Board 8 > ~ BCT's Epic 169 Movie Watch-Through (mostly '00s): Topic 1 [THE LIST] ~

(+) Yeah! (+)

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Written and directed by: George Lucas
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Frank Oz, Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson, Christopher Lee
Previous status: Don't recall

"It's over, Anakin! I have the high ground!"

I don't really have much to say that I didn't already say about AotC, since it's really no different with the way it was made. I do have a few things to add, though:
-The acting in this one feels so much more uneven. Multiple times, Hayden Christensen didn't feel convincing. Natalie Portman also had a couple points where I didn't find her reacting realistically, but others she was great.
-This one was lacking in comic relief. I think it's supposed to be that way, because this is the "turning point" of the story, where the bad guys take the lead.
-The Sith are really cool, but indisputably evil. The Jedi are just glorified space knights. I can see why Ani would turn on them. That and he doesn't want to give up his wife. But that's no excuse to murder children senselessly. I'd side with the good guys here. The Jedi weren't trying to overthrown the Senate. They were trying to stop Sidious from infecting it!
-Palpatine is a master manipulator. He knew exactly how to get to Anakin. He knew exactly to get what he wanted. It all went according to plan, and he utilized whatever variables arose (including the eloping in Italy thing) to the fullest.
-The most likable characters here are Yoda and Padme. Palpatine and Ani are both fascinating and well-developed. Windu was very much under-utilized and is easily one of the least inspired roles I've seen Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson in, but it's a testament to his abilities as an actor - he can sell someone stoic despite being pretty animated most of the time.
-Padme dying felt forced, but I guess it's because she lost her husband to the Dark Side. She died knowing that there was still good in him, which their son would bring back out.

RotS is most certainly an improvement over the first two. I can't say I'll go back to it often, in large part because it requires watching those first. This one on its own gets a 4, because it has actual character development, some memorable quotes, some good moments, and actual stakes.

By the way... I don't know what is with Disney+ and low volume, but that definitely had something to do with certain parts not working for me.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

no Star Wars movie has been made explicitly for fans

Nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans. The Force Awakens is too "samey" to the original trilogy? Okay, we'll make something different. What do you mean, The Last Jedi is "too different" than the others? WHAT DO YOU WANT? Oftentimes it's the same people just finding something to whine about. Me? I thought TFA was good, but did feel too redundant of the originals - not that there's an inherent problem with that. But I really thought TLJ was entertaining, and that's why I watch a Star Wars movie: To be entertained. All the story needs to do is make sense.

I'd say - the ones I've seen only:
The Phantom Menace: 2.5/5
Attack of the Clones: 2.5/5
Revenge of the Sith: 4/5
Rogue One: 4/5
A New Hope: 4/5
The Empire Strikes Back: 5/5
Return of the Jedi: 4/5
The Force Awakens: 3.5/5
The Last Jedi: 4/5
Rise of Skywalker: 2/5

5 > 4 > 8 > 6 = R1 > 3 > 7 > 2 > 1 > 9

Rise of Skywalker is really the only one I find fundamentally terrible. It was a sloppy, rushed product, without much justification into actions, with too much time devoted to action sequences that the other films didn't already do better. Carrie Fisher's passing (RIP) really did a number on the plan, but they could've made something grander. It was unfortunate to see Rose get Purpled. The destruction of Kijimi made zero sense; what strategic benefit did doing that offer? Zorii surviving was just "miraculous twist of fate, because she should" and nothing logical. I also was hoping that Rey and Kylo would switch sides with each other, only for Rey to have done so as an act. And while the scene where she skewers Palpatine with the spirits of the Jedi is awesome, the scene of her burying the light sabers on Tatooine is just weird. I'm with J.J. Abrams that the movie should've been delayed so he could have time to craft a proper narrative to justify the fun stuff, but.... the COVID would've prevented a theatrical release.

Also there's just too much Star Wars now, and that's why I don't really care to get too much into it. I wish it was more like James Bond and they made a new movie every few years and that was it. But Disney is squeezing the udders... sigh.

So yeah, tangent aside, I enjoyed this one more than the first two. That's good enough for me.

