hahahaha yeah he's a pathetic dweeb, and highly punchable

=

anyway it's a long weekend so there's time for moobys

nicolas roeg's "insignificance" (1985)




fucking great. totally unexpected. but it was criterion channel, so not so unexpected...

later i found out this was originally a play by one terry johnson (british, i didn't know of him before). it's been ages since i've lived in a decent city where one can see an actual play and so i'm mostly ignorant of theater these days.

so this morning by coincidence i saw another filmed play (or was it a broadway show? but the movie has no music)



this one is also on criterion, but packaged with a program of screwball comedies, which has a great intro by patton oswalt: https://www.criterionchannel.com/vid...rewball-comedy

great movie. There's a US remake with Jake Gyllenhaal, which I haven't seen. But this is the original one from Denmark.

I'm reluctant to see the US version now, even though it might be good, I would already know what's going to happen. They did rewrite the script

Didn’t think I’d like this at first but it totally pays off

‘Twas good indeed

I watched Westworld again last night.
Yul Brynner should have played the Terminator instead of Schwarzenegger!

Still haven't seen the series, perhaps I will, or not





Also, but already a few weeks back i saw this one:





I usually skip these types of movies, biographies etc. This one was very entertaining though

Yeah this was quite good if I recall. Except when Margot Robbie played Tonya at *FOURTEEN YEARS OLD* for a second. Oof.

I couldn't help but cheese it up with Hackers.

having not seen the movie, but news of the actual events, i'd say margot robbie is way too hot to play a believable tonya harding. she should have been the pretty one who had her knee broken.

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anyway caught a couple of 90s movies this weekend:

THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (ANTHONY MINGHELLA, 1999, his screenplay base on a patricia highsmith novel)



the cast on paper may seem like a collection of annoying 90s celebrities (matt damon, jude law, gwyneth) but damon is soooooooo fucking creeeeepy in this one, and the plot is so very good. the glorious cate blanchett and the dead philip seymour hoffmann have minor but brilliant parts in it. the plot is so very good. patricia highsmith had a fucking twisted mind hahahaha. apparently she was a terrible person, but hey, she sure could write.

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (JAMES FOLEY, 1992, david mamet screenplay based on his own original play)



everybody remembers the movie these days because of the alec baldwin speech that has become a youtube meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elrnAl6ygeM

and sure it's a great and ridiculous and hilarious scene, but there's an entire universe beyond that scene, and it's great. well, it's dismal actually, but it's done very well.

first, it's based on a david mamet play, and mamet himself wrote the screenplay and added that famous scene. so you get his trademark dialogue which is always fucking great.

then sure baldwin is great in it, but the movie fatures also: al pacino, jack lemmon, kevin spacey, ed harris, alan arkin, who take up most of the screen time and deliver some great fucking lines in this very well filmed play. jonathan pryce too, looking even more pathetic than in brazil.

now some people may say oooh kevin spacy is a bad man, but that's between him and the police. in this movie he plays his part very well. which makes him a good man in this movie. in others too by the way. but anyway i digress.



jack lemmon won an oscar here and i don't know who was up against him but it looks thoroughly well deserved, and he's brilliant and pitiful and his character reminds me of willy loman, a sad broken old salesman. pacino is fucking great, his part is great, he does it so well. ed harris does not play a villain exactly (he' so good at playing villains), he's just an angry resentful guy here. alan arkin plays... i don't know, someone who looks and acts a little like a bird hahahahaha. he's quiet, quietly anxious, and so good in his role. i don't know, excellent cast and screenplay. a++++++ will watch again.

oh and of course this was a rewatch. mamet's movies deserve regular rewatches. house of games, anyone?

I, Tonya (2017) - scene comparisons

It's too long ago for me to recall the actual events, but Margo did a great job in this movie, and most of the time she resembles her very closely (which for me wouldn't have been even necessary). I wonder how much of the skating she did herself though.
The other one is only barely featured in the movie.

But the mom is actually the star, must have been such a laugh to play her.

oh, margot is fantastic; luminous even. but see, the footage comparison illustrates the problem for me (in theory, anyway).

check out the long skating sequence in that video. the difference in hairdos alone *says it all.*

okay here's a closeup:



for me, margot is never gonna be able to play it _ugly_ enough, ha ha ha. she's just too beautiful to be a tonya harding, even when she grimaces or tries to look unpleasant.

she would need prosthetics, the way that charlize theron wore prosthetics for "monster" (and still looked way better than the serial killer she portrayed, lol)



hahahhaha maybe im being too harsh on poor tonya. but yeah, fuck, i never liked her.

Glengarry Glen Ross is excellent but they never tell you who’s Glen, who’s Garry and who’s Ross!!!

I saw Talented Mr. Ripley in THE THEATER, Jesus fuck I feel old, goddamn.

