Ok, this is going to be a mega post for the record books. I don't know that I've ever gone this long without posting in here, and of course, the one time it happens, you all go apeshit, with
europe and his new BFF
Beardo going on about B-movies,
Flemmy and
Joseph Budden throwing down over art movies, and
Caveat watching some classics. But damn it, I'm going to go through it all.
To start, I should mention, going back to where I was the last time I posted about my ill-fated excursion into the filmography of Clint Eastwood, that, despite how terrible I find his movies and how lame I find him as a bad ass,
Tightrope and
The Rookie were both awesome.
Tightrope is the kind of movie I love. No name writer/director, Clint gives him a shot, and he fucking goes for it. The ending sort of got away from him, but everything leading up to it, while by no means flawless, was so ambitious and in large measure successful that I was totally along for the ride. The opening is one of my new favorites, just wickedly executed. I also loved Clint's character. He actually plays a dorky dad type, a homicide cop newly divorced and with custody of his two little daughters (and the eldest daughter was played by his real-life daughter, which was really cool). However, beyond the dorky dad exterior, on the inside, he's sprinting down a path of self-destruction, engaging in high-risk sex with the low-lifes he comes across on his beat. Tons of inspired little moments, and one extended sequence of suspense involving his real-life daughter that I was absolutely stunned by (whichever one of his wives was the mother, she was either remarkably understanding or remarkably well-compensated). This is the kind of hidden gem I was looking for in Eastwood's filmography.
The Rookie wasn't quite as good, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a bit of a curveball for me having so much of the running time following Charlie while Clint was kidnapped. I was hoping for more of a buddy cop dynamic than what I got. Still, what was there worked really well, and I loved Clint dialing up the cynicism and misanthropy to 11. I also
loved the ending. At first, I had a bit of TDKR syndrome; I was initially bummed they didn't go for it, but when I considered what they
did do, it worked tremendously and I was ultimately satisfied with the decision.
That's all the movie watching I did this past month. On the TV front, I finally started watching
South Park. I watched it when it premiered (when I was the kids' age) and liked it. As I got older, I drifted away from it; as I got older still, it seemed too stupid and not as quick-witted as
Family Guy, so I stayed away. At this point, I'm glad I've finally come back around to it. The movie is still fucking hilarious, and while I still think
Family Guy is
by far the funnier show, I have a much greater appreciation for the way Trey Parker and Matt Stone use the medium of animation for their outlandish, absurdist satires (I just watched the one that deals with the transgender [and transracial and transspecies] controversy
).
I also reupped with Fight Pass. They've finally put up a good chunk of the Pancrase library I was promised ages ago. It's not all there yet, and what's there is mostly the stuff I've already owned for years, but it's still sweet. I also spent some time (re)watching fights with Hughes, Franklin, Couture, and Liddell. They were the top dogs when I started watching MMA and it was cool not only reliving those old pre-and-post-TUF memories, but Fight Pass has also added a bunch of their older, pre-UFC fights. It was awesome seeing Hughes reffing one of Franklin's matches and Hughes himself participating in some goofy ass Battle Royal style match between the Miletich crew.
Anyway, that's what I've been up to. Now on to what you all have been up to...
How did the whole Brucesploitation episode blow over, btw?
I got too busy to do it.
Enter the Fat Dragon thus remains on my to-see list.
Lamer than people like Steve Barkett?
I meant among the consensus GOATs.
Man Deadpool is just bad. It doesn't even feel like a Dirty Harry movie. A really spiritless closure to the series.
When I said it got my hopes up, that meant I was really liking it until the ending. For most of its running time, it was one of the stronger entries. Then they revealed the psycho and the whole thing came tumbling down.
Comparing M to Fury is actually rather interesting, since they both share a theme of mob mentality yet are on opposite ends in terms of storytelling and style. M is very experimental and eccentric, while Fury by Lang's standard was rather conventionally communicated.
What about
M strikes you as "experimental and eccentric"? I've always found
M to anticipate remarkably the style of the classical Hollywood thriller that he and Hitchcock would come to master.
