Last 11 things I really enjoyed:
Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
Safe (Haynes, 1995)
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
Diva (Beineix, 1981)
Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
Everything I've read about this movie makes my skin crawl. Of course I'd probably see it because I like that feeling, but yeah.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
Oh for sure. Even though its subject matter deals with things as gross and uncomfortable as it does, Louis using the style he does of the pre-code era Hollywood with an original, swelling, sunny score, with outdoor shots that are boundlessly gorgeous and indoor that very much wish to look like artificial sets, he finds an oddly perfect way to translate the sensibilities of his standup to confront what it does with the same sort of manic, dissonant, unashamed energy that provides an arena to laugh at/with and be entertained by the issues at the core of it through your discomfort with the characters dealing with it all, but never shrug it off as light or leave you off the hook enough to not feel as if you're sharing the intense stress of his lead.
There is no character with which the film equips with a wholly agreeable worldview here (Pamela Adlon's comes close, but she also fittingly isn't a large part of the lives of the characters always be there), everyone is their own type of idiot, whether it's because their blinded by parental affection, due to their naïvety, because of their perverted nature, or because they often just don't properly see the gravity of anything happening before them or they're doing themselves. It's a comedy of errors that doesn't care if it makes them itself. Louis as a writer and director is smart of enough to know he can't make a thesis about Woody Allen (or even just Malkovich's character's substitute here) without charges of hypocrisy or shirking responsibility having worked with Allen, and especially when he's also in the middle of a reality where creepy harassment allegations have been hurled at him himself (albeit not as infamous and largely introduced to the public in the form of blind-item articles and other comments assumed to be about him which more people later took it upon themselves to confirm and combine with their own sources), but at the same time you know that exact sort of danger in the nature of the subject matter is what inspired him to want to make this in the first place. It's also likely for the time being that this film may be the only form of an answer he'll directly, publicly give about any of those real-life allegations, which leads to the begging of an old tried and tested question (which has understandably yielded many different answers depending on the situation): Do we look to artists for their work, or their actions? And if it's both, do we wish to see them make their statements in their art? If it's the latter, I Love You, Daddy is as good a statement as any, especially because it's both as uneasy as it is, and as funny as anything we'd want to look to C.K. to make.
Last 11 things I really enjoyed:
Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
Safe (Haynes, 1995)
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
Diva (Beineix, 1981)
Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
The premiere of this movie was going to be tonight and it has just been abruptly cancelled this morning because they learned that this big NY Times story was coming out today: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/0...isconduct.html
Louis CK has also cancelled his talk show appearances to promote the movie.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
So after years of anonymous rumors about him, women are now finally coming out to accuse Louis publicly.
This might be big. One of the women was harassed on the set of a pilot produced by Courtney Cox and David Arquette and they confirmed the incident to the Times.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
Christopher Plummer's going to be busy.
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) ***
Aw man, I just made that joke on twitter.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
Great minds!Quoting number8 (view post)
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) ***
Oddly enough, given the "I'm sick, I need help and therapy" line from Weinstein, from what I read and saw, it actually seems accurate with Louis. He seems like he has genuine problems, but this will still probably bury his career. His compulsion seems to be consistent (lemme masturbate in front of you/in your direction), tho it's weird that he asked if it would be okay up front. That doesn't really sound like a power-tripping perv a la Weinstein, though he unquestionably benefited enormously from his station, given that the women didn't speak up out of fear of his status. The bits in his specials where he talks about how dark and wrong his thoughts get, especially when it comes to women, were always a bit weird, like he was trying to get everyone on board with the idea that this is just a problem men have generally, like he was trying to find excuses for himself while simultaneously revealing his failings.
I think he's an immensely talented comic and writer, just as I usually liked Spacey's work as well. But these are necessary sacrifices if they'll improve the landscape for everyone else.
"How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?"
