Pfff. Palmer was excellent in that movie. Best role in her career.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Now that I've seen Three Days of the Condor, more than ever I want slap people upside the head who talk about Winter Solder as a spy thriller. No matter how many conspiracy movie plot points TWS has (and it has a few, I guess), it misses the tone completely. It's a superhero movie, and superheroes are nothing if not totally, righteously certain. Condor works like gangbusters because it actually creates an air of paranoia, of uncertainty and mistrust and mounting horror.
Here's the difference: in Winter Soldier, the main character gets on an elevator with a bunch of bad guys and has to fight them all. And that's a cool scene. But it's nothing like the cool scene in Condor, where the main character gets on an elevator with a man who may or may not be a bad guy whom he may or may not have to fight before the elevator reaches the lobby. The two men glance at one another, maybe innocently, maybe sizing each other up, Redford wondering what's going to happen next. Subtlety, restraint, tension, the constant thought process of trying to evaluate and predict and escape--these are the hallmarks of a real conspiracy thriller.
Enough ranting. Condor is an excellent film, and I'm very glad I finally got around to watching it. You should check it out, too, if you're into that kind of movie--it's nuanced and compelling. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Americans (not least because I swear they put the husband in Redford's glasses and hair from this movie in that show). It's very attuned to the emotional and moral ramifications of Redford's situation, and he gives this great performance where he vacillates between increasingly cold and angry badassery and increasingly depressed and deflated shock at all the terrible things he's discovering. And the ending is just the perfect downbeat capper. Check it out on Netflix Instant, you won't regret it.
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FantastikaBetting That The Levee Will HoldRegistered Userregular
Now that I've seen Three Days of the Condor, more than ever I want slap people upside the head who talk about Winter Solder as a spy thriller. No matter how many conspiracy movie plot points TWS has (and it has a few, I guess), it misses the tone completely. It's a superhero movie, and superheroes are nothing if not totally, righteously certain. Condor works like gangbusters because it actually creates an air of paranoia, of uncertainty and mistrust and mounting horror.
Here's the difference: in Winter Soldier, the main character gets on an elevator with a bunch of bad guys and has to fight them all. And that's a cool scene. But it's nothing like the cool scene in Condor, where the main character gets on an elevator with a man who may or may not be a bad guy whom he may or may not have to fight before the elevator reaches the lobby. The two men glance at one another, maybe innocently, maybe sizing each other up, Redford wondering what's going to happen next. Subtlety, restraint, tension, the constant thought process of trying to evaluate and predict and escape--these are the hallmarks of a real conspiracy thriller.
Enough ranting. Condor is an excellent film, and I'm very glad I finally got around to watching it. You should check it out, too, if you're into that kind of movie--it's nuanced and compelling. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Americans (not least because I swear they put the husband in Redford's glasses and hair from this movie in that show). It's very attuned to the emotional and moral ramifications of Redford's situation, and he gives this great performance where he vacillates between increasingly cold and angry badassery and increasingly depressed and deflated shock at all the terrible things he's discovering. And the ending is just the perfect downbeat capper. Check it out on Netflix Instant, you won't regret it.
Tension and ambiguity, like you described, are missing from so many spy thrillers nowadays. Seems like they're all James Bond or Bourne type thrillers instead of thoughtful pieces. Have you seen Klute or The Parallax View yet?
Now that I've seen Three Days of the Condor, more than ever I want slap people upside the head who talk about Winter Solder as a spy thriller. No matter how many conspiracy movie plot points TWS has (and it has a few, I guess), it misses the tone completely. It's a superhero movie, and superheroes are nothing if not totally, righteously certain. Condor works like gangbusters because it actually creates an air of paranoia, of uncertainty and mistrust and mounting horror.
Here's the difference: in Winter Soldier, the main character gets on an elevator with a bunch of bad guys and has to fight them all. And that's a cool scene. But it's nothing like the cool scene in Condor, where the main character gets on an elevator with a man who may or may not be a bad guy whom he may or may not have to fight before the elevator reaches the lobby. The two men glance at one another, maybe innocently, maybe sizing each other up, Redford wondering what's going to happen next. Subtlety, restraint, tension, the constant thought process of trying to evaluate and predict and escape--these are the hallmarks of a real conspiracy thriller.
Enough ranting. Condor is an excellent film, and I'm very glad I finally got around to watching it. You should check it out, too, if you're into that kind of movie--it's nuanced and compelling. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Americans (not least because I swear they put the husband in Redford's glasses and hair from this movie in that show). It's very attuned to the emotional and moral ramifications of Redford's situation, and he gives this great performance where he vacillates between increasingly cold and angry badassery and increasingly depressed and deflated shock at all the terrible things he's discovering. And the ending is just the perfect downbeat capper. Check it out on Netflix Instant, you won't regret it.
Captain America 2 is a superhero movie that just tries to imitate a bit of the look of a 70s spy/conspiracy thriller but none of the actual content.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Now that I've seen Three Days of the Condor, more than ever I want slap people upside the head who talk about Winter Solder as a spy thriller. No matter how many conspiracy movie plot points TWS has (and it has a few, I guess), it misses the tone completely. It's a superhero movie, and superheroes are nothing if not totally, righteously certain. Condor works like gangbusters because it actually creates an air of paranoia, of uncertainty and mistrust and mounting horror.
Here's the difference: in Winter Soldier, the main character gets on an elevator with a bunch of bad guys and has to fight them all. And that's a cool scene. But it's nothing like the cool scene in Condor, where the main character gets on an elevator with a man who may or may not be a bad guy whom he may or may not have to fight before the elevator reaches the lobby. The two men glance at one another, maybe innocently, maybe sizing each other up, Redford wondering what's going to happen next. Subtlety, restraint, tension, the constant thought process of trying to evaluate and predict and escape--these are the hallmarks of a real conspiracy thriller.
Enough ranting. Condor is an excellent film, and I'm very glad I finally got around to watching it. You should check it out, too, if you're into that kind of movie--it's nuanced and compelling. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Americans (not least because I swear they put the husband in Redford's glasses and hair from this movie in that show). It's very attuned to the emotional and moral ramifications of Redford's situation, and he gives this great performance where he vacillates between increasingly cold and angry badassery and increasingly depressed and deflated shock at all the terrible things he's discovering. And the ending is just the perfect downbeat capper. Check it out on Netflix Instant, you won't regret it.
Tension and ambiguity, like you described, are missing from so many spy thrillers nowadays. Seems like they're all James Bond or Bourne type thrillers instead of thoughtful pieces. Have you seen Klute or The Parallax View yet?
No, but I'm thinking I should sooner rather than later. I like this sort of thoughtful movie.
Really I dunno what I'm seeing next. I've been cutting way down on TV lately in favor of getting to some of my Netflix list. So far it's been very rewarding.
Astaereth on
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
The Babadook popped up on Netflix and I'm sure I had heard good things.
It's interesting, rather than good. The budget was low, and they didn't really manage to make the best use of it, so the cinematography is all off, the actors are either bad or just not getting directed, the score is anaemic and the special effects detract from the sinister feeling that is generated against all the odds at a few points.
