DON JON, the first film authored by the hyphenate Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Seems to be channeling Wahlberg as much as The Situation here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU2tyQ1_k8s

r u excited morbz

I'm certainly happy for Tony Danza.

ScarJo seems to be a really convincing mall betty.

Seems to be channeling Wahlberg

By way of literally rapping along with Wahlberg.

Solid trailer. Obviously a hunk of "Saturday Night Fever" in there. too.

I didn't even think about whose lousy record that was.

It can be interesting to see actors try to play dull-witted without winking.

It can be interesting seeing JGL's bare torso without wanking.

so basically it's a movie based on The Situation featuring SJ as Marissa Tomei from My Cousin Vinny.

MOVIES ARE DIFFRENT THEY GIVE AWAHDS FUH MOVIES

this looks fucking terrible what the hell is wrong with all of you

c'mon, how is that not funny dialogue you just quoted, sourball?

it just sounds exactly like the kind of line someone with a 2D, condescending view of eye-talians would write for an eye-talian character, and she plays it like that, gum-chewing and all. I mean the dude and his dad at dinner BOTH in wife-beaters.

Like what is this weird moll schtick she's doing and what does it have to do with any actual real person living in the 2010s?

xp And thank god for that.

(But no really, the movie looks as terrible as Only God Forgives looks to everyone else.)

Guys Who Hate Comedy

YO IT'S COOL DAWG I'M JUST YO CHILL BLACK FRIEND. OHHHH SHIT, SHE FINE!

Like Only God Forgives isn't hysterical.

what does it have to do with any actual real person living in the 2010

well clearly my friend you have never been to north providence, rhode island

or northern NJ

I lived, worked and went to school in Northern and Central NJ for a total of ten years.

And that's Rutgers, not Princeton, so I went to school with plenty eye-talian kids from the shore and every other part of the state.

so really, SJ seems off to you??

SJ doesn't seem like a person in that trailer, she just seems like a collection of mannerisms.

...

she got good reviews on Broadway playing a Brooklyn Italian girl in A View from the Bridge, so I assume she's using the same accent.

IDK, I'm a little cranky from lack of sleep. I never think ScarJo is good in anything though, even though she is otherwise the most attractive woman in Hollywood. And also I'm very protective of Jersey.

And something about this movie just feels like it's designed to give people exactly what they've come to expect and want from working-class italian characters -- some sort of imagined "realness," no-bullshit attitude, familial warmth, etc. It's like this is becoming the new version of the quaint irish village with silly old men movie.

Also his muscles are way too small for the type of dude he's supposed to be.

her character doesn't have an italian name, fwiw, and the movie is actually about the effects of porn on sexual relationships which seems relevanto to 2010s, imo

you would be a terrible homosexual

xp

If you hire Tony Danza, wouldn't you want Katherine Helmond too? Or is she dead?

SJ doesn't seem like a person in that trailer, she just seems like a collection of mannerisms.

― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2)

when hasn't she?

Ghost World?

a ghost all right

hurting are you arguing that these character types DON'T exist? or that these characters DO exist but the trailer gets them wrong?

Sure they exist, but they usually have personalities.

perhaps some will emerge in the other 98 minutes of the film

*watches 2 minute trailer* THIS IS GARBAGE, WHERE IS THE CHARACTER DEPTH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYiz9AoSpNA

saw the preview for this in the theater, looks weird in a terrible way, also i feel like scarjo has already done the trashy jersey girl thing, maybe just on SNL?

also it was totally unclear when this is supposed to take place - it seems like early '90s ("good vibrations" etc) but also he's looking at internet porn

I think the idea of a movie about a guy trying to give up porn for a girl is not a totally terrible idea, but sounds more like something that a Judd Apatow movie should cover.

who should've been cast as Anthony Weiner?

also surely there are gu*dos who are 5'6"?

I thought they all were!

I think he means JGL should look like he's eaten every steroid in the world

yeah I thought his arms looked small for a supposed jersey guido gym rat. Do you even lift bro?

Agreed. He needs to actually have pushed it to the point of looking bad, and he stopped shy of that.

