okcomputer
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Post by okcomputer on Apr 28, 2020 13:55:38 GMT -5
One more thing that bugs me in Godfather III...
When Michael is in the Vatican talking to the Cardinal, he goes into insulin shock and asks for something sweet to help his blood sugar. The Cardinal sends a priest away to get some stuff, and about five seconds later he comes back with a tray loaded with chocolate bars and a pitcher of fresh-squeezed OJ. Like no matter where you are in the Vatican, you're never more than a few feet away from a room full of fruit juice and candy.
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Post by ravenmaniac on Apr 28, 2020 16:32:15 GMT -5
God brought him the juice and candy.
I thought I read that the actor who played Clemenza died, which is why the character wasn't in the 3rd movie. I was wrong, but I just read that Lenny Montana, who played Luca Brasi, was an enforcer for the Colombo crime family. He was a bodyguard for a senior Colombo Family member on the set of the first movie when he was introduced to Coppola and the producer Al Ruddy. They immediately hired him for the Brasi role. He was also a professional wrestler before he got mixed up with the Colombo family.
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 28, 2020 17:18:05 GMT -5
Godfather III's greatest fault is that Sophia Coppola is a shit actress and her character has too big a role, considering that. Winona Ryder was initially signed on to play Mary, and would have been a thousand times better. Robert Duvall returning (and the studio paying him closer to what they were paying the other returning cast) would have helped a lot, too. Eli Wallach is my favorite part of that movie. He was an extremely underrated actor. Winona Ryder would have been infinitely better to play Mary, and George Hamilton's character should've been Tom Hagen. And watching it last week I kept thinking that maybe Don Altobello (Eli Wallach's character) was intended to be an older Clemenza, but maybe there was still the same bad blood that kept Richard Castellano out of Part II. But then I remembered they specifically mention in Part II that Clemenza died under mysterious circumstances so that wouldn't work either. I guess when 1970's Paramount executives write an actor out of a movie they made sure to bury the body in the Everglades. But as good as Wallach is in Part III, his character is still yet another scheming former business partner with a vendetta against the Corleones, which by the third movie is a bit stale. The plot about the corruption in the Vatican ruining Michael's last ditch attempt at redemption was more than enough to carry the movie, and might have had more room to breathe without the Altobello character at all. So Part III remains this weird curiosity of a movie. The fact that it's a Godfather movie makes it both better and worse somehow, but the movie is ultimately an unnecessary conclusion to what was already a flawless, tragic character arc across two untouchable masterpieces. The final shot of Part II, of Michael sitting in his father's chair, a morally dead and hopelessly doomed man, is such a perfect place to leave the character. The final shot of Part III is Michael sitting in a chair again, all alone, and literally dying this time. It's ultimately pointless. It really is such a flawed movie. Correct me if I'm wrong, since I haven't seen this movie in a while, but isn't Don Altobello connected to the Vatican corruption and the cardinal? Maybe it would have worked without him, but I still think that while not entirely original, his character is still very well written (while quite a few characters are not), Eli Wallach is outstanding (as I said), and I liked that he was a friend and ally of Michael's instead of being just another old associate of Vito's. Besides, betrayal is a theme in these movies, and it's a reminder that the mob is just an untrustworthy bunch of ambitious thugs always looking to stab each other in the back to get ahead. "Loyalty is an illusion," I think I heard in a documentary on the History Channel. Betrayal is so much a part of the first two films that having another Godfather movie without someone trying to betray the Corleone family is like a Die Hard movie without John McClane saying "Yippee ki-yay" mother fucker. It might seem fresher to not have it, but it loses something without it. Hard to top betrayal from your own brother, tho. And I still think the original script idea with the Corleone family working with the FBI to take out Castro would have made for a more interesting film in general, if a third film had to be made at all.
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Post by frinspar on Apr 29, 2020 17:26:53 GMT -5
I have them all in a set and think I've watched GF3 three or four times and I remember little about it.