The story/concept is what saves it, there's an issue in that you can see what it's doing too early and then it all becomes a bit of a handle-turning exercise (and one that stalls a few times). It is genuinely horrifying though.
A rare film that could use a more competent remake.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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FantastikaBetting That The Levee Will HoldRegistered Userregular
Now that I've seen Three Days of the Condor, more than ever I want slap people upside the head who talk about Winter Solder as a spy thriller. No matter how many conspiracy movie plot points TWS has (and it has a few, I guess), it misses the tone completely. It's a superhero movie, and superheroes are nothing if not totally, righteously certain. Condor works like gangbusters because it actually creates an air of paranoia, of uncertainty and mistrust and mounting horror.
Here's the difference: in Winter Soldier, the main character gets on an elevator with a bunch of bad guys and has to fight them all. And that's a cool scene. But it's nothing like the cool scene in Condor, where the main character gets on an elevator with a man who may or may not be a bad guy whom he may or may not have to fight before the elevator reaches the lobby. The two men glance at one another, maybe innocently, maybe sizing each other up, Redford wondering what's going to happen next. Subtlety, restraint, tension, the constant thought process of trying to evaluate and predict and escape--these are the hallmarks of a real conspiracy thriller.
Enough ranting. Condor is an excellent film, and I'm very glad I finally got around to watching it. You should check it out, too, if you're into that kind of movie--it's nuanced and compelling. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Americans (not least because I swear they put the husband in Redford's glasses and hair from this movie in that show). It's very attuned to the emotional and moral ramifications of Redford's situation, and he gives this great performance where he vacillates between increasingly cold and angry badassery and increasingly depressed and deflated shock at all the terrible things he's discovering. And the ending is just the perfect downbeat capper. Check it out on Netflix Instant, you won't regret it.
Tension and ambiguity, like you described, are missing from so many spy thrillers nowadays. Seems like they're all James Bond or Bourne type thrillers instead of thoughtful pieces. Have you seen Klute or The Parallax View yet?
No, but I'm thinking I should sooner rather than later. I like this sort of thoughtful movie.
Really I dunno what I'm seeing next. I've been cutting way down on TV lately in favor of getting to some of my Netflix list. So far it's been very rewarding.
Those and Blow-out are some of the best conspiracy thrillers of the 70s. If you look at John Lithgow or John Travolta the same after Blow Out, I'll be amazed.
And if you want a recommendation regarding horror or thriller, I'm your man.
Fantastika on
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
That reminds me, I'd like to try something. Would anybody like to request a review? I wouldn't mind doing a few of these and seeing if it works well.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if I've seen it before or not, but if I've done a review before, obviously I won't want to revisit those.
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
+2
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
You ought review Empire Records and as such validate or denigrate my youth
Has anyone here seen the recentish Korean drama Poetry, about a woman in her 60s whose grandson was involved in a horrible crime? It's intriguing, often subtle and beautifully acted - but it also packs too much into the story that IMO doesn't pay off thematically. It rather felt like two or three films mushed up together like so much Korean Play-Doh.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
That reminds me, I'd like to try something. Would anybody like to request a review? I wouldn't mind doing a few of these and seeing if it works well.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if I've seen it before or not, but if I've done a review before, obviously I won't want to revisit those.
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
As a fan, I want you to do Ghostbusters (2) but can one still say something interesting about it? Don't care if you (still) like it or hate it. Just curious how you would handle it.
Wanna try my Mario Maker levels?
Shoot m to BITS (hold Y) [hard] C109-0000-014D-4E09 P-POWER Switch Palace 3838-0000-0122-9359 Raiding the Serpents Tomb 1A04-0000-0098-C11E I like to move it, move it FCE2-0000-00D7-9048
Now that I've seen Three Days of the Condor, more than ever I want slap people upside the head who talk about Winter Solder as a spy thriller. No matter how many conspiracy movie plot points TWS has (and it has a few, I guess), it misses the tone completely. It's a superhero movie, and superheroes are nothing if not totally, righteously certain. Condor works like gangbusters because it actually creates an air of paranoia, of uncertainty and mistrust and mounting horror.
Here's the difference: in Winter Soldier, the main character gets on an elevator with a bunch of bad guys and has to fight them all. And that's a cool scene. But it's nothing like the cool scene in Condor, where the main character gets on an elevator with a man who may or may not be a bad guy whom he may or may not have to fight before the elevator reaches the lobby. The two men glance at one another, maybe innocently, maybe sizing each other up, Redford wondering what's going to happen next. Subtlety, restraint, tension, the constant thought process of trying to evaluate and predict and escape--these are the hallmarks of a real conspiracy thriller.
Enough ranting. Condor is an excellent film, and I'm very glad I finally got around to watching it. You should check it out, too, if you're into that kind of movie--it's nuanced and compelling. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Americans (not least because I swear they put the husband in Redford's glasses and hair from this movie in that show). It's very attuned to the emotional and moral ramifications of Redford's situation, and he gives this great performance where he vacillates between increasingly cold and angry badassery and increasingly depressed and deflated shock at all the terrible things he's discovering. And the ending is just the perfect downbeat capper. Check it out on Netflix Instant, you won't regret it.
I doubt you could make a movie like Condor today though and that a shame. Not only because a lot of subtlety in storytelling as been lost, but because actually forcing people to watch a single shot for any length of time has become unpopular.
To kids today, Condor would be considered boring even if they where into conspiracy films. The stakes are too low, the pacing is too slow and the way it forces you to consider motivations is too hard. Plus shots that last for longer then 30 seconds.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Now that I've seen Three Days of the Condor, more than ever I want slap people upside the head who talk about Winter Solder as a spy thriller. No matter how many conspiracy movie plot points TWS has (and it has a few, I guess), it misses the tone completely. It's a superhero movie, and superheroes are nothing if not totally, righteously certain. Condor works like gangbusters because it actually creates an air of paranoia, of uncertainty and mistrust and mounting horror.
Here's the difference: in Winter Soldier, the main character gets on an elevator with a bunch of bad guys and has to fight them all. And that's a cool scene. But it's nothing like the cool scene in Condor, where the main character gets on an elevator with a man who may or may not be a bad guy whom he may or may not have to fight before the elevator reaches the lobby. The two men glance at one another, maybe innocently, maybe sizing each other up, Redford wondering what's going to happen next. Subtlety, restraint, tension, the constant thought process of trying to evaluate and predict and escape--these are the hallmarks of a real conspiracy thriller.
Enough ranting. Condor is an excellent film, and I'm very glad I finally got around to watching it. You should check it out, too, if you're into that kind of movie--it's nuanced and compelling. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Americans (not least because I swear they put the husband in Redford's glasses and hair from this movie in that show). It's very attuned to the emotional and moral ramifications of Redford's situation, and he gives this great performance where he vacillates between increasingly cold and angry badassery and increasingly depressed and deflated shock at all the terrible things he's discovering. And the ending is just the perfect downbeat capper. Check it out on Netflix Instant, you won't regret it.
I doubt you could make a movie like Condor today though and that a shame. Not only because a lot of subtlety in storytelling as been lost, but because actually forcing people to watch a single shot for any length of time has become unpopular.
