2024 MOVIES DISCUSSION THREAD

[Raziel]

I'd argue that the Theatrical cut of Alien is better and sticks to the lore of the rest of the series.  I'd be all for the DC because of it establishing Ripley as the smart one earlier on, but the Nest scene kinda doesn't fit with anything, even Scott's prequels.

I need to get to watching one of the rereleases of Blade Runner, since I'm in the minority that didn't really like the Theatrical and it kept me from ever getting to any of the alternate cuts or 2049.

[Curt McGirt]

Had to look it up and the subtractions to the Director's Cut were some of the tracking shots to "improve"/quicken pacing, Ripley specifically requesting John Hurt not be allowed back in the ship, and the cocoon scene. Of these I think only the cocoon scene really is a solid addition because it's gross and creepy as all get out. The silent footage of the Xenomorph doing its own version of the Exorcist crab-walk with the tail extended between its legs jutting out toward Lambert before he kills her is pretty cool but is further footage of the creature that might aid in destroying the mystique.

[Contentious C]

I think there are multiples of all 3 anyway.  Or at least, Terminator had releases prior to Harlan Ellison suing Cameron due to ripping him off.  I don't actually know what differences there are/were with Alien anyway, but my guess is they are minor (a Google search just talks about tracking and sequence length, so that's basically nil). 

I have the Alien Anthology Blu-rays, so it turns out that has both cuts anyway.

[Mike Campbell]

1 hour ago, Raziel said:

I'd argue that the Theatrical cut of Alien is better and sticks to the lore of the rest of the series.  I'd be all for the DC because of it establishing Ripley as the smart one earlier on, but the Nest scene kinda doesn't fit with anything, even Scott's prequels.

I need to get to watching one of the rereleases of Blade Runner, since I'm in the minority that didn't really like the Theatrical and it kept me from ever getting to any of the alternate cuts or 2049.

Honestly, the only thing I specifically recall from the Directors Cut is when Lambert slaps Ripley for not letting them back on the ship after the facehugger gets him. And I completely get why they cut it out, since it’s such a contrast to the later scene when she’s paralyzed with fear.

[Curt McGirt]

Here's a fun fact: Lambert was trans. 

https://i.stack.imgur.com/FZL6a.jpg

[Contentious C]

Yeah.

El Dorado - Hey, some laughs, some snappy banter, some misunderstandings and gunfights, a little bit of proto-buddy-cop drama, and it works - at least until it had to hit its racism quota for a Western of the period. Thanks for that winning decision as a capper.  But, this is generally pretty good, even if it's evidently a retread of Rio Bravo and would be retread again for Rio Lobo.  In that sense, it's a little weird that this passes for one of the films that Assault on Precinct 13 was copying, since Carpenter managed to copy the form of the film without even the slightest hint of what made this work: the characters and the dialogue.

School Ties - Yet another "saw a million commercials but never watched it" special.  Oddest detail here is that it was written by DICK WOLF, yes, that Dick Wolf of L&O fame (not the bad internet meme one).  I guess if you wanted to switch from very young James Caan being a racist to very young Matt Damon being a racist, you could watch these two movies back-to-back, too.  Turns out, the guy who cheated on the history exam *did* still get into Harvard, majored in history, and then portrayed the guy who could blithely read dry history textbooks and ruminate about how many Harvard grad students worshipped Gordon Wood as deftly as he could throw hands.  But the movie is just OK, another Wal-mart brand Dead Poet's Society.

Teaching Mrs. Tingle - Guy famous for boring Katie Holmes TV vehicles writes and directs boring Katie Holmes film. 

OK, look: Helen Mirren has never seemed shy about sexualized roles. She's done some smutty stuff, and I'm not saying this movie needed to be particularly smutty (certainly not above and beyond what would keep it PG-13). But, how do you have her play a buttoned-up, sexually repressed character named Mrs. TINGLE, who spends most of the movie *tied to a bed* and who claims to have been married to a man named DICK TINGLE, and yet the sexiest thing she gets to do the whole time is get snuggled by a passed-out Jeffrey Tambor? The jokes should have written themselves! Yeesh. What a waste.

3 stars for Marisa Coughlan, especially the Exorcist scene; subtract one for everything else, especially the dumbass ending, and certainly for our society's weird goddamn fetish for Katie Holmes in the late 90s. So undeserving of her level of fame.

