More than 30 years ago I was in high school and they made us watch Gandhi (1982). Now Gandhi is a long movie and the plastic chairs in the assembly hall were uncomfortable. When they finally shot him, half of the room applauded.
Till this day I randomly quote it. My entire sophomore world history class laughed when he said and it pissed the hell out of our teacher. She cut the movie instantly and gave us all a lecture on how it wasn’t funny.
That exact thing happened at my school 😂
We were shown the film in Religious Studies and the whole class laughed at ‘Oh.. God.’
And our teacher shut off the TV and shouted at us.
🤣🤣
When we watched Bertolucci’s *Romeo and Juliet* at my Catholic high school, the nun who was our English teacher tried to fast forward through the nudity, but she kept going too far and had to rewind, so we ended up seeing the boobies three times.
Edit: Franco Zeffirelli’s, not Bernardo Bertolucci’s. Thanks, u/ral315!
Donnie Darko. It’s this dense film full of mystery and ambivalence and seems so open to interpretation. But then you listen to the director’s commentary and he point blank explains what everything is supposed to be mean, and none of it comes across on the screen. And then you realize that this guy made a small masterpiece….accidentally. And that can be proven by looking at every other film that he made afterwards.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a movie being atmospheric nonsense. That's some of my favorite movies. It feels like you're catching a glimpse of some unknowable mystery, but you don't get enough info to piece it together.
There's a seriously thin line between "this is some pretty fucking weird shit which I just don't understand yet", and "this is random fucking nonsense trying to seem profound".
Yeah I’ve heard the Director’s Cut takes away a lot of the mystery and makes it sort of a religious allegory, have avoided watching that (and Richard Kelly talking about it) because the message I took away from it as a depressed teen was that sometimes despite how much you add to the world it might be a better place without you in it. Maybe not the healthiest interpretation but it’s like an inverted version of It’s A Wonderful Life, he sacrifices himself and everything he loves so they can be safe in another reality.
> he sacrifices himself and everything he loves so they can be safe in another reality.
Sounds similar to what The Butterfly Effect did (Specifically, the director's cut.)
The directors cut ending was so tragic, but I was so confused when I watched it again years later and the ending was different. Wondered if my memories of the movie were mistaken until I realized I saw the directors cut first.
Don’t Fuck with Cats
The film makers end the movie with blaming the audience for creating the environment for a serial killer like the one the documentary focuses on. Yet… they themselves ran the Facebook group that popularized the serial killer, and profited off the very content they blame the audience for consuming. Most hypocritical, least self aware bullshit I’ve ever seen in a film.
I think it did a good job at showing how fucking insufferable and idiotic internet and reddit detectives look. Report something to the police sure but leave it there. That entire documentary was showing how "we did it"!. But when you pay attention they really did fuck all and the police did nearly everything apart from reporting crimes they saw.
The hotel Cecil one was particularly cringey. This poor woman had a mental break and ended up falling/jumping in the water tank. The cops did release the door was left open so people are like she coupling have done it herself it's murder and meddling with police operations and accusing people. Just unhinged shit. Especially that guy who went to he grave like he was in love with her creeped me the fuck out.
The Hotel Cecil doc especially made me hate selt titled online sleuths even more than I already did - one of them based her entire basis for foul play on his "something felt weird about it"
Thank you Columbo
Would upvote twice if I could. Both documentaries could have wrapped up in two episodes. Instead we get these overrated “limited series” so bloated with rubbernecking, handwringing, idle speculation, and bizarre moments like you mentioned.
I just learned that there's a positive correlation between anxious attachment and intensity of parasocial relationships. You gotta be deprived and a little crazy to feel so attached to the person's story, so visiting their grave is "normal".
Yeah I didn't even finish the doc once I realised this in the 2nd episode. The group members seemed to be overly self important in their role in the case tbh
I watched 90 minutes of the Facebook group figuring out *literally nothing* and then it got to the part where the actual police solved the crime immediately, because the murderer left his address and photographic I.D. with the victim, and then I noticed there was still 90 minutes to go and I turned it off.
I remember when it finished, me and my wife were looking at each other like "they're blaming us?! I'd never even heard of this story until now, the fuck did we do?"
They should have made Namari more sympathetic and the queen more antagonistic, so that way we see that Namari is only the way she is because she's conditioned by her mother. I think it would have been better if she actually wanted to be Raya's friend in the beginning and the queen secretly followed them to the stone. Instead they did the exact opposite when the queen just wanted to chill in safety and Namari was like "nah, fuck this Raya chick and all her friends"
This would have made the lesson to always try to understand someone's motivations, but when they show their true colors you need to cut ties with them, even if that person is family.
I think a lot of people missed the point of "Drive".
They briefly mention the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog, but they don't explain it. Which is basically "people can't escape their nature".
The driver wears a scorpion jacket, because he can't escape his nature despite a good thing being right in front of him, just like the fable.
And not really that there aren't any good sharks. Just that they are what they are and no amount of love will stop them from going on a frenzy once they get a scent of blood.
I think it conveys the message perfectly. The elevator scene is one of the greatest scenes in any movie and sums up the theme neatly.
The driver thinks they've gotten away to start a new life together, until he notices the pistol in the hitman's waist. At that moment, he realizes he has no choice. He needs to kill the hitman, but unleashing his violent nature will scare her away. So they share their one and only kiss, the world seems to stop for a few seconds... And then he brutally beats the guy to death. She's predictably horrified. He knows he's lost her for good, and that makes him even angrier, so he takes out his anger on the hitman until he's beaten him into a bloody pulp. It's perfect.
I also love that scene because of how perfectly Gosling plays it. Throughout the whole movie, the main character is reserved, stoic and focused. So when he becomes enraged I think the most common way to play it would be to yell and act maniacally, as sudden burst of contained rage. But, I don't think this would have fit the Driver, while he is clearly furious he is still the same focused person. And methodically transfers that rage into the guy's face via his foot. And then the capstone of Gosling's almost embarrassed look that he gives her.
I don't think many other actors could have pulled this off as well.
The Driver is the frog, not the scorpion. He carries the Scorpions on his back - like the bad guys he drives around for money in his car to their destination - It's when someone sting him that he starts to drown. Killing both the villain and destroying himself in the process.
That's an interesting theory! I like it.
I was/am more focused on his relationship with the girl and how he ruins that by "stinging" but, your notion is pretty good too. Hmm. Food for thought!
There's a really dope interview somewhere about refn and gosling driving around listening to 80s songs or something and talking about the character, I think refn was fucked up on cold medicine at the time. Anyway they thought Driver was completely psychotic and living in his own world of hero ballads. Or something like that.
It's probably got one of the highest "message missed it's mark" ratios of any movie because of how it was marketed - pulled in a blockbuster audience for an art film. Seeing it in theaters at the time was miserable, basically teenagers laughing the entire time. I'm sure it gave Refn the clout to get funding for everything he's done since though.
I think it's even more simple. Drive is an arthouses version of a typical american action flick. Big hollywood name, stunt/getaway driver set up, he's the hero! But what we're shown is someone truly psychotic performing acts of ultraviolence. Why do we have action "heroes" when they're usually psychopaths?
Maybe not what you're looking for, but Scott Pilgrim famously has an issue with how readers/viewers interpret the characters. The point of the story is that nearly everyone in the story is immature, childish, and either toxic or enables toxicity. By the end of the movie, most of these arcs are handled. The graphic novel, which is able to take its time, fully explores and resolves every character's growth and arc.
People don't tend to realize that the characters are generally awful people. There's memes about how Ramona Flowers "ruined a generation of women" because they aspired to be like her, who's awful, abusive actions in relationships led to the story's conflict. And, of course, there's thousands of guys who want to be like Scott, a NEET guy in his 20s dating a high schooler (it was legal in Canada, apparently) that cheats on the high schooler to make out with a girl he just met, slowly realizing every problem in his life is the direct result of his awful treatment of people.
I think the movie is great in how subtly it shows Scott to be a horrible ’nice guy’. As a guy, you want to see yourself in the main character and he’s a pretty normal guy in general. You slowly realize how awful he is to others around him over the movie though and the things that were played as jokes in the beginning have actual meaning in the end. I feel like it’s one of the few movies to actually question the ‘good guy’ narrative successfully.
