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2020 MOVIE DISCUSSION


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This weekend at our local island of misfit cinemas, a few more of the screening rooms open (now 12 out of 16 screens. Started off with 8). Some older films come in, such as 40-Year-Old Virgin, Bridesmaids, Weird Science and The Greatest Showman. That Jon Stewart-directed political film with Steve Carell also gets a screening. Plus ...

RESISTANCE

Jesse Eisenberg plays Marcel Marceau in a film a lot of people were talking about at the start of the year, then COVID-19 hit and everyone forgot it existed.

 

BENEATH US

"Parasite" if made by a Blumhouse ripoff artist.

LOOKS THAT KILL

This actually looks ... decent and unique.

 

 

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In the summer of 1990 my friends and I wanted to see The Adventures of Ford Fairlane but we were 16 and that theater was super strict when it came to non-violent R rated movies, so we bought tickets to Dick Tracy and hopped theaters after about 30 minutes. The Adventures of Ford Fairlane was a disappointment and we debated sneaking into another showing of Dick Tracy to see what happened, but someone chickened out and we went home. Last night I finally got closure after watching Dick Tracy start to finish!!!!

Outside of Al Pacino's scenes and the look of the film Dick Tracy is really bad, Warren Beatty is cringeworthy as the title character and is 100% the wrong person to be playing Tracy, Madonna's acting is really really really bad and it's confusing on why she threw herself at Beatty for the role, it's really really violent for a PG movie that had a toy line, McDonald's tie in and song & dance show at Disney/MGM Studios. The backstory on how Dick Tracy got made and Beatty's lawsuits with Tribune over a possible sequel was a fun wikipedia wormhole to fall into.

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16 minutes ago, Execproducer said:

Maybe it wouldn't have worked because he wasn't that far removed from Eliot Ness but Costner would have made a good Dick Tracy and we could maybe have been spared his Robin Hood.

As bad as Robin Hood is, I wouldn't want to lose Rickman's performance

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55 minutes ago, Execproducer said:

Maybe it wouldn't have worked because he wasn't that far removed from Eliot Ness but Costner would have made a good Dick Tracy and we could maybe have been spared his Robin Hood.

Tom Selleck sans the mustache could have worked but Beatty owned the film rights so he was the only one who was going to play that role. 

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37 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

I've never even HEARD of that before...

when I was in grad school, my friend Darren did his project for sitcom class on it. How long ago was that? We got the episodes by trading tapes with someone on rec.arts.tv.misc for my KTMA mst3k episodes. 

(My choice for that class was f troop.) 

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The first time I heard about When Things Were Rotten was a lot like when I was a kid and Comedy Central played some episodes of Police Squad. “My gawd, King, that’s Frank Drebin’s music!” 

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21 hours ago, Mister TV said:

 Warren Beatty is cringeworthy as the title character and is 100% the wrong person to be playing Tracy, M

Just out of curiosity, why do you think that Beatty is wrong for the role?  I'm not disagreeing with you.  I don't remember the film well enough to have an opinion.  It's been a long, long time since I saw any of Beatty's films, but I would have guessed that'd be one of the few things the film got right.

Now I'm curious to see the film.  I saw it during it's first run in theaters, but that was a long time ago and i barely remember it.  

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We're going through the Back to the Future trilogy with my daughter. Normally, my daughter doesn't like movies that look "old," but for fathers day she insisted we watch Back to the the Future. I know I'm probably the biggest BttF fan on here so me loving the movie isn't a surprise, but man, it is fucking perfect. It holds up so incredibly well and is as timeless (pardon the pun) as you can get. Even my daughter really liked it and laughing at a lot of the jokes. It's easily my favorite movie of all time and I was thrilled my daughter liked it.

So then we moved on to BttF 2. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of 2 because it has obvious problems, but it had also been a long time since I watched it so I wondered what I would think about it while watching it with my daughter.

It is fucking terrible...up to a point. I still remember everything about seeing the movie in the theater even though I was only 8 or 9 at the time. That night I had to go to the ER because I got chicken pox for the second time. Lucky me. I remember getting sick during the movie. I remember where I sat in the theater, what I ate, and missing out on going ice skating after the movie because of being sick. I also remember being puzzled by the incredibly long opening credits. It's fucking bizarre. 1 starts out with the ticking clocks, the logo zooms onto the screen, Marty makes his way through Doc's garage, you see some credits at the opening, but that's it. The movie cuts right to the chase and doesn't fuck around. 2 though? They're flying through the clouds for what felt like 10 minutes while every single credit you could think of is displayed on screen. Nothing is happening. It was jarring as a kid, it was something I disregarded every other time I watched the movie, but it was especially jarring now for whatever reason. To make matters worse, Elizabeth Shue, who I love, received terrible writing and direction for taking over for Jennifer. She is just completely overacting in every scene.

