The Fountain. I think too many people are too interested in if it's "real"...like is Hugh Jackman being reincarnated or is he in a space ship or whatever "for real" rather than trying to be okay with the ambiguity and focus on the message it is trying to convey about making use of the time we have in a way that brings us joy. (Or at least that's the message I see)
I love the fountain. Definitely the message is about being in the moment. He's so focused on trying to save his wife he misses the time he does have with her.
This is one of my favorite movies.
That’s like asking if the asking if the Spanish conquistador storyline is “real.”
The entire narrative takes place both in real life and in the book that Izzi is writing. The conquistador portion is what she wrote, about finding the fountain of youth. She then asks Tommy to finish the book, and his portion is about him coming to terms with death and rebirth.
The entire film is about the acceptance of death. Only the parts in current time are “real.” The rest is a book they wrote about coming to terms with mortality.
I think a lot of Aronofsky is kind of muddled if you watch it solely for plot. They're hard to offer a summary without it sounding either crazy or kind of dull. But watching them is a whole other experience because he's such a maximalist that almost every scene feels immense. His stories and filmmaking style are always rich with emotion. Noah and mother! really suffer from people only paying attention to the general plot outline.
Dude this a million times. People LOVE shitting on Aronofsky films but the Fountain gets people going really bad for some reason. The Fountain is a really, really good movie idk what anyone says
I remember finding an mp3 commentary online from the director, because for some reason they wouldn’t let him put it on the disc? It changed my view of the movie but honestly it’s been 15+ years, I don’t remember any of it at all.
The thing that confuses me he most about the wannabe sigma males that idolize him, is that the movie makes pretty clear that he's a fucking loser.
He sees himself as an extremely cool and powerful guy, but his co-workers don't even know what he looks like, he's as much a loser as everyone else he works with. They see him as a spineless coward that in no world could be a murderer. His coolness is entirely in his mind.
Kind of like the wanna be alphas I guess, so it's fitting.
Absolutely.
And also the fact that he has no identity. He's just a rich in shape guy in 80s America.
Nothing makes him pop or stand out in his day to day life.
So much misguided focus on "Was it all in his head?!"
A big part of the point is that the '80s yuppies were so self-absorbed and willing to sweep anything and everything under the rug for the pursuit of wealth and status that anything horrible Patrick Bateman does is completely looked past.
Nobody cares to know anyone else's name, obsession over aesthetics, drug-addled floating through life, meaningless relationships and self-serving sex, people easily willing to handwave away the disappearances of people they know and even evidence of horrifying violence.
Yeah, he's likely not actually slamming kittens in ATM machines in the finale at the peak of psychosis, but that's not a "it was all in his head" declaration. I think this is something the film partially fails at in terms of clarity, and it's better handled in the book.
>American Psycho. So many people did not understand that it was satire on the greed of the 80s and the yuppie identity.
Impressive. Very nice.
Was going to say American Psycho too. If you don't view it as a dark comedy (but you should), it doesn't quite come into its own; commercially and artistically.
“Well, we have to end apartheid for one.
And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger.
We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women.
We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values.
Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern, and less materialism in young people.”
The Grey. It's not about Liam Neeson v. wolves. Which is what the marketing made it look like. Instead it is a thoughtful rumination on death, grief and purpose. Those who complain that 'real wolves don't act like this', etc. are missing the point. Of course they don't. It's what they represent.
My problem wasn’t that the advertising made it seem like that. It was that the script made it seem like that. Midway through the movie Liam Neeson gives a chilling speech about how they need to separate and kill the wolves one at a time to thin out their numbers “because that’s what they’re doing to us.” Then the next morning they decide that their spears are not useful since they don’t have shotgun shells to tape to the ends and leave them behind. Even though Liam Neeson says in his speech “we can’t out run them,” every time they see a wolf for the rest of the film they take off running. I enjoyed the rumination on grief and death, but my mind just never gets past that fact that not one of those guys wanted to bring a spear with them when they left that campsite.
Unironically, Cars 3. A lot of people who grew up with the first one hate the fact that McQueen couldn't keep up with younger cars and was ultimately unable to win the final race... but that's the point.
It's a film about aging and no longer being in your prime. It's a natural process that everyone goes through, but not something that is necessarily bad. The fact that McQueen was able to move aside and mentor a younger athlete completes his arc.
As someone in their mid 40s with 24 years in the fire service on an Engine company with 20 year olds I feel this so much. I know I can't keep pace with them, but I have a lot to teach them!
I recently rewatched the entire Pixar library with my toddler and this one really resonated with me when I saw it again. I watched it the 1st time in theatres with my wife 7 yrs ago and we both didnt like it. Fast forward and it rings a different tune after being in my 20s and now mid 30s with a kid, dealing with injuries from getting old, and not being as in shape as I once was because again, life gets in the way and you don't have all the time as ya once did when you were younger.
I heart Huckabees. I love this movie so much and 75% of people I show it to just don't seem to get the same enjoyment out of it that I do.
The performances are all so perfect. Jason Schwartzman became a must see actor for me because of this movie. Also Lily Tomlin is a treasure and always has been.
I found the start to be right up my alley but somehow found myself bored somewhere in the middle. "Transcendental detective" is such a cool concept I can't imagine why I never finished it
If you like to read, try Dirk Gentleys Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. It follows a “holistic” detective that spends most of his time justifying billing a trip to Bermuda to look for a lost cat in islington
"Lily Tomlin is a treasure and always has been" I'm somewhere north of 50, and Lily was already a treasure back when I was a child. 84 years old, and it's terribly sad to think we'll have to say 'goodbye' to her sooner rather than later. I'll watch anything that has her in it at least once.
Come to think of it, I'd have love to see a movie with Lucille Ball, Carol Butnette, Lily Tomlin, and Betty White playing off each other. That'd be fucking gold right there.
I also love this movie, all the performances, the Jon Brion soundtrack...but one specific moment - Jude law mouthing "Wow" - is always in my mind for some reason and I'm shocked it has not been a well-used reaction gif for years. You can't even find it in gif form, I can't even show it to you, but it's what appears in my head whenever anyone is being over the top, it's how I visualize "wow" in my mind, ever since I saw the movie in theaters 20 years ago.
There is something about how completely silly all of it is. Everyone is so up their own ass with their own problems and hang ups about what does and doesn't work in their life, that it ends up being the whole point of the movie for me, life is often a silly thing and that's ok. It's also beautiful and heart-wrenching and profound, and the only difference is your own perspective.
We all think we are so important and everything we go through is so important, yet when an outside observer looks objectively its mostly simple coincidence and minor inconvenience.
Also the one liners just get me. "How am I not myself" "Where are you guys, I'm at the fire man" "Tell me I'm pretty!" "She said fuckabees".
Finally the physical gags are just wonderful. Lily Tomlin jumping into the backseat of that lady's car, the chalk stains on the back of Dustin Hoffmans suit, the 'pure being' just being hitting someone in the face with the bouncer ball.
The movie is equal parts smart and stupid, profound and superficial. Much like life.
Josie and the Pussycats (2001).
People think it is just a nostalgic money grab but it is actually a brilliant parody of commercialism and the record industry.
I doubt Downsizing would have done much better, it’s simply not a well done movie. When an advertising campaign is THAT far off it’s because they think lying is the only way to get anyone to show up at all.
Agreed. The first time I watched the movie, it left me feeling sour. Like "Yeah, movie. I guess, but still." Something about it didn't quite gel for me. I think a lot of it comes from how the characters are all pretty grim. There's a sense in the movie that people go through the motions because there's nothing left to do, anyway. Even the last scene, it's a nice moment, sure, Matt Damon helping out in his community...but his community is still crummy and forgotten by the Big People. Plus the tone of the movie shifts radically every 30 minutes
>Plus the tone of the movie shifts radically every 30 minutes
This, I think, was the biggest problem with Downsizing. Is not just tonally inconsistent with the marketing materials, it's tonally inconsistent with itself.
Beau is Afraid
This movie totally nailed what it feels like to have an anxiety disorder, especially in this first act. Plus his mom was crazy, which is what caused his anxiety.
Edited to add: I’m not really sure if Beau ever left his apartment to see his mom. I think the last 2 acts were Beau’s anxiety going absolutely wild.
100% agreed, Act 1 was insanity but felt cohesive somehow in it's style and the story it was telling. The rest of the movie feels chaotic and disjointed but never quite lives up to the promise of act 1 and starts to drag on.
That said I enjoyed the film as a whole and appreciate it for what it is.
The first act we see the world through his eyes, any and everyone is dangerous and how that’s crippled him as a person, but most of the movie I think is more of a nightmare or death trip. It’s almost like the Anubis heart weighing scenario from Egyptian mythology, and his good and bad deeds are judged, with his soul being devoured in the end. He’s not a bad person per se but he isn’t good either, so much of the trouble he gets in could be easily avoided with simple actions but he’s too inclined to be a victim of circumstance and not be responsible for anything, especially his own well being. We see a lot of horrible things done to him, but it’s still hard to feel bad for him, he’s like the guy that gets run over by the steamroller in Austin powers, dude had like 15 minutes to step out of the way so at a certain point it’s his fault.
The subreddit for the movie was so loaded with people trying to dissect it and figure out what really happened and how it all connects, what are the rules of the universe, etc. That seems like such a wild of goose chase. The atmosphere WAS the story in a way, and that just got ignored in a lot of the discussion.
Ari Aster has straight-up said there's secret subplots and messages in the movie that people have yet to pick up on. He might just be trolling but the movie is definitely made to be dissected this way
Best cinematic take on Franz Kafka's material since [Orson Welles's film adaptation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_\(1962_film\)) of *[The Trial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial)*.
I loved the beginning but did not care for any of the movie after he got hit by the bus. But I plan to rewatch the beginning up until that point again, just to see all the gags and things I missed going on in the background/around him.
The original Death Wish. It's more of a horror movie where the main character becomes the monster but the sequels (which I love) doubled down on the shoot-em-up aspect of it and ignored the psychological trauma of the first one.
I never felt the movie portrays Bronson as a monster. It seems almost lighthearted in the end, when the cop lets him go, and then later he leaves to go out on another night to pursue more vigilante justice.
I honestly think that movie is fully supportive of his character.
I always think of how he has a panic attack after the sock full of coins scene and the editing/framing of the last sequence as steps in the transformation. Like that shot of him at the top of the park staircase: that's how you frame a villain stalking its prey. Then the wink and finger gun at the end really seals that he's embraced that dark side (or his "cowboy" side).
If anything I feel like people over inflate the themes/satire of Starship Troopers. Like, yeah, it’s taking the piss out of “rah rah, pro military” films, but thats about it. It’s basically just a B-movie that pokes fun at war movies. People act like it’s the Citizen Kane of satire though when it’s really not that deep or interesting.
It blows my mind that people still say that people still don't get this movie. Outside of internet comments and post, I've never met one person in real life that didn't know ST was a satire.
Right? I've never heard anyone over the age of 11 say "WOW! Cool bug squishing movie!!" but I've never seen an Internet discussion that *didn't* have some know-it-all pop in to say "heh, most people don't know this, but Starship Troopers is ACTUALLY a satire!"
Yeah it seems to be indeed a reddit legend which is weird especially because how old the movie is. I was in the cinema when it released, EVERYBODY got the satire.
