Tag: film

On legendary talents: RIP, Rob Reiner

On By Luther M. SilerIn moviesLeave a comment

I have never seen “The Wolf of Wall Street”. And yet, somehow, this is one of my favorite scenes in all of film, and I have most of it memorized. And it is damn near entirely due to Rob Reiner’s performance. My understanding is that most of the sequence was improvised, and Reiner is utterly breaking everyone in the room. The only one who can keep up with him is Jonah Hill, who is obviously cracking– you will never convince me that the laughing is acting– and the needling he’s directing towards Reiner just keeps winding him up more and more. DiCaprio is trying his damnedest to play the straight man in the scene, and he can’t hold it together either. I love every second of this scene, and I love it in a way that made me love Rob Reiner as an actor.

I don’t talk about it much, and I haven’t watched it in quite some time, but Stand by Me was one of my favorite movies as a kid. I was 10 when it came out, just a bit younger than the characters and a touch younger still than the actors playing them, but I’m willing to believe if I put it on right now I could still do a significant amount of the dialogue along with the movie.

The line “Suck my fat one, you cheap dime-store hood” (and River’s underrated “Whoever toldja you had a fat one, Lachance?” a few moments later) is going to be stuck in my head until I die. I’ve probably seen the film a couple dozen times.

And then there’s The Princess Bride, a movie that I have seen even more times than I’ve seen Stand by Me, an absolutely fucking immortal movie.(*)

I wish it was more common to realize the effect that a stranger has had on your life before they pass away, particularly when someone passes away in as tragic and hideous a way as Rob and Michele Reiner did. I’m generally not especially pressed by the idea of meeting celebrities (although I did meet Mandy Patinkin once, speaking of Princess Bride, and yes, I made him say The Line) but damn, the chance to tell Rob Reiner thank you is an opportunity I’m deeply saddened to have missed.

May his memory be a blessing.

(*) There is talk about doing a remake of this movie, which I thought was a horrendous idea until today, when I suddenly realized how to do it right: you must cast Fred Savage in the role of the parent reading the book, and he’s reading it to his own son or daughter(**) as they’re home sick, and you make it very clear that Savage is playing the same character as an adult. This neatly provides for new casting as well as any updates or changes the new director might decide to make to the story– it’s someone new hearing it, and we’re seeing their imagination and their interpretation, not Savage’s.

(**) Not to be too gender essentialist about it, but I kind of love the idea of a girl rolling her eyes at the fight scenes the same way The Grandson does at the kissing.

#REVIEW: A House of Dynamite (2025)

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Two movies? In two days? Madness!

You may recall that last year I read a book called Nuclear War: A Scenario. I called it the scariest book I had ever read, and while I absolutely cannot say that I enjoyed it, it ended up at a pretty high position on my Best Books of the Year list at the end of the year.

Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite is, technically, not a film adaptation of Nuclear War: A Scenario, or at least, if it is, it never claims it. That said, it may as well be: a single nuclear missile is launched from an unknown source (in NWAS, it’s immediately attributed to North Korea) toward what is eventually determined to be Chicago. The movie tells the story of the seventeen minutes between the detection of the launch and the impact of the missile three times from the perspective of three different groups of characters in the American government, all ending as the president makes his decision about what the US’s plan of retaliation will be. That decision is described by one character as “surrender or suicide,” and it’s not clear that there is really a whole lot of daylight between those two scenarios.

You might think that watching the same twenty minutes three times (the film’s runtime is just under two hours, so there’s not exactly a clock ticking in the corner for the entire movie) might be repetitive enough to drain some of the tension out of the film. For me, at least, it absolutely wasn’t, and the fact that you hear some of the same conversations three times over the course of the movie didn’t cut the drama at all. This might be partially attributable to my age– I think us ’80s kids are going to get hit harder by this movie than the generations before or after us, as the threat of dying by nuclear annihilation was something that was hanging over our heads for our entire childhood and we’ve internalized that very differently than people who didn’t go through that. But I had to go outside and mow the lawn after watching this movie just to burn off excess nervous energy, and I think it’s gonna have me fucked up for the rest of the day if not for longer than that.

