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I am looking forward to Nomadland and Minari being available to wide release in February. I’m assuming this will entail availability on some or other streaming service.
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Jan 3, 2021 05:07
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Maxwell Lord posted:I'm gonna have to hunker down and see some of the more acclaimed films of 2020 because I'd barely caught up with 2019 when theaters shut down. Yeah, First Cow is really good. Other 2020 movies I've seen that are at least "real good" if not better (or maybe late 2019s that I got to in 2020) are Another Round, Bacurau, The Twentieth Century, and Blow the Man Down.
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Jan 4, 2021 17:08
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I felt like it built the tension and dread so well and then, just before the movie releases the tension, it gives you my favourite "these guys are so hosed" scene ever.
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Jan 4, 2021 19:22
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Gripweed posted:No that's not what "there's no ethical consumption under capitalism means". It means that you personally can't do good in the world by shopping at Trader Joes instead of Target. The burden is not on you to live a moral life through your consumption because there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. It all feeds the same machine. It's not your responsibility to find the right things to buy to be a good person, because the entire idea that you can be a good person by buying the right things is just marketing. I believe the rattle is quite right with respect to how the argument frequently gets deployed.
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Jan 24, 2021 14:16
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Did you angrily point the cat's crotch at the vet and ask where the scrotum was?
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Feb 27, 2021 13:50
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Schwarzwald posted:https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/ This is really good. I particularly like the point about McMansion's being designed primarily for resale value, and the analogy that bodies are no longer to be lived in but rather trained for combat. I actually think that point could be pushed even further, about the demands for commodification of everything, and the economic value maximization of every facet of our lives. In this sense, physical shaping can also be tied to something like the gig (formerly sharing) economy and side hustles, where former leisure time and leisure activities are now for generating more exchange value.
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Mar 2, 2021 02:39
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Grendels Dad posted:Fury Road isn't exactly horny but it's got a funky sexual vibe that I find difficult to put into words. 
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Mar 2, 2021 16:19
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Baron von Eevl posted:I really appreciate that they don't really sexualize Furiosa or Joe's brides; like there's the first time Max sees them washing off and drinking water after the sandstorm and you think just for a second that it's going to be like a 80s metal video or carwash scene or something, then you realize that it's the water that Max is so thirsty for and not the women. Schwarzwald posted:Fury Road is in agreement with the article, being a film but a story about the commoditization of desexualized bodies, but in that respect its almost anti-horny. Shortly after the movie came out there was a nice blogpost somewhere about the storyboarding of this scene, how it had changed from having boobs and butts and the axes of the shot to the water being the focus.
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Mar 2, 2021 17:51
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Basebf555 posted:Makes me want to see some sort of ranked list of every single Best Picture winner. Are there any articles like that out there that actually go through every single year? Punched it in to the search engine and, aptly, the first hit had Argo ranked dead last.
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Mar 3, 2021 17:05
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therattle posted:May I all remind you of Crash. I'd really rather you didn't.
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Mar 3, 2021 17:29
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One gains a deep appreciation for how capitalism works when one takes time to think about how many thousands of dollars of labour hours were spent determining the rabbit's ideal fuckability.
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Mar 5, 2021 16:06
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Finally watched Minari, as I try to catch up on the best picture nominees. I found it kinda disappointing, in that the movie was the high end of 'good' but short of 'very good'. I think it ends up kinda limited by the auto-biographical element, which means that some of the sharpest ideas don't get sufficiently explored. Examples: (1) Like, the parents work as chicken sexers. The first time David visits, he asks what the smokestack is. Dad comments that it's for the male chicks, who are considered unproductive. So the movie starts with the very sharp idea it's not just you have to be productive or perish, but you have to be valuable to certain people or they will dispose of you. And that's definitely the central tension in the movie, but I feel like they never really push it very far. (2) You have a tension between 'success' and 'family' which isn't resolved, and while the non-resolution is genuine it feels like it isn't really... robust enough if that's the right term. (3) Then there's the fact that the farm's employee is a Korean war vet. Like they do some stuff with it, but I really feel like they needed to do more.