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Post by okcomputer on Apr 30, 2020 12:01:37 GMT -5
It really is such a flawed movie. Correct me if I'm wrong, since I haven't seen this movie in a while, but isn't Don Altobello connected to the Vatican corruption and the cardinal? Maybe it would have worked without him, but I still think that while not entirely original, his character is still very well written (while quite a few characters are not), Eli Wallach is outstanding (as I said), and I liked that he was a friend and ally of Michael's instead of being just another old associate of Vito's. Besides, betrayal is a theme in these movies, and it's a reminder that the mob is just an untrustworthy bunch of ambitious thugs always looking to stab each other in the back to get ahead. "Loyalty is an illusion," I think I heard in a documentary on the History Channel. Betrayal is so much a part of the first two films that having another Godfather movie without someone trying to betray the Corleone family is like a Die Hard movie without John McClane saying "Yippee ki-yay" mother fucker. It might seem fresher to not have it, but it loses something without it. Hard to top betrayal from your own brother, tho. And I still think the original script idea with the Corleone family working with the FBI to take out Castro would have made for a more interesting film in general, if a third film had to be made at all. The whole plot with the corruption around Immobilaire and the Vatican is already really convoluted, and Altobello's involvement muddies things even more. Michael's story arc in Part III is best when it focuses on his attempts to buy his salvation, only to discover that the Vatican is as corrupt as any other organization, and whatever good intentions he may have had devolved into the same cycle of violence and murder. That's a suitably tragic epilogue for his character, but really the only impact Altobello's scheming ultimately has is the accidental assassination of Mary. And that scene on the opera steps when Mary is killed really is quite good. Michael is cradling Mary's body with his face contorted into a scream before the scream itself actually comes, then there are a couple of brief flashbacks to Michael's happier moments. As an ending to the trilogy it's really quite good, but it isn't better than Michael sitting in a chair surrounded by dead leaves at the end of Part II. Part III's ending is more operatic than poetic, and I guess I think the more understated ending works better.
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Post by S. Griffin on Apr 30, 2020 17:05:41 GMT -5
It is a good scene. I like the whole Opera House sequence a lot, start to finish. Again, it's a shame it wasn't Winona Ryder instead of the director's VERY GREEN (as in almost completely inexperienced) daughter. And you're right. Nothing in this movie is as good as pretty much anything in Part 2. Maybe some of the acting. I think Pacino overdoes it pretty often through the movie, but Eli Wallach, as I've mentioned again and again, Diane Keaton, and Talia Shire are really quite excellent. Joe Mantegna was very good, too, but not quite up to the level of some of the veterans. Never sure how I feel about Andy Garcia in this. I'm hesitant to watch it again, although Mrs. Griffin has never seen it, so if we get really bored one of these evenings, we might give it a shot, but we do have a lot of better stuff higher up on our list.
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Post by okcomputer on May 26, 2020 9:35:02 GMT -5
We watched Rise of Skywalker again yesterday, and dammit if I don't like this movie more and more each time I see it.
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Post by S. Griffin on May 26, 2020 15:13:25 GMT -5
Wife and I watched it for the first time on Saturday. Hated it. Even if JJ Abrams wasn't like that kid doing stories-in-the-round who doesn't like what the last kid said, so he starts with "Okay, well Snoke is dead, buuuuuut Emperor Palpatine is alive again now, and he's got a fleet of star destroyers, and they're all armed with Death Star cannons, so they can blow up a whole planet, and Rey's parents CHOSE to be nobodies because her dad was Palpatine's son, so Rey is a Palpatine, and the Jedi didn't end with Luke Skywalker's death, and definitely not with that kid and the broom. Leia was a Jedi and she's been training Rey, and they even saved one of the sacred texts somehow, and Rose and Finn? That's not going to happen. Finn gets a new love interest, but they won't wind up together, and she's also black, and is also an ex-stormtrooper, and Luke's ghost shows up and says he was wrong, and..." I still would have hated it. Ironically, my favorite part of the movie was dumb as hell, but I laughed really hard, so that's my favorite part now, and it's when Finn and Poe are being held at gunpoint (blasterpoint?) and the camera pans away (because trope) and then you hear two blaster shots, and then the camera pans back over and they're still alive, and the stormtroopers are dead, and Hux is standing there with a smoking blaster and just says, "I am the spy!" Hilarious shit.
