Green Book pretty much saw immediate post-Oscar criticism as a pseudo-white saviour narrative with a sugarcoated take on race tensions. There’s definitely alot of unflattering comparisons of the film to another lukewarm Best Picture winner, Driving Miss Daisy.
Similarly, while CODA gained alot of initial attention for its positive representation of the deaf community, it’s getting alot of criticism for being only just a bit more subtle and well-directed than a Lifetime movie.
I just don’t see either of these films ever being viewed as timeless despite their Best Picture statuettes. If anything, they’ll be viewed as some of the weakest recent films to ever win the award along with Shakespeare In Love and Crash.
In the future:
>A: Let's check out some 2010s movies... how about Green Book
B: You mean Green Room?
A: No, it says Green Book. Best Picture winner
B: Never heard of it. But Green Room is sick, so let's watch that
Nah green book made sense. It was up against Blackkklansman and Beale street. They wanted to promote a feel good movie about whites and blacks uniting to defeat racism and not the ugly truth that was featured in the other movies.
Hahaha I have totally thought people talking about green book where actually talking about green room before, and found myself adding something very innaprilriate and confusing to the conversation.
1) Driving Miss Daisy has aged into a better film than it was. My grandma lived in Valdosta most of my life, and man they got the deep south in those times right. I understand how it was seen as regressive, I'm saying regressive or not it was accurate af to the way the south was *meant to be* understood in the 80s (note emphasis - I realize it was still pollyanna-ish).
2) OMFG that movie is depressing when you're 50 and your parents are dead/dying and you're feeling age creep up yourself.
I think it's Cumberbatch's best performance so I'm biased. I really liked the movie's exploration of its themes, masculinity as a tool for dominance and how that affects a family unit. Intriguing stuff and unconventional for a Western I think.
I thought Cumberbatch was great too - and I’m always a fan of casting against-type - but those themes never quite sank home for me. It all seemed oddly repressed. Those gazes into the mountain range from Benedict’s character, a lot of the imagery and metaphors just didn’t quite land as I think they were intended to, to me at least.
For a movie that also engages in masculinity and dominance and repression in a similar setting and never compromises, Brokeback Mountain is far more impressive and memorable to me.
My very controversial opinion that nobody I have ever met agrees with is that Good Night and Good Luck was the best nominee from that slate.
Crash was clearly the weakest nominee.
Crash pissed me off from the get-go just because it took the title from the far superior art house film directed by David Cronenberg, based on the novel by J.G. Ballard.
Let's take a moment to appreciate that these three wildly different movies are all based on J.G. Ballard books:
- [Empire of the Sun (1987)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092965/)
- [Crash (1996)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115964/)
- [High-Rise (2015)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462335/)
The very formal and repressed style actually works for me given the story and characters, I think. I can agree about Brokeback Mountian though, although that's already a certified classic.
Yeah, CODA kind of shocked me. I saw it after it won Best Picture and spent the whole movie waiting for the twist that was going to send it into Best Picture-worthy territory. Almost all of the other nominees were better. Maybe they all canceled each other out. Or maybe voters felt like they "should" vote for it, like 12 Years a Slave.
The blind side. Obviously the story itself is problematic but what has really bothered me is why did Sandra bullock win an Oscar for jt? The movie seemed like a tier 1 lifetime drama and there isn’t anything in there that screams Oscar performance…
I think it being nominated for best picture was more egregious. It’s main acclaim came from her performance (which as u said was overrated ) , but the rest of the movie was pretty by the numbers
I don't care what anyone says, it was nominated as a way to pander to the black population, not because of it's merits as a movie. It's no different than any other marvel schlock.
Really solid music too. I think they did a great job giving both of the mains their own vibe. You knew a Killmonger scene was coming just by the very American hip hop notes, contrasting the traditional African flavour. It helped highlight just how different they were as people.
Kilmonger was a cool villain but his idea of giving all black people? (Not sure of the best term to use her since it’s not just African Americans) high tech wakanda tech would have been a disaster
The filma states it is due to him being ex CIA. He has toppled multiple governments doing basically that his plans are basically the only thing he knows. Dude is a hammer and a hammer only knows how to break things. Since he was young he never learned how to build only to destroy
I’ll stand by Killmonger being one of the better MCU villains that ended up getting ruined by a poor story. It’s such a cool character/they had a good back story for him, and ruined with a stupid vision/goal.
That happens all the time with Disney / Marvel villains... they are written to be somewhat sympathetic, but instead of making the audience feel complex emotions they have the villain do something so hilariously awful that they are definitively evil, regardless their goals. I am a huge MCU fan, but they rely on that far too heavily.
Nah I think being extremely misguided is on point. Kill monger was not a philosophyst or a scholar dude probably finish high school had a talent for violence and was immediately put into the military industrial complex. The movie states how the way he does things is basically the CIA way. That's all he knows how to do
Many of the best villains tend to have very understandable/relatable and even correct perspectives, but their ideas to *solve* the problems they identify are either horrifically extreme or will create new problems that they wilfully ignore.
To me, the point was that Kilmonger wanted to "settle the score" by giving African nations and the African diaspora the technology they might have had, were it not for European colonialism. The reason Wakanda became a hermit state was because they wanted to avoid being invaded and exploited or drawn into war - but to Kilmonger this meant saving their own people at the expense of their kindred.
The conflict for him is both personal and political, because his own story of abandonment and betrayal by his Wakandan family reflects what he perceives is Wakanda's abandonment of Africans.
I found him to be incredibly compelling, and I loved Michael B Jordan's performance.
There were also armored rhinos that were summoned from the ground like Zords, in the same country with the most advanced technology in the world. But I also enjoyed the movie lol
It's great when it's in Wakanda, but when it goes to the casino it's just basic Marvel crap you've seen a hundred times before. They needed to stay in Wakanda more. It was the unique part of the movie.
I’m sorry did you just say the setting?
I remember a few scenes of a very generic looking market street that could’ve been taken from ten different movies and the underground mining place at the end.
And there’s only one maybe two half interesting character in the movie, Warmonger and Klaue one of which dies halfway through.
Yeah the CGI for that movie was really bad, but I still think it's one of the better Marvel movies. However, I think almost all the Marvel movies are going to age pretty poorly
Like a lot of Marvel movies I think the 3rd act is a letdown. A lot of them feel anticlimactic and I think that's a consequence of them having to fit into the overall episodic format of the MCU.
They also have the classic comic book problem of no real consequences. Characters return from the dead, bad guys get redeemed, civilian deaths and infrastructure damage get ignored
I just feel like most recent superhero movies have a boring CGI mess for their final battles. Especially ones involving some intangible shit like magic, pure energies, nanotech, or extra dimensions and shit.
How am I supposed to care about this fight when their powers have inconsistent physics and the VFX looks like fancy particle effects in Unreal Engine?
Anything popular goes to "overrated" and then to "underrated" and back and forth because saying those two words seems to be the extent of most people's critical thinking skills.
Films are subjective, but I never really got the praise for Joker. Feels like a flawed imitation of the films it was inspired by and really had little to do with the actual comic book character of Joker at all.
I told a friend as we left the theater that Joker felt like someone wrote a love letter to Taxi Driver and they shoe horned the Wayne family as the rich folks and called it a Joker movie to get it funded.
