So how is Ip Man 1 so good and the rest such hot garbage. Doesn't Donny Yen know what he's doing?
Logic dictates that Ip Man 1 is not actually good. It's the only way this all makes sense.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I don't know what happened to Paul Thomas Anderson. Magnolia's one of my favorite films ever... every single film he's done since is amazingly well made, but just plain depressing, with despicable characters. I think it's time he stopped writing and stuck to directing. (Referring to The Master here, and if not for having the late great Phillip Seymour Hoffman, I wouldn't care one bit.)
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
So how is Ip Man 1 so good and the rest such hot garbage. Doesn't Donny Yen know what he's doing?
The first movie came out in 2008, and was a Hong Kong movie first and foremost. It all has to do with the control of mainland China over the Hong Kong cinema. Hong Kong was always influenced by the west and their style of filmmaking, and even after returning to chinese control in 1997 their films were allowed to maintain that look and influence, mainly because China was still growing and focused on economic momentum compared to entertainment. They had like, Yao Ming and that was cool for them. Plus China allowed Hong Kong to remain autonomous.
Then their economic boom happens in the '00s, and there is a realization with how much influence films can have on people. And money. And a billion people need to be controlled, and not shown how super swick the west is with their thoughts of rugged individualism and having multiple kids. So they start clamping down more on Hong Kong cinema in subtle ways, pulling all the talent to Beijing, giving them all this money to tell movies that the state deems worthy to tell. And their list of demands seems to grow more and more, diminishing the freedom and basic filmmaking techniques and efficiency known for years in exchange for ADD moments of confusion and quick cuts followed by constant reassurance that China is the best or contributing to saving the day. Bad CGI crops up more and more because why spend more money cleaning up the CGI when you can just spew more and more onscreen instead? It's Star Wars prequels when it comes to some of their movies now, usually about ancient queens or warlords or something that again reflects how great China was.
Really, the last good mainland chinese film I've seen was Let The Bullets Fly, a film that largely hangs on the old Hong Kong cast and crew to make a decent mandarin film (and a movie where the translator should get an award because they were able to keep up with the dialogue and carry over the jokes without missing a beat). And that's a 6 year old movie. It's been an almost immediate shift in quality since 2010, and now that they've bought western studios like MGM or Legendary Pictures or done big deals like investing 250 million into 20th Century Fox and Universal (each!) for new films (of which that Huntsman flop that just came out was one of), they're going to just exacerbate the problems western blockbusters have yet to fix.
Watch any movie by a known Hong Kong actor from the 90's or early '00s, like Donnie Yen or Stephen Chow (Flash Point and Shaolin Soccer), and then watch something from the past year or so (Ip Man 3 or Journey To the West), that puts it into perspective. Wisdom is actively being lost in chinese films these days instead of gained and it's scary as hell brahs.
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ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
Saw 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Wasn't really a big fan of Cloverfield, so I'd intended to give this one a pass... but saw it got some good ratings... and then looked at it a bit closer, seeing it was set up as more of a character driven thriller or some such. I am game for that! So went to see it.
I loved the movie over all... except the ending. It really kind of took a dump on the movie that was going so well otherwise.
I don't care that there were aliens... it fits with the rest of the movie. But the "climax" of the movie was already reached... she got past Howard and made her escape.
THAT was the ultimate conflict, the payoff, the moment built to by the entire movie. It was her character finally confronting the issue head on instead of running as she always had in the past.
We should have seen her come out of the bunker, rip the suit, get into the dead ladies car and then drive off to eventually cut to her driving down the road like they did at the end where we see her listening to the news and finding out that... holy shit it was actually an alien invasion. The rest of the action movie bullshit with the xeno-dog and vaginaship were just completely useless to the movie at best, and detracted from it at worst.
I liked the fact that
You can be a crazy nutjob but also not wrong about the whole end of the world scenario. And John Goodman was creepy as hell.
Exactly... I had no issues with what was going on, just the specifics of how they chose to present it in the end.
Up until that last part it was great. Even parts of it were fine... it's just that bit where it decided to be a scene from Independence Day or something similar that were just wildly out of place.
But the rest? Yeah, I loved seeing how Goodman played Howard. He was awkward and creepy, yet often seeming nice and friendly. It really left you uncertain about what kind of person he really was for most of the movie.
It's what the people (TM) want. It has to be done to avoid endless complaints about not showing the good stuff.
You're not wrong about it being the weakest part of the film, but it's something we've brought on ourselves.
Nah, I think the ending was specifically to subvert expectations.
Nobody watches a semi obscure small scale thriller with a cast of three people set entirely in a single home, and expects that the end is going to turn into War of the Worlds. I was expecting that she came out and either saw something ambiguous that implied aliens, or else saw some minor thing that confirmed aliens, because that is how such movies always end.
The movie shifting gears like it did was great because you didn't see it coming, and it made the payoff at the end, when she just goes "fuck it" and heads for the safe zone more satisfying.
I thought it was a great capstone on a great movie.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
It Follows (Showtime) aka Don't Have Sex In Detroit was a good movie. The kind of movie where you see it once and never need to see it again. The actual It Following part was really good and perfectly creepy, and more than anything I was surprised with how well it followed the rules of the monster that it set forth because that's something most people will just go fuck you audience. It takes a while to show all the things you're thinking about for the first half, wondering the scope of the story, which isn't really helped by how it drags out some of the more normal stuff and conversations in this little hipster bubble, but by the end you realize everything, even why the opening turned out the way it did.
My only real complaints has nothing to do with the horror aspect here but the setting. It's this world where everything looks 70's and people still have boob tube TV's with rabbit ears and all the major cars shown are old, but then you have one of the supporting characters looking up a short story on her clamshell phone-that's-really-a-pocket-mirror-shut-up-audience. It's one thing to just have this old and dated look, but they didn't even try and lampshade things like why no one is looking up this monster on the internet, and just barely threw something out regarding everyone's parents not freaking out. The acting was good from everyone but the Nice Guy (TM) friend and the music worked for most of the movie.
So yeah, everyone was saying it's good, I agree. Twenty minutes too long but it does a lot of original creepiness to it to forgive that sin. Also kudos for going R with this, it actually makes the monster more creepy with that freed up, but in a more subtle way (ie appropriate nudity)
I loved the setting. It was a world out of time, was more interesting than putting it in a specific era, and the timelessness will make it age better, too.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Saw 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Wasn't really a big fan of Cloverfield, so I'd intended to give this one a pass... but saw it got some good ratings... and then looked at it a bit closer, seeing it was set up as more of a character driven thriller or some such. I am game for that! So went to see it.
I loved the movie over all... except the ending. It really kind of took a dump on the movie that was going so well otherwise.
I don't care that there were aliens... it fits with the rest of the movie. But the "climax" of the movie was already reached... she got past Howard and made her escape.
THAT was the ultimate conflict, the payoff, the moment built to by the entire movie. It was her character finally confronting the issue head on instead of running as she always had in the past.
We should have seen her come out of the bunker, rip the suit, get into the dead ladies car and then drive off to eventually cut to her driving down the road like they did at the end where we see her listening to the news and finding out that... holy shit it was actually an alien invasion. The rest of the action movie bullshit with the xeno-dog and vaginaship were just completely useless to the movie at best, and detracted from it at worst.
I liked the fact that
You can be a crazy nutjob but also not wrong about the whole end of the world scenario. And John Goodman was creepy as hell.
Exactly... I had no issues with what was going on, just the specifics of how they chose to present it in the end.
