What are we watching now?

Los-D said:
Tangent: love Honest trailers.

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My wife has been playing Breaking Bad for the first time while she works, and she’s near the end of the series, so last night we watched the Pitch Meeting and the Honest Trailer for it. Both were great, but the Pitch Meeting was incredible. In general though, the thing I love about Honest Trailers is that I agree with just about everything they point out, and they deal with a way more diverse group of films than Ryan George, the Pitch Meeting guy. It’s become a ritual for us to watch a couple of each every night, and they’re almost always hilarious.
 
Last night we watched Pretty Woman. I hadn’t seen it when I met my wife, so she showed it to me about twenty years ago for the first time, and last night was my second time seeing it. One thing that struck me so hard is that the directing and acting are really really good in this. I do not like Richard Gere. I don’t like his feel in general; I usually find him repellant for some reason. But I thought he was perfect for this role. And Julia Roberts is one of the best actors ever to have been on the screen. Here she was able to make every part of this fairy tale feel real and grounded, upsetting and raw when it needed to be, and light and wonderful when it needed to be.

It was really making me think of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, the basis for My Fair Lady, but this was like a bizarre storybook take on the first half of Pygmalion only. I liked the writing, surprisingly. I felt like the concept is so fantastical that the writing was there to ground it in reality as much as possible in every scene, and I loved that.

In addition to Julia Roberts’ absolutely superlative talent in plainly and unflinchingly showing her inner emotions in everything I’ve seen her in, Gary Marshall is the other massive factor in why I loved this movie.

The examination of class was perfect precisely because of his nuanced directing. He was making sure in each scene that the essence of what needed to be communicated came across. Nothing was flat or just there; all the interactions between people were perfect. He even knew where to throw the bad actors who played peripheral roles as the most monied people. You could feel that they were bad actors, but that their mannerisms were exactly what the fakest of high society types would act like in the real world. This guy knew exactly how to get actors to tell this story in a way that would actually pull you in. The danger with a script like this is that you make it so unreal that you distance the audience, and the emotions of the characters end up having to impact on the audience. I think the reason this film was, because of Roberts and Marshall, such a big box office success was that it managed to present a fairy tale, but to make it both completely real and extremely compelling from head to toe, and that is a nearly impossible feat.
 
State of Epicicity said:
Last night we watched Pretty Woman. I hadn’t seen it when I met my wife, so she showed it to me about twenty years ago for the first time, and last night was my second time seeing it. One thing that struck me so hard is that the directing and acting are really really good in this. I do not like Richard Gere. I don’t like his feel in general; I usually find him repellant for some reason. But I thought he was perfect for this role. And Julia Roberts is one of the best actors ever to have been on the screen. Here she was able to make every part of this fairy tale feel real and grounded, upsetting and raw when it needed to be, and light and wonderful when it needed to be.

It was really making me think of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, the basis for My Fair Lady, but this was like a bizarre storybook take on the first half of Pygmalion only. I liked the writing, surprisingly. I felt like the concept is so fantastical that the writing was there to ground it in reality as much as possible in every scene, and I loved that.

In addition to Julia Roberts’ absolutely superlative talent in plainly and unflinchingly showing her inner emotions in everything I’ve seen her in, Gary Marshall is the other massive factor in why I loved this movie.

The examination of class was perfect precisely because of his nuanced directing. He was making sure in each scene that the essence of what needed to be communicated came across. Nothing was flat or just there; all the interactions between people were perfect. He even knew where to throw the bad actors who played peripheral roles as the most monied people. You could feel that they were bad actors, but that their mannerisms were exactly what the fakest of high society types would act like in the real world. This guy knew exactly how to get actors to tell this story in a way that would actually pull you in. The danger with a script like this is that you make it so unreal that you distance the audience, and the emotions of the characters end up having to impact on the audience. I think the reason this film was, because of Roberts and Marshall, such a big box office success was that it managed to present a fairy tale, but to make it both completely real and extremely compelling from head to toe, and that is a nearly impossible feat.
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Man, Julia killed it in that movie. Absolutely beautiful and charming. It’s really hard not to be smitten for her after watching that film.
 
