Movies 2020 MOVIE DISCUSSION

[(BP)]

We watched Along Came Polly last night. My wife had never seen it, and I sold it to her as Philip Seymour Hoffman giving one of the greatest “better than the rest of the movie” performances ever. I’d actually have been fine watching the super cut of him, but my wife was curious about it because it’s generally her type of movie. 

I saw it in the theater and was underwhelmed, but I weirdly liked it more now than I did at like 16 when my standards were certainly much lower. It’s still not good, but it’s got a bunch of fun supporting performances from PSH, Alec Baldwin, and Hank Azaria, plus weird, nothing walk-on bits from prefame Judah Frielander, Kevin Hart, and Cheryl Hines. Its big failings are that the supporting characters are so much more fun and interesting than Ben Stiller or Jennifer Aniston are allowed to be.

Stiller has to play his typical archetype at its most one dimensional. Aniston is in that phase of her career where her management isn’t allowing her to take any real risks and is forced to play shades of Rachel in everything she does. Her character is supposed to be a wild free spirit, but she’s just a vaguely boho Holly Golightly knockoff. There is one pretty funny moment where it’s revealed she’s a fledgling author who writes violent children’s stories with Garbage Pail Kidsesque artwork.

It’s incredibly of its time and an absolute Ben Stiller Vehicle from that period, where they just Mad Libs in the story from a template: The love interest owns a  ____ (insert whacky animal.) Stiller has an embarrassing gross out moment in her apartment involving _____ (spicy Indian food and her grandmothers hand knitted decorative towel.) And the notion that a film is really made in the editing booth is supported here by the inclusion of some of the most insanely aggro fart sound effects I’ve ever heard.

Anyway, it’s a brisk 90 minutes, and once again, Philip Seymour Hoffman owns. 

 

[quackhell]

PSH in maybe his peak Jack Black form. It's kinda wild how they were both viewed as the same type of character actor before Hoffman just started crushing it in more challenging roles. That's not meant as a shot at Jables either as I love him as well.

[quackhell]

On March 14, 2020 at 2:14 PM, Tarheel Moneghetti said:

Anyone actually seen Bloodshot and want to comment?  I assume it's terrible since the studio decided not to pull it and (hopefully) release it when conditions are better.

Edit: I wouldn't have recognized Cush Jumbo in that trailer if I wasn't looking for her.  That hairstyle... is not flattering.

Bloodshot is super generic with a typical lunkheaded performance by Diesel, some meh cgi, mediocre supporting performances that are one note and Guy Pearce doing sub Iron Man 3 work. So yeah, ymmv but I didn't love it. 

[Brian Fowler]

I had the enormous privilege of seeing PSH live on stage in Long Day's Journey Into Night several years ago. He was amazing.

[odessasteps]

 

[John from Cincinnati]

The Way Back will be available on digital Tuesday.

[Brian Fowler]

Ditto Harley Quinn and the Various Titles.

Onward is available tonight at 8pm, will be on Disney+ April 3rd

[(BP)]

I can’t find the remotes to either of the Roku boxes in the house. 

[Brian Fowler]

8 minutes ago, (BP) said:

I can’t find the remotes to either of the Roku boxes in the house. 

Use the app on your phone

[Craig H]

I'm not the Kevin Smith movie fan I once was, but I still like his podcasts, stand up stuff, YouTube stuff, etc. I wound up watching Jay and Silent Bob Reboot this morning.

It's...not good? There's so much incidental music in every. single. scene. It's weird. And the writing is just consistently not good and not even funny. It's a million references to other things and it winds up feeling like a bad episode of Family Guy. Whereas his older movies felt more natural and flowed better, this is just so forced.

That's not to say it's completely terrible. There were a few funny scenes in it and a couple really WTF cameos that had me laughing pretty hard because of who it was. He also had some heartfelt things to say about being a parent that I liked, including all of the stuff with Affleck.

I'm tempted to go back and watch some of his other movies now just to see if they don't hold up.

 

[Control]

They don’t hold up.

[(BP)]

I got really hyped for Smith’s weird turn towards indie horror with Red State and Tusk, so it’s a bummer to see him regress so much. On the other hand, he almost died, so I think a lot of his decisions now are based on making sure his family is taken care of in case something happens to him. He’s got Mallrats 2 and Clerks 3 in the pipeline, and his plan is to self finance and do roadshows for them. He’s only catering to his hardcore audience, but he’s willing to be on the road touring for years to set his family up, so more power to him I guess. 

[Lawful Metal]

13 year old is getting really into movies and is turning into a total snob. 

He asked me what my favorites were and I named a few recent ones (Mandy, I Saw the Devil, 13 Assassins) but he wanted to know what my favorites growing up were. 

The Usual Suspects. 

I probably haven’t watched it in 20 years, and now it has the Brian Singer and Kevin Spacey stink in it. I wondered if it still held up.

Yep, still does. Dialogue was better than I remembered, and Byrne, Spacey, Palmintieri and Del Toro all hit it out of the park. Plot is a little too dependent on the unreliable narrator, but the twist still hits.

My son’s face after the end credits was worth it. He says his brain is broken and he’s insisting on watching it again. 

[J.T.]

1 hour ago, Lawful Metal said:

13 year old is getting really into movies and is turning into a total snob. 

He asked me what my favorites were and I named a few recent ones (Mandy, I Saw the Devil, 13 Assassins) but he wanted to know what my favorites growing up were. 

The Usual Suspects. 

I probably haven’t watched it in 20 years, and now it has the Brian Singer and Kevin Spacey stink in it. I wondered if it still held up.

Yep, still does. Dialogue was better than I remembered, and Byrne, Spacey, Palmintieri and Del Toro all hit it out of the park. Plot is a little too dependent on the unreliable narrator, but the twist still hits.

My son’s face after the end credits was worth it. He says his brain is broken and he’s insisting on watching it again. 

Good of you to bring the kid up on the classics.  There are plot holes in TUS you could drive a truck through, but the payoff at the end is still the best.

Mostly because Chazz Palminteri does a brilliant job of playing Dave Kujan as a arrogant prick that deserved to get swerved.  I have no idea why Spacey got the nom (and won) for Best Supporting Actor when it probably should've been Palminteri that got the nod.  The Keyser Soze twist does not work unless you really want to see the cops get outsmarted.  All of that burden is on Palminteri's shoulders and he totally delivers.

Yes, the dialogue is still tremendous.  So much so that it even converted lovable Kevin Pollack into a believable heavy.

Edited March 23, 2020 by J.T.

[quackhell]

 

On March 22, 2020 at 10:22 AM, (BP) said:

I got really hyped for Smith’s weird turn towards indie horror with Red State and Tusk, so it’s a bummer to see him regress so much. On the other hand, he almost died, so I think a lot of his decisions now are based on making sure his family is taken care of in case something happens to him. He’s got Mallrats 2 and Clerks 3 in the pipeline, and his plan is to self finance and do roadshows for them. He’s only catering to his hardcore audience, but he’s willing to be on the road touring for years to set his family up, so more power to him I guess. 

Smith is basically the Insane Clown Posse of film directors now. He has his cult and he is just making what they want. That's cool, I'm just glad I am no longer one of his Juggalos. 

Edited March 23, 2020 by quackhell

[Tabe]

1 hour ago, Lawful Metal said:

13 year old is getting really into movies and is turning into a total snob. 

He asked me what my favorites were and I named a few recent ones (Mandy, I Saw the Devil, 13 Assassins) but he wanted to know what my favorites growing up were. 

The Usual Suspects. 

I probably haven’t watched it in 20 years, and now it has the Brian Singer and Kevin Spacey stink in it. I wondered if it still held up.

Yep, still does. Dialogue was better than I remembered, and Byrne, Spacey, Palmintieri and Del Toro all hit it out of the park. Plot is a little too dependent on the unreliable narrator, but the twist still hits.

My son’s face after the end credits was worth it. He says his brain is broken and he’s insisting on watching it again. 

For reasons I will never understand, anytime somebody mentions The Usual Suspects I think of the movie Mystery Men instead.  Every.  Single.  Time.

[Lawful Metal]

1 hour ago, J.T. said:

Good of you to bring the kid up on the classics.  There are plot holes in TUS you could drive a truck through, but the payoff at the end is still the best.

Mostly because Chazz Palminteri does a brilliant job of playing Dave Kujan as a arrogant prick that deserved to get swerved.  I have no idea why Spacey got the nom (and won) for Best Supporting Actor when it probably should've been Palminteri that got the nod.  The Keyser Soze twist does not work unless you really want to see the cops get outsmarted.  All of that burden is on Palminteri's shoulders and he totally delivers.

Yes, the dialogue is still tremendous.  So much so that it even converted lovable Kevin Pollack into a believable heavy.

I think the plot holes are hand-waved away because it's all on Verbal's word, and from the get-go (the barbershop quartet in Skokie Illinois), everything he says is bullshit.  Everything he's saying is to get Kujan to come to the conclusion himself that Keaton was behind everything.  And Kujan falls for it.  

[RIPPA]

I didn't know this existed so I am share in case anyone else is a big dummy like me

 

[J.T.]

18 hours ago, Lawful Metal said:

I think the plot holes are hand-waved away because it's all on Verbal's word, and from the get-go (the barbershop quartet in Skokie Illinois), everything he says is bullshit.  Everything he's saying is to get Kujan to come to the conclusion himself that Keaton was behind everything.  And Kujan falls for it.  

The thing is that all of Verbal's bullshit would be laid bare if Kujan had simply turned around and looked at the blackboard behind him at any point before Verbal left the police station.  This is what makes Kujan look like a complete dumbass.

Verbal may have been making shit up as he went along, but all of his references were right there and Kujan probably could've put those pieces together at anytime and figured out Verbal's game. 

He figures out he's been had in seconds at the end of the movie, so there's nothing to say that Kujan couldn't have made the same mental leaps with Verbal's cues and figured out what was going on much earlier in the story IF Kujan had just been more observant of his surroundings.

But deep inside, you want Kujan to fall for it because he's an a dick.  The swerve couldn't have happened to a more deserving mark.

Edited March 24, 2020 by J.T.

[(BP)]

11 minutes ago, J.T. said:

But deep inside, you want Kujan to fall for it because he's an a dick.  The swerve couldn't have happened to a more deserving mark.

I think this is the main reason I’d always mix up Palminteri and Joe Mantegna as a kid. They’d always play crooks or cops, but more importantly they were always obnoxious pricks who ate shit by the end of the movie. 

[J.T.]

22 minutes ago, (BP) said:

I think this is the main reason I’d always mix up Palminteri and Joe Mantegna as a kid. They’d always play crooks or cops, but more importantly they were always obnoxious pricks who ate shit by the end of the movie. 

Yep, and since Keyer Soze is a master manipulator, he easily reads Kujan and plays the role of the inferior to feed Kujan's ego.   He allows Kujan to believe he's the smartest man in the room. 

The trail of bread crumbs that Soze leaves behind for Kujan to follow lead off of a cliff, but Kujan doesn't notice because he thinks he's in control of the situation.  We know as omniscient observers behind the third wall that Soze is ALWAYS the one in control.

Edited March 24, 2020 by J.T.

[(BP)]

The real twist took place two decades later when I watched Spacey release a video bragging about leaving a trail of bodies in the wake of his legal troubles, and I realized he really was Keyser Soze. 

[J.T.]

50 minutes ago, (BP) said:

The real twist took place two decades later when I watched Spacey release a video bragging about leaving a trail of bodies in the wake of his legal troubles, and I realized he really was Keyser Soze. 

Soze would never be that obvious although one could argue that Spacey was Kobayashi's new alias.  

The real question to ask when discussing the twist of the end of TOS is "Is Kobayashi picking up Soze from the police station or is Soze picking up Kobayashi from the police station?"

Verbal is such an unreliable narrator that anything is possible.

Edited March 24, 2020 by J.T.

[caley]

Self-Isolation/Clean Out the DVR/Trying not to spend money on movies so time to raid the stuff I  haven't watched watching!

Deathsport: This is apparently the sequel to the original Death Race and part of a planned trilogy that never materialized after this one did so poorly.  David Carradine plays a ranger (which is code for 'guy in his underwear' with a cape and see-through sword') who gets imprisoned with another ranger and they have to work together to fight back against the evil rulers.  It's Roger Corman (Well he's one of three listed directors, including a guy who was fired after fighting repeatedly with the actors) so it's cheap (Witness the futuristic vehicles which are just motorbikes with aluminium fastened onto them) and pretty lousy.  The best part of the movie is when they are fighting some cannibals in a cave and one of them is ignited by a torch and it's clearly a stuntman stumbling around on fire when he accidentally sets another non-stuntman on fire and you can see him break character and throw off his costume and run.  And, yes, that is IN the movie. 

Cherry 2000: A wiener-y  guy in a dystopian society is depressed after his sex robot breaks down, so he enlists a tracker (played by Melanie Griffith) to go track down another sex robot in the wastelands so he can upload the memory from his current sex robot into a newer model.  This movie is flat-out insane, but not in a good way.  Anyway, the annoying lead makes you wish he would quickly die and greatly appreciate the insane gonzo performance by the bad guy.  This made me long for the simple pleasures of 'Deathsport'.

Fun With Dick and Jane: This was something I was looking to throw on while I played games on my phone. It was pretty inoffensive and umremarkable.  I honestly can't remember any of it.  

Ravenous: I'd been meaning to see this since I saw a preview for it way back in the 90s and found it on the Aboriginal People''s Televsion Network one night.  It stars Guy Pearce as a US soldier during the Mexican-American war who is recognized as a hero, then revealed as not one, who gets dispatched to a remote outpost in the Sierra Nevadas.  A man (Robert Carlyle) comes to them one night telling a story about a stranded wagon train who has turned to cannibalism and Pearce and company set out to rescue them.  It's really weird, dark and strangely funny.  But the film requires you to basically believe in the conceit that

eating people has amazing curative powers and almost superpower-causing abilities

which is, ahem, a little hard to swallow.

Son of Kong: Weird sequel to the original King Kong that came out only 9 months after the original with a significantly reduced budget.  I watched this on Svengoolie (Which if you haven't seen is a must-watch: horror/monster movies hosted by the titular Svengoolie who cracks jokes during commercials and talks movie trivia with a sort of Kiss-esque face makeup and top hat and has been running for something like 40 years!) and he revealed that the screenwriter said they knew this movie couldn't be as good as the first with the limited budge/short turnaround time so instead they decided to make it funnier.  I don't know about funnier, but it is really weird, including a monkey orchestra, Kong making funny faces and an insane ending sequence.  I don't know if I could call it strictly good but it's watchable.

[bThe Long Day Closes[/b]: I picked the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of this up at a library book sale, knowing nothing about it.  It's a really unusual and beautiful coming-of-age British film about a young boy in 1950s England that moves in and out of time and reality and dreams without any real transitions and is just FULL of  music whether it be popular songs or being sung by church choirs or the boy's mother while folding laundry.  The statement "every frame of this film could be a painting" gets thrown around  a lot (And often by me!) but this is one where it's really true.  Just strikingly beautiful stuff throughout.  I really feel like Terrence Malick saw this during his 20+ year hiatus from films and had it influence where he wanted his stuff to go.

The Mule: Clint Eastwood-directed and starring film about an 80+ man acting as a mule for a drug cartel.  I thought the first half of this one was really effective with Eastwood's character's old-fashioned values and behaviour ingratiating him to his drug-dealing bosses but thought the back half which marries the story with a Heat-esque dynamic between Eastwood and a sadly-underwritten police officer (Bradley Cooper) and a family drama redemption story with the mule and his long-separated and suffering family

Paterson: I've tried to watch this 4-5 times and could never get more than 10ish minutes into it, with Adam Driver as the titular Paterson a bus driver who composes poetry in his spare time.  I'm glad I finally gave it another go because once you get pats that first ten minutes it gets less repetitive and fascinatingly weird.  There's not a lot going on, mostly Paterson writing poems and putting up with his flighty girlfriend but it's really neat and has an almost-hypnotizing tone/rythym.  

Across 110th Street: 70s crime drama with old-fashioned violent white cop (Anthony Quinn) trying to adjust to life as a subordinate to new college-educated black cop (the always awesome Yaphet Kotto) trying to solve a mafia-related robbery/murder in Harlem.  This is pretty by-the-numbers blaxploitation/cop drama, save for the terrific Bobby Womack score and Huggy Bear as a getaway driver.

They Live By Night: Nicholas Ray's first film: a crime melodrama loosely based on Bonnie and Clyde with Farley Granger as a young prison escapee who falls in with a group of robbers but wants to go straight when he meets the right woman.  It's very Ray with long shadows and lots of melodrama but I'm disappointed for what could have been as Robert Mitchum wanted to play one of the supporting roles and he would have been incredible here.

 

[odessasteps]

We did Across 110th Street during last years Ernie Ladd project.