#462

stop typing and go watch Infernal Affairs right now

#463

it has its own wiki for awards.

i can and will happily watch IA. but if you’re trying to go down the route of saying that as a film in its own right the departed is a bad movie, then i can live with you not liking raid 2.

i would have been alright with ‘not great’ but ‘really bad’ is overplaying a hand

#464

I mean, I could list all the awards Driving Miss Daisy won


tbh I think I only hated The Departed because I loved Infernal Affairs so much. It takes an absolutely lean, propulsive, thrilling movie and swamps it in flab, Jack Nicholson is terrible, and the ending is nonsensical. Good for you if you get something out of it, but I promise the original is ten times the movie the remake is.

2 Likes
#465

The Departed got most of its awards based on who made it tbf

1 Like
#466

i mean imma watch IA on your rec, likely tonight, so i’m not out to getcha here. But i do kind of think that you love of IA is definitely messing with your quality assesment. i’d agree about the flab on departed for instance, but i don’t think that’s there in the raid 2. rama
 yes, sure. he was a weird character who they never quite inserted well enough to be meaningful. but the other characters and their parts within the plot are tremendous.

@TKC the way i see it, you always have to account for that. but the sheer number of awards and noms means that even doing so, it was staggeringly well reviewed. although the other way to look at it is that there’s a very good reason people award scorsese high accolades: because he’s extraordinarily good

#467

The Departed definitely got the Oscars because it was Scorcese’s turn though. Not denying the guy is a good director (although he hasn’t made anything of note for about 30 years)* but the goodwill and love for The Departed were undoubtedly primarily for the makers rather than the actual film.

Put it this way, if The Departed never happened and Scorcese instead was the one who remade The Secret In Their Eyes, it probably would have got the same fanfare

*not seen Hugo and I would like to

#468

Turns out I can’t spell Scorsese

#469

idk. fanfare, yes, but
 idk. di caprio is eye wateringly good in the film, and he’s an actor that at his best automatically attracts a fuck ton of awards as long as the script holds up well enough. it only doesn’t happen on eg shutter island level stuff. the same goes for sheen, damon’s not bad, wahlberg is great, nicholson is
 jack nicholson, playing jack nicholson. really hard to review a performance of a man who has one speed and was presumably hired for that one speed. :smiley:

#470

i for one am shocked and surprised

#471

I’m not against The Departed, I haven’t seen Infernal Affairs so I can’t compare them but I just found it to be quite a standard cop film, nothing incredible

1 Like
#472

btw. watched this the other day. everything about it on paper says ‘this is going to be fucking terrible.’ What the posters, and the marketing, don’t get over, is that it’s basically Tarantino does Fargo. It spends the entire time taking the piss out of itself, and for a second your brain goes ‘nope’ because it’s still got Liam Neeson being a misery. And then somehow it sort of turns that on his head, and Neeson comes around to being almost a totally unnecessary character, or a weird balance for the real stars of the film who are the opposing villains. It’s proper weird. i recommend it as a three-beers-deep “what shall i watch”, nothing immensely special but worth watching for its oddness.

2 Likes
#473

Found infernal affairs to be a bit overrated. Not as bloated as the departed and more interesting stylistically but maybe one of those early 00s films that got a bit of a ‘cool’ tag because it wasn’t easy for anglophone audiences to find that doesn’t massively stand up 20 years later in the streaming age (see also Boy, Old).

Decent enough though

#474

Yeah I saw this on a whim at the cinema and had a thoroughly good time

1 Like
#475

Did think during Oldboy wow this needs Josh Brolin

#476

genuinely think it got Done Wrong by its marketing team. they tried to bill it as more serious, and literally no one needs more grumpy neeson

#477

Not seen the remake because I’m not a complete masochist

1 Like
#478

I have no idea why I watched it to start tbh

1 Like
#479

Its on Nettyf so I am tempted


#480

bet it won’t be as good as the original either :wink:

I had a very good time with this one, so if the remake manages to capture that too then :+1:

SkarsgÄrd >>>> Neeson any day though

2 Likes
#481

He decided to fuck this with all his weird racist comments in the press tour, which is a shame cos it’s clearly the best Neesploitation film of recent years. Was absolutely not expecting the Fargo-ness of it at all.

1 Like