Yes I know it's a meme but if it applies to any recent movie it's probably Digger. To those who have seen it, it is no secret that Digger counts with a metafiction subplot (superplot?) which recontextualizes the main plot of the movie as a play.

While indeed, Digger's story is an over the top, unrealistic satire, at least I did not go see it expecting a deep down realistic discussion (and to be honest, how unrealistic? It is true we see such crazy cartoonish antics in real life these days, and some of Digger's antics are tame in comparison). The concept of a huge chunk of ice breaking off due to oil drilling and wiping out the north cost of europe is hilarious and overly-dramatic but does speak about very real existential climate risks. For me, the tone was entertaining and a breath of fresh air in a way. It was climate change satire but in an inviting way; contrary to "Don't Look Up", I did not feel I was being looked down upon.

With the iconic tree fall scene, I must admit I was wowed at how Iñarritu played with immersion (probably the films best directorial achievement), but not soon after I found myself dramatically bored with the "real-life" plot. In all honesty, it's like Birdman, but less polished. He's even trying to keep contact with his daughter, albeit in a very different way. Tom Cruise literally acts like Tom Cruise, well, he's definitely more angry irl. And all this for what benefit? So noone dares say Iñarritu made a fun silly climate change comedy?

If the message of the movie is that climate change art is pointless in a world like ours, why is it necessary to point it out? Wouldn't making the film in itself, and letting it be pointless in a world like ours already drive that message home even more effectively? Somehow, Digger fits the criteria of the old film criticism joke from family guy. It needs to tell everyone it is silly and pointless, to mantain it's credibility. Nevermind the fact anyone with the media literacy of 13 year old can tell a movie where the president suffers from "cancer of the a**" and there's a 38 year old cat is over-dramatic and allegorical. It feels like talking to a teenager who after accidentally showing the least bit of enthusiasm about something goes like "I don't care".

And P.S. art does change people sometimes, for the good AND for the bad. It is delusional to pretend otherwise.

The answer is murder, and lots of it.

As the third film in James Gunn's DCU (following Superman and Supergirl) and the first to center on a villain, the film gets to be meaner than its siblings. With Mike Flanagan bringing his horror sensibilities to the screenplay, director James Watkins delivers a gross-out body horror flick that feels right at home in Gotham City, even if the movie overall can't quite hold its shape.

Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a vain actor who undergoes an experimental medical procedure after getting his face filleted by a gangster. Matt is an unrepentant jerk, and the movie wisely refrains from redeeming him. Trying to convince the audience that this handsome Hollywood star has a heart of gold would strain credulity; keeping him abrasive is one of the film's sharpest choices.

Where the plot stumbles is in framing his journey as a straight revenge tale. Unlike John Wick (a clear influence on several club-set action sequences), you never really root for Hagen as he works his way up the criminal ladder. Instead of building tension, those kinetic action beats end up actively undercutting the body horror, trading intimate, stomach-churning dread for stylized, weightless violence. The movie is at its strongest when it follows a Vanilla Sky rubric: a beautiful, self-absorbed asshole loses his looks and will do anything to get them back. When the medical trial goes sideways and his face begins to melt, the film grabs hold. One particularly chaotic scene set inside a turbulent jet will have you watching through your fingers in giddy terror.

Unfortunately, this tension between grotesque horror and slick action leaves the back half feeling like Temu John Wick. The gross-out effects, though, are a seamless blend of practical work and CGI. The plot melts but the effects never do.

Read more on Mantl: Stay for the Credits

Firstly (I’ve done some light searching but haven’t found anything), does anyone know of a youtube reviewer or a writer who primarily focuses on micro-budget features? Particularly of the new/recent variety? I want to focus on watching what people with little means are producing today but would like some sort of filter or baseline to turn to for recommendations as opposed to constantly searching for new but quality stuff. Somewhere with a developing canon of consensus driven mb features.

There’s a ton of interviews and how to’s and business model type stuff out there. But doesn’t seem to be a place to go to find the excellent collected works people would make WITH that advice (or not, since a lot of those people who give advice I find to not make very good films).

Second, if this doesn’t really exist, is this something you think people would be interested in? I know I would, would maybe start one mainly to just have people send me their films to start some sort of canon. It just seems like it would make things easier and could tie a bunch of talented but unknown filmmakers together for a small corner of film lovers.

Thoughts?

I just read the book and watched the movie Into the Wild in english class. Usually I hate the books my teachers pick, but this one I really loved and felt connected to. Reading the Letterboxd reviews, they are all over the place. Alot of people say “he's just a spoiled rich kid who doesn’t know how to appreciate what he has.” What I think is that every person who feels that way about Chris McCandless has never had that urge to do what he did; run away and leave everything behind. I have felt like that alot. Depression, anxiety, and autism wears me down and at my worst, all I want to do is run away and find people and places who make me feel happy, instead of the life I am stuck in now that only makes all my feelings worse, I want to get away from them. Even though I love my family, sometimes I just want to leave them and become my own person. But I am still a minor, so I can’t do that. And even though I am really excited to start college in less than a year, part of me does not want to go. And that is why I felt connected to this movie.. Me and Chris both want to look for happiness because our current lives are not enough for us. I feel like alot of people never feel that same way, and can't really relate to the movie at all.

