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Earwicker posted:iirc most of that soundtrack is by Lisa Gerrard, i.e. half of Dead Can Dance, who was launching a solo career at that time. she had one track on the Heat soundtrack as well, from her first solo album, then she did a bunch of stuff on The Insider, and then her really huge hit was the Gladiator soundtrack a few years later Oh dang, I did not know that! thathonkey posted:i think the insider is the only mann (directed) film i have not seen. ive been kind of saving it. I think it helped that he started that movie in his late 30s. Seems like he did a lot of work honing his skills over in the UK, doing commercials and made for tv stuff, before he came home and tried to make a feature, and it shows.
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Jan 1, 2024 23:29
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thathonkey posted:i think ferraris are cool but i could hardly give a poo poo less about the story and history behind the company. however, due to my tremendous amount of respect for michael mann (he's among my top directors easily) i will be seeing it in theaters probably honestly the most interesting part about enzo was his ability to royally piss people off and push them to incredible feats of automotive engineering just to show him up. one of these instances was covered in the movie Ford vs Ferrari, but my favorite was the one that turned a tractor company into a sports car company. as legend goes, Lamborghini tried to ask him some questions about some parts commonality between Lambo's tractors and Enzo's cars, and enzo basically blew him off with a "just be glad you're blessed enough to drive the greatest cars on earth" (with the "you inbred hillbilly new-money cousinfuck" being implied by tone). lambo was so pissed he said i'll show that snobby gently caress and started tooling up a corner of his tractor factory to build sports cars
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Jan 2, 2024 01:53
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mysterious frankie posted:It’s pretty cool! I like how he coaxed out the hidden moral and financial complexities to something that should be a no-brainer (ratting on tobacco companies for being monsters). What do you owe to yourself, what do you owe to your family, and what to you owe to the public? If you know you’re going to potentially destroy your family financially and emotionally by doing the right thing, and you know you’re doing the right thing for petty reasons rather than ethical ones, and you’re making these decisions unilaterally without your spouse, is it still the right thing? So the credits are rolling now, and holy cow was this movie good. It's a cannot miss if you like Mann's work, and it's just a great film overall. This complex struggle is absolutely one of the most compelling parts of it, the human that is caught in the middle of it all
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Jan 2, 2024 08:01
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Rewatching HEAT. Still so good. Ashley Judd was such a babe.
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Jan 2, 2024 08:56
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I HAD COFFEE WITH MCCAULEY HALF AN HOUR AGO!!!
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Jan 2, 2024 09:33
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I rewatched Collateral yesterday, having only seen it when it came out. It was excellent for the most part, but maybe could've used a slightly different ending. The mild-mannered taxi driver going toe to toe with the elite assassin and winning was a bit hokey and a bit too "the guy has to save the girl" for my tastes. I get that Max managed to get Vincent out of his comfort zone throughout the movie and forced him to react and respond, which he wasn't as good at, and also in the ending managed to get him to react emotionally and let his anger get him shot, but still. But other than that, I loved Mann's use of what looked like digital camcorders in many shots to get that extremely real "doesn't look like a movie, looks like someone accidentally just managing to film something" feeling, the sound design was again brutal, and I thought both Fox and Cruise were excellent in their roles. Banger of a movie. That scene in the jazz club was so loving good, instantly transitioning from jazz fanboyism to threat in the blink of an eye. All three guys did such a good job there. And of course "yo, homie, that my briefcase?" So what were the other pro watches from Mann? Manhunter? Miami Vice for that one shootout? Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 11:32
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I watched some director's cut of Miami Vice last night and I still don't get it. Is it supposed to be a ridiculous action movie even though everyone is taking everything so seriously? And beyond that it didn't even strike me as stylish. And oh god the music! That 'In the Air Tonight' cover was awful awful awful. Maybe there is something wrong with my TV. I love The Insider, Thief, Heat, Collateral, etc, but Miami Vice for me is just an awful story and no style. It is a great cast and I want to like it but nope.
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Jan 2, 2024 11:44
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Associate Christ
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part of miami vice's impact when new was the fact that it was really early on in the Gritty Remake trend. now that a bunch of others have done it (and in some cases, better, like Dark Knight) a lot of what seemed intense and hot about it seems more trite, and really through no fault of its own
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Jan 2, 2024 13:30
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i dont really get it either. maybe its cause in not familiar with the tv show at all but miami vice is my least favorite mann movie by quite some margin
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Jan 2, 2024 14:43
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:
The jazz club scene was great. Up until that point, Vincent's violence was very theatrical and cool. With the thieves in the alley, for example, he's doing this little murder ballet and I felt safe to just enjoy because it's so unreal. But when he point-blank, no frills, unloads his gun into the musician's forehead it felt grounded, which left me feeling both really bad for the victim and disturbed by a sudden awareness that someone could someday shoot me in the head, because as far as the universe is concerned it can be a completely mundane, casual act, like picking your nose or taking a nap. That was maybe one shot where the digital cameras worked for me; for the most part, whenever it was noticeable, it was like someone was enabling those Soap Operafication settings on my tv. Did you also notice in one of the other club scenes (there are three different club scenes, I'm now realizing), when Max is leaving the negotiations after successfully impersonating Vincent, they shot it so that his prescription eyeglasses are not clear, and look more like the sunglasses Vincent is wearing when he shows up at the airport? Like he is starting to really feel like a bit of a badass himself. Code Jockey posted:So the credits are rolling now, and holy cow was this movie good. It's a cannot miss if you like Mann's work, and it's just a great film overall. This complex struggle is absolutely one of the most compelling parts of it, the human that is caught in the middle of it all I loved the character study of Wigand and his misapprehension of his place in the world, and even how that world works. He blows the whistle not because he cares about the public, but because he feels like his ex-employer besmirched his honor when they intimated he might not be upholding his end of their agreement. He thinks of himself as a member of the landed gentry who is self-sustaining and can go to war over principles, but he doesn't even own his own house and his wife points out they basically have no financial runway without his severance. The bank owns his home and his position in this world is only as good as the next job he can land, but he acts like he's Lord Wigand of Gated Communityshire, and spends a lot of the movie trying to maintain or repair that self-image, generally to the detriment of himself and his family. By the end all he has is the painted figure of Paul Revere floating over his shoulder; he's lost his family and material wealth, so now he's trying to make do with the idea of himself as a great historical hero rather than a small angry man in a rented room. thathonkey posted:i dont really get it either. maybe its cause in not familiar with the tv show at all but miami vice is my least favorite mann movie by quite some margin I am really curious about what he did with the movie. The show is full of dodgy acting and lots of questionable production choices, and it was always punching above its weight while generally failing admirably, and that's part of what makes it so charming. Thematically it's not a deep show by any means, so if he files off the corny, experimental jank what is left? A slick movie about tropical cops?
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Jan 2, 2024 18:41
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mysterious frankie posted:Did you also notice in one of the other club scenes (there are three different club scenes, I'm now realizing), when Max is leaving the negotiations after successfully impersonating Vincent, they shot it so that his prescription eyeglasses are not clear, and look more like the sunglasses Vincent is wearing when he shows up at the airport? Like he is starting to really feel like a bit of a badass himself. I didn't, but that's a real cool detail and that's 100% the intent Mann had in the scene. Great spot!
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Jan 2, 2024 19:43
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:... The mild-mannered taxi driver going toe to toe with the elite assassin and winning was a bit hokey and a bit too "the guy has to save the girl" for my tastes. I get that Max managed to get Vincent out of his comfort zone throughout the movie and forced him to react and respond, which he wasn't as good at, and also in the ending managed to get him to react emotionally and let his anger get him shot, but still. If I recall what actually saved Max was that Vincent's muscle memory hosed him. IIRC Vincent Drew and shot first but put his rounds into the steel door aiming for center mass out of reflex, Max returned fire and got some shots through the off center glass windows shooting wild at extremely close range. Max only won by absolute dumb luck.
