Movie 2023 MOVIE DISCUSSION THREAD

[J.T.]

Killers of the Flower Moon was one of the best movies I've ever seen.  Thank God it rained last night so I was unable to set any tire fires in the parking lot.

I did hurl my car keys when I got into the house.  Now I have to patch the hole in the dry wall.

[Contentious C]

Hey hey, it's that time of year when my brain gets utterly stuck on a thing and can't let it go whatsoever, so I'm making that everyone else's problem (assuming you read this and assuming you give a shit, which are two godawful assumptions).

Here's a repost of the "Tip of my Tongue" movie that was unfortunately seared into 9-year-old me's brain and I kind of wish I could forget - second-best option is actually finding out WHAT FUCKING MOVIE THIS IS.

I'm not sure why that has to embed that way.  Yes, my Reddit username is a shortened form of "kathleenturneroverdrive". 

Anyway, I *also* have a second movie I haven't been able to place, but I figured someone among the many many horror weirdos could actually nail this one down quick-ish.

I want to say there was a pretty cruddy sci-fi/horror movie in the mid 1980s that has an early scene of the main character talking to whoever has captured them inside of a, I dunno, spaceship?  Some underground thing?  Something.  It's a bit body-snatcher-ish and a bit not, I just remember it being kind of big and organic and purple while being too cheap to rip off anyone good like Carpenter or Giger.  But the plot of the movie, um, then happens, which I recall absolutely nothing about, because it probably sucked, and then the big twist at the end is something like he was still trapped the whole time, or he thought he got away but they bamboozled him into getting stuck once more.  Point being it was one of those swerve endings that feels totally unearned.  I really wish I could at least remember who was in it. 

I'm probably Mandela Effect-ing this crap at this point, but better to get it out of my head and hope someone knows something I don't.

[Leonidas]

KOTFM was indeed one of the best movies I've ever seen as well. 

The only two negatives are the length, while it didn't feel like there was too much filler it could have been 30 minutes shorter without losing much context, and secondly, the ages of Leo/DeNiro were wildly wrong. You'd probably only know this if you'd read the book. Still, again DeNiro looks every bit 80 years old in this when Hale was actually only in his 50s during this time meaning Leo could've realistically played him, who did not look like a WW1 veteran in his 20s either. 

Other than that it was perfect in tone, colour and acting all the way through. The secondary characters look like they had been cast by the Coen's casting director and if it wasn't for the camera being in constant motion a lot of this movie felt like No Country at its best moments. Brendan Fraser in his very small role stole the courtroom scenes and his talking down to Ernest was so convincing I felt personally attacked when he called him a DUMB BOY as the camera was almost POV.

Whilst Scorsese has been quite meta in his last two movies I would say this is better than the Irishman and I loved that too. Confident that this will easily hold up against his most well-known and acclaimed works.

[AxB]

I watched a movie CJ Perry was in. Wifelike (2022), starring Johnathon Rhys Meyers and Elena Kampouris. It was... OK. It was very similar to Ex Machina, and the TV show Humans. It's about a company that makes robot AI replica wives for widowers, but there's protests against it because the AIs are sentient and the antis are thinking it's like slavery.

Elena Kampouris is really good in it, in a double role playing the robot version of Meredith, but also the actual human one in flashback. But it's one of those movies that's all about how male cruelty and inhumanity to women, that chooses to male gaze it by casting lots of models and dressing them mostly in lingerie.

[odessasteps]

Skipped the Marty movie to have time to play Starfeld and get my Movie Club written review done. Might still do it as a podcast.

[Contentious C]

On 10/20/2023 at 10:08 AM, J.T. said:

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.
 

  Reveal hidden contents

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?

 

I went back and read up on what's been said of the poem itself, just to see what it was all about and how much it aligned with the film, and it's refreshing to know George Martin got beaten to the punch by about 700 years.  That first shot you see of Arthur and Guinevere really says it all: frail, breaking if not yet broken, clinging to one last ember of a spark of actual life to try to recall what got them there in the first place.  And they were the lucky ones.

