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StarTopic Film Chat |ST| What's Your Favorite Acting Turn?

Prophet64 said:
John Huston is so good in this. Truly inspired casting. I guess so is the casting of Peter Bogdanovich but for different reasons (mostly so Orson Welles can throw shade his way).
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Brooks Otterlake is the best name for a character in any movie.

I love how John Huston plays a stand-in for himself, for Welles, and for everything Welles finds creatively contemptuous. Also, the movie is about a lot of things, but I was surprised about how much of it was about suppressed homosexuality.
 
I saw Bottoms yesterday and thought it was pretty fun - I think the surreal tone was a mixed bag (I would have been fine with it just being a queer Superbad-esque film without the weird Fight Club plot), but it was entertaining and the cast was good.
 
Mekanos said:
I saw Bottoms yesterday and thought it was pretty fun - I think the surreal tone was a mixed bag (I would have been fine with it just being a queer Superbad-esque film without the weird Fight Club plot), but it was entertaining and the cast was good.
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Ngl, hesring it's surreal makes me more interested in it
 
After making another unhinged post about my Saw experience elsewhere I have been gifted 2 tickets to Saw X in 4DX for the opening next Thursday.
 
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big lantern ghost said:
Feeling like watching a movie tonight. I haven’t seen Nope, Dune or John Wick 4 yet. Which would you recommend?
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I love all three of those, though I think Nope and Dune have their fair share of detractors. What's your mood?

Nope feels a bit like Jordan Peele doing his take on early Spielberg. Dune is Villeneuve doing Villeneuve, really bombastic and stark and gorgeous. JW4 is just an action masterclass that looks more like a graphic novel than any live action film I've seen in recent memory.
 
kvetcha said:
I love all three of those, though I think Nope and Dune have their fair share of detractors. What's your mood?

Nope feels a bit like Jordan Peele doing his take on early Spielberg. Dune is Villeneuve doing Villeneuve, really bombastic and stark and gorgeous. JW4 is just an action masterclass that looks more like a graphic novel than any live action film I've seen in recent memory.
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Hmm. This is hard. All of these movies seem great; how I haven't seen them yet is a bit of a mystery! And all three of your descriptions sound sublime to me. At the risk of sounding shallow...which movie impressed you the most visually? I have recently started watching movies on my good TV and wouldn't mind a nice HDR showcase.
 
big lantern ghost said:
Hmm. This is hard. All of these movies seem great; how I haven't seen them yet is a bit of a mystery! And all three of your descriptions sound sublime to me. At the risk of sounding shallow...which movie impressed you the most visually? I have recently started watching movies on my good TV and wouldn't mind a nice HDR showcase.
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John Wick 4 is drenched in neon and shadow and makes a terrific HDR showcase.

Dune is visually startling, but primarily in terms of scale, composition, and starkness of design. It also sounds incredible, though I don't know what sort of a sound setup you've got going.

Nope is a very handsome movie but, visually speaking, it pushes fewer stylistic boundaries.
 
kvetcha said:
John Wick 4 is drenched in neon and shadow and makes a terrific HDR showcase.

Dune is visually startling, but primarily in terms of scale, composition, and starkness of design. It also sounds incredible, though I don't know what sort of a sound setup you've got going.

Nope is a very handsome movie but, visually speaking, it pushes fewer stylistic boundaries.
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I think it might be a John Wick 4 sort of night! I feel like I want to be dazzled haha. I'll get to all of these eventually though. I really enjoyed Blade Runner 2049 and Get Out. (Sadly I just use my TV speakers, I most often watch movies after my kid goes to bed and they're a bit of a troubled sleeper. Have thought about getting a sound bar or some better headphones though 😁)

I was just googling around on these films and was reminded that Keanu Reeves is damn near 60 years old! God I hope I look 1/8th as good by the time I'm that age lmao.
 
big lantern ghost said:
I think it might be a John Wick 4 sort of night! I feel like I want to be dazzled haha. I'll get to all of these eventually though. I really enjoyed Blade Runner 2049 and Get Out. (Sadly I just use my TV speakers, I most often watch movies after my kid goes to bed and they're a bit of a troubled sleeper. Have thought about getting a sound bar or some better headphones though 😁)

I was just googling around on these films and was reminded that Keanu Reeves is damn near 60 years old! God I hope I look 1/8th as good by the time I'm that age lmao.
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I totally use (wired!) headphones for late night movie watching. It's worth the investment.

