One was a revisit, but I'd recommend that you experience neither.
First was 1968's Sympathy for the Devil, an alleged documentary from douche canoe Jean-Luc Godard:
Is it fair for me to rate a movie I shut off in disgust before 20 minutes were even completed?
Me and Jean-Luc Godard... Breathless and a few other of his early films were viewed. I liked all of them-until Alphaville. There's a smug, intolerable piece of crap. I was happy to not see anything more from a D-bag who devolved into anti-art nonsense and was a massive A-hole to boot. However, on a messageboard a few days ago, someone brought up them seeing Nouvelle Vague, the new Linklater joint concerning Godard and the making of Breathless. A short discussion of the director was had.
Besides that, I love The Rolling Stones so the idea of seeing them create the eponymous song from gestation through completion sounded fascinating. If the film would have just been devoted to seeing them create various songs on the Beggars Banquet album-a tremendous album, it is-that would have been neat. So would have been what I presumed this documentary was focused on from basic description: a juxtaposition between a song concerning Satan/Satan's atrocities committed through history with the turmoil of the late 1960's.
What we got instead: I saw some moments in the studio, which were neat. Otherwise... it was an unseen narrator delivering passages from an unknown work, something that made zero sense without any context-there were brief moments where random people were spray-painting words on random walls. However, what made me tap out and give up on this pretentious crap: a LONG scene at a junkyard.
We see what were apparently Black Panthers (reading the Wiki article on the film explained that... it also informed me I made the right decision in not seeing this to completion) reading more random narration-including a text that was horribly racist-doing random things in a junkyard, then random white women in white robes show up, and literally lie down like they're dead... honestly, my life is just too short to tolerate this insufferable garbage-remaining in a state of constant annoyance just to see “the good parts” if the rest was absolutely worthless like this was. Reading on Wiki that there's a long section in a “pornographic bookstore” which included comic books, two random people held hostage, and... ahem, Nazi pamphlets and everyone doing the Nazi salute. Sigh...
The hope is that somewhere, someone created a supercut containing just the scenes of Mick, Keith, and the rest in studio; I wasn't going to constantly hit the fast forward button. There is so much worthwhile still for me to view in the years ahead; this includes French directors new to me and those I've seen little of but wish to do a deeper dive on. To be frank with everyone, there were previous occasions in the past dozen or so years where I've bailed on a movie and never discussed it here-no, what they were won't be made public.
My annoyance level was so high at viewing not even 20 minutes of something that should have been awesome if done by someone who doesn't have their own head stuck so far up their own hindquarters... that is why I ranted & raved here. If others get much more out of his anti-art puffery, that's excellent, go right ahead. Going in different directions and not having to tolerate “difficult” directors like him is better for my cinematic tastes.
Second was a revisit of 2018's The Predator:
This movie is in fact bad if you don’t watch it with an enthusiastic audience like I did one random August night in 2018. While not described in my original review for the movie, the crowd laughing along with all the humor was an asset in my rating being “OK” despite the crux of that review being devoted to complaints over the film. Judging by one random tweet recently stumbled upon, at least one other person was w/ a raucous crowd at their screening, enhancing the experience—an opinion shared by more than one person on Letterboxd.
Seven years later, a streaming viewing at home accentuated the flaws. Before the release in ’18, The Predator was fraught w/ controversy. More than several reshoots plus the scandal over Olivia Munn rightfully aggravated over learning that director Shane Black hired a convicted sex pest to act in a scene with her… the die was cast and the mood was sour for people even before they gave it a shot.
Well, even divorced of that, The Predator is a crummy motion picture. The plot is a complete mess; the reshoots made it even more incoherent. The idea to focus on comedy was quite the misstep, especially when the “comedy” usually landed w/ a thud. The Goof Troop that teamed up with our lead Boyd Holbrook were especially dire, but this was full of repellent characters.
Thomas Jane’s character had Tourette’s; evidently that was seen as still OK in 2018. A number of unfortunate decisions were made, especially focusing on a boy played by Jacob Tremblay who has autism & the Predator race (Yautja) thinks that people w/ autism are an evolved version of humanity! Many people w/ that affliction felt insulted by that plot point for reasons too numerous to elaborate upon.
Other nonsense occurs and truthfully, that is not worth elaborating upon either. Jake Busey has a small role as the son of the character his dad Gary portrayed in Predator 2, but it was meaningless. Those that haven’t followed me for long, you should know that the “modern humor” and all the vulgar language didn’t sit well with me. It completely falls apart in the final act, where many of the reshoots were inserted.
No one will be faulted by me for liking or even loving The Predator. After all, I have modern movie biases that are controversial and sometimes really against the grain. In this case, though, many don’t like The Predator either. However, if the gory moments are a big deal and the humor did tickle your funny bone, go ahead and be a fan. My opinion of the franchise: the original is an all-timer, the second is pretty good, and I guess Prey was fine. Otherwise… the rest I’m happy to never view or even think about again. Who knows what my opinion of the new Badlands will be.
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