Random Movie Thoughts Thread

[The Cat]

that's my thought, fantasy films might become popular. Although they don't have the best box office track record. Cinematic universes are tedious for me. I don't always want to have to watch 20 films to know what is going on or to understand every little easter egg and reference.

I think 2024 is going to be the year that the 2020s as we know them will really begin. 2020 arguably killed off the 2010s, but I think the period up until now has been a weird transitional phase in which people have been grasping at what was lost and culture has been trying to return to the world of 2019. Going to be a lot of trends dying off and an influx of the new (or regurgitations of long dead trends)

2020 waterboarded the 2010's to death for three years. That's what it felt like.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

2020 waterboarded the 2010's to death for three years. That's what it felt like..

I'm bothered by all the businesses closing downtown. Covid was very hard on a lot of places economically.

It's possible (in a national sense) we'll get cool things coming up, but knowing the way things work, doubtful.

 

[Totenkindly]

I just finished "The Hidden" (1987) which I remember loving when I was younger but now I probably haven't seen for 25 years or something.

The plotline is kind of a B film, but the execution and script are good enough that this does not often feel like a B film -- it's kind of on-par with the original Terminator film in execution quality.

This might have been Kyle MacLachlan's third film ever (?). It also has other actors who later became more widely known. Lin Shaye plays the press secretary. Danny Trejo has a 5 second cameo as a hispanic guy in prison (I just heard his voice and was like, shit, that's danny trejo!) The guy playing Willis actually takes on a Russian accent in Season 1 of Six Feet Under as the flower store owner dating Ruth. Claudia Christian (22 here, she plays the stripper who actually has a large role) went on to much more popularity in Babylon 5 in the 90's.

The script is actually fairly polished and the dialogue is often very funny, not clumsy like much B films. The directing and editing of the multiple chase sequences and the shootouts are actually very well-done and coherent -- you recognize when one is bad, because you can't figure out where people are spatially and time-wise, but this is all really solid and you don't think twice about it.

It's basically a manhunt/cop film with scifi elements that actually generates human pathos for the leads in terms of what they've lost from the chase and the people they've lost, and the end of the film focuses on this emotional element. It isn't as perfect as it might be, but it stuck with me for years because it tried and it still does generate some emotion.

This is also from the 80's, before the next 35+ years of films involving aliens lurking inside of people, before trills ever showed up. You wonder whether Cameron's T2 picked up a few scenes from this film (like the mannikin storefront) or Star Trek thought of the trill after some folks saw this film, etc.

edit; This is actually a really nice review of the film and also discusses the director's history/skills and New Line. They even credit the car chase as one of the best shot ever.

The Hidden (1987)

New Line Cinema is known as “The House that Freddy Built.” It’s been established, acknowledged, and confirmed by the man himself, founder Robert Shaye. To that end, Wes Craven was the most important filmmaker in the early days of the burgeoning, would-be studio, with the possible exception of...

www.nickkarner.com

 

[Totenkindly]

In case anyone is interested, CinemaScore ratings are garnered directly opening weekend from people at the theater (so you need to have seen the film / buy a ticket in order to rate it -- you have to be dedicated to spend $12-15 on a ticket just to neg on a film you've already decided you hate), and uses bendable tabs rather than a pencil/pen which some people might not have with them, to minimize the amount of ballots left unreturned.

So basically it's ratings from people who were interested enough in a film to purchase a ticket and go to the theater to view it opening weekend.

What is a CinemaScore? - Cinemascore

For over 40 years, CinemaScore has been measuring movie appeal by polling moviegoer reactions to major movie releases. The company calculates its “CinemaScore” movie grades for major movie releases in the U.S. and Canada by polling a regionally-balanced and statistically robust sample of opening...

www.cinemascore.com

 

[SD45T-2]

This might have been Kyle MacLachlan's third film ever (?). It also has other actors who later became more widely known. Lin Shaye plays the press secretary. Danny Trejo has a 5 second cameo as a hispanic guy in prison (I just heard his voice and was like, shit, that's danny trejo!) The guy playing Willis actually takes on a Russian accent in Season 1 of Six Feet Under as the flower store owner dating Ruth. Claudia Christian (22 here, she plays the stripper who actually has a large role) went on to much more popularity in Babylon 5 in the 90's.

