I love The Neon Demon. It’s dark and moody, blending phantasmagoria with gritty horror. It’s like Black Swan told through the style of It Follows.
A teenage girl runs away to LA to become a model. She finds that the people around her are supernaturally drawn to her beauty. She makes her way into the modelling scene, but finds that she is as helpless to her own allure as everyone else. It’s tense in a grounded and nightmarish way.
Netflix keeps trying to get me to watch Philomena. How did they manage to make a whole movie out of this?
My cousin was in another movie and this one was absolutely terrible. It was a remake of Anastasia which went straight to Netflix and she played Princess Anastasia.
Rasputin (who’s a good guy) transports Anastasia to the USA in the 1980s to keep her safe. But Lenin uses mind control magic on him to turn him into a baddie.
And (spoilers) they all lived happily ever after.
Despite being a huge Wes Anderson fan, I keeping finding that I am inexplicably behind on watching his stuff. This weekend, I added two more to my watched list: Moonrise Kingdom and Isle of Dogs.
I have literally no idea how I missed Moonrise, since I saw both Darjeeling Limited and Grand Budapest Hotel and they both flanked its release, but whatever.
I doubt I can say much that hasn’t already been said but oh my god that was an absolutely brilliant movie. I think it did a particularly exceptional job at highlighting the absurdities that we incorporate into our mundane lives over time - certainly a common theme for Anderson, but I found it particularly pointed here, as the adults live in what is effectively a farcial world dominated by inane rules that have sapped the emotion from their existences.
And the kids were stellar - that was some very mature and natural acting from some relatively young people. It was moving and funny and profoundly sad and bittersweet. Just really top-notch stuff.
I can’t believe it took me this long to actually see it, what the hell.
Isle of Dogs was absolutely unexpected, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The blurb on the streaming service I used called it “hilarious” and I have no idea what movie they watched, but I would not call this “hilarious” by any stretch. It masterfully blends comical absurdity with seriously gritty and uncompromising reality, and I really appreciate the way it hit these different notes at varied points and paces. It was musical, in a way.
I found the language barrier device to be interesting, and I think it accomplished a compelling purpose for someone who doesn’t speak the language - I watched a setup where the dogs had to communicate with the humans through their emotions instead of through their words, and I think that created meaningful commentary on the differences between intellectual and empathetic understanding. The movie had a lot to do with a breakdown in empathy between people, and using the trope of humans bonding with dogs through a language barrier reinforced the importance of establishing understanding.
Nutmeg and Peppermint were kinda throwaway characters that just gave their respective male dogs something to develop against, which was kind meh to me, but that’s my only real knock on the film; there are other flaws certainly, but I felt that reducing two characters clearly coded as women down to a convenient sounding board for men was a bit off the mark.
Otherwise, that was superb and not at all what I thought it was going to be.
I was annoyed and moderately disturbed at their use of a real living language (Japanese) as the “alienation” barrier and deciding to have several human characters be perfectly understandable to the audience. Couple that with the foreign student effectively “saving the day” and despite my enjoyment, it left a sour taste in my mouth.
Scott didn’t talk about it on the show. Emily and I reviewed it that night. I don’t recall why, but I believe Scott didn’t see it when we did?
The foreign student saving the day was definitely a down note but I didn’t find it that bothersome in the moment - though, I hadn’t really considered the implications of using a living language as the alienation device, and putting those things together, I can see the huge glaring issue there, yeah.
I think it was maybe a ham-fisted attempt at talking about the value of a view from the outside of a conflict, but in the specific context of white imperialism in Japan, that was a…suboptimal choice, in retrospect.
I would personally have been more OK with it if we never understood what any human said during the film. But not completely OK, since:
I can’t say how earnestly it tried to even do that, versus how much of that was light theming to make these other points.
To wit, Lost In Translation also did this “Japanese as alienating” thing, and it was just awful.
Article on the topic that I believe was also discussed back when we did the review:
Didn’t have anything to do tonight after podcasting. Flipped through the Netflix to get my money’s worth. I saw Uncut Gems was on there. Not going to lie, I recognized it from the memes. I was also curious because I vaguely remember people saying it was good and that Adam Sandler movies had improved. I hadn’t seen one since… The Waterboy?
I gotta say, this movie was pretty good in a lot of ways. The acting was quite good from just about everybody. Even the kids looked like they have a great future in show business. The overarching plot of the movie was paced well, and it did a good job of managing suspense editing and shot selection. The movie also had a strong message that it delivered almost entirely by showing and not telling. I love that symmetry between the colonoscopy shot at the beginning and the shot at the end.
Both Adam Sandler and myself are New York Jews, so the New York and Jew aspects of the movie were extremely authentic and relatable. It was really obvious how almost all the scenes were shot at the real locations. I’ve been to just about every location in this film, many frequently. I especially loved the Passover scene with the plagues and the kids finding the Afikoman.
