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[MOVIES] SEPTEMBER 2018 DISCUSSION


Dolfan in NYC

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The Usual Suspects and Se7en are two of my favourite films from the 1990s but I won't rewatch them. I will see Baby Driver just because I've seen Edgar Wright's other movies.

I love Shawn of the Dead and discovered Scott Pilgrim vs the World on DVD. Watched it twice same day. Really liked Hot Fuzz and liked The World's End though that's definitely his weakest.

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Actually I think I'm going to go out tonight and see about buying the Intern.  Like I said, it has it's flaws, but watching the leads interact was great and it was just a gentle slice-of-life dramedy.  More I think about it, more I like it.  

I think the biggest flaw was running time.  It ran almost 2 hrs and there's not really that much plot.  I would probably have liked it better if they cut almost every scene with the supporting cast and trimmed the running time back to 90 or 100 min.  The stuff with the nebbish office workers was time-wasting, at best.  I kinda liked Deniro's romance with the masseuse and it took up very little screen time, but the scene where there first date is to a funeral was awfully contrived.

The subplot with the husband's affair was alright and gave the story some needed oomph, but the actor playing her husband made almost no impression on me and the wife and I couldn't decide which was more far-fetched: that that dude would get Anne Hathaway, or that that dude's character would be able to hold onto to a workaholic company president (in the story, the husband gave up his career to become the caregiver for their young daughter so Hathaway's character could run her company.  In most of his scenes, he's kinda messy and wearing jeans and a shirt with food/paint/stains on it).

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I'm pretty sure I'll be okay watching Spacey in the future. But watching him creepily insist on an unwanted relationship with a young man, even one that's not sexual, is just... Yuck.

Of course, I pre-ordered Baby Driver leaving the theater so I already own it.

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What a bunch of masochists you lot are to not watch films because one of the actors in them did bad things. Imagine never watching Chinatown, the greatest noir of all time, ever again because Polanski is a creep. What a miserable outlook. It's not like those films are indicative or symptomatic projections of the things he is alleged to have done. If you implemented this outlook wholesale, you'd be left with a lot of thumb twiddling and not a lot of entertainment at your disposal, believe me.

I remember a friend of mine getting shit off others in our group because he still listened to Lost Prophets after all that came out in the wash about the singer a few years ago, but his retort was that he could simply separate the artists from the art. And I respected that, but insisted the band still sucked.

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The band who came out saying they had a lifelong commitment to the Straight Edge lifestyle, and then a few years down the line, when the singer was on trial and was asked why he tried to rape a baby said "I don't remember, I was smoking a lot of crystal meth that year"?

See though the thing is, if you own the CDs and you're listening to them, that's not a big deal. But if you're streaming, they are actually making microscopic amounts of money from every track you listen to, so you are actually funding a criminal. So you're OK listening to the Sex Pistols because Sid Vicious is dead (and wasn't in the band when they recorded Never Mind the Bollocks in any case), but you shouldn't listen to any Gary Glitter songs* because he's still alive. After he dies you can stream his shit as much as you want. Just don't do it loudly or your neighbours (or the people you're driving past or whatever) will think you're some sort of paedo enabler.

* Yes, including Joan Jett covering his tunes. Sorry.

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Watched Tomorrowland early this morning.  Meh.  Wasn't terrible, but not as fun as you'd expect given the concept.  Wanted to like it more than I actually did.  Needed more of a "sense of wonder".  More sharply defined character motivations and conflicts wouldn't have hurt either.

Have watched the three Star Trek reboot movies over the past couple weeks.  Really liked the first one.  2nd one was good but not as fun for me.  Third movie was definitely a step down in quality but still enjoyable.  Chris Pine is perfectly cast as Kirk.  Zachary Quinto's Spock felt lightweight to me.  Think I would have preferred Abrams stay with this franchise (though i'm not a big fan of Star Wars or Star Trek).

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Loved Predator.

Tenuous pretense that works with a great cast and well timed humour. Biggest bugbear was the constant Home Alone esque guy getting minorly inconvenienced by something that should have killed them, beyond that, thoroughly enjoyable.

Dont bother with A Simple Favor. Just watch Gone Girl again, unless you really like an overload of internet referencing humour that will be obsolete in 3-5 years.

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Watched Superfly last night.  No idea why, other than it was a rental from the public library and thus free.  It was an easy watch and mildly diverting, but I never felt like I was watching a good movie.  Honestly, I thought it would be an action flick.  Nope.  There's a couple mild fight scenes, and some (a lot) gun violence, but it's definitely not an action movie.

Really felt like the movie needed to be more over the top.  The direction is surprisingly pedestrian and the story is flat.  LOt of tropes from drug culture movies 101 that we've seen done better.  Also, I had a hard taking a street gang that dresses entirely in white and calls themselves the "Sno Patrol" seriously.

Was kinda bemused when Jennifer Morrison (House, Once Upon a Time) showed up as a badass crooked cop.  I'm not a big fan of her acting, but she was surprisingly decent in the role.

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Caught a screening of Lords of Chaos tonight. Jonas Akerlund did an incredible job juggling different tones throughout the movie, and was great at building the tension between Euronymous and Varg, even if you already know the story.

Performances were fantastic. After a few minutes of adjustment I actually didn't mind that none of the American actors really tried doing Norwegian accents, better to just say fuck it and sound like you are just speaking American English than try to do a bad attempt at an accent. I could maybe see curious movie fans that aren't necessarily metal fans thinking the portrayal of Varg was hammy and over-the-top, when that is literally exactly how he is. So that was spot on.

Also, Nick Cave briefly sat in the row directly in front of me. He had to bail shortly into the movie, but even just sitting in a movie theater seat the man exudes an incredible aura.

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11 hours ago, clintthecrippler said:

Also, Nick Cave briefly sat in the row directly in front of me.

Wait, WHAT? Where do you live?! 

Now I'm wondering if Nick likes black metal...

Also, somebody is going to have to 1. get me real drunk and 2. keep me from throwing things to watch that movie probably. I've got a lot of respect for Akerlund (Spun is a personal favorite) but sensationalizing Euronymous' murder for some stupid docudrama is on the opposite side of the spectrum. 

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On 9/12/2018 at 12:16 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Shit, I feel bad owning a copy of The Usual Suspects now considering Spacey actually was a serious criminal in disguise

I still have my copy of The Usual Suspects and Se7en. I love both movies and have no intention of getting rid of either. It's not like we were knowingly supporting a sexual predator. It's similar to the Benoit situation. We didn't know we were supporting a murderer in the making. I still have my copy of the Benoit Hard Knocks dvd. I haven't watched it since 2007, but I don't have any intention of getting rid of it either. I also still have pictures taken with Benoit from an autograph session from April 2000.

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1 hour ago, Curt McGirt said:

Wait, WHAT? Where do you live?! 

Now I'm wondering if Nick likes black metal...

Also, somebody is going to have to 1. get me real drunk and 2. keep me from throwing things to watch that movie probably. I've got a lot of respect for Akerlund (Spun is a personal favorite) but sensationalizing Euronymous' murder for some stupid docudrama is on the opposite side of the spectrum. 

This was in Los Angeles at Beyond Fest, a two-week long horror and dark movie festival. Nick is in town recording the new Bad Seeds album, and always possible he is roaming around the festival to discuss film projects with someone that's also in town for the festival.

I completely understand the trepidation approaching the movie, and there are definitely some moments that are played for dark comedy, but the tone shifts appropriately and is quite ghastly and intense when the more super serious acts begin occurring. I think the film does a fantastic job of de-mythologizing everyone involved in that story, and really portraying everyone involved as angry young men aged 18-24 that really were flying by the seat of their pants and to borrow a phrase from the wrestling side of this board - "working themselves into a shoot" - as the Norwegian black metal scene was building around them.

And Varg is correctly portrayed as a massive piece of shit and an awkward weirdo pretty much from the moment he enters the fray.

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I was looking through my collection and realized I have a DVD of Seven too. But, yeah, that and Usual Suspects aren't going anywhere and neither is my Hard Knocks, unless some vampire wants a bunch of money for it and I am as broke as I am now.

I err towards the side of guilt when it comes to the art vs. artist conundrum, but I'm comfortable, as a recent Roger Ebert blog post that I can't for the life of me find right now said, "not watching something made by an asshole". Or not listening to something made by an asshole, for that matter, which as a metalhead can be an issue.

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Rented Upgrade on a whim last night.  Generally speaking, I dislike horror movies and especially dislike gore.  I have very little patience for torture porn stuff like Saw, Hostel, the Purge, etc.  So nothing about the backgrounds of the people involved gave me any confidence I'd like the movie, but I decided to give it a go anyway.

Solidly entertaining.  First half hour was a little meh, but the last 60 min was a blast.  

Ending was surprising and nasty, but makes a lot of sense given what came before it.

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Just watched Dunkirk and also Happy Death Day. Dunkirk was pretty standard. Impressive that Nolan managed to make a movie that's less than two hours long and still has boring bits in it. Why is that every movie he makes it worse than the one before it? But yeah, if you want to watch something about a British Army getting cut to pieces on French soil, watch Sharpe's Waterloo, that's for more entertaining.

Happy Death Day was a lot more fun. Like a teen slasher version of Groundhog Day, but heavier on the Teen than the Slash. But it's less than entirely predictable, which in a genre that's known for it's extreme predictability, is a big bonus.

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Just got home from Hellfest. It was certainly nothing groundbreaking, but still an enjoyable slasher flick. I went in spite of the lackluster reviews. I find critics of any artform to be mostly useless. Only I know what I truly like. Spoilered for those planning to see it.

Spoiler

I loved that we never find out why the killer's motivations and never see his face.

 

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Went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and ended up finding this out about Caligula

Quote

In February 2018, Penthouse announced a new cut of the film to be edited by Alexander Tuschinski.[42] Tuschinski will use 85 minutes of Tinto Brass's original workprint. He will edit the remainder of the film, himself, based on his extensive knowledge of Brass's work.[43] It remains unconfirmed if Tinto Brass will be directly involved with the edit.[44] However, the edit is an attempt to realize Brass's original vision for the film.

In July 2018, Alexander Tuschinski released his documentary Mission: Caligula on Vimeo. The film explores his relationship to Caligula, the process of reconstructing Brass's vision and Penthouse CEO Kelly Holland's backing of the project.[45]

You've got to be fucking kidding me. I mean, I actually LIKE Caligula (I am also a very, very sick man) but trying to create any structure out of it is almost as absurd as the film itself. I watched a minute or two of that Vimeo thing and the hyperactive German dude behind this actually did his college thesis on Caligula. That, my friends and colleagues, is a brave individual.

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