Movie 2023 MOVIE DISCUSSION THREAD

[Contentious C]

Sounds like Anvil for the Osmond crowd.

[Technico Support]

On 11/17/2023 at 4:59 PM, Contentious C said:

Beastie Boys Story - Well, this is all right.  It sure as shit makes me miss Yauch that much more, which was something that pops into my brain about once a month anyway, so, that sorta sucked.  But the movie is just OK; it's similar to a Broadway one-(or in this case two-)man show, and if you've seen one of those, you've kinda seen them all.  A lot of that stuff strives for profundity and rarely finds it.  What this does manage in the profundity department is largely because MCA is gone, and the others can muse on what they believed about him.  Good for a trip over to Nostalgiaville, and at least I've had nothing but their songs in my head for the last week, which, as earworm-sensitive as I am, is a blessing.

 

I really wanted to like this one but after they deified Yauch for about the 38th time (I swear they gave him credit for every single morally decent thing the band did), I got bored and turned it off.  I wanted a fun career retrospective and I got a saccharine sweet memorial service.  But one thing I really did enjoy was the background stuff about Simmons and maybe Rubin, to a lesser extent, fucking the band on royalties and demanding they keep working the boorish frat boy gimmick since that was what they figured made the money.

I got into the Beastie Boys when I was 12 and had no idea that Licensed to Ill was essentially a joke record.  I recently texted my brother, asking him how the hell we never realized that. I mean Rhymin' and Stealin' is a rap song about being a pirate for fuck's sake.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Technico Support

[Curt McGirt]

In the American Hardcore book they interviewed some New York locals from the time about the Beasties since they were involved in the scene back then, and the report was that Adam was the cool one and the other two were jerks. 

[Robert C]

1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

 

I got into the Beastie Boys when I was 12 and had no idea that Licensed to Ill was essentially a joke record.  I recently texted my brother, asking him how the hell we never realized that. 

For the same reason rednecks love Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother.  People don’t want to know the jokes on them. 

[odessasteps]

1 hour ago, Technico Support said:

I really wanted to like this one but after they deified Yauch for about the 38th time (I swear they gave him credit for every single morally decent thing the band did), I got bored and turned it off.  I wanted a fun career retrospective and I got a saccharine sweet memorial service.  But one thing I really did enjoy was the background stuff about Simmons and maybe Rubin, to a lesser extent, fucking the band on royalties and demanding they keep working the boorish frat boy gimmick since that was what they figured made the money.

I got into the Beastie Boys when I was 12 and had no idea that Licensed to Ill was essentially a joke record.  I recently texted my brother, asking him how the hell we never realized that. I mean Rhymin' and Stealin' is a rap song about being a pirate for fuck's sake.

Did you knew then about the album cover? 
 

I would still put the Beasties Boys Criterion as one of my top ten favorite things in the collection.

[Contentious C]

7 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I really wanted to like this one but after they deified Yauch for about the 38th time (I swear they gave him credit for every single morally decent thing the band did), I got bored and turned it off.  I wanted a fun career retrospective and I got a saccharine sweet memorial service.  But one thing I really did enjoy was the background stuff about Simmons and maybe Rubin, to a lesser extent, fucking the band on royalties and demanding they keep working the boorish frat boy gimmick since that was what they figured made the money.

I got into the Beastie Boys when I was 12 and had no idea that Licensed to Ill was essentially a joke record.  I recently texted my brother, asking him how the hell we never realized that. I mean Rhymin' and Stealin' is a rap song about being a pirate for fuck's sake.

I was 7 when it came out and there were certainly things that rubbed me the wrong way.  The kid who introduced me to the full tape was, ahem, well, let's just say the best adjective to describe him would rhyme with "schmunty", so the first time we listened to "Girls", we were both having a good laugh about that.  "Haha, yeah, that's how you ought to treat them", but the more I thought about the song, the more I realized, "Jesus, if I ever talked to my mother that way, I'd end up with summer teeth."

[Contentious C]

Ugh, I hate double-posting, but here we are.  Movies.