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Post by okcomputer on May 27, 2020 11:21:39 GMT -5
I know, I know, people hate that movie... but for me it works. It fits the pattern of the sequel trilogy mirroring the OT (TFA borrows heavily from ANH, TLJ is a masterpiece that subverts the previous one like TESB did, and TROS is the clumsy finale like ROTJ), and while it's far from perfect, but it works where it needs to and the major beats land successfully, which for me is the mark of a good Star Wars movie.
I've been accused (and am definitely guilty of) having blinders on when it comes to this franchise, because cheesy as it sounds, these movies and this universe mean a whole hell of a lot to me. I'll spare you guys the details, but I rediscovered the movies when I was 13 in the pre-internet mid-90s, and that trilogy (and the novels, and the comics) helped me through one mean motherfucker of a rough patch. These weren't just movies I liked watching, this was a universe that gave me an escape when I desperately needed one. When the prequels rolled around, I was able to recognize the flaws along with everyone else, but I still loved that we were getting more Star Wars movies. The parts of those movies that worked (the themes, the "rhyming poetry" bits with the OT, the major story beats) helped me look past the bad dialogue and occasional wooden performances from otherwise great actors.
So fast forward to the last movie of the sequel trilogy. I'm older and wiser and I think I have a better eye for media criticism than I did 15-20 years ago, but I still fucking love Star Wars. Even when it's not perfect, I still love it. And The Rise of Skywalker is far from a perfect movie, but for me it's a good Star Wars movie. Yeah, there are faults. I will go through some of them:
Jannah/Rose. Jannah is a cool character and when she and Finn mount their space horses and lead a cavalry charge ON THE EXTERIOR OF A STAR DESTROYER IN EXOGOL'S UPPER ATMOSPHERE... holy shit man, that's just plain cool. But there was nothing her character contributed that couldn't have been given to Rose Tico. Even Jannah's cool space horses could just as easily have been a herd of fathiers that Rose rescued from Canto Bight sometime after TLJ. That way we still get the cavalry charge, but it builds on Rose's character instead of shuffling her off to the side for a new character that we don't really learn much about aside from her and Finn having the same backstory. So yeah, Jannah should've been Rose.
Leia. Not having Carrie Fisher around to complete Ben Solo's redemption arc was never gonna be easy, especially once the producers (correctly) decided against bringing her back to life CGI Rogue One-style. The scenes in the first act when Leia is directly interacting with other characters are clumsy and don't quite work, since they clearly (and the making-of doc admits this) wrote the scenes around the snippets of unused Leia dialogue from TFA. Bringing back Harrison Ford for that scene was a nice touch, and then playing out the same scene from TFA with a hopeful outcome this time, it's a nice scene but it's never far from the viewer's mind that that was supposed to Leia. I think it probably was Leia, projecting herself to her son in the form of his father. I also think that was Leia projecting herself again (or at least influencing her son's actions) when Ben crawls out of the pit on Exogol, just in time to bring Rey back to life. Ben and Leia's bodies both disappear at the same moment so something was going on there, but without Carrie to film some explanatory scenes it's mostly left to the audience's interpretation. For the most part, it works. Not flawlessly, but writing the climax to a trilogy when you've lost the character central to that climax... it was an impossible task, but they figured out a way.
Pacing. This movie clearly includes some of the ideas JJ Abrams had mind for Episode 8, and as a result it feels at times like watching a movie and a half. The first 30 minutes move at such a breakneck speed with characters chasing a Maguffin to find another Maguffin that the movie really doesn't give the audience time to settle in. It's disorienting, and it makes the movie rush through scenes and locations that really deserved more time to be fleshed out. The scenes on Pasaana (Star Wars desert planet #4) are a perfect example. In the span of about 20 minutes or so, we see a cool festival that gives Rey her first real taste of happiness and life in the galaxy, the things that make the war worth fighting. Then we meet Lando. Then the First Order shows up and there's a big chase, and the gang gets sucked into an underground cave with a giant snake. Then Rey discovers her Force-healing abilities. Then Chewie gets kidnapped. Then Kylo and Rey face off (this scene fucking rules by the way) and Rey taps into some Dark Side powers, "killing" Chewie. That's a lot.
