I can, at the very least, concede that shoving a workman-like spy plot into a comedy at least means the plot is okay, unlike McKinnon’s last trip in being the crazy friend character (I liked Ghostbusters but that movie has script problems out the ass)
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It’s been a while since I saw it, but I’m wondering what the DoD contributed to Ernest Saves Christmas.
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I’m going to lazily bet it was NORAD tracking Santa
oof
BlacKkKlansman is a damn fine movie, riding on the razor’s edge of great black comedy and a fairly tense and thrilling procederal
with that said, if you are planning to see this movie, don’t read any real discussions about it
don’t a let a single soul ruin the end of the movie for you
I’m not even going to bother spoiler texting it because it needs to be seen, first hand
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groundhog day in 4K is pretty swell
been breaking in my new projector and my goodness it really is beautiful, that film grain is unlike anything I’ve seen other than at a handful of screenings I can remember.
also took the opportunity to watch stardust memories for like the tenth time. of all the navelgazing narcissistic jerk movies that I’ve ever loved, I think this is the only one I will never sour on. and it’s not even that well-liked otherwise!
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We saw Sorry to Bother You and neither of us were very impressed. Movie had a lot of funny concepts but no idea how to sell jokes.
Mostly why I bring it up is to say that I am never watching a movie with a girlfriend’s wacky art show ever again.
That scene went a little too long (like many scenes) but it was the core of Detroit’s backstory that was clearly an alternate telling of this movie – she’s got her own dubbed voice at the art show, her own entertainment when she gets beaned, she appears to become wealthy and successful as she pops back into the movie. I like how many bits the movie stuffs without calling attention to them, and cuts past resolution a lot of times; makes it feel like I’m trusted to work out the consequences once they’ve given me the pieces.
I thought its timing was pretty good too, but I was raised on Space Ghost C2C so that sense is skewed
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Cruise is Impossible had fantastic action and all the rest of it was actively stultifying. I had fun but Jack Reacher is the better movie.
yeah the art show bit ruled, that really impressed me. I loved the british accent because it was like, a simultaneously low-key and high-key satire of something you can’t quite articulate at first.
also that they even cast danny glover was great.
I didn’t love it but I liked it a lot, I kept waiting for it to get too heavy-handed but I thought the absurdist parts kept it feeling nicely oblique for the most part. I wasn’t in the mood for a straight parable and I felt like boots kept taunting me with one, especially with the conspicuously one-dimensional union organizer guy.
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It was unclear how stupid her art was supposed to be in the film’s world – “It’s like, Africa”, she intones, and Cash goes, uh? Love that he’s got a gift store tchotchke of her art in his rich apartment after a while, presumably she got a sweet gift shop deal.
It was fairly straightforward at the end – he gets his huge media exposure, reveals the corporation, and!
Nothing changes, we don’t get the fix we’ve been trained to expect in movies. The change he can effect is through local organizing (smart). Unfortunately it comes across as a 'get the gang together’montage that plays oddly with the scale of the movie. I think it was adjusted on the page enough that it doesn’t quite flow but I can be ok with the end when I talk about it and that’s good enough for me.
i loved sorry to bother you but something was really off about the editing in the last act. i don’t normally pay attention to technical stuff that much but it really irritated me. like the pacing was off somehow.
on top of the normal reasons, i really liked seeing a movie set in oakland, and i also really am a sucker for movies with alternate reality tv show universes
I really think it was scale and pacing; it was oscillating between big world-altering problems and small-scale organizing and from a high level that’s the whole point but as an emotionally received experience it’s a bit of whiplash. Time moved a bit odd as we skip forward multiple, indeterminate times at his job but the mansion party lasts forever.
I think a lot of the weird bits in the back are supposed to represent Cash’s subjective mindstate; we don’t understand there’s a picket line he’s been breaking until much later because he’s been ignoring that picket line and not understanding what it means and how it affects people around him; there’s a whole thesis about waking up to second-order consequences of your actions that’s experienced in the movie but it’s a complexity as everything else is spinning up.
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the last act is sloppy and has some tonal whiplash at times but, at the same time, doing that, although it does the film no favors from a quality standpoint, sort of echoes the ebb and flow of real life. like, he finally comes down from this high, precarious position and slowly has to readjust to just, well, living how he did before.
that probably wasn’t on purpose but I’ll give Boots credit anyway
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I thought Detroit’s performance art was a really great juxtaposition with Cash’s own performance a couple scenes later.
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Watched Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy again, still think that’s my favorite espionage movie, partially because of how mundane it is. I honestly blocked out the violence that is in that movie, kinda wigged me out when I saw it. Love how depressing it is. There are three gay men in that movie and it doesn’t feel like it was being played for shock value! There are, like, no women though. At least, there are no women who aren’t sad-sacks or getting murdered or exist solely to build the characters of the men they are around. Gary Oldman’s wife doesn’t even get to show her face! At all!
The Polka King is also a good, weirdly heartfelt movie. I think it’s a little too lovable, considering the real-world consequences of building a ponzi scheme, but taking it as pure fiction makes it easier to swallow.
Rewatched Mission Impossible 4 and 5 in preparation for the new one which ended up not panning out, but yeah those are great action movies. And pretty funny. The plot of the 4th one is forgettable at best, but the Spy v Spy thing in the 5th one works much better. Has a few good moments of emotion for, uh…lady spy. fuck i can’t remember anyone’s name except Benji.
(re)watched Invasion, that body snatchers movie with Nicole Kidman and NuJamesBondBoy. Daniel Radcliffe? Daniel Day-Lewis? fuck
Anyway that movie is so heavy-handed about its message as to be irritating, and the non-linear editing feels like a gimmick by the 5th time they use it. Should have only been in the more emotional scenes, or to represent the main character’s inability to stay awake rather than jammed in to action scenes so you can get a little more talking in during the car chase. Albert from West World is maybe the strongest performance??? Even though he only gets about 5 minutes of screen time.
Been watching a lot of movies lately
OH and watched Golden Compass for some reason, it so blatantly relied on being a trilogy as to be absolutely infuriating. The, uh, ferret is good though
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Love slow-burn espionage movies. Love slow-burn conspiracy movies. Love slow-burn horror movies.
Oh wait, I love anything slow and reflective
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should I set up a viewing club where we watch Until the End of the World (I have the 280 minute cut, if anyone has the full 295 minute cut I’d love to watch that version)
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Check out the ttss mini series if you havent seen it yet it’s great
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I’ve been watching Amarcord for the first time in years while migrating a bunch of our former university president’s email backups(?) today because apparently that’s my job and it just absolutely fucking rips, Fellini was hilarious
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Dang, I like Fellini but I never got around to that one. I love Satyricon, that one’s my favorite. Feels like he took a science-fiction ethnographer’s lens and approach to an actual historical period.
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