Everyone on here and on the rest of Sherdog is praising Logan to high-heavens.
Various friends of mine opened a discussions to go see it at two different occasions... yet I vetoed them both times. From the trailer it looks like absolute dreck. Wizened, old-aged Logan having to babysit a child, fighting dork-looking enemies with neck-tattoos to save her. It just reeks of cringy emotionalism and plot-tropes that I don't like, and the whole ordeal looks dull visually too.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong, wouldn't be the first time.
Went to see Hidden Figuers and John Wick 2 instead, btw.
So... have you informed her that Above the Law is the greatest film of all time yet? I mean... it just sounds like you should have some really potent warstories about ironing out those relationship-kinks with her.
All done boyo. Makes me wish I'd spent more time breaking down Beginners.
I actually had a bit of trouble tying together the plot as a whole, though I really liked the characters, especially Dorothea and Abbie. Overall it felt like a bit like an improved Linklater, where the characters are philosophical without feeling like they're all mouthpieces for the director, and much more human. I suspect there were some era-specific attitudes that were a little nuanced for my ahistorical self to pick up on, but I could still recognize when there was tension. The dinner scene was great. The motifs are challenging across epistemological lines, especially where interactions across age and gender are concerned, but I haven't quite made out where the film actually positions itself in relation to those. An example of this that I liked was how the montage-style character portraits were narrated by a different character until they each got to represent themselves in the end.
I could probably say more if I had some commentary to anchor the discussion. Was there anything you wanted to point out about it specifically?
All done boyo. Makes me wish I'd spent more time breaking down Beginners.
I actually had a bit of trouble tying together the plot as a whole, though I really liked the characters, especially Dorothea and Abbie. Overall it felt like a bit like an improved Linklater, where the characters are philosophical without feeling like they're all mouthpieces for the director, and much more human. I suspect there were some era-specific attitudes that were a little nuanced for my ahistorical self to pick up on, but I could still recognize when there was tension. The dinner scene was great. The motifs are challenging across epistemological lines, especially where interactions across age and gender are concerned, but I haven't quite made out where the film actually positions itself in relation to those. An example of this that I liked was how the montage-style character portraits were narrated by a different character until they each got to represent themselves in the end.
I could probably say more if I had some commentary to anchor the discussion. Was there anything you wanted to point out about it specifically?
You kind of pointed out what my favorite thing was about the film - the execution of everyone's viewpoint. I'd be startled when I didn't realise someone new had been narrating for a while. That's good craft.
I actually think it's more of a tribute to women from that time than anything else. How they're all complicated, smart, stupid, impetuous, kind, and given a chance to be, and how that's just fine for a story.
There's this thing they say about a well written character in genre writing - you have to write two traits to a person that play off each other, and with drama, they really have to be in conflict. Mills really got that with this. I love how Dorothea is ready to analyse the shit out of her son, even going so far as to thrust other women into his life so he either opens up about his problems or has a touchstone of some sort, but the second she's put in that position, she fights back like a caged animal. That's really all there is to her character from a functional standpoint for the whole damn film, but Mills milks it for all its worth.
Little decisions he made with the structure of the narrative really impressed me. Like how he gets it out of the way somewhere in the middle of the movie that Dorothea dies of cancer. From that moment on every single time she takes a drag has a dramatic weight. He's sneaky good like that. It's the Finding Nemo thing.
As for what it's saying: I'm not sure it's trying to? I love how you said it was "improved Linklater". That's why I recommended it. I think this film was a better version of Boyhood, really. There's no real aphoristic intent. Just: these are the lives of some good people, warts and all. Even the reconciliation between mother and son is somewhat played down, when he says that was the last time they spoke so freely/honestly.
I think it's better than Beginners just because all the techniques he uses, the montages, the voice-overs, the psychedelic scene transitions, all seem a bit more pointed and less about tone, more about content. I still love Beginners. But this was especially cool because the female POV was fascinating to me. Things like the girl sleeping over but not having sex. How she talks about why she fucks guys when she doesn't even have orgasms. That line about how 50% of the time she doesn't regret it being why she still does it. You don't see that kind of thing much on-screen. I appreciated that.
Logan was awesome. Hell of a movie right there. My one complaint would be that I thought the first 80 percent of the film (let's say up through the end of the Eriq LaSalle family sequence) was superior to the last twenty-five minutes or so. Still, high-quality ending. The action was visceral and made the most of the change in rating. Jackman was great, as expected. It really helped to wash away the stench of the last X-Men movie, Apocalypse. But, then again, this was so different tonally than the rest of the X-Men films, that it's tough to even really group them together for comparison. Origins was incredibly lame. The Wolverine did not interest me; it was not a bad movie, but I found it rather dull. But Logan delivered in pretty much every dimension. Good plot, great characterization, strong performances, solid action setpieces.
Of the recent well-received horror movies I've seen, Get Out was the one that really knocked it out of the park for me. I thought It Follows was quite cool from a stylistic perspective and definitely a horror film that I enjoyed, but it had some elements to it that I found frustrating, especially the more I thought about it. Goodnight, Mommy didn't impress me at all. One of my buddies called a key plot element within the first five minutes and the film just never struck me as anything more than a nasty, meanspirited movie without any real substance to it.
