Josh and Benny Safdie's UNCUT GEMS starring Adam Sandler as a jewelry dealer with a gambling habit

Well.

That can be read many different ways.

I drank a glass of wine and a mug of coffee while watching, a gastronomic choice reflecting...the film's rhythm.

This and Climax are the movies of the year and I'm clearly dancing willfully on the edge of oblivion.

looking forward to seeing it

Doing an advance screening/live Q&A with the Safdies this Thursday at my local Alamo (still tickets left if anyone's interested, but not that many).

Well!

Watched this on screener at home and enjoyed it, but picked up a ticket for a Christmas evening screening 'cause I need to see this thing with an audience.

still mad I skipped seeing good time on a big screen, not gonna make the same mistake with this one

burying the lead that Kevin Garnett is in it apparently!
went to must watch status

he's in it *a lot*

(role was apparently originally attached to Kobe, Embiid and Amar'e)
https://www.si.com/nba/2019/12/12/kevin-garnett-uncut-gems-adam-sandler

absolutely UNREAL levels of Tri-State Guy emanating from this interview. incredible. https://t.co/KG5p0RFovc

— Max Read (@max_read) December 16, 2019

he looks like the dumpster woman from mulholland drive

otm

This is like a sports movie if the sport was gambling

Listening to the soundtrack. It's great but how on earth is this going to work in context?

It doesn't -- unless you imagine the soundtrack as the aural equivalent of Sander's fried neurons.

Hm. Well that works in Punch-Drunk Love.

(role was apparently originally attached to Kobe, Embiid and Amar'e)
loved this tidbit from the new yorker piece:

Stoudemire was not cast, partly because he declined to shave his dreadlocks, which he did not have in his playing years.

dvdscr of this has leaked.

The use of the music is very striking, it doubles down / gets almost comically louder in scenes where you'd expect it to ease off

kg was great, i wouldve loved to see how kobe wouldve been ~ script wouldve had to change quite a bit

I thought this was much better than their last one, and just as much in thrall to the gritty neo-noir aesthetic of Chinese Bookie/Eddie Coyle - which is a good not bad thing imo.

this is the only time I will link to an SNL clip, vintage or otherwise

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/wfpas-monsters-of-monologue-94/2872689

saw this at 11pm in an empty theater on xmas night, great way to blow off holiday stress.

Didnt like this as much as Good Time just bc GT felt like a bolt from the blue, but thought it was great. Only thing I didnt like was the music, which I thought was extremely bad & ridiculous in all the wrong ways, and actually ruined what should have been a couple of the strongest scenes imo. KGs performance was legit good & much better than I was expecting.

Saw this in a basically sold-out Christmas evening screening. A couple walkouts and at least one "this is so stressful!"

It has that in common with Little Women.

lol, my little women viewing was punctuated by irregular bouts of sniffles/weeping around the theater. people take their fantasies seriously!

Saw this same day as Star Wars ; both excruciating but this had more cathartic ending and more deft use of CG. Music felt like 70s after-school special scolding, which I guess this was?

Kevin Garnett’s force awakening was really done much better in this movie.

decision to make Rey the granddaughter of Amar'e Stoudemire a major misstep imho

Julia Fox gonna be everywhere before long.

this was fantastic, upped the walking-a-tightwire-over-the-void tension of good time even further

the stressful cacophony of overstimulation, the weird grace of a dirtbag juggling scams. see also killing of a chinese bookie, california split

This is like Requiem for a Dream, but with gambling (and but good).

Also, love that Eric Bogosian has this role and the completely different Bernie Sanders-type role in Succession in the same year. Thought we had lost him to Law & Order.

haven't seen Eric B in eons, used to go to all his solo shows in the '80s

Can’t believe Morbz liked a president

Same here, and watched Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll not long ago. This year seems like the first time in forever that he has memorable roles.

this film is nuts

these guys really know how to convey stress, I’ll say that

the scene where Sandler’s character making a play at putting things back together with his wife and we see his version of a remorseful expression staring into her eyes from her perspective and he just looks like such a goofball, only for her to voice that exact reaction.... perfect

haven't seen Eric B in eons, used to go to all his solo shows in the '80s

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, December 27, 2019 5:10 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Can’t believe Morbz liked a president

― Οὖτις, Friday, December 27, 2019 5:18 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2018/10/22/23/5297288-6304711-On_the_phone_At_one_point_Sandler_is_seen_glancing_at_his_phone_-a-95_1540246947677.jpg

Jesus god this movie got my blood pressure up.