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Mar 20, 2021 18:35
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Has anyone else seen Promising Young Woman? I thought the visuals were quite good, but the story didn't quite pull together and it seemed to kinda get stuck at affirming the righteousness of the viewer. Like the point of the story became to affirm the badness of people whose badness wasn't in doubt, and instead of offering insight into that badness, or a new way of understanding it, the film just kinda keeps restating the same point.
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Mar 24, 2021 19:46
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Franchescanado posted:I don't think the film is about re-affirming that the bad people are bad. I took it to be more about how Cassandra is wrecked by the injustice of her friend's rape and suicide. Her friend is irreversibly dead, and Cassandra is no longer living. She's wracked with androphobia, PTSD, which has basically crippled her into arrested development. Her revenge up until the finale is partially a condescension towards predatory nice guys, and seems more about her want to have control while doing what she thinks is a "good thing". Her vigilantism is pretty misguided, cuz even friends of guys she has confronted, who heard the story and were freaked out by it, are STILL going to the bars and open to taking home drunk girls in order to rape them. I feel like I agree with your description of the movie, but see it as supporting my evaluation. Take Cassandra's characterization, and the character arc. She begins as a figure of righteous vengeance, specifically targeting 'nice guys' laden with 'nice guy' signifiers. The revenge narrative is confronted with the movie's rom-com narrative, and the movie transitions fully to the rom-com part with the two meetings that you identify. But then the rom-com is undone not just through Ryan's badness, but through his involvement in the defining event that looms over the full movie. At this point the movie fully reverts to the revenge narrative. The romantic comedy has been proven false, and the hope that the rom-com presents has been proven false. So how does this support what I say? I think it doesn't so much undo the growth shown over the 2nd act, but it suggests that the growth wasn't really growth at all. Her beliefs of the first act aren't just proven right, but the movie completely reverts to the dynamics of the first act where we have the righteous avenger against the whole bad world. But the reversion to those battle lines aren't brought about by any insight or thematic development, it's simply revealed that the guy who seemed to be good was bad all along. I think this also informs the climax. It's not just that she has to die to escape her pain, she has to die because there's nowhere (intellectually) for the movie to take her character. She was righteous, she was right all along, so she dies to the badness that affirms her righteousness. The bad guys stay bad, and their badness concretizes even further as the rapist turns into a murderer. In this sense, I don't think there's any lack of character growth per se. She started righteous and she ended righteous. She's righteous because of her relationship to the bad people, and the nature of the badness of the bad people never really changes. She dies because her righteousness is defined entirely by being subject to the bad people's badness. There's no "lack" of character growth because, in the most importance sense, the character began morally fully formed. Or something like that.
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Mar 24, 2021 20:33
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Pirate Jet posted:I’m mostly confused by a film that indicts the police for their complacency and apathy of rape culture but also depends on them to be victorious at the end. I feel like that part is deliberately unrealistic to the point of being fantastical. It's a 'wouldn't it be nice' that serves to underline just how much the legal system is part of the problem.
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Mar 24, 2021 21:00
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I genuinely didn't clock Cassandra as selfish. Rather, her character is defined by telling the truth (most specifically about Nina) but having nobody believe her. After all, her name is Cassandra. Consequently, she's not doing what she's doing for herself, rather she's doing what she's doing as a way of confronting people with the truth. On this read, then, the conversations that lead to the second act — Nina's mother and the cop — become not a source of character growth but rather delusion. They lead her away from righteousness and towards selfishness. But the selfishness ultimately comes apart because, in the end, rape culture is still ubiquitous and righteousness within rape culture — as represented by Ryan's embarrassed passivity in the video — is nothing but righteousness in complicity. This leads us to the third act where righteousness can only operate through confrontation.
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Mar 25, 2021 00:50
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:The second winning for making an Amazon commercial is equally depressing, time will not be kind in the slightest to Nomadland. I found the movie way too melancholy to consider it an endorsement of Amazon. I took it more as 'corporations have annihilated the American dream, supplanting the land itself as a force of nature, but at least we can find some limited freedom in choosing how we die'.
