Random Movie Talk, Louis the XIVth Edition

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It's faith-based hysterical nonsense in which Cage is legitimately good. Paycheck gig? No question. At least he commits to it.

A key plot point involves him wanting to have an affair with a hot flight attendant by taking her to a U2 show in London, I kid you not. There's also a high amount of mean-spirited midget humor for such a spiritual affair.

And I'm closer to Lance-a-Make-Her-Dance on the Aronofsky discussion, though I do very much enjoy Black Swan and The Fountain. He's in that class of dudes who rate high in High School Cinephilia or the Freshman Year Dorm DVD Collection.

Fight Club, Lebowski, the Pi/Requiem double disc, Pulp Fiction and/or Reservoir Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Fear & Loathing..., Eternal Sunshine. Either the DVD is on a shelf or a poster is on the wall. All fine, or legit masterpieces, but there's a whole 'nother world out there that I bet gets unexplored -- or better yet, casually dismissed.
 
YLB, you're fast becoming the BigMacPhisto of ZS. And BigMacPhisto posts in here every now and again.
 
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I'll post this article again, since the conversation is heading in that direction, but this is why I will not, under any circumstances, watch Left Behind, regardless of how inevitably hilarious it might prove to be:

Left Behind | Christianity Today

(Just hit single page mode, the article is not as long as it looks like it may be)

As a person who identifies as Christian, I can not tell you how frustrating this year has been for me, in regards to everything that's laid out in that link above. So many people trying to guilt me into seeing God's Not Dead and it's ilk (though I actually am kinda curious to see Heaven is For Real, despite it's horrible title, because I find those types of stories fascinating). When I saw this Left Behind movie's trailer/plot/backlash and then had someone legitimately ask me to go see it, it just made my blood boil, because they really are sticking you between a rock and a hard place, and it's horribly manipulative.

Plus, there are still plenty of other Cage shenanigans that I haven't yet experienced to tide me over.
 
LemonMelon said:
YLB, you're fast becoming the BigMacPhisto of ZS. And BigMacPhisto posts in here every now and again.
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Are you accusing me of being a contrarian for the hell of it or because I disagree with you? There's a distinction between the two, and it'd be nice if you clarified that for me.

bono_212 said:
I'll post this article again, since the conversation is heading in that direction, but this is why I will not, under any circumstances, watch Left Behind, regardless of how inevitably hilarious it might prove to be:

Left Behind | Christianity Today

(Just hit single page mode, the article is not as long as it looks like it may be)

As a person who identifies as Christian, I can not tell you how frustrating this year has been for me, in regards to everything that's laid out in that link above. So many people trying to guilt me into seeing God's Not Dead and it's ilk (though I actually am kinda curious to see Heaven is For Real, despite it's horrible title, because I find those types of stories fascinating). When I saw this Left Behind movie's trailer/plot/backlash and then had someone legitimately ask me to go see it, it just made my blood boil, because they really are sticking you between a rock and a hard place, and it's horribly manipulative.

Plus, there are still plenty of other Cage shenanigans that I haven't yet experienced to tide me over.
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I've been curious to check out any movie from this recent wave of faith-based films and Left Behind made the most sense given my Cage completism. And I was constantly unsure who the audience was throughout: folks who want to see their values reflected back upon them, or those hoping to convert belief systems throughout the movie. It's a little bit of both, and the po-faced sincerity clashing against a $2 budget makes for a mostly uneventful experience.

On one hand, you've got independently-financed films making huge dents in the domestic box office when studios focus on international products. Then there's a moral coercion attached to those in a specific community to support this stuff. Now it's getting to the point where it's not just Kirk Cameron showing up, but working Hollywood actors like Nic Cage and Greg Kinnear.
 
LMP said:
Are you accusing me of being a contrarian for the hell of it or because I disagree with you? There's a distinction between the two, and it'd be nice if you clarified that for me.
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Couldn't care less if someone disagrees with me or not. I just find posts like that one analogous to me dropping into a RMT Beatles conversation and saying "man, all the kids at school pretend to listen to these guys. Aren't you guys in your thirties? I've moved on." What does it add?
 
Hey, cute story. That's not what I fucking said.

I think it's fair be exasperated at aggressively canonized movies (and saying they're good) while also saying there's a whole lot out there. At this point, I'm probably barking up the wrong tree.

