2021

[Derived Absurdity]

I wasn't aware until this re-watch.

How to Train Your Dragon - This movie is extremely double plus good. Exceptional. Best animated movie I've ever seen. I have seen it many, many times and it remains incredible. A very sweet and simple story told exceptionally well. I love its aesthetic, I love its mood, I love its atmosphere. Its pacing, cinematography, soundtrack, and screenplay are objectively phenomenal. I know this movie spawned a big franchise and was critically respected and has boatloads of fans, but I still think it's grossly overlooked. It's not just good, it's fantastic. Soundtrack - probably the best in film history, to be honest. Not just the music itself, but how it's incorporated in the story for emotional effect. Movies are expected to know how to do that well, but this one is on a different level. Cinematography - the visual effects were obviously great, but the movie's entire visual palette was gorgeous and moving and super-immersive and like nothing I've ever really seen. Screenplay - I think this movie has four or five sequences where no dialogue is spoken, and the script lets the animation and the music entirely speak for it. You hardly even notice. They're beautiful and flow very organically. The dialogue when it shows up is usually very economical and natural and effective - Hiccup's big fight with Stoick flows abnormally naturally, Stoick's simple apology to him at the end is profoundly moving, and the many parallels between the first and third acts, adding up so much that they almost feel like mirror images of each other, are basically narrative poetry. Pacing - its most underrated quality, I think. Its beginning sequence is one of the best I've ever seen. In the first six minutes or so it manages to hook you in, firmly establish the world, organically introduce all the characters and establish their relationships, and kickstart the incident that will propel the rest of the movie. It even manages to subtly set up the twist reveal in the third act. All in the first six minutes! And it keeps going. The second act has two separate plots with separate conflicts the protagonist is involved in that keep building on each other every time they switch over so that it keeps you highly engaged throughout. This is an excellent narrative tool that more movies should use, but it's probably pretty hard, so I guess that's why they're so unengaging. Even the traditional end-of-second-act low point that most kids movies have barely exists here - Hiccup's dad disowns him and kidnaps his dragon, but this stage zips by extremely quickly. I mean, this seemingly mandatory narrative step technically exists, but it feels far more organic than usual because it's not pointlessly lingered on and doesn't feel at all melodramatic.

It's the little touches, too. The moment of hesitation before Hiccup and Toothless make contact, that weird stumble Stoick does right after he disowns Hiccup, the fact that the door doesn't even slam shut properly, the fact that Hiccup actually loses his leg at the end, the fact that every time they revisit the same set something is different. There was a lot of thought and a lot of love put into it. The movie's emotional core is very simple and personal and intimate, yet it still manages to make its outer world dynamic enough that it feels actually lived in, that it's an actual place with characters who have lives of their own and do stuff even when they're not presently on screen. It's not just a bunch of static little set pieces our three or four important characters visit again and again. Quite an impressive balancing trick to pull off, to have a small and intimate story in a relatively large and dynamic environment, yet this movie did it *perfectly*.

I don't think I've even gotten to its themes yet. But yeah, the themes of don't blindly follow tradition or authority, non-conformity and independence are good, violence doesn't solve your problems but emotional intelligence and empathy do, and so on are all very good. Just because you've been doing things one way for hundreds of years doesn't mean they're correct. Sometimes you don't solve your problems by hitting them very hard. Traditional masculinity is bad. All great lessons.

Is this the most positive I've been on this thread so far? I fucking love this movie a lot, and I love it despite the fact that I don't give a shit about dragons or Vikings and father/son relationship drama typically never does anything for me. Neither does a-boy-and-his-dog stories. Yet here we are.

One last thing I feel I need to add... Astrid. I think Astrid is this movie's biggest weak spot. I feel like this entire franchise never really gave a shit about her. Even in this movie, her strongest one by far, her emotional arc makes little sense, at least on the surface, and after starting off strong she basically devolves into a supportive cheerleader/generic hero's reward by the end. She had a lot of potential as a character that this movie basically wasted. She's such a blank slate and her arc is so nonsensical and boring that I find myself thinking up elaborate interpretations and analyses of her in my head every time I watch the movie; interpretations that the movie's text most certainly does not support, but doesn't explicitly reject either. It's kind of fun. Especially since I had a severe crush on her when I was younger; I like romance far more than father/son stories or a-boy-and-his-dog stories, and I cared about her character more than anyone else besides Hiccup, and I always wished she was more interesting and well-rounded. It very much sucks that she sucks so much; she's a big gaping hole in the movie that I used to fill in with fanfiction. The two writers of this movie also wrote Lilo and Stitch, a movie I'll get to soon, so it's not like they're bad at writing interesting and complicated women. I don't know what happened.

Anyway, this is the best animated film ever made.

[Raxivace]

I've never watched the movie because I don't have my own dragon to train. Sounds like I might need to correct that.

[Derived Absurdity]

I hyped up this movie a lot so you'll probably find it underwhelming. Just know that most of the reasons I like it are subjective shit like its mood and atmosphere, stuff I can't explain in words very well. Also I think it was my second or third viewing when I started liking it so much.

Jumanji (1995) - I guess it's fine. It was better in my memories. I'm a fan of the stream of the negative energies it pours out - it's stuffed with pain and fear and terror and trauma and sadness and horror and melancholy and in general just negative shit. The game literally gives one of the major characters lifelong trauma, and the movie shows her trying to deal with it. It's fun when characters in stories have to deal with goofy nonsensical cartoon shit and yet have realistic psychological reactions to them. A little girl saw her friend get sucked into a board game and it scarred her for life, and she has to face it again. But a lot of the movie is also silly and boring. I didn't really care about its central emotional conflict, since as I said I don't get affected by father/son stuff. The romance angle was dumb, the characters' decisions were irritating, the dangers paradoxically got more intense as the game went on on paper but became less intense in reality since they just got goofier and more cartoonish, and I'm not sure the ending is as happy or coherent as it's presented.

Robin Williams was this movie's biggest draw, I guess, but he doesn't do anything particularly special in it. I didn't know he was anyone famous or important when I watched it as a kid. It's surprising how normal and stable he is, actually. He spent twenty-six years of his life trapped in an extra-dimensional nightmare jungle in which everything is a darker, scarier and more dangerous version of what's found in a real jungle (and savannah), with a traumatic mental construct relentlessly trying to kill him, all by himself with nothing but his thoughts and his anger at Sarah for not rolling the dice and releasing him for company. How the hell is he even remotely sane. The bad CGI here works by making the creatures even more threatening and unnerving. That lion was fucking unsetting. This is like a horror movie for kids. You'd think from all this I'd like it more, but I don't. It's just okay, I guess.

[Derived Absurdity]

King Kong (2005) - The quality of this movie increases metronomically as it goes on. The first act (which is basically an entire movie by itself) before the island sucks, the second act (another entire movie) on the island is somewhat better, and the third after the island is really good. The first act sucks because it's about a bunch of flat and unengaging characters dealing with problems we don't care about with very goofy and melodramatic dialogue and editing. The second act is at least somewhat exciting and has good action set pieces, and Andy Serkis makes King Kong emotionally expressive and sympathetic. But the third act works very well; it's evocative, atmospheric, and emotionally effective. It's affecting to see every single thing we watched in the previous two acts come crashing down spectacularly, to have it all end in tragedy and horror, to have it all lead to nothing because of hubris and commercialism. It was all very well done.

Most of what happened on the island in the second act was stupid. The brontosaurus stampede was stupid and looked like shit. It was some serious Looney Tunes nonsense. The big dinosaur fight was at least fun to watch, but Naomi Watts would have died about thirty times a minute during it. Just goofy cartoon physics all around. The giant bug scene's effect was ruined by Jack Black literally punching them repeatedly like he's in a back alley fight. These are giant bugs. They have exoskeletons. You don't just hit them with your bare hands. And Jimmy managed to shoot like eight giant bugs off Adrien Brody with HIS EYES CLOSED. Even with his eyes open it wouldn't have been very effective, because these are BUGS. Bugs are STRONG. If these are supposed to be just larger version of normal bugs, they should have been practically invulnerable to human's puny bullets. And what were they even doing anyway? Adrien Brody had eight bugs crawling all over him at once and they weren't even doing anything to him. And shouldn't they, like, weigh something? He was moving around like nothing was on him. Stupid shit like this ruins the effectiveness of the scene, Peter Jackson. Goddamn, what a fucking amateur.



This movie really wanted to be "epic". That's why it's so fucking long. It's not that Jackson and Co. had too much footage and they couldn't cut it down, they decided beforehand that they wanted it to be incredibly long and so just kept adding in a bunch of shit, mostly a huge ensemble of characters to keep the "epic" feel. But every single character here sucks. The side characters are nothing. There's no excuse for them to be such non-entities when we spend so much time with them. The main characters are also bad. Jack Black is a huckster and showman, and that's it. Adrien Brody is... a guy. Naomi Watts a personality-free empty-headed doe-eyed flake who falls in love with every male she meets, no matter how many chromosomes he has. Kong is the best character, which is purposeful, and his protective affection for Naomi Watts is the most emotional part of the movie. But you have to have more than one good character.

I will give this movie credit; it was roughly three hours long and my attention only drifted a few times, and that was always at the beginning. The fact that it's basically three different movies smashed into one probably helped with that. But it only has one good act and one good character, and you need more than that to have a good movie. It's a shame, I remember liking this quite a lot.

[Faustus5]

King Kong (2005). . .

I will give this movie credit; it was roughly three hours long and my attention only drifted a few times, and that was always at the beginning. The fact that it's basically three different movies smashed into one probably helped with that. But it only has one good act and one good character, and you need more than that to have a good movie. It's a shame, I remember liking this quite a lot.

I pretty much agree with everything you say but I think you liked it a little bit more than I did. What happened, I theorize, is that the tremendous success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy completely went to Jackson's head and broke him as an artist. I honestly don't think he ever recovered.

[Derived Absurdity]

Yeah everything he's made after RotK has been mostly crap. Except They Shall Not Grow Old, I guess, though I haven't seen it.

The Last Seduction - Linda Fiorentino was the only thing good in it. Everything else was mediocre. Well, Bill Pullman was amusing, I suppose. Linda Fiorentino wasn't even that good, she just happened to fit the part really well.

[Faustus5]

Yeah everything he's made after RotK has been mostly crap. Except They Shall Not Grow Old, I guess, though I haven't seen it.

Forgot about that--it was pretty good.

[Derived Absurdity]

Let The Right One In - I put this on my favorites list a long time ago probably because I felt that this was the type of movie I was "supposed" to like, not that I actually liked it. It's very crisp and beautiful and appropriately moody, but kind of meaningless and boring as hell. I had a hard time staying awake during it. Also the cat attack scene was unintentionally one of the funniest scenes I've seen in a while.

I don't know, that's about it. We're getting close to the halfway mark!

[Faustus5]

Let The Right One In - I put this on my favorites list a long time ago probably because I felt that this was the type of movie I was "supposed" to like, not that I actually liked it. It's very crisp and beautiful and appropriately moody, but kind of meaningless and boring as hell. I had a hard time staying awake during it. Also the cat attack scene was unintentionally one of the funniest scenes I've seen in a while.

I don't know, that's about it. We're getting close to the halfway mark!

I thought the American adaptation of the book (Let Me In) was just as good. People keep calling it a remake of the Swedish film but that's just bullshit--it has stuff from the book that the first film left out and vice versa.

