Movie/film suggestions.

Something About Mary is a great comedy. Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz.

And don't forget Matt Dillon!

The Madness Of King George. Apropos, no?

Perhaps there will be a sequel coming set in more modern times?

. . . Michael Clayton kept my attention, House Of Sand And Fog was good enough that I watched it a second time after a year or two, and American Pastoral was another that kept my attention.

And speaking of Al Pacino (which I did last post), although I don't like them as much as Phil Spector or Donnie Brasco, I did enjoy Scent Of A Woman and Paterno.  

"Sunshine Cleaners"

Sunshine Cleaning, maybe? If so, +1 @slaw .

Besides dramas that are about everyday people in everyday scenarios that turn sideways on them (such as A Map Of The World with Sigourney Weaver), I seem to gravitate to dark movies with non gratuitous violence, and if based on factual events--all the better.

In no particular order, I immensely enjoyed Phil Spector, Donnie Brasco (I thought this was Al Pacino's best acting), Wonderland, Black Mass, The Departed, No Country For Old Men (I particularly thought that was a great one!), The Counselor, Gone Baby Gone.

Breaking away from the dark side, I really enjoyed Rushmore, and I can watch that one over again and find some facet I missed before and enjoy it almost as much as the first time I watched it.

A couple that used to be my favorites:

Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid

Apocalypse Now

I enjoyed Whiplash enough to watch it more than twice.  JK Simmons was great in that one. Also it is a movie with a musical theme; I would think that the drummers on this site might like it.

Alpha Dog was another I have watched more than twice.  Justin Timberlake, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster. . . .

War Dogs is another I've watched more than twice.Jonah Hill and Miles Teller create good film chemistry and the plot kept my attention and gave me a few laughs at the same time.

No love for Tarantino...?

I enjoyed Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown.

Also great to see The Counselor, an unfairly maligned masterpiece written by the great Cormac McCarthy, his only screenwriting effort.

I’ll say it again: a great movie! I am not a huge Brad Pitt fan, but he played his part and delivered his lines perfectly. There are certain aspects of this movie I gave up trying to figure out, but I figure that’s just McCarthy being McCarthy, and I can enjoy it without figuring out and understanding the ’why’ for everything.

Shattered Glass was about the downfall of Stephen Glass's career as a "journalist" at The New Republic.   starring Hayden Christiansen as Glass.  I thought the dialogue and acting were  good and the script moved along.   

I get a real kick out of Larry David's stuff, and Clear History had me laughing a lot.

@thecarpathian 

@immatthewj , not a huge Brad Pitt fan??! He's dreamy!

I think that the reason that I am usually not crazy about him is due to the roles that he usually seems to be cast in.  

I thought that the movie Everest was intense and the recreation it attempted of an ill fated Mount Everest Expedition came off as realistic to me. It featured a strong cast: Jake Glyllenthaal, Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Sam Worthington.

Binge watching The Office turned me into a Steve Carell fan. I particularly enjoyed his role portraying John Du Pont in Foxcatcher where he played the eccentric heir to the Du Pont empire who became increasingly divorced from reality and unhinged. I felt that Tatum Channing and Mark Ruffalo had good chemistry in their portrayal (which came off as realistic to me) of the Olympic wrestlers Mark and David Schultz. I just did a google to see who played David Schultz’s wife (it was Sienna Miller) and evidently (unbeknownst to me when I watched it) the real Mark Schultz (the surviving brother) had a small part as a weigh in official. (Vanessa Redgrave played the role of John Du Point’s aging mother.)

I could watch either of these movies more than once.

On the lighter side, and speaking of good chemistry, I loved and found hilarious what Tatum Channing and Jonah Hill did in 21 Jump Street. I never once watched the original series, but evidently that is why Johnny Depp had a role in the movie, and I loved the part in the movie that they stole (if that’s the right word) from a scene with Johnny Depp in another movie he starred in, Donnie Brasco.

@mksun , good deal--another vote for Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid! And Apocalypse Now! And Goodfellas too! And I’ll go along with Deliverance, I was never a fan of Burt Reynold’s movies before that though. I also like your pick of Drugstore Cowboy with Matt Dillon, but perhaps because I used to know someone that often got his product from someone else who broke into pharmacies.

