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2021 MOVIES DISCUSSION


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12 minutes ago, EVA said:

Completely agree about The Rock. I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but he stopped being an interesting actor years ago. Just gives the same performance in every movie now, like an animatronic. He’s become a Brand instead of an actor, and we’re all the worse off for it.

...so he's basically gotten to Will Smith most bankable to the point that fatigue hit really quickly. 

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I actually think Rock is more limited as an actor than Schwarzenegger.  Obviously Arnold’s got the stiff line delivery that hasn’t improved in forty years, but I can’t imagine Rock pulling off a terminator, or even being a good lead for a film like TOTAL RECALL.

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20 minutes ago, Control said:

I actually think Rock is more limited as an actor than Schwarzenegger.  Obviously Arnold’s got the stiff line delivery that hasn’t improved in forty years, but I can’t imagine Rock pulling off a terminator, or even being a good lead for a film like TOTAL RECALL.

For all his flaws I always believed Arnold as his character.  His classic run from Conan through T2 is a lot of “big dumb Arnie” roles but he brings subtleties to each, he plays Dutch and John Matrix very differently despite them being very similar characters. 

The Rock is always fun to watch but I always feel I’m watching “The Rock in a movie” as opposed to a character.  Maybe I’m just overly familiar with him, but I feel he plays most of his characters in the same way.   He does show good chops from time to time in Ballers.

I think I felt the same about Will Smith in the 90’s before Enemy of the State and Ali.  After those movies you realised Will could actually act and wasn’t just “Will Smith in a huge budget action comedy”

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I’m a huge Central Intelligence fan and I think it’s Dwayne’s best performance. Kevin Hart playing straight man to Rock’s unhinged manic energy is brilliant. It’s hard to even believe Rawson Marshall Thurber directed it and went on to make cynical lazy crap like Red Notice (I haven’t seen Skyscraper.)  

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5 hours ago, EVA said:

Completely agree about The Rock. I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but he stopped being an interesting actor years ago. Just gives the same performance in every movie now, like an animatronic. He’s become a Brand instead of an actor, and we’re all the worse off for it.

Rampage. It happened in Rampage.

 

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I enjoyed the new Ghostbusters. It didn't break any real new ground, but it was good for a lot of laughs and some real feel good moments. Early 20's Drew would've hated it, but as I approach 40 I find I just want to escape for a couple hours, and this movie definitely provided that. Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd are really great in it, but Logan Kim runs away with every scene he's in.

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I just got back from it with a bunch of friends (a rare occasion anymore) and really enjoyed it. It was a legit Good Movie, with appropriate pathos that made it a little dusty in there, awesome effects that never took me out of the movie, and above all humor, acting, and story that all worked completely. Very fun, pushing the envelope on the PG-13 like in the '80s (AKA like it should all the time) and quite touching. 

There's a buddy of mine in Des Moines who has a Ghostbusters tattoo so I'll report back what he says, being the ultimate verdict and all (I didn't even bother to ask him about the last one). My OTHER buddy who came with his SO and her brother to the movie ate two edibles and basically fell asleep and had a subconscious fit during the movie which was both concerning and hilarious. The other couple that came with us had no idea because I was the wall between this heaving, mumbling dude and them. He's fine now but yeah... don't think you can just eat two and be fine sometimes. 

Oh and IMAX ain't shit. That is not the sheerdrop seating, enormous screen thrill ride I saw in Florida as a kid. 

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23 hours ago, just drew said:

I enjoyed the new Ghostbusters. It didn't break any real new ground, but it was good for a lot of laughs and some real feel good moments. Early 20's Drew would've hated it, but as I approach 40 I find I just want to escape for a couple hours, and this movie definitely provided that. Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd are really great in it, but Logan Kim runs away with every scene he's in.

Exactly what I wanted to hear. Good news

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Not knowing anything about this reviewer, but I wonder if there will be a segment of critics looking to downgrade this film after the negative reaction to the last movie.

It wouldn't be difficult to see them as two distinct camps of critics. 

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Ghostbusters Maniac Friend on the last Ghostbusters: "A root canal on an airplane piloted by a drunken penguin during turbulence would be better than that atrocity to cinema." ? I'll let you know what his verdict is on the new one. 

EDIT: The Verdict~! "I was about to weep at how good it was." 

There you have it folks. Go see the fuckin' movie. 

EDIT II: Oh my, I missed his initial post about it on FB. 

"Tears are in my eyes, kids are dancing in the theater rows, and so many emotions right now.

Holy lord what an experience.

I came in dreading the worst and just couldn't believe my eyes.

I cheered and clapped.

I was that guy.

Amazing from start to finish.

... the very finish."

What he means is stay through all the credits -- and I mean ALL the credits.

Edited by Curt McGirt
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Saw the new Dune last night.  I think if I wasn't familiar with the previous 1984 version, I'd have no idea what was going on.  Looked great.  Plot was all over the place, felt absolutely incomplete.  Got absolutely no feel for literally any other character besides Paul and his mother. 

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Welp, I'm never saying I take movies too seriously ever again.  Jesus.

