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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.
Tonight was In the Name of the Father (1993) --- and holy shit. What a film!
The whole story (true story) is such a mess and a disgusting circumstance. In any other year I'd say it was an easy win for best picture, but it was up against Schindler's List... so that makes sense.
Watched this last night based on your recommendation -- Great movie!
nice! i found it remarkable that they kept some levity mixed in with such a heavy film. other films like Started Up (another great one) don’t even attempt it.
If you do watch Starred Up, Joe Cole has A Prayer Before Dawn, which is also great and takes place in a Thai prison. These two films are barely related, but there’s something about the tone that they captured.
I rewatched Ghostrider (2007) recently and I have to say that while it isn't a good movie by any definition, it's honestly not as bad as I think most of us remember. It's just your average bad Nic Cage movie, following every 00s trope. But for me it is in the category of so bad it's good, like, how can you watch Johnny Blaze eat jelly beans out of a margarita glass and not lose your shit?
I never read any comic books but ghost rider is my favourite hero concept and I wish they'd have done something more serious with him like the Netflix Daredevil show. (I liked Robbie Reyes in Agents of Shield but they didn't take that seriously)
Hellboy and Ghostrider have the opportunity to mix in some really fun occult, religious and unique concepts and conflicts that aren't available to other media and it's a shame.
Plus flaming guy on fast bike is cool
This week I watched two movies: On the Waterfront and Triangle of Sadness.
On the Waterfront was magnificent. I haven't seen many, if any, Marlon Brando movies but he was really spellbinding in this.
I also thoroughly enjoyed Triangle of Sadness. I didn't know much about it going in, and so it took me a while to settle into the structure cause I kept waiting for the plot to start, but I was really won over by the dinner scene. It's crude but the well choreographed vomit humor paid off. And the aloof British couple being killed by their own grenade is so obviously on the nose that it loops right past being stupid around to being hilarious. It's not a subtle movie but it's also not far from unrealistic. I'm still not sure what to make of the very last image of Carl running through the trees but I like the ambiguity. It's a jarring switch from everything what in the movie that almost always is exactly as it appears.
Watched Confidential Assignment (공조) from 2017 this week. It's a South Korean action-comedy film about a North Korean officer and South Korean detective that team up to track down a North Korean fugitive leading a team of counterfeiters. This is a great movie to watch. As a fan of the Mission Impossible franchise in the US, this movie honestly reminded me a lot of that franchise. There's a lot of amazingly choreographed action with some comedy sprinkled here and there. The soundtrack is also equally as good, mirroring the soundtracks of the more recent Mission Impossible films. Definitely recommend giving this one a watch!
Edit:
Watched the sequel, Confidential Assignment 2: International (2022) as well. Unfortunately, the English subtitles I could get for this movie were extremely crude and machine-translated. Sentences were often translated by the literal meaning of the words used so they often didn't make sense. There were also many visual things like text messages just left untranslated so I only really understood the basic parts of the story. That being said, what I did understand was still great. Top-notch choreographed action combined with good music. Of course, since there are American characters in this film, there's more guns compared to the previous one. This felt more like an Mission Impossible film than the last, with many aspects of the story closely resembling MI: Fallout. Definitely recommend watching this if you can find proper subtitles.
Over the weekend I had a bit of unwell time so I watched some DC movies. Maybe it's the food poisoning talking, but I thought they weren't as bad as people tend to think they were.
Man of Steel - this was a rewatch for me, and dang does Cavill ever get Superman right. I thought it was a bit long, but overall I thought it was pretty good for the Zod storyline, even down to Superman agonizingly accepting what he must do. There are some bad beats in the story - the father just not allowing Clark to save him is objectively stupid, considering that Superman is as fast as the Flash in later movies, so nobody would ever know. Overall, though, I think they got the spirit right.
Batman vs. Superman - this was also a rewatch. Again, there are some objectively stupid parts, like when Superman says, "Martha! You're letting them kill Martha!". Batfleck comes back with "Why would you say that?" and that was the first time I was in tune with Batfleck in the movie. That was poorly written, but Affleck and Cavill got to chew the scenery for it and did their best with a poor script. I was discussing with someone, and they expressed confusion about why Lex Luthor was even there - he claimed that the story could have been done without him. That also highlighted an issue that I think the story had, which is that Luthor does at one point explain that he was manipulating things so that Superman and Batman would be at each other's throats, but the only thing it really explicitly shows is when he captures Superman's mom, and I guess when he blows up the Capitol building.
Justice League was the one I hadn't seen before, and it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. There are some fun moments, and I actually enjoyed Flash and Aquaman in it, and Batfleck started to grow on me a bit. I think that the Steppenwolf storyline was weak, but it worked out well enough. There were some more instances of poor story / poor writing in this one too, like the parademons being around too early, which made no sense.
Overall, I'd give them all a 3/5, but what really busts my chops is that there is the makings of something pretty great underneath all of them. I haven't seen the Snyder cut of Justice League, and I don't know if there is a Snyder cut of all of these together, but dang do I want there to be. It would be great if the things that are clearly Darkseid premonitions were there from Man of Steel onwards, and ramped up into a full Darkseid-is-the-bad-guy culminating arc. I guess it was too similar to Thanos being the mastermind of all the bad things, which is just too bad because I think Darkseid is the better ubervillain.
Maybe that's why everyone seems to dislike the DC-verse; it could have been pretty good with just a few changes.
I think from the get go of Man of Steel people were disappointed. That initial trailer was very well received. I remember liking it enough when I watched it as a 13 year old. I did a rewatch of it in 2020, after several attempts of doing that previously.
