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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.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
I’ve been predicting this to be a big hit for over a year now. But on a personal level I was never that excited for it. I like the first Beetlejuice, I like Tim Burton (at least a significant chunk of his filmography), but I wasn’t a Hot Topic teen, I wasn’t emo, I wasn’t goth. I don’t have an affinity for that aesthetic.
I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected. Burton’s last film, Dumbo, is not something I really remember. But I do remember not hating it at the time, and I don’t think I’ve outright hated any of Burton’s 2010s films, most of which have been duds. I don’t think they’re outright bad, I just think they’re mediocre and not very memorable.
This is Burton building on his momentum from Wednesday. While I feel like a lot of Wednesday felt phoned in from him, it definitely gave him the second wind needed for him to go all out here. The craft of the film is really good, the best from Burton since Alice in Wonderland.
There’s a sense of fun here. It feels like the type of movie that was as fun to make as it is to watch. It’s messy, the plots don’t all add up or end up being satisfying, but it’s entertaining.
It’s typically hard for me to enjoy movies when I’m experiencing so much anxiety in life. I remember the last time I was experiencing this level of anxiety it was rare when I could be sucked into a film and lose myself. The one movie that did it for me back then was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. And Beetlejuice Beetlejuice surprised me by being that for me now.
I wouldn’t put those films on the same level, but that gives Beetlejuice Beetlejuice a lot of escapist value.
I've been working my way through a large backlog. Here are some things I've seen recently that I felt stood out in some way.
After Hours (1985) - dir. Martin Scorsese - Has very few of the trappings of Scorsese's more typical style. A farcical dark comedy which follows one man's Kafka-esque encounters over a single rainy night in Manhattan. Starts kind of slow but quickly becomes absurd and pretty damn funny to boot.
The Guilty (2018) - dir. Gustav Möller - This movie absolutely slaps. A Danish chamber piece about an emergency line operator. Well-acted and incredibly tense, and just when you think you know what's happening, you're blindsided by yet another disturbing twist. There's no fat on this one, only 80 minutes long.
Ghostlight (2024) - dir. Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson - A rather family-centric drama that follows a construction worker as he unwittingly joins an amateur theater troupe. The way that this film conveys background information, in little dribs and drabs just when it helps to clarify some new dimension of the characters themselves, is fascinating. It also makes this movie incredibly easy to spoil - if you like a slightly dark but ultimately heart-warming drama, go into this knowing nothing.
Greener Grass (2019) - dir. Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe - Super weird movie right here. Inhabits a surreal, cringy parody of suburban American, and drunkenly stumbles between moments of shamelessly gross humor, clever, winking irony, and nightmarish revelations. Almost no coherent plot to speak of, but frankly, it doesn't need one.
Moonlighting (1982) - dir. Jerzy Skolimowski - Jeremy Irons stars as a Polish contractor who brings his team to the U.K. to illegally refinish a house. Blends cultural fish-out-of-water comedy with compelling dramatic elements. No one else on the team speaks English, and none of what they say is subtitled, but they are men of few words and the meaning is always perfectly apparent. Kind of a fascinating movie that doesn't seem like it should work on the deeper level that it ultimately does.
The Coffee Table (2022) - dir. Caye Casas - A bad marriage. A gaudy coffee table. Something terrible happens. Any more would be a spoiler. You might honestly figure out what's going to happen the moment the movie reveals its basic starting facts. But the real magic isn't in the twist, it's in the grueling developments after the twist, what sickening despair results from keeping an un-keepable secret. Kind of a horror movie, but if you can manage to keep your lunch down, it's actually more of a pitch black comedy.
Have you seen the American remake of The Guilty with Jake Gyllenhaal? I thought it was pretty decent, though it was pretty obvious it was filmed during covid. I have not seen the original myself.
I haven't seen the remake, but I can't think of a film that needs a remake less than the original. Of course Jake Gyllenhaal is a good actor, and I am a little curious as to how he'd carry the main role. And in a way, the film is a bit like a play, so maybe that was the rationale for remaking it. Still, I think out of principle I'd probably skip the remake myself. You're fully spoiled on the plot now, but I'd still recommend checking out the original at some point.
Gyllenhaal is far and away the best part of the movie, but I'm biased because I love him in everything.
Last Sunday, I saw that one of my local theaters was playing Hitchcock's Rear Window for its 70th anniversary. Still as good as ever. Also, the theater was surprisingly packed. Honestly, it was probably was one of the most packed theaters I've seen in years and years which felt really nice. Tells me that there is still an audience that wants to see things at the theater, particularly classics. I think the last 2 or 3 films I've bothered to go out to see had, at most, maybe 5 or 6 others there. It wasn't a huge theater, but was at least 1/2 to 2/3 full.
