It’s about the life of Doug Kenney, whom you have probably heard of if you know anything about anyone from SNL, Animal House, Caddyshack, or National Lampoon. I’ve heard his name mentioned a lot over the years in various interviews and podcasts but did not know much about him before seeing this. It’s a pretty good biopic, funny in parts, sad too. Will Forte does a good portrayal I think, even if he’s a bit old for the part (the narrator, Martin Mull as an older version of Doug, makes a joking reference to this in the movie). 6/10 would recommend
I watched this one for the first time recently and yeah it’s definitely underrated. The last third (when it becomes clear this will not end well, and then it indeed doesn’t) is really elite McCarthy, the rest not so much but still pretty good. I wasn’t really into Cameron Diaz’s performance though (or that car scene lol).
Agreed and Brad Pitt Jesus what a small but WTF role.
The movie has a bunch of stuff as good as No Country, but like you said, it includes just enough that doesn’t work to see why the movie is underappreciated.
I’ve never had any desire to see any of these “live action” remakes. There is absolutely no reason for them to exist except for a money grab. Are any of them even close to as good as the animated originals? If they are, it’s a pretty well-kept secret. I can’t see how they would be, considering you can do more with animation than you can with “live action.”
As bad as the Disney live-action stuff is, the Netflix anime adaptations have to be a money laundering scam, there’s no way in 2023 an exec actually thinks people will watch live-action One Piece.
The Little Mermaid resonates too much as a queer icon for me not to dive as deep into every iteration of that property no matter what. I even love the cartoon!!!
And there’s no denying the power of representation by remaking the movie to feature Ariel played by a person of color with a voice that justifies the movie on its own.
But should TLM itself have been remade? Literally any of the other Disney movies? Nope. Nope. Nope.
They’re all terrible.
Cinderella came close but was still Not Good, in large part because the GOAT live action Cinderella movie already exists and it stars Drew Barrymore: Ever After.
The one exception to this rule is The Jungle Book, which succeeds precisely because it tells a brand a new version of the story rather than rehashing the 2D animation story with 3D montages.
It was so divergent that it felt kind of strange when someone started singing for just a few seconds, whereas the other movies are horrid auto tune pastiches of beloved soundtracks.
Watched Arrival again and Denis Villeneuve has such a gift for directing. Arrival is based on a short story and usually when someone wants to make a movie out of a short story they pad it out with extra exposition and plot and try and turn the short story into a quote unquote movie. But a short story, especially a science fiction story is more like a good magic trick.
The story, like a magic trick, doesn’t have time to pad out the story so it depends on economy of storytelling and usually combining that with a trick to entertain. And Arrival feels like a movie length short story. It’s got its tricks its pulling on you but with the combination of the score and the shots they feel more economic, elegant, and poetic more than in a ‘hey look at what I’m doing!’ kind of way. I also like how tidbits are dropped during the movie and once the ‘trick’ is revealed they don’t go back and piece everything back together for you, they give the start of it but it makes you go back and think about all the tidbits in the movie to put things back together. It takes talent as a director to make a movie feel like that.
Early on in “Burning,” Lee Chang-dong’s masterpiece of psychological unease, Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), a young woman teaching herself the art of pantomime, peels and eats an invisible tangerine. The trick, she tells her companion, Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in), is not to pretend that you’re holding a tangerine, but “to forget that there isn’t a tangerine.”
Burning is based on the short story “Barn Burning” from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami, with elements inspired by William Faulkner’s story of the same name.
It stars Yoo Ah-in, Jeon Jong-seo, and fan favorite from The Walking Dead Steven Yeun. The plot depicts a young deliveryman, Jong-su (Yoo), who runs into his childhood friend, Hae-mi (Jeon). They soon meet an enigmatic young man named Ben (Yeun), whom Jong-su becomes suspicious of and begins to believe Hae-mi is in danger.
Yeun gives off an especially brilliant shimmer: Well known to American audiences from “The Walking Dead” and speaking entirely in Korean here, he delivers a flawlessly restrained, sometimes appallingly funny performance, infused with the slyest hint of outsider celebrity. Ben is lofty, charming, maddening and unreachable, and yet crucial to his mystique is the suggestion of a deeper kinship between himself and Jong-su, two men who in very different ways veer perilously close to sociopathy.
At any given moment you can be nearly certain of what story is being told — a romantic triangle, a crime thriller, a dark comedy of class rage, a parable for a divided nation — only for the shape of the picture to suddenly bend, morph and slip once more through your fingers.
Burning is such a good movie ! (in fact one the first posts I made on this board was to recommend it). I haven’t seen it since its theater run, it’s due for a rewatch…or I might read the short story.
Btw after I liked this one so much I watched a few other Lee Chang Dong movies (“Poetry” and “Secret sunshine”) which I would also highly recommend if you can find them (they are much more straightforwardly depressing/heavy though).
