2024 MOVIES DISCUSSION THREAD

[AxB]

You were watching the Theatrical Cut, not the Director's. They cut the sentry guns out of the original released version to make it run tighter.

[Andrew POE!]

Two more movies:

Nightmare Alley (2021) (Leaving Hulu at the end of the month) - Not the original 1947 version, but the Guillermo Del Toro remake. A bit long tbh.

Spoiler

The first hour of the movie was great and lead you to believe that the movie would be about the cast of characters with Bradley Cooper trying to figure out his place with them. Instead, the movie is about Cooper's character Stanton Carlisle doing a 'big score' to pull over a judge and an industrialist. The ending was fatalistic but the best ending possible.

Revolutionary Road (Leaving Max at the end of the month) - It wasn't too bad. I haven't seen Titanic so I'm not familiar with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio together in that movie. Michael Shannon was the best part of the movie as were Kathryn Hahn and David Harbour. David Harbour literally looked like Michael Shannon at first.

Spoiler

Most of the movie consists of Frank Wheeler (DiCapiro) and April Wheeler (Winslet) yelling at each other or about to yell at each other while they talk about moving to Paris. Everything around April's abortion is a bit anachronistic given the time.

EDIT: Another one

Ismael's Ghosts (Leaving Max at the end of the month) - Rather long movie from Arnaud Desplechin starring Mathieu Amalric, Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Best way to describe it is as a French version of Adaptation.

Spoiler

At times, the movie didn't make sense even with the 'film within a film' motif that was going on.

Interesting to watch this movie with having watched Late August, Early September. It does a similar 'story told out of order' but was easier to watch in comparison.

Edited March 22 by Andrew POE!

[Curt McGirt]

I'd never even HEARD of the sentry guns until now. Whoa. 

EDIT: You know what, nevermind -- I've seen the Director's Cut before but must've forgot about them

Edited March 22 by Curt McGirt

[Mike Campbell]

2 hours ago, AxB said:

You were watching the Theatrical Cut, not the Director's. They cut the sentry guns out of the original released version to make it run tighter.

For real? I've probably seen that movie 200 times, and that's always been a staple scene for me. I thought the only DC additions were hearing Ripley talk about her daughter and the scene where Newt's father gets facehuggeed. 

[Technico Support]

9 hours ago, Mike Campbell said:

All the talk, both good and bad, about the Aliens 4K transfer has had me thinking about the movie for the last few days. So, with the rest of the family having gone off to bed, I saw that it was streaming on Max and turned it on. I got most of the way through (up to the pont where Vasquez and Gorman sacrifice themselves in the vent) and realized that I'd missed probably my favorite scene. When they set up the sentry guns and start blowing them away.  I thought maybe I'd just been looking at my phone or my mind had wandered and I'd missed it, so I rewound and there's no even a mention of them. The scene when they're looking at the blueprints goes from Ripley seeing the pressure door and suggesting they just weld plate steel over it and repair the barricades.  I even found the same scene on YouTube in case I was just misremembering, and nope, there it is. "There's a pressure door, can't we put one of the sentry units there?"

 

In all seriousness, is there really any good reason for this scene getting scrapped? All I can think of is something related to gun violence (which is something I take seriously, as a father and the husband of a school teacher). But look at the movie we're talking about, and it's not like every other bit of shooting and killing was taken out. And it's on HBO for fuck's sake.  I even did a google search to see if there was anything posted and I came up empty.

Apparently it's on the special edition but sometimes aired when the movie was shown on TV as well, so that's probably why people remember it.  I guess it was scrapped for time but re-added for TV since they needed to make up time with other things cut for TV.

The special edition also has a set-up scene where you get a look at life on the colony before everything goes to shit.  Not a bad scene but, again, some stuff just gets thrown out to tighten the movie up.

[Mike Campbell]

3 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

Apparently it's on the special edition but sometimes aired when the movie was shown on TV as well, so that's probably why people remember it.  I guess it was scrapped for time but re-added for TV since they needed to make up time with other things cut for TV.

That's got to be it then. I distinctly remember watching it on AMC during on overnight shift and when the sentry gun scene came on, the girl I was working with heard all the squealing and asked me WTF I was watching.

[The Comedian]

17 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Tenebrae (1b) and Inferno (1a) are the best Argento films and I'm dying on that particular island.

Has it ever been explained why the movie about Mater Tenebrae is called Inferno, and then he made a movie called Tenebrae that has nothing to do with it?

[Curt McGirt]

Would it be Argento if there were an answer?

[Andrew POE!]

26 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Would it be Argento if there were an answer?

Is the movie called Opera actually about all the characters doing dialogue as if they were singing in an opera?

[(BP)]

Tenebrae and Opera are my favorites. The theme song to Tenebrae goes so hard. 
 

