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Rounders (1998)
Beautiful shot , great introduction to poker
This film was suggested to me in a podcast, so I thought I'd give it a shot.
Didn't know anything about it, except for Matt Damon was in it and it is about Poker. Watched it on a Sunday afternoon, and that's why I enjoyed the film the way I did - It is smoothly told, very unagitated shot film with little (but intense) physical action and lot of action on the poker table.
I consider myself an amateur, but I know the basics and I know the World Series- but I get that when this film was released, Texas Hold'em didn't enjoy the popularity it does today. In this sense, the director is right in explaining the ground rules of the game in the films first minutes. After that, we have a rather typical "must get x in short amount of time" kind of plot, but it very slowly unfolds. Actually, it really gets going 50 minutes in when the main character is left by his girlfriend.
Some shots and scenes are too "slow" for modern cinema and show the age of the movie (was released 18 years ago). Also, some sub-plots seem important in the beginning, are completely dropped in the middle and are somewhat disconnected from the rest of the film (the whole lawyer-subplot felt rather unnecessary in it's extent). The main character wants to pursue a career playing poker? OK, that's fine but we never get to know that before he actually makes this decision - in the beginning. poker is made up to be a means of earning money for the guy.
In the end, we learn that he played Johnny Chan and won one single hand - that is his main motivation for his new career? Somewhat implausible!
In the end, still very enjoyable and is able to transport the feelings and anxieties during a poker match very well
7/10
Green Room (2015)
Starts furiously after a slow beginning, stops with a flimsical endling
What I liked about the film: The film, if you go see it blind will definitively have a big surprise coming for you. It starts out as a (darker) road movie about a young punk band that is starting out and touring the East Coast of the United States. Through a chain of unfortunate events, the band has to play a gig at a neonazi-skinhead location to get the money they need for gas to carry on touring.
That is when the whole movie abruptly goes haywire: Suddenly, one of the band members sees something he is not supposed to see (a murdered corpse of a young woman) and suddenly, the band finds itself trapped inside the name-giving "green- room". That was the part that was most enjoyable for me, because it was the part that was most suspenseful, as the dialogue through the door with the club owner (played by Patrick Stewart, the only non-noname of the cast, at least to my knowledge) was increasingly aggressive and threatening. Things get complicated and over the course of the movie, like in a slasher film, one after the other, the band gets "disensembled". This was all very aprupt and felt very rushed. Before long, the film ends with some of the remaining characters able to escape and the ending – like the beginning – feels like somewhat of a drag and, in its conclusion, also very flimsy. Through the first half, however, I rate it 7/10.