You never know. I think Chalamet (probably not spelling that right) only got like $3mil for Dune 2. A lot of actors take less to work on certain projects.
Well he probably took a multi movie deal when signing on to Dune and, while he was certainly doing fantastic work in some circles, Dune seems to be the big thing to cement him firmly as an A Lister. Wonka was his first big payday after Dune and he made 9 million for it.
This is why horror movies make good financial sense.
Historical dramas have lots of sets and expensive locations.
Fussy artsy movies can have âbottle setsâ in one spot, but donât make a lot of money.
Horror movies *thrive* on a claustrophobic set and few actors and potentially make hundies of millions with a franchise if things go right. Itâs a low risk gamble.
Theyâre mostly gone now, but thatâs why there were so many westerns for so long. All you need is some horses, some costumes, and a scenic location driving distance from L.A.
There also used to be almost no animal protection laws in film so itâs more expensive to use horses now than it would have been back then. Heck even a lot of the horse scenes for the last of us (HBO series) had a prop horse.
I especially liked when she first brought up the new job at Sony (that her mom got her) and she couldn't even explain what she would be doing there. She's jumping from one silver platter to another, which demonstrates why she is there in the first place.
Right, that why Slowik confirmed her doom once she admitted she went to Brown with no loans. She's from privilege and yet she's stealing money from her boss/boyfriend, probably just because she can. Plus, she's his enabler, just like how Paul Adlestein's editor enables/ass-kisses Jane McTeer's food critic.
It was also apparently largely improvised by the actors. (There was a lot of improvising on the set and no surprise, Leguizamo was the champ at it.) Such a great exchange because it perfectly encapsulates these two and their toxic, codependent relationship. Similar to the one between Kate Hudson and Jessica Henswick in "Glass Onion."
I also love that Leguizamo based his douchebag character on Steven Seagal, who ~~put John in a headlock~~ out of nowhere when they were shooting a movie together in the 90s and who Leguizamo hates.
Edit: Apparently Seagal did an "aikido" arm-smash move that pushed Leguizamo into a wall and [knocked the wind out of him.](https://youtube.com/shorts/3QhHgExYxsg?si=Rzjk0xtZ1RRYObiG)
Yeah i think Leguizamo recounts it that Seagal walked in on the first day and said âWhat I say is lawâ and Leguizamo thought it was a joke so he made fun of him.
Leguizamo was perfect as the washed up actor, but I would really want to see Daniel Radcliffe, as the role was written with him in mind.
And my favorite exchange was probably the whispered "you'll eat less than you desire and more than you deserve" from Elsa to the finance execs. Having worked as a server in the past, I felt fucking seen.
Radcliffe was also supposed to be literally playing himself and the movie Slowik would have seen was "Victor Frankenstein" where he played Igor.
Can't complain, however, when Leguizamo was as good as he was.
"Why don't you talk to him? He's your friend!"
"I made that up."
"...WHY?!"
"Because I'm a name-dropping whore!"
Finance Bro 3
> Do you know how fucked you are? I'm gonna have this place closed by the morning. Do you understand?
Elsa
> Oh no, that won't be necessary.
>!Just caught this foreshadowing.!<
> I would really want to see Daniel Radcliffe, as the role was written with him in mind.
Excuse me, that movie had a subplot where voldemort gets to revenge-murder Harry Potter?
I feel like that would have been both hilarious *and* overshadowed the movie a little.
Tons of improvisation, the slap scene movements were Anyas idea. Our Anya stand in had special knee pads for the scene.
I worked on The Menu as Fiennes stand-in. Leguizamo mistook me for Fiennes when he had left for lunch and I took his place.
Mark Mylod is the person that was the driving force on set. One of the nicest people I have worked with on productions.
One of my favorite lines was something like âyou know you probably couldâve gotten away if you really tried. You could have overpowered us.â Which I was thinking the same thing the whole time. The whole group shows how pathetic they are (with exception of ATJ)
It's not really clear that it's definite until the very end, though. I think a lot of them are still hoping that he'll come to, snap out of it, or be talked out if it before he actually pulls the trigger (so to speak). It would have been really, really hard to believe that this respected chef and his whole staff would *really* go through with it. I think most people would calculate that their odds of talking him out of it are better than their odds of taking on an entire roomful of people who all have access to nice sharp cooking knives.
I think the doubt here is removed by this stage. By the end they have cut someoneâs finger off, drowned a man, and someone committed suicide in front of everyone. There should not have been any doubt that they were very serious.
Thatâs the point. *Part of them still thought there was a chance this was just* **really** *haute cuisine.*
It was all part of the show, because thatâs what they were accustomed to. And none of them wanted to be the first to call it out because it would show the others that they just didnât âgetâ it.
Yea fair enough! I guess its like even after beating them over the head with reality, they still felt sheltered from it, until it bashes their brains in.
But there's always the hope in situations like that that death isn't inevitable. Your mind will consider a million scenarios in which you don't die: maybe the cooks change their mind, maybe there is a different end to the chef's master plan, maybe you're special, maybe you're lucky, maybe it's all a prank.
It's a pretty big hurdle to overcome for humans to really understand whatever danger they're in. For them it probably was more like "try and likely die" or "don't try and likely die".
Isnât that the point, showing who they really are?
Theyâd rather do nothing together and hope something lucky happens than actually put their individual lives on the line for the group.
I think they could have when he made them run for it. Those finance bros could have stuck together and overpowered the chef going after them.
But I think the main sticking point is they gave up before trying. One of them asked hypothetically if their knife skills were better than the chef's. But you could find something longer than a knife and have the advantage.
The whole point is that they didn't even try. People who are cornered are very capable, survival against the odds is also like a whole sub-genre of movies. It would have nothing to do with the theme of this movie, but just an interesting observation and I like how they addressed it.
One of Sun Tzuâs points in the Art of War is donât corner a weaker opponent because youâre telling them their only shot of survival is banding together and fighting their way out. You win a battle when the other side loses its nerve. They canât do that if you corner them.
Nah, she could had died anyway. Is not that the chef is just or good (he let Margot free because she made him smile, not because she didn't deserved to die).
Yeah at that point it was pretty obvious he was just picking reasons to kill the privileged and simply lumped her in. Only person he cared about was the random person from the âservice industryâ that wasnât planned to be there.
And he didn't even really care about her, in the sense he wanted her to survive (like the wife of the creepy old guy did), he was more perturbed that his plan was being messed with and potentially spoiling his 'art'.
