I made a 2018 movies thread too

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Thu Mar 15, 2018 4:29 pm

Lots this time.

Coco - for a Pixar movie this was perfectly average, which of course means it was fantastic. Like most Pixar movies, everything in it was flawless. The storytelling in particular (as usual) was impressive, as the plot is actually fairly complicated/convoluted but told in a way that makes it perfectly comprehensible as you're watching it, and always building towards an emotionally meaningful climax with such subtlety and grace that you don't even realize it until it happens, all the while being extremely entertaining from one moment to the next. Seriously, it's impeccable. Some of the actual plot devices are cliches, but who even cares at this point. Amazing, wonderful movie.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (season 3) - for those who don't know this show is the romantic comedy musical satire version of Breaking Bad. It's also really good. All three seasons are on Netflix. The third season is easily the weakest, with a lot of dead-end and time-filler plot points and a climax that makes very little narrative sense. I'm not sure what they were thinking. Still worth watching though.

My Girl - I sort of liked watching this movie as a kid, so I watched it again and I still think it's okay, I guess. Never realized how obsessed it was about death. If you want to watch a movie that tries to teach kids about death, Bridge to Terabithia handles the subject better and has a better message.

The Beguiled - this movie is what you would get if Sofia Coppola directed a pulpy exploitation flick. I'm a huge fan of her and would watch anything she makes, even if her last three movies have been terrible and she's also probably a racist and she embodies white bourgeois privilege and always makes essentially the exact same thing over and over again. I mean, she's terrible, but she's also wonderful. The story is a remake of some (probably dumb) Clint Eastwood movie from the 70s, where a bunch of bored women are holed up in a seminary during the Civil War and the sudden presence of a male soldier in their lives excites their hormones. I kept thinking of that Monty Python sketch as I was watching it, which either says something bad about me or the movie, I don't know which. Each woman in the seminary is distinct and compelling and has her own personality, and the guy represents something different to each one of them, and most of the fun of the movie is teasing out what they are. Ultimately it was a (sort of) well-made psychosexual period piece but kind of empty and meaningless, even more so than her usual fair.

One thing that needs to be said, though: Kirsten Dunst delivered an amazing, heart-wrenching, sincere, beautiful performance that pretty much single-handedly saved this movie. Her character is easily the most compelling one and it's all her fault. There's going to be a point where her greatness is finally acknowledged. There's some controversy over how whitewashed this movie is, but I think it's a good thing that Sofia Coppola decided to not portray slavery here, because she is literally the last person in the entire world who should be trying to depict slavery. I also think it's good that she eliminated the tragic mulatto character which was apparently in the original, because the tragic mulatto trope is not something that needs to show up in our stories anymore. That said, there's a question as to why she chose to tell a story about the Civil War in the first place if she was just going to eliminate all the racial elements to it. That is a very good question.

The Assassin - yeah... this was boring as fuck. I knew that going in, but I guess I didn't prepare myself enough. It's amazingly pretty, so if you treat movies like they're moving paintings you're going to like it. But if you care about story, it's torture. Some shots last four or five minutes when they should have lasted ten seconds. I admit I turned it off about halfway through, so it could have gotten better in the last half and I would have no idea.

John Wick - This was mildly entertaining, in a completely mindless way. The story was hilariously dumb, but the action was very good. That's all I can think to say about it.

Call Me Your Name - ahhh, here it is. I finally watched it, and it was good. It didn't emotionally overwhelm me as much as I expected it to, but it was still extremely good. The story is about two guys (well, one seventeen-year-old) in rural Italy in 1983 who fall for each other over the course of a summer. It's lush, sensual, vibrant, and rich. Watching it is like transporting yourself into a nostalgic wistful idealized memory of an idyllic langorious summer you had as a kid, and the movie is made in a way that makes me think that's how it was meant to be taken. The movie is oriented more around emotionally formative experiences and meaningful moments than concrete story points, which is exactly how our memories are constructed. (It sort of reminds me Swiss Army Man.) It almost seemed like wish-fulfillment, actually - imagine if the distant mysterious object of your summer infatuation actually reciprocated your feelings over the summer. The entire movie takes place in a heightened reality, a place of dreams and memories. It's like it's all Elio's memories and dreams of one summer told from thirty years later.

Elio and Oliver are great and subtle characters. Elio (the seventeen-year-old) is performatively aloof and cool, yet he's hungry for the approval and acceptance of everyone around him, while Oliver (his crush) is outwardly brash and obnoxious but is inwardly perceptive and tender. It's a careful balancing act to make these two characters seem believable and authentic and natural, yet they pull it off. Timothée Chalamet gave the best performance I've seen in a while as he spent the first half of the movie struggling to articulate his growing desire for Oliver both to Oliver and himself, and Armie Hammer was not far behind as he spent the same time wordlessly finding out ways to develop their intimacy for each other. They're both flawless performances that eliminate the hammy melodramatic bullshit that the Academy is apparently in love with.

Some people have said this movie is a love story, but it's not. It's an idealized representation of a crush/infatuation, but I guess the fact that people have confused it with love shows how well it pulled it off. My only real complaint is how it treated Marzia, Elio's girlfriend. He was a complete dick to her, but at least the movie had the grace to send her off with dignity and grace at the end, and I guess the fact that he was a hormonal confused teenager makes it more forgivable. Other than that, it was a masterpiece and the world is better for having it.

BruceSmith78 · Post by **BruceSmith78** » Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:53 am

Do you mean Call Me by Your Name?

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:56 am

CashRules · Post by **CashRules** » Fri Mar 16, 2018 8:13 pm

Sounds gay.

Raxivace · Post by **Raxivace** » Sat Mar 17, 2018 8:09 am

Derived Absurdity wrote:The story is a remake of some (probably dumb) Clint Eastwood movie from the 70s,

FWIW I've seen the original movie with Clint Eastwood (Though it should be noted that he didn't direct it, but that the great Don Siegel did) and liked it quite a bit. The major difference there is that the 70's film is from the Eastwood character's POV, and treats it more as a horror story where Eastswood is punished for his vices and ignoring the feelings of the women he's sleeping around with. Coppola puts more emphasis on the women's point of view, and I think that major change makes this remake worthwhile as a remake.

I also think it's good that she eliminated the tragic mulatto character which was apparently in the original, because the tragic mulatto trope is not something that needs to show up in our stories anymore.

Tbh I don't remember any such tragic mulatto character existing in the original film.

That said, there's a question as to why she chose to tell a story about the Civil War in the first place if she was just going to eliminate all the racial elements to it. That is a very good question.

I mean, it just plain isn't a movie about the Civil War. The Civil War is merely the setting for the character drama, and that's true of both Siegel's film and Coppola's film.

Cassius Clay · Post by **Cassius Clay** » Sat Mar 17, 2018 7:13 pm

Is that the movie where Clint Eastwood straight up rapes a woman, but is presented as consensual?

Raxivace · Post by **Raxivace** » Sat Mar 17, 2018 8:05 pm

Cassius Clay wrote:Is that the movie where Clint Eastwood straight up rapes a woman, but is presented as consensual?

You're probably thinking of the often criticized rape scene in High Plains Drifter, though I don't think you're meant to think Eastwood's character is any kind of good or noble person in that film. The whole thing is a pretty bitter revenge story, though its still not the most tasteful scene and plotline in the world.

Post by **Gendo** » Sat Mar 17, 2018 8:49 pm

Cassius Clay wrote:Is that the movie where Clint Eastwood straight up rapes a woman, but is presented as consensual?

That's a lot of movies. Well not Clint Eastwood specifically. But if he's playing a solider, then it reminds me of that scene in Fury. And that's not even getting into the huge number of films where someone has sex with a drunk person.

Raxivace · Post by **Raxivace** » Sat Mar 17, 2018 8:55 pm

Gendo wrote:
Cassius Clay wrote:Is that the movie where Clint Eastwood straight up rapes a woman, but is presented as consensual?
That's a lot of movies. Well not Clint Eastwood specifically. But if he's playing a solider, then it reminds me of that scene in Fury. And that's not even getting into the huge number of films where someone has sex with a drunk person.

He's playing a soldier in The Beguiled, but in that film its more that he's trying to woo every woman in that house than deliberately trying to force anyone into anything- he's a lothario. The character is also severely injured throughout much of the film, so the dynamic isn't quite the same as all of the able bodied soldiers breaking into the women's home in Fury.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 12:50 am

Krisha - kind of a weird move. It was well-made and all, but it felt disjointed. It was super judgmental of the main character (especially with the ending where she doesn't actually get any better), and yet it was filmed entirely from her perspective. So it's like on one level the movie had a subjective POV, but on the other it had an objective one as it felt like it was casting itself in judgment on her the entire time from an outside perspective (especially considering the director had his family member as the protagonist). Never really saw anything like it before.

Everything Sucks! - ok. Also kind of weird. Like a High School Musical and Freaks and Geeks mashup, but much weaker than the latter. Tone is all over the place. It slowly gets better as it goes on. I think it's targeted to middle schoolers or whatever, I can't really tell.

Perfect Blue - this is a horror anime and I was completely blown away by it. I did not expect to have that much of a reaction at all. It was supremely terrifying and disturbing in several ways and was almost perfectly made in every way I can think of. It's a "mind fuck" movie that puts all other movies I've seen with that label to shame, because it legitimately confused me, disoriented me, unnerved me, and seriously disturbed the fuck out of me in a way that made question my very reality. (Which is good.) Also it's legitimately scary. It depicted a young woman's slow yet inevitable march towards an absolute and complete psychological break from reality due to the shattering of boundaries between her reality and fantasy due to the pressures of fame and horrific celebrity culture (as well as multiple other things). It was horrific and frightening and unsettling because the themes it dealt with were inherently horrific and frightening and unsettling. A reason I like it is because it dealt with another thing I find endlessly fascinating, which is the tension between how you are perceived by society at large (the identity you project or the avatar you present) and how you're perceived by yourself, and this movie melds that perfectly with the larger theme of the breakdown between reality and fantasy by having the woman's avatar actually come alive (at least to her), and it was unnerving. This is perfect material for a horror movie! I'm going to have to see it again, and when I do I'll have more intelligent things to say about it because my mind was sort of shattered the first time, but as of right now I think it's one of the finest horror movies I've ever seen and one of my new favorite movies ever. (This movie is very reminiscent of Black Swan, which heavily inspired it, but... it is so much better. Black Swan was fine, but this is on another level.)

The Ritual - it was fine. The monster was cool.

Blue Velvet - not sure I got this one. Or if there was much to get. I was actually expecting something much weirder than what I got. It started off fine, but it just went off in weird directions for extended periods of time that I was just not a big fan of. It had quite a lot of potential from the first act that it just then kind of squandered. What's the point of setting up such interesting characterization and set-up if you're not going to actually do much with them? I guess I get what Lynch was trying to say, but it could have been more interesting in execution.

Paprika - I got to say this didn't impact me as much as Perfect Blue did. As weird as that one was, it had a method to its madness, whereas this one mostly seemed to be weird just for the sake of it. By the same token, that one's lack of anything resembling a coherent or standard plot was the point, whereas this one's lack of a plot made it seem like just a mess. It had much less interest in explaining what was going on or what the actual plot was than in showing a lot of nonsensical "trippy" images on screen (which weren't even that trippy), so by over the halfway point I kind of checked out because I had no idea what the hell was happening and I didn't care. Its major theme of fantasy meeting reality was also done much better in Perfect Blue.

Spirited Away - well, it was certainly interesting, I'll give it that.

John Wick II - just like the first one, there's not a whole lot here besides some admittedly great fight choreography/set pieces and some pretty saturated coloring. It's another okay way to kill two hours, but that's it.

Post by **Gendo** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:45 am

Did you mean to state that Black Swan inspired Perfect Blue? Because Perfect Blue is much older.

But yeah, it's great.

Raxivace · Post by **Raxivace** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 2:23 am

Yeah Perfect Blue is pretty dope, and its damn shame that Satoshi Kon died so young.

Paprika is Kon's worst film, though I think its an interesting set of visuals. In some ways it might be retreading what he did in Paranoia Agent more than Perfect Blue in regards to escapism.

I'm not exactly sure what your issue with Blue Velvet is though DA, or what you think the movie is saying.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 9:49 am

Yeah, I misspoke.

My issue with Blue Velvet is that it promised to be interesting at the beginning and then turned out to not be interesting. The rape scene set up a lot of possible characterization that it did nothing with, and it had a lot of emotional weight which the movie didn't seem concerned with developing. Instead of exploring all that, it just went off on pointless tangents that did nothing for me. I began to check out at the extended scene of Frank kidnapping Jeffrey and taking him on a road trip that didn't serve any narrative purpose from what I could tell. And after that it just devolved into a standard detective story.

I guess the problem is that the movie had the potential to be a sort of emotionally and socially charged psychosexual drama between a masochist, a pervert (for I thought Jeffrey was portrayed as so off-putting and creepy that it had to be on purpose, but I guess not), and a sexual sadist which would have been disturbing and strange and subversive, but it turned out to be something much more generic and standard and lame. Something like a mix between a standard neo noir and a satire of 50's Americana. It could have been better.

Post by **Gendo** » Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:11 pm

Oh yeah, I didn't get Blue Velvet either. I wouldn't say I had any particular problem with it; I just remember not enjoying it. It's been a pretty long time since I watched it.

Eva Yojimbo · Post by **Eva Yojimbo** » Sun Apr 15, 2018 2:37 am

Derived Absurdity wrote:The Assassin - yeah... this was boring as fuck. I knew that going in, but I guess I didn't prepare myself enough. It's amazingly pretty, so if you treat movies like they're moving paintings you're going to like it. But if you care about story, it's torture. Some shots last four or five minutes when they should have lasted ten seconds. I admit I turned it off about halfway through, so it could have gotten better in the last half and I would have no idea.

Dumping on a masterpiece by our greatest living filmmaker makes for a very unhappy Jimbo. I don't know how anyone could be bored when in the presence of such beauty. There are gazillions of films chock-full of stuff happening; there are almost none as gorgeous and hypnotic as The Assassin. Story is always submerged in Hou; I actually like the affect because it forces you to pay attention and likewise forces your attention on the mood and the underlying themes. I need to see it again--all of Hou's get better with rewatches because of their subtlety--but I still gave it a solid 9/10.

Derived Absurdity wrote:Perfect Blue

Pretty much agree with you on this, though I may have been slightly less enthusiastic. Sadly, I think I liked it better the first time than on my rewatch. I think much of the film's impact is in its twists and the "disorienting" affects that you described. Take away the shock/confusion and it doesn't have the same potency.