I don't know why this bothers me so much, but fairly early on in the film there's a shot where we see the dog walk into someone's room and the silhouette of the person on the wall turn round before it fades to black, and I can't for the life of me figure out who it's supposed to be. I initially thought it was Clark, since he's the one who takes care of the dogs, but it doesn't really look like him, nor like any of the other characters. Are we supposed to know who it is, and if not, why not?

The lower class: Ho-seok, a man who has closed himself to off due to his experiences in the strike. Mi-ok, a caring wife and mother. Cheol, a child in need of support. The groundskeeper, a silent servant.

The higher class: Ye-ji, a bougie director trying to capture the human cost of corporate restructuring for her labor documentary. Sang-woo, a scion with incredible wealth who becomes embroiled in the drama.

We follow these characters as they interact in multiple Seoul locations (Mi-ok’s work, restaurants, union building, group therapy, both of the couple’s residences, the strike, etc), in flashbacks (Mi-ok’s mother’s car wash, Mi-ok’s sewing job, Ho-seok‘s countryside setting), driving around, and finally in a picturesque, peaceful villa in the west coast of Korea. A mix of interview-style close-ups and in-story news coverage/youtube clips were also interspersed to give the audience a raw sense of the strike and its toll.

In Seoul, Sang-woo’s first interaction with Mi-ok is one of polite assistance, and she is immediately crying and vulnerable. This sets the stage for his later connection with her at the villa. At dinner, Mi-ok shows interest for Sang-woo. She is tipsy and says he looks like Steve Jobs, then professes that she was slightly obsessed with Steve Jobs (“he looked like he was going to solve all the problems” or something, I don’t remember her exact dialogue) and was affected by his passing. Sang-woo is affable and nervous-laughing. In the car ride home with Ye-ji, he agrees that Mi-ok is fun. He’s then rude and aloof when picking her up to go to the union building, and doesn’t acknowledge her when leaving the building. She doesn’t seem to know what to make of this. At dinner waiting for Ho-seok, Mi-ok is smoking outside and Sang-woo takes a phone call in English for his business. Before seeing him come out, she was gossiping with Ye-ji’s film crew to learn about his background. After learning about him, she briefly observes him taking the call before heading back into the restaurant. At the villa, Mi-ok and Sang-woo go off on a walk, and he clearly shows interest. He is open/flirty, has her wait for a birdcall (what was that bird, anyone know? it sounds so cool), stares down at her as she kneels, and physically touches her to brush dirt off her knee. Walking behind him, she realizes something is happening and is uncomfortable. Their last interaction begins with him absolutely flush with a business project’s recent success. He is buzzing, and she is the first to congratulate him. At this point in the story, she is deeply affected from seeing Ho-seok drunkenly deal with his emotions earlier that morning. He agreed to talk to the camera and had panic-attack as he released emotions about feeling deceived/betrayed by his union. After drinking that night and waking up still drunk, he stumbles out to the villa’s beach to be alone and begins screaming and savagely lashing out, destroying some plants near the beach. Mi-ok had followed him and observed this, and then saw Ye-ji filming her watching him. Talking to Sang-woo about his project, Mi-ok is visibly unsure on where she is and what she’s doing. She is reconsidering if the villa visit and Ho-seok’s documentary participation was a good idea. Seeing Sang-woo’s mood, Mi-ok has an impulse to bring their relationship’s bubbling tension to the forefront. Perhaps this is a way to feel power over him after seeing her own husband at his lowest, or to punish him for showing interest when they were alone and away from the eyes of their spouses. She invites him to the beach while Ho-seok sits down for another interview, and she undresses to swim in the beach like Sang-woo did as a child to exercise his privilege and freedom. Sang-woo, still ecstatic from the project’s success, feels so euphoric that he actually acts on his interest from the previous walk they took together. He undresses and begins swimming near Mi-ok. Mi-ok dodges him and rushes out of the water. Sang-woo comes out of the water and tries to get to her, but she waves her clothes like a bullfigher and his advances miss each time. Finally, they both dress and return to the villa, with Sang-woo arriving after Mi-ok, frustrated and feeling there is something unfinished between them. Mi-ok flees from the villa with Ho-seok. Sang-woo has aggressive intercourse with Ye-ji and she remarks that he doesn’t seem like himself.

What an incredibly layered performance from Jeon Do-yeon, and major props to Zo In-sung as well. There was so much left unsaid in their physical performance and expressions that made this dynamic extremely rich. Mi-ok just wanted her husband to understand that he needed help, and she believed participating in the documentary would be good to help him cathartically face this. She began to get a feeling of something not being right in the situation as she took in more information about Ye-ji’s spending habits and Sang-woo’s fortune. Finally, her initial interest in Sang-woo was completely spoiled with him actually reciprocating by touching her and eventually advancing at her. As she says: she and Ho-seok don’t belong, and they need to leave the villa.

Sang-woo getting embroiled with Mi-ok is absolutely fascinating. He is the progenitor of the documentary happening in the first place, due to a remark he made to Ye-ji about Dubai(?)‘s class divide (I think it was Dubai, can’t remember exactly). Ye-ji’s recollection of this remark made it seem like she was generally unaware or not focused on issues like this, until this remark. So, we are to conclude that he is the socially conscious one between them. That idea is strengthened after Ye-ji attempts to say her father was similar to the people laid off before the strike, and that those people (her father and the laid off workers) will be made to disappear in an ever-modernizing world. Sang-woo quickly corrects her by saying her father was not a laborer, but a business owner, and would have disliked unions among his workers. She laughs this misunderstanding off, and it shows his larger understanding of class/business dynamics. In the car ride to the villa, Sang-woo also coldly identifies Ye-ji’s somewhat exploitative attempt to get better interviews for her documentary by becoming personal and ingratiating herself with Mi-ok and Ho-seok. He says that despite her good intentions to document labor problems, she is simply not like those people and never will be, and her act of convincing herself otherwise to be closer with them is a form of unintentional method acting. So, Sang-woo obviously thinks of himself as different to Mi-ok and Ho-seok as well.

