Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

VERY excited about the Abyss being back in theaters Dec. 6.... I was 9 when I saw it in theaters and it's always remained a special film for me.

 

Also a big Abyss fan. Awesome film. Be interested to see what cut this is as they've done a couple.

 

Couldn't agree more. Hope it comes somewhere near me.

All 3 principle actors were at the top of their games for this one. I was never much of a James Cameron fan, but this one is very accomplished, especially given that it was special effects heavy and featured very early CGI.

 

Tonight it was Alan J. Pakula's incredibly riveting roller coaster ride of a political thriller THE PELICAN BRIEF. My family had this on VHS when I was a teenager and I remember being very taken with its mature, subdued and carefully paced style of filmmaking. Pakula's ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN of course being a kind of gold standard for this sort of filmmaking...

 

Great shout-out!

My Alan Pakula shout-out (one of many) would have to be THE PARALLAX VIEW, which I prize for its uber-dark ending and grim vibe. If you had to pick just one film to represent the very real paranoia of the late '60s and early '70s, TPV would be it.

 

Last night's film was Paul Schrader's MASTER GARDNER, described by many critics as the 3rd in the trilogy that began with FIRST REFORMED and THE CARD COUNTER.

FIRST REFORMED was a chilly, rigorously formal examination of the loss of faith and onset of radicalized theocracy; and THE CARD COUNTER was IMHO a brilliant parable of redemption. Both featured excellent performances. Given that, and Schrader's unparalleled track record as a screenwriter (TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, THE LIGHT SLEEPER, many others), I looked forward to his latest film.

Sad to say, it was a mediocre, error-ridden mess, devoid of Schrader's usual narrative sense, solemn pacing, and dialogue "voice.". All wounds here were self-inflicted: inexplcably off-tone dialogue; poor casting of the leads; continuity breaks, plot points that made little sense. My friend (also a big Schrader fan) and I actually shouted at the screen at times, so disappointing was this film (saw it on my big OLED, so no other patrons were offended).

As it turns out, botany and gardening are not the ideal underpinnings for a neo-Nazi expiation story. Not when they're accompanied by tiresome, overly self-important narration by the main character (that come across not as his own tiresome self-importance, but that of the screenwriter). Of the three main actors, only Sigourney Weaver really delivered a good performance, though her role (as written) is one of the more repellent, despicable characters I've seen in years.

I get no joy from trashing a film and screenplay by this great film maker. I feel so let down today. I guess I mythologize Schrader, and maybe have expectations that are too high.

When the credits finally rolled, my friend asked, "Do you think any of this will make more sense or feel better the next time we see it?" I replied, "There will be no next time for me." He nodded.

 

Yes, Pakula's "paranoia trilogy" of Klute, Parallax View and Presidents Men is one of the great runs of American cinema. I consider Pelican Brief a sort of epilogue to that.

 

Re: Schrader. I don't know if it holds up but MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS blew me away when it opened. Beautiful visuals and a great Phillip Glass score.

 

All war movies/ TV shows are problematic. That said, the best have scenes that will stay with you.
This one, for me, is so well executed. The 101st drops in on D-Day. Historically, despite units being scattered all over Normandy, there were relatively light casualties. See the 82nd in Sicily for contrast.

 

Yeah baby

 

Another incoming rant...

The state of black cinema is f'ing appalling. We've had decades for them to get their act together with telling cinematic stories with black characters in a country that is more than welcoming to the black population. As a black person who's spent more than 4 decades in the U.S. I can attest to this.

Yet every time I want to watch something on streaming and it happens to star a black person or people, it's tied to some social issue regarding race, portraying blacks as little more than victims who can't just exist... they have to be an example of black suffering. Fighting "the man"... "the system"... "whitey".

When I see a white guy in a movie, he's just a guy and he's allowed to be just a guy, going through whatever the character needs to go through as deemed by the writer(s). His challenges are not tied to his skin color. He is just allowed to exist as a distinct individual. When I see a black guy in a movie, he's not just a guy, he's symbolic of the trials and tribulations of the black race. He has no agency outside of his victimhood. And he cannot escape this trap. He is THE BLACK GUY.

Occasionally you will see Sam Jackson or Denzel or Will Smith or Morgan Freeman in an action movie or thriller or drama or comedy and they are allowed to just be themselves... I think this is because they have more power over the scripts they choose, and they don't see themselves or the black race as victims (see Freeman's brilliant rant on race)... on the contrary, their success totally bucks that stereotype.

