Hacker Cinema
Uncut Gems
2019 · Film · 136 min
Directed by Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie
A charismatic New York City jeweler always on the lookout for the next big score makes a series of high-stakes bets that could lead to the windfall of a lifetime. Howard must perform a precarious high-wire act, balancing business, family, and encroaching adversaries on all sides in his relentless pursuit of the ultimate win.
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26 comments on Hacker News
Sandler has some pretty good non-comedy (Uncut Gems, Hustle) or half serious comedy (like Click). He's among the few actors who still could do this and not feel completely out of place... but that's if you give his serious roles a chance, many people just judge the serious movies by his presence in the cast and never actually watch them.
He also had a lot of slop movies in career, so I don't blame people who do that... but it's a shame if you miss the good ones because his acting really makes these great.
I dunno, 2015, I'm a little weak on this year: It Follows, Creed, Ex Machina, Max Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful 8. I'd watch those again with someone any time, and recommend all of them often. Several on my to-watch list most of which I expect to be good, like Queen of the Desert, While We're Young, Slow West, and The Overnight, just haven't made it to them yet. Not an exhaustive list, just gleaned from some titles I have at hand.
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
Believe it or not, but there’s a lot more that goes into filmmaking beyond the premise.
Parasite, The Substance, Uncut Gems, mother!, Krisha, Tangerine, and The Lighthouse are some movies from the last decade that are novel in ways beyond their premises.
No generic prompts to an LLM could create those movies, even if it could spit out a vague 2 sentence premise that matches them.
Note that I’m not saying it could never happen, but LLMs as we have them in 2024 produce regurgitated slop, and require significant creative input from the prompter to make anything artistically interesting.
> I'm an American in my 40s. I've never seen "glorification of scams" in any mainstream culture
Some very popular movies that come to mind (Some of these may not be intended to be glorifying scams, but to many unsophisticated viewers, they absolutely are):
- The Social Network
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- Uncut Gems
- The Godfather
- Scarface
- Ocean's Eleven (and Twelve and Thirteen)
- Emily the Criminal
- I Care a Lot
- Nine Queens
- Punch-Drunk Love
> I've also never seen any sort of "hyper-masculization" shown in a positive light in mainstream culture
More movies!
- The Godfather (again)
- Pulp Fiction
- Fight Club
- American History X
- Gangster Squad
- Django Unchained
- Expendables
- Every Fast and Furious movie
- (Nearly?) Every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie
> it's common to see masculinity referred to as as "toxic" and equated with negative traits or externalities
I think this is (usually?) a misunderstanding. People refer to toxic masculinity, a set of problematic behaviors some men exhibit as part of attempting to appear "manly" that includes traits such as: homophobia, glorifying unhealthy habits (e.g., drinking like a man, don't cry like a woman, mental health issues depicted as "weakness", etc.) They're not referring to masculinity, itself, as being toxic.
Just like the Truman Show movie, I have always felt it's a bit underappreciated. So many great performances in that beautifully shot movie and such an emotional roller coaster. Although in many aspects a totally different type of movie, I think Uncut Gems was the first one since I watched Magnolia that touched me in similar ways. And just like with these other movies, it really changed my view of Adam Sandler.
He is great in Uncut Gems too.
(That movie is absolutely great, but it is a hard watch. I don't regret watching it, but I would never watch it again).
There have been plenty of great, original movies post-2010 that push filmmaking in some way, they’re just overshadowed by the marvels of the world. Some of my recent favorites:
Tar
Sorry to Bother You
Uncut Gems
Get Out
Tangerine/The Florida Project
Dogtooth
Mad God
He'll choose to when he's good and ready. He was amazing in Uncut Gems. What's worse, to be in a position to make shitty movies because you want to, because they're made for you and your buds? Or to have to appear in shitty movies because you're on the Hollywood work treadmill and can't support your lavish lifestyle without taking whatever work you can get?
