, is often held up as one of the worst movies of all time. I’m not saying that this is some sort of secret masterpiece or anything like that but I’ve seen way worse movies than this that never get brought up in conversations about the worst movies of all time or name checked in songs by Future of the Left about how creatively bankrupt Hollywood of the 21st century is. The performances are fine, the effects are decent for the time and the plot, while nothing particularly groundbreaking, is decent enough and kind of captures the overall tone of source material. I kind of wonder if a lot of the negativity back in the day was due to people assuming that because it was a movie based on a comic about a duck it was for kids and then being angry about there being nude duck boobs in the first five minutes of the movie or a scene where Howard gets a job in a bathhouse/sex club because there’s literally nothing about this that I would hold up as being the “Worst_____ in Cinema” for even the year 1986, let alone of all time. I honestly think this was probably the first example of people who hated the success of Star Wars and really, really wanted to see George Lucas fail. This was marketed pretty heavily at the time as coming from him (though I don't know how involved he was; I think he's only credited as producer). That gave it some hype that it was absolutely not good enough to support; kind of like a less extreme example of what happened with the Phantom Menace (which was both more hyped up and significantly worse as a movie). Lucas was just credited as a producer on Howard the Duck. ILM did all the effects too but I don't know how involved with any of that Lucas actually would have been. As I was a literal child when Howard the Duck came out I wasn't really aware of any sort Star Wars backlash that might have existed at the time (to me it was still the greatest thing that ever existed) but that would sort of explain a lot of the vitriol there was about the movie because, like I said, there really wasn't anything in it that I would have pegged as being outright awful (I mean aside from noted sex criminal Jeffrey Jones showing up in it but in '86 when people were reviewing the movie he would have just been "That guy from Amadeus (and maybe Ferris Bueller's Day Off)." |
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on May 8, 2024 18:05:59 GMT -5
(I mean aside from noted sex criminal Jeffrey Jones showing up in it but in '86 when people were reviewing the movie he would have just been "That guy from Amadeus (and maybe Ferris Bueller's Day Off)." Which was my college roommates' and my favorite part when we watched it, sad to say. We very frequently quoted the line "The transformation is now complete. I am now......someone else!" |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on May 9, 2024 16:21:54 GMT -5
Z—Beyond its obvious virtues—among which is its essentially direct adaptation of the events of Greece in 1967 (the conservative-but-independent-and-ethical magistrate seems like resister fan fiction from a contemporary the American perspective but he was a real guy)—this is the all-time greatest indoor sunglasses film. I watched this because I’m going culling my physical media collectionn and was gifted the soundtrack by a Greek-American used record store owner (this is very good, given that the pro-vs.-anti-Junta divide extended to the Greek expatriate community, even those that weren’t European, like mine). Until a couple nights ago it remained shrink-wrapped—I thought it was revival but it was new old stock from 1969! I don’t really care about collectibility but it sounds great, the soundtrack is able to stand apart from the movie, and it isn’t too obviously “Greek” sounding. Of note is the track “Cafe Rock” is strongly reminiscent of “Psyché Rock,” the late-sixties French instrumental piece best known as the inspiration for the Futurama theme. Either Theodorakis heard “Psyche Rock” and was a fan or independently came up with the idea of a fuzzy rock instrumental with loud bells.
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Post by chalkdevil 😈 on May 9, 2024 17:05:38 GMT -5
The other week I saw Dune 2, in a real live movie theater! It was great. Sure, I spent more than twice as much than to watch it at home, but it was big and loud and very good. Ol' Timmee was great. Austin Butler was creepy and, while I thought he could have pulled back a little on the Stellan Skarsgård voice impression a bit, he had a generally menacing presence. It was interesting to see Zendaya do some acting, since I far to old to have seen her Disney Channel/Euphoria work without getting on some watchlist somewhere, so I've really only seen her in the recent Spidermens, in which she is fun. I'd say here, she's doing good work but I found her overall vibe to be a little to modern compared to the other performances, if that makes sense. But yeah, really great film and really good adaptation of a book I have conflicted feelings about.
I also watched Pig! It was nice to see Cage do some proper acting. It's interesting to see where cinema is landing right now on foodie culture. Seems like low hanging fruit, but I still love to see it.
Additionally, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. I mean, what's there to say, it's still pretty great. I mean, Mel Gibson is in it, and he's a piece of shit, but he only says like 6 lines in the whole thing. Otherwise, it's just Australians driving around the outback in football pads and fetish gear. Glorious non-sense. I did notice, having seen Fury Road a bunch more recently, that apocalypse in this film is much tamer. Fury Road has flat desert wastelands covered in sand. This one is just a couple of poorly maintained roads everyone still drives on. Must have just been early in the collapse, before the infrastructure really went to shit.