To kids today, Condor would be considered boring even if they where into conspiracy films. The stakes are too low, the pacing is too slow and the way it forces you to consider motivations is too hard. Plus shots that last for longer then 30 seconds.
Unless it's flashy like Lubezki (Children of Men, Gravity, Birdman, etc). Or maybe that's just cinematography nerds like me.
Spielberg actually does some really good one shots that you don't necessarily notice are single takes, because he keeps the camera moving and will have 3+ "shots" within that single take.
Straight Outta Compton was such a fun movie. Movie Cube and Movie Dre are roguish rakes and heroes of free speech. I have no idea whether they bear any relation to Reality Cube and Reality Dre, but the film poked me in my middle-teens when the more interesting events happened, when I was watching Kurt Loder report on the Detroit show on MTVNews. Ending
was kinda a downer, though I suppose they did what they could to turn the events to positive with the legacy stuff at the end.
For a Good Time, Call... is a very cute little movie I found on Netflix. It's a love story about two female roommates who start a phone sex line. Ironically, the "love" portion of the film is platonic, which I'm sure AfterEllen.com commenters would be annoyed about, but it actually works pretty well... the rest of the film is so drenched in lurid sex-talk details that the chaste, genuine affection the women have for each other is refreshing, and I find that real, positive examples of adult female friendship outside of movies about traveling pants are actually kinda hard to come by (heyo Bechdel test).
It otherwise plays out almost identically to a bog-standard rom-com, with the quirky first meeting, forced circumstances bringing them together, and hostility developing into gradual attraction and then love. The really interesting and funny parts come with the male performances, unfortunately. Justin Long acts circles around the actresses (neither of whom I recognized) as the Gay Best Friend. Ken Marino, Seth Rogen, and Kevin Smith all play hilarious bit parts as men who call the sex line; Rogen in particular seemed like he was ad-libbing his lines. Sugar Lyn Beard is the notable female co-star in a rare non-VO role as a squeaky-voiced phone sex employee with hidden depths (Mimi Rogers, who is great, didn't leave much of an impression for me as one of the moms). All told, it was worth my time (while I wait for the next episode of Rick & Morty.
I request that you review Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.
I actually prefer the Kentucky Fried Movie for the purposes of flat-out martial arts parody. For thematic parodies, you can find way better with Stephen Chow stuff like Kung Fu Hustle or Shaolin Soccer.
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BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
Now that I've seen Three Days of the Condor, more than ever I want slap people upside the head who talk about Winter Solder as a spy thriller. No matter how many conspiracy movie plot points TWS has (and it has a few, I guess), it misses the tone completely. It's a superhero movie, and superheroes are nothing if not totally, righteously certain. Condor works like gangbusters because it actually creates an air of paranoia, of uncertainty and mistrust and mounting horror.
Here's the difference: in Winter Soldier, the main character gets on an elevator with a bunch of bad guys and has to fight them all. And that's a cool scene. But it's nothing like the cool scene in Condor, where the main character gets on an elevator with a man who may or may not be a bad guy whom he may or may not have to fight before the elevator reaches the lobby. The two men glance at one another, maybe innocently, maybe sizing each other up, Redford wondering what's going to happen next. Subtlety, restraint, tension, the constant thought process of trying to evaluate and predict and escape--these are the hallmarks of a real conspiracy thriller.
Enough ranting. Condor is an excellent film, and I'm very glad I finally got around to watching it. You should check it out, too, if you're into that kind of movie--it's nuanced and compelling. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Americans (not least because I swear they put the husband in Redford's glasses and hair from this movie in that show). It's very attuned to the emotional and moral ramifications of Redford's situation, and he gives this great performance where he vacillates between increasingly cold and angry badassery and increasingly depressed and deflated shock at all the terrible things he's discovering. And the ending is just the perfect downbeat capper. Check it out on Netflix Instant, you won't regret it.
Thank you. TWS is a spy thriller in the same way that CoD is an RPG with it's unlocks / progression.
As for requests, I think I asked for this during last year's Killtoberfest - Stephen King's It, please!
It's a shame, too; I liked The Winter Soldier, but I thought there was potential for it to be a spy thriller, or at least a spy thriller/superhero action hybrid, instead of the mostly straight superhero movie with nods to spy thrillers that we got. It's also what I wish for the MCU to become: a playground of different styles and genres through the superhero lens, rather than the diminishing returns of fun, snarky but increasingly samey episodes of Marvel Presents.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
That reminds me, I'd like to try something. Would anybody like to request a review? I wouldn't mind doing a few of these and seeing if it works well.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if I've seen it before or not, but if I've done a review before, obviously I won't want to revisit those.
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
I'm pretty sure we're still waiting for your justification of The Village being a great movie...
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
That reminds me, I'd like to try something. Would anybody like to request a review? I wouldn't mind doing a few of these and seeing if it works well.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if I've seen it before or not, but if I've done a review before, obviously I won't want to revisit those.
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
I would absolutely love to hear your take on The Guest. It's up on Netflix instant now, so it's readily available. It clocks in at 1:39, and was delightful in the most bizarre of ways when I watched it a few months back. I was kind of put off by the beginning, just because it is so odd, but I was fully on board by the end of the movie.
It's 1937. All the gangsters in Gotham are meeting in a massive hotel to discuss how their going to carve up Gotham. When the lights go out. It's Batman. Punching his way up, floor by floor. The fanciest gadgets he has are his grappling gun and smoke bombs. He's out of Batarangs by the time he gets to the top. It's basically a 1930's Raid adaptation, but with Batman.
I am curious if @Astaereth has yet opined on Rubber. (The one about the tire that achieves sentience and uses its psychic powers to murder everyone in pursuit of the girl it has fallen in love with.)
It's not necessarily good, but it's interesting and short and I was entertained by it. I would say it resembles Detention in the way that Super 8 resembles an actual 80s Spielberg movie.
ElJeffe on
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.
That reminds me, I'd like to try something. Would anybody like to request a review? I wouldn't mind doing a few of these and seeing if it works well.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if I've seen it before or not, but if I've done a review before, obviously I won't want to revisit those.
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
I'm pretty sure we're still waiting for your justification of The Village being a great movie...
I wrote most of that but haven't gotten around to the close reading part where I go through the whole movie with screenshots. I'll get back to it at some point, but that's a lot more time and energy-intensive than my normal reviews.
It's 1937. All the gangsters in Gotham are meeting in a massive hotel to discuss how their going to carve up Gotham. When the lights go out. It's Batman. Punching his way up, floor by floor. The fanciest gadgets he has are his grappling gun and smoke bombs. He's out of Batarangs by the time he gets to the top. It's basically a 1930's Raid adaptation, but with Batman.
That's my pitch.
That movie is 15 minutes long. Batman doesn't fight his way up, he goes in through the penthouse skylight.
Actually, Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum is basically what you're looking for (a Batman "bottle episode" story). I doubt we'll ever see a live action version of that, but odds are good they'll do an animated one at some point, since they already did Year One and Dark Knight Returns.
I am curious if @Astaereth has yet opined on Rubber. (The one about the tire that achieves sentience and uses its psychic powers to murder everyone in pursuit of the girl it has fallen in love with.)
