Here’s a little "theoretical" question for the group—does a film's aesthetic—you know, the camera angles, the lighting, the editing—get dictated by some higher abstract requirement of the overall story? Or is the "story" itself actually shaped by those individual elements a director chooses to play with? To put it more simply: do you actually need to know film theory to make a (good) movie?
Does a director just say, "Okay, I want to lean into immersion in film, so I'll move the camera this way and that," maybe throw in some moody lighting like those German directors from the interwar period to make it look cool, and suddenly they've got a masterpiece... or does a good film happen differently?
Honestly, film theory feels like a hobby for "intellectual" analysts who spend their time spotting patterns or identifying "repeated technical flourishes." It almost seems to hinder raw talent because people get hung up on things like, "Oh, you didn't notice how the camera was used in the films of Carol Reed" (and let's be real, without Graham Greene's novel, The Third Man wouldn't be what it is). In my book, a good film is built "top-down," not the other way around. You start with a core story; you have something to say, something to vent, maybe a bit of love or even some rage. Everything else is just sensibility—either you have the knack for communicating what you want to say in a clear, accessible way, or you don't. The rest is just noise.
Steven Spielberg is more of a film theorist. It’s hard to actually quote him, and I get the feeling he’s just incomprehensible to most people working in the industry. Honestly, I don't see how reading his stuff would help anyone. Movies should be straightforward and easy to grasp. Americans were the first ones to figure that out. Everyone else is just trying to copy them in their own way. What a movie actually needs are ideas, people with strong convictions, and a grounded human story that can actually grab our attention and hold it. You need interesting characters and, obviously, actors who can actually pull them off. Most importantly—you have to spot the potential for a good film before the cameras start rolling (and, you know, spot the garbage early enough to tell the screenwriter to just burn the script).
As for learning, the truth is probably that the best way is just to watch as many movies as possible and read as many scripts as you can. Both the great ones and the absolute disasters.
So, there’s this thing called a Title Sequence—that little stretch of film that plays while the credits roll. Some of them just stick in your brain, you know? They linger. Other movies don't bother with one at all, while others nail it so perfectly that it feels like a masterclass in filmmaking. For me, the one from Small Time Crooks really stuck. It's funny... I'll often find myself loving an opening sequence, only to have it slip my mind almost immediately. I guess the rest of the movie just tends to drown it out.
Is there a specific Title Sequence that actually stayed with you?
p.s. This whole topic popped into my head after I read that someone is actually writing a doctoral dissertation on it. Quite the niche subject.
Kill Bill by Tarantino The Matrix Revolutions from the Wachowskis And if—and that’s a big if—it ever actually hits screens, Malick’s 'Che' starring Benicio del Toro
Not really related to the topic at hand, but I find it interesting that they're being mentioned (in a good way, of course). 😁 I used to work at Wells Fargo back when I was living in the States, and now that I've moved up to Canada, I'm working on a project for Harris Bank.
As for Online Banking... I’m currently deep in the weeds working on the development of the Bank of Marts. According to some recent reports—looking at stuff from Bank of Montreal and Harris Bank—processing transactions online is roughly 300 times cheaper than handling them through a physical branch. It’s all just basic math, really. Anyway, there seems to be this growing trend among major banks across North America where they're offloading real estate holdings and just shutting down branches altogether.
Finally landed my first actual job during my senior year of college through Student Services. I ended up working for this small startup that specialized in banking information systems. I also did some work as a product demonstrator, though it was only a few hours a week and the pay wasn't exactly anything to write home about.
Avary just wrote that one little part in Pulp Fiction where Christopher Walken talks about the watch. That’s really it. So, yeah, you can't exactly expect much from him.
the characters just end up feeling kind of shallow again
Isn't that basically the whole point of the book, though? The issue is that when you try to pull that same concept off on screen, it just doesn't work.
