[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

I reviewed The Intern not that long ago and it had me convinced that Nancy Meyers is an auteur. I'll be there day 1 the next time she makes a feature film. 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

Movies today....I'm planning on watching Airport & Airport '77 probably this week or next week. As well as Hitchcock that's remaining on Netflix (outside of Vertigo, The Birds and Rear Window) and The Sugarland Express. 

Anyway...

Awakenings (Netflix, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

"I know it's not 1927....but I wish it was."

Awakenings as a movie is an incredibly life affirming but also incredibly heart-breaking work. Although it can be argued that it's melodramatic (with the score from Randy Newman especially tear inducing), the movie is about trying to get back a life long thought lost. With this, however, it's never reclaimed.

While a lot is said about Robert DeNiro's performance as Leonard, Robin Williams as Dr. Sayer is the focus of the movie. Williams has Dr. Sayer as awkward yet intelligent, humanistic yet shy, and funny yet sad (like how Williams was in life). This is probably Williams' best performance. Williams portrays the character reaching out and wanting to have a connection as much as the patients he meets. The first scene that we see him has him interviewing at the Bronx hospital and shocked at the hospital he's seeing before him. He interviews and his research consists of studies on earthworms. Feeling that he's not the right person, Dr. Sayer begins to leave with those interviewing him asking about his clinical work in medical school and then hiring him.

Dr. Sayer seeing the patients, including Leonard (DeNiro), wonders if something could be done. In a lot of ways at this point, Dr. Sayer attends a lecture about L-DOPA and what it's doing to patients with Parkinson's Disease. At this point, he asks for dosage of L-DOPA and after getting permission from Leonard's mother, administers it to Leonard. The changes start happening with Leonard. Awakenings resembles other movies about helping less fortunate patients like Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker and Ron Howard's Cocoon. It seems like Leonard is on the upside and is reclaiming his life too.

With DeNiro's performance, there's a reason why he got nominated for an Oscar for his work. DeNiro captures the nuances of someone who has been locked away for 30 years, in a prison in his own body. In Leonard's mind, he is still the 11 year old boy we see at the introduction of the movie, playing with his friends and carving his name into a bench. DeNiro has Leonard acting shy and uncertain with adults and even with talking at first. Eventually, however, Leonard begins to want to see the wider world and Dr. Sayer wants to help. Leonard wants to walk into the Hudson River before the tide comes in and stand on a rock. As Leonard says, "They need to be reminded of what they have and what they can lose. What I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life."

DeNiro has absolutely sweet scenes with Paula (Penelope Ann Miller), who is visiting the hospital because of her father. With those scenes, Leonard is opening up to the current time and realizing he is no longer an 11 year old boy and realizes that the opposite sex exists for him. They revisit this towards the end as Paula and Leonard dance. Another scene that exemplifies this is when Leonard and Dr. Sayer drive around NYC to The Zombies "The Time of the Seasons." People and love and youth and awakening of the world through the seasons is at Leonard's fingertips as he sees the world he never knew for over 30 years.

Unfortunately though, this renewal is short lived. Leonard begins to regress. DeNiro is absolutely brilliant as he is fighting against the regression but losing - for me those scenes made me absolutely cry. The heartbreaking moments of this movie is not in the melodrama, but in the little moments like that. Another scene that broke my heart was a patient being asked how he was doing. "My wife died, my son disappeared, and I know no one." The scene with the quoted line at the start of the review also broke my heart - the life that we knew when we were younger is something we'll never get back, although we wish we could.

Leonard fighting against his treatment and against his tremors reminded me a bit of Nicholson in One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, although this revolution is short lived. Leonard eventually realized that he and Dr. Sayer are on the same side, although Leonard isn't able to continue the fight.

Eventually, every patient prescribed the drugs begin to revert to what they were before. Williams' scene where he recounts what happened is especially heartbreaking to watch; Williams shows that no matter what happened, they couldn't change their patients. "The reality is we don't know what wrong any more than we know what went right," he says. It did make the hospital treat them more humanly though. The ending ends with a beginning as Dr. Sayer communicates with Leonard through an Oujia board.

Penny Marshall with this movie shows that she's in step with Ron Howard, Frank Capra and Steven Spielberg for humanistic and sentimental filmmaking. A lot of the shots in the movie are smart as it focuses on the characters' emotions in scenes through closeups. I did like how the "it's a fucking miracle" scene was shot as Williams and other nurses go through the doors with the camera following them. The camera is then setup in a living area facing them as they enter and then we see the patients after the drugs been administered. The patients walking around, talking, looking at the light sources, and looking at the bed was a 'wonderment of life' to borrow a phrase. It was like the elderly getting up and walking in Cocoon.

For the most part, Awakenings is just an incredible movie with tremendous performances from Williams and DeNiro and tremendous direction from Marshall.

Patch Adams (Peacock, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

Having watched Awakenings, it seemed appropriate to watch another "Robin Williams as a medical doctor" movie Patch Adams.

With this, Hunter "Patch" Adams (Williams) decides to become a medical student after a stint in a psychiatric hospital in the late 1960s. In a way, this movie was Williams speaking to Roberto Benigni, who in the previous year did Life Is Beautiful. In that movie, Benigni's character was a Jewish waiter being sent to a concentration camp and his character strove to provide laughter through the pain. Much in the same way, Williams did as Adams in this to the patients at the hospital and to the people he meets.

Much of the movie is a bit more melodramatic than Awakenings was. In a way, the plot structure of Patch Adams is a bit more looser since it focused primarily on Williams. This doesn't mean there weren't standout scenes - anytime that Williams and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (who played Mitch Roman) shared the screen was pure dynamite to watch. Monica Potter's scene with Williams where her character shared her reason for mistrust of men was one of the best scenes as well.

The movie takes a turn after Potter's character Carin Fisher is murdered. Adams as a character wants to throw in the towel on his studies and in a bit of eerie foreshadowing that's uncomfortable to watch now, contemplates suicide on a hillside. Eventually though, Adams resolves to continue studying due to Mitch Roman's insistence. Adams then is faced with a final challenge where he is to be expelled from medical school and stands in front of the state board.

To be honest, even though Adams as a character has his heart in the right place, he should have been expelled for stealing supplies and practicing medicine without a license. Fisher's murder should have served as a 'wake up call' for him because she wouldn't have been murdered if it weren't for Patch Adams opening a clinic in his house. The movie does reward Adams with being able to stay in medical school and Adams of course graduates.

But it speaks to a larger issue of the time and still relevant today about the medical industry. In the United States, the medical industry is the most expensive in the world, even with insurance. One doctor opening a clinic that does so for free and without malpractice insurance is still a risky bet. To be a patient in such a clinic is even risky as well; you can trust the doctor to do what he can to do it right and to do right by you, but there are going to be things that a free clinic cannot help. A free clinic isn't a permanent fix.

Even then, Patch Adams is decent although a bit of a slog to get through. At times, it seems to resemble a Lifetime/Hallmark Channel movie with its overuse of melodramatic music. Williams did a great job as an actor in the role and it shows, but a lot of the movie is working against him.

Oh and you can't tell me the ending song doesn't make you want to watch Scott Bakula on Enterprise again.

I Heart Huckabees (Hulu, leaving on 6/30) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

youtu.be/dXKX0o7U9D8?si=RUfoMpOYdTg0THdm

To be honest, I would rate this 1/2 star for David O. Russell if I could. He doesn't know how to act around people even though he's supposed to be a film director. In life, we've all had bosses that lose their temper and lose their minds while we are working with them. In a lot of cases, we make a conscious choice to get the hell out of that workplace and work somewhere else. With the countless stories about dealing with David O. Russell, it all leads to the same conclusion: David O. Russell has anger issues and impulse control.

After seeing the movie (and the clip above), this is probably the angriest movie I've seen in awhile. The energy is palpable with the anger due to the way dialogue is delivered. I can't exactly tell what was going on with this movie, but it wasn't a happy time or anything with a collaborative comedic effect to it.

What makes this movie work are the actors involved, not the director. David O. Russell to me is not a very good director. His most notable movie American Hustle was a complete homage to Martin Scorsese. Silver Linings Playbook is a bit like a spiritual sequel to I Heart Huckabees. Amsterdam (which was one of the worst movies I've seen last year) tries to transplant the energy of Huckabees but to 1940s New York and with comedy about war wounds.

To be honest, I Heart Huckabees is by default David O. Russell's best movie.

Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzmann) is suffering an extenstial crisis at a protest to save a forest from a Huckabees being built. Huckabees seems to be a weird Walmart/Costco hybrid that we never see the inside of during the movie. Just the corporate offices. Within the corporate offices are Albert's rival Brad (Jude Law) and Brad's girlfriend Dawn (an incredibly hot Naomi Watts). Albert hires two detectives Vivan Jaffee (Lily Tomin) and Bernard Jaffee (Dustin Hoffman) to determine the source of his crisis. We never learn the answer, but we aren’t supposed to.

Along the way, there's Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), who is suffering his own crisis after his girlfriend leaves him and the doorman at Albert's parents' condo (Ger Duany), Competing with the detectives is Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert). Also appearing is Shania Twain, Albert being fired from the coalition, Tommy insulting a couple about oil and using SUVs and showing up to a fire on a bicycle, Dawn shooting commercials for Huckabees, and Albert imagining drinking milk from Brad's teet.