2022 - Kimi, After Yang, Crimes of the Future, White Noise, Official Competition, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Tar, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
2021 - Nightmare Alley, The Card Counter, Zola, The French Dispatch, Come True, Don't Look Up, I Care A Lot,
2020 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Mank, The Sound of Metal, Possessor, His House
2019 - Climax, Uncut Gems, Parasite, Vivarium, First Cow
2018 - The Clovehitch Killer, Prospect, Mute, Anon, Mandy, The House That Jack Built, Cam, Sorry to Bother You
2018 had a glut of Netflix sci-fi B-movies that I think are very solidly good if not so great. I think they're underrated so I included them. I might have also messed up on the years.
These are all films I've seen. There are many others that I suspect are even better that I haven't seen.
Just a quick glance at Letterboxd....
Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Both Knives Out movies
Parasite
Nope (probably just in the "good" grouping, not great)
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That's, uh... just from the "popular this week" screen. And only the ones I've seen, so I know they're good. But I'm pretty sure all those are last five years, or close to it.
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Digging back to 2018 and later (we can say 2018 counts since 2023 just started, right?):
Annihilation
Sorry to Bother You
High Life
Midsommar
Uncut Gems (god it's so good)
Jojo Rabbit
The Lighthouse
The Green Knight
CODA
Spontaneous ([EDIT] It seems very dumb but wow is it a gut punch, when you start to think about what you're watching and make some connections to real life)
Red Rocket (small-scale brilliance)
RRR
Watcher
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I just realized I misread you as asking for 5 good ones from just one of the last 5 years, not 5 total from the last 5 years, but I think that gets the point across? Despite my leaving off a whole bunch that may be more taste-specific, not having watched even 1/3 of the films from that span I have good reason to believe are good, not exhaustively mining that timespan (I bet I could double the size of that list without changing how I was selecting them), and also omitting a bunch of more-popular movies that I think were at least decent.
[EDIT] Hell some years you could get to 2-3 good ones just by looking at what A24 produced that year, nothing else.
this sounds like a tragic version of the film Uncut Gems
Some good stuff on here at first glance. I often go to movie soundtracks when coding, and I see some nice selections from Uncut Gems artist Daniel Lopatin.
In Uncut Gems, he was only an actor, as opposed to the vast majority of his work, which comes from his production company (Happy Madison Productions). Of the films from that production house, "Hustle" is the only one that stands out as a quality production; the rest very much adhere to the formula described above.
Adam Sandler has been hitting it out of the park lately. Uncut Gems[0] showed what an excellent actor he really is.
[0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5727208/
uncut gems is not a netflix movie. It's A24.
> 3 Adam Sandler movies for half a billion dollars?
Kind of a weird example when the adam sandler movie (uncut gems) was probably one of the few critical succeses of their recent original content.
In total agreement here, Uncut Gems ranks as one of the few movies i have been unable to watch until the end.
Anchorman is another "not that great movie", but i suppose it's due to not thinking Will Ferrell is funny or interesting.
So I'd rather spend time going through the movies on the list "Top 10 Movies That Mess with Your Mind"
https://entertainment.time.com/2010/07/16/top-10-movies-that-mess-with-your-mind/slide/all/
Weird to see Uncut Gems there. Anecdotally, that seems to be one of the most divisive movies in recent years. Everyone I mention it to either loved it or hated it, with nobody I know saying 'it was just okay.' Personally, I absolutely detest it.
I’ll Stan Alamo til the day I die. Even took my family there immediately after I got married ha!
Here is why Alamo has set the bar high for being more than a “movie theater”, in no particular order: 1. Their programming AKA the movies they choose to show is highly curated. You’ll have your standard summer blockbusters, a weird Wednesday film (usually a cult classic from the past generations), screenings with Q&A after the film with directors, actors, etc. As a movie goer I engage a ton with their marketing to look out for these events, because yes, I would absolutely love to see Uncut Gems and have the Safdie brothers and Adam Sandler talk about their experience. Those are more rare but just another opportunity to create a long lasting memory of a film, even if it sucked.
2. The pre-programming is custom, curated and so clever, it makes me ALWAYS want to get there earlier. For most movies they find similar footage or clips that have intertwining themes to the main film (early footage of actors in the movie, etc). It’s usually on the funnier side of things.
