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2023 MOVIE DISCUSSION THREAD

RIPPA

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Zimbra

Zimbra

Posted
Posted
On 10/9/2023 at 11:41 AM, 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?

I thought it was still good when Matt Zoller-Seitz was running things but once he stepped away it went downhill pretty fast.

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Contentious C

Contentious C

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Posted (edited)

So, more stuff.

Practical Magic - Jesus tapdancing Christ, what a crock-of-shit movie this is.  I mostly watched this because somehow, someway, Griffin Dunne of all people directed it, but it's too bad the writers are evidently the fucking worst (backed up by the appearance of Akiva Goldsman on those very credits).  Literally every single thing that's given any weight in the film only has that weight for as long as it's convenient to the plot: not for it to be sensible within the framework of the plot, not to allow for proper, good movement forward, but purely convenience.  Oh, we want to investigate what might be a murder?  Sure, let's spend 30+ minutes on that and then forget all about it because having actual consequences is no longer convenient.  Want a town to hate and fear the witches?  Sure, until the crock-of-shit ending where they call in the same women who were afraid of them to help perform an exorcism because they need a circle, and hey, lookie, now they're universally beloved!  And that same exorcism has a brief prep session to it that I swear to God sounds like it's scored like a back-to-school or Christmas commercial, instead of sounding like they're building up TO AN EXORCISM.  Just what in the banana daiquiri fuck, people?  Plus it's one of those movies where you're sadly reminded that Nicole Kidman was once the most beautiful woman alive, prior to her tragic face-immobilizing accident of 2006 - and 2010 - and 2014 - and last year.

Hollywoodland - I can see why this got some of the bad reviews it got, but I think its biggest problem is that it's not a movie for everyone.  It's meant to toy with a certain type of mindset; if you're at all familiar with the term "gull-catching", this is a gull-catcher story.  And I can appreciate those for what they are.  I just wish they'd cast people other than Adrien Brody and Ben Affleck, who were not at their best here.  It leaves you with a fair bit to think about, if you keep the focus purely on George Reeves.  Brody's character, on the other hand, doesn't work well as the foil he's intended to be, and the ending feels unearned as a result.  The story is interesting, the script isn't terrible, and Diane Lane is probably the highlight, but this is pretty decidedly mediocre.

John Wick: Chapter 4 - I signed up for STARZ purely to watch this and The Equalizer.  And this film, let's face it, is The Equalizer: Volume Turned to 11.  It's simultaneously both far more ludicrous than the aforementioned movie and also somehow far more believable.  Obviously, Chad Stahelski has been in a vicious cycle of self-one-upsmanship since the first installment, and that does get pretty out of hand at times.  This likely needed one fewer big, bombastic, bugfuck crazy set piece to rein in how dumb it gets.  And yet, it kinda works, because if there's one thing Keanu Reeves has done through all these movies, it's that he's made the stunt work feel earned.  If nothing else, even when the madness goes from stimulating to numbing, it's oftentimes really fucking pretty to look at.  I could probably rewatch the top-down section every day and happily spend my time figuring out how they shot and assembled it.

