Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

Is the opposite possible? That the actors and indies create their own streaming service and cut out Netflix?

 

I just watched The Revenant for the first (and last) time. I'm just coming off of re-reading Blood Meridian so my dialog expectations might be unrealistically high, but what a disappointing contrast between awesome visuals and Marvel movie-level dialog. </rant>

 

And Tom Hardy's barely understood mumbling.

Leo winning an Academy Award for this must've been an apology for his Wolf of Wall Street loss, because he was so much better in that... one of the biggest snubs in Oscar history.

 

I watched the sequel, episode 8 and again, not perfect but SO much better than what we got from the mouse house. The major story beats are shockingly good, though it still feels a little like a first draft and could've used from refinement. But it doesn't matter to fans, who are starving for good SW content, which they're not getting from Disney. The creator is getting a (well deserved) sloppy BJ in the comment section.

The studios are in serious trouble, because its only a matter of time before these A.I. tools become more sophisticated and stills become animation, and soon you can just "program" in your better movie. Star Wars as an IP is actually in better hands with these "amateurs" than the "chosen ones". And I generally don't like most "fan films". But this guy's storytelling skills are seriously impressive.

 

I had this film bookmarked for awhile on a streaming platform. Ended up repeatedly having the following interior dialogue:

So...am I in the mood to see a big/huge Hollywood star (and his entire movie crew) beat the living shit out of himself to give credibility to a story of extreme suffering in the 19th century American "wilderness?" (NOPE)​

This film has a high IMDB rating (8.0) and some great reviews, few of which even touch on the script being good, bad, or indifferent. So you just gave me another reason to keep avoiding this one (I was gonna anyway). And FWIW, I've never been too keen on watching "frontier" or caveman-type films where everybody's wearing animal skins...

Maybe it's just me, but I pause before watching scenes that are described as being unusually hard on the viewer, typically due to extremely violent, sexually violent, or hard taboo content. Recently had a similar interior dialogue before watching BONES AND ALL:

So...am I in the mood to see a much praised indie film about canniablism and romance? A film with an apparently quite unnerving performance by Mark Rylance that no one seems willing to describe in detail? (YUP)​

 

I have nothing (pertinent/knowledgeable) to say about the strike or especially STAR WARS (never saw any of the films), so I'll show myself out after this comment.

I'm a broken record on this topic (broken clock?), but for anyone who likes films starring ordinary-looking (or elderly) men kicking extreme ass with buckets of blood and a high body count (you know who you are: you liked TAKEN, EQUALIZER, JOHN WICK), then you really should drop everything and watch a somewhat pieculiar, yet joyous example of this genre: NOBODY, starring the great (and not large/strong) character actor, Bob Odenkirk.

Maybe I'm overly fond of this because it was the 1st film I saw after theaters reopened post-pandemic (and it lit up my Zoom-addled heart); or maybe it's because on the best, strongest day of my life, I probably couldn't kick any ass of any size. But after my 2nd watch of it on Freevee last night, I'm here to tell you--this film got nearly everything right:

• Bob sells this role exactly as well as every other of his roles. He doesn't look the part, but after awhile, you submit to his skewed everyman (who isn't like any other man) performance
• The direction and particularly editing are so spot-on. This is a film with a pulse that never stops beating. Scenes follow other scenes organically and believably
• The dialogue is so witty. Lots of winks and nods between characters where I found myself nodding right back at the screen ("That's I'm talkin' about!")
  
• NOBODY stakes out a small but meaningful sub-genre: the ironic, droll shoot 'em up. There's an Elmore Leonard "did he really just do that?" vibe to the whole thing. Underneath the extreme body count is the simple story of a man who's struggling with retirement and his relationships with wife and kids (what retired old f**k among us can't identify with that?)

Pretty much everybody in this crazy story nails it. Bob aced it; Connie Nielson did so much with so little dialogue; I've never seen Christopher Lloyd better; and Adrian McLean may have walked off with the "small role/greatest screen impact" award.

NOBODY earned a 7.4 on IMDB and IMHO, that's a righteous rating. My only compaint: too many ads on Freevee the 2nd time around.

 

Shot in Winnipeg! It held up traffic on my route home many times.

 

I'm so glad you said that. I've never been able to figure out where the locale was.

My best guess was Cleveland (outskirts of downtown).

