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2020 MOVIE DISCUSSION


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Michael Mann is catty as fuck. Goddamn.

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Only days before the January 16 opening of Michael Mann’s new cyber-thriller “Blackhat,” one of the film’s credited composers, Harry Gregson-Williams, took to Facebook to voice his displeasure with how his work was – or wasn’t – used in the film, asserting that the film “contains almost none of my compositions. … I was not the author of most of what is now in the movie.”

He subsequently removed the posting, but not before a new Hollywood controversy was born.

Variety contacted Michael Mann for a response to Gregson-Williams’ complaint, and the “Blackhat” director was clearly standing his ground while also extending an olive branch — of sorts.

“Harry’s a talented composer whose music needed editing and remixing to fit the very contemporary subject and ambitions of my picture,” said Mann. “He was one of (several) composers who contributed to the score — along with Atticus and Leo Ross, Ryan Amon and Mike Dean. It would have been preferable to me, too, if the delivered music could have been used as it was.

https://variety.com/2015/biz/news/michael-mann-responds-to-composers-criticism-1201406396/

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I was browsing movies on Amazon Prime and came across a new one called Rogue. These are the first 7 words in the description. I defy you not to laugh:

"Megan Fox plays a battle hardened mercenary"

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There's a new movie with Kevin Nash in it called Chick Fight, which got a half-star review on the Roger Ebert site. This is from the review: 

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her father (six-foot-ten former wrestler Kevin Nash) has come out as sexually fluid. (The flirty scenes between him and Alec Mapa as his diminutive boyfriend are especially cringey in their hackneyed flamboyance.)

I... I kinda gotta see this. 

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I watched Hotel Artemis this evening. It's very short. Kind of feels like someone saw the script for John Wick, assumed it would be a huge flop and decided to be heavily inspired by it. But then John Wick was a huge hit so they had to differentiate it.

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“People I’ve never even met complain about how many takes I shoot. The take of Neil Patrick Harris parking that Jaguar dead center in the middle of that frame, that was take two. That was take two. It’s in the movie. We walked away after take two. So, please, go fuck yourselves.” - David Fincher, Gone Girl commentary

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Stumbled across Searching yesterday on FXX and watched it.  Effective little movie for the most part, until the twist ending.  I actually had the twist spoiled for me when the movie hit theaters several years ago, but forgot about it until the movie sprung it on me and I kinda went "Oh, yeah. I knew that.".  To say the twist doesn't work for me is an understatement.  It really becomes a different sort of movie after that reveal, and it's really incredibly coincidental that that character would be in the right place when the call came in and be able to manipulate events like that.

Until then, I thought the film was a decent drama and a sly commentary on how little we actually communicate when we rely on technology and social media to keep us connected.  

I did feel like the gimmick was stretched thin in spots.  Everything is told through devices - screen grabs of online searches, FaceTime calls, footage from smart phone cameras, etc.  Even when the main character is out in the middle of nowhere searching for his daughter, the story is told through FaceTime and voice mails,  The scene where John Cho's character gets into it with his brother took me out of it a bit because the camera view is segmented into a four-panel screen (security camera?) and I kept wondering why the hell the guy had so many cameras in his house.

 

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Been on a bit of a Jack Nicholson kick and trying to check off some of his movies that I haven't seen. Quick rundown:

Heartburn (w/Meryl Streep) Quite bad, no chemistry at all between the two of them. Tough to really care about their marriage falling apart because of it (and especially since Streep's character was warned about he is "famously single" and always leaves his partners). Mostly interesting as a curiousity, being a fictionalized account of Nora Ephraim and Carl Bernstein's marriage.

Prizzi's Honour (w/Kathleen Turner, Angelica Huston) Much, much better. Great chemistry between Turner and Jack and Huston is fantastic, much deserving Oscar winner for her role. She kind of sneaks up on you, she's in a few early scenes but the entire ending sequence doesn't happen without her machinations. About the ending

Spoiler

Way more intense then I was expecting. After all the double crosses I figured one of Jack or Turner was going to die, but I didn't expect it to be Turner after Jack THROWS A DAGGER STRAIGHT THROUGH HER THROAT! With a close up to boot...I don't gasp much when watching movies but damn that was wild. And then to end the movie with a soft focus romantic camera gaze on Huston... lol wow

Didn't need to be 2+ hours, but that ending made it worth it.

Goin' South (w/Mary Steenburgen, directed by Jack) Jack is a condemned man saved from the noose by Mary Steenburgen. So many men in her town have died in the Civil War that men set to be hanged can be spared if a woman agrees to marry them. She's mostly interested in getting him to work the mine she owns, in an attempt to save her land. Another one mostly interesting for the curiosity of it being one of Jack's few director credits. Like a lot of movies from the 70s, I find that its really weirdly paced. Long patches of nothingness, the plot comes and goes and then at some point the movie just decides to end. Some fun scenes like when a bunch of local ladies who also married cons come by to offer them advice or when Jack's old gang also barge in later and decide to stay. Steenburgen's first role and young Ed Begley Jr and early Danny Devito are noteworthy smaller roles. Most amusingly are Christopher Lloyd and John Belushi (playing Mexican) as the local deputies who want Jack dead.

Finally The Missouri Breaks (w/Marlon Brando) Is this the only time Brando and Nicholson acted together? Another Western. Jack is a con trying to go straight. Takes his last score and buys an old farm, but local regulator Marlon Brando is suspicious of where he came from. Complicating things are the fact that his old gang (w/Harry Dean Stanton and Randy Quaid) are out there and are not going straight any time soon.

