2014 MOVIE OMNIBUS THREAD

[Newb82]

R.I.P. Mr. Takagi.

[Kuetsar]

R.I.P. Mr. Takagi.

He won't be joining us for the rest. . of. . his. . life.

[nate]

 

It's just my own personal hang-up. That's all.

 

And I am not saying that you are wrong.  I am just saying that my level of acceptance is different than yours and there are plenty of reasons to find fault with Lucy that have nothing to do with the Brain Power myth perpetuation.

 

 

I didn't think you were.  I was - I think, similar in scope to your reply above - clarifying that, in a sense, I wasn't trying to push my viewpoint and therefore be a dick about it.  No harm, no foul.

[J.T.]

Coolio.  I didn't want you to think that I was trying to invalidate your opinion.  That's not how I do business.

[Reed]

 

R.I.P. Mr. Takagi.

He won't be joining us for the rest. . of. . his. . life.

 

 

I kind of liked how he managed to take relatively small, sacrificial lamb of a character and make him wholly sympathetic. I remember being all "JUST GIVE HIM THE CODE!" during that scene.

[caley]

My recent watchings

Escape Plan: Sylvester Stallone is a famous prison escaper who gets locked up in a futuristic prison for...puzzling reasons.  In prison he befriends fellow inmate Arnold Schwarzenegger and the two become fast friends and co-escape conspirators.  It's really far-fetched, even for a Stallone/Arnnold action flick, but has a surprisingly solid cast (Jim Caviezel, Amy Ryan, Vinnie Jones, Sam Neill, Vincent D'Onofrio...and 50 Cent), entertaining ridiculous escape sequences, and Schwarzenegge is in his best steal-every-scene-he's-in-with-pure-charisma mode here that every time it focuses on Stallone, you just really want to see Arnold again.

 

Hell Up In Harlem: A guy on the IMDB board suggests this might have been the film that heavily inspired 'Black Dynamite' and he could be right.  Fred Williamson reprises a character from the film 'Black Caesar' (Which I've been unable to track down) who is gravely wounded at the beginning of the film and enlists his father to help him.  His father goes from citizen, to Big Papa a pimp-hat-wearin', fur-collar-lined, pimp-slappin' gangsta from one scene to the next and it's hilarious.  The film also has some of the worst fight choreography you're ever likely to see  with one scene, where Big Papa fights some Japanese gangsters being particularly egregious.  The soundtrack also has the particularly silly habit of singing about EXACTLY what is going on onscreen: when Big Papa first shows up the backing sings about him (It's a pretty badass song, to be fair), later when Williamson says he's coming back to town but he's going to ease his way back in, the song playing goes "He's easing his way back in!"  Anyways, there's lots of shooting, lots of death, some good lines, and Julius Harris dominates the screen as Big Papa and makes you wish that someone had put together a Big Papa movie.

 

Into the Wild I found this to be rather irritating, truth be told.  I didn't find the protagonist's quest to find himself and live in the wilderness inspiring or noble, in the least.  I thought he was extremely selfish, in the way he treated his family firstly, but also the way he talked up his independence and finding his way in the world but relied almost entirely on he kindness of others to make his way to Alaska and also in the way he'd show up in these peoples' lives, become interesting/important/dear to them, then up and leave in the middle of the night when it suited him.  Still, it has nice cinematography and two really stunning scenes: the scene of him on the beach in silhouette against the setting sun with birds all around him and the ending

is particularly devastating with him realizing all the stuff he's done is pretty useless without someone to share it with as he slowly dies

That said, if I'd watched this movie in my late teens/early twenties, it probably would have felt like a life-changing experience.  Watching it later than that mainly brings up a feeling of "C'mon man, man the fuck up!"

Original Gangstas was pretty great.  A drive-by shooting in the town of Gary, Indiana brings back its most famous resident: a former NFL player (Fred Williamson) bent on revenge for an assault against his father.  He tries to reason with the gang, but quickly realizes this isn't possible and aided by fellow bad-ass former boxer Jake (Jim Brown!) and victim's mother (Pam Grier!), as well as local residents (Richard Roundtree! and Ron O'Neal!) they take on the young punk gangstas to take back their streets.  The action is kinda silly, the gangstas are made up of mostly struggling rappers who aren't really great actors, the soundtrack is all wrong (For some reason going with a sludgy 90s metal motif, rather than a much more apt funk/soul 70s pastiche) but it's still a lot of fun.  That first moment when Williamson gets off the plane is so bad-ass and perfect.  Apparently he started a kickstarter earlier in an attempt to make 'Original Gangstas 2' but it looks like he shut it down after only raising $6,000 of the $1.2 million he was looking for.  He needs to call Quentin Tarantino, he'd probably be pay for it out of pocket!

