What’s the deal with Mads? Serious question. My wife - and apparently millions of other women - finds him ridiculously attractive and I simply cannot fathom why. Is it the rapist stare with those dead fish eyes? The weird haircut?
1 Like
I can’t explain it. Very likely, neither can the women who find him attractive. What women find attractive in men is beyond reasoning.
Maybe it’s his big dick energy.
1 Like
I think he has the restraint to downplay certain roles which lessor actors would use as an opportunity to start emoting or doing a Nicholas Cage. Hence he gives off some kind of vibe, like there’s a great amount of violence simmering inside him just waiting to be unleashed. I’ve only noticed this ability in De Niro and a HK actor named Francis Ng(Infernal Affairs 2). Oh wait, and Benicio Del Toro too.
This shouldn’t be confused with actors like Russell Crowe just looking sad throughout a movie trying to pass that off “restraint”.
Watched “Hold the Dark” on Netflix this past weekend. I liked the film, but the wife did not (said it was “too boring”). A bit ambiguous (intended) and the ended felt a little weak, but the moving does a good job highlighting the oddness and depravity of basic humanity.
Kind of looks like Steve Buscemi’s slightly more attractive brother to me.
WandaVision
I have no idea what’s going on but it’s kinda entertaining. I’m guessing they’re trying to pull off something like Legion(the TV series) but the writers aren’t even close to being smart enough to pull something like that off. The only problem with Legion is that it got a little too mentally exhausting for me to justify investing my time watching it since I have little interest in that kind of subject matter so I stopped after season 2.
Noah Crowley is just such a brilliant all round filmmaker. Check out the first 2 seasons of Fargo(the TV series) if Legion isn’t your thing. They’re like 8.5-9/10 for me if I had to rate them.
But back to WandaVision. Maybe this is something from the comics but I’ve never read them so I wouldn’t know.
My opinion is that conceptually what would really drive home the sadness at losing Vision would have been to just let everything take place in a self-constructed reality Wanda created for herself and her allies are trying to bring her out of it. Something simple with the potential for lots internal conflict and emotional scenes.
Like that tiny spark of brilliance amongst all that horrific editing and disjointed storytelling in Suicide Squad where Harley Quin images a normal life with Joker. It was stuff like that which made me sort of give it a pass and assume there’s a director’s cut out there that’s actually good.
I’ve currently finished the 3rd episode and I’ll admit it’s almost a clever move to construct a reality around an American 50s sitcom and moving on to the late 60s since Wanda grew up in some made up shithole in the Eastern Block before being taken in by the bad guys so it kinda makes sense that her impression of a" normal American life" would be from sitcoms from that era. I use the word “almost” because this would probably only be the case If it was set in the the 90s. But whatever. I’m just going along with it.
I’m not sure their intent when it comes to the concept is what I mentioned earlier and I don’t think I like where they’re going with the story although it’s pretty well directed.
We’ll see. There’s no involvement from The Russo Brothers so I’m not really expecting nor hoping for much other than they don’t fuck it up.
Greenland
This is a surprisingly good movie. I really wasn’t expecting it. I thought it was going to be one of those silly but entertaining Roland Emmerich disaster flicks.
Instead, it’s a pretty clever human drama with a “ticking clock” in the form of an “extinction level sized” asteroid about to hit the earth in 2 days always looming in the background while “tiny” fragments large enough to take out Florida rain down occasionally as Gerard Butler and his family try to get to a government bunker.
Because they focus on, and make you care about the characters, the tension and sense of dread is always present and the addition of stuff like random raining down of rock sized molten debris almost turns it into a horror movie.
Don’t get me wrong. There are scenes of massive devastation and shit which are executed really well but they’re not the focus of the movie. They’re mostly shown briefly in the form of news footage. It was a good decision on the part of the filmmakers and I really appreciated that.
I won’t give any of the events of the plot away. It’s best to watch it without knowing too much. The movie does have it’s flaws - lots of them actually - but the ride is worth it as a whole.
7.5/10
As a disclaimer, I’m gonna confess I’m one of the only people in world who loved The Core despite it’s utter ridiculousness and complete, unapologetic disregard for the most basic of scientific principles so take this review with a grain of salt.
Im laughing as I read this whole exchange, then read it to my wife, and she actually said this same thing almost verbatim.
1 Like
I went and watched Justice League again just to see if I would still hate it after watching so much trash over the past year.
It still sucks. But I didn’t hate it as much. Birds of Prey and WW84 pushed the current standard so low compared to the standard of the Marvel movies at the time Justice League was released that I didn’t feel the original disappointment I felt when I first watched it and actually found it mildly entertaining.
All I can say that’s good about Zack Snyder is that he has great taste in music and knows how to use it in film. I liked how he used Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” in the intro. Just like when he used “When the Man Comes Around” in the Dawn of the Dead remake and that Bob Dylan song in the Watchmen intro along with Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower” near the ending.
And he does have a pretty good flair for visuals and montages. The opening scene of Batman V Superman was visually stunning and involved a high level of technical skill to pull off. But he sucks as a filmmaker. I’m not watching 2 hours of “hey look how cool this shit is”. I already have Michael Bay for that, and he does this shit way better. The difference between Zack Snyder and Michael Bay is that he does not have the skill to pull of a 13 Hours like Michael Bay did when he really wants to make a good movie.
