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APRIL 2015 MOVIE THREAD


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NBK was Oliver Stone tripping on mushrooms in the desert. They edited it with literally a million cuts. It has Tommy Lee Jones acting like a Looney Tunes character. It has Rodney Dangerfield as an abusive child molester. How anyone could not appreciate that madness is beyond me.

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In fairness, I think there is something genuinely unsettling about Natural Born Killers. I can't quite put my finger on it...but it's there. It's an unpleasant, soulless little movie.

 

Ben Elton's novel Popcorn was very much inspired by the film. His point was essentially "No, movies don't cause murders, but isn't a bit warped that these affluent Hollywood-types are essentially getting their rocks off to real life crimes and being so faux edgy and controversial?"    

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I had a version of the script for NBK back in grad school when i was working on my QT thesis. I recall it being better than the movie that was eventually made. Id say it was a little ahead of its time.

I agree it has an awesome soundtrack, such a crazy mish-mash: Patsy Cline, Diamanda Gallas, Leonard Cohen,... Its an album full of potential wrestling entrance music: Shit List, RNR ..., drums a go go, the future, and so on

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Natural Born Killers is very much a product of it's time. After the Saw movies and their imitators redefined what violence in a mainstream US movie could be, it looks tame now. But coming before that, when gory horror from the 80s and 90s always had the supernatural monster antagonist, the idea that a bad human being/ hero of the movie could be that violent was shocking and horrifying... at the time. Just not now.

Good soundtrack though. NBK-> Lost Highway-> Zodiac -> Social Network -> Oscar for Reznor.

It's not like it was any more violent than a Stallone or Arnie movie. The only difference is that the violence wasn't " righteous"
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NBK was Oliver Stone tripping on mushrooms in the desert. They edited it with literally a million cuts. It has Tommy Lee Jones acting like a Looney Tunes character. It has Rodney Dangerfield as an abusive child molester. How anyone could not appreciate that madness is beyond me.

 

Who is also a wrestling fan that hates Tatanka.

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So, a Wrestling fan then? ;)

 

The best part is, it's from when Tatanka was just getting ready to turn heel, so they had the commentators selling that he was beating the jobbers up too much and he should just pin them and let it be over. And Dangerfield was complaining that it wasn't violent enough for him.

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I watched The Boy Next Door over the weekend because I'm a moron.  It seems the two driving points of the movie are:

 

1) Jennifer Lopez is still hot and we've got lovingly filmed, lingering shots of her body to prove it.

2) If you fuck Jennifer Lopez, you will become obsessed with her.  Jennifer Lopez' pussy will drive you to madness.

 

When I saw "produced by Jennifer Lopez" in the end credits, everything made sense.

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I watched The Boy Next Door over the weekend because I'm a moron. It seems the two driving points of the movie are:

1) Jennifer Lopez is still hot and we've got lovingly filmed, lingering shots of her body to prove it.

2) If you fuck Jennifer Lopez, you will become obsessed with her. Jennifer Lopez' pussy will drive you to madness.

When I saw "produced by Jennifer Lopez" in the end credits, everything made sense.

I saw it (I have a movie pass I pay monthly for so I'll see pretty much anything in a theater these days) and yes, it's a terrible terrible movie. Beyond terrible. That being said, your first point is true; she still looks incredible. As for the second point.... I can totally believe it being true.

But don't let my observation detract from the fact that this movie is an abortion captured on film.

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I didn't dig NBK because aside from the psychadelic avant-garde stuff that I didn't think worked very well, it tried to paint Mickey and Mallory as the protagonists (yes, I realize part of the point of the movie was pop culture's obsession and glamorizing violence and serial killers and such) and make them cool or sympathetic, but I just wanted them to die painfully.  That was one of the main reasons I didn't like Devil's Rejects either.

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Guest The Magnificent 7

NBK is uneven, but has genuine moments of genius in it.  I'm a pretty big critic of Ollie Stone, but the dude was on fire for NBK.  This scene from the movie in particular, with the music, dialogue, and images colliding is brilliant.  It's when the warden (Tommy Lee Jones) is taking Tom Sizemore through the prison.  There isn't a clip on youtube that has the visuals, but here is everything else. 

 

 

And Woody Harrelson is incredible in NBK.  Tom Sizemore is great, too.

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I love The Devil's Rejects.  The protagonists are monsters, it never shies away from that fact, but it puts you in a position where you feel for the anyway, at least a bit, because the torture scene is so damn raw and brutal.

 

Great fucking flick.

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I didn't dig NBK because aside from the psychadelic avant-garde stuff that I didn't think worked very well, it tried to paint Mickey and Mallory as the protagonists (yes, I realize part of the point of the movie was pop culture's obsession and glamorizing violence and serial killers and such) and make them cool or sympathetic, but I just wanted them to die painfully.  That was one of the main reasons I didn't like Devil's Rejects either.

 

This is true. I was seriously pissed when they got their happy ending. Yeah, so they had shitty childhoods. Lots of people do. They don't become mass murderers. The whole faux-deep "Who's worse? Us for doing this or the press for sensationalizing it?" question was cringe-worthy. Yeah, still you guys.

 

I would have liked to have seen Tarantino's version, though. He does glamorize violence too, but I've never personally watched anything of his and felt "Yeah, a serial killer would jack off to this!". NBK, not so much.

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I read a review on Paul Blart 2 where the reviewer said that he avoids using all of the usual phrases that critics use when trashing a film because it feels lazy, but he could not believe he wasted 2 hours of his life to review that film. It was one of the worst things he had ever seen and not even in a "this is so bad that I can at least have fun with its awfulness" kind of way.

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It is too bad actually.  I like the whole deal from the first movie where he was a struggling single parent trying to earn a paycheck and raise his daughter, but the movie was seeped in so much lowbrow comedy and fat jokes that it was nearly devoid of humor.

 

I expected the same of the sequel and was happy I avoided it.

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Reading Reel Terror by David Konow. Dear God, does the shooting of Texas Chainsaw Massacre sound like hell.

 

Like we've all heard the horror stories about the makings of Apocalypse Now and The Shining, but this might be the first time I've ever heard an actor say in all seriousness, like Edwin Neal does here, that the experience of shooting a movie was worse than when he served in Vietnam.

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Reading the review what astounds me most is that, what, 12 years or so after CGI made the "someone gets hit by a huge truck" gag possible, and then inevitable, and then played out within months...someone still did it expecting a laugh?

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Reading Reel Terror by David Konow. Dear God, does the shooting of Texas Chainsaw Massacre sound like hell.

 

Like we've all heard the horror stories about the makings of Apocalypse Now and The Shining, but this might be the first time I've ever heard an actor say in all seriousness, like Edwin Neal does here, that the experience of shooting a movie was worse than when he served in Vietnam.

 

Reading the review what astounds me most is that, what, 12 years or so after CGI made the "someone gets hit by a huge truck" gag possible, and then inevitable, and then played out within months...someone still did it expecting a laugh?

 

Trucks running over people in a movie, aye?

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I think Piranesi was talking about Pall Blart 2. Or he's confused Texas Chainsaw with Devil's Rejects, although the person getting hit a by huge truck wasn't played for laughs in that. Unless you have a very unconventional sense of humour.

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I love The Devil's Rejects.  The protagonists are monsters, it never shies away from that fact, but it puts you in a position where you feel for the anyway, at least a bit, because the torture scene is so damn raw and brutal.

 

Great fucking flick.

 

The only bad thing about The Devil's Rejects is that I'm still trying to figure out how to work "Consider me fuckin' Willy fuckin' Wonka! This is my fucking chocolate factory! You got it? My factory!" into a conversation.

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