Posts by northerncrane4

Steven Newman50 said:There are films, monographs, and other works covering similar themes that I wasn't fully acquainted with either—works that helped me understand why these subjects mattered and what they signified for their era.

I’d argue "The New Yorker" conveyed that much to you, too—it just seems you aren't a fan.

Besides, instead of actually synthesizing the points provided, you just pick them apart until there's "too much noise."

Steven Newman50 said:I really wanted to love it—honestly—but I just didn't get that "old-school magazine love letter" feeling.

Fair enough—but how much experience do you actually have with that kind of print? I mean, those magazines you’d pick up and obsess over for a month, written by actual intellectuals.

"The New York Times" is a monstrous amount of information for today’s sluggish, distracted standards—especially in under two hours—yet it remains masterfully coherent. The problem lies with you. 🙂

James Gunn—especially after Peacemaker—has enough credit for me to give this a shot. Honestly? It’s a fun bit of nonsense. It isn't boring, but let’s be real, it’s nothing groundbreaking either. The geg jokes and quick wit carry the film, though there are some massive misses—like Draxov’s "Why didn't you ask?" line. I also wasn't a fan of how they poked fun at Adam Warlock, which felt messy since he hasn't even been part of previous phases. On the bright side, seeing Mrs. Gunn and Nathan Fillion was a definite plus.

Edward Price6 said:Does that apply to The Sixth Sense?

Or Memento?

Anyone who didn't finish them definitely missed the point, no matter how smart they are.

Let's see if you can figure out the difference yourselves. If not, I'll explain tomorrow—but then you fail the quiz.

Mark White11 said:No, seriously—you two who haven't even finished the movie yet but keep showing up to talk about it? You guys are clearly the geniuses here.

One hallmark of intelligence is learning from experience—which leads me to conclude that not watching the film to completion is actually the smarter move here.

amberfox7 said:Alright, I’m joining the ranks of the exhausted—tried three times now, barely made it to the 35-minute mark. I see the craft there—solid acting, some clever self-aware genre play—but those gray, static shots? They absolutely kill me. I suspect they were going for that hyper-stimulated brain fog you get from scrolling through Instagram or TikTok—just constant, rapid-fire input where everything is loud and immediate, the stupider and more entertaining it is.

It feels like the writers think they’re being incredibly clever—even though I sat through 20 minutes more than you did😁.

Laura Jackson2 said:Everything Everywhere All at Once just became the most awarded film in the world—officially bumping "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" off its throne.

The movie has already raked in 158 awards, and the Oscars haven't even aired yet.

I'd bet my life "Halimin's Path" actually walked away with more.

Jacob Cooper5 said:What's the actual connection between the first and second films?

I watched both over the last few days. Between the pile of identical themes, settings, and philosophies—they even throw in the same characters—it’s pretty obvious.

Richard Barrett53 said:It’s nothing groundbreaking—just a decent action flick if you've got two hours to kill, nothing more, nothing less.

Actually, it's shorter than that—IMDb lists it at 1h 47m.

Steven White7 said:So, I managed to catch one of those last screenings down in Washington, D.C., and honestly, I’ve been sitting here just letting my thoughts drift around the implications of it all...

Breaking the fourth wall is such a fascinating, albeit dangerous, gamble, especially when you're dealing with a film that’s this brutally realistic. Honestly, after that hospital sequence, I found myself struggling to trust the movie for a while. Specifically, when the brother showed up at the apartment, I spent the next five minutes sitting there thinking, "Wait, is this just another fabricated moment?" I couldn't shake the feeling that the writer was just pulling a fast one on us—trying to manufacture some sort of redemption arc for the brother within the script just to smooth things over. I don't know if I'm the only one who felt that skepticism creeping in. Look, if you break the fourth wall at the very end of a movie, sure, maybe it works. But doing it early on, while the audience is still trying to wrap their heads around the established rules of the world, feels suspicious to me—even if the scene itself ended up being one of the best moments in the entire film.

