I didn't understand the ending to Uncut Gems (2019)

Hard (but respectful) disagree! Thought Sandler was great. It's a version of his angry characters, sort of the same way his character in Punch-Drunk Love was, but there's a lot more going on there. It's an admittedly fine distinction, in the sense that Anthony Hopkins could play another sophisticated serial killer and we'd all have a hard time not just thinking of it as him rehashing Hannibal.

Honestly don't understand this. It goes everywhere. It's positively breakneck.

That's not what a morality play is, though. A morality play exists to teach a lesson, not to give you someone to root for.

That's exactly why. The entire movie, that particular thug gets angrier and angrier, is antagonized more and more. And the fact that he's a hired thug means he's a mercenary, so at a certain point he decides it's better to just kill everyone and take what's there.

But, if you don't buy that, that's the morality play part: the universe (the one inside that little gem, no less) punishes Howie for his refusal to learn. The last moment to save himself is when he's hovering over that button on the phone, when he knows he can call Julia and pay off his debt and get on with his life, and he chooses to let it ride anyway. That shows he'll never learn, never change, and that's why he dies.

Eh, people who are superficially "out of each other's leagues" get together all the time, especially when issues of power and money are involved. Not that weird.

Having never been a Sandler fan, I thought that he was a shoo-in for the role as Howard, the role he was made for. As for the end, I wouldn't overthink it; it makes perfect sense. To me it was fairly clear that he pissed off a bad guy (Phil), Phil impulsively killed Howard because he was hot and sweaty (enough to justify murder) and then cleaned up his mess by killing Arno. Meanwhile Julia takes the money. There's rarely any honor among thieves. The web site wanted to auto-correct "honor" in my last sentence by making it "humor". That turns out to be true too.

That kind of thing happens all the time in the world of street crime. Bad guys kill each other and someone else takes the loot. If there were a sequel to the movie, it would be the one where, a couple weeks later, Julia is face down in an alley, the money is gone and the news broadcaster doesn't understand why anybody would kill her.

Nice points. I have to jump in as a distraction though as when I got to the end of your reply I read your last quote (your insisting on puppetry signature quote) as the last quoted question that you planned to respond to. In all of maybe half a second the following thoughts raced through my mind: 1) Why did Yoda quote this guy and then just not answer it? I mean, he's made pretty convincing responses in a clear and organized manner so far. How is it that he just dropped the ball on this last reply? 2) Was it character count? I've run into character count limits but it's rare. Doesn't seem like this post should have capped at all! Hm. 3) Wait. Why would this guy be asking about puppetry in Uncut Gems? That makes NO sense! Sure, I've only been able to watch maybe a third of this movie (mental note: after reading through Yoda's replies here maybe I should revisit it at some point), but I seriously doubt there was mention of puppetry! Sure, there was the weird bejeweled Furby necklace in the case, but ...hm. Did he make a voice when presenting it to the NBA player? Is that enough to call it puppetry? I would expect....wait. oh. ....ooooooooooooooh. dammit, yn.

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That reminds me, for no good reason: Garnett was good. I loved the note about his name being a gem (I had never thought of that, even though my wife's engagement ring is a garnet), and I think he did a good job. He didn't have to do a ton, but he had to emote and act a fair bit a couple of times and he seemed very natural. Enough that if I didn't know he was a professional athlete I'm not sure I would have guessed. I assume they gave him less a script than a few general points to hit that he could express however, and that maybe that's what made it more natural. Whatever it was, good job KG.

When I saw it, it didn't seem to me as a morality play, since there's none of that anywhere in the story. It didn't give me any shivers because my personal bargain with Death includes a rule that reads, "don't steal from sociopathic bad guys and especially don't aggravate them". Howard got foolish and forgot about that rule. I slept well that night, knowing that I don't live in that world.

I'm open-minded as to whether it should be called a morality play or not, though I think a pretty good argument can be made that it is. Mostly just noting, with that post, that if it is a morality play, then the thug losing his cool doesn't even really have to be realistic, since the relevant bit would only be that happens to Howie and why, and not really how it happens.

I told you already, don' lean on the case.
Fair point. Deeper than it probably comes off during a watch. I mean, that was awkward. He had to time that action several ways while doing it so many times while making it look casual every time. I never questioned it until now, that you brought him up. Of course they may have shot those cuts (cuts. LOL! not really allcap lol, but still kinda lower case lol?) 2,000 times (lol). Still it plays well.

