Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
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Re: New Films in Production, v.2
I remember him discussing this project over a decade ago. I hope Darryl Ponicsan is writing the screenplay with him.
- hearthesilence
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- Ribs
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- Michael Kerpan
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Re: Trailers for Upcoming Films
Looks very interesting...Ribs wrote:Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying
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I imagine the "Language Throughout" notation on the MPAA rating means that the profanity will be comparable to The Last Detail which broke boundaries for explicit language when released in 1973.Michael Kerpan wrote:Looks very interesting...Ribs wrote:Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
Like I might fucking care.
- domino harvey
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
Top YouTube comment
looks gay but ill watch it
- Dead or Deader
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
Not enough guns and explosions to delight his feeble mind.
- The Narrator Returns
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
He's just saying that because he thinks Steve Carell's presence means they're gonna do the Scarn in the movie.
- bdsweeney
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
I can't tell if Linklater's made a deliberate attempt to capture the same somber colour palette as The Last Detail (which I remember being quite dirty, wintery and using natural light) or if it's just more of that greenish colour correction that seems so popular now?
- domino harvey
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
looks green but ill watch it
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
Don't ask me why but I watched this three times today: without sound, without sound but with subtitles, and finally with sound and image. It actually was a kind of interesting way of being introduced to it.
Anyway this looks good. I think if Linklater didn't do this I'd have loved to see Soderbergh try but I'm not complaining. It just manages to straddle the edge between gritty 70s Last Detail Feel and a more cliche Old Drinkin' Pals Reunite kinda thing. But mostly it feels genuine and sincere, as Linklater always does.
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Anyway this looks good. I think if Linklater didn't do this I'd have loved to see Soderbergh try but I'm not complaining. It just manages to straddle the edge between gritty 70s Last Detail Feel and a more cliche Old Drinkin' Pals Reunite kinda thing. But mostly it feels genuine and sincere, as Linklater always does.
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- Ribs
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
Alexander Payne actually talks about how he was circling it for a year or two after its publication before Linklater picked it up on the Indicator release of The Last Detail. He seems like the other obvious fit, especially considering it would have come right around when Sideways, a film I'd say at least generally bares a lot of comparisons to the original, really propelled him into the mainstream.
Assuming this is even a modest commercial success it would not surprise me at all if Sony pulled a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and seized the rights for a regular BD release of Ashby's film in the US from Twilight Time, despite this new film being from a totally different studio (presumably why the names have been changed?).
Assuming this is even a modest commercial success it would not surprise me at all if Sony pulled a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and seized the rights for a regular BD release of Ashby's film in the US from Twilight Time, despite this new film being from a totally different studio (presumably why the names have been changed?).
Last edited by Ribs on Thu Aug 24, 2017 8:47 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
I can see Payne directing this but I have mixed feelings about his work. I still love "Election" and his films all have something to like, but they can be a bit too misanthropic (and paradoxically too sentimental - there always seems to be an effort to show some type of redemption, but I rarely find it convincing in the way it comes across). Linklater has a natural empathy in just about everything he's done, and his films have grown on me more and more primarily because of the humanist qualities of his work.
- The Narrator Returns
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
This got a pretty muted response out of NYFF. The consensus seems to be that Cranston is handily the weak link of the main trio, with Fishburne and Cicely Tyson (who has a small role as the mother of a soldier who died in Vietnam) getting the best notices.
- Ribs
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
It is downright *bonkers* this film is bombing as hard as it is at the box office (seems genuinely possible it ends up with less than $1 million), considering it's such a down-the-middle safe movie that pleasant older folks should enjoy in droves despite the relatively high quotient of swearing. After Everybody Wants Some doing similarly poor returns last year, I'm concerned they're going to put Linklater into movie jail assuming his already-in-the-can "Cate Blanchett is playing an agoraphobic architect because who else can we possibly get for a movie about an agoraphobic architect" similarly doesn't inspire much enthusiasm.
