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20-10s General Pimping Thread


RIPPA

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Recency bias is totally a thing!  But I think of it as (sometimes) balancing out the time you've had to get nostalgic about other movies.

I tend to think of it in 1-on-1 matchups.  A good set of placeholders for me so far goes something like:

The Lobster

Blade Runner 2049

Short Term 12

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse

Those are all Top 50 for me and when I think of ranking something, I start with a rough idea and then, "Yeah, but..." myself into a series of thoughts about whether something is honestly better than the next thing up the ladder.  Parasite was kind of easy for me, because it beats all that stuff but then ran into Moonlight and I couldn't countenance putting it past that.  The Tree of Life is tougher, and I certainly wouldn't call it anything close to perfect, but...cripes is it beautiful.  Hard to believe, really, that it's nearly 10 years old and still looks *better* than practically everything else since.

Anything below top 50 feels a little like guesswork and I sometimes rearrange.

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Life After Beth

A Ghost Story

Room (Netflix)

Life was a ridiculous enough take on zombie movies to be worth watching above and beyond the irredeemable dross that is Zombie Pop Culture, but it's otherwise forgettable.  Now, I turn your attention to something different.

To David Lowery, writer & director of A Ghost Story:

Mr. Lowery,

I'm sure quite a large number of people have told you how wonderful your film is.  Allow me to provide an alternative viewpoint.  The most insufferable part of your movie happens close to the middle, when you decide to use Will Oldham as a pompous, pontificating prick.  In the future, if it occurs to you to do something like this again, please don't rattle off scientific concepts you learned in 5th grade and then say, "That's science!"  Because, if you really wanted to be scientifically accurate, you'd have learned - from any number of sources - that, long before our sun becomes a red giant and engulfs Earth, it will grow larger -- and therefore both more luminous and, most importantly, hotter.  When that happens, some time in the next 500 million to a billion years, it will boil every last bit of water off the surface of the planet, and the loss of water will be what ends life as we know it.  And THAT is science.

Also, quit contributing to Rooney Mara's bulimia.  It's cruel.

Thanks.

Anyway.  Now that that's out of my system, I'd like everyone to know Brie Larson is a goddamned American treasure.  I tried watching Room about a year ago and couldn't make it past the first 10 minutes because I knew the premise was going to make me have to stop, and it did, repeatedly.  But sweet crap, she's of course great.  I forget which list I saw a while ago that mentioned this film and said it was, at a nuts-and-bolts level, a jumped-up Lifetime movie concept.  I kinda get what they were saying, but the difference between something like that and Room comes down to focus.  There are so many little moments where all those impossible choices are piled on top of her like Spider-Man getting crushed under the rubble that he eventually lifts...but here, we get so much more of the doubt that the effort of lifting is still worth it.  Lifetime movies, uh, don't do that.  I was really thrown for a loop with this, because William H. Macy didn't die in some awful way, so hey, good for him, but this will probably be in the back end of my list.  Having said all this, I'm still not really sure that this was a better performance from her than what she gave us in Short Term 12.

Happy Hour (Amazon & Kanopy)

Yes, this film is over 5 hours long.  But also yes, it really doesn't feel like it.  The director here used a bunch of unknown actors to pull off this gut punch of a film; we're lulled into a bit of a false sense of security with the initial setup over the first hour, and, as one woman of the four central characters reveals her unhappiness, the others start questioning their lives and begin their own strange social death spirals.  And, since it's Japan, that only amplifies the pressure everyone is subjected to as this slow-motion car crash unfolds. 

There's been some criticism of this film that claims it's a misandrist work, but I don't know if that's true.  It does, for a while at least, portray all its male characters in an exceptionally dim light - you kind of want to slap them all for not noticing their wives are unhappy - but the last 90 minutes of the film really turns that on its head, as the one guy you figure might be on the spectrum actually reveals a subterranean ecosystem of hidden depths in a totally believable way.  What's really going on here is a double whammy of social pressures.  All the characters lead these relatively unexamined lives until they're given no choice but to ask themselves what they really want; the women are able to navigate this because they ostensibly have society's permission to do that.  The men, though, are just men, and their cluelessness is as much due to disuse and lack of practice as it is any emotional shortcomings.  Everyone in the movie is too busy, for so long, trying to hold up standards and work hard and play their role correctly and all that rot, but the men get the added handicap of "Be a man" and all that entails.  So, not really anti-male as much as, frankly, pretty damned true to life.  I'm not sure I cared for some of the last 15 minutes, but otherwise it's surprisingly affecting and rewarding for something so long.  Sachie Tanaka, who plays Akari, the divorced nurse, deserves to get cast in all the things.