Get Out, conversely, was really good and has kept me thinking about it a couple days after I saw it. There are a few things that set this above your typical horror movie. First off, while the story is nothing groundbreaking, it is made all the more interesting and impacting because of the social commentary/racial elements of it. There is some definite, biting satire in this film. Second, the performances were a lot better than your run-of-the-mill genre film. I've never seen Dan Kaluuya in anything else, but I'm looking forward to it because he was terrific. Williams did a very good job as well. But some of the real scene-stealing moments are provided by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener.
Peele deserves a lot of credit, not only for the story/screenplay, but for the surefooted way in which the whole film is executed. The visuals, the build up of tension, the execution of certain scenes (particularly one between Kaluuya and Keener) that will, in my opinion, go down as classic horror movie moments, are all feathers in his and the rest of the production team's cap. Additionally, there is some definite humor throughout the film- some in the form of an outright comic relief played by the brother from the Carmichael Show and- and some in more of a, chuckle, that's uncomfortable type of way.
Basically, this was a quality, entertaining film that stands well above many of the movies I've seen from the genre in the past few years.
haha there was definite humor in it and Peele is at the helm, but it's pretty serious and intense for the bulk of it.
I thought it was awesome. I'm not sure how you'd like it, but I'll definitely recommend it. I also have the distinct feeling that it's the type of movie that is even better on the second viewing.
Whitford is great in whatever you see him in. Best part of Scent of a Woman may be the scene he is in. Hilarious in Billy Madison, etc.
Goodnight, Mommy is an Austrian horror film where these twins have an uneasy feeling that there mother came back different after getting plastic surgery. Premise and the trailer seemed on point but the movie is actually very different than what the synopsis indicated and not for the better. Big disappointment.
You kind of pointed out what my favorite thing was about the film - the execution of everyone's viewpoint. I'd be startled when I didn't realise someone new had been narrating for a while. That's good craft.
I actually think it's more of a tribute to women from that time than anything else. How they're all complicated, smart, stupid, impetuous, kind, and given a chance to be, and how that's just fine for a story.
I agree that it was well-rounded and fleshed out its characters well. I think one of the reasons it's able to transition between narrators so seamlessly is because there isn't really a character that exists for the audience to dislike or distrust, and you get this kind of sincerity that's more intriguing than it is jarring when switching back and forth between them.
There's this thing they say about a well written character in genre writing - you have to write two traits to a person that play off each other, and with drama, they really have to be in conflict. Mills really got that with this. I love how Dorothea is ready to analyse the shit out of her son, even going so far as to thrust other women into his life so he either opens up about his problems or has a touchstone of some sort, but the second she's put in that position, she fights back like a caged animal. That's really all there is to her character from a functional standpoint for the whole damn film, but Mills milks it for all its worth.
That's a very cool idea. There's this character you see sometimes that's like the "perfect liberal parent," for lack of a better description, and I liked that Dorothea wasn't one of those. She was unique and compelling without being flawless. I even found the way she rationalized her smoking endearing.
Little decisions he made with the structure of the narrative really impressed me. Like how he gets it out of the way somewhere in the middle of the movie that Dorothea dies of cancer. From that moment on every single time she takes a drag has a dramatic weight. He's sneaky good like that. It's the Finding Nemo thing.
Agree! I felt that too. Even every word she spoke after that, I kept thinking - shit, these people better wrap up their relationships with her quick, because she's going to be gone soon. Of course it's rare that we get those flags in real life.
As for what it's saying: I'm not sure it's trying to? I love how you said it was "improved Linklater". That's why I recommended it. I think this film was a better version of Boyhood, really. There's no real aphoristic intent. Just: these are the lives of some good people, warts and all. Even the reconciliation between mother and son is somewhat played down, when he says that was the last time they spoke so freely/honestly.
I think it's better than Beginners just because all the techniques he uses, the montages, the voice-overs, the psychedelic scene transitions, all seem a bit more pointed and less about tone, more about content. I still love Beginners. But this was especially cool because the female POV was fascinating to me. Things like the girl sleeping over but not having sex. How she talks about why she fucks guys when she doesn't even have orgasms. That line about how 50% of the time she doesn't regret it being why she still does it. You don't see that kind of thing much on-screen. I appreciated that.
It was definitely a soothing kind of watch, and getting back to the Linklater comparison I felt like it meandered and poked around but without getting annoyingly unfocused. The characters would shift from setting to setting in a much more pointed way, and even though you could say they were just living their lives, it was clear that at the same time each setting had a special significance, especially as the characters pushed through the various revolving doors in mixed up pairings.
The reason I wanted more of a statement from the film is more personal, because the question of how to open up the possibility for authentic communication through the barriers of conventional identity is one that bothers me all the time. We see the first way of dealing with the problem from Dorothea in the beginning - she succumbs to the idea that she can't properly communicate with her son because she's his mother, and instead assigns other women to the job. But the best relationship to track this theme in my opinion is the one between Jamie and Julie, because you can see the metamorphosis happening as sex becomes an issue for both of them. Prior to that you had this kind of innocence that allowed them to interact in a way that permitted inconsequential physical touch, honesty, and gentle criticism. But then Jamie pushes for the relationship to change in a way that better enables categorization, even asserting his love in a cringeworthy scene, and prompting Julie's accusation he's become "just like the other guys".
