This is starting to feel like actual harassment. Honestly... if you don't have anything constructive to say, whether you're arguing against something or defending a point... just move on. Leave me alone. 🙄 😕
Look, this is a drama, not some soap opera... if you’re looking for twists and turns, stick to those Mexican or Brazilian telenovelas... if you need speed and adrenaline, go watch a Vin Diesel movie.
😁 I appreciate the commentary on my taste, really, but I’m sticking to my guns: this movie doesn't deserve a single Oscar nomination. And again, regarding the acting—if I wanted to stare at expressionless, pretty faces, I’d go window shopping at a boutique. If I actually wanted to see Japan, I'd just pick up a 'Lonely Planet' guide.
Seriously, if anyone can find a single line of dialogue between the two leads that has actual substance... and isn't just some heavy-handed cliché, I'll eat my hat. Memorable Quotes:
You're probably just having a mid-life crisis. Did you buy a Porsche yet?
Ooooh... wow... that one really hits hard. Or maybe that was supposed to be 'funny':
Bob: I was feeling tight in the shoulders and neck, so I called down and had a Shiatsu massage in my room... Charlotte: Mmh, that's nice! Bob: And the tightness has completely disappeared, and then replaced by unbelievable pain! [she laughs] 😁
Or maybe "Philosophy for Dummies":
Charlotte: I just don't know what I'm supposed to be. Bob: You'll figure that out. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.
Oh my GOD!!!!!! 🙏
And while we're on the subject of an older guy and a younger girl, you're better off watching 'The Good Thief'... if nothing else, the cast is at least a notch above this.
So, this was one of those movies I put in the "maybe watch on a rainy Sunday" pile, and—honestly? I overplayed my hand. It’s just... messy. Fragmented, disorganized, totally nonsensical. There isn't really any dialogue to speak of, let alone any actual reveals or plot twists. I almost turned it off halfway through, but I felt obligated to push through since it’s an Oscar nominee and features the first female director in that category. Good grief, what a jumbled mess of scenes and cuts. And the acting? Don't get me started. Murray isn't even really acting, and the young girl is the only one who looks remotely convincing, but that’s about it. The supporting cast flies by like a bullet train; you don't learn a single thing about them. This isn't even "watchable," much less "solid" or worthy of being some Oscar-nominated masterpiece. What a joke. 🙄
I watched this one about six months ago, and you nailed the atmosphere. It’s such a breath of fresh air stylistically, especially watching the chemistry between the two leads. But regarding the story... well, something almost identical actually happened within an undercover unit at the LAPD; one of the guys working deep undercover went through the exact same thing as the character played by Jason Patric. Sure, they added some extra stuff just to amp up the drama, but the core of the story is definitely rooted in reality. On some level, the movie reminded me of Donnie Brasco, where Johnny Depp—playing the undercover guy—goes through this subtle transformation and shift in perspective where he starts to respect certain things about the character played by Al Pacino. Still, Donnie Brasco is more of a saga, whereas Narc is pure dark noir.
I didn't manage to catch everything from last night's Golden Globes ceremony because they were showing 'Blade Runner' on the Discovery Channel, but from what I did see...
-- Sean Penn deservedly took home the award for Best Actor in a Drama. Clint Eastwood accepted it on his behalf and dropped this great observation about actors we take for granted just because they're so good we don't even notice it, and according to him, Sean is exactly one of those guys.
-- Bill Murray won Best Actor in a 'Comedy / Musical', and honestly, his acceptance speech had me falling off the sofa laughing.
-- I feel like it's about time they created a specific category for 'trilogy' films. It feels like an unfair competition against "regular" movies. I'm starving for more Lord of the Rings and stuff like that. No comment.
-- Piccolo Coppola definitely learned how to write a screenplay from the best. And the directing, too.
-- The American version of 'The Office' is the best comedy out there. Ricky Gervais just felt the most natural somehow. Probably just the accent, I guess.
The rest was mostly just "who wore what," which everyone's already talked about anyway.
That hospital scene with the one-eyed aunt: Okay, that's a nod to Almodovar, he mentioned it somewhere...
