Christmas Vacation is one of my favorite comedies of all time. If you hate Chevy though (which is fair enough), you might not be willing to come in ready to laugh and enjoy it. Which would be miserable, in a comedy. I will say, if you've had uncomfortable or flat out terrible family gatherings, it still might get you, it portrays that topic extremely well.
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Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The scene in Spies Like Us when he and Akroyd are taking the test is an all time favorite comedy scene for me.
Christmas Vacation has a lot of good bits that aren't focused around Chevy or don't even involve him at all, plenty of other great characters, but he's also the main character and definitely has more than a few grating/obnoxious moments.
I'd still say at least give it a chance, but I wouldn't blame you if you decided to turn it off halfway through. I don't actively dislike Chevy but he's never been my favorite comedian from that era, and I still like the movie itself a whole lot.
Houk the Namebringer on
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Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
astrobstrdSo full of mercy...Registered Userregular
The Vacation movies are one of the few times where Chevy lets himself be the butt of a joke. They (1 and 3 at least) are good and he is good in them (I also do not generally care for most CC stuff).
Christmas vacation always felt like the most mean spirited cynical movie everyone seems to love.
Because it's more realistic to many people's lived experiences with trying to do huge family events. Yet it still has heart snuck in there, like the talk Clark's dad has with him when things are going wrong or Clark looking out for his idiot cousin's kids as much as he can.
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I only saw Christmas Vacation once, and the only thing I remember about it was being completely unable to understand anyone's motivations
I only saw Christmas Vacation once, and the only thing I remember about it was being completely unable to understand anyone's motivations
Clark needs to buy a pool to prove to his family he's a Real Man/ Ellen needs to tolerate her Manchild husband and prove to her parents she has a successful marriage
Also, Ellen clearly isn't happy, and Clark would probably cheat given the opportunity, and the kids are well aware of the fact that their parents are barely restrained whack jobs
The Humans is an A24 adaptation of the Stephen Karam play from a few years ago about an average family gathering for Thanksgiving
Starring Richard Jenkins, Steven Yeun, Amy Schumer, June Squibb, Beanie Feldstein and Jayne Houdyshell
Directed by Karam
Coming to theaters, and to Showtime, Nov 24
so this is out now and i fucking loved it
there's a lot to gush about and i don't know how much can really be done without spoiling. untagged i'll play it safe and say Watch The Humans
so this broken family gathers for a Thanksgiving meal. that's it, that's the film
it works. so so well
Richard Jenkins, in the best performance of the film, is made anxious by...everything, and i don't think that's even an exaggeration? off the top of my head:
1) one of his kids (Beanie Feldstein) lives in this shitty broken-down apartment* 1a) with a lot of noises that spook him*+ 1b) that's close to where a flood recently happened
+2) noises in general spook him, especially when he's deep in thought
3) weird dreams he's having
4) weird neighbors of Beanie's he keeps seeing around the house off and on walking to do their own things that we never get a good/clear glimpse of because why would we, they're not relevant
5) relationship issues, whether it's his or his family's
6) stability
7) the concept of if he's capable of having depression
8) seeing what's happening to his mom with Alzheimers 8a) and the possibility that might be his fate too
*9) seeing every flaw and crack and deterioration in this shitty broken-down apartment 9a) and the possibility that might be his fate too
*so sidenote i'm classifying this as at least partially a horror film. despite having a whole lot of drama and a decent amount of comedy, there are a Lot of jump scares and a surprising amount of tension, especially later in the film when the place gets increasingly darker as their power grid completely fails them over the course of the night
Feldsetin's character has student loan debt making this decrepit place more viable than most in the area she wanted to live in. She can't afford therapy for her depression, a plight few else in the family can afford financially or with time to assist with, and the ones who can don't take depression seriously enough to try, even though they definitely also have it. When it's all too much, she cries in a different section of her own home so as to not disturb the rest of her family, even when it's their words that cause the tears
i was surprised at how even Amy Schumer's performance was captivating! She's unemployed, has health issues, also has money issues, and has no real and/or healthy relationship to fall back on because her family's clearly dysfunctional and she's not yet over her girlfriend breaking up with her
Despite being an office manager, Erik's wife Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell) has similar financial issues, which are admittedly not helped by taking care of both Erik's mom with Alzheimers and her own aunt (recovering from knee injuries) simultaneously. Given the awful things she's seen, and the awful things done to her, and the awful things said around and about her (that she inevitably overhears), she has maybe the least reason to have as much faith as she does that things will improve for the better. That life has its ups and its downs, and the ups can't be limitless or end at a certain age
