criterionforum.org

On the Basis of Sex, the RBG biopic with Felicity Jones

domino harvey wrote:On the Basis of Sex, the RBG biopic with Felicity Jones

So with that trailer now that the actress race is over for 2018, who’s winning 2019?

I don't get Felicity Jones.

She's a good actress with a good agent and one of the most beautiful women alive. What's not to get?

movielocke wrote: Mon Jul 16, 2018 4:33 pm

domino harvey wrote:On the Basis of Sex, the RBG biopic with Felicity Jones

So with that trailer now that the actress race is over for 2018, who’s winning 2019?

That seems really optimistic - Mimi Leder's made some real junk in her career and has never made a film that's anywhere close to Oscar contention despite trying very very hard with stuff like Pay It Forward. This is riding the somewhat inexplicable wave of sub-Wonkette meme-ified hero worship of Ruth Bader Ginsburg so there's sure to be an audience for it, but it could be totally ignored with a Christmas release date unless it's really, really good.

That said, that documentary has been playing at my local arthouse for what feels like a century now, so maybe I am underestimating the level of hysteria around some kind of 'the year of RBG' narrative.

Also, I don't get Felicity Jones either. I think LQ has compared her to a wet noodle in the past, and she was DOA when she hosted SNL. And her presence as the lead in Rogue One wasn't doing that already troubled film any favors.

Jones is great in her big scene in True Story-- for the whole movie it's a complete mystery why she took such a thankless role and then she gets an amazing monologue near the end and just kills it. A great example of a mediocre film with a great scene-stealing supporting performance

I haven't seen True Story or The Theory of Everything but everything else I've seen her in, she didn't strike me as special. It doesn't help that she was horrendously miscast in the Star Wars movie. She has a girl-next-door prettiness, she's not my idea of "one of the most beautiful women alive" (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course)

I'm actually kind of happy to see Leder getting another theatrical release. She's not a great director, but also didn't deserve to be damned to television.

mfunk9786 wrote:

movielocke wrote: Mon Jul 16, 2018 4:33 pm

domino harvey wrote:On the Basis of Sex, the RBG biopic with Felicity Jones

So with that trailer now that the actress race is over for 2018, who’s winning 2019?

That seems really optimistic - Mimi Leder's made some real junk in her career and has never made a film that's anywhere close to Oscar contention despite trying very very hard with stuff like Pay It Forward. This is riding the somewhat inexplicable wave of sub-Wonkette meme-ified hero worship of Ruth Bader Ginsburg so there's sure to be an audience for it, but it could be totally ignored with a Christmas release date unless it's really, really good.

That said, that documentary has been playing at my local arthouse for what feels like a century now, so maybe I am underestimating the level of hysteria around some kind of 'the year of RBG' narrative.

Also, I don't get Felicity Jones either. I think LQ has compared her to a wet noodle in the past, and she was DOA when she hosted SNL. And her presence as the lead in Rogue One wasn't doing that already troubled film any favors.

Well if the white dude critics (85% of population) pre decide months in advance they’re going to hate this film and they all take epic shits on it no-matter-what then all bets are off, of course. Awards films bomb every year and this could be one of the innumerable failed awards bait films, especially if the feral consensus turns against it.

On the other hand my wife texted me earlier that she is already setting up a dec 26th pilgrimage with her mom, aunts, cousins and friends to see this in the best theatre they can find (one of the arclights) which they haven’t done since les Mis. And they’ll do that even if they hear its shit.

So, when a "progressive" awards bait doesn't actually become a contender, it's because of white male critics. But when it does - like Get Out, Call Me By Your Name, The Shape of Water, or Lady Bird, just to name a few of the most recent critically acclaimed ones -, it's in spite of the same white male critics. Isn't that neat?

Cremildo wrote:So, when a "progressive" awards bait doesn't actually become a contender, it's because of white male critics. But when it does - like Get Out, Call Me By Your Name, The Shape of Water, or Lady Bird, just to name a few of the most recent critically acclaimed ones -, it's in spite of the same white male critics. Isn't that neat?

Pfft. I was being sarcastic, I think the whole awards eco system is a bananas and unpredictable cesspool with a lot of money in it for the participating punditry and the dancing monkeys of agents and above the line talent

"Neither does the word freedom."

Looool, what is this. Ginsburg seems like an impressive and important figure in recent US history, but this looks like the mother of all cringeworthy biopics.

It sure does. Finally got around to watching the trailer and woo boy this looks absolutely awful

It looks fine, a typical middlebrow biopic with poor modern song choice and socially relevant message. This will make $40 million and be completely forgotten by this time next year

Just took a quick peak at the trailer and it's been a while since somebody that not Jewish looking played such a distinctly Jewish character. That's borderline Alec Guinness in Oliver Twist.

The trailer looks awful like most trailers these days do. They usually turn out to be 'honesty in advertising'. I'll pass on this.

Trailer is pretty terrible.

Sign me up in the "don't get Felicity Jones" crowd (though her line reading at the end of this trailer was strong) and while Mimi Leder's work on The Leftovers is very good, this unfortunately looks closer to most of her theatrical stuff, i.e. slightly warmed-over garbage.

domino harvey wrote: Tue Jul 17, 2018 2:13 am It looks fine, a typical middlebrow biopic with poor modern song choice and socially relevant message. This will make $40 million and be completely forgotten by this time next year

That's exactly what it looks like to me as well. Don't get the insta-hostility it seems to be generating quite honestly.

This is one of those movies whose very existence is so corrupt that there's almost no way it's even remotely good.

The Clarence Thomas Story—that could be a good movie. An obviously troubled man, a sexual predator, widely viewed as a race traitor, consumed with self-hatred and married to a paranoid, fragile crone, a Supreme Court justice who remains almost pathologically silent during oral arguments? Abel Ferrara could direct.

(Which reminds me, did anyone see Marshall?)

Why is the existence of this film "so corrupt"?

Because it exists almost solely to flatter the #resistance arthouse audience revealed by the blockbuster success of the RBG documentary; to collect Oscars; and to provide meme-able quotes for folks' social-media feeds? Because the chances it will have anything challenging or even interesting to share with that audience are almost nil? Because every aspect of it, from the casting on forward, seems like it was executed with an almost pathological caution?

Not to imply a false equivalence between the respective ideologies, but as "art," this seems likely to have a similar relationship to its intended audience than much of the pap discussed in this thread has to the evangelical crypto-fascists crowding exurban multiplexes.

This movie was in production well before the documentary. That comes across as both silly conspiracy theory and doesn't reveal any actual corruption (just opportunism).

Regardless of how bad this film might turn out to be, why shouldn't it be able to exist?

Knives, is English your first language? Because you often seem to nitpick others' posts on the basis of a less-than-perfect (and often overly literal) understanding of what words can connote. "Corrupt" doesn't necessarily mean something like, I dunno, the Trump-Putin-GOP-NRA thing; it can just mean—and I intended it to mean—rotten, or dubious. Likewise, I'm not positing that the film was greenlit specifically because of the success of the RBG documentary, but that they both are seeking, in an identical and thoroughly opportunistic and slipshod fashion, to flatter and thereby exploit the same audience. (I'm not the only one who feels somewhat this way. And I'm not counting the usual shit-for-brains "conservative" film critics who might object to these films for the obvious reasons.)

Regardless of how bad this film might turn out to be, why shouldn't it be able to exist?

Ugh. Who said it shouldn't (or shouldn't be able to) exist? It just looks awful, is all.

I think Barmy might be back.