Oh I'm sorry, Did I Break Your Conversation........Well Allow Me A Movie Thread by S&T

[calibeebee]

Kimchi Papi

Any of those on HBO right now?

 

[equality]

Some docs I’ve recently watched that I recommend in no particular order -

1. Won’t You Be My Neighbor
2. I Am Not Your Negro
3. Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow
4. Andre The Giant
5. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
6. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
7. Dark Money

Gotta catch that AiWeiWei doc. What'd you rate oit?

 

[Kimchi Papi]

No unfortunately... But here are some on hbo you might like -

1. One Nation Under A Dog.
2. Mapplethorpe
3. Carrie Fisher Wishful Drinking
4. Baltimore Rising
5. King In The Wilderness
6. Levees Broke
7.The Defiant Ones
8. Robin Williams
9. Spielberg

 

[Kimchi Papi]

Gotta catch that AiWeiWei doc. What'd you rate oit?

7/8 He’s kinda a hero of mine so I’m a bit biased. I loved it. Its visually a gorgeous doc. I wish I saw it on something like IMAX. It’s a good view into the world of refugees warts & all.

It was shot in 23 countries & I think I read he had like a 900 hours of footage. It’s really long at 2 1/2 hours or so but I didn’t find it boring though most people it would. It does fill you with a sense or sadness & anger though...

 

[calibeebee]

No unfortunately... But here are some on hbo you might like -

1. One Nation Under A Dog.
2. Mapplethorpe
3. Carrie Fisher Wishful Drinking
4. Baltimore Rising
5. King In The Wilderness
6. Levees Broke
7.The Defiant Ones
8. Robin Williams
9. Spielberg

My man

 

[Kimchi Papi]

My man

You might like the Defiant Ones about Dr. Dre & Jimmy Iovine if you want something light... And along that sentiment, the Carrie Fisher, Robin Williams, & Spielberg docs to.

 

[stuntman mike]

wow! some interesting ones on that list. i think i'll give that ryuchi sakamoto doc a watch this week.

 

[MetalMario]

Casting JonBenet. a doc on filming the auditions of the filming to reenact a movie on her case using people who live in the area while getting their takes on it. hella weird but yeah lol. netflix.
Amy. The Amy winehouse doc that finally got released on netflix.

Cosign on I'm not your Negro by Psk. that was a great one. netflix

I may be late on Iceberg's doc but I saw it this summer for the first time. gotta utilize the catalog differences of Amazon Prime and Netflix. this one is only on Prime

 

[pmatic]

 

[|A-Man|]

A lot to watch tonight.

The Purge tv series
Mayans M.C.
Wrecked

I'm watching Wrecked

 

[hand2handking]

Mel Gibson’s New Police Brutality Movie Is a Vile, Racist Right-Wing Fantasy

VENICE, Italy — Two years ago, the Venice Film Festival hosted the world premiere of Hacksaw Ridge, a World War II drama directed by Mel Gibson. The film marked Gibson’s first turn behind the camera in a decade, since he’d drunkenly slurred “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” pleaded guilty to battering his then-partner Oksana Grigorieva, and was caught on audio saying she was “asking” to be “raped by a pack of n*ggers.” Despite never demonstrating much in the way of genuine contrition, he was treated to a prolonged standing ovation on the Lido—the opening salvo of a “comeback tour” replete with rave reviews, a $175 million box office gross, and six Academy Award nominations. This fukk you attitude, coupled with a rich history of racism, misogyny and homophobia, has elevated Gibson to folk-hero status among the far-right. He is their Oprah.

And they’re going to be very happy with his new film.

Making its world premiere in Venice, Dragged Across Concrete’s premise is as follows: a pair of detectives, Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) are caught on tape applying excessive force to a Hispanic prisoner in handcuffs, in the form of Ridgeman grinding his boot into the man’s neck until it emits a cracking sound. (During the bust, Ridgeman and Lurasetti also mock a scared, naked Latina suspect, claiming they can’t understand what she’s saying due to her accent. Both scenes are played for laughs.) With the tape destined to go viral, Ridgeman and Lurasetti are suspended for six weeks without pay, though the chief of police (Don Johnson) is sympathetic to their plight, delivering a rambling sermon about how being branded a “racist” today is akin to getting labeled a “communist” in the 1950s—or, to quote the president, this is a WITCH HUNT! and these two violent cops are the real victims.