Well, was in lockdown all afternoon due to the Canadian Miasma returning. Could not go outside, so I decide... why not watch one of the longest movies on THE LIST? Namely, a certain two-parter I was eager to see.

Kill Bill (2003-04)
Written and directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, Darryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, Vivica A. Fox, Julie Dreyfus
Previous status: Clips only

"Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with samurai swords."

This was a four-hour trip, that's for sure. There were highs, there were lows, but the satisfaction was most certainly in the swordplay and kick-assery, not in the actual plot. The plot is pretty one-dimensional - The Bride wants revenge on the people who killed her groom-to-be, her friends, and the witnesses (which included a Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson cameo that flew by me, since the black and white threw me). Tarantino really used his friends to the fullest here, and anyone else who was along for the ride.

The best fight sequence was easily at the end of Volume 1, when The Bride takes on 80ish yakuza thugs at once (after taking out a few others already) and still manages to win (appears that took eight weeks to film, because Tarantino realized just how great it was). Sure, most of the survivors lost an arm or part of a leg, and I'm not sure what was a worse fate for someone Japanese. Traditionally, the samurai would rather die, as Lucy Liu alludes to with the above quote. Japan is big on the honor and Tarantino put a lot of effort into depicting the culture accurately; the only issue I saw was that Gogo was driving on the wrong side of the car for Japan (Sofie, on the other hand, was not - and The Bride actually showed her some mercy as a pawn). Lucy Liu's character Oren Ishii overtaking the yakuza was just BOSS. And how she beheaded a guy who dare mock her was just as cool as I remembered. She commanded an army of rats, which The Bride took care of with her Hanzo steel easily. He had one hell of a reputation, obviously.

There's humor to be found here alongside the badass fight choreography. "My name's Buck, and I'm here to fuck." for instance, when him and his creepo buddy enjoyed raping The Bride in her coma. Both of them got what they deserved. A lot of these people got what they deserved. That said, like Eyeless Elle said about The Bride, "she deserved better than to be bested" by Budd, who also had a lame death. Eyeless Elle also gave Pai Mei a weird comeuppance, for being a racist, sexist prick (I also did not believe his age.... or Vivica's kid, for that matter. BB was closer, but was still obviously 6 y/o, not 4). Eyeless Elle, however, got an amusing comeuppance, with her second eye being plucked out and her looking everywhere for anything, not knowing what to do, as her snake friend slithered toward her. Delicious.

I do gotta say that the best part was the use of lighting and black and white effects during the fight sequences (which helped make the yakuza brawl even better), plus a little split screen in the trailer (that fight was great, too - the self-swirly was hilarious). That made them more memorable and gripping. The Matrix rip-off parts were fine - a fad of the time, since. The use of anime/manga style cut-ins in the Japanese sequences was great. The Bride is a great character - well-rounded and as perfect of an assassin as you can get, but not without weaknesses or traumas. For example, she underestimated Budd, who, opposite of Oren, was hard to find but easy to kill... she just needed to be sneakier than barging in through his trailer door.

Bill was interesting as a villain in that he was unseen for all of Vol. 1, then in Vol. 2 he just shows up right away and we're presumed to know him. He's smarmy, but not a horrible person. He admits he overreacted while The Bride is under the truth serum, where she admits the truth about leaving was for the sake of her unborn daughter. Why didn't he just ask her back then? Seriously. No reason to kill everyone. NONE.

My issue with Volume 2 was that it was a lot talkier than the first, which put more emphasis on badassery; the training montage with Pai Mei felt unnecessarily long as well since it didn't offer as much development as others I've seen. Still, I don't see how Tarantino could've cut four hours into two and a half, possibly even less since [REDACTED] suggested that he split it into two two-hour affairs. It works best as a single entity, and that's why I'm glad I watched them back-to-back.

That said, the ending was kind of disappointing. She hardly even fights Bill, and he just keels over. The end. She got her wish, but was it satisfying for her? But hey, at least her daughter got to come with her. That's a good thing (not sure how the guns didn't wake the kid, though).

Vol 1: 5/5, gold
Vol 2: 4/5

More soon!

Snakes on a Plane (2006)
Directed by: David R. Ellis
Written by: John Heffernan, David Dalessandro, Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring: Samuel L. Father Mucking Jackson, Julianna Margulies, Nathan Phillips, Rachel Blanchard, Flex Alexander, Kenan Thompson, Todd Louiso, Sunny Mabrey
Previous status: Last seen 2020ish

"Enough is enough! I have HAD it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!"

You probably saw this coming if you saw my topic from the other day (it was going to be that night, but then I started feeling ill - so why not do something light as I get better?). That "TV version" quote describes this movie perfectly: It's so absurd and ridiculous that it's hard to not find it funny. The absurdist humor of this very idea is why it was a meme here and at other Internets. This is also why it takes me back when I first came to the land of GameFAQs...

This is what Samuel L. Jackson saw in the script. You can tell he's having fun with just how ridiculous and unrealistic this is, hamming it up while still behaving as a believable FBI agent. He's the big star - there are really only three major characters and everybody else is minor. Jackson's Agent Neville Flynn is a badass, immediately establishing it by shielding Sean Jones (Phillips) from crime lord Eddie Kim's goons, as Sean had seen Eddie bludgeon the LA District Attorney to death while the victim was vacationing in Hawaii. Then there's flight attendant and law school student Claire (Margulies), who seems to take the lead of the crew after the womanizer pilot dies. Unfortunately, there's not much backstory for her aside from her starting law school, and I think it would've been nice to give her at least something more. With Sean, we know he's a surfer and dirtbiker, thrust into a situation he didn't want to be in. We got a lot about Flynn's character and how he's been hardened, though a couple sentences about why he became an FBI agent would've been nice.

But honestly, victim-fests such as this aren't meant to have character development. Really, nobody else here needs it. Just those three. The rest have personalities that are easily definable. Dickwad, some pompous British arse, is as his name implies, shown to be the worst when he throws socialite Mercedes' emotional support dog to the snakes as bait before being eaten alive himself. He deserved it. Really, though, that one and the one when flight attendant Ken put a coral snake in the microwave to blow it up.

Speaking of blowing up, why didn't Eddie Kim's goons just put a bomb on the plane after the dogs left? That would have been remarkably more effective, cheaper, and easier. How did they smuggle the snakes into the plane anyway? There's more than just a couple guys working on an airport tarmac, so one would've thought they'd get seen. It's this line of questioning that furthers the ridiculousness of the premise. You gotta keep in mind that this is 2006; there's no way this movie would've been set today, because, to avoid taking chances, Sean would've recorded a video testimony and been placed under federal protection until the sentence was delivered. What's amazing, however, is that an early smartphone makes an appearance - Mercedes' Blackberry is used to take pictures of the snakes to email to the LA FBI crew. Amazed at how this plane had Wi-Fi back then. Or maybe that was just meant to be absurd too. Dickwad somehow didn't seem impressed, though.

We don't get a real proper ending, aside from Tiffany, the flight attendant who'd been flirting with Sean the entire time, writing her number on Sean's hand, Flynn asking Claire to dinner as a "thank you" (obviously, it's actually to see where things go), and.... well that's about it. Sean takes Flynn surfing in Bali and then the movie just ends. We don't get a minute devoted to one of them talking about Eddie Kim being found guilty or anything to put a bow on it - but he obviously was convicted and sentenced to death. The snake oil salesman was also likely shut down for good, but whatever.

There's really not much more to be said about this movie. It's not worthy of any awards. It's nothing that transcends time. It's just ridiculous fun in the moment, the kind of thing that spawns memes and is then forgotten about. There's nothing wrong with that since this movie accomplished what it set out to do. It's something just meant to be enjoyed as you watch it. And that's when movies shine. Too bad I'm not really buzzing after it, but can't win 'em all. I think a 4/5 feels right.

For me, Snakes on a Plane is one of those films where it's fun in the moment, but the reality of it may not compare to your imagination when you hear the title.

4/5 definitely feels generous to me but glad you enjoyed it.

I will say that was a fun one to be working in a movie theater for. We would just yell "Snakes on a plane" across the lobby from time to time. We'd get a laugh whenever someone asked what the movie was about. And I even took home the movie poster because it was fun.

GavsEvans123 posted...

For me, Snakes on a Plane is one of those films where it's fun in the moment, but the reality of it may not compare to your imagination when you hear the title.

