Patrick R

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    2342

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Patrick R

  1. Posted

    I did not think this year was a strong year but I saw more new movies than any year previous, so I still saw more good movies than last year. 2015 and 2013 were amazing years, though. I think a big disconnect for me that happened this year is that 2017 was the worst year of my life, largely because of the cultural climate in America, and it felt like there weren't any films at all that actually addressed that.

     

    Obviously due to the nature of film production almost every 2017 film was in pre-production before Trump was elected but it still created a massive whiplash for me. Killing of a Sacred Deer was the only film I saw that felt it captured the feeling of living in 2017, even though it too was made before any of this and was almost certainly not a specific reaction to the cultural climate of America. That was a very cathartic film, I think I exorcised a lot of dark shit laughing my ass off.

  2. Posted

    I recorded a massive two-part 5-hour podcast about 2017 films with my friend and former podcast co-host Jim. In it we talked about our favorite films of the year.

     

    Part 1

    Part 2

     

    And my top films of the year were:

     

    25. The Babysitter
    24. Call Me By Your Name
    23. Columbus
    22. Snowflake 
    21. The Meyerowitz Stories
    20. Mother!
    19. Baby Driver
    18. I Am Not Your Negro
    17. Three Billboards
    16. The Florida Project
    15. Good Time
    14. Blade Runner 2049
    13. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
    12. Lady Bird
    11. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
    10. Tragedy Girls
    9. Dunkirk
    8. The Square 
    7. Wormwood
    6. Get Out
    5. Personal Shopper
    4. John Wick Chapter 2 
    3. The Crescent
    2. Staying Vertical
    1. Killing of a Sacred Deer

  3. Posted

    Pac-Man Championship Edition DX Nitro+ Blasterz Xrd HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue is super satisfying but I have only played about an hour and I'm not sure what if any strategies I should be employing. The fun is that I'm flying by the seat of my pants (not unlike the original Pac-Man) but it feels like maybe there's more nuance to getting a high score than that, especially on the shorter time trials where the optimal route feels very obvious I'm not sure how I could do them faster.

  4. Posted

    Apparently that iron joke was a true blue reference to Hardware Wars(?!?!?), which is maybe the purest distillation of Johnson's approach I can think of. Dude snuck a Hardware Wars reference into a real life main-line Star Wars movie.

  5. Posted

    I have hearing loss and if I haven't seen a movie before I always opt for subtitles to be on, especially if there are other noises happening like the dishwasher going. However, if I'm familiar with a movie and know it well enough that making out every line of dialogue isn't necessary for me to follow the story I will turn them off because I do find them distracting to some extent. And Jennegatron is definitely correct about them ruining jokes in comedies.

  7. Posted

    In Christmas movies like Miracle on 34th Street and The Santa Clause where Santa is real but adults don't believe in him, what does Santa actually do? Because if he delivers presents to all the boys and girls of the world, where do their parents think those presents came from? And If he doesn't, what good is he?

  8. Posted

    Interesting! That certainly explains why they are so ubiquitous and conspicuously clutter the frame in so many of those scenes, which is what made me think of Star Wars Special Edition. On the other hand, this movie is already positively cluttered with new Star Wars creatures elsewhere so it still feels kind of Special Edition to me throughout, and puffin replacement doesn't explain that scene of Chewie traumatizing the porgs, or their return in the Falcon, and I do think those moments are designed to sell stuffed animals.

     

    On the other hand, part of my respect for this movie is that everyone gets a character arc, and if he wasn't going to actually affect the plot in any way, Chewie's relationship with the porgs is a cute way to not forget about him.

  9. Posted

    16 minutes ago, itsamoose said:

     

     

      Hide contents

     

     


    The sequence with Luke, Kylo and Rey on the island was fantastic in it's entirety.  
     

     

     

     

    I especially like the way Johnson plainly depicts the bridge between Kylo and Rey via simple editing. It felt similar to the way he depicted time travel mechanics in Looper. No sparks, no fading in or out, just not there one frame and suddenly there in the next. There was a more obvious CGI assisted visualization of their connection that could have happened, but the way Johnson just shoots them as shot/reverse shot, as if they were in the same scene, with the drastically different color schemes, is such a neat and unique visual. I don't know if I've ever seen psychic links depicted that way on film.



     

    Also, thank Christ the big reveal about Rey's parentage is that "she's no one special" because I was dreading the inevitable moment that they would tie her to some piece of Star Wars mythos and make the whole thing about fate and destiny and she's the special chosen one blah blah blah that every blockbuster does now.

  10. Posted

    Deathtrap and Sleuth are not that old ('82 and '72, respectively) but they make a positively wonderful "Verbose and Witty Two-Handed Single Location Michael Caine Play Adaptation Comedy Thrillers About Murder And People Talking About Murder" double feature. Sleuth is OOP and probably harder to track down legally (though I hear, through the grapevine, many OOP movies are uploaded in their entirety to YouTube) but Deathtrap is available on most legit streaming sites and on disc via Warner Archive.