Sandler totally nails the gambler's high!

Also glad for once they did the sports betting part right. OG Bad Lieutenant was infuriating how he kept betting "double or nothing", like even illegal sportsbooks won't do that shit

I'll have to take your word for it on the stakes, but holy shit was he making some weird contrived bets

Lol I'm glad that bookie could understand the cunt - I was a betting shop manager for years and didn't have a fucking clue what types of bets he was making!

He was doing crazy parlay betting where each of the three events (opening tip, Celts winning straight up, Garnett hitting certain threshold of points plus rebounds) had to all occur or else he would lose the bet.

Opening tip probably the riskiest cos of how random it can be.

So is there a porn called Uncut Jims yet

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) December 28, 2019

Greatest actor of all time

Taking vigs from beyond

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/benny-safdie-solo-the-curse-smashing-machine-1235859184/

is this the thread for discussing THE CURSE!?

bc it's really good and i am on ep 4 after starting this afternoon (it's my day off, fuiud)

Nathan For You

oh ok! thanks
related to Uncut Gems also -- I started listening to Julia Fox's autobiography (as audiobook, read by by the author) and it's also great. there's something about her story that reminds me of Penelope Tree.

So much yelling. And in the one quiet moment, you telling me that she didn't hear the *ding!* on his cellphone when she texted him from 14 feet away?

yes, that's what they're telling you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI6-qKhzTt8

In which our hero Josh Safdie tries to manifest an Oscar.

Joshua Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv/Second Woman/etc has been implying on social media that he worked on this. Maybe his first soundtrack?

I think he's already done a few, actually.

Or maybe just contributed. Interesting how the Safdie's lean into experimental/electronic stuff. Benny's movie has a score by Nala Sinephro.

is Timothée Chalamet the only available actor these days?

No, there is also Pedro Pascal.

Timmy's the preeminent quirked-up white boy in his 20s

is Timothée Chalamet the only available actor these days?

This made me wonder which other men under 30 are bonafide Movie Stars. The only ones I'm coming up with are Tom Holland and Paul Mescal. (I'd say Harris Dickinson and Jacob Elordi are on track but not quite there yet.)

40 is the new 30. or 50 maybe idk

it's gonna be interesting to compare the safdie bros parallel solo debuts about niche athletes

if you expand to under 40, who do you even add? michael b. jordan. austin butler, maybe? barry saltburn?

Glen Powell

true, i assumed he was a little older

robert pattinson, daniel kaluuya, jesse plemons and caleb landry jones (the pasty duo,) ketamine gene wilder

Presumably movie star means someone who can sell tickets no matter what the movie is, meaning you need them to actually get a non-franchise movie made?

a bonafide movie star is someone who stars in bonafide movies

I'm not sure which of those guys could open a movie. I guess we'll see? Pedro is kind of fascinating, in that he's a big star, yet off the top of my head he's not yet really had a movie where he is the bona fide *star.*

i feel like only pattinson fits out of that crew. kaluuya maybe, but he has been relatively inactive lately

Pattinson sure couldn't open that Mickey 17 movie.

What happened to Lucas Hedges? Still only 28.

he is more of a character actor, no?

Hedges has a supporting role in a good movie called Sorry, Baby.

He was the star of the action-packed Marvel movie Boy Erased, but mostly a character guy, yeah.

thought of john david washington but he's in his 40s

Pedro Pascal, who is nice to look at and says the right things on social media, is like Glen Powell in that the powers-that-be really want to make a star out of him.

I've asked students several times in the last four years whether stars as such mean anything. The answer: not a lot. The ephemerality of consumption via streaming -- start a movie, turn it off when bored, start another -- and the collapse of the promo practices on which we grew up (talk shows, magazine covers) means that they recognize few personalities.

That said, Zendaya and Tim Chalamet are huge with them.

we will see how david corenswet plays his newfound fame

I see this also stars bonafide movie star Kevin O'Leary.

And Fran Drescher and Tyler The Creator. Good combo!

"The pictures got small" - and still getting smaller!