The Cinema Thread

[billy.pilgrim]

Saw an ad for this new movie "Judas and the Black Messiah," about Fred Hampton and the Chicago Black Panther Party of the 60's. Looks like it'll be pretty intense. Hampton was murdered in his bed by cops.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/v ... tion=click

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_and ... ck_Messiah

It's very good. It's on HBO max.

[neoplacebo]

Saw an ad for this new movie "Judas and the Black Messiah," about Fred Hampton and the Chicago Black Panther Party of the 60's. Looks like it'll be pretty intense. Hampton was murdered in his bed by cops.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/v ... tion=click

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_and ... ck_Messiah

It's very good. It's on HBO max.

[Vrede too]

The Hate U Give (2018)

Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her (unarmed Black) childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a (White) police officer. Now, facing pressure from all sides of the community, Starr must find her voice and stand up for what's right.

Holy crap!

[Vrede too]

Bad Times at the El Royale

Bad Times at the El Royale is a 2018 American neo-noir thriller film written, produced and directed by Drew Goddard. The film stars Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman and Chris Hemsworth. Set in 1969, the plot follows seven strangers each hiding dark secrets, who come together one night in a shady hotel on the California-Nevada border....

Excellent, if you can handle "jarring bursts of graphic violence".

[Vrede too]

https://tvlistings.zap2it.com/

The Delta Force (1986)
2:45 AM ON HDNETMV 811 • Stereo • CC

Terrorists reroute a passenger jet from Athens to Beirut, where commandos (Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin) are waiting to negotiate.

Has there ever been a movie where Chuck Norris or Lee Marvin "negotiate"?

Anyhow, I'll pass.

[billy.pilgrim]

https://tvlistings.zap2it.com/

The Delta Force (1986)
2:45 AM ON HDNETMV 811 • Stereo • CC

Terrorists reroute a passenger jet from Athens to Beirut, where commandos (Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin) are waiting to negotiate.

Has there ever been a movie where Chuck Norris or Lee Marvin "negotiate"?

Anyhow, I'll pass.

Blazing Saddles

I have nearly always liked Marvin, but I don't think I've ever seen Norris in anything other than the occasional commercial for his tv show.

[Vrede too]

Has there ever been a movie where Chuck Norris or Lee Marvin "negotiate"?

Anyhow, I'll pass.

Blazing Saddles

I have nearly always liked Marvin, but I don't think I've ever seen Norris in anything other than the occasional commercial for his tv show.

:?: I don't think either one was in Blazing Saddles.

Tough guys don't "negotiate".

Norris has been in a bunch of action flicks, most of which I haven't seen.

[GoCubsGo]

Fuck Chuck Norris.

Norris is a Republican.[133]

On November 18, 2008, Norris became one of the first members of show business to express support for the California Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage, and he chided activists for "interfering" with the democratic process and the double standard he perceived in criticizing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints without criticizing African Americans, who had voted for the measure by a wide margin.[134]

On June 26, 2012, Norris published an article on Ammoland.com, in which he accused the Obama administration of paying Jim Turley, the current National President of the Boy Scouts of America, to reverse the organisation's policy that excluded gay youths from joining.[135]

During the 2012 presidential election, Norris first recommended Ron Paul, and then later formally endorsed Newt Gingrich as the Republican presidential candidate.[136] After Gingrich suspended his campaign in May 2012, Norris endorsed Republican presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, despite Norris having previously accused Romney of flip-flopping and of trying to buy the nomination for the Republican Party candidacy for 2012.[137] On the eve of the election, he and his wife Gena made a video warning that if evangelicals did not show up at the polls and vote out President Obama, "...our country as we know it may be lost forever...".[138][139] Norris also produced the film Answering the Call, which featured his 2007 trip to Iraq to visit the troops.[140][141]

Norris has visited Israel and voiced support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the 2013 and 2015 elections.[142][143] Norris endorsed Huckabee again in the 2016 Republican Primary before he dropped out.[144] In March 2016, it was reported that Norris endorsed Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz and that he would be attending a Cruz rally,[145][146] but two days later, Norris stated he would only endorse the GOP nominee once that nominee has been nominated by the party.[147] Norris endorsed former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore in the 2017 United States Senate special election in Alabama.[148]

In 2019, Norris signed an endorsement deal with gun manufacturer Glock. The deal was met with criticism from some members of the public and some of his fans who felt it was bad timing due to the increase in school shootings in the United States.[149]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_N ... ical_views

[billy.pilgrim]

Has there ever been a movie where Chuck Norris or Lee Marvin "negotiate"?