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Jan 2, 2024 20:01
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BitBasher posted:If I recall what actually saved Max was that Vincent's muscle memory hosed him. IIRC Vincent Drew and shot first but put his rounds into the steel door aiming for center mass out of reflex, Max returned fire and got some shots through the off center glass windows shooting wild at extremely close range. E: I think the movie wants us to take away that he won by caring about something in his present, rather than always planning for an idealized future, thereby breaking out of his dehumanizing loop as Really Good Driver, which gave him the unpredictable versatility and passion to overload Vincent, the Really Good Assassin. It was absolute dumb luck, but Max laid the groundwork to force chance in his favor. I also love when Vincent dies. Just powers down like a robot. mysterious frankie fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 21:32
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I still don't really get the final shootout in Collateral. I've said it before but if the explanation for Max winning really is as simple as 'he moved over and Vincent didn't see it', it's maybe the weakest part of an otherwise great film. I've heard some explanations that there's more to it but it really doesn't seem that way. Then again, HEAT has a similarly-flawed climax, with Hanna just happening to catch McCauley's shadow in the nick of time.
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Jan 2, 2024 21:48
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The idea is that Vincent is rigid and dogmatically efficient, and so fails to innovate against what has always worked for him. Max succeeds because he is resourceful and can improvise.
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Jan 2, 2024 21:51
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:So what were the other pro watches from Mann? Manhunter? Miami Vice for that one shootout? Manhunter is extremely good. Of all the movies I've seen by him so far, the only one I'd caution against rushing into would be The Keep; that thing can only be enjoyed as a curiosity piece, though some individual scenes are gorgeous. I'm in the minority here, but I believe The Last of the Mohicans is his weakest legitimately good movie. What have you seen by him so far?
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Jan 2, 2024 22:08
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mysterious frankie posted:Manhunter is extremely good. I cannot second this enough, it's one of my favorite movies by far
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Jan 2, 2024 22:20
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BitBasher posted:If I recall what actually saved Max was that Vincent's muscle memory hosed him. IIRC Vincent Drew and shot first but put his rounds into the steel door aiming for center mass out of reflex, Max returned fire and got some shots through the off center glass windows shooting wild at extremely close range. Yeah it's this, Jamie Foxx is firing wildly with one hand while Cruise does a near perfect failure drill that he had done several times previously. I think it fits perfectly with the tone/themes of the movie personally. Training scars are absolutely a thing with firearms, even highly trained shooters end up falling back onto trained patterns during stressful encounters and some guy that has trained a failure drill thousands of times will revert to that during an adrenaline dump. Also I think I am like the one person that loved Miami Vice
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Jan 2, 2024 22:59
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B-Rock452 posted:Also I think I am like the one person that loved Miami Vice I liked Miami Vice, it wasn't Thief or Heat but it's neat to see him do a new take on the characters
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Jan 2, 2024 23:08
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exquisite tea posted:The idea is that Vincent is rigid and dogmatically efficient, and so fails to innovate against what has always worked for him. Max succeeds because he is resourceful and can improvise. I get it, but it's still done in a hamfisted way.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:14
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mysterious frankie posted:Manhunter is extremely good. agreed on all counts! i cant decide on an exact ordering on any given day (and ive probably posted it before itt, sorry!) but my top 3 mann films are firmly: heat, thief, and manhunter
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Jan 3, 2024 01:01
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thathonkey posted:agreed on all counts! i cant decide on an exact ordering on any given day (and ive probably posted it before itt, sorry!) but my top 3 mann films are firmly: heat, thief, and manhunter one hundred percent
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Jan 3, 2024 02:26
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mysterious frankie posted:Manhunter is extremely good. I probably saw Last of the Mohicans back when it was new, but on my current rewatch round I've only seen Heat and Collateral. So I guess I have a lot of Michael Mann stuff to watch! mysterious frankie posted:I also love when Vincent dies. Just powers down like a robot. Yeah that was incredibly cool. He's in the progress of reloading, realizes what has happened and just ... powers down like you say, and sits down. I normally actively dislike Tom Cruise, but he was fantastic in Collateral. Shaman Tank Spec fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 10:09