That said, there was something pretty huge I really didn’t like about this movie, and that was the main character. I had flashbacks to John Goodman’s character in The Big Lebowski. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be funny, but it just makes me angry. It’s not fun to watch a person who behaves and acts that way. Thankfully a lot of characters treat him as he deserves to be treated, which helps vent my frustration by proxy. Also, there are some redeeming scenes where they show how even though he’s an insufferable fuck-up, he does have some positive redeeming qualities.
The other major major problem with the movie is all the yelling. More than half the movie are people just yelling at each other, or more often, yelling past each other. And when people aren’t yelling, they’re silent and not talking! This is painful from the usual aspect of problems not being solved because adults won’t communicate and converse reasonably, honestly, and in good faith. It’s also nearly unwatchable at times due to the sensation of being stuck in a room full of people yelling. My poor ears.
If you’re not bothered by watching awful people be awful, and can tolerate yelling, this movie is well worth the time it takes to watch once. If you’re like me, I guess it depends what kind of mood you’re in. I’m going to have to take a break from this sort of story for awhile before my brain is ready for another one.
EDIT: One last thing. Now that I understand the memes better, they are less funny. Watching the movie made the meme worse.
That last complaint is the biggest thing keeping me away from the movie. As good as I hear it is, that issue is the impression that I get and I’m not sure I’m willing to put up with it for the good that the rest of the movie may be.
This movie sounds perfect. That character is a treasure.
It is indeed a treasure in terms of the quality of acting. One of the greatest acting performances I have seen. The character is just such an infuriating person that I can’t stand it.
You must never watch It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The show is based primarily around seeing several terrible people do terrible things, while anyone reasonable around them is outraged an/or harmed. Tada.
Superbly acted terrible people. Well crafted anti-social behavior. Well-timed “zooming out” from the narrow view of whatever they’re up to to remind you that literally every other person involved in it hates them.
I personally enjoy that kind of character as an element of contrast and/or absurdity (Walter Sobchak indeed being my favorite example), but specifically cannot stand Always Sunny because it’s just too much. When the work is oversaturated with unlikable people I just…don’t like it. I enjoy clips and bits from it, but the whole show grates on me.
I’m trying to figure out how this is different than liking a villain. Is it because this kind of character is typically a caricature - they lack other depth or redeeming qualities, so they just exist as this detrimental force? There are many villains I find compelling and even likable to an extent, but that is a different thing than liking an actor’s portrayal of a terrible character, I think.
The characters in It’s Always Sunny aren’t villains cause they don’t want anything. It’s slice of life but they’re awful people.
For me, it has nothing to do with the person being good or bad in a moral sense. It’s simply the mannerism and personality of the person being infuriating. Another great example is Katharine Hepburn’s character in Bringing Up Baby. Just shut up and listen for a minute!
Saw this news and had nothing to do, so I rewatched Highlander. That movie has some positive and fun aspects, but overall does not age very well. Particularly jarring is the stark contrast between some of the homophobic content in the movie and the Queen soundtrack.
So this past weekend, some film nerd friends and I rented out a local theatre to screen, Velvet Goldmine (1998). I didn’t really know what to expect going in, other than glam rock musical drama, but I was absolutely blown away by how good it was. I totally get why this is a cult classic and a favorite film for a couple of my older friends. I feel like if I had seen this movie in 1998, when I was still in high-school, my head would have exploded. The way queerness is shown in this film is something to behold. And depicting the glam/queer/rocker lifestyle as some sort of super power gifted to humanity by space aliens via Oscar Wilde was a trip, to say the least.
The film is far from perfect, with some of the music numbers falling a little flat and the actual story seeming a bit all over the place and disjointed. The narrative pays explicit homage to Citizen Cane and which is ambitious and maybe a bit of a reach. But it fucking works. This film was a joy to watch from beginning to end. I’m a bit surprised it’s not more popular and that it was a box-office flop. I have to wonder if that is more to do with homophobia than the merits of the film itself.
If you enjoy music by the likes of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, and Lou Reed, you will probably really love this movie. And it’s still a fabulous piece of art regardless. Plus Ewan McGregor shows his dick. So there’s that.
I’ve been in a movie mood recently. That Mad Max Fury Road everyone lost their shit over was still sitting in my queue. I figured hey, let’s watch all four. The first one was on Netflix. I haven’t seen it since at least last millennia when it was on TV. Clearly I didn’t remember much of it. Even if I had, what I saw was probably very edited and in a pan and scan aspect ratio.
What is there to say about the first one? It’s a pretty typical power fantasy plotline with the old fridge trope. It’s no surprise it came out the same year as The Warriors. It does that same sort of world building where they explain nothing. The audience watches groups of people doing their thing and are left to piece together what the deal is with this world all on their own. Lots of violent and delinquent groups of people engaging in violence and speaking with a lot of slang. The english subtitles helped a lot. Clockwork Orange also has a lot of that, at least in the beginning parts of the movie.
The positives I think is that the movie is shot really well. Lots of really creative camera angles to make the action on the road visually interesting without having to do lots of ridiculous car stunts. The action that happens is really tame compared to Fast&Furious, James Bond, or even The Blues Brothers. The camera does almost all the work, and that’s pretty cool.
