Board 8 > B8 Movie Club Topic 2 - Into the Little Shop of Fargo Willy's Machete Wonderland

(+) Yeah! (+)

or alternatively: Sound of Mother Thoroughbreds in Bruges Lost in 45 Years

Newcomers are welcome! We take turns to recommend movies, vote and then all watch it once a week.

Spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jQ5mrOOC83ua5DfEOd0DgZczFGm9qc8AMjQz-WSblrs

Feel free to rate or discuss any movie from the past. You may change your rating at any time. Newcomers can rate movies or request to be on the recommendations list at any time. You must maintain a 50% watch rate (subject to change) to recommend movies for your turn. If you would like to push your recommendation week back, please mention so IN ADVANCE. You will be moved to the bottom of the list if you do not meet the watch rate requirements and there is no other response from you when it is your turn. I will @ everyone on the list every week when its time to vote and to announce the movie.

Nominate movies by: Thursday of that week, 8:00 P.M. EST/5:00 P.M. PST
Vote by: Friday of that week, 8:00 P.M. EST/5:00 P.M. PST

Current recommendation order:
Suprak the Stud
SwiftyDC
Camden
Snake5555555555
Seginustemple
Xeybozn
tyder21
ChichiriMuyo
Aecioo
kateee
iiicon
CoolCly
Johnbobb
Raka_Putra
jcgamer107
ViolentAbacus

Let me know if you want to get on or off the recommendations list. This will also serve as the list of people I @ for the votes/announcements. Additional information about tiebreaks, ratings, deadlines, etc. in spreadsheet (Recommendation Order sheet).

Thoroughtags

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next movie is Fargo (1996) by the Coens

@Aecioo
@Camden
@ChichiriMuyo
@CoolCly
@iiicon
@jcgamer107
@Johnbobb
@Raka_Putra
@Seginustemple
@Snake5555555555

@Suprak_the_Stud
@SwiftyDC
@tyder21
@ViolentAbacus
@Xeybozn

I still need to watch the newest season of Fargo, as well.

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Has there ever been a TV adaptation of a movie that's nearly as good as Fargo?

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Good timing for me to give Fargo a rewatch. Just finished binging seasons 1-3 of the TV show.

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Johnbobb posted...

Has there ever been a TV adaptation of a movie that's nearly as good as Fargo?

Ash vs. Evil Dead and maybe Hannibal come extremely close, but Fargo is still king.

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Willy's Wonderland

Great pick this we... damn it. Well I was always gonna watch this anyway so I might as well talk about it here. This is a GREAT film, with one of my favorite Nic Cage performances since Mandy. He doesn't even speak besides a few grunts here and there, and it is an inspired choice, like a silent video game protagonist going through each level dutifully, stoically and with purpose. On that note, it will be hard to escape accusations of FNaF plagiarism here, but let's not act like moving animatronics were started by that series anyway. Intensely popularized maybe, but it's all really just an extension of a long lineage of killer inanimate objects dating back to the 1920s with Waxworks. Like many of those movies, Willy's Wonderland mainly embodies the slasher genre, with some of the most disposable teen characters I've seen in awhile, and it doesn't reject what it is, instead choosing to bathe in its neon colors and blood-soaked ultra-violence as intense synthwave blares throughout its soundtrack (I want this film's soundtrack BTW). It's a film that knows what it wants to be front and back and is made all the better for it, what's old is new again, the slasher cliches seemingly dead and buried with 2010s' cynicism brought back to consciousness in a film that's simply interested in supplying the gleeful carnage we've all been craving for again. It's that primal relief the classic slashers were built on, but instead of focusing on its killers, Nic Cage's zen-like charming toughness is the death dealer fighting against representations of chaos, depravity and hopelessness. For a horror fanatic like me, it's just what the doctor ordered.

8/10

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Five Nights at Freddys is a title I've heard many times but never knew what was about until i saw the trailer for Willy's after it was said in the last topic it was basically that

i'll probably never see it on my own tbh

Fargo (1996) - Despite the Coen brothers being in my top 3 directors, and hearing a ton about it, I've never watched it. It was a hoot and a half! 9/10

So, first off the cast all did a great job. It was weird seeing William Macy and Steve Buscemi in the roles they had, but they fit. The movie did a great job with the humor sprinkled throughout and the deadpan style had me chuckling throughout. The story was compelling, and as usual I loved the filmography. I do feel like some could have been cut, like when Marge went to see Yanagita but overall it was a very tight experience. I question Jerry's plan on what his plan was, and how he thought it would all work from his mysterious borrowing 300,000 for cars that he didn't have to hiring the kidnappers.