All That Jazz - I have precious little patience for much of anything Broadway-related, and little more for musicals in general (Singin' in the Rain is where it begins and ends for me). I tend to feel biopics of the famous are massively overrated, because how hard is it to portray someone if you're an AC-TOR and that person has hundreds of hours of highlight footage available to mimic (or better yet, they're your goddamn director)? I don't care much for Roy Scheider, who, like Tommy Lee Jones, seems to have been born at the age of 40, and I CANNOT STAND Ben Vereen. And autobiographies are either tedious or self-indulgent, or both at once.

And this...hits each and every one of those low points, while also being raw and weird and ridiculous and sad and pathetic in almost equal measures. It's an interesting enough character study that the particulars of the man matter only a little less than the willingness to expose and criticize them. But at the same time, the depth of self-loathing - to the point of vainglorious self-pity - is so great that it threatens to devolve the entire picture into just another massive ego stroke by a different name. It's all one big high-wire act, whether on the screen, in his mind, or in the real world.

But the toughest thing to shake is this: Who's supposed to buy it? His wife? His daughter? The mistresses? The public? God? Anyone? "Never bullshit a bullshitter," he says, while shoveling 122 minutes of the stuff down his own throat in as ridiculous, self-indulgent, and over-the-top manner as he can muster. And it doesn't entirely work.

Then again, it's the sheer contradiction of it all that rings the truest - seen not only in his own self-destruction for the sake of fame, but the same sweat-drenched ethic of the co-workers he runs ragged - and that *does* work.

Paperhouse - This probably should have been something that clicked for me, but somehow didn't. Perhaps Pan's Labyrinth is just so far superior to it in every conceivable way that it's hard to reward a prototype. The acting is pretty bland, the script doesn't help in that department, and the ending is just sort of befuddling, a bit of unnecessary drama that doesn't add much. The horror elements work against this as much, if not more, than they work for it, particularly the music, which is full to the brim of your typical cheesy-as-Hell 80s "this when you're supposed to be scared" stingers and riffs (the rare Hans Zimmer misstep, but he was young).

But the set design is genuinely eerie, Elliott Spiers works well as the emotional touchstone of the film, and it's not bad as far as films dealing with this age group go. The Neverending Story, for example, delves into a lot of the same material and doesn't hold up half as well as this does.  And then Guillermo del Toro had to go and take a story like this and make it perfectly.

21 Hours at Munich - Not knowing much of the particulars of the Munich massacre, I thought there was an outside chance this was my Unnamed Hostage Movie of Mystery.  It isn't, not enough gutshots. And this is one TV movie that does not hold up well at all. Other than the performance from Franco Nero (aka Taron Egerton Sr.) and the early action scenes, which feel a lot like what John Carpenter was doing with Assault on Precinct 13 at the time, there's basically nothing redeemable about this nowadays. It's more than a little foolish to have stuck an American "star" into something like this just to get eyeballs on it, when Holden's total lack of even trying an accent is one of its biggest drawbacks. It also just spends too much time talking back and forth among characters you don't care about at all, particularly the dully-portrayed men trying to plan the extraction. And while the events covered by the film are deplorable, so is the script's need to mention how very "Arab" all the men were. Granted, I tend to think every religion is stupid, so there's plenty of stupid to go around, particularly in light of current events, but the casual racism is more than a bit much. Skip this.

Lovelace - After watching Streetwalkin' and referencing this I figured I should finish it.  Just in: shitty industry populated by shitty men treats women shittily. But really, this is about as dead-average as a film can get. It tries the "shaded" and "real" story gimmick quite a while before The Last Duel put it to far more effective use, but you can't really cast Peter Sarsgaard in something, wearing that many wifebeaters, and not know what you're going to get.

Then again, this movie doesn't get too grimy or graphic; some of the news articles written and referenced at the time were at least as pointed and descriptive, if not more so, to the point that the script almost feels desultory. And you can catch a few weird missteps by the crew even if you didn't already know some of the story (a chyron mentioning Florida in 1970 followed 10 minutes later with a conversation about The French Connection, which didn't come out until 10/71?? Are we really supposed to think they met and then didn't date for a year?).  But the performances are fine, even if you might have expected more than just 'fine' out of a cast like this. Like I said, dead-average.