Presently, I guess I'd rank them about the same. I suspect I'd have to re-watch M just to make my mind up. I'd say that Fury is a more consistently-superb affair though while some parts of M are definitely better than others.
M is too patchy, and the parts that don't work
really don't work.
Fury is solid all the way through, and with Tracy's performance as well,
Fury is way out in front IMO.
I'm starting to think that you just don't like movies with downbeat endings.
Over the years, I've moved farther and farther away from making lists and focusing on rankings, and even while I was putting a lot of emphasis on it, my rankings would shift quite a bit, but what has still yet to change is my standard one-two punch of the greatest movies ever made:
Citizen Kane and
Raging Bull. And neither one is exactly full of sunshine and rainbows
I'll freely admit that I enjoy upbeat movies more than downbeat movies - and anyone who says otherwise has some psychological problems they should look into fixing - but just because a movie isn't a Randian triumph of the rational and the moral doesn't mean I'm incapable of appreciating/liking it.
Bonnie and Clyde,
The Exorcist,
The French Connection,
Chinatown...those movies just suck.
Intresting. The local University has it. Might be doing a little reading this summer.
While my track record of getting people to watch classic movies has been pretty good, my track record of getting people to read film scholarship is fucking abysmal. You can break that streak, though, and if you do actually read it, I'm sure you'd get a lot out of it. It's a really shrewd look at one of the most awesomest of all movie genres.
can you say that Philip Marlowe has the same cynicalism?
Damn it, now that I'm thinking about it,
The Big Sleep would kind of shoot a hole through my assertion. After all, what pisses Bogart off at the end of
The Big Sleep is that such a young and innocent kid was heartlessly gunned down. His anger wasn't at the fact that the world is full of shitty people, which he is absolutely cynical enough to not bat an eye at, but rather at the fact that the small little pockets of the world that haven't been corrupted with people that aren't (yet?) morally bankrupt, are starting to get caught in the crossfire. So you could say that Bogart's Marlowe is actually very similar to Eastwood's Harry.
Back to the drawing board on that one.
I'm quite adamant in any assessment of these Marvel things that they should stand on their own [...] It started occurring to me when I was listing the must-watch MCU films for Flem or Chickenluver, worried they wouldn't "get" Civil War if they didn't see certain ones. Then went to see Civil War again and literally covered my face through half of it in embarrassment for both it and myself, and how I'd been so over-the-top with my first review. Realised at that point that doing a movie marathon prior ruins any chance you'll enjoy the damn thing by virtue of it actually being any good functionally, because it isn't.
Hmm. As I preface all of these remarks, I still haven't seen
Civil War so I can't comment specifically with regard to that film. However, the general nature of your problem here strikes me as similar to saying stuff like, "If Semmy Schilt weren't so big, he wouldn't have done so well in K-1," or, "If De Niro wasn't in
Raging Bull, then it would've have been such a good movie."
That kind of logic has always seemed weird to me inasmuch as it is reducible to "if things weren't the way they were, then they would've been different." You seem to be saying that, if the Marvel movies weren't there, then
Civil War wouldn't work. Couldn't the same thing be said about
Die Hard with a Vengeance, or
Scream 3, or
The Dark Knight Rises, or indeed
any sequel/installment in a franchise (I just picked my favorites for examples; I'm sure you don't like any of them
)?
I expected exploration, the consequences of such hard character work. But all we've got is rehashing and poor commitment to stakes instead of actual change in Phase 2, which is the death knell for function, and it's all because of the bottom fucking dollar.
They tease these serious issues without making anything happen, then return quickly to status quo. You know what would happen in a real story if Tony Stark created Ultron in such a careless manner, secondary to a cocktail of daddy issues and misapplied concern for the human race? He would die so the protagonists, The Avengers, reassess and implement real change. Think about how Whedon was willing to sacrifice Coulson in The Avengers and how that's what gets them all fucking fired up.
But what happens instead in Age of Ultron?
Tony does it again while Banner just stands there like a flaccid ballsack, so they can introduce another beloved comic character for the next movie. It's so transparent it hurts that I didn't see it.
