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[michaelplzno]

Have you seen any good movies lately? Found a plot hole? Movie was perfect? Post about it in this thread! The creators of the film might see it and never want to work with you because you expressed your feelings about their work! (Such artists are worth avoiding in general though. Tina Fey was doing a podcast where she said never to critique other people's movies because they won't work with you after you do. And she's about as powerful as anyone so maybe she's right?)

Here's a great one, Deadpool and Wolverine:


Most of my minor nitpicks are spoilers, the end is like two men fighting over who pays the check.

Space Cadet was a fun little comedy about a spacy woman who lies to get into NASA and of course, NASA didn't really do their homework to make sure she was for real, so hilarity ensues.




 

[Golds]

I think my favorite director of the 2020s is Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Drive My Car is the film that first turned me onto him. But his other movie from 2022, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, is just as good.

Here's a trailer:




I recently rewatched Muriel's Wedding, as I tend to do every few years, about a socially awkward, young provincial Australian woman played by a fantastic Toni Collette, the social dynamics among her friends & family, her enduring love of ABBA, and her move to the big city of Sydney where she dreams of someday getting married.

It's such a heartwarming, funny, often honest and idiosyncratic movie that I end up rewatching it every few years. Almost all the major characters are women. It's on Netflix, which is a good excuse to watch it!

[michaelplzno]

Drive my car seems like powerful art about grief and love, but I'm not one of those "art" guys... 

(The truth is that I'm a believer in the power of art and respect that power enough to worry about what I expose myself to.)

We'll try Muriel soon.

[Schoq]

Not sure about lately but I suppose I'll pick a few from the top of my head

A Taxi Driver / 택시운전사
I accidentally downloaded this when I wanted to watch Taxi Driver. Different movie!!
But it was a good mistake. An initially sort of oblivious taxi driver guy who doesn't want trouble accidentally gets involved in big historical events. You know like Jar Jar Binks in star trek.

Babel
"It's hard being human anywhere. The world is connected and not as well as it should" I've said about it elsewhere. It leaves me with a feeling of wanting to give all of our dumb species a long hug. Watch if you're a global studies person.

C'est la vie! / Le Sens de la fête
This was presented to me as a romantic comedy so I was maximally uninterested going in. It's actually a logistics comedy about a wedding. It's funny.

Songs from the Second Floor / Sånger från andra våningen
This one only loosely has a plot. It's more like observing a series of paintings except they move and talk. It's a trilogy but the first one is best one. The world is rudderless and always accelerating. We all seem stuck in a hurry without knowing why or whereto.
It's nominally a comedy? but doesn't feature jokes.
I'll close the post with a scene from it

[Golds]

Another good recent movie is Tar, with Cate Blanchett. Highly recommend. Only movie where I've ever seen a Wikipedia-editing scene. Trailer:

[michaelplzno]

I'll have to check some of these out, here's a good one I just saw with my wife:





Great rom-com for people who are afraid to fall in love. Starts as a meet-cute and then becomes an epic love story of two kids who just can't take the plunge. The Sci-Fi does a great job of supporting the narrative symbolically as well as spoofing contemporary culture. At one point they use their version of Amazon to buy a box where they can create an alternate universe where the two actually date each other, for example.

You wouldn't think that 2 people on a green screen talking about their feelings would be such a great flick, but the execution is just perfect.

[Golds]

I'm in the middle of watching one of my favorite movies (possibly one of the best movies ever?), The Searchers, directed by John Ford. George Lucas lifts the raid on the Skywalker ranch directly from this movie. It's quite good, and unexpected in its plot.

[michaelplzno]

I've noticed some movies I've seen shift a little bit if I don't commit them entirely to memory. I didn't realize Morricone did the soundtrack for The Searchers. I watched it in undergrad film classes. Ah, as I'm looking into it, a fan added that music to it.

Morricone reads as much rawer and even real to me than the stuff that someone like Max Steiner would use.

Here's one we saw a while ago:

[Golds]

Haven't seen Cry Macho yet. But I love a lot of Clint Eastwood's directed features, like Unforgiven.

