Stu Presents: His Favorite Movies!

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Do you suffer from chiroptohobia?

 
No, they are just always somehow too constructed. And if you're like, what the heck does that actually mean? I . . . don't know.

There are always parts I enjoy, but never as an entire body of work that I want to then sit down and view in its entirety again.

EDIT: But the suave guy in your picture? I'd watch THAT Batman on repeat. You know, the Batman movie where he fights crime by giving them rabies?



No, they are just always somehow too constructed. And if you're like, what the heck does that actually mean? I . . . don't know.
You're right, I don't know what that means.

Is this something that bothers you more about Batman than about other superheroes? You're not really a fan in general, right?

I'm not defending any Batman films here, just saying that their strengths/flaws don't seem so different to me than the other CBMs.
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Just saying this is open to interpretation and would be interested in making my case in PM



You're right, I don't know what that means.

Is this something that bothers you more about Batman than about other superheroes? You're not really a fan in general, right?

I'm not defending any Batman films here, just saying that their strengths/flaws don't seem so different to me than the other CBMs.
It might actually be the fact that I watched Batman: The Animated Series religiously as a kid (I'm literally looking at two seasons of it on DVD on my shelf right now).

Batman films make me hyper aware of all of the choices that are being made in representing Wayne, Batman, Gotham, the suit, the car, and the villains. It gives me evaluation fatigue in a way that other superhero films don't.



I stopped caring if I offend people in liking a movie and just concentrating if I liked it, it seemed to work out



I think that it comes down to what the film itself demands. I think that the degree of abstraction to the Joker works in that film, just as Pfeiffer's more "human" villain works for her film.
Yeah, I'm not saying that the characterization of Ledger's Joker was in any way a wrong choice for TDK (since it very much was a right one)... just that, I don't find him to be as 100% as compelling as a character as Catwoman was in Returns, due to the inherent nature of the way they were presented in their films, you know?



Although speaking of Batman, I probably wouldn't mind seeing a feature-length version of this, to be honest with you:





I bet your favorite movie of all time is called



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Moviefan1988's Favorite Movies
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Welcome to the Dance: My Favorite 20 High School Movies
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No Country For Old Men (Coens, '07)



You can't stop what's comin'.

Against a pitch black screen, we hear the whistle of the Texas wind as it haunts its way across the gargantuan, desolate landscape, and, as the newborn sun slowly creeps its way above the horizon, we hear the voice of a weary, defeated old man say: "I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old... hard to believe". As the man continues, lamenting the incomprehensible new brutality arising from the modern world, we see a sheriff's deputy walking a handcuffed figure with an odd haircut into the back of his patrol car before driving away, as the unseen prisoner sits deathly silent all the while, the outline of his obscured figure looming over us like an angel of death. And, as the camera rises away from the sun-baked asphalt, the voice of the old man concludes: "I always knew you had to be willin' to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet somethin' I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say: 'Okay... I'll be part of this world.'".

This is the masterfully stage-setting opening of Joel & Ethan Coen's No Country For Old Men, an astonishingly tense neo-Western Thriller, one of the best movies of its decade, and just one of the best movies I've ever seen, period. It tells the tale of three men; Llewelyn Moss, an utterly everyday, blue-collar good ol' boy who randomly stumbles upon a suitcase full of cartel money, Anton Chirgurh, a bizarre, almost alien-like assassin tasked with recovering the cash, and the aforementioned Ed Tom, the weary old sheriff who observes everything on the sidelines, as the film use the men's dueling perspectives to illustrate its discussions of the central themes, all while the main pursuit wears on, the innocent continually get caught in the crossfire right alongside the guilty, and the bodies pile up all over the state.

Admittedly, while the basic story of No Country isn't particularly innovative on paper, on film, it differentiates itself from any more standard "cartel thrillers" out there (coughSicariocough) through its technical and atmospheric perfection, whether it be the way that the specter of death always looms heavy over the entire experience, or cinematography icon Roger Deakin's brilliant juxtaposition of lovingly detailed, intimate close-ups, and epic shots of the Texas plains as desolate as the characters' souls, or the emphasis on eerily placid moments of complete silence, which are inevitably shattered by the sudden outbursts of carnage, as the film's agonizingly slow pacing takes the sparse prose of Cormac McCarthy's novel and stretches it out into endless, nerve-shredding eternities.