Up until that last part it was great. Even parts of it were fine... it's just that bit where it decided to be a scene from Independence Day or something similar that were just wildly out of place.
But the rest? Yeah, I loved seeing how Goodman played Howard. He was awkward and creepy, yet often seeming nice and friendly. It really left you uncertain about what kind of person he really was for most of the movie.
It's what the people (TM) want. It has to be done to avoid endless complaints about not showing the good stuff.
You're not wrong about it being the weakest part of the film, but it's something we've brought on ourselves.
Nah, I think the ending was specifically to subvert expectations.
Nobody watches a semi obscure small scale thriller with a cast of three people set entirely in a single home, and expects that the end is going to turn into War of the Worlds. I was expecting that she came out and either saw something ambiguous that implied aliens, or else saw some minor thing that confirmed aliens, because that is how such movies always end.
The movie shifting gears like it did was great because you didn't see it coming, and it made the payoff at the end, when she just goes "fuck it" and heads for the safe zone more satisfying.
I thought it was a great capstone on a great movie.
But it went on for evvvvvvvveerrrrrr. Seriously, they could have cut the runtime of the stuff outside the bunker in half and the film would have been better for it.
Saw 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Wasn't really a big fan of Cloverfield, so I'd intended to give this one a pass... but saw it got some good ratings... and then looked at it a bit closer, seeing it was set up as more of a character driven thriller or some such. I am game for that! So went to see it.
I loved the movie over all... except the ending. It really kind of took a dump on the movie that was going so well otherwise.
I don't care that there were aliens... it fits with the rest of the movie. But the "climax" of the movie was already reached... she got past Howard and made her escape.
THAT was the ultimate conflict, the payoff, the moment built to by the entire movie. It was her character finally confronting the issue head on instead of running as she always had in the past.
We should have seen her come out of the bunker, rip the suit, get into the dead ladies car and then drive off to eventually cut to her driving down the road like they did at the end where we see her listening to the news and finding out that... holy shit it was actually an alien invasion. The rest of the action movie bullshit with the xeno-dog and vaginaship were just completely useless to the movie at best, and detracted from it at worst.
I liked the fact that
You can be a crazy nutjob but also not wrong about the whole end of the world scenario. And John Goodman was creepy as hell.
Exactly... I had no issues with what was going on, just the specifics of how they chose to present it in the end.
Up until that last part it was great. Even parts of it were fine... it's just that bit where it decided to be a scene from Independence Day or something similar that were just wildly out of place.
But the rest? Yeah, I loved seeing how Goodman played Howard. He was awkward and creepy, yet often seeming nice and friendly. It really left you uncertain about what kind of person he really was for most of the movie.
It's what the people (TM) want. It has to be done to avoid endless complaints about not showing the good stuff.
You're not wrong about it being the weakest part of the film, but it's something we've brought on ourselves.
Nah, I think the ending was specifically to subvert expectations.
Nobody watches a semi obscure small scale thriller with a cast of three people set entirely in a single home, and expects that the end is going to turn into War of the Worlds. I was expecting that she came out and either saw something ambiguous that implied aliens, or else saw some minor thing that confirmed aliens, because that is how such movies always end.
The movie shifting gears like it did was great because you didn't see it coming, and it made the payoff at the end, when she just goes "fuck it" and heads for the safe zone more satisfying.
I thought it was a great capstone on a great movie.
Hmm, I guess my expectations were different. And perhaps influenced by my general opinion on such things. I agree that the ending was well done. It's more that they had an uphill battle having it be as good as the rest of the movie.
It's the culmination of character arc. She's demonstrated to be resourceful in the first 10 minutes of the movie, but she has her fear of confrontation. By the end of the movie she's resourceful and brave, moving her from merely being a final girl into being a legitimate protagonist and - perhaps - soon to be hero.
But the tonal shift after she comes out of the bunker is jarring. While I was mostly able to roll with it, I can understand why not everyone was.
So how is Ip Man 1 so good and the rest such hot garbage. Doesn't Donny Yen know what he's doing?
The first movie came out in 2008, and was a Hong Kong movie first and foremost. It all has to do with the control of mainland China over the Hong Kong cinema. Hong Kong was always influenced by the west and their style of filmmaking, and even after returning to chinese control in 1997 their films were allowed to maintain that look and influence, mainly because China was still growing and focused on economic momentum compared to entertainment. They had like, Yao Ming and that was cool for them. Plus China allowed Hong Kong to remain autonomous.
Then their economic boom happens in the '00s, and there is a realization with how much influence films can have on people. And money. And a billion people need to be controlled, and not shown how super swick the west is with their thoughts of rugged individualism and having multiple kids. So they start clamping down more on Hong Kong cinema in subtle ways, pulling all the talent to Beijing, giving them all this money to tell movies that the state deems worthy to tell. And their list of demands seems to grow more and more, diminishing the freedom and basic filmmaking techniques and efficiency known for years in exchange for ADD moments of confusion and quick cuts followed by constant reassurance that China is the best or contributing to saving the day. Bad CGI crops up more and more because why spend more money cleaning up the CGI when you can just spew more and more onscreen instead? It's Star Wars prequels when it comes to some of their movies now, usually about ancient queens or warlords or something that again reflects how great China was.
Really, the last good mainland chinese film I've seen was Let The Bullets Fly, a film that largely hangs on the old Hong Kong cast and crew to make a decent mandarin film (and a movie where the translator should get an award because they were able to keep up with the dialogue and carry over the jokes without missing a beat). And that's a 6 year old movie. It's been an almost immediate shift in quality since 2010, and now that they've bought western studios like MGM or Legendary Pictures or done big deals like investing 250 million into 20th Century Fox and Universal (each!) for new films (of which that Huntsman flop that just came out was one of), they're going to just exacerbate the problems western blockbusters have yet to fix.
Watch any movie by a known Hong Kong actor from the 90's or early '00s, like Donnie Yen or Stephen Chow (Flash Point and Shaolin Soccer), and then watch something from the past year or so (Ip Man 3 or Journey To the West), that puts it into perspective. Wisdom is actively being lost in chinese films these days instead of gained and it's scary as hell brahs.
i am so glad that my gradual move away from asian cinema wasn't just me becoming jaded and bored. i felt like the quality was declining rapidly but i couldn't figure out why.
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ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
Saw 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Wasn't really a big fan of Cloverfield, so I'd intended to give this one a pass... but saw it got some good ratings... and then looked at it a bit closer, seeing it was set up as more of a character driven thriller or some such. I am game for that! So went to see it.
I loved the movie over all... except the ending. It really kind of took a dump on the movie that was going so well otherwise.
I don't care that there were aliens... it fits with the rest of the movie. But the "climax" of the movie was already reached... she got past Howard and made her escape.
THAT was the ultimate conflict, the payoff, the moment built to by the entire movie. It was her character finally confronting the issue head on instead of running as she always had in the past.
We should have seen her come out of the bunker, rip the suit, get into the dead ladies car and then drive off to eventually cut to her driving down the road like they did at the end where we see her listening to the news and finding out that... holy shit it was actually an alien invasion. The rest of the action movie bullshit with the xeno-dog and vaginaship were just completely useless to the movie at best, and detracted from it at worst.
I liked the fact that
You can be a crazy nutjob but also not wrong about the whole end of the world scenario. And John Goodman was creepy as hell.
Exactly... I had no issues with what was going on, just the specifics of how they chose to present it in the end.
