movies

[PujolJunkie]

The Adjustment Bureau is so much better than the over-hyped Inception. (At least I think so since I kept falling asleep during Inception)

I don't mean to double post, but man I just could NOT stay awake during Inception. At all. I finished the movie but like I said after the first hour, it was all in kind of bits and pieces. Couldn't tell you anything about what happened.

[lukethedrifter]

Saw Jane Eyre last night with my daughter and gf. Not the Orson Welles version. No, not the Anna Paquin version. Not the Susannah York version. The new one with that girl from Alice In Wonderland. Really it was an incredibly well acted movie.

Also, Man on Wire. Well, I didn't quite get to finish it but really great documentary.

[Schlich]

saw "Session Nine."

had no idea what was going on, but it was thrilling enough, i guess. Having Horatio from CSI Miami play the main role just kind of ruined it for me. Good movie though.

[go birds]

Saw The Fighter as well. Great flick. Bale was well deserving of the oscar imo.

[robbotis]

Let the Right One In - pretty good. Nice spin on Vampires. Creepy kids, even freakier cats.
However:

[SHOW]

The last scene, w/ Oskar and the vampire on the train? Is he running off w/ her? Is he taking the place of the old guy that spilt acid on his face? Was he once an Oskar like kid? I imagine thats the case, as who else would do all that for her.

[clevername]

saw Sucker Punch. A lot of people are going to hate this movie. The hyperbole will be thick with plenty of "worst movie I've ever seen" comments thrown around.

I thought it was visually excellent and I really enjoyed it on that level. The script wasn't great but wasn't quite as bad as I'm reading in the online reaction to the thing.

[TimeForGuinness]

I finally got to watch Visual Acoustics this weekend. If you're a fan of photography & architecture, you'll want to watch this documentary.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1233611/

Visual Acoustics celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world's greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. Shulman, who passed away this year, captured the work of nearly every modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Frank Gehry. His images epitomized the singular beauty of Southern California's modernist movement and brought its iconic structures to the attention of the general public.

[slide_into_first]

Win Win was good- well meaning struggling lawyer and high school wrestling coach does something shady but a lot of nice things as well and eventually gets caught, pays the consequences and moves on.

[The Third Man]

saw Sucker Punch. A lot of people are going to hate this movie. The hyperbole will be thick with plenty of "worst movie I've ever seen" comments thrown around.

I thought it was visually excellent and I really enjoyed it on that level. The script wasn't great but wasn't quite as bad as I'm reading in the online reaction to the thing.

I'm hopefully going to see it this weekend. Also, you might find this interesting:

[SHOW]

It feels like there's a weird argument being made that something can't be satirical, or that satire isn't worthwhile, unless it's brazen and over-the-top, with the contrasts slammed violently into the viewer, which is a point I just don't get. I feel like there's huge room out there for subtle, insidious, subversive satire, satire that honestly flies over a lot of heads, but manages to make a potent subconscious impact. Someone posted earlier that Starship Troopers wouldn't have worked as satire without the news reels, which is ridiculous; it was the actual movie's content, from the deliberately vapid casting, the pervasive facisct themes, etc. The news reels just hammer the point home, but the satire exists far beyond them.

Anyway, about Sucker Punch. I honestly can't believe there are people taking this movie at face value, when, out of Snyder's library, it's his most blatant and obviously self-critical movie. The biggest thing that people seem to be getting hung up on is the details of the plotline of the movie's top layer, but that's silly; this isn't a movie about reality, and then two layers of fantasy. The asylum isn't any more "real" than the brothel or the battles. It's an absurd, unrealistic, contrived vision of an asylum which doesn't make sense in its time period (lobotomies were fully out of vogue by the 60s). Nothing in this movie is "real" in any meanginful sense of the word; it's three fantasies that overlap each other to make a point.

And what is that point? Just look at the layers backward. Start with the battles: these are insane, stupid, mystifyingly overwhelming embodiments of this entire genre of grrrrrl-power "female empowerment" action, from Tomb Raider to Charlie's Angles to anything Milla Jovovich has ever done. This layer IS the Zybourne Clock, and very intentionally so, a crazy pastiche of every nerd-culture element. This layer is exactly what the movie was primarily advertised as, and what, based on this thread, it sounds like most people wanted to see: gorgeous women in skimpy outfits fighting orcs and dragons and steampunk samurais. And yes, this level is stupid, because that is a stupid thing to want to see. But it's still just harmless, CG fun right? That's when we zoom out a level and see that this fantasy of combat is really...

