Movie 2023 MOVIE DISCUSSION THREAD

[Curt McGirt]

I rewatched most of it on TV recently and though it was a hot mess those effects were so gnarly. Freddy without the glove and just the finger-knives, the face in the torso, the exit from the body. Englund's makeup wasn't so streamlined yet so he looked like probably the scariest version they ever did. 

[Contentious C]

Yeah, yeah.

Blair Witch - Ah yes, nothing like yet another pointless sequel at least 10 years too late.  At least it doesn't try to be a more conventional movie and then utterly, totally, completely, horrifically suck the way Book of Shadows did.  But this doesn't really have anything going for it that wasn't more or less lifted from the first film.  Watch that instead if it still does it for you.  This isn't worth the time unless you really like Callie Hernandez, or, like me, you were bugged by Letterboxd telling you you hadn't finished all the Blair Witch movies (OK, OK, maybe the first reason counts a little, too).

Fearless - One of Peter Weir's movies you don't hear people talking about, but then again, it isn't quite as visually stunning as Picnic at Hanging Rock, or as epic as Master & Commander, or as bonkers as The Truman Show.  And it isn't as good as any of those three, either, so there's that.  But it still has a few moments where the visuals are compelling, the sound design and scoring are eerie and unsettling, and the acting is mostly strong, with a few smaller, memorable roles from the likes of Tom Hulce and Benicio del Toro.  The ending is a massive cop-out, though, and doesn't work well considering the tone of the rest of the film.  That said, the first third or so of the finishing sequence is pretty amazing to watch.  And this isn't just a movie about grief or life or death; it's just as much, if not more, about the little deaths we all experience every time we aren't true to ourselves, or when injustice is done, or when we don't give voice to the things we know to be real.  Maybe not great, but a thinker.

Addicted to Love - Ah yes, Sam and Maggie, the inaugural and founding members of Doctor Pepper's Clinically Insane Hearts Club Band*.  Let's celebrate the incredible love affair of two psychotic stalkers who break all sorts of laws, assault people on a routine basis, and squat in an abandoned hovel!  Somehow I backed my way into watching yet another Griffin Dunne-directed movie, and yet if there's anything really screwed-up about this, it's that he cast his own father in the movie and then had the old man eat a damn cockroach.  Talk about having issues.  But at the end of the day, all four of the main characters are either written to be utterly insane or appallingly stupid, so maybe they deserve to just form a...uh, well...it's obviously not a throuple, so I guess a fourple?  Whatever kitchen table ENM situationship you want to call it, just so long as they quit bothering anyone else, anywhere else.  Buncha creeps.

* - All 23 flavors may not be covered by most health insurance plans.

Cast a Deadly Spell - The first 3 minutes of this made me cringe extra-hard, and, granted, if you've watched as much noir as I have, the script may still make you do that, since it's straight from Baby's First Cut-and-Paste Noir Screenplay, but it's got its moments where it rises above the B-movie, direct-to-video nature of its beginnings.  Mostly it's due to Fred Ward getting in some noteworthy zingers throughout.  Plus, his character is named after H.P. Lovecraft, and yet he has to frequently rely upon the kindness of his Black landlord and one of the major plot points involves a cross-dresser, so I'm sure the actual Lovecraft was doing quadruple axles in his grave after this came out.  But hey, fuck that guy.  Mostly it's just the right sort of cheesy, and it's occasionally wickedly funny, if not scary at any point whatsoever.  It's not the worst way to spend 90 minutes if you just want a laugh.

Bullet to the Head - This, on the other hand...ugh.  Yet another film (much like Die in a Gunfight) where the title references the best practices available to anyone who actually involved themselves in making this turd.  Terrible acting, terrible script, racist all day long: the number of things wrong with this could fill the Grand Canyon before the number of things right with it filled a thimble.  And somehow Walter Hill directed it, but it seems like it was shot on digital film, because FUUUUUCK it looks ugly.  I've never thought Hill's movies were great by any means, but this thing is just visually insulting.  It's like a cruddy CBS acronym TV show (or, for brevity's sake, a CBS show).  It's got a bunch of try-hard transitions between scenes that look stupid, and these weird "data-dump" moments about the various criminals that are a complete waste of time unless you're, again, trying way too hard to seem modern for evidently no good reason at all.  I really wonder if this is Stallone's worst movie.  It might be.

The axe fight scene's kinda dope, though.