It's like the blanket. It represents all the matter and energy in the universe, okay? This is me, this is you, And over here, this is the Eiffel Tower, right, it's Paris!

I found I had to accept the fact that this movie didn't make any sense. Sometimes, things are filmed and it just works out in the end. The hallucinations that Albert undergo are trippy to watch and the manic, angry energy just flows into the scenes throughout the movie.

I Heart Huckabee works because you have to accept that it does.

 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

Movies today...

To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar (Peacock, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars

Spoiler

As is likely to be compared to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar as a movie is a bit different. Whereas Priscilla had more of a focus on the three main characters and their relationships with themselves and each other, the trio in this is more interested in saving a small town they are having to stay in until their car is repaired. While Priscilla is more of a road trip and you can sense the places the characters go to for their arrival to Alice Springs, Australia, this was less of a road trip.

We don't really learn anything about the three - Vida (Patrick Swayze), Noxeema (Wesley Snipes) and Chi Chi (John Leguizamo). Vida's backstory is briefly touched upon as it turns out she's from wealthy family and we see the three drive past her house. A lot of the conflict at first is with Vida and Noxeema accepting Chi Chi as part of their group. (It sorta didn't make sense for Chi Chi to win other than to have the real Julie Newmar cameo).

The bulk of the movie is John Waters like in its campiness as the three characters save a small town and make those living there feel better about their lives. I did like the scenes with Swayze and Stockard Channing as Carol Ann. Carol Ann learns to accept herself and learns to stand up for herself to not allow her husband Virgil (Arliss Howard) to abuse her and hurt her any longer; yet, she decides she must stay in the town when offered a chance to leave.

A lot of the movie is carried by Swayze, Snipes, and Leguizamo's performances. The movie did drag a bit (pun not intended) in the middle of the movie and the subplot with the sheriff (Chris Penn) looking for the drag queens was a bit unnecessary (although the scenes with the town standing up to him were a great visual). I did like the Fellini-like dance scene where people in the town danced together while the trio watched.

For the most part, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar is a different kind of movie about drag queens and is a nice American take on it.

The Loneliest Planet (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

So much of The Loneliest Planet falls into the complaint that nothing happens and there is no drama. This isn't necessarily true; the couple (Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) seem to be using the hike as a novelty in their relationship without there being much spoken for their relationship. The movie opens with Furstenberg being completely nude and jumping up and down as Bernal comes in to wash her off; obviously, the characters have a shared intimacy to do that. They go to a restaurant to share a drink and dance, but so much is unspoken.

They finally find a guide named Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze) who takes them on a hike through the Georgian countryside. Everything is going fine until they encounter a local and two kids with the local pointing a gun at Alex (Bernal). Alex instinctively pulls Nica (Furstenberg) in front of him with Nica pulling herself behind him. It reminded me a bit of what Ruben Ostlund did in Force Majeure where the male's desire for self-preservation took over for his desire to provide protection.

Through the rest of the movie, Nica is distant from him and from the guide. Just with her body language alone and lack of talking, she spells out her discomfort and her fear over what Alex did. They never talk about it and there isn't a loud argument over what happened.

Towards the end, Nica and Dato end up alone and Dato makes a move on Nica, with her pushing away. Nica goes to the tent and sleeps with Alex and then has sex with him. It's not known at the end if they've really have reconciled as Alex and Dato pack up and take down the tent.

The Loneliest Planet is primarily a cinematography showcase with beautiful shots of the mountainous region. The night time scenes were nearly in pitch black and this isn't really a movie to watch in day light hours.

IWOW: I Walk On Water (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 0.5/5 star

Spoiler

Quick! Want to know how this movie was made? I'll tell you.

1) Record footage of anything in New York City, doesn't matter what it is. Guy walking down the street, police sitting in a car, guy holding flowers, it doesn't matter.
2) Record audio unrelated to the images being shown where people have conversations with you on subjects that may or may not have a point and are conspiracy theories.
3) Find a schizophrenic man from Haiti called "Frenchie" and exploit him....I mean, become friends with him where you record the gibberish he says.
4) Take mushrooms and scare the shit out of your mom while recording it.
5) Wash rinse repeat for 3 hours and 16 minutes. (basically, claiming you're Jesus, so this tracks).

Khalik Allah had something with his short films because they make sense. This didn't make any sense. I did like the Wu Tang rappers he talked to and Fab 5 Freddy gave him good advice ("you gotta watch out for the people you bring into your home").

This would be played at an art installation in New York City while people sip champagne. Jean Luc Godard would watch this and go, "What the fuck are you doing? I at least have a point when I do video essay/collage style films!"

Frenchie may be a good guy, but this is a bad movie.

[NOTE: I only watched 2 hours of it. It's not like I was judging it. I kept waiting for the alchemy moments as I call them to happen where the film gels together with the format style presented, but that never happened.]

The Monuments Men (Netflix, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars

Spoiler

For a movie about WWII, this is about as low frills as you can get. This seems to be an excuse for the director George Clooney to work with his friends again - a reunion with The Good German co-star Cate Blanchett and a reunion with Oceans trilogy co-star Matt Damon as well as a reunion with The Fantastic Mr. Fox co-star Bill Murray.

As it is, the movie has the characters with Frank Stokes (Clooney) as the leader being tasked to recover stolen art from Nazi Germany. The movie comically has middle aged / older men going through Army training and then having to be in the field to do it. Even then, two of them are killed during the mission. It's not quite Indiana Jones, but it seems to be like a movie Ron Howard would do and gets shown on a Sunday afternoon after football.

For the most part, there isn't a whole lot that's even interesting with this. Although Cate Blanchett as Claire Simone has a commendable French/Belgian accent to her character.

I did like the cameo with Nick Clooney as the older version of Frank Sloane for the ending.

 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

It's been awhile, but I distinctly recall feeling like one of the wives definitely knew about what was going on between the two of them in Brokeback. Don't remember which one though. 

Spoiler

It was Michelle Williams' character first then Anne Hathaway's character. She seemed too aloof, too specific, too rehearsed, and too cold for it to be a freak accident and especially the way she told Ennis too. 

 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

2 hours ago, Mister TV said:

Just looked over what was all nominated for the 1997 Oscars and ouch! That As Good as it Gets, The Full Monty and Good Will Hunting all got nominated for Best Picture over Jackie Brown and Boogie Nights is just wrong. Same with Jack Nicholson winning Best Actor over Robert Duvall for The Apostle and even Peter Fonda in Ulee's Gold. Totally forgot that the actors in L.A. Confidential didn't get nominated for anything!

I reviewed As Good As It Gets not that long ago and I thought it was decent, but a lot of it wouldn't work today. The romantic subplot wouldn't have been done today.

I have Good Will Hunting on Blu Ray but I remember that Robin Williams was the heart of that movie. Maybe I need to rewatch it for my insanity of daily movie watching lol. 

I haven't seen The Full Monty, The Apostle or Ulee's Gold. Well, I guess I need to lol. 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

Speaking of which, movies today....

Bunker (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars

Spoiler

Boring middle aged men with existential crises and subscriptions to Prepper / Survival magazines were a mistake.

Bunker as a documentary has the director visiting various subjects that all have bunkers or live in bunkers. Cinematography is relatively the same and seems to have a few repeating shots. As a documentary, it's somewhat dull. Thankfully, the director doesn't provide commentary on the subjects and instead let's them speak for themselves.

The first vignette showing a company making bunkers while people stare listlessly at their phones was the best one. The subject never talks to the director Jenny Pilan, they just go about their day while what they do is recorded.

The rest of the vignettes are basically a variation on the same theme: let's have a bunker because of some unknown disaster that we think will occur.

The second vignette had people with a stick up their ass about their location being recorded. The third vignette had a guy that was woefully unprepared but seemed more personable. The fourth vignette had a guy I would hang out with and smoke weed with while watching Easy Rider. The fifth vignette is an asshole with a bitcoin and trying to sucker people into coming to his "fortitude ranch." The final vignette seemed to have an awesome fully functional place although the dude was a bit of an ass (willfully watching FOX News means his brain is mush).

Yeah, don't give your kids "Doomsday prepper magazines," this is what they turn into.

28 Years Later (saw in the theaters) - 3.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Having not seen 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, I had no connection with going into 28 Years Later. The story starts with young kids watching Teletubbies as 'zombies' attack the mother with Jimmy running away into a church and hiding under the floor.

From those introductory scenes, 28 Years Later will be a messed up movie.

We go to 'present day' as there is a small isolated community on an island - part The Last of Us and part Midsommar. Spike (Alfie Williams) is to undergo a trial with his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) that involves going onto the main land and earn his first kill. During the expedition, Spike isn't able to kill a zombie and his father has to do. Their journey conjures memories of The Road with they hiding out in a barn and eventually having to get back with an "Alpha" on their trail.