[Elsalvajeloco]

Dude, Julius Harris rocked the shit out of Hell Up in Harlem. However, I would probably say Black Caesar also was a big inspiration for Black Dynamite. Tommy's mom dies offscreen (maybe they didn't have enough money to shoot that scene) and then they play "Mama's Dead". Instead of having that scene, James Brown explains it through song. It was probably poignant back then, but it's fucking hilarious when you watch it now. I'm pretty sure that gave us "Jimmy's Dead" in Black Dynamite.

[caley]

Dude, Julius Harris rocked the shit out of Hell Up in Harlem. However, I would probably say Black Caesar also was a big inspiration for Black Dynamite. Tommy's mom dies offscreen (maybe they didn't have enough money to shoot that scene) and then they play "Mama's Dead". Instead of having that scene, James Brown explains it through song. It was probably poignant back then, but it's fucking hilarious when you watch it now. I'm pretty sure that gave us "Jimmy's Dead" in Black Dynamite.

Now I really wanna track down 'Black Caesar'! Apparently, per IMDB, they had James Brown tabbed to score 'Hell Up in Harlem' but didn't like his songs, turfed him, and hired Edwin Starr instead.  Those songs they rejected?  They just became a little album called 'The Payback'.

[Curt McGirt]

Black Caesar is a legit good movie, maybe the crown jewel of the blaxploitation movement (with its diametric opposite being the equally amazing Dolemite). Fred is great in it, there is some fine acting, and it comes off like a serious drama with a strong character arc for the lead. It may not be as fun as Foxy Brown or Super Fly, but that's kinda apples and oranges even though they're in the same subgenre. I still haven't seen Hell Up in Harlem but need to. And yeah, Original Gangstas was fun too. 

 

It's funny you mention Escape Plan cause I just caught the end of Lock Up on satellite. Pretty bad, that one... not one of either Sly or Donald Sutherland's finest moments. Or even Tom Sizemore's.

[Jingus]

The argument over Lucy: I share Nate's hangup, that's a pet-peeve urban myth that I'm annoyed to see is back in fashion. But then again, I can't judge the movie itself before seeing it, and this is from the same guy who made total bullshit storyline into magical music with The Fifth Element.

Speaking of bullshit alarms: I remember mine faintly ringing even as a young child at the end of Lock Up. I didn't believe Stallone could somehow actually get all the way into the office like that.

[Swift]

Movies I've seen over the last month...

 

84 Charing Cross Road (1987) A New Yorker (Anne Bancroft) and a London bookseller (Anthony Hopkins) maintain a friendship through letters over a few decades. This is probably the most pleasant, delightful film I've seen in a long, long time. There is no major plot action here. Nothing much really happens. It's just an amiable stroll of a movie. I was afraid the movie was going to take a wrong turn with a romantic element (Hopkins' character is married with a family) but thankfully, it didn't and remained platonic. There was one hokey scene where Bancroft's character gets arrested at a student protest, but apart from that, it was totally enjoyable.

 

The Italian Job (1969) I finally got around to watching this. A fair amount of English jingoism throughout, and I felt a little dirty enjoying a film that Jeremy Clarkson probably worships. I loved the final 45 minutes with the great Mini sequence. That scene where the 3 Minis followed by the Fiat drive up onto the roof of a building was impressive. Just unabashed fun. A little slow in getting to that finale though.

 

The Running Man (1987) Cheesy, and not in the good way. Richard Dawson steals the show though. Not very realistic though. Lots of half naked chicks dancing in close proximity to him, and he didn't feel up any of them.

 

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) A war vet (Spencer Tracy) arrives in a small town to give a medal to the father of a Japanese-American buddy who died during the war. He meets all kind of resistance from the locals. Disappointing movie overall. I guess I just didn't understand why the locals were so blatantly antagonistic towards Tracy's character, especially when they're trying to hide a secret.

 

Road Games (1981) Stacy Keach is a trucker in Australia who believes he's on the trail of a serial killer who's been raping and killing women along the highway. Keach is great in this, playing a really likeable guy. Jamie Lee Curtis pops up as a hitchhiker too. Recommended, though the ending is a little silly and abrupt.

