Last Movie Watched Thread

Nicolas Cage is a truffle hunter in the woods with a truffle pig. Somebody steals the pig. He has to get it back. By this point, most Cageans either have seen Pig, or know that it is not the Taken-style violent romp the summary suggests. It mostly consists of Cage and a chauffeur-assistant-nonfriend (Alex Wolff) driving around Oregon, playing detective and occasionally causing severe emotional upset to hoity-toity chefs who serve insincere 10-course deconstructed tasting menus.

Apparently the distributors made the first-time director cut an hour of material from this movie, dropping it from 150 minutes to a tight 90. I don't know what's lost, of course, but the tight 90 is all this movie needs. It keeps Pig feeling like a fable, a parable, a short story - tightly focused, well-drawn characters who have just enough airtime, with a nice emotional arc and an inevitable-feeling ending. It's just what I wanted and nothing more complicated or fancy than that.

Sir Nicolas Cage has said that this was one of his most personal roles ever, and that he threw every emotion he had into it. Mostly, this comes across as silent glares, sullen crankiness, and acting performed by face - heck, acting performed by hair - rather than words. For a guy who isn't Middle Eastern, Wolff looks weirdly like he is. They nicely capture the range of the arc from definitely not friends to begrudging respect and even affection.



God, Alec Guinness looks so creepy in this! The weird, drapey hairpiece that looks like it hasn't been cleaned in 12 years, the teeth permanently jutting out, it's so gross. He leads a group of bank robbers (including Peter Sellers AND Herbert Lom, 10 years before they became Pink Panther co-stars) who use a daft old lady's house as their planning spot and hideout. Of course, old Mrs. Lopsided turns out not to be so daft after all.

This is one of those macabre English dark comedies (like the also-Guinness-starring Kind Hearts and Coronets) that features a bunch of people meeting their fates, played totally straight-faced but still meant to amuse. And it does. It's also one of those movies that feels like a cliche now but was absolutely not when it appeared in 1955. To me, the biggest pleasure comes in the rather stylish direction and the totally committed, detail-oriented performances by Lom, Sellers, Cecil Parker, and Danny Green as the criminal gang. Guinness is kind of overshadowed by his fake teeth, but Sellers has a youthful plumpness that fits his naturalistic comedy, Green is so convincing as an idiot that I thought maybe he really was an idiot, and Parker acts like he just walked out of an Agatha Christie mystery.

One sign of how much the world has changed: the studio was scared to cast Katie Johnson as the old lady because she was so old and frail they thought the production would kill her. She was 75!! So they cast another, younger actress...who died before filming even started. Nowadays, 75 is not that old, right? Helen Mirren is older than that now and you wouldn't cast her as a frail old thing who might keel over at any second.

Lawrence of Arabia - My friend hosted movie night to watch this, his favorite film. It was great. In the past I have largely avoided watching movies before my lifetime but am slowly fixing that. I also don't know much about the time period of WWI, so this was also interesting in this regard. Sir Alec Guinness playing the prince Faisal I was interesting casting, but he did well and didn't seem disrespectful at all.

Tombstone was the official selection from our most recent movie night, beating out Yojimbo and High Noon. (C has a cold and wasn't feeling up for anything too complicated.) Tombstone is not a particularly good movie, but is an enormously fun movie. Everybody simultaneously over- and underacts, the dialogue is stilted, the romantic subplot is bizarre, and the ending just peters out. And yet...I'm your huckleberry. Would this movie be remembered at all without Val Kilmer devouring every last scrap of scenery? Maybe? Even without Kilmer there's quite the murderers' row of 1990s character actors doing what they do best, from Powers Boothe to Sam Elliott to Thomas Hayden Church, to...Billy Zane? I completely forgot he was in this. (And also Kurt Russell is there.) But the main draw is watching Val Kilmer just giving everything to this cheesy little popcorn western. I love it.

I found it deeply affecting and got teary-eyed a few times without ever feeling like I was being manipulated into it. 

This is a great way to put this - if I feel I'm being manipulated into tears, I refuse to feel anything. 

What was your reaction to Fred Durst showing up in it?

Nightcrawler (2014)

Creepy. Chilling. Beautifully shot. Excellent performances, especially Gyllenhaal. In his acting, I saw shades of Pupkin, shades of Bickle. Maybe a few hints of Refn in the cinematography. All revolving around the story of original crime scene photographer Weegee. 

Huh, did not know that was him until you just mentioned it and I looked up which character he was.

The Bikeriders—We’re back to Brando’s voice, after a fashion, as Tom Hardy’s character, inspired to start his motorcycle club by The Wild One, speaks in a Brando-mixed-with-da-Bears voice the whole movie (this is to the old school Northern Cities Shift Chicago accent as Ben Affleck’s oeuvre is to the Irish Boston one, in that they’re notable and even though I’m from both reasons I can’t vouch for their authenticity). Hardy really is one of the great speaking actors, it works really well and it’s a pleasure to hear him talk (see also: Locke, the Venom movies). The fact that Brando’s voice is a bit high for the roles he played—outlaw, rapist, white poet-warlord—plays into Hardy’s character, whose arc is essentially one of cosplaying gotten out of hand.

Austin Butler doesn’t get to do anything with his voice, unfortunately. In fact he doesn’t do much of anything with it, spending much of the movie as the strong, silent type. Well, the silent type. He’s too quiet—it’s easy to get overshadowed by Hardy, I guess, he’s basically a non-presence even if the film’s ostensibly centered around him.

I think Ryan Swen basically nailed the movie—Mike Faist (always welcome) plays a young photographer doing a project on Hardy’s motorcycle club, but he’s at a bit too much of a remove from them. The guy he’s based on, Danny Lyon, actually joined the club that inspired Hardy’s Vandals. Faist doesn’t, mostly hanging around with the wives on the periphery.

This gets to the major weak point of the film—the original core of bikers are basically just treated as hard-living nice guys, while the actual club—the Outlaws—really weren’t even if they had a romance to them. Despite Hunter S. Thompson warning him to get out and never look back as soon as he got his photos, Lyon rode with the Outlaws for years, willfully blind until he saw some using a Nazi flag as a picnic blanket. Lyon finally realized that some of this imagery went beyond the joy of transgression.

That’s a lot of willful blindness—Lyon had formerly worked with the SNCC and somehow didn’t register the broader implications membership in an all-white motorcycle club in the Chicago suburbs. I’m sure a lot of those guys were personable and nice if you were the right person, there is a romance to motorcycle riding, and the older membership did realize things were getting out of hand as the club grew and a new generation of guys whose consumptions habits went beyond alcohol joined.

It’s like Nichols doesn’t trust us to find the characters appealing in the earlier phases even as bad guys, even though this cast is more than capable of it (beyond the main cast there’s just a killer lineup of great character actors, though I have to admit I spent a long time thinking “woah, Conan O’Brien can really act” before realizing it was another guy—Damon Herriman—with a similarly-shaped head and less-tall version of his haircut). The thing is there isn’t much groundwork layed for the eventual transition into a really hard-edged and scary gang, the sort where it’s impossible to look the other way. There’s supposed to be some groundwork layed: burning down a bar is supposed to be a turning point for Hardy’s character, where he really starts to get in too deep, but it doesn’t register strongly enough. It mostly comes across as a generation of psychopaths and druggies replacing people with ties to humanity. That might be the schematic view of what happened, but it could have been done better. You just know something’s missing when you’re watching, and an actual depiction of willful blindness would help.

This might seem like a bad review but I really did enjoy the film—the performances are strong and it’s a fun watch, and this is a work of fiction, not a documentary, so the lack of weight or realism’s okay (even if it could have been a better drama if more of that was brought in).

I was disappointed, though, that this wasn’t shot in the Chicago area but in the Cincinnati area (and if you know Chicago you’ll eventually realize it isn’t there). I get that most Chicago neighborhoods are too transformed, either by continued development or demographic change, to film this economically but it’s also a largely a story of the west and southwest side suburbs, which have stagnated or declined in a way that I’d think would make them suitable for filming. Maybe that was too close to the real Outlaws to feel comfortable, but still I’m disappointed that Chicago’s media talent pool couldn’t work on something that’s actually good (I’d rather follow these bikers than the cops of Blue Bloods and the like).

