Jake Gittes

Hah.

Looks fine but not anything that gets my heart pumping. A prestige studio film with a little more intensity than usual. Hope Chazelle's personal stamp comes through better in the film itself.

If it's something I already read in a couple of reviews seems more pointless than anything.

I keep forgetting about that light. Whenever it appeared I mostly just thought it was a cheesy visual effect.

Was he being possessed? That never crossed my mind. I thought he was always himself, just an underwritten character. It's a tricky line, I'm generally very much in favor of not spoonfeeding the audience but there are works where questions are rewarding and open up interesting possibilities and those where they're frustrating and you suspect that the writer just threw too many ideas into the pot. This is a case of the latter for me.

You sure you wanna use that exact method of scoring? 82% of movies on a list worth the same number of points?

Here's what's been stuck in my mind since watching this: once the full scope of the cult and its plan is revealed, are we to believe that they somehow played a role in Charlie's death, so that later Annie would attempt to communicate with the spirit world, which in turn would only further fuck things up? Or is it a tragedy that works on purely a thematic level - meaning, it underlines that it's the family's last chance to actually communicate and unite, but instead they fall into even greater mutual distrust and resentment, and perish as a result? The event itself is amazingly effective - the long close-up on Peter's face, where both you and him just sit there having gone through something this horrific and trying to process it, is perfect - but I'm unsure about how it fits into the overall story. This is the kinda thing I meant when I was talking about the movie not being very tightly structured in the main thread, and it's also reflected in what @JohnnyGossamer points out about the reveal and generally in the film piling hardcore family drama, spirits, and a cult that brings a king from Hell into this world on top of each other. The suggestions about what's going on are scattered through the movie from the beginning but for a while they don't fully register, i.e. when Annie comments about the unfamiliar faces at her mother's funeral that doesn't make me suspicious of anything by itself. The vandalized grave also feels like something that would have worked better visually than as something briefly heard about over the phone. It's supernatural horror hiding itself so cleverly under family drama that for a good while you don't even notice it at all. The ending scene... I've tried but couldn't shake off the impression that it's kinda goofy, and I don't know whether intentionally or not. A big part of it, again, is Peter's close-up. Instead of taking in the arrival of a king of hell I'm just sitting there listening to old naked people chant and staring at a teenager with a broken nose who looks completely stoned. Plus, the scope of what's presumably to occur kinda diminishes the family's plight. Rosemary's Baby and The Witch made this exact ending work by making it about character: Rosemary at least spits in her husband's face and takes on her role as a mother, and Thomasin finds a new family after her previous one failed her. But here the ending is not about Peter - he's just the empty vessel for Paimon. The emotional, human-centered ending really comes much earlier, when Annie admits that she's at fault and tearfully pleads with her husband. Once he dies and she gets possessed, the drama just... ends. But the movie keeps going. One final complaint: where Collette/Annie is all raw emotion, Gabriel Byrne is barely even a character. I get that he's supposed to be this reliable steady presence but on the whole he's really strangely unaffected by all the tragedy that occurs around him (I mean his daughter is killed and the next time we see him he just kinda sits there calmly reading a book or something) and doesn't really become an active player in the story until a couple of minutes before he dies. On the whole, though, it's still impressive. The emotional tension in the family makes the feeling of dread in the second half that much more intimate and intense, which is aided by excellent camerawork and use of darkness. (Though Aster is not above clichés: see how Peter doesn't turn on the light ONCE during his final walk through the house. I liked that Annie immediately did when she saw the apparition of her mother, and was disappointed when he didn't.) Charlie's cluck haunting Peter is genius, and an example of where the movie does make the story work as horror and character drama simultaneously. (I jumped every time.) Collette is very good, the others generally solid. The script could have given them more to chew on, but the pain of a hopelessly divided, fractured family unit comes through regardless. The score is effective. It's a solid movie. Not a new horror masterpiece or a personal favorite or something that fucked me up and got deep under my skin and is gonna keep me up nights. I look forward to watching it again.

Then again the first Conjuring's Friday was over 40% of the OW and that was a WOM hit. It's gonna be very close.

Small thing I know but irked by the "to the moon" part of the tagline. Let people guess/connect the dots. (I doubt many would think that he's playing Yuri Gagarin.)

Yeesh my man Ignatiy V. gave this a C review on The AV Club and then this really makes the case for why Gary Ross as both writer and director shouldn't have been allowed within 100 miles of the thing. My enthusiasm took a hit for sure.

It did but it could have worked better. I did say I found the dread-building in the second half very well-done.

week 7 no

Part A: 1. Will Ocean's 8 Open to more than $36M? 1000 Yes 2. Will Ocean's 8 Open to more than $42M? 2000 Yes 3. Will Hereditary open to more than $6M? 3000 Yes 4. Will Hereditary open to more than $8.8M? 4000 Yes 5. Will The top 2 new entries combine to more than $50M? 5000 Yes 6. Will Hotel Artemis open to more than $3.75M? 1000 Yes 7. Will Hotel Artemis open to more than $5M? 2000 Yes 8. Will Solo stay in the top 2? 3000 Yes 9. Will Deadpool fall less than 48%? 4000 Yes 10. Will Life of the Party's PTA stay above $1,000? 5000 Yes 11. Will Action Point drop more than 60% on Friday? 1000 No 12. Will Overboard increase more than 55% on Saturday? 2000 No 13. Will Book Club drop less than 32%? 3000 Yes 14. Will Adrift stay above Avengers? 4000 No 15. Will it turn out that this was only called Ocean's 8, so that the trilogy can use up 9 and 10 without encroaching on the original titles? 5000 5000 Bonus: 9/15 5000 10/15 8000 11/15 12,000 12/15 16,000 13/15 20,000 14/15 24,000 15/15 30,000 Part B: The top 3 predictions will score points as follows: Closest: Within 1% - 15,000, Within 2,5% - 12000, Within 5% 9,000, Within 10% - 6000 Outside 10% - 3000 points 2nd Closest: Within 1% - 12,000, Within 2,5% - 10000, Within 5% 7,000, Within 10% - 4000 Outside 10% - 2000 points 3rd Closest: Within 1% - 10,000, Within 2,5% - 8000, Within 5% 5,000, Within 10% - 2000 Outside 10% - 1000 points 1. What will Ocean's 8 make for its 3 day? 51.507 2. What will Action Point's percentage change be? -62.5% 3. What will Upgrade's PTA be for the Weekend? $2,084 Part 😄 There will be 6 films to place and points are expanded because traditionally people haven't scored well here: 3. Deadpool 2 5. Avengers: Infinity War 7. Book Club 8. Hotel Artemis 10. Life of the Party 12. Overboard

33 37 Game Night Warner Bros. (New Line) 58 - - - - - - 16 Domestic Total as of Jun. 6, 2018: $68,948,674 WB really wants to get Game Night to the nice number.

i dig it

It is kinda cheesy but in a good way! The cheese doesn't take away from how fucked-up the situation is, it only underscores it.

Gordon rules in RB, and the remarkable thing about its ending is that it's openly absurd and horrific and even weirdly touching without any of these things canceling each other out. That's just the highest level. I understand why filmmakers, especially first-timers and especially in horror, choose to stick with one tone - better to reinforce the one thing you know you can do than risk messing up the whole movie - but it takes away from the result. The Witch, which I love, at least found the time for something like the scene of Thomasin and Caleb playing and laughing by the stream, this doesn't even have that - there are moments when you can relax but they are still overwhelmed by a sense of doom. Admittedly there are story reasons for this, but still.

The tone I'd say definitely remains the same. Portentous and heavy to the max. Next to no levity. (This tends to frustrate me, actually, and it does here too, though it's not a dealbreaker.) As for the suggestions, yeah I noticed a handful both visual and dropped into dialogue, but I'd still say the movie spends too much time being a family drama before it abruptly lets all hell break loose.

Perhaps it would. I'm not gonna be seeing it again till the home video release, though, since it's only playing here dubbed. Once was enough. I'll go into more detail once the RTM thread is opened so as not to tempt folks with spoilers here but let's just say I didn't feel like the story strands were tied together particularly well in the end. Certainly not as well as in Rosemary's Baby which is a very thematically unified movie. This one changes focus throughout.

Literally rewatched Rosemary's Baby yesterday. It holds up.

Initial impression is that this is quite good but not great. Slow burn for sure but the dread is real, I was holding my breath through most of the second half. What this movie can do with just the simplest sound effect is impressive. Aster is a better director than writer though, the story meanders and the set-up and payoff is not as strong as it could have been. The ending in particular didn't work as well for me as it was clearly supposed to. Rosemary's Baby and The Witch are the best comparisons I can think of overall but both those movies are a good deal more meticulous and tightly structured as far as both horror and drama go. Collette is excellent but as far as nominations it's too early to say for certain. Don't think the GA is gonna be too crazy about it but it's not F cinemascore material either. The Witch numbers should be the target, anything above that is gravy.

It'll be seen by like four people in the speakeasy.

How is Delgo not #1?

TOG's 2008 revisiting thing recently got killed because of the top 100 movie lines thing. Which will be going on till the second half of July. Apparently you can't have two countdowns going on at the same time. You can plead with grim or whoever though I guess, for one by pointing out that movie lines and animated films aren't even remotely similar.