Film Junk Podcast Episode #190: W. and Let The Right One In
0:00 – Intro / In-House Stuff
6:25 – Greg’s Border Crossing Story
17:15 – Headlines: Zack and Miri Marketing Trouble, Muppets Murder Mystery, Robert Downey Jr. Tropic Thunder Oscar Campaign
34:10 – What We Watched: The Thing, Durham County, The Norm Show, The Express, Standard Operating Procedure
59:15 – Junk Mail: More Driving Tests, Zellers, David Lynch, Movies That Change Your View on Life, Pretentious Movies
1:15:00 – Review: W.
1:43:33 – Review: Let The Right One In
1:50:05 – This Week’s DVD Releases
1:53:45 – Outro
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Comments (11)
I anxiously await hearing your assessment of W. (probably listen to it on my jog tomorrow morning). I thought it was a severely flawed and unassured movie that was nonetheless really entertaining, mostly due to Josh Brolin’s and James Cromwell’s performances.
Posted by Joel on October 21st, 2008One movie that strikes me as “most pretentious” is Harmony Korine’s “Gummo”– or, really, anything he does.
Posted by Jon Rocks on October 21st, 2008I Heart Huckabees is one pretentious piece of crap.
Posted by swarez on October 21st, 2008I Heart I Heart Huckabees.
Posted by Kurt on October 21st, 2008I Heart I Heart Huckabees only during the scenes where Naomi Watts wears a bikini.
Posted by ColinZeal on October 21st, 2008Wow, Greg hangs out with “tattoo models” who work for the “suicide prevention hotline”? I gotta move to Canada!
Seriously though, most of us Americans aren’t cocksuckers. Well, OK, it’s more like a 50/50 split. But I’m sure most countries are like that. It’s just that only cocksuckers get hired as border guards (same thing down here on the southern border).
Posted by Joel on October 21st, 2008I dont get what people find pretentious about Huckabees. It’s a goofball movie, and all the philosophical mumbo jumbo is more or less driving the insanity rather than trying to impress you or convince you it’s smart. It’s just digging into the weirdo zone from a different angle.
Posted by Goon on October 21st, 2008Naw, it’s balls.
Posted by swarez on October 21st, 2008Oh– “The Squid and the Whale” is a really pretentious movie. In fact– all of Noah Baumbach’s stuff would probably qualify as pretentious.
Posted by Jon Rocks on October 21st, 2008here’s my rebuttal to Jay re: biopics
In general, I like them. I mean, I actually agree with a LOT of Jay’s points, and his ongoing references to Man on the Moon as a prime example is bang on. But I think theres very good reasons why they win awards, and think its a tad unfair to lump them all together.
I think many of them actually have real stories to tell with actual underlying main lessons and themes.
First off, to why they win awards – they are meaty roles that when done well, require more acting than a lot of other roles, where people are just essentially playing themselves. There’s really not a lot of original movies with new characters people have to get into. “Sling Blade” doesn’t happen that often, and I guess its this mentality that allows for maybe, RDJ to get consideration for Tropic Thunder or for Depp to get consideration for Pirates. Also, on the female side, there really aren’t a whole lot of great movies where the female gets to carry the film. I absolutely 100% support the decision for Mirren to win for “The Queen” – there was nothing else as juicy that required acting or depth, and she brought it to the role.
As for certain films, well here’s a few examples, and funny enough, a couple are Milos Forman films, who also did Man on the Moon.
Amadeus and The People vs. Larry Flynt – some of my favorite films, and are immensely rewatchable. They are telling stories of their lives, but in Amadeus’ case there’s the theme of jealousy and talent and framing it into somewhat of a thriller. With Larry Flynt there’s the cool aspect of the love story with a pornographer as the main character, and I love the themes of fighting for rights and freedoms. The lines about having to protect the worst in society to protect yourself really stuck with me, and overall that movie actually would fall in the category of movies that shaped how I think about things. Saw it when I was around 16 and was still shaping these ideas around. In The Queen there’s the cool part of how they limited the story to just this one short time, and showing basically Old Britain vs. New Britain, the contrasts between Blairs messy house and the palace, their ideas, and the relevance of the Monarchy. Love that movie.
And then there’s Capote, which is one of my favorite films of this decade, if not all time. It’s absolutely devastating and I can’t watch it with other people because they just break down bawling by the end, how having this goal to create a masterpiece can at the same time destroy your life forever. And while Capote HAS to do somewhat of an impression to play him, lets face it, the impression is nowhere near as good as the one in “Infamous”, where Toby pretty much WAS Capote, a perfect impression. But Hoffman’s better suits his film and even though they cover the same events, it has better focus towards its themes, and the actual filmmaking around it reflects that, through colors and scenery and tone. Infamous gets dragged down by talking head cutaway reflective narration and going too far with making up what may have happened, and loading so many more stars in there in unimportant parts. The first time I saw Capote I thought it was just okay, but on repeated viewings I find more and more that its to me, pretty much a perfect film.
Going back to the Queen again, the scene with her staring at the deer was the best scene of the year for me. It probably never happened, in fact almost assuredly never happened, but it says a whole lot more about the character in that film than any historical recreation could. When directors can pull this off, I really dig it.
As for the vast number of other films like this, from A Beautiful Mind to Ray, etc, theres much to knock but at the same time, I can point out a lot to praise. ABM wants to create empathy, and I think it succeeds, while Ray of course is all about the performance. I can’t knock Foxx one bit for becoming Ray Charles so well if he could. You can only blame the hack director, Taylor Hackford, for not being able to build around it.
Then there’s the John Adams HBO series, which I just finished watching last week and loved a lot. It’s sort of a biopic, but its not really concerned about Giamatti becoming this guy, its simply that this guy played such a central role in so many of the important parts of the American Revolution, so he was an ideal choice to go tell it around, and bring his human story with it to give it more oomph, bring his big family and their sacrifices and suffering into it.
Posted by Goon on October 22nd, 2008Amadeus is a biopic to the same extent that Lost in Translation is a romantic comedy.
Posted by Henrik on October 22nd, 2008Leave a Reply