Yet Hollywood is still trapped in this neverending vortex of painting anything that isn't white with this simplified brush... is it this desperate need to virtue signal? Is this how they actually see black people, as perpetual victims? Is it white guilt? Do they hate blacks and just want to see them as "others"? It's been 15 f'ing years since Obama was elected to the highest position in the country, the world if you really wanna get technical... why is Hollywood still seemingly decades behind in race portrayal?

Sometimes you will a non A-list black character who isn't shackled by this handicap, but the norm seems to be REPRESSED, VICTIMIZED, OTHER. Geordi from Star Trek TNG is more of what we need. A character who was just another member of the Enterprise crew and not hamstrung by his skin color. I don't mind the occasional "message movie" that highlights racial issues, but it seems like I can't scroll through a streaming lineup without seeing 90% of the black character films as stuff you'd show to a high school classroom to teach kids about "racism".

JUST STOP!

 

Suffered through another mediocre Apple TV show, MONARCH: LEGACY OF MONSTERS. I actually cancelled Apple TV after the price hike, but the first episode was free and I felt like checking it out. Every time I do this I always regret it.

The technical aspects of the show are top notch, as to be expected. That seems to be the easy part with anything modern. But the writing and acting are terrible. Wooden, stilted, two dimensional actors fumbling around with badly written, hamfisted dialogue in a boring storyline I couldn't care less about. One girl literally sounds like she may fall asleep at any moment, complete with droopy eyelids. There is just no life or energy to the performances from the young leads (show is obviously aimed at moronic, easy to please social media obsessed gen Z'ers). And it doesn't forget to include all the typical cringe inducing gender politics we know and love... The monster action wasn't enough to save this. Hard pass.

 

If you're looking for something to watch, this video does a pretty great breakdown (minus the occasional interruptions of the sidekick) about how movie stars are becoming more about squeaky clean branding and corporate identity than real actors.

 

Watched The Killer on Netflix after seeing it for the first time in the theater. Flawless from a technical/filmmaking perspective, which I would expect from Fincher. It left me cold on first watch in the theater, but I'm liking it more on a second viewing. The comedy is hitting more. I would rank it in the bottom half of Fincher's filmography, but he doesn't make bad movies so The Killer is still definitely worth a watch.

Not sure if this was a browser glitch of mine or not, but when in full screen mode the Netflix player was not inserting any black bars and was violating the frame. Here's an example still from an early scene where the camera focuses on a bloody piece of broken glass which is pretty important information.

Here's the view in "normal" mode with the browser window sized to take up my whole desktop. You can see everything you need to see:



And here's the view in Netflix's fullscreen mode:



WTF Netflix? It is not even cropped to the center of the frame. Horrible.

 

Well the movie has bars when the whole frame is visible (1st shot), so obviously netflix is sending the correct aspect ratio. Something with your browser? Have you tested other 2.35:1 movies?

 

Seems to be a Safari bug. I tried some other films and had the same issue, but Chrome fullscreen mode works as expected.

 

I finished rewatching Abel Ferrera's THE ADDICTION the other night. It proved far more affecting and estimable than I thought in the early minutes of it.

This is a cyclone of acting energy and commitment by Lily Taylor. I remember thinking when I saw it in the theater, "Here's a beautiful young woman trashing her body & mind to drive her performance." I still feel that way. Either she improv'd the strangest, most physical scenes, or the script called for them (ie, the violent self-harm scene in the room adjacent to the site of the ill-fated "faculty party"). Regardless, she is utterly fearless. In this movie of rather extreme action and tonal shifts, Lily is the north star.

Everyone in the film is superb. Even when mumbling lines that make little sense, absolutely or in context (an AF trope), they're all in. Christopher Walken's scene is a masterclass in acting nuance and power. He's terrifying, though he barely shows his fangs. The script gives him the best lines. To a very afflicted Lily, "you're a demon in hell. Demons suffer." When she pleads for him to relieve her suffering (in this film, vampirism = rootless, implacable suffering), he says, "I am not that person."

The script is often brilliant. The action takes place in & around a grad school in NYC (Lily is prepping for her PhD in philosophy). Characters mumble random philosophical generalities. Sometimes the lines seem a parody of academia, but sometimes the lines land like arrows in the chest (in Walken's scenes). I suspect this variability in tone is purposeful. Amidst throwaway dialogue, certain lines "pop" in a way they couldn't otherwise: when Lily sneeringly challenges a victim, she says, "Go ahead, tell me to leave. Go ahead!" This may imply an underlying vampiric OS, a set of rules; but I believe in AF's vampire world, there are no rules at all. She merely displays disdain and emnity towards victims, for whom there is no way out.