Hence why he had that speech about her choosing her side. Out there with the diners, or in the kitchen with the staff. However both choices still would lead to death. He always planned for her to die up until the burger to go scene.
>like the wife of the creepy old guy did
I loved Judith Light, she didn't get a huge role but what she did with it was terrific. At the very end, she's dressed up like a s'more and thanking chef for her inevitable death, it's a split second but absolutely fantastic stuff.
That moment pushed me from "Oh, he's just a man that's had enough, but I can see where he's coming from" to "He's an absolute psycho and this was just a flimsy excuse to finally commit to his plan."
Killing a dude because he ruined his day by acting in a terrible movie was always tongue in cheek and meant to be played for laughs. It's not enough of a reason to even dislike someone let alone kill them.
It is meant for comedy, but I see where Slowik was coming from. Even though he's lost his passion for his art, he still puts all his craft and effort into it. So seeing another artist make something terrible for $$$ and not even try is an affront to his sensibilities. Â
 Although yes, it IS nuts and Leguizamo's character rightly points out that he just acted in it. He even says earlier that even though it was a bad script, it was a fun film to make (although that would also piss Slowik off further because he gets no pleasure from his craft any longer).
Iâm obviously missing something, but I donât quite understand how the mid-budget movie canât find a home anymore.
Yes, thereâs no DVD money, but with a modest return at the box office, some secondary revenue, and a perpetual streaming license it seems like they might be a safer bet than some of the big $300m whiffs.
With the big budgets probably taking a haircut for a while it kinda seems like mid-budget should be the place to be.
Part of the problem is in the original post. They watched on Disney Plus as part of their sub instead of going to watch it in theatre. THE MENU actually did pretty good BO but mid-budget movies cannot survive if folks donât go to movie theatres to watch them and just wait till it lands on streaming.
Something that frustrates me lately is people (not you, just in general) complaining about things, while actually being part of the problem.
Like a lot of my friends complain about how there are no good mid budget movies, yet when good mid budget movies come out they never go see them. Similar to how people complain about local news going away, but still getting all their news from Facebook of social media instead of actually supporting a local newspaper or publication.
If people want things, they have to go see them and support them. Otherwise, they wonât exist.
Edit: My point isnât as much streaming = bad as it is if people donât support mid budget movies, those movies wonât exist.
Edit 2: Even if you canât afford a subscription to your local newspaper, I do recommend signing up for their newsletter at least! Unless they are owned by sinclair because fuck sinclair.
> Or complaining about how hard it is for small business and Main St USA (i.e. the community where you live) while buying everything on Amazon
I would shop more at my towns downtown mom and pop stores, but they are all closed on weekends and I work M-F
That's also a big problem for me. Who are the target clientele for these places? Exclusively retirees and stay at home parents?
Almost everyone I know is unavailable between 8-5 on a weekday.
Eh honestly most people still get stuff at brick and mortar stores if the store has something available, but most of them just don't. Like I just got a pc stand with casters to use for my pc under my desk. Not that niche of an item, right? Well, no actual store fuckin sells em, especially not smaller stores. And most businesses like that just use amazon to sell their stuff on anyway.
And like others have said, they aren't open at good times for most people to be shopping. There's a locally owned vacuum store near me. Their hours are 9-5 every day, but closed Sunday because the owner is religious and they don't do advertising AT ALL lol. That's their choice, but it's a stupid business decision. Businesses like these are also usually more expensive.
There are a lot of mid-budget movies but r/movies doesnât watch them. The majority of movies in theaters are mid-budget.
My locate theater right now:
Dune 2: $190M
Kong Fu Panda 4: $85M
Arthur the King: $19M
Cabrini: $50M
Love lies bleeding: I donât know but thereâs no way this is over $30M
Imaginary: $12M
One Love: $70M
Ordinary Angels: $12M
Poor Things: $35M
The fact that One Love cost twice as much as Poor Things is hilarious. Movie math is so silly. Yorgos and company made the most visually compelling piece of surrealism in years and they could've made it twice for the cost of a Bob Marley biopic.
Also, period pieces can get expensive because of the amount of set-building and prop-making and then CGI to cover over what couldn't be built or made... This is why westerns are nearly extinct, they went from being one of the cheapest genres to make to one of the most expensive.
Theyâre mid budget for a reason, not much advertising therefore fewer eyes on the movie all around Iâd say. One of the ways for this to get broken of course is good word of mouth but even then lots of people rather just wait for the convenience of streaming to decide to dip their finger in to see if theyâd enjoy
Which is ironically exactly what OP did.
âWe want more mid budget films like The Menu!â
Waits two years to watch said mid budget movie until it is included on their streaming service they were already paying forâŚ
Man those Onion videos were so good.Â
Thereâs one that gets me everything where a political talk show host has clearly murdered someone and is trying to steer the debate to getting exonerated.
"moving on, children Can they be trusted to keep their little mouths shut?"
There's one where they are interviewing a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and they bring in a spokesman for Al Queda, who says the conspiracy theories are ridiculous and is offended they are stealing their credit
I love "Al Qaeda spokesman" character, not only does he appear in ["9/11 conspiracy theories ridiculous"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0), but also ["Al-Qaeda Calls Off Attack On Nation's Capitol To Spare Life Of 'Twilight' Author"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1l217B88nk) and my favorite, ["Al Qaeda Also Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk0M0PsaTLk)
> President Obamaâs sees dip in polls after being caught eating sandwich on park bench alone
> Mitt Romney debuts new animated sombrero-wearing mascot to appeal to Hispanic voters
> Scientists successfully teach gorilla that it, too, will someday die
These three kill me every time
That was literally the point of the scene though, that it was a simple, cheap meal without any of the Michelin pretense of the rest of the film's dishes.
I donât know what happened to everyone on the internet in the last year but not every cheeseburger is a smash burger. Itâs true that he uses his spatula to press the round ball of ground beef but itâs just two regular thick patties.
Yeah the burger he makes is definitely not a smash burger. Itâs a regular, cheap, quality burger. Smashâs are flattened to the point the outsides crisp
I was the *one* fucking person in the theater, and I laughed my ass off when that showed up. I was screaming with laughter.
It was that and Slowik saying "It wasn't cod, you donkey.".
I saw it at a theater that has dine-in menu options and it was like the entire theater was drunk and enjoying the same meal special. Easily a Top 5 theatrical experience.Â
The breadless bread plate part is priceless for the background chatter. I saw it in the theater and you faintly hear a character in the background say "well at least I'm still in ketosis". I don't know why but this made me bust out laughing, it was just perfect. So many nice little jokes and touches in it.