Rankings for overall Coen brothers movies I've watched: No Country for Old Men > Fargo > Big Lebowski > The Ballad of Buster Scruggs > O Brother, Where Art Thou? > Hail, Caesar! > True Grit > A Serious Man

I also went ahead and watched Willys Wonderland since I was going to do that anyway. I wasn't going to talk about it, but since Snake did, I will too!

Willy's Wonderland - 8/10
It's pure dumb fun. I loved pretty much every minute of it. Like Snake said, it knew what it was and didn't try to be anything else. If you watched any trailers, the movie was basically that, but elongated. Nick Cage whoopin' ass and playin' pinball. It had some of the silliest gags I've seen in a while, and some quotes I'm definitely going to be using at somepoint like "Gorilla Greetings!"

I tried starting up 45 Years and just wasn't feeling it at the time... Maybe eventually!

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Lost In Translation

This one's been on my radar so long I felt nostalgic finally watching it for the first time in 2021. Check out how dated the trailer feels already, it makes it feel like the movie came out in the 80's - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6iVPCRflQM

Not of all of it aged well, right off the bat it leans into the short jokes and l/r syllable gags that I kinda roll my eyes at. ScarJo/Murray's sudden romance didn't feel totally organic and overuses this trope of justifying their connection by pinning all their marriage troubles on stock nagging wife and inattentive husband characters. Some of you mentioned it was more believable as a friendship than a romance and I'd agree with that. I have kind of a similar deal with Vertigo where I can see why a 50-year old Jimmy Stewart is charming in conversation but am I supposed to think his looks caught Kim Novak's eye? I mean, eye of the beholder I guess.

And Murray certainly is charming. I am futher convinced RDJ's Tony Stark is just a Bill Murray impression with a goatee. I appreciated the classy Caddyshack reference (I assume) with Mt. Fuji looming in the background, that was a nice shot. A lot of what really worked for me in this was the aesthetic choices, a lineup of excellent needledrops over emotive wordless scenes, neon lights passing by in the car window's reflection, cool blue indoor pools, Scarlett looking pensively out over the city, lots of stuff that could come off like corny navel-gazing but it's done so well and does a great job wordlessly developing the leads and making Japan itself an important character in a way that, you know, mocking the height of their shower-heads does not. The Alone In Kyoto sequence was great. And this scene in particular - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec9jY9kPIp4 is the key scene of the movie to me. It's just kinda magical.

8/10
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Seginustemple posted...

Check out how dated the trailer feels already

i was fully expecting the voiceover guy - "In a time..."

the text on the screen is pretty much that though. "Bob is an actor" and then immediately includes scenes where that's obvious (including the one right before the text) lol

Seginustemple posted...

Some of you mentioned it was more believable as a friendship than a romance and I'd agree with that.

the kiss at the end wasn't originally in the script and was improvised. when i first watched it, i was fully expecting a full-blown affair and was a bit surprised that the kiss at the end was all that came of it. i took it as them restraining themselves since they knew their time was limited and just letting go a little bit at the end.

watching it now, it does seem like we aren't shown as many scenes in a romantic context. it's not a long film and they don't even meet each other until like 30 minutes in. also considering that the amount of time they have together isn't that long, i guess it's more like a emotional "soulmate" situation where their connection and bonding is amplified by the isolation and just didn't have the time to progress to the physical intimacy part.

Seginustemple posted...

I kinda roll my eyes at

was pretty much my reaction for those scenes. i did cringe during the sushi scene though because it was the first time the character just did it on his own. Charlotte at one point asks, "Why do they switch the l's and r's here?" which i think reveals the mindset. it's not that l's and r's are being "switched" but that they don't exist in Japanese. like the letter 'r' has no equivalent character. there's a character which sounds like it, but it is not the same. that's what's lost in translation. she's thinking about it in context of English letters and "well that's how they speak English here" not "these people are speaking in a language that doesn't have the same rules as their native language making it appear a certain way to me because I can't speak theirs and we need to communicate"

Fargo (1996)

First time seeing Fargo. I heard a lot about it but just never got around to watching it. I didn't know any of the plot points other than it's a murder mystery movie and considered a "dark" comedy with some familiar faces.