Her Smell (HBO & Kanopy)

I think I tried watching this about 4 times before I finally finished it tonight.  I get why some people might like it, and I get that Elisabeth Moss is a great actress, but I'm not sure that this doesn't veer more into Most Actress territory as opposed to Best Actress territory.  The first hour or so features some of the most ridiculous, painful-to-watch, walking shitshow insanity committed to a film whose plot is entirely coherent.  I guess that is to her credit for rendering a character so fully loathsome.  But the dialogue she's given is embarrassingly overblown.  On some level, that's the point - she's supposed to be unaware of what a self-parody she's become - but...well...no one sounds like that.  OK, OK, sure, no one talks in real life like they do in movies, but this is a severe edge case of that.  I'm not sure that the conclusion of the film is the conclusion it set up or that it deserved, either, and not much else about it besides Moss' performance is any better or worse than any other indie director would slap together, so I'm not sure why critics would slather praise on this.  This was 135 minutes and felt longer than Happy Hour.

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Out of interest, are you doing a top 50 or top 100 ballot? Normally I do the 100 but I'm thinking of 50 this as I don't want do a 100 made up of some padding to get to that number, I haven't seen as much from this decade and by cutting it in half, you really have to make the most of selections.

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I watched five films from 2019 over the past couple of weeks.  Most of them were good, but probably won’t make my list, except maybe on the bottom end.  One was utter shit...

ALADDIN (2019):  A musical apparently directed by a guy who has never watched a musical in his life.  An absolutely hideous eyesore of a film without even the faintest hint of a pulse.

ROCKETMAN:  This movie deserved all the praise that BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY got.  Taron Everton is great as Elton John.  I loved the idea of making it like a musical, with different characters singing, dance numbers, and surreal imagery.  That said...At the end of the day, it still adheres to the same musician biopic template that has been thoroughly run into the ground over the years.  The musical numbers are pleasant diversions, but you know every beat of the story before the lights go down.

FORD V FERRARI:  A prestige underdog sports flick.  Really well crafted by James Mangold, who is probably one our more underrated directors these days.  Interestingly, I think this film transcends it’s genre the same way Mangold’s WALK THE LINE managed to transcend the musician biopic—it’s a two-hander.  The film becomes more about the relationship between the two leads, rather than just a by-the-book recounting of historical events.  To top it off, the race scenes are really well shot (which is not easy to do!).  I wish Hollywood made more crowdpleasing adult movies like this these days.

AD ASTRA:  A solid movie that awkwardly tries to straddle the fence between heady, art house space films (like SOLARIS and 2001) and rollicking, sci-fi adventure, ultimately failing to be either.  Brad Pitt is very good in this!  His scenes with Tommy Lee Jones are really good, and I like the *idea* of what this movie is supposed to be about, but it’s too dumb to actually be about it.  But not dumb in a fun way.  Another frustrating miss from David Gray.

US:  Lupita Nyong’o should’ve been nominated for an Oscar, probably.  What she does in this film is really hard and really good.  The rest of the film?  I mean, the craft is good.  It’s clear that GET OUT was no fluke, and Jordan Peele has the goods as a director.  And I love the moments in this film where his unique voice comes out, like setting the climax to a symphonic rendition of “I Got 5 On It.”  Nobody else is doing that!  But the story.  Man.  This is what happens when you just made GET OUT and nobody wants to give you a note.  The big reveal  is preposterous and doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.  It grinds an otherwise entertaining movie to a halt.  It’s amateur hour Twilight Zone.

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7 hours ago, hobo joe said:

Is there a deadline for this? I need to start watching shit.

I believe I read the deadline got pushed to August 1st.