I keep trying with Tarantino, and the results keep being the same: super fun acting, lively jokes, panache-filled direction that keeps your eyes peeled...and a general storytelling approach that just isn't mature. His best movie is still the one he adapted from a better writer's book. 

This has some really, really amazing stretches. The first 45 minutes are pretty impressive comedy, fast-paced, witty, fun. The camera work is that of somebody who really loves camera work. That's a pro and a con; some of it makes me super happy but some of it makes me think "OK, we get it already." All the genre parody bits, Western scenes, cop shows, etc. are just wonderful. Period detail is lovingly attended to with clear nostalgia. The canned food plopping into the dog's bowl shows what a great director can do with a normal bit of life. The very best sequence is the incredible - and incredibly long! - scene where Pitt visits Spahn Movie Ranch and encounters the Manson cult. It is absolutely showstopping. Pitt in general owns the movie, along with the parade of cameo stars (Pacino! Bruce Dern! Clu freaking Gulager!) and the grounded emotion of Leo.

But. And I don't think this will be news to most people; it was in all the reviews at the time. Sharon Tate is not a character in this movie. She's a handy prop, a fetish object, something for Tarantino to feel smug about rescuing. Things she does in this movie: dance, smile, watch her own movie, have like two real conversations in 160 minutes. Tarantino has not written women well in a decade or two, and it really drags this one down. The problem is that once the focus shifts from Brad & Leo to Sharon Tate, the pace slows and the movie gets duller, because they have really funny lines and banter, and she basically doesn't have any lines at all. She just walks around smiling and dancing.

Some natural slowing of the pace happens because the Manson cult is creepy and you have to let your creepiness sink in. But it also happens because Sharon turns out to be a distraction. They ultimately don't even have to save her from the Mansons. She's just...nearby. Which is good, if the fictional guys stepped in to directly save the pretty woman, that would have spawned a billion hot takes. And it allows the ending to be comedy again. As comedy - Pitt high as a kite, one of the Manson girls weirdly impossible to kill - it is silly fun. But it still has a disjointed feeling. The introduction of a narrator for murder weekend, who narrates things we are already seeing on the screen so that Tarantino can speed up and get to the murder already, makes this worse. Oh, sure, he was willing to spend 120 minutes to develop Brad & Leo's backstory...but once it's time for Sharon to be in danger, let's put the movie in fast-forward!

Man. The guy fits in that awkward uncanny valley of being such a good director that you notice when he isn't.



This movie is the exact opposite - it seems almost not to have been directed at all. You keep thinking that a bunch of real, slimey, desperate thugs have been caught by a camera that just happens to be nearby. (Oddly enough, Tarantino loves this movie and named his best movie after one of the minor characters in it.)

The Friends of Eddie Coyle offers you NO help trying to get into the story. People just show up, talking to each other in different configurations. They're all gonna betray each other, but it's up to you to figure out who is who and who has what power. There's a federal agent - not revealed to be one for quite some time - and two different snitches, and a gang of bank robbers, and a guy who sells machine guns. Be patient and very attentive. Also, recall the rules of movie credits. (If Peter Boyle is just a bartender cameo, why does he have second billing on the poster? Oh. OK. That's why.)

Robert Mitchum is just incredible. Also, for a seemingly inscrutable movie about twisted gangster relationships, there are some really good taut action sequences - two bank robberies, a little car chase, a hockey game - and there are some excellent lines, too. "This life's hard, man, but it's harder if you're stupid." "When you piss, you piss." "Never ask a man why he's in a hurry."

Bleak shit! Oh, one more thing that makes it hard to get into. The sound editing is pretty poor. I tried it on a streaming service and couldn't understand anything anyone was saying. Sprang for the Criterion blu-ray, which takes it up to comprehensible but not exactly crystalline.