[Derived Absurdity]

Lilo & Stitch - yep, pretty good! Well, half of it is. I can take or leave all the wacky alien stuff. But the other half, the one with the human characters, is honestly kind of great. The emotions and dialogue are very authentic and naturalistic and down-to-earth. Nani is great. Lilo is great; she's weird not in a lovable quirky way, but in an unpleasant and genuinely somewhat disturbed way. Their relationship dynamic is touching and very well done. They have to deal with real-world things like poverty and unemployment and CPS, and the movie treats it somewhat maturely. The romance is a very minor and meaningless subplot (good thing). The animation is also very good. It's very warm and comforting and bright, which fits as it takes place in Hawaii. It does a good job of reminding people that many people actually live in Hawaii; it's not just some tropical tourist paradise. Poverty and desperation exist there too.

Unfortunately Lilo and Nani is only about half the movie. The other half is forgettable scifi alien stuff. Stitch himself is not bad. I got the impression the filmmakers were trying to appeal to both genders separately here; the emotionally raw sisterhood/romance/poverty stuff to girls, the spaceships/gun battles/violence stuff to boys. We don't want the movie to feel too girly, do we, so make Stitch as hilariously violent and carnage-inducing as possible so boys don't feel like their dicks are falling off while watching it. But also make him cute, so girls aren't turned off by him. It's a careful balancing act that I guess they pulled off.

I can't decide if I like this movie enough to keep it on my favorites. I guess I do. I like the good half well enough. I don't know anything at all about the other Lilo & Stitch stuff. I just found out that this movie and How to Train Your Dragon are both written and directed by the same guy, Chris Sanders. The only other movie he has both writing and directing credits for is The Croods, which I also remember being a bit above average. He also has no directing or writing credits for either of the How to Train Your Dragon sequels, which I'm going to assume is the reason for their relative not-goodness. He also had no directing or writing credits for any other Lilo & Stitch stuff, so I'm going to assume they're not worth seeking out.

[Derived Absurdity]

Fair warning: I have a pretty good feeling the next several posts are going to be very, very long.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Holy shit the end credits to this are almost thirty fucking minutes.

I haven't seen any of these movies for about ten years, maybe more, and I only just realized I've seen the extended editions precisely never. I thought I should probably watch those editions for the first time here, even though I understand that that's cheating. I also know that people basically see this trilogy as one big movie, but I'm reviewing all three of them here separately, partly because rules are rules, and also because I disagree that they are basically one big movie. They're each pretty different from one another.

The extended edition, as its name implies, primarily functions to make an already long movie really really fucking long. There was an excellent Bilbo-narrated introduction that described the Shire at the beginning which for the life of me I cannot figure out why they cut from the theatrical release, and a pretty good scene where Boromir and Aragorn were introduced, but other than that, I don't think it added all that much. The mere act of watching this all the way through was exhausting, and I have two more to go, so I don't have enough energy in me left to make, like, an actual review. Instead I just have notes and questions that I jotted down as I was watching it that I didn't have when I was younger.

- The beginning felt contrived. Sauron's forces somehow tracked down and got hold of Gollum right when Bilbo was leaving the Shire, after decades and decades of nothing happening? Are we supposed to know how Sauron found him, or why he would even think to look for him in the first place? Wouldn't it be less contrived if Bilbo's use of the Ring for his disappearing act at his birthday party be the thing that kicks off Sauron's manhunt? At least then the party scene would have some kind of narrative and perhaps thematic purpose.

- Also, if putting on the Ring transports you to the Shadow Realm... why didn't that happen with Bilbo at the party? Was Sauron just not strong enough at the time? Even though he was strong enough when Frodo put it on in Bree, presumably only a few weeks later? That's another thing that bothers me. Everything in this world seems to happen on scales of several decades to centuries, yet a whole bunch of important and meaningful things happen at the very start of this movie in a matter of mere weeks or even days just to get the story rolling. We're operating in highly condensed timeframes all of a sudden. And later on at Rivendell, we learn that the Elves are suddenly leaving the world forever? Why are a whole bunch of huge things suddenly and randomly happening at once? I know the Doylist answer, I don't know the Watsonian answer.

- There is no reason at all why Gandalf didn't go with Frodo and Sam to Bree. Leaving them to fend for themselves in the big scary woods when he knew Sauron had already captured Gollum and learned the Ring's general location was unbelievable irresponsible and dangerous beyond belief. His date with Saruman could have waited at least until the hobbits are in Strider's hands, at the absolute bare minimum.

- I love how characters just kind of show up in this movie. Merry and Pippin literally just run into Frodo and Sam, and they then just stay with them forever. No one is shown even telling them what the hell is happening until they get to Rivendell. Do they not have family or friends back home that will miss them? Lives of their own? Apparently not. Also Sam. Gandalf just decides Sam is going with Frodo and so he does. There's no good-bye to his family or anything. The Shire is shown to be very socially connected and tight-knit; it's just amusing to me. Also, Legolas and Gimli literally just show up. There's no introduction, no context, no anything at all. They didn't exist one moment, and they're major characters the next. I thought that was hilarious. I mean, with Boromir, at least the movie tells us he's supposed to be important. Legolas and Gimli are just suddenly there. This movie is eons long and it couldn't spare a few seconds to give us proper character introductions? Or even basic explanations as to why they're characters?

- This movie features, by far, the most effective and scariest jump scare I have ever seen. In fact most of the highlights here are pure horror shit. I never realized how horror-inflected this movie is.

- It's really weird that Elrond would even let Aragorn on this trip, considering how he thinks men are weak and corruptible and Aragon is literally the heir of Isildur. I would think he would consider it too much of a risk.

- It was also funny to me how full of shit Gandalf is in this movie. Every decision he made got everyone into trouble. He didn't travel with Frodo and Sam to Bree, which almost got all of them killed multiple times and caused Frodo to get stabbed. He trusted Saruman. He let them go into Moria, which, of the three options presented, was probably the worst one. He didn't even figure out the second grade-level riddle on the mountain door. He didn't even figure out what the Ring was until Bilbo left Hobbiton, meaning that everyone waited until the last minute to try to destroy it. I don't hate Gandalf or anything, but did he ever make an actual good decision in this movie? Or do anything to justify his reputation as wise and powerful? Gandalf was literally an angel in the books, more powerful than almost everybody, but here he seems like a bumbling old man in way over his head.

- I think this movie is very good and all, but I acknowledge that almost every moment of it is teetering dangerously close to hammy and campy, and often passes it. The fight between Gandalf and Saruman is a good example. Hammy, over-the-top, and Gandalf's twirl up the tower to bash his face on the ceiling (I guess? I don't know what the fuck that was supposed to be about) just sealed it. A lot of this movie shows Jackson's origins as a shlocky B-movie horror director, but considering that it's trying very hard to be taken seriously, its mood and tone and style clash against each other horribly. Almost every scene is camp or over-the-top melodrama, and you would think it's Jackson trying his best to give some weight to the source material, until you watch King Kong and realize it's just kind of how he is in general. There are no less than four stupid random death fake-outs in this movie alone with no sense of tension or drama since we know they're fake. The scene with the Ringwraith stabbing the beds in Bree is especially bad. The problem is that this movie takes itself so seriously - the tone is somewhat lighter in the first half, but after the Fellowship forms everyone is always solemn and portentous. And IIRC this shlockiness problem just gets worse later on. I mean, I never realized how many goofy fucking zoom-in close-up shots we get of peoples' faces here, for example, especially at the beginning.

- Galadriel was full of shit. There was no reason Frodo had to abandon literally everybody and travel alone just because Boromir had weak willpower. Aragorn was safe. Legolas was probably safe. Gimli was probably safe. The other hobbits were definitely safe. I don't know, traveling by yourself to Mordor is dumb. And he took Sam anyway, and that eventually saved him multiple times. What the fuck was she talking about? Does she secretly work for Sauron?

That's all.

[Raxivace]

What if one of them just swallowed the Ring? Like is Sauron going to really still want it then if its covered in Hobbit feces.

[Gendo]

Even though he was strong enough when Frodo put it on in Bree, presumably only a few weeks later? That's another thing that bothers me. Everything in this world seems to happen on scales of several decades to centuries, yet a whole bunch of important and meaningful things happen at the very start of this movie in a matter of mere weeks or even days just to get the story rolling. We're operating in highly condensed timeframes all of a sudden.

So interestingly enough, in the books, the time between Biblo's birthday party and Frodo leaving the shire on his quest was... 17 years. Yeah, 17 years.

- I love how characters just kind of show up in this movie. Merry and Pippin literally just run into Frodo and Sam, and they then just stay with them forever. No one is shown even telling them what the hell is happening until they get to Rivendell.

This is another one where the book is completely different... in the book, Merry and Pippen had been planning with Gandalf about going with Frodo all along.

[Derived Absurdity]

What if one of them just swallowed the Ring? Like is Sauron going to really still want it then if its covered in Hobbit feces.

Why don't they just bury it in the ground? Sam's a gardener, right? He's good at burying things. Problem solved.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The extended edition added less here than it did the previous one, even though it had some good parts. The Battle of Helm's Deep was epic and well-choreographed and technically impressive and everything, but not all that emotionally gripping or intense to me. The stakes aren't that high (I don't know why the survival of what the movie portrays as basically just a random piss-poor village of three hundred peasants is supposed to be that important), we don't care about the characters very much, the bad guys are video game enemies, and even aside from that it keeps cutting to a bunch of other scenes of other characters in other places and squandering all the tension and momentum. I don't know, I was really not very involved with it. I was more invested in the somewhat more personal and intimate journeys of the characters in Fellowship; a bunch of guys in armor yelling and hacking away at snarling black blobs for fifty minutes in the rain doesn't do much for me, even if the set pieces and sense of spectacle are good.

About the characters. We care about them a little bit, but not much. We care about Aragorn primarily because of Viggo Mortensen. Legolas and Gimli have almost no depth, the former still barely has a personality and the latter was turned into a joke. Merry and Pippin are comic relief with their own side plot. Frodo just stares at things with wide eyes, grimaces, and peers around walls. Sam yells a lot, bullies Gollum, and occasionally gives dramatic speeches. Saruman is nothing. King Théoden, except for one scene, is nothing. Eowyn lusts after Aragorn. Faramir is fine. The only emotionally expressive and psychologically interesting character is Gollum, and he loses all his depth by the next movie. Seriously, these people are barely one step above the characters in King Kong. It's only because I grew up with them that I never realized how flat and shallow they are.

I think the hokiness and silliness was toned down since last time, but there's still a lot. Gimli wonders what madness would drive Merry and Pippin to run into Fanghorn Forest, implying that he knows there's some danger to it, yet later when he's actually in it he acts like he has no idea what's going on and has to have Legolas explain it to him. Gimli and Legolas's orc-killing competition just makes the big battle seem even more like a video game with no real danger or tension. Aragorn's fake death is kind of self-explanatory. The horse bearing down on Pippin and the cut to black is even more self-explanatory. I have to wonder if that was campy on purpose. Wormtongue turning into a B-movie cartoon villain. Théoden and Aragorn just letting Wormtongue go. The Elves showing up at Helm's Deep. And probably a lot more I can't remember. I'm not going to put Legolas's skateboarding here, because that wasn't stupid; that was just resourceful and efficient.