I'm actually watching this right now. Enjoying it immensely, hopefully it doesn't fall apart in the 20 minutes I have left.

It is great when Jack and Marlon are sharing the screen together except.... Marlon is playing his character IRISH?! Why? There's nothing in the plot that needs him to be Irish. It would be distracting if it weren't so amusing. His character is a delightful dandy weirdo anyway, fuck I wish he didn't do the accent though.

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Watched 'Cold Pursuit' recently (then rewatched it) based on the review of someone on here, and I think he undersold just how nutso the movie is. It almost plays like Liam Neeson is in your standard Liam Neeson revenge flick, while everyone else it out of 'Fargo'. It's delightfully strange: every time a character dies, the screen goes black and there's a memorial page for them; the baddies all have weird little nicknames (Speedo, Wingman, Santa); the head drug dealer is trying to make a weird intense meal of every single line he delivers; there's two guys from 'The Wire' (Herc and Rawls); a group of Native American drug dealers who get comped at a hotel for taking offence to the term "reservation" and an insane ending that comes out of nowhere.  I heartily recommend it.

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On 11/17/2020 at 12:52 AM, elizium said:

Marlon is playing his character IRISH?! Why? There's nothing in the plot that needs him to be Irish. It would be distracting if it weren't so amusing. His character is a delightful dandy weirdo anyway, fuck I wish he didn't do the accent though.

Apparently, the answer is because Brando.  Admittedly, that's not an entirely terrible reason.  The story goes that director Arthur Penn couldn't control Brando and eventually just gave up and let Brando do whatever he wanted on the set, both in front of the camera and off-camera.  Brando reimagined the character and went and did a completely ridiculous take on the character and, because he's Brando, no one stood up to him.  Supposedly, even a lot of Clayton's dialogue was improvised, as was the wacky mace/harpoon weapon Clayton used (allegedly, Nicholson complained about Brando reading his lines off cue cards, so Brando started improvising.  Because... Brando).

The studio wasn't happy either, but Missouri Breaks was shot just after the Godfather, so everyone ultimately sat down and shut up and let Marlon do his thing.  

I enjoy the film and Brando's performance, but I also sit there going "So, you thought this was the best thing for the film, huh?"  Clayton's accent is something else.  He goes in and out of it a in a couple places, and at one point, I think he slips into a Welsh accent.  Just... lol.

Ultimately, he probably hurt the film and his bank account.  Nicholson and Brando agreed to do the film for a million or so each, plus a percentage of the gross over a certain amount ($10-$12 million, depending on which actor's contract we're talking about).  The film tanked and only made about $14 mil in the US.

 

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In the end I turned all the way around on it and ended up loving the accent. It would probably been a better movie without it, but it wouldn't have been as memorable.

Continued my Jack run by watching The Shooting (1966) last night. Hoo boy was that a good one. Reading about it after and its described as an early "existential Western" and yeah, I can see it. Definitely a low budget gem.

Willet Gashade (Warren Oates) returns to his mining encampment to find it abandoned by all but the slow-witted member of his gang (Will Hutchens). He finds out that his brother has run off after an incident in town that led to a death followed by the other member of his gang getting killed by an unknown assailant. Just then a woman shows up (Millie Perkins, literally credited as "Woman") offering to pay them a lot of money to lead her across the desert to another town. The whole movie has the really thick sense of dread all the way through. Willet can sense that whatever he's leading her to is going to be bad, especially as she offers no hints about what it is or who she is, but it's like he's fated to do it. They have plenty of opportunity to turn around, but keep pushing forward as horses die and water becomes scarce.

Jack shows up about halfway through as a hired gun and you never really know what his motivations are. It could just be money, but it seems like he's way to devoted to her, even though she she's is cold and distant to him as well. I would say it's like she's a Siren from mythology, but even Sirens sing you a sweet song before they lead you to death.

Big recommendation to anyone who hasn't seen it, it can be streamed for free on Tubi.

Probably continue on with Ride in the Whirlwind tonight, which was shot back-to-back, Corman-style with The Shooting. Not surprising, since Corman was an uncredited producer of both. Ride wasdirected by Monte Hellman and stars Nicholson and Millie Parker as well. Ride was also written by Jack, while The Shooting was written by a pseudonymous Carole Eastman (5 Easy Pieces, The Fortune).

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23 hours ago, caley said:

Watched 'Cold Pursuit' recently (then rewatched it) based on the review of someone on here, and I think he undersold just how nutso the movie is. It almost plays like Liam Neeson is in your standard Liam Neeson revenge flick, while everyone else it out of 'Fargo'. It's delightfully strange: every time a character dies, the screen goes black and there's a memorial page for them; the baddies all have weird little nicknames (Speedo, Wingman, Santa); the head drug dealer is trying to make a weird intense meal of every single line he delivers; there's two guys from 'The Wire' (Herc and Rawls); a group of Native American drug dealers who get comped at a hotel for taking offence to the term "reservation" and an insane ending that comes out of nowhere.  I heartily recommend it.

I thought it was the best comedy of last year, even if it wasn't meant to be one.

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The last movie I watched was Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Well, no, it was alright. The review isn't in the title this time. Felt like they really wanted to tell the story of Ted Bundy's girlfriend, only she mostly just went to work and raised her daughter, and sometimes got a few phone calls and letters off her psychopath ex boyfriend, and... that's not a movie. So they made a Ted Bundy movie without any killing scenes or torture scenes, and cast a Disney presents High School Musical pretty boy as him, and it's a courtroom caper movie about how popular he was and how loads of girls fancied him. Kind of irresponsible really. I bet if you let Ted Bundy write the movie of his life, it would be something like this.

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