But I find that accusation to be self-serving. Not only does Jamie explicitly not want to be like the other guys, but it's Julie's own insecurity about that categorization that renders it so powerful. You could say that as a teenage woman a sexual identity is something that society fosters upon her unwillingly, but it's clear that the identity is not all bad, it just requires a little navigation. Jamie offers the possibility of that navigation through a safe space of the kind that Julie doesn't seem to have ever really had, but he gets turned down. I'm not sure how to deal with that rejection. Maybe his timing is off, or maybe she's not able to articulate what she really wants and is attracted to, or maybe I'm missing some flaw in him that is obvious to her. But the conclusion in that specific scenario seems to present this dichotomy between young and mature relationships as those walls go up all of a sudden, and this example of passivity from Julie - as if the world should just know how she wants to be seen without her being present in that negotiation, or even as if that transparency was impossible - bothered me.
Of course Dorothea and Abbie are such strong counterexamples that I can't condemn the film as a whole, but that relationship ticked me off lol. Perhaps for obvious reasons.
I also watched A Serious Man last night. Wasn't that one of your recommendations too, @Ricky13? That'll teach me to expect answers to any of the bold metaphysical questions I have
For anyone interested, that actually finished off the 100 films in 365 days challenge I started around this time last year. Here's the full list:
1. Romeo+Juliet
2. Frozen
3. The Notebook
4. 12 Angry Men
5. Closer
6. Heat
7. Vanilla Sky
8. Black Swan
9. Her
10. Steve Jobs
11. The Hateful Eight
12. Collateral
13. The End of the Tour
14. Hamlet
15. Good Will Hunting
16. Groundhog Day
17. The Lobster
18. Ghost in the Shell
19. In Bruges
20. Calvary
21. The Fountain
22. Transcendence
23. Garden State
24. Mad Max
25. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
26. Being John Malkovich
27. Citizenfour
28. The Nice Guys
29. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
30. Django Unchained
31. Only God Forgives
32. A Streetcar Named Desire
33. Conversations with Other Women
34. Hail, Caesar!
35. All about Eve
36. Carnage
37. Primer
38. V for Vendetta
39. Before Sunset
40. Before Sunrise
41. Before Midnight
42. Clerks
43. Aguirre, The Wrath of God
44. Stalker
45. 500 Days of Summer
46. Shane
47. Daredevil
48. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
49. Pi
50. Dark City
51. Everybody Wants Some!!
52. HEVN
53. Mad Max: Fury Road
54. Almost Famous
55. The Royal Tenenbaums
56. Snowpiercer
57. Snowden
58. The Gift
59. Upstream Color
60. Beginners
61. A Separation
62. The Raid
63. Captain Fantastic
64. Hell or High Water
65. The Neon Demon
66. Captain America: Civil War
67. Gattaca
68. Edge of Tomorrow
69. The Matrix
70. Macbeth
71. Memento
72. Inception
73. Looper
74. Spring Breakers
75. Hacksaw Ridge
76. Out of the Past
77. Girl on a Train
78. The Muppet's Christmas Carol
79. The Jungle Book
80. The Jungle Book
81. Nocturnal Animals
82. Arrival
83. Interstellar
84. The Accountant
85. Creed
86. Manchester by the Sea
87. Crazy Stupid Love
88. The Big Short
89. Gone Baby Gone
90. Deadpool
91. A History of Violence
92. Never Let Me Go
93. The Social Network
94. Dr. Strange
95. The Gambler
96. Chasing Amy
97. Fences
98. Passengers
99. 20th Century Women
100. A Serious Man
It's been a very... educational year That's about all the commentary I have on the list as a whole right now.
One more detail re: 20th Century Women just because I'm all fucking riled up now -
You could say that the solution to the problem of authentic communication is simply to allow the other person as much freedom as they require in order to express themselves in the way they wish to be seen. Of course we saw that attempt fail with Jamie and Julie, but that failure might have been less about the strategy and more about Julie not really buying into Jamie's execution of the strategy (he basically admitted to thinking she was a slut in a previous scene, so the setting wasn't exactly free of judgement).
But now let's look at how Dorothea follows up on the task of communicating with her son that she'd initially given up on. Finally, toward the end of the film, we get a rare scene where she's completely honest with him and it seems like we're seeing the solution in its properly executed form. But then Jamie throws two more wrenches into the issue, by saying first that he never had a problem with it just being him and his mom, and then in the narration stating that they never really had that kind of conversation again. So not only did we just get a tease, but you could say it was a pessimistic tease, and here's why - Dorothea's relationship to Jamie as his mother is effectively functional. Jamie may have been comfortable just being with his mom, but fortunately she recognized that this state of affairs was not good for his development, even though changing it threatened the clarity of her relationship with him. She can't speak to him openly because she's his mom and because he needs a mom, not a genie to grant all his wishes and keep him comfortable.