It also has William Boyett, who was the sergeant on Adam-12.

 

[Totenkindly]

Watched Red Dragon (2002) today -- I saw it once years ago but remembered little aside from that I wasn't fond of it. I basically blame Brett Ratner (the director) for this. He does manage a half-okay thriller out of Harris' book but it has none of the resonance of the film that drove this remake (Manhunter by Michael Mann was shot in the mid-80's) -- one of the best movies ever made, 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs" that then drove all these further Hannibal Lecter movies.

Maybe one can claim it is unfair to compare Red Dragon (which in the book series occurs before TSotL) to that Oscar-winning film, but Ratner pretty much demands that comparison by trying to capitalize off it with castings like Anthony Hopkins as Lecter and Anthony Heald as Chilton (and some of the minor characters as well), despite the fact they look ten or more years older in this film. Ted Tally even drafts the screenplay. "Why don't we remake Red Dragon, but with Hopkins as Lecter, since he is now synonymous with the character?" you can hear the execs saying. Welp, this is what happens when you let a music video guy with little nuance direct a book that thrives off a slow burn and psychological implications.

Ratner's approach is best described by the Dolarhyde house explosion near the film's end. Oddly enough, the house also explodes (rather than just burns) in the book as well, but the issue here is that Thomas Harris is notorious for writing sensational plot moments into these books and making them work because of his beautiful and suggestive prose that transforms the descriptions into art. (In Hannibal, he introduces electric eels and flesh-eating pigs and somehow gets away with it.) But if you translate it literally to the screen, you just get a bombastic ridiculous mess; his house explosion here is utterly hilarious and overwrought, strung out by Danny Elfman's overly bombastic and frenetic scoring.

Despite such a remarkable cast, there is so much in this version of Red Dragon that is totally inert on the screen, and it boils down to a few things: (1) uninspired direction with dialogue and camera shots, (2) taking everything on the nose, rather than being more suggestive or surreal, (3) the rushed pacing, and (4) lack of real investment in the characters. We never really get inside Dolarhyde's head, Will Graham is just one-dimensional, Hopkins just feels like a second-rate copy of the version from 1991, Harvey Keitel's Crawford is generic Keitel and of course plays very differently than Glenn's version. The cast is not really to blame, it's really a result of inadequate direction and the rushed pace and surface-level content. This version of the story might have been shot for MTV.

There are occasionally a few moments of power, where the scenes go back to basics by doing zooms and tilts on character's faces, bringing us more into their perspectives. Freddy Lounds meeting the Dragon and later the scratchy tape recording of his obeisance. Reba touching the tiger. It's hard to predict when a good moment will occur. Ralph Fiennes acts his heart out in a few scenes and actually almost becomes transcendent in the attic sequence as he argues over Reba with the Dragon, but it's impossible for him to really shine when we're only hearing half of the conversation. Much of the time Dolarhyde feels smaller than he should, and simply detached or crazy. We really (like Will) needed to be inside his head to really get the gist of what was going on.

This is really a film that would benefit not from a Mann or Ratner approach, but something more mystical and surreal, in a way that not even Silence of the Lambs needed. There, at least Jonathan Demme was more concerned about the characters than about necessarily the murders, which are handled more as collateral damage and we see the remains of the crimes as if we were forensic scientists at best (rather than glamorized violence) or the relatives experiencing lingering sadness surrounding their loss. That script focuses on a lost girl trying to succeed in a man's world and a man who looks civilized but is at heart a savage monster and how they still manage to connect through some kind of awareness and honesty between them -- there is an authentic connection despite Lecter's pervasive taint. (I am reminded faintly of the bond between Katniss Everdeen and President Coriolanus Snow, who tells her that regardless of what happens between them and being enemies, he has promised to never lie to her, nor does he.)

