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2022 Movies Discussion Thread (v.2.0)


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4 hours ago, John from Cincinnati said:

Razzies are lame as hell, but I guess I'll watch The Woman in the Window now because I can't imagine Amy Adams turning in a bottom five of the year performance. 

She definitely didn't.  She did the best she could with the material.  It's not a good movie but she's certainly not bad in it.

Note that they put her in the bottom five for supporting actress, too, for Dear Evan Hansen.  That one I haven't seen.

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Movies!  I watch movies, too!  I watch too many of the damn things!  It's Day 209 (and counting) of More Movies You Don't Care About, Why Did I Stream This? Edition...

Hot Garbage

Greenfingers - I get this is based on real events, but man, who needed a movie about prison gardeners winning a royal competition?  I mean, really, that one sentence is more compelling than the movie actually is.  Clive Owen & Helen Mirren had the strangest 2001, playing mother and son in Gosford Park and starring in...this.  And the whole thing is structured like a sports movie; you could literally take the beats and edits from Major League and play them side-by-side with this to spot a pile of similarities.  I don't think I laughed or was charmed by a single moment in the whole thing.  At least it was short.

Acceptable

What's Love Got to Do with It? - If this were purely based on the acting, it'd be way, way, way, way, way higher, as Bassett and Fishburne might have both been robbed of Academy Awards.  Then again...if Bassett had won over Holly Hunter, you'd say Holly Hunter gave the best performance that didn't win, and you'd be right, just like you can say that of Bassett now, so, if there were ever a year for co-winners, it was 1993.  It's just that, eh, the rest of this is sort of there.  It's not compelling in any other sense whatsoever; it's just standard fare biopic territory, and it leans far too heavily on the sheer insanity of the events and the people to carry things forward.  As a film, it doesn't cut it next to what was a pretty solid year for high-quality movies.

The Killing - AKA, "Should Have Taken the Bus".  I know, what am I doing, putting a movie from Lord God Kubrick in this pile?  Well, it's because the first 45 minutes are pretty boring, and the Tedious Narration really made me want to put my fist through my TV.  Marie Windsor's character is one of the only saving graces early on, but luckily the last half-hour really gets going.  This is obviously one of Christopher Nolan's favorite movies, since there are huge chunks of it that he lifted for his own work, but I don't know that he's had an ending - or for that matter, a final shot - as good as this one.  Maybe Memento?  Maybe.  As far as noirs go, I don't think it's terribly strong or interesting in that department; it's really more the finish that makes this work.

Summer Hours - This is almost the flipside of The Killing; the first 20 minutes or so are interesting, and practically carried by Edith Scob, and the unwinding of her family's attachment to her house is less-than-compelling material.  Assayas just has better movies; Clouds of Sils Maria is better by gobs, and Personal Shopper, which I didn't actually like, is at least fittingly creepy.  There are probably too many characters and too few moments to give them enough depth and enrichment, so Scob's dominance of the early part of the film looms even larger by comparison.  I mean, granted, the movie is mostly about showing off the artwork that's at the center of the story, and that's...OK, I guess, if you're into that?  But turning that into a feature is a bit much.

My Blueberry Nights - I really had no idea this was a Wong Kar Wai film when I picked it; don't know how that slipped by me.  I think if I weren't a fan of his, and this was my first exposure, I might have liked it more.  But, ultimately this feels like an attempt to get lightning to strike twice, by Americanizing Chungking Express and putting it into a road-trip style film.  It kinda works with the first two sections, but it loses a lot of steam by the time Natalie Portman's section takes over, and you already know where it's going, so you sort of just want it to get there.  That said, Norah Jones & Jude Law really do work well together; Jones hangs in there with all the heavies, in fact, and this is probably the best role from Jude Law in...fuck, forever.  He's closer to a real person with real problems than he's probably been in any of his movies, instead of some male model pantomiming the vague outline of a dude.  This was the rare instance where the use of slow motion and step-printing became seriously distracting, rather than adding to the film, too; really could have dialed that back a lot.

Awesome

Test Pattern - I hesitate to call this "awesome" because, uh, the subject matter is decidedly not that.  But damn, quite the debut film.  Just a haunting, awful, unnerving experience, where the actors are pitch-perfect and their dilemma is handled about as adroitly as humanly possible.  The music for this is also just really, really, really well-done - always exactly the track or score you need to hear to carefully underline each moment, only ever adding rather than detracting.  I don't really want to say too much about the plot, since it's better to know as little as possible about this going in - everything hits that much harder - but this is not an easy film.  It's about as hard as it can get and still be incredibly straightforward.  I could end up slipping this into the back end of my Top 100 of the 2010s, even though I probably never want to even think about watching it again.

