I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
The Wachokskis make some failure but at least they're usually interesting failures. I think me and my gf are the only two people on earth who actually liked Cloud Atlas.
I am so sad that Cloud Atlas doesn't have any commentary tracks on it. The features are not terrible but I would have really liked a full-length commentary from the directors or the cast to go into details about making such an ambitious feature.
The strangest mistake Devil made was in the marketing.
The first trailer gives away the entire movie.
The biggest problem was that it had a dozen actually serious problems. Starting with the premise that the literal devil, Satan, Lord of Hell, is taking the time to fuck with an elevator full of assholes. Like, I guess he is really bored and he's already exhausted his movie collection because it's Hell and the only films they have down there are bootleg Portuguese dubs of Pluto Nash. Still, seems a little beneath the dude who once got into a war with the God of All Creation.
The Exorcist sidestepped this problem by making the bad guy just some demon. A powerful demon, but still just a demon. Devil went too big.
Then, yeah, the marketing - Hell, even the name - gives everything away. "Yep, it's the devil. Devil is terrorizing an elevator. Yep."
Then there was the terrible script and the nonsensical story. And a carload of unlikable characters who you would probably root against except they're so goddamn boring you can't even muster the energy to do that.
At least The Happening had the decency to be hilariously bad. Devil was just bad-bad.
Religious guy with an accent who knows wayyyyyy too much? Check.
Nonsensical story? Check.
The "toast test"? Oh fucking check.
That movie was fucking stupid.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
I think his Pulp Fiction part is an amusing bit that he doesn't perform any better or worse than anybody else would, probably. And he's great in From Dusk Til Dawn and Desperado. And I like him in Planet Terror, although more for the meta-thematics there than the performance.
Totally pointless in Django, though, accent included. Really it's just distracting in a scene that already kind of represents the nadir of the movie's momentum.
What director does the best acting in their own movies, though?
I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
I think his Pulp Fiction part is an amusing bit that he doesn't perform any better or worse than anybody else would, probably. And he's great in From Dusk Til Dawn and Desperado. And I like him in Planet Terror, although more for the meta-thematics there than the performance.
Totally pointless in Django, though, accent included. Really it's just distracting in a scene that already kind of represents the nadir of the movie's momentum.
What director does the best acting in their own movies, though?
Tommy Wiseau in The Room.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
Didn't M. Night make his expy in Lady In The Water a writer that will eventually become a pseudo prophet whose book will change the world? Tarantino hasn't got the balls to do that with cameos.
I wouldn't go that far, but the parts that were good were really really good, and the parts of the plot that made no sense shouldn't ruin the film for you unless you want them to.
Which part have I gone too far on?
No parts, that was a response to Astaereth I just failed to quote his post.
I really liked Cloud Atlas. One hundred million dollars spunked up against the wall for an epic whose message is essentially Be Excellent To One Another.
I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
I think his Pulp Fiction part is an amusing bit that he doesn't perform any better or worse than anybody else would, probably. And he's great in From Dusk Til Dawn and Desperado. And I like him in Planet Terror, although more for the meta-thematics there than the performance.
Totally pointless in Django, though, accent included. Really it's just distracting in a scene that already kind of represents the nadir of the movie's momentum.
What director does the best acting in their own movies, though?
I also thought he was really great and creepy in From Dusk Til Dawn.
One of the few films I saw more than once in the theatre I enjoyed it so much.
Also if there were an Oscar for best fake tattoo that makes George Clooney look even more ridiculously sexy it would definitely go to From Dusk Til Dawn.
I really liked Cloud Atlas. One hundred million dollars spunked up against the wall for an epic whose message is essentially Be Excellent To One Another.
I liked it overall
The makeup was distracting at times, and all the parts felt rushed.
And I don't remember the book all that well, but :spoilers:
wasn't the revolution in neo-future fake in the book? because it came off as real in the movie
I really liked Cloud Atlas. One hundred million dollars spunked up against the wall for an epic whose message is essentially Be Excellent To One Another.
I liked it overall
The makeup was distracting at times, and all the parts felt rushed.
And I don't remember the book all that well, but :spoilers:
wasn't the revolution in neo-future fake in the book? because it came off as real in the movie
yes book spoiler
is the book she was programmed from the start to be a revolutionary.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
This Tom Hanks peeing in everything is fascinating and seemingly true off the top of my head.
And I didn't know Bettany was in Da Vinci Code, he seems to always be a priest or an angel.
and a sidenote Chef is on Netflix instant now so there's no reason to not watch it, it's a great, happy movie you will be better off for watching.
This Tom Hanks peeing in everything is fascinating and seemingly true off the top of my head.
And I didn't know Bettany was in Da Vinci Code, he seems to always be a priest or an angel.
and a sidenote Chef is on Netflix instant now so there's no reason to not watch it, it's a great, happy movie you will be better off for watching.
Bettany was the albino assassin.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I never cared to see Da Vinci Code, or that other one by the same author, in which the commercial tried to sell me on the movie with a heart pounding car chase......in Smart Car.
I never cared to see Da Vinci Code, or that other one by the same author, in which the commercial tried to sell me on the movie with a heart pounding car chase......in Smart Car.
The sequel was pretty garbage but the first one (Da Vinci Code) was pretty entertaining. Definitely superior to the book, source material being elevated by the cast big time.
watching Godzilla again. I know I ragged on the way it teases monster fights and doesn't deliver ANYTHING as buildup, but I find the movie weirdly compelling and incredibly atmospheric. Just, for all the things about it that I don't like, it's really fun to watch.
I rather liked how Godzilla reinforced the cosmic horror aspect of kaiju films.
Up until the last 10 minutes or so, Godzilla and the MUTOs just didn't care about (or possibly even notice) the humans around them, and killed thousands mostly by accident as they hunted each other/food.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited January 2015
I watched a few old-ish school movies the past few days.
The Frighteners. If you haven't seen this one, I'd suggest you give this horror-comedy from Peter Jackson a whirl. Michael J Fox is in great form and it's a lot of fun.
Major League. This movie works. I mean, it just works. There are nearly 30 year old jokes in this movie that still crack me the fuck up every time I hear them. The ending is cliche? It doesn't matter, it works. The characters are all caricatures? It doesn't matter, it works. Everything works. Classic.
That Thing You Do. I don't know what it is but as someone who spent nearly two decades in bands, playing music, and doing "the thing", everything in this movie just hits the right spots. The bass player has no name, the artistic guy gets his shit run over, the charismatic guy who loves music for music ends up playing in clubs for chump change, and people just randomly shuffle off. It's a great flick.
I never cared to see Da Vinci Code, or that other one by the same author, in which the commercial tried to sell me on the movie with a heart pounding car chase......in Smart Car.
The sequel was pretty garbage but the first one (Da Vinci Code) was pretty entertaining. Definitely superior to the book, source material being elevated by the cast big time.
The book was better than the movie. Both had an awful ending where Tom Hanks acted like James Bond and got the girl *wink wink nudge nudge* , who was an awesome in the book.
The Da Vinci Code was the book that reminded me that mainstream fiction is fucking terrible. The movie was better by virtue of not having shit prose and claiming every five pages that THIS SHIT TOTES HAPPENED DUDE, I KNOW, CRAZY, HUH?
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
@Astaereth - I was actually serious about wanting to know what you find so incredible about The Village. I might need to give it a rewatch or something.
I basically feel like MNS gave us two brilliant movies, then a good but kind of flawed film in Signs, another good but flawed film in The Village, the milquetoast Lady In the Water, and then varying levels of festering ooze since then.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
I'm working on it, El Jeffe, but it's a long one. Gimme some time. Putting up a different review in a few minutes, too, which I need to get out fresh while I'm still pissed off. (Also I too probably want to rewatch The Village so I can be sure of my close readings.)
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
edited January 2015
I saw a preview screening tonight, and they asked us not to discuss the film on social media or anything. So I won't reveal the name of the film.
But that's the last fucking Mark Millar movie I ever see.
What's worst is that it's not unentertaining. It has some clever ideas, it's not without a certain love for a certain filmic tradition, and even when it overtly breaks with that tradition, it generally does so with respect. I suspect many of you--perhaps those trash-swilling John Wick fans* among you--will enjoy it quite a bit. My friend who took me to the film certainly did so. "That movie gave zero fucks," he said gleefully as the credits rolled, and he wasn't wrong. This is a ridiculous, ridiculous movie that at times embraces a bombastic verve that is actually quite admirable. The performances are strong, particularly the British star, the movie's villain (whose actor finds a kind of cockeyed inversion of the usual scenery-chewing bad guy; he goes far under the bottom, extrudes scenery via the mouth, and then hides behind it), and a certain TV actress playing this movie's equivalent of Odd Job (I wouldn't say she's spectacular, but she fits the role of "the heavy" much better than you'd expect). And the main reason I wanted to see this in the first place, the action cinematography, paid off in spades. This is absolutely a fascinating style that I'd love to see other movies pick up on--instead of shakycam post-action, it uses fast cuts, dynamic angles and stark compositions, and shows you several action "beats" per shot in fairly wide views.
