What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

My girlfriend and I watched 1968's Bullitt, starring quintessential COOL GUY Steve McQueen. He plays Lt. Frank Bullitt, a cop who GETS RESULTS.

I remembered this movie being cool, and my girlfriend had never seen it, but of course knew of McQueen's inherent coolness. Boy... were we wrong.

This movie doesn't hold up at all. There is really only one cool scene, which is a wild car chase through San Francisco. Even this car chase has issues, namely that the director thought it would really put us in the action if much of it was filmed with a dash cam. All it gets you is motion sick. I'm glad that directors have learned a few tricks since 1968. This movie has a TON of establishing shots, as though the audience had to have their hands held every step of the way to make sure they weren't confused. Good thing they showed me the Senator walking into the hospital, because when he appeared near the patient's room later I would have thought he teleported!

This movie is 2 hours long, and could easily be less than 90 minutes. If you want to see Steve McQueen being cool, just watch Great Escape.

Great Escape is definitely better. The Getaway is a good McQueen film as well.

Despite my reservations, I sat through The Matrix: Resurrections.

JFC was that bad. I mean just bad. Not redeemable in almost any respect. The first problem is the most obvious one: Just like The Force Awakens, this is is a retelling of the first movie. It's the same plot. It even uses many of the same characters in the same roles (Neo is trapped in the Matrix! We have to find a way to get him out and make him realize what the real world is! Morpheus will help us with this! Oh, wait! Now someone else is trapped and needs to be saved (it's just that this time it's Trinity.)) But instead of following the smart pacing and visual storytelling of the first film, this one mixes repetitive action (More explosions! Use the telekinetic force wall! Again!) with exposition dumps which are literally just people standing around talking. Not doing the Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk so at least you have visuals of motion and feel like you're doing something. No, they're literally standing in a room and talking at each other about basic elements of both setting and plot.

This doesn't even rise to the level of first-year film student direction or screenwriting. This is like backyard-with-a-Super8-camera level. Keanu Reeves does the usual Keanu Konfused/Koncerned reaction throughout and Neil Patrick Harris details the precise motivations of everyone in the room with him, in case Lana Wachowski thought we couldn't figure that out on our own. On top of all that is the endless fan service. From the actual flashbacks to the previous films to the little in-jokes about how we've all done this before to even parroting the same lines and moments (Follow the white rabbit!) Remember that from the first film?! Wasn't that cool?! Here it is again, as if we all can't watch it on TNT every other month! And there's two-and-a-half hours of this.

It was already a bad idea to take the original, complete concept film and stretch it across two more, but when people are throwing money at you, you do this stuff sometimes. Resurrections is what happens when you really have no new ideas but want to hearken back to when people thought you were actually something of a visionary filmmaker. I want the 2.5 hours of my life back, please.

In preparation for The Matrix: Resurrections, I recently re-watched the Matrix trilogy. The first movie is still great, while the second and third installments are interesting but flawed. Overall, the world doesn't quite make sense, but represents a triumph of style over substance. The spectacular visuals and the emotional beats work well enough to tell the story.

Today, I started watching The Martix: Resurrections. It seemed like a low-budget re-working of the first one, only with a lot of meta in the mix. I dozed off after 20 minutes. In all fairness, I have been known to doze off even during exciting scenes of movies when I am tired, and the harsh subzero temperatures this weekend made each excursion draining. But when I woke back up after a few minutes of snoozing, I paused the movie to ponder if I wanted to rewind or try again some other time. Based on what I had seen so far, I felt no real interest in continuing, either now or later.

Bullitt's car chase may stink by modern standards, but it was the very first one (unless you count various Keystone exploits). You might just as well complain that the Wright brothers' flight didn't have wifi.

I started Matrix: Resurrections but had to stop half way through. That was a week ago, and I've not been particularly motivated to finish it.

Saw Just Look Up and hated it. It wanted to be Dr. Strangelove or even Idiocracy, but it didn't have anywhere near the charm, wit, or humor. The actors are trying way too hard, but the script just isn't there.

I did not realize it was the first car chase. That makes a lot more sense. And when it wasn't on the hood of the car, it was cool as shit. Knowing that everything happening was REALLY happening went a long way.

So both Matrix and Don't Look Up are identical in that they aren't movies in the popcorn flick sense. They are a reflection of where society is at this point in time, and are more social commentary than high drama. They ask the viewer to consider where society is at this point in time. IMHO they are both a condemnation of the media cycle of hate that pervades the CNNs and Fox News of the world.

They probably won't work in a vacuum, and require the viewer to be in a reflective mood. In that sense they are both 10/10 for me.

I'm going to skip the matrix sequel, I'm pretty sure I'll just feel like Jackwraith did. This doesn't reflect positively on me and my open mindedness atm, but I'm not in the right mood to have the director of Jupiter Ascending try to give me a commentary on the modern nightmare esp after the sequels which I find mostly irredeemable. I've seen so much commentary trying to pump them up in the last month or two and it feels very desperate to me and makes me VERY suspicious of the positive critic takes on the current movie.

I would put Papillion up there with Great Escape for another McQueen movie.

With the car chase discussion up thread, I had to look up the date for the original Gone in 60 Seconds and sew there was a sequel, Junkman. I'm sure it is absolute shit, but I'm a sucker for car chases.

Good review of MATRIX REGURGITATED here:

The Mustang gets all the love in Bullitt, but IMO that Charger is way cooler. If I hit the lottery I'm buying one of those 68-70 Chargers. I wouldn't care if its numbers didn't match, or even if it was made completely out of fiberglass. Just so cool.

And yes, that chase scene is considered the first real car chase scene. There are a few scenes early on in the chase, where you get to see the same Volkswagen three times in a row.

As for Gone in 60 Seconds, do yourself a favor and don't watch the old one again unless you want to be disappointed. Heck, do yourself another favor and don't watch the new one with Nicholas Cage in it either.

The old one is terrible, but the cars are so much cooler than the remake. It is worth all the other poor qualities.

I only made it halfway through that video review before I decided that I definitely don't want to watch the rest of The Matrix: Resurrections.

RobertB wrote: The Mustang gets all the love in Bullitt, but IMO that Charger is way cooler. If I hit the lottery I'm buying one of those 68-70 Chargers. I wouldn't care if its numbers didn't match, or even if it was made completely out of fiberglass. Just so cool.

And yes, that chase scene is considered the first real car chase scene. There are a few scenes early on in the chase, where you get to see the same Volkswagen three times in a row.

Came in here to say "if you think McQueen was a car-chase badass, the guy doing it in the Volkswagen keeps getting past him..."

Also, French Connection, where the car chase was so good it basically won them an Oscar.

But the hands-down wildest of the 70s car films will always be C'était un Rendez-vous


(also, I never even watched the Matrix sequels, I'm sure not going back for more now. If you enjoyed it, then that's good.)