Rate That Movie Part IV: Movies Never Sleep

[numbersix]

Won't bother go into why I didn't like some recent films such as Zama, How to Talk to girls at Parties, or An Evening With Beverley Luff Lynn. Instead here are some decent films

The Miseducation of Cameron Post
There's nothing surprising about this story of a teen girl sent to a Bible camp designed to purge people of their homosexual urges, but it's still a very engaging watch thanks to a cast consisting of Chloe Moretz and Sasha Lane, as well as the film's smart decsion to not force a lesbian relationship onto the plot, but rather let the film be about a group of teens who just want to be themselves when they're told they can't.

Faces Places
Agnes Varda is now 90, yet she's still full of energy as she travels through Frace with enigmatic artists JR, visiting people and taking photos, placing huge murals on walls as they go along. It's a playful, fun documentary that deals with plenty of issues, all wrapped in a sensation that can only be described as a love for creativity. It's a joy to watch.

Hereditary
An incredibly unsettling horror film about grief and how it tears a family apart. It's like a modern-day The Witch, in which the supernatural is only secondary to the dread of loss and how it makes people feel utterly alone. The performances are OTT but intense, and the build-up of certain events (particularly a seance) is superb. The last 15 minutes is questionable as it descends into a flurry of genre cliches, but neverthelss it's a powerful experience.

[W]

Gotti 3/10

Looks like you got duped. I almost went to see it too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comment ... toes_were/

Looks like someone (possibly Moviepass because some reviewers reviewed American Animals as well) went through the trouble of creating thousands of fake RT accounts just to rate Gotti as 5 stars, hence the very high audience score vs the 0% Critic score.

[Buscemi2]

I read that the film's producers (not sure if it was one or the 127 or so credited, there were a lot of producers) is calling the film's critics the trolls rather than the MoviePass users. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't help that view that as being the filmic version of Amy's Baking Company.

And I wasn't lured in by Rotten Tomatoes (user scores are slanted towards easy to please, audience-friendly movies while critic scores tend to punish smaller films). I saw the trailer before another movie (the much-worse Bad Samaritan, which somehow got some defenders) and thought it looked decent.

[W]

https://twitter.com/Gotti_Film

Pinned tweet as of now:
"Audiences loved Gotti. Critics put the hit out. Who would you trust more? YOURSELF or a TROLL behind a keyboard?"

I love being able to watch a billion movies a month for $10 (I'd probably watch 4-5 movies a month anyway but with MP I'm at 8-10), but this kinda pisses me off. And it's a bad business decision for a company that's trying to hang on as long as possible while bleeding money. They didn't need a stake in Gotti (no reason at all) and half-ish of the OW was caused by MP. If MP is really about getting small movies seen why not give an aspiring filmmaker a small amount of money and see what happens like Blumhouse does?

Bad Samaritan, Hurricane Heist, Solo, 15:17 in some order are the worst movies I've seen this year. I only saw Bad Samaritan because of Moviepass, but I've only seen Hereditary and Upgrade because of it too. After getting IMAX tickets for JW2 Thursday night my options this weekend are slim: Book Club, Superfly, Gotti, and if I really want a decently long drive American Animals.

[Buscemi2]

I'm probably seeing First Reformed this weekend. The Drafthouse is pulling it but the local non-profit is keeping it. Also, Crooklyn is getting a couple of showings this weekend. It's the first Spike Lee movie I ever saw so there is some personal interest for me to see it in a theatre.

As for MoviePass, them buying Emmett Furla Oasis basically suggests they are not interested in helping out aspiring filmmakers. The films typically made by them are cheap B-movies, usually starring Bruce Willis or another fallen star.

[W]

And... AMC is starting their program next week (6/26): https://www.reddit.com/r/moviepass/comm ... scription/

Highlights:
-$19.95 locked in price for at least 12 months.
-3 month commitment.
-3 movies per week. Can do multiple movies in one day.
-One per person.
-Any format including 3D, Big D, and IMAX
-Can make future reservations.
-Must be two hours between reservations.
-Everything their top tier Stubs program already has.
-You get points on your membership fee.

Every theater I go to but one is an AMC and that's about an hour away. It would be nice to see whatever format I choose. And it'd be nice to grab tickets days or weeks early for big movies and I could see three movies a day instead of having to spread them out. Plus any classic screenings (Ghibli stuff going on right now, TCM stuff) I believe would be covered. It's app based and you don't have to screw around with the card, checking in, taking a photo, thinking you may screw up and get your card killed off. If I could use one of the three screenings to take my kid with me it would be a no-brainer. I'll have to think about it.

[transformers2]

Watching the producers of Gotti try to pull off this "ayy the critics are dopes, audiences love this movie!!!!!!!!!" spinjob is absolutely hilarious. If they didn't want their long-delayed mob movie that features ample B-roll and a score from Mr.Worldwide to get slammed so hard, they should've stuck with the original VOD and a theatrical release in Des Moines strategy.

[BanksIsDaFuture]

Well shit, AMC's subscription seems like a great deal. $20 for 3 movies a WEEK, including imax? With the ability to reserve seats without having to be at the theater? And no card?

My city is mostly Regal, and the only AMC is a 25 minute drive so it doesn't work for me. But if MP ever raised their price, the AMC would be worth the switch.