“Zahler’s latest is a cold-blooded saga that revels in the violence it inflicts on women and minorities, in particular.”

Though a six-week suspension seems like a mild punishment, especially considering this is the third time Ridgeman’s been busted for using excessive force, he is in desperate need of cash. You see, his wife Melanie (Laurie Holden) has MS and his daughter is bullied by black kids on her four-block trek to school. Worried that those same black kids will rape their daughter once she matures, they vow to move to a better neighborhood (presumably one with less black people). “I never thought I was a racist until living in this area,” Melanie says, her husband nodding in agreement. So Ridgeman cooks up a plan to rob an out-of-town crook, and ropes in Lurasetti with a Forgotten Man spiel: “I don’t politick and I don’t change with the times,” he explains, lamenting how that matters more in today’s world than “good, honest work.”

Things don’t go as planned, of course.

Dragged Across Concrete is written and directed by S. Craig Zahler, whose previous film, Brawl in Cell Block 99, also bowed in Venice. Unlike Brawl, a slick work of poetic brutality about a hard-on-his-luck pugilist (Vaughn) who’s forced to smash in skulls to save his pregnant wife, Zahler’s latest is a cold-blooded saga that revels in the violence it inflicts on women and minorities, in particular. Its two most sadistic scenes consist of a newly-minted mom whose fingers and face are shredded off with a machine gun, and a black man (Michael Jai White’s Biscuit) who is graphically disemboweled in order to retrieve a swallowed key. After removing his heart and intestines, a white henchman warns another not to puncture his liver because “it stinks… black guys especially.”



Summit Entertainment
There’s a lot more objectionable nonsense in this film, from Gibson and Vaughn’s characters prattling on about how gender lines have been erased, to a black character (Tory Kittles’ Henry Johns) whose grammar is constantly corrected by the white men around him, to a black woman who rails against her “****-sucking ******” of a husband for leaving her for another man. Defenders of Dragged will argue that its general sense of nihilism—or its ending—will justify such hate. They’ll be wrong. This is one ugly film. And at 158 minutes, with a script that shoehorns words like “assuage” and “lament” into its tough-guy banter, it’s a chore to get through.

“I’m not chasing the biggest audience and I’m comfortable with losing some of them. There are obviously remarks that are throwaway jokes and there are lines that aren’t politically correct,” offered Zahler at a press conference for the film. “There are lines that will get people to hate me, and that is your right to do so.”

Dragged Across Concrete Review – Glum Mel Gibson in Unflinching and Nasty Police Thriller
Vince Vaughn and Gibson execute film director S Craig Zahler’s distinctive vision in a confident mismatch of heist and violence


Vince Vaughn, S. Craig Zahler, Tory Kittles and Michael Jai White attend the 75th Venice Film Festival Photograph: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis

https://www.theguardian.com/film/20...oncrete-review-vince-vaughn-mel-gibson-zahler

S Craig Zahler takes a lot of pleasure in perversity. This much was evident from Bone Tomahawk, his take-no-prisoners 2015 debut in which Patrick Wilson assembles a mismatched bunch of old west types to pursue his kidnapped bride and stumbles instead on a cabal of barbaric, cave-dwelling cannibals. For the follow-up,Brawl in Cell Block 99, Zahler upgraded to Vince Vaughn, who stars as a jailed drug dealer who is blackmailed into committing horrific acts of violence in order to be put in a maximum security prison, where he’s instructed to kill a fellow inmate.

Both films have a lot in common: notably the mashing up of disparate genres, sudden and extreme gore, and an air of gravitas bordering on the funereal. They are also rather long, clocking in at 132 minutes each. And for his third feature, Zahler really doubles down: Dragged Across Concrete – another fantastic but never really explained mood title – comes in at a mighty two hours 34 minutes, this time featuring not one star but two, seeing the returning Vaughn paired up with an even-more granite-faced-than-usual Mel Gibson.

One might expect this, then, to be Zahler’s magnum opus; and yet, somewhat counter-intuitively, it might be his simplest story yet. This time, there are three men in a tight spot, the first being ex-con Henry Johns (Tory Kittles), who returns home to find his mother on heroin and on the game, neglecting his crippled brother. The other two are police partners Brett Ridgeman (Gibson) and Anthony Lurasetti (Vaughn), who make headline news when their uncivil arrest of a drug dealer is captured on a cameraphone.

