My husband and I finally sat down to watch the movie last night before the awards ceremony... I honestly don't get why people are finding this so hard to follow, it’s actually kind of weird to see so many of you claiming it was a struggle. Sure, the editing is snappy, but we aren't exactly rookies when it comes to sitting through a movie... 🤷
First off, we were cracking up—the visual gags were hilarious, and even though they were pretty simple, we spent most of the runtime laughing our heads off. Those hot dogs were funny, man, just all those little bits where the characters do weird stuff kept us grinning... Secondly, as a middle-aged mom with a quirky daughter, someone who’s been both semi-successful and a total mess in various areas of life, and blessed with a really great husband, I found myself connecting with the protagonist almost immediately... there were definitely some tears mixed in with the laughter. It felt like a real family experience. People insisting that the movie is nothing but "woke" just seem unable to wrap their heads around the idea that they aren't the only demographic that deserves screen time. They're always so quick to throw around that word absolutely...
Now, look, the film isn't perfect. The last third gets a bit predictable in that overly sentimental, emotional way, and they probably could have trimmed down the action scenes or handled the whole multiverse concept with a bit more punch. I also couldn't tell if the Bagel thing was meant to represent depression or something else entirely... It leans heavily on cinephile tropes, which makes it feel like a genuine breath of fresh air. I haven't seen the other nominees, so I can't say if it deserved all the hype, but the costume design hit the mark for me in several spots. Still, I’m genuinely baffled that so many people found it too demanding to keep up with; for us, it was an easy, enjoyable watch...
If you haven't seen him, then you honestly haven't lived... I mean, seriously. He was just so charming and witty, such a blast to watch, even if he did have those constant little blowouts with his co-star on set. But man, that series really captured the magic of its era, just such an incredibly beautiful production from start to finish...
The fanbase for this show is honestly something else... there are people out there who probably still spend their afternoons drafting formal petitions just to beg for a revival... 😁
Good health...
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I'm signing off on that... he was just so incredibly charming and sweet in that role, you know? It totally won me over right then and there... and honestly, he’s been one of my absolute favorite actors ever since.
The guy’s got an absolutely killer resume, I mean, we’re talking legendary roles in flicks like Die Hard and Pulp Fiction, plus stuff like 12 Monkeys, The Fifth Element, and The Sixth Sense... he even showed up in those stylized pieces like Sin City and Moonrise Kingdom. He really has plenty to be proud of, honestly, and let's face it, most people would kill to have that kind of massive popularity and just being a total fan favorite... I guess I should just say thanks to him for everything... all the laughs, the constant energy, and honestly, just making things such a blast...
Justin Rogers5 I haven't even finished my first cup of coffee yet and I'm already seeing people jump to conclusions about this... it’s like everyone just wants to rush into things without actually thinking for a second, you know? It's always the same pattern with these discussions where people get all worked up over nothing... anyway, what was I saying... oh right, the whole thing feels a bit rushed if you ask me... Maybe I’ll actually manage to sit through this thing until the credits roll today... third time's the charm, I guess...🤣 Honestly, this movie is so incredibly dull that I’m basically asleep before the opening credits even finish... there's just nothing to latch onto. The only saving grace is the Spanish cast, because Agire was actually fantastic, whereas Rock was just terrible. His attempt at "humor" feels more like he's just forcing some cheap, tasteless joke at the audience's expense, which really rubs me the wrong way. And Emily Blunt? She’s great, but she’s clearly out of her element here; this kind of role just doesn't suit her style at all. To make matters worse, they tried to force this forced, sappy romance between them that was just plain cringey...There’s just zero chemistry between any of them, honestly... it all feels like it was shot entirely on a green screen or stuck in some sterile studio setting, making everything look incredibly artificial and forced....
