28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Yxklyx]

I found it to be a parody of the other flicks. The toy car bomb is pretty cheesy.

Kind of like Death Wish 3 then? I don't think they went out to make a parody but the third installment is pretty hilarious - probably the best of the bunch.

totally unrelated: Starz and their BS logo - that's one less customer for them...

[DFA1979]

Kind of like Death Wish 3 then? I don't think they went out to make a parody but the third installment is pretty hilarious - probably the best of the bunch.

totally unrelated: Starz and their BS logo - that's one less customer for them...

Death Wish 3 is hilarious and outlandish. The Dead Pool never reaches those heights. Now I'm dwelling on how many action franchises I've sat through over the years.

[Philip J. Fry]

Happy birthday you mad legend.

[Wryan]

It's a good thing that much of De Palma's Femme Fatale glides along deliciously and sensually without dialogue, because most of the dialogue that's there is simply awful. And the Butterfly Effect cum Final Destination ending is a straight howler. But it's so delighted with itself it's hard to not enjoy the ride at least a little.

[Mal]

I loathed Femme Fatale when it came out. Rewatched it early in quarantine and it was better, though all things considered, just ok- regardless of titillation.

[StuSmallz]

Martin Scorsese’s infinity war:

And to return to Scorsese’s latest, actual, point: Curation should be celebrated, just as expertise should be appreciated and encouraged. And there’s a reasonable place for the algorithm. The rapacious capitalistic dictates of what kinds of movies get seen, streamed, and distributed shouldn’t be swept under the rug, any more than the grim economic realities of our current era that led to that predicament. Sure, we can well assure Scorsese that we know the difference between varying kinds of content: A Fellini film and a YouTube video of a cat falling out a window to AWOLNATION’s “Sail” are very different things, thank you very much. But it’s disingenuous to pretend we’re his intended target: The corporations and bottom-line-minded decision makers who dictate the value of content don’t give a fuck about qualitative differences, and certainly don’t care about the artistic merit of one over the other. Who controls our access to both art and entertainment is very much a matter of crucial importance, and the extremely rich people determining those matters do not need defending. They need the Martin Scorseses of the world to call them out; and rather than take umbrage at the suggestion that any movies we enjoy could be anything less than capital-A Art, maybe the rest of us need to support Scorsese, lest we eventually not even know what it is we’re missing out on.

[Skitch]

Man that guy picks odd hills on which to die. Like, who cares? Cinema evolves. It's a technically a relatively young art form.

[StuSmallz]

Man that guy picks odd hills on which to die. Like, who cares? Cinema evolves. It's a technically a relatively young art form.

Speaking up against the continued commercialization of film at the expense of it remaining any form of personally-derived art is about the best hill a filmmaker could die on, if you ask me.

[Wryan]

That's silly. We'll always have non-commercial indie films. How else will we find the directors for the next Marvel movie?

[Irish]

Two main currents have risen to dominance in media during the 21st century as a result: 1) the demolishing of previous standards of elitism (often racist, sexist, and classist) via a mentality often loosely called “poptimism”; and 2) a broader cultural bias against elitism in any guise, fostered in part by a decades-long culture war waged by the right.

So despite the Culture Wars of the ’80s and ’90s, which saw the idea of multiculturalism emerge largely victorious against narrow-minded forces of Eurocentric panglossianism, it’s been a steady uphill battle to continue diversifying and broadening the scope of voices allowed into popular culture.

So it’s understandable why the old distinctions needed to be demolished: In many ways, they sucked. It’s all too easy to say “Atlanta is good, but it’s no Mad Men” and elide the long history of institutionalized racism that has traditionally devalued the work of BIPOC artists, especially because so much of these ideas were taught to us at the unconscious level.

So not only is this article glaringly ahistorical in too many places, it's also depressingly stupid.

The argument here is weak and the message muddled. You can't believe everything is art, with pop culture as net positive, and then propose that some elitism is good, actually.

[Ezee E]

Scorsese actually mentioned AWOLNATION "Sail?"

[Irish]

Scorsese actually mentioned AWOLNATION "Sail?"

As recently as fifteen years ago, the term “content” was heard only when people were discussing the cinema on a serious level, and it was contrasted with and measured against “form.” Then, gradually, it was used more and more by the people who took over media companies, most of whom knew nothing about the history of the art form, or even cared enough to think that they should. “Content” became a business term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode. It was linked, of course, not to the theatrical experience but to home viewing, on the streaming platforms that have come to overtake the moviegoing experience, just as Amazon overtook physical stores. On the one hand, this has been good for filmmakers, myself included. On the other hand, it has created a situation in which everything is presented to the viewer on a level playing field, which sounds democratic but isn’t. If further viewing is “suggested” by algorithms based on what you’ve already seen, and the suggestions are based only on subject matter or genre, then what does that do to the art of cinema?

Outside the opening and closing, the essay is really just a paean to the genius of Fellini.

[Spun Lepton]

So not only is this article glaringly ahistorical in too many places, it's also depressingly stupid.