On 6/16/2020 at 3:33 AM, The Natural said:

Out of interest, are you doing a top 50 or top 100 ballot? Normally I do the 100 but I'm thinking of 50 this as I don't want do a 100 made up of some padding to get to that number, I haven't seen as much from this decade and by cutting it in half, you really have to make the most of selections.

Late quoting reply, I know. I’m leaning towards the same as you. On Letterboxd I have things organized to a solid 50. So much more to see to beef it up, but the year has been weird enough that I didn’t get as much movie time as I thought I would.

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On 5/28/2020 at 10:15 PM, Contentious C said:

 

BlacKkKlansman would have been more memorable if John David Washington were half the actor his father is.  And it didn't need the Charlottesville chunk at the end to get its message across.  The rest of it was like the very, very best parts of Mad Men, where it splits its audience into 3: the people who marvel at how the world used to be, the people who wish the world were still that way, and the ones with brains who realize nothing's actually changed.  This is on my list, but not super-high. 

 

I quite liked this when I watched it, then I read Boots Riley's problems with the film, and it kind of cryszallized some feelings I had, too, but maybe hadn't considered as well as him illuminating that the whole climax of the film being

completely made-up.  Per Riley, the whole bombing storyline was made to look the main character look like a hero saving Black people when he was actually more of a detriment to the black cause by infiltrating/attacking Black groups


Now, I'm not always a huge stickler for sticking strictly to the historical facts but this feels like a tough one to overlook, for me, as least.

On 6/5/2020 at 2:24 PM, Contentious C said:

Nope, managed to forget at least one thing while watching a bunch of new stuff, so...

The Fits (Kanopy)

I don't know; I suppose I didn't really get this.  It's an interesting piece of work to be sure, done primarily with setting and looks and atmosphere and very very little dialogue, but a film about social acceptance was never going to be my cup of tea.  Not sure why it was so bloody high on that Vulture list; a lot of the stuff on there was pretty choice, but this was merely pretty good.  But it is very short (under 75 minutes), so it's not like it's a waste of time at all.

 

First Reformed felt like a movie that didn't have the courage of its convictions.  I haven't seen The Last Temptation of Christ, so I can't really comment on the similarities regarding the endings, but...there was probably a more challenging, ballsy ending to be had that would have left people even more baffled by its meaning, and they just didn't follow through on it.  Having said that, though, this movie has two really big things going for it: it's the only time I've ever, in the entirety of my life, 1) been able to stand Cedric the Entertainer or 2) thought Ethan Hawke was the best choice for a film.  They're both just great in this.  Won't make my list, but if quiet and thought-provoking is what you're going for, this has a lot of that.

 

 

These were both movies that I liked okay, but LOVED one fantastical sequence in each that made me think I liked the movie more than I did.

I felt the same on 'The Fits', I loved the ending but didn't understand it, and, really, didn't understand the whole film.  I get that it was a metaphor on becoming a woman, or something; but never really felt it came together.

I'm not sure there was a film that brought me down as much as 'First Reformed' did.  It was good and I loved the 

INSANE meditation, trascendental journey scene


but, man, is that some HEAVY subject matter.

 

On 6/11/2020 at 12:06 PM, (BP) said:

Has anyone else watched something for the first time and immediately wanted to put it at the top of your list, but you weren’t sure if it was only because of the immediacy of having just watched it? 

I’m struggling with that for Tree of Life and Parasite, because I watched both this week and they are near perfect to me. 

Not really a spoiler if you've listened to anything I've said on here about movies, but 'TOL' is my easy #1

On 6/21/2020 at 8:44 PM, EVA said:

 

US:  Lupita Nyong’o should’ve been nominated for an Oscar, probably.  What she does in this film is really hard and really good.  The rest of the film?  I mean, the craft is good.  It’s clear that GET OUT was no fluke, and Jordan Peele has the goods as a director.  And I love the moments in this film where his unique voice comes out, like setting the climax to a symphonic rendition of “I Got 5 On It.”  Nobody else is doing that!  But the story.  Man.  This is what happens when you just made GET OUT and nobody wants to give you a note.  The big reveal  is preposterous and doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.  It grinds an otherwise entertaining movie to a halt.  It’s amateur hour Twilight Zone.

