According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
Ya I didn't notice that at all. The scene came on and I was kind of repulsed. I hope it was a stunt double, I just felt dirty for seeing it.
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
Ya I didn't notice that at all. The scene came on and I was kind of repulsed. I hope it was a stunt double, I just felt dirty for seeing it.
The point of the scene is to be repulsed, so that means it worked? It is absolutely not meant to be tittilating.
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
Ya I didn't notice that at all. The scene came on and I was kind of repulsed. I hope it was a stunt double, I just felt dirty for seeing it.
The point of the scene is to be repulsed, so that means it worked? It is absolutely not meant to be tittilating.
But I don't need that in my film. Like I said, I hope it's a stunt double, but I don't want to see a 12 year olds vagina. Even if disturbing is the point. And I guess maybe it plays into the story but I feel It's just wrong. I got queasy and about turned it off.
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
Ya I didn't notice that at all. The scene came on and I was kind of repulsed. I hope it was a stunt double, I just felt dirty for seeing it.
Almost certainly fake. You turn down the lighting and its really easy to get painted latex to look like skin.
"Cuties" is probably in the clear. Though Netflix did not do any favors with their marketing of the film
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
Ya I didn't notice that at all. The scene came on and I was kind of repulsed. I hope it was a stunt double, I just felt dirty for seeing it.
Almost certainly fake. You turn down the lighting and its really easy to get painted latex to look like skin.
"Cuties" is probably in the clear. Though Netflix did not do any favors with their marketing of the film
I always assumed and hoped so, but the thought you just looked at some little girls vagina. I'm actually curious to look it up now and see if it looks really fake and if I notice the mutilation. But my first instinct was to be repulsed and I don't feel I need this in my movies.
Then again I've enjoyed texas chainsaw massacre, the first hostel, and the saw films. So I don't mind disturbing stuff, it just really turned me off and ive only seen it once so I don't know if it adds value. Was just a shock when I saw it.
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
From what I read about the book(I wanted to read it but havent gotten to it yet), Not really a spoiler if you have seen the movie, but extra context we dont get:
male vampires are castrated to prevent them from..... breeding? I dont know if it goes into if male vampires can get someone(vamp or not) pregnant, or what the consequences for any of that is. It might just be a form of control by a ruling class in power to control food supply. She was turned at that age however specifically to be used/abused, I think.
It's all gross ritualistic horror stuff.
All of this context is lost in the film, and I found the scene to be completely unnecessary. It doesn't really give us insight into the character or her motivations, from what we can see its still pretty straightforward(see spoiler). I think the point of the flash was to show the kid seeing it and having sympathy for her? Is he old enough to know what is going on with that though? You can't have a lingering shot of it for obvious reasons, but we don't get context that he recognizes what happened to her. And we can't get a shot where we just assume he sees her naked and its the first girl he's seen. Its just set up so bizarrely.
She needs a human to handle her business because she can't do it on her own. The whole film is just repeating her cycle of ingratiating someone to her through her appeal of power and prospect of "love" to someone abused.
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
Ya I didn't notice that at all. The scene came on and I was kind of repulsed. I hope it was a stunt double, I just felt dirty for seeing it.
The point of the scene is to be repulsed, so that means it worked? It is absolutely not meant to be tittilating.
But I don't need that in my film. Like I said, I hope it's a stunt double, but I don't want to see a 12 year olds vagina. Even if disturbing is the point. And I guess maybe it plays into the story but I feel It's just wrong. I got queasy and about turned it off.
The important thing here is that it's not your film. It's the director's/writer's/producer's film and if you're watching movies or taking in any form of art it's important to remember that part of the social contract you're agreeing with is that you may be exposed to things that make you uncomfortable.
I'm not saying you're wrong for being repulsed - as stated above, that's the intention (and it'd be a bit weird if you weren't). The problem arises when we start over-assigning morality judgements to these things and exert too much control on artistic vision.
And, no, I don't think that's a slippery slope. We rate films as a means of guiding people based on the content therein and I think there's a gulf of difference between something like Cuties and actually real exploitative shit that's out there around children/at risk groups.
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
Ya I didn't notice that at all. The scene came on and I was kind of repulsed. I hope it was a stunt double, I just felt dirty for seeing it.
The point of the scene is to be repulsed, so that means it worked? It is absolutely not meant to be tittilating.
But I don't need that in my film. Like I said, I hope it's a stunt double, but I don't want to see a 12 year olds vagina. Even if disturbing is the point. And I guess maybe it plays into the story but I feel It's just wrong. I got queasy and about turned it off.
The important thing here is that it's not your film. It's the director's/writer's/producer's film and if you're watching movies or taking in any form of art it's important to remember that part of the social contract you're agreeing with is that you may be exposed to things that make you uncomfortable.
I'm not saying you're wrong for being repulsed - as stated above, that's the intention (and it'd be a bit weird if you weren't). The problem arises when we start over-assigning morality judgements to these things and exert too much control on artistic vision.
And, no, I don't think that's a slippery slope. We rate films as a means of guiding people based on the content therein and I think there's a gulf of difference between something like Cuties and actually real exploitative shit that's out there around children/at risk groups.
All post modern critique is based on death of the author. Not sure how art vis a vie movies gets evaluated under a different standard here.
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
Ya I didn't notice that at all. The scene came on and I was kind of repulsed. I hope it was a stunt double, I just felt dirty for seeing it.
The point of the scene is to be repulsed, so that means it worked? It is absolutely not meant to be tittilating.
But I don't need that in my film. Like I said, I hope it's a stunt double, but I don't want to see a 12 year olds vagina. Even if disturbing is the point. And I guess maybe it plays into the story but I feel It's just wrong. I got queasy and about turned it off.
The important thing here is that it's not your film. It's the director's/writer's/producer's film and if you're watching movies or taking in any form of art it's important to remember that part of the social contract you're agreeing with is that you may be exposed to things that make you uncomfortable.
I'm not saying you're wrong for being repulsed - as stated above, that's the intention (and it'd be a bit weird if you weren't). The problem arises when we start over-assigning morality judgements to these things and exert too much control on artistic vision.
And, no, I don't think that's a slippery slope. We rate films as a means of guiding people based on the content therein and I think there's a gulf of difference between something like Cuties and actually real exploitative shit that's out there around children/at risk groups.
All post modern critique is based on death of the author. Not sure how art vis a vie movies gets evaluated under a different standard here.
I don't know if I think that's as much as an absolute as you make it out to be.
It's possible to divorce the piece from the intentions of the author without imposing your own personal moral judgements on it. And again, there's a gulf of a difference between child pornography and some girls dancing in the same way that most girls of that age are taught how to dance in your average hip hop dance troupe.