I don't get it... a tribute to what exactly? The one-eyed aunt character or...?
From what I can tell, you practically need a degree in film history just to wrap your head around some movies. It’s like the film you're actually sitting down to watch isn't enough on its own.
Jennifer Lopez played the lead female role in Oliver Stone's 'U-Turn' back when she was still relatively under the radar, and honestly, I was pretty impressed by how well she handled it. I agree that things got messy later on, but 'U-Turn' is a masterpiece, and she really helped make it what it is.
If I had to sum up the movie in one word, it’s cool. It was built to be cool, and it succeeds.
"Cool" is really just a matter of perception—it's all in the eye of the beholder, I guess. The problem is that "cool" doesn't exactly stand the test of time; once you label something as "cool," you're basically digging its grave under the weight of its own trendiness. It's about form, never substance. In a movie, form without substance is like seeing Twiggy in Victoria's Secret lingerie. Cool is dead. Only the uninformed are still out there swapping out "cool" for a kind of pretentiousness that borders on hysteria. 😉
p.s. I'm still sticking to my guns: Kill Bill has nothing to do with Pulp Fiction (aside from some shared actors and a few inside nods, but does that actually matter in a movie?).
... but I ended up rewatching Blade Runner, prompted by that new movie based on the Philip K. Dick story, Paycheck.
Blade Runner—based on a novella where Philip himself mentioned how tricky it is to adapt because it doesn't follow a standard sci-fi plot, but rather focuses on that slow, steady drip of atmosphere from a future world. That whole vibe stems from the question of what actually makes us human in an era where Replicants exist. My own little angle on it—every single leap forward for the human race seems to have the seeds of discrimination baked right into the core of what we call "civilized progress." There's a parallel there—back in the day, bringing slaves over from Africa to the USA was a massive turning point for development, a move still cited as foundational to American society. I won't even waste words pointing out the obvious roots of discrimination in that era. Interestingly, even then, there were specialized hunters looking for runaways, much like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Sort of like Blade Runners. I don't have the time or the space for a full-blown comparison, but to answer the prompt—yeah, Blade Runner still holds up.
BTW—Paycheck feels more like The Impostor, so it's a one-time watch. And that’s being generous, considering the terrible casting. But hey, who gives a .... 😉
Even Soderbergh had promise back when he made his first film, and then one day he just goes and makes Full Frontal 😁
Potential shouldn't really be a metric since we're talking about some hypothetical future. When you're making a list, you're looking at right now—the work already done. You look at their body of work, things like stylistic originality, how consistent the quality is, and the actual impact they’ve had on subsequent generations of filmmakers.
Forgot to mention in my first post that I have no idea where Ridley Scott, Jim Jarmusch, Tim Burton, or Oliver Stone fit into this.
The New York Times just dropped their list of the World's Best 40 Directors. Check out the list here
So, David Lynch is sitting at number one. When you actually sit back and look at his whole body of work—that sheer, undeniable originality he brings to the screen—it honestly makes perfect sense. 👍
A good chunk of my favorites made the cut too—Martin Scorsese is at #2, plus Terrence Malick, Abbas Kiarostami, and David Cronenberg.
I'm a bit stumped on why Steven Soderbergh, Spike Jonze, or Quentin Tarantino even made the list, though. 🙄
As for the rest... I can't really say. I haven't seen enough of their stuff to form an opinion.
Just go take a look at IMDb.com and read the reviews from people actually visiting the site. Honestly, the stuff you're seeing here feels like it was written by a middle schooler... just amateurish, messy, and incredibly brief. 🙂
Take Piano Teacher , for instance. Here’s the first comment:
First of all, those who are faint at heart should definitely avoid this film. Even those, like me, who are desensitized to most graphically violent and sexual acts in movies should beware. I'm not telling you to steer away from the film, but be aware that what you're about to see is some disturbing material. Definitely not a pleasing film to watch, but nothing is put on screen strictly for shock value. But I must admit, when I watched the film for a second time, I had to skip to the next chapter when the "razor blade scene" came up.