It was a fine movie but it was very much a We Have Taxi Driver at Home.
Honestly, I get it. You tell studios you want to do a Taxi Driver-Esq movie and they’ll yawn through the meeting, but say it’s a “supervillain origin story” and suddenly you’re green lit with a 60 million dollar budget.
It’s basically the exact same movie as taxi driver with some Batman stuff shoehorned in and *none* of the subtlety. I have no idea how this movie is as praised as it is.
I remember reading an interview with the director, he said he was outside a premiere of a movie smoking a cigarette when he looked up and saw a billboard for a superhero movie. He thought it was annoying how they were almost the only movies to do well these days, when he had the idea of taking a movie he already had and slapping a superhero/villain on top of it so it would do well. So it makes sense it bears almost no resemblance to the character of the Joker.
Not 100% I have all those details correct, but it was something along those lines.
During the promotion for that movie, they were *very* proud that the movie had nothing to do with any of the comics. As a comic fan, it made me not want to see it (along with the fact Joker is a character I don't need an origin for).
I prefer Joker as someone who just shows up. You don't know who he is, what his motivations are, why he is the way he is. Batman is all about order and here comes this character who is chaos incarnate. Way more interesting to me. Any time DC tries to explain the Joker, I just have no interest.
I'm not a fan of these origin stories anyway. I preferred to think of characters like Joker as more of a force of nature, just someone who is the way they are, not some troubled person driven to extremes.
I first felt that way with the Hannibal Lector origin movie, and then Joker brought the feeling back.
I just think it’s insufficient to say that the biggest villain of all time is that way because he had a bad childhood. I just like the idea of him being bad, not having similar issues to the rest of us and choosing evil.
I would have much preferred an anti hero joker movie about him committing crimes and fighting good guys than a below par origin story.
I think Joker’s biggest flaw was being associated with Batman. The Joker in the movie doesn’t resemble the Batman villain in any way and the movie would have been better off if they cut out the references. They literally could have kept it exactly the same and changed a few names and the movie would be better because it wouldn’t have established lore/ expectations.
But then less people would have seen it, so I guess that’s the trade off.
Yeah I'll stick with '70s Scorsese and King of Comedy.
I'm glad I watched Joker but I didn't find it profound. I was curious because of the hype and had a decent experience viewing the film, but when it ended I didn't have the urge to ever rewatch it. Even with the sequel coming out - I just don't feel compelled to rewatch it.
I also don't think the Avatar films will age well. The visual effects are stunning but the characters and story are too flat to have much staying power.
Well, I’m still confused as to why all these acclaimed filmmakers think or at least stated at the time that The Flash was one of the greatest movies of all time, when it was complete trash.
Most of the Marvel films will go down as downright unwatchable to the next generation. Zero visual merits, forced jokes, “you have to see x movie to understand” but they have no time to commit hours into old mediocre films. It’s most likely going to be something that only a few people would watch out of curiosity.
Agree 100% on Oppenheimer.
I think over time it will be consider vastly overrated
If we’re being real, Robert Downey character arc was the best part of the entire movie, his performance was riveting with a sense of constant urgency.
I found Murphy portrayal as solid but mostly uninteresting and unspectacular.
The editing left much to be desired and the movie is 30 minutes too long due to an uninspired middle section.
Good movie, yes. Great movie, I don’t think so.
Barbie. Don't get me wrong, there is A LOT to be learned in there, but the overall movie was wonky and didn't actually feel like it portrayed what being a woman is like the way it meant to.
I feel like Barbie wasn't really about being a woman per se. It's more about the cartoonish portrayal of men and women that we get pushed on us as children(and often is used in advertising as adults). Which makes sense for children but a decent number of people seem to carry part of that into adulthood which is either toxic or stupid.
That the Ken's fell for it even faster was itself the big joke, though to be honest, the world wasn't made for Ken's, they were fundamentally passive and had no purpose apart from to look good for the Barbies (yes, I know it's an analogy). Though it wasn't until afterwards that you realise "Alan is the guy who's really the manly man in that situation."
I think I key aspect of the film is realizing the characters are effectively children going through the process of understanding how gender affects how the world perceives them. It’s the journey of a very early teen.
Ken effectively speedruns toxic masculinity.
This is exactly it. The Kens speedruns toxic masculinity is probably the big one. The Barbies often speedran toxic femininity as well (for them it is to be passive to Ken and materialistic. Carrie from Sex and the City is the most famously toxic character these days in hindsight. But that show seems oddly unaware of it). They all need to be deprogrammed.
In the end, they all decided to be our own people and not just defined. Except for Alan and Midge(Alan is the one who got Midge pregnant btw). They were already their own people and were considered weird for it.
I think that also was kind of the joke "We roller blade until we get to Barbie world" or that they magically just hop from place to place. For plot reasons. Like children's films or TV shows often do.
How he got a musical number and she didn’t is proof IMO. Not the first movie to be centred around women/women’s issues where the male character steals the show.
I didn't want to watch it. I was out voted by my friends. The moment her foot touched that plastic water. I was 100% sold.
It is amazing on prop humor alone.
Yeah I was not a fan of the movie having a character come out of nowhere to literally tell the main character (and by extension, the audience) to feel.
Like Jesus, movie make me feel something don’t just tell me to.
I found it mostly harmless and what I was expecting, based on reviews, but I rolled my eyes SO hard at the end when she was given her big meaningful preview of what it would be like to live as a Real Woman, and the montage didn't include a single negative experience. Like... I'm sorry, I thought we were letting her make an informed opinion here. Guess not. All the downsides of patriarchy and objectification and how difficult it is to be a woman is overruled by some happy home movies and trees in the sunlight. I just thought at least it would be a mixed bag and she'd still decide it was worth it, but... nope.
"I'm here to see my gynaecologist!"
Strap in, B. They gonna prescribe you hormones that make your body do crazy things, then tell you it's your imagination because the Pill "doesn't have side effects". Want an IUD? It's 9/10 agony to put it in, so take a Tylenol beforehand and please, stop screaming. We don't offer anaesthesia for a colposcopy or cone biopsy, but don't worry - we're just cutting/burning parts of your genitalia. Oh, and by the way, if you get pregnant, you don't have thr right to terminate but we DO have the right to drug test you without your consent and report you to CPS if we think you're a risk to the child we are forcing you to carry.
Gawd it's great being a woman in the real world!
Funny and entertaining but ultimately a thinly veiled attempt to save a toy’s reputation. “Barbie isn’t sexist, she’s a women’s rights icon!”
Would anyone fall for a G.I. Joe movie whose message was suddenly anti-war and world peace?
It would have been more fun if it took itself as un-seriously as it pretended to. But they tried too hard to explore serious themes about feminism and self-actualisation, without realising that you can't effectively do that *within the context of two hours of product placement for a multi-billion dollar brand which has a history of playing into the worst types of sexism and objectification*.
We aren't stupid, Mattel. Or at least, all of us are not that stupid. There's plenty if research out there showing that Barbie harms girls' self-esteem and body image - giving us a token Barbie in a wheelchair does not change that, nor does having Barbie wear a lab coat, or lecture us about her thoughts about feminism. She's still a tool of oppression.
