As an Oscar blogger, I screen all the awards films and Best Actor is the toughest of the four this year to call. I had big expectations for the Adam Sandler thriller, but I couldn't stand it. After forty five minutes I clicked the x on my VLC player. All Sandler and the rest of the boorish cast do is yell, scream over each other, and make shady deals. Once he's thrown in the trunk of a car, I had hoped he would stay there.
If anyone can tell me this gets better from here on, I will give it another go. But Sandler won't be nominated, nor the screenplay.
BEST ACTOR PREDICTIONS, OSCAR
Christian Bale, Ford v Ferrari
Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
Adam Driver, Marriage Story
Taron Egerton, Rocketman
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
Bust as an Oscar blogger, don't you have to force yourself to complete a movie viewing.
You don't know if the next hour turns out to be great? How can you opinion really matter?
What did you think about Hustlers?
I've heard about how J-Lo may be nominated for an Oscar on this one.
Yeah, um, Okay. (eye roll)
You didn't miss anything. I almost turned it off too. Annoying fucking cast of characters with little or no redeeming qualities. You get the sense they are even more scummy than what they had time to portray in the movie. Garbage 5/10
I agree. The trailer made the movie look way more exciting than it actually was. It wasn't terrible, but definitely not as good as I expected. If you didn't see the end, you really didn't really miss much. (I won't give away the ending just in case). Especially at 2 hrs. 15 minutes, they really could have condensed it some. It wasn't so good that it needed to be that long.
I wanted to turn it off as I couldn’t stand the shouting, which was the whole way through, but kept going. So frustrating too and you didn’t miss much. I actually had a headache afterwards.
Excuse me? I am a real Oscar blogger. In fact, I won a huge Oscar contest in 2019 when I got Green Book right for best picture and no one else did. Also shouldn't you be social distancing, and washing your hands? Don't waste time talking about my work efforts. Worry about your own work- if you have any left. With this virus, 90% of American jobs will be gone by the end of 2020. Luckily I still have a job, because movies aren't going anywhere.
That is if you finish watching half of them. Seems like you are unable to do your job, which is watch movies and review them. Turning them off while having a hissy fit isn't doing your job. Oscar blogger my ass.
Sandler spends the rest of the movie flailing around trying to get an "out". His prize gem is re-priced at the auction, to his fury. He convinces a family member to bid and drive the basketball player into paying the original asking price. The family member bids, wins the gem, and is angry with Sandler (who vows to pay him back).
Sandler keeps digging himself in deeper and deeper, getting more and more desperate, with debtors barking at his door all the time. Sandler gets the basketball player to buy the gem at a worse price. It's just enough to cover his debt with the guys who want to kill him. They come looking for it and accidentally get trapped in the little security kiosk. Sandler sneaks the money out the back (his girlfriend mules it) and gives her specific instructions as to how to bet it.
She takes it to a casino and bets the cash as Sandler says. Sandler and the (trapped) gangsters watch the Celtics game on TV, the basketball player thinking the opal is good luck. Every shot, miss, basket, foul, etc., reverberates through the shop until...
...Celtics win. The bet is covered. Sandler won TONNES of money. Celebrating, he lets the goons out of the cage, but one of the gangsters is ticked off and blows Sandler's head off. One of the other gangsters freaks out and the first guy shoots his buddy.
Sandler's girlfriend gets out of the casino with the MASSIVE amount of loot while the remaining two gangsters loot the store. The police are on the way...
I really loved the movie. I thought it was tension-filled, tightly-scripted, and well-performed. Sandler is a great actor when he wants to be, and he wants to be here. I liked the character dynamics, and this story of a guy who doesn't know when to quit or what's good for him. It was uncomfortable to watch, I think the character's an idiot, but it hit that golden quality of good stories (for me): I always wanted to know what was happening next.
Happy to help. I loved Uncut Gems, but I respect that every movie isn't to everybody's taste. I also relate to needing to know the ending without watching it; I got stuck slogging through the (exponentially worse) From Dusk Till Dawn show because I just wanted to know how it ended.
From Dusk Till Dawn felt like they took, say, a two hour movie, and turned it into a multi-season TV show. Which is what they did, of course, so that only makes horrible, horrible sense. What doesn't make sense is: whyyyyy?