Yeah, you think it's going to be even more over-the-top than it ultimately is, but it's still silly fun. And that's what matters here.

Maniac64 posted...

4/5 definitely feels generous to me but glad you enjoyed it.

I will say that was a fun one to be working in a movie theater for. We would just yell "Snakes on a plane" across the lobby from time to time. We'd get a laugh whenever someone asked what the movie was about. And I even took home the movie poster because it was fun.

Part of how I rate movies is based on what they set out to do. If this was meant to be a serious action thriller, I would have given it a 3. But it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. Samuel L. Jackson was aware of this - he was having fun.

And you were, too, it sounds. That movie theater running joke sounds hilarious. And, well, ppl r dum, so even with an obvious title, they ask what it's about. It's about the same kind of obvious as "Do you work here?"

Or my favorite dumb question in concessions: "Do you sell popcorn?" While the giant popcorn machine is running behind me, popcorn is in the glass case next to the register, and popcorn is all over the menu.

Maniac64 posted...

Or my favorite dumb question in concessions: "Do you sell popcorn?"

"I don't know, is water wet?"

P. S. I keep getting tied up with things. Haven't been able to sit down and watch. Hopefully in the next few days!

So I was at the library the other day and decided to see what they had, and this is what I picked up....

Dune: Part One (2021)
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
Written by: Frank Herbert; adapted by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth
Starring: Timothe Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgard, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista
Previous status: Never seen

"I see you found the mood."

That quote - from Brolin - spoke to me, because I hadn't felt "in the mood" to watch movies for a while. And I thought the library might get me jumpstarted again. It did, at least for now. Really, that's some cast list.

That said, I found the first hour of the movie to be way too long, with too much exposition that didn't exactly feel relevant, and too much scenery porn for my liking. Sure, the movie deserved its Oscars for visual effects and production design, but this felt like too much exposition. The first major plot point took place an hour into the movie, when Paul inhales the "spice" - everything before that was setup, and it started to get tiresome. I found myself distracted.

There's also the villains' cliche appearance, clearly ripping off of Voldemort, with the Baron having the gluttony thing. They didn't make an effort to hide that. Yes, I know the book was originally written in the 1960s, but that doesn't change that this modern lens clearly ripped things off from other successful franchises. In fact, it almost felt like "The Voice" - a Bene Gesserit power - was a Jedi mind trick, and Paul fulfilled the prophecy to bring balance to The Force. Perhaps this is why Dune was adapted into a movie in 1984 and was done so again in 2000 and now - to make $$$ off the Star Wars trilogies despite its sheer lack of alien species. Everyone here is some kind of human, though each race has its own powers and benefits. Perhaps this was something that inspired George Lucas to do it better for cinematic purposes.

And this is what leads me to argue that Star Wars is better for the silver screen and Dune is better as a novel, with many things left in the mind of the reader. There's more pages for exposition there. I have more patience for it when reading or when gaming. It's all about the medium you're using. Something like Star Wars is too surface-level to work as a deep novel, while something like Dune benefits from descriptions, lore, and exposition, to immerse the reader in its world. While this movie was visually dazzling, I found it hard to care about the characters and the world because it was too stripped down and yet I felt like I was supposed to understand the lore when all that went by really fast. To adapt a tome like Dune into a movie, you need to strip it down somewhat. Don't take out things like Jason Momoa's self-sacrificing badassery or Dr. Kynes (Duncan-Brewster) outwitting the Clonetroopers, obviously. The sand worm stuff was all necessary and the thing looked like your standard sand worm except less skin around the "eye" to allow the "mouth" to open backward. Good job on the design team there.

While, yes, Zendaya is cute, the sword tech is neat (though I thought it was only used for sparring at first, as it looked like simulation), and the blue eye effects were very noticeable, I felt like I was thirsting to read the book as opposed to go see Part Two this fall. Too bad the library didn't have any copies of the original. The movie gets a lot of points for the visuals but given how elongated it is, I can't give it any more than a 3.5/5.

One of my favorite movies of the past half-decade! But I get what you mean, the movie IS all setup.