Derived Absurdity wrote:Blue Velvet -

I've always been a bit love/hate with this one. As it sits it's more middling Lynch for me, with a lot of interesting stuff that's definitely a riff on his common themes--the darkness/perversion lurking underneath the clean/perfect facade of the American Dream--but it always felt a bit disconnected compared to his best (Mulholland Drive & Eraserhead).

Derived Absurdity wrote:Paprika -

I agree with Rax in calling this Kon's worst film and agree with your negative criticism. It's great visually, but narratively it's a mess that ultimately develops into a cliched "save the world from evil mastermind." Tokyo Godfathers is Kon's least trippy, but story-wise it shits all over Paprika. I still maintain that Paranoia Agent is Kon's masterpiece. It's everything he does best extended into a series, with a lot of great stuff thrown in that he never explored in his feature films.

Derived Absurdity wrote:Spirited Away - well, it was certainly interesting, I'll give it that.

I'd like to hear more. It's one of Miyazaki's most magical films, IMO. I think it's SLIGHTLY overrated in the sense that I think Miyazaki did better--I'll take Mononoke, Totoro, and Castle in the Sky over it--but I also understand why its reputation is what it is.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Sun Apr 15, 2018 2:07 pm

Lol. Different strokes. Could you explain why you think The Assassin is a masterpiece? I did say it was amazingly pretty, so I gave it credit for that, but what else does it have?

I do plan on watching everything by Kon, so don't you worry about that. He didn't really release a whole lot before his untimely death so it won't be a gigantic undertaking. As for Spirited Away, it just didn't affect me very much, but that might not be its fault. I was more confused than enchanted by it for the most part to be frank. That might be the result of me having no knowledge of Japanese culture.

Some more stuff:

The Iron Giant - just saw it for the first time. It was good. I cried.

The Place Beyond the Pines - it was okay. Turned boring eventually.

A Series of Unfortunate Events (season 2) - I don't remember if I gave my thoughts on the first season or not but they're both just ok. It's mostly missing the undercurrent of solemnity and melancholy that gives the books it's based off of their distinctive flavor. Very little sense of drama or urgency. Spends way too much time on tangential sub-plots that serve no purpose.

Speed Racer - is awesome. One of the most vibrant and gorgeous and kinetic and joyful movies I've ever seen. It's an acid trip in movie form. It's also one of of the most blatantly and overtly anti-capitalist movies I've ever seen, which is a big plus. Not sure why it doesn't get the appreciation it deserves, but time will be kind to it. Probably could have been shorter, though.

Eva Yojimbo · Post by **Eva Yojimbo** » Sun Apr 15, 2018 3:07 pm

Derived Absurdity wrote:Lol. Different strokes. Could you explain why you think The Assassin is a masterpiece? I did say it was amazingly pretty, so I gave it credit for that, but what else does it have?

I do plan on watching everything by Kon, so don't you worry about that. He didn't really release a whole lot before his untimely death so it won't be a gigantic undertaking. As for Spirited Away, it just didn't affect me very much, but that might not be its fault. I was more confused than enchanted by it for the most part to be frank. That might be the result of me having no knowledge of Japanese culture.

Some more stuff:

The Iron Giant - just saw it for the first time. It was good. I cried.

The Place Beyond the Pines - it was okay. Turned boring eventually.

A Series of Unfortunate Events (season 2) - I don't remember if I gave my thoughts on the first season or not but they're both just ok. It's mostly missing the undercurrent of solemnity and melancholy that gives the books it's based off of their distinctive flavor. Very little sense of drama or urgency. Spends way too much time on tangential sub-plots that serve no purpose.

Speed Racer - is awesome. One of the most vibrant and gorgeous and kinetic and joyful movies I've ever seen. It's an acid trip in movie form. It's also one of of the most blatantly and overtly anti-capitalist movies I've ever seen, which is a big plus. Not sure why it doesn't get the appreciation it deserves, but time will be kind to it. Probably could have been shorter, though.

The aesthetics alone is enough for me to think it a masterpiece. It's one of those films where I just got sloppy drunk on its atmosphere. Theme-wise I'd have to revisit it again to say anything substantial. The thematic layers of Hou's films and the ways in which they're embedded in the narrative and aesthetics tend to only reveal themselves upon rewatches. Without exception, every time I've revisited one of his films I've picked up on some thematic/symbolic/cinematic nuance I didn't notice the first time around.

With the Assassin, the most immediately analogous film in his filmography is Flowers of Shanghai, which was also a distant-period piece in which the rapturous aesthetics were used in a story about how traditions, propriety, duty and honor squashed passions and individual freedoms (except for the rich men who patronize the brothels). My initial thought was that there's something similar going on in The Assassin, with the central conflict dealing with Yinniang's honor/duty VS her mercy and personal feelings for the man she's sent to kill. An interesting contrast between the films was that Flowers of Shanghai was set entirely indoors, and the insular, cloistered feel of that film helped to emphasized how "imprisoned" its characters were in their own little world; The Assassin, of course, is big on landscapes, and in it there's this idea of openness and freedom, yet we know Yinniang is anything but free. In both I love how there's this palpable sense of yearning throughout, even if it's never made 100% clear what the yearning is for/about. In a way, Hou made this most clear in his film Three Times that told three stories of love in three different time periods and titled them "A Time for Duty" (set in the distant past, made as a silent film), "A Time for Youth" (set in the present, similar to his Millennium Mambo where characters are full of anxiety because they have complete freedom, but no direction/purpose), and "A Time for Love" (set in 60s, which would've been during Hou's adolescence, where he seems to think there was a balance between freedom and duty in such a way that allowed for love).

Hmmm, I guess I had more to say than I thought. :D

Can't wait to hear what you say about Paranoia Agent. In particular the episode called Happy Family Planning is one of the more ingenious episodes I've ever seen in any TV series ever.

Spirited Away is similar with Totoro, and perhaps Howl's Moving Castle, in being the Miyazaki films that are more about just enjoying their imaginative, magical worlds than in making sense of them. Miyazaki could do engrossing, coherent, entertaining narratives like Kiki's Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky; but he was also unparalleled in animation at fantasy world building. One reason Mononoke remains my favorite from him is because it's a perfect balance between dramatic, engrossing, coherent narrative and a magical, imaginative world. Totoro is my second favorite, and it's almost plotless by comparison, but it has such charm that I don't care. Ebert wrote a great review for both Totoro and Spirited Away (adding them to his "Great Movies" list).

Been ages since I saw The Iron Giant, but it made me cry too back then. Great film.

I remember liking Speed Racer, much for the same reasons you point out. But I'm a sucker for such "vibrant and gorgeous and kinetic" aesthetic exercises.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Wed May 02, 2018 7:15 am

Avengers: Infinity War - I have lots of thoughts on it! I don't even know how to grade this movie. I'm not sure it even can be graded. It's almost not even a movie. It's just an event. It doesn't have the traditional three-act structure of a movie or many of the other standard movie templates. Which is fine, obviously, but since it's barely a movie (in more ways than those), it's hard to review it or even react to it as a movie.

If kind of goes without saying at this point that if you're a Marvel fan you'll like it. As a Marvel non-fan, I thought I would at least enjoy all the characters from the previous movies finally getting together and interacting with other in interesting ways. Most of them show up, but they only do so to prop up the plot and absolutely nothing more. This movie is nothing but plot, all the time. There's barely any space for genuine or meaningful interactions or even emotional weight (with the exception of one character, maybe) until the very end. It's all forward momentum, just relentless propulsion, all the time. This made it entertaining and feel a lot shorter than it was, but, as usual, doesn't give me a lot to feel or think about when it's over.