Hope you like the movie! It's my [checks letterboxd] #3 of the year so far!.
 
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AstroOhHey said:
Barbie's the first movie I've seen in theaters for several months and in all honesty given some people's reactions, I was expecting far worse? Not a perfect movie by any means but I had a lot of fun with it and think it kept things balanced enough where it had a strong message but wasn't overly preachy about it, or at least not in a way that overtook the experience.

There were some walkouts though with families with especially little kids lol, maaaaay have been slightly mis-marketed in that sense.

In terms of general movie watching without a theatre being involved I rewatched Treasure Planet and Nimona recently, both great animated films! Glad the latter still came out despite the fuckery with Disney, I really think it could've been a bigger hit than their other recent films if they'd had the balls to stick behind it.
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I saw it last week and really liked it. It's so dumb to expect the film to present some unified solution to gender tensions (or whatever the term should be). It's challenging and fun and that's more than enough. I like how visually striking it is too, even though I don't love the look itself.

I felt once again watching Barbie that The Lego Movie is one hell of an influential film
 
big lantern ghost said:
Hmm. This is hard. All of these movies seem great; how I haven't seen them yet is a bit of a mystery! And all three of your descriptions sound sublime to me. At the risk of sounding shallow...which movie impressed you the most visually? I have recently started watching movies on my good TV and wouldn't mind a nice HDR showcase.
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John Wick 4. Dune's visuals are impressive more for how natural they seem, how they blend into the world to make it look believable. Whereas John Wick 4 is stylized and bright and colorful and...

...well, I'll just say: there's once scene in particular that is absolutely wild if you're looking for something that'll visually impress. It was literally inspired by a heavily stylistic video game and the production even admitted that. It is bonkers and your eyes will thank you.
 
big lantern ghost said:
Watched John Wick 4 and uh, wow. That was outrageous! Looked incredible too.

(And yeah, that scene was spectacular. I need to look up some BTS stuff for this movie)
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I actually just realized there were two scenes that could be said were videogame-esque: one being like Hotline Miami (although the production team cited Hong Kong Massacre, but it was inspired by HLM so) and the other being like Frogger 😅
 
chocolate_supra said:
I actually just realized there were two scenes that could be said were videogame-esque: one being like Hotline Miami (although the production team cited Hong Kong Massacre, but it was inspired by HLM so) and the other being like Frogger 😅
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Lol I see your point! I meant the former. That was…maybe the best action sequence I’ve ever seen.
 
So I just got back from seeing Expend4bles because my dad really wanted to see Expend4bles

Yall Expend4bles is really bad

And not like the first two where they were "bad but fun because the cast is charismatic and nostalgic and they'e obviously having a blast and its a throwback genre film that's supposed to be dumb," it's bad in a "those knock-off direct-to-dvd movies you used to see on the shelves in Blockbuster" bad. The cast (or what remains of them) seem to actively dislike each other and the whole process of what's going on, except for Statham (for whom it seems the movie shifted into being a vehicle instead of an ensemble action movie) and Stallone (from whom it feels like the franchise is being ripped away, and it kinda hurts to see). Megan Fox was about as bad as people are saying her performance in Mortal Kombat 1 was, the other additions to the cast are given almost nothing to work with (except the incredible Tony Jaa, who thankfully gets to knee a couple people in the head), and the CGI and explosions are just.. not great. How do you bung up the explosions in an Expendables movie???

sorry, I mean How do you bung up the explosions in an Expend4bles movie???

Also this movie helped remind me how much I miss Jet Li.

At least The Creator comes out next week. Silver linings.
 
chocolate_supra said:
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Lol

Wanna take this as an opportunity to say that in addition to being an incredible director, Scorsese is one of the most thoughtful, insightful cinephiles and its always such a pleasure to hear him speak about films he loves. The man has a truly inexhaustible curiosity about cinema from around the world and has done so much to preserve and premote marginalized, forgotten, and nearly lost movies. Gonna shill for a bluray company one more time today and recommend Criterion's Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Collection series. Some truly amazing films, and all of them are at least interesting.
 
So I saw a rumor floating around that Christopher Nolan is gonna reboot the Bond series as a 1960s period piece starring Aaron Taylor Johnson.

I don't necessarily think it's valid but holy fuck it sounds like exactly the thing I'd love
 
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So heh. MORE SPIELBERG.

Duel (1971)
This one's good. Small-scale, simple story, one main character. We never see the truck driver's face. It's kind of paranoïd in a way. What is genius about this is that since you don't have a face to hate, well, the truck kind of becomes the face of the main villain.

