What movies are you watching?

[dimejinky99]

Watching the Muppet movie. It's still hilarious. Anyone who has kids should show them 'tis:)

Trying to learn this on uke

[bune]

Speaking of kids, watched the Angry Birds movie with mine. Wow there wasn't much in the movie, full stop. I laughed at the scene with the eagle peeing because I'm a five-year-old at heart but other than that it was just terrible. And the music! Man. Everyone associated with this basically phoned it in.

I take that back - the animators did a fine job, it looked very pretty.

[BurtReynolds]

Hell or Hightwater. It was ok. They really didn't like those damn banks.

[Strat]

Hell or Hightwater. It was ok. They really didn't like those damn banks.

Is it better than Suicide Squad?

[lennytheweedwhacker]

i watched the first 30 minutes of the devil's advocate, but i had enough

[Simple Torture]

i watched the first 30 minutes of the devil's advocate, but i had enough

There's some boobies at the end.

[LoathedVermin72]

Bulworth. Holy shit.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Bulworth. Holy shit.

in what way?

[lennytheweedwhacker]

i watched the first 30 minutes of the devil's advocate, but i had enough

There's some boobies at the end.

oh ok

[Simple Torture]

Tonight we watched A Christmas Melody. Honestly, this wasn't the worst of the bunch, but there was barely anything that made it stand out from the pack, except for one key element (which I'll get to). The main character is a woman living in LA whose dress shop has folded; she takes her daughter and moves back to her hometown in Ohio to try and get her life back together (she's a single mom, and all we're told is that her husband "passed away"; my wife and I had a few guesses--military, car crash, workplace shooting, autoerotic asphyixiation--but it's never revealed how he kicked it). She's now living in her father's old house and working as a waitress, and everyone she runs into from her childhood asks why she gave up on her dream of being a big fashion designer. Her daughter is also depressed, because she's got no friends and is generally a loser. Things start to turn around for both of them when they meet the school's music teacher, Handsome Man, who grew up with Leading Lady (but she wouldn't give him the time of day in high school). In the span of an hour and a half he makes the little girl believe in herself by helping her write a song for the school Christmas pageant and by convincing Leading Lady that, yes, falling in love is the most important thing a woman can do. In the very end, one of Leading Lady's best friends from LA surprises her with a visit in OH and gives her some startling news: without her knowledge, she's sent her portfolio to a bunch of department stores and one of them liked her work so much that they want to give her her own fashion line. But, of course, she would have to move back to LA to make this happen. But like all of the female protagonists in all of these movies, she decides that falling in love is far more important than a career, and she decides to stay. The end.

There are two things I haven't mentioned, somehow. This film was directed by, features in a supporting role, and features the music of Mariah Carey. She fucking directed this movie. She comes across pretty convincingly as an annoying cunt who, in the end, befriends the protagonist despite their differences. There was one thing that was really jarring: every shot of her basically featured no other actors in the frame, and there was something...different about them. My wife explained that Carey only allows herself to be shot in specific soft light and a little bit out of focus, so any shot of her face looks like a completely different movie. During dialogues with other characters, it was nauseous going from one shot to the other.

And finally: the little girl in the movie befriends the school janitor, who is so fucking obviously Santa Claus from the first moment he's on screen. There isn't any suspense or anything about it, he's just Santa Claus who also happens to be the school janitor. But in the final scene when the little girl performs her big number at the school play, there are these cut-away shots to Santa the Janitor that are either completely accidental or a brilliant homage. Check them out in the video below at 2:00, 2:10, and 2:30 (among other places):



Are these shots references to the janitor in the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? You be the judge (1:35, 3:32):

[LoathedVermin72]

Bulworth. Holy shit.

in what way?

It's fucking bonkers.

[Simple Torture]

Bulworth. Holy shit.

in what way?

It's fucking bonkers.

I've heard a number of people refer to it with high praise, but no one ever really talks about it. Sounds like a interesting movie club pick...

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Bulworth. Holy shit.

in what way?