Passage of time. For some reason I don't understand, both TLJ and TROS added in a ticking clock to the plot, telling us exactly how much time has passed over the course of the movie. I do not like that choice. One of the best things about The Empire Strikes Back is the vagueness with which it plays with time. How long was Luke on Dagobah? How long did it take the Falcon to fly to Bespin with a busted hyperdrive? The answer was always "however long it took for Luke to complete enough of his training, and however long it took Han and Leia to fall in love". That approach is infinitely better than "The bad guys are gonna launch an attack in 16 hours". Why not 12 hours, or 24 hours? Why not just leave the timeline vague?
Too many false alarms with beloved characters. Oh shit, Chewie is dead! 10 minutes later he's fine, there was another shuttle. Oh shit, 3PO has to have his memory wiped to decipher the Sith text! It's ok, R2 fixes him.
Those are the big things that jump out at me with the movie fresh in my mind. It has pacing and structural issues that could've been fixed with an extra 30 minutes or so, but I still think the movie works. There are SO MANY things I loved about it, though. Pasaana, I wish we could've spent more time there. Babu Frik, I love that weird little dude. D-O, the little conefaced droid with personal space issues. The massive armada of freighters ("It's not a fleet, they're just... people"). Palpatine and his creepy Sith cult, whose voices we've been hearing in the score ever since Return of the Jedi. The scene with Luke where he admits to his mistakes, something no other Jedi has done, owning up to the errors that wiped out all the Jedi in the first place. The scene with the Jedi voices, goddamn it's great. Space horses and a cavalry charge on the exterior of a Star Destroyer. The Death Star wreckage. Cloud City. "Rey Skywalker."
Man, long post. But I really do dig this movie.
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Post by BeefEaster on May 27, 2020 18:28:06 GMT -5
I felt like I had a hangover from second hand stupidity after watching it.
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Post by S. Griffin on May 27, 2020 20:53:09 GMT -5
I felt like I had a hangover from second hand stupidity after watching it. Good description. Hey, so here's an issue I don't think I saw anyone else raise (to be fair, I have not looked at every review of Rise of Skywalker). So Exegol is clearly just another planet in the Endor system, because otherwise how the fuck did Wicket and Wicket Jr. see the star destroyer blowing up? And since it's definitely in the Endor system, what's the point of most of that fucking quest? Get the dagger and translate the dagger and then go to Endor II or wherever the Death Star wreckage is and use the dagger to find the mapguffin and then it clearly leads just a few planets away. PUZZLEBOX MASTER!
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okcomputer
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Post by okcomputer on May 27, 2020 21:22:13 GMT -5
Exogol isn’t in the Endor system. We also see Star Destroyers blowing up over Bespin and Jakku, but they’re regular First Order ships and not part of the Sith fleet. As the good guys are leaving Exogol Finn says “People are rising up all over the galaxy”, then we get the short montage of recognizable planets and burning Star Destroyers.
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Post by S. Griffin on May 27, 2020 22:13:43 GMT -5
I do not remember a montage, but whatever. That was way less clear than you think, and your extra viewing helped you understand what was happening. Congratulations. It's still stupid.
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Post by okcomputer on May 28, 2020 7:50:48 GMT -5
I mean, it ain't David Lynch...
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Post by S. Griffin on May 28, 2020 10:37:05 GMT -5
David Lynch doesn't make movies this messy...not even Dune.
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Post by frinspar on May 31, 2020 15:45:32 GMT -5
Jesus Christ, Uncut Gems is a fucking grueling ordeal. It wasn't bad, but I'd never, ever watch even 5 minutes of it again because it's just so completely aggressive and hateful and angry and unrelenting in its depiction of a miserable piece of shit human being just living the life he works so actively to destroy completely.
It is inevitable in its arc. I watched it like I was taking a shit.
