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2022 Movies Discussion Thread (v.2.0)


RIPPA

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Hey, it's great that someone has asked me some questions about this!  Because you know what makes it great?  Ignoring your questions!  I don't owe you nerds any explanation!  Hahahaha!  I'm too busy talking about MOVIES MOVIES MOVIES- FIFTEEN BLOODY MOVIES this time, it's Day 188 (and counting) of this movie thing, WTF Did I Just Watch Edition!

Hot Garbage

Blockers - Hey, let's just spend literally every moment we can just stating the premise and themes of the movie as blandly and directly as possible, all the time, every time!  That'll work!  Sure!  (Note: yes, I understand that Interstellar does exactly this at one point.  I still enjoy it anyway.  In summation, get bent.)  This is basically just like Daddy's Home and any number of other 2010s comedies, where you could have written an entire movie via the writer getting takeout every night for 90 days, and then asking the delivery driver to give them jokes and bits, and simply stringing all those random jokes together would have been funnier than this was.  It's not too terrible when it focuses on the girls more directly, but the parent stuff is just unbearably unfunny and boring.

Night Hunter - Hey, I like Henry Cavill, and Alexandra Daddario, and Nathan Fillion; how bad can this suspense thriller be?  It can be real, real bad.  This was ruined for me by having read too many shitty Dean Koontz novels in high school (or, for brevity's sake, Dean Koontz novels), and the plot twist is straight out of one of those.  30 minutes in, I just blurted it out and I was right.  The guy playing the killer is pretty good, but the movie feels disjointed, the other roles are poorly acted especially considering all the familiar faces, the script is awful, and the police violate pretty much every single one of their professional standards with total impunity, which is...OK, yeah, right, that's actually 100% accurate.  Sorry!

Father's Day - Here's a trend: a sometimes-great actor making you want to retroactively strip them of an Oscar for a movie they did the same year.  That's Robin Williams here, as somehow he was beyond dreadful - like, August Rush bad, if you ever saw that fluorescent turd of a movie - to the point that it made me think, "You know, maybe Sean Maguire isn't that great a character."  I don't know how someone has that 1997, but he did.  Billy Crystal is probably just as bad, except he's playing the straight man here, and there aren't as many obvious instances where he drags the movie to a grinding halt.  I'm not sure I laughed hard at a single thing in this, and this is two of the biggest comedy draws of their generation falling this flat.  Yuck.

Poison Ivy && - I couldn't remember if I'd seen this before or not until I got about 20 minutes into it and realized I had.  One huge problem with it is that Sara Gilbert is probably my least favorite actor in history.  Whatever I've said about James Caan or whoever else that doesn't connect with me, or is a walking charisma sink?  You could bury them all in the Mariana Trench that is my reaction to Sara Gilbert and not notice the depths had changed.  You're basically watching this for Drew Barrymore, but then naturally the plot has to develop, and once she has to seduce Tom goddamned Skerritt, of all people, it gets into full-on SQUICK territory.  I'm trying to picture who was clamoring for an emancipated 16-year-old Drew Barrymore/Tom Skerritt hookup on screen, and, uh, yeah, that person doesn't exist.  Shitty exploitation passed off as something challenging and transgressive, but it's just not.

Showgirls && - Who was clamoring for gross jailbait movies? Probably the exact same people clamoring for this famous turkey.  I couldn't remember if I'd seen it before either (it's probably been 15 years), until Gina Ravera shows up in the movie, and then I remembered the awful, awful, awful, awful, awful way her character is treated in the last 30 minutes of the movie, and I thought about shutting it off.  I'm simultaneously glad I didn't and disgusted at myself that I didn't.  This is one of the most deeply misogynistic, fucked-up, wrong-headed, backwards-thinking pieces of shit ever committed to film.  The fate of the Molly character aside, all of the representations of women are extreme, terrible stereotypes or they're tacit enablers of the men who are worse.  Ever wonder why representation matters in film, especially when it comes to the production side?  This is *exactly* why it matters.  Most of the cast are women; most of the stories are women.  The only person important to the production of the film who is a woman?  The fucking choreographer.  And the thing is, that's really too bad, because there are some surprisingly good set pieces here (like the scene where Berkeley and Gershon are alone on stage), and you do have to admire the dedication involved to pull off a lot of the details here.  Too bad it's caught up in a giant pile of crazy bullshit or pathetically bad scenes that stink from a mile away, like the absolutely ridiculous sex scene with Berkeley & Kyle MacLachlan.  But, I'm probably not saying anything new here; just reminding myself that people have hated on this for good reason for a very long time, and that most of the actors involved with it deserved better.