The main character is one of the most unsympathetic characters I can think of, but we start to better realize the humanity of her character later in the film's second act. In one scene, she stuffs broken glass in one of her student's jacket pocket after being dissatisfied with her apparently unsatisfactory performance and getting nervous when in front of a live audience. The student goes into her pocket and cries out with pain as she stares at her blood-stained hand. Next to the razor blade scene, that disturbed me most. The student's mother is not much more sympathetic than she. When she gets word that her daughter won't be able to play, she talks about it like she also got also her hand injured, being one of those spoiled mothers who tries to torture her daughter into becoming an overachiever.
Though the film intrigued me and caught my interest for the most part, I felt more needed to be explained about Isabelle Huppert's character. When a woman is fascinated by sadomasochistic porno movies and engaging in that behavior herself, you want to understand the root of the problem. The movie establishes that she wants desperately to be loved. Then why the hateful attitude towards everyone? Why does she receive sexual pleasure from pain?
The acting is terrific and I liked the glossy, stylized lighting. Altogether, it's not a film I'd recommend if you're in the mood to be entertained, but as I said it's very intriguing. And I'm sure if I watched it a few more times, I'd be able to spot certain subtleties that'll shed more light on aspects of the film I didn't realize initially.
Or look at Minority Report:
Minority Report: Worst Spielberg yet? I think so. I've never turned off or walked out of a Spielberg film until last night. For me, Spielberg has always been a hit or miss director, but his misses have never been so wide as with Minority Report. After a few hours (I watched another, much better film) I returned to where I'd left off in Minority Report and was pleased to see that the film did improve (however slightly) during the latter half.
The first image the audience is handed in watching Minority Report is a robotic lathe that looks like it was designed with some ten-year-old CAD software by a drafter who spent the night binge-drinking. This special effects showcase was off to a bad start, to say the least. In fact, the only special effects worth any credit were the "spiders." The entire production's ability to pivot from muted, sharp cinematography in one frame to air-brushed, soft-focus, and poorly textured CGI in the next was staggering. One minute I'm watching a gritty cop flick... the next I'm watching Blue's Clues as our hero pretends to jump from one moving vehicle to another without drawing undue attention to himself. I kept waiting for him to miss his mark, look right at the camera, and then, upon looking down, fall with the full Looney Tunes orchestral accompaniment. I couldn't suspend my disbelief for a single second. Special effects? 3/10.
One of the biggest sins of this flick was the touchless interface used in the pre-homicide detective's workspace. Sure, it looks cool... but I thought we'd be in for a real treat when the lights dimmed, Cruise lowered his head, raised his arms, and we saw a spectrograph form across the middle of the screen. I figured Spielberg would incorporate some music after creating such an image of a high-tech conductor. No. Instead, we see yard-long hand motions used to perform the same basic functions—selecting, dragging, zooming, focusing—that I can do with my mouse, one hand, and about twelve square inches of desk space. If you're going to invent a futuristic computer interface, at least try to make it more practical than what we have now. A keypad, a mouse, and two jog-wheels would have made the whole thing ten times more productive. The set being filled with Lexan screens that were glued together with ugly, poorly formed seams was a letdown, too. I really thought the future would have something better to offer.
The plot felt incredibly forced, relying on these really surface-level character tropes. It wasn't exactly a mental workout since the story just hands you everything on a silver platter—it totally kills any chance of engaging with it intellectually. If you actually stop to look at the logic behind the twists, the whole thing just falls apart.
So, Anderton goes through maybe twelve to sixteen hours of pure agony just to get his eyes swapped out so he isn't flagged by scanners everywhere... then, in this one totally unnecessary scene, he pulls out his old eyes just so he can scan himself into the Pre-Crime HQ. Thank God he got the new ones... or... well, whatever *shrug*. Then there's the part where Anderton walks straight into the room where he’s destined to commit a murder—weapon ready and everything—just because he acts like a complete idiot. There's zero logical motivation for him to walk in there; it's clearly just to push this messy plot forward.
I didn't even realize Colin Farrell was in this until he walked on screen. If that was his big introduction to the American public, I imagine he'd be happy people caught him in decent movies like Tigerland before judging him... such a lousy role.
