Unrelated

OK, I had to stop this and download subtitles from the pirates (if pirates can create subtitles, why can’t DVDs carry subtitles? (because fans will do this sort of thing for free, but the people who make the DVDs can’t afford to anybody)), because the first few scenes were totally incomprehensible to me. Which is doubly weird because I think the audio has been done after it was filmed?

So this looks like it was filmed on one of those early digital cameras? So this looks pretty bad except in scenes like this.

I’m not sure whether the general aimlessness of the movie is because Hogg wanted to depict this kind of aimlessness or whether they basically just went to Italy and mostly improvised the movie?

There’s genuinely unnerving scenes, though.

And scenes like this just seem a bit too staged for the aesthetic?

Uhm uhm uhm I just couldn’t get into this movie. It seems like totally the thing I’d like, and the cinematography (modulo the horrible digital cameras) is good, and the performances are good, but I just didn’t connect.

Unrelated. Joanna Hogg. 2007. ⚃

Fall Guy

It’s a cute opening to the movie, but… it felt like an exposition dump? While pretending to be witty repartee? It was just a bit odd.

That’s some awesome… wig work.

So is this all about Tom Cruise? But doesn’t he do a lot of his own stunts?

Eep!

If there’s one thing huge audiences love, it’s a movie about making movies. I can’t think of any movie like this that has bombed, except all of them.

Yeah, it lost a lot of money. But not historically.

It’s cute and it’s amusing, but it just moves so slowly. The movie is 2h25m long, and it feels like all these scenes could have been cut. Even though they’re cute.

… oh! I’m watching the extended cut? It’s 20m longer than the proper version. Oops.

It seems pretty obvious what scenes were cut… like this one? I mean, I’m just guessing, but…

Heh heh

Yeah, OK, I like all the stunts and stuff — and they’re supposed to be all? mostly? practical — but the way they’re filmed, they just don’t pop like they should. I mean, most everything has been desaturated in the way movies are to match up real footage with CGI, so it’s just hard to be as enthusiastic as you’re supposed to be.

So, like, this looks 100% fake an embarrassing — but it might just be because of how it’s composited.

I dunno… The first half of this movie, I was on board, but then the last nine hours have kinda dragged? But then again, I’m watching the extended cut (which was a mistake).

Those are weird glasses. Did they CGI in the sky reflection in every shot?

These are the things you start wondering about when you’re not quite invested in the movie.

I’m totally willing to believe that the theatrical release of this was better, but I was just bored silly through large parts of this extended version.

But this movie just has a basic problem with the aesthetics. It’s supposedly a love letter to practical stunts — and there were a lot of them in this movie. But they all looked like shit! Because they were all colour graded into oblivion and composited, so even the realest stunt looked as bad as the cheapest CGI these days.

It’s like they had no confidence in the central concept of this thing but had to hedge.

Fall Guy. David Leitch. 2024. ⚃

Storytelling

Hey! AOL Time Warner! That was a thing.

Solondz is unable to get financing for his movies these days… but on the other hand, you have to ask yourself why we were subjecting ourselves to his movies in the first place. I need more pillows to hide behind while watching this.

Wow, weird desks. You can’t adjust the chairs?

DING DING BITING SATIRE WARNING DING DING

Well, I dunno. It’s such an aggressive movie — it’s designed to get a rise out of people. And the second part of it seems designed to be critic proof — Solondz has already made all the criticism you could make, so ha ha!

I think the only way the two parts work is that the second part tries to defuse any objections you had to the first part? And that’s just ass covering. So it’s no wonder that the featured review on imdb is: