Film Junk Podcast Episode #388: Looper

Posted by on October 2nd, 2012   Filed under: Featured, Film Junk Podcast

0:00 – Intro
4:35 – Review: Looper
24:40 – Headlines: Marc Webb to Direct The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Mark Millar to Oversee Fox Marvel Movies, Matt Reeves to Direct Dawn of the Planet of the Apes?, Len Wiseman to Direct The Mummy Reboot
38:00 – Other Stuff We Watched: The Princess and the Frog, 21 Jump Street, Jeepers Creepers, Don’t Look Now, The Game, Sound of My Voice, Timecop
1:11:30 – Junk Mail: Favourite DVD and Blu-ray Menus, Favourite Opening and Closing Credits, Deckard is a Replicant, Period Pieces, Overanalyzing Films, Throwing Away DVD Sleeves
1:42:00 – This Week on DVD and Blu-ray
1:45:00 – Outro
1:47:14 – Spoiler Discussion: Looper

Film Junk Podcast Episode #388: Looper by Filmjunk on Mixcloud

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  • Kasper

    Funny enough The Scorpion King is the best movie in the Mummy series.

  • Steve

    A filmjunk episode under two hours?
    Are you mad at us? We’ll be better, promise!

  • rjdelight

    Is there something up with the itunes feed? I was trying to download a couple of the late 200 episodes and kept getting errors. Anyone else having issues?

  • rjdelight

    the looper spoiler talk pushes it over 2.

  • Are there specific episodes that aren’t working for you?

    I recently made a change on our server to prevent multiple simultaneous downloads because download accelerators have been killing the site. It’s possible that also blocked iTunes if it opens multiple connections at once.

  • kyri

    /*SPOILERIFIC*/<-thing for the FJ glossary?

    Frank. what you say with the kid makes no sense. no matter how many disney films you show to that kid at the moment. It will have nothing to do with the future because it is not his uprising at the time that makes him evil. it is Bruce Willis killing his mother and leaving him an orphan what transformed him.

    The plothole that Sean mentioned bothered me as well, but I thought at the moment that she was alive and she was sent back for JGL to kill (I thought they showed that scene at the beginning)

    Also .. maybe at the BWills timeline they didn't know about closing the loops deal. maybe the rainmaker is closing the loops because he knows that this is how he becomes who he is at the time. (maybe he fancies being evil).

    But I think what J says sums it up.. it's pointless to talk about plotholes in films of this kind..
    because to the bottom line:

    If they can send people from china to the land of the free, then why not just dump them in the middle of the ocean.. no need for a film the first place.

    The concept is a vehicle to explore more interesting stuff.. you just have to suspend your disbelieve otherwise don't even bother watching films like this..

  • Lori C

    Thoroughly enjoyed this episode and the discussion on period films versus contemporary films once viewed in the future. You guys touched on a topic that I hope you will explore more thoroughly in a future episode.

    Under “Other Stuff we Watched” –
    Perhaps you could list two or three nonrelease films that your team will watch and review on an upcoming episode, allowing us listeners time to watch the films, too? These should be films in the public domain or available through sites, such as, youtube, hulu, netfli, amazon, etc.

    Great work and thank you all for your hard work.

  • Thanks Lori! That’s a good idea. We don’t always co-ordinate the What We Watched stuff, but maybe at the end of the show when we talk about what the next main review will be we can mention if there are any related films we are thinking about revisiting as well.

  • Fatbologna

    In this podcast Frank’s nitpicks about the kid and Sean’s nitpicks about the plot in Looper did the same thing for me that the kid did for Frank in the movie. Frank’s bitching dragged me into an anger loop that didn’t end until *SPOILER* I killed myself.

  • rjdelight

    Sean, #279 is what i was trying to download. It didn’t work, so I tried a few other episodes between 260-280 and kept getting errors.

  • scott

    I had a bunch of issues with this movie, but the biggest would probably have to be morality. The characters seem to have no qualms about killing people for a living and even killing their friends, etc., but then they give these sappy speeches about their girlfriends and you’re supposed to feel bad about the end. It was too much for me to take. The whole movie is like look how cool it is to mutilate people, but these poor guys can’t get rich killing people without dying thirty years later poor poor them. It was total fucking shit.

    scott
    http://www.reconditepictures.com

  • scott

    Hollywood hates period pieces and films set in snowy settings because nobody sees that stuff.

  • ***SPOILERS***

    @#11 Scott

    I was thinking a similar thing through the whole film, because these are BAD guys to begin with. We don’t know anything about the people they’re killing, and while they’re likely dealing with other unsavory criminal types, there might be some more innocent folks involved too, or at least people that don’t deserve to die. What we DO know when the loops start getting closed is that the person getting killed was a killer themselves. Why should we be sympathetic to some mystery man taking them out? Other than retiring these guys early, we don’t know anything else about the Rainmaker’s agenda. As far as we know, he’s not out to rule the world or anything, he’s just taking out other gangsters and stuff. He’s a bad guy only from the perspective of the bad guy, and normal folks in the future might be better off having him around. JGL didn’t really sacrifice himself at the end for the greater good. His death, and the kid maybe not becoming the Rainmaker, just means that the future mob that he works for can just keep going about their business.

    I enjoyed the first half of the film quite a bit more than the second, and I also don’t think that the TK really added anything to the Rainmaker plot at all. Now, if we found out that someday the Rainmaker went all Akira on everybody and fucked up the world with his telekinesis, that would be something, but again, we just see him toss some shit around and liquify that one dude. It doesn’t really play an important part in the finale at all. I think someone pointed out on the podcast that they still could have gotten to the ending they ended up with without the TK.

  • Also, I’d like to suggest “Gorillas in the Mist” for your ape-themed premium podcast. Since the apes in that film were a tad less murdery than their cinematic brethren, they tend to get overlooked. It’s too bad you already did “Project X” (and that the ape show was a joke anyway) *sigh*

  • I like the Fantastic Four movies as well. They were fun, lighthearted and pure comic-book. I would take the first FF over the bloated Thor and it’s ilk, with their exaggerated self-importance. The FF are one of Marvel’s more silly inventions and the original film captured it as well as any movie could.

    The Abyss Special Edition DVD has one of the best menus I ever seen, beautifully animated as the inside of the Deepcore rig.

  • Falsk

    Dude. Frank hating on “Enchanted”? Ouch. The movie itself may be shit, but damn if those aren’t some of the best Disney songs in a long, long while…

  • Lucas3D

    Looper thoughts: it would have been cool in the first timeline after BW is shot straight away that JGL sees he has a tattoo of the Eiffel tower on his neck. That emergent information and JD china spiel was enough for JGL to choose to go to china instead. Ultimately he ends up with a shitty looking Chinese tattoo anyway or instead.
    On the girl dying, maybe the trouble is that the body is left in the world and technology can reverse engineer biology and even memories, so it’s WHAT that person knows thats is dangerous and that lady might not know shit. You gotta get rid of the biological material ;)