Topic: The Movie Thread

I like how Oscar Isaac was all dismissive of big budget films after completing SW, saying he's going to focus on "handmade" films, then proceeds to secure roles in Dune, Metal Gear Solid, Moon Knight, and an Addams Family sequel. Just find that amusing.

Rewatched Traffic the other night. Not as good as I remember but still a solid film.

Also surprised no one has brought up the Tom Cruise thing, especially since we'd just recently mentioned him. Mixed feelings as I totally agree with him in principle but I also feel people have a right to a work environment where getting yelled at is unacceptable.

@zupertramp I dunno, if more people were like Tom Cruise then we’d be in a much better place. He was perfectly right, especially the fact that he’s responsible for the livelihoods of people all over the world doing different small parts of the movie from catering to special effects. He probably shouldn’t have shouted at them but sometimes giving people a bollocking works.

@nessisonett Fair enough and don't get me wrong, his reaction is the one I have raging inside of me just about every time I leave the house but yelling is just unprofessional... even when it's a "good" reason and even if it's Tom Cruise. That said we all lose our cool and you can tell he's under untold amounts of stress so, I mean, it's totally forgivable but still wrong.

@zupertramp Ah well, at least it’s coming from a good place and not about how the alien precursors are reading our minds and indoctrinating us 😂

@nessisonett Ha, yes it's funny because despite my criticism, his tirade actually helped me see him a positive light for a change.

@zupertramp Oscar Isaacs said in an interview before Star Wars TFA was released that he could be connected to the downfall in two of the biggest franchises in cinema. Whoops. 🤣

I watched Jojo Rabbit and I dunno, it frustrates me just as much on a second viewing. I totally get what Taika Waititi was going for and a lot of the humour does land but I find his portrayal of Hitler a bit kinda flat, it lacks edge. Sam Rockwell’s character muddies the waters too, he portrays it well and is great as usual but his ‘good Nazi’ character somewhat takes away from the whole indoctrination angle. It just feels a bit toned down for the Hollywood audience, as if he was worried about what he could get away with. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve seen both Come and See and The Painted Bird, two films that deal with World War Two seen through the eyes of a young boy and aren’t afraid to truly delve into the impact and toll that takes on his mind. Jojo Rabbit isn’t a bad movie, it’s just missing a certain something.

@nessisonett and all the horrible German accents. Rockwell was all over the place.

More to the point though, I agree it was mildly amusing but not nearly as biting as I thought it might be.

That said, I rewatch that grenade scene quite often because it's hilarious.

@zupertramp Yeah, the physical comedy is great and Rebel Wilson endeared herself to me in a way that she hasn’t before but it really needed to let loose and bare its fangs. There have been better Nazi satires and better dramas showing the effects of war on children so it just rather disappointingly falls in between without really being a cohesive whole.

I really should get round to doing a top 10 of 2020 movies but to be honest, I really haven’t watched that many that I enjoyed. Things are complicated further by the fact that several movies didn’t hit cinemas over here until 2020 like Parasite and on Netflix like Uncut Gems. Both I loved but they would really be 2019 movies at heart.

@nessisonett I mean... I haven't seen The Painted Bird in film form, but if it's anything like the novel, then it'll practically be an exploitation film. Waititi's film is going for mass market appeal.

When you talk about the portrayal of Hitler lacking edge, I take it you mean Adolph, his imaginary friend?

I liked the film myself, although I'm not sure the more comedic elements ever fully worked for me. The film is a bit too screwball at times to really work well as satire. It's clear the film has a strong moral core to it and wasn't trying to be flippant, but some of those characters are a bit overtly cartoonish - especially the one Rebel Wilson plays. But it's a nice reprieve from the dreadfully uniform films about the third reich we typically get.

I didn't get on at all with Uncut Gems, personally. The role was a good fit for Sandler's kind of manic performance style, but the film really dragged for me.

@Ralizah Yeah, if I compare Waititi’s portrayal of Hitler to the way Chaplin plays ‘Adenoid Hynkel’ in The Great Dictator, both play up on the really quite silly appearance and eccentricities of the character but Chaplin has an unmistakable menace about his person. I understand that Waititi is playing a fictionalised version of Hitler in Jojo’s mind but it felt a very skin deep portrayal in that it made the obvious jokes but didn’t delve as far as it could have. In fact, if you remove Hitler from that movie, it would be absolutely 100% the same movie and wouldn’t really suffer. He ultimately doesn’t matter as a character which cheapens the role to the point that it feels a bit like it was only put in for shock value or to fulfil a ‘lol so random’ quota in order for reviewers to use the words ‘zany’ or ‘irreverent’.

The Painted Bird essentially is an exploitation movie at heart which sounds in rather poor taste given the subject matter but it totally nails it. You can tell when reviewers are saying that the movie about the Holocaust is ‘too bleak’ that we’ve been desensitised through all the ‘Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ and ‘Life is Beautiful’ type movies out there. I’d recommend everybody at least watch Shoah once in their life as it’s the most extensive Holocaust documentary out there, over 9 hours long, but it affirmed to me that there seems to be a flat acceptance around the Holocaust. That attitude of ‘yeah, that happened and it was bad’. That can’t sit right with me after watching Shoah, the sheer human cruelty on display is such a hard watch but so important because we should all truly understand how something so disgusting could happen on such a wide scale. Just seeing first hand accounts from both sides humanises the stories, makes you realise that it wasn’t that long ago and these were people who made human decisions. A bit like ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ in that it’s one thing to read a history book but a completely different thing to actually see real life people talk about what they experienced.

