grudlian.

lol fuck those decisions Green Book is this year's The Help or Driving Miss Daisy. It's watchable and the performances are great (duh it's Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortenson). Bohemian Rhapsody is not good. Other than the Live Aid section, it's garbage. Rami Malek was bad. People calling it a cookie cutter music biopic are giving it a bit too much credit in my mind.

I agree that the audience shouldn't need to do research using outside the film resources to appreciate it. That's a bad film. I think The Searchers doesn't require that though. I think the interesting details are in the film. They are just hard to pick up. I needed to hear the commentary to notice them but they are there on screen.

At first, I thought it was just a lazy device to have him be able to vocalize his thoughts without VO. And it's been done before I think. Then he has two women with him. And he dresses differently. I'd probably let it slide if it was a funny enough joke. And vampires can't even see their reflection. Setting aside that the movie plays very loose with vampire mythology, something needs to be addressed for who the mirror guy is.

So, what is his reflection? Vampires can't normally be seen in a mirror and reflections don't have different personalities, talk back to you or dress differently. So, is his reflection a different dimension?

I legit laughed so hard at his transformation. It was so stupid and perfect and punctuated with that fart sound. The other part that I thought was genuinely funny was his reflection having different voices in the funhouse mirrors.

So, the first Friday of January is coming up. But we sometimes skip to the second week of January if the week is short. So, is the 4th good for everyone?

He was great in Leave No Trace but that's going to suffer from no one having seen it. So, I at least kind of get why he won't be nominated. For Hell Or High Water, there's no excuse because we know they saw the movie. I assume he was in that weird situation where he's kind of bigger than supporting but not the lead and they just split his voting or something.

Having now seen If Beale Street Could Talk, please know it's definitely in my top 10.

In case anyone is interested in seeing animated shorts that will get nominated for Oscars, here's a site compiling everything on the short list and where it can be streamed.

Yeah. I'm sure they get recommendations every day on twitter. So, a handful of people asking for Rockula probably won't get through. I know Paul has talked about people sending DVDs for years to demand Rad. Is that what we have to do?

After seeing this, is there a way to force Paul to do Rockula for the show?

I'll be starting this at 9:30. Come one, come all. https://www.rabb.it/grudlian

If we haven't heard from Cinco in a few minutes, I'll rent this on Amazon and set up a room

Cinco, do you have a room ready?

Does anyone already have this movie and want to host?

I eventually decided on festival releases not counting and theatrical release anywhere as the release (which typically is the country of origin).

I've always had mixed feelings about this. I've been a real stickler for the original release date regardless of country or festival releases. It's strange because critics will vary what counts or doesn't. Sometimes some limited release movie will go on an end of year list and sometimes it doesn't. It really seems to be up to the critic and whether or not they saw it that year.

Based on Letterboxd, this movie is not popular here. I get that. I didn't see what all the fuss was about when I watched this a few years ago. Like Paul, I watched it again (with commentary) and I liked it more on the second viewing. I found a lot of stuff going on in the background that I hadn't noticed (like, as Amy points out, John Wayne being in love eith his sister in law). It's been a few years since I watched it. So, I can't defend it much. I don't think it will turn you around on the movie but this does benefit from an additional viewing if you're on the fence about it.

The Total Recall remake was supposed to be, to my understanding, closer to the book. I never read it but it wasn't long into the remake that I realized that was just marketing. I guess I could get on board with the caller from Black Christmas having some backstory. I'd be pretty wary because I'd definitely expect that to go Rob Zombie's Halloween remake which made Michael Myers much less threatening in my opinion.

I think Robocop is deep enough with ideas that were only glossed over in the original that you could make a couple remakes while with their own basic stories. A movie about militarization or weaponizing police forces centered around a Robocop could be interesting. A movie about why Detroit and addressing the poor and the race breakdown would be interesting. But I don't think anyone remaking Robocop would want to make a movie with any depth even though the original is such a smart movie for a gory cyborg movie. I never saw the remake of Black Christmas, but I'm not sure how you'd expand the lore for something that's basically just a campfire tale.

You know they don't have to be HDTGM caliber movies, right? I've never even heard of this. So, it seems interesting at least.

Except Toy Story 2 is the best in the trilogy and Incredibles 2 is merely pretty good.

I'm sorry to hear that, Cinco.

Top 20 movies of 2018 that I saw (in no particular order): Eighth Grade Sorry To Bother You Crazy Rich Asians Blindspotting They Shall Not Grow Old Widows Halloween Black Panther A Star Is Born Skate Kitchen Roma Private Life Leave No Trace We The Animals Lean On Pete First Man Hereditary Won't You Be My Neighbor? Annihilation Blackkklansman

I'm still finishing Red Dead Redemption 2. Does that count?