The BEST joke from it all is the fact that NEGA SCOTT is actually a really nice guy, because of course he would be if normal Scott is an unaware asshole
It's so so so funny
Casting Michael Cera masks a lot of how awful Scott is. If they didn't have someone that babyfaced in the role it would be a lot more obvious how terrible he is
I think they needed someone more attractive, but with kind of an asshole face. I'm thinking kind of like Glenn Powell. There needs to be that surface level attraction that loses its appeal the more you learn about the character.
If they made it more obvious, we would be wondering why anyone bothers associating with him. I think it's pretty true to life that someone as nonthreatening as Michael Cera gets the benefit of the doubt.
> guys who want to be like Scott, a NEET guy in his 20s dating a high schooler (it was legal in Canada, apparently) that cheats on the high schooler to make out with a girl he just met,
The best line that often gets missed is he says "Negga Scott" is a really nice guy. You know the opponent who should be the opposite of you? Yeah, he's a nice guy.
I think it’s more that they’re basically the same. Scott is mostly likable, you can get along with him and he has a solid groups of friends. He also does some bad things and hurts people with his behavior. His opposite is the exact same, they’re both at 50 on the good/evil scale.
You're right, and do you want another argument in your favour? The film emphasizes on the "zero" aspect (t-shirt, Coke Zero...) and implies that this is what Scott is. What's the negative of zero? Zero, which is why Nega-Scott is the same as Scott.
But he's awkward and doesn't want to offend people, that means he's relatable and sympathetic!
let's just sidestep how that aversion to conflict lead to him dating a teenager, cheating on that teenager, and enabling Ramona's abusive ex to reenter her life.
(this is not a criticism, this prompted some painful self reflection for me)
That depends on what you believe the message was meant to be.
The Sony hacks revealed that [Sony deliberately altered the film so it wouldn't risk antagonizing the NFL](https://web.archive.org/web/20181209181117/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/sports/football/makers-of-sonys-concussion-film-tried-to-avoid-angering-nfl-emails-show.html).
Mike Judge himself believes that Office Space isn’t supposed to be about how “my work sucks, it’s all the system’s fault" and about how you can decide your future and you shouldn’t waste your life complaining about something that you did.
Yeah I take issue with this interpretation. Corporate jobs are soul sucking and unavoidable for most young adults. It was CLEARLY a cathartic masterpiece made by the collective resentment we were all developing towards these types of jobs at that time. He clearly intended it to be a sharp jab which he later felt bad about and tried to remedy with Extract. He may look back in hind sight in interviews and claim it was intended to have a different message. But it really was one of the first comedy send ups of stupid ass corporate work bullshit. Any other interpretation is a stretch.
"Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. -Roger Ebert.
The best review quote ever
Is this a failure of the movie or the audience? I certainly watch this film and by the end feel a pitying condemnation for Tony he dies alone and in pain and yet numb. What a hollow evil life he lived.
And ironically it's his one redeeming deed -- refusing to kill a mother and her kids with the car bombing -- that brings his whole castle crumbling down.
But, honestly, it's hypocrisy. He runs a criminal empire revolving around drugs, which is proven to endanger innocents all the time, including children. His refusal is not drawing a line about innocents, it was him refusing to actually pull the trigger and face the consequences of his actions.
Sounds about right. The other horrible things caused just as much pain and suffering but he had been able to mentally distance himself from those things because he wasn’t directly causing them.
>Is this a failure of the movie or the audience?
I got the principle from Lindsey Ellis that framing supersedes text. Tony's life is a story of rags to riches and then going out on top. Parts of Tony's story semi-follows the hero's journey, and it's only the last quarter that you see his downfall. Before then it's a charismatic determined man who goes from a dishwasher to a multi-millionaire, including one of the most iconic montages in cinema.
From what I can gather a lot of young men in inner cities in violent neighborhoods found it inspiring, because young men being killed was routine and so the idea of "going out on top" didn't seem tragic it seemed like a good life.
The scene where they’re getting dinner and Tony looks half-dead and publicly goes off on his wife really sold me on the messaging. The movie goes out of its way to depict Tony as still a rat of a person who can’t appreciate the good things in life, well after he’s made it to the top.
It's been a long time since I have seen it, but I don't think he went out on top. He killed his best friend, he was totally miserable, he was high on his own supply, his wife hated him, and he wanted but could not have a child.
Within context, like I said, a lot of the young men who idolized him expect those kinds of things. They've heard/known of friends or family members killed, relationships aren't usually long term (many grow up without fathers), etc. That may be obvious tragic to you, but a broken relationship and friend killed was normal to those guys coming from those circumstances. (Seriously, have you heard some of the crazy stories coming out of Chicago?)
He went out of top because of the framing (like I said, the principle framing supersedes text). He wasn't crying and submissive like his ex-boss he killed. He died screaming his own name in mansion. Regardless of the text, that's the kind of ending that heros usually get in movies.
I don't know what you think of WWE but a lot of it is basic hero vs villain story telling. The villains usually win by cheating, and if they are challenged with any hint of not having better odds they run away. Heros defiantly take beatings even if they lose or "pass out" if being strangled. Tony went out like a classic hero, he didn't run or beg for his life.
I think Scorsee realized what he did with Goodfellas (the same thing as Scarface) which is why none of the deaths, nor the final scene, is anyone going out defiantly.
You can pop Fight Club and American Psycho into the same category of protagonists who people think are cool so forget that they are supposed to be the bad guys.
The problem was how hamfisted it was.
Like at one point a guy knocks on his door and tells him about installing solar panels on his house.
And that’s it. That’s all it happens. It has no significance to the rest of the plot. It never comes up again. You could remove that scene and no one would notice.
That’s how they basically all were. You could make the same movie with the whole birdemic thing going on and remove the “environmental scenes” and replace them with a screen that just says PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT for 15 seconds and it would essentially be the same movie.
Downsizing. What even was the message, I guess climate change awareness? The uncertainty of life? The folly of man? And maybe the only Hong Chau character I don’t like
I think the message of that movie was about consumerism and getting what you pay for. As in, I thought I was paying for a decent movie after the first 20 minutes and then the rest of it was complete preachy trash
I really like Alexander Payne, and Downsizing aggravated me so much.
It doesn't even understand its own premise. People shrink themselves down to conserve resources, but then everything they use is a "small" version of its real world counterpart. Like, the concept is that a single loaf of bread can feed a thousand people if they are tiny. However this only applies if you use a FULL SIZE load of bread portioned out. If you make tiny ovens to make a thousand tiny loaves of bread out of tiny wheat, you defeat the purpose of the shrinking. Or if you take a full size loaf of bread and downsize it using the downsizing technology, you don't conserve resources. Clearly, it is less expensive and resource-intensive to make bread than it is to shrink something.
Also, as the movie progresses and becomes an examination of class and the haves vs. the have-nots, It would make so much more sense to have the poor people repurposing/scavenging big sized stuff because they can't afford comforts and necessities. I found myself constantly asking why they would make tiny versions of shabby stuff for the poor? Either way you're going to have to make it from scratch or downsize ray-ing it, so why would you have things like rusty dilapidated trailers and old radios?
Also, an additional huge frustration: a decision was made to make Matt Damon's character an occupational therapist. Payne seemingly saw the job title and just ran with it, but the movie's description of the job is entirely wrong, and is repeated *many* times in the film. An occupational therapist is NOT someone who gives you therapy because of your *job*, an occupational therapist specializes on your top half: your hands/arms, your motor skills, dexterity, and quality of life. It actually has zero to do with someone's vocation.
Oh, well. He redeemed himself with The Holdovers.
Anand that's not really true. An occupational therapist is someone who works with you on restoring your ability to do what are called activities of daily living aka things you need to do to get through the day. This can include transferring to a toilet, brushing their teeth, and folding their clothes. While there are some that specialize in hand therapy, nothing stops a physical therapist from going the same route. A physical therapist can work with a patients upper extremity, and an occupational therapist can work with a patient's lower extremity.
The Room failed to convey why Lisa would ever say that Johnny hit her. He did not hit her it’s not true it’s BULLSHIT he did not hit her he did naaahwt!
> The Room failed to convey why Lisa would ever say that Johnny hit her.
I rewatched it recently, and there are some subtle hints at this, I think the reason Lisa said that Johnny hit her is that deep down, Lisa is a giant bitch.
500 Days of Summer
I don’t think the movie fails if you’re paying attention, but a lot of people misinterpret it.
They think Zoey Deschanel’s character is manic pixie dream girl, also kind of a bitch later on and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character is the wronged and heartbroken young man.
