Jump to content
DVDVR Message Board

2022 Movies Discussion Thread (v.2.0)


RIPPA

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, Contentious C said:

I think that's just how some bald guys look.  I've seen a few others that look like that.  Maybe weight gain/loss?

Anyway, it's Day 533 (and counting) of some bullshit, Men with the World's Worst Daddy Issues Edition.

ALERT ALERT ALERT - Unforgivable Instance of Film Malpractice, Flaming Dogshit in a Sequel

A Christmas Story 2 - Ugh.  I'm not one to extol the virtues of the original film, because, frankly, it has very few of them: the fatalistic rudeness of Santa shoving Ralphie off the slide with a hobnailed boot, and the quick chop of the duck's head at the Chinese restaurant, and....yeah, we're done here.  It's not a good film itself, but it certainly speaks to a section of American culture, and the "say one thing in dulcet tones, show us the rotten truth" device is ultimately lazy but well-done enough, considering.  This movie, though?  Oh, go fuck yourself.  Take every joke from the original, find a way to dumb it down and make it horribly unfunny, and then fill in the blanks with stuff that vaguely resembles "fan service" but looks more like Larry Sellers plagiarized the original script and lost it in the Dude's El Camino.  I think I laughed twice, and otherwise this was like nails on a chalkboard.  I'm pretty sure everyone who watches this comes away having less charisma than they did before viewing it, much like everyone who acted in it; it's not a Dump Stat, it's a Dump Stat Vortex.  But, now I never have to see it again.  Also, Daniel Stern and his attempt at out-turkey-necking George Lucas should never appear in anything ever again.

Your Baby's Dirty Diaper

Copenhagen - I wondered why Netflix recommended this, and also why it looked a tad familiar, but it was directed by the same guy who did Kodachrome, so, there you have it.  But, it turns out that guy might be something of a pederast, if this squicky fucking script is any indication.  Gethin Anthony, who you'd recognize as the very gay and very dead Baratheon brother from Game of Thrones, is well and truly a first-rate, S-tier, Grade-A shitheel for most of this movie, but that might be about all it has going for it, and it's not like when his inevitable moment of self-reflection comes that you truly believe it, since he's been so thoroughly awful for most of the film.  There are just far better instances of "cad learns not to be a cad" than this; it feels like a weird combination of 'way too autobiographical' from the director and 'wanted to see the young ingenue's tits on camera' from said director.  Either way, blech.

Saturday Night Fever - This isn't really a rewatch, since I'd only ever seen the first few minutes, as well as most of the dancing sequences before.  Turns out, if I'd ever sat down and watched the rest of the movie, I'd remember it, because holy SHIT is this one of the most appalling piles of crap to ever be called a "classic".  The *music* might be famous, but maybe people have developed some serious selective amnesia about the horrorshow of misogyny that permeates the other ninety minutes-plus of footage here.  None of the characters are well-written or remotely likable, and yet we're supposed to, what, sympathize with Polyester Alex Delarge and his droogs?  Uh, no.  Nope.  Uh-uh.  By the end you hope they all jump off the fucking bridge. 

Staying Alive - This, on the other hand, I hadn't seen a moment of, even by accident.  And it feels like the legacies of these two movies should be reversed: this may not have much (or any) memorable music to it, unless you like making fun of Frank Stallone (btw, this was probably Norm Macdonald's favorite movie), but the actual *story* is loads better, since it isn't just a collection of every awful racist and sexist thought the screenwriter ever had.  So, even though this is thought of as a turkey, it probably shouldn't be, and a lot of the credit for that goes to the script that Sylvester Stallone co-wrote.  Unlike the prior movie, this actually shows some believable, understandable growth from Tony, and for once, you actually want to see him succeed.  But, then you get to the fucking RIDICULOUS Broadway show, and it's hard to keep a straight face.  I don't know if that's really a condemnation of this movie, though, or if it's a reflection of the state of Broadway in the early 80s (The Fan was every bit as hokey when it did stage sections).  Plus, Finola Hughes is maybe the deepest of my deep-cut celebrity crushes, and clearly, she was always stunningly beautiful.

