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Reminder: Act of Valor was a real movie that came out.
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Oct 10, 2015 20:15
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Criminal Minded posted:I'm shocked to learn how many people took a "Rah Rah America" message away from fuckin' ZD30. i'm not sure there's a more concrete example of a movie that so many people made up their minds on before watching it. maybe Last Temptation of Christ, i guess.
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Oct 10, 2015 20:16
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Criminal Minded posted:I'm shocked to learn how many people took a "Rah Rah America" message away from fuckin' ZD30. Goons.
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Oct 10, 2015 20:24
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Criminal Minded posted:I'm shocked to learn how many people took a "Rah Rah America" message away from fuckin' ZD30.
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Oct 10, 2015 21:18
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Josh Lyman posted:Wasn't the whole reason it got "bad publicity" because people thought it glamorized war? that was American Sniper. ZD30 got in trouble for supposedly condoning torture.
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Oct 10, 2015 21:21
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Also American Sniper didn't get bad publicity.
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Oct 10, 2015 21:39
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:i'm not sure there's a more concrete example of a movie that so many people made up their minds on before watching it. I'll admit that it's hard to tune out the publicity noise machine of headlines and think pieces, but I mostly felt that it was made a little too soon after the assassination itself for proper critical consideration (by a nation still relatively consumed in war fervor), and way too close to a presidential reelection to not be considered utilitarian on a political level. The fact that there were all sorts of weird conflicting interchanges between Boal, Bigelow, and CIA representatives really muddied the waters for a movie that's play-acting as narrative based on facts at hand. REDACTED. It doesn't have to condone warfare, militaristic culture or even torture to come off as propaganda. If you don't think the tag line "The Greatest Manhunt in History" has a conniving tone in relation to our extra-legal affairs in other countries then I don't know what to tell you. Or maybe I just think it's cowardly to present a moment of historical crux using the language of amoral detachment and faux-journalistic pedigree. (the assassination serving as a unifying moment of American ideology, a tool to provide retroactive credibility to a war that destabilized an entire region and left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced). Maybe the dead deserve more. As was the case with cinematic reactions to Vietnam, I see more potent indictments of the GWoT to come with the passing of time, which kind of leaves ZD30 in the dustbin. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Also American Sniper didn't get bad publicity. Chris Kyle is the physical embodiment of bad publicity. BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Oct 11, 2015 |
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Oct 11, 2015 02:34
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Criminal Minded posted:I'm shocked to learn how many people took a "Rah Rah America" message away from fuckin' ZD30. I remember Salon had an article about how Sicario was as problematic as Zero Dark 30 regarding glamorizing war, their tv/movie coverage s such a loving joke. They somehow can't even identify the protagonist of Scream Queens in their lovely thinkpieces.
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Oct 11, 2015 02:46
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Question for the group: Did any of you feel like Emily Blunt's FBI partner was subtly coded as gay? Not in a derogatory way, but more in just a subtexty way. My wife and I were discussing the film and we'd both come to that conclusion independently but weren't sure why at first. We eventually came up with three reasons: 1. Blunt walks around in front of him with a bra and this is framed as normal and non-sexual. 2. Kaluuya jokes that he's a cowboy because he has a wife (among other things). Blunt finds this very funny for some reason. 3. Kaluuya comments on Blunt's appearance, but in a tender, non-objectifying way. It never feels like he has sexual interest in her as a woman but rather a concern for her as a friend. Now, this could just be showing that they are very good friends, but the film makes a point that Kaluuya is a rookie, new to the team. So, a plain reading would suggest that Blunt and Kaluuya can't have known each other that long, and yet there is a tension-less ease with how they approach and discuss Blunt's body. If he is supposed to be gay in the universe of the film, I think it was handled really well because it was a character trait that expressed itself in the character's actions but wasn't used as code for weak or evil or deviant, nor was it played for laughs.
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Oct 11, 2015 17:56
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People were also giggling and loudly promoting some of the most deplorable things in my theater, but now that I'm hearing it's happening everywhere I'm a little less peeved about it. Sicario is going to be one of those films where audiences are going to form two distinct interpretations of the film's message.