I think the bolded part is the best articulation of what I did not care about the film at all.  I was "meh" on 'Get Out'

I always thought that the entire conceit of a super-secret operation that has been conducted for years but can be undone by ONE camera flash was so silly that it took me out of the rest of the film.  I mean, they had this intricate plan to kidnap and operate on Black people, but never stopped to consider that someone might one day take a photo of ONE of them?!


and liked this even less.  The visuals were great but the entire plot was ludicrous

so these shadow people hid underground for YEARS and their big plan is to come out and join hands across America because they saw it on a t-shirt?!  What was the end-game there?!  They're just going to stand there while the army rolls over them with tanks?!

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I will start accepting ballots July 1 (a more formal post about this will go up this week)

August 1 is the soft deadline 

Sept 1 is the hard deadline

(basically the longer we have to deal with the nonsense of the real world the longer I might give folks)

I should also remind folks that they can edit their ballots after sending in

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2 hours ago, caley said:

 

I think the bolded part is the best articulation of what I did not care about the film at all.  I was "meh" on 'Get Out'

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I always thought that the entire conceit of a super-secret operation that has been conducted for years but can be undone by ONE camera flash was so silly that it took me out of the rest of the film.  I mean, they had this intricate plan to kidnap and operate on Black people, but never stopped to consider that someone might one day take a photo of ONE of them?!

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I personally haven’t seen a camera flash in almost a decade. 
 

Also, like, I don’t think they intentionally built in the flash glitch. If someone was like “you can live forever but a camera flash might bugger you up for thirty seconds”  I doubt I’d consider that much of a downside.

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7 hours ago, Control said:

I personally haven’t seen a camera flash in almost a decade. 
 

Also, like, I don’t think they intentionally built in the flash glitch. If someone was like “you can live forever but a camera flash might bugger you up for thirty seconds”  I doubt I’d consider that much of a downside.

It was a phone camera flash! You haven't been around someone taking a photo with their phone in ten years with the flash on?!

And

I never said it was an intentional glitch, I said it was a pretty terribly easy way to undo a super-secret operation that has been kept hidden for decades and that can only be rectified if your friendly, neighbourhood racist hypnotist happens to be around.  Andre's mind subjugation is undone when Chris takes a surreptitious photo of him with his camera, freaks out and warns Chris (So presumably Andre is completely in control of his faculties for these few moments), and is only calmed and returned to normal after Missy takes him aside and, presumably, re-hypnotizes him.  So, in all those years what happens when someone takes a photo of someone and Missy isn't in the same location to re-hypnotize them?!



It's fine if it doesn't bother anyone else, but it COMPLETELY took me out of the movie and that's why a movie lots of people think is a best of the decade won't be anywhere near my Top 100.

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16 hours ago, RIPPA said:

I will start accepting ballots July 1 (a more formal post about this will go up this week)

August 1 is the soft deadline 

Sept 1 is the hard deadline

(basically the longer we have to deal with the nonsense of the real world the longer I might give folks)

I should also remind folks that they can edit their ballots after sending in

Yeah, more time. Time to make the most of it.

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On 6/28/2020 at 4:32 AM, OctopusCinema said:

Late quoting reply, I know. I’m leaning towards the same as you. On Letterboxd I have things organized to a solid 50. So much more to see to beef it up, but the year has been weird enough that I didn’t get as much movie time as I thought I would.

With you on both counts. Further thanks for the Carol recommendation.

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On 5/26/2020 at 4:39 PM, Control said:

I watched a few movies that qualify!

DEADPOOL 2 (2018) was fine, right? I think it was fine. It had a lot going for it and yet it was kinda like some thoroughly satisfying fast food you forget eating the next day. Zazie Beats is gorgeous.  Two or three superhero movies will make my list--probably not this one.

Have you seen Deadpool (2016)? That's the Deadpool movie you need to watch. Far funnier and leaner than Deadpool 2. I was disappointed by it. Best thing from it was the mid and post-credits scenes.