Always Be My Maybe - I had started watching this when it came out, then only watched the first 10 minutes, so this was just an extra movie on top of what else I watched for the day.  Annnnnnd...it's also just not funny in any meaningful way.  Randall Park is pretty good, but I can live without Ali Wong...um, I think forever?  She's not any good here; not likeable, not believable, certainly not funny.  It's also ridiculous that the movie is about Randall's character living up to his talents when the comedy rap group he has is *absolutely fucking terrible*.   The only moments of charm and character in the film come from Randall Park's dad, who outshines everyone else in the whole damn thing.

ALERT ALERT ALERT Hot Garbage, So So Hot, Like the Burning Fire of a Thousand Suns Incinerating a Sulfur Enrichment Plant

Seventh Son - I only know two true things about myself.  I knew when this movie came out in 2014 that it looked like a massive, drizzling pile of shit.  And I knew, when I first saw its appearance on Netflix, that I would eventually subject myself to this particular brand of masochism.  Oh God, where do I start?  Talk about revoking Oscars, let's take away Julianne Moore's, and let's DEFINITELY take away Jeff Bridges' Oscar, as this is some All-Time Razzie-Level - like, the Razzie to Rule Them All - bad acting from him.  They try to make him wryly funny or...something.  And does it work?  What the Hell do you think?  And Alicia Vikander has some massive Robin Williams vibes here, too, as she was in Ex Machina, one of the greatest sci-fi films in decades in the same year as THIS.

The CGI, oh my God, the CGI.  You could have brought the crew's kids under the age of 5 onto the set to draw the action on posterboards and it would have looked better.  You want to know how bad the artwork was here?   Just look no further than the bumper it has on Netflix!  It looks like 90% of a well-done dragon, but then they took the meme of the crying guy wearing the smiling mask and pasted that on the dragon's face!  You can't unsee this shit!  Pointless characters who do nothing but eat up screen time?  Boy have we got those!  Let's just have a whole slew of easily-dispatched alleged badasses who come from nowhere, get maybe one scene to seem dangerous, and then eat it in embarrassing fashion to put over the good guys!  A confusing ending? Sure, why not put the cherry on top of the shit sundae, why don't you?  I don't usually spoil much, but I'm a helper, so I'm helping you here by saying, do the good guys vanquish?  Not really.  Do they show cleverness and trick the bad guys into losing? Nope.  The witch LITERALLY JUST GIVES UP, after threatening to burn entire nations!  What in the SANDWICH FUCK.

But!  Guess what?  It's STILL not as bad as The Crow: Wicked Prayer.  But damn is this right there on the Mount Rushmore - ahem, excuse me, the MOUNT FLUSHMORE - of absolutely dreadful movies, and this isn't even a sequel of anything!

Acceptable

In the Soup - Oh thank you, finally, a movie that's just weird instead of mental toxin delivered at 24 frames a second.  Steve Buscemi is the main character here, but the real star is Seymour Cassel, who manages to pull off this highwire act of being crummy and charming and scary and creepy and loving and genuine and utterly fake all at the same time, and usually all in the same scene.  Jennifer Beals is pretty great as the unattainable love interest, too, but what this movie reminds me of the most is the film Pi, if only that movie were whimsical and not-so-serious, instead of being completely warped and demented.  It feels like Aronofsky lifted a huge pile of the shots and settings - and the attendant claustrophobia and paranoia - from this movie about making movies.  I don't think it accomplishes what it's trying to, or really even gets that close, but the acting is the real highlight here.

Misbehavior - This is a Korean film about a teacher whose work and personal life become increasingly screwed-up by a nepotistic coworker who only got her place because her daddy runs the boys' school where they teach.  This was verging on the Hot Garbage territory for quite a while, as the first third or so of the movie is pretty dull.  It tries - and usually fails hard - to capture some of the same quiet madness that someone like Ryusuke Hamaguchi is so great at filming.  But Ha-neul Kim, who plays the main character, drags this to watchability until we get to the ending, where I was thinking to myself, "You know, this has been a really restrained movie, but what it probably needs is a violent ending" and BANG, there it is.  Gotta hand it to the Koreans for that.  There are whispers and elements of movies like Eyes Without a Face and Mulholland Dr. in the last 10 minutes; it isn't anywhere near as good as those, but at least the director had the sense to steal from great things.

