Posts by fadedmason7

Exactly. If Werner Herzog isn't the real deal, then who is? 🤷

His stuff from the 70s was peak—honestly, in terms of sheer genius and how much he pumped out, I’d say the only one who even comes close is Rainer Werner Fassbinder during that New German Cinema era. Everything after that felt way weaker, just the occasional flash of greatness here and there. Mind you, I watched him ages ago in a big retrospective, so I definitely need to refresh my memory on some titles and finally catch his newer stuff.

Edit: Okay, total waste of time typing that out. 😁 (Basically what Dennis Martin6 is saying above.)

Just knocked out about 30 films—here’s my top 10:

1. Welt am Draht
2. Berlin Alexanderplatz
3. Martha
4. The bitter tears of Petra von Kant
5. In a year with 13 moons
6. Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, Vertigo
7. The third generation
8. All About Eve
9. The Great Gatsby, Gone with the Wind
10. West German trilogy

Spoilers ahead!

Dennis Martin6 said:That greenhouse scene? It’s basically the movie's whole MO—that kid John just watching his dad burn his mom's stuff after she bailed, which is exactly what he was venting about to Ben earlier. But get this: the director shows us a burning greenhouse instead of actual clothes. It's like Ben's story about those greenhouses leaked into John's head—real memory gets totally warped by John's neurotic headspace in the present.

The greenhouse scene and that moment with Amy—those are basically the only two non-linear, dreamlike bits in the whole movie. That’s my main gripe—they aren't the "modus operandi," they're just exceptions that probably got hacked down to nothing in the edit.

I figured the kid was John—but I don't think we're looking at some "distorted memory" about him burning his mom's stuff. It feels more like this whole phantasmagoria thing tied to his father. In the original book, specifically with Faulkner, the dad gets accused of... Barn burning—classic Faulkner. Just gritty, raw stuff.So, at Boeing, it turns out the dad got convicted for attacking an officer. Honestly, it feels like this whole "burning plastic" thing is just a toxic mix of his mom's baggage and his dad's criminal record—talk about a bad combo. Didn't Ben claim that plastic burns so easily because the cops just don't do anything about it? And man, John almost burned one down himself.

That’s exactly the director's play here—he spends the whole movie gaslighting the audience into thinking Ben is some total psychopath. It's all based on this unproven theory that he killed Amy and dumped her body in the lake, but honestly? There isn't a single shred of actual evidence on screen to back that up. At the end of the day, the only guy we can be 100% sure is a killer is John.

Fair enough interpretation— one Since we’re seeing everything through the eyes of a manic John—who is, let's face it, a total unreliable narrator—everything is filtered through his warped perspective. But Amy really did vanish without a trace; even the other characters back it up. We might be lacking hard evidence, but the circumstantial clues are strong enough that you can't just toss John-suov's theory aside. And yeah, Ben's guilt? Still totally up in the air. Beyond a reasonable doubt—period.To quote the fund— 😉 I honestly think that ending hits way too hard—like, it's a total overkill. Having a lethargic guy like John, who’s been nothing but a passive observer this whole time, just commit a brutal murder in the final scene? Especially when he hasn't even found any real smoking gun—because let's be real, the cat and the watch aren't exactly "case closed" level proof.

The movie isn't even about the rich vs. the poor—honestly, thinking it is just some populist way of reading it. It all happens in that gap between what the director intends and how we actually see it. Ben is basically Gatsby from that classic Fitzgerald novel—our only real link to this whole Van Dyck-style world. And Amy? She’s like that girl who gets so much plastic surgery she becomes unrecognizable, using nothing but mime to try and simulate a whole new reality (not that it has anything to do with the "soul"). John is the writer behind this whole thing—he's basically crafting the story about these characters we're watching. The way these three interact—it’s all happening inside this bubble of non-stop propaganda blaring from the loudspeakers... it’s just a sign of how artificial the protagonist's whole reality and life actually is.

