28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Dead & Messed Up]

Never posted my thoughts on ROCKY V, d'oh!

After wishing that the previous two films hadn't rocketed into caricature and absurdity, ROCKY V seems like a return to the low reality of the original two. And, go figure, there are things I very much liked about this movie. A circular return to Rocky's neighborhood, making Adrian a more prominent voice after her being sidelined in the prior two films. Most interesting to me was the promise of a sobering look at boxing. Boxing isolates Rocky from his family. Boxing gives Rocky a mild sort of brain damage (movie brain damage, admittedly). Boxing produces anger-driven violent men like Tommy Gunn. Boxing is full of predatory promoters like George Washington Duke (who's the most interesting new personality in the film). In short, boxing has problems.

Sure, the movie starts out with an odd contrivance: Paulie accidentally signed away power of attorney for Rocky's estate, which then went deeply into debt. The legalese doesn't track, and you'd figure Rocky has a number of options for paying off his debts (print advertisements, fundraisers, an appeal to the city that loves him so much they gave him a goddamn statue). And then Sage Stallone as Rocky's son doesn't quite have the talent to pull off his own scenes (he's not terrible, he's just not charismatic). And then you realize that Tommy Gunn is being held up less as a dark mirror to Rocky and more as a foil for Rocky's relationship with his son, who Rocky evidently doesn't care about, and we can't really blame Rocky's negligence on brain damage, so we're left with "Rocky is stupid about his son because the film needs him to be stupid, or else there's no story." And then you realize that Tommy Gunn similarly lacks charisma. You see the single-mindedness, but, like Clubber Lang, what you see is what you get (even then, Tommy Gunn doesn't have the presence or specificity of Mr. T's Clubber).

These storylines converge in a final scene of surprising awfulness, in which Rocky settles the score with Tommy Gunn in a street fight. After the film has repeatedly painted Rocky's potential boxing as problematic at best and deadly at worst (apparently Stallone first wrote the ending so Rocky would die), the film then totally contradicts itself with Rocky triumphantly reuniting with his family and settling grudges through the power of punching. It's like the film is saying, "Boxing is a complicated and ultimately unfortunate business-- NEVERMIND PUNCH THAT MEAN BOY."

I thought this film would be absurdly awful, given its historical status as the worst of the films. And I think that people are right, that ROCKY V is the worst one. But what surprised me is how much I thought the film could've been, and how gradually - almost imperceptibly - it slid from promising to dull to disappointing to just plain stupid.

[Also, we should've seen the robot from ROCKY IV being sold at the estate sale, and you watch Paulie's tearful face as it rolls out of his life.]

[Dead & Messed Up]

Anyway:

1. Rocky - A
2. Creed - A-
3. Rocky Balboa - B+
4. Rocky II - B
5. Rocky III - C+
6. Rocky IV - C
7. Rocky V - C-

Though I will admit that III and IV have some A-level moments and images.

[Grouchy]

I've seen some movies I hadn't seen before!

Harold and Maude was a pretty big revelation. I went to the Mar del Plata film festival recently and there was an Ashby retrospective and I couldn't quite fit this one in - I traded for Shampoo which was fun but pretty slow and dated. H&M is one of the most original, endearing films I've ever seen. I love how the movie keeps playing with the audience's expectations of where these kind of drama tropes usually end up. I wish more directors attempted this zany mix between depressing drama and outrageous comedy. There's an uniqueness to this movie that is hard to describe and even harder to accomplish as a filmmaker. There's always less to say about a great work of art than about a meddling one so I'm gonna make this one short. Suffice it to say that Wes Anderson's entire filmography is ripped off from this gem - and that's not entirely a bad thing.