The Tender Bar - I think you mean, "The Tepid Bar"!  I can't believe this got award nominations; it's...massively mediocre.  I mean, yeah, Ben Affleck is pretty good in it, but the only other role that really pops is Briana Middleton, who plays Tye Sheridan's on-again, off-again love interest.  Where this really falls short is in actually *showing* any real consequences to any of the choices that the protagonist makes.  There are allusions to drinking problems and whatnot, but nothing he does seems to really cost anything in any meaningful way, so it really makes me wonder how this was even supposed to be that compelling of a memoir, let alone a film adaptation. 

The Intruder (1962) - Two things: the title shown in the opening moments for this movie is I Hate Your Guts, which is undeniably a better title.  The other thing is that, uh, you may not want to watch this.  Maybe ever.  It's an attempt at capturing some of the sense of what was happening during the Civil Rights movement, but man, is it really insane to see something this wildly racist today.  On some level, maybe that's actually a useful thing about it; it's a reminder that all the craziness we've seen the last 5+ years is something that simply never went away in the first place.  But it is the height of irony to watch William fucking Shatner, who fucked everything in the galaxy as the clearly unprejudiced Captain Kirk, play a carpetbagging racist shit-stirrer.  It's not a badly-made film, and it sort of works considering its premise, but not everyone may have the stomach for it.

I Could Never Be Your Woman - Totally forgot I just watched this! It's also easy to forget Amy Heckerling, one of America's real film geniuses.  She just makes too few films to stay front-of-mind.  And this is a long, long way from her strongest work, but it's still 100% hers, as she's just leveling her guns at all sorts of targets with the same withering humor you come to expect of her.  This has one of Saiorse Ronan's earliest big roles, basically playing the Sally Draper-esque cypher for the whole movie, speaking with Heckerling's voice about her various beefs with Hollywood, and she's probably the highlight of the film.  The plot is thin gruel, but Paul Rudd really busts his ass to make it watchable, and there are more than a few times in the movie where you could believe he's actually an insane person they just let out of the nuthouse. 

Awesome

Daisies - Talk about a movie that's not for everyone; that's this one.  But man, this is wild, wild stuff that the world needs and continues to need.  Even if you don't agree with the politics, or you don't understand the messages about war and consumerism and feminism, just the *editing* in this film alone is so utterly brilliant that it would make this a great movie on its own.  This veers all over the map, from silent film/Vaudeville shenanigans to more avant-garde stage acting to slapstick and almost everything else you can think of, so there's not much in the way of plot.  But it's got a metric ton of the same "fuck you" anti-authority vibes that Repo Man has, so if that's your bag, this probably is, too.

Don't Look Up - I don't know what those other nerds were thinking about this when they said they didn't like it.  This isn't Adam McKay's best movie or anything, but it's pretty darn good.  It's funny in that "if you don't laugh, you probably ought to cry" way, since you could swap out the comet for COVID or climate change or the fact that the US is a failed state, and the message is basically the same for any and all of those crises.  It's probably the best acting either DiCaprio or Lawrence has done since their own Academy Award wins, and Cate Blanchett is seventeen shades of batshit crazy here.  It's rare that I have wanted to punch anyone in the face as much as I wanted to punch Jonah Hill in the face for the entirety of this movie.  Plus, as a scientist, it is a bit of a relief to see someone capture how infuriating it is to have people in the media blatantly misunderstand demonstrable facts on a regular basis.  I don't think this is as good of a "end of the world comedy" as Seeking a Friend for the End of the World was, so props to Lorene Scafaria for that movie once again, but I think this is going to age better than some of Adam's other films, assuming, you know, we don't destroy ourselves first.