I very much did not like the ending at all. Spoilers from here on out, but I assume you guys know it by now. Obviously everyone who turned to dust is going to come back; the only question is when and how. The fact that this is a comic book movie + the fact that many characters who turned to dust have their own movies coming up + the fact that time was rewound to make it happen in the first place means that none of those "deaths" were permanent. I don't think Marvel expected any adult to believe otherwise; they just realized that ending it like that will give people something to talk about and make sure they show up for the next movie. So the only real debate possible is how they're going to come back. Which means that the only question this movie leaves everyone at the end is how much of its own events are going to be canceled from existence. So... you have a movie that's almost entirely forward momentum ending in a way that tells you that it's all going to be erased. Or what it was leading up to is going to be erased. I've never seen a movie negate itself this hard before. Lmao, what the hell kind of storytelling is this? I've never seen pure nihilism in movie form before.

That's partly why this movie is barely even a movie. It cancels itself out just for the sake of making sure people show up for the next one (as if that was ever in doubt). It negated itself just for revenue. It results in a paradox on a fundamental level. And since the character interactions were neutered in service to the plot, the fact that the plot itself was basically neutered sort of makes that a tripling down on the paradox. Paradoxes upon paradoxes.

Thanos is a complete dipshit. He also wasn't even built up that well, which is another rather fundamental paradox. The MCU's whole deal is that it's supposed to be good at long-form storytelling, and yet it can't even manage to build up its single biggest bad guy? No one except fans even knew who the hell he was before this movie.

So yeah. I still don't like Marvel movies much. Whatever.

BruceSmith78 · Post by **BruceSmith78** » Wed May 09, 2018 5:44 pm

What was your problem with Thanos?

Post by **Gendo** » Wed May 09, 2018 7:33 pm

In terms of setting up its own reversal, isn't that how all first-parters generally go? Although the Star Wars prequels were bad, I didn't hear people saying that they were bad because they spent the whole time focusing on how the Emperor rose to power, even though we all knew he would just be overthrown later.

Infinity War is the story of how Thanos rose to power; how he (at least temporarily) succeeded in his goal. I don't see what's wrong with that. And not sure what you mean by only fans knowing who he was before the movie... if by fans you mean people who watched Guardians of the Galaxy or the first Avengers, maybe. But I didn't know anything about him from anything outside of the MCU, and I felt like this movie didn't expect or need me to know anything else.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Thu May 10, 2018 4:14 am

The prequels didn't have the events they depicted wiped from existence, though. IW set itself up so that (some or most of) the events we just watched would at some point be literally canceled, like they never happened. The prequels told a story about the rise of the Emperor; his later fall doesn't retroactively render all the events leading to his rise non-existent, but that seems to me the direction IW chose to take.

I mean, I could be wrong, I guess. It might go the direction of the third Harry Potter, where they time traveled backward but it didn't erase what had happened, it just added a new timeline. But I don't know if that's what they'll do.

I know Thanos showed up before now, but only in random ending scenes where he wasn't given any context or background or story. He had no narrative build-up. Or he technically did, but it was really bad build-up.

Thanos is a dipshit because making a random half of the population of any civilization disappear would result in immediate economic and industrial collapse, and therefore mass starvation. The movie doesn't seem to realize this, as Gamora's home planet is apparently paradisaical after Thanos massacred half of it, but it's still reality. Also you have the power to rewrite reality and the best solution to overpopulation you can come up with is killing half of everyone? You can't just make more food? Or more space? Or make some people infertile?

BruceSmith78 · Post by **BruceSmith78** » Thu May 10, 2018 6:57 am

Can the infinity gauntlet do all those things? I mean point taken I guess, I'm no expert on economics so I'll take your word for it about the collapse and starvation stuff, but I don't remember where they clarified what exactly the infinity gauntlet can really do.

Anakin McFly · Post by **Anakin McFly** » Thu May 10, 2018 9:34 am

I don't really keep up with upcoming releases and I didn't know IW was meant as a two-parter, so I went into the movie thinking it was the final one when anyone could permanently die. I was sure there'd be more Marvel movies, because money, but that they would be at earlier parts of the timeline since the movies weren't strictly linear anyway. But all the previous movies seemed to be leading up to this one, so I thought it was the finale, and the ending hit me pretty hard.

Even if the timeline is rewound, it wouldn't change that in this iteration half of everyone died. It's sort of the time travel equivalent of brutally torturing someone, and then wiping their memory and removing all traces of injury so they had no idea that happened.

Also you have the power to rewrite reality and the best solution to overpopulation you can come up with is killing half of everyone? You can't just make more food? Or more space? Or make some people infertile?

He didn't seem to be a particularly imaginative guy.

A friend and I were discussing on FB all the different and less destructive ways Thanos could have killed half of everyone in order to minimise suffering, which was his goal. e.g. if you have two families and have to kill half those people so the rest can survive, it would likely be more humane to kill all of one family than half of each.

Post by **Gendo** » Thu May 10, 2018 3:00 pm

I've heard the complaint about why Thanos couldn't come up with a better solution before. It seems to ignore 2 important things:

- The fact that Thanos is in fact an utterly insane and evil tyrant. Yes, he has his own reasons why he thinks that he's doing the right thing, and those reasons are how he convinces himself that he's not wrong; but we aren't meant to agree with his reasons or think that he is correct.

- The fact that Thanos had this plan long before he had any infinity stones. His plan was developed to save his own home world. People didn't listen, and his world was destroyed as a result. At the time, on his home world, he didn't have the option of just creating more food, or doing any other magical infinity stones stuff to make it better. After that happened; he was driven by the goal of instituting his home-planet plan everywhere. So it's not as direct as "he wanted the infinity stones so that he could solve the world's overpopulation problems". It's that he wanted to kill half the population on each planet, and that the infinity stones happened to be the easiest way to make that happen. He didn't stop to think "oh, well now that I have the infinity stones, there might be new options available to me other than the plan that I've been seeking after for generations".

BruceSmith78 · Post by **BruceSmith78** » Thu May 10, 2018 3:41 pm

Gendo, while I agree with your justification for why Thanos did what he did, it basically amounts to “Thanos was a dipshit," so you're not really disagreeing with DA there. I'm just curious to know if there's any basis to believe the infinity gauntlet could do things like, “create more space," or “create an inexhaustible food supply", or “render people infertile", other than the fact that it was super powerful and magical and stuff. I honestly didn't understand what it could do. At times it seemed to make Thanos unstoppable, and other times he got slapped around and even struggled to overpower a genetically enhanced human (Captain America).

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Fri May 11, 2018 1:10 am

According to Wikipedia whoever holds all the little glowy infinity things gets omnipotence, so I guess your power is unlimited. The soul stone lets you control living things, the space stone lets you control all of space, and the reality stone lets you warp reality to your will even if it defies physics. And the power stone lets you enhance the power of all the other stones. So you could probably create more food.

I get your point, though, because the movie seemed really unclear as to what the stones could do and it seemed to switch up Thanos's power level constantly. I didn't understand why getting all the stones would suddenly make him capable of snuffing out all life, or why he had to have all of them in order to do that; why couldn't the soul stone or the reality stone do that by themselves? Maybe I missed that.

