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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 usually post Oscar predictions right out of Cannes, but I’m struggling for two reasons: Netflix and A24. They currently do not have contenders. I predicted Hit Man for Netflix, but they’re really burying that. Maybe regional critic awards and the Globes can prop it up, but at this point I’m not sure Netflix even wants people to see it. I had originally pegged We Live in Time as A24’s main contender (it’s from the Director of Brooklyn and stars Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh) but test screenings have gone poorly. I suppose they can go with Sing Sing but I don’t really buy that happening.
While it seems like Searchlight is gonna prioritize A Real Pain and Focus will prioritize Conclave, again im not entirely sure if that will be the case. They can both easily change their minds closer to the actual Oscar season. Focus might actually go with Nosferatu and Searchlight might go with Kinds of Kindness. I just don’t know.
The only things I’m sure of: WB will get both Dune and Joker in. Neon will prioritize Anora. Apple/Sony will prioritize Blitz.
I guess I could cobble together a quick Director prediction:
The first four I’m good with but Berger didn’t even get in for a techy war film. The strikes really muted this year in a lot of ways.
Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros (2023, 82%, Documentary)
This was awesome! Four hours is... a lot, but it was great to see the level of detail and overall operation for just one day. While most of it is in french, you can easily have this on in the background and see what's going on. I bumped Harold and Maude for this.
edit: I'm never going to watch Harold and Maude. I bumped it again to watch All That Jazz, which was awesome and perfect.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare - 3/10
This just fell flat. There was never really any tension because the heroes easily mowed down their opponents in every single action sequence. It felt like I was watching someone play a game on "very easy" - the main bad guy was also such a caricature that he may as well have been named Dr. Evil and been in an early 2000's video game. The location in the movie is a desert but in real life it's a lush, green island, so even though it's based on real events, it is even less historically correct than Inglorious Bastards. I am no fan of Guy Ritchie but I usually like his style, so that's about the only thing that prevents me from fully regretting wasting my time watching this movie. But still, what a dud.
Also, the Danish character apparently grew up hunting bears and elk on his family estate.. we do not have bears and elk in Denmark lol. So that about sums up this movie.
(Edit: forgot to add that the portrayal of Churchill here is the worst that I have ever seen, I usually really like Rory Kinnear but he was just egregious in this role!)
The Fall Guy - 7/10
This was a fun watch! Ryan Gosling is doing so many light roles the past years and I love him for it. Emily Blunt is always a pleasure as well, and Aaron Taylor Johnson was also there. I have somehow watched all of David Leitch's movies, without realizing it, but he is continuing a pretty good streak of action comedies. I mean, they are a little middle of the road sometimes, but it's great entertainment to turn your brain off for 2 hours.
Civil War - 9/10
Incredible stuff. Gripping throughout, and even on the edge of my seat for most of it. I'm having problems putting my feelings into words about it, but it just really got to me and had me fully absorbed. The best and worst of humanity displayed in such great ways: I mean Jesse Plemons, enough said! The shot of Wagner Moura where tanks roll by behind him! The sequence where Kirsten Dunst's soul leaves her body! The way the pictures taken seamlessly blend into everything!
Ammonite - 8/10
This often gets called the discount version of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and while there certainly are a lot of similarities, I feel like it's a very cheap shot. Portrait is a 9/10 for me, but Ammonite stands on its own for sure. It's a great story. The only thing I had a problem with was a scene that felt very off when Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan are in the ocean, but other than that, they both give stellar performances which is practically a given at this point. I think there are those that would call this a slow movie, but for me, that's what makes it so good because when you then finally get release, it's been built up for so long meaning the climactic moments feel earned and all the more powerful. And if that isn't quintessentially lesbian, I don't know what is.
Yeah I agree with you on Ungentlemanly Warfare, I’m curious if you’ve ever seen Man From UNCLE. Warfare feels like a spiritual successor to it, but UNCLE actually has a decey screenplay, it has a more stylized look to it, and Cavill and Hammer’s chemistry is a lot of fun.
I generally agree with you Fall Guy and Civil War takes.
I haven’t seen Ammonite, but I vividly remember the trailer and poster. There weren’t a lot of major releases at the time, and predicting the Oscar’s back then was a challengez Ammonite was one of the movies people predicted really early on. But ended up joining the quite long class of This Had Oscar buzz films from the pandemic era.
I did think The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was decent-to-maybe-good on my first watch - never special though. I tried to rewatch it a couple of years later, but it fell flat and felt like such a shallow film just like the above. I remember I had to pause it for some reason, but I never resumed watching since it just didn't do anything for me. So I stopped halfway through, outright bored, and I have not attempted to rewatch it since on account of the whole cannibalism thing - I am not able to separate art from artist, because it will always be in the back of my mind that the person I'm watching (or reading/listening to) is a piece of shit, and my mind just can't let it go.
