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flyonthewall2983 wrote: Mon Dec 28, 2020 10:16 am The Midnight Sky had real potential to be interesting but George Clooney finally made me a believer about his deficiencies as a director. I speak for myself here but I doubt few would disagree that he's possibly one of the most agreeable movie stars of the last 3 decades. This is the first time where I felt kind of tricked by that, because he is the most interesting thing happening on screen against an incredibly overdone story, with what is an interminable pace at 118 minutes. Even though it's an overdone cliche itself now (RIP David Giler, who invented it) I was really thinking/hoping one of the characters on the spaceship turned out to be a robot/AI, just for the sake of making it feel a little more sci-fi than melodrama. Then it turns out no he's human, with another half-hearted backstory in a movie already chalk full of them. This is to speak nothing of the silly twist at the end that further made me feel stupid for dedicating two hours of my life to it.

Clooney is a great actor but at this point perhaps his agent should “misplace” the rights to anything he wants to direct himself

It’s a shame, too, because GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK was phenomenal; I couldn’t wait to see how his directorial career would go. And everything since then has been borderline unwatchable (or in the case of SUBURBICON, across that border to a genuinely punishing degree).

I remember Ides of March being decent

I remember that too, though I also remember absolutely nothing about that movie except Evan Rachel Wood's plot. It's kind of impressive to assemble that group of talent and have none of them deliver anything that sticks in your craw, though it's much more impressive to bungle Suburbicon as badly as Clooney did, I remember that movie clearly and it tells me to never ever trust Clooney-as-director again.

Suburbicon was the un-rationalizable writing on the wall. The Coens had a promising script with ideas that anyone who could handle tonal shifts would be able to make edible lemonade out of, but whatever meddling Clooney did deflated everything- the film didn't even default to any singular vibe.. I think his greatest failure is that he doesn't know how to direct actors to giving what he wants, because I don't think he knows what he wants. Good Night, and Good Luck was good, but it wasn't hard to figure out how people should play things with historical documents for how Murrow behaved and the direction to play a mid-century suit for the talent behind the scenes isn't exactly rocket science, plus that tone was set before any director signed up for the project.

swo17 wrote:I remember Ides of March being decent

Probably the best of the bunch, but I remember little about it except that it took the least interesting and most conventional angle on the material possible. So maybe not “borderline unwatchable” as much as “no reason to watch it”.

Had a cool poster, though.

Ides of March was a fine, three star, never need to see it again kind of movie

I liked the Sam Rockwell movie when I saw it as a teenager. I wonder if it stands up.

knives wrote: Mon Dec 28, 2020 11:08 pm I liked the Sam Rockwell movie when I saw it as a teenager. I wonder if it stands up.

That’s the one I’ve liked the least (so far!)

The Monuments Men is not terrible, but similarly just kind of a one-and-done thing I haven't dropped everything to rewatch again.

Wait, I change my vote to that as the worst one-- I only just saw it earlier this year and already had erased it from my memory. I found it such a poor excuse for a film, and perhaps the most predictable movie I've seen in some time

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Like, was there ever any doubt which of the titular men was going to be killed? Of course they off the Frenchie

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There was a perfect opportunity to kill off Damon's character towards the end I remember, but it didn't go that way. I know it's based on a true story and he wanted to get as much of it right as he could I'm sure, so I can understand why it didn't go that way.

I will say that there is one great scene with Bill Murray's character, listening to a message sent by his family, that sticks out clear as day now.

Brian C wrote: Mon Dec 28, 2020 9:41 pm

swo17 wrote:I remember Ides of March being decent

Probably the best of the bunch, but I remember little about it except that it took the least interesting and most conventional angle on the material possible. So maybe not “borderline unwatchable” as much as “no reason to watch it”.

Had a cool poster, though.

I sat through the play in its NYC off-Broadway production, when it was originally entitled FARRAGUT NORTH as I recall, and found it uninteresting and conventional (news flash -- politics is a dirty business).

MoMA started streaming this for a week today. I'm actually still watching it, but it hasn't really sustained my interest that well. I got a feeling what the twist might be pretty early in the film, and I don't think it took much to guess. Anyway, it's not a terrible film, but the lack of imagination and frustratingly conventional and familiar approach to so much of the story is all the more egregious when it's a sci-fi film. It feels like a network TV drama blown up with an enormous budget. (EDIT: as I get closer to the end, it feels more and more like a paint-by-numbers TV drama plopped into a sci-fi film.) I've never read the book, so perhaps a lot of it's baked into the source material, but even with the best VFX money can buy (with a long stretch that felt like it was lifted from Gravity), there's nothing about this film that felt particularly inspired.

