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Re: Terms of the Apocalypse

alexandercoleman — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 21:29:36 -0000

"Male Tracy Flick" Pete Buttigieg. Bravo.

The spinner of platitudes is a tired act, and he misspent precious debate night resources punching down (figuratively, natch) against Amy Klobuchar for some reason. Honestly, he is probably less electable as a presidential candidate on the Democrats' ticket than just about anyone else considering how blacks seem to view him as the embodiment of the plague. He would probably make Hillary Clinton look like Barack Obama in being able to excite the "Obama coalition."

Re: The Kill Team movie review & film summary (2019) | Roger Ebert

alexandercoleman — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 18:04:06 -0000

Casualties of War is such a searing experience, it is difficult to revisit any more than perhaps once a decade.

Re: Many If Not Most Indiewire Reviews Are Woke-Filtered

alexandercoleman — Sun, 08 Sep 2019 21:00:13 -0000

Was talking about that scene with someone the other day. Love how Bruce Lee says that they were having a friendly competition (to settle their differences) when they are interrupted with their two-out-of-three-falls contest deadlocked at one fall apiece. Lee comes off as arrogant and dismissive (truth is he was, and he was--rightly--deeply jealous of his reputation, making him occasionally nightmarish to work with from everything I have gathered) but also supremely cool. He and Cliff Booth just need to iron some matters out, physically.

It's a wonderfully "1960s scene" in a film set in that decade.

Re: Feinberg Downgrades “Just Mercy”

alexandercoleman — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 23:51:32 -0000

Could not have put it any better.

Michael B. Jordan has that "dangerous" quality that makes him engaging and sexy to the ladies in the way male movie stars have had for generations, but can tap his inner mute button to shut that off and be straitlaced and inoffensive and sweet.

Were there such things as heirs, he would be the logical one to Denzel Washington: someone who, as a good-looking and extremely talented black actor, can effectively split his time taking one collection of parts that are "designed" for someone of his race, and another collection which could have gone to anyone like Ryan Reynolds, Tom Hardy, Bradley Cooper, Oscar Isaac, etc. And he has another advantage, which is that for that rough generational age group, he is considerably younger than all of those aforementioned gentlemen.

Have not seen Just Mercy, but this sounds like one of those late-'90s good-for-you broccoli (which I like, actually) movies that Washington made as "Oscar bait," a film like, say, The Hurricane which has aged poorly.

Jordan needs his Pelican Brief (just revisited it--what a weird, wonderful, somewhat silly time the '90s were), his Crimson Tide.

Re: Rough Stuff

alexandercoleman — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 01:55:49 -0000

"five counting Casino"...

Thank you!

Casino is an operatic odyssey, and every time I revisit it, my complaint remains the same: I wish it were longer.

Re: “Just To Be Safe…”

alexandercoleman — Tue, 03 Sep 2019 16:12:27 -0000

Yes, befitting a roadside hotel.

Re: The Fanatic Movie Review & Film Summary (2019) | Roger Ebert

alexandercoleman — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 08:57:25 -0000

I finally braved Battlefield Earth a few days ago.

Wow. It lived up to the "hype" in terms of "bad movie hype."

Re: Dregs of the Gene Pool

alexandercoleman — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 18:26:11 -0000

Natural Born Killers's most significant and damning flaw is that it is satire with little finesse. It is like seeing a magic trick with no deceptive misdirection, which renders it admittedly odd but ultimately fairly unfulfilling.

Re: Another Eastwood Slider

alexandercoleman — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 18:01:55 -0000

Eastwood was far savvier and more self-conscious, in an enlightening way, than many critics gave him credit for being in the 1970s. He is almost merciless in skewering his own tough-guy image in The Gauntlet, playing an in-over-his-head none-too-sharp brutish and alcoholic cop.

Of course he is still endlessly entertaining and a "bad-ass" who single-handedly puts fear into the bone marrow of a biker gang but for one scene. But, he's Clint Eastwood.

