Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Random Thoughts' started by purr1n, Jan 8, 2020.

  1. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    Everybody's a critic!
     
  2. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    I'm rewatching THE TWO JAKES, which I meant to do ever since I saw CHINATOWN for the 10th or 11th time several months ago. This film is just as pungent and haunted as I remember.

    The writing by Robert Towne is incredible, no more or less so than it was in CHINATOWN, but different: time-worn, overshadowed by modernity, somehow even more weary and cynical than before. At one point a voiceover by Jack Nicholson's Jake Gittes posits his place in the LA underbelly:

    "In this town I'm the leper with the most fingers."

    (f**k, that's amazing) More to say about this one later. There are moments of brilliance here, also eerie moments of cultural/temporal resonance.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2023
  3. Aklegal

    Aklegal Friend

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    I don't know if it has been mentioned yet but the first two episodes of Station 11 are fantastic. The entire first season is on HBOMax.
     
  4. caute

    caute Lana Del Gayer than you

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    I really liked the first few episodes but [SPOILER] once about the time David Cross's character showed up, I kinda lost interest...
     
  5. caute

    caute Lana Del Gayer than you

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    A Chinatown sequel?! What, what?!
     
  6. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    It's true, though as one WaPO review said, "THE TWO JAKES is more a reaction to CHINATOWN than a sequel."

    The backstory is interesting: apparently Nicholson tried to get this sequel off the ground starting in the early '80s, just 7 years after the initial 1974 run of CHINATOWN (a stone classic directed by Polanski). But Polanski couldn't direct the sequel because he couldn't set foot in the US without being arrested on rape charges, so Nicholson became the director. It took another 9 years to get this film in theaters, where it did just ~1/3 the box office of the earlier picture.

    Here it is on imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100828/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

    I finished watching this last night, and after the near-spectacular first 1/3 of the film, the rest turned into a slow seep of tension, viewer interest and believability. In the first 1/3 I was aware of Nicholson being a tyro director (some bizarro film school student camera angles gave it away), but was so swept away by the writing and acting that I thought this would be the rare sequel (of a great film) that comes close to the original. But that didn't quite happen.

    It's still well worth seeing. At moments the writing is amazing, as good as Raymond Chandler (working in the same locale & milieu), and the acting is often quite good. But the plot creaks quite a bit as time goes by. IMO the biggest problem was in the writing of Harvey Kietel's Jake Berman character: he kills a man in cold blood, apparently with considerable premeditation; has the lethal Reuben Blades and another thug on his payroll; and overtly threatens Nicholson's Jake Gittes character with death at least twice--yet Berman magically fails to harm Gittes (despite have mulitple opportunities to do so) and ends up literally crying on his shoulder. Not Kietel's fault--it's the writing.

    There's also an insane scene with Nicholson beating a cop, pointing a gun in his face, and making the guy pee his pants, yet afterwards he's not beaten to a pulp by all the other cops and soon walks out, free on bail. Sorry: in the real 1948 that scene would've played out very differently...

    But on a meta level, the nagging plot details don't matter so much. This was the real prime of both lead actors, and the always interesting Meg Tilly would soon fade from view and stop acting altogether. Interesting how a film about the ravages of time on the main characters, simultaneously documents the ravages of time on the principal actors.
     
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2023
  7. Aklegal

    Aklegal Friend

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    LOL. Well [ spoiler ] he doesn't last long. You might enjoy how his character exits the series.
     
  8. luckybaer

    luckybaer Friend

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    I binged and watched this over the course of 3 or 4 days (is that a binge for what... 8 episodes? lol...). I haven't read any of Little's books, so I came in with no preconceptions. I thought the show was pretty good - dark (naturally), surreal, yet rooted in so many contemporary truths. Even things I thought could be hyperbole - after careful thought and discussion - really aren't hyperbole (like the portrayal of influencers and our gaming culture).

    I give it a 7/10, which is pretty stout for me. Be interested in reading what other viewers here think.
     
  9. Old Groucho

    Old Groucho Acquaintance

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    Finished watching the South Korean series, Stranger. A great series, one of the best I’ve seen. I feel kind of sad because they only made two seasons. It’s strange because, after a total of 32 episodes lasting over 64 hours, I now feel I’m going to miss many of the main characters. They sort of became part of my daily life for a while. That’s just how good the writing and acting was in this series. To be able to make someone miss them is quite an achievement. Highly recommended. Thanks again Pharmaboy.
     