From what I’m reading here, it feels like we’re running into that same old pattern with most of Disney's live-action remakes lately... you know, the ones they just churn out year after year. It’s always the same formula: take movies like Dumbo, Alice, Nutcracker, or Aladdin and just cram them full of massive A-list celebrities and over-the-top sets and costumes, then toss in directors like Tim Burton or Guy Ritchie to give it some prestige, yet somehow the whole thing still ends up being totally unwatchable...
Benjamin Stewart53 said:So I just caught this on PBS... honestly, I didn't know much about the director before this. To be fair, the actors seem way too old to actually be playing nineteen-year-olds, there isn't really a cohesive plot going on, and while you get these random little moments of chaos here and there, the whole thing has this heavy sense of melancholy that really shouldn't be there since it's supposed to be a comedy, right?
The director pretty much specializes in exploring how time slips through your fingers, especially when it comes to young people navigating their hopes and figuring out the world, which ends up creating this specific melancholic vibe when you look at his other works—you know, the films in the same cycle or those told through a retro lens... Linklater just does whatever he wants, he’s got his own poetic style and doesn't feel the need to stay boxed in by genre constraints.
If you check out Dazed and Confused, the Before trilogy, or Boyhood, you'll see that this is just classic Linklater...
If you consider plot twists, that heavy dark atmosphere, the urban grit, and all that criminal undertone to be the defining pillars of the genre, then honestly, why wouldn't you call Fight Club a Neo-noir... I mean, it fits the bill perfectly if you look at it that way... You know, I was just sitting here thinking about that specific kind of heavy, dark atmosphere you only get from certain classics... like when you watch Taxi Driver or Se7en and you just feel that weight pressing down on you, or how movies like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction pull you into that dangerous, obsessive headspace... then there’s that surreal, haunting feeling from Angel Heart or the way Memento completely messes with your sense of time, or even the sheer grit of The Black Dahlia and Reservoir Dogs... it’s all part of that same moody spectrum, really, whether it’s the tension in The Usual Suspects, the intensity of Training Day, the sultry heat of Body Heat, or that classic, doomed feeling you get from The Postman Always Rings Twice... it's a hell of a list to get lost in... If we’re talking about that specific flavor of tech noir, you’ve got to look at the heavy hitters like Blade Runner, Gattaca, and Strange Days... though some people would argue that The Matrix, Total Recall, The Terminator, or Minority Report belong in that same dark, gritty conversation too...
To me feels less like a standard movie and more like this sort of poetic meditation captured on film, which makes it absolutely stunning in my eyes. Having actually spent some time out in Virginia, specifically near Jamestown, I’ve had a chance to really soak in that landscape and get a feel for the "New World" atmosphere the film is chasing, and man, they nailed the depiction... it's phenomenal. I just sort of settle into this headspace where I'm listening to a symphony, so just let it ride, Terrence...
If I had to rank them, Days of Heaven and New World are right up there in terms of sheer quality and how much I cherish them—those two are definitely my favorites.
I actually enjoyed the movie, mostly as this deep dive into a self-destructive writer who’s actually got a heart... you know, the guy saving some small town back in the States, watching people and leftist politics crumble during a crisis, and he's just totally disgusted by it all—literally gagging at the sight of it! But he lacks the actual muscle to change anything, other than using his muse to get a little payback against Hearst for crushing the hopes of Upton Sinclair's socialist policies. It feels like Fincher is clearly trying to comment on the role of the artist, acting as the court jester sitting right there at the table where power, money, media, and politics all collide. He can be kicked out or fired a hundred times over, but the story... that's what sticks.
As for the visual perfection and that razor-sharp dialogue, plus the endless stream of literary and cinematic nods, I don't even need to go into it. They really captured that Golden Age of Hollywood vibe, specifically those screenwriters in the room at the start who could just rattle off brilliant bons mots left and right. It’s such a tight blend of form, substance, and meta-commentary.
