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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 saw the new Resident Evil movie recently and it was so much goddamn fun. I loved Cregger's approach with it, you can tell he adores the games and absolutely nailed the spirit of playing the games. Great balance of shocks, twisted creativity and gut busting laughs.
I saw Unshatter last night, it was great! Definitely recommend it for Linkin Park fans. There isn't that much new information if you've devoured the interviews and streams since their relaunch, but it was great to get even more :D
Tony is an almost fine movie but its full of bullshit... so if you have any respect for Bourdain, maybe skip it. (edit: Banderas looks amazing) -- double edit: this is a bit harsh. its still a fine movie, I just wish they didn't fabricate some things.
The East of Eden series is out now. Its neat that Zoe Kazan gets to make a series for the movie her Grandfather made in '55.
This whole time I didn’t know she was related got Elia Kazan lol. She should do A Streetcar Named Desire at some point.
I’m looking forward to it. I don’t like the film but maybe this is better suited for me, although I don’t really care for Steinbeck’s other books that I’ve read.
i saw the first episode last night and it’s pretty good. has a measured darkness to it. Really nice performance from Tracy Letts, too. He’s pretty consistent, but this is weightier than most of his roles.
it’d be neat if she did some more. like Streetcar, though. she seems like a capable writer.
i appreciate his books but i really struggled with Grapes of Wrath — just too heavy; at least for me at the time.
Supposedly this team is next adapting Lonesome Dove.
I had a relatively slow month in September and only watched 10 movies, half of which were rewatches of things I had seen before ¯\(ツ)/¯. Buy anyway, the highlights were:
United 93 (2006) - I like the fly-on-the-wall style storytelling when you already know what's going to happen.
Coyote vs. ACME (2026) - Maybe I'm too juvenile, but most of the humor worked here. The plot is silly, but you don't watch a Looney Tunes movie for the plot.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (2023) - This is my second-to-last Marvel catch-up movie. It brings the Guardians trilogy to a satisfying conclusion, even if it runs a little long and the villain is a bit over the top at times. It makes me wonder why James Gunn's more recent work has been less well-received.
I didn’t know anything about this. Obviously I knew about 9/11, but I didn’t know the whole story. Didn’t know how many planes were hijacked.
Number one, I had no idea it was about 9/11 when I first started watching. So when I came to the realization it was about that I was like oh shit. And two, I was completely shocked at the end because I didn’t know that’s what happened!
I guess I need a spoiler tag then, whoops
It must be a completely different movie if you don't know what it's about ahead of time. That makes me think about the Hitchcock quote about a hidden bomb underneath a table. If you don't show the bomb to the audience, then they are more surprised when it blows up, but the rest of the scene is boring. If you show the audience the bomb at the start, then the characters can do absolutely anything and there will automatically be tension and a looming sense of dread for the entire scene. So if you didn't know the story of flight 93, I'd imagine that a significant portion of the first half would be boring.
Did you understand the ending right away? The movie just cuts straight to black when the plane crashes, and the final shot before it is just the ground getting slowly closer, slowly, wait, it's speeding up, uh oh, aaaaaah! There's no stereotypical hollywood fireball or excessive visual flair; it's very matter-of-fact about it. If you didn't go into the movie knowing that the plane crashed (and didn't reach its target), I could see that possibly being confusing because it's so sudden.
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No, actually. I understood it was about a plane hijacking before going in, and I think the slow reveal that it’s 9/11 helped the impact of the film for me.
I didn’t find the ending confusing. I just thought they were actually going to live and land the plane. So when it just cut to black i was like, no way they died? It was wildly depressing.
Digger
I love Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, which is not a popular sentence to make. His only film that landed well with critics was Birdman and that’s because the technical craft he showed there was undeniable. But I love most of his movies. The Revenant is fucking sick, it’s so gorgeous and brutal and insane. Babel is so devastating and beautiful. All his films are really beautiful. I also loved 2022’s Bardo with its magical realism and self-indulgent self-reflection.
This was not great. I enjoyed it, but there were moments, long moments where the film was losing me. And the technical showcase here isn’t anything like AGI has done in the past, it’s not technically impressive the way Revenant or Bardo are. Tom Cruise’s performance is a bit mixed, which was done on purpose, but was an odd choice for what was made as an Oscar vehicle for him specifically.
It’s a very unfocused film. I’m gonna go into spoilers now because there’s a large aspect of the film that’s not shown in marketing materials but that I need to talk about.
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I knew about this going into it. About 40 minutes into the film it’s revealed that the political satire we’ve been watching is actually a play. These are actors portraying real world people in the world of the film.
You think you’re getting Dr. Strangelove or Don’t Look Up but you’re actually getting Birdman 2.0.
Now, I was led to believe that after it’s revealed to be a play that we would be dealing with the fallout of the play being poorly received. That’s not the case. We intercut between the play and the actors performing the play. It blunts the impact that either component could have.