I can't get behind the underlined part—there's zero class struggle vibes in Murakami's stuff. It’s more like Faulkner, where that theme is everywhere, and the director/writer is clearly leaning on that text to flesh out the characters. You've got massive youth unemployment on one hand, then you have John and Amy's pathetic little jobs, the dad's run-down farm... and then there's Ben and his crew, the mom, all that. John starts off feeling this class resentment toward Ben, and then everything else just follows...

John acting as the narrator of the story? In a metaphorical sense, sure, since he's our focal point. Or are we talking literally? He doesn't even start writing until she disappears—or maybe later, I can't quite recall. His "story" might just be the movie's resolution, not the whole dramatic arc. If we follow your logic, you could argue that Ben's murder at the end is actually a crime committed within a novel by John's literary alter ego—just some cold revenge served up in the realm of the author's imagination.

Anyway, thanks for clearing some things up. It's a super interesting take, even if it feels a bit forced to me. 👍

@goldenhound32/">@@goldenhound32: (Spoilers) The way they portray the rich—everyone from actual psychopaths like Ben to those just plain indifferent assholes who don't give a damn about his girlfriends' fates. Okay, maybe calling it "socialist realism" is a bit much, I'll give you that, but the movie definitely leans hard into populist vibes. Amy is broke and uneducated, sure, but she’s got soul and does mime; meanwhile, all of Ben's buddies are just shallow hedonists. Even the mom is a villain for ditching John and his dad just to chase consumerist thrills (that phone scene, ugh). Etc.

@Dennis Martin6/">@@Dennis Martin6: Read your post on the other thread. You're reading way too much into this—you're basically seeing Schrödinger's cat everywhere. 😁 As far as I recall—I saw this in the theater a few days ago, so I haven't double-checked—both of those controversial scenes are clearly framed as the protagonist's dream.

@Henry Campbell5/">@@Henry Campbell5, I caught it recently too. That kangaroo hunt (probably the most brutal thing in the whole movie) and that drunken gay brawl... unforgettable. A masterpiece.

Tarkovsky – The Return. Took me about five tries on YouTube to actually get it—but man, I ended up loving it. It’s easily sitting in my top 3 American films now. 😍

I mean, let's say the toolkit stays the same: charm and brains. I think you're unfairly overestimating the Queen and her husband. Abi might not keep leveling up, but I don't see her losing what she's already built—she'll probably just play it safe to maintain the status quo, which honestly isn't nothing given where she started. But hey, that's a whole other movie.

Spoilers

Jesse Thomas7 said:Yeah, sure, but a Queen is a Queen. When you talk about actual power—the ability to indulge every random whim, make the calls, change her mind on a dime, or just shut down whatever she feels like—she’s in the exact same spot at the beginning and the end. Despite being physically and mentally a wreck, her position hasn't budged. She doesn't even have to lift a finger if she doesn't want to.
She could flip the whole script tomorrow if she felt like it, and everyone else would just have to deal with it.

Abina's game is over. The tool has been used up. She’s effectively stripped herself of the one last thing—maybe the most vital thing—that she held onto even when she was at her absolute lowest point in terms of practical standing: hope.
Hope, the ghost of any idea, any plan, any desire or ambition that might actually improve her situation. She knows it's done. This is what she fought for. That’s why I think that closing scene is masterfully handled. Instead of some heavy-handed dialogue where they spell everything out three times over to make sure you get the point, they cement the entire theme through one long shot of Abina’s defeated face. You can practically feel the hopelessness, that trapped sensation, and the hint of apathy that’s going to be her permanent state of being moving forward.

And honestly, it's not just the final scene. Even with all those specific little plots, games, and twists that some people write off as the movie's "bad side" or just a bunch of nonsense, there are a few moments—like that one part about the different games the two of them are actually playing—where a single question or one seemingly throwaway sentence forces you to rewind in your head. You find yourself connecting the dots yourself, drawing conclusions based on what *wasn't* said.

