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2023 MOVIE DISCUSSION THREAD


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I randomly decided to watch Easy Money for the first time and I really hate myself for not bothering to watch it until now. It might actually be Rodney Dangerfield's best movie and I'm saying this having watched Back to School just the other day

James

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9 hours ago, J.H. said:

I randomly decided to watch Easy Money for the first time and I really hate myself for not bothering to watch it until now. It might actually be Rodney Dangerfield's best movie and I'm saying this having watched Back to School just the other day

James

Easy Money is by far the best Rodney movie and that includes his scenes in Caddyshack.

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Watched Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game last night. It's the true story of the guy who showed pinball is a game of skill and helped get it legalized in NYC in the 70s. I'm a huge pinball guy - grew up with one in the house thanks to my mom, who also grew up with one in her house in the 50s. So I've been looking forward to this one for a long time. 

Unfortunately, it doesn't deliver. It tries to be clever and a little meta by interviewing "Roger Sharpe" to tell us his story. I got a bad feeling when he said "you have to start at the beginning" and that feeling got confirmed. The movie looks pretty good but 90% of it is just Sharp's relationship with his future wife and his job at GQ. It's not all that interesting and builds to an anticlimactic finish. 

5/10.

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8 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

I'm pretty sure Peter Jackson hates editors and being told no.  

Wait, but the extended cut of Return of the King is 4 hours and 24 minutes long.

Edit: Fathom Events lists it at 260 minutes for this, not 251. Which is still shorter than it is in my VUDU account...

Edited by Brian Fowler
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Perhaps they cut out the list of the entire membership of the Lord of the Rings fan club. Or they updated it to remove everyone who stopped their subscription to it.

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I watched the EE of each once. Return of the King was the best of the three, but I don't think I would watch the EE of it again unless someone gave it the Hateful Eight treatment and did it in four one-hour episodes, which I still think is the best way to watch the Hateful Eight.

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20 hours ago, BrianS81177 said:

"You there, boy! What day is today"

"Today, sir? Why today is Wickmas Day!!"

Merry Wickmas to everyone. Enjoy watching Keanu pile up the bodies. 

Bah gunbug! (Didn't care for 3, not expecting anything from this)

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Pulp Fiction is on uncensored on IFC. I just realized after all these years (even if it wouldn't make for a story), Butch should have definitely shipped off his wife before the match. 

Also, I read the Slash biography and apparently he ended up fucking Ms. Esmerelda Villa-Lobos multiple times. Specifically in his car. Damn, the luck...

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On 3/22/2023 at 7:53 AM, Craig H said:

I watched the EE of each once. Return of the King was the best of the three, but I don't think I would watch the EE of it again unless someone gave it the Hateful Eight treatment and did it in four one-hour episodes, which I still think is the best way to watch the Hateful Eight.

And I won't watch anything BUT the extended editions. Different strokes and all that. . .

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So, yeah, I re-watched Glengarry Glen Ross on Amazon just because I figured what the fuck, why not. Some of the homophobic insults and shit stick out like a sore thumb but it holds up so fucking well.

I mean, Jack Lemmon's performance? Holy fucking shit, you're talking about one of the all time great film performances in history; the desperation of that character oozes out of Lemmon in every fucking scene, it's fucking palpable. But then I looked it up and see Pacino was nominated for the Oscar for doing an average I'M AL PACINO AND I DELIVER EVERY LINE LIKE THIS performance but Lemmon didn't get a look in?

I also watched Cocaine Bear. I mean, it was a bear on cocaine and, yet, it didn't go anywhere near as ridiculous as I wanted it to. 

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Actors/Actresses to have played at least two iconic parts I've come up with in no particular order apart from the first three:

  • Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman in The Dark Knight Trilogy and Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000).
  • Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988) and Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).
  • Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name, William Munny and Harry Callahan.
  • Ian McKellen as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Magneto in the X-Men films.
  • Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in the MCU and Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction (1994).
  • Harrison Ford as Han Solo in the Star Wars films and as Indiana Jones.
  • Michael Keaton as Batman and Beetlejuice.
  • Chris Evans as Captain America and the Human Torch.
  • Ben Affleck as Batman and Daredevil.
  • Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy and Cruella.
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John Wick 4 fucking rules.  

It's like if you dropped him in the GTA V universe and just had him go to work.  

It's literally built like a video game, complete with pain in the ass mini-bosses and incredible scenery with impossible action sequences.  The Arc de Triomphe scene is amazing.

 

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Just got back from John Wick 4 and it was fucking tremendous.  A fitting and bittersweet conclusion.  I don't think it could've ended any other way.

You hardly notice the runtime because the movie skilfully cycles between table setting and gloriously violent action scenes captured with Oscar-level cinematography.

The movie fight between Donnie Yen and Hiroyuki Sanada was thirty-five years in the making.  I can now die happy.  