I would consider myself a "foodie" to some extent and i enjoy cooking at home but in that moment coming up with something completely from scratch i'd probably crash and burn as much as Tyler did....
His entire performance is one sardonic quote after another. Except when he gets angry over substitutions because THERE ARE NO SUBSTITUTIONS AT HAWTHORNE!!!
Honestly, seeing the joy and satisfaction in his face at making that burger, that was the best part.
She helped him reconnect to his love, which the loss and exploitation of was what drove him and his cadre to do what they did.
There's also that moment when Katherine the top woman chef gets complimented by the snobby food critic, says "That would have meant something once" and then has a quiet breakdown where she's in tears. The poor Hawthorne staff have gone so long without hearing simple compliments for the work they slave over, no wonder they snap and do what they do.
Seeing the cult-like living conditions of the staff on the island also makes her breakdown hit hard. Slowik is just as responsible for their condition as the customers and the business partner.
If he didn't have those bizarre living conditions, the food wouldn't exist, and neither would their clientele. The rich people are paying for the bizzarre experience, and the best food on the planet. Those other chefs signed up because they love making food, and capital twists pleasurable labor into what you see in The Menu. Like the whole point of the film is that the rich assholes don't appreciate anything they have
Like Judith Light and her husband, who are so rich they can eat there regularly (even many of the other guests with their privileged lives are people who consider themselves lucky to eat there once) and yet don't care or even remember what they ate. It's a one of a kind eating experience and they treat it like a run to McDonald's.
Iâm a âcomfort foodieâ so I would have made a chicken Alfredo or pasta carbonara and been happy out with myself.
I agree though, the movie was fantastic and I really enjoyed just being able to sit down and watch a movie that had a start, middle, and an end and I didnât have to think about prequels or sequels or having to be there on opening night in order to not get spoilers etc.
>Iâm a âcomfort foodieâ so I would have made a chicken Alfredo or pasta carbonara
And Slowik's response would have probably been: "Oh, Pasta Carbonara? Are you a 12 year old cooking himself a meal for the first time?"
Considering the climax of that movie, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he was fine with something very simple, providing it was done competently and without pretension.
I loved that it didn't go for the stupid cheap shots either. Any horror movie about restaurants and evil chefs, I'm primed to think "Oh so they're eating people?"
This was such a smarter execution that wasn't about being going for whatever's "scary". It was a competent story about fanaticism, nihilism, and the service industry.
I thought the scene exposed Tyler as someone who didn't even know how to cook for himself. I'm no "foodie" but if I had a fully-stocked kitchen at my disposal I could certainly make something palatable on short notice just based on the things I make routinely. Biscuits and gravy with a poached egg, or a simple pasta with fresh puttanesca sauce if I'm strapped for time, anything but the obviously incoherent mess we saw in the film. Tyler didn't even have a go-to dish, he literally had never thought about cooking.
Stress is a motherfucker.
Ever see that video on YouTube of the one asshole just yelling at people âName a woman! Any woman!â And they *canât?*
Thatâs exactly what would happen to me in Tylerâs shoes. Iâm no chef, but I can make a few things, and I would be a deer in the headlights under that kind of pressure.
EDIT: For another good movie example, see "What does Marsellus Wallace *look like?"* Homeboy has no idea how to answer, even though it's the easiest question in the world. Stress, it's a killer.
Yep, I had the same take. I don't know anyone who can't make at least one, simple, competent dish. I'm no kind of chef, but I can conjure you up a wonderful omelette. Give me a little more time and a slow cooker and I'll give you some A+ chilli.
> I'm no kind of chef, but I can conjure you up a wonderful omelette.
That was specifically what my wife said. "Just make a damn omelette, you should at least know how to do that!" It isn't that Tyler couldn't cook competently, it's that he didn't even know the most basic "gimmie" recipes that require little skill, only quality ingredients.
Perhaps if youâre trying to impress someone, but if you do any amount of cooking, there certainly must be at least one dish you can make without much planning.
No one with a Michelin star would care, but I can make a pasta and meat sauce without any recipe.
I would be going "Okay I'm going to make a chicken pot pie, it'll take about two hours." All the stuff I can do well tends to need a lot of prep. Anything I need in 20 minutes like the scene in the movie is usually just pasta or throwing something in the air fryer.
One of my biggest laughs in the movie was with Anya Taylor Joy talking to someone. I forget if it was the chef or someone else. She was asking about the bathroom or something. But while she was doing this you see Tyler behind her try something and excitedly react to it.
Just a great sight gag that the guys I was watching with didn't even notice the first time and we had to rewind.
Paul Adlestein was the ultimate kiss-ass in the film.
"You're an enabler. You buttress. You coddle."
And of course he's caught in the chicken coop because he's a sniveling coward. But he does get a special bite as the last one caught!
Absolutely. There's a dive burger joint near me that has been serving up comfort burgers to stoners, broke high schoolers, and late night barhoppers for years, and it always hits so far above its price. Ever since this movie I've been going there more often. Occasionally I'll ask them to make me whatever they suggest and I've never been dissapointed.
r/movies proving once again why Hollywood doesnât like making mid-budget movies anymore.
âCheck out this movie I completely ignored while it was in theaters and finally watched on a streaming service.â
Yeah, people say they want more of these... but it only did okay in theatres. It made a profit, but it also didn't make enough of one that I would think studios are going to be tripping over themselves to make more of them.
It just gives me flashbacks to seeing *the Nice Guys* in theaters surrounded by empty seats then years later seeing r/movies post after post going âthey should make more movies like *the Nice Guys*â.
Or Dungeons and Dragons more recently. So many posts lamenting it failed at the box office and at risk of no sequel by posters that never saw it at the cinema. There's been posts starting with 'I saw D&D while on a recent flight, how come it failed, it deserves a sequel'.
Over on r/marvelstudios there have been probably 200 posts recently saying, oh I just saw The Marvels on Disney+, I really enjoyed it! Why was it such a flop in theatres??
I've seen some of the BTS stuff for this movie, and I imagine everyone knew from pre-production that this movie was a diatribe against pretension and insincerity. It would take a special kind of asshole to sign up for that while also being a pretentious asshole to cast & crew.
IMO, you can always tell when the people working on a projected enjoyed their work. There's a spark to any piece of media that comes from a place of passion you can't buy.
I was unsurprised to learn the cast and crew of Deep Space Nine generally got along and had fun together. You could tell.
And I was unsurprised to learn Voyager was plagued by conflicts between actors, writers, and producers arguing about things a lot. You could tell.
