Actually I was calling you gush about Sonic 3, but that works too.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
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Me and my daughter got vaklempt at the end. Worked for me. I guess I don't watch enough weepies to have seen it coming.
My daughter was chagrined that when she told her friend about getting misty as 39 year old hugs Chad, she replied, "yeah, that was sad, that he dies" but it is the living that recognize loss. Me and my kid got misty at the bitter sweet feels the 39 year old must have been feeling.
Without the swears and female nudity, I think this would have been PG and maybe made better box office. Guess that's why I'm not in the industry.
Oh, you won't catch me gushing about anything Sonic, least of all the movies. Haven't seen any of them, have no interest to, and haven't been a fan of the games since Sonic and Knuckles 30 years ago, so to say I'm out of touch is beyond an understatement.
If you gotta any nieces or nephews that are interested, then you're probably watching it with them at some point. Or if your girl is interested. If you ever see them, the great news is that you don't have to know anything about the games to enjoy them. Though there's always a big special bonus for those who are longtime fans of the games if you get the references.
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Yeah... not gonna happen. I don't have anyone remotely near my circle that wants to watch the Sonic movies. I can't even fathom a circumstance where any one of them would be on in my presence, and I'd not actively look for something else to watch. Glad you enjoy them, though, and proudly support your right to promote them.
Mara
Another low-budget bogeyman horror movie, about a sleep paralysis demon called Mara. Olga Kurylenko is a "rookie" police psychologist (she's like 40?) investigating. A dude is killed in his sleep and the police decide to arrest the wife, who's huffing and puffing around the living room like a 28 Days Later zombie, apparently solely based on the shrink's recommendation - which seems so implausible I never connected with Olga's guilt over separating the mom from her kid. Yet the movie treats it like this was entirely on her, and terribly important at that.
The sleep paralysis demon is played by the clinically and professionally emaciated Javier Botet, of REC/It/Slender Man/Insidious/The Conjuring cred. The movie doesn't make much of the creature. In concept all you can do with it is have a character lying down, looking terrified around the room, and then, you know, the bogeyman shows up and strangles them without further ado. It's not like with Freddy where you can play on the same fear of helplessness but also go wild with the nightmares.
The one creepy part is a character clipping one of his eyelids so he won't fall asleep. It's off camera but the shot holds long enough to sell the ick.
Another low-budget bogeyman horror movie, about a sleep paralysis demon called Mara. Olga Kurylenko is a "rookie" police psychologist (she's like 40?) investigating. A dude is killed in his sleep and the police decide to arrest the wife, who's huffing and puffing around the living room like a 28 Days Later zombie, apparently solely based on the shrink's recommendation - which seems so implausible I never connected with Olga's guilt over separating the mom from her kid. Yet the movie treats it like this was entirely on her, and terribly important at that.
The sleep paralysis demon is played by the clinically and professionally emaciated Javier Botet, of REC/It/Slender Man/Insidious/The Conjuring cred. The movie doesn't make much of the creature. In concept all you can do with it is have a character lying down, looking terrified around the room, and then, you know, the bogeyman shows up and strangles them without further ado. It's not like with Freddy where you can play on the same fear of helplessness but also go wild with the nightmares.
The one creepy part is a character clipping one of his eyelids so he won't fall asleep. It's off camera but the shot holds long enough to sell the ick.
A ★★★ review of A Christmas Carol (1938)
“What right do you have to be merry? You’re poor enough.” “And what right do you have to be miserable? You’re rich enough.” This film follows one Ebenezer Scrooge (Reginald Owen), a miser who hates the concept of Christmas, cheer, and especially Christmas cheer, something that puts him at...
letterboxd.com
I'm not looking for some scathing criticism of Fox or Disney for their handling of the aforementioned characters.
I just thought it neat narratively to see the old Fox Marvel canon being used as lost denizens of the void between multiverses
This reminds me of a joke I saw on the internet a couple of months back of a guy on YouTube looking at Sonic 3 the movie and Knuckles the TV show's release year and going; They actually did it, Sonic 3 & Knuckles!
I like to think it was videogamedunkey, but I'm not sure as I can't seem to find it.