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Apr 27, 2021 14:06
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Carly Gay Dead Son posted:Haven’t seen Nomadland but that is no poo poo a great way for a corporation to advertise themselves. The dread victor gracefully and earnestly eulogizing the vanquished past, offering what little hope they can to the powerless disaffected, and making a ton of cash in the process. I feel like there is a great gap between what you say (which I limitedly agree with, though I'm not sure just how much it can be put on the movie), and the original claim. It's not celebratory of or deferential to Amazon. It won't 'age poorly' since it doesn't present any mistaken view about Amazon's goodness.
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Apr 27, 2021 14:25
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It's quite literally made with the express permission and endorsement of Amazon. You've seen Superbowl commercials - a 30 second spot for Dodge trucks is also melancholy. You can absolutely view that as nuanced and mature but a company that wants to buy up Hollywood and used borderline illegal tactics to combat one warehouse unionizing selling you a movie about the dignity of poverty or whatever is rancid. It's made with their permission and it's limited by that. Criticism of Amazon is slight, made very indirectly, and not especially threatening to them. That's still well short of considering the movie some kind of celebration or vindication of Amazon's bigness.
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Apr 27, 2021 14:35
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It doesn't need to be any more dramatic than presenting as Amazon as "good, honest work" to be a complete fabrication. This is the problem with sponsored depictions in the first place. It's not "good, honest work" it's the work of last resort. What's there to catch people when everything else has failed. And, both in reality and as depicted in the movie, everything else has failed because of Amazon (and Amazon as a stand-in for the machinations of global capital). As with the rest of the movie's resigned-to-death attitude, the 'honesty' of working for Amazon doesn't come from the goodness of Amazon but it's badness; it's only honest because there's nothing better left. Carly Gay Dead Son posted:Anybody have anything nice to say about August Osage County? I don’t, because I don’t remember anything about it besides “eat the fish, bitch.” What is it with Letts and the coercive consumption of fish/poultry? I remember thinking it was decently good. It's sort of about the echoes of American history, with Meryl Streep's matriarch having been made extremely cruel by the process of surviving the Great Depression. I remember finding Julia Roberts character quite good, especially the part where she tells her daughter "die after me."
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Apr 27, 2021 15:30
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banned from Starbucks posted:The most disturbing part of Killer Joe was them calling it the K-fried C Hearing that again makes me think it's really great efficient characterization of "idiots who think they're clever."
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Apr 28, 2021 22:39
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Carly Gay Dead Son posted:Has anyone here seen the new adaptation of Waiting for the Barbarians? I just watched it and was pleasantly surprised. Was expecting a real bastardization of the book but it was amazingly faithful in content and tone. I recommend. I hadn't realized it had actually come out. What service is it on?
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Apr 30, 2021 20:20
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TrixRabbi posted:Would be curious if The Rattle has any insight into this, but I've chalked the death of horny up to 1. Family friendly PG-13 movies that are too expensive to risk the kid audience 2. The growing dependence on the international market and the need to make poo poo that's palatable for overseas censors. Last time the topic came up here someone posted this piece which I found quite good. It situates the lack of horniness in movies in a kind of cult of the body where the body is to be maximized for some kind of physical or economic combat. The body is entirely a tool for generating exchange value and ascending hierarchy. Within that ideology, pleasure is a kind of distraction, almost a weakness of the will.
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May 3, 2021 18:19
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Lurdiak posted:The West Wing sucks but I don't see why everyone's so mad about the influence it had on politics when we have garbage right wing shows like 24 out there writing legal decisions by proxy. People get more upset about things they expect better from.
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May 19, 2021 17:02
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pospysyl posted:Speaking of revisionist Westerns, is First Cow one of those, or is it something distinct? First Cow is very distinct, and very good. I strongly recommend watching it, just be ready for it to be sloooooow.
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May 19, 2021 21:56
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The Cameo posted:Lynch is famously nice and funny, Tarantino and Spielberg are always very excited about movies and are infectious about it, Snyder is nice and learns seemingly every single person’s name on set from every extra all the way up, The Coens are nice but anal-retentive about their scripts to the point where - I forget who told this story - they walked up to one of the actors during a shoot and was like “you said this line with a comma in the middle, it’s actually two sentences and should be said that way.” Would this be Nicolas Cage? I seem to remember Cage explaining that he didn't work with the Coens after Raising Arizona because they needed what happened to be exactly as they wanted it, which left him no room to be Nic Cage about things.