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:Yeah that was incredibly cool. He's in the progress of reloading, realizes what has happened and just ... powers down like you say, and sits down. I normally actively dislike Tom Cruise, but he was fantastic in Collateral. I saw some reviews from the time that said Cruise was too robotic, but I feel like they missed the point of that performance. I need to lay out my own understanding of Mann's work to really defend what I'm saying here. Apologies in advance. I've read critics who claim that Mann loves professionals, but I'd say he is in awe of professionalism as a method by which damaged people\outcasts gain superior abilities through deliberately narrowing their life experiences down to embodying a perfected set of skills, often at great personal expense, and the systems of order whose existence rely on networks of these people remaining in a disordered state of professional focus. Where those critics get confused, I think, is that Mann doesn't outright condemn professionalism and those systems, and he often shows how cool professionals operating at peak performance look, so their conclusion is he must unambiguously love this state of being. In reality, I think Mann reveres professionals and mourns their necessity in a natural world that he views as inimical to human prosperity because it doesn't\can't want, understand, or respect what we want (to live, have cool stuff, be happy, make more humans that can also have all that) and can't be bargained with; I think this oppositional, natural world is embodied in characters like Waingro, Dolarhyde, and even Frank to some degree. To oppose these forces man creates order (laws and expectations, often imposed by threat of force, that define what is and isn't an acceptable human) and uses professionals to maintain it; as a result of man's inability to create a perfect system the order creates outgroups who, still desiring all the same stuff as the ingroup, create their own prosperity driven criminal orders that are serviced by outgroup professionals. I think it's a very Judeo-Christian model of reality, laid on top of a materialism that alternates between despairing and celebrating its own insufficient primacy in human affairs. The angels- perfect servants that accomplish tasks ordained by God with peerless skills and no conflicting desires- have gone missing (except when they aren't, ie in The Keep), leaving man undefended with only his wits and physical resources; as a response we created our own angels and demons out of ourselves via professionalism and put those professionals to work maintaining our artificial heavens, hells, and kingdoms abiding by their laws. This state of being isn't natural to humans, so it causes the professional and those who love the professional a great deal of suffering which increases over time until it eclipses whatever pride & utility they receive from the arrangement. In Mann's stories the professional is often introduced at a point in their lives where they are no longer suitable to fulfill their role in whatever order they represent, and so they must choose over the course of the story to abandon their professionalism in favor of their humanity; those who do are rewarded wand those who don't suffer a full collapse of self or outright death. Collateral, taken from this view, could be seen as a critique of modern society, where the order or things and the sacrifice of professionalism is no longer counterbalanced by the value it provides. Max is a professional driver who can't use that professionalism to move on and create his own limo company, instead stuck in a loop like a worker ant; where conflicted professionals in Mann's previous films would stand on beaches that represent being at a transitional point where difficult decisions need to be made, now the professional has a picture representing the fantasy of one day having a choice (echoing Frank's photo collage of what he imagines humans want, Max has a photo of what he imagines it feels like to be able to self-determine). The man who called the hit can't tell the difference between Max and Vincent because they're interchangeable commodities, and for a moment as he leaves the club Max can't even tell the difference between himself and Vincent. Even the attendees at the third club are like programmed revelers who don't react when Vincent kills several people in the crowd while pursuing Max. Vincent represents the nihilistic pinnacle of this deadening, meaningless professionalization of all humanity. I think it's intentional that he dies, or powers off, on a train- a single-purpose mechanical device that cannot function without a track- and then the train bears the corpse of its brethren away, while Max and Annie, having chosen humanity over professionalism, watch from the platform. Naturally, Cruise should play that character as a spooky robot man! He IS a spooky robot man, and I think Cruise played him perfectly.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:36
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Great write up, I love stuff like that.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:49
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i don't think Last of the Mohicans is a "weak" movie in any sense, it's very good, it's just much more of a typical hollywood blockbuster than anything else he's done and has elements of old school swashbucklers and cheesy romantic scenes. but given the novel it's based on that makes perfect sense and it's well done, still got great music and lots of amazing cinematography and moody scenes, the ambush in the meadow and that last fight on the cliffs with that scottish violin riff playing the whole time are two of my favorite scenes in all of movies.