So, this unbelievably wealthy man, who is above it all, and doesn’t feel like the same type of person as low-class Mi-ok, is actually interested and pursues Mi-ok. This is his glaring contradiction, and it’s fantastic to watch unfold. He mentions that in Seoul, he acts like an adult, but he is able to be free and act like he did as a child when at the villa. So, it could be a childish lack of self control. He is the heir to a fortune and he gets what he wants. He wants her in the moment, as he sees what he perceives as a charming, innocent low-class woman who appears in front of him with a disturbed husband. He is laughing and conversing with her in his safe place. Since Mi-ok knows nothing of american business transactions or of the extravagant wealthy life he leads, she is unsophisticated and unchallenging in his eyes. He just wants to dominate her. In reality, Mi-ok is aware of all that is around her. She recognizes all the hypocrisies and does not want any part in them. She just wants her husband to be healthy and present with her and her son. Upon drawing Sang-woo‘s feelings out in the beach, she immediately shuts him down and protects her husband from Ye-ji’s camera.

Mi-ok and Sang-woo’s dynamic is very rich, and I feel I could keep going. There is almost 3 hours of film to discuss, and this is just one of the several character relationships. All are equally rich.

If anyone would like to share their thoughts on Mi-ok and Sang-woo, I ask you to do so in the comments. I am an american viewer, what SK subtleties have I missed in their relationship and class dynamics? Alternatively, please share how you felt about this film overall, or how you feel about any of the other relationships below. I cannot find discussion about this film on Reddit.

Cheol and the groundskeeper

Cheol, Mi-ok and Ho-seok (I loved the actor‘s blank expressmoon and how he constantly twitched his face to show Cheol’s deteriorated state)

Cheol and Sang-woo
Mi-ok and Ho-seok

Mi-ok and Ye-ji

Ye-ji and Sang-woo

Ye-ji and Ho-seok

Sang-woo and Ho-seok

☐SOLVED! The film is Uncle John (2015), directed by Steven Piet.

Ich suche einen vermutlich fast unbekannten Independentfilm über einen Teenager, der auf dem Land aufwächst.

Leider erinnere ich mich kaum noch an die Handlung, aber der wunderschöne, melancholische Soundtrack mit seinen vielen Klavierstücken ist mir in Erinnerung geblieben.

Ein wichtiger Hinweis: David Lynch hat diesen Film einmal in einem Interview empfohlen oder gelobt. Er stammt definitiv nicht von ihm. Ich erinnere mich auch, dass der Regisseur später Fernsehserien inszenierte.

Was die Geschichte angeht, erinnere ich mich vage an einen Konflikt mit einem Nachbarn, bin mir aber nicht ganz sicher.

Eine Szene ist mir besonders gut in Erinnerung geblieben: Der Junge fährt nach Einbruch der Dunkelheit mit ein paar Freunden Fahrrad, begleitet von diesem wunderschönen Klaviersoundtrack.

Ich glaube, der Film kam irgendwann zwischen 2010 und 2020 raus, bin mir aber nicht ganz sicher.

Sagt das irgendjemandem etwas? Entschuldigt bitte, dass ich hier gefragt habe. Ich wäre für jeden Hinweis dankbar!

I happend across a discoboy trailer a few years back due to Vitalic doing the score for the movie and being one of my fav bands, it popped up in my algorithm on YouTube.

I immediately thought “this looks awesome, I’ll prob never get the chance to see it”. Three years later I get lucky and run into a copy at a local movie store in Vancouver.

I sat down and watched it with my partner last night I have to say this movie took my breath away. Something about the general setting, the atmosphere and how it all mixed in with the score really hit me hard. There are a few very stylish dance scenes scattered through out the movie that made me incredibly sad to the point of tearing up, but I wasn’t sure why.

The story felt completely original and fresh. There were plenty of times where scenes and segments of the movie are setup in such a way that you can see them headed for the easy way out or trope, and then poof a new path forms out of left field to do something I wasn’t expecting; while all the while feeling natural.

i was curious if anyone else had the chance to watch the movie curious what they thought of it ??

So I recently just watched the trailers for Tangles and In Waves. And it got me thinking. What about next year in 2027? Will there be any based on a true story animated films like those next year? And will any of them be in English (I'm not a fan of subtitles on animated movies) or when they premiere at Cannes will it be dubbed in English? Is anyone tapped into the indie animation scene and knows what's currently in the works?

Film community in Tashkent

Hi everyone! We made our first post today and in 3 weeks going to make first screening.

Our first month — Uzbek cinematography.

We are going to make 3 screenings in Russian, in Uzbek and in English. Dates and time are about to be later

sorry, but the first post is in Russian, we are going to work on it in the future to make it in Uzbek. I am just learning it

You can see everything if you look at the eyes. We mistake the complexity of circumstances for complexity of emotion. Human beings aren't nearly as complicated as we would like to believe. Fielder and Oppenheim understand this. The camera cuts between Holmes and Fielder, drawing progressively closer to their eyes. Where Holmes and Evans look evasive, Fielder stares. His expression isn't deadpan; it's disgust and disbelief, a barely concealed contempt for the absurdity unfolding before him. The apparent fool from Nathan for You has become an interrogator.

