Nocturnal Animals got robbed of some Oscar nominations, but they couldn't deny him.

I will never forget his role on Boardwalk either. Hell of an actor.

The Boy

Oh boy! I wanted to watch a ****ty horror movie last night, and I got my wish. This movie steals from other successful movies, but doesn't do much to create a sense of tension or dread, and doesn't add much into the haunted mansion/object genre.

The plot is ludicrous, and it doesn't help that the actors think everything is relatively normal. A young woman who is leaving an abusive relationship gets a job at a creepy house, is hired by a creepy couple to be the nanny of their 8 year old boy. The catch...The boy is a creepy porcelain doll.

We know exactly where things are going. Shoes will go missing, the doll will get moved without anyone moving him/it, and then more sinister things start happening.

In the hands of a better script or director, this may have worked. Look at the success of a movie like The Babadook, where a haunted children's book actually created some genuine terror. We get glimpses of what the makers were aiming for in The Boy, with the nanny unsure of whether she is going nuts or if the doll is actually doing stuff, but this was thrown away quickly once the third act reveal happens. I might mention, that the reveal is in the top ten for eye-roll worthy moments in cinema.

This is a good example of a failure of execution. If you are going to have a ludicrous horror movie plot, you need to be committed to it and tell a convincing story. The Conjuring understood that, Sinister understood that, but The Boy failed miserably in this endeavor.

I think I'm the only one here who liked Ice Man, but that's the one that really showed me what he could do.

Take Shelter is one of the top ten films this century, and Shannon's performance in it is easily one the greatest I've seen.

Couldn't agree more.

I agree that he's one of the best, but IMO Iceman was such a wasted opportunity. Besides MS, the rest of that movie blew.

His monologue at the community dinner still gives me goosebumps thinking about it. In fact, I haven't seen that in awhile, gonna rewatch tonight.

Same

I will watch anything with Michael Shannon in it, no questions asked.

I can't believe this movie or performance doesn't get talked about or brought up more.

I Am Not Your Negro

Doc from last year that takes the writings of James Baldwin from an unfinished manuscript about his relationships with Medger Evers, Malcom X, and MLK, and fashions a treatise on the history of black people in America.

We get film of Baldwin discussing "the negro problem" on shows like Dick Cavett, and Samuel L. Jackson gives voice to Baldwin while narrating the manuscript.

This is spectacular. Everything Baldwin says is both beautifully written and spookily prescient of our country today.

Must watch.

I really want to see the James Baldwin doc. Where did you see it?

Amazon Prime has it

Colin Hay - Waiting For My Real Life

Great doc on the life of Colin Hay, signer/songwriter/troubadour. Most famous for being the lead singer of Australian 80s superstars, Men at Work.

The Men at Work part gets done with fairly quickly, and the rest of it is about his life as a solo artist who doesn't have a record deal, and travelling the world touring to small clubs and medium-sized halls, singing his songs and telling stories. He's a great raconteur.

I saw Colin Hay at Largo on Fairfax in L.A. in the early 80s, at least 5 or 6 times...he was a regular there, along with Aimee Mann and Michael Penn and some famous comedians. Great place to see a show. His sets are still some of the best music I've ever seen.

He's on tour now and I can't recommend him enough...as someone in the films mentions, he's probably "the world's best troubadour." Just him and an acoustic guitar and his stories...you will be transfixed.

Ruthless People (1986 comedy) - Unexpectedly great. Clever scenario about a kidnapping that would work (with adjustments) in a crime drama. The plot continues to surprise throughout. I lol'ed a bunch of times, always a good sign.

I recall reading about Michael Eisner's producing on this in his early days of Disney (Touchstone), probably in the book Disney War. It was a hit, and I'd guess part of the reason it isn't much remembered now is there's no huge star that appeals to people nowadays. Midler, DeVito, Reinhold, Pullman.

It's definitely worth seeing. Also has one of those great animated title sequences and a cool rich ultra-'80s house (possibly better than Weekend at Bernie's, but we see less of it).

Spaceballs - Didn't like this when I saw it on VHS in 1998 or 1999. Liked it more than I thought this time, but it's no classic (as many make it out to be). Parts are funny, but it often falls into mere punniness that I've criticized Brooks for in the past. A punny name in a film is just not funny, unless you're going to go over the top with it like Abbott & Costello or whatever.

Fourth-wall breaking stuff is okay but it's significantly smarter and better in The Great Muppet Caper.

Surprisingly good practical effects and overall production value that did not show on VHS.

Moana - This was a singalong version with like kids screaming in the theater etc. In this case it might enhance the experience if anything. Hadn't seen it before, so there's a decision about whether it's better to see it in a theater with people and sometimes words on the screen, or to watch at home in peace.

