What's the latest movie you've seen?

[Guybrush]

JG Ballard's book is a masterpiece, Spielberg's film is the very definition of "mid"

Yes, Spielberg has a good eye and a handle on storytelling, so of course it's gonna be decent. But besides Bale's performance, there's not that much to get excited about.

It's entertaining enough. Mid is an okay summary 👌

I haven't read the book, but it seems fascinating. I noted that it's semi-autobiographical and I'm always interested in realism and what people saw and experienced during WW2.

As for movies, I miss creepiness so I gotta watch some horror next 👹 Tumbbad was an appetizer, but didn't quite scratch the itch.

[DJChameleon]

I did the Barbieheimer double feature two days ago.

I feel like people are doing it wrong by watching Barbie first then going into Oppenheimer. It's better in my opinion to watch that 3 hour flick that weighs heavy on you then watch Barbie to laugh and lift up your spirits a bit.

Oppenheimer has a great ensemble cast but because they have so much to cover they all couldn't get their proper shine. I feel like a few great actors were under used. As far as the sound design goes that people like to make fun of Nolan flicks for. It was well done in this moving. I won't go into too much detail about it to avoid spoiling but I just like the use of the bomb sound to showcase when Oppie was having anxiety. I feel like the movie should've ended after the bomb got dropped but it drags on for like another hour. The pacing up until that point was really good and I didn't notice time flying by.




Barbie

So, I went into it thinking it was going to be much darker than most people expected and I got what I wanted. It didn't go too over the edge obviously but I knew from the trailer it was going to deal with Barbie having an existential crisis to deal with. America Ferrara makes this great speech in the middle of the movie and because I'm a troll I said "nice speech can't relate". It was a speech talking about the experiences of being a woman and what's expected of women. Some guys in the theater laughed when I said it. In my head I was like no you don't get to laugh at my stupid joke not when you are sitting next to your gf/wife. Good luck sleeping on the couch tonight rookies. I wouldn't have made the joke if I was watching it with my wife. Matter of fact when I go to see it with her this weekend I will NOT be making that joke. I did feel a bit bad for Ken because of the whole unrequited love angle which I COULD relate to. I feel like Greta did a great job with this movie.

[Lexi Darling]

Barbie was delightful! I'm very pleasantly surprised at the feminist message, I know some might find it shallow or surface level, and it certainly is those things, but in an era of unhinged conservatism in America right now, it really feels good to see a movie with such a huge audience really embrace a positive message like that. It's something I have to grapple with personally, as my relationship is sometimes misinterpreted as being a "traditional gender roles", anti-feminist or even misogynist thing by people who don't know us very well. But we both enjoyed the movie a lot, kept us engaged all the way through.

Oppenheimer was about as enjoyable as it probably could have been for someone like me who doesn't really enjoy biopics or character studies like that. I do confess I was really tired from a long day of kitchen cleaning, my work shift, and having just sat down for two hours during Barbie. I ended up falling asleep a little over two hours in, after having already been drifting in and out of paying attention. So I wasn't really in the right mode to appreciate the movie, which I don't feel great about but at the same time I really wouldn't want to watch it again, not for a good while at least.

[jadis]

Yes, Spielberg has a good eye and a handle on storytelling, so of course it's gonna be decent. But besides Bale's performance, there's not that much to get excited about.

It's entertaining enough. Mid is an okay summary 👌

I haven't read the book, but it seems fascinating. I noted that it's semi-autobiographical and I'm always interested in realism and what people saw and experienced during WW2.

As for movies, I miss creepiness so I gotta watch some horror next 👹 Tumbbad was an appetizer, but didn't quite scratch the itch.

BTW it's the same JG Ballard who wrote Crash, the novel Cronenberg filmed so memorably. All the same, for all my love for Cronenberg I prefer the novel. I find that the film has some great scenes but as a whole the novel works in ways the film doesn't.

I've read Empire of the Sun when I was already familiar with Ballard's trademark technological nightmares, dark humor, extreme violence etc, having read Crash, Atrocity Exhibition, High Rise, Concrete Island etc. So for me it wasn't so much a straightforward realist account as a "let's see where it all began". And it's all there, themes like confinement, escape, civilizational collapse, disintegration of bodily limits, war not as the state of exception but as the norm etc etc...