Take Out - Wooooooooooof, Sean Baker.  This was his first notable film, and if you've seen his later stuff, you have some idea of what you're in for, stylistically; he's improved and occasionally shot with real cameras but hasn't necessarily steered away from what this film is like.  And Jesus what a bunch of kicks to the solar plexus this is.  This also feels a bit casually racist at times, but given the subject matter, it's less about that and more about the differing levels of isolation that seem to lend even the smallest interactions a certain sheen of cruelty.  So many words are left unsaid, or are perfunctory, and nearly all of them are hardly understood anyway; it's hard not to echo Ming's incredibly shitty mood as an audience, given how long and monotonous and futile his day seems.  The ending gets awfully predictable, but considering that the whole thing feels exhausting by sheer repetition, the familiarity doesn't lack any punch just because it's obvious.  It also makes me decidedly not-hungry for fast food.

I've been on a real grime kick lately.  Maybe I should watch something big and stupid like The Flash.  Oh, look, HBO MID is on sale, because WBD is stupid enough to undercut their own DVD sales!  Sure, I'll watch 20 movies on your service for $3!  Idiots.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Contentious C

[colonial]

With my 12-year-old visiting her mom's family in Alabama this week, this was another opportunity to check out a grown-up movie. And the local theater has new ownership (Epic Theaters), so the days of those oddball movies that got a screening here for tax purposes and whatnot (The latest Steven Seagal film, etc.) appear to be over.

Checked out NAPOLEON. It's a two-and-a-half-hour movie, but it didn't feel like that. I enjoyed it, but it could be a bit schizophrenic at times -- best way to describe it is a historical epic that wants to be a big-budget actioner and Oscar bait at the same time, as well as the Cliff's Notes version of Napoleon's life and times.

Spoiler

Joaquin Phoenix apparently using his natural voice to play Napoleon was ... a choice. Every few minutes, you had to ask yourself why the Emperor of France sounds like an insurance adjustor from Iowa. For the most part, the other actors at least tried with accents.

There were a few high schoolers in the theater, and ...

Spoiler

... they got a kick out of British soldiers using the f-word in the late 1790s. They also asked who would win in a fight between Napoleon and Naruto.

 

[odessasteps]

I guess Abel Gance’s Napoleon isn’t public domain yet, as you cannot find it easily online.

[Contentious C]

Napoleon sounds like it's going to kind of suck.  Not looking forward to that.

Anyway, you know what the deal is.

The Flash -Literally the worst "cinematic universe" entry since the MCU fired up in 2008. At least Snyder's masturbatory efforts for the DCU have some visual style (even when it's horribly de-saturated). At least Aquaman was fun. At least the first Wonder Woman ripped off a superior movie. At least the first Shazam was funny. At least the Whedon Justice League has a joke or two that lands. So they brought back Michael Keaton for nothing, because this film has none of that.

The screwed-up thing about it, too, is that what should have been the emotional core of the movie is something that could work, if it weren't surrounded by two hours of incredibly bad CGI (and no, it isn't a 'stylistic choice' to make the Speed Force look 'different'; go back to Wonder Woman and see that their CGI has always sucked when the director doesn't care if it looks good) and Ezra Miller pulling the same 3 stupid faces for the entire film. How do you have this much Ezra-on-Ezra action in a movie with this kind of budget, only to have it look significantly dodgier than episodes of Orphan Black, which is a 10-year-old TV show? Despite all that, though, when Maribel Verdu appears, it works. When Sasha Calle gets more to do than punch things or die, it works. Aside from them, everyone is miscast, even Keaton, who is so clearly coasting on fumes from 1992 and is probably just counting the zeroes on the end of his paycheck.

MID (I'm not calling it by its actual name; MID is far more appropriate considering their awful decision-making) should have paid me $3 on Black Friday to watch this piece of shit.

Definitely, Maybe - Why are we seemingly so far away from time when we got a yearly rom-com like this?  Jesus, this was shockingly good.  And it really makes The Proposal seem even more like an overrated pile of tripe, since Ryan Reynolds had *no* chemistry with Sandra Bullock in that but has AMAZING chemistry with Elizabeth Banks (in her prime), Isla Fisher (in her prime), and Rachel Weisz, who isn't in her prime or out of it, because she's never stopped being the Most Beautiful Woman in Existence (at least since her nose job in the 90s).  But damn, you think the film print is going to light on fire like the climax to Inglorious Basterds when Reynolds and Weisz finally admit their feelings for each other.  Some of the story is lame, but that seems to be the point, such as all the politically connected stuff, but the main moving parts all work great.  I think this might be the most underappreciated movie in its genre in the last 15 or 20 years - stuff like, say, Dan in Real Life may be significantly *better*, but people also talk about how good that film is.  I've never seen anyone praise this, but it will make the room misty a few times and the story works.