It's not necessarily good, but it's interesting and short and I was entertained by it. I would say it resembles Detention in the way that Super 8 resembles an actual 80s Spielberg movie.
I haven't seen Rubber, but I did catch a movie by the same director at a film festival. It was... decent?
That reminds me, I'd like to try something. Would anybody like to request a review? I wouldn't mind doing a few of these and seeing if it works well.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if I've seen it before or not, but if I've done a review before, obviously I won't want to revisit those.
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Fair Game, wow this was a 90's mess. From the opening credits where Cindy Crawford is running in sunrise silhouette in slow motion (thus depriving why you'd even do the slow-mo), something doesn't seem right. And you realize it's because she can't even act like she's running normally, that the slow-mo is showing how she can't even pace herself right for a person doing a normal morning jog.
And then we get instant characterization. Baldwin #3 has a shitty personal life but he's a great cop who kicks a computer into a bad guy's nuts while Selma Hayek is bitching him out, Cindy Crawford is a beautiful noble public attorney working for the downtrodden (suck on that, Daredevil) who is such a workaholic she has faxes (remember those?) sent to the police station where they're taking her report about being injured in a drive-by shooting earlier that morning, and then THE RUSSIANS appear with magic internet hacking powers that makes. no. sense. God, those early internet days, where you could bluff anything with computers and one of those super nerd keyboards with the mouse ball in the middle and it curves outward for serious hacking powers. Magical wifi hacking powers in a van that is constantly trying to kill Crawford because reasons.
Baldwin #3 is fine, he's playing a generic character but the problem lies in how the film makes him unstoppable when he's yet to deliver action star chops like Stallone or Willis did. But Crawford really, truly, cannot act. The best scene in the movie is basically a standard hottie seduces nerd scene that feels ripped off from her Pepsi commercials, only because it requires her to not act like the character she has to portray. Everything else she does is so delayed and bad, with what sounds like every line she spoke was ADR'd afterwords, which is fucking weird because what must have existed first was just the best they could get. And the people playing the KGBs are just standard bad bad guys who slip into German more than russian. The only highlight is Selma Hayek truly being a GDB to Baldwin in the beginning because something, and Christopher McDonald is always one of the best go-to guys for playing the dickhead in any movie.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
It's 1937. All the gangsters in Gotham are meeting in a massive hotel to discuss how their going to carve up Gotham. When the lights go out. It's Batman. Punching his way up, floor by floor. The fanciest gadgets he has are his grappling gun and smoke bombs. He's out of Batarangs by the time he gets to the top. It's basically a 1930's Raid adaptation, but with Batman.
That's my pitch.
That movie is 15 minutes long. Batman doesn't fight his way up, he goes in through the penthouse skylight.
Hell, if it's 1937 Batman, he's packing a gun.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
edited August 2015
It's no surprise, really, that most movie sequels just plain suck. Sequels are tough for a number of reasons, but there are two big ones I want to focus on here. The first is that really good movies often work because they've been specifically constructed so that all elements work harmoniously. The world of the film works a certain way because the plot has to do this heading into the first act, or the main character has a specific backstory or flaw because the story requires them to overcome that in the end. Telling another story with the same characters in the same world means finding another angle on material you've already covered, coming up with a new story and arcs without invalidating your previous details, or coming up with new details in a way that's organic.
(An example of not remotely organic: in the "Back to the Future" sequels, Marty McFly suddenly has a really strong, simplistic motivation he never has in the original, that now he can be easily baited by anyone who insults him. Not only does it come out of nowhere because they needed a new character arc for Marty, it doesn't really jive with the first movie, where he seems to only care about others' opinions of him when it's reasonable to do so (like the band audition) and dismiss opinions coming from bullies ("Yeah, well, history's gonna change."))
The other difficulty with sequels is a little more fundamental, and that's figuring out what the hell people liked about your first movie. Let's not even get into how difficult it might be for even the same creative team to execute those elements well for a second time. It's hard enough just to accurately evaluate the work you've already done and the public response to it and come up with which elements of the original need to be dropped and which need to be carried forward.
This brings us to Ghostbusters 2, a movie that didn't quite know what to do and didn't quite know how to do it, either.
The original Ghostbusters is one of the all-time great comedies for a couple of reasons. It was one of the first movies to marry a comedic sensibility to big-budget special effects work (and to do both sides of that very well), a concept that pays off in spades with the big, laugh out loud joke of Gozer's final form. Also, the movie is perfectly cast, from the main three and Weaver down to Rick Moranis' classic pathetic neighbor. The movie is dense and funny, with lots of great little jokes coming out rapidfire or in the margins or without having to be said out loud (for the latter, I've always been a big fan of Venkman's psychic experiment).
But I think the most important element, and the one that, for all its flaws, Ghostbusters 2 does get right, is the strong point of view grounding and shaping the story. In Ghostbusters, these guys aren't just scientists, they're disreputable scientists who have to prove themselves. This isn't just a ghostly invasion, it's a ghostly invasion of New York and how dare you mess with our city. The movie takes its sinister aspects seriously: this is not a goofy situation, it's a dangerous situation that confronts goofy people. The very first ghost they encounter is not a wacky, silly ghost, but a legitimately creepy thing with just a hint of its own story (it's probably a librarian or something, what with the shushing), and the comedy comes from the seat-of-their-pants way that our three protagonists try to deal with her. ("Get her? That was your big plan?")
Ghostbusters was met with critical and financial success, making over $240 million off a budget of $30 million. (Adjusting for inflation, that would be like a $70 million dollar movie today making more than half a billion dollars.) A sequel was damn near inevitable. But that left a lot of questions. What did people like about the movie? And could we find a way to do that again, but different? Ghostbusters 2 focuses on these elements:
-A quasi-romance between Peter and Dana; as in the original, she finds him inadequate for some reason while fending off advances from a short, annoying acquaintance, while Peter seeks to prove himself to her via bustin'.
-A big supernatural threat taken seriously, beginning with a hidden threat and culminating in an absurd giant figure roaming New York.
-The main characters' disreputability, a status they must work to overcome by convincing the public and city officials of their value.
There are problems with all three of these elements when it comes to the sequel, but they're mostly big structural problems. All three are executed pretty well, I think, and the result is a movie that's entertaining, especially scene to scene, but not satisfying. Ghostbusters 2 is like a house made out of wood and then you finish building it only to realize that you've succeeded at "rustic charm" but forgot the door and also should have used bricks instead. Let's take these one at a time.
First, the quasi-romance. This isn't the most obvious misstep (or at least, not the one people tend to complain about), but I think it's the one that hurts the movie more than any other. The first Ghostbusters has one character arc that ties the movie together, and that's the question of whether or not Venckman is a scientist (or a good scientist). That's the source of the team's disreputability, when they're thrown out of college:
Doctor... Venkman. The purpose of science is to serve mankind. You seem to regard science as some kind of dodge, or hustle. Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!
It defines the romance, too. The obstacle between Dana and Peter isn't that she doesn't like him but that she doesn't respect him; she finds him odd and silly and doesn't believe he can do anything to help her:
Dana Barrett: You know, you don't act like a scientist.
Dr. Peter Venkman: They're usually pretty stiff.
Dana Barrett: You're more like a game show host.
