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2020 MOVIE DISCUSSION


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I watched Blockers last night, with John Cena. I was expecting it to be just another generic toned down copy of Superbad, but it was properly hilarious in places. But also quite generic.

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I watched Into the Forest on Netflix over the last couple of nights (the one from 2015 with Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood), and I almost wish I hadn't.  In the hands of anyone less talented, I think this would have come off as just too unbearably grim -- and occasionally shot through with moments that are too light that they become almost hokey.  But instead it's two of the better actors of their generation reining this in and making it believable...ish.  There's also a, uh, moment that will be reminiscent of Westworld, let's leave it at that, but holy mother of God is this portrayal of it just so much more bleak (like everything else in the film).  Afterwards it sort of turns on its head a little and goes this other way that leaves you wondering, "Well, why didn't they do some of this sooner?  Why now?"  It's not confusing, per se, just...muddled.  It nails the growing, lingering sense of pervasive dread and little else.   What was confusing was Callum Keith Rennie; he can play good guys?!?

At least it's off my Netflix list.

I tried watching Uncut Gems as well and only made it through about 15 minutes before I had to turn it off because it was too much of a car wreck.  I also made it about as far into Good Time, the other Safdie brothers movie, before the same thing happened.  I get they're going for a whole aesthetic with the grainy 70s/80s look, but it does nothing for me.  I just feel like I've seen this a thousand times and I didn't like it when it was Dino de Laurentiis funding movies like this.  And I certainly don't need movies to be upbeat - I just finished watching Into the goddamned Forest for crying out loud - but there's a level of, I don't know, mockery?  Glee?  Something that seems to be taking a perverse joy in the screw-ups of these screwed-up people they've made their movies about.  I guess I'll try to actually finish this one to see if they manage to make the rest of it a little more believable.  They do have a knack for chaos, though; the first Kevin Garnett scene is appropriately over-the-top in that respect.

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Showtime seems to have picked up some small movies that were due to be released earlier this year so they're way off the radar.

Olympic Dreams - I went into this with no expectations other than hearing that Tracktown an earlier film by Jeremy Teicher(director) and Alexi Pappas(star/writer) was decent and a good flick to watch on a flight. Olympic Dreams is set and shot inside the Olympic Village at the 2018 Winter Games, Pappas is a cross-country skier who competes early in the games who is dealing with "what to do next", Nick Kroll is a volunteer dentist and they end up bonding. It's way different than you think it's going to be and there's some conversations between them that are brutal in that I've had similar ones in the past kind of way. Pappas is an Olympic track athlete who competes for Greece(American but he dad is from Greece) and got funding for this movie from the IOC Arts Foundation, it's not a sugarcoated "yeah Olympics" type of movie it's a really good story set at the Olympics. 

The Jesus Rolls - I guess this is a "spin-off" to The Big Lebowski with John Turturro bringing back the Jesus character, it's set in New York State and begins when Jesus get's out of jail. It's not that good of a flick but its not horrible, there's some funny scenes and you can really tell Turturro enjoys playing the character. While watching it I got a "this seems really European" vibe and I was right since it's also kind of a remake of the 1974 French film Going Places, if someone watches this thinking it's going to be like Lebowski or even a straight up comedy they're going to be disappointed. This also has a lot of cameos some of which are great like Pete Davidson and some are bad like John Hamm. 

Tracktown - Not on Showtime but on Prime! I watched this since I really liked Olympic Dreams, Pappas plays a track athlete preparing to compete in the Olympic Trials in her hometown of Eugene, Oregon, and she has to take a day off before the big race. Decent little movie with Rachel Dratch totally brining it in a dramatic role.

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I watched Hubie Halloween under the best possible circumstances: totally baked late at night in a bed and breakfast in Salem, Massachusetts after spending the day in witch trial museums and on ghost tours. Even in that setting it was just okay, but it’s been so long since I’ve watched a Happy Madison movie that it was almost refreshingly dumb and what one would expect. 

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This is from the review of that on Ebert.com

Quote

While he was doing press for “Uncut Gems,” Adam Sandler joked that if he didn’t get an Oscar for that film that he would torture us and make the worst Netflix comedy ever made for revenge. The good news is that this is not that movie. “Hubie Halloween” is just generally entertaining enough to be harmless, while also being the kind of movie that people will have trouble remembering exists by the time he makes “Tommy Thanksgiving”.

 

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We Own The Night was pretty good. A couple issues though: 

1. If I was Joaquin's character I would have walked on his family from the jump over the way they treated him. Fuck those cops. 

2. The "big bust in the warehouse" setpiece has been played out since The French Connection. 

Otherwise it was pretty good. You can almost look at it as a descent into madness. At the end

Spoiler

Joaquin's a cop, but at what price? And is he really gonna affect any change? He lost the love of his life and it's going to haunt him forever. It's really about survivor's guilt and him succumbing under the pressure of that, while his brother takes a desk job from full-blown PTSD. The most honest bit in the whole movie was Wahlberg finally admitting after all these years that he was jealous of his brother because he was free. Joaquin buckled under and took his place as the system's slave. It's not a happy ending. 

