Talk About Movies: Part 4
Somehow threads merged, so here's part 4 of our ongoing movie discussion.
The Instigators Apple TV+
Matt Damon? Casey Affleck? Doug Liman? Gronk?
Wait isn’t that Ving Rhames? Why isn’t he in the credits?
With this group why is this direct to tv?
Because it blows
Wolfs Apple TV+
This time it’s Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
Another one that makes me hope that one day the Freakonomics guys will look back and trace the impact of the most recent Hollywood writers’ strike. If your last two minutes is the main characters explaining it to the audience, and your movie isn’t titled The Usual Suspects, somewhere along the line something has gone horribly wrong.
This is why we love Harmony...
And if you have any interest in Art...
A documentary on the history of the Artist Provocateur that is Harmony Korine is absolutely mandatory.
40 minutes well spent.
my good friend grew up with him, says he's every bit that way all the time
Thanks for the warning, John. I will close my eyes if anything resembling the crap that is a Harmony Korrine movie appears on my screen
It only appears for a few seconds on her laptop. If you blink, you'll miss it.
I thought julien donkey-boy "interesting."
Hated Gummo. Trash Humpers was unwatchable; I lasted five minutes.
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He's not a very good artist; just offbeat.
The Outrun - I'm not usually a fan of films that meander through characters' lives with little in the way of plot. I haven't been able to make it through a Chloe Zhao film. So it's a testament to how intensely watchable Saoirse Ronan is that I really enjoyed The Outrun.
Ronan plays Rona, who has returned to her home of the Orkney Islands after her life in London was destroyed by her alcoholism. It's a peculiar decision, because if I was stuck on a cold, blustery archipelago that's 95% farmland, I'd have to turn to alcohol to cope.
Rona's journey of recovery is skilfully juxtaposed with flashbacks to her drinking days, which helps develop her character and keep things interesting. There are though a few too many scenes of Rona trudging around the islands and staring. But at the end of the day, Ronan's performance elevates the film. She is transfixedly compelling. Surely she'll be regarded as one of the best actors of her generation.
And if you have any interest in Art...
A documentary on the history of the Artist Provocateur that is Harmony Korine is absolutely mandatory.
40 minutes well spent.
That was really interesting. I didn't know about Fight Harm. So crazy that David Blaine was involved, but it kind of makes sense. From Wikipedia:
Fight Harm is an abandoned project by Harmony Korine filmed in 1999. The premise was to verbally provoke passers-by into a fight. The rules were Korine couldn't throw the first punch and the person confronted had to be bigger than Korine. To Korine, Fight Harm was high-comedy reminiscent of Buster Keaton. "I wanted to push humour to extreme limits to demonstrate that there's a tragic component in everything." Filmed in New York, the project was abandoned following the injuries and arrests Korine faced while shooting.
Filming began sometime in 1999 in Manhattan, New York, with a camera crew headed by David Blaine. The production was halted at one time while Korine served at least one prison sentence for offences related to the film. Before each fight, Korine would get drunk. Nine were filmed in total which only surmounted to seventeen minutes worth of footage. The project ultimately took a massive toll on Korine and the people involved. In one interview he recounted the reaction a bouncer had after finding out the fight was for a film:
[He] got so sad when he found out... He was like, "Oh my God, if I knew this, I never would have touched the guy!" And so he signs the release form. And the girl beside him is totally in tears, the stripper. She's like, "Don't sign it! He's not a director – he needs to be locked up in a mental institute!"
Production for Fight Harm was shelved around September of 1999 as a result of extensive injuries sustained and Korine's own underestimation of the length of fights.
I stand by my opinion that he's not a good artist. He's unconventional, and yeah, he's willing to take risks, but his output is pretty bad. This quote emphasizes what's wrong with his approach to filmmaking. Kids is a great because it's not this.
"How can an artist be expected not to be self-indulgent? That's the whole thing that's wrong with filmmaking today [...] To me, art is one man's voice, one idea, one point-of-view, coming from one person."
