Infernal Affairs is really good, but it doesn’t capture what I love most about The Departed: a bunch of Massholes taking bullets to the head.
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Liberty Valance is a great movie. Nobody could chew scenery like Lee Marvin but Edmund O’Brian stole the show. Upstaging Wayne and Stewart seems impossible but he did it. And he upstaged Bogart and Gardner in Barefoot Contessa.
I like the Departed quite a bit. I like all of Scorsese’s movies. I find Ragin’ Bull kind of hard to watch but it is an undeniably great film. I guess Goodfellas is my favorite. I haven’t seen Infernal Affairs since it first came out, maybe I need to revisit it.
If you like watching Tony Leung steal every scene it’s worth revisiting .
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The Searchers being John Wayne’s best is not opinion. It’s fact.
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I think John Wayne was an all time great movie star. I never thought much of him as an actor but I loved his movies. Kind of how I feel about Keanu, too. I love them both but when I think of great actors, I never think of either of those guys. Fact.
I was a kid when the first True Grit came out, and the thing that drove me crazy was the setting. We lived about 20 miles from Oklahoma, and if there was one thing I knew, that was not Indian Territory. As a kid, that really bugged me.
Years later when the Coen Brothers version came out, I finally read the novel, which is great, and the Coen Brothers’ version is great, and it follows the tone and dialogue of the novel brilliantly. All that said, they used the same setting as the original movie. That is not Indian Territory.
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I would concur, Coen brothers’ version is much better.
I was a video store manager when it came out and I bought both on bluray. Then I watched them both in one setting.
My older customers would scoff when I said I liked the new one better.
You can’t tell a 60 year old farmer that John Wayne wasn’t (isn’t) the second coming.
The first time I saw it I was a kid too and thought that it was pretty good. Then saw the Cohen Bros version when it came out and thought it was better. But I wanted to be sure so I watched the original again and thought it weird that in 1969 Kim Darby had the same hair as Justin Bieber in 2010.
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There is a difference between the two, though. Keanu is a generous, good person. The Duke was a right-wing nut who was a draft dodger and detested poor people. That being said he made great movies and I’ll be a fan of his work, but I won’t ever forget these quotes from him: “There were great numbers of people (white settlers) who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.” AND “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.”
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And those 2 quotes really highlight why the older, longer established white people of Idaho love him so much.
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His lack of service in WWII gnawed at him and made him an over-the-top hyper-patriot, according to his wife. John Wayne was a prick and I always give him the finger when I pass his statue in the Orange County airport. However, a lot of his movies were entertaining.
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His wife was probably only saying that under duress.
I got it today. Also got Boom Town.
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Nice. May not be your thing but there’s some great recent books about the historical Texas/US/Native American/Mexico frontier. Fiction and non.
Veering off into the absurd, “Red Notice” is a stupidly entertaining blend of True Lies, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Deadpool. The latter solely because I can’t see - more accurately - hear, Reynolds as anything other than Wade Wilson.
This is very cool (once you get past the bit about “Spaced”). EdgarWright breaks down how he achieved some of his iconic scenes in his movies.
Facebook is no longer allowed to change its name to “Meta”. I just watched “Matrix Resurrections”, and there’s no meta left in the known universe.
I can’t imagine volunteering for that after the other 2 sequels.
It’s comfortably the 2nd best movie of the 4. But still with enough “Architect” type nonsense to remind you that it’s a Matrix sequel.
It learned all the lessons to be learned from Star Wars about how not to resurrect (pun intended) an old franchise. You can reference the shit out of what has gone before without blatantly making a second rate copy.
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