MOVIES

[ILLINIWrestlingBlog]

On 12/9/2024 at 9:05 AM, Danny Deck said:

Went to this over the weekend. I enjoyed it. Jude Law trying his best to be Gene Hackman. They did great with the robbery scenes.

 

 

 

"Jude Law trying his best to be Gene Hackman" is a good line and a smart career move. Cheers!

[ILLINIWrestlingBlog]

The very latest Rotten Tomatoes guide to free movies on YouTube is out for 2024. There are a number of tasty selections on the menu. I was going to watch Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga tonight, but I'm going cheap and will watch a free movie on YouTube. 

I'm leaning towards Source Code (2011), but I'm also going to eventually watch Train to Busan (2016). Also on the list is The Insider (1999). Thoughts? Recommendations? 

I'm also thinking about doing my own YouTube movie channel reviews. Because there aren't enough of them now. This'll have to be after the college season, though. 

[Danny Deck]

I hate this time of year. All of the "Opening on..." dates are lies as they mean opening in maybe 5 cities. Particularly looking forward to September 5 and The Brutalist. I find it particularly annoying that The Brutalist isn't going wide over the holidays because it's 3.5 hours. I'm going to set the time aside but work with me here on releasing it when I'm going to have days off work anyway.

 

[ILLINIWrestlingBlog]

7 hours ago, Danny Deck said:

I hate this time of year. All of the "Opening on..." dates are lies as they mean opening in maybe 5 cities. Particularly looking forward to September 5 and The Brutalist. I find it particularly annoying that The Brutalist isn't going wide over the holidays because it's 3.5 hours. I'm going to set the time aside but work with me here on releasing it when I'm going to have days off work anyway.

 

 

I will probably never see September 5, as I've read the books and the newspaper articles and seen the documentaries. I get the fresh perspective angle, but it is from a perspective that I don't particularly prize. I also don't like unhappy endings, and I especially don't like unhappy beginnings, middles and endings. 

On the other hand, I will certainly see The Brutalist, as it sounds like it will be another The Godfather experience that travels into an era from a perspective about which I'd like to learn more. Plus, it's getting killer reviews. In fact, that helps me better understand movie review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes, and it helps me explain my review of Source Code. 

SOURCE CODE (2011) 

Whereas a lot of the critics have raved about The Brutalist, giving it 9 out of 10 or calling it an "epic" and so forth, it is my theory that a massive percentage of critics and audiences saw Source Code as a pretty good movie. Yet, it gets a 92% rating from critics and 82% from audiences at Rotten Tomatoes. 

That's where Math comes in. 

Great films like Memento, A Bug's Life, Children of Men, Traffic, Cinderella (1950 animated) and West Side Story (1961) also sit at 92%. The key to Source Code is that only a small percentage of the critics hated it, not that a large percentage loved it. In other words, there was something in the movie for each critic to give it a Bart-Simpson-passes-the-fourth-grade grade. 

Here be Spoilers. 

This may be the most derivative movie in Hollywood history. Here you have stolen IP from Groundhog Day, Jacob's Ladder and especially 12 Monkeys. Thing is, Groundhog Day is funnier, Jacob's Ladder is scarier and 12 Monkeys is more dramatic. 

But the movie is pretty good. 

As for the Science Fiction, I want my Sci-Fi based on something more than an analogy. It was a good and interesting analogy--the way a light flickers as it goes out--but not enough to base a movie around it. That's why when science makes a giant leap, we get all of the new genres of Sci-Fi, whether it is rocket ships in the 1950s (Rocketship X-M, after the development of "practical" rockets in WWII), meetings with alien creatures (2001: A Space Odyssey, just before and after the Apollo missions), computers (War Games), and now Artificial Intelligence (Ex Machina). 

Here is where I get hypocritical: The movie is pretty good. The acting, screenplay, CGI and action are all ... pretty good. In fact, Source Code passes my Bart-Simpson-passes-the-fourth-grade bar for a recommendation: It is worth the money and time spent on a free YouTube viewing.