I'm with you here on the failure of
The Avengers 2. That was bad writing, pure and simple. However, I don't think he needed to die for the point that creating Ultron was a bad idea to be made. In fact, that change you're talking about not only doesn't require Tony's death, it doesn't even require a whole movie. At least it shouldn't. That change should've happened right there in
The Avengers 2. That change should've been Tony's arc. To have gone that route would've meant no Vision, though, and going back to your thing on character introductions and asses in seats, that just wasn't an option.
Think about Winter Soldier [...] what a cool little allegory - government doing some shady shit in the name of "safety". So Cap dives down the rabbit hole to get down to the bottom of this, and he's totally right.
Oh wait no.
It was comic book nazis all along who had nothing to do with this story in any functional or thematic sense.
Now here I think you're being a little hard on
The Winter Soldier. I actually think the Nazi tie-in works on a thematic level. Yes, it's conspicuously comicy, but the
idea of America (embodied in Captain America) being pitted against the
idea of Nazism (embodied in Hydra) and having that battle raging on in a 21st Century context is actually a clever little twist on the enduring (emphasis on the temporal) battle of good versus evil.
I've watched Blade 2 to some extent like 10x this week. Shit is always on.
I need to watch blade 1 again cause i don't remember liking it ever. I must though if i like 2 and 3.
That opening scene where the vampire chick lures the guy (Lem from The Shield) to the dance club behind the meat-packing plant, the blood starts coming down from the sprinklers in the ceiling- revealing the ravers are all vampires, and then Blade shows up to fuck the vamps shit up is worth the price of admission alone. Easily one of the coolest introductory scenes of a comic book character in a film that I can recall.
I haven't watched any of them in years, but when I was a kid,
Blade was one of my favorite movies. I watched that movie so many times. Wesley Snipes at his most bad ass and my man Stephen Dorff as the villain. And hell yeah,
ufcfan, that opening scene is one of the GOAT.
When
Blade 2 came out, I was super stoked, but I initially thought it sucked. It was actually similar to what happened with the Mission: Impossible movies. I grew up fucking loving the first one, thought the second one sucked ass, and then just forgot about the whole series. I eventually wound up rewatching the second one and still thought it sucked, but I was surprised at how much I liked the third one.
It'd be interesting to see how I'd rate them all now. I can't imagine I'd do such a dramatic 180 on
Blade 2, but at this point I don't even remember it.
That was one of my favorite things about Inception - which i think did an even more clever thing with it. You go through all the pre-mission stuff very comfortably until the end when Mal is like "you really sure that wasn't a dream too?" You think back and you are finally tuned into that possibility...and I'm actually taken for that ride every time i watch it.
I've reached a point in my PhD where what I'm going to write will either be all Bruce Lee (except that'll leave a lot of unexplored movie territory) or it'll be broader with just a chunk about Bruce (except that'll leave a lot of unexplored Bruce territory). Right now, I'm leaning towards the latter, and if that's what I end up doing, I'm for sure bringing in
Inception. That movie has been on my mind a lot lately as like the ultimate cinematic response to skepticism. People have often bashed it as being pseudo-intellectual, but I think anyone who trots that out just proves that they're a pseudo-intellectual, because
Inception is as seriously and profoundly intellectual as movies get.
Plus it's one of the coolest fucking movies ever.
I don't know if I was touched or offended when they recycled Eternal Sunshine... into a True Blood storyline. It was like masturbation- it felt good but really dirty and shameful at the same time.
Guys, did someone that's not me just bring up
True Blood?