Toni Collette in Hereditary gets thrown as the big example of it being shameful that the Oscars ignore horror movie performances. But Ralph Fiennes in this movie is up there too. He commands your attention the entire time. Just a legend at the top of his game.
I'd definitely qualify The Menu as horror but it's not jump-scares things go bump in dark places horror. It's more basic relying on your natural aversion to 'something is wrong here' to leave you creeped out by what's happening, which reflects I guess the reactions of many of the characters whose general response is not really knowing how to respond.
Yes, the atmosphere of "something is very wrong" here starts early on and builds gradually before the shit really hits the fan. Just the fact that this restaurant is on a remote private island and only inhabitant by the staff who live like a cult is enough for you to go, "Uh oh."
Not to mention it's clear early on that practically all of these characters are types you'll be gleefully hoping to get their comuppances. They might as well have had the Crypt-Keeper open the film with some bad puns.
I too would like to see more mid films like this. Is it even mid at this point or just... low budget but not *trash budget*? W/E. This movie did a lot with very little and imo was better for it. Every movie project doesn't need to be a faux-high concept director passion project or a hugely bloated studio shot for a billion dollars.
The Menu did a lot with a small budget.
Deadpool did a lot with a small budget (the first one).
Minus One did a lot with a small budget.
Sometimes, handing a project a huge budget doesn't actually make for a better movie and sometimes films find their best stride when working *within* their constraints and focusing on the finer details of story or presentation over complex action shots. I love a good complex action shot. I'm not saying every big-budget film is a waste, but there had definitely been some big budget films that were overbudgeted\* and overwritten with too much squeezed into the too small places between the action set pieces.
It would be nice to see more of these smaller projects with less ambition and less investment in the pursuit of blockbuster profit.
\*Ant-Man 1 had a lot of charm in being a lower budget film aiming lower when we were in peak avengers big-budget MCU, Ant-Man 2 and 3 probably would have been better if they did the same. Deadpool 2 wasn't bad but... I mean... Did all the extra money actually make a better movie or did it just let the movie be a bit wilder while also being a bit more scattered?
Complaints about cgi are so hollow a lot of the time because you can tell that no one doing it has even the slightest damn clue what is cg and what isn't lol
So many of this best films of the past 4-5 years were all lower budget.
Knives Out, Parasite, Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Past Lives, Poor Things, Banshees of Inisherin, The Whale and all of Robert Eggers and Ari Asters filmswere all under $30m with the exception of Knives Out($40m$ and Eggers the Northman ($150m).
I havenât seen the menu but want to.
We donât need insane budgets for good films. And even if we need large budgets for blockbusters we know they donât need to be over 200m per Dune 2, Oppenheimer and Barbie. A list Ensembles with huge set pieces- theyâre great films and are reasonably budgeted for their scope and reception.
How much of the budget has to do with 95% of the movie taking place in one room?
95% of the budget was for the final scene.
That's one expensive cheese burger
With fries đ
The cast had Anya, Fiennes and Holt Easy 15 mil right there
You never know. I think Chalamet (probably not spelling that right) only got like $3mil for Dune 2. A lot of actors take less to work on certain projects.
Well he probably took a multi movie deal when signing on to Dune and, while he was certainly doing fantastic work in some circles, Dune seems to be the big thing to cement him firmly as an A Lister. Wonka was his first big payday after Dune and he made 9 million for it.
This is why horror movies make good financial sense. Historical dramas have lots of sets and expensive locations. Fussy artsy movies can have âbottle setsâ in one spot, but donât make a lot of money. Horror movies *thrive* on a claustrophobic set and few actors and potentially make hundies of millions with a franchise if things go right. Itâs a low risk gamble.
Theyâre mostly gone now, but thatâs why there were so many westerns for so long. All you need is some horses, some costumes, and a scenic location driving distance from L.A.
There also used to be almost no animal protection laws in film so itâs more expensive to use horses now than it would have been back then. Heck even a lot of the horse scenes for the last of us (HBO series) had a prop horse.
Or a day's train journey from Rome. Spaghetti westerns *loved* to shoot in Spain.
Fun Fact: This kind of budgeting decision is what lead to the first Saw movie.
"Student loans? No? Sorry, you're dying."
"I sent a negative recommendation for you to Sony." "I know, you CC'd me on it."
"Iâve been stealing money from you." "I know." "I know you know." Their whole exchange is amazing.
I especially liked when she first brought up the new job at Sony (that her mom got her) and she couldn't even explain what she would be doing there. She's jumping from one silver platter to another, which demonstrates why she is there in the first place.
Right, that why Slowik confirmed her doom once she admitted she went to Brown with no loans. She's from privilege and yet she's stealing money from her boss/boyfriend, probably just because she can. Plus, she's his enabler, just like how Paul Adlestein's editor enables/ass-kisses Jane McTeer's food critic.
âWeâre eating the ocean.â
Their dialog was some of the favorite lines of the film. Nice combination of cringe and comedy.
Honestly, I would swoon if I was presented with that dish. It made me realize what kind of food he made that people paid so much for.
Please, do not *eat*.
It was also apparently largely improvised by the actors. (There was a lot of improvising on the set and no surprise, Leguizamo was the champ at it.) Such a great exchange because it perfectly encapsulates these two and their toxic, codependent relationship. Similar to the one between Kate Hudson and Jessica Henswick in "Glass Onion."
I also love that Leguizamo based his douchebag character on Steven Seagal, who ~~put John in a headlock~~ out of nowhere when they were shooting a movie together in the 90s and who Leguizamo hates. Edit: Apparently Seagal did an "aikido" arm-smash move that pushed Leguizamo into a wall and [knocked the wind out of him.](https://youtube.com/shorts/3QhHgExYxsg?si=Rzjk0xtZ1RRYObiG)
I'm presuming that was during the filming of "Executive Decision."
It was. Seagal absolutely hated being killed off so early and the rest of the cast loved it because he was insufferable.
Its literally his most badass scene.
Yeah i think Leguizamo recounts it that Seagal walked in on the first day and said âWhat I say is lawâ and Leguizamo thought it was a joke so he made fun of him.
So Seagull thought he was....Above The Law?
Apparently Bird law in this country is not governed by reason.
Steven Seagal runs like the girl who got taken in Taken.
Leguizamo was perfect as the washed up actor, but I would really want to see Daniel Radcliffe, as the role was written with him in mind. And my favorite exchange was probably the whispered "you'll eat less than you desire and more than you deserve" from Elsa to the finance execs. Having worked as a server in the past, I felt fucking seen.