I couldn't finish this one because it just stressed me way out. I'd like to finish it but I just don't know if I can. I imagine if I ever do, it will then sit with The Road and Children of Men of pretty great movies that I'll never watch again because of the anxiety they induce.

I thought it was a good film. Definitely overrated. Sandler was decent but was not Oscar worthy (his performance in Punch Drunk Love is ten times better).

I score the film

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This was very unrealistic to me and just thrown in for drama.

The funniest part about him being in it, I really dug the trailer to the movie. When I do I'll go on YouTube and watch some trailer reactions. Well naturally it's usually a bunch of comic book nerds who do these movie trailer reactions. Probably watched like 30-40 reactions....only one was like "Oh, that's KG!" hahaha. Nobody had a clue it was actually a legit NBA MVP in the movie He did do a pretty good job in the movie I was surprised. In the words of the man himself "Anything is possible!" lol

As for the movie itself. I did enjoy it and Adam, I feel should have got nominated for an Oscar. His performance was deserving but how much more interesting would the Oscars have been? The movie itself was fine although I did find it a tad underwhelming from the hype it was getting.

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I'd say that I liked the movie from a point of view of filming, acting, writing, etc, but that I did not really enjoy it. About 10 minutes in, I realized that Howard was not going to come to a good end, so I didn't want to get attached to the character. It was a lot like in Dracula movies, that moment when somebody does something really dumb, like when Dracula says to Harker, "enter freely of your own will" and you know that Harker should NOT go into the castle but he does anyway, in spite of bats and wolves. Howard's Harker moment comes when he makes his complicated bet with money connected to bad guys. You and I know better than to do something dumb like that...Howard goes into the creepy castle.

Like my caution about entering creepy castles, Howard should have asked himself whether he wanted to engage in high stakes, complicated betting involving gangsters, deception and lots of money. As a latter day Harker, he says yes. He was doomed at that moment in the plot. In a kid movie, everything has a happy ending, but in a gritty gangster movie, there's only victims and perpetrators, with fools like Howard between them.

The distinction between admiring the film and enjoying it is certainly a fair one. I mostly enjoyed it anyway, but I've had to make that distinction sometimes, and usually with films a lot like this ones: films that continually ratchet the tension or drama up throughout their runtime.

Admiring/appreciating a film and enjoying/favoring it is a great way to make a distinction. Where I tend to fall on a lot of older films is I admire them for their importance to the median. I can appreciate them for the time they were made in. I tend to enjoy, rewatch and favor movies from 90s on. From my generation.

This film just sort of fell in the middle of admiring/enjoying it to me.

My take on that particular part was the "thug" actually being a low level hired mafia associate/soldier and the humiliation of being held prisoner by Howard was such that to maintain his own standing he had to answer that humiliation. Had it just been your standard thug shooting Howard would have been extreme. I don't think the thug lost his cool, rather the opposite, this guy has tainted my reputation so bad by locking me up like this that I must answer it, a decision rather than an angry outburst.

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Well it seems to me that if he had thought about it more, than he would have killed Howard more discretely another time, with no witnesses, and hide the body, sort of thing. Here, he leaves his fingerprints and DNA all over the place to be found, so was he really thinking, rather than out of anger?

On the other hand, he probably figured that that would be the best possible time to do something about it, especially if it would allow him to loot the store at the same time.

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Sure, but he didn't even bother to use gloves, or wipe away the prints he already left.

He has been to the shop probably several times chasing debts so could explain away any lingering DNA/fingerprints, also he killed the only witness.

Don't overthink these characters. One of the common features of those sort of low-level gang guys is that they are NOT strategic thinkers or detailed plotters. If they were, the'd have a different life and would not end up face down in the alley or caught by the police or shot by a rival. Movies like the Godfather epics give us the impression that these guys are like corporate strategists, but that's only the top management. Most of them are violent, not too bright and are sociopathic, so shooting is just what they do.

You're locked between two doors, getting hot and aggravated, so what do you do? You shoot the guy who locked you up and probably everybody else in the room too. You can think about it later. That's the part of the end of the movie I though was exactly right. Howard had a scheme, but he aggravated the wrong guy. Game over. While you're doing the killing, someone else walks away with the money. That's not much of a plan.

Not to "overthink" things again but movies and TV have given us all an unrealistic view of fingerprinting and DNA. I think it's actually quite unlikely to get a good print, the suspect has to touch glass or have something on their hands to cause a print, like blood or paint etc. Most surfaces you can't actually get a fingerprint.