This is the most narrated movie (well...40 minute short) I've ever seen. It is basically all narration. Everyone except Richard Ayoade gets to narrate their own scenes. It's a deliberately stagey theatrical production, even by Wes's usual standards; every set is shown to be a set, and there are some cool visuals like the multilayered "jungle" of backdrops. When the yogi levitates, he then shows you he was "levitating" on a camouflaged wooden box. Because people are talking constantly, the time rather flies, and if something is a little bit irritating, wait 90 seconds and it'll be over.

Watching this is a childlike experience. It's obviously twee and full of artifice, but for me (and the wine I was drinking), it helped my imagination kick in more to fill in the scenes around the edges, and ultimately that meant I engaged with the very slim short story more than I would have otherwise. Pretty cool. There are a few more of these, right? Why doesn't Netflix have them bundled as a collection so we can easily find them all together? Stupid Netflix.



Continuing on the shorts theme...11 comedy skits in black and white, all of which involve people drinking coffee (or tea) and smoking cigarettes (or weed). Pretty simple premise but the range is super wide, from the reserved Tom Waits trying to avoid being insulted to two old Italian guys hamming it up. Some are just absurd (Roberto Benigni) while others are 

Also these are some of the most entertaining intro credits ever. Simple alternating black and white screens, but what's fun is that they present the actors in order of appearance, so you'll have a few screens of Not Famous people and then...blam! Cate Blanchett! I didn't know who all was in this movie going in, and that's a lot of the fun. Everyone is in this movie! In small doses, each individual skit is mildly amusing, gently quirky. Taken together all of them back to back, it becomes a Mood. The movie pummels you with coffee and cigarettes until you (or at least I) are overcome with an urge to go to a seedy diner and eavesdrop on everybody. I don't smoke cigarettes or drink coffee. But I love to eavesdrop! Maybe that's the key to success here.

Here are movies.

Scarecrow (2013) - So the titular scarecrow is closer to a wood woad than a scarecrow and is represented by at times janky made-for-TV movie CGI but for what this was it wasn’t terrible. And what was it was? Why a mash-up of The Breakfast Club and a slasher film where a teacher brings a gaggle of detention teens to an old farm to collect a scarecrow for the town’s scarecrow festival of course! Not exactly high art by any stretch of the imagination but perfectly cromulent fare for a Sy-Fy original. While most of the kills happened off camera there were a lot of them and there was still a surprising amount of gore for a made-for-TV jawn. Most of the cast was pretty mediocre but I’m now of the mind Lacey Chabert kind of missed her calling as a Scream Queen.

Iron Monkey (1993) - A Robin Hood-esque tale of a bandit that steals from the rich and gives to the poor only instead of a bow and arrow this Robin Hood (the titular Iron Monkey) fights cops with giant ball bearings, caltrops, and nasty-ass roundhouse kicks to the dome. The cast is great and the action is tremendous if at times a bit cartoonish (I do not know how many times people busted through walls like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man during fight scenes). Definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of kung fu cinema.

The Master Demon (1991) - No budget outsider art martial arts fantasy cinematic insanity. While not as outright weird as Furious or as charmingly earnest as Miami Connection it’s very much cut from the same cloth as those movies. It’s dudes kicking and punching on camera with goons that are 100% guys from the local strip mall dojo that Eric Lee knew. There are demons and wizard shit. A pre-WWF Ludvig Borga shows up as a henchman. There’s random gore. It’s all very low budget martial arts fantasy but none of that shit matters. What truly sets this movie apart from all other no budget kick-punchers is the presence of one Officer Wayne Besecker (played by Sid Campbell). Wayne is a cop with a shitty plaid jacket, a beer gut, and a 1980s dad mustache. He gets the movie’s sole sex scene and also knows karate…or something the movie wants us to accept as karate. He flails around, uses his jacket like nunchucks and does really terrible roundhouse kicks. I absolutely howl with laughter whenever he is on screen. Watch this nonsense for him and the scene where a lady smashes a schlubby private detective’s boombox causing him to bellow, “Not my ghettoblaster!”