 

Stranger by the Lake (2013) A great, little French film with aspects of Hitchcock. A guy spends his time visiting a local gay cruising beach, and witnesses a murder committed by a guy he's been enamoured with. He then becomes sexually involved with the murderer. This film is so economical, and yet looks beautiful. The lake and the surrounding woods are the only locations in the film, and there are only a handful of characters, but it all works. Needless to say, if you're the type of idiot who is horrified by the sight of gay men and/or male nudity, this film isn't for you. 90% of the movie has full frontal nudity, with a couple of hardcore scenes in there too.

 

Paths of Glory (1957) Despite never seeing Kirk Douglas in a movie, I'd stupidly written him off as a hammy Charlton Heston type. (Note: I've also never seen Heston in a movie) He is hammy in his one big scene, but his screen presence impressed me immensely. I think I could probably watch him in anything now. What a great film though. At a tidy 90 mins, it says everything it needs to say about the futility of war and the abuse of power by the higher ups without overstaying its welcome. The battlefield scene is stunning by the way, but it's Kubrick, so you would expect no less. I ended up watching a one man show by a 92 year old Douglas a few days after this where he ruminates on his life and his career. Seems like a really good guy.

 

On The Waterfront (1954) You know who else I'd written off? Brando. Having only seen his 70s work, I'd always thought he was overrated. He was great here, and I couldn't take my eyes off him anytime he was on screen.

 

3 (2010) Not a movie I've ever encountered anyone talking about, but I've liked the couple of Tykwer films I've seen, so I figured I'd check it out. A guy ends up having sexual affairs with a husband and wife without any of them realising it. There's a great scene where the husband and wife are at a museum and they notice their lover walking towards them and they both break away from each other to avoid him and then quickly make excuses about having to leave. I've seen it compared since to a German Woody Allen film, but I don't know if I got that impression myself.

 

Sleeper (1973) Speaking of Woody Allen. I enjoy his movies, and yet I've never found myself loving them. I'd contend however that each of his films contains one great scene. Here is Sleeper's great scene:

 

 

Skip to 2:00 for Diane Keaton doing Brando.

[Brian Fowler]

On The Waterfront is my favorite movie ever, and Brando anchors it with the single best film performance I've ever seen.

[piranesi]

Trying to watch the CARRIE remake, but I'm just having a hard time sitting through what is essentially a litany of cruelty with maybe a promising bit of TERRA CHIMP-esque slaughter at the very end and HOLYSHIT ELLIS FROMDIEHARDIS HERE!!!!!

 

Okay, I have to wait this out just to see how awesomely he takes his disemboweling.  I can watch that guy die all night.

[AaronMLuke]

God - why did I watch so much of the edited version The Hangover last night?

 

I almost would rather just have total silence then here the phrase "FORGET YOU!" edited into a movie ever again

Best edited phrase EVAH is Mickey mouse bullsquash in a cable version of The Professional. Just hilarious.

[Brian Fowler]

Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?

[piranesi]

As far as purposeless remakes go, CARRIE is pretty far near the bottom of the heap.  Nothing was added to the idea of the story.  Some things were taken away.  Turning the main mean girl into a bloodthirsty psychopath was shallow and pointless.  It diminished the shock of commonplace and recognizable cruelty with something easier to dismiss and leading to a cheap "gunfight at high noon" climax.

It wasn't an easy thing to undertake.  Somehow, the story itself doesn't fit in today's world.  Part of the shock of the original had to do with the clash between the fantasy of that idyllic smalltown life that people still believed themselves to be living in in the 1970s, and the emergence of acknowledgement that that world was gone and being replaced the rough ugly clickish teenage Darwinism that was going to characterize the 80s and beyond.  There were two "unleashings" in the original CARRIE.  Carrie's was the secnd.  The first was an assault on the veneer of civility among American kids.  And it had impact then in the same way that a lot of the teen slashers had a moral that seems redundant nowadays.

How do you redo that nearly three decades into that new world?  When we all already lived our youths well beyond that cultural moment?  This movie didn't really bother to try and figure that out other than just attempting to make each act of emotional brutality from the original a little harsher this time and filmed a little clearer.   As if the best only answer was amplification.  But THIS TIME IN SUPER HIGH DEF!!!! is no substitute for ideas.