This is why keeping yourself hidden is so dangerous, because sometimes the way you want to be seen is stupid and not actually in your best interest, so you put it out into the world to face criticism. Julie and Abbie represent opposite responses to that challenge. Which leaves us with two positions that we need to keep in some balance - first, to be careful to allow different people the space to show themselves in the way they wish to be seen, and second, to realize that not all ways of being are good just because they're freely chosen. And I think that tension has become especially political in the current day and those sides have moved further apart instead of figuring out when and if each is appropriate.
Get Out was fucking incredible. I mean Jesus. How is that a first feature? What the fuck?
It's also made me feel a bit clearer about the things I felt went wrong, just ever so slightly, with Logan for me, which I'll address in response to @HUNTERMANIA, and which @Bullitt68 will duly come around to kick my ass for. It took the clarity of Get Out for me to understand it. Still an awesome watch, Logan, I just think it's interesting to talk about.
Get Out was fucking incredible. I mean Jesus. How is that a first feature? What the fuck?
It's also made me feel a bit clearer about the things I felt went wrong, just ever so slightly, with Logan for me, which I'll address in response to @HUNTERMANIA, and which @Bullitt68 will duly come around to kick my ass for. It took the clarity of Get Out for me to understand it. Still an awesome watch, Logan, I just think it's interesting to talk about.
@Ricky13 I haven't read your posts on the film (or anyone else's, lol) but my thoughts were:
He takes the whole bottle of stuff, we have no indication throughout the film that it has a short half-life and suddenly, "it's wearing off" - like, what? lame. A whole bottle lasts literally 10 minutes? It just felt off to me, like it interrupted the flow, they could have let him keep going and fight the other wolverine and still lose/have the girl shoot him w/o any of that "it's worn off" nonsense
NOT VERY SPOILERY, BUT IF YOU'RE PEDANTICALLY SENSITIVE ABOUT THAT STUFF LOOK AWAY I GUESS:
It's interesting you mention flow. I think that's general issue I had with the film. It's really a movie of moments. In between stuff happens.
That sounds uncharitable. But the more I think about it, on a pure story level, it feels like the beats weren't good enough to forget that what I was enjoying was texture. Looking back at some of what I'd written, I praise tonal things: "brutal", that it felt similar to 3:10 to Yuma and Looper. And looking at most reactions, people were sated most by the grit of it. Viewers were waiting for a grim-dark superhero film that anchored its emotionality to story better than the DC films, which can seem heavy for the sake of it.
Mangold fulfilled that need. I'm just not sure it's that well done. It relies on a commitment to a facade of gravitas, without necessarily earning it in a visceral manner. It's the littlest bit lazy with the mechanics that influence a rewatch, particularly propulsiveness. There's a lot of waiting around before a reveal or emotional moment, so that when they happen, they play a bit like cliche, which is the most common criticism I'm noting. @europe1 foresaw this.
History is obscured so there's a degree of mystery to core motivations. Holding off on why Prof. X was hidden away, why Logan was helping him, and for some reason begrudgingly, was a mistake. When we do find out, it's farted out of a radio and incoherently at that. This is a bad idea. For one it's just not very good writing to explain why characters have been acting a certain way until now. It's better to know that something happened at the outset, and then events from that point on have a certain weight (see my exchange with @Caveat about how 20th Century Women gets this right; there's a great Finding Nemo anecdote about this as well).
Laura/Logan doesn't really kick in until she speaks. I know it's a cool moment and all but delaying it prevents the conflict between her and Logan from being set in motion, so that his inevitable sacrifice doesn't feel out of left field. It thus takes a good while for Logan to "answer the call". The turnaround jarred a little, to the point where I think the film's themes are being discussed more than felt, and this is more or less the opposite of how a classic becomes one.
The message of the film is that the past doesn't matter. Logan is right that the kids are hung-up on unrealistic comic books. What he doesn't get is that living meaningfully is about recognising that those stories are important to someone like Laura. And it takes real-life, adult sacrifices for those stories to evolve in a child's mind from fantasy to inspiration to action. The emotional through-line for Laura/Logan needed to be Rain Man/Leon-like. Instead there's a lot of, sort-of, hanging around? Driving, sleeping, waking up (SO MUCH sleeping and waking up, because it feels like real life, I guess - more tonal witchcraft). And moments of bonding are sold by two things, really - perspective through an external agent (Prof. X and the family/its fate) and Hugh Jackman's insane ability to act with his face.
The action is great as individual set-pieces. I'm not so sure about overall. A common sentiment is that the movie was smart to show you it was going to be brutal through its first scene. But that's an era-specific reaction, and means nothing for function. It renders every single head impalement from that point on tepid, and is why the ending, despite its brutality, left me a little cold, and needed superb performances (Laura and the X on the grave, Logan's enigmatic line - one really shouldn't be debating what the hell he means by that!) to sell the muddied thematics of the action (Logan fighting himself, the manner of his alter-ego's fate). The hotel scene is good, but Laura's unveiling works best, because it doesn't waste time getting there. It's similar to the Rainmaker reveal in Looper, which is one of the best modern film scenes, period. Think of the build-up, and the cause-and-effect similarity to how the reveal occurs in Logan.