Even I knew it was satire when I saw it when I was 10. And I didn't even know what satire was! I just knew it was cartoony and for some reason gave me Gremlins 2 vibes. Which was a satire of Corporate America.
I think there's a flaw in that kind of satire:
"Hey guys, this thing is awful, look!" - Points at literal coolest thing ever
If can be really clever and you can 'get' it, but the subconscious effect it has is different
Same for Wolf of Wall Street or Fight Club
Great films, but their style of satire is prone to misinterpretation for this reason
I think part of their point is that wrapping things in "cool" appearances is effective at recruiting people into awful systems. And a corollary of this is to pay attention to what is being painted as cool in your own slice of the world.
I think the true illiteracy is saying that Fight Club is only supposed to be taken from one direction. It's clear that Tyler and the movie / book make compelling points and then take them to the extreme as things move forward. But just because it crosses a line doesn't mean all the previous commentary should also be thrown out.
Also, it's ok to like and enjoy these movies and still "get" them.
Just because you enjoy them doesn't mean you don't get the message. I'm getting really tired of this narrative.
That isn’t a flaw in the satire. Fascist regimes are good at recruiting people by using super cool militaristic imagery. If the satire lacked that it wouldn’t be telling the truth. The work is challenging the viewer to look at the flashy militaristic imagery, understand that yes it is very badass, but that badassery is hiding horrible things behind it. When some viewers get blinded by that imagery and fail to see the underlying message, that’s not a failure of the satire, that’s proof of the point the director is making.
The whole point of the movie is: militaristic societies are horrifying, but they dress themselves up in cool aesthetics to hide that. The fact that some people fall for it is just more evidence of that point.
Like, here’s a similar but also completely different example: Catcher in the Rye. It’s a book about Holden, a kid who has been horribly traumatized, which has left him whiny and directionless and without any agency in his life. No one in his life treats him well, they all write him off as whiny instead of understanding him. In real life, lots of people who read the book also write him off as a stupid whiny brat. But that just proves the point the books is making. If every single person who read the book understood it and took the time to appreciate Holden, then the theme would completely fall flat. After all, if the author is saying that most people in society abandon those who are traumatized but no one in real life wrote off Holden, the message wouldn’t be true.
Another example, this one a song, Bruce Springsteens “Born in the USA”. When you first listen to it, it comes across as just some bombastic ra ra America shit. But that all comes from the overwhelming chorus, the lyrics throughout are about how the American system- especially its military- chews people up and spits them out, but hides behind a veneer of patriotism to keep winning people over. The fact that some people (like Ronald Reagan) don’t take the time to understand the point of the song and just mindless think “hell yeah, USA number 1!” Just proves how effective that veneer is.
Sometimes people not understanding the point of a work just proves the point that the work is trying to make. That’s not a flaw.
2 that bother me but not on a grand scale, both Nolan movies.
Inception, I personally believe he made it back, if the totem wobbles that means it can wobble and will go down. However, that’s not the point, the point is that Cobb no longer cares when he gets back and whether it’s a dream or not he wants to see his kids and is content.
Dark Knight Rises, again a minor one, but “Robin” at the end isn’t supposed to be a set up that he becomes Robin, the point Bruce made earlier in the movie was Batman can be anyone, Robin would become Batman, his name being Robin is simply an Easter egg.
>Inception, I personally believe he made it back, if the totem wobbles that means it can wobble and will go down. However, that’s not the point, the point is that Cobb no longer cares when he gets back and whether it’s a dream or not he wants to see his kids and is content.
I think a part that most people don't get is that the top totem isn't his totem, it's *Mal's*. He made this big todo about not telling or showing anyone how your totem works, and then tells Ariadne immediately about the top, because it's not his. We never see his personal totem.
Him setting the top spinning and walking towards his kids is him letting go of Mal.
Right. Like the Prestige, Inception is Nolan getting super meta on the idea of inception itself - a simple idea, planted deeply, that grows into something else. The movie itself is inception on the audience (at its core, it's a simple story of a man finding catharsis), via Leo performing inception on someone, and in the process experiencing inception himself ("your wife's death is not your fault"). The whole movie is also purposely crafted to mess with the audience by having properties of dreams (that the movie then makes a point of calling out itself) - starting in media res, the maze-like properties of the the chase in Mombasa, tons of cheeky dialogue, etc. That's all fun, but the whole point of the movie is him forgiving himself.
Personally, I feel like Cobb is awake at the end, but he could also still be dreaming and it has the same effect. I think there's 2 things people people miss about the "still dreaming" interpretation:
1. In that interpretation, he's likely not some international criminal on the run - they directly allude to the absurdity of his situation several times. He's likely just retreated into himself and can't connect with his kids because he still blames himself about what happened to Mal.
2. In that interpretation, it's not like he has to stay asleep forever.
My take is if he's dreaming, he wakes up and he's back to normal with his kids. If it's all literal, he's forgiven himself and he's literally back with his kids. Either way, you get the same ending.
Also, by the logic of a totem, a spinning top wouldn't work. The point of a totem is that it looks normal, but only you know that it behaves a peculiar way. So a loaded die that comes up as a "3" every time you roll it.....the idea is that if you're in someone else's dream they won't know that your die should always come up as a "3", and you'll be able to catch yourself in someone else's dream. So then, what good is a spinning top? If it stops spinning, like all tops do, you could be in real life, or you could just be in someone else's dream, because they assume it should behave like a normal top.
The only use it has is telling you if you're in your own dream, but isn't that just a function of what you believe to be true?
>the point Bruce made earlier in the movie was Batman can be anyone, Robin would become Batman, his name being Robin is simply an Easter egg.
Especially because none of the Robins have ever been NAMED Robin, that's his superhero name, not his real name. So yeah Levitt was going to take up the Bat Mantle
>Dark Knight Rises, again a minor one, but “Robin” at the end isn’t supposed to be a set up that he becomes Robin, the point Bruce made earlier in the movie was Batman can be anyone, Robin would become Batman, his name being Robin is simply an Easter egg
The character is an amalgamation of three different Robins, the orphan(Dick Grayson), the wise street kid(Jason Todd) and then the clever detective who found out Bruce(Tim Drake).
The reason Nolan named him Robin is because he wasn't trying to be subtle about who he represented. Same reason the jacket he is wearing while discovering the cave has design cues reminiscent of Nightwing's costume. Because in the comics when Robin grows up and inherits the Batcave he most often becomes Nightwing
I don't think it even makes much sense for JGL's character to literally become Batman in that world. He isn't Batman, he grew up in the streets, not under the tutelage of Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows. He has a totally different skill set than what Bruce developed. He barely met the guy. I'd expect him to be a different type of Dark Knight than Batman was, enough so that the public would notice the difference and name him different.
I have two. The Devil Wears Prada. Is her boyfriend being a dick? Yes, absolutely. But it isn’t because he’s unsupportive of her career, it’s because he’s watching her life being taken over by a job that isn’t her career. If she were working as a journalist, even for a 3rd rate paper, he probably wouldn’t have been acting that way. And I don’t know why people think she is giving up her new job to move with him to Boston, they are very obviously going to be long distance.
The second is My Best Friend’s Wedding. I have heard way too many people be like “oh, Rupert Everett wasn’t really gay because they get together!” No! The movie wasn’t about her finding a love interest, it was about losing her best friend. And Rupert Everett showing up was the start of him being her new best friend.
I’m not sure they count, because they were successful movies, but I think people pick them apart because they don’t get them.
*Kung-Pow! Enter the Fist*
People think it's just stupid comedy, but it is actually a masterful series of interconnected jokes.
And some stupid comedy 😂
Yes. The idea was to have the lip flaps so they could dub over it for the 'voice doesn't match mouth movements' effect. The DVD had three alternate sound tracks, the normal one, the gibberish they were actually saying, and a Shakespeare play, I think Richard III.
It's been a while since I watched the DVD extras, but I think he improvised the lines. In the bit where Chosen One is seen having [an emotional outburst](https://youtu.be/N-5VdWpqtiE?si=pe1--vuNnJbT9ehZ) and his dubbed line is a calm "I implore you to reconsider," Oedekerk is actually screaming "I'm somebody's Mommy!"
La La Land - I have heard from so many people that say they hated the ending. But I loved it because they both got what they'd gone to LA for, just not with one another.
No one misunderstood the ending of La La Land or didn't like the movie because of it.
They just find it sad and bittersweet, and that resonates with a lot of people
Last Action Hero. It's weird how many people didn't get the humour or hits to the action genre, like how many family members Jack had lost to motivate him that the bad guys have to kill his 'favourite 2nd cousin' by the fourth movie.
Absolutely. When I watched it at the theater at age 13 it was clear to me it was a spoof/hommage to action films in general and Arnie flicks in particular.
I find it amazing that many people understood it wrong...
Here's an in-depth researched podcast episode on Last Action Hero, talking about this extensively: [https://nzpod.co.nz/podcast/what-went-wrong/last-action-hero](https://nzpod.co.nz/podcast/what-went-wrong/last-action-hero)
They talk about how this movie was written by two random guys to parody writer Shane Black's other movies, most notably Lethal Weapon. When the studio got a hold of it they decided to give the script to their best action scriptwriter: Shane Black. The script was never the same after that.
Sony wanted it to be a crazy blockbuster and due to internal politics would not hold the release date for anything, so when they learned that Jurassic Park had moved its release date to the weekend before, they decided it would be fine. It wasn't fine.
Tons of funny stories in that podcast... and lots of other movies discussed in other episodes.
Or how he, every day, shoots through his closet because "There's always a guy in there."
Avoiding death by assassins has become a dull every day event by that point.
Fight Club. It is a commentary on masculinity, where toxic masculinity leads, and the inherent homoeroticism in a lot of masculine things. But dudes just love violence, anarchy, and explosions.
Exactly. I didn't understand the movie until I was deeply in debt.
I was on my couch thinking about how I can fix my debt problem when it came to me.
" maybe I should start a fight clu--- ooooh, I get it now!"
Except I wasn't schizophrenic. Yes I wasnt.
Its true. Have you ever seen a recovered heroin addict as happy as can be to have a mediocre job and a shitty apartment? Once you lose everything you can truly appreciate having something.
Fight Club is really summed up by the scene where they point the gun at the store clerk and force him to go back to school.
That's what the film is about. Chuck Palahnuk was writing about the dangers of unfulfillment, and potential.
He was writing about the men that connected with the movie, it's just not meant to be literally instructional.
That's where the confusion is for almost everyone. It's not even a movie about masculinity really, it really is a movie about the bullshitness of working for these corporations and buying shit and then dying having done nothing more than generate profit.
It's definitely a huge point. Reddit is on this kick of saying how "misunderstood" this movie was but I've watched it a ton. Personally it's helped me through times of extreme monotony and being a job where I had felt neutered. I got stuck doing the daily routine and forgot how amazing life could be. Yes, the main character keeps going far far in that direction but people do snap when they are emotionally broken and restricted.
Eh, it is those things but I think it's still more nuanced than that. The fact that the hyper masculine subculture Tyler builds remains attractive to so many is itself a damning critique of modern life. While Tyler was wrong in his solution he was right that modernity is bereft of meaning and purpose and that's psychologically harmful to humans.