The Verdict: A cold, hollow summer blockbuster that doesn't come close to competing with the heavy hitters when it comes to special effects, action, or actual philosophy. Total junk.
Even The Architect doesn't actually know why these anomalies are happening.
Well, since The Architect is basically just code, it makes sense (ironically enough!) that he wouldn't grasp why anomalies pop up within a logically consistent system built on a set of axioms like The Matrix. But humans? We get it. And honestly, that’s the fundamental divide between machines and people—pure rational thought can never truly reach an ultimate truth in any logical sense.
For me, the big breakthrough was the way the original The Matrix film introduced this parallel world where anything feels possible. I always find myself thinking back to that scene where Trinity leaps from one building to another—that massive jump—followed immediately by an Agent. Looking back now, my suspension of disbelief starts to fray a little; you get these tiny crumbs of doubt that maybe it was all a bit cheesy or over-the-top. Then there's that phone scene... you almost want to walk away, but then you realize what's actually happening, especially with those shots of Neo where the lines between reality and dreams just blur together. Watching that first movie felt like a unique kind of mental release, something totally unparalleled. All these endless debates about Reloaded and Revolutions feel like nothing more than sheer intellectual frustration, because there isn't really much to grab onto, and the sequels themselves just don't offer that same sense of closure or payoff that the original gave us.
The comic was mostly used because someone at Warner Bros. had to basically "sketch out" what they wanted to build for the movie—the level of detail needed, especially for those action sequences that required entirely new visual concepts. Plus, having a solid, detailed storyboard makes the whole production process way smoother. The point is, Andy and Larry wrote the script first, and only then did the comic act as that detailed storyboard. It’s interesting, for instance, how the look of the Neb—Morpheus’s ship—came about. Tani Kunitake talked things through with Andy and Larry, and they described it in words, but the actual design is entirely his. What he drew is exactly what we see on screen.
As far as I'm concerned, parts 2 and 3 don't exist. The original Matrix stands perfectly fine on its own. Personally, I don't feel the need to have every single philosophical or existential question answered, especially not through a movie sequel. Regarding quality, it's pretty obvious that all the creative energy, years of persistence, and drive to create something groundbreaking were poured into the first film's production.
Just for comparison, think about how Blade Runner ends. That movie doesn't deal with external reality like Matrix does—where the question is, "I am real, but is the world around me?" Instead, it deals with internal reality—as in, "In the world I live in, am I actually real?" Blade Runner leaves plenty of questions hanging. People spent years speculating if the lead character was also a replicant, for example. But my point is, a movie usually runs about two hours, and you just can't zip an entire universe into 120 minutes of film. A movie's value often lies in what it shows, whether explicitly or implicitly, but also in everything it chooses to leave out.
Speaking of dialogue by Quentin Tarantino, here’s a snippet from "True Romance". Like I mentioned before, the guy just has a way with words.
Clarence In "Jailhouse Rock", he's everything rockabilly's about. I mean he is rockabilly: mean, surly, nasty, rude. In that movie he couldn't give a fuck about anything except rockin' and rollin', livin' fast, dyin' young, and leaving a good-looking corpse. I love that scene where after he's made it big he's throwing a big cocktail party, and all these highbrows are there, and he's singing, "Baby You're So Square... Baby, I Don't Care". Now, they got him dressed like a dick. He's wearing these stupid-lookin' pants, this horrible sweater. Elvis Presley ain't no sweater boy. I even think they got him wearin' penny loafers. Despite all that shit, all the highbrows at the party, big house, the stupid clothes, he's still a rude-lookin' motherfucker. I'd watch that hillbilly and I'd want to be him so bad. Elvis Presley looked good. I'm no fag, but Elvis Presley was good-lookin'. He was fuckin' prettier than most women. I always said if I ever had to fuck a guy... I mean had too 'cause my life depended on it... I'd fuck Elvis Presley.
Lucy takes a drag from her cigarette.
Lucy I'd fuck Elvis Presley.
Clarence Really?
Lucy Lucy when he was alive. I wouldn't fuck him now.
Clarence I Don't Care. (they laugh) So we'd both fuck Elvis Presley. It's nice to meet people with common interests, isn't it?