TV/Movies Megathread

[garbon]

This week's Veep was a bit week. Felt mostly like a segue episode.

[Eddie Teach]

I watched 7 minutes of the pilot of that show, couldn't take any more.

[garbon]

I watched 7 minutes of the pilot of that show, couldn't take any more.

ok

[Eddie Teach]

Just thought you should know. 

[garbon]

[Ideologue]

Margot Kidder looks pretty fantastic in Amityville Horror.

[Ideologue]

The Brave One Yeah, it's from 2007, but hey, I never fucking saw it.

I've always been a Jodi Foster fan;  she always worked just enough not to OD audiences on her, she's had the presence of mind and the respect of her craft to choose her roles reasonably well, and because she's not exactly your stock Hollywood hottie it's always seemed easy to focus on her acting as opposed to focusing on her titties (even after the new ones she bought for Panic Room).  Personally, I'd do her anyway, even if she wouldn't do me.  It wraps up that mid-2000s stint she turned in, with better-than-average movies Panic Room, Flight Plan and Inside Man.  As I've mentioned before, my only beef with her role in Inside Man is in reality that character would've been a man--but that's Spike Lee's fault, not hers.

So anyway, Jodie, her beau and their dog get their spending reduced brutally by deficit hawks in Central Park, with the result of the beau being sequestered permanently.  Jodi winds up dealing with more than your usual survivor trauma;  she buys an illegal gun and enters the vigilante business, at first incidentally but then purposefully putting herself in increasingly dangerous positions to play her new game.  Terrence Howard (always a great actor, even in shit movies) plays a great cop, as does his partner, Nicky Katt (you'd remember him from Way of the Gun);  they've got the right amount of workman-like fatalism without all the cop cliches.  As the vigilante incidents begin to pile up, Terrence starts putting it together--you see him putting it together, he has his suspicions as he and Jodi continue to intersect, but the film doesn't insult the audience by giving that hand away.  And it doesn't end the way you think it will.

What I like about this film is two-fold;  first, it's the approach to Jodi's vigilantism--it doesn't play any PC punches (sorry but yeah, chances are it's gonna be two yo boys on the NYC subway fucking with people at 1am, not Raz and Ide) with plausible situations, and doesn't glamorize them or Jodi's personal torment over them.  Secondly, the plot is sound, the writing is pretty damned good, and there's simply not a bad actor within sight.  Neil Jordan did a wonderful job with this one.

I give this 4 out of 5 Wayne LaPierres, if Wayne had an actual conscience and missed his dog.  A very strong, very tight film.

SOLD.

Which reminds me, why do so many people think Jodie Foster isn't radically hot?  I mean, even now, she's still quite pretty.  But I mean Silence of the Lambs-era Foster.  WTF?  She's gorgeous.

***

Fast 5 and Furious 6.  Of the franchise, these are the only two I've seen.

The great thing about 5 was that it's the closest thing to a Hulk vs. Thing battle we're likely to see in a movie for at least ten years.  And in seriousness, I was extremely impressed that when they set Diesel and the Rock against each other, they didn't cop the fuck out and have it end inconclusively.  They picked a winner of the fight and that's respectable.

Unfortunately, despite the reasonable cleverness with which the central heist was plotted and replotted, the climax involving two 2-ton Chargers and a 10-ton bank vault that moved like a carboard box but with INSTANT DESTRUCTION TOUCH left me extremely cold.

6 had enormously bullshit physics too, but the worst loaf got pinched off well before the ending, and so instead of leaving me cold during the climax, I was able to enjoy it (especially when Vin Diesel hits back, back, forward and unleashed his torpedo attack, which I laughed about not with derision but with sheer joy for at least five minutes, and that's okay because that scene still wasn't over ).  On the minus side, they [spoiler]killed my favorite characters from 5, although they were apparently dead already[/spoiler].

Middling and high Bs, respectively.

[Josephus]

I watched 7 minutes of the pilot of that show, couldn't take any more.

I made it to about three episodes I think. Last one I watched had her at some ice cream shop and she had diarrhea or something...I quit at that point.

[CountDeMoney]

Which reminds me, why do so many people think Jodie Foster isn't radically hot?  I mean, even now, she's still quite pretty.  But I mean Silence of the Lambs-era Foster.  WTF?  She's gorgeous.

I'm pretty sure Yi would bang her.

If you want to catch a wonderful no-name Jodi Foster film, find Stealing Home from 1988 with Mark Harmon.  Very, very good, and Mark Harmon's best work.

[Josephus]

She is gay. That said I did kinda like her during her Silence of the Lambs phase. Others here probably like her from her Taxi Driver days.

[CountDeMoney]

Of course she's gay.  Chances are we knew she was gay before she did.

[Eddie Teach]

Which reminds me, why do so many people think Jodie Foster isn't radically hot?  I mean, even now, she's still quite pretty.  But I mean Silence of the Lambs-era Foster.  WTF?  She's gorgeous.

I agree, but I think a lot of people are turned off by the schnozz.

[Neil]

MIM's wife is cool.

[garbon]

Middling and high Bs, respectively.

Nah, bro. You've lost me here. Fast Five was one of the low points of my life...and that's competing with depression.

[Ideologue]

Middling and high Bs, respectively.

Nah, bro. You've lost me here. Fast Five was one of the low points of my life...and that's competing with depression.

Hm.  By no means are they outstanding, but they're decent cartoons.  They're workmanlike, in a good way.  I ain't saying go out and buy 'em, but I don't understand how they could evoke that kind of hyperbolically negative reaction.

I agree, but I think a lot of people are turned off by the schnozz.

Perhaps.  I like her nose.  Great eyes too.

She was also very hot in Contact.  Lol at the pump and dump of McConnaughey.