Talk About Movies: Part 4

One Battle After Another - Will wonders never cease - a PTA film I actually like! Who knew he could do action so well? For once his stylisation didn't get in the way. The highest compliment I can give is that I didn't feel the 2hr50 runtime. The film motors along. The sequence where Benicio del Toro smoothly takes charge of protecting Leo and the immigrants was brilliantly constructed.

A couple of PTA flourishes that did cause the eyes to roll - the name 'Perfidia' was a little too on the nose. Sean Penn's performance as Lockjaw 🙄 was way too on the nose. He crosses the line from menacing to cartoonish.

As a Mission Impossible television fan, the movies pissed me off right from the very first movie having Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt instead of Jim Phelps.

Also, the person that ended up being the villain at the end of the first movie made me want to kick someone in the dick.

The Vanishing (1988) - My wife has been trying to show me this movie for years but we never got around to it. Since it's scary movie season, we're watching one horror movie every day so tonight she chose The Vanishing. At first I didn't think much. The movie takes place during the day, we're safe! What could go wrong? That's one of the great tricks of this movie. I think it takes a special talent to set a horror/thriller/mystery in daylight and make the viewer feel deeply unsettled. Once the confusion of the first act ends, the rest moves like a terrifying freight train. I was hooked by every word, every scene. When we get more of a glimpse into the villain and see the things he does following that first act, it made me wonder what kind of maniac thought of this? Who put this all together? WHY did he think this? But that's the world we live in where monsters like this do exist. One of the rare times it felt like we got to examine a bloody psycho.

started watching horror films during the last week of September. Here's what we've watched so far: Red State, Planet Terror, Death Proof, A Nightmare on Elm Street, From Dusk til Dawn, 28 Years Later, Scream, The Vanishing.

Feels like the consensus is that Death Proof is QT's lowest film on most/all lists. I still have a lot of fun with this one. You can tell Kurt Russell is having a blast with Stuntman Mike. He's so charming in the bar and his response to the second set of women he encounters is so funny. He's all giggling and telling them he had fun, it seems like he's gonna ride off into the sunset thinking he killed one them. BAM bro gets shot and now he becomes the prey. The bit where he's crying and cleaning his gunshot wound is so funny. It makes my heart happy the way my wife cheers as the women beat him to death. THE END, celebration and cheers in our house.

Scream is among my all time favorite horror films. I have a hard time ranking them as I have many favorites depending on my mood: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Alien/Aliens, The Shining, The Thing, The Lost Boys, The Descent, and so on. The opening sequence in Scream is top notch. It takes me back to when I watched it for the first time, thinking how WILD it was that they killed Drew Barrymoore in the opening of the movie. WHAT?? The most unsettling part for me is when Billy and Stuart cut each other up at the end in an attempt to frame Sydney's father. It still gets under my skin, Ulrich and Lillard play it so well.

saw smashing machine

fantastic acting

they really nailed certain things like how asians are very indirect and passive - but strategically so in business negotiations, also really nailed what it's like when two people without much chemistry but like the physical appearance and status they gain from their partner so they think they love each other is good

very odd film - kinda half documentary half film

not really much happened, didn't have much pacing or structure - you'd think it's about fighting and then learn its not, then you think it's about struggles with addiction but then its not, you then think it's about the relationship with his gf but nope they move on from that as well

there's also a lot of stuff that's unexplained, ie he would pay out of pocket for his opiates which i had to google afterwards

so you're kind of left knowing something weird is happening but not what it is, maybe he's dumb, maybe he just hates paperwork, who knows

pretty meh overall because it never takes you anywhere and it's kinda weird

like coleman famously said hurt kerr the most was he was terrified every time he fought and that's why he got into opiates to ease that fear in real life but the movie makes it very clear that kerr is fearless and even goes out of their way to include a line where he says you can tell who will lose before the fight even starts because of how scared they are

they also did coleman dirty - he was the better fighter with better accolades

also for weird reasons in the tourney they kept showing igor - kind of implying that there's going to be a rematch somewhere down the bracket and he's not even in the competition

poorly structured and doesn't make much sense but the acting carries it all the way and it's covering stuff that's inherently interesting enough to overlook that nothing actually happens

also, they made a big deal about kerr never losing

he lost a lot, he had almost as many losses as wins

he was undefeated at the time in a handful of mma fights but had lost plenty of big wrestling matches so again the "i can't possibly know what it would be like to lose" was such a weird thing to include in the film

Doing more oldies and loving the snazzy, cutey pie Jack Nicholson of the 60s. Great in China Town and Five Easy Pieces. I remember later on a brother said that only Nicholson could have pulled off The Shining character so well. I didn't really love that movie, didn't even like it. Gonna have to rewatch it now. See some more early Jack.

Good flick ... Five Easy Pieces. Oldie with Jack. He's a dude back then. In the final scene, he stops on the road at a gas station, and is out of the car milling about. A trucker hauling huge tree trunks all stacked up pulls up next to him. I had the funny thought, "What if all massive trunks fell on him and crushed him, and then the credits rolled." Laughed my ass off about that potential ending. But something even stranger than that happened, if a little more subtle.

Quite the hot take

saw friendship on my flight - obviously knew it was going to be weird based on the previews but i did think based on the cast that there'd be more comedy in it

or thought it'd be more like where rudd and his buddys decide to mess with guy but it's later shown that's clearly not the case as they were down to hang but his super weird behavior ruined it

i really, really liked the concept, but it was just too much, he was so bizarre and weird it failed to be relatable, they had touched so easily on socially awkward narcissist trying to be cool and then made it so bizarre by upping it to the absurd

great concept, really nailed a lot of male friendship social dynamics, but ultimately whiffed

Friendship should’ve been an easy 4.5 out of 5 stars but the scene early on with the soap kind of killed the entire thing for me. I’m a big fan of Tim and knew what I was getting in to but that scene just pissed me off lol

yes, if they just left out that kind of stuff that took it from reality to fantasyland then it would have worked so much better

ending was also terribad

I'm a Boyle apologist. I adore the hell out of Yesterday, the 4K disc just arrived at my place today. This was such a jarring experience because I know I'm in a minority here. I'm ok with that, I want to love everything I watch but this one felt like an insult. It felt like a knockoff of the franchise, written and directed by a couple of guys who had the previous movies described to them, then fed prompts into chat gpt on where the franchise could go if they retconned 28 Weeks Later.

Marshmallow - Fun campy flick about a kid who loses his grandpa in front of his very eyes, then his parents are like, "You're going to summer camp!" He's small, prone to get bullied and he meets up with other kids that are also bully victims. There's a heavy reliance on child actors and they do a fine job. There's one chubby kid who serves as comic relief and he's very funny. Camp counselors fall into genre tropes and it all feels familiar.

One of the counselors tells a story of a doctor who used to live in the woods and do experiments on his victims. OOoh scary! The movie takes familiar beats and make those beats their own. I was interested through the whole movie and was impressed by the final act. It gets exposition heavy at one point and that normally turns me off, but it works here in a weird way. It's worth a watch if you're interested by the trailer. (It's better than 28 Years Later)

I watched this a while back too. It starts out like a typical summer camp teen serial killer movie with some mystery until a surprising wild twist at the end . Worthwhile Halloween season movie. On Hoopla for free and on Amazon and Apple and Youtube and others for rent. Happy viewing.

Didn't like the Nicholson flick The Pledge. Seemed kind of hokey. I did like Robin Wright's character, dressed way down.

Not to rehash the whole absurdity but Stephen King suggested Bruce Dern & Jill Clayburgh for the leads. The kid isn’t good. Hard to explain why but he just isn’t, aside from in the maze. Least believable family ever.

Kubrick decided to make the hotel the star while keeping the running time tight and succeeded at that.

may be the greatest living filmmaker working today

Speaking of King, the Carrie remake was actually as ‘good’ as was possible, but again WHHYYYY.

Hadn’t seen the OG Pet Sematary in decades. Dated, and the lead actor isn’t great, but the horror is great. Truly disturbing. Did The Ramones get nominated for Best Song? Of course not.

I was in a group interview with Park Chan-wook and he smiled fondly when I mentioned his DP and I asked him how closely they work together through the whole process. He said he loves his DP like his brother and he brings him in as soon as he starts writing the script. Said he needs to be there every step of the way.

Wheres the One Battle After Another review

No movie scared me more as a kid more than og Pet Cemetary, saw it way too young

Sean Penn hams it up, gets Oscar. Leo sometimes looks confused/worried, other times determined/upset. Some lesser known/unknown non-white actresses perform well, steal the show, manage to express how racist Trump is far more subtly than Penn. BDT alternates between mumbling and giggling while imitating Cheech & Chong. And the soundtrack! All the office Christmas party planners just got their playlist!!

Pee-Wee As Himself, Matt Wolfe, 2025

Great, lovely documentary on the wonderful Paul Rubens, aka Pee-Wee Herman.
I adored his brand of zaniness and surreal silliness.

Our revival house, the Beverly Theater, is doing a whole month of scary movies, of course....and today we are watching 1970's Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, a Czech movie I have never heard of before, by a filmmaker I have never heard of before. But the trailer looks spectacular, so we are going to go see it.