Movie 2021 MOVIES DISCUSSION

[AxB]

Watching Birth of the Dragon (2016). I always wanted to watch a biopic about Bruce Lee

Spoiler

's friend Steve.

The WWE Films logo came up at the start, so I was constantly wondering if Brian Myers or Aron Stevens was going to show up in the cast, but they never.

Edited June 25, 2021 by AxB

[The Natural]

Mark Kermode's the best. Long time listener and got to meet him in 2012, he was really nice as were his band, the Dodge Brothers.

[J.T.]

13 hours ago, The Natural said:

Mark Kermode's the best. Long time listener and got to meet him in 2012, he was really nice as were his band, the Dodge Brothers.

Why would a human being subject himself to that marathon?  I'd rather eat glass.

[Curt McGirt]

https://www.screenslate.com/articles/yo-dude-its-abel-abel-ferraras-cinema-village

For those in NYC, Abel Ferrara is doing a nine-day airing of films at Cinema Village in Manhattan. Here is an interview full of Abel being Abel.

[odessasteps]

I hope it's a seedy Times Square theatre.

[Curt McGirt]

It looks to be a sincere arthouse spot, judging from the way they talk about the owner. Besides none of those exist in Times Square anymore post-Giuliani. I think. 

Anyway, you want to see something really crazy, somebody decided to make a new version of Caligula from the 90 hours (!) of extra footage in the film that follows Gore Vidal's original script. This guy says there isn't a single scene from the original in it. https://www.fangoria.com/original/caligula-is-back-exclusive/

[J.T.]

7 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I hope it's a seedy Times Square theatre.

Is there such a thing?  The infamous Green Apple isn't even there anymore.  

[Control]

19 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

 

Anyway, you want to see something really crazy, somebody decided to make a new version of Caligula from the 90 hours (!) of extra footage in the film that follows Gore Vidal's original script. This guy says there isn't a single scene from the original in it. https://www.fangoria.com/original/caligula-is-back-exclusive/

That’s pretty wild, actually. Look forward to it.

[Curt McGirt]

So do I. The uncut original is a big-time guilty pleasure of mine actually. 

[Dolfan in NYC]

On 6/30/2021 at 7:49 AM, J.T. said:

Is there such a thing?  The infamous Green Apple isn't even there anymore.  

They haven't been a thing since about 1996. Big Apple theater is now an Applebee's.  (Fucking thanks Giuliani.)

Cinema Village is a very cool little theater that's been around forever. (Pretty sure that's where I saw Pi back in its original theatrical run.)   I'm legitimately shocked they survived the pandemic. 

[caley]

Man, my movie-watching has been really weird as of late.

'Jesse Stone: Stone Cold': The biggest flaw with this one is casting Tom Selleck in the lead. Selleck's a bit questionable in his real life at times, but onscreen he always comes off likable. And in this made-for-TV movie about an alcoholic police chief, it would actually have fit the movie better if the actor wasn't nearly so likable as the alcoholic thing never really comes across with Selleck: he just seems like a solid dude who drinks a bit. The most notable thing about this movie is that somehow Viola Davis is in it with a very small role just before people figured out how good she is. Anyway Selleck investigates a series of murders in his hometown before the killers target him. It's pretty paint-by-numbers.

'Freddy Got Fingered': Saw a review of this the other day that suggested it was some sort of brilliant satire of movies so I saw it on Prime Video and gave it a shot. Nah.

'A Family Affair': So charmingly old-fashioned and saccharine-sweet, yet weird in that it handles a couple issues one wouldn't expect in 1937: infidelity and blackmail. Judge Hardy (Lionel Barrymore, not being evil!) blocks a local construction project and the entire town turns on him while he tries to ignore it and help his family with their problems, chiefly his daughter whose husband has left him after she was caught at a seedy hangout kissing another man (Which is pretty racy for 37!). This is somehow the first of a series of 16 (!) films but the only one with Barrymore. I still think Andy Hardy (Mickey Rooney) is kind of an asshole but this was still charming.

'The Stratton Story': Jimmy Stewart plays Monty Stratton, the MLB pitcher who lost his leg in a hunting accident, in a biopic based on true events. But what's weird is the way this film ends kind of underplays Stratton's accomplishments. It's actually the rare biopic where they choose a lesser event to end the film instead of what really happened. 

'Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter': This was weird-as-shit, a satire of advertising  that is mainly a thinly-veiled attack on 20th Century Fox's own star: Marilyn Monroe. I didn't much care for this, I mean it actually had the line "I used to look up to you, but you're just a poop of a man. And that's the way the poop, poops!"

'Eddie Macon's Run': I loved this silly little flick. John Schneider (The Dukes of Hazzard guy, not Roy Scheider whom I somehow mistakenly thought was in this) plays an escaped convict on the run after being wrongfully jailed (Kind of). Kirk Douglas plays a cop determined to show he still has it and bring him to justice. There's lots of semi-notable people in here: John Goodman (in his second role!), Tom Noonan, JT Walsh, etc. Even though it's from 1983, it feels REALLY older. Like there's guys getting shot, an attempted hanging, an attemped rape etc. etc. but the second someone's about to used an f-word, they abruptly cut to the next scene. Fun car chase in it, too.

'Trouble With the Curve': As soon as this started, I thought "This is totally some old guy who saw/read 'Moneyball' and went: "The scouts deserve better!" and, looking it up, the timeline seems to add up. Clint Eastwood is a gruff old baseball scout being pushed out by the young, computer-assisted stats-obssessed scout. Seeing as his vision is failing, his daughter shows up (Amy Adams) to help him scout an important prospect and save his job. Justin Timberlake also turns up as failed prospect doing some scouting and adding a love story to the arc (With Adams...not Clint). You can probably tell exactly what the movie is like from this description: Eastwood and his crusty old buddies drink a lot and trade barbs, Adams fights with her dad while showing the men that women can know baseball too, her and Timberlake flirt and you know exactly how it ends...but in the last act there is a REAL abrupt tonal shift when Eastwood

[spoiler]tells a story about him sending his daughter away because some groundskeeper tried to ASSAULT her when she was around 7 and how he showed up, sent her away and MURDERED the guy. And it's this silly breezy little little comedy/love story and then there's a big "WHOA was not expecting things to get that dark" moment there.[/spoiler]

'Bad Trip': This was sooo stupid. I'm a big fan of Eric Andre's show but this can barely be called a movie. Just a series of hidden camera stunts barely strung together to make some semblance of a plot. The funniest part is watching them talking to the dupes during the credits, really. Though I did get a good laugh out of the zoo sequence, I'll admit

[Leonidas]

9 hours ago, caley said:

'Freddy Got Fingered': Saw a review of this the other day that suggested it was some sort of brilliant satire of movies so I saw it on Prime Video and gave it a shot. Nah.

You really needed to be 13 the first time you saw this. I was and still find it hysterical now. 

Edited July 4, 2021 by Leonidas

[Curt McGirt]

That has to be the most strangely dismissive review of Freddy Got Fingered I've seen. It tends to evoke at least some kind of strong reaction in people, usually negative. 

[caley]

4 hours ago, Leonidas said:

You really needed to be 13 the first time you saw this. I was and still find it hysterical now. 

That would make sense. I saw 'Kids in the Hall Brain Candy' in theaters and my friends and I were laughing non-stop while everyone walked out of the theater going "That was terrible." In retrospect those people were more right than we were, but I still get a chuckled out of it.

4 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

That has to be the most strangely dismissive review of Freddy Got Fingered I've seen. It tends to evoke at least some kind of strong reaction in people, usually negative. 

I felt like it was trying to top itself with the gross-out gags/subject matter than in the last third it kinda fizzles out. I guess I was expecting more, either positively or negatively but it just kind of meh

[Curt McGirt]

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/freddy-got-fingered-2001

This is more what I was expecting.

[J.T.]

On 7/1/2021 at 10:28 PM, Dolfan in NYC said:

They haven't been a thing since about 1996. Big Apple theater is now an Applebee's.  (Fucking thanks Giuliani.)

Yeah, when I briefly lived in Manhattan and started going to the New Year's Eve ball drops at TS, we always noticed that the camera crews from the major networks running New Year's celebration specials were pointed away from the hookers in front of the adult theaters.   The sex workers used to hold up signs advertising their prices hoping that they'd be seen on live television.  It was great.

Edited July 6, 2021 by J.T.

[Curt McGirt]

Pussy Prices! Ass for Sale! Get it while it's hot! 