I stumbled upon this review that flat-out denies the movie is actually a critique of our institutions. It reminded me of something Jergović wrote once—something along those same lines: Look, calling "S. Place" some kind of critique of the healthcare system—or any other institutional structure for that matter—is just wrong. To suggest that would be an insult to what this movie actually is, or if you really think that, it’s a clear sign you completely missed the point. It’s like looking at "Anna Karenina" and claiming it was written as a scathing indictment of the safety protocols on the Russian imperial railway system. You're missing the forest for the trees. If you actually take a second to look at what’s happening on screen, who is even responsible for the mess? It feels like the movie spends an eternity dwelling on these snapshots of pure laziness, arrogance, and the sheer inhumanity of our institutions, yet it never really offers even a shred of a systemic critique. Instead, it just shows us individuals trying to navigate that broken machine while attempting to be decent human beings. It sounds trivial when you say it out loud, I know, but in a film this relentlessly bleak, that one small, warm gesture from the local cop in Split toward that family... man, it hits you differently. I honestly don't even know where to start with this one, but let's just dive straight into the mess that is Marendu. It’s funny how certain things just stick in your mind, isn't it? I was sitting there the other day, thinking about how much everything changes, yet some things stay stubbornly, frustratingly the same. It reminds me of those long, winding drives through the outskirts of Chicago where you feel like you're stuck in a loop, just circling the same old ideas without ever actually getting anywhere. Anyway, back to the point—Marendu. There's something about the way people talk about it, or rather, the way they *don't* talk about it, that feels off. It's like we're all collectively pretending that the nuances aren't there, which is just lazy, if you ask me. I remember telling an old friend of mine—actually, he's more of an acquaintance now, lives out in Seattle—that if you can't look at something directly, you aren't really seeing it. You're just looking at a shadow. And that's exactly what this feels like. We're squinting at a shadow and calling it reality. It's blunt, it's messy, and frankly, it's exhausting to keep up with the pretense. If we're going to have a conversation about this, let's at least be honest about how ridiculous the whole situation is. No sense in dancing around it. While they’re busy drowning in all that mindless paperwork.
Look, if we’re being honest about where everything fell apart, there are really only two massive, systemic failures that stand out to me. First, they completely botched my brother's diagnosis, and second, the hospital staff was so incredibly negligent that they actually let him wander right out the door. Everything else people want to nitpick—the slow, rude clerks at the front desk, some open window in his room—that's just noise. Those are trivialities, little coincidences that don't change the big picture. And honestly, regarding that misdiagnosis? We might not even be able to prove it was wrong yet. They were barely even halfway through the evaluation process; it was his literal first day on the ward, and he had hardly spoken a word to anyone.

By the way, I was just sitting there recently, catching up on some Nolin. Every single time we drift apart, I find myself spiraling back into these same old patterns, staring at the ceiling and wondering how we always end up right back here. It’s like this recurring loop that I can't seem to break, no matter how hard I try to convince myself that things have actually changed. You know, it reminds me of that one summer I spent stuck in Chicago, just waiting for something—anything—to shift, feeling that same heavy sense of inevitability hanging over my head. We go through these cycles where everything feels fine for a while, and then suddenly, the distance starts creeping in again, quiet and persistent, until we're basically strangers sharing the same space. It’s exhausting, honestly. I sit here thinking about all the arguments we've had and all the silences that followed, and it just feels like we're walking in circles, chasing a version of us that doesn't even exist anymore. Every time we part ways, there's this lingering question of whether we're actually moving forward or if we're just stalling for time before the next inevitable crash. Even back in 1994, we were already seeing this casual, almost incidental critique of how our institutions fail the people they’re supposed to protect. Here’s the gist of it: you have this single father who fought early on in the war, but because he wasn't properly logged in the official records, the system basically forgets his sacrifice. So, when he shows up in Washington, D.C., with his young daughter, the bureaucracy treats him like he’s still just a draft eligible recruit. They try to drag him back to the front lines while his little girl is left to fend for herself in the city. What's frustrating is that the movie doesn't even bother to address the fallout of that later on. I keep looking for these patterns because this theme—this systemic negligence—has been baked into the DNA of independent American cinema since the very beginning, yet the depth of the analysis hasn't actually moved an inch forward. It feels stuck. Unless, of course, I’ve somehow missed a film that actually manages to tackle the weight of this problem with any real substance.