Probably not willing to sacrifice his gonadal health on the altar of his directorial debut.

also, he looks like he lifts, bro.

hurting otm

singing at the stop light scene sold me on this tbh

seems like a pale imitation of the wilson phillips singalong in harold and kumar

God this looks terrible, how did 2 such reputable names get involved in a film who's premise could have been an 'Everybody Loves Raymond' episode circa 2004?

Also is ScarJo really that bad of an actress?

what are the 2 reputable names

is one of them tony danza

oh god do you mean joseph gordon-levitt

a pale imitation of the wilson phillips singalong in harold and kumar

except no one with a life remembers that or what Wilson Phillips sounded like.

People who saw Bridesmaids do!

what are the 2 reputable names

― ty based gay dead computer god (zachlyon), Friday, July 26, 2013 2:09 AM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is one of them tony danza

― ty based gay dead computer god (zachlyon), Friday, July 26, 2013 2:09 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh god do you mean joseph gordon-levitt

― ty based gay dead computer god (zachlyon), Friday, July 26, 2013 2:10 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol i had the same thought process

needs to do bro "comedies" to raise ILEsteem

already did bro
http://i.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/new-50-50-post-released__oPt.jpg

50/50 was very good. this doesn't look nearly as good

waiting for the third-act twist to be that she's pregnant and after the credits the kid pops out, already rockin the wifebeater and yelling "booooooashk!!"

I wouldn't assume we know what this film is "about," given that Julianne Moore is barely in the trailer because Too Old to Sell.

i love when people who have been fabulously wealthy movie/tv stars literally their entire lives attempt to approximate what it's like to be "working class." like somehow when they do these really cartoonish accents and say dumb things (BECAUSE THEY'RE POOR) it's supposed to be funny and not disgusting. and meanwhile trying to ironically equate the falseness of romcoms with the falseness of porn while somehow being totally unaware of the irony of trying to present this in the framework of a totally false movie.

serious, serious!

The way the mom is written/directed looks particularly egregious too "WHATSEH NAME WHATSEH NAME!"

Julianne Moore has to be the therapist, right? Working class people otherwise played for laughs always find redemption through the upper middle class pursuit of therapy in these fantasies.

I'm guessing it's related to the "porn addiction" or w/e.

Which really kind of fits in with a larger theory of the sub-genre that's kind of coming to me. Working class people are loveable primitives lacking in full self-awareness, but therapy offers them a pathway to bourgeois enlightenment and self-understanding. Thus the audience can feel superior and charitable at the same time for having affection for these doltish characters and wanting them to better themselves.

wanting *them* to better themselves.

why is he out in the park waslking with his therapist? I can only hope he fucks her too.

is this like the comedy version of Shame?

bah ok looks like she's not the therapist, just a wise older woman who helps him understand women

it's like he watched silver linings playbook and was like how can i make this even more boring and dumb? there should be a mash-up sequel where tony danza and robert deniro sit on a couch together wearing wifebeaters, eating pasta, and watching football on tv for two hours.

akm, asking the right questions!

i mean most movies are dumb and offensive so really the main problem here is how boring it looks

i hope the black friend has some funny lines

there should be a mash-up sequel where tony danza and robert deniro sit on a couch together wearing wifebeaters, eating pasta, and watching football on tv for two hours.

My Dinner Wit Ant'ny

hold the phone - have we determined whether tony danza's character is named "tony"?!?

Jon Sr. apparently

:(

could jon somehow be short for tony

lol:
http://www.donjonrecycling.com/

Be honest. It's Morbs' enthusiasm that's inspiring this gangpile.

nah brah i hated this movie before this thread was started

Oh no doubt, it's almost too rich that Morbs knocks any film that seems proletarian and then is psyched to see a condescending, middlebrow take on the proles.

