The Michael Mann poll

i watched or rewatched a number of his movies in the past year. i watched thief for the first time and then rewatched it a few months later, cann is amazing in it, just a coiled tense ball of testosterone. rewatched heat and collateral, the latter of which i think belongs in the top tier of mann movies for sure - foxx is so great and the shitty digital cinematography has aged really well. also watched last of the mohicans for the first time, which i enjoyed a lot - the main romance is pretty eh and it's not DDL's best performance but all the action (which is like 85% of the movie anyway) is fantastic and wes studi steals the movie.

idk one eye open, if you liked thief that much for those reasons, you should prob revisit the mann films that turned you off

though you do mention one thing i love about thief that isn't really in a lot of other crime genre cinema, which is that the jobs go off without a hitch and he only has run-ins with the law because the cops are itching for their bribe

mann's understanding of prison culture, the way it alters one's ability to effectively reenter society, and also just the way the system flattens and ruins lives forever, is deeper than any director i can think of offhand

Last of the Mohicans is more fun and touching than it has a right to be.

heat is the gayest movie of all time

mann's understanding of prison culture, the way it alters one's ability to effectively reenter society, and also just the way the system flattens and ruins lives forever, is deeper than any director i can think of offhand

Check out Ulu Grosbard's Straight Time, with Dustin Hoffman. It's streaming on Prime for $2. The book, No Beast so Fierce by Ed Bunker, is also excellent. Bunker spent years in juvenile and adult institutions, and this is his whole theme. Depressing stuff, but his writing's extremely vivid, and the movie's about as unglamorous as you can imagine but also brilliant. Some of Hoffman's best work ever.

well, gays like great asses

(Ha; I just looked at Wikipedia and Mann was an uncredited co-writer on Straight Time.)

whoa, had no idea! Straight Time is great, definitely worth a watch.

other thing i liked abt Thief is the plot didnt hinge on any ridiculous science fiction technology, which marred for example Collateral for me, what with the futuristic custom ipad/tricorder for assassins or whatever that was (iirc).

i always forget that he did Last of the Mohicans. i was thinking the same thing Brad re:revisiting stuff, i havent watched anything by him since Public Enemies in the theater (regrets, ive had a few), maybe i'll have different take now. i skipped Miami Vice at the time, i think i might do that one soon.

I'd also recommend a 2004 film starring Kevin Bacon called The Woodsman.

I laughed at MV at the time; saw it again about six years ago enthralled. Maybe his best fantasy.

futuristic custom ipad/tricorder for assassins

i think just was just a laptop with a USB drive?

I've still never seen the theatrical cut of Miami Vice (or any version of Blackhat).

Heat is showing in London on 35mm, the first screening sold out super-fast so they added another. THAT would be a great film to see after being away from theaters for a year.

https://princecharlescinema.com/PrinceCharlesCinema.dll/WhatsOn?f=3182341

_futuristic custom ipad/tricorder for assassins_

i think just was just a laptop with a USB drive?

lol, it was at least a tablet, i definitely remember tom cruise jabbing at stuff with a stylus

it's like a tablet yeah, can't say in the many times i've watched collateral i've once given it any thought

I can't imagine Blackhat ever being particularly must-see (at least by Mann's standards). Likewise, I'm reluctant to revisit Public Enemies (though I liked it fine the once). But Miami Vice is must see, both cuts.

Public Enemies, I do recall that one and The New World being two relatively contemporaneous films featuring Christian Bale in iirc surprisingly supporting-level roles.

blackhat is amazing just on the level of camera go through computer screen and observes the inner tech fluctuations that cause a nuclear meltdown brrrrrrrr

yeah i haven't seen blackhat but i've heard it's good

It's not bad, it's just probably the least of his variations on a theme. With Hemsworth not exactly bad, either, but perhaps not right for the movie. Or maybe the movie wasn't right for his character? Might have liked it better if it was more of a thriller and less of an action-thriller. Something more like The Insider.

The recut Blackhat is much better than what was released in theaters, even on the level of sound mixing, which muffled so much Hemsworth dialogue originally.

I love how the Collateral technology (and even the cab itself, pre-Uber) are so specifically mid-2000s, especially the phone battery quitting. Also love the whole office shootout in complete darkness except for the city lights.

The last time I saw "Last of the Mohicans" I liked it better than I remembered it. At this point I have no idea what cut it was, but I assume it was the "extended" cut. This time I think I saw the director's cut, which might be a little shorter than the extended cut but a hair longer than the theatrical cut; none of them are radically longer or shorter than the other. Anyway, I don't think anyone ever thinks of this as one of his best films, but this time I was more let down than the others. It's really got not much to offer beyond the spectacle, and for all the fiddling over one cut here or one cut there, 112 minutes vs. 114 minutes vs. 117 minutes, this is the movie that might have benefitted more by being three hours, not "Heat." It would have given the characters and their relationships more weight, fleshed out the melodrama and balanced out the 20 minutes of people running through the woods. Speaking of woods, why did Mann, master of authentic details and verisimilitude, film in North Carolina for upstate New York?