To me, art is one man's voice, one idea, one point-of-view, coming from one person."
Artists wanting creative control over their work is one thing. But one man's voice? So narrow. It's like an author using dialogue as a mouthpiece for his own views rather than letting the characters do their thing and have the story speak for itself.
Ben Foster is elite in Hell or High Water. If only Taylor Sheridan confined himself to movies.
yup absolutely fantastic....the scene at the gas station when the punks are talking **** to him just such an absolute amazing and enjoyable scene remember the first time we watched that movie I had to rewatch that scene like 5x.
and ya lol it's absolutely incredible just how great his movies are and just how horrendous his TV shows are.
Wolfs Apple TV+
This time it’s Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
Another one that makes me hope that one day the Freakonomics guys will look back and trace the impact of the most recent Hollywood writers’ strike. If your last two minutes is the main characters explaining it to the audience, and your movie isn’t titled The Usual Suspects, somewhere along the line something has gone horribly wrong.
speaking of horrendous man what a massive disappointment wolfs was.
was pretty excited for this one love both clooney and pitt obv and while pitt is just as charming as ever (and good lord he is an adonis age has no effect on his looks whatsoever) good lord that movie was so terrible we barely made it thru 40min and that was solely out of respect for the cast.
it was just next level stupid with pretty much no redeeming value whatsoever other than spending a little time with pitt (even clooney who's normally fantastic was off here like he was doing a caricature of a clooney performance and failing) even the banter between them was cringe worthy and could not possibly have cared less what happened to anyone or what the "mystery was" didn't even bother to read the wiki article to see how it ended.
what a colossal piece of ****.
Wolfs Apple TV+
This time it’s Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
Another one that makes me hope that one day the Freakonomics guys will look back and trace the impact of the most recent Hollywood writers’ strike. If your last two minutes is the main characters explaining it to the audience, and your movie isn’t titled The Usual Suspects, somewhere along the line something has gone horribly wrong.
Yeah… this was really, really bad. Pitt and Clooney? How do **** that up?? Them 2 doing anything together should be at the very least some sort of a fun watch. Nothing about this was fun.
It's the same stuff with all the streaming platform movies. Apple TV+, Netflix, Prime, whatever. An overwhelming amount of their films just flat out suck, and it's all just trying to sell via big name actors.
If your last two minutes is the main characters explaining it to the audience, and your movie isn’t titled The Usual Suspects, somewhere along the line something has gone horribly wrong.
Everyone has their own taste, and I can typically still see the appeal in things that I don't like but have to admit that the love that movie gets baffles me. Ebert's review of it was pretty funny.
The first time I saw “The Usual Suspects” was in January, at the Sundance Film Festival, and when I began to lose track of the plot, I thought it was maybe because I’d seen too many movies that day. Some of the other members of the audience liked it, and so when I went to see it again in July, I came armed with a notepad and a determination not to let crucial plot points slip by me. Once again, my comprehension began to slip, and finally I wrote down: “To the degree that I do understand, I don’t care.”
Funny I also don’t love that movie but recognize that is a minority opinion.
It's the same stuff with all the streaming platform movies. Apple TV+, Netflix, Prime, whatever. An overwhelming amount of their films just flat out suck, and it's all just trying to sell via big name actors.
Get Criterion. The movies don't suck, and you can catch up on any number of classic films and explore new ones.
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Trap is one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen. Nothing in the entire movie makes any sense whatsoever...I mean, not a single damn thing. It's quite amazing actually. Also, I hope Night realises how terrible his daughter is and doesn't start casting her in more of his movies, but I kinda doubt it.
I hate The Usual Suspects...it makes no sense.
Watched the 1978 version of The Big Sleep with Robert Mitchum that's set in England. Also includes smaller roles for Jimmy Stewart, Richard Boon, and Oliver Reed.
A wacky performance from Candy Clark as the youngest daughter is a standout.
Not bad, but stick with the original.
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but does it still make no sense? That's critical to the enjoyment of the original.
