sycasey 2.0

I'd say it's right down the middle for a Fast & Furious movie . . . like, almost exactly what you would expect for an average movie of this type.

Though with this movie I could be equally convinced that they just forgot to film another scene with Ron Eldard.

I can't really say that I love any of them, but I still think Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was pretty decent.

I do remember seeing this movie as a child, but here's the thing: it made absolutely no impression on me. Like, I remembered seeing it. I remembered the basic premise, that it's about an adult woman's imaginary friend from childhood coming back to her. But that's it, I had no good or bad memories of it. It was just a movie that happened. Rewatching as an adult, I have to go with Team Sanity. I can see that the movie is TRYING to go for a metaphor about Fred representing childhood, mischief, playfulness, etc., and how the adult Lizzie needs to get that back, but the movie is so consistently confusing about what Fred is and what he can do that I don't think it lands. The other movies this has been compared to -- Monsters Inc., Beetlejuice -- are much clearer about how and when the supernatural creatures can interact with the humans, and also about what they want. One thing that may complicate everyone's reading: did anyone else notice that the child Lizzie has blue eyes, but grown-up Phoebe Cates has brown eyes? I suppose colored contact lenses are a possibility here, but it's very unusual for anyone to permanently wear contacts to make their eyes DARKER, unless it's for a costume or something. Are we even sure it's the same kid? What if the movie has pulled yet another fast one on us, and the whole thing is from Fred's perspective, and he is remembering Lizzie's older sister who died or ran away or something, the sister she never knew? Boy is that a dark story: Fred mourning for his previous friend, pushing Lizzie to act out, Lizzie's parents hiding the true source of their family strife. Yikes.

I have literally never thought of this but it makes all the sense in the world.

Yeah, I think that's about right. By the end they are kind of acting like a married couple, especially the argument about the bloody towel.

On a formal level, probably Dr. Strangelove is the one on the list that most meets the standards of "great filmmaking" while also being funny.

So I don't know if anyone saw Jason Mantzoukas' appearance on this week's episode of Legion, but I will report that his character does begin the episode by asking someone to hand over their baby.

This is one of those "I like it but don't love it" movies, but I was swayed to vote yes because of the laundry list of movies they mentioned that used Katharine Hepburn's character as a model for their female leads. The creation of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope was here, basically. (Though this character has more of her own life and agency than the pejorative use of that term would suggest.) Could be that His Girl Friday deserves to be here in its place though.

https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Maggie_Simpson:_Bringing_Down_Baby

The fact that Steve Buscemi was originally intended for the role says a lot here. I love Buscemi as much as the next guy, but he's not an actor typically cast in "good guy" roles.

I can kind of defend how it's used in the film: 1. I don't really buy that Jimmy is supposed to be a "likable" character, He's basically an obstacle for Jules and Vincent to get around. 2. The movie has already established that it depicts a dark underworld in which people toss around insults and racial slurs freely, so Jimmy was ever part of that world then his language still fits. That said, I doubt Tarantino would write the scene like that today. Attitudes really were different in the 90s, that word was thrown around a lot more frequently, and there was a more pervasive sense that we should just get all the bad stuff out in the open and deal with it. These things change; it's not acceptable today, largely for the reasons laid out above.

Yeah, that's just it with the Tarantino homages. I'm not sure who else was so obvious about how much he was drawing from previous sources before him. The way the characters all talk about other pop culture, the way it's constantly in the frame (whatever is on TV, the stuff in Maynard's store, everything about Jack Rabbit Slim's). I'm sure something like that had been done before Tarantino, but it really feels like him doing it kicked off a whole movement of pop-culture referencing in nominally "serious" movies (not parodies) that still hasn't left us. You could argue that QT really began this with Reservoir Dogs, but Pulp was the popular hit that everyone saw and wanted to replicate.