Never Say Never Again - Now I can Never See Never Again, because holy shit is this fucking bad.  There are worse Bond movies: the direct copy-and-paste of The Spy Who Loved Me into Moonraker as a follow-up, because gee, underwater or in-space is enough to fool people into thinking the plots aren't fucking identical; or For Your Eyes Only for just being all-around bad; or Die Another Day as the worst glob of big-budget extruded waste product the Hollywood Machine has gakked up (at least until Rise of Skywalker came along).  But this had no business being made anyway.  Thunderball was hardly a movie worth redoing in the first place, and then they...just made a jokey-ass Roger Moore Bond movie, but with Connery.  Oh, and toss in some casual racism at the end, horrid acting from Barbara Carrera, and a way-too-hands-on Bond villain, and this is a Disaster, capital D. 

Bridget Jones's Baby - Renee Zellweger owes one of her two Oscars to Emma Thompson for putting this fucking movie on her back.  Painfully unfunny for the bulk of it, way too many years past its sell-by date, and you really just want to punch Patrick Dempsey in the face even more than usual.  It's also kind of sad that Zellweger kinda looks worse here than at least one of her now-mom friends from the earlier films.  But, having said that, she does have oddly good chemistry with Colin Firth, still.  Sarah Solemani upstages everyone anytime she's on the screen, and Emma upstages even that.  But hopefully they're done with this crap, instead of whatever that ending is.

The Devil Wears Prada - Why did Meryl Streep get nominated for this, again, when about a dozen different women could have done the same role the same w--oh, she's Meryl Streep, that's why.  Emily Blunt is pretty clearly the MVP in this, even though the garish eye shadow and frilly bullshit dresses and hair dye occasionally make her look like a peacock from one of Syd Barrett's LSD flashbacks.  The ending is both obvious and maddening (in a good way, I guess), since The Wide-Eyed Protagonist Learns Her Lesson, but oooooooooh, the shit that has to happen to get there makes just about everyone in existence unhappy, and that takes some doing.  But honestly, I watched about half an hour or so of this maybe 10 years ago, and then I turned it off once I realized it was just a movie, and not a horror movie where Meryl Streep actually is the devil, like a distaff Witches of Eastwick or something.  Not bad once I adjusted my expectations, though I don't get the people who love it.

[odessasteps]

Never Say Never Again, on the bright side, according to 14 year old me, has in particular order: the cool video game showdown, Rowan Atkinson, Bernie Casey and Kim Basinger.

[Brian Fowler]

NSNA is not good, but For Your Eyes Only on a worst Bond list is wild. It's one of the only two actually good Moore Bond movies, and would be hands down his best and a contender for best Bond movie period if not for Bibi Dahl.

[Mister TV]

8 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

NSNA is not good, but For Your Eyes Only on a worst Bond list is wild. It's one of the only two actually good Moore Bond movies, and would be hands down his best and a contender for best Bond movie period if not for Bibi Dahl.

Co-sign on For Your Eyes Only being good, the Bill Conti disco soundtrack is bad though. 

[odessasteps]

1 hour ago, Mister TV said:

Co-sign on For Your Eyes Only being good, the Bill Conti disco soundtrack is bad though. 

Let’s have no besmirching Sheena Easton, though.

[Mister TV]

2 hours ago, odessasteps said:

Let’s have no besmirching Sheena Easton, though.

Of course not, the theme song is great but the disco music during the amazing chase scenes are really bad.

[The Comedian]

13 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

NSNA is not good, but For Your Eyes Only on a worst Bond list is wild. It's one of the only two actually good Moore Bond movies, and would be hands down his best and a contender for best Bond movie period if not for Bibi Dahl.

The other one is Live and Let Die I hope.