I'll probably have more to say about this next time, but Sam's cruelty to Gollum has always been disturbing to me, ever since I was young. Mostly because the movie basically justifies it, since, after all, Sam turns out to be right and Frodo, with his kindness and trusting nature, turns out to be wrong. It wasn't even because of Sam's meanness that Gollum turns against them, which would at least be poetic irony or whatever; it was because he (Gollum) mistakenly blames Frodo for Faramir's men mistreating him. A random, meaningless misunderstanding. Gollum is far and away the most psychologically interesting and thematically important character in LotR; the dynamic between him and Frodo and Sam (especially Frodo) had the potential to be incredibly interesting in many different ways, but in the movies it just wasn't. Gollum is schizophrenic, Frodo is too naive, Sam is suspicious and protective who turns out to be right by accident. That's it. That's all there is. Not very compelling. I know people don't watch this trilogy for deep character drama, but why not? It wasn't inevitable that its big selling point had to be big action Hollywood spectacle; that was just a personal directing decision. There was plenty of interesting character drama in the books.

The best thing about the extended edition is the flashback to Faramir and Boromir at Osgiliath. It gives him much-needed characterization and pathos and makes his actions in the theatrical version more coherent, and I have no idea why such an important scene was cut. But it also reveals that Boromir was sent to the Council by his Dad to act as his patsy and bring the ring to Gondor, which completely changes his entire character in Fellowship. Now his big internal conflict was not being tempted by the Ring's power; now it was who he should choose to be loyal to, Elrond or his dad. Way to cheapen his character and ruin all his thematic depth.

All in all I liked Fellowship more. It's more grounded, it's more emotional, it has more of a sense of adventure, more interesting set pieces, a better mood, it established the stakes better, and not unimportantly it showed more loyalty to the original novels. The Fellowship was a highly engaging fantasy movie for the most part and a pretty good adaptation; The Two Towers is good bombastic spectacle, but only a middling fantasy movie and a pretty awful adaptation.

[Derived Absurdity]

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - You could make the case that this is the biggest contemporary movie of all time, all things considered. A blockbuster juggernaut, and (unlike many blockbuster juggernauts) unanimous and rapturous critical acclaim, and (unlike many movies with unanimous and rapturous critical acclaim) unanimous and rapturous audience acclaim, and it also set some kind of record at the Oscars. Put it all together, and it comes out on top, above movies that made more money like Titanic, Avatar, and Endgame. I had a pretty lukewarm reaction to it, for the most part. Just take my feelings on Helm's Deep from last time and transport them here and you get it. This movie is all immediate, in-the-moment spectacle. It's pretty good spectacle, but the books described an actual well-connected and well-developed world with actual intricate history and folklore and mythology and deep and interesting characters and drama and stuff. This movie is basically just a bunch of grandiose set pieces. Minas Tirith is just a giant white model set in a mountain on a giant plain. Does it have an agricultural base anywhere? Any industry? An economy? Anything that signifies people actually make a living there? The entire world in this movie seems incredibly small and artificial, like a toy play set of Middle Earth; it's a world composed entirely of set pieces smashed together. Unlike in the first movie, there's little sense of scale or perspective. A lot of fantasy, not enough folklore or history. This wasn't unavoidable; the movies did not have to be a purely Hollywood action bonanza. The books certainly weren't. That was 100% a directing decision. And it's ironic because I thought one of the points the books made was that all the spectacle Aragorn and Gandalf get up to at Minas Tirith and the Pelennor Fields barely even mattered in the grand scene of things; what really mattered was the Frodo-Gollum-Sam triad. That was really kind of the heart of the story, including plot-wise; everything else was a side plot. And the movie acknowledges that, but it still focuses primarily on the side plot above everything else. It had some great parts, though; Faramir's pointless sacrifice is probably the most emotional part of the trilogy for me.

But even the Frodo-Gollum-Sad triad was messed up. IIRC in the book Sam's cruelty to Gollum is treated consistently as a blemish on his character to be contrasted unfavorably with Frodo's kindness to him. Here, Gollum is explicitly aware that Sam hates him because he sees - and Frodo does not - that Gollum intends to betray them. Sam, in fact, is in the right; Frodo's kindness really is naïve and stupid. In Tolkien's story, Frodo's mercy to Gollum brings the good, Sméagol side to the fore. At one quick moment, Sméagol is on the point of repenting and becoming a wholly regenerate character, but Sam accuses him of "sneaking" and destroys the moment. Ironically it's only because Gollum remains evil and seizes the Ring that Middle-Earth is saved; the evil Gollum does what the good Frodo cannot do. In the long run Sam's cruelty rules the fate of many just as surely as Bilbo's mercy several decades ago did. And later, Sam takes pity on Gollum when they were fighting on Mount Doom, which probably saved the world as well. I'm just saying there's a lot of subtle depth and poignancy to this whole triad that the movies completely wrung out. And instead they added a scene where Frodo chases Sam away on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, easily the worst scene in the trilogy. I can't tell who's more OOC there, Sam or Frodo. I'm just saying I think how Jackson and Co. handled Gollum shows how little he really got what Tolkien was doing there. I should read the books again.

Denethor's death scene was one of the funniest things I've ever seen and would have been the lowest point of the whole trilogy without the aforementioned Cirith Ungol scene.

Finally, the multiple endings are great and there is nothing wrong with them.

All in all, the Fellowship of the Ring is easily the best of the trilogy.


Next: my two favorite movies of all time are coming up! Whoo!

[Lord_Lyndon]

All in all, the Fellowship of the Ring is easily the best of the trilogy.

Definitely. Couldn't agree more.

Next: my two favorite movies of all time are coming up! Whoo!

'Lost in Translation' and 'Mad Max: Fury Road'? Two brilliant films and can't wait to hear your thoughts on those two.

[Gendo]

Hey, people who agree with me that Fellowship is the best! I don’t hear that often enough.

[Derived Absurdity]

'Lost in Translation' and 'Mad Max: Fury Road'? Two brilliant films and can't wait to hear your thoughts on those two.

Damn, you pay attention. That is correct.

Lost in Translation - One of my favorite movies of all time. It connected with me on a very deep and profound level when I first watched it several years ago when I was young, a level that almost no other movie or piece of art has ever reached. It captured the general feeling of being lost in life perfectly. Being adrift. Being surrounded by people but disconnected and alone at the same time. When you’re just being carried along by your mere existence and nothing else. Wanting to make a change but not knowing how. Not understanding either those around you or yourself. It’s easy to appreciate this movie when you’re going through an existential crisis, when you’re feeling like you’re just floating aimlessly through life with no direction or connection, like I was all through my teenage years and well into my adulthood. This movie, again, captured that feeling perfectly, even though in the movie the feeling is not really existential - it’s primarily a function of Bob and Charlotte being in a strange city by themselves. But I’ve seen so many films similar to this one since and it still has this ineffable, indescribable quality I haven’t found anywhere else, even in other Coppola films. This intangible and perfectly captured melancholy, a sort of peaceful and serene loneliness. Its style is distinct, consisting of soft focus and lighting, hazy and blurred edges, dreamy color blending, strictly symmetrical blocking, and intimate capturing of figures, especially faces, all of which mix to make it IMO without peer purely as a mood piece, even besides everything else.

This movie is about human connection. Not romantic love or even platonic friendship. It’s about two people sensing kindred spirits in each other. It’s about a connection two people make that could only happen for each of them at that exact place and moment in time and under those exact circumstances. If they had met and tried to have a relationship back in the States, it wouldn’t have lasted and wouldn’t have had the same feel. If they tried to meet up with each other when they got back home after Tokyo, it wouldn’t have worked, and they both knew it. The connection they had was entirely built on the specific conditions that were transpiring for them at the time. This is why every single human relationship and emotional connection that exists and ever will exist is literally special and unique - how we relate to each other and perceive each other and feel about each other is always molded and sculpted by external, arbitrary, situational factors in our lives that we have little to no control over and which necessarily pass us by only once. This is an existentialist theme if ever there was one, and I’m not sure if I’m explaining it properly but I feel like it’s an extremely profound truth about the human condition that will always apply no matter how long we last or what we end up as as a species, and which this movie captures and appreciates on a deep level.

It’s also postmodernist, as its title sort of suggests. There is no overarching objective reality the movie wants us to accept; it keeps us in multiple isolated, disjointed perspectives. Tokyo for example is obviously not really how it’s portrayed here; that’s just how Bob and Charlotte perceive it. Every time they interact with the inhabitants their perspectives clash and something important gets lost in translation. Even Bob’s last words to Charlotte go unheard by us and supposedly remain a mystery even to Coppola. That ending is very fitting, as no one else ever truly knows what goes on inside a relationship, what two people truly mean to one another. That would be knowledge for those two alone. And the inherent uniqueness of every human relationship - even every disjointed slice of one - that is IMO this movie’s primary theme also carries the suggestion of rejecting the idea of some kind of universal or objective perspective that exists over and above individual subjective and isolated viewpoints. Again, if one aspect of their circumstances had been different, or if they had tried to get together later, whatever they had going on in this movie would have been irrevocably altered, almost certainly for the worse. It would have gotten... lost in translation.

On this level I think this movie is a timeless and transcendent masterpiece, a film that exemplifies what the art of cinema is about. On a different level, however, the more nuts-and-bolts level, unfortunately, it has a few issues. Ever since it came out it’s been dogged by accusations of racism against the Japanese, and well, I always made the point that its superficial representation of Tokyo and the caricaturish portrayals of its residents were part of the movie’s point, and were reflective of the white protagonists’ ignorance and disconnect rather than anything about Tokyo or Japanese people. On the one hand, this is true. But on the other, a lot of the movie’s jokes are clearly at the Japanese’s expense. Two jokes about how the Japanese are short. Quite a lot about how the Japanese are silly and ridiculous, especially one extremely awful and jarring scene near the beginning with a call girl. It definitely adds up to something unpleasant. It would have been very simple to portray our protagonists’ alienation and disconnection from Tokyo without dancing on the edge of racism. I think a lot of it has to do with Coppola wanting the movie to be part comedy, so she shoehorned some weird slapstick in it. Probably should have been shot as straight drama. But even beyond this, it’s hard to overlook how self-absorbed and narcissistic our two leads are. Yes, they’re supposed to feel alienated and disconnected in a big strange city. But they didn’t even make an attempt to connect with anyone or anything besides each other. Charlotte in particular walks around and gawks at her surroundings like she’s at a zoo. Bob treats everyone he meets as ridiculous. They have no real curiosity about anything around them. There are at least four scenes that actively detract from the movie and should have been left out. This all makes the movie really flawed, and there’s no getting around it. The good parts of it are exceptionally good and the bad parts of it are many and really, really bad. It’s unfortunate that I can’t love this movie without reservations, but that’s how it is.

People also take issue with the movie’s opening shot, which consists of an extended close-up of Scarlett Johannsson in pink panties as she lays on a bed. The camera lingers on her for about thirty seconds. I always appreciated this shot, a lot, obviously, even though I could never think of any possible artistic justification for it. But now it seems similar to that shot in Fury Road of Max meeting the wives for the first time by the truck. We’ve been conditioned to view any image of a female in skimpy clothes as inherently sexual, even though there’s actually nothing sexual at all about either of these scenes; certainly the camera itself does not leer or sexualize or objectify anyone, it’s just our brains and our cultural assumptions doing that for it. And I think in both scenes that was deliberate. This shot lacks sexuality; it’s just a static shot of a pretty girl laying on a bed. It subverts expectations, just like the rest of the movie subverts our expectations of how movies are “supposed” to go. The shot is based on an objectifying painting from some guy who painted women in lingerie all the time, and by using it here in this new context Coppola sort of appropriated it and freed it from its sexualized and objectifying overtones. And the title of the movie meaningfully appears right over it, purposely reinforcing the motif of disjointed and subjective perspectives. I don’t know, I think that was deliberate. I still appreciate it, though, obviously.