It feels like the blame is shifting, isn't it? We used to point fingers at the institutions, but lately, it seems like the weight of responsibility is falling squarely on the family unit instead. It’s a heavy thing to wrap your head around. In this case, they knew exactly what they were dealing with—they knew his skepticism was completely irrational, bordering on the delusional—but instead of standing their ground, they just folded. They swallowed his paranoia about psychiatrists and medical diagnoses whole, letting his fears dictate their actions. And then, because they chose to believe him over the professionals, they deliberately bypassed legal protocols just to haul him off somewhere else. It was a conscious choice to break the law, and in doing so, they basically handed him back the opportunity to attempt suicide all over again. It’s a tragic cycle when the people who are supposed to protect you are the ones who enable the very thing that's destroying you.
You know, that specific brand of blatant indifference you see from the receptionists in these movies? It’s not just a cinematic trope; it actually bleeds into the way the author and his mother behave. I remember reading about them waiting for a psychiatrist out in Washington, D.C., sitting there chatting with this woman who had been waiting an entire week just to be seen. Then, when the doctor finally shows up, Lerotić and his mother just cut right to the front of the line, completely bypassing the woman who had been stuck in that waiting room for seven days straight. At first glance, you might find the audacity a little funny, but if you sit with it for a second... it gets a bit darker.
I can't say I'm actually blaming them, honestly. When you're suffocating under that kind of pure panic and desperation—and you haven't even had a second to catch your breath or step back to look at the big picture—it’s hard to wonder why people act the way they do. It doesn't surprise me one bit. At the end of the day, it’s just this intense, probably short-sighted, desperate need to protect a brother or a son. And if there's any silver lining to be found here, that's probably it: the core issue isn't some failure of our institutions, but rather just raw, unfiltered care and love. (Though, God help me, I might actually be agreeing with Jergović on that point.)

In the end, maybe there wasn't anything that could have been done at all. There’s this crushing sense of helplessness woven through the whole film. It feels like it was built around that old-school, ritualistic obsession with the number three—you know, the kind of stuff you see in everything from *The Three Little Pigs* to the structure of the *Divine Comedy*, or even that old saying about how God helps on the third attempt. The movie functions like this rigid, predetermined framework where we just watch the protagonist cycle through three suicide attempts until the third one finally sticks. It’s like fate has already made up its mind, and the characters are just helplessly running in circles until they hit that inevitable finish line.
I guess I’m kind of on the same page as Justin Richardson7. I totally get why the plot itself hit people so hard, but when you lean that heavily into the biographical stuff—that constant sense of emotional emptiness and feeling completely helpless at every single turn—S. Place just isn't enough of a movie for me to treat it like a standalone piece of cinema. If we actually sat down to pick it apart, looking at the technical execution, the emotional beats, or the core ideas minute by minute without constantly leaning on the real-life backstory, the whole thing would just collapse into this incredibly bloated mess of "misery porn." I respect the gesture behind making it, I really do, but beyond that... I don't know. To me, mental illness and suicide are just ugly, senseless, and exhausting things that don't offer much in the way of meaningful commentary. Maybe if the film reflects that exact hollowness, then it’s a success?

The placement of the scene doesn't bother me—it’s fine—but what I can't get past is how they tell us (and we assume it's true, since why else mention it?) that the family sued the hospital for malpractice, yet the director keeps the doctors' actual names in the script. Without that detail, I could let it slide to avoid dragging institutions through the mud, but with it? Not happening. 🤷

If nothing could be done about it long-term, then that's indisputable.

Rachel Price75 said:It’s about how complete everything feels, not about comparing structures. (I guess your comment was pretty unnecessary anyway)

It’s just amateurish posturing—trying to compare things that aren't comparable. You might as well say a film = a bowl of stew. 😵

Rachel Price75 said:Watched it yesterday, and man, it’s honestly one of the best and most original movies ever made.
It isn't about the metaverse or any of those other nonsense topics people keep bringing up in the comments here. It isn't even an action movie, despite how much action it seems to have on the surface; it's really just about love and acceptance.

You really need to sit down and watch the whole thing from start to finish without distractions, because that first hour is total chaos... but there's a reason for that. Trying to watch it in bits and pieces (which I guess has become a huge thing lately) is totally pointless. A film is like a painting—you can't just look at half a painting and claim you've seen it. 🙂
My advice: just dive in headfirst. It's such a miracle of a film.

Total nonsense. A film is a film—an image lacks any sense of temporal narrative.

I’ll admit there’s a certain raw warmth to it—the way information is meted out leaves plenty of room for interpretation—but on the flip side, I just can't stomach this endless self-analysis and soul-searching, especially coming from a debut film.

Justin Richardson7 said:Honestly, there isn't much I can do when they've already turned the whole thing into such a joke.

There's a less than 1% chance you aren't just trolling here—so what does my little uncle actually see in this mess, if I were to follow your specific version of events?

Justin Richardson7 said:Right.
Look, that’s why I asked you—has your hair grown back down there yet? You know, mudfish, sometimes women make noise during the act. Psychomodo pop: she screams that she loves me, man.😉

... Wait, you actually concluded from that line that the uncle raped his mom???!!!?
And before that, you missed how staged everything was: how they welcome him so submissively, how they put him on a pedestal, how they fawn over the camera like sidekicks, while the uncle explains all the wonders of Germany... Did you really miss all of that??

