also, maybe more generally, it’s interesting how movies that are at the time seen as the beginning of some new era in retrospect often look like the last examples of what came before it
jaws and star wars 1 are the same way, for different reasons i guess.
i dont think tdk is as iconic as either of those, but … it just strikes me that if you take away the comic book element, they really don’t make movies like this anymore.
tdk is one of the last huge smash hit action movies that is basically just about people punching each other and driving cars
of course the fast and the furious franchise also exists
It also has villains which actually have some weight in the story. And seem formidable.
I also really enjoyed how the Joker makes a joke out of his origins. And the whole time we are watching the origin story of Two Face, but don’t actually know it. And when he does turn, its simple rage about how F&%#*$ everthing is. Not the usual wrong and/or disgruntled employee/customer/citizen/veteran in 80% of movies.
I don’t think TDK is perfect. But it does a bunch of things I appreciate.
I attempted to see The Lighthouse, but 20 minutes in, the fire alarm went off and everybody had to evacuate the theater. Those 20 minutes were very atmospheric though!
I watched Mystic River. I’d never seen it. It was quite good. Like if they made a True Detective movie—you’d want it to be like this, this good. It was 2 hrs 17 minutes but felt longer, in a good way. Very nearly no wasted time, no rushing, all the right details.
I think my only complaints are
that it leaves one thing open ended and I’d like to have seen that end. But, that would kinda require another movie to make it good.
And Kevin Bacon’s character has a little side plot detail going with an separated wife, which was completely unnecessary and also used to no effect. When I said very nearly no wasted time, that comprised all of the wasted time. Which might amount to 45 seconds of screen time where she would cold call him. And then at the end she finally speaks and they get back together. woo hoo…Its seriously thin and I’m real surprised they didn’t just edit out the cold calls.
“Dolemite is My Name” never really digs into anything. Its more like a light summary of events. Its decent background noise if you’ve got some crafts or something stationary, needing done. But you may as well just put on some actual Dolemite movies. So I dunno.
yeah, i found myself going back and forth a lot while watching re: whether or not i thought it was good. it has its moments, but there’s something about it that just feels artificial. i.e. i couldn’t even buy that this was set in the past; just something about the way it’s shot and the dialogue, if it wasn’t for the clothing, this movie could be happening sort of any time? i’d have to rewatch and take notes to be more specific, but there are moments in the movie that really work and other parts that feel unconvincingly slapped together.
and it made me wonder if this was, in fact, a meta-commentary about Dolemite itself and the effort to make a movie about Dolemite.
I rewatched Event Horizon a couple weeks back, and it is still goofy fun. I wish the original cut still existed because that blink and you miss it Hellraiser-level gory montage near the end is absolutely wild.
I hope its 73 minutes of him shitting on Bill Cosby.
Not really but, he semi recently did some unplanned, improv Bill Cosby shitting at an awards show or something. And it sorta interrupted the show and it was beautiful. According to Murphy, Cosby was always very rude and dismissive with him. Even though Cosby was one of his main Inspirations. So, double great.
Yeah, I heard that footage is completely gone. What survives in the movie is like 3 seconds of extremely quick flashes of some really cool imagery. I think they had to cut it down from an NC-17 to an R or something. In retrospect the entire movie is a pretty soft R otherwise.
Explains why every watch since I always felt like something was missing - not that the original even had it, but damn if it didn’t make you envision more of the Infernal Orgy.
Supposedly, the cut scenes were found in, of all places, a Transylvanian salt mine, but they had deteriorated beyond repair.
During an interview at ComicCon 2012, Anderson revealed that producer Lloyd Levin had found the original cut of the film on a VHS. However, nothing has been heard of it since.
Reminds me of the director’s cut of Phase IV, which restored an absolutely incredible Saul Bass phantasmagoria of footage and animation that ends the film with a metaphysical and psychosexual exploration of what it would mean for humanity to get displaced by hyperintelligent ants. Absolutely incredible in the theater, but sadly it’s only available at screenings or in this camcorder footage of it: