https://x.com/Variety/status/1831347550676259036?t=ptI2eGmXzniTArh77wjmCw&s=19
Don’t tell her, because i don’t want to break her heart, but the performance that i will always associate with her is when she told jack donaghy how much she loves her big beef and cheddars
Huh. Definitely did not know she was Ingrid Bergman’s daughter.
Anyway, I’m sure there’s truth to a lot of the younger generation not even bothering with one of the GOATs like Casablanca, because why watch that when they can instead watch cat memes and then text each other things like “lol wowwww hahah,” but performing as a lead in Casablanca is almost as much as an actress could do to continue to be known by cinephiles for as long as cinephiles are a thing.
Ok boomer
Is there such a thing as a good Jean Claude Van Damme movie? I’d say yes, and not just in the Bloodsport remake over and over again sense.
I like him a lot in Hard Target and Sudden Death, but my favorite Van Damme movie is Timecop. It’s sort of like The Guns of the South, a novel by Harry Turtledove that features time travelers who supply the Confederate army with advanced technology during the Civil War.
Except in Timecop, the idea is a special agency is developed to ensure such a thing never happens. They can’t prevent time travel, but they can prevent people from going back in time and creating disastrous ripples. Who better to serve as your lead time enforcement officer than Van Damme?
Rewatched Miller’s Crossing tonight for the first time in forever.
I can’t watch one of these elite John Turturro performances without being stricken by the fear that the world might not love him as much as he deserves. I really don’t know if there’s a character actor from the past 40 years of cinema that I cherish more.
Anyway, firmly a top three Coen film for me. On the right day you could get me to consider putting it above Fargo. (No Country is incontrovertible #1 for me unless the Coens do something truly otherworldly in the future.)
If only they would adapt another McCarthy novel like Blood Meridian. I have high hopes for that one as is if it gets adapted by John Hillcoat, who already made a fantastic film of The Road.
Saw an italian movie recently where the main character lives in some old lady’s house…when I realized this old lady was Isabella Rossellini it hit me pretty hard…
(although after looking it up I’ve barely seen her in anything else than Blue velvet which might explain why this feels sudden)
And then you watched The Night Of
Van Damme has made some of the most hilariously bad action movies in history: Street Fighter, Double Team, Knockoff, etc.
Strert Fighter is such an entertaining bad movie, and about 95% of that you can attribute to Raul Julia.
No love for Sudden Death?
Ronald
3/10
Giving it three points because it’s competently made and the actors are not bad in it. It’s a hagiography though, that has no tension or texture to it, plot wise or even within each scene. No one’s a person, including Reagan himself. He’s just an avatar for Truth, Freedom, and Loving This Country Too Damn Much.
The “tear down this wall” segment was a bit funnier in person because a few seconds after the end of the clip posted they cut to Gorbachev watching the TV crying.
My only meta contributions is that the internal villains in this movie are unions who are infiltrated by communists and punk college kids who are insolent and infiltrated by communists. What’s lacking is any mention that Reagan also thought that the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movements were infiltrated with communists. To my mind that’s a reflection the tacit acceptance of broad tenets of the Civil Rights movement within the larger conservative movement and the lessening of hard line anti black sentiment as a driver of cultural resentment.
Also the Iran Contra scandal is presented as Reagan just wanting to get those damn hostages home and just wanting to help out some people in need in Nicaragua in defending their freedom. No mention of death squads or why Congress wouldn’t help out.
I do have Lebowski #4 FWIW, and it’s a strong four. They continue to have other really strong movies throughout their catalog, but the drop-off from 3 to 4 for me is a lot smaller than the drop-off from 4 to 5 (Burn After Reading or True Grit probably).
I feel like it only works if youre a hockey fan. Small sample sizs but im a hockey fan and really enjoyed it, and all my non hockey fan friends find it pretty dull
Lawl. I joked with my friend as the movie finished that maybe the movie had a post credits scene like the Marvel movies. But there was!
That cloyingly waxy shine goes all the way past the credits too, when it follows up on a detail from Reagan’s house stay during the Geneva Summit: While he was using his host’s son’s bedroom, the boy’s goldfish died. That the president of the United States left behind a note of apology to the kid is a cute story, granted, even if it’s treated as an act of above-and-beyond integrity, of the “Mr. Gorbachev can WAIT!” variety. But McNamara needs exoneration, tacking on post-credits the boy’s written response, declaring his VIP guest innocent of pet-care negligence. Fish die — no big! A fitting coda to a childish slog of hero worship.
I’m still looking forward to the Hunter Biden biopic.
I’ve never seen the movie, but nonetheless this makes me nostalgic. So…many years ago I moved to Austin to “git me some learnin’” as we say down there. I’ll need to get some Fine Arts credits, so I choose a course called Introduction to Drama. One of the requirements is to see three plays and write brief reviews. The first was called “Cassandra” by a local playwright. It was a feminist/experimentalist/ vagina-y thing. I like vaginas, and have since puberty, so that was fine. Then there was a student production of “Hair” which was creditable if not quite fantastic. The third was “Waiting for Godot.” Alright, that’s absolutely my cup of onions. So during intermission (or as we called it in Austin “Milking Time”) I read the program and noticed that the actor playing Pozzo was FREAKIN’ LEATHERFACE!!! in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
A month or so later I see the guy in the produce section of a grocery store. It occurred to me that certain kitchen tasks, say slicing a watermelon, would go a bit faster if you had chainsaw skills. In retrospect I wish I had gotten a little closer to the guy so that I could say that I was within a chainsaw’s reach of Leatherface and lived to tell the tale.
FWIW I used to own a Husqvarna with an 18" bar (this was before they were sold to Craftsman) and it was sweet. At this point I’d recommend dropping the money for a Stihl. That’s all I have to say about chainsaws for now.