Man of Steel feels like the bigger disappointment for me. Every time I listen to the score, every time I see the cinematography for it (gorgeously shot on 35mm), every time I see Henry Cavill in the suit. It feels like it should be better than it is. I don’t even mind the grounded approach they were going for, I think there’s an angle there it just wasn’t very interesting.
By the time we got to BvS and JL it was like yeah this might as well get worse. I think Wonder Woman was the only one that I really enjoyed for a while, but when I rewatched that a few years ago I ended up not liking it as much.
There's a pivot for me between Wonder Woman and then Justice League that was so noticeable and it can be summarized with the shot of WW's ass as she talks to Bruce in JL. The only thing in focus on this scene is her ass. There's no reason to do that in this otherwise typical conversation.
It's perhaps the trophy winning exemplar of "male gaze" and I was immediately done with the DCU. It was that off-putting. Especially on Diana. I tried WW1984 and was unimpressed by the "this is sexual assault but we'll pretend it isn't" on top of everything else wrong with that movie. Id probably dislike the 1st as well now but it felt so much less gross than everything else at the time.
(And idk about the Snyder cut, besides being done at that point, the fans of Snyder turned me off the cut so I haven't seen it. I'm not a big fan of his regardless.)
10 words, exactly what I was trying to encapsulate above, without quite realizing it. That's a perfect summary of the issue with these films. All of them are not quite it, but are good enough for you to feel that they could be good.
I agree with almost everything you said. The Snyder cut was better than the theatrical release I thought, but it had its own different problems. Worth a watch though if you ever want to return to this otherwise mangled franchise
A Michael Haneke film never fails to leave a lasting impression. His films always hits me deeper than most other directors, and while they are all amazing his films are also the sort of horrifying experiences that I only want to watch once. Time of the Wolf (Le temps du loup) from 2003 is a post-apocalyptic scenario that hits too close to home and stabs right into my underlying fear of what would happen if my carefree privilege way of life disappeared in a scenario that frighteningly seems less unrealistic in the current geopolitical climate.
The film doesn't provide any background on what the cataclysmic event is, but it is not really needed as we see the consequences and what it does to regular people. Families willing to kill other families to protect their own, desperate mothers offering sexual favors for a little water and kids sacrificing themselves to not be a burden. Everyone here is way past their breaking point as people cling to a small hope that tomorrow will be better if they just keep moving.
In usual Haneke fashion all the despair and misery are portrayed without any music or emotionally manipulative tricks, making room for the viewers thoughts and emotions. Haneke is a true master at what he does, but I will probably need a few months before seeing the next one.
I have a couple good ones for you all --
Fitzcarraldo - A slightly unhinged German man in the 1800s hatches a wild plan for getting rich off the south American rubber trade and bringing opera to the continent. My favorite Herzog movie I have seen so far. Kinsi is incredible and you can feel so much how big and REAL movies were before everything was CGI-d.
The Last Castle - A 3 star general has been convicted of an unknown crime and is sent to a military prison. While there, he realizes how corrupt the prison and its staff are and ends up organizing and leading a mutiny/revolt with the other prisoners.
Twisters
I actually saw this twice. I saw the original for the first time a few months ago. I didn’t particularly care for the original, but it is one of my friends all time favorites.
I like this more than I like the original. I liked it a lot more the first time I saw it than I did the second however, that first watch I was just sucked into how fun it is. How pretty the film looks (it being shot on 35mm is much appreciated). How impressive the set pieces are. And how attractive and charismatic Glen Powell is. The second time is when the flaws of the script became more noticeable. Although, I think some of it is on purpose to try to emulate the blockbusters of the 90s (like the original Twister).
I would have liked if Christopher McQuarrie did a rewrite for it, Joseph Kosinski (director of Top Gun: Maverick) came up with the story and was originally set to direct this. And I think there’s a lot of good ideas here (especially the Tornado Wrangler angle which is what separates it from the original) but it just doesn’t quite get all the way there to make it as good as Maverick was.
Still though it’s a lot of fun, and it’s a well made blockbuster. It’s directed by an Oscar nominee and you can tell Chung really tried to make something special here.
Since we are seeing Edge of Tomorrow next week in "Movie of the Week", I have been catching up with some Tom Cruise stuff.
First off Top Gun which I knew was going to be cheesy and very 80s, it was still amazing how much it actually is. In many it is laughingly ridiculous at times, but with that fantastic soundtrack and how committed everyone is to the style and tone, you just become swept up and go with it.
As I am more of car person and not that much into fighter jets or dogfighting, I was slightly more into Days of Thunder which is basically the same story, but the technical marvels of all the aerial scenes are truly amazingly well made. While I prefer Formula 1 and IndyCar, I do have quite a bit familiarity with NASCAR from racing it a couple of years in iRacing. So it was cool just seeing some track action with the classic stock cars. The racing scenes are great. The rest is so so. Pretty funny at times and cheesy but it owns it well. While the general story is fine to gets things going, I don't think the rivalry/friendship with Rowdy was developed enough to be really interesting. And as most racing movies does, dealing with the theme of fear of death for these death defying drivers only reaches surface level here. Rush had the better rivalry and The Last American Hero had a more developed character arc. For what it is, this is still a pretty decent racing movie.
The best was however Eyes Wide Shut which I would consider one of Cruise's best acting performances. This film is seducing, flirting and teasing on all tangents. Two of the hottest and biggest Hollywood stars at the time in a relationship filled with lust, desire and jealousy. The storyline is equally seducing and teasing the viewer with a constant intriguing mystery that is never quite fulfilled. The camerawork is playful and captivating. Not unlike in Lolita Kubrick is able to explore sexuality in a provocative way that is leaving more questions than answers, but it was clear Kubrick was allowed to do more here and it pays off.