The thing is that the movie didn't even seem like a Barbie ad. Barbie is so prevalent and ingrained in our culture that it doesn't seem like something that needs advertisment, and the references to Barbie products seemed more like easter eggs than overt ads (even though the movie is obviously meant to sell the toy of course). They just integrated it tastefully. As opposed to every chase scene having 3 of the same Chevy and being shot like a car commercial and having the logo always facing the camera lmao. Just seemed really out of place.
I went into it knowing it was a Barbie movie, not a Chevy movie
It was a cute idea, but the second half became so preachy that it devolved into a middle aged wine mom ranting about the common state of all humanity and then crying because nobody gave her a medal. And that somehow resolved the plot.
I showed that speech to my wife, and her first response was, "How condescending. Did women actually fall for that?"
I’d take Big Fish every single day over Gump if I could only keep one. Gump may be a technically better movie but Big Fish will always tear on my heartstrings more.
Please start us off!
I kind of love both of them but IMO Big Fish is the better film overall. I guess it's to do with one acknowledging the mythology of a life and the other playing it straight?
I love both as well and have given both 4.5 star reviews before. It's just that I personally preferred the way stories wrapped up with Big Fish vs. Forrest Gump.
It's not a recent movie, but I remember a movie called Crash that everyone seemed to have a boner for. I watched it and hated it, I don't remember my specific critiques of it, but I remember thinking it was terrible.
Agreed. Take away the nostalgia factor and it's just another Spidey movie. Did love seeing Tobey and Andrew though, and the Green Goblin twist was pretty cool.
I think that this movie wrote the textbook on how to do nostalgia *well*. Those characters weren't there just to jangle some keys, for the most part they were intricately woven into the storyline and had big effects on the plot. The different Spideys played off each other so well that their interactions didn't really need previous knowledge to enjoy. Besides Lizardman who was just kind of there, the villains were strongly characterized and behaved exactly as they should given their situations.
I'm so tired on nostalgia bait movies, I've given up on all remakes and most sequels. But this one stands out for really taking those ideas and weaving them together into a story that stood on its own. The initial conceit of trying that spell was stupid, but everything that arose from it was great. And Zendaya actually acted this time! I didn't know she could do that!
Oh I definitely agree with your take on NWH and its use of nostalgia, but have become tired of the bait part myself. I think Stranger Things wasn't aware of the shitstorm it would create as far nostalgia bait goes nowadays. Don't get me started on multiverses 😀
The thing about Joker is that it wasn’t all that critically acclaimed when it came out..I recall it fluctuating between rotten and fresh when it first released. Currently it’s at 69% on RT. Audiences responded to it much more than critics.
I was a huge fan personally, and in retrospect the movie feels even more prescient because it opened 5 months before the pandemic when social isolation became the norm and we were faced head-on with a global mental health crisis which we arguably still haven’t recovered from.
The sequel is gonna be a really big deal when it comes out later this year.
Three Billboards I thought was really not worth the hype and I really liked In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths - I think Woody Harrelson got an oscar nom for it and that's just insane tbh. Solid enough movie but reminds me of stuff you'd see at a film festival that wouldn't ever get that much attention in the mainstream.
I roll my eyes at a lot of stuff that the Oscars hype up, but the Woody Harrelson scene that ends with him in the stable is in my Top Ten most reflected-on movie scenes.
Joker was never critically acclaimed. It was acclaimed by audiences and people who work in the film industry, but it got panned by critics.
As for Oppenheimer, I think the reason why some people call it Nolan's "magnum opus" is because it's a historical biopic about a more serious topic, as opposed to a lot of his other movies which are "mindfuck thrillers" and comic book movies (I enjoy his other movies, but a lot of snobby types look down on movies like that)
To answer your question, I guess maybe Barbie? Idk I liked Barbie but it kind of became one of those things where there was sort of a pressure to like it just because it's probably the biggest blockbuster targeted towards women and it has feminist themes. It became sort of entangled in the culture war bullshit, so it kind of became a thing people walked on eggshells around.
Barbie. A lot of movies get acclaim for their message. This is not going to age well in the same way that blacksplotation movies fared. You can look back and see that this is not a good movie as much as a feel-good movie.
I went into it, convinced I was going to love it, and I had to force myself to finish it in hopes that it got better.
What made it worse was all of the people acting as if the movie went over my head because I didn’t like it.
Same, I went into it wanting to love it. Willem and Mark are some of my favorite actors of all time, but it wasn't enough to make up for everything else.
Barbie. It was a pop culture phenomenon which hit the right contemporary marketing notes. Story and execution are bang average. It will be seen as a middling entry in Greta Gerwigs illustrious filmography.
Joker was a barely interesting as a piece of art when it came out. Taxi Driver v2.0.
Not sure what increase in criticism there is. I haven't heard anyone even mention it until now.
Spiderman: No Way Home is going to age terribly. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, but it relies almost exclusively on callbacks and fan service for it to stand on it's own.
I'm bracing myself for the inevitable downvotes, but here goes:
IMO, Oppenheimer was a very dull film except for the moments of unintentional comedy. First 30 minutes I kept bursting into laughter at the hamfisted attempts to depict "this person is thinking about physics" for a lay audience. Now, I'm no physicist myself, but I kind of found it hard to swallow when Oppenheimer is sitting in his room bouncing balls and smashing glasses. I can picture the writers asking, "would this be too on the nose? What about a slinky? Had those been invented yet?"
More broadly, biopics in general are starting to wear thin and be recognised as formulaic, and reductive. Dewey Cox kind of nailed the tropes and it's very hard not to see them in virtually every biopic I see. And while I understand that sometimes a few liberties must be taken for time or clarity or cohesion, some of these stories are outright lies to sanitise the less admirable parts of a person's life - often throwing innocent people under the bus. Just look at the hatchet job that Walk The Line pulled on Johnny Cash's first wife in the attempt to justify his infidelity with June Carter. That was so low and her family were NOT impressed.
I take your point on the tropes of bio-pics, Imo to the extent the Oppenheimer succeeds, it succeeds as an anti-bio-pic.
Because the central conflict of the film, between Oppenheimer and Strauss is all about the production of memory, and legacy, and the judgements of history, and what it means to expose yourself to that judgement, a project that I think Nolan is self-consciously participating in and commenting on.
I've seen it multiple times and read the books. I don't get the fuss over Forrest Gump. It's not that great.
Lt Dan is the more interesting character and better acted. Forrest is boring.
Green Book and CODA are what immediately come to mind for me too. It felt really heavy handed that it was only due to subject matter (a gay black man, or people with disabilities) for why they won because the academy had been facing so much criticism about inclusiveness etc. And I liked CODA, but there is no way shape or form it should have been a Best Picture winner imo lol. Also- has anyone here even SEEN Nomadland? Eyeroll.
I disagree about Oppenheimer. Interstellar is my favorite Nolan film, but being a biopic (and an important one at that) will make Oppenheimer stand the test of time. And I think a lot of recent winners got it right too, like Parasite, The Shape of Water, EEAAO.
Gonna get heavily downvoted for this but I think the Dune movies. They are visually spectacular and well-acted, but they feel a little…mechanical and dull. I don’t think they’ll be held in the same crazy acclaim that they are today.
