What Movies Are You Watching Lately

[double00]

I think it was The Guardian that said either this is a terrible movie or spycraft is too subtle for me to understand.

i'd read the book a couple of times before i watched it, le carre really insists on unfolding the plot through character internals in all of his stories that i've read

 

[otc]

Compare it to Margin Call. McKay spends so much time - celebrity cameos, Gosling voiceovers, diagram scribbling - showing us how the financial instruments work and how they led to destruction. Chandor spends almost no time explaining what the bank in Margin Call does - maybe a minute during the boardmeeting - but when Spacey and Irons are confronting each other on the eve of the firesale and Irons yells “THIS IS IT! I am telling you THIS IS IT” at a reluctant Spacey, we know that it’s life or death. It doesn’t matter that the movie hasn’t explained. The drama is in the air and all the characters feel it, and so the audience does too.

I mean...isn't that kind of the point? The Big Short is a Michael Lewis book. It is supposed to tell you *what* is happening in an approachable/entertaining way.

If you know little about the financial crisis, you come away with a rough intuition about what happened.

What the bank in Margin Call actually does is unimportant. It is just a vehicle for the drama and acting.

 

[zenosparadox]

i'd read the book a couple of times before i watched it, le carre really insists on unfolding the plot through character internals in all of his stories that i've read

Yeah, also the movie isn't so much interested in the spycraft as it is in using spycraft and international espionage as contexts to explore broken homosocial bonds. In that way, it's consistent with the director's previous (excellent) film, Let the Right One In, which is only nominally a horror film. I actually haven't read le Carré's novel, so am uncertain what is the author and what is the director, although A Most Wanted Man seemed interested in similar themes--I know many of the other viewers in the audience when I saw it were disappointed, because the story was actually more interested in disappointment than the payoff most spy films provide--so I'm assuming that a lot of it must be true to the text.

 

[SixOhNine]

Is the Tinker Tailor BBC miniseries with Alec Guinness available? I recall it being far more highly regarded than the movie.

 

[noob in 89]

homosocial bonds

Wait, do you have an advanced English degree?

These are the only people I know who use this word.

 

[imatlas]

In & Of Itself.

That was beyond excellent.

Literally no idea what i watched.

This was excellent.

We actually were reminded of something else, but I’d be hard pressed to describe either.

 

[zenosparadox]

Wait, do you have an advanced English degree?

These are the only people I know who use this word.

I’m mortified to know that I’m a type—and particularly that type—but yes.

 

[King Calder]

I mean...isn't that kind of the point? The Big Short is a Michael Lewis book. It is supposed to tell you *what* is happening in an approachable/entertaining way.

If you know little about the financial crisis, you come away with a rough intuition about what happened.

What the bank in Margin Call actually does is unimportant. It is just a vehicle for the drama and acting.

Fair enough. To the extent the movie is trying to tell me what happened in an entertaining way, it does that sometimes. But it’s a film caught between trying to be a reenactment, a drama, and a PSA. It’s a bit of a mess, and it’s self-righteousness doesn’t do it any favors. If you want a PSA watch Inside Job. If you want a reenactment watch Too Big to Fail. If you want drama watch Margin Call. If you want a self-righteous Steve Carrell in a bad wig distracting you from a great Christian Bale performance, watch the Big Short.

Moneyball is a far better adaptation of a Michael Lewis book. It takes a book about math and baseball and turns it into a exceptional human drama. Hard for me to imagine the Adam McCay version of moneyball being any better than the one that got made. I don’t need Justin Bieber explaining what Bayesian statistics are to me while in a batting cage.

 

[noob in 89]

I’m mortified to know that I’m a type—and particularly that type—but yes.

Haha, sorry, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I first heard it as an undergrad in relation to The Confusions of Young Torless, thought, Well, that’s peculiar..., and have kept tabs on it ever since. As far as I can tell, it’s yet to go mainstream.

 

[The Ernesto]

I’m mortified to know that I’m a type—and particularly that type—but yes.

If you've got the jargon this is the place to drop it.

 

[zenosparadox]

Haha, sorry, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I first heard it as an undergrad in relation to The Confusions of Young Torless, thought, Well, that’s peculiar..., and have kept tabs on it ever since. As far as I can tell, it’s yet to go mainstream.

No offense taken! I just never want to be the guy that walks around saying the word différance like it’s in italics. But homosociality is a useful concept that names something we don’t really have another good word for, so a good word to keep tabs on, I think. It would probably add an important dimension to the impoverished ways people talk about relationships between men if it were to go mainstream—although at least half of our media would just think it means “gay“ and condemn the further brainwashing of America’s children by radical academia.

 

[King Calder]

Caught this in HBO. Captivating biopic about Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and his assassination by the Chicago PD and FBI in the 1960s. I liked it! Kaluya as Hampton is electric and delivers one of the most captivating and charismatic performances of the year. I thought Lakeith Stanfield is just okay, but my problem is more that I think the Bill O’Neil character is poorly written. I found it extremely disorienting to understand his motivation and inner life, and thought some of the information the movie gives you is outright contradictory. Otherwise, great costumes, great supporting cast, and a tragic/enraging story that should be more well-known (I certainly didn’t learn about it in public school.)

 

[Joffrey]

The new Netflix move “I Care A Lot” was enjoyable. It’s a black comedy that appears to be divisive with audiences. I enjoyed it despite how ludicrous the premise was.

Just saw this. Typical Netflix movie 6/10 but was not bored. Think it could have been a lot better. For instance, they were a little lazy with the lawyer bit and the doctor's doctored note.

 

[noob in 89]

I’d think the typical Netflix movie would be a generic teen dramedy. Maybe I need a new algorithm.

 

[SixOhNine]

Felt like watching something mindless, so I picked this

Solid cast, obviously large budget, a premise that had potential, but just not well done. You gotta lean into the crazy with something like this, and they just didn't. It was almost criminally dull.

Followed it up with

It's interesting watching movies from the 70s and seeing how much slower and quieter (literally quieter) they are compared to modern movies. And why anyone ever thought caftans were a good idea I'll never understand...


However, Jenny Aguter was super hot, so that alone made it worthwhile.