October 2020: Seven Psychopaths and Unstoppable

Once again, the following are extra long quotes straight from the mouths of moofie members. No fancy write ups. Just let the moofers speak for themselves. This club moofie took place on the 24^th October 2020. Once again, in the miserable year that was 2020, this meeting too place over the most horrid piece of software of all time, Zoom.

In this one, Ray was away watching the AFL grand final. Meanwhile Paul & Jodi were away on a road trip. The rest of us were in attendance.

Sylvia: who nominated these movies?
CJ: All the nominators are absent today!

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Seven Psychopaths

Seven Psychopaths 

Wendy: why did you nominate this film Ray?
Sylvia: we are all asking this question!
Wendy: Well, he was a bit embarrassed after having watched it cause he felt that it was a bit of a dud but he says …

Ray: I picked this movie when we came across it by accident on Netflix and thought, ‘what a great cast’, plus the Director (Martin McDonagh) did a great job on Three Billboards.  The cast worked hard, but the script was pretty ordinary.  It was excessively violent like a Quentin Tarantino movie except without the class. Had a few good moments, but not enough.

Sylvia: ok, well I walked out after 5 minutes into this film so I didn’t see it. 
Andy: it was the language … 
Sylvia: … and the description of the shooting in the eyeballs so that was enough for me. So you guys go ahead! 

Andy: I’m going to agree with Ray… I thought it was trash 

Andy : it was a waste of a good cast 

CJ: Tarantino does come to mind when watching this one but Tarantino was the original of that style. This felt like what Pearl Jam is to Nirvana .. it was not the cutting edge. It was the repeat. It didn’t feel original or new, it was just trying to be cool. 
Beck:… uh sorry, I’m a Pearl Jam fan so we’ll have none of that
Andy:.. apples and oranges, CJ! 
Sylvia: how about Pearl Jam/Nirvana is to Michael Bolton? 
Beck:.. that’s better 
CJ: yes, it was Michael Bolton to Nirvana 
Beck: No, I’ve got it! it was Nickelback to Nirvana

Sylvia: were the actors alright or were they all pretty rubbish as well? 
Wendy: he had a great cast. Christopher Walken, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson…
Andy: Abbie Cornish – wasted. Abbie Cornish in a wet T-shirt? What teenage boy wrote this film??!
Beck: I’ve seen her in about two or three films now. I just don’t get her as an actress. 
Wendy: she was in Three Billboards 
Beck: she was pretty useless in that as well 

Sylvia: what did you think about it, Wendy?
Wendy: oh yeah, it was half an idea. It didn’t go anywhere. 

Beck: it was really bizarre. I was watching going “oh no. Don’t get it. Don’t understand”. And it was such a waste. On the box it was great, Christopher Walken – tick, Sam Rockwell – tick, Colin Farrell – I can take or leave, Woody Harrelson. I like; so I was like “ok, we’re gonna get some where. It’s gonna be fun, it’s gonna be smart, gonna be clever … No”

Beck: shall I do the sound effect? (Gets up and slams a drawer)
Sylvia: It’s a drawer slammer! That’s one for Ray. Ray got a drawer Slammer!
Andy: Hey, we’ve gotta have a new award “The Drawer Slammer” for the lowest scoring film 
Sylvia: well shall we put that to bed then?
Beck: how many drawer slammers does this one get then?… 

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Scores for Seven Psychopaths

• Sylvia 0 (“minus 5“)
• Ray 2.5
• Renny 1
• CJ 1
• Beck 1 (“only for Christopher Walken. If he wasn’t in it I’d give it 0“)
• Andy 1 (“for the Christopher Walken monologues“)
• Wendy 2 (“it was half baked but the bits that were baked were ok“)
• Paul abstain
• Jodi abstain

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Unstoppable

Unstoppable

Sylvia: everybody ready to move on?
Andy: let’s plough through at 70 mph 
Wendy: wasn’t it 15mph? 

Sylvia: can I just say I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. It was just relentless. Right from the get-go it was ‘oh my god!’. I had the pillow against my face because I was worried something terrible was going to happen and then … it was really really engaging. Much more than I expected. … I had no expectations. I knew nothing about this film. I actually ended up really enjoying it.

Andy: it was heaps of fun. Good effort 

Sylvia: I can see why Paul nominated it.

Sylvia: he (Tony Scott) had a really strong female character in this. I really liked the Rosario Dawson character. 

Wendy: it was pretty good on the whole. 

Wendy: I was fixated on the question – how could that have happened? Apparently it was based on a true story. 

