Recommend (or don't) a movie thread v2

[Brendone]

Originally Posted by direwolf

Such a beautiful and magical film. The final scene still gets me every single time.

Gets me too. Who the Fk says “want to have a catch”?

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan

Has anyone watched Field of Dreams lately?

Jesus christ, I'm smiling and bawling my eyes out every other scene. The connections between all the character's stories is a beautiful bit of writing. The themes of Americana, fathers and sons, beliefs, passions, regrets etc. are overwhelming me. It's a brilliant classic film. Simple, and kind of a silly premise too, but goddam magic on a screen.

Watched it the other week with my son.

I was good, a bit hokey at times, but good.

[Nyah]

Watched Pearl and X over the weekend. Mia Goth might be my new favourite horror actress. She's so great in both of them. Looking forward to exploring more from A24.

[jroc]

Originally Posted by Nyah

Looking forward to exploring more from A24.

Go see 'Talk to Me'.

A++ spooky movie.

[Engine09]

Looking like a 2024 release for Maxxxine, great cast:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaXXXine

[J pold]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Edgar Wright is hollywoods most over rated director. I’m not sure how he keeps getting gigs. But that movie is pretty good. Best thing he’s done since Shaun of the dead. Only good thing he’s done other than Shaun of the dead.

Could not agree more.

[timun]

^Erroneous.

First of all Hot Fuzz is Edgar Wright's best movie, and secondly, pretty much everything he's done has been at the very least "very good". (The World's End was his weakest, in my opinion.)

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Hot Fuzz is the most typical Edgar Wright movie. Great concept, some funny parts but otherwise a total mess. He didn’t even get the genre spoofing right. Actually his utter failure to make the parody he wanted is what is most disappointing.

The movie was advertised as a sort of parody of action films and buddy cop movies. And it’s weird that people still talk about it like it is. It’s not. At all. Like how Shaun of the dead riffed on zombie movies except terribly done.

He completely dropped the ball. The first 20 or so minutes does it well enough. And so does the final 20 but everything in between is just a bad rehash of a horror thriller. A poorly done rehash at that. I’ve seen that movie before and it was called Club Dread and it friggin sucked.

It ends up being this awful mix of murder mystery, thriller and horror that fails badly. It had the right idea but veers off the tracks and by the time it recovers, the action parody parts start to feel out of place.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

The posts above about visual comedy are dead on though.

Stylistically his movies are a tier above your average hollywood comedy. Creative exposition and transitions, not just your standard, lazy methods. He weaves comedy into the mundane with pans and angles that help the humour in the script to land.

Hot Fuzz is also one of the more quotable films of the last decade and a half or so. Up there with Step Brothers. It's a gem. I think the appreciation for it is a matter of personal taste more than a reflection of Wright's competence as a director.

There's a lot of brit humour, and that doesn't always translate effectively to a north american audience either.

I think the fact that it doesn't fit into traditional boxes of JUST mystery or comedy or thriller is what helps it stand out. But if you don't jive with what it's going for, and need it to fall into one of those genres then perhaps it's less of an enjoyable watch.

[direwolf]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Hot Fuzz is the most typical Edgar Wright movie. Great concept, some funny parts but otherwise a total mess. He didn’t even get the genre spoofing right. Actually his utter failure to make the parody he wanted is what is most disappointing.

The movie was advertised as a sort of parody of action films and buddy cop movies. And it’s weird that people still talk about it like it is. It’s not. At all. Like how Shaun of the dead riffed on zombie movies except terribly done.

He completely dropped the ball. The first 20 or so minutes does it well enough. And so does the final 20 but everything in between is just a bad rehash of a horror thriller. A poorly done rehash at that. I’ve seen that movie before and it was called Club Dread and it friggin sucked.

It ends up being this awful mix of murder mystery, thriller and horror that fails badly. It had the right idea but veers off the tracks and by the time it recovers, the action parody parts start to feel out of place.

[ResAlien]

Club Dread is fantastic, Cecil’s being a silly goose.

[FireGilbert]

Enjoyed these two movies from 2022 I saw over the weekend:

Confess, Fletch: A really funny and fast paced art theft/murder mystery. John Hamm shines in the titular role having a good balance between arrogance and likeability. His interactions with the cast of quirky suspects provides most of humour with some interesting twists and turns along the way. One of the funnier movies I've seen recently and I hope we get a sequel. 9/10

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Damn this is gorgeous animation. Dreamworks has caught up to the bar set by Sony and they are both leaving Disney in their dust. The fantasy adventure story is pretty good too with some interesting themes around happiness and mortality. Continues the Shrek universe trend poking fun at fairy tale tropes but stands well enough on it's own you forget Puss was a spin off. 9/10

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Hot Fuzz is the most typical Edgar Wright movie. Great concept, some funny parts but otherwise a total mess. He didn’t even get the genre spoofing right. Actually his utter failure to make the parody he wanted is what is most disappointing.

The movie was advertised as a sort of parody of action films and buddy cop movies. And it’s weird that people still talk about it like it is. It’s not. At all. Like how Shaun of the dead riffed on zombie movies except terribly done.

He completely dropped the ball. The first 20 or so minutes does it well enough. And so does the final 20 but everything in between is just a bad rehash of a horror thriller. A poorly done rehash at that. I’ve seen that movie before and it was called Club Dread and it friggin sucked.

It ends up being this awful mix of murder mystery, thriller and horror that fails badly. It had the right idea but veers off the tracks and by the time it recovers, the action parody parts start to feel out of place.

I feel like this is another instance of Americans having trouble understanding satire (which to be fair is a very European and especially very British form of comedy).

Parody is a form of comedy where tropes of a genre are exaggerated for comedic effect. You're right that that isn't what Hot Fuzz does, and if that's what you expect from the movie you'll mostly be disappointed. Although things do go increasingly over the top towards the end.

For the most part, Hot Fuzz plays on juxtaposition between film/TV and reality, and it's mostly satirical. As is pretty typical for satire, the form of the satire (buddy cop movies, action movies, but also British TV shows about small towns) is not the target of the satire. In other words, the movie (for the most part) isn't really making fun of movies and TV, but rather people who think and/or act like they are in movies or in a TV show, and people who have trouble viewing the world through any other lens than an imagined camera lens. And of course the lengths some people will go to to make reality conform to their idea of what a perfect little village is supposed to be like. (But of course the tropiest trope is that the more perfect a little village appears to be, the darker the secrets it hides.)

A big metajoke in the movie is that the characters are from different film or TV genres (or have watched different genres and acting out roles from them), making the movie kind of a deliberate mess. Which I don't think works that well in practice if I'm being honest. Mostly the movie is doing way too much "having cake and eating it". It's very funny in the parts where people are trying to be movie characters in a world which is inherently uncinematic, and pretty funny when it does full throttle movie nonsense, but for my tastes it lands somewhere in the middle too many times. I get why people really like it though.

Likewise, Shaun of the Dead isn't a parody of zombie films, it just uses the form of a zombie apocalypse to satirize people living their lives as if they were zombies. (Shaun most specifically.)

[timun]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Hot Fuzz is the most typical Edgar Wright movie. Great concept, some funny parts but otherwise a total mess. <clipped for brevity>

[btimbit]

One of my favorite things about Hot Fuzz is how they originally wrote it to include a love interest for Nick/Pegg, but they cut it for time and just gave most of those lines to Danny/Frost, and it just.... Works so well

Also love how they set up a big murder conspiracy just for it to unravel and be about something incredibly simple and silly instead.

[Locke]

'Hot Fuzz' is a treasure.

[Burninator]

Edgard Wright used to be a lot higher in my books. Scott Pilgrim is probably my favourite movie of his. I have the remastered 4k and it's stunning. But in my opinion it's been a downward trend with World's End, Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho. He is a huge film buff/nerd and I feel like his focus has been towards that and not making a better movie. Last in Soho had a great concept and technically was amazing but the story and pacing felt left behind.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Locke

'Hot Fuzz' is a treasure.

Why thank you.

[timun]

Hot Fuzz is a treasure. Regular Fuzz is just... regular.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by timun

Hot Fuzz is a treasure. Regular Fuzz is just... regular.

I can be Hot too, dammit!