If you haven't seen this movie yet, please don't bother reading this post.
There might be a logical explanation for this, and I'm not calling it a mistake per se, but I am genuinely curious... how is it even possible that several of these cars don't have front license plates at all?
Furthermore... if Parker isn't actually motivated by the money, but strictly by principle, why did he bother stealing the jewels in the first place? I mean, if he’s already decided to go all the way to the top and settle things with the big boss in Chicago, why couldn't he have just taken what was owed to him from the man directly?
Moving on... this gang of thieves initially wanted to kill Parker because he refused to chip in his own cash for the next heist... and looking back, fine, I get it, they’ll need funds for various things... but they used the lion's share of that money to buy a house in Florida. Why buy it? Wouldn't renting a place have been much more practical?
briskhound2 said:That one with Lee Marvin is lost somewhere in the gap between wanting to be a gritty crime thriller and an art film. It just doesn't work—or at least, it didn't there. Soderbergh's The Limey is much better.
While I agree that the Soderbergh film is superior, I actually enjoyed that one too. Just compare the Lee Marvin version to this absolute mess from 2013.
I just finished watching it. Given my appreciation for Statham, and since Taylor Hackford isn't a bad director in his own right, I was hoping for a gem. But no. Aside from a brawl in a bathroom, there isn't a single thing I could highlight as being truly wonderful. It lacks the humor found in Payback with Mel Gibson, yet it fails to be dark. Despite all the violence, it feels... diluted 👎 ...even Statham doesn't quite do it for me here.
Tyler Clark86 said:I’ve been watching since they released Payback with Mel Gibson; honestly, I don't mind them pushing an adaptation of that novel, because any new Statham flick is a win in my book. 🙂
+1, though I also sat through the one with Lee Marvin. Both were decent enough.
nimblescout50 said:Doesn't it seem like he undergoes a much more intense transformation in Fight Club?!
Hmm... I wouldn't say that. His character certainly undergoes one—in the sense that he becomes Tyler Durden—but as far as the actual performance goes, not really. After all, he doesn't even realize he *is* Tyler until the very end of the film.
analoghawk13 said:I remember being about seven years old when my dad was sitting there reading the paper and suddenly starts getting all hyped up: "Oh! Tarzan! With Weissmuller!" Around one in the morning. I had to spend three hours earlier that evening faking sleep just to pull it off, but then finally, my dad and I are sitting there at 1 AM watching Tarzan. It left this impression on me—that movies were something significant, something precious.
Since then, it’s been nothing but endless TV, tons of old classics, Westerns, Musicals. My old man actually had pretty decent taste; he could spot a good film from a mile away, but since he was an engineer, he could never quite put into words *why* a movie worked. Even back then, I had this quiet ambition to eventually get better at understanding it than he was. Reminds me of those summer nights as a kid, hanging out at the local Open-air surplus events. And occasionally, he’d actually manage to shock me: watching "Catch 22" when I was barely nine.
But I really found myself through cinema while I was at the university engineering labs, basically ruining my studies by obsessing over Truffaut, Bergman, Godard, Kurosawa, and the rest. That was a long time ago, and honestly, I don't regret it for a second. If anything, movies are what saved my life.
What exactly do you mean by that? I’m not sure I follow your line of reasoning.
I think I started reading your translations before I could even properly read myself.
Every single evening, I’d find something to watch, always nursing this quiet hope that my father would finally pass out on the sofa. If he did, maybe he wouldn't kick me upstairs to bed at eight, nine, or ten at night. Some nights I got lucky; most nights, I didn't.
Back then, the best programming in the world was local public access TV—stations where the staff basically just pirated movies from god-knows-where... a colleague of yours mentioned them once. There was this strange, intoxicating sense of victory in seeing a film before it ever hit the local multiplex.🙂 ...just that old-school grit in my soul, I suppose.
When I was eleven, my absolute favorite was the first Mortal Kombat movie, mostly because of that heavy-hitting soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwWPadFsOA
By twelve or thirteen, I caught Blade... and god, what a masterpiece that was. All I have to do is recall that one specific scene and the music playing while they trigger the blood spray.🙏 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNOP2t9FObw
Then, at fourteen, I stumbled upon that old Usenet newsgroup, film.rec.movies... and that's when it really started. There was no saving me after that. That was the moment my disdain for summer blockbusters and mindless "popcorn" movies took root, a phase that lasted for many, many years. I’ve mellowed out since then, though I'm not quite as judgmental as I used to be.
By fifteen, I was sitting there watching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, haha... and The Seventh Seal, wtf... just a steady stream of heavy, serious cinema. There were films I didn't truly grasp, which was expected at that age... but I was stubborn. I refused to let anyone talk about some "important auteur" if I didn't personally understand why they mattered.
At fifteen, I discovered Fight Club. Watching it, I couldn't believe that someone on the other side of the country was experiencing the exact same thing. Instant identification. It wasn't just a movie unlike anything I'd seen; it was proof that a different kind of world was possible. That’s what I love about cinema—it pulls you in so deep that you momentarily forget you have homework to finish, a job to go to, people to fake a smile for, or dinner to make. Just pure immersion. An instant classic for me.
High school passed by. My peers were out drinking and socializing, while I was tucked away watching movies. I can still see the consequences of those choices today.
In those days, the internet was painfully slow; downloading movies wasn't really an option. But I started collecting DivX files. My first few were Alien Resurrection, The Matrix, Cube, and Hollow Man. You start accumulating them, keeping meticulous lists in Notepad. You’d trade with people online... one good trade involving six DVDs might net you thirty carefully selected titles.🙏
And so, the years roll on. People change, lives get busier, we all grow older... but film remains. My first love, and the one I'll never forget.
It’s all because our education system is fundamentally broken. From what I hear, aspiring psychologists here are being force-fed nothing but absolute garbage.
The film itself is solid, and I honestly don't see what the fuss is about. It featured a perfectly executed twist that caught me completely off guard.
It’s a solid film... I’ll concede it doesn't quite reach the heights of Paris, but at least it feels fresh. Paris felt like it was just cobbled together from recycled characters we've seen a thousand times before. I gave this one a week of my time, and honestly, I feel somewhat privileged to share a planet with Mr. Allen. 😍
The moment I saw that guy singing under the shower for the first time, my immediate thought was, "Good grief, did King Allen really hire an actual world-class tenor to play a gravedigger?" Then I checked IMDb and realized 🙏
Jamie Nelson10 said:That’s true; it feels similar to when Brando delivers that monologue in On the Waterfront...🙏
I actually wept during both instances. I believe the first time was at a local pub, and then again on a porch swing. Even though the scene on the swing is the more iconic one, that moment in the pub hit me much harder.
Everyone seems to think Werckmeister is the pinnacle, so go ahead and watch it if you must. For me, it felt incredibly tedious, and Karhozat was even more 🤷 ...I actually gave up on both after about 45 to 50 minutes.
As for Karhozat, I remember breaking down in tears during that one sequence where the woman was singing; that part alone was pure genius, but the rest of it? Total garbage.🙂
Honestly, what is even the deal with Béla Tarr? Antonioni made slow films with minimal plot, sure, but they were never tedious. I can’t say the same for Tarr.
The true auteurs of our era—real artists in every sense of the word—are names like Haneke, Trier, and Ki Duk Kim. There might be a few others out there, but those are the heavy hitters.
As for Antonioni, my absolute favorite has to be Le Amiche. I’ve given one or two of his other works a nine, but this one... I was just speechless.🙏 ...The movie progresses, getting better and better, and just when you think, "Damn, this is masterpiece territory," the film keeps going and the quality never dips.