According to the indictment, which was handed down Sept. 23 but only revealed Tuesday, Netflix did “knowingly promote visual material which depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time.”
The indictment goes on to note, relevant to the legal definitions of pornography, that the visual material in “Cuties” appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
“Cuties,” which won a prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in February, was put online to stream into America’s homes by Netflix on Sept. 9.
The French movie, which was called “Mignonnes” in its native land, depicts a “Mean Girls”-type clique of 11-year-olds, one of the activities of which is a dance troupe.
The climactic scene is a contest for which the protagonist, a Senegalese immigrant, devises a routine that includes group twerks, mouth gestures, ground humping and hip grinding. Other scenes show them rehearsing the numbers and other sexualized moves that the girls are sometimes depicted as only half-understanding.
Netflixtold the New York Post in a Tuesday statement that it stood by the film.
“‘Cuties’ is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit and we stand by the film,” Netflix said.
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
Has mutilated genitalia due to being born with male genitalia in her previous life. The implication being that prior to being turned (possibly by a sympathetic vampire) her life was decidedly not good
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
From what I read about the book(I wanted to read it but havent gotten to it yet), Not really a spoiler if you have seen the movie, but extra context we dont get:
male vampires are castrated to prevent them from..... breeding? I dont know if it goes into if male vampires can get someone(vamp or not) pregnant, or what the consequences for any of that is. It might just be a form of control by a ruling class in power to control food supply. She was turned at that age however specifically to be used/abused, I think.
It's all gross ritualistic horror stuff.
All of this context is lost in the film, and I found the scene to be completely unnecessary. It doesn't really give us insight into the character or her motivations, from what we can see its still pretty straightforward(see spoiler). I think the point of the flash was to show the kid seeing it and having sympathy for her? Is he old enough to know what is going on with that though? You can't have a lingering shot of it for obvious reasons, but we don't get context that he recognizes what happened to her. And we can't get a shot where we just assume he sees her naked and its the first girl he's seen. Its just set up so bizarrely.
She needs a human to handle her business because she can't do it on her own. The whole film is just repeating her cycle of ingratiating someone to her through her appeal of power and prospect of "love" to someone abused.
It seemed to me like a continuation of the whole way their relationship is fundamentally non-sexual. Eli can't offer Oskar that kind of relationship. It's built on something else, divorced in many ways from the idea of romance. Imo at least, it's all kinda fucked up. She's depriving him of real human contact. She can't even offer it. She can only pull him into her orbit to satisfy her needs. She's feeding on him. I think it's another important piece of what is going on.
Wife and I continued our annual October watch of the Shining. I don't think I can get tired of that movie.
I’ve never seen it.
I should watch it.
After you do, check out some of the longer form analysies of it. Particularly around the design of the sets and background details.
Some wild stuff going on with the hotel interior.
Edit: sorry, spoiler. He gets the job.
MichaelLC on
+4
Options
MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
Spoilers for The Shining/Doctor Sleep
As someone who has been sober for almost 3 years, reading The Shining and then Doctor Sleep was an INCREDIBLE one two punch of showing how these cycles can repeat easily. A lot of the horror of Doctor Sleep to me came from how much of myself I saw in Jack and watching Danny struggle with that as an adult hurt and honestly scared me. I love the True Knot in DS as a firm allegory for Boomers - taking from the youthful, as painfully as possible, as technology makes their attempts at relevance disappear, or, seducing in young members they can exploit.[/spoilers]
Both books and movies gave me a lot to chew over.
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Earlier this week, we went to see Fritz Lang's Spione (Spies), a silent film from 1928. I wasn't altogether keen at first, other than on an abstract level; I've not seen all that many silent films, and seeing that this one was 2 1/2 hours long I wasn't sure if I was interested enough in the name of filling the gaps in my film history. Once we were at the cinema, though, and the film had started, I was pretty much transfixed from the first. Not only was the film marvellously inventive and kinetic, it was also a fascinating prototype for the James Bond movies. The villain, the main female character, the setpieces: there's so much to like here, and not in a patronising "Amazing how well they did, considering that it was practically the Middle Ages at the time, isn't it?" way. While some of the performances are rather broad, most work really well, even in 2020. If there's anything I'd criticise, it is the length: the film would've been even better if it had been somewhat tighter, but even like this it was exciting and just plain fun - and the ending is darkly hilarious.
Which means I now have zero excuse not to finally see Metropolis.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Metropolis is good. Some of the amazingness of the effects and sets might be a little lost on a modern audience though.
If you liked Spies be sure to check out M, possibly Langs best film.
Its an fantastic example of early movies with sound. Peter Lorre at the top of his game. and Lang's trademark cinematography. It so heavily influenced Nior you'll swear it was made 25 years later than it was.
I agree that Lang's silents can be a bit cumbersome, but they're visually so impressive, and use their characters so well---even if they often don't feel like more than archetypes. Dr. Mabuse the Gambler is probably my favourite of his silent films. It's also long, but it recalls and sharpens a mode similar to the serial formats of directors like Louis Feuillade.
If you liked Spies be sure to check out M, possibly Langs best film.
M I've seen, repeatedly. I have no overall problem with older films whatsoever, it's just silent films that I simply don't have much experience with. Though my impression of the ones I've seen so far - including Nosferatu, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Häxan and the wonderful Sherlock Jr - is that the best of them are more inventive and ambitious in terms of using the medium than so many of the rather static talkies based on stage plays of 1-2 decades later.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
If you liked Spies be sure to check out M, possibly Langs best film.
M I've seen, repeatedly. I have no overall problem with older films whatsoever, it's just silent films that I simply don't have much experience with. Though my impression of the ones I've seen so far - including Nosferatu, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Häxan and the wonderful Sherlock Jr - is that the best of them are more inventive and ambitious in terms of using the medium than so many of the rather static talkies based on stage plays of 1-2 decades later.
You'd probably love Metropolis then. It's top of the Silent movie era of operatic scope and striking imagery.
0
Options
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Hubie Halloween (Netflix) is shockingly good, and like Murder Mystery feels like a Sandler comedy where he actually cared again, and the whole thing is lifted by everyone having a good time and feeling like they enjoy working on the film beyond just a paycheck. It is what Grown Ups wanted to be in terms of execution. I am dangerously close to making it H&G Certified.