--Homer
This is the part of these stories that always breaks me:
Seems to be even more common in the comedy world. I dunno if you're familiar with local NYC comedians like Aaron Glaser and Jamie Kilstein and their harassment scandals, but the stories from the women run the same. One of Glaser's victims was so traumatized she quit comedy entirely and moved to the midwest to get away from the scene. I do think about this a lot when people ask why aren't there more female _____? And I've started questioning back, "I dunno, is it safe for them to be?"Quoting Irish (view post)
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
I didn't know any of that!Quoting number8 (view post)
I was thinking of Farrow's first report in the New Yorker. Buried in between the stories from A-list actresses were the also-rans and the nobodies---women who expressed exactly the same sentiment: they became disheartened and left the business because of what Harvey did to them when they were 20.
https://entertainment.theonion.com/e...-00-1820307690Quoting Spinal (view post)
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
It's official now:
Congrats Henry Gale. You're one of the few who have watched a rare movie.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
What does that mean? I'll never get to see this??
Not anytime soon. Maybe years from now when Louis gets the rights back and decides to sell it on his mailing list for $5 or whatever.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
What is "Sexual Misconduct" anyway? Is it really some legal term? I thought there was only sexual assault and sexual harassment (workplace related involving authority figure). I remember when the Weinstein news came out, Woody Allen said this was going to lead to a "Witch Hunt" - I didn't realize how right he was at the time.
Welp. Having had thorough but still murky familiarity with these allegations as they stood for years without actual voices attached to them, I don't want to say I'm "glad" or "relieved" to hear it's all true, but it certainly solidifies the irksome asterisk that's been next to his name for a while for me, and makes it a little easier to have real feelings about.Quoting number8 (view post)
I still stick by this film being, like much of Louis' narrative work, productively uncomfortable in a way that confronts unspoken social conflicts that (at least before the last month or so) most cinema doesn't seem to know how to deal with interestingly without being exploitive, even when these things so frequently come up in the real-world around filmmaking, and that this will probably still stand as one of the better pieces of work to ever deal with that, because who the hell would want to make something with this subject matter otherwise, especially now?
It's deliberately messy in what it wants to say, because like these real-life situations, it's tough to have just one feeling about it. And it probably will still stand as the closest thing to an unfiltered statement about this sort of situation for the near future, and for that alone it's weirdly valuable, if not easy to deal with.
Last edited by Henry Gale; 11-10-2017 at 06:01 PM.
Last 11 things I really enjoyed:
Speed Racer (Wachowski/Wachowski, 2008)
Safe (Haynes, 1995)
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Parker, 1999)
Beastie Boys Story (Jonze, 2020)
Bad Trip (Sakurai, 2020)
What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972)
Diva (Beineix, 1981)
Delicatessen (Caro/Jeunet, 1991)
The Hunger (Scott, 1983)
Pineapple Express (Green, 2008)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
"How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?"
--Homer
Damn.
I hope all this mess can be resolved without burying the film, because it looks interesting to be honest.
The allegations against Weinstein or Spacey frankly leave me indifferent as regards to the actual person, because while they're excellent producers and actors respectively, I don't really feel any "relationship" to them as people.
But this is a harder pill to swallow because much of Louis C.K.'s work is centered around baring his soul to the audience and I love his work.
I Love You, Penis (Louis C.K.)
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
Well said. I shake my head at people who are now retconning Louis' work (particularly the 'rape' scene with Pamela Adlon) as being 'creepy'—no. I mean, yes, but not in the way they mean. That scene was essential and an authentic depiction of predatory male behavior, behavior which men often don't even realize is predatory. That's just how men are. Louis was the best at depicting that honestly—and from the sounds of it, he would know.Quoting Henry Gale (view post)
I hope that once the dust clears and the real sexually deviant criminals in Hollywood are exposed, we can go back and say that people CAN change, and some people are not unforgivable, because Louis is a straight-up genius, and a good person, ultimately.
The severed arm perfectly acquitted itself, because of the simplicity of its wishes and its total lack of doubt.
I do hope this comes out in some form, otherwise this will go down with Promises Written in Water as a movie that exists that I'll never be able to see.
Last edited by Pop Trash; 11-16-2017 at 09:57 PM.
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