They celebrate Spike's 'success,' even though he doesn't feel it was earned. The celebration is something out of Shaun of the Dead with people downing pints and Jamie being very drunk. In the meantime, Isla (Jodie Comer) is ill and Spike asks his dad about taking her to a doctor. Jamie wants Spike to ignore the fire from a camp (where the doctor is) and to forget about it.

Eventually, Spike takes his mother on a journey to meet the doctor using a fire as a distraction.

28 Years Later as a movie is mostly about two journeys. The first journey resembles The Road while the second journey resembles The Book of Eli. Isla, Spike and Erik (Edvin Ryding) come across a pregnant infected that gives birth to a healthy baby - there is pure Grapes of Wrath imagery as Isla holds the baby. Isla and Spike meet Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who is a bit mad yet kind. In a nice darkly nod to Hamlet, Dr. Kelson holds Erik's skull and says "Alas, poor Erik, I knew him well."

As a character, Spike is searching for sanity in this world where there is none.

In a lot of ways, 28 Years Later is a metaphor for post-Covid, post-Brexit, post-Westernized world of England. The mainland of England is completely cut off from the rest of the world; Spike and his community operate in isolation, albeit not purposely. It's almost like the scene in The Village where we find out the village is near a national park.

The ending of the movie is a bit infuriating as Jimmy and his group of Jimmys appear to help Spike kill zombies, appearing like football hooligans from Shaun of the Dead. The movie ends with a promise of a sequel, meaning this isn't the end of the story.

I did like quite a few of the technical aspects of the movie. Danny Boyle used a lot of different camera setups for the movie - like the camera mounted to the baby carrier and the quick cuts to other scenes that seem to be almost “out of sync” with the time period of the story (until we find out later their significance). For example, Erik and his squad seemed like something that happened 28 years earlier but is in fact part of the current time period.

I also liked some of the cinematography choices made - the Shell station with the removed “S,” a zombie with a…long stick (someone watching this movie will make a porn parody soon) and the Stonehenge-like monument of skulls.

Even then, 28 Years Later is a decent zombie survival story.

Brokeback Mountain (saw in the theaters) - 5/5 stars

Spoiler

Watching Brokeback Mountain for the first time, I was struck at how similar it was to another movie I saw recently: The Last Picture Show. In that movie, teenagers find love and sex completely destroy them in a small Texas town. With this, love and sex completely Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) in small town Wyoming and the namesake mountain.

The thing with this movie is these two men are broken people even before they meet up. The movie starts with Ennis arriving at an office trailer for a job detail he's doing - his walking through small town Wyoming didn't feel that dis-similar to Jeff Bridges when he strolled through in black and white.

Like the two characters from The Last Picture Show, women seemingly encircle them on account of their swagger, shyness, and good looks. Ennis marries Alma (real-life wife Michelle Williams) and Jack marries Lureen (Anne Hathaway).

What's interesting is the progression of time through the movie reminded me of another romantic film with Texas in the background: Giant. In some ways, Ledger's portrayal of Ennis matches a bit with James Dean's portrayal in Giant. Ennis finds himself unable to understand himself and why he keeps going back to Jack while taking Alma for granted throughout the movie. Ennis as a character bottles up the trauma and the repression and heartbreak throughout the movie; for example, his story about seeing a man being killed and forced to see it from his father. We see what happened in flashback as a young Ennis is pulled along to witness the aftermath. He divorces Alma, dates Cassie (Linda Cardellini) but breaks up with her to never re-marry.

The flipside to that is Jack Twist. Jack never feels completely comfortable or in control. He talks throughout the movie to Ennis about starting up a ranch for just the two of them. His relationship with Lureen is at a disadvantage; she is more powerful than he is financially and socially. One scene that stands out to me was Thanksgiving dinner. Lureen's father (Peter McRobbie) stands up to turn on the television for football and Jack walks over to turn it off. They go back and forth until Jack explodes on him.

I almost wonder if Lureen was aware of Jack's trysts. Jack goes to Mexico and ends up going somewhere with a guy he meets. One of the husbands that Jack meets at a party propositions him with a similar idea that Jack has with Ennis. In the scene where Lureen says that a 'tire exploded in Jack's face' and then we see Jack being killed by several men, I almost wonder if Lureen knew the truth from the way she speaks to Ennis about what happened. Ennis just had to know what happened based on the trauma that was shared with him.

Throughout the movie, the cinematography is incredible - especially in the mountain regions and evokes the cinema of John Ford. There really isn't a wasted shot with the early scenes as Jack and Ennis go through the region herding sheep.

Although some story aspects were a bit underdone and Ledger's dialogue as Ennis was sometimes unintelligible (if you can understand Boomhauer, you can understand Ennis), Brokeback Mountain is a great character driven drama.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Peacock, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Beneath the road trip approach and questionable approach to queer/drag queen characters, there's a message about accepting yourself for who you are and finding happiness for yourself where you are.

Terence Stamp as Bernadette, Hugo Weaving as Antony/Mitzi Del Bra and Guy Pearce as Adam/Felicia has somewhat of a snippy yet protective friendship with each other as they ride in a bus dubbed "Priscilla" from Sydney to Alice Springs for a show.

Stamp and Bill Hunter as Bob had great scenes together and a healthy respect for each other.

I finally got to see this after seeing ads/trailers on MTV growing up.

 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

6 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Oh, and definitely watch Malcolm X -- or just read The Autobiography of Malcolm X (a book which frankly changed my whole life perspective). 

There's only so many hours in the day for me to watch stuff.

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

Movies today....I'll have to caution you, most of what I watched today was a bit political. 

L.A. Confidential (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

L.A. Confidential may not be the best movie from the 1990s, but it certainly is one of the best noirs of all time. L.A. Confidential has everything that made Polanski's Chinatown a classic; the intersection of corruption and the police department. It's no surprise that the look and feel of L.A. Confidential inspired the video game LA Noire.

What makes L.A Confidential so compelling to watch is the three main actors and their storylines - Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), Wendell White (Russell Crowe), and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce). The three different characters have different motivations for what they do - Vincennes is a consultant on a television show similar to Dragnet called Badge of Honor and uses publicity to keep his name in the papers. White is riding with his partner who gets involved in a jailcell riot and then finds himself dead. Exley is wanting to do better than his father did as a police officer and desires to earn a promotion within the department.

All three characters have varying shades of grey. At times, they aren't truly good, but they aren't truly evil either. Vincennes and Exley team to investigate further what happened at the "Night Owl murders," which leads to Vincennes being killed. Exley and Wells then team once they figured out who did it and how far it stenches the LAPD.

Besides these three characters, the supporting characters are equally compelling to watch. Lynn Bracken (Kim Basiinger) is mixed up with the dirty business of Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn). Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito), who writes for a magazine called Hush Hush and pays Vincennes to generate stories through arrests, knows more than he lets on. Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) functions as a guiding hand for Exley only for it to be found out his involvement.

Throughout the movie, there's a sense of propulsion. Although at some point towards the end, it does move a little too fast towards the finale shootout and the bodies do pile up by then, there isn't a wasted scene or a wasted shot. The cinematography for L.A. Confidential is beautiful - I loved one shot towards the end as Exley is walking towards the police with his badge up in the air.

I will say that I was surprised that Crowe's character survived and was seated in the back of a car at the end of the movie. It made more sense for Dudley to have killed Wells. In a way, L.A. Confidential ends more positively versus Chinatown. Exley goes on, the LAPD moves to a new HQ, and the Santa Monica Freeway is getting built.

Even then, L.A. Confidential is pretty much a classic.

Citizenfour (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Citizenfour as a documentary is more chilling to watch in 2025 than when it was first released in 2014. In 2014, the media reported on it and spoke up as members of the "Fourth Estate." They weren't afraid of lacking courage to report on the activities of the NSA in the United States and around the world. Through the entirety of the documentary, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald meet with their source without knowing who he is and what information he has.

Could this documentary happen today? Absolutely not. The media is more afraid of speaking up because of how the United States will respond. Look at who is currently in the White House with Donald Trump and look at who is under him. The DOJ is investigating the recent "No Kings" protests and the funding for it. This could potentially go after the private citizens that participated. Who's to say they won't use the tools that Edward Snowden talked about in this documentary? Also, the media is afraid because of what Trump will do to the media companies; Paramount is looking to merge with Skydance, which owns CBS. Terry Moran, a reporter for ABC News, was fired for his Twitter comments about Stephen Miller. The implication of what was raised in Citizenfour is wider and scarier because we no longer have the adults in the room with the US government, we have bipolar children running the government.

At its core with the documentary are the brief interviews with Edward Snowden and the wider implications of what Snowden said to Poitras and Greenwald. What makes it compelling to watch is the lengths all three go to get Snowden's story out there; as Snowden predicted, the focus shouldn't be on him, but should be on the implication. Yet, with what happened, it ended up on him.

The other aspect that lends itself to paranoia are incidents that happen - a "fire alarm test" during one of the days of interviews, reporters trying to call Snowden and forcing him to change room, and Greenwald's partner being held for questioning in the UK airport.

The camerawork in the documentary is interesting with the unguarded moments of Snowden looking at outside from the hotel and towards the end where he's making dinner with his wife Lindsay Mills.

Citizenfour is a great documentary of an event that's still being felt today.