Anyway, I think this is a legit great film and would have it Top 20 at least, and on my personal list it's probably going to finish in the Top 10. For all the credit Tarantino gets for his writing (clever wisecracks, memorable lines, etc.), I don't think most people realize what a masterful visual director he is. He's precise on the level of a Spielberg or Hitchcock, filmmakers that people would normally think of as great visual storytellers before they think of their scripting. One of my favorite examples is the famous long conversation between Jules and Vincent that opens the film (after the pre-credit diner scene). For example, look at just the segment that takes place inside the car: The dialogue is fun and all, but really they are just kind of bullshitting and talking about nothing. Yet to me the scene feels dramatic and propulsive. Why? Note that Tarantino changes the visual approach when the subject changes. First it's a two-shot with both actors in frame, Travolta closer to the camera. We stick with this for the entirety of the discussion about pot being legal in Amsterdam. Then notice what happens as the conversation shifts to beer and fast food: suddenly Tarantino is cutting between close-up shots of each actor's face, before pulling back to the two-shot just as this line of conversation peters out ("I didn't go into Burger King"). Then we get an angle looking up from inside the trunk at both actors as they've changed subject again, talking about what kind of guns they'll need. The visual language is telling you where the dramatic beats are. So many filmmakers that try to do this kind of chatty, hangout scene don't understand this, they just hold a single shot or just cut between faces. Tarantino has a strong sense of telling a STORY with every scene he directs, which makes a huge difference. (And yes, this strategy of changing the visual angle when the dramatic beat changes continues as they go into the building and up to Marvin's apartment.) Pulp Fiction is loaded with stuff like this, the visual language telling you something that isn't in the dialogue. Another great example from early in the film is when Marcellus is explaining his plan for what Butch should do in the boxing match: Marcellus does all the talking, but the camera holds only on Butch's face. This primes the audience for the fact that Butch is going to be an important character later (something the dialogue doesn't do) and also keeps Marcellus shrouded in mystery as to what his face looks like, enhancing the menace everyone feels from this character. It's pretty brilliant. To me there's a reason the movies with Tarantino scripts but different directors don't quite reach these heights. Finally, that speech from Jules at the end really ties the room together. I actually get emotional when he talks about "trying to be the shepherd," because the whole movie has been about that, people making moral choices to save other people's lives. Jules is the only one who does it without any obvious self-serving benefit (even Butch gets the benefit of Marcellus removing the price on his head), which is the central question in the movie: What does it mean to "be the shepherd?" I find new stuff to appreciate in this movie every time I watch it. I love a lot of Tarantino's work, but I'd still put this one on top both for its influence and its own merit.

I mean, the fact that badass action heroes now want to discuss pop-culture minutiae on the regular is definitely a debt owed to this film. The influence has gotten more diffuse over the years, but in the 10 or so years after Pulp there were a LOT of indie movies clearly trying to copy the Tarantino template (only they just copied the wisecracking gangsters, not the discussions of moral issues).

You know the old saying: "The common denominator in all your bad relationships is you?" Maybe if you're getting posts deleted in two different forums with different moderators there is something you can change about your own behavior.

I admit, I didn't think we'd get to "this is why Trump won" THIS quickly.

Is that all you did, or did you also use phrases like "fuck you" in doing so? Because if so I think the latter is why you would have gotten banned. In my experience people are not kicked out of that group merely for disagreeing with the hosts.

Sure, I don't mean to suggest this doesn't still exist. But I think the level of pressure was significantly different in the 1950s and 60s, and to me the film seemed to land its drama on that heightened assumption. Someone else also pointed out on the Facebook group: it's interesting that the two wives don't get any scenes alone together, but the husbands certainly do. That kind of frames the conversation about the couples' infertility in a specifically male way. Again, I get it, it's a 50 year old movie. These were just some things that kind of nagged at me while watching it.

For me it's more that I get the sense the filmmakers are also assuming that you'll just get it, that this was the thing causing so much pain in these couples' lives. That's highly subjective of course, but the way it's structured, with the idea of George and Martha's infertility being saved for the final "reveal," it feels to me like that's supposed to read as an "Ohhhhhh" moment, so as to explain the couple's mean and erratic behavior for the entire film. The underlying assumption seems to be, yes, women want to have babies and will have psychological problems if they can't.

Yes, but BOTH women in the movie have their issues tied back to infertility. It's not so much that the idea is invoked once here, it's that it's part of a long-standing and over-used trope. Also that.

Sure. I mean, they are, clearly. It's just that to me the movie feels like it's being presented as something immediate, very forward-looking, as opposed to something like, say, Gone with the Wind, which is already meant to be portraying an antiquated time even for when it was originally made. There's a dissonance there with Woolf that threw me off.

I voted no and will probably be alone in that. It's a well-acted and well-made production, not going to deny that. I was bothered by a couple of things: 1. It REALLY feels like a play to me. Not that Nichols doesn't do stuff with the camera to add cinematic language, he does, but it seems like all of the dialogue is basically intact from the stage show and it feels obvious. People describe things rather than do them. The movie tells more than it shows. It's not badly done, exactly, but to me I wouldn't put this up as emblematic of "cinema." The Graduate, on the other hand, is communicating a whole helluva lot just with visuals and music. We haven't gotten to it yet, but to my recollection A Streetcar Named Desire is a much better stage-to-film example. 2. Some of this is what Amy brought up: the assumptions about male/female roles are really rooted in the time. Not just that the failure to have kids will inevitably have a negative effect on women, but also the general social pressure to be married, that the younger couple felt an absolute need to marry because of a pregnancy that turned out to be false. Not sure you could put that in a movie today. I'm not really blaming the movie for that (those were the standards of the time), but as an all-time entry I found it a bit unfortunately dated.