Movies 2022 Movies Discussion Thread (v.2.0)

[Brian Fowler]

Razzie's also rescinded the Shelly Duvall worst actress nomination from The Shining.

They apparently are still standing by nominating Been Affleck as worst supporting actor for his genuinely excellent work in The Last Duel (which, for the record, fucking ruled despite a pretty weak Matt Damon turn)

[Trebor]

On 3/28/2022 at 8:41 PM, Death From Above said:

I had no idea Brian Bosworth (a contemporary of Bo Jackson who kinda flopped in the NFL) ever made movies but this looks absolutely batshit insane incredible.

 

the "How Did This Get Made" podcast will be covering this film on it's next episode.

[Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie]

On 4/1/2022 at 9:51 AM, The Natural said:

End of an era. Listened since 2004. It'll be around elsewhere in some format you'd have to think.

You'd think correctly. Looks like it launches in May. https://somethinelse.com/news/introducing-kermode-mayos-take-a-new-podcast-with-mark-kermode-and-simon-mayo/

[The Natural]

14 hours ago, Stefanie the Human said:

You'd think correctly. Looks like it launches in May. https://somethinelse.com/news/introducing-kermode-mayos-take-a-new-podcast-with-mark-kermode-and-simon-mayo/

Thank you, @Stefanie the Human. Appreciate it!

[J.T.]

Kenneth Branagh's Death on the Nile is fucking great.  The movie's so-called backstory about Poirot's moustache is merely a way to humanize the pompous old windbag detective that we loved anyway.  It doesn't settle for being just a mystery and instead becomes a story of Poirot facing his inner demons and bravely choosing justice when tempted by revenge.

I am really hoping Branagh at least makes Appointment with Death or Evil Under the Sun before calling it quits with the Belgian sleuth.

Edited April 3, 2022 by J.T.

[Mister TV]

HBO Max must have cut a deal with Sony for content since a lot of older Columbia & TriStar films popped up on the 1st, between what was already on there and this new stuff you could easily recreate a day of HBO programming from 1987. I watched two flicks I haven't seen in years this weekend.

The Last Detail (1973) - Jack Nicholson and Otis Young are two sailors escorting a young Randy Quaid to the Portsmouth Naval Prison, directed by Hal Ashby and written by Robert Towne. Forgot how good this was, the three main performances were amazing and Otis Young deserved to get a Best Supporting Actor nom along with Randy Quaid, that neither Nicholson or Quaid won in their respective categories is a robbery.

Armed and Dangerous (1986) - From the winter of 1987 to the mid-1990's this movie played on cable at least once a week, I haven't seen it in 25 years yet I still knew almost all the dialogue and jokes, that was the power of cable tv back then. It's an interesting flick since both Eugene Levy and John Candy switch between being the clown and straight man, that wouldn't have worked with any other pairing. It also has an all-star team of character actors filling out the cast Robert Loggia, Kenneth McMillan, James Tolkan, Jonathan Banks, Brion James, Tony Burton, Larry Hankin, David Wohl, Larry "Flash" Jenkins and Tony "Tiny" Lister! All of them have a scene or line that is intentionally or unintentionally funny.

In the next week or so I'm going to re-watch The Last Dragon, Iron Eagle, and The Toy.

[Contentious C]

The Last Detail has been on and off Criterion sometimes, so given the crossover between TCM & Criterion content, I'm not surprised it ended up on HBO, too. I watched about 15 minutes of it and never went back to it; gonna fix that eventually.

But for now, I have things to say, and you have new things to completely ignore!  Movies again, movies forever, movies for a thousand years, err, episodes, of movie watching dot com!  Or something.  It's Day 265 (and counting), Making That Criterion Channel Membership Work Edition.

Hot Garbage

Absolutely Anything - Was this Robin Williams' last movie, or close to it?  Good God, what a shitty way to go out.  I do wonder how much poorer some of these actors would be if they didn't do shitty movies.  Kate Beckinsale would be living in a double-wide if she didn't make shitty movies.  And I think I'm officially done with Simon Pegg being a person who has to exist where I can see him.  Just go away.   This has generally awful CGI for a 2015 film, a bunch of ideas that make it obvious that septuagenarians wrote & directed it, and its own miserable pile of unfunny jokes cut in with unfunny and racist jokes.  Could have gone a million different directions with something like this, and instead of doing its own title, it does absolutely nothing.  Really awful.

Acceptable

The Voyeurs - The first 5-10 minutes of this are terrible, and the last 5-10 minutes are so full of plot holes you could drive a truck through them, but in between it's a weird movie that becomes increasingly effective over time.  Of course, it helps that the film spends more and more of its time focusing on Sydney Sweeney's character, who is the only one in the movie who's particularly believable.  Justice Smith, for example, is someone I can't take seriously, since he has the voice of an overmedicated bear trying to talk while sucking soup through a straw in the corner of his mouth.  I just can't, dude; please never be in anything I have to watch ever again.  I don't think I'd recommend this, but it has some genuinely creepy, paranoiac sorts of moments that build and build by the time you get to the middle and through the big plot twist, before the ending kind of screws up everything.