Steven Yeun's character as Richard, the girlfriend of Feldstein's character, is the one most visibly held together, which
a) is contrasted by him being visibly the most overworked character of the day trying to make this Thanksgiving meal work out for a family he's not even really an official part of yet,
and b) has an emotional payoff where he is the only character to openly admit he has/had depression, and when he says he likes to think he's done things to try overcoming that and believes he's in a better place, effectively instigates the family to talk about how (whether they realize it or not) they all know they have it too, right now, they just don't want to call it that, because it's not supposed to happen to them, and even if it were you're not supposed to admit it out loud
In a lesser, worse film like a Malcolm & Marie, any or all of these scenes could be more confrontational than any of them end up being, or more pointless, or just devolve into one ninety-minute argument scene that makes you just wonder why they'd ever still willingly speak to each other, let alone stay. Not once, even at the beautifully-done end scene (that could have ended moments earlier and had an entirely different meaning/feeling), did this ever come up as a real possibility of happening in The Humans. Through it all you get the sense this Is a family, these people Do love and care about each other, they just...need to try harder at showing that as best as they can
It's a testament to the quality of the film and its talent that none of the above is really a spoiler for the directions, and depth, the tale goes; it's a testament to the performance of Jenkins that he can have his character say a cheer "To knowing this is what matters. Right here." and concede "Everything you have in this life, it goes" in the same conversation and it not only feels sincere, it doesn't feel awkwardly out of place like a thing multiple people should be saying
Not my favorite film of the year, maybe not even the one I've thought most about after the credits rolled, but definitely the one I've paused and taken the most notes on during its runtime just because of moments that made me go wow, that stood out, that made me emotional, and that at times made me feel like I was gazing into a mirror or at my own family
I only saw Christmas Vacation once, and the only thing I remember about it was being completely unable to understand anyone's motivations
Clark needs to buy a pool to prove to his family he's a Real Man/ Ellen needs to tolerate her Manchild husband and prove to her parents she has a successful marriage
Also, Ellen clearly isn't happy, and Clark would probably cheat given the opportunity, and the kids are well aware of the fact that their parents are barely restrained whack jobs
Both Clark and Ellen have very direct opportunities to cheat in the previous two movies and both of them ultimately flinch. Further, Clark is buying the pool because he genuinely thinks his family will love it and is rushing the decision based on financials that would have been safe in prior years. Based on dialogue in the movie, he's actually had an incredible year at work to the point where the prick CEO is forced to directly acknowledge him as a superior employee, so his assumption of an incoming bonus is not really presumptuous at all. Inviting the extended family IS an ego thing, but he's also feeling magnanimous at the time. Clark has very realistic holiday motivations (spoil the kids/wife, impress the guests, blow off steam from work), it's just that he wants everything to be perfect and impressive, which Ellen points out as his Achilles Heel right at the start of the movie.
Hmmm, HMMMMM. On the one hand you incline me to give it a shot. On the other multiple people have indicated Fletch was humorous which....I just ...I don't know if we see the same things, is all I'm sayin.
minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
At the end of the day, he’s still fuckin’ Chevy Chase, so if you hate him with the fury of a thousand suns, Christmas Vacation ain’t gonna change that.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Chevy Chase also largely isn't capable of not being Chevy Chase in anything he's in, so he's not gonna come out and surprise you or anything
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Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Watched 8 Bit Christmas with the fam.
5 year old whined it was boring the whole movie
11 year old was reciting some of the closed captioning out loud and said it was AMAZING when it was done
My wife(MY WIIIIIFE) who loves the cheesiest hallmark Christmas said it was alright
My 13 year old was downstairs playing Xbox so I do not have his opinion
I thought it was ok. Solid C+ movie. Waaaaay too saccharine at the end and it kind of felt like someone modernizing A Christmas Story but keeping it rated PG.
It was fine
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KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
I like June Diane Raphael a lot but the trailer didn't entice me very much, I'll probably skip it
When Bill Murray and Chevy Chase got into a physical fight during Chase’s return to SNL as a guest host, Bill Murray pointed at Chase and yelled, ‘MEDIUM TALENT,’ and I think that might be the most brutal insult in history.