When a movie pulls that off, especially with that kind of finesse, there's no way it can be total garbage.

I don't know much about cinematography. You're saying wide-angle? 🤣

I mean, I know it when it looks good. 🥳

I'm not sure if I'm missing something deeper because of the specific way he chose to frame the shots, but I'm hoping he did it specifically so that even someone like me, who doesn't grasp technical stuff, can still pull the intended meaning out of it. 🙂

I disagree—her "game" isn't over and she hasn't run out of "tools." 😉 She basically wiped out her rival for good; now the Queen is even more dependent on her due to that stroke, and she’s got a husband who's easy enough to manipulate. In that killer final scene, Abina actually shows a hint of self-reflection for the first time. Everything she did was for social climbing, driven by pure survival instinct in a cutthroat environment. She always looked forward, never back. But in the end, she realizes her new status is built on some seriously dirty work—both figuratively and literally.

Jesse Thomas7 said:Yeah, sure, but a Queen is a Queen. When you talk about actual power—the ability to indulge every random whim, make the calls, change her mind on a dime, or just shut down whatever she feels like—she’s in the exact same spot at the beginning and the end. Despite being physically and mentally a wreck, her position hasn't budged. She doesn't even have to lift a finger if she doesn't want to.
She could flip the whole script tomorrow if she felt like it, and everyone else would just have to deal with it.

Abina's game is over. The tool has been used up. She’s effectively stripped herself of the one last thing—maybe the most vital thing—that she held onto even when she was at her absolute lowest point in terms of practical standing: hope.
Hope, the ghost of any idea, any plan, any desire or ambition that might actually improve her situation. She knows it's done. This is what she fought for. That’s why I think that closing scene is masterfully handled. Instead of some heavy-handed dialogue where they spell everything out three times over to make sure you get the point, they cement the entire theme through one long shot of Abina’s defeated face. You can practically feel the hopelessness, that trapped sensation, and the hint of apathy that’s going to be her permanent state of being moving forward.

And honestly, it's not just the final scene. Even with all those specific little plots, games, and twists that some people write off as the movie's "bad side" or just a bunch of nonsense, there are a few moments—like that one part about the different games the two of them are actually playing—where a single question or one seemingly throwaway sentence forces you to rewind in your head. You find yourself connecting the dots yourself, drawing conclusions based on what *wasn't* said.

When a movie pulls that off, especially with that kind of finesse, there's no way it can be total garbage.

I don't know much about cinematography. You're saying wide-angle? 🤣

I mean, I know it when it looks good. 🥳

I'm not sure if I'm missing something deeper because of the specific way he chose to frame the shots, but I'm hoping he did it specifically so that even someone like me, who doesn't grasp technical stuff, can still pull the intended meaning out of it. 🙂

Like I said before, I thought the movie was great, even if the script isn't exactly groundbreaking. Honestly, it felt better and warmer than most Lanthimos films. 🙂

Spoilers

Jesse Thomas7 said:SPOILERS

Plus, that final scene where they ask, "What exactly do you think you've won?" really drives home the point—that woman who fought her way to the top was never actually higher than she was in that exact moment. It’s a total Pyrrhic victory.

It’s not bad. Honestly, the ending is pretty damn good.

True, but the whole ambiguity of power is baked into the motive from the start. The Queen at the top of the pyramid is simultaneously the most isolated and most persecuted figure. It’s only in that final scene that Abigail finally grasps the full weight of her success—or her downfall.

I have to give props to the wide-angle shots, too—they frame the characters within these massive, almost overwhelming spaces that really nail their spot on the social ladder. On the flip side, the whole vibe feels super staged, like a painting or maybe even a fish tank. Kinda grotesque, honestly.