How about Electra Glide In Blue with Robert Blake? There was a time when I think I would have put it on my list. That time has passed.

I actually had to google Seven, @ezwind , to remind myself whether I had seen it or not. I’d have to say that I don’t think I’ve seen it. I did see Legends Of The Fall when it came out on VHS and initially I thought it was a pretty good movie, but I wouldn’t watch it again.

As far as The Road, I think that may have been the first Cormack McCarthy book I ever read (I never did see the movie) and McCarthy books seem generally dark to me with very little redemption for the characters. I enjoyed the movie No Country For Old Men more than the book actually, but this was because the movie followed the book almost to a ’T’ if I remember, including the great dialogue. Dark, and if anyone was waiting for everyone to live happily ever after, it didn’t happen.

As far as Brad Pitt, I know he played a serial killer in Kalifornia which I thought was an intriguing movie, but generally doesn’t he play confident nonchalant swaggering alpha males? Which I guess he played in his (three?) short appearances in The Counselor, but it was the lines that McCarthy wrote for that character and the way he delivered them that make me say he played his part perfectly.

I found the movie Crash to be a very watchable movie with a strong cast.  Besides Matt Dillon as a bigoted police officer, the movie, which was intersecting stories of various characters with their own prejudices and biases,  featured Don Cheadle, Jennifer Esposito, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Ludacris, Michael Pena, Keith David, Tony Danza.  It also featured Sandra Bullock and William Fichtner whose acting I particularly enjoy when cast in the right roles.

William Fichtner made me think of his brief appearance as a coke dealer in Hot Summer Nights which was set in the north east in the summer of '91 (a heat wave) which just happened to be the year we moved from NC to Pittsburgh and I was wondering, "Is it always this hot here?  The realtor told us we wouldn't need air conditioning!"   

A couple of Sandra Bullock movies I enjoyed were the comedy Heat with Melissa McCarthy  and Our Brand Is Chaos.  with Billy Bob Thornton.

Has Goodfellas been mentioned yet?  If it has, I missed it, but with my eyesight that's quite possible.  A classic!

Ah, 'Legends of the Fall.'

A feel good romp if there ever was one...!

Well, @thecarpathian , I guess maybe, but didn't it take some suicide, murder, sickness, death, brutality of war, and betrayal to get there?

@grislybutter , I thought Planes, Trains And Automobiles was hilarious! A great movie! However I am not ashamed to admit I have been a Steve Martin fan for a long time. And Steve Earle got some acclaim for his cover of Six Days On The Road. There is a good youtube of him doing it on someone’s TV show, and this was back when Earle was in his heyday of drug abuse, and judging by the gleam in his eyes he was lit up then. I remember when that came out I had a job in southern Illinois and my niece who was more like a little sister to me back then got to come down and spend the X-mas holidays with us and we all went to the theater to see that movie.

@mksun , I am not putting Electra Glide In Blue on my suggested list . . . it was just that some of your picks from that era made me think of it and at one time it had an impact on me.

But Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid!  Yeah!  The fact that Bob Dylan wrote Knocking On Heaven's Door for it all by itself makes it great!  What a classic!  I love the duel at ten paces  that Kristofferson (Billy The Kid) has with Jack Elam:  Kistofferson turns around at pace one and when Elam turns around at six or seven Kristofferson shoots him and then says, "That wasn't ten, hoss."  

Anyway, I remember my middle sister (I was the youngest) took me to see that when it came out.  I think she wanted to see Bob Dylan, but my oldest sister was out of town and my middle sister was an introvert and didn't want to go alone so she took me.  The violence, which was graphic for its time, made an impact on me.

I have not seen Lost Highway, but I'll look for it and see if it is a rental on 'on demand.'

Here are a couple with a musical theme that I would add to my list:

Sid And Nancy (Chloe Webb as Nancy Spungen and Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious) is a classic.    I just did a google and Courtney Love had a part that I do not remember, but seeing as how it was about junkies, I am sure she was convincing.