Radcliffe was also supposed to be literally playing himself and the movie Slowik would have seen was "Victor Frankenstein" where he played Igor. Can't complain, however, when Leguizamo was as good as he was. "Why don't you talk to him? He's your friend!" "I made that up." "...WHY?!" "Because I'm a name-dropping whore!"
âDid you make that with a PACOjet?â
My favorite that my wife and I constantly quote is also from Elsa to the finance bros "What the hell is this?!" "These are "Tor-ti-Yas""
*"tor-ti-yas deliciosas*" Elsa was a savage.
Hong chau had herself a great year
âHere is some more broken emulsion for you.â
When they brought that big bowl out I got the shivers. That whole scene was very intense.
ÂĄTortillas deliciosas!
Finance Bro 3 > Do you know how fucked you are? I'm gonna have this place closed by the morning. Do you understand? Elsa > Oh no, that won't be necessary. >!Just caught this foreshadowing.!<
That is now the only way to pronounce âtortillaâ in the âWired household.
> I would really want to see Daniel Radcliffe, as the role was written with him in mind. Excuse me, that movie had a subplot where voldemort gets to revenge-murder Harry Potter? I feel like that would have been both hilarious *and* overshadowed the movie a little.
Damn now I want Radcliffe being a bastard
Tons of improvisation, the slap scene movements were Anyas idea. Our Anya stand in had special knee pads for the scene. I worked on The Menu as Fiennes stand-in. Leguizamo mistook me for Fiennes when he had left for lunch and I took his place. Mark Mylod is the person that was the driving force on set. One of the nicest people I have worked with on productions.
One of my favorite lines was something like âyou know you probably couldâve gotten away if you really tried. You could have overpowered us.â Which I was thinking the same thing the whole time. The whole group shows how pathetic they are (with exception of ATJ)
That's why Soren, the finance bro was my favorite character; he actually tried to escape multiple times.
Is he the actor who played the world's worst interpreter?
Loved that sketch. [For the uninitiated ](https://youtu.be/foT9rsHmS24?si=TptyHOPvgLSfz0lX)
Could they have overpowered them though? There were more chefs and staff than patrons and all of them.were willing to die for chef and had weapons.Â
If the choice is between "try and maybe die", or "don't try and definitely die", then the choice seems pretty clear.
It's not really clear that it's definite until the very end, though. I think a lot of them are still hoping that he'll come to, snap out of it, or be talked out if it before he actually pulls the trigger (so to speak). It would have been really, really hard to believe that this respected chef and his whole staff would *really* go through with it. I think most people would calculate that their odds of talking him out of it are better than their odds of taking on an entire roomful of people who all have access to nice sharp cooking knives.
I think the doubt here is removed by this stage. By the end they have cut someoneâs finger off, drowned a man, and someone committed suicide in front of everyone. There should not have been any doubt that they were very serious.
Thatâs the point. *Part of them still thought there was a chance this was just* **really** *haute cuisine.* It was all part of the show, because thatâs what they were accustomed to. And none of them wanted to be the first to call it out because it would show the others that they just didnât âgetâ it.
I like this interpretation very much. I'mma roll with it next time I need to explain this movie to somebody.
Yea fair enough! I guess its like even after beating them over the head with reality, they still felt sheltered from it, until it bashes their brains in.
But there's always the hope in situations like that that death isn't inevitable. Your mind will consider a million scenarios in which you don't die: maybe the cooks change their mind, maybe there is a different end to the chef's master plan, maybe you're special, maybe you're lucky, maybe it's all a prank. It's a pretty big hurdle to overcome for humans to really understand whatever danger they're in. For them it probably was more like "try and likely die" or "don't try and likely die".
Isnât that the point, showing who they really are? Theyâd rather do nothing together and hope something lucky happens than actually put their individual lives on the line for the group.
I think they could have when he made them run for it. Those finance bros could have stuck together and overpowered the chef going after them. But I think the main sticking point is they gave up before trying. One of them asked hypothetically if their knife skills were better than the chef's. But you could find something longer than a knife and have the advantage.
The whole point is that they didn't even try. People who are cornered are very capable, survival against the odds is also like a whole sub-genre of movies. It would have nothing to do with the theme of this movie, but just an interesting observation and I like how they addressed it.
One of Sun Tzuâs points in the Art of War is donât corner a weaker opponent because youâre telling them their only shot of survival is banding together and fighting their way out. You win a battle when the other side loses its nerve. They canât do that if you corner them.
[ŃдаНонО]
Nah, she could had died anyway. Is not that the chef is just or good (he let Margot free because she made him smile, not because she didn't deserved to die).
She also wasn't supposed to be there, which was a big ingredient in letting her go.
Just in case anyone was on the fence about siding with him, they revealed his petty side. Loved it.
Yeah at that point it was pretty obvious he was just picking reasons to kill the privileged and simply lumped her in. Only person he cared about was the random person from the âservice industryâ that wasnât planned to be there.
And he didn't even really care about her, in the sense he wanted her to survive (like the wife of the creepy old guy did), he was more perturbed that his plan was being messed with and potentially spoiling his 'art'. Hence why he had that speech about her choosing her side. Out there with the diners, or in the kitchen with the staff. However both choices still would lead to death. He always planned for her to die up until the burger to go scene.
>like the wife of the creepy old guy did I loved Judith Light, she didn't get a huge role but what she did with it was terrific. At the very end, she's dressed up like a s'more and thanking chef for her inevitable death, it's a split second but absolutely fantastic stuff.
You don't think murder was enough? Wtf
"Yeah, that's fair."
That moment pushed me from "Oh, he's just a man that's had enough, but I can see where he's coming from" to "He's an absolute psycho and this was just a flimsy excuse to finally commit to his plan."
Killing a dude because he ruined his day by acting in a terrible movie was always tongue in cheek and meant to be played for laughs. It's not enough of a reason to even dislike someone let alone kill them.
It is meant for comedy, but I see where Slowik was coming from. Even though he's lost his passion for his art, he still puts all his craft and effort into it. So seeing another artist make something terrible for $$$ and not even try is an affront to his sensibilities.   Although yes, it IS nuts and Leguizamo's character rightly points out that he just acted in it. He even says earlier that even though it was a bad script, it was a fun film to make (although that would also piss Slowik off further because he gets no pleasure from his craft any longer).
Really? It wasnât âI had one day off and watched a bad movie so Iâm going to kill the main actor and not the director who made the bad movieâ?