Winner Winner, I'll have what she's having for dinner

When Harry Met Sally... && - I know, I know, obvious film critic is obvious.  But every so often, I get a hankering to rewatch this, and it just holds up every. Single. Time.  Easy Top 10 of the 80s pick for me and probably a Top 40 all-time pick for that matter.  Simply the most rewatchable film I can think of, and that's only a little bit because TBS used to play it all the time.  The jokes always land (although I'm sure some people could take or leave the "Ethiopian/empty plate" joke these days, but I still laugh), the side characters feel developed and genuine but we also understand they're just window dressing, the old couples never stop being charming, and the script is close to perfect.  I think what I caught this time that I hadn't seen before was how meals punctuate so many of the big discussions they have about sex and relationships: the initial diner talk about Sheldon the Wonder Schlong, the scene we all recognize, the failed set-up dinner with Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher (where Jess and Marie banter about how he wrote that dinners are overrated~!~!), the quiet dinner of Billy Crystal grazing on his salad like an idiot after they finally sleep together.  I never go out of my way to listen to the kind of stuff that's on the soundtrack, either, but it's a joy every time I hear every song.  Probably because I associate them with this movie.  And the ending speech Billy Crystal gives is basically seared into my brain as how I think about love. *chef's kiss*

Whew, that was a lot.

Edited by Contentious C
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Recently, I actually read a pretty good summation of why DON’T LOOK UP doesn’t really work. I don’t have the exact quote, but it was essentially “Great satire is angry FOR it’s audience, but Don’t Look Up is angry AT it’s audience.” It’s basically Punching Down: The Movie. In the scene where Leo finally has his NETWORK moment, they might as well have turned the camera to McKay and let him scream directly at the audience for 5 minutes instead. Totally obnoxious.

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@Contentious C, I watched The Tender Bar this weekend and felt exactly the same as you.  Not bad, but nothing to make me ever think about it again.

You bring up a good point about it probably not being all that compelling of a memoir.  There's a part where the narrator says, "What's that line about old dogs and new tricks?" And I immediately thought, "Are we supposed to think this guy's a good writer?"

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@Contentious Cis a treasure and should never be questioned!  ?

I had a "FUCK I AM OLD" moment this weekend when I bought a movie from 1998 on Prime and said, "man, this movie is so old it's only available in HD!" 

I've come a long way from my first video recorder, a Betamax that I am positive that my dad bought hot for $50 in the mid 80s.

Edited by Technico Support
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I think the issue with that criticism of Don't Look Up is that the intent of the film makes it literally impossible to separate the "for" from the "at".  We're the audience, but we're also the problem.  And it's hardly the only satire that is that way.  I think there's a lot of the same spirit in both Fight Club and American Beauty, for example.

Anyway, I don't want to write up 15 goddamn movies again anytime soon, so I'll do a somewhat quick-hitting post for this week's stuff.  Hey hey, yesterday's movie was Day 195 (and counting) of Movies You Don't Care About: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of 2007 Edition.

Hot Garbage

The Good Night - 2007 stink bomb # 1.  Who asked for this?  I mean, really, who wanted to see a TON of otherwise enjoyable actors muddle their way through one of the most self-indulgent pieces of garbage since whatever Extruded Film Product Woody Allen last shat out?  Oh, right, it's Gwyneth Paltrow's brother writing and directing, so being related to someone famous means you get to have people blow smoke up your ass about how your movie is worth seeing, even when it's junk.  I love Penelope Cruz in this, as she does a good job with a dual role.  The whole premise is that Martin Freeman wants to escape his boring life via lucid dreaming (yes, it's that navel-gazing), and she is his dream muse but also a real-life model who turns out to be completely different (and to my mind, frankly even more interesting) from the fantasy.  The problem with this is...literally everything else.  It's trying to be a mockumentary, which apparently means it has to look ugly 80% of the time.  It's not funny, and when you have Simon Pegg managing maybe one zinger the whole movie, something is wrong.  It's a total waste of Freeman and Danny Devito, who can do both halves of something tragicomic if they wanted, but the material is beneath their talents.  And the central premise is ridiculous; not so much the dreaming part, which can be passed off as magic realism, but Freeman's character was a one-hit wonder who still records shitty TV music and jingles as a keyboardist, and he's unhappy with the route his life has taken.  Do you really expect anyone to have sympathy for him when he *literally works in a recording studio all day* and if he wanted to record something better, he could just, y'know, do it on the fucking side in the SEVEN YEARS he allegedly had to make the music he wanted?  Get the fuck out of here.