Anyhow, I'll pass.

Blazing Saddles

I have nearly always liked Marvin, but I don't think I've ever seen Norris in anything other than the occasional commercial for his tv show.

:?: I don't think either one was in Blazing Saddles.

Tough guys don't "negotiate".

Norris has been in a bunch of action flicks, most of which I haven't seen.

I claim brain fart. I meant Cat Ballou.

[Vrede too]

Yeah, Chuck Norris is even more of an asshole than I knew.

I claim brain fart. I meant Cat Ballou.

It's been a long time. Does Lee Marvin "negotiate" in Cat Ballou or do gunslinging twins Eli 'Kid' Shelleen and Tim Strawn just kill people?

[billy.pilgrim]

Yeah, Chuck Norris is even more of an asshole than I knew.

I claim brain fart. I meant Cat Ballou.

It's been a long time. Does Lee Marvin "negotiate" in Cat Ballou or do gunslinging twins Eli 'Kid' Shelleen and Tim Strawn just kill people?

I remember him being very agreeable when drunk. Sober was a different story.

[Vrede too]

It's been a long time. Does Lee Marvin "negotiate" in Cat Ballou or do gunslinging twins Eli 'Kid' Shelleen and Tim Strawn just kill people?

I remember him being very agreeable when drunk. Sober was a different story.

Booze, lubricating negotiations for 12,000 years.

One False Move

One False Move is a 1992 American crime thriller film directed by Carl Franklin and co-written by Billy Bob Thornton. The film stars Thornton alongside Bill Paxton and Cynda Williams. The low-budget production was about to be released straight to home video when it was finished, but became popular through word of mouth, convincing the distributor to give the film a theatrical release. Film critic Gene Siskel voted this film as his favorite of 1992.

Critical reaction

Hal Hinson, writing for The Washington Post, praised the film: "'One False Move' is a thriller with a hair-trigger sense of tension. Directed by newcomer Carl Franklin, its power comes from the stripped-down simplicity of its style and the unblinking savagery of its violence." Film critic Roger Ebert praised the film's director in his review: "It is a powerful directing job. He starts with an extraordinary screenplay and then finds the right tones and moods for every scene, realizing it's not the plot we care about, it’s the people." The film was nominated for the Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

As of September 2020, One False Move holds a rating of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 51 reviews.

"stripped-down simplicity of its style" - I was trying to think of the right words. The lack of Hollywood glitz and artifice makes it flawlessly believable.

Bill Paxton is excellent. He died at 61 of a post-op stroke in 2017.

[Vrede too]

Saw an ad for this new movie "Judas and the Black Messiah," about Fred Hampton and the Chicago Black Panther Party of the 60's. Looks like it'll be pretty intense. Hampton was murdered in his bed by cops.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/v ... tion=click

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_and ... ck_Messiah

It's very good. It's on HBO max.

New film highlights FBI abuses as House Democrats push to strip Hoover's name from building

A group of House Democrats is mounting a renewed push to strip J. Edgar Hoover’s name off the FBI headquarters in the wake of a powerful new film that highlights one of the bureau’s worst abuses under his leadership: a secret, decades-long program known as COINTELPRO that was aimed at discrediting civil rights activists, and which ultimately led to the 1969 killing by law enforcement of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

“You take a poll and I would bet 90 percent of the society has no clue what COINTELPRO was,” said Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, who, along with 22 co-sponsors, has reintroduced a bill to remove the longtime FBI director’s name from the bureau’s headquarters building in Washington, D.C. “This is an ugly part of our past that is not well known.”

Cohen made those comments during an interview for a special, two-part “Buried Treasure” series of the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery.” It is being released this week on the 50th anniversary of a historic break-in of a small FBI office outside Philadelphia that yielded the first clues to COINTELPRO’s existence, along with other documents revealing FBI surveillance abuses. Among them: a directive from Hoover to create “racial squads” tasked with recruiting informants and agent provocateurs within black nationalist groups. (The full story of the break-in — including the identity of the left-wing activists who committed it — was first told in the book “The Burglary,” by former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger, and the documentary “1971” by director Johanna Hamilton.)