But all of this is put in service of a cartoon, and an offensive, angering cartoon as well. The best way I can put it is that this is the closest we'll ever get to a live-action Archer movie--if Archer (the show) didn't know all of its characters were terrible human beings. I'll unpack that in a minute.
On one level, I found the movie difficult to engage with because it suffers from thin characters (particularly the lead, who I found really boring), a plot with too much repetition and at least one gaping hole (there is a group of people in the movie who exhibit great selfishness--which I could buy in a satirical way--and great stupidity, which I couldn't, when they allow something to be done to their bodies that violates all common sense, let alone security protocols), and action which--while shot really well--is way too cartoonish to actually work the way it wants to. Those are all kind of normal "yeah this wasn't too great as a movie but still kinda fun" complaints.
On another level, the thematic structure of this movie, what it was actually saying made me pretty fucking angry. Speaking vaguely, you have a conflict between:
-a secret society that is coded both as noble/self-sacrificing AND the ultimate old white boy's club (a supposedly meritocratic organization where membership is only offered to those born with privilege)
(and)
-a black self-made man and his handicapped assistant trying to save the environment (the Ozymandias way) who arbitrarily selects the most famous people in society (the movie calls them the richest, but all we actually see are celebrities and politicians--more self-made people) to survive the apocalypse
There's also the impoverished masses, who are portrayed as wasting their potential in booze, unemployment, and spousal abuse, people who will spend all day in line waiting for free stuff; and yet the movie argues that the elite among them (read: secret princes) will learn the valuable skills of parkour and not ever snitching.
Then there's the... unfortunate scene where coding and tones and signals are layered on top of one another so densely that it's hard to tell what the movie wants you to feel. (I'm speaking of the scene set to the guitar solo from Freebird, which... ugh. Just ugh.) Actually, I know exactly what the movie wants you to feel there, because it does the same thing at the climax. It wants you to feel the exhilarating catharsis of seeing cardboard caricatures of a hated group be the victims of horrific/cartoonish violence. It sets up paper tigers so that you can cheer when the hero tears them down, and makes sure to make those tigers particularly odious so that you feel good about the violence done to them, and then goes back to being a story where violence is awful and wrong. It wants you to feel good and bloodthirsty--and politely shocked--and pleased that the movie had the balls to shock you so by appealing so nakedly to your bloodthirstiness--and then moved to authentic sadness and horror by the prospect of further violence.
Ultimately, like Kick-Ass, this movie wants to rape its cake and eat it too. It's as though the filmmakers carefully deconstructed the James Bond mythos--the questionable geopolitics, the sexism, the casual murder, the absurd tropes--and then decided that those were totally awesome and made a movie whose sole purpose is to high five that mythos as hard as it can. And speaking of sexism, the movie is so sexist in its construction (in a few specific moments, in the wasting of a character in the climax, and in the values of the institution the film idolizes) that the inclusion and treatment of its most prominent female character feels like the movie trying to head off accusations of sexism, where another film might simply have felt progressive. And then the movie's last big joke is a horribly offensive one on several levels.
It's the perfect capper to a film that just feels gross, like a mean-spirited Mad Magazine spoof. I'd hate it less if it didn't have at least some quality as an entertainment, or if it didn't seem to believe that it was honestly telling a progressive story about class distinctions. Deconstruction as a form is one of the best and most progressive one can undertake, because it lends itself so well to questioning tradition, incorporating minority voices, thinking critically, and examining tropes in the harsh light of reality. With this and with Kick-Ass, the filmmakers use that form to laud tradition, silence minorities, shun critical thought, and renew tropes, all while pretending to do the exact opposite. If you've heard the quote, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," well, this movie takes the dismantler's tools and uses them to add a whole new fucking wing onto the master's house. Don't see this movie.
Edit: In case it wasn't clear--I may have gotten too distracted by the hypocrisy to really sum up the movie's ethos properly--I think the film simply assumes as fact that some people are better and more deserving of success than others by virtue of their status as either rich, white males or the sons thereof, even while pretending/attempting to argue against such a notion. And I find that pretty fucking despicable.