No Wilde quote, no rap diss track compares.
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Raijin QuickfootI'm your Huckleberry YOU'RE NO DAISYRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I like June Diane Raphael a lot but the trailer didn't entice me very much, I'll probably skip it
It’s definitely skippable. I got roped in on the name and thinking it would be more video game stuff
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Just watched Shang Chi. I don't know if it's just because pulling so hard from Chinese mythology was a nice change of pace or if I was just jazzed to see a basically all Asian cast in an MCU film or what, but I had a blast with that movie. Super charming. I even liked the climactic CGI punchfest more than usual.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
Tonight I decided to treat to myself to some international cinema, as I am a consumer of worldwide culture.
So, obviously, I watched the 2018 French movie, MILF.
The film, directed by Axelle Laffont, who also plays Elise, follows a trio of forty-something women who begin dating younger men while on vacation. The trio, Sonia, Cécile, and Elise, are friends who go to the Côte d'Azur in the south of France to help Cécile prepare her vacation home to be sold.
During their vacation, they meet 3 men in their twenties – Julien, Paul, and Markus (a former family friend of Cécile's), who work at a local sailing club. The men are immediately interested in the women, who they have deemed "MILFs". The 6 of them spend a lot of time together as a summer fling; the movie ends on their last day of vacation.
Spoilers: this movie is horny and erotic, while also featuring scenes of folks crying. French cinema!!!
But the movie as a whole? What this movie is about? Oh, its a tale as old as time:
+41
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
I can't believe I missed a whole page discussion of Hollywood's Fishman fetish.
Posts
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
Original Vacation, Christmas Vacation, Fletch, Spies Like Us
He’s fucking hilarious in all of those.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
I'd still say at least give it a chance, but I wouldn't blame you if you decided to turn it off halfway through. I don't actively dislike Chevy but he's never been my favorite comedian from that era, and I still like the movie itself a whole lot.
Doctor
Doctor.
Doctor...
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
It gets real weird real hard
It's our Thanksgiving tradition that after the meal it is put on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCadghh4UIY
yeah chevy chase was in it
some people hate their families, yeah
Great in its own right, and also a vital predecessor of Galaxy Quest.
Because it's more realistic to many people's lived experiences with trying to do huge family events. Yet it still has heart snuck in there, like the talk Clark's dad has with him when things are going wrong or Clark looking out for his idiot cousin's kids as much as he can.
And some people's family fucking suck, you know?
Clark needs to buy a pool to prove to his family he's a Real Man/ Ellen needs to tolerate her Manchild husband and prove to her parents she has a successful marriage
Also, Ellen clearly isn't happy, and Clark would probably cheat given the opportunity, and the kids are well aware of the fact that their parents are barely restrained whack jobs
so this is out now and i fucking loved it
there's a lot to gush about and i don't know how much can really be done without spoiling. untagged i'll play it safe and say Watch The Humans
it works. so so well
Richard Jenkins, in the best performance of the film, is made anxious by...everything, and i don't think that's even an exaggeration? off the top of my head:
1) one of his kids (Beanie Feldstein) lives in this shitty broken-down apartment* 1a) with a lot of noises that spook him*+ 1b) that's close to where a flood recently happened
+2) noises in general spook him, especially when he's deep in thought
3) weird dreams he's having
4) weird neighbors of Beanie's he keeps seeing around the house off and on walking to do their own things that we never get a good/clear glimpse of because why would we, they're not relevant
5) relationship issues, whether it's his or his family's
6) stability
7) the concept of if he's capable of having depression
8) seeing what's happening to his mom with Alzheimers 8a) and the possibility that might be his fate too
*9) seeing every flaw and crack and deterioration in this shitty broken-down apartment 9a) and the possibility that might be his fate too
*so sidenote i'm classifying this as at least partially a horror film. despite having a whole lot of drama and a decent amount of comedy, there are a Lot of jump scares and a surprising amount of tension, especially later in the film when the place gets increasingly darker as their power grid completely fails them over the course of the night
Feldsetin's character has student loan debt making this decrepit place more viable than most in the area she wanted to live in. She can't afford therapy for her depression, a plight few else in the family can afford financially or with time to assist with, and the ones who can don't take depression seriously enough to try, even though they definitely also have it. When it's all too much, she cries in a different section of her own home so as to not disturb the rest of her family, even when it's their words that cause the tears