     

    They are both somewhat tongue in cheek homages to the stage thrillers of the era that plays like Dial M for Murder made famous, but not so much that they turn into parody. Deathtrap is probably the more suspenseful of the two (director Sidney Lumet does really great work creating a metafictional aesthetic) while Sleuth is definitely the wittier and more verbose. If you've only seen Christopher Reeves as Superman Deathtrap is a real treat and proof that he was legitimately one of the great actors of his generation and if you've only seen Laurence Olivier in roles where he's hamming it up and shouting than...well that's exactly what you get in Sleuth, but it's great fun.

  11. Posted

    I really liked this! I was so happy with how irreverent it is. It has no reverence for what these movies are supposed to look like, no reverence for the kind (and amount!) of humor they're supposed to have, the tone they're supposed to have or the moral universe they exist in. As someone who feels very distanced from his peak Star Wars obsession circa 1996, that was the breath of fresh air I needed. 

     

     

    I especially like the step away from the mystical half-baked truism Force shit of the original and prequel trilogies. I always hated Jedis as an established religion, and thought Yoda and Obi Wan were really tedious characters when they were in wise teacher mode. Johnson sets fire to a lot of Star Wars mythology with his approach, as literally visualized by the tree setting on fire. Then it's followed by Yoda saying "Page turner, it was not" because no one in this movie feels like they come from a galaxy far far away. Like how they keep talking about fuel and use the phrase "running on fumes" which makes me wonder what those spaceships are actually powered by. If only there were 20 books detailing the technology of Star Wars.

     

    It feels like a half-step towards a Lord/Miller sensibility but the relentless playfulness (and even overly broad silliness) is tempered by a desire to follow through on the emotional journey of every character, no matter who, no matter how it screwed up the pacing. It feels personal and heartfelt in a way no Star Wars movie has since A New Hope. But A New Hope is an elegant weapon, not as clumsy or random as The Last Jedi.

     

    After Force Awakens I had no confidence in Disney to allow a movie this idiosyncratic to be part of the main trilogy and if it weren't JJ Abrams taking the reins again for the next one I'd say it's got me more invested in  Star Wars as an ongoing series than ever. Even as a 12 year old who thought Episode 1 was really cool and neat and keen, I had no desire to return to that world. But this was a great time and I am invested in the emotional lives of these space people, even the villains, and that's really something.

     

    On the other hand, I even liked the Porgs, and Porgs are objectively awful Star Wars Special Edition crap designed to sell stuffed animals over Christmas that feel extruded from the same think-tank as Minions. So maybe I'm some sort of lunatic.

  12. Posted

    I've really been enjoying Intrusion 2, which is sort of like Metal Slug if Metal Slug had a ton of jittery physics objects, but the second world boss is a massive pain in the ass and whenever he fires off his missiles the slowdown gets too bad for me to dodge them. Wish there was some sort of level select cheat so I could just skip it and move on to the next world but instead I'll just skip it altogether.

  13. Posted

     

    I mostly listened to old music this year but my favorite working band, A Giant Dog, put out a new album and while I prefer their previous two albums there's still some great stuff on it, like this.

     

    My favorite old music I discovered this year is The Platters, which is a 50's/60's vocal group. They're most famous for their rendition of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" but pretty much any one of their songs where tenor Tony Williams is the lead vocalist is a heart melter. 

     

     

     

    I bought myself the The Platters Ultimate Collection for my birthday and it's been wonderful seasonal music, with some of the same tenor and atmosphere of classic Christmas music but none of the schmaltz and, most importantly as a real-life Grinch, none of the Christmas.

  14. Posted

    The Disaster Artist is a very perfunctory and uninspired movie. Franco does a good Wiseau impression but reveals nothing about the character, so it's never more than that. I like movies about making movies and this had all that same behind-the-scenes fun but anyone expecting more out of it, closer to something like Ed Wood, will be sorely disappointed. That said, the audience I saw it with were mostly die-hard The Room people (and had tickets to see the monthly midnight screening immediately after) and they absolutely loved it so if you are a huge fan you'll probably like this more than me.

  17. Posted

    Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, making a 1920's era documentary is a crazy great thing to do in a game. I haven't played Firewatch yet (my laptop can't run it) but I hope by 2009 I have some piece of equipment that can run this because this is so up my alley. 

     

    If anyone from Campo Santo is reading this, what is the music in the trailer? I may well be mistaken but I'd be surprised if it's an original composition and I can't find the track listing anywhere where the trailer's been officially posted.