*
I haven't seen John Wick yet, but after hearing y'all talk about it so much I'm super excited to watch it. I'm just placeholdering it into my curmudgeony rants because I think that's funny.
Astaereth on
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
On the above
I guessed the movie pretty early on in the write up, that's pretty much what I expected ever since I saw the trailer.
There are certain movies that make you wonder why they bother letting people see them ahead of the release date.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
I think his Pulp Fiction part is an amusing bit that he doesn't perform any better or worse than anybody else would, probably. And he's great in From Dusk Til Dawn and Desperado. And I like him in Planet Terror, although more for the meta-thematics there than the performance.
Totally pointless in Django, though, accent included. Really it's just distracting in a scene that already kind of represents the nadir of the movie's momentum.
What director does the best acting in their own movies, though?
Doesn't he die in every movie he cameos in, though? Or at least, get grievously wounded? Cats not exactly trying to be a big part of the movie.
@Astaereth John Wick isn't super long, so I'm curious what you'd think of it. Some rambling about John Wick to follow.
One thing I found interesting about John Wick is
that the wife's death isn't the call to action. It's a terrible thing that sends John into a deep depression, but it's not what gets him back into the game. This is clever, because most movies would go the Taken route and have that be the call, but instead it's his dog's death. The dog symbolizes and embodies his wife's love for him, since it's her dying gift.
Also kind of neat is that the most ruthless of the assassins is a woman, a role that could've easily been cast male.
I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
I think his Pulp Fiction part is an amusing bit that he doesn't perform any better or worse than anybody else would, probably. And he's great in From Dusk Til Dawn and Desperado. And I like him in Planet Terror, although more for the meta-thematics there than the performance.
Totally pointless in Django, though, accent included. Really it's just distracting in a scene that already kind of represents the nadir of the movie's momentum.
What director does the best acting in their own movies, though?
Doesn't he die in every movie he cameos in, though? Or at least, get grievously wounded? Cats not exactly trying to be a big part of the movie.
Off the top of my head, at least in Pulp Fiction nothing happened to him.
I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
I think his Pulp Fiction part is an amusing bit that he doesn't perform any better or worse than anybody else would, probably. And he's great in From Dusk Til Dawn and Desperado. And I like him in Planet Terror, although more for the meta-thematics there than the performance.
Totally pointless in Django, though, accent included. Really it's just distracting in a scene that already kind of represents the nadir of the movie's momentum.
What director does the best acting in their own movies, though?
Doesn't he die in every movie he cameos in, though? Or at least, get grievously wounded? Cats not exactly trying to be a big part of the movie.
Off the top of my head, at least in Pulp Fiction nothing happened to him.
then it's revealed again that shayamalan has no idea how humans act and has a park ranger give a strange blind girl medicine instead of, oh I dunno, going to where the injured person is and maybe calling some people or asking any followup questions whatsoever
I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
I think his Pulp Fiction part is an amusing bit that he doesn't perform any better or worse than anybody else would, probably. And he's great in From Dusk Til Dawn and Desperado. And I like him in Planet Terror, although more for the meta-thematics there than the performance.
Totally pointless in Django, though, accent included. Really it's just distracting in a scene that already kind of represents the nadir of the movie's momentum.
What director does the best acting in their own movies, though?
I also thought he was really great and creepy in From Dusk Til Dawn.
One of the few films I saw more than once in the theatre I enjoyed it so much.
From Dusk Til Dawn is fantastic. And it's on Netflix, so anyone reading this post who hasn't seen it should go watch it right now.
They did a season long TV series remake of it which is okay, but not great. I like some of the things they did with it, but they needed to trim it down 20% lengthwise. The guy who plays Seth Gecko is a dead ringer for Clooney in terms of mannerisms and speech, which is awesome, but he isn't as nearly imposing.
I despised the ending and the unnecessary twist, but everything leading up to it was stellar.
Shyamalan has made more great movies than a lot of directors, but his bad movies are SO bad, and his self-insertion shtick is so horrible, that it nearly washes out the outstanding amazingness of Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, Signs, etc.
I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
I think his Pulp Fiction part is an amusing bit that he doesn't perform any better or worse than anybody else would, probably. And he's great in From Dusk Til Dawn and Desperado. And I like him in Planet Terror, although more for the meta-thematics there than the performance.
