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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 have checked off Oppenheimer now and it was generally good, but not mindblowing. I am probably also biased since I am not really a fan of Nolan - with a few exceptions. Most of my qualms with it seems to be with his directing choices.
I am sucker for movies shot on film and the look of this is absolutely top tier. Great cinematic look and feel. I liked the script and the broken up narrative structure. I think it would have been a slog if it was told strictly linear, so the time jumps didn't bother me. It helped with keeping things interesting throughout the 3 hour runtime. I found Matt Damon and Downey Jr to deliver really great performances, really getting to know their characters. Oppenheimer himself remained more of a mystery, which may be a point in itself, but since the movie is focused on him, I didn't feel we really got inside his head or understood his motivations. However I do think Nolan intended it to be that way. I am fine with not getting all the answers.
My main issue lies with most of the editing and directing choices. Editing is best when it is mostly left unnoticed, but here it was very jarring many times. Super fast cuts in slow scenes, the overall pace of the film was somewhat exhausting and the constant need to add hyper intensive musical cues just frustrated me more than it added to the drama. Though this is just personal preference where I tend to prefer slower pace overall, but for fans of this particular Nolan style it delivers.
I feel like we did. At the very least we definitely understood how he felt about his work after it was completed. I think the film's emotions are shaped by Oppenheiemer's.
Nah. I think editing can be great even when it's extremely noticable. One of Nolan's biggest inspirations is Michael Mann, pecifically Heat, and Mann is known for his bombastic editing. I think that's part of why Oppenheimer and Dunkirk feel epic.
The editor for this is Jennifer Lame, who also edited Manchester by the Sea and Marriage Story (and who first worked with Nolan on Tenet). Those two movies probably fit more into the subtle editing you're talking about, but they still have a lot of flashy sequences like the police station scene in Manchester or the argument scene and the gate closing scene in Marriage Story.
I think it's more noticeable in Oppenheimer because of the scale of everything, and that it's supposed to be feel more like a thriller which is why the pacing is so fast.
The key here is that in Lawrence of Arabia that specific cut is special and thus a great exception because you notice it. The rest of the movie isn't like that. While with Oppenheimer the jarring cuts was almost a constant. I can see it tries to be a thriller but not successfully in my opinion.
if you're up for suffering, this edit is chronological -- https://www.chronoloppenheimer.com
I'm in your camp re: Nolan. I couldn't get through this film at all.
Wife and I are watching Drive My Car, a Japanese film adapted from the short story by Haruki Murakami. They added material to the short story but it all feels natural. Really good watch if you like slow burn art house films.
I decided to go for a Joe Spinell in 1980 double feature with Cruising and The Ninth Configuration. There are multiple interesting connections between them. The first I already mentioned with Joe Spinell in both.
Cruising was directed by William Friedkin who famously directed The Exorcist, a film written by William Peter Blatty. Friedkin's film about the NY gay scene has compelling moments, but not my favorite from the director.
William Peter Blatty wrote and directed The Ninth Configuration and you can feel his style all over it with characters debating science and faith. Jason Miller, who most famously played Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist also appears in this Blatty film. The script and dialogue for this is excellent. I really need to get around to continuing the Exorcist series to watch Blatty's entry.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
It's not always that a films box office performance is the reason I go out and watch a movie. The last time I did this was for Elemental after it had pretty incredible legs. And now GxK is outperforming all expectations and having the biggest Monsterverse opening since the 2014 Godzilla.
So that, mixed with me not having seen a movie in theaters since Drive Away Dolls, made me go watch this despite not being interested in it. I remember liking Godzilla v Kong enough. I saw it on HBOMAX, and there's a decent chance I was drunk when I watched it since I don't really remember a lot from it. But my memory keeps souring on it as time goes on.
I hated this honestly. I thought it was headache inducing with all the lore explanations and all the loud noises. I was mentally checked out from it less than a third of the way in. I probably would have walked out of the theater, but I have this thing about wasting money so I sat through the rest of it and hoped maybe I would like some of it.
I guess some of the fight scenes were cool, I liked Dan Stevens, and that's about it.
I liked Adam Wingard's previous work, including the 2016 Blair Witch which I saw at an advance screening before reviews were out and was surprised at the strong negative critical reception of it. But it's weird that a guy that started off as a genre filmmaker with a strong style with You're Welcome and The Guest has pivoted to these movies that don't have any discernible style or characterstics. I don't think this is visually interesting in any way.
It reminded me that, although I might be a nerd, I'm not this type of nerd. I know people love this shit, I know they make memes about monk v lizard and stuff. It reminds me of the Fast and Furious stuff we would see in the late 2010s, which has now calmed down after 9 and X came out to negative reception. I liked the 2014 Godzilla, I liked Kong Skull Island, just like how I liked Fast Five, F&F 6, and Furious 7. But this franchise fell hard for me starting off with King of Monsters.
It is not everyday I see a new movie that I would classify as a masterpiece, but that was the case when I saw A Separation. An Iranian film from 2011 directed by Asghar Farhadi. It is a small family drama spiraling into courthouse drama not unlike Anatomy of a Fall. Starts off with a middle-class family struggling to take care of an aging family member with alzheimers, so they hire a woman to look after him during work hours. Unfortunate accidents happen and otherwise good people are stressed close to their breaking point and things get worse. There isn't a single bad person here. All feel very authentic and worthy of sympathy, but we see how illness and poverty can strain even good people. Throw in religious complications as well as a cherry on top.