Well, he said Collateral. It's true, Heat is widely recognized for the great gunplay and AR-15 reloads by Val Kilmer, but I'm referring to the lightning fast Mozambique Drill as Tom Cruise easily dispatches two thugs in the alley with his HK USP.
Numerous "gun nuts" have commented that this is the best single moment of gunplay they've seen on film and as someone who has fired thousands of rounds downrange in my lifetime, I can tell you that something like that would be very difficult to do from the draw, but is very doable with drilling and training, but yeah they got it perfect and Cruise nailed it.
It's also easy when the script says what happens.
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I mean in the effectiveness of shooting someone with a quick draw and fire in two seconds. It's easy to execute the maneuver when the script says it'll happen.
I mean in the effectiveness of shooting someone with a quick draw and fire in two seconds. It's easy to execute the maneuver when the script says it'll happen.
I guess I'm still confused. A MoFo member rated Collateral 9/10 and I commented how it is a film that a lot of people in the firearms community agree has one of the best if not the best single gunplay moment in all of film.
So when you write "It's easy when the script says what happens," does this mean that you're complimenting the script, or taking away from the power of the scene because somehow what we see on film is not as significant as how it was written - as though those two things were in opposition? Are you taking away from the execution of performing the scene from the actor, Tom Cruise, because it was written well... soooo... "nothing to see here?"
I'm genuinely confused on what point or "claim" you are making. Yes it was written well. Yes it was filmed well, nearly every frame in long shot, and yes it was performed well and yes it's a great scene. Iconic and legendary to tell the truth.
Is the claim that great scenes don't matter because anyone can write a great scene? I'm genuinely confused.
Yes writing is important. Yes good films like Collateral are cool. Yes Michael Mann makes great action scenes - among the all time best. Yes Michael Mann and his crew have great attention to detail and unlike many Hollywood films, especially of and before that time (2004), he wants the gunplay to look, sound, and feel real. Yes Tom Cruise practiced that and nailed it and it's a legitimate scene in how firearms work and what they do and how fast that stuff happens. Yes with great filmmakers it's "easy" which is too bad it doesn't happen more often.
Keep in mind too this is before John Wick made this type of stuff "mainstream" in film. This is a time when we were living in a Jason Bourne insane amount of camera edits, close up filming so it's difficult to follow, not always showing reloads or the effects of firearms or technique in long shots, etc, etc and in 2004 we're still only 20 years or less from the insanity that are Rambo films, we're in the midst of Steven Seagal actioners, overly stylized and "cool looking" but unrealistic Matrix gunplay, and Michael Bay is at his most obnoxious best in the pinnacle of his career showing random explosions, infinite ammo cheats, no aiming, no reloading, no real firearms techniques or drills...
So aside from Heat, Black Hawk Down, The Way of the Gun, and a few other gems that had been released by this time... the type of stuff that we see in Collateral just ain't common faire.
Here's a video from Larry Vickers breaking down why the scene works and is perfect and the technique is a REAL WORLD technique and is done flawlessly. Again, maybe you're more familiar with firearms and shooting than I am, but at least in my experience of shooting dozens and dozens of different firearms in nearly all major calibers and throwing thousands of rounds down range... what you see on screen in Collateral, ain't easy. At all.
I fail to see what the misunderstanding is. I mean the ease of effectiveness. Maybe it looks clean and smooth and true to life, which is all good of course, so naturally props to the filmmakers for accomplishing that. What I'm saying is that Tom Cruise killing those guys in two seconds is easy to do when the script says they get shot and killed. Maybe the maneuver is tough and takes practice in real life. However Collateral is not real life. Collateral is a film.
I shot someone with a sniper rifle from down a hill up to a balcony in a film. It wasn't impressive because it was in a film. It was scripted my bullet would hit him. It took zero skill. That's what I mean here. It took zero actual combat skill to do this. He just had to make it look good.
I mean in the effectiveness of shooting someone with a quick draw and fire in two seconds. It's easy to execute the maneuver when the script says it'll happen.
True, but we don't verisimilitude in film on the basis of the script's "say so."
Rather, we have to judge verisimilitude in terms of our own experience
WARNING: "Do you feel lucky? Well do ya' pants?" spoilers below
How many gun fights have you been in? Yeah, me neither, go figure.
