Please suggest a film for July's "Fedi Film Club"!

Anything that either you'd like to watch or would recommend to the community.

Please make sure it's more than a year or two old so that it will (hopefully) be available somewhere.

And if possible, provide a quick description for why you'd like to watch or why you suggest it.

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• See the introduction post for "Fedi Film Club".
• We'll take a vote on the suggestions in about a week's time after this. Then we can watch and discuss.

Summary:

A woman named Sam finds herself trapped in New York City during the early stages of an invasion by alien creatures with ultrasonic hearing

Director:

Michael Sarnoski

Writers:

Michael Sarnoski, John Krasinski, Bryan Woods

Cast:

• Joseph Quinn as Eric
• Lupita Nyong'o as Samira
• Alex Wolff as Reuben
• Djimon Hounsou as Henri
• Thea Butler
• Jennifer Woodward as Nurse

Rotten Tomatoes: 86%

Metacritic: 68

Summary:

A man seeks to break free from his predetermined path, a cop questions his wife's demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning, and a woman searches for an extraordinary individual prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide.

Director:

Yorgos Lanthimos

Writers:

Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthimis Filippou

Cast:

• Emma Stone as Rita
• Jesse Plemons as Robert
• Willem Dafoe as Raymond
• Margaret Qualley as Vivian
• Hong Chau as Sarah
• Tessa Bourgeois as Louise

Rotten Tomatoes: 74%

Metacritic: 65

I watched them roughly once every night or two. And I'd previously seen them all.

And I was rather surprised at how I felt about the films afterwards. It seemed really clear that the quality of the films went continuously down after Casino Royal.

I thought Skyfall would stand out as the best followed by Casino Royal. But, in sequence, nah. Despite having clearly positive qualities, it seemed bloated and empty by comparison.

I also thought Quantum of Solace would rank pretty low as I recall thinking little of it at the time it came out. Instead, I thought it paired really well with Casino as a great follow up.

In fact, it felt like the Craig-era was basically Casino + Quantum and "other things". And yea, the "post-Skyfall" films just didn't feel like they were worth the effort. I thought they'd be more passable than they were, but after Casino + Quantum, which, for me, had a real punch and through-line, Spectre + No-Time-to-Die just felt like they were going through the motions and taking up space. At times, they really seemed to be badly flawed. And that's where my impression of Skyfall really hit ... it seemed that was the "what do we do now with this character?" moment and that Skyfall belonged with Spectre etc not the other way round.

Is this common among Bond fans or am I off base here?

> Something is wrong in Appalachia in the first trailer for 'Hellboy: The Crooked Man.' Jack Kesy stars as the big red hero trying to figure it out.

I would've shared the video via YouTube, but unfortunately, it's embedded into Entertainment Weekly's web page. As a big Hellboy fan, I'm not sure what to make of it so far, but I like the horror vibe.

Fuck it, I ripped it to my YouTube account. Find it here.

> “ A Quiet Place: Day One ” is making noise at the box office. The prequel earned an estimated $53 million in its first weekend in North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday. > > It’s both a franchise best and significantly more than expected. Going into the weekend, prerelease tracking had “Day One” pegged for a $40 million debut, but audiences were clearly more enthusiastic to see the action-horror starring Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn and released by Paramount. The same could not be said for Kevin Costner’s “ Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1,” which opened to $11 million. > > The ”Quiet Place” victory wasn’t quite enough to snag the coveted first place spot on the charts, though. That honor again went to Disney and Pixar’s juggernaut “ Inside Out 2,” which added an estimated $57.4 million in its third weekend in theaters, and crossed $1 billion globally. > > There's a distant possibility that the places will shift when actuals are released Monday. But either way it’s good news for movie theaters in a summer season that’s finally heating up but still running far behind last year (down 19%) and pre-pandemic norms (down 36% from 2019). > > “Inside Out 2” continues to be a box office phenomenon, the likes of which the industry hasn’t seen since “Barbie” almost a year ago. In just three weeks of release, it's earned nearly $470 million in North America and $545.5 million internationally, bringing its global total to $1.01 billion. The sequel is the only 2024 release to cross the billion dollar mark and it did it in just 19 days, a record for an animated film.

About 10 mins. Focuses on some of the shooting and camera choices in Alien.

Specifically how "dirty shots" were used ("dirty" meaning some unfocused object "dirties" up the shot) and how the 2 camera setup were used.

I think the video was trying to make a point about how Alien was kinda "modern" in this regard. I don't know cinema theory well enough to know ... definitely interesting though!

Either way ... it's some Alien appreciation and this little snippets are definitely good reminders of how awesome the film is.

Just finished watching this and I was blown away by how little depth they gave the bad guy. I don't know his name because they only said it twice. He makes his entrance shooting his two buddies and then saying he had to do it and that no one helped his family when he was starving. He then tells the protagonists mom she should just walk away, before shooting her when she refuses.

And then that just repeats the whole movie. He attacks people, and says he was poor earlier in his life. He also tells Madame Web to walk away. No flashbacks, no explanations, no monologues, no ideals. No depth. I actually love him as a character because he is so one dimensional and ruthless, closer to Jason Vorhees than Thanos. Its just a very odd decision from a writing perspective. Also he kind of talks like Tommy Wiseau.

Besides him the movie wasn't great. Feels more like it was on the writers/director than the on stage talent though.

!

> Where’s Jack? This year marks the 50th anniversary of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), the 1930s LA-set crime thriller that has one of Jack Nicholson’s most famous performances, as sardonic detective Jake Gittes. It’s also nearly half a century since Nicholson played rebellious everyman RP McMurphy, who is incarcerated in a mental institution and engaged in a battle of wills with the sociopathic Nurse Ratched, in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Those two movies alone are cast-iron classics. > > But despite such major anniversaries, Nicholson – now 87 – is nowhere to be seen. There was a time when the actor was spotted everywhere: in nightclubs, on chat shows, at basketball matches, at movie premieres. No more. The actor has performed a vanishing act. It is 14 years since his last movie, the rapidly forgotten romcom How Do You Know. One of his friends, music producer Lou Adler, told the WTF podcast that Nicholson now prefers to spend his time “sitting under a tree and reading a book”.

> Red One, the upcoming Christmas movie from Amazon, is arguably among the most talked-about of the year. However, until now, the conversation has had little to do with the film itself. Instead, Red One looks set to go down in history as the film that tanked Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s reputation. > > For the newcomers: in April, The Wrap ran a feature about exactly how troubled Red One’s production allegedly was, with several insiders pointing to The Rock’s chronic unwillingness to work as a key factor. Among claims of his wrongdoing, The Rock was accused of repeatedly showing up eight hours late to set, and also making his assistant dispose of bottles of his own urine that he’d fill when he couldn’t be bothered to walk to a bathroom. > > As a result, not only was Red One’s release date pushed back from 2023 to this year, but its budget also spiralled out of control. According to The Wrap, the film cost a total of $250m to produce. This means that it is not only likely to be the most expensive movie ever made by Amazon, but also the most expensive Christmas movie. For reference, you could take Red One’s budget and use it to make 10 Die Hards, 14 Home Alones or two and a half Fred Clauses. > > Of course, none of the backstage drama will matter a jot if the film turns out well. But the bad news is that Red One’s trailer has just dropped – and that is looking less and less likely by the second.