This movie was pretty fucked up and if it is a true story, why? Unless I missed it, I don't think we ever get a definitive answer on why Jerry needed the money. I assumed he owed someone but why? And holy shit, the location of this movie is so boring. I would hate to live there. Everyone just looked funny-looking, too. And that accent, yeah? Yeah.

Jerry is such a piece of shit. He pretty much kills everyone even though he didn't kill anyone. Just goes to show how a shitty plan can go completely sideways, and for what? Yeah. What I got out of this is how one should treat and love their wife/lover with Jerry/Jean and Marge/Norm. Jean deserved better. Three Billboards is one of the best movies I've seen in the past few years, and Frances McDormand is great in this, too. Steve Buscemi pretty much was what I was expecting, slimy old dude. But I don't think I laughed once throughout this film. Don't think I'd want to watch it again either, BUT I am interested in the TV show. Heard it's a prequel?

6/10, yeah.

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SwiftyDC posted...

Heard it's a prequel?

they are not directly related iirc, just similar style since it's an adaptation.

a while back when i was looking for possible answers for the question i had for Lost in Translation, i came across this. it's a 30-min. BTS feature on the Blu-Ray where they go over the making-of.

I actually own the BR and never knew about this (the inconvenience of physical media...). i love shit like this

https://youtu.be/PA2XTJGfo4A

SwiftyDC posted...

This movie was pretty fucked up and if it is a true story, why?

Fargo is not in any way based on a true story. They put a fake disclaimer at the beginning to make it seem more believable.
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Are there five movies with the exact same name that are available on streaming platforms? Asking for a friend, totally not an idea floating around for my nomination...

Most I've found is four.

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Camden posted...

Are there five movies with the exact same name that are available on streaming platforms? Asking for a friend, totally not an idea floating around for my nomination...

Most I've found is four.

I know there's 3 movies titled Escape Room

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I actually think Fargo has aged really well because of the series. Its built this nice anthology vibe to it

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Willy's Wonderland

I mean everybody else was watching it and I already downloaded it thinking it would likely win, so I figured why not. Still gonna watch Fargo this week but I've already watched it like 5 times before, it's one of my favorite movies.

This was dumb. And, like, I get that it was supposed to be dumb, but this actually kinda made me mad how dumb it was. I can't really explain that feeling. Like, it wasn't scary, but it wasn't really supposed to be? But it also wasn't funny enough to be a proper horror comedy. It fell into really stupid tropes like the one black character acting like a total stereotype and the stupid couple sneaking off to have sex when they literally already knew the things were alive and then SEEING it in the room and waving it off despite already having known it was alive. Seriously, no decision anyone made throughout any of this movie made even a little bit of sense.

I'm all for goofy over-the-top nonsense (I LOVED Cage's other recent film Mandy and was hoping for something on par with that) but there's a limit. There has to be some bit of sense to be made of any of it, because otherwise it's just kind of all just bullshit happening without reason. You can't care about any of the characters because most of them are just blank fodder to be killed off. The only character with a personality is Cage, who is silent and also nonsensical in his actions. Like if you're going to kill the animatronics anyway, why not just do that? Why wait until they're already mid-kill?

Also the sound editing was really wonky; I didn't really dig most of the music and it sounded way louder than scenes called for, often coming across as weirdly jarring. Sound effects were similarly inconsistent volumes. The ending even feels a little icky, with Liz getting in the car and taking the drink offered by the strange old man. Was that a happy ending? What even is that?

also my girlfriend called it the worst movie she'd ever seen.

2/10

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Fargo was like watching a whole new movie after having not seen it for so long. I was getting the first season mixed up with it and was expecting things to happen that never ended up happening. Still love the movie and it's still a 10/10 for me, even if there were no dragons to be found in this one.

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45 Years

I must have been in the right mood because this one got to me. Charlotte Rampling has this callous exterior with just enough vulnerability to affect a lot of pathos when it shows. Tom Courtenay is stuck simping for a corpse in a glacier *ahem* glassier but he's just too sweet to fault him for it. I think the baby reveal needlessly absolves his character and stretches belief a bit, though. I know lots of movies about relationships ask us to suspend disbelief about miscommunication (fair enough, I guess you gotta have a plot somehow) but this one's really sneaking in the premise that not only did this never come up but old gal never even checked those photos in the attic for 45 years. I mean you gotta be kicking yourself to have had the evidence in the house half a century without knowing!