Minari - Maybe Lee Isaac Chung just bounces off me.  Granted, his other movie is like taking a Toad the Wet Sprocket song and stretching it into a 90 minute movie, so almost anything would be an improvement over that.  I suppose it doesn't help I watched this on Hoopla, which, for whatever reason, made this look far grainier than it should have for a digital film made in 2020.  But even then, really? That's the message? Trust in water dowsing? Ugh. Also, the parents were just selfish pricks who hadn't realized they were each married to a selfish prick until the prickery started stabbing one another. Sort of wanted them both to fail, just not at the expense of a friggin' stroke victim who shouldn't have been left alone.  If I'm going to watch Steven Yeun be a smug asshole, I'll just watch Burning again.

It's pretty, though, I guess.  Just don't expect me to buy into movies about 'having faith' that things will work out.  Look around you; they really don't, and if they did for you, it's probably dumb luck, the choices you made, or both.

Natural Born Killers - A lot of people took a stab at the same message about the same time: Wild at Heart, Man Bites Dog, True Romance to a lesser extent, but this might be the best of those films because it's the most committed to its style. There's nothing straight about this: not the story, not the presentation, not the camera angles, not the dialogue, not the performances, and certainly not the path it takes. The crazy little funhouse-mirror warpings of faces here and there aren't distortions, set against that background; they're the only moments where we see something like a true reality stepping forward.

I think it's a bit simplistic to say this film merely wants to talk about how violent media propagates violence in broader society. I think it's more to do with the role media plays in shaping *all* appetites, sharpening far too many little urges and momentary impulses to razor's edges that leave us to suffer not a death by a thousand cuts, but a life shredded, rendered less-than by them. In that respect, the film this most resembles is none of its contemporaries, but instead (fittingly enough) Putney Swope.

Tarantino may have a wheelbarrow full of complaints about how this was handled, but, frankly, Oliver Stone was working on a whole other level with the idea. Tarantino may have made a better film that year when he made Pulp Fiction, but I doubt he could have made a movie this good from his material.  And I'm not sure Tommy Lee Jones had any business winning Best Supporting Actor for The Fugitive in 1993, but goddamn if he didn't nearly deserve it here (that's the award Martin Landau won instead of Sam Jackson, for anyone else keeping score).

Edited January 20 by Contentious C

[The Natural]

Film anniversaries this year.

10 years:

• Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
• Nightcrawler.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past.
• The Lego Movie.
• Guardians of the Galaxy.

20 years:

• Shaun of the Dead.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
• Shrek 2.
• Spider-Man 2.
• Saw.

25 years:

• 10 Things I Hate About You.
• Galaxy Quest.
• Fight Club.
• American Beauty.
• The Matrix

30 years:

• The Shawshank Redemption.
• Pulp Fiction.
• Forrest Gump.
• The Crow.

35 years:

• Batman.
• Ghostbusters 2.

40 years:

• Ghostbusters.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street.

50 years:

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

60 years:

• A Fistful of Dollars.
• Goldfinger.
• Mary Poppins.

Some will likely get re-releases while others won't. I'm especially hoping for Shaun of the Dead, The Crow and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I watched Shaun of the Dead after it came out, it's the only film of the Cornetto trilogy I've never seen at the cinema. The Crow has long been on my films I want to see on the big screen. To me, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the best horror film of all time.

Edited January 20 by The Natural

[The Natural]

On the subject of re-releases in cinemas, which films have you seen there? Mine:

• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
• Batman.
• Batman Returns.
• Blade.
• Die Hard.

Great getting to experience them at the cinema for the first time ever as these films either came out before I was born or I wasnt old enough to.

[Mike Campbell]

If we don't get a Blu Ray or 4K Steelbook release of A Nightmare On Elm Street this year, then we probably never will.

[Curt McGirt]

I loved the characters and dialogue in Assault on Precinct 13. They're the best part. I don't know if they stand up to El Dorado, but come on. 

I've always loved NBK for all the wrong reasons (as well as the right ones) but I don't really care. It's great. And Tommy Lee plays a better Looney Tunes character than anyone I can think of off the top of my head.

Meanwhile Ready Player One is on after Rampage here and they have apparently made a movie that is just pure CGI, like Pixar made an action flick. Does it have a plot? Does it have actual actors? I'm not sure. That's probably the whole idea and I'm expecting something else... it is apparently one big video game after all. 

Shaun of the Dead was a blast to see in the theater without knowing just how good it was gonna be.