Georgia starring Mare Winningham as the vocally talented Georgia Flood, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as her younger sister, Sadie Flood, who is either of lesser talent or perhaps, in my opinion, talented in a different way. Sadie has demons, that's for sure.  And that's an understatement.  The movie also features Ted Levine (whose acting I really enjoy) as Georgia's partner, John C Reilley played in the group with Sadie (I think he was the drummer), and Max Perlich played Sadie's boyfriend for a period of the film.  This film completely won me over the first time I watched it, and it was one I watched a few more times.

I thought Syriana was an intense and well cast movie.  I don't always like George Clooney, but I did enjoy his portrayal of the CIA spook who I understand was actually intended to represent Robert Baer.  It was a movie I could watch more than once.  Matt Damon was good (as usual) in this movie.

I also liked The Kingdom with Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, Jamie Foxx, Danny Huston. . . .  I guess I may have enjoyed it because going way back I spent a couple of years as a civilian working in Saudi Arabia, so it took me back a bit . . . but even without that I think I still would have enjoyed it.

Speaking of George Clooney, I thought that The Ides Of March had a pretty quick moving and tight plot with some good acting by Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marissa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood. . . .

 his characters become him, whereas Rudd becomes the character.

@grislybutter that is a pretty good synopsis.  In my opinion, there are some movies that Clooney has been in where that worked well (the Clooney character, that is) but there are actors that can actually act much better and that is what makes them a pleasure to watch. 

I enjoyed Tom Cruise in Born On The Fourth Of July.  

his characters become him, whereas Rudd becomes the character.

@immatthewj I don’t mean to say: Clooney is a bad actor/not great/etc.

@grislybutter , among the many things I do not claim to be is a movie critic; I doubt that there are any actors out there who could care less about what I think;. regardless, I still offer my opinion to anyone who will waste their time listening to me.

Personally, I do not think that George Clooney is a great actor, but I do think that he has played some roles that are perfect for his acting. It is heresy to type this, but I don’t think that Clint Eastwood is a great actor either. On the other hand, I’ve watched certain movies that made me think of Matt Damon as an extremely versatile actor, and the same for Al Pacino.

"Rancho Deluxe"

The great Jeff Daniels.....among others

Was Jeff Daniels in Rancho Deluxe? I remember when I was in my teens and growing up in Montana, Rancho and Thunderbolt And Lightfoot were both popular movies there because I think both were filmed in Montana. (I know that quite a bit of Thunderbolt was filmed in Great Falls.) Neither one of them did much for me at that tender age, and now I am afraid that they do even less.

At Any Price starring Dennis Quaid as a farmer/seed salesman in the mid-west was another movie I enjoyed.  The actors seemed believable in their roles of everyday people in a life-situation that went sideways.  

I found We Need To Talk About Kevin (Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly) to be intense in a creepy sort of way.  

Here are a couple of more that I enjoyed and may not be super well known. I liked them because they both portrayed a gritty story that seemed believable to me, and although there were no superstars of the acting world, I thought that the actors that were cast did an okay job of coming off as realistic,

Winter’s Bone (a google says 2010) did feature Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Dale Dickey . . . and was set in the Ozarks and involved a situational crisis related to poverty in the meth belt.

I didn’t think Wind River was as good, but it was still quite watchable for me. Set on The Wind River Indian Reservation of Wyoming (which is no doubt partly the reason I enjoyed it--I could relate to the setting) it was a tale that revolved around the murder of a Native American woman. (I just did a google and see that it was a 2017 Taylor Sheridan Movie which doesn’t really win any points from me, as I cannot stand Yellowstone.) Anyway, it featured Jeremy Renner who came off a bit bigger than life, but I guess you gotta have that with Taylor Sheridan, and in my opinion he did not ruin the movie. Also featured were Elizabeth Olsen and Gil Birmingham.

. . . not really what I would call a great movie, but I found We're The Millers to be entertaining.  

Being a Steve Carell fan I wanted to see Vice for his portrayal of Donald Rumsfield (with Christian Bale as Dick Cheney). I found it to be an interesting/entertaining movie.

I also enjoyed The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei.