The only Mamet-directed films I'd seen before House of Games were State and Main and The Spanish Prisoner. The former I remember as a witty comedy while the latter (also con-related) left me with the same feelings as this one. The script is unquestionably great but the direction (and that includes the performances) is weirdly stiff. I sense that this is a deliberate choice by Mamet but it makes me feel there's a better movie hidden somewhere. I love how he methodically constructs the set up for the final, tragic confrontation but he has to know the audience has seen this type of story before - this is the '80s and RififÃ*, The Sting and Paper Moon were already classics. You don't have to waste seconds in explaining stuff that everyone should have grasped already. The female character is also unrealistically naive at times. And speaking of ripping off, this isn't quite that but I'd never realized the late Fabián Bielinsky had based the entire tone of Nine Queens on this one.

Two-Lane Blacktop is a beautiful indie road movie that needs more love. It's unquestionably ahead of its time in the unprejudiced, methodical way in which it explores its subjects, the so-called "road freaks" and the drifters. Based on the quality of this one, Monte Hellman should have directed more films. Warren Oates gives an Oscar-worthy performance and the widescreen cinematography is equally overlooked as it must have been a big influence on subsequent road epics. Harry Dean Stanton has an appearance as a horny gay hitch-hiker that probably lasts less than a minute and is even more memorable than the already memorable film around it.

Kundun was the last fiction film by Scorsese I had yet to see. Scorsese is by far my favorite director of all time but (like most of his fans, I suppose) I'm more drawn to his movies about daredevil capitalism junkies and outsiders than I'm about the part of his canon that deals with religious martyrdom - The Last Temptation of Christ, Silence and this one. I understand these are not separate themes - Scorsese's work is all about the individual vs. (and sometimes using) the society that already exists around him/her, and in all three religious films there's a quest to better society that is strongly repressed. Regardless, I think the story of how China managed to effectively bury the film from international distribution (it wasn't even released in Argentina) is even more fascinating than the film itself, which is standard biopic stuff with the artistic flair a master like Scorsese gives it. It was still a good watch but it might be my least favorite of his work next to Gangs of New York. If I want Scorsese do Visconti or that type of film I'll always have a masterpiece like The Age of Innocence.

[Skitch]

I've seen some movies I hadn't seen before!

Two-Lane Blacktop is a beautiful indie road movie that needs more love.

I'm pretty sure that one has plenty of love. I watched it for the first time a few months ago (on glorious VHS). I enjoyed it as well. The reason I blind bought it was because I've seen it listed in so many car movie lists.

[Grouchy]

Well, it's a cult item, but come on, on purely cinematic terms it's a lot better than Easy Rider.

EDIT: I get your point, though.

[transmogrifier]

Easy Rider is actually very well-directed.

[Dukefrukem]

I just watched the Sound of Music for the first time. It checks out.

[Irish]

Two-Lane Blacktop is a beautiful indie road movie that needs more love. It's unquestionably ahead of its time in the unprejudiced, methodical way in which it explores its subjects, the so-called "road freaks" and the drifters. Based on the quality of this one, Monte Hellman should have directed more films. Warren Oates gives an Oscar-worthy performance and the widescreen cinematography is equally overlooked as it must have been a big influence on subsequent road epics. Harry Dean Stanton has an appearance as a horny gay hitch-hiker that probably lasts less than a minute and is even more memorable than the already memorable film around it.

Yes! I saw it a year or so ago and was taken aback. Everything about it is perfect.

The film engages without a hard plot and neither lead was a pro actor. Fucking remarkable. Not only was I shocked to find the movie, I was doubly shocked that I've never heard anybody talk about it.

[MadMan]

I love both Easy Rider and Two-Lane Blacktop. Each is a great, if bleak, take on the American rode trip.

[Yxklyx]

I just watched the Sound of Music for the first time. It checks out.

I like the first half a lot but the second half has too much story and only one new song (and it's not that great). The second half just drags...

Yeah, one of the first things I thought of when watching (as Grouchy mentioned very original) Harold and Maude was Wes Anderson's flicks.

Both Two Lane Blacktop and Easy Rider are very good - I forgot Stanton is in the former so queued that one up again (it's still on netflix dvd).

