I sort of agree with you about the last part, but I don’t think that’s necessarily bad. I think The Dark Knight is a great movie, but it’s kind of a remake of Heat. In fact critics applauded it for being a good crime thriller that almost didn’t need Batman.
I didn’t see any Todd Philips movies before this, but I watched Old School a couple of days ago, and now I understand why people were WTF for a different reason with this movie. It is a truly odd choice for him, though perhaps not as surprising in hindsight.
Joker was just not a good movie. The Gary Glitter song choice was maybe the worst I can ever remember in a major movie.
I loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I loved how it played with history and expectation to create tension. The ranch scene was one of the best scenes of the decade for this reason.
Yeah, it was all very watchable and honestly flew by. I just found the end a bit incomprehensible - the climax, not the very last scene. It was sort of fun, but it seemed like it was just the same trick as in Inglourious Basterds. Grand guignol fantasy as preferable to reality. It even made a sort of sense for a war movie, because plenty of those are extremely unrealistic. But I couldn’t put OUATIH in a box, which is fine, I suppose. But I doubt I’ll ever get the urge to re-watch it.
Watched Samsara last night - it’s a 90 minute documentary with no speech, just footage and music. The idea is sort of like slice of life shots from around the globe, and it was promoted as a sort of meditative reflection on humanity and the various ways in which we live.
I thought it was great. Some really moving scenes, and absolutely beautiful shots. Glad I came across it.
Honestly I hated Midsommar and Hereditary. Just unpleasant to watch, a lot of the “horror” was cheap and manipulative imo, but otoh lots of people absolutely loved these movies so maybe I’m the weirdo.
I didn’t like Hereditary because it felt like two movies mashed together. Midsommar was a perfect movie to me, but one I’d probably won’t watch again. It’s not really a movie you can just pop in with friends.
Saw Game Night last night. Very disappointing for a well-rated film. Much of the humour fell flat imo. Jason Bateman was phoning it in. Character drama was dull. Not good folks, we hate to see it.
Tarantino was on the Rewatchables podcast. He’s doing three, all movies of his choosing, and they started with Dunkirk. I thought it was a good episode even though I don’t hold that movie in as high regard as he and one of the hosts do. Can’t wait for the next two.
It had a few good points, Jesse Plemons was good, there were a few laughs, but if there were any really funny bits I missed them. It was all slapstick and smart-assed pop culture asides. It’s driven by a plot which ought to have characters in danger, but the movie never even tries to create any tension, it instantly defuses any scene which ought to be tense. The result is this weird tonal blancmange which tries to subsist entirely on one-liners, most of which aren’t funny.
It would have worked better as a black comedy with some real menace in it and the laughs used to defuse tension, which is what I assumed I was getting from the poster:
