Midweek Movie Free Talk

I saw The Quick and the Dead.

This is gonna be really embarrassing for me to admit and very Zoomer behavior on my part. I didn't know about this movie's existence until I saw an edit of Leonardo DiCaprio on TikTok. So I googled Leonardo DiCaprio western, and found out it was directed by Sam Raimi.

I really don't know why I didn't know about this movie. It is so fucking sick. Like it's probably Sam Raimi's best movie. I know it got bad reviews at the time, but it's pretty well received currently as you can see. I'm surprised it's not a bigger deal.

I can see why critics didn't like it at the time. Criticism from the 90s to the late 00s was heavily middle-brow. Something as shamelessly b-movie esque as this wouldn't do so well. Not unless you're Quentin Tarantino. I'm pretty middle brow myself but I have a soft spot for b-movies, grindhouse, and exploitation flicks. And I feel like this cuts the difference between a b-movie western and a middle brow studio film.

So I'm gonna post again (and probably again tomorrow) so bare with me here.

There's this filmmaker named S. Craig Zahler. He first came into the film world with Bone Tomahawk which was very acclaimed, and was embraced by a lot of horror fans. In 2017 he came out with Brawl in Cell Block 99, I don't actually remember anything about this film's release so I'm not gonna talk about the attitude towards it cause I simply don't know. In 2018 however, his film Dragged Across Concrete premiered at the Venice Film Festival. While the film still received positive reviews, there was this big hooha done by a lot of media outlets about it being a MAGA film (no doubt aided by the casting of Mel Gibson). Zahler got accused of bigotry, of being a Trump supporter, something that he has denied under the blanket of "I'm not political." The subject matter doesn't help, where our heroes are white male cops who commit a bit of police brutality in the beginning of the film.

As we've moved away from the age of Trump, I do believe Zahler has been going over a bit of a rehabilitation among even liberal viewers.

My interest in him reignited when Dragged Across Concrete was surprisingly the number 1 movie on Netflix's weekly list earlier this year. It wasn't until right now, however, that I decided to give all three of his films a watch.

Bone Tomahawk

So I do remember this movie coming out. But I didn't have interest in watching it. Then a few years later RedLetterMedia posted a reView of the film. I still didn't watch it, but after they posted that video I did put it on my watchlist.

At the time that Dragged Across Concrete came out I did not know they were the same filmmaker. But now that I do, I do wonder how this would have been received in a post-Trump world. There's the top letterboxd review for this film wherein the user refers to it as "the first Trump horror" but most people called him crazy.

I really enjoyed this film. It started off kind of wonky for me (which is the pattern that would follow for the other three films). Right away I was kind of turned off by the way it looked. It looked like a cheap straight to digital movie, which it is. And the performances and the dialogue of the first two people we see certainly threw me off. I wasn't expecting the homage to exploitation films to be that deep into it.

After a while though it kind of goes away. I'm not sure if I just got used to it every time or something, but at some point it hits better. The performances are much better, the dialogue is much better, and I just got lost in the film.

And what an insane nightmare fever dream this turns into at the end. It is so insanely gruesome and violent.

But by the end, with the last shot, and the score, it left me impressed with how beautiful a film it actually is.

Brawl in Cell Block 99

So this is actually my least favorite of his. I still liked it, it's entertaining and Vince Vaughn is surprisingly good. But the cheap look to it never really goes away. It looks like an Uwe Boll film.

But what I liked about this film was the utter focus on character. The actual plot is fairly simple, but it's this deep dive on Vince Vaughn's character. Who's basically like a Terminator who can just fuck people up easily.

It felt satisfying but I still wasn't left with the feeling of beauty that Bone Tomahawk left me with.

Dragged Across Concrete

This is another one where it's a shaky start (like there's an actual five minute conversation between characters where they talk about cancel culture in a non-human way).

But at the end of it, I was left feeling like I had just watched a pulpy masterpiece. It is Zahler's best film, his technical craftsmanship really shows here. It doesn't look like an Uwe Boll film and it doesn't have that cheap digital look that Bone Tomahawk did.