If what I'm saying holds water (and go watch the movie, then tell me if it does), then it never occurred to you that the dad is such a pushover—playing the clown—that the uncle can do whatever he wants. For instance, if he feels like messing with the mom, this supposed "niece" just... goes along with it. And the dad heads out for a smoke, just to keep things smooth.

Yeah, totally normal and zero trauma involved. 👍

Justin Richardson7 said:The only issue with this brilliantly conceived backdrop—since there was zero trauma or violence—is that it was all Christmas spirit. You hit the nail on the head there. As for actual trauma? Not a trace.

If you consider it "violence" when people welcome an uncle with nothing but respect—serving him turkey, sweets, and letting him lead the Hail Mary at the head of the table—then maybe you should go ask your own uncle what actual violence looks like.
Look, I don't know what else to tell you—the movie literally depicts exactly what I'm talking about. Go watch it.

"Mama screams," says the cat. You've blocked out a chunk of the movie—it just doesn't fit.

Justin Richardson7 said:But then Miki Manojlović starts praying the Hail Mary and singing about Mount Velebit—so much for being the "embodiment of Southern cinema."

Nothing is actually disappearing—far from it. Mickey’s father was even sent on an official business trip acting as a subversive element, and you were already living with your uncle right there in your rebel neighborhood.

Justin Richardson7 said:Let’s get back to Uncle.
We actually agree that Uncle isn't doing anything wrong—it's just that for me, it isn't about "trauma" (what trauma? please, man, you can't have trauma in this kind of movie!), but rather that Uncle fails simply because he is stuck in one single day of his life. The idea of nostalgia acting as a pathology—that's a solid hit, as there are plenty of people out there just as broken.

“There can't be any misery in this type of movie”—that means absolutely nothing, because clearly, the misery exists here. The only character whose backstory we actually get is Uncle's. And that background is a Christmas trauma he recreates on a loop because his childhood brain is trapped in that specific collision of idyll and violence; he can't break free until he's given exactly what was denied to him. In the film, this is expressed through a mix of genre tropes, caricature, and allegorical symbolism. There's even enough material for a meta-cinematic reading where Miki Manojlović serves as the embodiment of American cinema—specifically the dysfunctional family dynamics seen in US films from the 90s onward—if you bother to dig through the layers.
But, look, I just don't feel like it. I've already explained this to you a few times: you simply cannot step outside your own narrow-minded worldview, and that's that. 👋

Justin Richardson7 said:Mudfish, you can't break my heart: there isn't some fundamental issue with how I watch (or understand) movies—or anything else for that matter.

You aren't breaking my heart—it’s just that nothing "wrong" exists within the confines of your own little bubble, which is exactly what I'm pointing out. Your internal ecosystem is rigged to interpret everything in a way that prevents any outside influence—or heaven forbid, a new concept—from ever breaking through.

Look, the idea of using thriller tropes to deliver satire is ancient—older than the movie industry itself. There is nothing weird or revolutionary about it. In fact, that's the point: the satire effectively mocks the very genre it uses as a vehicle.

Uncle is clearly a traumatized individual—because when he takes his daughter-in-law into a room, he doesn't assault her the way the previous uncle did to the former daughter-in-law (or maybe he didn't, but let's call him the proto-uncle)—his trauma is the only thing stopping him. He isn't actually acting; he's just performing a superficial imitation to convince himself he's the one pulling the strings, when the reality is that he's completely impotent. The proto-uncle didn't need a gun or a controller to manage the family dynamic. An impotent Uncle does.

Justin Richardson7 said:And once again, mudfish is off base—because if you actually want to tackle trauma seriously, the person discussing it needs to be serious too.

Your chronic issue with movies is that you can only experience them through a projection of yourself. As soon as a character, a situation, or the plot gains any actual depth, it becomes incomprehensible to you. You present yourself as linear and narrow-minded—though you aren't actually—because it suits your self-image. You define your surroundings and the world entirely through your own lens; consequently, any complexity involving conflicting layers or counterpoint is something you simply cannot accept.

Look, damn it—people are layered. They’re simultaneously traumatized and at peace, even if they've become caricatures of themselves—whether you want to admit it or not. And you, electriccanyon26.

Justin Richardson7 said:So, anyway—
The author's intent—it’s pretty clear—is to offer a critical look at that specific brand of patriotism.

There’s no such thing as a specific "type" of patriotism. Patriotism is like fire—it all depends on how you choose to handle it.