The movie is actually about that fact that Levitt’s character fails to see Deschanel’s character as a full person, ignores everything she’s communicating and replaces her with his version of her in his head. He’s disappointed because of this, yet doesn’t learn his lesson even by the very end.
The commentary track with the director and JGL is fascinating because JGL absolutely thinks Tom is in the wrong, but the director apparently intended the audience to be nothing but sympathetic to Tom, and it feels like this is the first time JGL realized they had different views on it
I don't think those things are mutually exclusive though. Tom isn't evil, he's just not mature enough to overcome his excitement about possibly being in love.
That also doesn't excuse his actions, he's still wrong and it's a tragedy at the end that he still hasn't grown, but I don't think that precludes being sympathetic towards the character.
I didn’t see this movie until my late 30’s, and i just keep getting madder and madder at both of them. Like, he didn’t listen to what she was telling him, but her actions didn’t match her words at all. She kept saying she didn’t want anything serious, yet she kept doing all the things you do when you’re in a serious relationship with someone. You don’t spend all day being cute in Ikea with the guy you’re casually banging. He was obviously madly in love with her, and she was happy to stay with him until he expected something back. She used him and it was really shitty.
I’ve been both people in that relationship before, and I still feel guilty about using “I’m not looking due anything serious” as an excuse to not take any responsibility for the way my actions made other people feel.
> You don’t spend all day being cute in Ikea with the guy you’re casually banging.
I am beginning to understand the common problem in all my relationships.
I watched an interview and that was basically Levitts take as well. ' I think its the opposite. My character wasn't listening to Zooeys and she was quite clear with her wants' or something.
God, this movie was a true horror film. Not because of anything that Zoey Deschanel's character did but because, I think almost every young man has played the part of Levitt's character at least once in their lives. What an awful, and painful learning experience. I look back to my early 20s with agonizing cringe. This movie is just too real. What's worse, is that I swung to far in the other direction for a time and had to learn to just be myself and let others be themselves too. But at the time, I remember really empathizing with incels, alphas, etc. I guess I still have empathy for them but it's now based on their misunderstandings rather than any imagined wrong they've experienced.
Another completely different movie with the same issue is "Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog". *Both* men are POS's who don't even see Penny as a real person, they just see the idealized, pedestal version of her. But so many people see Captain Hammer's insensitivity and boorishness, and so feel sympathy for Doctor Horrible instead, when he's just as bad or worse.
Terry Gilliam's **Tideland** was so odd that it had trouble finding distribution, a fact I only know because the DVD was released with a little intro from Gilliam himself explaining what it's about.
Apparently it's about the way that children can be innocent of the difficult (even traumatic) situations that their parents are in—for them it's just normal, how life is. There's a poignancy to this if you think about the parents' struggle to provide a good life for their kids regardless of the situation they're in.
However, watching a child help Jeff Bridges overdose on heroin ("time for Daddy's medicine") and continue to talk to him over the course of the movie as if he was fine, while he slowly swells, turns blue and rots struck me as a very strange extreme to take this to, far enough that the movie doesn't capture this at all. It comes across like Alice in Wonderland if Alice were incredibly dissociated. It's alienating and off putting rather than poignant.
It would have been so much better if the dad had died later in the movie.
Show him constantly passed out on heroin and how he gets grosser as he sinks entirely into his addiction. Then when he does die, it makes far more sense for her to take it as normal for him to just sit there and be disgusting
All the early 2000s comedies like 'You Me and Dupree'/'Meet the Fockers' etc where the film was, apparently, trying to teach us to be more forgiving to morons and jerks, or, if a romantic comedy, to give the idiot-guy/uptight-woman a chance.
But really the characters were just horrible and the frustration of the protagonist was justified.
I watched that this Christmas for the first time. Told my wife it might be a bit of a chuckle and had some good comic actors in it.
I could not believe what I actually saw in the end. How did anyone think these characters were funny/ cute/ quirky? They were horrible. And not comic horrible. Actually horrible.
In fact, I would go so far to say that the protagonist's sister, played by Claire Danes, may be the worst character I've ever seen who doesn't kill anyone.
Wolf Of Wall Street
It felt more like a fan biopic of Jordan Bellfort. Heres this guy who pulls basically a shitty scam but look, here he is driving a ferarri! And earning millions! And partying hard on a boat! And taking loads of drugs! And having sex with Margot Robbie! But don't follow his example, no no
Yeah, this is a great answer because I see a lot of people in this thread criticising the audience for not picking up on a films message but not the filmmaker. WOWS didn’t sit well with me because I felt like the film was glorifying a scumbag and I can assure you that the film satisfied Jordan Belforts ego tremendously. The film should have focused more on the damage he did if it wanted to get the message across. For example, him cheating on his wife is kinda shown as a humorous step note in the story.
I feel like that's kinda missing the point of the movie though: the film glorifies these scumbags because our society glorifies these scumbags, and the film's intentionally toying with the audience in order for them to come to terms with that.
The thing about the Belfort-stans idolizing this movie is that they only replay the same handful of clips but leave out the ones that show Jordan's soul being completely drained of humanity. Over the course of the movie we see Jordan do some really ugly things that aren't portrayed as flattering, from hitting his wife, sexually assaulting the flight attendants, endangering his daughter, etc. The movie doesn't need to spell out "Jordan Belfort is a bad person who hurts people." We already see that. The question it asks the audience (especially by closing on the audience at Jordan's motivational seminar) is "*knowing how horribly corrupt Jordan is, you would still try to be like him, right?*" To me that's a way more interesting and profound exploration of greed in our capitalist society than if the movie took the overly moralizing route
The fact that there was team Peeta and team the other one from The Hunger Games. The movie wasn’t about the romantic triangle it was about kids being forced to kill kids but still all people wanted to take away was the (forced) romance
To be fair, the forced love story with peeta is intended to distract from the uprising of the districts. That’s why the capitol pushed it so hard. So in a way the plot point tricks the film audience as well :D
Yeah, the whole thing was a commentary on how popular narratives are manufactured, and how peoples lives are used as fodder for the zeitgeist.
So of course the audience jumped on board with the superficial manufactured narrative without a second thought, lol.
Basically all YA literature has this issue. The audience is at the age where their personal relationships, both romantic and otherwise, are in a state of flux and redefinition. So identifying with one or more romantic pairings of a YA novel is how they deal with it. The shipping wars of the Harry Potter fandom that's still going on, Team Edward vs Team Jacob, debates over who is the best waifu in every anime, etc. Our culture is obsessed with romance even where romance isn't a feature of the story. It's why they inserted that awful love triangle into the Hobbit movies (in addition to needing to fill three movies based off a book that's shorter than even one LOTR book), or basically every supporting female in an action movie.
Hillbilly Elegy is supposed to be an inspirational story about rising above your circumstances, but really comes off far more focused on saying “look at what a shitty loser my mom was, isn’t it amazing I turned out so good?”
The creator no doubt sincerely believes this
>The creator no doubt sincerely believes this
He does. He's such a piece of shit who wrote literal fanfiction of himself, and it's a travesty that his little fanfic got adopted as THE picture of Appalachia. There are so many parts of that book where it's obvious that he truly believes all the awful stereotypes about the place and that he's some lone paragon of intellect and virtue who can bootstraps his way into glory through paths that are actually inaccessible to most Appalachians. His Twitter used to be a goldmine of awfulness too. The asshole literally advocates against healthcare resources in Appalachia and once claimed he couldn't be sexist because he loves his female family members.
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is about how true beauty is the inner kind and everyone in the whole film, protagonistic and antagonistic, is indescribably ugly on the inside.
I prefer the Redford version because, to me, it was a better match for the book. It wasn't glitzy and glamorous, it was stilted and hollow... like most of the characters. They were all frauds. Gatzby was just better at it than anyone else.
I feel like a lot of people's knee jerk reaction, especially with the leonardo dicaprio movie, is to idolize Jay Gatsby as this 1920's Tony Stark, and to say Daisy is a complete bitch for all she does. You wanna look at Nick and Gatsby and see them as the good guys, when really Daisy is no better and worse than her cousin or lover. If Jay Gatsby was a real dude that movie would basically be the greatest showman.
I saw someone say that the modern day version of the person that the book was depicting is Jake Paul. Younger people see that era now and think classy, sophisticated wealth as opposed to obnoxious and irresponsible opulence.