But that goes to my point as to why I think Thanos is not a very good villain. Not only did he have an inconsistent and unexplained power level through the entire movie, his motivation was incredibly nonsensical and dumb and not really psychologically grounded in any meaningful way. Compare him to Killmonger from Black Panther, who was psychologically well-rounded, whose motivations and actions made sense and you could at least relate to him on some level and see where he was coming from, and who directly tied into the movie's theme. It seems that in the comics the reason Thanos wanted to kill everyone was that he had a crush on the embodiment of death and wanted to go on a date with her. That is actually less dumb than the movie, somehow, and has an added benefit of being more psychologically grounded/realistic.

(And the movie could have made it work and appear somewhat less dumb, if they had actually done the work of building him up and introducing the embodiment of death and developing their relationship and so on beforehand.)

Anakin McFly · Post by **Anakin McFly** » Fri May 11, 2018 9:22 am

At times it seemed to make Thanos unstoppable, and other times he got slapped around and even struggled to overpower a genetically enhanced human (Captain America).

The stones didn't make him physically powerful or immortal. I can't remember which stones he had at that point and what it would have allowed him to do, but then it also goes back to how he's just not a very bright guy.

I didn't understand why getting all the stones would suddenly make him capable of snuffing out all life, or why he had to have all of them in order to do that; why couldn't the soul stone or the reality stone do that by themselves? Maybe I missed that.

They were probably not powerful enough on their own, hence requiring the power stone. The mind stone allowed him to do things just by thinking about it. The space stone allowed his power to reach throughout space, and the time stone took care of the problem of nothing travelling faster than light. Each stone might also increase the power of the others.

his motivation was incredibly nonsensical and dumb and not really psychologically grounded in any meaningful way.

He'd fallen into a very misguided form of utilitarianism that neither seeks to maximise pleasure nor minimise suffering. Also what Gendo said. Possibly his grief over what happened to his home planet had made him irrationally obsessed with seeing his original plan through to completion, even though it no longer made sense.

also this

BruceSmith78 · Post by **BruceSmith78** » Fri May 11, 2018 2:31 pm

If the stones didn't make him physically powerful or immortal, then how the fuck did he kick Hulk's ass so quickly and easily with just one stone? Also, I don't think anything you said about the stones was in any of the movies, unless I missed it, which is entirely possible.

Cassius Clay · Post by **Cassius Clay** » Tue May 15, 2018 10:23 am

Where did Thanos learn karate?

I actually enjoyed Infinity War btw. I didn't think I would be able to follow because I've missed so many of the movies leading up to it(Ragnarok, Winter soldier, Age of Ultron). I'm pretty sure I haven't even seen Iron Man 3...nor the second Thor movie.

BruceSmith78 · Post by **BruceSmith78** » Tue May 15, 2018 4:08 pm

Winter Soldier might be the best Marvel movie. You should watch it.

Cassius Clay · Post by **Cassius Clay** » Wed May 16, 2018 12:34 am

Spiderman 2 is the best marvel movie...but I think I'll give this so-called *squints at notes* "winter soldier" a shot. I'll watch Ragnarok tonight tho.

Anakin McFly · Post by **Anakin McFly** » Wed May 16, 2018 10:23 am

Also, I don't think anything you said about the stones was in any of the movies, unless I missed it, which is entirely possible.

Yeah, that was partly speculation on my part. From the wiki:

- the mind stone gave Thanos telepathic abilities, in this case to do things just by thinking about it
- the deaths were the result of the time stone rapidly accelerating them into old age
- the reality stone worked with that to turn them into dust
- the soul stone erased their souls from existence
- the space stone and power stone amplified the effects of the other stones

http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.co ... ity_Stones

Post by **Gendo** » Wed May 16, 2018 2:47 pm

Anakin McFly wrote:
Also, I don't think anything you said about the stones was in any of the movies, unless I missed it, which is entirely possible.
Yeah, that was partly speculation on my part. From the wiki:

- the mind stone gave Thanos telepathic abilities, in this case to do things just by thinking about it
- the deaths were the result of the time stone rapidly accelerating them into old age
- the reality stone worked with that to turn them into dust
- the soul stone erased their souls from existence
- the space stone and power stone amplified the effects of the other stones

http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.co ... ity_Stones

That really doesn't sound right to me. Based just on the movies, and having no comicbook knowledge, it seemed clear to me that the point of collecting all 6 stones was that doing so gave you complete control over the universe, to simply make everything be exactly what you wanted. And Thanos wanted the universe to be in a state where half of the people were no longer there. I saw no evidence that each stone worked individually to cause 1 part of the mass killing.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Sat Jun 09, 2018 2:08 am

Phantom Thread - yeah, I guess I'm not smart enough to recognize a genius of Paul Thomas Anderson's caliber, but I didn't get a whole lot out of this one. The performances were all good, the cinematography was fine, I guess, and Daniel Day Lewis's character was fleshed out okay - you know, all the standard stuff - but what was there beneath it all? It was partly a portrait of and a deconstruction of the archetypal coddled male asshole who thinks he's a genius, something that's already been done to death, but considering the reputation of this movie I thought there would be more than that. The movie is about his relationship with Alma, but it's a not a particularly deep or interesting relationship, unless I missed something, partly because we don't get a sense of who Alma is and where her motivations are coming from. The movie seemed more intent on basking in its own cinematography and performances and music than actually deepening or even focusing on the characters or the story.

Good Time - entertaining for the first two thirds, but I got bored after that. Super ridiculous and corny, but mostly sort of fun. Also kind of racist with the whole "loose black girl" stereotype.

The Last House on the Left (both versions) - I guess this is part of a long-running theme. You have a classic horror movie, which is definitely flawed and in certain cases even amateurish but still extremely memorable and effective, and then you get the modern Hollywood remake, which fixes all of its more overt flaws but at the same time completely bleaches it of all its original heart or soul or personality. The 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left is much sleeker, much glossier, much more technically competent than the original, and with much better pacing and acting, but with its heart completely ripped out. It's the definition of soulless and forgettable and bland and generic. Somehow the remake did everything it was supposed to do right, and yet the inept original full of plot holes and bad acting is a vastly superior movie for reasons that are easy to feel but hard to explain. There's probably a lot of lessons to be drawn here, one of which is that humanity, passion, and emotional intelligence are vastly more important to filmmaking than all the technical competence in the world.

Fright Night (2011) - lol, literally the exact same thing. Again, I guess this is a theme. To be fair, I haven't seen the original of this one. But this one was competently executed in all the standard ways, yet I only saw it over a week ago and I barely remember anything in it except for how hot Imogen Poots (really? really? that's her name? oh my god) is, while in contrast I assume there's a reason the original is remembered over twenty years later. It was definitely more entertaining than the The Last House on the Left remake, though. I'm still cautiously optimistic about the Pet Sematary remake for no reason I can rationally justify. I guess it's just that I love the book so much and I'm hoping against hope that the adaptation won't fuck it up too much.

Riverdale - a CW show based on the Archie comics, lol. The first season was actually pretty good and I recommend it. It was completely bananas and bizarre and made no sense and didn't take itself seriously yet still had good characters and relationships and the emotion worked. It was both "dark" and fun at the same time. Then the second season came and ruined everything that worked in the first season. It got boring and plodding with the characters flattening and all the fun bleached out. It was also incredibly long. I recommend the first season, stay away from the second. Betty is an amazing character and the real MVP of the show.

