Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Michael Mann Movies

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Starting point is 00:00:22 Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and will be releasing these Quick Takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these Quick Takes are a little more laid back, and they're hosted by just one of us. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy this Quick Take episode. Shazam! Boom!

Starting point is 00:01:15 Hey, what's up, squad mates? This is Paul here with another Quick Take episode. And before we jump in, I just want to say thank you so much for your support. We really do appreciate it. On this episode here, I wanted to talk a little bit more about movies. And so one thing that I wanted to talk about was, you know, how do you find a good movie to watch? I know that some people will, like, go to Rotten Tomatoes or something like that. And I think one thing that really helped me is once I

Starting point is 00:01:45 realized how important the director is to the movie. And when I went through kind of like my big boon of falling in love with movies, it was when I was a teenager. And I started just picking actors that I liked, and I would start going through their full filmography. And I remember going through a big Sandra Bullock phase. I think this was probably in the late 90s. And I remember going through a Denzel Washington phase. And at the time, I just kind of assumed that, you know, a movie, who matters the most? Well, certainly it's the actors, right? And as I got a little bit older and started learning more about movies, I realized that really more than anything, a lot of it comes down to the director. And if you have a good director who knows what they're doing, and they have a vision, and they understand the

Starting point is 00:02:36 script, then they're going to pull out a better performance from the actors. And with the editing and the cinematography, all of it will pull together to make for a much better movie. And sometimes you don't even realize what the director is doing. But as soon as I kind of learned this, I started going through the filmography of directors and realized that if you can find a director whose style you really like, more than likely you're going to like all of their movies, at least to a certain degree. And so one of my favorite directors is Michael Mann, and that's Mann spelled M-A-N-N. And most of his movies kind of span from the 70s through the 90s. He still does make some stuff now, but I think even he would kind of say he's kind of past that prime of when he was making movies in previous decades. But I already previously talked about Heat being probably my all-time favorite movie.

Starting point is 00:03:31 It is a fantastic heist movie. If you want to hear more, go back to that quick take. I don't need to say much more about that here. But another one of his movies that I really love, and it's also one of Josh's favorites, is The Last of the Mohicans. And it's one of those movies that I kept putting off for a long time, and I don't really know why. I remember watching Dances with Wolves and watching Braveheart, and it kind of felt like in the 90s, there were just so many of that kind of movie coming out. And then when The Last of the Mohicans did, I didn't want to watch another movie about old colonial times. And I just put it on the back burner and I didn't even bother. And then later, as Daniel Day-Lewis kind of became the obvious best actor alive,

Starting point is 00:04:22 I knew that he was in The Last of the Mohicans. I knew it was one of my favorite directors. And finally, Josh had mentioned that it was probably in his top three or top five favorite movies. And I was like, all right, I finally got to sit down and watch this movie. And I actually watched it twice back to back. And I have only done that maybe two or three times in my entire life. But I finished Last of the Mohicans and immediately restarted it. It is absolutely fantastic. Daniel Day-Lewis is incredible. I was so confused watching this movie the first time, and it makes so much more sense the second time. But right off the bat, I was like, why would you get Daniel Day-Lewis to play a Native American? But you do learn in the course of the movie that he was actually adopted,

Starting point is 00:05:08 and so he's been raised by Native Americans. And it's a really interesting story. It has a romance storyline with Madeline Stowe, which is not fully fleshed out, but it is interesting. It is lit incredibly well. The movie just looks so real and intense, and I think that the music might be the best use of music in a movie ever. The last 20 minutes of this movie are so incredibly satisfying. Every once in a while,

Starting point is 00:05:41 I'll just pull up on YouTube the Last of the Mohicans ending, and I'll just pull up on YouTube you know The Last of the Mohicans ending and I'll just watch it and it's so incredibly well done it's great another fantastic Michael Mann movie is Manhunter and Manhunter is one of these movies that I think is so incredibly underrated for people my age and younger usually when I ask people if they've seen it they say no and they haven't even heard of it but Manhunter is the movie from the 80s, and it is based on the same source material that was the basis for Silence of the Lambs. And if you've seen Red Dragon, which is not a very good movie, that is actually basically the same story to an extent that you get in Manhunter. Basically, a detective is pulled in to work a case of a missing person, and he is attempting to profile the killer and to try to find him. And so he goes and visits Hannibal Lecter to get hints at figuring out who this killer might be.

Starting point is 00:06:41 And like any good psychological thriller like this, he starts diving into the mind of the killer, and it's almost like going too far in and how it affects him and his family. And it is so good. It has one of the creepiest scenes ever in a movie. You have Joan Allen in it, who plays a blind woman, And there's a really interesting scene with her and the killer, which is done really well. And it has so much tension. That is a Insider. And that is a movie that has Al Pacino and Russell Crowe.

Starting point is 00:07:39 It is based on a real-life story. It is all about the tobacco industry and how they were aware of the addictive nature of nicotine and yet covered it up for years. And Russell Crowe plays a real-life person who was a whistleblower, who had documents and had information that the tobacco company knew how bad cigarettes were and lied about it under oath. And basically, it kind of goes over how he's going to share that story and whether or not the news media are going to air that story.

Starting point is 00:08:14 And there are higher powers that be trying to shut this all down. Great, great movie. It doesn't have as much action as most of Michael Mann's other movies. This one's a little bit slower, but really intense. Very fantastic. And then the last one that I'll bring up here is Miami Vice. And people are usually surprised when they hear me talk about how passionate I am about that movie. But I think when Miami Vice came out, people were expecting it to be a little bit brighter, and they were expecting it to be fun little bit brighter, and they were expecting it to be funnier. And I think the trailer kind of did it a disservice. But Miami Vice is this incredibly

Starting point is 00:08:52 gritty, dark crime story about these undercover officers who are working their way into the criminal underworld and trying to find and expose and arrest the powers that be behind all of this movement of drugs in the, you know, international ocean waters. And it's just very, it's not like on the surface as pulpy as the Miami Vice show was. And I think that threw a lot of people for a loop. In years past, it has developed a much better reputation and a lot of people do like it now. And so if this is a movie that maybe you saw when it came out, or maybe you saw the trailer and heard it was bad, I'd really encourage you to give it another try. I think that Jamie Foxx and Colin

Starting point is 00:09:42 Farrell are both great in it, especially Colin Farrell. He's got like this wild mustache and the way he decides to act in that movie is just so interesting. It's not really like anything else I've seen. And if you really want to go into a deep dive, start reading and learning about the filming process because Michael Mann was filming this in crime-ridden areas in international countries, to the point that Jamie Foxx, I think at one point, threatened to quit if they didn't start having more safeguards because their lives were kind of continually at

Starting point is 00:10:17 stake filming where they were. And I think that's one of the things I love about Michael Mann is that he tends to shoot these movies in areas that movies are not normally shot. So when I watch movies, you can kind of tell, oh yeah, this is LA, this is Chicago. I've seen these locations a thousand times in movies, but Michael Mann will pick these other locations to give it a sense of genuineness and authenticity. And that just adds a whole nother layer for why his movies overall, they just feel great. They are so much fun to watch. And on top of that, Michael Mann did Thief, Collateral, Ali, Public Enemies. These are all fantastic movies as well. And so I would highly

Starting point is 00:10:58 recommend checking out some of Michael Mann's films, since he is probably my second favorite director, only behind David Fincher. So anyway, hopefully that'll give you some good movie suggestions here, and we'll see you guys later.

Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Michael Mann Movies

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