But I don't think it's really a problem. I'll quote a review from criticker user VinegarBob - "To criticise this film on the basis of the plot contrivance the events are centred around is to miss the point. This is a precisely crafted character study of an urbane woman driven to inarticulate rage over the accumulation of a thousand tiny injustices." and that's exactly what worked for me about it. It stuck to its lane and felt emotionally real by way of a great lead performance. This isn't a movie I'd be keen on re-watching but I'm glad I saw it once.

8/10
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Tag. Man, these two-three weeks have been busy for me due to this digital marketing course I'm in. Will try to watch Lost in Translation today.

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Fargo

So, uh, I've got this one on DVD. Bought it at my local library for $2 before the pandemic. However, I just now watched it for the first time. As you may have guessed, I often procrastinate on watching movies. Anywho...

I loved how it was such a tight script that really didn't want to take a lot of your time. There were certainly some quieter and slower moments and plenty of things had nothing to do with the main plot at all, but it never felt out of place. Sure, it's a crime thriller of sorts, but it's also an examination of these quirky characters and how they all handle various (dark) situations. If this was a Tarantino crime thriller it'd have been an hour longer and we'd have a lengthy scene sexualizing Frances McDormand's feet, doncha know. As a Coen brothers film, though, it just tells a simple, straight forward story in a neat little package.

8/10, would watch again, tell your friends, three-cent stamp.

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Sound of Metal

So I did post about this movie before but deleted my post because maybe I was thinking a little too hard about it. I found some parts very great - Riz Ahmed, the sound design used to portray what he was going through, some of the lighter moments while he was learning to deal with his newfound deafness. However I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something deeply wrong with what I was watching. I really felt like the character had found himself dragged into a cult-like setting and that we as the audience were just supposed to be okay with that. Since someone else mentioned that they got the same vibe, though, I wanted to go ahead and talk about it. It is highly unusual for a counsellor to suggest an addict in recovery ends a romantic relationship unless it's clear that the partner is only helping to feed the addict's behavior. Not only was he separated from his romantic partner and only real connection in the world he was forced to. He was given no choice, and even checking up on her seemed to be prohibited as he snuck in to use the computer during one scene. I know that this was supposed to be an all deaf community and that they nay have their reasons for wanting to keep it that way, but it is an eerie cultish thing to do to force someone to cut off all ties to anyone now in the group. And when he does try to reconnect with the outside world his is met with banishment. A simple goodbye, don't ever come back, you don't belong here. Yet not once does the movie even question any of this. My initial score for the movie was quite good, but the more I thought about it, the more it ate at me. There's even something someone else pointed out in their review - even though he went into his situation clearly in the position of a staunch secularist, by the end he seems to be at peace in the presence of an old church, as if to say he escaped one cultish group only to find himself seeking out another. Yet the movie never tries to address this issue. It simply put is out there like all of these things were just normal. I put the blame for this on the writer/director who clearly showed his inexperience in film making for not doing something, anything, more with this. By having the main character so quickly turn from resisting the separation from his girlfriend to almost completely accepting it as just normal all of the tension and drama that was promised early in the movie is deflated and the balloon is left empty. Acceptance is a part of recovery for addicts, not the end all be all. And again, the movie just does nothing with what it had. It didn't need to be turned into a Jordan Peele movie, but it could have been something. Instead it's just fluff, matress filler.

4/10

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Fargo

9/10 oh jeez

Third favorite Coen brothers film! Actually bumped my rating of this by 1-point from the last time I watched it. Dunno if it's because I'm riding high off of just seeing the TV show for the first time or what. But I've really grown to love the general atmosphere of a deep-winter Minnesota.

It's frankly just entertaining to watch criminals suck at being criminals while a competent law enforcer hunts them down. The script also seems to me like the Platonic ideal of a Coen brothers' script. Fairly tight story, except for the odd Yanagita scenes that always seemed out of place to me.

Soundtrack slaps btw.

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Dammit.

I appear to have been an idiot and the Fargo that is on Hulu is the tv series, not the movie. I could've sworn I checked to make sure it was the movie, but I must've made a mistake. Welp. I have a DVD copy of this film, so maybe I can try to find that tonight.

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have you seen it before?

Seems like a lot of us got busy around the same time. I can rate Fargo now as a 9/10 and say it's one of the Coen Brothers' best movies, behind only No Country For Old Men imo. The whole cast is great, but William H Macy especially so, I think.

I still plan to watch Lost in Translation, and 45 years again before I rate/review it.