And honestly, I wouldn't disagree with anyone saying it doesn't touch on modern times; if anything, Fincher is trying to stay incredibly relevant—I mean, the lead character is basically an Antifa sympathizer and a socialist, so they aren't just bringing up Hitler for the sake of period decoration. It shows how voters get hypnotized by raw emotion and film propaganda, voting for whoever promises to protect their way of life... you know, the GOP, MAGA, oops, we even had that little drama with the vote counts, lol... It's not like artists are going to go out and fix the world, that's a pretty pessimistic take, but still...
Maybe it’s just that they have superior film schools and a better educational system overall... I’ve met several Romanian women who had incredibly solid liberal arts backgrounds. For instance, since they’re a Romance people, their high culture and education tend to be heavily oriented toward French language and sources, and when you actually follow the French—you know, the philosophers, the writers, all in the original tongue—it provides this intellectual foundation that's just a much thicker layer than what we have here, for example. Looking at the current generation of middle-aged American directors, honestly, I can't think of a single one who strikes me as a top-tier intellectual with a truly deep, foundational education...
Just finished watching The Right Stuff again, maybe my fourth or fifth time through now... It’s honestly holding up incredibly well, even after all these years. You catch glimpses of Yeager in a few spots too—like when he’s playing Fred the bartender—and I have to admit, he actually had me laughing a couple of times. It’s just really nice to see he lived such a full life.
Check out this article, you might find it pretty interesting and it actually clears up a few things: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/07/bi...ee-1202156884/ It mentions a "style bible laying out the visual rules of the show, common for TV series looking to maintain consistency between different filmmaking teams." This particular situation was a bit of an outlier where things didn't follow the standard playbook, but you can see how it usually works for most shows...
Another way people refer to the creator or the lead producer is the showrunner—kind of like how Matthew Weiner runs the show for Mad Men.
So, I ended up watching a movie on my iPhone while traveling on an Amtrak train... just kind of by chance, really. It was Disney's Zootopia. Honestly, I didn't think there was any way it would actually hold up—I mean, when you have a film with that much insane animation and detail, I figured the tiny screen would just ruin it... but I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. Since I had my headphones in, the sound was pretty immersive, and I actually had a great time with it. I even caught myself being surprised by how much I liked it. I think I even binged a few episodes of Black Mirror afterward too. It was honestly way better than trying to watch movies on those tiny little seatback screens on a flight; the picture quality is so much better on my phone, and at least I can control the glare from the light...
I don't usually spend much time scrolling through stuff on my phone—I'm more of a desktop person, especially if I'm not sitting right in front of the TV—so I don't get distracted easily, but I do find myself doing the crossword if a movie starts dragging or if I'm just watching some routine episode of a series. But as soon as things get tense or actually interesting, I put everything else aside and my focus is strictly on the screen.
I mean, I already mentioned it, but one of those guys in the Slaven group could have actually been eloquent enough to hold a real dialogue with the lead character, you know, acting like an actual subject in the story instead of just background noise. Take that character played by Brad Dourif, even though he’s credited as Mr. Eggleston... based on how he spoke, he sounded Polish, and he could have been developed a bit more, maybe as an equal partner in this whole resistance narrative, so it didn't feel like everything was just strictly Anglo. We could make sense of the local dialect or catch bits of Polish or Russian drifting through the air, but to an American viewer watching without subtitles, it all just sounds like total gibberish, like some kind of Tower of Babel situation... I do appreciate the effort they put into showing the visual and linguistic nuances of immigrants with distinct cultural backgrounds, though; it’s just that having one more fleshed-out character would have made it hit harder. These are American stories, sure, but somehow in Deer Hunter, the dynamic felt much more organic with the Rutens, or the Ukrainians, or whatever they were... where it’s clear that you have Americans alongside people with European roots, and they don't need some designated leader or middleman to illustrate their relationship with the world.
Dennis Hall41 As if I haven't heard this before... turns out wiredbison82 is back at it again with these theories... All that whining about how the farmers are being pushed to the sidelines just doesn't hold any water...
