Movies you've seen recently (Part 1)

Cafe Society
161

NightCrawler. Jake Gyllenhaal as a newbie, independent, gore-hunting, video stringer for TV news. 95% at RT.

Wow. This is a movie. I’ve seen all but two of the Oscar noms and this one beats them. Gyllenhaal really gets into playing a super creepy guy. One of the many weird traits is this habit of saying something like “What I want to say to you is …” followed by a threat of something. As if the preface is intended to soften it when it has the opposite effect. A lot of depth-of-character embedded in the script.

I love Renee Russo in this. (She’s also the wife of the director/writer/co-producer. Gilroy won the Screenplay plus Best First Feature awards at the Spirit awards. Nice to see an older guy being considered a “newcomer”.) She plays a seriously messed up person as well.

Hence it’s up to Kevin Rahm, of all people, to play the voice of reason. Don Draper would be confused.

All these years and I still root for [del]Chet[/del] Bill Paxton to get bashed.

A really good movie, but not exactly candy and puffy clouds.

162

Watching “Raze” on cable right now. It’s about some rich people who kidnap 50 women and force them to fight to the death with their bare hands (or their loved ones get murdered). It’s torture porn. I think they try to slide around the torture porn label by having it be the victims who do violence to one another. But it’s 90 minutes of women being beaten senseless, bloody and painful and freaking evil. It’s not at all the stylized violence of kung-fu movies, the blood and pain are the main thing. Do not watch unless you enjoy that sort of thing (i.e., if you liked “Hostel”). I didn’t watch all of it, just enough to know there wasn’t going to be any kind of hook or trick to justify all the gloried-in beating up of women.

163

I recently saw “The Overnighters”, which many people believe should have been nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary. On the surface, it’s about a Williston, ND pastor who opens up his church to house new arrivals to the oilpatch, but there’s a LOT more to that story.

This includes a 20-megaton bomb that he drops just minutes from the end, and that warrants a separate movie in itself. We were discussing the movie on another website, and we all said, “How could we have missed it all along?” but there were so many other things going on, it’s easy to overlook.

164

Spoil-bracket the 20-megaton bomb for us, please.

165

I’d rather. not. You can, however, find it easily with Google.

Just Google “Jay Reinke” and you’ll get quite an eyeful.

166

Watched Listen Up Philip. Jason Schwartzman, Elisabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce and Krysten Ritter.

Basically: seriously mean, rotten, mega-misanthropic authors and the completely messed up women in their lives.

It is was hella downer movie. Nobody comes off well. (E.g., why would the women spend anytime around these jerks at all???) Not at all pleasant to watch.

In addition, the production values are nearly non-existent. Lots of unwanted shaky cams. Weird lighting issues. Those black blurs on the edge of the screen keep appearing. At times, there’d be a small zoom in for a few seconds and then back out like somebody bumped something. Very, very amateurish. The audio also had problems with some dialogue to faint too hear well.

I watched because of the actors involved. I like noting family connections. While Jason Schwartzman is the son of Talia Shire and hence part of the Coppola clan, there’s another interesting family connection going on. In a small role is Dree Hemingway. Daughter of Mariel, great-granddaughter of Ernest. For her to appear in a movie about messed up authors is fun.

This movie is 84% at RT. This is a huge mistake. It is a crappy movie start to finish.

167

Recently seen:

Calvary
A dark comedy about an Irish Catholic village priest beset by the sins, doubts and hostility of those around him, and struggling with how to respond to a death threat by a man who was sexually abused in his youth by another priest. Very powerful film, with beautiful views of the Irish coast. I’m surprised Brendan Gleeson, who’s excellent as the priest, didn’t get an Oscar nomination out of the role.

The Package
Rewatched this pretty good Cold War political-assassination thriller with BMalion. Gene Hackman is a grizzled Army sergeant escorting a military prisoner, played by a very young-looking Tommy Lee Jones, back to the U.S. from a base in West Germany. He comes to realize after Jones’s escape, and with the news that the Soviet leader (unnamed, but he looks an awful lot like Gorbachev) is visiting Chicago, that there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye.

Rope
I was really underwhelmed by this 1948 Hitchcock film. Technically interesting, in that it was filmed in just a few long takes, but the acting is really stilted (not Jimmy Stewart’s finest moment) and the plot just never grabbed me.

