Movies (and occasionally face slaps) (Part 2)

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King of comedy and taxi driver had very clear themes, understanding of its characters etc.

Joker was just vapid. As empty of a movie for something that many people liked of anything of late. Like so many recent remakes, it has no soul. I generally love movies about anti heroes, or straight up villain protagonists. Joker doesnt seem to realize this for much of the film

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A good 8.5 out of 10. Using 3:4 ratio during the broadcast and then switching to 16:9 during the behind the scenes scenes was great touch with extra touch to go with black and white for the behind the scenes instead of color.

Great acting all around.

Felt like someone made a movie of a great Stephen King novel.

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Well said. It’s basically a love letter to incels and proud boys. Zero desire to see a musical version of that which seems designed to move the Overton window further.

What I liked about Joker was it finally explained the origin of the Joker (he was a sad man in New York who became violently angry over time). My hope for the sequel is that it explains what his whole deal was with Batman.

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I assume this is satire?

https://twitter.com/thr/status/1778116757649236447

Ed Norton in Fight Club being told, “you said you’d DEFINITELY say that,” but for two hours.

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I did work for the movie, Stuber, a movie that tonally f***ed itself so hard that it was impossible to be good. Still, there was one scene in that movie that had me on the floor and if they had hit the tone like that, the movie might have worked. Unfortunately, it came about 20 minutes into the movie and it was way too late by then. I think the movie probably worked in the script stage, but nearly every directing decision was wrong for the type of movie it was. /randomstorygenerator

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Didnt the movie essentially fall on and impale itself with its own javelin by naming it “Stuber”

It has to be one of the all time worst titles, alongside “The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain” and “Norbit”

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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is another ridiculous self-own.

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I think it made sense in the context of the movie (a dumb character says it as an insult/pet name), so I didn’t really have a problem with it as it got the point across of the movie and how the character ends up in his jam.

The issue is the movie was wayyyyy too violent for the type of movie it was. It starts out over the top violent and the gags are basically insane making it hard to take as what should have been a relatively light action comedy in the vein of Money Talks, Blue Streak, Beverly Hills Cop, Die Hard, etc. (bloodthirsty villains who still manage keep the movies fun).

They instead took it as a too serious revenge movie and leaned heavily into the violent parts with far too much glee. A stark example is the fight inside the sporting goods store. Like Bautista literally would have murdered Kumail at least a dozen times in the way the scene was shot. It was ludicrously violent and over long for no reason.

It really was just blisteringly bad direction tonally overall and once you set it in the wrong tone, it’s really hard to get back even with two really well executed scenes in it that nailed the proper tone of what the movie should have been. It had a lot of good moments, but that was script more than the execution. When I saw it before it came out, I predicted it would land with a hard thud because it was so tonally wrong…and it did. In more capable hands, it could easily have crossed $100m worldwide and gotten near or above a 7 on IMDb.

Yea how do those terrible movie names make it to the theatre. John Carter is another one. Like what are they thinking??

John Carter was a huge mistake on a lot of levels, though (budget and generic naming were two). Why is John Carter bad but John Wick is good? Any movie that can get its plot across in the title, even with a stupid name, usually works at least on that level. Stuber is pretty low on that chart for me, especially once you’ve seen the movie.

I don’t think John Wick is a particular good movie name either. It didn’t do great at the box office either. It only made $43M which is the lowest in the franchise. It was just saved by being a really fun movie. I could be wrong but I think that movie had really strong word of mouth and dvd sales.

It did well for its budget. A cursory wiki look says it had a budget of $20-30m and made $86m worldwide. I think its budget was likely closer to $20m, which would make it an unquestioned hit with a ton of sequel potential.

Coincidentally, I worked on the last movie Keanu did before this one, and the director (whether it was just beginning when they were doing reshoots I can’t remember) said he was over the moon about playing a guy who just got to shoot a bunch of people in the face.

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The magical society one is another recent example. Tailor made to scare off white people from ordering a ticket out loud

Bad title. Great film.

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I believe it. I know it has a strong rep, and I do intend to get to it. Of course, that makes the titling malpractice even worse. I’m less annoyed if someone wants to name a movie, say, Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, because I suspect it doesn’t matter that I missed that one.

Civil War

I had high hopes. My hopes were met. If anything, maybe even slightly exceeded.

Such strong directorial craft on display here that it kept occurring to me throughout the movie, “Alex Garland cannot truly be retiring already.” Hopefully those comments are just the bullshit I suspect they are. More choices that I just stopped and admired than I can immediately recall during the afterglow, but I just think this was top-level filmmaking. The major set pieces are really intense, when you’re supposed to feel emotions you feel them, and the movie knows when to pump the brakes and give the audience a breather.

I guess if I was going to critique one thing (and this is a fairly minor thing to divulge, probably not a big deal to click unless you’re really spoiler-averse, but I’m playing it safe): you never really get even the slightest explanation as to what the war is about; there’s no attempt to justify this fantasy where California and Texas have teamed up to lead a secession. But honestly, given what Garland was going for, I actually find myself even warming up to that choice as I type it out.

The acting is all on point. I don’t really have special plaudits to give to one performance over the others, but everyone felt suited to their roles and I appreciated all of them.

Best movie of 2024 so far? I still give a slight lean to Dune 2, but the fact that I’m saying “slight” is an extremely high compliment to this one. And frankly I can’t even rule out changing my mind as I get more of a chance to digest.

4.5/5. See this.

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I just finished. Walking out now so I’ll write up in a second but I disagree. 6.5/10 and a disappointment

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