28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[MadMan]

Watched an oldie for the first time in a while.

Gene Hackman in The Hunting Party. Some bloody, mean Western movie that could only have gotten made in the 70s. It's horrible, but the sweet thing about the movie is that the main weapon is a long range rifle. The final scene is just two guys taking each other out with them to an overly bloody degree. Everyone dies.

Oh, and Candice Bergman is in it.

I want to see that now.

[Irish]

Gina Prince-Bythewood's Beyond the Lights is the kind of midlevel romance that would have been swallowed up by audiences two decades ago, but it seems like this film is more celebrated by critics only. And that's unfortunate. Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Nate Parker are both attractive and compelling leads; at times the script goes beat-by-beat through overt themes, but the quality of the leads overwhelms any of the predictability. It's more than competent as it's able to articulate a level of character intelligence that these films often neglect.

Surprisingly good, and the kind of film that will make visit Love and Basketball after ignoring it for so many years.

I feel like I got suckered on this one. Seemed like every critic on twitter talked it up to high heaven and when I saw it, it was just standard melodrama. Well formed melodrama with charismatic leads, but still.

It made me think the pro and semi pro critics out there have particularly weird and insular habits. Like they've spent their lives seeing nothing and reading nothing. Like the fucking Lego movie is experimental cinema for them, so Beyond the Lights seems fresh and exotic.

[Pop Trash]

Duke: what's with the dates on those Poltergeist movies in your sig? Am I missing something?

[Dukefrukem]

Duke: what's with the dates on those Poltergeist movies in your sig? Am I missing something?

What ever do you mean?

[Pop Trash]

What ever do you mean?

haha that was severely tripping me out

[Watashi]

Can someone who's erudite in studio politics explain the purpose behind embargoes? I don't understand why studios screen movies weeks (sometimes months) in advance so critics can sit on their words until a certain date. Is it solely to keep spoilers underwraps? Are they afraid of bad buzz? Then why not screen the movie the week of or before the release. Embargoes get broken all the time. Studio usually don't bat an eye considering most time an embargo is broken, it's because of a positive review.

When I screened films at Comic Con, I never had to sign a contract or anything and I was allowed to tweet or tell my friends about it. I don't get it.

[Irish]

I am not an expert, but this is what I've gleaned over the years:

The current system is a holdover from a time when:

- Movies did not always have simultaneous release dates. Most movies were released in major markets first and then secondary markets were added a week at a time afterwards.

- The only people writing reviews were local newspapers, national magazines, and local TV.

Also:

- The studios run their own PR in LA and outsource it everywhere else. How different news outlets get treated and what the rules are depend a great deal on the local PR agency. Chicago operates differently than San Francisco.

- Many agencies still look down on online only outlets. HitFix, for instance, will be forced to operate under different rules than Time magazine, The New York Times, or your local paper.

- The trades (Variety & the Hollywood Reporter) can do whatever they want (and always have, even back when everything was newsprint) because they are the trades. Variety used to break embargoes every week and print their reviews for upcoming movies in their Monday issue. Everyone else (even Ebert) would wait until the Thursday before release.

- Big movies are only screened months in advance for big outlets. These screenings usually happen during the day, ahead of press junket interviews. The director and actors are in town, touring and promoting. That tour last months and the schedule has to be coordinated across the country. Much of this schedule depends on the celebrities involved doing live events, like radio and TV, in major markets the week of release.

- Press screenings run right up until the Wednesday or Thursday before a movie's release date. This is when smaller outlets see them. There are usually 3-4 screenings for each movie. Your invite depends on where you land in the pecking order, and there's a great deal of cache around this. The farther out you're allowed to see a movie, the more chances you have to see it, the more important you are.

- Unless they have special permission or serious pull, any outlet that breaks embargoes will get phone calls, emails, and threats from their local PR agency. Even in benign cases, a facebook mention during an embargo, will generate angry emails.

Press screenings aren't about politics as much as coordinating the marketing message. If you consider reviews a form of advertisement (and they are), then you want everyone talking about your movie at the same time, during the same week right before release, to maximize exposure for your product.

If everyone posted reviews whenever, this effect would be diluted to a degree the entire enterprise becomes meaningless. You can see the effect of this, to a degree, with small movies that premiere during local film festivals. They get a lot of uncoordinated buzz around the festival, a maybe a few reviews, but when they finally get picked up and released six months later, nobody talks about them.

This system makes less sense (at least from a fan point of view) when you consider big movies have automatic worldwide distribution. Age of Ultron comes out a week ahead in the UK but US critics are still embargoed from talking about it. The same thing regularly happens in reverse. This is because while distribution may be international,
PR is still local. So you end up with fans who can go online and read foreign press as easily as they can read their local paper, way before the movie comes out in their town.

The PR people didn't care what you say at Comic Con because you went to a promotional event. They only care that you talk about it, preferably on social media. Most people don't have large followings, so whatever you say doesn't carry much weight. But they can pull your tweets and facebook posts, throw them into a database and get a consensus on "word of mouth," good or bad, that they can report back to the studio. This is why they still have local radio stations doing giveaways to free screenings in the week before release. It's the same thing. They want buzz, and they want to quantify that buzz.

[Peng]

This talk reminds me of Calum Marsh, who is now barred from all press screenings held by eOne in Canada, because he broke embargo by a pun tweeting: "More like Age of Bad-aline." His full review for the newspaper was also pulled by eOne's request.

[Winston*]

This talk reminds me of Calum Marsh, who is now barred from all press screenings held by eOne in Canada, because he broke embargo by a pun tweeting: "More like Age of Bad-aline." His full review for the newspaper was also pulled by eOne's request.