I'm not either, but it's the movie that's framing itself as taking potshots at everyone. Deadpool is the merc with the mouth who doesn't respect even the narrative constraints that he inhabits, but they're not going to let him actually go after Disney, and that puts corporate provisos (thank you Alladin) on his disrespectful antics. The freedom of a character marketed as having no respect for the status quo and the powers that be is now tempered. Deadpool is owned by Disney, and it's in his character to rail against that, but they're never going to let him do that, so he just ends up feeling toothless.
Something like Peace Maker does a better job at showing a disrectful asshole "superhero", and the Spider-Verse movies do a far better job at being silly, tongue-in-cheek, and referential while also providing a heartfelt narrative.
Animatrix, overall a 7/10, but the quality varies a lot
This is the almost completely forgotten animated companion anthology to the original Matrix trilogy. It consists of 9 different short films, all with their own stories and animation styles centering around the Matrix in various ways. Instead of rating the film as a whole I think it makes more sense to judge the shorts individually, since they range quite widely in quality, and have zero connection to each other whatsoever. As an overall experience it was engaging and interesting, but sometimes also hopelessly dated bordering on corny. The showcasing of different animation and visual styles is the cake here, and whatever emotional engagement you might feel is the frosting.
Final Flight of the Osiris, 3/10
This is the first, and personally the worst of the anthology, so at least there's nowhere to go but up. It's one of the two shorts in the movie directed by the Wachowskis themselves. It's probably the most straightforwardly connected to the trilogy, since it links directly to a vital plot point in Revolutions. It's about a ship named Osiris and its crew venturing into the outside world, and discovering the giant drill the machines plan to invade Zion with. They escape and try to get the message out to Zion in time. Its animation is easly the weakest, since it's presented in the snazziest realistic CGI of 2003, meaning that nowadays it looks like an in-engine PS3 cutscene from 2008. It begins with a weirdly horny fight scene, and isn't overall really interesting. It does manage to build some characterization, but overall it's just a big shrug and a "meh".
The Second Renaissance, parts 1 and 2, 4/10
This is the second of the shorts directed by the Wachowskis, and probably the second worst (are you seeing the pattern here). It's basically a long exposition dump detailing the origins of the machine war, and how the world became a biomechanical hellscape. It does have way better animation than the previous one and there's some occasional interesting designs and images in it. But when it comes to storytelling it's about as subtle as Detroit: Become Human. Seeing as humanity is right now living through an AI revolution IRL, the images in this feel hopelessly quaint. Legions of humanoid robots marching manually to work in the streets while humans party up in the skyscrapers is either the Wachowskis completely lacking creativity, or making the bluntest, least subtle metaphor in film history (which isn't new if we're being honest). I guess you could make the argument that the images aren't supposed to be completely literal, that they're more about conveying an idea than a depiction of actual events, but that feels like a copout. It relies mostly on shock images or borderline recreations of iconic images from art or 20th century photography. For example, there's an image heavily reminiscient of the Okinawa flag raising from WW2, except in this it's robots raising the flag, and it's on fire. Gee, are you getting the message here? It was rather eye-rolling for a lot of it, and the origins of the Matrix universe aren't really as interesting as I think the Wachowskis think they are. So it's another shrug.
Kid's Story, 7/10
This is where the anthology gets into gear. This is a short about how the kid who basically worships Neo in Reloaded and Revolutions came to Zion. It's presented in a dreamlike, rotoscoped style reminiscient of Linkin Park's Breaking the Habit video. It's told through minimal dialogue, and is mostly about the ethereal and off-kilter presentation: characters twist, bend and move in completely unnatural ways, which is completely in line with the feeling of alienation and wrongness the main character's psyche is wracked by. There's not much to say about it since it's one of the shortest parts, but it's very enjoyable.
Program, 6/10
This short is about an unnamed woman training in the simulation, presented here as her battling Edo-era samurai. Her (presumed) boyfriend shows up and reveals he's decided to be plugged back into the Matrix. It's basically just a fight scene interspersed with dialogue that isn't really all that interesting, and kind of highlights how limited The Matrix ultimately is as a storytelling framework. The presentation's top notch though, shown as an ultra-stark contrast anime style similar to Redline, with bold use of limited colors. It's one of the less substantial parts of the anthology, and if you cut down some of the dialogue and length, would make for a pretty fucking sick music video.