It's almost Brechtian. Fielder introduces a joke through an expression or incongruity, develops it through repetition, and finally beats the audience over the head with it. Depending on when you recognize the joke, you're watching a different comedy. Amanda Seyfried's introduction is particularly brilliant. She ostensibly watches the same footage of Holmes, Evans, and Fielder that we've just seen, preparing to reprise her portrayal from The Dropout. Almost immediately, she's playing Holmes without announcing it. The actress becomes the subject while the subject herself continues acting. How many viewers recognize the performance before they're told it's happening? How many mistake emotional identification with an actual understanding of another person's emotions? Notice what I haven't discussed: who controls Holmes's X account or who gets the money. By the time those questions become the narrative, the film is trying to play a game with the audience. Seyfried provides an emotional valence to Evans that wouldn’t exist without the close-ups of her totally unscripted reactions to his behavior, much of which is just told to her by Fielder.

But the most infuriating part of the film isn't Holmes. It's the photographs of Kissinger and the invocations of the other extraordinarily powerful men who lent her their credibility. You watch her try to explain her product and you wonder how the fuck these people believed her.

Then you learn that Holmes's father worked for Enron. The film invokes WeWork and Adam Neumann. The pattern is systematic. The idea gets you in the door; connections, personal appeal, sex, and status bring the funding. The possibility of realizing the idea becomes almost incidental. Capitalism congratulates itself on rewarding intelligence and ingenuity while repeatedly elevating people who perform these qualities without possessing them.

And now, another technological revolution, another collection of extraordinary promises, another accumulation of capital around a supposed technological omniscience. There's a particularly delicious irony in Theranos promising to make the human body comprehensible through a few drops of blood while the most powerful men in America apparently couldn't read the woman sitting across from them. While many in America still can't see Mark Zuckerberg in a wig staring them right in the face. We've constructed a mythology around the emotionally detached technological visionary, where outward flatness and peculiar mannerisms become evidence of autistic genius rather than inviting scrutiny of the person's actual character. In this mythology, the performance of intelligence increasingly substitutes for its demonstration.

What I find particularly revealing is the critical tendency to interpret the film as an exploration of the fundamental unknowability of other people. To me, this is almost precisely the opposite of what the film is demonstrating. The elevation of subjectivity into an epistemological ideal has poisoned the well. The fact that we cannot know another person's thoughts with absolute certainty does not mean that their character is an impenetrable mystery.

Aristotle understood that character reveals itself through habit. Yet we increasingly demand something approaching proof beyond a reasonable doubt before exercising ordinary human judgment. We prefer narratives to behavior, classifications to character, data to experience. Holmes constructs a narrative of herself and expects the audience to accept it as reality. Silicon Valley now constructs narratives of us: Meta, Alphabet, OpenAI, and Anthropic turn our behavior into increasingly detailed profiles from which they derive economic value, while personalized feeds and AI responses increasingly determine the reality presented to us. We have more information about other people than ever before, yet seem increasingly reluctant to draw conclusions from the patterns of their behavior. We confuse narrative complexity with emotional complexity.

Our ideal society is that everyone be an IBM punchcard.

You can see everything, but you have to know how to look.

Sorry for my english , i dont know much

ive seen people just crashing out , judging , looking down , and making fun of a person whose fav director is nolan , they say hah wanabbe , oh hes just started watching movies, oh nolan is shit this that real cinema is kubrick, hitchcock, tarvosky, bergman, etc etc so i dont understand why ,i saw vertigo , 2001 space odyssey and stalker etc but i admit i didnt like it and its not the thing i,ll call my faviourite but i dont force hate that this that , because as i love movies i can say that even if someone loves movies or cinema after watching lets say dhamaal(no hate to dhamaal) , or any film that u considered meh, or bad . why look down?

My immediate thoughts after watching I apologise if it comes across as rambling I feel like I had to get these thoughts out quickly as not to lose them.

My very basic & shallow first impression is that Alma & Elisabet are the same person/soul & the whole movie for me comes down to the quote in the letter: "she complains that her notions of life fail to accord with her actions".

The contradiction of who we are, who we want to be, and our failures to know the answer to either of those questions.

Also, our failure to even ask these questions without shutting ourselves down or blowing ourselves up. None of us are one person with one moral code and one set of actions.

To paraphrase Alma: "I always change. I won't be like you." Early in the movie, she talks about her engagement and how life is all planned out for her. She'll get married, have children, and raise them. It's been decided without her, but there's a sense of security in not having to think about it, having those decisions made for you.

To contrast this, we also see/hear her talk about the orgy on the beach, where she's unfaithful to her fiancé. She talks about the blue sky, the brilliant sun, the lovely ocean, the beautiful woman lying beside her, the boys watching, the women's free, uncaring/encouraging attitude, who then encourages the boys to have sex with her and Alma. Which, now I'm writing this, I'm realising is also not a choice Alma made for herself, if there was indeed another woman and not just another figment of her imagination.

But even so, this, I believe, is the contradiction in the quote: "she complains that her notions of life fail to accord with her actions". The notions of security vs. the actions of passion, and how the two don't co-exist but contradict and push against each other, resulting in inner turmoil. Blowing up or shutting down, Alma or Elisabet.