Re: Wyatt In The Sky

alexandercoleman — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 17:57:16 -0000

I had ordered a DVD online about a week or two before Peter Fonda's death. You covered the film's merits; it is sturdy, solid and at times surprising.

The news came to me, not having a cell phone or anything with me, very late last Thursday night/early Friday morning only an hour or so after attending a screening of Jackie Brown at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco (in a lovely double-bill with John Cassavetes' Gloria), so it was particularly painful having just seen Peter Fonda's daughter Bridget on the big screen and with several characters watching Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry together including hers. Peter even receives a "Thank You" acknowledgement near the end of that film's credits.

Re: Another Eastwood Slider

alexandercoleman — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 17:40:36 -0000

Chief: "Have you been following that man?"

Harry Callahan: "Yeah, I've been following him on my own time. And anybody can tell I didn't do that to him."

Chief: "How?"

Harry Callahan: "'Cause he looks too damned good, that's how!"

Re: Another Eastwood Slider

alexandercoleman — Thu, 22 Aug 2019 15:16:52 -0000

Never doubted this. Eastwood is capable of making a middle-budget drama some time between early-morning breakfast and a late-night dinner. If the film is good at all, like The Mule (one of Eastwood's best in a long time), Warner Bros. will sneak it in before New Year's.

Re: And The Oscar Goes To…

alexandercoleman — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 20:35:47 -0000

Is that an actual quote? Funny if true.

Re: And The Oscar Goes To…

alexandercoleman — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 07:38:08 -0000

Agree that Pitt's performance is understated perfection. However, it perhaps goes without saying that "you can see the wheels turning a lot more on [DiCaprio's] end." This is practically Tarantino's Jim Jarmusch buddy comedy, only with the role reversal of the main character being a motor-mouth and the supportive sidekick being the laconic figure of the two. One of the components that makes the film hum is the contrast between the two: everything Rick Dalton does is underlined, like lines of dialogue he is learning for the next day's shoot, while Cliff Booth is temperamentally easygoing to a fault. Booth was concerned when he saw his friend breaking down and crying in the parking lot ("Don't cry in front of the Mexicans,") and the most we see from Booth is a furrowed brow, as though he were the protective big brother to a sibling who had just been picked on earlier in the day at school. Even the violent climax highlights their attitudinal differences: Cliff (admittedly under the influence of alcohol and an acid cigarette) has a calm back-and-forth with a murderous fiend before things turn physical, whereas Dalton loses it the millisecond his peace at the pool is broken, and so he breaks out the trusty flamethrower. If you created memes of electronics symbolizing the respective characters Rick would be this incomprehensible device with a thousand buttons, switches and wires, while Cliff, like the "Men" side of the ledger versus the "Women" side in that older meme, would be a simple, streamlined device anyone could use, with but one button/switch: "on/off" or "power."

Re: And The Oscar Goes To…

alexandercoleman — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 07:20:51 -0000

His filmography from roughly 2004 to now has probably been the absolute best out of all of the top-of-the-line A-list Hollywood stars of this era.

Humorously, probably only DiCaprio's rivals it for art/scope or scope/art ratio. But while DiCaprio was more obviously deserving of an Oscar (and perhaps more consciously chasing one) for a while, Pitt's filmography from the past 15 or so years takes it for me. Though DiCaprio has been a dynamo of consistency and pickiness since his Gangs of New York/Catch Me If You Can late-2002 twofer.

Re: Forget Hinterland Bumblefucks, Nominate Michelle Obama

alexandercoleman — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 23:11:42 -0000

In such a theoretical match-up, the odds are that Trump would have the lower floor but also the higher ceiling. Biden, for the Democrats, is effectively the tortoise option. Slow and steady. He would effectively stand around and just say, "Not Trump," and it might actually work. But it could also flame out or simply lack sufficient fuel to beat the incumbent Trump.