Predestination
I really enjoyed this time travel paradox movie, starring Ethan Hawke and based on a clever Robert Heinlein short story, “–All You Zombies–,” with an added terrorism subplot that (mostly) works. Good stuff.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Chris Pine is adequate in the title role, with Keira Knightley as his sweetheart; Kenneth Branagh directed the film and also plays their polite but deadly Russian-mobster adversary. Kevin Costner seems almost sedated as Pine’s CIA handler. An OK but not great spy movie.

168

Ummm~ “How to Train Your Dragon 2”
The first one spoiled me with the music and animation

169

Out of shear boredom, I gave “21 Jump Street” a try, as people seem to think it’s hilarious. No, it’s not. I detest Jonah Hill, and I detest Rob Riggle, and I detest Chris Parnell. The movie is only mildly amusing in some few parts and otherwise a complete waste of time. The only reason I continued to watch after the opening scenes was because for some reason I did find the “Aroma of Christ Church” to be laugh out loud funny, and hoped it offered some hope for equally funny moments later on.

170

I’m pretty sure the second one was terrible. At least compared to the first.

Why are sequels generally so bad compared to the original? It’s not hard to understand.

So many people in this business work so hard and usually just get crapped on. So when they find themselves in a hit, (this next part is just my guess), they will do anything to get a bunch more money so they can finish paying off their mortgage or whatever else they need that money for.

But like I say, that is just my guess.

So, these people, when given the opportunity to make a second movie and get a whole bunch of money for doing it, they will just be too happy to snap it up. I know I would.

Here is how I would feel about it:

I have worked for 20 years in this business and finally had a hit last year where I made $100K. I bought a nice home for my self and my wife and now these people are offering me $200K to make a second movie.

If I could get $200K, then I could pay of my mortgage and I would own my home outright. I could also have some great financial security and my wife and kids would never have to worry again about money.

So … Damn Straight! Give me the money. Who cares about the quality of the movie?

I just want the money. Money! Money! Money! Money! Money!

Oh Yeah! It’s Money. It’s my home free and clear. It’s security for my wife.

Anyway. That is just my guess. That is how I would feel about it. I really can’t tell how they would feel about it.

At this point, I’m guesssing the best thing to do would be to ask you. How would you feel about it?

171

I saw the second one and I thought it was terrible. At least compared to the first.

Why are sequels generally so bad compared to the original? It’s not hard to understand. Although I’m just guessing. Let me tell you my guess?

So many people in this business work so hard and usually just get crapped on. So when they find themselves in a hit, (this next part is just my guess), they will do anything to get a bunch more money so they can finish paying off their mortgage or whatever else they need that money for.

But like I say, that is just my guess.

So, these people, when given the opportunity to make a second movie and get a whole bunch of money for doing it, they will just be too happy to snap it up. I know I would.

Here is how I would feel about it:

I have worked for 20 years in this business and finally had a hit last year where I made $400K. I bought a nice home for myself and my wife (albeit in a kind of crappy neighborhood) and now these people are offering me $800K to make a second movie.

If I could get $800K, then I could pay of my mortgage and I would own my home outright. I could also have some great financial security and my wife and kids would never have to worry again about money.

So … Damn Straight! Give me the money. Who cares about the quality of the movie?

I just want the money. Money! Money! Money! Money! Money!

Oh Yeah! It’s Money. It’s my home free and clear. It’s security for my wife.

Anyway. That is just my guess. That is how I would feel about it. I really can’t tell how they would feel about it.

At this point, I’m guesssing the best thing to do would be to ask you. How would you feel about it?

172

Or it could just be you, since Dragon 2 was nominated for an Academy Award and a slew of other awards. It won the Golden Globe, the Annie, the Producers Guild, the BAFTA, the NBR and a bunch of Critics awards.

173

Oh my gosh! Now you’ve gone and done it.

I feel reprimanded once again for screwing up the lesson associated with the old motto,

"Whenever you make an assumption, you always wind up making an Ass out of you and me!’

It’s so true and I just cannot understand how or why I keep losing it. I always screw it up and even though I know better, I stil bulldoze ahead and make that doggone assumption and then I have to eat crow or maybe that is “I have to eat shit”?

Oh dear. I can just be such a dork! How can I ever learn this lesson once and for all and not fuck it up over and over again?

174

I’m in the minority also. I loved How To Train Your Dragon. Saw it in the theatre twice, own the blu-ray, and then bought the 3-D blu-ray.
Saw How To Train Your Dragon 2 in the theatre once and never really bothered to see it again. Seemed like they went to the grab bag of “generic plots for sequels” and threw something together.