Somewhat related to both of these though I strongly recommend Bigelow's The Loveless ('82) starring Dafoe as a biker (on netflix dvd). I think it's co-directed by the "cowboy" from Mulholland Dr.

[Grouchy]

I forgot Stanton is in the former so queued that one up again (it's still on netflix dvd).

He's in it for like one minute and knocks it out of the park.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Captioning Quigley Down Under at work, never would've given this movie the time of day, but Alan Rickman plays the villain, and boy, it's just too much fun watching Rickman chew into villainy. It's like in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, where the main drama lacks juice, but Rickman turns every scene he's in into joyful burlesque.

[MadMan]

Quigley is merely a solid movie at best, but I do enjoy watching Tom Selleck and Alan Rickman face off.

[Irish]

Glancing at this list from JustWatch, I honestly can't decide.

[Dukefrukem]

Can't decide what to watch next?

[Irish]

Can't decide if 2018 was a good year at the movies. Every single Triple-A blockbuster wannabe disappointed me, but there was at least interesting smaller / indie films to fill that void.

[Dukefrukem]

Can't decide if 2018 was a good year at the movies. Every single Triple-A blockbuster wannabe disappointed me, but there was at least interesting smaller / indie films to fill that void.

My Letterboxd ratings say no, it wasn't (granted I only saw 60 2018 films)

[Dead & Messed Up]

I mean, I'm more judicious with what I watch, but of the sub-20 flicks I saw this year, I enjoyed most of them. I tend to think every year is a great year for movies, just in different ways-- what a precious little Pollyanna this boy can be.

[baby doll]

Can't decide if 2018 was a good year at the movies. Every single Triple-A blockbuster wannabe disappointed me, but there was at least interesting smaller / indie films to fill that void.

Speaking personally, if I take what I saw last year as a far from random sampling of 2018's offerings, I would say that even the best films I've seen (i.e., Hotel by the River, Jinpa, El Laberinto, Le Livre d'image, and The Stone Speakers) were less impressive than the best films I saw in 2017 (Cocote, The Florida Project, Laissez bronzer les cadavres, Life and Nothing More, Western) and 2016 (Hermia & Helena, La Mort de Louis XIV, The Ornithologist, Safari, The Woman Who Left).

[transmogrifier]

2018 was the year blockbuster fatigue finally set in for me. Skipped Fantastic Beasts 2, not interested in Aquaman or Bumblebee, I'm going to skip Captain Marvel unless my wife drags me to it even though I know it will probably have a bearing on The Avengers 4, which will be my last Marvel movie I think, outside of an interesting director taking one of the movies.

One of the most frustrating things is seeing stupid and hollow things like The Meg/Venom make a tonne of money and have a lot of people defend them on the basis of "check your brain at the door, they are made to be fun" and then a lot of the same people will turn around and criticize the hell out of something that is competently made and trying something different like Hereditary for having a kind of silly ending.

I just get the feeling that more and more we are excusing lazy filmmaking because (a) we just want fun! and/or (b) it's part of a unified universe and thus it is okay for an individual movie to be lacking because it is crammed with references to other films and acts as a stepping stone to the next commercial play date.

Of course, there are exceptions (the animated Spider-man apparently, though I haven't seen it) but I truly believe that critical groups (e.g., Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic) are becoming softer and softer on mainstream films and genuine film criticism has been jettisoned for a focus on how a film will play with a general audience.

[baby doll]

Of course, there are exceptions (the animated Spider-man apparently, though I haven't seen it) but I truly believe that critical groups (e.g., Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic) are becoming softer and softer on mainstream films and genuine film criticism has been jettisoned for a focus on how a film will play with a general audience.

