Let's All Go to the Movies

LurchingBeast can have Robert Pattinson as favorite Harry Potter actor.

I am starting to really appreciate Daniel Radcliffe. 🤣

www.unilad.co.uk

Daniel Radcliffe Won’t Get Twitter Because He Knows He’d Argue With People

<p>Unlike most celebrities, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has chosen to stay off social media because he thinks he’d end up getting into arguments with people. With the likes of Emma Watson, Tom Felton and, most recently, Rupert Grint on Instagram, 31-year-old Radcliffe won’t be joining...
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OceanOfMead said:
LurchingBeast can have Robert Pattinson as favorite Harry Potter actor.

I am starting to really appreciate Daniel Radcliffe. 🤣

www.unilad.co.uk

Daniel Radcliffe Won’t Get Twitter Because He Knows He’d Argue With People

<p>Unlike most celebrities, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has chosen to stay off social media because he thinks he’d end up getting into arguments with people. With the likes of Emma Watson, Tom Felton and, most recently, Rupert Grint on Instagram, 31-year-old Radcliffe won’t be joining...
www.unilad.co.uk www.unilad.co.uk
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His Hot Ones was great yesterday.
 
I liked Mank. Beautifully shot. A little slow in parts but overall very enjoyable. Oldman is unsurprisingly good, but I actually enjoyed Amanda Seyfried and Tom Pelphrey quite a bit. Idk. Maybe I just really love Mean Girls and Ozark.

I also watched Whiplash. As a kid that used to routinely play the drums until my hands bled and my parents yelled at me to knock it the fuck off from ages 11 to whenever I got disillusioned with music in my twenties I can identify with a lot of the content of this movie. Wanting to be great so bad you would run to a stage covered in your own blood is a thing I would have done when I was 19 without hesitation. That sort of toxic environment is also bullshit and people thrive all the time without some monster yelling homophobic slurs at them. But I still thought the presentation felt authentic and enjoyed the story.
 
seedavid said:
I liked Mank. Beautifully shot. A little slow in parts but overall very enjoyable. Oldman is unsurprisingly good, but I actually enjoyed Amanda Seyfried and Tom Pelphrey quite a bit. Idk. Maybe I just really love Mean Girls and Ozark.

I also watched Whiplash. As a kid that used to routinely play the drums until my hands bled and my parents yelled at me to knock it the fuck off from ages 11 to whenever I got disillusioned with music in my twenties I can identify with a lot of the content of this movie. Wanting to be great so bad you would run to a stage covered in your own blood is a thing I would have done when I was 19 without hesitation. That sort of toxic environment is also bullshit and people thrive all the time without some monster yelling homophobic slurs at them. But I still thought the presentation felt authentic and enjoyed the story.
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Man I love Whiplash. I actually thought it should’ve won best picture the year if came out. So intense. A double feature of that and Uncut Gems would probably kill me.
 
seedavid said:
I also watched Whiplash. As a kid that used to routinely play the drums until my hands bled and my parents yelled at me to knock it the fuck off from ages 11 to whenever I got disillusioned with music in my twenties I can identify with a lot of the content of this movie. Wanting to be great so bad you would run to a stage covered in your own blood is a thing I would have done when I was 19 without hesitation. That sort of toxic environment is also bullshit and people thrive all the time without some monster yelling homophobic slurs at them. But I still thought the presentation felt authentic and enjoyed the story.
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Yeah Whiplash is great. Of course it takes liberties to create drama, but that's what's needed in movie making. The music is outstanding and there are some great moments.

The only thing that takes me out of it is how Simmons is supposed to be this incredible musician/director, but when he comes into the club, his piano solo is so fucking simple and amateurish. They couldn't have had an actual pianist record a great solo and cut around him playing?!
 
Just watched Irresistible. Went in with low/no expectations. Honestly we could not remember why we wanted to watch it. Once it started up and we started hearing Trump talking we were like “oh, one of these...” 😒 Then we saw Steve Carell “Oh.” And Jon Stewart’s name “Oh I remember why we wanted to watch this.” And then Bob Seger’s “Still the Same” started playing. So while the movie wasn’t filmed in Wisconsin, the small town midwest culture is nailed pretty well. I don’t want to spoil why I found it so funny but so much of it was small “that’s so Wisconsin!” things.
 
Really enjoyed Mank. Especially Oldman’s performance and the production values though. You can tell from the score down to the way the sound field mirrors a 1940s film down to the cigarette butts and scratching at “reel changes” that the whole thing was a labor of love by Fincher.
 
Mank (7/10), despite the many auteur details mainly involving the photography and post-production, is probably Fincher's most approachable movie yet. Much funnier than I expected, though the script is very Sorkin-inspired with it's quippy verbal sparring matches and big grandstanding scenes. The entirety of the drunken dinner scene and the Organ Grinder's Monkey monologue are painfully Sorkin. What is supposed to be the big turning point for Mank's character ended up my least favorite 'episode'. Mank consists of a dozen or so of these 'episodes' or vignettes, jumping around through the moments of washed up Hollywood writer Herman Mankiewicz's life that inspired his seismic screenwriting achievement, Citizen Kane. Deliberately structuring Mank similarly to Citizen Kane is one of the many homages to the Welles' film. The vignette where Mank and Marion Davies (played by a never better Amanda Seyfried) walk and talk (*cough* another Sorkin staple) after a contentious dinner party was easily my favorite as it's the closest we get to understanding the most important people in this telling of the story.

The acting is at a seriously high level throughout. As expected, Gary Oldman commands every scene and will be the front-runner for another Oscar (though I would keep Delroy Lindo at the top of my ballot). Especially impressive because Mankiewicz himself might be the least interesting character in the story. But Amanda Seyfried matches Oldman in all of her scenes in a supporting role. She's goddamn radiant as Marion Davies, though it is helped that she is lit differently than every other actor in the movie.

I thought the story itself lacked some detail in Mank's character motivations and depth in regards to his personal relationships. I was more interested in Marion Davies or even Mank's wife to be honest. I couldn't help but think Fincher's attention to the aesthetics got in the way of telling a great story. The old-timey sound design really works, while some of the minute details like the scratches and cue marks feel like overkill. I can't say if it's how the film was lit but I watched it in UHD and the black and white had a very muddy look that made me consider the limitations of digital filmmaking. Cold War, for example, looks far more impressive in this regard.

Reading this back, it comes off as a negative review. I LIKED IT! Maybe my expectations were too high for what is supposed to be 2020's The Big One from a director I really admire.

Go watch Citizen Kane. Then watch Mank, my favorite Aaron Sorkin movie of 2020.
 
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