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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.
The Truman Show (1998)
Liked: Noah Emmerich.
Disliked: Audience segments.
Verdict: 🟢
Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)
Liked: Theme song.
Disliked: Long and boring.
Verdict: đź”´
I recently went through all of the Mission: Impossible movies and MI2 stands out for its ridiculousness. I don't know if it's just a product of its time, the John Woo of it all, or what, but that movie is insane. Having said that, I'm not ashamed to admit that I thought it was the greatest movie ever made when I saw it in theaters as an 11 year old. And yeah, that Limp Bizkit theme song is a banger. When it kicks in as the bad guy realizes Cruise did a face swap with the number one henchmen? Goosebumps.
Watched The Invite a few days ago. It was a lot funnier than I expected. The trailer made it seem like it was going to be slower, cringier, and maybe a tad bit creepy. Watching it with my parents wasn't the most comfortable experience, but it was still fun nonetheless. Middle aged Seth Rogan is the best Seth Rogan.
I also saw The Apprentice for the first time. Great performance from Jeremy Strong, as usual. I'm sure he was a delight on set.
Loved The Invite I thought it was such a funny Woody Allen-esque film.
I saw The Apprentice in early 2025, I think after Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong were nominated for Oscar's.
I liked it more than most people did at the time. I love that it looks like it was shot on old video tapes. I love the sex party sequence, which I think is one of the few moments that humanizes Trump. An aspect I thought was underrated was Maria Bakalova, she was great.
I was pleasantly surprised by The Invite too. Felt more like a play than a movie, which to me is a great thing. It made some points I found pertinent to my own life and relationship. Really glad I watched this.
Pre fall-fests 2027 Golden Globes predictions
Drama
Comedy
Director
Screenplay
Lead Actor - Drama
Lead Actress - Drama
Lead Actor - Comedy
Lead Actress - Comedy
Supporting Actor
Supporting Actress
Globes have been going more artsy lately, so would not be surprised if All of a Sudden makes drama over Sense and Sensibility.
Might be going overboard with giving Wilde three individual nominations, but this is her comeback year after all (and they're going to want a woman in the directing category). Just like how Pattinson is having a banner year, so I'm giving him two individual nominations.
Pretty sure Inde is winning here at the very least. Yes in Comedy, Get Out and The Substance were in the comedy category and it is a funny movie. She's probably going to lead the regionals.
Watched the 25th anniversary release of The Fast and the Furious (2001) last night. I've actually never watched this movie despite being really into cars and watching clips from the movie many times over the years. The movie Is very aggressively early 2000s in how the people dress and obviously in how the cars are modified. It was cool watching a car-focused movie where they actually used the real car sounds and not just generic ones. Will definitely need to watch parts of the remainder of the franchise. I've actually never watched any of them.
I wanted to see it, but my local theater wasn't showing it :/
When you say that they used real car sounds, do you mean that they didn't foley in the sound in post-production, or do you just mean that they didn't replace the noise with "generic_car_sound_effect_37.mp3"?
The latter I mean. Each car brand's engine usually has a distinct tone that car guys love to pick up on. In most movies, they don't really seem to care about that tone so they just use generic car sound effects. But in this, you can hear the distinct Honda engine tones for the Honda cars, the distinct Nissan engine tones for the various Nissans in the movie etc.
Also I did some Cannes watching:
Two Xavier Dolan films: Mommy (2014) and The Death and Life of John F Donovan (2018). Technically Donovan is not a Cannes film, but Dolan didn't have Donovan at Cannes but that's cause he was unhappy with the film and tried to salvage it many times.
Dolan is a guy I think I would have liked as a teenager. I mean, I was a teenager when his films were releasing. He was in his 20s as his films released, so most of his reputation was that he was this very young guy making films that Cannes gave awards to. I also knew that he directed the Hello music video for Adele. And I believe he's really good friends with her.
In hindsight people have re-evaluated his films in a negative way.
I liked both of these films. Mommy I remember was acclaimed at the time but Donovan was panned. I don't think Donovan is great, but I think there's really good stuff in it. He re-worked that film a lot and even cut out Jessica Chastain's role, I think that was his biggest mistake. He shaped the story around the least interesting character. This is about a gay actor telling a story of another gay actor who killed himself after he was outed. I think that's too many layer, and the focus should have been on the actor who killed himself (who is played by Kit Harrington). Chastain's character was a gossip journalist looking into Harrington's life. That is a much more interesting intro to the film as opposed to the, flashback structure it currently has.
Mommy really works well though.
Both films are melodramas. Big speeches, shouting. They're both beautiful looking films, especially Donovan which also has an incredible score.
I like Dolan's usage of pop music. I feel like, based on the stuff I've written, if I was a director I would also have similar uses of pop songs. When Obsession first came out, lots of "film critics" said that it didn't use "cool" enough music. I'm sure that would be lodged at Dolan. But, I'm a basic pop bitch, so that's where my tastes lie.
I also saw The Assassin (2015). I was recalling an article I read that said Xavier Dolan prevented Carol by Todd Haynes from winning the Palme at Cannes. Which ended up resulting in Dheephan winning which was directed by the Emilia Perez guy. I was reading the comments on that and the consensus was that either Son of Saul or The Assassin should have won Palme instead. Son of Saul isn't streaming anywhere so I only watched this.
I thought it was super boring. I think the primary thing here is that it looks so pretty. It's more about mood and atmosphere, than it is about story or characters. I think the characters are a little hard to follow. And you get the general gist of the themes just by watching the visuals. But it's so slow. Like they'll leave a character's face up on screen for like 10 minutes. Like, that's what we're dealing with.
There was once a time where I pretended to like films like this to appear smart. But those days are long gone. I need story, I need characters, and I need to be entertained.
It is really a gorgeous movie though. I would love to see a, I suppose, middle brow movie that looks like it.
Watched The End of Oak Street and I'm bothered by its ending.
My takeaway from the film is it's mostly a fun action adventure with dinosaurs, and some light critics of the suburban culture:
a. These people are not survivalist material and would naturally be fumbling around in a situation like this. So many characters seemingly making "dumb" decisions are all quite understandable.
spoiler
Like the boy going out to find his dog alone, carrying bow and arrow despite being useless with it, or the multiple times people just dwelled in escapism by listening to music and taking silly photos.
b. There's a lack of community kinship where people mostly just look after their owns and cares for others in the community is only an afterthought.
spoiler
Throughout the film there's no attempt by anyone to maybe gather with fellow neighbors for survival. Early into the incident, the dad said he'd go out to see if anyone needs help, but after just a few moment looking out onto the empty street and maybe getting a sense that there's more danger than he could see, he decided to turn back in and pretend those people will be fine anyway.
Then another moment when the parents noticed their neighbor lashing out on the roof, decided to just look on, commented about how stupid he is, and let him get inevitably eaten. There are many small moments like that, where we see them running across other people that they could choose to do something to help but didn't.
Similarly, when the bully hit the boy from the main family, it's understandable that he probably was in shock and lashed out. But once calmed down, he just left the boy there, beatened and defenseless.
Most eggregious is near the end when they travelled back to an alternate present, the orphaned kid decided to run back to warn her alternate family and the mom let her go but stopped her kids from going after her despite thinking the effort is too late. Also during this moment, the mom decided to save alternate dad from the incident but apparently don't mind at all about their alternate version from being zapped away.
Which make the ending seems quite unbelievable to me, where apparently
spoiler
a. The mom cared enough about many of her neighbors to call and convince them to get out of town but not their alternate selves? Even assuming that she tried but could not reach them for whatever reason, I'd imagjne she'll be struck with a bit of survival guilt afterward, not merrily typing away a new books like it's just all a distance memory.
b. Some of them actually believed her warning? Especially the neighbor who was annoyed with them throughout the film and already suspected that they're playing pranks on him?
Not only is it unbelievable, but if my interpretation of the theme is about there, then this ending seems to go against it as well,
that this person's last-minute half-hearted attempt at being heroic was enough to reward her a happily-ever-after with everything she wanted, including career, social standing and family life.
The ending sticks out enough that I'm not sure it's not meant to be taken too seriously, or if we're supposed to notice the discrepancy and think harder about some sort of implication.
Someone help me square the circle here.
Spoilers!
To quote Looper: “Time travel shit. Fries your brain like an egg”
I don’t think we’re supposed to be thinking about the ethics of it too closely, even though it’ll jump out at you. Nor do I think we’re supposed to think of the others as alternate selves. It’s them just a few days earlier.
It’s supposed to be a happy ending that you don’t think about too much. The ending was originally the characters ending up during the 1700s and they were stuck there, but the studio demanded a more crowd pleasing ending and this is what Mitchell came up with.
spoiler
I went with there being alternate selves since the final scene showed the orphaned kid reunited with her family including who looks like the other version of her.
Oh but studio meddling explains a lot. The intended ending sounds much more in line with the rest of the film to me.
I think the crowd pleasing ending fits more specifically because it’s an evocation of a certain type of studio film from the late 20th century. And those types of films almost always ended happy.