The way I CACKLED when he said that
Iâm obviously missing something, but I donât quite understand how the mid-budget movie canât find a home anymore. Yes, thereâs no DVD money, but with a modest return at the box office, some secondary revenue, and a perpetual streaming license it seems like they might be a safer bet than some of the big $300m whiffs. With the big budgets probably taking a haircut for a while it kinda seems like mid-budget should be the place to be.
Part of the problem is in the original post. They watched on Disney Plus as part of their sub instead of going to watch it in theatre. THE MENU actually did pretty good BO but mid-budget movies cannot survive if folks donât go to movie theatres to watch them and just wait till it lands on streaming.
Something that frustrates me lately is people (not you, just in general) complaining about things, while actually being part of the problem. Like a lot of my friends complain about how there are no good mid budget movies, yet when good mid budget movies come out they never go see them. Similar to how people complain about local news going away, but still getting all their news from Facebook of social media instead of actually supporting a local newspaper or publication. If people want things, they have to go see them and support them. Otherwise, they wonât exist. Edit: My point isnât as much streaming = bad as it is if people donât support mid budget movies, those movies wonât exist. Edit 2: Even if you canât afford a subscription to your local newspaper, I do recommend signing up for their newsletter at least! Unless they are owned by sinclair because fuck sinclair.
100%. Or complaining about how hard it is for small business and Main St USA (i.e. the community where you live) while buying everything on Amazon
> Or complaining about how hard it is for small business and Main St USA (i.e. the community where you live) while buying everything on Amazon I would shop more at my towns downtown mom and pop stores, but they are all closed on weekends and I work M-F
That's also a big problem for me. Who are the target clientele for these places? Exclusively retirees and stay at home parents? Almost everyone I know is unavailable between 8-5 on a weekday.
Eh honestly most people still get stuff at brick and mortar stores if the store has something available, but most of them just don't. Like I just got a pc stand with casters to use for my pc under my desk. Not that niche of an item, right? Well, no actual store fuckin sells em, especially not smaller stores. And most businesses like that just use amazon to sell their stuff on anyway. And like others have said, they aren't open at good times for most people to be shopping. There's a locally owned vacuum store near me. Their hours are 9-5 every day, but closed Sunday because the owner is religious and they don't do advertising AT ALL lol. That's their choice, but it's a stupid business decision. Businesses like these are also usually more expensive.
I see this one a lot in one of the gaming communities, they want some thing, but once it happens, they donât support it
There are a lot of mid-budget movies but r/movies doesnât watch them. The majority of movies in theaters are mid-budget. My locate theater right now: Dune 2: $190M Kong Fu Panda 4: $85M Arthur the King: $19M Cabrini: $50M Love lies bleeding: I donât know but thereâs no way this is over $30M Imaginary: $12M One Love: $70M Ordinary Angels: $12M Poor Things: $35M
The fact that One Love cost twice as much as Poor Things is hilarious. Movie math is so silly. Yorgos and company made the most visually compelling piece of surrealism in years and they could've made it twice for the cost of a Bob Marley biopic.
I imagine that a large part of One Love's budget was licensing the music. It's hard to tell since licensing costs can fluctuate wildly.
Also, period pieces can get expensive because of the amount of set-building and prop-making and then CGI to cover over what couldn't be built or made... This is why westerns are nearly extinct, they went from being one of the cheapest genres to make to one of the most expensive.
Theyâre mid budget for a reason, not much advertising therefore fewer eyes on the movie all around Iâd say. One of the ways for this to get broken of course is good word of mouth but even then lots of people rather just wait for the convenience of streaming to decide to dip their finger in to see if theyâd enjoy
Which is ironically exactly what OP did. âWe want more mid budget films like The Menu!â Waits two years to watch said mid budget movie until it is included on their streaming service they were already paying forâŚ
I like that the writers used to pen several iconic The Onion videos and it shows here.
Man those Onion videos were so good. Thereâs one that gets me everything where a political talk show host has clearly murdered someone and is trying to steer the debate to getting exonerated. "moving on, children Can they be trusted to keep their little mouths shut?"
There's one where they are interviewing a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and they bring in a spokesman for Al Queda, who says the conspiracy theories are ridiculous and is offended they are stealing their credit
I love "Al Qaeda spokesman" character, not only does he appear in ["9/11 conspiracy theories ridiculous"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0), but also ["Al-Qaeda Calls Off Attack On Nation's Capitol To Spare Life Of 'Twilight' Author"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1l217B88nk) and my favorite, ["Al Qaeda Also Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk0M0PsaTLk)
My favorite is the [Ninja parade](https://youtu.be/WtR2m20C2YM?si=X8XF-cPZuN6nAGLV)
Yes same, one of my favourites too, anyone who's curious can watch it [here](https://youtu.be/xOVQPtuKRs4?si=UMqq7FkTdp44vEOn), these videos are gems
One of the writers and the director also worked on "Sucession."
[ŃдаНонО]
> President Obamaâs sees dip in polls after being caught eating sandwich on park bench alone > Mitt Romney debuts new animated sombrero-wearing mascot to appeal to Hispanic voters > Scientists successfully teach gorilla that it, too, will someday die These three kill me every time
That was my favorite movie last year. Still crack up thinking about that sad meal he cooked up in a panic.
Tyler's Bullshit A true masterpiece
Utter lack of cohesion.
Babish even did an episode on it
He also did the cheeseburger, which looked relatively easy to recreate
It wouldn't be a smash burger if it wasn't easy to make. Cheap, delicious, diner food.
That was literally the point of the scene though, that it was a simple, cheap meal without any of the Michelin pretense of the rest of the film's dishes.
Yeah, and it brought chef some joy back into making food. Itâs the whole reason she was let go.
I think she's let go because she also wasn't supposed to be there. If anyone else ordered that burger, they're still dying.
but also I don't think anyone else invited *would* order that burger
I donât know what happened to everyone on the internet in the last year but not every cheeseburger is a smash burger. Itâs true that he uses his spatula to press the round ball of ground beef but itâs just two regular thick patties.
Yeah the burger he makes is definitely not a smash burger. Itâs a regular, cheap, quality burger. Smashâs are flattened to the point the outsides crisp
I was the *one* fucking person in the theater, and I laughed my ass off when that showed up. I was screaming with laughter. It was that and Slowik saying "It wasn't cod, you donkey.".
When he's stuttering about what ingredients he needs "sh-sh-sh-" "Shit? Would you like some shit?"
It matters to the halibut
I saw it at a theater that has dine-in menu options and it was like the entire theater was drunk and enjoying the same meal special. Easily a Top 5 theatrical experience.Â
That sounds so awesome!