I watched Better off Dead (ridiculous film) and that horror movie everyone was gushing about, X. The one with the prequel that came out the same year? It was fine. Pretty predictable and occasionally dumb but there were some cool stylistic choices.

glengarry is the new hot property they're gonna sell ("the glengarry leads")

glen ross is an old property they once sold. gets mentioned i think by jack lemmon and pacino recalling their old glories and somewhere you can see a brochure "glen ross farms".

the title to me after rewatch is related to that talk pacino gives jonathan pryce at the table when he's plying him with drinks, hahaha. he says that in life you're either looking forward or you're looking back. then asks "where is the moment...?" great dialogue.

and yeah lol, i watched mr. creepley way back when too, at a multiplex. brrrrr! i still remember walking out surprised.

The banshees of Innisherin (sp?)


Jesus fuck, what is wrong with Irish people? What is the fucking point of this bullshit bleak, useless movie? Fuck, I laughed at the sad sack for 45 minutes, and then it all goes into just the bleakest, most pointless sadness. why make this film? Why write this film?
I fucking hate shit like this.

one guy writes it and directs it so he controls the story and thinks he is working out some childhood trauma or family horror on film, making us al watch it to and suffer with his dumb ass.

Fuck all these people. Fuck everyone in this film. They all deserve to live in a far uglier place than the isle of innisherin.

Fuck the director for making me watch another sad sack fim about white people's made up problems.

I must say I did enjoy In Bruges, although that too was a slight piece of shit barely worth watching.

Lmao, I was making a very stupid joke. But thank you.

Yeah, it’s a good movie but also fuck this stupid fucking movie. I was hyping it up for months to my girlfriend, based on 3 Billboards, Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges, but it ended up being a complete misery-fest. And my girlfriend SOBBED at *that one scene* and I felt like a total fuck.

If I were Colin Farrell’s character I would have murdered that stupid psychotic malcontent fiddling fuck in his sleep and pissed on his corpse.

1992's Dracula because a podcast I'm a fan of covered it recently and I want it fresh-ish in my mind.

My wife was horrified.

I think the whole point was that Colin Ferrell's character is so FUCKING STUPID that he doesn't understand the man he thinks of as a best friend LOATHES him.

what a waste of time and money.

These are the kinds of stories that make me read very few fiction novels.

i haven't seen this, but wouldn't such illuminations into people's characters be one of the important social functions of fiction? the exploration of morality, relationships, etc?

i mean... there are a lot of stupids who think other people love them when they actually don't. abused people have what's called a "fantasy bond". easy to name, but harder to illustrate.

again i'm saying this *not having seen the movie.* and i probably won't, having read your reviews, hahaha. i'm just going by what you say in this bit i'm quoting, about the uses of fiction.

Yeah, but, like, ideally there would be some shred of redemption — somewhere.
This movie is bleaker than fuck. It’s like misery porn masquerading as black comedy. It’s well made but fuck it I am too old to pay to be bummed the fuck out.

It’s also a metaphor for the Irish civil war, so that’s in the background. But holy hell I’ve seen literal WAR movies that are vastly more enjoyable and vastly more upsetting that still manage to be worth the time and energy.

Most horrible special effects you've ever seen, for a big budget movie.

but would you watch again?

Lmao, I thought this was from the ‘60s or ‘70s for some reason and I was about to ask what you expected, but nope, it’s from 1981. Post-Star Wars!

Still, I’m not sure the capabilities were really there for anything much better. But then again what do I know, not much

Reading that the author/director (also did in Bruges) had the cast set and the "story" 9 years ago, and that until midawy through production, did not know how the film would end, made me so fucking mad. I don;t wanna see no fuckers and their half-assed ideas. They think it is tragic, when it is actually torture.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It

Yikes.
But I did love In Bruges. And Seven Psychopaths. And Three Billboards. He’s one of my favorite directors I think, but fuck Banshees.

possibly in like 10 years when I've forgotten that I've already seen it a long time ago. But I would much rather see that one again than the two movies I saw in the last few days








Yuck! The poster already makes me want to vomit.
There's nothing good in this movie






This movie was OK, but it's sort of a typical movie that's written by Luc Besson. Very chaotic, too many story lines, some characters are really lame especially Amber Heard's. Haven't seen many movies with Kevin Costner lately, he's OK in this one.

I wouldn't let anyone put you off watching The Banshees of Inisherin. I found it hilarious, yet it also raises interesting existential questions and mocks the absurdity of the Irish civil war.

Watched La Strada with wife on Valentine's Day yesterday. Wonderful film.

I never saw it before. I made the mistake of watching some of Fellini's more relationshippy films, hated them, so I avoided all his films.

fuuuuuuck, la strada, amazing!!

fellini before lsd is better than fellini after lsd.

maybe look for "i vitelloni" next. about useless young men wandering aimlessly.

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funny thing, but the discussion eventually made me wanna see it after all hahaha. plus now i'm a fan of brendan gleeson since i saw him in "the guard", which was fucking hilarious. the character he plays there is great.

anyway i saw in bruges some years ago, it was okay but i didn't find it extraordinary or anything.

but anyway turns out the banshees etc is on hbo max which i just cancelled after the holidays so i'll have to wait to watch it maybe this summer or maybe next year or something. there's too much damn tv these days lol.

Pretty good in the Salinger-lite way most Baumbach (and a lot of Wes Anderson) films are. A bit aimless, but generally that works in the film’s favor. Ah, the malaise of emerging adulthood for creative/academic types.