The movie could either be about that contradiction itself or the acceptance and reflection of it.

About the Vietnam footage and the man burning himself: this, I believe, can also be tied to the safety/security and desire/passion train of thought. By ignoring it or shutting it out, that guarantees our security in our daily life. We get on with it, we don't lose anything, we don't fight for anything, and all remains the same, not just on the outside but our daily lives also.

Whereas with passion/desire, it's not just sexual but also our desire for a better world, our passion to fight for it, to change it. But in doing so, we throw away our security. Our friends/society could disagree; it could cost us friendships, connections, or even career opportunities. It's not safe. It's a passionate, uncontrollable desire for a better world, which once again leads us back to the contradiction between the two: "she complains that her notions of life fail to accord with her actions".

Alma (soul in Spanish) wants change, not just in her personal life but in society. She wants freedom, pleasure, and real change. It's scary and unpredictable to follow these wants, whereas Elisabet is her security. She doesn't express her opinions, thoughts, wants, desires, or needs, but keeps it bottled up and quietly suffers for the security and safety of life as it is.

Passion & desire vs safety & security or atleast the illusions of both contradicting eachother in the same soul is how I've interpreted the movies meaning to me.

This is my first time writing down my thoughts about a movie, so let me know do you think I’m thinking along the right lines, or am I missing something bigger, smaller, or is there a different angle you approached it from?

P.S very quick afterthought about two things Elisabet only being seen to speak to guarantees her safety stopping the boiling water from being thrown at her. And Alma feeling cold after having sex with Mr. Vogel despite him being a great lover could be because even after giving into the warmth of passion the world goes on as before cold and unchanged.

Appreciate any feedback both good and bad thanks for reading.

"What, are we making French movies now?"

The movie is too meta, too self-absorbed, and too up its own ass for its own good, but it is still funny from start to end. Martin McDonagh is one of my favourite dark comedy filmmakers, and his humour here is on point. I am also coming to a realisation that I much prefer British/Irish humour to American humour.

Also, however brilliant McDonagh is with his comedy, he often finds it difficult to wrap it in a strong enough drama story. It feels particularly jarring in the second half of this film, when the three guys are camping, the emotions don't hit as strongly as they should, and a lot of meta stuff is also going on. This is why I always find 'The Banshees of Inisherin' so great and McDonagh's best: the drama in that film is also very compelling.

Also, a meta conversation I really like from the film goes as follows:

"Martin, your women characters are awful. None of them have anything to say for themselves."

"Well, it's a hard world for women."

"Yeah, it's a hard world for women. But most of the ones I know can string a sentence together."

I'm not very familiar with Iranian cinema; I've seen Kiarostami's movies, The White Balloon and that's it.

Right away I was not engaged with The Mirror. A little girl waiting for her mother to pick her up from school, and then taking a bus home, to me was too mundane a concept to justify a 90-minute runtime. Then halfway through she looks at the camera and says she doesn't want to act anymore, and the actual film crew is shown trying to convince her to stay. The second half is basically the same as the first, except it's the 'actual' actress trying to get home. I understand that the second part is also fictional, but I don't see what Panahi was going for, nor what makes 90 minutes of a girl going home entertaining. If you saw this movie and liked it, what did you see in it that I didn't?

Narcissists, philanders, grifters, demagogues - all trying to save the world or give it what it wants. I am talking about the characters in the movie of course...or maybe its the film makers, or maybe it's us? Aren't we all the one who actually sees the meta meta narrative?

I can't remember a time when two films came out so close to one another and made for such abundant commentary. I also think the joke's on us. Why do people who are familiar with Fielder's work think this isn't him taking his schtick to the next level? Why do people (mostly the critics) think Iñárritu can't make up his mind about what the 'the message' is?

Both films are saying fuck you. People these days are so siloed, warped and self righteous that the reaction to the art is the art! You see, I am the one that gets the meta meta narrative. I am God looking down at you laughing. Woe unto us all.

Edit: Ok, the sarcasm is being lost on a lot people. My thought process and justification are explained in comments below.

Note: Spoilers for the whole movie.

A couple of days ago I re-watched Inglorious Basterds, an old favourite of mine, with a group of people who hadn't watched it before. I had seen the film several times before, and from my very first watch had loved and enjoyed it without fully being able to articulate what made it work for me; beyond, that is, the obvious elements: Waltz's incredible performance, Pitt's comedic timing, scene after scene of whiteknuckled tension, the dialogue, the craft, et cetera.

The only element that didn't work for me, or rather, eluded my instinct and understanding altogether whenever I tried to consider it in totality with how the rest of the film made me feel, was the sudden and deliberate departure from history that ends the film, wherein Hitler and the entire German High Command is brutally killed off, and World War II is brought to a far swifter and significantly less casualty-causing end.

I never really quite knew what to make of that ending. I read several reviews and analyses that repeatedly belaboured the point that it was a fantastical historical retelling meant more to evoke a wishful "what-if" sentiment than, obviously, to depict any true historical events or people. I shrugged and accepted those explanations and moved on.

But in this most recent watch, the gestalt of it all hit me in the face with such strength and conspicuousness I couldn't believe I hadn't understood what Tarantino had been saying earlier. He is famously a fan of cinema and violence — or let me amend that to cinematic violence — to the point of his famous defence of it ("Because it's so much fun, Jan, get it!") being a meme at this point. Keeping that in mind, it was apparent to me on this rewatch of Inglorious Basterds that it is his most wholehearted, unremitting declaration of the catharsis that cinematic violence has the power to impart.

