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AUGUST 2015 MOVIE THREAD


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Straight Outta Compton was damn good. The resemblance of Cube's kid to his dad is un-fucking-canny, and he sure can act. The MVP of the film is the guy who played Eazy, though. Of course they left out all that stuff about, you know, Dre beating up women, but that was to be expected. Packed theater of teenagers so lots of laughs. 

 

That opening scene though! Shit was intense. For those who haven't seen it I have one word: "batter-ram". 

 

EDIT: After re-reading some of your comments about it, I agree with the second half being mostly Dre/Cube; they don't even play a single song from Eazy's solo records. Them giving so much attention to "No Vaseline" was hilarious though. I'm sure most of the kids in the crowd hadn't even heard it before so their awe was palpable. Something I want to know, did Cube really bust up the Priority dude's office with a bat? Speaking of which, here is Cube fact-checking the film: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/13/straight-outta-compton-film-ice-cube

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Something I want to know, did Cube really bust up the Priority dude's office with a bat? Speaking of which, here is Cube fact-checking the film: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/aug/13/straight-outta-compton-film-ice-cube

According to the current article in Rolling Stone, Bryan Turner said that it actually happened, but Cube went out of his way to smash stuff that wouldn't be missed all that much and that they both eventually had a good laugh about the whole situation.

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I am celebrating the 20th anniversary of MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAT!  It is painfully obvious who did their won fighting, who did SOME of their own fighting and who did none. And I hate Scorpion's symbiotic hand-tentacle as a substitute for the kunai on a rope. All in all I'm having fun though.

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Please forgive me in a bit of fantasy booking here.

 

When I was watching Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and the trailer for Spectre before it, I was reminded of the subplot from Quantum of Solace about the American CIA agent above Felix Leiter who was trying to help Quantum take control of Bolivia and I thought it would be funny if they had made a straight-faced spy spoof which parodied 1980s Reagan-era foreign policy.  Imagine if, before he died, Phillip Seymour Hoffman had made a sequel to Charlie Wilson's War where his character of Gust Avrakatos was placed in a Mission: Impossible/James Bond style adventure:

 

[We fade in on an old fashioned photo booth in a dilapidated shopping mall.  A title on the screen says: "Arlington, Virginia  1986." Phillip Seymour Hoffman, as CIA agent Gust Avrakatos, enters the booth, inserts 50 cents, and closes the curtain.]

 

Voice: Good morning Mr. Avrakatos.

 

[A film projector fires up behind Avrakatos.  On the screen in front of him is 8mm footage of a middle aged Hispanic man in a suit and tie, giving a speech at a political rally.]

 

Voice: The man you see before you is Henrique Hererra, former professor of Marxist theory, and, currently, the democratically elected President of the tiny South American nation of San Marcos.

 

[The film shifts to footage of Hispanic men harvesting marijuana plants in the South American jungles.]

 

Voice: As you know, despite its small size, San Marcos is one of the world's leading suppliers of the illegal narcotic known as marijuana.  In 1984 alone, it is believed that over 40% of the marijuana that was smuggled into this country illegally could be traced back to San Marcos narcotics cartels.

 

[Cut to footage of Herrera meeting with two men in business suits.]

 

Voice: In the two years since his  election, President Herrera has rebuffed repeated requests from the Drug Enforcement Agency to curb his country's narcotics smuggling, choosing instead to focus his country's limited resources on issues of "Social Justice," such as eradicating poverty, building new schools and hospitals, fighting corruption, and promoting equality for the homosexual and indiginous Indian minorities of San Marcos.

 

[Footage shifts to a newspaper photo of Herrera holding up a rainbow flag with a headline that reads, in Spanish, "San Marcos Legalizes Gay Marriage."]

 

Voice: Throughout all of this, President Herrera has continued to demonstrate disturbing signs of belief in Marxist and Socialist ideology.

 

[Footage of Herrera feeding the poor at a soup kitchen.]

 

[The footage then shifts to show a middle aged HIspanic man in full military dress, standing on a stage as a military parade of soldiers and tanks marches by.  The man is evil looking, with burn scars on one side of his face and his left eye "clouded over" ala Jake Roberts.]