Totally pointless in Django, though, accent included. Really it's just distracting in a scene that already kind of represents the nadir of the movie's momentum.
What director does the best acting in their own movies, though?
I also thought he was really great and creepy in From Dusk Til Dawn.
One of the few films I saw more than once in the theatre I enjoyed it so much.
From Dusk Til Dawn is fantastic. And it's on Netflix, so anyone reading this post who hasn't seen it should go watch it right now.
They did a season long TV series remake of it which is okay, but not great. I like some of the things they did with it, but they needed to trim it down 20% lengthwise. The guy who plays Seth Gecko is a dead ringer for Clooney in terms of mannerisms and speech, which is awesome, but he isn't as nearly imposing.
Yeah, the plot of the original movie could NOT sustain a 13-episode series. It just couldn't. The filler stuffed into From Dusk 'Til Dawn: The Series was kinda intolerable. I hated that they removed
the coincidence of the preacher's family meeting up with the Geckos and made it part of an evil vampire plan all along. The abrupt tonal shift from gangster movie to monster movie is what really made the film special.
I watched Ip Man last week on the advice of a friend, and god damn but that is a fine film. Not just a good martial arts movie, but a great flick all around. I loved Mrs. Man. She had the greatest martial arts master in town so whipped, but she let him out of the box when she needed to.
The Da Vinci Code was the book that reminded me that mainstream fiction is fucking terrible. The movie was better by virtue of not having shit prose and claiming every five pages that THIS SHIT TOTES HAPPENED DUDE, I KNOW, CRAZY, HUH?
Please ElJeffe. The Da Vinci Code has totally shit prose.
I really loved the story of the Templars, and even personally visited the super amazing Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. The DaVinci Code made the subject boring to me. I have no idea how that happened.
then it's revealed again that shayamalan has no idea how humans act and has a park ranger give a strange blind girl medicine instead of, oh I dunno, going to where the injured person is and maybe calling some people or asking any followup questions whatsoever
I never liked how the brother escaped his locked room, put on the monster costume in the shed, tracked his sister down in the forbidden woods, tried to play tag or something but instead fell in a hole and died. Granted she didn't know the woods, either, but, nope, the whole climax was hokey.
So it's good, eh? I was readying myself getting disappointed by it :<
Yeah, I really enjoyed it from a bit of a Twilight Zone perspective. Very claustrophobic, left me with the same kind of feeling as the end of The Beach. Touches of Moon, too. I obviously can't predict who else will like it, but I'd disagree heavily with anyone who thought it a dud.
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I don't love that he gives himself a speaking role in every movie that he's made (well, every movie that I've seen), but I think he's a notch above Tarantino when he puts himself in his flicks.
Tarantino is the worst part of every movie he's in. Definitely the worst part of Pulp Fiction (and, fun side note, if you watch the DVD commentary that has "fun facts" about the movie his monologue is the only spot that doesn't have any fun fact subtitles.... fuck you buddy). Also, why did he decide to go Australian for Django? He already can't act, so he might as well suck at acting in a bad accent too?
I am so sad that Cloud Atlas doesn't have any commentary tracks on it. The features are not terrible but I would have really liked a full-length commentary from the directors or the cast to go into details about making such an ambitious feature.
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Religious guy with an accent who knows wayyyyyy too much? Check.
Nonsensical story? Check.
The "toast test"? Oh fucking check.
That movie was fucking stupid.
I think his Pulp Fiction part is an amusing bit that he doesn't perform any better or worse than anybody else would, probably. And he's great in From Dusk Til Dawn and Desperado. And I like him in Planet Terror, although more for the meta-thematics there than the performance.
Totally pointless in Django, though, accent included. Really it's just distracting in a scene that already kind of represents the nadir of the movie's momentum.
What director does the best acting in their own movies, though?
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Tommy Wiseau in The Room.
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Didn't M. Night make his expy in Lady In The Water a writer that will eventually become a pseudo prophet whose book will change the world? Tarantino hasn't got the balls to do that with cameos.
No parts, that was a response to Astaereth I just failed to quote his post.
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I also thought he was really great and creepy in From Dusk Til Dawn.
One of the few films I saw more than once in the theatre I enjoyed it so much.
I liked it overall
The makeup was distracting at times, and all the parts felt rushed.
