6
votes
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.
The Smashing Machine
I was in for that first hour man. It reminded me of The Fighter. And it had this lovely texture thanks to the 16mm film stock Benny Safdie used. The production design, and the costume design especially on Blunt I mean. And even Johnson's performance gave it this cozy almost ASMR feeling to it with his gentle voice. He's genuinely giving a good performance, something I already knew he was capable of since I've seen Pain and Gain. Blunt is also really good, if anything she is the stand out for me.
And then it just falls apart. I don't think Kerr's life is very interesting at least not to sustain a feature film like this. Perhaps if Safdie took a different angle it would be, but slows down so much half way through and it never really recovers. The central relationship between Kerr and Dawn ends up becoming annoying to watch. It's a super abusive relationship with Dawn being manipulative. Johnson and Blunt have great chemistry, which we already saw in Jungle Cruise (a film I enjoy a lot btw). But that's just not enough to get it over the finish line.
It's superficial. At some point I remember thinking all the tech stuff like the 16mm felt more artificial. Like it was cosplaying a serious drama. And the film ends on the real fighter today. Safdie shot that sequence on IMAX 70mm, and I have to say what a waste of IMAX film stock. It is a trite scene, it doesn't fit with the film, it's corny, and it would have made more thematic sense for that part to be shot on digital cameras.
Let's see how Marty Supreme is.
Good Boy
This reminds me of last year's In a Violent Nature. IFC released both of them, and they're ultra low budget horror films with a perspective gimmick. Nature put us in the perspective of the killer in a slasher and Good Boy puts us in the perspective of a dog in a horror film.
I think this is much better than In a Violent Nature, but it still has similar pacing issues. The gimmick here doesn't really sustain throughout a feature runtime. So it lost me at times with how slow everything is. And I understand that's what happens when you work in these constraints but it's something I take issue with. It's also not a straight ghost story as I was expecting/hoping it would be. It's an allegory. Which disappointed me, although, I thought the ending was effective.
On a technical level, it does feel like a YouTube filmmaker. I think the director here shows more promise, however, than a lot of YouTube directors. But the central premise, that they used a dog that wasn't an actor to shoot everything, is still impressive. That they managed to get such a specific performance from the dog is an achievement in and of itself.
Heh, that's pretty much exactly what I said a few years ago when the movie was first announced:
Oh you’re what I was thinking about. I remember a comment like that being made but wasn’t sure where it came from.
At the very least I think the film should have been compressed to make the events seem… faster I guess.
Kinda sad that my prediction appears to have turned out true, since I would have genuinely liked to see another really good MMA fighter focused movie. Which also makes me wish they had just come up with another original story like they did for Warrior or The Wrestler, instead of doing a Kerr biopic though. Especially since, TBH, it was kinda weird they picked Kerr as the focus in the first place, since even ignoring his life being not super interesting (IMO), he isn't exactly very well known outside of very early MMA fandom.
Or they could have had Kerr’s story be the A Story and Coleman’s story be the B story. Apparently Coleman was trying to keep his family’s heads above water the whole time which seems more interesting than Kerr and Dawn having screaming matches. You’d have to get a real actor to play Coleman for that though, and you’d diminish The Rock’s screentime which I suppose he didn’t want
Does anyone want to talk about any of the following?
Charade (1963): ★★⯪
To paraphrase the third review on Letterboxd, it's the most Hitchcock movie not made by Hitchcock. I called a couple of important twists before they were revealed, but this movie has so many twists that everyone's sure to catch at least one.
Spider Man (2002): ★★☆
My theater is showing the three Raimi Spider Man movies. I had heard of the movies before, but didn't really know what to expect. Enjoyed it.
Spider Man 2 (2004): ★★☆
"
I see that reviews for the final movie are a bit worse, but I'll still go and see it later this week. I assume that it didn't stick the landing on the trilogy-long character arcs, but I haven't read too much in order to avoid spoilers.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006): ★★☆
I could have watched the Spider Man movies on consecutive nights, but then I would've missed the chance to see this one. I saw the trailer at a Ghibli movie and thought the premise was interesting. I enjoyed it well enough, but it felt a bit tonally mixed. It flip-flops between serious and lighthearted scenes. Instead of making a balanced movie, it felt like it maybe it didn't quite know what it wanted to be. Still worth watching.
continuing my PTA-a-thon --- its remarkable how one director can kind of start out of no where (through the Sundance Institute), and have an absolutely perfect filmography with no stinkers.
Tonight is There Will Be Blood, which is pretty much dialog-free for the first fifteen minutes (we do get one well-earned 'no')
Just a remarkable film from top to bottom.
I wish PTA did more commentary tracks. He did ones for Sydney / Hard Eight and Boogie Nights (also a cast one) along with a little featurette for Magnolia.
quick edit: one thing I've started doing is putting straight audio rips of the commentary tracks into my fancy RSS feed. I know these movies like the back of my hand, so it works really well.
another edit: during the Boogie Nights commentary, PTA mentioned the commentary track for Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). The movie itself is alright. I'm really taken by how much Anthony Michael Hall looks like Spencer Tracy in this.
Paul Greengrass's The Lost Bus released on Apple TV+ based on a catastrophic wildfire in 2018 in northern California, focusing on the story of a school bus driver who saved a bus full of kids. The movie works out as a very classic disaster movie narrative, with a small setup of who the main characters are, so we are supposed to care more about what happens to them. While it is serviceable, and I respect if it is the true background story, it does come off as somewhat clichéd. At least I didn't really connect with the two main characters, as the whole terrifying situation for the whole town was something I found more scary. Of course, a movie like this needs a few people that are fighting to get out of a life threatening situation. Attach a school bus full of kids and it is a good recipe for some edge of the seat tension. It does what it does, in my mind a tad melodramatic at times, but effective. It is unfair to wish for a different movie, but I would personally love to see the same scenario with more focus on the whole community, the fire fighters, life rescuers and police officers trying to control the massive natural disaster. More of Ray Martinez's character basically, but that is not where the main focus is here.