The three stories take a while to collide; when the two cops are suspended without pay, Ridgeman is hit the hardest, living in a tough neighbourhood where his teenage daughter is regularly assaulted. Ridgeman’s MS-afflicted wife wants to move, but with a drop in income, and no realistic chance of a pay rise, Ridgeman feels backed into a corner. Instead of waiting it out, he visits an old underworld connection – played by the unflappably louche Udo Kier, fast becoming a Zahler regular – who alerts him to an imminent bank robbery. Figuring that’s the easiest way to get rich in a short space of time, Ridgeman calls Lurasetti and proposes a plan to intercept the contraband. In the meantime, Henry, with no work forthcoming, has been recruited by an old friend as the getaway driver in the very same plan.

It sounds like the parts of a tense heist thriller are being laid in place, but Zahler is in no hurry to get to the job itself, and takes many digressions along the way. Some of them work – like the story of a bank teller who shouldn’t be going to work that day – and others really don’t, like an extended back and forth between Vaughn and Gibson as they prepare for their stakeout. Both, though, are a perfect example of where Zahler sees himself – what he thinks is his “thing” – and while it is certainly a matter of taste, this fusion of deadpan sincerity with wiseass, Tarantino-savvy dialogue is pretty unique to him.

Such a glum Gibson fits well into Zahler’s vision, which is probably just as well, since, in Hollywood terms, he’s still paying penance, and the film is very much about a man fallen from grace (the “dragged across concrete” could easily be Ridgeman’s ruined reputation, after years on the beat). Vaughn has the patter down pat too – and yet there’s something that seems to be missing from this all-too-promising package. Zahler has a way with action, and the set pieces are inventive and nasty, with an unflinching eye for violence. Such style and confidence is impressive. But after three movies, his increasingly morose characters’ world-weariness is becoming wearying in itself; a little more light and shade here and there would easily take this cult director to the next level. That is, if he wants to go.

Venice Film Review: Mel Gibson in ‘Dragged Across Concrete’
S. Craig Zahler continues to test the limits of B-movie form in this outsize bad-cop drama, to alternately exhilarating and unpleasant effect.

https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/dragged-across-concrete-review-mel-gibson-1202924928/

If you’re out to criticize “Dragged Across Concrete,” the latest supersized exploitation opus from writer-director S. Craig Zahler, on charges of gratuitously provocative violence, misogyny, racial discourse or the mere presence of right-wing firebrand Mel Gibson in the lead, know that the film issues a preemptive retaliation in its own script. “I don’t politick and I don’t change with the times,” spits Gibson’s bent, brusque cop Ridgeman, after being disciplined for using excessive force on a perp. “And it turns out that sh-t’s more important than good, honest work.” Thirty years on from the bad-cop hijinks of “Lethal Weapon,” Gibson’s now the one who’s too old for said sh-t, though Ridgeman and Murtaugh, Danny Glover’s weary detective from that 1987 smash, would probably define the grind of their job very differently.

Zahler’s film places a lot of these wink-wink reactionary assertions in the mouths of Gibson and Vince Vaughn— noted Hollywood conservatives both, of course — as old-school policemen who run topically afoul of a crackdown on brutality in the force, with personally ruinous consequences. As in his last feature, the pummeling, Vaughn-starring “Brawl in Cell Block 99,” it’s for viewers to determine whether “Dragged Across Concrete” is complicit in such politics or taking a more ambivalently observational stance: Does it heroize its flawed white male characters for their flawed white maleness, or admonish them via the grimy downward spiral of their narrative?

Either way, as is now Zahler’s custom three features into a distinctive oeuvre, we get ample time to ponder these ambiguities. At a whopping 158 minutes, “Concrete’s” sleek, languorous anatomy of a heist represents the filmmaker’s most extreme exercise yet in painstaking genre deceleration, sparked as ever by the tangy movie-movie vernacular of his writing, the crunchy metal-on-asphalt dynamism of his craftsmanship, and the back-from-the-brink reanimation of his stars.

