Subscribe: / stonedgremlinproductions Website: www.thecinemasn... Brad Twitter: @thecinemasnob Sarah Twitter: @boxcar_sarah Brad and Sarah review the Will Smith film Collateral Beauty.
Moral of the story: Get over your depression of having a dead child or your friends and coworkers will try to trick you into being committed into a mental institute.
You know, the plot of this movie could be easily rewritten as a "Tales from the Crypt" episode: a delusional emo business guy is all reclusive and lonely and is visited by human forms of Love, Time and Death and he's forced by the latter to kill himself. Then the twist is that Love, Time, and Death are actually actors paid by his co-workers to fool him and cause his death for their schemes. But then in the end the classic Tales from the Crypt karma happens with the greedy co-workers getting visited by the actual manifestations of the three things who royally fuck them up for what they did.
I'm reminded of a horror anthology movie from like the 70s, it was one of those UK movies with like Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing telling stories to each other on a train. One story was about a man (Peter Cushing) who is constantly harrassed by this guy but he manages to ignore it. It comes to a point where the guy sends the old man a letter telling him to kill himself but how it's written makes it think that his family is telling him this and that actually sends him over the edge and he does kill himself. He then comes back as a zombie, breaks into the asshole guys house and does something to him, next morning, the cops are investigating the murder and they find a letter where it just talks about how much of a dick the guy was and it ends with something to the effect of "Now I know you have no..." and underneath that, at the bottom of the letter is the paper wrapped around the guys heart.
I wanted to go see this but my seats were in the front row and next to the speakers. I don't know if I can enjoy a film when it's so extremely loud and incredibly close.
same. i saw the trailer for this film at moana and i rolled my eyes thinking it was going to be a shitty hallmark movie fronted by oscar winners. then i saw stuckmann's review and realized it was so much worse.
All I could think when I saw this trailer was "Did Will Smith go up to his agent after Seven Pounds and say 'No, not shitty enough. I need this exact movie but dumber'"?
I haven't seen the movie, but Mathew Buck did a Bad Movie Beatdown episode on it where he explained that he disliked it because beyond it just being a dull film, it portrayed Will Smith's character's suicide as being some incredibly noble thing, which he found unpleasant since he knew someone who committed suicide and he didn't like the idea of killing yourself being portrayed so simply positively. It's been a while since I saw the review so I didn't do a great job explaining his feelings on it, but if you want to understand why someone might dislike it, I'd watch it.
mr. Wldasoldmysoul4pussyasateen He doesn't "hate suicide". He had a friend who committed suicide and ultimately thought that the film didn't treat the subject with the appropriate gravity.
Forgive me for asking what may be a dumb question, but...If Will Smith is so distraught with grief that he can barely function, why do they need to engage in an elaborate ruse (or at least what they thought was a ruse) to have him declared mentally incompetent? Wouldn't the actual stuff be enough to go before a judge and be like, "yeah, he's the majority shareholder, but the guy is just gone, can we address this before the company goes under?" Of course, the obvious answer is if they did that there wouldn't be a movie, but I'm wondering if it was ever addressed in-universe.
The problem with movies like this is that they don't have any idea how anything actually works. They want it to feel real, but that only takes you out of it when you are like "Wait that isn't how shit works".
The trailers for this movie seem to imply it's telling what would be a rather interesting story. A grieving man being visited and spoken to by anthropomorphised concepts like time, death, and love, learning that they're concepts that man may never fully understand yet they are what make life worth living as they remind us that we should seek to live a fulfilled life. If told properly it could be a beautiful story. The trailers lied. WOW did they lie. Talking like, "Brian Cranston is the star of Godzilla"/ Case 39/"Forbidden Kingdom doesn't star a white boy" lied.
greendaythebeatles Allan Loeb received $2 million for this beauty. In other news, Allan Loeb will be receiving an honorary Best Head award at the Oscars.