The story revolves around Hubie Dubios, a fifty year old glorified hall monitor (who is mostly a cross between Waterboy and Little Nicky) and ex Eagle Scout who is easily scared and still lives with his mom. It's Salem, on Halloween, and he wants to make sure everyone has good trick or treating because his family dates back to the witch trials and standing up for the weak. But he's the weak one because everyone in town bullies him. But things go spooky on Halloween as people disappear and Hubie is on the case! Plus Julie Bowen is his long time crush and she is still 9/10 would bang.
It has the usual Sandler checklist in just being a big ensemble comedy, product placement (with Hershey's so it's believable for Halloween), but in having a lot of callbacks to other Happy Madison movies too it makes the whole thing enjoyable. There are two running gags that should have failed but because everyone tried this time, they work well; Hubie being increasingly harassed on his bike with an ever growing arsenal of dangerous items thrown his way, and his magical thermos that holds soup but also a bunch of scene specific items like it's a swiss army knife. That it's only brought up once in passing is what makes the absurdity work in a otherwise normal story. This is also the right kind of improv, where it's not a whole scene improvised but just the few seconds after the story/scene has advanced. That also helps with the quick editing so things don't linger and drag as it flails about not being funny. There were quite a few times I chuckled because there were solid set ups to jokes and payoff on real life things, like the Harley Quinn joke or the silly shirts Hubie's mom wore.
The only downside to the movie is a subplot with Julie Bowen's kids (Will Byers and Sandler's daughters) that feels tacked on by Netflix to try and hit the young kid demo even though we know the algorithm will still recommend it to you, and that it will warp your brain as you see Steve Buscemi look more like his actual age of 63, and Ray Liotta is clearly a 65 year old man with plastic surgery. By having so many people from Sandler stuff in it, it's more jarring than something like Grown Ups in seeing all these people get old in front you. Even Sandler's mom in the movie, June Squibb, is actually 90 and I can't process this.
I would have paid to see/rent the movie, which is something I can't say for every Netflix Sandler movie (bar Murder Mystery). It will be a good Halloween staple that's not a horror movie but also not a kid's halloween movie, a nice solid PG-13 comedy.
Wife and I continued our annual October watch of the Shining. I don't think I can get tired of that movie.
I’ve never seen it.
I should watch it.
After you do, check out some of the longer form analysies of it. Particularly around the design of the sets and background details.
Some wild stuff going on with the hotel interior.
Edit: sorry, spoiler. He gets the job.
I know a lot about what happens. Jack Nickerson plays a cobbler who specializes in polishing shoe buckles and his daughter played by Olive Oyl helps him with shoe deliveries to residents of some hotel in Alaska. Right? It’s a family comedy.
Watched a couple more horror-ish indies on Netflix: The Endless and Green Room. Actually neither of these films really qualifies as horror in my opinion, the former is Lovecraftian sci-fi and the latter is more of a thriller.
I really enjoyed The Endless, it took a little while to get going but once it opened up it felt really inventive and fresh for a fairly simple take on Lovecraftian ideas. Green Room is a grimy little "escape the room" movie. Punks vs neo-Nazis is a fun idea for a bloodbath thriller, the movie has great atmosphere, but I dunno, I think I'm just tired of movies that are sadistic and miserable without being scary.
I also re-watched Session 9, which scared the crap out of me when I was younger. I didn't find it all that scary this time around, and actually realized that almost none of the characters are scared for most of the movie either. We as the audience are just supposed to be scared because the location is spooky and one of the characters is listening to some creepy tapes (this character is never visibly scared by what he hears, he's just chillin listening to these tapes for most of the movie). It feels like a movie with a great setting, great atmosphere, but kind of a disjointed script.
Next up are The Invitation and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Any other good horrors on Netflix right now? There's a whole bunch of stuff on Shudder I want to watch.
Wife and I continued our annual October watch of the Shining. I don't think I can get tired of that movie.
I’ve never seen it.
I should watch it.
After you do, check out some of the longer form analysies of it. Particularly around the design of the sets and background details.
Some wild stuff going on with the hotel interior.
Edit: sorry, spoiler. He gets the job.
I know a lot about what happens. Jack Nickerson plays a cobbler who specializes in polishing shoe buckles and his daughter played by Olive Oyl helps him with shoe deliveries to residents of some hotel in Alaska. Right? It’s a family comedy.
Are any of the classic horror movies on any streaming services? Would love christopher lee and Peter cushing stuff.b or even the frankenstein and dracula movies from the 30's/40's.
Watched a couple more horror-ish indies on Netflix: The Endless and Green Room. Actually neither of these films really qualifies as horror in my opinion, the former is Lovecraftian sci-fi and the latter is more of a thriller.
I really enjoyed The Endless, it took a little while to get going but once it opened up it felt really inventive and fresh for a fairly simple take on Lovecraftian ideas. Green Room is a grimy little "escape the room" movie. Punks vs neo-Nazis is a fun idea for a bloodbath thriller, the movie has great atmosphere, but I dunno, I think I'm just tired of movies that are sadistic and miserable without being scary.
I also re-watched Session 9, which scared the crap out of me when I was younger. I didn't find it all that scary this time around, and actually realized that almost none of the characters are scared for most of the movie either. We as the audience are just supposed to be scared because the location is spooky and one of the characters is listening to some creepy tapes (this character is never visibly scared by what he hears, he's just chillin listening to these tapes for most of the movie). It feels like a movie with a great setting, great atmosphere, but kind of a disjointed script.
Next up are The Invitation and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Any other good horrors on Netflix right now? There's a whole bunch of stuff on Shudder I want to watch.
If you haven't seen the babysitter that's good fun. Although it's not really horror. The invitation is another netflix original that's more thriller than horror but pretty good. I liked creep but a lot of people here hated it I believe. And of course, if you haven't seen it, the haunting of hill house is a pretty good series. Just trying to think of some Netflix originals off my head. Need to boot up netflix and see what horror offerings they have to offer this season.
+1
Options
KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
The Babysitter is absolutely a horror movie. Horror/comedy goes back a long ways, and having that comedy element doesn't make films like that not horror somehow.
I'm seeing hush is on Netflix looking at a too 50 list made recently. That was pretty good if you haven't seen it. But again probably more thriller. Would you rather is pretty good.
Are any of the classic horror movies on any streaming services? Would love christopher lee and Peter cushing stuff.b or even the frankenstein and dracula movies from the 30's/40's.
Criterion Channel has a collection of 70's horror. Includes The Vampire Lovers and Dracula A.D. 1972 from Hammer Films.
It also includes The Hills Have Eyes, Wicker Man, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, among others.