3. The no bs talking and phones policy is amazing. It’s enforced and if you want to experiment being a rat, you can even alert servers of guests that are breaking the rules without fear of retaliation. Finally a place to enjoy the film without most distractions.
4. It’s nice to plan a dinner and a movie and have it be all in one place. While the food is fine and not completely mind blowing, it’s good for a movie night and the popcorn is fantastic. Also +1 the queso as well. Alcohol selection is great and you can basically order whatever you want and will likely be able to make it (cocktail-wise).
5. When it existed, the Alamo season pass was amazing. $30 bucks a month, a movie a day and you select your seat ahead of time (you select your seat regardless of the pass, but still). I hope it comes back!
Some downsides: 1. You sometimes will smell food that might not be your favorite. Your a veggie that doesn’t like the smell of a burger, sorry, you likely are gonna have all the food smells.
2. Servers darting around the theatre for a lot of the movie. They are usually pretty sneaky but you get some Paperboy PTSD of enemies coming out in your peripheral vision.
3. YMMV with each Alamo. Pre-pandemic some were franchises and some were corporate. The corporate ones were so much better and the franchises just seemed to be poorly run across the board.
So many other things they hit out of the park, screenings for families and folks with autism (you can talk, etc) as well as screenings for parents with young kids (more talking and likely some more crying). Lots of accessibility screenings for the deaf and blind. The list goes on…
If The restructure for Alamo works out, you’ll be seeing more and more of the old guard changing things to align more like Alamo, and that definitely will be a good thing for the film industry. Just my 2¢
My favorite original movies of 2019: Parasite, 1917, Once upon a time in hollywood, midsommar, uncut gems, ford v. ferrari, the lighthouse, knives out, jojo rabbit, us, a number of shows that have shifted towards a streamed series format vs. traditional film
I think the film industry is alive and well.
I'd also say that dr. sleep only barely qualifies as a sequel if we're in the mood to complain about hollywood cliches.
I disagree. There are quite a few interesting movies out there. From 2019 alone: Uncut gems, Marriage Story, the Irishman, Us, 1917, Jojo Rabbit and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. All of those are good movies depending on the preference. In fact, they are innovative and creative. The main problem with judging now vs past, is the survivorship bias of the good movies, the bad ones are forgotten and lost.
Two of those are netflix movies - Irishman and Marriage Story, I don't see them any more synthetic than 1980's RAMBO 2-5? or God Father 2,3 etc. Movies were always based on the popularity, the difference being the better data.
> bad comic adaptations, getting their rating from wide fan base
The amount of haters and lovers might not offset each other perfectly, yet it should not matter after the hype dwindles. Besides, the top rated comic books adaptations are quite good - Joker?
Maybe I misunderstood your comment and "Uncut Gems" was an example of a funny film :-)
But didn't Adam Sandler's character use an iPhone extensively in Uncut Gems? He's the protagonist, but definitely not a "Good guy."
P.S. Yes, it's an excellent film, and it's on Netflix.
I don't think Uncut Gems counts as a Sandler movie, he was just an actor in it.
Netflix is shooting for lowest common denominator television, TV that keeps engagement and attention. They shoot for just enough to get nominated for some awards, for the press. They are not Anapoura or A24esque.
To be fair, a couple of the Adam Sandler movies haven't been half bad (at least for Adam Sandler), like Murder Mystery. Uncut Gems is also supposed to be pretty good, but I've not seen it yet.
Choose your adventure:
- people using their phones during the movie
- people talking during the movie
- $15-20 for popcorn and soda
- droll hollywood plots
- seats too far in the back (unless you can book seats, and did so early enough)
- driving 20-40 minutes to a nice theater and parking
- can't bring in alcohol (unless your local theather allows it) - no pausing/rewinding
- dwindling sales means higher ticket and concessions prices, which makes less people go, and repeat
Yeah it's really a shocker that people want to watch movies at home. My home setup is really nice, and, well, it's my home.
However our local theater is $10/ticket. So we've caught some showings for new films like Uncut Gems, or stuff like Studio Ghibli Fest that I actually wanted to see on the big screen.
Also at home I can watch old, cheesy Jackie Chan films from my collection with friends with some beers and laugh our heads off.