175

I’m in the middle of Big Ass Spider (2013)

I’m very disappointed to see that it was rated 5.3 on IMDB.

This movie is very clearly higher than 7.0. It is a great film and a lot of fun. Really!

A whole lot of fun. A very smart movie. I like it a lot.

I suppose that other people could very well argue that it’s not as good as it could be or should be.

But … WTF? You got a huge MF spider that can climb up city sky scrapers and bite the shit out of most anyone and anything. What more could you want?

But, you get a whole lot more than that. So, FFS! Get real with the ratings. Stupid Dumbasses!

176

OK. I am now down to the last 15 minutes of “Big Ass Spider” (2013) and I just can’t believe how truly excellent this movie is.

“Big Ass Spider” (2013)

I’m comparing it to “It Came From Beneath The Sea” (1955)

Check out the discussion of older horror movies from the 1950s in this thread:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=712136&page=2

It’s really quite amazing to me how horror movies have changed from 1955 to 2015. That is 60 years. Oh my gosh!

As a kid of 6 or 7, I was really terrified of that octopus creature in “It Came From Beneath The Sea” (1955).

But as a kid today, I’m sure I’d be equally terrified of this Big Ass Spider. But I’d like to ask just what you all would think.

Do you think you would be just as terrified of the big ass spider in 2015 as you would of the creature that came from beneath the sea in 1955?

There is a huge gap between these two movies. OMG! 60 years!

But check these posts in the thread about Big Ass Spider: #196, #198, #202,

You will get a real perspective on the way that kids would scream in horror back in 1955 at horror movies.

177

Sorry. It wasn’t clear what thread I was suggesting you check out the discussion of older horror movies from the 1950s. It was this one:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=712136&page=2

I suggested you look at the three posts: #196, #198 and #202. They all discuss that old movie and just how terrifying it was to kids.

178

“Black Comedy”

About that term. To me, to be a black comedy, it has to be, well, you know, funny. But I’m on an anti-roll of alleged black comedies that aren’t funny at all.

Don’t get me wrong. I like black comedies. Some of my best friends are black comedies (Fargo: movie and series). But that’s because they contain actual humor.

We got burned a while back with Cheap Thrills. Nasty, brutal, ugly film. Not at all funny.

So when I saw The Voices was coming out on video, described as a black comedy, I was wary. Good cast. Ryan Reynolds (okay, may not so good), Anna Kendrick, Gemma Arterton, and Jacki Weaver plus a dog and a cat.

Reynolds is a seriously messed up dude whose afflication is named on the box. Quite a bit of horror and gore.

I was careful. Read critics and audience reviews. Fairly clearly described by several as funny.

No. It. Is. Not.

Especially based on the closing credits, I think the people who made it thought it was supposed to be funny. But it fails at that miserably.

Note: If you want a pure splat-fest, psychologically nasty, downer of a movie. Then this is an okay movie in that department. But don’t think of it as quirky or funny or anything.

Some interesting insights into the troubled minds of someone like Reynold’s character.

I’m getting concerned about Kendrick. She hasn’t made a really good movie that I’ve seen since the days of Up In The Air and 50/50. She’s also doing a dreaded sequel to that awful Pitch Perfect, etc. Shame if she doesn’t get back into making better films.

Jacki Weaver, bless her heart, isn’t up to par with her acting in this film. She doesn’t seem to be doing well since her return to films several years back. Cf. Silver Linings Playbook.

Gemma Arterton, with her accent, mien, etc., just doesn’t fit in.

Ryan Reynolds: Did Green Lantern kill his career or was it already dead?

179

Just watched “That Girl That Was In That Thing.” It’s billed as a documentary about actresses and what they have to go through to succeed. I was hoping from the cable guide precis that it would examine all kinds of actresses including actresses who have been totally unsuccessful economically.

Instead I got a bitchfest by a group of moderately to very successful network TV actresses bitching about how hard their lives were. It was all very predictable and well known stuff about low pay, limited opportunities and demeaning roles among those roles that are available (though most of THESE actresses were recognizable and had had some fairly good long-running roles in various series). I’m not saying the problems the actresses cited do not exist, just that it’s all VERY familiar ground and the insights into that ground is also VERY familiar.

I have no idea why anyone who is not related to or close friends with these actresses would want to watch the film. I have to wonder what the people who made it were thinking.

180

I am guessing you meant: That Gal… Who Was in That Thing, the sequel to That Guy… Who Was in That Thing.