The directing was kind of bad too.  In a lot of scenes Chloe Grace Moretz wasn't given enough, I'm not sure exactly but distance maybe?  to be able to pull off some of the more absurd looking scenes without looking like "an actress in an absurd situation."  The straightforward framing was just cruel and incompetent.  It's a really hard part to make believable, especially at the end when you're waving your arms around like some cross between an Grimm's fairy tale Lorelai witch and Tom Cruise in MINORITY REPORT, grimacing and scowling, and somehow it seemed like the director had no idea how to protect her from that.  The end result was none of the emotional impact of that scene or the final scene in the house between her and Julianne Moore that the original had. 

 

Weirdly I think part of it is was casting.  Moore looks too weak and Moretz too strong through the entire movie, whereas with Spacek and Piper Laurie it was the opposite. I almost wish it was Moore playing Carrie and Moretz playing Margaret somehow.

How devoid of new ideas it was is perfectly summed up by the useless dumb final scene where they couldn't even be arsed to find a way to re-imagine that famous ending.  Hard to do after all these years and all the imitations?  Yes.  But that's the challenge, if you give enough of a fuck to accept it, of remaking a classic.  But they settled for some rocking guitar and a cheap CGI moment that was more snotty hair-toss than haunting elegy.

 

I give it two fat internet nerds down.

[Kuetsar]

 

God - why did I watch so much of the edited version The Hangover last night?

 

I almost would rather just have total silence then here the phrase "FORGET YOU!" edited into a movie ever again

Best edited phrase EVAH is Mickey mouse bullsquash in a cable version of The Professional. Just hilarious.

 

I dont know, Yippee Ky Yeah, Mr. Falcon from Die Hard 2 is up there. . .

[Craig H]

"This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" became "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps."

[caley]

I read an excerpt from a book about working with the Coens where they were bragging to John Goodman about changing a line of dialogue in 'Fargo' from "I'm fucking hungry" to "I'm full of hungry" then they laughed and said it was much better and they should have kept it that way in the original, as well.

 

The edit of 'Observe and Report' that they run on Peachtree TV is pretty incredible.  The lengthy "Fuck you" exchange between Seth Rogen and Aziz Ansari becomes to guys shouting increasingly quiet "Forget you" at each other; Ray Liotta's meltdown about having to work with a "fucking retard" is changed into "a freakin' DOO-fusss"; Danny McBride talking about the tattoo of his son on his chest goes from "You think I'd have just any motherfucker on my motherfuckin' chest" to "You think I'd have just any melon farmer on my mother lovin' chest"? and my favourite part, when Rogen's character arrests McBride's son and goes "Boom! Fuck you!" on the way out it becomes the much crueler "Boom! I hate you!"  That said, I was really bummed they didn't photo-shop pants onto the streaker rather than go blurry.

[Niners Fan in CT]

I still think Observe and Report is awesome. Anna Faris is great. Ronnie reminded me so much of a couple guys I went to school with.

[Death From Above]

Now I want you to go in that bag and find my wallet.

 

Which one is it?

 

It's the one that says Bad Melon Farmer on it.

[Swift]

Why would a TV station even show a film like Observe and Report?

 

Reminds me when I first came to this part of the world, bored late at night watching TV and noticing that Basic Instinct was starting on TBS. The opening sex scene lasted about 5 seconds. Late at night. The Brits do this kind of thing well where there's a 9pm watershed. After that anything goes in terms of language, sex, violence, etc.

 

America, you're a weird bunch of puritans. I'm watching Hannibal, and it is genuinely one of the most sick and gory shows I've seen on network TV. That episode where the killer tears the skin off the people's backs and hangs them like angels with wings was genuinely disturbing. And yet, these horrifically mutilated bodies are filmed at such an angle that the female's nipple is always obstructed. Shots of bare backside are covered too. This is all ostensibly done to protect children from seeing the true evil of a human's body. All of the other stuff is apparently perfectly fine for your child to see.

 

Seriously, if you're letting your child watch this show, you're a terrible, terrible parent. But, if somehow, a child is watching all of these violent images, the sight of the nipple isn't the one that's going to send them over the edge. So if we agree that this is an obviously adult show, who are the people who need protecting?

[Niners Fan in CT]

Apparently, the human body is only beautiful when it's mutilated and covered in blood or so says network television and the MPAA.

[Death From Above]

Roger Ebert wrote about how much this pissed him off pretty constantly in the later years of his career. The whole thing is ridiculous.

[Brian Fowler]

"This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" became "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps."

Aw, Bank has me on ignore.