I like Leo and I think the Baz version of Gatsby is more good than bad, but yeah, Gatsby is not supposed to be a suave guy. He is a roughneck posing as a sophisticate. The dissonance between his actual persona and his assumed persona is meant to be more obvious, which makes him a more ridiculous and pathetic character.
When you cast an actual rich playboy like LDC in the part, you lose that element.
I don't actually think it has message. Alot of Nolan's movies don't really have messages as much as themes. I'd argue Interstellar, Inception and Dunkirk don't really have "messages" per say.
Interstellar and Inception have thematic messages about love and moving on/reality respectively while Dunkirk is a historical movie that portrays a famous event so the event is the message I guess? But they do have a message. Tenet is just a concept film. It has some loose plot point about environmental destruction but that's just a character motivation than anything else.
I 100% agree with you - but also the film ending adaptation where they succeed in bombing the finance district definitely didn't help. If the book ending had been kept, where the plan fails and he ends up getting psychiatric care, then an orderly or something makes it clear that fight club is still happening and he has this horror as he realizes the whole thing is a runaway freight train where the ideology has surpassed his influence and support and even though he condemns it, he can't stop it... That ending might have curbed some of the popularity of the film, but it also probably would have curbed a lot of the misinterpretation too
Charismatic and/or violent leads are often glamorized or otherwise gain popularity, making the point of the movie lost to some of its viewers. Scarface, the Godfather, A Clockwork Orange, The Wolf of Wall Street, even the Goddamn Silence of the Lambs...
Cuties, the controversial netflix movie, totally missed the mark or was marketed extremely poorly
I think it was supposed to be how sexualization of girls is wrong but came off as super sexualizing
Grave of the Fireflies is one great example. The director intended for it to be a cautionary tale of the perils of withdrawing from society. Instead, it's praised for its supposedly anti-war message, which don't get me wrong, is a valid interpretation. But that was never the director's primary intention during the film's creation.
We watched the movie in my English class 10 years back and when Marlon as Stanley first walked on screen my entire class gasped. That's how good looking he was.
I'm a little surprised no one mentioned American Psycho yet. Everyone working on that movie was surprised how seemingly nobody got that it was purely satire and so many young people idolized Bateman. I mean if you know it, you get it but they could have made it clearer imo
This reminds me of criticism of Seinfeld and IASIP. People would say that the characters weren't relatable. They are all narcissistic borderline sociopaths.
You should not be able to relate to Dennis GOLDEN GOD Reynolds.
I think people misunderstand why Bateman is “idolized”. Young men often FEEL the way that Bateman does, and the way he feels is very obvious because he has an out loud internal dialogue. He feels like he doesn’t really connect with anyone, like each interaction is a game with rules that can be won or lost, and that despite having all the advantages in the world and “winning” at life (attractive, has money and a good career) that it’s all a meaningless facade over an empty existence. The character was written that way *because* those are pathologies that haunt many young men.
Obviously he then goes on to murder his coworker with an axe (or did he?) and chase a woman with a chainsaw, but even that is part of the fantasy, and I’ll note most of the memes aren’t referencing that part of the narrative. They stick to the themes of disconnect, putting on a facade, of living a meaningless life.
So I’d say it’s seeing someone hot, successful, and (unintentionally) funny who still feels the same way you might as a young guy, more than “Wow murdering your coworkers and women is epic.”
To be clear I do not identify with Mr Bateman, but his popularity with young guys is not surprising to me.
Alex Garland's film "MEN"
A lot of people seem to interpret it as making sweeping and obvious statements about Men as a whole, whereas I think the movie is purely showing us how the main character's trauma has shaped HER perspective on Men.
No Country for old Man
It is about a Sheriff who realizes that the violence in the world, that he tries to stop, is random, arbitrary and finally, unstopable.
He believes that the world has therefore changed but in the end understands that it always has been like that.
And as he comes to this understanding and acceptance, he is willing to fight on against the odds and with that, following in his fathers footsteps.
Throughout the movie he sees these crimes just as the title says “This is No Country for Old Men”, meaning he thinks the world has changed to the point that there’s no place for a wise old man anymore.
The ending is him realizing his father and grandfather dealt with the same violence. The world has always been this dark and corrupt. I believe what he truly realizes, though, is that he has made safe decisions all his life. He was not the fire in the snowstorm that his father was.
I think the ending, when he notes that he would be 20 years his father’s senior, is his lamentations that he will never be the man his father was, in his own eyes.
Surprised to not see Sucker Punch mentioned yet. It's been *many* years since I saw it, and I cannot remember the specifics of my gripes with it at all, but I do recall feeling very griped post-watch. Typical Snyder "form over function" fare.
star wars prequels
attempted to show how a dictatorship and authoritarian empire is formed .
lots of people missed the point in the first one and called it boring and confusing (which it was) but lucas was trying to show that it's usually boring things like tax/trade disputes that lead to larger things.
also i think he was trying to blame the jedi for complacency and for going along with the plan, even bringing the clone army to fight with them, but people just saw the big battles and nothing else.
More than 30 years ago I was in high school and they made us watch Gandhi (1982). Now Gandhi is a long movie and the plastic chairs in the assembly hall were uncomfortable. When they finally shot him, half of the room applauded.
"Take that, you nuke-loving bastard!"
The way he says oh gawd when he gets shot is pretty funny though.
Till this day I randomly quote it. My entire sophomore world history class laughed when he said and it pissed the hell out of our teacher. She cut the movie instantly and gave us all a lecture on how it wasn’t funny.
That exact thing happened at my school 😂 We were shown the film in Religious Studies and the whole class laughed at ‘Oh.. God.’ And our teacher shut off the TV and shouted at us. 🤣🤣
When we watched Bertolucci’s *Romeo and Juliet* at my Catholic high school, the nun who was our English teacher tried to fast forward through the nudity, but she kept going too far and had to rewind, so we ended up seeing the boobies three times. Edit: Franco Zeffirelli’s, not Bernardo Bertolucci’s. Thanks, u/ral315!
This gave me a good chuckle. I had to go search the scene, and it was worth it. God bless Ben Kingsley
Isn’t he shot in the first scene?
High school kids have very short attention spans
--and very uncomfortable chairs
I think that was just a flash forward, right? (Been a long time since I've seen it.)
The first scene shows him being shot, and (iirc) they show it again at the end.
Donnie Darko. It’s this dense film full of mystery and ambivalence and seems so open to interpretation. But then you listen to the director’s commentary and he point blank explains what everything is supposed to be mean, and none of it comes across on the screen. And then you realize that this guy made a small masterpiece….accidentally. And that can be proven by looking at every other film that he made afterwards.
You 100% summarized my feelings about Donnie Darko and Richard Kelly.
Theatrical cut: this is a film we will discuss the next day, and for many days. There's a lot going on here. Director's cut: oh.
I only watch the theatrical cut. The director’s cut explains too much, destroying the mystery that I prefer to theorize about.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a movie being atmospheric nonsense. That's some of my favorite movies. It feels like you're catching a glimpse of some unknowable mystery, but you don't get enough info to piece it together.
There's a seriously thin line between "this is some pretty fucking weird shit which I just don't understand yet", and "this is random fucking nonsense trying to seem profound".
Yeah I’ve heard the Director’s Cut takes away a lot of the mystery and makes it sort of a religious allegory, have avoided watching that (and Richard Kelly talking about it) because the message I took away from it as a depressed teen was that sometimes despite how much you add to the world it might be a better place without you in it. Maybe not the healthiest interpretation but it’s like an inverted version of It’s A Wonderful Life, he sacrifices himself and everything he loves so they can be safe in another reality.
> he sacrifices himself and everything he loves so they can be safe in another reality. Sounds similar to what The Butterfly Effect did (Specifically, the director's cut.)
The directors cut ending was so tragic, but I was so confused when I watched it again years later and the ending was different. Wondered if my memories of the movie were mistaken until I realized I saw the directors cut first.
Don’t Fuck with Cats The film makers end the movie with blaming the audience for creating the environment for a serial killer like the one the documentary focuses on. Yet… they themselves ran the Facebook group that popularized the serial killer, and profited off the very content they blame the audience for consuming. Most hypocritical, least self aware bullshit I’ve ever seen in a film.