World Record, 9/10
Probably my favorite of the whole anthology, this short is about a top of the line sprinter, who's heading to set the new world record against the protests of his manager. Its style I can best describe as "early 2000s animated MTV music video", with completely weird designs, proportions and movements on the characters. The animation itself is honestly not that great, but it makes up for it with some quite bold choices in vital moments. It also takes an interesting approach to the Matrix: the character here has zero connection or interest in it, but stumbles upon it accidentally by pushing himself physically. It's a really interesting, Lovecraftian idea that one can literally walk between worlds through sheer physical effort. The ending is also great.
Beyond, 8/10
This is a story about a young woman searching for her cat in what I presume to be Tokyo, and ending up at a derelict building where some kids are playing around with seemingly unexplained physics anomalies, the house being presumably a place where the border of the Matrix is thin. It's easily the least connected to the whole Matrix, and could honestly just be a short film about a paranormal anomaly of its own. But it's great nonetheless. For such an otherwise bleak and dystopian setting, Beyond is quite sweet and wholesome. The woman and the kids have some fun together, and get a brief peek of what actually lies beneath. It's got a bright and colourful palette, which stands in stark contrast to the main films, which were downright tyrannically dominated by steely blues and greens. It doesn't end with a grisly death, or someone not making it, which was a nice change of pace from the otherwise pretty grim anthology.
A Detective Story, 8/10
My second favorite of the shorts, this is a (short) film noir about a private detective who's tasked with finding Trinity, and tumbling down the rabbit hole in the process. The story is nothing special, but the presentation makes up for it in spades. It's got an almost Sin City -esque black and white color palette, and creative use of what I can only call "smearing and blotching". Its design is also unlike anything else in the entire franchise, being set in what is best summarized as "cyberpunk 1940s Los Angeles", suggesting that the Matrix might manifest as different kinds of worlds to different people. It's a really interesting mix of different eras and technologies, and I kind of wish we'd have seen more of it beyond the brief glimpses shown here. It's directed by Shinichiro Watanabe (the guy behind Cowboy Bebop), so the mixing of different styles and aesthetics makes complete sense.
Matriculated, 6/10
This is about a crew of tech people out in the wilds of the Matrix world who capture a robot in an attempt to reprogram it to their side. It's another "early 00's MTV" style presentation that often teeters the line between stylish and interesting, and offputtingly repulsive. This is easily the most head-scratching of the anthology, because it's so disconnected from the rest of the universe it could honestly be form almost any post-apocalyptic setting, and because once it gets going, it became almost completely incomprehensible to me. The reprogramming of the robot is presented in a super abstract and weird way in the Matrix, and I had no idea what most of it was supposed to represent. I guess some people would enjoy that interpretation aspect, but I was just left completely befuddled.
Like I said, this branching out from the film unfortunately ends up exposing the problem with The Matrix as a setting and storytelling framework: there's only a very limited selection of the stories you can tell in this universe. It mostly boils down to one of the following
This is the almost completely forgotten animated companion anthology to the original Matrix trilogy. It consists of 9 different short films, all with their own stories and animation styles centering around the Matrix in various ways. Instead of rating the film as a whole I think it makes more sense to judge the shorts individually, since they range quite widely in quality, and have zero connection to each other whatsoever. As an overall experience it was engaging and interesting, but sometimes also hopelessly dated bordering on corny. The showcasing of different animation and visual styles is the cake here, and whatever emotional engagement you might feel is the frosting.
Final Flight of the Osiris, 3/10
This is the first, and personally the worst of the anthology, so at least there's nowhere to go but up. It's one of the two shorts in the movie directed by the Wachowskis themselves. It's probably the most straightforwardly connected to the trilogy, since it links directly to a vital plot point in Revolutions. It's about a ship named Osiris and its crew venturing into the outside world, and discovering the giant drill the machines plan to invade Zion with. They escape and try to get the message out to Zion in time. Its animation is easly the weakest, since it's presented in the snazziest realistic CGI of 2003, meaning that nowadays it looks like an in-engine PS3 cutscene from 2008. It begins with a weirdly horny fight scene, and isn't overall really interesting. It does manage to build some characterization, but overall it's just a big shrug and a "meh".