I think I get it somewhat. I don't mind at all if the movie wanted to go for a feel-good family-friendly ending. It's just that in this case, the events leading up to it didn't feel like they matched the tone. There weren't that many feel-good moments in the film that didn't feel like they were setup for something else. The only genuine moment that I remember was them taking photo of the
Beside, feel-good endings still only work if they're in service of a feel-good theme of some sorts, yeah? Earlier I brought up their moral characters since that's what the current ending seems to want us to think about. If the ending was as the other way you mentioned, I'd mostly stick with this being about them stumbling around and in over their head and the film would remain coherent.
I suppose another feel-good theme that this film could be about is family, but that's still undercut by the current plot,
where the dad they reunited with is not their "real" dad, and that throughout the film they never got a chance to succeed together as a family.
Or maybe the feel-good here is that this is primarily just a fun dinosaur adventure where you're not supposed to think too hard about how traumatic the events are. But if so then there was too much emphasis on the traumatic elements for me to be able to take it lightly,
On that note, maybe the theme could be sonething along the line of "you only realize what you treasure after it's gone",
Could work, I suppose. Hm I'll need to sit with this one for a bit.
The Last House
A family is stuck in their house when it starts raining and something keeps the doors and windows from opening. They see it's not just them - all around in the neighbourhood people are stuck. And there's something out there in the rain...
The Good: the creature design was phenomenal. The concept of the movie is great. Heck, read my mini intro up there, it's neat!
The Bad: good lord what was the last half hour? And why is there a 40 minute side quest around creating traps? I am all for suspension of disbelief while watching movies, but there has to be in-universe consistency.
The Ugly: the final act of the movie is an unmitigated disaster that makes me question if the writers have basic knowledge about things like "how does water work"? It was pretty clear that they must have had several scripts or ideas that were disjointed, and they tried to write their way from one to another.
Mild spoilers for the movie
My theory is that there were three screenwriters and they had three scripts. In one script, an engineer makes more and more complex traps to trap animals for food, to survive. In another script, a house fills with water and there is a monster in the house that they have to escape. In the last, people are stuck in their homes for a long time because of magical rain. They all had coffee together and complained about how they couldn't figure out how to progress their stories, and while complaining, they realized that they could just stick them together with duct tape.
There are a lot of relatively cool moments in the film that just don't work together or aren't supported in any way, and there are also things that seem to work directly against each other, such as the house being supernaturally closed due to the rain, but that not effecting the chimney.
As a b-movie fan, this is one of those times where almost every single scene is something I would give a B+ or better, but the movie as a whole is a complete failure.
Verdict: 2/5 and almost all of those marks are for monster design.
I watched Wild at Heart and it is a movie that feels like a battle between Nicolas Cage and David Lynch. For most of the runtime it is almost two parallel films. Nicolas Cage and Laura on an absolute wild road trip, Cage being Cage turned to 11. Literally sex and rocknroll all the way. Then there is a separate narrative that is all Lynch. A grotesque Twin Peaks-like Wizard of Oz inspired crime plot. For me, Cage won. Whenever the movie turned to the Lynch-ian world, I mostly just wanted to get back to Cage and Dern. Of course the two narratives need each other and it does sort of come together in the end, though of course in the acid tripping kind of way you would expect from Lynch. This confirmed that I like Cage more than Lynch at least.
I saw The Hunt (2020).
I remembered the controversy about this when it released during the pandemic. And I was struggling to remember until the social commentary popped out. It was like "oh yeah this is about rich liberals hunting conservatives."
This got labeled alt-right and whatever at the time. Even though it's written by Damon Lindelof, who was the showrunner for Watchmen the year before and which got a lot of support from the woke crowd.
I liked this a lot. I think the film has aged well. I think it's biggest mistake was it's timing. Two years later we get Bodies Bodies Bodies which does a similar thing with a similar format. And a year after that we get American Fiction which is the prestige version of making fun of white liberals. It would have been better received if it released during Biden's term, which is when the era of endlessly criticizing everything that didn't follow a rigid political philosophy started to die down.
Actually watching this now, I don't understand the controversy. It is essentially doing what Get Out did in 2017. The difference being that the lead character here is a working class white woman.
It's a really funny movie, I like the direction from Craig Zobel who also directed every episode of Mare of Easttown and did the first few episodes of The Penguin. I have a script that's like if Woody Allen characters were thrown into a Shane Black film, and watching this I was like oh this guy would be perfect for that.
The main character isn't even a conservative. She's apolitical. She's smart and capable, and arguably smarter than the educated rich antagonists. But they all assume she's a dumb hick, and are surprised when she's read Animal Farm. Showing that they also have their own biases. Much like Get Out did, just in a different direction.
Reading reviews of it at the time is interesting. It's like going back and seeing what critics were writing about Joker since it was the same era. And because that's when I came of age, I suppose, it's interesting to see how that fell out of fashion. Especially when stuff like it started getting more acclaim.
This would be a really good double feature with Bodies Bodies Bodies.