Given the accelerating degradation of Western culture, which just in my own lifetime has progressed at such an alarming rate that it's now possible to look back wistfully upon the Hollywood cinema of the 1990s as relatively refined and sophisticated, it's not surprising that people have degraded along with it, accepting as normal things that would have seemed appalling in an earlier, more civilized age.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Is it possible that some of that culture has shifted in general? While pop-mainstream movies can be a barometer of a certain kind of media viewer/reader, the explosion of television and streaming has created new opportunities for more adult-targeted material, to the point that Scorsese and the Coens, among others, have migrated to those mediums. Certainly Netflix and Amazon Prime, among others, are blurring the boundaries of where and how films can be distributed.

Just as an example of the shifting landscape of "what we watch," my primary source of media the past however-many months has been YouTube, largely due to the philosophy/analysis/comedy videos put out by channels like Contrapoints, Collative Learning, Monster Factory (just some examples). I wouldn't say for a second that those are the next iteration of films, but they have widened my definition of what visual media is and how it can function.

I'm not arguing anyone's points here, just wondering aloud if the "degradation" of USA filmmaking is in some ways a response to the overall widening of media itself.

[transmogrifier]

I'm not arguing anyone's points here, just wondering aloud if the "degradation" of USA filmmaking is in some ways a response to the overall widening of media itself.

I think it is just more of the fact that audiences increasingly crave familiarity, the feeling of continuity, and the ability to see things they and others recognize on screen, combined with this a general love of expensive-looking set-pieces combined with the same generically smart-arse humor style. Marvel has harnessed that to excellent effect, and now everyone is doing it. It is not always successful because not everyone can do it well, but the homogenization of mainstream cinema is real, and I think the reviewers are complicit in allowing their inner geekdom (or their general wokeness) to override their critical analysis of the elements of film-making involved.

Note that I'm definitely not saying that blockbusters are worse than in the past, because the 80s and 90s had a lot of shitty money makers or money-maker wannabes; I'm just of the opinion that the big-budget movies these days tend to be shitty or good in a more similar way to each other than in the past (and that reviewers are much less critical of them now). I honestly think there was more variety in the past than there is now. Smaller budget films are still chugging along as they always have, and the new distribution methods have helped their exposure, so I don't think they are really suffering, but mainstream studio films are a crashing bore, by and large.

[transmogrifier]

One thing I have definitely learned (finally!) is that if a bunch of people on Rotten Tomatoes or Letterboxd describe something as "silly but fun" or similar, I'm staying far, far away. Hence no Aquaman for me.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I think it is just more of the fact that audiences increasingly crave familiarity, the feeling of continuity, and the ability to see things they and others recognize on screen, combined with this a general love of expensive-looking set-pieces combined with the same generically smart-arse humor style. Marvel has harnessed that to excellent effect, and now everyone is doing it. It is not always successful because not everyone can do it well, but the homogenization of mainstream cinema is real, and I think the reviewers are complicit in allowing their inner geekdom (or their general wokeness) to override their critical analysis of the elements of film-making involved.

Oh, sure, and there's a lot to unpack in terms of how internet commentators and access journalism have accelerated the homogeneity you're talking about, especially as it pertains to franchise films. (Basically, all hail the eternal franchise, o great giver of pageclicks.)

Basically, I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm wondering how much of this is a consequence of, like, dumbed-down populace (degradation!) and how much is a consequence of studios shifting their focus out of a perceived necessity, due to a more competitive media landscape. So they have to try to interlink franchise films, because they need that extra incentive to push people to watch a film in the theater (fear of missing out, etc.). And they have to push more brand names, because a brand name will make investors 20% more willing to invest in a project. And they have to either tentpole or Blumhouse their films, because it by and large isn't worth it to chase medium-budget adult-targeted films, because those types of viewers are watching The Marvelous Miss Marple or whatever the hell it is on Amazon.

[Note that they don't actually have to do any of this, but the calculus of risk when dealing with major-release films has shifted dramatically. A consequence of this is that a success like Crazy Rich Asians inspires studio head-scratches-- who would've thought that a mass audience might want to see a fun, comparatively low-concept romantic comedy. Imagine that.]