Just got back from watching Saturday Night. This is a new film about the first episode of Saturday Night Live and was directed by Jason Reitman, whose father Ivan Reitman directed Ghostbusters, Stripes, Meatballs and others. It’s set in the hours before the first episode premieres. I have to admit that I was distracted trying to identify actors and who they were portraying. And now that I’m home, I’ve got that first episode playing on the Peacock streaming service.
The ads make it look bad. Did you enjoy it?
Actually, yes, I did.
I get fooled by ads all the time!
Rotten Tomatoes has the critic score at 80% and the audience score at 89%.
Thanks for the reminder! Of the 22 films shown at the last Cannes festival (or at least, the 22 that were reviewed in the New Yorker) there were three that I wanted to see. This was one, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness was an other, and finally Cronenberg’s The Shrouds. The Substance won the Cannes award for best screenplay.
Looks like Shrouds won’t be out until January for home viewing, and it’s quite poorly rated anyway. The other two I’ll probably watch this weekend.
Killer Heat
Now streaming on Amazon Prime.
I’ve always found Joseph Gordon-Levitt to be a reliable actor who more often than not makes good choices in the projects in which he is involved. “Killer Heat” is touted as a “Thriller,” a modern-day film noir, but it makes a cardinal error. It’s utterly lacking in thrills. It’s just dull and plodding and predictable with uninteresting characters.
On the plus side: the scenery is nice, and you will only lose 97 minutes of your life watching it.
Hope he got a good paycheck for it.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Um, how do I politely put this. It was not remotely good. By "remotely’ I mean not even in the same universe I live in.
It started off so-so. Got worse. Got worse. Got unbelievably awful near the end. I mean, just jaw droppingly bad. A key scene dragged on and on and on and on and on and on and on without being remotely funny. They barely gave Keaton anything to work with.
Per the BB thread, I agree that there was way too much cast and subplot bloat. This is a script that needed some serious trimming and needed to focus on a few characters and their issues. And they basically substituted the real Lydia with someone with a quite different personality.
It was also hard to watch Wednesday Addams play a very similar role. That just didn’t work.
I just don’t get the the mostly positive reviews for this. It is truly a bad movie.
Give it 1 sandworm. And that’s just for Catherine O’Hara who at least was somewhat Delia-like.
And what’s with people not acknowledging the serious charges against Don Cornelius? This is not a person you add a CGI cameo to your film for fun. (Or induct into the R&R HoF.)
Saw it on Friday… thought the same thing. It was fine, but people made it sound like it was emotionally resonating and I guess if you’re a mom? But I’m not.
Just to add, my son was over for movie night tonight and we watched The Substance (which neither of us had seen before) and Poor Things, which I had seen before but he had not. Definitely a quality movie night – both weird movies, but both excellent.
Still have not got around to Kinds of Kindness. Maybe later tonight.
My daughter and a friend went to see it. They walked out in the middle. So that’s two teenagers that decided it wasn’t worth the time.
Terrifier 3
Recommended. I guess?
Watch Terrifier, the original. If you like that, continue onto the sequels, which are probably better in some ways, but still maintain what made the original gain such a wide audience. Terrifier 3 has been billed as the most violent of the bunch, but I honestly did not find that to be the case. I’d say it is about as violent and extreme as the first two.
I don’t love these movies, but I do have to admit, there are some great practical body/violent effects. Unlike a lot of slasher movies, this series still shows effort.
Terrifier 3 was released Unrated because it was clear that it would receive an NC-17 rating, which it definitely deserves. Amazingly, it won the box office its opening weekend. Other than non-fiction movies like concert films, etc., is this the first Unrated or NC-17 level movie to win the box office?
It worked, by the way. I teach 6th grade English and many of the kids got their parents to take them to it despite its extreme gore and the fact that it was an NC-17 movie released unrated.
Anyone else see this? I have no idea how much longer Terrifier can go. I know Terrifier 4 is already being scripted, but it is going to get very tiresome soon.
I just saw Birdemic: Shock And Terror, and as good as that was, I wonder how much better it would have been with a script…and actors, and a director, and a budget that reached into the triple digits. I hear that there are three in this series so far with more to come, and I just can’t wait…
…for Hell to freeze over.
If you want JG-L in good film noir, watch Brick.
The Rifftrax version, right? Right…?
Unfortunately not.
Upthread I review another recent movie Greedy People with J G-L. His overacting hurt the movie even more than , the rest of it.
Not going to see Birdemic 2 and 3?
I haven’t seen this installment yet but what could really be different than the first two? This franchise is something I would generally ignore but I happened upon the first one(?) with the babysitter and I figured it was some cheesy movie from the 80s that I happened to miss. The blood and gore is sometimes predictable and sometimes a bit creative, but the really disturbing part is that damned clown. Clowns don’t bother me - not even Pennywise(comes close, though)- but this character is a standout. I’m not sure I can put my finger on it; he’s just freaky as hell.
Saturday Night. I suspect I (and others versed in SNL lore) enjoyed this more than most people will. I was too busy identifying all the different characters to dwell on how improbable it was that all of the events took place in just a couple hours. They shoehorned in a lot of foreshadowing of future sketches and a rather eye rolling scene of Gilda musing to Belushi about where they will be in 20 years (Spoiler: Dead). There is also an attempt to build tension around the possibility that the show won’t go on; but, of course, we all know it will. J. K. Simmons as Milton Berle is an award worthy performance.