Seginustemple posted...

glacier *ahem* glassier

( )

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kateee posted...

have you seen it before?

Yep but I was hoping to rewatch it anyway because I quite enjoyed it. My pre-rewatch rating would be a 9/10 but I was curious if I'd feel different now after a rewatch.

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jcgamer107 posted...

The whole cast is great, but William H Macy especially so, I think.

to this day it still upsets me he lost Best Supporting Actor

hell, it upsets me he was even nominated for Best Supporting Actor and not just Best Actor despite probably having the most screentime of any character

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Oh wow, Nicholas Cage won an Oscar. And another movie I have not seen.

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Seginustemple posted...

45 Years

not only did this never come up but old gal never even checked those photos in the attic for 45 years.

they definitely discussed the girl before. if you're just referring to the pictures existing then yeah i guess that's a little strange. i guess it's plausible that she never pressed him on it when it was mentioned earlier on in their relationship because she only knew that it was a traumatic event so she never knew the full details. but yeah it's whatever.

ChichiriMuyo posted...

Sound of Metal

I really felt like the character had found himself dragged into a cult-like setting and that we as the audience were just supposed to be okay with that.

this isn't the first time something like this is mentioned here but for the people it came off that way for, i can't imagine that was intentional.

@Suprak_the_Stud btw it issssss your turn to recommend!

I think I'm below the 50% threshhold so I'm not sure if it is fair for me to recommend? I can if you want but I haven't re-watched Fargo yet!

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no i specifically asked you whether you had already seen it since that counts

you do not need to rewatch for it to count.

more than anything the watch rate requirement is there in cases where someone was like only interested in choosing the movie but never being involved with anything else

also i didn't think about this in the beginning but the incentive for procrastinators doesn't hurt either lol

kateee posted...

this isn't the first time something like this is mentioned here but for the people it came off that way for, i can't imagine that was intentional.

I'm sure it wasn't. One of my key complaints is that the writer/director seems so lacking in awareness of what he was doing. Unintentionally or not he wrote a story that has very deeply unsettling undertones and did nothing to address it. If the movie had made anyone other than the main character more than a 2d cutout that could have changed the whole vibe, but again the guy making it just didn't do anything with it. In my first impression of it I liked the movie, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that it's actually quite vapid. If not for Riz Ahmed's sheer talent the movie would have all the depth of a Michael Bay film.

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Oh cool. I can just pull from my "to watch" list. Then my five recommendations are:

Dolemite Is My Name
Marriage Story
Okja
Hell Or High Water
Hunt For The Wilderpeople

First three on Netflix, bottom two on Hulu.

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My vote:
Hunt for the Wilderpeople

I would rank-list all of them, but I want to see this movie an order of magnitude more than the others.

Also for the time being we can tally up Lost In Translation as watched for me, but that was 16 years ago so a rewatch is probably in order. Like Fargo, I own it on DVD. So possibly soonish?

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Hunt for the Wilderpeople

It was a movie I was going to nominate.

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Vote for any and all movies you would be interested in seeing for the next week (~Feb. 19th, NA). The movie with the most overall votes wins. You may rank your votes from most preferred to least (do not rank movies you would not vote for) so I don't have to @ you back in case of a tie. If you do not intend to vote and are fine with whatever wins, please reply with "No Vote" so there is as little of a waiting period as possible. If you list multiple movies in your vote but you are not ranking them, please include "Not Ranked" along with your vote (I will assume they are ranked otherwise). Please vote by Friday, Feb. 19th, 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)
Marriage Story (2019)
Okja (2017)
Hell Or High Water (2016)
Hunt For The Wilderpeople (2016)

@Aecioo
@Camden
@CoolCly
@iiicon
@jcgamer107
@Johnbobb
@Raka_Putra
@Seginustemple
@Snake5555555555

@tyder21
@ViolentAbacus
@Xeybozn

Hell Or High Water
Marriage Story
Hunt For The Wilderpeople

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Hunt For The Wilderpeople (2016)
Dolemite Is My Name (2019)


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Marriage Story (2019)
Okja (2017)
Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

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Lost in Translation - 6/10

The acting is great and the connection/relationship between Bill Murray and ScarJo feels genuine and endearing enough. However it feels too long for too little development. Well, it is a slow burn kinda movie, I suppose, but just not one I really enjoy. The way Japan is presented here is kinda cringey and overblown that it was hard to watch at times for me (I get bad secondhand embarrassment). Or perhaps I was not in the mood for love. Oh well.

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