My favorite moment in this review is Sara imitating Will Smith's "I don't want to eat that" sad face. Also I think it would have been more interesting if Helen Mirren were Time, Keira Knightley were Death, and Michael Pena were Love. Because, seriously, nothing about the way they're cast now is original. Of course they're going to have the oldest person in the cast play Death! What else would she play?
With the right director (like Mike Judge or Armando Iannucci), the movie's basic concept would make a great pitch-black comedy. Hopefully this will get a Snob episode after he does them on Gods of Egypt and Pan.
The guy who wrote this also wrote a couple of Kevin James movies, an Adam Sandler movie, and a Miley Cyrus movie. How can I take this movie seriously when the writer wrote THOSE movies.
The more I watch of this Screening, the more fascinated I become. The writer of Collateral Beauty, Allan Loeb (Just Go With It, 21, Wall Street: Monet Never Sleeps), his Trivia reads: "In 2008, Allan Loeb paid $2.03 million for a home in the Hollywood Hills, which he would put another $500,000 into in renovations. By 2014, Loeb had moved to a new home in Venice Beach and placed his Hills home on the market for $1.99 million." And I can't help but to think the next update will be: Loeb now resides in an apartment in Springfield, Illinois.
I'm really glad you covered spoilers! I hate it when reviewers shit on a movie to the point where their audience almost certainly won't see it, but then leave me hanging on what super ridiculous ending it had.
Honestly I'm tired of seeing Will Smith in these depressing melo-dramas. The dude really shines when he's in comedies and the occasional action film. We don't need to see him in movies involving dead babies or him killing himself with a jellyfish to donate organs. Just no, man.
He doesn't care what he shines in anymore. All he cares about is if he'll get an Oscar and lots of money for it. I don't have much respect for him anymore.
Headbanger142 I don't know; the man wants an Oscar/doesn't want to be typecast. I think he can be fine in dramas, the problem is that he just picks really shitty ones.
Just got round to this film a couple of days ago...this review is 110% accurate. I winced when i first saw the pretentious title, it's so much worse. I suppose the twist that they're really invisible angels or something means they don't have to digitally remove actors, but then makes other stuff not make sense. It goes from Oscar bait to nonsensical.DIE DIE DIE
I have this strange reaction to emotions in media. I can get pretty emotional, I can get water-eyed, but sometimes, a piece of media (movie, book, game, whatever) really tries to force you to feel something. If they really hammer on an emotional point, I get the opposite reaction of being stubborn and either not carring or being cynical to the point of cruelty. Usually Oscar Bait makes me cheer for the villain. Even if it's just general grief or inevitability of cosmic entropy.
Ersatz Person Batman Returns is fucking awesome. Honestly, Burton's Batman and Batman Forever are the only Batman movies I actually like (Batman Forever as a guilty pleasure. Reminds me of the tone of the 60s show).
Props dude that's the first Batman movie I saw in theaters I have photos of myself with Keaton, and Phiffer next to one of the Ducks that Penquin travels in. I love that fucking movie and can't believe how many people shit on it.
I'm here because my brother suggested this one for our weekly bad movies night and am ashamed I didn't think about that PoV shot being in universe. What's most sickening to me is this Hollywood trend of using killing kids as a plot device. Tonight we're doing The Identical. Thanks, Brad!
Smith's last attempt at Oscar bait was the pretentious, miserable, and downright vile Seven Pounds. Worse the movie promoted suicide and portrayed it as heroic. Give it up Smith instead of Oscar bait try actually picking scripts that don't suck. Then again this is the guy that passed up Django Unchained for After Earth
I didn't think Concussion was poorly made or acted, it was just boring. You could have gotten the same story by reading the Wikipedia entry on the doctor who discovered CTE.
Miss X Nah. There are plenty of directors that could revive his career, but Tarantino is particularly famous for doing it with many actors. If he ever hooked up with Paul Thomas Anderson, he'd get an instant Oscar nod. David Fincher somehow turned Tyler Perry into a good actor. Any good director can squeeze out a good perfornance from an actor. Will Smith is already a good actor. He needs a good movie behind him.