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Post by okcomputer on Jun 1, 2020 9:38:08 GMT -5
Uncut Gems is goddamn great, a future cult classic for sure. I'm not sure it's one I'll revisit very often, but maybe sometimes when I'm in just the right kind of bad mood, like with Clockwork Orange or Straw Dogs.
Over the weekend I desperately needed a break from the news so we watched Invisible Man, the new one that came out a couple months ago right before the world came to a screeching, coughing halt. And it's really good! It's a solid thriller with some nice scares, and one hell of a satisfying ending. Definitely recommended.
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Post by BeefEaster on Jun 1, 2020 21:46:37 GMT -5
I couldn't make it through uncut gems.
It made me feel like when you're stuck at someone else's house and they start having a big family argument and you're just sitting there and everything is super awkward and you just wanna get outta there. Then I realized I could just shut the movie off so I did.
I can't stand that DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA type stuff. I've got enough drama in my own life.
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Post by frinspar on Jun 2, 2020 11:24:33 GMT -5
^ It did feel like that. I'm sure that was the intent, and they succeeded in conveying that anxiety. But it was the movie equivalent of being on a car ride with your sibling and they kept doing the "I'm not touching you!" bullshit. And your sibling was Gilbert Gottfried.
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Post by ravenmaniac on Jun 8, 2020 15:08:07 GMT -5
I thought it was great but damn stressful. Thought Sandler got hosed on an Oscar nomination, but he made his own bed with all of those hideous movies he's made in the past. The Academy will continue to refuse to take him seriously. He should be blackballed because of Little Nicky alone.
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Post by frinspar on Jun 8, 2020 15:38:28 GMT -5
People can either act, or they can't. Whatever kinds of movies he's made - and I used to fucking hate him for all the frat boy kinda stuff before I gave in and found it's enjoyable - but he can act. Even back in Bulletproof he did well.
Watched Midnight Cowboy the other night. Never have watched it all, and even just bits at that. I get why it's still a revered classic. It was sad and ugly, but quite excellent.
Caught Hustlers last night, starring JLo and other people. I had no idea what to expect, knew nothing about it going in. It resolved itself into a pretty good story and movie.
David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly still holds up as a kickass horror movie with fantastic effects. And they kept the technology simple so that it never feels dated.
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Post by okcomputer on Jun 9, 2020 9:06:29 GMT -5
99% of Sandler's movies are unwatchable garbage, but once in a while he'll make something like Punch Drunk Love or Uncut Gems. He has it in him to do quality stuff, but there's more money in Grown Ups 5.
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Post by frinspar on Jun 9, 2020 10:50:30 GMT -5
You can't argue with a free month-long vacation in Hawaii or Africa paid for by a studio where you can hang out with your friends and make the same nostalgic couples movie over and over and have it take in a guaranteed $300 million at the box office each and every time.
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Post by GhostRider5289 on Jun 20, 2020 14:49:14 GMT -5
Watched all the Mad Max movies for the first time over the past four days and with the exception of Thunderdome I enjoyed them quite a lot. Fury Road was especially a damn good time.
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Post by S. Griffin on Jun 20, 2020 15:41:15 GMT -5
Watched all the Mad Max movies for the first time over the past four days and with the exception of Thunderdome I enjoyed them quite a lot. Fury Road was especially a damn good time. Yeah, Thunderdome is fucking terrible.
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Post by GhostRider5289 on Jun 20, 2020 17:23:47 GMT -5
I liked the first half but after he gets kicked out of the town and meets the kids I pretty much checked out.
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Post by S. Griffin on Jun 20, 2020 23:10:26 GMT -5
That's why it's terrible. I could have looked past Tina Turner's bad acting, but those fucking kids are too much.
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Post by okcomputer on Jun 21, 2020 2:00:03 GMT -5
Only the second and fourth Mad Max movies are any good.
And I would LOVE to have my mind wiped and be able to watch Fury Road for the first time again. Seeing that movie in the theater was a damn near religious experience.
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Post by GhostRider5289 on Jun 21, 2020 2:09:47 GMT -5
I really liked the first one.
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Post by S. Griffin on Jun 21, 2020 16:49:45 GMT -5
I really liked the first one. The first one definitely has its charms, especially if you watch the undubbed version.
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