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daveyh's Replies
see, this is why I'm not a screenwriter! I hadn't thought of that - great idea. Have Utah in the Pappas role, mentoring the new quarterback punk young dumb and full of * FBI recruit, played by some rising young actor. Thankfully Shia LaBeouf if too old to ruin this one!
who are the girls, Fredo?
you know nothing. In fact you know less than nothing, because if you even knew that you knew nothing, that would be somethinhg, but you don't
true, would have been a very short movie had Miles gone home early. Plus Miles himself will have some hilarious stories involving Jack (and largely at Jack's expense) as a result of staying and putting up with Jack's shennanagins (still can't spell that word!).
because c64 wont give the maitre d ****.
Is that Reed Robinson over there?
while I've already replied once on this thread, I may as well type this here. There's a couple of lines in the movie that imply that Tom falls hard and fast and that he's been in the same situation before, and having looked over these boards, I can't see that they've been mentioned yet.
Very early on in the movie, when Chloe Grace Moretz cycles round, can't remember if it's her or one of Tom's friends says "it's Amanda Heller all over again".
More tellingly, immediately after Tom's "I love Summer" monologue, which he's actually saying to his friend, when he's finished talking and walks away, as soon as Tom's out of ear shot, the friend says "this is NOT good". As if he already knows where this is heading. Presumably he'd seen enough of their interactions during the "stalking/if any 'jobs' come up" scene to realise that she was no-where near as into it as Tom. Or, as I say, it's happened before, and when Tom starts talking like this, waxing poetically about a girl, he's heading for a fall.
There's also an extended version of Tom's blind date with Rachel Boston, in which, after establishing that Summer hadn't cheated, abused, stole from him and told him from the beginning that she didn't want to be serious, she says "jeez Tom, did she break your heart, or did you?".
I guess that line was taken out because it would have taken all the subtlety and interpretations and debate out of the story.
—Their meeting being unexpected and random (what if Mackenzie had told Tom a few days earlier that he wasn't going? Tom would have, in his own words, not gone, and the whole meeting doesn't happen)
At the time, though, wouldn't that have just played into Tom's idea of fate? That they were meant to both be unaccompanied when they bumped into each other on the train. He'd already be thinking that years down the line, it'll be a great story about how they were reunited.
Agree with your comment and the earlier one that it's strange that Summer's soon-to-be-fiance wasn't at the wedding with her, and that she didn't mention him all day. Maybe the bride (who'd left the company during all this) wasn't sure if Tom and Summer were a couple either! And so didn't want to send them a joint invite but also didn't want to put "plus one" on each of theirs, so just sent them separate individual ones....or maybe Summer's new man just couldn't make it for whatever reason.
As for the subject not coming up, that can be explained by what we've seen throughout the movie. That Summer avoided mentioning her new relationship to prevent any awkwardness or upset on what was a fun day together, and that Tom consciously avoided asking any questions that might cause her to reveal that she'd moved on, because, as his sister so brilliantly pointed out earlier, he was scared of what the answer might be.
ah OK just watched Before Sunrise again. Jesse says he's more interested in excelling at something than finding love. Still it's pretty much the advice the same actor gives to Mason at the end of Boyhood!
thanks for the responses guys. I get it now. He's a meek and passive character, but that's the point! A guy with his brains could be working for NASA or be a quant on Wall Street, enjoying the money and lifestyle that come with it, but such is Lambeau's status in his world that Tom would rather be his lackey, just to be around him.
And then we have Will effortlessly being smarter than both of them and showing Lambeau no respect at all. It's a great contrast.
No insults. No trolling. No p*ssing matches. Just good, insightful replies. This is how Moviechat should be :)
Thanks again.
There's a theory that the ending is a fantasy as Miles commits suicide. I can't take credit for this one - think I saw it on Reddit. The reasoning:
He has his most precious bottle of wine as part of his "last meal".
It ties in with Jack's comment earlier about the guy who wrote Confederacy of Duncces and how he only got published and became well known after his suicide.
The unusually well behaved 8th graders reading a passage about the narrator feeling like they're at their own funeral.
The message from Maya comes out of nowhere and seems awfully long for a voicemail. Even if she was allowed unlimited time for her message, it feels like if Maya had that much to say, she'd wait until a time when he answered so they could talk.
And if you really want run wild with it, Miles climbing the stairs to her apartment could be interpreted as him ascending into the afterlife - like I say, it's a stretch.
As with BeaSouth's reply, I hadn't thought about that before either - although the book didn't get published, it did get him into Maya's good graces again. So some good did come from putting his book out there, and maybe even from Jack's lie that they were celebrating Miles' book deal!
I guess the ending is open to interpretation, which is why they didn't show what happened after. It was also a way of bookending the story - the film starts and ends with a knock at the door.
Fun fact, that scene with young idealistic child Casey was originally supposed to be shown much later on in proceedings, on the drive from Houston to Pittsfield - Athena shows it to her - she found it online because Casey's parents uploaded the video.
Casey then asks Athena if she's been tracking her all her life - I'm not sure if this was filmed, but it doesn't look like they changed the lines afterwards. It makes a lot more sense now when he hear Athena say "I only found you a month ago.....", especially the fact that she seems to empathise the word "only".
I need to read the screenplay of this!
thank you, glad someone else has said this. I thought it was strange that they were living with their dad - unless we're only shown them on weekends or during the times when the dad has custody.
Maybe the professor mentioned being divorced when they met, I can't remember, but I don't recall their mother being mentioned until this point.
Agree about the 2nd half and agree with subsequent posters that it seemed to begin around the his 15th birthday, for which they showed an entire weekend. And this was my biggest problem with the 2nd half - if it seemed to drag, it's because it did. 8 or 9 years are covered in the first half of the movie. The entire 2nd half only covers the last 4 years, meaning each passage will on average be on for twice as long.
