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Thread: 28 Film Discussion Threads Later

  1. #66851
    Quote Quoting Skitch (view post)
    Fight Club is...perfect. Perfect adaptation, perfect black comedy, incredible editing...I adore that movie.
    Yep, pretty much. A shame Fincher has never really tried comedy again, because this is hilarious. I'm still amazed at how badly some critics read the movie, taking the message at face value and ignoring pretty much the entire third act.

    One of the biggest headscratchers for me are those critics who single out Tyler Durden commenting on a Calvin Kline ad on the bus with something along the lines of "Is that what men look like?" and claim that having Brad Pitt say that line is emblematic of the hypocrisy of the movie. It's like - did you even pay attention to anything that followed?
    Last 10 Movies Seen
    (90+ = canonical, 80-89 = brilliant, 70-79 = strongly recommended, 60-69 = good, 50-59 = mixed, 40-49 = below average with some good points, 30-39 = poor, 20-29 = bad, 10-19 = terrible, 0-9 = soul-crushingly inept in every way)

    Run
    (2020) 64
    The Whistlers
    (2019
    ) 55
    Pawn (2020) 62
    Matilda (1996) 37
    The Town that Dreaded Sundown
    (1976) 61
    Moby Dick (2011) 50

    Soul
    (2020) 64

    Heroic Duo
    (2003) 55
    A Moment of Romance (1990) 61
    As Tears Go By (1988) 65

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  2. #66852
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    Dude...I laugh, and laugh...and LAUGH...every time I watch that flick. Its so fucking funny. Oh, and perfect casting too. One of the few movies that I've watched every commentary track on.

  3. #66853
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting transmogrifier (view post)
    Yep, pretty much. A shame Fincher has never really tried comedy again, because this is hilarious. I'm still amazed at how badly some critics read the movie, taking the message at face value and ignoring pretty much the entire third act.

    One of the biggest headscratchers for me are those critics who single out Tyler Durden commenting on a Calvin Kline ad on the bus with something along the lines of "Is that what men look like?" and claim that having Brad Pitt say that line is emblematic of the hypocrisy of the movie. It's like - did you even pay attention to anything that followed?
    I think the question is more one of proportion - how much the film lingers on the pleasures of its superficialities for the first two-thirds, and how effectively it subverts them in the final third. Not just that it subverts them, but that the flip has substance in its execution and meaning. But yeah, I would agree that any critics knocking that moment aren't paying close enough attention.

    I've just always felt weird because I remember watching it with so many college friends, and the big takeaways were "fuck corporations" and "let's start a fight club." And these guys weren't stupid guys. Which, yeah, that doesn't mean the film isn't effective artistically or thematically (and my crowdsourced anecdote from over a decade ago isn't some sort of Tiger uppercut on the film), but I do sometimes wonder about the value of satire if it's clear only to the type of people who didn't need the lesson in the first place. The type of people who might benefit most from the messaging could be the ones uniquely unqualified to process it.

  4. #66854
    The Pan Spinal's Avatar
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    Woody Allen:
    A. Zelig
    B. Midnight in Paris

    Michael Bay:

    Only seen two, pass.

    Wes Anderson:
    A. Bottle Rocket
    B. Grand Budapest Hotel

    Steven Soderbergh:
    A. Che
    B. Erin Brockovich

    Spike Lee:
    A. Mars Blackmon
    B. She's Gotta Have It
    Coming to America (Landis, 1988) **
    The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019) *1/2
    Us (Peele, 2019) ***1/2
    Fugue (Smoczynska, 2018) ***1/2
    Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013) ***1/2
    Shadow (Zhang, 2018) ***
    Oslo, August 31st (J. Trier, 2011) ****
    Climax (Noé, 2018) **1/2
    Fighting With My Family (Merchant, 2019) **
    Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013) ***

  5. #66855
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
    LotR was in production for a good long while before Gladiator came out.

    Are you suggesting it primed modern audiences to get enthusiastic for that Cecil B. DeMille sort of production?
    It's the first I can think of, in which it returned to that type of production. I guess a few years before that had Braveheart, but not to the scope of Gladiator with it's medieval times, heavy blood, heavy production value. Lord of the Rings came out the next year. Can't help but feel that Gladiator helped warm our appetites to that.

