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2022 Movies Discussion Thread (v.2.0)

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Contentious C

Contentious C

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Buncha y'all don't know a joke when you see one.

It's that time!  Today's the day!  Made to one year! of this nonsense.

Well, sort of.  I actually got kind of fucked up and distracted the day I watched China Moon (Jan. 23 by my notes) and had to watch the last 12 minutes on the 24th, technically (just watched it through midnight of those days), but I watched the first 80+% on the day I intended to, so...I think that counts.  Even then I'm back up to nearly 150 days regardless, so, screw you, I'll bookkeep however I like.

I think I'm going to shake up the titles for the new year.  I'm going to slice things a little thinner and include separate categories for those "not-quite-total-shit" movies like Waitress and whatnot, and another one for the "not-quite-great" stuff like Thief.  Though I can still see Curt's eyes rolling from that one.  Anyway...

Total movies watched (that I commented on): 398... Total number that passed the Bechdel test: not enough... Total number of times Sean Bean died: less than I expected!  Biggest takeaway from the movie-watching year that was: I need to get a life.

The Worst 5 Movies I Watched for the First Time Last Year

1. The Crow: Wicked Prayer (literally the worst fucking thing I've ever seen that was intended for wide release)

2. Seventh Son

3. Artemis Fowl

4. Tomcats

5. No One Lives

The Best 5 Movies I watched for the First Time Last Year (otherwise The Piano would win this every year)

1. Videodrome (my current pick for Bot80s)

2. Secrets and Lies

3. Come and See

4. A Separation

5. Drive My Car

Honorable mention to 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days for that category, but the worst & best were all fairly clear standouts to me.

But you want more movies, right?  Here are more movies for Day 365 (and counting), Better to Burn Out than Fade Away Edition.

Acceptable

Queens of Pain - This documentary about NYC roller derby was easily the "worst" thing I watched, but I made a concerted effort to not watch total bilge this week.  This is OK, but I think it could have used a more thorough explanation or a full-on breakdown of exactly *how* roller derby is played, because it's not like the casual viewer is going to understand.  And that means when the big matches are shown - which there also needed to be more footage of - it isn't always clear why things develop as they do, because the rules are at least somewhat obscured.  It could have also used a lot more supporting talk from the other people involved, rather than just the 3 primaries.  This was only a 75-minute movie and I just can't think of a good reason why they didn't flesh it out more.  What's there is all right, certainly far from great, but it just feels incomplete.

The Doors - I really don't care for Oliver Stone much.  JFK is a bloated waste of time, Platoon is overrated, and I can't stand Scarface.  But this?  This I liked.  There's just enough weirdness to make you feel like you're watching Morrison build up and fall apart believably, without becoming too incredulous or too expository about the whole affair, either.  Really, one of the worst things you can say about this movie is that it's about the Doors, and so their music is inescapable...but hey, Val Kilmer could really sing, as it turns out.  Makes it that much shittier what's happened to him since, and it also makes me wonder, why didn't anyone call him for Mamma Mia?  Was he already sick by then?  He *had* to still be a better singer than Firth, Skaarsgard, or fucking Pierce Brosnan were.  This is easily his best role, even if it is tinged with a bit of 'what if'.  The other worst thing you could say about this is goddamned Meg Ryan trying to play Sally Albright in half her scenes instead of, I don't know, acting.  Jesus, this is one of the worst performances of her career.  But the rest of it holds together and paints a believable picture of a guy who had no intentions of sticking around.  And, ultimately, maybe we're better for that.  Does anyone else want to picture the notion of 80-year-old Jim being a fucking crank like Clapton or Van Morrison, or doing Louis Vuitton ads like Keith Richards?  Because I don't.

Spencer - This felt like a slightly prettier, slightly less absurd attempt at a Yorgos Lanthimos movie; think The Favourite only more contemporaneous and yet somehow less believable for it.  I think where the former movie works and this one fails a little is that there's a lot more humor to be had from acknowledging certain realities and tweaking their nose than there is in trying to spin some Fantastic (capitalization intended) yarn about what someone in the public eye must have been thinking.  I don't know if Kristen Stewart *quite* deserved a Best Actress nomination for this, but she carries it pretty well, and I suppose if anyone would understand living under a microscope to the extent that Diana did, it'd be Stewart.  Mostly, though, the real draws here are the script, which is occasionally pretty cutting and incisive, and the cinematography, which really does make the locations seem quite beautiful.  It doesn't quite feel like it spends enough time with the other major players, although if that had come at the expense of the exchanges with Sally Hawkins' character, then they wouldn't have been worth it.  I can see why this isn't some people's cup of tea, and it wasn't really mine, either, but it's still fairly solid.