Fight for Your Life (1977) - Racial Slur: The Movie! A trio of prison escapees take a black minister and his family hostage and bellow racial slurs at them for like an hour until the dude finally has had enough and wrecks shop on everyone. As far as home invasion and revenge flicks go this one might be the nastiest. Not because of gore or the physical cruelty (though there's some of that) but just because of how hateful the dialogue is.

Beach Babes from Beyond (1993) - A cast consisting of actors with a way more famous relative, Burt Ward, and Linnea Quigley! Boobs! Space Shit! A song about "MONSTERS! On the beach!" that gets played on a loop for like 10 minutes! Beach Babes from Beyond has it all and by "it all" I of course mean those four very specific things I just listed and absolutely nothing else because there's literally nothing else going on here.

Soul Brothers of Kung Fu (1977) - I don’t know if this movie really lives up to the title Soul Brothers of Kung Fu. Like there’s a single black guy in the entire thing and he comes across way more like a goofy kid sidekick that a total badass and he’s like a tertiary character at best. Maybe the titular soul brothers were the characters played by Bruce Li and Meng Lo since they had way more of a “you were like a brother to me,” arc anyway. Regardless this was a decent enough Brucesploitation flick about people on the edges of society trying to make lives for themselves via the awesome power of kung fu. The fights are decent and the story, though kind of cliché has enough going on that it’s never really boring.

The Arena (1974) - I’m not really a huge peplum movie fan as they far too often take forever to get to the good stuff and when they finally do the fights are never that great anyway and while both of those things are true of The Arena it also had Pam Grier stab countless Roman legionnaires to death with a trident and that fucking ruled. One star for the actual movie. One star for Pam Grier wrecking shop on everyone in the last 20 minutes.

Fist of the North Star (1995) - This American live-action remake of a Japanese anime that even I, famously not an anime guy, have long been aware of might have one of the most batshit insane casts of any movie ever. The kid that played Rufio in Hook is here! “Downtown” Julie Brown! Melvin Van Peebles! WCW wrestleman Vader and WWF wrestleman Ludvig Borga! Malcolm McDowell! Costas Mandylor! Clinton Howard! Sean Penn’s brother! All the stars! Bonkers cast aside the movie was a decent enough mix of post-apocalyptic sci-fi and ultraviolet martial arts action that reminded me a lot of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. While it doesn’t quite hit the highs of that most august of cinematic masterpieces it did feature several heads exploding, geysers of blood and folks get fingers poked through their chest. How faithful to the source material this all is I could not say but I do know that more movies should occupy the same space Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky does.

Shaolin vs. Vampire (1988) - Gordon Liu in hopping vampire movie should have been better than what this was. It started off as a real Scooby-Doo ass deal where guys pretend to be vampires in order to get people to leave a village so they can sell the land or something...only one of the guys involved is an actual wizard who can summon actual vampires so I don't really know why they fucked around with fake vampires in the first place. Gordon Liu's a stuntman and kung fu guy who doesn't believe in ghosts but he's less important than his pigtail daughter named Bee who meets a random child vampire and does antics that get her mom killed. Gordon Liu's bummed out but then a Japanese college student who's doing her thesis on the awesome power of kung fu comes to town. There's a city pop song called "Vampire Summer Vacation" and random small child antics before we finally get some goddamn kung fu in the last 15 minutes. I wanted to like this. The weird late 80s made-for-TV movie vibes were honestly kind of cool and horror kung fu, when done right, rules but this was way too light on both the horror and the kung fu to really get into.

Coming Home (1978)

Despite Hal Ashby fandom, I'd avoided seeing this out of antipathy toward message movies...and I was right to do so. Struggling to find anything interesting to write about this fashionable angst that manages to waste even a performer as unpredictable as Bruce Dern. Yeah, I know the famous sex scene is historically important for feminism and disability. The film's surprisingly hard to find now and not on streaming anywhere due to music rights. It's mildly curious to hear this soundtrack from the very dawn of the Classic Rock format when people presumably wouldn't open their wrists and might even welcome hearing "For What It's Worth" or "White Rabbit" again.