JOE GOR always seems very eager to come across as a versatile guy who can do comedy and disappear into extreme roles, so i'm not surprised this is his passion project. looks like it could be fun, or could be as painful as some of his SNL sketches.

it's nice to see someone ELSE review a movie they haven't seen yet xp

elmo what is your point, we have a million different movie threads where people talk about how good or shitty it will be based off of trailers or even less info, why are you getting so defensive about this one?

i didn't realize i was being 'defensive'! this movie may or may not be crap, that's fine with me, i think hurting going talking a streak about cultural stereotyping of italian americans and the working class based on the trailer is kinda bizarre tho

I am not "psyched" to see this film, Hurting, and unfortunately I've met my quota of telling ppl to get stuffed for July.

You know what really trashed proles? The Honeymooners. Damn stereotyped loud fat bus drivers.

it's almost too rich that Morbs knocks any film that seems proletarian

srsly wtf, nitwit

Did we run out of clusterfuck threads already? I wasn't paying attention...

Based entirely upon the trailer, if you see this you deserve everything that happens to you.

is this like the comedy version of Shame?

― akm, Friday, July 26, 2013 11:45 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

shame was the comedy version.

elmo what is your point, we have a million different movie threads where people talk about how good or shitty it will be based off of trailers or even less info, why are you getting so defensive about this one?

― congratulations (n/a), Friday, July 26, 2013 1:03 PM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

lol u sound like a psycho dude

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/don-jon

tsk tsk, absolutely no one in NJ sez "Joisey," Andrew.

Gordon-Levitt attempts to situate his own lead character's porn obsession within a very specific context: a working-class Italian New Jersey home life whose patriarchal structure perpetuates the view that women are little more than objects of desire and a media environment that echoes these same ideas.

i hope this isn't true b/c porn addiction doesn't really discriminate in terms of class, geography, etc. people get addicted to strong hits of dopamine, it's not much more complex than that. i suppose background might help to explain what _type_ of porn someone is addicted to, but i can't imagine the film will go too far down that road, unless JGL is hoping to make his mark as a director by doing some kind of gaspar noe poetics of transgression thing.

indeed from description in that review film seems fundamentally conservative.

the depiction of the mother in the trailer seemed pretty insulting tbh

I didn't really think JGL was gay until he cast Julianne Moore as the ideal sex partner.

-- signed, another gay/actressexual who thinks Julianne Moore is the ideal sex partner.

Zacharek raves.... maybe you just have to love JGL and hate Italians.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-09-25/film/don-jon/

Julianne Moore is prized by the straights, too, damn it

Rene Rodriguez's weekend feature:

For his 21st birthday, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt bought himself a copy of Final Cut Pro, the revolutionary software that allowed anyone with a digital camera and a bit of computer savvy to turn their home movies into polished films.

“I’ve probably made hundreds of little videos since then,” says the actor, now 32. “I would shoot little movies with me in them, put them on my computer, edit them and put music to them. I was just doing it for myself, and I had so much fun. But I also learned a lot. If it hadn’t been for all of those videos, I wouldn’t have been able to make Don Jon the way I did.”

One of the most impressive things about Don Jon, the first feature film Gordon-Levitt wrote and directed, is how stylistically ambitious it is. The ingenious editing, sound effects, music and camera placements fly against the traditional emphasis on performance most actors-turned-directors use their first time out. The success of Don Jon, which opens Friday, ultimately rests on the strengths of its cast, but the movie also has the craft and technique of a veteran filmmaker’s work.

Most importantly, Gordon-Levitt uses all the toys in his tool chest not to show off, but to underscore the emotional journey of Jon, an online-porn addict and gym rat who tries to go clean after he meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), a beautiful young woman whose idea of true love is defined by Titanic and film adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels.

“Style is not about having cool shots,” he says. “It’s about drawing the audience closer to the story you’re telling and accentuating the evolution of your characters. That to me is the mark of a good filmmaker.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/25/3650084/joseph-gordon-levitts-don-jon.html#storylink=cpy

James Wolcott wrote a feature about 10 years ago complaining about how terribly new actors moved in character. It's true: JGL is an exception.

A friend who went to last week's screening said ScarJo's accent was most convincing.

The ingenious editing, sound effects, music and camera placements fly against the traditional emphasis on performance most actors-turned-directors use their first time out.

really? this is, in my experience, the hallmark and big problem with first time films from actors.

really? this is, in my experience, the hallmark and big problem with first time films from actorseveryone.