It's fucking bonkers.

and you liked it?

i noticed it was on netflix awhile back and thought about watching it, but never got around to it

[LoathedVermin72]

I enjoyed it, yeah. I don't really know what it was ultimately trying to say but you definitely can't take your eyes off it.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[Simple Torture]

Today's movie was Christmas Under Wraps - I am officially fucking sick of movies where a character is Santa Claus in disguise but they spend the entire movie pretending that he isn't Santa Claus in disguise; this has probably overtaken "female characters abandoning their dreams to be housewives" as my most-hated trope in these films. So in this one, protagonist lady has just finished med school and is patiently waiting to hear back about a fellowship at a hospital in Boston; her father used to work there and knows the dean of medicine, so she's a lock for the position. Well, surprise! The nepotism doesn't work and she's rejected. What follows are five minutes of the most explicit but least self-aware cases of privilege ever committed to film: she hems and haws about how that fellowship was for her, and how she had it, and how someone else has taken it away--honestly, I was waiting for her to complain that it was probably an affirmative action hire. There's only one available fellowship, and it's in a small town in Alaska, so our heroin (that wasn't really a spelling error, I just wish I had heroin while watching this movie) heads off without the right sort of clothes or any idea how to interact with any humans. She falls in love with the guy who flies her into the small town immediately, and we soon find out that his dad--a great big fat guy with a white beard who dresses in red--owns a "shipping company" in this isolated Alaskan town. Come the fuck on now. Really, the scene-by-scene parts of this were pretty forgettable, except when Handsome Pilot uses the phrase "he would have gone crippled without your help" to describe a guy with a broken leg. STOP TRYING TO FOOL US, HALLMARK CHANNEL--WE KNEW HE WAS SANTA THE WHOLE TIME. FUCK YOU. In the end she decides to decline another fellowship in Boston in order to stay with the heir to the Santa Claus fortune.

Power Rankings:
1. Cookie Town
2. A Christmas Melody
3. Christmas Under Wraps

[VinylGuy]

Tickled.

Well, it was fun for a saturday evening.
The story was really weird, and that guy must have tons of money to do that and get away with it.

[VinylGuy]

Looper.

Only saw it once in the theatre, i enjoyed Bruce Willis, of course, and the movie is fine. I like it more the first time i guess.

Deja Vú.

Wow, what a piece of crap. Its such a mess....Denzel doing whatever he does in a Tony Scott movie. Man, what a waste.

[Simple Torture]

Tickled.

Well, it was fun for a saturday evening.
The story was really weird, and that guy must have tons of money to do that and get away with it.

Yeah, I feel like this would've been excellent as a 50-minute documentary. It felt like it was strrrrrretched to feature-length.

[bada]

Today's movie was Christmas Under Wraps - I am officially fucking sick of movies where a character is Santa Claus in disguise but they spend the entire movie pretending that he isn't Santa Claus in disguise; this has probably overtaken "female characters abandoning their dreams to be housewives" as my most-hated trope in these films. So in this one, protagonist lady has just finished med school and is patiently waiting to hear back about a fellowship at a hospital in Boston; her father used to work there and knows the dean of medicine, so she's a lock for the position. Well, surprise! The nepotism doesn't work and she's rejected. What follows are five minutes of the most explicit but least self-aware cases of privilege ever committed to film: she hems and haws about how that fellowship was for her, and how she had it, and how someone else has taken it away--honestly, I was waiting for her to complain that it was probably an affirmative action hire. There's only one available fellowship, and it's in a small town in Alaska, so our heroin (that wasn't really a spelling error, I just wish I had heroin while watching this movie) heads off without the right sort of clothes or any idea how to interact with any humans. She falls in love with the guy who flies her into the small town immediately, and we soon find out that his dad--a great big fat guy with a white beard who dresses in red--owns a "shipping company" in this isolated Alaskan town. Come the fuck on now. Really, the scene-by-scene parts of this were pretty forgettable, except when Handsome Pilot uses the phrase "he would have gone crippled without your help" to describe a guy with a broken leg. STOP TRYING TO FOOL US, HALLMARK CHANNEL--WE KNEW HE WAS SANTA THE WHOLE TIME. FUCK YOU. In the end she decides to decline another fellowship in Boston in order to stay with the heir to the Santa Claus fortune.

Power Rankings:
1. Cookie Town
2. A Christmas Melody
3. Christmas Under Wraps

We're watching one with the girl from Battlestar. She's an army wife trying to make Christmas special for all.