[(BP)]

Cast a Deadly Spell has a loose sequel directed by Paul Schrader called Witch Hunt that I remember liking. Dennis Hopper plays Lovecraft. 

[Technico Support]

On 11/25/2023 at 2:14 AM, Contentious C said:

 

The Devil Wears Prada - Why did Meryl Streep get nominated for this, again, when about a dozen different women could have done the same role the same w--oh, she's Meryl Streep, that's why.  Emily Blunt is pretty clearly the MVP in this, even though the garish eye shadow and frilly bullshit dresses and hair dye occasionally make her look like a peacock from one of Syd Barrett's LSD flashbacks.  The ending is both obvious and maddening (in a good way, I guess), since The Wide-Eyed Protagonist Learns Her Lesson, but oooooooooh, the shit that has to happen to get there makes just about everyone in existence unhappy, and that takes some doing.  But honestly, I watched about half an hour or so of this maybe 10 years ago, and then I turned it off once I realized it was just a movie, and not a horror movie where Meryl Streep actually is the devil, like a distaff Witches of Eastwick or something.  Not bad once I adjusted my expectations, though I don't get the people who love it.

I loathe this movie.  It's so blantantly anti-labor, pro management that it feels like propaganda.  Meryl Streep's character is a total piece of shit and is horrible to everyone, but is painted as an anithero and gets zero comeuppance or character development.   She's characterized as a driven badass instead of the abusive terror she is.  Hathaway's character becomes a horrible person as well, yet most discussion I see relating to this film is how she was fine and that her friends are the ones who were unfair to her.  There's a scene where she's chewed out by Streep and she looks for a sympathetic ear in the form of Stanley Tucci's character.  Instead, he, too, tears her down and gives her the "stop complaining...you should be thankful to be here" speech, which is treated as sage advice instead of as something horrible.  As I said, it's so fiercely anti-worker.  Aside from that, it's just poorly-conceived and muddled.  What is this movie trying to say?  The ending feels so tacked on and Hathaway gets some perfunctory growth, I guess, while all the other pieces on the board have moved roughly an inch.  Just a godawful film.

 

On 12/3/2023 at 12:27 AM, Contentious C said:

Bullet to the Head - This, on the other hand...ugh.  Yet another film (much like Die in a Gunfight) where the title references the best practices available to anyone who actually involved themselves in making this turd.  Terrible acting, terrible script, racist all day long: the number of things wrong with this could fill the Grand Canyon before the number of things right with it filled a thimble.  And somehow Walter Hill directed it, but it seems like it was shot on digital film, because FUUUUUCK it looks ugly.  I've never thought Hill's movies were great by any means, but this thing is just visually insulting.  It's like a cruddy CBS acronym TV show (or, for brevity's sake, a CBS show).  It's got a bunch of try-hard transitions between scenes that look stupid, and these weird "data-dump" moments about the various criminals that are a complete waste of time unless you're, again, trying way too hard to seem modern for evidently no good reason at all.  I really wonder if this is Stallone's worst movie.  It might be.

The axe fight scene's kinda dope, though.

I just watched this and holy fuck, it feels like an unreleased 80s movie someone found in a studio vault and decided to put out.

• Stallone doing Stallone things and being roided the fuck up
• Non white partner who is the butt of constant racist jokes
• Hero has a sister or daughter he's trying to keep people from fucking
• Evil rich guys doing evil rich guy things
• Bad guy henchman who is built up as the final boss
• Walter Hill

It's so aggressively average that my reaction after watching was just, "okay then."

Edited December 5, 2023 by Technico Support

[Curt McGirt]

Huh. Prometheus is an Xmas movie. 

Not a bad reason to rewatch it honestly. I did that recently and it's really quite good. 

[The Comedian]

I loved Prometheus when I saw it in the theater. Fassbender is incredible in it. Probably didn't hurt that I had recently inhaled the entire "Dragon Tattoo" trilogy at the time and was in love with Noomi Rapace. 

[Technico Support]

Something something scientists removing their helmets something something running in a straight line from a space tire etc

[Contentious C]

Welp.