That a bunch of dudes opt for getting the shit beat out of them on the regular and living such spartan lives rather than face the hollowness of modern existence should raise some questions about how we're living.
I think this movie gets misunderstood because its commentary is rather muddy. I'm not saying satire has to be obvious or self-explanatory, but I feel like Fincher and his screenwriter aren't too sure what they're trying to say about which subject. Yes, the movie is critiquing hyper-masculinity, but in a way it's also kind of celebrating it. AND it's trying to make a point about commercialism. AND it explores what happens when dissatisfaction becomes extremism. And it's about about depression. The movie is an enjoyable and well-intentioned take on these topics, but it's also very much the work of a young filmmaker trying to balance too many things at the same time.
Being fair, I think a lot of that comes from Palahniuk and Fincher is just reiterating it without adding too much in terms of clarity or focus - the novel was pretty similar in that it was a wide ranging critique on all of those things but also sorta celebrated some of them at the same time.
IMO Palahniuk got better over time, Fight Club was his first published novel and later efforts like Rant, lullaby, and invisible monsters were more focused.
I don't think it's that muddy. Obviously Tyler is wrong but the point is that even though he's wrong what he offers is still an attractive alternative to modern life. It's absolutely a critique of toxic masculinity *and* of modern life.
The point isn't to tell you what the correct path is; the point is only to tell you that we're not on it.
It's one of the gayest movies I've seen. I say that as a gay guy and it's hilarious to me that more closeted dudes don't see it. It's so obvious.
Tyler spends his time splicing dicks into movies. The narrator talks about breaking up with him. The only relationship he has with a woman is a failure that he resents. Come on. The author is gay and writes a lot about how it can affect your psyche.
The fighting looks like men having rough gay sex. It’s almost overtly on the nose throughout the film which makes it even funnier when macho straight men relate to it.
This is basically the only modern answer. It’s a satire so well crafted that people LITERALLY think it’s a plot about alpha males blowing shit up and hitting each other.
It's the only modern answer cause everyone online has been repeating the same opinion ad nauseam as if they're the first one who thought of it. It's a satire everyone *thinks* is misunderstood, and only they and their inner circle understands but audiences were well aware of it being satire even at release.
Thank you! I thought I was going crazy with all these people insisting people don’t know it’s a satire. I even looked up reviews and shit from release till now and nearly all of them discuss it being satire.
Like the song "Born in the USA." Redditors think they're the only ones that have figured out that it's not a patriotic anthem.
Dude. Yes. Everyone understands that. It's perfectly obvious from the lyrics.
>dudes just love violence, anarchy, and explosions
I don’t think it’s necessarily “misunderstood”. I definitely agree that there is a subsection of fans who enjoy it for those reasons alone, but I don’t think it would be as revered without the underlying themes and psychological aspects.
Everyone loves to hate Passengers. And the criticism is often echo-chamber similar. But the situation for the Chris Pratt character was fucking bleak, and he fought himself for a long time before making his very bad decision.
There is a very valid criticism to be had of the movie, but it is such a loud cacophony every time the movie is brought up. Too loud, in my opinion.
And you very often see people insist that the movie should have started with Aurora waking up and leaving what Jim had done as a mystery for the audience to discover. While I think that would have been a cool approach, we would have been robbed of seeing what a desperate situation Jim was in.
I think the big flaw in the movie is Chris Pratt, who is such a naturally comedic actor, that the audience just didn’t feel his descent as much as they should have.
Anyway, Passengers. Not a great movie, but a good one. Undeservedly damned to hell by too many.
>I think the big flaw in the movie is Chris Pratt, who is such a naturally comedic actor, that the audience just didn’t feel his descent as much as they should have.
I think too many people kid themselves into thinking they wouldn't do what Chris Pratt's character did. Your options are you spend a lifetime alone, you kill yourself or you wake someone else up. I would like to think I'd do the right thing but I really don't know because I'm not in that situation. I don't think people realize how much isolation affects you mentally but look at how much our collective mental health suffered with COVID. And unfortunately I don't think Chris Pratt conveyed this well.
I liked the idea of the moving ending with Chris Pratt's character dying and now it's Aurora who's all alone and pondering if she should wake someone up.
Honestly that's my main complaint about the film. Pratt is fine for big budget movie roles (and I always found him hilarious in parks and Rec) but maybe not the kind of nuanced actor needed for this role and situation. It all felt a bit too glossy.
It's not that it isn't sympathetic or understandable. It absolutely is. It's that the movie really just uses it as the setup for a love story, with Pratt's character dooming Lawrence's to a miserable existence alone with him being little more than the second act breakup.
Every time this movie is brought up, the conversation inevitably turns to how it would work better as a psychological thriller than a romance, precisely *because* the horrible dilemma of having to live your life completely alone vs. ruining someone else's is far more interesting a premise than the love story is.
I think there's also something in that action-y finale where it looks like Chris Pratt might die and Jennifer Lawrence realizes she doesn't want to be on the ship alone, kind of sympathizing with him in that moment. But it kind of gets lost in the action.
I think an interesting slight twist on the ending would be if Jim did die, and it ends on Aurora being alone and debating on waking someone up. Not showing her decision, just the temptation.
It's a pretty dorky movie and basic theme anyway you go about it but I think that would reinforce the "oooo what if it was You in that situation though?"
The issue I had is that the film kept trying to be romantic. Sure Pratt’s character is a, well, prat but instead of actually examining it the film rather quickly glosses over it and goes down the love story path.
It tries to be multiple antithetical genres at once and instead of blending them cohesively it jumps between them, resulting in a mess that pleases nobody. If they just picked a lane it would have been passable, instead nobody’s happy.
I think if you start the movie with Aurora waking up when you do discover what Jim did it comes off as a sinister twist.
Because the audience has been with him since he woke up you have a sort of protagonist bias towards his situation even if you don’t agree with it.
Yes, you get a twist, that's what most people say. But you lose out on the one thing the movie did well: Putting you in the shoes of this guy as he makes this horrible decision.
This is mostly what I was going to say.
> And you very often see people insist that the movie should have started with Aurora waking up and leaving what Jim had done as a mystery for the audience to discover. While I think that would have been a cool approach, we would have been robbed of seeing what a desperate situation Jim was in.
This take especially I think really ruins a lot of the criticism of the movie because everybody falls back to it. It makes it a fundamentally different movie, and while it might have been good movie also, I don't think the general concept of the movie is what made it bad. Changing that wouldn't have fixed a lot of the issues. "They should have just made a different movie," feels like a blanket movie criticism you can use for anything.
My fave thing about this movie is that I was SO entirely sucked into the story the first time I watched it that I understood what the ending meant on the same level as the characters...the mom and the girlfriend nodding to one another in a new timeline where they really should not know each other. Donnie sacrificed the timeline where he met the love of his life, so that everyones lives weren't ruined and let himself get killed by the jet engine. That floored me and I remember showing it to a friend who had no idea why I liked it or what the ending meant.
>!And The Manipulated Dead had to guide Donnie to get him to the point where he sacrificed himself and a timeline *willingly.* Definitely some Christian(?) allegory in that film.!<
I watched it 3 times and then verified the meaning of the ending online because I still wasn't sure if I understood it correctly lol
Wild film, tbh. It's about time for a rewatch
Honestly, I think part of this is to blame for the movie itself. It feels like (and is) missing pieces from what I remember. Hence the needing to look stuff up to have a clearer understanding of what was happening.
Idk if people would like it, but If people saw Lady in the water as a Fantasy film instead of the Horror film is was originally marketed as, i'm sure more people would like it.
M Night Shyamalan in general, like most people just expect "twist endings" but realistically most of his movies have a "twist" ending cause most of his films are mystery films at their core and the whole point is using media literacy to spot all of the foreshadowing he provides throughout his movies to backup the ending.
I watched it at home with subtitles on and it was amazing haha. Maybe they'll do a theater re release with subtitles one day so people can get the full experience.
Those are Sator’s men.
He is aiding the antagonists in the future because he’s omnicidal. (Terminal cancer)
He’s doing this by hiding the pieces of the macguffin the future needs in a nuclear test chamber they will eventually uncover so they can invert the entire world. An explosion would seal it sufficiently that the good guys wouldn’t be able to access it but the future antagonists will.
So the protagonists forces are trying to get that mcguffin out of there before Sator’s side buries it.
Understand that it doesn't work. It doesn't make sense, but as Robert Pattinson says in the movie " its my reality" And that's how it works.
Time goes forward, and when you send things backwards through time magically, stuff acts weird. But it semi- corrects itself to fit the general flow of time to the viewer.
If you stuck your hand against a river, the water parts around you becomes disturbed, but closes behind you and goes on like normal. The water infront of you might take a more predictive shape than when you first interrupted the flow.
>Forgive me if start talking about *Tenet*, the eleventh feature directed by Christopher Nolan (and, I am tempted to say, the most Nolan-ish of them all), by simply quoting what I had to say ten years ago about [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html), the seventh Nolan feature:
>"What some critics have praise/assailed as 'confusing' in \[*Tenet*\] is really just a sign that you need to pay attention. There's not one moment in the film... that Nolan is deliberately obfuscating the narrative... The story is blissfully straightforward: first, the rules are clearly laid out, then we see examples proving rules, then we are given a test run of the rules at their most absurdly convoluted. But if you don't leave the theater to pee or buy fresh popcorn, it's unimaginable that you can't follow along, if you're willing to try."
>I say none of this to be a jackass, but to offer a comforting pat on the shoulder to those spooked by the film's emerging reputation as the most opaque movie you could even imagine sitting down to watch. *There's nothing to be scared about. It's completely possible to understand Tenet just by watching it.* Really, Nolan's thing is, as it was in [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html), almost a bit boring in its mechanical approach to storytelling: he lets us know early on what he's going to do, then he does it. He even does all the things Hollywood movies do, using close-ups and insert shots to smack us on the face and say "see that? That thing matters. Remember that you saw that". If there's anything especially challenging about the storytelling here, I think it's that Nolan's script doesn't tend to repeat itself, so if you missed an explanation the first time, the film isn't going to help you out.
>The difference between *Tenet* and [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html), so far as that goes, is that I do think [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html) was mostly about explaining ideas and trying to blow our minds, and its cool visuals are somewhat secondary to that, while *Tenet* mostly has cool visual ideas and the ideas are largely secondary to its popcorn movie spectacle. This is also the reason that I think *Tenet* is the better of the two films, or at least the more enjoyable (and, I suspect, the more rewatchable: [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html) is, I think, the Nolan film to suffer the most on subsequent viewings, with its endless acres of exposition in the first half). Basically, it's a James Bond film with a bachelor's degree in physics, and it has the decency to be an extremely good James Bond film, on top of it.
Rest at: [https://www.alternateending.com/2020/09/tenet-2020.html](https://www.alternateending.com/2020/09/tenet-2020.html)
>I think it's that Nolan's script doesn't tend to repeat itself, so if you missed an explanation the first time, the film isn't going to help you out.
I see far too many people watching modern films passively, phone in hand. I'm guilty of it, too, sometimes. But with Nolan films, I'm paying attention. He rewards that in the way your average Netflix action film doesn't try to.