So yeah, definitely a comfort movie of mine. I have somewhat mixed feelings about parts of it nowadays, but I still consider it an unparalleled artistic triumph and it’s such a quiet, subdued, intimate, wholesome, and honest experience watching it that it will remain one of my personal favorites forever, even with the racism.

And next: something completely different!

[Gendo]

When it comes to watching things in order by title; do you encounter issues where you just aren't up for the movie that's next on the list? This has happened to me a few times; many years ago I set out to watch my entire collection (back when it was about 1/4 the size it is now) in alphabetical order, but I didn't get very far because I was constantly running into things where the movie that was up next was one that I just wasn't up for; either because it was too long, required me to be less tired, or just not in the right mood, etc. It's also the reason why I have far more re-watches this year so far than first-time watches.

[Derived Absurdity]

It's usually more like I'm not up to writing a whole post on whatever's up next. I don't mind watching the movie that's up next, but thinking about it afterward and writing all my thoughts on it down in a coherent and organized manner is time-consuming and mentally draining, at least when there's a lot of them like in LiT, LotR, or HtTYD. Writing that long-ass Lost in Translation one and making those five paragraphs intelligible and well-organized, for example, took me like three or four hours in total. Sometimes I skip ahead on my list if I know it's going to take a lot to make a post about the movie that's up next, and then come back to it. I saw The Truman Show like a month ago, for example, because I figured I wouldn't have much to say about it when I got to it, unlike the last several.

And now...

for the best movie on this list, by far...

Nay, the best movie ever made, period...

Nay, the best work of art ever produced by Western civilization...

I present to you...

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

WITNESS, BITCHES. THIS MOVIE SLAUGHTERS ALL. THERE IS NO COMPETITION. THERE IS ONLY FURY ROAD.



https://www.metacritic.com/feature/best ... cade-2010s



LOOK AT THIS. There is NO CONTEST. It ANNIHILATED. It is in a world ALL ITS OWN.

Seriously, though, this is quite easily my favorite movie ever and, objectively, the best movie I've ever seen. Often "the best" movies and "my favorite" movies don't overlap, but they do with this one. It has everything. I don't even know where to start. This is going to be long.

So, yeah, the action first. It's pretty good. I mean, it's the best the genre has to offer; I'm not sure anyone disputes that, at least. I don't know of any action movie which has more to offer than this one in terms of pure spectacle, in terms of just raw, hyper-kinetic, balls-to-the-wall adrenaline. It's just a relentless audiovisual onslaught of wild excess that somehow never runs out of steam, that manages to keep your nerves wound like a drum for two hours. I think it's amazing that what is, as people have noted, basically a two-hour car chase through the desert can keep me so engrossed for so long, because since when do I give a shit about car chases? And the biggest reason it's able to keep me engrossed is that it integrates its character development, emotional beats, world-building, and themes within the action, and do so so effectively that many viewers don't realize they're there. The action works well enough that many people think that because they enjoyed the movie so viscerally on a purely surface level, there must be nothing there but surface. But there’s a lot of depth and subtext, just as much depth and subtext as many other “message” movies that were sold primarily on their depth and subtext, and yet the depth and subtext themselves aren’t as impressive as the way they were integrated into the surface narrative so effectively and efficiently. Everything is done in conjunction with the action instead of being left on the side; it uses action to develop its story rather than hinging everything on dialogue and whatnot. The first thirty minutes in particular showcase some of the most complex and intricate world-building I've ever seen, using very little dialogue. It transmits an extremely high density of information to us in a very economical way, using almost exclusively visual language, all the while keeping up a high adrenaline rush. If you don't recognize visual storytelling and are continually waiting on verbal cues, the movie probably seems simple or bland, but it's not. It does what movies are supposed to do - tell a story visually. And I literally haven't seen a single movie that does that better than this one.

Not one single shot or line of dialogue was wasted. There's nothing self-indulgent here. The narrative is down-to-the-bone. That's another reason I like it - it's extremely concise. Nothing is weighing it down. Everything moves the story forward. All of the traditional unnecessary fat is completely cut out to forge an extremely tight-writ, laser-focused, whistle-clean, thematically complex, and emotionally fulfilling end product. That is probably why for so many people it gets better and better the more times they watch it - it rewards multiple viewings because the sheer amount of information it bombards you with, both thematic and emotional, is simply too much to fully take in on the first time, or even the second or third time, especially if your higher functions are overwhelmed by a titanic adrenaline rush. To me, it is fantastic to have such a complex and layered film text to read, one that unfolds upon repeat viewings to reveal more and more layers of meaning. And its very narrative leanness helps you focus on all the subtleties and nuances it presents with each re-watching without getting bogged down by exposition and so on. I have seen this movie countless times and it literally gets better every single time. Every single one. Because there's always something new.

It serves as an interesting litmus test for how you approach watching movies. Hearing people complain that hardly anything happens in the film except for the action and that the story is too simplistic - that basically reads to me that they’re only following obvious narrative beats and missing the rich masterclass of visual storytelling that is unfolding underneath. It seems to me that the more attentive and appreciative you are of film language, the higher your regard for this movie will likely be. This explains why so many cinephiles and directors and professional critics love the film, while casual audiences are more apt to disregard it as mindless entertainment (not least because it belongs to a supposedly lowbrow genre which they feel comfortable holding in general disdain). (And that’s not to say general audiences disliked it. They liked it a lot. But film critics liked it a lot more.) And I just think the irony is funny. That pretentious art snobs like an explosions-and-car-cashes-and-hot-chicks movie more than casual audiences.

The film is completely awash in ironies, actually, and it’s self-aware about them, another thing that’s great about it. I mean, for one, this is the most bombastic, unhinged, over-the-top action movie to come out in years, maybe ever, where everything goes wildly beyond what is necessary, but as said the narrative itself is as thin as possible, ruthlessly and very carefully trimming off all excess. It's the apotheosis of a genre which is seen as hyper-masculine and aggressive, yet it's one of the most subversively feminist blockbuster movies ever and actually spends its entire running time deconstructing the very toxic masculinity it's seen as celebrating and which brought many men to see it in the first place. It's also, despite all this bombast and excess, tasteful and restrained where it matters, like gore; you would expect it to be overflowing with Tarantino-level gore, but the only truly gory moment is the movie’s emotional climax and it only lasts a second. The rare times someone in the movie gets injured enough to make it gory it's meaningful and special and dramatically affects the plot. Considering this, the movie probably could have been PG-13 if you shaved off about thirty seconds. Another amazing irony is how it treats violence in general: it was marketed and taken by many as a cinematic orgy of violence, yet the violence that occurs is remarkably subdued and is taken very seriously when it occurs (for example, Angharad’s relatively minor leg wound is a factor in her slipping from the War Rig and getting crushed, and it’s severely life-threatening and debilitating when Furiosa gets stabbed in the chest with the gear-shift knife), and above all its celebration is wildly subverted and undercut at every single turn. The image of the War Boy dune buggy being sucked up in the maelstrom, for example, was sold as an awe-inspiring money shot, but when it actually appears the soundtrack turns mournful, like it's a lament, even though it's the bad guys dying. It wants you to feel sad, not awed. And when Max goes off by himself into the night with a can of guzzoline to blow up the Bullet Farmer's car, we don't even see it. We see him walk away from the War Rig, there’s a big explosion in the distance, and then he trudges back. In any other movie, this would have been a huge set piece. And when he comes back, he acts different and seems psychologically damaged. It’s a great, subtle moment that subverts the normal way an action movie handles this sort of scene, not only by withholding the actual action and undercutting the idea of lone heroism, but by suggesting that it’s not even triumphant. The sandstorm chase, which Nux thinks is going to be his heroic triumph, ends with a flare sputtering out impotently in the dust. The fight in the canyon, which feels the most classically heroic, is undercut by Angharad falling off the War Rig, breaking the team almost as soon as it’s assembled. The moment where everyone should be high-fiving over their seamless teamwork, they’re grieving instead. Even the climactic moment of the film is undercut by the fact that Furiosa gets gravely wounded. So many examples. While this movie produces an incredible adrenaline rush, we never get to just revel in it and vicariously enjoy these characters’ competence at violence without awareness of the costs. (You could say the movies glorifies danger and adrenaline, not violence, which is an important distinction; craving the adrenaline rush of driving a car 120 mph on an empty desert road is very different from craving the power rush that comes from breaking things, starting fights, and so on.)

The ur-irony is that this is, again, on the surface, an aggressively red-blooded macho type of movie, the distilled expression of a very masculine genre, and yet its themes and subtext are entirely feminine, at least stereotypically: feminism (obviously), anti-toxic masculinity, anti-capitalism, environmentalism and conservation, the high value it places on virtues like empathy and tenderness and compassion and healing, and the overarching theme of not objectifying people and valuing them for their inherent personhood rather than their utility. When the MRA people said this movie was a Trojan horse for left-wing ideas, they were very much correct: George Miller snuck in a lot of traditionally left-wing and feminine subtext in this two-hour macho explosions-and-car-crashes-and-hot-chicks movie. It's great. And I am very certain none of it was done on accident.

About the feminism. There are probably movies out there that are more feminist than this, but not many, and certainly no big blockbuster ones. It's been five years and I still see people continue to misrepresent that water scene where the Wives are first introduced, calling it sexualized and objectifying. It’s not. The scene only strikes people as sexual because we've been trained by our misogynistic culture to automatically see conventionally attractive women showing skin as sexual; how often do films like this (or any films) show attractive women without framing them as consumable, after all? But the very next shot shows them cutting off their chastity belts, a rather blunt and unsubtle visual illustration of their rejection of their status as sexual objects. The camera doesn't leer at their bodies in this scene, or ever; it simply shows them. And neither does Max: he leers at the water. There is no focus on their body parts, or their skin; there is no male gaze. It focuses on their faces and reactions. And we've already learned at this point that they are sex slaves. They are taking off their chastity belts. One of them literally graffitied "We Are Not Things" a few hours previously. It would be pretty fucking gross and ugly to objectify and sexualize these women in this scene, and it's like the movie is practically daring us to, when nearly every previous line and action had revealed their subjugation to us at this point. This scene was a purposeful deconstruction. A pretty good one. Female skin isn’t inherently sexual. Women aren’t objects. Most people didn't get it.

The feminism in this movie is manifested by having a heavy plurality of the main characters be women, having them all be interesting and individuated, having them be the catalyst for the story, and having the story centered on them. Furiosa and the Wives are the ones that set the movie in motion, that kick off the action, which by itself is rare for an action movie. The Wives are not helpless damsels-in-distress, as some say; they advocated for their own freedom, they convinced Furiosa to free them, not the other way around, and they helped out and held their own throughout the movie, despite being sheltered. They were never sexualized or dehumanized in any way, ever, despite the movie having ample opportunity to do so; the narrative didn’t reenact any of the violence on them that they were escaping from. There's no gratuitous rape scene to show us how much they suffered, or scenes of sexual violence inflicted by the villains, or even sexual harassment, or gender-based abuse or gendered insults, or even any lusty camera shots. The film literally consisted of a bunch of hyper-masculine super-misogynistic tyrants chasing down literal sex slaves and yet no one ever felt the need to utter the words “bitch,” “cunt,” or “whore.” It managed to present about the least female-friendly society you can possibly imagine but treated its female characters with more respect than most *regular* action movies. (I read an excellent point somewhere online: “When a villain calls a woman gendered slurs in a movie, or sexually degrades or harasses her or anything else, that’s not the film showing us he’s sexist; that’s the film showing us his sexism is worth hearing.” Fury Road didn’t show us any of that because it didn’t want to include the villains’ perspectives in the narrative, or waste a second suggesting their point of view on things is worth hearing. It shows you don’t have to tell us someone or something is sexist by reenacting it for our entertainment. We learn the villains here are sexist entirely second-hand through world-building and context.)

