The 2023 20:20 Frame Game

That’s some impressive Hawke recognition! You are indeed correct, it is Predestination, the adaptation of Heinlein’s classic time travel story, All You Zombies. I highly recommend it for some timey-wimey goodness. And if you don’t have time for the movie, read the story! It’s very short and very good!

@charmtrap, tell us your life story in a bar! (or just give us a screenshot).

New 20

Enemy of the State?

Yes it is Enemy of the State! A typically blown-out, overdirected, way too long mess from Tony Scott that somehow still manages to be entertaining. Will Smith is charming, Gene Hackman is crabby, Jon Voight is conniving, and even a small role for our recently-departed hero Tom Sizemore. It’s pretty silly, but if you have 2 hours 30 to kill, there are worse ways.

All yours, @BellaConfusione!

I find it much more enjoyable in all its over the top Tony Scottness than Spy Game, which I recently watched. That completely superfluous rotating helicopter shot of a rooftop in some Eastern European metropolis doubling for Paris epitomizes everything wrong with his direction, which I quite like to a certain degree.

Here’s your new 20:20. I’m off to bed, so if someone gets it immediately, they’ll have to wait a bit unfortunately.

No Sudden Move? Wasn’t it done already?

Yes to the former, no to the latter. No Sudden Move (2021) it is.

40:40

60:60

80:80

100:100

@ArtVandelay you’re up

I liked No Sudden Move. A fun little movie, surprisingly lightweight (in a good way) considering all the names involved.

Now, who can tell me what movie this 20:20 is from?

No guesses? Maybe the 40:40 will help:

I’ve seen none of them but will guess with Hunger Games… 3? Is there a 3rd one?

There may be, but it’s not the movie you’re looking at here.

I wasn’t sure after the 20:20, but after the 40:40, I’m positive…

I haven’t seen this movie.

I have seen this. But it was a looooong time ago, on HBO. We’re talking circa 2000/2001. And it tickled my brain until now.

It is also one of my favorite movie posters.

Julie Taymor’s retelling of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. It’s a very distinctive mesh of Ancient Rome in a 1950s timeline. Centurions on motorcycles!

https://youtu.be/SkDI4oD6Aeo

You are correct, of course, and the rest of the frames (and there are a lot of them) will be posted when I get home. I wouldn’t describe it as Rome in the 50’s though, in as much as you can pinpoint an era for this deliberately out-of-time setting, I think it would be in the 90s when it was made.

Titus, 60:60:

The 80:80 finally shows us Titus Andronicus himself, Anthony Hopkins:

The scene the 100:100 is from presents us with a puzzle: Titus Andronicus is sometimes described as Shakespeare’s worst play, but it contains the following exchange:
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: That which thou canst not undo.
CHIRON: Thou hast undone our mother.
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
If all the other plays are so great, how come none of them feature Yo Mama jokes?

In the 120:120 we see the Goth army camp. Note that in the 40:40 Alan Cumming may be wearing black lipstick, but he isn’t a Goth, he’s a Roman. The Goths are the Blondes.

Finally, in the 140:140 we have Lydia from Breaking Bad (OK, the actor is Laura Fraser):

The movie is nearly long enough for a 160:160 frame, and it’s not hard to believe it stayed in @Woolen_Horde’s mind all these years. The crazy production design, music and costumes are fitting for this over the top, unhinged story and the characters who drive it. It’s an unrelentingly grim tragedy, where I’m not sure whose side the audience is supposed to be on: Titus and his family are depicted as if they are tragic heroes, but King Lear he is not, right from the opening moment where he sacrifices a son in front of his mother, and the guy who constantly monologues about being evil ends up by far as the most sympathetic character in the story.

A world that seems to be a complete moral vacuum. Five stars.

Oh, yeah, Laura Fraser. Sigh.

20:20

Boy A?

Boy Nein!

That looks like the back of Robert Redford’s head.

I have totally seen this. I think.