Movies 2025 Movie Discussion Thread

[odessasteps]

He just generally rubs me the wrong way. When he is supposed to be a bad guy or antagonist (Rushmore, Scrooged), it works fine. 

[J.H.]

19 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Yeah, I can see that. Where Robin could be too broad -- or just too manic -- Bill can be too cynical and in-joke-y. Deadpan? Yeah, that might be the best way of putting it. 

Ranking comedy in any form gives "good '80s Western" a big, big pass. At least you might get an answer there!

Well that's the thing, there was so much great comedy in the 80s that we could fill the next 20 pages or so in this thread naming and discussing them.

80s Westerns... that's niche as hell with a smaller sample to work with. 

But man, 80s comedies are fun as hell. You got the holden era of Dangerfield films, Police Academy somehow spanning a huge franchise, the breakout Eddie Murphy stuff... we could spend months on 80s comedies!

James

Edited April 7 by J.H.

[(BP)]

Murray’s deadpan is so good. He’s at his best when his character thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. Sometimes the character revels in it and sometimes it makes them absolutely miserable. His movies where he’s being a plain old doofus are hit or miss for me. 

While we’re talking comedy and 80s westerns, Three Amigos! John Landis should’ve been in jail instead of making it, but he made it and it’s good. 

[Andrew POE!]

1 hour ago, J.H. said:

Look, Peter Clemenza may have taught us how to make sauce, in case we gotta cook for 20 guys someday, but the gangster movie that really makes me hungry is Goodfellas.

From the pizzeria, to the grill in Paulue's back yard to dinner in jail; I can't watch Goodfellas and not get hungry. I'm not talking snacking popcorn and Mr. Pibb hungry. I mean Paul Sorvino in the backyard eating sausage and peppers hungry. I'm talking waiting on the wine to arrive in the joint while Johnny Dio cooks the steaks and calling me an aristocrat for wanting mine medium rare.

I'm trying to think of other movies that make me hungry the way Goodfellas does, that isn't about a restaurant or chess. Dammit, as I type this up all I can think aboutvis cooking up some Eyetakian style meatballs using the Clemenza sauce.

Hell, I think I gained 5 pounds just typing about it!

James

Julie & Julia maybe but it's French cuisine so I'm not sure if you're up for that or not.

For me, it's Office Space or Taxi Driver. I had a New York style eclair while watching Taxi Driver, so it's imprinted into my brain now.

[Curt McGirt]

I loved how The Sopranos took that Goodfellas blueprint and just ran wild with it. Somebody has to have counted all the food shots, references, etc. and numbered them in the hundreds. 

15 minutes ago, J.H. said:

Well that's the thing, there was so much great comedy in the 80s that we could fill the next 20 pages or so in this thread naming and discussing them.

80s Westerns... that's niche as hell with a smaller sample to work with. 

But man, 80s comedies are fun as hell. You got the holden era of Dangerfield films, Police Academy somehow spanning a huge franchise, the breakout Eddie Murphy stuff... we could spend months on 80s comedies!

James

My statement was meant more that everyone's sense of comedy is so finicky and personal, that comparing a list of great comedies to even really any great Westerns from any decade could be impossible. It's just too subjective. 

[J.H.]

5 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

My statement was meant more that everyone's sense of comedy is so finicky and personal, that comparing a list of great comedies to even really any great Westerns from any decade could be impossible. It's just too subjective. 

Totally misinterpreted what you were getting at my good man. Sometimes, I gotta have spelled out.

James 

[JLSigman]

1 hour ago, odessasteps said:

I posed this to my cinephile friend and he only mentioned Lonesome Dove and the Long Riders are worthy candidates. 

I only remember the TV spinoff Lonesome Dove because Bret Hart starred in some episodes

[Curt McGirt]

8 minutes ago, J.H. said:

Totally misinterpreted what you were getting at my good man. Sometimes, I gotta have spelled out.

James 

Not a problem. I don't think I was crystal clear in the first place anyway. 

Lonesome Dove has (I think) its own streaming channel because I keep seeing ads for it on Dish over here, and I had no idea it was Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as the leads... only remembering, of course, Bret Hart 

[odessasteps]

I read something a few weeks ago that McMurty and some director (maybe Altman) wanted to make a western comedy in the 70s with John Wayne and some other western actors as farmers but Wayne passed. But that germ of an idea eventually became Lonesome Dove. 

[odessasteps]

Quote

, Bogdanovich told McMurtry he wanted the Western film legends John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Henry Fonda in addition to a part for his girlfriend Cybill Shepherd.

I was close. Streets of Loredo. 

Edited April 7 by odessasteps

[J.H.]

There's also the story that Mel Brooks asked Wayne to appear in Blazing Saddles but Wayne said no because he didn't think his audience would like him in a comedy western/spoof

James

Edited April 8 by J.H.

[Tabe]

3 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Similar to my general dislike of Bill Murray, where i acknowledge it's a me thing. 

He's a garbage human being. It's not just you. 

[HarryArchieGus]

18 minutes ago, Tabe said:

He's a garbage human being. It's not just you. 

Curious what qualifies him as a garbage human being? Maybe you know him personally?

[odessasteps]

29 minutes ago, J.H. said:

There's also the story that Mel Brooks asked Wzyne to appear in Blazing Saddles but Wayne said no because he didn't think his audience would like him in a comedy western/spoof

James

If it was someone that stayed in the movie, would it have been Slim Pickens’ trail boss? If so, I could see him not wanting to do that part.

if it had been a cameo in the scene where they say “John wayne” instead of “Randolph Scott,” when they all stand out of respect, and you cut to Wayne for a sight gag, I think that would have been fine.

[Tabe]

9 minutes ago, HarryArchieGus said:

Curious what qualifies him as a garbage human being? Maybe you know him personally?

Perhaps you've missed the numerous people that have accused him of awful behavior and harassment? Geena Davis, Lucy Liu, the 2022 movie that was ended because of his behavior, and so on. There's numerous stories out there about his behavior. 

[Andrew POE!]

Movies today....

Songs of Earth (Criterion Channel, leaving on 4/30) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

Absolutely gorgeous and probably an unintentional movie for Norwegian tourism. The drone and aerial cinematography is just amazing at times as the movie is shot with digital cameras.

Most of the story with the movie is with Margreth Olin's parents as they sing songs and recount histories of Nordfjord and the surrounding communities in it.

A prevailing image throughout the documentary is of a spruce tree planted by Olin's father's grandfather.

It's somewhat sad and interesting that Olin's father recounts a glacier breaking off and being smaller than it used to be after growing in the 1990s. How much of it is the cycle of things versus climate change isn't known.

The documentary makes me want to hop a plane and visit Norway, Sweden, and Finland and go to the cinemas there and walk in nature there too.

Tonsler Park (Criterion Channel, leaving on 4/30) - 2.5/5 stars

Spoiler

As an actual movie, Tonsler Park is a failure. As a documentary, it succeeds in the fact that the deliberateness of filming a voting precinct in one of the most significant times to vote in our lifetimes has to be shown.

Where I'm from in Georgia, a lot of talk was made about what happened when people went to vote in Fulton County and the racist dog whistles about the people in charge of administering the voting precincts in the county. Two black women (including one that is a grandmother FFS) were accused by "America's Mayor" with a leaking hair dye of fraudulently influencing the vote. When the simple fact is, they were just doing their jobs. They sat in front of Congress to recount this while those on the right of course doubted anything they were saying. Then of course "America's Mayor" doesn't pay and avoids paying them for what he did.

When watching this, everything just blends into background noise but you can see the act of working to maintain democracy is done like any other job. The almost Kafka-esque maze of going from one table to another, going to a voting booth then turning in a printout to confirm a vote. People directing those arriving to locations and to answering questions.

What I noticed is the amount of babies and small children in the background, as if leaving a job for a parent is a huge ask, not to mention trying to locate a babysitter while the parent has to vote. It confirms to me how much this whole process of voting would be easier if we could vote from a computer or from a mobile phone to a secure website. Hell, we call in to vote for the next pop singer on American Idol, why can't this idea of ease and simplicity extend to voting in elections?

The simple fact is this is our democracy if we can keep it.

This House / Cette maison (Criterion Channel, leaving on 4/30) - 2.5/5 stars

Spoiler

While I appreciate the talent and effort it took to create this movie, the story was probably almost too oblique for me to follow. It seemed to dwell in an area next to Chekhov or Lars Von Trier or Thornton Wilder while being so non-specific with what exactly it is trying to do.

I understand that it's a meditation on grief and processing grief, but I came away feeling I didn't understand what I saw. It turns into a series of images that centers around a family in Quebec deciding to stay or go based on the 1995 Quebec independent referendum and somehow that has to do with the death of the youngest daughter. The movie never even addresses the cause other than 'it was found in the autopsy report' that 'sexual assault had occurred' (by whom or when is not spoken in the movie).

Sometimes you just want a movie to say what it is about and do it then throw scenes together and hope you figure it out.

Drop (saw in the theaters) - 4/5 stars

Spoiler

Drop is a nice piece of Hitchcockian suspense. Like what Hitchcock would do, the movie is setup to be focused on one thing that affects the main character that no one else is aware of. It showed up in The Man Who Knew Too Much and North By Northwest - except this time it’s much more modern with mobile phones.

Meghann Fahy is part of an old tradition with suspense thrillers: she’s the Hitchcock Blonde. Difference being her character Violet is striving to escape being trapped and being abused. For this movie, she strives to escape only to fall back into it when she starts receiving mysterious drops or messages sent through AirDrops. It turns into something similar to Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder.

Most of the movie is within the restaurant where Violet meets Henry (very Chris Hemsworth looking Brandon Sklenar) for their date. As I was watching it, I was wondering who the source of the drops was. Could it be Henry? Could it be the guy Violet bumped into at the start? Could it be the waiter? Could it be the bartender? Could it be an older gentleman named Richard (Reed Diamond)? The movie does a great job in terms of slowly adding details to keep me interested and wondering who the culprit is while keeping the main character at bay as well.

With the movie having its roots in suspense thrillers, there’s a lot of excellent camerawork, especially in the bathroom scenes where Violet goes in to look at her phone and discovers the tiny cameras.

I will say that the reveal for who the culprit of the drops is doesn’t hold up well under scrutiny. But I did like how Violet was able to distract him while Henry was taking a shot. The scene where Henry meets the culprit had a knowing look on Henry’s face.

The last ten minutes had Violet going back to her house and stopping the burglar hired to kill her son (which the burglar turns out to be a character Violet knows). Also, the technology behind the drops doesn’t really hold up well to scrutiny (I don’t know of a messaging app that lets you see other people in a room also messaging unless I’m mistaken).

For the most part, Drop works even with using a modern take on a tried and true formula.

The Luckiest Man in the America (saw in the theaters) - 3/5 stars

Spoiler

The Luckiest Man in America is somewhat of a disjointed conglomerate of Robert Redford's Quiz Show and Todd Haynes' Joker. Michael Larson (Paul Walter Hauser) has delusions of grandeur that revolve around the show Press Your Luck.

Most of the movie isn't really about what motivated Michael Larson to memorize the patterns for the board; it's much more focused on the people behind the scenes trying to figure out how he did it. Walton Googins plays the host Peter Tomarken as he seemingly eggs on Michael to continue while Bill Carruthers (David Strathairn) and Chuck (Shamier Anderson) dig deeper into Michael's background.

Something like this should be much tenser for the viewer to watch - I wonder if the movie should have been done in real time to match the actual episode. The extra characters involved, including Game of Thrones & Dr. Who alum Maisie Williams as Sylvia and Johnny Knoxville as a talk show host, are interesting but don't add to the story at all. They are merely sidenotes.

The centerpiece of the movie is Michael. What can be questioned is his ethics and who he is - his first appearance on screen had him impersonate another person for an audition to the show. Obviously, Michael will do anything to get ahead, which is why he gets asked to show back up tomorrow by Bill Carruthers. As Michael struggles through the movie, it begs the question: What would any of us do in impossible circumstances such as his? America has produced people like Bernie Madoff, who also participated in Ponzi schemes like Michael Larson. What makes any of us different from them?

For the most part, The Luckiest Man in America is easy odds for a decent movie.

 

[Curt McGirt]

I Wiki'd Lonesome Dove and it looked like McMurtry wanted to make Deadwood and came up with that instead. He doesn't agree with people that rate it so high. 

Murray was just in my FB videos feed for yelling at a fan for being rude or something. He's definitely got his issues. I like him but I don't expect him to be a saint -- as long as it isn't some Speaking Out shit. 

EDIT: Well, it looks like the Being Mortal '22 stuff was pretty close to Me Too (being a wrestling fan of course I wrote Speaking Out mistakenly). ND agreements usually say it all. Everything else seems like... well, he's a misanthrope. One that was actually funny was him hanging Seth Green, as a minor, over a trash can and dropping him when Seth kicked him in the balls 

Edited April 8 by Curt McGirt

[zendragon]

There's a story where he said "when meatballs became a hit I realized I could show up late to work everyday" and it seems since then he's had a bad case of "I'm a star I do what I want". And I know a lot of stuff can get said in divorce proceedings but those story's plus the accusations  from his ex wife don't paint a great picture.

What do people think about Robin William's performances where he goes totally dark like One Hour Photo, Insomnia, The Final Cut.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zq3KCBed5Q

I think the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy sketch highlights the issues with his manic performances

[HarryArchieGus]

11 hours ago, Tabe said:

Perhaps you've missed the numerous people that have accused him of awful behavior and harassment? Geena Davis, Lucy Liu, the 2022 movie that was ended because of his behavior, and so on. There's numerous stories out there about his behavior. 

I’m aware he’s had some disputes. I’m also aware of many ppl who have loved working with him. Thanks for sharing your thought process on labelling him a ‘garbage human being’.

[Technico Support]

9 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

Also, the technology behind the drops doesn’t really hold up well to scrutiny (I don’t know of a messaging app that lets you see other people in a room also messaging unless I’m mistaken).

Also, you can't just AirDrop anybody.  It's set to Contacts Only by default.  Setting your AirDrop to wide open is akin to raw dogging in New Orleans.

[Andrew POE!]

1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

Also, you can't just AirDrop anybody.  It's set to Contacts Only by default.  Setting your AirDrop to wide open is akin to raw dogging in New Orleans.

That's what I mean. There's not anything that you can just see who's available for AirDrops through an app.

It's fine for the movie and if you think too much about it, it's ruined for you. But just take it as it is and it's fine (?).

Rawdogging in New Orleans sounds like fun.

Edited April 8 by Andrew POE!

[odessasteps]

There’s also the peekaboo Murray story which some find clever, but I don’t. 

[Pete]

So this past weekend Cindy mentioned that she was really interested in seeing Anora. I was a bit confused since she doesn't usually roll that way on movies, but I said "sure, what the hell." Movie starts, we're both enjoying it. We get about 30 minutes in and Cindy goes "I'm confused. Why hasn't Zoe Saldana shown up yet?"

Anora, Emilia... let's call the whole thing off.  

[Technico Support]

25 minutes ago, Pete said:

So this past weekend Cindy mentioned that she was really interested in seeing Anora. I was a bit confused since she doesn't usually roll that way on movies, but I said "sure, what the hell." Movie starts, we're both enjoying it. We get about 30 minutes in and Cindy goes "I'm confused. Why hasn't Zoe Saldana shown up yet?"

Anora, Emilia... let's call the whole thing off.  

I put off seeing The Lincoln Lawyer for years because I thought it was a historical piece about Abraham Lincoln's attorney. Shit happens.

[J.H.]

40 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I put off seeing The Lincoln Lawyer for years because I thought it was a historical piece about Abraham Lincoln's attorney. Shit happens.

See, everyone has their own Legends of the Fall movie!

James