How many gun fights have you been in? Yeah, me neither, go figure.
and the commentary of experts in the technical sphere who have the cognitive authority to speak on a topic. This is one of those rare scenes that has been singled out for high praise.
Curiously, this is a kind of genre on YouTube. Doctors reviewing clips from medical shows. Cops talking about police shows and so on. Curiously enough, I've heard tell that My Cousin Vinny has been singled out by some law school profs as offering a very solid depiction of certain legal procedures/go figure. Seems like a stretch to me, but then again, I ain't a lawyer and everything I think I know about the law, I've learned from film and TV.
WARNING: "Do you feel lucky? Well do ya' pants?" spoilers below
How many gun fights have you been in? Yeah, me neither, go figure.
How many gun fights have you been in? Yeah, me neither, go figure.
and the commentary of experts in the technical sphere who have the cognitive authority to speak on a topic. This is one of those rare scenes that has been singled out for high praise.
Curiously, this is a kind of genre on YouTube. Doctors reviewing clips from medical shows. Cops talking about police shows and so on. Curiously enough, I've heard tell that My Cousin Vinny has been singled out by some law school profs as offering a very solid depiction of certain legal procedures/go figure. Seems like a stretch to me, but then again, I ain't a lawyer and everything I think I know about the law, I've learned from film and TV.
It's hard though at times because film so often misrepresents actuality that the accuracy of something can be muddled. I concede that the form of Cruise's actions is most likely exemplary of someone doing such a maneuver.
One reason, and not the sole reason, is your notion of there being a sort of genre on YouTube where professionals dissect whether a scene or shot is accurate to what really happens.
I do think realism is good. It's just so hard to achieve. I've seen too many actions in films that are unrealistic for me to take many seriously. Exceptions to the rule are fun though. If Cruise's maneuver here is accurate, then that's good. The cast and crew did a fine job.
And then we get scenes where people are stabbed through the heart and out the back and he has a chance to say three sentences before he dies. Oh my...
It's hard though at times because film so often misrepresents actuality that the accuracy of something can be muddled. I concede that the form of Cruise's actions is most likely exemplary of someone doing such a maneuver.
One reason, and not the sole reason, is your notion of there being a sort of genre on YouTube where professionals dissect whether a scene or shot is accurate to what really happens.
I do think realism is good. It's just so hard to achieve. I've seen too many actions in films that are unrealistic for me to take many seriously. Exceptions to the rule are fun though. If Cruise's maneuver here is accurate, then that's good. The cast and crew did a fine job.
And then we get scenes where people are stabbed through the heart and out the back and he has a chance to say three sentences before he dies. Oh my...
If, as a general viewer, you are skeptical of Tom Cruise's demonstration of fighter combat or gun handling, that's more of a sign of common sense than anything else. This just seems to be one of those odd cases where they happened to do a pretty good job of showing a "pro-thing."
I think the most implausible thing about our action heroes is not that they may exhibit competent technique indicative of training (a scene in isolation may be solid), but that they have a highly implausible string of "Ws" in repeated high risk scenarios. One guy acting in alone in repeated 1-vs-many fights is kind of like beating a blackjack table by repeatedly doubling-down. John Wick movies, for example, show some real-deal firearms and some real-deal techniques (I guess Keanu isn't half-bad at that cowboy stuff and that he has trained with some legit people), but you have to be smoking crack to think that anyone is going to shoot their way through seventy armed thugs to get to the final boss.
I'll give it this - A Different Man made me think a lot, even though it tries to do a lot of the thinking for us. Have you ever thought about your worst quality - your Achilles heel - and considered what your life would be like if you were free from it? For Edward Lemuel (Sebastian Stan) it's something major - neurofibromatosis, which has turned his face into an oversized, disfigured wonder. He has to endure the constant reactions, attention and absence of physical affection - until meeting Ingrid Vold (Renate Reinsve), whereupon he sets himself on a journey where he'll discover just how much who we are underneath the skin matters. This is especially true when the impossibly charismatic Oswald (Adam Pearson - you'll remember him as the deformed man in Under the Skin) comes into Edward and Ingrid's life, bringing tough to stomach realizations to our protagonist in this film. This was quite funny in parts, and at times I found it frightening - the only big negative being just how obvious the whole message of the film is in it's final stretch. (The last line felt like being hit over the head with it - I like to leave a movie thinking "what was that all about?" instead of pretty much being literally told.) Not quite, but something akin to a movie written by Charlie Kaufman.