(This also functioned to make us trust the Wives’ perspective on their own subjugation. We don’t need to be told that the Wives’ feelings on their own oppression are valid by having some random villain snarl some horrific rape threat at them or whatever; we know it’s bad enough by simple virtue of the fact that THEY’RE TRYING TO ESCAPE FROM IT. There’s no moment of insecurity where the movie feels it necessary to attempt to convince us that the Wives’ lives were “bad enough” to justify them trying to escape. (That is seriously an objection some people have brought up.) It trusts that we’re mature and empathic enough to simply trust their perspective. That was nice.)

And then they find that out that salvation doesn’t lie in fleeing to some matriarchal utopia, but by going back and tearing down the patriarchal system that subjugated them in the first place. Not to mention freeing all the men and boys that were brainwashed into existing as cannon fodder, because patriarchy oppresses men, too. Oh, and Max tags along and helps sometimes by not getting into Furiosa’s way too much and sometimes pulling off something cool for the group. What’s great and feminist about this movie is that our titular brooding White Male Lead in an Action Movie™ is given no opportunities to appear badass or heroic unless he’s working as part of a team or directly helping someone else. The first time he’s properly badass is in an action sequence that begins with him handing Furiosa a gun. He then willingly becomes a prop to steady Furiosa’s shot. He then he runs off on a solo mission and it doesn’t even merit screen time. And in the final chase all his badass moments are dedicated to helping and protecting his new family. And of course, his biggest heroic moment in the film isn’t a cool action sequence or taking out a villain - it’s saving someone’s life through an act of healing. It’s being selfless and compassionate, fixing something that’s broken. This entire movie is one giant-ass deconstruction of action movie tropes. Then at the end, instead of being rewarded with a sexy girl, Max gets nothing. He gives everything to Furiosa - his love, his loyalty, his fighting skills, his blood, his name - and he takes nothing in return, nor does he feel he is owed anything. He is content simply to help her, and thanks to his love and selflessness he was able to achieve some kind of redemption. He receives no reward or external validation for his help, and doesn’t expect any. None of the women ever tell him how great he is or even thank him. His contribution is seen as equal to, but no more valuable than, theirs. He doesn’t ask for or feel entitled to special credit for the victory, nor does he receive any. He’s portrayed as what a male ally should basically be like: he helps out, but he doesn’t focus on himself or center himself; he realizes victory will be good for him, in the end, but knows that’s not why it should be done; he doesn’t impose his leadership, he merely offers his services and makes suggestions. In Fury Road, a man’s heroism is not determined by how strong or tough he is - it’s defined by how willing he is to help, support and protect others selflessly while demanding nothing in return. Ultimately, the male characters - Max and Nux, primarily - are the most subversively feminist thing about Fury Road. And I think this is a cool and somewhat under-appreciated aspect of the movie.

Another thing that was nice about it that I feel should be mentioned: in a lot of movies like this, the villain is some preposterously evil rapist fascist psychopath, kind of like Immortan Joe, and the male protagonist is a douchebag, but the movie wants us to think he’s fine because he compares favorably to the villain. Malcolm Reynolds in Firefly, Peter Quill, James Bond, and so on. Fury Road is refreshing because it doesn’t use Immortan Joe’s cartoonish villainy as an excuse to brush off sexism from the film’s male heroes. Max Rockatansky has zero sexism. In another film, Immortan Joe would have been presented as an outlier that mainly exists to make a male hero’s douchebaggery seem acceptable by comparison. In Fury Road, Immortan Joe is presented as patient zero of a toxic masculinity epidemic. The male heroes are either immune to his influence or are cured of it through the aid of feminist medicine, like what happens to Nux the moment he leaves Joe’s Citadel.

There’s a lot more I could say, but my point is that this movie’s feminism runs a lot deeper than “it’s bad to keep women as sex slaves and women that shoot guns and drive trucks are cool.” And I talked about this movie’s feminism for five paragraphs and I haven’t even gotten to Furiosa yet. Lol.

Well, about Furiosa: one scene I really like in this movie is when Furiosa tells Max the code to start the rig right before the canyon. It’s great because that was literally the only thing that kept Max from leaving all of them in the dust to their fate in his panic to escape just a few minutes previously. Yet she makes the decision to give him the code and give him the power to completely screw them over if he wanted to. But he doesn’t, and she knew he wouldn’t, because she’s not only extremely strategically intelligent and badass in all the conventional ways, she’s emotionally smart and perceptive. She read his psyche correctly from the beginning and figured out he wasn’t inherently a dangerous threat, but a trapped and scared animal, and realized she could turn him into an ally if she calmed him down by giving him some level of trust and respect and responsibility. She doesn’t hold it against him that he just held them all at gunpoint and abandoned them in the desert a few moments ago, and in return he just immediately throws his weight in with them. Furiosa ultimately accomplished her goal and won a very valuable ally partially because she makes a decision to treat a person who had been treated like an object (just like the Wives) up to that point as a human being (which ties into the movie’s primary theme: treating people as human beings instead of commodities).

On the surface, her sudden decision to give this scared-looking man waving guns at her the code to her only means of transportation, and his sudden decision to immediately throw his weight behind her, seems both stupid and random. That’s because all of it took place underneath the surface, with barely any dialogue (it basically started and ended with the line, “You want that thing off your face?”) and instead with silent facial expressions and body language and emotional context clues. In the fight they had when they were first introduced, Max showed her clearly that he isn’t interested in killing anyone by wasting three bullets on warning shots once he finally got the upper hand instead of finishing her off like anyone would expect he would, as well as by disabling Nux with a punch in the solar plexus even though he’s holding a loaded pistol and has every reason in the world to want to kill the fuck out of him. Even at his most feral, just out of an experience that would curl most people into a quivering ball, Max just wants to get away, not kill anyone, and it says something about Furiosa that it only took her seven words to figure that out. In any other movie character development of this sort would have taken thirty minutes and several pages of thudding verbal cues. In this one it took seven words. Quite a lot happens in this little section of movie on an emotional and character level, but being able to fully read it requires you to be quite an active viewer, to parse out a lot of subtle details like body language and facial expressions and whatnot. And this is just one small example; the whole movie is like this - it requires a high degree of active attention, visual processing, and emotional intelligence to take in everything that’s happening, precisely because the movie doesn’t stop and hold your hand through any of it. This movie has a level of depth and complexity I’m not used to seeing in most art movies, let alone a big action blockbuster. It demands a lot from the audience, but that’s good because it makes sure the audience is rewarded many times over. A movie that demands this level of audience participation to get most of it would sound like a complete chore to get through, at least for non-cinephiles, but obviously not this one; it somehow manages to have all this and still be wildly entertaining on a visceral level as well. I seriously do not know how they pulled that off. No other movie in history has ever done this, at least not on this level, I feel confident in saying, even though I’ve barely seen any movies.

Another thing about this scene is that it’s one of the many examples of this movie subtly and effortlessly integrating the plot (they get past an obstacle and move closer to the Green Place) with theme (Furiosa wins Max to her side by being the first person he's met in a while to not treat him like a commodity) and characterization (showing Furiosa's emotional intelligence as well as Max's desperate need to feel connection with others and be respected as a person). And it was done with barely any dialogue in like five minutes. Furiosa ripping off Joe’s face is another example (it basically fulfills her arc while also advancing their mission by eliminating an obstacle), as well as Nux’s sacrifice and Max’s healing of Furiosa at the end. These are all functional plot/action beats, and are also the culmination of each character’s story arc. See: storytelling! This movie is really good at it! Like, really, really good! The most common complaint about this movie is that it doesn’t have a story. It’s Just A Two-Hour Car Chase, after all. “All they do is drive away and then drive back!” That’s kind of like saying all that happened in The Lord of the Rings is that they walked to a volcano and threw a ring in it. Yeah, that happened, but there was a lot else going on. The plot of this movie is thin, but the story is incredibly thick. What do you even need plot for? Who gives a fuck about plot? Maybe this movie doesn’t have too little plot, maybe other movies have too much. The plot is just the tool you use to tell the story. The plot is the sequence of events; the story is what that sequence of events is actually about. Sometimes telling a good story with little plot is the mark of a good storyteller; sometimes a complex plot does nothing more than to cover up the fact that the story it’s telling is thin and/or dumb. The story of Fury Road is that it’s set in a world where everyone is objectified and treated purely as a commodity, everyone is defined purely by their ability to be utilized for some end, and a few characters manage to overthrow the oppressive system that upholds that and reorganize society so that it’s based on recognizing peoples’ inherent humanity, on defining life through relationships and human connection instead. It tells this story via a two-hour car case through the desert. “We Are Not Things” is the movie’s thesis statement. The War Boys are cannon fodder, the Wives are breeders, Max is a blood bag. They all start off as things. And the cool thing is, with Nux and Max, they complete their arcs when they do what they were dehumanized to do, but on their own terms instead, and for a higher purpose. Nux eventually sacrifices himself in the manner he was trained to do, but on his own terms, as an act of selfless compassion, ending the oppressive system that had trained him for that in the first place. Max finishes the movie by donating blood, but on his own terms, by his own choice, as a deeply personal and vulnerable act of selfless giving, because he’s finally gained a connection with someone. He chooses to share what was forcibly taken from him; what was a monstrous violation when stolen becomes touching and moving when freely offered as a gift. Even the Milk Mothers, who are on screen for all of fifteen seconds, who had their bodies forcibly utilized at the beginning to provide nourishment, had their own moment at the end where they nourished people of their own volition by releasing the captured water. It’s all pretty cool! People are not things! I like it a lot!

A few other random things I liked about this movie that I can’t easily fit anywhere:

- The three groups converging on Furiosa and Friends were Immortan Joe, the People Eater, and the Bullet Farmer. As someone pointed out, they are, essentially: the tyrannical oligarch that commodifies everyone and everything, the fuel magnate, and the war machine. The three major prongs of the military-industrial-corporate complex. Amazing.

- The shockingly beautiful color grading and visual palette. Turns out you don't need to bleach the world of color and prettiness and make everything look grimy and shitty to make a serious movie.

- The unapologetic and undisguised manipulation of the frame rate to portray fast motion, which is especially noticeable in the beginning. Cinema is all illusory anyway, this movie says, so let’s not even pretend. You want things to go fast? Here you go. They’re fast now. It works. Your nervous system doesn’t care that it’s unrealistic, even if your brain notices.

- The fucking eyes. They used rotoscope and added contrast, saturation, and sharpening to make the characters’ eyes extremely clear, vivid, and sharp. Eyes are the windows to the soul, it is said. It works. Everyone’s eyes in this movie are luminously beautiful.