[Curt McGirt]

Went to see Killers with my dad and just got back. We both liked it though yeah, we were gone for four hours (oofta). I'm not sure how you could cut it down, and in fact I expected more from the courtroom and we thankfully didn't (there is probably cross-examination on the cutting room floor). Speaking of the courtroom, how many lawyers has Lithgow played? I got Perry Mason's HBO reboot and some TV comedy from a quick Googling; anyway, damn was he made to play a lawyer. That erudide, almost mocking diction of his is/was perfect. Lily Gladstone was really the rock of the film, it lived and died on her, no matter what stupid, evil shit was going on around her. She was the movie's representative for the whole Osage Nation and all the horrible shit done to them. Very important, and if her acting didn't work, the film wouldn't. She did so it did. It certainly wasn't hanging on DeNiro doing his DeNiro and DiCaprio playing dumb and frowning the whole time. Probably my favorite scene, and the most emotional one, was the conference with the Osage leaders and colleagues. The Osage guy with the Southern accent just layed it the fuck down, unknowing that their enemy, though he called them by name, were sitting right in their midst. He thought he was among friends and allies even though they were white; he was dead wrong. It's a tragedy. 

Another note about DeNiro, he was too old in this role but I also read the book The Irishman was based on, and man was he REALLY too old for most of that role. Honestly, Jesse Plemons probably deserved that role. And of course Plemons killed it again here. Funny thing I thought of in the car: here, DiCaprio played the role that Plemons played in Breaking Bad of a guy beholden to his evil uncle that somehow doesn't understand how fucking crazy and awful all this is. Granted, Todd was a true sociopath albeit an unaware one and Ernest was just a stupid pawn, but it's a funny connection.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Curt McGirt

[Curt McGirt]

Man, here's another complaint about The Irishman. In the book, Frank Sheeran still has entree in mob circles well into his nursing home years. As he says in the book, "my trigger finger still works". There was no sense of threat to him in his later years and honestly in most of the film. DeNiro just played him wrong. That guy in real life was fucking scary. 

[The Comedian]

15 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Man, here's another complaint about The Irishman. In the book, Frank Sheeran still has entree in mob circles well into his nursing home years. As he says in the book, "my trigger finger still works". There was no sense of threat to him in his later years and honestly in most of the film. DeNiro just played him wrong. That guy in real life was fucking scary. 

Yeah DeNiro is the worst part of The Irishman, which kinda sucks since he's the lead. Semi-retired Pesci acts circles around him. Pacino may bluster a lot in his old age but he still has that gravitas. And Keitel shows up for one scene and knocks it out the park. But hey, to this day Mean Streets is still my favorite Scorcese film. I don't think he's ever filmed a cooler scene than Keitel dancing into David Proval's bar. 

[Curt McGirt]

Another thing is that Frank Sheeran was a guy who could knock you out with one punch, and could relate the physics of it. He mostly drank, fought, and fucked when he wasn't doing union work, i.e. stealing. This is a guy who worked as a carny who lost his virginity to the gypsy women, and was Catholic so he'd never jerked off beforehand. I mean, there are some stories in that book. 

[J.H.]

Tonight after I get off work I'm sitying down with chicken parm s hero and watching Point Blank. I'm a fan of both director John Boorman and star Lee Marvin so I'm in good hands methinks.

Since it's pretty much Payback but by all accounts better I'm just assuming it is some sort of biography of Lee Marvin's life since he goes around shooting and beating the crap out of people

James

Edited October 24, 2023 by J.H.

[Curt McGirt]

That was on TCM again recently. Love the ending. 

[Contentious C]

Welp, managed to solve Mystery # 2 of the ones I listed earlier on this page: the movie in question was almost certainly Invaders from Mars, which would have been very much on TV at the time.  I'm sure plenty of the horror nuts here have seen it and have an opinion.  I may just watch it tonight and make sure.

Now if only someone could tell about the 70s/80s hostage movie where some poor dark-haired, bearded schmuck wrestles with the hostage takers, gets gutshot by a machine gun, and then slowly bleeds out while they half-assedly send one of the kidnappers and one of the hostages in a car to fetch a doctor, I could stop obsessing over bad movies I've already seen and complain more about bad movies I'm currently watching!