In this case, that chiefly applies to Gibson. Sporting an ashy brush cut and a roadkill mustache, he rewards Zahler’s trust with his most calmly committed performance since well before the downfall era, even as the script seemingly plays on the most controversial aspects of the star’s latter-day public persona. When Ridgeman manhandles the nude Latina girlfriend of a suspect to extract information, pushing her under a cold shower and jeering at her ethnicity, it’s a wince-inducing spectacle of art imitating tabloid life. His younger partner Lurasetti (Vaughn) is the more temperate and ethically conscious of the two, and even he’s a crude, heedless racist — though he dimly insists that ordering “a cup of dark roast every Martin Luther King Day” proves otherwise.

Developed in parallel with, if a little less generously than, the cops’ story is that of African-American career criminal Henry (a laconic, charismatic Tory Kittles), who has no sooner been released from a lengthy prison spell than he’s roped into another underworld job by his childhood pal Biscuit (Michael Jai White). (Zahler positively revels in such clichés of crime-film plotting, the basic hubs around which his less orthodox genre mechanics spin.) Together, the men agree to serve as getaway drivers for a large-scale bank robbery masterminded by the ruthless Vogelmann (Thomas Kretschmann), with the agreement that no one will get killed unless in self-defense. That’s the falsest of pinky swears in an S. Craig Zahler film, where blasted body parts and grand jet-sprays of cherry-cola blood are very much part of the deal.

Unluckily for them — well, for all involved parties, really — it’s the same heist that Ridgeman decides to intercept (following a tipoff from a ripe Udo Kier) after he and Lusaretti are both suspended from duty for violent arrest tactics. Law-keeping is not the objective this time, however; fearing his job may be lost forever, and under pressure from his MS-stricken ex-force wife (Laurie Holden) to move to a safer, more affluent neighborhood, the disgraced cop is simply after the money. Initially reluctant but likewise motivated by financial strain, Lusaretti hops along for the ride. And a slow ride it is for what, by heist-movie standards, remains a pretty straightforward scheme: Zahler is less concerned with knotty complications and double- or triple-crossings than he is with simply getting a firm grip on the people involved.

Indeed, the most absorbing sections of “Dragged Across Concrete” are actually its most serenely conversational, as his characters shoot the blue-aired breeze while on stakeouts that stretch languidly across days, or while tailing vehicles in virtual real time on the interstate highway. In these stretches, the film is fat with the sharpest, seamiest stylistic pleasures of Zahler’s filmmaking, from the mustardy midnight haze of Benji Bakshi’s widescreen lensing to a terrific original song score that improbably matches Zahler’s high-kitsch lyrics to the creamy harmonies of revived soul collective The O’Jays.

Best of all, Zahler’s dialogue is pithy and rhythmic as ever, packed with irresistibly heightened turns of phrase that, at their peak (“It’s bad for you, it’s bad for me, it’s bad like lasagne in a can”) sound like the product of caffeinated all-night writer’s-room sessions between Quentin Tarantino and Dr. Seuss. The sheer fizz of that idiom propels “Concrete” past a lot of distasteful indulgence, but it’s still doesn’t quite justify lavishing this outsize runtime on such quick-and-dirty potboiler material. Certain digressions — notably a lengthy domestic interlude on Jennifer Carpenter’s bank employee, a new mother loath to return to work on what proves to be very much the wrong day for it — wind up playing as taunting shaggy-dog tales; women get particularly short shrift here, often cruelly dispatched for getting in the middle of the boys’ risky business.

Zahler’s script has an inbuilt response to those misgivings, too, as its police meatheads rail repeatedly against liberal values they perceive as oppressive: “People react to every perceived intolerance with complete and utter intolerance,” Ridgeman fumes between racist rants, before his superior (a sighing, grizzled Don Johnson) cautions him against losing “perspective and compassion.” Is the film on the boss’s side, or in tacit, dog-whistling sync with the cop’s lament? Egged on by that sly, close-to-the-bone casting, the film’s self-reflexivity tips too far at points into self-regard. Its sympathies, however, just about hang in the balance, as the upper hand keeps shifting among this sordid convention of losers.

 

[6 Rings G.O.A.T.]

 

[a-friend]

Wow @ Dragged Across Conrcrete
That is a lot to stomach.

 

[calibeebee]

Infinity War 4.9/8

These superhero movies are continually underwhelming. Glad I only paid redbox prices.
Thanos wack. Character motives wack. Random bad guys wack. Dialogue wack.

But HEY! Cool CGI!

 

[4one5]

Kimchi Papi

Any of those on HBO right now?

