The Movie Thread

I rewatched a doc I had seen many years ago called 'Crumb' about an underground artist named Robert Crumb and his brothers.

What was really interesting about this movie was that the three brothers depicted all seemed mentally ill and sexually obsessed, but one of them (Robert) had managed to parlay this sickness into artistic success and all the worldly gains that come with that. Meanwhile the other two (also artistically talented) brothers had similar hang ups but were basically total outcasts to society.

The movie seems to have this subtext that you can use your perversions as fuel to success if mixed with the right temperament and work ethic. Although it doesn't really go into detail on this somewhat interesting idea and you're left to infer exactly how Robert managed to do this while the others could not.

It appears that the Crumb brothers had a somewhat domineering father who was distant and then a completely smothering devouring mother. This appears to be a powerful concoction that creates weak willed or depressed men. Without a strong masculine role model to help them combat the over-protective mother, it can be very tricky to escape and reach any kind of healthy maturity. Indeed in the movie the eldest brother Charles Crumb has completely withdrawn from society and lives at home with his mother until his suicide. In my opinion even the 'success' Robert is completely controlled by his obsession/addiction' to women and just because he achieved artistic success doesn't mean he's a psychologically healthy or rounded individual.

Having recently been somewhat interested in heroes journey archetypes I couldn't help but consider this in relation to the brothers and the 'plot' of this documentary. You see the young Crumb turns to older Charles as a mentor who he eventually surpasses as he uses his art to attain fame, fortune and women while his 'mentor' is stuck at home on anti-depressants. What needs to be overcome are the overbearing parents and once this foe is defeated comes the women and ultimately family in the case of Robert. I think the resonance of the movie is that it shows different stages of being beaten by and also beating the same psychological conflicts all within one family to different degrees by each brother.

The thing is that Charles comes across as a great 'character' in the movie with a sense of humour and articulate nature. I never really forgot the part of the movie showing a comic Charles had written which started off as some child like Treasure Island piece which slowly disintegrates alongside the artist's mind into just nonsensical unreadable lines.

What I gleam from this movie is that the lines between worldly success and complete failure and death, are closer than we may think.
 
RedLagoon said:
I guess it's no coincidence to have the "Joker" play as Napoleon.
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It was the worst casting decision I've seen in a while. You refer to Joaquin as "Joker" but he acts like Joker throughout the whole movie. Doesn't even make an attempt at sounding French or like Napoleon. You hear his dialogue and imagine him saying "all I have are negative thoughts" as the joker. De Niro did a lot of training and voice training to sound like Travis Bickle, and you don't even think about Travis on any of his other movies, or Tony Montana on an Al Pacino movie.
The worst part of Napoleon is Napoleon himself, thanks to this choice. All you have left with the movie are the cuck jokes about Josefine, which the audience at my theater laughed and commented at many times. And historically inaccurate CGI battles cherry picked to show that Napoleon is a bad leader.
 
I watched 'Nefarious' after seeing it mentioned quite often.

The basic premise is that a psychologist is to see if a serial killer can be signed off as sane for execution. However, this convict states that he is posessed by a demon and that the psychologist will commit 3 murders of his own.

What ultimately happens is that over the course of this movie there are theological discussions as well as a light being shone on sin that has been normalized in the West. I liked how the demon explain how through a series of smaller actions saying 'yes' that demonic influence can insidiously damage the individual. To be honest just being made to actually think about morality makes this movie an achievement when compared to the majority of films that either glamorize decadence or completely distract from real evil with over the top cartoon villains.

Despite the heavy moral themes, the movie has a thriller plot that leaves you feeling on edge as to what might happen as we learn the demon's horrifying scheme.

Sadly, there is a coda to the movie that undoes a lot of the work built up earlier. In my opinion the ambiguity and uncertainty created by the story was actually more disturbing than trying to explain everything and show to the viewer what was actually true.

What I liked in this movie is that it gives you this genuine sense of unease and makes one really consider the existence of evil rather than trying to rationalise it or put it in some of grey areas as is so common no idea (or indeed even glorify it).