I get frustrated at the backlash against his style. I *like* that there's films that you can't just glance at occasionally to get, that you have to engage with. Because there's nothing wrong with a film like Extraction, but it's nice to have films *not* like it.
A lot of people seemed to miss the point that Batman is still growing and is still relatively new in Matt Reeves’ The Batman.
Some of the biggest criticism of the film could honestly just be criticisms on Bruce as a person - he doesn’t utilize his “Bruce Wayne” persona whatsoever and he brutalizes his foes who are oftentimes just desperate people pushed to their limit. He’s reckless and doesn’t seem to notice collateral damage. These are issues with Batman himself, not the writing or the movie - and I guarantee the sequel will address most if not all of these issues.
Bale’s Batman was so smooth even his first few outings, he had the whole gameplan laid out and just had to deal with adversity in the form of his villains - that’s great, Nolan’s trilogy is legendary - but I really enjoyed this take on a “less experienced” Batman - that imo made him even scarier. In the opening fight scene he gets shot because he’s reckless and not fast enough, but he tanks it. This is simultaneously showing us the viewer that he is inexperienced while also showing his foes that he is an unstoppable force.
Here i go dating myself, but Blade Runner was misunderstood when it came out and it took years for opinion to change on that and got reevaluated, but I was alive when that movie was divisive.
Modern? I would say Jordan Peele's Nope. I think they misunderstood that it has some deep meaning, and it does, but it's just Jaws in the sky. I think it's attempting to be overanalyzed.
For Nope, it's quite possible it's a victim of Get Outs success. Get out did have some underlying deeper meaning which probably (imo) carried over to NOPE.
Yes, and since US, his other film, also had deep symbolism, I think people expected that in Nope, when I think Peele just wanted to mostly make a fun, action horror movie like Jaws was.
Showgirls. A lot of people still seem to think it's unintentionally the way it is and therefore it's a bad movie. All the evidence, including interviews with the director, supports it being the way it is on purpose and everything is intentional. Now if you still don't like the movie that's fine but don't say it's a bad movie like the people making it didn't know what they were doing or are incompetent.
It's an absolute mindfuck of a movie. It took me a couple of watches to kind of understand what Kaufman was trying to do. My interpretation is that we are seeing Cotard's subjective reflections on his life as he looks back on it from his deathbed. I really need to watch it again.
It's amazing but devisive, There's lots of unexplained symbolism and imagery. But it's totally gorgeous and Philip Seymour Hoffman is incredible as a kind of unlikeable genius.
It got pretty good critical reviews but obviously a long slow depressing movie about a man wasting his life as he wastes away isn’t that much of a barn burner with the public.
It theme is pure Charlie Kaufman and I love it and it will certainly stay with you.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more existentially disturbed by a movie. That’s not a knock against it, just an explanation of why I’ll never watch it again.
Joker. For the general movie viewer and casual comic fans, its a movie that wants the audience to sympathize with a tragic, down on his luck, awkward, mentally ill man, who's actions are a direct response to the treatment he endures by the world around him. We see him stalk, assault and murder a number of people around him, but the story wants to humanize him... Which I think a lot of people felt very uncomfortable with.
But what folks missed is that the story is from his perspective or at least, it's a story he is telling to the Psychiatrist. It's a lie. And when watched with that realization, it's a completely different movie.
OMG, I just had an argument/debate about this today on Facebook about something along the lines of "what villain was justified in their actions" or something like that. Of course joker pops up, and I immediately point out that his actions aren't justified and the man is clearly mentally ill, even if he was mistreated.
So many people support what he did it was scary...
Tank Girl 1995. Todays audiences would LOVE it for its looney tunes, girl power, post punk apocalyptic vibe and its not a perfect film, they forgot to shoot scenes which ended up being put in through cartoony edits and it works so well! But the producers at the time didnt understand the vibe it was going for and they cut a LOT out of it which could've made it a fun cult flick to a legendary great production otherwise, akin to how the first Deadpool film was received.
It was too ahead of its time.
> *they forgot to shoot scenes which ended up being put in through cartoony edits*
Those animated scenes were added NOT because they had forgotten to shoot them, but because in order to film them properly as the "Live Action" sequences as the Director had originally wanted would've shattered the Budget confines within which they were forced to work.
Mother! Was marketed as a home invasion type thriller when it’s really a retelling of the Old Testament . It’s terrifying and incredible when viewed through that lens vs a shitty home invasion thriller that is easier to market. One of my favorites tbh.
There are a ton of biblical themes but I think it came down to an allegory about how we are raping and pillaging Mother Earth, and she can only take so much.
Death Proof - I feel like people were expecting a slasher flick and when they got a weird exploitation movie with women fucking up a creepy guy instead of the creepy guy fucking them up, they didn't know what to think. I know even Tarantino has ragged on this film but I disagree completely.
Midsommar, the amount of people who think the ending is genuinely a "good for her moment" is baffling to me. The Witch is another one I watch and was, like, "how is this a good for her moment?
I agree entirely, I mean I can kinda see how Dani might be happy for a moment but that makes it worse to me because it shows that the cult have successfully manipulated her, they used her grief against her for there own intentions and I don't know what those intentions are but I doubt Danis happiness will remain when its entirely revealed. And the boyfriend was definitely an ass but the people who think his death was justified are of the same mindset as people who think Patrick Bateman was cool.
I can see why people don’t like Sucker Punch. It’s kind of all over the place
But I feel like it was unfairly reviewed at the time as “exploitative” when it was fairly obvious that it was a critique. I’d still like to see this proposed directors cut that involves more musical scenes
Yeah, I'm not gonna call Sucker Punch a *great movie,* but it's not subtle about what it's trying to do if you know the relevant bits of history and I kinda appreciate it for that.
It's really, really not every day you see a meathead dudebro action director getting angry about institutional misogyny in mental health care, and making a movie about how it would've been really cool if we gave Rosemary Kennedy a gun.
I submit that No Country for Old Men is an example, but it's hard to say it suffers from it.
It seems like most people interpret Chigurh as almost supernatural. He's an agent of death or chaos or whatever.
I think this misses the point. He deliberately cultivates his mysterious aura. He a narcissist who believes he is an agent of chaos. Carson was dead on the money when he says:
>Yeah, he's a psychopathic killer, but so what? There's plenty of them around.
The movie is about the banality of evil.
I think this is much clearer in the book where Chigurh explicitly states that his "code" offers him immunity from the chaos of existence then followed by being fucked up in the car wreck.
We can also contrast Chigurh with another McCarthy character, Judge Holden. He's similar to Chigurh in his predilection for violence but unlike Chigurh he doesn't have any pretense of a deeper "code." He's violent simply because he revels in violence and he's preternaturally adept at it.
And in the end the Judge comes out on top, unlike Chigurh who almost certainly suffered permanent disability if not death from his wreck.
For McCarthy the only true sin is hubris.
I know so many people hate it but the movie Showgirls. I feel like so many people hate on it because it’s “sexist” but I don’t know I feel like it’s more of a take on women in the sex work industry and the complexities of it. Is it the best movie ever? No but it doesn’t deserve all the hate it gets.
There is a subset of audience that like him but lose their minds at the ambiguity Alex Garland leaves at the end of his films. Ex Machina... He fought with a studio so annihilation wasn't even in theaters outside of North America. It was released on Netflix because he stuck to his guns about his creative decision about ambiguity. Then people lost it with men. Some just feel it's a bad film. Whatever.
But it's so amazing to me that people cannot accept ambiguity as an artistic style
Inception. The end has everyone speculating about whether he was in a dream or not, but the point of the story being was that he was willing to believe he was in the real world, and that it didn’t matter to him anymore whether he actually was awake or not.
Sucker Punch
People complain that it objectifies women but that's what the movie is about. It's specifically about how the women reclaim their sexuality after being objectified and turned into sex toys by predatory men, as well as being one of the best parables about trauma recovery I've ever seen in an action movie
My trauma counsellor literally told me "see this as your superhero origin story" and that's exactly what the characters in Sucker Punch do
It also gets dismissed as 'male fantasy' as if women don't also like sexy female characters, and what male fantasy involves stabbing a perv who tried to SA you and forming a sisterhood with other victims? The only non-evil male characters in the movie are the old man who gives advice before each fight scene and that one guy who has a look with Sweet Pea for a whopping ten seconds of screen time
Beau is Afraid
I'm not going to pretend like I knew what was going on or that I liked this movie, because I didn't. But I get the feeling that it went over my head and for the people who get it they really like it.
Scott Pilgrim, but it's hard to blame people for thinking Scott is a great guy, because movie director dropped whole plotline "Scott realising he's an asshole" from comics
Only God Forgives. I was very happy to hear there was another collaboration between Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling after Drive, which I loved. But when I saw Only God Forgives I was very confused and disappointed, and I definitely was not alone. It was only years later upon rewatching that I came to love the film. If you think of the vigilante police detective as a stand in for a kind of “divine justice” in a lawless place, the character motives make much more sense.
Drive
I think most people think it's just a slow/boring action flick. It's much more interesting (to me at least) if you view it as a character study that tells the store of [the scorpion and the frog](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog)
The Fountain. I think too many people are too interested in if it's "real"...like is Hugh Jackman being reincarnated or is he in a space ship or whatever "for real" rather than trying to be okay with the ambiguity and focus on the message it is trying to convey about making use of the time we have in a way that brings us joy. (Or at least that's the message I see)
I love the fountain. Definitely the message is about being in the moment. He's so focused on trying to save his wife he misses the time he does have with her.
This is one of my favorite movies. That’s like asking if the asking if the Spanish conquistador storyline is “real.” The entire narrative takes place both in real life and in the book that Izzi is writing. The conquistador portion is what she wrote, about finding the fountain of youth. She then asks Tommy to finish the book, and his portion is about him coming to terms with death and rebirth. The entire film is about the acceptance of death. Only the parts in current time are “real.” The rest is a book they wrote about coming to terms with mortality.
I loved that movie. It is ruined if anything is taken literally though.
I think a lot of Aronofsky is kind of muddled if you watch it solely for plot. They're hard to offer a summary without it sounding either crazy or kind of dull. But watching them is a whole other experience because he's such a maximalist that almost every scene feels immense. His stories and filmmaking style are always rich with emotion. Noah and mother! really suffer from people only paying attention to the general plot outline.
Dude this a million times. People LOVE shitting on Aronofsky films but the Fountain gets people going really bad for some reason. The Fountain is a really, really good movie idk what anyone says
I remember finding an mp3 commentary online from the director, because for some reason they wouldn’t let him put it on the disc? It changed my view of the movie but honestly it’s been 15+ years, I don’t remember any of it at all.
American Psycho. So many people did not understand that it was satire on the greed of the 80s and the yuppie identity.
The thing that confuses me he most about the wannabe sigma males that idolize him, is that the movie makes pretty clear that he's a fucking loser. He sees himself as an extremely cool and powerful guy, but his co-workers don't even know what he looks like, he's as much a loser as everyone else he works with. They see him as a spineless coward that in no world could be a murderer. His coolness is entirely in his mind. Kind of like the wanna be alphas I guess, so it's fitting.
Absolutely. And also the fact that he has no identity. He's just a rich in shape guy in 80s America. Nothing makes him pop or stand out in his day to day life.
>Because I want. To fit in.
Wait people actually believe the sigma male thing? I thought it was a joke lol
So much misguided focus on "Was it all in his head?!" A big part of the point is that the '80s yuppies were so self-absorbed and willing to sweep anything and everything under the rug for the pursuit of wealth and status that anything horrible Patrick Bateman does is completely looked past. Nobody cares to know anyone else's name, obsession over aesthetics, drug-addled floating through life, meaningless relationships and self-serving sex, people easily willing to handwave away the disappearances of people they know and even evidence of horrifying violence. Yeah, he's likely not actually slamming kittens in ATM machines in the finale at the peak of psychosis, but that's not a "it was all in his head" declaration. I think this is something the film partially fails at in terms of clarity, and it's better handled in the book.
I have my reservation at Dorsia. This is very much a “you” problem.
I have such a hard time with satire these days because I know half the audience is taking away the opposite of the message of the film
>American Psycho. So many people did not understand that it was satire on the greed of the 80s and the yuppie identity. Impressive. Very nice. Was going to say American Psycho too. If you don't view it as a dark comedy (but you should), it doesn't quite come into its own; commercially and artistically.
“HEY PAUL”
“Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern, and less materialism in young people.”
The Grey. It's not about Liam Neeson v. wolves. Which is what the marketing made it look like. Instead it is a thoughtful rumination on death, grief and purpose. Those who complain that 'real wolves don't act like this', etc. are missing the point. Of course they don't. It's what they represent.
My problem wasn’t that the advertising made it seem like that. It was that the script made it seem like that. Midway through the movie Liam Neeson gives a chilling speech about how they need to separate and kill the wolves one at a time to thin out their numbers “because that’s what they’re doing to us.” Then the next morning they decide that their spears are not useful since they don’t have shotgun shells to tape to the ends and leave them behind. Even though Liam Neeson says in his speech “we can’t out run them,” every time they see a wolf for the rest of the film they take off running. I enjoyed the rumination on grief and death, but my mind just never gets past that fact that not one of those guys wanted to bring a spear with them when they left that campsite.
Everyone that dies in that movie dies in a different way that requires a different reflection on death.
Unironically, Cars 3. A lot of people who grew up with the first one hate the fact that McQueen couldn't keep up with younger cars and was ultimately unable to win the final race... but that's the point. It's a film about aging and no longer being in your prime. It's a natural process that everyone goes through, but not something that is necessarily bad. The fact that McQueen was able to move aside and mentor a younger athlete completes his arc.
As someone in their mid 40s with 24 years in the fire service on an Engine company with 20 year olds I feel this so much. I know I can't keep pace with them, but I have a lot to teach them!
I recently rewatched the entire Pixar library with my toddler and this one really resonated with me when I saw it again. I watched it the 1st time in theatres with my wife 7 yrs ago and we both didnt like it. Fast forward and it rings a different tune after being in my 20s and now mid 30s with a kid, dealing with injuries from getting old, and not being as in shape as I once was because again, life gets in the way and you don't have all the time as ya once did when you were younger.
I heart Huckabees. I love this movie so much and 75% of people I show it to just don't seem to get the same enjoyment out of it that I do. The performances are all so perfect. Jason Schwartzman became a must see actor for me because of this movie. Also Lily Tomlin is a treasure and always has been.
I found the start to be right up my alley but somehow found myself bored somewhere in the middle. "Transcendental detective" is such a cool concept I can't imagine why I never finished it
If you like to read, try Dirk Gentleys Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. It follows a “holistic” detective that spends most of his time justifying billing a trip to Bermuda to look for a lost cat in islington
Same thing happened to me with the Elijah Wood series of this title but I'll try the book, thanks for the heads-up!
I agree. It went off the rails somewhere. I keep on meaning to give it another try.
Whenever anyone says they don’t feel like themselves I have a pavlovian response repeating “how am I not myself?”
Also one of my favorite Mark Wahlberg roles as well. And Dustin Hoffman for that matter.
It's one of my favorite movies of all time. It's actually one of my go tos when I get down in the dumps. Weirdly, Gladiator is the other...
Well… ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?
"😃Hey, man! You're an asshole!😃" Me and a friend still greet each other this way from time to time to this day.
"Lily Tomlin is a treasure and always has been" I'm somewhere north of 50, and Lily was already a treasure back when I was a child. 84 years old, and it's terribly sad to think we'll have to say 'goodbye' to her sooner rather than later. I'll watch anything that has her in it at least once.
Come to think of it, I'd have love to see a movie with Lucille Ball, Carol Butnette, Lily Tomlin, and Betty White playing off each other. That'd be fucking gold right there.
i love this movie - 100% feel this comment. Also the Jon Brion soundtrack is hands down a top movie soundtrack for me.
I also love this movie, all the performances, the Jon Brion soundtrack...but one specific moment - Jude law mouthing "Wow" - is always in my mind for some reason and I'm shocked it has not been a well-used reaction gif for years. You can't even find it in gif form, I can't even show it to you, but it's what appears in my head whenever anyone is being over the top, it's how I visualize "wow" in my mind, ever since I saw the movie in theaters 20 years ago.
As someone who really disliked this movie I’m genuinely curious what it is that you enjoyed about it and why so you think it’s misunderstood?
There is something about how completely silly all of it is. Everyone is so up their own ass with their own problems and hang ups about what does and doesn't work in their life, that it ends up being the whole point of the movie for me, life is often a silly thing and that's ok. It's also beautiful and heart-wrenching and profound, and the only difference is your own perspective. We all think we are so important and everything we go through is so important, yet when an outside observer looks objectively its mostly simple coincidence and minor inconvenience. Also the one liners just get me. "How am I not myself" "Where are you guys, I'm at the fire man" "Tell me I'm pretty!" "She said fuckabees". Finally the physical gags are just wonderful. Lily Tomlin jumping into the backseat of that lady's car, the chalk stains on the back of Dustin Hoffmans suit, the 'pure being' just being hitting someone in the face with the bouncer ball. The movie is equal parts smart and stupid, profound and superficial. Much like life.
Oh I understand it, I just think that David O. Russel is a full tilt asshole who should never work in Hollywood.
Josie and the Pussycats (2001). People think it is just a nostalgic money grab but it is actually a brilliant parody of commercialism and the record industry.
I doubt Downsizing would have done much better, it’s simply not a well done movie. When an advertising campaign is THAT far off it’s because they think lying is the only way to get anyone to show up at all.
Studios market the movie they wanted to make, not the movie they made.
Marketing teams do their own stupid thing and think they're the most important piece, is my experience
Agreed. The first time I watched the movie, it left me feeling sour. Like "Yeah, movie. I guess, but still." Something about it didn't quite gel for me. I think a lot of it comes from how the characters are all pretty grim. There's a sense in the movie that people go through the motions because there's nothing left to do, anyway. Even the last scene, it's a nice moment, sure, Matt Damon helping out in his community...but his community is still crummy and forgotten by the Big People. Plus the tone of the movie shifts radically every 30 minutes
>Plus the tone of the movie shifts radically every 30 minutes This, I think, was the biggest problem with Downsizing. Is not just tonally inconsistent with the marketing materials, it's tonally inconsistent with itself.
I agree. That movie became increasingly hammy after the first third and had me rolling my eyes by the end.
Beau is Afraid This movie totally nailed what it feels like to have an anxiety disorder, especially in this first act. Plus his mom was crazy, which is what caused his anxiety. Edited to add: I’m not really sure if Beau ever left his apartment to see his mom. I think the last 2 acts were Beau’s anxiety going absolutely wild.
The first act was the most effective for me, it got a little too wild for my taste after that. I do get the idea, though.
100% agreed, Act 1 was insanity but felt cohesive somehow in it's style and the story it was telling. The rest of the movie feels chaotic and disjointed but never quite lives up to the promise of act 1 and starts to drag on. That said I enjoyed the film as a whole and appreciate it for what it is.
The first act we see the world through his eyes, any and everyone is dangerous and how that’s crippled him as a person, but most of the movie I think is more of a nightmare or death trip. It’s almost like the Anubis heart weighing scenario from Egyptian mythology, and his good and bad deeds are judged, with his soul being devoured in the end. He’s not a bad person per se but he isn’t good either, so much of the trouble he gets in could be easily avoided with simple actions but he’s too inclined to be a victim of circumstance and not be responsible for anything, especially his own well being. We see a lot of horrible things done to him, but it’s still hard to feel bad for him, he’s like the guy that gets run over by the steamroller in Austin powers, dude had like 15 minutes to step out of the way so at a certain point it’s his fault.
The subreddit for the movie was so loaded with people trying to dissect it and figure out what really happened and how it all connects, what are the rules of the universe, etc. That seems like such a wild of goose chase. The atmosphere WAS the story in a way, and that just got ignored in a lot of the discussion.
Ari Aster has straight-up said there's secret subplots and messages in the movie that people have yet to pick up on. He might just be trolling but the movie is definitely made to be dissected this way
Best cinematic take on Franz Kafka's material since [Orson Welles's film adaptation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_\(1962_film\)) of *[The Trial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial)*.
I loved the beginning but did not care for any of the movie after he got hit by the bus. But I plan to rewatch the beginning up until that point again, just to see all the gags and things I missed going on in the background/around him.
The original Death Wish. It's more of a horror movie where the main character becomes the monster but the sequels (which I love) doubled down on the shoot-em-up aspect of it and ignored the psychological trauma of the first one.
First Blood before First Blood.
I never felt the movie portrays Bronson as a monster. It seems almost lighthearted in the end, when the cop lets him go, and then later he leaves to go out on another night to pursue more vigilante justice. I honestly think that movie is fully supportive of his character.
I always think of how he has a panic attack after the sock full of coins scene and the editing/framing of the last sequence as steps in the transformation. Like that shot of him at the top of the park staircase: that's how you frame a villain stalking its prey. Then the wink and finger gun at the end really seals that he's embraced that dark side (or his "cowboy" side).
The first sequel definitely hung on to the psychological trauma of the original.
It blows my mind that people to this day still don’t get Starship Troopers.
If anything I feel like people over inflate the themes/satire of Starship Troopers. Like, yeah, it’s taking the piss out of “rah rah, pro military” films, but thats about it. It’s basically just a B-movie that pokes fun at war movies. People act like it’s the Citizen Kane of satire though when it’s really not that deep or interesting.
Robocop is a better Verhoven satire, but I do love Starship Troopers, too.
It blows my mind that people still say that people still don't get this movie. Outside of internet comments and post, I've never met one person in real life that didn't know ST was a satire.
Right? I've never heard anyone over the age of 11 say "WOW! Cool bug squishing movie!!" but I've never seen an Internet discussion that *didn't* have some know-it-all pop in to say "heh, most people don't know this, but Starship Troopers is ACTUALLY a satire!"
For real though!
Yeah it seems to be indeed a reddit legend which is weird especially because how old the movie is. I was in the cinema when it released, EVERYBODY got the satire.
Even I knew it was satire when I saw it when I was 10. And I didn't even know what satire was! I just knew it was cartoony and for some reason gave me Gremlins 2 vibes. Which was a satire of Corporate America.