And speaking of "Heat," recently rewatched that, too, and while it remains probably his best looking film, and still strong, it felt a little shaggy to me this time. "Heat" actually would probably be a bit better if it were *shorter*, possibly if it lost all of the Pacino at home stuff with his wife and daughter, which doesn't really add anything to the story, especially since the movie already explicitly highlights the married to their jobs nature of lonely loners Pacino and DeNiro. Pacino, btw, was better than I remembered him, or at least his ott-ness was less ott than I remembered, even if he still seemed too chic to be a down and dirty LA detective. As opposed to Mark Ruffalo as the same in "Collateral."

Think I'll give "Thief" another watch. Did Mann do anything more than re-color correct it?

Speaking of woods, why did Mann, master of authentic details and verisimilitude, film in North Carolina for upstate New York?

Tax breaks would be my first guess.

i watched LOTM for the first time this year and enjoyed it. DDL felt like the weak link to me, honestly, though it's almost an impossible role to pull off for a modern viewer. mann can't really do romance but it's more of an action movie than a romance anyways, and all the action was really impressive. wes studi is amazing in it.

Iirc, Thief gained a couple short scenes.

tbh, if DDL is your weak link you've probably messed up somehow.

The ‘Movie Censorship’ site is your go-to for comparisons between various different cuts of films. I really love the brief extra scene in Thief between Caan and an old man fishing.

https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=665044

there are lots of sites that seem to list what's different, but there are also some things seem to be really subjective, like the different color correcting of new Thief or new Heat, or the inclusion of certain scenes over others. Something I read about Mohicans said that sometimes he chooses alternate camera angles even.

manhunter is up on criterion this month. not my favorite mann but it looks amazing and william petersen does the tortured cop thing better than anyone else has ever done it.

which cut? that one has something like four different cuts.

it is almost certainly whatever's on the scream factory release

Unclear. Looks like Scream Factory included the theatrical and director's cut, but this one on Criterion runs about 2:02, while the director's cut runs 2:04 or so (and the theatrical 2 hrs flat). The one you can rent on Amazon right now runs 2:01.

Heh, I guess there are actually 7 or 8 different cuts!

http://manhunter1986.com/miss00.html

Looking into it a bit more, it seems the Scream release was the theatrical in HD with stuff from the erstwhile DC spliced in. At this point I doubt many can tell one from the other.

Blackhat just popped up on HBO Max, so I guess I'll finally get to see it. It's the theatrical cut.

it's really awesome enjoy

Last time it was on HBO (a few years back) it was Mann's revised cut. Much better sound mix and a few things shuffled around.

It’s the recut/improved version on HBO Max. Instead of opening purely inside the electronic world, it establishes the nuclear reactor and the hacker in the opening minutes, as well as the breach itself — the first of many improvements.

I'm about 45 minutes in now and the goofy inside-the-computer animation is really the only part I don't like so far. He's really a master of shooting digital. The contrast between a fight scene inside a restaurant (extremely close, hand-held, lots of quick cuts) and the long beautiful landscape shots is just stunning. I'm watching on a laptop with headphones, so some of the ADR-ed dialogue is really obvious, but whaddya gonna do. I'm also kind of pleasantly surprised by Hemsworth's accent work in this.

blackhat is pretty fucking good. some quibbles (mostly the unlikeliness of hemsworth's character and stuff like thousands of malaysians being treated as background in the climax instead of doing anything when one dude stabs another dude through the head with a screwdriver right in front of them) but way more positives - looks amazing, strong cast (i like that the big baddie is some actor i didn't recognize instead of a big star), very visceral action (that shootout that goes wrong in the second act, amazing). kind of felt like a grimmer, more realistic version of bourne/mission:impossible.

it's kind of a cosmic gumbo

it almost moves to the beat of jazz

thousands of malaysians being treated as background in the climax instead of doing anything when one dude stabs another dude through the head with a screwdriver right in front of them

It’s funny how Blackhat, Collateral, and Miami Vice all have scenes where limbs are being broken in a crowd (in nightclubs in the latter two) and no one really notices or cares.

Watched Miami Vice (2006) for the 10th or 15th time tonight, and it still makes more sense with each viewing, on a pure story level.

Heat is a western

watched blackhat for the first time and am mad at how bad the rating is on review aggregator sites for it.

looking forward to watching "the keep" and "the insider" to complete the Mann filmography

The Insider is perfect. The Keep ... is not. Not as bad as is reputation has it, and some intriguing stuff, but a real mess all the same. I think there is a fan edit somewhere that is supposedly better?

blackhat underrated yeah

btw I'm still a fiend for mojitos

how odd

pic.twitter.com/mgcMlPwHA0

— Michael Mann (@MichaelMann) January 19, 2022

Weird that this is a big “new development,” since Mann has been talking for a while about how the books would be stories of before and after the movie’s timeline.

I do wish they’d do some kind of chapter-by-chapter audio release. Could be as gripping as a Sunday-night HBO series.

Also, Mann’s 78 now, so it makes sense that he would construct stories this way instead of going through the multi-year studio process.