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SEPT 2017 MOVIE DISCUSSION


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Watched Colossal last night with my wife.  Enjoyed it quite a bit.  Hathaway was good as usual, and Jason Sudeikis was surprisingly good in a more dramatic, "casting against type" role.   Plot probably has a lot of holes if I think about it overmuch, but tone and plot are not what you expect going in, so it plays out sort of surprisingly.  Wife and I were arguing about whether to read the movie as commentary on how badly we act when we feel rejected by someone we love, or if it's simply a cautionary tale about power corrupting.

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4 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

I presume Fences was great, right? I just finished reading the play (its been sitting around at the school I work at) and I couldn't help but read Troy in Denzel's voice.

It's fucking fantastic. Denzel wasn't up to much as a director, but it doesn't really matter with material that good handled by a cast that talented.

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I thought it was pretty good. It's incredibly obvious that it started life as a play.  My main gripe is that Denzel talks CONSTANTLY and ends up being annoying. He's also a prick. Still, it's well-made and worth seeing. 

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I thought the adaptation was unimaginative.  It felt like Denzel simply set up a camera and shot the play, with no effort at all put in to how he could make it fit the medium of film.  Boring set design, lots of stand-and-talk, and , way too much "tell, don't show" dialogue.  Hey, did you miss the fact that Troy is stepping out on his wife?  Don't worry, Bono will bring it up 12 more times.  I guess that works for a small three act play where that kind of exposition might be a limit of the form, but it kills a movie for me.  Cut 95% of those mentions and show Troy at the bar meeting his girl.  It's not sacrilege to flesh out the source material with new content if it avoids clunky exposition.

The source material was kinda crap, too.    It's probably personal preference, but I couldn't stand how lightly it let Troy off.  The Troy character left a trail of human wreckage in his wake because he was a petty, angry little man who couldn't deal with how his life had turned out.  Every person he interacted with was the worse for having known him.  So to have a happy ending where everyone turns just fine and then they all get together to celebrate his life, well holy shit, that's something so audacious you wouldn't even see it in a Hallmark movie.  

This movie wouldn't get nearly the praise it does if Denzel and Davis hadn't been attached.  Put Morris Chestnut it in and give it a TV director and it might get some play on Lifetime or Centric.

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Went to see the Hitman's Bodyguard with my bae and my kid at the discount movies on post at Ft. Meade.

We had a great time and the movie was pretty awesome.

I am probably the worst father in the world for allowing my 14 year old kid to hear the F-Word more times than we could count.

The smile on her face at dinner later on said otherwise, though.

Me being a right brained walking computer immediately noticed that three of the premier actors in the movie (Ryan Reynolds, Sam Jackson, Elodie Yung) factor heavily in the MCU either on television or in the movies.

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mother! got a F from CinemaScore and Box Office Mojo lays out that probably kills its chances at the box office

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Third place went to Darren Aronofsky's mother!, which not only opened with a supremely disappointing $7.5 million from 2,368 locations, but became one of only 19 films to ever receive an "F" CinemaScore suggesting a 60+% drop next weekend and a short-lived theatrical experience. The overall audience was 44% male vs. 56% female, of which 18% were under the age of 25. For star Jennifer Lawrence this is her worst wide debut ever, falling almost $5 million shy of her much-maligned September 2012 thriller House at the End of the Street, which debuted with $12.2 million despite an 11% rating on RottenTomatoes compared to the 68% rating for mother!

At this point the best comparison is likely 2009's The Box, which also debuted with $7.5 million and received an "F" CinemaScore. That film went on to gross $15 million domestically.

 

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We're talking about mother! in the Horror forum and are coming to the conclusion that:

Spoiler

People are mad that it is not a horror movie in the traditional sense.

I think people who go back and watch Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan will come to appreciate mother! in concept.

Those films will remind them of how Aronofsky is fond of the use of frightening allegory to discuss far more basic themes and armed with that, they should be able to watch mother! with a more open mind.

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Rex Reed called it the worst movie of the century~!

I get why mainstream audiences would hate it, but all you need to do is a bit of Googling or read 2 particular lines in the Wiki entry to understand it.  You don't even have to put any thought into it yourself if you don't want to.

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Meanwhile, it got 3 1/2 stars from Rogerebert.com. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mother-2017 

Like J.T. and SKOS, I think people just don't want to think this summer and would prefer to watch something like It instead. 

EDIT: I dig this paragraph at the end of that review

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“mother!” is going to make people angry. It’s going to make people ecstatic. It’s that kind of film—a movie that feels like it was purposefully made to be divisive, and completely unapologetic and unrestrained in terms of its creator’s vision. Love it or hate it, and there will be many on both sides, it’s a film people will talk about, which is both exactly what Aronofsky wants, and what we should demand more of from our movies. 

 

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28 minutes ago, Horton Hears a Wooo!!! said:

I think Mother's probably very well done, from an artistic perspective.

It also looks like something that would take way more effort to enjoy than the wife and I wanted to put out this weekend. 

Exactly. It's gonna tank bigtime but it'll end up a cult classic. It'll also be reviled by a lot of people too. For example, our local Art Theater would probably be all over it but they are super feminist in their programming and I think it might be a bit too fucked up in that regard for them. And they're playing Santa Sangre in a couple weeks! Then again, I could be wrong and they might end up showing it at some point after the chains dump it. 

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For whatever its worth - Stephen King picks his 8 "favorite" films for BFI. They are in no particular order except the first one 

  • Sorcerer (he said this is his favorite film of all time)
  • Les Diaboliques
  • The Changeling
  • Night of the Demon
  • Village of the Damned
  • Duel
  • The Hitcher
  • The Stepfather

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/stephen-king-favourite-films

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I read the Wiki plot summary for mother.  God, I hope that's not really the movie.  Are the characters really named "Man", "Him". "mother". etc.?  The whole thing sounds like one of those odd projects that is totally impenetrable and ponderous to sit through, but you assume must be really good because it's art and you are dumb for not getting it.

Not for me.  if anyone needs me, I'll be watching The Emoji Movie.

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17 hours ago, Ace said:

I liked Dave Holmes' take on it.

I get the joke, but now I'm trying to think of the harshest and most aggressively unpleasant experience I've ever had in a movie theater.  Enter The Void, maybe?  Not that it's wall-to-wall terrible but it's quite a long movie with some very rough spots.

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43 minutes ago, S.K.o.S. said:

I get the joke, but now I'm trying to think of the harshest and most aggressively unpleasant experience I've ever had in a movie theater.  Enter The Void, maybe?  Not that it's wall-to-wall terrible but it's quite a long movie with some very rough spots.

There are some films that come to mind like Salo, Gummo, Antichrist, Irreversible, and A Serbian Film which were intended to be deliberately unpleasant, I think, but Enter The Void is a good choice for something I believe was supposed to be thought inspiring and turned out rather to be ponderous.

Nymphomania was also the most un-erotic erotic film I have ever had to sit through.

 

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The fallout from Mother beggars belief. If people are pissed that it's not a horror film based on marketing, I'd hate to have seen people's reaction to Fight Club when they went expecting it to be a story about bare knuckle boxers.

Viewers don't seem to be able to understand mainstream film as art or allegory's challenging them or asking unresolved questions anymore. See also fallout from Twin Peaks finale. It's not even like Mother requires a lot of thought, in fact it almost felt too on the nose to me. I enjoyed it, massive biblical themes condensed into a narrative about a house and a couple I think is just brilliant, but Aaronofsky's films always feel like they're one step away from a masterpiece

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3 hours ago, CreativeControl said:

The fallout from Mother beggars belief. If people are pissed that it's not a horror film based on marketing, I'd hate to have seen people's reaction to Fight Club when they went expecting it to be a story about bare knuckle boxers.

I think that it is hilarious that so many of Aronofsky's movies (especially The Fountain) are reviled because they had the audacity to make someone engage their brain while watching a movie.

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