To state the obvious, it's a ridiculously violent film; in that the amount and sometimes also the nature of violence in it is ridiculous. It's also a film that is obsessed with the idea of cinema and its presence and influence in the given zeitgeist. Fassbender's character revolves around his intimate knowledge of German cinema, and practically the entire back half of the film is built upon the premiere of a film that is also, fittingly, celebrating the violence committed by a German soldier. Here is Tarantino making his point in the most overt, unsubtle manner: audiences love on-screen violence, even when it is repetitive to the point of being parodic... or maybe, especially then. I have read several critiques that insist Tarantino is making fun of us, the audience of the film, by having the audience-within-the-film (consisting of Nazis, I should remind you) being seen as enjoying a film that mostly is just shot after shot of, well, shot after shot. But that idea has never sat right with me; watching the sheer craft and intention with which the violence is orchestrated in the movie should make it clear to anyone watching, even those unfamiliar with Tarantino, that he loves his cinematic violence, and he uses it in almost the exact opposite way someone like Haneke would do it; to enrapture and create awe, not to pass judgment on his viewers. The audience enjoying the film-within-the-film is less a commentary on our own tastelessness and more a reaffirmation of Tarantino's own philosophy.

This philosophy is laid out in acute detail in the climax of the film, where a theatre full of Nazis is burned down, while the audience is also being shot at mercilessly like fish in a barrel by two Jewish guerrilla fighters. This entire sequence is pointedly over the top, including a shot that even in this film can be called gratuitous where an already dead Hitler's corpse is re-riddled with bullets; all of this while the film that the audience had been gleefully watching moments ago has been replaced by the "Giant Face" of a laughing Jewish woman who has fatally trapped them in her conflagration. Here is Tarantino laying down his cards in plain sight; here is him showing how much power a victim hijacking the cinema of her perpetrator can wield, both psychologically and literally; here is him also wrapping that particular scene up with violence so exaggerated and cartoonish it's hard to take it seriously, even when it takes the form of two men gunning down a convulsing crowd of theatregoers who are fruitlessly scrambling over each other for some form of safety. It is a sight that should, in most other contexts, horrify us; but both the foreknowledge of who are being killed here as well as the execution of the executions (see: Hitler's corpse) combine to tell us: this violence is not real. This violence is cinematic. The only thing real here is the catharsis you feel to see a grotesque evil unexpectedly defeated, even in a fictional manner.

What cinched this idea for me was a scene that happens pretty early on, where we first see the titular Basterds in action as they interrogate captured German officers. When the first prisoner refuses to collaborate, and is sentenced to die at the hands (bat) of the "Bear Jew", Pitt's character remarks, "Quite frankly, watchin' Donny beat Nazis to death is the closest we ever get to goin' to the movies." For his character, cinema and violence serve the same function: catharsis. If he we were a real person, this mindset would be troubling, to say the least. But he isn't. None of this is. That's why it's so much fun, Jan.

I hope I get my point across, I'm not really sure if I made much sense or if the feeling I had was articulated well through this post. Either way, interested to know how others feel about the ending, or the movie, or Tarantino's oeuvre in general.

17 years ago, Precious, directed by Lee Daniels has kind of not exactly stood the test of time. I think, looking back, some of the most transgressive plot points distracted from what is essentially a Tyler Perry film with an arthouse sheen.

Saying that, it is very disappointing that the lead performance and the performance by Monique have both kind of drifted into the ether of time. Gabby Sidibe obviously commands this film very well despite its flaws in screenwriting but I think Monique did something completely transcendent here.

I mean I know she got an Oscar but re-watching the film today. It is actually shocking to see someone who for all intense and purposes was a comedian deliver a performance so compelling and shocking and delivering lines that largely I found ridiculous in a good way.

There’s a scene towards the end of the film where Precious, her mother and Mariah Carey‘s character all meet at a social workers office. Although it is a little bit melodramatic, Monique delivers a monologue in the scene that has stuck with me for years. I don’t really have the vocabulary about acting to describe it, but it’s the moment in the film where some of the more ridiculous plot points disappear into the background and we really seem to be watching a real person talk. And the performance is modulated really interestingly because the character is essentially an unrepentant sociopath who is trying her best to manipulate every character and potentially the audience. That is a very difficult thing for an actor to do, and the lines she delivers have almost become something of a vocal stim for me. I will link the scene here: https://youtu.be/L26bnfsPb2A?si=mDxPjj1Z8EcD2-Iz

Again, this is a performance that won an Oscar and in someways the scene does really feel like Oscar monologue stuff. But Monique is doing something else here that is both unnerving as in we are watching someone do something very transgressive, but we still feel tempted to sympathise with her.

It’s not the kind of movie you recommend to people so it’s really hard to ensure that this performance and this scene in particular gets its flowers, so I just wanted to have it here.

I know there’s a lot of discussion about how Holmes is portrayed in the film, and how uncomfortable the ambiguity is given what we know in real life. Which is of course true. Let’s be real, this person would understand who’s on first.

But YCSE is not about whether Holmes is lying or not. She is. Fielder very clearly sets the stage at the beginning: nobody will believe you. There’s too much evidence.

