Blindspotting. Earnest to the point of being a little mawkish, but very funny for most of it, as a parolee attempts to steer clear of trouble for the last few days before his parole expires. Perhaps it should have been slightly more serious or slightly more comedic, but it’s honestly felt and genuine.
One Cut of the Dead. I don’t normally comment on rewatches, but this is just a massive load of fun. A film within a film and also a faux making-of as part of both, as a low-budget zombie film gets interrupted by real zombies. Inventive, funny, enjoyable all the way through.
48 Hrs. This one is an 80s classic, by which I mean there’s some dated hair and suits, a split diopter shot or two, some wheelguns (in one early shootout everyone has a revolver), a black police captain, breasts, laid back and casual racism, and Eddie Murphy. The cast is like a bingo for my childhood, Nick Nolte is an unapologetic arsehole.
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Movie Recommendations Needed!
My wife is away for the weekend, so that means I can watch a movie or two tonight and tomorrow night without being interrupted (unless my one year-old wakes up), and as previous posts should make clear–I cannot be trusted to choose my own movies any longer.
SO–suggest some movies, please! Newer movies from the last 10 years or so are more likely to land as I haven’t seen that much (due to kids). Bonus points if you tell me what service they’re on (because I am lazy). You lose points for zombies, horror, Marvel-or-DC-anything, war movies, potty humor, and documentaries, all of which I have no patience for.
Thank you comrades!
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Banshees of Inisherin. Everything Everywhere All At Once. The Northman. The Green Knight. The Kid Detective.
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The last few movies I have watched recently are Glass Onion:Knives out on Netflix, Banshees of Inisherin on HBO, and The Menu on HBO.
All three were well worth the watch, with Banshees being the standout of the three.
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The Green Knight looks interesting, but I keep reading that it is very slow and tedious, you liked it?
I personally disliked Everything, Everywhere All at Once, but I know I am an anomaly with that opinion. My wife did not care for it either.
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Green Knight is great, it’s just not an action film, you’re not getting fantasy Knight’s Tale or anything.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once was by far my favorite movie last year. It is currently available on Showtime Anytime. The story really connected with my daily struggle to deal with excessive screen time for my 2 teenage kids, and Short Round delivers a performance that leaves no doubt as to where the Best Supporting Actor Oscar will land in March.
The Banshees of Inisherin, The Menu, and Tar were also very good.
The Sound of Metal came out several years ago and can currently be viewed on Amazon Prime. It is an outstanding story about loss of livelihood, dealing with addiction (of many varieties), and adjusting the pace of your life. The final scene was profoundly insightful.
5-25-77 (also on Showtime) snuck up on me last year. It is a nostalgic look at science fiction films in the 70s. It is based on the real life experience of the director, but his personal relationships aren’t quite as interesting as his interaction with the film industry.
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Ok, so I went with Banshees last night because it got the most votes here. And I am also a huge Siouxsie and the Banshees fan, so it was like, Well, duh Biff. And it was fine. I mean, I can see why people are into it. But the whole time I was essentially thought-screaming at the TV to Colin Farrell’s character to just admit to his sister that he did not actually like hanging out with this decrepit jackass crazy person. Do that simple thing, and the movie is 20 minutes long and no monkeys expire.
So after that uplifting, sunny film, I made the mistake of choosing another movie to watch on my own.
I know. WTF Biff Pow?!? What. the. Actual. Frak.
And that phrase (WtAF) is what was repeatedly going through my head as I tortured myself for what felt like hours watching Black Bear.
I can be down with artsy films–My Dinner with Andre, Slacker, and 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould are some of my favorite movies. I often like being confused about what’s happening in a movie for a little while, if there’s a payoff. But this was just pointless, went nowhere, and ended with a glance from the lead actress that, to me, was her saying, “Gotcha! Made you watch this utter nonsense!”
Moreover, all of the characters in the movie were the kind of people I’d like to be run over by a train several times, so I just never cared. I honestly only kept watching because I was hoping (so much) that the finale of the movie would feature a real black bear invading the house and mauling everyone. But (spoiler) that’s not what happens.
So. Round two tonight. Any late additions to the suggestion list are welcome and appreciated!
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Man, it’s surprising me how many of my favorite movies are war movies. I mean, I expect something like Saving Private Ryan or Apocalypse Now to be a war movie, but Kingdom of Heaven and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World are both also clearly war movies.
Did you ever see Baby Driver? It’s rentable all over the place. Best use of music in a movie I can recall. I’ll echo Knives Out/Glass Onion on Netflix; creative murder mysteries with brilliant casts. Moon (HBO Max) was grim and sad, but very tidy sci-fi. Or you could watch something like Beverly Hills Cop (Paramount+), which is now, hilariously, a period piece. Or, heck, go for a classic—Casablanca’s one of those oft-mentioned movies people tend to avoid if they don’t like ponderous classics, not realizing it’s witty and fast-paced (HBO Max).
Fuck—that’s a war movie, too!
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Come on, it’s set during a war but it’s not a war movie, surely.
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It’s not a combat movie, but there’s a heck of a lot of focus on the internal politics of the resistance. Depending on what about war movies causes the boredom, it might count as a war movie for @biffpow’s purposes.
I like Casablanca a lot and it’s not what I think of when I think of a war movie. Apocalypse Now, Band of Brothers, all of that stuff is more what I mean. I even really like Kingdom of Heaven. It’s the carnage and the black and white right/wrong aspects that I have no interest in.
Baby Driver is a great suggestion–I have seen it and liked it. It was very Michael Mann (real Michael Mann, not “I’m going to do a character study of a white journalist taking on the yakuza in Japan! Yeah, people will love that!”).
Enjoyed Knives Out/Glass Onion a lot–love ensemble mysteries and have since I was a kid. I may watch the Branaugh Murder on the Orient Express tonight, which I have not viewed yet because I can’t get past the absurd mustache.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone!
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If the mustache bothers you, you might prefer to start with Death on the Nile, in which it is explained.
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The Kid Detective.
A broken-down former child detective is now an adult detective, skating by on the last of his childhood fame and goodwill, when he is hired to solve a murder. There are some tiny things about this film that are not good, but it’s mainly fucking excellent, so I watched it twice in two days. The dialogue is pithy and sharp, it’s doing a noirish tale in a small Canadian town, and the detective in question, played wonderfully by Adam Brody, has plenty of blind spots and weaknesses, not least the burden of his history everywhere he goes. Everything about it is well observed, taking cues and running with them from kid detective stories, except this time the protagonist is an adult in a more grown-up story, and because he has failed to mature in some ways, it doesn’t go well. Great comedy, a competent mystery, a good script, solid acting, wonderful stuff. Restored my faith in film for at least the next week.
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Explained by yet another Hollywood toe who believes they can do better than the original author…
Last night we watched BJ Novak’s “Vengeance” and it was really good. It is streaming on Amazon Prime right now. Story is about an guy from NYC who is into the mass casual dating scene, and then someone he hooks up with dies in her home town in Texas - and the family thinks he is the boyfriend. It’s a dark comedy with some interesting commentary on media, culture and the divisive thinking that permeates the US right now.
Mirror Mirror is worth a go. Very trippy.
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No Tears for the Dead is stuck in a halfway point between saccharine and sharp, and it’s an uncomfortable place to be for an action film. There are some great shootouts and fights, combined with a decent plot around a PTSD-afflicted hitman, but there definitely isn’t enough for the almost two hours of run time. A little too much Hollywood-style exaggeration in amongst the tactical action, a bit too sappy, but otherwise well above average. A very fine ending, too, which is rare.
White Noise could easily be, and in many ways is, an 80s screwball comedy. Not so much poking as stabbing fun at academia, Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and their host of neurotic children from multiple marriages all have fun dodging a massive chemical spill, then escape a quarantine camp, then go home, where the couple continue their marital problems and mutual fear of death. It is absurd, ridiculous, and an adaptation of a novel that wouldn’t normally be attempted. The film is all over the place tonally as a result, and I think Baumbach is trying is hardest here to be faithful to the novel and simultaneously piss in a lot of faces.
Babylon. I freely admit I have no idea if this film is any good or not. I did enjoy all three hours plus of it, though. A mad dash through Hollywood from the days of silent films through to the middle of the 20th century, it seems to want to cover all genres too, comedy, horror, action, musical, crime, you name it. Sumptuous, opulent, and indulgent, I’m not quite sure what the point of the film is besides “Isn’t film great!” which is a little bit…self-referential, I suppose, but there’s a good role here for Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie has fun with her part, and everyone else is largely a bit player, apart from Diego Calva who gets to be the POV character. A tumultuous barrage of a film.
You know what you’re getting with Mann. Some cool lighting, good cinematography, competence porn, no fluff, and at least one good shootout, iconically carried here by Holt McCallany picking motherfuckers off with a .45 while Chris Hemsworth cries behind a bus stop. It dodges most of the pitfalls of ‘hacking’ films, avoiding having people furiously slap keyboards while shouting about the firewalls, although it does still indulge in the sin of cyberspace visuals. Hemsworth is fine, although whatever he’s trying to do with his voice doesn’t work, he’s easily as believable as any other film hacker (so not very), and he also has a fine sideline in stabbing and shooting people, somehow. Ritchie Coster is great as the hired gun, but Yorick van Wageningen looks like a fucking refugee from the Disco Wars, what the fuck were they thinking. The ending is silly and bad.
Tar. I probably did not get the full effect of the film, because the main character’s a piece of shit, and I don’t think that her skill at conducting excuses her. I think we should all be long past the myth of the tortured artist who has to misbehave in order to produce art, and the end may be the biggest act of snobbery I have ever seen committed to film. Very well made, in all respects, but I think the film could have made even more of its excellent sound design, though overall I don’t think that taking more than two and a half hours to tell this story was warranted. I do not empathise or sympathise with Blanchett’s character, however well performed it is. Virtually every other character is either spineless and/or repulsive, and similarly well-acted. Intellectually vapid.
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My entire family noped out of Everything Everywhere. No idea why everyone loves it so. Great premise, great actors, but then it gets in its own way and falls apart. I’ve left very few films while they were still running, but I’m adding EEAAO to Blade Runner 7890264.
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