This movie had a budget 500 times the size of the last one I saw: A hundred grand! A fortune!
Sean Baker sure is good at making movies that jump into conflicting emotions without losing track of the story.
I live less than ten miles from where this was shot. I’ve walked those exact blocks many times. I can’t tell you how many times I drove past the doughnut shop at the center of this movie and made a joke about it being Donut Time.
Side note: RIP Donut Time. I believe I might have actually been inside once. I hope your current life as Danny Trejo’s doughnut shop is going well.
Today’s poster parody felt like the obvious choice.
On the one hand, this movie is terrible. On the other, it’s also excellent.
Shot for about 200 bucks by a bunch of people in a village in Uganda, it’s a faithful adaptation of a big budget action blockbuster that also gleefully mocks everything about the genre, including itself. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a movie that came preloaded with its own heckler audio track. My favorite bit of low budget ingenuity/ glorious nonsense is the bad guy with the giant tommy-gun that’s made out of a chunk of wood with a pan attached to the bottom who has a bandolier of bullets made from sharpened twigs.
I don’t know that I need to see it again, but I’m glad I saw it once. If you watch it, heed the words of the narrator: expect the unexpectable!
The fake poster was a bit of a challenge since there is not one single decent quality frame in the film, but I embraced the spirit of the film and made do with what was available. The reference poster is for a fairly recent film that had a famous director and won some big awards, but the poster wasn’t a standout. Reference movie title in the alt text.
It’s hard to talk about this movie without giving away the different take it has on how to capture a ghost story, so I’m not going to try. Spoilers for that below. I won’t spoil any of the actual story, but if you want to be surprised by Soderbergh’s latest way of Soderberghing, now is the time to look away.
All good? Cool.
Soderbergh’s approach is to tell a ghost story from the point of view of the ghost. Every scene is a single shot from the ghost’s perspective. For the most part it works. The movie really only breaks when things happen that are beyond things that would happen in the real world; shaking tables are a lot more believable than floating objects.
As for the actual story: It’s pretty predictable- especially since there are a couple of important plot points that were extremely telegraphed- but the cast is watchable enough to let that slide.
Today’s fake poster is only the slightest of genre shifts. I could easily see a similar poster being actually used. This version, however, wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance.
Not every movie has to be The Brutalist. Sometimes the right movie is a low stakes comedy where crazy situations happen but you’re not worried because you know it’s going to work out for the right people; a movie where people repeatedly get into bad situations, and when they try to get out of them they fall into something worse until everything falls apart- which somehow is exactly what needs to happen to fix everything.
Does this movie really make sense? No. Is it lighthearted fun with charming leads? Absolutely.
And is it bad that it’s only February and I’m stretching to find reasonable posters to parody? Maybe.
When the trailers for this first started showing up I said “I would have to hear a LOT of good reviews before I’d see that.” Then I heard a lot of movie folks say they like it, and that there was at least one scene- the “Rock DJ” number- that needs to be seen in a real theater to be appreciated. So I went.
It’s not very good.
Vera Drew’s Letterboxd review explains perfectly why they went with a CGI chimp instead of a person: “How else are they going make the most unlikeable character in bio pic history someone you wanna watch for two hours?” He’s a jerk through 99 percent of the film, and his big transition to slightly less of a jerk starts with him blaming his problems on getting fame as a teenager. It’s also pretty funny that he spends most of the movie wanting to make his own music, but the big standout song is from a band he seems to hate, and the redemption song at the end of the movie is a version of “My Way.”
Lazy joke poster below.
I went through the trouble of finding the Planet of the Apes font, but wasn’t even enthused enough to add the credit block from the original poster.
I should have watched this in a theater, and I should have done it decades ago. There was no way it could have lived up to what I’d heard about it while I was watching it at home with headphones on and distractions everywhere. Even so, it was inspiring and heartbreaking to watch.
No one is going to get the reference for this poster. I’ll save everyone some grief and put it in the alt tags.
Silents Synced takes silent films and pairs them with more current music. It’s not a new idea: Giorgio Moroder did it 40 years ago with Metropolis. The main difference is that Moroder made new songs just for the movie. These use existing songs that have little or nothing to do with the films. They also include special effects that draw attention toward themselves and away from the movies. The audience applauded at the end, so I guess this works for people, but I’d rather watch a clean print with music created to enhance the story instead of just playing in the background. A modern score created and performed specifically for the film by a group like R.E.M. sounds pretty darn cool. Until that happens, I’d say watch the originals. You can find them for free all over the place.
Since the movie is about a guy who wants to be a detective, I used the poster for a movie about a different detective as inspiration for this poster. I barely had to change the story description.
I’m about to make some silly nit-picky complaints, but this is a good movie with strong performances from everyone in the family, and it’s worth investing two and three quarter hours to watch. Soheila Golestani is particularly strong as a woman trying to do the right thing while protecting her family.
That being said, here comes the nitpicking! There’s a bit of mild spoiling below:
If Anton Chekhov watched the first scene he’d jump up and yell “Hey! I know at least one thing that’s going to happen at the end!”
The ages of the actors playing the kids are a little hinky. There’s a moment where the mother says one of the daughters is going through puberty, and I thought “wait- how old is she supposed to be/” I looked up the actress afterward, and she’s 32. She doesn’t look ancient, but she sure doesn’t look like a kid. Then again, this movie was shot in secret and everyone had to flee the country after it was done to avoid getting arrested, so I guess they were lucky to find good actress of any age willing to live in exile to tell this story.
Also: is it bad that a chase scene in this very serious movie reminded me of Scooby Doo?
You know what this movie needs? A silly poster!
If you can figure out the poster I’m copying, you can probably figure out why I picked it. Or you could save some effort and just read the alt text.
After watching Barb & Star yesterday, this feels like a trip to the frat house. It’s somehow dirtier, but with less sex. Funny, but much more caustic.
I saw this at an Alamo Drafthouse “Sing Along Party.” It was… odd. I think they had someone watching and turning on closed captioning whenever they thought a song would start. Sometimes the lyrics wouldn’t show, but the dialogue would. Maybe it was supposed to be a Joke Along Party as well.
I will not tell you how long I spent trying to make the letters on this poster look right. I thought I’d save time so I made a custom brush and did it in Illustrator. I probably could have neatly written it on paper and scanned it in half the time. And it’s still not quite right- but close!
This movie came out in the middle of COVID. I started to watch it at home, got about five minutes in, and turned it off. It wasn’t for me.
Then Alonso Duralde from Maximum Film was excited that there was going to be a screening in an actual theater, so I decided to give it another shot.
I discovered the movie isn’t for me if I sit alone and watch it on my computer, but is much more for me in a crowd of BASGTVDM superfans. It’s wild and silly and a bunch of fun. I’m glad I found the right crowd to watch it with. Thanks, Alonso!