And speaking of Mickey Rourke, I can just about watch Body Heat (William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Ted Danson) just for his (Rourke’s) classic lines:

"I got a serious question for you: What the f*** are you doing? This is not s*** for you to be messin’ with. Are you ready to hear something? I want you to see if this sounds familiar: any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you’re gonna f*** up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you’re a genius -- and you ain’t no genius. You remember who told me that?"

and

"I hope you know what you’re doin’. You better be pretty damn sure about it, cause if you ain’t sure, don’t do it. Of course, that’s my recommendation anyway -- don’t do it. I tell you, counselor, this arson -- this is serious crime."

And I thought it was a nice touch when, in the movie The Counselor, McCarthy uses that when Brad Pitt is advising Michael Fassbender,

Westray: "Maybe I should tell you what Mickey Rourke told what’s-his-face? That’s my recommendation anyway, Counselor. Don’t do it."

The Counselor: "Because arson is a serious crime?"

Westray: "Yeah, and so is this."

And there were a lot of other reasons that I liked Body Heat.

NASCAR has got to be the most boring spectator sport I have ever forced myself to try to watch, but Talladega Nights:  The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby is hilarious.  The interaction between Ricky Bobby's juvenile delinquent kids and their grandmother, the disfunctional relationship between Ricky Bobby and his father, the scenes in the movie where Ricky Bobby's dad is trying to teach him how to drive fast again . . . plus a great sound track!

"Rancho Deluxe" 

The great Jeff Daniels.....among others 

I think you're mixing him up with the great Jeff Bridges.

I didn't think Jeff Daniels was in Rancho, but then again, Sam Waterston was in it and that was back before I knew who he was, so I thought that maybe the same was possible for Jeff Daniels also.  

+1 @nonoise  for another vote for No Country For Old Men.  I've listed several movies I enjoyed, but that is one of my all time favorites.  

Thank you, @thecarpathian , typo duly corrected:

Almost Famous was a decent movie with a musical theme to it that had a serious plot but also had plenty of humor interjected.

I enjoyed The Mean Season with Kurt Russell and Mariel Hemingway.  

I am not really much of a Jeff Bridges fan, but I did enjoy his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in the remake of True Grit; I liked him in Arlington Road (maybe because he got blown up at the end), and I also liked him in Masked And Anonymous (also featuring Bob Dylan, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Val Kilmer and Luke Wilson).

Hustle n Flow

I finally got around to watching that one on Flix.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Another movie with a musical theme.

I enjoyed Zodiac as well, @nonoise ; I generally like Jake Glyllenhaal and most of the movies he has been in. (As in, for example, Everest.)

I’ve seen a lot of movies I liked that were based on factual events. A couple I just thought of were The Kill Team (2013 and 2019). 2013 is a straight up documentary consisting of interviews and it is about a group of GIs who were convicted of basically executing civilians in Afghanistan but claiming that the civilians were combatants. I was surfing movies on Tubi a few years ago and found that one by accident. The 2019 version was the movie that they based on the documentary.

No, @thecarpathian ; no, you are not the only one who ever saw that movie.

I cannot believe that no one has picked Cocaine Bear!!  How can that be??

Anyway, I liked Blow (Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Ray Liotta, Emma Roberts), and although I have never been a real Tom Cruise fan, I did find American Made   an enjoyable movie to watch. 

HEAT (Deniro/Pacino/Kilmer)

**Yawwwwnnnnn**  bang bang/shoot  'em up.

My circadian rhythm is a mess and I stayed up late (or early, depending on how you look at it) last night watching Vengeance (2022),starring BJ Novak (of The Office). I was thinking that I probably was not going to like it and would probably turn it off in the early going as it also featured Ashton Kutcher, which made me think it was going to be a stupid or sappy comedy. However: it was a real good movie. Not a GREAT movie, but still a good one. It turned out to have a serious and grim plot, but the dialogue was good, and there was lots of fairly dark humor wove in. Novak did a good job with his part. Movies have to have twists, I guess, and this was no exception, it had a couple of plot twists, and I will say that I was surprised by the ending.

