What Movie Did You Just Watch

[Dr. Insomniac]

It was hilarious seeing the guys on Twitter who are otherwise "This media is colonialist!", "This movie is propaganda!" suddenly keeping their lips shut when Avatar 2 and Top Gun 2 came out. The theaters that showed Top Gun literally had military recruitment booths, and the people who cry that something like Thor Love and Thunder was military propaganda pretended not to notice.

While they probably didn't rally around Tar and demand everyone see that is because Tar isn't a mainstream appeal movie. I personally got bored while watching it.

[Avaitor]

Finally got around to seeing the new Hellraiser, and when Pinhead was on screen, I loved it! The genderfluid take on it, which is closer to Barker's original vision, works and the person playing them is great, and the torture scenes were similarly cool.

The rest of the movie is crap, though. I wasn't expecting much, but I just did not like the "human drama" at all, and it did not need to be 2 hours long.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Stumbled my way into watching slow cinema like Tropical Malady and Goodbye Dragon Inn, and I don't get the appeal of slow cinema. My attention span is fucked so I'm probably biased, but I've yet to watch one of these movies where I wasn't bored to death, besides maybe Tarkovsky's Stalker.

[Avaitor]

John Wick 4 was really that movie, and I hardly felt the length at all. Possibly my favorite?

Spoiler

It looks like this is it for the character, though, unless the Continental show is a prequel.

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[Foggle]

John Wick 4 was really that movie, and I hardly felt the length at all. Possibly my favorite?

Last hour is probably the best action movie I've ever seen, the rest was just incredibly delicious icing.

Spoiler

The ridiculous car combat followed by the one take Hotline Miami part followed by that fucking staircase scene? Pure cinema. I almost cried when the Justice song came on.

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I love all of these films so much.

[Avaitor]

Spoiler

Yeah no, the Paris car chase scene is an all-timer, especially when it stops being a car chase and just has John throw people into traffic.

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I haven't seen a movie in theaters twice since Guardians Vol. 2, but I'm considering making an exception for this.

[Avaitor]

I couldn't co-sign on the 2013 hype train and zoned out of Ash vs. during its last season, but Evil Dead Rise was a lot of fun, enough to give me hope for the franchise again and maybe do a full rewatch. I also need to upgrade my copy of Army of Darkness, I only have the older Blu. Need the Shout/Scream Factory release.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Finally got to watching John Wick 4. Wasn't expecting Scott Adkins to steal the show.

Also rewatched The Crow when it was on TV a few weeks ago, and it got me wondering what Brandon Lee could have done in the John Wick movies if he was still around. Given Stahelski was his body double, and how a few of Keanu's roles back in the 90s were considered with Lee in mind.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Saw Clerks 3 a few days ago, and that shit was rough. Kevin Smith was always high on my list of creators I was heavily into as a teenager but just don't see the appeal of even out of nostalgia, which nothing about this movie or anything he's done in the last decade has disproved. I'm reminded of why the first one became a huge cult classic, because people were amazed that indie films like this could come from just a few guys with a camera and little money, and how that led to Smith recruiting a young Ben Affleck to partner up for a bunch of later films. But now that charm's gone, and it turns out Smith never learned any new directing tricks since the 90s, none of his friends learned how to be better actors either, so now we have old Dante and old Randall argue about Star Wars and their sex lives again but without the quirk of knowing it's their first film.

Spoiler

And while the plot tries to deal with heavier shit by killing off Rosario Dawson from the 2nd film and leaving Dante a widower, the fact that she died in 2006 but Dante's been in a funk since then while Randall hasn't done shit to help him undermines any real friendship we're supposed to feel for them. Hell, Randall's the reason Dante gets his fatal heart attack. Yeah, their relationship was always shitty, but never this bad. But instead of the movie tearing apart Randall for this, he's given most of the sympathy, and Kevin Smith even gives post-credit narration saying Randall becomes successful and lives into old age. We're supposed to see Randall as Smith's self-insert because he gets a heart attack and makes movies about working at a convenience store and all that, but none of the emotional beats pay off because Randall's such an ass to everyone in a way that doesn't warrant the amount of schmaltz the scenes give him. It's like if Dennis from IASIP or Cartman got a heart attack and we were supposed to feel bad.

And then there's Rosario Dawson's ghost showing up to give Dante a pep talk, but since he dies shortly after, none of that means anything. The whole movie's kinda nihilist in that regard. These feel good speeches about continuing to live life mean nothing, the random comic relief characters with no connection to reality like Elias get to become rich, Dante had so little people in his life that he contacted his ex from the 2nd movie who he hasn't talked to in 16 years for money. But then Randall makes another "This is the way" Mandalorian reference so Smith can have dumb jokes.