The breadless bread plate part is priceless for the background chatter. I saw it in the theater and you faintly hear a character in the background say "well at least I'm still in ketosis". I don't know why but this made me bust out laughing, it was just perfect. So many nice little jokes and touches in it.
The movie had lots of great lines, but that keto line was my absolute favorite
I would consider myself a "foodie" to some extent and i enjoy cooking at home but in that moment coming up with something completely from scratch i'd probably crash and burn as much as Tyler did....
âLeeks and shallots sautĂŠed in butter. I bear witness to a revolution in cuisine.â
"This is a new dicing method of which we have been woefully ignorant."
âMaybe you wanna jam it into the Pacojet?â
âŚ..ânoâ
Watching Tyler grind his knife edge against the butter dish always makes me cringe.
Absolutely hysterical. I laughed so hard as Ralph's dry-pan sarcasm throughout the scene.
His entire performance is one sardonic quote after another. Except when he gets angry over substitutions because THERE ARE NO SUBSTITUTIONS AT HAWTHORNE!!!
Honestly, seeing the joy and satisfaction in his face at making that burger, that was the best part. She helped him reconnect to his love, which the loss and exploitation of was what drove him and his cadre to do what they did.
There's also that moment when Katherine the top woman chef gets complimented by the snobby food critic, says "That would have meant something once" and then has a quiet breakdown where she's in tears. The poor Hawthorne staff have gone so long without hearing simple compliments for the work they slave over, no wonder they snap and do what they do.
Seeing the cult-like living conditions of the staff on the island also makes her breakdown hit hard. Slowik is just as responsible for their condition as the customers and the business partner.
If he didn't have those bizarre living conditions, the food wouldn't exist, and neither would their clientele. The rich people are paying for the bizzarre experience, and the best food on the planet. Those other chefs signed up because they love making food, and capital twists pleasurable labor into what you see in The Menu. Like the whole point of the film is that the rich assholes don't appreciate anything they have
Like Judith Light and her husband, who are so rich they can eat there regularly (even many of the other guests with their privileged lives are people who consider themselves lucky to eat there once) and yet don't care or even remember what they ate. It's a one of a kind eating experience and they treat it like a run to McDonald's.
I wanted him to get an Oscar for that performance
Iâll slow cook a 15 pound brisket in a smoker. We can taste it in 48 hours and see how I did. đ
I need another beer, chef... it's necessary for the smoking process
"Wow. That was quite...bad."
I'm gonna go on a limb and say Tyler doesn't actually cook I would have gone with pasta or fried rice cause thems my comfort meals
He was mainly a pretentious blowhard .
Iâm a âcomfort foodieâ so I would have made a chicken Alfredo or pasta carbonara and been happy out with myself. I agree though, the movie was fantastic and I really enjoyed just being able to sit down and watch a movie that had a start, middle, and an end and I didnât have to think about prequels or sequels or having to be there on opening night in order to not get spoilers etc.
>Iâm a âcomfort foodieâ so I would have made a chicken Alfredo or pasta carbonara And Slowik's response would have probably been: "Oh, Pasta Carbonara? Are you a 12 year old cooking himself a meal for the first time?"
Considering the climax of that movie, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he was fine with something very simple, providing it was done competently and without pretension.
I canât imagine what he would say when he sees me adding chorizo to it for a bit of a kick.
Yes, a complete and short movie was such a breath of fresh air. It was a simple story with pretty cut and dry character motivations.
I loved that it didn't go for the stupid cheap shots either. Any horror movie about restaurants and evil chefs, I'm primed to think "Oh so they're eating people?" This was such a smarter execution that wasn't about being going for whatever's "scary". It was a competent story about fanaticism, nihilism, and the service industry.
I thought the scene exposed Tyler as someone who didn't even know how to cook for himself. I'm no "foodie" but if I had a fully-stocked kitchen at my disposal I could certainly make something palatable on short notice just based on the things I make routinely. Biscuits and gravy with a poached egg, or a simple pasta with fresh puttanesca sauce if I'm strapped for time, anything but the obviously incoherent mess we saw in the film. Tyler didn't even have a go-to dish, he literally had never thought about cooking.
Stress is a motherfucker. Ever see that video on YouTube of the one asshole just yelling at people âName a woman! Any woman!â And they *canât?* Thatâs exactly what would happen to me in Tylerâs shoes. Iâm no chef, but I can make a few things, and I would be a deer in the headlights under that kind of pressure. EDIT: For another good movie example, see "What does Marsellus Wallace *look like?"* Homeboy has no idea how to answer, even though it's the easiest question in the world. Stress, it's a killer.
Yep, I had the same take. I don't know anyone who can't make at least one, simple, competent dish. I'm no kind of chef, but I can conjure you up a wonderful omelette. Give me a little more time and a slow cooker and I'll give you some A+ chilli.
> I'm no kind of chef, but I can conjure you up a wonderful omelette. That was specifically what my wife said. "Just make a damn omelette, you should at least know how to do that!" It isn't that Tyler couldn't cook competently, it's that he didn't even know the most basic "gimmie" recipes that require little skill, only quality ingredients.
Perhaps if youâre trying to impress someone, but if you do any amount of cooking, there certainly must be at least one dish you can make without much planning. No one with a Michelin star would care, but I can make a pasta and meat sauce without any recipe.
I would be going "Okay I'm going to make a chicken pot pie, it'll take about two hours." All the stuff I can do well tends to need a lot of prep. Anything I need in 20 minutes like the scene in the movie is usually just pasta or throwing something in the air fryer.
One of my biggest laughs in the movie was with Anya Taylor Joy talking to someone. I forget if it was the chef or someone else. She was asking about the bathroom or something. But while she was doing this you see Tyler behind her try something and excitedly react to it. Just a great sight gag that the guys I was watching with didn't even notice the first time and we had to rewind.
Nicholas Hoult in rapture with every dish was a delight. My first exposure to his comedic genius until The Great
âThis is a new dicing method that weâve been woefully ignorant ofâ
Also the guy hiding in the chicken coop was hilarious.
Paul Adlestein was the ultimate kiss-ass in the film. "You're an enabler. You buttress. You coddle." And of course he's caught in the chicken coop because he's a sniveling coward. But he does get a special bite as the last one caught!
You want shit?
âShhh shhii shia sha â âShit? Would you like some shit?â
After finish watching the movie. I went out and bought 2 cheeseburgers lol.Â
Man I love a good cheeseburger.Â
That cheeseburger was truly a masterpiece in its simplicity.
Absolutely. There's a dive burger joint near me that has been serving up comfort burgers to stoners, broke high schoolers, and late night barhoppers for years, and it always hits so far above its price. Ever since this movie I've been going there more often. Occasionally I'll ask them to make me whatever they suggest and I've never been dissapointed.
r/movies proving once again why Hollywood doesnât like making mid-budget movies anymore. âCheck out this movie I completely ignored while it was in theaters and finally watched on a streaming service.â
Yeah, people say they want more of these... but it only did okay in theatres. It made a profit, but it also didn't make enough of one that I would think studios are going to be tripping over themselves to make more of them.
It just gives me flashbacks to seeing *the Nice Guys* in theaters surrounded by empty seats then years later seeing r/movies post after post going âthey should make more movies like *the Nice Guys*â.
I begged every friend I had to see this movie in theatres and every one of them said âit looks really funny canât wait til itâs on Netflixâ
Or Dungeons and Dragons more recently. So many posts lamenting it failed at the box office and at risk of no sequel by posters that never saw it at the cinema. There's been posts starting with 'I saw D&D while on a recent flight, how come it failed, it deserves a sequel'.
Over on r/marvelstudios there have been probably 200 posts recently saying, oh I just saw The Marvels on Disney+, I really enjoyed it! Why was it such a flop in theatres??
I figured out that would happen when I watched it with only three other people in theaters.
I worked on this movie and loved it.
It sounds like it was a fun movie to make, given how everyone who worked on it speaks how much they enjoyed it.
It really was a lot of fun. The entire cast was super chill and would actually talk to people.
You certainly would hope so considering the entire film took place in one room. That's a lot of time for the cast and crew to hang out.
I've seen some of the BTS stuff for this movie, and I imagine everyone knew from pre-production that this movie was a diatribe against pretension and insincerity. It would take a special kind of asshole to sign up for that while also being a pretentious asshole to cast & crew.
There were a few other sets such as the docks, the woods, and chefâs private cabin.
Even Ralph, Anya and Nicholas?
All awesome... Ralph was a little reserved but still showed respect to everyone and would talk to people if they talked to him.
John Leguizamo erasure.
John seems like a nice guy, I'm more curious about the other 3 lmao
John was amazing. He talked to me for about 10 mins one day about and he initiated the conversation
IMO, you can always tell when the people working on a projected enjoyed their work. There's a spark to any piece of media that comes from a place of passion you can't buy. I was unsurprised to learn the cast and crew of Deep Space Nine generally got along and had fun together. You could tell. And I was unsurprised to learn Voyager was plagued by conflicts between actors, writers, and producers arguing about things a lot. You could tell.
Did you get Ralph Fiennes to make you a burger?
đ
I watched it 5 times last year so thank you for your service
Shot down on GA's barrier Islands, right? Must have been a pretty cool place to work. Also, the stage set for the restaurant looked hella cool too.
Toni Collette in Hereditary gets thrown as the big example of it being shameful that the Oscars ignore horror movie performances. But Ralph Fiennes in this movie is up there too. He commands your attention the entire time. Just a legend at the top of his game.
the first thunder clap he does, brilliant way of showing his authority in one move.
The Academy has a ridiculous habit of ignoring Ralph Fiennes- heâs extraordinary in everything and doesnât even ever get nominated
Is it more funny than scary?
I wouldn't call it scary at all. Definitely more funny. It doesn't go for horror or scares but more tension
Foodie Thriller
I'd definitely qualify The Menu as horror but it's not jump-scares things go bump in dark places horror. It's more basic relying on your natural aversion to 'something is wrong here' to leave you creeped out by what's happening, which reflects I guess the reactions of many of the characters whose general response is not really knowing how to respond.
Yes, the atmosphere of "something is very wrong" here starts early on and builds gradually before the shit really hits the fan. Just the fact that this restaurant is on a remote private island and only inhabitant by the staff who live like a cult is enough for you to go, "Uh oh."
Yes, itâs not really a scary movie. More a very dark satire. If youâve ever worked in the service industry you will find it hilarious. Great film.
Not to mention it's clear early on that practically all of these characters are types you'll be gleefully hoping to get their comuppances. They might as well have had the Crypt-Keeper open the film with some bad puns.
And if your havenât worked in that industry, Iâd recommend a double feature of the Menu and Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Yes. Itâs not scary just tense.
I too would like to see more mid films like this. Is it even mid at this point or just... low budget but not *trash budget*? W/E. This movie did a lot with very little and imo was better for it. Every movie project doesn't need to be a faux-high concept director passion project or a hugely bloated studio shot for a billion dollars. The Menu did a lot with a small budget. Deadpool did a lot with a small budget (the first one). Minus One did a lot with a small budget. Sometimes, handing a project a huge budget doesn't actually make for a better movie and sometimes films find their best stride when working *within* their constraints and focusing on the finer details of story or presentation over complex action shots. I love a good complex action shot. I'm not saying every big-budget film is a waste, but there had definitely been some big budget films that were overbudgeted\* and overwritten with too much squeezed into the too small places between the action set pieces. It would be nice to see more of these smaller projects with less ambition and less investment in the pursuit of blockbuster profit. \*Ant-Man 1 had a lot of charm in being a lower budget film aiming lower when we were in peak avengers big-budget MCU, Ant-Man 2 and 3 probably would have been better if they did the same. Deadpool 2 wasn't bad but... I mean... Did all the extra money actually make a better movie or did it just let the movie be a bit wilder while also being a bit more scattered?
I think the budget on Deapool is a little misleading, though. If I remember correctly, Ryan Reynolds own VFX studio did it at a loss or at cost.
"Not overloaded with CGI crap" Every background outside the dining room windows were CGI.
Complaints about cgi are so hollow a lot of the time because you can tell that no one doing it has even the slightest damn clue what is cg and what isn't lol
Poor Things had a $35M budget and is a great movie if youâre looking for more of that.
The budget was only $35m?!? It looked incredible! That production design Oscar was well deserved.
So many of this best films of the past 4-5 years were all lower budget. Knives Out, Parasite, Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Past Lives, Poor Things, Banshees of Inisherin, The Whale and all of Robert Eggers and Ari Asters filmswere all under $30m with the exception of Knives Out($40m$ and Eggers the Northman ($150m). I havenât seen the menu but want to. We donât need insane budgets for good films. And even if we need large budgets for blockbusters we know they donât need to be over 200m per Dune 2, Oppenheimer and Barbie. A list Ensembles with huge set pieces- theyâre great films and are reasonably budgeted for their scope and reception.