Related discussion: viewtopic.php?p=81362#p81362

One of those who participated in the podcast series is Shaka King, the director of “Judas and the Black Messiah,” a new film in which actor Daniel Kaluuya plays Hampton, a charismatic community organizer and Black Panther leader who was shot sleeping in his apartment during a December 1969 predawn raid by agents of the Cook County state attorney’s office and Chicago Police Department.

As the film shows, the raid was facilitated by an informant, William O’Neal (the “Judas” in the film’s title), who was recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the Black Panthers and passed along a diagram of Hampton’s apartment with an X marked by the bed where he was sleeping.

Cohen says he hopes the film will give new impetus to his years-long campaign to remove Hoover’s name from the FBI’s national headquarters across the street from the Justice Department. Cohen said this step is akin to efforts over the past year to change the name of military bases named for Confederate generals, as well as the successful removal of Robert E. Lee’s statue from the U.S. Capitol.

Among the Democratic co-sponsors of his bill are leading members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep. Barbara Lee of California, a former Black Panther activist who said last week she was a “first-hand witness to, and a target of Hoover’s illegal COINTELPRO operations.” No Republicans have yet to sign on.

“That movie has gotten a grand reception, and it showed the interactions between the Chicago police and the FBI in the murder of Fred Hampton,” Cohen said. “That was part of COINTELPRO, J. Edgar Hoover’s organized effort to make sure there was not a Black leader who would rise up for civil rights and better conditions in the Black community.”

Hoover, played by actor Martin Sheen, makes appearances in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” decrying the rise of the Black Panthers as a threat to law and order. “The Black Panthers are the single biggest threat to our national security,” the Hoover character says in the film. “Our counterintelligence program must prevent the rise of a Black Messiah.” (The real Hoover did in fact make comments along these lines. In 1968, Hoover issued a directive to agents that they must “prevent the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.”)

Yet King, the film’s director, seemed less than enthusiastic about Cohen’s bill, calling it a “cosmetic” response to a full reckoning for the historic abuses the FBI engaged in during Hoover’s nearly half-century as director.

“Cosmetic change is change of some kind, but it’s not really any kind of redress,” King said. “It’s not fixing anything. It’s actually a fairly hollow statement. A real statement is, ‘Let’s take a look at COINTELPRO and the damage it’s caused, and let’s engage in some historic justice.”

The renewed interest in the legacy of COINTELPRO comes amid a larger debate over policing and law enforcement in minority communities triggered by last year’s death of George Floyd and the nationwide protests inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet it is also is taking place amid a parallel controversy over whether the FBI and the Justice Department under the Trump administration were aggressive enough in investigating and conducting surveillance of right-wing extremist, white supremacist and militia groups such as those that participated in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Despite some recent halting efforts the FBI and national security state have always targeted lefties and non-Whites.

... It was not until years later, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and an investigation by a Senate committee headed by Idaho Sen. Frank Church, that the public learned the full story of what COINTELPRO was: a counterintelligence program launched by Hoover in the 1950s that targeted left-wing and civil rights groups by seeking to discredit their leaders and sew division within their ranks. Its most notorious action was the collection of secret audio surveillance tapes allegedly involving Martin Luther King Jr., particularly those related to his sex life, which bureau agents later used to try to blackmail the country’s foremost civil rights leader.

Enraged about the break-in, Hoover ordered a nationwide investigation to find the culprits, but the FBI never cracked the case. Forsyth and his fellow burglars revealed themselves only in 2014, long after the statute of limitations had expired.

See my BRD link above.

... The burglars, calling themselves the “Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI,” soon started anonymously mailing the documents to members of Congress and journalists. Presidential aspirant Sen. George McGovern and Rep. Parren Mitchell, both FBI critics, returned the documents to the FBI, saying they did not want to take possession of stolen property.