Oh yeah, regarding Star Wars, I find it pretty annoying how much people dismiss the sequel trilogy out-of-hand just because it overrides the "happy ending" of the original trilogy. Part of this may be bias since I don't think even before TFA came out I ever found Return of the Jedi's ending to feel particularly "final", but even taking that into account I felt that the sequel trilogy at least provides a better explanation for why things went to hell than something like Alien 3 or Terminator 3 for example! Plus even if that explanation just amounts to "government is stupid"...is that really THAT hard to buy after a whole prequel trilogy showing that? Or heck, given real-life events? Really I could go on, but the Star Wars fandom is such unbelievable filth by this point.

Actually I will go on for now. Star Wars came to mind again due to the in-progress commercial failure of the new Indiana Jones movie, specifically how I was feeling like that movie simultaneously distanced itself too much from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to excite people who were still on board with the franchise while not distancing itself enough from it to win over those skeptical. That made me think that for all that went wrong with the sequel trilogy, it at least did a good job of distancing the franchise from the prequel era and from George Lucas more generally (and as someone who always thought Lucas got too much hate, at least regarding people re-evaluating his contributions to the original trilogy, I say good riddance to him because Star Wars is so huge it shouldn't be burdened by association with one guy) by comparison with the new Indiana Jones movie. The even dumber thing is that when I saw The Last Jedi with family, it just came off to me as another Star Wars movie and I didn't see much to get excited or mad about and didn't understand what expectations were being subverted - if anything I seemed to notice the parallels with the original trilogy more than I did with Abrams's films (this might have been because I just re-watched the original trilogy). It wasn't until I watched Knives Out that I understood Johnson's subversive intent with TLJ, and the more I think about what TLJ was trying to do the more I appreciate it - but the execution still came off to me as not so much bad as just lazy and if anything overly reverent.

And on the topic of Lucasfilm and Indiana Jones...while I do think Kathleen Kennedy is absolutely the individual most to blame for the state of the company and Star Wars franchise overall, the big thing with her is that George Lucas didn't really have much in the way of close business associates after about the '80s so he was kind of setting up whoever succeeded him as head of Lucasfilm to "fail" in this department. Lucas probably picked Kennedy because they had just worked together on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and he just wanted to get the whole thing over with. And then the new Indiana Jones movie was announced in 2019, before Rise of Skywalker's release, and initially set for release in 2021 before the pandemic and production troubles led to a two-year delay. Wow this situation is so frustrating, and what doesn't help is the consistently appalling conduct displayed by many a Star Wars fan online - the kind of thing that would get them labelled loonies in public.

But then again, I'm the kind of guy who feels like Anakin's characterization in the prequel trilogy undermines Luke seeing the good in Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi more than Luke's characterization in the sequel trilogy does. Side note: boy does it seem easy to corrupt people to the Dark Side of The Force in the franchise or what? In hindsight, that Luke held it off for so long is nothing short of miraculous.

Just haven't felt like doing anything for this. Will fix that soon, probably after the holiday

Apologies, once again. Been busy AF and am finally going to have time this weekend for both this and FFXIII.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
Written and Directed By: Paul W.S. Anderson
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Iain Glen, Ali Larter, Shawn Roberts
Previous status: Never seen

"You're ALL going to die down here."

Meh. I found this one hard to watch - not because of anything to do with the plot, but because of the jarring lighting effects and dizzying editing. Thankfully this is the 2D version - the 3D version would've made me sick. It still wasn't that fun even if there were still some pretty awesome moments.

I also don't like how the last film was rendered pretty much irrelevant, with no explanation for where Jill, Ada, and Leon all went. You would think the three of them + Chris + K-Mart + whoever else was still alive would return for the most part for a final chapter, not too dissimilar from No Time to Die. Yes, a few of them would have been killed off, but they would have gotten epic sendoffs, leaving just a few at the endgame. At the VERY least, we got Claire back, and she survived just fine. But it would've given more emotional weight to have people you already knew from prior affairs be the ones killed off instead of newbies whose names I don't even remember, save for Razor. They certainly didn't do a good job of introducing them.