The Lost Weekend - I was kinda hoping I would like this more, but maybe I just don't care much for Billy Wilder, either; I watched The Apartment some years ago and didn't really think that was a particularly great movie.  Or maybe it's just too much in the way of studio convention: the big, overblown, swirling music that smashes everything else, the stilted line deliveries, the predictable transitions that don't add up to much in terms of building tension or drama.  There's still a lot to like here - the script is great and obviously so is Ray Milland - but this doesn't feel like a movie that has aged particularly well.  I'm not entirely fond of how judgmental and condescending it's played either; I think a lot of other media dealing with alcoholism has been more nuanced and less critical of their subjects.  Then again, maybe they had the sense to do that because this movie existed before and it is what it is with respect to its presentation.  Hard to untie that knot these days, but still worth watching if you're into old stuff.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - This is I think the first time I'd seen Jane Russell in anything, but this is also her biggest role by far, so who knows when I'll dive back in to anything else she did.  She's pretty great here, and so is Marilyn for the most part, but holy FUCK this is THE WHITEST MOVIE EVER.  Ever.  There are, what, 3 or 4 people of color in the entire thing and they're such clearly overdone caricatures that it just draws even more attention to how lily-white-WASPy the rest of it really is.  That said, it's not without a certain amount of charm, and the musical numbers aren't too bad.  But, I watched this mostly because I'm of a certain age where Madonna's "Material Girl" video made an impression on me, so I felt it was time to take a look at the original.  As it turns out, the best pop culture reference in the whole thing happens about 34 minutes into the film; watch it and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about, because I just about fell out of my chair laughing.

Awesome

The Set-Up - Hey, now we're talking.  This was frickin' great - an old boxing movie that has some obvious lines to draw to the likes of Raging Bull and Rocky and even Snake Eyes, but also to stuff like Pulp Fiction, if only with respect to plot.  But the real source of quality here is the direction and camera work, which at times are WAY ahead of the curve - or, at least Robert Wise knew the right people to borrow from to make something that feels ahead of its time.  There a ton of really good cuts here, where instead of doing boring crud like you would have seen in The Lost Weekend or practically any other movie from the 40s, Wise actually moves us to what the main character is seeing or chasing or running away from, like, you know, practically every director for the last 50 years has been doing.  There are a few sections that I could swear were a little bit of a nod to Fritz Lang's M, as well, as it's got some of the lurking shadows and claustrophobia that eventually build up in that film.  The lighting is sometimes really nifty, too, and all the side characters who get any real amount of dialogue - aside from maybe the Big Bads - are well-acted instead of just being 2-D plot props.  Probably the worst thing about this is the boxing itself, but I'm not a fan of the "beat the shit out of each other the whole time" style that Rocky movies espoused, either, so I suppose The Fighter remains undefeated for showing decent ring action.  But this was kind of a revelation to watch; if I were making a Best of the '40s List (what am I saying, of course I am), it'd probably be somewhere on the bottom half of the top 100.

Edited by Contentious C
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Curt McGirt

Curt McGirt

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1 hour ago, Contentious C said:

the "not-quite-great" stuff like Thief.  Though I can still see Curt's eyes rolling from that one.

And what did I find not a minute ago? 

My soundtrack of Thief.

EDIT: Waitaminute you can't stand Scarface? Really? Why?

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Contentious C

Contentious C

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2 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

And what did I find not a minute ago? 

My soundtrack of Thief.

EDIT: Waitaminute you can't stand Scarface? Really? Why?

Soundtrack's a banger, but then again, what Michael Mann soundtrack isn't?

Scarface was way too long, fatalistic, self-serious, morbid, and thoroughly unlikable (a lot of which is intentional, but it's to an excessive degree) in any meaningful way.  And I thought Pacino was at his hammy worst, and that's saying something from that guy.  Really everything about the movie is so over-the-top and yet so grim that I found it a pain in the ass to sit through. Granted, I watched it probably close to 15 years ago, but I doubt my opinions on it would change that drastically.  Really, De Palma and Oliver Stone feel a bit interchangeable at times and I don't care much for their output as a whole, except I actually like more De Palma movies (though not many more).  Gimme Carlito's Way or Blow Out.

Other awful opinions of mine: I don't like Taxi Driver either!

Edited by Contentious C
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J.T.

J.T.

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10 hours ago, elizium said:

Come and See is such a good movie and I never want to watch it again

I am happy to see that Contentious C was able to watch the movie without contemplating suicide.   It is such a marvelous film that will never ever watch again.  I don't even want to have a copy of it on my DVD rack at home.  It would just sit there and mock me for not having the courage to take it off of the shelf and give it another viewing.