Trump has almost completely failed to deliver to the suburbanites and "Reagan Democrats," et. al, people who had not even voted in a generation leading into 2016, much of anything. The economy is statistically good but not so much more appreciably so now than in 2016 for these voters to make him an obviously superior pick to Biden. On the other hand, if it's Bernie Sanders or even Elizabeth Warren (who is pretty clearly more "tolerated" by the establishment than Sanders) Trump just might be able to scare those same voters to at least stay home if not vote for him.

I personally like Bernie more than Biden. Not that I like Bernie, but Biden is a fairly despicable figure when you go over his actual decades-spanning record. At the same time, though, most baby boomer voters want to either pretend that they're still living in the 1990s or Obama is president, and Biden at least being on the ticket would probably make them more comfortable. Not to mention Biden's apparent stronger connection with black voters than Hillary Clinton had.

Having said that, to keep the excitement on the left sustained including Bernie or at least someone of that "wing" seems mandatory. It's something of a conundrum.

Re: World War I “Birdman” Action

alexandercoleman — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 19:51:05 -0000

Agreed on Sam Mendes. Having said that, based on what I can tell, the preproduction work on Spectre was a mind-boggling mess and as lifeless as the film is, it's probably something of a miracle that it is coherent at all. It was a case where the studio was unwilling to budge their own release date, and there was simply too little time, with teams working around the clock to edit together the teaser helicopter sequence while much of the rest of the movie was being shot. I think Mendes and Daniel Craig were probably in complete agreement by the time the movie was coming out that they would rather "slash [their] wrists" than make another one. It was time for the regime to move on from Mendes, anyway, since even with the reasons for Spectre's shortcomings, it's fairly obvious that he ran out of new things to say or do with the character after Skyfall, but Craig had a change of heart, of course.

Re: World War I “Birdman” Action

alexandercoleman — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 19:41:46 -0000

Yes, this has become an aggravating little pet peeve and yet another reason why I seldom intentionally set out to watch trailers.

We are experiencing trailers for trailers now.

Re: World War I “Birdman” Action

alexandercoleman — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 19:38:33 -0000

Excellent, gritty trench warfare near the end, too.

Re: World War I “Birdman” Action

alexandercoleman — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 19:38:27 -0000

The novel and film are truly wrenching experiences.

Re: How Dumb Is Rick Dalton?

alexandercoleman — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 19:18:45 -0000

You're welcome, and thank you.

Could not agree more. I was just thinking to myself minutes ago that this is the first time in a long time where I have felt that true "movie rush." Yet it is more contemplative, like one of the best of the Coen Brothers. Ready Player One and Us are recent high points for wide releases, but for the most part it's been too long. Saw someone else online observe that it felt good to have a "full five-course meal at the movies again." Definitely going back soon.

Re: How Dumb Is Rick Dalton?

alexandercoleman — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 05:35:12 -0000

It's hilarious that this is coming up in this thread right now, as I just saw him in this pretty bizarre, uneven and downright fascinating--but also deeply flawed--B-movie Western from 1951 film Gunplay directed by Lesley Selander. I couldn't stop watching it. The pivotal murder that drives most of the storyline is shockingly brutal in how it's handled, for instance. Then I noted to someone else how odd it seemed that Holt was starring in this only shortly after Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Only after that did I learn that Holt starred in a ton of B-movie Westerns in the 1950s. So now I have a whole lot of B-movies I need to catch up with, haha.

Re: How Dumb Is Rick Dalton?

alexandercoleman — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 05:23:30 -0000

Probably the single greatest subversion of expectations in the film is Rick Dalton and the girl actor. From what seemed like distance and even mild loathing initially, with Dalton fighting off his rough hangover and her annoyance with same, to the final moment they have together, one would probably have expected things to go poorly. However, ultimately Dalton's realization that he saw himself in the Western novel's protagonist was the "Jules sees himself in Pumpkin" moment, even more thoroughly signaled by Tarantino having him refer to the actor as "Pumpkin Puss." From that point forward, Dalton is--to a minor extent, yes, but some considerably critical one--a new man, as it were.

