View Poll Results: Anyway, how you rate this?

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  • I tired, I wasted, I love it, darling!

    11 78.57%
  • I FED UP WID DIS MOVIE!!!

    1 7.14%
  • I cannot tell you, it's confidential.

    2 14.29%
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Thread: The Disaster Artist (James Franco)

  1. #26
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    I haven't seen The Room, nor do I really want to. I've never been a fan of the "so bad they're good movies" because I'll chuckle for a few mins, and then just want to do something else.

    However, this was very fun to watch for the creative process at trying to make something that one thinks is really good, that is so obviously bad to others. The Franco Brothers are spot on together, and the Tommy is just grounded barely enough that I think everyone can think of 'that guy' they've seen before.

    There's a side of Tommy that scares me that I was hoping the movie wouldn't explore. I wanted to just have a good time and laugh with this one, and I did. Good, fun stuff.

    Barbarian - ***
    Bones and All - ***
    Tar - **


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  2. #27
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    Without doing any type of research, and just the exposure of him to the movie, my own thought of how Tommy got money would be some medical/accident settlement that he eventually developed into real estate.

    Barbarian - ***
    Bones and All - ***
    Tar - **


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  3. #28
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Light enough to like, but so superficial that I came out of the film mostly just wanting to watch The Room again, which in its own lunkheaded way felt more piercing and passionate than this film, which is too celebratory and rubricky (sic) to ever come alive on its own terms except some of the climactic scenes (the confrontation during the bedroom scene, the late-shoot "football" scene, the uneasy cruelty of the theater screening and the unconvincing re-branding attempt).

    If there is a reason to watch the original film, for me it's the fact that you start to piece together that you're seeing a warped, awful, but very specific perspective that you'd never see otherwise. In that sense, it does carry some of the incidental fascination of the (best) worst movies of Neil Breen and Ed Wood.

    But because this film should have more access to the real story, I wasn't interested in them building Tommy as some sort of mystery figure with laudable dreams. I mean, if you've actually watched The Room, there are clearly enormous fucking issues with this guy. Ed Wood had a similar goal but came about it more honestly by giving us an unmitigated dark side to Hollywood ambition in Martin Landau's stunning performance as Bela. Nobody here has that dimension - or even seems interested.

  4. #29
    Ed Wood is a fantastic film. Just wanted to say that.
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  5. #30
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting transmogrifier (view post)
    Ed Wood is a fantastic film. Just wanted to say that.
    Agreed. My favorite film of Tim Burton's.

  6. #31
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    I got into this movie a minute late, which is something that I very rarely do. It all started with the acting class for me.

    I don't know... I read the book too recently for me to like this. Like 8 says, the book paints a pretty level-headed character assessment of Wiseaw and shows him on his darker and more troubled moments, which is something that this film never really does. And yes, it does sound like Franco just personally appreciates all the laughs he's gotten out of Wiseaw so much that he doesn't want to go there. It's an uncomfortable line, to be honest. There were times reading the book where I was fascinated by Tommy's weirdness and I recalled people whom I've met in real life that exhibited some of these traits, and I couldn't imagine myself putting all that stuff on print about a person that I've met intimately and that never did me no wrong. I also think, as a result of this contrast, the Greg Sestero of the film is basically a gullible, impotent and kind hearted idiot while the one self-described in the book is a completely ordinary person that only goes along with this trainwreck because he's getting paid.

    But I did laugh a lot, so there's that.

  7. #32
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    I even thought the structure itself of the book was smarter than the one in the movie. Sestero opens with a scene of them having dinner in a legendary Hollywood restaurant the night before production on The Room is set to begin. And that scene shows how a person like Tommy could overcome other people's common sense just by being 100% oblivious to reality and irrationally confident. And from there on, he alternates between flashback chapters about his friendship with Tommy (which is longer and more nuanced) and the production of The Room.

  8. #33
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    Maybe it's because I watched The Room and then read Sestero's very good book leading up to this film, never participating in any of the cultiness. But what I take from both, apart from the compelling and occasionally fun ineptitude, is the complexity of Wiseau and in maintaining a relationship with him, with all those exhilaration and toxicity. And even though he remains a fascinating figure throughout, I'm still disturbed and appalled by the abuses too much to ever join in the fun of his cult now, I think.

    Which might put me in a wrong frame of mind for this film, because I find it streamlined (a shame since the book's structure seems tailor made for adaptation), simplified (over half of the psychological darkness gone and a lot more heartwarming), and rather sloppy in centering around and lurching through Sestero's character. But man, James Franco is just too enormous fun for me not to dig this on some level. And casting brothers as Wiseau and Sestero might be some extratextual shortcut, but it resonates quite a bit emotionally nonetheless. 6/10
    Midnight Run (1988) - 9
    The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
    The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
    Sisters (1973) - 6.5
    Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5

  9. #34
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  10. #35
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Free on youtube now in case anyone hasn't seen it.

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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
    Quote Quoting TGM (view post)
    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

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