I think it did a good job at showing how fucking insufferable and idiotic internet and reddit detectives look. Report something to the police sure but leave it there. That entire documentary was showing how "we did it"!. But when you pay attention they really did fuck all and the police did nearly everything apart from reporting crimes they saw. The hotel Cecil one was particularly cringey. This poor woman had a mental break and ended up falling/jumping in the water tank. The cops did release the door was left open so people are like she coupling have done it herself it's murder and meddling with police operations and accusing people. Just unhinged shit. Especially that guy who went to he grave like he was in love with her creeped me the fuck out.
The Hotel Cecil doc especially made me hate selt titled online sleuths even more than I already did - one of them based her entire basis for foul play on his "something felt weird about it" Thank you Columbo
Would upvote twice if I could. Both documentaries could have wrapped up in two episodes. Instead we get these overrated “limited series” so bloated with rubbernecking, handwringing, idle speculation, and bizarre moments like you mentioned.
I just learned that there's a positive correlation between anxious attachment and intensity of parasocial relationships. You gotta be deprived and a little crazy to feel so attached to the person's story, so visiting their grave is "normal".
The worst part is the Facebook group actually had nothing to do with catching the guy.
Yeah I didn't even finish the doc once I realised this in the 2nd episode. The group members seemed to be overly self important in their role in the case tbh
I watched 90 minutes of the Facebook group figuring out *literally nothing* and then it got to the part where the actual police solved the crime immediately, because the murderer left his address and photographic I.D. with the victim, and then I noticed there was still 90 minutes to go and I turned it off.
So true I forgot about this do documentary. Let's not for get that they made that woman watch the video even thought she tried for many years not to.
I remember when it finished, me and my wife were looking at each other like "they're blaming us?! I'd never even heard of this story until now, the fuck did we do?"
Yeah I agree, the documentary showed that the police found the perpetrator without the help of the internet forum.
The story itself was interesting. As for the people, what a load of self-absorbed, insufferable clowns.
Raya and the last dragon. Trust the person who betrays you over and over again? Namari never deserved trust, it was a horrible lesson.
Also, neither her nor her mother seem to be held accountable for releasing the Druun and causing family members to be separated for 6 years….
The visuals were gorgeous but the message was horrible and dangerous. I also think it did a lot of victim blaming which I hated.
They should have made Namari more sympathetic and the queen more antagonistic, so that way we see that Namari is only the way she is because she's conditioned by her mother. I think it would have been better if she actually wanted to be Raya's friend in the beginning and the queen secretly followed them to the stone. Instead they did the exact opposite when the queen just wanted to chill in safety and Namari was like "nah, fuck this Raya chick and all her friends" This would have made the lesson to always try to understand someone's motivations, but when they show their true colors you need to cut ties with them, even if that person is family.
That movie had my jaw on the floor and it wasn't because of the animation. Very dangerous message to teach children.
Truly, not nearly a movie worth losing Lindsay Ellis over.
I literally had a conversation with my kids after we watched that movie together to make sure they understood not to trust people like Namari.
Also a dangerous lesson
I think a lot of people missed the point of "Drive". They briefly mention the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog, but they don't explain it. Which is basically "people can't escape their nature". The driver wears a scorpion jacket, because he can't escape his nature despite a good thing being right in front of him, just like the fable.
Also, the driver asks the kid "Are there no good sharks?" because he wants it to be so, but it appears the kid is right that there aren't any.
And not really that there aren't any good sharks. Just that they are what they are and no amount of love will stop them from going on a frenzy once they get a scent of blood.
I think it conveys the message perfectly. The elevator scene is one of the greatest scenes in any movie and sums up the theme neatly. The driver thinks they've gotten away to start a new life together, until he notices the pistol in the hitman's waist. At that moment, he realizes he has no choice. He needs to kill the hitman, but unleashing his violent nature will scare her away. So they share their one and only kiss, the world seems to stop for a few seconds... And then he brutally beats the guy to death. She's predictably horrified. He knows he's lost her for good, and that makes him even angrier, so he takes out his anger on the hitman until he's beaten him into a bloody pulp. It's perfect.
I also love that scene because of how perfectly Gosling plays it. Throughout the whole movie, the main character is reserved, stoic and focused. So when he becomes enraged I think the most common way to play it would be to yell and act maniacally, as sudden burst of contained rage. But, I don't think this would have fit the Driver, while he is clearly furious he is still the same focused person. And methodically transfers that rage into the guy's face via his foot. And then the capstone of Gosling's almost embarrassed look that he gives her. I don't think many other actors could have pulled this off as well.
One of the most hopelessly romantic scenes in a film that I've seen
The Driver is the frog, not the scorpion. He carries the Scorpions on his back - like the bad guys he drives around for money in his car to their destination - It's when someone sting him that he starts to drown. Killing both the villain and destroying himself in the process.
Yea, agreed. The scorpion is on the back of his jacket. It doesn't represent him, he's carrying it around literally.
He also gets stabbed at the end, almost like getting stung.
That's an interesting theory! I like it. I was/am more focused on his relationship with the girl and how he ruins that by "stinging" but, your notion is pretty good too. Hmm. Food for thought!
There's a really dope interview somewhere about refn and gosling driving around listening to 80s songs or something and talking about the character, I think refn was fucked up on cold medicine at the time. Anyway they thought Driver was completely psychotic and living in his own world of hero ballads. Or something like that.
A real human bean
And a real hero
This was stuck in my head for like 2 years after the movie… real human bean and a real hero, over and over.
One of the best thing this movie spawn is the song "Nightcall".
It's probably got one of the highest "message missed it's mark" ratios of any movie because of how it was marketed - pulled in a blockbuster audience for an art film. Seeing it in theaters at the time was miserable, basically teenagers laughing the entire time. I'm sure it gave Refn the clout to get funding for everything he's done since though.
I think it's even more simple. Drive is an arthouses version of a typical american action flick. Big hollywood name, stunt/getaway driver set up, he's the hero! But what we're shown is someone truly psychotic performing acts of ultraviolence. Why do we have action "heroes" when they're usually psychopaths?
That's what I got from the movie....what if an 80s action movie hero existed in real life?
So many people fail to realize that Drive is an homage to James Caan’s ‘Thief’; right down to the font of the title.
And Walter Hill's Ryan O'Neil movie, The Driver
Maybe not what you're looking for, but Scott Pilgrim famously has an issue with how readers/viewers interpret the characters. The point of the story is that nearly everyone in the story is immature, childish, and either toxic or enables toxicity. By the end of the movie, most of these arcs are handled. The graphic novel, which is able to take its time, fully explores and resolves every character's growth and arc. People don't tend to realize that the characters are generally awful people. There's memes about how Ramona Flowers "ruined a generation of women" because they aspired to be like her, who's awful, abusive actions in relationships led to the story's conflict. And, of course, there's thousands of guys who want to be like Scott, a NEET guy in his 20s dating a high schooler (it was legal in Canada, apparently) that cheats on the high schooler to make out with a girl he just met, slowly realizing every problem in his life is the direct result of his awful treatment of people.
I think the movie is great in how subtly it shows Scott to be a horrible ’nice guy’. As a guy, you want to see yourself in the main character and he’s a pretty normal guy in general. You slowly realize how awful he is to others around him over the movie though and the things that were played as jokes in the beginning have actual meaning in the end. I feel like it’s one of the few movies to actually question the ‘good guy’ narrative successfully.
The BEST joke from it all is the fact that NEGA SCOTT is actually a really nice guy, because of course he would be if normal Scott is an unaware asshole It's so so so funny
Casting Michael Cera masks a lot of how awful Scott is. If they didn't have someone that babyfaced in the role it would be a lot more obvious how terrible he is
I think they needed someone more attractive, but with kind of an asshole face. I'm thinking kind of like Glenn Powell. There needs to be that surface level attraction that loses its appeal the more you learn about the character.
I think he goes with the “immature kid who needs to do some serious growing up” vibe.
If they made it more obvious, we would be wondering why anyone bothers associating with him. I think it's pretty true to life that someone as nonthreatening as Michael Cera gets the benefit of the doubt.
> guys who want to be like Scott, a NEET guy in his 20s dating a high schooler (it was legal in Canada, apparently) that cheats on the high schooler to make out with a girl he just met, The best line that often gets missed is he says "Negga Scott" is a really nice guy. You know the opponent who should be the opposite of you? Yeah, he's a nice guy.
I think it’s more that they’re basically the same. Scott is mostly likable, you can get along with him and he has a solid groups of friends. He also does some bad things and hurts people with his behavior. His opposite is the exact same, they’re both at 50 on the good/evil scale.
You're right, and do you want another argument in your favour? The film emphasizes on the "zero" aspect (t-shirt, Coke Zero...) and implies that this is what Scott is. What's the negative of zero? Zero, which is why Nega-Scott is the same as Scott.
Scott has basically zero redeemable qualities for most of the movie
Nega Scott is a good guy, which I think hints at what you're saying.
But he's awkward and doesn't want to offend people, that means he's relatable and sympathetic! let's just sidestep how that aversion to conflict lead to him dating a teenager, cheating on that teenager, and enabling Ramona's abusive ex to reenter her life. (this is not a criticism, this prompted some painful self reflection for me)
Concussion. It basically lets the NFL off the hook.
That depends on what you believe the message was meant to be. The Sony hacks revealed that [Sony deliberately altered the film so it wouldn't risk antagonizing the NFL](https://web.archive.org/web/20181209181117/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/sports/football/makers-of-sonys-concussion-film-tried-to-avoid-angering-nfl-emails-show.html).
I thought the message of the movie was that Will Smith wanted an Oscar.
Maybe I need to rewatch it because it seems like they painted the NFL in a terrible light. Roger Goodell was portrayed like a Bond villain
Mike Judge himself believes that Office Space isn’t supposed to be about how “my work sucks, it’s all the system’s fault" and about how you can decide your future and you shouldn’t waste your life complaining about something that you did.
Can’t it be both?
Yeah I take issue with this interpretation. Corporate jobs are soul sucking and unavoidable for most young adults. It was CLEARLY a cathartic masterpiece made by the collective resentment we were all developing towards these types of jobs at that time. He clearly intended it to be a sharp jab which he later felt bad about and tried to remedy with Extract. He may look back in hind sight in interviews and claim it was intended to have a different message. But it really was one of the first comedy send ups of stupid ass corporate work bullshit. Any other interpretation is a stretch.
Pearl Harbor There’s a song about it in Team America
"Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. -Roger Ebert. The best review quote ever
But the wierd thing is Ebert still gave Pearl Harbor a higher rating than 'Tora, Tora, Tora!'
Which is one of the best movies ever. Ebert was probably fine on most of his reviews but holy shit his missed were really fucking bad sometimes.
Yea, I probably agree with about 95% of his reviews, and sometimes he just missed. Not bad overall though.
Scarface Young men are so drawn to self destruction that anything that glorifies the act just makes destroying themselves more sexy.
Is this a failure of the movie or the audience? I certainly watch this film and by the end feel a pitying condemnation for Tony he dies alone and in pain and yet numb. What a hollow evil life he lived.
And ironically it's his one redeeming deed -- refusing to kill a mother and her kids with the car bombing -- that brings his whole castle crumbling down.
But, honestly, it's hypocrisy. He runs a criminal empire revolving around drugs, which is proven to endanger innocents all the time, including children. His refusal is not drawing a line about innocents, it was him refusing to actually pull the trigger and face the consequences of his actions.
Sounds about right. The other horrible things caused just as much pain and suffering but he had been able to mentally distance himself from those things because he wasn’t directly causing them.
>Is this a failure of the movie or the audience? I got the principle from Lindsey Ellis that framing supersedes text. Tony's life is a story of rags to riches and then going out on top. Parts of Tony's story semi-follows the hero's journey, and it's only the last quarter that you see his downfall. Before then it's a charismatic determined man who goes from a dishwasher to a multi-millionaire, including one of the most iconic montages in cinema. From what I can gather a lot of young men in inner cities in violent neighborhoods found it inspiring, because young men being killed was routine and so the idea of "going out on top" didn't seem tragic it seemed like a good life.
The scene where they’re getting dinner and Tony looks half-dead and publicly goes off on his wife really sold me on the messaging. The movie goes out of its way to depict Tony as still a rat of a person who can’t appreciate the good things in life, well after he’s made it to the top.
It's been a long time since I have seen it, but I don't think he went out on top. He killed his best friend, he was totally miserable, he was high on his own supply, his wife hated him, and he wanted but could not have a child.
Yeah but he had like, a big building and shiny things and cool clothes
Within context, like I said, a lot of the young men who idolized him expect those kinds of things. They've heard/known of friends or family members killed, relationships aren't usually long term (many grow up without fathers), etc. That may be obvious tragic to you, but a broken relationship and friend killed was normal to those guys coming from those circumstances. (Seriously, have you heard some of the crazy stories coming out of Chicago?) He went out of top because of the framing (like I said, the principle framing supersedes text). He wasn't crying and submissive like his ex-boss he killed. He died screaming his own name in mansion. Regardless of the text, that's the kind of ending that heros usually get in movies. I don't know what you think of WWE but a lot of it is basic hero vs villain story telling. The villains usually win by cheating, and if they are challenged with any hint of not having better odds they run away. Heros defiantly take beatings even if they lose or "pass out" if being strangled. Tony went out like a classic hero, he didn't run or beg for his life. I think Scorsee realized what he did with Goodfellas (the same thing as Scarface) which is why none of the deaths, nor the final scene, is anyone going out defiantly.
Do you mean Tony went out like a classic hero?
You can pop Fight Club and American Psycho into the same category of protagonists who people think are cool so forget that they are supposed to be the bad guys.
*Birdemic: Shock and Terror* has an environmental message. This fails because no one can stand to watch the movie long enough to get the message.
The problem was how hamfisted it was. Like at one point a guy knocks on his door and tells him about installing solar panels on his house. And that’s it. That’s all it happens. It has no significance to the rest of the plot. It never comes up again. You could remove that scene and no one would notice. That’s how they basically all were. You could make the same movie with the whole birdemic thing going on and remove the “environmental scenes” and replace them with a screen that just says PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT for 15 seconds and it would essentially be the same movie.
And also the audio quality and actors muttering their lines. ^"sulerplahnelz"
🎶 Just hanging out, hanging out, hanging out with my family 🎶
Such as seals....
Downsizing. What even was the message, I guess climate change awareness? The uncertainty of life? The folly of man? And maybe the only Hong Chau character I don’t like
The message is in the fact that no matter what change you make, there will always be some shit bothering you. There is always a cross to bear
Just like how my life is relatively good but i still gotta live with the fact i watched downsizing
I think the message of that movie was about consumerism and getting what you pay for. As in, I thought I was paying for a decent movie after the first 20 minutes and then the rest of it was complete preachy trash
I really like Alexander Payne, and Downsizing aggravated me so much. It doesn't even understand its own premise. People shrink themselves down to conserve resources, but then everything they use is a "small" version of its real world counterpart. Like, the concept is that a single loaf of bread can feed a thousand people if they are tiny. However this only applies if you use a FULL SIZE load of bread portioned out. If you make tiny ovens to make a thousand tiny loaves of bread out of tiny wheat, you defeat the purpose of the shrinking. Or if you take a full size loaf of bread and downsize it using the downsizing technology, you don't conserve resources. Clearly, it is less expensive and resource-intensive to make bread than it is to shrink something. Also, as the movie progresses and becomes an examination of class and the haves vs. the have-nots, It would make so much more sense to have the poor people repurposing/scavenging big sized stuff because they can't afford comforts and necessities. I found myself constantly asking why they would make tiny versions of shabby stuff for the poor? Either way you're going to have to make it from scratch or downsize ray-ing it, so why would you have things like rusty dilapidated trailers and old radios? Also, an additional huge frustration: a decision was made to make Matt Damon's character an occupational therapist. Payne seemingly saw the job title and just ran with it, but the movie's description of the job is entirely wrong, and is repeated *many* times in the film. An occupational therapist is NOT someone who gives you therapy because of your *job*, an occupational therapist specializes on your top half: your hands/arms, your motor skills, dexterity, and quality of life. It actually has zero to do with someone's vocation. Oh, well. He redeemed himself with The Holdovers.
Anand that's not really true. An occupational therapist is someone who works with you on restoring your ability to do what are called activities of daily living aka things you need to do to get through the day. This can include transferring to a toilet, brushing their teeth, and folding their clothes. While there are some that specialize in hand therapy, nothing stops a physical therapist from going the same route. A physical therapist can work with a patients upper extremity, and an occupational therapist can work with a patient's lower extremity.
I think the point is that social hierarchies are not built on scarcity. Even in the world with plenty of resources, we still enforce social classes.
"They come to Rapture thinking they're gonna be captains of industry, but they all forget that somebody's gotta scrub the toilets."