I only saw
Eternal Sunshine once and I was pretty young, so that probably explains why it didn't land, but that
True Blood storyline
really landed. The scene where Hoyt asks Jessica to glamour him in Season 5 was powerful enough on its own, but then the way they brought that shit back in Season 7 was one of the few bright spots in that miserable series-capping season.
given all the interesting conflicts throughout the film the priest vs. psychopath one was a little too easy for me. Part of what made me (pleasantly) uncomfortable about the film in general was that each conflicting ideology had to manifest between real, complex citizens of a small town, which complicated any simple judgement. Throwing a psychopath in there made me a roll my eyes a little
The reason I love that scene so much is because of the formal brilliance of it. Even if I concede that it's "easier" than some of the other scenes, the aesthetic "difficulty" makes up for it by offering a different kind of complexity. If you watch that scene and consider the cinematography and the editing, the visuals are actually responding to the tenor of the conversation. The camera gets closer and closer as the conversation becomes more intimate, and any time psycho boy breaks the intimacy, the camera pulls back as if it, like the priest, has to start over and work back towards some kind of connection.
I did a comprehensive aesthetic breakdown of that scene for the students in a film class I taught on this past term, an exercise that really opened that scene up for me, and while I truly loved that film, that was really the only scene that was so aesthetically rich and rewarding, the only scene where there was that level of visual and thematic synchronicity. That's not a knock, though, because I've found that, in most movies these days, the conventions have been nailed down so thoroughly that there is very rarely that kind of formal ambitiousness and experimentation, so to see such an aesthetically brave and skillful sequence was a hell of a treat.
I feel more detached from movies when I watch them lately, like it's hard to immerse myself in it - I'm seeing actors act on a stage and it's fake. IDK. Part of it is that I'm changing and it's affecting every area of my life - well that's not part of it, that's all of it, lol.
Are you having trouble with new movies or are you having trouble with movies you used to never have trouble with?
I did watch Mulholland Drive a while ago though and I wanted to comment - I don't remember if I did or not, but it was around 6 weeks ago. I enjoyed the film, I feel like I should rewatch it. I was not sure at all what was happening, lol, but I liked it.
David Lynch is often more annoying than he is profound, but I've always dug that one.
Not enough Serious Movie thread posters seeing Neon Demon
No joke, dude, there's a store near me and the entire fucking outside wall is covered with like 8 full-size posters for that movie. You aren't on a world advertising tour for that movie, are you
I owed shadow a timely watch of a movie club movie
How's that movie club going? Are the discussions any good?
I hopped on board with
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and fucking loved it. The way
@HUNTERMANIA goes crazy for
Black Swan is how I feel about certain dialogue-heavy romances (
Closer being a good example, with the stage-to-screen adaptation commonality here) and this shot up the list after the first watch.
Never been one of my favorites, but it's definitely a good one. I'm more intrigued about your comment regarding "dialogue-heavy romances." If you haven't seen any of these, you might like them:
It Happened One Night - A classic in the romantic comedy genre and it still holds up.
Alice Adams - Might feel a bit stiff and dated in places, but behind De Niro in
Raging Bull, Katharine Hepburn turns in the single greatest screen performance ever. It's such an endearing story and she's such a heartbreakingly sweet character.
Libeled Lady - A bit under-the-radar, but one of my favorite of the early screwball-style romantic comedies. Fast-paced and a great ensemble cast.
Bringing Up Baby - One of the all-time greats, still fucking hilarious and anchored by two incredible performances from Hepburn and Cary Grant.
Holiday - More dramatic and with more heart than
Bringing Up Baby, but another home run for Hepburn and Grant. From what I've gathered of your movie sensibilities, I'd pick this one to be pretty high up there for you.
The Philadelphia Story - Just one of the greatest scripts and greatest acting showcases in the history of film, and the last and IMO greatest outing for Hepburn and Grant.
His Girl Friday -
@Sigh GunRanger will back me up on this one. Blistering dialogue.
Now, Voyager - A classic romance with Bette Davis at the top of her game.
Woman of the Year - Spencer Tracy takes over for Grant. Tracy and Hepburn are screen gold and the writing is superb.
State of the Union - The most underrated of the Tracy/Hepburn pairings. Wickedly smart and funny script.
Adam's Rib - The GOAT battle-of-the-sexes romantic comedy and arguably the best of the Tracy/Hepburn pairings.
It Should Happen to You - Judy Holliday is the most underrated comedienne of all-time and she's fantastic here paired with Jack Lemmon.
Phffft! - Even more underrated Holliday/Lemmon pairing, and even better IMO.