It’s a critique of satires like Don’t Look Up where it’s people feeling smug about themselves while the world still deteriorates around them. But, it is also showing reverence for them. And it’s critiquing the wealthy people in charge while also saying they’re not all bad people. It’s a very confused film in its messaging.
It needed to do one or the other. Personally I was excited for AGI’s Dr. Strangelove and then when I learned of the twist a few months ago I immediately lost interest. And that’s translated to critics and the general audience. It’s a bad choice. It’s not just weird it’s actively a bad choice that harms whatever the movie is trying to do.
And I think AGI missed a part of what makes Don’t Look Up work is that it’s funny. Adam McKay has been in comedy for most of his career, he knows what makes someone laugh. There’s humor in Don’t Look Up that is not political. There’s no serious attempt here to make people laugh. There’s the odd joke here and there.
But like half of what we see is stuff that is written and acted poorly on purpose. That’s an insane decision to make. And it’s not insane-good. Tom Cruise is a great actor, and he desperately wants an Oscar. I don’t know who told him it would be a good idea to go for it in a movie that requires him to be bad. He is like Michael Keaton levels good in the actor parts of the film, but when he’s playing “Digger” it’s not great.
Very disappointing.
To each their own, but overall, I had a very different reaction to this movie. For starters, I enjoyed Cruise's performance. I don't necessarily think over the top = bad, but part of that might have been clouded by how excited I was to see Mr. Action Hero act weird and silly for the first time in nearly two decades.
As for the message, I didn't see it as a critique of satires as much as it's a love letter to satire. It stresses the catharsis that satire can provide, be it through laughter or rage, or in Fossil Fools's case, both. Also, I didn't take away the message that Jesse Plemons's character was not a bad guy. I saw him just as a normal guy who not only got swept up into the world that Digger created, but still benefited from it even after the supposed exile. After all, he maintained a great deal of power and wealth, enough to produce the play and locate a random person at the drop of a hat thanks to his "global security" company.
I suppose that part of his character is a critique of satires in popular culture in that those who produce them are often the same people who are responsible for our need for the catharsis that they provide. At the end of the day, he is still in charge of the story that the audience is told. Sometimes the harsh truth (or some version of it) can still be a benefit to the Rockwells of the world. A distraction might be necessary, but it's still a distraction. And while that might appear to contradict the reverence this movie has for satire, both things can be true at the same time. Having said that, I also see Plemons's character as a stand in for us. We want to experience some form of justice, catharsis, or even self-flagellation, especially in art about climate change. But at the same time, we still enjoy the benefits of the source of the problem. Like Digger said in his speech to the EU, deep down we want the comforts of our unsustainable lifestyle. That message stuck with me as I left the air-conditioned theater to my car, having just seen a sweating audience walk out of a theater to a horrifying dystopian world.
I’m not doing a spoiler tag since I’m not talking about that part, my issue with the political critique here is that Don’t Look Up already did this and did it better. And this movie has a certain “we’re doing it better” attitude about it.
Like there’s a scene in Digger that’s clearly a play on this scene from Don’t Look Up (which itself was a play on the famous scene from Network) but it runs significantly longer and lacks the stance that McKay takes in his writing. Don’t Look Up is more layered in its commentary with its inclusion of the political divide in America as opposed to general platitudes of “the elite” and the hypocrisy of everyone else. Just by nature of McKay not being afraid to take a political stance I think that film has more interesting satire.
And, again, it’s actually funny.
It's funny, I was really disappointed with Don't Look Up the first time I saw it. I revisited it a few months ago and developed an appreciation for it. Now I think it's the definitive satire of our time, not just as it relates to climate change, but every issue we're unable to address as things fall apart. I chuckled a few times at both, but I don't find either to be very funny. Then again, that might be due to the fact that I get mad when watching Don't Look Up.
I understand drawing the comparison between the two given the subject matter, but I feel like they're very different movies with different focuses and themes. I feel like Don't Look Up is more focused on the systems that lead to how we collectively approach climate change, be it indifference, distraction, polarization, insanity, or rage. Digger doesn't have that, but I don't think that was ever the intention.
The meta-analysis is something that you're much more plugged into, and I understand why this movie will be hit and miss with viewers, but at the end of the day, I'm just glad we finally got a big swing from Cruise and a unique movie from a major studio.
I bring up Don’t Look Up a lot because I think that’s what Inarritu was riffing on the most. Since it’s more in line with what McKay did in DLU than what Kubrick did in Strangelove or what Lumet did in Network.
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that Inarritu came up with this idea shortly after spending a lot of time with McKay during their Oscar campaigns for The Revenant and The Big Short. In my opinion, Digger feels antagonistic towards McKay’s philosophy with his films.