This might sound pretty stupid, but I was hoping the soldiers accused of massacring civilians in El Salvador had of been under the influence of hallucinogens or some other drugs to add a bit of sparkle to this film's dull, literal title. There are many twists in this film, and all of them bland, rote, simple and unsurprising - making this an uninspiring dud of a legal thriller. Crack lawyer Claire Kubik's (Ashley Judd) husband Tom (Jim Caviezel) is picked up on a warrant left over from his Marine Corps days when he had a different name - was he fleeing because he'd killed civilians in El Salvador? Kubik enlists the help of military law guru Charlie Grimes (Morgan Freeman) and the green lawyer this case was assigned to, First Lieutenant Terence Embry (Adam Scott) to try and save him from the death penalty. I could see everything that was about to happen from a mile away so while I wasn't really bored I wasn't thrilled or surprised either. A tasteless sausage in a genre that should offer spicy chicken wings.
5/10
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Funny surrealist horror movie. I like how this movie embraces the absurd. The gore is extremely entertaining and funny. Art, the clown is quite charismatic. Excited to see the third movie this weekend.
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"This Would Sharpen You Up And Make You Ready For A Bit Of The Old Ultra-Violence."
The premise of this film seemed right up our alley, what with my whole family being avid hikers. Right off the bat, we both found ourselves being pretty annoyed with the main character. While I did have some empathy for him in the sense that this was some sort of allegory for battling mental illness or social anxiety, the guy was just ultra annoying, so I found myself being pretty ambivalent to his plight. Not only that, but the guy he meets in the woods was also really annoying, especially to my wife, who kept complaining about him as we watched.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the third act, that careened into pretty silly territory. I just sort of rolled my eyes and accepted the film was just sort of goofy, but my wife was mad she had wasted the time watching it. I will go ahead and rate it as above, but she pretty much hated it.
Sadly, a miss for both of us!
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The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is definitely a misfire, but a fascinating one.
First of all, I should say this one should appeal to anyone who is inclined to like movies with a literary theme or characters who are authors or whose lives revolve largely around books.
It also boasts a pretty likable cast: Kunal Nayyar and Lucy Hale, headlining; and Christina Hendricks and David Arquette absolutely great in supporting roles.
Where the movie goes sideways in a very oddball way is in the way that it tells a very offbeat story in a way that simultaneously makes you feel for the characters and also kind of makes you want to distance yourself from them at some key moments, where they exhibit increasingly unlikely behavior.
Having said that, the locations are very beautiful and the way characters obsess over literary themes is kind of charming.
Halloween Friends (2022) Watched on Tubi. A horror comedy anthology with an unusual wraparound device. Freddy's wife, Jason's daughter, and Michael's sister are friends and tell short horror stories. A couple of the short films are entertaining. The whole thing is pretty goofy and silly. It's not great, but I liked it.
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
(2010, Bayer) Horror film from the 2010s
"I'm starting to dream with my eyes open. I can't tell what's real anymore. I haven't slept in three days. If I sleep, I dream. If I dream, I'm dead."
This remake follows the basic template of the original, with a group of teenagers being terrorized in their dreams by Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley), a child molester that was burned alive by the parents of his victims years before. Having somehow blocked those memories, some of the kids start realizing what is going on so they decide to end their nightmares in order to sleep in peace again.
First of all, I appreciate that it goes back to its roots of making Freddy really scary, as opposed to the wisecracking goofball that plagued most of the sequels. Part of that is in the story/writing, but part of that is also in the casting and performance of Haley. The most important thing is that he's not trying to imitate Robert Englund, but adding his own take to Freddy. His pace, body movement, and mumbling add a certain muted menace to the character that I enjoyed.
This remake follows the basic template of the original, with a group of teenagers being terrorized in their dreams by Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley), a child molester that was burned alive by the parents of his victims years before. Having somehow blocked those memories, some of the kids start realizing what is going on so they decide to end their nightmares in order to sleep in peace again.
If I could (or were forced to) remake this, I would make Freddy's alleged child molester reputation count. In other words, I'd like to see Freddy who targets tweens instead of late teens (who, at least physically, are more like young adults).
The 2010 remake offered nothing new to the original and should never have been made.
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