I don’t have a ton to say about the technical aspects of the movie. The music is very effective, quietly echoing Jaws in the worst imaginable way and again plucking at the strings of the ’80s kids. The acting is as good as it needs to be with no really standout performances; the only actor in the film I was previously familiar with was Idris Elba, who plays the President as someone who never really thought he’d have to make the decisions he is faced with and allows just a trace of “Why me?” to come through his performance. Angel Reese has a cameo; I guess I’ve heard of her, but the movie’s not going to live or die on her playing herself for a couple of minutes.

Much like Nuclear War: A Scenario, I can’t really recommend this movie so much as say it’s very effective at what it wants to do and it’s up to you whether you want that in your brain or not. I wouldn’t spend a lot of time reading reviews; they’re very mixed, and I’m guessing that the film’s ending is primarily responsible for that. I’m not spoiling anything; for me, it ended in the best way it could, but clearly a whole lot of other people disagreed.

I think I’ll go mow the lawn again.

(ALSO: If you’re a Movie Person, please follow me on Letterboxd. I need people over there.)

#REVIEW: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

On By Luther M. SilerIn movies, ReviewsLeave a comment

In case it hasn’t been clear, or, like a normal person, you aren’t obsessed with my media consumption, I decided recently that I was tired of complaining about how I don’t watch movies any more, and instead I was going to watch more movies. And because nothing in my life can’t be mined for blog content, I might as well review them too. I missed last week, but this weekend’s movie (or today’s, at least; maybe I’ll make up for last week tomorrow) was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, written and directed by the Coens.

I only know this movie exists because of TikTok, which has served up numerous snippets of Tim Blake Nelson’s titular Buster Scruggs, a white-garbed, polysyllabic desperado with a penchant for murderous improvisation and bursting into song at the slightest provocation. What I didn’t realize was that this movie is actually six unrelated vignettes, all set in the Old West, with the framing device of a book of short stories called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

Sadly, the book itself is fictional; each vignette begins and ends with a slow pan into the first or last page of the story, and what text that’s there aroused my attention and would surely have acquired my money had the book actually existed to be bought.

The stories themselves range from the comic and musical (Scruggs) to what really feels like supernatural horror (The Mortal Remains) to a couple that are more firmly reality-based and tend toward the dark and depressing. The second, Near Algodones, is the only near-miss of the bunch; James Franco’s bank robber character is not terribly interesting, and while the visual of a deranged bank teller protecting himself from gunshots with armor made from cast-iron pans is hilarious, the story is slight enough that I couldn’t remember it just now and had to look for a list of the vignettes to get myself to six.

As it turned out, I had already unknowingly seen Scruggs nearly in its entirety on TikTok, and I was a little worried after Algodones, but the last four vignettes are uniformly fascinating and well worth the cost of a subscription to Netflix and two hours out of my Saturday. If you like Westerns or the Coens’ previous output, it’s well worth your time.

#REVIEW: SINNERS (2025)

On By Luther M. SilerIn movies, ReviewsLeave a comment

I don’t remember the last time I wrote a movie review. It’s been a while, I can tell you that.(*) The thing about me reviewing movies– and if you’ve been around, you’ve seen me say this before– is that I have to guard against my own enthusiasm a lot of the time. There are plenty of times when I’ve written a movie review quickly after watching the movie and in retrospect it’s been more positive than maybe it would have been if I’d waited a few days.

Last night, after watching Ryan Coogler’s new film Sinners, I commented to my wife (and posted on BlueSky, I believe) that I’d have been more positive about it had I never seen From Dusk Till Dawn. And since FDtD is easily the movie’s most obvious point of comparison, let’s go straight at this: the two movies are similar enough that you could tell me Sinners was deliberately meant as a remake and I wouldn’t be surprised at all. That might feel like a slam; it’s not, as From Dusk Till Dawn is a great movie. But that’s where I was; I enjoyed Sinners quite a bit but I felt like in large part I’d seen it before.