Milk (Peacock, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars

Spoiler

"My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you!"

Honestly, this is probably one of the better biopics I've seen in quite awhile (I haven't seen Malcolm X, which is considered the pinnacle of recent historical figure biopics). Gus Van Sant does this film almost conventionality and like other biopics - except with a twist just due to the person that's being covered in this movie.

The thing about Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) is Milk wasn't a perfect person, but he couldn't be anything except himself. I loved a lot of the scenes with Penn as Milk as he smiles mischievously and conveys the anger and sadness over ballot measures not being passed. The thing that's heartbreaking is the one person that he started with Scott (James Franco), he never ended up with. One telling scene was in which Milk told Dan White (Josh Brolin) that he had "four relationships in his life with three of them leading to suicide." Yet, Milk stood tall until the end. In that scene, White's frustration with himself and his life spills out as he stands there drunk talking to Milk.

One thing that I loved about Milk is how close to the actual people the actors looked, just based on the ending footage showing them. The actors got the behaviors and mannerisms down as well as the period clothing.

An aspect that stuck out to me was the scene where Milk and Scott were sitting in bed and Milk lamented about his birthday. "I'm 40 and I feel like I haven't done anything with my life." On a humanistic level, that line is telling and should serve as a wake up call to anyone in their lives; it doesn't mean that person has to become a gay rights activist or even be gay themselves, but a person's life up to that point doesn't end at 40.

I will say that some of the scenes did run a little long and the story for the movie was primarily focused on Harvey Milk. Everyone else involved took a backseat to him and to a smaller extent Dan White. The murder of Milk was played out without any sound as Milk stares across the street at the opera house as his face was going out of focus with the opera house in focus. The side story with the guy leaving his parents was really touching as well.

Still, there's a reason why Milk ended up getting nominated at the Oscars.

Bulletproof (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars

Spoiler

www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback

To be honest, I can't even get mad about this documentary. The pacing for it is slow and meandering, the narrative focus isn't there, and I'm not exactly sure what the director's point with what's there. On a technical level, there's a lot of long shots of students walking, people working on kelvar hoodies, and overweight white men lecturing and fear-mongering about school shooters.

Nowhere does anyone say, "You know, if we pass laws where guns are banned in the United States and we did gun buybacks like in Australia, none of this would be a problem." Instead, let's have a bald school administrator that got deployed and hit on the head too many times show us AR-15s he has locked up at a Texas City high school. What kind of person would be encountered that resorting to using an AR-15 is even necessary? Is it an invading force or a foreign government? Nope, it's just the mythical school shooter, that's usually a white kid, usually alone, usually obtaining a gun somehow.

Then let's hear a bunch of people at a trade show fear monger school administrators about using an electronic flash bang or a bullet proof white board or anything else.

Thankfully, this documentary is mercifully short.

 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

21 minutes ago, J.H. said:

I saw a commercial for Brude Hard while binging episodes of The Good Wife (my infatuation with Christine Baranski is... problematic). I initially couldn't figure out if it was an Abrams brothers style spoof or a spinoff from Bridesmaids.

All I took away was that I have no interest to see it, even on a dare!

James

Well, I watched a crappy movie so you didn't have to and I can confirm it's crap.

And Christine Baranski is indeed a foxy minx. 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

Movies today....

Robinson's Garden (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars

Spoiler

At times, Robinson's Garden works when it's striving for a Jim Jarmusch / Wim Wenders aesthetic. The scenes where Kumi (Kumiko Ohta) is sitting on the roof in a lounge chair while chaos happens around her just hits on a certain level. The first 30 minutes or so where she discovers an empty building after a drunken night has an appeal to it of saying 'fuck it' to society and just isolating herself away to start a garden.

It's just so much of the movie seems to be Kumi going through madness due to the isolation in an urban place like Tokyo. The rest of the movie just fails on some level.

There were some great scene towards the end where a younger Kumi imagines herself being carried by her grandfather and staring at the moon while next to a giant tree. The ending is a bit unexplainable - the kid that's been tormenting Kumi is flying a radio controlled plane around. Kumi has started digging a hole and then.....she doesn't appear for the rest of the movie. Did she die? Did she dig far enough that she fell into the earth? The movie never explains. We just see the garden over a nice synth riff.

Robinson's Garden is a bewildering movie.

What's Up Connection (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

Having watched both this and Robinson's Garden back to back, Masashi Yamamoto seems as a director where plot is a suggestion rather than a hard and fast rule. What's Up Connection is basically Shoplifters done in the style of Jean Luc Godard. It's anti-capitalistic through and through and the movie starts as misadventures of a man from Hong Kong who won a trip to Tokyo, only to lose his money and his return ticket, then becomes a family against Mr. Yasaki and his business interests to seize their land to build a "friendship building."

Compared to Robinson's Garden, it's a lot more coherent. The sequence where the kids rob the guy of his card to hack into Mr. Yasaki's computer and then take 150 million USD away from the corporation is wild stuff.

Fauna (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Fauna at first is boring. A couple - Luisa (Luisa Pardo) and Paco (Francisco Barreiro) - go to the house of Luisa's parents where they meet Luisa's brother Gabino (Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez). The first half of the movie is generally a mingling of the parents with the siblings and the boyfriend with Paco spending 200 pesos on two packs of cigarettes he bought from Gabino's father. The small town life of the parents has the local convenience store running out of cigarettes.

Luisa and Paco are actors. Paco is asked in a bar to perform a scene from his season of Narcos, even though he doesn't have any lines. He makes up some lines as he walks back into the bar then gets asked to do it again.

Somewhere along the way, the movie changes to a Mexican Last Year at Marienbad as Gabino relays to Luisa what happened in the book he read. The book involves a guy going into a hotel room to take a shower and use a towel, but it's not his room. He apologies to the girl (also played by Luisa Pardo) and the girl named Flora wants him to find a girl named Flauna. The guy gets kidnapped when he finds the girl at a bar and runs into Flauna's boyfriend who grabs him and takes him out of the bar.

The movie ends as Gabino indicates he doesn't want to finish the book and wants to whisper something in Luisa's ear. The guy in the story whispers something in the girl next to him's ear. We never know what is whispered from both.

Fauna as a movie talks about actors and the worlds they create internally with the movie serving as a buffer to the world created from the book. With this, there's a lot of midrange closeup shots of the characters as they talk. The movie is more focused on the conversations rather than anything overly dramatic. The scene where Paco has to 'act' in front of Gabino's dad is both funny and typical; actors have this perception of 'constantly performing' when the truth isn't the case at all.

The story is a bit a low-key at times, but it's well shot.

Bride Hard (saw in the theaters) - 0.5/5 star

Spoiler

Legitimately one of the worst movies I've seen this year, Bride Hard just doesn't work. In a premise (and a script) that had to have been written by AI, the movie attempts to meld the action thrills of Die Hard with the comedic chops of Bridesmaids. Whereas both of those movies were funny on their own (with Bridesmaids having more of a meaning behind it), Bride Hard just tries too hard.

Rebel Wilson is Sam, who is the best friend and bridesmaid of her best friend Betsy (Anna Camp). Sam apparently is really good at disappearing for any get-together with Betsy and the other bridesmaids (including My Girl's Anna Chlumsky as Virginia and Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Lydia and Gigi Zumbado as Zoe). We find out nearly at the start that Sam is a spy. The movie tries to thread the line between bridesmaids gone wild hi-jinks and Rebel Wilson's stunt double doing combat, but just fails.

I would repeat the rest of the story, but what does it really matter? Betsy finds out that Sam is indeed a highly trained spy when a group lead by Kurt (Stephen Dorff) crash the wedding because Virginia and Ryan (Sam Huntington)'s family are insanely rich. They also set the movie in a private island near Savannah, GA and just casually drops that Virginia & Ryan's family made whiskey for over two centuries (without there being a mention that their family didn't do that work themselves if you catch my drift). The opportunity for the rich (especially Southern rich from the backs of slavery) to get their comeuppance besides nameless faceless mercenaries never happens. Also, Virginia was set up as a possible villain at the start, until she wasn't.

Bride Hard at times just isn't funny. None of the comedic moments seem particularly earned. Wilson offers wise cracks and she really makes it seem like she isn't sure of the lines she's saying (which I guess is campy). Sam seems to forgive Betsy way too easily for the snub and being removed as the maid of honor. Bridesmaids had a better, more emotional arc when it came to Kristen Wiig's character facing hardships even with being selected as a bridesmaid. Sam is momentarily upset before the movie speeds along to the bad guys arriving and firing their guns.

To top it all off, not once did Sam say "welcome to the party, pal" or "Yippie ki yay motherfucker." But we did have an okay (yet annoying) sequence set to "Raining Men."

Cinematography throughout the movie is just bad and has a "Made for Netflix" look to it. It's almost as bad as Shadow Force or Canary Black or Union. Why there seems to be a willingness to do low budget action comedies, I don't know. Shane West did better movies years ago like Tomb Raider and Con Air, but this is just bad. At a few points during the movie, it had a smokey haze in the shots that was a bit annoying along with a really overly lit look. Most of the time, everything just looked cheap.