And I don't remember the book all that well, but :spoilers:
It’s not a very important country most of the time
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yes book spoiler
And I didn't know Bettany was in Da Vinci Code, he seems to always be a priest or an angel.
and a sidenote Chef is on Netflix instant now so there's no reason to not watch it, it's a great, happy movie you will be better off for watching.
Bettany was the albino assassin.
The sequel was pretty garbage but the first one (Da Vinci Code) was pretty entertaining. Definitely superior to the book, source material being elevated by the cast big time.
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Up until the last 10 minutes or so, Godzilla and the MUTOs just didn't care about (or possibly even notice) the humans around them, and killed thousands mostly by accident as they hunted each other/food.
The Frighteners. If you haven't seen this one, I'd suggest you give this horror-comedy from Peter Jackson a whirl. Michael J Fox is in great form and it's a lot of fun.
Major League. This movie works. I mean, it just works. There are nearly 30 year old jokes in this movie that still crack me the fuck up every time I hear them. The ending is cliche? It doesn't matter, it works. The characters are all caricatures? It doesn't matter, it works. Everything works. Classic.
That Thing You Do. I don't know what it is but as someone who spent nearly two decades in bands, playing music, and doing "the thing", everything in this movie just hits the right spots. The bass player has no name, the artistic guy gets his shit run over, the charismatic guy who loves music for music ends up playing in clubs for chump change, and people just randomly shuffle off. It's a great flick.
The book was better than the movie. Both had an awful ending where Tom Hanks acted like James Bond and got the girl *wink wink nudge nudge* , who was an awesome in the book.
I basically feel like MNS gave us two brilliant movies, then a good but kind of flawed film in Signs, another good but flawed film in The Village, the milquetoast Lady In the Water, and then varying levels of festering ooze since then.
But that's the last fucking Mark Millar movie I ever see.
What's worst is that it's not unentertaining. It has some clever ideas, it's not without a certain love for a certain filmic tradition, and even when it overtly breaks with that tradition, it generally does so with respect. I suspect many of you--perhaps those trash-swilling John Wick fans* among you--will enjoy it quite a bit. My friend who took me to the film certainly did so. "That movie gave zero fucks," he said gleefully as the credits rolled, and he wasn't wrong. This is a ridiculous, ridiculous movie that at times embraces a bombastic verve that is actually quite admirable. The performances are strong, particularly the British star, the movie's villain (whose actor finds a kind of cockeyed inversion of the usual scenery-chewing bad guy; he goes far under the bottom, extrudes scenery via the mouth, and then hides behind it), and a certain TV actress playing this movie's equivalent of Odd Job (I wouldn't say she's spectacular, but she fits the role of "the heavy" much better than you'd expect). And the main reason I wanted to see this in the first place, the action cinematography, paid off in spades. This is absolutely a fascinating style that I'd love to see other movies pick up on--instead of shakycam post-action, it uses fast cuts, dynamic angles and stark compositions, and shows you several action "beats" per shot in fairly wide views.
But all of this is put in service of a cartoon, and an offensive, angering cartoon as well. The best way I can put it is that this is the closest we'll ever get to a live-action Archer movie--if Archer (the show) didn't know all of its characters were terrible human beings. I'll unpack that in a minute.
On one level, I found the movie difficult to engage with because it suffers from thin characters (particularly the lead, who I found really boring), a plot with too much repetition and at least one gaping hole (there is a group of people in the movie who exhibit great selfishness--which I could buy in a satirical way--and great stupidity, which I couldn't, when they allow something to be done to their bodies that violates all common sense, let alone security protocols), and action which--while shot really well--is way too cartoonish to actually work the way it wants to. Those are all kind of normal "yeah this wasn't too great as a movie but still kinda fun" complaints.
On another level, the thematic structure of this movie, what it was actually saying made me pretty fucking angry. Speaking vaguely, you have a conflict between:
-a secret society that is coded both as noble/self-sacrificing AND the ultimate old white boy's club (a supposedly meritocratic organization where membership is only offered to those born with privilege)
(and)
-a black self-made man and his handicapped assistant trying to save the environment (the Ozymandias way) who arbitrarily selects the most famous people in society (the movie calls them the richest, but all we actually see are celebrities and politicians--more self-made people) to survive the apocalypse
There's also the impoverished masses, who are portrayed as wasting their potential in booze, unemployment, and spousal abuse, people who will spend all day in line waiting for free stuff; and yet the movie argues that the elite among them (read: secret princes) will learn the valuable skills of parkour and not ever snitching.