The Second Renaissance, parts 1 and 2, 4/10
This is the second of the shorts directed by the Wachowskis, and probably the second worst (are you seeing the pattern here). It's basically a long exposition dump detailing the origins of the machine war, and how the world became a biomechanical hellscape. It does have way better animation than the previous one and there's some occasional interesting designs and images in it. But when it comes to storytelling it's about as subtle as Detroit: Become Human. Seeing as humanity is right now living through an AI revolution IRL, the images in this feel hopelessly quaint. Legions of humanoid robots marching manually to work in the streets while humans party up in the skyscrapers is either the Wachowskis completely lacking creativity, or making the bluntest, least subtle metaphor in film history (which isn't new if we're being honest). I guess you could make the argument that the images aren't supposed to be completely literal, that they're more about conveying an idea than a depiction of actual events, but that feels like a copout. It relies mostly on shock images or borderline recreations of iconic images from art or 20th century photography. For example, there's an image heavily reminiscient of the Okinawa flag raising from WW2, except in this it's robots raising the flag, and it's on fire. Gee, are you getting the message here? It was rather eye-rolling for a lot of it, and the origins of the Matrix universe aren't really as interesting as I think the Wachowskis think they are. So it's another shrug.
Kid's Story, 7/10
This is where the anthology gets into gear. This is a short about how the kid who basically worships Neo in Reloaded and Revolutions came to Zion. It's presented in a dreamlike, rotoscoped style reminiscient of Linkin Park's Breaking the Habit video. It's told through minimal dialogue, and is mostly about the ethereal and off-kilter presentation: characters twist, bend and move in completely unnatural ways, which is completely in line with the feeling of alienation and wrongness the main character's psyche is wracked by. There's not much to say about it since it's one of the shortest parts, but it's very enjoyable.
Program, 6/10
This short is about an unnamed woman training in the simulation, presented here as her battling Edo-era samurai. Her (presumed) boyfriend shows up and reveals he's decided to be plugged back into the Matrix. It's basically just a fight scene interspersed with dialogue that isn't really all that interesting, and kind of highlights how limited The Matrix ultimately is as a storytelling framework. The presentation's top notch though, shown as an ultra-stark contrast anime style similar to Redline, with bold use of limited colors. It's one of the less substantial parts of the anthology, and if you cut down some of the dialogue and length, would make for a pretty fucking sick music video.
World Record, 9/10
Probably my favorite of the whole anthology, this short is about a top of the line sprinter, who's heading to set the new world record against the protests of his manager. Its style I can best describe as "early 2000s animated MTV music video", with completely weird designs, proportions and movements on the characters. The animation itself is honestly not that great, but it makes up for it with some quite bold choices in vital moments. It also takes an interesting approach to the Matrix: the character here has zero connection or interest in it, but stumbles upon it accidentally by pushing himself physically. It's a really interesting, Lovecraftian idea that one can literally walk between worlds through sheer physical effort. The ending is also great.
Beyond, 8/10
This is a story about a young woman searching for her cat in what I presume to be Tokyo, and ending up at a derelict building where some kids are playing around with seemingly unexplained physics anomalies, the house being presumably a place where the border of the Matrix is thin. It's easily the least connected to the whole Matrix, and could honestly just be a short film about a paranormal anomaly of its own. But it's great nonetheless. For such an otherwise bleak and dystopian setting, Beyond is quite sweet and wholesome. The woman and the kids have some fun together, and get a brief peek of what actually lies beneath. It's got a bright and colourful palette, which stands in stark contrast to the main films, which were downright tyrannically dominated by steely blues and greens. It doesn't end with a grisly death, or someone not making it, which was a nice change of pace from the otherwise pretty grim anthology.
A Detective Story, 8/10
My second favorite of the shorts, this is a (short) film noir about a private detective who's tasked with finding Trinity, and tumbling down the rabbit hole in the process. The story is nothing special, but the presentation makes up for it in spades. It's got an almost Sin City -esque black and white color palette, and creative use of what I can only call "smearing and blotching". Its design is also unlike anything else in the entire franchise, being set in what is best summarized as "cyberpunk 1940s Los Angeles", suggesting that the Matrix might manifest as different kinds of worlds to different people. It's a really interesting mix of different eras and technologies, and I kind of wish we'd have seen more of it beyond the brief glimpses shown here. It's directed by Shinichiro Watanabe (the guy behind Cowboy Bebop), so the mixing of different styles and aesthetics makes complete sense.