Let's not forget the last 5 or so minutes with the false endings. One of the false endings was better than what they went with.

Bride Hard fails hard.

Il Buco (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars

Spoiler

Utterly impressive to watch and to reflect on. Somewhere between Werner Herzog's The Cave of Forgotten Dreams and the cinema of Nuri Blige Ceylan, Il Buco is a very simple premise and a very simple movie. It's a movie about exploration.

Every shot in this is captivating to watch and is made for contemplation. The story being told is through the long wide angle shots of a hole in the earth. We start the movie from us looking outwards from the hole to the sky as some cows look into the hole. People watch a television program about a crew going up a skyscraper as the host questions how high the skyscraper will go.

In this movie, the question is "how low does the hole in the earth go?"

Running parallel to the exploration from a crew of the cave is an old man shepherding cattle from a hill. He's found lying in the ground, unable to move. The crew explores the deeper mystery of the cave while a doctor explores the mystery of the old man's illness. The end of the cave is found. Sadly, the end of the man's life is found too. Yet, even after a lead scientist measures out the distance of 683 meters, the ending of the movie has us hearing the call of the old man through the fog.

Il Buco works purely on cinematography and sound design. The length, the width, the depth, the closeness, the farness, the intensity, the softness, the light and the darkness of cinematography and sound choices are incredible. As the explorers got to the end of the cave, I actually got a bit of anxiety watching them crawl through a tight squeeze. It's amazing the camera setups done in this movie and how the director Michelangelo Frammartino did everything. I'm surprised he isn't spoken more about among Italian directors.

Il Buco is a hole worth going down.

 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

5 hours ago, J.H. said:

But what about DC Cab?

How can you deny yourself a movie starring Mr. T, Gary Busey AND The Barbarian Brothers?

James

Sure I'll watch that too!

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

I will likely be watching Wise Guys sooner than later. 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

Thanks for enjoying those movie reviews Harry. 

Movies today....

Paper Moon (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 5/5 stars

Spoiler

"There's just a rainbow around the corner"

Paper Moon is in a long line of movies about the con and those who participate in the con. Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde, George Roy Hill's The Sting, David Mirkin's Heartbreakers, Stephen Frears' The Grifters, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood and The Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou? among others all pass through Paper Moon. O Brother Where Art Thou in particular has a lot in common - George Clooney's character in that movie is what Ryan O'Neal's Moze would be if he wanted a relationship with his children. Moze has a possible/maybe/likely kinship with Addie (Tatum O'Neal) that the movie never really answers. It's just known that by the end of the movie, they are both con artists together.

The con starts almost as soon as the movie starts. The movie opens with a closeup of Tatum O'Neal's face - not smiling, but not frowning either. Moze's car arrives in a wide angle shot and one of the first things Moze does as he walks up to the graveside is steal flowers. Moze looks at the coffin of Addie's mother and tells the coffin "I just know your ass is still warm." Upon meeting the group for the funeral, Moze tells them he is a Bible salesman - which was the same career as John Goodman's character in O Brother, Where Art Thou. Moze is begrudgingly given Addie and he seeks to unload her as soon as possible.

Moze and Addie's relationship seems to have an undercurrent of real life hostility between the two actors. When Tatum O'Neal won the Oscar for her role, Ryan O'Neal was rather jealous of her win and had actually punched her. It seems to come almost too easily for Ryan O'Neal to play Moze in this. Tatum O'Neal seems to convey being a precocious and misunderstood child really well - it's easy to sense the heartbreak when Addie is called a boy on account of how she dresses. Tatum's acting is otherworldly great throughout this movie. Moze does his con of selling widows Bibles with their names on it after checking the obituaries in the paper. Eventually, Addie gets involved and actually gets Moze more money than he normally gets.

Along the way, Moze and Addie meet up with Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn) and Imogene (P.J. Johnson), who are also con artists of a different sort. Trixie uses her charms and her looks to get lonely men like Moze to part with their money. Addie and Imogene use a hotel clerk for Moze catch Trixie and the clerk in the act. The next scene, we see Addie and Moze riding together again with Addie in the front set.

What does Moze and Addie is the encounter with the bootlegger (John Hillerman) and stealing from him; this ends up getting the two in trouble with the sheriff (also played by John Hillerman). They manage to escape and Moze finally gets Addie to the relative at the start of the movie that he telegraphed. Only for Moze and Addie to continue their adventure at the end....

Like the movies mentioned earlier, family and the con game being the only game they know have a lot in common with each other. George Clooney's character in O Brother, Where Art Thou knows of nothing else but being a con in his quest of getting back to his wife and children and 'being bonafide.' The Grifters and Heartbreakers are about multi-generational families of con artists with the sires of the parents (John Cusack and Jennifer Love Hewitt's characters) joining their parents on the con game. There Will Be Blood more closely resembles Paper Moon; Daniel Plainview uses the dubious/possible/likely relationship with H.W. Plainview to buy lands to procure oil, without the end result of the land being dried up being known.

For me, Paper Moon is probably the fastest 1 hour and 40 minute movie I've seen - the scenes just move along and every scene works toward the story. In a lot of ways, the movie is a road trip movie; Addie and Moze are supposed to reach their final destination (the relative's house), but what happens along the way with the pursuit of money for the trip adds to it.

I loved the camerawork and the cinematography used. Bogdanovich uses split diopter shots a few times - one scene in particular had the closeup of a guy being hassled for money by Moze with Moze near the door and further back. There's also a few POV shots as it shows Addie looking at objects in the distance; this happens during the scene where they are chased by the police. Also, when Addie is peering into Trixie's room from a high angle.

Paper Moon is probably one of the most perfect movies ever made. It's bonafide.

American Sniper (Netflix, leaving on 6/21) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

From a purely technical level and a performance level, American Sniper is a great movie. Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle inhabits a character that is from a rural area of the country and is trained from an earlier age in killing targets. Kyle talks infrequently, emotions just as little, and is inspired to become a Navy Seal on 9/11.

It's just when you break everything down about the character and the character's motivations, it comes apart.

Kyle is as patriotic as he is distant. Kyle seems unwilling or unable to let his wife Taya (Sienna Miller) into his world. Kyle as a character is taught at an early age into a set of beliefs that are toxic masculinity from his father: "The world is divided into three things: wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. I don't want any wolves in my house." As Kyle's father threatens violence and holds a belt up. From the start, Chris Kyle is a damaged person that devotion and duty to the United States cannot save.

Kyle meets Taya in a bar and once he is deployed, he keeps her at arms' length throughout the movie. The audience is also kept at arms' length as far as the character goes too. It's only during the sandstorm after taking down the other sniper does Kyle let down his guard. "I'm coming home," he says on the phone to Taya as he is crying.

The thing with the story of American Sniper is Chris Kyle's continuous tours in Iraq is motivated to take out the Iraqi sniper Mustafa (Sammy Sheik). We never learn that much about him other than Mustafa has a sense of patriotism too (having competed in the Olympics for Iraq) and also has a wife and child. American Sniper could have told an interesting story with the duality of these two characters: both motivated by single minded purpose and both have superior skills in taking out their targets. Kyle in a scene is shown watching a video of an American soldier killed due to Mustafa's handiwork.

The other thing that the story for American Sniper missed out on is the complicated nature of American occupation in Iraq to attempt regime change and how the local civilians feel about that. Instead, of course, the movie does the nameless, faceless approach to Iraqis that movies like Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and Green Zone did to present a wartorn region like Iraq. We don't learn anything about the region (nor should we expect to). All we know about the movie is the determination Chris Kyle has as part of his deployments.

When Kyle returns, Kyle is experiencing PTSD. He lied to his doctor about it and his wish to 'have done more' while deployed, but it's there throughout the movie. A drill at a car repair shop sets him on edge (reminding him of "The Butcher" that killed people with a drill). A dog on top of a child at a birthday party causes him to grab at the dog and kill it. The abrupt, curt manner he talked to a fellow soldier that had his life saved by Kyle. It's as much what Chris Kyle says as what he doesn't say and as much what Chris Kyle does that he doesn't do. Helping the soldiers at the VA with missing limbs and the soldier that ended up killing him is a way for Chris Kyle to pay penance for what he did and the lack of care of life that he did.

Sienna Miller, who is a great actress, was given very little to do in this movie. Her character is at first resistant to the idea of dating or being involved with someone in the military due to her friends' experiences. This is never presented as a major story issue for the character and never leads much further. Taya as a character complains to Kyle that he's never there even when he's back from overseas. But that's far as it goes. Miller does make the best of what she can, but in the world of patriotic / supportive of the military movies like this where all of the emphasis is on the main character, then it can't be faulted that much.

Which leads to the purpose and aim of this movie. This movie does present itself as an anti-war movie, but it's as close mouthed about it as its lead character is. Chris Kyle doesn't react, but you can sense his emotions when he hears about people in his squad either dying, losing a limb, or never returning. The movie is more angry at Iraq than it is the interventionists policy of the United States; one scene had Kyle finding his brother and his brother being in near tears due to having to be in Iraq.