  10. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    That's exactly how I felt. These are very compelling characters brought to life by highly skilled actors. I went from "suspend disbelief" to complete immersion over the course of this series.
     
  11. Philimon

    Philimon Friend

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    [​IMG]
    The Lost Daughter
    3.25/4
    IMDB and trailer

    The movie is about a lady dealing with her past. Most of the story is internalized and completely from the point of view of the main character. I believe this type of film is called a character study.

    The major enjoyable part of the movie is watching Olivia Colman work. The movie would've been only 3/4 with a less exciting actor since they have to carry so much weight in this film.

    The trailer appears somewhat sinister like this character is hiding a dark secret which is what pulled me into watching the movie (combined with Colman). It's mostly inner turmoil, not much happens. It's partly about some of the difficulty and responsibility of parenting and the story of course works much better if you can relate which I do.
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2023
  12. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Black Panther Wakanda Forever:
    Warning: politically incorrect for shits and giggles - taking the view of a dumb american + run on sentences
    Ton o' spoilers
    I watched this on the plane

    Something about advanced society of mexicans (the native variety) and blacks going at each other's throats because the native mexican leader was scarred from colonialism (spanish conquistadors killing everyone in front of his eyes when he was a kid 400 years ago). Also the queen of the blacks distrusts the USA and of course France, because the french absolutely need to be singled out as motherfuckers when it came to colonization. Basically USA and France, and presumably NATO, being greedy white motherfuckers, want the unobtainium from Wakanda, but not being able to get it, they send special forces and SEAL types with a unobtainium detector to find it on the ocean floor near the south of mexico.

    The native mexican leader / aquaman happens to be a mutant with superpowahs. He kills the colonizers he finds on the seabed. He believes this shit is 100% the fault of the advanced black people because black panther went public about Wakanda and all in the last movie. Native mexican aquaman then tells the black queen he wants the inventor of the detector found and dead. However, it so happens that unobtainium detector was made by african american girl at harvard, so the black people debate and conclude that delivering her to mexican aquaman would be dishonorable.

    In the meantime for some random reason, a white CIA guy, who is friends with the advanced black people, gets involved to help (he tells the black people who the inventor of the unobtainium detector is). Even though he is the one white guy that is cool with them, turning against the CIA, the black people insist on calling him colonizer. (I find this strange because the black people I know in real life aren't this crass. In fact, a classmate of my son even gave my son the N-pass because they were cool with each other - FWIW, we know the existence of the N-pass is debatable, so my son never uses the N-pass.)

    Next, Chadwick Boseman's sister gets kidnapped by the mexican aquaman, who tries to convince Chad's sister that all surface dwellers should be killed and that they should combine forces to do this. However, Chad's secret wife, who lives in Haiti, is recruited to rescue them from the native mexicans' deep water base. This pisses off mexican aquaman who initiates a warning attack on Wakanda, killing the queen, and telling the blacks they need to side with the water mexicans or else! (oh, I forgot to mention, the native water mexicans look like blue aliens)

    Chad's sister is finally able to recreate the herb that gives people black panther powahs. She then uses it on herself, but not before a vision quest where warmonger from the first movie tells her that she needs revenge for the death of her mom, the queen, at mexican aquaman's hands. Warmonger is totally different (very violent and full of rage) from other more reasonable Wakondans because his dad moved him to Oakland California when he was young.

    The advanced black people then set up a trap for the water mexicans. There is a big battle, and the harvard girl also joins in the battle with ironman suit that she made herself from spare parts with presumably some unobtainium tech. In the end, the black panther girl roasts mexican aquaman with fire, but a last minute vision from the queen convinces the black panther girl to show mercy and offer a mutual protection alliance. In the end, the native mexicans and blacks make up because they know they cannot trust the surface world (euphemism for white people).

    In the end credits scene, we find out that Chad's secret wife had a son, also named T'challa. Obviously black panther must ultimately be a boy and not be a girl.

    0/5 stars
    I lost IQ points
    This is not cinema
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2023
  13. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    I finally got a chance to see Triangle Of Sadness and I was disappointed.