i was surprised at how even Amy Schumer's performance was captivating! She's unemployed, has health issues, also has money issues, and has no real and/or healthy relationship to fall back on because her family's clearly dysfunctional and she's not yet over her girlfriend breaking up with her
Despite being an office manager, Erik's wife Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell) has similar financial issues, which are admittedly not helped by taking care of both Erik's mom with Alzheimers and her own aunt (recovering from knee injuries) simultaneously. Given the awful things she's seen, and the awful things done to her, and the awful things said around and about her (that she inevitably overhears), she has maybe the least reason to have as much faith as she does that things will improve for the better. That life has its ups and its downs, and the ups can't be limitless or end at a certain age
Steven Yeun's character as Richard, the girlfriend of Feldstein's character, is the one most visibly held together, which
a) is contrasted by him being visibly the most overworked character of the day trying to make this Thanksgiving meal work out for a family he's not even really an official part of yet,
and b) has an emotional payoff where he is the only character to openly admit he has/had depression, and when he says he likes to think he's done things to try overcoming that and believes he's in a better place, effectively instigates the family to talk about how (whether they realize it or not) they all know they have it too, right now, they just don't want to call it that, because it's not supposed to happen to them, and even if it were you're not supposed to admit it out loud
In a lesser, worse film like a Malcolm & Marie, any or all of these scenes could be more confrontational than any of them end up being, or more pointless, or just devolve into one ninety-minute argument scene that makes you just wonder why they'd ever still willingly speak to each other, let alone stay. Not once, even at the beautifully-done end scene (that could have ended moments earlier and had an entirely different meaning/feeling), did this ever come up as a real possibility of happening in The Humans. Through it all you get the sense this Is a family, these people Do love and care about each other, they just...need to try harder at showing that as best as they can
It's a testament to the quality of the film and its talent that none of the above is really a spoiler for the directions, and depth, the tale goes; it's a testament to the performance of Jenkins that he can have his character say a cheer "To knowing this is what matters. Right here." and concede "Everything you have in this life, it goes" in the same conversation and it not only feels sincere, it doesn't feel awkwardly out of place like a thing multiple people should be saying
Not my favorite film of the year, maybe not even the one I've thought most about after the credits rolled, but definitely the one I've paused and taken the most notes on during its runtime just because of moments that made me go wow, that stood out, that made me emotional, and that at times made me feel like I was gazing into a mirror or at my own family
Steam
Both Clark and Ellen have very direct opportunities to cheat in the previous two movies and both of them ultimately flinch. Further, Clark is buying the pool because he genuinely thinks his family will love it and is rushing the decision based on financials that would have been safe in prior years. Based on dialogue in the movie, he's actually had an incredible year at work to the point where the prick CEO is forced to directly acknowledge him as a superior employee, so his assumption of an incoming bonus is not really presumptuous at all. Inviting the extended family IS an ego thing, but he's also feeling magnanimous at the time. Clark has very realistic holiday motivations (spoil the kids/wife, impress the guests, blow off steam from work), it's just that he wants everything to be perfect and impressive, which Ellen points out as his Achilles Heel right at the start of the movie.
OMFG I literally had this exact thought two days ago and I was literally going to post it here but I got so busy.
Which I thought would be funny for multiple reasons, not solely because Galaxy Quest came out way after Three Amigos.
Kinda like how I feel about Adam Sandler.
5 year old whined it was boring the whole movie
11 year old was reciting some of the closed captioning out loud and said it was AMAZING when it was done
My wife(MY WIIIIIFE) who loves the cheesiest hallmark Christmas said it was alright
My 13 year old was downstairs playing Xbox so I do not have his opinion
I thought it was ok. Solid C+ movie. Waaaaay too saccharine at the end and it kind of felt like someone modernizing A Christmas Story but keeping it rated PG.
It was fine
It’s definitely skippable. I got roped in on the name and thinking it would be more video game stuff
So, obviously, I watched the 2018 French movie, MILF.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3WBCV0ybNU
Spoilers: this movie is horny and erotic, while also featuring scenes of folks crying. French cinema!!!
But the movie as a whole? What this movie is about? Oh, its a tale as old as time: