Movie 2023 MOVIE DISCUSSION THREAD

[Contentious C]

OK, well, I just found one of the zanier things there is on Youtube, and that's saying something.

https://www.youtube.com/@JeremySockman

Somehow, someone who's been around for at least 4 years and only has about twice as many subscribers as videos (and there's well over 100!).  The algorithm must really not like sock puppets.  But damn if the channel isn't weird and very much after my own heart with respect to breadth of viewing material.  Almost, *almost* makes me wish I'd done my reviews this way (I think I could have stretched most of them into 3-5 minute segments, but the video editing would have killed me).

Edited September 28, 2023 by Contentious C

[elizium]

18 hours ago, Contentious C said:

OK, well, I just found one of the zanier things there is on Youtube, and that's saying something.

https://www.youtube.com/@JeremySockman

Somehow, someone who's been around for at least 4 years and only has about twice as many subscribers as videos (and there's well over 100!).  The algorithm must really not like sock puppets.  But damn if the channel isn't weird and very much after my own heart with respect to breadth of viewing material.  Almost, *almost* makes me wish I'd done my reviews this way (I think I could have stretched most of them into 3-5 minute segments, but the video editing would have killed me).

Dude, that's my buddy Ian's character. He'll be thrilled your digging them

[Contentious C]

LOL, unless he was aware of me from a previous life and loathes my former Internet presence.  But I don't specifically recall pissing off anyone named Ian.

I finally did it.  No, I didn't watch a film that's actually worse than The Crow: Wicked Prayer, because that doesn't exist within the realm of things made with legitimate budgets.  But I did something related: I finally finished the, ahem, Crow "tetralogy", if you can refer to vomiting up the exact same plot 4 times in a row as a connected story, that is.  I'd watched City of Angels I don't remember how long ago, and it was terrible, but I think a great deal of the vitriol thrown its way is due to "not being worthy of the first film" and not purely due to its own shortcomings, even though there are many.  Because by the time you get to Crow: Salvation, which has quite possibly the worst protagonist of all 4 movies, it's like the viewing audience has realized the only way through is down, down, down, and basically nothing about it is redeemable if you limit yourself to examining the people truly "making" the movie (director/writer/producer types).

What does work, as one might expect, is that Fred Ward chews scenery with the best of them, and by FSM if he isn't a smug, hammy, unlikable, miserable fuck every second he's on screen.  Kirsten Dunst is also not the actual worst - you'd point to Elizabethtown as her worst role at least as often as you might point to this - and then there's William Atherton, who doesn't get much to do besides explain plot and die, but he's still someone you want to punch in the face every time he's on screen.  And, for a Crow sequel, there's one clear through-line among the movies, that through-line being that the only way to stop them from being unbearably bad is to feel something besides the urge to scream at the screen, "For fuck's sake, be done already!", and guess what?  Wanting to punch another grown man in the face is, well, not that urge.  Mission accomplished!

But, still very clearly not as bad as Wicked Prayer (the fact that there's a very old post about that movie hidden in the recesses of the board that mentions defending Wicked Prayer - search "Edward Furlong" - well, let's just say the author of the post is not going to surprise anyone with a long memory).

Edited September 28, 2023 by Contentious C

[(BP)]

@Contentious C I tried to look up the old post, but if you search Wicked Prayer on here the first 18 hits are separate posts by you shitting on it lol.

[Contentious C]

1 minute ago, (BP) said:

@Contentious C I tried to look up the old post, but if you search Wicked Prayer on here the first 18 hits are separate posts by you shitting on it lol.

Then all is right with the world.

[AxB]

They're making a reboot of The Crow after the strike ends. Bill Skarsgard is playing Eric Draven. FKA Twigs is Shelley.

[JLSigman]

17 hours ago, Contentious C said:

 Because by the time you get to Crow: Salvation, which has quite possibly the worst protagonist of all 4 movies, it's like the viewing audience has realized the only way through is down, down, down, and basically nothing about it is redeemable if you limit yourself to examining the people truly "making" the movie (director/writer/producer types).

What does work, as one might expect, is that Fred Ward chews scenery with the best of them, and by FSM if he isn't a smug, hammy, unlikable, miserable fuck every second he's on screen.  Kirsten Dunst is also not the actual worst - you'd point to Elizabethtown as her worst role at least as often as you might point to this - and then there's William Atherton, who doesn't get much to do besides explain plot and die, but he's still someone you want to punch in the face every time he's on screen.  And, for a Crow sequel, there's one clear through-line among the movies, that through-line being that the only way to stop them from being unbearably bad is to feel something besides the urge to scream at the screen, "For fuck's sake, be done already!", and guess what?  Wanting to punch another grown man in the face is, well, not that urge.  Mission accomplished!

 Terrible movie, but probably the best soundtrack of the spin-offs.

[Zimbra]

I finally got to see Stop Making Sense tonight.  The new transfer is absolutely gorgeous, beats the hell out of the DVD release. Gonna try to catch it at least once more while it's in theaters.

[odessasteps]

On 9/30/2023 at 1:02 AM, Zimbra said:

I finally got to see Stop Making Sense tonight.  The new transfer is absolutely gorgeous, beats the hell out of the DVD release. Gonna try to catch it at least once more while it's in theaters.

Went today. 6 people in the theater. Looked great. We didn’t get that Q&A unfortunately.

[Contentious C]

Some other stuff I watched that I should say something about before I forget I watched it:

St. Elmo's Fire - The most memorable thing about this dreadful fucking movie is the just-as-dreadful song from the soundtrack that still gets adult lite rock radio play.  It's almost as if all these Brat Pack members decided they should write the movie for themselves and then miscast and misjudged the whole bit, but since they had someone to pay for it, they said, "Fuck it" and made it anyway.  It also does a fair job of explaining why most of them haven't done shit except small roles since the 80s, because, goddamn, who needs to see Andrew McCarthy in a starring role ever again?  There's just not a single plot line to care about here, and if anything, some of them are outright creepy, like the Rob Lowe/Mare Winningham one as well as Emilio's & Andie MacDowell's.  The thing I remember most is Demi Moore, largely because she was, like Julia Roberts in Mystic Pizza, a bit on the thicker side here and it worked for her just as much as it did Roberts.  Hollywood fucks up everything, man.

Sirens - Hey, a famous flop from the 90s that...well, wasn't going to do anything except flop, really, especially since it got an NC-17 rating at the time, but it's definitely better than its reputation and some of the scathing reviews I vaguely remember from back then.  I'm not sure why it got the wide release it did, perhaps because The Piano had been so successful the year before and so Aussie/NZ properties were faddy, or perhaps because Hugh Grant had just made his star turn in Four Weddings and a Funeral, but the focus is mostly elsewhere anyway, and the story it tells is...well, all right, I guess?  It's a little higher-minded and effective than what it's known for - mainly Elle MacPherson being very very naked for a good chunk of the movie and being possessed of acting skills equal to her clothing - so anyone who skipped it because they thought it was going to be bad or pure titillation probably missed out.  A little, anyway.  It's still not particularly good, and a lot of the imagery can be ham-fisted at times, but there were far worse films to spend your time on in the 90s than this.  If nothing else, it introduced the world to Portia de Rossi, and I'm sure Arrested Development fans are happy for that.

Split Second - Oh, holy fuck.  HIGH HIGH HIGH HIGH HIGH ALERT for potential Mount Flushmore status, boys and girls, because THIS FUCKING MOVIE had the gall at the time to pitch itself as "Alien meets Blade Runner".  Yeah.  Sure.  If you only made some things in the film passingly resemble a couple of the aesthetics from those two stone-cold classics and otherwise shat out the most cliched, badly-written, wouldn't-work-as-a-TV-movie-written-by-ADHD-afflicted-sixth-graders garbage you've ever witnessed, then you might say that X Meets Y could hold.  But this.  This fucking movie.  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck you, buddy.  I think this may well and truly have the single most inane plot I have ever seen in my life.  Even A Better Way to Die, which is clearly the Lincoln of Mount Flushmore, made more sense than this movie.  The one and only thing I can say in its defense, and it's so very very thin indeed, is that about 2/3s of the way through the film, it's as though Rutger Hauer and Alistair Duncan totally give up on being serious.  Of course, that's the enormous problem with the first hour+: when they play it serious, it looks fucking dumb and when they go for a laugh, you're laughing at the awfulness rather than laughing with them on the joke.  But that last third, there's just an element of, "Oh well, we thought about trying, but this is obviously a massive piece of shit, so let's just amuse ourselves now," and...I dunno, it almost works?  It at least distracts you from how beyond terrible the rest of the film is, if only for a minute or two.  Because wow, the actual finale is some of the most insulting crap you'll ever watch.  Really.

To Hell with it.  Welcome to Mount Flushmore, guys.  You're Teddy Roosevelt.

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles && - I'm not sure what's more useless to this movie: Tom Cruise or the sub-header, "The Vampire Chronicles".  I remembered this being, well, rather not-good, and I think that still holds.  Brad Pitt pogos back and forth between interesting and basically awful, and Cruise is, perhaps rightly, playing the entire thing for camp.  I mean, if you've read all the books, that does make sense, since Lestat is somewhere between the Devil & Faust in his portrayal, and Anne Rice loaded him up with a huge pile of Mary-Sue traits crossed with a guy trying way too fucking hard to be cool.  That sort of thing ought to describe Tom Cruise to a tee, but he just feels really miscast next to Pitt.  Of course it only gets worse from there, since Antonio Banderas' section is just as waffly and inconsistent as the rest, and even though the ending, which is different from the novel, should almost sorta work, it hardly salvages the rest of this being a boring excuse to trot out elaborate costumes and set pieces.  What does work, though, are two things.  The first and most obvious is that this might still be Kirsten Dunst's best role, which, I don't know if that's praise or condemnation at this point.  She gets all the fun dialogue, all the plot points that actually get you thinking revolve around her, and she's the only character whose blend of predacity and sympathy actually lands.  The other is knowing why the book was even written in the first place: Rice had lost a daughter to leukemia, and so many beats of the story fall into place when you realize the whole thing is a long, ugly look at her guilt and grief.  That doesn't make it *good*, but at least it makes it approachable.  I don't know; maybe Neil Jordan can't film anything good that doesn't involve filming at Brighton Palace Pier.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - I think enough other people have had positive things to say about this that I don't have much to add.  I'm looking forward to whatever they do next, although it would be kinda neat if it were a different party each time.  But the ending I didn't care much for, since it felt like it resolved itself too quickly and too neatly after as much build-up as it had.  Otherwise a lot of fun.

Bad Times at the El Royale - Hey, look, it's Drew Goddard!  And Drew Goddard is saying, "Hey look, I can do a Tarantino!"  And then he does a Tarantino, and all you can say is, "Yeah?  So?"  This isn't awful, but it makes you wonder why it exists and why it's over 2 hours long.  Also, Chris Hemsworth might be the first non-American to do an actively bad American accent.  I guess if you like quirky twists purely for the sake of quirks and twisting, you'll find something to like about this, but Under the Silver Lake was weirder and funnier.

The Name of the Rose - This was maybe my first ever "Hey, spoilers!" movie, since I remembered my mom telling me the plot point about the books when I was 7 or 8 and it stuck in my head all these years despite never reading the novel.  I didn't expect this to be "Plague-era Sherlock Holmes" but that's what we got, and hey, it mostly works.   The parade of character actors and grotesquerie really brings the period to life, but a part of me also couldn't help but get hung up on some details.  At one point, a couple of them are gabbing about some old, vaguely pagan/Satanic looking ruins, but 90 seconds later, I was thinking, "This is supposed to be the 1300s, they wouldn't have been ruins *then*, they're only ruins *now* because you're shooting a movie in 1985-86!"  Connery had a pretty strange and yet somehow successful year then, between this and Highlander.  As far as intellectual pot-boilers go, this is better than most and still worth checking out.

Edited October 1, 2023 by Contentious C

[driver]

Mafia Mamma-rented this on Prime. I love Mafia movies, have liked Toni Collette ever since Muriel's Wedding and this should've been a homerun. The fact that it's a comedy...at least there was a very well heeled kill.

[Contentious C]

Oh, was that the one that came out pretty recently where she's like the last relative of some mob guy and has to start running stuff?  I was shocked a movie like that could even get off the ground.  It's not the 80s anymore.  I love her, too, but it had major "Balls of Steel" vibes in the sense that someone much bigger like Julia Roberts must have backed out.

Edited October 1, 2023 by Contentious C

[Tabe]

20 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Some other stuff I watched that I should say something about before I forget I watched it:

St. Elmo's Fire -  It also does a fair job of explaining why most of them haven't done shit except small roles since the 80s, because, goddamn, who needs to see Andrew McCarthy in a starring role ever again?  

 

I dunno, I'd say Demi, Lowe, Emilio, Judd, and Andie have all been plenty busy with a lot of bigger roles since the 80s.  Are they mega-stars (other than Demi, whose star has certainly fallen)?  Nah.  But Lowe, for example, was one of the leads on the best TV show of all-time (The West Wing), along with starring on Parks and Recreation and 9-1-1: Lone Star.  

 

[driver]

On 10/1/2023 at 7:26 PM, Contentious C said:

Oh, was that the one that came out pretty recently where she's like the last relative of some mob guy and has to start running stuff?  I was shocked a movie like that could even get off the ground.  It's not the 80s anymore.  I love her, too, but it had major "Balls of Steel" vibes in the sense that someone much bigger like Julia Roberts must have backed out.

Yes, sir. It is the one and the same.

[AxB]

Was Rob Lowe the one who got in the controversy about how he tried to make a sex tape (with a bulky, early 90s VHS Camcorder) without telling his sexual partner at the time he was filming it? I know it was one of those Brat Pack lads. It was supposed to ruin his career.

[Johnny Sorrow]

27 minutes ago, AxB said:

Was Rob Lowe the one who got in the controversy about how he tried to make a sex tape (with a bulky, early 90s VHS Camcorder) without telling his sexual partner at the time he was filming it? I know it was one of those Brat Pack lads. It was supposed to ruin his career.

No, it was far worse. He made a sex tape with two women and one was only 16 while he was in town for the 1988 Democratic Convention. 

[Contentious C]

Speaking of actors who made sex tapes, I forgot to include:

Seven Psychopaths - This might be the closest I've seen someone get to making a movie *like* 8 1/2, even if it's not anywhere near as good as that.  Its weird recursive plot and structure make it pretty obvious that McDonagh was probably mad as Hell that all anyone wanted him to do was "another In Bruges" and he spat this out at Hollywood.  So, bravo on him for writing a script that's a giant middle finger to regular old action movies.  But, it's still just...OK?  I mean, Sam Rockwell was in prime Dancing Weirdo territory here (though I don't think he dances in this! Maybe I should fast-forward through and check), and this is one of the last really clutch Christopher Walken roles (I find him to be a bit overcooked, like Jack & Al; at least Jack had the good sense to retire years ago).  But the remainder of what's there isn't really 100% meant to hang together, and it doesn't, because it's supposed to show what being rushed into writing a movie is like, instead.  Still, it's occasionally hilarious and occasionally creepy as Hell, but I've seen this kind of movie done better, and let's face it, McDonagh has done far far better before and since.

[Curt McGirt]

That reminded me more of a Guy Richie film. Walken was awesome.

[The Comedian]

St. Elmo's Fire might be garbage, but "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" is fucking great and I won't hear otherwise...

[(BP)]

In the last few years I’ve mostly associated that song with Into the Spiderverse. 

[Contentious C]

I associate it with wanting to wear earplugs.

Anyway, other stuff.

Striptease - I'm not sure what fails the hardest about this.  How utterly unsexy it is, despite the title and the content?  Burt Reynolds' pathetic, 1.5-dimensional caricature of a politician?  Demi Moore being made out of wood where she's not made of silicone?  Oh no, wait, sorry, it's the ENDING, which can only be adequately described as "cockamamie".   It's almost as though that word were invented specifically so this movie could eventually come along and embody its spirit with how full-of-shit the details of the finish are. 

The sad thing, though, is that a couple of times, it's a good example of how you can learn even from something generally accepted as awful. There are 2 nearly back-to-back moments where you can see someone was paying attention to details and it made the movie funnier: one involves the congressional aide who pilfer's the main character's dryer lint (yes, you read right) so Reynolds can whack to it.  They shoot most of the scene from *inside* the laundromat dryer, and then as the guy tries to play off what he just did by silently "hi"ing and waving to people, he finally collapses on a post, clearly fed up with the choices he's making.  Then, when Reynolds gets the lint, he slathers himself in Vaseline prior to a "family values" rally.  He gets cleaned up, but as he shakes a few hands on the way to the podium, all the guys he shakes hands with try to suppress the urge to make a face and surreptitiously pull out hankies to wipe off their hands.  Sometimes it's actually funny!

It's just too bad that, you know, the rest of it is fucking terrible.

Hard Rain - Oh, hey look, it's Speed in a flood!  No, really, the same guy who wrote Speed wrote this.  If it didn't have Striptease as an immediate comparison point, from having watched it the day before, this would be a catastrophe, and not in the way they intended.  It's dull, it's badly acted, the stunts are maybe the highlight and that's not saying anything, they edit out 2 or 3 plot points of a 90-fucking-minute movie that were actually needed to explain how things go from Point A to Point B, and mostly you just feel awful for everyone involved, since they had to shoot this piece of shit movie while standing in water 95% of the time.  I think I'd have a complex about pools or the ocean if I'd worked on this.

The Fabelmans - Hey, this actually *was* really fucking good, even if it is a Hollywood movie about Hollywood.  But for me, the truly grating bit (one of its only demerits, though a sizable one) is knowing what a thin veneer this movie makes of Spielberg's actual childhood.  Every time someone says "Fabelman" in the movie, I just wanted to say, "Yeah, but they're the Spielbergs", because they are.  That said, I think this might actually be my favorite Seth Rogen role, since, for once, all of his bad habits are reined in and, lo and behold, much like Jonah Hill, he can act when he wants to.  And of course Michelle Williams is queen-sized throughout.  She's probably the best actor who hasn't won an Academy Award at this point, and, as good as Michelle Yeoh was in EEAAO, I think Williams might have been robbed here.  Steve's got a knack for making these "close but not quite" Best Picture nominees, though I think I liked Banshees of Inisherin better than this, too.

The Whale - If you'd asked me 5 years ago whether Brendan Fraser would win an Academy Award for Best Actor or if Darren Aronofsky would have another movie nominated for Best Picture, I would have leaned toward the latter option pretty hard.  After seeing Doom Patrol, I think I would have split that about 50/50.  I don't really find this performance that surprising given how Old Man Fraser has been, I guess is what I'm saying.  He's always had oodles of charisma; he just didn't pick hardly any good projects, other than The Mummy, early in his career.  And considering the physical hardships he's endured due to his time on movie sets, it's easy to think he could channel those emotions into something special, and, mostly, he does.  I didn't really think as much of Hong Chau in this as others clearly did; to me, the best section of the film was with Samantha Morton, and it distinctly gives off, "Hey, this would make a good play" vibes...and then the credits roll, and, oh look, it WAS a play first.  No wonder.  I can see why this got left off the Best Picture noms, as the rest of the supporting cast doesn't exactly have much to work with, and the film's kind of got nothing going for it visually - the other edge of the sword when you play around with aspect ratios and dig into how slovenly the character's life is.  Then again, Elvis got nominated...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem - Hey look, it's the Force Awakens of children's intellectual properties.  I guess if you're going to go for nostalgic fan service, though, totally ripping off Into the Spider-Verse to this degree is pretty bankable.  And hey, that mostly works!  Hardcores would probably push their glasses up their nose and wonder why it doesn't resemble Daredevil more closely, but leaning into the sensibilities of 60s/70s Spider-Man for your plot instead of Frank Miller is only going to make something like this better.  It's probably still maybe a little too long, though, as it runs out of steam eventually.  The casting was pretty solid, though; I'm always good with more Ayo Edebiri, and casting Natasia Demetriou for Wingnut was inspired.  BAT!

The Equalizer - Once in a while, a movie comes along that works even when it shouldn't.  Antoine Fuqua making another crock-of-shit action movie that's 20 minutes too long?  Check.  Denzel Washington in a tough-guy role he's 20 years too old for?  Check.  A final 45 minutes of the film that's utterly ludicrous?  Check.  And yet, here we are, having a good time.  I have an internal thesis about movies like this, that they're part of the subtle poison that keeps the average American from doing more about actual injustice and actual rights and wrongs, and that our lust for pantomime revenge keeps us from doing something in the here and now about our screwed-up world, but even though I think all that, I'd probably still watch this again eventually.

[Curt McGirt]

Now I want to see you review the last Equalizer. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-equalizer-3-movie-review-2023

[Contentious C]

I clicked that link, glanced at the by-line, then left.  I'm sure Robert Daniels is onto something.

[Curt McGirt]

I swear to god I couldn't pick the writing of the Roger Ebert people out of a lineup, sadly, but I still go there and read all the reviews. Is there a better review site out there?

[Kuetsar]

39 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

I swear to god I couldn't pick the writing of the Roger Ebert people out of a lineup, sadly, but I still go there and read all the reviews. Is there a better review site out there?

Well considering Ebert's been dead for a decade that's not surprising. . . .