I mean, I've tried to challenge it. Bullet Train and Baby Driver come to mind. These are pretty good movies, but because they star people who have done some truly unforgivable and fucked up things, I really just can't truly enjoy them. It sours the experience so much.
Slightly digressing there, sorry.
I can't speak to Oscars races as I don't care/don't follow it, but I definitely highly recommend Ammonite!
I have seen two movies at far this year that really blew my socks off!
The first is Mars Express (dir. Jérémie Périn), which is a French, animated, sci-fi, neo-noir.
The plot follows P.I. Aline Ruby as she and her robot (this is complicated) partner Carlos as they investigate the disappearance of a college student who got herself involved in some serious robotics hacking. It is a very satisfying and twisty-wisty mystery, as well as clearly being influenced by previous sci-fi greats such as Ghost In The Shell and Blade Runner, lesser works like Minority Report and i-Robot, and what feels like perhaps a slight nod to...Coneheads?
This film has some of the best world building in have seen in a very long time, not just in how this future world uses technology, but also in how the human characters are indifferent to it in certain ways. The robots for example exist in two clear categories; those that were made to be robotic servants and helpers with clearly robotic aesthetics, and what are called "back-ups" or robots that have had the memories of humans uploaded into them after their death. You or I would probably see these two types as quite different, but the humans in this world treat them exactly the same, and it's through this indifference that the ideas and themes of the film really show through.
All in all, everything comes together beautifully in a powerful denouement set to a wonderfully French electronic score.
The second film is I Saw The TV Glow (dir. Jane Schoenbrun), a dreamy and hypnotic exploration of finding identity through media, and a cautionary tale of living a life untrue to ones-self.
Set in the 90s suburbs, Owen and Maddie are two youths who form a bond over their shared love of a very 90s teen TV show, and how they come to see themselves, but with some very strange and evocative visual and story elements, and a banging original soundtrack.
This feels to me like the memory of watching 90s teen television, not the shows them selves, and I found it to be very effecting. It has caused me to look within myself and explore my own feelings of gender and gender expression.
This movie is WEIRD, with very strange delivery of dialogue. So if realism is your bread and butter, this might leave you hungry. Just know that this filme is not for Everyone, but it is also not For everyone.
I am excited to see what this director does next! Three cheers for new queer cinema!
I wanna share a few thoughts on two very different films about showbusiness. The first being the classic musical Singin' in the Rain. I basically only knew the song beforehand and not that it was actually about the transition from silent movies to talkies in Hollywood. This movie clearly was a heavy influence on The Artist and Babylon, two movies I had many reservations with and seeing the original here sort of made me dislike those even more. This simply tells that story many times better, because it can stand on its own without drenching itself in "magic of the movies". Not without some flaws as it starts better than the last half that does drag a bit, but a lovely charming classic.
The other is Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls. The whole meta discussion about this movie was what made me want to watch it. Is it misunderstood satire or simply misogynistic trash? Probably intended to be both. Unlike with Verhoeven's Starship Troopers where there seems to be a general consensus that it is indeed satire, this is still more divisive judging from the rating distribution and from what I can gather from online discussions. I admit I am not entirely sure of my own opinion, because it was impossible to watch this blind without any pre-assumptions from this movie's legacy. I went in hoping and wanting it to be a good movie and that may have clouded my judgement.
I do think it is a powerful story with a stellar Elizabeth Berkley in the lead. Nomi is a really interesting and fully fledged multi-dimensional character. Some of the writing does fall deep into the "men writing women badly", which i choose to view as intentional. What surprised me was seeing some of the critical reviews mentioned on Wikipedia dealt with the movie not being erotic, because I barely see this as an erotic drama. All the nudity is not generally filmed with the usual erotic male-gaze lense. Unlike for example Striptease which was clearly made as an excuse to show Demi Moore naked, I didn't get that vibe at all from this movie. It is not meant to be erotic stimulating, quite the opposite, which I think is a great strength for this movie.
I am not quite in the "misunderstood masterpiece" camp, but this was very far from the reputation of "so bad it is good" and definitely not a lame excuse for watching some nudity.
Last weekend, I watched Boy Kills World and The Fall Guy on Saturday; Civil War, and Love Lies Bleeding on Sunday.
For rankings, I'd say I liked Boy Kills World a bit more than The Fall Guy, though both were fun action movies. I think I just connected with the pathos of Boy Kills World just a little bit more and also, any opportunity to bring Yayan Ruhian (who I loved in The Raid 2) to western audiences gets my thumbs up. His role as The Shaman was terrific.
For my A24 night on Sunday, I'd give the edge to Love Lies Bleeding. I have lots of love for dyke noir films, since there seems to be so few (pair this movie with the 1996 film Bound). Kristen Stewart and Anna Baryshinkov are both incredible in their roles. Definitely something everyone who is inclined to should watch.
