It’s been forever since I’ve seen both but the one demerit I recall for 24 Hour Party People was that I liked the dude they cast as Curtis in Control better.
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Watched One Battle, and of course spent most of the time thinking about Vineland and about my mom, who both really liked that book and deeply felt the disappointment at the failures of the 60s in the long run. She always stayed hopeful about potential, but felt that depression herself a lot.
It was a pretty good movie overall, but I get how it could not hit for a lot of people. Vineland worked for me at least in part because of spending so much time with my mom and burnt out leftists from the Quaker House, so maybe that helped.
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Most fucked up thing about 24hr Party People is that Ian Curtis says he hates Bowie when in actual fact he loved Bowie and Low and The Idiot were huge influences on Joy Div. But ya the rest of the movie is great, and Robby Mueller is the only one to ever make DV look good.
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Rewatched Army of Darkness on Friday with my neighbors. What a perfect movie, honestly.
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i’ll never forgive john chu for what he did to jem and the holograms but wicked is basically best case scenario of a 2020s version i suppose.
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Just saw the new movie Happyend, by Ryuichi Sakamoto’s son. It’s about a high school implementing a facial recognition based surveillance system that watches students at all time and automatically docks them points when it detects misbehavior. You see the ways different sorts of students react to this affront. The film’s got unabashedly leftist politics, which is nice. At its core, it’s a classic high school drama about a small group of friends growing up together while dealing with this situation. It reminded me of the universal high school experience of running up against petty rules unjustly enforced and having a moment where it hits you for the first time that these institutions don’t always have your best interests at heart.
It was pretty good! Great performances and soundtrack, and a few laugh-out-loud moments for me, especially the tiny prank a kid pulls during graduation at the end. My partner cried when the credits rolled. I’ll see more stuff by this guy.
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one battle after another? more like one uh… easy choice after another! i liked it as an action-comedy, but it was so disinterested in doing anything morally ambiguous or complex. despite how every obvious cliche pathology of right wing jackboots is thrown on his character, i still think sean penn gave an admirable anime villain performance. leo did a lesser version of rick dalton. benico was a delight. it’s ultimately rad lib agitprop with some fun performances, great filmmaking and expert pacing. that isn’t a bad thing, especially for a huge release like this given the state of cinema, but it’s a bit disappointing coming from pta.
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Watched the new Naked Gun. Made me laugh once or twice, which is more than I can say for most of the Naked Gun sequels, but it doesn’t even come close to touching the original.
It definitely reuses a lot of jokes and scenarios from those older movies, though I’ll hand it to 'em that the romantic cutaway bit goes so off the rails in its weird contained little side story…that was pretty good. Goofy as shit but needs to be seen rather than spoiled.
Came away from it thinking that, y’know, while Pamela Anderson is mostly there to fill the Priscilla Presley/straight man role, she’s got a few moments where she does some deadpan better than Neeson does.
Glad the movie kept the most important and consistent cameo in the franchise, too…
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Pam Anderson is pretty good. She was very campy back in the day in the Barb Wire movie. And last year she was the best part of a Gia Coppola knock off of The Wrestler, called The Last Showgirl
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I also watched The Naked Gun reboot over the weekend. I wish I’d watched it in theaters, or at least in a room full of friends, but I had a good time with it. Probably the funniest Hollywood studio comedy I’ve seen in… a long time?
Still not as funny as many episodes of the original Police Squad!, to my recollection, which I’ve been meaning to rewatch but apparently is not streaming anywhere.
It also might be Akiva Schaffer’s most accomplished, funny, coherent movie as a director, though I admit it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Hot Rod.
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Saw Good Boy on the weekend.
Lives up to its title; Indy is a very Good Boy. Ends well and has a short runtime but I think it could have been a 25-minute twilight zone episode, it’s a little slight. Stick around after the credits.
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I saw it as well and liked it. Agree with the runtime but I feel like it didn’t overstay it’s welcome. Was more creepy than scary but still a good time.
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Opera is by far the best Argento I’ve seen. Previously I thought Phenomena was. So I really exploded out of joy when at the end we cut to a film director practicing manipulating a fly attached to fishing line against a background of the Alps!
Remember psychic communication with bugs?? I clapped!
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of unknown origin (1983)… loved this one. Peter Weller vs One Big Rat. set in the monoobsessive universe where everyone is constantly telling each other disquieting rat facts and where the premise of the movie seems to be that rats are some kind of unspeakable Sin Animal bent on committing acts of evil who must be destroyed by whatever means necessary. remarkable, Death Wish level commitment to this stupid premise. very impressed that despite the occasional threats of becoming some form of moral parable on yuppie paranoia, loss of control etc it never does and remains a movie about this one specific rat he hates and why he needs to fight it with a dark souls weapon. great dream sequences, many pov and reaction shots of the rat, content warning for some distressing nature documentary clips of rats eating each other that he watches in the library like someone trying to get in the head of a serial killer. supporting cast incl the guy whose head explodes in scanners, the guy who gets blown up by a computer in scanners, and windom earle.
edit: turns out the director also did COBRA which explains something of the tone..!!
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Nobody 2 was kind of pointless. Every bit of revelation or character arc anybody could have was already taken care of by the first movie. Movie open the exact same way as the first one and everybody comes back for a reprise of their roles. You’ve got Sharon Stone as the villain this time and she absolutely eats. The violence is stylish, though none of it is as amazing as the bus fight from the first one, though the arcade scenes are pretty neat, and the collection of big setpieces that form the BIG fight are a delight.
My bottom line is that the story of the sequel is weak compared to the original, which wasn’t a terribly inventive story to begin with, but if you just wanna see Christopher Loyd with a gatling gun, RZA with a Katana(yes you can tell it’s capitalized when he unsheathes it), and Bob Odenkirk lighting piles of money on fire then it’s a fun enough film. I’d say I’m glad I watched it but I probably won’t rewatch it anytime soon.
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didn’t care about this at all but i ain’t know we woke up sharon stone for it…
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is that the heartbreak kid? astounding movie
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wait but is it the remake of the heartbreak kid?
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It’s the OG. Thankfully forgot they remade it so miffy dodged a bullet there.
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