Then there's the... unfortunate scene where coding and tones and signals are layered on top of one another so densely that it's hard to tell what the movie wants you to feel. (I'm speaking of the scene set to the guitar solo from Freebird, which... ugh. Just ugh.) Actually, I know exactly what the movie wants you to feel there, because it does the same thing at the climax. It wants you to feel the exhilarating catharsis of seeing cardboard caricatures of a hated group be the victims of horrific/cartoonish violence. It sets up paper tigers so that you can cheer when the hero tears them down, and makes sure to make those tigers particularly odious so that you feel good about the violence done to them, and then goes back to being a story where violence is awful and wrong. It wants you to feel good and bloodthirsty--and politely shocked--and pleased that the movie had the balls to shock you so by appealing so nakedly to your bloodthirstiness--and then moved to authentic sadness and horror by the prospect of further violence.
Ultimately, like Kick-Ass, this movie wants to rape its cake and eat it too. It's as though the filmmakers carefully deconstructed the James Bond mythos--the questionable geopolitics, the sexism, the casual murder, the absurd tropes--and then decided that those were totally awesome and made a movie whose sole purpose is to high five that mythos as hard as it can. And speaking of sexism, the movie is so sexist in its construction (in a few specific moments, in the wasting of a character in the climax, and in the values of the institution the film idolizes) that the inclusion and treatment of its most prominent female character feels like the movie trying to head off accusations of sexism, where another film might simply have felt progressive. And then the movie's last big joke is a horribly offensive one on several levels.
It's the perfect capper to a film that just feels gross, like a mean-spirited Mad Magazine spoof. I'd hate it less if it didn't have at least some quality as an entertainment, or if it didn't seem to believe that it was honestly telling a progressive story about class distinctions. Deconstruction as a form is one of the best and most progressive one can undertake, because it lends itself so well to questioning tradition, incorporating minority voices, thinking critically, and examining tropes in the harsh light of reality. With this and with Kick-Ass, the filmmakers use that form to laud tradition, silence minorities, shun critical thought, and renew tropes, all while pretending to do the exact opposite. If you've heard the quote, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," well, this movie takes the dismantler's tools and uses them to add a whole new fucking wing onto the master's house. Don't see this movie.
Edit: In case it wasn't clear--I may have gotten too distracted by the hypocrisy to really sum up the movie's ethos properly--I think the film simply assumes as fact that some people are better and more deserving of success than others by virtue of their status as either rich, white males or the sons thereof, even while pretending/attempting to argue against such a notion. And I find that pretty fucking despicable.
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There are certain movies that make you wonder why they bother letting people see them ahead of the release date.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Doesn't he die in every movie he cameos in, though? Or at least, get grievously wounded? Cats not exactly trying to be a big part of the movie.
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One thing I found interesting about John Wick is
Also kind of neat is that the most ruthless of the assassins is a woman, a role that could've easily been cast male.
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Off the top of my head, at least in Pulp Fiction nothing happened to him.
He lost his aunt's sheets.
then it's revealed again that shayamalan has no idea how humans act and has a park ranger give a strange blind girl medicine instead of, oh I dunno, going to where the injured person is and maybe calling some people or asking any followup questions whatsoever
From Dusk Til Dawn is fantastic. And it's on Netflix, so anyone reading this post who hasn't seen it should go watch it right now.
They did a season long TV series remake of it which is okay, but not great. I like some of the things they did with it, but they needed to trim it down 20% lengthwise. The guy who plays Seth Gecko is a dead ringer for Clooney in terms of mannerisms and speech, which is awesome, but he isn't as nearly imposing.
Yeah, the plot of the original movie could NOT sustain a 13-episode series. It just couldn't. The filler stuffed into From Dusk 'Til Dawn: The Series was kinda intolerable. I hated that they removed
I watched Ip Man last week on the advice of a friend, and god damn but that is a fine film. Not just a good martial arts movie, but a great flick all around. I loved Mrs. Man. She had the greatest martial arts master in town so whipped, but she let him out of the box when she needed to.
Please ElJeffe. The Da Vinci Code has totally shit prose.
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Yeah, I really enjoyed it from a bit of a Twilight Zone perspective. Very claustrophobic, left me with the same kind of feeling as the end of The Beach. Touches of Moon, too. I obviously can't predict who else will like it, but I'd disagree heavily with anyone who thought it a dud.