It is my contention that the vast majority of current episodic storytelling lacks the ability to compel episode by episode, as opposed to episode to episode.
I don't think the issue here is one of clarity. I think it's one of value. Not only do I recognize this, not only do I not mind this, I like this. That's not to say I like it more (or less). I simply like it too.
I read an essay once about how the cliched comparison of films to novels was wrong and that really it should be film-short story/TV-novel. If we're doing an aesthetic genealogy, TV was for a long time trying to be (like) film. Every 22-minute sitcom or 45-minute procedural or what have you would be its own little microcosm just like every film - and every short story - was its own self-contained entity. But TV started to expand the scope of its storytelling with novelistic ambitions. We've seen the transformations, one of which, it seems, has been the attempt by film now to try to be (like) TV and tell stories across "chapters" - like a novel.
Am I talking out of my ass (again) or does that hit some kind of nail somewhere close to its head?
Nowadays? This is one of the oldest cliches in the book. And, continuing my historical sage-style survey of the arts, I think nowadays it's more common than ever for the best not to be the first. You go to Spider-Man 2 a lot, not Spider Man; I go to The Dark Knight Rises, not Batman Begins; I think Iron Man 3 is the best of the bunch; anyone with a brain in their head should think Captain America is a piece of shit compared to The Winter Soldier (or even Civil War for that matter). Going back a little bit further, I think Scream 3 is the best in that franchise, I think Scary Movie 2 and Scary Movie 3 are better than Scary Movie, I think X2 is better than X-Men (and Logan is better than all of them, but we'll get to Logan soon enough ), and that's not even getting into TV, where I think it's rarer still for the first season to be the best.
But the very premise presupposes that reason isn't an ineliminable constituent of the emotions. It's a Platonic view that I reject on philosophical grounds. But that's not ground we need to waste time with today. But if you want to spend some time on that ground, just say the word.
What's happening now is an issue of assumed empathy. With the Marvel movies, I'm watching folks bend over backwards to explain why certain characters are saying/doing something, because writers assume viewers care enough already.
The interesting thing here - at least, it's interesting for me because I'd like to be able to account for it in the context of an objective aesthetics - is that you don't "care enough already" while I - and probably most other people - do. If it doesn't work for you but it works for me, does it or does it not in fact work?
With great drama, this isn't needed [...] The Russos just aren't good enough to have their cake and eat it too like that. QT/Mann/The Coens/Raimi/McTiernan/Cameron are.
Hmm. Pointing out equivocations/contradictions always smacks of pedantry and everyone hates it, so apologies at the start, but there seems to be an equivocation here. On the one hand, you set-up the "Marvel/Great Drama" binary and argue that, in great drama, one finds the opposite of what one finds in Marvel films, hence Marvel films aren't great. On the other hand, you say that in the films of Tarantino, Mann, the Coen Brothers, Raimi, McTiernan, Cameron - the filmmakers I gather are not just "great" but the best - one finds exactly what one finds in the Marvel films, just better.
So is it that the Marvel films are doing what they're doing poorly or is it that they shouldn't be doing what they're doing?
I can't remember too much about IM3 [...] but Paltrow dying while he's actually growing, is learning, does nothing but punish him for no narrative reason.
In the context of Iron Man 3 as it was told, Paltrow helps him learn. My argument is that, in the context of Iron Man 3 as it could have been - and, in my opinion should have been - told, Paltrow dying would've helped him learn. We're both emphasizing Tony's growth, but the way he allegedly grows in Iron Man 3 felt contrived, lazy, and weak to me, like after going 11 hard rounds Shane Black spent the last round pulling his punches.
The reason I advocate for his death in Ultron is because his conflict was different. He's turning megalomaniacal, and nobody is noticing except to make a joke now and then. Hell, one of them helps him create Ultron. His death, in that case, would allow the protagonists (the Avengers) to reassess their purpose.
The reason I don't like this is because implicit is the idea that Tony is beyond learning, beyond help, beyond saving. A hero incapable of seeing the error of his ways is no hero. That's why the redemption arc is such an enduring trope. For Tony to go out like that, ignominiously and with no (possibility for) redemption, would be out of place and (at least to my mind) needlessly harsh.
when a writer is propagating a point of view that deviates from the norm (eg. black people are policed more stringently because they have low moral fortitude), I believe a viewer should err on the side of sympathy for the perceived victim, and check the writer's conclusions rather than assume his/her non-expert view is correct. This would make it far less possible for the viewer to contribute to minimising the seriousness of sexual harassment. It happens to be the kinder thing to do to assume women aren't complaining for no reason.
But this is a key to the Sorkin style. He loves to find topics or issues where, at the point in time at which he's writing, the pendulum is way to one side, and then to write from that other side that currently seems so far away. He writes to people's consciences, often times trying to remind them of certain things they may have forgotten or that have gotten buried under other shit.
None of which is to deny any of what you're saying but which is rather to try, at the very least, to clarify his intentions, if not to validate them, as well.