You just want filmed plays with the camera nailed down, is that it?

I love how the poster crops out his haircut in favor of the almighty dimples.

eh this was pretty simpleminded. cute though.

yeah its a sitcom. it's okay. there's a few startlingly real moments w/julianne moore near the end that dont fit in with the rest of it... kinda makes u picture the movie jlg could've made. also brie larsen is the shit. shes definitely my favorite actor under 30

is JGL nude in it

i cant remember. he shows off his bare torso a fair amount anyway.

i will see this when i am sufficiently hungry for ass

didn't really believe that in 2013 a) a reasonably with-it woman, even if written as controlling and bitchy, would be so mortally aggrieved by a straight bro's porn viewing, or b) a straight bro porn viewer, even if written as a dim guido, doesn't know how browser histories work

though it did make for one good gag: the misunderstood double meaning of a girlfriend shrieking IT'S IN YA HISTORY. IT'S IN YA HISTORY.

I know a few women who would be mortally aggrieved by a boyfriend's porn viewing.

now I've gotta see this

also, yeah, there are definitely people who are not as accepting of casual (let alone obsessive) porn consumption within a relationship

i bought a), b more of a contrivance. scarjo was awesome btw.

who gives a shit about browser histories unless it's at work and somebody is looking over your shoulder

saw this yesterday. its basically JGL saying 'porn is bad!' and 'technology is bad! have you noticed?!' for an hour and a half. but i liked it.

i found it a little grating that its so obvious what its doing all the time. this is a film with net to no subtext - the subtlety is sledgehammer-like. i found it weird that for a film objecting to overt female sexualisation, its constantly poring over scarlet johannsen's body.

also found its obvious appeal to 'the man on the street' a little too obvious (though OTOH, average working class families dont appear much in modern hollywood anymore, unless we're talking the poorer sister in blue jasmine, which is a parallel for the family in don jon for being seemingly conjured up from watching a dozen 80s/90s italian-american-centred movies).

the whole film seemed to want to say (and JGL's character actually did say this at one point) 'hey porn isnt just for ugly dweebs' as if to hammer home its point that porn is hurting everyone but its a tad hard to have sympathy for someone whos going home with attractive women every day of the week. this was basically like shame or that other recent sex addiction movie with gwyneth paltrow - it wants to explore something sexually thorny and problematic but doesnt really want to explore it at anything other than a pretty comfortable level. still, i give it some credit for trying.

that said, i did like that SJ's character was so anti-porn. made a difference from it being casualised, even if her character was the 'beautiful woman' sterotype: sexually conservative/a bitch/unwilling to bend/narcissistic.

not read the whole thread so i might be rehashing but tbh, i think i would have liked the depiction of working class italians more if it didnt seem like the film wanted to show how dumb/cruel/superficial that kind of family can be while using them to appeal to everyone and show porn addiction isnt just some rich guy problem.

did you end up seeing this, morbs?

astonished by the lyrical praise the nyt is spoonfeeding jgl above, this film was directed like a car commercial

prejudices of hurting ii so otm itt

is this like the comedy version of Shame?

Yessss

Mark Wahlberg in the lead, Will Farrell as therapist...

Yesss this is a great idea, that is.

prejudices of hurting ii so otm itt

― mustread guy (schlump), Saturday, January 11, 2014 3:13 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, when I saw this thread bumped I was actually thinking "Hmm, maybe I got a little carried away, maybe it's not so bad."

i can't remember if i saw this or not...

feel like i did though :(

saw this and thought it was dumb and manipulative. pretty sure meatheads like Levitt's character don't suddenly stop objectifying women simply because they screw an older lady in night class.

whoa man why dont u walk in his shoes for a while

no, i haven't yet seen it. lotta films out there.

i saw this the other day and yeah, i didn't think the JGL character's supposed epiphany was very well executed

johansson was great tho

Nothing wrong with tha characters or the acting. Script needed work, a lot of work.