There was a period a few years back where a nice pocket of cinephiles congregated here and had some involved discussions; I'm romanticizing it given that it was at a pivotal moment of my getting serious about media/art and discussing it with folks. And it pops up here from time-to-time, but rarely to anything satisfactory -- more or less folks putting up little discussion threads and hoping someone tags along. Even fucking around and quoting Heat for like 5 pages doesn't happen anymore.

Frankly, I'm tired of coming on here and getting told the business by you on multiple forums on any topic of the day. It's bullshit. I don't need to be at the whims of an omnipresent elitist who is going out their way to try and call me out on most of what I post. Enjoy being right all of the time, you fucking clown. I'm out.
 
I get why you're frustrated, but honestly, the last few weeks I've almost stopped posting here, entirely. Some of the reason for that was because I've felt like a lot of your posts were condescending, and most often talking above, or around subjects that I've personally brought up.

I get what you've been trying to say, but I don't really think there's anyone in here that you need to convert, and yet you make posts like this:

...He's in that class of dudes who rate high in High School Cinephilia or the Freshman Year Dorm DVD Collection.

Fight Club, Lebowski, the Pi/Requiem double disc, Pulp Fiction and/or Reservoir Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Fear & Loathing..., Eternal Sunshine. Either the DVD is on a shelf or a poster is on the wall. All fine, or legit masterpieces, but there's a whole 'nother world out there that I bet gets unexplored -- or better yet, casually dismissed.
Click to expand...

And don't find that to be elitist? If your posts didn't come at the expense of knocking down what other people like, I don't think there would be any barriers to discussion.

But, if I'm talking to a puff of air at this point, so be it. Fun having you around while it lasted.
 
LMP said:
Hey, cute story. That's not what I fucking said.

I think it's fair be exasperated at aggressively canonized movies (and saying they're good) while also saying there's a whole lot out there. At this point, I'm probably barking up the wrong tree.

There was a period a few years back where a nice pocket of cinephiles congregated here and had some involved discussions; I'm romanticizing it given that it was at a pivotal moment of my getting serious about media/art and discussing it with folks. And it pops up here from time-to-time, but rarely to anything satisfactory -- more or less folks putting up little discussion threads and hoping someone tags along. Even fucking around and quoting Heat for like 5 pages doesn't happen anymore.

Frankly, I'm tired of coming on here and getting told the business by you on multiple forums on any topic of the day. It's bullshit. I don't need to be at the whims of an omnipresent elitist who is going out their way to try and call me out on most of what I post. Enjoy being right all of the time, you fucking clown. I'm out.
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The day I dedicate the bookends of my discussions in RMT to how and why someone should think beyond Houses of the Holy and Dark Side of the Moon is the day you can refer to me as an elitist with a straight face. That's not who I am at all.

As far as taste is concerned, everyone is where they are at that moment and that is just fine with me, believe it or not (though I admittedly do pick on EYKIW posters for their obsession). I can't recall the last time I've dropped a passive aggressive comment regarding an obscurity that you've enjoyed, nor the last time I berated you for enjoying a B&C favorite. People who do that are shitheads, point blank. Life is too short.

This is the second time I've been begrudged for being "omnipresent" and leaving "my" section of the forum. Once by you today and once by GAF in Put Em Under Pressure (though we talked that one out and it was fine). Am I a total pest or what? Regardless, if you want to foster a community that shares, as you look back on with such fondness, I suggest you try to foster other people's tastes (however shallow) instead of dismissing them as dorm room-core. I don't even take offense to that comment myself because it was like 6 years ago when I first discovered those films and have seen hundreds more in the meantime, but it does discourage me somewhat from starting conversations on more populist directors like Darren Aronofsky.

With regards to the personal comments you made, I'm totally willing to admit I'm wrong. If you have some examples of me being an elitist, antagonistic prick throughout the forum, feel free to post them (though the mods would probably prefer PM). I'll read through them and think them over. I'm on here all the time and if I'm pissing people off with my behavior, I'll apologize sincerely. In fact, I'm already sorry that I raised a complaint through a snarky comment instead of being more direct about it. That's how blowups like this happen. So I'm sorry for making things worse.
 
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Regardless of who may have said what for whatever reason, I really hope you didn't drive YLB away. He'd been gone for a while and it was nice to have him back.

I don't know that he said anything that out of bounds with that list of movies. As someone who was in college roughly around that time, it's right on the money. In the Freshman dorm where I was, almost every guy on the Communications major floor had some Reservoir Dogs poster on their wall, followed by Pulp Fiction when it came out that year.