- The Dag

- The Doof Warrior and the fucking flamethrowing guitar

- Several zillion other things

I could go on for a lot longer, trust me, but if I had to sum up, I like this movie so much because it brings the best of all movies into one ne plus ultra movie. It works no matter what you want. If you simply want a non-stop badass hardcore action blockbuster movie which wildly entertains you for two hours, this is the best of the bunch. If you want a thoughtful subversive social critique/commentary, this has messages about everything from patriarchy, environmentalism, capitalism, the nature of violence, political oppression, redemption, and humanity in general to think about. If you want an emotional character drama, the mature, intimate, organically developed, and emotionally compelling relationship between Max and Furiosa will serve you fine, and the respect and humanity with which the movie treats all its (good) characters provides emotional beats as genuine and effective as any anywhere else. If you want an "art" movie that does unique and artsy things with aesthetics, story structure, and cinematography that film nerds can appreciate, you certainly get that. And if you want a movie where you can just fall into its universe, the world-building is so complex and ingeniously and effortlessly crafted that it more than serves that purpose for you as well. It’s extremely rare to find a film that achieves so much in so many different directions, for so many different types of viewers, to seamlessly integrate it all into one perfectly composed cinematic tour-de-force, two exquisite hours of cinematic perfection on multiple levels, and above it all make it look so effortless and easy as this one. This is almost like the ultimate movie, in my eyes. The purest example of the art of cinema as a storytelling form. It is perfect and purely self-contained; it doesn’t ever leave me wanting anything outside it; even though it spawned some comic books and is the sequel/reboot/whatever to three other films that are presumably also pretty good, it leaves me with no desire to see or read them, and it gives me no real desire for a sequel. The movie by itself is more than satisfying enough on multiple levels. It is a timeless classic, shiny and chrome, perfect in every way; it’s going to be remembered as an all-time masterpiece and even fifty years later we’ll be looking back on it and wondering how the hell it managed to pull all that off.

[Gendo]

It was ok. It's no Avengers End Game though.

[Raxivace]

I'll read the book you wrote on Fury Road tomorrow, but it skimming it now it seems like you hit a lot of good stuff in the movie.

It was ok. It's no Avengers End Game though.

[Gendo]

You know of all the amazing and wonderful things that Fury Road gave us; that meme/gif has to be one of the best.

[Derived Absurdity]

Yeah, it's great. I also use "MEDIOCRE!!" a lot.

Marie Antoinette (2006) - I can't tell if this movie is actually good or not, but I enjoy it. It's a good experience if you just feel like drowning yourself in meaningless pretty. It's also an effective portrait of someone trapped in an ultra-gilded cage, with everything in her life completely outside of her control, someone who is both obscenely entitled and pampered and privileged but also severely constrained and constantly dehumanized. I'm not sure this movie's interpretation of Marie Antoinette as purely a victim of circumstances is accurate, but I guess it doesn't matter since it's obviously not attempting to be historically accurate. There's anachronisms like contemporary pop music, random sneakers in Antoinette's bedroom, incongruous dialogue, several instances of characters looking at the camera for some reason, and so on. It's basically the life of a sheltered and pampered teenage girl who happens to be named Marie Antoinette with Versailles as the setting; everyone in history thinks they're living in the present, not the past, and all the movie's modern anachronisms seem to me to be attempting to invite the audience to share that perspective. It's trying to be timeless and relatively universal.

It makes a lot of sense that Sofia Coppola would sympathize so strongly with Marie Antoinette, growing up in a gilded cage herself as a scion of Hollywood royalty, along with her insatiable tendency to care about the plight of sad rich white girls at the expense of absolutely everyone and everything else. This is basically the ultimate Sofia Coppola movie, for both better and worse. It's good that we never heard from any of the French peasants or got any real inkling of what things outside of her life were like; the whole point is that Marie Antoinette was severely cloistered and out of touch with anything real or important, so we are too. And when she meets her fate it kind of seems like it comes randomly and out of nowhere, with nothing really leading up to it, because from her perspective that's probably how it felt. It's probably also good that we don't actually see any of the revolutionary violence or the beheading; we wait through the whole film to see this young girl beheaded at the end, a rather unhealthy and unwholesome anticipation when you think about it, and I'm glad Coppola deprived us of it.

I will also add that this movie manages to be both visually flamboyant and vivid yet dreamy and misty at the same in a way I've only seen Coppola manage to successfully pull off. It makes sense that Kirsten Dunst is her actress of choice so often, as she appropriately brings this weird ineffable sense of detached and melancholic dreaminess to almost all of her roles.

[Derived Absurdity]

The Mask (1994) - uh it was fine, I guess. Lol I liked this movie a lot as a kid for some reason. I don't know why. It was funny but also kind of unnerving, so it hit that sweet spot that kids like. The funniest part is every character's blasé reaction to encountering a being that's obviously from an entirely separate plane of reality. They should make a dark and gritty R-rated remake.

[Gendo]

Yeah The Mask was definitely a childhood favorite; my friends and I would basically quote the entire movie to each other from memory. It has a lot of creative moments at the least.

[Derived Absurdity]

Mean Creek - Undoubtedly the best in the "a bunch of kids kill someone and then deal with the fallout" movie sub-genre, at least from the ones I've seen (Bully, River's Edge, Super Dark Times). It's haunting and atmospheric, disturbing and incredibly bleak, with great performances and a high level of authenticity and sensitivity. It's good. It's not cynical and exploitative like Bully and doesn't jarringly switch to shallow slasher bullshit for no reason like Super Dark Times. It has a certain amount of poignancy, although its narrative is not ultimately particularly deep or meaningful; its message basically amounts to "man, kids can be mean sometimes, can't they?" It feels kind of thin and unsatisfying. But it's well-made and moving enough that it's still a favorite.

[Gendo]

Mean Creek is the only movie I’ve seen in that genre, I think. I only saw it once a long time ago, but I remember liking it a lot; remember thinking Rory did a great job.

[Derived Absurdity]

Yeah. Josh Peck and Scott Mechlowicz did as well.

Millennium Actress - It was good. A well-made and warm and moving love letter to cinema. The reverse image of Perfect Blue, in that the latter is about a woman falling into delusions unwillingly because she's losing her mind and the former is about one who does so willingly and it leaves her more fulfilled. I still prefer Perfect Blue because it's so radically unconventional and weird and awful and it's a bit deeper and more complex, but this one was still good. Not a favorite.

[Derived Absurdity]

Mulholland Drive - Yeah, I don’t know. This movie is obviously well-made, but I don’t know what the fuck it’s saying, whether it’s even saying anything, or whether it’s stupid of me to go into it expecting it to be saying something. I guess the basic message is that Hollywood is a destructive profit-driven machine that takes people with dreams and talent and mercilessly chews them up and spits them out, but there are several things one could potentially point to that seemingly contradict that. I guess I “get” the surface-level story (the first two-thirds is a dream/fantasy, the last third is reality, and so on) and I can work out what most things here “mean”/symbolize (the homeless person behind Winky’s probably represents Diane’s guilt and fear of failure, the girl “Camilla” in her fantasy is her projection of all of real-life Camilla’s maliciousness, the joyriders that obliterate Rita’s would-be murderers are Diane’s subconscious wish for the real-life hit to have failed, and so on); I think I can fit at least most of the puzzle pieces this movie throws at me together, but what is the point of putting the puzzle together? What am I meant to get out of it? What is the underlying thematic core here? I guess the point is that that’s up to interpretation, just like dreams, and I guess maybe it’s not the fault of the movie that I think I can figure most of it out and still not get much out of it. Plenty of other people seem to have gotten a lot out of it. People often say that you’re not supposed to experience a Lynch movie as a puzzle box - you’re supposed to just experience it and, like a dream, let its emotional currents wash over you. Yet it certainly seems to me that a lot of Mulholland Drive adds up to something logical and coherent, or makes an attempt to; there are too many connections between too many things that add up to a relatively clear overarching picture for me to believe that I’m not meant to experience it cerebrally on some level. But I simply don’t know what the picture is saying, or what I’m supposed to be getting out of it. As it is I don’t get much of anything out of it.

The two scenes in this movie IMO that are most pregnant with meaning are the audition scene and the Club Silencio scene, and they’re both saying essentially the same thing - that Hollywood is all image-manufacturing, where nothing is authentic, that it’s all illusory, the only things made in it are canned and artificial and factory-made, and yet despite the obvious artifice, these illusions still have the power to move us. They’re good. Kind of obvious, I guess, but whatever.

I like how self-consciously movie-like Diane’s dream is. The performances are hokey, the dialogue is clearly dubbed, the lighting is overdone, the story is filled with tropes and clichés (police detectives, amnesia, mistaken identity, the Nancy Drew stuff, and so on). It’s not just a fantasy or a dream, it’s specifically a movie-like dream. I think what this is getting at is that we construct our fantasies and dreams through fiction, which are simply fantasies presented to us through other people. And on a separate level, it’s interesting that the first time you watch this you don’t figure out that the first two-thirds are supposed to be a dream and the last third is supposed to be reality until well after it transitions, and often not even then; considering the dream is so happy and the reality is so depressing and bleak, part of your mind rebels at the realization. You’re inclined to doubt the reality of the second part instead. I think it’s possible that Lynch isn’t simply trying to fuck with people by cramming all the explanations for what we’ve been witnessing for the past two hours at the very end; by presenting the story in that order and getting us invested in the dream first, he might be suggesting that the dream isn’t any less profound or meaningful than the reality is. If anyone would have enough respect for dream realities to impart a message like that, it’s Lynch. Of course this possible message is somewhat subverted by having so much of the dream reality be self-consciously artificial and hokey. I don’t know.

This fucking movie gives me a headache. I can’t say I dislike it, but… do I like it? I can’t say that either. I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t really enjoy watching it very much and I don’t really get much out of trying to figure it out. Guess I’m not a true cinephile. I like Naomi Watts’ performance, and I like the Winky’s diner scene, that’s about it.

This movie helps crystallize for me the type of film watcher I am. My tastes are a lot less basic than your average filmgoer, but I'm not at true cinephile-level where I can watch a god-tier movie like this one and automatically intuit and appreciate what it's doing. I'm right in the middle. This shit is too advanced for me. I think I'm good with that.

[Derived Absurdity]

Nightcrawler (2014) - Still really good! I like it a lot! It remains incredibly surreal to me that so many people have totally missed the incredibly glaring and unsubtle subtext of this movie. It's not primarily about the news media, it's about capitalism. Lou Bloom is the personification of capitalism. He's completely amoral, he dominates his competition by being the most ruthless, he doesn't care about anything except making money, he thinks every single aspect of life is a potentially exploitable commodity, he views all human interaction and relationships as purely transactional, he's happy to deal out violence to anyone who gets in his way, he's obsessively hyper-focused on profit-making at the expense of everything else, he has a never-ending lust to continually expand his possessions and wealth and status, and so on. I mean, he talks almost exclusively in empty dehumanized corporate self-help maxims and Forbes 500 HR manual-speak. That's the only way he knows how to communicate. I don't know, I kind of figured out what Dan Gilroy was doing early on the first time I watched it and I laughed my ass off every time this empty-eyed creep kept blathering on inspiring people through innovative thinking and putting things on the fast track toward growth and so on and so on. I figured this was a very dark and hilarious satire of our culture's frenetic can-do capitalistic spirit and corporate attitudes and our current capitalist hellscape in general, and I was on its wavelength from the very beginning. I guess most other people weren't? I don't see how you can listen to this complete sociopath hilariously babble on about acquiring job security by performing as an indispensable employee or whatever while he's running from the cops and formulating plans to murder his partner and not see the satirical subtext there. This is honestly one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. Lou Bloom is one of the funniest characters that has ever been in a movie.