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But it's a movie where the plot's resolved by Elias selling Jesus NFTs while he's dressed like a Juggalo, so I'm the fool here for expecting the beats to work. At least it was better than Yoga Hosers?

[Avaitor]

I crossed seeing one of Smith's stand-up/Q&A shows off my bucket list when he did the Jay & Silent Bob Reboot roadshow. It was nice to see him and Mewes up close and shoot the shit, but there's a reason that I didn't attend the Clerks 3 roadshow when it came here. And it's probably the same reason that you no longer see many up-and-coming filmmakers call him an influence anymore.

[Dr. Insomniac]

And it's probably the same reason that you no longer see many up-and-coming filmmakers call him an influence anymore.

And a lot of that's down to time and distance, since the very creation of Clerks wouldn't happen in the same way it would now thanks to iPhones and advances in computer editing. There are all these microbudget films like Tangerine shot on a smartphone that look a thousand times better than Clerks did. Even back in the late 00s, Clerks' accomplishments in spite of its budget didn't look as impressive when Primer did much more with a quarter of the money Smith had. Another weird part of 3 is that Smith doesn't seem to know that film technology's moved on, so when Randall's making his own movie that's just Clerks but within that universe, he does the same exact shit Smith did in the 90s like get 30 grand in loans and use a black and white camera.

Also because the 90s are long over, and Kevin Smith isn't the underdog struggling to get his work on the big screen anymore. Sure, he's not a big filmmaker like Tarantino or Rodriguez, and you'll never see him hired to make a blockbuster any time soon, but he's definitely in a position where he can just shit out movies whenever he wants with little executive interference instead of fighting to get another Dogma or Chasing Amy made, and I doubt any aspiring filmmakers find inspiration from Tusk or Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.

[Avaitor]

I'm still critical of Indiana Jones as a franchise, but I got to see a free screening of Dial of Destiny. It's not very good, and the climax takes a wild turn that makes the fridge scene look like nothing. Still, I had fun watching an Indy film on the big screen, and Mads Mikkelsen will always be a good choice to play a villain, even a Nazi.

Now Bottle Rocket, on the other hand, that's a great time on the big screen. If you're not an Anderson fan, it won't sway you to change your mind, but I think it's his best since Grand Budapest.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oppenheimer was a pretty strong outing for Nolan and easily his best film since Inception for me. I liked parts of Interstellar but felt he got too heavy-handed with the themes he wanted to explore that he lost focus on the overall story and relatability to the characters. I really liked Dunkirk but it's not necessarily the most readily rewatchable film in his catalogue as it's a very specific kind of vibe. I tried but really could never get into Tenet even on a re-watch.

Oppenheimer feels like a breath of fresh air for Nolan in that he can flex his creative muscles and use everything he's learned over his filmmaking career while telling a cohesive story and not losing the audience with trying to be too grandiose with his ideas. It was a fairly quick 3 hours for me.

[Avaitor]

I'm not able to do the Barbienheimer thing (honestly not sure I'd want to, five hours in a theater sounds like a big commitment), but luckily I got to see a free preview of Barbie on Wednesday, which is a fun, if heavy handed time. I do intend to see Oppenheimer at another point, but I just don't know when I'll have the three hours to spare.

Oh, but Dead Reckoning Part I was excellent. I'm almost disappointed that Cruise is backing out on these being the end of the MI franchise, but if he and McQuarrie can keep topping themselves even after Part 2, I can't complain.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, wasn't expecting the double feature to be 5 hours. The tonal whiplash was about as much as you can expect. At least the casting directors somehow knew in foresight that audiences would make the experience more convoluted than it was supposed to be, and packed both movies with actors I'd recognize just to make it easier to keep track of everything. Especially in Oppenheimer's case, once you get past the obvious ones everyone will know like Einstein and Truman, it throws a hundred characters at you and the only way you'll keep track of half of them is because you know most of them by their actor name.

But it was fun. Interesting to watch a movie made in 2023 where Rhea Perlman gives the big epiphany speech, and neat that Nolan finally figured out how to give Cillan Murphy a lead role after years playing bit parts in his movies. And that final scene between him and Einstein where he's in pure fright over what his role in history will become.

Which adds to how strange it is to watch these movies back to back. Barbie's a movie about desperately looking for personal meaning in light of a lack of identity. Oppenheimer's about finding that meaning and gaining no positive insight, but an existential disturbance from it.