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on May 11, 2024 13:31:50 GMT -5
 My first introduction to the calm, thoughtful, super-realist world of Kelly Reichardt. Just on a surface level, it's nice to watch a movie where people put on long underwear, the sky is cloudy and ugly, there's time to watch someone really clean out a stable, that kind of thing. The dialogue feels very real too - especially the passive-aggressive argument that takes place throughout the second section. This is a short story collection, like an anthology movie, except that the stories very VERY tenuously connect with each other, and at the end, there's a 10-minute epilogue circling back to all the characters showing you how they mostly did not change. Reichardt does not hold your hand by putting up title cards or doing fancy transitions when we go from one story to the next. You just know, based on the elliptical, not-quite-closure endings (oh so trendy in short stories for 50+ years now). In the first, Laura Dern is a lawyer whose client (Jared Harris!) is driven to desperation by his workplace injury. In the second, Michelle Williams is annoyed with her husband for making her the "bad guy" in their parenting setup (among other things - and she doesn't know about his affair). In the third, Lily Gladstone gets a crush on Kristen Stewart but is too repressed, too shy, too socially untrained to make a move until it's too late. And...that's about it. But the detail, writing, and acting are top-shelf, and the storytelling has a literary confidence. Reichardt changed the original stories in one instance: Lily Gladstone's character was a man. The only false note, for me, is that in his final scene (but somehow not any of the previous ones - maybe because his hair changed?), I stopped being able to buy Jared Harris as a Montanan. But I was already sucked in by Laura Dern and all the rest of the ladies doing their thing and Reichardt doing hers.  Turns out I'd already seen this a few years ago and forgotten. The production was truly cursed: the circus tent blew away in a storm, then it burned down, then the film negative was scratched so Chaplin had to reshoot the climactic scene where he really actually does the tightrope walk for real, while being attacked by monkeys. Also, Chaplin was going through a high-profile scandalous divorce with...uh... (checks notes) a girl he married when she was...uh... (checks notes) goddammit. Anyway. There are some really amazing gags in this! I love the bits where Chaplin imitates a mechanical person, plays whack-a-mole with a bunch of geese, doves, and other critters, and runs past a door, then pops out from behind the door to outfox a cop. I laughed at all the parts where the tramp is not trying to be funny but is, naturally, way funnier than everyone who is trying to be funny. Side note: what confidence it takes to write a character for yourself who is, accidentally, so much funnier than everyone else, and then pull it off. I know Harold Lloyd is funny and does killer stunts, and Buster Keaton has a special tragic clown aura, but in terms of the tramp...I dunno, the only guy you can compare him to is Jackie Chan. Fun sneering mustachio'd villain by Al Garcia. The music - by Chaplin! - is good and includes some clear Wagner quotes, although I hated the cloying but non-rhyming theme song - sung by Chaplin.  I wonder if Kelly Reichardt saw this movie. It's another one of the "so realistic" movies. It doesn't seem that way at the start - the first thing that happens is a guy steps in dog poop and throws his shoe into the river. But then you realize, nah, this guy's just a doofus. The camera is such an unobtrusive observer, and the people are so real. It's a remarkable movie. It's also just so freaking warm and heart-full. Even the doofus is sympathetic. You can tell when a director loves their characters, and Paul Mazursky loves his characters. This also comes across in the Criterion Blu-Ray's bonus feature interviews with two of the supporting actors (the doofus and his daughter), where they talk about how collaborative the process was and how close they felt with everyone else on set. The main cast were lifelong friends afterward. Anyway. Simple plot again. Jill Clayburgh's doofus husband falls in love with another woman he meets at Bloomingdale's, buying a shirt. They split up, and we watch wife and daughter go on journeys through grief and self-discovery. That's about it. Towards the end, a new loverboy shows up - Alan Bates, in a wonderful juicy part that Anthony Hopkins refused because he didn't want to play a character who's only in half a movie. Guess he changed his mind before Silence of the Lambs. When a movie feels this real, I end up inserting myself in it to some extent. Could I be that jerkish husband, falling for another woman? Uncomfortably, I think I could. But then, how do you handle that? He handles it by bursting into tears and saying "I don't want to hurt you, but..." It really made me think, damn, I would be so unprepared for that situation, I better never fall in love with anybody else. Like Certain Women, this movie really benefits from its sheer honesty about life. Characters changing into pajamas...grapefruit seeds flying around the breakfast table...assholes cutting in line at bars...and Clayburgh's therapist, played by a real actual therapist and filmed in her real actual apartment/studio. She was not given any script for the therapy sessions, only told to listen and respond as if to a real client. Apparently she became a minor celebrity around New York after the movie came out. (And also: Michael Murphy, who plays the doofus, says in the bonus interview that he couldn't get a date for four years after the movie came out.) There is some debate about whether or not this movie is what my parents saw on their first date. The other candidate is A Woman Under the Influence. All they remember, I guess, is that it was about a woman and somehow did not manage to ruin the idea of relationships for them. Either way, they picked a weird one to start out on! |
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