Waitress - 2007 significantly less stink bomb but still a bit smelly, # 2.  Quite a few familiar faces here, too, but while it's kind of interesting at times to see this centered on the problems of someone trying to escape a small town, most of what goes on here is predictable to the point of being dull.  Its attempts at humor don't work well, and the few that do are typically due to Cheryl Hines, who's the only legitimately funny character.  Keri Russell is...OK, but she seems to be someone who works up or down to the level of the script she has, so she's too bland here to keep your focus or your empathy.  It's basically up to Jeremy Sisto (another actor who doesn't really do it for me, and don't get me started on the giant charisma whirlpool that was him and Lauren Ambrose having to act together in Six Feet Under and almost ruining that show for me...oops) to tantrum his way into keeping the stakes high enough, but even his character is one of the worst cardboard cutouts of an insecure husband you could possibly write.  And the ending is a tiny variation on "A baby will fix everything", which is quite possibly the dumbest plot device this side of, "We only use 10% of our brains".  If this had been more consistent, funnier, or kept more of a focus on the terror Sisto's character inflicts on his wife, it would have cracked Acceptable, but, alas.

Acceptable

Eve's Bayou - It's a little weird to have Sam Jackson be the main draw when so much of the film leans so heavily on Meagan Good and Jurnee Smollett as child actors.  Smollett is...basically the same as she is now.  It kind of ruins her Lovecraft Country character for me, as she did the same indignant, take-no-shit character there as she did here, but just a grown-up version.  And I've always thought Meagan Good was basically awful in everything else I've seen, but she's good here; it's like she used up all her acting talent on this one movie.  The plot meanders way too much, though, and even the bits that are actually important are things you could see from a mile away even without the lame "this family is spooky and sees the future" device.  There's one particularly clever scene in the middle of the film, where the aunt tells a story and the setup and camera work are really wonderful.  You could sort of just watch that 5-minute stretch and see all you need to out of this.  It's kind of too bad the quality of writing and structure don't otherwise live up to the best parts.

Dark River - Another "see this coming a mile away" story, only more mediocre.  Ruth Wilson is pretty good in this, but I highly doubt we will ever see anything her entire career where she isn't pretty good at the very least.  This is yet another indie movie that also fits the same complaint as others I've mentioned, where they all look the same.  This one just has violence towards animals involved (though to be fair, they run a sheep farm; I mean, you have to slaughter your livestock eventually).  At least this is set in...Ireland?  I think?  And so the vistas and scenery we're subjected to are quite nice to look at.  But if this had anyone other than Ruth Wilson dragging it, it would have been so forgettable as to be a Hot Garbage entry.  It's very close to being one even with her, but you're always palpably aware of how much she is grappling with her past and her commitments.

Swiss Army Man - I know, I know, how dare I not put this in Awesome?  It's close, OK?  Really close.  I just think it's possible that the sheer absurdity of this film gets in the way of its message.  It feels like the Daniels spent more time frittering over the next stunt they wanted to pull off than they did about whether we care about the people involved.  I think the whole strange misdirection plot with Manny and Sarah works at cross-purposes, and the relationship with the father was missing something, too, and the only solution the Daniels came up with for those problems was, "Let's just make things crazier", rather than writing something that hit home a little better.  At its best, it does a fantastic job of nailing the sense of needless, often self-inflicted isolation that feels so pervasive in modern society, and this is easily Daniel Radcliffe's best work, but the corpse wasn't the only thing that needed more of a beating heart.  But still, one of the most memorable films in...forever, so undeniably worth watching.

China Moon - This, on the other hand, is a rather predictable noir that can be skipped.  I obviously like the genre to some extent, but aside from the beginning and the ending, it doesn't show a lot of depth or cleverness.  Ed Harris is almost the anti-James Caan for me, though; no matter how bad the film is around him, I will basically watch him anyway because I buy the characters he plays.  Madeleine Stowe seems like the kind of woman who should be better at these roles, but she's actually kind of wooden aside from her ability to cry on cue.  Then again, I'm not sure if she's ever had a role where you really took notice of her, aside from *maybe* The Last of the Mohicans.  And Charles Dance, of all people, is kind of terrible, or at least his attempt at a Southern accent is, as it sounds like he tried to learn how to do one by watching Gone with the Wind.  But the opening scene nicely sets up how Harris' character operates (and how Stowe's eventually corrupts him), and the ending lends some validity to the twists and turns that happen throughout.  Unfortunately, that's about all this has going for it.  Also perilously close to Hot Garbage territory.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner

Once - Cripes, 2007 was a great year (setting aside the stuff I described earlier).  Three high qualifiers on a Best of the 2000s list (There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and three other Academy Award nominees that are all really good films.  And then this, which won for Best Original Song.  But wow is this great.  The opening scene is probably the only remotely slow or obvious moment with little to no payoff; it just sets up the situation for the main character before you really get going after the credits. Most of the time, when a movie is about a painter or a writer or whoever that's trying to "make it big," a lot of the output is in fact boring.  Not so here.  It's the rare film that's about art where the art in question is actually *really* good - I know, there's a term for that here: a bloody MUSICAL - but this is about the least musical musical possible, and really just a film where music plays a crucial role in the relationship of two people falling for one another.  The chemistry between Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova is off the charts, the simplicity of the story and script are perfect, and there are multiple moments in this where the sudden melding of the storyline elements with the music they make will give you enormous chills.  The ending is also the ending it needs, and after you think about it a while, it's also the ending you didn't know you wanted.  Granted, I may be a bit of a homer for this kind of thing, as this is nearly a film version of what I imagine it must have been like to sit in the studio with John Paul White & Joy Williams while they were doing the first Civil Wars album a few years later (aside from the two of them falling in love, anyway).  But this is exactly the kind of movie I would shove into someone's hand if they wanted to understand why I like movies.

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6 minutes ago, Contentious C said:

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner

Once - Cripes, 2007 was a great year (setting aside the stuff I described earlier).  Three high qualifiers on a Best of the 2000s list (There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and three other Academy Award nominees that are all really good films.  And then this, which won for Best Original Song.  But wow is this great.  The opening scene is probably the only remotely slow or obvious moment with little to no payoff; it just sets up the situation for the main character before you really get going after the credits. Most of the time, when a movie is about a painter or a writer or whoever that's trying to "make it big," a lot of the output is in fact boring.  Not so here.  It's the rare film that's about art where the art in question is actually *really* good - I know, there's a term for that here: a bloody MUSICAL - but this is about the least musical musical possible, and really just a film where music plays a crucial role in the relationship of two people falling for one another.  The chemistry between Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova is off the charts, the simplicity of the story and script are perfect, and there are multiple moments in this where the sudden melding of the storyline elements with the music they make will give you enormous chills.  The ending is also the ending it needs, and after you think about it a while, it's also the ending you didn't know you wanted.  Granted, I may be a bit of a homer for this kind of thing, as this is nearly a film version of what I imagine it must have been like to sit in the studio with John Paul White & Joy Williams while they were doing the first Civil Wars album a few years later (aside from the two of them falling in love, anyway).  But this is exactly the kind of movie I would shove into someone's hand if they wanted to understand why I like movies.

Hansard has been on my "See live" bucket list for years, and Once was my exposure to him. I currently have a ticket to see him in DC. It's rare I travel more than 6 hours for a concert. I'm hoping I can pull off that trip, but life, funds, etc. 

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In today's pointless lawsuit that will waste everyone's time - some folks who are a little TOO into Ana De Armas watched the trailer for Yesterday, so that she was in it so rented it for $4 from Netflix specifically to see Ana De Armas.

Ana De Armas ended up not being in Yesterday as her part was cut due to test audience not liking her character (reminder Yesterday came out in 2019)

Said folks who are a little TOO into Ana De Armas have now filed a $5 million dollar class action lawsuit against Universal for “deceptive and misleading advertising”. Oh and part of their reasoning is that Himesh Patel and Lily James — the two stars of the film — are “relatively unknown” to casual movie fans. (But that Ana De Armas is not)

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1 hour ago, Chaos said:

Hansard has been on my "See live" bucket list for years, and Once was my exposure to him. I currently have a ticket to see him in DC. It's rare I travel more than 6 hours for a concert. I'm hoping I can pull off that trip, but life, funds, etc. 

Damn.  Bought.  Maybe we can get a beer there!  Hope you can make it; let me know if you need a lift from the airport or something like that.

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1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

In today's pointless lawsuit that will waste everyone's time - some folks who are a little TOO into Ana De Armas watched the trailer for Yesterday, so that she was in it so rented it for $4 from Netflix specifically to see Ana De Armas.

Ana De Armas ended up not being in Yesterday as her part was cut due to test audience not liking her character (reminder Yesterday came out in 2019)

Said folks who are a little TOO into Ana De Armas have now filed a $5 million dollar class action lawsuit against Universal for “deceptive and misleading advertising”. Oh and part of their reasoning is that Himesh Patel and Lily James — the two stars of the film — are “relatively unknown” to casual movie fans. (But that Ana De Armas is not)

So I can just sue a film company for not making something I like now? 