So, I caught this one, and honestly? It’s a solid watch. M. Pfeifer really knows how to hold her own; she’s incredibly convincing. That shift from being this independent, free-thinking woman to someone completely broken and abandoned is just... wow. Phenomenal. There’s this moment where you think, "Oh, she’s totally spiraling," but then the very next scene, she’s right back—steady, focused, driven. She’s basically the engine keeping the whole movie running. The scenes depicting life in a Foster home are legendary—one feels like a chaotic segment from Jerry Springer, while the other plays out like something straight out of an Oprah talk show. But hey, that’s just America for you. As for Renee Z., I’m with you; she’s got zero talent. The ending was pretty predictable, though. Still, compared to the mountain of absolute garbage movies out there, this one actually leaves an impression.
For me, the story and the lead character—plus the main villain—are basically the soul of the movie. That’s the skeleton the director builds everything else around: the atmosphere, the tension, the raw emotion, the thrill, all of it. Every decent noir film needs more than just killer direction and moody cinematography; it needs a real narrative. It needs that thriller element to give the style some actual legitimacy... kind of gives the director's stylistic choices a reason to exist. I've seen plenty of movies that are stylistically perfect, executed to perfection, but they're just empty. No emotion, no substance, leaves you feeling nothing at all.
I mean, I'm not really talking about myself anyway... not particularly interested.
If anyone actually makes movies where the story is the whole point, it’s Alan Parker. I mean, look at 'Mississippi Burning', 'Midnight Express', 'Angel Heart', 'Come See the Paradise', 'Angela's Ashes', and so on—those are all just exceptional, gripping, unconventional, and always controversial stories that basically form the backbone of Parker's entire body of work.
LODG feels similar. There are really two ways to look at the death penalty issue. First, there's the moral argument—the idea that capital punishment isn't humane and doesn't even work as a deterrent for serious crimes, so we should just scrap it. The second approach is much more tangible, though. It's that eternal question: is the person sentenced to die actually the one who committed the crime? How can we ever be sure justice was served? Pretty early on in the film, you realize the moral debate is heavily loaded with political undertones, and arguing about whether the death penalty is "moral" feels pretty hollow when a huge chunk of the population still believes in that Biblical 'eye for an eye' mentality. So, the plot quickly shifts focus toward that second angle—trying to prove the system is fundamentally flawed, because honestly, just one innocent person being executed would be enough reason to abolish it entirely. From that point on, the movie turns into more of an action piece rather than a philosophical discussion (like that TV interview between Gale and the Governor), which makes the story feel much more cohesive within its own context.
I feel like I’ve already gone over this, but fine... one more time...
First, coastalpanther43 says: This is how discussions on all other topics should look. And then follows up with: anyway, let's move on from debating definitions
It’s actually pretty vital to this specific movie that it isn't HC. Since everyone seems to have a different take on what "high concept" even means, it makes for an interesting debate about the term itself. Especially considering one character is out there churning out HC scripts while the other is trying to write "different kinds of movies."
Take something like Pulp Fiction, for example—it's basically synonymous with high concept. Of course, Tarantino is a screenwriter first and a director second, and what he pulled off with the script for Pulp Fiction is something very few people who write for film can actually do. He managed to turn dramatic dialogue into a full-blown movie. In Reservoir Dogs, for instance, we don't even see the bank robbery happen, whereas in a typical HC movie, that heist would probably eat up half the runtime. Filling the screen with nothing but dialogue before and after a heist you never even witnessed? You have to be a genius to pull that off, which is exactly what Tarantino is (just my two cents, anyway).
Man... he’s really overdoing it now. Calling something a "high concept" movie isn't exactly a compliment (well, that's just my take, anyway); it basically means it'll rake in cash during its first two weeks and then call it a day. Just because "high concept" sounds a bit cooler doesn't mean it's actually a good thing. Take Adaptation—that's an incredibly well-thought-out art-house film with this weird, wonderful sense of humor, and you can't just summarize it in twenty-five words. Simply put, Adaptation is the perfect example of what a HC film is NOT.
High-concept movies are usually the stuff made by Spielberg and his crowd (take Jaws, for instance), where everything boils down to pure action. The Matrix is a HC film, too. Honestly, the whole term is just a product of Hollywood producers like Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer, and those types. I once read an interview with some guy who looks at his watch and says, "If I'm not entertained in 5 minutes, the movie sucks." And it's people like that making the calls in Hollywood about what gets funded and how. About 95% of movies end up being flops, and only that lucky 5% brings in enough money to keep everyone else working.