So if Brads new girlfriend and Offscreen Lettie both watch the same film, would they have to like... both lay down in the back seat at the same time? That sounds like it'd be super uncomfortable.
Myself and a friend are actually super psyched to see this. We both know it's going to be bad... like, epic bad... but that's kind of the point. We're just intrigued to see a film that has this kind of plot. Only problems are A) We would technically be supporting the script financially and B) Our laughter might be distracting / disrespectful to those who are genuinely buying into the cheese. Is it not even Mystery Science Theater 3000 worthy?
Like many people here I knew this was going to be a flaming wreck when I saw the trailer, but I didn't expect it would be *this* bad. I might actually have to go see it now.
I live in NYC and go on subways all the time. I've seem people yell at another over the phone, but I've only seen people yell at each other once and when that happened, like 3 people intervened at varying levels. I'm sure it's not impossible, I'm usually in Manhattan and sometimes Brooklyn, I might not be entirely correct but I'm inclined to chalk it up to yet another thing the movie doesn't understand.
"[...] *really* sad, dead-baby sad" "[...] sad fucking dead babies!" Can we have dead babies in every midnight screening from now on? It's morbid, but hilarious
Went to see this because I was out with friends late at the Mall of America, and there were no more showings of Rogue One that night. It was either going to see this or re-watching Moana, which in hindsight I should have opted for, but I didn't want to sit around doing nothing for and hour and a half to wait for Moana. The trailer seemed interesting, sort of akin to A Christmas Carol, so I was optimistic. Definitely not what I was hoping for. Should have waited that extra hour and a half for Moana. Oh well... I saw Rogue One a couple days after, which certainly helped to erase this film from the forefront of my mind.
The advertisement for this film played just before the review. Even though I don't own one, I felt my fingers twitch and my hand reach reflexively toward the drawer where a gun should have been...
The year Will Smith was nominated for Pursuit of Happiness he was against DiCaprio (Blood Diamond), Peter O'Toole, and Forest Whitaker (who won for Last King of Scotland) and he lost to Denzel Washington in "The Training Day" when nominated for "Ali" so he shouldn't feel bad about not having an Oscar. Whenever he does a good movie, people have always consistently done better ones. :P
There is an old woman who goes to church with my parents who husband died two years ago. They were both the nicest people I've ever known, the kind that you feel like a better person for having met them. She is excited to see this and now I have to tell her the awful truth that the trailers lied to her.
Thanks for the warning. I've been through that sort of grief. I know other people who have been through that grief. Whoever wrote this, whoever green-lighted this, oh, my God - haven't they ever lost anyone? If so, why didn't they see that what you're describing in this film is pure bs? I can't help thinking that the end should have had him telling them off and kicking them out of his life. Sounds like a horribly offensive movie.
Going in Style is an old movie that the late great George Burns made. My mother made me see it. And I agree with them. Why not rob a bank. It sure as hell beats sitting in a nursing home waiting to die.
"Here's how that's solved, Edward Norton should just slap upside the back of her head." Funny, that's exactly how I get about Emma Stone's character in Birdman.
My family got tickets for Passengers at the upscale theater in town for my birthday, back when we thought it was going to be good. (Rogue One was sold out and La La Land's not there yet.) Now, knowing that I have set myself up for something sure to be insane, I am now holding on to hope that it will be some Winter's Tale/Jupiter Ascending craziness. If I hadn't gone ahead and jumped the gun on tickets, I probably would never see it, but now that I'm roped in, I'm hopelessly intrigued for the What-the-Fuck-Hollywood that surely awaits.
As with "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte", you despise the schemers' heartless greed and victimizing of a mentally unwell protagonist. I love Brad's rage here, because I hate these kinds of films.
So basically, someone saw that "Every Oscar-Winning Movie Ever Made" fake trailer and decided to make the actual movie? (ten minutes later) ...You know what, that would actually be a good idea in comparison.