I didn't realize Morricone did the soundtrack for The Searchers. I watched it in undergrad film classes. Ah, as I'm looking into it, a fan added that music to it

Morricone is definitely my favorite film composer of all of them, and I know a lot of them! I love his style. My absolute favorite is:





Still haven't seen the actual movie, hah

[Golds]

Thought of another movie I love. I've probably recommended it to Michael before:

A medical school dropout loses his fiancée in a tragic lawnmower incident and decides to bring her back to life. Unfortunately, he was only able to save her head, so he goes to the red light district in the city and lures prostitutes into a hotel room so he can collect body parts to reassemble her.

[michaelplzno]

I'll tell you why I haven't rushed to check out "Frankenhooker" despite your vehement recommendations:

The premise is that his wife died, which is not a comedic premise. Then his goal is to bring her back to life, which is always doomed to failure in film due to the unwritten morality code of movies.

It seems we are making some headway in this department because "I DID IT FOR FAMILY" is becoming more powerful than "IT IS WRONG TO BRING BACK DEAD PEOPLE"





This Keanu movie where he tries to bring back his dead wife was tense because I was always assuming something would go horribly wrong... but nothing stops Keanu apparently.

[Golds]

The premise is that his wife died, which is not a comedic premise. Then his goal is to bring her back to life, which is always doomed to failure in film due to the unwritten morality code of movies.

It defies conventions (!). The ending is something I wouldn't have predicted at all, and despite the premise, the gender relations are surprisingly progressive given the time period. It's a fun one.

[michaelplzno]

I saw Frankenhooker and it was shit.

[Golds]

I saw Frankenhooker and it was shit.

This man is lying  .

You should try Muriel's Wedding though. If you don't like that one, I don't know what to tell you

 

[michaelplzno]

Trap: M Night was bold enough to brag about writing this one in 5 months. And for a movie that was probably not much effort to make, or even much of a budget (The big spend was getting a stadium full of people... probably m-night fans who showed up to get a free t-shirt.) it does well.

Lots of plot holes and bad writing for a thriller. Most stuff was predictable, and it was not a horror movie at all.

But it's something to watch that isn't too boring.

The cops are totally dumb in this one to the point that it got bothersome to watch. They have a general description of the guy, as well as knowing that he bought a ticket to the show: they decide to trap him with 300 police officers surrounding the stadium (of potential hostages/victims which he does end up hurting several people) rather than just look up the info they have on each of the ticket holders and knock on doors of the ones that fit the description.

If you can accept the dumbness, it's watchable.

[michaelplzno]

I don't know where this fits in the actual film, I never saw the movie:





but this is my favorite Morricone. I listen to it and think of revenge.

[michaelplzno]

The star of frankenhooker posted this on her profile.

[Golds]

The star of frankenhooker posted this on her profile.

Nice. A callback to an inside joke. This is the kind of thing I really liked in the early days of the forum, and it directly led to the creation of Owl Country.

Movie-wise, I'm just about finished with The Searchers. I've got Cassavetes' Gloria (1980) on my Letterboxd watchlist.

[michaelplzno]

When more established people act all chummy, it gets a bit intimidating to new devs who need to navigate all that in order to fit in. Particularly when it seems like saying the right/wrong thing will get you career boosts/punishment. When I started out, I saw most of the tig people as gatekeepers rather than just people who were trying to break down the gate themselves.

Looking at your list for who worked on Owl Country, I recall telling Alec that he could be nicer to newcomers, to which he replied, "fuck you." He was a prickly guy.

I know the feeling of wanting to end it because of perceiving the entire world as being against you. Not fun. Earned me a trip to the hospital. I wish I could have been Alec's friend and helped him through that.

Mostly I just want a place where I can be myself without having to constantly worry about fitting in.

Back on topic, Movies... fitting in... high school behavior:

[michaelplzno]

I heard Kelsy Grammer would only do this movie, Down Periscope, if he got to do "In the Navy"