Worth it.

[Gittes]

I've been thinking about revisiting Contact, which I haven't seen since the first time it appeared on video store shelves way back when. I feel like I would be way more receptive to it now. I actually have very little sense of its general reception and only the haziest of memories, but what I do recall seems kind of fascinating.

[Dukefrukem]

I've been thinking about revisiting Contact, which I haven't seen since the first time it appeared on video store shelves way back when. I feel like I would be way more receptive to it now. I actually have very little sense of its general reception and only the haziest of memories, but what I do recall seems kind of fascinating.

I watched it late last year. It's awesome.

[dreamdead]

I feel like I got suckered on this one. Seemed like every critic on twitter talked it up to high heaven and when I saw it, it was just standard melodrama. Well formed melodrama with charismatic leads, but still.

It made me think the pro and semi pro critics out there have particularly weird and insular habits. Like they've spent their lives seeing nothing and reading nothing. Like the fucking Lego movie is experimental cinema for them, so Beyond the Lights seems fresh and exotic.

I think the bolded part here is pretty much the key. Beyond the Lights is the sort of midlevel genre film that doesn't get made much anymore, and hasn't been made for roughly 15 years except on a micro-indie budget; between the actual commitment to treating the various family dynamics seriously, a female director and writer, and the dynamics of having an African American film that isn't of a typical Tyler Perry quality, it all coalesces into an over-praising of the kind of film that basically exists to be a three star film, where it's well-made and committed, but not pushing the narrative beyond the expected beats in any spot.

I do think it's got the chance to build to a Pitch Perfect-like cult status, but it'll be one entertained by general audiences. I can't see rewatching something so familiar, but I am intrigued by the filmmaker's potential if her scripts push for something just a little more original.

[Gittes]

The AV Club posted their list of the 100 best films of the decade thus far. I was very pleased that their number one choice is The Master, as it's definitely my favourite of the decade (here's a random thought about that film that has returned to me for whatever reason in the past few days: the guttural, violent way that PSH/Lancaster Dodd reacts after downing a glass of Freddie's booze is amazing).

I was a bit surprised to see Frances Ha so high, but that was a pretty lovely film. Greenberg is better, though, and that one only shows up as the 69th choice! Other good choices in the top 20: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Inside Llewyn Davis, Before Midnight, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Social Network, Boyhood, The Tree of Life, Under The Skin, etc. There are several others that are likely wise selections, but I have yet to see those (I really need to watch A Separation).

A little further down, I see that they put Ghost Protocol above films like Edge of Tomorrow, The Immigrant, Looper, and Lincoln. That's a curious decision. I really liked Ghost Protocol but all those other films seem like more notable achievements.

[Pop Trash]

They may have just done a poll for that AV Club list, so you get lots of random surprises. 2-3 people have Frances Ha and only one has Greenberg and suddenly Frances Ha is in the top ten.

[dreamdead]

Impressed with the magnitude of Assayas's Carlos miniseries. That second episode, with the hostage takeover of the building is tense even if you know Carlos's general chronology. Although almost all of the characters besides Carlos are sketched more so than realized, the series is never less than compelling, and Assayas's typically multinational approach to narrative is particularly well suited here.

I'm missed Something in the Air and still a little wary of Cloud of Sil Maria being a return to form, but this made me optimistic.

[Idioteque Stalker]

That list reminded me that Computer Chess was really well-liked here, but seems to have been forgotten in our own best of the decade lists.

[Gittes]

The Ghost Writer also deserves to be somewhere on that list!

[Dead & Messed Up]

In some ways less a paen to their own vanity than a hopeful prayer for success, the Olsen Twins' When in Rome uses the backdrop of the eponymous city to color around the edges of the then-young actresses' ambition to be clothing designers (a desire matched by their avataric characters). By using pregnant pauses and unexpected "amateur" editing, director Steve Purcell purposefully eschews the brainless form of traditional Hollywood cinema in favor of qualities reminiscent of the heroes' on-screen sketchbook. No accident that this is one of the Olsens' final films before establishing their own fashion bona fides globally. Lesser critics might dismiss the film as wish-fulfillment, but in an age of cynical child entertainments like the low-achieving The Boxtrolls and the everyone-in-their-place Randianisms of Ratatouille, When in Rome courageously suggests that wishes can be fulfilled.

[MadMan]

I'm 45 minutes into Holy Motors. What the fuck am I watching?

[Spinal]

Been making my way through the Fast & Furious films with my son. The first two were tolerable, but Tokyo Drift just about killed me with its stupidity. It's amazing that one of the most commercially successful franchises of all time spawned from this wreckage.

[Spinal]

I'm 45 minutes into Holy Motors. What the fuck am I watching?

The next 45 minutes are not going to answer that, alas.

[Russ]

I'm 45 minutes into Holy Motors. What the fuck am I watching?

The next 45 minutes are not going to answer that, alas.

Heh.

[Winston*]

The last 5 minutes really tie up all the loose ends.

[Spun Lepton]

I'm 45 minutes into Holy Motors. What the fuck am I watching?

That's about 35 minutes more than I made it. Not bashing the film, mind you. I quickly knew it was something I would not enjoy.

[Dukefrukem]

Been making my way through the Fast & Furious films with my son. The first two were tolerable, but Tokyo Drift just about killed me with its stupidity. It's amazing that one of the most commercially successful franchises of all time spawned from this wreckage.

Tokyo Drift is the best one.