Jane the Virgin - see, now this is a show that has retained the exact same quality and tone for four long seasons now. It's super fun and entertaining and trashy and relentlessly optimistic without being grating all the way through. I can't think of much to say about it beyond that. It's not my favorite CW show, but in terms of quality, it's probably "objectively" the best I've seen. Petra's the best character.

PotC: Dead Man's Chest - it's been a while since I've seen this, and I knew it wasn't as good as the first, but wow I don't remember it being that awful. Holy shit. What a horrible movie. Even they knew it, because all the jokes here were literally just repeats from the first movie. That fucking sucked balls. And the third one is supposed to be even worse??? How???

Up in the Air - I really need to get better at this kind of stuff, because this movie surprisingly moved me, and yet I can't articulate way. I'm a shitty movie reviewer. All I can say is that I thought it was going to be some shitty Oscar bait, and yet it turned out to be surprisingly poignant and melancholy. I guess I connected to George Clooney's character more than I thought I would and his sadness and almost complete disconnect from other people and the world. As a character study it was miles ahead of Phantom Thread. As a piece of existentialism it was actually really effective. This turned out to be one of my favorite movies, which... I did not expect. Why can't more movies be like this?

Black Swan - Inspired by Perfect Blue, I re-watched this for the first time since high school or middle school or wherever the hell I was when it first came out, and, uh, I don't remember it being so cheesy and over-the-top. Like... ridiculously cheesy and over-the-top and actually not very good? Like, it was kind of a mess, actually. The symbolism and themes were aggressively unsubtle, the "scary" moments were repetitive (Natalie Portman seeing her doppelganger every ten minutes got old pretty quickly), and it was all just silly and random and not very interesting. This is basically Perfect Blue without any of the intelligence, creativity, imagination, or depth.

Raxivace · Post by **Raxivace** » Sat Jun 09, 2018 2:43 am

Yeah I kind of agree about Alma's character in Phantom Thread being underdeveloped. It didn't seem like the big twist actually revealed that much more about her or recontextualized that much about her or the relationship the way something like Hitchcock's Vertigo does, and Vertigo is all over Phantom Thread so its kind of hard not to make the comparison.

The only other film I've seen from that post is Dead Man's Chest which I just don't remember very well, other than the fact that a child in a line ahead of me for a slide at a water park felt the need to spoil the movie for some reason. I still think back on that child sometimes, wondering if she still goes around spoiling movies.

BruceSmith78 · Post by **BruceSmith78** » Sat Jun 09, 2018 6:29 am

I kept thinking that was Passion of the Christ: Dead Man's Chest, and I was trying to figure out why there would be a sequel to PotC, why I had never heard of it, and why it would have jokes.

I never saw any of the Pirates movies because they all looked terrible.

Faustus5 · Post by **Faustus5** » Sat Jun 09, 2018 11:38 am

Derived Absurdity wrote:Up in the Air - I really need to get better at this kind of stuff, because this movie surprisingly moved me, and yet I can't articulate way. I'm a shitty movie reviewer. All I can say is that I thought it was going to be some shitty Oscar bait, and yet it turned out to be surprisingly poignant and melancholy. I guess I connected to George Clooney's character more than I thought I would and his sadness and almost complete disconnect from other people and the world. As a character study it was miles ahead of Phantom Thread. As a piece of existentialism it was actually really effective. This turned out to be one of my favorite movies, which... I did not expect. Why can't more movies be like this?

Have you given some of his other movies a chance? I'd try Young Adult and Tully.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Sat Jun 09, 2018 1:28 pm

The first Pirates is good.

Faustus5 wrote:
Have you given some of his other movies a chance? I'd try Young Adult and Tully.

Based on your posting history I think you're his biggest fan on the Internet. I trust your judgment, and I liked this movie a lot, so I'll see them. I also want to see Jennifer's Body at some point.

Faustus5 · Post by **Faustus5** » Sat Jun 09, 2018 2:44 pm

Derived Absurdity wrote:Based on your posting history I think you're his biggest fan on the Internet. I trust your judgment, and I liked this movie a lot, so I'll see them. I also want to see Jennifer's Body at some point.

Actually, you tend NOT to like the same stuff I do so this could be a gamble--I'm basing the recommendation just on you liking Up In the Air and having a similar reaction to mine.

And FYI, Reitman was a producer on Jennifer's Body, he didn't write or direct it like he did with Up in the Air. Or were you referring to Diablo Cody, who is a lady? She wrote Jennifer's Body, Young Adult, and Tully. Reitman directed the latter two. They collaborate well and often, though not often enough for me.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Fri Jun 22, 2018 2:54 am

Cruel Intentions - funny.

Millennium Actress - That was really, really good, too. It's quite a bit more emotional and way, way less harsh than Perfect Blue. Perfect Blue is extremely cold and alien; this one is much more warm and sentimental and moving. They're almost like mirror images of each other; they have the same themes and motifs, but there's a striking difference in that one is about a woman who falls into illusions unwillingly because she's losing her mind and it leaves her shattered and the other is about one who does so voluntarily and it leaves her more fulfilled. I still largely prefer Perfect Blue because it's so radically unconventional and weird and awful and its a bit deeper and more complex, but this one was still good.

Jennifer's Body - whatever.

iZombie - the only truly good season of this show is still the first. After that it got stale and meandering.

The Last Seduction - I've always avoided the neo noir genre because it didn't interest me, so this is my first one, and I kind of fell in love with it. The fact that the protagonist was such an absolute stone-cold hateful psychopath left me feeling a kind of euphoric hollowness at the end when she managed to so thoroughly fuck over everyone and win everything and face absolutely no consequences, ever. I wouldn't have had the ending any other way, though. I was worried, sort of, that it was going to turn out that she had a soft heart after all, or could grow one, or some other hokey bullshit like that, but... yeah, no, that didn't happen. It gives me a weird sickness to watch movies starring such thoroughly evil, despicable, awful people. Especially when they win. But I really liked it. Anyone know any other good ones?

Young Adult - it's always nice to watch a movie with a protagonist even more fucked up than I am. It was very good, very well-made, very funny, and had a lot of heart. Movies that don't bend over backwards to make their protagonists "likable" (read: bland) make them more likeable, so much so that I liked her and sympathized with her even though she was terrible. She was very real and layered and nothing ever felt forced except maybe the very end, which felt somewhat rushed and inorganic. I get the feeling they didn't know how to end it. A common theme here is a sort of emotional denial, where many people trivialize or just flat-out don't acknowledge other peoples' emotional problems, which might go some way in explaining why she is the way she is. It's a good theme. Good movie.

Tokyo Godfathers - It was good.

Your Name - It was good. Not really what I expected. The aspect of it that everyone said was its primary story was really only the first half, and then a sort-of twist a bit before the halfway point led the story down an entirely new direction that the first half was mostly only a set-up to. I liked the first half more. I was much more invested in it, while in the second I was much more emotionally passive (although it still had some touching and beautiful moments). If you take the film more cerebrally than it's intended a lot of the plot developments are extremely arbitrary and nonsensical, which will you take you out of it if that's stuff you care about. I was led to believe this was a romance movie with fantasy elements, and there's definitely a strong emotional intimacy to it, but as I said the story abruptly switches to something other than romance halfway through, and if the romance was eliminated the plot would have stayed the same, so I'm not sure it really qualifies. I definitely recommend it, though. Also this is by far the most beautiful animated movie I have ever seen in my life. The backgrounds were almost photorealistic. I have never seen that in an anime movie. That's pretty cool. I should probably watch it again soon.