First off, it’s pretty obvious that Cimin viewed them as a collective unit, which you can see clearly enough in those pivotal scenes inside the tent... there isn't really any talk of individual characterization, unless you count those forced moments, but that was just his stylistic choice as an auteur. If we start nitpicking that, we're basically just drifting into the territory of personal preference, kind of like saying, I don't know, that Kristofferson should have worn glasses because they would've suited him better...
Look, obviously it’s the director's call, and at the end of the day, it really just comes down to my own personal taste, but I can't help but wonder why you're nitpicking the way the working class is portrayed as this exoticized, monolithic second in film—something that should have felt like a gritty portrayal of blue-collar life—and then comparing that massive thematic critique to something as trivial as an aesthetic choice regarding a pair of glasses... Honestly, my personal taste just leans away from that whole trope where you have to sit through yet another portrait of some WASP guy struggling with his own indecision, torn between taking action and doing nothing, all while being absolutely tortured by his own sense of class betrayal... it’s exhausting to watch how they frame this epic struggle of the oppressed as some incomprehensible Tower of Babel that only our hero—with his polished Harvard education—can somehow bring to heel. It feels so narrow. I mean, looking back at the same decade, you had leftist immigrants actually making waves and running American newspapers like Workers' Guard, though maybe a bit further east than Wyoming... anyway, I was just thinking about certain directors whose work still holds up for me today, mostly because they actually bother with nuanced portrayals of non-white characters, women, and those complex post-colonial power structures that most mainstream films just gloss over...
Dennis Hall41 said:Secondly, even regarding the first one, we aren't talking about a movie without a central protagonist here; this isn't some Eisenstein crowd piece or an Altman ensemble flick where everyone is equally important... it’s a film driven by three main characters, though the "most important" one is definitely Kristofferson's. Actually, I might be going too far, but I'd argue it's really a film about him—about the individual redemption of a soul, perhaps a self-contained one, through merging with the collective... it's about that innate "sin" of wealth that somehow gets washed away by making contact with the downtrodden, with the Other. Let's not forget that he’s constantly dealing with all those complaints about how he can't possibly be a legitimate voice for the downtrodden just because he carries the mark of having a wealthy family background...
Yeah, I’d say it’s really just a film about an individual... sort of in the same way that by the time you hit that anthology-style finale in The Godfather Part II, it becomes crystal clear that the whole thing is actually about Michael... Sure, maybe he won the long game, maybe he fulfilled some grand moral imperative by standing up for the underdog, but—and we can see this pretty clearly from those telling glances he shoots his partner now—he’s essentially a loser at heart... because he "failed" on an intimate level, losing the one person he truly loved just to settle for a pathetic compromise...
So, my main gripe used to be that his characterization might have fallen short... though I only say "might" because, let's face it, Cimin isn't exactly Tolstoy, and he doesn't exactly have 900 pages at his disposal like Tolstoy does in Anna Karenina when he's got just three and a half hours to work with... And honestly, what he pulled off there... it was just masterful...
When you look at the love triangle dynamic playing out in both films, I find the one in Heaven's Gate to be way more compelling, mostly because of how uniquely shaped that character's personality is... though honestly, they’re both pretty well-drawn if you can get past my one little gripe. It’s just that Ellin’s indecisiveness feels a bit murky, and I can't quite tell if we're looking at her being flighty or if it was actually Cimin's own mistake... either way, it leaves a sour taste, since the first option feels totally unresolved and the second one leaves you wondering exactly what went wrong in the first place...
Comparing it to McCabe and Mrs. Miller makes sense, though I’d also throw in the equally brilliant and more recent Matewan into the mix...