AXE Body Spray Instead of Shower

We're the Millers - Whew, a lot of crap this week.  This probably could have easily gone a notch lower, as I'm beginning to realize from his film catalog what a complete fucking psychopath Jason Sudeikis must actually be.  The thing is, I just don't understand why Olivia Wilde didn't spot it sooner, unless she is also a complete fucking psychopath of a different sort.  Most of this is pretty predictable stuff, and it's not really that funny; I'd imagine most people who've seen it are guys who wanted to see Jennifer Aniston do a pole dance.  But for me, the real winner?  It's the scene where he comes clean about the money and how he'll split it up, and he tells a homeless runaway he'll give her $125,000.  "You can buy yourself a house and then run away from it!"  Put that one in the Comedy Hall of Fame.  The rest of it sucks.

Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki - I kinda hate to say it, but having seen 2 Miyazaki docs now, I kind of think he's more interesting than his movies are or were.  It's just such a strange thing to see this hard-edged, sorta-crazy, exacting, obsessive perfectionist always push and push and push, especially when so many of his movies have such different emotional tones to them than what he evidently walks around with on a daily basis.  This ends in an appropriate way, with Miyazaki saying, "I'd rather die that way (waiting for my next movie to be done) than doing nothing; I'd rather die while I have something to live for."  Nothing else can quite encapsulate his strange behavior any better than the notion that creating is the only thing that's given his life purpose.  But, this is in the category it's in not because of the subject matter, but because of what a shoddy job NHK did in making this in the first place.  It feels quarter-assed and amateurish and rarely seems like the technical quality is on par with its subject.

Yeah, But...

The French Dispatch - I should probably rename this category, "The Wesley Wales Anderson Memorial Award for Nearly Always Hitting but Instead Consistently Missing the Bulls-eye" because GOD if he doesn't just do this over and over again.  Grand Budapest and Fantastic Mr. Fox are a cut above for me, but everything else he's done, this included, is just a little too disjointed, or a little too long, or spends too much time with characters who are not that interesting, or indulges his habit of casting his favorites even when they don't really add to the movie.  This one probably falls into the latter 2 categories, if any.  Benicio del Toro's bit is a good section, but I'm not sure the other pieces quite hit the same heights, except with trickery (like the animated sequences towards the end).  Then again, you can make a strong argument at this point that his entire repertoire is trickery...just like every other director's, except he wants you to know you're being tricked.

Glass Onion - I refuse to call this "A Knives Out Mystery"...why didn't he call it "A Benoit Blanc Mystery"?  Like, c'mon, it was right there.  I didn't care that much for Knives Out; I'm not sure this is substantially better, but it's more fun, and it seemed like the cast had more fun with it.  I actually didn't track Janelle Monae at first - I thought she was Ayo Edebiri from The Bear, and then I had to spend the entire movie asking myself if she would have been better in the film than Monae was.  The first hour is pretty tight, but I think it loses too much momentum once it starts explaining itself.  I also wonder how well this will hold up over time, if we'll still be having a good laugh at the expense of these sorts of vacuous dipshits, or if we'll be too busy stealing guzzoline from one another and trying to stay shiny and chrome.  Enjoy it while you can, I guess.

Rian Johnson is reportedly pissed that he was forced to include the "A Knives Out Mystery" tag in the title, but it was insisted upon.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh shit! I neglected to mention I watched just about all of The Last King of Scotland today too. It really deserves a second viewing; the progression of events I thought was too predictable but that's kind of the nature of the beast. The racist English dude finally having to tell Doc that he was supporting evil was ironic. The dead body scene was legit shocking, I almost expected them to reference Amin's supposed cannibalism instead of THAT (the hooks too!). It really is kind of formulaic the more I think about it (good guy falls in with a bad crowd and the walls close in) but the acting was so good, and Forrest definitely deserved his Oscar. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Decided to get back into the Val Lewton RKO films. Found a couple that I wasn't able to find when I initially started searching for them last year (The Body Snatcher and Mademoiselle Fifi). Still can't find Youth Runs Wild, his juvenile deliquency film.

The Body Snatcher was not much to recommend. A Burke and Hare style story about Boris Karloff as a grave robber who supplies to a doctor and his apprentice, who resorts to killing to provide specimens. Love Karloff, but its closer to a creaky Universal style horror that Lewton actively didn't want to make. Too much time on a saccharine story about a paralyzed girl needing a special surgery to walk again. It's the catalyst of the plot, as the doctor wants a cadaver to practise on, but they come back to it way too much. Mostly notable for being the last time Karloff and Bela Lugosi were in a movie together. The one scene they have together is the best in the whole movie. Lugosi finds out about the murder and goes to blackmail Karloff and it goes about as well as you suspect it would. The low end of the Lewton films for sure, but that scene makes it a worthwhile watch.

