Oh I'm sorry, Did I Break Your Conversation........Well Allow Me A Movie Thread by S&T

[noblekane]

movie of the week by decades

 

[servechilled81]

We could do things from the AFI top 100 films list
http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies10.aspx

 

[everysingletime]

They just dropped a netflix movie called Step Sisters. I'm probably going to like it

Will watch tomorrow

 

[calibeebee]

We could do things from the AFI top 100 films list
http://www.afi.com/100Years/movies10.aspx

That list is damn near flawless......except Shawshank is listed way too low, and I didn't see Toy Story or Wall-E on there anywhere

 

[hand2handking]

‘American Assassin’ Is An Idiotic Marine Todd Fantasy That Doesn’t Even Have The Decency To Be Fun

http://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/american-assassin-review/

American Assassin feels like it sprang directly from the id of some wannabe militia man reading Soldier of Fortune during frequent toilet breaks, who imagines elaborate revenge scenarios about finding the terrorists who murdered his imaginary girlfriend and killing them with MMA. It’s a poor man’sBourne, with all the tasteful vagaries of geopolitical spycraft stripped away until it’s just some pockmarked Steve Bannon type shouting about enriched plutonium to whip us into an ill-advised war with Iran. I’d always wondered what the Bourne series might look like if its authoritarian impulses weren’t so hedged and dull, and in that way, American Assassin is refreshing, like hearing a petty fascist finally openly advocate genocide.

Our hero is Mitch Rapp, from the prolific Vince Flynn’s series of crappy airport fiction, played by Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf), who with some facial scruff and floppy hair feels a little like OC-era Adam Brody. (More like Adorable Assassin, am I right??) In the first scene, Mitch proposes to his bikini model girlfriend (played by Charlotte Vega) in the gentle waves of a Mediterranean resort, shortly before she gets blown away by AK-wielding jihadists and bleeds out on the sand before his very eyes. Like I said, points for directness.

While it’s unclear what Mitch’s job was before his baby left this world, after the terrorists kill his fianceé he turns himself into a kind of DIY counter-terrorism spy. This mostly seems to involve chatting in Arabic online and training at, I kid you not, “Troy’s MMA.” He spends his days being a giant **** to his training partners (using chokes that don’t actually exist — you can’t do a gi choke on a guy in a t-shirt) and his nights throwing knives at a black and white picture of Adnan Al-Mansur, kicking a big heavy bag in his thankfully open-floor plan apartment along the way. Because everyone knows that the way to stop ISIS is with a nice roundhouse. TERRORIZE THIS, MOHAMMED! (*cuts cantaloupe with katana*)

Eventually Mitch gets recruited by an elite CIA unit called “Orion,” led by Stan Hurley (played by Michael Keaton, who has never been bad, not even in this turd), who puts Mitch through an intensive training course that mostly seems to involve more MMA, this time out in the woods. Along the way, Stan gives helpful counter-terrorism advice like “The enemy dresses like a deer and kills like a lion” and reads important dossiers on his Panasonic Tough Book. (Because he’s tough! Grrr!) Would you believe Mitch is a brash but reckless prodigy?

Stan begrudgingly takes Mitch along on a mission to stop some Iranians from buying black market plutonium for nuclear weapons, assisted in their dastardly task by a rogue agent, Stan’s former protege, played by Taylor Kitsch. Kitsch’s character sells the Iranians some nuclear triggers, saying “Now you can kill as many Jews as you want.”

Iran is American Assassin‘s big villain, presumably for their crime of not funding American infrastructure projects. Those damned Iranians! Remember how 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Iran? It feels almost like someone adapted Peter Berg’s “You gotta join the army, ************!” interview into a film (which, incredibly, has no less than four credited screenwriters), conflating Jihadist terror attacks with unrelated state-level malefactors in George W. Bushian style.

In typical fashion, most of these intractable geopolitical conflicts are solved through hand-to-hand combat. To its credit, American Assassin‘s fight choreography is better than Bourne‘s shaky garbage, and the R-rating allows for more blood, and even a nameless naked lady at one point (does Soldier of Fortune have a centerfold?).

Of course, the trouble with American Assassin isn’t its graphic violence (yes, please), rampant vulgarity (ditto), or even its misplaced, borderline irresponsible jingoism (sure, why not). In fact, plenty of great action movies have sprung from problematic politics. Hell, Rambo III thanked the brave Taliban in the credits andJohn Milius (who, like American Assassin author Vince Flynn, was rejected by the Marines on medical grounds) never heard of a foreign country he didn’t want to bomb. The trouble with American Assassin is that it’s a fifth grader’s fantasy that doesn’t even allow itself to have fun. It’s too stunted to even own its inherent homoeroticism.