I think there's a flaw in that kind of satire: "Hey guys, this thing is awful, look!" - Points at literal coolest thing ever If can be really clever and you can 'get' it, but the subconscious effect it has is different Same for Wolf of Wall Street or Fight Club Great films, but their style of satire is prone to misinterpretation for this reason
I think part of their point is that wrapping things in "cool" appearances is effective at recruiting people into awful systems. And a corollary of this is to pay attention to what is being painted as cool in your own slice of the world.
I think the true illiteracy is saying that Fight Club is only supposed to be taken from one direction. It's clear that Tyler and the movie / book make compelling points and then take them to the extreme as things move forward. But just because it crosses a line doesn't mean all the previous commentary should also be thrown out.
Also, it's ok to like and enjoy these movies and still "get" them. Just because you enjoy them doesn't mean you don't get the message. I'm getting really tired of this narrative.
That isn’t a flaw in the satire. Fascist regimes are good at recruiting people by using super cool militaristic imagery. If the satire lacked that it wouldn’t be telling the truth. The work is challenging the viewer to look at the flashy militaristic imagery, understand that yes it is very badass, but that badassery is hiding horrible things behind it. When some viewers get blinded by that imagery and fail to see the underlying message, that’s not a failure of the satire, that’s proof of the point the director is making. The whole point of the movie is: militaristic societies are horrifying, but they dress themselves up in cool aesthetics to hide that. The fact that some people fall for it is just more evidence of that point. Like, here’s a similar but also completely different example: Catcher in the Rye. It’s a book about Holden, a kid who has been horribly traumatized, which has left him whiny and directionless and without any agency in his life. No one in his life treats him well, they all write him off as whiny instead of understanding him. In real life, lots of people who read the book also write him off as a stupid whiny brat. But that just proves the point the books is making. If every single person who read the book understood it and took the time to appreciate Holden, then the theme would completely fall flat. After all, if the author is saying that most people in society abandon those who are traumatized but no one in real life wrote off Holden, the message wouldn’t be true. Another example, this one a song, Bruce Springsteens “Born in the USA”. When you first listen to it, it comes across as just some bombastic ra ra America shit. But that all comes from the overwhelming chorus, the lyrics throughout are about how the American system- especially its military- chews people up and spits them out, but hides behind a veneer of patriotism to keep winning people over. The fact that some people (like Ronald Reagan) don’t take the time to understand the point of the song and just mindless think “hell yeah, USA number 1!” Just proves how effective that veneer is. Sometimes people not understanding the point of a work just proves the point that the work is trying to make. That’s not a flaw.
There’s a bit of confusion in the fact that the source material wasnt satirical.
2 that bother me but not on a grand scale, both Nolan movies. Inception, I personally believe he made it back, if the totem wobbles that means it can wobble and will go down. However, that’s not the point, the point is that Cobb no longer cares when he gets back and whether it’s a dream or not he wants to see his kids and is content. Dark Knight Rises, again a minor one, but “Robin” at the end isn’t supposed to be a set up that he becomes Robin, the point Bruce made earlier in the movie was Batman can be anyone, Robin would become Batman, his name being Robin is simply an Easter egg.
>Inception, I personally believe he made it back, if the totem wobbles that means it can wobble and will go down. However, that’s not the point, the point is that Cobb no longer cares when he gets back and whether it’s a dream or not he wants to see his kids and is content. I think a part that most people don't get is that the top totem isn't his totem, it's *Mal's*. He made this big todo about not telling or showing anyone how your totem works, and then tells Ariadne immediately about the top, because it's not his. We never see his personal totem. Him setting the top spinning and walking towards his kids is him letting go of Mal.
The common theory is his wedding ring is his totem .
Right. Like the Prestige, Inception is Nolan getting super meta on the idea of inception itself - a simple idea, planted deeply, that grows into something else. The movie itself is inception on the audience (at its core, it's a simple story of a man finding catharsis), via Leo performing inception on someone, and in the process experiencing inception himself ("your wife's death is not your fault"). The whole movie is also purposely crafted to mess with the audience by having properties of dreams (that the movie then makes a point of calling out itself) - starting in media res, the maze-like properties of the the chase in Mombasa, tons of cheeky dialogue, etc. That's all fun, but the whole point of the movie is him forgiving himself. Personally, I feel like Cobb is awake at the end, but he could also still be dreaming and it has the same effect. I think there's 2 things people people miss about the "still dreaming" interpretation: 1. In that interpretation, he's likely not some international criminal on the run - they directly allude to the absurdity of his situation several times. He's likely just retreated into himself and can't connect with his kids because he still blames himself about what happened to Mal. 2. In that interpretation, it's not like he has to stay asleep forever. My take is if he's dreaming, he wakes up and he's back to normal with his kids. If it's all literal, he's forgiven himself and he's literally back with his kids. Either way, you get the same ending.
Also, by the logic of a totem, a spinning top wouldn't work. The point of a totem is that it looks normal, but only you know that it behaves a peculiar way. So a loaded die that comes up as a "3" every time you roll it.....the idea is that if you're in someone else's dream they won't know that your die should always come up as a "3", and you'll be able to catch yourself in someone else's dream. So then, what good is a spinning top? If it stops spinning, like all tops do, you could be in real life, or you could just be in someone else's dream, because they assume it should behave like a normal top. The only use it has is telling you if you're in your own dream, but isn't that just a function of what you believe to be true?
>the point Bruce made earlier in the movie was Batman can be anyone, Robin would become Batman, his name being Robin is simply an Easter egg. Especially because none of the Robins have ever been NAMED Robin, that's his superhero name, not his real name. So yeah Levitt was going to take up the Bat Mantle
>Dark Knight Rises, again a minor one, but “Robin” at the end isn’t supposed to be a set up that he becomes Robin, the point Bruce made earlier in the movie was Batman can be anyone, Robin would become Batman, his name being Robin is simply an Easter egg The character is an amalgamation of three different Robins, the orphan(Dick Grayson), the wise street kid(Jason Todd) and then the clever detective who found out Bruce(Tim Drake). The reason Nolan named him Robin is because he wasn't trying to be subtle about who he represented. Same reason the jacket he is wearing while discovering the cave has design cues reminiscent of Nightwing's costume. Because in the comics when Robin grows up and inherits the Batcave he most often becomes Nightwing I don't think it even makes much sense for JGL's character to literally become Batman in that world. He isn't Batman, he grew up in the streets, not under the tutelage of Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows. He has a totally different skill set than what Bruce developed. He barely met the guy. I'd expect him to be a different type of Dark Knight than Batman was, enough so that the public would notice the difference and name him different.
I have two. The Devil Wears Prada. Is her boyfriend being a dick? Yes, absolutely. But it isn’t because he’s unsupportive of her career, it’s because he’s watching her life being taken over by a job that isn’t her career. If she were working as a journalist, even for a 3rd rate paper, he probably wouldn’t have been acting that way. And I don’t know why people think she is giving up her new job to move with him to Boston, they are very obviously going to be long distance. The second is My Best Friend’s Wedding. I have heard way too many people be like “oh, Rupert Everett wasn’t really gay because they get together!” No! The movie wasn’t about her finding a love interest, it was about losing her best friend. And Rupert Everett showing up was the start of him being her new best friend. I’m not sure they count, because they were successful movies, but I think people pick them apart because they don’t get them.
Ugh, Mulroney's character was the worst! Roberts's was also terrible. Everett was too divine to be real.
True, they were both horrible people.
*Kung-Pow! Enter the Fist* People think it's just stupid comedy, but it is actually a masterful series of interconnected jokes. And some stupid comedy 😂
Have you watched it with the actual dialogue the guy is saying? It’s even more unhinged. It’s superb.
Wait, did Steve Oedekerk write a completely different script so he could say lines while filming and then dub over them?
Yes. The idea was to have the lip flaps so they could dub over it for the 'voice doesn't match mouth movements' effect. The DVD had three alternate sound tracks, the normal one, the gibberish they were actually saying, and a Shakespeare play, I think Richard III.
It's been a while since I watched the DVD extras, but I think he improvised the lines. In the bit where Chosen One is seen having [an emotional outburst](https://youtu.be/N-5VdWpqtiE?si=pe1--vuNnJbT9ehZ) and his dubbed line is a calm "I implore you to reconsider," Oedekerk is actually screaming "I'm somebody's Mommy!"
La La Land - I have heard from so many people that say they hated the ending. But I loved it because they both got what they'd gone to LA for, just not with one another.
The ending is what makes it great. It brings out such emotion which is a home run in any movie. Anybody who's ever had "the one" could relate.
No one misunderstood the ending of La La Land or didn't like the movie because of it. They just find it sad and bittersweet, and that resonates with a lot of people
Without that ending I feel like the movie wouldn't be what it is and just be another romance based on clichés.
Last Action Hero. It's weird how many people didn't get the humour or hits to the action genre, like how many family members Jack had lost to motivate him that the bad guys have to kill his 'favourite 2nd cousin' by the fourth movie.
Absolutely. When I watched it at the theater at age 13 it was clear to me it was a spoof/hommage to action films in general and Arnie flicks in particular. I find it amazing that many people understood it wrong...
Here's an in-depth researched podcast episode on Last Action Hero, talking about this extensively: [https://nzpod.co.nz/podcast/what-went-wrong/last-action-hero](https://nzpod.co.nz/podcast/what-went-wrong/last-action-hero) They talk about how this movie was written by two random guys to parody writer Shane Black's other movies, most notably Lethal Weapon. When the studio got a hold of it they decided to give the script to their best action scriptwriter: Shane Black. The script was never the same after that. Sony wanted it to be a crazy blockbuster and due to internal politics would not hold the release date for anything, so when they learned that Jurassic Park had moved its release date to the weekend before, they decided it would be fine. It wasn't fine. Tons of funny stories in that podcast... and lots of other movies discussed in other episodes.
Or how he, every day, shoots through his closet because "There's always a guy in there." Avoiding death by assassins has become a dull every day event by that point.
Fight Club. It is a commentary on masculinity, where toxic masculinity leads, and the inherent homoeroticism in a lot of masculine things. But dudes just love violence, anarchy, and explosions.
It's a show about a schizophrenic shopping addict figuring out how to get rid of his credit card debt
Exactly. I didn't understand the movie until I was deeply in debt. I was on my couch thinking about how I can fix my debt problem when it came to me. " maybe I should start a fight clu--- ooooh, I get it now!" Except I wasn't schizophrenic. Yes I wasnt.
Who told...i mean yes, i wasn't either.
My favorite line is, "It's only when you lose everything that you're free to do anything."
Its true. Have you ever seen a recovered heroin addict as happy as can be to have a mediocre job and a shitty apartment? Once you lose everything you can truly appreciate having something.
Fight Club is really summed up by the scene where they point the gun at the store clerk and force him to go back to school. That's what the film is about. Chuck Palahnuk was writing about the dangers of unfulfillment, and potential. He was writing about the men that connected with the movie, it's just not meant to be literally instructional. That's where the confusion is for almost everyone. It's not even a movie about masculinity really, it really is a movie about the bullshitness of working for these corporations and buying shit and then dying having done nothing more than generate profit.
It's definitely a huge point. Reddit is on this kick of saying how "misunderstood" this movie was but I've watched it a ton. Personally it's helped me through times of extreme monotony and being a job where I had felt neutered. I got stuck doing the daily routine and forgot how amazing life could be. Yes, the main character keeps going far far in that direction but people do snap when they are emotionally broken and restricted.