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Even something like the blood floating in the air feels like it's milked too self-consciously. The way that whole scene is staged felt like pro forma E.R. direction, from the sudden crisis to the mournful resolution complete with a solemn piano melody to squeeze out every last tear.

I'm also pretty sick of hearing "Sweet Caroline." I never want to hear any more Neil Diamond unless it's a song he cut at Bang.

I will say that I enjoyed Clooney's presence on-screen (and to be fair, the entire cast does a fine job). Though there have been comparisons to Cary Grant in the past, I wouldn't put Clooney on the same level. But as he's really looking his age here, I remembered that Grant called it a day before he got "too old" - given the chance, it could be interesting to see how Clooney evolves as an actor as he enters his golden years.

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EDIT: Yeah, the twist is disappointing because it's so uninspired. Right from the start, they establish the problem with grappling with loneliness. Fabricating a companion felt a little too obvious because it's been done before, and connecting it to the daughter he's never met turns it into a pat, shallow depiction of his guilt from abandonment.

hearthesilence wrote: Fri Jan 08, 2021 4:13 am MoMA started streaming this for a week today. I'm actually still watching it, but it hasn't really sustained my interest that well. I got a feeling what the twist might be pretty early in the film, and I don't think it took much to guess. Anyway, it's not a terrible film, but the lack of imagination and frustratingly conventional and familiar approach to so much of the story is all the more egregious when it's a sci-fi film. It feels like a network TV drama blown up with an enormous budget. (EDIT: as I get closer to the end, it feels more and more like a paint-by-numbers TV drama plopped into a sci-fi film.)

It tries to bank more on the emotion, but also is really trying not to be a genre movie either. Of the recent acclaimed prestige sci-fi pictures we've seen out of Hollywood in the last several years, most of them manage to do both. This would be akin to a Rocky movie without the fight scenes.

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In reference to an earlier post, I was desperately hoping Demian Bichir's character was revealed to be some sort of AI. He's a fantastic actor, and I was really curious why he just stood around for most of his scenes. It would have made much more sense that he was akin to Bishop in Aliens, to use one example. Then he reveals he had a daughter die on earth and connecting it to the girl bleeding out in zero gravity felt more manipulative than dramatic.

knives wrote: Mon Dec 28, 2020 11:08 pm I liked the Sam Rockwell movie when I saw it as a teenager. I wonder if it stands up.

I haven't seen it recently, but I remember liking it. If it still holds up, it's probably because he used as much of his clout to make up for his lack of experience. The cast is a bonafide all-star roster but Rockwell rose above everybody and it became a breakout role for him.

I've not seen Good Night, And Good Luck but remember it being quite acclaimed so may have to check that out too.

It's been years since I've seen it, but Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was a frustrating failure, because "the Sam Rockwell movie", as some see it, to me is "the compromised Charlie Kaufman movie" that was diluted of his essence and thus left as a rudderless mess. With Kaufman, I feel like the director needs to take risks and go full-throttle into his imaginative space or pull back enough in communication with the writer to find a balanced wavelength, but this movie was an uneven and bizarre approach to filming an uneven and bizarre script, going for sincerity and mythic humor at odd intervals, hitting tonal shifts that felt empty, gauche, and sloppy. Kaufman hasn't been shy about being uninvolved in the rewriting process and it shows. I'll revisit it someday and hopefully change my mind, but even though I think Clooney has made worse movies, this is the one that Could Have Been and irritates me the most.

flyonthewall2983 wrote: Fri Jan 08, 2021 6:18 am It tries to bank more on the emotion, but also is really trying not to be a genre movie either. Of the recent acclaimed prestige sci-fi pictures we've seen out of Hollywood in the last several years, most of them manage to do both. This would be akin to a Rocky movie without the fight scenes.

I'm actually more interested in the "emotion" than genre set pieces like the asteroid scene, but it doesn't have much to say. The ideas come across as too broad and too shallow - the cast does what it can with it, but it never feels all that moving because it just scratches the surface. The guilt of abandoning your child is indeed awful, but in retrospect, I don't think the film was convincing emotionally.

To be fair they gave themselves tough parameters - since he chose never to meet his kid, it means the nature of the abandonment is less acute dramatically speaking. In real life, that would translate to a slow and sad loss where both parties go on living without the other and will be denied a lifetime of experiences day by day. I never got the sense that the movie understood that loss very deeply - it was sort of a bland sadness.

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The daughter's dream of being left behind promises an exploration on how that abandonment has shaped her, but that's never effectively realized.

Slightly-OT, but the thread title is brilliant.

Soothsayer wrote: Fri Jan 08, 2021 2:59 pm Slightly-OT, but the thread title is brilliant.

Praise for me is always on topic

Suburbicon was one of the few movies I gave up on and within like 10 mins, maybe even 5. Crash-like in how didactic and on the nose it was.