Throughout the movie, the production and sound design is really incredible; Clint Eastwood as a director tells stories in almost a dry a fashion as possible. In some ways, he's continuing what Don Siegel (his frequent collaborator in the 1970s for movies like Escape From Alcatraz, Dirty Harry, and what I recently saw Coogan's Bluff) did. There isn't anything fancy about the cinematography or the shot selection or how the story is told. It's basic, yet well-made.

Even with character issues and some story issues, American Sniper is a great recent war film.

Elio (saw in the theaters) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

A tale as old as time, Disney movies always have grief about the loss of parents for the main character. Elio (Yonas Kibreab) has the double whammy of losing both his parents and being with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana). Olga obviously doesn't understand Elio and he doesn't understand Olga; he reaches out to the stars for a connection to life beyond Earth.

After separating from Olga while she talks with a co-worker, Elio finds an exhibit for the Voyager 1 probe. In a nice tip of the hat to Star Trek, Kate Mulgrew is the exhibit announcer (you can always tell the warmth in her voice when she says "Voyager" and in almost the same tone as her Captain Janeway) as well as the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture where the Voyager 1 probe is swallowed up by the aliens.

Eventually, Olga finds Elio.

For the first 30 minutes or so, this is probably the heaviest Pixar movie since Up (although not full on crying like that movie provoked). The emotions evoked are similar and in a way, this is a bit like Buzz Lightyear's standalone movie but a lot better done. Elio is butting heads with Olga and with other kids at the base for his ham radio club until he gets found and taken away to outer space.

Elio hits its stride with a quite frankly Spielbergian sense of wonder borrowed from E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Elio is shown a world where he is understood and he is accepted. He is believed to be the "leader of Earth" and he meets Glordon (Remy Edgerly). In a way, their relationship is a PG rated version of the relationship between Pamela Pearl and Nicky Marotta from Times Square; they both are misunderstood but they understand each other. (It can be said that Lord Grigon played by Brad Garrett is like an intergalactic version of David Pearl from Times Square). Lord Grigon wants to be part of the council but due to his warmongering he can't.

Although some of the third act had a lot of deus ex machina (including ham radio operators guiding Olga and Elio through the asteroid field and Lord Grigon breaking out of his armor when his son is dying), Elio is probably one of the better Disney movies this year. (And I liked Snow White from this year, which makes me one of the few). It will not reinvent Pixar movies - some of the character and story choices are a bit too safe and lack the individualistic touches that other Pixar directors have - but it's a great effort from Disney/Pixar.

Brain on Fire (Netflix, leaving on 6/21) - 2.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Brain On Fire honestly isn't as bad as the Letterboxd average indicates. Chloe Grace Moretz plays Suzanne, a New York Post writer who has an unexplainable illness due to issues in her brain from an autoimmune disorder.

A lot of the aspects of the movie isn't that adventurous with how the story is told although I really liked a section where there's quite a few quick cuts to show the chaotic nature of Suzanne's life. The movie is a bit melodramatic, but Moretz really tried to challenge herself with the role by showing the manic energy, physical issues, and the catatonic state of the character. It somewhat reminded me of Mila Kunis' role in Four Good Days. Moretz isn't known for challenging roles, so having an actor like her stretch herself in a role is a welcome sight.

Carrie Anne Moss as her mother Rhona was a great reliable actor in the role and Richard Armitage as her father Tom was decent (although his English accent did slip through when he got angry).

I'm not sure I agree with the character that an autoimmune disorder on a person's brain explains schizophrenia, bipolar and manic depression and people may have been misdiagnosed. Suzanne's symptoms are too wide ranging and as Dr. Sohel Naijar (Navid Negahban) indicates, those psychiatric disorders wouldn't lead to someone writing a clock the way Suzanne wrote it. Also, it's a bad idea for people to self-diagnose (usually that's done due to income instability and lack of finances).

The elephant in the room with the movie is it's never mentioned how Suzanne and her family was going to pay for her medical bills. In America, people get soul crushing debt for medical bills because according to those running the country, fuck socialism and fuck socialized medicine. The way the medical system is set up in America prevents people that are having to go through something like this from even being able to crawl out of the hole they are in. Suzanne isn't privileged to say the least, so the solution to extreme medical debt is to write a book about it that sells millions of copies to people that vote in politicians that vote against socialized medicine.

Also, some of the dialogue seems 'empty' (can't tell you how many times the parent characters say "we gotta keep looking" as if the doctors weren't doing enough). Jenny Slate's characterization and dialogue seems a bit better earlier on in the movie and Tyler Perry as Richard varies throughout the movie. Naturally, a boss at a publisher like the New York Post would be relentlessly cruel to employees regarding deadlines and Perry's character does a complete 180 once Suzanne returns back at the end of the movie.

Brain On Fire won't set any awards on fire.

River of Grass (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 3.5/5 stars

Spoiler

It's crazy that the same director that did Showing Up (and a few other movies I haven't seen yet) did River of Grass. As a movie, River of Grass is more like Malick's Badlands through a Reservoir Dogs / Pulp Fiction filter. It's very much an early 1990s indie film, so the budget aspects are definitely....showing up (sorry, couldn't resist).

Some of the story threads introduced (like with the jazz drummer police detective) doesn't pay off in the end and are left unfulfilled. The majority of the movie is Cozy (Lisa Donaldson) and Lee (Larry Fessenden) going on the run after Lee believed he killed a guy at a pool. This is despite the guy being interviewed by the police and at the Greyhound station.

Cozy's decision to kill Lee and shove him out of the car seems to be driven by a desire not to be around Lee anymore. Cozy finds herself at the end wanting to leave everything behind, but is stuck in traffic. Sooner or later, Cozy would have been found out for murdering Lee and throwing out the gun.

Still, this is a decent effort from Reichardt and seems in line with Steven Soderbergh's works since Soderbergh tends to focus on losers and deadbeats in his films.

 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

5 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:

Blue Jasmine and Irrational Man with Joaquin Phoenix follow VCB and are both excellent additions to his masterful catalog. Maybe take a look at Moses Farrow’s account of the personal story to get some balance. It may help avoid what seems like a pretty clouded judgment and lack of fair objectivity of the Allen catalog. If you’re blindly buying into the Farrow narrative it’s gonna be hard to be objective. 

Actually, I wasn't even thinking about the Mia Farrow narrative when I watched VCB or the whole thing with Woody Allen's personal life. I was just thinking about how I felt about the movie versus the rest of his work that I've seen. 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

27 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:

I like to think I can overlook a bad trailer, but the story of Materialists seems pretty clear in there - a completely homogenized mainstream normy romcom. Potentially very disappointing considering this director Celine Song's last film - the very good Past Lives. Still, I haven't seen it but I have a difficult time believing it's a stronger film than Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which you seemed to have completely missed. It's such a beautifully performed, sexy and fun movie. Penelope Cruz alone is just dynamite. I feel like you put a lot of weight on the story being something that it's not trying to be - all the while overlooking what Cruz, Bardem and Rebecca Hall bring to those well constructed characters. The quantity over quality watch model seems like it makes quieter, more subtle stories more challenging to engage with. Less is more? 

Yeah, I tend to struggle when watching movies later at night as far as aspects like that go. It's likely if I watched Materialists at a 9:00 pm showing I would end up with what happened to me and the most recent The Wedding Banquet - essentially falling asleep in the theater and not remembering portions of the movie. I had paid attention enough to Vicky Cristina Barcelona and just wasn't a fan of Bardem/Hall/Johansson's characters. I could just re-watch it before the end of the month. Woody Allen movies to me just vary quality wise; some I connect with like Annie Hall, Interiors, and Hannah And Her Sisters, but some just seem really average to me like Bananas and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Although his more recent movies after that have a Mendoza line it's failing to hit. 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

2 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

Materialists is the worst movie I've seen in a theater since... Probably the one two punch of Jurassic Park Dominion and Lightyear.

Yet I watched Materalists and liked it enough to give it 5 stars. It sounds like it's a divisive movie. 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

Movies today...

Casualties of War (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

It's interesting how much Michael J. Fox in this movie resembles James Stewart. Stewart throughout his career played characters that a strong sense of morality, principles and humanity, even with characters that weren't necessarily good (like in Vertigo and in Rear Window). Fox portrays very much a James Stewart like character as PFC. Eriksson; Eriksson starts the movie on a train, like the trains found in Hitchcock's The Birds and in Vertigo. The camera opens with the train car as if it is a room with Eriksson barely visible.

As Eriksson falls asleep, his story is recounted.

Contrasting this is Sean Penn as Sgt. Tony Meserve. Penn portrays Meserve as having a DeNiro-like swagger and jadedness. Meserve leads his squad of soldiers including Eriksson to locate a woman and kidnap her (Thuy Thu Le). The reasoning has to do with the death of "Brownie" Brown (Erik King) and Meserve being frustrated at having to follow orders. During the course of this expedition, the soldiers feel they have no choice but to follow what Meserve orders them to do. Eriksson objects to doing so and his sexuality is questioned. Even when returning back, Eriksson encounters resistance for reporting what happened from Captain Hill (Dale Dye, who was the technical advisor on the earlier Platoon). Eriksson finally tells a chaplain what happens; the next scene has investigators taking photos of the dead woman with Captain Hill angry at Eriksson for even daring to break the 'good old boy' system. "The chain of command must be preserved for a murder," Eriksson says sarcastically in a scene earlier.

