What are we watching now?

[State of Epicicity]

We watched Plan 9 From Outer Space. I had seen it a couple of decades ago, but I forgot just how a lot of it is surprisingly boring. But there are still a lot of moments where the prodigiously awkward dialog combines with the no less than brutal acting to make cinematic magic.

I feel like The Disaster Artist was very inspired by Ed Wood, the idea of making the highest quality film about someone who makes the very lowest quality film. This is the Dizzying Paradox genre of cinema.

I'm also put in mind if Timothy Carey's The World's Greatest Sinner from 1962. I kept thinking, "Yeah, no wonder this asshole didn't get any funding." I'm thoroughly convinced that most of Hollywood has always been comprised of people who essentially just don't want to work for a living. It's one industry where incompetent, lazy people have so often risen to the top that it feels like a lottery.

With Ed Wood, he seems like a guy who loved the idea of movies, without ever studying what makes a director, actor, or writer great, or even good. To me a good artist is someone who can tell if what they do sucks.

So why begin to criticize B movies? What's the point? I don't get pissed off about it often, but sometimes it makes me think of every band I've been in where I'm working my fucking ass off and some asshole I'm working with hasn't even bothered to practice. It feels exactly the same. You can see when people are working and when they don't, and it's in great film too; it's this incongruous, disjointed patchwork of artists that I think of zeitgeist.

The most B of B movies represents a ridiculous extreme, but it's indicative to me of charlatans in all areas of life, and when I think of it that way, it stops being fun and just gets way under my skin.

The same goes for the other end, when films are so pretentious they are trying to fool you they've created something mind blowing when they're really just trying to cover up for their inherent lack of creativity. We recently tried to watch The Assassin from 2015, and it was beautifully shot, the sound was incredibly mixed, and it was bullshit. Pretentious shit. My wife kept making smartass commentary until I shut it off. Tarkovsky falls in this category too, along with what Terrence Malik became.

To me you can just feel when a movie is coming from a real place, just like when you can tell a person is phoney. And that is I guess the main thing that pulls me in or repels me fundamentally.

 

[the swede]

Started Saul, as my son wanted to after we finished BB. It’s great!

Also the Jesse movie was really good to.

 

[norminal]

 

[ᛗᛜᛜᚺDᛜᎶ Ꮤᛨᚳᚴ]

I am not up to date on all that has been said on this thread, so forgive me if this is duplicate, but I recently watched a movie called "Sing Sing"! OMG, AFAIAC, it should have been nominated for and won best picture for 2024!! It was first shown September 10, 2023 (TIFF) and was released in theaters July 12, 2024 (United States). Not only is the story WAY better than any of the best picture nominees IMO (I have seen all the nominees except "I'm Still Here" which I will be watching soon), but it was also written, directed by and starred many of the individuals from the real life story that it recounts. Without spoiling anything, it is about a Theater program started at the Sing Sing prison to help rehabilitate, educate and entertain inmates at that prison.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

View attachment 40786

Lol, suck it, Disney.

 

[laxu]

To me you can just feel when a movie is coming from a real place, just like when you can tell a person is phoney. And that is I guess the main thing that pulls me in or repels me fundamentally.

I think there's several grades to "B-movies":

• Made in earnest, but failing spectacularly. This is The Room in a nutshell.
• Made in earnest, but due to low budget or lack of knowhow ends up a mess. These can be still fun to watch because they have heart and they at least tried to make something out of it. These are the kind of things you want to find at a "bad movie night" with friends. Everyone's having a good time riffing on the ridiculousness on screen, and you end up with "Well, we'll never watch that again but it was fun!"
• Movies made by what seem like focus groups or boardrooms. They are so lukewarm that they don't appeal to anyone. They weren't trying to make a good movie, they were hoping to make something that sells.
• Movies where the script or directing is bad and even good actors can't save it. I feel like a lot movies with a vast all-star cast fall into this category. In theory you should have all the building blocks for a great movie, but the end result is just bad. It's like it was more about the star power on the poster than making a good film.
• Movies where seemingly everyone phoned it in. I don't know what causes this, whether it's a bad script or poor direction or lack of talent from the actors. These may even be films where one more talented actor does a lot of heavy lifting but can't save the trainwreck around them.

I wish I had good examples of all of these to provide.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

The Evil Dead trilogy doesn't belong in any of those categories.

 

[State of Epicicity]

I think there's several grades to "B-movies":

• Made in earnest, but failing spectacularly. This is The Room in a nutshell.
• Made in earnest, but due to low budget or lack of knowhow ends up a mess. These can be still fun to watch because they have heart and they at least tried to make something out of it. These are the kind of things you want to find at a "bad movie night" with friends. Everyone's having a good time riffing on the ridiculousness on screen, and you end up with "Well, we'll never watch that again but it was fun!"
• Movies made by what seem like focus groups or boardrooms. They are so lukewarm that they don't appeal to anyone. They weren't trying to make a good movie, they were hoping to make something that sells.
• Movies where the script or directing is bad and even good actors can't save it. I feel like a lot movies with a vast all-star cast fall into this category. In theory you should have all the building blocks for a great movie, but the end result is just bad. It's like it was more about the star power on the poster than making a good film.
• Movies where seemingly everyone phoned it in. I don't know what causes this, whether it's a bad script or poor direction or lack of talent from the actors. These may even be films where one more talented actor does a lot of heavy lifting but can't save the trainwreck around them.

I wish I had good examples of all of these to provide.