But we never really get that much here, it's just one plot point to the next, no pacing, no real depth of character involved. (Ironically, the Hannibal TV show from 2013-2015 took advantage of the weakness inherent in this film to double-down on surreal and psychological depth to the exclusion of fast-paced action and really develop these characters using new casting, and was far better for it.)

Again, it's kind of insane that this film could assemble a cast of such renown, along with a award winning composer + screenwriter, and still only achieve an average product all the director's vision and skill was only average. I found this film disappointing.

 

[The Cat]

Watched Red Dragon (2002) today -- I saw it once years ago but remembered little aside from that I wasn't fond of it. I basically blame Brett Ratner (the director) for this. He does manage a half-okay thriller out of Harris' book but it has none of the resonance of the film that drove this remake (Manhunter by Michael Mann was shot in the mid-80's) -- one of the best movies ever made, 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs" that then drove all these further Hannibal Lecter movies.

Maybe one can claim it is unfair to compare Red Dragon (which in the book series occurs before TSotL) to that Oscar-winning film, but Ratner pretty much demands that comparison by trying to capitalize off it with castings like Anthony Hopkins as Lecter and Anthony Heald as Chilton (and some of the minor characters as well), despite the fact they look ten or more years older in this film. Ted Tally even drafts the screenplay. "Why don't we remake Red Dragon, but with Hopkins as Lecter, since he is now synonymous with the character?" you can hear the execs saying. Welp, this is what happens when you let a music video guy with little nuance direct a book that thrives off a slow burn and psychological implications.

Ratner's approach is best described by the Dolarhyde house explosion near the film's end. Oddly enough, the house also explodes (rather than just burns) in the book as well, but the issue here is that Thomas Harris is notorious for writing sensational plot moments into these books and making them work because of his beautiful and suggestive prose that transforms the descriptions into art. (In Hannibal, he introduces electric eels and flesh-eating pigs and somehow gets away with it.) But if you translate it literally to the screen, you just get a bombastic ridiculous mess; his house explosion here is utterly hilarious and overwrought, strung out by Danny Elfman's overly bombastic and frenetic scoring.

Despite such a remarkable cast, there is so much in this version of Red Dragon that is totally inert on the screen, and it boils down to a few things: (1) uninspired direction with dialogue and camera shots, (2) taking everything on the nose, rather than being more suggestive or surreal, (3) the rushed pacing, and (4) lack of real investment in the characters. We never really get inside Dolarhyde's head, Will Graham is just one-dimensional, Hopkins just feels like a second-rate copy of the version from 1991, Harvey Keitel's Crawford is generic Keitel and of course plays very differently than Glenn's version. The cast is not really to blame, it's really a result of inadequate direction and the rushed pace and surface-level content. This version of the story might have been shot for MTV.

There are occasionally a few moments of power, where the scenes go back to basics by doing zooms and tilts on character's faces, bringing us more into their perspectives. Freddy Lounds meeting the Dragon and later the scratchy tape recording of his obeisance. Reba touching the tiger. It's hard to predict when a good moment will occur. Ralph Fiennes acts his heart out in a few scenes and actually almost becomes transcendent in the attic sequence as he argues over Reba with the Dragon, but it's impossible for him to really shine when we're only hearing half of the conversation. Much of the time Dolarhyde feels smaller than he should, and simply detached or crazy. We really (like Will) needed to be inside his head to really get the gist of what was going on.