The psychologist is supposed to be a surrogate for the audience yet I suppose one problem with this for the critics (aside from the Christian themes) is that it's pretty clear the writers have contempt for his worldview. The movie ends up being an attack on it's own protagonist. To be fair, he does go through a transformation but it all happens off screen and very much at the end of the movie.

That being said I don't necessarily mind films that have unlikeable protagonists. Yet it might have been more effective for some if they'd cast an actor with less of a smugness about him. Maybe some sort of plot contrivance where he was a greener psychologist. Also it might have helped the movie to make the 'murders' done by the psychologist a little more sympathetic. Just these subtle changes I think would have at least changed the critical reaction a little.
 
God's lonely asperger said:
It was the worst casting decision I've seen in a while. You refer to Joaquin as "Joker" but he acts like Joker throughout the whole movie. Doesn't even make an attempt at sounding French or like Napoleon. You hear his dialogue and imagine him saying "all I have are negative thoughts" as the joker. De Niro did a lot of training and voice training to sound like Travis Bickle, and you don't even think about Travis on any of his other movies, or Tony Montana on an Al Pacino movie.
The worst part of Napoleon is Napoleon himself, thanks to this choice. All you have left with the movie are the cuck jokes about Josefine, which the audience at my theater laughed and commented at many times. And historically inaccurate CGI battles cherry picked to show that Napoleon is a bad leader.
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Just one thing I have to pick out of what you say - I hate when actors put on an accent when portraying someone who wasnt an english speaker. We know, for example, that Harrison Ford is portraying a Russian submarine commander in K-19, he doesnt have to put on a russian accent to sell it to us. He can speak english (even american) and we can still get it.

One of the best ways I have seen this done is the opening of Hunt for Red October, where the submarines officers are talking and one reads a passage from the bible. During the bible reading the language just changes from russian to english and from then on everyone can speak english. Including Sean Connery, whose english comes from somewhere north of Hadrian's wall.

 
Cuchulainn said:
Just one thing I have to pick out of what you say - I hate when actors put on an accent when portraying someone who wasnt an english speaker. We know, for example, that Harrison Ford is portraying a Russian submarine commander in K-19, he doesnt have to put on a russian accent to sell it to us. He can speak english (even american) and we can still get it.

One of the best ways I have seen this done is the opening of Hunt for Red October, where the submarines officers are talking and one reads a passage from the bible. During the bible reading the language just changes from russian to english and from then on everyone can speak english. Including Sean Connery, whose english comes from somewhere north of Hadrian's wall.

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It isn't even the English speaker thing. There was just no attempt at anything. The only French spoken in the movie is on one or two scenes about the revolution.

My example of De Niro's accent wasn't even an English thing, it was more as in the accent that a military veteran with PTSD living in New York would have.
 
God's lonely asperger said:
It isn't even the English speaker thing. There was just no attempt at anything. The only French spoken in the movie is on one or two scenes about the revolution.

My example of De Niro's accent wasn't even an English thing, it was more as in the accent that a military veteran with PTSD living in New York would have.
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Yeah, I have no problem with everyone portraying Napoleonic-era french people speaking english without french accents. Its made for an english speaking audience.

If a french movie company made a movie about Wellington, I would expect that they would all speak french and not speak in english or english accented french as its for a french speaking market.

I just find it weird that they put on the accent of a foreign language when speaking english, I get it, the character you portray is french, this is an english language film, you dont need to put on an accent for me to get that Napoleon is french.

If I read The Three Musketeers, I dont read it with a french accent in my head.
 
I recently finished the Wellington and Napoleon Quartet of novels, by Simon Scarrow. I have a few criticisms of Scarrow's writing style, but overall I found the books very good, and I learned a lot about Napoleon and Wellington.


These books presented Josephine as a cheating slut too, and showed Napoleon having a lot of angst about it, although he was able to find various other women to console him.

However, I agree he was a brilliant general, and I had hoped the movie would present this. Besides being a brilliant general, he implemented numerous civil reforms that greatly modernized the areas he conquered. On the other hand, he really does appear to have been fairly blood thirsty and thoughtlessly cruel. I would have liked the movie to show all of this complexity in his life, with a good dose of large scale battle action.

I doubt I'll see it now, based on the reviews.
 
Got The Prince of Egypt in 4K during the Black Friday sale. I skimmed through the film not expecting a difference from the various VHS, DVD, and BluRay releases over the years but I was blown away by how good the film looks. I felt like I was in the theater watching it for the first time. Highly recommended.

If you've never seen the film, you are missing out. It is easily the best DreamWorks film.
 
Just learned the Singin' in the Rain scene in A Clockwork Orange was improvised.
The song fits in extremely well. Alex genuinely equates rape and violence to an innocent song about singing in the rain. According to Malcolm, Kubrick was overjoyed at the improvisation song.
I wonder what the copyright agency thought he was going to do with rights to the song.
 
God's lonely asperger said:
Just learned the Singin' in the Rain scene in A Clockwork Orange was improvised.
The song fits in extremely well. Alex genuinely equates rape and violence to an innocent song about singing in the rain. According to Malcolm, Kubrick was overjoyed at the improvisation song.
I wonder what the copyright agency thought he was going to do with rights to the song.
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"Yes, Hello, I'd like to purchase the rights to Singing in the Rain, for my upcoming movie". "Oh, that's so nice Mr. Kubrick! We're so happy to have you feature this classic movie song in your film." ;)







:oops:
 

^ Linked above is a ranked list of the top movies of 2023 according to Rotten Tomatoes.

Yes, I'm aware Rotten Tomatoes sucks, I'm just using it to highlight the ever-evolving zeitgeist of modern cultural decline.

It's absolutely awful. Endless horror gore/satanism, LGBTQ softcore porn, feminist female lead roles, identity politics, destruction of women/family, dark fantasy, denigration of masculinity, etc. Just madness.

This is the worst it's ever been. The tiny hat producers are really going all out these days. I used to be able to at least find a few gems back in the day using this list but now it's just full-fledged globohomo psyop slop.
 
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Wow, you're not kidding. I avoid most media now. Not only is it subversive, but it's flat out boring to boot. Only three of those films I've actually seen: Turtles and Spider-Man were objectively awful, not entertaining at all. John Wick 4 hadn't just jumped the shark, it was flying 30,000 metres overhead in a jumbo jet. I spent half the film laughing at how stupid it was. I liked the first 2 by the way, and 3 wasn't too bad.

The film industry/s is like modern art now, just a self perpetuating circle jerk with little value to the general public.
 
I went to see a national movie for the first time in a while. Was expecting trash to just pass the time, but MAN. What an astonishing movie!
Name of it is:

O Sequestro do Voo 375​

(kidnapping of flight 375, in direct translation).

It is about the kidnapping of that flight (who would have guessed?). The thing is that it was a pretty big deal at the time. I don't want to spoil anything since it's better if you don't understand what happened historically, but it was over politics. The president at the time was an extremely incompetent and bad guy (he supported Lula in the last election, as well), and the guy who kidnapped the flight was a black Brazilian from Manaus (very poor city in the north) who was struggling with money and jobs.

Follows both the pilots, the hijacker, and a few of the passengers. Thrilling movie, even knowing the story. I did not get bored at any point in it. Audience when I went also loved it.
It lacks professional Hollywood tier CGI and camera-work, but that's to be expected. It did what it had to do perfectly.

LEFTY STATUS:​

Non-existent. They got every race on the historical plane right. No shoe-horned black characters. It's what you'd expect from a Brazilian airplane going to the capital.

The furthest you can go is the motivations of the black guy doing a proto-9/11. His story is told fairly. He was a very poor guy who did a lot of hard work for his family (it takes way too much for me to say this about a black guy in my country), but he is also shown as INSANE and killed a guy and almost everyone in the plane.
There is a scene where he is offered one basic bean bag food type deal in exchange for the entire plane, which made people laugh. That's about how it went. VASP was just that bad, seeing as they let a revolver get in willy nilly.
The president he wanted to kill was bad, like I said before. He tried to shoot down the plane with 100 people using a hunter plane. He wasn't even left or right wing, just corrupt to the core. He took power to "redemocratize" Brazil after the military dictatorship. Ruined the currency, ruined jobs, ruined hiring. The black guy was just one of the more direct victims.

I strongly recommend watching it, if anyone even cares about national movies.
I got it with free tickets from a bank, by the way. Also how I watched Napoleon.



(I didn't like the trailer much at first watch)
 
I saw “The Boy and the Heron” on Friday. It’s a Hayao Miyazaki film from Studio Ghibli. It did not disappoint. It could likely be his final film, and if it is it’s a fitting end to his career, but I’m still hoping for another. It’s been 10 years since “The Wind Rises”-which was supposed to be his last work. Some of his other films are in my top 10 and I re-watch them every year but I didn’t love that film. That’s a whole other subject, and I’ll have to watch it again one of these days, but it felt more like an epilogue than a real concluding chapter. This new film is the opposite of that. Many viewers are interpreting it as an allegory for Miyazaki’s life, career etc-maybe even Studio Ghibli itself.

It takes place in Japan during WWII and focuses on a boy grieving the loss of his mother. He meets a strange Grey Heron who can speak and goes on an adventure. I won’t say much more than that but if you liked Miyazaki’s previous work you should like this. It’s a bit dark and has some heavy themes, so maybe not the best for younger kids but older ones would probably appreciate it. It’s certainly better than anything Disney puts out nowadays. That’s a bit ironic since they were once Ghibli’s US distributor.

Bonus: I’d give it an absolute 0 on the wokeness scale. Japan is really killing it this holiday season, I’m told that the new Godzilla they made is excellent. If I manage to see it I’ll post about it here.
 
TrainedLogosmotion said:

^ Linked above is a ranked list of the top movies of 2023 according to Rotten Tomatoes.

Yes, I'm aware Rotten Tomatoes sucks, I'm just using it to highlight the ever-evolving zeitgeist of modern cultural decline.

It's absolutely awful. Endless horror gore/satanism, LGBTQ softcore porn, feminist female lead roles, identity politics, destruction of women/family, dark fantasy, denigration of masculinity, etc. Just madness.

This is the worst it's ever been. The tiny hat producers are really going all out these days. I used to be able to at least find a few gems back in the day using this list but now it's just full-fledged globohomo psyop slop.
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True but it's becoming char now that the 2023 movie season will be remembered as probably the worst in Hollywood's history. The studios are losing money hand over fist. Plus alternative studios and production firms are quickly springing up now. It’s just a matter of time now until reality reverts things beck to a reasonable mean.
 
Just heard about Jordan Peele making a game with Hideo Kojima. His movies are hilariously bad. I watched one of them at the end of high school days, and the only purpose it served was watching E;R's video on it where he just complains about the movie and me going "WAIT THAT'S THE ONE I WATCHED!".



Peele unapologetically hates white people, and his movies almost always are either 99% black casts or 1% white villains. Not to mention that they're horrible.
The movie I talked about earlier in particular is entirely compromised of metaphors and symbolism, as he says in the video. I kind of feel bad for the people I heard saying they spent hours analyzing the plot and deep meaning of the movie ("muh we are Americans"), but they probably had more fun with that than I did laughing at the movie.
 
God's lonely asperger said:
Just heard about Jordan Peele making a game with Hideo Kojima. His movies are hilariously bad. I watched one of them at the end of high school days, and the only purpose it served was watching E;R's video on it where he just complains about the movie and me going "WAIT THAT'S THE ONE I WATCHED!".



Peele unapologetically hates white people, and his movies almost always are either 99% black casts or 1% white villains. Not to mention that they're horrible.
The movie I talked about earlier in particular is entirely compromised of metaphors and symbolism, as he says in the video. I kind of feel bad for the people I heard saying they spent hours analyzing the plot and deep meaning of the movie ("muh we are Americans"), but they probably had more fun with that than I did laughing at the movie.
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I only saw Get Out and thought it was clever in its satire but not something I particularly enjoyed, not enough to try his later films. I will say him using all black casts doesn't bother me... that's how it should be, instead of browbeating white directors to make diverse casts just let black directors make black movies. Although frankly Peele in my eyes did better with Key & Peele than he has with his increasingly pretentious feature film output.

Kojima has been jumping the shark since Death Stranding alas so not terribly surprised to hear about this.
 
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