Gonna need some guidance here. Please rank the following in order of increasing quality
-This movie owns
-This movie slaps
-This movie fucks
I’ve listed it how I’m interpreting it (i.e. fucks is best), but just wanna be sure I’m understanding the Trolly movie reviews correctly.
Peter Watkins is a British filmmaker mostly known for making fake documentaries of political inspiration. I already posted some time ago itt about “punishment park” (1971) where he depicted US leftist activists being hunted down by the police in the desert during the Nixon presidency.
In 1965 he made a movie called The War Game depicting realistically how nuclear war could start and the consequences of a nuclear strike against the UK. This starts from the displacement of populations as anticipations of the strike, to the physical various effect of the bomb strikes, massive casualties and ending with more or less societal breakdown. Since this was done not long after WW2, this in part relied on testimonies from Dresden, Hiroshima etc… as well as informations from various experts.
This was commissionned by the BBC (presumably for educational purposes), but when seeing the result they deemed it to be “to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting”, and this was only shown on British TV much later in the 1980s. This is obviously not surprising that they would refuse to air this, as it shows that whatever small measures were planned by the government would be mostly useless in the case of such an event.
Seeing it now, with the hindsight that this didn’t actually happen, this can be taken as a very dark satirical piece, but I can only imagine how it must have felt to see this at the time.
This is only 45 mins long and in the public domain (high def copy can be found e.g. on vimeo here). This won the Oscar for Best documentary at the time, imo one of the best anti-war films ever made, highly recommend !
Just saw Triangle of Sadness. I think I’m not smart enough to fully unpack it, but it’s got a lot going on. One note, and this isn’t really a spoiler but if you’re squeamish you might want to read this prior to seeing the movie: there is an extraordinary amount of vomit. When the vomiting starts, it’s not really safe to look back at the screen until the next phase of the movie.
Becky was entertaining.
https://twitter.com/kylebuchanan/status/1614774452394528770?s=20&t=JQEKtmtOjj1hm70qQmGlLA
https://twitter.com/kylebuchanan/status/1614775803191132161?s=20&t=JQEKtmtOjj1hm70qQmGlLA
I rewatched Sideways recently, and it’s still great. But it is very hard to get over the idea of Paul Giamatti getting together with Virgina Madsen. She’s a gorgeous, confident woman and he’s a completely unlikeable schlub with no redeeming qualities. Miles seems like the absolute worst hang imaginable.
post deleted
Cool chart from Twitter/Reddit showing ticket sale trajectory for Avatar 2 relative to other top movies.
LOL at Endgame crushing $2 billion in its 2nd week.
This is good for theatres but not for the studio because the longer a film is in the theatre the greater the split the theatre gets. Studios would prefer they make all their money in the first few weeks.
This is partly why Avatar needs to net so much more than other films to make a profit.
Why is this?
(I have no idea of the logistics work regarding how a theater decides to show what films when.)
The deal between studios and theatres is a moving ratio tied to length of time in theatre. At first the studio gets most of the ticket sales. If a movie has a very long run time at the end the ratio is reversed and the theatre gets most of the ticket sales.
I’d be interested in seeing more details behind this. There’s a really interesting write-up here, but it seems UK-oriented and is a little out of date.
Also, Disney was apparently super aggressive with its most recent Star Wars films:
Before exhibitors can begin screening “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” this December, they must first commit to a set of top-secret terms that numerous theater owners say are the most onerous they have ever seen. Disney will receive about 65% of ticket revenue from the film, a new high for a Hollywood studio. Disney is also requiring theaters to show the movie in their largest auditorium for at least four weeks.
Ignoring the terms carries an unusual penalty. If a theater violates any condition of the distribution agreement, Disney can take an additional 5% cut, bringing the studio’s total haul to 70% of sales on a movie likely to gross more than $500 million at the domestic box office.
If he were to sign up for the movie under Disney’s terms, Mr. Akin said he would be stuck playing “Last Jedi” to near-empty auditoriums toward the end of a monthlong run while still giving Disney 65% of those paltry sales. The studio is applying the 65% split across all weeks of the film’s release, rather than some studios’ practice of beginning a split at a high figure and then lowering it in subsequent weeks.
Previous “Star Wars” installments gave Disney 64% of ticket sales and included four-week holds, and other releases from the studio usually require a minimum of two weeks of screenings. But Disney’s 5% penalty for failing to meet terms on “Last Jedi” is unusual. The charge will be implemented for various violations, including if a theater pulls even one “Star Wars” screening from its schedule or begins marketing the movie before Disney gives the go ahead, according to theater operators.
I’m gonna try to watch every Stallone movie over the next few months. But I don’t have to finish the terrible ones. And probably not every movie he even makes a cameo in. Needs to be one of the main characters. I’ll keep a ranking tally going with a very brief summary.
So far:
Rambo (2008) - Not bad, satisfying to see him kill all the rapey Burmese pirates and army guys. Best part is it didn’t pull any punches on the Burma (now Myanmar) junta. Evil fucks.
Cliffhanger (1993) - Cheesy, ridiculous impossible climbing things. Janine Turner is hot. Delivered as expected. John Lithgow kept killing his own henchmen. I don’t understand how these teams of criminals come together and function when everyone is willing to frag everyone else at the first opportunity.
Next up: Expendables.
I think you’re going to need preclearance from this site before making this judgment. I’ll save some time: Cobra, Tango & Cash, and Over The Top are not terrible.
Stallone has a new show on Paramount+ that should be added to the list
Oh I’m finishing those. I’m talking about Rhinestone (maybe), whatever the fuck Avenging Angelo is.
I pay $172/month for cable + internet. It sucks in some ways. But my friends are always blown away that I can just watch shit on ESPN. And I can stream pretty much any sports using my cable provider login. Anyway the point is I aint paying more for any goddamn streaming services.
I think you can watch it on cable, but I’m not 100% sure
