Film & 40s: Film & 40s: Face/Off

YES

HELL YEAH! This is perfect timing, it's been awhile since i've watched this one.

Here we go!

I've never seen Face/Off before, should I watch it without commentary first?

Nah, you'll be fine.

Oh shoot you went and did a commentary for Face Off. That's two and a half hours of pain I'll go through again I suppose.

Look this movie is cool sometimes, but it drags on for way longer than it needed to. It may be better watching it with ya'll, though.

Looks like this one is available on Starz if you have access to that.

@mikecardii: It's a Nic Cage movie so don't do that to yourself

There's a Bonk on this commentary!

* Touches my face's reflection on the mirror from top to bottom. *

Bless you all, every one.

Last time I bought every Fast and the Furious movies because of this. I guess I'll buy a bunch of Nic Cage movies now?

Oh baby!

This is my first time watching this movie. Am I crazy, or is it _really_ bad? Both leads feel over-acted, and the way its shot feels silly.

random bells don't make a very good sync point

I have my peach ready to go!

@phoenixlol: Sorry, the movie takes like five minutes to get to any actual dialogue and the opening is just kinda quiet. As I said in the show notes, the start point is the 2 second mark of the movie.

Filed under: Nicolas Cage

This is great.

FYI, Google Play has a coupon that's showing up for some folks that'll give a .99 rental.

Also, my sync game was on point on this one. Exact.

You're not crazy. Face/Off plays into its leads' and John Woo's worst tendencies in a way I honestly find fascinating, and consequently extremely watchable, but I'd be hard-pressed to call this a good film. Something went really awry when Woo made the leap to American cinema that I've never quite been able to pin down.

This is probably just 2 hours of Dan babbling, right?

Oh shoot my Saturday has been made. Loons v Fire then films and forty. Hot dog!

No, it's 2 hours of Vinny not paying enough attention and then going on and on about stuff he doesn't understand.

This doesn't keep in sync with the Google Play version.

Just finished watching this. Face/Off is a bad movie, but this was fun to watch. Alex's random trivia about the movie was appreciated as well. Bonk was good as well.

Now time to go see this Tomb Raider movie that is sure to suck terribly!

Face/Off is an action classic. Thank you finally getting a recording in for this one.

It is. When I was a kid, it seemed like the best thing ever and I rented the movie like half a dozen times.

When I watched it again year or two ago, it was incredibly stupid. I still found it entertaining most of the way because of Cage and Travolta hamming it up, but it is pretty bad.

Still going to watch this, though, because I want to hear Vinny's reactions. Too bad I gotta do the stupid syncing thing again...maybe I at least have a dvd of this somewhere.

Awww Hell yeah! I know what I'M doing this weekend!

I could not BELIEVE this movie lived up to the hype.

I watched it for the FIRST time last year, and literally watched it again the same night. I was watching it with a friend, my wife came home and we watched it again. And I was THRILLED to.

Now I am thrilled to watch it with this commentary track.

Some familiarity when the parlance of the duders might be required.

When they say this is a "great movie," they don't mean "great" like Unforgiven or Selma. They mean great like "overacting, underwritten, incredible fight choreography." They mean ENTERTAINING as hell, but no: none of these movies are going to be truly "great" because those don't make for very fun commentary. Watching Nic Cage drink himself to death in Leaving Las Vegas wouldn't exactly be the fun-filled trip to do a commentary track for.

Wow Bianca is great! Also, I just watched Face/Off for the first time and I think it's terrible! This was fun :)

@undeadpool said:

Oh, for sure, but Face/Off in particular has a weird track record of being legitimately reviewed well, which can make it a bit jarring when you watch it with no warning that you're actually supposed to be here for Nic Cage hammily impersonating John Travolta's hammy impersonation of Nic Cage's turbo ham.

Memories of Brad getting mad at Dan for referencing the peach line.

This is very exciting.

