Talk About Movies: Part 4
Somehow threads merged, so here's part 4 of our ongoing movie discussion.
You guys are right it's getting a little too political, but these days even a lot of what should be simple popcorn movies aren't immune from politicization. Fair enough though
Margin Call
The Big Short
I'm going to presume these would be well known with the 2+2 crowd but I liked them a lot. Centered around the 2008 housing crisis but very good casts and thoughtful movies. And where I figured out for sure that I had underappreciated how good Steve Carell actually was.
loved big short
margin call was absolute trash imo - felt like they were just trying to make a series of vignettes which would play well on tik tok
Took a rewatch of The Place Beyond The Pines (2012) by Cianfrance. It's hard to describe the plot in a single and simple line without conflating a part of the story, so I'd probably identify the themes and call it a film about fatherhood and legacy with suspenseful elements.
never understood why anyone liked place beyond the pines
just felt like they rebooted drive but with motorcycles and more melodrama
Re: color blindness. In my old poker group, one night before starting we were inspecting the two decks to be used. One guy asked why we were using two decks with the same color.
One was red, one green. Matt knew previously he was color-blind, but it was the first time it came up in the group.
Re: color blindness. In my old poker group, one night before starting we were inspecting the two decks to be used. One guy asked why we were using two decks with the same color.
One was red, one green. Matt knew previously he was color-blind, but it was the first time it came up in the group.
When I used to play at the Borgata, they at some point changed their cards so that one deck was brownish-purple and the other was purplish-brown.
Marvin Call is one of the best movies this century.
loved big short
margin call was absolute trash imo - felt like they were just trying to make a series of vignettes which would play well on tik tok
gotta hard disagree with this one I absolutely loved it and couldn't think of anything really I thought should have been removed or something it lacked it felt close to perfect to me.
and how can you not love tucci irons and bettany???
the charisma those 3 possess is off the charts.
**** bettany called up jennifer connelly and asked her to marry him and she said yes and they had never even gone on a date!
and she's one of the most beautiful women alive.
well, they did work together on A Beautiful Mind, so I assume they knew each other quite well at that point.
as they told the story they met on a beautiful mind but each was in a relationship so nothing happened and then they went their separate ways and had no further contact til he made the call out of the blue (he says it was right after 9/11 and it inspired him to make the call) but who knows the extent of their flirting etc on a beautiful mind guessing there was obv quite a bit of mutual attraction but no idea obv.
Furiosa - Very entertaining from start to finish. It was a little more Fury Road prequel than I was expecting. I feel like there was a good balance of keeping it within the Mad Max universe while also giving us her backstory. Fury Road is probably my favorite action movie of all time. Furiosa isn't on that level but it’s on the next tier. 8.5/10. Its a 9.5/10 on the perfect Sunday afternoon popcorn movie scale.
a friend invited me to see Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes yesterday. I have not seen any previous films from the series. they do give a brief introductory explanation in the opening which I was thankful for.
a pretty movie with a ton of pretty good CGI, but it was incredibly boring and slow and uninteresting. none of the characters were engaging. I was never emotionally stirred. it presented zero desire to see any previous or future installments.
Furiosa needed to be 35 minutes shorter. Like just about every ****ing movie being made right now.
Furiosa needed to be longer...I would see a ten hour Mad Max movie
Brats, Andrew McCarthy, 2004
Fascinating doc by Pretty In Pink actor on the 80s "Brat Pack" designation on those young actors and what it meant to them all and how it affected their careers.
It's fascinating because you have actors like McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, and Ally Sheedy - who never quite grew out of the label in their careers - and others like Demi Moore and Rob Lowe - who later became big stars - talking about the label. McCarthy, Estevez, and Sheedy all somewhat feel the label really hurt their careers, as it came with a lot of baggage and prevented them from getting interview or auditions with serious filmmakers.
However, both Moore and Lowe think of it as something interesting and good - they will always be linked to the zeitgeist of that time period, and, as Moore eloquently says, you can olny give power to the label if you let it.
McCarthy also interviews various writers, movie execs, directors, Malcom Gladwell, etc...and you can really see McCarthy working through the damage he feels the label did to him. The film is basically his therapy.
In the end, he also sits down with writer David Frum, who wrote the original Brat Pack article and coined the term. It's quite fascinating, because Frum is defensive and unapologetic, and you can sense McCarthy is looking for an apology that never comes.
This is an interesting movie...well-edited and directed...that goes much deeper than most movie docs.
Agree Don I watched it on the plane. Correction it’s not David Frum but some other guy with a similar name.
Most of them are sober I wish they’d ventured into that realm, and Judd Nelson / Molly ringwald would have been additive, but it was worth watching if you were a kid in the 80’s for sure.
recently watched guardians of the galaxy 3
usually don't like superhero films but always found the guardians films nice lighthearted fun
this was the best superhero film i've seen imo and really surprisingly emotional/sad - a huge departure from the earlier format but it works very well
I decided to watch The Straight Story again today. It means even more to me today than it did some twenty years ago. I guess the line in the film, the worst thing about getting older is remembering when you were young, strikes a chord with me that didn't then.
For those of you who haven't seen The Straight Story, it's about a 79 year old man, Alvin, who sets out on a riding mower to see his estranged brother, whom he hasn't seen in ten years. The journey on that riding mower is 200 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin. Along the way, Alvin meets a number of strangers: a pregnant girl who has run away, a man who takes him in when his lawnmower breaks down, two brothers who repair the lawnmower, and a fellow veteran in a bar.
Alvin connects with all of these strangers. His story about the importance of family to the pregnant girl lets her go home. The story he tells to the two brothers is the story of his own relationship with his brother.
Maybe in the hands of another director the film might be a maudlin one, but in the hands of David Lynch, along with the music of Angelo Badalamenti and Richard Farnsworth's acting, it's a beautiful film.
Yesterday was Father's Day and my kids came to see me, one of my brothers called, I saw two of my oldest friends in the morning, and the woman who drives me places dropped off dinner, and I drove to Boston with her to pick up her daughter at Logan Airport. I figured she could use the company for the almost two hour drive. Another friend will drive me to a neurologist appointment on Thursday.
Even though I'm stuck at home, unable to drive for a few more months, I'm not depressed about it. I've come to realize in my old age that old age isn't so bad, at least for me.
Alvin seeks to connect with his brother after an argument ten years ago and look at the stars like they did as boys. They do connect and look up at the stars.
I so many ways, The Straight Story is a film filled with sadness. In so many ways, it's life affirming. We live with both.
As E.M Foster writes, "Only Connect." We should make time for that.
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nice, John
La Chimaera - very good, mysterious Italian film about tomb raiders who ransacked Etruscan tombs. Josh O'Connor couldn't be more different from his Challengers role. In this he is an archaeologist who has a gift for finding tombs. He's stumbling through life, pissing off everyone around him, and is haunted by memories of his girlfriend. A mysterious, dreamy film tinged with magical realism.
