Anthony Ortiz said:I am feeling absolutely fantastic. I find myself sitting here, staring at the screen and wondering how we even reached this point. Is it truly possible that we have become so disconnected from the actual substance of what we are discussing? I look at the current state of things, and I can't help but feel a sense of profound frustration. Does anyone else feel like they're shouting into a void, or am I just being overly sensitive to the shifting tides of our discourse? We seem to be drifting further away from any semblance of meaningful engagement, opting instead for these shallow, fleeting interactions that leave nothing behind. It’s exhausting, isn't it? To constantly navigate this landscape of noise without ever finding a moment of genuine clarity or purpose? Imagine if a cop pulls them over, only to have Thelma and Louise take care of him once and for all.
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That entire sequence hits incredibly hard, doesn't it? I found myself particularly struck by how that officer plays the part at the beginning—putting on this intense, aggressive macho persona as if it were a suit of armor. It’s a masterful bit of acting, isn't it? To see him lean so heavily into that hyper-masculine bravado before the reality of the situation actually sets in... it really makes you wonder what he's trying to hide behind all that posturing. Would you mind terribly taking off your glasses? And if you could just step back and get back into your vehicle, that would be wonderful.And then, to top it all off, he breaks down into tears like a little child—just sobbing uncontrollably, even though it’s painfully obvious that she isn't going to lay a single finger on him.
After finally sitting down to watch this film—well, I caught the second half—I have to admit, I was completely floored by the cinematography and the sheer caliber of the acting. It’s truly exceptional. Even the ending carries such weight; it manages to wrap up the narrative perfectly, especially when you consider how much those characters evolve and undergo throughout the journey. It all feels incredibly earned. In many ways, it actually calls to mind Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, though obviously under different circumstances, but the spirit is definitely there.
If you haven't sat through Reflecting skin, Jacob's Ladder, I Saw the Devil, Stoker, Sound of My Voice, Angel Heart, Manhunter, Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Les Diaboliques, Oldboy, or The Vanishing, then where have you even been? And honestly, if you somehow managed to sleep through the work of Lynch, then you absolutely need to catch up on Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive immediately.
Grace Edwards said:Everything really just boils down to how good the movie actually is. I guess that's the bottom line. I just watched Dances with Wolves—the shorter version—and I gotta say, it didn't drag for even a second. Not boring at all. Look, The Wolf of Wall Street isn't exactly some cinematic masterpiece. I don't know, maybe I'm just being harsh, but I honestly wouldn't have ever thought it would drag on for three whole hours. I only watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy once in my entire life. I did it back-to-back, day after day, giving it my absolute full attention—and look, I guess it was a decent experience to watch, but I wouldn't ever do it again. It just demands way too much effort, and honestly? They definitely could have been shorter.
But isn't it also dependent on other factors, such as individual personality traits and the viewer's own perception? You can't just pin everything on the quality of the film, especially when "quality" itself is such a deeply subjective judgment to begin with...
Anything can be a reason, really. Some of the points already brought up hold plenty of weight in my eyes—differing expectations or specific criteria regarding a movie might actually breed more die-hard fans and fanatics who end up throwing out inflated ratings. That said, I think what Jerry is getting at makes sense too; you tend to run into fewer haters when a film only lasts ninety minutes to two hours. Most people will sit through the whole thing even if they aren't feeling it, just to get to the end, and then they hit it with a bad review. It isn't exactly rare to hear someone complain, "Give me back those two hours of my life..." But when it comes to an entire season of a series—not to mention five or more seasons—most people won't bother following along if the show doesn't click with them early on. And unless the show absolutely infuriates them, they probably won't go out of their way to leave scathing reviews for later episodes or entire seasons they never even watched in the first place. So, you don't hear "Give me back my 24 hours of life" or "Give me back my 196 hours" nearly as often. Perhaps you'll hear it from someone who genuinely loved a series, only to be violently disappointed by the finale or the end of a season, but everyone else had checked out and stopped rating it long ago.
I just caught a rip of this, and honestly, it doesn't even feel like a shaky-cam movie. You could maybe pass it off as some fun little trashy flick or something intentionally campy, but beyond that? The sequel isn't much to write home about either.
Sophia Thomas7 said:I mean, obviously, she had to seduce him. If they had just staged a frontal assault on the house and wiped everyone out—like they did five minutes later—wouldn't that have worked? 😬 Her entire role in the movie is basically just a plot device; it was pretty obvious from the jump that she was going to be the 'traitor.'
Look, we aren't talking about 2001: A Space Odyssey here; this is an action thriller. In this genre, logic frequently takes a backseat to pure spectacle. However, with a direct frontal attack, that second lord—if he’s actually organized—would have plenty of time to hide or escape, whereas this way, they have a backup plan, specifically her, to take him out without him even realizing what hit him. But fine, sure, you can certainly criticize that, along with several other things; I'm not saying it's a total catastrophe, but it's certainly not a film that's going to stick in my memory for long.
