Episode 37: The Cat Came Back

Amy wanted Cats!

• Randy chose Timothy Findley's 1984 novel, "Not Wanted On The Voyage."
• Joe selected the 1979 classic, Ridley Scott and Dan Bannon's "Alien."

Show notes

Intro Music: "Wildcat" by Ratatat
Exit Music: "The Cat Came Back" by The Countdown Kids

• Amy and Randy had a real back and forth on whether Jupiter Ascending is a lot of fun or it it's just a big pile o' shit. (Trailer)
• Randy wants to recommend everyone see The Last Five Years (trailer) and Paddington (trailer).
• Joe's wholeheartedly recommending the new Joe Lynch and Salma Hayek thriller Everly (his review and the trailer) but is only somewhat recommending Alien Outpost (trailer)

On the next episode

Randy decided that he wanted us to plumb the depths of past depravity and so asked us to pick works that were controversial back in the day.  Joe picked the 1928 D.H. Lawrence novel Lady Chatterly's Lover (Goodreads) and Amy chose the 1971 Don Siegel vehicle for Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry (trailer).

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Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

2014

Directed by:  Matt Reeves

Written by: Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver

I have a few thoughts:

1.  It's worth going in with no idea how it will end.  It's a very dark movie that doesn't indulge in a happy ending (and really, is there any one of the Apes movies that has what could be called a "happy" ending)?  Try and avoid any major spoilers if you can.

2.  This is walking away with the Visual Effects Oscars.  You never think during the movie about the ape effects, a magnificent achievement for the effects people and for the actors.  Andy Serkis as Ceasar, yes, but also people like Judy Greer, Toby Kebbell and Karin Konoval.  As John Scalzi said in his review, "We’re on the other side of the Uncanny Valley of the Planet of the Apes."

3.  And speaking of that...I'm hard put to think of when the last popular movie in the US was where a lot, if not the majority, of the movie is subtitled.  There are a lot of scenes with the apes talking to each other in SL (and thank you, modern movies, for the shift from hard-to-read white subtitles to much better yellow ones).

4.  The kid (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is pretty good, but the plot thread involving a teenage son kind of goes nowhere.  Does have a great scene where he shares a graphic novel (Charles Burns' Black Hole, of all things) with Maurice.

5.  I like a movie where the villains are pretty sympathetic, and this one delivers in spades.  There's two, both with good reason to not trust the other side and the movie doesn't ignore that.

It's a hell of a movie, one of the best of the year so far and a damn good job building on what was one of my favorite surprises of 2011.  I figure they'll do a third movie, perhaps, to build on the sad inevitability of this one's ending and I can't wait to see it.

4.5/5

Snowpiercer

 

설국열차 / Seolgungnyeolcha / Snowpiercer

2014

Directed by:  Bong Joon-ho

Written by: Bong Joon-ho and Kelly Masterson, adapted from Le Transperceneige by Jacque Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette

The Earth has frozen, due to an accident of humans trying to combat global warming with a q uick fix.  All that is left of humanity rides one train making an eternal circuit of the earth.  Rich people in the front, poor people in the back.  Bing bang boom, there's your setup; you don't need to know much more than that since it's not the journey in this case that's the important part but the reaction of the people in the tail to being penned up for 18 years that this movie is about.  Tensions rise, angers flare and tales of old rebellions spur new actions.

What happens next manages to overcome what could have been a heavy-handed commentary and pulls it off quite deftly due to Bong Joon-ho's deft direction and a passel of good performances.  Tilda Swinton (as the representative of the front of the train to the trail, a sort of fascist minister to the downtrodden) is as great as usual, but there's some notes here from Christopher Evans (as the leader of the tail group) that we haven't seen before.  (Then there's Alison Pill, pulling off a manic little appearance that's a highlight of the movie in how scarily logical it is.)  I somehow had no idea Octavia Spencer is in the movie as well, but was damn happy to see her (there's a bit where she causally cracks a hard-boiled egg on the head of a child that had me laughing far too hard).

While not quite at the level of Mother, this is still some damn fine Bong Joon-ho work.  It can be a little heavy-handed at times but the performances and directing overcome it and this is one of the better post-apocalyptic movies to come along in a while, with an good ending that has the tiniest sliver of hope.

4/5

Episode 22 - "I like my Muffin toasted."

 
Weddings! We read the 1932 novel Cheerful Weather For The Wedding and watched Robert Altman's A Wedding.