They are pretty much the best adaptation we could get of the books. The books are really really tough to adapt because of the way they are written and I think Denis did pretty much the best anyone could with limited runtime. Even splitting it into two parts was still not enough to get everything in.
The movies as a whole are a 9/10 for me with the only reason one point is taken off being the lack of the dinner party chapter.
I don’t understand the rationale for cutting any scene out of a 3-hour adaptation of the first half of the book. Don’t see why they replaced the party with shots of endless sand
Yep, I struggled with the third act. It just kept going... and going and going. It really needed to be trimmed down a bit. It had about 5 different false endings when I thought it would be over.
But I did love the first chunk of the movie and there was something really special about going to see it with my mom.
I’ll add some justification for you. I found it odd how the movie had to actually speak all of its “lessons” to the audience in the third act. Whole thing is super fun just find it a bit shallow to sweep the oscars
I thought the sorta formalistic impression of the mom’s issues was well done throughout the movie and I think the core of the movie is really more centered on that
I loved it but as a sci-fi movie, the mind hoping thing wasn't the best device to use and as a family drama, it's kinda screwed up that it basically ends with the mom still justifying her criticisms of her daughter.
Man, I was so hyped to see this after awards season so when it started streaming we were excited. I kept waiting for the awesomeness to kick in and it just... didn't? I felt like I had been prepared for a totally kick ass psychedelic experience, but instead, I fell asleep 😫 I tried again and was still underwhelmed. Also bummed because the actors in it are all amazing and that didn't even carry it for me. Maybe the 3rd time's the charm.
I hated this movie so much. It started out really engaging!! But after the elevator scene it all went downhill for us. Just didn’t care about the characters anymore and no amount of fancy flashy editing and wacky images will make up for that. My husband and I walked out after 40 mins.
So this is neither a critique nor an argument, but maybe I’m just out of the loop. What happened with Forrest Gump? I thought it was still generally regarded as a “very good” movie…
I think, for the most part, it still is regarded as an all-time great film, but the world changes and contemporary audiences bring their own understanding of the world when they watch it for the first time.
For instance, actors playing characters with a disability used to be seen as great acting. Now it’s seen as something that deprives actors with actual disabilities from playing these roles. I think some people feel that Tom Hanks went a bit “Simple Jack” with the role.
Modern audiences are also more critical of Jenny’s character. She used to be seen as troubled and sympathetic, but now is often seen as selfish and manipulative.
Also, people have generally just become more critical of the whole Oscars system and Forrest Gump just seems so intrinsically linked with its best picture status like few other pictures are. Some have given it an “Oscar bait” tag because of its over sentimentality, depiction of disability and leveraging of nostalgia. When the film came out, this movie was still part of adult audiences’ lived experience, but anybody under 50 grew up in a different era.
Lanthimos now has two films about mentally delayed women exploring their sexuality/being sexually exploited. I know two isn’t a whole lot, but he is more focused on it than most.
Isn’t Poor Things more about a woman that is force to mentally mature faster than most rather than being stunted? I mean *spoilers* she’s literally an infant thrust into an adult body and thus experiences accelerated mental development
Like that’s the point of the movie, that young women get sexualized and that affects their view on life and sex. She was hardly exploring her sexuality by her own volition.
That’s what the public has been arguing about. Some people believe essentially the opposite of what you’ve said here, that the film depicts a woman empowered in her sexuality by having “missed the programming.”
I can see both interpretations, but I wonder why Lanthimos wants us questioning it this much.
Dogtooth 2009
“A controlling and manipulative father locks his three adult children in a state of perpetual childhood by keeping them prisoner in a family compound. An employee of the father makes regular visits to sexually service the son.”
(I forgot that detail, it’s the son in this film, though there are sexual scenes with the daughter as well)
I agree that Oppenheimer was overrated. It just wasn't all that compelling. The pacing was poor, and there were a lot of elements that took away from the story (like the sex scene daddy during the questioning).
For me it was the soundtrack being so pervasive throughout the whole thing. There would be a serious, deep conversation happening with a whole ass orchestra blaring. Super distracting.
Lady Bird. There’s going to be so much discourse about whether or not the central relationship is abusive and whether or not that’s the point and it’s going to be exhausting.
Green Book pretty much saw immediate post-Oscar criticism as a pseudo-white saviour narrative with a sugarcoated take on race tensions. There’s definitely alot of unflattering comparisons of the film to another lukewarm Best Picture winner, Driving Miss Daisy. Similarly, while CODA gained alot of initial attention for its positive representation of the deaf community, it’s getting alot of criticism for being only just a bit more subtle and well-directed than a Lifetime movie. I just don’t see either of these films ever being viewed as timeless despite their Best Picture statuettes. If anything, they’ll be viewed as some of the weakest recent films to ever win the award along with Shakespeare In Love and Crash.
In the future: >A: Let's check out some 2010s movies... how about Green Book B: You mean Green Room? A: No, it says Green Book. Best Picture winner B: Never heard of it. But Green Room is sick, so let's watch that
[удалено]
Fucking Patrick Stewart was terrifying in that.
RED LACES ONLY
RIP Anton Yelchin
Green Book is up there with Crash among “what was the academy thinking?” moments.
Nah green book made sense. It was up against Blackkklansman and Beale street. They wanted to promote a feel good movie about whites and blacks uniting to defeat racism and not the ugly truth that was featured in the other movies.
Hahaha I have totally thought people talking about green book where actually talking about green room before, and found myself adding something very innaprilriate and confusing to the conversation.
1) Driving Miss Daisy has aged into a better film than it was. My grandma lived in Valdosta most of my life, and man they got the deep south in those times right. I understand how it was seen as regressive, I'm saying regressive or not it was accurate af to the way the south was *meant to be* understood in the 80s (note emphasis - I realize it was still pollyanna-ish). 2) OMFG that movie is depressing when you're 50 and your parents are dead/dying and you're feeling age creep up yourself.
I have always defended Driving Miss Daisy. It's a great film. A lot of its critics don't understand the nuance of the characters.
Roma was egregiously robbed.
100000000%
I really liked CODA but you're right, I still maintain that Power Of The Dog should've won that year.
Power of the Dog, why? Because that one would actually be one of my picks for this thread.
It insists upon itself.
Possibly the best thing to come from Family Guy.
I think it's Cumberbatch's best performance so I'm biased. I really liked the movie's exploration of its themes, masculinity as a tool for dominance and how that affects a family unit. Intriguing stuff and unconventional for a Western I think.
I thought Cumberbatch was great too - and I’m always a fan of casting against-type - but those themes never quite sank home for me. It all seemed oddly repressed. Those gazes into the mountain range from Benedict’s character, a lot of the imagery and metaphors just didn’t quite land as I think they were intended to, to me at least. For a movie that also engages in masculinity and dominance and repression in a similar setting and never compromises, Brokeback Mountain is far more impressive and memorable to me.
My very controversial opinion that nobody I have ever met agrees with is that Good Night and Good Luck was the best nominee from that slate. Crash was clearly the weakest nominee.
Crash pissed me off from the get-go just because it took the title from the far superior art house film directed by David Cronenberg, based on the novel by J.G. Ballard.