Bridge of Spies (2015)
This one is really good. It starts as a law movie in act 1 and then becomes a cold war thriller past it. Tom Hanks is as charming as ever and Mark Rylance is somehow able to convey so much emotion in so little.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)
This one may be the best of the three. DeCaprio + Hanks + Spielberg is already an explosive combination but that movie really drives home how much the main character was impacted by the divorce of his parents and his strong desire to revert back to the way things were. It also feels personal in a way since Spielberg was kind of broken by the separation of his own parents.

There was also Schindler's List (1993) (two words: dreading and phenomenal) and Amistad (1997) I saw earlier. I was thinking about doing Close Encounters (1977) in place of Bridge of Spies originally but for some reason I have a problem finding a high quality source for it. I also still need to get around E.T.
 
entut1 said:
So heh. MORE SPIELBERG.

Duel (1971)
This one's good. Small-scale, simple story, one main character. We never see the truck driver's face. It's kind of paranoïd in a way. What is genius about this is that since you don't have a face to hate, well, the truck kind of becomes the face of the main villain.

Bridge of Spies (2015)
This one is really good. It starts as a law movie in act 1 and then becomes a cold war thriller past it. Tom Hanks is as charming as ever and Mark Rylance is somehow able to convey so much emotion in so little.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)
This one may be the best of the three. DeCaprio + Hanks + Spielberg is already an explosive combination but that movie really drives home how much the main character was impacted by the divorce of his parents and his strong desire to revert back to the way things were. It also feels personal in a way since Spielberg was kind of broken by the separation of his own parents.

There was also Schindler's List (1993) (two words: dreading and phenomenal) and Amistad (1997) I saw earlier. I was thinking about doing Close Encounters (1977) in place of Bridge of Spies originally but for some reason I have a problem finding a high quality source for it. I also still need to get around E.T.
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Duel is high on my list. I missed a rep screening at the Alamo earlier this year and was very jazzed to see it pop up on Criterion!

It’s kinda crazy how effortlessly good so much latter-era Spielberg is. He just kinda casually throws off these incredibly well made pictures.
 
kvetcha said:
Duel is high on my list. I missed a rep screening at the Alamo earlier this year and was very jazzed to see it pop up on Criterion!

It’s kinda crazy how effortlessly good so much latter-era Spielberg is. He just kinda casually throws off these incredibly well made pictures.
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I love Duel, I think its one of Spielberg's best picture, but I can't pretend I wasn't disappointed that the truck didn't blow up at the end. Clearly a budget limitation, there's no way the truck blowing up wasn't in the script.

My take on Spielberg is I wish he had kept making movies loke Duel and Jaws.
 
Phosphorescent Skeleton said:
I love Duel, I think its one of Spielberg's best picture, but I can't pretend I wasn't disappointed that the truck didn't blow up at the end. Clearly a budget limitation, there's no way the truck blowing up wasn't in the script.

My take on Spielberg is I wish he had kept making movies loke Duel and Jaws.
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Scrappy Young Spielberg is my favorite phase of his, but I’m also glad that Elder Statesman Spielberg is around to make stuff like West Side Story, cuz goddamn.
 
Watched Aliens last night, so good. I will never get tired of Bill Paxton’s wild, bug eyed performance in it. Go big or go home!
 
Watched Smoking Causes Coughing a couple of nights ago. Very fun movie, sort of like a French Monty Python and the Holy Grail for tokusatsu? I'd recommend it, though it's not everyone's speed.

Also watched The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar last night. I liked the premise of the sets and the dialogue, how it's shown as a stage play and the characters self-narrate. Wife liked seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in funny outfits.
 
Looks like I'm going to see The Creator tonight. I tend to find Gareth Edwards' movies visually compelling but dramatically inert, so I'm not expecting the world.
 
Saw X is over, I can be at peace.

It was actually weirdly good for an hour, like was on pace to be the best Saw sequel by miles and a legitimate good horror rec. Then it just fumbles, picks it back up, then fumbles again in the tail end. I feel if they weren't so indulgent on repeating certain Saw tropes and trying to play to the audience they had something really good. Still some highlights and avoided a lot of what I hate about this series(still can't quite let go of a certain theme), so fair enough. I gotta say though, it's weird being in a Saw movie where a thing happens and it feels like I'm expected to clap like when Spiderman shows up in a Marvel movie. There's always Saw 11 next year!
 
