The Michael Mann poll

Two words:

http://www.tatteredcoat.com/images/heat-pacino-buggy.jpg

GREAT ASS!!!

He's such a crap director.

and so it begins.

"None of the Above," but if I have to choose, I'll say Collateral.

Miami Vice is like heroin.

Yeah Collateral.

That scene where Cruise beats the shit out of those dudes who think he's a pussy was A++++

xpost yeah, I could totally see that again. But I have to go with Heat.

MANHUNTER.

DO YOU SEE?

i voted for collateral but i think i meant heat

Miami Vice (2006) - awesome awesome awesome
Collateral (2004) - awesomer
Ali (2001) - good, but kinda pales in comparison to actual footage of Ali
The Insider (1999) - haven't seen
Heat (1995) - reputation better than it deserves to be - but still awesome
The Last of the Mohicans (1992) - haven't seen in ages, but didn't care much for it then
Manhunter (1986) - this one is actually pretty crappy
The Keep (1983) - waht is this?
Thief (1981) - very underrated

I'm voting for Miami Vice just because.

Isn't Rollins in Heat?
;_;

we get down if the play calls for it

"That's not what happens. What will happen is....what will happen is... I will put a round at 2700 feet per second in your medulla at the base of your brain, and you will be dead from the neck down before your body knows it. Your finger won’t even twitch. Only you get that. So tell me sport, do you believe that?"

Yo Homies, is that my briefcase?

Thief (1981) - very underrated

OTM. James Caan is fantastic in it.

"There is 'undercover' and then there is 'which way is up.'"

"Dream much, Will?"

Yo Homies, is that my briefcase?

-- milo z, Wednesday, 29 August 2007 09:40 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^^AWESOME, thx.

Miami Vice (2006) garbage
Collateral (2004) garbage
Ali (2001) pointless
The Insider (1999) decent enough
Heat (1995) good up until the last 45 minutes which are garbage
The Last of the Mohicans (1992) garbage
Manhunter (1986) some good performance, but mostly irritating
The Keep (1983) never seen
Thief (1981) nice score, but has James Caan starring in it.

The Insider because, thankfully, he had a co-writer.

Yeah I voted The Insider too.

there are people who hate James Caan? This is news to me.

What kind of heartless, fun-hating bastard hates Heat, Collateral AND Miami Vice?

Yeah they are people who hate bad overacting.

Tony Scott poll coming up soon, I think

The Insider's the only one that feels like he created and inhabited a world. Russell Crowe, Bruce McGill, and Diana Verona are all great.

(xpost)Oooh that's a good one!

Miami Vice would have been a classic if only they'd gone the Robert Bresson route?

The Thief score by Tangerine Dream is very nice, but is also so dated it gets giggles.

You gotta let Vice drip into your veins and FUCK your arteries.

Yeah, Rusty was good in the Insider, one of his better performances.

xposts

"Miami Vice would have been a classic if only they'd gone the Robert Bresson route?"

Haha possibly!

what Mann score isn't dated within two weeks of release? Worst part of Collateral is when they're rolling slow through LA to the sweet, sweet strains of Audioslave.

Miami Vice does make good use of Jay-Z/Linkin Park, though. The assault on the drug boats! So badass.

Miami Vice. The Insider is pretty tolerable, tho, for blatant Oscar bait.

'cept Al's shameless angling for the bait wasn't noticed.

I didn't really like Ali at all. :(

Me neither.

Collateralz
James Caan is great in Thief but the movie's not the greatest. the score is really good and really bad.
indsider was booooring. russell crowe looked like he was full up to the neck with feces

you could smell him?

Ali is the oscar bait, and it suffers because of it. Insider is great.

This one is tough.

I think everyone's misread what I wrote: I said "Al," as in, "Pacino." We really shouldn't discuss Ali in polite conversation.

miami vice the show should really be in there

I really liked the insider.

AH! I assumed it was a typo. Sorry.

to alfred, obv

"we've been made"

Miami Vice sucked. My rental DVD went kablooie when they were about to rescue the chick from the trailer with the fake-pizza-delivery-scam, and I didn't even bother asking for a replacement to finish it. Awful, awful, awful, and boring to boot.

I voted for Collateral.

fuck manhunter haters YOU OWE IT AWE.

you know the more of that i saw the drastically worse it got

The director’s cut of Miami Vice is a cinematic crime.

There was one cut of Blackhat on HBO a few years back where the sound mix was remarkably improved, and it made a world of difference, what with Hemsworth's mumbling. No idea which version that was.

I just listened to a good 30-minute new podcast interview with Mann on the 20th anniversary of Collateral. Turns out Tom Cruise's outfit was inspired partly by Lee Marvin in Point Blank.

Maybe I’ll pass on blackhat then or maybe I should watch it and substitute the audio

I remember some cool visuals and a fight at a restaurant scene in Blackhat but not much else. Nu-Mann movies tend to glide over me tbh. Although Miami Vice was definitely much better on the rewatch.

The Mann-directed episodes of Luck and Tokyo Vice could be as enjoyable or better than a Blackhat or Public Enemies watch/rewatch.

“The password is ‘gofastboatsmojito’ all one word”

The Bear knows what’s up

— Patrick Willems (@patrickhwillems) June 23, 2023

Mann directed Tokyo vice?

Mann directed Tokyo vice?

Only the pilot. And you can tell in about two seconds.