    It's a film that is too on the nose to be of any value, lacking any kind of subtlety or nuance, espousing obvious and tired cliches about the excesses of the rich and the transference of power dynamics. You have characters literally saying out loud the themes of the movie (a big no no in screenwriting), so of course the pretentious art snobs at the Cannes Film Festival awarded the movie its top prize.

    Wonderfully shot, and mostly well acted, but it's about 30 minutes too long, and absolutely disgusting in the middle during an absurd dinner/sea sick orgy of madness. And the ending is a big WTF?
     
  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    This sounds horrible, along the lines to a cliche Scandinavian art film that has a character sick of modernity taking off his clothes, running in circles around his couch, while his house is burning down.

    Maybe you took Triangle Of Sadness too seriously and should have viewed it as comedy while drunk? Do you advise?
     
  15. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Unfortunately, I did take it seriously, mostly because it won the Palm D'or at Cannes and those movies are typically grim, sour-faced affairs.

    I had a couple glasses of wine but probably wasn't enough.
     
  16. rott

    rott Secretly hates other millenials - Friend

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    I haven't yet watched Tom Hanks in "A Man Called Otto", but on Prime (streaming at least in USA) I really liked the Swedish source movie "A Man Called Ove". I thought it was very well done.
     
  17. rott

    rott Secretly hates other millenials - Friend

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    That may have been sarcastic, but I wasn't entertained by the movie.

    Might have been more interesting as a character-building, single-season show.

    I lost faith in MCU movies some time ago.
     
  18. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Wakanda Forever sucked donkey nuts just like every Marvel movie sans the first Iron Man. The MCU is built on a foundation of sand, and the tide has come in. AntMan 3 bombed, and no MCU movie has cracked a billion since Endgame (except Spiderman, but that was Sony, not Disney). You can only make formulaic garbage for so long before audiences get tired of it. People are hungry for good ol' fashioned storytelling that respects its characters since there is such a lack of it now, which is why Top Gun Maverick and Avatar 2 have pretty much destroyed everything else at the box office.
     
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  19. Pharmaboy

    Pharmaboy Friend

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    It's on Prime and I can see it without inconvenience. But I've been circling this title for days due to two of my (many) longstanding dislikes:
    • Films that concern redemption (social/societal, not religious); and
    • Films about lessons taught to/learned by a curmudgeon.(unless he's played by Bill Nighy)
    Just can't waste my waning brainpower on either of those.

    BTW, I'm well aware that these sentiments would have kept me from seeing certain films of great depth and nuance earlier in my life (ie, WILD STRAWBERRIES; and maybe UMBERTO D). All I can say is, that was then, and this is now.
     
  20. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    Rant incoming...

    I f'ing hate Netflix and Prime and Hulu and how they've hijacked the movie business. I heard about the remake of All Quiet On The Western Front, which I missed in theaters... I wanted to watch it so looked it up on letterboxd.com, which is an amazing resource for movie lovers, as it has a list of all the places you can buy or stream or rent the film you look up. Well All Quiet is a Netflix film, so if I want to watch it, I have to subscribe to that garbage can of a streaming service, which I refuse to do (had it for a while, cancelled it).

    On the flip side, if I want to watch say, The Batman, I could subscribe to HBO Max and watch it, but I don't have to... I can still rent it on various VOD services (Vudu, Redbox, Google, Apple, etc) for a few bucks for a night of entertainment and be done with it like we used to do in the old days. The rental model is still the best way to experience stuff not in theaters if you're not a collector IMO. What Netflix and others have done is not only inconvenienced the consumer by excluding them from their catalog unless they commit to a subscription, they've completely removed a potential source of revenue for themselves.... because all Netflix gets is the monthly fee from their subscribers, missing out on the money they could be getting from people not interested in subscribing, but still wanting to experience a film made by people trying to reach everybody, not just Netflix subscribers. And who knows, maybe the person will be so impressed by the film, they decide to subscribe.... and Netflix has captured yet another revenue source (on top of the rental fee). I still have not see the Knives Out sequel, and I want to, but won't sub to Netflix in order to do so. Their loss.

    It's a really irritating turn of events in the movie world.

    I understand the strategy behind it, forcing people to subscribe to experience their content, but they could still license some of the bigger more anticipated films out to rental services, while keeping many of their smaller originals on the platform. As it stands, greed may actually be robbing them of a bigger payday.
     
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