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MARCH 2017 MOVIE THREAD


RIPPA

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I realized this as I was doing my ballot for the GOAT poll

Robert Redford is one of my all-time favorite actors. I just never connected the dots until I was realizing how many things he was in were doing well on my list.

I mean like I have even watched shit like Legal Eagles way too many fucking times

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That sounds like when I realized Aja Kong was one of my favorite wrestlers.  She's in all these matches that I really like...

I watched Sundance grand prize winner I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore on Netflix last night.  It was a good time.  Sort of a mumblecore crime movie with flashes of violence... there are moments when I could see comparisons to both the Coens and Tarantino.

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33 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Anyone seen The Red Turtle, the French animated movie nominated for best animated picture oscar? Its plenty sort of nearby. 

1. Yes, it's really good.

2. It's co-produced by Studio Ghibli so not entirely French made.

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Watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them last night and holy crap is that ever an adorable movie.  When Universal eventually shoehorns a Newt Scamander's suitcase ride into one of their Harry Potter lands, its going to be incredible  

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17 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I had the studio ghibli part in there originally, then i saw there were 4 or 5 procducers, so didmt want to refer to it as one of "their" movies. 

I've seen it and it is a very Studio Ghibli movie, which is not a bad thing.

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Watched John Wick 2 today.

Ho. Lee. SHIT.

Spoiler

I have to admit that the last scene in The Continental threw because John hesitated just long enough for me to think he might respect the rules and let Santino live and then BOOM MOTHERFUCKER YOU DEAD! I hate that I'm stuck wondering if Aruelio will at least give John his car back before the hour expires and the excommunication order begins. Also, when John was getting his car back from Viggo's brother, was that Koslov who he kneecaps at the end or are my eyes deceiving me?

I can't wait to go see it again next week.

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Watched Die Hard With a Vengeance for the first time in ages recently. Really wondering if it was originally written as a generic action movie and then adapted to be part of the Die Hard series, because so much of what a Die Hard movie had been to that point is dispensed with. The first one has John McClane, NYPD cop in LA, never leaving Nakatomi Plaza. Second has John McClane, LAPD cop in Washington DC, never leaving the airport. Whereas here he's an NYPD cop again, going all over New York state (and over the Canadian border). So it loses the fish out of water aspect AND the trapped in an unfamiliar location aspect.

And actually, although 4.0 gets a lot of shit for transforming McClane into a Superhero, he was kind of on that path throughout the series, they just pushed things a bit too far in the 'how can we outdo what we've done previously' department that time. But driving high speed through Central Park and not hitting anyone is a bit ridiculous. Or getting into a lift unarmed, with four armed men who are planning on killing you, and coming out without a scratch having killed all enemies is some Captain America business.

Now Repo Chick (2009) is the sequel to Repo Man, but is really nothing like it. It appears to have been made with a zero budget. Literally, it's green screen and toy cars. Pretending that a train set is in fact a full size train with people on it. And the main character is a Paris Hilton tribute act only she's a Mary Sue who is the best at everything. It's pretty bad. Look:

Yes, that's Rosanna Arquette with the black hair.

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"The script ultimately used was intended for a film entitled Simon Says, originally positioned as a Brandon Lee vehicle, and the character of Zeus was written for an actress in mind. Warner Bros. bought the script and rewrote it as a Lethal Weapon sequel. Warners later put the script in turnaround, only to be purchased by Fox and rewritten as a Die Hard film."

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And the original Die Hard was originally going to be a Frank Sinatra movie, and was Commando 2 for a few minutes. Anyway, we watched Die Hard 4.0 (the American title is stupid) and right during the tunnel vs helicopter bit, Xavi said so far it was the best Die Hard movie of the four. Although after it finished, he conceded that it wasn't as good as the first one, but he has them 1-4-3-2 in terms of goodness. Whereas I've got 1-3-4-2... and I didn't hate 2, it was just another Die Hard copy (of which there were several, at the time) that happened to feature the actual Die Hard cast.

I know a lot of people disliked 4 because the action scenes had one-upped one another into incredulity, but ramming a helicopter with a taxi wasn't that much more unbelievable than Sandra Bullock jumping a bus 30 feet, and taking out a Fighter Jet with a lorry was more surviving long enough (and that's John McClane's thing; He takes a lot of damage and survives) for it to destroy itself than actually winning. The jet pilot was clearly an overconfident risk taker dude, you could tell by how low he was going to try and get his shots off.

Ramona Flowers sure looks different with normal hair, doesn't she?