[Contentious C]

OK, movies.

Gigli - Oh look, Ben Affleck's magical lesbian-curing penis strikes again!  Actually, you know what?  If the title of this pile of trash had been, Oh Look, Ben Affleck's Magical Lesbian-Curing Penis Strikes Again! then this would have garnered exactly *one* laugh from me, which is exactly one more than it has garnered in the last 20 years from anyone.  I didn't really think it was possible for a movie with this bad of a reputation to live up to that, but holy shit, did it!  The only reason this isn't firmly, FIRMLY entrenched in the discussion for Worst Movie of All Time is because of Christopher Walken; he's only there for 3 minutes, and it's really too bad we never circle back to his character, because GODDAMN they wasted enough time on enough other dumbass bullshit, but Walken makes a pretty good "I'm the shark circling the drop of blood you left behind" cop.  Well, and maybe the "rip that takes the past" line was OK, but it's just too bad that line got wasted on THIS FUCKING MOVIE, instead of being, I don't know, ANYWHERE ELSE.  Mad mad mad props to First-Generation Bennifer for being such a disaster of a couple that they created this supermassive black hole of on-screen chemistry, even while Jennifer Lopez is basically begging you to stare at her crotch for literally 5 minutes straight during one scene. 

The Big Easy - Oh man.  Maybe this is the Terrible Casting Edition here, because Dennis Quaid doing a Cajun accent is about as bad as...well, Dennis Quaid trying to act in any other manner conceivable, since if he's not grinning that fucking mile-wide shark grin, no one wants to see him do ANYTHING.  But he's really a special kind of awful here.  Poor Ellen Barkin; she really tries (though why is beyond me, since she's the only one) but this doesn't work at all for the first hour.  It starts to get, I dunno, pointed somewhere other than "insultingly stupid" for about 15 minutes once the plot of the film fully unwinds itself and some things with actual stakes start happening.  But, after that, it just sprints into "let's wrap this up 80s style" mode to finish it off, and of course Barkin's character Stockholm Syndromes herself in the process.  Never mind that the movie's got about 6 different misogynistic, disgusting moments where she ought to haul off and deck half the cops around her, like a proto-Karrin Murphy from the Dresden Files books, but instead she FaLlS iN lOvE and that's somehow a better ending than slapping some cuffs on the entire corrupt NOPD. 

Where the Buffalo Roam - Did you know there was a Hunter S. Thompson movie made prior to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?  You didn't?  Would you like to go back to thinking Terry Gilliam's film was the only one??  Me too!  This is the only time I've ever heard Bill Murray try to do a voice.  I'm not sure if that's a measure of the exact extent to which he was interested in making any real effort as an actor (died 1980, if so), or if he *actually* respected Thompson and wanted to sound something like him, but...yeah, this has basically nothing going for it.  I think even without the last 40+ years of Murray playing an over-the-top doofball, this would still just seem like "Bill acting like a douchebag and we're supposed to think it's funny" even with only Stripes, Caddyshack, and Meatballs as context, rather than believably playing a part.  The only time the script is remotely interesting is during a far-too-short Q&A section near the end, and otherwise it's bland in every aspect, except for how it expects you to react, "Ooh!  Ooh!  He's doing something zany~!" every 2 minutes.  I'm not really a Johnny Depp fan by any means, but at least Gilliam made you feel something.

Malone - I don't know why I ended up watching this Burt Reynolds turd, but *sigh* there went 90 minutes of my life.  Basically the premise and execution of the movie are like if Glenn Beck had written Road House.  It's every bit as bad in the ways you'd expect it to be bad, but instead of being lovably hokey, it's self-serious and paranoid and fucking weird and at times rather gross.  Cynthia Gibb was maybe 23 when this movie came out, and Reynolds had to be 50, but they had her play a high school-ish kid who develops a crush on him and also comes out of the bathroom in just a t-shirt to seduce him or something toward the middle of the movie.  Thankfully he says no, but then before the finale, he *kisses her on the fucking mouth in front of her father*.  Good one, Eighties.   Really.  And not even 10 years later, the same guy would be playing the Striptease creep with about 1000 times more believability.

