Eh, well, they are dissimilar in just about every other possible way.Quoting Qrazy (view post)
Eh, well, they are dissimilar in just about every other possible way.Quoting Qrazy (view post)
See my latest blog entry: The Wolf of Wall Street and The New Cinema of Excess
Reasonable, I haven't seen Midnight in Paris. I can just never pass up an opportunity to slag off Match Point. :PQuoting Israfel the Black (view post)
The Princess and the Pilot - B-
Playtime (rewatch) - A
The Hobbit - C-
The Comedy - D+
Kings of the Road - C+
The Odd Couple - B
Red Rock West - C-
The Hunger Games - D-
Prometheus - C
Tangled - C+
Yeah, I sensed the clear intention to take a swipe. I'm sure I've sparred you on it in the past, figured I let that pass.Quoting Qrazy (view post)
See my latest blog entry: The Wolf of Wall Street and The New Cinema of Excess
Take the early scene where Paul takes everyone on a tour. They all mock Gil for his story about the nostalgia shop. They take turns at psychoanalyzing his denial of the present and his "Golden Age" thinking, the coping mechanism that results in the fallacy or erroneous thinking that the past is always better than the present. Gil's entire novel is deconstructed, lampooned, and dismissed right in front of him, long before he even had the chance to write it. He simply walks casually along with his head down in defeat and takes the brutal mockery. It's actually one of the more humorous bits in the film.Quoting Boner M (view post)
You might think about this scene that Gil represents Woody Allen and Paul is the quintessential "pseudo-intellectual" that Allen proceeds to prove wrong throughout the course of the next hour and half. But of course, that's to ignore the bittersweet insights of the conclusion and the function of comedy in Woody Allen's films. If Gil is a proxy for Allen, then the self-deprecation in this scene has to be at least considered at face value. Allen's cerebral humor works because his self-deprecation reflects a kind of Socratic uncertainty. In other words, it's not that Allen thinks Paul is simply wrong and that Gil is right, that Paul's intellectualized rant flatly fails to capture the real intellectual complexity and nuance of Gil's novel and philosophy on life. It might be right to think of Paul as a pseudo-intellectual because he speaks from what he's (half) read from books and not from what he has experienced, but that doesn't mean his analysis of Gil is incorrect. That's the value of the irony in this scene. Allen's brand of humor is a thoroughly self-aware one.
See my latest blog entry: The Wolf of Wall Street and The New Cinema of Excess
Painful to watch. No characters. Historical idiocy & inaccuracy. Sophomoric insights.
After VC Barcelona, Whatever Works & this, I'm convinced some half wit NYU undergrad is writing Allen's scripts.
Isn't this sort of the point though? These historical characters are meant to be projections of Gil's mind (or are they?).Quoting Irish (view post)
Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:
Top Gun: Maverick - 8
Top Gun - 7
McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
Crimes of the Future - 8
Videodrome - 9
Valley Girl - 8
Summer of '42 - 7
In the Line of Fire - 8
Passenger 57 - 7
Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6
Yes & no.Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
If Gil really is a huge fan of the era, the he'd know that Hemingway wasn't a combatant in WWI and didn't go to Africa until 1933, well after the period presented.
On a personal level, it just bugged me that they took thee wonderfully interesting figures and reduced them to the stupidest level of characterchure. The back cover of the Cliff Note's for The Sun Also Rises has more depth than this movie.
I understand what Allen was doing, but I'm mystified it took him 2 hours to do it. Just as im mystified it took a grown man a week+ to realize there was no penicillin in 1925.
There's maybe 30 minutes of story & "insight" here. The rest is just a travelogue for Paris.
Watched it twice already. Probably my favorite film of 2011. During the second viewing, though, I can't help but notice how transparent and mechanical the script is.
The movie, as a whole, is rather silly, but a kind of silliness only Allen can pull off effortlessly. In fact its effortlessness is part of its charm. The movie is like a sketch by a master who knows he could make, or did make, a much greater movie.
I imagine a young and ambitious film-maker trying to work on this same concept. He'd probably strain every creative muscle to achieve this fine balance between smugness and playfulness, and audiences would surely notice that.
"Over analysis is like the oil of the Match-Cut machine." KK2.0
This was highly entertaining at times, when it goes back to the 20's, the 1890's... But when it is in the present. Blegh.
Kind of ironic I guess...
Allen films Paris with the eye of a tourist, and it's lovely. Can't complain there. This might be his best looking movie in a while.
Some have complained about the caricatures of the idols. To that, I think it's justified, and from the onlooker of someone that goes back in time, they'd be looking for those things in my opinion. Similar to how someone visits Paris for the first time.
