Random Movie Thoughts Thread

[The Cat]

When I think of Christopher Walken...I think of Gabriel in the Prophecy movies first.

Wbu?

 

[Totenkindly]

When I think of Christopher Walken...I think of Gabriel in the Prophecy movies first.
Wbu?

His cameo in "Pulp Fiction."

 

[Totenkindly]

Do I dare to hope an MCU movie might actually be worth seeing? (at the very least, this is why you cast good actors like Florence Pugh in these films.)

 

[Totenkindly]

Then we have... this.

I mean, the retro idea is kind of cool. I think the Surfer looks like shit, though -- and I'm not that impressed with anything else really from the trailer. And as much as I like Pedro Pascal, I'm not feeling it for this character.

 

[The Cat]

Then we have... this.

I mean, the retro idea is kind of cool. I think the Surfer looks like shit, though -- and I'm not that impressed with anything else really from the trailer. And as much as I like Pedro Pascal, I'm not feeling it for this character.

It looks like theyre trying to tell to many stories at once and will end up telling no story at all...

 

[SearchingforPeace]

Lionsgate just released a beautiful 4K pack for Basic Instinct (1992), which I got yesterday. I haven’t seen this movie for probably 25 years. I’m not sure why people hated on this film or downplayed it when it came out. The transfer is absolutely gorgeous, the music/orchestration is perfectly shaped and suited to support the emotional narrative of the film (I see now Jerry Goldsmith did it, he’s got a long professional career), and the editing even got an Oscar nod.

The acting by the leads is solid. I mean, Douglas has played lots of roles like this in his career, so he could probably do it in his sleep, but it’s still very solid and he captures the kind of double-mindedness involved when he feels like he is being seduced, and then slowly stops caring because Catherine speaks to and awakens something deep inside of him, that lets him throw off caution and expectation and just get caught up in how alive he feels with her.

Stone is just mesmerizing, she dominates the whole film – and creates the same kind of atmosphere as her character, she feels dangerous and untrustworthy except that you want to trust her and accept her innocence even if you still think she might have committed all of these crimes. I mean, pop culture might have made her character here a cliché, but that does a real injustice to her performance. One also can't help but be reminded of Greta Scacchi's performance as Carolyn Polhemus from Presumed Innocent which was filmed two years prior, but whereas Carolyn is a more traditional femme fatale (she's more blatantly an ambitious woman with disregard for her conquests, leading to her untimely end that opens that film), Catherine is a different matter and manages to paint herself both as manipulative and dangerous while also perhaps just misunderstood and vulnerable, with her guilt never quite certain. She is guilty of not playing the role of a conventional woman and instead possessing strong self-autonomy, but a killer? Unclear.

As far as the truth behind all of the crimes, the film manages to string you along until the end legitimately, within the context of noir at least. Also, there’s this weird fadeout at the very end.

Right before the fadeout, Catherine rolls back towards Nick with nothing in her hands (despite the crazy music) and they begin to make love, crisis averted.

But then comes a second or two of blackness, before the film jumps back in and then does the infamous pan below the bed. But the ice pick seen there doesn’t match the similar picks earlier in the film.

Is this an alternate ending? The film does wonderfully in setting up two narratives at once, that Beth is the killer or that Catherine is the killer. Or maybe even a third narrative, that each is responsible for different killings in the film, whereas Nick was trying to erroneously connect them all. There's some strong support and yet strong discrepancy to each of the film theories, and it's almost like the film doesn't WANT to resolve which is the “most true.” The strongest evidence against Catherine is the parts of her novels describing crimes that have occurred and and the first draft dropping from her printer describing a detective running up to floor 4 to save his partner, which happens only a few hours later, along with the potential for her to plant evidence against Beth, makes her a viable suspect; and yet Beth's story contains motives for the film's death and she has also effectively been unmasked by Nielson, who then dies before he can spill anything.