MTB1973 said:
Yeah, well, I watched Meatballs 4 yesterday. If you don’t think it’s Corey Feldman’s magnum opus, you’re delusional.
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Not?
IMG_9235.jpeg
 
State of Epicicity said:
We watched the original Twister last night from 1996, the first time for me. I had never wanted to see it, thinking it was everything bad and pandering about movies, plus I hate every role I’ve seen Bill Paxton deliver, but my assumptions were all wrong; I loved everything about it.

First of all, the director was incredible in this. The performances of the actors were top notch. They really were great and perfect for the story. Helen Hunt was cool and real and warm, Bill Paxton was earnest and real and compelling, and Jamie Gertz was real and vulnerable and so perfectly moved forward the story. She really was the most important in getting the story to mean something here, and that was great.

On top of that, that pace of the director Jan de Bont was spot on. There was room for air and contemplation, to let you rest before the next onslaught. And the onslaughts felt real but viewed through the eyes of a thoughtful and careful observer.

The pace was driven by the editing by Michael Kahn, so the editing was outstanding, just perfect. And the score by Mark Mancina was buoyant and full of a sense of awe, wonder, and beauty.
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And on top of all that, it features this song, even if it is a stripped-down version!

 
The Original Kings of Comedy is an alltime classic. Blue Collar Comedy tour (which was a 1000% reactionary take) was an abomination. Though I do think Ron White can be funny in smallish doses and (shudder) Larry the Cable Guy can be actually much funnier than dumbass redneck humor angle would imply. Jeff Foxworthy is a hard no and that Jeff Dunham turd is godawful.

Bill Burr at his most bitter is legendary. Maniscalco is hilarious in a modern Italian interpretation of the Seinfeld technique. Shane Gillis is a GOAT of the modern age as well. Pryor is an OG and fantastic as is Robin Williams. Kill Tony has a lot of up and comers that will hopefully hang around for a bit? Casey Rocket comes to mind immediately. Riff Spaghetti ftw \w/
 
Watched Aliens 3 last night. For the first time in YEARS. I remembered the setup but really forgot most else? CGI was very early days looking but actually thought it was great.
 
JiveTurkey said:
Other night I watched MIssissippi Burning on Sunday. What a phenomenal movie. Gene Hackman is an absolute legend. And as repulsive as Michael Rooker's character is; he does a great job making him supremely loathable.
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Oh cool! I don’t remember that one well, but I remember it being good. Films that deal with racism are extra upsetting to me so I think I just block them out. I love Willem Dafoe always.

I remember something a friend told me after watching School Ties, that Matt Damon must be a great actor because he makes you hate him so much in that. I agree totally. I think one hallmark of a great actor is you should have no sense of what they’re actually like as a person.
 
Achilles said:
Another nod to 'Frailty'. He's great, and his direction of his two 'sons' in it is pretty great too.



You need to check out 'An Officer and a Gentleman' and 'Primal Fear'.
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Yeah, I very much reassessed Bill Paxton after Twister, so I’m going to look for this when it pops up on one of my streaming services.

I have seen a ton of Gere films, including those two. Ironically, each of those films made me obsessed with the other lead actor in it, Edward Norton and Debra Winger, but then vastly disappointed by their performances in other movies, with the exceptions of American History X, Fight Club, Urban Cowboy, and A Dangerous Woman.

I think both actors have been in other good movies, like Betrayal, where’s she’s fine, but it’s just a cool movie, or The People Vs Larry Flynt, where he’s fine, but it’s just an interesting story, but for both I’m always shocked at how outrageously impressively they were for one or two performances.

Back to Gere, I think he’s what I call so many actors, an SGIEM, same guy in every movie, but to me that same guy sucks. I just don’t like him. He just has the most obnoxiously arrogant feel to me. I saw his interview on Inside The Actor’s Studio, and I couldn’t believe how much of a dick he was being to the infamously obsequious host. Even though the host was overly praising of every actor on earth, he knew a ton and had a genuine love of the mechanics of learning acting as a fine craft. And I think Gere is largely successful because of zeitgeist, like many in film.

Not that he doesn’t try at all; I just can’t stand him haha.
 
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