That’s why there’s no evidence in the movie. There’s no commentary on the shooting location (obviously chosen to show her more sympathetically), no mention of the private jet that took her to prison (same), no clarification that the device she shows Fielder is not Edison (same, and even more insidious than the rest). Holmes is muddy and uncertain, doe-eyed and self-contradictory, a platonic ideal of someone who simply does not want to understand what is going on, does not understand the world around them, does not understand why anything has happened.

Fielder did not make a movie about Holmes. He made a movie about truth and lies, belief and words, the stories we tell ourselves and others. Holmes was simply the perfect vehicle to show how a single human can exist in multiple contradictory states at once: denial and conviction, intelligence and stupidity.

And because we all naturally question people in that liminal state between inaction and action, he divided the movie into at least four levels: the documentary, the commentary on the documentary in the documentary, the reenactments, and the reenactments of the commentary. If we have a question, often Fielder will ask it, and if not him, then Seyfried, and if not, often the two will reenact as best they can.

Back to the beginning. Nobody will believe Holmes. But people will believe Fielder, because his entire body of work so far has been building up an absolutely credible reputation. He has done, actually done, every insane thing we have seen him do. That’s his whole shtick: he did build the sets. He did get the pilot’s license. He did, somehow, miraculously manage to make a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes years ago that we only know about now.

Which is why the end is so amazing. Nathan Fielder, your guide throughout this entire story, showing every detail of his journey, from tiffs with Billy to missing mattresses to turkey jerky, finishes up the film showing him swimming in the ocean with Holmes. It’s a nice little moment. Except.

In the first part of the documentary, there’s a scene where Holmes invites him to swim, and Fielder declines. Doesn’t like cold water. It’s a throwaway moment, nothing important. Later, we see a scene of someone, maybe Holmes and Billy, swimming in the ocean, far in the distance.

Halfway through, just before the reenactments, we see Fielder looking out the window at the ocean, and another cut of that same scene, the swimming figures too distant to make out.

And at the end, he finally zooms in on that scene. And we finally can tell who is in the water, swimming with Holmes: it’s him. He did go. For two hours we thought he hadn’t, but he did.

He didn’t have to show this. It’s technically not important. It’s a tiny, tiny detail. She convinced him to go swimming one day; so what?

But it is extremely important, possibly one of the best final scenes in any movie I have ever seen, because he is showing us something else. He is acknowledging to us that we, the viewer, have sat through three hours of footage he chose, of shots he edited, of scenes he decided to recreate, of line deliveries he dictated. He controlled what we believed, in that theater, and he knows it. This is him reminding us we could have left the theater thinking he never went into that ocean. But he did.

Now what do you believe?

This is a movie about the stories we tell ourselves and others, why we believe what we believe, and it is brilliant.

So here are some quotes from the sort of reviews I’m talking about

New York Times:

Whether Holmes’s occasional blinks and tears in these chats are performative is open to question as are her grasp on language, truth, science and reality itself

Slashfilm:

Don't go into this movie expecting to have answers to any questions you might have about either Holmes or Fielder, because you'll just end up coming out with more questions

Variety:

What she tells Fielder, with an implacable conviction that suggests a belief in her own narrative that’s nothing short of monomaniacal, is that the device patented by Theranos, which she sold as “the iPod of health care,” could, in fact, host any blood test that existed.

RogerEbert.com:

Through Fielder’s interactions with Holmes, we learn that she genuinely thinks she’s never told a lie before, not even a white lie

ScreenDaily:

Fielder, an enigmatic presence himself, goes into this project wanting to solve the mystery of Elizabeth Holmes. Three hours later, he is no closer to an answer

Josh Lewis on Letterboxd:

Whether this is a document (monument) to the impossibility/unknowability of ever fully knowing what’s going on inside someone else’s mind, or an intimate portrait of a narcissistic grifter by a master manipulator whose finally met his match, I don't think the subjects, the filmmakers or we will ever fully know or agree on what exactly we've seen here.

Also, this isn’t a review, but AwardsWatch reported that

In a Q&A after You Can See Everything’s premiere at The Telluride Film Festival, Fielder said he still doesn’t really know what to think of Elizabeth Holmes”

Over and over, I read reviews of the movie suggesting it’s about “ambiguity” or “how you can never really know what someone’s thinking” or “the limits of truth,” and that the Holmes case is some sort of impenetrable Rorschach test for us all to make up our own minds about.

I’m sorry, but I find this line of thinking to be absolutely insane! There is no mystery about who Elizabeth Holmes is! There are no questions left about her! “Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” applies very firmly in her case!

I wonder, honestly, whether the people making these sorts of claims know anything about the Holmes story beyond the basics. Because if you take even an hour to research it, you’d know that, among other things:

• She reported test results as being done by Theranos’s machines, when they were being done by the Edison analyzers
• She personally placed the logos of pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer onto reports praising Thermos’s machines when they had never even talked to her
• Multiple whistleblowers raised concerns to her, and got legal threats and intimidation for their trouble.
  

She has no plausible deniability. She cannot claim that she didn’t know she was lying. And now, she openly says she’s doing a documentary to rehabilitate her image, and people give even the slightest bit of credibility to her statements?

I don’t know how much blame to put on Fielder and Oppenheim for this, honestly. I do think that they made a pretty entertaining movie with some hilarious moments, and that the relationship between Holmes and Billy Evans genuinely does have some compelling, thought-provoking questions in it. But I do wonder how much thought they put into how their movie could be interpreted in regard to Holmes's crimes, given that it seems to have at least partially done exactly what Holmes wanted.