 

Canadian wilderness (Alberta Rockies)

Raquel Welch in 'One Millon Years BC'. Fabulous costuming (still trying to find one of those fur bikinis for Mrsdegraded) and dialogue that can't be beat.

Halloween approaching, 'El Conde' (Netflix; Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet reimagined as a vampire - which actually doesn't take too much imagination) is likely to get a viewing here.

 

I keep reading about that one, circling it. Is is & isn't in my wheelhouse. I'm a longtime fan of the vampire myth (it goes back to childhood); but I tend to resist these more imaginative deployments of the myth in satire and novel scenarios. To put it plainly, the real Pinochet was enough of a human monster to not require transmogrification into an ancient undead monster for dramatic impact.

I prefer vampire films that are more straight ahead bloody horror (many settings & time periods):

• NEAR DARK (Kathryn Bigelow 1987)
  
• NOSFERATU THE VAMPIRE (Werner Herzog,1979)
• THIRST (Park Chan-wook 2009)
• THE ADDICTION (Abel Fererra 1995)
• 20 DAYS OF NIGHT (David Slade 2007)
• SALEM'S LOT (Tobe Hopper 1979)
• LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Tomas Alfredson 2008)
• MARTIN (George Romero 1977)
• A GIRL WALKS HOME AT NIGHT (Anna Amirpour 2014)

(etc)

The other night finally saw RENFIELD, which IMO exemplifies all that's wrong with vampires as tools of social satire. It was funny, using a scenery-chewing Nick Cage to blow up the myths of "self-help" & healing. But it also annoyed me. The film pisses all over vampires, with their menacing mythic & erotic potentials for story telling.

 

'Renfield' is also on the list here; your description has only reinforced my interest but it'll be hard to get Tom Waits's portrayal out of my head (the guy owns every movie role he gets to play). I enjoyed 'Let the Right One in', and 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night' is just excellent, but I also have a soft spot for more traditional vampire fare...

If you can find it, you owe it to yourself to see Andy Warhol's 'Blood for Dracula' (1974) (which "involves Count Dracula arriving in Italy to feast upon the blood of virgins, only to find difficulty with this due to the lack of virgins present in Italy"). It's not as funny as 'Flesh for Frankenstein' (1973), which is particularly hilarious in 3D ("To know life, Igor, you must f**k death in the gall bladder"), but both take the same early 70s soft-horror-porn vein to a more satisfying place than the too-Britishly-polite contemporaneous Hammer Horrors.

 

See 'John Carpenter's Vampires' if you ever wondered what a Sam Peckinpah-esque take on the lore would be, 'The Hunger' (Tony Scott's first film) might be the moodiest vampire flick ever made, and I still consider the original 'Blade' to be an excellent moody take on the genre, rising above its comic book origins (the sequels are trash) and still being the best Marvel flick ever made. And I have a big soft spot for Jim Jarmusch's 'Only Lovers Left Alive' for its achingly forlorn quality.

 

I think that's basically every Jim Jarmusch movie

 

New trailer. Definitely looking forward to this one... in all my bitching in the previous post about acting being in the toilet, Bradley Cooper continues to be one of the few bright spots.

 

Hopefully good news
https://deadline.com/2023/10/actors-strike-weekend-talks-deal-hope-1235585553/

 

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER was tonight's pleasure watch and god what a pleasure it was seeing it again... a masterful exercise in cinematic tension and thrills... just elegant, intelligent and thoughtful filmmaking. It's smart, slow-burn approach seems to be a lost art amongst today's impatient, hyperactive and crass filmmaking techniques. And it's jam packed with fantastic actors who have the gravitas missing from so many of today's "stars". This movie has aged like a fine wine.

 

Great movie. How you make all the right decisions when doing a movie about the USSR.

1) If your cast isn't Russian don't make them all do Russian accents
2) Be historically accurate about the time period and people. Late Cold War is not the Stalin Purges
3) Make me remember why I like being American and rooting for America

 

Probably the best “Jack Ryan” movie ever with due respect to Harrison Ford. The script was good, the acting was excellent, the pace was tense, and no special effects distraction that I find annoying these days. Add a young and talented Alec Baldwin, and a seasoned Sean Connery…and even Sam Neill, Stellan Skarsgard, James Earl Jones…and Tim Curry!