American Assassin is far from the first action movie to use hegemonic scaremongering as the jumping off point to flatter the national security apparatus and indulge our grossest impulses, but at least when Arnold Schwarzenegger killed a hundred faceless brown terrorists, it was fun. He dropped a quip here and there, rocking 22-inch pythons and effusing rugged charm. Mitch Rapp is a mopey turd whose eyes fill with tears every time someone mentions his dead girlfriend. Don’t give us wish fulfillment and pretend it’s a gritty political drama. Enough with the weaponized dourness. If you’re going to make a Marine Todd movie, at least make Marine Todd awesome.

 

[hand2handking]

‘American Assassin’ Is At Least Ten Years Too Late To Be Taken Seriously

https://substreammagazine.com/2017/09/american-assassin-review/

Sometimes the moment has passed on making a particular type of film. The time of the post-9/11 spy thriller has passed in popular culture, and with it has gone the era of handheld shaky-cam to deliver us our action beats. It’s not surprising then thatAmerican Assassin, an ostensible adaptation of the late Vince Flynn’s novel by the same name, spent about a decade in production hell, never quite coming together when the American spy thriller was at its modern height and feeling immediately dated in its jingoism and America First politics.

In the aftermath of a terrorist attack that kills his fiancée, Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien) devotes his life to hunting the terrorist who led the attack. When he tracks down the cell responsible and is subsequently captured, he is rescued and recruited by the elite CIA subdivision Orion, led by Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan). Under the tutelage of renowned handler Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton), Mitch is trained to become a secret agent so that he and his team may take down a rogue agent bent of doing violence to the United States.

On a basic character arc plotting level, American Assassin makes minimal sense as Mitch Rapp is seemingly immune from consequences for every boneheaded move he makes. It’s demonstrated early on that Mitch is only capable of demonstrating a baseline level of barely contained rage, and this leads him to make reckless mistakes that place himself and others in mortal danger. One would think this would set up an arc for Mitch wherein he learns the value of teamwork, set against a former CIA agent who feels abandoned by the United States after he similarly acted counter to orders, but Mitch is a consistent reactionary who breaks rules on instinct or whim without ever seeming to learn that his actions have consequences. Sure, he gets positive results because the plot dictates it, but it’s patently unbelievable that anyone in authority would allow such a loose cannon to progress through training as he does, even as those same authorities repeatedly voice their well-founded doubts in being able to control Mitch.

As mindless action fare, American Assassin fares a little better, but not by much. The action beats rely on aping Bourne-style handheld camera work that is meant to be thrilling but instead comes across as merely disorienting, which was likely intentional to hide some noticeable issues with continuity and characters’ placement in a set’s geography. Tonally the film exists somewhere between the relatively apolitical leanings of the Bourne films and the hardcore jingoism of London Has Fallen, which supposedly lends itself to a self-serious realism yet can’t help but feel like a fetishistic conservative power fantasy. After all, Mitch is a rage-fueled consequence-free killer with a vendetta against brown people, who are in turn easily manipulated by a similarly competent white villain; this is racist pulp fantasy disguised as geopolitical melodrama that doesn’t effectively function as either.

More than anything, American Assassin is a film that severely overestimates how seriously it should take itself. This is the kind of narrative where a nuclear bomb goes off—with admittedly impressive special effects given the film’s modest budget—but there are minimal immediate casualties or political repercussions, and we’re supposed to take the protagonist’s grim scowl and determination without a hint of irony. Sorry, but that just doesn’t work for an audience with any interest in engaging intelligently with the material, and the lack of recognition of just how silly the whole proceeding is sinks the whole production as a result. This might have flown ten years ago when post-9/11 fervor still drove audiences to root for this sort of propaganda without much scrutiny, but that time has long passed and it is about time we stopped indulging this kind of American supremacy as something to be taken seriously. Treat American Assassin as the joke it is and opt out of giving it your time or money.

 

[keko jones]

Also, include international films too.

 

[MetalMario]

that helen mirren video was touching. Always a shame thinking about Neeson's wife. she was beautiful

 

[...So]

.

 

[Master Zik]

I've seen a lot of AF1 list. They only update it every 10 years I think?

 

[Master Zik]

Only saw him in NWA and the Kong flick.

He's good but I haven't seen the flashes of greatness like I've seen with MBJ and Bozeman.

 

[...So]

.

 

[Master Zik]

Only heard about it cuz if Mary J. being in it.

Been dragging my feet on catching any war related flicks for some reason.

