What a pointless film.
It was like watching toddlers on their first day out, but it's actually grown-ass, sheltered kids driving/walking across country. No plan, no money, no food, no water, just their smartphones (which never need to be charged, apparently) and weed. They keep disparaging older people, but the only reason they didn't get mugged, raped or killed was because of kind strangers they serendipitously met along the way.
This is how terminally online Zoomers think the #VanLife is like.
This must be what schizophrenia feels like.
Cohen meets Tarantino, but without the humor or directorial flair of either.
Very slowly paced and edited.
Not great, not terrible.
"The only way to annihilate this insidious people once and for all is to open our arms, invite them into our homes, and embrace them. Only then will they vanish into assimilation, normality and love. But we cannot pretend. The Jew is nothing if not clever. He will see through hypocrisy and condescension. To destroy him, we must love him sincerely."
You just checkmated yourself. :laughing:
More evidence that stunt coordinators make lousy storytellers.
Even the stunts didn't impress me because almost all of them were "digitally enhanced" which leaves you with an aftertaste of "fakery".
I would've appreciated it if the fights "IRL" were distinctly made to not look like "stunt fights".
And the romance story was completely unnecessary and full of toxic romantic moments.
Alternative titles:
- My Little Phony
- Filly Vanilli
Possibly the best film about OCD, with a focus on the obsessive part, and mental health recovery in general.
Wow, watching this felt like trauma therapy, in a good way.
It reminded me a little of Umma (2022) because of the transgenerational trauma as a common theme, only this is a family drama, not a horror film.
I think anyone who is mixed race, especially of far east Asian descent, will find aspects of the film relatable. Judith and Steve felt very similar to how my mom and dad were. Excellent performances from both girls, especially Remy Marthaller who played Emmy.
I found the subtle signs that Emmy may be neurodivergent very well done.
Major props to writer/director Meredith Hama-Brown for her first feature film. Looking forward to her future work.
The only scene that was worth a damn was Paul's speech at the Circle; the rest of the movie felt like watching a trailer for a graphic novel adaptation of the book. The dialogue for the most part was atrocious, especially for the Harkonnens. Zendaya's line delivery and mannerisms were too "American", compared to the other Fremen, breaking the Middle Eastern-inspired atmosphere.
In 2024, conflating the terms "psychotic" and "psychopathic" is inexcusable. How the fuck did none of the story editors/producers pick that one up?
Beautiful cinematography. Some iconic scenes, gunfights, stunts, and one-liners.
It seemed that they wanted to have nuanced characters, but most of their storylines were handled sloppily or were underdeveloped by today's standards.
The 3rd act was all over the place, with excitement constantly ramping up & down, like it couldn't decide when to end.
That was brilliant!
I wish it was a TV series. Now, I have to watch The Thick of It .
Jesus fucking Christ (mate)...
American History X is like a Disney movie by comparison.
Astounding performances by everyone, most notably Pittaway (Jamie) and Henshall (John). Direction and cinematography were masterful. The editing lost me in a couple of scenes. The score and sound design really amplified the tension and dread.
Decent movie, but I think it ultimately fails to deliver because of Main Character Syndrome.
If you want to show an American being the foreigner, then have the balls to not make him the main character. Imagine if whenever he was in France, the POV was not his own. Maybe that would've helped American audiences experience what it's like to be on the "other" side.
It had all the hallmarks of an amateur film: boring script, poor direction, bad editing, stilted acting.
I didn't understand the point it was trying to make with Lennon's arc.
So, according to the delusion, if you save a missing person, you eventually become psychotic and go missing yourself, because "a body is owed". So, rangers "learned" to become apathetic towards missing person reports, in fear of getting lost themselves? Is that why Lennon left the last missing person alone? Kind of a depressing end, without any payoff, after all of her psychological traumas that were surfaced.
Is the movie supposed to be a call for help, to raise awareness on the mental issues caused by social isolation that rangers have to deal with?
Some scenes at the 1-hour mark felt like they were ripped right out of Hideo Kojima's P.T. :sweat_smile:
I think it over-relied on the hallucinations/flashbacks to show her backstory, over her acting. IMO the wrong way to do "show; don't tell".
Utter dog cat shit.
What a colossal waste of time.
The first 30-40 minutes bloated up the runtime, and wasted precious time that could've been used to flesh out the characters.
When Silvia's backstory is finally revealed, while tragic, it couldn't have been more clichéd.
The movie presents so many issues (child abuse, sexual assault, teen alcoholism, AA meetings, dementia, controlling relatives etc.), but it doesn't unpack or explore the characters. It just hits you with them for shock value, but it's not like it's anything we haven't seen a million times before.
There are so many conflicts between characters, but we never see any meaningful development. We just catch the beginning of the conflict, and then it cuts to the aftermath. It's like the filmmaker is purposefully treating the audience, like Silvia treated her daughter.
Silvia (and Olivia) needed therapy, not a freaking cult like AA.
And the ending was abrupt and naive.