Eventually, those involved (including John C. Reilly as PFC Hatcher and John Leguizamo as PFC Diaz) are found guilty and sentenced.

Brian De Palma directing a war movie is a bit of an unusual choice. The camerawork and shot selection in this does lend itself to De Palma's strengths, as well as Michael J. Fox as the lead actor. This movie is honestly Fox's best performance; imagine how things would have gone if De Palma and Fox continued to work together. Fox's next movies were Back to the Future series as well as comedies; I could have seen him doing a nostalgic thriller with De Palma that harkens back to Vertigo and Rear Window.

The ending scenes are a bit of another homage to Vertigo; Thuy Thu Le plays the woman on the train that reminds Eriksson of the woman he saw in Vietnam. Eriksson calls out to her in Vietnamese and she responds. "The bad dream is over" as she walks away.

Casualties of War as a movie is a great war movie about Vietnam and is a nice counterpoint to Platoon. Platoon depicts everything being messed up with morality in Vietnam; Casualties of War shows that morality is messed up, but the arc of the universe eventually turns back to justice.

Audition (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Having finished Audition, I'm not exactly sure what to make of it. So much of it seems to hit all the buttons for Hitchcock and the obsessives of Hitchcock. The initial hour or so gave me a flashback to Vertigo with Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) searching for a woman to replace his dead wife through 'auditions.' The obsessiveness on his search is like James Stewart's character searching for a woman like Kim Novak's character. The difference being his former wife doesn't look anything like the female object of his pursuit named Asami (Eihi Shiina)

What hits the buttons for the obsessives of Hitchcock include Brian De Palma. Like De Palma, Takashi Miike has the camera function in a voyeuristic fashion; one scene in particular is when the camera watches the housekeeper leave and then the camera goes up the stairs into Aoyama's house. The camera stops at the whiskey bottle before the scene ends.

Another obsessive of Hitchcock that plays a factor in Audition is Dario Argento. The restaurant scenes with the glass walls reminded me a lot of Argento's The Bird With The Crystal Plummage. In fact, a lot of the characteristics of Asami is in line with Italian horror. The movie makes it seem as though someone or something is pursuing Asami as Aoyama tries to retrace where she was or what she was doing. The truth is though....Asami was the one luring Aoyama into a trap.

The movie seems to make a statement about the uniquely Japanese phenomenon of the standards of women in the culture. In a lot of ways, this movie wouldn't work in the United States at all. Sure, Hollywood would look excitedly at women auditioning for a part in a movie and the rapid sequence as Aoyama and his partner Yasuhisa Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura) are interviewing the women, but that's where it ends. The cultural norms of the United States would likely prevent some of what's shown from happening (especially the child abuse that Asami endures).

What really is hard to follow in the movie is the last 30 minutes or so. We never hear the truth from Asami's own lips as to what it is. We don't know how much of it is Aoyama remembering what really happened, imagining what happened, or presuming what happened. Asami's own life even as we see it on the screen isn't completely real. Was she actually injured when she was younger? Or did the injuries happen recently? Did she kill the guy at the abandoned dance studio or was that imagined? Were there two different stories about herself that she told Aoyama? At times, I wondered if Asami was even a real person...her characterization is one of a Succubus than an actual woman. The creepy yet painful sounding neck twist after falling down the stairs makes me wonder if she was about to get up and kill Aoyama's son Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki).

Audition doesn't answer any of those questions....it's more Lynchian than anything else. The ending scenes confirms that with Asami talking, despite being seemingly dead. She repeats the phrases she said to Aoyama on one of their dates.

Even then, Takashi Miike plays with the conventions of dramas and of thrillers and inverts the "Hitchcock Blonde." Asami is not a 'damsel in distress.' She's not looking for Aoyama to save her. Aoyama is the one that needs saving at the end of the movie.

Don't Be A Dick About It (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 1/5 star

Spoiler

I guess I'll have to be a dick about it.

First off, I have no issue with documentaries that present people having autism. For almost all of those, the filmmakers attempt to present the complexities of the people with autism on their terms and help those who don't have autism come away with an understanding of the person.

With Don't Be A Dick About It, so much of it is wasted motions and seems to be 'let's setup a camera and watch Peter re-enact Survivor episodes." The documentary is about his relationship with his brother (who may also be autistic too), but I never felt a connection to the material or to the documentary. I felt like I was wasting my time.

Peter through many minutes spent in the world of Survivor (whether watching it or re-enacting it and then telling family members/friends/unknown people they are voted off), comes across a bit mean-spirited. So much of his demeanor honestly rubbed me the wrong way and I came away feeling as though "I wouldn't hang out with this person or even want to be related to him." The chief example is the scene where he talks to the kids smoking out of a bong in the house and then wants to touch the bong. His father gets mad at the kids and doesn't like the fact they did this, while Peter laughs away and acts innocent (despite earlier expressing curiosity about what they are doing). I get it - this is how he understands the world. His brother has a relationship with him on account of being related to each other. Peter did start the early part of the documentary going on a subway and working at an arena for crew at Washington Wizards.

While watching it, I felt a bit of panic as an adult. "I remember going on a subway for the first time and I felt uncomfortable then too. Is this what it's like?"

The last five minutes were a bit redemptive for this movie with the song "Cheerios" and the two brothers telling each other what they're favorite things about each other are.

But to conclude this, I apologize that I have to give this 1 star. The documentary's heart is in the right place, just not sure that I liked it.

 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

Movies today...not as much as usual due to having to go into the office for work.

Platoon (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Platoon as a movie is oppressively bleak. The movie starts with Chris (Charlie Sheen) arriving at a base in Vietnam, just as bodies are leaving to be taken away. There's no respect for the dead; the soldiers throwing them are disgusted at having to do so and whatever idea of humanity is out the window. Barber's "Adagio For Strings" plays throughout the movie and adds to the funeral atmosphere. Platoon just shows the body count and, in a way, we become numb to it.

As Chris moves through the movie, he as a character isn't regarded as human being either. As is said early on, "They don't bother to learn your name in the first few weeks." The people serving with him aren't any better. Chris gets asked why he's there. "I volunteered, dropped out of college, I wasn't learning anything." Those that are, as Chris says, "With guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line, most of them, small towns you never heard of. [...] Two years' high school's about it. Maybe if they're lucky, a job waiting for them back in a factory. But most of 'em got nothing. They're poor. They're the unwanted. Yet they're fighting for our society and for our freedom. It's weird, isn't it?"

This dichotomy of the rich and the poor shows up in another scene - "the rich will always screw you over. Always," said by King (Keith David). Even within the dichotomy, there's an element of further division. Black soldiers like King and Big Harold (Forest Whitaker) and Junior (Reggie Johnson) are regarded as 'lesser than' by Sgt. O'Neill (John C. McGinley) and especially Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger).

Sgt. Barnes is both scarred mentally and physically; he fights for control with Sgt. Elias (Willem DeFoe). The scene where Barnes guns down Elias is fraught and intense; the camera switches back and forth as it zooms in on their eyes before Barnes shoots him. It's only justifiable in a way for Chris to do the same to Barnes towards the end of the movie. As Chris narrates towards the end, "we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves."

With Platoon, Oliver Stone did what Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza tried to do with Warfare and present a realistic experience of warfare in Vietnam. We get the sense of who the characters are; the scene where Chris discovers the room where soldiers are smoking weed and dancing (set to "White Rabbit" nonetheless) is appropo. War isn't a place where people are supposed to 'feel good' about anything. The character moments are small, but throughout the movie, we sense the mounting frustration and fruitlessness they are experiencing.

There's much in the way of 'plot' or character arcs, but that's the point. As Chris said about going back to the same area the next day, "it's like we're going back to the scene of the crime." The soldiers gun down and torch a village because they can and they've picked the defenseless villagers as a target. Even Chris isn't immune from the hopelessness in those scenes; he has a one-legged villager jumping up and down as he fires at the ground. Chris later breaks down after realizing what he's done.

Discussion of Platoon cannot exclude the famous poster image as Willem DeFoe's character survives and just throws his hands into the air; the helicopters circling around and finally just flying away. Chris and Barnes exchange glances and, without speaking, Chris knows that Barnes killed Elias.

The cinematography throughout the movie is incredible; it's quiet and eerie and really presents the feeling of the soldiers being trapped in a jungle without coming up for air. Editing is also really great; scenes never out stay their welcome. A lot of the themes in Platoon stayed with Oliver Stone throughout his career and with his later movies about the mistrust of the US government. The US government in Platoon sends the soldiers off, as if it's a meatgrinder. "Eventually we get tired of winning too much," says O'Neill at one point in the movie.

Platoon is a standard in war films.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

Compared to other Woody Allen movies I've seen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is more saved by the actors involved than the character work or the storytelling. The constant narration is a bit oft-putting; it feels like a combination of Arrested Development and The Royal Tennebaums and is more matter of factly than anything humorous. Some of the narration leaves the mystery of the story out and spells it out too much what is going on. I was halfway expecting the narrator to be a character that sees Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) from a distance at the end of the movie.