"You made a Michael Bay movie but I wanted to see Christopher Walken read the phone book! FALSE ADVERTISING!!!"

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Incidentally Yoram Globus is still alive. 

Quote

In 1993, having produced over 300 films, Globus returned to Israel to focus on his home company, "Globus Group," which includes a private "Globus" arm with a large film and television studio in Neve Ilan, Israel (where various Israeli stations broadcast, such as the Israeli News Company). Globus is responsible for a significant part of the Israeli film distribution industry ("Noah CPP") and owns the public arm "Globus Max," which owns and operates numerous theaters in Israel. In 1999, Yoram Globus won the Ophir Award for "Lifetime Achievement" by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television.

In 2015, Globus sold "Globus Max" and returned to Hollywood to launch a new film production company, "Rebel Way Entertainment." The company seeks to reconnect young and web-crazy audiences with the traditional theatrical experience.

So if you're lucky...

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18 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Incidentally Yoram Globus is still alive. 

So if you're lucky...

"Will you settle out of court for a slightly damaged original lobby poster for Alien from L.A.? It has a drawing of Kathy Ireland on it...."

"Yoram, you had me at slightly damaged."

"CASE DISMISSED. NOW LET"S ALL GET LAID!!!!!!"

 

I'm Alright...no need to worry 'bout me....

Edited by piranesi
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I like what feels to be a recent trend of films getting re-released at the cinema to mark their anniversary. I was able to see Batman (1989) for the 30th anniversary and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) for the 55th anniversary last year. Both made for two of the most memorable cinema going experiences. Here's some films celebrating their 30th, 20th and 10th anniversaries this year.

30th:

Unforgiven.
Batman Returns.
Basic Instinct.
The Muppet Christmas Carol.
Reservoir Dogs.
Aladdin.

20th:

Spider-Man.
The Bourne Identity.
Red Dragon.
Die Another Day.
Road to Perdition.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
Gangs of New York.

10th:

Avengers Assemble.
The Dark Knight Rises.
The Amazing Spider-Man.
Argo.
Skyfall.
Ted.
The Cabin in the Woods.
Silver Linings Playbook.

I'm really hoping to see Unforgiven. It's in my top five greatest movies of all time with the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction and The Dark Knight. I'd also like to watch Reservoir Dogs on the big screen.

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Desperado is making the rounds on MTV. I haven't seen it since it came out but when it came out I must've seen it a million billion times*. Anyway, forgot how cool that movie is. Antonio and Salma (one of my first big movie crushes) have great chemistry and Antonio does pretty well for a guy that didn't speak English at the time. All the jokes land really well and it's fun to see Buscemi and Tarantino show up. Rodriguez hasn't does something like this since Planet Terror and it'd be good to see him do another one instead of another Spy Kids or Star Wars episode or whatever. 

*: 

Spoiler

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Watching The Hunted(1995)… What a weird ass movie. I remember loving this when USA first started showing it in the middle of the day. It really hits that early weeb itch of wanting to watch more Samurai flicks, but this is what was available to me. It’s inspirations are obvious. Especially when they drop in a Sleepy Eyes of Death clip in the first act of the movie. But the casting of Lambert, and modern Ninja Vs. Samurai stuff is also a try at the Highlander fans without doing a Highlander movie. But because of these weird meldings of ideas they sort of accidentally made a live-action OVA anime with its graphic violence, and sexual themes. It honestly feels at times like a Kawajiri film(but less graphic) because of it.

For a hack film, made by a hack director it’s still surprisingly well made. Makes me think he must’ve gotten a lot of help in directing it. According to IMDB, the man directed those bad early 90’s Bill Maher movies, and I see that in the scenes with the ninja clan in their hideout. They come off like a bad cheap Andy Sidaris film. But the scenes with Yoshio Harada, Lambert, and the samurai feel like they were handled by a Japanese film crew. The film stock even looks different in those scenes too that it reminded me of those 80’s Samurai flicks that were the last gasp of that genre. I also got a Mr. Baseball vibe from it as well with the way the film was lit.

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What are the best examples of films with a big drop in quality between entries and those going the opposite direction?

Drop down:

Wonder Woman to Wonder Woman 1984.

Toy Story 3 to Toy Story 4. I really didn't like Toy Story 4.

Shrek 2 to Shrek the Third.

Significant upgrade:

Thor: The Dark World to Thor: Ragnarok.

---

I'm likely blanking on some.

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