The Gunfighter is terrific. Has to be one of the first psychological/revisionist westerns. It took serious balls to make a movie about a the fastest gun in the West and never show him quick drawing. And to make a western almost entirely indoors. But like a lot of the best westerns, the setting/period is just a vehicle and metaphor for a great story about human nature. Gregory Peck is perfectly laconic and it has some somewhat noir elements (not in visual style so much as tone).
John Wick: Chapter 2 - 9/10 K-19: The Widowmaker - 6.5/10 Solaris - 6/10 Carlito’s Way - 9/10 Cell - 1/10 Max Payne - 2/10 Self/less - 4.5/10 Saw my first film from this year at the cinema this week in the form of John Wick: Chapter 2 and it was a fantastic experience and mostly surpassed the first effort unfortunately the rest of the week was mostly not as strong. Cell has to be one of the worst films I have ever seen and Max Payne is just another video game film adaption that utterly fails to match the greatness of the games it is based on. K-19: The Widowmaker and Solaris are passable but not films I am likely to revisit whereas the same cannot be said of Carlito’s Way which I have seen multiple times and despite treading old ground I still love it, easily a favorite of mine from De Palma. Self/less has a interesting premise and a solid cast but strangles both under a sea of shallowness but at least wasn't painfully stupid like the previous two in the week.
I saw Dirty Grandpa because my girlfriend wanted to and it was definitely better than I expected it to be
The biggest blindspot in critical consensus is how they approach dumb comedies. Jake LaMotta putting his penis in his grandson's face is better than most of the Oscar nominees.
I just had this conversation with my friend. The way most critics review movies like that is just plain stupid but the reviews still slip into my mind when I think about watching them.
Moonlight was devastating, and has all the social urgency that La La Land lacks. Lion felt emotionally manipulative, albeit sincere. Didn't really take any chances with the craft. Arrival has a far less ambitious scope than Interstellar, but I actually kind of appreciate that about it. Hacksaw Ridge was expectedly tense and surprisingly poignant. Easily the most visual-oriented film. Hidden Figures was delightful. Like Lion, it felt really safe, but unlike Lion, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Don't need to watch it to see the general consensus from critics and audiences alike who see it as a pointlessly crass film that thinks it is edgy by stepping over the line but please offer up some poor excuse. One of the worst things as a film lover to me is intentionally watching an unfunny comedy and seen all I need to arrive at that conclusion.
No point when from what I have read, heard and seen it looks like the typical American comedy that thinks doing stupid crass things and saying offensive things for the sake of being offensive is somehow a good thing. When 68% of the 8000+ people on Letterboxed give it a 2 and a half star rating or less then watching it is just a waste of time even more so than the bad films I rated earlier in the week.
A lot of it comes from people being unable to break out of the hive mentality. It happens a lot with comedies, but it also happens in reverse with dramas, where they are massively overrated and then generally people walk away from them. It is less of a waste of time than movies you have liked such as Room and Up in the Air. It is not any sort of great movie but a very fun comedy that goes against the grain of the Apatow-led stealth conservatism of recent comedies.
I don't even like Apatow comedies, so going against the grain of something shit by being shit itself is hardly enticing. I would rather watch two films that are really good than something that is a carbon copy of every other gross out comedy that has infested the film industry for at least the last ten years but nice to see that you think you know how people think and are somehow so superior to not be impacted by such a mentality.
Super dope to argue about films you haven't even seen. Discussion should have ended when you admitted that
It comes from years of watching trends in the film industry and reading thoughtful commentary. Critics, especially newspaper critics, have to watch way too many movies and their writing suffers. You take a trailer and a January release, throw out some words, and go back to reviewing all the other films that need to be covered before your editor's deadline. This is not really controversial.
The homophobic charge was particularly illustrative; in the middle of the film DeNiro's character gives a thoughtful apology for his (and his generation's) homophobia and promises to be better after saving a gay man from being beaten up.
Not talking about professional critics though am I? I am talking about general audience consensus and even the best case scenario of a 6/10 on IMDb hardly paints the hilarious picture that you present and I was referencing a few reviews I had read but either way it still is the typical gross out comedy that people by and large haven't warmly received. Clear that you have in the past and even now like to go against the general consensus (for whatever reason) but doesn't make you any more right than the majority who disagree.