The visuals, production design, costumes, and score? All top-tier. The acting holds up too—though honestly, I was much more into Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman than Emma Stone. The script is where it trips up, though; it feels a bit thin and predictable, almost like a blunt instrument of political theory—think some nasty blend of Hobbes and Machiavelli. It’s just constant backstabbing where everyone is out for themselves, with rivals doing whatever it takes to win over the sovereign—basically weaponizing sex and cunning to climb the ladder. That whole "one rises while the other falls" career arc is also pretty cliché. Still, as a whole, the movie works surprisingly well—it's catchy and actually pretty funny in spots. 7/10

Social realism is back on top at Cannes—following in the footsteps of Audiard's Dheepan and Loach's Daniel Blake. All three flicks basically tackle the breakdown of the traditional family tie and how people are forming these weird new post-family alliances just to survive. Koreeda touched on similar ground in Nobody Knows, which was based on that true story about abandoned kids navigating life in Tokyo. In this one, those old-school family ties feel almost artificial—they try to make it feel more "real" by using a news report style near the end, or through that meta-commentary where characters act like they're in a Brecht-style epic theater, explaining their life paths to the younger members of the "family." Honestly? The acting and the pacing were the best parts. It’s a solid, warm movie overall, though I think I preferred Nobody Knows because of those little hiccups. Still gonna hunt down more of Koreeda's work. 6.5/10

Cool interview with Paul Schrader:

Paul Schrader : Quote : There ’ S an enormous sense of satisfaction i derive fra First Reformed, because it pulls together threads of what I’ve been thinking and doing for almost 50 years. The First serious writing i did on film was about spiritual Cinema, Transcendental style. That was in 1972. From that point on, I became a screenwriter and director, and I never thought that I would make that type of film. I like those films, but those films are not for me. I was much more interested in action, empathy, sexuality, violence, and these really aren’t in the transcendental tool kit. So I went on and left that world behind. i wrote was Taxi Driver (1976). Now, 45 years later, i have made a film that combines The thinking in that book with The narrative Drive of Taxi Driver. So I have my first philosophical book and my first screenplay combined in this current film. That has been very intimidating because it’s a little difficult to think of what to do next. Hopa that First Reformed is not my last film, but if it is, it’s a very good last film.
(...)
I looked at the models. You have the main character from Journal d’un curé de campagne (1951). Then you have The setting of Winter light (1963). Then i decided on The ending fra Ordet (1955). I added a levitation scene from Andrei Tarkovsky, and then i tied IT All together with The glue of Taxi Driver. look AT The model of Winter light: small empty church. A man going through the motions meets a young couple. Max von Sydow is in despair because of nuclear weapons. Well, shift that over. Take that young couple and ask yourself, “What is the current despair?” The current despair is environmental collapse. It’s more real in a way, because nuclear weapons are kind of theoretical. It may happen. Environmental collapse is not theoretical. It is happening and will happen. So that becomes the shift.
http://cinema-scope.com/cinema-scope...rch-of-cinema/

Also check out this solid essay by American critic Lucas Hedges on late-career Paul Schrader and the fate of his film Dying of the Light.

Discussing over at filmspovjedaonica, and we've got a thread going.

Trier almost tripped and fell into making a dud here, but he pulled it off. The guy is just too good a director—even when he’s spinning his wheels and repeating himself endlessly. 6/10

SPOILERS

Jack is the most derivative von Trier yet. It feels like a cheap attempt at a European blockbuster. Structurally? It's basically a nymphomaniac without the sex and regret—just violence without the love, and sadism without the masochism. A Christian Antichrist. It's basically a gore horror flick dressed up in high-brow discourse. It's like Albert Speer wandered right out of that "i am a Naza" press conference at Cannes and straight into the movie, which says a lot about the narcissism—and the dark humor—of the director. An autopoietic film told in five "incidents" leading to a final "katabasis" (very moody, very music theory vibes). You can see some motifs borrowed from fra Hell. There are these opulent, sometimes forced analogies and visual metaphors everywhere. The artist as a serial killer, and vice versa. Total pretentiousness. Very Romanticist and Academic in its visuals. Medusa's raft. Dante and Virgil. Bach and Gould. Two Williams—Bouguere and Gull. You can definitely feel the Tarantino influence, though I doubt that'll win over the US audience. Honestly, I'd love to see von Trier get back to smaller projects like The boss of IT All, otherwise, his next one might actually be boring and bad...