Speaking of which, the whining that Sorkin perceives has its own hypothesis (literally called "the whiner hypothesis"), which has been thoroughly refuted.
From my sense of his writing, I think Sorkin is profoundly suspicious of the very notion of "progressive thought" and tends more often than not to be interested in detecting in that which is allegedly progressive shit that either blocks progress or promotes regress. And he'll always have my sympathy for that.
In general terms: First, I'm not conceding that your "Marvel film" is feigning depth. Second, despite my emphasis in my own work on authorship, I don't buy into the age-old auteur theory fallacy that "Film X is automatically superior to Film Y because Author X made Film X." The name on the film may get me to it, but as soon as the credits roll, there's going to need to be a hell of a lot more there for me than just that name.
I love Scorsese, and his name will eventually get me to Silence, but I just can't imagine there being anything else there past his name.
Damn it, now you've got me turned around. I quoted your discussion with Rimbaud. What other post are you referring to? Point me in the right direction and the multiquoting can commence.
Hell, I'm usually in rabbit holes talking to myself. If anyone ever dives in first, I'll always jump in after them, even if they eventually start wanting to climb back out just to get the hell away from me
Hey sweet Bullitt is back! I missed you buddy! It's been far to long since you last posted here. I hope you never leave [...] Jesus Christ why the hell are you even on here!? Do you have to assult us with these wrong opinions!? I hope you bury yourself in some closet and never come back!
Wow, you really liked Marked Woman, huh? @Flemmy Stardust always dug The Roaring Twenties more than I did, but I still think both G-Men and The Roaring Twenties are pretty far out in front of Marked Woman.
That said, I'm inspired to rewatch it now to test that.
Meh, this is where I start to sound like Ricky and say shit about how I can understand what you're saying and can see its presence all the while denying that it was effective in that particular form.
This may be me at my smallest and pettiest, but I'm going to tell this anyway. When I was home for the holidays, my friend and I were watching trailers for new shit. We'd both heard of but knew nothing about and hadn't seen any trailers for Manchester by the Sea, so we watched one. In the one we watched, they show that scene where Casey and the kid talk about "basement business." After the trailer, the first thing we both thought was, "What the fuck is basement business?" We figured it was pretty much what it sounded like, but given the name, we figured it had to have something to do with a basement.
So, I Googled it and I found an NPR interview transcript with the writer/director. At one point in the interview, they show a clip. The NPR guy asks the same thing, what the fuck is basement business. This is the exchange:
GROSS: What does basement business mean? Is that your phrase?
LONERGAN: (Laughter) I just made it up.
GROSS: I've never heard it before. You made that up?
LONERGAN: It means they're stuck in the basement and the mom could knock on the door at any moment, so there's not too much they can do. But I invented that myself.
GROSS: But they're actually upstairs in her bedroom.
LONERGAN: Yeah, well, you know, sometimes you don't always get to shoot in the room you thought you were going to shoot in. And anyway, basement business is alliterative and upstairs room business is not.
This literally hurts my brain. This fucking retard WROTE AND DIRECTED HIS OWN SHIT, in which HE INVENTED THE FUCKING PHRASE, and he couldn't have shot HIS SCENE in the movie HE MADE where HIS PHRASE appears in a fucking basement?
Fuck that moron and the movie in which such monumental idiocy is embedded.
Even before the retarded basement business shit, it looked really stupid to me. I hate Casey for one thing. For another, it just looks like one of those annoyingly sincere movies about people and shit happening to them that I'd never in a million years be able to even pretend to care about.
I think because of how much you like Shane I just assume you've seen every Alan Ladd movie ever made, but did you ever see their collaborations? This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, or The Blue Dahlia?
Hey do you know those types of movies that center around a duel between two awesome stars but unfortunately ends up being really bad? Those always sucks, don't they? Well fuck those movies because I watched Death Hunt with Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin motherfuckers!
Keeping up on the positive note, dear God All That Heaven Allows looked amazing. Those were some pretty colours. The only other Douglas Sirk movie I've seen is There's Always Tomorrow but I noticed his mastery of pristine visuals in that production too.
Now, I don't love superhero movies as much as you guys do so my standards are a lot lower, but I would even go a step further and say that Logan is the best superhero movie of all time (unless you count stuff like Dredd). Including all the Batman stuff.
I'm not going to fight you on the "Batman stuff" part. I'm curious, though, when you say "stuff like Dredd," what other stuff is there? What else would you put above Logan if you weren't worried about where to draw those comic book lines?
I think the differences are sort of more interesting than the similarities though. Shane really tries to integrate [...] Logan stays at arms-lenght at all times. He rejects the money but never plans to follow them to the promised land. He's to emotionally scared to even try to integrate into the community.
Remember when we talked about Shane and The Searchers sort of transforming the archetypal Western hero? With what you're saying here, this is where Logan is less like Shane and more like Ethan. Just a miserable, violent son of a bitch who is no longer of this world but who can, if he can manage to convince himself to tap back into that buried remnant of a human being, help those who are of this world.
