Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

I don't remember that, but I might have been high.

 

I hope 3 Body Problem has a second season. I hope it is not years away (like The Last of Us).

I miss the days when serials were meted out in a more consistently timely manner.

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/f1-front-for-drug-dealers/

 

High octane fuel for the pit crew.

 

Just watched the first episode of 3 Body, having heard of but never read the book(s). It strikes me as a materialists/secular version of the "End Times" genre (e.g. Hal Lindsey's "Late Great Planet Earth" being a fundamentalist Christian version of the story). I will watch the second episode but if I'm right about the metanarrative I probably won't finish it...

 

I never liked the films of director, Guy Richie, so avoided his new Netflix series, THE GENTLEMEN. But a friend recommended it, saying it was entertaining and I should bypass my feelings about the director and try it. So I did--all 8 episodes of Season-1.

Well, my friend was right. THE GENTLEMEN is very entertaining. It's also not completely directed by Richie (he directed 2 of the episodes), though he co-wrote and originated the series. The acting is uniformly excellent. I'd never seen Theo James before and quite like him. Someone should consider him for James Bond (my 2 cents).

The women actors fare well here, with one good performance after the other. Kaya Scoledario (previously unknown to me) really nailed a difficult part--she's the daughter of mobster and a mobster herself, lower class to the bone, yet she has real style. Joely Richardson (a real stunner) nails the mother part. She descends from British acting royalty and was born to play a royal. I also liked whoever played the daughter (for some reason she's not listed on imdb).

The biggest surprise is Vinnie Jones, footballer turned Guy Richie bone crusher (he was in a number of Richie's earlier films). He plays a tough guy here, too, but the best part of his role is his very sympathetic dealings with the mother and daughter on the estate. This man can really act. It was a pleasure to discover that.

No surprise at all was how wonderful Ray Winstone is as the boss of the Glass operation. I've never seen him be less than excellent, and he walks away with it in this role as a low-born tough guy with the smarts and intuition to stay way ahead of everybody.

But the bad part of this series begins and ends with Guy Richie, because he glorifies violent murder. Here he uses it as an ironic punchline, a stylish twist, a cheap entertainment. That's where he loses me--the same place he loses me in his films. His cavalier attitude toward murder actually skews this series in strange ways: the whole appeal of the Duke, played by Theo James, is that he's totally upper class and not fluent with criminal murder, yet is uncommonly smart and strategic. But by the end of Episode-8, after he & Susan Glass arranged for their problematic "allies" to die violently, then jokingly pair up to shoot the final one--all his charm is gone. He's just a well mannered thug, perhaps a sociopath, which upends the intriguing class component of this very British tale.

I suspect this "royal turns common thug" is a lower-class rude boy fantasy in the UK. In other words, they're just like us, only richer and snottier. Knowing that doesn't help: I just don't like the way Richie renders a sympathetic main character very unsympathetic. I think he wrote this series into the ground.

 

You just summed up the Ritchie British gangster genre. I’ll likely pass…it’s a rehash of the movie several years ago also by that name, no?

 

I honestly don't know. Never saw the film. I'll pretty much have to now, having seen the series.

I see a lot of violence in film and streaming series, so maybe t's weird that I would find Guy Richie's brand of it objectionable. There's just something about the nihilistic glee his bad boys exhibit in f'ing up others--and the implicit suggestion that the viewer should share in the feeling--is off-putting to me.

 

I think you hit it right on the head about the nihilism. Not to mention classism, sexism, and racism that seem cartoonish. Thug Britannia.

I would be interested in your take of the 2019 film and how that compares to the series.

 

I will watch that film for sure. I'd love to find out it has more heart than the series (hope springs eternal)..

Was thinking about this "thug Brittania" thing (perfectly named, BTW), realized I've seen a number of films that feature lower class violent crime in GB, but do it in more effective, narratively intriguing ways than Richie's quip & shoot thing. 2 examples:

• LAYER CAKE (2004): Solid, effective pre-Bond work by Daniel Craig. The emphasis on character and motive makes the film far more interesting than the usual bloody Brit street crime caper
  
• HARRY BROWN (2009): The great Michael Caine in a role that on the surface looks like DEATH WISH, but underneath is darker & more serious. The violence he finally dishes out (after much provocation) is different in every way than that dished out by local gang members: he's doing something necessary that no one else can do (a moral imperative), while they're just delivering pain & enjoying it. Sean Harris, so good years later in a couple MISSION IMPOSSIBLE FILMS, is disturbingly feral & creepy here (a clear view of evil in action is another way this film backs up its own moral core)

 

How did I miss this great retort?

(Answer: I might have been high)

 

This was an enjoyable film, and Daniel Craig was really good in this. It may just be me, but I think he's better here than in any of the Bond films.

Speaking of which, it seems that even the Bond films have gotten more gritty like the Brit gangster flicks. It's not my cup of tea, having grown up watching the pre-Dalton Bonds who were charming and sophisticated. Maybe it's that "thug" trend. I wanted to be like Bond when I was a kid; these days, I don't want to be him with the brooding, getting hurt (psychologically and physically) and sucking in all negatives of the job. With the Mission Impossible and Bourne franchises, as well as the more recent Gray Man, I didn't feel compelled to watch a Bond film. I have yet watched the last one.

I'll have to watch this, well, because it's Michael Caine.

 

I just took one for the team. Last night I rented the film version of THE GENTLEMEN. I watched about 3/4 of it. That's all I can take. It's one of the more repellent films I've ever run into.

