Saturday, February 11, 2023

Weekend Open Thread

16 comments:

  1. Just finished Tony Scottʻs remake of TAKING PELHAM 123 (Iʻm watching a string of Denzel Washington movies this week). Fun! Surprisingly great! And way better than the 1974 original, although I enjoyed that one, too. Poor Denzel. He always has to do everything himself.

    I think Denzel Washington is my second favorite actor of all time. It goes without saying how great he is, but I still donʻt think I gave him enough credit until I really thought about it.

    CRIMSON TIDE (2015). Now this movie, in my not very humble opinion, was pretty bad. The extent to which they ripped off Hunt for Red October is distracting. It also suffers from being a pre-Trump movie in a post-Trump world, where any non-crazy bad guy whoʻs not a completely shameless, openly fascist nazi leader feels tame. There are so many budding stars in it. Viggo Mortensen and Matt Craven in the same movie? Pretty and pretty.

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    1. TOTALLY agree with you about Denzel. I recently visited several of his flicks (including multiple pairings with Tony Scott). Each time his performance blew me away and made me want to seek out more of his work. Hes incredible!

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    2. Crimson Tide is one of my favourite movies ever. I'm sad you didn't enjoy it more. I get the main theme from the score in my head all the time.

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    3. Is it really, Paul? Ok, well. That actually makes me feel better about it. Maybe I missed something. It was entertaining - I'll revisit. :)

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  2. Ok action fans...i watched this one as it showed up on one or two lists of great actioners...

    Punisher: War Zone (2008 blu).

    Holy cow i had a LOT of fun with this one. Its a check-your-brain at the door action flick with some really creative stylized action. And as we all know, having a good baddie is a huge element in these type of flicks, well in this case theres TWO batsh@t crazy villains. One of which feels like he'd be in place in a super violent R rated version of Dick Tracey and the other that feels like a distant cousin to Pollux Troy from Face Off. The flick is by no means perfect (critics loathed it) and the 3rd act action is kinda POV video game but theres enough weirdness, and violence, and quirkiness that i really connected. Also the director tried to impart some comic book style by limiting the color palate of every scene. check it out.

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    1. The director was inspired a lot by the Garth Ennis run (early 2000s)

      Also, that parkour/bazooka bit always makes me laugh 🤣

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  3. I had some free time to watch through some older stuff for the first time. Things I had just never gotten around to because they're all pretty long. Without realizing it, they fit a bit of a theme going from WWI through WWII and into Vietnam, and dealing to large extent with the trauma the leads suffer through. Those movies were Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and The Deer Hunter (1978). I watched them in that order also, so they were arranged chronologically by when they took place.

    I don't think I have any unique insight to offer on on these films that have been around for 45-75 years. I enjoyed them, at least to the extent that one is meant to enjoy them. Obviously The Deer Hunter is the most cynical of the three, and really takes its time getting in, practically showing the audience a wedding in real time, and getting past the hour mark before the leads are even shown in Vietnam. Lawrence of Arabia, telling the story of a historical figure tries to straddle the line between mythologizing the titular character, and showing the more complicated reality. It still ends up much more the former than the latter, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit. The Best Years of Our Lives meanwhile obviously feels like the most personal, as Wyler made it only a couple years after being in the war.

    Compared to another 3+ hour "epic" I watched lately (Babylon, a movie that somehow feels even more mean-spirited than The Deer Hunter), these made for a pretty good week of movie watching.

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    1. I take breaks partway into movies sometimes. Part of it is just me figuring that if I can put 10-20 hours into a season of TV, I can probably devote 3+ hours to Lawrence of Arabia.

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    2. I take breaks often as well. Sometimes I'll watch a movie split over 2 evenings. I'd rather do that than be falling asleep and barely remember the ending.

      I've been known to fall asleep for 10-15 minutes even at the theatre. Although, recently I've been trying to take a short nap before going, and it really refreshes me so I don't fall asleep during the movie proper. I'm just much more of a morning person than a night owl.

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  4. BIG BUG (2022). Jean-Pierre Jeunet made a new movie and no one told me??? Like most Jeunet movies, it has far-out visuals and quirky weirdness. But, also like most Jeunet movies, the quirkiness overstays its welcome at more than 2 hours.

    INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978). This was made in the '70s? You don't say.

    YES GOD YES (2019). I guess this is a comedy, but it's a very dry comedy. Yet another tale of sexual repression among hardline Christian teens. It's... fine. The biggest problem is just that this type of story has been done a bunch of times before.

    BATMAN: GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT (2017). One of my favorite graphic novels gets the DTV animated treatment. The visuals are maybe a little flat, and not as atmospheric as I'd hoped. But the recasting of the Bat characters in olden times remains great fun.

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  5. The Freshman (1925). I'm very unfamiliar with the work of Harold Lloyd. I've only watched Safety Last (which was very good and funny). This one is very different, telling an actual story instead of going for the laughs at every turn. It took my a couple of minutes to adjust, but in the end i really liked it. It was on the Criterion blu-ray, so i have a couple of shorts to watch, and have to go through the extras.

    Mad God (2022). Second watch, on blu-ray this time. Still weird, stuff visually stunning, still don't understand what's going on.

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    1. Harold Lloyd is my favorite of the silent comedians! Definitely keep going on his work!

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    2. SPEEDY is an entertaining Harold Lloyd film. I believe it was his final silent film.

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    3. Is Mad God supposed to have a plot? I've watched a bunch of 10-20 minute chunks of it, and it's quite visually pleasing. I have no idea what's going on either.

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    4. Apparently there is one, but i couldn't tell you what it ks.

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  6. Not much happening on the movie front this week. The only thing I watched was a documentary about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, BILL W.. The presentation of the story of William G. Wilson, who created the 12-step program with AA, is frequently lackluster, but the content itself was engaging enough for me to finish it. Probably the most interesting part of it was how Wilson disliked the way he was deified by fellow AA members.

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