Good point, you might be right.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 18 September 2023 16:51 (eight months ago) link
Yeah you know that is a good point, everything after a certain era got really jokey and a bit more gleefully, winkingly amoral rather than simply matter of fact. These guys aren't reveling in their respective schemes, Peterson is this pathologically overconfident psycho and Dafoe is all business (tho he's extremely sexualized obv), and there's nothing spelled out and no audience handholding. I'm trying to think of a movie from the last 20 years that tries to mine similar territory, and I can't really think of it. A cop thriller where it's not even that the leads are antiheroes, and you side with them because they get the job done, they're presented fully as the good guys (maybe Dirty Harry types to the extent that they're on the edge) and you wind up realizing they are the true villains and destructive forces.
― omar little, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:01 (eight months ago) link
Keeping in mind that I really like Tarantino a lot, but he's one of those who is virtually impossible to successfully emulate and so he's the only one who's truly good at that specific thing he does. And his influence resulted in almost exclusively trash.
― omar little, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:03 (eight months ago) link
Abel Ferrara has a similar vibe to TL&DILA, but he obviously predates Tarantino. Trying to think of something else post 1994.
― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Monday, 18 September 2023 17:05 (eight months ago) link
End of Watch had it both ways: All Cops Are Good and They Are Also The Biggest Street Gang In LA
― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 18 September 2023 17:09 (eight months ago) link
Listening to Siskel & Ebert episodes from the early '90s, I was shocked to think that this was my world for a long time: choosing from forgettable thrillers and shit SNL comedies. Stuff like Malice and Guarding Tess hit #1 at the box office.
― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 18 September 2023 17:11 (eight months ago) link
Also one year before Tarantino: Mike Figgis' Internal Affairs.
― clemenza, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:14 (eight months ago) link
Disclosure, With Honors, On Deadly Ground, The Specialist
― omar little, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:15 (eight months ago) link
There's a Friedkin program going on here at the Waterloo rep: The Exorcist/French Connection/Sorcerer. Hour-long drive, not sure if I'll rouse myself for anything.
― clemenza, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:16 (eight months ago) link
All those Joe Eszterhas things.
― hat trick of trashiness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 18 September 2023 17:17 (eight months ago) link
Maybe I'm misremembering how the storyline goes, but I recall Q&A maybe having some very very superficial similarities with TLADILA. Just in terms of the nolte character, and how his storyline plays out. I forget if he was quite obviously a villain at the very start.
― omar little, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:17 (eight months ago) link
I took a date to see a preview screening of Jade. That one didn't go as well as I hoped.
― omar little, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:18 (eight months ago) link
xp - my favorite tidbit about With Honors was where they had to dress up the University of Illinois campus to look like Harvard:
The exterior of Winthrop House appears, but the interiors pictured are not that of actual Harvard houses, and the last scene of the movie was shot at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The buildings and surroundings were dressed up to look as if it were Harvard and many of the people in the final scene are Illinois students. The graduation scene was shot while the local climate in Illinois had not allowed for the trees to bloom leaves and so artificial branches and leaves were stapled on.
― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, 18 September 2023 17:18 (eight months ago) link
I think Q&A--which didn't hold up all that well last time I saw it; some of it is really heavy-handed--is closer to Internal Affairs, with the Gere/Nolte characters very similar.
― clemenza, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:20 (eight months ago) link
Yeah obv TLADILA is more of an action film, which maybe makes the story arc even more startling to an extent.
I think the Johnnie To film Drug War shares its cynicism and bleakness and brutality, and the ostensible hero being a destructive force is there too. But it's not the same type of movie at all, it's more an indictment of the system and the drug war.
― omar little, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:28 (eight months ago) link
Watched The Exorcist for the first time this weekend. It was quite an achievement from a technical standpoint but I didn't find it scary at all; I guess I'm 100% not a Catholic anymore. (The scene where the doctors tell Ellen Burstyn that Catholics still believe in exorcism, like they're trying to keep from laughing in her face, was pretty amazing.)
― read-only (unperson), Monday, 18 September 2023 17:31 (eight months ago) link
think sicario attempts some level of the amoral ambiguity of TLADILA?
― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Monday, 18 September 2023 18:12 (eight months ago) link
― clemenza, Monday, 18 September 2023 17:16 (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
id drive an hour and back for any one of them on the big screen tbh
― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Monday, 18 September 2023 18:15 (eight months ago) link
My local theatre's doing Sorcerer, Cruising, TL&D, Killer Joe, The Guardian, and The Exorcist - I'm hoping to go to them all.
― jmm, Monday, 18 September 2023 18:17 (eight months ago) link
They also showed The Wages of Fear the same week as Sorcerer, which... cool idea, but I couldn't fathom wanting to watch that story again so soon.
― jmm, Monday, 18 September 2023 18:23 (eight months ago) link