The quote containing the words "Joey, there's no living with... with a killing. There's no going back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand. A brand sticks." Is a bit wonky for this film though. Shane saves Joey from becomming a man of violence himself (along with the rest of the valley I suppose). And he does so by doing the violence himself. The situation isn't really analogous in Logan since Laura kills a shitload of people herself. By Shane-logic, she already has the stamp. She's already a killer. So is the movie insinuating that she's going to grow up and become like Logan? But that seems particularly egregious since she seems to have a wholesome family-unit with the other kids, which would enable her to grow up and become an emotionally balanced and good human being. The specter of loneliness and violence doesn't seem to hang over Laura the way it did Logan at the end.
I think, from Logan's perspective, it's a "don't be like me" type deal. If you look at it from the nature/nurture angle, it's waffling a bit, but Logan fell into a deep anger that he couldn't pull himself out of, or that he couldn't pull out of himself. Laura still has a chance, though. She doesn't have to - although she could very easily - become Logan. I think Logan muddies the ethical waters more than Shane does; in the latter, the garden/desert antinomy is very strong and the purity of the former is as pure as it gets. In Logan, though, there's no question of any kind of purity. We're not dealing with a killing. It's more a kind of killing, or a kind of relation to killing. This is an almost hopelessly violent world, but the key is that it isn't hopeless. Laura still has a chance, but only if she holds on to her humanity and she doesn't let the violence consume her.
For me, I had a problem not with the inclusion of the Shane thematic and such allusive storytelling. Rather...
My problem was the way Laura's eulogy was just her parroting the dialogue from when her and Professor X were watching it. Because we, the viewers, know Shane, understand the themes at play, and can map the connections, the fact that it's playing on the TV means something to us. Does it - can it - actually mean anything to Laura? If it doesn't, what are we supposed to do with that? What's the takeaway? My initial reaction was of being struck by the disjunction between the thematic profundity and the diegetic emptiness.
Holding off on why Prof. X was hidden away, why Logan was helping him, and for some reason begrudgingly, was a mistake. When we do find out, it's farted out of a radio and incoherently at that. This is a bad idea.
Logan is right that the kids are hung-up on unrealistic comic books. What he doesn't get is that living meaningfully is about recognising that those stories are important to someone like Laura.
A common sentiment is that the movie was smart to show you it was going to be brutal through its first scene. But that's an era-specific reaction, and means nothing for function. It renders every single head impalement from that point on tepid, and is why the ending, despite its brutality, left me a little cold
Same thing I mentioned before: If it worked for me but didn't for you, did it work or didn't it?
Specifically, while it's undeniably an "era-specific reaction," even people binge-watching the X-Men franchise 20 years from now will likely have a very similar "Holy shit, this is different" reaction. Added to which, I cannot disagree strongly enough about the violence post-opening being "tepid." That shit was brutal beginning to end, man, and it was awesome.
I don't think the issue here is one of clarity. I think it's one of value. Not only do I recognize this, not only do I not mind this, I like this. That's not to say I like it more (or less). I simply like it too.
I read an essay once about how the cliched comparison of films to novels was wrong and that really it should be film-short story/TV-novel. If we're doing an aesthetic genealogy, TV was for a long time trying to be (like) film. Every 22-minute sitcom or 45-minute procedural or what have you would be its own little microcosm just like every film - and every short story - was its own self-contained entity. But TV started to expand the scope of its storytelling with novelistic ambitions. We've seen the transformations, one of which, it seems, has been the attempt by film now to try to be (like) TV and tell stories across "chapters" - like a novel.
Am I talking out of my ass (again) or does that hit some kind of nail somewhere close to its head?
I like this a lot. No you're not talking out of your ass. You're one of the few people I speak to about this that knows where I'm coming from. You just don't think it's a problem. And that's fine. I need the opposing view to grow.
I don't mind the idea either. I just know some writers manage to do both, and the more we favour serialisation, the less it's going to be important to remember some really fundamental rules about how to hold an audience's attention when you want to. I say it a lot, and I say it again. There's guys who can play you like a fiddle, and others who simply can't. The latter are the ones I'm beginning to see across the board.
The most significant effect I've noticed is audiences liking something because it feels right in a textural sense, as opposed to being legitimately challenged by material. And I'm starting to think it feeds into a kind of laziness on the part of filmmakers that aims to stimulate the pleasure centres of audiences. This is not the same thing as holding an audience's attention. It means making it easier to sit there without the burden of being truly engaged or forced to confront a truth.
What's wrong with this? A lot, I think. It's like eating fast food for every meal. And as excited as I am about tech, directors are thus using it towards these lesser aims. It's not a coincidence that colour palettes of movies are the same now. You want to portray darkness? Get that sepia filter on. You want to show two people fall in love? Make sure they're really really really good looking and that they flirt in pitch-perfect CGI locales for a few scenes, history be damned (this is one of the worst things to happen to romantic films ever, and it's fucking rampant).