As it is, both Vicky and Cristina even as main characters are a bit too handcuffed. Vicky is repulsed, yet drawn unexpectedly to Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem). Cristina is drawn completely to him from the start. It's hard to take seriously or not sense danger from Juan Antonio's initial scenes with the two characters. He tells them he wants to dine, show them a sculpture and hope to sleep with both of them. Vicky's reaction would be a normal, rational reaction; in other movies, Juan Antonio would be pegged as a manipulative and yet psychotic character. With this, he seems almost faultless because of the relationship he has with his ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz).

What makes Vicky Cristina Barcelona work as a movie is not the soap operaish writing and acting, but Penelope Cruz as Maria Elena. Maria Elena as a character is volcanic, but yet is truly talented. It seems to be a bit of a counterpoint to Julie Taymor's Frida with Salma Hayek. Maria Elena as a charcter reacts to Cristina and Juan Antonio and most of what works is how Cruz acts in scenes.

The movie eventually resolves itself to where Vicky has 'one last fling' with Juan Antonio who shows her his artwork - it does create a question that's similar to Tim Burton's Big Eyes - is Juan Antonio taking credit for Maria Elena's painted works? We do see Juan Antonio painting but he seems less in control of what he does versus Maria Elena and her artwork. Anyway, Maria Elena appears with a gun and Vicky realizes at this point what a mistake she made.

As I mentioned, the character work and the storytelling isn't as good. Vicky as a character is a fool; for her intellect and rationality, she seems more likely to make mistakes and screw up a good thing she has with her financee (a common Woody Allen trait apparently). I almost wonder if Cristina was written the way she was so that Woody Allen could fantasize about Scarlett Johnasson being in a bed naked. Her character arc is no different than when she started with the movie. The ending has the two characters being literally right where they started; the difference being that Vicky is now married.

Still, despite the formulaic approach and some character/story issues, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a slightly average romantic comedy/drama.

 

[2025 Upcoming Movies Thread]

1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

Keep that kind of talk quiet.  Some useless studio exec will start dreaming up a musician shared universe series of films.  Do we need Rami Malek playing Freddie Mercury again?  We do not.

If it includes John C. Reilly as Dewey Cox, I'm fine with it. 

[2025 Upcoming Movies Thread]

2 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

This is the teaser for the Springsteen biopic starring Jeremy Allen White

Can't wait for the crossover movie where Bruce meets Bob Dylan (played by Timothee Chalamet of course). 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

3 hours ago, Control said:

Trump would have been in his 20s when Mailer ran for mayor, no?

I need to check this out. TOWN BLOODY HALL, which was previously on the Criterion Channel, is a pretty entertaining Mailer documentary, focusing on his “debate” with a handful of prominent feminists. They mostly eat his lunch.

Yeah, Trump was in his 20s when Mailer ran.

Town Bloody Hall is still on Criterion Channel now. I don't know when Norman Mailer vs. Fun City is leaving Criterion Channel, but considering the rest of the Fun City collection is leaving this month, it's likely to be next month. 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

Movies today....a few more short films compared to usual. 

Tongues Untied (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Part theater, part poetry, part performance art, part documentary, part musical performance, part ASMR, Tongues Untied is so unique that it's virtually undefinable. There's a lot of standout moments in the less than an hour runtime. Men recounting their experiences growing up with white men saying racist phrases in close up of their mouths. A doo wop performance juxtaposed with footage of a march. Someone recounting a feeling of loss in a city like San Francisco while footage of him walking down the street and standing on street corners. Footage of the civil rights marches shown after footage of gay rights marches.

I wouldn't be able to have an understanding of Marlon Riggs and others involved and their experiences, but that's fine. The end result is a great piece of filmmaking.

Q (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

Beautiful cinematography throughout this documentary although it's a tad difficult to follow what the filmmaker Jude Chehab is trying to state in the movie. It's very likely to do with her family's complicated feelings and history with an all female Muslim sect the Qubaysiyat in Syria. What makes it complicated for them is it's not a black and white issue; the leader of the sect had an impact upon Jude's mother and grandmother and their lives in positive ways but also in negative ways too. Towards the end, when the Anisa (the leader of the sect) has died, Hiba laments the years spent but doesn't want to talk about it either.

Interspersed within the present day documentary is also family footage of Jude receiving her hijab and her childhood.

With Q, it's a beautiful yet sad documentary about the influence that other people can have on a person. The documentary doesn't present Islam negatively, but does present that other people acting as teachers in the religion can be negatively. Freedom from their influence can be both liberating and utterly transformative and heartbreaking too.

The documentary somewhat reminded me of The Seed of the Sacred Fig, although that was shot in Iran. This is shot in Syria and in America.

Q is worth checking out.

Will-o'-the-Wisp (Criterion Channel, leaving on 6/30) - 2/5 stars

Spoiler

With this being my first exposure to Joao Pedro Rodrigues as a director, this movie is trying to fit with Claire Denis' Beau Travail, Fassbinder's Querelle and Derek Jarman's filmography but is a bit slim on the story. An aristocrat named Alfredo (Mauro Costa) decides to become a fireman in a few midrange shots that involve the doors opening and closing at dinner, spread a few years apart. The movie opens in 2069 as Alfredo is dying.

Alfredo meets a fellow fireman named Alfonso (Andre Cabral) and they fall in love.

The movie is a bit trippy to watch; there's an extended dance sequence, Alfredo and Alfonso jerk each other off in the woods, and there's a long scene where Alfredo stares at slideshow of male genital. I can't tell honestly how much of this is just trying to be absurdist comedy in the spirit of Bunuel. There's a lot that just doesn't make sense to me and a lot of the scenes just fall flat for me.

I will say that the movie is beautifully shot though and the dance sequence was the best part.

Norman Mailer vs Fun City (Criterion Channel) - 3.5/5 stars

Spoiler

Having someone like Donald Trump as United States President, it's crazy that a writer and journalist (who got his bachelor's degree at Harvard no less and actually served in the military!) named Norman Mailer was spouting similar ideas to Trump before Trump was a mattress stain on his dad's bed.

Mailer does the same sort of playbook: blame other people for getting more to give his supporters an enemy, say outrageous things about his opponents that ends up getting published, and having ridiculous ideas without even a plan (or "concepts of a plan"). His idea for 200 story housing with a bridge made out of Legos looks like something out of Blade Runner. He wants to have New York City become the 51st State too (the logistics behind both plans are really never discussed or thought out, other than letting people in Harlem have their own sanitation department and control over their police force for example).

The documentary covers the rough and tumble campaign that Mailer and his running mate Jimmy Breslin as they go around the city to get out the vote and hear from people who really aren't sure having these two running the city is a good idea.

Mailer and Breslin don't win and only get 5% of the vote.

Mailer would have been better than Eric Adams and wouldn't have been indicted while he was mayor! Not sure I would want to live in a 200 story apartment building though.

Autobiographical Scene Number 6882 (Mubi, leaving on 6/30) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

This short film is accurate to what I know of male friends I have. The lure of the line between suicide and risk taking is too strong. Ruben Ostlund is able to depict how someone is suggested to do something, gets told it's dangerous and not to do it, the others around him realize it's a terrible idea, but he does it anyway.

 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

58 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:

Thank You! I appreciate this - the first review I've ever read of Left Behind. You've got me intrigued. Also, I sense something about Reservoir Dogs triggered an emotional response that clouded your judgement. Those characters are some of the best written and most memorable gangsters I've ever seen on film. Michael Madsen in particular feels like a huge star. Further, they stretched every dollar they had on that film and the result to my eyes/ears is a perfect film. IMO it's 2nd only to Pulp Fiction in the Tarantino catalog. 

Yeah, it was honestly the first 30 minutes or so of Reservoir Dogs and having the characters dropping the 'n-word' left and right. Even when I divorced myself from that, I found myself not liking Reservoir Dogs as much. So far, I don't like that aspect of Tarantino's character writing. Almost all the films after Pulp Fiction though, he hasn't done that (or as noticeable). (I haven't seen Django and I'm fairly sure he does it there too). 

I didn't have the same reaction to Reservoir Dogs as I did to Mallrats; I found Mallrats disappointing to watch.

EDIT: Oh and if you value your time and your life, don't watch Left Behind (2000). It's really that bad.  

[DVD/BR Collector Thread for the Physical Media Enthusiasts]

September Criterion Collection releases got announced. They include:

- Flow

- Born in Flames

- Read My Lips

- The Beat That My Heart Skipped

- This Is Spinal Tap 4K (finally no longer in OOS)

- High And Low 4K

- Isle of Dogs

- The French Dispatch

Isle of Dogs and The French Dispath are individual releases and also part of the Wes Anderson box set for a kidney / $500. 

[2025 Movie Discussion Thread]

2 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Now I'm wondering if you've seen the Kill Bill films because this immediately reminded me of "My name is Buck and I like to fuck" -- after considering "somebody actually named somebody that in a movie?! And it wasn't Tarantino so they couldn't get away with it."

Yeah, it's too easy of a joke too. "My name is Buck Williams and I fuck millions!" 

Christians are weird.