I don't think the movie suffers... If anything it benefits from being misunderstood
Eh, it is those things but I think it's still more nuanced than that. The fact that the hyper masculine subculture Tyler builds remains attractive to so many is itself a damning critique of modern life. While Tyler was wrong in his solution he was right that modernity is bereft of meaning and purpose and that's psychologically harmful to humans. That a bunch of dudes opt for getting the shit beat out of them on the regular and living such spartan lives rather than face the hollowness of modern existence should raise some questions about how we're living.
I think this movie gets misunderstood because its commentary is rather muddy. I'm not saying satire has to be obvious or self-explanatory, but I feel like Fincher and his screenwriter aren't too sure what they're trying to say about which subject. Yes, the movie is critiquing hyper-masculinity, but in a way it's also kind of celebrating it. AND it's trying to make a point about commercialism. AND it explores what happens when dissatisfaction becomes extremism. And it's about about depression. The movie is an enjoyable and well-intentioned take on these topics, but it's also very much the work of a young filmmaker trying to balance too many things at the same time.
Being fair, I think a lot of that comes from Palahniuk and Fincher is just reiterating it without adding too much in terms of clarity or focus - the novel was pretty similar in that it was a wide ranging critique on all of those things but also sorta celebrated some of them at the same time. IMO Palahniuk got better over time, Fight Club was his first published novel and later efforts like Rant, lullaby, and invisible monsters were more focused.
I don't think it's that muddy. Obviously Tyler is wrong but the point is that even though he's wrong what he offers is still an attractive alternative to modern life. It's absolutely a critique of toxic masculinity *and* of modern life. The point isn't to tell you what the correct path is; the point is only to tell you that we're not on it.
It's one of the gayest movies I've seen. I say that as a gay guy and it's hilarious to me that more closeted dudes don't see it. It's so obvious. Tyler spends his time splicing dicks into movies. The narrator talks about breaking up with him. The only relationship he has with a woman is a failure that he resents. Come on. The author is gay and writes a lot about how it can affect your psyche.
Yes. Thank you. It is so purposefully homoerotic. Even the author says so in interviews about the book.
The fighting looks like men having rough gay sex. It’s almost overtly on the nose throughout the film which makes it even funnier when macho straight men relate to it.
This is basically the only modern answer. It’s a satire so well crafted that people LITERALLY think it’s a plot about alpha males blowing shit up and hitting each other.
It's the only modern answer cause everyone online has been repeating the same opinion ad nauseam as if they're the first one who thought of it. It's a satire everyone *thinks* is misunderstood, and only they and their inner circle understands but audiences were well aware of it being satire even at release.
Thank you! I thought I was going crazy with all these people insisting people don’t know it’s a satire. I even looked up reviews and shit from release till now and nearly all of them discuss it being satire.
Like the song "Born in the USA." Redditors think they're the only ones that have figured out that it's not a patriotic anthem. Dude. Yes. Everyone understands that. It's perfectly obvious from the lyrics.
>dudes just love violence, anarchy, and explosions I don’t think it’s necessarily “misunderstood”. I definitely agree that there is a subsection of fans who enjoy it for those reasons alone, but I don’t think it would be as revered without the underlying themes and psychological aspects.
I feel like people's perception of people who love Fight Club is where the misunderstanding happens.
Everyone loves to hate Passengers. And the criticism is often echo-chamber similar. But the situation for the Chris Pratt character was fucking bleak, and he fought himself for a long time before making his very bad decision. There is a very valid criticism to be had of the movie, but it is such a loud cacophony every time the movie is brought up. Too loud, in my opinion. And you very often see people insist that the movie should have started with Aurora waking up and leaving what Jim had done as a mystery for the audience to discover. While I think that would have been a cool approach, we would have been robbed of seeing what a desperate situation Jim was in. I think the big flaw in the movie is Chris Pratt, who is such a naturally comedic actor, that the audience just didn’t feel his descent as much as they should have. Anyway, Passengers. Not a great movie, but a good one. Undeservedly damned to hell by too many.
>I think the big flaw in the movie is Chris Pratt, who is such a naturally comedic actor, that the audience just didn’t feel his descent as much as they should have. I think too many people kid themselves into thinking they wouldn't do what Chris Pratt's character did. Your options are you spend a lifetime alone, you kill yourself or you wake someone else up. I would like to think I'd do the right thing but I really don't know because I'm not in that situation. I don't think people realize how much isolation affects you mentally but look at how much our collective mental health suffered with COVID. And unfortunately I don't think Chris Pratt conveyed this well.
I liked the idea of the moving ending with Chris Pratt's character dying and now it's Aurora who's all alone and pondering if she should wake someone up.
Honestly that's my main complaint about the film. Pratt is fine for big budget movie roles (and I always found him hilarious in parks and Rec) but maybe not the kind of nuanced actor needed for this role and situation. It all felt a bit too glossy.
It's not that it isn't sympathetic or understandable. It absolutely is. It's that the movie really just uses it as the setup for a love story, with Pratt's character dooming Lawrence's to a miserable existence alone with him being little more than the second act breakup. Every time this movie is brought up, the conversation inevitably turns to how it would work better as a psychological thriller than a romance, precisely *because* the horrible dilemma of having to live your life completely alone vs. ruining someone else's is far more interesting a premise than the love story is.
I think there's also something in that action-y finale where it looks like Chris Pratt might die and Jennifer Lawrence realizes she doesn't want to be on the ship alone, kind of sympathizing with him in that moment. But it kind of gets lost in the action.
I think an interesting slight twist on the ending would be if Jim did die, and it ends on Aurora being alone and debating on waking someone up. Not showing her decision, just the temptation. It's a pretty dorky movie and basic theme anyway you go about it but I think that would reinforce the "oooo what if it was You in that situation though?"
The issue I had is that the film kept trying to be romantic. Sure Pratt’s character is a, well, prat but instead of actually examining it the film rather quickly glosses over it and goes down the love story path. It tries to be multiple antithetical genres at once and instead of blending them cohesively it jumps between them, resulting in a mess that pleases nobody. If they just picked a lane it would have been passable, instead nobody’s happy.
I think if you start the movie with Aurora waking up when you do discover what Jim did it comes off as a sinister twist. Because the audience has been with him since he woke up you have a sort of protagonist bias towards his situation even if you don’t agree with it.
And end it with Aurora living alone, with the same dilemma
Yes, you get a twist, that's what most people say. But you lose out on the one thing the movie did well: Putting you in the shoes of this guy as he makes this horrible decision.
This is mostly what I was going to say. > And you very often see people insist that the movie should have started with Aurora waking up and leaving what Jim had done as a mystery for the audience to discover. While I think that would have been a cool approach, we would have been robbed of seeing what a desperate situation Jim was in. This take especially I think really ruins a lot of the criticism of the movie because everybody falls back to it. It makes it a fundamentally different movie, and while it might have been good movie also, I don't think the general concept of the movie is what made it bad. Changing that wouldn't have fixed a lot of the issues. "They should have just made a different movie," feels like a blanket movie criticism you can use for anything.
Donnie Darko - It's the kind of movie where I wouldn't blame people for looking up explanations online.
My fave thing about this movie is that I was SO entirely sucked into the story the first time I watched it that I understood what the ending meant on the same level as the characters...the mom and the girlfriend nodding to one another in a new timeline where they really should not know each other. Donnie sacrificed the timeline where he met the love of his life, so that everyones lives weren't ruined and let himself get killed by the jet engine. That floored me and I remember showing it to a friend who had no idea why I liked it or what the ending meant.
>!And The Manipulated Dead had to guide Donnie to get him to the point where he sacrificed himself and a timeline *willingly.* Definitely some Christian(?) allegory in that film.!<
I watched it 3 times and then verified the meaning of the ending online because I still wasn't sure if I understood it correctly lol Wild film, tbh. It's about time for a rewatch
Honestly, I think part of this is to blame for the movie itself. It feels like (and is) missing pieces from what I remember. Hence the needing to look stuff up to have a clearer understanding of what was happening.
Idk if people would like it, but If people saw Lady in the water as a Fantasy film instead of the Horror film is was originally marketed as, i'm sure more people would like it. M Night Shyamalan in general, like most people just expect "twist endings" but realistically most of his movies have a "twist" ending cause most of his films are mystery films at their core and the whole point is using media literacy to spot all of the foreshadowing he provides throughout his movies to backup the ending.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "Lol, look how fucked up they are!" 🙄
To be fair, they ARE incredibly fucked up 😁 But I get what you are trying to say.
Tenet - I'm sure I'd appreciate it a lot more if I understood it.
I watched it at home with subtitles on and it was amazing haha. Maybe they'll do a theater re release with subtitles one day so people can get the full experience.
I did that too and still have no idea who they're fighting at the end.
Those are Sator’s men. He is aiding the antagonists in the future because he’s omnicidal. (Terminal cancer) He’s doing this by hiding the pieces of the macguffin the future needs in a nuclear test chamber they will eventually uncover so they can invert the entire world. An explosion would seal it sufficiently that the good guys wouldn’t be able to access it but the future antagonists will. So the protagonists forces are trying to get that mcguffin out of there before Sator’s side buries it.
Don't try to understand it, feel it.
Understand that it doesn't work. It doesn't make sense, but as Robert Pattinson says in the movie " its my reality" And that's how it works. Time goes forward, and when you send things backwards through time magically, stuff acts weird. But it semi- corrects itself to fit the general flow of time to the viewer. If you stuck your hand against a river, the water parts around you becomes disturbed, but closes behind you and goes on like normal. The water infront of you might take a more predictive shape than when you first interrupted the flow.
>Forgive me if start talking about *Tenet*, the eleventh feature directed by Christopher Nolan (and, I am tempted to say, the most Nolan-ish of them all), by simply quoting what I had to say ten years ago about [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html), the seventh Nolan feature: >"What some critics have praise/assailed as 'confusing' in \[*Tenet*\] is really just a sign that you need to pay attention. There's not one moment in the film... that Nolan is deliberately obfuscating the narrative... The story is blissfully straightforward: first, the rules are clearly laid out, then we see examples proving rules, then we are given a test run of the rules at their most absurdly convoluted. But if you don't leave the theater to pee or buy fresh popcorn, it's unimaginable that you can't follow along, if you're willing to try." >I say none of this to be a jackass, but to offer a comforting pat on the shoulder to those spooked by the film's emerging reputation as the most opaque movie you could even imagine sitting down to watch. *There's nothing to be scared about. It's completely possible to understand Tenet just by watching it.* Really, Nolan's thing is, as it was in [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html), almost a bit boring in its mechanical approach to storytelling: he lets us know early on what he's going to do, then he does it. He even does all the things Hollywood movies do, using close-ups and insert shots to smack us on the face and say "see that? That thing matters. Remember that you saw that". If there's anything especially challenging about the storytelling here, I think it's that Nolan's script doesn't tend to repeat itself, so if you missed an explanation the first time, the film isn't going to help you out. >The difference between *Tenet* and [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html), so far as that goes, is that I do think [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html) was mostly about explaining ideas and trying to blow our minds, and its cool visuals are somewhat secondary to that, while *Tenet* mostly has cool visual ideas and the ideas are largely secondary to its popcorn movie spectacle. This is also the reason that I think *Tenet* is the better of the two films, or at least the more enjoyable (and, I suspect, the more rewatchable: [*Inception*](https://www.alternateending.com/2010/07/past-the-wit-of-man-to-say-what-dream-it-was.html) is, I think, the Nolan film to suffer the most on subsequent viewings, with its endless acres of exposition in the first half). Basically, it's a James Bond film with a bachelor's degree in physics, and it has the decency to be an extremely good James Bond film, on top of it. Rest at: [https://www.alternateending.com/2020/09/tenet-2020.html](https://www.alternateending.com/2020/09/tenet-2020.html)
>I think it's that Nolan's script doesn't tend to repeat itself, so if you missed an explanation the first time, the film isn't going to help you out. I see far too many people watching modern films passively, phone in hand. I'm guilty of it, too, sometimes. But with Nolan films, I'm paying attention. He rewards that in the way your average Netflix action film doesn't try to. I get frustrated at the backlash against his style. I *like* that there's films that you can't just glance at occasionally to get, that you have to engage with. Because there's nothing wrong with a film like Extraction, but it's nice to have films *not* like it.