Wendy: there were moments where I was thinking, ‘this train is going 15kmh’. They’re putting this exciting music on and this train is going at a snail’s pace. 

Wendy: You would think that they would have some kind of GPS on it, but with freight trains, they don’t. I was probably thinking too much about the train. Anyway, it was good

CJ: they’re trying to inject drama but I couldn’t get out of my mind that this is just a train, and it’s going pretty slowly, you could just catch up to it, jump on, turn a knob and it’ll stop. It’s not that dangerous. Well actually it IS but it just doesn’t seem that lethal compared to other genres. 

Renny: bad choice of subject. It’s a freight train and there are no passengers on it. Just these two people sitting there. So the only way you’re going to inject some drama is to see what are you gonna hit? What can they throw in the path of this train? So you got another train with school kids on it – yay, let’s put that in. Then you got – let’s hit something at the level crossing – you knew that was coming. You’ve got this weird curvy track and there’s fuel tanks underneath it. Why would they build it like that? It just seems like that’s the way you have to make this movie because the train itself is pretty boring. There’s nothing for it to do except reverse and forward and brake and that’s it. It seemed a little bit ‘manufactured’.

Renny: that guy who started it (the train driver) he was breaking so many regulations. I thought he would have gone to jail for that but instead he went to work in fast food. I guess he got out of that alright. 

Beck: I thought that it was fun! It did the job and I quite liked that it was ‘just about a train’. I liked that it was just layer upon layer of human error, bureaucracy, ego, to f**k up a situation which was already a mess to begin with. 

Ray: Pretty good action movie with a simple plot. Denzel Washington and Chris Pine worked well together. Action scenes were good (although the train didn’t seem to be going at 60mph at times). Usual American schmaltzy happy ending.

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Scores for Unstoppable

• Wendy 3.5
• Ray 3.5
• Beck 4
• CJ 2.5
• Renny 2
• Andy 3.5 (Andy: “2.5“; Sylvia: “2.5? really?“; Andy: “Nah, 3.5“)
• Sylvia 4
• Paul abstain
• Jodi abstain

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Once again, that’s the end.
Until next time!
CJ

August 2020: Top Gun and Parasite

Hi everyone. It’s been a long time between write-ups and 2020 was especially bad. Moofie club kept going but we did it over zoom. This write up happened in early 2021 but the actual meeting happened on the 29^th August 2020. Our two movies for the night were Top Gun and Parasite (2019). No fancy write-ups here. The quotes this time are extra long and detailed so lets let the people of club moofie speak for themselves. Without further ado…

Top Gun cover

Top Gun (1986)

Renny: they were basically sweating in every single scene. Not enough air conditioning 

Renny: as a kid you fantasise about how cool it would be to be one of these guys.

Renny: The music is fun and cool. Everyone loved it at the time. All these things now make it (the film) such a fun journey down memory lane 

Renny: I think now I’d watch it and think, ‘No! That’s terrible. There’s so many horrible scenes that is not right in terms of behaviour in the workplace’ 

CJ: one of the reasons why I chose top gun, to compare with the sequel 

Sylvia: Wendy and Ray, what did you think? Did you enjoy the film?
Wendy: I thought it was pretty cheesy. It was just terrible 
Sylvia: it was a Camembert 
Ray: I remembered it as a really bad movie. And the good news is that my memory is very good!

Ray: that is about the best example of the worst possible script and American chest beating you could imagine 

Beck: I do think if you’re going into this movie thinking it’s anything more than a flesh-fest and flash flying, this isn’t for you 

Beck: I like that older woman choice (on Kelly McGillis) 

Beck: If I was flicking through channels on a Saturday night and it was a choice between Fast and Furious and Top Gun, then Top Gun’s gonna get my Saturday night. It’s totally cheesy, I don’t really care, it’s a sentimental favourite for me. 

Beck: I still don’t like Tom cruise in this 
Sylvia: I think he was alright because he wasn’t really “Tom cruise” in this one. He was still really young 

Wendy: I wanted to ask the guys what they though of Kelly McGillis? She’s got an unusual kind of face. Is she attractive? 
Andy: I don’t think so 
Sylvia: really? I think she’s beautiful 
Beck: other guys?
Paul: she was ok but I didn’t have posters of her on the wall 
Andy: she’s a lot sexier in Witness 
Beck: that’s what I mean. At the time it was a really unusual casting 

Beck: I’ve got a question for the guys, only because there’s no real female role models in it, who would you be? – do you wanna be Iceman, Goose, Hollywood? who’d you wanna be if you were in top gun?
Ray: I think I’d prefer to be the ejector seat and just get out of there 
Andy: now that is a blatant play for quote of the year 