Keith Jones36 said:Well, that actually is the entire plot of the film. That’s the one thing that keeps you engaged—barely—to find out who the killer is, even though the title pretty much tells you someone from the team did it.
If this weren't a "woman's movie," it would have been over in ten minutes.
And what you're saying isn't even sexism. Women simply don't belong in those environments. Among men, there are instinctive codes of conduct and mutual respect.
Women tend to be more prone to being underhanded and manipulative.
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One of the female agent's specific assignments within the squad was to lure in and eliminate that drug lord at the very beginning, a task she executed flawlessly precisely because of those "feminine qualities"—namely, the underhandedness and scheming you mentioned—so... 😁 Surely there’s room for at least one woman on a team? Any perceived shortcomings in terms of raw physical strength or pure stamina can easily be compensated for by other skill sets, depending entirely on what the mission requires.
The movie isn't bad, per se, but it certainly could have been handled better and felt much more convincing in certain aspects...
I wouldn't go so far as to call this a "good" movie or a masterpiece of quality, but if you look at it as a stylistic exercise on the scale of a small indie production, it actually works quite well.
Whether we're talking about that specific episode where his aunt moves back to town and traps him in a sleeveless sweater, or the moment he later slices a steamroller clean in half with nothing but his bare hands—there was plenty of other interesting stuff worth noting.
The movie isn't exactly bad, but calling it anything special would be a stretch. It’s fine, I suppose, if you just need something to have on in the background. To me, it feels like one of those standard European crime thrillers we've seen flooded the market lately; honestly, if you swapped out Costner for Reno, you’d see exactly what I mean. It follows that predictable formula: a bit of action here, a dash of drama there, some forced seriousness mixed with a little humor, all delivered by this gravelly-voiced, sleep-deprived, totally exhausted protagonist dealing with his usual family baggage...
It’s a solid action thriller, and honestly, you shouldn't go in expecting some kind of mind-bending masterpiece, but the execution is incredibly effective. The way everything is packaged for Liam and the manner in which the story unfolds keeps you glued to the screen.
Peter Phillips32 said:So, what does a person actually gain, or what changes within them, when they finally grasp "physical reality as it truly is in its essence"?
What really shifts in someone if they just accept that "physical reality as it truly is in its essence is always an illusion"?
And what can a person even do to try and perceive "physical reality as it truly is," if that very reality is fundamentally nothing but an illusion?
What even counts as "physical reality" if the "physical reality as it truly is in its essence" is always kept hidden from us?
The stimuli we receive from the outside world through our sensory systems—you know, receptors, nerves, the sensory cortex—aren't inherently illusions. They are real inputs! It’s only once the mind starts processing those impulses—when thoughts kick in and we start the whole subjective dance of interpreting, refining, and experiencing that data—that things get fuzzy. That's where the "illusion" part actually happens! It all boils down to how the observer's mind handles it.
Think about it: the way we process any incoming information from the world depends entirely on a person's unique perspective—which is shaped by everything from their education and upbringing to their assumptions, beliefs, and past experiences... (nothing really new there, right?)
I suppose that would be correct, at least in a broad sense. But isn't it true that we all experience the world through that final filter you're mentioning—that lens formed by our own unique perspectives as individual people or organisms? This suggests that one core part of how we process information is what we categorize as subjectivity, or what some might dismissively call an illusion. Can we even begin to perceive objects in this world without that final component, or without some form of subjective processing, without severely compromising our very consciousness? It seems to me that this subjective, or perhaps "illusory," perception of the world is actually an inseparable characteristic of being human—it's built into our normally functioning consciousness, our cognitive apparatus, or whatever term we choose to apply to the final stage of processing an object. Consequently, doesn't that mean physical reality, in its absolute essence, remains forever hidden from us, essentially serving as an illusion?
Daniel Castillo11 said:In Buddhism, the concept of "illusion" isn't really about some false divide between the physical world and a non-physical one—that’s a bit of a misunderstanding. It’s more about our own psychological attachment to concepts, like the idea of a permanent self (whether you call it high or low), or our refusal to accept mortality and the inevitable shifts in ourselves and in Nature. At its core, we're talking about attachment and reactivity in all its various forms. It feels much more like a matter of individual human Psyche and how we perceive our surroundings rather than a statement about objective reality itself. If we look at it that way, Nirvana would be a kind of "numbing" or letting go of those attachments to object-oriented models of existence and human experience. In that light, traditional notions like the soul or the spirit basically just dissolve into nothingness...
I haven't exactly witnessed ideas splashing into the water yet; maybe a few pebbles here and there, or perhaps some people jumping off a pier, but nothing else.