Grab our ponytails and hang on as we fly away to a magical land, a land of massive genies, evil sorcerers, overboard dogs, elaborate stabbing machines, terribly timed spells, giant spiders, and scrumptious sausage plates! That’s right, it’s 1940’s biggest winner at the Academy Awards, The Thief of Bagdad, directed by… [checks notes]… everyone? Give it a listen and enjoy!
Here Are the Nominees revisits a randomly selected Oscar-nominated film from the past. We’ll examine the nominations it received, weigh in on their merit, and see how the film holds up in general today.
There was a point in time where Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire would have become an instant favorite for me. Around age 21 or so, when a cavalcade of bullets and some cheeky music is all it would take to turn my head, sounds about right. When I was 23, I thought Lucky Number Slevin was pretty brilliant, so there’s no reason why Free Fire wouldn’t have earned my adoration as well.
After all, there’s a lot to like about Free Fire. Starring Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, Sharlton Copley, and a bunch of other people you recognize as that guy who was in that thing, it’s a remarkably simple story: One group (Larson, Murphy, et al.) arrives at a warehouse to buy some guns from a dealer (Copley) via a facilitator (Hammer). Due to a personal dispute among henchmen from each side, the deal goes bad and a shootout ensues. And that’s it. That’s the whole movie. Free Fire is a scant 90 minutes, and it’s all about the shootout.
In a way, it’s refreshing. The film starts a little unevenly, establishing characters and subplots that seem forced, and you wonder exactly what sort of rote crime-focused black comedy we’re in store for. After 5 minutes of these characters delivering pre-meeting dialogue, I was nearly ready to opt out of the film altogether. Nothing was natural or painless. But once the movie settles into the long fight, you can relax a little. This isn’t going anywhere else. There aren’t going to be any big storylines that disappoint you later, because there aren’t any at all. In an age where so many movies feel the need to out-twist or out-set piece one another, I came to appreciate the economy of Wheatley’s and co-writer Amy Jump’s story.
Talkie Talk #203: The Irishman & Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
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Starring David as Joe Pesci, TJ as Robert de Niro, and Chris as Al Pacino, Talkie Talk is a podcast where we talk about the Irishman. We also talk about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Frozen II, Knives Out, and more. Join us for this spoiler-y movie roundup. And Survivor! NOTE: Marriage Story is homework for next week’s pod.
TJ & Chris: Knives Out (1:28)
Chris: Frozen II (7:21), Hobbs & Shaw (14:29)
David: Booksmart (18:36)
All: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (20:04), The Irishman (34:10)
Reality Roundup: The Challenge: War of the Worlds 2 (59:46), Survivor: Island of the Idols (1:03:14)
While this is an audible medium, we’ve always assumed our listeners have a funny young, lost look about them. That will be gone forever. Gone once we tell you about Rebecca…now let’s get it on behind that palm tree!
HOUSEKEEPING: The homework announced in this episode of Talkie Talk is Marty. Marty was pulled off of Amazon Prime the day after the episode was recorded. New homework will be The Last Emperor currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
When it comes to reviewing movies, I tend to try to wrap up my thoughts about a film in a particular, easy to explain way. They range from bad to good, along a typically linear spectrum. I’m certainly not alone in this regard. Whether it was Siskel and Ebert awarding thumbs up, a local writer awarding stars, or modern internet ratings on things like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDB, or Letterboxd, we tend to think about things on that sort of scale. We have a mental slider, an internal speedometer of sorts, that lets us know exactly how we’re feeling about a movie, TV series, video game, hotel stay, meal, board game, or, well, anything. You can rate anything these days. When things rub us the wrong way, the slider moves to the left, toward zero. When we’re impressed, it slides right. It’s a scale that we’re all comfortable with.
Aquaman put a three-pronged hole right through my scale.
Sometimes movies change the way you live your life. Think about how Blair Witch Project made you refuse camping trips for a few years. Or how Alien forced you to reconsider your life as an astronaut. Hell, The Shining gave me a fear of being alone in hotel hallways. Ladies and gentleman, you can add The Meg to that list. Then cross it off, rip that tiny peace of paper from the list, burn it, use the energy from the fire to charge your remote control and watch Dam Sharks, a film about sharks that use human bodies to create dams. I have not seen Dam Sharks, and therefore can’t endorse the movie, but I can confidently say it is better than The Meg.
Jason Statham and Bingbing Li in The Meg (credit: imdb)
The Meg is about a shark. The shark is big. Huge even. It swims around killing people for a while and then it is killed. The movie, however, realizes that it’s killed the only villain it’s got, so it decides to make more megs. Three to be exact. And they all die in a series of boring ways.
Now I know what you’re saying. “TJ, this movie was supposed to be dumb. You went in expecting Carrie and are upset because you got Scary Movie.” WRONG. This movie makes Piranha look like Citizen Kane. You see, Piranha knew what it was doing. It embraced the camp. The Meg tried to take itself seriously. They tried to give you Jaws Dreyfus, but failed, and instead you got Piranha Dreyfus. Piranha Dreyfus is fine if you know you’re watching a comedy, but if he’s just randomly inserted into a drama(?) it all feels lost. There’s no good one-liners. There’s no good laughs. And honestly I don’t even see where the laughs were supposed to be.
I was looking for pictures to use for this review and came across the following fun fact on IMDB. The last quote in the quotes section is the following:
Mac: “What’s that?”
1 of 4 found this interesting
That one sad person thought that quote was interesting. All it took was a “What’s that?” to make the guy watching The Meg think for a minute.