Young Jane Seymour. Yaphet motherfucking Kotto. The 7Up "Uncola" guy as Baron Samedi. Young Jane Seymour. It's a fucking blaxploitation Bond movie. The Wings theme. Gloria Hendry. Young Jane Seymour. Fred Williamson's dad from Hell Up In Harlem as the henchman with the claw hand. The New Orleans funeral set piece. Hard to beat that...

[Brian Fowler]

1 minute ago, The Comedian said:

The other one is Live and Let Die I hope.

Young Jane Seymour. Yaphet motherfucking Kotto. The 7Up "Uncola" guy as Baron Samedi. Young Jane Seymour. It's a fucking blaxploitation Bond movie. The Wings theme. Gloria Hendry. Young Jane Seymour. Fred Williamson's dad from Hell Up In Harlem as the henchman with the claw hand. The New Orleans funeral set piece. Hard to beat that...

The only other one I consider good is The Spy Who Loved Me.

Koto is great in LaLD though.

[odessasteps]

I think a lot of the Moore Bonds fall in category of “guilty pleasure”.i think even Octopussy and Living Daylights have moments of fun or cool gadgets or set pieces. 
 

[Chaos]

On 11/25/2023 at 1:14 AM, Contentious C said:

 

Definitely, Maybe - Why are we seemingly so far away from time when we got a yearly rom-com like this?  Jesus, this was shockingly good.  And it really makes The Proposal seem even more like an overrated pile of tripe, since Ryan Reynolds had *no* chemistry with Sandra Bullock in that but has AMAZING chemistry with Elizabeth Banks (in her prime), Isla Fisher (in her prime), and Rachel Weisz, who isn't in her prime or out of it, because she's never stopped being the Most Beautiful Woman in Existence (at least since her nose job in the 90s).  But damn, you think the film print is going to light on fire like the climax to Inglorious Basterds when Reynolds and Weisz finally admit their feelings for each other.  Some of the story is lame, but that seems to be the point, such as all the politically connected stuff, but the main moving parts all work great.  I think this might be the most underappreciated movie in its genre in the last 15 or 20 years - stuff like, say, Dan in Real Life may be significantly *better*, but people also talk about how good that film is.  I've never seen anyone praise this, but it will make the room misty a few times and the story works.

 

I'm honestly shocked this one doesn't get more love. It was one of my favorite discoveries from my time working at Movie Gallery, and it's not a genre I go out of my way to seek out even to this day.

[Contentious C]

The fact that How I Met Your Mother was in full swing at the time and the plot is similar may have worked against it.  But, it's a far better execution of the premise, and I'm one of the few people who thought the ending to HIMYM was the correct one.

Anyway.  Yeah.

Blue Beetle - Stop me if you've seen this all before, but...

Internet Shaquille's little brother grabs a MacGuffin and turns into El Hombre de Hierro, except his powers are literal Plot Armor, and he gets rescued by Nite-Owl's ship, full of people who seem totally OK with killing even when the hero has to insist, "We are not kille"----WAIT, did this just turn into a huge criticism of Reagan and capitalism? Where in th--nope, we're back to Big Bads getting blown up and cliches.

At least the CGI wasn't as terrible as The Flash.  No wonder DC hired James Gunn.  He can't do worse than 2023.

Be Kind Rewind - OK, this is a difficult movie to pin down.  If you're not in the mood for zany, this probably doesn't work so well, and the first 20 minutes *CERTAINLY* don't work.  It's kind of baffling, honestly, why Michael Gondry felt the whole kooky sci-fi elements fit in with everything else.  The guy worked in a junkyard; he could have just accidentally had a big magnet with him.  But damn if it isn't heartwarming at its core.  This is right up there with High Fidelity for Prime Obnoxious Jack Black.  And of course it also shows so much love for so many movies that a lot of people probably wouldn't even know about unless you're old or a hardcore movie fan (they even have a brief glimpse of an Umbrellas of Cherbourg Sweding!)  Sigourney Weaver as the corporate shitheel is a very tiny part, but an inspired call, considering how the movie progresses.  If you just want to feel good about movies, this is good for that.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge - The good thing about no longer being on the New Movie Every Day Death Spiral is I can watch old shit again, once it's too far out of my memory to recall any bits of it.  I...wish I didn't recall any bits of this, because holy fucking shit is it terrible.  I get it, it's been co-opted by the gay community because of all the subtext, and there's more than enough of it there to support reading the film that way, but if you're seriously overlooking how badly *made* the film is just because of an interpretation of it, then you're sporting some massive rose-colored glasses.  The pacing is some of the worst I have ever seen, the plot barely makes any sense (why would that house even still be there if so many awful things happened?  Why not tear it down?  Why not...anything?), it isn't even scary 90% of the time, and the acting is largely godawful.  There's exactly one scene that works - granted, it *really* works (the Grady scene with the chestburster), but you do kinda wonder if it would even be that memorable if the rest of the movie had been better.  What an undercooked load of blah.