Eight - This is another movie I can't quite recommend, but it's certainly well-done, if more than a bit of a hammer blow of a film.  The only important character in the film is a woman battling OCD and agoraphobia, and man, does this go hard at how debilitating those things are to her life.  Not at all an easy watch, especially if you've ever known anyone like that, but it's a sight better than, say, As Good As It Gets with respect to being believable and sympathetic to the sufferer.  I can't recall seeing the actress here in anything else, but it's an Australian film, and maybe she just hasn't made anything overseas yet.  In terms of feel, this actually reminded me quite a lot of I'm Not Here, which had J.K. Simmons in it and which I thought was self-indulgent crap when I reviewed it several months ago.  This is just as quiet and dialed-down, but it actually does something worthwhile with the tone it sets.

The Cheat - I watched this 1931 pre-code movie tonight because it was short, but it's not a bad movie.  By today's standards, it's just a dull episode of Law & Order, but it's a little darker and edgier for its time.  The acting is pretty good throughout, probably the one real highlight of the whole thing, though most of the time I was watching it, it felt a bit like a very loose adaptation of The House of Mirth.  It's kind of funny on some level that there's a bit where someone loses a bunch of money in a stock deal, too, as the Crash had just happened, so you wonder if that's in there just so it seems topical, or if it's an indication that the Crash didn't teach anyone a thing even back then.  I'd guess probably the latter.  The climax of the movie is pretty messed-up, so if you like older stuff and have nothing better to do for 70 minutes, this might surprise you.

Posthumous - On the opposite end of the spectrum from the Dustin Hoffmans and James Caans of the world, for me at least, is Jack Huston.  Given he easily stole each and every scene he was in in Boardwalk Empire while wearing a mask over half his face, I will watch just about anything he does.  This is...just all right.  It's a cute idea to some extent, and the way it gets played off at the end is actually relatively clever, not to mention it gleefully hammers home the notion that people who buy modern art don't have a damn clue what the art is about.  I think my issue with it primarily comes from Brit Marling, who is kind of stiff and not as likable in this.  She has pretty good chemistry with Huston, but when the two of them aren't on screen together and she has to do the heavy lifting, it doesn't really work well at all.  But the rest is OK and it's not without its moments of charm and laughter. 

Awesome

Kentucky Pride - One of my big blind spots: silent films.  An even bigger, and maybe more embarrassing blind spot?  Never watched a John Ford movie.  Well, now I have, and this one is surprisingly good.  You have to think this was something of a big influence on a few movies primarily or tangentially about horseracing, such as The Killing, for example.  And while it has some fairly awful crap in it with respect to racist & ethnic portrayals, and the writing on the intercalary cards is schmaltzy as all get-out, the rest of this is really, really, really good.  There's a fair bit of decent physical humor, which, hey, it's a silent movie: they leaned heavily on that.  But it's the same sort of unexpected, offbeat stuff that maybe Kurosawa took to heart, since Ford was his favorite director.  The story itself also puts the lie to the notion of men being unable to express their emotions, as a big chunk of the film revolves around a character's unwillingness to shoot a lame horse.  And the plot, such as it is, is a nice redemption story of sorts, too.  But if you do watch this, it is *silent* - there isn't even an after-the-fact score attached to the version streaming on Criterion.  But it doesn't need it.  The rest is quite good all on its own.

Return of the Living Dead - Greatest B-movie ever made?  I'm hardly the person to make that judgment, since I don't watch many of them, but... probably, right?  Just funny as Hell, over-the-top in all the right ways, relentlessly satirical, and happily takes a place right next to Repo Man as a pointed criticism of Stupid American Life.  Granted, this isn't nearly as good as Repo Man, but the tone is so familiar between the two that you couldn't mistake it.  There are about 25 of you with better, more informed opinions about this movie, since you've watched it collectively about a bajillion times, but I can definitely go in for low-budget when it's got good enough writing that you forget how the special effects look.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Contentious C

[Curt McGirt]

It is also right next to Repo Man as a perfect '80s Punk Rock Movie. And those effects are still killer. 

[(BP)]

Linnea Quigley…that’s it, that’s the post. 

[J.T.]

34 minutes ago, (BP) said:

Linnea Quigley…that’s it, that’s the post. 

I am a Brinke Stevens man, myself.

[odessasteps]

Who here will speak for Sybil Danning?

[J.T.]

2 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Who here will speak for Sybil Danning?

I have seen enough swords and sandals epic to speak to the awesomeness of Sybil Danning.  The costume designer for Hercules deserved to win whatever version of the Oscar for campy Italian movies is.  Ingrid Anderson as Cassiopea and Mirella D'Angelo as Circe also brought the funny feeling.

Edited April 5, 2022 by J.T.

[Contentious C]

2 posts to get to B-movie actress discussion.  I knew this was going to happen when I watched the movie; I watched it anyway.

[elizium]

LeeAnne Baker is my ultimate "goddamit I wish she made more movies" lady of the B-movies 80s. Someone please get the rights to Necropolis away from Full Moon, so that a proper HD version can be released.

