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Midweek Movie Free Talk
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
White Noise
I’m a big fan of Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story was my favorite of 2019. This reminds me a lot of Inherent Vice. Both are adaptations of so called unfilmmable novels. The plot is mostly nonsense and deliberately hard to follow. They’re both thematically focused as opposed to everything else. I didn’t particularly care for Inherent Vice, I think it’s one of PTA’s weakest, and I feel the same about this one.
I will say though, that this is Baumbach’s most cinematic film. He came up in the mumblecore movement, so his movies have always been more talky, his camera has always mostly been locked down. And here he’s doing a lot of Spielbergian camera movement. Adam Driver’s performance is really good, there’s some interesting monologues that I really liked. And that first hour I enjoyed a lot more than the rest of the movie.
The Menu
Finally on HBOMAX, I wanted to see this in theaters but it just didn’t work out that way. I loved it. I knew, going into it, that it was the type of thing that was up my alley. Not in small part because Adam McKay is a producer on it and I love all the stuff he’s doing.
It’s basically an eat the rich satire, which we’ve had a lot of in the past couple of years. What made this different, what it made it stand out for me, was the tension. It’s basically a thriller and a lot of moments are incredibly intense and are punctuated by the fantastic score. Also, surprisingly, very gory. I wasn’t expecting that.
Anya and Finnes are great. I thought Nicolas Hoult was very funny throughout the movie, kind of a comedic relief.
It’s like if Triangle of Sadness was good. In a better world this would have gotten the Golden Globe nomination for Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy over Triangle of Sadness. And in fact it’s kind of weird that it didn’t get it considering both Anya and Finnes were nominated.
I really liked The Menu as well; the horror was so good that on the first watch that the humor kind of just flies over your head. Which is a bit of a shame because there are some really good jokes.
I’ll make another comment. Now that I feel like I’ve seen enough movies in order to make a top 10 list. And instead of making another post like I did last year, or hunting down the 2022 post, I’ll just comment here.
Here are my top 10:
The Banshees of Inisherin was amazing and has no business being that good. I love that Colin Farrell it’s into these quiet, weird, but refrained roles. If I quantified it, he’s probably my favourite actor.
Farrell’s career is incredibly interesting. He was deemed the next big thing after Tigerland, and then Phone Booth and then Spielberg cast him for Minority Report. Then he did a lot of bad movies, had addiction problems, his sex tape got leaked. He was considered a pretty boy that couldn’t act. And then he came out with In Bruges and ever since then has gotten an insane amount of acclaim as an actor.
I really really wanted to see Banshees but I couldn't drag the husband to the theater to watch it.
Glass Onion is also my #2 movie, but my number one didn't even make your list; Everything Everywhere All at Once.
I haven't even heard of TÁR untll recently because it's at the top of everyone's list somehow. It seems like something I would enjoy but I honestly don't know much of anything about it yet.
Banshees is on HBOMAX now, if you have that service.
I’ve talked about Tar before in these little threads. I’ve also talked about it in my awards prediction posts. It’s the second best reviewed movie of the year, behind a movie called Aftersun.
I’ve also shared my thoughts on EEAAO if you’re interested in reading them.
Edit: oh wait you’re the one that replied to my comment in that lol.
I loved Tar and Aftersun, where can I find this list?
Did you catch Tuesday (short) from Charlotte Wells? She's so talented.
Here you go
If anyone is interested in Star 80 (1980, Bob Fosse), Tarantino and Avery did two episodes of their podcast on it -- The Video Archives Podcast with Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. The knowledge these two have is unreal.
I’ll make another another comment. I’m interested in what movies everyone saw in theaters in 2022? This is something that was done in the box office subreddit, but I’m interested in what “normies” usually watch.
Here’s all of the ones I saw:
Bullet Train was a pretty fantastic movie, too. It's a bit of a shame, though, because I'm sure nobody will remember it in a year's time; I haven't heard anyone talking about it. Hopefully it will make more of an impact on streaming than in the theaters.
Now that I think about it this year has been full of really great movies; there hasn't been as big of a list of movies that I would recommend for years. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for thrilling movies with a mystery behind it - Glass Onion, Bullet Train, The Menu, even Lightyear kind of fits.
While I enjoy movies, I watched zero movies in the theatre. My last theatre outing was in December of 2019.