Yeah, that movie was terrible tho I think the characters were also pretty dumb. Felt pretty lifeless and shallow like his other stuff, but without the visual fun that his stuff can occasion upon. I don’t know why I expected better! Also I had never seen Pedro Pascal in anything before and I don’t understand why he’s getting so much work now except that he’s pretty conventionally good looking
I think there is a mini epidemic right now of people thinking that they’re hitting the Coen brothers tone (including, lately, the Coen brothers themselves) and just not really getting there and making a kind of pointless bummer of a movie as a result
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He got that huge Disney boost and is like a serviceably decent actor who is attractive but not like Chris Hemsworth marble slab attractive and seemingly a nice fun guy to work with. Just an all round B+, he can slot into anything
Totally took that ending of 28 Years Later as a gut punch that the kid’s about to fall into a shockingly different sort of fucked social order than the one he abandoned, but if it’s a set up for a sequel, that takes a bit of umph out of the impact
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Rewatched Susperia last night, on blueray instead of on a discord stream. wow those wallpapers and sets are something.
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leather jacket love story (1997) - a black and white indie drama from the god decoteau. some funny lines and period details, and some interestingly crazed feeling music cues that seem to have been ripped from old live action disney films, but i’m posting abt it here for a more important reason: Nicholas Worth is in it as a character named Jack Meoff, so if you watch it you get to see Kommisar Leber from Gabriel Knight 2 share a stage with Mink Stole before delivering a dramatic poem abut his dick.
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Thank you @bib for recommending Track of the Cat. The family drama is unimpeachable. Robert Mitchum is the silver screen’s greatest bastard.
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soon as i’m rich the first thing i’m doing is getting that coat
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watched a few movies while I had the house to myself for a week. mostly picking the worst-critic-rated ones with swearing violence and tits
Cookie (1989)
starring Peter Falk but Dianne Wiest steals the show as his high-strung mistresses/mother of Cookie. Falk is a mobster recently released from prison after 13 years and has to (rom-com?) bond with his 18-year-old illegitimate daughter, who he employs as his driver. Cookie shows her skills by pulling some handbrake & J turns in a limo to ditch tails, escape drive-bys, very nice
screenwriter followed up with My Blue Heaven so I guess witness protection was just the hip thing in the late 80s. lots of NY locations pre-gentrification
Cookie has some great fits in this
I already forgot that Jerry Lewis is in it as an Atlantic City businessman
The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
a redhead, a brunette, and a blonde accidentally start a coven and summon an avatar of the devil, who then turns it into a polycule. very fun up till the finale, which was too long & actiony. Jack gets turned into a Bloodborne creature but up till then get does a great job of luxuriously sliming around the place
real movie magic in this was getting three great actresses to star. a Stephen King adaptation?? there’s a lot of it going around
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Sirens (1994)
famed Australian painter Norman Lindsay is visited by Anglican vicar Hugh Grant to convince him not to display The Crucified Venus in the 1919 Melbourne art show
but the redhead, brunette, & blonde models help his wife through a (gentle) sexual awakening+liberation
filmed at Lindsay’s house in the Blue Mountains, a few towns down from where my brothers and parents live now. Elle Macpherson is not a great actor, delivers her lines way too fast, and Hugh Grant hugh-grants the place up. rest of the cast is fine-to-great. authentic atmosphere as the first thing said to the poms on entering a bush town is the local drunk instructing him to get fucked
Frankenhooker (1990)
real slow start with terrible acting from the lead, got a bit icked out at the self-trepanation. Patty Mullen is only in half of it but gives her all
I see & applaud how they spent most of the budget on special effects instead of actors
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Doom Asylum (1988)
a dumb slasher. I enjoyed the character quirks, the indecisive boyfriend (“we should leave right now! Or maybe we should stay…”) getting beaten up by Tina, the lead singer of the punk noise band rehearsing in the asylum when the rest of the cast turn up. who pauses the punishment to throw her head back and laugh like an anime villain. here’s what they were rehearsing:
Patty Mullen is so funny, playing it straight like Anna Faris.
I had to watch one of the kills (powerdrill to the forehead) a few times to see the trick, I was convinced despite the very obvious stage makeup & blood. rest of the kills are very over the top.
Kirstin Davis’ first movie, amazingly both her and her character are the daughters of psychologists/psychiatrists and can’t act. there’s a cover of House of the Rising Sun that’s so god-awful and repeated in the opening, reprise, and credits. and the director cut in scenes from his favourite Tod Slaughter films (very B British horror from the 30s and 40s) in a baffling fashion.
the only location is a derelict asylum that looks well-loved, covered in natural graffiti and tags from the movie characters
Boxing Helena (1993)
Julian Sands is a neurosurgeon with terrible mother issues and (completely unrealistic for a surgeon) no inflated sense of self-esteem & -confidence. he pathetically pursues Sherilyn Fenn, causes her to be involved in a life-changing accident, and arranged to imprison her in his house while she recovers. plot and scenes progress in a wet, dreamy way (the anticlimax resolves this & is most unsatifying). too weird to be bad, not psychosexual enough to be interesting.
filmed in Atlanta? I couldn’t tell
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Misery (1990)
oops this one was positively-reviewed. I dunno why, one of the worst I watched. the acting was fine but the direction & plot structure was so boring, tired, predictable, formulaic. that Stephen King touch. plus the inane novel bowdlerising to show just how *unhinged* & *disturbed* the antagonist is sounds goofy, not ominous or unnerving.
Action Jackson (1988)
Joel Silver worked with Carl Weathers on Predator, and said “hey let’s do a movie together”, picked the first script, shot it and released a B action movie in 18 months. the chemistry between Carl and Divine is very strong and one-way. Carl’s Harvard law-educated cop has a lot of snappy comebacks for the lockerroom atmosphere of the Detroit PD. great car chase, a truck full of gas canisters gets blown up
reading the contemporary reviews, critics knocking it for “almost pornographic fascination with guns and weaponry”. which is an insane take, there’s a handful of guns used and most of them in a completely utilitarian manner. a couple were referred to by name (cleaned and ported your .357, saw him packing a .32)
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The Lawnmower Man (1992)
not an adaptation of Flowers for Algernon but… Stephen King again?! looks great, DP went on to Titantic, every indoor scene is hazy/smoky to bring out the volumetric lighting
except for when the guys from The Shop are planning something
the 90s uni researcher fit…
turns out I had the director’s cut which is an hour too long. most of the visual effects are Mind’s Eye-level dated, but I liked the video conferencing system
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Crazy thing about this movie is it actually has nothing to do with King other than the title, the story it comes from is about like some kind of mischievous lawn imp or something
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That bit in Action Jackson where you see a jar filled with gonads is so cool…
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How do you like your ribs…
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Naked Gun and Together both rule
Eggers Nosferatu is a blast, wow.
didn’t expect it to go so hard so quickly, but Dafoe obviously had a blast playing in this.
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I think i usually have a pretty high tolerance for weirdness, but i think On The Silver Globe may have tipped over the threshold a bit. It’s visually amazing but 90% of the dialogue is people scream-monologuing at the camera incoherent philosophical rants, which for a nearly 3 hour film is a bit much.
I think the best part is when they go to the city of the grotesque eldritch bird people and it’s just a dilapidated Polish city, with bird people peeking out of their windows from behind their little floral arrangements.
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