Passengers - Oof.  The last gasp of Chris Pratt as Someone I Want to See Leading a Movie.  Sadly, this is a Hollywood movie, and every bad decision that goes along with that is plastered all over the last 40 minutes, which are just dumb and lazy and pointless compared to the far more interesting things they *might* have discussed if it had stayed focused on its initial questions.  But, like I said, Hollywood movie.  They're going to fuck up things like this; it's their job.  Still, though, that initial hour or so is pretty good, good enough to probably make the remainder watchable, and I'm not sure Pratt did better work outside the MCU.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - Sorry, but for as much as people talk about Tom Hanks like he's Mr. Rogers, he makes a really bad Mr. Rogers, as it turns out.  Matthew Rhys - a.k.a., Hangdog Sadboi - pretty much acts circles around him for the entire movie, while Hanks tries to seem congenial and compassionate, and it somehow just doesn't really work!  If anything, his whole schtick only seems as kind as it does because he has Hangdog Sadboi's cynicism to play off of for the whole film.  Otherwise, I dunno, man.  I watched Won't You Be My Neighbor? when it came out, and Hanks looks positively *malevolent* in this movie compared to the man himself.  If anyone besides Sadboi pulls their weight in a noteworthy manner, it's Chris Cooper, who knows what he's doing by now, piece-of-shit-dad-wise.  But you really are better off watching the documentary, which is genuinely eye-opening, even to someone like me who grew up thinking the guy was a waste of time and a square.  Plus this has a really irksome moment towards the middle that's just eye-roll-inducing to an absurd degree; the director must have thought it was "powerful" but someone at the studio really should have told her it was just cringe.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - Ah yes, so unbearable to be rich and famous, and go where you want, and do what you want, and get million-dollar offers for the dumbest reasons possible.  Yeah, sure, I get this is a lark and a send-up, but hey, I'd much rather have a cashier's check in my hand for the amount of whatever Cage's ridiculous fucking jewelry and wardrobe cost than watch this again, and I liked this movie.  There's a certain tone-deafness at play here that is hard to ignore, maybe in large part because the whole movie is screaming, "See, we're in on the joke, too!  Do you get it? DO YOU GET THE JOKE!?!?!?!?!" for 100 minutes when it's, you know, still about a spoiled rich guy at its core.  It's like trying to listen to Elon Musk tell the Pagliacci joke in full clown make-up and expect us to, what, think he's making the joke at his own expense?  That he's so sad, too?  Nah, fam.  But I can see why people liked it.  Pedro Pascal, on the other hand, may need to pump the fucking brakes pretty hard in the next year or two before he becomes just as "give them time to miss you"-averse as Cage is.

Edited by Contentious C
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Contentious C

Contentious C

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Posted (edited)

My issue wasn't how Cage played it, which was fine.  Go watch The Big Sick and tell me there isn't, as it turns out, a real craft to portraying yourself, since Kumail Nanjiali is easily the worst part of a movie about himself.  It's just...my ability to feel empathy for anyone's everyday struggles is inversely proportional to how much they got paid to be in Con-Air, man.

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clintthecrippler

clintthecrippler

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15 hours ago, Contentious C said:

John Wick: Chapter 4 - I signed up for STARZ purely to watch this and The Equalizer.  And this film, let's face it, is The Equalizer: Volume Turned to 11.  It's simultaneously both far more ludicrous than the aforementioned movie and also somehow far more believable.  Obviously, Chad Stahelski has been in a vicious cycle of self-one-upsmanship since the first installment, and that does get pretty out of hand at times.  This likely needed one fewer big, bombastic, bugfuck crazy set piece to rein in how dumb it gets.  And yet, it kinda works, because if there's one thing Keanu Reeves has done through all these movies, it's that he's made the stunt work feel earned.  If nothing else, even when the madness goes from stimulating to numbing, it's oftentimes really fucking pretty to look at.  I could probably rewatch the top-down section every day and happily spend my time figuring out how they shot and assembled it.

This scene in John Wick: Chapter 4 was legit one of my favorite action-movie set pieces in a long time. 

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Brian Fowler

Brian Fowler

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I'm way late on The Crow talk, and it's been years since I watched the three sequels, but I remember Salvation being relatively decent. Not an actual good movie, but far and away better than City of Angels which was itself far and away better than Wicked Prayer (even if I kinda dug Boreanaz basically playing Angelus for his villain turn.)

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Brian Fowler

Brian Fowler

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On the "best review site" discussion, normally I would highly recommend alternateending.com but right now the lead critic, Tim Brayton, is deep in the process of finishing his doctoral dissertation so reviews of new movies have basically vanished. 

Edited by Brian Fowler
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Brian Fowler

Brian Fowler

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10 hours ago, elizium said:

Don’t really have much to say about it, but I am really enjoying The Last Duel

Very good movie that got unfairly ignored by audiences.