Also, he did acknowledge that those films might all be masterpieces. Yet he's correct that they represent a certain tween stage that serious film people eventually move past to explore different avenues. Perhaps there's a less haughty way to word it but it's an observable thing; we're talking about how people get deeper and deeper into any form of the arts and move past what one could label the "fringe" of the mainstream, and that fringe also overlaps with Bro culture at times when we're talking about the male-dominated Hollywood stuff (we could have a whole different discussion of what films younger "hip" women are into). I'd argue that the next step up from that are the entry-level film school students who get heavily into Bergman or the rest of Kubrick's work, for example and get stuck in another cliched rut.

I would also say that you two in particular, as well as some other non-film people like NSW have shown great taste as you go outside your comfort zone, and have shown interest in checking out less-mainstream or geocentric films. I don't mean to sound patronizing but many of us have been here a long time/through formative years and it's nice to see that discussion in this part of the forum (as well as others) have opened up people to more things.
 
There was nothing especially difficult to understand about his post, it's a commonly observed phenomenon. I was there too, at one point. But, lest we forget, this was at the center of a discussion I started. I'm the one returning to the Aronofsky well, overexposing his work even further. So I took it personally, though in the light of day I know I shouldn't have.

In return, I made a snarky comment that I vainly hoped would be accepted differently than it was. A blowup and subsequent disappearance (remains to be seen, but that's the worst case scenario) is the exact opposite of what I wished that would accomplish.

What troubles me is that he took it as as a "you just want to be right" kind of deal. There's nothing to be right about here. I felt one way, he another, and a dialogue on those terms would have been great but it was late and cooler heads didn't prevail. What I get from this is that I'm perceived to be the kind of person to turn anything into an argument and that really bums me out. I don't want to be that guy. I hate those guys.

Thank you for the kind words in that last paragraph, Laz. I'm interested in many different kinds of art and quietly acknowledge my ignorance in those fields, though I know that sort of humility doesn't always come across. Evidently, so infrequently that I chase people off because of it.
 
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You know, I don't want to continue with this. It was a stupid fight. Point blank. Hopefully it works itself out, but I doubt it will.
 
Finally got around to watching the Wolf of Wall Street. It was ok, I guess. I should go back and google what you guys had to say about it. Without really possessing the proper movie-discussing vernacular, I like the scenes and shots and are so typically Scorsese-you know, the kinda that sweep around a room and follow someone, but they just seemed like they existed to remind me that's who made the movie, rather than anything else. A little by the numbers, maybe? The music, which is always so well embedded and woven into the film itself didn't really do it for me, either. That's always one of my favorite things, and it sort of felt flat, not really adding much to any of the scenes. If anything, it was overused and borderline distracting when it wasn't being forgettable. Happy to see my boy Kyle Chandler appear as the FBI agent (it had somehow never been made known to me, which is weird because it's totally the kind of text my mother would have sent me, that he was in this movie. I've never seen a single episode of Friday Night Lights, but when I was 12, the ultra cheesy/unwatchable-as-an-adult show Early Edition was like my favorite thing next to reruns of m*a*s*h or the odd couple. Don't hurt yourself laughing too hard after you google what a cringe-inducing lame-fest that show was), but then during the yacht crash scene I found myself looking at the the cgi waves to see if there were any sharks...overall, kind of a disappointment. Not terrible, but not really any better than just ok. I'd hate to say a 3 hour movie could have an ending that felt rushed, but I said it.
 
As a fan, I expected more from The Wolf of Wall Street. The pacing wasn't right at all, no real flow to it, mostly zany scenes followed by crashing lows followed by more zaniness. Despite being very colorful and energetic, it's also very static. It certainly felt like a Scorsese movie, but not an especially graceful one. The ending did seem rushed and I felt I learned next to nothing about the protagonist in 3 hours, which is unfortunate. Leo is a lot of fun as Jordan Belfort, but his character's development wasn't as intriguing to me as that of Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta, Henry Hill and so on. Leo's assertive acting sticks in my mind more than any specific character traits about Belfort. He yells a lot and likes cocaine and S&M. I don't remember much else.

If I had never seen a Scorsese film before and just wanted to have fun at the movies, I would have been satisfied with the hot girls and drug humor and moved on with my life. It was very entertaining and I only checked the time once or twice. Does it linger with me to this day? No, not really. I don't feel like I need to see it again.