1957 is a year on the cusp of change which might be why I had trouble ordering things on my list below the whole spoilered write-up this time. A lot of great stuff here, but much feels like an anomaly or a work that anticipates ever greater movements, genre developments, or careers. Broadly, the films I enjoyed from this year exhibit how America scored some heavy hitters in genre cinema; Japan's damn good; France was about to launch its New Wave but had little to offer at the moment; Russia got to show off some stuff that wasn't just straight propaganda; other parts of Eastern Europe got to flourish; and all sorts of other countries had something to offer as well. It's a pretty diverse list, which is nice.
So in America, with much of the big-budget stuff reading a bit stagnant and overstuffed (to me anyways), I looked to the genre filmmakers to bring something of more kinetic or aesthetic interest. For example Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man is one of the best sci-fi films of its era. Low budget, but very inventive. It's a dread-ridden, semi-cosmic odyssey worth experiencing.
Western director Bud Boetticher had two films this year (The Tall T and Decision at Sundown), but while tough and efficient, they aren't as punchy or imaginative as his best westerns. Western legend John Ford provided a work outside of the genre but within his fascinations: The Wings of Eagles, a slightly dopey but effective military chronicle about a man's duty pulling him away from his domestic life and personal responsibilities. I feel it's a bit underrated.
Samuel Fuller had 3 films released this year: 2 westerns and a war picture. The war film, China Gate, looks great, but squanders some compelling performances with weak plotting and a jingoistic tone. The westerns are better, more athletic. Forty Guns would be a great film, with sharp direction and a great Barbara Stanwyck performance, but it's a bit chauvinistic. Run of the Arrow, on the other hand, is a very peculiar, somewhat confrontational film about co-opted native resistance that I really enjoyed. Its finale, a Sioux raid, is one of the more impressive western setpieces of its era.
The American genre filmmaker with the best year was undoubtedly Jacques Tourneur. His noir Nightfall is one of the best late entries in the genre; tight, thrilling, and wintery, it's a clear influence on Fargo. Greater still is the surprisingly sophisticated Night of the Demon, a seriously atmospheric gothic horror film full of sinister wind and imposing architecture. Tourneur took everything he had learned from working with Val Lewton and made what might be his finest picture; a horror film that deserves a greater reputation.
But everything worthwhile from America wasn't just low budget genre stuff. A pair of middlebrow courtroom dramas from emerging directors are worth mentioning as well. Stanley Kubrick's World War I court martial film Paths of Glory shows him refining skills as a storyteller and exhibits an atypical, more humane perspective from the director. And Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men is very efficient in its writing and character work. It's an immediately involving, smartly shot one room wonder that continues to entertain even the most resistant modern viewers---something few other films from this year can really lay claim to.
And then there's Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter, a studio comedy by former animator and frequent Jerry Lewis collaborator Frank Tashlin. About an advertising man who's drawn into the world of celebrity when a starlet prompts a fake relationship for publicity reasons, it's a wild, inventive, deeply cynical satirical comedy about America's growing materialistic culture. Jayne Mansfield is hilarious, and the craft of the film, with its high-colour widescreen is wonderful.
France needed one more year. Its stagnant studio system and small independent scene offered up barely anything worth savouring in 1957. Next year the first French New Wave film hits, and it's a great one, but for '57 there's really only one film I really like from France, but I like it a good deal: Letter From Siberia. This is one of Chris Marker's first solo efforts (his early partnership with Resnais, Statues Also Die, is also excellent) and it's a thoughtfully designed, quite beautiful film of illustrated correspondence, made up of cool colour footage Marker shot in Siberia.
Japan, near its height of cinema attendance, keeps it going with a continuation of old masters making late-career works, postwar directors maturing, and young directors debuting all within a busy and confident studio system. This environment wouldn't last forever, but for the moment it's hard not to be impressed by technical skill and artistic intelligence of so many of these films.
Though Mizoguchi was dead and Ozu didn't have a particularly great year with his grim Tokyo Twilight, a couple other directors from the silent era had good showings. The ever-golden Mikio Naruse had Untamed, a film with an excellent cast and an uncharacteristically feisty female lead (his frequent star Hideko Takamine). It isn't quite as fluid and deeply observed as some of his best work, but it's very solid. Shiro Toyoda provided a handsome and thorough adaptation of one of my favourite books, Snow Country. It's perhaps a bit literal, but it's very beautifully shot and acted. Another director of this generation who's a bit overlooked, Heinosuke Gosho, released two films this year that are both different and very good. Elegy of the North is a spare, emotionally fascinating melodrama set in Hokkaido about a young woman who becomes involved with an older, married man. Yellow Crow, the other film, is a story of a child trying to adjust to the changes that his newly repatriated father brings to his household. Its bizarre colour cinemtography (almost entirely in hues of yellow and green), and its focus on child psychology make it especially unique and beautiful.
One of the most socially concerned postwar directors, Tadashi Imai, released Rice, a kind of ethnographic docudrama about a farming community. Its atmosphere is more noteworthy than its drama, but it's a pretty original item for the time, capturing the toil and day to day life of an unacknowledged underclass. And the great Akira Kurosawa released what is unquestionably one of his best works: Throne of Blood. A truly atmospheric rendition of MacBeth set in the Sengoku period; and the material is wonderfully served by its cultural reimagining. Deftly using noh theatre technique, and changing the ending of the play to something even more maddeningly expressive, this is one of Kurosawa's most complete and rewarding works. Mifune and Yamada remain the best MacBeths ever put on screen.
Yuzo Kawashima, mentioned in my previous year-focused post as a kind of prototypical new wave director, released his most famous film this year: Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate. It's a shaggy-dog ensemble comedy set in a brothel only a few years before the Meiji Restoration. The samurai are angry and confused, the geisha are garish and competitive, and the central character, a grifter, takes advantage of everyone he can in order to continue his idling lifestyle. Japanese critics consider this one of the greatest films ever made in their country, and while I wouldn't go that far, it's an entertaining and multifaceted film that seems to be as much an allegory for Japan's modern problems as it does a new approach to the period piece.
Japan also had a couple of its first more directly classifiable new wave directors hit the scene this year. Koreyoshi Kurahara's first film I Am Waiting is an enjoyably tough romantic noir, but the big story is the arrival of Yasuzo Masumura. Masumura studied in Rome and was disenchanted with Japan's more classical style, and his first three films were released this year. They're noticeably energetic and divergent from the established national style. Warm Current, about love and administration in a hospital is well acted and shot with real intelligence. Stronger is the colorful satire The Blue Sky Maiden, about a country girl who stays with her complacent and Westernized estranged family in the city. His best film this year, however, is his debut, Kisses. It's a free-wheeling story of love between a young couple whose fathers are both jailed. Questions of money, reputation, and generational misunderstanding define this vibrant and surprisingly optimistic film. Masumura is bound to be a continual presence in my posts moving forward; I'd only seen a couple of his films before, and now I've made up my mind to see all I can from this guy.