Edited by Brian Fowler
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(BP)

(BP)

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Posted

I think the best thing they did with The Crow property after the first movie was the tv show, Stairway to Heaven. I’m a sucker for 90s syndicated garbage, and I liked that his powers and appearance kind of worked like The Incredible Hulk. Plus, Mark Dacascos was the ideal discount Eric Draven. 

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J.T.

J.T.

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On 10/18/2023 at 11:23 AM, Technico Support said:

For me, John Wick 1 is like Dexter season 4: It's better to pretend they stopped there.

Yeah, for me, The Matrix ends with Neo zooming up into the cyber sky and Wake Up by Rage playing during the end credits.

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Contentious C

Contentious C

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Yeah, movies.

eXistenZ - Here's what I wrote for Letterboxd; I think I may just end up taking nearly all my reviews from here and chucking them up there at some point, because at least it would sorta-kinda preserve them, but anyway, the movie...

This is what happens when you get super-baked, listen to "Virtual Insanity" by Jamiroquai on repeat far too many times, and then suddenly you think you have something important to say about technology and the future.  Also, David, your gastrointestinal tract is effectively a convoluted doughnut hole and not at all analogous to your idea of "bio-ports", but please, whenever you have any more ludicrous thoughts like this, be sure to cast Jennifer Jason Leigh in your films so she can open her mouth for us and tell us by proxy, "This is one of Mr. Cronenberg's badly thought-out ideas."

Additional notes: God this sucked.  That Criterion tried to call it a "spiritual successor" to Videodrome is insulting.  And there's one other thing this gets horribly wrong about VR or AR and probably always will: People.  Don't.  Like.  Pain.  Sorry, C-berg, but you're a lot more alone on Masochism Island than you think, and any altered "reality" can only be "deformed" as far as can be taken without pain and suffering as the natural leavener of our happiness.  The best games, et al, can manage to do is merely manipulate our dopamine schedule, and denying pleasure through operant conditioning isn't truly the same thing.  Massive fail on the part of this movie to have skipped reading, I don't know, ANY actual psychology or game theory (and plenty of it existed by the late 90s).  No, let's just, I dunno, have Jude Law lick some surgery holes instead.

The Green Knight - OK, other than *that* scene, this was EXACTLY what I've wanted from an Arthurian tale for so long.  The only director besides David Lowery who could have pulled this off is Robert Eggers, which you can probably guess from the prominent roles played by Kate Dickie and Ralph Ineson.  Jesus tapdancing Christ this is just a stunningly gorgeous movie; there was one of the forest scenes that looked a bit rough - I think it may have been because my TV is probably 60Hz and if the scene was shot at 24, it would have likely played better on a 120Hz screen - but otherwise it's just a gob-stoppingly beautiful piece of work.  On more than one level, it may also remind you of Justin Kurzel's Macbeth from 2015, which looks too good to be real and yet too real to believe it could be so pretty.  But what this has that Macbeth didn't is a better grasp on the subtext, even as the end of this film goes the "Macbeth" route in one sequence.  There's so much to dig into about masculinity, courage, history, vulnerability, truth...they could have called this The Onion Knight and it would have been apropos, too, since there is a lot to peel back and think about.  Still not better than Drive My Car, but possibly a step or two ahead of everything else from 2021.

The King of Comedy - This is available on Youtube for FREE, for God's sake, so you should watch this at your earliest convenience.  We're all familiar with "cringe comedy" nowadays, what with Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, BoJack Horseman, Rick & Morty and a dozen other things that have littered the landscape over the last 20+ years, but this, in its own way, is truly the king.  I have a lot of, um, feelings about Robert DeNiro, and most of them end with "Man, I am so sick of him being in everything and being *praised* in everything."  Some of his most famous roles - such as the clearly influential Travis Bickle - are things I can take or leave.  But Wow WOW WOWOWOWOWOWOW is he good here.  I don't think this is a better film, start to finish, than Raging Bull was, but DeNiro is at least as good here as he was in the former film.  It takes a tremendous performance - and maybe an even more tremendous script - to take a delusional comedian and make him quite possibly the least funny person in the history of film.  You truly get more laughs out of every protagonist in every Dumpster Fire film I've ever talked about, even if all you're doing is laughing at instead of laughing with. 