Part of me thought I might be crazy by thinking this movie was so obviously a satire of capitalism, since seemingly no one else saw it, before I looked it up and found several interviews where the director flat-out said "Yes, this movie is about capitalism." He explicitly modeled Lou Bloom on what a rational corporation would be if it was personified. And he does value what is "rational", from a self-interested capitalist perspective - he has no moral floor, yet he's mostly not overtly tyrannical or coercive. Everyone he dominates and exploits willingly submits after he lays out all the angles to them. He talks in libertarian platitudes about choice/negotiation/freedom of exit while offering the true capitalist reality of "work or starve". Because he's economically rational, he's usually willing to listen to criticism and makes the point to his employee that he's a fair boss. Which is true, from his perspective, since he thinks fairness is determined entirely by bargaining power and leverage. If being rational means being nicer to his intern so he gives better directions, he'll do that without complaining. If the most rational thing is finding a way to kill his employee because he's jeopardizing his operations, he'll do that instead. And because this movie is a really fucking good satire of capitalism, he gets rewarded for his behavior, over and over and over again. He ultimately wins. He succeeds. He's the twisted mirror version of Horatio Alger. He's not terribly realistic if you're looking for a naturalistic character study of a sociopath, but filming his employee bleeding out for profit makes more sense when you read him as the personification of the economic religion of our era. He wins because capitalism incentivizes and rewards self-centered, amoral behavior, as long as you don't get caught. That's how you climb up the corporate ladder and find Success. In any halfway decent and civilized society, some worthless thug like Lou Bloom would be shunned by everyone and thrown in a cell somewhere, but in our society he instead would be running some multinational corporation and have his face plastered on the cover of Bloomberg Magazine and go on CNBC lamenting about how our generous unemployment benefits are keeping people from seeking out work.

Anyway, this movie is great. Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom is transcendent. Rene Russo and Riz Ahmed's performances were also excellent and generally overlooked. The script is top-notch, the satire is perfect, and the entertainment value is first-rate. It's good! Unlike capitalism, which is very, very bad!

[Derived Absurdity]

Pan's Labyrinth - One of the best movies ever, definitely holds up. I don't really have anything to say about it beyond the obvious. Breathtaking visuals, heartbreaking story, mixes two genres (war and fantasy) seamlessly, haunting atmosphere and soundtrack, superb set designs, and so on. It's highly creative, engrossing, and original. Also incredibly dark and disturbing.

[Gendo]

Last 2 are both great... I need to rewatch Nightcrawler though; only saw it once for some reason.

[Raxivace]

Nightcrawler was never one of my favorite X-Men so I just never saw his movie.

[Gendo]

Nightcrawler was never one of my favorite X-Men so I just never saw his movie.

[Derived Absurdity]

They both have great rewatch value.

Perfect Blue - Similar to what Eva said, I found this a bit better the first time than on my rewatch. Much of this movie's impact is in its twists and disorienting effects, and if you take away the immediate visceral shock and confusion of those it loses a lot of its effect. It's still very good, and it has a lot of Important Things To Say about celebrity culture and voyeurism and parasocial relationships and fan entitlement and patriarchy/misogyny and whatnot. On a somewhat deeper level I think there's a lot of commentary here on identity in general, which applies to every single person that participates in society, not just celebrities or people with social media followings. I've had an interest in the topic of social identity for most of my life - the tension between how you are perceived by others and how you "actually" are, the avatars or personas each person projects in their social ecosystems, the existential anxiety of not having any control over your identity as perceived by others, and so on. (This interest probably stems in part from my intense social anxiety and rejection sensitive dysphoria - I'm more obsessed than the average person in how people perceive each other and the mental impressions we each make on each other.) The thought of what happens in Perfect Blue - your avatar or social persona spiraling completely out of your control, of people perceiving you in ways that you don't choose and don't like and that perception then becoming reality over your actual reality - is almost like the perfect nightmare, for me. And the melding of that with the larger theme of the breakdown between reality and fantasy, as well as the simple ordeal of spending an hour watching a largely sympathetic and likeable woman experience a complete psychotic breakdown due to succumbing to the pressures of celebrity culture and patriarchy - the experience of watching this movie is intense. It manages to pack quite a lot in a short running time. It's unnerving, it's disturbing, it's visceral, it's philosophically dense, and it's only eighty-one minutes long. It's pretty great.

[Raxivace]

DA have you seen Paranoia Agent yet?

[Derived Absurdity]

Nope, I have not, but I fully expect to in the near future. Do you have any thoughts on Mulholland Drive? I know you're a Lynch fan, I'm wondering if you got something more out of that movie than I did.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl - Yep, still pretty good. As far as blockbusters go, there's not much better. Entertaining, well-constructed, tightly paced despite being over two hours, good choreography, excellent performances, memorable soundtrack, impressive set design, a lot of energy and personality and creativity and passion and sense of adventure and spectacle. What more could you ask for. I consider this pretty much a timeless classic of blockbuster adventure cinema. The second one sucked and the third one I had to turn off in agony after about fifteen minutes, which I rarely do. Don't know what happened with those. But this one is still great.

[Raxivace]

It's been 6-7 years since I last saw Mulholland Dr. so it really needs a rewatch from me (Maybe I'll get to it in a few days), but generally I think the movie is more of a character study on Carmilla/Rita. To me that's the point of putting the "puzzle" together (Why does dream play out way it does?), with the last third being a sort of skeleton key of sorts for why the first 2/3rds are constructed the way they are.

You can of course interpret thematic elements from that- like a criticism of Hollywood (Lynch himself of course has had various negative experiences with Hollywood over the years, such as whole Dune fiasco). I know that the first 2/3rds loosely resemble a film noir plot has caused people to argue the film is about how popular culture influences how people consider their own "interior world", their desire and view of themselves etc. There are probably many ways to look at the movie.

Personally, despite whatever explanation or interpretation you plot onto/from the film, I think there's something to be said for puzzle or mystery to be used as a aesthetic element in of itself- something to contribute to the feeling of a movie as much as cinematography or actor's performance or music, which is what I think Lynch is often going for to some extent- a dreamy atmosphere.

Not sure if any of that helps, like I've said its been a while.

[Derived Absurdity]

Yeah that's what I got out of it.

The Piano Teacher - I genuinely can't tell if I like this movie. It's unpleasant, sure, but mostly I found it slow and unengaging. Isabelle Huppert single-handedly saved it; without her it would have been dumb and shallow. She gave the movie all of its psychological depth and emotional impact with her deeply engaging and nuanced performance. As a character study of a deeply disturbed woman, the movie is mostly successful, but not great; multiple scenes (such as the one near the end where she violently kisses her mother) seem to be there primarily for shock value, and the one where she ruins the hand of one of her students is very jarring and out of character. Yes, it was established at this point that she had severe issues, but not that she was immoral. Having sexual pathologies stemming from living with a domineering mother does not naturally lead to or translate into thinking it's a good idea to physically harm an innocent teenager just because she has a pleasant moment with your crush. At that point she just turned straightforwardly villainous and unsympathetic - or, at minimum, a more boring and cliched version of crazy rather than the interesting and unique type of crazy she was before.

I did think the scene where she finally bared her soul to Walter in her bedroom was very well done and extraordinarily uncomfortable to witness, and I suppose I should give the movie credit for somehow managing to make a violent rape scene seem morally ambiguous. I don't know if I like the very end scene.

All in all I have no idea if I like this movie, which is a first for this list. I should probably see it again, if I can. I guess I'll keep it for now.

[Derived Absurdity]

Princess Cyd - I guess I like these little no-budget slice-of-life coming-of-age indie drama movies with no plot or conflict, at least if the main character is attractive enough. Or maybe I just like this one. It's very tender and gentle and emotional and sweet. No conflict, no drama, no histrionics. It's very low-key and restrained and featherweight. Not really sure it even qualifies as coming-of-age. Not sure it qualifies as anything. It's partly about a teenage girl exploring her bisexuality. It has the female masturbation scene, apparently an absolute and unconditional requirement for indie female teenage coming-of-age movies. A movie of this genre without the requisite female masturbation scene is like a Tarantino movie without the N-word. It's just not done. Although amusingly this movie zipped right by it; it was only about five seconds long, like the director knew he was just marking it off on some sort of checklist and wanted to move on.

Anyway, it certainly has issues but I don't care about them. I enjoy watching it.

[Derived Absurdity]

Pulp Fiction - I fucking love this movie, a lot. But so does everyone else on the planet. Howard Hawks, according to Roger Ebert, once said the definition of a good movie is three great scenes and no bad ones. This movie has about thirty great scenes. It's basically just a presentation of great and iconic scenes, organized sequentially. Every single thing about this movie is great. Is it "deep"? Is it actually "about" anything? Is there anything to it under the surface? No, not particularly, IMO, although you could make a good case that it's "about" redemption. But the draw of the movie is all about the surface stuff - the dialogue, the characterization, the acting, the unexpected plot twists, the creative non-chronological storytelling, the entertainment value, the humor, the soundtrack, the sense of style, the infectious love of movies that seeps through it during its entire running time, and so on. It may be all style and no substance, but who needs substance when the style is this good? And there is some substance, just not a whole lot. Mostly I'm just continuously impressed at how well-utilized the non-chronological structure is: the events are told out of order, but the dialogue, characterization and character development, and themes are not: the dialogue often thematically sets up what comes up after, and the characterization established earlier often deepens the impact and meaning of scenes that come after it sequentially but before it chronologically, most especially with Vince Varga. I also quite like how this movie ended, not with some violent shoot-out like is typical of Tarantino, but specifically with avoiding one, with de-escalation and attempts at redemption. The climax, the movie's ultimate moral and thematic core, revolves around avoiding violence, not unleashing it in some grand climactic spectacle, which I think is mature and unexpected especially for Tarantino. Sort of a subversion of expectations on a meta level.

And of course this movie is all about subverting expectations and stereotypes. You go in assuming Vincent is a suave and competent hitman, because that's the archetype, but it turns out he's a whiny panicky incompetent piece of shit who dies like a bitch (which the movie doesn't truly reveal until the end, which is good since it recontextualizes almost everything we saw before and gives it more impact, and on a meta level it sort of "damns" him in the same sense the movie redeems Jules: he starts the movie cool and impressive, and by ending it clearly showcasing his stupidity and incompetence that's the vivid impression the audience is ultimately left with.) You kind of expect Jules to be completely remorseless, but he's the one who makes a conscious decision to turn over a new leaf. You expect Mia to be this sultry vixen who knows her shit about the underworld, but she can't even handle her drugs properly. Marcellus Wallace is built up as this huge scary monster, but that image is kind of destroyed by the end when we see him brutally emasculated by some random rapist rednecks. And the movie's title leads you to expect a certain thing, but you get something different: pulp fiction is predictable and lurid and meaningless, but Pulp Fiction is anything but predictable and not very meaningless, either. ("Lurid" is debatable, but it's again worth noting that it ends specifically with avoiding a huge orgy of violence.)

A paradox or irony, or whatever, of this movie similar to the subversion of expectations is that this is a movie made by a movie geek for movie geeks, a movie that's all about its own love of movies, and yet a huge amount of it is all the stuff that takes "in between" the stories movies generally portray. We get random lengthy meaningless chatter about cheeseburgers and foot massages that most movies would completely skip over. The main character (arguably), Vincent, is shown going to the bathroom like four times, something everyone knows movies never show. This movie also continuously subverts its own genre of crime and neo-noir. The sultry underworld queen does not accidentally OD. The suave hitman does not get randomly killed in a bathroom in the middle of the movie. The mob boss does not get kidnapped and raped by hillbillies in a sex dungeon underneath a pawn shop. Pulp Fiction is not only all about things that typically never happen in crime movies, but things that never happen in movies, period. This movie, along with being wildly entertaining and perfectly constructed formally, is pretty smart and self-aware, two characteristics that Tarantino is sometimes not associated with.

So yeah this movie is a fucking masterpiece. The only small stain is Tarantino's cameo where he repeatedly says the n-word to Samuel Jackson for no reason. A pretty bad scene, and not just because of the awful acting. Not a fan of Tarantino as a person. In fact I haven't really liked anything he's made besides this movie. Jackie Brown was okay, I guess. Inglorious Basterds has some good aspects. But I will always love this one with all my heart.

