The Verdict benefits quite a bit from David Mamet’s screenplay as well, IMO, I would consider it as much his work as Lumet’s.
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Chart is pretty good but there needs to a middle step where they claim Tarantino’s best film is Jackie. Brown.
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fixed
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Disliking challengers is a sign of mental illness. 
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Rewatchables for The Verdict alerted me to something that I surely should have realized, that the juror I hate so much from 12 Angry Men is played by Jack Warden. The younger him just looked too much different for me to clock that at all.
Definitely spent my whole life to this point not realizing that the baseball juror
was also Artie’s dad from Dirty Work.
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First time I’ve stumped in these tourneys. Good, Bad, and Ugly’s GOAT theme needs your help in the tourney
richard iii (1995)
i’ve never seen a shakespeare movie that i liked, and from what i can tell, the closer the adaptation gets to actual shakespeare, the less i like it. but i was high on ian mackellen after watching the first extended-edition lord of the rings movie so i gave it a go for him.
the language is incomprehensible. it was like watching a foreign film without subtitles. but foreign in a language that you kind of know, like if you took 4 semesters of it 20 years ago, so i somewhat understood the broad strokes of what was happening most of the time. it wasn’t completely unenjoyable. but you want to know what WAS completely enjoyable? The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers Extended Edition (2002, 3h56m) and The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King Extended edition (2003, 4h24m).
it’s going to sound like i’m being sarcastic or doing a comedy bit but i’m telling you on my word i breezed through these back-to-back. i wouldn’t even trim the long goodbye ending, i remember it being too long, but as an ending to 13 hours of film you can give the audience 15 minutes to wind down. and i spent most of that part of the movie standing and applauding at my television anyway. wilhelm scream at 2:51:03. 5 bags of popcorn
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On Golden Pond (1981)
I’ve heard this film be panned as boring on a number of occasions. But it doesn’t seem like any slow and contemplative drama can ever fully avoid those charges, and I disagree often enough that I clearly had to see for myself. The verdict on the “boring” charge? Mixed, to some extent; this film does have some kind of boring sequences, and it isn’t firing on all cylinders for the full run time. The verdict on the film itself doesn’t feel mixed really at all: the Henry Fonda performance is so good that it basically makes the movie a worthy endeavor on its own, and Katharine Hepburn is really strong as well. Without having seen every nominee, it does not seem out of line at all that they both won Oscars for this.
The family dynamics are a bit of a weak spot for me; I was expecting more from the on-screen Henry and Jane Fonda relationship. At best, those beats in this story are hit-or-miss, as they do seem kind of underdeveloped. But watching Henry Fonda’s character deal with the deterioration of old age really tugs at the heartstrings, and especially feels poignant given the knowledge that this was his last movie and that he would die a year later.
If you’ve watched his big works and enjoyed him as I expect that most anyone would, this is absolutely worth taking in as a fitting cap to a legendary career.
3.5/5
i’m not gonna reveal what movie i’m watching rn because it’s embarrassing but The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has a wilhelm scream at 2:14:18
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Horror Candy is a collection of award winning short films that are sort of like miniature episodes of the Twilight Zone. They deliver sometimes predictable twists, but they’re all so short that I enjoyed them. They reminded me of Goosebumps books in that they’re all horror but also just a little goofy. Free on Tubi.
Hobbit movies seem to occupy a weird space in cinema. I’ve read the book, it’s quite short, I can’t get my mind around how they would have spawned three long movies from it, so I’ve skipped the movies out of skepticism. And I think it’s truly batting .000 when I ask people who’ve seen it whether it’s any good. But the rating aggregation sites always indicate a pretty positive rating, considering that it’s impossible to find someone who will actually defend them.
I guess maybe I’ll just try for myself one day, but it’s kind of impossible to find the will to do so.
Seriously don’t bother. If you’ve read the book you’ll get nothing from the movies but rage. Maybe with some bewilderment sprinkled in. Mostly rage though.
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No reason to see them no matter how much you like the book. They aren’t faithful to the book, all of the added filler is terrible, it’s 100% a shameless money grab.
The Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit from the 70s absolutely slaps, however.
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And that’s another good demonstration of my long-term confusion at it being a pretty well-rated film (at least the first one) on IMDb/Letterboxd/Rotten Tomatoes. This movie seems to have a fair number of at least soft fans and I simply can’t find them. It’s bizarre.
There needs to be one for music where one of the stages is: “Only into bands, not songs. There is no such thing as a good song by a bad band.”
Most of my friends are there.
Thinking about Kris Kristofferson yesterday I rewatched the John Sayles woke masterpiece Lone Star where he plays the racist sheriff. He was so memorable in that role I was surprised that he is only on screen for maybe 10 minutes. Anyway film holds up, free on Tubi, recommended.
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Its awful. Adds nothing to the canon and shouldnt be watched. Lindsy Ellis’ three parter about how bad it is is the most you should ever have to watch about that trilogy
Kristofferson was a pretty strong actor. He’s good in a lot of stuff.
Movies like Megalopolis make me really miss Roger Ebert. There is no way in hell I am going to watch a movie that sounds frankly stupid, but I would have LOVED to read a Roger Ebert review of Megalopolis. His take downs of bad movies were hilarious.