Up until that last part it was great. Even parts of it were fine... it's just that bit where it decided to be a scene from Independence Day or something similar that were just wildly out of place.
But the rest? Yeah, I loved seeing how Goodman played Howard. He was awkward and creepy, yet often seeming nice and friendly. It really left you uncertain about what kind of person he really was for most of the movie.
It's what the people (TM) want. It has to be done to avoid endless complaints about not showing the good stuff.
You're not wrong about it being the weakest part of the film, but it's something we've brought on ourselves.
Nah, I think the ending was specifically to subvert expectations.
Nobody watches a semi obscure small scale thriller with a cast of three people set entirely in a single home, and expects that the end is going to turn into War of the Worlds. I was expecting that she came out and either saw something ambiguous that implied aliens, or else saw some minor thing that confirmed aliens, because that is how such movies always end.
The movie shifting gears like it did was great because you didn't see it coming, and it made the payoff at the end, when she just goes "fuck it" and heads for the safe zone more satisfying.
I thought it was a great capstone on a great movie.
But it went on for evvvvvvvveerrrrrr. Seriously, they could have cut the runtime of the stuff outside the bunker in half and the film would have been better for it.
Was it really that long? It seemed like maybe 10 minutes, 15 tops. Maybe it was a bit gratuitous, but I was buying what they were selling, so I didn't mind.
Opinions!
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Nah, I think the ending was specifically to subvert expectations.
Nobody watches a semi obscure small scale thriller with a cast of three people set entirely in a single home, and expects that the end is going to turn into War of the Worlds. I was expecting that she came out and either saw something ambiguous that implied aliens, or else saw some minor thing that confirmed aliens, because that is how such movies always end.
The movie shifting gears like it did was great because you didn't see it coming, and it made the payoff at the end, when she just goes "fuck it" and heads for the safe zone more satisfying.
I thought it was a great capstone on a great movie.
Well, like I said. I didn't mind what they were selling. Just how they did it.
To use the selling analogy. Instead of a well done commercial, they put up an in your face billboard with giant neon letters and obnoxious flashing lights.
To elaborate...
It was a Cloverfield movie. I 100% expected the invasion to be real. Anyone who had seen the first Cloverfield and even remotely suspected there to be some relationship should have expected something of the sort.
It would have actually been more of a surprise had there been something else involved entirely.
But even with that. The alien part was absolutely fine with me in terms of plot.
But she took out a ship that had killed how many people now? And she took it out with a makeshift Molotov cocktail. I mean, come on... it was just so incredibly stupid and silly! It didn't fit the tone of the movie at all. It went from a serious thriller to Independence Day in the span of a couple minutes.
If she would have just ducked the gas, or maybe let her find a shotgun in his truck and take the xeno dog out with it before she gets on the road. That would have made it short, sweet, and WAY more sensible while still showing off the alien invasion in a very clear light. But more importantly it would have kept the tone of the movie intact without crossing into silly town.
Also:
She didn't go to the safe zone. She went towards the combat area where they were looking for anyone that could help. Safe was if she'd gone straight.
It Follows (Showtime) aka Don't Have Sex In Detroit was a good movie. The kind of movie where you see it once and never need to see it again. The actual It Following part was really good and perfectly creepy, and more than anything I was surprised with how well it followed the rules of the monster that it set forth because that's something most people will just go fuck you audience. It takes a while to show all the things you're thinking about for the first half, wondering the scope of the story, which isn't really helped by how it drags out some of the more normal stuff and conversations in this little hipster bubble, but by the end you realize everything, even why the opening turned out the way it did.
My only real complaints has nothing to do with the horror aspect here but the setting. It's this world where everything looks 70's and people still have boob tube TV's with rabbit ears and all the major cars shown are old, but then you have one of the supporting characters looking up a short story on her clamshell phone-that's-really-a-pocket-mirror-shut-up-audience. It's one thing to just have this old and dated look, but they didn't even try and lampshade things like why no one is looking up this monster on the internet, and just barely threw something out regarding everyone's parents not freaking out. The acting was good from everyone but the Nice Guy (TM) friend and the music worked for most of the movie.
So yeah, everyone was saying it's good, I agree. Twenty minutes too long but it does a lot of original creepiness to it to forgive that sin. Also kudos for going R with this, it actually makes the monster more creepy with that freed up, but in a more subtle way (ie appropriate nudity)
I loved the setting. It was a world out of time, was more interesting than putting it in a specific era, and the timelessness will make it age better, too.
I'd also add that It Follows lends itself extremely well to multiple viewings. There's a lot you'll miss just watching it once. There's a lot of subtlety in that movie.
Granted, I thought it was one of the top 3 movies from last year so I may be biased.
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RhalloTonnyOf the BrownlandsRegistered Userregular
Nah, I think the ending was specifically to subvert expectations.
Nobody watches a semi obscure small scale thriller with a cast of three people set entirely in a single home, and expects that the end is going to turn into War of the Worlds. I was expecting that she came out and either saw something ambiguous that implied aliens, or else saw some minor thing that confirmed aliens, because that is how such movies always end.
The movie shifting gears like it did was great because you didn't see it coming, and it made the payoff at the end, when she just goes "fuck it" and heads for the safe zone more satisfying.
I thought it was a great capstone on a great movie.
Well, like I said. I didn't mind what they were selling. Just how they did it.
To use the selling analogy. Instead of a well done commercial, they put up an in your face billboard with giant neon letters and obnoxious flashing lights.
To elaborate...
It was a Cloverfield movie. I 100% expected the invasion to be real. Anyone who had seen the first Cloverfield and even remotely suspected there to be some relationship should have expected something of the sort.
It would have actually been more of a surprise had there been something else involved entirely.
But even with that. The alien part was absolutely fine with me in terms of plot.
But she took out a ship that had killed how many people now? And she took it out with a makeshift Molotov cocktail. I mean, come on... it was just so incredibly stupid and silly! It didn't fit the tone of the movie at all. It went from a serious thriller to Independence Day in the span of a couple minutes.
If she would have just ducked the gas, or maybe let her find a shotgun in his truck and take the xeno dog out with it before she gets on the road. That would have made it short, sweet, and WAY more sensible while still showing off the alien invasion in a very clear light. But more importantly it would have kept the tone of the movie intact without crossing into silly town.
Also:
She didn't go to the safe zone. She went towards the combat area where they were looking for anyone that could help. Safe was if she'd gone straight.
This is the biggest problem surrounding the advertising/marketing of the movie.
If you're going to turn the word Cloverfield into some kind of catch-all for an anthology of movies tangentially related to aliens or weirdness, that's fine, but you have to actually tell people that. And distance yourself from the original movie of the same name that featured a giant creature causing some kind of apocalyptic event.
An equivalent of what they did was say "it's not a spoiler, but there's a guy that turns into a werewolf that's behind everything" before someone went in and saw Psycho. The entire runtime they're going to be thinking about that werewolf and any mystery that's presented, well, they'll always jump right to that idea of a werewolf.
Then at the end, they'll be surprised it wasn't a werewolf, but any mystery one might feel was already ruined because of an alternative spoiler that was, functionally, close enough.
And then they'll think "Why the hell did they tell me that? It's half-right, there was a guy, but why would someone tell me that?"
It's part marketing buzz and part structural similarities.
The original isn't REALLY about the monster, it's just the hook for the character driven story. 10 Cloverfield Lane is similar. They're basically feature length Twilight Zone episodes. (With less helicopter related fatalities)
I'd say that 10 Cloverfield Lane is a cross between: (Spoilers if you're familiar with The Twilight Zone. I suppose visa versa too.)
The Shelter and The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
gjaustin on
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RhalloTonnyOf the BrownlandsRegistered Userregular
It's part marketing buzz and part structural similarities.
The original isn't REALLY about the monster, it's just the hook for the character driven story. 10 Cloverfield Lane is similar. They're basically feature length Twilight Zone episodes. (With less helicopter related fatalities)
I'd say that 10 Cloverfield Lane is a cross between: (Spoilers if you're familiar with The Twilight Zone. I suppose visa versa too.
The Shelter and The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
Agreed and true to a certain extent, but at the same time The Twilight Zone was known anthology/episode of the week type show.
To the public who maybe don't follow this stuff as close as we do, this is kind of like making
10 Godzilla Lane and then having the last 10 minutes of the movie be about a new, entirely unrelated giant monster. The title carries baggage in the public consciousness,
especially for the people that want to "go to the movies" on some Saturday afternoon and choose from what's playing.
It's part marketing buzz and part structural similarities.
The original isn't REALLY about the monster, it's just the hook for the character driven story. 10 Cloverfield Lane is similar. They're basically feature length Twilight Zone episodes. (With less helicopter related fatalities)
I'd say that 10 Cloverfield Lane is a cross between: (Spoilers if you're familiar with The Twilight Zone. I suppose visa versa too.
The Shelter and The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
Agreed and true to a certain extent, but at the same time The Twilight Zone was known anthology/episode of the week type show.
To the public who maybe don't follow this stuff as close as we do, this is kind of like making
10 Godzilla Lane and then having the last 10 minutes of the movie be about a new, entirely unrelated giant monster. The title carries baggage in the public consciousness,
especially for the people that want to "go to the movies" on some Saturday afternoon and choose from what's playing.
That's a fair point.
But considering how well 10 Cloverfield Lane did with critics and with it's budget being fairly low, I'd expect a third movie. By then the problem should mostly go away.
Yeah I like Edward started to notice a general decline in the Chinese movies and I just kind of got bored with them. Korean film seems to be picking up the slack to an extent.
What's sad is when you have people like Jackie Chan out front spewing propaganda for the Chinese government.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Green Room. Ooof. Marketed as a thriller but probably closer to horror. Blue Ruin's director returns to ramp up his exquisite skill with the old ultraviolence. Masterfully shot and acted, the tension grabs hold and never lets go. I watch tons of horror and considered myself quite desensitized to violence but the mayhem in this film had me squirming. None of it is gratuitous, just hyper realistic and with enough character levity that there's an audible punch to your gut each time the blood splashes. I really feel like director Jeremy Saunier is saying something about violence with his movies, despite it's frequency and effect none of it is glorified (I'm looking at you Kingsman). If you have the stomach for it I highly recommend checking this one out.
Saw 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Wasn't really a big fan of Cloverfield, so I'd intended to give this one a pass... but saw it got some good ratings... and then looked at it a bit closer, seeing it was set up as more of a character driven thriller or some such. I am game for that! So went to see it.
I loved the movie over all... except the ending. It really kind of took a dump on the movie that was going so well otherwise.
I don't care that there were aliens... it fits with the rest of the movie. But the "climax" of the movie was already reached... she got past Howard and made her escape.
THAT was the ultimate conflict, the payoff, the moment built to by the entire movie. It was her character finally confronting the issue head on instead of running as she always had in the past.
We should have seen her come out of the bunker, rip the suit, get into the dead ladies car and then drive off to eventually cut to her driving down the road like they did at the end where we see her listening to the news and finding out that... holy shit it was actually an alien invasion. The rest of the action movie bullshit with the xeno-dog and vaginaship were just completely useless to the movie at best, and detracted from it at worst.
I liked the fact that
You can be a crazy nutjob but also not wrong about the whole end of the world scenario. And John Goodman was creepy as hell.
Exactly... I had no issues with what was going on, just the specifics of how they chose to present it in the end.
Up until that last part it was great. Even parts of it were fine... it's just that bit where it decided to be a scene from Independence Day or something similar that were just wildly out of place.
But the rest? Yeah, I loved seeing how Goodman played Howard. He was awkward and creepy, yet often seeming nice and friendly. It really left you uncertain about what kind of person he really was for most of the movie.
It's what the people (TM) want. It has to be done to avoid endless complaints about not showing the good stuff.
You're not wrong about it being the weakest part of the film, but it's something we've brought on ourselves.
Nah, I think the ending was specifically to subvert expectations.
Nobody watches a semi obscure small scale thriller with a cast of three people set entirely in a single home, and expects that the end is going to turn into War of the Worlds. I was expecting that she came out and either saw something ambiguous that implied aliens, or else saw some minor thing that confirmed aliens, because that is how such movies always end.
The movie shifting gears like it did was great because you didn't see it coming, and it made the payoff at the end, when she just goes "fuck it" and heads for the safe zone more satisfying.
I thought it was a great capstone on a great movie.
But it went on for evvvvvvvveerrrrrr. Seriously, they could have cut the runtime of the stuff outside the bunker in half and the film would have been better for it.
Was it really that long? It seemed like maybe 10 minutes, 15 tops. Maybe it was a bit gratuitous, but I was buying what they were selling, so I didn't mind.
Opinions!
Yes, it's my opinion that those ten or so minutes could have been halved.
ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
Oh, I completely misread the ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane. To be fair, I liked it better my way.
Regardless, the ending was a trick that will only work once. The next film will have to find a new way to be tricksy.
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Green Room. Ooof. Marketed as a thriller but probably closer to horror. Blue Ruin's director returns to ramp up his exquisite skill with the old ultraviolence. Masterfully shot and acted, the tension grabs hold and never lets go. I watch tons of horror and considered myself quite desensitized to violence but the mayhem in this film had me squirming. None of it is gratuitous, just hyper realistic and with enough character levity that there's an audible punch to your gut each time the blood splashes. I really feel like director Jeremy Saunier is saying something about violence with his movies, despite it's frequency and effect none of it is glorified (I'm looking at you Kingsman). If you have the stomach for it I highly recommend checking this one out.
I have been desperately trying to see this movie but have no means to do so. Nobody is showing it any where near me.
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RhalloTonnyOf the BrownlandsRegistered Userregular
Romantic movies have the worst sudden changes in film. Like there is a Robert Pattinson one where he dies on 9/11 at the end of the movie because fuck you.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Romantic movies have the worst sudden changes in film. Like there is a Robert Pattinson one where he dies on 9/11 at the end of the movie because fuck you.
I can't lie, while I have never seen the movie I always laugh when I remember that ending exists. I will not learn it's name , it is the "Surprise! 9/11" movie in my brain
Oh, I completely misread the ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane. To be fair, I liked it better my way.
Regardless, the ending was a trick that will only work once. The next film will have to find a new way to be tricksy.
Hmm, I think that if I'd interpreted it your way I would have left the movie angry. It's the culmination of her character arc.
I liked it because it was unexpected, but entirely realistic.
Like, the culmination of her arc is self determination and courage and whatever.... but then suddenly GIANT FUCKING VAGINA ALIENS, and it's entirely reasonable to go, "okay, yeah, fuck that, I'm done with this shit."
Apparently I should not write movies. :biggrin:
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So, yesterday I said I'd talk a little bit about how the historical context of Dazed and Confused, and the themes that the film presents, are interrelated. So, if you don't mind my sperging out, I'm about to drop another wall of text on you.