But then I gave it as a birthday present to a colleague of mine, who is working on texts written by French Holocaust survivors, and told her "this is WW2 as you've never known it" and she absolutely loved it despite never having heard of Ballard. Great books can be read in all sorts of way from multiple perspectives.  

[jadis]

Also on the subject of Crash, the guys who plays Vaughan, Elias Koteas, is so much more than a De Niro lookalike. His career didn't pan out as it could have, god knows why, but he's a brilliant, brilliant actor. And a proud son of Montreal's thriving Greek community!




He's probably best known as Casey Jones from the fucking Ninja Turtles and strong supporting turns in films such as Thin Red Line, Shutter Island and Zodiac. For me, his greatest achievement is the lead in a 1991 Atom Egoyan film, The Adjuster, which also happens to be one of my all time favorite films. This is what Koteas said about playing the role of Noah:

I feel like I'm watching someone else when I see it. I almost felt like I don't really know how to talk about that film. It seems like an out-of-body experience. What people take from that is completely different than what I could possibly say about it. And it makes my heart smile when people respond to that film, because it's so quirky and odd. Sometimes being so controlled as an actor and knowing everything you want to do can serve it. Sometimes not knowing on the day what you're going to do may be the best remedy for that part. Sometimes the actor's confusion might translate into the character's confusion for the viewer. And Atom Egoyan, he said in passing, recently, that you probably can't make that kind of movie now. It's just not possible. When you look at it, it's like a capsule of the potential of independent filmmaking at its rawest. And Atom has such a passionate view of how he looks at the world and how people relate to each other. And any time he has a story that he thinks I can help him tell, I'll be there.

[Guybrush]

Nice, Jadis! Thank you so much 🙂 I will check out Ballard as well as The Adjuster.

I wrote about rewatching Crash here a few months ago and Elias Koteas is one of those actors I typically recognize without remembering exactly from where.

I've also been thinking about Crash today as I wrote about Rosanna Arquette in the Hot Peeps thread 🤔 I'll check out Ballard's book after I've finished Hiroshima.

[Guybrush]

Saw the 2021 horror The Sadness yesterday.



It's a Taiwanese movie about an epidemic where a flu-like virus turns people into violently sadistic, rapey berserkers. It resembles a zombie film even though the afflicted are not zombies, just really dangerous and out to get ya.

It has a lot of ultra violence in it, so unless you can stomach sexual violence, eyes getting poked out, innocent people stabbed and murdered, lotsa guts etc. this movie's not for you.

I found the movie to be pretty good and surprisingly well made, at least early on. It has jokes and never lets up that it's just a movie, but it also knows when to turn on the drama. The actors do a mostly fine job.

The cinematography is also good and we get some cool (if extreme) visuals.

HOWEVER the movie's last act fell very flat for me. So it's like first act is very good. Second is good. Final act is bad.

Final verdict:

Still, there's a lot to like here if you're a gore hound or just like a bit of occasional visceral violence.

[Guybrush]

Today, we saw the Indonesian 2022 movie Satan's Slaves 2: Communion which is a sequel to Satan's Slaves from 2017.



The title does make it sound like pure exploitation, but these are somewhat serious attempts at making spooky movies with a family drama at their core, kinda like James Wan's Conjuring movies

Not everything works here and the family drama didn't quite grab me, but there's still a lot to like. The movie's well made with some striking imagery and fun and original ideas. It also takes place in an apartment building and uses this setting to good effect.

On the downside, quite a few things don't make sense and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Still fun, though.

I'd rate it:

[degrassi.knoll]

Barbie was delightful! I'm very pleasantly surprised at the feminist message, I know some might find it shallow or surface level, and it certainly is those things, but in an era of unhinged conservatism in America right now, it really feels good to see a movie with such a huge audience really embrace a positive message like that. It's something I have to grapple with personally, as my relationship is sometimes misinterpreted as being a "traditional gender roles", anti-feminist or even misogynist thing by people who don't know us very well. But we both enjoyed the movie a lot, kept us engaged all the way through.

In what way do you possibly interpret a Greta Gerwig film as only having a shallow or surface-level feminist message? Like... I don't know how much deeper you can get than a modern day parable of the effects of the patriarchy on all genders. 

And isn't being a trans kind of an exemption from traditional gender roles at large or...?

I feel like you missed the point and just judged it as inherently a chick flick. Like what about the message was surprising exactly?

[Lexi Darling]

In what way do you possibly interpret a Greta Gerwig film as only having a shallow or surface-level feminist message? Like... I don't know how much deeper you can get than a modern day parable of the effects of the patriarchy.

I didn't really mean shallow in the sense that it lacked substance or merit to the message, just that I found the parable to be portrayed in a pretty simplistic way. I don't think it dug particularly deep into the subject matter, and don't get me wrong, I don't think that's bad or that the movie is worse for it. It just felt like it didn't really get at the roots of misogyny and sexism and systemic male privilege in a particularly satisfying way for me. But that's my own preference; I actually think the portrayal of the message is brilliant in its clarity.

I'm not even really saying I think it's shallow or surface level anyway, just that I can see why others would think that. I'm largely unfamiliar with Gerwig, but I don't like the idea of positioning anyone as an authority on feminism or how pro-feminist messages should be portrayed in film. I can have my own preferences on that, at the end of the day I can only speak for myself and the way I process art. I'm not saying it makes the message less effective or powerful.

I feel like you missed the point and just judged it as inherently a chick flick. Like what about the message was surprising exactly?

I most certainly did nothing of the sort. If anything maybe some nuance is lost on me because I have such a weird situation with gender, I fully admit that. And I'd love to discuss my trans identity and how it relates to gender roles, but with all due respect I would want to have a proper conversation about that rather than having assumptions made about me.

[degrassi.knoll]

It just felt like it didn't really get at the roots of misogyny and sexism and systemic male privilege in a particularly satisfying way for me.

How so?

[Lexi Darling]

How so?

To me, boiling it down to "Ken feels taken for granted so he becomes a misogynist and decides to erect a patriarchal order" just doesn't really get into the nitty gritty enough for me. Like I said, I think the movie did portray the message well in the context of the narrative. But would you not agree that there is more to the roots of patriarchy and misogyny than that story arc gets at?

Maybe I'm a feminism illiterate weirdo, I get why I might be thought of that way. It's very probable that my perspective comes from a different place. I don't claim to speak for all women when I say these things.

And I meant I was surprised that a Hollywood movie co-produced by Mattel, Inc. went there with the feminist message. That's all I meant by that.

[degrassi.knoll]

Lol no need to get defensive, no one's saying you can't have your own preferences ffs, I'm just asking questions.

As for Ken, I think the whole bringing the patriarchy to Barbieland narrative is what's surface level. It's the Kens turning on one another and becoming toxic and self-loathing, their identities being minimized to the most basic variety of masculinity, that is a perfect illustration of how as much as the patriarchy protects men, it is also inherently harmful to them. Not to mention the commentary on compulsive heterosexuality and Ken being created literally as an accessory to Barbie.

It's not a documentary on misogyny, no. No one claimed it to be. But as I thought it seems like you might have missed the forest for the trees. No offense.

[Lexi Darling]

Lol no need to get defensive, no one's saying you can't have your own preferences ffs, I'm just asking questions.

As for Ken, I think the whole bringing the patriarchy to Barbieland narrative is what's surface level. It's the Kens turning on one another and becoming toxic and self-loathing, their identities being minimized to the most basic variety of masculinity, that is a perfect illustration of how as much as the patriarchy protects men, it is also inherently harmful to them.

It's not a documentary on misogyny, no. No one claimed it to be. But as I thought it seems like you might have missed the forest for the trees. No offense.

I'm only defensive over having assumptions made about me and the implication that for whatever reason I am not qualified to have my thoughts on feminist media readings. I understood the messages just fine. And once again I think we agree where it matters. Maybe I'm not articulating well enough, there's only so much detail I can put into these forum posts. I just don't appreciate being talked to like this stuff is lost on me and my ideas about feminist issues are less informed or less valid than yours because I may personally value different approaches to feminist narratives in film than the one Barbie took.

[degrassi.knoll]

Bruh, you posted your thoughts on the film, and I asked for elaboration. I didn't make any assumptions, I used your own post as a basis to form my questions. Yeesh.

Am I the cinema? Because you are projecting.