Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched

[Gordon_4]

I agree with most of this, except my personal favorite of his comedies would be Liar Liar.

Liar, Liar is a better film and contains some of Carrey’s best comedy moments (The Pen is Blue, The Roast, I’m Kicking My Ass etc) but it also was a pretty decent showcase for his dramatic ability if only for a few key scenes (“I hold MYSELF in contempt!”). The Mask is pretty much just working class schmuck comedy paired to the zany antics of the Mask - although that stuff is god tier - so we just alternate between normal funny Jim Carrey and Ace Ventura as empowered by a Chaos God Jim Carrey.

Mind you, that dance bit he does with Diaz, fucking spectacular and the jazzy tune is killer.

 

[thebobmaster]

"OBJECTION!" "On what grounds?" "It's devastating to my case!" "Overruled." "Good call!"

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm trying to remember if Margot Robbie's Barbie even has a job in Barbie Land. There's Doctor Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, President Barbie but I don't believe we're ever shown or told what she does for a living. I don't think she does anything. None of the Kens have jobs either (they're not allowed) and are mocked for it, but what the fuck was Barbie's job anyway?

I'm not trying to CinemaSins the movie. The plot has more holes than Sonny Corleone. Who cares. But in a movie that constantly celebrates how Barbie can be everything, I don't remember her being anything.

 

[Absent]

I'm not trying to CinemaSins the movie. The plot has more holes than Sonny Corleone. Who cares. But in a movie that constantly celebrates how Barbie can be everything, I don't remember her being anything.

Haven't seen it but I assume that if you're free to have any job in an utopia, you're also free to have none. My impression is that in that toy world, each job is a dream job embraced for fun, never a financial constraint.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Haven't seen it but I assume that if you're free to have any job in an utopia, you're also free to have none. My impression is that in that toy world, each job is a dream job embraced for fun, never a financial constraint.

Not being forced to be a wage slave also sounds woke and a threat to Western civilisation, so that's probably it.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Haven't seen it but I assume that if you're free to have any job in an utopia, you're also free to have none. My impression is that in that toy world, each job is a dream job embraced for fun, never a financial constraint.

Funnily enough despite Barbie always been tarred as consumerist fantasy, the Barbies in Barbie Land already seem to own everything they'll ever need. Everything is just pretend (they don't actually eat, shower, sleep, age, etc), including their jobs. So no point in acquiring legal tender for products or services.

I still don't fully understand what's the point of isolating Kens from government and professional jobs when their society doesn't need either and everything is just for fun. But maybe that's the dumb treehouse club pettiness they were going for.

 

[Absent]

I still don't fully understand what's the point of isolating Kens from government and professional jobs when their society doesn't need either and everything is just for fun. But maybe that's the dumb treehouse club pettiness they were going for.

Either the Ken toys don't have jobs and it's a reference to that, or the film just invents it for the sake of making a social commentary through caricatural inversion.

But it doesn't strike me as a film where the notion of plot hole really applies. Isn't it an openly absurdist premise ? Part of the joke being that it doesn't have to make sense ?

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Liar, Liar is a better film and contains some of Carrey’s best comedy moments (The Pen is Blue, The Roast, I’m Kicking My Ass etc) but it also was a pretty decent showcase for his dramatic ability if only for a few key scenes (“I hold MYSELF in contempt!”). The Mask is pretty much just working class schmuck comedy paired to the zany antics of the Mask - although that stuff is god tier - so we just alternate between normal funny Jim Carrey and Ace Ventura as empowered by a Chaos God Jim Carrey.

Mind you, that dance bit he does with Diaz, fucking spectacular and the jazzy tune is killer.

I always wanted Jim Carrey to do a horror thriller, or something where he plays a true psychopath. I think 23 was as close as he got, and that was a shame.

 

[gorfias]

I'm trying to remember if Margot Robbie's Barbie even has a job in Barbie Land. There's Doctor Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, President Barbie but I don't believe we're ever shown or told what she does for a living. I don't think she does anything. None of the Kens have jobs either (they're not allowed) and are mocked for it, but what the fuck was Barbie's job anyway?

I'm not trying to CinemaSins the movie. The plot has more holes than Sonny Corleone. Who cares. But in a movie that constantly celebrates how Barbie can be everything, I don't remember her being anything.

