The James L. Brooks Movie Poll

spanglish

/end thread

I kind of love Terms of Endearment. No, really.

I just watched Broadcast News last night! They were all awesome in it but I esp. loved Joan Rivers!

!!!

Broadcast News. As Good As It Gets is kind of overrated right?

No -- it's awful.

So, yeah.

He's making a movie with Paul Rudd.
As Good as it Gets is maybe my least favorite movie ever.

If Nicholson should sign on, he would join a cast that already includes Paul Rudd, Reese Witherspoon and Owen Wilson. It was said that Bill Murray was in extensive talks to portray the father of Rudd's character, it seems that Murray has lost interest in the film and Nicholson may come on board as the last key member of the cast.

The story is said to revolve around a love triangle, with both Rudd's character, a white-collar executive, and Wilson's character, a pro baseball pitcher, both trying to win Witherspoon's character over

I read this the first couple of times as "Albert Brooks" and I was like "WTF where is Defending Your Life?"

I don't remember I'll Do Anything, but the first two are pretty good movies. Broadcast News is slightly better so that'll get my vote.

Saw Terms Of Endearment for the first time recently and it was like a sitcom epic

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

not one vote for Tarantino's favorite?

his wang?

"However, whenever Brooks settles down and trusts his instincts, he becomes a more interesting filmmaker, as in the fascinating I'll Do Anything and the triumphant Spanglish. One of the few real wonders of recent years, Spanglish nails the particular world of the modern upper middle class, with its anxieties about race and aging and failure masked behind a systematic do-goodism and compulsive yessing that verges on the maniacal."

I feel like I should watch this again.

I'm watching Spanglish now. An odd mix of sentimentality and social commentary; the last Hollywood quasi-comedy that attempted something so ungainly with a two-hour-plus running time also starred Adam Sandler, Funny People.

I saw Terms of Endearment for the first time last year. I wasn't that into it, but the ending really got to me.

lol wikipedia

ts proponents champion the film as a seminal, revolutionary masterpiece, breaking new ground in the areas of visual composition and sound/light resonance, as well as a moving portrayal of the difficulty of family problems and self-identity (and perhaps to a lesser extent the difficulties and rewards of communication across cultural boundaries). The film also highlights the powerful sexual chemistry between actors Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni

his new movie cost $120 million http://www.welpfolks.net/forum/images/smilies/astonishedstare.gif

Well, Jack Nicholson earned $119 million.

doesn't the average Hollywood movie cost $80M? He has four above-the-line stars in it.

depends what you mean by "average Hwood movie" I think. The stars + director cost ~50 mil, which leaves 70 million for a set-driven romcom, which still seems pretty incongruous.

Brooks' timing is really shot to hell now, even in the halfway-funny scenes.

Rudd is actually quite OK at times, free of the piss/shit wit of his stock roles.

For some reason I really want to see this, in the same way I wanted to see Morning Glory and Love and Other Drugs. I avoided them both in the end.

don't really see the point of a Paul Rudd movie without him smearing poo poo and pee pee on the walls, i thought that's all he could do

which studio do you run?

Broadcast News is possibly my favorite film ever of a certain kind...which I don't quite know how to describe: middlebrow Oscar-bait? Old-fashioned mainstream Hollywood? I just love it, and have probably seen it a dozen times. I love quoting Albert Brooks: "Let's meet at the place by the thing where we went that time." And Holly Hunter's just great. (I even like William Hurt a lot for a change; he's supposed to be vapid and annoying and superficial, but not descend into caricature, and he pulls it off well.)

it's out on Criterion next month.

I promise I will not start a poll of the rather haphazardly defined "Old-fashioned mainstream Hollywood middlebrow Oscar bait."

I wouldn't say I love Terms of Endearment but I do like it quite a bit. It's pretty funny in parts, the performances are great and the scene where Debra Winger dolls herself up in the hospital to and brings in her boys to say goodbye damn near kills me.

i saw terms of endearment recently and the ending did kinda get to me

I should watch Terms again--I think I'd be more receptive to it today. Not a film to see when you're 21 and halfway through a film degree.

liked most of the comedy in it, not so much the bathos

How Do You Know drops out of the top 10 b.o. after one week.

it's a bad film, but it's not THAT bad. stack it next to most Heigl/Aniston/etc rom-coms and it towers above for wit and intelligence. for this reason it is a shame it is such a financial failure. but it doesn't deserve to be a big hit either.

he worked on this for six years!

I mean, The Mary Tyler Moore Show only ran seven.

but he had to research women's softball

Commercials look bad enough that I wouldn't bother. I hate most of Terms of Endearment, which really feels dishonest in fundamental ways, and like As Good as It Gets (or what I remember of it) a lot more. But going back to Mary Tyler Moore on DVD is a revelation: I have a feeling he should do it as well.

Broadcast News is easily one of the best comedies of all time, it's just a sensation. possibly the best american comedy screenplay of the 80s. the kind of movie they *really* don't make anymore. wonder what's on the Criterion edition that's not on the DVD.

Terms.. is bloody fabulous too. the hospital scene with Shirley Maclaine freaking out is just the best thing ever, i wonder how much of that was on the page and how much of it she invented herself. she's still not as brilliant as Debra Winger in the aforementioned goodbye scene with the kids mind although it's a tough call. here she is winning the Oscar and supposedly saying to Debra "Half of this is yours"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqSEH_bVRz8

Pauline Kael did a great bit about Terms.. that year (not her original review, a year-end thing) which was great. wish i could find it online.

watched Starting Over last night, a divorce comedy set in Boston and his first theatrical screenplay (a book adaptation directed by Pakula), and didn't think much of it. Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen have some amusing moments (both AA-nominated), but Burt Reynolds got way too much credit for playing... a writing teacher?