I’m sitting here right now, fifteen or so hours later and having slept on it, wishing I’d bought the thing instead of renting it, because I want to watch it again.

Sinners is that rarest of things: a movie that’s growing on me. I think I’m just going to assume that everything Ryan Coogler makes for the rest of his life is going to be gold; Michael B. Jordan is amazing playing two of the three leads in twins Smoke and Stack,(**) and the entire supporting cast ranges from solid to outstanding– I haven’t seen Delroy Lindo in anything recently, and I could watch that man read the phone book. I’m not familiar with Wunmi Mosaku, but her Annie is tremendous, and Hailee Steinfeld disappears into her role thoroughly enough that it took a good 2/3 of the movie before I realized who she was.

(A quick word about that: apparently there are people mad about Steinfeld being cast as this character, who says at one point that her “daddy’s daddy was half Black,” which makes her an eighth Black. The fact that Americans have a word for someone who is 1/8 Black is part and parcel of how fucked up this country is, and light-skinned Black people moving away and quietly passing into the white community has been a real thing for going on two centuries in this country. Steinfeld herself is literally an eighth Black. She is the exact race of the character she portrays. Pick up a book, Goddammit.)

Anyway, I always forget to talk about the plot so let’s do that: it’s 1930-something, somewhere in Mississippi, and Jordan’s Smoke and Stack have returned to their hometown after leaving years ago, loaded with cash and guns and planning on opening a juke joint. The first half of the movie is getting ready to open, pulling everyone else into their orbit, including the actual main character, Miles Caton’s Sammie, himself an extraordinarily talented blues musician. Sammie is Smoke and Stack’s younger cousin. They open up the joint to a successful first night, and then everything goes directly to Hell in more or less exactly the same way it did in From Dusk Till Dawn, and if you haven’t seen FDtD and don’t know the twist (although they haven’t done much to hide it) I’m not going to go any further than that.

Other stuff: everyone’s praised the music, for good reason, although Buddy Guy’s 88-year-old voice coming out of Sammie’s mouth is a little odd. Guy actually shows up in person in a stinger at the end of the movie, so don’t turn it off when the credits roll, although you probably won’t be in enough of a hurry to turn it off that you’ll miss it. The movie is almost a musical but not quite. There are numbers, but they make more sense in context than, say, Alexander Hamilton randomly bursting into song.

(Okay, yeah, it’s a musical, but it’s not the type of musical that people who don’t like musicals should avoid. Just fuckin’ trust me, please, plus blues musicals are amazing, as it turns out.)

So, yeah. Two thumbs up. Check it out. But it’s only five bucks more to buy it from Amazon Prime than to rent it, so buy it; you’ll want to watch it again.

(*) It was over a year ago, and ludicrously enough, it was Abigail, which I also compared to From Dusk Till Dawn.

(**) I would not have called myself an MBJ hater, but I’ve never quite gotten the hype about the guy? I mean, he’s good, but he’s got the reputation of the second coming of Denzel Washington or something, and I haven’t seen that from him yet. Okay, y’all. I get it now. Plus, not for nothin, he’s insanely sexy in this movie. Do what you want with that information.

Set it all on fire and salt the earth

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

Pictured: Not my TV.

I think I am entirely giving up on the idea of television. It’s been a minimal part of my life for years, but I don’t even want the concept around any longer. I don’t give a shit about the Super Bowl but I’d kind of like to watch Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, and it appears to be completely impossible to watch the Super Bowl on the television in my office without either purchase of additional equipment (the TV is not currently hooked up to any sort of antenna, since it’s almost exclusively for gaming) or signing up for something. I tried to download something called Fubo, where apparently the game is being streamed for free, and my TV told me that I had to sign into it– as in sign into the television— in order to download the software.