It's messy and complicated (really didn't follow who had to bring which amulet to what spot and for what reason), but it's overall okay.

Doesn't need to and should not be 112 minutes. Little Mermaid, Lion King, Pinocchio, Beauty & the Beast are like 92. Dumbo is frickin' 64. Cut out some of the convolution.

La La Land - This was also a singalong, and in this case it sucked because there were drunk *******s behind me crossing the line between "singing and engaging in some fun in-between songs" and "being annoying *******s". I eventually moved.

I don't think this movie is very strong at all and it really should not have sniffed Best Picture.

So yea, out of these 4, Ruthless People is the clear best film imo.

The best part of a Colin Hay show are his baleful stares.

The Trust, 2015, Alex Brewer, Benjamin Brewer

Vegas heist movie starring Nicolas Cage and Elijah, Wood, Cage doing his wacky thing, and Wood doing his intense, wide-eyed thing. And it works.

Funny, well-written, and then it gets very dark. Definitely worth a watch.

Beatriz at Dinner

Pretentious, slow-moving, poorly acted, ham-fisted and a downer. Salma Hayek is fat (she admits it herself in the movie) and John Lithgow plays Donald Trump not nearly as well as His Majesty of the Oval Office does himself. Skip it.

Great movie, I agree. I still remember Danny DeVito handling the wrong number phone call he got. Pure gold.

Wonder Woman

Had little interest in anything playing the theaters right now other than maybe Alien, but needed to accommodate some visitors that wouldn't work for. Settled on this, though I'm not really any kind of WW fan and lukewarm on most comic movies. But I had to push to avoid the Pirates movie.

Cliff's: just another forgettable, cookie-cutter comic book movie. At best I guess you could call it watchable and one of the better DC offerings, at least post-Nolan, though that's not saying too much.

The first act and exposition wasn't interesting for me at all, and I didn't see the charm or humor that Shuffle did. The villains were weak. Her arc is pretty much Demi-God.

I do agree with Shuffle that this character isn't challenged at all. The story seems engineered around setting up dramatic shots of her jumping into (or out of) explosions or whatever, at will, with apparently nothing posing meaningful threat to her.

Or even to her hair...now, granted, movie heroes usually get the glamor treatment, but even with say Captain America they at least throw a few scratches and dirt on him, some tears in the uniform. She comes out of a WW1 trench battle looking clean and poster-ready. It's not the aesthetics, just her apparent invulnerability She did get a scratch but apparently heals fast - having little prior familiarity with the character I still don't know know what her weaknesses are.

Besides all of that, it felt like a mashup of other comic movies, even some of the dialogue.

Defending Your Life

This randomly showed up on HBO, so I gave it a rewatch, and I still love this unique rom-com as much as I did years ago.

Albert Brooks plays a man who just got hit and killed by a bus. He wakes up in....I guess we'll call it purgatory, a way-station in between our world and the next. There he must, as the title of the movie indicates, defend his life. He must be judged on the decisions he has made throughout his life and they decide if he is ready to move on to the next world. This is done in a courtroom with a prosecutor, a defender, and two judges. They play scenes from his life to support the argument of whether he has conquered his fears.

The world they created was such a fun and quirky place to visit. They have a tram that you see at Universal studios take you everywhere you want to go. There's an obsession with food there that is really quite funny. There's always a discussion of how many days they are looking at, and while we don't completely understand what that number means (he is looking at 9 days), it is always hilarious to see people's reaction to his answer.

He meets Meryl Streep, and they begin to fall in love. It is here that the movie really shines. It is clear that he and Meryl are on different tracks. Her life is easy to defend, his is a struggle. She stays at the equivalent of a Four Seasons. He stays at a motel 6 equivalent. He has made some very cowardly decisions throughout his life. She ran back into a burning building to save a cat.

Brooks truly embodies that of a scared man who accepts his fate as someone who did not achieve what he wanted to in life. He knows where he is headed after his trial, and that makes his romance with Streep all the more heart-breaking. The final sequence on the trams is wonderful, and a great ending to an almost perfect movie.

Defending Your Life is one of my favorites.

So no one else has seen It Comes At Night yet? It's really fascinating and I want to discuss the questions left open by the ending....

Saw Edge of Seventeen last night. It was surprisingly great. It's on Netflix right now.

This sounds like one of those
" this movie is great!"

To

"WTF was i thinking?"
Ten years later

Situations.




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Left open?

Its pretty obvious what happened and whats going to happen.

Its somewhat interesting how they got to this point, but not really surprising.

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