There are sequences that are just filled with tension. Everyone's performance here is great. And it never stops being entertaining. It just good story telling. We see the evolution and the build up to the eventual violent pay off at the end.

I don't think Zahler is racist or bigoted (I mean he's worked with a lot of minority actors). But I do think he actively tries to court a more conservative crowd (I mean why else would you cast Mel Gibson). But I think the idea that his films have a conservative ideology just stems from the nature of the exploitation films that he's inspired by. Exploitation films would be called bigoted in some way especially by today's standards. And if you're not used to them, or you're too used to seeing everything through a particular lens, it's gonna come off as being Trumpian to you.

Alright, last comment from me in this thread.

Thanskgiving

I've never seen an Eli Roth movie in my life. But what got me to watch this is that out of all the big releases this weekend, and even this month, this got the best reviews, shockingly.

So from what I read people start off going "this is like Scream" and then towards they go "oh yeah this is the guy that directed Hostel" And that's exactly what you get. I ain't gonna lie, it's pretty fun.

The effects are actually kind of awesome. And, while the movie plays it mostly straight, it has kind of a sense of humor to it. It's a fun quick ride, and a cool callback to a lot of old slashers.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

I was in high school when the original four movies released. I never cared about them. I thought they were kind of boring, I thought the performances were mostly bland (I actually kind of knew the girl that played Primrose because she's from here but that's not important). As much as I like Jennifer Lawrence as an actress, she really slept walk through those films (what's strange is that she had a movie release each year that had a much better performance in it).

This was good. Really good. It is shot, edited, and acted better than all the other three movies. It feels like there was a lot of effort and care put into this movie. More than any of the original movies, which is kind of strange to me. I would even go as far to say that it is beautifully made.

Rachel Zegler is so good in this, it reminded me why I loved her so much in West Side Story. The main guy is also great as this kid who slowly starts losing his mind. Jason Schwartzman is funny as the sort of precursor to Stanley Tucci in the original movies.

I think what really helps is that this is an interesting story. It's not the cliche YA crap that the original trilogy was. The chosen one narrative, the bullshit love triangle where the actors don't have any chemistry on screen. None of that is present here. The love story here is focused, endearing even, and they have so much chemistry together.

This is what I wanted this series to be from the beginning. It's darker in tone, it feels more brutal. Like it's just good. I do not understand why this has the worst reviews of the franchise, it is easily the best of the series.

Saw Priscilla this past weekend. It was pretty good! Really beautifully-made movie, even though SPOILER it ended pretty quietly, right as Priscilla actually began to find her own life. I would definitely recommend checking it out, especially if you like Sofia Coppola.

We watched Drive My Car last week here and this led me to watch The Worst Person in the World which seems to be many peoples second choice for the International Academy Award that year. It was easier for me to get into this, most likely because the cultural distance to Norway is practical zero for me - and it is just more charming and funny compared to the very subdued and restrained Drive My Car.

I was rolling my eyes at the start about a young millennial and her indecisiveness with her education and relationships. Not really in the mood to a movie about that kind of struggle. While it sort of is exactly that, there was also plenty more to keep me interested - especially all the other people Julia encounters. So the movie did end up winning me over gradually. The structure with a prologue, 12 chapters and an epilogue works really well here to set the frame around a narrative that is very messy and without any clear character arc or plot - which is sort of refreshing because that is how life can be. Each little chapter can stand on its own, some elements adding to the overall picture and other things are just left where there are. I actually found that structure very pleasant to follow and experience. Everything is showed with a great level of charm, humor and romanticism that never overstays its welcome.

In some ways this feels like a movie aimed at millennials, and while I am technically one, I could probably mostly relate to the older Aksel. Of course it is not a requirement to personally relate to characters in order to enjoy a movie, and this manages to show an interesting depiction of someones messy life and struggle with finding meaning - even though I can barely relate to any of it. And I think people of all ages will be able to get something out of this.