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| billyweeds |
 Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 10:25 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| As meh as I found Darling Companion, I still much preferred it to About Schmidt, which for me was Payne's career low point by far. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 11:00 am |
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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About Schmidt is one of the few movies I've walked out on. Payne made it up for me with The Descendants, which I really like.
I'm currently reading "The Origins of Political Order" which has a lot on lineages and tribes and I'm reminded of the family in The Descendants. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 12:01 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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Lawrence Kasdan, come back. All is forgiven. Your comeback movie was at least watchable, which is more than I can say for the new Whit Stillman effort, Damsels in Distress, Stillman's first since 1998's The Last Days of Disco, which was his third success in a row (after Metropolitan and the slightly less effective Barcelona). But even though Disco is the only one of the three I love, Damsels makes them all look like masterpieces. DiD is about a group of college girls who talk in a patois that not only bores the listener stiff but makes the co-eds sound like they come from another planet. They run a suicide prevention center and their cure for suicide is tap dancing, which might make it sound fun. It is so not fun.
Put it another way--and I know this will resonate with Gary if no one else. Remember Death Proof, the Tarantino half of Grindhouse? Remember the group of grrrls who sat around blathering about nothing in particular for the first half of the featurette until they were permanently silenced in perhaps the happiest instance of mass murder ever recorded on film? Well, Damsels in Distress turns those girls into college students and gives them an almost uninterrupted 90 minutes to spew their idiocy. It's one of the worst movies I can remember, and coming from Whit Stillman this is perhaps the hugest disappointment of my moviegoing career. This movie--which is inexpllcably getting some good reviews from knee-jerk Stillman groupies masquerading as legitimate critics--is a must to avoid unless you've been losing sleep and need to catch up. No, scratch that. Insomnia is preferable to this debacle. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 7:53 am |
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| As soon as I read you explaining the plot of DiD I thought. "Oh no another Death Proof conversation." How did you manage to sit through DiD? Sounds like it should have been called Dimbos in Dialogue. I never saw The Last Days of Disco (or the other movies you mentioned. I meant to see TLDoD but the reviews I read were so bad that I passed on it. I guess I'll pick up the video sometime. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 8:36 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| The Last Days of Disco is a strange but very very interesting movie. The girls (and I use that word rather than "women" because it's apt) played by Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale are distinct types and not strictly realistically observed, but they're fascinating and their rellationship is clearly and memorably delineated. The last scene is haunting. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 9:00 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Quote: They run a suicide prevention center and their cure for suicide is tap dancing....
This, alone, suggests to me a film I can skip. I really enjoyed your review, however. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 9:29 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Thought Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco, were both entirely okay.
I've liked most Payne films, but really disliked About Schmidt. Seemed like a complete misfire. |
Last edited by gromit on Wed Apr 04, 2012 9:45 am; edited 1 time in total
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 9:42 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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gromit wrote:
I've like most Payne films, but really disliked About Schmidt. Seemed like a complete misfire.
Agreed. I'm happy to see I'm not the only one who loathed AS. The original reviews were virtually non-stop raves. Payne has otherwise ranged from pretty good (Citizen Ruth) to excellent (The Descendants) to great (Sideways, Election). |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 10:57 am |
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I wouldn't give it a rave but I would certainly give AS ***1/2 out of *****.
I wonder what Bart thought of it, since it is in his neck of the woods. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 11:31 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Somewhere in the middle, based on what I'm reading here. While I agree it's not Payne's best work, I found some things to like...it's been a while since I saw it, so am not prepared to make a case. Obviously, some geographic fun for someone well-acquainted with the I-80 stretch from Omaha to Denver.
Am currently looking at possiblity of moving to Dundee, the neighborhood in central Omaha where Payne grew up. The neighborhood has a great moviehouse, runs mostly art films, and one of the few single-screen theaters left in the Omaha-Lincoln metro. There's a nice watering hole there called "Beer and Loathing in Dundee." Warren Buffet sightings not uncommon, as he lives in the neighborhood. Scenes in both Election and Citizen Ruth were shot in nearby Elmwood Park. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 6:19 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Quote: The new movie is just as good as Cyrus, with less plot but characters you can believe and care about. Jason Segel plays Jeff, the slacker who watches my fave rave and Gary's non, Signs, over and over and over again in search of the meaning of life, all the while inhaling from a giant bong. He lives in the basement of his mom's house, and she's Susan Sarandon. Jeff's older brother Pat (Ed Helms) is an asshole (there's really no other word for it, except maybe dickwad) who doesn't appreciate his wife Judy Greer. Nothing happens to speak of until the ending, which is either wonderful or not, depending on how much you've come to care about the slacker/pothead and asshole/dickwad brothers. I cared a lot and came out loving the movie. I think you might too.
Just saw "Jeff" and loved it. People who liked both Signs and The Big Lebowski may find this eminently watchable. I know I sure did. If, in addition you happen to consider Judy Greer the doyenne of indie comedy, then you may want to go back into the theater and watch again. The ending is a little surreal, yet somehow I accepted it as plausible. Pass the bong. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 6:45 pm |
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"Obviously, some geographic fun for someone well-acquainted with the I-80 stretch from Omaha to Denver."
A road I've travelled on more times than I can remember. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 7:27 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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bartist wrote: The ending is a little surreal, yet somehow I accepted it as plausible. Pass the bong.
Plausible I don't know about, but wonderful I do. I loved that ending. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2012 8:35 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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SPOILER MAYBE FOR "JEFF..."
I don't know if people generally notice this kind of stuff, but I liked the marimbas playing as he is fitting a slat of wood into the closet door - i.e. we see a row of rectangular wood pieces before us as we hear someone plunking on a row of rectangular wood pieces. Little, almost subliminal, touches like that really do something for me.
Film might also be an antidote for American Beauty. If that makes any sense. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2012 11:22 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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50/50 is a fairly good film, I just didn't like it that much. The early indie music cues kept annoying me, though the later classic rock didn't help much either. Just didn't care for the way music was applied in the film.
My other gripe was the way in which each character seemed to be locked into their own shtick. JGL smiling and smirking, or looking worried. Seth Rogan being the loud solipsistic friend (in a performance which I thought had echoes of Goodman in Lebowski). Anna Kendrick doing her nervous adult imitation. They didn't interact so much as act separately. And the girlfriend was pretty much a thankless write-off part.
I probably liked best the scenes with the two other cancer patients, though even those found a familiar path. I can see how people could like this film, and it tries to balance humor with some serious subject matter. But it wasn't very subtle and tended towards exaggeration. It's certainly watchable, just didn't do much for me. |
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