But by the end of the movie, Venkman and his friends have proven the validity of their science to the authorities, to the public who now believes in them and cheers them on, to Gozer by using science to kick its ass, and to Dana by rescuing her. The end of the movie finds them covered in marshmallow but triumphant, feted by a jubilant crowd who symbolize their validation.
But where do you go in the sequel with that arc and that relationship? Ghostbusters 2 ends up with a cargo cult arc, recreating or mimicking different parts of the original's without actually connecting them with one another. So Peter and his friends are once more looked down upon, but this has nothing to do with Dana, who dated and broke up with Peter between movies; her relationship with Peter doesn't have much to do with the supernatural conflicts on a plot level, either. All the baby-stealing is just an excuse for them to come back into contact.
The problem between Peter and Dana is that Peter was your standard immature, afraid of commitment jerk type--she probably wanted to get married but he wasn't ready. In the interim she got married to somebody else (who conveniently left her later) and had a kid, which has Peter thinking about what could have been. For her part, Dana is attracted to but wary of Peter, and his willingness to care for the kid seems to convince her to give things another try. There's nothing too awful about this (it's kinda basic and cliche, but it's not bad). The issue is that it's a totally different formulation from the gang's larger problem--rather than achieving success but not wanting to commit, they achieved success that was more or less arbitrarily stolen from them (public opinion reversed, the city failed to pay them, etc).
This disconnect between the two major character problems of the movie is the flaw that destroys the unity of the film, and with it, any chance of the story functioning as a story. In the original movie, nobody respects Peter as a scientist, including the woman he wants to prove himself to, and then he does. In the sequel, New York City dislikes Peter and doesn't want him around, and Dana doesn't want Peter around either, but for completely different reasons and with completely different resolutions.
That disconnect is mirrored in the second way the movie carries over a major element from the original, the big supernatural conflict. Obviously this is the no-brainer element, because Ghostbusters as a concept really boils down to "funny people fight ghosts" and not "funny people fight ghosts while trying to have sex with Sigourney Weaver" or "funny people fight ghosts but nobody respects them" or whatever. The comedy goofballs + supernatural threat formula is a solid one that many stories have tapped into (I'm partial to John Dies at the End, myself--the novel more so than the film), but nobody does it better than Ghostbusters. And that includes Ghostbusters 2, which has one too many goddamn supernatural threats, just like it has one too many character conflicts.
And the pairs match up, too. On the one hand, there's a river of slime flowing underneath New York, which literalizes the negative feelings that New York has in general and specifically the way New Yorkers (and NY institutions like the courts and the mayor's office) feel about the Ghostbusters. On the other hand, there's an evil painting of a dead wizard-tyrant who wants to return to life via Dana's infant son, a plot which I'm only now realizing as I type this sentence mirrors the Peter/Dana relationship in this film to a far greater extent than I'd thought. (After all, that relationship is also long-dead but now might return via Peter protecting Dana's child.) The thematic disconnect here is also a plot disconnect, where the two supernatural elements are only tangentially related (the painting draws power from the slime, or maybe created it? the connection is neither clear nor strong). The result is a movie divided, that works scene to scene but in its overall structure is just going the motions. It remembers there were certain kinds of scenes in the first movie, but not why.
To be honest, with the exception of Vigo's last words ("Death is but a door, time is but a window, I'll be back"), the painting story is far, far less interesting than the slime story. While a little hokey, the slime plot is very dynamic, bringing both the comedy (the toaster scene comes to mind, as does the Titanic reference, which may be my favorite joke in the whole movie) and the spooky (all the underground stuff is super eerie, and I love the courtroom sequence). The Vigo plot, on the other hand, is pretty generic, the villain is boring, and Janosz is way on the wrong side of annoying. Rick Moranis is adorably pathetic because he's a kind, good-hearted person who doesn't know how much of a dweeb he is. Janosz is a sweaty, desperate, rape-y creepazoid, and it's unclear how much of what he does in the movie is his idea versus Vigo's. The movie would be at least 40% better if you replaced all the Vigo/Janosz stuff with more slime, and then in the end the Statue of Liberty could fight a giant slime monster instead of, uh, a rooftop.
Finally, I want to address the "re-disgracening" that happens between the two movies. Ultimately I think this represents a lack of imagination or courage on the part of the filmmakers. It's that "Hangover" notion that audiences want as much as possible to be the same in their sequels, even though the best sequels tend to leap in a new direction (as I've mentioned before, Aliens is kind of my gold standard for this). But I also think the desire to keep the same underdog sentiment from the first film, plot contortions be damned, speaks to the misunderstanding of Ghostbusters' comedic engine.
I talked above about how the tension between competence and incompetence drives much of the original film--are Peter and his friends good scientists or not? But the humor doesn't come from the idea that they're bad at their jobs; it's that they're actually quite good at their jobs, just in an unconventional way. (For example, Peter threatening to put Slimer back in the hotel in order to get the manager to pay them.) In other words, the jokes come from the characters, from Egon's incredibly boring nerrdom ("I collect spores, molds, and fungus") to Venkman's selfishness ("Everybody has three mortgages nowadays") to Ray's childlike innocence ("You gotta try this pole!"). They're great characters, and great characters work well in any context. Put these guys on the moon and you know exactly what their reactions will be. Ghostbusters 2 should have allowed them to be successful, and worked to find the humor in that, rather than knocking them back down so that they can once again climb up to respectability.
Overall, the movie has these three big problems that leave it feeling like a scattered, unsatisfying carbon copy of the original. Does that mean it's worthless? No. These are still talented, funny people, and there are plenty of good lines and good scenes, which I've tried to call out throughout my review. And in the absence of a better movie this is sometimes preferable to rewatching the original for the umpteenth time. If this wasn't a sequel to such a phenomenal film, I think its reputation would be better than it is currently. But it's still not great.
In closing, I'd like to point out that, according to Ghostbusters 2, humanity has mere months to live, since Peter's talk show guest declares that the world will end on February 14th, 2016. ("Valentine's Day. Bummer.") So don't worry too much about those new Ghostbuster movies--even the all-girl one won't be released until July of next year, 4 months after the apocalypse.
That reminds me, I'd like to try something. Would anybody like to request a review? I wouldn't mind doing a few of these and seeing if it works well.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if I've seen it before or not, but if I've done a review before, obviously I won't want to revisit those.
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
I was serious about Hudson Hawk being my favorite movie. I'd be curious what someone who actually knows what they're talking about would have to say about it.
@DarkPrimusKung Pow: Enter the Fist is goofy, dumb, and hilarious, or at least that's the way I remember it. I haven't seen the movie since I was like 14, so I'm kinda hesitant to return to it for fear I wouldn't like it as much now. Also I doubt I would have anything to say about it--that kind of absurdist comedy tends to resist analysis. It either works or it doesn't. So I won't be reviewing it (beyond this paragraph, I guess).
That reminds me, I'd like to try something. Would anybody like to request a review? I wouldn't mind doing a few of these and seeing if it works well.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if I've seen it before or not, but if I've done a review before, obviously I won't want to revisit those.
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
I was serious about Hudson Hawk being my favorite movie. I'd be curious what someone who actually knows what they're talking about would have to say about it.