This is really a film that would benefit not from a Mann or Ratner approach, but something more mystical and surreal, in a way that not even Silence of the Lambs needed. There, at least Jonathan Demme was more concerned about the characters than about necessarily the murders, which are handled more as collateral damage and we see the remains of the crimes as if we were forensic scientists at best (rather than glamorized violence) or the relatives experiencing lingering sadness surrounding their loss. That script focuses on a lost girl trying to succeed in a man's world and a man who looks civilized but is at heart a savage monster and how they still manage to connect through some kind of awareness and honesty between them -- there is an authentic connection despite Lecter's pervasive taint. (I am reminded faintly of the bond between Katniss Everdeen and President Coriolanus Snow, who tells her that regardless of what happens between them and being enemies, he has promised to never lie to her, nor does he.)

But we never really get that much here, it's just one plot point to the next, no pacing, no real depth of character involved. (Ironically, the Hannibal TV show from 2013-2015 took advantage of the weakness inherent in this film to double-down on surreal and psychological depth to the exclusion of fast-paced action and really develop these characters using new casting, and was far better for it.)

Again, it's kind of insane that this film could assemble a cast of such renown, along with a award winning composer + screenwriter, and still only achieve an average product all the director's vision and skill was only average. I found this film disappointing.

I imagined every paragraph as a slide in a slide show, and between all the slides you keps asking me Do you see? It was glorious.

 

[Totenkindly]

I imagined every paragraph as a slide in a slide show, and between all the slides you keps asking me Do you see? It was glorious.

Now I am tempted to add that into the post roflmao. It would definitely be a more glorious experience than the film.

I will say the Blake painting looked pretty awesome in 4K.

 

[Totenkindly]

Okay I did see The Marvels. Pretty much everything said about it is true, so it's hard to even assess the film.

• The interplay between Brie Larson, Teyonah Paris, and Iman Vellani is the heart of the film and very enjoyable.
• Iman Vellani lights up the screen any time she is present, she really shines the brightest.
• This was a much needed humanization of Carol Danvers. I wouldn't call it a "deep study" but it's easily better than the Captain Marvel film in that regard.
• Kamala's family actually gets a decent amount of screen time on small subplots and is actually pretty enjoyable rather than annoying.
• The film isn't nearly as self-serious as Captain Marvel or other Marvel features, it feels more casual. In fact a lot of the time the leads are wearing street clothes, even occasionally PJs.
• The villain is terrible. She's an Accuser in the line of Ronan -- Ronan did not really get backstory and had presence only because of Lee Pace's acting. The actress here has no presence whatsoever, her introduction in the first three minutes is half-assed and she scans as weak and ineffectual, and they do not spend any time developing her.
• Unfortunately this ties in with the broad plotting of the narrative -- you need a villain with discernible motives, and then you can see with the heroes what is at stake, but it's all very basic, dumb, and the villain one-note. I honestly feel like the actual story was an afterthought, based on how lame it is.
• There are actually a few sequences that are amusing and creative, and I even hate the fact I find them a bit endearing. Why? Because Marvel needs to be showing some creativity and fresh ideas, and the silliness of the water planet of Aladna + how they get all the people off the doomed ship fits the tone of the film and actually is amusing. The cap to the Aladna dance scene also is a great one-liner. The problem is that all the main plotting again was just really sketchy.
• MCU is hinting at starting the Young Avengers.
• The end credits were neat. The early part of the film also had more animated stuff for Kamala like we saw in her TV show.
• There's a mid-credits sequence that I hated. I wish MCU would just drop all the multiverse crap, it's like wasted noodling. Yes, we know there's an unlimited potential of universes out there. Make us care about OUR universe with your stories, not just throwing in fan service from a universe that will likely never matter. I just don't care about all this stuff. It's like Strange disappearing with Clea at the end of DS2 -- will that ever get revisited?

Unfortunately this is like a Gareth Edwards film experience in reverse, in the sense of him being able to make an $80 million film that looks like it cost $160 million. The Marvels, aside from any of its good points, feels like a $50 million dollar film that instead cost $220 million. This should have been a Disney channel release and it should have been budgeted far lower. It seems to be what it was most suited for -- not a wide theatrical release with a crazy high budget. I also don't get how they can drop $220 million on a film without writing a decent villain. This one (and the main plotline) feels literally like an afterthought. I feel the pitch for the film was, "Three MCU women of different ages and backgrounds learn to work together and become a family" but there was no real good reason otherwise to make this film.