If you liked this, go watch Bates Motel (2013) and Help (2021).
Amusing satire but never quite "haha funny".
I liked how the characters were like parodies of characters out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, as a way to address the pervasive misogyny, narcissism, and overall toxicity among yuppies in the '80s-90s.
I wish I had watched it when it came out. Quite ahead of its time.
Cute rom-com but clearly written/directed by (nice) guys, for (nice) guys... It's their ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy.
I wish the story wasn't so predictable and safe, like by having Wallace ending up with Chantry's sister, Dalia, in a healthy, mutually-supportive relationship, instead of how movies mistake witty banter for romance.
Marriage Story but better.
The first hour was a bit unfocused, but I think that was by choice, in order to be as objective as possible, so the audience can form their own presumptions of the events. While in the second half, we get to discover more and more the subjective nuances of the family's relationships. I empathized with the relatable issues it explored, regarding Samuel's character, like guilt, shame, self-loathing, self-sacrifice, fragile narcissism, perfectionism, fear of failure, procrastination etc.
Wow, freedom-of-speech-loving QAnon snowflakes were so butthurt that they mass-reported my previous comment after receiving the most likes because it exposed their cult.
This sensationalist piece of far-right propaganda is actually harming with its lies the real victims of human trafficking, most of which are aged 15-17 and/or LGBTQ runaways, not kidnapped pre-adolescent children as the film suggests.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/sound-of-freedom-child-trafficking-experts-1234786352/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a3apm/anti-trafficking-group-with-long-history-of-false-claims-gets-its-hollywood-moment
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/archive/blog/2013/06/lgbtq-youth-high-risk-becoming-human-trafficking-victims
https://www.romper.com/life/mom-influencers-child-sex-trafficking
The self-loathing was real in the '90s.
A handful of good moments but chickens out and doesn't go all the way.
Jeff, Bee-Bee and Pony were very well written. Erica and Buff were the shallowest.
Cinematography and editing was very '90s, generic and unremarkable. It needed more wider shots when they were talking, to reinforce the sense of alienation.
Impotent adaptation with an identity crisis, that doesn't know if it wants to be an absurdist satire, rom-com, or drama.
I think Roger Avary tried to reproduce the formula of Pulp Fiction, but just couldn't pull it off.
There were too many side-characters included from the book that were completely unnecessary for the movie, like the 3 scenes with Rupert, the OD scene with Harry, the bedroom and restaurant scenes with Richard, the diner scene with Victor etc. that just wasted precious time that should've been used to flesh out the 3 main characters (Sean, Paul, Lauren), instead of boiling down their characterization to a sophomoric "No one'll ever know anyone".
I just hope someone someday will re-adapt the book into a TV series more faithfully in its original '80s setting.
The first half is a 10, the second half is a 6.
Amazingly ahead of its time, paving the way for the "anti-work" and "quiet quitting" movements.
It came out only a month before The Matrix, and it's insane how similar the two films are in themes and in some cases even visually, e.g. the "cubicle ducking" scenes are shot almost identically!
If there's ever a biopic about Putin, they should get Matthias Schoenaerts to play him! Holy hell, the resemblance is uncanny!
Interesting (if not depressing) down-to-earth spy thriller that drives home how espionage is actually either a no-win situation or a fool's errand, especially when it's about double or triple agents, since sooner or later it always devolves into a game of "give me something to show they can trust me" on both sides ad nauseam .
I was expecting a more complicated gambit for the ending: I thought Korchnoi (Jeremy Irons) was not actually the mole, but he was testing Dominika to see if she would give him in.
I wouldn't mind a movie sequel or TV series. The Americans has left a big hole.
I didn't expect this to be so good, or so funny!
I knew it was considered campy, but it captured the insanity of NYC in the late '80s - early '90s with a perfect dose of cynicism and nihilism. Nicolas Cage, at his prime, doing what he does best. Listening to him deliver noir-ish monologues is always a treat. Unique cast, unique characters.
IMO, much better than the Taxi Driver.
Nuanced, thought-provoking plot, but clumsy direction that didn't age well.
They could remake this as a TV series. It has many supporting characters with different perspectives, backgrounds, motives, and enough antagonists to fill at least a couple of seasons.
An eye-opening, somber, enraging experience.
One of the most hard-hitting documentaries I've ever watched, devoid of dramatizations, half-truths or propaganda.
Directed by Josef Weitz's own great-granddaughter, as she delves into the diaries of Josef, the architect of one of the largest land-grabbing, ethnic cleansing, population transfers in recent history. This is the history of the Zionist state of Israel.
The most important takeaways:
Richard Fuld, former CEO of Lehman Brothers, has never been charged with any crime.
A few months after Trump was elected, the DOJ discontinued investigating Lehman Brothers.
In 2018, Trump rolled back the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, a law that protected consumers from abusive lending practices.
A romantic perspective of a purely analog lifestyle. That's all the movie is.
The storytelling and character-building are very stereotypically Japanese.