I think my thoughts on Hudson Hawk would just make you sad. I don't think it's good, and I don't have an interesting reason for not thinking that it's good. Sorry.
@DarkPrimusKung Pow: Enter the Fist is goofy, dumb, and hilarious, or at least that's the way I remember it. I haven't seen the movie since I was like 14, so I'm kinda hesitant to return to it for fear I wouldn't like it as much now. Also I doubt I would have anything to say about it--that kind of absurdist comedy tends to resist analysis. It either works or it doesn't. So I won't be reviewing it (beyond this paragraph, I guess).
That reminds me, I'd like to try something. Would anybody like to request a review? I wouldn't mind doing a few of these and seeing if it works well.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if I've seen it before or not, but if I've done a review before, obviously I won't want to revisit those.
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
I was serious about Hudson Hawk being my favorite movie. I'd be curious what someone who actually knows what they're talking about would have to say about it.
I think my thoughts on Hudson Hawk would just make you sad. I don't think it's good, and I don't have an interesting reason for not thinking that it's good. Sorry.
I have long become immune to other people's perspectives on things I enjoy.
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Astareth's opening paragraphs clearly point out how D2 The Mighty Ducks is one of the few sequels that is better than the original, because it knew what people wanted and simply gave them more because they didn't have to really do backstory or world building. It really masters the less is more ideal without really sacrificing too much either. Great film, great sequel, come at me, bro.
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Pfff. Palmer was excellent in that movie. Best role in her career.
Here's the difference: in Winter Soldier, the main character gets on an elevator with a bunch of bad guys and has to fight them all. And that's a cool scene. But it's nothing like the cool scene in Condor, where the main character gets on an elevator with a man who may or may not be a bad guy whom he may or may not have to fight before the elevator reaches the lobby. The two men glance at one another, maybe innocently, maybe sizing each other up, Redford wondering what's going to happen next. Subtlety, restraint, tension, the constant thought process of trying to evaluate and predict and escape--these are the hallmarks of a real conspiracy thriller.
Enough ranting. Condor is an excellent film, and I'm very glad I finally got around to watching it. You should check it out, too, if you're into that kind of movie--it's nuanced and compelling. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Americans (not least because I swear they put the husband in Redford's glasses and hair from this movie in that show). It's very attuned to the emotional and moral ramifications of Redford's situation, and he gives this great performance where he vacillates between increasingly cold and angry badassery and increasingly depressed and deflated shock at all the terrible things he's discovering. And the ending is just the perfect downbeat capper. Check it out on Netflix Instant, you won't regret it.
Tension and ambiguity, like you described, are missing from so many spy thrillers nowadays. Seems like they're all James Bond or Bourne type thrillers instead of thoughtful pieces. Have you seen Klute or The Parallax View yet?
Captain America 2 is a superhero movie that just tries to imitate a bit of the look of a 70s spy/conspiracy thriller but none of the actual content.
No, but I'm thinking I should sooner rather than later. I like this sort of thoughtful movie.
Really I dunno what I'm seeing next. I've been cutting way down on TV lately in favor of getting to some of my Netflix list. So far it's been very rewarding.
It's interesting, rather than good. The budget was low, and they didn't really manage to make the best use of it, so the cinematography is all off, the actors are either bad or just not getting directed, the score is anaemic and the special effects detract from the sinister feeling that is generated against all the odds at a few points.
The story/concept is what saves it, there's an issue in that you can see what it's doing too early and then it all becomes a bit of a handle-turning exercise (and one that stalls a few times). It is genuinely horrifying though.
A rare film that could use a more competent remake.
Those and Blow-out are some of the best conspiracy thrillers of the 70s. If you look at John Lithgow or John Travolta the same after Blow Out, I'll be amazed.
And if you want a recommendation regarding horror or thriller, I'm your man.
Some caveats:
-Doesn't matter if it's good or bad so long as it's interesting--bad movies can be fun to write about too. Don't be sadistic, though--this is not an excuse to make me watch Squirm or whatever.
-Anything's game so long as it's available on video--nothing impossibly obscure, nothing currently in theaters (tickets are expensive, yo).
-Running time under 3 hours, please. Someday I will watch Satantango, but that day is not this month.
-I reserve the right to say "hell no I'm not watching that garbage", and I also reserve the right to watch it and realize I have nothing at all to say about it, which does happen every once in a while.
-For obvious, October-y reasons, probably don't give me horror films, unless they're absolutely amazing.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
As a fan, I want you to do Ghostbusters (2) but can one still say something interesting about it? Don't care if you (still) like it or hate it. Just curious how you would handle it.
Shoot m to BITS (hold Y) [hard] C109-0000-014D-4E09
P-POWER Switch Palace 3838-0000-0122-9359
Raiding the Serpents Tomb 1A04-0000-0098-C11E
I like to move it, move it FCE2-0000-00D7-9048
See my profile here!
Thick as Thieves (with Baldwin)
Thursday
Made Men (with Belushi)
I've never met anybody that's seen any of these, so I've never heard anybody else's opinion of them.
Jules et Jim
Russian Ark
Solaris (either version)
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I doubt you could make a movie like Condor today though and that a shame. Not only because a lot of subtlety in storytelling as been lost, but because actually forcing people to watch a single shot for any length of time has become unpopular.
To kids today, Condor would be considered boring even if they where into conspiracy films. The stakes are too low, the pacing is too slow and the way it forces you to consider motivations is too hard. Plus shots that last for longer then 30 seconds.
Unless it's flashy like Lubezki (Children of Men, Gravity, Birdman, etc). Or maybe that's just cinematography nerds like me.
Spielberg actually does some really good one shots that you don't necessarily notice are single takes, because he keeps the camera moving and will have 3+ "shots" within that single take.
Straight Outta Compton was such a fun movie. Movie Cube and Movie Dre are roguish rakes and heroes of free speech. I have no idea whether they bear any relation to Reality Cube and Reality Dre, but the film poked me in my middle-teens when the more interesting events happened, when I was watching Kurt Loder report on the Detroit show on MTVNews. Ending
For a Good Time, Call... is a very cute little movie I found on Netflix. It's a love story about two female roommates who start a phone sex line. Ironically, the "love" portion of the film is platonic, which I'm sure AfterEllen.com commenters would be annoyed about, but it actually works pretty well... the rest of the film is so drenched in lurid sex-talk details that the chaste, genuine affection the women have for each other is refreshing, and I find that real, positive examples of adult female friendship outside of movies about traveling pants are actually kinda hard to come by (heyo Bechdel test).
It otherwise plays out almost identically to a bog-standard rom-com, with the quirky first meeting, forced circumstances bringing them together, and hostility developing into gradual attraction and then love. The really interesting and funny parts come with the male performances, unfortunately. Justin Long acts circles around the actresses (neither of whom I recognized) as the Gay Best Friend. Ken Marino, Seth Rogen, and Kevin Smith all play hilarious bit parts as men who call the sex line; Rogen in particular seemed like he was ad-libbing his lines. Sugar Lyn Beard is the notable female co-star in a rare non-VO role as a squeaky-voiced phone sex employee with hidden depths (Mimi Rogers, who is great, didn't leave much of an impression for me as one of the moms). All told, it was worth my time (while I wait for the next episode of Rick & Morty.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I actually prefer the Kentucky Fried Movie for the purposes of flat-out martial arts parody. For thematic parodies, you can find way better with Stephen Chow stuff like Kung Fu Hustle or Shaolin Soccer.