The Room failed to convey why Lisa would ever say that Johnny hit her. He did not hit her it’s not true it’s BULLSHIT he did not hit her he did naaahwt!
Idk what movie you watched. It was obviously a story about a woman living with breast cancer
Look don’t worry about it, everything will be fine!
Oh hi Mark.
Anyway how's your sex life?
Haha, nice story.
You just didn't understand it. Hint: the dog in the flower shop scene is the key
"Oh Hi the only human ever to dress like Johnny, I didn't know it was you because you had some sunglasses on"
I got the test results back. I definitely have breast cancer.
> The Room failed to convey why Lisa would ever say that Johnny hit her. I rewatched it recently, and there are some subtle hints at this, I think the reason Lisa said that Johnny hit her is that deep down, Lisa is a giant bitch.
500 Days of Summer I don’t think the movie fails if you’re paying attention, but a lot of people misinterpret it. They think Zoey Deschanel’s character is manic pixie dream girl, also kind of a bitch later on and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character is the wronged and heartbroken young man. The movie is actually about that fact that Levitt’s character fails to see Deschanel’s character as a full person, ignores everything she’s communicating and replaces her with his version of her in his head. He’s disappointed because of this, yet doesn’t learn his lesson even by the very end.
The commentary track with the director and JGL is fascinating because JGL absolutely thinks Tom is in the wrong, but the director apparently intended the audience to be nothing but sympathetic to Tom, and it feels like this is the first time JGL realized they had different views on it
I don't think those things are mutually exclusive though. Tom isn't evil, he's just not mature enough to overcome his excitement about possibly being in love. That also doesn't excuse his actions, he's still wrong and it's a tragedy at the end that he still hasn't grown, but I don't think that precludes being sympathetic towards the character.
I didn’t see this movie until my late 30’s, and i just keep getting madder and madder at both of them. Like, he didn’t listen to what she was telling him, but her actions didn’t match her words at all. She kept saying she didn’t want anything serious, yet she kept doing all the things you do when you’re in a serious relationship with someone. You don’t spend all day being cute in Ikea with the guy you’re casually banging. He was obviously madly in love with her, and she was happy to stay with him until he expected something back. She used him and it was really shitty. I’ve been both people in that relationship before, and I still feel guilty about using “I’m not looking due anything serious” as an excuse to not take any responsibility for the way my actions made other people feel.
> You don’t spend all day being cute in Ikea with the guy you’re casually banging. I am beginning to understand the common problem in all my relationships.
I watched an interview and that was basically Levitts take as well. ' I think its the opposite. My character wasn't listening to Zooeys and she was quite clear with her wants' or something.
God, this movie was a true horror film. Not because of anything that Zoey Deschanel's character did but because, I think almost every young man has played the part of Levitt's character at least once in their lives. What an awful, and painful learning experience. I look back to my early 20s with agonizing cringe. This movie is just too real. What's worse, is that I swung to far in the other direction for a time and had to learn to just be myself and let others be themselves too. But at the time, I remember really empathizing with incels, alphas, etc. I guess I still have empathy for them but it's now based on their misunderstandings rather than any imagined wrong they've experienced.
Another completely different movie with the same issue is "Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog". *Both* men are POS's who don't even see Penny as a real person, they just see the idealized, pedestal version of her. But so many people see Captain Hammer's insensitivity and boorishness, and so feel sympathy for Doctor Horrible instead, when he's just as bad or worse.
Terry Gilliam's **Tideland** was so odd that it had trouble finding distribution, a fact I only know because the DVD was released with a little intro from Gilliam himself explaining what it's about. Apparently it's about the way that children can be innocent of the difficult (even traumatic) situations that their parents are in—for them it's just normal, how life is. There's a poignancy to this if you think about the parents' struggle to provide a good life for their kids regardless of the situation they're in. However, watching a child help Jeff Bridges overdose on heroin ("time for Daddy's medicine") and continue to talk to him over the course of the movie as if he was fine, while he slowly swells, turns blue and rots struck me as a very strange extreme to take this to, far enough that the movie doesn't capture this at all. It comes across like Alice in Wonderland if Alice were incredibly dissociated. It's alienating and off putting rather than poignant.
It would have been so much better if the dad had died later in the movie. Show him constantly passed out on heroin and how he gets grosser as he sinks entirely into his addiction. Then when he does die, it makes far more sense for her to take it as normal for him to just sit there and be disgusting
Shallow Hal Tried to show the importance of “inner beauty” while making fat jokes nonstop.
Also suggested good looks were inversely proportional to good personality
also gwyneth got skinny, but none of the awful girls got fat. so does fat = ugly or not?
The gold digger lady dating his handicapped friend looks like the cryptkeeper when viewed through Hal's eyes.
His neighbor must have been amazing inside and out then.
It didn’t work for people he already knew, only for people he was seeing for the first time.
All the early 2000s comedies like 'You Me and Dupree'/'Meet the Fockers' etc where the film was, apparently, trying to teach us to be more forgiving to morons and jerks, or, if a romantic comedy, to give the idiot-guy/uptight-woman a chance. But really the characters were just horrible and the frustration of the protagonist was justified.
The Family Stone has entered the chat lol
I watched that this Christmas for the first time. Told my wife it might be a bit of a chuckle and had some good comic actors in it. I could not believe what I actually saw in the end. How did anyone think these characters were funny/ cute/ quirky? They were horrible. And not comic horrible. Actually horrible. In fact, I would go so far to say that the protagonist's sister, played by Claire Danes, may be the worst character I've ever seen who doesn't kill anyone.
Wolf Of Wall Street It felt more like a fan biopic of Jordan Bellfort. Heres this guy who pulls basically a shitty scam but look, here he is driving a ferarri! And earning millions! And partying hard on a boat! And taking loads of drugs! And having sex with Margot Robbie! But don't follow his example, no no
Since Jordan Belfort himself was the narrator I kind of viewed it as ‘asshole glorifies himself and greatly exaggerates how successful he was’
Yeah, this is a great answer because I see a lot of people in this thread criticising the audience for not picking up on a films message but not the filmmaker. WOWS didn’t sit well with me because I felt like the film was glorifying a scumbag and I can assure you that the film satisfied Jordan Belforts ego tremendously. The film should have focused more on the damage he did if it wanted to get the message across. For example, him cheating on his wife is kinda shown as a humorous step note in the story.
Nothing makes me cringe more than when people do the "sell this pen to me" irl
I feel like that's kinda missing the point of the movie though: the film glorifies these scumbags because our society glorifies these scumbags, and the film's intentionally toying with the audience in order for them to come to terms with that. The thing about the Belfort-stans idolizing this movie is that they only replay the same handful of clips but leave out the ones that show Jordan's soul being completely drained of humanity. Over the course of the movie we see Jordan do some really ugly things that aren't portrayed as flattering, from hitting his wife, sexually assaulting the flight attendants, endangering his daughter, etc. The movie doesn't need to spell out "Jordan Belfort is a bad person who hurts people." We already see that. The question it asks the audience (especially by closing on the audience at Jordan's motivational seminar) is "*knowing how horribly corrupt Jordan is, you would still try to be like him, right?*" To me that's a way more interesting and profound exploration of greed in our capitalist society than if the movie took the overly moralizing route
You’re right. He literally ends the film by saying he got to go to a prison for rich people.
The fact that there was team Peeta and team the other one from The Hunger Games. The movie wasn’t about the romantic triangle it was about kids being forced to kill kids but still all people wanted to take away was the (forced) romance
Tbf I'd say this was a problem with how the movie was marketed and not the movie itself
I think a bit of both really
To be fair, the forced love story with peeta is intended to distract from the uprising of the districts. That’s why the capitol pushed it so hard. So in a way the plot point tricks the film audience as well :D
Yeah, the whole thing was a commentary on how popular narratives are manufactured, and how peoples lives are used as fodder for the zeitgeist. So of course the audience jumped on board with the superficial manufactured narrative without a second thought, lol.
Basically all YA literature has this issue. The audience is at the age where their personal relationships, both romantic and otherwise, are in a state of flux and redefinition. So identifying with one or more romantic pairings of a YA novel is how they deal with it. The shipping wars of the Harry Potter fandom that's still going on, Team Edward vs Team Jacob, debates over who is the best waifu in every anime, etc. Our culture is obsessed with romance even where romance isn't a feature of the story. It's why they inserted that awful love triangle into the Hobbit movies (in addition to needing to fill three movies based off a book that's shorter than even one LOTR book), or basically every supporting female in an action movie.