 

Voice: This man is Generalissimo Ernesto Mendoza, supreme commander of San Marcos' Army, Navy, and Air Force.  His grip on power has been tenuous since the election of President Herrera, and he is currently the target of at least five different corruption investigations.

 

["Spy camera" photos of Mendoza torturing a man chained to a ceiling pipe.]

 

Voice: Despite repeated accusations of major human rights violations by the Jimmie Carter Foundation, General Mendoza has come to be viewed as a valued ally of American interests by the Reagan Administration.  He is an ardent opponent of communism, and is a vocal supporter of America's War on Drugs.]

 

[Photo of Mendoza posing with Nancy Reagan, his arm around her shoulder.  Both are wearing "Just Say No" t-shirts.]

 

Voice: Recently, the CIA has learned that in five days time, President Herrera will give a major policy speech to the San Marcos Parliament.  In this speech, he will announce that he is seizing all American-owned businesses within San Marcos, and nationalizing them with the aim of using profits from these corporations to directly lift San Marcos' poorest citizens out of poverty and into the middle class.  It is vitally important that President Herrera not give this speech.

 

[A countdown timer appears on the screen.]

 

Voice: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the nation of San Marcos and prevent President Herrera from giving this speech.  

 

Further, you are to assist General Mendoza in any way possible in staging a coup and overthrowing the Herrera government, establishing a military junta that is friendly to the United States and its business interests in the region in its place.

 

If necessary, you are authorized to assasinate President Herrera and his supporters in order to ensure that American interests in the region remain stable.

 

As always, should any you or any member of your team be captured, the CIA will send a Delta Force commando unit to rescue you and annihilate your captors.

 

Good luck, Gust.  This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

 

[Cut to the outside of the photo booth. Tom Hanks is standing outside, drinking Beefeater Gin straight from the bottle.  Smoke begins to billow from the photo booth as Gust steps outside]

 

Charlie Wilson: Where to this time?

 

Gust Avrakatos: San Marcos.  Commie pig that runs the country is getting ready to turn all the American-owned businesses in the country over to the peasants in the favelas.

 

Charlie Wilson: The nerve.  You wanna go to a strip club?

 

Gust Avrakatos: Of course I wanna go to a strip club.

 

[The two men walk off as the self-destructing photo booth bursts into flames.]

 

-----

 

Sorry about that, I really need to start making amatuer film spoofs on Youtube or something.

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I am celebrating the 20th anniversary of MORTAL KOMBAAAAAAT!  It is painfully obvious who did their won fighting, who did SOME of their own fighting and who did none. And I hate Scorpion's symbiotic hand-tentacle as a substitute for the kunai on a rope. All in all I'm having fun though.

I haven't read it yet, but apparently The Hollywood Reporter put together an oral history of the movie.

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it has dawned on me that I have seen the Rachel Dolezal saga unfold before.

 

9235118_ori.jpg

 

only the movie was better because it had the Keyser Soze bait and switch villain and a Chinatown-esque crooked land deal thrown in for good measure along with Jolene Blalock being pretty hot for a fake sista.

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I watched BIRDMAN last week, and shit I loved that movie.  Much of that is because I felt a weird connection to Keaton's character, and even Keaton's character's character.  I also love how the whole movie seemed to feel like you were watching a play.  Not just the scenes about the play itself, but everything about it.  It was like the actors were playing to a back row that wasn't there, and the set pieces were very contained.  My only gripe would be Emma Stone's character, because it very much had that "fake deep" feel that I thought faded out in the early 2000's.  Of course that may have been intentional, but I'm not sure if they intended for the character to be full of her own shit and pretentious.  Either way though, great flick.

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A group of film podcasts that I listen to have joined together in the last few weeks to review a bunch of films themed for what they call "SLEAZY SUMMER".  Kind of like the Halloween Havoc that goes on here but with some of the sleaziest exploitation films.

sleaxy.jpg

 

It'll include The Gentlemen's Guide to Midnite Cinema, Silva & Gold, The Trashy Trio, Married With Clickers, Hammicus, Cult of Muscle and The Feminine Critique.

So if you love Marvel Comics like crossover summer events but with down and dirty sleaze, check these podcasts out!

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See three weeks ago when we were talking about 2 movies that are the same movie? We forgot Dead Man's Curve and Dead Man on Campus. Just saying.

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So I was watching the always hilarious The Great Outdoors and it's one of those movies I love and watch almost annually, but this is the first time watching it that I realized it's also really excessively poorly-made: there are some pretty glaring continuity errors all over the place (When John Candy is undressing his wife near the start, she's wearing a full slip, but all of a sudden, it's just a bra; when the son accidentally gooses the girl with the pool cue and she spins around, sending the cue flying, to confront him, the pool cue is miraculously back in his hand); the whole storyline with the son and the local girl plays the exact same music every time, is badly underwritten and feels like it was a totally different story that they just wedged into this one because they didn't have enough material to pull it off.  But, I still love it.

 

Also watched The 'Burbs which kind of gets better with each subsequent rewatch.  It's so dark, and the cast is so good (Tom Hanks, Rick Ducommun, Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher, Corey Feldman...back when it was acceptable to like him), and it's funny and crazy, and the neighbourgs kind of really remind me of my neighbours which adds a whole new level of enjoyment to the film.

Late to the party, but I feel like The 'Burbs is this hidden gem of a movie and my favourite Tom Hanks movie (I really do not like OSCAR AWARD WINNER TOM HANKS). The ending is fucking insane because it's all like progressive and optimistic at first, in that the neighbours weren't really crazy, we were bad to think that of them! Then all hell breaks loose and it's awesome.

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Kind of like the Halloween Havoc that goes on here but with some of the sleaziest exploitation films.

I'm watching a hell of a candidate for them right now. I guess I shouldn't be surprised when a Japanese pinku flick from the 1970s with the glorious title TERRIFYING GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL: LYNCH LAW CLASSROOM might turn out to be sordid. But man, the first fuckin' shot of this movie is literally a standard-issue Japanese schoolgirl/sexploitation victim being tied up and stripped nude by a bunch of evil schoolgirls in bright red surgical masks. And now they're getting out scalpels and needles... hoo boy, looks like I'm in for a looooong movie.
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See three weeks ago when we were talking about 2 movies that are the same movie? We forgot Dead Man's Curve and Dead Man on Campus. Just saying.

Had to look up what you were talking about. Turns out Dead Man's Curve was called The Curve in the US. I thought your statement looked funny - Dead Man's Curve is a movie about the music group Jan & Dean.
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I think the thing there was, Dead Man's Curve (the Matthew Lillard one) got a small cinematic release in the UK whereas Dead Man on Campus went straight to video*. Whilst in the USA, Dead Man on Campus was the bigger film (or maybe just scheduled to come out first), so they changed the title to avoid confusion. And ended up with a confusing title. They should have just called it Pass by Catastrophe, really.

 

* The only people in the UK who've seen it are the Saved by the Bell super-obsessives (who are - to this day - still upset that Channel 4 stopped showing NYPD Blue when Jimmy Smits left), and Buffy obsessives who'll watch anything Alyson Hannigan has ever done. Which is quite a small sample of Saved by the Bell/ Buffy fans (who are also a small sample of people to begin with).

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Has anyone else checked out AMERICAN ULTRA?  Just got back from seeing it and I quite enjoyed it.  Definitely felt like it had some inspiration from Scott Pilgrim vs the World at it's core, which I won't complain about.  Had some hints of Grosse Pointe Blank in there as well, which is also ok with me.  At the same time, it felt original, while still using some standard tropes.  I didn't know much about the movie going in, so the second act came WAY out of left field for me.  Not a perfect movie, but absolutely a fun one.  Great action, a sweet love story and some genuinely funny moments, so I say give it a watch, maybe take a date.

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After sitting through both Drinking Buddies and Frances Ha recently, I've started to develop an intense dislike for the whole Mumblecore/"I just turned 30, what do I do with my life" film genre.

 

I really can't wait until Greta Gerwig and some of these other Mumblecore actors/writers hit 40, to see what they turn out.  Presumably, the movies will be a lot like Greenberg except that Gerwig herself will be in the Greenberg role, rather than playing the love interest.

 

I really liked Drinking Buddies, but Happy Christmas was not a very good movie. I think I also watch only 1-2 of these types of films a year, so I think that helps too.

 

So I just watched 'Drinking Buddies' and LOOOOOVED it.  Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson are so wonderfully fun in it.  And that ending was a letter-perfect ending.

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