Next week: Randy has us choosing stuff we have to struggle to find good things to say about. Joseph chose the movie Boondock Saints and Amy chose the novel Ethan Fromme.


Also discussed this week: Jersey Boys, Midsomer Murders, Pie in the Sky, QI, Rev and Deadwood.

Show Notes: Sorry about the sound of the rain on my side of the conversation.   I didn't mean for it to sound like we were recording in the middle of a Frankie Avalon & Annette Funicello movie.


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Intro music: "The Wedding March," by Queen
Outro music:  "Chapel of Love" by Better Midler

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Episode 21 - Life After Death

This week we talked life after death!  We watched A Matter of Life and Death and read A Dirty Job.


Also discussed was the season finale of The Americans, a soap opera called The Edge of Night, X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Fall, Orange is the New Black and Fargo.

Show Notes:

At one point, I mention the interesting romantic life of Roger Livesey, who played the doctor in A Matter Of Life And Death; his family history is kind of weird and entangled and explained here.

Next week, our theme is Weddings.  Joseph picked the book and we'll be reading 1932's Cheerful Weather for the Wedding.  Randy picked the movie and we'll be watching 1978's A Wedding.


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Intro music: "Every Day A Little Death," by Stephen Sondheim
Outro music:  "Death & Glory," by The Clash

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Episode 14: Time Keeps On Slipping

We discuss Agatha Christie's The Clocks and the 2009 movie Timer, along with mocking mystery novel contrivances, debating the ethics of having your romantic destiny determined by a wrist timer and why Hercule Poirot is kind of a dick.

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Next time we're revisiting childhood favorites.  Amy chose the novel The Chocolate War and I chose the 1973 animated version of Robin Hood.

Amy's New Project: LibraryLinks

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Will/Should/What Could Have Been - Oscar Talk

With the Oscars ceremony tomorrow, we figured we'd all make our predictions as well as try and correct some obvious missteps in the nominations.  The next episode we record, we'll talk our picks a bit and see who flamed out the least.

Best Picture

Nominees: American Hustle; Captain Phillips; Dallas Buyers Club; Gravity; Her; Nebraska; Philomena; 12 Years a Slave; The Wolf of Wall Street 

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated
Amy	???	Philomena	I wouldn't have minded seeing "Rush" make the list.
Joe	Gravity	12 Years A Slave	Before Midnight was hosed.  Upstream Color was the best film of the year but had no chance of a nomination.
Randy	12 Years a Slave	Gravity	Before Midnight

Best Actor

Nominees: Christian Bale – American Hustle as Irving Rosenfeld
Bruce Dern – Nebraska as Woody Grant
Leonardo DiCaprio – The Wolf of Wall Street as Jordan Belfort
Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years a Slave as Solomon Northup
Matthew McConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club as Ron Woodroof

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated
Amy	McConaughey or Eijofor	Anybody but Bale
Joe	Matthew McConaughey	Chiwetel Ejiofor	Simon Pegg, "The World's End"
Randy	Matthew McConaughey	Leonardo DiCaprio	Robert Redford, "All Is Lost"

Best Actress

Nominees:

Amy Adams – American Hustle as Sydney Prosser

Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine as Jeanette "Jasmine" Francis

Sandra Bullock – Gravity as Dr. Ryan Stone

Judi Dench – Philomena as Philomena Lee

Meryl Streep – August: Osage County as Violet Weston

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated
Amy	Adams	Dench
Joe	Cate Blanchett	Amy Adams	Julie Delpy.  Inexplicable omission.
Randy	Cate Blanchett	Sandra Bullock	I would have loved a nom for Brie Larson in "Short Term 12".

Best Supporting Actor

Nominees:

Barkhad Abdi – Captain Phillips as Abduwali Muse

Bradley Cooper – American Hustle as Agent Richard "Richie" DiMaso

Michael Fassbender – 12 Years a Slave as Edwin Epps

Jonah Hill – The Wolf of Wall Street as Donnie Azoff

Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club as Rayon

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated
Amy	Leto		Daniel Brühl was terrific as Niki Lauda in Rush. The Germans I saw it with said he NAILED Lauda's distinctive Austrian accent.
Joe	Jared Leto	Jared Leto	I have nothing on this one.
Randy	Jared Leto	Jonah Hill	James Gandolfini, Enough Said.

Best Supporting Actress

Nominees: Sally Hawkins – Blue Jasmine as Ginger

Jennifer Lawrence – American Hustle as Rosalyn Rosenfeld

Lupita Nyong'o – 12 Years a Slave as Patsey

Julia Roberts – August: Osage County as Barbara Weston-Fordham

June Squibb – Nebraska as Kate Grant

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated So It Could Win
Amy	Nyong'o	Lawrence - Took a character that could have been LOATHED and made it multi-dimension and sympathetic. I thought hers was a better performance than Adams', frankly.
Joe	Lupita Nyong'o	Lupita Nyong'o	No choice on this one.
Randy	Lupita Nyong'o	June Squibb	Margot Robbie, The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Director

Nominees: David O. Russell – American Hustle
Alfonso Cuarón – Gravity
Alexander Payne – Nebraska
Steve McQueen – 12 Years a Slave
Martin Scorsese – The Wolf of Wall Street

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated
Amy	Russell	Cuarón	Stephen Frears for Philomena or Ron Howard for Rush
Joe	Alfonso Cuarón	Alfonso Cuarón	Shane Carruth for Upstream Color or Edgar Wright for The World's En.
Randy	Alfonso Cuarón	Alfonso Cuarón	Sarah Polley deserved more recognition for the remarkable Stories We Tell.

Best Screenplay - Original

Nominees:

American Hustle – Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell

Blue Jasmine – Woody Allen

Dallas Buyers Club – Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack

Her – Spike Jonze

Nebraska – Bob Nelson

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated
Amy	Her or American Hustle	American Hustle	Don Jon - Joseph Gordon Levitt. Way smarter than it had any right to be. Original and interesting.
Joe	American Hustle	Nebraska	I like Amy's Don Jon nod so I'm going to copy it.
Randy	American Hustle. Ugh.	Nebraska	Gravity, because this ridiculous notion that its screenplay is bad needs to stop.

Best Screenplay - Adapted

Nominees:

Before Midnight – Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke

Captain Phillips – Billy Ray

Philomena – Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope

12 Years a Slave – John Ridley

The Wolf of Wall Street – Terence Winter

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated
Amy	12 Years a Slave	Tie: Philomena and Before Midnight
Joe	12 Years a Slave	Before Midnight
Randy	12 Years a Slave	Before Midnight

Best Animated Feature

Nominees: The Croods; Despicable Me 2; Ernest & Celestine; Frozen; The Wind Rises

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated
Amy	Frozen	Frozen	This category could be very interesting next year with both How to Train Your Dragon 2 AND The Lego Movie in contention.
Joe	Frozen	Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)
Randy	Frozen	Frozen

Best Documentary Feature

Nominees: 

The Act of Killing; 20 Feet from Stardom; Cutie and the Boxer; Dirty Wars; The Square

	Will Win	Should Win	Shoulda Been Nominated So It Could Win
Amy		I only saw 20 Feet from Stardom but I loved, loved it.
Joe	20 Feet From Stardom	The Act of Killing	Stories We Tell
Randy	The Act of Killing	The Act of Killing	Stories We Tell

Other categories:

F This Movie Fest 3

Hello all!  We're not tooting our own horn this time around but promoting the third annual Twitter-based movie festival from the folks over at F This Movie.  It starts on Saturday the 15th at noon CST and we'll be watching five movie from 1985:

Noon

Dir. Tim Burton/90 minutes

2 p.m.

Dir. Mark L. Lester/90 minutes

Read the Heavy Action column

4 p.m.

Dir. Joe Dante/106 minutes

6:15 p.m.

Dir. Richard Donner/114 minutes

8:30 p.m.

Dir. Robert Zemeckis/116 minutes

 

I've been part of the two previous years of this fest and it's a lot of fun, so stop on by on Twitter, using the hashtag #fthismoviefest (also follow them on Twitter at @fthismovie).  We'll have some laughs, crack some jokes and reminisce about how Goonies is not actually a good movie.

Episode 6 - The One Where We Talk Fluids

This week, we talk clones! We watched Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain and read Cat Patrick's The Originals and had all sorts of fun discussions on bald spacemen and Dolly The Sheep, among other things.
Comment!  Poke fun!  Argue!

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Episode 5 - Myths, Mythsteps and Mythadventures

Joseph, Randy and Amy discuss the book "The Arrow's Flight" and the movie "Weird Science."  We talk Greek myths, bad 80's movies and just how the hell you pronounce Pyrrhus and Philoctetes.

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Amy's coverage of Dancing With The Stars for the Baltimore Sun can be found here.