I enjoyed Monkey Man more than Clovis did, but I’ve also found it to not be a very sticky movie for me as I look back on it. I initially tried to talk myself into it being more than lesser John Wick, because I like Dev Patel and it got an endorsement I respect from Jordan Peele, but I ultimately don’t find even my initial 3.5-star opinion holding up that well for me.
I guess I still default to it being a top 5 (specifically #5, comfortably behind #4) movie I’ve seen so far in 2024, but that’s more a statement on the dearth of strong movies available to us early on in this calendar year. And if I were to move it within my ongoing rankings then it would go down rather than up.
That said, I cannot imagine any scenario where I’m walking out at the 90-minute mark of a 120-minute movie in the absence of some unforeseeable event forcing me to.
Of course Stanley Kubrick is able to make a top-tier heist movie. Of course he is. While you can identify a certain life philosophy that crosses Kubrick’s works, his genre range seems especially impressive in the afterglow of watching this one, as to my knowledge this was unique within his catalog.
I love the way he does the absolute minimum of hand-holding here. Halfway through the movie, I’m going, “Uhh, so I’m PRETTY sure he hasn’t really told us what the heist even is, right?” You know bits and pieces of what will happen as you see certain non-central pieces of the plan get arranged. And you know that they would like to obtain money. As to what exactly they’re doing? You’ll find out when the heist is under way. Given the average director’s proclivity for audience hand-holding, I was relieved at one exchange when a character asked - somewhat as audience surrogate, but organic to what the character in this position would ask - for context and gets shut down. That managed to reassure me that I in fact hadn’t randomly blacked out during a piece of major exposition or something.
Coming of age as a big fan of The Shining, it feels out of context to place Kubrick in a 1956 black-and-white picture that very much feels of its time, but it’s no great surprise that young Kubrick 24 years earlier was already performing near the top of the industry, especially as I have seen Paths of Glory and am aware that he made one of the great war films right around this time also (I have been circling a rewatch of that one forever; I loved it but it’s been too long).
Sterling Hayden, who I’ve primarily known as the guy who gives the worst performance in a brief but significant role in The Godfather as Captain McCluskey - his flat delivery of “why you little punk” to Michael lives on in my head as an unfortunate attempt at a line delivery in a movie where every other acting performance is beyond reproach - is actually a pretty strong lead for this one, and gives me a bit more of an understanding for why he had a career. Also, shoutout to the rando who is tangentially involved with the heist and who I immediately had to assume to be a pro wrestler of the time. After all, barroom brawls don’t tend to involve fireman’s carries and airplane spins. Google confirmed that he was indeed a wrestler from well before my day.
Watching this will only cause me to more strongly prioritize my desire for rewatches of Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove. I still can’t imagine touching A Clockwork Orange again, but I suppose I’ll keep the word “never” off the table.
This one is on Prime, but only through tomorrow. It’s a tight 86 minutes, so it wouldn’t take very long to fit in if you’ve never seen it.
Also, if you want to see the ‘star who wasn’t’ (outside of his infamous Seinfeld role), check out Born to Kill with Lawrence Tierney. If that guy wasn’t an absolute psycho, he would have had Bogart’s career. The only actor I can think of in recent memory who matches his menace level on screen in his prime is the guy who played Lalo Salamanca in Better Call Saul.
He had leading man looks (hard to believe), a mean affect, and a charisma that ran over the screen in a very scary way. He was impossible to get along with, on set and in life. Another great ‘cameo’ by him was in the 80s cop show Hunter. They relentlessly needle him in that episode and it plays so much better knowing what he was like in real life.
The commentary I edited and mixed for Born to Kill was one of my favorites, but almost all the good stuff about Tierney was put on the floor for legal reasons. Most of it was about the commentator being Tierney’s chaperone at a screening for the movie that Bob Wise was at when he was very old. Tierney was a piece of work who’s probably pretty fortunate he didn’t end up in prison for life when snapping just a little wrong.
I had read about the basic concept of NYC ban and the skill vs luck demonstration.
Very nice movie. The mustache was a bit distracting. Crystal Reed was unfamiliar to me, impressed. The whole reviewing the story in terms of writing a script worked.
Man the knives are really out for him. FWIW the article says “as much as” 8 hours, the tweet headline says “constantly”. I absolutely do not believe he was regularly 8 hours late, they would’ve shut down production. Also the bottle peeing story is the kind of thing people would’ve previously said “he works so hard he doesn’t even go to the bathroom to pee”.
I’m not saying he’s not a pain in the ass or that he hasn’t earned the derision, but I do think he’s become a fun person to tear down.
Yeah the capsule does look to have taken some liberties, but the story does source people from Ballers who paint a picture that constantly being an unacceptable level of late is a thing with him.
Johnson’s tardiness has been an issue for a number of years. “They rent a location they can shoot as much as they can of other actors while they wait for him to decide if he’s coming to set,” a producer who visited the set of HBO’s “Ballers” told TheWrap. A former production assistant on the show corroborated this, saying, “He was regularly three to four hours late to set. Keeping 100+ crew members waiting for no reason.” According to a third insider, in March of 2017 Johnson was six hours late to the “Ballers” set.
100+ crew members getting 4 hours of pay for nothing and then 4 hours of OT isn’t really something that’s going to make most crew members hate him. Plus, if a star is being problematic like this on set, they just build that into the production schedules (call him at 9am with the expectation he won’t be there til 1pm) and shoot other stuff. If it was a real problem, the production would be shut down like LFS said. If it was something like The Flash, where the lead character is in every shot/scene, production would be stopped like it was on that movie after principal photography.
Here’s some back of the napkin math. Let’s say the average union crew member’s hourly rate is $42 an hour (an estimate with some way higher and some significantly lower). That means each person is getting an average of $168 a day in sit down time and $252 a day in OT (not including many sets going an average of 14 hours a day, so much more overtime), based on 4 hours of sitting and waiting and 4 hours that the day’s schedule is backed up pushing the production into OT. That’s $42,000 a day in costs related to his tardiness theoretically. It is highly highly highly dubious this guy could ever cause $50 million in budget overrages just with his lateness. You’d be talking something like 1000+ day shoots and I can’t think of any movie that spends that amount of time in production where there would be 100+ crew members depending on him arriving daily.
It’s kind of like the hit pieces on Taylor Sheridan, where they’re like, ‘he is spending so much money on catering and getting people overtime’. Ain’t nobody on those crews complaining about that, the line producers and studios are.
As Johnson’s star begins to wane (various box office/TV failures), people will become very aggressive with stories like this about problem children on sets. They bury the f out of it while the person is making money for the studios in bucketloads.
Just watched The Killing. Holy Smokes! The last 20 minutes were intense! Great recommendation. Prime Video queued up 12 Angry Men immediately so I guess I’m finally gonna watch that. I’m pretty sure a teacher in Junior High showed it to my class once but haven’t seen it since.
Awesome. Realizing that the movie with a 100% approval rating does not exist, I really have to think that 12 Angry Men might come the closest. I fully expect that you’ll at least like it, hopefully love it.