 

[a-friend]

Man I loved Chappie.
I've seen it no less than 10times.

Absolutely loved it.

I hear a lot of trash talk about Chappie and Praise for District 9, and I hated District 9.

 

[Master Zik]

Didn't really care for either. Didn't like Elysium much eitherm

I want to give Blokamp another chance that's sort of outside that setting. He seems to bring a South African flavor to his projects and I don't want to jump to just saying I don't like that.

 

[stuntman mike]

elysium was a horrible failure of a movie except for sharlto copely as the bad guy. that was a great performance. i enjoyed district 9 (i’m sure h2hk could find an article on how district 9 is a failed tale on race).

on the subject of bad sci-fi, contact was such a let down. the book was so damn good. wonder if they could do a remake but i think the run time would have to be really long and it might be hard to hold people’s interest.

 

[...So]

.

 

[HEATHEN]

Nah I’m good on Cloverfield after that last BS film with John Goodman.

Unless it’s a direct sequel to the first movie I don’t eem wanna hear it.

 

[Kimchi Papi]

I really like MBJ, but he's definitely trying to go the will smith route & go for block buster movies.

Jason Mitchell already has a better resume than MBJ IMO. Compton was aiight, but he's showing some range in Mudbound & The Chi. He was in Detroit too right? I hope he & his agent continue to get good work.

Mudbound was a solid story... Wanted to poo poo Mary J, but she did aiight.

 

[getback]

Started watching Shot Caller with Jamie Lannister and Cheddar Bob. Didn't get through the whole thing because I fell asleep, but it's moving a little slow and doesn't really seem to have a lot of direction although I hope I'm wrong and the last half hour makes up for it.

Watched the Invitation again (third time). Brilliant use of tension. People have recommended Coherence but I can't find it anywhere.

 

[shotimesheff]

Ok so I didn't miss something ...

So again, a great movie that left me salty about the ending.

Made absolutely no sense for the man to go visit her (mind you, out his way) ... probably weeks if not month later to be in town again with a buddy in a random bar talking about the death to not be him? FOH .....

**** was weak ....

The best ending would of have been the knucklehead solved the murder and they actually took revenge.

But hey ....

Its kind of crazy Sam Rockwell won a globe for that. He was good but not the best. Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project is miles ahead.

 

[getback]

Rockwell was nice in Conviction.

 

[hand2handking]

i’m sure h2hk could find an article on how district 9 is a failed tale on race

Xenophobia, Racism Drive Alien Relocation in District 9

https://www.wired.com/2009/08/xenophobia-racism-drive-alien-relocation-in-district-9/

“It’s not just the whites and blacks,” told Wired.com. “You have coloreds, you have the Nigerians and Zimbabweans coming in as refugees, you have tribal fractions within that. It’s massively broken up and stratified. It’s an incredibly tense environment, so then to add aliens is almost just like one more layer, and they happen to go right in at the bottom.”

‘District 9’ — Profoundly Racist

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/district-9-profoundly-racist/

What D. W. Griffiths did to U.S. history in his technically magnificent but thematically racist “Birth of a Nation,” Neill Blomkamp does to Africa in the profoundly racist “District 9.”

The “Nigerians” in “District 9” inherit the depictions of slaves and freed Blacks in the Griffiths epic: they are snarling, monstrous, cannibalistic, sexually depraved and murderous. And they are the only Africans in the film other than the few African residents of the future Republic of South Africa in which the story takes place.

And what about the South Africa shown in this film? Is there any sign that the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela have influenced the character of this future South African society? No way! Not in Blomkamp’s vision. The South African technocracy is pretty much lily white, with just a few Africans who have become qualified to work in the corporate and state institutions. And this in a country that is almost 90% African and only 10% European.

Is District 9 Racist?

https://io9.gizmodo.com/5340409/is-district-9-racist

Yup, that's Hollywood's Africa the Africa we get from the media, isn't it. Black Africans shown as degenerate savages who'll have sex with non-humans and are pretty damn eager to eat people.

Disgusting.

 

[6 Rings G.O.A.T.]

 

[calibeebee]

Xenophobia, Racism Drive Alien Relocation in District 9

https://www.wired.com/2009/08/xenophobia-racism-drive-alien-relocation-in-district-9/


‘District 9’ — Profoundly Racist

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/district-9-profoundly-racist/


Is District 9 Racist?

https://io9.gizmodo.com/5340409/is-district-9-racist

Normally I don't like to entertain these stupid *** cherry picked racism posts of yours, but yes District 9 was hella racist. White savior protagonist. Black people depicted as savages with voodoo eating and chanting rituals. Was pretty blatant.