It is weird to notice how similar the Fast / Furious and John Wick franchises are in spirit as both have evolved far beyond their original concepts.  Who knew that we've have such a rich and detailed universe spring from a simple tale of revenge?

They must've hired the make-up guy from The Batman as Scott Adkins got the Penguin treatment and is nigh unidentifiable as Killa, the card-shuffling head of the High Table in Germany.  You can't hide Adkins's martial arts skills, though.

Edited by J.T.
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Been watching movies again.

Am I going back to reviewing them? Fuck no.  I still have some weird, self-inflicted mental damage on myself now, where if it approaches midnight and I haven't finished watching something, I feel guilty about it.  I don't know how long that'll take to deprogram, but I'm definitely not going back to it.

Top Gun: Maverick - I'm of two minds about this.  There is some BEAUTIFUL stuff in this movie, and on some level I wish technical acumen were appreciated more.  I suppose things like Avatar or Dune getting nominated for Best Picture when they're merely very, very good instead of great are examples of that happening.  So a part of me is not entirely annoyed this got a nomination.  Everything else that's *not* a 'filmmaking craft' detail?  Uh, no, no, no, a thousand times no.  Also, I have a question for all the red-blooded, patriotic, gung-ho, hyper-masculine, gun-toting, truck-driving, military-loving Muricans out there, and I do mean this in as much seriousness as I can muster: why do all y'all suck SO MUCH DICK for our armed forces when you're so certain sucking dick is a thoroughly unmasculine enterprise?  Because most of this movie an extended wank session.  I like the pretty pictures and the stunts; everything else is boring, except maybe seeing Jon Hamm make quite possibly the stupidest face of his entire career at one point.

Lost in Translation - I hadn't watched this since going on a date when it came out.  It...has not aged that well.  Again, some really beautiful stuff at play here, and the visuals make it worth seeing, but I think there's some merit to the calls (at the time) that the script is pretty racist.  I can't see this movie getting made today with the way it goes.  And no, Sofia, it doesn't matter if you don't think you're racist.  When you visit Japan - or any country - more than a handful of times and then you *work with those people* for a month making a movie, and the biggest takeaway you have from that experience is not to humanize them but to make the same fucking joke 8 separate times in your movie, maybe you've got some implicit bias going on in your head, you bougie privileged fuck.  It probably doesn't also help that I've learned what a douche Bill Murray has been some of the time, and it's increasingly hard to separate the person from the role when the role is that he's playing a more Bruce Willis-y version of himself.  And in retrospect, I think I like him more in Rushmore, of all things (a Wes movie I love to hate) than I do in this.  The gap between Master & Commander: Far Side of the World and just about EVERYTHING else that came out in 2003 is only growing (I suppose I should get around to watching Memories of Murder).

Burning - Hm.  Hmmmmmmm.  I *should* like this more, but I think I don't just because Jung-so is not exactly a likable at all character.  And I wonder where that emanates.  I haven't read either the Faulkner or Murakami stories that feed into this, so I don't know where Lee's script begins and something else ends (or truly, if that even matters).  But I have read Norwegian Wood, and that has a vaguely similar structure: the oafish, emotionally stunted clod who can't see the forest for the trees, the ineffably sad waif, the triangle completer who pulls them together and disrupts them in equal measure.   So for Murakami's part, I wonder if this wasn't a sort of dry run for that book (I don't know if the book came out later or not...and I'm too fucking lazy to look it up!).  But...man.  It's got some Drive My Car-quality moments where the quiet and the still will just wreck you.  The midpoint of the movie with the sunset is devastating.  But what's it about?  I don't know, and since it isn't trying to answer the question, it's hard to give it too much credit.  It's almost too clever for its own good.  Maybe someone who's read the stories can spoil them for me, assuming they're actually relevant at all.

Candyman - The new one keeps popping up as available on Prime, but I wanted to watch the original, so I spent some digital credits and watched this for free.  Plus, aside from maybe Madchen Amick, Virginia Madsen had the title of "Most Beautiful Woman in Hollywood" on fucking lockdown back then.  Casting her as an angel in A Prairie Home Companion was some really obvious stuff from Robert Altman.  I'd heard a little bit about how this develops, but I was pleasantly surprised by the depth and contours it had in regards to the social topics it was trying to tackle.  I just wish it had been written a bit better and delved a bit deeper instead of veering entirely towards horror.  But nevertheless, the extended metaphor of what happens to Madsen's character is hard to miss and easy to appreciate.  Show up for Virginia, stay for the social commentary.