But Civil War haunts me. On one hand, it's absolute lack of world building feels cheap. The fucking Purge movies have a more cohesive and compelling lore than Civil War does. But Civil War's imagery still haunts me many days later. The looters at the gas station was a chilling concept, and I had to rewind the whole scene with the dude in the tire to believe it actually happened. After seeing that, I was grateful my wife nixed going to see Civil War in favor of seeing the latest Ghostbusters, because I might not have gotten laid that night if she had to watch someone being burned to death in slow motion.
Still, it was an excellent weekend in cinema.
FYI dyke is a slur and very much not okay to use unless you are a lesbian yourself (which I assume you aren't, going by your username) - it would be kind of like referring to Heartstopper as a "faggot show".
I assume/hope you didn't mean offense so I'm saying this with good intentions 🤗
"dyke noir" and "butch noir" genre descriptions just FYI, not terms coined by the previous poster.
Idk whether the movie in question qualifies or not, but it's the sort of term so rarely used I don't think it was a slur attempt.
I see. I've never heard either of those terms before. This is an American thing or?
Seems like a very odd way to refer to a genre - at best inappropriate - but maybe that's just me then.
It's not a common American thing, no. I suspect is a very niche queer cinema thing but I am not a cinephile nor film analysis fan nor a particular connoisseur of queer cinema (and I'm rarely a fan of noir in general) but I did some googling and that's what I came up with.
Americans are far more sensitive when it comes to slur uses, to the point where someone will take out the word Spaz in a song because it’s a slur in the UK.
Lesbian noir as a thing is used more in academic settings and they analyze characters in noir films as being queer coded and whatnot. Definitely not a common term, but appropriate with the film being described.
I mean, it's apparently very offensive in the UK to the point that it was due to the UK fans responses that the word was taken out. I don't know if that actually implies Americans are more sensitive or if every area just has their own particular words that hit harder.
Queer labels get complicated when used outside of the community because there's not a word for us that's not been used against us.
The offensiveness of certain words seems to be a moving target. Let's take the r-word as an example. Once upon a time, it was considered a milder, more politically correct way to describe someone with mental disabilities. Calling a special needs person a "moron" was considered the more awful term and "mentally retarded" was considered more polite.
But even polite terms end up devolving into slurs, and the previous slur ends up becoming the more socially accepted term. Calling anyone the r-word is considered offensive nowadays, where I can go around calling motherfuckers morons day and night and no one will give a shit.
That said, as person who has three sisters with severe mental disabilites, anyone who calls them morons or the r-word is an absolute cunt, and I mean that in the American inflection of that word.
Every area does have different words like that, but the UK has a slang term for cigarettes that’s offensive in the U.S, yet there’s not nearly as much kerfuffle made about it in the U.K.
I think U.S artists are much more careful about causing offense, especially back in 2019 when the whole spaz controversy occurred.
I don’t even recall it being loads of people condemning the song, I recall it being a few Twitter influencers that spearheaded it.
Lol. Back in college, I was smoking a cigarette out on the quad and a British student came up to me and asked if I'd bum him a fag.
I screwed up my face like, "What the fuck, are you calling me a fag?" but he put his fingers up to his lips, indicating what he meant, so I hooked him up with one of my Marlboro lights.
It's funny how English slang can invert certain words. In American, the word "cunt" is considered extremely foul. But put an English accent on it, and it can sound positively chummy. I'd almost rather an English person call me a cunt than an American person who doesn't know me call me "buddy".
Makes sense I never saw it before then, I suppose. If it's not even common in the US I guess there's a reason it never made it all the way to Northern Europe either - however my friend knew of it but she has an English degree (she is Danish though) so I guess that's why?
Thanks for the information anyway. I still find it highly peculiar but interesting nonetheless.
I am, indeed, not a lesbian.
However, in the gay heavy circles I exist in, the word "dyke" is as much of a slur as the word "queer" is. Queer was a slur once, and can even be used as a slur even today depending on the context. However, it's also the most commonly accepted additional consonant in the LGBTQ diaspora.
That said, I'm not gonna argue about how a straight cis-man like myself has a d-word pass just because I have "lesbian friends" or bought my queer daughter all the Heartstopper comics for Xmas. I did not mean it as slur, but I shall be more careful of my language in a public context in the future.
Please don't worry about a thing - I was debating if I should have deleted the comment when @DefinitelyNotAFae corrected me but decided to leave it up because yeah I was just ignorant about this terminology so if anything, it is me that should apologize.
It's definitely a curious phenomenon, the way in which the meaning of words change so much in such a brief period of time. I refer to myself as queer more than anything in the acronym, and the irony of that is not lost on me but yeah, it always depends on context and intentions for sure.