But Medsger, the first journalist to receive them in her Washington Post mailbox, fought to publish them. As she explains on the “Skullduggery” series, she got stiff resistance. The paper’s lawyers and publisher Katharine Graham opposed publishing them after Attorney General John Mitchell demanded the newspaper hold back. But the paper’s executive editor at the time, Ben Bradlee, sided with Medsger and prevailed, leading to her first big scoop on the documents. “Stolen Documents Describe FBI Surveillance Activities” declared the front-page headline on March 24, 1971.

It was, Medsger says in the podcast, a “dress rehearsal” for the debate within the newspaper just months later when the Post, along with the New York Times, received a more famous cache of stolen documents: the Pentagon Papers.

[neoplacebo]

[Vrede too]

Maybe I'll skip watching this one:

Piranhaconda (2012)



Two piranha/anaconda hybrid creatures hunt down the scientist who stole their egg and a film crew making a slasher film in the jungle.

[GoCubsGo]

Maybe I'll skip watching this one:

Piranhaconda (2012)



Two piranha/anaconda hybrid creatures hunt down the scientist who stole their egg and a film crew making a slasher film in the jungle.

Great flick!

[Vrede too]

Great flick!

Shucks, now I'm sorry that I missed it.

Q Ball (2019)



Documentary that explores the San Quentin Prison basketball squad - teammates and inmates at "the Q" - along their journey of rehabilitation and possible redemption.

Excellent doc . Kind of an unfortunate title given what happened to America in the subsequent 2 years.

[Vrede too]

"Judas and the Black Messiah" did very well for Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. What a strange country we live in.

Molly's Game

Molly's Game is a 2017 American biographical crime drama film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin (in his directorial debut), based on the 2014 memoir of the same name by Molly Bloom. It stars Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong, Chris O'Dowd, Joe Keery, Brian D'Arcy James, and Bill Camp. The film follows Bloom (Chastain), who becomes the target of an FBI investigation after the underground poker empire she runs for Hollywood celebrities, athletes, business tycoons, and the Russian mob is exposed....

Fantastic!

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 81% based on 297 reviews, with an average rating of 7.07/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Powered by an intriguing story and a pair of outstanding performances from Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba, Molly's Game marks a solid debut for writer-director Aaron Sorkin." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale.

Peter Debruge of Variety praised Sorkin's script, saying, "... Molly's Game delivers one of the screen's great female parts — a dense, dynamic, compulsively entertaining affair, whose central role makes stunning use of Chastain's stratospheric talent." Mike Ryan of Uproxx gave the film 9/10, writing, "Molly's Game is a perfect story for Sorkin. There's poker, the Russian mafia, the Italian mafia, celebrities, and sports. The only thing missing for Sorkin's wheelhouse is President Bartlet. And at over two hours long, the film still feels tight and never fails to entertain."

Writing for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, saying, "Molly's Game bristles with fun zingers, electric energy and Sorkin's brand of verbal fireworks – all of which help enormously when the movie falters in fleshing out its characters. Still, in his first film with a female protagonist, the writer-director has hit on a timely theme: the tribulations of being a woman in a man's world." Chastain's portrayal of Molly Bloom was praised by The Hollywood Reporter, for "Chastain roars through the performance with a force and take-no-prisoners attitude that keeps one rapt." The Hollywood Reporter also stated: "Sorkin keeps things rolling relentlessly and gets fine results from the actors down the line [...]. [...] The film looks sharp and a trio of editors keeps thing pacey despite the 140-minute running time." It concluded: "One strong woman and many rich men make for a good show."

I agree.
Sorkin's trademark snappy dialog and assumption that the audience is intelligent enough to keep up really shine.
"Chastain's stratospheric talent" - She's a national treasure, one of our finest actors.
Idris Elba knocks it out of the park, too.
Teenage Chastain/Bloom, Samantha Isler, does a fine job, also. I wonder why it was her last role. College?

To the extent that the film depicts the irl Molly Bloom (author) accurately -

Wiki article about the film:

... Molly Bloom herself discussed Chastain's portrayal of her character with ET Canada stating, "We spent a little time together. She didn't have much time for prep or research," Bloom tells ET Canada's Matte Babel. "I was blown away by her performance by how right it was and how deep and understood I felt by her performance."

That works. Chastain did not overdo the glamour.

[GoCubsGo]

Thx, forgot about that one.

That flick had been on my list but somehow fell off.

Will search it out.

[Vrede too]

Fruitvale Station (2013)



42 (2013)