The film is fundamentally about friendship as much as anything else, which is almost needless to say.

The bit of business with Booth's wife does feel like a Natalie Wood homage, but also a way by which Tarantino embeds the thought that for Booth, Dalton is truly all he has in terms of a strong emotional connection at that level (there's the line of narration of, "Closer than a brother but not quite a wife," or however it went [someone nearby coughed loudly at that moment]). The ending with Dalton watching the ambulance drive away was his recognition of what Booth had been all along, with him even stating aloud how much of a good friend Booth is. Dalton was "taken" by his new Italian wife, but Booth was a different matter.

The more one lingers with the film, the more painful Sharon Tate's part is, as she represents the unattainable (romantically even for the likes of "King of Cool" Steve McQueen) and she and her husband Roman Polanski are symbolizing "hot Hollywood" with he coming off of Rosemary's Baby and being one of the hottest directors in the world at that moment and she obviously ascending as a sex symbol star. After the Manson family recognize Dalton from their brief confrontation on the street, and elect to attack him, Booth and Dalton unwittingly saving Tate and her unborn child permits Dalton entryway--literally--into that world. As others have said that ethereal, sad voice of Margot Robbie's as Tate's on the intercom may be the film's signature piece of audio. It pierces. The ending to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood seems to argue that, as far as the fairy tale world Quentin Tarantino has conjured, Dalton's fortunes are about to change, that the moment with the novel he was reading and his performance rendering "the best acting" the child actor had ever seen was the beginning of a newer, slightly wiser Dalton.

The two leading men give two of the best movie star performances of the decade here, and that is what is called for by Tarantino's screenplay.

It is also intriguing to consider how the villain Dalton is playing is supposed to be, as Sam Wanamaker requests, the "evil Hamlet," a self-justifying deranged hippie despot of cruelty. It is how, Tarantino realizes, people instinctively want to picture Charles Manson: a figure of despicable cunning and frightening portent, like a cult-leading Hannibal Lecter. Attaching such superhuman (in a horrible, disgusting way) attributes to the figure makes him more distant and provides us with a narrative that feels at least vaguely comforting in the distance that it engenders. Instead, the real Manson is mostly just some admittedly oddly slightly charismatic punk moron. Tarantino is not having it, however, and he allows Dalton to resuscitate his career playing the image of a manipulative monster who controls girls to his own ends, while deliberately keeping Manson off of his picture's proverbial proscenium arch.

Furthermore, the Western dramas Dalton is helping to make, all while the genre was taking body blows, help to represent how Tarantino views the time period for the old guard of Hollywood, the way Sam Peckinpah envisioned the West's slow, inexorable "death" in several of his films. Dalton and Booth are almost Peckinpah-worthy protagonists roaming across the Wild West. Tarantino even has Wanamaker make the piquant observation directly by addressing verbally through inquiry what connects 1869 and 1969.

Re: How Dumb Is Rick Dalton?

alexandercoleman — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 05:09:31 -0000

Seemed like something that he had dealt with as a child/youth in all likelihood, given how it pops back up to the surface when he was stressed. As Bob Hightower notes, too, it never occurred when he was acting. Found that to be a wildly fascinating detail as well.

Re: Silver-Toned Sea Fable, Tinged With Lunacy

alexandercoleman — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 04:51:42 -0000

I'm as weary of the MCU as almost anyone, I think, but the more ground you cover with your argument, the more I'm finding myself agreeing. Not so much on the point that Robert Downey, Jr. deserves to win or even be nominated for a legacy, but that when you measure what he's doing in a film like Civil War or Endgame (the latter of which was mostly interminable when he wasn't onscreen) against a bunch of the recent Best Actor winners, you're not wrong at all.

McConaughey was a good winner, at least.