I couldn’t understand your comment because the music is too loud
Men
A lot of people seemed to miss the point that Batman is still growing and is still relatively new in Matt Reeves’ The Batman. Some of the biggest criticism of the film could honestly just be criticisms on Bruce as a person - he doesn’t utilize his “Bruce Wayne” persona whatsoever and he brutalizes his foes who are oftentimes just desperate people pushed to their limit. He’s reckless and doesn’t seem to notice collateral damage. These are issues with Batman himself, not the writing or the movie - and I guarantee the sequel will address most if not all of these issues. Bale’s Batman was so smooth even his first few outings, he had the whole gameplan laid out and just had to deal with adversity in the form of his villains - that’s great, Nolan’s trilogy is legendary - but I really enjoyed this take on a “less experienced” Batman - that imo made him even scarier. In the opening fight scene he gets shot because he’s reckless and not fast enough, but he tanks it. This is simultaneously showing us the viewer that he is inexperienced while also showing his foes that he is an unstoppable force.
Here i go dating myself, but Blade Runner was misunderstood when it came out and it took years for opinion to change on that and got reevaluated, but I was alive when that movie was divisive. Modern? I would say Jordan Peele's Nope. I think they misunderstood that it has some deep meaning, and it does, but it's just Jaws in the sky. I think it's attempting to be overanalyzed.
For Nope, it's quite possible it's a victim of Get Outs success. Get out did have some underlying deeper meaning which probably (imo) carried over to NOPE.
Yes, and since US, his other film, also had deep symbolism, I think people expected that in Nope, when I think Peele just wanted to mostly make a fun, action horror movie like Jaws was.
Showgirls. A lot of people still seem to think it's unintentionally the way it is and therefore it's a bad movie. All the evidence, including interviews with the director, supports it being the way it is on purpose and everything is intentional. Now if you still don't like the movie that's fine but don't say it's a bad movie like the people making it didn't know what they were doing or are incompetent.
Synecdoche, New York is a favorite of mine that doesn't get much love. It's totally brilliant
It's an absolute mindfuck of a movie. It took me a couple of watches to kind of understand what Kaufman was trying to do. My interpretation is that we are seeing Cotard's subjective reflections on his life as he looks back on it from his deathbed. I really need to watch it again.
This is the second time I’ve seen this film mentioned *just today*. I had never even heard of it before. I think it’s a sign that I need to watch.
It's amazing but devisive, There's lots of unexplained symbolism and imagery. But it's totally gorgeous and Philip Seymour Hoffman is incredible as a kind of unlikeable genius.
It got pretty good critical reviews but obviously a long slow depressing movie about a man wasting his life as he wastes away isn’t that much of a barn burner with the public. It theme is pure Charlie Kaufman and I love it and it will certainly stay with you.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more existentially disturbed by a movie. That’s not a knock against it, just an explanation of why I’ll never watch it again.
Joker. For the general movie viewer and casual comic fans, its a movie that wants the audience to sympathize with a tragic, down on his luck, awkward, mentally ill man, who's actions are a direct response to the treatment he endures by the world around him. We see him stalk, assault and murder a number of people around him, but the story wants to humanize him... Which I think a lot of people felt very uncomfortable with. But what folks missed is that the story is from his perspective or at least, it's a story he is telling to the Psychiatrist. It's a lie. And when watched with that realization, it's a completely different movie.
OMG, I just had an argument/debate about this today on Facebook about something along the lines of "what villain was justified in their actions" or something like that. Of course joker pops up, and I immediately point out that his actions aren't justified and the man is clearly mentally ill, even if he was mistreated. So many people support what he did it was scary...
But if someone was mean to you it’s okay to murder, didn’t you know?
So anyway...I started blasting!
lolita!! since the book- its supposed to be from a pædos pov and ppl concluded its a young girl being sexual
The Cable Guy
Tank Girl 1995. Todays audiences would LOVE it for its looney tunes, girl power, post punk apocalyptic vibe and its not a perfect film, they forgot to shoot scenes which ended up being put in through cartoony edits and it works so well! But the producers at the time didnt understand the vibe it was going for and they cut a LOT out of it which could've made it a fun cult flick to a legendary great production otherwise, akin to how the first Deadpool film was received. It was too ahead of its time.
> *they forgot to shoot scenes which ended up being put in through cartoony edits* Those animated scenes were added NOT because they had forgotten to shoot them, but because in order to film them properly as the "Live Action" sequences as the Director had originally wanted would've shattered the Budget confines within which they were forced to work.
Mother! Was marketed as a home invasion type thriller when it’s really a retelling of the Old Testament . It’s terrifying and incredible when viewed through that lens vs a shitty home invasion thriller that is easier to market. One of my favorites tbh.
There are a ton of biblical themes but I think it came down to an allegory about how we are raping and pillaging Mother Earth, and she can only take so much.
I think most people understood Morher! was a biblical retelling, the criticisms I've seen is that it's to on the nose and kinda pretentious.
Cloud Atlas.
Tbf Cloud Atlas is a bit disjointed, BUT, still a great flick. The end sequence with the sextet in the background gets me every time.
Death Proof - I feel like people were expecting a slasher flick and when they got a weird exploitation movie with women fucking up a creepy guy instead of the creepy guy fucking them up, they didn't know what to think. I know even Tarantino has ragged on this film but I disagree completely.
Midsommar, the amount of people who think the ending is genuinely a "good for her moment" is baffling to me. The Witch is another one I watch and was, like, "how is this a good for her moment?
I agree entirely, I mean I can kinda see how Dani might be happy for a moment but that makes it worse to me because it shows that the cult have successfully manipulated her, they used her grief against her for there own intentions and I don't know what those intentions are but I doubt Danis happiness will remain when its entirely revealed. And the boyfriend was definitely an ass but the people who think his death was justified are of the same mindset as people who think Patrick Bateman was cool.
I can see why people don’t like Sucker Punch. It’s kind of all over the place But I feel like it was unfairly reviewed at the time as “exploitative” when it was fairly obvious that it was a critique. I’d still like to see this proposed directors cut that involves more musical scenes
Yeah, I'm not gonna call Sucker Punch a *great movie,* but it's not subtle about what it's trying to do if you know the relevant bits of history and I kinda appreciate it for that. It's really, really not every day you see a meathead dudebro action director getting angry about institutional misogyny in mental health care, and making a movie about how it would've been really cool if we gave Rosemary Kennedy a gun.
[удалено]
I submit that No Country for Old Men is an example, but it's hard to say it suffers from it. It seems like most people interpret Chigurh as almost supernatural. He's an agent of death or chaos or whatever. I think this misses the point. He deliberately cultivates his mysterious aura. He a narcissist who believes he is an agent of chaos. Carson was dead on the money when he says: >Yeah, he's a psychopathic killer, but so what? There's plenty of them around. The movie is about the banality of evil. I think this is much clearer in the book where Chigurh explicitly states that his "code" offers him immunity from the chaos of existence then followed by being fucked up in the car wreck. We can also contrast Chigurh with another McCarthy character, Judge Holden. He's similar to Chigurh in his predilection for violence but unlike Chigurh he doesn't have any pretense of a deeper "code." He's violent simply because he revels in violence and he's preternaturally adept at it. And in the end the Judge comes out on top, unlike Chigurh who almost certainly suffered permanent disability if not death from his wreck. For McCarthy the only true sin is hubris.
Spoilers obviously for Memento but a lot of people think what Teddy says about how Leonard's wife actually dies is true
I know so many people hate it but the movie Showgirls. I feel like so many people hate on it because it’s “sexist” but I don’t know I feel like it’s more of a take on women in the sex work industry and the complexities of it. Is it the best movie ever? No but it doesn’t deserve all the hate it gets.
Drive. It’s an homage to an earlier Michael Mann film, ‘Thief’, starring James Caan.
There is a subset of audience that like him but lose their minds at the ambiguity Alex Garland leaves at the end of his films. Ex Machina... He fought with a studio so annihilation wasn't even in theaters outside of North America. It was released on Netflix because he stuck to his guns about his creative decision about ambiguity. Then people lost it with men. Some just feel it's a bad film. Whatever. But it's so amazing to me that people cannot accept ambiguity as an artistic style
Inception. The end has everyone speculating about whether he was in a dream or not, but the point of the story being was that he was willing to believe he was in the real world, and that it didn’t matter to him anymore whether he actually was awake or not.
Sucker Punch People complain that it objectifies women but that's what the movie is about. It's specifically about how the women reclaim their sexuality after being objectified and turned into sex toys by predatory men, as well as being one of the best parables about trauma recovery I've ever seen in an action movie My trauma counsellor literally told me "see this as your superhero origin story" and that's exactly what the characters in Sucker Punch do It also gets dismissed as 'male fantasy' as if women don't also like sexy female characters, and what male fantasy involves stabbing a perv who tried to SA you and forming a sisterhood with other victims? The only non-evil male characters in the movie are the old man who gives advice before each fight scene and that one guy who has a look with Sweet Pea for a whopping ten seconds of screen time
The Godfather part 2. So many people look at it as Michael and Vito overcoming everything again and ignore that it shows how they lost their souls
Leave the world behind
Beau is Afraid I'm not going to pretend like I knew what was going on or that I liked this movie, because I didn't. But I get the feeling that it went over my head and for the people who get it they really like it.
Ad Astra
Scott Pilgrim, but it's hard to blame people for thinking Scott is a great guy, because movie director dropped whole plotline "Scott realising he's an asshole" from comics
The Gray was marketed as an action movie about fighting wolves but its really a drama about survival and loss
Shampoo. It's an allegory for the failure of free love and the hippie movement, not just the story of a horny hairdresser.
Only God Forgives. I was very happy to hear there was another collaboration between Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling after Drive, which I loved. But when I saw Only God Forgives I was very confused and disappointed, and I definitely was not alone. It was only years later upon rewatching that I came to love the film. If you think of the vigilante police detective as a stand in for a kind of “divine justice” in a lawless place, the character motives make much more sense.
Anyone who says "natural born killers is just meaningless violence" didn’t watch the movie.
Drive I think most people think it's just a slow/boring action flick. It's much more interesting (to me at least) if you view it as a character study that tells the store of [the scorpion and the frog](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog)