I’m just still bummed it wasn’t a Selina Kyle / Michelle Pfeiffer starring spin off from Batman Returns. I mean, the final shot is RIGHT there. and it’s my favourite Pfieffer performance, like, ever in anything. 

Ha! The Blackface was startling and uncomfortable. I liked the Die Hard With Vengeance reference, if that’s what it was.

Elvis Presley has to think about his whole life before he plays,,,

I think the problem with superhero 3rd acts is that they always have to rush to get the big final fight in, and due to the ubiquity of the genre, the fights these days need to be getting bigger and bigger with each new movie to top the last one. Like think back to Iron Man 1. The final fight in that one is Tony…

A Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie?  I’m already exhausted.  

The Avengers had a solid third act, and Thor: Ragnarok had Tessa Thompson strutting out of some fireworks to Led Zeppelin, which forgives a lot. But those movies didn’t have a satisfying third act so much as climactic CGI fight scenes with a bit of panache.

Jet LI is a legit badass in 4, and the highway chase scene is pretty damn good. But the racial politics haven't, um, aged all that well. It does that Boomer thing where it tries to grapple with a real concern, in this case forced labor and trafficking from Asia, but ends up being kind of racist along the way.

The Last Duel was the last good Ridley Scott movie. You know, from way back a month ago. Also, The Martian.

Note to brittle fanboys: “Ridley Scott has made some shitty movies” does not rebut anything he is saying here.

Maybe there’s an argument that Aliens is a superhero movie - I personally don’t think so but can at least understand the argument - but for Alien I don’t get where he’s coming from at all. He doesn’t provide any reasoning in the interview so I suspect he’s just being contrarian - if he really did envision Ripley as a…

I remember reading somewhere that Paul Thomas Anderson wishes that when he was making this, he’d A) calmed down a little and B) cut about 1/2 hour.

Yes

Magnolia is good, but not nearly as good as it thinks it is. This makes sense because PTA himself said that he recognized after Boogie Nights that he was in a position he’d never be in again and could do whatever the fuck he wanted, which was to “make the epic, all-time great San Fernando Valley movie.” Throw in…

Other than some of Tom Cruise’s stuff, I hated this movie. Tried watching it again recently to see if I was wrong about it and nope, still found it grating for the most part. I love Punchdrunk Love, and think There Will Be Blood is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, and Boogie Nights is just fun, but this one was…

I always thought of Magnolia as a mediocre-at-best (and grating-at-worst) attempt at aping Robert Altman’s far superior Short Cuts.

This movie and Short Cuts always get mixed up in my mind.

Years ago I considered myself a PTA detractor (now I’m more neutral). This pair of movies are a big part of why. I even prefer Crash to Magnolia.

I liked it, but as a friend of mine (who also liked it) said, “it’s one of those movies.”

Magnolia is bloated AF. It needs to be cut in half. There are moments of brilliance but they get severely bogged down by too many other stories. The Tom Cruise toxic masculinity story really works (fight me) and the William H. Macy con man but there is too much bloat overall. The final act also falls totally flat for…

I’m going with garbage. It’s a 2+ hour film about people crying over dumb shit. Where the third act wierdness is just there for a big WTF moment.