Matriculated, 6/10
This is about a crew of tech people out in the wilds of the Matrix world who capture a robot in an attempt to reprogram it to their side. It's another "early 00's MTV" style presentation that often teeters the line between stylish and interesting, and offputtingly repulsive. This is easily the most head-scratching of the anthology, because it's so disconnected from the rest of the universe it could honestly be form almost any post-apocalyptic setting, and because once it gets going, it became almost completely incomprehensible to me. The reprogramming of the robot is presented in a super abstract and weird way in the Matrix, and I had no idea what most of it was supposed to represent. I guess some people would enjoy that interpretation aspect, but I was just left completely befuddled.
Like I said, this branching out from the film unfortunately ends up exposing the problem with The Matrix as a setting and storytelling framework: there's only a very limited selection of the stories you can tell in this universe. It mostly boils down to one of the following
- Person discovers the Matrix and maybe tries to leave
- Person in the real world struggles with the machines
- Person wants to go back into the Matrix
My personal favorites are World Record, A Detective Story, Program, and Beyond. Though I always felt Matriculated is the weakest for me.
The Animatrix as a whole I still find better than any of the sequels.
I got back from seeing Nosferatu (2024) earlier this morning. Everybody needs to see this movie now! It's another S-Rank, 10/10 horror movie for me! I literally have 0 complaints. It's what a gothic horror movie should be. It's what a remake and re-imagining should be! It clearly pays respect to the original film, but does its own thing and has a few neat twists I'm not spoiling.
Not that I wasn't already planning to see this (after The Lighthouse and The VVitch, Robert Eggers could remake Taylor Mead's Ass and I'd be interested), but if you've seen the Werner Herzog version of Nosferatu, how would you say it compares?
About as great as Herzog's version or even greater. I should give you a heads up: I saw that version once or twice back when I was 10. I don't remember too much other than me liking it. If you love the 1970s remake, you'll love this but for different, yet similar reasons. I will say I do prefer the art direction of the newest movie compared to the 1970s version. I don't consider the latter's bad, just that I find 2024's much better.
Django Unchained (2012)
Tarantino's 7th movie and, as I always felt, probably his best one.
Django Unchained is a western about the exploits of former slave Django (Jamie Foxx) and bounty hunter King Schulz (Christoph Waltz). Schulz liberates Django when he requires his assistance with a bounty. Soon a friendship develops between the two men, Django becomes Schulz's apprentice and Schulz offers his assistance in liberating Django's wife who's still enslaved in a Mississippi plantatation.
Thus starts what's probably Tarantino's most straight forward and most fast paced movie. It abandons the ensemble casts of Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds and the digressions of Kill Bill in favour of a movie told through the viewpoint of two characters it never strays from too far. Django Unchained is stil quite a few things. A western, a blaxploitation pastiche, a buddy comedy and a revenge thriller. There is also something to be said about the fact that it's probably Tarantino's most straight forward action movie which is interesting, considering his two subsequent movies are certainly movies with action in them but not necessarily action movies.
Django Unchained is an immensely entertaining yarn about two very entertaining characters facing off against a couple of equally entertaining villains in the antebellum south. I'll say it, it probably has some of Tarantino's overall best character dynamics and performances. Waltz plays what's effectively the benign version of his character in Inglourious Basterds, a cunning, smooth talking hunter of people who presents himself as a corny european eccentric. However, unlike Landa, a turncoat and an opportunist, Schulz is a man with genuine principles and while he originally helps out Django out of selfish motives a relationship of genuine trust develops between them. The movie eventually juxaposes this relationship with the movies two primary villains, Leonardo de Caprio as sneering plantation owner Calvin Candie and Samuel L. Jackson as his manservant Stephen. Not only does it make for an interest contrast between Django and Schulz, who consider each other equals and Candie and Stephen who do seem to have some twisted appreciation for each other but still exist strictly in a master-servant dynamic, it genuinely drives home what makes this movies work so well.
There is no moral ambiguity there. Django and Schulz are, unambigiously, good guys and Candie and Stephen are unambigiously evil. It's in essence a very straight forward adventure story because of how clear, or so I hope, from a modern perspective the evil of institutionalized slavery and those upholding it is. All of which really lets the writing and performances really lean into these larger than life characters. Not to digress, but recently I've been playing the first Red Dead Redemption again which, somewhere around the third act, features a racist scientist, spousing pseudoscientific theroies it plays for comic relief, a bit that got old for me almost the moment it started. When DiCaprio starts smugly bullshitting about skull shapes, he sells the hell out of it. And there really is something to be said, you have those great over the top actors like DiCaprio, Jackson and Waltz, sometimes in the same scene which each other, playing those great over the top characters and that once again lend this essentially very straight forward plot a sense of operatic grandeur. Not to mention that it also contains a lot of Tarantino's most consistently funny dialogue.
