Movies

Finally got around to Promising Young Woman. It was good; I've avoided reading about it or even watching trailers, so I went in pretty fresh. I can see why some would be championing it and others would consider it a bit irresponsible or flip in its approach.

I will say I was pretty surprised how relatively tame her 'double life' turned out to be; as someone who's seen Hard Candy, Love Witch, and plenty other biting revenge stories in horror, it seemed a little underwhelming that her 'revenge' (up until she found Al) was to basically go 'boo! I'm sober!'
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A lot of its effectiveness may boil down to perspective; early on I mentioned feeling the men are too obviously scummy, and it'd be easy for the average dude to refuse to see himself in the behavior depicted onscreen. I mean, when McLovin is doing lines off an album cover and going "Consider the Lobster? Consider my mind blown!" it's a little broadly drawn. But then, the movie's billed as a dark comedy, so perhaps those elements are supposed to be overtly silly? Either way, my wife said "nope," to all my nonsense and I think she's right: no matter how broadly or how outre you depict fictional bad male behavior, there's real men out there actually being like that.
 
waruv said:
Made it through the best picture noms I'm going to watch, my rough preferences and thoughts

1. Sound of Metal - I really loved this movie. One of the things I actually really enjoyed about most of this slate is that a lot of the movies didn't take a lot of pre-amble time to get into the core of the story. I'm not hearing impaired so I can't speak to the authenticity but the sound work really brought me into the film and the very strong emotional work throughout the film, the believable plotting, and the smaller details left me in a good space. I would love to see this in a theatre with surround sound and the full effect of what they intended.

2. Minari - The more I think on it the better I feel overall about the high ranking. I certainly agree that Oscar movies often veer into "misery porn" territory, I just don't think Minari got there. The movie felt honest and was a pretty fascinating world view into a slew of different societal and personal issues - in a bit of a weird way it felt like an alternate universe version of last year's Marriage Story to me. The dynamics of the family all felt very well thought out and very American if you will. I would love for it to pull off the Oscar upset.

3. Promising Young Woman - What a statement of a movie. For me the most unique story of the ones I watched and the one that sticks in my mind. Carey Mulligan continued to prove she can do no wrong and I thought the casting throughout was really strong and the right story forks were taken. This deserved a bigger audience than it got.

4. Trial of the Chicago 7 - This was Sorkin all the way through: a lot of 3-5 minute scenes pieced into a movie with a really interesting narrative feel and some characters who were just a bit too caricatured. I actually really enjoyed most of it, with my markdowns being more in the realm of losing the full picture of the trial and probably being a bit too overlong in spots.

5. Nomadland - I hope this one is in theatres by the time I'm vaccinated fully and I get a shot there. I think it'd play better than it did on a small screen in a room full of distractions, especially if I'm going in knowing what I'm seeing. There was a very interesting comparison to me between this film and Boyhood, which was one of my all time favorite movies, and that crystalized to me that my lack of interest was probably just in my inability to relate to most of the characters. A me flaw if you will. If it wins, and I think it will, I certainly won't be mad. Feels like a movie that is very re-watchable.

6. Judas and the Black Messiah - I felt really bad that I couldn't get into this as much as I wanted to, I just couldn't. That's more on me than the movie

7. Mank - Yeah, didn't care for it, I never really love the old Hollywood reflection films though.

I didn't watch The Father - after the experience known as Amour I pretty much refuse to watch dementia related films. I'm sure Hopkins was amazing and the film is great and special and that's all good.

I didn't watch as much as I want to this year at all, I do feel like One Night in Miami was relatively robbed (it'd be probably #3 or #4 on this list if it were nominated for best picture). Soul wasn't going to break out of the animated category but it was just as good as most of these. Palm Springs is not an Oscar movie but I had more fun with that than anything on the list.
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Thanks for taking the time to do this!

I watched Sound Of Metal over the weekend and thought it was brilliant. Its one of the few films that I have watched of recent months that really made me wonder what it must be like to be in that position. Very powerful stuff imo.
 