I dunno about you, but personally, as soon as I got off the train, I immediately went whoring in Pigalle.Quoting Ezee E (view post)
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (CĂ©line Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
Never been. Is that what they recommend in Frommer's?Quoting baby doll (view post)
Every character only has one note, and like others have mentioned, its sense of literary history is similarly basic (since Djana Barnes is thought of as a lesbian, of course she likes to lead in dancing) but it still has an effortless air. And Hemingway's one note is true and fine note. It is a pure note. And as such, it is a pure and glorious note. I could watch 2 hours of his character and still crack up.
Every scene with McAdams grates, but that's her character. Owen Wilson has the right breeziness to pull off the WA surrogate type. Enjoyable but slight nonetheless.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
This seems to be a lot of 2011's heavy hitters. Paris, The Artist, Hugo, even Drive.Quoting dreamdead (view post)
Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:
Top Gun: Maverick - 8
Top Gun - 7
McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
Crimes of the Future - 8
Videodrome - 9
Valley Girl - 8
Summer of '42 - 7
In the Line of Fire - 8
Passenger 57 - 7
Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6
The nostalgia quartet?Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
Ugh, this was unbearable. Has there been a less sympathetic put-upon protagonist in Woody's canon than Owen Wilson in this movie? The thing is, Allen IS self aware, but still refuses to quit making the same movie. Midnight in Paris is the ultimate, ironic embodiment of that. I think I'm done with you, Woody. At least we'll always have Broadway Danny Rose
I thought this was fine, slight but fine. The only thing that really failed hard for me was the central relationship between the protag and his fiance. That dynamic was terribly executed as was the end of their relationship. Also, my god, by and large in this film women are just pretty faces to Allen. The curator? The audiophile? Bleh.
It's definitely infinitely better than Match Point though which is the last contemporary Allen I've seen.
The Princess and the Pilot - B-
Playtime (rewatch) - A
The Hobbit - C-
The Comedy - D+
Kings of the Road - C+
The Odd Couple - B
Red Rock West - C-
The Hunger Games - D-
Prometheus - C
Tangled - C+
I loved all of those movies.Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
BLOG
And everybody wants to be special here
They call your name out loud and clear
Here comes a regular
Call out your name
Here comes a regular
Am I the only one here today?
Apart from Drive, I don't recall there being much heavy hitting in any of those movies.Quoting Pop Trash (view post)
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (CĂ©line Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
I'm curious - what exactly do you think this film is about? I've seen a lot of people in this thread alternating between similar sorts of dismissals that describe the film as either 'obvious,' silly, simplistic, or short on insight, but yet many of those I've encountered have had slightly different interpretations on what this film is about considered in relation to its theme of nostalgia.Quoting Irish (view post)
I've actually said myself that the conclusions made by Owen's character at the end of the film come off a bit trite, and I take it that this informs what most people think the film is about, but I don't think taking these thoughts wholesale as the film's own conclusions is really doing the film justice. I think the text is a bit more open than that and in a way that's more fitting with Allen's other work. And if we're really saying this is a quintessentially formulaic Allen film, then any presumption of a straightforward conclusion ought to be markedly measured by strong considerations of thematic irony and existential uncertainty. These qualities are the hallmark of any good reading of one of his more typical films.
See my latest blog entry: The Wolf of Wall Street and The New Cinema of Excess
I was definitely thinking that this was going to be second rate Allen self-parody watching that opening scene. I was very pleasantly surprised when it shifted in tone and moved into the historical section. I ended up liking the film a lot.Quoting Israfel the Black (view post)
I think it's a great scene and gives the ending the more resonance.Quoting MarcusBrody (view post)
See my latest blog entry: The Wolf of Wall Street and The New Cinema of Excess
This was fun! The historical scenes trafficked in caricature, but they also sparked with life from the actors - Pill and Stoll and Cotillard were treats (especially Stoll, good God). By the time Gil's big moment came along, we've known for a while what the "lesson" is, so it doesn't hit as impactfully as it might have. Maybe because the film works best as a sort of highlight reel of formative American artists. Sort of a college junior's heavy rewrite of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. The modern scenes were more "eh." I was expecting another layer to reveal itself regarding why Gil would've ever bothered joining into this shallow circle of human beings (he's shallow too, but he comes from a place of genuine enthusiasm and warmth, as opposed to the dry detail-recitation of his wife and especially Peter), and that never happened. There's maybe something Allen could've teased out more with Gil not just yearning for a "golden age" of American art but also yearning for the earlier years of what's now a tired jog into an unhappy marriage.
It's funny to read these older comments on the ending, because I liked how the film ended, with him happy to be in Paris now, creating a new moment now with the woman. Anyway, he's not going back to the 1920s stoop. I'd call that progress.