Depressingly stupid is par for the course at the AVClub.

[baby doll]

As far as I can tell, all Scorsese was arguing in his Harper's article was that people should take movies seriously as an art, which is something people have been saying for a hundred years--although there's something quintessentially 1950s about Scorsese's implication that film's significance as art rests on the work of a handful capital-A Auteurs who developed a consistent authorial persona in their films, and Fellini in particular. And by only citing either European art house directors or American directors of his own generation who specialized in ripping them off (Allen, Fosse, Mazursky) as Auteurs--as opposed to Ford, Hawks, Lubitsch, et al. (Hitchcock is mentioned once in passing as a "brand")--Scorsese does leave himself open to the charge of implicitly upholding a high/low art binary, a binary that, as the AV Club writer suggests, is grounded more in race, class, and sex than in aesthetics. Even worse, here and in his earlier dismissal of comic book movies as theme park attractions, Scorsese implicitly grants that contemporary mass culture is actually entertaining. Probably the single most depressing moment in the AV Club article is when the author describes a film as pleasurable as Parasite as though it were some rarefied high art that only a connoisseur could enjoy, which just goes to show how completely degraded the concept of entertainment has become by the culture industry's utter contempt for its audience. (Two years ago, when I told my wife that I thought Justine Triet's Sibyl was "entertaining," she thought it meant I didn't like it.) The problem with contemporary Hollywood cinema isn't that it's frivolous entertainment; the problem is that it sucks.

[Skitch]

Speaking up against the continued commercialization of film at the expense of it remaining any form of personally-derived art is about the best hill a filmmaker could die on, if you ask me.

I'm not saying hes wrong, hes allowed to feel that way, but has there ever been more room for indy filmmaking?

[Grouchy]

Outside the opening and closing, the essay is really just a paean to the genius of Fellini.

Well, it's arguably the intent, but I also believe there is a lot of worth in what he says about "content".

[DFA1979]

I just want Marty to make that western he's been planning. I don't give a shit what he thinks about Marvel movies.

[Wryan]

Someone tell me how the fuck this isn't Martin Freeman in heavy makeup as Stalin but is, rather, someone else entirely named Adrian McLoughlin? Because that's fucking Martin Freeman in heavy makeup.



From the moment I saw the trailer, I said, "That's Martin Freeman lol." He even sounds like him. I've never been more convinced of something in my life. BUT NO. It is not.

How???

[StuSmallz]

Well, it's arguably the intent, but I also believe there is a lot of worth in what he says about "content".

Agreed, and while I understand the concerns about the "cult of the auteur" being taken too far, it's not an either/or dilemma; it's possible to acknowledge that just giving any self-described "auteur" creative freedom won't automatically result in better movies all the time, while also feel that Hollywood as it is doesn't give enough freedom to the right artists. That's the reason why I'm focusing on the latter here, not because I feel Hollywood is too artist friendly, but not artist-friendly enough.in its current state. If anyone else feels otherwise, I'd hear them out, but I'd have to hear a good case first to start putting credence in that viewpoint.

[StanleyK]

So, in Funny Games, Michael Haneke sets out to criticise audiences for watching violent thrillers. He decides that the best course of action is to make a violent thriller (a very good one I might add, with plenty of superbly-directed tension). After directly calling out the viewer for deriving pleasure from the torture of the innocent family, he then chastises us by denying the victims comeuppance on the villains. But doesn't that directly contradict his own thesis that we are voyeuristic sadists? Ultimately, it seems like the only way to 'beat' Haneke would be to not watch the film at all, or walk out when things start to get violent.

I'm going to say the p-word: Michael Haneke is pretentious. He thinks he's morally above violent cinema while making nothing but violent cinema (at least up to 1997) and that his audiences are vile for watching the movies he makes.

[megladon8]

Thank you. Yes. 100%.

I saw an interview with him where he said exactly what you suggested - he wanted people to be punished for not walking out of the film when things started to get unpleasant.

Head-up-ass of the highest order.

[Ezee E]

Pretentious? In other movies, sure. But I think Funny Games takes an approach that mutually resonates with the audience and was actually intended by Haneke at the same time.

I think he has other movies where he believes there's a lot more within his movie that what's actually there.

[Skitch]

I do not disagree.

Still a good movie lol

[Wryan]

"I'll tell you what. The day I need a friend like you, I'll just have myself a little squat and shit one out." --Mrs. Carmody, The Mist

One of the great wtf moments I can remember in "recent" memory. At least, that's what I thought before the events of the last few years. Now it just seems like an accurate portrayal of the melodramatic, self-victimizing, insane evangelical white woman. Now, after seeing so many videos of these folks in action calling the police on Black people and screaming about Jesus, this proto-Karen hits different, as they say.

[DFA1979]

I liked Funny Games but I wanted a movie that didn't feature any winking nods to the camera. When the flick is being relentless and brutal I was engaged. I feel that Scream did the meta thing better even if Funny Games has the superior ending.