Women Talking - This was merely rather good, not great.  It's weird that a film like Men got utterly lambasted for bringing up some of the same topics as its central theme, while this won a Best Screenplay award for literally stating those themes out loud and as directly as humanly possible.  Obviously there's a lot more going on in this movie beyond that, but it was hard to get that thought out of my head for the first 20 minutes or so, where Jessie Buckley and Rooney Mara and Claire Foy are just explicitly telling you what you're supposed to care about, like they're talking straight to the audience.  I feel like if this had been a play, that tactic might have worked a little bit better, instead of making it drag a bit.  But over time, more and more awful details start worming their way out to the surface, and those are handled quite a bit more artfully, especially given the quality of the cast.  And it's got its moments of pulling you away from the terrible events and towards a reminder that there are reasons to keep living and to keep up the good fight.  I see why it was nominated, but I also see why it was probably never a serious contender.

A Few Good Men - Another rewatch that, I don't know, I thought there was something else going on with this movie than there was, but it's...eh, it's not really that good, it's just got the memorable stuff that goes for broke and otherwise it's quite flat.  The early set-up for the plot feels badly done, since there's a pretty weird hole of sorts in there, and then it just sort of wends from here to there without really feeling like it's building to anything until Cruise's character pulls a bunch of stuff out of almost-thin-air. Plus, I didn't realize this was the movie that inflicted Aaron Sorkin on us for the last 30 years until I rewatched it.  Yikes.  And honestly, it's hard to tell Rob Reiner directed this, because instead of feeling anything like his other films, the movie just feels like "unsubtle Ron Howard".  Then again...maybe that just describes Reiner's entire directorial career.

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Much like Phil brooks, glad more and more are coming to my side in not liking Bill Murray.
 

 I mean, for the longest time, I’ve felt like Richard Dreyfus’s in What About Bob, a lone voice in a sea of people snowed by Bill. 😀

Edited by odessasteps
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7 hours ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

John Wick 4 fucking rules.  

It's like if you dropped him in the GTA V universe and just had him go to work.  

It's literally built like a video game, complete with pain in the ass mini-bosses and incredible scenery with impossible action sequences.  The Arc de Triomphe scene is amazing.

 

 

4 hours ago, J.T. said:

Just got back from John Wick 4 and it was fucking tremendous.  A fitting and bittersweet conclusion.  I don't think it could've ended any other way.

You hardly notice the runtime because the movie skilfully cycles between table setting and gloriously violent action scenes captured with Oscar-level cinematography.

The movie fight between Donnie Yen and Hiroyuki Sanada was thirty-five years in the making.  I can now die happy.  

It is weird to notice how similar the Fast / Furious and John Wick franchises are in spirit as both have evolved far beyond their original concepts.  Who knew that we've have such a rich and detailed universe spring from a simple tale of revenge?

They must've hired the make-up guy from The Batman as Scott Adkins got the Penguin treatment and is nigh unidentifiable as Killa, the card-shuffling head of the High Table in Germany.  You can't hide Adkin's martial arts skills, though.

Still want to see the John Wick series. When 3 came out at the cinema, 1 was on a streaming service while 2 wasn't so I couldn't go. Hopefully the first three are on Prime.

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Kevin Nash has a tiny role in John Wick 1, Vlad Kozlov similarly has a small role in John Wick 2, and John Wick 3 features that Angle vs Shane McMahon tribute spot. Any pro-wrestling stuff in 4?

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1 hour ago, AxB said:

Kevin Nash has a tiny role in John Wick 1, Vlad Kozlov similarly has a small role in John Wick 2, and John Wick 3 features that Angle vs Shane McMahon tribute spot. Any pro-wrestling stuff in 4?

The entire final sequence up the stairs to the Sacre Couer is basically a "how far can a hurcanrana make you bump."   

I'm sure Kenny was seething with jealousy. 

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So, my mom has the most interesting taste in movies. She fucking LOVES the whole Rocky series and that's largely why I'm such a fan of those movies because I watched them so much as a kid.

But now that she's in a nursing home she can't really watch movies that much. And she has no interest in ever leaving her room to talk to other people there so she just watches whatever is on TV. Yesterday when I go to visit her, she goes, "do you know what movies I just watched that I loved? John Wick." 1, 2, and 3 must have been on TNT or TBS or something and she watched all of them and loved them. I was shocked. Normally all she watches is crap like My 600 Pound Life or whatever it's called.

My daughter then asks what John Wick is and I explain the basic plot details and she goes, "can we watch it?" I hemmed and hawed a little bit because of how violent it is and my daughter is going to turn 13 in a month, but just the day prior we watched the first Scream (which still fucking rules, "my mom and dad are gonna be so mad at me!") and so I figured, sure. I did preface it by saying that this is not realistic and it's about as fantastical as the MCU movies.

That first John Wick is still awesome. My daughter wound up liking it a lot too except she thought the beagle, Daisy, was cuter than the dog he takes at the end, but that dog at the end is still adorable.

I doubt I'll be able to catch John Wick 4 in the theater, but this was just such a weird turn of events for my mom to tell me how much she loves those movies to then watching the first one with my older daughter.

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