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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 watched two movies over the weekend: Runaway Jury and Anora.
Runaway Jury was pretty forgettable, which was surprising to me with Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman. Plus, my wife and I had recently(ish) watched The Rainmaker and The Firm, both John Grisham adaptations, so I thought this would be more like those in quality. But I probably wouldn't watch this one again.
Anora, on the other hand, was really incredible. Definitely understand why people liked this movie. It was way funnier than I expected, and about halfway through I started to realize that Igor was the only person in the movie who really seemed to care for Anora/Ani as a person. The actor did an incredible job with acting through his eyes/facial expressions. Really enjoyed this.
Last week, I found a set of the first six Mission Impossible movies for cheap at a secondhand store. I also found the most recent one for cheap at a regular store, so I made the unwise commitment to watch them all before the new one comes out. I feel like I can't really google anything without risking spoilers, so I figured I'd ask if anyone wants to talk about them here instead. Sooo...
Does anyone want to talk about:
☑ Mission Impossible (1996)
☑ Mission Impossible 2 (2000)
☑ Mission Impossible 3 (2006)
☑ Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol (2011)
☑ Mission Impossible 5: Rogue Nation (2015) (Edit: watched 5/15)
☑ Mission Impossible 6: Fallout (2018) (Edit: watched 5/20)
☑ Mission Impossible 7: Dead Reckoning (2023) (Edit: watched 5/21)
☑ Mission Impossible 8: Final Reckoning (2025) (Edit: watched 5/23)
I rewatched the series last year and to me the first one is still the best, even though it is somewhat different from the rest of the series. It feels more like an actual spy movie compared to the others. Personal nostalgia probably also plays a role. The new approach to the series found its footing in Ghost Protocol, and in my opinion peaked with Rogue Nation. The scene at the opera house is cinematic perfection on all parameters.
For me, MI:III was absolutely the best of the bunch. It was Phillip Seymore Hoffman's villain that made that movie stand out. He was the perfect foil in the same way that a good Bond villain makes for a good Bond movie. Between that and the more personal stakes, (Ethan getting married and his wife being taken) made it a more grounded and relatable experience than some of the more recent films.
How much worse is Mission: Impossible 2 compared to all the others, huh?
I liked it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Without wading into spoilers, I do think it had the weakest villain of the four I've watched so far. And some of the gadgets are less impressive now than they would have been in 2000 (e.g. one is basically just GPS), so maybe that has something to do with it for a modern viewer.
Ranking:
I have been having a bit of a Vietnam-war theme the past week.
Starting with Platoon which is very classic war movie depicting the usual "war is hell" and how it can foster psychopaths. It does that well enough, though maybe it felt more groundbreaking at the time than it does now. I don't think Charlie Sheen is entirely convincing, but thankfully both William Dafoe and Tom Berenger are delivering fantastic performances.
Then there is The Deer Hunter with its now famous Russian roulette scene, every bit as harrowing as I thought it would. It is however only a shorter middle part to a very long movie, with a very long prologue and epilogue. Too long in my opinion. I honestly didn't get much out of that overextended wedding party. Where Platoon was a war film taking place directly in the battle zone, this seems to more want to built a symbolic take on being at war. The Russian roulette in itself may not be historical accurate, but it serves to illustrate the randomness of whether one lives or die in war. The constant looming threat of getting shot and killed with little to no control over how and when. An effective metaphor, but I think it gets a little overused.
I rewatched the first two Rambo films and the second one is just one-man-army action, but First Blood still stands as the best Vietnam-movie for me. The personal aftermath and how society treated veterans after that failed war is something I find much more interesting than the usual "war is hell"-depiction. Stallone may not be an actor with great emotional range, but his physical acting abilities is something to be admired and an acting skill that deserves praise a long side the usual "emotional"-acting. Just observing how his body language changes throughout the film in different scenes shows so much about Rambo's state of being.
Then I found Casualties of War which I haven't heard about before. It is based on true events where a group of soldiers kidnapped, raped and murdered a Vietnamese woman. Just because they thought they could get away with it. It is directed by Brian De Palma, so while the narrative is sort of classic war drama, it still has some of his directional touches that comes from sleazy campy thrillers. It does feel a bit odd at times, but just for that I liked this movie. It is a different take on the war drama, showing the cruelty, the dehumanization and insanity in a different light. Only thing is that Michael J. Fox isn't super convincing in his role, but Sean Penn makes up for it as an absolute scary sociopath.
Just got out of a late showing of Final Destination: Bloodlines, and I really enjoyed the movie a lot! I only put Final Destination movies on as background noise nowadays, even though I kinda grew up with the movies. I feel like Final Destination is one of the few movie series that does such deep retroactive lore dumps in future installments, and it's so interesting with the way they've done things with this movie for sure.
The opening kill montage was really well done, and definitely the biggest one they've done in the series. The kills were pretty cool, if not a bit CGI heavy but I guess that's what the whole series kinda built itself on. The characters themselves were more memorable than any of the other ones in the franchise for sure (besides MEW but that's because I had a huge crush on her lol). I do love Tony Todd's sendoff too. Would definitely recommend to watch in Dolby, the kills and gore are so much more brutal with the sound the way it is.
Final Destination: Bloodlines
I liked this a lot. Reminded me of Saw X in the sense that the producers of the franchise went "hey let's try to make an actual movie this time." I never watched any of the Final Destination movies prior to this year, I was not into horror movies as a kid. I do vividly remember watching the trailers for the fifth film which prominently featured the Lasik death scene. I binged all of them, 3 was the best of the bunch, felt like the only film where they cast good actors and went at a breakneck pace.
This is the longest of the Final Destination films, with a running time that nears two hours as opposed to the 80-90 minute runtimes of the first five. But there's a purpose to it: they decide to have actual characters with personalities and arcs. The opening scene is much longer than any of the other opening scenes, but it does a better job at building tension than any of the other premonition scenes. The actors here are all solid, the kills are wild. The thing with this film, like 3 but moreso, is that you actually want to see the characters live.
Hurry Up Tomorrow
I'm a Weeknd fan so I might be biased here, but I didn't think this was as bad as the reception makes it out to be. It is currently one of the worst reviewed films of the 2020s.
I was no fan of Schulz's last film Waves which I thought was empty, boring, and pretentious. It was wildly overhyped at the time. I think this film has similar problems: pacing issues and pretension. But it's story is at least a little bit more interesting, and Jenna Ortega gives a captivating performance. Ortega is also beautifully photographed, reminds me of how much the camera adored Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook.
There are interesting concepts here, if there was a better focus on the Misery inspired scenes this would have been a cool horror movie. If it was just a visual concept album that would have been cool on its own. But it's this weird mishmash of both that doesn't really come together.
And yes... The Weeknd cannot act.