Kiki's Delivery Service - I watched this one other time years ago, and 2 hours later, it was far and away my favorite Ghibli movie. And I've seen all the biggies (almost the whole catalog, and looking forward to December 8).

Here I am, 20 years later, and it's still top of the heap. There's just something to be said for the earnestness of the entire film; sure, it came from a year right on the cusp of postmodern irony, which I will always and forever associate with the Beastie Boys' first 2 albums, so sensibilities were a little different, but the world has churned through so many fads, scams, schemes, sales, memes, and half-baked ideas in the intervening decades that the characters here feel fresh and invigorating and alive, merely because they're willing to be themselves and show empathy and *care* about something more than the boundaries of their own small world. They lift each other up. You might even say they help each other fly. Isn't that novel?

And strangely, I totally misinterpreted Jiji's situation when I watched it the first time.  I was a little scared to rewatch this, partly because I was afraid my nostalgia for it was too strong (it wasn't), but also because I misremembered Jiji getting transformed into something else.  But, he doesn't.  He's...just a cat.  Granted, by the end of the film, he isn't a talking cat anymore, which could remove some of the charm for some people, but he's still a cat, and cats are great!  Besides, he's got a big life with big responsibilities, being a papa and all, so even if he doesn't/can't communicate with Kiki anymore (and it's unclear that it's truly 'gone' anyway, the movie never answers that), it's not like his life isn't awesome and full of love regardless. 

Now, I just worry about how he seems to be a vegan cat.  Must be different rules in that universe.

Of course, this is still only the second-best *animated* film of the eighties, but they're a study in contrasts; Grave of the Fireflies is astounding but one of the least rewatchable movies in existence, after all. But when that sucks the hope and feeling right out of you, it might be worth the time to repay a visit to Kiki's world.

Reminiscence - Oh Jesus fucking Christ, someone stop Lisa Joy already.  In the middle of reusing Westworld sets, she wrote and directed this blatant, boring, totally unnecessary ripoff of Strange Days; it's so obvious that I'm shocked Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron haven't sued her into non-existence over it.  Then again, Cameron's no stranger to ripping off someone else's best ideas for his own movies.  But cripes this is just a pointless movie.  The only bit of plot from Strange Days that it doesn't steal is all the L.A. Riots-inspired detail; it swaps those out for Climate Change Land Baron/Robber Baron details instead.  But clinging to old memories through technology?  Check.  Badass Black woman strangely in love with some White guy with no discernible positive qualities besides his impossible good looks?  Check.  Femme fatale who gets involved with a deranged ex-cop henchman?  Check.  City that's on the edge of a massive riot?  Check.  Oddly, Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson do have pretty good chemistry together; you just wish it weren't wasted on this piece of shit.

Edited November 28, 2023 by Contentious C

[odessasteps]

I saw Kiki on the list and thought “oh no, how can he hate this?” So, I’m glad you didn’t. 

[Contentious C]

If any random person asked me, "I want to get into film, but I know pretty much nothing except that I like movies and I want to broaden my horizons, so what do I watch?" it would probably be the first film off my lips. 

But not the dubbed version.  Of anything.  Ever.

[Log]

@Contentious C, have you seen The Killer yet? Did I miss your write-up on it? Just curious as to your take on it.

[Contentious C]

No, I don't have Netflix.

[Travis Sheldon]

Nightmare On Elm Street 2 was the last mean Freddy before they turned him into a killer with frat boy puns.