Both those are good, but for the ultimate in Stephen Chow one must go to The God of Cookery:
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Thank you. TWS is a spy thriller in the same way that CoD is an RPG with it's unlocks / progression.
As for requests, I think I asked for this during last year's Killtoberfest - Stephen King's It, please!
Steam: adamjnet
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I'm pretty sure we're still waiting for your justification of The Village being a great movie...
I would absolutely love to hear your take on The Guest. It's up on Netflix instant now, so it's readily available. It clocks in at 1:39, and was delightful in the most bizarre of ways when I watched it a few months back. I was kind of put off by the beginning, just because it is so odd, but I was fully on board by the end of the movie.
3DS: 0963-0539-4405
It's 1937. All the gangsters in Gotham are meeting in a massive hotel to discuss how their going to carve up Gotham. When the lights go out. It's Batman. Punching his way up, floor by floor. The fanciest gadgets he has are his grappling gun and smoke bombs. He's out of Batarangs by the time he gets to the top. It's basically a 1930's Raid adaptation, but with Batman.
That's my pitch.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
It's not necessarily good, but it's interesting and short and I was entertained by it. I would say it resembles Detention in the way that Super 8 resembles an actual 80s Spielberg movie.
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I wrote most of that but haven't gotten around to the close reading part where I go through the whole movie with screenshots. I'll get back to it at some point, but that's a lot more time and energy-intensive than my normal reviews.
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That movie is 15 minutes long. Batman doesn't fight his way up, he goes in through the penthouse skylight.
Actually, Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum is basically what you're looking for (a Batman "bottle episode" story). I doubt we'll ever see a live action version of that, but odds are good they'll do an animated one at some point, since they already did Year One and Dark Knight Returns.
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I haven't seen Rubber, but I did catch a movie by the same director at a film festival. It was... decent?
Krull
This is terrible.
And then we get instant characterization. Baldwin #3 has a shitty personal life but he's a great cop who kicks a computer into a bad guy's nuts while Selma Hayek is bitching him out, Cindy Crawford is a beautiful noble public attorney working for the downtrodden (suck on that, Daredevil) who is such a workaholic she has faxes (remember those?) sent to the police station where they're taking her report about being injured in a drive-by shooting earlier that morning, and then THE RUSSIANS appear with magic internet hacking powers that makes. no. sense. God, those early internet days, where you could bluff anything with computers and one of those super nerd keyboards with the mouse ball in the middle and it curves outward for serious hacking powers. Magical wifi hacking powers in a van that is constantly trying to kill Crawford because reasons.
Baldwin #3 is fine, he's playing a generic character but the problem lies in how the film makes him unstoppable when he's yet to deliver action star chops like Stallone or Willis did. But Crawford really, truly, cannot act. The best scene in the movie is basically a standard hottie seduces nerd scene that feels ripped off from her Pepsi commercials, only because it requires her to not act like the character she has to portray. Everything else she does is so delayed and bad, with what sounds like every line she spoke was ADR'd afterwords, which is fucking weird because what must have existed first was just the best they could get. And the people playing the KGBs are just standard bad bad guys who slip into German more than russian. The only highlight is Selma Hayek truly being a GDB to Baldwin in the beginning because something, and Christopher McDonald is always one of the best go-to guys for playing the dickhead in any movie.
Hell, if it's 1937 Batman, he's packing a gun.
(An example of not remotely organic: in the "Back to the Future" sequels, Marty McFly suddenly has a really strong, simplistic motivation he never has in the original, that now he can be easily baited by anyone who insults him. Not only does it come out of nowhere because they needed a new character arc for Marty, it doesn't really jive with the first movie, where he seems to only care about others' opinions of him when it's reasonable to do so (like the band audition) and dismiss opinions coming from bullies ("Yeah, well, history's gonna change."))
The other difficulty with sequels is a little more fundamental, and that's figuring out what the hell people liked about your first movie. Let's not even get into how difficult it might be for even the same creative team to execute those elements well for a second time. It's hard enough just to accurately evaluate the work you've already done and the public response to it and come up with which elements of the original need to be dropped and which need to be carried forward.
This brings us to Ghostbusters 2, a movie that didn't quite know what to do and didn't quite know how to do it, either.
The original Ghostbusters is one of the all-time great comedies for a couple of reasons. It was one of the first movies to marry a comedic sensibility to big-budget special effects work (and to do both sides of that very well), a concept that pays off in spades with the big, laugh out loud joke of Gozer's final form. Also, the movie is perfectly cast, from the main three and Weaver down to Rick Moranis' classic pathetic neighbor. The movie is dense and funny, with lots of great little jokes coming out rapidfire or in the margins or without having to be said out loud (for the latter, I've always been a big fan of Venkman's psychic experiment).
But I think the most important element, and the one that, for all its flaws, Ghostbusters 2 does get right, is the strong point of view grounding and shaping the story. In Ghostbusters, these guys aren't just scientists, they're disreputable scientists who have to prove themselves. This isn't just a ghostly invasion, it's a ghostly invasion of New York and how dare you mess with our city. The movie takes its sinister aspects seriously: this is not a goofy situation, it's a dangerous situation that confronts goofy people. The very first ghost they encounter is not a wacky, silly ghost, but a legitimately creepy thing with just a hint of its own story (it's probably a librarian or something, what with the shushing), and the comedy comes from the seat-of-their-pants way that our three protagonists try to deal with her. ("Get her? That was your big plan?")
Ghostbusters was met with critical and financial success, making over $240 million off a budget of $30 million. (Adjusting for inflation, that would be like a $70 million dollar movie today making more than half a billion dollars.) A sequel was damn near inevitable. But that left a lot of questions. What did people like about the movie? And could we find a way to do that again, but different? Ghostbusters 2 focuses on these elements:
-A quasi-romance between Peter and Dana; as in the original, she finds him inadequate for some reason while fending off advances from a short, annoying acquaintance, while Peter seeks to prove himself to her via bustin'.
-A big supernatural threat taken seriously, beginning with a hidden threat and culminating in an absurd giant figure roaming New York.
-The main characters' disreputability, a status they must work to overcome by convincing the public and city officials of their value.
There are problems with all three of these elements when it comes to the sequel, but they're mostly big structural problems. All three are executed pretty well, I think, and the result is a movie that's entertaining, especially scene to scene, but not satisfying. Ghostbusters 2 is like a house made out of wood and then you finish building it only to realize that you've succeeded at "rustic charm" but forgot the door and also should have used bricks instead. Let's take these one at a time.
First, the quasi-romance. This isn't the most obvious misstep (or at least, not the one people tend to complain about), but I think it's the one that hurts the movie more than any other. The first Ghostbusters has one character arc that ties the movie together, and that's the question of whether or not Venckman is a scientist (or a good scientist). That's the source of the team's disreputability, when they're thrown out of college:
It defines the romance, too. The obstacle between Dana and Peter isn't that she doesn't like him but that she doesn't respect him; she finds him odd and silly and doesn't believe he can do anything to help her:
Dana Barrett: You know, you don't act like a scientist.