9 hours ago, (BP) said:

 Blow Out is impeccable. Probably Travolta’s best movie. 

This, and the movie it was remade from, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup (1966), is one of the best suspense thrillers ever made and IIRC is currently available on TCM OnDemand,

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J.T.

J.T.

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The very delayed Glasshouse should now be available on VOD.

The trailer was heavily promoted on DUST's YouTube channel since last year, but apparently it has just recently got a distribution deal.

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Curt McGirt

Curt McGirt

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All of those reasons are why I love Scarface. Carlito's Way is fine (great ending) but I'm not a huge fan of the voiceover. Blow Up is INSANELY good and the real reason for lionizing De Palma. Even some of his misses are fun, like the ridiculous Raising Cain. 

As far as Stone goes, most of what I've seen I've liked too. The Doors is corny to watch over again but I still enjoy it, mainly for the music. His sleeper is Nixon, and writing Year of the Dragon. And the Untold History of the United States documentary series and book which was probably the best as his political stuff got (I still haven't seen JFK or Born on the 4th of July though, and will probably pass on the more recent stuff). 

EDIT: While we're talking about crazy American film auteurs I just wanna pimp Friedkin Uncut which is a wonderful look at another one that did some shit as good as Sorcerer and some as bad as The Guardian. His emphatic fuck-off to the Oscars and Cannes as his closing statement is lovely. 

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J.T.

J.T.

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No.  The Killer is not a remake of the John Woo classic.  It is loosely based on the 2018 novel, The Girl Deserves to Die, by Bang Jin-Ho

Yes.  It is totally badass.

All of the action tropes are there.  You probably won't give a shit.

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Mister TV

Mister TV

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On 7/14/2022 at 7:45 PM, Contentious C said:

Acceptable

Queens of Pain - This documentary about NYC roller derby was easily the "worst" thing I watched, but I made a concerted effort to not watch total bilge this week.  This is OK, but I think it could have used a more thorough explanation or a full-on breakdown of exactly *how* roller derby is played, because it's not like the casual viewer is going to understand.  And that means when the big matches are shown - which there also needed to be more footage of - it isn't always clear why things develop as they do, because the rules are at least somewhat obscured.  It could have also used a lot more supporting talk from the other people involved, rather than just the 3 primaries.  This was only a 75-minute movie and I just can't think of a good reason why they didn't flesh it out more.  What's there is all right, certainly far from great, but it just feels incomplete.

 

This seemed more like a profile piece that they tried to make into a "quest for the championship" doc in the edit room. Suzy Hotrod was still one of the top skaters in the world when the doc was shot and even for Gotham was the exception to the rule when it comes to derby athletes, the other two they profiled is way more spot on. 

As someone who's been involved with Roller Derby for a long time, it's really disappointing that no one has done a doc on the quest for the WFTDA Championship, every year there's an amazing story to be told that would carry over to the next year and the next. 

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Swift

Swift

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I also watched Come and See for the first time this year. I was aware of its reputation as this all-time classic anti-war film, but wasn't expecting to be as blown away by it as I was. Absolutely horrific and stunning film.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I watched Marcel the Shell with Shoes on at the theatre over the weekend. I wasn't aware of the original shorts and when the trailer came out I thought it was just uninteresting whimsy, but I had a free ticket and some time to kill. It's a complete delight. Just really sweet and funny.

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Contentious C

Contentious C

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New year (for me anyway), new titles, new reasons for you to continue to not give a crap about my movie reviews.  It's Day 372 (and counting) of Movie Madness, The World Is on Fire And What the Hell Am I Doing with My Time Edition.

Your Baby's Dirty Diaper (Also, Quit Feeding Your Baby Five Guys)

Monuments - This was an indie movie I found on Kanopy, and I wish I hadn't.  It's got about, oh, 3 minutes of charm to it, and then it's just some of the most boring, obvious shit you'll ever watch.  It's one of those movies where you just *know* that the writer/director/producer (because of course some guy did all 3) has this really clear vision - in his head - that he pulled off the movie he wanted to, but it's not that clear to basically anyone else.  It tries awfully hard to borrow from a lot of other films - Raiders of the Lost Ark, North by Northwest, Oh Brother Where Art Thou? - but there isn't nearly enough cleverness in the script or charisma from the pairings or good acting on display to make you actually give a crap about what is going on here.  If it were as cute and as funny as its opening credits scene, it might have been a fine movie.  Instead, the opening credits, replete with "Technicolor/Panavision" logos and music straight out of the Studio Era, are kind of the highlight.