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Jan 3, 2024 17:51
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Last of the Mohicans also did not age nearly as well as many of his other movies (even older ones) imho. i saw it for the first time last year or maybe the year before though so maybe other people feel differently
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Jan 3, 2024 18:09
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Earwicker posted:but given the novel it's based on that makes perfect sense and it's well done He based his screenplay on a script written by Philip Dunne in 1936. IMO it was intentionally a formalistic Hollywood blockbuster because it was a learning exercise Mann was doing to figure out how blockbusters work. He took what he learned, synthesized it with his artier crime movies, and made Heat. I'd never claim it's a bad movie, but I do think it's a weak good movie because it's like... I dunno, a well-made runway for a much more interesting jet? E: or maybe it's less like a runway and more like the plant that built some of the parts that made the jet? I'm confusing myself at this point. mysterious frankie fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 18:20
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hollywood blockbuster type movies tend to be a product of their time period and every 5-7-10 years or so fashion etc changes enough to date things
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Jan 3, 2024 18:28
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thathonkey posted:Last of the Mohicans also did not age nearly as well as many of his other movies (even older ones) imho. i saw it for the first time last year or maybe the year before though so maybe other people feel differently Also for everyone enjoying Heat (i.e., everybody), check out L.A. Takedown. It's the same movie made for TV with appropriate budget, production values, acting, etc. It's a very fun exercise to compare and contrast them.
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Jan 3, 2024 18:34
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mysterious frankie posted:He based his screenplay on a script written by Philip Dunne in 1936. IMO it was intentionally a formalistic Hollywood blockbuster because it was a learning exercise Mann was doing to figure out how blockbusters work. He took what he learned, synthesized it with his artier crime movies, and made Heat. I'd never claim it's a bad movie, but I do think it's a weak good movie because it's like... I dunno, a well-made runway for a much more interesting jet? Thank you for this. Somewhere in my  brain was rattling around "Mann based it off some 1920s/30s movie" but I couldnt find anything by googling. IIRC (again, ) Mann said in interviews about the movie that there were certain things he would have done differently but he wanted to follow the script because that was the challenge he gave himself (or something similar)EDIT I wanna say it was one of the ambushes with a kerjillion extras rushing in from the sides?
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Jan 3, 2024 18:36
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mysterious frankie posted:I saw some reviews from the time that said Cruise was too robotic, but I feel like they missed the point of that performance. I need to lay out my own understanding of Mann's work to really defend what I'm saying here. Apologies in advance. fantastic write up and I agree 100%
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Jan 3, 2024 19:06
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I just got Collateral on Blu-Ray ($6 at my local used CD shop!) and now I’m very psyched to watch it for the first time
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Jan 3, 2024 19:34
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Vampire Panties posted:Thank you for this. Somewhere in my I'd be super interested in seeing what Michael Mann would have done with that story if he wasn't trying to copy form. I'm not sure it'd be a good movie, but I'd definitely find it a lot more fun to think about. thathonkey posted:Last of the Mohicans also did not age nearly as well as many of his other movies (even older ones) imho. i saw it for the first time last year or maybe the year before though so maybe other people feel differently The thing he's done which has aged the worst (best) is the email scene in The Insider. His concept of what email is and does in 1999 is so weird that it goes all the way back around to being unintentionally awesome. Even at the time I would have been like "Wait, my Juno account isn't a winged cartoon envelope that flies around my desktop making death threats. What gives?" I'm not old enough to have casually faxed anyone, so I can only assume he got that technology 100% correct, and middle-aged yuppies were constantly using it like AIM to bug one another.
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Jan 3, 2024 20:11
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that email thing was unintentionally hilarious, watching it in 2023
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Jan 3, 2024 21:40
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A counter to that is the OG mission impossible movie when Ethan is browsing newsgroups looking for por..err looking for terrorists. Holds up well.
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Jan 4, 2024 02:21
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I watched through the Mission Impossible movies recently and it was funny seeing it go from that grounded usenet take (except there were weird animations playing whenever a message was sent) to just completely nonsensical stuff like a Minority Report hologram computer built into the windshield of a car a couple movies later
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Jan 4, 2024 02:27
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Russel Crowe was great as Wigand, I'm not used to seeing him play subtle and subdued. I already want to watch The Insider again lol, Michael Mann you've done it again
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Jan 4, 2024 02:36
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Haptical Sales Slut posted:A counter to that is the OG mission impossible movie when Ethan is browsing newsgroups looking for por..err looking for terrorists. Holds up well.
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Rewatching heat now because of this thread it's been a long time since I've seen this and I didn't remember that you could hear Robert de niro's characters tinnitus in his scenes I forgot how loving wild and good this movie is Edit - Lol not in the movie, the tinnitus was just me Movie still rules Beefed Owl fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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