André the Giant doc is on HBO.

 

[hand2handking]

Infinity War 4.9/8

These superhero movies are continually underwhelming. Glad I only paid redbox prices.
Thanos wack. Character motives wack. Random bad guys wack. Dialogue wack.

But HEY! Cool CGI!

Dont post that in the marvel thread

Them dudes cant handle no criticism of that movie at all

 

[|A-Man|]

Infinity War 4.9/8

These superhero movies are continually underwhelming. Glad I only paid redbox prices.
Thanos wack. Character motives wack. Random bad guys wack. Dialogue wack.

But HEY! Cool CGI!

If you thought it was whack 4.9 is a bit high, no?

 

[mastamind033]

RIP Burt Reynolds

 

[calibeebee]

If you thought it was whack 4.9 is a bit high, no?

That’s like a D- fam

 

[|A-Man|]

Oh **** wow, in the world of Shooter the president is Mexican.

I know all sort of shows are tapping in to the zeitgeist but this blew my mind a bit. I kept thinking Red walked in to a room that just looked like the Oval office

That’s like a D- fam

Out of 8? Seems closer to a C given its basically a 5.

Still seems high.

 

[6 Rings G.O.A.T.]

 

[6 Rings G.O.A.T.]

Rest in peace, Burt Reynolds.

 

[hand2handking]

Facing Overwhelming Hollywood Backlash, Academy Shelves 'Most Popular' Oscar
After much backlash, the Oscars are officially postponing that whole "Popular Film" award

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/academy-drops-popular-oscar-now-193730614.html

Most Popular Oscar, we hardly knew you — and few, it seems, are going to miss you." data-reactid="15" style="margin-bottom: 1em;">Most Popular Oscar, we hardly knew you — and few, it seems, are going to miss you.

This afternoon, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) revealed that it’s putting plans for its controversial new award — which was announced only last month — on indefinite hold, because the idea “merits further study.” In a statement, the academy made it clear that the 91st Oscars (scheduled for Feb. 24, 2019) will not feature the prize for “most outstanding achievement in popular film” because implementing it so late into the cinematic calendar year creates “challenges” that can’t be properly dealt with before the telecast. A timetable for a permanent decision on the matter remains, for now, unknown.

In a statement, academy CEO Dawn Hudson said, “There has been a wide range of reactions to the introduction of a new award, and we recognize the need for further discussion with our members. We have made changes to the Oscars over the years — including this year — and we will continue to evolve while also respecting the incredible legacy of the last 90 years.”" data-reactid="17" style="margin-bottom: 1em;">In a statement, academy CEO Dawn Hudson said, “There has been a wide range of reactions to the introduction of a new award, and we recognize the need for further discussion with our members. We have made changes to the Oscars over the years — including this year — and we will continue to evolve while also respecting the incredible legacy of the last 90 years.”

Although the new award seemed designed to help attract mainstream-moviegoer viewers (after last year’s show tallied all-time low ratings for ABC), the Board of Governors’ decision to approve the “most popular Oscar” was met with widespread criticism. That stemmed from the fact that the rules by which it would operate weren’t clearly laid out — leading to industry confusion just as fall film festivals were getting set to kick off the end-of-year award season — and because, existing alongside the Best Picture category, it appeared to unnecessarily distinguish between popularity and critical acclaim (thus doing a disservice to contenders in both fields).

At the time of its announcement, Chadwick Boseman said that the award — which many viewed as the academy’s means of guaranteeing that Black Panther takes home a significant trophy — was of no interest to him and his Marvel team: “We don’t know what it [the new prize] is, so I don’t know whether to be happy about it or not. What I can say is that there’s no campaign [that we are mounting] for popular film; like, if there’s a campaign, it’s for best picture, and that’s all there is to it.”

He wasn’t alone, as many other celebs also spoke out against the ill-defined proposal:

Thus, it’s unsurprising that many cinephiles have immediately cheered the academy’s newfound decision to put this unpopular popularity award on the shelf, at least for the foreseeable future:

Presumably, only Mark Wahlberg is mourning the news.

 

[keko jones]

Can it be that a lot of mediocre films could win the award?

Or that predominantly black films might win it year in and out?

 

[shotimesheff]

The Nun 4.5/8 - Was expecting a lot more. The jump scares were weak and the origin was rushed. Still a cool demon/villain whatever you want to call it.