Films You've Seen Recently and Don't Know WTF to think

[IdleRich]

Or TLDR review of Molly's Game and biopics in general.

Biopics suffer from two major problems and American ones about financial criminals very often have a third

1. They are a one-sided and biased version of events that normally makes the protagonist out to be a lot smarter, handsomer, and nicer than they really were.
2. Real lives don't have a story arc but films need one and an attempt to kinda force one on to a sequence of events means that you end up with a bit of a mess
3. American gangster films are often in love with the idea of winning and they try and force you to love and admire the win-at-all costs mentality of people who are basically psychopathic assholes who were slightly smarter than the people they robbed until that point that they weren't - which was totally not their fault and their downfall was completely different from all the other people it laughed at in the film whose downfall was entirely deserved

Molly's Game suffers from all of the above in spades (no pun intended) and so what could have been a fairly interesting film with an insight into a seedy world that none of us have any access to ends up being more cliche than film and overall it ends up at about 5 out of 10.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

well you have actually made me think it might be worth seeing.
its the same sort of thing as films like the big short. god forbid you actually show the heroes as grubby and money grabbing and scheming. instead they have to be sympathetic. thats just hollywood though. they dont want anyone to be too, if at all unlikeable, so you end up with a lot of warped-positive portrayals of people who dont really deserve it.

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah I definitely wouldn't want to put anyone off. It's watchable enough and an interesting world to glimpse. It's just you've seen the story before... success and meteoric rise, excess and glamour, crash and fall... and finally redemption and contentment in a different world where, older and wiser they live with less money but more happiness as a teacher or nurse. Older and wiser and able to laugh at the follies of their youth.

The other day there was a film with Mathew McConaughey which follows that arc precisely. He is a star American Football player but gets injured, however his knowledge of the game means he always knows which team will win and so people pay him to pick winners for sports betting, then Al Pacino takes him to a bigger company and he's doing it on TV, he overtakes their star guy and gets money and a flash car etc, then gets cocky stops working and picks loses, loses it all and finally finds happiness coaching kids to play American Football.

 

[william_kent]

I only remembered that I had seen Molly's Game due to @IdleRich's review, it's one of those films that can occupy you for it's duration, but fades..fades..fades..from memory, until someone ( in this case @IdleRich ) mentions it and then a vague and distant recollection coalesces and I realise, oh, it's that film I saw years ago with the card game in the back of truck and then I wonder, did that scene happen or am I making it up?

edit: please please, please, put me out of my misery, did i really conjure up a scene where where high stakes are performed in the back of a truck, or is this the crazed imagination of a drug addled old fuck?

 

[version]

Hardcore (1979)

I love Schrader, but this one was bizarre even by his standards. He's said himself he finds it a bit embarrassing and poorly written now and I can't believe he put his fanatically religious mum and dad in a film based around the porn industry - it's clearly a very personal film, perhaps to a fault.

The studio ending is terrible too. Apparently what was supposed to happen was George C. Scott would descend into the porn underworld looking for his daughter then find out she'd died in an unrelated car accident and he'd have to wrestle with the fact her death had nothing to do with whatever poor or immoral decisions he thought had been made, but the studio thought it was too dark and ambiguous so had him write an ending where he tracks her down and takes her home...

 

[forclosure]

Hardcore (1979)

I love Schrader, but this one was bizarre even by his standards. He's said himself he finds it a bit embarrassing and poorly written now and I can't believe he put his fanatically religious mum and dad in a film based around the porn industry - it's clearly a very personal film, perhaps to a fault.

The studio ending is terrible too. Apparently what was supposed to happen was George C. Scott would descend into the porn underworld looking for his daughter then find out she'd died in an unrelated car accident and he'd have to wrestle with the fact her death had nothing to do with whatever poor or immoral decisions he thought had been made, but the studio thought it was too dark and ambiguous so had him write an ending where he tracks her down and takes her home...

It is very much a movie about the porn industry made a total prude and not only that the incest undertones are very pungent

 

[IdleRich]

I only remembered that I had seen Molly's Game due to @IdleRich's review, it's one of those films that can occupy you for it's duration, but fades..fades..fades..from memory, until someone ( in this case @IdleRich ) mentions it and then a vague and distant recollection coalesces and I realise, oh, it's that film I saw years ago with the card game in the back of truck and then I wonder, did that scene happen or am I making it up?

edit: please please, please, put me out of my misery, did i really conjure up a scene where where high stakes are performed in the back of a truck, or is this the crazed imagination of a drug addled old fuck?

I don't remember that.

 

[version]

It is very much a movie about the porn industry made a total prude and not only that the incest undertones are very pungent

I read an interviewer say they felt the film was building towards the Scott character being exposed as a hypocrite and were surprised he never was and that the film seemed to endorse his viewpoint.

Schrader's said it's modeled on his father and he was essentially agreeing with him, but using tools he didn't approve of, i.e. film.

That being said, he clearly wasn't as prudish as his father as he spent some time lurking in porno theaters prior to writing Taxi Driver and he admitted to going overboard with some of the stuff in Hardcore because he was fascinated by what he was seeing and just wanted to get it all in.

And yeah, I know what you mean about the incest thing.

 

[IdleRich]

I'm watching a Taiwanese zombie film called The Sadness.... flipping heck

 

[IdleRich]

This is the most violent film I've ever seen. It's just fucking horrible.

 

[IdleRich]

I've realised that I can put the trailers in here





Just to be clear, it's not exactly disturbing, it's an hour and a half of realistically shot sexualised ultra-violence that somehow becomes cartoonish because of the sheer amount of it. I think I'm gonna change my mind and put it in the recommended thread.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

i wanna see the sadness.

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah I think you should

 

[IdleRich]

I saw a review on YouTube where the guy marked it down cos the main characters were not developed. Which totally misses the point to me... I think you learn everything you need to know about someone when they are running like fuck from an enormous horde of rapacious zombies - all you need for this film anyway. If they'd made it ten minutes longer and delved into their motivation they would have likely fucked it anyway.

 

[Pandiculate]

watch the sadness yesterday, I found myself just thinking how fun it must have been to film. That one scene in the hospital though, even though they didn't show what was happening it made me feel very uncomfortable.

 

[droid]

Its based on crossed, apparently. Grim but gripping, and all in all a very effective horror flick. 4 stars.

 

[forclosure]

Its based on crossed, apparently. Grim but gripping, and all in all a very effective horror flick. 4 stars.

yeah once i looked that up it made sense, Garth Ennis at his most mean spirited

that comic was meant to start out as like a mean spirited parody of The Walking Dead before turning into its own thing where you don't know where the joke ends or begins

 

[woops]

yeah once i looked that up it made sense, Garth Ennis at his most mean spirited

that comic was meant to start out as like a mean spirited parody of The Walking Dead before turning into its own thing where you don't know where the joke ends or begins

i read all this during the lockdown from @droid's list and i can assure you the joke begins when alan moore starts writing

 

[catalog]

Droid and Web are the same person just a sea and a generation apart. Precision and structure. A certain seriousness.

 

[forclosure]

Droid and Web are the same person just a sea and a generation apart. Precision and structure. A certain seriousness.

i haven't read any comics in a loooong time but i remember reading through a trade of crossed once

not good