Italy saw the maturing of some of its promising talents this year. With Le Notti Bianche, Luchino Visconti adapts the Dostoevsky short story White Nights, setting it in wintry Venice. It's an elegant, original take on the story that does it justice. The maestro Fellini had his first truly excellent work: Nights of Cabiria. An episodic, boisterous portrait of a prostitute dreaming of love in the streets of Rome. It successfully marries many seemingly contradictory tones with Fellini's recognizable carnivalesque style and Giulietta Masina's marvelous lead performance.
The softening of censorship produced some very interesting projects this year from the Soviet Union. The most famous is Sergei Kalatozov's war picture The Cranes Are Flying, which appears familiar on paper with its story concerning a pair of young lovers torn apart by the war. What's original is Kalatozov's magisterial visual talents, which use light and shadow, propulsive camera movement, disorienting editing, and impressive long takes in order to make its story a more emotionally engaging experience.
Other, older Soviet directors took the liberty of this period to tell stories closer to their interests. Longtime propaganda filmmaker Dmitri Kirsanoff adapted Don Quixote. Shot in colour widescreen in Crimea, it has a wonderful, Earthy atmosphere suitable for the deranged knight to amble about in. And another director who had been working for decades, Mark Donskoy, made a beautiful, folkloric story about an eloping couple called The Horse That Cried. Shot in a dreamy, colourful style with a specifically fantastical Ukrainian ambience, it feels like something halfway between Dovzhenko and Parajanov stylistically speaking. It was a complete surprise to me.
Other Eastern European countries enjoying de-Stalinization had good showings too. Poland, for one, was currently in bloom with a whole generation of talented artists. Andrzej Wajda, who would become Poland's national cinematic icon, was currently breaking out, and 1957 saw the release of one of his best films: Kanal. Following a band of partisans in the final days of the Warsaw Uprising, it's a harrowing, suffocating watch. The short-lived Andrzej Munk also had an influential release this year with Man on the Tracks. A Citizen Kane-esque storyline piecing together the life of a strict forman in a railyard after his death, it's a sharp and thoughtful political drama.
And while Czechoslovakia wasn't quite hitting the same stride as Poland yet (give them a few years), 1957 gave us Clouds of Glass, a short film by Frantisek Vlacil commissioned by the air force. It's really more about a kid dreaming of flying, and it's practically dialogue free. It's completely gorgeous---one of the most beautifully designed films of the year with almost obsessive attention to visual texture, movement, and colour. Vlacil would grow into probably the greatest Czech filmmaker of all time, but it's wild how good he was before completing a feature.
Some countries situated in Northern Europe had some good items this year as well. The biggest story is definitely Ingmar Bergman, who released two arthouse classics this year: The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, both fantastical films about the fear of death, though approached in very different ways. The Seventh Seal is the better film in my mind: funnier, visually richer, more bizarre. The latter film never totally worked for me, though it has some memorable passages. Norway released one of its most famous films: Nine Lives. It's a war film about an underequipped partisan on the run from Nazi soldiers through the unforgiving wilderness. It's a thrilling survival story with a strong emphasis on landscape, which I always like. In Germany, returned filmmaker Robert Siodmak made the stark and confrontational The Devil Strikes at Night, about an Aryan serial killer in Nazi Germany. And Great Britain offered a noir called Across the Bridge set on the America-Mexico border starring Rod Steiger... as a German. You wouldn't know it was British without looking at the credits (it's based on a Graham Greene short story), but it's a worthwhile man-on-the-run tale with some fun turns.
Elsewhere, Bollywood was going through one of its most iconic eras, and this year brings one of my favourites, Pyaasa. Its involving drama about a hard-done-by poet makes it feel like a lot more than just a musical; something more socially reflective and genuine while still delivering everything its audience could want from it. Really great stuff. And in the Southern Hemisphere, in Argentina, there was this very stylish, baroque coming of age film House of the Angel that I liked a lot.
Top 10:
1. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
2. Night of the Demon
3. Throne of Blood
4. Nights of Cabiria
5. Kisses
6. Kanal
7. 12 Angry Men
8. The Horse That Cried
9. Nightfall
10. Yellow Crow
Honourable Mentions in vague preferential order:
Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate
Clouds of Glass
Pyaasa
Letter From Siberia
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Elegy of the North
Man on the Tracks
The Seventh Seal
Untamed
Le Notti Bianche
The Devil Strikes at Night
The Blue Sky Maiden
The Cranes Are Flying
Run of the Arrow
Paths of Glory
House of the Angel
The Wings of Eagles
Rice
Nine Lives
Don Quixote
Across the Bridge
Snow Country
I Am Waiting
Forty Guns
1958 looks like more of the same (which is a good thing), but with some pops in quality from France, a greater genre focus in Japan, and some cool looking stuff from Hungary I'm looking forward to. My goal is to finish the 1950's this year and I'm still on track.
Are there any dvd collections with all or most the hammer movies? Found one but it has sequels and such, but not the originals. Same for the universal monster movies .
Are there any dvd collections with all or most the hammer movies? Found one but it has sequels and such, but not the originals. Same for the universal monster movies .
There was one a good few years back that had the first Hammer Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy movies, but I dunno if the US got it.
We watched the 1965 John Frankenheimer movie The Train yesterday, something of an old-school action film about a group of Resistance members (including that most French of Frenchmen, Burt Lancaster) trying to stop the train German Colonel von Waldheim (a wonderfully cold, intellectually arrogant performance by Paul Scofield) is using to take France's great art, from Cezanne to Picasso, to Germany. I like a good Frankenheimer film, and while this is no Manchurian Candidate, it makes for a great Saturday evening movie. What I like especially is that even with Burt being his manly self, much of the film is not about who shoots guns best but about ingenuity and about outsmarting the Germans. When there is action, though, it's pretty good - you don't expect explosions this big and exciting in a black and white film. The ideological conflict between Lancaster's Resistance man and Scofield's art-loving Nazi is also fascinating: as much as he tries to hide behind cynicism, von Waldheim clearly loves the painting he's stealing, although according to the Nazis it's all degenerate art (though the character von Waldheim isn't softened by his appreciation of art). Lancaster's Labiche, on the other hand, is pulled into the action almost against his will: he doesn't have much use for art, in particular when it results in the death of his men, yet he finds that his copatriots are willing to sacrifice themselves for paintings many of them have only heard about but have never seen, even though the war in France is almost over and the Allies are just a few dozen miles away. The film perhaps suffers a bit from somewhat languid pacing towards the end, but it still holds up well, and Frankenheimer's great at his craft as always.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Are there any dvd collections with all or most the hammer movies? Found one but it has sequels and such, but not the originals. Same for the universal monster movies .