For those of you who don't know, or haven't seen it, D&C is a movie with a fairly simple setup. It takes place over the course of 24 hours in an apparently quiet, unremarkable town in Texas (implied, but never actually stated, to be somewhere around Austin). The day is May 28th, 1976. In other words, we're at the height of our bicentennial summer. Patriotic imagery and American flags are common sights throughout the film, as are the colors red, white, and blue. But the America of 1976 - or at least the 1976 as depicted in this movie - is one that, in our post-9/11, post-Obama, post-2012 world, is hardly recognizable.
It's easy to forget now, because not a few of us (including myself) were born after this era, but in the mid-1970s, by all appearances the counterculture had resoundingly won most of their battles in the previous decade. The 1960s were a time in which nearly everything about society was grounds for confrontation, especially between the young and old. Vicious battles - sometimes literal battles - were fought over integration, over the Vietnam war, over the legality of recreational drugs, over music, over movies, over clothes, and over sex. In the 60s, the forces of traditional institutional structures and authority constantly pushed back against the young. It was an era in which an 18-year-old boy could reasonably expect to get jumped, beaten, or kicked out of his house over the length of his hair.
Yet, somehow, through all that turmoil and literal bloodshed, those who sought to change society came out on top. Part of it, of course, was that all those traditional authorities - the government, the military, the news, and most especially that perennial object of adulation for would-be monarchists, the presidency - had all their crimes and banal evils laid bare for the public to see. How could the military command its traditional status when My Lai was on TV and draftees were known to frag lieutenants they thought would get them killed? How could the government command any sort of respect at all, after Watergate and the Pentagon Papers blew the lid off all the star-spangled bullshit and revealed its operators as little more than petty, lying thugs?
And, maybe there was something even simpler at play. You can only be scandalized and outraged over things for so long, after all. Most of the kids were smoking pot now, and had been for years, but people were starting to care a lot less. Most of them were openly interested in sex and alcohol and rock and roll, but none of these things generated the umbrage that they used to. The Beatles had generated a cultural firestorm only a few years previously, but someone looking back at it in '76 might have been hard pressed to remember why. Lots of those same "adults" who had gotten so outraged over those cultural battles less than a decade ago were now divorcing, having mid-life crises, taking up hobbies like hot-tubbing and swinging and primal screaming and new age religion. Even LBJ was growing his hair out.
In short, in this strange, betwixt-and-between era - post-Nixon, pre-Reagan - the values of the young seemed to have triumphed. But, it must be said, the "young" are never homogeneous, and there are always those who will look up to and identify with the values of their fathers, even if their fathers are now seated before them in a velour bathrobe and gold chain, even if they have been demonstrated to be liars and philanderers and hypocrites, even if the values they claim to uphold never really existed. And as the subsequent decade would prove, the forces of social conservativism and authority never truly died, or even retired; they had simply gone dormant.
The faces of authority, May 28th, 1976.
Which, of course, brings us to the actual fucking movie. This level of widespread institutional disaffection, its almost reflexive distrust and raised-eyebrow skepticism toward anybody who would try to tell you what to do, permeates most of the movie's small interior conflicts. This is not a movie about peace demonstrations or Black Power or Kent State; such things are barely even mentioned. But its general attitude and social setting couldn't exist without those events having transpired and - most crucially - without the underdogs in those conflicts having been retrospectively vindicated in a socially-recognized way.
This plays out in a lot of different ways, but it's always there, especially through the first half of the film. It's done most explicitly in the conflict over whether or not our nominal protagonist, Randall "Pink" Floyd (played by Jason London), signs a pledge sheet not to engage in drinking, illegal drug use, or any other activity that would prevent them from having a successful football year in the coming fall. Pink is fairly sharp for his age, and he realizes that what he is essentially being asked to do is to sign up in at least publicly affirming (if not actually following, as his best bro and fellow football player Don points out) good old-fashioned conservative lifestyles in opposition to the newer, long-haired, laid-back, blissed-out values of his pothead friends.
A more subtle, but definitely noticeable, way that this theme shows up is through the film's examination of the school's strange, arcane, and usually sadistic hazing rituals. A lot of people who see this movie wonder WTF is going on with all this hazing, since it seems extremely strange to those who never experienced it (it's apparently a regional thing, which I for one thankfully never experienced, although we did hear stories from prior generations of students even where I come from), and it seems so out-of-place in what is considered a party film. Even if stuff like this did go on, they wonder, why are we concerned about what's happening to all these poor eighth-graders? Yeah, it's terrible, but isn't our focus really on the new seniors and their coming-of-age?
There's a LOT going on with the hazing, some of which I intend to explore in my next post, especially as it relates to concepts of liminality and initiation (do I actually intend, you may be asking yourself, to bring Victor Turner into a discussion of a movie about high school kids having a party? Oh yes. Yes I do). But what I'd like to focus on here is how closely the movie tracks the (senior) character's attitudes toward the new, post-60s world they live in with how enthusiastically they embrace these hazing rituals. The hazing is, after all, the essence of tradition, and is passed down and carried out for the same reason most all traditions are. Why do the seniors treat the freshmen so abominably? Because that's what happened to them when they were freshmen. Because they always have.
So, you will notice people like Cole Hauser's Benny - a hulking redheaded defensive lineman with hair about as short as you could get away with in '76, who refuses to smoke pot, dislikes the local stoners (and the fact that his football buddy, Pink, is now hanging out with them), and seems very disaffected in this new post-Vietnam world - embraces the hazings enthusiastically and brutally. Don, who likes smoking weed as much as anybody but thinks Pink should sign the pledge sheet because really, who cares about shit like that, also engages in the hazing, but he's definitely not a sadist, and seems to feel obligated to take his victims under his wing afterward. Pink, who is clearly drifting away from the whole flag-and-football scene, thinks they kind of suck, and doesn't participate, but he doesn't outright criticize it. Our only real critical examination comes from the local crew of brainy intellectuals, especially Adam Goldberg's Mike, who approaches the whole thing like an anthropologist studying some other culture.*
This cultural conflict pops up occasionally elsewhere in the film, too, especially when Mike gets into it with a vicious greaser townie named Clint (Nicky Katt). Clint disparages Mike's intellect (calling him "Isaac Fucking Newton"), while Mike is furious at being harassed by such an obnoxious cro-magnon bully ("a super-dominant male in a fifties greaser uniform"). It's always simmering under the surface, even if it doesn't come right out with it most of the time.
In short, Dazed and Confused takes place in a world where it had become acceptable, even expected, to question or even ridicule the sacred values of the previous generation. It exists in a liminal time when the nation had been reborn out of a period of significant cultural strife, and had yet to decide what it stood for, what rules (if any) it would choose to follow, and just who the hell it was.
Which, of course, makes it a perfect setting for examining the perennial concerns of adolescent human beings. In my next post, I intend to examine the ways in which the teenagers of the film essentially exist in a world of their own creation, in which they are trying, and often failing, to create a meaningful interior culture.
*A notable exception to this are the characters of the drug dealer, Pickford, and professional stoner Slater (Rory Cochrane). They're definitely along the un-conservative side of the spectrum - Benny and Ben Affleck's O'Bannion hate Slater in particular - but they have no problem whatsoever with the hazing and Pickford actually looks for some kids to haze at one point. My explanation for this is that Pickford is kind of just a stuck-up prick, and that Slater is just a follower and sort of a douche.
Yep, I need to watch that movie again. It's been a good 20 years or so. I bet my perspective had changed!
