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Loved the movie, loved its score. Some not so quick thoughts after just seeing this, kind of all over the map. I hate all the spoiler tags but whatever. I loved that this film was messing with expectations the entire time and I never felt that anything I saw or was told was 100% reliable by the end. With Neil Patrick Harris, the dude is shot to look sinister and gives a performance to match. He's the creepy mastermind with a Bond villain mansion and Harris plays up that element, and then the bedroom scene comes and we see that he's just another guy completely out of his element. We see him looking villainous because Nick sees him that way and Amy writes him that way. He felt along the same lines as Alien in Spring Breakers, another guy that's kind of sleazy but gets completely ruined by being swept up in something bigger than him. Much of the film's plot deals with how the media paints characters a certain way to manipulate audiences while the film itself is doing the same thing to us. MeinPanzer posted:The problem I have with this response is that while every character ends up looking bad (except for the sister, I guess), the movie really presents Nick as the protagonist, and after the point where he confesses his infidelity, he pretty much just becomes a sympathetic character I loved that the Amazing Amy Case of the present day and the Amazing Amy books of the past are essentially the same thing, both selling the public on a true story that isn't really there. Also thought the early shot of Nick carrying a giant copy of MASTERMIND under his arm while going to the bar was pretty funny and "I just want to shoot some people" while playing his game was pretty funny too. Zwabu posted:I think the issue is, as a practical matter, there's now way she could get away with being on the road in the cabin for days and then being at the lake house for weeks and make up such a complicated story about what happened. As a practical matter, you're right. But what matters is the FBI doesn't care. They're satisfied with these results and close the case. It's showing law enforcement as corrupt and gross as the media. The Good Cop knows the story's full of holes and she gets shot down trying to pursue it. Yoshifan823 posted:Weirdly, I didn't buy the dude who got fake-rape-accused, at least not entirely. I mean, I dont doubt the event happened, but clearly you only get one side of that story, and the other dudes Amy fucks with are seen from an objective point of view, rather than telling their own story. I'm sure if we just heard Desi's side of the story, he'd seem pretty sympathetic too. Another thing I liked: Amy, for all her brilliant machinations, gets totally punked by the Dumb Redneck Cliches she meets. And she automatically assumes the man manipulated the woman into robbing her because that fits the image.
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Oct 6, 2014 03:56
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K. Waste posted:In the alternate ending the cat is Amy and Nick's child. The way he carried the cat into the house like a baby was pretty adorable.
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Oct 6, 2014 16:47
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I think this film is to Law and Order what Twin Peaks is to daytime soaps. Nick's dopey Law and Order namedrop is one of the best bits. The Homeless City is also pretty funny.
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Oct 6, 2014 21:28
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The FBI scene is massively important though, even if the officer's gender didn't matter until that point it very much mattered to the subtext then. I agree that a lot of the characters you listed were just loud, brash cliches but I found them all (intentionally) funny rather than flawed writing.
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Oct 6, 2014 22:22
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Yeah I'm pretty sure during the Cool Girls monologue she mentioned inventing the abuse. By the end she's made Nick into the monster she needed him to be and his shoving her really sends that home.
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Oct 7, 2014 22:23
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Yoshifan823 posted:I think you're mistaking the character being a representation of these stereotypes because it's easy to write/make seem evil, and the character being written that way because the character knows these stereotypes and uses them to her advantage. It's more like a movie about a sociopathic black/Jewish person who uses the stereotypes of them in order to gently caress people over. Whether or not that's problematic itself is up for grabs, but Amy is just as aware of these stereotypes as we are. Yeah, she's fully aware of it and her Cool Girls speech has echoes of Richard III's "I'm determined to prove the villain" monologue.
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Oct 8, 2014 17:52
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Aramis posted:However, I'm not sure how I understand why the movie went out of its way to make sure we don't feel bad about Neil Patrick Harris dying.
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Oct 9, 2014 05:39
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
Along this line, I like that Nick "defeats" her by offering her love and forgiveness, even though it's an act.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:57
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The Tactical Realism of her plan isn't really the point here anymore than it is in Spring Breakers or American Psycho.
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Oct 14, 2014 00:52
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She gives this massive monologue and shows every little thing going perfectly and then gets wrecked by being too dumb to take the Dumb Rednecks seriously. The first plan derails pretty quickly and isn't a great plan, the point of it is the way she, Nick and the media sell the story, not what's actually true. The world's happy with the results, the people questioning it are told to shut up. Of course there are holes in her plan. Of course it wouldn't hold up in court. The detective sees through it immediately and says so. The point is the people watching her story don't care. I mean, quote:god knows if she has any injuries under there or if he's carrying any dangerous blood-borne pathogens, but no, we need a Lady MacBeth-esque "a little water clears us of this deed" shower scene. A True Jar Jar Fan fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 02:48
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Is it a plot hole if a character in the film directly acknowledges it and the police shake their heads and shut her up? A hole in her story (and yeah, there are a ton) isn't a plot hole in the film. The point of all the media frenzy stuff is that "reality" is whatever you're selling the audience. If nothing else, Amy and eventually Nick are great salesmen.
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Oct 14, 2014 03:21
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PriorMarcus posted:Doesn't Amy's narration out right say that he never hit her? Yes, she says she invented the abuse. She also tells Nick at the end that he has to play along with the abuse story, and the girl who robs her sees through her story and says she's obviously never really been hit before.
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Oct 19, 2014 06:46
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Rewatched it this weekend and another thing that stuck with me regarding class is that the poor/homeless drug dealer is 100 percent honest and genuine. The couple that robs Amy has little need for artiface and this guy, even "lower" than them, has none.
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Oct 20, 2014 21:20
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I liked this movie a lot more the second time even knowing all the beats. Don't let basic plot information drive you out of a theater during a preview.
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Nov 5, 2014 15:48
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There are literally scenes in the movie in which the characters point out that there's evidence of holes in her story and that the investigators/media/public doesn't care, they just want a good story. Do you think that's there on accident or that it might be making a point?
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Dec 5, 2014 03:21
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Law enforcement is definitely never corrupt or lazy in real life. There's plenty to legitimately criticize in the film but "the police didn't follow proper protocol in this black comedy" making it the worst film you've ever seen makes you kind of dumb. A True Jar Jar Fan fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 03:36
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lizardman posted:I finally saw this and couldn't wait to come here and read how 'problematic' people thought the movie was. You didn't disappoint, CineD!
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Jan 26, 2015 14:27
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The ridiculous romantic dialog and increasingly ridiculous schemes work well and are really funny as a black comedy/satire of police procedurals. Nick's big stupid grin when he says "it's like an episode of CSI!" early on is great. The plausibility of the crime and the sloppiness of Amy's methods aren't really the point. If you didn't like the media stuff then yeah I can see not liking it at all, everything hinged on that.
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Feb 13, 2015 18:26
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Yeah, there's a lot about how Amy treats and manipulates class here and the robbery is the best part. She 100% fools the rich guy, her middle class husband takes half the movie to figure out something's wrong, and the "trashy" characters see through her immediately. Her sloppiness is a big part of being a rich person playing a role she's unsuited to, and roles/perception are a huge part of the film.
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Feb 13, 2015 22:08
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Amy's vindictiveness outweighs her logic. She shouldn't have left the notes for Nick at all but that's what makes her fun to watch.
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Feb 16, 2015 19:57
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