Paul: I loved it. I’ll always love it. If it’s on TV then I’ll just sit there and watch it – it’s a no-brainer 
Jodi: I loved it too. We would replay the opening scene over and over again all afternoon and into the evening until the neighbour downstairs came up and asked us to shut it off 

Andy: usually I’m not with Ray but I’m with Ray on this one. You say this is part of public culture but there’s got to be more to it… 
Sylvia: ..no there doesn’t!
Paul: was that your first time watching it?
Andy: I’d never seen it 

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Scores for Top Gun

• CJ 3.5
• Renny 3
• Sylvia 2
• Andy 1
• Paul 4
• Jodi 4.5
• Wendy 2.5
• Ray 1.5
• Beck 3

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Parasite cover

Parasite (2019)

Sylvia: Wendy you nominated this one. Can you tell us why?
Wendy: well I hadn’t actually seen it yet. We put it on the to-watch list. I am glad I nominated it because… you watch it and you go, ‘What’s this about?’ And now something else happened! And you go ‘what? What?!’ 
It turned from this conman-family story into something else. Then you end up with this person who lives in this bunker in the bottom of the house .. it’s very unexpected the way it twists and turns 

Wendy: the dialogue was great. Lots of memorable funny scenes, very black humour, and very sad as well 

Wendy: I think it says a lot about the class culture as well. I really enjoyed it 

Ray: interesting thing is that it speaks to the comedy but there’s quite a lot of pathos so it’s more a drama than a comedy. It might be something to do with Korean humour. It’s not all fun and games, even in a comedy. There’s always some sad stuff as well. You just don’t know if you’re supposed to laugh or be shocked by what happens. 
CJ: it’s quite a common Korean thing that a comedy ends up as a knife murder halfway through. Nothing ever ends happily 

Sylvia: yes, this one really stayed with me. I kept thinking about it a lot. I really did like it. I thought it was very clever. The dialogue was excellent. It was very original 

Sylvia: I did not pick that there would be someone living in the basement 

Sylvia: that scene where the mum tells the story of the little boy seeing the ghost coming up the basement. That scene, that visual, stuck with me, like I couldn’t fall asleep. Oh that was so creepy 

Andy: I thought it was a masterly made film. The story was so clever. Such a fantastically made film. 

Ray: I think it was an unusual film to have won the academy award as best movie. Does it mean that:
1: it was a great movie (and it *was* a great movie but I would have thought not to the taste of everyone in the academy);
2 that there wasn’t that many other movies (which could possibly have been the case); Or
is it the 80 year old men of the academy trying to show, “before we lose our jobs, we’ll try to demonstrate we can vote a black movie as best picture (Moonlight), and a multicultural foreign language movie as well”? 
Sylvia: Well, that’s very cynical 
Ray: it’s a really unusual choice to give that best movie 

Paul: I thought it was very clever. It looked amazing. I wondered the same thing – if this was indicative of a Korean film 

Beck : loved it. I though it was really good. The whole thing was so bitter-sweet. 

Beck: The scene where the daughter is sitting on the toilet while it’s spewing raw sewerage – I mean how do you come up with this?! 

Beck: All of it was heartbreakingly sad, and bizarre. Like a wild ride the whole film. I loved it – I had no idea what was going to happen next 

CJ: I loved it too. Totally unique and totally unpredictable. I loved how the con unfolded. One character introducing to the next. There was a real momentum there building that up. Overall I thought it was really unique and interesting.

CJ:  But… and I always have some sort of problem with something) the one thing. that knife murder: 
First it was a really interesting development with the con, how the whole family got themselves in leeching on this other family. Then the film changed direction, completing this cycle where this new guy becomes the new ‘haunting’ in the basement. So there is this trajectory – the film goes in one direction, then it changes to this other direction; and the catalyst to make that happen is the knife murder. For some reason that bit seemed a bit … what’s the word, ‘contrived’? did it *have to be* a knife murder?
It (the film) was so clever in every other way, but couldn’t that (the catalyst for change) have also been a little more clever? I liked where it started, I liked how it ended, I liked that it did change, but the thing that makes the change – the knife murder – couldn’t they have done that better? 
Sylvia: [not getting what CJ meant] what would you have done to make that less contrived? 
CJ: well I don’t know. It’s the movie maker who’s been so clever in every other way to make the story unfold the way it did. It’s not for us to make that up. We’re watching their movie. I was expecting something more clever to change it up, and the next phase of the movie begins. To have this bloody murder scene … I’ve seen a lot of Korean movies and there is usually a bloody murder scene…. He (the director) was original in every other way and this movie wasn’t like any other Korean movie I’d seen, but that bit was like MANY other Korean movies. In a way that’s a little bit lazy … he took an easy path there. 
Sylvia: if you feel like you’ve seen that before then that would definitely affect how you’re viewing this film. 
CJ: this film in particular was very clever in how it unfolded so to revert to this knifing – that’s how you’re going to resolve this situation? I was hoping for a cleverer unravelling. Where they could talk, discuss it out, things would fall out of it, and then we move on. Instead, we get to this point, we slash and burn and everyone is murdered, and then, that’s it? You could have done better than that (as a film writer) to make this bit just as clever as the rest of the film was. It’s like when you write a story, tie the story in knots and then you just write “it was all a dream and then I woke up”. It’s an easy way out. 

Renny: I think it deserved the academy award. 

Renny [on the knife murder scene] it sort of robbed us of the ‘unravelling’ of the storylines. We should have been waiting for a clue or something for people to catch onto the con and then some sort of confrontation, but because it was so sudden and no one could really say anything, and that was the end, and that family never saw that other family again – well it was like, that’s the end. 

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Scores for Parasite

• Beck 4.5
• Paul 4
• Jodi abstain
• Wendy 4.5
• Ray 4
• Renny 4
• CJ 4.5
• Sylvia 4.5
• Andy 4

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That’s it for now.  Just had to keep it brief – which is a shame as I had so much trivia to contribute especially to Top Gun, but oh well… another day.
See ya,
CJ

June 2020: The Nightingale and Won’t you be my neighbour?

The Nightingale

Set in the penal colony in Tasmania, this is a haunting tale of convicts, revenge and sadism.  It tells the terrible history of the massacre of the aboriginals in Tasmania who were systematically exterminated and the convicts who were treated appallingly. The rugged scenery of Tasmania was a highlight but the movie is not for the faint hearted. I personally found it very hard to watch.

Quotes:

Beck: I’ll just do an apology and disclaimer for The Nightingale. It was not a rom-com.

Beck: But I never thought it was gratuitous.

Andy: She was only stabbing the guy about twenty times.

Beck: They didn’t try to pretty it up. It was heart wrenching what she went through.

Andy: It was about how harsh and brutal it was.

Ray: It was a very hard movie to watch but gives you an idea of what it was like for women, the Irish, convicts and Aboriginals. If you were two of those things, it was very bad.

Beck: It was a total disregard for indigenous people.

Beck: Both had songs that helped them with their culture.

Beck: The cinematography – wow! I loved all that.

Beck: I didn’t enjoy watching it but I appreciated it. It opened my eyes to what had happened in the past.

Wendy: I hated it.

Scores:

Beck: 4

Andy: 2

Ray: 2.5

Wendy: – 2

Others: abstain

Won’t you be my neighbour

Fred Rogers had old fashioned message – that very child should be loved. Driven by his faith, he had an impact on generations of children in the US. His shows reflected the great moments in history and he was able to explain difficult issues such as death with great sensitivity and emotional intelligence. His persona was so clean, people wondered how he could be so nice. Was he a serial killer? This documentary would have meant more if you had grown up watching the show, nonetheless, if modern cynical living is getting you down, watch this documentary about this inspiring man.  

Quotes:

Sylvia: I found it charming and emotional.

Sylvia: [On why she picked it] I like a good documentary. I didn’t know anything about this person. It had more than I expected. He had a deep purpose in life – to explain to children the difficult concepts.

CJ: I came out of this feeling good. His message is so nice. But critiquing the documentary is difficult from the message. I still didn’t understand how it turned him into the guy he was. For example, he was a priest in an ordained ministry. Did he preach?

CJ: I didn’t think I knew him. I wanted to know what made him tick. What formed him? People asked was he really that nice? It didn’t reveal enough about him. I was left wondering.

Andy: I think the documentary was about his impact on a whole generation of kids. He wanted to talk to kids, not down at kids.

Paul: I knew nothing of this man. I went in cold. I was surprised I never heard of him.

Beck: I enjoyed it but the undercurrent of Christianity irked me a bit. At one moment, it was feeling too perfect. Was he really that squeaky clean? Did he ever make a mistake?

Scores:

Beck: 3

Sylvia: 5

Andy: 4

Paul: 3.5

CJ: 3.5

Wendy: 4

Renny: 3