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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.
I gave Hell or High Water a watch last night and thought it was very good. Easily the best performance of Chris Pine's career in my eyes, and Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster were also excellent. Besides the themes the movie explores, what was really impressive to me were the number of memorable one scene characters -- the old guy in the bank who's more concerned that the two robbing the bank are white and not Mexican than he is that he's being robbed, the waitress who doesn't want to give up her big tip to the rangers, the "rattlesnake" waitress. This is a movie that really understands these people and this region.
I found the end of the police investigation a little flimsy. Obviously Bridges knows Chris Pine is guilty, even if he doesn't have the evidence. But the motive should be extremely easy to suss out with a little leg work. I didn't really buy that the police would write him off as a suspect so quickly. But that aside, it leads to the incredibly uneasy standoff at the end, which was a great way to leave things.
I've now seen all of Sheridan's neo-westerns and I'm not sure which I liked the most. They're all very enjoyable and quite different from one another, at least in story. Hell or High Water probably gets bumped down the most just because of the hand waving around Pine as a suspect, but like I said, I'll overlook that for the sake of the conclusion.
So instead of making a post that gets zero comments, I'll just do it here. Here's an early spitball of the 2025 Oscar's:
Picture
Also: I'm dog earring Twisters and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as potential surprise populist contenders ala Top Gun: Maverick.
Director
Original Screenplay
Adapted Screenplay
Lead Actor
Lead Actress
Supporting Actor
Supporting Actress
Film Editing
Did anybody happen to catch Ninety-Five Senses from Jared and Jerusha Hess (Napoleon Dynamite)? If not, try to find it. Its around the typical piracy spots if you're cool with stealing.
Beautiful short. Not worth a win, but still great.
quick edit: War is Over was neat... but a little too much like a heavy handed Coke ad or something.
Since we are doing High Noon this week I have been watching a handful of various older westerns.
The Gunfighter from 1950 is interesting in relation to High Noon. It follows a similar theme of how violence catches up with you whether you want to or not, and Gregory Peck even turned down an offer for High Noon because he felt the role was too similar to this one. It was a pleasant surprise and it seems to be a bit overlooked in the history of classic westerns.
Anthony Mann and James Stewart worked together on a handful of westerns. Most noteworthy are Winchester '73 and The Man From Laramie. I watched two very similar movies centered around the conflict of peaceful settlers and greedy gold minners in Bend of the River from 1952 and The Far Country from 1954. Not bad, but definitely the lesser ones of Mann's and Stewart's westerns.
John Wayne is hard to ignore when it comes to western, so it was fun to add Red River from 1948 and The Shootist from 1976. The latter is also somewhat similar to High Noon and The Gunfighter, and practically works as Wayne's farewell legacy movie playing an aging gunslinger that is diagnosed with cancer but it is hard to die peacefully with his reputation. Red River is also interesting because Wayne is sort of the bad guy in this epic cattle drive that feels like an extended episode of Rawhide.