Excellent breakdown. I think encapsulated this perfectly. In the first category I'd put my personal favorite, Miami Connection. The earnestness makes it also one of the funniest things you'll ever see. Sadly the RiffTrax for it was terrible, probably because it was live with the cast watching and they were trying not to hurt their feelings.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Watched a couple of late 80's early 90's horror flicks over the weekend. Brainscan (which I had never seen, mostly because of the "killer" and Edward Furlong) but it was, cheese factor as F for really everything aside; pretty damn good. Like Lawnmower Man/Virtuosity if they knew better because visual effects for that particular subject were just not up to snuff and would not hold up historically. Bonus points for a killer TAD song I'd forgotten about on the end credits

Watched 976-EVIL as well. I have seen this before but it was ages ago. Robert Englund's directorial debut (iirc?) with actor who played Evil Ed from Fright Night. Some definite performances and characters of the time (the aunt 1000%) but also very good if you are wanting to scratch that 80's horror you somehow missed the first time around itch.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Steven’s wife is also in it.
It will definitely win a few awards .

Watched this. First 2 were good, acting from EVERYONE was SUPERB. I did not like how they did the last 2 episodes. It was actually a bold move going how they did vs. going the standard courtroom/police procedural drama.

It's funny you brought that up, because I was actually pretty pissed off about how she just ruined any parts of scenes she was in in Ed Wood, but that the one exception I know of for her is True Romance. I was thinking about the fight scene between her and James Gandolfini, where she loses her mind, how she became a worker for one movie, then slacked off in everything else I've seen.

I love a few films she's been in, including Lost Highway, and she's a shitty actor in that too. It's great that she's smoking hot as she undresses in that movie, but it would be way better if she just decided to build a character and be in the moment like what trained actors do, rather than just relying on being smoking hot.

Suddenly the praise for Lost Highway makes sense

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

Watched a couple of late 80's early 90's horror flicks over the weekend. Brainscan (which I had never seen, mostly because of the "killer" and Edward Furlong) but it was, cheese factor as F for really everything aside; pretty damn good. Like Lawnmower Man/Virtuosity if they knew better because visual effects for that particular subject were just not up to snuff and would not hold up historically. Bonus points for a killer TAD song I'd forgotten about on the end credits

Watched 976-EVIL as well. I have seen this before but it was ages ago. Robert Englund's directorial debut (iirc?) with actor who played Evil Ed from Fright Night. Some definite performances and characters of the time (the aunt 1000%) but also very good if you are wanting to scratch that 80's horror you somehow missed the first time around itch.

Did you watch them on Shudder?

 

[JiveTurkey]

Did you watch them on Shudder?

Yep. They got added fairly recently afaik?

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

The Evil Dead trilogy

Now you're talkin'. Winner of 31 Academy Awards.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

Yellowstone. 1st season is the setup, but mostly a snooze. 2nd season builds and at the end it's finally going somewhere.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

Here's a superhero movie that blows away all the other recent diarrhea from Marvel & DC:

 

[norminal]

We started watching The Pitt last night. Typical hospital show, but so far, it seems to be very well written and directed. Pretty balanced in terms of drama, comedy, etc. At first I thought it was an ER spinoff due to Noah Wyle being in the cast, but apparently it’s not.

If you’re into these types of shows, I’d suggest checking out Nurse Jackie if you haven’t. Edie Falco and Merritt Wever alone are worth the watch.

 

[State of Epicicity]

Suddenly the praise for Lost Highway makes sense

Man, I don't think I've ever known of a more polarizing movie. Although, now that I think of it, when I say I've known it to be polarizing, almost every single person I've ever known fucking hates it haha.

I'm of two minds about David Lynch in general, that sometimes he created very cool and interesting scenes, then I felt like he was the worst kind of charlatan. Plus I think he always exploited people to make his films more upsetting, like hiring people with physical abnormalities to show them off like circus freaks, and that's something only an asshole would do. But there are still elements of Lost Highway I really like, like the fact that the story plays out entirely twice, in two different contexts, Robbert Loggia's performance, and Robert Blake's performance. On the other hand, I don't find the terrible acting in a lot of his movies charming; instead it makes me think the great performances he directed were because of the actors, not him. I think he got by by establishing himself as kind of the avant guarde and just being lucky enough to continue finding funding until he died.

I still love Blue Velvet, his bonkers Dune, even though it has major problems, Wild at Heart, The Elephant Man, elements of Lost Highway, and elements of Mulholland Drive. To me Mulholland Drive is virtually a slightly tweaked reworking of the idea of Lost Highway, including replaying parts of the film twice in a different context. Plus they both contain excellent soft core haha.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

Now you're talkin'. Winner of 31 Academy Awards.

I don't particularly care for films that have won awards.

Here's a superhero movie that blows away all the other recent diarrhea from Marvel & DC:

The remake of this looks godawful.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

I don't particularly care for films that have won awards.

...unless Bruce Campbell (greatest actor in modern times) is in it.

 

[mbenigni]

Watched this. First 2 were good, acting from EVERYONE was SUPERB. I did not like how they did the last 2 episodes. It was actually a bold move going how they did vs. going the standard courtroom/police procedural drama.

I binge-watched Adolescent over the weekend. I actually liked the first and fourth episodes best. In the first episode you're completely in the dark, which is inherently compelling, and in the last episode, the dad's performance is just riveting. Episode 2 was a bit of a slog for me; I just find high schools and high school students painfully dull.

It was cool how each episode seems to be written/ filmed in real time, essentially. (E.g. family drives to store; audience watches the drive in its entirety.) Each episode a 45 minute (give or take) slice of life. They just happen to be very intense slices.

Also watched Heretic (strong start, once Hugh Grant is on screen; but ultimately beset by every horror movie's undoing: how do you conclude things without letting all the air out?), and a couple episodes of No Good Deed. I like Ray Romano, generally (whatever happened to Men of a Certain Age, anyway?), but I don't feel like this one is going anywhere. And Denis Leary's "edgy guy from Bahston" bit is starting to feel a little long in the tooth.