Spoiler

 

 

[Travis Sheldon]

1 hour ago, (BP) said:

Tenebrae and Opera are my favorites. The theme song to Tenebrae goes so hard. 
 

  Hide contents

 

 

Synapse released a nice Tenebrae 4K box set.

One of the must haves from his classic era.

[Curt McGirt]

2 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

Is the movie called Opera actually about all the characters doing dialogue as if they were singing in an opera?

Dunno if this is a joke, but no

[Andrew POE!]

On 3/22/2024 at 4:43 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Dunno if this is a joke, but no

It is a joke (a terrible one too)

Two more movies today:

Jennifer's Body (Max, leaving at the end of the month) - Darkly funny horror movie with Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried. Megan Fox did this while being in between Transformers movie. People hated it, but I found it pretty good.

Late Night With The Devil - Just got back from the theaters. GO SEE THIS NOW. It'll be on Shudder next month.

Edited March 24 by Andrew POE!

[HarryArchieGus]

Any fans of Niri Bilge Ceylan? I was privileged enough to see his newest 'About Dry Grasses' on Thursday afternoon. A novelistic 3 hour 17 minute masterpiece. Beautiful cinematography and incredible performances throughout. The topic of power dynamics on full display. This film is by no means for everyone, but I encourage anybody who values consciousness expansion from their movie-going to take a good long look. This was my favorite of the three Ceylan films I've seen (Wintersleep and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia). Maybe in part because of the captivating big screen experience. Here's the Coens reuniting with Josh Brolin's Llewelyn Moss to introduce the Turkish master...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4AeXMEIeNI

[Andrew POE!]

1 hour ago, HarryArchieGus said:

Any fans of Niri Bilge Ceylan? I was privileged enough to see his newest 'About Dry Grasses' on Thursday afternoon. A novelistic 3 hour 17 minute masterpiece. Beautiful cinematography and incredible performances throughout. The topic of power dynamics on full display. This film is by no means for everyone, but I encourage anybody who values consciousness expansion from their movie-going to take a good long look. This was my favorite of the three Ceylan films I've seen (Wintersleep and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia). Maybe in part because of the captivating big screen experience. Here's the Coens reuniting with Josh Brolin's Llewelyn Moss to introduce the Turkish master...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4AeXMEIeNI

Local arthouse theater near me doesn't have it. But I will be on the lookout for it. Hopefully, it'll come to Hulu or Mubi (which I'm pretty close to subscribing to on account of wanting to see Fallen Leaves and Passages).

[Contentious C]

16 hours ago, Andrew POE! said:

Late Night With The Devil - Just got back from the theaters. GO SEE THIS NOW. It'll be on Shudder next month.

What did you think of the AI?

[Andrew POE!]

30 minutes ago, Contentious C said:

What did you think of the AI?

I wasn't aware there was AI until you mentioned it and it was talked about in a Google search. It was no more off putting than computer generated Peter Cushing in Rogue One (where in certain lighting had me wondering if it was a real person).

[Andrew POE!]

Watched three movies so far today:

A Walk In The Woods (Max, leaving at the end of the month) - For a movie about going on a hike on the Appalachian Trail, it is surprisingly low stakes. There wasn't really a sense of tension in the movie. You probably could put Tim Allen in Robert Redford's place and would have the same result. Robert Redford and Nick Nolte have chemistry at times but other times they felt disconnected.

Spoiler

The plus I can say is the scenery in the movie is gorgeous (although you can tell they shot around the same places in Georgia and not of the areas looked beyond Georgia but that's a nitpick). The penultimate cliff area felt 'fake' to me (on the HDTV I used it clearly looked like a painted background and not in actual outdoors).

Lord Huron's songs were great throughout the movie.

Collective (Hulu, leaving on Monday) - Great documentary film about corruption running deep in an entire country.

Spoiler

A fire at a nightclub should be a call to arms to stop corruption in Romania, but instead those involved dig in their heels. The reporters, activists and victims ask the right questions. The reporters involved with investigating corruption get death threats while the Mayor of Bucharest attacks the Minister of Health for sending lung transplant patients to Vienna (it makes me wonder if she's involved with the corruption too). Vlad Voiculescu, the Minister of Health, is good hearted but essentially has his hands tied with the system that's setup. His conversation with his dad after the elections was especially heartbreaking.

At times, the movie is somewhat disjointed from its premise. It is less about the victims of the fire and more about the complex political system in Romania. It's somewhat uninvolved emotionally as a result. I felt like the various politicians and network TV talking heads weren't personally affected by it - the main reporter Catalin Totalin was bothered the most by what he seen through his reporting. I came away feeling that if I need health care, don't go to Romania to do it.

Immaculate (saw at the theaters) - Cinematography and sound for the movie is excellent. Acting and scripting isn’t as excellent.

