Posts by Ethan Davis34

The movie is depressing, sure, but it’s missing something... it feels way too realistic for its own good.
I mean, Gran Torino is similar, and honestly, I think it's much better than anything by Ott.

mistyotter35 said:I watched it. It isn't exactly bad, though I suppose the plot development feels somewhat reminiscent of 47 Meter Down.

yeah, plus the Frozen 2010 https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1323045/

brighteagle39 said:What truly bothered me was how two seasoned climbers could clearly see the amount of rust on the holds and how loose the bolts were, yet still decide that scaling the cliff was worth the risk. At one point, that blonde climber—the taller one—starts wiggling and shaking the rungs, laughing it off like she’s just playing around, even though she knows she has to descend using those exact same holds. It turned out to be the turning point, because most of the bolts actually started popping out right after her little stunt. I honestly can't wrap my head around how someone could be so reckless.

That's just how some people are... look at what happened to Tomaž Humar... first he gets injured building his own house, then he dies in the Himalayas during a solo climb. Ugh, and these girls are out there going light, barely even using rope.

wanderingridge said:I haven't actually sat down to watch the movie myself, but a friend of mine did (we both spend our free time climbing), and he absolutely trashed the climbing scenes. They didn't put nearly enough effort into making the climbing look realistic—it was totally off. For instance, if you want to see how it's actually done, that 2015 remake of Point Break was executed incredibly well when it came to all those action-sports sequences.

Yeah, those climbing scenes disappointed me too, along with various techniques—it's like they were seeing a rope for the very first time. They're rappelling by sheer brute strength when they should be using something like a figure-eight knot.
Also, I was thinking about how I'd try to descend from a tower: I'd wrap their rope around the tower, around a pipe, and use a Prusik. One person clips to one end, the other to the second, and they slowly descend. I don't know, just thinking out loud, but I bet there was a way. Someone who actually understands knots should weigh in here.

hiddenranger7 said:gracija Filipović won an Oscar for Breakthrough Actor in Gotham

https://twitter.com/FilmUpdates/stat...83387618033664

The haters are out in full force today. ☕

Edward Watson18 said:Sometimes awards just aren't the benchmark, especially looking at some recent Oscars...

I still remember when Hrvoje Šalković picked up a hundred $0.00 for best unpublished novel back in 2006 for "Pretend You Didn't See This"...

The whole book was basically a blatant rip-off of Hunter S. Thompson's "fear and loathing in Las Vegas" (they even lifted a scene from "Who Is That Pev" where Milivoje Tomić storms out in front of the marshal and yells, "Who are you calling a spy?")... and honestly, for that reason alone, he shouldn't have touched that award... but whatever, the industry brass gave it to him anyway...

There's plenty of stuff like this... so I can't say these are just isolated incidents...

I agree, and I'd throw the Nobel Prize (for Literature) into that mix too. On the flip side, the movie Murina pulled in 7 awards from 7 different festivals around the globe, so it's hard to argue that's rigged in this particular case.

Justin Richardson7 said:Well, you really dug your own grave this time.
You’re out here preaching about art while carrying a price tag: three thousand bucks, kid. It’s obvious why you don't get Murina's critique... because you're just a confused little Julia, except in your case, we actually know what you're worth.

By the way,
Good for you on landing that deal: five cards of text for three grand. You got your fix, so why does my objection even matter to you??
We aren't even living in the same universe, so there's no fear: maybe other people will actually like you.

Money comes easy, but both pieces—whether they count as works or not—were recognized by professionals who actually know their stuff. And you? What do you know? What's your actual job? Why even bother watching American films if you hate them so much? Or are Americans on this forum the only ones reading your "brilliant" critiques? That's the perk of being in a small pond; any idiot can act like an expert.

Justin Richardson7 said:Exactly, because based on your brief description, it’s obvious that neither you nor she actually understands how to make real art.
I dig the concept—hunting wild boars in the Hinterland. But honestly, everything feels semantically broken when I read your posts, especially this one where you ramble about the "impossibility of raising a young person in the Hinterland." If that’s really your angle, then your job as an author is twofold: first, you have to prove why it’s impossible for youth to thrive there, and second, ensure that thesis actually reflects the reality "on the ground." In other words, you need to be convincing if you want to hold a stance.

So, here is the real question for you: why does this patriarchal father have issues with his daughter, and how is that actually explored through the specific lens of the story "Hunting Wild Boars"?

Bravo. You managed to jump to a conclusion about my story without even reading it.
Whatever. For barely five pages of text, I got three $0.00, yet this director somehow snagged God knows how much funding and seven (7) awards for Murina. The real question is, what exactly did you gain by trashing everything American? And how is it that you can't even find work at a single publication—not even the bottom-of-the-barrel local rags? Don't tell me you aren't even capable of that.