Equally opaque is Lily's brilliant hospital scene where she actually takes communion from an apparently caring, skillful priest. I kept expecting her to seize and drain him, but she does not. She's a straight-up undead blood sucker receiving communion: a shocking, beatific scene.

Perhaps the best parts of this film are the long traveling shots of city streets circa 1995, showing all the grunge & glory. These shots do not appear schematically planned and blocked. Rather, I'm guessing the camerman just walked around downtown and shot whatever/whoever was there.

The central paradigm of this film, that vampirism is just another addiction, is at times indifferently, casually presented. But often it's deadly serious, depicting these newly minted vampires, formerly decent people, turning into sneering, hate-spewing addicts who'll trash anyone for blood. The scene where Lily et al turn a faculty party into a blood bath goes down in history with other great scenes of vampires trashing the living (ie, the bar scene in Kathyrn Bigelow's NEAR DARK).

I'll never understand the final scene. Did Lily (undead Lily) actually die? Or did she somehow ascend to the next functional level of vampirism, as Chris Walken's character had? This confusion is very much on purpose, showing the script's refusal to be linear and resolved--to behave like a regular script.

THE ADDICTION is a flawed but brilliant film IMO.

 

I had seen this movie in bits and pieces but never sat down to watch it from start to finish. I remedied that last night. I would say I liked what I saw in those initial bits and pieces but didn't realize just how indicative that was of the film's overall quality.

What I mean by that is Babylon is a "burnt ends" movie... not quite meaty or juicy enough a meal, but not so bad that it could be called scraps. I felt the movie only ever painted its characters and situations with the broadest of strokes, which works well in isolated scenes without context, but they seem to be missing the fine details that give a film depth. The film has a very breezy, bold and in your face tone... like a less coke fueled version of Baz Lurman's flicks. This actually works in the film's favor in its pre title opening sequence... which is a wild, drug, sex and booze fueled party at a mansion. You really get a strong sense of the decadence of early Hollywood with its wild west approach to everything. It fits. The problem comes when the movie kind of never slows down enough to get us totally invested in the characters. There are definitely scenes where it tries to do this, but the writing and performances remain kind of held at arms length and these things seem to be a bit of an afterthought.

The film chronicles the changes that rocked the film industry in its early days, namely the introduction of sound, and there is a brilliant sequence where we see the very specific problems that needed to be solved in order to make this a viable aspect of film production. But that's all the film ultimately is... a series of virtuoso sequences strung together, full of vitality and visual inventiveness but just lacking in character work. The film never really rises above its preoccupation with the decadence, wild exuberance and innovation of early Hollywood and I never really understood how it affected the characters beyond a very broad surface level thishappensthenthathappensthenthishappens series of events.

The film actually heavily mirrors BOOGIE NIGHTS, straight up ripping off entire sequences of that movie. But what Babylon is missing that Boogie Nights effortlessly conveys is the earnestness of its characters. They feel like real people and not plot devices to show off cool camera movies and wild events, even though Boogie has plenty of that... it pulls off the amazing feat of juggling both. Babylon feels like the characters always came second to the craziness of the plot. For instance there is a scene in the desert with a snake that seems utterly pointless... like you could've removed it and it would have nary an impact on the overall film. I can't say the same for Boogie Nights... every scene feels vital. At over 3 hours, you begin to wonder what the point is with Babylon. By the end you do start to the realize the filmmaker Damien Chazelle meant it as a love letter to tinseltown, but he seemed to forget that we love Hollywood not just because of the razzle dazzle (though that is part of it)... we love it because of the characters that made those movies memorable.

6.5/10

 

Looks like Aardman is going to run out of clay

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2023/11/17/crisis-looms-for-chicken-run-aardman-clay-shortage/

I’ve been watching some stop motion movies and I’m appreciating a bit more what it provides. I noticed that technically the scenes are much more clear and detailed than typical movies, which I thought was set construction but I’m realizing that it’s because it’s not really video but a series a photos.

Video is compromised in a sense due to limits of exposure time and other specs that are necessary for capturing motion. While stop motion is extremely tedious, this also means you can capture frames the best way possible. ISO can be at a minimum and exposure time can be optimized.