A brothel. A degrading venue for titillation, for leering male eyes and women whose consent is dubious or nonexistent, for the reduction of women to flesh. That's what these 'hot chicks fighting' movies are, Snyder is saying; it doesn't matter how many asses Milla kicks, she is still doing it, first and foremost, for male titillation, in movies directed by men, written for men to ogle. And the fact that it's PRESENTED as empowerment, as 'winning an awesome battle', is even worse, because there's really nothing remotely empowering about these movies; they're a stripshow at heart, dressed up in skintight leather and given a badass pose. But okay, fine, so it's a little harmless titillation, but it's no big deal, right? No one's REALLY being raped, hell no, not in THIS brothel, and we don't actually see any sex, so it's not that bad, right? That's when we zoom up ANOTHER level and reveal that this PG-13 brothel is really...

A [expletive] up asylum, one clearly chosen to evoke the imagery of women being locked away for hysteria and radicalism. A bitter, dark, [expletive] place, where you get raped and lobotomized and the best you can hope for is that maybe your suffering helps out someone else. This top level is "the real world", in so far as it drives the point home: these indulgent fantasies, this casual misogyny and sexualization, is part and parcel of a patriarchal and toxic culture that exploits, degrades, and destroys women.

In short, the battle layer is the movies we love to watch, the brothel layer is how we justify it to ourselves, and the asylum is what we're really participating in. The toothlessness of the brothel is EXACTLY the point; the idea that we're all participating and leering and enjoying the fruits of this forced prostitution, but will suddenly act horrified as soon there's a "rape" is precisely the joke. The movie is a huge troll, and a huge [expletive] YOU to the audience that came to watch the awful spectacle that it promised to be, and if you think it's too subtle, I counter that posts like this:

I can't recommend this movie to anyone. Especially dudes.

It started out making me feel like a douche for thinking that jailbait was hot and then tried to make me think they were hot while shooting robots and then made me feel bad for thinking she was sexy in that-no wait shes being raped and now shes actually using her sexuality to-

[expletive].

There is no way in hell that this film was anything other a punch in the dick. If it tried to imply some greater subtext or deeper story, it failed.

My friend called it "The World's Most Expensive Cocktease," and I think he had the right idea.

If it was just an unpretentious, fun movie about hot chicks [expletive] monsters up while trying to destroy the One Ring with Zach Snyder patented action scenes along the way it would have been great. The fact that they made most of the males who wanted to see a bit of T&A squirm uncomfortably for 120 minutes is just more evidence that this was an expensive prank.

This movie really reminded me of The Fall, except The Fall didn't suck. I feel like I just payed $12 to have someone make fun of me for two hours.

show that it did EXACTLY what it set out to do.

[clevername]

not really any spoilers here, but I'll spoiler it anyway since its in response to something that does have a few spoilers.

[SHOW]

all that subtext is there, but I think it comes across a little clumsily in the film. It's also a bit heavy handed, IMO, and I think that post bears it out a little. The people who are going to come out of this movie feeling superior because they "got it" when other people didn't are going to be almost as irritating because it wasn't hard to "get it". I don't think Snyder was trying to trick anyone, and I think what this movie is was even evident in the trailers if you paid any real attention to them beyond "those are some crazy visuals!". The commercials were less reliable, but they're trying to sell a movie in 30 seconds so all you're going to see are the action shots.

I think the themes are interesting and the discussion it could spurn are interesting, but I don't think the movie quite hits its mark there. I think it does better job of portraying fantasy (yes, the dreaded nerd fantasy) as a coping mechanism for any traumatic series of events in general as opposed to specifically the plight of women in nerd/film misogyny. It hits a home run there with the first fantasy sequence, where Snyder tells you point blank that our main character is an invincible person who can almost literally do anything she wants with no real world restrictions tying her down, which is of course entirely the point of escapism fantasy. That sort of thing is applicable to any number of horrible things people go through but would like to escape from.

Unfortunately, so much of what we see in nerd fantasy does have exploited women in skimpy outfits (of course, that's not unique to nerd fantasy...), so the movie can't be just about that without addressing it. This film, in particular, chooses to not just address it but make it the central theme, which is fine, but I don't think the characters or the dialog stand up to that level of discussion, so I just didn't get that much out of it.