grudlian.

Ok. You answered my next question of, "if you can figure this out, why not call 911?" It's possible she was just touching the wires randomly and got Chris Evans or his number could have a phone number similar to 911 (like 912-9119 or whatever). I think the latter is a real stretch though.

If I had to hold someone hostage for hours, I'd think a bathroom would be a better place. 1. You don't have to worry about moving the person when they inevitably have to use the bathroom. 2. A lot of bathrooms don't have windows. So, you can't look outside and try to identify where you're being held captive. 3. A lot of bathrooms don't have landline phones. So, are we positing that Kim just clicked the wires together at the right intervals to equal a digit in the phone number? I know old pulse phones had an audible click for each number (1 click for 1, 2 clicks for 2, and so on). I'm not even remotely close to being a phone expert but I assume this is what she did (or what we're supposed to believe happened). I'd be very surprised if touching two wires would be able to connect a phone call any other way.

I've seen it before and absolutely hated every second of it. In general, I found surreal avant-garde movies entirely reliant on heavy symbolism boring. I don't mind symbolism as a rule but when every character is an anthropomorphized something and the plot only makes sense if you unravel each symbol, it's tiring and eye roll inducing. So, it had an uphill battle regardless of what the movie was about. But I also found the content awful. It's bloody and gross. Again, I don't mind as a rule, but I'd like it to have a point. In El Topo, it all feels shocking to be shocking which I find very boring. And there's a for real, planned rape in the movie. So, fuck El Topo and Alejandro Jodorowsky.

This is what I was thinking. Cellular could be a much better movie if it were entirely from Chris Evans perspective which is what Phone Booth basically is. Imagine the movie starts with the scene of Chris Evans on the beach. We haven't seen Kim Basinger get attacked so we are right there with Chris Evans from the beginning. Is this a joke? Should we take her seriously? This puts us in Chris Evans shoes. It's immediately a better movie and that's just chopping off the first five minutes of the movie. I think a little bit of rewriting to keep it focused on Chris Evans (even just editing out the existing scenes with side characters) could make a solid action thriller. More like Phone Booth or Sorry, Wrong Number where is much more psychological from the person on the phone.

Yeah. The dad was a real idiot. He did probably the worst thing he could have done. He didn't tell anyone he got this footage. Not even his family. It would have been safer for him to just give notable LA resident Jason Statham the phone. They would have probably left him alone. I like that the dad didn't really fight them though. He saw police officers murder a guy and steal his drugs. They are basically Training Day without Denzel's charisma. I'm not fighting them. At most, I'd unsuccessfully try to fend them off before they either beat me up or killed me. I'd probably do whatever they asked.

Did a quick search. A few can be rented from Amazon. Seven Samurai, Ikiru, High And Low, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and The Hidden Fortress are on there.

Criterion puts out almost all of his movies in the US and I don't think they have a streaming platform any more after Film Struck went down.

I think it just becomes one of those crazy twist then another twist then another twist crime movies. Certainly could work but something about him being an art thief throws me. Maybe it's just movie stereotypes but it seems like a totally different type of crime even though it's still just breaking and entering and theft. It seems like it doesn't fit with any other type of crime genre film. Everyone being cops was really dumb to me. Six (?) cops knew about a broad day light murder on the streets and they all covered it up? With kidnapping? Just make them drug dealers or something. Maybe have one cop whose in on it but the situation spiraled out of control and keeps getting worse. Also, why didn't Kim Basinger's husband go to the cops in a different precinct? Give it to the news?

This sounds like a much worse movie. It's weird because I've seen this before and I still thought Kim Basinger was in on it for most of the movie.

This movie should have been five minutes long. The phone would display the phone number from the incoming call. Even if they get disconnected, it saves the last 50 calls. Chris Evans could have told the police that a woman was kidnapped and being held at the home with that phone number. The cops could confirm the owner of the phone number with the phone company then search the place. Also, the crooked police officer hiding out in Kim Basinger's house puts on an accent which is what tips of William H Macy. Why? That seems like a really pointless way to draw attention to yourself.

A local art house theater played this movie as their last movie before they closed forever. One thing Paul and Amy talk about is Red River playing at the end as championing how great Texas is. But the scene is specifically a bunch of people yelling about going to Missouri. I don't know if that's another level to the story of, even in the legend of Texas at its best, people are leaving.

I think Bill is right to call them assassins in this case. I might be wrong but bounty hunting is within the law. I also understand that bounty hunting typically wanted the subjects alive (While we hear about "wanted dead or alive" sometimes, I assume "wanted dead" wasn't a thing). Here, the law decided a punishment; Alice and co. decided death was a more fitting punishment. Offering money for dead bodies outside the law, especially if you know it's just citizens offering the money, is assassination.

You should also watch Yojimbo some time. A Fistful Of Dollars is a remake of it.

I'll also add in Once Upon A Time In The West and The Great Silence.