I... just really like this movie. It doesn't try to do as much as Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction but for being simpler I think it's the best display of Tarantino's talents. It's witty, it's smart, it has great characters and great actors, it has crunchy violence and a feeling of genuine righteous anger behind it, it's a movie I have genuinely almost nothing to complain about. Except, perhaps, for the fact that it somewhat awkwardly stretches out a three act narrative into 4 acts by the means of what's kind of a pointless narrative detour after the first climax. I... just don't quite get why it's structured like that.
But nevertheless, I hadn't seen both in a while but I remembered really liking Django and being kind of underwhelmed by Basterds and I do stand by that. I think Django Unchained is peak Tarantino.
Tarantino's 7th movie and, as I always felt, probably his best one.
Django Unchained is a western about the exploits of former slave Django (Jamie Foxx) and bounty hunter King Schulz (Christoph Waltz). Schulz liberates Django when he requires his assistance with a bounty. Soon a friendship develops between the two men, Django becomes Schulz's apprentice and Schulz offers his assistance in liberating Django's wife who's still enslaved in a Mississippi plantatation.
Thus starts what's probably Tarantino's most straight forward and most fast paced movie. It abandons the ensemble casts of Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds and the digressions of Kill Bill in favour of a movie told through the viewpoint of two characters it never strays from too far. Django Unchained is stil quite a few things. A western, a blaxploitation pastiche, a buddy comedy and a revenge thriller. There is also something to be said about the fact that it's probably Tarantino's most straight forward action movie which is interesting, considering his two subsequent movies are certainly movies with action in them but not necessarily action movies.
Django Unchained is an immensely entertaining yarn about two very entertaining characters facing off against a couple of equally entertaining villains in the antebellum south. I'll say it, it probably has some of Tarantino's overall best character dynamics and performances. Waltz plays what's effectively the benign version of his character in Inglourious Basterds, a cunning, smooth talking hunter of people who presents himself as a corny european eccentric. However, unlike Landa, a turncoat and an opportunist, Schulz is a man with genuine principles and while he originally helps out Django out of selfish motives a relationship of genuine trust develops between them. The movie eventually juxaposes this relationship with the movies two primary villains, Leonardo de Caprio as sneering plantation owner Calvin Candie and Samuel L. Jackson as his manservant Stephen. Not only does it make for an interest contrast between Django and Schulz, who consider each other equals and Candie and Stephen who do seem to have some twisted appreciation for each other but still exist strictly in a master-servant dynamic, it genuinely drives home what makes this movies work so well.
There is no moral ambiguity there. Django and Schulz are, unambigiously, good guys and Candie and Stephen are unambigiously evil. It's in essence a very straight forward adventure story because of how clear, or so I hope, from a modern perspective the evil of institutionalized slavery and those upholding it is. All of which really lets the writing and performances really lean into these larger than life characters. Not to digress, but recently I've been playing the first Red Dead Redemption again which, somewhere around the third act, features a racist scientist, spousing pseudoscientific theroies it plays for comic relief, a bit that got old for me almost the moment it started. When DiCaprio starts smugly bullshitting about skull shapes, he sells the hell out of it. And there really is something to be said, you have those great over the top actors like DiCaprio, Jackson and Waltz, sometimes in the same scene which each other, playing those great over the top characters and that once again lend this essentially very straight forward plot a sense of operatic grandeur. Not to mention that it also contains a lot of Tarantino's most consistently funny dialogue.
I... just really like this movie. It doesn't try to do as much as Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction but for being simpler I think it's the best display of Tarantino's talents. It's witty, it's smart, it has great characters and great actors, it has crunchy violence and a feeling of genuine righteous anger behind it, it's a movie I have genuinely almost nothing to complain about. Except, perhaps, for the fact that it somewhat awkwardly stretches out a three act narrative into 4 acts by the means of what's kind of a pointless narrative detour after the first climax. I... just don't quite get why it's structured like that.
But nevertheless, I hadn't seen both in a while but I remembered really liking Django and being kind of underwhelmed by Basterds and I do stand by that. I think Django Unchained is peak Tarantino.