Dr. Peter Venkman: They're usually pretty stiff.
Dana Barrett: You're more like a game show host.
But by the end of the movie, Venkman and his friends have proven the validity of their science to the authorities, to the public who now believes in them and cheers them on, to Gozer by using science to kick its ass, and to Dana by rescuing her. The end of the movie finds them covered in marshmallow but triumphant, feted by a jubilant crowd who symbolize their validation.
But where do you go in the sequel with that arc and that relationship? Ghostbusters 2 ends up with a cargo cult arc, recreating or mimicking different parts of the original's without actually connecting them with one another. So Peter and his friends are once more looked down upon, but this has nothing to do with Dana, who dated and broke up with Peter between movies; her relationship with Peter doesn't have much to do with the supernatural conflicts on a plot level, either. All the baby-stealing is just an excuse for them to come back into contact.
The problem between Peter and Dana is that Peter was your standard immature, afraid of commitment jerk type--she probably wanted to get married but he wasn't ready. In the interim she got married to somebody else (who conveniently left her later) and had a kid, which has Peter thinking about what could have been. For her part, Dana is attracted to but wary of Peter, and his willingness to care for the kid seems to convince her to give things another try. There's nothing too awful about this (it's kinda basic and cliche, but it's not bad). The issue is that it's a totally different formulation from the gang's larger problem--rather than achieving success but not wanting to commit, they achieved success that was more or less arbitrarily stolen from them (public opinion reversed, the city failed to pay them, etc).
This disconnect between the two major character problems of the movie is the flaw that destroys the unity of the film, and with it, any chance of the story functioning as a story. In the original movie, nobody respects Peter as a scientist, including the woman he wants to prove himself to, and then he does. In the sequel, New York City dislikes Peter and doesn't want him around, and Dana doesn't want Peter around either, but for completely different reasons and with completely different resolutions.
That disconnect is mirrored in the second way the movie carries over a major element from the original, the big supernatural conflict. Obviously this is the no-brainer element, because Ghostbusters as a concept really boils down to "funny people fight ghosts" and not "funny people fight ghosts while trying to have sex with Sigourney Weaver" or "funny people fight ghosts but nobody respects them" or whatever. The comedy goofballs + supernatural threat formula is a solid one that many stories have tapped into (I'm partial to John Dies at the End, myself--the novel more so than the film), but nobody does it better than Ghostbusters. And that includes Ghostbusters 2, which has one too many goddamn supernatural threats, just like it has one too many character conflicts.
And the pairs match up, too. On the one hand, there's a river of slime flowing underneath New York, which literalizes the negative feelings that New York has in general and specifically the way New Yorkers (and NY institutions like the courts and the mayor's office) feel about the Ghostbusters. On the other hand, there's an evil painting of a dead wizard-tyrant who wants to return to life via Dana's infant son, a plot which I'm only now realizing as I type this sentence mirrors the Peter/Dana relationship in this film to a far greater extent than I'd thought. (After all, that relationship is also long-dead but now might return via Peter protecting Dana's child.) The thematic disconnect here is also a plot disconnect, where the two supernatural elements are only tangentially related (the painting draws power from the slime, or maybe created it? the connection is neither clear nor strong). The result is a movie divided, that works scene to scene but in its overall structure is just going the motions. It remembers there were certain kinds of scenes in the first movie, but not why.
To be honest, with the exception of Vigo's last words ("Death is but a door, time is but a window, I'll be back"), the painting story is far, far less interesting than the slime story. While a little hokey, the slime plot is very dynamic, bringing both the comedy (the toaster scene comes to mind, as does the Titanic reference, which may be my favorite joke in the whole movie) and the spooky (all the underground stuff is super eerie, and I love the courtroom sequence). The Vigo plot, on the other hand, is pretty generic, the villain is boring, and Janosz is way on the wrong side of annoying. Rick Moranis is adorably pathetic because he's a kind, good-hearted person who doesn't know how much of a dweeb he is. Janosz is a sweaty, desperate, rape-y creepazoid, and it's unclear how much of what he does in the movie is his idea versus Vigo's. The movie would be at least 40% better if you replaced all the Vigo/Janosz stuff with more slime, and then in the end the Statue of Liberty could fight a giant slime monster instead of, uh, a rooftop.
Finally, I want to address the "re-disgracening" that happens between the two movies. Ultimately I think this represents a lack of imagination or courage on the part of the filmmakers. It's that "Hangover" notion that audiences want as much as possible to be the same in their sequels, even though the best sequels tend to leap in a new direction (as I've mentioned before, Aliens is kind of my gold standard for this). But I also think the desire to keep the same underdog sentiment from the first film, plot contortions be damned, speaks to the misunderstanding of Ghostbusters' comedic engine.
I talked above about how the tension between competence and incompetence drives much of the original film--are Peter and his friends good scientists or not? But the humor doesn't come from the idea that they're bad at their jobs; it's that they're actually quite good at their jobs, just in an unconventional way. (For example, Peter threatening to put Slimer back in the hotel in order to get the manager to pay them.) In other words, the jokes come from the characters, from Egon's incredibly boring nerrdom ("I collect spores, molds, and fungus") to Venkman's selfishness ("Everybody has three mortgages nowadays") to Ray's childlike innocence ("You gotta try this pole!"). They're great characters, and great characters work well in any context. Put these guys on the moon and you know exactly what their reactions will be. Ghostbusters 2 should have allowed them to be successful, and worked to find the humor in that, rather than knocking them back down so that they can once again climb up to respectability.
Overall, the movie has these three big problems that leave it feeling like a scattered, unsatisfying carbon copy of the original. Does that mean it's worthless? No. These are still talented, funny people, and there are plenty of good lines and good scenes, which I've tried to call out throughout my review. And in the absence of a better movie this is sometimes preferable to rewatching the original for the umpteenth time. If this wasn't a sequel to such a phenomenal film, I think its reputation would be better than it is currently. But it's still not great.
In closing, I'd like to point out that, according to Ghostbusters 2, humanity has mere months to live, since Peter's talk show guest declares that the world will end on February 14th, 2016. ("Valentine's Day. Bummer.") So don't worry too much about those new Ghostbuster movies--even the all-girl one won't be released until July of next year, 4 months after the apocalypse.
I was serious about Hudson Hawk being my favorite movie. I'd be curious what someone who actually knows what they're talking about would have to say about it.
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@DarkPrimus Kung Pow: Enter the Fist is goofy, dumb, and hilarious, or at least that's the way I remember it. I haven't seen the movie since I was like 14, so I'm kinda hesitant to return to it for fear I wouldn't like it as much now. Also I doubt I would have anything to say about it--that kind of absurdist comedy tends to resist analysis. It either works or it doesn't. So I won't be reviewing it (beyond this paragraph, I guess).
I think my thoughts on Hudson Hawk would just make you sad. I don't think it's good, and I don't have an interesting reason for not thinking that it's good. Sorry.
I have long become immune to other people's perspectives on things I enjoy.
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Review Howard the Duck!