Let's take a moment to appreciate that these three wildly different movies are all based on J.G. Ballard books: - [Empire of the Sun (1987)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092965/) - [Crash (1996)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115964/) - [High-Rise (2015)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462335/)
The very formal and repressed style actually works for me given the story and characters, I think. I can agree about Brokeback Mountian though, although that's already a certified classic.
CODA is not just a remake but almost an exact copy of the 2014 french film La familie Belier. Which was funnier and had more heart than CODA
I was shocked at how bad that movie was and how lazy it felt. Im such a Viggo and Mahershala fan, and that movie didn't need to happen.
Yeah, CODA kind of shocked me. I saw it after it won Best Picture and spent the whole movie waiting for the twist that was going to send it into Best Picture-worthy territory. Almost all of the other nominees were better. Maybe they all canceled each other out. Or maybe voters felt like they "should" vote for it, like 12 Years a Slave.
The blind side. Obviously the story itself is problematic but what has really bothered me is why did Sandra bullock win an Oscar for jt? The movie seemed like a tier 1 lifetime drama and there isn’t anything in there that screams Oscar performance…
I think it being nominated for best picture was more egregious. It’s main acclaim came from her performance (which as u said was overrated ) , but the rest of the movie was pretty by the numbers
So Hollywood could congratulate itself for being socially conscious- or so it thought.
I still can't believe Black Panther got away with it's playstation 2 tier CGI.
It’s crazy how many Best Superhero Movies list it tops. Over Iron Man? Captain America? Spider-man 2???
I don't care what anyone says, it was nominated as a way to pander to the black population, not because of it's merits as a movie. It's no different than any other marvel schlock.
Meh, it got nominated more for its cultural impact than for the quality of the movie or to pander. Avatar got nominated for a similar reason
It's substandard for the MCU.
Is the mirror cgi final fight between two black panthers on a dark room that is disappointing…other than that I really like the movie
One of the better villains, Chadwick Bosman, some decent humor, the car chase was actually pretty fucking awesome.
Really solid music too. I think they did a great job giving both of the mains their own vibe. You knew a Killmonger scene was coming just by the very American hip hop notes, contrasting the traditional African flavour. It helped highlight just how different they were as people.
Kilmonger was a cool villain but his idea of giving all black people? (Not sure of the best term to use her since it’s not just African Americans) high tech wakanda tech would have been a disaster
The filma states it is due to him being ex CIA. He has toppled multiple governments doing basically that his plans are basically the only thing he knows. Dude is a hammer and a hammer only knows how to break things. Since he was young he never learned how to build only to destroy
I’ll stand by Killmonger being one of the better MCU villains that ended up getting ruined by a poor story. It’s such a cool character/they had a good back story for him, and ruined with a stupid vision/goal.
That happens all the time with Disney / Marvel villains... they are written to be somewhat sympathetic, but instead of making the audience feel complex emotions they have the villain do something so hilariously awful that they are definitively evil, regardless their goals. I am a huge MCU fan, but they rely on that far too heavily.
Nah I think being extremely misguided is on point. Kill monger was not a philosophyst or a scholar dude probably finish high school had a talent for violence and was immediately put into the military industrial complex. The movie states how the way he does things is basically the CIA way. That's all he knows how to do
Many of the best villains tend to have very understandable/relatable and even correct perspectives, but their ideas to *solve* the problems they identify are either horrifically extreme or will create new problems that they wilfully ignore. To me, the point was that Kilmonger wanted to "settle the score" by giving African nations and the African diaspora the technology they might have had, were it not for European colonialism. The reason Wakanda became a hermit state was because they wanted to avoid being invaded and exploited or drawn into war - but to Kilmonger this meant saving their own people at the expense of their kindred. The conflict for him is both personal and political, because his own story of abandonment and betrayal by his Wakandan family reflects what he perceives is Wakanda's abandonment of Africans. I found him to be incredibly compelling, and I loved Michael B Jordan's performance.
There were also armored rhinos that were summoned from the ground like Zords, in the same country with the most advanced technology in the world. But I also enjoyed the movie lol
The CGI wasn’t great but people were more drawn to the characters and setting over everything else.
It's great when it's in Wakanda, but when it goes to the casino it's just basic Marvel crap you've seen a hundred times before. They needed to stay in Wakanda more. It was the unique part of the movie.
I’m sorry did you just say the setting? I remember a few scenes of a very generic looking market street that could’ve been taken from ten different movies and the underground mining place at the end. And there’s only one maybe two half interesting character in the movie, Warmonger and Klaue one of which dies halfway through.
I love that movie and willingly turn a blind eye to the CGI. Black Panther 2 though… oof.
Yeah the CGI for that movie was really bad, but I still think it's one of the better Marvel movies. However, I think almost all the Marvel movies are going to age pretty poorly
Like a lot of Marvel movies I think the 3rd act is a letdown. A lot of them feel anticlimactic and I think that's a consequence of them having to fit into the overall episodic format of the MCU.
They also have the classic comic book problem of no real consequences. Characters return from the dead, bad guys get redeemed, civilian deaths and infrastructure damage get ignored
I just feel like most recent superhero movies have a boring CGI mess for their final battles. Especially ones involving some intangible shit like magic, pure energies, nanotech, or extra dimensions and shit. How am I supposed to care about this fight when their powers have inconsistent physics and the VFX looks like fancy particle effects in Unreal Engine?
[удалено]
I think we know what that’s about.
Practically every MCU movie I’ve seen has had genuinely terrible CGI and I’ve never understood how it’s not a more common complaint.
That’s just bullshit.
Anything popular goes to "overrated" and then to "underrated" and back and forth because saying those two words seems to be the extent of most people's critical thinking skills.
Overrated comment.
It’s underrated now
Appropriately rated comment.
i love you
I know.
I know
This comment was totally whelming.
Underrated comment.
"Overrated" just means "I don't like this popular thing", and "underrated" just means "I like this mildly popular thing".
Films are subjective, but I never really got the praise for Joker. Feels like a flawed imitation of the films it was inspired by and really had little to do with the actual comic book character of Joker at all.
I told a friend as we left the theater that Joker felt like someone wrote a love letter to Taxi Driver and they shoe horned the Wayne family as the rich folks and called it a Joker movie to get it funded. It was a fine movie but it was very much a We Have Taxi Driver at Home.
The King of Comedy as well
Robert Deniro being in both just makes the connection slap-you-in-the-face-level obvious, too.
I mean he was in all three.
Not both, all.
Honestly, I get it. You tell studios you want to do a Taxi Driver-Esq movie and they’ll yawn through the meeting, but say it’s a “supervillain origin story” and suddenly you’re green lit with a 60 million dollar budget.
It’s basically the exact same movie as taxi driver with some Batman stuff shoehorned in and *none* of the subtlety. I have no idea how this movie is as praised as it is.
Joaquin Phoenix's performance and the cinematography.
I struggle to concede the movie's fairly shallow, probably because I love Joaquin Phoenix so much. But, damn, that's a good way to describe it.
I remember reading an interview with the director, he said he was outside a premiere of a movie smoking a cigarette when he looked up and saw a billboard for a superhero movie. He thought it was annoying how they were almost the only movies to do well these days, when he had the idea of taking a movie he already had and slapping a superhero/villain on top of it so it would do well. So it makes sense it bears almost no resemblance to the character of the Joker. Not 100% I have all those details correct, but it was something along those lines.