Morbs reviews Broadcast News. I mostly agree. What bothered me most about it is how we're supposed to sympathize with Holly Hunter's ideals getting crushed as she realizes her boyfriend fakes his tears on television.

Finally saw Broadcast News tonight. How Do You Know comes off a lot worse in comparison.

Why does Holly Hunter's ideals getting crushed bother you?

First of all, he's not her boyfriend. None of the three principals ever sleep with each other. It's purely symbolic of the style vs substance distinction the movie makes re news (which I don't entirely buy, but it's entirley moot in today's infotainment environment).

Watching BN for the first time in a decade, I'm ready to bump it up a few notches in esteem. I can't get over how the movie accepts the conventions of Albert Brooks' kind of news presentation over William Hurt's; it asks the audience to choose between two kinds of falsity. But it's punchy and efficient, especially that scene in which Hunter "exec produces" for the first time (couldn't stand the too cute prologue though).

I can't praise the actors enough. Hunter figures out how to give even the lamest line an unexpected reading. I give Hurt credit for not minding looking like a fool and being almost sexually ambivalent if it means realizing his ambitions.

Watching Terms of Endearment for the first time in a while... I tend think of this movie mainly in terms of the great performances & screenplay, though I notice now that it also has some really well directed "movie" stuff. Like when Garrett drives Aurora to lunch in his convertible, there's a wonderful shot where their car pulls up alongside the camera for a few lines of dialogue, then zooms off ahead (and Aurora loses her scarf)... it's one of those "wow, what a shot" things (also, a few scenes later, the scene where they kiss in the surf and then he grabs her boob, against the afternoon sun; the whole thing looks great).

It's really something how episodic the movie is, and how large chunks of time pass between the early scenes, and yet how fluid it is and how well it "holds together" (...an understatement).

For some reason though, on this viewing, I feel like Nicholson's performance isn't quite as strong as it could be; or like he may have been slightly miscast(?) (Wikipedia says the role was originally intended for Burt Reynolds.) Obviously, he's Nicholson being Nicholson, it's good stuff, but maybe not Jack at his best? (Also, I realized he's basically the same age in this movie as I am now... which is just ridiculous to contemplate.)

yeah, i watched terms for the first time in full a few weeks ago... really thought it was a wildly good movie... agree the performances and screenplay are incredible & the episodic nature works amazingly & mustve been a really hard thing to get exactly right

Midway through watching Broadcast News for the first time I blurted out "this thing is more old-fashioned than actually old movies"

Joan Cusack is so great in this

Holly Hunter's no slouch in it, either.

I stand by my 2015 post.

I haven't seen this in ages, but this may have my favorite lead performance by William Hurt, a thoroughly venal man incapable of understanding why his motives are so morally compromised and why his actions are so wrong.

(At least that's how it seemed at the time.)

What did he do that was so vile? Fake the tears? Serious question.

Short answer is yes, but there was a lot of context for that one action. It was for a rape story, and even though in his defense he really did feel sympathy for the woman, given how that interview played out in raw form, he clearly had no second thought of exploiting a woman's trauma for entertainment value. To be fair, simply doing a story on a rape victim brings up that debate, but the second he decided to fake the tears, there was no question what the story was about, or at least what it became. Later on when he's confronted about it, he's warned what he did could get him fired, and he immediately counters that it got him promoted - that the personal gain from it could be immediately used as justification felt all the more gross and vile.

Just watched Broadcast News for the first time. Much of it has almost a stageplay quality, especially the scenes with just two people talking (which is a lot of the movie)… it’s an unusual, and largely successful, approach.

After getting into The Mary Tyler Moore Show a bit last year, I have to conclude: James L. Brooks does not have a soft spot for news anchors!

(I think the movie presents the fake tears somewhat more ambivalently than in birdistheword’s analysis – and doesn’t necessarily 100% endorse the Holly Hunter character’s (sincerely felt) pov – but also doesn’t quite push far enough into the ambivalence to really put a bow on that whole aspect of the movie’s theme, if that makes sense. I almost wish it leaned a little harder into the interpersonal relationship side of things, and less on the “ethics and changing face of the news” angle.)

(It feels suspended btw those two poles… like it doesn’t want you to get TOO invested in these characters’ personal lives, but also doesn’t commit to being a full-blooded “business of the news” movie. I guess it takes a His Girl Friday to deftly blend the two?)

i also watched broadcast news recently.. i had seen it before but had v little memory of it.. agree w one of alfreds comments upthread, i was bothered by holly hunters character making such a big deal of william hurt recreating his teary reaction shot..taking it just as something that is a catalyst for them not pursuing a relationship any further though, it works in the larger sense

bn is alright, terms is much better imo

Jane drops Tom so easily, and it's not clear why she was so into him to begin with (beyond the surface reasons). Are we meant to gather that she saw him as sort of a "project," and viewing the tape made her realize he was irredeemable?

Also, when she (reluctantly) tells the cab driver at the end that he can take any route he wants, are we supposed to infer that the experience has changed her somehow, and made her realize she has to "loosen the reins" in every aspect of her life? If this was conveyed, it was too subtle for me to appreciate.

Hunter's performance is great, but it's not truly clear what makes her character tick – or Albert Brooks, either – they both feel like very well executed constructions. Tom (Hurt's character) is actually the most "interesting" in a way; and despite ending up as the heel, conveys motivation and an "inner life" that the other two don't.

(I think the movie presents the fake tears somewhat more ambivalently than in birdistheword’s analysis – and doesn’t necessarily 100% endorse the Holly Hunter character’s (sincerely felt) pov – but also doesn’t quite push far enough into the ambivalence to really put a bow on that whole aspect of the movie’s theme

This makes sense.