What kinda got me about Jojo Rabbit is that satire can totally be an effective weapon but only if it’s sharpened enough. When your target is arguably the most inhumane regime the world’s ever seen, you better be sure you’re bringing the big guns. It just needed more cutting dialogue and a stronger message. Unfortunately, at a base level, the message could be reduced to essentially that Mitchell and Webb sketch:

Finally watched Tenet.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh

It's either Nolan's worst film or second worst film (TDKR was pretty bad at times). The script is almost completely devoid of humor or charm, and the characters are largely without presence. Conceptually, it's just a bad James Bond story obfuscated by its creative but ultimately gimmicky treatment of time manipulation, and the larger plot, only revealed near the end, is so dumb that the characters are forced to lampshade it in order to make it seem less aggressively stupid than it actually is.

@nessisonett I feel like the "skin-deep"ness of the portrayal is the point of Adolph. The reality of the fuhrer is very different from the boy's image of him, and I think there's something really interesting to explore there. With that said, I did like how the 'menace' of the character is dialed up near the end of the film, reflecting Jojo's altered values and cognition.

Not that I'd argue it's great satire or anything. Like I said, I'm still not really sold on the approach of the film, and its primary value is how unique its treatment of the subject matter is compared to other films.

re: The Painted Bird, I think the primary complaint is likely that it's unnecessarily bleak. From what I recall of the book, it was a young boy wandering around Eastern Europe encountering pedophiles, rapists, murderers, ignorance, and the like. That's... I mean, there's some value in probing the 'barbarity of man' concept, but I prefer when my exploitation media doesn't dress itself in the clothing of fine art and pretend to be meaningful to justify its wallowing in depravity (with some exceptions: I continue to find Cannibal Holocaust's arguably hypocritical attack on sensationalist media and its at-the-time innovative found footage approach to be pretty fascinating; same with the outrageously nihilistic murder-philosophy-porn of the Marquise de Sade, which I've always taken to be deeply satirical pokes at class warfare and social iniquities that "polite society" ignores more broadly).

I ended up watching Shaun of the dead, hot Fuzz and the worlds end again after finishing up spaced.

I always forget how funny and just brilliant the worlds end is. I always thought hot Fuzz was the best of the 3 films but the worlds end is just kind of perfect. It's funny, has a bittersweet ending, a troop of really great actors and really poignant moments too. It has a really good message that really resonates with me and the fight scenes are just awesome. Kind of makes me feel more sympathy for the all the baddies in Star Trek that fight against the homogeny of the Federation. Funny how I can have contradictory feelings on that topic, guess it means I'm human!

I watched Little Women again, the Greta Gerwig one and yeah, I really dislike it. Previous adaptations, both the Winona Ryder one and the BBC one, are great. The book is great. This just isn’t. Why is Florence Pugh playing a 12 year old girl? Fair enough playing her when she’s 19 but it’s just completely wrong and creepy to see a grown woman sitting in school with little girls and acting like a petulant child. There’s something deeply deeply wrong about that. They also have Timothée Chalamet as Laurie (the worst character in literature) who is the opposite, he’s fine as young Laurie but he absolutely cannot pass as a 30 year old. It’s nonsense, it’s only there to make the relationship not look like he’s a total pedo. Instead of making a cutting remark on how Laurie moves from the girl he fixates on to her younger sister who he’s known since she was 12, the film avoids that issue completely for the sake of having an up and coming cast. The film irritates me.

I thought I might as well finish off Edgar Wrights filmography and watch Scott pilgrim and baby driver.

Scott pilgrims a weird one because I remember loving it when it came out and not so much on a second watch. This will be the third time I've seen it and I think it's growing on me again. It's technically very amazing and the performances are all great, but it's not fun to watch with a clueless audience. I think I was amazed by all the game references when I saw it in the cinema but that part of it isn't amazing a second time around. I can just see the boredom and confusion on the faces of people of whom the references do not mean much to. It's good but I think the concept wears a little thin.

Baby driver is just excellent though, great performances, one of the best soundtracks in film (as well as being brilliantly used and edited). Its got a classic bonnie and Clyde style heist film narrative that's subverted in all the right and meaningful ways. Just a brilliant film. Can't wait for Edgar Wrights next film whatever it is!

@ralphdibny Have you read the Scott Pilgrim comics? I got into them roughly 2008 and they’re just fantastic. The movie falls a little flat for me because they tried to cram 6 incredible graphic novels into one movie. Definitely worth a read.

@nessisonett ah fair enough! Nah I haven't actually, I'd say if anything the movie puts me off. How accurate is the film, like I guess I'm interested in how they derived all the game music and crazy colourful effects and fight scenes from what I assumed was a black and white comic

@ralphdibny The comic is pretty dynamic in the way it portrays fight scenes but solely through the use of lines and shading, as opposed to the colour seen in the movie. The game music was used in the movie as a substitute for the innumerable references and nods to games seen across the series. The characters are developed so much better across the 6 volumes than in the movie which makes sense, there’s a lot more content after all.

@nessisonett fair enough, sounds like it could be worth checking out! I did like most of the exes in the film so I guess it could be cool if their characters were padded out a bit. Not sure if I liked them because of the actors though like Chris Evans and Brandon routh. I think overall that Mary Elizabeth winstead and keiron culkins characters were my favourites though

@ralphdibny I really need to get the coloured version of the comics but they’re just so expensive. It’s crazy to see my first or second edition black and white paperbacks that I got for about £8 in Borders back in the day and then see coloured hardbacks going on Amazon for £20 each. Also interesting that the first book isn’t ‘VS The World’, they must have just preferred that title!