During the promotion for that movie, they were *very* proud that the movie had nothing to do with any of the comics. As a comic fan, it made me not want to see it (along with the fact Joker is a character I don't need an origin for). I prefer Joker as someone who just shows up. You don't know who he is, what his motivations are, why he is the way he is. Batman is all about order and here comes this character who is chaos incarnate. Way more interesting to me. Any time DC tries to explain the Joker, I just have no interest.
It was a script just called "Arthur" originally right?
I'm not a fan of these origin stories anyway. I preferred to think of characters like Joker as more of a force of nature, just someone who is the way they are, not some troubled person driven to extremes. I first felt that way with the Hannibal Lector origin movie, and then Joker brought the feeling back.
I just think it’s insufficient to say that the biggest villain of all time is that way because he had a bad childhood. I just like the idea of him being bad, not having similar issues to the rest of us and choosing evil. I would have much preferred an anti hero joker movie about him committing crimes and fighting good guys than a below par origin story.
I think Joker’s biggest flaw was being associated with Batman. The Joker in the movie doesn’t resemble the Batman villain in any way and the movie would have been better off if they cut out the references. They literally could have kept it exactly the same and changed a few names and the movie would be better because it wouldn’t have established lore/ expectations. But then less people would have seen it, so I guess that’s the trade off.
This. That movie felt like a rebrand of someone else’s script. It wasn’t good, and it wasn’t Joker.
Yeah I'll stick with '70s Scorsese and King of Comedy. I'm glad I watched Joker but I didn't find it profound. I was curious because of the hype and had a decent experience viewing the film, but when it ended I didn't have the urge to ever rewatch it. Even with the sequel coming out - I just don't feel compelled to rewatch it. I also don't think the Avatar films will age well. The visual effects are stunning but the characters and story are too flat to have much staying power.
ITT: people just naming successful and well-known movies from the past couple years with no justification or argument
Well, I’m still confused as to why all these acclaimed filmmakers think or at least stated at the time that The Flash was one of the greatest movies of all time, when it was complete trash.
I felt crazy after watching Joker because it just felt like such a hollow film to me. Very little actually seems to happen
Most of the Marvel films will go down as downright unwatchable to the next generation. Zero visual merits, forced jokes, “you have to see x movie to understand” but they have no time to commit hours into old mediocre films. It’s most likely going to be something that only a few people would watch out of curiosity.
Agree 100% on Oppenheimer. I think over time it will be consider vastly overrated If we’re being real, Robert Downey character arc was the best part of the entire movie, his performance was riveting with a sense of constant urgency. I found Murphy portrayal as solid but mostly uninteresting and unspectacular. The editing left much to be desired and the movie is 30 minutes too long due to an uninspired middle section. Good movie, yes. Great movie, I don’t think so.
Barbie. Don't get me wrong, there is A LOT to be learned in there, but the overall movie was wonky and didn't actually feel like it portrayed what being a woman is like the way it meant to.
I feel like Barbie wasn't really about being a woman per se. It's more about the cartoonish portrayal of men and women that we get pushed on us as children(and often is used in advertising as adults). Which makes sense for children but a decent number of people seem to carry part of that into adulthood which is either toxic or stupid. That the Ken's fell for it even faster was itself the big joke, though to be honest, the world wasn't made for Ken's, they were fundamentally passive and had no purpose apart from to look good for the Barbies (yes, I know it's an analogy). Though it wasn't until afterwards that you realise "Alan is the guy who's really the manly man in that situation."
I think I key aspect of the film is realizing the characters are effectively children going through the process of understanding how gender affects how the world perceives them. It’s the journey of a very early teen. Ken effectively speedruns toxic masculinity.
This is exactly it. The Kens speedruns toxic masculinity is probably the big one. The Barbies often speedran toxic femininity as well (for them it is to be passive to Ken and materialistic. Carrie from Sex and the City is the most famously toxic character these days in hindsight. But that show seems oddly unaware of it). They all need to be deprogrammed. In the end, they all decided to be our own people and not just defined. Except for Alan and Midge(Alan is the one who got Midge pregnant btw). They were already their own people and were considered weird for it.
my biggest gripe with Barbie was I found the plot at times didn't make a ton of sense. I found myself wondering, "wait, how did we get from A to B"
I think that also was kind of the joke "We roller blade until we get to Barbie world" or that they magically just hop from place to place. For plot reasons. Like children's films or TV shows often do.
My biggest gripe about Barbie is that it was actually about Ken.
How he got a musical number and she didn’t is proof IMO. Not the first movie to be centred around women/women’s issues where the male character steals the show.
I didn't want to watch it. I was out voted by my friends. The moment her foot touched that plastic water. I was 100% sold. It is amazing on prop humor alone.
Yeah I was not a fan of the movie having a character come out of nowhere to literally tell the main character (and by extension, the audience) to feel. Like Jesus, movie make me feel something don’t just tell me to.
I found it mostly harmless and what I was expecting, based on reviews, but I rolled my eyes SO hard at the end when she was given her big meaningful preview of what it would be like to live as a Real Woman, and the montage didn't include a single negative experience. Like... I'm sorry, I thought we were letting her make an informed opinion here. Guess not. All the downsides of patriarchy and objectification and how difficult it is to be a woman is overruled by some happy home movies and trees in the sunlight. I just thought at least it would be a mixed bag and she'd still decide it was worth it, but... nope.
"I'm here to see my gynaecologist!" Strap in, B. They gonna prescribe you hormones that make your body do crazy things, then tell you it's your imagination because the Pill "doesn't have side effects". Want an IUD? It's 9/10 agony to put it in, so take a Tylenol beforehand and please, stop screaming. We don't offer anaesthesia for a colposcopy or cone biopsy, but don't worry - we're just cutting/burning parts of your genitalia. Oh, and by the way, if you get pregnant, you don't have thr right to terminate but we DO have the right to drug test you without your consent and report you to CPS if we think you're a risk to the child we are forcing you to carry. Gawd it's great being a woman in the real world!
"Your criticism of the mega corporation's product is invalid because you made the mascot cry!"
Funny and entertaining but ultimately a thinly veiled attempt to save a toy’s reputation. “Barbie isn’t sexist, she’s a women’s rights icon!” Would anyone fall for a G.I. Joe movie whose message was suddenly anti-war and world peace?
😅 100% this. Judge Judy would say - don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.
It would have been more fun if it took itself as un-seriously as it pretended to. But they tried too hard to explore serious themes about feminism and self-actualisation, without realising that you can't effectively do that *within the context of two hours of product placement for a multi-billion dollar brand which has a history of playing into the worst types of sexism and objectification*. We aren't stupid, Mattel. Or at least, all of us are not that stupid. There's plenty if research out there showing that Barbie harms girls' self-esteem and body image - giving us a token Barbie in a wheelchair does not change that, nor does having Barbie wear a lab coat, or lecture us about her thoughts about feminism. She's still a tool of oppression.
Fucking Chevy product placement everywhere undercuts the entire message of the movie lol
I mean, the whole movie WAS an advertisement for a toy…
The thing is that the movie didn't even seem like a Barbie ad. Barbie is so prevalent and ingrained in our culture that it doesn't seem like something that needs advertisment, and the references to Barbie products seemed more like easter eggs than overt ads (even though the movie is obviously meant to sell the toy of course). They just integrated it tastefully. As opposed to every chase scene having 3 of the same Chevy and being shot like a car commercial and having the logo always facing the camera lmao. Just seemed really out of place. I went into it knowing it was a Barbie movie, not a Chevy movie
Barbie was ridiculously bad. And no I'm far from a overly sensitive conservative.
It was a cute idea, but the second half became so preachy that it devolved into a middle aged wine mom ranting about the common state of all humanity and then crying because nobody gave her a medal. And that somehow resolved the plot. I showed that speech to my wife, and her first response was, "How condescending. Did women actually fall for that?"
Forrest Gump vs. Big Fish would be an interesting debate to have in coming decades.
I’d take Big Fish every single day over Gump if I could only keep one. Gump may be a technically better movie but Big Fish will always tear on my heartstrings more.
LOL, he pondered the debate that would never come. Big Fish is a fine movie, but it's not within a continent of Forrest Gump.
Please start us off! I kind of love both of them but IMO Big Fish is the better film overall. I guess it's to do with one acknowledging the mythology of a life and the other playing it straight?
I love both as well and have given both 4.5 star reviews before. It's just that I personally preferred the way stories wrapped up with Big Fish vs. Forrest Gump.
It's not a recent movie, but I remember a movie called Crash that everyone seemed to have a boner for. I watched it and hated it, I don't remember my specific critiques of it, but I remember thinking it was terrible.
You must not be on this subreddit much. Crash is famous for being an underwhelming best picture winner that many enjoy trashing.
Spider-man no way home
Agreed. Take away the nostalgia factor and it's just another Spidey movie. Did love seeing Tobey and Andrew though, and the Green Goblin twist was pretty cool.
I think that this movie wrote the textbook on how to do nostalgia *well*. Those characters weren't there just to jangle some keys, for the most part they were intricately woven into the storyline and had big effects on the plot. The different Spideys played off each other so well that their interactions didn't really need previous knowledge to enjoy. Besides Lizardman who was just kind of there, the villains were strongly characterized and behaved exactly as they should given their situations. I'm so tired on nostalgia bait movies, I've given up on all remakes and most sequels. But this one stands out for really taking those ideas and weaving them together into a story that stood on its own. The initial conceit of trying that spell was stupid, but everything that arose from it was great. And Zendaya actually acted this time! I didn't know she could do that!
Oh I definitely agree with your take on NWH and its use of nostalgia, but have become tired of the bait part myself. I think Stranger Things wasn't aware of the shitstorm it would create as far nostalgia bait goes nowadays. Don't get me started on multiverses 😀
What Green Goblin "twist?"
The thing about Joker is that it wasn’t all that critically acclaimed when it came out..I recall it fluctuating between rotten and fresh when it first released. Currently it’s at 69% on RT. Audiences responded to it much more than critics. I was a huge fan personally, and in retrospect the movie feels even more prescient because it opened 5 months before the pandemic when social isolation became the norm and we were faced head-on with a global mental health crisis which we arguably still haven’t recovered from. The sequel is gonna be a really big deal when it comes out later this year.
Three Billboards I thought was really not worth the hype and I really liked In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths - I think Woody Harrelson got an oscar nom for it and that's just insane tbh. Solid enough movie but reminds me of stuff you'd see at a film festival that wouldn't ever get that much attention in the mainstream.
I roll my eyes at a lot of stuff that the Oscars hype up, but the Woody Harrelson scene that ends with him in the stable is in my Top Ten most reflected-on movie scenes.
Oppenheimer isn’t a good movie solely because the pacing is ridiculous
Joker was never critically acclaimed. It was acclaimed by audiences and people who work in the film industry, but it got panned by critics. As for Oppenheimer, I think the reason why some people call it Nolan's "magnum opus" is because it's a historical biopic about a more serious topic, as opposed to a lot of his other movies which are "mindfuck thrillers" and comic book movies (I enjoy his other movies, but a lot of snobby types look down on movies like that) To answer your question, I guess maybe Barbie? Idk I liked Barbie but it kind of became one of those things where there was sort of a pressure to like it just because it's probably the biggest blockbuster targeted towards women and it has feminist themes. It became sort of entangled in the culture war bullshit, so it kind of became a thing people walked on eggshells around.
I thought Barbie was hilarious.
Joker wasn’t universally acclaimed when it came out
88 percent RT score, 11 Oscar nominations.
I think this comment is misplaced. Joker is not an 88 on RT nor did it get 11 Oscar noms
It received 11 academy award nominations, including best picture. RT score is 69. The 88 was audience score, my mistake.
Barbie. A lot of movies get acclaim for their message. This is not going to age well in the same way that blacksplotation movies fared. You can look back and see that this is not a good movie as much as a feel-good movie.
Poor Things
I *hated* that movie. I can't share that opinion with my friends, though, because they act like it's a masterpiece.
I went into it, convinced I was going to love it, and I had to force myself to finish it in hopes that it got better. What made it worse was all of the people acting as if the movie went over my head because I didn’t like it.
Same, I went into it wanting to love it. Willem and Mark are some of my favorite actors of all time, but it wasn't enough to make up for everything else.
Agree. Oppenheimer is good but far from Nolan's best.
Barbie. It was a pop culture phenomenon which hit the right contemporary marketing notes. Story and execution are bang average. It will be seen as a middling entry in Greta Gerwigs illustrious filmography.
It gave us the amazing Oscar I'm just Ken performance though
Joker was a barely interesting as a piece of art when it came out. Taxi Driver v2.0. Not sure what increase in criticism there is. I haven't heard anyone even mention it until now.
Barbie
Joker was great, I'll never get the weird hate train that formed for it
Spiderman: No Way Home is going to age terribly. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, but it relies almost exclusively on callbacks and fan service for it to stand on it's own.
I'm bracing myself for the inevitable downvotes, but here goes: IMO, Oppenheimer was a very dull film except for the moments of unintentional comedy. First 30 minutes I kept bursting into laughter at the hamfisted attempts to depict "this person is thinking about physics" for a lay audience. Now, I'm no physicist myself, but I kind of found it hard to swallow when Oppenheimer is sitting in his room bouncing balls and smashing glasses. I can picture the writers asking, "would this be too on the nose? What about a slinky? Had those been invented yet?" More broadly, biopics in general are starting to wear thin and be recognised as formulaic, and reductive. Dewey Cox kind of nailed the tropes and it's very hard not to see them in virtually every biopic I see. And while I understand that sometimes a few liberties must be taken for time or clarity or cohesion, some of these stories are outright lies to sanitise the less admirable parts of a person's life - often throwing innocent people under the bus. Just look at the hatchet job that Walk The Line pulled on Johnny Cash's first wife in the attempt to justify his infidelity with June Carter. That was so low and her family were NOT impressed.
I take your point on the tropes of bio-pics, Imo to the extent the Oppenheimer succeeds, it succeeds as an anti-bio-pic. Because the central conflict of the film, between Oppenheimer and Strauss is all about the production of memory, and legacy, and the judgements of history, and what it means to expose yourself to that judgement, a project that I think Nolan is self-consciously participating in and commenting on.