There was one a good few years back that had the first Hammer Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy movies, but I dunno if the US got it.
They legitimately blew up the train station in The Train. The railway wanted to enlarge it but lacked the funds, so as a condition of Frankenheimer using it to film, many of the explosions were actual dynamite demolition charges.
Posts
How bad is it and how artistic is it? I'm pretty sure I remember watching the foreign original version of let the right ones in, and they showed her vagina. At least I think they did, and I was pretty repulsed by that. I'm by no means a prude, but I didn't see the point in it. And it kinda turned me off from the whole movie.
You see that Eli:
For what it's worth the first couple times I saw the film I thought the same thing and only caught it a couple years ago.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Ya I didn't notice that at all. The scene came on and I was kind of repulsed. I hope it was a stunt double, I just felt dirty for seeing it.
The point of the scene is to be repulsed, so that means it worked? It is absolutely not meant to be tittilating.
But I don't need that in my film. Like I said, I hope it's a stunt double, but I don't want to see a 12 year olds vagina. Even if disturbing is the point. And I guess maybe it plays into the story but I feel It's just wrong. I got queasy and about turned it off.
Almost certainly fake. You turn down the lighting and its really easy to get painted latex to look like skin.
"Cuties" is probably in the clear. Though Netflix did not do any favors with their marketing of the film
I always assumed and hoped so, but the thought you just looked at some little girls vagina. I'm actually curious to look it up now and see if it looks really fake and if I notice the mutilation. But my first instinct was to be repulsed and I don't feel I need this in my movies.
Then again I've enjoyed texas chainsaw massacre, the first hostel, and the saw films. So I don't mind disturbing stuff, it just really turned me off and ive only seen it once so I don't know if it adds value. Was just a shock when I saw it.
From what I read about the book(I wanted to read it but havent gotten to it yet), Not really a spoiler if you have seen the movie, but extra context we dont get:
All of this context is lost in the film, and I found the scene to be completely unnecessary. It doesn't really give us insight into the character or her motivations, from what we can see its still pretty straightforward(see spoiler). I think the point of the flash was to show the kid seeing it and having sympathy for her? Is he old enough to know what is going on with that though? You can't have a lingering shot of it for obvious reasons, but we don't get context that he recognizes what happened to her. And we can't get a shot where we just assume he sees her naked and its the first girl he's seen. Its just set up so bizarrely.
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/pixar-soul-disney-plus-1234773525/
The important thing here is that it's not your film. It's the director's/writer's/producer's film and if you're watching movies or taking in any form of art it's important to remember that part of the social contract you're agreeing with is that you may be exposed to things that make you uncomfortable.
I'm not saying you're wrong for being repulsed - as stated above, that's the intention (and it'd be a bit weird if you weren't). The problem arises when we start over-assigning morality judgements to these things and exert too much control on artistic vision.
And, no, I don't think that's a slippery slope. We rate films as a means of guiding people based on the content therein and I think there's a gulf of difference between something like Cuties and actually real exploitative shit that's out there around children/at risk groups.
What are your thoughts on Doctor Sleep?
All post modern critique is based on death of the author. Not sure how art vis a vie movies gets evaluated under a different standard here.
I don't know if I think that's as much as an absolute as you make it out to be.
It's possible to divorce the piece from the intentions of the author without imposing your own personal moral judgements on it. And again, there's a gulf of a difference between child pornography and some girls dancing in the same way that most girls of that age are taught how to dance in your average hip hop dance troupe.
It seemed to me like a continuation of the whole way their relationship is fundamentally non-sexual. Eli can't offer Oskar that kind of relationship. It's built on something else, divorced in many ways from the idea of romance. Imo at least, it's all kinda fucked up. She's depriving him of real human contact. She can't even offer it. She can only pull him into her orbit to satisfy her needs. She's feeding on him. I think it's another important piece of what is going on.
I’ve never seen it.
I should watch it.
After you do, check out some of the longer form analysies of it. Particularly around the design of the sets and background details.
Some wild stuff going on with the hotel interior.
Edit: sorry, spoiler. He gets the job.
Both books and movies gave me a lot to chew over.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Which means I now have zero excuse not to finally see Metropolis.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
If you liked Spies be sure to check out M, possibly Langs best film.
Its an fantastic example of early movies with sound. Peter Lorre at the top of his game. and Lang's trademark cinematography. It so heavily influenced Nior you'll swear it was made 25 years later than it was.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
You'd probably love Metropolis then. It's top of the Silent movie era of operatic scope and striking imagery.
The story revolves around Hubie Dubios, a fifty year old glorified hall monitor (who is mostly a cross between Waterboy and Little Nicky) and ex Eagle Scout who is easily scared and still lives with his mom. It's Salem, on Halloween, and he wants to make sure everyone has good trick or treating because his family dates back to the witch trials and standing up for the weak. But he's the weak one because everyone in town bullies him. But things go spooky on Halloween as people disappear and Hubie is on the case! Plus Julie Bowen is his long time crush and she is still 9/10 would bang.
It has the usual Sandler checklist in just being a big ensemble comedy, product placement (with Hershey's so it's believable for Halloween), but in having a lot of callbacks to other Happy Madison movies too it makes the whole thing enjoyable. There are two running gags that should have failed but because everyone tried this time, they work well; Hubie being increasingly harassed on his bike with an ever growing arsenal of dangerous items thrown his way, and his magical thermos that holds soup but also a bunch of scene specific items like it's a swiss army knife. That it's only brought up once in passing is what makes the absurdity work in a otherwise normal story. This is also the right kind of improv, where it's not a whole scene improvised but just the few seconds after the story/scene has advanced. That also helps with the quick editing so things don't linger and drag as it flails about not being funny. There were quite a few times I chuckled because there were solid set ups to jokes and payoff on real life things, like the Harley Quinn joke or the silly shirts Hubie's mom wore.
The only downside to the movie is a subplot with Julie Bowen's kids (Will Byers and Sandler's daughters) that feels tacked on by Netflix to try and hit the young kid demo even though we know the algorithm will still recommend it to you, and that it will warp your brain as you see Steve Buscemi look more like his actual age of 63, and Ray Liotta is clearly a 65 year old man with plastic surgery. By having so many people from Sandler stuff in it, it's more jarring than something like Grown Ups in seeing all these people get old in front you. Even Sandler's mom in the movie, June Squibb, is actually 90 and I can't process this.
