What Did You Rent Last Night?

[Binky]

I watched Brad's Status and Lorelei on streaming.

Brad's Status is about a 50 year old man having a mid-life crisis of insecurity on his lifetime achievements while taking his son to tour colleges. It's well done, but not particularly enjoyable to watch an insecure middle aged man self-hating his very nice middle-class life. I will give it credit that the movie doesn't make sexual exploitation of young women a part of his crisis despite ample opportunity to do so, and the character doesn't become a creep towards his son's female friends OR reproach his wife for aging. It also has a nice depiction of father/son relationship.

Lorelei is one of those movies that actors love to make, a scenario rather than a narrative. Pablo Schreiber and Jena Malone are fabulous but this movie feels a little too safe and gentle to be the depiction of working class struggles with employment, drugs, and single parenting it wants to be. Wonderful child actors, but I really wanted a story that never appeared.

[Ginger]

I finally watched Belfast, and it was very good. It is going to be the only movie at the Oscars that I have seen.

There was a glaring flaw in the accuracy of the movie that actually affected the plot: there is no smoking whatsoever in the movie. In the 1960s in working-class Northern Ireland, people would have been smoking all over the place. Hollywood has banned depictions of smoking, and a movie like Belfast would be ineligible to air on several different streamers if there were smoking in it, even for the sake of historical accuracy. But when I heard a character's ominous, foreshadowing cough in the movie, I thought it was a bit of a con that the movie would have you believe it was solely because of coal mining.

Belfast is an autobiographical film, and in real life, every single one of the adult characters (except for the grandmother) died prematurely of lung disease caused by smoking. It's the reason why Branagh's parents aren't still around to see this movie about their lives. I think there's something troubling about sanitizing reality in that way.

[Ridha]

Hollywood has really banned depictions of smoking or is that hyperbole?

If the former then sanitising to that extent is indeed very troubling. I predict in 10 years from now they’ll remake Henry VIII and have him take Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard for marriage counselling.

[Mutagen]

No, it hasn't been banned. Despite the headline of the linked article, most studio policies at least theoretically make exceptions for artistic choice/historical accuracy/etc. 

Also, historically, tobacco companies have used Hollywood movies to advertise and "sanitize" smoking, so that concept cuts both ways.

[Ginger]

The letter of the law may permit for loopholes, but I think the anti-smoking movement in Hollywood is enough that filmmakers aren't going to want to take chances. Making a film that includes smoking only to find out when it's finished that potential distributors don't consider the smoking "artistic" enough or are worried anyway about bad publicity means you're screwed. And the rules may very well tighten up even further and make the movie less attractive to streamers 5 or 10 years from now.

My assumption is not that Branagh struggled with specific rules; my assumption is that he self-censored from the beginning because he didn't want to it to be an issue.

[Mutagen]

Sure. I think it's fair to question why Branagh chose not to include that in the movie, from an artistic/truthfulness perspective, and I certainly wouldn't deny that anti-smoking efforts among movie studios might have played into it. But, while there is a general effort to decrease depictions of smoking, the numbers don't really bear out that you can't show smoking in Hollywood movies. Personally, I question how much it might also just be a response to the general cultural shift that's happened with smoking (at least in countries that have had indoor smoking bans in place for a while). People really do forget how omnipresent it was, even those of us who lived through it. 

[Deleted]

The story was told from a child’s perspective, and showing all the adults smoking all the time probably wasn’t necessary to tell the story the way he wanted to. His parents in real life probably were not nearly as gorgeous as they are in the movie either, but I don’t see anyone arguing that he shouldn’t have hired who he did to play them.

Ultimately I don’t think he was going for absolute realism, he was going for how a child perceived things at the time and how an adult might remember them later. So I don’t think the lack of the depiction of smoking really matters.

[Millis]

In CODA a character openly smokes, though I believe it's weed.

[Binky]

I watched Spider-Man: No Way Home last night, and generally enjoyed it. It did well given how chock full it was of kinda excessive special effects and characters. Very easily could have been an unwatchable mess. I never saw the Andrew Garfield Spider-Mans (largely because of how much I despised the 3rd Toby Maguire movie)- are they worth checking out? He's recently grown on me due his fabulous job in Tick Tick Boom.

[famvir]

Nightmare Alley.

I was disappointed. It sounded like the kind of niche movie that I am forced to watch alone, no one else wants to see it because it seems dark/scary/weird. I did watch it alone and it was closer to a 40’s film noir than the “nightmare plus alley” description actually in the title.

Turns out it’s a remake of a 40’s film noir movie. I should have done more research. I actually knew there was an earlier movie of that name, but figured it was just a fluke to have the identical name.

Saw the twist ending coming 30 minutes from the end.

I think it’s a missed it’s audience in the trailer. It’s a beautiful movie, and shadowy instead or terror or horror. Maybe Bradley Cooper wasn’t the best choice for Stan. He’s got the swarmy down, but not the pathos.