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They posted about it this morning and have already mentioned they're working on how to implement support for rating and reviewing TV shows. Goodnight, sweet prince. It should have been Goodreads.
 
Henry Sugar anybody? I'm curious if any Wes-haters have watched it because I suspect it works even if you aren't already a fan. I am incapable of making that judgment, though, because I am totally in the tank for Anderson. He speaks on exactly my emotional wavelength (self-loathing intellectualism -> raw weird earnest poignancy) whether I like it or not.
 
Ramune said:


They posted about it this morning and have already mentioned they're working on how to implement support for rating and reviewing TV shows. Goodnight, sweet prince. It should have been Goodreads.
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As far as I've heard, Tiny is pretty hands-off with their acquisitions, so I don't imagine they're going to be exerting much influence on how Letterboxd does their thing. They were toying with adding TV well before this.
 
kvetcha said:
As far as I've heard, Tiny is pretty hands-off with their acquisitions, so I don't imagine they're going to be exerting much influence on how Letterboxd does their thing. They were toying with adding TV well before this.
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Fingers crossed, and yeah, so long as TV is something I can ignore on there it's fine. I'll have to unfollow some friends if they start logging all the uninteresting telly they watch.
 
Ramune said:
Fingers crossed, and yeah, so long as TV is something I can ignore on there it's fine. I'll have to unfollow some friends if they start logging all the uninteresting telly they watch.
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I'm secretly hoping it's like...a totally separate section, or at least a toggle you can disable.

Then again, the more people I can force to realize that Station Eleven is a 5-star masterpiece, the better.
 
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Ramune said:


They posted about it this morning and have already mentioned they're working on how to implement support for rating and reviewing TV shows. Goodnight, sweet prince. It should have been Goodreads.
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Anyone else notice how every Ryan Reynolds movie has 5 stars now?
 
Apopheniac said:
Watched Smoking Causes Coughing a couple of nights ago. Very fun movie, sort of like a French Monty Python and the Holy Grail for tokusatsu? I'd recommend it, though it's not everyone's speed.
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I haven't seen this yet, but my favorite Quentin Dupieux movies are Reality and Keep an Eye Out. Not all of them hit the same, but I'm just glad there's someone pumping out a bunch of movies on their own unique wavelength.
 
Dizzle said:
Henry Sugar anybody? I'm curious if any Wes-haters have watched it because I suspect it works even if you aren't already a fan. I am incapable of making that judgment, though, because I am totally in the tank for Anderson. He speaks on exactly my emotional wavelength (self-loathing intellectualism -> raw weird earnest poignancy) whether I like it or not.
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As another soldier of Wes myself, I don't see this series converting any Wes skeptics. Every element he gets criticized for is out in full force here, and the format doesn't do him any favors.

It's a shame that the marketing focused on Henry Sugar, because a lot of people didn't realize there were three other short films, and I personally liked those more than I did Henry Sugar. Rupert Friend is great in The Swan and The Rat Catcher, and the sets are all incredible.
 
Caught A Haunting in Venice a couple weeks late. I actually kinda like his Poirot, but I think Director Branagh generally confuses visual razzle-dazzle for storytelling. My man deploys every camera trick in the book, but only occasionally with any sense of purpose.

Pretty decent cast. Michelle Yeoh kicks ass. Tina Fey can’t quite convince me she’s not Liz Lemon doing a Katherine Hepburn.
 
Apopheniac said:
As another soldier of Wes myself, I don't see this series converting any Wes skeptics. Every element he gets criticized for is out in full force here, and the format doesn't do him any favors.

It's a shame that the marketing focused on Henry Sugar, because a lot of people didn't realize there were three other short films, and I personally liked those more than I did Henry Sugar. Rupert Friend is great in The Swan and The Rat Catcher, and the sets are all incredible.
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I really like Wes and still need to sit down with these.
 
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EVEN MORE SPIELBERG.

E.T. (1982): Oh this one, this is really really good. Probably the only Spielberg movie I've seen that portrays a full-fledged family ensemble for the better part of the movie (I've seen over half his movies at this point). I wondered for a good while what Elliot was trying to express on the final shot though, but that's all.

A. I. (2001): this one is pretty unique in the filmography. There aren't a lot of Spielberg movies with such a bonkers third act and a tragic ending. May have been in part due to Kubrick apparently being behind the mother/son relationship in act 1/3 and Spielberg added in Jude Law's character.