Spoiler

Felt like a Roman Polanski movie without a lot of the horror. I expected it to be revealed that it was all in her head on the car ride over to the nunnery and Sydney Sweeney’s character had fallen asleep. I also expected to see something more sinister with what Bennetta Porcaroli’s character hinted at near the start (like blood sacrifices or those running it were really satanists). Instead it was “priest guy studied biology so he knows genetics too somehow because reasons.”

A few scenes bothered me a bit (especially the nail pulling scene) but nothing significantly scary.

 

Edited March 23 by Andrew POE!

[HarryArchieGus]

Just saw Wim Wenders' late career masterpiece 'Perfect Days'. Outstanding lead from the deserving 76h Annual Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award winning Koji Yakusho. I suspected I would like this film, but this blew away my reasonable expectations. I really hope this movie is seen and appreciated by the widest audience possible.   

[Dolfan in NYC]

 

[Craig H]

Ghostbusters Frozen Empire was really fucking solid. I’ll have more to say later, but I have zero clue what any reviewer was expecting. It was a ton of fun and, not that it matters, the theater was clapping for it once the credits rolled. I really didn’t expect that.

[odessasteps]

Ive heard it was funnier than the trailer made it out to be. 

[Andrew POE!]

I'm going to go see Frozen Empire tomorrow despite having missed Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Would I need to have seen Afterlife for Frozen Empire to make any sense?

And why do both titles sound like PC expansion titles for Civilization?

[(BP)]

I liked Frozen Empire. My biggest issue was it felt a bit unfocused since it’s practically an Altmanesque large ensemble piece. On the other hand, I wasn’t crazy about spending the entire film with the sitcom family dynamic set up early on, so I’m glad they opened the world up. It felt like the script needed another pass, but the last act is a hoot. 

Cool creature design, fun support from Nanjiami, Oswalt, and the legacy actors,  plus it’s a tent pole movie clocking in at a merciful two hours. 

[Craig H]

It really did feel like one of the cooler plots from an episode of the Real Ghostbusters. I have zero clue what any of the reviewers were basing their poor reviews on. I don’t know what they expected to see. I saw some say that they wanted to see more ghost busting so it could be more like the original where they're like plumbers or firemen, but for ghosts. I've seen that opinion a lot. It makes me wonder when the last time they saw the original movie was because they bust 1, ONE ghost, and it's Slimer. The rest of the time it's fucking around with a once in a generation cast, a once in a generation script, and a once in a generation job by the director, especially with letting Bill Murray say whatever he wanted. They show the montage of them around town, but that's it.

I thought it was really funny and had a lot of heart. Again, this seems to come up a lot, but there's plenty of stuff I could see hitting close to home for parents or step parents or step children, not to mention what it's like to raise a young teen.

I liked that it establishes what's happening with the family in NYC and what they're doing and then it pretty much moves on from there to where, without spoiling anything, it opens up the Ghostbusters universe in a way that is really fucking cool. I geek out for dumb shit like schematics that some graphic designer cooked up, but that works here because you also get to see just how it works.

I think if I had any big criticism it's that the third act feels somewhat rushed. There also seemed to be a lot in the trailer that wasn't in the movie, which makes me wonder how much the strike affected things. It makes me think there was more to explore in that third act and it ends putting a really nice and neat bow on everything where...

Spoiler

Nothing is really destroyed. Prior to the events of the ending, you see cars and all kinds of shit being impaled, but once the big bad is defeated, everything is clean and nice and nothing is trashed.

So yeah, you could flesh out that third act more, but then you're probably adding another 20 to 30 minutes to this thing and a tight 2 hours was about perfect.

BTW, I loved, LOVED that callback to the shit that happens to William Atherton in real life...

Spoiler

If you're not familiar, Atherton says that ever since Ghostbusters, so decades now, people still yell out "HEY DICKLESS!" or "THIS GUY HAS NO DICK!" So at the end when the people start getting mad at him there's someone way in the back that yells out "HEY DICKLESS!" and I about died. 

The reviews for this movie are about the most unfair I've seen for a movie that is, at worst, just OK, and at best, for someone that's a huge fan of the movies and lore and everything, I think it's better than 2 and I think it edges out Afterlife (I really loved the sentimentality of Afterlife). If you go off of the reviews, you'd think it was worse than Madam Web, a movie where THE VILLAIN HAS ALL OF HIS LINES ADR'd AND NONE OF IT MATCHES UP WITH THE MOVEMENTS OF HIS MOUTH and that doesn't even speak to how big of a piece of shit the rest of it was. 

I don't know. It's pretty fucking good. At least I thought so. And I'm happy it's making a lot of money to make a third one of these. So like, go see it. If you weary of it, again, at worst I could see someone thinking it was merely OK or passable, but if you're down for fun Ghostbusters shit, then yeah, it's going to be your jam.