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Oct 11, 2015 20:46
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quote:The movie is under-written to its own detriment, although since you're using the term "expository dialogue" pejoratively I'm not going to go too far down that road. Honestly, I don't really have that much of a problem with expository dialogue, you couldn't watch movies from the 40's or 50's without it. However, when a movie commits right away to showing you things rather than telling them to you, it's best to go with it. centaurtainment posted:Showing Silvio eat breakfast four times with his family and like, wink at his wife when she sees him add booze to his coffee, does not a character make. We know nothing about his motivations, all we know is that it seems like he loves his son. Then the first time we see him outside of that very basic setting is the scene at the end of the tunnel, at which point he simply becomes a human shield for Alejandro, who kills him for basically nothing. We do see him a couple more times, loading up his trunk and most notably shadowing the caravan. We don't need to see what he does with the rest of his time. We get the Indian Creek cigarettes, and that's all you need, because he rounds out Kate. Kate is partaking little by little, standing for something but completely powerless to change anything. She's supposedly making a difference as an FBI agent, just like Silvio is making a difference as a cop. On the flipside, Silvio is there to show you that this is not just a simplistic story about how a woman can't do a man's job or whatever. Characters you can infer from are no less characters. Like, take the two Texas Rangers who come along on the raid. Why, other than procedural accuracy, are the Texas Rangers there? Or for that matter, the Mexican Federal Police? Why does Jeff Donovan's character look like a NASA engineer rather than one of the rotated-in DEVGRU guys? Why is Silvio the only traditionally uniformed police officer you see in the movie? Why does Alejandro wear a crumpled suit? It's all there in the film and it isn't like it's being hidden. It's just not being explained. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Oct 11, 2015 |
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Oct 11, 2015 20:57
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gently caress me, I cannot stop thinking about this film. 
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Oct 11, 2015 21:13
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Also American Sniper didn't get bad publicity. Also, it actually was deplorable and terrible.
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Oct 11, 2015 22:48
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It's an illuminating look into the 'apolitical' mindset.
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Oct 11, 2015 23:04
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Anal Surgery posted:Question for the group: Did any of you feel like Emily Blunt's FBI partner was subtly coded as gay? Not in a derogatory way, but more in just a subtexty way. My wife and I were discussing the film and we'd both come to that conclusion independently but weren't sure why at first. We eventually came up with three reasons: I didn't read it that way, it is possible that the character was gay but I don't know if that's what the screenwriter intended. As for (2) I think the "cowboy" joke is more just them making fun of the bar that they're in, and (1) and (3) were more just a reflection of them being comfortable around each other as friends, which is irrelevant as to whether he's gay or straight or not. Her "appearance" and his comments on it are just to show that Blunt's character is focused on her job more than anything else. I mean it is possible for straight male to be friends with a woman without wanting to have sex with her... Even if he was relatively new the implication was they have been partners for at least some time. Kaluuya's character's function is reassurance. I think the audience is meant to identify with Blunt's character throughout in a very specific way as the fresh eyes to this uncertain world; Kaluuya allows there to be someone else experiencing it with her. The film is pretty oppressive already, so not having a second outsider character there would make it an unbearable nightmare. From a plot perspective bringing him along is also essential for her continuing with the mission.
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Oct 11, 2015 23:16
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second-hand smegma posted:gently caress me, I cannot stop thinking about this film. Just got back from seeing it, loved it.
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Oct 11, 2015 23:21
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BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:
I definitely agree with you in the Real World, but I'd say it's rare for Cinema World to allow male-female relationships to be that casually friendly such that walking around in your underwear in front of each other contains zero sexual tension. Well, mainstream cinema, anyway.
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Oct 11, 2015 23:50
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:We don't need to see what he does with the rest of his time. We get the Indian Creek cigarettes, and that's all you need, because he rounds out Kate. Kate is partaking little by little, standing for something but completely powerless to change anything. She's supposedly making a difference as an FBI agent, just like Silvio is making a difference as a cop. On the flipside, Silvio is there to show you that this is not just a simplistic story about how a woman can't do a man's job or whatever. Again, I'm not arguing that this stuff isn't there, I'm saying that I didn't find him to be a compelling character. He functions very nicely as a synecdoche for a lot of the issues that the film deals with and as a counterpart for Macer. I just wish that his character either had more or less to do than he ultimately does. Keeping him so separated from the rest of the cast (in terms of filmmaking, not physically, see below) draws the audience's attention to him, in essence giving him his own piece of the movie, but then I felt like the writer didn't know what to do beyond that, so you get the repetitious breakfast scenes. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:shadowing the caravan. I liked this scene a lot; it was nice that the film didn't feel the need to spell it out. The fact that this worked so well was part of why I was disappointed with his ultimate demise at the hands of Alejandro, which seemed to me to drive the point home far too overtly in a film that is otherwise quite subtle. EDIT: Again, I feel the need to say that I really liked this film, and that I'm putting it under such an intense critical lens because I do not believe that discussing its (subjective) faults takes much away from the whole. I would not spend this much energy on a less deserving film, and your comments have definitely reduced the degree to which I disliked his character's role in the story. centaurtainment fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Oct 12, 2015 |
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Oct 11, 2015 23:54
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Nah, no need to say so. I only responded because I found your take on that interesting. In fact, I initially reacted the same as you because I thought they were telegraphing that vaguely anonymous character as the titular character. In a different movie, that would probably have been the case, to be fair.
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Oct 12, 2015 00:14
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Anal Surgery posted:I definitely agree with you in the Real World, but I'd say it's rare for Cinema World to allow male-female relationships to be that casually friendly such that walking around in your underwear in front of each other contains zero sexual tension. Well, mainstream cinema, anyway. There isn't really that much of a cinematic precedent for films of this ilk with a female lead, though. On another note; "Due to the success of the film in limited release, Lionsgate has commissioned a sequel, centering on del Toro's character. The project is being overseen by writer Taylor Sheridan with Villeneuve also involved". How do you guys feel about this? It seems really unnecessary, as the film said everything it needed to say. The Del Toro character was interesting, but I think having a man who murders two innocent children might not be a compelling lead to sustain a two-hour runtime. I feel like they're more likely to make it a prequel, but it's more interesting to keep the character a bit of a mystery, the important details were already sketched out.
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Oct 12, 2015 01:39
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got back from seeing this, and it's my favorite movie of the year, by far. i hope this does incredibly well.
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Oct 12, 2015 01:48
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BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:There isn't really that much of a cinematic precedent for films of this ilk with a female lead, though. It's funny because I went into this movie almost blind. I though it was probably a drama, but I had seen the headline "Sicario Sequal to Focus on Del Toro's Hitman Character" which suggest to me that it was more of an action movie. I wouldn't really mind a sequel if it was in the same vein as the first one. I would not like if was a prequel, showing the "origin" of his character as described in this one. Trying to make some sort of edgy revenge flick would go totally against the sardonic and nihilistic tones of Sicario. If they manage to make a sequel that is like "and more poo poo just keeps happening forever" I would be okay with that.
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Oct 12, 2015 02:19
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BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:
Ehh.... I give this about a 30% chance of being a worthwhile sequel. If Sheridan and Villeneuve are involved, I guess I'll give it the benefit of the doubt but drat... Sicario seems perfect as a solo story. Oh well, I've been surprised before!
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Oct 12, 2015 02:19
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It didn't really take off in wide release, so I'd be kind of surprised if it ever happens. The market for old-man character-actor killfests has kind of cooled, too.