Sadly, Alice survived too, because of course Paul W.S. Anderson just HAD to let his wife's character live. Yes, the twist was great - even if her saying she doesn't remember anything before the mansion made me go "Hmmm..." - but it felt like she was meant to die there, and only survived because the director wanted her to. It made for a really dumb ending. And then she magically inherited the memories of her "mother" - the original Alice, Alicia Marcus, daughter of the Umbrella founder and current co-owner alongside Dr. Isaacs (I really wish someone would've called Alice "REPLICA!" lol). She had deployed the Red Queen - who was ALSO a clone of her (and played by Anderson and Jovovich's daughter) - to get Alice to release the antivirus. It all felt very contrived and was ultimately unsatisfying. It would have been better had Claire been the only survivor, with her having to find someone new to breed with seeing as she killed her rat of a boyfriend. Obvious traitor became obvious - Alice figured it out for the same reason I did: That he wasn't killed by the booby-traps. Honestly, the betrayal should've been revealed before everyone else was dead.

Aside from the twist (something which none of the prior movies really touched on), Wesker getting fired, and the final boss fight with Dr. Isaacs, most of this was lame. Too many plotlines weren't explored, and it felt like it ended just because the series needed to end since it had run out of steam two movies earlier. Really, the whole series would've benefited from being shorter, without cliffhanger endings. Because by the time you get to this one, you're just tired of it, you're tired of Alice, and you're tired of the redundancies. So for this one, I'll have to give it a 2/5 - and I think it's the worst one in the franchise. Something like 2 > 3 > 5 > 4 > 1 > 6. Maybe I underrated 1 tbh.

@GavsEvans123 you get a new nomination, finally, if you'd like one.

I definitely think that is underrating 1

When I marathoned the whole series myself (I had watched the first three before, but the marathon was the first time I'd watched 4-6), I was flagging by this point too. The line of dialogue early on that there are only 5000 people left alive on the planet stuck out to me, and I spent the rest of the film while watching it counting down from 5000 whenever someone died. 2 is my favourite as well.

I took a look at the list, and the cast list for The Scorned made me laugh, so I was tempted to nominate that, but as Christmas is coming, I'll get into the festive spirit and nominate Love Actually instead. I will soon give you the gift of being able to understand all those hot take "Well ackshually, Love Actually sucks" articles that get churned out annually! Kind of a rubbish gift really, considering that hot take is now so overdone that it's positively glacial.

You want to see a real Love Actually hot take? Check this out!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/92bea945.jpg

Should get to watch one on Thursday.

I need to get my life back in order. Badly.

btw I did watch Die Hard, a holiday classic, on Thursday night but had numerous interruptions - including Mafia and watching that rather heartbreaking volleyball game - and thus didn't finish until after midnight. And then I never got around to posting anything.

I also didn't feel like a write-up would do its greatness justice. Like, let's go over things it does well:

1. Its setting, Nakatomi Plaza, is a character of its own
2. The henchmen have names and identities, so they don't feel like generic thugs
3. John McClane is a hero that's mortal, yet very stubborn
4. Alan Rickman makes Hans Gruber an insanely good villain - such a Eurotrash prick
5. Has justifiable explanations for why situations end up the ways they do
6. The issues of trust keep getting examined - and there's multiple little storylines happening throughout, like the cowboy thing
7. Gives numerous characters a chance to shine, including that sleazeball Ellis getting himself killed and limo driver Argyle knocking Theo's lights out

There are also epic little moments like when McClane gives Gruber a gun and Gruber stupidly thinks McClane trusts him, when in reality that empty pistol was nothing more than a test of trust.

A damn shame that Die Hard 2 was so lame that the series stagnated. The third and fourth movies were pretty good though, but the first one is still by far the best because it does everything right.

EDIT: Obviously 5/5, gold, but you knew that already.

I'm at my parents so they decide what I watch. Last night was an annual favorite (Home Alone) but tonight's absolutely belongs on here. The write-up will be shorter since I'm mobile, but it's something.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Written by: Dr. Seuss, Peter Seaman, Jeffrey Price
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Jim Carrey, Taylor Momsen, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Baranski, Anthony Hopkins
Previous staus: Saw ages ago

"The audacy! The impudence! The unmitigated gall!"