It was not at all a Cormack McCarthy screen play (which if it was would have done nothing to redeem anyone’s soul) but everyone did not exactly live happily ever after either. Not exactly.

Worth watching, in my opinion, if you’ve got a couple of hours to kill and you are looking for something kind of new.

A couple I just now thought about that I liked and are somewhat related:

Primary Colors starring John Travolta who (although the names were changed) was obviously portraying Bill Clinton in the '92 primaries, also featured Billy Bob and Kathy Bates.

Game Change had Julieanne Moore doing a great imitation of Sarah Palin, Ed Harris (who I like a lot, although I am not sure how well he came off as John McCain), Woody Harrelson as a not bad Steve Schmidt,  Sarah Paulson doing a maybe okay Nicole Wallace, and I think Ron Livingston portraying her (Wallace's) husband..  I enjoyed the movie so much I bought a used copy of  the book on Amazon by  John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.  The book was actually well written and evenhanded and was not a trashing out of Sarah Palin as the movie sort of was; I was hoping to read more about Nicole Wallace which was  not included in the book.  I enjoyed that book so much I found a copy of the followup book, Double Down, which was about the '12 campaign, but I did not find that as interesting.

@immatthewj Since you listed two political movies, one I’d recommend is The Contender, starring Joan Allen (who should have won best actress) as a VP contender, Jeff Bridges as the president, Gary Oldman as a GOP senator and William Patterson, Christina Slater, Sam Elliot and Saul Rubinek.

I actually did see that, @nonoise ; as I typed a few posts ago, except for his roles in Arlington Road, True Grit (remake) and Masked And Anonymous, I am not much of a Jeff Bridges fan (another subject I seem to be the odd man out on). I wasn’t crazy about him in The Contender, but I actually really enjoyed the movie.

Speaking of political movies, did you ever see The Ides Of March with Ryan Gosling and George Clooney? If so, what did you think of it?

And I noted that you also picked no Country For old Men (which is way way way up high on my list); did you watch another Cormack McCarthy generated movie, The Counselor? I liked that one almost, if not as much, as No Country, but again I seem to be the exception.

As I typed, @nonoise , I was thinking I would be the odd man out on that one.  Thunderbolt is one of my least favorite movies he (Jeff Bridges) was in, but you know what they say:  "It's a good thing we all don't like chocolate ice cream."  Or something like that.  And I remember when it came out, Thunderbolt tha is, it was very popular in Montana, as was Rancho.

And I completely agree with you about The Counselor.  

I also liked The Counselor and especially, the back and forth over the phone between the cartel leader played by Ruben Blades and Michael Fassbinder as Ruben intellectually schools Michael in the world he wrongly stepped into. That was some might fine and chilling dialogue. 

. . . and I meant to say, @nonoise , is that I particularly liked the part and the dialogue for the role that Brad Pitt played.  And I thought that he (Pitt) carried it off nicely.  Better than nicely.  (McCarthy wrote some great dialogue in book, No Country, also, and in the film they followed the dialogue of the book very closely.  

The other night I watched a dark one that was a comedy of sorts (it made me laugh a few times), Greedy People (2024).  

And speaking of dark and funny, Fat Man (2020) cracked me up.  Walton Goggins and Mel Gibson.  A spoiled rich kid gets a lump of coal for Christmas, so to get even he hires a hit man to bump off Santa.  Hilarious.

@bassbuyer , +1!  Yeah, that did make me laugh.  Particularly the desk top scene.  Michael Keaton played his part excellently.  

@mylogic: To be perfectly honest, my original motive for the thread was to make a joke about the current head of the U.S. government,

the thread didn’t turn ugly, or get deleted. 

I found that unbelievable!  I think the joke you were making was missed by many, @bdp24 .

Oops!  Too late for an edit, @bassbuyer , I typed "desk top" but what I was referring to was the "desk-pop" scene in The Other Guys.

I am not usually crazy about westerns, but I enjoyed Tom Horn (1980) with Steve McQueen as Tom Horn and costarring Richard Farnsworth and Slim Pickens. Set in Wyoming, Tom Horn is hired by the cattle ranchers to curtail cattle rustling by whatever means he chooses that will work.