I had a good enough time with this, though I think almost everything that makes it especially interesting tie to relating it back to Ashby despite it not being an actual sequel (it basically still is, minus one subplot). It's an element it's totally right to ignore but I think Linklater's main drive here is to just recreate that specific vibe of a trio of soldiers on leave traveling up and down the Amtrak Northeastern route but how it's different when thirty years have passed and they've all aged up. Cranston is playing the character exactly as Nicholson did, as he's the one who didn't change, and it's the performance that personally I find the most interesting again for that specific relationship of trying to recreate the unique star presence Nicholson had in one of his most iconic roles. But really, I'm so committed to Ashby's 70s films that just something trying to go for that vibe and somewhat actually understanding the source material is enough for me to walk away happy. Would be interesting to compare it to a hypothetical Alexander Payne version, all the same.
I had a good enough time with this, though I think almost everything that makes it especially interesting tie to relating it back to Ashby despite it not being an actual sequel (it basically still is, minus one subplot). It's an element it's totally right to ignore but I think Linklater's main drive here is to just recreate that specific vibe of a trio of soldiers on leave traveling up and down the Amtrak Northeastern route but how it's different when thirty years have passed and they've all aged up. Cranston is playing the character exactly as Nicholson did, as he's the one who didn't change, and it's the performance that personally I find the most interesting again for that specific relationship of trying to recreate the unique star presence Nicholson had in one of his most iconic roles. But really, I'm so committed to Ashby's 70s films that just something trying to go for that vibe and somewhat actually understanding the source material is enough for me to walk away happy. Would be interesting to compare it to a hypothetical Alexander Payne version, all the same.
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
I would agree that Cranston is pretty terrible. I've never seen the Ashby film that is the forerunner to this one but it completely makes sense now that I read after the fact that Cranston basically has the Nicholson role, because I can see that's what Cranston was trying to do. But unlike Nicholson, I don't think Cranston is capable of playing a grating character without grating himself - it's a very annoying performance, very demonstrative but with the beats and emphasis all wrong, like a show-offy amatuer stage actor trying to manufacture the "presence" that Nicholson always had much more naturally.The Narrator Returns wrote:This got a pretty muted response out of NYFF. The consensus seems to be that Cranston is handily the weak link of the main trio, with Fishburne and Cicely Tyson (who has a small role as the mother of a soldier who died in Vietnam) getting the best notices.
On the whole, the movie deserves its muted response, I'd say. It's not in any way (aside from Cranston's performance) a bad film, but it does straddle the line between "good" and "mostly forgettable". Instead of Fishburne, though, I'd single out Carell as the film's strength. In fact, I think Carell is extremely underrated in general, but here I thought his work is very beautiful and sad, a much more low-key performance than grieving actors usually give but all the more effective for its simplicity and quietness. Curiously, though, the film has his character playing second-fiddle in his own story, a decision that I don't feel fits the material. At one key moment, the movie just abandons him altogether to follow some random bullshit with the other two, and it seems kind of cruel.
But I guess that's Linklater for you. His movies tend to seem willfully unfocused and uncentered, and I get that that's part of his appeal with his admirers, but I've never been all the way on board. Still, I liked this one better than most of his, at its best it has a handful of genuinely thoughtful moments and it ends with a grace note that actually makes a lot of sense given what we know about the characters. And at the very least, it's a mile better than most other films that deal with similar subject matter ... Billy Flynn's Long Halftime Walk and Grace Is Gone come immediately to mind, for example.
- The Narrator Returns
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Re: Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017)
I pretty much agree with everything you said (although I'm a much bigger Linklater fan than you and this is definitely near the bottom for me, in the "at least you tried" column with Fast Food Nation). Every once in a while, it really starts cooking with gas, and every once in a while, it just lies there straining to achieve whatever it's trying to do, and then there are a lot of scenes somewhere in the middle (with a lot of potentially touching scenes rudely interrupted by Cranston throwing out some filthy one-liner). I'll give it that I was never bored, which is something of an accomplishment given how leisurely and melancholy it is. And the few, very elderly audience members I saw it with all seemed to love it, making this maybe the first Linklater movie that appeals more to Grandpa than Junior.