All That Heaven Allows - I'd heard good things about Douglas Sirk for a long time and always thought, "Oh, I'll get around to his stuff eventually."  Well, here we are, and it didn't disappoint.  I don't think time has been terribly kind to the bones of the movie, since it's just about the most obvious film in the history of both films and obviousness, but that doesn't mean you care about the characters any less, since they're so well drawn.  But mostly this is still worth the watch due to the colors and compositions, which are still just fucking staggering to look at.  The arguments with her kids are both just master classes in staging and lighting, and the last scene in the house is quite the kick in the pants too, with that hideously ugly Christmas tree and the TV set serving as the turd on top of the main character's shit sundae.  Just a really, really beautiful film; there are better ones, cleverer ones, better acted ones, but not a lot that *look* as good as this.  I wonder how many times Terrence Malick has seen this.

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1 minute ago, Technico Support said:

Shitting on Bruce Willis when he's possibly got early onset dementia and is just trying to make money while he still can is really horrible.

Woah. This is the first I've heard of this.

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1 minute ago, Craig H said:

Woah. This is the first I've heard of this.

It was in either this thread or another thread here, I think.  If you Google it, all you find is an article from OK Magazine (more reputable then the Enquirer and less so than People), threads discussing said article, and vague rumors.  STILL, if there's a possibility of that being true, making fun of it is bullshit.  Honestly, I feel like the world is moving on and there's no place for The Razzies' type of mean spirited shit.  Nobody actively sets out to do a bad job...lay the fuck off.

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Another movie:

Here Comes the Boom - Kevin James is Scott Voss, a high school science teacher who was once great but now lazy and terrible. Henry Winkler is the school music teacher. Budget cuts area announced that will leave Henry out of work. Scott is mad and, after some stuff happens, decides to take up MMA to raise money. From there, it's basically Rocky but with laughs. The premise is stupid and the movie aims for simple but it works. Kevin James is not annoying here and actually got in shape a bit for the movie and clearly did at least a bit of training. Overall, it's a dumb, entertaining movie with some laughs. And scorching hot Salma Hayek is here being hot. I like this movie way more than I should but realistically it's 5 or 6/10.

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On 2/10/2022 at 7:55 AM, Tabe said:

Another movie:

Here Comes the Boom - Kevin James is Scott Voss, a high school science teacher who was once great but now lazy and terrible. Henry Winkler is the school music teacher. Budget cuts area announced that will leave Henry out of work. Scott is mad and, after some stuff happens, decides to take up MMA to raise money. From there, it's basically Rocky but with laughs. The premise is stupid and the movie aims for simple but it works. Kevin James is not annoying here and actually got in shape a bit for the movie and clearly did at least a bit of training. Overall, it's a dumb, entertaining movie with some laughs. And scorching hot Salma Hayek is here being hot. I like this movie way more than I should but realistically it's 5 or 6/10.

Here Comes the Boom is a favourite of mine as an MMA fan, Bas Rutten, the MMA cameos and yes, Salma Hayek is scorching hot. Liked her ever since From Dusk Till Dawn. I'm definitely not the only one with THAT scene.

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On 2/10/2022 at 2:55 AM, Tabe said:

Another movie:

Here Comes the Boom - Kevin James is Scott Voss, a high school science teacher who was once great but now lazy and terrible. Henry Winkler is the school music teacher. Budget cuts area announced that will leave Henry out of work. Scott is mad and, after some stuff happens, decides to take up MMA to raise money. From there, it's basically Rocky but with laughs. The premise is stupid and the movie aims for simple but it works. Kevin James is not annoying here and actually got in shape a bit for the movie and clearly did at least a bit of training. Overall, it's a dumb, entertaining movie with some laughs. And scorching hot Salma Hayek is here being hot. I like this movie way more than I should but realistically it's 5 or 6/10.

Kevin James actually was a really good high school amateur wrestler. He was on the same wrestling team as....

 

Spoiler

Mick-Foley.jpg

 

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10 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Because when people think Amateur Wrestling, they think Mick Foley ?

I mean it's true if Mick's autobiography is to be believed. That body scissors move he used against Shane in order to force Vince to give him a title shot against Rock was something he learned during his high school wrestling days.

Edited by cwoy2j
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Not sure how it happened, but my wife and I ended up watching GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1998) this weekend. I vaguely remembered it. At release, it seemed like it was trying to ride the wave of ROMEO + JULIET—a classic updated to the modern day with hot young people and a killer alternative soundtrack—but it got eaten alive, like everything else that winter, by TITANIC.

Anyway, my jaw drops when the opening credits roll and I discover it was directed by ALFONSO CUARON! Upon further research, it seems he’s glad most people don’t associate his name with this movie. Basically, the script is quite bad (it’s a heavily abridged and significantly altered version of the classic), and Cuaron’s efforts to brute force it into an art film confounded the producers, who meddled with the edit and even added BLADE RUNNER-esque voiceover narration (written by David Mamet, in a style that in no way resembles how Ethan Hawke’s character actually talks in the movie).

Still, it’s fun to see Cuaron developing the elements of his signature style. There’s a show stopping oner of Hawke’s character running through the rain that is an obvious precursor to what he’d do later in CHILDREN OF MEN and GRAVITY.

On the flip side, he did commit a crime against cinema by having Hawke (28, at the time) play a teenage version of his character with a wig that I’m certain had to be Ben Stiller’s inspiration for Simple Jack in TROPIC THUNDER.

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