But, besides that meta-textual stuff. I just don’t see how Digger’s satire is significantly different from what Don’t Look Up is doing. The biggest difference is that Don’t Look Up names names. People criticize McKay for insulting the audience, in both Vice and DLU which is what Digger is also getting criticized for.
I know I just posted Oscar predix a week ago, but I needed to update them again. And this time it's the predictions in all the tech categories as well. I did it in the spoiler tag as to not be an eyesore on the thread.
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Watched a few movies this week:
Primetime (2026) - 8/10
Pretty solid movie. Having read the Wikipedia page for To Catch a Predator it kinda did spoil the story for me overall. That being said, Pattinson and the rest of the cast do an amazing job here. Definitely recommend watching if you've got the time.
Days of Thunder (1990) - 8/10
Another great movie. I can see why people love it. I found the story to be a little underwhelming but I just loved how they showed the on-track action and did the sound design.
Digger (2026) - 7/10
This movie I'm a little on the fence about to be quite honest. Tom Cruise does a phenomenal job but I was kind of lost by the plot for the majority of the movie. It wasn't until maybe the last 10-15 minutes that I finally put all the pieces together. I'd definitely give it a chance.
Blackberry (2023) - 10/10
Finally caught up with this movie after years of watching clips of this online. Absolutely amazing movie. While parts of it are a dramatization, the story keeps you engaged from start to finish and the cast, especially Glenn Howerton do an amazing job. Absolutely recommend you watch this movie!
Verity
This is the worst Colleen Hoover adaptation for sure. I saw Reminders of Him and Regretting You relatively recently. They’re okay for the most part. They’re like the Nicolas Sparks movies from the 2010s that helped young actors break out of their teen demographic.
This and It Ends With Us are poorly constructed films. It’s like the sense of storytelling is nonexistent in both. The editing is god awful in both as well. I probably enjoyed Verity more just because no one took it seriously the way Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively took It Ends With Us extremely seriously.
This reminded me so much of The Housemaid last year. They’re both books so I looked it up, Verity was published four years before Housemaid. And it appears that there have been broad allegation of McFadden copying stories numerous times. But, The Housemaid is so much better. I don’t know how much of that is the source material and how much of it are the creative teams behind the films. I have so much more respect for Paul Feig being able to elevate this type of dreck for sure.
This meanders a lot in a way that The Housemaid does not. The actors in The Housemaid all have better chemistry with each other. There’s zero chemistry here among all the actors. Sydney Sweeney is a better actress than Dakota Johnson, which isn’t saying much. And Amanda Seyfried gave an insane performance. Anne Hathaway plays this super goofy as she does with projects she doesn’t respect (see also: Devil Wears Prada 2).
The characters in The Housemaid are so much more compelling. It’s a better paced thriller. There’s constant movement. The eroticism works better with Sweeney than it does with Johnson, despite Johnson being more physically attractive. And the ending for The Housemaid is more cathartic, this is like if The Housemaid ended forty minutes before its actual ending.
I’ve never sat down and read a full Hoover book, I’ve read snippets. Her writing is so clunky and inelegant. But, I do kind of want to see how Verity and The Housemaid differ in their prose. To see if maybe McFadden copied the main idea and went “I think I can do this better.” Because the film adaptations are night and day.
At best this is a so bad it’s good type of a thing, because there are jump scares that are so laughably terrible. Meanwhile, The Housemaid is an incredibly entertaining campy thriller.
I watched The Vanishing (Spoorloos) from 1988 and it is one of the most unsettling films I have seen in quite a while, though I didn't get there immediately. Apparently Stanley Kubrick has stated it was "the most terrifying film he had seen".
As the title suggests, the premise is pretty straight forward. A married couple on a vacation in France stop at a gas station, the wife goes to buy some soda and disappears without a trace. Rest of the film is how the husband become increasingly obsessive in founding out what happened to her.
In the beginning of the film there is a small detail that kept me puzzled for the entire runtime, and it never becomes resolved - unlike most of the rest of the narrative, and it turns out to be a vital key. It ended up being the type of film that needed to roam around in my head for a while before I could see how deeply unsettling and disturbing it really is. Because right after finishing it, it definitely felt like a fully resolved closed thing.
The detail I am talking about is when Rex leaves the tunnel to get gas, leaving his scared wife behind in the dark, there is a very brief sinister smile on his face. It is a small insertion of doubt on his motivations for the rest of the film. His obsessive search would logically be motivated by love for his wife, but there is a nagging feeling that is not really it. He shares some of the inner darkness with the murderer, cannot deal with the not knowing as he isn't driven by love, but guilt and shame of what he did and perhaps his own deeper darker nature.
This was really a film that needed time for me, as I didn't thought that highly about it while watching it, as everything gets foreshadowed and resolved quite cleanly in the narrative sense. The vital minor details only materialized the day after sealing it is a unique piece of psychological horror. The mystery of the vanishing may be solved, but the inner darkness of everyday men is left without a safe explanation.