Josh and Benny Safdie's UNCUT GEMS starring Adam Sandler as a jewelry dealer with a gambling habit

Monkey paw

no Oscar nominiees for this. not surprising, but it is yet another example to how worthless the Oscars are in general

Keith Richards Williams for Best Goon

"The most exhausting two hours of yelling and hysterics I've seen since The Wolf of Wall Street. I think it's supposed to look back to a certain kind of '70s urban realism--Lumet, Chayefsky, James Toback maybe, the John G. Avildsen of Joe and Save the Tiger"

maybe the only thing in common is the yelling becuase Wolf Of.. is a really bad movie. No wonder Scorsese is the producer here, he loves those so called realistic crime/mob movies (he also produced Gomorra for example). I do think it owes more to Cassavetes than anything.

Bad news: Sandman gets no love from the Academy.
Good news: Sandman can stop wearing suits.
Congrats to all my friends who got nominated, especially Mama. pic.twitter.com/o1Ep3E7GRB

— Adam Sandler (@AdamSandler) January 13, 2020

the gem's powers are real! they have to be. the movie would be meaningless otherwise- it's about capitalism splitting the oppressed up and setting them against each other. Howard puts a price on a priceless object and pays the ultimate price.

― flappy bird, Tuesday, January 14, 2020 12:44 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

who are the oppressed being split up, the diamond jeweler and nba player? just about every person in the movie is rich. howard leverages bets on bets and (SPOILER) gets killed by a loan shark

i loved the movie, but imo it's just not a nuanced critique of capitalism. at best it slips in a blunt critique of neo-colonialism with the blood diamond stuff

who are the oppressed being split up

presumably the Ethiopian miners?

I do think it owes more to Cassavetes than anything.
― nostormo

Yes, very much so--who is also tough going for me (documented in a Cassavetes thread here somewhere), so it stands to reason I'd feel the same about Uncut Gems.

presumably the Ethiopian miners?

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Tuesday, January 14, 2020 2:03 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

so the movie is about capitalism splitting up ethiopian miners and setting them against each other? they're only in it for like 5 seconds!

idk man it wasn't my argument!

I have already posted the correct interpretation of this movie for anyone desperate to interpret it as being "about" something

haha i like your interpretation

It's a (shallow) satire about Capitalism, (comparing the images of the opal to his colonscopy etc). It's a great movie regarsing technique/directing/camera. Besides that, pretty shallow imo

it's a movie about wanting to fight the weeknd, and i can relate.

"he's gonna be really big, even though he's canadian"

BLACK JEWS!

an ilxor posted a great review on Letterboxd about this I will find it

a cut gem would have easily identifiable facets but this one's uncut

part of me suspects clem is correct that this wouldn’t hold up to its shouty 70s forebears, and part of the reason we all love it so much is we’ve been starved of gritty urban lowstakes crime thrillers for so long. looking forward to their 48hrs reboot

also i am def on team anxiety inducing. i loved it but was itching to scream ‘shut the fuck up!!!’ throughout. 2 people in the group of like 7 that i went to see it with had to leave the theatre before the end

This was a complete joy to watch and think about later.

howie was clearly a character that needed to shut the fuck up. but i'm on team adrenaline-not-anxiety.

references to the film's anxiety inducing capacities are greatly exaggerated. it's more of a thrill ride.

myself and the stranger next to me kept moaning or facepalming or bugging our eyes out at each other or saying "oh no" whenever Sandler tripled down did basically anything throughout

there was no doubt he was going to continue to make the worst decisions but I still deluded myself into thinking, when he finally reacquired the stone before the big auction, that he was going to be able to pay off his existing debts. and, because the film wasn't going to stop his gambling, give him a little extra to gamble with

by the end I realized that even if he'd gotten the full million he was hoping for, he'd still be blowing every cent of it gambling because this train doesn't stop and only goes in one direction

"Julia...don't leave the casino yet."

chasing that big win like a dog chasing a car. no idea what to do if he catches it

really though, there is no "big win" because there must always be another bet

yup. that's why I had to ultimately stop, and my stakes were uhh, significantly lower

Gotta watch this at home tonight with the volume maxed up

this movie was a lot

I think we can all agree on that much

It just occurred to me that the Weeknd is of Ethiopian descent. Build a theory around that.

when howie tells julia to "go fuck the weeknd," he too is spiritually "fucking the weeknd" when he bilks his ancestral people out of their natural resources.

the gem is functionally real, Howard and KG believe in it, there's that awesome montage right before KG breaks the glass, plus the opening and the beginning, there is something to the spiritual significance of a gem that unites black and jewish people

Absolutely loved this! I'm so glad that I caught it at the cinema too - it was awesome to get completely caught up in the tension of it all on the big screen with big sound. I really want to see it again.

Maybe expectations and watching it quietly at home by myself made an impact, but my second viewing was far from anxiety-laden? If anything, I appreciated how well-paced the school play sequence was, for example.

lol what an icon

Julia Fox started an Insta gram AMA yesterday, answered 2 entire questions, then returned today answering a 3rd question with the explanation, "my sincerest apologies but i completely lost interest in the AMA." pic.twitter.com/gfOe3lkrTn

— Davis. (@realdaveimboden) January 14, 2020

perfect

there is something to the spiritual significance of a gem that unites black and jewish people

Historically Jews and African-Americans have been accused of failing to assimilate into mainstream (Protestant) American culture, even as they are scorned for materialism and vulgarity (one of those ways of keeping up the barriers). Throughout the movie I saw examples of jewelry, clothing, and décor that seriously offended my taste, but I don't doubt they reflect the subcultures' time, place, and values.

Then at the auction house every employee speaks with a posh accent and the colo(u)red gemstone specialist doesn't agree with Howard's valuation of the opal. Wotta wet blanket.

https://www.gq.com/story/uncut-gems-furniture

bloody great piece that, thanks!

It's a kyber crystal. The championship rings are trophies of dead Jedi. The jeweled furby is an inversion of Ewok veneration of C3PO.

There was so much unpleasant yelling and overtalking but that's part of what creates the tension, and then in the quieter moments I'd be thinking "where's the tension?" Good Time was similar but flat-out great, this one I'm pretty ambivalent. Last third was extremely good and pretty much saved it for me. I probably admire this movie more than liked it: the idea of building a movie around KG and his 2012 playoff performance, using Sandler and a newcomer in lead roles

It wasn’t built around that basketballer or game btw, they just picked the game once they’d auditioned various basketballers

yeah, it can't have been that hard to retrofit the scenario around the game they chose. gambling is wacked out enough to where you could easily find a bunch of interesting parlays

and hardcore gamblers like that don't require it to be the playoffs. they're the dudes who will bet on like the 27th game of the season with crazy lightning bets

I appreciated the post-game interview where KG is asked about his playing and he says something "I just had to been my concentration on the rock"

The integration of the in-game footage was stunning imo

jesus christ autocorrect did a thing

he says something like "I just had to keep my concentration on the rock"

for a little while I thought the entire parlay was going well but KG needs another rebound or point to win the final part of the parlay and he gets the final rebound and Howard goes nuts and the game ends, and then teh scorekeeper officially amends it to a "team rebound", thus screwing Howard, and Arno's crew kills him, then goes to kill the scorekeeper.

KG really deserves a lot of credit for his performance. He did such a good job. I don't think Kobe or whoever would've had that same kind of manic intensity.