[odessasteps]

Since they were part of the Criterion “cat month,” I decided to watch both That Darn Cat and The Cat From Outer Space. While harmless, the best part as seeing all these character actors getting work. That Darn Cat had Frank Gorshin as a bank robber, William Demarest and Elsa Lancaster as nosy neighbors and Richard Deacon. Outer Space had both Harry Morgan and McLean Stevenson in it. Funnily enough, both had Roddy McDowell as a nominal bad guy or at least antagonist. 

Edited January 20 by odessasteps

[Brian Fowler]

IIRC, on the intro to the director's cut of Alien on the Blu-ray, Scott specifically says the theatrical cut is the definitive one and he just made that cut because Fox wanted to have alternate cuts for all four for the quadrilogy box 

[Mike Campbell]

6 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Meanwhile Ready Player One is on after Rampage here and they have apparently made a movie that is just pure CGI, like Pixar made an action flick. Does it have a plot? Does it have actual actors? I'm not sure. That's probably the whole idea and I'm expecting something else... it is apparently one big video game after all. 

Pixar doing an action flick is actually a pretty accurate description of it. The movie is an OK way to waste a couple of hours, but the book is great.

[Curt McGirt]

I own the fucking Quadrilogy set and I don't think I've watched anything beyond the Director's Cut Alien and the documentary stuff. I didn't even REMEMBER there were different cuts of the other movies (then again, I got that sucker for free from a buddy of mine so I didn't have much impetus to dig in). 

I Wiki'd Ready Player One and found out it's a Spielberg movie with a bunch of nostalgia product placement, which I had an inkling of from the moments I watched. So, so not my thing.

Edited January 20 by Curt McGirt

[(BP)]

I’ve never seen Ready Player One or read the book, but whenever it comes up I think of how the author wrote an infamous cringe poem about the kind of porn he’d like to direct.

 

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

I loathed the book when I listened to the audiobook (read by Wil Wheaton, and featuring literally five minutes of him reading a list of what was apparently essential media, and I swear it felt like torture), so I've only liked two things related to it:

1) Jenny Nicholson's review of the movie, which she ends by saying in summary: "Is this satisfying? I don't understand! It's like watching a speedrun of a book."

2) Mike Nelson (yes, MST3K Mike Nelson) and Conor Lastowka's podcast, which was initially about the book (as well as Ernest Cline's followups) and since has branched into other books, called "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back". Guess what they thought!

[Dolfan in NYC]

I've got no context for this other than Jim Varney looks bad af...

 

[JLSigman]

WHAT???  WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Shit it's going to be at the theater right behind my house.

[Curt McGirt]

Why a DeLorean is/was the ultimate rich person's car: You need a private parking space just in order to get out of the vehicle. 

EDIT: That photo is a repost from another Tweet where the poster was talking about how that was one of the very few expensive splurges Jim allowed himself, otherwise being really frugal I guess. He showed his niece the car and she asked where the flux capacitor was, haha. (In retrospect, he should have gotten rid of his real spending issue... the cigars.)

Edited January 23 by Curt McGirt

[twiztor]

On 1/19/2024 at 9:46 PM, The Natural said:

On the subject of re-releases in cinemas, which films have you seen there?

i think just The Exorcist back in 2006 (6/6/6)

[Mike Campbell]

7 hours ago, twiztor said:

i think just The Exorcist back in 2006 (6/6/6)

That was also the same day that the remake of The Omen was released. Talk about an insane double feature!

[HarryArchieGus]

On 1/19/2024 at 8:48 PM, Contentious C said:

Natural Born Killers - A lot of people took a stab at the same message about the same time: Wild at Heart, Man Bites Dog, True Romance to a lesser extent, but this might be the best of those films because it's the most committed to its style. There's nothing straight about this: not the story, not the presentation, not the camera angles, not the dialogue, not the performances, and certainly not the path it takes. The crazy little funhouse-mirror warpings of faces here and there aren't distortions, set against that background; they're the only moments where we see something like a true reality stepping forward.

I think it's a bit simplistic to say this film merely wants to talk about how violent media propagates violence in broader society. I think it's more to do with the role media plays in shaping *all* appetites, sharpening far too many little urges and momentary impulses to razor's edges that leave us to suffer not a death by a thousand cuts, but a life shredded, rendered less-than by them. In that respect, the film this most resembles is none of its contemporaries, but instead (fittingly enough) Putney Swope.

Tarantino may have a wheelbarrow full of complaints about how this was handled, but, frankly, Oliver Stone was working on a whole other level with the idea. Tarantino may have made a better film that year when he made Pulp Fiction, but I doubt he could have made a movie this good from his material.  And I'm not sure Tommy Lee Jones had any business winning Best Supporting Actor for The Fugitive in 1993, but goddamn if he didn't nearly deserve it here (that's the award Martin Landau won instead of Sam Jackson, for anyone else keeping score).

