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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.
Yesterday, I watched Doctor Zhivago (1965) due to its recommendation in the classic movies thread a few weeks ago.
It's three hours long but never boring. The introduction part with old Yevgraf is kind of unnecessary--but it's not that long and it adds context for the film and ties it together somewhat at the end.
It's weird to watch a film set in a foreign place and everyone speaks English. The story takes place in Russia but most of it was actually filmed in Spain. It's thematically and emotionally similar to Les Miserables but it is also very different.
My wife and I took a break from binging The Good Place so we could watch the first Happy Gilmore and then the sequel. I don't know that it was worth the break, although I did enjoy HG2.
There's something to be said for a movie that knows it's a lazy, nostalgia-driven reference factory and just doubles down on it. On one hand it's lazy, on the other...it's a post-00s Sandler comedy. My expectations are low and I laughed, so I can't really complain. Some highlights:
there’s a just-okay 30 for 30 on John Daly, Hit it Hard that is interesting enough. He’s a wild character in the sport.
I skimmed his wiki and it kind of seems like he's a real-life Happy Gilmore. Powerful drive (is that the right term? idk golf at all), inconsistent, aggressive, full of antics, etc.
haha yeah. he was essentially the opposite of what the PGA was looking for in a star. you’ve probably seen that meme of him. his cigarette smoking and stuff is unhinged.
Ruimy just posted a retrospective on 2015. So I’ll go ahead and post mine as well. Quite a different list from the time since I’m not including films I didn’t care for at the time.
At the time, when I was 15/16, What We Do In The Shadows was my number 1 fave. I never really did top 10 lists back then but i don’t remember caring about The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, or The Hateful Eight. Even something like Mission Impossible wasn’t something I was really in love with, but I learned to appreciate more as time went on.
I think at the time I liked Straight Outta Compton, Trainwreck, Steve Jobs, and Anomalisa more. But I’ve since seen Brooklyn and Carol which I didn’t watch until the 2020s.
I go back and forth between Rogue Nation and Man From UNCLE, I think Nation is the better crafted film but UNCLE just has a style I really like. And this scene got stuck in my head.
The one movie I’ve tried over and over to like is Joy, I love David O Russell. I didn’t like Joy at the time and my opinion hasn’t really changed that much. There are some moments I love but it’s so uneven.
After a quick look, in addition to your list I'd throw Chappie, Spotlight, Mississippi Grind, Legend, The Martian, and The Lobster into consideration.
At the time I think Chappie and The Martian might have made a list I made. Maybe not Chappie but I remember liking that a lot and Hugh Jackman saying “what in the name of the lord.”
I loved The Martian at the time though.
The Fantastic Four: The First Steps
This was so… disappointing. Fantastic Four was one of the first comic books I ever read (I’m not a comic book nerd whatsoever but I thought their stuff was cool).
The first 30 minutes are great, but after the team comes back from space the film’s pacing is really slow. I was bored, honestly, for a good chunk of this. There is surprisingly little action in this. I think that’s on purpose, looking at Thunderbolts’s lack of action they’re trying to get back to basics with their characters. The issue for me is that the first phase wasn’t like that, there were plenty of action scenes in all those movies.
It looks great, production design is great, score is great, performances are pretty good all around with Pascal being the weak link. And at the very least it clears the low-bar set by the previous three films.
Happy Gilmore 2
Decently entertaining. It doesn’t stand on its own at all, whenever a character is introduced that is a reference to the previous film they will show a clip of the previous film. There are so many celebrity cameos. It’s very much not in line with Sandler’s best Netflix work like You’re So Not Invited to My Batmitzvah. The only scene that has anything interesting happening (both narratively and comedically) is the scene featuring Margaret Qualley where Gilmore is playing golf for the first time after 10 years.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
The original is a bad film. It’s a cheap copy of Scream. It looks bad, and it’s boring (only three people die).
This is so much more entertaining. More kills. It’s deliberately campy and self-aware. Essentially a horror comedy and a slight parody of the original. It looks cinematic in a way that the original looked cheap. Madelyn Cline is incredibly funny in this.
I watched Fear is the Key (1972). Ben Kingsley's first role... and he's got hair!
Anyway, good chase at the start. To say the plot is a little far-fetched is... generous. Not the worst movie, though. The ending has a really strange use of blue screen.
I'm watching jaws for the first time.
i liked it.
So interesting how Friendship had me busting guts within the opening scene, and Happy Gilmore 2 I was like a petrified zombie trying to take it's medicine - I was just awestruck that the one bit in the movie is just Happy opening various items and drinking the liquor he hid inside. Everything else felt like it had zero passion.