Watching
My last 10 watched from Letterboxd.
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A River Runs Through It
RIP to Robert Redford, who was truly, as the kids say, goated. Filling in some gaps in his filmography with this one, which came out when I was in high school and everything about it looked boring as shit to me, a young idiot. Watching it for the first time now, as a parent of two boys similarly separated in age, I couldn’t help but wonder which will go on to be a professor, and which I’ll have to bail out of jail. This is a fine movie with great cinematography and earnest performances all around. Brad Pitt, pre superstardom, is particularly mesmerizing. It’s odd that Redford narrates as the older brother, and not Pitt, who is almost the spitting image of Redford in both looks and charm. Unfortunately the older brother is pretty dull by comparison. The ending really hit hard and made me realize I’d come to care for these characters, dullness and all. Not sure high school Mike would have felt the same though.
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The Way of the Gun
McQuarrie’s directorial debut is definitely a product of its time — a Y2K crime flick with lots of gun play. If you can get past the edgelord dialogue of the opening minutes, it settles into a pretty solid, modern Western. Love young Benicio Del Toro here as one of a pair of kidnappers who gets in over his head. Not to mention James Fucking Caan as a badass bagman rocking a Member’s Only jacket. There’s some great action here and memorable scenes. It’s incredible McQuarrie went on to direct huge action blockbusters. I’d love to see him revisit something on a smaller scale like this.
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Highest 2 Lowest
I recently enjoyed Kurosawa’s High and Low, which is part morality play and part police procedural. Spike Lee’s remake, on the other hand, replaces the police procedural element with… a Denzel movie. I love Spike and Denzel, but this remake, like Oldboy, is just completely unnecessary. The score is so overbearing, there’s almost never a moment when there’s no music and it doesn’t fit the vibe of the movie at all. The cops are poorly written and completely inept — the movie looks like an ad for the NYPD but then portrays its cops as dipshits, which, ok.Overall it doesn’t improve on Kurosawa’s in any way and doesn’t seem to have much to say by bringing it into the modern era. A huge swing and a miss by Spike.
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Honey Don't!
Love Margaret Qualley but this script doesn’t do her any favors. There’s a few fun scenes but the ending just came out of nowhere, rendering most of what happens earlier seemingly meaningless.
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Aguirre, the Wrath of God
I was interested in this because I haven’t seen many films shot in Peru or about its history. And while the film is largely fictional, it captures a time when the Spanish came to the land of the Incas and pretty much took whatever the fuck they wanted. The Spanish men in this film are largely brutish, greedy, and power hungry, while the native Peruvians seem resigned to their fate more than anything. It’s a hard movie to reckon with, since I likely wouldn’t be here otherwise, having both Spanish and native Peruvian ancestry. It’s pretty fascinating that they were even able to make this, filming chronologically on location in the Amazon. Kinski’s screen presence is riveting, his face practically chiseled from stone and his eyes bulging.
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Weapons
Right up there with a handful of horror movies that changed the game — Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, Get Out. Seeing this gave me that same feeling, like I just watched a magic trick that had never been pulled off before. Definitely glad I saw this in the theater. The crowd experience was amazing. But I’m so glad to have this available at home and looking forward to making my wife watch it.
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Possession
This movie is completely unhinged with The Room-level acting and writing. Some interesting cinematography and a wild climax but ultimately not a very enjoyable watch.
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K-19: The Widowmaker
Of all the submarine movies, K-19 is one of them. A mix of Crimson Tide and Chernobyl, but never reaches the highs of either of those. Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson are so subdued in this, but maybe that’s just them emulating Russian culture with their rough Russian accents. When the two meet some 25 years after the events of the film, their makeup makes them look even older than they do in real life, where nearly the same amount of time has passed since this was filmed. You can definitely pick up on some of the themes Bigelow explored in movies like Point Break and The Hurt Locker, but overall this is a pretty forgettable exercise.
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Duplicity
Tony Gilroy’s follow-up to Michael Clayton is a fun romp but feels like watered-down Soderbergh. As much as I love Clive Owen, I couldn’t help think while watching this that Clooney was Gilroy’s first choice to play opposite Julia Roberts but was otherwise busy. The premise is great and anytime Paul Giamatti or Tom Wilkinson are on screen they cooked. Didn’t love the ending but it did subvert my expectations.
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We're No Angels
Around the time this came out on cable I used to watch it all the time. It’s a goofy premise (which I only now learned was written by David Mamet, of all people) but DeNiro and Penn really sell it. DeNiro with his entire range of facial expressions and Penn with his earnestness. There’s also a spunky young Demi Moore, John C Reilly doing his thing, and Wallace Shawn. It’s almost cartoonishly silly, but it still tickled me all these years later.