Over/Under-rated movies: the redux

Culture
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I think Keanu would have been better off as a silent actor. He generally looks like he means what he is saying, but his voice has been a limitation. There’s a bit of gruff hoarseness to it that doesn’t always suit his roles (with a little work he could have developed a pretty good tough guy voice) and he doesn’t seem readily able to do normal inflection (exaggerated Bill and Ted dude-isms, he can do).

He has gotten better with it over time. I think the limitation is still there, but he can more readily work within it.

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That blows away my pet theory. He has a narrow face and a small mouth – not unlike Buster Keaton, which does link to the silent film idea.

But Keaton was famous for going through his entire films virtually stone-faced – a way to make all those stunts funny, not scary.

Keanu does a lot with his voice, er, to your point, he tries to. I remember seeing him in Much Ado About Nothing and people laughing when he said “I hate him”, because he sounded angry but his face didn’t change enough to please them.

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I still haven’t seen that. I did hear it being discussed at work when it was out and they were talking about the clues and I was all oh duh he is dead but just doesn’t know it and every one of the clues you mentioned were gimmies to someone who has seen as many movies as I have.

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I know he does do a lot of gee Ted I can’t seem to get out of this role movies… I quite enjoyed the hell out of John Wick. He did good in that one and the cinematography and fight scenes were excellent. And while
it is a predictable and overdone story they manage to do a fresh take on it.

ETA I should see John Wick 2 sometime.

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That reminds of when the Harry Potter books were still being released and people were losing their minds over what happened to Dumbledore at the end of Half-Blood Prince. A writer reported she said to a friend, “He was the mentor figure. What did you think would happen?” And the friend was all “but weren’t you shocked?”. The writer said no, she wasn’t, but she admired it for being well done.

That’s the thing about spoilers. Spoilers for whom? If you’re one of those people who knows whodunnit by the end of the first act, you’re just there to enjoy the execution.

(And the Sixth Sense is very well executed on that front. Even when you know you get lost in the psychology, or at least I do.)

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Or even in some shows like Columbo. You know who did it right from the start as they show you. The fun is watching the schlubby little detective trip up the murderer and figure it all out.

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Well, I should rephrase. He can work as a silent actor mostly because of the Kuleshov effect. He often displays a suitable blankness which the audience can project their own ideas on. Sometimes all you need to do is affect the right pose and let the audience do the rest. Which, these days, is a skill. Not many male actors know how to do that anymore. (R.I.P. John Philip Law.)

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I like Keanu Reeves. He is one of those people who has that movie star magic halo around him, where the camera just eats him up. Like a lot of people who have that quality, there seems to be no rhyme or reason for it. He was just touched by the Gods and somehow he can do this thing where he is very consistent in his performances and can carry a movie from beginning to end. He isn’t really handsome but you can’t stop watching his face. His voice is weird and shouldn’t work and his acting isn’t crafty. But he still seduces you. I appreciate people who have this magical thing, charisma.

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image

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That’s a really good way to put it. We watched the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still the other night. I seldom like the remake more than the original, but this one was an exception. His acting is wooden, he’s not very expressive, but he does have that certain undefinable something that makes him a star.

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I don’t get it about him. To me, nearly everything he does, he’s still Ted “Theodore” Logan. I think his finest hour was River’s Edge. I remember how woefully miscast he was in Dracula and Dangerous Liaisons and it’s just really hard for me to see past that, even now, 30 years later.

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I have finally seen the entirety of “The Last Picture Show.” In the past few years I’ve bumped into this film a number of times on television. I’ve seen most of it, but as a series of bits and pieces out of their correct order. Now I am able to give a definitive description of the movie: it’s “Hud,” but with fewer cows and more boobs. Lots of boobs, in fact. More than were probably necessary for the telling of the story.

But it’s a curious movie because it doesn’t really have a story. What it has instead is great actors delivering great performances in a dusty, windswept locale. I have a feeling that in the nothingness of the story there is potentially a deeper meaning that I will have to think about during subsequent viewings. Like the tagline on the original poster, “Anarene, Texas, 1951. Nothing much has changed…” There’s a lot of poetry in that line. That one line is almost as good the entirety of the movie.

One of the themes of the movie is how a group of people’s life start to fall apart when one character, Sam the Lion, dies. This is indeed true. In fact, the whole movie starts to fall apart at that point too.

I really wish Sonny had kept driving at he end. He shouldn’t have gone back to Ruth Popper. That was a very believable action on his part, but it is not evidence of personal growth. Nothing much changed, I guess.

