Let's all go to the movies~

[Mothra]

The Florida Project is good, sad.

The Adam Project is good, dumb.

[Thad]

Rashomon is one of those highly influential classics that I couldn't exactly enjoy due to its subject matter. It's not just a movie about a rape, it's a movie about rape culture.

I think its gender politics may be more progressive than they seem at first glance -- the toxic masculinity is so consistent and so repellent that I think it must be intentionally so, even considering it's a film written and directed by Japanese men in 1950 -- but it's uncomfortable to watch despite its gorgeous cinematography and legendary storytelling conceit.

One of those films to respect, and to analyze, but not so much to watch for entertainment.

[Büge]

and to make jokes about

[KingRoyal]

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a remarkable gem of a film. The premise of jumping through the multiverse is used to explore themes of nihilism, personal choice and who we are and who we choose to be with. And it happens to be incredibly funny and have a lot of fun, expressive action scenes to boot. Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan are both fantastic in it, though I think that undersells how the entire cast knocks it out of the park. Just absolutely loved this movie.

[Thad]

F for Fake is a movie I've known by reputation for decades but just got around to watching for the first time. It's a documentary/essay film by Orson Welles, primarily focusing on Elmyr de Hory, an infamous and prolific art forger, and Clifford Irving, who published a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes and a real biography of de Hory.

The film is a celebration of charlatans and fakery, but also a postmodern examination of the question what is real, anyway, and how can we tell? The "experts" we rely on to establish authenticity are fallible; de Hory fooled dozens of them and, he claims, in one instance an artist even mistook a de Hory forgery for his own work. It reminded me of the recent classic game speculation bubble, which appears to be rife with conflicts of interest (and buoyed by many of the same people who inflated the collectible coin market in the '80s and the collectible comics market in the '90s).

The third and weakest act focuses on a story of Oja Kodar, her relationship with Picasso, and her art forger grandfather. It's a complete fabrication, and, to my mind, it ironically undermines the point of the film. Welles speaks at length about frauds that are indistinguishable from the real thing, and the Oja story is presumably intended to be one, but it's far less compelling than the true stories of de Hory and Irving and largely seems like a pretext for Welles to leer at his girlfriend for the better part of 20 minutes.

There are bits of it that work -- most famously, the apocryphal, probably made-up story where Picasso claims "I can fake a Picasso as well as anybody" -- but ultimately the Oja/Picasso story just doesn't work as well as the rest of the movie.

The film raises interesting questions throughout. What is it that makes an authentic Magritte more valuable than a de Hory forgery, if the forgery is so good that nobody can tell the difference? Why do people fall for forgeries in the first place? Welles raises a number of answers to that one -- art collectors and dealers have a self-interest in believing what they're buying is genuine. People believed Irving's phony Howard Hughes autobiography was real because the real Hughes was so erratic and eccentric. People thought Welles's famous War of the Worlds performance was real because it was presented in a familiar and authoritative way. People go to magic shows to be "fooled" for fun.

All in all: Welles presents the material well, asks provocative questions in an intelligent manner, and he's clearly having fun, so it's easy to forgive his getting a little self-indulgent in the end. F for Fake was long considered Welles's last film (though The Other Side of the Wind, completed in 2018, now holds that title) and it's a high note to go out on.

[Thad]

I was poking around through old posts in the thread and I saw this

The only Batman I think that truly fucks is Batman '66, and that's because the whole world has this sexy, swinger party vibe that makes it seem like the villains and heroes things is just what a bunch of rich, attractive socialites do in their free time.

and thought I'd link to Adam West's story about getting kicked out of an orgy:

Well, I think one of my favorite memories is that Frank [Gorshin] and I were invited to a party one night and we decided to go, a Hollywood party we didn’t know anything about. We were kind of laughing and having a few beers and said, “Let’s go over there.” We walked in … and it was an orgy. So I immediately went into the Batman character, and Frank went into the Riddler character, because we were getting the big giggles. It was so funny to us, what we walked into. And we were kicked out. We were expelled from the orgy.

(Gorshin claimed not to have any recollection of the incident.)

[Thad]

I love how the opening scene of House of Wax is Vincent Price telling his investor "No, I'm not going to turn this into a horror exhibit; I'm not interested in ghoulish exhibits about people dying gruesome deaths" and then his other investor shows up and he's like "Here, let me show you around, here's my Antony and Cleopatra exhibit, here's the Lincoln assassination, Joan of Arc tied to a stake, and over here is Marie Antoinette..."