Hey, new stuff I watched?  You want some more of that?  Well, no one cares what you want.  It's Day 129 and counting, Fuck the Piece of Shit Who Stole My Wallet & Car Keys Edition.

Hot Garbage

Jungle Cruise - Most of what was said about this in prior posts is accurate enough, especially how hokey the green-screening looks.  There's a fuzzy edge around people in several scenes that just takes you right out of any suspension of disbelief you could possibly have.  I might have liked this a little more than outright hating it because Emily Blunt & the Rock do play off each other well.  Not the worst movie I watched in this stretch; not the worst movie I didn't mind so much, either.

The Black Dahlia - Man, this is fucking awful.  Josh Hartnett is just a walking charisma sink, like how they use boron rods to suck up neutrons in a nuclear reactor?  Yeah, he's got boron rods, all right.  The only thing that makes more interest in a film vanish is the cleft in Aaron Eckhart's chin an--oh shit, they're in the same movie, and it's merging!  Aaaaaargh.  And Hilary Swank should probably give back one of her Oscars for this pile of shit. A lot of the "detail" of this is actually quite good, even if it does feel like they just dusted off all the stuff that got used for the far superior L.A. Confidential.  But the script is hammy as shit, it goes on too long, the twists and turns mostly don't add up that well, and once you get to see Hartnett and ScarJo slap a pot roast across a room so they can hump on the kitchen table, you've seen all there was really worth seeing.  I wonder if this is De Palma's worst movie, but I fear it isn't.

Goon - I get that this is a bad, crass, offensive, actively stupid film that glorifies a bunch of wrong-headed stuff.  I also managed to like it, because it is a little bit charming.  Seann William Scott and Alison Pill bring *just* enough to their roles and their screen time together that you can pull for them, and Liev Schreiber is the right kind of menacing mentor figure.  But, despite how bad it is, it's a movie I would rewatch if I had to.  Not quite "guilty pleasure" in the vein of Monster Squad, for example, where I will actively seek it out, but this is at least a crap movie that lets you in on the joke and enjoy its crappiness.

Acceptable

Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her - I've been on a Kanopy kick lately.  This was awfully, awfully close to Hot Garbage.  I wonder why some guys think they have some amazing insight into women; there are precious few of those insights here, and the quality that does exist is more in the performances than the writing, that's for sure.  Holly Hunter's section feels like it should have been an entire separate film, from how little it weaves into the others, and she probably does the best work of anyone (no surprise there) with an otherwise weird and not-that-interesting premise.  Glenn Close's section is bad, Kathy Baker's section is bad except for one awesome scene where her teenage son blurts out that he's getting laid more than his mom, and the Cameron Diaz/Amy Brennaman section is bad except for one monologue that Diaz somehow nails to the wall as well as I've ever seen her do anything.  But if there's a real surprise here, it's Calista Flockhart - you'll get over the shock eventually, but yes.  Of course, it comes in a scene that's The Fault in Our Stars-level of "Hey, we're making Heart-String Pulling into an Olympic sport, and here's our entry", weapons-grade sentimentality, so you've seen things like it before, but her and Valeria Golino are pretty great together.  This was another bit that probably should have just been its own film, and it would have been significantly better for it.

Un Flic - I'm a stupid, and I assumed this translated to "A Movie" instead of "A Cop" for the longest time.  "Weird way to go out, Melville!", I thought to myself when passing this on streaming services.  So I finally watched it.  It's...all right.  It's certainly no Le Samourai for all its attempts at being super-stylish.  If anything, it feels strongly like Melville was retreading or ripping off himself with the nightclub scenes.  Delon's character is not quite as dead-eyed as his earlier assassin, and not quite as interesting, either.  And I don't think I've ever seen a film where Richard Crenna actually made me care about anything he did.  But, this is arguably worth watching just for the opening robbery sequence and the train heist.  The use of models for that is simultaneously hokey and fascinating.  Seems like this is the kind of thing that might have influenced how Marty took Infernal Affairs and developed that into The Departed, given the way the story unfolds, too.

Youth in Revolt - I really expected nothing out of this, given I remembered it bombing pretty hard at the box office.  I don't care much at all for Michael Cera, but he's probably better here than he is in Scott Pilgrim, which is saying something.  It's rather ridiculous, though, that he was, for example, playing a dad-to-be 17-year-old in Juno, circa 2007, and then playing a 15-year-old virgin in this movie in 2010.  But this is actually fairly funny, with a lot of familiar faces fleshing out the cast of screw-ups and malcontents.  Aside from being well-written and well-executed enough, I don't think this brings anything remotely new to the table for these kinds of stories, though.  Then again, there are so many insufferable coming-of-age bits of pop culture out there that one marginally less insufferable one seems like a gift.

