Rewatching and reconsidering Bill Castle’s 1964 Straight-Jacket, a movie where the backstory is more compelling than the actual movie: Bill Castle was a master of B-moive gimmicks, always ready to get lurid and pulpy. Joan Crawford was a washed-up legend of the 30’s so desperate for work that she was willing to do B-movie axe murdering roles. Not sure if I would recommend it because the pacing felt really slow to me but when this movie really gets going it’s surprisingly intense by the standards of its day.
An analysis of the documentary.
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Heroic Trio (1993)
This movie whips, Johnnie To crams an entire comic book cinematic universe of lore into one movie. With Anita Mui as knockoff Batman, Maggie Chung as knockoff Catwoman, and Michelle Yeoh as like Scarlet Witch or some shit.
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Went looking to see if there had been any discourse on Licorice Pizza since I watched it yesterday. There isn’t much, but lifting this from the TV thread:
I’m with you on The Shape of Water, but not on the latter two. I don’t have raves to offer about The Fabelmans or Licorice Pizza, but I did enjoy them. It does make sense that a person would either like or dislike both since the tone is awfully similar. Gonna take a shot in the dark and guess that you also didn’t enjoy Almost Famous (if you’ve seen it)?
Release date: December 25, 2023
Wtf. Thanks for the review, looking forward to seeing it!
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Haven’t seen it. Also guessing that it doesn’t seem like my type of movie, but would give it a fair shot.
Doesn’t seem like my style, but seems like it might appeal to some of y’all. (Sorority girl adopts a homicidal sloth. Hijinks ensue)
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It’s whatever, but lots of people like it. You can shove it way down the priority list until you fix this “never seen a Hitchcock movie” issue.
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I love Almost Famous, but age gap romances where one person is a minor fundamentally change the story into one of violation and abuse. The central relationship in Licorice Pizza is a deal breaker for me.
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Yeah. It’s not like it would have been great without it, but when I watched it I was like “WTF?” most of the time.
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Obviously fair. I’m guessing it would have made it much more viscerally unpleasant for me if the age gap was more visually obvious rather than just being something that the movie explicitly states repeatedly. I looked up their ages online and fully expected to find out they were a year apart or something (I was wrong; it’s a real 11-year gap, albeit with the younger one not being a minor in reality). I think this created some sort of disconnect between what I knew and what it felt like I was watching.
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Do most people think it’s important for movies and TV to have correct moral views? I feel like most people do think this now (exceptions made for violence) but fewer people felt so in the past.
I’ve noticed this a lot on NPR lately. “I liked it, but the representation…”, “I didn’t like what it had to say about race…”, “The director doesn’t understand consent…” etc. Most reviews have two parts: an aesthetic assessment and then a moral assessment.
I don’t really have an opinion either way. Just noticing a sea change.
Maybe it’s best for society if they do but for me it isn’t important at all.
IDK about all that. A movie can include all sorts of things without endorsing them. Wolf of Wall Street and Breaking Bad, for example, say more about the viewer if they watch them and think the stories are encouraging them to be like those people.
But a story in which the audience is invited to enjoy the romance based on the violation of a minor? I’m going to separate that into a different conversation and just ask anyone and everyone to stop making those movies.
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Fair enough. That one does feel especially icky.
Murder, torture, genocide are still OK with most people, I think. It’ll be interesting to see how this changes (or doesn’t) in the coming years.
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fwiw I think it would be a bit weird to interpret Licorice Pizza (a 16 yo boy chasing a 25 yo woman, unsollicited) this way…
(I really liked the movie btw. wouldn’t say that the age gap really added much but whatever)
absolutely agree with that
for instance I recently watched Point break for the first time, and it was much better than I expected, but if you find out someone in your crew is an undercover fed, I would absolutely not recommend taking them skydiving for a bonding experience 
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Its out? Maybe you meant 2022?
But much of the violence that gets portrayed in film also isn’t really being endorsed. Quite a bit different than Licorice Pizza, the plotline in Leon where Matilda develops an age-inappropriate crush on her older protector doesn’t feel icky in the slightest to me because it’s natural that she would develop those feelings and he 100% shuts her down when she attempts to act on them. I would happily outright defend that whole aspect of that plot, whereas I don’t really wish to do that with Licorice Pizza even though I enjoyed the movie.
Granted that there is a whole subgenre devoted to violence via vigilante justice where the filmmaker is clearly somewhat endorsing the violence, but I do think that’s a lot less common than simply showing violence happen.
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Thanks, Risky. Happy to be in the club. Busy week so I haven’t been able to watch anything. However… my wife and I are on a plane to Italy tomorrow to visit friends and we’ll be catching a few movies at the Venice Film Festival. I will report back.
My friends have already picked up tickets to 4 films and I have no idea what we will be seeing.
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It’s only gotten limited release so far. I have no way of watching it yet (outside of paying $20 to stream it).
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