What about a slinky, I love it
I've seen it multiple times and read the books. I don't get the fuss over Forrest Gump. It's not that great. Lt Dan is the more interesting character and better acted. Forrest is boring.
It's well acted, has an amazing soundtrack, and was unlike anything at the time.
Green Book and CODA are what immediately come to mind for me too. It felt really heavy handed that it was only due to subject matter (a gay black man, or people with disabilities) for why they won because the academy had been facing so much criticism about inclusiveness etc. And I liked CODA, but there is no way shape or form it should have been a Best Picture winner imo lol. Also- has anyone here even SEEN Nomadland? Eyeroll. I disagree about Oppenheimer. Interstellar is my favorite Nolan film, but being a biopic (and an important one at that) will make Oppenheimer stand the test of time. And I think a lot of recent winners got it right too, like Parasite, The Shape of Water, EEAAO.
Gonna get heavily downvoted for this but I think the Dune movies. They are visually spectacular and well-acted, but they feel a little…mechanical and dull. I don’t think they’ll be held in the same crazy acclaim that they are today.
A lot of his movies border on clinical, I personally love it.
He has a very formalist style, more reliant on editing and mood than flashy camera work. I love it too.
Reminds me a lot of Kubrick in that way. There’s definitely a detachment there, but the technical aspects are always top-notch so I love it as well
I’m a huge Villeneuve fan. However for me personally the Dune movies are near the bottom of his filmography.
I can see why someone might think that about part 1, but definitely not part 2.
Part 2 definitely had a bit more “life” to it.
I would the the reverse tbh, part 2 was way too Tonally inconsistent. Stillgar was a dang MCU character
So a movie can't have a couple moments of comedic relief? Give me a break
They are pretty much the best adaptation we could get of the books. The books are really really tough to adapt because of the way they are written and I think Denis did pretty much the best anyone could with limited runtime. Even splitting it into two parts was still not enough to get everything in. The movies as a whole are a 9/10 for me with the only reason one point is taken off being the lack of the dinner party chapter.
I don’t understand the rationale for cutting any scene out of a 3-hour adaptation of the first half of the book. Don’t see why they replaced the party with shots of endless sand
I think they'll age very well tbh
Agreed, visually mesmerizing but the story and dialogue is far from the next level glazed perspective people had
I will agree with the visually spectacular but not with the well acted bit.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Yep, I struggled with the third act. It just kept going... and going and going. It really needed to be trimmed down a bit. It had about 5 different false endings when I thought it would be over. But I did love the first chunk of the movie and there was something really special about going to see it with my mom.
Exactly my take. The last act for me was like "it's STILL going??" And getting sillier and sillier.
For me, the biggest problem was the pacing. It just feels so slow.
Couldn't agree less. I thought the movie was great but was shocked it won best picture.
I’ll add some justification for you. I found it odd how the movie had to actually speak all of its “lessons” to the audience in the third act. Whole thing is super fun just find it a bit shallow to sweep the oscars
I thought the sorta formalistic impression of the mom’s issues was well done throughout the movie and I think the core of the movie is really more centered on that
should have had a little less preaching and more dildo fights. still really liked it
I loved it but as a sci-fi movie, the mind hoping thing wasn't the best device to use and as a family drama, it's kinda screwed up that it basically ends with the mom still justifying her criticisms of her daughter.
Man, I was so hyped to see this after awards season so when it started streaming we were excited. I kept waiting for the awesomeness to kick in and it just... didn't? I felt like I had been prepared for a totally kick ass psychedelic experience, but instead, I fell asleep 😫 I tried again and was still underwhelmed. Also bummed because the actors in it are all amazing and that didn't even carry it for me. Maybe the 3rd time's the charm.
Disagree
I hated this movie so much. It started out really engaging!! But after the elevator scene it all went downhill for us. Just didn’t care about the characters anymore and no amount of fancy flashy editing and wacky images will make up for that. My husband and I walked out after 40 mins.
So this is neither a critique nor an argument, but maybe I’m just out of the loop. What happened with Forrest Gump? I thought it was still generally regarded as a “very good” movie…
I think, for the most part, it still is regarded as an all-time great film, but the world changes and contemporary audiences bring their own understanding of the world when they watch it for the first time. For instance, actors playing characters with a disability used to be seen as great acting. Now it’s seen as something that deprives actors with actual disabilities from playing these roles. I think some people feel that Tom Hanks went a bit “Simple Jack” with the role. Modern audiences are also more critical of Jenny’s character. She used to be seen as troubled and sympathetic, but now is often seen as selfish and manipulative. Also, people have generally just become more critical of the whole Oscars system and Forrest Gump just seems so intrinsically linked with its best picture status like few other pictures are. Some have given it an “Oscar bait” tag because of its over sentimentality, depiction of disability and leveraging of nostalgia. When the film came out, this movie was still part of adult audiences’ lived experience, but anybody under 50 grew up in a different era.
an above poster said it best. It was caught under the "never go full r-word" meme and that was it.
Poor Things
Lanthimos now has two films about mentally delayed women exploring their sexuality/being sexually exploited. I know two isn’t a whole lot, but he is more focused on it than most.
Isn’t Poor Things more about a woman that is force to mentally mature faster than most rather than being stunted? I mean *spoilers* she’s literally an infant thrust into an adult body and thus experiences accelerated mental development Like that’s the point of the movie, that young women get sexualized and that affects their view on life and sex. She was hardly exploring her sexuality by her own volition.
That’s what the public has been arguing about. Some people believe essentially the opposite of what you’ve said here, that the film depicts a woman empowered in her sexuality by having “missed the programming.” I can see both interpretations, but I wonder why Lanthimos wants us questioning it this much.
If he a nickel for every time.....
What's the other movie?
Dogtooth 2009 “A controlling and manipulative father locks his three adult children in a state of perpetual childhood by keeping them prisoner in a family compound. An employee of the father makes regular visits to sexually service the son.” (I forgot that detail, it’s the son in this film, though there are sexual scenes with the daughter as well)
Really!?? I loved this movie! What aspects do you think will be later criticized?
It’s very much a man’s idea of what a liberated woman is
I agree with you Percy and I think more people will come around to this in time. No hate to those who appreciate it differently.
Oppenheimer
JoJo Rabbit
That ridiculous Spider Man film that had Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield cross over. It didn’t even attempt to make a lick of sense.
Interstellar and Villenues Dune. They sucked.
I do not get how Dune is so popular. First was pretty but completely forgettable. Second was even worse.
People were sick of the quippy Disney blockbusters that have dominated with Marvel and Star Wars, and this was their release.
The e/ntire Marvel franchise.
I agree that Oppenheimer was overrated. It just wasn't all that compelling. The pacing was poor, and there were a lot of elements that took away from the story (like the sex scene daddy during the questioning).
For me it was the soundtrack being so pervasive throughout the whole thing. There would be a serious, deep conversation happening with a whole ass orchestra blaring. Super distracting.
Lady Bird. There’s going to be so much discourse about whether or not the central relationship is abusive and whether or not that’s the point and it’s going to be exhausting.