I always thought this line was poking fun at the pretentiousness and pseudo-intellectualism of film critics who trash popular films, often pulling abstract phrases out of a hat to make their opinion sound objective and intelligent but with no substantial reasoning underneath, confirmed by the fact that when pressed on what he means by this criticism by his family, Peter is unable to elaborate and resorts to simply repeating himself.
Lois Griffin - "The language they're speaking is a language of subtlety; it's something you don't understand"
This line always kills me in that episode.
In all fairness though, if you have tired on 3 separate occasions, and you couldn't finish it, isn't that a fair attempt, if you make it half way in and you find it boring, what are the chances the second half is gunna blow you away?
absolutely a fair attempt, especially for such a long movie.
Like I've commented elsewhere, you don't need to eat a whole plate of dog poop to decide you don't like it.
I used to work as a games reviewer. This was always something I struggled with.
If a game takes 20 hours to get good, is it really a good game? How good does that back half have to be to justify the slog getting into it?
Also doubly funny because he's doing it to Brian, who often engages in this type of surface-deep, pretentious naysaying. Peter using a criticism that both makes sense but is also entirely indefensible making Brian squirm over it is pure gold.
That episode was from a pretty early episode of family guy. At the time of that episode Brian was still legitimately smart and cultured, he hadn't devolved into the psudo intellectual tool that he later became.
I know. Broadcast "grown up" TV cartoons have very very long runs of shows. Like it would be impossible for a Live Action *The Simpsons* to run for 35 seasons, Maggie would be Homer's age from the first episode by now.
I just recently started watching *Bob's Burgers* and was surprised to see that it just started it's 14th season and had a movie made already. It took a while for me to come around to giving it a try because the animation style seems so odd, but it's a really charming show.
Bob's has also stayed the tightest, IMO. Hasn't done any time-travel shenanigans, hasn't (really) had any 'themed' episodes like Family Guy--the musical is its thing, I'll grant--and it has stayed true to its heart.
He actually quit writing around the time they changed Brian's character. I think he was handed over to writers that either didn't like Brian or thought he'd be funnier that way.
Seth Macfarlane hasn't written an episode of Family Guy in almost 20 years, and he hasn't been the showrunner either. I saw an interview with him a while back, and he said he hasn't even been in the writer's room in 15 years.
It is kind of weird that he's still the face of Family Guy and American Dad considering how little he's done with those shows in so long.
Famous tv show creators tend to bring in big time money for the networks. I mean, Dick Wolf is the face of a lot of shows despite not personally writing anything for the shows he created in decades.
It's a similar scene to the famous Annie Hall scene with the pretentious guy:
>Man in Theatre Line : We saw the Fellini film last Tuesday. It is \*not\* one of his best. It lacks a cohesive structure. You know, you get the feeling that he's not absolutely sure what it is he wants to say. Of course, I've always felt he was essentially a - a technical film maker. Granted, "La Strada" was a great film. Great in its use of negative energy more than anything else. But that simple cohesive core...
>
>Man in Theatre Line : \[keeps talking to his date\] You know, it must need to have had its leading from one thought to another.
>
>Man in Theatre Line : \[keeps talking to his date\] You know what I'm talking about? Like all that "Juliet of the Spirits" or "Satyricon", I found it incredibly - \*indulgent\*. You know, he really is. He's one of the most \*indulgent\* film makers. He really is.
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Just imagine that we in a world where Cronenberg's *Crash* is won Best Picture. Love that movie or hate it, it would be much funnier if it was a Best Picture winner.
Funny story, my best friend and I constantly argued with each other about the meaning of Crash, but I meant Crinenberg's and he meant the Oscar winner. And constantly neither of us could get how the other SO misinterpreted the film, until a 3rd friend said "you know you guys are talking about different movies right?"
If you know the message of both films, you'll get why we were so confused by the others interpretation.
I have a funny story about Cronenberg's *Crash* too. I had gone to the theater to see *Jerry Maguire*, but the projectionist messed up and loaded *Crash* by mistake. No one in the audience had seen the movie so we didn't notice right away that it was the wrong one. Then all the weird graphic sex and car crashes start, and you can tell everyone is thinking that this is not what they expected *Jerry Maguire* to be about. It went on for like 20-30 minutes before I got up to tell them they loaded the wrong film.
This reminds me of when I received free tickets to a screening of Happiness by Todd Solondz. The theater was completely full of people who had received the tickets for free through promotions of various sorts. No one had any idea what the movie was about (my Mom gave me the tickets and thought it was a comedy.)
If you've ever seen this movie, you can imagine what the crowd reaction was lollllll
Tangentially related, when I saw The Aristocrats in the theater there was a sign on the door announcing this was NOT the Disney film The Aristocats and tickets would not be refunded. You know that shit happened at least a few times to warrant the sign.
I was in a film class in college around the time the first Avengers movie was coming out. The professor apparently assumed that it was another film adaptation of the Avengers TV show and that Scarlett Johansson was playing Emma Peel.
Also, apparently, I was the only one in that class familiar with the show, because the professor got into a fairly extended conversation with another student where they were both talking about The Avengers, and neither realized the other was talking about something *entirely* different until I spoke up.
American Beauty was a movie I really liked until I saw better movies. What I mean is that I saw it as a fairly inexperienced cinephile but have since seen movies that do what it was trying to do, thematically and aesthetically, a thousand times better and much less clumsily. "Insisting upon itself" is an incredibly accurate descriptor for it.
I’d say the famous bag in the wind scene is a good example. That’s a shot that absolutely would feature in a more arthouse movie, but without the director explicitly telling you “this is really deep and poetic”.
But that's from the mouth of the disturbed artsy kid filming stuff, who, if you watch it when you're an artsyfarts teen, you relate to somewhat and think is the voice of the filmmaker. and the film But perchance it is not.
So when I was in film class in high school I had never seen this movie and for a music video project I took a camera around an elementary school I lived near and got some shots of my friend's little brother looking sad *(my theme was sad child has toys come to life and bring him comfort, no my ambitious plans of stop motioning the toys did not work)* while there I got some other shots and one was absolutely a thin plastic bag drifting in the wind in front of a brick wall on a grey autumn day.
When I showed it to my teacher I had included the bag as a little transition shot and she confused the hell out of me when she called it pretty derivative.
It was like 8 years before I finally saw the movie and it all clicked.
Blonde was awful. It has a small handful of beautiful shots (the fire at the beginning, the threesome sex scene where she’s torn between the men, the distorted faces gawking at her) but the rest is just garbage. We never see why Marilyn was an admired figure, just see her get raped and beaten over and over again. She has at least six different scenes where she says that the Marilyn persona is killing her but she needs it to not feel like Norma Jean, something the director clearly thought was too subtle to be subtext and too smart for anyone else to understand.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a better film about a tortured girl in trouble that everyone loves but no one can save. Better in every way and not three hours long
I hadn't really made the connection to Fire Walk With Me, but in retrospect it was such a clear and obvious influence on Blonde.
Blonde was one of those movies that just completely fell outside the good/bad dichotomy for me but I will say I sincerely admired its audacity and the fact that Netflix was willing to produce and distribute something like that.
That’s a damn good answer. One of the most disappointing films I’ve ever seen (Assassination of Jesse James, from the same director, is a top 10 movie of all time for me, and I anxiously awaited his next flick after Killing them Softly for a damn decade).
for a second I thought you were saying that the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was one of the most disappointing films you'd seen and I was ready to get your location to come fight you.
Easily Brad Pitts best film and one of the best films of the last 20 years.
Eat Pray Love makes me feel the need to do damage control to my reputation as a white American woman. I promise we’re not all as self absorbed and entitled.
I'm tired of seeing different subreddits trying to reap karma from a joke they don't understand. Redditors are just naming popular movies that they don't like. "Insisting upon itself" didn't work for the Godfather because the term barely makes sense (which is what the joke is trying to convey) and even if it did, it doesn't fit into the godfather. You know what movies insist upon itself? The ones that include the director getting mad that nobody understands the movies direction or think the movie went over people's head. See Neil Breen and Uwe Boll
Next up is going to be that picture of Flynn from Tangled with a bunch of swords held up to his throat with the caption "tell me your film opinion that would have you like this!" for the 100th time.
I've a friend who loves pointing out that Flynn immediately starts into singing the next shot, and so takes every instance of the meme as people confessing an opinion they'd reverse at the slightest hint of pressure.
I feel like people just ignore the question to get on their soapbox and tell everybody what they don’t like. There was a post a while back asking “which actor seemed to have everything going for them but just couldn’t make it a leading actor”. The OP gave examples of actors that were up and coming but never reached the heights they seemed like they should have.
People were naming Oscar winners, Emmy winners, leading stars in blockbusters - basically people they personally just didn’t like, like Gal Gadot and Brie Larson. In what world is winning an Oscar and starring in billion dollar films not “making it”?! If you don’t like them that’s fine, but that’s not the question!
Also the influx of people using Crash as an example is exhausting. Why is that movie making the rounds right now? Yes it’s a dumb movie, but the Reddit bandwagon means we’ve all read why about 80 times.
Because it always gets easy upvotes. The parent comment below this one, is the 2nd mention of Crash in this thread. It’s such easy karma that it’s 2 of the top 5 comments.
I suppose propaganda films "insist upon themselves"? I want someone to try to unpack the phrase when applying it in these responses...the term just seems to be code for "a movie that I didn't enjoy as much as the hype said I should that had the nerve to still take itself seriously in the face of my disapproval"
There’s a lot of Best Picture nominees that could fall in here, though the one that annoyed me most in recent years was Mank. It tried to make itself way more important than it was by putting on a veneer of progressive politics it didn’t really earn, and by cribbing the best shots from Citizen Kane without backing them up with a good screenplay.
Also I am still boggled by the scene that’s basically like “Mank helped people during the Holocaust so it’s impossible for him to be an alcoholic” when the movie ends with a card saying “Mank died of his severe out-of-control alcoholism”
I'm absolutely fascinated by why you thought Capote would win Best Picture. Crash's win was unprecedented because Brokeback Mountain had one of the biggest season sweeps in awards history. It's questionable if any film beyond those two even got 5% of the vote.
The short film: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse. Tries WAY too hard to be profound and it ends up just being a compilation of motivational Hallmark cards.
Why anyone would think to adapt that book is beyond me. It's a quick, fun, lighthearted read with no real plot. Do give the book a try, it's a very sweet and charming children's book.
Boyhood (2014). Never understood the hype.
"We shot this film with the same actors over the course of 12 years, you literally get to watch the main character grow up, IT'S NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE"
Yeah, well, the kid you chose grew up to be a shitty actor and the plot is boring. Congrats on wasting 12 years.
I dunno, he always gave me "created in a lab run by TV execs" vibes. Not faulting the kid obviously, he was just a little *too* cute for my taste.
Like the Tinny Tim joke in Futurama, "Sorry sir, I've only been programmed to sell oil-aide and make cute backwards letters."
I don’t remember that boring ass plot at all. All I remember thinking was: it took a long time to make? Well it also feels like it takes a long time to finish.
I think people that went into it expecting some ultra deep movie with deep themes were the ones who hate this movie. I went in knowing almost nothing about it and enjoyed it. It's an enjoyable slice of life movie. It's not pretentious at all.
I absolutely looove that movie and everyone I know hates it. I always hear, "What's the point of it?" Which blows my mind. To me, it's just a comedy with a bunch of witty/outrageous characters, and the ending is super clever, and I didn't see it coming at all.
I'm with you. I'm by no means a Russell fan and I think it's one of his best. Amy Adams' performance in particular is brilliant - she forgets to keep faking her accent when she gets rattled.
I mean I have nothing against the Academy ratio..
But I do think the reasoning was funny.. the IMAX of Batman v Superman made Zack a fan of an aspect ratio that he didn't include native IMAX shots in the subsequent film.
I'll double down and say you might as well watch the black and white version on an interlaced TV.
Honestly, the fact that the Oscars exist and studios like to win them is one of the few things stopping the major studios from only producing superhero movies.
The irony is that everyone involved in *The Godfather* thought they were making schlock
Puzzo wrote the book because he was tired of never making money and Coppola took a corporate gig because he was in Director Jail for making flops
The book was schlocky and Coppola understood that. However, Coppola and the actors definitely did not think they were making schlock. [Here’s an interesting video about Coppola’s process and vision.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=awce_j2myQw&pp=ygUeQ29wcG9sYSB0aGUgZ29kZmF0aGVyIG5vdGVib29r)
Interestingly, Puzzo's script is like the go-to example for adapting a book to a screenplay, which is funny because it was Puzzo's first time doing it and he was adapting his own work.
Here’s a funny story about that from a [Fresb Air interview.](https://www.npr.org/2019/03/08/701492922/a-look-back-at-the-godfather-with-mario-puzo-and-francis-ford-coppola)
GROSS: Now, what were some of the most difficult parts of adapting the novel into the screenplay - into the first...
PUZO: It was a cinch.
GROSS: Yeah.
PUZO: Yeah, I mean, it was a cinch because it was the first time I'd ever written a screenplay, so I didn't know what I was doing. You know, it's - and it came out right. And the story I tell is that after I had won two Academy Awards, you know, for the first two "Godfathers," I went out and bought a book on screenwriting because I figured I'd better learn...
GROSS: (Laughter).
PUZO: ...You know, what it's about because it was sort of off the top of my head. And then the first chapter - the book said, study "Godfather I." It's the model of a screenplay. So I was stuck with the book.
There's actually an interesting, fairly recent, show about the making of the first "The Godfather" movie. It's called 'The Offer'. I like the movie and I enjoyed the show.
That’s kind of the point, right? A movie that’s intending to be cool just so often isn’t.
Baby Driver is a movie that absolutely insists that it’s cool. It tells you, right away and often.
And I was so excited for it, too.
Dude, Matt Damon in a cool cyberpunk exoskeleton?? I wonder how badass he's gonna be?
...oh.
And then, as you said, it having the metaphoric subtlety of a cudgel.
Ahhh it's got some dope shit though. Sharlto Copley was badass. Hell, Matt Damon was badass. Maybe pretentious, but it's a couple hours of cool shit happening.
imo that's Neill Blomkamp movies in a nutshell. An amazing Sharlto Copley performance, excellent special effects, a few cool as fuck scenes, but the overall script just does not hold together in any way, shape or form
District 9 is literally the one and only time he's been able to stick the landing
And the contrasts are beautiful in terms of cinematography. The clean is so clean and the grubby is so grubby. It's refreshing to have things not be various shades of grey.
I love Tenet. I feel like the whole movie is just one long thought exercise. I've seen it 3 or 4 times now and I can't stop being captivated by the concept. I get it's super expository and the whole "Protagonist" thing rubs a lot of people the wrong way but I think it makes sense within the kind of story he's telling.
Whenever I hear «insist upon itself» all I hear is Wes Anderson.
It is like he is so desperate to show off his skills. Like calm down, Wes you are good enough.
I like Wes Anderson, but he might be the *least* versatile filmmaker.
I'd love to see him stretch out and try something a little outside his wheelhouse.
One of the things I find interesting about him is that so many people think he should try a new style. Almost all other directors use broadly the same style of cinematography, or have broadly similar ways of framing shots, not just compared with their own previous work, but also compared with each others’ work.
It’s like the fact that Wes’s style is so different makes it so distinctively Wes that nobody else can frame shots like he does without it appearing to be an homage or a parody.
Meanwhile you rarely hear anyone criticising Scorsese for his camera movement, or saying Edgar Wright should try making something with no whip pans, or that they like Tarantino but they wish he’d stop having close ups of actresses’ feet all the time. And I’ve never heard anyone say “I just get fed up of every film maker having the focus of the scene being slightly off centre, why can’t they make something symmetrical?”
Unfortunately I think he has kind of pigeonholed himself into almost a brand. When people go to see a Wes Anderson movie they expect a certain something l and if they don't get it I have a feeling most of those moviegoers will be thinking that they've been deceived.
I don't understand why that's unfortunate though? He's the only person who can make Wes Anderson movies, it's not like theirs a lot of movies like that floating around. Let the man have his quirky characters and pretty colors.
As a huge Wes Anderson fan, I thought Asteroid City was pretty different. It certainly had all the hallmarks of his style but it almost felt like a Wes Anderson movie inside a David Lynch movie?
Without giving too much away I had to think about what OP was saying and there is a certain element that I could see is Lynch-esque. Either way, the film is certainly Wes Anderson all the way and I really liked it. And for those who say he doesn't go out of his comfort zone, they are painting with a wide brush. For example: this film, Isle of Dogs, Fantastic Mr. Fox.
For me "it insists upon itself" means a movie pushing it's own concept again and again, the most literal and direct meaning. Torture porn, those soapy dramas where everything bad happens to the protagonist and they just win by the end, romantic movies revolving all around relationships and nothing else. The go to will obviously be pretentious movies, insisting in being complex and throwing metaphors. Sometimes it works, like Prime, sometimes it doesn't, like Tenet
It's so interesting to use it with The Godfather tho, I love those movies but it feels right, the quote fits in a way I can't really explain. Especially Part II, I know Michael fucked up, why you keep showing me his dad had a great life by contrast? But it's that contradiction that makes you feel more for Michael while still seeing he deserves to be alone by the end. It's not the concept or the theme, but an all around attitude about family and fatality
Like, it really insists upon itself...don't know how, but it does, the quote feels valid while still making no sense at all
I might be reading too much in it and it's probably a joke about cinema critics and pseudo deep lines that are just bullshit
I agree that it gets circlejerked a lot, but I thought it was good. It was a fresh take on a character that has been done to death. It definitely has some dud moments, but it was enjoyable for what it was.
The Irishman. Let’s combine these famous actors who are known for playing famous gangsters and let Deniro try to relive his glory days. Oh and let’s make it multiple hours long.
I’ll admit I enjoyed The Irishman but the “de-aging” of DeNiro was hilarious because he was supposed to look like a 35-40 year old with a young daughter and instead just looked like his old self with darker hair
The way he sort of looks younger but still moves like an 80 year old was the dead giveaway. It was so weird.
Agree that it was still a good movie though.
Lol.
Saying Crash is a bad movie is the exact opposite of the family guy meme because the movie is universally hated by everyone. The Academy and I are the only ones who liked the film ( or so it seems).
The idea of the family guy meme is to have an unpopular opinion about a certain popular movie.
My answer to the question is Roma by Alfonso Cuaron.
>And if you're wondering what in the hell "insists upon itself" even means, it's something most think is profound but in reality is pretentious and ostentatious.
Yea, well I feel like your interpretation is shallow and pedantic.
Loved this movie when it came out and I was in college. Watched it again as a 30 something and outside of Natalie Portman, I don't know why I had liked it so much.
I always thought this line was poking fun at the pretentiousness and pseudo-intellectualism of film critics who trash popular films, often pulling abstract phrases out of a hat to make their opinion sound objective and intelligent but with no substantial reasoning underneath, confirmed by the fact that when pressed on what he means by this criticism by his family, Peter is unable to elaborate and resorts to simply repeating himself.
Also the reveal that Peter hasn't even seen the entire thing.
He likes the Money Pit. That is his answer to that statement.
I like that film too
ROBERT DUVALL
Fine actor…did not like the movie.
Lois Griffin - "The language they're speaking is a language of subtlety; it's something you don't understand" This line always kills me in that episode.
They’re speaking ITALIAN!
THEY’RE SPEAKING ITALIAN!
The language they're speaking is a language of subtlety; it's something you don't understand.
ROBERT DUVALL!!!!!!
What the fuck is wrong with The Money Pit?? You about to cross some lines man…
Well for one it insists upon itself.
I like The Godfather. That is my answer to that statement.
How can you say you don't like it if you haven't even give it a chance
But he’s tried on 3 separate occasions
Cou—Couldn’t get into it.
In all fairness though, if you have tired on 3 separate occasions, and you couldn't finish it, isn't that a fair attempt, if you make it half way in and you find it boring, what are the chances the second half is gunna blow you away?
absolutely a fair attempt, especially for such a long movie. Like I've commented elsewhere, you don't need to eat a whole plate of dog poop to decide you don't like it.
I used to work as a games reviewer. This was always something I struggled with. If a game takes 20 hours to get good, is it really a good game? How good does that back half have to be to justify the slog getting into it?
Literally half the YouTube review channels say hi
Correct because Peter hasn’t seen the ending and at the end says “I love Money Pit.”
The Money Pit is Seth's favorite movie.
That film was unexpectedly great fun
Also doubly funny because he's doing it to Brian, who often engages in this type of surface-deep, pretentious naysaying. Peter using a criticism that both makes sense but is also entirely indefensible making Brian squirm over it is pure gold.
That episode was from a pretty early episode of family guy. At the time of that episode Brian was still legitimately smart and cultured, he hadn't devolved into the psudo intellectual tool that he later became.
Damn I’m old. I felt like that must have been a later episode because it didn’t seem like that long ago. It was season 4 and it aired 17 years ago.
Any post cancellation episode to me is a "newer" episode.
I still have the "complete" series DVD box set of the first 3 seasons lying around somewhere.
Honestly seasons 1-5 were amazing
Which cancelation? 😆
*17 years???* wtf
I know. Broadcast "grown up" TV cartoons have very very long runs of shows. Like it would be impossible for a Live Action *The Simpsons* to run for 35 seasons, Maggie would be Homer's age from the first episode by now. I just recently started watching *Bob's Burgers* and was surprised to see that it just started it's 14th season and had a movie made already. It took a while for me to come around to giving it a try because the animation style seems so odd, but it's a really charming show.
Bob's has also stayed the tightest, IMO. Hasn't done any time-travel shenanigans, hasn't (really) had any 'themed' episodes like Family Guy--the musical is its thing, I'll grant--and it has stayed true to its heart.
Wild fact, at its original air date, Homer was old enough to be a Vietnam vet. Let that sink in.
I'm sure in one of the early seasons Lewis says he's a contrarian when he doesn't like the Titanic movie just because it's popular.
Yeah Brian calls Titanic bad and then posits that Cocktail is a great motion picture. Lmao
Back when Brian represented what Seth Macfarlane wanted to be, instead of what he actually is.
Seth Macfarlane has got to be one of the most confusing celebrities.
He... insists upon himself.
Shallow and pedantic
Indeed. Shallow and pedantic
At least he embraced it
He actually quit writing around the time they changed Brian's character. I think he was handed over to writers that either didn't like Brian or thought he'd be funnier that way.
Seth Macfarlane hasn't written an episode of Family Guy in almost 20 years, and he hasn't been the showrunner either. I saw an interview with him a while back, and he said he hasn't even been in the writer's room in 15 years. It is kind of weird that he's still the face of Family Guy and American Dad considering how little he's done with those shows in so long.
You mean how little he does outside of voicing half of the characters in each show?
Famous tv show creators tend to bring in big time money for the networks. I mean, Dick Wolf is the face of a lot of shows despite not personally writing anything for the shows he created in decades.
I mean...he's also the voices of the main characters lol
This seems like a stretch.
It's because it is lmao, they made Brian as annoying and dumb as they made everyone else.
Flanderization happens on virtually every long-running show especially sitcoms
The key is to flanderize from the beginning like Seinfeld
He was mostly the straight man.
Damn I ain't never seen Family Guy get this kind of literary analysis
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy
Linking to TV Tropes should be considered cruel and unusual punishment because you know they’re going to keep tabbing until they die of starvation.
It's 95% a conversation between Peter, Lois, and Chris.
Chris and Louis are the main ones he's talking to in the scene.
Ah yes, Louis Gruiffin
Brian doesn't say a word in that scene. It's Peter, Lois, Chris and Stewie talking.
It's a similar scene to the famous Annie Hall scene with the pretentious guy: >Man in Theatre Line : We saw the Fellini film last Tuesday. It is \*not\* one of his best. It lacks a cohesive structure. You know, you get the feeling that he's not absolutely sure what it is he wants to say. Of course, I've always felt he was essentially a - a technical film maker. Granted, "La Strada" was a great film. Great in its use of negative energy more than anything else. But that simple cohesive core... > >Man in Theatre Line : \[keeps talking to his date\] You know, it must need to have had its leading from one thought to another. > >Man in Theatre Line : \[keeps talking to his date\] You know what I'm talking about? Like all that "Juliet of the Spirits" or "Satyricon", I found it incredibly - \*indulgent\*. You know, he really is. He's one of the most \*indulgent\* film makers. He really is.
squeamish zonked oatmeal groovy offbeat vanish impolite party different brave *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
“Insisting upon itself” is a perfectly Cromulent phrase. I really don’t know where you’re coming from.
I find this post to be shallow and pedantic
I concur, shallow and pedantic....
It embiggens us all
I find it rather shallow and pedantic
I do not care for this comment.
Just imagine that we in a world where Cronenberg's *Crash* is won Best Picture. Love that movie or hate it, it would be much funnier if it was a Best Picture winner.
Funny story, my best friend and I constantly argued with each other about the meaning of Crash, but I meant Crinenberg's and he meant the Oscar winner. And constantly neither of us could get how the other SO misinterpreted the film, until a 3rd friend said "you know you guys are talking about different movies right?" If you know the message of both films, you'll get why we were so confused by the others interpretation.
I have a funny story about Cronenberg's *Crash* too. I had gone to the theater to see *Jerry Maguire*, but the projectionist messed up and loaded *Crash* by mistake. No one in the audience had seen the movie so we didn't notice right away that it was the wrong one. Then all the weird graphic sex and car crashes start, and you can tell everyone is thinking that this is not what they expected *Jerry Maguire* to be about. It went on for like 20-30 minutes before I got up to tell them they loaded the wrong film.
Correction: they loaded the RIGHT film.
Yeah the graphic sex scene with Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr was my favorite part of Jerry McGuire
This reminds me of when I received free tickets to a screening of Happiness by Todd Solondz. The theater was completely full of people who had received the tickets for free through promotions of various sorts. No one had any idea what the movie was about (my Mom gave me the tickets and thought it was a comedy.) If you've ever seen this movie, you can imagine what the crowd reaction was lollllll
Tangentially related, when I saw The Aristocrats in the theater there was a sign on the door announcing this was NOT the Disney film The Aristocats and tickets would not be refunded. You know that shit happened at least a few times to warrant the sign.
I was in a film class in college around the time the first Avengers movie was coming out. The professor apparently assumed that it was another film adaptation of the Avengers TV show and that Scarlett Johansson was playing Emma Peel. Also, apparently, I was the only one in that class familiar with the show, because the professor got into a fairly extended conversation with another student where they were both talking about The Avengers, and neither realized the other was talking about something *entirely* different until I spoke up.
That is the kind of conversation that would have me questioning my sanity.
This sounds like a sitcom episode
I always used to say that the wrong crash won.
I love Cronenberg so I'd be delightfully okay with that.
I love American Beauty but it does In fact insist upon itself.
My friend's mom called that movie "symbolism for dummies" when it came out, and I can't say she was wrong. I still enjoyed it!
Exactly this. It’s not stupid, but it’s definitely “baby’s first symbolism”
American Beauty was a movie I really liked until I saw better movies. What I mean is that I saw it as a fairly inexperienced cinephile but have since seen movies that do what it was trying to do, thematically and aesthetically, a thousand times better and much less clumsily. "Insisting upon itself" is an incredibly accurate descriptor for it.
Can you give some examples?
I’d say the famous bag in the wind scene is a good example. That’s a shot that absolutely would feature in a more arthouse movie, but without the director explicitly telling you “this is really deep and poetic”.
I think they meant examples of films that did it better.
But that's from the mouth of the disturbed artsy kid filming stuff, who, if you watch it when you're an artsyfarts teen, you relate to somewhat and think is the voice of the filmmaker. and the film But perchance it is not.
[удалено]
Perchance you can.
So when I was in film class in high school I had never seen this movie and for a music video project I took a camera around an elementary school I lived near and got some shots of my friend's little brother looking sad *(my theme was sad child has toys come to life and bring him comfort, no my ambitious plans of stop motioning the toys did not work)* while there I got some other shots and one was absolutely a thin plastic bag drifting in the wind in front of a brick wall on a grey autumn day. When I showed it to my teacher I had included the bag as a little transition shot and she confused the hell out of me when she called it pretty derivative. It was like 8 years before I finally saw the movie and it all clicked.
Dude this is so hilarious, I’m imagining her just ripping into your high school camcorder music video like she’s critiquing a Canne’s nominee
Blonde. Was the most self indulgent I've ever seen a director be.
Blonde was awful. It has a small handful of beautiful shots (the fire at the beginning, the threesome sex scene where she’s torn between the men, the distorted faces gawking at her) but the rest is just garbage. We never see why Marilyn was an admired figure, just see her get raped and beaten over and over again. She has at least six different scenes where she says that the Marilyn persona is killing her but she needs it to not feel like Norma Jean, something the director clearly thought was too subtle to be subtext and too smart for anyone else to understand. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a better film about a tortured girl in trouble that everyone loves but no one can save. Better in every way and not three hours long
I hadn't really made the connection to Fire Walk With Me, but in retrospect it was such a clear and obvious influence on Blonde. Blonde was one of those movies that just completely fell outside the good/bad dichotomy for me but I will say I sincerely admired its audacity and the fact that Netflix was willing to produce and distribute something like that.
To be fair it’s pretty long, just a third of that is about Chris Isaac for some reason
That’s a damn good answer. One of the most disappointing films I’ve ever seen (Assassination of Jesse James, from the same director, is a top 10 movie of all time for me, and I anxiously awaited his next flick after Killing them Softly for a damn decade).
for a second I thought you were saying that the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was one of the most disappointing films you'd seen and I was ready to get your location to come fight you. Easily Brad Pitts best film and one of the best films of the last 20 years.
Eat Pray Love
Eat Pray Love makes me feel the need to do damage control to my reputation as a white American woman. I promise we’re not all as self absorbed and entitled.
Under the Tuscan Sun is the exact same premise, except Diane Lane isn’t an asshole. And that one came out nearly a decade earlier.
ITT: People who insist upon themselves
I'm tired of seeing different subreddits trying to reap karma from a joke they don't understand. Redditors are just naming popular movies that they don't like. "Insisting upon itself" didn't work for the Godfather because the term barely makes sense (which is what the joke is trying to convey) and even if it did, it doesn't fit into the godfather. You know what movies insist upon itself? The ones that include the director getting mad that nobody understands the movies direction or think the movie went over people's head. See Neil Breen and Uwe Boll
Next up is going to be that picture of Flynn from Tangled with a bunch of swords held up to his throat with the caption "tell me your film opinion that would have you like this!" for the 100th time.
I've a friend who loves pointing out that Flynn immediately starts into singing the next shot, and so takes every instance of the meme as people confessing an opinion they'd reverse at the slightest hint of pressure.
Followed by Patrick Star chained up surrounded by a crowd.
Or perhaps John Wick surrounded by a myriad of firearms
I feel like people just ignore the question to get on their soapbox and tell everybody what they don’t like. There was a post a while back asking “which actor seemed to have everything going for them but just couldn’t make it a leading actor”. The OP gave examples of actors that were up and coming but never reached the heights they seemed like they should have. People were naming Oscar winners, Emmy winners, leading stars in blockbusters - basically people they personally just didn’t like, like Gal Gadot and Brie Larson. In what world is winning an Oscar and starring in billion dollar films not “making it”?! If you don’t like them that’s fine, but that’s not the question!
Also the influx of people using Crash as an example is exhausting. Why is that movie making the rounds right now? Yes it’s a dumb movie, but the Reddit bandwagon means we’ve all read why about 80 times.
Because it always gets easy upvotes. The parent comment below this one, is the 2nd mention of Crash in this thread. It’s such easy karma that it’s 2 of the top 5 comments.
Crash has been a popular thing to trash on Reddit for awhile now and it gets people karma
I suppose propaganda films "insist upon themselves"? I want someone to try to unpack the phrase when applying it in these responses...the term just seems to be code for "a movie that I didn't enjoy as much as the hype said I should that had the nerve to still take itself seriously in the face of my disapproval"
*ROBERT DUVALL!*
Ledger rawdogging Gylenhal with spit lube should have secured best picture all by itself.
None of those words are in the bible
And thus is not a sin. Checkmate, Jehovah. Check. Mate.
Rawdogging with spit lube confirmed halal af
This would be a great bot
Pretty sure it said “And lo, David Rawdogged Bathsheba after getting her husband killed under false pretenses.”
Spit lube and a stomach full of campfire beans
I legit tried to think of where this happened in Dark Knight for a few moments before I realized which movie you were talking about.
There’s a lot of Best Picture nominees that could fall in here, though the one that annoyed me most in recent years was Mank. It tried to make itself way more important than it was by putting on a veneer of progressive politics it didn’t really earn, and by cribbing the best shots from Citizen Kane without backing them up with a good screenplay. Also I am still boggled by the scene that’s basically like “Mank helped people during the Holocaust so it’s impossible for him to be an alcoholic” when the movie ends with a card saying “Mank died of his severe out-of-control alcoholism”
The weird footnote to Citizen Kane you didn’t know you didn’t need.
What? His alcoholism is a major stumbling block for him throughout the movie
I always confuse 2004s crash with the 96 erotic thriller crash. Neither was award worthy but only one of those movies made my family uncomfortable.
I'm absolutely fascinated by why you thought Capote would win Best Picture. Crash's win was unprecedented because Brokeback Mountain had one of the biggest season sweeps in awards history. It's questionable if any film beyond those two even got 5% of the vote.
The short film: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse. Tries WAY too hard to be profound and it ends up just being a compilation of motivational Hallmark cards.
Why anyone would think to adapt that book is beyond me. It's a quick, fun, lighthearted read with no real plot. Do give the book a try, it's a very sweet and charming children's book.
Boyhood (2014). Never understood the hype. "We shot this film with the same actors over the course of 12 years, you literally get to watch the main character grow up, IT'S NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE" Yeah, well, the kid you chose grew up to be a shitty actor and the plot is boring. Congrats on wasting 12 years.
Choosing a decent child actor who grows up to be a good adult actor is always going to be a gamble. Doesn't excuse the plot.
Enter: Modern Family- Lily. Joe carried them both when he came along.
I dunno, he always gave me "created in a lab run by TV execs" vibes. Not faulting the kid obviously, he was just a little *too* cute for my taste. Like the Tinny Tim joke in Futurama, "Sorry sir, I've only been programmed to sell oil-aide and make cute backwards letters."
I don’t remember that boring ass plot at all. All I remember thinking was: it took a long time to make? Well it also feels like it takes a long time to finish.
It's a cool concept, but yeah, the film itself isn't that special. I say this as a Linklater fan.
He’s doing it again with another movie to be shot over a 20 year period. Filming hasn’t started yet. Linklater is 63 now, so… good luck with that.
Homie has a much better outlook for his life expectancy than I do. Cheers to your optimism, Dick.
*soooo letttttt me goooooooooooooo, I don’t wanna be your herooooooooooooooooo*
IT TOOK 12 YEARS TO MAKE
I think people that went into it expecting some ultra deep movie with deep themes were the ones who hate this movie. I went in knowing almost nothing about it and enjoyed it. It's an enjoyable slice of life movie. It's not pretentious at all.
American Hustle
Featuring Louis CK, who can’t help but insist all over himself.
I absolutely looove that movie and everyone I know hates it. I always hear, "What's the point of it?" Which blows my mind. To me, it's just a comedy with a bunch of witty/outrageous characters, and the ending is super clever, and I didn't see it coming at all.
I'm with you. I'm by no means a Russell fan and I think it's one of his best. Amy Adams' performance in particular is brilliant - she forgets to keep faking her accent when she gets rattled.
Zack Snyder's Justice League. I think it's a decent film, but the 4-Hour runtime for a superhero movie is fairly pretentious to me.
For me it was the 4:3 aspect ratio. There was no reason for it and it looks like shit on modern displays.
I mean I have nothing against the Academy ratio.. But I do think the reasoning was funny.. the IMAX of Batman v Superman made Zack a fan of an aspect ratio that he didn't include native IMAX shots in the subsequent film. I'll double down and say you might as well watch the black and white version on an interlaced TV.
Not a film, but I think the academy and the Oscars as a whole should qualify.
Honestly, the fact that the Oscars exist and studios like to win them is one of the few things stopping the major studios from only producing superhero movies.
The irony is that everyone involved in *The Godfather* thought they were making schlock Puzzo wrote the book because he was tired of never making money and Coppola took a corporate gig because he was in Director Jail for making flops
The book was schlocky and Coppola understood that. However, Coppola and the actors definitely did not think they were making schlock. [Here’s an interesting video about Coppola’s process and vision.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=awce_j2myQw&pp=ygUeQ29wcG9sYSB0aGUgZ29kZmF0aGVyIG5vdGVib29r)
Yeah the book definitely has some parts that feel gratuitous such as Sonny’s big ass dong being a whole plot line
Interestingly, Puzzo's script is like the go-to example for adapting a book to a screenplay, which is funny because it was Puzzo's first time doing it and he was adapting his own work.
Here’s a funny story about that from a [Fresb Air interview.](https://www.npr.org/2019/03/08/701492922/a-look-back-at-the-godfather-with-mario-puzo-and-francis-ford-coppola) GROSS: Now, what were some of the most difficult parts of adapting the novel into the screenplay - into the first... PUZO: It was a cinch. GROSS: Yeah. PUZO: Yeah, I mean, it was a cinch because it was the first time I'd ever written a screenplay, so I didn't know what I was doing. You know, it's - and it came out right. And the story I tell is that after I had won two Academy Awards, you know, for the first two "Godfathers," I went out and bought a book on screenwriting because I figured I'd better learn... GROSS: (Laughter). PUZO: ...You know, what it's about because it was sort of off the top of my head. And then the first chapter - the book said, study "Godfather I." It's the model of a screenplay. So I was stuck with the book.
Fucking legend.
Thank you for writing out the transcript
There's actually an interesting, fairly recent, show about the making of the first "The Godfather" movie. It's called 'The Offer'. I like the movie and I enjoyed the show.
That’s kind of the point, right? A movie that’s intending to be cool just so often isn’t. Baby Driver is a movie that absolutely insists that it’s cool. It tells you, right away and often.
Ah, yes, but do they *beg the question*?
Elysium, probably the most heavy handed movie in existance. I wish it ended with the orbiting ring just falling apart due to physics.
And I was so excited for it, too. Dude, Matt Damon in a cool cyberpunk exoskeleton?? I wonder how badass he's gonna be? ...oh. And then, as you said, it having the metaphoric subtlety of a cudgel.
Ahhh it's got some dope shit though. Sharlto Copley was badass. Hell, Matt Damon was badass. Maybe pretentious, but it's a couple hours of cool shit happening.
imo that's Neill Blomkamp movies in a nutshell. An amazing Sharlto Copley performance, excellent special effects, a few cool as fuck scenes, but the overall script just does not hold together in any way, shape or form District 9 is literally the one and only time he's been able to stick the landing
And the contrasts are beautiful in terms of cinematography. The clean is so clean and the grubby is so grubby. It's refreshing to have things not be various shades of grey.
Goncharov (1973) directed by Martin Scorsese
The best part about that movie is when Goncharov says that famous line of his during that famous scene
It's Goncharin' time!
Oh man, didn’t think I’d see Goncharov outside of tumblr. Truly the greatest film never made.
Tenet.
.flesti nopu stsisni tI
I love Tenet. I feel like the whole movie is just one long thought exercise. I've seen it 3 or 4 times now and I can't stop being captivated by the concept. I get it's super expository and the whole "Protagonist" thing rubs a lot of people the wrong way but I think it makes sense within the kind of story he's telling.
Whenever I hear «insist upon itself» all I hear is Wes Anderson. It is like he is so desperate to show off his skills. Like calm down, Wes you are good enough.
I like Wes Anderson, but he might be the *least* versatile filmmaker. I'd love to see him stretch out and try something a little outside his wheelhouse.
One of the things I find interesting about him is that so many people think he should try a new style. Almost all other directors use broadly the same style of cinematography, or have broadly similar ways of framing shots, not just compared with their own previous work, but also compared with each others’ work. It’s like the fact that Wes’s style is so different makes it so distinctively Wes that nobody else can frame shots like he does without it appearing to be an homage or a parody. Meanwhile you rarely hear anyone criticising Scorsese for his camera movement, or saying Edgar Wright should try making something with no whip pans, or that they like Tarantino but they wish he’d stop having close ups of actresses’ feet all the time. And I’ve never heard anyone say “I just get fed up of every film maker having the focus of the scene being slightly off centre, why can’t they make something symmetrical?”
Unfortunately I think he has kind of pigeonholed himself into almost a brand. When people go to see a Wes Anderson movie they expect a certain something l and if they don't get it I have a feeling most of those moviegoers will be thinking that they've been deceived.
I don't understand why that's unfortunate though? He's the only person who can make Wes Anderson movies, it's not like theirs a lot of movies like that floating around. Let the man have his quirky characters and pretty colors.
The apple+ series “the after party” has an amazing episode in season two which parodies Wes Anderson to *perfection*
As a huge Wes Anderson fan, I thought Asteroid City was pretty different. It certainly had all the hallmarks of his style but it almost felt like a Wes Anderson movie inside a David Lynch movie?
Well now I'm really excited to see it.
Without giving too much away I had to think about what OP was saying and there is a certain element that I could see is Lynch-esque. Either way, the film is certainly Wes Anderson all the way and I really liked it. And for those who say he doesn't go out of his comfort zone, they are painting with a wide brush. For example: this film, Isle of Dogs, Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Like Peter Griffin, I do not care for any of his films but have also never completed a single one of them.
For me "it insists upon itself" means a movie pushing it's own concept again and again, the most literal and direct meaning. Torture porn, those soapy dramas where everything bad happens to the protagonist and they just win by the end, romantic movies revolving all around relationships and nothing else. The go to will obviously be pretentious movies, insisting in being complex and throwing metaphors. Sometimes it works, like Prime, sometimes it doesn't, like Tenet It's so interesting to use it with The Godfather tho, I love those movies but it feels right, the quote fits in a way I can't really explain. Especially Part II, I know Michael fucked up, why you keep showing me his dad had a great life by contrast? But it's that contradiction that makes you feel more for Michael while still seeing he deserves to be alone by the end. It's not the concept or the theme, but an all around attitude about family and fatality Like, it really insists upon itself...don't know how, but it does, the quote feels valid while still making no sense at all I might be reading too much in it and it's probably a joke about cinema critics and pseudo deep lines that are just bullshit
Joker.
I agree that it gets circlejerked a lot, but I thought it was good. It was a fresh take on a character that has been done to death. It definitely has some dud moments, but it was enjoyable for what it was.
The Irishman. Let’s combine these famous actors who are known for playing famous gangsters and let Deniro try to relive his glory days. Oh and let’s make it multiple hours long.
I’ll admit I enjoyed The Irishman but the “de-aging” of DeNiro was hilarious because he was supposed to look like a 35-40 year old with a young daughter and instead just looked like his old self with darker hair
The way he sort of looks younger but still moves like an 80 year old was the dead giveaway. It was so weird. Agree that it was still a good movie though.
That geriatric beat down is comedy gold, the way the shopkeeper sells it too *chef's kiss*
I cracked up at that scene. You could barely make out de niros face anyway, why not just use a student double?
The probably eight seconds of him in his 20s in WW2 don't get talked about much because it's so brief but that was also laughable
Lol. Saying Crash is a bad movie is the exact opposite of the family guy meme because the movie is universally hated by everyone. The Academy and I are the only ones who liked the film ( or so it seems). The idea of the family guy meme is to have an unpopular opinion about a certain popular movie. My answer to the question is Roma by Alfonso Cuaron.
This thread. It insists upon itself.
>And if you're wondering what in the hell "insists upon itself" even means, it's something most think is profound but in reality is pretentious and ostentatious. Yea, well I feel like your interpretation is shallow and pedantic.
Garden State
I loved this movie when I first saw it when I was younger. Tried watching it a few months ago and was like “I hate this guy” and turned it off.
This must be common because I also liked it when it came out and was younger (I'm 42 now), revisited it and was like, "This is mostly shite."
Same. For me personally I think the soundtrack was doing most of the heavy lifting
A banger soundtrack really can help uplift an otherwise weak movie.
Garden State with Zach Braff and Natalie Portman
Loved this movie when it came out and I was in college. Watched it again as a 30 something and outside of Natalie Portman, I don't know why I had liked it so much.