Big Eyes - I...suppose this was OK?  I mean, Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams are who they are, so you're not going to get awful performances out of them, but it's the sort of movie that makes me question whether Tim Burton is ever going to do something interesting again, because this is as rote and predictable as a plot arc gets.  Tedious Narration, Happy Development to get our protagonist out of a jam, Cracks Start Showing, Things Get Crazy, the Break-Up, etc., etc.  50 movies a year just like this get made, so why did Burton attach himself to this one?  What did he add that anyone else couldn't have done?  Probably nothing, aside from the first 5 minutes where it feels like the colors of the film pop differently than the rest of the movie.  And none of the side characters give you a thing, either: Krysten Ritter is dull, Danny Huston is dull, even Terence Stamp is just trotting out Grumpy Grandpa that he could do in his sleep (if he weren't in costume, I'd figure that's exactly what he did).  Oh, and I'm very firmly in the camp who thinks Margaret Keane's art is kind of dreadful and certainly creepy after watching this.

Beautiful Boy - Here's another Olympic-caliber Heartstrings movie, but one that largely works.  For the first ten minutes, I thought of this as one of those E! shows: "Dune: True Hollywood Stories", with Paul going to Spice Rehab, because Chalamet 100% uses The Voice on Steve Carell very early on!  It's a pretty jarring moment, and man does this only get darker from there.  The acting is the highlight here, although I feel like Carell takes on roles like this not because he's the best choice for them, but because he still feels the need to shake off his comedic past.  He's obviously got more range than a lot of his counterparts who've made the same transition, but there's just a look on his face all the time of, "Please take me seriously as an actor" even after, y'know, you already did for stuff like Foxcatcher.  This does feel like a tiny bit of a waste of both Maura Tierney and Amy Ryan, too, since everything is so focused on the father & son.  But, while I haven't yet seen Call Me By Your Name, I think it's safe to say that, after this performance, that little Chalamet bastard deserved to get cast in everything under the sun, because he puts this on his back and carries it.

Diary of a Mad Housewife - This was very, very close to making Awesome, as it's about as biting and vicious a satire of yuppie America as you're going to find.  While the particulars of the film don't directly correlate to today's society - certainly not as many stay-at-home mothers these days - there are still enough parallels to make this both unsettling and relevant.  Every time I think to myself I've found an acting performance that was the most punch-in-the-face-worthy there is, another one pops up that beats it, and the new king is Richard Benjamin, who is the most infuriating, whiny, pathetic piece of human trash you've ever seen walking around in a $500 suit.  It's scary, actually, to think this came out 50 years ago, and yet it's still relatively easy to identify people I know - or I am related to, sadly - who behave like that character on a regular basis.  I think if there's a weak point to it, though, it's the bits with Frank Langella - the acting is fine, but maybe I'm just too inured to how sex scenes have been played in films my whole life to think there is anything all that compelling about how it's done here.  It does, however, make an interesting companion piece to something like, say, Carnal Knowledge, which came out the following year, where the sex & relationship bits are a lot more blunt and frank, but the social commentary isn't as thought-provoking.

Awesome

Asako I & II - Seems like I can add Ryusuke Hamaguchi to Denis Villeneuve and Damien Chazelle (and probably Celine Sciamma) as the directors I'm just going to find myself enjoying every time I see something new from them.  This isn't *quite* as good as Happy Hour, but if you want an obviously more bite-sized representation of his work, this is outstanding.  The whole twinning aspect of the plot may seem like a gimmick, but the real brilliance of this movie is that it doesn't matter.  When you think about relationships, the truth that's shining through here is that practically all our choices in that realm are capricious and arbitrary, no more or less so than dating a man because he looks like your ex.  We've all done something like that, just not to the extreme that is presented in this case.  And our ability to make good decisions for ourselves and the people we care about (or claim to care about) is only as good as our ability to be honest with ourselves about why we're making those decisions.  Maybe I've over-explained the movie by saying this, but it's pretty hard to miss the subtext once this gets going.  And plus, Hamaguchi has a wonderful handle on quiet moments, little Ozu-like touches of scenery and routine and even awkwardness that add texture and depth to the reality he's presenting you.  Those may seem boring to some people, but they work for me.

Edited by Contentious C
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26 minutes ago, Contentious C said:

It's a pretty jarring moment, and man does this only get darker from there. 

I read Tweak by Nic Sheff, which the movie is partly based on, and it is some serious Requiem for a Dream shit. Dude almost even loses an arm to infection like in that book/film too. 

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Following the recent Rock in Movies chat, I decided to watch Red Notice.  Ryan Reynolds as a wisecracking rogue; the Rock as a government agent.  The pitch to the executives was clearly what if we made Hobbs & Deadpool? It was entertaining enough but kind of mindless drivel.

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18 hours ago, Ultimo Necro said:

Following the recent Rock in Movies chat, I decided to watch Red Notice.  Ryan Reynolds as a wisecracking rogue; the Rock as a government agent.  The pitch to the executives was clearly what if we made Hobbs & Deadpool? It was entertaining enough but kind of mindless drivel.

Mom watched that last night. She said, "Well, it was kinda boring in spots. I guess the Rock's getting older."

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3 hours ago, JLSigman said:

Mom watched that last night. She said, "Well, it was kinda boring in spots. I guess the Rock's getting older."

Well, he WILL be 50 next year, same as an incredibly handsome and brilliant board member from Spokane...

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