There were lots of scenes, that, in my opinion, could easily have been cut out altogether in order to improve the pacing and momentum of the story (what little story there is). For example, at 16, the bit where he's asked to take photos of the football game, for me, would have worked better if they'd cut straight from the classroom to the football game. Instead we have a long scene at home - while it shows that things are becoming strained with stepdad#2, that's evident from their conversation on the porch when Mason comes home from the party later that night anyway. I don't think we needed to be shown twice.
I can't say that about the first half - there wasn't a single scene I'd want to lose.
That's one of the problems with a project like this, though. If Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke make time in the schedules for filming this each year, then it's only right that at least one scene featuring them each year has to be included, even if these scenes add nothing and only serve to interrupt the flow of things.
Couple of other reasons the 2nd half wasn't as enjoyable - as has been mentioned on other threads, the actor playing Mason Jr just didn't seem to have the same presence of the same knack for carrying scenes and conveying emotions in his mid-teens that he'd had as a child.
And finally, at 15 he'd pretty much become an adult in terms of appearance - at full height, voice already broke, etc, so, hairstyles aside, his appearance doesn't altar, and so the 2nd half didn't have the novelty of watching him grow up before your eyes either.
The mentioning of 'starting a band to attract women' is like Richard Linklater's trademark. It's mentioned twice here, just to be on the safe side.
Pink mentions it at the beginning of Dazed and Confused.
I'd have to watch Before....again, but I've got a feeling that, in Sunrise, Jesse mentions being in a band at some point.
School of Rock, well, the whole thing's about being in a band.
Although I don't think they say it in Everybody Wants Some, there's certainly a whole conversation about how being on the baseball team helps separate them from the herd in terms of getting noticed by girls, exactly like Mason Sr's fatherly advice at the end of this one.
I've had a similar experience. I've known a couple of Jack types too. I've learned that, over the years, a lot of these "cool guys" show themselves to be chancers and users and completely irresponsible. I've also observed that they tend not to have any like-minded friends who they view as their equals, instead they seem to have sidekicks. Or lackeys or monkey-boys or whatever you want to call them. The women in their lives also seem to be completely manipulated by them.
Like the saying that everyone's a socialist at 20 and a capitalist at 40, when you watch Sideways at 20 you think Jack's awesome and Miles needs to lighten up, then when you watch it again at 40 you realise what a selfish, feckless a**hole Jack really is. And this is coming from someone who identifies more with Miles personality-wise, both when this movie came out and now!
Funnily enough, I also felt this. I actually found the tipping point to be the Valentines Day episode of Series 5. The show just kept getting better and better and better, up to and including that one (it's not the best episode ever but the last in a good run of them), and then it all went south.
And I was especially disappointed because I'd been looking forward to Idris Elba appearing in it - until this point, they hadn't had an equivalent to Neil (from the English version), and smooth business-school Stringer Bell seemed perfect for the role, and the thought of him clashing with Michael seemed to good to miss. But it just didn't work. And I can't explain why it didn't work. The whole story with The Michael Scott Paper Company just seemed to fall flat too, and again, I don't know why.
With the exception of the Wedding episodes, Season 6 continues in a downward trajectory, in my opinion, and after only catching episodes intermittently, I stopped watching when Steve Carrell departed during Season 7 (for me, Michael Scott WAS the show) so I couldn't tell you if it picked up again after this.
I did watch the finale and found that to be hit and miss too, but maybe I didn't appreciate a lot of the jokes or references or whatever having missed so many years. When it hit, though, it still had all the humour and heart that it had during its earlier years.
sorry, thought of another one. When Miles asks Jack if Victoria's new husband will be coming to the wedding with her, and Jack says "what do you think?!"
Don't get me wrong, it was a dumb question from Miles, but damn Jack, bit of compassion here!!
also Melanie was a last minute replacement for Simone, who'd absconded. Which was very convenient for Jackie because, as far as the authorities knew, Melanie wasn't part of the original plan at all
In Infernal Affairs, about 9 years pass between the 2 main characters being in the academy together and the story picking up again. Realistically this is time enough for them to rise through the underworld and the ranks of the police respectively.
In The Departed, it's implied that Costello helps Sullivan along by tipping him off about things or setting people up for him - as shown with the whole Jimmy Pappis thing, Branagan even saying to him "no wonder you get ahead". It's also suggested that Sullivan's bosses don't question how he solves the crimes or achieves the arrests he does because, being careerists themselves, the results he gets will also make them look good (see the bit with Alec Baldwin - "que gives a s**t" indeed). Even with all this though, I can't help feeling it should have taken at least a few years for him to make Detective Sergeant - in fact, doesn't he go to SIU straight from the academy? That's kinda crazy.
The film does a much better job in showing how Costigan's family connections, combined with his own chequered history, plus the jail time after getting kicked out of the academy, enable him to infiltrate Costello's gang so quickly.
What's especially good about it is that the only person Billy proactively approaches is his "idiot cop-magnet" cousin. After that, he lets them come to him. To suspect him of being a rat would be to doubt their own judgement because they approached him and brought him in.
I get what the OP is saying about him not having the training or experience to go undercover, but he's not going after a group of strangers in another city - the Costigan name is his "in", and as Quenan (and someone on this thread already) says, they can't conceal that he's joined the police - so, the longer he's a cop, the less likely it is that it'll work.
Of course, the smart move would be to go all White Heat and get someone out of town to do jail time with one of Costello's gang and get in that way, but that film's already been done!
I thought he said "in no time you made sergeant" - that scene, though, I'm just bracing myself for the "you have any suits at home....." line