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Jun 27, 2021 19:42
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There is new promotional material for the new Space Jam movie and it is worse than you expected. Yes, worse than that: https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1410634202693967876
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Jul 1, 2021 18:50
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Pig is wonderful but I have to disagree with everyone who said it's nothing like Taken. It's exactly like Taken, but in the context of climate change (and the emotional outlooks that entails) rather than 9/11.
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Jul 20, 2021 03:36
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https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3973870 The Olympic Torch relay is now making its way through Cinema Discusso.
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Jul 21, 2021 15:33
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:I want to see Pig but I don't want to be sad I did not find Pig to be very sad, but I liked it very much. It’s very melancholy, but I didn’t find it as sharply sad as I did with The Grey (which I think is the closest partner movie to Pig). In a way, Pig is a lot like The Grey but in the context of global warming rather than 9/11. They’re movies about loss and catastrophe, about the paterfamilias figure dealing with his family falling apart, finding the mature response in the face of that loss, and confronting the question of how you create (or maintain) value in the face of death. Great movie. Doubt you’ll regret watching it.
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Jul 25, 2021 17:28
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Alan Smithee posted:Does he ever wig out He absolutely destroys a guy by having a long, soulful talk about what that guy truly valued, what he wanted to accomplish, and how he needs to stop soiling his life by chasing the superficialities of bourgeois praise.
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Jul 26, 2021 07:49
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feedmyleg posted:Finally watched The Muppet Movie after decades of putting it off. Delightful, of course. But it made me curious: what are some other films which are just extremely pleasant and utterly earnest? The Paddingtons and the Bill and Teds come to mind immediately. 2019's Little Women.
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Aug 3, 2021 14:16
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FreudianSlippers posted:Also the whole secret network of Replicant rebels waiting for the go on a slave rebellion. being a tiny detail mentioned in one scene felt a bit strange aside from being used to drive the plot forward. It's part of the idea that Ryan Gosling is not special. You've got this whole important, world-changing political movement happening, but it's just happening elsewhere. He's so far removed from it he doesn't even see it. This is of a piece with how the movie ends: we stay with Ryan Gosling dying outside, as Deckard disappears to see his daughter.
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Aug 12, 2021 18:52
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Just watched Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. It seemed really good, but I'd be lying if I said I fully grasped it.
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Aug 14, 2021 20:12
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Gripweed stop trolling the movie forum chat thread and everyone else stop falling for it.
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Aug 15, 2021 14:46
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Since I know there are a few Toronto area people here, the TIFF schedule was released today. I've circled Dug Dug; One Second; Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash; and The Middle Man as four movies I'm interested in. Now the question is to see how comfortable I feel about actually sitting in a theatre in September.
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Aug 25, 2021 01:15
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:drat they finally made a Dig Dug movie? Is there a story behind this? I just saw it on the list and thought it looked potentially cool.
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Aug 25, 2021 01:46
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therattle posted:I’m involved in a film called Mlungu Wam which is really worth checking out - it’s a horror set in South Africa about the lingering effects of apartheid and the servant/employer relationship. Oh, I noticed that one. It looked interesting but I really have no stomach for horror.
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Aug 25, 2021 14:35
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:https://twitter.com/marina0swald/status/1431318736720515075?s=20 This is the next stage in the aestheticization of politics. “Turn your brain off” is now the demand of moving from movies to real life.
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Sep 3, 2021 19:22
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 03:43 |
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CPL593H posted:Yes of course. But 9/11 conspiracy theories permeated mainstream culture in a way all the bonkers NWO and faked moon landing poo poo never did. And it was accepted more easily than those kind of things. 9/11 trutherism in particular is the road that lead to where we are now. Last I checked, as long as data has been recorded, levels of conspiracy belief in the US population have been stable (and quite high). What makes 9/11 trutherism and its cluster of theories stand out to us is that for North Americans our age, it's the first 'core' conspiracy theory. It exists in our peer group so we encounter it (and feel it) differently than we do JFK conspiracists, or moon landing conspiracists. We've already started to see 2016-centred conspiracy theories displace Trutherism, and 2016-centred theories will be in turn displaced by something a decade from now.
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Sep 5, 2021 02:32
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