Basically, if you already get Disney +, it's worth a view if you're curious when it finally drops there, and it's definitely better than the worst MCU films like Thor 2 and Incredible Hulk and others. It might be better than the original Captain Marvel in terms of feeling.

 

[Totenkindly]

I'm ready for sword and sorcery to make a come back. I just need a break from cinematic universes.

There, you can have your fix of Millie Bobby Brown. Bon apetit!

 

[Totenkindly]

What is up with these asshats lately?

‘Coyote Vs. Acme’: Warner Bros Setting Up Screenings For Streamers Of Axed Looney Tunes Film; Amazon A Prime Candidate – The Dish

Coyote vs. Acme: Warner Bros Showing Pic to Amazon, Apple For Acquisition

deadline.com

 

[The Cat]

What is up with these asshats lately?

‘Coyote Vs. Acme’: Warner Bros Setting Up Screenings For Streamers Of Axed Looney Tunes Film; Amazon A Prime Candidate – The Dish

Coyote vs. Acme: Warner Bros Showing Pic to Amazon, Apple For Acquisition

deadline.com

WB hasnt been able to manage their merchandising rights since 1989 when Jack Nicholson hacked the console commands from under the studios nose. They've literally never gotten over it and only the audiences and fans have suffered under their madness.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

What is up with these asshats lately?

‘Coyote Vs. Acme’: Warner Bros Setting Up Screenings For Streamers Of Axed Looney Tunes Film; Amazon A Prime Candidate – The Dish

Coyote vs. Acme: Warner Bros Showing Pic to Amazon, Apple For Acquisition

deadline.com

If I'd heard decent reviews of this film, I probably would have watched it. The coyote was always my favorite character out of animation from that era.

 

[Totenkindly]

If I'd heard decent reviews of this film, I probably would have watched it. The coyote was always my favorite character out of animation from that era.

Oh yeah, that's what is really frustrating -- sounds like the test audiences liked it and they decided to toss it at first for a tax write-off, until so many people bitched they decided to shop it around and see if they could sell it to someone else to use.

Talk about having no respect for your actual company products or the people who make them.

 

[Totenkindly]

4K "The Abyss" Is Coming To Cinemas - Dark Horizons

A newly remastered 4K version of the ‘Special Edition’ cut of James Cameron’s Oscar-winning underwater adventure “The Abyss” is coming to cinemas for a one-night-only event on December 6th. In an official statement, Cameron says: “If you haven’t seen the film before, this is the way to...

www.darkhorizons.com

 

[Totenkindly]

Warner Bros. will shop 'Coyote vs. Acme' to other studios after backlash

'Coyote vs. Acme' won't be going the way of 'Batgirl' after all: Warner Bros. has reversed course, and the movie will now be shopped to other studios and streamers for a new distribution deal.

ew.com

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

There, you can have your fix of Millie Bobby Brown. Bon apetit!

I get a kick out of Robin Wright playing the evil queen.

 

[Totenkindly]

I get a kick out of Robin Wright playing the evil queen.

I saw someone else in there too -- oh yeah, Angela Bassett.

To be honest, if you watched House of Cards, it's not really much different for Robin Wright. She's also kind of a hardass in Blade Runner 2049.

 

[Totenkindly]

Just came from Killers of the Flower Moon. Just kinda wow. I'm pleasantly happy with myself for sitting through the entire film without a bathroom break. I also got a Tuesday discount for going today, and no one else was even in the theater so I had the whole room to myself which was kind of neat.

Scorsese might get a bad rep at times for being critical of genres outside his lane, but he's also a damned good filmmaker and this was no exception -- especially with some of the cool stuff that bookended the film (like that opening montage when oil was discovered). I really liked that the closing credits were all nature sounds including rain, which is a callback to a small moment early in the film between Mollie and Ernest.

I don't know how many times I muttered "WTF" watching the events of this film unfold, the evil presented here is just shameless and embarrassing and frustrating to watch. Despicable to the degree I was getting angry watching it.

Lily Gladstone was just amazing. Looking at her past performances I now feel stupid because I did not remember her, but I saw both "First Cow" and "Certain Women" the latter of which I really liked and own a copy of... and now I need to rewatch and will assume she was the lead for the third story in that film. As an actress she knows how to evoke things without saying a word, it's a rare skill that is just formidable, and it fits with her character in KotFM.

For the central Native role, though, Scorsese knew he wanted Gladstone.

“I saw her in Kelly Reichardt’s picture ‘Certain Women,’ and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her,” Scorsese writes in an email. “Lily’s character was quiet, she spoke very little, but she commanded the screen with her presence, with every move, every gesture. There are very few actors around who know how to hold the screen like that, and it was perfect for the character of Mollie.”

it was interesting to me that for some reason I ended up focused on most of the characters' intelligence in the first 30 minutes of the film -- I was weighing each up. It was really clear that Ernest wasn't very quick and thus easily manipulated, while Mollie and King were both highly intelligent characters -- King in his slick ability to manipulate others and pose as a wolf in sheep's clothing, while Mollie was very perceptive and constantly sizing others up (although she seemed to have a few blind spots... or did she?)

I read the wiki summary after I saw it, and was kind of confused about how much Ernest was actually aware of. He seems complicit with many of the activities occurring in the film, but in connection with Mollie's diabetes:

DiCaprio plays him as kind of muddled and not really putting 2+2 together a lot, although the script as noted eventually reveals that regardless, he was also kind of capricious and stealing/robbing/killing one minute and the next acting like he was just normal.

I couldn't tell how aware he was of his actual poisoning of Mollie for awhile. He seems like a guy who can convince himself he is not doing anything wrong because he can't accept his uncle would lie to him, and even with evidence otherwise he would kind of reflexively sweep it under the table. When he gets the insulin originally, it seems like he believes it. But he is asked to add something else to it after MOllie goes to Washington DC ("to settle her down") and he is reluctant but does it while also seeming to really believe it's all helping her. But eventually he does pour some of it in his own whiskey to drink, so he had to have known then because he got sick -- but it's like he can't accept that this is poison, so he keeps giving her the insulin and telling himself lies about it and punishing himself by taking some himself on and off.

The wiki makes it sound like he is fully aware of what he is doing. The film kind of muddies that -- it's like he's aware on some level but blocks it out of his mind. When she asks him the final time whether he was poisoning her and he says no, I actually believed he believes that and has blocked out his culpability in his own mind -- it's like he can't accept that he loves her but was doing this awful thing to her. I dunno. Maybe DiCaprio was too convincing?

I was kinda surprised to see some people panning Brendan Fraser's performance (it's not a long one) in the film. I don't know why. It seemed fine to me and was just a particular type of character who could easily manipulation Ernest by brute loudness.

So no spoilers but this movie will win a glut of Oscars. It was fantastic and not just the acting. I read the book and I chalked it up to yet another near erasure from history by the state of Oklahoma (Tulsa massacre, segregation and lynching..) but it was really far more than that. I truly hope Lili Gladstone is recognized especially for this role.

Totally agree. It might currently be the front runner for Best Picture and would deserve it, although I've noticed The Holdovers creating a lot of buzz too.

Yeah, it drew overt parallels with Tulsa, and it shouldn't be ironic that the same shitheads trying to fleece the native americans were also violently anti-racist against the successful black communities of the time -- "oh, we don't want to be seen with the Klan," but hey the Klan then shows up in a parade and they're all buds.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I saw someone else in there too -- oh yeah, Angela Bassett.

To be honest, if you watched House of Cards, it's not really much different for Robin Wright. She's also kind of a hardass in Blade Runner 2049.

I forgot she was in Blade Runner, but you're right.