Edited April 6, 2022 by elizium

[Curt McGirt]

Ghoulies was just on and I forgot/didn't know that Jack Nance was in it. Mariska Hargitay, too! 

I'll always have a fond memory of it coming on TV at my uncle's house in Florida while everyone else was busy watching OJ escape in the white Bronco. 

[Curt McGirt]

Just read a review on the Ebert site of Sonic 2 that said Jim Carrey has claimed that will be his last movie. 

...

[Swift]

On 4/4/2022 at 7:21 PM, Contentious C said:

The Voyeurs - The first 5-10 minutes of this are terrible, and the last 5-10 minutes are so full of plot holes you could drive a truck through them, but in between it's a weird movie that becomes increasingly effective over time.  Of course, it helps that the film spends more and more of its time focusing on Sydney Sweeney's character, who is the only one in the movie who's particularly believable.  Justice Smith, for example, is someone I can't take seriously, since he has the voice of an overmedicated bear trying to talk while sucking soup through a straw in the corner of his mouth.  I just can't, dude; please never be in anything I have to watch ever again.  I don't think I'd recommend this, but it has some genuinely creepy, paranoiac sorts of moments that build and build by the time you get to the middle and through the big plot twist, before the ending kind of screws up everything.

I thought this was perfectly fine when I watched it last year, even quite good at times, right up until [the major turning point re: Smith's character] and I thought "well, that's a bit OTT", and then all of the twisty stuff happened and I hated the fucking movie.

And yet... the movie has stuck in my head since then as a fun, cheap thriller type and I've actually been tempted to sit down with my wife to watch it just to see her reactions to it.

[Mister TV]

I liked The Voyeurs, it was cool that they set and shot the movie in Montreal, most of the time Montreal is a double for NYC or some generic US city.

[J.T.]

Yaksha:  Ruthless Operations debuted on Netflix yesterday.  Watch and be enthralled.

[AxB]

 

[Control]

So, when did INLAND EMPIRE become *the* Lynch movie for fanboys? Or was it immediately crowned? I remember people thinking it was a bit *too* Lynchian and a step down from MULHOLLAND DRIVE, but now it seems to have surpassed that film with connoisseurs.

[Travis Sheldon]

3 hours ago, Control said:

So, when did INLAND EMPIRE become *the* Lynch movie for fanboys? Or was it immediately crowned? I remember people thinking it was a bit *too* Lynchian and a step down from MULHOLLAND DRIVE, but now it seems to have surpassed that film with connoisseurs.

I wasn't aware that it had reached that status, but my guess is it's in peoples minds because of the remaster that is playing some cities.

Inland Empire was a tough watch for me because of the length.

Of course, when the 4K is announced I'll be up for a preorder.

[Control]

That’s just my read of things, though obviously the people talking about it online are its champions, which skews the discourse.

I enjoyed INLAND EMPIRE when I watched, thought Laura Dern put on an all-time great performance, and have no intention of seeing it again.

[Travis Sheldon]

1 hour ago, Control said:

That’s just my read of things, though obviously the people talking about it online are its champions, which skews the discourse.

I enjoyed INLAND EMPIRE when I watched, thought Laura Dern put on an all-time great performance, and have no intention of seeing it again.

Dern has never disappointed me in Lynch films.

I will watch it again when I can see the remaster.

Like I said, it's a long haul viewing for me.

Would love to see a 4K of The Straight Story.

That's a film I did not expect to like, but it has become a Lynch favorite of mine.

It's also great as a double-feature with Lucky (2017) dir. John Carroll Lynch.

 

[colonial]

Took my 10-year-old to see Sonic 2 over the weekend. She's loved everything Sonic for the last 3 years or so -- has posters, plushes, every episode of "Sonic Boom" on DVD, and most of the games on Nintendo Switch.

The movie did not disappoint her -- she loved it all and was pretty excited to recognize the Easter eggs and various references to the Sonic universe throughout the film (the theater had about 100+ people in it -- most were in the 12-and-under range. Every time an Easter egg popped up, you can hear the kids tell their parents and grandparents what that is and why it's cool. Moments like these are what make the theater experience fun. Regardless of age, there was so much excitement from the audience.)

As for the movie -- it was about 30 minutes too long (clocked at just over two hours). and certain things didn't click. Carrey was his usual "rubberface" self but was entertaining, and Idris Elba did well voicing Knuckles. Also a good move from the producers to have Colleen O'Shaughnessy voice Tails after doing so in the cartoons and video games for years.

Spoiler

Knuckles was portrayed as being powerful, yet naive and clueless about social situations -- a change of pace from the "dopey echidna" seen in recent media. By the end of the film, I thought Elba got lessons on how to voice Knuckles from Broken Matt Hardy (though the scene in the baseball field was funny).

Most of the "human scenes" could have been scrapped. The whole wedding subplot looked like it was written in one night. 

 

Overheard in the theater ....

Kids watching scenes with Carrey's Robotnik and his assistant -- why does that guy look up to Robotnik when he's so evil?

Adults watching scenes with Carrey's Robotnik and his assistant -- so, is the assistant a live-action Smithers who wants to be life partners with Robotnik?