Betty Jackson69 said:Honestly, the only thing that felt truly idiotic was portraying those memorial sites for fallen firefighters as if they were just some plots of land up for sale (if I even caught that correctly). I honestly have no clue what the point of that was supposed to be. 😕

The author is clearly calling out the hypocrisy of Americans. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a scenario play out soon where the memorial site for those fallen firefighters gets sold off to some massive hotel consortium. It’s not like we haven't seen "sacred ground" auctioned off to the highest bidder before.
That massive tattoo of the national emblem is nothing more than a joke—it’s just pure, unadulterated performative patriotism. Look, we love to talk about how our grandfathers bled for this country and how we’re all supposed to be these fierce, die-hard patriots, but let's be real. The second a customer walks through the door with a fat wallet, all those "sacred values" go right out the window. It's all for show.

I actually have a short story of my own—it won first prize in a contest—that’s pretty much in the style of Murina. Only in my version, the whole thing is set deep in Appalachia, where a traditionalist father takes his daughter out on a wild boar hunt. Even the ending is similar; except in my story, you're left wondering if the carcass on the ground is the father or the beast.
Basically, the idea that a young person can't truly find themselves in the middle of some rural backwater is still incredibly relevant, whether it's my work or the author's. But sure, go ahead and call it "unjustified rage"—what an oxymoron 🤣

The movie Murina definitely has both motivation and clear direction. Your issue isn't with the film; it's that you don't understand how art—whether it's literature or cinema—works. There are endings designed specifically to leave things unresolved, sometimes even adding layers of complexity rather than providing neat answers. That’s on you.
You haven't even come close to identifying the actual flaws in this film. Some characters are completely one-dimensional—take the father, for instance, as my colleague pointed out—and they feel pretty stereotypical, driven by ambitions and fears we've all seen a thousand times before.

Furthermore, you still haven't explained what you mean by that typical, irrational coastal anger.
Honestly, that’s an incredible statement that sounds more like disguised hatred or jealousy toward people from the coast (and I see that sentiment isn't limited just to the Tourism thread). It's exactly like me claiming that New York City residents are irrationally angry simply because they have access to better social and professional opportunities due to centralization. People are far more complex than just the observation that "they live by the ocean and have money."

Justin Richardson7 said:If things worked the way you claim, we’d actually have a coherent ending. The movie would have a "point," a clear progression where characters move from point A to point B.

But that’s just not happening.
They don't end up happy and peaceful; they're still pissed off. That unmotivated rage of the American spirit in the Mediterranean is its own damn subject—we could hold a whole symposium on it, analyzing everything from Haloa and Alexi to Pijat, Two Sunny Days, Theresa, Mar, Kaja, I'll kill you, and so on. It’s the exact opposite of the classic setup where people come to find meaning or peace. Think Rossellini and Viaggio in Italia, Zorba the Greek, Mediterranean, etc.

Help me out here,
I can't help you if you refuse to see that her choice is legitimate (you claim she can do what she did because the families involved are just trash), but any work is objectively better or superior when it actually has a structure. In this case, for example: the father, daughter, and mother should realize that their problems aren't about money, transactions, or buying and selling. It's that very lack of stability and the obsession with deals that causes the issues and prevents them from finding themselves. Making a film in that direction would provide actual cohesion. Then it's up to the director to develop that meaning through the story and thematic layers so clearly that the audience isn't left guessing what the message is.

Since that isn't clear here, you get these conflicting interpretations: one person thinks the message is about Julia's liberation, while another thinks the subtext is that family is everything. These misinterpretations happen precisely because the film is a mess, and even the director doesn't seem to know what she's trying to say with this piece.

You don't know anything about life, let alone life in the American South. For God's sake, why are you attacking Pijat now?! At least that's an excellent film—personally, the best American film ever (though there isn't much competition).
You only showed up to this thread to act high and mighty and dump your "wisdom" on us, but the real question is what are you actually capable of creating (if anything)?

edit: And what on earth is "unmotivated rage"? How can rage be unmotivated? For crying out loud.

First off, it wouldn't kill anyone to fix the title formatting. Either go all caps or all lowercase; the current way looks hideous...
btw, I couldn't even finish the trailer because it was just way too much for me, but I'll try my best to sit through the actual movie.😁

@David Jackson2 exactly. The issue is that the movie is way too close to reality—it’s practically built out of clichés.

For instance, one of the more interesting beats was when the girl finds a vibrator and a magazine belonging to Javier in that bag. I honestly thought it was Javier's bag 🤣 and was bracing myself for some twisted plot twist, but whatever. This is just an American film; they don't have the guts to actually go down those paths.
Still, the ending works. Instead of some safe, cliché killing of the father, she makes it clear she isn't playing games. That move alone firmly establishes this as a feminist film.

The way the protagonist speaks with that local dialect just works perfectly.
The settings are great too—Key West and somewhere else, right?

A civil war is brewing in Russia; even a complete idiot could see that coming.