Chorus.Fm Weekly Movie Club • Page 9

My pick is Igby Goes Down and it’s one I’ve been wanting to rewatch since high school. I’m sure it’s not great but oh well! It has a great cast though.

Streaming on prime and tubi.

 

I liked Meek's Cutoff a LOT despite it being verrrrry deliberately paced. The beauty of the landscape contrasted against the million ways in which we should never have survived our hubristic expansion into it. Great shit.

 

Needed some time to sit and think about Exotica after I watched it last night. The film explores the transactional nature of intimacy and the ways in which people navigate their losses and desires. Atom Egoyan invites us to make assumptions about the characters and their motives by withholding information at every turn. However, as the narrative progresses, those assumptions unravel, and the intricate layers of vulnerability and longing that drive each character's actions are revealed. This leaves us with an ending that is as equally rewarding as it is devastating.

 

Party Girl was a lot of fun! Parker Posey was hilarious as a 20-something-year-old loser, doomed to drunkenly roll herself up the stairs of her New York City apartment and then roll back down again the next morning for eternity, until one day she decides to become a librarian lol. A great pick for Pride Month.

 

It's been a busy last couple of weeks, but I finally finished Bad Boys. It's got a lot of the typical awful things that have been covered to death about Michael Bay, but the chemistry between Lawrence and Smith really does make this a fun ride. It's pretty easy to remember why Will Smith was one of the biggest stars of the 90s.

 

Slaughterhouse-Five - While George Roy Hill successfully captures the essence of Vonnegut's narrative, there's a certain depth and poignancy present in the novel that isn't fully realized in the film adaptation.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the movie; Michael Sacks gives a commendable performance as Billy Pilgrim, effectively capturing the character's detached demeanor and inner turmoil and there were several clever match cuts used throughout to convey the shifting timelines. However, there's a certain elusive quality that prevents it from reaching the same heights as the novel.

 

I wasn't expecting Bad Boys to be good, obviously, but I was at least hoping it would have been fun. Ended up being quite dull and a tough watch.

 

I agree, that's the number one thing missing for me. Sack's did a great job of bringing the detached and somewhat aloof nature of the character to life, there's still a bit missing. Throughout the book, you get the feeling Pilgrim has some underlying feeling of guilt for everything that happened in the war and he's trying to escape it. There are hints of it, but it's never fully realized in the film.

 

Meek's Cutoff was great. The deliberate, creeping pace coupled with the barren landscape creates an inescapable sense of dread. Bruce Greenwood is great chewing up the scenery next to what are pretty reserved performances from everyone else.

 

Igby Goes Down was ok, which was a surprise as a huge hater of Catcher in the Rye teen boy melodrama and House of Leaves year 2000 edgyness but adding dysfunction family dynamics with an extremely watch cast saves it. The humour wasnt quite landing but it wasnt grating.

Not a fair comparison but within a frame of art as an expression of culture (similar late 90s early 2000s tone/genre) Infinite Jest blows away everything igby was and trying to do.

 

@Greg is up.

 

Oh shoot, I guess I never subscribed to the thread and have missed everything. I have a lot going on right now. Can I skip this time and I’ll be ready for the next one. Sorry!

 

@Daniel would be next.

 

I already went when Sheriff and Greg didn't respond the first time.

 

Well I'm just jumping the line then.

Something I've wanted to rewatch for a while is Four Lions. It is a comedy about a bumbling group of Islamic fundamentalists trying to become world-renowned terrorists. They say the best comedies attempt to disarm their target by making them look stupid, and it definitely applies here.

It is also free on YouTube.

 

Four Lions is great

 

Oh man, I love Four Lions. Excited to rewatch it.

 

Just finished Igny Goes Down. I’m a sucker for coming of age stories, but outside of Kieran Culkin I didn’t find much to enjoy. The dysfunctional dynamic of the family just felt forced with every new wrinkle.

There’s a handful of scenes that are shot in a very stylized manner which just feel tonally off. Like when his brother is talking about finding the cabinets full of his dad’s cigarettes. It’s shot the same way you would show Batman revealing his gadgets or something.

I also never really liked Catcher in the Rye that much when I read it in school, so the similarities with this were never going to work for me.

 

I love Four Lions. Dark as hell and super funny.

 

Have slipped off this for various reasons, but I adore Four Lions, so any excuse for a revisit is worth it for me.

I'm not sure if Chris Morris has much of a reputation outside of the UK, but his TV news satire Brass Eye, particularly the "Paedogeddon" special are absolutely essential viewing, that feels completely timeless, and still dangerous watching it today.

It used to be on Youtube, but I can't find it now, but if all you know of him is Four Lions, "Paedogeddon" is definitely worth the effort to track down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paedogeddon

Here's some high praise from the Daily Mail, if you're on the fence about it...

 

Well now I want to track this down. Hot damn.

 

I found it on DailyMotion last night;

 

I genuinely can't believe someone agreed to broadcast satire like this. Jonathan Swift himself might raise an eyebrow.

And of all the great jokes (and there are a bunch, especially the Eminem parody) somehow the loudest laugh for me was in the middle of a long list of insults calling him The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

 

Just watched Four Lions, very funny and as a comedy film it's great.


As far as its attempt to contribute to the de-radicalization of islam it probably does as well as it can while being a comedy film written and directed by non muslims. Well researched, considerate, avoids the harmful stereotypes and still attacks the absurdity of extremism with bite.

i was dying at smooth running, "slow but fast, fast but smooth" the knife and fork bit too

 

Re-watched this today, one of the best British films of the past twenty years or so, and a shame that Chris Morris isn't more prolific.

It does feel a bit like Iannucci's The Thick of It / In the Loop, where it's coming in almost as the swansong to New Labour and the Britain / world of the 00's, before a new political reality started to appear just after it.

Absolutely crammed full of great lines, one that really caught me on this watch was, "You can't win an argument just by being right", which feels like a line straight out of a Stewart Lee show.