But in addition to its overall amazing sense of tension, Country also distinguishes itself by utilizing McCarthy's philosophical musings on the natures of fate, chance, and what seems to be the increasingly worse presence of evil in the contemporary world, interspersing the scenes of cat-and-mouse carnage with genuinely piercing, thought-provoking discussions, as the story contrasts the perception of a more peaceful "Old West" with the horrifying crimes of today, suggesting that, as the film's Wikipedia so memorably put it, "rather than triumphing over evil, the best thing the modern heroes can hope for is to merely escape with their life intact.

This makes No Country the rare Thriller that gives us something to actually think about long after the screen has faded to black for the final time, as its three main characters all serve to contrast each other perfectly, whether it be Ed Tom's utterly conventional (and ultimately defeated) black-&-white morality, Anton's bizarrely-principled amorality that is perfectly adapted for survival in his pitiless day and age, or Moss's position in-between those two extremes, neither being "good" enough to keep his nose clean of the whole affair, but also not cunning or ruthless enough to ultimately survive it either. It's a central trifecta that is strongly supported by the film's minor characters, the colorful, salt-of-the-earth Texans who make for equally colorful exchanges that fit in plenty of the Coens' signature pitch-black sense of humor, simultaneously keeping the film from ever becoming too overbearing with its fundamentally dark tone, while also avoiding the dreaded, unnaturally-forced style of "comic relief" that Hollywood so often thrusts upon us unnecessarily.

And of course, I would be remiss in my review without discussing what is easily the best character within it, Anton Chirgurh, portrayed in a soul-chilling, Oscar-winning turn by Javier Bardem, who has become one of the newer additions to the cinematic pantheon of great villains, with his creepy, monotonic line deliveries, "pageboy"-style haircut that would look laughable on anyone else, but instead serves to make him even more unnerving, and his signature weapons in the forms of a silenced shotgun, and a cattle gun that's mostly utilized to shoot open locks, but which gets used for its original purpose (sort've) in a particularly disturbing moment early in the film.

With the inscrutable set of "principles" that he lives by, as an agent of the chaos he perceives as fate, Anton contrasts the other two main characters brilliantly, helping him become one of the greatest film villains for one of the greatest films, which, despite its receival of the obviously dubious honor of the Best Picture Oscar for its year, this really is one of the rare occasions where the Academy got it right, as, even considering all of the modern cinematic classics they've created to date, No Country For Old Men still remains the true magnum opus of the Coen brothers' long, storied career, as far as I'm concerned; "You can't stop what's coming" indeed.

Favorite Moment:



Victim of The Night
[center]No Country For Old Men (Coens, '07)



You can't stop what's comin'.
That's vanity.

No, seriously, one of my favorite movies of that decade, easily my favorite of that year, I didn't think TWBB, a very good movie, to be sure, was close, honestly, despite DDL's great performance. Possibly because No Country boasted one for the ages as well from Javier Bardem and then the whole rest of the movie.



That's vanity.

No, seriously, one of my favorite movies of that decade, easily my favorite of that year, I didn't think TWBB, a very good movie, to be sure, was close, honestly, despite DDL's great performance. Possibly because No Country boasted one for the ages as well from Javier Bardem and then the whole rest of the movie.
Well, There Will Be Blood IS fairly close behind No Country for me, but I do still prefer the latter; I mean, Blood is extremely gripping on the whole, it's just a matter of NCFOM being even more so, like, all-time gripping, you know? It's a case of a great movie versus one of the greatest of all time, as far as I'm concerned.



I consider 4 movies from 2007 to be among the greatest of all time: NCFOM, TWBB, The Assassination of Jesse James, and Zodiac.

I consider NCFOM to be the greatest among them.



I consider 4 movies from 2007 to be among the greatest of all time: NCFOM, TWBB, The Assassination of Jesse James, and Zodiac.

I consider NCFOM to be the greatest among them.
Amen!: https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/tag/2007/reviews/



I haven't reviewed (or even seen) it yet, silly.
Oh my. You need to change that immediately. And not admit such things in public.



Oh my. You need to change that immediately. And not admit such things in public.
Yeah yeah, I know.