    I'll have to ponder on Jaws some more. It's fine for its characters and the lifestyle presented, but boy does the shark look dorky.

    Barbarian - ***
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  6. #66856
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    And yes. I had thought Fight Club trended down a bit in my mind, but I watched it again, and it's humor and production value got me right back into it again. There will forever be little details to discuss in that movie that pop up on later viewings, as mentioned earlier.

    It's also Pitt's best performance, probably.

    Benjamin Button... Not sure what others think, but feel like it's regarded as not good, and it isn't.

    Barbarian - ***
    Bones and All - ***
    Tar - **


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  7. #66857
    Quote Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
    I do sometimes wonder about the value of satire if it's clear only to the type of people who didn't need the lesson in the first place. The type of people who might benefit most from the messaging could be the ones uniquely unqualified to process it.
    The movie kind of addresses this as well - it is only the narrator who learns anything in the end. Literally everyone else in Project Mayhem stick with it and never stop to consider whether their cult is actually moral or just. To me, rather than act as a subtextual message to the audience that the lifestyle is cool and right, it is a straight-forwardly cynical look at our predilection for coming together in groups that purport to celebrate some shared characteristic but which really revolve around hatred of "others" and the glee we get in destruction (physical, social, political, whatever). The fact that the film itself attracts these type of people is not its fault.
    Last 10 Movies Seen
    (90+ = canonical, 80-89 = brilliant, 70-79 = strongly recommended, 60-69 = good, 50-59 = mixed, 40-49 = below average with some good points, 30-39 = poor, 20-29 = bad, 10-19 = terrible, 0-9 = soul-crushingly inept in every way)

    Run
    (2020) 64
    The Whistlers
    (2019
    ) 55
    Pawn (2020) 62
    Matilda (1996) 37
    The Town that Dreaded Sundown
    (1976) 61
    Moby Dick (2011) 50

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    (2020) 64

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  8. #66858
    Since 1929 Morris Schæffer's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting transmogrifier (view post)
    I think I have to reassess everything I thought I knew about Ezee after that Jaws comment.
    I may have to do the same.
    [+] closer to next rating / [-] closer to previous rating

    • Dark (S3) ✦✦✦½ [-]
    • Fall (Mann, 2022) ✦✦✦½ [-]
    • Ms. Marvel (S1) ✦½ [+]
    • Dark (S2) ✦✦✦✦
    • Moon Knight (S1) ✦✦½ [-]
    • Get Carter (Hodges, 1971) ✦✦✦½ [+]
    • Prey (Trachtenberg, 2022) ✦✦✦ [-]
    • Black Bird (S1) ✦✦✦✦
    • Better Call Saul (S6) ✦✦✦½ [+]
    • Halo (S1) ✦✦✦ [-]
    • Slow Horses (S1) ✦✦✦½ [+]
    • H4Z4RD (Govaerts, 2022/BE) ✦✦½ [-]
    • Gangs of London (S1) ✦✦✦½ [+]
    • We Own This City (S1) ✦✦✦½ [+]
    • Thor: Love and Thunder (Waititi, 2022) ✦✦ [+]


  9. #66859
    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    Watched Bedeviled after seeing transmogrifier list it as good k-horror some months back, and it totally and absolutely commits to its premise, zeroing in on every failure of its main character and interrogating her indifferent reaction to sexual assault. It's a film that I initially thought a little less of it once I learned the director comes from Kim Ki-duk's sphere--it's there in the clinical treatment of sexuality and violence, but perhaps it's as simple of gender reversal to make the themes resonate as something more substantial than brutality. It's got a pained and melancholy view of human responsibility, and that view underscores the coda too. What a final match-cut of the lead's body into the island, too. Great, underrated stuff.
    Last edited by dreamdead; 06-27-2017 at 02:58 PM.
    The Boat People - 9
    The Power of the Dog - 7.5
    The King of Pigs - 7

  10. #66860
    It really is a great film. Glad you liked it.
    Last 10 Movies Seen
    (90+ = canonical, 80-89 = brilliant, 70-79 = strongly recommended, 60-69 = good, 50-59 = mixed, 40-49 = below average with some good points, 30-39 = poor, 20-29 = bad, 10-19 = terrible, 0-9 = soul-crushingly inept in every way)

    Run
    (2020) 64
    The Whistlers
    (2019
    ) 55
    Pawn (2020) 62
    Matilda (1996) 37
    The Town that Dreaded Sundown
    (1976) 61
    Moby Dick (2011) 50

    Soul
    (2020) 64

    Heroic Duo
    (2003) 55
    A Moment of Romance (1990) 61
    As Tears Go By (1988) 65

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  11. #66861
    Screenwriter Lazlo's Avatar
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    My podcast, I Was a Teenage Movie Critic is live! Check it out if you have some time. In the first episode Joanne and I talk about how we became teenage movie critics and we dive into my first review, the Disney classic RocketMan. Ratings, reviews, subscriptions, and, most of all, feedback would be greatly appreciated. Hope you enjoy!
    Last edited by Lazlo; 06-27-2017 at 02:44 PM.
    last four:
    black widow - 8
    zero dark thirty - 9
    the muse - 7
    freaky - 7

    now reading:
    lonesome dove - larry mcmurtry

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    The Harrison Marathon - A Podcast About Harrison Ford

  12. #66862
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    Scorsese
    Under: The Age of Innocence
    Over: I dunno... The Departed? It's a great movie, he has simply made many better ones.

    Fincher
    Under: Zodiac
    Over: Can't think of any that qualifies.

    Spielberg
    Under: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
    Over: Lincoln

    Scott
    Under: Legend
    Over: I hear some people consider Prometheus a good movie.

    Linklater
    Under: A Scanner Darkly
    Over: Boyhood. I wouldn't watch it again.

    Tarantino
    Under: The Hateful Eight
    Over: None really, but I'll say Django Unchained for the hell of it.

    Miller
    Under: The Witches of Eastwick?
    Over: Happy Feet? I feel like I'm missing some films that would be key here.

    Stone
    Under: Savages
    Over: The Doors

    De Palma
    Under: Femme Fatale is a fucking masterpiece.
    Over: Carlito's Way

    Coens
    Under: The Man Who Wasn't There
    Over: Blood Simple

    Raimi
    Under: A Simple Plan
    Over: Not sure. If anything, his filmography lacks appreciation. I guess the original Evil Dead is a bit crude by today's standards, but the praise usually goes to the sequel.

    Allen
    Under: Broadway Danny Rose
    Over: A looooot of them. I'll go with Midnight in Paris.

    Bay
    Eh. I'd like to do this one, honest, but I only marginally liked Bad Boys and 70% of that is because of Tea Leoni's slender legs.

    Wes Anderson
    Under: Bottle Rocket
    Over: The Darjeeling Limited

    Soderbergh
    Under: The Informant! and The Limey
    Over: Contagion

    Spike Lee
    Under: Summer of Sam
    Over: I'm not sure how many people actually love it, but Jungle Fever is quite bad.

  13. #66863
    The Pan Spinal's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Ezee E (view post)
    Benjamin Button... Not sure what others think, but feel like it's regarded as not good, and it isn't.
    And yet it was nominated for Best Picture, so I think you could make a case for it being overrated in that sense. It's the worst Fincher I've seen by a pretty wide margin.
    Coming to America (Landis, 1988) **
    The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019) *1/2
    Us (Peele, 2019) ***1/2
    Fugue (Smoczynska, 2018) ***1/2
    Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013) ***1/2
    Shadow (Zhang, 2018) ***
    Oslo, August 31st (J. Trier, 2011) ****
    Climax (Noé, 2018) **1/2
    Fighting With My Family (Merchant, 2019) **
    Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013) ***

  14. #66864
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    I like Ben Button. Its a weird premise for sure, but such a beautiful sad movie.

    Alright, wheres the Director Consensus thread for Fincher, lets do this.

  15. #66865
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Spinal (view post)
    And yet it was nominated for Best Picture, so I think you could make a case for it being overrated in that sense. It's the worst Fincher I've seen by a pretty wide margin.
    Great point. I've watched some of it on TNT or somewhere, and the Fincher-look is certainly there. Just a story that doesn't really work for movies I think. Great Gatsby meets Forrest Gump or something... Eh

    Barbarian - ***
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  16. #66866
    Quote Quoting Grouchy (view post)
    Fincher
    Under: Zodiac
    ???
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


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  17. #66867
    The Pan Scar's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Ezee E (view post)

    I'll have to ponder on Jaws some more. It's fine for its characters and the lifestyle presented, but boy does the shark look dorky.
    My rule of thumb is judge the special effects based on when the movie was made.

    Damn near lost my temper years ago at a lady who was laughing through The Exorcist because 'it looked fake'.



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    “What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, er... an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks and that's all.”

  18. #66868
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    Yeah I still remember my shock and awe at how amazing the SFX were in The Last Starfighter. Now it looks like it was done on an Atari 2600. Still heart the movie though.

  19. #66869
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    If a movie is no longer effective because of outdated special/visual effects, it probably wasn't all that good in the first place because it overrelied on spectacle.

    But I also agree with Scar that it's not worth it to judge special effects from decades ago as being unworthy. If they're contextually unworthy to their peers, that I get, but even that has its limits. I get more out of the visual effects in Equinox than I do something like Logan's Run because they're more offbeat and imaginative, even if Logan's Run has more technically robust work.

    But a corollary: most movies were never intended to be seen on flat digital screens at home in bright light while the viewer's cooking pasta. I actually sorta hate the clarity of image in my Night of the Living Dead millennium edition. Through no fault of the film, its makeup appliances look more like appliances. That movie's meant to be seen on 16mm, in a grungy drive-in, with a couple of off-balance splices between the reels.

  20. #66870
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Scar (view post)
    My rule of thumb is judge the special effects based on when the movie was made.

    Damn near lost my temper years ago at a lady who was laughing through The Exorcist because 'it looked fake'.



    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    This is like pointing at a Giotto fresco and laughing at the lack of dimension.

  21. #66871
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Scar (view post)
    My rule of thumb is judge the special effects based on when the movie was made.

    Damn near lost my temper years ago at a lady who was laughing through The Exorcist because 'it looked fake'.



    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Yeah, some parts in the Exorcist definitely look kind of weird, but there's still many parts that look very real to me too, usually when it's just the performance speaking for it all instead of the flying up and down stuff.

    Barbarian - ***
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  22. #66872
    Producer Yxklyx's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Scar (view post)
    My rule of thumb is judge the special effects based on when the movie was made.

    ...
    Why do special effects even have to be judged? Theater requires suspension of reality - I don't see film as being any different.

  23. #66873
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Yxklyx (view post)
    Why do special effects even have to be judged? Theater requires suspension of reality - I don't see film as being any different.
    For most special effects artists throughout history, their goal was to work as hard as they could to convince an audience of their realism, much like editors working their hardest to make the cuts "invisible." That's the goal they were chasing, and so I tend to judge many of them against that goal (while also recognizing the film's context). Obviously it's fine if you don't care (sincerely). But since they're an element of the film, I think it's worth "judging" them or at least evaluating them, especially since special effects are increasingly a means of delivering new kinds of characters. My favorite element of the Godzilla reboot was how meaty and weighty and convincing the animals were, moreso than probably any monster movie I'd seen before, even Spielberg's Jurassic films. That element contributed to the feelings the film was trying to evoke: awe, grandeur, a sort of Lovecraftian helplessness. The film wouldn't've achieved those goals with men in suits or stop-motion (which have their place, to be sure).

    That assumes you would agree that Godzilla '14 worked.

  24. #66874
    The Pan Scar's Avatar
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    Judging may not have been the best term to use.


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  25. #66875
    Cinematographer StanleyK's Avatar
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    I want to watch Herzog's La Soufrière, but I can only find it with an English-language narration, even though IMDB lists its language as German and Wikipedia as French/German. Are they wrong and I can thus watch it, or should I hunt some more for a proper version?

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