So I'm watching 2 and almost none of the jokes are landing. It was like they had to get all of their shit in. Plus, you have the added problems of them just playing the hits from the first movie. It feels like a note for note remake at times. I remember being so excited as a kid to see the stuff in the future and all of that is easily the worst part of the movie. You then get them shoehorning in Marty's affliction to being called a chicken, which just comes out of nowhere. Jennifer then keeps overacting, Michael J. Fox is playing 10 different characters and none of it is played for subtle laughs like many of the jokes in the first movie, old Biff is dying and fading out because he altered the past but they never show you that's what's happening, and the 2 is just an absolute fucking mess...until they go back to 1985. Once they go back to 1985, the movie gets a lot better. It's still kinda shitty at first, but it's progressively getting better and better. By the time Marty jumps off of the roof of Biff's building, the movie is hitting it's stride and it's a totally different movie at that point. Everything that then follows is fantastic. 2 is just one of the most confounding movies ever. I don't understand what Zemeckis was going for with the first part of 2, but it was seriously terrible in almost every way.

BTW, Thomas F. Wilson is the absolute MVP of 2. He's so fucking good, even as old Biff in the bad parts of 2. When they go back to 1955 he repeatedly had me cracking up at how much of a dirtbag he was to everyone. "Oh, this ball? You want this ball? WELL GO GET IT! HAH HAH HAH HAH!" 

Anyway, the second half of 2 saves that movie. It's so tonally different and written closer to how the first one was written. The first half felt like some dickhead at Universal was like, "we gotta punch this up!"

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I think my biggest problem with 2 is still the point where the movie just cold stops dead in its tracks to explain the shifting timeline stuff. For a frothy adventure film, that scene just murders the movie and, personally, I can never really get back into the film after it.

But Part 3? That movie is awesome.

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2 hours ago, Control said:

The first Mike Leigh film I saw was NAKED, which I’m currently rewatching. Anyway, it gave me the wrong impression about his filmography.

Naked is a film I am fond of based solely on the acting.

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12 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

I think my biggest problem with 2 is still the point where the movie just cold stops dead in its tracks to explain the shifting timeline stuff. For a frothy adventure film, that scene just murders the movie and, personally, I can never really get back into the film after it.

But Part 3? That movie is awesome.

Part 3 is the only one I ever have any interest in watching again. Not sure if it's an appreciation for the Steampunk notes or just how Christopher Lloyd left no piece of scenery unchewed, but it's definitely my favorite.

Edited by JLSigman
can't grammar this morning
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I will stop what I’m doing and watch any of the three when they’re on tv. My only issue with the third one is that it makes absolutely no sense that Lea Thompson plays Marty’s paternal great grandmother. 

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22 hours ago, Doc Townsend said:

Just out of curiosity, why do you think that Beatty is wrong for the role?  I'm not disagreeing with you.  I don't remember the film well enough to have an opinion.  It's been a long, long time since I saw any of Beatty's films, but I would have guessed that'd be one of the few things the film got right.

Now I'm curious to see the film.  I saw it during it's first run in theaters, but that was a long time ago and i barely remember it.  

I was never a "funny papers" reader so I don't know much detail about the Dick Tracy character but Beatty doesn't seem like any type of character or brings anything to the character, he comes off as Warren Beatty in a yellow hat and yellow coat. Disney really hyped this movie and they could have gotten away with someone else as Dick Tracy since who was playing the title character wasn't the selling point. 

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1 hour ago, Mister TV said:

I was never a "funny papers" reader

Unless you were around in the '40s I don't think you would have seen it anyway

I had a baller Dick Tracy shirt with all the villains on it and Tracy holding a Tommy gun that my dad brought me home from a trip when I was a kid. Loved that shirt. The movie is interesting for its effects, sets, and Pacino but that's all it's got going for it.

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8 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Unless you were around in the '40s I don't think you would have seen it anyway

Chester Gould kept writing and drawing the Dick Tracy comic strip up to 1977. It's still being produced today, though I don't know by whom.

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