Raxivace · Post by **Raxivace** » Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:44 pm

Tokyo Godfathers is fun- its still bizarre to me that its a loose remake of a John Ford western of all things. Check out 3 Godfathers (1948) if you want to compare and contrast Ford's take on the story with Kon's.

Loved Millennium Actress. I think its just plain great on its own merits, though I wonder how I would look at it after having seen some Setsuko Hara movies, since that actress loosely serves as the model for the actress character in the Kon movie.

I haven't seen Your Name yet but I love a lot of the other Makoto Shinkai movies I've seen. 5 CM Per Second is a classic, the cat short is cute, Voices of a Distant Star (Like Anno's GunBuster before it) does Nolan's Interstellar better and did it better before it, and The Place Promised in Our Early Days is a bizarre little movie about terrorists and parallel dimensions. All of them look beautiful. I'll probably really dig Your Name whenever I get around to it.

Haven't seen any of the rest.

Post by **Gendo** » Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:35 pm

I will never not love Cruel Intentions. Don't know why. Though more recently I've started to think that Ryan Phillippe might actually be a good actor.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Wed Aug 08, 2018 4:59 am

Yeah, I've definitely been slacking on this. Oh well. This board is dead and buried, only like three people are going to read this anyway, so I'm not putting any effort into it.

Aggretsuko - it was fine. Next.

Cowboy Bebop - it was good. Only a little embarrassing, which for anime is pretty good. I didn't love it. I wasn't emotionally invested until the last three episodes or so, and it wasn't as thematically deep or interesting as I expected it to be, but I understand why it's so lauded. I'll see the movie if I ever can.

The Woman in Black - lame. I remember liking it when I first saw it but it's lame.

Annabelle: Creation - lamer. The Conjuring 2 remains the only good movie in this franchise.

Twin Peaks - saw the original two seasons. It was okay. If someone could explain to me why everyone went nuts over it I'd appreciate it. I thought it was mostly boring and silly, but I'll still watch the newest season if it ever gets on Netflix.

I don't think I've watched anything else in this entire period.

Post by **Gendo** » Thu Aug 09, 2018 3:21 am

This board is super-active, I've just blocked your account from being able to see most new threads.

Raxivace · Post by **Raxivace** » Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:42 pm

Derived Absurdity wrote:Cowboy Bebop - it was good. Only a little embarrassing, which for anime is pretty good. I didn't love it. I wasn't emotionally invested until the last three episodes or so, and it wasn't as thematically deep or interesting as I expected it to be, but I understand why it's so lauded. I'll see the movie if I ever can.

I saw bits and pieces of this when I was young, but haven't gone back to watch the whole thing yet. FWIW I seem to remember people generally liking the movie.

Also anime is good.

Twin Peaks - saw the original two seasons. It was okay. If someone could explain to me why everyone went nuts over it I'd appreciate it. I thought it was mostly boring and silly, but I'll still watch the newest season if it ever gets on Netflix.

-Brought arthouse sensibilities to American television
-Legitimately cinematic direction in the episodes Lynch did, which is unusual even for "prestige" television today
-Clever postmodern story that alternates between loving pastiche and critical parody of multiple genres (Soap opera, mystery, noir, TV sitcom, melodrama, surrealism etc.)
-Addressed societal issues that simply weren't being talked about in the culture at large at the time
-Rad as fuck soundtrack

In some ways its a compromised text because of network limitations (The movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, in somewhat unsubtle imagery, even begins with a character smashing a television with an axe) and production issues, Lynch and Frost being forced to reveal the killer before they wanted to, and them leaving the show for a bit for the middle portion of season 2 before coming back in the end, though I'd argue that its still better than most of what's being made for American television today which is largely still struggling to catch up with what it was doing back in 1990.

Also season 3 only pushes its avant garde elements even further FWIW. One scene, for example, is an uninterrupted shot of a guy sweeping a floor for like two straight and with a complete lack of any irony whatsoever I think it owns a lot.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Sat Aug 11, 2018 9:32 pm

Anime is not good, actually.

Point taken about Twin Peaks, though.

Anyway... spoilers ahead!

Tully: It was also good. Fucking hell, I would never wish parenthood on my worst enemy. I still think Young Adult was better. I thought it was more emotional, although that might be in part due to me not being this movie's target audience. I both liked and didn't like the reveal. Liked because it deepened the movie's themes ingenuiously and it was cool how we could get two different perspectives, from both her current self and her past self, on the same situation, but I disliked it somewhat because it ultimately made the movie be not about motherhood but mental illness (postpartum psychosis in particular), something entirely different. It muddled the theme as well as deepening it. I'm also a bit ambivalent about how the movie seemed to show that her mental illness actually helped her through her situation and that she was able to get better without getting any treatment (in fact *because* she didn't get any treatment), which I'm not entirely sure is a very responsible message. All in all it was good, but not as good as Young Adult.

Annihilation - it was.. all right? Could have been better. I didn't realize I had read the book it was based off of fairly recently until I started watching it and it felt vaguely familiar. I was never too into the book; I think the movie improves on it somewhat by depicting the Shimmer as a kind of psychedelic Lovecraftian nightmare where all order and human knowability breaks down rather than the environment re-claiming itself as per the book. The entire thing, it turns out, is one big screaming metaphor for grief and depression, because of course it is, and you can read that into every single thing that happens in the movie (which wasn't a big focus in the book iirc). It wasn't very entertaining, to be honest, with the exception of one late scene of straight-up horror that almost makes up for everything else, and it could have been far more thought-provoking and disturbing (maybe with a bigger budget), and it ends in a whimper. By most conventional metrics (pacing, dialogue, acting), it's mediocre, the weirdness wasn't weird, and it wasn't very intellectually challenging. It's too bad. It could have been great, maybe.

Incredibles 2 - it was fine. First was better.

The Spectacular Now - It made me cry, so I guess it was good. I think I can describe it best by listing a bunch of adjectives that apply to it: naturalistic. realistic (somewhat). emotional. romantic. sensitive. touching. heart-warming/breaking. That pretty much sums it up. It did do that annoying thing of spending a disproportionate amount of time on the inner life and troubles of the male at the expense of the female in the movie for no reason. The movie makes it abundantly clear it's much more interested in Miles Teller than it is in Shaileene Woodley. It might be a mild problem but it was enough to prevent me from liking it more. Everything else about it was perfect, which made the sexism in it all the more disappointing. I think the lack of interest in Woodley's personal life the movie had was noticed a bit by my subconscious, which might be why I didn't find the movie as affecting as I should have.

Wind River - Extremely good. Fucking depressing as fuck and rage-inducing. But extremely good. I'm never seeing it again.

Raxivace · Post by **Raxivace** » Sun Aug 12, 2018 12:18 am

Derived Absurdity wrote:Anime is not good, actually.

You're right, it's not good, it's...very good!!!!!!!!

Annihilation - it was.. all right? Could have been better. I didn't realize I had read the book it was based off of fairly recently until I started watching it and it felt vaguely familiar. I was never too into the book; I think the movie improves on it somewhat by depicting the Shimmer as a kind of psychedelic Lovecraftian nightmare where all order and human knowability breaks down rather than the environment re-claiming itself as per the book. The entire thing, it turns out, is one big screaming metaphor for grief and depression, because of course it is, and you can read that into every single thing that happens in the movie (which wasn't a big focus in the book iirc). It wasn't very entertaining, to be honest, with the exception of one late scene of straight-up horror that almost makes up for everything else, and it could have been far more thought-provoking and disturbing (maybe with a bigger budget), and it ends in a whimper. By most conventional metrics (pacing, dialogue, acting), it's mediocre, the weirdness wasn't weird, and it wasn't very intellectually challenging. It's too bad. It could have been great, maybe.

Yeah I had pretty similar thoughts about Annihilation. I didn't read the novel, put Tarkovsky's Stalker was the point of comparison for me and Annihilation wasn't nearly as interesting as it while also being a lot more obvious with what it was about.

Even the obviousness with what it was going for would have been fine if it was constructed a little more strongly. Like its baffling to me that they intercut between the adventure into the Shimmer and the aftermath of it. It just completely ruins any notion that you could feel like you're trapped in this weird zone with the characters.

Still I thought the extended bit at the end with the clone thing was kind of neat and wish more of the movie had been going for something like that.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:30 am

Yeah, that intercut was pretty bad and mostly ruined my emotional investment. I don't know what they were thinking.

Dear White People (season 2): I don't know if it's good or not. It's far less focused than the first season. This season just sort of wandered around and many of the episodes felt disconnected. I'm not sure if that was intentional. It was much more introspective and personal. I didn't much like the late reveal; both because they didn't explore it nearly as much as they should have, it seems like it came out of nowhere, and it seems sort of clueless and irresponsible to, in the Age of Trump, make a gay Hispanic dude, of all people, the main racist alt-right troll. I realize the point was to show that anti-blackness doesn't come just from white people, but I remain unimpressed. And GOD everyone on this show is so motherfucking pretty. Jayzus. Joelle is like a superhuman. She's also the greatest character by far. By far.

Nathan For You (season 1 - 4): This show was amazing as hell. I don't understand why I only just now heard of it, but everyone needs to watch it immediately. I don't even know how to describe it. The best I got is that it's basically a parody of reality tv where a guy attempts to helps struggling small businesses get back on their feet by pitching them completely balls-out insane ideas that effectively function as extremely elaborate real-world pranks. It results in the single cringiest, most painful, most awkward, most absurd thing I have ever seen. Sometimes I could barely even comprehend what I was watching. Half the fun of the show is figuring out what it even is. It's partly a commentary on human nature, but I don't even know what it's trying to say. It's sort of a prank show, but I often can't tell who the butt of the joke is supposed to be. It's a satire, but it's satirizing like a dozen different things at once. It's really hard to explain, almost as hard as it is to watch.

The season four finale in particular, which might be the show finale, is one of the best episode of television I have ever seen. It moved the show from an absurdist piece of avant-garde to something that can actually be considered high art. It wrapped up all the themes of the show in a way that both brilliantly constructed and extremely emotionally cathartic, which I kind of thought is what finales are supposed to do. There might be more seasons after but I hope not, because I've never seen a show finish as perfectly as this. I really can't recommend it enough.

FLCL: This was an extremely... experimental and unique experience. At least, it was in its form, but the story underneath all the experimentation was surprisingly (to me) simple, straightfoward, and traditional - it was ultimately just a representation of adolescence. I enjoyed it immensely. I was super-confused through most of it, sort of like Fury Road the density of this show is absolutely insane so I probably only really got a sliver of all of it. That said this doesn't seem to be a show that it's a good idea to try to "analyze", much like you shouldn't try to "analyze" the inner turmoil of someone going through puberty; it's chaotic, incomprehensible, and incoherent; the best you can do is just sort of let it wash over you. That said I thought it was pretty entertaining and well-constructed and satisfying towards the end, so it was good. So I've just seen another anime show that I've actually liked.

Raxivace · Post by **Raxivace** » Wed Aug 29, 2018 4:22 pm

It's been years since I last watched it but I loved FLCL. I'm not sure I could entirely tell you everything going on with Medical Mechanica and Atomsk and all that, but the coming of age story underneath all of that is easy enough to get and very enjoyable.

The sort-of sequel FLCL Progressive has way less experimental elements but, somewhat paradoxically, I found much harder to get a real read on. I think that makes it interesting though- a lot of internet people seem to disagree with me (I half suspect most of these people are just mad that it isn't just the original FLCL but again but eh what are you gonna do). It does suffer from being on a TV budget instead of an OVA budget like the original was though.

There last sort-of sequel FLCL Alternative airs on TV in like a week or two. I'm looking forward to it personally.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Sat Sep 01, 2018 4:03 pm

Hereditary - I don't really even know where to start with this one. It's really difficult to wrap my head around it. If I had watched it expecting it to actually live up to the hype of being "the scariest movie ever made", I would have been disappointed, because it most certainly is not. What it actually is is seriously sad and disturbing. What happens about half an hour in is one of the most horrific and awful things I've ever witnessed in a movie. That was... extremely tough to watch. Unfortunately for me that was the movie's emotional high point.

I can understand why critics fell so in love with it, but I can also understand why audiences seemingly disliked it. I can't really tell if I like it or not. It was well-made, but ultimately it felt like less than the sum of its parts, which is how most of the recent arthouse horror films over the past few years I've seen felt to me, and yet I'm having a hard time picking out what the actual problem was.

It's funny how completely polarized audiences and critics are with this. The latter agree that the last act is when it all finally comes together for them and becomes emotionally traumatizing, yet for the former that seems to be where they finally fully checked out. I think I'm closer to the audience's side. I was led to expect something much smarter and deeper than what the last act finally revealed the movie to be, some psychological horror/family stuff of the likes I had never seen before rather than what actually occured, some stale and conventional demonic possession stuff. I realize the demonic possession stuff is a metaphor, but that was what was actually fueling the narrative and emotional intensity, so it's the thing that matters. Furthermore, not only did the "overt" story (as opposed to the actual story of mental illness) turn out to be conventional and generic, but the way it was presented to us, the scares themselves, turned out to be as well. I wish the last act had been a bit more ambiguous and sophisticated. Most of the movie was a deeply disturbing and brutal exploration of grief and family trauma framed by the strong suggestion of mental illness, and the last act, where it was all supposed to come together, was given a lot of material based on the foundations laid for it by the last hour and a half to go somewhere truly dark and chilling... something more deeply rooted in psychology, something like hallucinations that are metaphors for how the family thinks about each other, or something, only still with a supernatural backdrop. Instead we got heavy-handed metaphor in the form of a silly demon carnival ride not dissimilar in structure to what you'll find in the Insidious movies. I think that was disappointing.

I'm not saying I can imagine a better last act or that I could write one, because I can't. I'm just saying that was what I was led to believe by the marketing and the first hour and a half of the movie.

(The movie even seemed self-aware about how conventional it was at times and half-heartedly tried to correct for it. No, the cultists can't literally worship Satan, because Satan-worshippers have been done as villains a billion times, so instead they're going to randomly worship Paimon, "one of the eight kings of Hell". That makes it different. Lol, okay, movie.)

So I guess that's my actual problem. Ultimately it felt unfulfilling to me. That really sucks, because I really wanted to like this movie. Alas, I didn't. That said, it was obviously well-made in parts and the director is very talented and the fact that it's his debut is impressive and I'm looking forward to what else he has to offer.