Rewatched The 7th Victim after and that may be my favourite of the bunch. Really dark subject matter for a early 40s film. A young girl goes to New York to find her missing sister and discovers that she was caught up in a Satanic cult (of the bored, rich Greenwich Villagers type cult, not cloak-wearing, dark spell type cult). Spoiler for the end and how surprisingly dark the subject matter is:

Spoiler

The sister, Jacqueline, has been obsessed with suicide her whole life. To the extent that she keeps an apartment with nothing but a noose and chair in it.

The cult has decided that she must die because she betrayed them by discussing them with her psychiatrist and attempt to get her to kill herself by sitting her in a chair with a glass of poison in front of her. They surround her and try to get her to drink it by saying its what she's always wanted, that she has no future so she might as well do it, etc. It is pretty tough to watch.

Even though she refuses and they eventually let her go, she feels so hopeless that the last scene of the movie is her walking into that apartment. We hear the sound of a chair toppling over and the movie ends. It's really unexpected for a movie of the time.

I've watched it now a couple times and it still gets me. There's some period-specific things that undercut the horror for a modern viewer and a really inappropriate shoehorned in romance, but it's still so fucking good. Big recommendation.

The sister is played by Jean Brooks, who herself is a sad tale of washing out of Hollywood and dying of cirrhosis at a young age. She gives such a haunted performance.

Still need to watch Fifi, Bedlam, and Youth Runs Wild but I think my current personal listing has them at (spoilered for space and for people who don't care to see other people's lists):
 

Spoiler

1. The 7th Victim

2. The Curse of the Cat People

3. Isle of the Dead

4. Cat People

5. The Leopard Man

6. I Walked with a Zombie

7. The Ghost Ship

8. The Body Snatcher

NC: Mademoiselle Fifi, Bedlam, Youth Runs Wild

2-6 I could honestly jumble up a lot of different ways depending on the day, but that's my current thoughts. The Ghost Ship is a good movie about gaslighting, but 1-6 are capital-G Great movies.

Edited by elizium
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I miss the late great Alan Rickman. Was gutted when he passed. Two of the best bad guys ever: Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988) and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) Sheriff of Nothingham. Not a villain but great in Galaxy Quest (1999).

Edited by The Natural
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, elizium said:

Decided to get back into the Val Lewton RKO films.

 

Liked this post. For me, The 7th Victim would be #3 after The Curse of the Cat People and Cat People respectively and followed by The Leopard Man, I Walked With a Zombie, and Bedlam as the cream of the crop. I'm probably a little higher on The Body Snatcher but it would still come after Isle of the Dead and The Ghost Ship. Can't really go wrong with any of those, though. I also have a weird crush on Elizabeth Russell who shows up in several Lewton films and is basically the villainess of Curse.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Execproducer said:

Liked this post. For me, The 7th Victim would be #3 after The Curse of the Cat People and Cat People respectively and followed by The Leopard Man, I Walked With a Zombie, and Bedlam as the cream of the crop. I'm probably a little higher on The Body Snatcher but it would still come after Isle of the Dead and The Ghost Ship. Can't really go wrong with any of those, though. I also have a weird crush on Elizabeth Russell who shows up in several Lewton films and is basically the villainess of Curse.

It actually kills me to have The Leopard Man so low but as I said, you could ask me tomorrow and I might order them a bit differently. The Leopard Man I think might have the single best scene of any of the Lewton films, with the girl being stalked on her way home by the leopard at the beginning. Truly terrifying and heartbreaking. 
 

The Ghost Ship would probably remain where it is, but has the best pure villain out of any of the movies, in Captain Stone. 
 

I love how Lewton and DeWitt Bodeen took an impossible situation; making a sequel to Cat People with the studio demanding they bring back Simone Simon’s deceased Irena and turned it into a fucked up fairy tale ghost story 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, elizium said:

I love how Lewton and DeWitt Bodeen took an impossible situation; making a sequel to Cat People with the studio demanding they bring back Simone Simon’s deceased Irena and turned it into a fucked up fairy tale ghost story 

That's exactly why I love it the most. It really is brilliant in that it is the Lewton film that shows you the most in terms of a supernatural element in the form of the spectral Irena and yet it is almost certainly the product of the imagination of a lonely child and Lewton's most plausible film.