Let's start with this: Jim Carrey is the only reason this movie works. Sometimes all it takes is a headliner putting in an all-star performance and magic is born. No other performance does anything even remotely similar; the closest is Jeffrey Tambor as Mayor Sleazeball, who humiliates the Grinch and incites the night of terror by reminding him of the childhood traumas incited by bullies led by the 8 y/o version of the mayor. But there's a major problem here: The Grinch is... not the bad guy? He's portrayed as a sympathetic victim of xenophobia who has to prove that it's unwarranted, and when he does, he gets laid and everyone lives sappily ever after. Except for the mayor, of course, who doesn't get his way and proves that's he's the real scrooge.

Cindy Lou has a nice expanded role here, but I feel like something is missing. Yes, the Grinch gets her out of a jam begrudgingly, and she's a grand example of the good that happens when we don't judge books by their covers, but I feel like they could have explained that better. She seems almost like a 6 y/o hopeless romantic and it only gets halfway to greatness. Or maybe it's the ridiculous hair, I don't know. Martha looks way better with her hair down, obviously.

The production design is wonderful here - and the Oscar for best makeup was absolutely warranted. But there's really not much else to say here. It was an expanded remake of a classic that still doesn't compare, but it still works due to Jim Carrey. That's really all there is to it. 3/5

I'm finally in the mend from having COVID. Might feel like writing a review again soon. Won't be able to tomorrow but maybe Monday!

Bump. Should watch soon. Haven't been feeling like myself :/

Saving this.

Winter depression is for shit. If someone wants to force me to watch something, pick one movie out from the list that I will watch tomorrow, PERIOD.

up

Thanks.

On vacation now. Haven't had the time or desire to watch something. Sorry about that.

Going to watch a few when I get home, but that's a few weeks off.

Saving this

One more week

bump

bump

Thanks for the bumps, Lasa.

I WILL get back to this very soon, I promise. I've just been stressed, and that tends to affect how I view movies.

If somebody wants to pick out a movie for me to watch ASAP, I will do it.

Sorry to hear youve been stressed BCT

how about you pick things back up with a true cinematic masterpiece

The Room directed by Tommy Wiseau

I can go pick that one up at the library on Saturday, or maybe go back to the used disc store now that it's back in action, though considerably smaller. I went, spent $11, and added three new, more recent Blu-Rays to the list: Wonder Woman (the first one, that's actually good), Paper Towns (love me some John Green), and American Sniper.

Thought Wonder Woman was decent myself.

Okay, FINALLY hoping to be back on track of this.

Thanks for the rec, @wallmasterz - here we go!

The Room (2003)
Written & Directed by: Tommy Wiseau
Starring: Tommy Wiseau, Juliette Danielle, Greg Sestero, Philip Hadiman, Carolyn Minnott
Previous status: Never seen

"Do you understand life? DO YOU?"

Seriously, what the hell did I just watch? This is like if there was some cross-breed between a porn movie, a soap opera, and r/AmITheAsshole... like that's how "out there" this is. And despite that, it's somehow both absolutely fantastic and genuinely terrible at the same time. VERY FEW movies manage to do SBIG right, but this is absolutely one of them, and it does belong in the conversation for "Best Worst Movie Ever Made" with the likes of Troll 2.

Let's just start with how bad the acting is. For the most part, everyone just cannot deliver lines in a way that feels like a real person would - actor/director/writer/producer/bossman Tommy Wiseau being the worst culprit as lead man Johnny, to the point I thought he'd been overdubbed early on. The exceptions are Sestero, who plays Johnny's best friend Mark who lives upstairs, and Robyn Paris, who plays Johnny's fiancee Lisa's best friend Michelle; these two somehow manage to deliver some of their lines brilliantly while sounding absolutely cringe in delivering others. It's amazing, honestly. But this type of acting are where I get the "porn movie" part from - along with all the fucking.

And there's a lot of that. Four actual sex scenes plus an oral quickie. None of the actual acts are shown, but for a 99-minute film, that's certainly a lot of fucking. Most movies I've seen so far that contain intercourse have had one or two sex scenes. This one also does have BOOBIES, which I know I have to mention because BOOBIES. But because Lisa is bored with her life with Johnny, she decides to start seducing Mark, who is reluctant to go along with it because he doesn't want to anger his best friend. Her mother doesn't like this because she sees Johnny as her son-in-law, the kind of guy that can provide for Lisa and protect her. And this leads to an interesting conversation about how you don't marry for love, you marry for economic reasons. Which is probably accurate, but that doesn't stop me from being picky. I certainly wouldn't want a skank like Lisa to pull shit like she does.

That shit includes lies that Johnny hit her and that her pregnancy test came back positive. She is just a nasty person through and through who is too afraid to tell her fiance the truth, something he feels she owes him. And let's be real: Dishonesty destroys relationships, and the worst cases end up like this. Sadly, in the end, Lisa and Mark's affair gets caught by some guy we don't know - apparently they had to replace Peter midway through the movie with another friend - and soon everybody knows about it, including Johnny. This leads to a physical altercation between Johnny and Mark and Johnny locking himself in the bathroom. Lisa decides to leave him and she calls Mark, not realizing that Johnny had tapped the phone with a tape recorder. He confronts her on her way out and she does not care. As I expected and feared, Johnny kills himself (though I'm not sure why he had the gun - if that drug dealer had possession of it, the cops would've confiscated it). Having heard the shot from upstairs, Mark and Lisa run down to find Johnny dead, and Johnny's semi-adopted college-age son Danny runs too to cry over his body as the police, most certainly summoned by another neighbor who heard the shot, arrive. Mark shuns Lisa and tells her to get lost, so because of her adulterous actions, she ends up with nothing except the guilt that she killed a man who loved her.

Needless to say, there were times I felt that this movie was satire of some kind, though I couldn't quite figure out what it was trying to make fun of, simply because of how many things get abandoned suddenly (Lisa's mom having cancer, Peter's character entirely, Johnny playing football in tuxedos with the groomsmen for no reason), and how Mark suddenly shaved without anyone noticing. There were just no actual direction here - it was all inside the head of someone seemingly insane, and boy do I relate to that. I have ideas that work so well but actually making the narrative coherent is more work than it seems, likely because of my own mood swings. I have felt betrayed numerous times, including when it wasn't there, and people seem to disappoint me too often - which is all a result of my own life experiences.

Honestly, this is just one of those movies I have no idea what to make of. Again, it's both great and awful at once - the ultimate in unintentional comedy. I'd thus give it a 3/5 - I might want to get it again, sure, but I'm not gonna go out of my way.

At any rate, this needs to go back to the library tomorrow. Or I could renew it if I don't get there. We shall see.

I did not expect you to actually watch The Room but that was a great write up!!

I've actually seen it. It gets everything so wrong it's glorious. Movie doesn't even have a decent rooftop set.

Have you read The Disaster Artist? Greg Sestero wrote it about his experience working on The Room, as well as how he and Tommy Wiseau met and became friends. It was my favourite book I read last year. I haven't seen the film adaptation, but I understand the film is more from Tommy's perspective than the book.

wallmasterz posted...

I did not expect you to actually watch The Room but that was a great write up!!

I mean, it's a drama presented as a black comedy. I kinda felt like... aw what the hell, this might be fun. And fun it was for all the wrong reasons.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

I've actually seen it. It gets everything so wrong it's glorious. Movie doesn't even have a decent rooftop set.

Yeah, that doesn't even look like an actual rooftop. Very much done on the cheap.

GavsEvans123 posted...

Have you read The Disaster Artist? Greg Sestero wrote it about his experience working on The Room, as well as how he and Tommy Wiseau met and became friends. It was my favourite book I read last year. I haven't seen the film adaptation, but I understand the film is more from Tommy's perspective than the book.

I haven't, but I was reading about that as I did that write-up. It sounds fascinating, and I definitely want to read it. May have to go to the library that has it to pick it up. (I have two libraries I go to when I need to; the larger one has it, the smaller one doesn't.)

The best part is Tommy had access to an actual rooftop.

up

Thanks Lasa

Will bump it myself this time, and will certainly get to a movie in the next few days now that cat sitting is done with. Sorry for the hold up!

I will second the nomination for reading The Disaster Artist. It's also probably the most anxiety-producing "I need to put this book down and walk away right now because WHAT THE FUCK WHY" things ever. At least four or five times I remember just needing to take a break and come back later. Also hilarious. Also dark. Also emotional. Also passionate. It's an incredible addition. Sestero delivers.