Fish Tank - I suppose they called it Fish Tank because Chav Petting Zoo would have been too on-the-nose.  But, holy crap. There have been a lot of female coming-of-age movies in the last 20 years-ish, so this is familiar territory in a lot of respects.  Where this differs from, say, Girlhood or Rosetta is that it goes the full 2 hours without feeling like it's at all repetitive. Even the revisits to one key locale have new developments each time and represent the progression that Mia herself either has already undergone or has to learn to accept. The emotional climax is close to perfect: nothing said, because all the awful, awful, selfish, destructive, insane actions speak so much louder anyway, and if two terrible people were ever closer to being even in a fictional setting, I haven't seen them.

I'm not sure this is *quite* as good as those other two movies; Sciamma's movie for being uplifting and the Dardenne's movie for being a breakthrough, but this fits well along that spectrum, along with things like the more recent Mickey and the Bear. Uncomfortable but essential.

Pitch Perfect - Yep, I'd never seen this.  It's...I mean, it's OK.  In some ways it feels like it's supposed to be inclusive, but in plenty of others it feels cheap and stereotypical and insulting.  The musical bits are actually rather good, and I guess that's a positive contribution, given it's, you know, a musical, so good on them for getting the one thing right that they really had to.  But the next college freshman I meet who is as self-possessed as Anna Kendrick will probably also be 27 (or older) themselves.  It's a little weird as well to cast your male romantic lead and then cast another guy to be his roommate who basically looks like the ugly version of him: I couldn't unsee the similarities and it surprises me that anyone else can.  Then again, I'm not face-blind.  Maybe Anna Kendrick's character is supposed to be.

That Thing You Do! - Ugh, including that exclamation point kind of makes me want to die.  As for the movie: mehhh.  See above, only duller and with fewer good songs. It starts off boring as all get-out and becomes marginally less boring, while hitting every trope it possibly can along the way. Hopefully those watching it today who might be in some form of entertainment or content production realize that their businesses are still 1-million-percent this shady and awful at every conceivable turn.  I'm glad that (ostensibly) Tom Hanks is done writing and directing movies.  Really, feel free to stop at Larry Crowne, buddy.

The Avengers (1998) - Yeah, so, uh, not the good one. Jesus. I didn't think this would really be that bad, and then it was worse.

Let's take every jokey-ass, badly designed Roger Moore Bond movie and roll them into one, but without any interesting set pieces, no charisma, no good dialogue, not even any reasonable amount of exposition to explain the many things that are just left unremarked-upon (What external reason was there for a weather shield in the first place? Why was Wynter obsessed with clones who happened to look like Peel? Why does this branch of intelligence seem to have exactly THREE field operatives and the Big Bad has exactly TWO goons?).

Do you want to know how utterly ill-conceived this movie is? They have EDDIE IZZARD in the film and she doesn't have a SINGLE line of dialogue (other than an "Oh fuck" that sounds like it got snuck in during ADR). Because Heaven forfend that someone in the movie manages to be FUNNY. She could have shat out her worst improv and it would have been orders of magnitude funnier than anything written for this movie. I'm surprised they didn't cast James Earl Jones and Clancy Brown for some minor roles and then tell the both of them to shut the fuck up, too, just to complete the hat trick.

There are only three positive things about this movie: Uma Thurman in incredibly tight pants (aka, the only reason anyone paid to see it in the first place); the very brief Escher-like stair maze sequence; and, now that I've seen it, I never have to watch it again.  A persistent contender for one of the worst movies ever made, and deservedly so.  But I do imagine Kenneth Branagh saw this after getting the Artemis Fowl job and said, "Hold my beer."

Bodies Bodies Bodies - Once I started spinning my wheels on how this could have unfolded, I somehow didn't manage to consider that the film would actually use Pete Davidson in *exactly* the correct way: a thoroughly unlikable, thoughtless, hopeless, coked-out agent of chaos who was dead inside of 30 minutes, but they did!  The least believable part of it is that everyone had phone batteries so good they could use them as flashlights all night.  Otherwise, it was just the spin on the "Ten Little Indians" idea I hoped it would be, absolutely jam-packed with people so nasty and solipsistic that you practically cheer every subsequent development in the film.  So no, the kids are not all right, but then again, they never really were, because the human race is the worst and we're all a bunch of fuck-ups no matter our age.

[Curt McGirt]

20 hours ago, Technico Support said:

Something something scientists removing their helmets something something running in a straight line from a space tire etc

*Ridley Scott mode on * IT'S A FUCKING HORROR MOVIE, THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE SMART. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS, YOU COMPLAINING FUCKS. *Ridley Scott mode off *

Given his recently public commentary in interviews I'm 99.9% sure that's what he would say, including the cursing.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Curt McGirt

[driver]

Watched Fool's Paradise last night. It's a fun little movie that Charlie Day wrote, directed and starred in. Now I want to see a movie about Sir Billy. It's on Hulu.