8 Million Ways to Die - OK, I only watched this because Hal Ashby's name was on it, until I realized this was his last Hollywood film, and he was actually fired from this movie because his drug problems were already getting out of hand.  Oddly enough, the last thing Ashby directed was a TV show with Graham Chapman, that was also the last thing Chapman starred in; two 70s icons going out with a whimper way too soon.  But anyway, yeah...this is also Not a Good Movie.  I mean, compared to everything else I watched this weekend, it was practically King Lear but it's still crap even for a noir.  Hell, even for an Eighties Jeff Bridges Thriller, which he did approximately 6000 of, this isn't good.  I'd rather watch Against All Odds than this any day of the week.  Cutter's Way was not good but is probably still better than this.  The only bits that really work are when either Jeff Bridges and Andy Garcia are yelling at each other, or when Jeff Bridges and Rosanna Arquette are yelling at each other to defuse the fact that they want to jump into bed.  The rest of this tries at times to be kind of grimy but then also tries too hard for a redemption arc, and even that seems ham-fisted and barely thought-out.  Why would the LA Sheriff's office work such a sloppy bust with an ex-officer?  And so part of the ending is crazy and over-the-top, but then the final resolution is just focus-group-tested and lame in comparison, and it just feels cheap.

Edited October 25, 2023 by Contentious C

[elizium]

5 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Welp, managed to solve Mystery # 2 of the ones I listed earlier on this page: the movie in question was almost certainly Invaders from Mars, which would have been very much on TV at the time.  I'm sure plenty of the horror nuts here have seen it and have an opinion.  I may just watch it tonight and make sure.

Now if only someone could tell about the 70s/80s hostage movie where some poor dark-haired, bearded schmuck wrestles with the hostage takers, gets gutshot by a machine gun, and then slowly bleeds out while they half-assedly send one of the kidnappers and one of the hostages in a car to fetch a doctor, I could stop obsessing over bad movies I've already seen and complain more about bad movies I'm currently watching!

Rereading your post, Invaders from Mars definitely sounds right. It has been a few years since I've watched it, maybe 7 or 8 years ago, but I really enjoyed it on rewatch. I think it works as a horror movie for kids and its an interesting tangent in Tobe Hooper's career. I saw it the first time when I was like 6 and it scared the shit out of me. I really dig the design of the main alien, kind of a Krang crossed with a turtle thing.

[Contentious C]

Boy, you're really not going to like what I sent to RIPPA as a bonus review.

[elizium]

Going to Killers of the Flower Moon Saturday night, so I don't have much longer to avoid spoilers.

Will be a decent day, it's also the Winnipeg Comic Con this weekend. Maybe I'm too used to going to indie wrestling shows where $20 gets you an autographed 8x10 and a selfie and a hug from Zicky Dice or whoever. I am not paying $100 for an autograph from Giancarlo Esposito, no matter how cool he is.

[Curt McGirt]

Whew, the Where the Buffalo Roam Wiki is worth reading. But, Re: Bill and Hunter

Quote

During production, Murray and Thompson engaged in a series of dangerous one-upmanship contests. "One day at Thompson's Aspen, Colorado home, after many drinks and after much arguing over who could out-Houdini whom, Thompson tied Billy to a chair and threw him into the swimming pool. Billy nearly drowned before Thompson pulled him out."[7] Murray immersed himself in the character so deeply that when Saturday Night Live started its fifth season, Murray was still in character as Thompson. "In a classic case of the role overtaking the actor, Billy returned that fall to Saturday Night so immersed in playing Hunter Thompson he had virtually become Hunter Thompson, complete with long black cigarette holder, dark glasses, and nasty habits. 'Billy,' said one of the writers, echoing several others, 'was not Bill Murray, he was Hunter Thompson. You couldn't talk to him without talking to Hunter Thompson.'"[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Buffalo_Roam

Of note, I'm re-reading some Hunter from the late '80s, covering stuff like Iran-Contra, the Gary Hart and Jim Bakker scandals, etc. He had the devolution of politics with PACs and such nailed from the jump.

[Contentious C]

"Before principal photography, (the director) took a four-month crash course in directing" is not a phrase you want attached to any movie, unless you're Sam Raimi and then you made Evil Dead.