Ah Greta

Ah Greta too...

Last watch was John Byrum's Inserts, with a wonderful Jessica Harper and a Richard Dreyfuss who wanted to forget the shooting of Jaws that had just preceded.
No ellipse at all, wonderful acting.
Great flick.

I wanted to watch it after a Youtube clip from a Phantom of the Paradise reunion where Harper reflected on how three of her first films bombed (the third being Suspiria) to become kinda cultish (kinda applying to Inserts since Byrum never went that much farther after that).
The film was supposed to be a porn movie. A guy had told Byrum "write me down a porn flick and you'll shoot it". He started writing. But it didn't pan out as planned and there was no porn in it. Eventually someone produced it as it was quite cheap - 5 actors, no more, a single setting and that was it, the story being the shooting of a short porn film by a former promising director from the 1920s.

Said producers got to help a few other directors like Bill Forsyth whose Local Hero is a joy.

Watched 3/4 of Closer, at the request of my wife, and fuck if it was not the most pointless shit since Banshees of Iniisherin.

I COULD GIVE A FUCK.

ah greta three! hahaha. yeah, she's adorable.

i've somehow ended up watching this about once a year lately, maybe, and always like it, even though her character is so damn cringeworthy, hahahahaha, trying to keep up with the trustafarians and finance bro wags.

*MANY SPOILERS COMING* but hey this is an old movie already

i don't read it as a purely creative/academic thing though, i see mostly a class misfit in a gentrified new york that no longer offers viable options for the aforementioned "creatives." and a middle class person among rich kids she maybe used to know in college.

i mean back in the lydia lunch days she would have been a squatter somewhere in alphabet city, storming the streets with public performances, but in this century she has to fit into some sort of bourgeois respectability, not just mere adulthood, and find a select venue supported by millionaire's donations for their own cultural enjoyment.

so im glad she wakes up to her socioeconomic reality and sorts out her deranged class fantasies, but her solution feels like a bit of a betrayal to me, and maybe jt's even a bit fake? because there is a lot of difficulty even after an awakening. there are no magical solutions, especially after your eyes are open. where is that magical mailbox located? (asking for a friend, lol)

i mean, to borrow an overused term, baumbach himself is a bit of a nepo baby, hahaha, so we can't ask him to delve into the subject of real deprivation and class struggle and rebellion. so for frances it all amounts to just a temporary embarrassment. at the end of the movie she has planted her own flag but more than anything else she's ready to rejoin the dinner parties, aka "society".

but anyway, regardless of what i see as its blind spots, i like the movie a lot, part because of her and part because the french new wave homages are quite charming.

but yeah, it doesn't offer a real out, does it? adapt + comply. which, sure, adaptation is essential for survival but... here i did not see one iota of protest or rebellion, which the french new wave had in spades. she just has longing for consumption and status, and then frustration, and then ultimately an easy american dream style "success".

oh, the bit of psychology that it portrays really well i think is that phase in young woman's lives where they have these very intense friendships that almost feel like romantic relationships but then they drift apart, usually over some man, and it's often the same man the compete for (but not here, although who knows).

fo real though CLOSER SUCKED ASS.

natalie Portman is a terrible actress. I do not buy her in anything. She is wooden, boring, and has the emotional range of a 12 year old girl.

I have always hated dipshit Jude Law. SHITTY actor. worst thing in everything he has been in.

Julia Roberts was so fucking BORING.

I hate self-serving plays converted into masturbatory films. Fuck Mike Nichols too. All his shit sucks.

oh right i was gonna ask you if closer was the one where those 4 people interfuck/crossfuck somehow. i can't remember a thing about it. i used to like mike nichols more when i was younger and stupider, like when i first watched "the graduate" and loved it. not anymore.

catch-22 was good though. i never read the novel but the movie was okay and highly educational about the ways of the world.

i also can't stand natalie portman. she's pretty for sure, but annoying as fuck. more annoying than anything else.

jude law is 50/50. he's good at some stuff (mr. ripley, the young pope, anna karenina). chris rock making fun of him at the oscars ages ago was hilarious. it starts here lol: https://youtu.be/caObUaz7oOc?t=150

julia roberts i used to find unbearable as a young romantic lead, but as an old person she's very good at some parts. it boils down to she's great when not relying on her teeth. e.g. she does miserable extremely well. so i liked her tons in 2 tv shows lately: "homecoming" and "gaslit". you might like homecoming on amazon, it's some vaguely dark present day post gulf war science fiction shit. gaslit was about the nixon watergate shitshow and it was good and at times hilarious although depressing because of the way history rhymes in america and the stupids never fucking learn.

Good-ish. Some creepy moments. Quite paint-by-numbers in terms of plot but there was some good gray matter here and there.

It’s no Barbarian, but it’s a damn sight better than Black Phone, which sucked ass like that was its job.

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire.

Jesus. It might be the greatest film I've ever seen.

oh i missed that one...

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it's on hulu, huh?

i'll have to catch it the next time i subscribe

i want to write about what i saw last week but don't have time right now