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#ocean's 11

dsy
@dsy
Ocean's Eleven Review

More than anything I think I really admire the art of subtlety that permeates this film. Maybe it's better described as "coolness"? But there's a level of confidence in the job that never falters even as numerous things go sideways, seemingly all by intentional design. Big admiration for Andy Garcia as the constantly simmering casino boss - I think his shout of "find out how they broke into my VAULT" is the perfect boiling over moment of breaking the coolness. Rusty's rule one of poker: leave emotion at the door. There's still like 15 minutes of scam time left, but as soon as Garcia is playing on tilt he's lost entirely.

Other great stuff: Brad Pitt and George Clooney have incredible bromance energy from the word go, easily one of the best pairs of male leads I can imagine. Similarly, the first scene with Clooney and Julia Roberts in the restaurant is ooooooh so good. Pitt's weird doctor spot is the perfect thing for him, reminds me that Brad Pitt works best as A Movie Guy. (thinking Burn After Reading as a similar flavor?)

The script, the editing, almost all of this film is a treat to watch. I think that some of the setups work out a little too conveniently and I totally don't understand what Don Cheadle is doing. I'm glad he got paid, though.

Behemoth
@Behemoth

Behemoth's Monday Movie Moundup - IV

I am no longer sick, and I'm on vacation this week, so you know what it's time for...!

Ocean's 11 - Lewis Milestone, 1960

This movie has a reputation for being extremely boring, and boy oh boy does it live up to it. Early on it's kind of a fun hangout movie with some movie stars, but then it gets into the actual logistics of the heist and it's just interminable. Any novelty of seeing old 60s casinos is not worth the price of entry.

It also has a very weird downer ending, which I can only attribute to the fact that it was made under the Hayes code. One of the team dies and all the money burns up in his coffin, so it just ends with everyone leaving the funeral looking extremely depressed.

Sympathy for Mr Vengeance - Park Chan-wook, 2002

Hooooooo boy, now this is some primo early '00s grit and grime, I tell ya what. One of those movies that is so incredibly bleak that it wraps around to being funny. You can really see Park's style taking shape in this one, the way they handled the deaf protagonist is brilliant.

Asteroid City - Wes Anderson, 2023

You probably already know whether you're going to like this movie or not. It is the most extremely Wes Anderson-y movie that he's made yet. I loved it, and I've had this song stuck in my head since I saw it yesterday.

The Net - Irwin Winkler, 1995

The classic techno-thriller! I'd never seen it before, it was pretty good. Interesting how the terrors of the internet that it imagines are kind of the opposite of what we've ended up dealing with. Sure, identity theft is A Thing, but the far more pervasive phenomenon is that information on you is gathered and stored forever, indelible.

It was fun seeing all the old computer interfaces, all obviously extremely fake. But what passes for like... a believable interface, appropriate for a movie, is in itself an interesting time capsule. Lots of screen-reading going on, I guess they didn't want people to be annoyed at having to read quickly.