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

I thought one point of the end is that Howard has been playing this like a game all along, but to the heavies with guns, this is not a game. That's why they have guns. So he thinks he's "won," his brother in law thinks he's "won," but these bad guys are bad guys and they don't give a shit. In a way when they take them out, *they've* won the game *they've* been playing.

Arno’s goon is just a hired goon, though. It’s not going to do great things for his feedback on goon Yelp that he murdered the last dude to hire him

who would leave the feedback tho

Hired goon or no, he clearly doesn't have an off switch. Kind of reminds me of, I dunno, "Out of Sight?" Where Albert Brooks throws his money around to pay for protection/hired goons, somehow not realizing that any allegiance is to that money, not to the man. Arno is not a real heavy - he doesn't have the (lack of) heart. And Howard might be a selfish, compulsive, self-destructive gambler, but he still cares about people, too. The heavy, though, he's truly bad, enough so that killing someone out of anger and frustration is worth more to him than whatever he is being paid. The jewelry he snags right after is just an afterthought.

Arno clearly got cold feet and was a liability, dude made a snap decision and killed him to prevent him from talking. honestly a snmart goon move imo

I kind of got the impression that the goons didn't have any particular allegiance to Arno. I imagined that Arno was like a wannabe gangster who probably was connected to an actual gangster who ordered his goons to provide Arno with some muscle, but they ultimately saw that Arno was full of shit.

and a pussy, as Howie correctly pointed out

There are definitely some hints that arno doesn't quite have the stomach for mob life.

Throughout. Exclusively.

It seemed like he was using the apparatus of enforcement to lean on Howie but but wasn't down with the actual ethos

You can just keep letting someone who owes you money slide! You've got to send a message. It was clear no message was going to be sent, no code followed, just... let the degenerate gambler pay us now. I can understand why his tough guy decided "fuck that" and killed

The heavy, though, he's truly bad, enough so that killing someone out of anger and frustration is worth more to him than whatever he is being paid.

After weeks or months of seeing Arno give Howard repeated, unwarranted second chances, and then being locked in a diving bell with a sweaty Bogosian for hours and listening to Adam Sandler free-extemporise throughout, who amongst us etc etc

xxxxxxpost

I thought Sandler was alright but replacement-level, basically. He was inconsistent. I loved his odd lilting salesman cadence in the shop. At times he was str8 Gilbert Gottfried. You have to wonder what Julia, a smoking hot, tender, cool, caring young woman sees in this guy. Felt uncomfortably like a bit of wishful thinking.

Those two thoughts are unconnected, I guess - sorry i've wodged them into the same graf

I actually didn’t find the julia relationship too implausible. don’t think we got too much background on her but she is young, presumably very fucked up, howard seemed to treat her well and had money, etc. I actually found their relationship pretty affecting

he's rich(ish), keeps her out of trouble, does weird sex stuff she likes

also he's not a cokehead unlike the other guys she meets in her job as a coke dealer

Sure - and I wasn't really bothered by it - lord knows I've seen enough real relationships where I'm like 'huh?'

They kept her feelings about Howie pretty ambiguous.

And we never find out what happens to the money

Howie's Angel carts it away iirc

sandler was fine which for sandler is saying a lot

Yes that is how I break it down to an extent

I also thought of Gilbert Gottfried!

Yes, there's no accounting for who some ppl screw.

Refresh my memory, do we know Bogosian is Sandler's brother-in-law before the seder scene?

I don't think so

don’t think so

i feel like there's a throwaway line that implies some kind of family connection prior to that but nothing specific

no, and it’s such a great reveal

weird sex stuff?

Well. She’s pretty delighted to have him be jacking off in the cab, and more delighted he was in the closet all along

you're describing a vanilla tuesday there though

i feel like there's a throwaway line that implies some kind of family connection prior to that but nothing specific

― na (NA), Tuesday, February 4, 2020 4:44 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

he does seem to know an awful lot about his family and kids in that scene in the car (that amazing detail where arno mentions that howie's sending his kids to the notoriously ritzy camp timberlake)

i assumed she was in it for the apartment and then the money/excitement but maybe that makes me an asshole

mainly because everyone else in the movie is scamming

I think she loves him in the authentic way that only truly fucked up people can love each other. it felt very real to me

yeah, i thought their relationship was weirdly sweet.

I think the sexting moment is the first tell. As said upthread, when they're sexting, she doesn't know he's there, yet she still starts pleasuring herself to the convo.

Also when she pulled the temporary prank to list his apt on Craigslist, but he goes home to find out she's actually gone as requested and left a sweet note, it showed she still had some feelings and compassion for him.

She didn’t list his apartment she sent him a link to a place she could move into

But I thought the same lol

i thought she was texting the craigslist ad as a way to say "here's where i'm going"

i don't think that was his apartment she was listing? It was going for like 1600 or something in the LES and that's not what was up with his goumada drop spot at all.

When he's hiding in the closet I just assumed her outfit was for someone else and that's why the scene was unfolding as it was - the fact it was all genuinely for him was shocking and sweet and surprising

if she was listing where she was going, why did he get so angry and distracted at dinner? he starts getting worked up and frantically texting her asking if she was fucking with him, then gets mega insistent on checking to see if she's gone on the way home. Which, yes, he did tell her to be out and send a picture confirming it, so he would have showed up to check on that regardless, and it's true dude doesn't give much of a shit about other people, but I felt like he was probably more likely to wait until he got them home so his kids wouldn't find out if he hadn't been spooked by her text.

I interpreted to be her posing a prank and listing his apartment for far less than it was worth on Craigslist so that people would keep coming by and fucking with him asking about the place. Apparently other people thought this too, but maybe we're wrong! (http://themoviespoiler.com/movies/uncut-gems/)

He just seemed mega convinced that she was up to no good and seems surprised when he hears loud music but finds nobody inside.

I guess the thugs must've been working on contingency, only getting paid when howard does

xp my revised read on the whole sequence was he's mad because it seems like she's actually leaving, which of course he didn't actually want her to do?

the 'script' i found online just says it's just a one bedroom, not that it's his, so *shrug*.

xpost possibly

i think she's saying "here's where I'm going when you decide you want to see me; I'll be okay" and he reads it as "buy me this place instead" or just otherwise misconstrues it in asshole fashion

Lol the dialogue was coming fast so obviously I missed an important word of two but I thought “Timberlake” meant tickets to see Justin.

154-minute cut hitting theaters shortly