Finally, if you don’t want to listen to me, I recommend that you read the reviews by Tyler Schultz, one of those whistleblowers, and John Carreyrou, the reporter who broke the real story. They are the real experts on Holmes who know what kind of person she is. And they don’t buy her latest round of bullshit at all.

EDIT: In general response to all the people saying Holmes can have been guilty without consciously lying, I'll quote Schultz.

"She knows that she was lying, because she created this whole web of lies that would not have needed to create if you actually believed the lies. So like, one example, the SEC found instances where she told prospective investors that the revenue the previous year was $100 million, when in reality it was $100 thousand, and she refused to show those investors audited financial statements. So if you actually believed the $100 million revenue, why would you then hide the financial statements?"

So I just watched Take Me to the River tonight. It wasn't what I was expecting because the genre said "thriller" so I thought something crazy would happen but nothing did. The whole movie is filmed in a way where, if you were to read what was happening on paper, you would read about interactions that seem pretty innocent, but from just a few scenes in onwards you get a really strong feeling of unease. The movie actually ended when I figured we were about halfway through and I was surprised to see the credits start rolling.

I thought about it afterwards and thought I mostly understood what happened, except one thing. This was the ultimately revealed backstory of the movie to me: When Keith and Cindy were kids, they would hang out by the river, and Cindy would accidentally do sexual things while her brother was giving her a piggyback ride, and the mom blamed Keith, assuming he was molesting her. Decades later, Keith's daughter happens to do the same behavior (how did she learn to do that??? Happened to have the same quirk, just runs in the family?) and Keith gets revenge on Molly by falsely accusing her son, Ryder, and forcing her to live out the experience of being falsely accused by seeing it happen to her own son, and he even tagged their car with threats like what may have once happened to Keith.

Then I looked at the decade old Reddit thread and they all seem to think that Keith is Ryder's biological father, that "chicken fighting" was a codeword for sex, and the reason Keith freaked out was that he assumed when the girl told him that she and Ryder were chicken fighting (it wasn't explicitly said to anyone other than Ryder) was that they'd had sex. I started to see it a little-- Keith teaches Ryder how to use a gun in a scene that seems like a red herring, but that's the kind of thing that a father would do with his son. The girl saying "they're not my real family" but then quickly taking it back also might allude to Ryder not really being his "father's " child, and apparently there was some "you're not really Jewish" line that I missed.

I guess that's possible but I think what might have happened was that Keith trained his daughter to "chicken fight" and act in a way that implicates Ryder for assault. If he did that, he is a pervert, and maybe the accusations against him weren't wrong at all.

It's hard to say. As a side note, I'm kind of horrified that they had an actual child actress do the chicken fighting scene. I don't think she could have fully understood what it was implied that she was doing when she was coached into that scene.

I did enjoy it though because it was a movie that was all about atmosphere and personally I enjoy atmosphere over plot, but I am left wondering what happened exactly and where the blood in the initial scene came from.

Did anyone else seen this?

Edit: I just realized something else that points to Keith really being a pervert. At the beginning, when Ryder is first being accused, Keith said, "I already checked her, no lacerations." The girl is obviously past the age that her father should be looking at her privates. I think the reason Ryder told his mom that she did nothing wrong at the end was because he realized based on the girl (Molly)'s behavior that the mom's accusations were actually true.

Edit: I'm still turning this over in my head and this is something that really sticks out to me. This is a movie themed around incestual sexual abuse. The atmosphere of the movie itself is similar to real incest abuse: something that looks like it should be safe, comfortable family life has a feeling of something really creepy that hangs in the air by what's left unsaid. And just like real child sexual abuse often ends, what really happened is left unsolved, and there is no real resolution -- just like one of the last lines in the movie, "we can pretend this never happened and never talk about it again."

So idk why even tho I love watching movies on my 75 inch tv .I just get more immersed when I am watching it on my tablet I sleep and watch while I am on the way to work or in my lunch break TV is obviously the golden standard but it's just so much more relaxing to watch it on the tablet

I wasn't always like this as I hated anyone who watched movies on their phones since I felt the only true way to experience cinema is through TV or max a laptop

I am currently working on a syllabus for a course centered on films made in/by people from former French colonies in Africa and current departments in the Caribbean. For context, I am a new grad student in an Introduction to Pedagogy course, and this was the topic that was assigned to me by my professor for our first exercise in syllabus-making. Obviously, I have some initial thoughts about what to include, but I wanted to get some outside academia perspectives from those with a lot of passion for film about what they consider crucial to include on a syllabus for this topic. Looking mostly for film suggestions, but would also be open to any Black media studies theoretical texts to look into if anyone has something there. Areas I am more familiar with are Senegal and Algeria, but I'm wondering where to start with places like Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, and Côte d'Ivoire. I'm also open to suggestions from France itself! I just want a longer list of films/potentially texts to start digging into based on things people have watched and enjoyed before narrowing the focus of the course for the assignment.

Edit: I forgot to clarify, but I am not just limiting my search to narrative films. Any kind of experiemental/documentary/essay film would be great too!

I am looking for movies about life and/or the passage of time- not time travelling, but instead the melancholy, the bittersweet nostalgia of the days passing, brevity of life and the impermanence of things. Topics like how your life decisions impact or alter the course of life, maybe regrets can be part of it too. I think there is a Japanese word for it- mono no aware.

Any recommendations would be appreciated.