[KingRoyal]

Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness somehow came down more on the Raimi filmmaking side of things than the Marvel house style and it is glorious

[hngkong]

Without openly discussing spoilers, that whole scene was shocking.

[Grath]

Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness somehow came down more on the Raimi filmmaking side of things than the Marvel house style and it is glorious

You can tell when the Marvel-mandated boilerplate ended and Raimi got to do his thing, and it's right when Bruce Campbell shows up for a cameo.

[Destynova]

[beatbandito]

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once is very good. It's great Asian representation, the family being Chinese-American is topical and relevant to events, but not forced in as an aspect of the primary story being told. Based on the trailer I was surprised by the limited scope of the story, and that a spoiler I expected to be a reveal is immediately part of the narrative. On the reverse, the effects were a little disappointing, especially of a Daniels movie. Most of the best computer effects are shown in the trailer, and most of the aesthetic is sold through costuming. On that note both a lot of the SFX and costumes around one of the characters is done in just a way over-the-top zany way that takes away from a couple scenes, imo. Definitely, definitely worth seeing, though.

My mom made me sit down and watch The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie's latest attempt to remake Lock Stock again. It's not good. I would have put it 4/4 of movies of his I saw, but when checking right now I realized he didn't actually make Layer Cake so I guess it's 4/3 on my list of Guy Ritchie movies. The main narrative device is a "gangster" selling a screenplay that is the events of the movie currently happening. It may be Guy's most racist movie to date, but probably one of the least anti-sematic? Anyway the best I can sum up how incapable of recapturing the fire this movie is, is by presenting two plotlines: on one side there's the main white-collar crime guy's wife who runs a somehow-illegal garage for women, by women. She ends up with a gifted, fancy gold-plated derringer that was given to her husband. There's a number of scene mentioning how having a gun around is unsafe and trying to get rid of it, only for the gun to end up in the exact right place to save her life during a culmination of events (this was the good story, despite the gun not actually being set-up as the twist in that scene, with it instead focusing on TWO "is he dead?" cut-aways from her husband while her scene just plays out static). Compared to the main character breaking into a famous/wealthy drug-addict's apartment, killing a guy, chasing a bunch of kids through a small town, and at the end of it all revealing he had an automatic rifle under his coat, which he fires off in the middle of this small town he's been running around making a ruckus in after a public murder.

[Niku]

[beatbandito]

Sonic 2: jim carrey is doing his thing. sadly there is no rap. knuckles starts out as a stoic warrior and the second he gets betrayed by robotnik and joins with sonic he loses all his braincells, so clearly they understand the character.

Chip n' Dale: this is fine. nothing about it is good except for gadget's introduction 10 minutes before the end of the movie, but it's not painful to watch

MORBIUS:

[Upthorn]

Sonic 2: jim carrey is doing his thing. sadly there is no rap. knuckles starts out as a stoic warrior and the second he gets betrayed by robotnik and joins with sonic he loses all his braincells, so clearly they understand the character.

I mean, he didn't have that many braincells while he was working with Robotnik, either.

But yeah, the people in charge of this movie actually understood the franchise and got Knuckles and Tails correct. I found it mostly enjoyable, as opposed to the first movie, which understood neither what makes Sonic enjoyable, nor what makes movies enjoyable.

[beatbandito]

Knuckles needs to be naive to be fooled by Robotnik in all versions. But there is an immediate and steep drop-off in his ability to comprehend the situation or look cool after the good heel-turn. toe-turn.

[nosimpleway]

sadly there is no rap.

I ain't gonna let it get to me

[beatbandito]

Rewatched Bone Tomahawk after thinking about it since I watched it for the first time last year. I was sure I read about it here, or at least mentioned something the first time, but anything I would've holds up. It's an excellent western adventure movie with effortless worldbuilding and the best performance of anyone who was on LOST. Major content warning for violence, especially in the last 20 minutes or so, but there's no big twist or reveal (barely even a tone change) just the content.

[Destynova]

[Mongrel]

I'll hold off 'till the actual reviews (from friends - you know, good sources), but I'm increasingly suspicious that this movie is actually going to be bust-a-nut good.

First look at Ryan Gosling as Ken in Greta Gerwig’s ‘BARBIE’.

EDIT: STUPID TWITTER CROPPING. HOW DOES THEIR ALGORITHM GET IT WRONG EVERY TIME?!