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J.K. Simmons recommended Juno (2007) in Movies (curated)

 
Juno (2007)
Juno (2007)
2007 | Comedy, Drama

"My last two are gonna be Whiplash and Juno, for obvious reasons. [laughs] Juno came along, what is that, 10 years ago now? That came along when I had a nicely established career going and was paying my mortgage and putting my kids through their outrageous L.A. private school. We’d moved out from New York to L.A. two or three years before that, and I’d met Jason. I’d done Jason Reitman’s first feature, Thank You For Smoking, which is also an underrated film, by the way. Actually, he joined our semi-regular poker game when I was playing it at the time. And he quickly became, from a guy who basically barely knew what beats what in poker, he quickly became one of the best players at the table just because he’s such a smart guy. But we were playing at my friend’s house, and Jason showed up and he just handed me this paper script and he said, “Hey, I’m gonna be working on this,” or, “I just got this,” or something sort of vague, and he said, “You gotta read this. This is so good. It’s by this writer nobody ever heard of.” That night or the next day, I read the script, and of course immediately fell in love with the part of Juno’s dad, Mac MacGuff. You know, [Reitman] hadn’t said anything to me. He hadn’t said, “Look at this part,” or, “Look at that part.” So, I’m thinking, you know, maybe he wants me to play the drugstore guy in the first scene, or maybe he just wanted to share it with me because we’re pals now. I don’t know. It wasn’t until days later — and I wasn’t gonna say, “Hey, I wanna play this part” — it wasn’t until days later that he said, “Oh, God, of course, J.K. I want you to play the dad. Of course I do.” And he said, “I got the whole movie cast already in my head. I hope we get everybody I want.” Of course, the people financing the movie wanted him to get some famous pop star to play Juno, and they wanted to get some very well-known actor to play Juno’s dad. There were lists of guys that were way more famous than I was, but they kept throwing at Jason saying, “Look, if you want to get this movie made and get the budget that you want to have, these are the kind of guys that you need to play Juno’s dad.” For both Ellen Page and for me — and really for most of the characters, for Michael Cera, for Allison Janney — you know, these were all the people that he had in mind as soon as he read the script, but he knew he wanted the cast in the movie. He went to bat for all of us, and Ellen and I actually had to do a full on screen test that he set up with film, on actual film, at a sound stage. Jason had us do a couple scenes from the movie to convince the money people that we were the actors that were gonna help make the movie the best it could be. So that was a really nice vote of confidence from Jason, who, by the way, I just emailed five minutes before you called, because I’m gonna be doing his next movie, The Front Runner, which we start shooting in like less than two weeks."

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    The Witcher: Old World

    The Witcher: Old World

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    Tabletop Game

    In The Witcher: Old World, you become a witcher — a professional monster slayer — and immerse...

Molly's Game (2017)
Molly's Game (2017)
2017 | Drama
Perfectionism, pressure, drive, success – “Molly’s Game” tells the story of a woman pushed to achieve these qualities by her father (Kevin Costner) throughout her childhood and adolescence. The pressure to become perfect went far with Molly (Jessica Chastain), who grows up to become an Olympic-class skier and scores astronomically on the law school entrance exam.

But Molly doesn’t go to law school, and she doesn’t win the gold medal. She comes in fourth and slides into the seedy world of high stakes gambling, where her clever mind and charming appearance take her far. She becomes a leader of an underground world, filled with money, greed, and glamour.

Her gambling ring included players that were famous, wealthy, and in some cases criminal. She became the target of an FBI investigation, that revealed how little she was actually in the know about her own game.

Chastain does a great job in her role as Molly. Her striking features and strong demeanor exude a woman in charge. Particularly enjoyable is the performance by Michael Cera as Player X, a celebrity poker player who always plays in the big leagues. Cera, does a great job of making you wonder which celebrity Player X was, and why he was so heavily involved in the high stakes gaming world. It is a nice switch u for Cera into a more serious kind of role.

The consequences of Molly’s choices unfold rapidly. Making it fast paced and suspenseful, without a dull moment.

The style of the film paints a pretty picture of an ugly scene, with each shot appearing beautifully smooth and gliding transitions that grab a viewer’s focus.

“Molly’s Game” is a must see for anyone who loves a good crime-thriller, especially one based on a tell all of a real human experience in a wild reality.