Face/Off is a perfect example of a movie completely nailing its tone. For the record, this is the rare violent action film that was both critically acclaimed on release and a huge boxoffice success. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/faceoff

I think anyone saying it's a "guilty" pleasure is really being dismissive about how well it executes its premise. A completely "serious" version of this movie would be terrible, the stylized approach is a great fit for the crazy premise

Love me some peaches.

Oh for sure. I wasn't some great art piece; I expected it to be a dumb in a good way movie. Instead it felt dumb in a bad way - the shot selection was bad without it being over the top enough to feel like a deliberate stylistic choice, it was overacted but not in a way that felt hammy and that you were going for something but just that you missed the mark, and some of the writing was pretty bad ("It's a capital crime...the punishment is death" - yes, that's what that means....).

Honestly, I think I enjoy Fast 2 more - it was probably a worse movie in some ways, but it didn't keep pulling me out of it/leave me thinking "Come on...." like this one did. I could just go with it as being a bad movie that's entertaining at times, whereas some of the choices made here were _really_ jarring. I think there's a GREAT movie to be made out of Face/Off (with the same cast even), but it either needs the cinematography tightening up (the random gun close ups/slow-mo shots feel out of place) and the performances reigning in OR it needs dialing up like ten notches. This weird mix of the two just didn't work for me.

(And what's up with the face touching?!)

I think you're just not used to John Woo (and hong kong cinema more generally) cinematography. It's a degree of stylization you don't get in western action movies (outside of maybe Tony Scott).

Personally, at his best, I think it wipes the floor with most american action movies, there's nobody making movies in Hollywood who understands rhythm and how to use slow motion in the same way. People like to be dismissive and sarcastic about it, but what he's doing is very elaborate, mixing probably 5-6 different framerates on a shot to shot basis, inside of extremely complicated action sequences where the geography is always kept clear. Also all done with practical stuntwork and 0 cg.

Is this not showing up in the premium podcast feed for anyone else?

Ah nice the F&F podcasts were my favorite thing on GB so far so I'm super stoked about this.

Now I'm trying to guess the other 7 Nic Cage movies. There's no way Con Air and The Rock aren't going to be in this, they talk about those movies too much. I'm personally hoping Wild at Heart, Raising Arizona, and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans show up, because those are all excellent movies where he cages the hell out.

Guys ..the description says 2 seconds right before the Paramount logo starts .. they mean the Buena Vista logo right ? I hope they don't have a different copy than me ..

@chandoo: @chandoo: Yes they mean the Buena Vista Logo.

This was a perfect way to start the weekend, thanks for doing this again guys!

All the face waterfalls!

@sambair: The ones we've confirmed are:
Face/Off
The Rock
Con Air
National Treasure
Vampire's Kiss
The Wicker Man
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

I'm also running an ongoing twitter tournament to pick an eighth film. So far Wild at Heart, Gone in 60 Seconds, and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance have advanced in that. There's a poll up right now for Adaptation vs. Valley Girl.

I could eat them for hours.

@whatshisface: Turning on subtitles might help with that. If the Fast 40s are anything to go by, a lot of the dialogue will be missed.

@alex: I'm so glad y'all are doing this new run of Film & 40's. If Adaptation makes the cut, I'll be in heaven. Such a delightfully bizarre movie.

I'm not sure it's that, as I've enjoyed the other Woo stuff I've watched. Here, it generally feels very standard (relative to other Western action movies), but then there are scenes where that more stylised take shines through. Taken on their own, they are probably the better scenes, but in context they felt off - it feels more like you are oscillating between two styles of film-making and feels almost atonal rather than rhythmic. That's why I said you either need to take it up a gear OR reign it in - what we currently have is two separate styles existing side-by-side, with scenes of "stylish action" (for lack of a better term) are dropped onto a more typical action presentation, rather than being blended into something more cohesive.

Really though, my bigger issue was with the performance of the leads - they didn't commit to being over the top consistently, and felt somewhat out of step with the supporting cast. Had I not already been thinking in that direction, I doubt the visual presentation would stood out nearly as much.