[Swift]

I watched Bullet to the Head earlier this year and the most memorable thing about it was when I went to log it on Letterboxd, it turned out I had already watched it a few years earlier. Literally didn't remember a thing about it, and barely remember a thing about it now.

Some stuff I've watched this week - 

Escape to Victory - Loved this as a kid. Nazi Max Von Sydow challenges well fed and paunchy POW Michael Caine to assemble a football team for a Nazis vs. POWs game. Pele, Ossie Ardiles, Bobby Moore and a bunch of others show up. It was and still is weird seeing actual footballers in a movie, particularly John Wark who has a remarkably ripped body in a shower scene. Stallone feels very miscast and seems to have been shoehorned in to have an American star. It's all very silly but holds up as a perfect weekend afternoon movie. Pele's slow motion overhead kick and Ardiles' flick are things of beauty.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - The original trilogy is my favourite film trilogy by far. I hate the 2008 one and was wishing they hadn't made this one, but I think I actually really like it? This was a second viewing. It doesn't have the inventiveness of Spielberg and looks too computer generated for my tastes but still kinda feels like it belongs in the same world as the earlier films. The ending is a major misstep for me. Without going into spoilers, it had a perfect ending set up that I would have adored, but they chicken out into an abrupt send them home happy kind of ending. Or probably leaving the door open for yet another movie.

Napoleon - Looks gorgeous and there's a lot of effort put into the production design. That's kind of all I want sometime in my period films. The rest of the film just plays a bit like a greatest hits album. Phoenix irritated the hell out of me at first, just moping around like a stroppy teenager as he seems to play a lot recently, but his performance grew on me as I realised that Scott was kinda taking the piss out of the Corsican.

Elisa, vida mia - Geraldine Chaplin plays a woman going back to visit her ill estranged father (Fernando Rey) after a decade while dealing with the breakdown of her relationship. Very elliptically told -  some scenes are in the present, some appear to be from the book her novelist father is writing, some are flashbacks to her childhood where Chaplin also plays her mother and some are episodes in her recent life which appear fantastical. At one point, there's an out of context love scene between Chaplin and Rey and you're left wondering if that was a flashback, a fantasy, incest? So a messy film, and one that worked best for me when it was just straight scenes of father and daughter chatting and reconnecting.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Swift

[Contentious C]

Ooof.  I picked some doozies.

Dressed to Kill - Diet Silence of the Lambs! None of the award recognition, quality writing, or three-dimensional characters, all of the transphobic taste!

All the camera trickery is fine (except when it isn't; that museum scene is actually a bit nauseating to watch) and the Hitchcock attempt is better than, say, Still of the Night. But by the end, I just wanted to know whether Keith Gordon's character got any.  DePalma had some real fucking issues about seeing his wife naked on camera, didn't he?  Yeesh, what a massive pervert.  I actually really wonder where he ranks in the film pantheon of perver--

*Quentin Tarantino enters the chat with a pair of size 6 high heels held in the first two fingers of his left hand*

...Right, never mind.  This was...well, it was OK for the technical aspects.  The rest could go flush itself, really.

Funny Farm - I had watched this (I think) as a kid, but it was one of those movies that was "on TV" but was probably so boring I never recalled finishing it.  And it is exactly that fucking boring. For a guy who gets cast in a lot of comedies, Chevy Chase has a Zoolander-like inability to just tell a joke.

Then again, that's pretty common; lots of men think they're funny but aren't as funny as they'd like to believe. It's similar to how doing massive amounts of cocaine will make you think whatever you're doing is really important.  Hey, wait a minute...

The Counselor - I'd like to not feel things for a while, thanks.  Jesus fucking Christ on crutches.  Cormac McCarthy was a real asshole.  Ridley Scott was an even bigger asshole, evidently, for casting Penelope Cruz in her role.  There should be a goddamned new Geneva Convention for Crimes Against Penelope Cruz, Even in Theory after this fucking movie.  God, what a cynical piece of shit, mostly full of characters who could all just burn.  Also: don't do drugs.  Really.  Just fucking stop doing them, if you're doing it recreationally.  Ugh.  Ugh ugh ugh.  This is like a sleazier, less thought-provoking No Country for Old Men or a slicker, less careful/visually stunning Sicario.  But it's 100% gross.  Haven't felt that bad about a discarded red coat since Schindler's List.

Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace - Or perhaps "Jobe's War" is the subtitle as the film itself seems to stipulate: who knows, who cares!  Certainly not the people who actually made it! Wow, is this terrible. But there are far worse movies than this!

Perhaps the most ludicrous thing it expects us to believe is that, in 4 short years (less, really, when you think about the time it would take to find Jobe and rehab him), the presence of "VR" - as something more than the overblown parlor trick that it has been for literally 30 years - morphs Los Angeles from something close to normal to a bad Blade Runner knockoff, down to the constant rain and the Big Bad Compound overseeing all.  Of course, it steals heavily from plenty of other sources: Tron, Star Wars, even Peter Pan, but at least it has the decency to steal from things that are less terrible than this film, rather than trying to do something in the "spirit" of the first movie, when the first movie was dull and had no spirit to speak of. The plot is cliched as Hell, but at least it's a cliche instead of a non sequitur, like some of the very worst DTV and Hollywood-budget-caliber movies ever made (see The Avengers or The Crow: Wicked Prayer for truly pathetic attempts at making a movie). The acting is...generally awful, with Matt Frewer doing a laughably bad Jim Carrey impression, which is especially foolish since Jim Carrey probably ripped off half his schtick from Max Headroom in the first place.

But hey, could have been worse.  Just not by much.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father - I'D LIKE TO STOP FEELING THINGS RIGHT ABOUT FUCKING NOW, THANKS. 

Curt, don't watch this movie.

I'm disappointed in myself that I only recently heard of this movie. I'm disappointed in myself that I probably can't ever bear to watch it again. I'm disappointed in myself that I haven't been the kind of force for good and kindness that Andrew Bagby evidently was.  But people like Andrew, Kate, and David Bagby do make fine examples for the rest of us.

On a more technical note, this probably wasn't executed as well as it could have been; I often felt Kuenne's narration was far too speedy, and a slower cadence would have given more time to let things percolate, would have lent more weight to each moment, not that these sledgehammers *needed* more weight, per se. It's a small nitpick, but a persistent and sometimes distracting one.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Contentious C

[odessasteps]

 

[Curt McGirt]

Why me, just because it's a depressing documentary? The plot reads like something that would go on Dateline. I don't wanna watch that.

The De Palma giallos are entertaining in their absurdity. The worse they got the better they got, actually. Well, Body Double was boring, but the drill part was okay. Raising Cain was trashed but it is really entertainingly stupid. Dressed to Kill is totally bizarre; rape fantasies and transvestite killers who pretend to be psychiatrists? Okay. Is The Black Dahlia any good is what I want to know, because I recorded it and if it sucks I'll drop it from my DVR. 

Coincidentally The Lawnmower Man is on TV right now. I have it on as background noise for the moment and it looks really stupid. Its sequel is following!

[(BP)]

De Palma swears he hadn’t seen Deep Red when he made Dressed to Kill, but I dunno…

I think everything you need to know about where his head was with that movie is that he based Keith Gordon’s character on his own experiences as a teen spying on his father’s extramarital affairs at the request of his mother. It’s fine as a dry-run for Blow Out, which I consider his best movie. 

[Curt McGirt]

Well, Blow Out is a perfect movie. It doesn't get any better (from him) unless it's Carrie or Scarface. Or The Phantom of the fucking Paradise which is in its own world entirely. (You'd have to pay me to watch Casualties of War, I tried and nope.)

EDIT: After reading the Ebert postmortem of Black Dahlia I dumped it. However, Sisters and Obsession are both on the DVR, and I've never watched 'em...

Edited December 11, 2023 by Curt McGirt

[HarryArchieGus]

11 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Ooof.  I picked some doozies.

Dressed to Kill - Diet Silence of the Lambs! None of the award recognition, quality writing, or three-dimensional characters, all of the transphobic taste!