I don't quite get what you're struggling with regarding Elle... She mentioned several times that she chooses Nate because he offers her marriage, which instantly turns her into a respectable member of society, whereas Jim—that whole silent type vibe—can only offer her love, but apparently, she just isn't enough for him, especially when she's being haunted by this image of a once-in-a-lifetime romance (like Haustor or Shane). Our indecisive hero just couldn't make up his mind, or rather, he struggled too long and ultimately retreated back into the suffocating silk comfort of his class privileges, leaving his working-class love riddled with holes right outside the cabin... In the end, capitalism and the class system won out over that fleeting, inefficient alliance between the working class and the salon intellectual who spent way too much time obsessing over his ties and vests.
Michael Vronsky might be the silent type, but it’s crystal clear he’s a man of action, so there’s really no question as to why he wins Linda over; he doesn't need fancy carriage numbers to prove himself.
How on earth can anyone claim that Aguirre isn't striking? That one long sequence with the rafts, the river, and the deep jungle... it honestly hits harder than the entire filmography of some directors I could name... After seeing that, movies like The Lost City of Z just look pale and amateurish by comparison. Queen of the Desert is just a bad, kitschy mess, so don't go expecting much from it.
So, I finally sat through it... it was exhausting, honestly, but I’m glad I checked it off the list. "Overblown" is probably the best word for it, because those massive crowd scenes just go on forever. That sequence where the train rolls into Casper... man, you just know they dropped millions just to pull that off. It really made me nostalgic for movies like Zhivago—those sweeping epics like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, or Lawrence of Arabia... they just don't make them like that anymore.
If I had to nitpick, my biggest gripe is that despite all this focus on the immigrant experience, the main players end up being WASPs on both sides of the coin again. Lean handled that balance so much better; in LoA or A Passage to India, his non-Anglo characters actually felt three-dimensional and stayed with you, whereas here, everything still feels centered around the Englishman. Dourif's role could have used more weight too, since his true motivations were always a bit fuzzy. All those Slavs, Germans, and Jews ended up feeling like little bits of exotic flavor rather than real people. And honestly, I’m still scratching my head over what they even produce there or why they’re all crammed into that communal housing... for all the effort put into the worldbuilding, there are just so many loose ends left hanging.
I will give credit where it's due, though; certain scenes were gorgeous, like that dance at Harvard—the editing there was top-tier. Still, you can't compare it to The Deer Hunter, which is a total masterpiece. That trio—Streep, de Niro, and Walken—was way more effective than this cast. Or even look at Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller; it shares some DNA, being atmospheric yet intimate with those classic Western themes of economic and personal conflict, but it’s a much humbler, much more successful film.
@Morgan Rodriguez57 Is the USA anything like the Czech Republic, or is it more like some isolated backwater in the middle of nowhere? Do you actually grasp the fact that we were quite literally a colony... It’s honestly kind of touching to see someone claiming to be such a big patriot while pining for foreign capital to come in and fix Washington, D.C., as if that's some long-awaited dream come true...
Honestly, this entire sub is just absolutely reeks of desperation because you have all these die-hard fans of Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Kevin Feige, and Christopher Nolan constantly sucking up to their mid-tier masterpieces and outdated acting performances... and then suddenly, someone decides to preemptively roll their eyes at some movie about (young) women made for (young) women before even seeing it or reading a single review. Just straight up hating from the jump. It’s honestly pathetic...
I remember posting spoilers for Incendies here on the forum a while back, and honestly, when I finally sat down to watch it, that heavy emotional weight everyone talks about just didn't hit me at all... I’d also read some critiques regarding how it handles different religions, which left me with this nagging sense of formulaic tension that was pretty irritating. I guess you could say there are certain ways to tell a story—some feel more sincere, like if you just laid all your cards on the table from the start—and then there are the less honest approaches, specifically those end-of-movie twists where the impact feels pretty limited, if you ask me.
I've never been one for excessive violence, so movies like that are automatically a struggle for me—it brings back those grim images of the occupation in the news—and sometimes I'll just shut it off entirely if I feel like the whole thing has lost its purpose, much like when I couldn't get through Django Unchained... but when it comes to an intellectual challenge, I usually find myself leaning into the difficulty rather than complaining about how hard it is to follow.