Lincoln (2012): The actor they got for Lincoln, aside from looking pretty accurately like him, is a pretty smooth talker. Which helps a lot because this is a 90% of a talking movie. Spielberg puts a really good light into the personal and external stakes of Lincoln's decision-making.

The Post (2017): The one I best enjoyed. Another movie with 90% of talking (actually we might be closer to 95%) but it plays out like this absolutely epic action movie thanks to the magnificent editing and camera angles/movements. Also Tom Hanks out here getting the best lines in a Spielberg movie he's in, once again.
 
So I was fully planning on going to see The Creator by myself as my dad really really doesn't like scifi, but as I was getting ready to go he asked to come along just to have something to do. So I warned him it was scifi and he was kinda wincing but went ahead and came with me anyway.

I think this might have been the first scifi movie my dad liked.

Like, ever.

He was pointing out things and actors during the movie (he almost never does that) and as the credits rolled he was asking me who wrote it and "made" it, so I told him who Gareth Edwards was. He never, never asks about who makes the movies we go see. He was so impressed that he wanted to know who came up with the whole thing.

As far as me:
I thought they treated the death and destruction a bit too flippantly at times and that started bugging me. I get the impression they were trying to go hard on the horrors and casualties of war and show how those who perpetrate it are extremely shitty but it started to feel more like they were glorifying the violence at points, even if unintentionally. And there were a few plot holes that bugged me (like how the hell did they get the kid's picture for those wanted posters?) but for the most part it was way up my alley, warts and all. Beautifully shot, visual effects that enhance the world they created rather than making it feel cartoonish *coughsuperheroescough*, alternate history with some weirdly anachronistic aesthetics at times (for example the font and design for the "us army" graphics on the giant vehicles was almost comically dated) but I think that serves the feeling of a western world sorta frozen in the past, especially having them lead with AI and robotics essentially being created in the 1950s(ish) before everything went really bad.
It was a bit indulgent and maybe even pretentious at times but I actually like that. 😅 I mean, all I wanted to do after seeing it was talk about it, so I guess that's something. And my dad too, which again, is very rare. All in all I'm really happy to see a big effects movie being made with at least some intention of being art rather than being yet another IP vehicle. So between The Whale, Barbenheimer, TMNT, Gran Turismo (shockingly), and now The Creator, this has been a pretty damn good year for theatrical releases for me. So now just waiting for Killers of the Flower Moon (which my theater hung a poster of, so we're actually getting it locally!!) and The Boy and the Heron to round 2023 out.

Also fuck Warner Bros for delaying the second part of the Dune trilogy. That is all. 😁
 
I took my one-and-a-half-year-old baby to her first movie in a theater today, and she had a blast.

The two of us saw Stop Making Sense, the recently restored Talking Heads concert film. We sat in the back corner and had the back row and couple lit up steps in front of us to ourselves. She was very engaged, lots of big smiles and a couple songs where she danced! We took a couple little walks around the lobby but didn't miss much. The restoration itself is very good. It's abundantly clear how much fun everyone in the band was having.

For some reason, the few other folks in the theater were seated and viewing it like Cinema the whole time. I would have a hard time not moving while watching it even without a baby.

David Byrne and Talking Heads have meant a lot to me over the years. Through the lens of representation in the media, I can't think of any performer who reminds me more of myself than David Byrne, although I wish he didn't spend years diving headfirst into cultural appropriation.

I find that it's always a joy to catch an older film in theaters. And it's always a joy to catch a good concert film in theaters. Now I can say that it's always a joy to see a movie with my baby in theaters!

I don't think we're going to hit up the movie theater again any time soon, but I will definitely take her to the Beyonce concert film!
 
entut1 said:
The Post (2017): The one I best enjoyed. Another movie with 90% of talking (actually we might be closer to 95%) but it plays out like this absolutely epic action movie thanks to the magnificent editing and camera angles/movements. Also Tom Hanks out here getting the best lines in a Spielberg movie he's in, once again.
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I vaguely remember this coming out. Wanna see it now.
 
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entut1 said:
A. I. (2001): this one is pretty unique in the filmography. There aren't a lot of Spielberg movies with such a bonkers third act and a tragic ending. May have been in part due to Kubrick apparently being behind the mother/son relationship in act 1/3 and Spielberg added in Jude Law's character.
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Fun fact, I think Spielberg is responsible for the mother son stuff or at least it's what drew him to the movie and if you see the Fabelmans you'll understand why! Uh oh!
 
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