Boner
Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:
Top Gun: Maverick - 8
Top Gun - 7
McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
Crimes of the Future - 8
Videodrome - 9
Valley Girl - 8
Summer of '42 - 7
In the Line of Fire - 8
Passenger 57 - 7
Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6
Seeing this tomorrow.
Loose and funny and mostly hollow. A running gag involving Louis CK is the obvious highlight.
This was the most boring version of this movie that could have possibly been made. A bad imitation of much better films. I still enjoyed it though, in some subconscious way.
Trying to decide if I travel up to Westside this week and see it for the weekend, or just wait an additional week.
Where do you see your movies eternity?
Last night there was a New York Film Critics Series screening of this in a couple dozen cities. http://www.nyfilmcritics.com/Quoting Ezee E (view post)
Review. (first in a while)
Ehhhhhhhhhhh...
Pretty boring really. Jennifer Lawrence isn't in it enough. Nice way to keep the cameo secret.
Oh, I did love the heck out of the Live or Let Die scene.
I'm actually kinda surprised by the universally lackluster response this one's getting here. I thought this was pretty genuinely great all around, with awesome performances by all involved, and seriously hilarious at points as well.
I really liked the bit where the secretary was showing off pictures of her cat, and Cooper was looking at the pictures with a great combination of interest and befuddlement.
Russell channeling Scorsese. A bit pale in comparison, but Russell adds his recognizable brand on it. The scenes with Louis C.K. were hysterical ("Do not load that weapon!"). Had fun with this one. Very involving. The look of the production is kind of bland, but the music selection is great. Jennifer Lawrence was incredibly entertaining. Everyone else kind of balances each other out nicely, so no other major standout, but I liked Bale's performance. I enjoyed his surprising ethical shift when he sees that genuinely caring people trying to help New Jersey are going to get burned in their sting.
Agreed. Probably my favorite of Russell's since Three Kings.Quoting TGM (view post)
Out of 4 stars:
The Guest: ***1/2
Furious 7: ***
The Tale of Princess Kaguya: ***
It Follows: ***1/2
:|
Yeah, he hasn't ever hit the charisma that he had in Hurt Locker.Quoting wigwam (view post)
Convoluted, shallow, and shapeless. Funny how the most amusing bit comes from a character playing it straight (Louis CK) in this portrait of zany, ostensibly appealing cartoon characters.
I was checking my watch a lot, and I don't even wear a watch.
Very entertaining film. Excellent performances all around. Great script.
This is Russell's best film in my book. It definitely feels like Scorsese, but part of it is just Russell taking his manic style to the crime genre (which, as it happens, is how Scorsese does crime). It's hard to do a respectable crime film without a nod to the master, though. Anyways, this was great because the female characters were so on point, which I think is one of Russell's strong suits.
I highly recommend this film.
See my latest blog entry: The Wolf of Wall Street and The New Cinema of Excess
Holy fuck was this a boring movie. Could not wait for it to be over.
What the hell did The Fighter do to Russell? The guy who directed Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees now make movies that look like this all the time?
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
Yeah, I've nodded off at this and Silver Linings Playbook.Quoting number8 (view post)
Ew, this was more lame than I expected it to be. But I was not expecting to like Bradley Cooper. Maybe it was Louis CK's interaction with him, but at least that was enjoyable.
I fully expect this to be Irish's #1 movie of the year.
Sure why not?
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Rian Johnson) - 9
STRONGER (David Gordon Green) - 6
THE DISASTER ARTIST (James Franco) - 7
THE FLORIDA PROJECT (Sean Baker) - 9
LADY BIRD (Greta Gerwig) - 8
"Hitchcock is really bad at suspense."
- Stay Puft
I thought it was quite good. The first half was pretty flat, but the second really stepped up the razamatazz (and/or Scorsesian stylistic tics—great use of sudden pounding pop music). I agree with Israfel that the script was great: I really liked how the narrative was built up from the petty power plays of the pathetic characters, and I liked how sympathetically the movie treated those characters, how likable and understandable it made their foibles and how they were all driven by some deep need to be somehow worthwhile and live some dream. Although his was the least memorable of the performances, Renner was surprisingly good at playing dopey.
Of the three Russell movies I've seen, this is easily my favorite.
I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?
lists and reviews
Well, there's just a whole lotta good-looking nothingness going on here, huh?
I'm genuinely happy for anyone that really enjoyed this, I just sincerely hope they don't go along thinking it's anything resembling a great piece of work, or more pressingly, one of the best films of this year. It's too thinly developed, broadly dramatized, frequently overly simplistic, and seemingly more comfortable in montage mode than anything that may otherwise help tether the story or any floating thematic ideas to something meaningful.
I can imagine the four lead actors (not counting Renner) trusted Russell no matter what, especially since they were all met with huge acclaim and accolades for their work under his direction in his last two films, but here, their performances are presented in ways that feel like they're out of sync with their character's motives or the emotions of the plot as a whole, struggling to find the reasons for their characters to act the way they do in any particular scene. They're certainly not bad performances, just ones that feel incomplete in how they're utilized here.
As divisive as The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook have seemingly been with people over time in terms of how Russell drastically altered his style and more overt tolerance for sentimentality through them, at least they both had defined character arcs, a discernible tone, and darkly comedic flourishes worth investing in and having strong opinions on. It's as if those criticisms of his last two films being an ill-minded, mushier direction of sorts for him were misguidedly taken to heart, leaving his attitude towards American Hustle's material to attempt to be something more morally gray and raunchy, even if ultimately it ends ups feeling so vacant, innocuous and bland. It's quite possible that those weirder traits of his oeuvre simply don't exist in his artistic system anymore, particularly for a film like this.
The original title of it was American Bullshit, and as much as anyone knew that was never going to end up sticking, it kind of sums up the sort of posturing the film itself has. It tries to be edgy, finds reason to recede before it matters, and then replaces what's there with something generic and falsely vigorous.
It might think it's an efficient hustle, but in the end, it's kinda bullshit.
Last 11 things I really enjoyed:
Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
Safe (Haynes, 1995)
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
Diva (Beineix, 1981)
Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)