You don't even get the opportunity to laugh at Rupert Pupkin.  It's too absurd.  And that goes on and on and ON for nearly the whole movie, and yet you never (or, I should say, you *should* never) lose your empathy for the character.  He's so pathetic, so broken, so deluded, that Rupert becomes a barometer of your own humanity: the longer you can watch the car crash happening, and the longer you can still feel how terrible it all is, moment by moment as it spirals out of control, the more in-touch with your fellow man's plight you probably are.

But, I think this might also be where "Robert DeNiro as" basically starts, in the same way "Al Pacino as" happens in, oh, The Devil's Advocate or "Jack as" stinking up The Witches of Eastwick and every rom-com he's done as a gross old man.  Because yeah, you can see Robert pulling a LOT from Travis Bickle and repurposing it.  It works, but he also pushed as hard as anyone to get this movie made in the first place, so you can tell it comes from a place of caring about the authenticity of the performance.  Afterwards?  Well, uh, nobody needed 3 "Meet the" movies, buddy, but I guess you never saw a paycheck you didn't like. 

But anyway, the rest of this is pretty special, too.  Jerry Lewis was inspired casting, playing 1000% against what you think you know him as to end up as this bitter, furious guy whose life, frankly, is just as broken and just as lonely as Rupert's.  There are a couple of times where Lewis oozes so much malevolence that you're certain he's about to go berzerk.  And the ending...I'm still kind of in awe of it.  The film really, truly, entirely commits to a bit, and it ends with quite the punchline.  This is one of the most uncomfortable things you could possibly watch, but it's also somehow just as revealing and compelling as it is hard to stomach.

Edited by Contentious C
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J.T.

J.T.

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I think the best thing about The Green Knight is how it subverts everything we've learned in school about epic poems and all that stuff about the hero's journey.
 

Spoiler

When it comes down to it, Gawain is just a guy.  He's not particularly noble or heroic and he revels in the irresponsibility that he assumes should come with his privileged station in life.  Gawain takes up the Green Knight's challenge mostly to impress Arthur and has no idea what he's getting himself into.  When Gawain realizes he's signed his own death warrant, the real Gawain comes out.

Our heads filled with romantic notions, we all assume that this epic journey will somehow magically transform Gawain into the honorable and brave knight we all expect him to become and at the crucial moment we learn that not only has Gawain remained the same person he ever was, he will become an even worse person and a despot once he takes the throne and becomes king

Then you are left wondering what Gawain's motives were for resigning himself to his fate and receiving the Green Knight's return blow.  Does Gawain do it to honor his end of the bargain and prove his strength of character by saving Camelot from his own reign of terror, or is he merely committing suicide by foe and sparing himself the misery of his future life?

 

Edited by J.T.
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HarryArchieGus

HarryArchieGus

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I'd be more likely to suggest 'King of Comedy' is his most underrated feature, but always love seeing it's champions pass the word along with fan fervor. I don't think I've screened or shared that movie with anyone that didn't love it. It's lack of fanfare on arrival is kind of indicative of where the film industry and filmgoers were at in 1982 more so than it's high quality. 

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Contentious C

Contentious C

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Posted

The one thing about Pupkin I was kinda laughing at the whole time had, I guess, not a lot to do with him specifically, but the notion of him.  Here is:

- a New Yorker

- who is always seen in a suit

- with a ridiculous, immobile helmet style of hair

- who lives in his own fantasy world where he is certain he could be universally beloved.

I wonder where we've seen that before.   I wonder...

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