  18. Posted

    Out There Somewhere is a fun puzzle platformer with a teleport gun mechanic. It's awfully short (I got stuck on a couple puzzles and ended up finishing in 90 minutes) but it's only two dollars (and I think I got it for less via some Humble Bundle) and I definitely enjoyed it. My only complaint is the elements of combat, which are not great and it unfortunately doubles down on in the end.

  19. Posted

    Three Billboards Outside of Ebbings, Missouri is really exciting on a scene to scene basis but I really didn't buy any of it. McDonagh tries so hard to give the audience whiplash, emotionally and tonally, that it feels way too highly constructed for such a relatively realistic movie. There's a moment where Frances McDormand's character goes from hostile to nurturing on a dime's turn and it felt phony. Same with the redemption arc of the film's most despicable character. There's a lot of little moments where it feels like McDonagh is trying to make the characters complicated and instead just undermines their reality. Every character's actions seemed to stem from a screenwriter's desire to shock instead of their own inner state, especially the stuff with the letters*.

     

    But Frances McDormand is amazing and it has Martin McDonagh's trademark dialogue and about a hundred really good little storytelling moments. I just never really got lost in the story or characters. 

     

    As for the regressive/mean-spirited humor stuff, it's pretty clear that these are all bad, flawed people and I think it's more a device to key the audience not to root too hard for any one character than an expression of Martin McDonagh's actual beliefs. On the other hand, thinking that people this sexist/racist/homophobic/sizeist are so easily redeemable and worth empathizing with is definitely very, as the Twittersphere would say, "centerist", especially since none of the people of color get all the generous "depth" and "complication" that McDonagh grants the white characters. This is exacerbated by the fact that the film doesn't really have a moral center or even any one strong belief it holds. It tries to be bold and transgressive but actually feels quite timid in that way. It's like South Park, if South Park were funny.

  22. Posted

    I manually checked a bunch of directors on Letterboxd. Entirely possible I'm missing something, but I think these are my most watched directors:

    Woody Allen - 42

    Steven Spielberg - 34

    Robert Altman - 23

    Spike Lee - 23

    Buster Keaton - 21

    John Carpenter - 19

    Coen Brothers - 18

    Martin Scorsese - 17

    Wes Craven - 17

    Brian De Palma - 17

    David Lynch - 15

    Alfred Hitchcock - 14

    Roger Corman - 14

    Ridley Scott - 13

    Mario Bava - 13

    Billy Wilder - 12

    David Cronenberg - 12

    Richard Linklater - 12

    Michael Curtiz - 11

    Paul Thomas Anderson - 10

    Roman Polanski - 10

    Christopher Nolan - 10

    Joe Dante - 10

    Francis Ford Coppola - 10

    William Wyler - 10

    George Romero - 10

    David Fincher - 10

    Wes Anderson - 10

    Robert Zemeckis - 10

    John Huston - 9

    Kenneth Anger - 9
    Russ Meyer - 9

    Stanley Kubrick - 8

    Kathryn Bigelow - 8
    Anthony Mann - 8
    Robert Wise - 8

    Larry Cohen - 8

    David Mamet - 8
    Vincente Minelli - 8

    Quentin Tarantino - 8
    John Ford - 8

     

    Hard to imagine anyone topping Woody Allen, unless I start digging through and fully marking every single Loony Tunes cartoon I've ever seen, in which case it wouldn't surprise me if I've seen more Chuck Jones films than anything else.

  23. Posted

    On 11/26/2016 at 2:06 PM, Erkki said:

    Kelly Reichardt has made another great movie Certain Women. My favourite from PÖFF so far.

     

    I saw Certain Women last night and was blown away by it. Rarely is such gentle subtlety paired with such absolute emotional clarity. And it's so gorgeous!

  25. Posted

    On 8/6/2017 at 9:56 AM, Patrick R said:

    Yesterday I discovered that Martin McDonagh, the Irish playwright who wrote and directed the films In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, directed a short film with Brendan Gleason (one of the best actors around) in 2004 that won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. It's called Six Shooter and it very much operates in the pitch black tone of In Bruges, mixing a witty script with absolutely horrible things happening to already emotionally devastated people. The humor gets pretty dark but it's also really really funny, and if you liked In Bruges I'd recommend it.

     

     

     

    I think it's in theaters now in America and I'm anxious to see it. Dark, even mean-spirited humor is definitely Martin McDonagh's thing, and moralistically giving awful people their comeuppance is definitely not. A lot of his stuff (that I've seen, I'm pretty unfamiliar with his theatrical work) is very much about the ways people are nasty to each other and I'd be shocked if he put all that discriminatory humor in the film without at least trying to make a point about it.

     

    That said there's something to be said about trying to have your cake and eat it too and some of the jokes in In Bruges (especially the dwarf/fat American stuff) rubbed me the wrong way. Above is my post about his Oscar-winning 2004 short Six Shooter earlier in this thread and I think it's a pretty good indication of his bleak worldview.