Selaws said:
Thanks for taking the time to do this!

I watched Sound Of Metal over the weekend and thought it was brilliant. Its one of the few films that I have watched of recent months that really made me wonder what it must be like to be in that position. Very powerful stuff imo.
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Agreed. Riz did a great job running through the gamut of emotions that must run through someone’s head when that kind of devastating news settles in. I though the ending was perfect as well.

He’s also great in Nightcrawler if you haven’t seen that. Available on Netflix currently
 
ayayrawn said:
Oscars are pretty predictable in most categories this year, but it will be nice to have the 2020 slate out of the way and eyes forward towards the good stuff coming this year. I'll still have a good time watching, though this will be the first year in a while that my roommate and I aren't watching at the movie theater at our college, gaming our ballots and winning a couple blu rays.
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I read this and I was like “you went to a movie theater for the oscars last year?” And then I remembered what time of year the oscars usually happen haha.
 
gouis said:
I gotta be honest. I believed everything I said about Minari but mostly I just found it boring as shit.
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Do you enjoy Terrence Malick films? Like the plot is fine but the the film is visually stunning. I was never bored because even the most mundane events were filmed beautifully.
 
Melt Face Molly Drop said:
Agreed. Riz did a great job running through the gamut of emotions that must run through someone’s head when that kind of devastating news settles in. I though the ending was perfect as well.

He’s also great in Nightcrawler if you haven’t seen that. Available on Netflix currently
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Yeah it must be pretty harrowing.

I loved Nightcrawler! His character was very different again so it shows just how great of an actor he is.
 
Like I literally watched this 4 hour french figure drawing movie (La Belle Noiseuse) in quarantine and it was freaking great. I just need movies to try something beyond "oh isn't this touching".
 
So, I finally got around to watching Trial of the Chicago 7 and I have to say, it was probably the most engaging Best Picture Nominee out of the four that I've seen [the other 3 are: Minari, Nomadland, and Sound of Metal]. I have a bad habit of pausing movies every 5-10 minutes as I watch them to see how much time is left, and there were very full lulls in the dramatic tension here to give me the space to do that, and I appreciate that in a film. Sure, it was formulaic and that last scene was too much with all the music swelling - but even then, I didn't like HATE it or anything. I can't pretend to be mad about a film that spoonfeeds so much history and context to me and clearly signals how I should react to this miscarriage of justice. I feel like I've seen a lot of films this year that just kind of lazily meander around and throw a bunch of half-hearted ideas in the air in the hopes that the audience will piece them together into something meaningful, and it felt nice to be in the hands of a screenwriter who knew what they wanted to say and then successfully said it, especially when the subject matter is so relevant. Granted, it's easier to do that when you're working off actual events with clearly known outcomes, but I just feel like the script and the cast were both better than any other movie that came out this year, except for One Night In Miami. I guess I'm still pulling for Sound of Metal to win Best Picture, but in a year as bereft as 2020 was, I'm fine with this being nominated. For as slow as some of the other contenders were, it's impressive to me that this film clocks in at over 2 hours and still felt a little rushed.
 
Did I expect Mortal Kombat to be a good movie? No. But I also didn't expect it to be as bad as it was. The fights didn't even save this movie. They were slow and not at all entertaining. The script felt like a middle schoolers fanfic. They awkwardly forced every catch phrase they could, it was horrible.
 
Max Sterling said:
Did I expect Mortal Kombat to be a good movie? No. But I also didn't expect it to be as bad as it was. The fights didn't even save this movie. They were slow and not at all entertaining. The script felt like a middle schoolers fanfic. They awkwardly forced every catch phrase they could, it was horrible.
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So was it an improvement from the original? Because this makes it seem so
 
Max Sterling said:
Did I expect Mortal Kombat to be a good movie? No. But I also didn't expect it to be as bad as it was. The fights didn't even save this movie. They were slow and not at all entertaining. The script felt like a middle schoolers fanfic. They awkwardly forced every catch phrase they could, it was horrible.
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I was out when I read that there was no tournament. THAT'TS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE THING
 
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