the whole "chick-flick romances are just as much of an illusory narcotic as p0rn" angle was intriguing but dealt with hastily

also amused/underwhelmed by the 'reveal' that ScarJo was a villain thru her bristling at Don Jon CLEANING his apartment.

i don't know that acting/characters/story can really be tidily separated when you're dealing with something as just deeply, reflexively tired & tiring as the home-life portions of this film; don jons jr and sr trading EY YOU GIBRONI DIDJA SEE THE JIBRONIS ON THAT kind of shit, just this awful minstrel show of working class. joseph gordon levitt inhabiting the asshole-smirk at clubs. working class communities in film are dealt with well by like three english language directors & i feel like the sorta satisfying porn-morals denouement of this doesn't make its handling of subcultures any less lazy or indulgent.

i was just into scar-jo dry humping him to take a night class, that was good.

porn = chick-flicks seems kind of like a lazy and inapt comparison too. I've never heard of women binging on chick-flicks or compulsively clicking one rom com clip after another for hours.

Maybe "shopping" would be a better stereotypical female activity to compare.

i think they're more comparable in damage to IRL expectations, not hours invested.

Actors who direct get more praise than they deserve because they know what a camera is and how to look good in front of it.

I wanted to like it, and ScarJo finally looks alive on screen, and it'ss 90 minutes, but it devolves into a familiar Hollywood yarn about A Man Who Can’t Love. "Why watch porn when you can have the real thing?" "What can you get from porn that you don’t get from sex?”

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1592972!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/scarjo28f-3-web.jpg
"Why drink Dr. Pepper when you can have the real thing?"

Julianne Moore kinda wandered in from the non-didactic, screwball comedy version (the widow stuff aside) that i would rather have seen.

also the repeated shot of him walking into the gym was nice. Confessions needed a better payoff tho.

chick-flicks seems kind of like a lazy and inapt comparison too. I've never heard of women binging on chick-flicks or compulsively clicking one rom com clip after another for hours.

you have never heard of girl weekends, where they watch 3 or 4 in a row. ;) (ok maybe they'll just watch a zillion episodes of Girls... or Friends.)

i thought Julianne Moore was funny on a meta-level (Boogie Nights, and more specifically The Kids Are Alright)
like she's the old woman who knows about TRUE SEX
i kinda disliked she had this trauma though. also no one is truely communicating, and there are not enough snappy dialogues. (maybe, none)

i apologize for using the word old there, but it was in the spirit of the douchebags in the movie

Julianne Moore is very slightly older than I am, so I'm theoretically fine with her being his sexual savior, but it didn't work

I didn't really think JGL was gay until he cast Julianne Moore as the ideal sex partner.

can't get over this quote from eric h.

Thought this was all over the map - apparently the entire plot takes place in the final 15 minutes. Also, inverting the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope to a Manic Damaged Dream Older Woman trope is still a trope.

Didn't dislike it, but felt like it needed far more of an edge to it.

this film was directed like a car commercial

not nearly that good

has some truly awful buzzwordy filler dialogue scenes, oh u don't know abt SWIFFERS or TIVO??

This had its charms but I won't defend anything people have criticized up thread. StillAdvance wrote, for a film objecting to overt female sexualisation, its constantly poring over scarlet johannsen's body

I think this was an intentional and rather subtle way to connect her to...let's call it the porn-industrial-complex...that self-serving "one-sided" or instrumentalist view of relationships (porn vs romance movies and both against "real" intimacy). what's interesting about all that is that it suggests that porn is simply the logical end point of her worldview and even the (supplemental, excluded) thing that made him seem like the perfect guy! so long as he kept it hidden.

Finally watched this. Far more enjoyable (and less homophobic) than Shame, but much of this ground was already covered in a far more probing and challenging (and less cutesy) manner 40 years prior in Carnal Knowledge.

It was fun to see Tony Danza and Glenne Headly again, though. And JGL clearly devoted a lot of time towards developing a gym bod for this film, as he never missed an opportunity to show it off (not a complaint).

Not sure which JGL thread this should go in, but ... not the prettiest of women.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPWs1QkK9k8