No. I’m not signing into my television. No thank you.

So, yeah, fuck it. I’m going to hit “publish,” make a very cursory attempt to stream the game on my computer instead of my TV, and if I don’t have it up and running in under a minute, it’s YouTube tomorrow for me. Things were better when you could just turn the Goddamned TV on and watch one of the five things that were on. I don’t give a fuck if that makes me a Boomer or a Luddite or whatever; television is so thoroughly enshittified at this point that I’m simply opting out of it altogether. I’m tired of idly thinking that maybe I’d like to watch a certain specific thing and then inevitably discovering that despite the ten fucking million options out there and the fifteen things we’re already signed up for, I can’t watch that thing because Reasons. It literally happens every time I decide I want to watch something specific.

I absolutely refuse to create a login for my television. That’s the line, apparently.

Fuck it.

Blood Transfusions Don’t Work Like That: A review of MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

On By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Reviews10 Comments

maxresdefaultYou might be familiar with a little review I wrote for a little movie called Snowpiercer.  In fact, you’re more likely to be familiar with that piece than anything else on the site, since it’s had nearly eleven thousand hits, which is eight thousand more hits than the second most popular post I’ve ever written.  It’s the first thing you get when you Google “Snowpiercer stupid,” and it still gets 35-40 hits a day, every day, no matter what.

A thing to remember about that movie is that I wanted to see it.  It was my idea.  Because Snowpiercer had been getting rave reviews from people whose opinion on film I generally trusted.

Those same people have been raving about Mad Max: Fury Road for over a week now.  It’s been an incredibly well-received film.  And as a result it was the first movie since Lincoln that I’ve seen in the theaters that didn’t involve a superhero somehow, although I did manage to miss opening weekend.

I was terrified to see this film, and I was terrified precisely because of Snowpiercer.  I wanted to love it, but…well, you’ll see.

Here’s the good news: I didn’t hate it.  It might sound like it at points, but I really didn’t.  Does that mean I think it was a good movie?  No.  It’s not.  In fact, the Snowpiercer comparison is actually pretty apt: Mad Max: Fury Road is a very Snowpiercer-ish movie, in that it is stunningly well-shot, amazingly pretty, great to look at… and so deeply stupid that it hurts me in my bones.

But God, is it pretty, and exciting, and appropriately badass at any number of points.  This is the bad guy:

MadMax-FuryRoad-ImmortanJoe

I mean, look at that creepy motherfucker, with his creepy teeth painted onto his respirator and his weird creepy transparent plastic armor.  He’s Obviously Evil, and impressively so.

Here is the thing about Mad Max: Fury Road.  It is a two-hour car chase.  It is literally and completely and I am not exaggerating a two hour car chase, or if you want me to be super specific it’s probably about three half-hour car chases with some slightly calmer shit in between.  Shit blows up good, and people are badasses.  There’s a dude whose only job it is to play electric guitar while hanging from some chains several feet above a moving vehicle.  The guitar occasionally shoots fire for some reason.

If you hear that and think “Awesome!” then go see this movie right now.  If you’re of the mindset to question the need for a flamethrower-guitar dude while risking dozens of lives and some of the only few remaining post-apocalypse vehicles plus untold amounts of ammunition and explosives and gas and water to bring the only four pretty women left on Earth back to Captain Creepyteeth up there, you might want to give it a pass.  If you’re going to spend the movie wondering why the four scantily-clad pretty women aren’t ever worried about sunscreen, this might not be your movie.

(Captain Creepyteeth’s real name is Joe.  That’s not a joke.  The character’s name is Joe.)