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Oct 12, 2015 02:25
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Last King posted:got back from seeing this, and it's my favorite movie of the year, by far. Doubtful
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Oct 12, 2015 04:21
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centaurtainment posted:I liked this scene a lot; it was nice that the film didn't feel the need to spell it out. The fact that this worked so well was part of why I was disappointed with his ultimate demise at the hands of Alejandro, which seemed to me to drive the point home far too overtly in a film that is otherwise quite subtle. Regarding the scene you're referring to The cop that shadows the convoy is from Juarez, while Silvio is from Nogales. He had nothing to do with the Americans until the tunnels Something else: I can't say I pegged Silvio for an innocent when he was first introduced. All the secrecy and conspiratorial menace that happened prior, really clouded my perception of a Mexican man sleeping through the morning. We do not see him go to work, wash his car, or play soccer with his son, because they are irrelevant to our viewpoint. We do not see these things because it is only important that he is a Mexican, and we fill in the blank. You do notice how little we learn of him. He works late, he owns a gun he shouldn't have, he frequently isn't home. If you imagine this movie without those scenes, Silvio would simply be another gangster with slightly more screentime. His role in the plot is so minor that it's repeated. Alejandro kills him, and uses him as a pawn to get closer to Manuel Diaz. Then minutes later, he uses Manuel for the exact same purpose. Silvio could have been anybody, but instead he wasn't. His life exists outside of anyone else's perspective, even the audience's. He is everything that should be forgettable. The scene when Silvio steps out of his car and walks towards Manuel is set up like the climax to a Western. The two men, a criminal and a lawman stand face to face while camera affixes at head level. They stare at each other until shots ring out, and both fall to the ground. But it's a total sham, and Alejandro steps out of the darkness and puts an end to that genre moment. I just liked that moment
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Oct 12, 2015 07:31
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Regarding the scene you're referring to Nice post.
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Oct 12, 2015 07:54
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:
The fact that Silvio was actually killed first only drives home how expendable he was to both "sides".
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Oct 12, 2015 07:59
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Anal Surgery posted:Question for the group: Did any of you feel like Emily Blunt's FBI partner was subtly coded as gay? Not in a derogatory way, but more in just a subtexty way. My wife and I were discussing the film and we'd both come to that conclusion independently but weren't sure why at first. We eventually came up with three reasons: At first when Blunt was all  in the bar and asking "Where are we?" I thought it was because he took her to a gay bar.
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Oct 12, 2015 09:18
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BOAT SHOWBOAT posted:There isn't really that much of a cinematic precedent for films of this ilk with a female lead, though. If there was something that the audience was totally missing like with The Wire I wouldn't mind a sequel to show it off better, oh and Del Toro isn't necessarily the lead he could be the antagonist while still having the story centre on his character. As for the Kaluuya being gay stuff I never read it that way, when Blunt was recruited and even when she was off doing poo poo with them I was surprised there wasn't any comments on her gender at all. As in you could have replaced her character with a male up until a point and it'd be fine, so when Kaluuya was the way he was I just thought it was that same progressivism.
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Oct 12, 2015 10:07
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Regarding the scene you're referring to Good point.
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Oct 12, 2015 12:07
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:that was American Sniper. ZD30 got in trouble for supposedly condoning torture. second-hand smegma posted:I'll admit that it's hard to tune out the publicity noise machine of headlines and think pieces, but I mostly felt that it was made a little too soon after the assassination itself for proper critical consideration (by a nation still relatively consumed in war fervor), and way too close to a presidential reelection to not be considered utilitarian on a political level. The fact that there were all sorts of weird conflicting interchanges between Boal, Bigelow, and CIA representatives really muddied the waters for a movie that's play-acting as narrative based on facts at hand. REDACTED. There's also the fact that, you know, the CIA leaked information to Kathryn Bigelow when they heard she was making ZD30 specifically so that it would make them look better. I wasn't as down on the movie as a lot of people before hearing that, but it certainly changed the way I think about it.
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Oct 12, 2015 23:47
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What's really weird to me about ZDT is that they had to write in the Abbottabad raid at the last minute. That seems like a totally different movie to me, them not finding OBL.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:25
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I'm one of the people that couldn't really get into ZD30 but this movie really worked for me but it also is a movie that does make ZD30 seem subtle in retrospect. This movie kind of just has a "gently caress everybody" view in a world where that probably the best you can possibly draw from it. In regards to this movie, I saw it today and throughout most of it's running time I wasn't sure how into it I was. Sure the whole thing was extremely well done on all levels but something wasn't fully clicking with me. Fortunately it all comes together in it's own way by the end. What I really like about this movie is I feel it plays off of what we're expecting out of it. We're (or at least I was) expecting this woman to be taken into this program and be exposed to horrible poo poo but slowly get used to it and have it change her but in the end she adjusts to this world and becomes a part of it. Instead she is always in a state of aggravation and confusion and always WAY over her head. Like us she's just trying to keep up with what's going and no one is helping her catch up. The more she catches up, the more dire and awful everything looks and the more useless, small and naive she looks. The movie starts out from a place of hellish horror and gets so much worse by the end. Audience analog characters are hard to pull off and I feel this is one of the few movies that does it perfectly. Blunt's character never feels like she wouldn't be there but she also exists to have a character that is going through what the audience is going through and ti just makes the whole thing all the more utterly hosed.