ALERT ALERT ALERT - Unforgivable Instance of Film Malpractice (But Also, Seriously, Quit Feeding Your Baby Five Guys, We Only Have So Much Febreze in the World)

Eragon - Hooooooooooooooooooooooooo boy.

Where the FUCK do I start with this?  Let's just get a few things out of the way.  Obvious, and pathetically bland, attempt at capitalizing on Harry Potter-mania with a sword/sorcery version.  And this goes all the way down to making sure they cast people who weren't cast in any of the early Potters (or at all, by the looks of it).  But even without that, even on its own...holy sweet mother of fuck there is just NOTHING about this that's actually *good*.  The best part by a country damn mile is Jeremy Irons, but even for him, it's the equivalent of mailing it in.  The script is dead on arrival; the CGI looks terrible even for 2006; John fucking Malkovich deserved a Razzie for this movie; and there are plot holes the size of the damn dragons in the film.  The sad thing about it, too, is that everyone I've ever spoken to about the books says the books are worth reading for YA fantasy, and yet they barfed up this adaptation that comes off more like if you drained all the color out of one of Terry Brooks' early Shannara books, which were already the most lifeless fantasy bilge imaginable.

And you want to know the worst thing?  THEY BASICALLY REMADE THIS!  Seventh Son is the EXACT same fucking movie, except Ben Barnes doesn't ride a dragon!  He's got some other stupid wibbly-wobbly, prophecy-wophecy kind of bullshit that makes him "special" and lets him borrow the world's dumbest Plot Armor from Eragon.  How in the Hell did they not learn their lesson when this flopped so damn hard??  Ugggggh.  UGH.  It's so bad it makes me angry.  I need to move on.

AXE Body Spray Instead of Shower

Predators && - I think you could just about bin every Robert Rodriguez-directed-or-produced movie into this "not quite shit, but actually, yeah, it's shit" category, save maybe Desperado.  Anything he touches always has the veneer of quality, and this *looks* good as often as not, but the best parts of this are entirely in the first half, when it feels less like a dumb action movie and more like an episode of The Twilight Zone.  It's also sort of laughable to see Fishburne, Goggins, and Mahershala Ali playing various numbered fiddles to Adrien Brody.  Granted, two of those guys had yet to become stars in 2010, but it's like having Kobe, LeBron, and Dr. J on your team, but you make Dana Barros the team captain.  All this said, it does have the single most METAL opening scene in maybe all of film, and I can't totally hate it just for that, if nothing else.  Otherwise, it's only better than the AvP movies because it's shinier, not because the things operating underneath the surface are actually superior.

Feast of Love - This was a 2007 movie with a lot of beautiful women doing an absurd number of sex scenes for an otherwise standard - and largely forgettable - romantic film.  Why they felt the need to dust off Robert Benton (director of Kramer vs. Kramer) for this, I don't know, but you can't really fault Morgan Freeman or Greg Kinnear for showing up, because those guys always show up when you flash a paycheck, no matter how mediocre the material is.  If there's a highlight to this, it's Jane Alexander, who hardly gets any lines, but acts circles around the rest of the cast with just a few looks and expressions in her rather few scenes.  But it's one of those movies suffering from Interstellar disease, unconvincingly yapping its themes out loud instead of taking anyone on a trip with the film itself.  Oddly enough, the song "Falling Slowly" by the Swell Season, which won Best Original Song that same year, also appears in this movie!  But they even manage to screw up that little bit of serendipity by cutting the song off too soon.

That'll Do, Pig

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot - I mean, this is, well, it's *decent*, but it's just kind of unremarkable as far as Gus Van Sant goes.  Let me just say that however I've managed to express that I feel about not connecting to actors that others consider great, that goes about a thousand-fold for Joaquin Phoenix, who I have probably never liked in anything, except for You Were Never Really Here.  And this isn't much of an exception, though it's as close as it gets.  It just feels a lot like "Joaquin Phoenix as", in the way that Nicholson or Pacino are sort of doing the same schtick for a lot of their roles.  Except Phoenix's schtick is to be pathetic and schlubby and self-loathing, so I guess they got the right guy for this role, if nothing else.  If anyone shines, it's probably Jonah Hill, who's a little more believable as his sponsor.  The love affair between Callahan and Rooney Mara's character is pretty flat, too, which is strange (or maybe explained) since her and Phoenix are actually a couple and have been for years.  I don't think a lot of the creative choices Van Sant makes in this are things that make the movie a lot better, but the story at the core of everything works well enough that I basically didn't care that there were things I didn't otherwise like.  Your mileage may vary.

Pain & Gain - This was *reeeeeeeeeeally* close to bumping up to the next category, but I think it overstays its welcome, the little titles and voiceovers get old after a bit, and the script isn't quite as funny once it has to wrap up as it is to start.  But damn if this isn't pretty much the best Michael Bay movie that's ever been made.  It's the rare time where his obsession with overblown action and crazy bullshit actually fits the story.  Wahlberg and the Rock are both great ("I can't help you chop up bodies, I'm doing a superset" is the most honest gymbro comment ever), and Rebel Wilson steals every scene she's in.  I can also appreciate anything that makes the police look totally fucking incompetent more often than not.  Carlin was right; it's the American Dream because you gotta be asleep to believe it.

Yeah, But...

Midnight - I was worried I wouldn't hit every category out of the gate, and then I watched this Korean thriller today.  Man, this is pretty interesting stuff.  It's not quite *great*, because it's a little obvious at times - you have seen lots of movies like it, and it liberally borrows from other films - but it still has a lot to say about social issues. It isn't exactly Parasite in that regard, but it's closer than you might expect.  The main character is deaf, and the many otherwise-absurd twists and turns in the plot end up working relatively well because of her run-ins with incompetence, or bigotry, or indifference, or a lack of empathy from quite a few different characters and groups of people in the film.  And there's kind of a funny switch that gets thrown at some point (I think I'd need to rewatch it to pinpoint exactly when), but it goes from being almost jokey and sympathetic toward the serial killer's behavior to being full-on insane and creepy and putting the audience very much in support of the victims.  The acting is generally pretty solid and although there's a lot of RUNNING!, the camera work is usually quite good.  Not quite your run-of-the-mill thriller and worth a look (also on Kanopy right now).

One Maple-Frosted Donut

Flee - Ooooof.  If Drive My Car hadn't won Best Foreign Film, I could see this taking it in a walk last year.  I think it might have been a bit unfairly punished because the animation style is like those old insurance commercials and A Scanner Darkly, where they filmed at least some real stuff and then rendered that into a cartoon, so I'm a little surprised this didn't win Animated or Documentary, either.  But I don't feel like the animation does a thing to hurt the emotional impact of this, which is just...it's a lot.  But I also think it's a movie people have been prepped for, at least a little bit.  We've had The Kite Runner or Incendies to sort of speak the language of refugees prior to this, so I don't think this is quite the hammer blow it would have been without those films.  But, then again, that's also the main thrust of the whole damn thing: getting eyeballs on a problem and getting people to take it seriously enough.  The whole movie is shot through with so many instances where people drift in and out of the moment and choose inaction over doing the right thing, and families and nations suffer, over and over again.  This film makes it painfully apparent that it's impossible to flee the greatest cruelty of all: the cruelty of indifference.

Why They Make 'Em, Why We Watch 'Em

Raging Bull && - After watching The Set-Up, I figured maybe I should revisit this, since I hadn't seen it in probably 20 years.  Back then, I can safely say I didn't appreciate it.  I found some of the boxing action ridiculous (and still do, in the case of the last Robinson fight), and I didn't really have much of an eye back then for the craft of putting together something like this.  Plus, I think I felt like something had happened between Joey and Vickie, and I'm not sure where I got that that idea from anymore.  This time...it was almost like I hadn't seen it at all, and I guess on a lot of levels, I hadn't.  I still think it's maybe a little too long - some of the post-boxing stuff could be shorter, especially if they'd had something else besides the passage of time to really make his suspension feel like it had consequences - but everything else is basically letter perfect.  I think this is probably my favorite Joe Pesci role.  I also really found myself liking the script, which felt a lot more natural than, well, just about any other movie you'll ever watch, because, hey, people repeat themselves and don't just say flowery bullshit all the time!  I'd still probably rate this lower than a lot of you - I think it'd fall at # 4 for the 80s behind Videodrome, Raiders of the Lost Ark (only the most rewatchable movie ever), and Come & See, in that order - but it's nice to finally 'get' this one.

Still probably won't fucking like Taxi Driver, though.

Edited by Contentious C
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Cobra Commander

Cobra Commander

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I watched Beavis and Butthead Do The Universe tonight.

When the worst thing you could say about the movie is that it wrote the two main characters a little too smart at times. Overall, if you can buy into the concept of a black hole teleporting you from deep space to Galveston, the movie is realistic enough. Also nice to not have any forced or near forced references to Covid in the movie so that it's as evergreen as possible for a movie about dumbass teens time traveling from the 90s to the 2020s. It's essentially the B movie equivalent to Beavis and Butthead Do America.

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