This is also the second time I got to see Robert Duvall play a cop that ends up getting shot which I thought was funny.

The line "better to be tried by twelve than buried by six" was great btw, never heard that one before.

EDIT: One more thing -- and it probably doesn't need to be stated but I want to anyway -- HOLY GOD IS EVA MENDES HOT AS FUCK.

Edited by Curt McGirt
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Just watched The Shape of Water. It's really good. Del Toro has this weird double career where he makes both high budget action movies and unusual horror-adjacent art movies, only it seems like the one that are supposed to be hits just sort of come out and do what business they do, and are then quickly forgotten. Meanwhile the smaller, more personal movies do bigger business than they're supposed to, end up on top ten lists and people love them and get tattoos of them and stuff. This kind of bridges both though. Michael Shannon's having a really good heel run the last few years.

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And now I've watched Pacific Rim: Uprising. It's very Chinese. For what's ostensibly a Hollywood movie, there's an awful lot of dialogue in Mandarin (and even an American guy who speaks Mandarin badly for comedy purposes). I know the first Pacific Rim ended with a sequel tease, but watching this movie, it kind of feels like there wasn't really any need for it. It doesn't really do anything the first movie didn't do. Like it's trying to raise the bar, but actually fails to reach it.

It's kind of the Tokyo Drift of the Pacific Rim franchise, only unlike Tokyo Drift I don't see this one suddenly changing course from doing an American Pie (dozens of Straight to Video sequels that nobody has ever watched, but are somehow profitable enough to keep getting made, like it looked like F & F was going to) to becoming the American version of the Bond movies. Yeah, Pacific Rim 3 is either not happening at all ever, or it's a micro budget STV thing. Which I'm not sure you could do with one of these All CGI All The Time deals.

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9 hours ago, AxB said:

And now I've watched Pacific Rim: Uprising. It's very Chinese. For what's ostensibly a Hollywood movie, there's an awful lot of dialogue in Mandarin (and even an American guy who speaks Mandarin badly for comedy purposes). I know the first Pacific Rim ended with a sequel tease, but watching this movie, it kind of feels like there wasn't really any need for it. It doesn't really do anything the first movie didn't do. Like it's trying to raise the bar, but actually fails to reach it.

It's kind of the Tokyo Drift of the Pacific Rim franchise, only unlike Tokyo Drift I don't see this one suddenly changing course from doing an American Pie (dozens of Straight to Video sequels that nobody has ever watched, but are somehow profitable enough to keep getting made, like it looked like F & F was going to) to becoming the American version of the Bond movies. Yeah, Pacific Rim 3 is either not happening at all ever, or it's a micro budget STV thing. Which I'm not sure you could do with one of these All CGI All The Time deals.

Yeah, I have to say this was not the sequel I was looking for. I love Boyega, but they killed off Mako Mori way too early and it just was trying too hard to not be one coincidence after another afterwards.

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7543ff31bc3fa8bb79e67d1d6440eb6e58152292

Had a mare trying to find a shop that sold Parasite (2019) on DVD due to delays in stock caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Was Parasite worth the positive WOM bestowed upon it? Oh, yeah. The less you know going into it, the better. The first hour was my favourite thing from it, the infiltration period. One of the best films of the 2010s. Be interesting to see the black and white version.

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I am assuming that was more a thing specific to the UK since it wasn't even released in the theaters there until after already being on DVD here in the states (and not to mention being on Hulu)

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18 hours ago, AxB said:

Just watched The Shape of Water. It's really good. Del Toro has this weird double career where he makes both high budget action movies and unusual horror-adjacent art movies, only it seems like the one that are supposed to be hits just sort of come out and do what business they do, and are then quickly forgotten. Meanwhile the smaller, more personal movies do bigger business than they're supposed to, end up on top ten lists and people love them and get tattoos of them and stuff. This kind of bridges both though. Michael Shannon's having a really good heel run the last few years.

This was my thought too. I'm someone who really liked Pacific Rim, but I also understand it's largely dumb and kinda shitty. It is fun though. His other movie that got a ton of pre-release hype was Crimson Peak and that movie fucking sucked. The Shape of Water gets less than half of the hype that Crimson Peak got and it's a million times better.

Same thing with Hellboy and then Pans Labyrinth. Hellboy is largely whatever (I like it, shrug), but Pan's Labyrinth felt like it snuck out at the time and was great.

And yeah, Michael Shannon is the shit. I know you mentioned him having a heel run, but he's been one of my favorite actors to watch for awhile now. He's a good piece of shit in Knives Out, I loved Take Shelter, same with Midnight Special, I thought he was good as Zod in Man of Steel (I also recognize I'm probably the only person that really likes MoS), etc. I don't think I've seen him in something I didn't like him in.

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