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Oct 13, 2015 04:33
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porfiria posted:What's really weird to me about ZDT is that they had to write in the Abbottabad raid at the last minute. That seems like a totally different movie to me, them not finding OBL. That's nuts.
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Oct 13, 2015 15:07
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Does anyone else sing "sicario" in the tune of Phil Collins sussudio?
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Oct 13, 2015 16:32
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I thought this movie was pretty good, but not great. The cinematography and sound were phenomenal, and the director is a master at creating tension which really shows in 2 amazing scenes (Drive into the city / Dinner Table at the End), but overall the work came off as a McCarthy-lite. I've already seen this story and these themes done better with No Country for Old Men and The Counselor (I Know people don't like the latter, but I did). Despite strong narrative similarities between this and the Counselor, I actually felt No Country for Old Men was the more apt comparison. Both movies touched on the concept of banal human violence as a law of nature that simmers quietly right beneath the civilized facade that people in the USA see. Both movies explored this idea through the lens of naive law officers with strong traditional morals (Blunt/Tommy Lee Jones) getting plunged into this underworld, and simply being shocked and confused the entire time with no real resolution. The reason I like McCarthy's work more is that I feel like he does a better job of fleshing out of his characters, which resulted in me being more engaged, and the message having a stronger impact. I felt that even The Counselor, which had a tangential narrative, had more interesting characters than this movie. I agree with the criticism that Blunt was somewhat shallow-- she had relatively few lines, didn't say much of importance with them, and I just never really cared about her or her plight. I also agree that the scenes with Silvio were exploitative and shallow, and also disrupted the pacing of the movie. Overall I enjoyed the movie, and look forward to whatever this director does next, but I hope he works with a stronger writer next time.
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Oct 13, 2015 16:51
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Megasabin posted:I felt that even The Counselor, which had a tangential narrative, had more interesting characters than this movie. The Counselor is a weird, uneven movie that has a lot of very memorable performances and scenes (particularly Cameron Diaz loving the car and Brad Pitt's death scene). I think No Country for Old Men was more successful because of the filter between McCarthy's writing and the screen: he's an incredible novelist but only an alright screenwriter, and so you need excellent screenwriters like the Coen Bros to sort-of translate his work for the screen.
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Oct 13, 2015 16:58
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On the surface at least, Sicario parallels No Country for Old Men in a lot of ways... a character with strong moral boundaries, assumed to be the protagonist, is forced out of the narrative focus by a brutal hitman in reflection of society's naivety. Both movies essentially toy with the idea of a "good guy" being able to "win" before asserting that "evil can never be stamped out".
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Oct 13, 2015 17:00
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Saw the movie yesterday with my friend and I took the meaning of it to be "should you fight monsters with monsters, and after that, when does it end?" One thing that I really liked was how Alejandro used the CIA just as much as they used him. He was in mostly for revenge and they pointed him in the direction and gave him the means of achieving that. That being said, my friend and I started comparing it to the revenge fantasy films the US loves to make (think Death Wish or even Taken) and how Alejandro is nothing like the "heroes" in those movies because he is pretty much a mindless killing machine (mindless as in he doesn't really care he gets in his way innocent or not). He is pretty much the antithesis of all those revenge films. One thing that confused my friend and I after the movie when we discussed it was what was Alejandro's endgame for after he got his revenge. Was he supposed to take over from the cartel he just wiped out? Was he just going to keep killing drug kingpins? What did the states expect to happen afterwards? The ending of the movie showed that violence still happens in Juarez even after the big kingpin get taken out, and there is probably a power vacuum now, so what did they want to happen after
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Oct 13, 2015 17:50
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