Halle Berry was in The Call where she's a 911 operator when someone calls while trapped in a trunk. As I recall, it's okay for what it is until it gets really crazy.

But is he good guy? He's well known as a cold blooded murderer of women and children. His story is he's going to assassinate a man. He brings his friend out of assassin retirement who otherwise would not have known about the mission. He kills six people in the bar when he probably could have just rode away from town. By his own admission, he killed people who didn't deserve it and is going to hell. We sympathize with him because he needs money for his kids and he lets a guy he shot get some water and he won't sleep with a prostitute because he loves his deceased wife. But he's not a good guy. The closest thing we have to a good person is maybe Delilah or one of the nameless posse that notifies Gene Hackman whenever a bad guy shows up in town.

I agree to an extent that it isn't super revisionist but I'm also not an expert on westerns. I think one thing that is revisionist is making the characters a bit more grey morally. Most classic westerns are very good guys versus very bad guys. Characters are either white hat or black hat. Even the shady characters are definitely one or the other. But here, everyone is somewhere in the middle. Clint is our hero (I guess?) but he's an assassin who really can't do anything else since he's failing at raising his family. The sheriff is normally a flawless, perfect character but here he's unmarried with no potential suitor, bad at carpentry, and brutality beats English Bob. Normally, if a character puts up a bounty, they have the money instead lying about it to get someone killed. And so on with every character. But further, death is a real problem. In most westerns, there's no real after effects. The sheriff may not want to kill but he's justified because he only kills bad guys. But here death has consequences beyond stopping evil. Schofield kid is transformed by killing. That kid who gets gut shot has a long, drawn out death and he is not a main character. Clint is going to hell (metaphorically but he acknowledges it) for what he's done. I don't know that these are huge changes to westerns but filling in the gaps is unusual. But I also think there are westerns that kind of addressed this stuff (The Good The Bad and The Ugly doesn't have any true heroes, High Plains Drifter has a...not great protagonist, for example, and Blazing Saddles is of course a commentary on westerns but in a different way). But it's a lot of little things like a conversation that absolutely wouldn't happen in a normal western. Unforgiven isn't to westerns what Scream is to slashers (which is also a slasher despite subverting slashers)but there's some subversion going on.

Yes, it's definitely stupid in this case. I'd probably argue Rachel Weisz is the lead character but that's certainly up for debate being that she's the titular character. At least with Green Book, I'd argue Viggo is the lead of the two. I agree that they are probably co-leads.

I liked this enough because the goofy charm works but you're right. He's not a vampire. He's a shapeshifter or a were-bat I guess. In other stuff that ignores or changes mythology, they typically give some kind of reason. In Salem's Lot, crosses only work if you have faith. In Twilight, vampires don't go out in the day because sparkling gives them away. Even Vampire Academy makes up something playful when it violates vampire rules. In Rockula, most that stuff is shrugged off. I'm glad I don't remember this because I have the exact opposite of a foot fetish. Please put on more socks and shoes, people.

I wasn't aware Singer was the director until I was already in the theater and his name came on screen. It was one of those moments where I debated leaving but...ehhhh... I'm already here and I didn't pay.

I'm technically fine with it because knocking a lead actor to supporting just to get them nominated with hope of a win is common. It happened with Viola Davis with Fences. Granted, I think it speaks to some institutionalized racism that Ali (and Davis) might have been pushed down from lead to supporting which ties in specifically to Green Book in particular. And he was really good in the movie. So, his name deserves to be in the conversation when if the movie is really mediocre. I read today that the real life family for Green Book did not like the movie. They thought the relationship between the guys was professional (friendly but professional). So, it only makes me double down on how undeserving it was to win.

I only know this because Almostaghost and Polly told me but he gets blood delivered. You bring up something that really frustrated me. He likes garlic. Crosses don't bother him. He can go out in the sun (with sun block). He has a reflection. Presumably he can't glammer because otherwise he'd win over Mona instantly. He's barely a vampire. A lot of vampire stories play with or ignore some of the lore. That's fine. Sometimes it really adds some interesting depth. Rockula ignored pretty much all of it though. Some of it is needlessly brought up. The scene with him explaining he likes garlic didn't need to be there. The scene with crosses not bothering him didn't need to be there. The sunblock scene could have taken place at night (but I'm fine with it as a joke in a vampire movie). If you're going to break one major part of the mythology for your movie, you can't actively drop the rest of it too.

Especially since he doesn't kill for blood.

Vampire lore generally holds that you stop aging from the moment you turn into vampire. But Ralph and his mother are vampires. So, what happened? He wasn't born a vampire because he's 22. How did they both become vampires? Was it the same vampire attack? Did one turn first? Did one bite the other? What I imagine happened is his mother turned vampire first. She couldn't live without her son and turned him.

Maybe his mirror self is just a lifelong Duck Soup type mirror gag on Ralph?