The thing the film really does do, however, is take Catherine Trammel and instead of punishing her for being a femme fatale instead arranges things so that after dominating and controlling the behaviors of many people in the film (almost every character’s bad behavior stems from her, whether it is Nick, or Roxy, or Beth), instead of being punished (i.e., driven into exile, killed, arrested like most noir films) or instead of having her fate dictated, she gets what she wants. Nick fills her capacity for danger, himself having killed and lived on the edge... and also succumbing to her wiles, she's capable of keeping him ultimately under her thumb. And at the very end, it sounds like Nick wants to go for a conventional life where Catherine would be expected to pump out kids and be a mother, leading to the huge musical buildup as she starts reaching down alongside the bed… until Nick lets all that go and lets Catherine be whoever she wants to be and drops the kid thing… he will ultimately give her what she wants ... and whether or not she is the killer, instead of rebuffing, murdering, or fleeing him, she accepts that and embraces him. She’s reached her “happy ending” and retains her autonomy.

I did crack up regarding the nefarious crotch shot. I’m not sure what was visible in the original large-screen theater, and the early home “Unrated” versions was muddy enough in terms of quality that you just did not get enough detail to really make out much... but this 4K Unrated version leaves nothing to doubt. You get a full (though very quick) shot of everything in perfect distinct detail. Like, holy shit.

I rewatched it about six months ago or so. I was glad it held up. Beautiful film. Good tension. Twists. Etc.
Stone's prior film was Total Recall, where she held her own against Arnold and showed her potential. In Basic Instinct, she clearly was the most charismatic character and clearly dominated the movie.
The analysis of the murders was spot on.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

In a nutshell, movies go straight to streaming within a couple of weeks after leaving theaters, so there is less incentive to see them in the theater

 

[SensEye]

Do I dare to hope an MCU movie might actually be worth seeing? (at the very least, this is why you cast good actors like Florence Pugh in these films.)


View attachment 32387

I think that ship has sailed. But that preview looks better than most. Nonetheless, I think the best an MCU movie can aspire too these days is mediocrity (as opposed to unwatchable garbage). In fairness, I haven't really watched many movies in the genre for the past 5+ years so I am not really up on things. Just Deadpool (and I thought the last installment in that franchise was crap).

I note the F4 reboot seems once again to concentrate on the origin story. That's usually the only interesting part of these shows and why they have to keep re-booting so they can re imagine the origin story. Once you get past the origin story into the inevitable rise of the super villain who will inevitably be defeated by the superhero(s) everything gets boring and predictable and the movie at that point becomes a special effects showcase. Throwing in a few red shirt superheroes to kill off hasn't helped much. Including a little humor and self mockery of the genre helps a little but can't overcome the repetitive predictability inherent in the genre.

 

[The Cat]

I think Disney/MCU labor under the impression that if you spend billions on a movie you can't make a cheap movie. Woe betides us all that this is not the case... Art is one of those rare things that just dumping a bunch of money into it doesn't make it so.

 

[Totenkindly]

In general, agree about the films going to streaming -- although it's really only good for groups of friends or families. The streaming prices are usually $20-25 a view, which isn't economical for single viewers (considering tickets are $12-15). But for groups, if it's a film you don't need to see on big screen, everyone can toss in a few bucks.

Mickey 17 wasn't actually supposed to be bad, but it wasn't really promoted well + it's a niche genre film w/ Pattinson as the billing. I would like to see it, but I just couldn't bring myself to drag my sorry ass to a theater for it.

Snow White, OTOH... well, I heard Disney might now be swearing off live-action remakes? If so, thank god.

 

[Totenkindly]

 

[The Cat]

Snow White, OTOH... well, I heard Disney might now be swearing off live-action remakes? If so, thank god.

We all owe Rachel Ziegler an apology...she saved us from more DLA garbage.

 

[Totenkindly]

Watched Companion this morning, which ended up being a much stronger film than I had expected. (I think the last five minutes was the most conventional part of the film, honestly -- it seems to fall into line with every other abused female protagonist story we've seen -- but it didn't really ruin what came before.)

I think the only other disappointment is just that the premise was either exposed in the marketing or in the streaming descriptions and on social media so that it's impossible to watch this film completely "clean" per se, but it doesn't really ruin the film, it just highlights other aspects of the film -- and then there's more than a few unexpected twists that keep the fun going. It's hard not to compare this to

Ex Machina or Westworld Season 1 (although I'd avoid comparing to M3GAN, which purely tries to exploit the conceit for horror purposes rather than digging into the painful mess of this kind of existence).

This is also another specific subgenre of thriller film as explained in the spoiler (so maybe skip this until after viewing, even if you know the main spoiler of the film):

Films where a male character who genuinely seems nice is eventually exposed as a villain or somehow corrupt. I'm not talking about thinly painted nice or average guys who come off as immediately shady but ones who generally feel sympathetic and end up breaking your heart a bit when they turn. Obvious comparison examples would be Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) from Colossal, Ryan (Bo Burnham) from Promising Young Woman, Norman (Harrison Ford) from What Lies Beneath, and (possibly) Burke (Paul Reiser) from Aliens. The effectiveness is really in the casting, it's actors who have genuinely endearing screen presence who suddenly end up being horribly tainted in some way... and typically the character breaks bad due to a misguided sense of entitlement -- and so it is in this film.

Companion should be commended to digging into that ambiguous area between facts and the subjective experience, and also legitimately asking what the real difference is between

humans and androids. Are humans not programmed into some ways? Do we not have senses of self that are partially built on subjective experience and misunderstanding of cold facts? Is there any real different in the feeling state / subjective experience level? The question sometimes seems to be whether we're separate simply because we're not easily controlled directly, at a button push, although we can be programmed over time to have similar but messier responses to certain stimuli.

 

[Totenkindly]

Rewatched Bourne Legacy last night. Hoping it gets more appreciation with the success and appreciation of Andor, since Tony Gilroy (who also wrote two of the earlier Bourne films with Damon) co-wrote and directed this film.

I can't imagine why people don't like it or why it did worse in ratings, aside from a few things:

1. It doesn't have Jason Bourne in it -- but it was supposed to position Aaron Cross as a successor to Jason Bourne with Damon leaving, and the film's role is acknowledged by its title.
2. It kind of fits within the last half of the third Bourne film, we get bits of connecting tissue to anchor it in the prior plot.
3. Cross never actually fights a comparable agent (namely Larx 3) in HTH combat, although there's a pretty great chase scene across Manila on car and bike and foot. Cross however just totally destroys other trained non-enhanced agents plus quite a number of security/police in some pretty cool fight sequences.

Still, I feel like Gilroy's strengths come out in this film, with how it centers character development and gives Renner and Weisz a lot of interaction. Despite not knowing a lot of backstory details, they still feel fully realized with what detail we get and the acting from both leads. Gilroy manages to evoke pathos out of both character's backstories.

Aaron is basically a guy without a home who buys into the military/science program to find a place to belong but ends up questioning his allegiance and feeling like a captive (and separated from other people) because he's tied so strongly to his med cycles -- and we find out later one reason he's so desperate to be cycled off is a basic variation on "Flowers for Algernon." Marta meanwhile is happy living in the dark with other portions of the medical apparatus she's part of (like, who these people are and why they volunteered, or how these accentuated people are being used globally), until she's basically treated like a disposable cog in the machine and only survives because of Aaron.

There's a lot of great intellectual and medical detail inserted into the script that flows naturally, unlike a Christopher Nolan info dump, on a level the viewer can understand, and the decisions and plotting all feel logical -- strengths of Gilroy. He's also great at insinuating a lot with a limited amount of detail (kind of like the two outcome agents in the remote cabin -- you get a sense of how these men are just tools, punished to be kept in line, and taught to mistrust others as part of being more effective weapons). It's kind of neat to watch the pursuit/tracking unfold but so far behind Cross and Shearing that they don't catch up until it doesn't matter as much.

But it's really Renner and Weisz that bring warmth and depth to their characters. When Cross rages, you understand why; when he tells Marta "Thank you" as she virals him out, you feel it. You can hear how caught up Marta was in her job and focused on just her small piece, without thinking about its impact on the outcome agents she was altering. She is able to tell Cross exactly what enhancements she provided him with the viral delivery, but when she watches him utterly destroy three security guards in a Manila basement in about 7 seconds, you can see the total fear and surprise on her face at actually seeing her "science" in action.

 

[The Cat]

Ive been thinking about this for a while.
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