This is totally off base—honestly, it's beneath a writer of Hemon's caliber 👎

Quote: Personal as it may be, the film is about a male genius so supreme that it can choose even when and how to be weakened in the presence of a woman, who, in exchange for monogamy, is ever willing to serve it. Anderson dazzled critics into believing that they’re not reproducing power but affirming the art of the personal. Wrapped up in that fancy art-house aesthetic, the movie basically serves as a massive endorsement for the "natural" brilliance of men. "Phantom Thread" is straight-up patriarchal propaganda, plain and simple.

That’s honestly the beauty of it—just 130 minutes focused entirely on those two characters, their dynamic, and how they evolve... feels more like Bergman than Kubrick...

Amanda Robinson4 said:Just watched it. Honestly, no matter what you think of PTA, you have to see his stuff in a theater 😬 (even if I haven't caught every single one of them, still ☕ )... but, hmm, yeah... my final takeaway is... unsettling? 😁

I struggled a bit trying to figure out how to genre-label this thing, but honestly, who cares? Let's just call it a period romance drama. It’s slow-burn by nature, obsessed with the little details, and puts almost all its weight on the (romantic) relationships.

Man, if I had tried watching this at home on my laptop, I would've been totally lost. Even sitting here, I found myself waiting for the plot to actually kick into gear, but the end result was—well, surprising, to say the least. Mostly because of the pacing, which just slowly meanders through the complexity of Alma and Reynolds' relationship until it hits these sudden, intense dramatic peaks.

It's pretty clear that with Anderson, there's no such thing as a shallow theme. You can dig so much into it—everything from the director's obsession with high-end 1950s fashion and the overall vibe of that social circle, down to the uncompromising, almost neurodivergent traits of Day-Lewis's character.

I couldn't shake the feeling that some of the screen junkies were right when they said this is basically a movie about Day-Lewis himself, playing a guy who can't tell where his personal life ends and his craft begins. 😬 It feels even more symbolic considering it's his last big role.

In that same vein, PTA is just unapologetic. He doesn't disappoint, but he definitely leaves you with a bunch of questions spinning in your head. Which is great, because that's really the whole point. I get why a lot of people might not vibe with this, but for me? It gave me plenty of food for thought. 🙂

That hits the nail on the head for me too, even if Phantom Thread isn't quite his absolute peak. I'd say a solid 7.5/10.

The casting is predictably spot-on: Day-Lewis, Lesley Ann Manneville (apparently they became buddies six months before filming, which explains why their chemistry feels so effortless) and the incredible Vicky Krieps, whom I first caught noticing in Karl Marx. 🙏

The cinematography (also by Anderson), especially the outdoor shots—just gorgeous. Honestly, wish we had more of that!

And J. Greenwood’s score? Pure, subtle genius. It basically gives a voice to everything in that house—from the physical objects to the tightly coiled emotions of the residents, mirroring both their connections and the tiniest shifts in mood.

SPOILERS!

I found the symbolic layer of the plot really fascinating. "A house that doesn’t change is a dead house," as the head of the household, Mr. Woodcock, puts it at one point. Even the name is a clue. The Woodcocks climbed the social ladder through years of grinding, reaching this enviable status, but they've ended up stuck—kind of like wooden roosters perched on a roof. Their lineage is dying out because Reynolds is still totally haunted by his mother. That’s where Alma comes in as the savior. Her name means "young woman" in Hebrew, "nourisher" in Latin, and "soul" in Romance languages. Alma brings the necessary upheaval to the house. She cuts the umbilical cord tethering Reynolds to his late mother, and she uses those shears to slice a Belgian princess's dress while searching for signs of his infidelity. She embodies both Eros and Thanatos; she's that classic femme fatale, a force of nature who can either nurture life or cut the thread entirely...