Burnwinter wrote:

Yeah, there are some pretty marginal Coen Bros films. Argo was pap. 3:10 to Yuma I liked for its classicism.

Most of the Coens stuff is massively overrated. The bad stuff is rated well and the decent stuff is rated as brilliance.

I look at the Coens filmography and see four or five truly brilliant, classic movies. Which is a tough thing for any filmmaker to accomplish in a lifetime. So I give them a lot of leeway on their more questionable projects, of which there are quite alot I'll admit.

The same way Woody Allen has put out a ton of pretentious crap throughout his career but between Hannah and her Sisters, Annie Hall, Bullets over Broadway, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Manhattan I have no choice but to consider him a great filmmaker.

Burnwinter wrote:

I doubt Suicide Squad will be actually good, but my sense is that it's going to be critically praised or at least condoned because the DCU is "due" a success.

I thought so too, but I was wrong. 47 on Metacritic and 33% on RT so far. 

Just finished Enter the void, which makes it the most fucked up movie I have ever seen.
Having said that, it is original, visually both beautiful and dizzying, violent, graphic, and really explores and delves into its topics. In short, I liked it quite a bit.

Couple of good visual ideas by the director but overall I thought it was a pretty poor and at times silly film.

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Burnwinter wrote:

I doubt Suicide Squad will be actually good, but my sense is that it's going to be critically praised or at least condoned because the DCU is "due" a success.

I thought so too, but I was wrong. 47 on Metacritic and 33% on RT so far. 

Ouch. Glad I didn't have any money on my prediction.

A critic friend who's been making positive noises about it went to see it yesterday and hated it, so.

DC need to give up and reboot everything.

"When you compare Suicide Squad to what James Gunn and Marvel Studios achieved in Guardians of the Galaxy – low-profile property, oddball characters, make-it-fun brief – the film makes you cringe so hard your teeth come loose."

Speaking of DC, finally got around to seeing Dawn of Justice. Had low expectations and generally knew not to expect much from the lead characters or the movie as a whole but even then I was caught off guard by Lex. What the fuck was up with that? Worst portrayal of him ever.

Was Suicide Squad supposed to be fun?

My wife went and saw Suicide Squad yesterday, said it was a let down. The Jokers character wasn't nearly as pivotal as most people thought and Harley Quinn's best/funniest moments were all shown in the trailers. She said it was a big let down.

Just the trailer for Suicide Squad annoys me.

RocktheCasbah wrote:

Just the trailer for Suicide Squad annoys me.

Which one? It had about 7 in 4 different tones.

Jason Bourne's not bad at all, been a bit under-reviewed in my opinion.

Savz wrote:

My wife went and saw Suicide Squad yesterday, said it was a let down. The Jokers character wasn't nearly as pivotal as most people thought and Harley Quinn's best/funniest moments were all shown in the trailers. She said it was a big let down.

You have a wife? I though you were in your early 20s.....

Burnwinter wrote:

Jason Bourne's not bad at all, been a bit under-reviewed in my opinion.

That's what I've heard from every non critic who's seen it.

Burnwinter wrote:

Jason Bourne's not bad at all, been a bit under-reviewed in my opinion.

It's enjoyable but not better than the trilogy don't you think?

Caught skiptrace this week, brainless comedy, not worth the time to sit through it.

I thought Jason Bourne was a solid 7/10 movie. Good fun but pales into relative insignificance when compared to Ultimatum.

Saw Bourne a couple of days ago too, was more than a decent watch if you take it separately from the trilogy.

Going to see Suicide Squad today. Wanted to see Bourne, but I haven't seen the one with Jeremy Renner so I'll wait.

Okay, that wasn't very good. Some of the things that annoyed me, kinda spoilery:

- Cara Delevingne should stop being and actress.

- Both this villain and the one in BvS made huge, random CGI energy fields. Speaking of CGI, it's been kind of bad in the DCEU so far. Odd, considering their budgets.

- Rick Flag causually sitting in the helicopter saying "When she kills someone with her sword it captures their soul" (paraphrasing) without any further explanation or reaction from anyone.

- When Rick Flag says you're free to go, and Mr. Boomerang immediately runs away. Next scene when they're doing their cool slow motion walk, he's there like nothing happened. If that was a joke because his name is Boomerang, it was horribly executed. Which is a theme for the movie - bad editing.

- Killer Croc/stereotypical black guy reminded me of the racist robots from one of the Transformers movies.

- The one-liners really weren't funny. Margot Robbie especially suffered for it.

- You notice the re-shots from Rick Flag's hair randomly changing from long to short.

- Jared Leto's laugh was very annoying.

Burnwinter wrote:

I think it's thematically richer than the earlier films in some respects, though the action sequences aren't quite as crash hot. 

Here's the (spoilery) bit of criticism I wrote on it anyway: 

Lovely review, Burnsy. You miss that Matt Damon only says about 40 lines, the majority of which are commands or questions about his existence. If one is looking for great monologues or dialogues even, this is hardly the movie. 
I also thought Tommy Lee's character lacked complexity - he was quite one dimensional throughout the movie. In fact, despite collecting an acting elite (Vikander, Jones, Damon, Cassel), the script barely required actors who might typically appear in Mega Shark. 

Yeah, it's really not a film about dialogue—or character! I don't really rate the cast that highly, though I think Jones can be really good with the perfect material (eg in Three Burials or The Fugitive).

The film's more about technics and geometry, space, information, infrastructure. I thought it was a good film to be honest, solid three and a half stars. (That review's from another site but I don't want to inflict my entire amateur film critic career on OMITT).

Lol. No, I enjoyed it as well. Had good pacing and action. And also appreciated that it integrated important contemporary issues like Europe in crisis, cyber security and freedom of information.