Nice review. Fair comparison with Wild at Heart and Man Bites Dog, but kind of an apples and oranges situation concerning 'best'. Tho, no doubt far better than the heavily flawed and disappointing True Romance. Everything came together on NBK for the very uneven, inconsistent Stone. Great cast, story, performances and somehow still sort of audacious and original with it's visual presentation. In true Stone hit/miss fashion, he couldn't just leave it alone, and made his far weaker 'Directors Cut' the more easily accessible version for decades. The director's cut sounds like the better or more interesting version on paper (with Jones' head/spear etc). but the extra cuts are a total nuisance at multiple points. Most clearly, the flow of the prison break scene going from near perfection to a goddamn yawn. Pleased to see this new UltraHD4K2023 release includes the much stronger theatrical cut. Also, overjoyed to have 'Burn' back in the mix. I wonder what other examples there are of a movie losing such a key song? It's such a short bit, but so jarring hearing replacement music over the climactic montage. Jones often gets the chatter, and deservedly so, but Juliette Lewis, Woody, Downey, and Sizemore are all pretty incredible. Dangerfield and Edie McClurg are also pretty perfect in their smaller roles. Rarely was Stone better (and often nowhere near as good). For me, this ranks up their with the masteful JFK. 

Edited January 24 by HarryArchieGus

[(BP)]

Tarantino loved Badlands so much that he wrote his own take on it twice. What’s funny is that when he was approached about writing Halloween 6 around that time his pitch was a road movie with Michael and The Man in Black. Now that would’ve been something. 

I think cutting the Barbarian Brothers scene out of NBK was a perfectly reasonable decision, but I’m so happy that it exists. 

 

[Curt McGirt]

Watched The Many Saints of Newark again after finishing up the whole Sopranos again (blame it on the anniversary replays). I like it more now. Coming right off the series you get all the throw-backs and in-jokes that you may have missed the first time around, and the whole movie takes on a more elevated tone, plot-wise. Tony isn't really the son of his father. He's the son of Dickie, as much as the son of his mother. The pinky swear at the end is more of a spiritual transferrance than anything, Tony with Dickie's death becoming the surrogate father to Christopher, inheritor of his trade, inheritor even of his crew. The business sense, the sudden murderous rages, the guilt all comes from Moltisanti. (Of course, this was probably pretty obvious in the first place, but there was too much distance on first watch with me.) Dickie's a really good role that Alessandro Nivola nails and that dude deserves WAY more work. I also liked how 10 year old Tony acted just like Anthony Jr., only Anthony Jr. never really evolved from that state, he was the same kid by the time he was 20. Anyway, it may be worth a rewatch.

[Contentious C]

And then I went and did this.

North - Well, this isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be. It's just awfully close.

Casual racism, tepid dialogue, stereotypes a-plenty, and desperately trying to tap into the Home Alone/Matilda/cute-kid-of-the-month bullshit of the 90s, much to the chagrin of anyone who's bothered to sit through this. I suppose we're lucky, really; this could have sunk Elijah Wood badly enough that he ended up concerned with an entirely different sort of crack. The only highlight to speak of is Richard Belzer's section, which is funny in spite of its context entirely because of Belzer.  Somehow surprising that Reiner directed one of the best kid's movies of the times and one of the worst.

Personally, I find myself laughing at the possibility of an alternate ending, where North stays with the Nelsons and, in 2002/2003, becomes massively rich when he and ScarJo popularize step-sibling incest porn a good 10-15 years before anyone else.

Little Giants - Yeah, I watched this mostly because some of you put this on your All-Time Best lists and that seemed...ah, baffling is the kindest word that comes to mind.  And it's a Matthew McCurley double feature with the execrable North as the last movie I watched! Quirks like that always get me. I wonder how people adjust to this sort of happenstance: 15 minutes of fame before you're 15, and then you have to jump out in the big bad world as just some guy and hey, weren't you in that thing I saw once?

Anyway, the comparisons to North are, I find, appropriate, because there's a lot about even this beloved movie that's pretty wrong-headed. It's got just as much stereotyping, loads of "the joke is how fucked-up this kid looks, so please laugh", an occasional bit of casual racism and sexism, and it's not like the acting really hits home (aside from Ed O'Neill).  So why does this work while North is fucking awful? Well, for starters, staying in one place helps; there's just as broad a cast here, maybe more so, except it isn't so laser-focused on any one person to leave out development for the others. Second, it's just better writing. "Spike is going to rip my face off and wear it for Halloween" is an all-timer, and everyone can probably find a joke in here that they identify with. Kinda helps that the premise explains itself, too, instead of relying on Bruce Willis to explain everything to death. And even though Rick Moranis was the old hand for kid-friendly movies, it's O'Neill who stirs the drink; he's got the most punchable face he ever had, perhaps in his entire career portraying characters who didn't get punched in the face enough, and yet when he has to support his niece, he's on World's Best Uncle behavior and they have a nice couple of scenes together.

The endings between the two films are equally predictable, equally saccharine, equally boring and rote, but one makes you give a crap - to the point that I was frankly shocked by the sportsmanship shown at the end - and the other makes you want it to vanish into the memory hole. Little Giants still isn't *good*, per se, but it shows it isn't that difficult to achieve some level of competence and watchability when you show rather than tell and give even your most cartoonish antagonists a real heart.

Real Women Have Curves - Forget the backwards-in-time comparisons to Lady Bird, which I didn't think was that great to begin with. In some respects, perhaps because it was an HBO movie, this feels and especially looks more like Clockwatchers to me: oddly muted, only hinting at a vibrancy that must exist somewhere else for someone else to make us yearn so badly for it. I was also reminded of the look of the limited bit of Charles Burnett's work I've seen (albeit far less insane and troubling story-wise).

But this mostly hinges on its performances (not surprising from something adapted from the stage). I can't quite decide if Lupe Ontiveros was brilliant or flimsy: her character so richly deserved a Zangief Piledriver into a rock quarry, but as much as that terrible attitude was the point, there is such a thing as too much "go-away" heat. The blink-and-you-miss-it bit of rage and sass-swapping at the burger joint sets the tone, and the rest of the film sits somewhere among awkwardness, outrage, and relief for a nice little ride.

The French Lieutenant's Woman - Is it just me, or did young Jeremy Irons rather resemble Henry Cavill, if Cavill had scoliosis?  This is famous for a bunch of unusual reasons, but the structure of the film is maybe still the most notable of those. However, the pacing is probably the worst part of this, particularly since it doesn't spend enough time developing the modern-era segment of the story. But by the end, the switches back and forth are quick enough to mimic the fraying nature of their relationship. For most of the film, the juxtaposition of time periods works, because the romanticism of the Victorian world could be parodied and contrasted against the real damage Mike and Anna could do to each other's lives. As a result, though, I don't know that the ending - the 'now' ending - works for me, since it's too wistful and pointlessly romantic, like there's some place and time where they would work things out, perhaps on another movie set someday.

Instead of avoidance, it might have fit the mood better to have the ending embedded in the film ending: pull away from that scene and hear "cut". Start where the whole movie began in a sense, backing out to the director/crew calling the scene finished, and as they wrap, Mike and Anna just ignore one another, ripping off costuming and walking away. The "talk" Mike wanted already happened, and now we just see the sad, brutal outcome.  Still, though, the performances make this work, even if it is a little strange to see Meryl Streep in a scene with Penelope Wilton (you know who she is) where Wilton is the one who gives us more to ponder.

Possession - Well.

I watched this.

Yikes.

This makes Marriage Story seem like everyone was shot up on horse tranquilizers, and it makes the symbolism of The Babadook look like it was written in crayon (and not a good color like cerulean or periwinkle; instead, one of those new box names that are for weenies).  You could definitely criticize this for being a multiple-category nominee for Most Actor instead of Best Actor (particularly Heinrich, who's just generally not good), but GODDAMN if Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani weren't spectacularly out of their minds for this.  Normally I'm a fan of subtlety, but sometimes you just need to rip the goddamn motherfucking Band-Aid off and see what's *possible* instead of merely the same old idea of what's *good*, and this film has that in abundance: goopy, oily, tentacly abundance.  Then again, it's also a little inscrutable - not so much in terms of the plot or its meaning, as those are pretty clear - but more its inception.  Was Zulawski really making a big, sweeping, bold statement about relationships, or is this born out of sad male insecurity?  It's hard to say for certain.  Maybe in the hands of less capable actors, the latter interpretation would win out, but instead, it's just...well, certainly not balanced, but somehow unbalanced in as fair a manner as possible. 

And besides, as many others have said, I, too, would lose my grasp on reality if it meant I could be married to Isabelle Adjani.

Edited January 29 by Contentious C