To my chagrin, my daughter calls herself a feminist. Even so, she hated this movie. She thought it would be a fun movie about a toy come to life and instead, it is a diatribe of anti-male hate and feminist supremacy which even she objects to. Be interesting to see its box office drop off as people come to see that the marketing was a bait and switch.

 

[SilentPony]

To my chagrin, my daughter calls herself a feminist. Even so, she hated this movie. She thought it would be a fun movie about a toy come to life and instead, it is a diatribe of anti-male hate and feminist supremacy which even she objects to. Be interesting to see its box office drop off as people come to see that the marketing was a bait and switch.

To be fair female empowerment and women can do anything is the literal point of the Barbie toy line, and Ken is literally an empty headed token boyfriend. I'm not sure what ya'll were expecting, but that's pretty on brand.

 

[gorfias]

To be fair female empowerment and women can do anything is the literal point of the Barbie toy line, and Ken is literally an empty headed token boyfriend. I'm not sure what ya'll were expecting, but that's pretty on brand.

Steve Trevor is a side kick to Wonder Woman, as Ken is an accessory to Barbi. But in the WW movies? He is brave, competent and fun to watch. He is not the main draw. WW is: it is her movie. But he still acquits himself well.

They could have had a Ken that did well too, even if he is the accessory. They didn't They made him a brain dead mimbo and villain. And for my feminist daughter? That hurt the movie.

 

[Gordon_4]

I always wanted Jim Carrey to do a horror thriller, or something where he plays a true psychopath. I think 23 was as close as he got, and that was a shame.

I think The Cable Guy almost gets there.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Oppenheimer

Watching Oppenheimer is a lot like watching The Passion of Joan of Ark, the 1928 Dreyer film. Despite the veneer of a historical epic, most of the plot boils down rather pettily to a sham audience between the titular martyr and a group of vile men tasked with assassinating their character. Joan burned at the pyre while Oppie merely got his security clearance revoked, though you can draw a symbolic parallel between witch hunts and witch burnings in there.

Both movies are also primarily made up of intense closeups of faces. "Passion" famously contains what for the longest time was considered the best performance ever captured on film (Maria Falconetti as Joan); also famously the movie splurged an unprecedented fortune on a realistic, life-sized, interconnected movie set meant to recreate a medieval fortress... which you don't even see in the finished thing, because the movie is 98% Joan's face and her accusers' faces. The producers got really angry about that.

Now you have Oppenheimer playing on IMAX and being sold like a must-see IMAX cinematic experience - even though, again, 98% of the movie is peoples' faces. It's all closeups, baby. Closeups of old, stuffy men in crummy rooms. The Trinity Test, and an apocalyptic vision, are the two sole set-pieces in the middle of the movie. Lots of faces in nondescript rooms before and after. Cillian Murphy gives a brilliant, haunted, enigmatic performance.

Actually he kinda looks a little bit like Falconetti.

 

[BrawlMan]

I always wanted Jim Carrey to do a horror thriller, or something where he plays a true psychopath. I think 23 was as close as he got, and that was a shame.

23 was pretty decent, yet I never felt the need to watch it again.

I think The Cable Guy almost gets there.

Cable Guy is a dark-comedy suspense thriller. I was so confused the first time I saw that movie in theaters as a kid. I asked myself, "Is Jim the bad guy this time?". It took about the halfway mark to realize something was off.

 

[Gordon_4]

Heat - 10/10

Still probably one of the master class films for modern day crime thrillers. You want gunfights, this movie has one of the best sounding and shot ones in modern history. You want character pathos, the coffee scene and McCauley leaving Eady (at least) have you covered. You want heists, two of the greatest ever filmed are right here. Michael Mann as a filmmaker is Christopher Nolan without thinking he's smarter than he thinks he is, he's Michael Bay who understands restraint and tone and he's James Cameron without the ego OR the fetish for water.

