Honestly, I think this flick is a total masterpiece. It’s got that heavy campus vibe, but it feels way more like something straight out of a Saul Bellow novel, you know? And man, Michael Douglas is absolutely killing it. I mean, the whole damn cast is just top-tier.
Can anyone hook me up with a link to that archive, or is it just gone for good? I’ve got such fond memories of the Jukebox, man—it was actually pretty solid and had a great sense of humor once they pivoted over to punk.
I’m totally with Melissa Moore32 on this one—that movie is honestly in a league of its own compared to those typical, cookie-cutter teen rom-coms you see everywhere. But hey, if we're talking about modern takes on Shakespeare, I gotta say that Clueless is also an absolute masterpiece. Honestly, I have to say, Julia Stiles is hands down one of my absolute favorite new actresses out there. Like, I could just talk about her talent for hours, seriously.
Honestly, Sylvia should’ve been playing Courtney Love—you know, like, back before all the lip fillers became a thing—instead of this totally anemic version of Gwyneth Paltrow we're stuck with. Or maybe even a slightly younger Judy Davis would've worked better. Actually, if you listen to her, Judy Davis even has a voice that sounds just like Sylvia's.
Nah, honestly, it's just such a blatant example of how those screenplay awards are basically nothing more than consolation prizes for the Best Picture nominees.
Look, even if the Oscar list for Best Original Screenplay is a bit more decent than the one for Best Picture, there’s still some absolute garbage on there. I mean, take Good Will Hunting—the whole script is basically just a bunch of arrogant teenage rambling. And don't even get me started on Lost in Translation; the dialogue in that flick isn't exactly its strongest suit. But honestly, the funniest Oscar award has to be the one for Gosford Park, especially since that entire movie was packed with improvisation under Altman's direction. What a total joke of an Oscar.
To me, the Oscar for Best Screenplay feels like a consolation prize for solid movies that don't have massive, megalomaniac ambitions. If we're being real, this year, American Splendor really should have taken home the win for Adapted Screenplay.
Man, I am absolutely loving Elephant. It’s just so hypnotic and deeply poetic, you know? And honestly, this isn't some movie you sit on your couch at home for; you really need to hit up a theater with a killer sound system so you can actually hear every single footstep echoing through the room. I also just don't get how someone who directed stuff like Drugstore Cowboy, or even My Own Private Idaho, could turn around and make something as totally different as Good Will Hunting. Like, seriously, I’m just baffled by how that works.
Justin Patel: If you honestly can't see that this movie is absolute garbage, then you straight up don't have the right to say anything about film as an art form or a craft. Period. Look, I get it, people can argue about taste all day long—that’s what debates are for—but we aren't talking about "taste" here. We're talking about objective, undeniable lack of quality. It's just bad. Richard Hernandez13, why are you throwing those kinds of hints my way? You're gonna make me misinterpret things, man.
I’m right there with you, honestly. It’s basically just a movie about some aging actor hitting his midlife crisis running into a young woman whose husband is perpetually MIA. I mean, let’s be real, it’s nothing more than a rom-com—a pretty boring one at that, but hey, what can you do? That whole interpretation was really just pre-empting the exact kind of sentimental garbage people who love this flick always go for. Personally, I just can't stomach that whole vibe of bored, upper-class Americans living their best lives while being totally disconnected from reality.
xe, xe... I’m telling you, man, you gotta pitch this idea immediately. Seriously, it’s way better than some low-budget flop like Titanic ii : Revenge of The Ghost Pirates.
'Lost in translation' would probably rank among the absolute worst movies I’ve sat through in the last decade—if I can even call it that, since I practically crawled out of the theater after just thirty minutes. Honestly, the last time I bailed on a movie like that was when I saw 'The Wedding Singer'. And man, oh man, what a disaster. It wasn't just that the dialogue felt totally shallow; half the scenes were completely pointless, like you could swap them around or cut them entirely and nothing would change, just total nonsense. Don't even get me started on the amateurish execution of the script, which was just straight-up garbage. I mean, seriously, what is the point? What was the actual vision here, and what kind of reaction were they even aiming for? If the goal—like some people claim—was to use the atmosphere to paint this picture of an existential crisis and how isolated we all feel in a post-industrial society, where being physically displaced serves as a metaphor for feeling lost in a tech-driven world (basically a tiny, freshman-level course in existentialism by Sofia Coppola), then fine, I guess it worked. It worked so well it actually drove me out of the cinema from sheer, soul-crushing boredom. Now, look, I absolutely love Scarlett Johansson—ever since she was in 'Ghost World' (now *that* was a great movie)—and she was fantastic in 'The Man Who Wasn't There,' too. But at this rate, she's headed for the exact same fate as Kate Winslet.
Man, I’ve missed out on way too many good flicks this year, honestly—my watchlist is basically a graveyard at this point. So, I’m not even gonna try to give you a huge list; I’ll just nominate one single movie, but fair warning, this one easily cracks my top ten from the last few years: 'Spellbound'.
Ugh, alright, I’m gonna vent about these one—actually, two—movies I’ve been obsessing over watching lately, but I haven't even gotten through them yet because I am my own worst enemy and just plain stupid. The first one was Hitchcock's 'The Lady Vanishes,' which I was trying to record so I could watch it properly. And yeah, I did, but since I totally botched the settings on my DVR, I missed the last ten minutes, which were probably the most crucial ten minutes of the entire movie! I also tried to record 'The 39 Steps,' and honestly, I feel like I messed that one up too, but I haven't even checked because I'm too busy being absolutely mortified by my own incompetence.
I’m checking in, but honestly, I’m doing it for love—though, man, I gotta be real with you, I’ve never actually sat down and listened to Trout Mask Replica from start to finish. It’s such a massive undertaking.
Look, let me backtrack a bit there. I’m not saying Christian Bale is a total wash—I mean, that scene where everyone is just swapping business cards? That was actually killer, super subtle and sharp. But honestly, I feel like he should’ve let that sense of deep-seated frustration and that "I'm not good enough" competitive anxiety bleed through the whole movie more naturally. To me, American Psycho works best as this biting social satire—kind of a dark comedy of manners, you know?—regardless of all those Bateman fantasies, which I think the movie leans into way more than the book does. I really think it would’ve hit harder if they hadn't played Bateman as such a cartoonish psychopath; adding just a little bit of ambiguity or internal conflict would have made him so much more terrifying. By the way, can we talk about that song choice during the suicide scene in The Secret...?
I was reading this interview with Avary the other day, and she actually mentions that Sean Bateman is supposedly Patrick Bateman’s brother. I had absolutely no clue about that connection! I actually picked up Rules of Attraction after seeing the movie, but honestly, I couldn't get into it—it felt a little too "teen comedy" for my taste, like the author hadn't quite found his footing yet. But then, right around page ten, while they're traveling through Europe, there's this random bit where they meet these two guys in Greece who teach them how to translate Bruce Springsteen songs into some local dialect. 😁 I mean, Rules of Attraction is a decent enough movie, even if Dawson is a bit much. And don't even get me started on how unrealistic it is that Ian Sommerhalder just can't find anyone to sleep with. Personally, I think I prefer it over American Psycho; even though that one is more elegantly directed, it veers way too far from satire into pure parody, mostly because Christian Bale's acting feels so off.