To me, the most interesting thing about this movie is finding out that Tonny Bennett recorded the original recording of “Blue Velvet” a decade before Bobby Vinton got his limp hands on it. I have no idea how I have not heard his version before, fan of Mitch Miller that I am.

Another theme of the movie is the general pathetic pointlessness of love, or should I say “passion?” In that regard this film l lot like “La Règle du Jeu.” Yes. It’s similar in message to La Règle du Jeu, but with boobs. Lots of boobs.

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Have you seen Paper Moon? I thought Last Picture Show was fairly great, but loved PM.

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bill-ted-wildstallions

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Not the whole thing. It’s a movie I intend to get to. It seems to be one of the few movies that get the 1930s right.

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I’m a little late for the spoilers discussion, but in the context of this thread I think it’s perennially relevant. I also think it’s pretty clear-cut, and that some of the common arguments don’t really hold up.

There’s no statute of limitations on true spoiling, which I would define as revealing so much that you’re possibly lessening someone’s experience.

At the time of its release, we couldn’t escape discussion of and reference to The Sixth Sense. When it’s that ingrained in the wider culture, it’s harder to argue that you have to refrain from talking about it - at least, after the video release. It’d be nice if people didn’t blatantly spoil but it was hard to avoid being spoiled in that case, because people are rude.

It’s now nearly 20 years later (yikes) though. It’s no longer so deeply ingrained in the culture that being spoiled is inevitable. If I were to discuss any twists or catchphrases from that, I would make sure everyone had seen it first. There are millions who haven’t seen it yet, many of whom weren’t even born when it came out and are only now at an age where they can enjoy it.

It’s easy to forget this. I think of my friend’s 10-year-old daughter, who is getting into movies (including old ones) - I want her to have the whole experience I got to have watching a movie like that, or any other. It’s surprises like in that movie that make people fall in love with movies, and I want to encourage that.

It’s just common decency not to outright reveal information that could potentially lessen somebody’s experience of watching something for the first time.

This applies even to things that have a huge cultural impact like The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects or The Empire Strikes Back or Casablanca even, it applies to things where the plot doesn’t have twists and turns and may seem obvious like romantic comedies (is this obvious to a 10-year old?), it applies to things that don’t even really have a plot (the WW1 ending of Blackadder comes to mind), and it absolutely has no statute of limitations.

Witness for the Prosecution is twice as old as I am but you’d have to be a total dick to reveal the ending to someone who hasn’t seen it, particularly a young person. I mean that’s enjoyable even if you do know the ending, but being genuinely surprised is a relatively rare and wonderful thing that makes movies enjoyable.

That’s not to say that you can’t discuss spoilers - obviously you can and should (I enjoyed the TLJ discussion). Just state at the beginning that you’ll be discussing spoilers. In most cases it doesn’t even need to be spoiler-tagged out, except in cases of a major surprise point.

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Somehow, I missed having the Sixth Sense spoiled. So when I watched it years after it had been out, I was actually pleasantly surprised.

What I hate more than blatant spoilers such as Ol’ Yeller kills everyone and and moves out to the west coast to work in Hollywood is the Movie FOO has this amazing twist. At that point, I would rather have the spoilers so I can enjoy Movie FOO and not keep wondering when the TWIST is going to occur.

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Agreed. Knowing there will be a big twist is often worse than knowing what the twist is.

Of course, if the movie’s actually good, I’m able to be absorbed into it enough that I forget that there’s a twist and can still be surprised. I think with how The Sixth Sense is structured and how good they build atmosphere and everything, that could happen for most people seeing it today even though it’s famous for its twist.

I don’t know if that works for everyone - maybe I’m just forgetful. Likewise if I read a spoiler for something, if I wait even just a few weeks chances are I may remember that I read the spoiler but I won’t remember what it was, since I didn’t see it in context with the rest of the movie, and will still enjoy the movie as if I didn’t know.

I still prefer not to be spoiled, of course, and there are plenty of people who don’t forget as easily!

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And then there’s when people call “spoilers” or “goofs” on things which are not spoilers or goofs at all. See: things which are in the trailers and which obscure plot twists in the rest of the plot, or when good continuity is mis-labelled as bad because the reporter doesn’t understand how the mechanics work. Example: man removes rain-dotted glasses to wipe them on his tie, replaces now-clean glasses in next shot; ragenerds complain continuity was broken.

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This me. I sometimes will seek out spoilers, solely so I can pay attention to the plot. A well-plotted story has spoiler resistance built in. If a spoiler can completely ruin a story (IMO), it generally wasn’t well-written for the rest of it. Twists are fun, and sometimes spoilers really do, even on well written things, but I am, generally, more captivated in how they set things up. I guess I prefer Fridge Brilliance to a wham moment twist.

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