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I remember watching it as a kid and wondering if the pledge was basically a nicer, less obnoxious way of alluding to the draft that took place a few years earlier, and also being a way to give the teens, who now no longer have to worry about fighting in a war, an excuse to still rage against the machine with all the sound a fury of idiotic teenagers. I think Linkedinletter did a good job of both showing the kids concerns for wanting freedom while also showing they're more than likely just idiots too, even the Woodward & Bernstein team (like when Adam Goldberg thought he knew how to game the system with regards to a fight at a party and then the other guy stabbed him in the chest while going shhhhh, shhhhhh).
I guess what I'm saying fam is that D&C is one of those movies that can speak to you at the different stages in your life without also shitting on those various ages at the same time.
One thing that is perhaps worth noting is that, according to Linklater, the pledge sheet was not a part of the original script. It was added at the behest of some studio dudes who looked at what he had written and said, "You have to put in at least of a fig leaf of a plot in here or we're not going to fund this."
I don't really think the pledge sheet changes too much overall, but I do think it makes some of the film's implicit themes a little more explicit. It also gives the characters something to bounce off of and react to. I think it probably improved the film, honestly - unlike a lot of suit-mandated script changes in movie history.
Romantic movies have the worst sudden changes in film. Like there is a Robert Pattinson one where he dies on 9/11 at the end of the movie because fuck you.
On the one hand, that's a horrible thing to do to a romance film (although romantic stories ending in tragedy are certainly not a recent invention).
On the other hand, it illustrates the different texture and quality of grief that exists when a loved one dies in an abrupt tragedy. It is not at all like losing a loved one to illness, even a brief serious illness. The surviving family/partners of people who have been murdered or killed in accidents, disasters, or terror attacks have complete lack of closure and preparation that is less common than what happens when people normally die. Whether the movie handles that well at all I can't say having not seen it (and again, it's not a recent development in cinema other films have attempted to capture exactly this thing).
If the film actually does abruptly end with "surprise 9/11 fuck you roll credits lmao" then... I don't know what to say. That's not great.
Romantic movies have the worst sudden changes in film. Like there is a Robert Pattinson one where he dies on 9/11 at the end of the movie because fuck you.
On the one hand, that's a horrible thing to do to a romance film (although romantic stories ending in tragedy are certainly not a recent invention).
On the other hand, it illustrates the different texture and quality of grief that exists when a loved one dies in an abrupt tragedy. It is not at all like losing a loved one to illness, even a brief serious illness. The surviving family/partners of people who have been murdered or killed in accidents, disasters, or terror attacks have complete lack of closure and preparation that is less common than what happens when people normally die. Whether the movie handles that well at all I can't say having not seen it (and again, it's not a recent development in cinema other films have attempted to capture exactly this thing).
If the film actually does abruptly end with "surprise 9/11 fuck you roll credits lmao" then... I don't know what to say. That's not great.
Here's the whole film's plot summary from Wikipedia. In spoiler tags because I guess that's the kosher thing to do in this thread.
In 1991 in New York City, Alyssa "Ally" Craig is waiting with her mother for the subway when they are mugged by two young men who shoot her mother after boarding the train.
Ten years later, Ally is a student at New York University and lives with her father, Neil, a New York Police Department detective. Tyler Hawkins audits classes at NYU and works at the university bookstore. He has a strained relationship with his businessman father, Charles, because his older brother, Michael, committed suicide years before. Charles ignores his youngest child, Caroline, of whom Tyler is protective.
One night with his roommate, Aidan, Tyler gets involved in somebody else's fight and is arrested by Neil. Aiden calls Charles to bail Tyler out, but he does not stick around to have a conversation with his father. Aidan sees Neil dropping Ally off, realizing that she is his daughter. He approaches Tyler with the idea to get back at the detective by persuading him to sleep with and dump Ally. Tyler and Ally go to dinner, kiss at the end of the night, and continue seeing one another. While at Tyler's apartment, Aidan convinces the pair to go to a party, after which Ally is very drunk and ends up crashing there. The following day she and her father argue. Neil slaps her and Ally flees to Tyler's apartment.
Caroline, a budding artist, is featured in an art show and Tyler asks his father to attend the show. Tyler confronts him in a board room filled with people, which causes his father to explode. Neil's partner recognizes Tyler with Ally on a train, so Neil breaks into Tyler's apartment and confronts him. Tyler provokes Neil by confessing to Aidan's plan and his initial reason for meeting Ally, which forces Tyler to confess to Ally. She leaves and returns home. Aidan visits Ally at her fathers home to explain that he is to blame and Tyler is in love with her.
Caroline is bullied by a classmates at a birthday party where they cut her hair off. Ally and Aidan visit Tyler's mother's apartment where Caroline is sobbing. Tyler accompanies his sister back to school and when her classmates tease her for her new haircut, Tyler turns violent and ends up in jail. Charles is impressed that Tyler stood up for his sister, and they connect. Charles asks Tyler to meet with the lawyers at his office.
Tyler spends the night with Ally and they reveal they love each other after making love. Charles takes Caroline to school. He calls Tyler to let him know this and tell him he'll be late. Tyler is happy his father is spending time with Caroline. He tells Charles he will wait in his office, He sees on Charles's computer, a slideshow of pictures of Tyler, Michael and Caroline when they were younger.
After Charles drops Caroline off at school, she sits in her classroom, where the teacher writes the date on the blackboard as September 11, 2001. Tyler looks out the window of his father's office—which is revealed to be located on the uppermost floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Once the 9/11 terrorist attacks begin, the rest of the family, Aidan and Ally look at the towers before the camera pans over the rubble, showing Tyler's diary. In a voice-over of his diary, Tyler reveals to Michael that he loves him, and he forgives him for killing himself. Tyler is buried next to Michael.
Some time later, Caroline and Charles seem to have a healthy father-daughter relationship. Aidan, who has since gotten a tattoo of Tyler's name on his arm, is working hard in school and Ally gets on subway at the same spot where her mother was killed.
"Remember Me" tells a sweet enough love story, and tries to invest it with profound meaning by linking it to a coincidence. It doesn't work that way. People meet, maybe they fall in love, maybe they don't, maybe they're happy, maybe they're sad. That's life. If, let us say, a refrigerator falls out of a window and squishes one of them, that's life, too, but it's not a story many people want to see. We stand there looking at the blood seeping out from under the Kelvinator and ask with Peggy Lee, is that all there is?
You can't exactly say the movie cheats. It brings the refrigerator onscreen in the first scene. It ties the action to a key date in Kelvinator history, one everybody knows even if that's all they know about refrigerators. But come on. This isn't the plot for a love story, it's the plot for a Greek tragedy. It may be true, as King Lear tells us, that as flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods. But we don't want to think ourselves as flies, or see fly love stories. Bring on the eagles.
EDIT: As a note, that's how Ebert's review starts. Good god, that man could write.
I just cant shake this feeling that in my lifetime, Micheal Bay will make a 9/11 movie.
Unless we invent time travel and the reason why Hitler still rose to power is because all of the interventionist time travelers get wiped out when one of them replaces Micheal Bays axe body spray with a brick of C4 that has the words "pussy slayer" written on it in sharpie.
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Logic dictates that Ip Man 1 is not actually good. It's the only way this all makes sense.
