Movies (and occasionally face slaps) (Part 2)

The blackface was intended to be taking shots at the Downey Jr. character, it’s supposed to seem outrageous and unacceptable. The “retard” thing is less clear, it does come across as a word the writers thought it would be funny toss around.

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True, but can you do that today for that reason?

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in my mind, downey didn’t do blackface. he played a character who takes method acting to such a farcical extreme that he truly loses all sense of himself, and that character inadvertently does blackface because his method is outrageously misguided. and it works because of his acting #1 but also because the joke is solely on this character and his faulty logic and foolish decisions. it’s very clear the joke isn’t on black people or any individual black person.

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That’s why it works to my mind too. The punchline is against the actor for doing it. The role would be received much differently if the joke had been anything else.

Let’s give some love to their fake trailers lol

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But that’s not what jamie foxx said to joe rogan. He said downey can do blackface because he’s an entertainer and entertainers must be allowed to entertain by any means necessary. And that he didn’t get pushback for doing blackface because he hangs out with and is friendly with black people. Seemed like he didn’t even watch the movie

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Multiple times right wing weirdos have tried to cancel RDJ over the movie but black twitter backs him up

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I was referring more to the liberal use of retard with simple jack more than RDJ blackface.

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Maybe. I’m okay if I disagree with Jamie.

I understand if someone takes the bright-line stance that the word shouldn’t be thrown around for comedic purposes, but I’ll say this sequence doesn’t come across to me like a completely cheap joke. If RDJ’s character was saying it repeatedly for pure shock value with no artistic merit, I’d have no use for it. But his character spamming that word in service of the most fucking earnest, 100% serious professional advice he could possibly give someone is just irresistibly funny to me, and it’s a joke that wouldn’t work without a provocation embedded in it. If I have to sheepishly claim it as a guilty pleasure then okay, but I can’t deny I laughed.

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Nyad

I vaguely remember this story about a woman swimming from Cuba to Florida about 10 years ago. Apparently there’s a bunch of controversy about the swim to the point where the Guinness Book of World Records revoked its recognition. The film addresses none of that.

I’m not sure why this movie was made. They didn’t make the subject look good. Nyad comes off horribly here, completely ungrateful and mean for the first 3/4ths of the film. I guess there’s a slight redemption at the end, but I wasn’t rooting for her.

And I can understand some creative license (like the scene in Argo where the plane is being chased; this never happened), but there were so many weird and unbelievable occurrences that it was really difficult to take this seriously. It was basically a Hallmark movie with a couple of A-list actors.

Annette Bening was fine. Some might say she overacted, but I think that worked with this character. Jodie Foster was fantastic. The casting was A+. Damn near everything else was below average to a complete mess.

3/10

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Ha, was probably going to watch that this weekend. I hope I don’t suffer as you did.

I’m three films away from The Full Eyebooger™ for 2024. Thankfully I was already planning on that being the weakest one. (Perfect Days and Io Capitano are the others, not yet available to me.)

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I wouldn’t call it “suffering”. I guess the best word I can use to describe the movie is “disposable”.

I could have easily been playing a board game with friends with the movie on in the background and not felt like I missed out on anything.

That’s going above and beyond The Full Eyebooger™ imo. I try to see all the nominees for Picture/Director/2x acting/2x supporting/2x screenplay. Adding the international films is extra credit.

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Fair enough, though most years you’ll have some subpar movies with acting nominations that are worse than all or most of the Best International field. I don’t actually know the first damn thing about Io Capitano except that it was nominated, but I’m hopeful that Perfect Days will actually be pretty great. I watched The Teachers’ Lounge tonight, lots of really good stuff but held back a bit by a final act I didn’t love.

Definitely, although (as you noted) it’s often not easy to see those nominees.

My friends and I still say “you never go full retard” of course it’s funny. :)

https://twitter.com/WhenToStream/status/1755970467100238077

Man, this poor movie. Now it’s sharing a streaming service drop date with Oppenheimer. It’s better than the level of obscurity it’s being fated to.

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Just got home from teachers lounge, liked it a lot, very intense/uncomfortable, didn’t like the end.

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Birdman is just a great movie to talk about. If you want to watch a movie with your bros and talk about it afterward, I gotta recommend it.

Yeah, really felt like skilled filmmaking at work. The methodical ratcheting up of tension was impressive. Super well paced until you arrive at the part where they didn’t know how to end the film properly.

I’m at The Zone of Interest > The Teachers’ Lounge > Society of the Snow for the Best International nominees right now.