Yeah, there’s a few good pics there (my favorite of that selection would be Lawrence of Arabia), but not the one I’m looking for. 
Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny… wow, what a great Indy adventure! I’m just surprised it was only 20 minutes. But I loved seeing him punch out Nazis and fight his way through that Nazi train. It ends in a nice and neat way with the train destroyed and Indy having practically won World War II singlehandedly. The biggest surprise to me is how Harrison Ford hadn’t even aged a day since the last Indy film 35 years ago. Some people online are crazy. They swear the film has another two hours and has an old Indy in it. They must be smoking something. My film clearly stopped after twenty minutes and that’s the way it should be. (Still not sure what that title “Dial of Destiny” means, but meh)
I just saw this too and I agree with this statement. There are a few minor things that I don’t like (namely the very poorly written female characters and some really amateur-hour, very Nolan-esque wordy dialogues in the beginning), but overall it’s very strong. The Trinity test and victory speech are in particular his career highlights, and the cast are good across the board (except Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh who were completely wasted on some very poor writing), especially RDJ and Casey Affleck, the latter’s one scene wonder should definitely be talked about more. It also really hits home with a fantastic final scene.
I watched The Pale Blue Eye with skinny Batman and Edgar Allen Poe.
Made me not miss the snow in NY even more.
protonVPN is free
das all
The movie “May December” was released in Taiwan on November 17th and is still being shown in some theaters.
Maybe the distributor opted not to release it on Netflix Taiwan first.
However, I didn’t notice any significant promotion for this movie.
oohhh boys do I have a HATEFUCK to report
NATURAL BORN KILLERS 1994
more like natural born SHITTERS because its SHIT
It tries so hard to be self aware about it – it literally has the segment with maybe the news guy or some TV person in the room and someone’s raising objections to the material (like is this really a good idea/a good thing?) and he just says something like it’s brain fodder for the zombies out there watching tv, which is totally supposed to be reflexive upon the audience but like, that has got to be the LEAST clever way of doing that. Since it was written by Tarantino, I think the comparison is fair: in his other films, there are very often moments where it reflects on the viewer but it doesn’t directly call them out; it shows violence being enjoyed, and then responds with more violence for example. If you’re sharp, you make the self reflexive connection before you have time to reject it. But this shit literally calls the viewer out, which makes you obviously reject it especially if you’re not really reveling in the violence of the film. Also think most of the violence in this film achieves very little to nothing of characterization – honestly the only ones that did were the opening, Indian guy, and the ending one of the reporter. First one, they commit violence because they revel in it. Second one, it’s an accident and the girl realizes it was wrong meaning they do have a compass of sorts. Last one(s), they kill the cop who they said they’d let go once they got out and then kill the media guy as a fuck you to all he stands for or just because they wanted to.
Ok, so what, we got that from their interview, the whole prison riot scene was violence porn, and what’s the cogent point? That media picks up and plays this shit for clicks? Highly doubt that was original even back then (Nightcrawler did it way better anyhow, albeit quite a bit later). Or the whole point about them being “Natural born killers” because of the circumstances they grew up under? That would’ve been a wise comment to be offered by the media guy which could represent how the media criminalizes mentally ill and traumatized individuals, but no. The murdery man himself says it, which gives actual credence to it? The only person who disputes it is the media man who has to put himself in opposition for views even if he might actually agree… So what do you actually think Stone? Like is that their fate, as they love to talk so much about? Or is this just another self aware moment where we all pat ourselves on the back for knowing that’s not true even if it’s not AT ALL in the subtext of the film?
Which might I add an “oh so tongue in cheek and clever Mr Stone!” to express how in the context of the film it was neither of those things and just some more self aware post irony bullshit that renders the section beyond banal
And then further on the “how do i make a self-aware movie that isn’t asshole?” front, the goddamn mallory backstory sitcomThat was the only bit of the film that was shot as some sort of comicalized meta narrative which like, why? I get the film being a frame story, that makes sense, but that segment? Just why play it as a sitcom satire? Wtf does a sitcom have to do with the bleeds it leads media narrative? I wouldn’t put it beyond Stone and this film to simply make the connection media sensationalization bad → the rest of TV is in on it or something? What else is he trying to say? Fuck all my god that was horseshit.
So yeah, it’s a self aware piece of media being against the if it bleeds it leads mentality and then tops it off with some seriously excessive, graphically depicted violence and lazy system critical messaging by making a jail so awful its a comic over exaggeration and loosely showing bad cops with the rapey murdery cop dude and the shit cherry is the incredibly awful name dropping of other shit (nuclear bombs! prob military industrial complex bit I don’t remember) without really caring to engage with it any more than that. And the laziness of the handling of the title question isn’t even worth bothering with.
Stone’s strat seems to have been throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, but for me all that’s left over is the shit smell of Oliver Stone’s messy depends and rapid mental degeneration already being visible in '94. It draws connections between things like a conspiracist given a crayon and a piece of paper with blackrock printed on it, the subtlety of the Russian propaganda posted in the Ukraine forum, and the clarity of message of Maoist roadside propaganda. The ONLY highlight of this film are the actors. The editing is stupid. And where the message was supposed to be is an empty hole filled by the supposedly ‘deep’ commentary on media and glorification of mass killers, hyperviolence, and the failure of irony. Maybe it’s just me, belonging to a generation born and growing up through corporate marketing going through a transition from sex appeal and projection marketing into the absurd by the early 2000s (ala the Cadbury gorilla) and from there to self-aware to ironic and post-ironic in their marketing (think the twitter Wendys shittalking and the deeply sincere but questionably politicized ads from Bud Light for exmaple), which leaves the shallow irony of this film feeling awfully shallow in view of it’s excesses in exploring the topic. Ebert wrote in his review of it that it doesn’t really show a ton of the blood and guts. No, it shows worse; blood and guts are briefly shocking but beyond movie magic inspire no real terror; the various death scenes given to certain characters (put in oven, in washing machine, lynched, burned alive, raped and choked to death, etc.) are much more real and work against the irony! Why not depict that shit in graphic detail if the film is supposed to be over the top, self aware, etc.? Make it a slasher, of which it also has plenty. Just absolutely strikes out at trying to be self-aware imo.
And the real kicker of it all? It’s a film against the glorification of serial killers, everyone gets the messsage because it is so clear you’d have to be literally a potato not to, he tries poorly to implicate the audience in that but fails really because he doesn’t trust his audience enough or isn’t skilled enough himself to do a proper Tarantino-esque self-reflection, puts society broadly and without much common logic through the shredder which a viewer with their brain turned on will recognize for the bullshit it is as a line of only superficially connected bull, etc. - He makes a hyperviolent film criticizing hyperviolence, and makes three times the budget. Good job, you’ve bashed everyones’ skulls in with your message that the mass media glorifies and profits from murderers and other awful deeds, and used the mass media to create and disseminate a film which at it’s best moments is simply senseless violence and in-between drags from place to place looking for an excuse for another murder scene?
(i typed most of this to a friend last night and just readapted it for a post here since I needed a break from work and studying chinese)
Movie any good?
Anyone able to get VPN to work properly on a Sony smart tv/? It only works with HBO and Disney plus for some reason
could just HDMI-in a laptop, das what I do. Mostly because my TV is very much not smart or particularly good and i also don’t know how to work the remote.
I liked it. A bit slow and a bit predictable and a bit silly, but I think I’m beyond suspending disbelief for any long period of time.
Detective story with a guy who does a great EA Poe. Not gratuitous until the very end. I’d recommend it to a high school forensics class. Good character acting in a period piece.
I started Bad Mothers last night. I was larfing.
Yeah I could but just adds another task I guess. Just a little annoying
yeah that it do be 
given i have no idea how smart tvs work tho…
lol
NATURAL BORN KILLERS 1994
You have no idea how boring action movies were before this came out. Of course it glorified violence, because that’s what CNN was doing at the time (and they drove the media cycle) , and that changed everything about the direction the media was moving in. The Guld War, OJ Simpsons, Rwanada slaughter, Kurt Cobain blowing his head off, Jerry Springer, and AMerican Psycho the novel.
All that shit happened in the span of a few years. Before NBK, we had Cape Fear with De Niro, which was absolute shite.
Rodney Dangerfield’s grotesque performance alone was worth the price of admission.
And Robert Downey jr’s cameo as the NZ Jerry Springer? That’s prime fucked up pre-intervention Iron Man.
As I said, the acting is solid and the only part I’ll bother giving credit. What’s not solid is everything else, short of clear hard work put into editing and other post production, much of which is not really in Stone’s hands, and of course generally good camera angles. It a competently made movie for the most part but unfortunately has all the nuance and meaning of an superhero movie, and not one of the morally ambiguous ones. I find it interesting that Tarantino is known for criticisms of excessive violence in his films; he wrote the original script, and is well known to “fucking hate” NBK. I wonder why? Maybe because it left a meaningless void where the message was supposed to be, not to mention it seemingly actually does condone demonization of certain people as Natural Born Killers. You already get the media madness message within the first like half hour spit directly at you, the audience, the zombies in the audience of the action murder film. I didn’t need another 1.5 hours to really synthesize that because, evidently unlike Stone’s intended audience, I have a brain that’s capable of grasping connections even if they’re not drawn in red bloody crayon all over the screen and with an elementary schoolers sense of symbolism.
Throw shit at the wall. If it bleeds it leads wasn’t a new saying by that point, and this wasn’t a new thought. It was just that same thought rammed down my throat for two hours plus.
I remember being confused about the message when I saw the movie back when it came out. Was it meta on top of meta? I think I concluded it was basically a big middle finger to the audience for letting itself be manipulated by the media in the first place. I may have to go back and rewatch it.
I would offer, having lived through that time in America, that was the point. The point where America fell into nihilism wasn’t a slope, it was a cliff. Thelma and Louise drove right over it.
And I didn’t need another 30 years of it showing up in real life.
yet, you lack the history and experience I am talking about, and that really was what the movie was about. Innocence in AMerica, like the Leonard Cohen song Democracy, wasn’t lost, but hung upside down, raped and left in a dumpster.
That place is a mess. I was there when it happened, and I went back for 10 years, and just left it again and I’d say it’s way worse now.
That movie is a time capsule. Maybe you don’t like it because you can’t relate. 
I recall in 1992 walking around campus reading American Psycho. An English professor I had stopped me and asked me my opinion. I said it was one of the best things I’d ever read because it pulled no punches. The department, he said, was debating whether or not to ban it. 
Maye you yung uns recall the nihilistic violent video game wake of post WW2 America, but I recall the death dragging on for twenty years, the hippies and the yuppies and Reagan and the Cold War ending with a wheeze. I’d say, imo, at the time, that movie hit American media like a Bob Dylan song.
me too!
I’m doing a David Lynch retrospective at the moment though, so Natural Born Killers may not be an appropriate palate cleanser.
I’ve been avoiding him for years due to the hype. I may be running out of time!