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13 minutes ago, The Natural said:

Have you seen Deadpool (2016)? That's the Deadpool movie you need to watch. Far funnier and leaner than Deadpool 2. I was disappointed by it. Best thing from it was the mid and post-credits scenes.

I have! I thought it was about the same, actually—obviously the first one was fresher, but the second had better performances, I think.

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The Forbidden Room (Madden, 2015)

Think of this like the Adult Swim of Arthouse Cinema. A feeling of different vibes and skits but it successfully morphs and blends together to a singular piece. For people not familiar with Guy Madden, he often gets compared to Lynch for his use of oddity and strange vibes, but he is much more of a comedian with his tongue and cheek weird sense of humor. If this project was for the previous decade I’d have a few of his films listed. Without spoiling or going too in-depth, the movie takes place on a submarine while the crew 

 

Cosmopolis (Cronenberg, 2012)

I really enjoy post-Body Horror Cronenberg. Majority of this film takes place in a limo with a very dry and stoic Robert Pattinson. This is the type of film that really threw me off at first and took me a bit to get into the pacing, but once my brain was moving with it, I really enjoyed it. 

 

The Other Side of the Wind (Welles, 2018)

Maybe the most important film to come out this decade. There has been a battle for who owned the rights to finish the edit and release this since the 70’s. So many times it has been hyped up that it would finally be finished only for roadblocks to stop it as traction picks up, that once Netflix got involved it was almost too unbelievable for any Welles-obsessive to believe it would actually happen. When it came out I watched it at my friends house with steak after eating a grilled steak. The entire movie I was smiling. 

It should be noted: I’m recommending this specifically for Orson Welles nerds. This was shot in the 70’s by an Auteur inspired by and addressing an experimental new time. Shot just before his masterpiece F For Fake. The plot parallels Welles’ story by staring John Huston as an old director making his comeback Hollywood movie after spending time in Europe. 

There also is a doc on this movie, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead.

 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Alfredson, 2011)

Gary Oldman being stoic. 

 

Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)

@The Natural, check this one out if you hadn’t seen it. In style, visuals, and pace I’d compare it to Carol. VERY different plot though. Tenderly glamorous in a slowly classical tense, but add the dysfunctional interpersonal conversation jockeying of a Bergman film. Replace forbidden love with neuroticism.

 

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25 minutes ago, OctopusCinema said:

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Alfredson, 2011)

Gary Oldman being stoic. 

I'm going to try and watch this one because Tomas Alfredson directed Let the Right One In (2008). I love that film.

Edited by The Natural
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24 minutes ago, OctopusCinema said:

Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)

@The Natural, check this one out if you hadn’t seen it. In style, visuals, and pace I’d compare it to Carol. VERY different plot though. Tenderly glamorous in a slowly classical tense, but add the dysfunctional interpersonal conversation jockeying of a Bergman film. Replace forbidden love with neuroticism.

 

I added Phantom Thread (2017) to my List on Netflix a few days ago. Thanks to your recommendation, @OctopusCinema, I'll prioritize that.

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First time watches for the project:

 

Carol (Haynes, 2015)

Nightcrawler (Gilroy, 2014)

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waitiit, 2016)

Ex Machina (Garland, 2014)

Snowpiercer (Joon-ho, 2013)

The Death of Stalin (Iannucci, 2018)

Hereditary (Aster, 2018)

Three of those are locks for my ballot. There may be a fourth.

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8 minutes ago, The Natural said:

First time watches for the project:

  Reveal hidden contents

Carol (Haynes, 2015)

Nightcrawler (Gilroy, 2014)

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Waitiit, 2016)

Ex Machina (Garland, 2014)

Snowpiercer (Joon-ho, 2013)

The Death of Stalin (Iannucci, 2018)

Hereditary (Aster, 2018)

Three of those are locks for my ballot. There may be a fourth.

Films I'm hoping to see:

 

Coco (Unkrich/Molina, 2017)

Phantom Thread (Anderson, 2017)

Parasite (Joon ho, 2019)

Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017)

Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Alfredson, 2011)

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018)

The Big Short (McKay, 2015)

You Were Never Really Here (Ramsay, 2017)

It Comes At Night (Shults, 2017)

Thoughts on these, priorities etc? Thanks.

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