[Curt McGirt]

Even Raimi made a test-run on Evil Dead with Within the Woods.

[odessasteps]

The Big Easy does at least have a great soundtrack.

[J.H.]

Point Blank was really good, Lee Marvin such a no bullshit leading man. Even when he smiles Marvin looks grim and determined. 

Hey! Carol O'Connor!

Yeah, I just sat back and enjoyed this while chomping on hot sauce/cheese popcorn and Mr. Pibb

James

[Craig H]

On 10/22/2023 at 9:05 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Man, here's another complaint about The Irishman. In the book, Frank Sheeran still has entree in mob circles well into his nursing home years. As he says in the book, "my trigger finger still works". There was no sense of threat to him in his later years and honestly in most of the film. DeNiro just played him wrong. That guy in real life was fucking scary. 

I thought the Irishman pretty much sucked except for any scene with Pesci in it. De-aged DeNiro at the beginning trying to act tough, but moving like a stiff old man because, well, despite de-aging he's a very stiff old man, was not imposing at all. There's that early scene where he beats up someone outside of a restaurant or something and it just looks really bad. Maybe the book is very good, but I felt the movie really wasn't. I mean, Anna Paquin has all of, what, one line? In a 3 hour movie? 

Still looking forward to watching Killers of the Flower Moon because I did read that, but I'm not prepared for the sense of anger or sadness it's going to leave me with. I'm guessing it's probably going to leave me feeling the same way I felt after watching BlacKKKlansman, which was wanting to burn everything to the ground.

[Craig H]

Oh, and because I watch terrible movies so no one else has to, I watched No Hard Feelings. What a shit show this movie was. It was equal parts really fucking stupid and not in a funny way and pretty depressing. There was almost nothing I laughed at. I laughed at the naked beach fight and a line Jennifer Lawrence had near the end of the movie. The rest of it was such a fucking downer. It felt like it had more to do with depression and loneliness and the writers thought that would be funny or something. It also has my second most hated trope of beautiful young women that look really young being called old by kids who are being played by adult actors. Any time Jennifer Lawrence's character is around her assignment's peers, they all call her mom and talk about how old she looks. She looks fucking younger than they do. For what it's worth, my most hated movie trope are scenes in hospitals at night where nearly all the lights are off on the floor and there is not a soul to be found. THAT'S NOT HOW ANY HOSPITAL WORKS. It's not like it turns 9 pm and only one person is on duty in the nurse's station. There are still nurses everywhere because they're waking you up all night long to take your blood pressure or do whatever the fuck. It would be glorious if that's how hospitals did work and they let you sleep except for, you know, patients are in hospitals and need round the clock care. I really fucking hate that in movies. Looking at you Scream 5, Happy Death Day, and plenty of other movies that do that.

Jennifer Lawrence was way too talented to be in a movie like No Hard Feelings. She needs a better agent or script reader.

[Mister TV]

13 hours ago, Contentious C said:

The Big Easy - Oh man.  Maybe this is the Terrible Casting Edition here, because Dennis Quaid doing a Cajun accent is about as bad as...well, Dennis Quaid trying to act in any other manner conceivable, since if he's not grinning that fucking mile-wide shark grin, no one wants to see him do ANYTHING.  But he's really a special kind of awful here.  Poor Ellen Barkin; she really tries (though why is beyond me, since she's the only one) but this doesn't work at all for the first hour.  It starts to get, I dunno, pointed somewhere other than "insultingly stupid" for about 15 minutes once the plot of the film fully unwinds itself and some things with actual stakes start happening.  But, after that, it just sprints into "let's wrap this up 80s style" mode to finish it off, and of course Barkin's character Stockholm Syndromes herself in the process.  Never mind that the movie's got about 6 different misogynistic, disgusting moments where she ought to haul off and deck half the cops around her, like a proto-Karrin Murphy from the Dresden Files books, but instead she FaLlS iN lOvE and that's somehow a better ending than slapping some cuffs on the entire corrupt NOPD. 

Quaid pretty much used the same accent in Everybody's All-American, which I remember being so bad it was funny.