Desperate Hours (1990)
Remake of a 1950s Humphrey Bogart movie. An escaped convict (Mickey Rourke) hides out in a suburban house and takes hostage a couple (Anthony Hopkins, Mimi Rogers) and their two kids. He's got two 1980s goons with him (David Morse, Elias Koteas) and of course the three of them are batshit, strutting around the house and trying things like they're from Planet X and are just discovering clothes and walkmans and TV. Apparently Rourke's big masterplan is to lay low and wait for his accomplice (Kelly Lynch, with her tits out for like half the movie for no reason) to come pick him up and drive down to Mexico.
So, fugitive terrorizes family during a home invasion should be a no-brainer, but the movie fumbles. Either there's a very specific reason for the home invasion (Panic Room) or the pointlessness is the point, like in Funny Games (and I wonder if Haneke didn't take some inspiration in the invaders kneecapping the dad ASAP). Here the break-in is random and in the service of a plan, supposedly, but the plan makes no sense. Ok, so they have to lay low - what's the point in terrorizing a family and vetting/collecting housecallers all day like it's Pokemon? Why all the theatrics and all the lectures? Why waste time and risk exposure when you should be halfway out of the country? They already have money and a getaway car. Kelly Lynch brings nothing but her knockers to the table, it's not like they need her. Especially when she's a suspect in the getaway and sure enough, in a series of confusing scenes, the FBI is on her ass letting her lead the way.
This was made by Michael Cimino, who made the great Deer Hunter and then single-handedly tanked Universal Artists with Heaven's Gate (also great, by the way). Between this and Year of the Dragon I'm convinced the dude suffered some kind of meltdown or nervous breakdown that rendered him unable to either appreciate or care when his actors go over their fucking top. Everyone's screaming and in hysterics the whole time, and the tone is all over the place. When one of the goons finally gets stood down by the cops the movie decides this is a terribly tragic, poetic moment and makes a martyr out of a non-character, having him commit suicide by cop like we're at the end of RDR. And then Cimino does the exact same scene a second time for the climax, now with Rourke, as if there should be anything to lament about it.
Remake of a 1950s Humphrey Bogart movie. An escaped convict (Mickey Rourke) hides out in a suburban house and takes hostage a couple (Anthony Hopkins, Mimi Rogers) and their two kids. He's got two 1980s goons with him (David Morse, Elias Koteas) and of course the three of them are batshit, strutting around the house and trying things like they're from Planet X and are just discovering clothes and walkmans and TV. Apparently Rourke's big masterplan is to lay low and wait for his accomplice (Kelly Lynch, with her tits out for like half the movie for no reason) to come pick him up and drive down to Mexico.
So, fugitive terrorizes family during a home invasion should be a no-brainer, but the movie fumbles. Either there's a very specific reason for the home invasion (Panic Room) or the pointlessness is the point, like in Funny Games (and I wonder if Haneke didn't take some inspiration in the invaders kneecapping the dad ASAP). Here the break-in is random and in the service of a plan, supposedly, but the plan makes no sense. Ok, so they have to lay low - what's the point in terrorizing a family and vetting/collecting housecallers all day like it's Pokemon? Why all the theatrics and all the lectures? Why waste time and risk exposure when you should be halfway out of the country? They already have money and a getaway car. Kelly Lynch brings nothing but her knockers to the table, it's not like they need her. Especially when she's a suspect in the getaway and sure enough, in a series of confusing scenes, the FBI is on her ass letting her lead the way.
This was made by Michael Cimino, who made the great Deer Hunter and then single-handedly tanked Universal Artists with Heaven's Gate (also great, by the way). Between this and Year of the Dragon I'm convinced the dude suffered some kind of meltdown or nervous breakdown that rendered him unable to either appreciate or care when his actors go over their fucking top. Everyone's screaming and in hysterics the whole time, and the tone is all over the place. When one of the goons finally gets stood down by the cops the movie decides this is a terribly tragic, poetic moment and makes a martyr out of a non-character, having him commit suicide by cop like we're at the end of RDR. And then Cimino does the exact same scene a second time for the climax, now with Rourke, as if there should be anything to lament about it.
A ★★★½ review of Moulin Rouge! (2001)
“It’s not that I’m a jealous man. I just don’t! Like! Other! People! Touching! My! Things!” Inspired by Bollywood films, Baz Luhrmann decided to make a film that essentially combined what he called low comedy and drama in a big song-and-dance way. Towards that end, he took inspiration from the...
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