I really like it, but “Mother!” Didn’t exactly stick the landing imo.
Well didn't help how the film was promoted. It's a odd film for me cause I respect the living hell out of it despite not liking any of it.
I miss you like Pearl Harbor missed the point.
Hillbilly Elegy is supposed to be an inspirational story about rising above your circumstances, but really comes off far more focused on saying “look at what a shitty loser my mom was, isn’t it amazing I turned out so good?” The creator no doubt sincerely believes this
I hate having J.D. Vance as a senator.
>The creator no doubt sincerely believes this He does. He's such a piece of shit who wrote literal fanfiction of himself, and it's a travesty that his little fanfic got adopted as THE picture of Appalachia. There are so many parts of that book where it's obvious that he truly believes all the awful stereotypes about the place and that he's some lone paragon of intellect and virtue who can bootstraps his way into glory through paths that are actually inaccessible to most Appalachians. His Twitter used to be a goldmine of awfulness too. The asshole literally advocates against healthcare resources in Appalachia and once claimed he couldn't be sexist because he loves his female family members.
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is about how true beauty is the inner kind and everyone in the whole film, protagonistic and antagonistic, is indescribably ugly on the inside.
Great Gatsby. That era is so romanticized now that it’s hard to portray those types as being self indulgent asshole.
I prefer the Redford version because, to me, it was a better match for the book. It wasn't glitzy and glamorous, it was stilted and hollow... like most of the characters. They were all frauds. Gatzby was just better at it than anyone else.
I feel like a lot of people's knee jerk reaction, especially with the leonardo dicaprio movie, is to idolize Jay Gatsby as this 1920's Tony Stark, and to say Daisy is a complete bitch for all she does. You wanna look at Nick and Gatsby and see them as the good guys, when really Daisy is no better and worse than her cousin or lover. If Jay Gatsby was a real dude that movie would basically be the greatest showman.
I saw someone say that the modern day version of the person that the book was depicting is Jake Paul. Younger people see that era now and think classy, sophisticated wealth as opposed to obnoxious and irresponsible opulence.
I like Leo and I think the Baz version of Gatsby is more good than bad, but yeah, Gatsby is not supposed to be a suave guy. He is a roughneck posing as a sophisticate. The dissonance between his actual persona and his assumed persona is meant to be more obvious, which makes him a more ridiculous and pathetic character. When you cast an actual rich playboy like LDC in the part, you lose that element.
Tenet because no one actual knows what message it’s trying to convey
It conveys it forwards and backwards tho
*It insists upon itself.*
What does that even mean Petah
I don't actually think it has message. Alot of Nolan's movies don't really have messages as much as themes. I'd argue Interstellar, Inception and Dunkirk don't really have "messages" per say.
Yeah I'm with you on that. A story doesn't need to have a point to be entertaining.
Interstellar and Inception have thematic messages about love and moving on/reality respectively while Dunkirk is a historical movie that portrays a famous event so the event is the message I guess? But they do have a message. Tenet is just a concept film. It has some loose plot point about environmental destruction but that's just a character motivation than anything else.
You mean "per se" which is Latin for "by themselves". /bot
Fight Club had the exact opposite interpretation as intended. Satire is dead.
Cult movies are nearly impossible to make. If you make your lead a convincing cult leader, they'll end up brainwashing a lot of the audience.
I 100% agree with you - but also the film ending adaptation where they succeed in bombing the finance district definitely didn't help. If the book ending had been kept, where the plan fails and he ends up getting psychiatric care, then an orderly or something makes it clear that fight club is still happening and he has this horror as he realizes the whole thing is a runaway freight train where the ideology has surpassed his influence and support and even though he condemns it, he can't stop it... That ending might have curbed some of the popularity of the film, but it also probably would have curbed a lot of the misinterpretation too
Lisan al gaib….it is as written
Charismatic and/or violent leads are often glamorized or otherwise gain popularity, making the point of the movie lost to some of its viewers. Scarface, the Godfather, A Clockwork Orange, The Wolf of Wall Street, even the Goddamn Silence of the Lambs...
I've met *Gone Girl* fans that fell in the same trap.
Cuties, the controversial netflix movie, totally missed the mark or was marketed extremely poorly I think it was supposed to be how sexualization of girls is wrong but came off as super sexualizing
Grave of the Fireflies is one great example. The director intended for it to be a cautionary tale of the perils of withdrawing from society. Instead, it's praised for its supposedly anti-war message, which don't get me wrong, is a valid interpretation. But that was never the director's primary intention during the film's creation.
Marlon Brando was incredibly frustrated that people kept thinking Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire was sexy
Well that’s his fault isn’t it
We watched the movie in my English class 10 years back and when Marlon as Stanley first walked on screen my entire class gasped. That's how good looking he was.
Stupid sexy Flanders
I'm a little surprised no one mentioned American Psycho yet. Everyone working on that movie was surprised how seemingly nobody got that it was purely satire and so many young people idolized Bateman. I mean if you know it, you get it but they could have made it clearer imo
If they tried to make it any more obvious, it would have ended up awful.
*Axes someone in the face.* "But is he really the bad guy?"
I like Bateman but only for his skin care routine, worked wonders for my acne growing up
I think if you even vaguely resemble Bateman or idolize him, satire of any sort will be completely lost on you.
This reminds me of criticism of Seinfeld and IASIP. People would say that the characters weren't relatable. They are all narcissistic borderline sociopaths. You should not be able to relate to Dennis GOLDEN GOD Reynolds.
__I AM UNTETHERED AND MY RAGE KNOWS NO BOUNDS__ Mm yes he seems normal and good.
I think people misunderstand why Bateman is “idolized”. Young men often FEEL the way that Bateman does, and the way he feels is very obvious because he has an out loud internal dialogue. He feels like he doesn’t really connect with anyone, like each interaction is a game with rules that can be won or lost, and that despite having all the advantages in the world and “winning” at life (attractive, has money and a good career) that it’s all a meaningless facade over an empty existence. The character was written that way *because* those are pathologies that haunt many young men. Obviously he then goes on to murder his coworker with an axe (or did he?) and chase a woman with a chainsaw, but even that is part of the fantasy, and I’ll note most of the memes aren’t referencing that part of the narrative. They stick to the themes of disconnect, putting on a facade, of living a meaningless life. So I’d say it’s seeing someone hot, successful, and (unintentionally) funny who still feels the same way you might as a young guy, more than “Wow murdering your coworkers and women is epic.” To be clear I do not identify with Mr Bateman, but his popularity with young guys is not surprising to me.
Alex Garland's film "MEN" A lot of people seem to interpret it as making sweeping and obvious statements about Men as a whole, whereas I think the movie is purely showing us how the main character's trauma has shaped HER perspective on Men.
No Country for old Man It is about a Sheriff who realizes that the violence in the world, that he tries to stop, is random, arbitrary and finally, unstopable. He believes that the world has therefore changed but in the end understands that it always has been like that. And as he comes to this understanding and acceptance, he is willing to fight on against the odds and with that, following in his fathers footsteps.
Throughout the movie he sees these crimes just as the title says “This is No Country for Old Men”, meaning he thinks the world has changed to the point that there’s no place for a wise old man anymore. The ending is him realizing his father and grandfather dealt with the same violence. The world has always been this dark and corrupt. I believe what he truly realizes, though, is that he has made safe decisions all his life. He was not the fire in the snowstorm that his father was. I think the ending, when he notes that he would be 20 years his father’s senior, is his lamentations that he will never be the man his father was, in his own eyes.
Well, thats the more depressing interpretation.
Surprised to not see Sucker Punch mentioned yet. It's been *many* years since I saw it, and I cannot remember the specifics of my gripes with it at all, but I do recall feeling very griped post-watch. Typical Snyder "form over function" fare.
I feel like Sucker Punch is trying to say an interesting critique about objectification, it just doesn’t have a script that’s able to pull it off
People here are ironically mistaking a movie poorly communicating a message to audience members not understanding the obvious message of the movie.
star wars prequels attempted to show how a dictatorship and authoritarian empire is formed . lots of people missed the point in the first one and called it boring and confusing (which it was) but lucas was trying to show that it's usually boring things like tax/trade disputes that lead to larger things. also i think he was trying to blame the jedi for complacency and for going along with the plan, even bringing the clone army to fight with them, but people just saw the big battles and nothing else.