I read your review like an episode of Life documentary, with Sir Dave's voice.

"I'm standing here up to my neck in espionage, patiently trying to catch a glimpse of the Bourne feeding."

I thought this was a rather excellent article about Jared Leto's Joker and how Hollywood has ruined method acting: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/08/hollywood-has-ruined-method-acting/494777/

It makes a lot of great points about perceived 'realness' and the male complex within the movie business. I think this part in particular touches upon one of my own criticisms of The Revenant:

It isn’t a coincidence that many matinee idols see method acting as a time-honored way of shedding their image as sex symbols. In his post-Titanic career, DiCaprio has been outspoken about wanting to be viewed as a real artist rather than as just an object of female desire. As of late he has embodied, more than anyone else, the idea of acting as an endurance test (as David Sims has written for The Atlantic). This often leads to performances that feel far too studied, in which every choice seems obvious. But it finally got DiCaprio his first Academy Award for Best Actor earlier this year.

The Oscar campaign for The Revenant made a huge deal about DiCaprio’s punishing approach to his role as a hardened frontiersman. He ate wild bison liver despite being vegetarian, put his life on the line wading into freezing rivers, and even slept in an animal carcass. “I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do,” DiCaprio said of his performance. DiCaprio’s career ascension and Oscar win enforces some of the most wrongheaded ideas about modern acting, as the critic Matt Zoller Seitz noted:

[D]uring the last 15 years […] he’s bought into the idea that if you’re not losing or gaining weight, changing your appearance, spending long periods of time in extreme weather conditions and otherwise proving your mettle, then it’s not really acting—or, maybe just as bad, that it’s a sissy version of acting, all about clothes and makeup and hitting your marks.

There’s a reason the word “sissy” comes up repeatedly—method acting, as it’s practiced today, depends on framing less drastic techniques as feminine, and therefore inferior. This can even apply to male performers like Brad Pitt, who is discussed much differently than his method peers. Actors like DiCaprio are about their own performance above all else, sometimes to the detriment of the film itself. Pitt isn’t often praised as a great actor, and it’s not because he doesn’t have the scenes to prove it. Rather, he has an ease and ability to use his personality to inform his work in a way that recalls the greats of classic Hollywood like Cary Grant, who didn’t believe acting needed to ​be a painfully realistic reflection of the world.

Before I got to bit about Pitt I was thinking of Clooney who'd fit that mould too. I'm definitely gonna read the rest of that at a later time. Its also worth noting that its a very american way of acting. British actors are usually stage trained and don't tend to need to fall into the method er.. method. I think thats also a reason why a lot more British and other non-American actors have done so well in recent years. Especially on TV where there is arguably more interesting acting jobs than movies lately.

That was an interesting read, and it has a point, but I have so many problems with the way it made that point. 

Firstly, Daniel Day Lewis, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Christian Bale and also Di Caprio are actually good, definitely among the best traditional actors of our day, so if they have a common approach to acting, the argument that it's of necessity bad doesn't fly for me.

I have no idea why a nullity like Jared Leto should be spoken of in the same breath as them in relation to a shit ten minute reenvisionment of a caricature. The "method" aspect of Leto's Joker performance is empty hype. 

Secondly, I enjoyed The Revenant while recognising it as what it was, Oscar-bait. Luzbecki's cinematography was enjoyable against the beats of an actual story (as opposed to a Malick indulgence) and although the relentless tale of masculinity and revenge was histrionic, marginal, and at times offensive, I enjoyed that too.

The problem is the Oscar-bait structure and the way projects are selected, timed and promoted, and the kinds of stories that keep getting told to the exclusion of others much more than it is acting methods.

Thirdly, at the end of the article Swinton, Johannson and Tomei are mentioned as particularly admirable actors, and of the three I only particularly like Tomei, though I enjoy the roles of Swinton for the edge of her amazing physicality and appearance.

There are many women actors I prefer working, for example Cate Blanchett, Angela Davis, Kristen Stewart, Isabelle Huppert, Jennifer Lawrence, Maggie Smith, etc, many of whom also work extremely hard on character in a way that I really enjoy. 

I wonder how much of it is artifice though. I have heard many stories about DDL from Hollywood that make him sound like an utter cunt but he lives relatively close to me when he is not working and I've only ever heard that he's a very decent and gracious chap in normal life. How much of it is just about seeming incredibly serious?

I think Daniel Day Lewis is probably an arrogant shit on set but I'm fine with that.

I can see really good reasons not to always inevitably be talking about the kind of guy who gets cast as the lead in a PTA film, but if anyone's honestly claiming flatly Daniel Day Lewis and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are bad actors, then get in the bin. Meanwhile Di Caprio and Bale have each had many great roles, they just haven't been as discerning.

Wasn't there a time when method acting was considered something forced and disingenuous?

Cinema suffers from a reality complex that the stage can only dream of. Verisimilitude is just what it is, no deeper. Exposing it is more real than its obfuscation. So of course method is forced and disingenuous. It is pure style. There's nothing wrong with that until you start calling it by another name.

I like Naomi Watts. Not much of a career anymore, but she is a very good actress.

What the fuck was the Lobster going on about?

Would rather have my hand stuck in a toaster than watch it...

Laughable effort, that one. Couldn't bear it.

Watched Our Kind of Traitor last night.

Rather workaday film in many respects. It's an implausible Le Carré adaptation with a plotline about trust and redemption for a generally unlikable McGregor hero.

However, it does have an espionage meetup sequence set at the Emirates so that's neat!

Our Kind of Traitor was utter shite. Low-budget crap made without any intention of actually creating something remotely watchable.

I do like Damian Lewis as an actor for some reason though.