The fact this guy has made movies like this one and Collateral and doesn't have the studios kicking the crap out each other at his door is fuckin' criminal.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Heat - 10/10

Still probably one of the master class films for modern day crime thrillers. You want gunfights, this movie has one of the best sounding and shot ones in modern history. You want character pathos, the coffee scene and McCauley leaving Eady (at least) have you covered. You want heists, two of the greatest ever filmed are right here. Michael Mann as a filmmaker is Christopher Nolan without thinking he's smarter than he thinks he is, he's Michael Bay who understands restraint and tone and he's James Cameron without the ego OR the fetish for water.

The fact this guy has made movies like this one and Collateral and doesn't have the studios kicking the crap out each other at his door is fuckin' criminal.

Also noteworthy in that the film is a remake, they did the same film a few years before with less budget, and it was...ok? Forgettable. So they decided to do it again and bigger, and it obviously worked.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I still don't fully understand what's the point of isolating Kens from government and professional jobs when their society doesn't need either and everything is just for fun. But maybe that's the dumb treehouse club pettiness they were going for.

I had two gripes with the movie. One was that anything emotional or "deep" that they tried to do never stuck the landing. The scene with the founder of Barbie had me checking my watch.

The second was this. It was a fun takedown of toxic masculinity (the scene with film criticism I genuinely laughed out loud at), then they follow it up by maintaining the status quo. The status quo of Kens being second class citizens and maybe homeless. They even make a joke about how the Kens will continue to be treated how women are treated in the real world.

I wouldn't call this men-hating, just straight up shit writing. The first half of the movie paints Barbieland as a dystopia where whatever role you were given at "birth" is what you're stuck doing forever. To end the movie by just going back to that felt very lazy.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Heat - 10/10

Still probably one of the master class films for modern day crime thrillers. You want gunfights, this movie has one of the best sounding and shot ones in modern history. You want character pathos, the coffee scene and McCauley leaving Eady (at least) have you covered. You want heists, two of the greatest ever filmed are right here.

And let's not forget the amazing soundtrack. Brian Eno's "Force Marker" and Moby's "God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters" alone solidified Heat as one of my favorite all-time movies. They punctuated the scenes they were featured in so perfectly. I just watched these a few months ago, but you're making me want to watch it again already.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Heat - 10/10

Still probably one of the master class films for modern day crime thrillers. You want gunfights, this movie has one of the best sounding and shot ones in modern history. You want character pathos, the coffee scene and McCauley leaving Eady (at least) have you covered. You want heists, two of the greatest ever filmed are right here. Michael Mann as a filmmaker is Christopher Nolan without thinking he's smarter than he thinks he is, he's Michael Bay who understands restraint and tone and he's James Cameron without the ego OR the fetish for water.

The fact this guy has made movies like this one and Collateral and doesn't have the studios kicking the crap out each other at his door is fuckin' criminal.

He’s also 80 years old now. Guessing he’s too old to care at this point, but even two decades ago might’ve been amused at the thought.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Oppenheimer

Watching Oppenheimer is a lot like watching The Passion of Joan of Ark, the 1928 Dreyer film. Despite the veneer of a historical epic, most of the plot boils down rather pettily to a sham audience between the titular martyr and a group of vile men tasked with assassinating their character. Joan burned at the pyre while Oppie merely got his security clearance revoked, though you can draw a symbolic parallel between witch hunts and witch burnings in there.

Both movies are also primarily made up of intense closeups of faces. "Passion" famously contains what for the longest time was considered the best performance ever captured on film (Maria Falconetti as Joan); also famously the movie splurged an unprecedented fortune on a realistic, life-sized, interconnected movie set meant to recreate a medieval fortress... which you don't even see in the finished thing, because the movie is 98% Joan's face and her accusers' faces. The producers got really angry about that.

Now you have Oppenheimer playing on IMAX and being sold like a must-see IMAX cinematic experience - even though, again, 98% of the movie is peoples' faces. It's all closeups, baby. Closeups of old, stuffy men in crummy rooms. The Trinity Test, and an apocalyptic vision, are the two sole set-pieces in the middle of the movie. Lots of faces in nondescript rooms before and after. Cillian Murphy gives a brilliant, haunted, enigmatic performance.

Actually he kinda looks a little bit like Falconetti.

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I’ve hear similar takes on this being practically nothing but dialog, which would be supported by the overuse of closeups. I doubt I’ll bother until it’s streaming. They’re really marketing the 70mm format but it seems little more than wasted potential here.