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I watched the bizarro Bob Odenkirk flick Girlfriend's Day on Netflix.  It plays a lot like a stretched-out Mr. Show sketch.  Odenkirk plays a formerly-great greeting card writer who lost his knack when his wife left him and is recruited to write the world's most romantic card.  It's weird, funny, and really weird.  Also the cast is pretty great: Amber Tamblyn, Stacy Keach, Rich Sommer, Natasha Lyonne, Andy Richter, Stephanie Courtney (Flo the insurance lady), Nate Mooney (One of the McPoyles) and Ed Begley Jr.

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Just watched MS .45 (1981).  Abel Ferrara is astounding.  He takes a 70s rape/revenge exploitation story and a budget of literally tens of thousands of dollars and makes something that is gorgeous and poetic to look at, psychologically profound, and troubling for the viewer who is caught between disgust at the institutionalization of misogyny and just staring slack-jawed at Zoe Lund's transofrmation.

I don't know how he does it. This is a movie made on a shitty drive-in budget that ends up being as much a visual poem as ROSEMARY'S BABY or something posh like that.

I know part of it is the casting of Lund and making her mute so that she becomes a kind of blank tablet for whatever is going on in the viewer's own mind.  The chatter and noise of all the people around her while she finds her obsession for violence, the first thing she's ever had that is hers and hers alone and makes her powerful and others weak, and embraces it with a frenzy. It's basically maybe five days total time, maybe a week.  She has no real desire to not get caught or anything.  She's just so completely alive all of the sudden that nothing else matters but keeping the high.  I guess like a lot of Ferrara's work, it's also about addiction and, of course, that was something that a big part of Lund's life as well.

The way she turns mechanical when she suddenly clicks into violent mode and the way that happens more and more easily. All with no dialog. Just changes in her face and level of vulnerability. There's also an element of slasher to it as she begins to dress like some kind of Jack The Ripper and slowly becomes more and more out of step with the reality around her.

And amazing little touches like her not knowing she needs to reload this gun she found at some point. Or how after watching her kill like  a dozen human men, Ferrara plays you again by making the only time you lose sympath for her when se

Spoiler

kills a dog.  Even an annoying one. And then, of course, we are able to retcon her as a hero again when we find out she couldn't do it.

Also it ends with a Halloween part and any movie that does that is automatically passage into film heaven.  And this is a New-York-in-1981 Halloween party so it looks like an episode of Glenn O'Brien's TV PARTY.

There's also something eerie about that final scene.  It's an explosion of violence from a victim like  CARRIE and so it has a similar feeling of mystical poetic justice (as if we're feeling it from inside her mind) but at the same time it's not magic and she is just randomly killing people (one of which I swear, was dressed as Ed Grimley).  It's just a mass shooting, an incredibly common and ugly and brutish real-life event and so, again, Abel Ferrara makes our cinematic aesthete's tastes get blindsided by the real-world ugliness of violence and it's impossible to separate them because we are seeing this both from inside her twisted romanticized head and from our real-world perspective.

I mean, in the end, she's just another dimwitted slug who ends the lives of dozens of people at a party and deserves nothing but scorn. But that's not how you feel because of how film can manipulate you with visuals and music.  It's wroth watching over and over to work through it.

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piranesi, you are awesome and I love you for making me watch this, but every single person in the film deserved at least a severe ass-kicking for one reason or another, and most of them massive. The dog is an argument point though.

Spoiler

He's still a cannibal after all... at least if he was human

 

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Yeah, Ms. 45 (or as my friend calls it:  What Repulsion Would Be If It Made Sense) is definitely one of the more bizarre and great things I have sat through in my life and time.

I can't think of a more Nietzschean film.  What happens to her is horrific, but her response to it is even more so which is precisely the point.

And so much subtle awesomeness.   Her use of her attacker's gun to attack others and becoming a hunter rather than prey.  The fact that she is mute and the gun becomes her voice.  Using her perceived vulnerability as bait to trap other social predators.

Even her name has greater meaning (Thana = Thanatos) and the bizarre nun garb she wears at the party is more evidence that she really does believe that she's a divine instrument of punishment.

It's hard to watch, but I still think it is a pretty significant piece of work.

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Rapevenge movies usually turn my stomach. But this movie was so easy to watch. Ferrara's camera is like a comedians eye. It finds all these weird details in every street and space.  Every shot is so interesting. 

And on a budget of like 50'grand. If I was going to follow around one film-maker to learn how to make a movie I think it would be him. 

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