False alarm. I haven’t given it a shot yet. Yesterday I chose Zone of Interest and am kinda regretting that I didn’t watch Grand Budapest instead.
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Curious to hear what you think about Grand Budapest! I enjoyed it immensely.
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I’ll probs see it tomorrow. Last chance before my Hulu trial runs out!
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Saw frozen empire and it was bad and should feel bad imo
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I saw it a week ago and legit don’t think I can remember the plot.
I watched Grand Budapest today. What a delightful movie. There’s so much here to love. I like all of the stories within stories. This was accessible enough too for me to understand the aesthetic of a Wes Anderson movie that appeals broadly to his fans.
Not enough for me to finish Asteroid City, but a win for a non fan.
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It’s easy to see why that one was the big commercial success that also got nominated for Best Picture. For my money, it would have been a good winner that year. Would personally have voted for Whiplash, but given the Academy’s childlike insistence most years on giving the big award to something that isn’t too dark, Grand Budapest Hotel would have been a worthy second choice.
(Birdman actually winning was fine, but just would not have been my vote. Probably would have been my #3 on a ranked ballot.)
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That’s a year where I think Best Director might not go to the same winner for Best Picture. I’d much rather have seen Best Picture go to Whiplash or Grand Budapest. Best Director should have gone to Linklater for Boyhood. I don’t think it’s necessarily a Best Picture winner, but there’s no denying the scale of what he achieved as director. I would also have liked for Best Original Screenplay to have gone to Grand Budapest, which plays almost like I’m listening to a novel with illustrations.
Boyhood is a bloodless, dull movie wrapped in kind of a cool gimmick. Super weird of Linklater to just decide that it was optional to make his movie interesting as long as there was some kind of meta achievement involved to deodorize the movie itself.
But obviously his Before trilogy deserved WAY more Oscar love than it got.
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No way. Bloodless?? Mon dieu. I didn’t think it was that bad. You have no respect just for the achievement? I feel like that’s a separate consideration than whether the movie is any good at all.
Watching a kid go through a garden-variety childhood that millions of children go through? Big pile of meh. I honestly don’t mind it being nominated given the achievement, there are worse BP nominees for sure, but having seen people earnestly argue that it was robbed of the win has probably radicalized me and made me loath to give it much of any credit. The notion of it deserving the BP win (which I realize you clearly did not argue; I’m just bringing invisible but real ghosts into the conversation) is so absurd that I’m on tilt just thinking about it.
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I think we’re not that far apart. I wouldn’t say it is anywhere close to deserving Best Picture or even a nomination. I’m not very fond of Birdman either, tho there was a fun push to celebrate all things Michael Keaton for a little while.
Holy smokes, Blood Simple is one heck of a movie. On Criterion now.
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Strangely, also just free for everyone on regular YouTube right now. It showed up as a rec in my feed. And then when I clicked into it, I see a bunch of other great movies that YT is also offering for free.
FYI for everyone.
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Is that a full red status bar underneath Heat?? 
It…looks like it? I never really rent things from YT, but I watched it a couple of years ago and I can’t remember how. Maybe it turned up free back in 2022 also.
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Other free streams on YT right now: Pride and Prejudice, O Brother Where Art Thou, Bridge of Spies, Hoosiers, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Donnie Darko, The Firm, Barry Lyndon, original Mad Max, The Grapes of Wrath, Point Break.
Anyway, people should go have a look around if interested, just dial any of these up and then the sidebar populates with a bunch more options.
Is Tubi ad supported? Because it feels almost like movie laundering
Saw this one a few months ago. Worth it just for young Frances McDormand.
After watching, I realized this meant I’ve seen all of the Coen bro’s movies (not counting the recent solo ones).
I’m not sure why that is the case as I’m not specifically a fan but I guess they’re consistent enough to have (almost) never made a bad movie (and of course many very good ones).
(Meanwhile there’s still some Lynch, Cronenberg, De Palma, Mann, and a lot of Coppola I haven’t seen…)
Re:Tubi, aren’t the ads a huge turn-off ? We don’t have it here but have a similar channel (plex) and I watched a few movies on there as they have a pretty good selection of e.g. western’s and random old horror movies (like Tobe Hooper’s “eaten alive”, which is like TCM but with a crocodile instead of chainsaw, and also sadly not nearly as good…). But having ads interrupting every ~10 mins really took me out of the movie (not to mention adding 15% runtime), so I’ve kinda given up on it.
I’ll forever be grateful to this board for motivating me into watching a bunch of Van Damme movies a few years back. Anyway I just watched Cyborg (1989) where Jean-Claude is moving through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, hunting/being hunted by a crew of “pirates” and trying to deal with traumatic flashbacks.
Obv not the most plot-driven movie (although it was labeled “brainy” by the genius Prime Video A.I.), but fun enough, and a higher production value than I would have expected.
There’s one scene in particular which makes it worth watching, words cannot do it justice but here goes : JCVD is in the sewers, in rough shape, being followed by a villain. We assume the villain is closing in, and we see close-ups of JC who seems to be waiting confidently. He is preparing to strike, with his face and upper body fully under a light source, so why is Villain not seeing him ?
(also JC is an apt abbreviation, given that he is literally crucified by the bad guys at one point. Thankfully he got more tricks than his older namesake and he simply brings the cross down with strong footkicks)
The basis of the plot is a woman cyborg (2 mins of screen time) carrying the cure for a devastating “plague” (20 secs of screen time) to scientists. This ends with her looking at Jean-Claude (going back to the wasteland) and saying
“Perhaps HE is the real cure for this world…”
Shame this never got a proper sequel !
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