I wish cinemas did this properly where I live. But the times I've been to this type of showing, they just put on the Blu-ray which of course does not look good enough when the screen is so big
Gone Girl is a movie that has been on my to-watch list for a long time, and I finally got around to watching it. I liked the movie and recommend it, but have a few minor issues.
Spoilers for the movie where spoilers really ruin the movie, avoid if you have any intent to ever watch it
Affleck might have been miscast for this movie. There are definitely things that I enjoy Affleck in a lot, but I thought that he missed the mark a bit here; most of the time he was fine, but there should have been a more explicit pulling off the mask scene where it became clear that he was also a psychopath. Instead, you kind of get left with an ending where you sympathize with poor Nick Dunne, getting stuck with his awful wife. I think you're actually supposed to be left with "these two sociopaths are perfect for each other and are enjoying their games".
Rosamund Pike is exceptional, which is maybe why I felt like Affleck wasn't as good as he could have been. I was looking through her IMDB page and couldn't actually think of any role where I thought she wasn't good; she's been in lots of movies or TV that haven't been good, but I think she's elevated everything she's been in.
There are a lot of story beats that you see coming and are not surprising, but they are still told very well and are compelling, and there are a few twists that I did not anticipate at all, like the death of NPH's Desi. By that I mean that I was surprised when Fincher showed that it was about to happen, but not by the death itself.
Overall, this was a really good movie. Fincher is such a good storyteller - the pacing is great, the visuals are just so, the attention to detail is impressive. I give it a solid 4 / 5.
I think Affleck’s casting works. It’s a bit of meta casting on Fincher’s part since Affleck has a bad relationship with the media, where in the early 00s they kept portraying him as a smarmy douchebag (this was also due to how he poses and smiles for photos just like Nick Dunne does in Gone Girl).
I also think you’re misreading the character of Nick Dunne. There is no mask off moment for him. He’s not a good guy, but he’s not anywhere near a monster. I also don’t think the take away here is that they’re made for each other, I think it’s more of a broader examination of toxic relationships and the reasons we choose to stay in them.
I think that Nick is definitely not a sociopath in the same way as Amy, but I also think that he shows at the end that he actually enjoys playing Amy's sick games. As much as Amy enjoys sociopathic manipulation, Nick enjoys playing the games as well. He could certainly have walked away by explaining things to the cops, but he doesn't want to. There are other parts of the game that he enjoys as well, like when he plays for the media and everyone eats it up. Margot even accuses him of wanting to stay with Amy, and I think she's right.
I think Nick and Amy both have a true and a false side as well. False Nick and false Amy are both the "cool guy" from Amy's monologue. True Nick is a conniving cheater, True Amy is a sociopath. I think at every level their relationship is toxic - I 100% agree with you there - but I think that there are levels to them and how they interact with each other. They start off with True Nick chasing Cool Amy, and True Amy accepting Cool Nick, but the more time they spend, the more they start to loathe each other... until Amy starts down this path where True Nick sees True Amy and they both get a kick and thrills out of it. So they end up stuck together pretending to be the cool versions of themselves, but now really knowing the false versions. They bring out the worst in each other.
Edit: it's this "bringing the worst out of each other" that makes them "perfect" for each other I think, because they complete each other in totally awful, toxic ways.
All of this is probably quite coloured by my decision to immediately start the book after watching the movie, which was maybe the wrong order to do things, and also has led me to think a little bit about how the movie could have been different.
Rebel Ridge
Here's what I wrote about this film when the trailer released. What I didn't know was that production actually began in 2020 and was shut down because of COVID, and then the rest of its production troubles began. It's incredible how much shit this film went through, only to be dumped by Netflix without much promotion.
If this was handled by an indie distributor like Neon, or by indie labels like Focus or Searchlight. I'm sure they would have released this theatrically in the beginning of the year, likely a dead month like May. I'm not sure how much it would have made, but I'm sure it would have had a greater impact.
This was fantastic. I think it's actually Sauliner's best film. He really struts his technical skills here. His direction is so confident. His writing is simple, and rather elegant, the way that he weaves through the story. The film is tense from beginning to end, the action scenes are sophisticated and well choreographed.
Aaron Pierre does a great job here, and he shows a physicality with his performance that I don't think John Boyega would have been able to show.
This is the film that Sauliner should have made after Green Room, and it would have kept his momentum going. But it's a great return to form with him.
I honestly believe this is one of the best movies of the year.