Everything I dislike about Guy Richie's films is here is mega-doses: tangled, opaque plotting that I quickly gave up trying to follow; a procession of exaggerated "characters" intended to be charming, amusing, menacing or ironic, but who basically mug for the camera; endless chatter also intended to be charming, amusing, menacing or ironic, but instead merging into nonsensical noise. The script is at least 1/4 leaden wordplay that doubtless amused Guy Richie but leaves me cold.

His self-indulgence and self-satisfaction unavoidably seep into the performances. I don't think I've ever seen a bunch of actors (some of them quite good in other things) chew the scenery this much. Each actor is a "type," a 2D cardboard cutout (ironic thug; ironic victim; ironic crime lord). The violence is occasional, flashy, also intended to be ironic, but simply boring. There's a scene prominently involving projectile vomiting ... of course intended to be ironic as well as menacing (it's neither).

Lead actor Matthew McCaughey deserves a special comment. I know he can act. His performances in TRUE DETECTIVE & DALLAS BUYERS CLUB were beyond good. But here he's just A-list window dressing, glib thug #1 who menaces by never smiling and narrowing his eyes A LOT. What is he doing in this mess? Brad Pitt might have enlivened this trashy role, but McCaughey just looks dyspectic and annoyed (like me, watching it).

There is a superficial connection between the film's plot and that of the streaming series--McCaughey operates weed farms on upper crust villas. Beyond that, the film is an inversion of the series: it focuses almost entirely on the bad boys, while the series focuses more on the upper crust types who host the weed farms.

The 8-episode series faced the writers with so much time & visual expanse to fill that some of the excesses of the film necessarily burn off. The series has less preening and smirking than the film, though still more than I like. The series is more humanely paced and sports character development of a sort, though the arc of the main character (the Duke) is little more than degeneration into a Guy Richie stereotype: a rogue, an armed, amoral bad boy.

The series is entertaining. The film most definitely is not.

 

Sorry I should have warned you

I agree with you, even though I don’t hate the Gentlemen film as much. I found that none of the characters are likable. This movie was a far cry from Locks, Stocks and Two Smoking Barrels.

I might give the series a try…but I think I’m getting PTSD from the movie at the moment haha

 

In the spirit of taking hits for the team: season 2 of The Tourist is now available on Prime (Elliot & Helen go to Ireland after clues to unlock his past). 2 episodes in, my recommendation is: don't.

Seems like they attempted to make it much more of a comedy than season 1, but the writing really isn't funny and seems to rely on hoping that viewers will find Irish people and their accents laughable in and of themselves. We'll watch at least one more, maybe will try to struggle through all 6 if we can stomach it, and I'll report back if it improves to the extent that it might be more fun than washing your hair. (Note that I have the same haircut as my avatar.)

 

Interesting to read this. I got 20" into Episode-1 of Season-2 and stalled out. That whole Keystone Cops thing with his kidnappers just turns me off.

I liked Season-1 a lot, but 2 is hard going.

 

There were some pretty big plot points that didn't make much sense to me. I'm not sure if that's the show's fault or mine. I thought the series was beautifully shot though. They didn't skimp on the production value and half way through the series I was paying as much attention to the visuals/cinematography as anything else.

Also, agreed regarding the cast.

 

Recently I watched Nicholas Wilding Refn's big Hollywood film, DRIVE (2011). It earned Refn and his star, Ryan Gosling, a great deal of attention and was nominated for many awards. At the time it may have seemed that the Danish director, previously best known for his PUSHER trilogy, would take Hollywood by storm. But the opposite happened. Refn retreated into an increasingly idiosyncratic personal style having little to do with traditional film-making.

Compared to Refn's later work DRIVE is relatively conventional. At first it presents as a color noir complete with sunny L.A. location shots. With the exception of Gosling, other top-line actors have actual characters to play and pithy lines to say (things that disappear in his later work). There's even a doomed love sub-plot, as there often is in noir.

The best scene in DRIVE is the opening when Gosling's character serves as getaway driver. After the thieves return to his vehicle, the resulting car chase is masterfully directed and seems to presage a classic LA crime story. But DRIVE is an unconventional, subversive narrative. The main character is inscrutable and has very few lines. We never learn where he came from or what past events made him capable of the extreme violence he commits here. At times his rage appears infinite, completely at odds with the sweetness he exhibits around his neighbor (played by a radiant Carey Mulligan) and her young son.

At first it feels like we've seen this love story before (SHANE, HOLIDAY AFFAIR, others). But we really haven't. The violence Gosling's character unleashes to protect the woman and her child verges on nihilistic, and these characters seem idealized in a Madonna and child way.

DRIVE downshifts into strange territory in the end, edging closer to dissociated misfit tales like Lee Marvin's POINT BLANK or Clint Eastwood's "man with no name." As the film ends, it's unclear if the main character will survive, or if he does, what he could possibly do next.

I've become a fan of Refn's later works, including the stranger examples. I couldn't handle the relentless brutality of the PUSHER films, but was completely won over by his bizarre, 6-part streaming masterpiece (my word), COPENHAGEN COWBOY. Also rewatched his 2nd Ryan Gosling vehicle, ONLY GOD FORGIVES. Here the relative coherence of DRIVE is gone; the narrative is a dreamlike succession of largely static nighttime friezes lit in saturated neon colors. Even daylight scenes feel unreal, nightmarish. Refn's later work gets under my skin, reminding me of Ingmar Bergman's '50s & '60s films, which often used dreams and the subconscious as plot elements.

 

Oho - this looks like a must-see:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/culture/350...w-about-sasquatch-sunset-absurd-bigfoot-movie

 

Saw this trailer in theaters. All it lacked were giant neon letters,

MOCUMENTARY!

Looked to me like Netflix' immortal TRAILER PARK BOYS, but with way more body hair.