[Faustus5]

And of course this movie is all about subverting expectations and stereotypes. You go in assuming Vincent is a suave and competent hitman, because that's the archetype, but it turns out he's a whiny panicky incompetent piece of shit who dies like a bitch (which the movie doesn't truly reveal until the end, which is good since it recontextualizes almost everything we saw before and gives it more impact, and on a meta level it sort of "damns" him in the same sense the movie redeems Jules: he starts the movie cool and impressive, and by ending it clearly showcasing his stupidity and incompetence that's the vivid impression the audience is ultimately left with.) You kind of expect Jules to be completely remorseless, but he's the one who makes a conscious decision to turn over a new leaf. You expect Mia to be this sultry vixen who knows her shit about the underworld, but she can't even handle her drugs properly. Marcellus Wallace is built up as this huge scary monster, but that image is kind of destroyed by the end when we see him brutally emasculated by some random rapist rednecks. And the movie's title leads you to expect a certain thing, but you get something different: pulp fiction is predictable and lurid and meaningless, but Pulp Fiction is anything but predictable and not very meaningless, either. ("Lurid" is debatable, but it's again worth noting that it ends specifically with avoiding a huge orgy of violence.)

Great insights into what on most days is my favorite movie of all time. Fantastic review.

[Derived Absurdity]

Thanks Faustus. I try.

Rango - wow this movie was kind of stupid. Lots of care and craft in the visual department, nothing for the story. The humor was also extremely fucking stupid. By the time Clint Eastwood showed up and cracked a joke about how he wants to eat poptarts with Kim Novak I fully checked out. Again, it looks great. I appreciate how unashamedly weird and ugly it is. Also I'm pretty sure Fury Road ripped off its water scene at the beginning from this movie. But it has no soul and no creativity or originality in its story. Bruce was right. By the way where is Bruce?

[Derived Absurdity]

Repulsion (1965) - a horror film from Roman Polanski about a woman who was cursed by God to harbor a very primal and visceral hatred and repulsion of men and sexuality, and yet be so physically attractive that she is constantly the target of male lust. The universe played a terrible, terrible cosmic joke on this poor woman. And that's even before all the regular psychosis and schizophrenia she suffers from. She spends the entire movie in a borderline catatonic state, and yet somehow no one notices or cares. Part of that is the point - people, particularly men, look at her and see what they want to see, particularly her dipshit "boyfriend" who thinks he has some kind of deep emotional connection with her despite the fact that she can barely string a sentence together in front of him. Also her sister's boyfriend, who does notice something wrong with her but only because he feels miffed that she's not responsive to his male charms. Needless to say every single male in this movie sucks. It seems to be arguing that due to entitlement and toxic masculinity, the woman's horrific perception of the male gender is actually pretty much accurate, and her extreme androphobia and disgust of male sexuality is a pretty rational response to her environment. I don't disagree with that message, but I have to wonder if there's some sort of psychological projection going on from our esteemed director here.

I do like how this movie portrayed an extremely beautiful person - and Carol here is stunningly attractive, which is the biggest reason I kept this movie on my favorites list, which I realize makes me a disgusting male and part of the problem but I don't give a shit - as actually having problems. Movies have been basically telling us for decades that conventionally beautiful people actually are better and more special than the rest of us in some undefined ineffable way, and that they don't actually have serious problems like everyone else. Well, they can, and often do, and over fifty years later that message is still somewhat subversive. And make no mistake, Carol here has some problems. It's not just androphobia and schizophrenia. She is completely non-functional on a basic level; I have no idea how she managed to get a job or hold one down as long as she has (well, I guess I do; people see what they want to see, as I said, and attractiveness has many perks); she seems repulsed not only by the male gender but by life itself. Relatable.

The very ending scene - which heavily implies that Carol's problem with men stems from childhood abuse she suffered from a male family member - kind of neutralizes a lot of the movie's weight. It's not men that's the problem; it's merely this one particular man who did this horrific thing to her several years ago. It individualizes what could have been a more profound theme about gender relations and toxic masculinity and ultimately makes the movie seem more shallow.

This movie is much more fun to think about than it is to actually watch, despite Carol's physical flawlessness and some cool horror shit.

[Derived Absurdity]

Side Effects (2013) - hmm... no idea why this is a favorite. It's crap. Next!

[Gendo]

Side Effects was on your favorites list!? Weird. Yeah I made some comments about it a couple years ago. It’s interesting in a few ways; mostly in how the entire plot keeps shifting to different things. But I can’t think of what you might have seen in it to list it as a favorite.

[Derived Absurdity]

I guess I liked all the twists. Also Rooney Mara, probably.

The Sixth Sense - Without the twist I think this movie would be remembered, if at all, as a mildly above-average ghost story. But the twist significantly heightened its emotional resonance and heft and gave it a lot of rewatch value, even if there are parts of it that I don't think make a lot of sense, or at least remain unexplained. The movie kind of cleverly conditions us to think there's nothing particularly odd with no one on-screen besides Cole ever talking to or making eye contact with Bruce Willis, since the movie is so ponderous and quiet and moody and intimate/personal that no one ever really speaks to each other unless they absolutely have to anyway. The movie's emotional atmosphere and structure sort of makes the twist seem somewhat plausible as you're watching it. I never considered the possibility - or likelihood - that Cole knew Bruce Willis was dead the whole time until this rewatch, and that potential aspect sort of gives all their interactions throughout the movie more psychological depth.

Haley Joel Osment is obviously really good. The scares basically work. The atmosphere is generally tense and unsettling and sad. The first real scare and the reveal doesn't even happen until around the midpoint, and it's impressive that the movie remains compelling despite nothing much really happening in its first half. Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette's scene in the car was great. The twist was executed superbly. It all adds up to a good movie. I don't know why I don't like it more. I guess like I said I would consider it just a mildly above-average suspense thriller which happens to have a fantastic performance at its core without the ending, as would the rest of popular culture.

[Cassius Clay]

Thought Rango was boring as shit when I first saw it. Fell asleep multiple times. Was aware that a lot of work went into it and it was nominated for a bunch of stuff...so I really tried to like it, but just wasn't feeling it. Then I watched it with some kids like a year ago, and it turns out it's a way more entertaining movie than I had remembered. Not really sure exactly what changed. Then I happened to watch 'The Mexican' like a month ago, and it reminded me so much of Rango(other than the fact that they're westerns) in a way I couldn't explain. Turns out they were made by the same guy.

I remember really like Side Effects at the time. Probably due to Rooney Mara too(what the hell happened to that chick?)

The last time I watched the Sixth Sense was the first time I realized the boy probably knew Willis was a ghost the entire time. Adding another layer to the twist almost 20 years after my first watch.

The thing you mentioned about scares not really getting going until halfway through reminds me of why I like 'The Mummy' so much. The older I get, the more I love that movie. Last time I watched it I was really struck by how the titular villain character doesn't show up until the midpoint, or maybe even past that. The lead actors are amazing and have great chemistry, and that alone keeps you invested up to that point. Which also allows the suspense/anticipation for the mummies appearance to build up slow while we're kept entertained. Then when the mummy finally shows up it's rewarding...you don't even notice the movie is half over at that point. Less competent storytellers wouldn't have the patience(or trust in the audience) to do that...I think. Trying to think of other movies pull of something like this nearly as well. Maybe King Kong...or the first Jurassic Park?

Rachel Weisz is probably my top 5 favorite actress ever(every fucking movie I watch with Rachel Weisz in it just happens to be really good. Recently enjoyed 'The Favourite' and 'Disobedience'). And Brendan Fraser is the Indiana Jones heir we deserved.

[Derived Absurdity]

It's funny, what you're saying about the The Mummy (which I haven't seen... I guess I should) also applies very well to the next movie I'm doing. In this one the villain also doesn't really properly show up and meet the hero until a little past the halfway point, and we hardly notice because the movie is so good at keeping us engaged until then. I guess this is a late 90's-early-2000s blockbuster thing, as far as I can tell. It shows confidence in its own storytelling, if nothing else.

Spider-Man (2002) - A whole lot of this list is just taking movies I have fond nostalgic memories of from childhood and then rewatching them with more cynical grown-up eyes to see if they hold up. Many of them do not. Of all of them, this movie is the one I was perhaps worried about the most. I have loved this movie all my life, but even when young I knew it was very dumb. So is it as good as I remember? Well, folks, I am here to tell you that it most certainly the fuck is. I like this movie very much. It is so gloriously, deliriously stupid. Right when it starts, with the amazingly corny narration and the opening scene where the thirty-year-old man tries to chase down a schoolbus filled with other thirty-something grown adults, with amazing dialogue like "What a geek!" and "You're so lame, Parker!", it shows you immediately the absolutely cosmic level of goofiness you're going to be subjected to. Part of the fun of this series is trying to figure out how much of the camp is intentional and how much of it is not. But even if most of it is not, I admire the genuine emotional sincerity and seriousness behind it. You don't really see that in blockbusters anymore. Peter Jackson got away with that level of high camp and emotional sincerity in Lord of the Rings, because the quality was otherwise very good and we generally had a much higher level of tolerance for stuff like that back then. And Raimi got away with it as well because he was flawless in his attempts to balance the goofy stuff with the grounded and realistic emotional stuff. In fact - with the exception of this one's sequel - I have never seen a movie perform this balancing act this well. You can't tell where your ironic love of this movie stops and where your unironic love of it begins, at what point you switch from laughing at it to laughing with it, to how much of it, precisely, is just genuinely bad to so-bad-it's-good to just genuinely good. Because it's goofy, and incredibly bad, but also incredibly unironically good at the exact same time (especially the second one) - heartfelt and engaging and emotionally affecting.

I've heard of people responding to movies this way before - Jupiter Ascending for example has a fanbase partly because of its cheesiness, but not in a distant cynical The Room we're-laughing-at-it-because-it's-so-bad way, more like a I-can't-tell-if-I-like-this-ironically-or-unironically-or-whether-that-distinction-even-matters-or-makes-sense,-I-don't-know-it's-kind-of-complicated kind of way. However, I never fully understood it until now. I love this movie, and of course it is incredibly bad, and anyone who denies that is just being silly. But it's also incredibly sincerely good, and anyone who denies that is being equally silly. Some parts of the good (many of the emotional scenes and the character drama) and the bad (the CGI) remain cleanly delineated and separable, but most of them mix together like Play-Doh, impossible to untangle even in your head. It's great.

I can't think of another movie that, as I said, balances heightened goofiness and nonsense with emotional sincerity as well as this one, and I think part of why is the homey, comfortable, rustic, grounded feel of the movie generally, and I thought the loss of that feeling in the third one is an overlooked reason for its negative reception. It's unpolished, it's un-glossy, it's has a lot of heart, it's not forced, everyone doesn't mindlessly quip every six seconds, we get members of the New York working class actually looking and acting like members of the working class, we get financial problems and poverty, we get grimy 90s'-era school hallways, we get ugly crying, and so on. This is a cartoonish comic book world, but it also feels like the real world, with real people, with real problems. Not like the MCU Spider-Man, which cut down on both the campiness and the sincerity to deliver an unengaging and forgettable emotional flatline of an experience.

I'll probably expand on these thoughts in the next post, but for now I'll say that I'm very pleasantly surprised at how good this movie remains. It has loads of heart and fanboyish passion, as well as enough balls to put in loads of camp and emotional sincerity and the raw filmmaking talent to balance them effectively.