Much better than Cinemark's pathetic attempt at competing - $8.95 for 1 movie a month lol

[numbersix]

Watching the producers of Gotti try to pull off this "ayy the critics are dopes, audiences love this movie!!!!!!!!!" spinjob is absolutely hilarious. If they didn't want their long-delayed mob movie that features ample B-roll and a score from Mr.Worldwide to get slammed so hard, they should've stuck with the original VOD and a theatrical release in Des Moines strategy.

Can't say its IMDB score is really indicating a general audience loves it either. Let's see how it holds

[transformers2]

MoviePass is probably going to be working their number-fudging, ticket-buying magic on the American Animals semi-wide expansion this weekend, so unless there's a sudden spike in interest stemming from this face-saving social media ad campaign, it'll likely fall quite a bit.

[Buscemi2]

Funny that I mentioned actors past their prime and taking anything for the paycheck because I just found rumors that Johnny Depp is almost broke. If you thought his career was declining now, look where it's going to be a few years from now.

[Shrykespeare]

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - 3/10

I'll boil it down in one sentence - every single person in this movie is stupid. Really, what else is there to say at this point?

(The one possible exception is Jeff Goldblum's character, who only appears at the very beginning and the very end, spouting the same speech to a Congressional Oversight Committee that he did in the very first movie - basically: that humans are stupid, which is proven over the next two hours.) Even the little girl, who I grew to like over the course of the movie, make an unconscionable decision at the very end that will no doubt result in hundreds of needless deaths. Sigh.

From the opening scene, pretty much every decision made by a human being was the wrong one. In the end, we already know what's going to happen, and the only reason it happened is so they can make more movies where dinosaurs chase children and eat bad guys.

I really like Chris Pratt, but his character had about 25% of the charisma he gave to Star-Lord, and was way down from the first JW. Bryce Dallas Howard is not a great actress, and the rest of the supporting cast was forgettable. Even James Cromwell and Toby Jones phoned it in.

I am officially done with this franchise.

[Buscemi2]

First Reformed 10/10

The religious film Hollywood and a lot of independents are too scared to make. While most of today's religious films are either designed to convert, pander to a vocal sect, or make a crowd-pleasing blockbuster for international sales, Paul Schrader's comeback film serves as both a criticism of organized religion and a meditation of how religion lost its way in the drive to stay relevant. It is also the film about environmentalism that you won't see a studio making. Schrader enters the psyche of how we as a whole ignore climate change and eventually drive those who do care into madness. A lot of the film's detractors (mainly Evangelicals, I'd imagine) are bound to claim the film is anti-religion (much like they did on another film written by Schrader, The Last Temptation of Christ) but if anything, it's anti-ignorance.

Ethan Hawke is fantastic as the main character, a reverend who is nearing death who has entered his own personal crises as he approaches the final days of his life. Amanda Seyfried for once is able to find a project worthy of her talents while who would have guessed that Cedric the Entertainer could stretch his range? Casting him as Hawke's superior was definitely outside the box, being that he's known for comedic roles, but it works extremely well. I could see him playing similar roles in other dramatic roles in the near future. Also, the cinematography, using Academy ratio with long takes and natural light, is amazing. In the wrong hands, it would have seemed boring and pretentious. But with Schrader, wearing his influences of existentialism and slow cinema on his sleeve, it is beautiful in its own madness.

This film has been considered Schrader's best in a long time. I might go beyond and say this is his best as a director.

[Buscemi2]

American Animals 8/10

Sold as Ocean's Eleven for young people, it's really closer to The Rider in that it uses a docu-fiction style to tell the story (only here, it's the real subjects sharing screen time with the actors playing them). Bart Layton, making his narrative debut, keeps things interesting by in addition combining truth and drama (and beyond), uses a style that is atypical from most heist films. For one, he uses a 60's/70's folk-pop soundtrack (though the official soundtrack consists mostly of 90's rap, little of it is heard in the film) to convey mood rather than what was actually popular in 2004. Also, he manages to make characters that could have easily been unlikeable sympathetic. Even though you know things won't end well, you are interested in these students in their quest to get rich quick and live like the characters in the films they emulate. They're kind of like a more social version of The Wolfpack.

And I was impressed by Evan Peters' performance as the supposed mastermind behind the Transylvania University heist. I had never really paid much attention to him before but he really knocked it out of the park. He's as if the face of Dane DeHaan got the acting skills of an Ethan Hawke or Michael Shannon. I have a feeling this guy could get more chances of carrying a film if the industry wasn't so pre-occupied with launching every Disney or Nickelodeon actor to stardom.

It's too bad though that this film is getting lumped in with the MoviePass controversy. Because it's a better film than some of the other films (Gotti, The Hurricane Heist) that have used the service to boost the box office. I think the film would have been able to find a niche audience without it as it's interesting and original.

[Buscemi2]

Uncle Drew 6/10

Who would have guessed that a movie based on a character designed to sell Pepsi products would be decent? What could have been a dreadful vanity project for its star actually turns out to be a decent throwback to the era when high-concept movies were way more in abundance that they are now. The film is self-aware in its ridiculousness and Kyrie Irving doesn't do too badly (he's mainly there for the basketball scenes while Lil' Rel Howley does the acting) but it's Chris Webber that steals the show as Preacher. He knows the kind of film he's in and hams it up as the streetball star-turned-evangelist.

In a way, the film feels a lot like something Eddie Murphy would have made in the late 80's/early 90's (back when he still had some magic left). Funny and designed not to be taken too seriously.