The first movie came out in 2008, and was a Hong Kong movie first and foremost. It all has to do with the control of mainland China over the Hong Kong cinema. Hong Kong was always influenced by the west and their style of filmmaking, and even after returning to chinese control in 1997 their films were allowed to maintain that look and influence, mainly because China was still growing and focused on economic momentum compared to entertainment. They had like, Yao Ming and that was cool for them. Plus China allowed Hong Kong to remain autonomous.
Then their economic boom happens in the '00s, and there is a realization with how much influence films can have on people. And money. And a billion people need to be controlled, and not shown how super swick the west is with their thoughts of rugged individualism and having multiple kids. So they start clamping down more on Hong Kong cinema in subtle ways, pulling all the talent to Beijing, giving them all this money to tell movies that the state deems worthy to tell. And their list of demands seems to grow more and more, diminishing the freedom and basic filmmaking techniques and efficiency known for years in exchange for ADD moments of confusion and quick cuts followed by constant reassurance that China is the best or contributing to saving the day. Bad CGI crops up more and more because why spend more money cleaning up the CGI when you can just spew more and more onscreen instead? It's Star Wars prequels when it comes to some of their movies now, usually about ancient queens or warlords or something that again reflects how great China was.
Really, the last good mainland chinese film I've seen was Let The Bullets Fly, a film that largely hangs on the old Hong Kong cast and crew to make a decent mandarin film (and a movie where the translator should get an award because they were able to keep up with the dialogue and carry over the jokes without missing a beat). And that's a 6 year old movie. It's been an almost immediate shift in quality since 2010, and now that they've bought western studios like MGM or Legendary Pictures or done big deals like investing 250 million into 20th Century Fox and Universal (each!) for new films (of which that Huntsman flop that just came out was one of), they're going to just exacerbate the problems western blockbusters have yet to fix.
Watch any movie by a known Hong Kong actor from the 90's or early '00s, like Donnie Yen or Stephen Chow (Flash Point and Shaolin Soccer), and then watch something from the past year or so (Ip Man 3 or Journey To the West), that puts it into perspective. Wisdom is actively being lost in chinese films these days instead of gained and it's scary as hell brahs.
Nah, I think the ending was specifically to subvert expectations.
The movie shifting gears like it did was great because you didn't see it coming, and it made the payoff at the end, when she just goes "fuck it" and heads for the safe zone more satisfying.
I thought it was a great capstone on a great movie.
I loved the setting. It was a world out of time, was more interesting than putting it in a specific era, and the timelessness will make it age better, too.
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Hmm, I guess my expectations were different. And perhaps influenced by my general opinion on such things. I agree that the ending was well done. It's more that they had an uphill battle having it be as good as the rest of the movie.
But the tonal shift after she comes out of the bunker is jarring. While I was mostly able to roll with it, I can understand why not everyone was.
i am so glad that my gradual move away from asian cinema wasn't just me becoming jaded and bored. i felt like the quality was declining rapidly but i couldn't figure out why.
Was it really that long? It seemed like maybe 10 minutes, 15 tops. Maybe it was a bit gratuitous, but I was buying what they were selling, so I didn't mind.
Opinions!
Well, like I said. I didn't mind what they were selling. Just how they did it.
To use the selling analogy. Instead of a well done commercial, they put up an in your face billboard with giant neon letters and obnoxious flashing lights.
To elaborate...
It would have actually been more of a surprise had there been something else involved entirely.
But even with that. The alien part was absolutely fine with me in terms of plot.
But she took out a ship that had killed how many people now? And she took it out with a makeshift Molotov cocktail. I mean, come on... it was just so incredibly stupid and silly! It didn't fit the tone of the movie at all. It went from a serious thriller to Independence Day in the span of a couple minutes.
If she would have just ducked the gas, or maybe let her find a shotgun in his truck and take the xeno dog out with it before she gets on the road. That would have made it short, sweet, and WAY more sensible while still showing off the alien invasion in a very clear light. But more importantly it would have kept the tone of the movie intact without crossing into silly town.
Also:
I'd also add that It Follows lends itself extremely well to multiple viewings. There's a lot you'll miss just watching it once. There's a lot of subtlety in that movie.
Granted, I thought it was one of the top 3 movies from last year so I may be biased.
This is the biggest problem surrounding the advertising/marketing of the movie.
An equivalent of what they did was say "it's not a spoiler, but there's a guy that turns into a werewolf that's behind everything" before someone went in and saw Psycho. The entire runtime they're going to be thinking about that werewolf and any mystery that's presented, well, they'll always jump right to that idea of a werewolf.
Then at the end, they'll be surprised it wasn't a werewolf, but any mystery one might feel was already ruined because of an alternative spoiler that was, functionally, close enough.
And then they'll think "Why the hell did they tell me that? It's half-right, there was a guy, but why would someone tell me that?"
The original isn't REALLY about the monster, it's just the hook for the character driven story. 10 Cloverfield Lane is similar. They're basically feature length Twilight Zone episodes. (With less helicopter related fatalities)
I'd say that 10 Cloverfield Lane is a cross between:
(Spoilers if you're familiar with The Twilight Zone. I suppose visa versa too.)
Agreed and true to a certain extent, but at the same time The Twilight Zone was known anthology/episode of the week type show.
To the public who maybe don't follow this stuff as close as we do, this is kind of like making
But considering how well 10 Cloverfield Lane did with critics and with it's budget being fairly low, I'd expect a third movie. By then the problem should mostly go away.
What's sad is when you have people like Jackie Chan out front spewing propaganda for the Chinese government.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yes, it's my opinion that those ten or so minutes could have been halved.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Regardless, the ending was a trick that will only work once. The next film will have to find a new way to be tricksy.
The third movie will be about the bunker across the street.
I have been desperately trying to see this movie but have no means to do so. Nobody is showing it any where near me.
Cloverfield of Dreams
And then right before the business story is hitting it's climax
The Intersection at Cloverfield Lane and Jump Street
...
I'd pay to see that.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I can't lie, while I have never seen the movie I always laugh when I remember that ending exists. I will not learn it's name , it is the "Surprise! 9/11" movie in my brain
I liked it because it was unexpected, but entirely realistic.
Apparently I should not write movies. :biggrin:
For those of you who don't know, or haven't seen it, D&C is a movie with a fairly simple setup. It takes place over the course of 24 hours in an apparently quiet, unremarkable town in Texas (implied, but never actually stated, to be somewhere around Austin). The day is May 28th, 1976. In other words, we're at the height of our bicentennial summer. Patriotic imagery and American flags are common sights throughout the film, as are the colors red, white, and blue. But the America of 1976 - or at least the 1976 as depicted in this movie - is one that, in our post-9/11, post-Obama, post-2012 world, is hardly recognizable.
It's easy to forget now, because not a few of us (including myself) were born after this era, but in the mid-1970s, by all appearances the counterculture had resoundingly won most of their battles in the previous decade. The 1960s were a time in which nearly everything about society was grounds for confrontation, especially between the young and old. Vicious battles - sometimes literal battles - were fought over integration, over the Vietnam war, over the legality of recreational drugs, over music, over movies, over clothes, and over sex. In the 60s, the forces of traditional institutional structures and authority constantly pushed back against the young. It was an era in which an 18-year-old boy could reasonably expect to get jumped, beaten, or kicked out of his house over the length of his hair.
Yet, somehow, through all that turmoil and literal bloodshed, those who sought to change society came out on top. Part of it, of course, was that all those traditional authorities - the government, the military, the news, and most especially that perennial object of adulation for would-be monarchists, the presidency - had all their crimes and banal evils laid bare for the public to see. How could the military command its traditional status when My Lai was on TV and draftees were known to frag lieutenants they thought would get them killed? How could the government command any sort of respect at all, after Watergate and the Pentagon Papers blew the lid off all the star-spangled bullshit and revealed its operators as little more than petty, lying thugs?