What separates it from Snowpiercer territory is that Mad Max: Fury Road knows what kind of movie it is, and revels in it.  Yeah, there’s a guitar flamethrower.  But squibbity-blam-boom-flame!!!  Yeah, there’s a scene where grown men attach themselves to the ends of giant mechanical pole vault sticks to swing around above the cars that are moving at many dozens of miles an hour over desert, and there’s lots of people spraypainting their mouths silver for some reason, and then there’s the bit with the blood transfusions that I won’t even get into.  But all that shit is cool!  Fury Road knows it’s a gloriously dumb movie, and it wants you to revel in the glorious dumb.  Snowpiercer really thought it was a Deep and Serious Film about Deep and Serious Issues and not a shit-stupid action movie.  Mad Max: Fury Road knows good and goddamn well that it’s a shit-stupid action movie, and it is a damn good shit-stupid action movie, to the point where I’m not sure being smarter would have helped.

(A possibly clarifying example: that robots vs. monsters movie… what the hell was it called?  Pacific Rim.  Pacific Rim was a terribly stupid movie that did not have to be terribly stupid, and in fact in several places could have been helped by being less stupid.  I’m not sure that removing the dumb parts helps Mad Max.  The movie wouldn’t be better without Flamethrower Guitar in it.  It would just be less itself, if that makes any sense.)

There is also this guy, whose name is– I am not making this up– Rictus Erectus, because of course it is:

new-mad-max-fury-road-trailer-shows-no-mercyHe will play Grond, when Benevolence Archives becomes a movie.

(And I’ve found no good place to mention this, because this movie really isn’t about acting, but Charlize Theron really is as great as everyone’s been giving her credit for.  The movie really should be called Furiosa: Fury Road, except that takes it into Riddick levels of stupidly repeated words.)

Question of the day

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, movies25 Comments

Your five favorite movies.  Don’t think about it and don’t worry about putting them in order.  GO.  (Mine after the jump.) Continue reading “Question of the day” →

In which I want to do things I don’t want to do, or vice versa, I’m not sure

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy10 Comments

ghibli_whispersdvdsleeveSitting on the couch in the living room right now, watching the snow outside, which has been stuck on “whiteout” for the past half hour or so.  I’m listening to Johnny Cash entertain a bunch of convicts at Folsom Prison in 1968.  The boy’s taking his nap, the dogs are sacked out and content.  There’s an enormous book about World War II next to me waiting for me to get back to it.  All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

The Cash is playing through my Apple TV.  When you’re listening to music, it plays a screen saver.  I got tired of looking at the nature pictures it plays and just for the hell of it told it to start showing me movie posters as a screensaver.  I’ve been sorta idly watching them as they’ve scrolled across my screen.  And then it hit me: I really miss watching movies.  There were several years in my life, most of the time I was living in Chicago, in fact, where I was seeing 40-45 movies a year.

I have not seen a single movie nominated for an Academy Award this year.  Not one.  And of the nine Best Picture nominees, I only have a haziest idea of the plot of five.  I’ve never even heard of Philomena, Dallas Buyers’ Club or Nebraska.  And there are lots of movies that I’m seeing posters for that at least pass the initial “that looks interesting” test.

(Sidenote: poster for 3 Days to Kill just spun past.  When did Kevin Costner turn into Tom Selleck?)

I don’t remember the last time I saw a movie in a theater that didn’t have at least one Avenger in it, and that kind of makes me sad.  And, to make it worse, it’s not like I don’t have all kinds of access to movies– I can stream damn near anything I want a few months after it hits theaters, and you best believe my iTunes wish list, which I’m using as a “Watch this!” queue, is chock full of stuff– I’m just not doing it.  This could turn into a typical new-parent “get a babysitter/pay the babysitter/pay for the movie/pay for dinner/night costs $150” rant, but it’s not that.  I have time to watch movies if I want.  I just don’t.  My priorities have shifted.  And it’s a weird feeling, knowing that I want to do something, and I have the opportunity to do something, and that I’m just not going to.  For no clear reason.

Anyway, that’s all.  I could go get my DVD of The Maltese Falcon out of the rack in my office and watch it now, like I’ve kinda wanted to since rereading the book a month ago.  What’ll probably happen is that I’ll clean up the living room or read something and keep on listening to Johnny Cash.  I dunno why.