And yeah, that scene from The Leopard Man is truly heart-breaking.

Edited by Execproducer
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Man, I love The Body Snatcher. The end of that is sick. Karloff is such a dark presence the whole time. 

There are a couple Lewtons on my DVR but sadly The 7th Victim isn't one I don't think. It's probably just Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, Isle of the Dead and Body Snatcher sadly. 

EDIT: Only Cat People and The Body Snatcher? Dammit. Well, they always show up on TCM, even when you least expect them. 

Edited by Curt McGirt
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Karloff is 100% great in it, but he's 100% great in everything. I just think the apprentice character, basically our lead, was a wooden plank. And I can't tell you enough how much I hated the little girl subplot. I know they wanted to end the movie on a happy note, but its so cloying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Got around to watching Paid In Full last night and that is one of the best crime films I've ever seen. We all know that Wood Harris is great but his reluctant yet talented dealer is a super role. I knew about the actual story ahead of time but couldn't remember how it really turned out (and I think they took some creative license) so it was a bit of a surprise, and then at the very end 

Spoiler

breaking the fourth wall while dissing paper gangsters at the same time

was choice. The choice of film stock/color tone and the period fashions and vehicles... *mwah* It was just really really good. You wouldn't expect that from A Damon Dash Production but there you go. Highest recommendation. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I've plugged this before, but I highly recommend the podcast Secret History of Hollywood's 11 part Lewton series; Shadows. It is fantastic. Lewton's story is fascinating and its a great look at how B-movies were made in the studio system. My favourite bit is learning that RKO basically gave him free reign to write the stories he wanted, but he was given the titles. Not after the fact, before. They focused tested a bunch of potential titles and would be like "Hey Val, your next movie for us is going to be called Cat People" and then he'd have to go and write a movie around that title. Imagine being handed a slip of paper with "I Walked with a Zombie" on it and having to go and make something out of it.

Most of SHoH is behind their patreon paywall, but that one is still available for free on Apple podcasts. Each episode also opens with a folk tale read by Mark Gatiss that somehow ties in thematically with the episode, whether to an event in his life or the movie that episode focuses on. The host of the episodes, Mark Roche, is a fantastic story teller as well. These are not dry recitations of facts.

I also really recommend the Cary Grant series they are in the middle of. It is comprehensive. One episode is about 14 hours long. The Lewton episodes vary from about 1.5 hours to I think 5 or 6 hours is the longest.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, elizium said:

My favourite bit is learning that RKO basically gave him free reign to write the stories he wanted, but he was given the titles. Not after the fact, before. They focused tested a bunch of potential titles and would be like "Hey Val, your next movie for us is going to be called Cat People" and then he'd have to go and write a movie around that title. Imagine being handed a slip of paper with "I Walked with a Zombie" on it and having to go and make something out of it.

 

Just finished the first episode. 2 hours and 12 minutes to get to that point but every minute of it was engrossing.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best first-time watches of 2022:

Any Number Can Win

The American Friend

Virunga

Ride the High Country

Road Games

Fascination

Bad Day at Black Rock

Walkabout

Bacarau

Body Heat

Before Trilogy

Himiko

Mr. Klein

Round Midnight

Witchhammer

Story of a Cloistered Nun

Clearcut

Jules & Jim

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/29/2022 at 9:51 PM, Brian Fowler said:

Rian Johnson is reportedly pissed that he was forced to include the "A Knives Out Mystery" tag in the title, but it was insisted upon.

When I saw the first trailer, I was like, "Are we all that stupid that this movie needs Knives Out name recognition?"

Then I browsed over to the YouTube recommended clips page and realized that indeed we are all that stupid.

  • Like 2
  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Execproducer said:

Just finished the first episode. 2 hours and 12 minutes to get to that point but every minute of it was engrossing.

It's a commitment, but it never drags. One day I'll sub to their patreon, because everything I've listened to from that podcast have been fantastic and I'm really interested in seeing what the stuff they've never released for free is. I've really loved the Cary Grant episodes I've listened to. Haven't listened to the latest yet, as I've been going through the Too Scary, Didn't Watch back catalogue

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • RIPPA locked and unpinned this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...