And, maybe there was something even simpler at play. You can only be scandalized and outraged over things for so long, after all. Most of the kids were smoking pot now, and had been for years, but people were starting to care a lot less. Most of them were openly interested in sex and alcohol and rock and roll, but none of these things generated the umbrage that they used to. The Beatles had generated a cultural firestorm only a few years previously, but someone looking back at it in '76 might have been hard pressed to remember why. Lots of those same "adults" who had gotten so outraged over those cultural battles less than a decade ago were now divorcing, having mid-life crises, taking up hobbies like hot-tubbing and swinging and primal screaming and new age religion. Even LBJ was growing his hair out.
In short, in this strange, betwixt-and-between era - post-Nixon, pre-Reagan - the values of the young seemed to have triumphed. But, it must be said, the "young" are never homogeneous, and there are always those who will look up to and identify with the values of their fathers, even if their fathers are now seated before them in a velour bathrobe and gold chain, even if they have been demonstrated to be liars and philanderers and hypocrites, even if the values they claim to uphold never really existed. And as the subsequent decade would prove, the forces of social conservativism and authority never truly died, or even retired; they had simply gone dormant.
The faces of authority, May 28th, 1976.
Which, of course, brings us to the actual fucking movie. This level of widespread institutional disaffection, its almost reflexive distrust and raised-eyebrow skepticism toward anybody who would try to tell you what to do, permeates most of the movie's small interior conflicts. This is not a movie about peace demonstrations or Black Power or Kent State; such things are barely even mentioned. But its general attitude and social setting couldn't exist without those events having transpired and - most crucially - without the underdogs in those conflicts having been retrospectively vindicated in a socially-recognized way.
This plays out in a lot of different ways, but it's always there, especially through the first half of the film. It's done most explicitly in the conflict over whether or not our nominal protagonist, Randall "Pink" Floyd (played by Jason London), signs a pledge sheet not to engage in drinking, illegal drug use, or any other activity that would prevent them from having a successful football year in the coming fall. Pink is fairly sharp for his age, and he realizes that what he is essentially being asked to do is to sign up in at least publicly affirming (if not actually following, as his best bro and fellow football player Don points out) good old-fashioned conservative lifestyles in opposition to the newer, long-haired, laid-back, blissed-out values of his pothead friends.
A more subtle, but definitely noticeable, way that this theme shows up is through the film's examination of the school's strange, arcane, and usually sadistic hazing rituals. A lot of people who see this movie wonder WTF is going on with all this hazing, since it seems extremely strange to those who never experienced it (it's apparently a regional thing, which I for one thankfully never experienced, although we did hear stories from prior generations of students even where I come from), and it seems so out-of-place in what is considered a party film. Even if stuff like this did go on, they wonder, why are we concerned about what's happening to all these poor eighth-graders? Yeah, it's terrible, but isn't our focus really on the new seniors and their coming-of-age?
There's a LOT going on with the hazing, some of which I intend to explore in my next post, especially as it relates to concepts of liminality and initiation (do I actually intend, you may be asking yourself, to bring Victor Turner into a discussion of a movie about high school kids having a party? Oh yes. Yes I do). But what I'd like to focus on here is how closely the movie tracks the (senior) character's attitudes toward the new, post-60s world they live in with how enthusiastically they embrace these hazing rituals. The hazing is, after all, the essence of tradition, and is passed down and carried out for the same reason most all traditions are. Why do the seniors treat the freshmen so abominably? Because that's what happened to them when they were freshmen. Because they always have.
So, you will notice people like Cole Hauser's Benny - a hulking redheaded defensive lineman with hair about as short as you could get away with in '76, who refuses to smoke pot, dislikes the local stoners (and the fact that his football buddy, Pink, is now hanging out with them), and seems very disaffected in this new post-Vietnam world - embraces the hazings enthusiastically and brutally. Don, who likes smoking weed as much as anybody but thinks Pink should sign the pledge sheet because really, who cares about shit like that, also engages in the hazing, but he's definitely not a sadist, and seems to feel obligated to take his victims under his wing afterward. Pink, who is clearly drifting away from the whole flag-and-football scene, thinks they kind of suck, and doesn't participate, but he doesn't outright criticize it. Our only real critical examination comes from the local crew of brainy intellectuals, especially Adam Goldberg's Mike, who approaches the whole thing like an anthropologist studying some other culture.*
This cultural conflict pops up occasionally elsewhere in the film, too, especially when Mike gets into it with a vicious greaser townie named Clint (Nicky Katt). Clint disparages Mike's intellect (calling him "Isaac Fucking Newton"), while Mike is furious at being harassed by such an obnoxious cro-magnon bully ("a super-dominant male in a fifties greaser uniform"). It's always simmering under the surface, even if it doesn't come right out with it most of the time.
In short, Dazed and Confused takes place in a world where it had become acceptable, even expected, to question or even ridicule the sacred values of the previous generation. It exists in a liminal time when the nation had been reborn out of a period of significant cultural strife, and had yet to decide what it stood for, what rules (if any) it would choose to follow, and just who the hell it was.
Which, of course, makes it a perfect setting for examining the perennial concerns of adolescent human beings. In my next post, I intend to examine the ways in which the teenagers of the film essentially exist in a world of their own creation, in which they are trying, and often failing, to create a meaningful interior culture.
*A notable exception to this are the characters of the drug dealer, Pickford, and professional stoner Slater (Rory Cochrane). They're definitely along the un-conservative side of the spectrum - Benny and Ben Affleck's O'Bannion hate Slater in particular - but they have no problem whatsoever with the hazing and Pickford actually looks for some kids to haze at one point. My explanation for this is that Pickford is kind of just a stuck-up prick, and that Slater is just a follower and sort of a douche.
I guess what I'm saying fam is that D&C is one of those movies that can speak to you at the different stages in your life without also shitting on those various ages at the same time.
I don't really think the pledge sheet changes too much overall, but I do think it makes some of the film's implicit themes a little more explicit. It also gives the characters something to bounce off of and react to. I think it probably improved the film, honestly - unlike a lot of suit-mandated script changes in movie history.
On the one hand, that's a horrible thing to do to a romance film (although romantic stories ending in tragedy are certainly not a recent invention).
On the other hand, it illustrates the different texture and quality of grief that exists when a loved one dies in an abrupt tragedy. It is not at all like losing a loved one to illness, even a brief serious illness. The surviving family/partners of people who have been murdered or killed in accidents, disasters, or terror attacks have complete lack of closure and preparation that is less common than what happens when people normally die. Whether the movie handles that well at all I can't say having not seen it (and again, it's not a recent development in cinema other films have attempted to capture exactly this thing).
If the film actually does abruptly end with "surprise 9/11 fuck you roll credits lmao" then... I don't know what to say. That's not great.
Here's the whole film's plot summary from Wikipedia. In spoiler tags because I guess that's the kosher thing to do in this thread.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
EDIT: As a note, that's how Ebert's review starts. Good god, that man could write.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
And then I'll never get to pick a movie again.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Unless we invent time travel and the reason why Hitler still rose to power is because all of the interventionist time travelers get wiped out when one of them replaces Micheal Bays axe body spray with a brick of C4 that has the words "pussy slayer" written on it in sharpie.