And yeah, I completed watching WW84. It sucks. It’s like the director was intentionally trying to make a Zack Snyder movie, which makes no fucking sense since the first movie was everything that Man of Steel wasn’t. It succeeded in every aspect where Man of Steel failed. I don’t understand how they managed to make this one suck so badly.
I really thought the first movie was just a “warm up” for the Patty Jenkins like The Winter Soldier was for the Russo Brothers and this movie would be the equivalent of Civil War, which was even more amazing. I was wrong.
Of course I’m not saying I expected the Russo Brothers’ level of filmmaking. That would be unfair and absurd. They’re fucking geniuses. IMO not even Aquaman came close and I rave about James Wan all the time. The only movie that came close was Thor: Ragnarok but I have a feeling that was a one time fluke after watching the director’s other movies.
All I expected was something better than, or at least on par with the first Wonder Woman. What I got instead was Zack Snyder Lite.
1 Like
Watched two enjoyable movies recently. Gone Girl was the first. This one had some plot twists I did not see coming, and an unusual ending. I like movies that don’t fit a typical pattern and this was one of them. 8.5/10.
The Grand Budapest Hotel was next. I had no idea what this movie was about. TBH I thought it was going to be some chick flick with Jude Law since he is in it, and the movie cover is of a big pink hotel in the mountains. It was not that at all. It was a fantastic adventure movie with comedy sprinkled in (sort of has a Tarantino feel to it). I don’t think this movie is very long, and left me wanting more. The actor who played Amon Goth in Shindler’s List was excellent. 9/10.
3 Likes
Man, I LOVE this movie. So absurdly wonderful.
1 Like
I hesitantly watched it. My wife was the one who wanted to see it, and as I said I thought it was a Jude Law chick flick. I was very wrong about it. I think I will actually watch is again, as I was kinda scrolling the phone (probably on T-Nation) for the beginning. Then it kinda drew me in.
I don’t even know how to classify the movie. Is it a comedy, action, drama? Had a bit of everything.
Watch it again. I enjoyed it more my second viewing. Wes Anderson movies are so weird.
Isle of Dogs is another one by him that was super weird, but I really enjoyed.
3 Likes
The Royal Tenenbaums is one of my favourite movies. I’m still in love with Gwyneth Paltrow because of it.
I just call it a Wes Anderson movie lol. It’s actually a great example of post-modernism in film but I refrain from using the term since it’s like a dirty word nowadays.
Simply put, like Tarantino, the dude deconstructs and extracts elements from older genre flicks and/or combines and reinterprets them to form something new, which makes his movies somewhat unclassifiable.
You were spot on when you saw this similarity though their films are so different. I don’t think you have any formal education in film theory and neither do I although I briefly studied art history and do some filming as part of my profession but we can still pick up stuff like this. It’s why I keep saying filmmakers need to have faith in their audience.
I personally think all Wes Anderson’s movies are tragic comedies.
He reminds me of a the Hong Kong filmmaker Stephen Chow who’s known all over Asia for his comedies(Shaolin Soccer, Kungfu Hustle). But Stephen Chow’s films are more commercially viable with less arthouse tendencies.
Every time he released a new movie up to the 2000s he set a new box office record in HK and certain other countries. Almost every single time. One big reason is because they released them during the Chinese New Year season and people want to watch comedies or light-hearted Jackie Chan flicks during the period.
The dude once lamented, “Why do people think my films are comedies? They’re all tragedies.”
I agree with him. His characters are mostly archetypical tragic ones or just plain losers from older classic HK movies reinterpreted and put in comedic, or unexpectedly heroic situations played straight without irony, which actually heightens the comedic aspect of his movies.
Wong Kar Wai, another post modernist filmmaker from HK(Chungking Express, Days of Being Wild), said it best: “Film students should stop analysing my films so much and just watch more movies.”
1 Like
Perfect comparison. Lots of similarities between their styles.
1 Like
The Gentleman
This movie had popped up briefly on my radar when it came out, then I promptly forgot about it. Watched it over the weekend with my wife and loved it. Guy Ritchie’s dialogue in his films is always fantastic, and this was no exception.
Also Hugh Grant playing such a… non Hugh Grant character was hilarious. Much broader actor than I used to think, apparently.
9/10
3 Likes
Yeah, and one of biggest similarities I noticed is they have lots of respect and empathy for their characters so they can place them in the most silly situations and they don’t look like complete fools. You can actually still take them seriously when you’re required to.
1 Like
It’s interesting you brought this movie up since Guy Ritchie is like the complete opposite of Wes Anderson lol. For some weird reason, he needs to completely despise his characters to make a really good movie. It’s why I think this movie worked so well, like Snatch and Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels did.
I honestly didn’t like the 2 Sherlock Holmes movies and I don’t think they would have had any chance of succeeding without Robert Downey Jr single-handedly elevating them. And King Arthur was a joke IMO.
You are correct. No formal classes in film. I am a film fan though. I have watched most of the movies on IMDB’s top 250, and most of the movies that are discussed as great movies.
I really liked this movie. Probably worth a re watch. I liked the alternative scenes they have that make you think the movie is going in a different direction.
It was also something different. I think we need more movies that are not so obvious and don’t fit a marketing formula for making a lot of money. Hopefully these movies can make a lot of money and we see more ambition from producers to make original films.
1 Like