I would have paid to see/rent the movie, which is something I can't say for every Netflix Sandler movie (bar Murder Mystery). It will be a good Halloween staple that's not a horror movie but also not a kid's halloween movie, a nice solid PG-13 comedy.
I know a lot about what happens. Jack Nickerson plays a cobbler who specializes in polishing shoe buckles and his daughter played by Olive Oyl helps him with shoe deliveries to residents of some hotel in Alaska. Right? It’s a family comedy.
I really enjoyed The Endless, it took a little while to get going but once it opened up it felt really inventive and fresh for a fairly simple take on Lovecraftian ideas. Green Room is a grimy little "escape the room" movie. Punks vs neo-Nazis is a fun idea for a bloodbath thriller, the movie has great atmosphere, but I dunno, I think I'm just tired of movies that are sadistic and miserable without being scary.
I also re-watched Session 9, which scared the crap out of me when I was younger. I didn't find it all that scary this time around, and actually realized that almost none of the characters are scared for most of the movie either. We as the audience are just supposed to be scared because the location is spooky and one of the characters is listening to some creepy tapes (this character is never visibly scared by what he hears, he's just chillin listening to these tapes for most of the movie). It feels like a movie with a great setting, great atmosphere, but kind of a disjointed script.
Next up are The Invitation and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Any other good horrors on Netflix right now? There's a whole bunch of stuff on Shudder I want to watch.
If you haven't seen the babysitter that's good fun. Although it's not really horror. The invitation is another netflix original that's more thriller than horror but pretty good. I liked creep but a lot of people here hated it I believe. And of course, if you haven't seen it, the haunting of hill house is a pretty good series. Just trying to think of some Netflix originals off my head. Need to boot up netflix and see what horror offerings they have to offer this season.
Criterion Channel has a collection of 70's horror. Includes The Vampire Lovers and Dracula A.D. 1972 from Hammer Films.
It also includes The Hills Have Eyes, Wicker Man, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, among others.
Western director Bud Boetticher had two films this year (The Tall T and Decision at Sundown), but while tough and efficient, they aren't as punchy or imaginative as his best westerns. Western legend John Ford provided a work outside of the genre but within his fascinations: The Wings of Eagles, a slightly dopey but effective military chronicle about a man's duty pulling him away from his domestic life and personal responsibilities. I feel it's a bit underrated.
Samuel Fuller had 3 films released this year: 2 westerns and a war picture. The war film, China Gate, looks great, but squanders some compelling performances with weak plotting and a jingoistic tone. The westerns are better, more athletic. Forty Guns would be a great film, with sharp direction and a great Barbara Stanwyck performance, but it's a bit chauvinistic. Run of the Arrow, on the other hand, is a very peculiar, somewhat confrontational film about co-opted native resistance that I really enjoyed. Its finale, a Sioux raid, is one of the more impressive western setpieces of its era.
The American genre filmmaker with the best year was undoubtedly Jacques Tourneur. His noir Nightfall is one of the best late entries in the genre; tight, thrilling, and wintery, it's a clear influence on Fargo. Greater still is the surprisingly sophisticated Night of the Demon, a seriously atmospheric gothic horror film full of sinister wind and imposing architecture. Tourneur took everything he had learned from working with Val Lewton and made what might be his finest picture; a horror film that deserves a greater reputation.
But everything worthwhile from America wasn't just low budget genre stuff. A pair of middlebrow courtroom dramas from emerging directors are worth mentioning as well. Stanley Kubrick's World War I court martial film Paths of Glory shows him refining skills as a storyteller and exhibits an atypical, more humane perspective from the director. And Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men is very efficient in its writing and character work. It's an immediately involving, smartly shot one room wonder that continues to entertain even the most resistant modern viewers---something few other films from this year can really lay claim to.
And then there's Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter, a studio comedy by former animator and frequent Jerry Lewis collaborator Frank Tashlin. About an advertising man who's drawn into the world of celebrity when a starlet prompts a fake relationship for publicity reasons, it's a wild, inventive, deeply cynical satirical comedy about America's growing materialistic culture. Jayne Mansfield is hilarious, and the craft of the film, with its high-colour widescreen is wonderful.
France needed one more year. Its stagnant studio system and small independent scene offered up barely anything worth savouring in 1957. Next year the first French New Wave film hits, and it's a great one, but for '57 there's really only one film I really like from France, but I like it a good deal: Letter From Siberia. This is one of Chris Marker's first solo efforts (his early partnership with Resnais, Statues Also Die, is also excellent) and it's a thoughtfully designed, quite beautiful film of illustrated correspondence, made up of cool colour footage Marker shot in Siberia.
Japan, near its height of cinema attendance, keeps it going with a continuation of old masters making late-career works, postwar directors maturing, and young directors debuting all within a busy and confident studio system. This environment wouldn't last forever, but for the moment it's hard not to be impressed by technical skill and artistic intelligence of so many of these films.
Though Mizoguchi was dead and Ozu didn't have a particularly great year with his grim Tokyo Twilight, a couple other directors from the silent era had good showings. The ever-golden Mikio Naruse had Untamed, a film with an excellent cast and an uncharacteristically feisty female lead (his frequent star Hideko Takamine). It isn't quite as fluid and deeply observed as some of his best work, but it's very solid. Shiro Toyoda provided a handsome and thorough adaptation of one of my favourite books, Snow Country. It's perhaps a bit literal, but it's very beautifully shot and acted. Another director of this generation who's a bit overlooked, Heinosuke Gosho, released two films this year that are both different and very good. Elegy of the North is a spare, emotionally fascinating melodrama set in Hokkaido about a young woman who becomes involved with an older, married man. Yellow Crow, the other film, is a story of a child trying to adjust to the changes that his newly repatriated father brings to his household. Its bizarre colour cinemtography (almost entirely in hues of yellow and green), and its focus on child psychology make it especially unique and beautiful.
One of the most socially concerned postwar directors, Tadashi Imai, released Rice, a kind of ethnographic docudrama about a farming community. Its atmosphere is more noteworthy than its drama, but it's a pretty original item for the time, capturing the toil and day to day life of an unacknowledged underclass. And the great Akira Kurosawa released what is unquestionably one of his best works: Throne of Blood. A truly atmospheric rendition of MacBeth set in the Sengoku period; and the material is wonderfully served by its cultural reimagining. Deftly using noh theatre technique, and changing the ending of the play to something even more maddeningly expressive, this is one of Kurosawa's most complete and rewarding works. Mifune and Yamada remain the best MacBeths ever put on screen.
Yuzo Kawashima, mentioned in my previous year-focused post as a kind of prototypical new wave director, released his most famous film this year: Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate. It's a shaggy-dog ensemble comedy set in a brothel only a few years before the Meiji Restoration. The samurai are angry and confused, the geisha are garish and competitive, and the central character, a grifter, takes advantage of everyone he can in order to continue his idling lifestyle. Japanese critics consider this one of the greatest films ever made in their country, and while I wouldn't go that far, it's an entertaining and multifaceted film that seems to be as much an allegory for Japan's modern problems as it does a new approach to the period piece.
Japan also had a couple of its first more directly classifiable new wave directors hit the scene this year. Koreyoshi Kurahara's first film I Am Waiting is an enjoyably tough romantic noir, but the big story is the arrival of Yasuzo Masumura. Masumura studied in Rome and was disenchanted with Japan's more classical style, and his first three films were released this year. They're noticeably energetic and divergent from the established national style. Warm Current, about love and administration in a hospital is well acted and shot with real intelligence. Stronger is the colorful satire The Blue Sky Maiden, about a country girl who stays with her complacent and Westernized estranged family in the city. His best film this year, however, is his debut, Kisses. It's a free-wheeling story of love between a young couple whose fathers are both jailed. Questions of money, reputation, and generational misunderstanding define this vibrant and surprisingly optimistic film. Masumura is bound to be a continual presence in my posts moving forward; I'd only seen a couple of his films before, and now I've made up my mind to see all I can from this guy.
Italy saw the maturing of some of its promising talents this year. With Le Notti Bianche, Luchino Visconti adapts the Dostoevsky short story White Nights, setting it in wintry Venice. It's an elegant, original take on the story that does it justice. The maestro Fellini had his first truly excellent work: Nights of Cabiria. An episodic, boisterous portrait of a prostitute dreaming of love in the streets of Rome. It successfully marries many seemingly contradictory tones with Fellini's recognizable carnivalesque style and Giulietta Masina's marvelous lead performance.
The softening of censorship produced some very interesting projects this year from the Soviet Union. The most famous is Sergei Kalatozov's war picture The Cranes Are Flying, which appears familiar on paper with its story concerning a pair of young lovers torn apart by the war. What's original is Kalatozov's magisterial visual talents, which use light and shadow, propulsive camera movement, disorienting editing, and impressive long takes in order to make its story a more emotionally engaging experience.
Other, older Soviet directors took the liberty of this period to tell stories closer to their interests. Longtime propaganda filmmaker Dmitri Kirsanoff adapted Don Quixote. Shot in colour widescreen in Crimea, it has a wonderful, Earthy atmosphere suitable for the deranged knight to amble about in. And another director who had been working for decades, Mark Donskoy, made a beautiful, folkloric story about an eloping couple called The Horse That Cried. Shot in a dreamy, colourful style with a specifically fantastical Ukrainian ambience, it feels like something halfway between Dovzhenko and Parajanov stylistically speaking. It was a complete surprise to me.
Other Eastern European countries enjoying de-Stalinization had good showings too. Poland, for one, was currently in bloom with a whole generation of talented artists. Andrzej Wajda, who would become Poland's national cinematic icon, was currently breaking out, and 1957 saw the release of one of his best films: Kanal. Following a band of partisans in the final days of the Warsaw Uprising, it's a harrowing, suffocating watch. The short-lived Andrzej Munk also had an influential release this year with Man on the Tracks. A Citizen Kane-esque storyline piecing together the life of a strict forman in a railyard after his death, it's a sharp and thoughtful political drama.
And while Czechoslovakia wasn't quite hitting the same stride as Poland yet (give them a few years), 1957 gave us Clouds of Glass, a short film by Frantisek Vlacil commissioned by the air force. It's really more about a kid dreaming of flying, and it's practically dialogue free. It's completely gorgeous---one of the most beautifully designed films of the year with almost obsessive attention to visual texture, movement, and colour. Vlacil would grow into probably the greatest Czech filmmaker of all time, but it's wild how good he was before completing a feature.
Some countries situated in Northern Europe had some good items this year as well. The biggest story is definitely Ingmar Bergman, who released two arthouse classics this year: The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, both fantastical films about the fear of death, though approached in very different ways. The Seventh Seal is the better film in my mind: funnier, visually richer, more bizarre. The latter film never totally worked for me, though it has some memorable passages. Norway released one of its most famous films: Nine Lives. It's a war film about an underequipped partisan on the run from Nazi soldiers through the unforgiving wilderness. It's a thrilling survival story with a strong emphasis on landscape, which I always like. In Germany, returned filmmaker Robert Siodmak made the stark and confrontational The Devil Strikes at Night, about an Aryan serial killer in Nazi Germany. And Great Britain offered a noir called Across the Bridge set on the America-Mexico border starring Rod Steiger... as a German. You wouldn't know it was British without looking at the credits (it's based on a Graham Greene short story), but it's a worthwhile man-on-the-run tale with some fun turns.
Elsewhere, Bollywood was going through one of its most iconic eras, and this year brings one of my favourites, Pyaasa. Its involving drama about a hard-done-by poet makes it feel like a lot more than just a musical; something more socially reflective and genuine while still delivering everything its audience could want from it. Really great stuff. And in the Southern Hemisphere, in Argentina, there was this very stylish, baroque coming of age film House of the Angel that I liked a lot.
Top 10:
1. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
2. Night of the Demon
3. Throne of Blood
4. Nights of Cabiria
5. Kisses
6. Kanal
7. 12 Angry Men
8. The Horse That Cried
9. Nightfall
10. Yellow Crow
Honourable Mentions in vague preferential order:
Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate
Clouds of Glass
Pyaasa
Letter From Siberia
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Elegy of the North
Man on the Tracks
The Seventh Seal
Untamed
Le Notti Bianche
The Devil Strikes at Night
The Blue Sky Maiden
The Cranes Are Flying
Run of the Arrow
Paths of Glory
House of the Angel
The Wings of Eagles
Rice
Nine Lives
Don Quixote
Across the Bridge
Snow Country
I Am Waiting
Forty Guns
1958 looks like more of the same (which is a good thing), but with some pops in quality from France, a greater genre focus in Japan, and some cool looking stuff from Hungary I'm looking forward to. My goal is to finish the 1950's this year and I'm still on track.
There was one a good few years back that had the first Hammer Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy movies, but I dunno if the US got it.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The Curse of Frankenstein is so good.
I've not yet seen the others; I really should some time.
Steam | XBL