And yeah, I agree that the use of music was disappointing. I liked it in the theater, but no individual moments stuck with me. I can't recall a single song choice from the film. Nothing as awesome as Be My Baby or Rubber Biscuit from Mean Streets, that's for sure.
 
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My biggest problem with the character of Belfort was that I couldn't see him in a sympathetic light just as I couldn't really be cheering for the Feds to take him down, either. It wasn't bad, I am not going to say I actively disliked it otherwise I wouldn't have sat through the whole movie. In the end, I just couldn't care too much about him at all. The scenes where he was selling the crap out of stuff, evangelist preacher-like amping up the company with speeches, were the most compelling bit of characterization, yet they were so few and far between (it's a long movie, there was like 1 per hour, which is sort of hard to keep in your head with all the snorting coke off hookers and other crazy going on), and so one-dimensional (as in, I don't think more of the same would have been better, because it would have just been more of the same thing) that they weren't really all that compelling.

You know what was missing? The real lack of time and place. I know the when and where because I was told, but at no point did I really feel like I was in NY in the late 80s. You could say well, it's not really a period piece. But I wouldn't really say every single Scorsese film is, either. And even with things that aren't Gangs of NY or the Age of Innocence, you still always get that very immediate sense of when and where this is happening. I got remarkably none of that with Wolf of Wall Street, which is weird as fuck. I'm blaming the music, again. It always really helps.
 
Life of Brian was on tonight. Seen it a million times but I'm still blown away. It is such an incredibly brilliant bit of satire. The way it sends up religious zeal is brilliant from start to finish. I particularly love when Brian runs off on his followers, leaving a shoe behind, and they bicker for about a minute about what to do next and then his 100 or so followers all splinter into five or six different groups. Also extremely funny throughout and endlessly quotable.
 
IWasBored said:
Finally got around to watching the Wolf of Wall Street. It was ok, I guess. I should go back and google what you guys had to say about it. Without really possessing the proper movie-discussing vernacular, I like the scenes and shots and are so typically Scorsese-you know, the kinda that sweep around a room and follow someone, but they just seemed like they existed to remind me that's who made the movie, rather than anything else. A little by the numbers, maybe? The music, which is always so well embedded and woven into the film itself didn't really do it for me, either. That's always one of my favorite things, and it sort of felt flat, not really adding much to any of the scenes. If anything, it was overused and borderline distracting when it wasn't being forgettable. Happy to see my boy Kyle Chandler appear as the FBI agent (it had somehow never been made known to me, which is weird because it's totally the kind of text my mother would have sent me, that he was in this movie. I've never seen a single episode of Friday Night Lights, but when I was 12, the ultra cheesy/unwatchable-as-an-adult show Early Edition was like my favorite thing next to reruns of m*a*s*h or the odd couple. Don't hurt yourself laughing too hard after you google what a cringe-inducing lame-fest that show was), but then during the yacht crash scene I found myself looking at the the cgi waves to see if there were any sharks...overall, kind of a disappointment. Not terrible, but not really any better than just ok. I'd hate to say a 3 hour movie could have an ending that felt rushed, but I said it.
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After I watched it I youtubed some video of the dude that Leo actually portrayed. But yeah. I thought the movie was good and reminded me that Leo is really a versatile actor. Jonah Hill wanted the role he played so badly that he only made 60 k I read.
 
Jonah Hill is terrible. He should never be in non-Seth Rogan movies. He can be in all the Seth Rogan movies he wants to be in, just not any movies I may actually watch.
 
John Wick and Fury this week, $1.50 a ticket. Really glad I looked around for a reasonably priced theater. It's ludicrous that I lived in North Hollywood for months without ever going to the movies.
 
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Saw it for the first time in October. I expected to like it, but it definitely exceeded my expectations.
 
So, just finished watching Jersey Boys, and now I'm going crazy. I can't find anything through Google or IMDb to back me up, but doesn't the song "Who Loves You" play over the climax of some movie? I swear it does.... But... Maybe I just completely am making this up.
 
OK, very late to the party but just finally watched The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Which one of you is actually Wes Anderson?
Cause know way you come up with Jeff Golblum being found dead in Kunstmuseum unless you're a long time member here. :lol:
 
Whenever he saw the sign "Next stop Kuntsmuseum" I started laughing, but then to have him found dead in there was just too good to be true.
 
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