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by Curt McGirt

[Contentious C]

I tried watching things; apparently Sling has a nice habit of removing things if they're not in the active rotation of whatever channel they'd normally play on, so I didn't finish Tomb Raider in time.  It was shaping up to be somehow worse than the Angelina Jolie movies, though; the first 40 minutes felt both too short (because they didn't develop any characters besides Lara in any worthwhile manner) and too long (because the asides to show you how PLUCKY~! and SCRAPPY~! and NEVER-SAY-DIE~!~! she is drag on and on and on).  Maybe the last 2/3s are better?  Maybe I don't give a shit about ever finding out, because I'd rather play the games since they're actually enjoyable.

Is there a movie conceit that has aged worse than the one for Searching for Bobby Fischer?  I'm guessing there isn't, unless you include obviously racist/sexist stuff.  Bobby Fischer was a piece of shit and needed to stay gone; it's too bad he didn't, post-9/11.  This movie is not-quite-a-piece of shit, but it's tepid and milquetoast and generally badly executed, aside from a few of Ben Kingsley's scenes and basically all of Larry Fishburne's scenes.  Otherwise it's a Lifetime movie.  You get the sense by the end that Kingsley's character is secretly a pedo and he's doing all he can to resist his urges, or at least that's how I thought he was playing it.  Or maybe I just made that up because it gave the movie some goddamn flavor.

Creed is simultaneously one of the best Rocky-based movies and also Ryan Coogler's least interesting film by a mile.  I have never liked Stallone in anything whatsoever other than First Blood - not even the first Rocky - but he's actually pretty great here.  He seems more real and relatable as someone this broken-down and past giving a shit about himself anymore.  Michael B. Jordan is great, but Tessa Thompson's character...I mean, it's Tessa, when has she been terrible in anything, but her whole subplot feels tacked-on, just so her character seems more sympathetic.  Unless the second movie does something real with it, it's the weakest part of what they were doing.  Oh, sorry, second-weakest, because the Goddamned Rocky Boxing is always always always the weakest part of these ridiculous movies.  No one stands and trades shots like that, except Kazushi Sakuraba when he's feeling particularly masochistic!  Quit filming this!  Ugh, lame.  I expect better out of Coogler, but maybe I shouldn't.

I'm about 2/3s through watching Dumb and Dumber To, and it's very clearly a movie that never needed to be made.  But it's not without a couple of decent laughs.  The nicest thing I can say about it, though, is it's not as bad as Ebert made Freddy Got Fingered sound.

[Control]

I am watching SHRUNKEN HEADS and it’s pretty wild, but I’m stopping by to say that Meg Foster deserves to be more of an icon of B cinema than she seems to be. With her role as Big Moe in this, plus her parts in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE and THEY LIVE (and to a lesser extent, the OBLIVION films), she’s got some real credentials.

[Tabe]

On 7/3/2021 at 11:22 PM, caley said:

Man, my movie-watching has been really weird as of late.

'Jesse Stone: Stone Cold': The biggest flaw with this one is casting Tom Selleck in the lead. Selleck's a bit questionable in his real life at times, but onscreen he always comes off likable. And in this made-for-TV movie about an alcoholic police chief, it would actually have fit the movie better if the actor wasn't nearly so likable as the alcoholic thing never really comes across with Selleck: he just seems like a solid dude who drinks a bit. The most notable thing about this movie is that somehow Viola Davis is in it with a very small role just before people figured out how good she is. Anyway Selleck investigates a series of murders in his hometown before the killers target him. It's pretty paint-by-numbers.

 

I LOVE the Jesse Stone movies. I can't quite put a finger on why, I just do. 

[Curt McGirt]

5 hours ago, Contentious C said:

I have never liked Stallone in anything whatsoever other than First Blood - not even the first Rocky

How about Cop Land? I always thought that was his second best role after First Blood. (Even though I like boxing I have never seen all of any Rocky movie, however.)

[odessasteps]

I'd throw in paradise alley and nighthawks.

[Contentious C]

23 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

How about Cop Land? I always thought that was his second best role after First Blood. (Even though I like boxing I have never seen all of any Rocky movie, however.)

Never saw that or Nighthawks, never even heard of Paradise Alley. Nighthawks is one of those movies that pops up on my radar every so often and I tell myself I should see it, then I never do. 

[odessasteps]

Paradise Alley is timely, as it's partially about wrestling in the Depression and Terry Funk is in it. 

[elizium]

It's not a good movie at all, but Stallone is fantastic in The Lords of Flatbush. There's a scene where his girlfriend is telling him she's pregnant and it is beautiful how he plays it. Starts out full of bravado, all "this is your problem, not mine" but you can see in his eyes him coming to the realization that his world is crumbling.