Very little reason to continue past that point (even though I trudged through both seasons)

i watched the first episode of tokyo vice i found the lead character and premise execrable i didnt watch any more

public enemies is the flattest, least charismatic big names big star big release big hype movie ive ever seen and also perhaps the ugliest

guys is michael mann ..... bad

I wouldn't say he is but Public Enemies you're def right about.

MVD Shop offering up to 50% off certain recent-ish Fun City Editions titles

https://mvdshop.com/collections/fun-city-editions

Oops, meant to that for the boutique label thread...

Michael Mann definitely good. Manhunter, Thief and Heat are all classics imo. His digital era movies though try to adopt this dry detached European tone that I don't think suits him and renders his movies a bit lifeless

Public Enemies is the worst of his movies that I've seen. Depp is a terrible actor under any circumstances, but the use of digital in a period piece — the particular way in which Mann uses it — often makes it look like a high school student film.

i was in a dark place last night after the blackhat sound mix, i agree in the light of day that the three mike lists there alone prob save him for life

I saw Ferrari twice in the theater. There's some astonishingly great work in that movie and from hearing Mann talk about it in terms of techinical issues, the process of overcoming those issues, etc. I think that's what keeping him engaged and having to cast Adam Driver (or Johnny Depp) is the deal to get your movie made. The nagging feeling that became obvious on the second watch was just how much of the movie you could dismiss as costume drama Top Gear.

ferrari was pretty bad. the racing scenes were great, penelope cruz was great, but the rest of it ranged from boring (so much somber dialogue in dark rooms) to cartoonish (seriously how did they hire adam driver to do another role requiring an italian accent after gucci?????)

i mean obviously they hired him to bring in the $$$ as ET noted just above but he is so badly miscast (and i like driver in some other movies)

People whose names seemed to predict their career or job [Started by Mormons come out of the sky and they stand there (Abbbottt) in September 2010, last updated twenty-five minutes ago by Josefa on I Love Everything] 3 new answers

lol

trying to reconcile these rumors of Adam Driver playing the young Neil McCauley in Heat 2 with how Robert DeNiro looks.

isn't Adam Driver a foot taller than Bobby D?

He offered to lose height for the role

brave

my wife when I start talking about Heat pic.twitter.com/10EZDCymGb

— Tom Reagan’s Hat (@RufusTSuperfly) September 11, 2024

Coincidentally we just watched Ali the night before and shouted "Kamala, boma ye!" a couple of times last night.

I can't quite recommend Ali when there's hours of Muhammad Ali clips just right there on YouTube but the first 45 minutes or so of Ali is some of Mann's best work. The Liston fight sequence is incredible.

How does it stack up against the Chris Rock fight sequence

I’ve still never seen Ali. Gotta get on that.

I've tried several times but have never made it to the end.

The Ali-Liston fight is still exciting even when you knew what the outcome would be

(xx-post)

I had pneumonia the Christmas week Ali released and spent it on the couch watching ESPN Classic's Ali marathon - fights, documentaries, specials about him and Cosell. Pretty much made it impossible for me to ever fully get into the movie (which is really quite good as biopics go).

I saw Thief for the first time and damn if that film isn't gorgeous - all the neon, street lights, welding torches, and string lights glowing so warmly out of darkness.

Caan is really good in this and I loved the soundtrack. The relationship with Weld and the baby subplot were kind of clumsy and underbaked.

The big bad Prosky? was so good - genial looking guy who was terrifying.

The shoot-em-up ending belonged in a tv show - in fact he used it on nearly every episode of Miami Vice.

Very enjoyable film.

It's almost unique in that it's a total thematic dry run for what he would return to again and again, pride and ethics of being good at your job, and yet successful on its own terms and scale.

he should have given it up after this one tbh

Mann gave a good interview about Thief last week.

Was just about to post that link. It's definitely worth reading.

michael mann went to school with the guy joe pesci played in casino

In the 1980s NBC series Crime Story, the character of mobster Ray Luca is based on Anthony Spilotro. Show creator Michael Mann said in a 2015 interview "The people who Crime Story is about are all people I knew. I went to high school with Tony Spilotro..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Spilotro

Crime Story is basically a much much longer TV interpretation of the Casino story told from the police/FBI pov. Andrew Dice Clay played the Lefty Rosenthal/Robert DeNiro character, his arc including both him becoming a TV personality and surviving a car bombing.

https://www.chicagomag.com/arts-culture/michael-mann-on-the-true-chicago-story-behind-heat/

Good lord, Crime 101 (Mann not involved) is egregiously Mann-derivative in dozens of ways, from little things like lines ("How about I buy you a cup of coffee?") to decor (spartan beachfront apartment for the thief protagonist) to score (not long before the end, a pretend version of "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters") to big things like an L.A. cat-and-mouse cops/robbers story. Overwhelmingly derivative, though Chris Hemsworth improves on his Blackhat and Ruffalo gets to be a completely different cop from his Collateral one and Hallie Barrie is pretty much a version of Jada Pinkett Smith's Collateral character 20 years later. Watchable, but holy moly, what a ripoff.

Does it have an urban fox wandering the streets?

Apparently it's based on a story (novella? not a novel, at any rate) by Don Winslow, whose books are mostly pretty good. I'm gonna watch it as soon as it's streaming somewhere.

I haven’t checked it out but the soundtrack by Blanck Mass popped up in my music recommendations

Thief getting 0 votes is insane.

was it hard to see for a while? I feel like it’s had a critical resurgence in recent years. awesome movie