All the camera trickery is fine (except when it isn't; that museum scene is actually a bit nauseating to watch) and the Hitchcock attempt is better than, say, Still of the Night. But by the end, I just wanted to know whether Keith Gordon's character got any.  DePalma had some real fucking issues about seeing his wife naked on camera, didn't he?  Yeesh, what a massive pervert.  I actually really wonder where he ranks in the film pantheon of perver--

*Quentin Tarantino enters the chat with a pair of size 6 high heels held in the first two fingers of his left hand*

...Right, never mind.  This was...well, it was OK for the technical aspects.  The rest could go flush itself, really.

Ha, what, how does Dressed to Kill qualify as Diet Silence of the Lambs? Other than where the films might be filed for genre, how do these two films compare with one being the superior of a similar final draft? The tone, the style, they seem like polar opposites to me. Wait, lack of award recognition is a reason to denounce a film? Obviously there's a thoughtful conversation concerning our killer's identity that could and has been had, and fair enough to anyone who finds that element too difficult to look passed. I'm with the Blowout is my favorite crowd, but Dressed to Kill is pretty fucking excellent too. Anyone else love that Baumbach/Jake Paltrow 'DePalma' doc? Or the excellent episode of 'Video Archives' on this and the American Giallos? I wouldn't say DePalma's a favorite filmmaker of mine, but that doc made me a lot more interested or curious.

[Mister TV]

11 hours ago, Contentious C said:

Funny Farm - I had watched this (I think) as a kid, but it was one of those movies that was "on TV" but was probably so boring I never recalled finishing it.  And it is exactly that fucking boring. For a guy who gets cast in a lot of comedies, Chevy Chase has a Zoolander-like inability to just tell a joke.

I swear HBO ran this movie every other day from 1989 to 1994 and then sold it off to basic cable channels who ran it all the time from 1995 to 2000. I remember the funny parts being near the beginning like the fishing scene, then sucking once they decide to move.

[Curt McGirt]

1 hour ago, HarryArchieGus said:

Anyone else love that Baumbach/Jake Paltrow 'DePalma' doc?

*raises hand* 

He's a lot more sympathetic than his critics would think. Smart guy. If you want a real nut, go watch the John Milius documentary. 

[Contentious C]

You don't even need to watch a doc about Milius.  Just remember that Walter Sobchak is based on him.  I mean, fuck.

And I say this as someone who, when asked, "What is your spirit animal?" I honestly reply, "Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski."

[Curt McGirt]

Really? He was based on Milius? That's hilarious.

Walter Sobchak, Zen anarchist! 

Edited December 12, 2023 by Curt McGirt

[Tabe]

On 12/11/2023 at 12:28 AM, Contentious C said:

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father - I'D LIKE TO STOP FEELING THINGS RIGHT ABOUT FUCKING NOW, THANKS. 

Curt, don't watch this movie.

I'm disappointed in myself that I only recently heard of this movie. I'm disappointed in myself that I probably can't ever bear to watch it again. I'm disappointed in myself that I haven't been the kind of force for good and kindness that Andrew Bagby evidently was.  But people like Andrew, Kate, and David Bagby do make fine examples for the rest of us.

On a more technical note, this probably wasn't executed as well as it could have been; I often felt Kuenne's narration was far too speedy, and a slower cadence would have given more time to let things percolate, would have lent more weight to each moment, not that these sledgehammers *needed* more weight, per se. It's a small nitpick, but a persistent and sometimes distracting one.

EASILY the most gut-wrenching movie I've ever seen. It's so far ahead, everything else is playing for 4th place on the list. 

It's also EASILY the most infuriating movie I've ever seen. 

[Curt McGirt]

I point you towards Come and See in the gut-wrench sweepstakes (and run away very fast after)

[Contentious C]

Come and See gets points for its lack of sentimentality. Then again, it's fiction (at least in part; things like it and worse were sure to have happened). Dear Zachary ends with something like hope, maybe, but JESUS getting there and knowing for certain that it actually happened is...the sort of thing that makes you think the planet would be better off without us.

But, that's rather the message of both films when it's boiled down enough.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Contentious C

[Contentious C]

Egad.  I catch bits and pieces of movies all the time, or half-remember them from my childhood, so I decided to cross out a bunch of things that I partly watched so that they could get pushed over to fully watched on Letterboxd.  I, uh, mostly wish I hadn't done this.

The Woman in Red - Jesus, this is terrible.  Even the soundtrack, which is probably why most people would remember it at all, is terrible.  "Don't drive drunk / Mothers against drunk driving get mad"?  Really, Stevie? Maybe 3 jokes land, the story feels like a teenager's attempt at spicing up a 50s Doris Day/Rock Hudson number, and the two serious dramatic moments in the film, while good, get swept under the rug. Why did this get made in the first place?

...

Oh, right.  Kelly LeBrock was one of the most stunningly beautiful women who ever lived; that's why.  I'd almost think the entire plot was too ludicrous, except she married STEVEN SEAGAL, so obviously her taste in men would have been improved by getting involved with Gene Wilder.

Clockwatchers - Criterion's blurb about a distaff Office Space does a disservice to both films. The latter is funnier, more quotable, undeniably zanier, but it runs out of steam (and then some) by the end. This, on the other hand, steers away from the doldrums of mere bureaucracy and incompetence and captures so much more of its value in tone better than Mike Judge will probably manage in anything he ever creates.

I worked a job not unlike this during college, and saw so many of these same scenes play out without realizing their significance; their cruelty; their pointless, high-minded attitude to pay 'tribute' to the company, as if there's a God of Corporations out there that would strike us down if we didn't. But, no, it's just people: a collection of small-minded people shoving miserable viewpoints onto anyone available, because if they have to be miserable, so does everyone else in their purview (like a lot of communal inventions - see: religion, arranged marriages, etc.).

So, the plot doesn't matter. The endpoints don't matter. The job doesn't matter, and the work certainly doesn't. But the defiance does, even if all you can do in that defiance is drift alongside Margaret.

Cadillac Man - Painfully unfunny, a cure for insomnia (even at its most frenetic moments), featuring a cast of familiar faces doing 2-dimensional bullshit for the entire film, and then it wraps up with a nice, neat, teensy-weensy widdle bow because Hollywood. What garbage.  It's hard to believe Williams' character, at least as shown here, has the personality to pull off juggling 3 women at once, especially when two of them are Lori Petty and Fran Drescher.  Then again, given all the characters are boring-ass cardboard cutouts, it's believable in a "Suzie makes her Barbie and Ken dolls fuck" kind of way.

And somehow still not Robin Williams' worst movie.

Deconstructing Harry - Self-indulgent asshat indulges self and employs usual hat, donned slightly askew so everyone knows what a rakish rapscallion he is.  Jesus, did he actually just recycle the same wardrobe from Hannah and Her Sisters?

Judy Davis is good; better than the material deserves. The mother-in-law from Marvelous Mrs. Maisel gets the only scene with strong, punchy dialogue that's as funny as it's intended to play. Practically everyone and everything else is a cringy, obvious, navel-gazing joke where no one is laughing, either at or with, like a prototype for a Rick & Morty sketch gone horribly wrong where Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland make a special appearance from Cancellation Purgatory and then the whole episode becomes about what terrible people they are, replete with the use of air quotes around "Rick" and "Morty" the entire time.

And the movie looks like shit, too. Seems like 99% of the budget was spent on the Hell scene and the other 1% was on make-up so he'd look less of a ghoul. It didn't work, as the contents of my stomach would tell you every time he had a makeout session with Consummate Professional, Elizabeth Shue. The jump cuts add nothing: they don't look like some auteur bullshit; they look like he couldn't decide what takes he actually liked and just kludged it all together after the fact, because it didn't matter, because it looked like shit anyway.  Some Letterboxd reviews try to defend this by pointing out that it's not 1000% narcissistic because it's actually about Philip Roth; I posit that it doesn't matter which one it's about.  The best Hell for either of them may very well be one where they are surrounded by ordinary people but are forever *ignored*.

When people tell you who they are, listen the first time. (This, of course, being time # 87 through about # 119 if the scene breakdown is any indication.)

Only God Forgives - JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST, YOUR MOVIE DOES NOT TAKE ON ADDED SIGNIFICANCE OR GAIN ADDED DEPTH JUST BECAUSE YOUR ACTORS NEVER BLINK.  Yes, yes, everyone gets the moral compass you've set up with all the characters, Nicky -- but no one CARES.  Too bad for you that you don't live in an "Only God Reviews" world, because no, I don't forgive.

Interesting to see, though, that being a cop in Thailand evidently involves no solving of actual crimes: just 85% vengeful mutilation using a Dha, 15% karaoke in front of your subordinates.  On the plus side, at least the run time is shorter than the average episode of Too Old to Die Young, which, let's face it, is only for the truest of Refn Fart Connoisseurs.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Contentious C