I don't think Tarantino holds on to analog because he's a fetishist of some sort. He just knows that the more he whittles down his tools the more likely he'll be forced to use the ones he has in the right way to actually say something. And I don't think the Coens insist on Deakins for every film because of his name. They use him because of things like this:
“All I’ve ever wanted to do is take stills of people, or take documentaries about people, and try to express to an audience how somebody lives next door. You know what I mean? Just how similar we all are as individuals. I think I’m drawn to scripts that humanize people, that in some way help us understand who we are, that are about character, or character development, and man’s dilemma. And that does come into the Coen’s films. They may not be overtly political. But you take a film like The Man Who Wasn’t There, that’s a very interesting study of alienation, at least in my viewpoint, anyway.”
This is why the 70s is my favorite era. Almost every time I watch something new from back then it's trying something man. Often it'll fall flat. But by and large, the gritty thrillers are full of import. And the romances say something about the nature of love. And they're largely fun as fuck. Where they're seemingly boring to modern audiences, they're actually meditative (Two-Lane Blacktop).
I'll leave you with Scorsese:
"Cinema is gone. The cinema I grew up with and that I'm making, it's gone. The theatre will always be there for that communal experience, there's no doubt. But what kind of experience is it going to be? Is it always going to be a theme-park movie? I sound like an old man, which I am. The big screen for us in the '50s, you go from Westerns to 'Lawrence of Arabia' to the special experience of '2001' in 1968. The experience of seeing 'Vertigo' and 'The Searchers' in VistaVision."
“There’s over saturation, particularly in our world as it is now and nothing really does have a meaning.
Images for example are everywhere. Cinema used to be in a building and even on television, you’d see a film or whatever."
"I must say a lot of the films that I’m aware of…and I don’t see that many new ones over the past two or three years, I stopped because the images don’t mean anything."
And I'm really not the old man yelling at kids to get off my lawn. I watch all this new stuff. I've seen all the Marvel stuff and Star Wars films until maybe a few months ago. But the whole thing where they won't take a chance with a character or plot mechanics, it's part of all this shit.
But the very premise presupposes that reason isn't an ineliminable constituent of the emotions. It's a Platonic view that I reject on philosophical grounds. But that's not ground we need to waste time with today. But if you want to spend some time on that ground, just say the word.
I've completely forgotten what this was in reference to buddy. Sorry. If I can I will come back to it. If not, bring it up again somehow? I don't like leaving things un-argued. LOL.
The interesting thing here - at least, it's interesting for me because I'd like to be able to account for it in the context of an objective aesthetics - is that you don't "care enough already" while I - and probably most other people - do. If it doesn't work for you but it works for me, does it or does it not in fact work?
Please note that I don't lump you in necessarily with the average movie-goer when I say this:
My argument is that audiences are no longer invested in cinema to even want to "care enough already". Does that make sense? This is anecdotal, but it seems to be getting more and more important to get people into the classics earlier so they're over the tangible things that bother modern viewers normally - hokey acting, bad special effects, odd dubbing, black and white.
Assumed empathy means they're in the seats because they know they're going to get a minimum of something tonally to justify the time and money.
I don't think that you have that problem, honest. I think however, that when you like something tonally, you're more likely - because of your academic/analytical nature - to impart significance to certain things thematically than I am (and vice versa eg. Fury Road). Whereas I am more likely to, through the lens of function to say, "But that's not what they're trying to say, based on the cinematic language I'm seeing."
Hmm. Pointing out equivocations/contradictions always smacks of pedantry and everyone hates it, so apologies at the start, but there seems to be an equivocation here. On the one hand, you set-up the "Marvel/Great Drama" binary and argue that, in great drama, one finds the opposite of what one finds in Marvel films, hence Marvel films aren't great. On the other hand, you say that in the films of Tarantino, Mann, the Coen Brothers, Raimi, McTiernan, Cameron - the filmmakers I gather are not just "great" but the best - one finds exactly what one finds in the Marvel films, just better.
So is it that the Marvel films are doing what they're doing poorly or is it that they shouldn't be doing what they're doing?
I don't believe I said the Russos are "the opposite" of those guys.
As for your question, I'm not sure. I've never seen the Russos actually execute, but I think it has a lot to do with how they're in a tough spot. Killing off Robert Downey Jr. can't be an easy proposition to present to producers.
In the context of Iron Man 3 as it was told, Paltrow helps him learn. My argument is that, in the context of Iron Man 3 as it could have been - and, in my opinion should have been - told, Paltrow dying would've helped him learn. We're both emphasizing Tony's growth, but the way he allegedly grows in Iron Man 3 felt contrived, lazy, and weak to me, like after going 11 hard rounds Shane Black spent the last round pulling his punches.
The reason I don't like this is because implicit is the idea that Tony is beyond learning, beyond help, beyond saving. A hero incapable of seeing the error of his ways is no hero. That's why the redemption arc is such an enduring trope. For Tony to go out like that, ignominiously and with no (possibility for) redemption, would be out of place and (at least to my mind) needlessly harsh.
From my sense of his writing, I think Sorkin is profoundly suspicious of the very notion of "progressive thought" and tends more often than not to be interested in detecting in that which is allegedly progressive shit that either blocks progress or promotes regress. And he'll always have my sympathy for that.
I'm not sure it matters that he's suspicious of it if the evidence points in the opposite direction? Doesn't that mean he's coming from a place of emotion as opposed to reason? It makes him colour a scene so that his argument is presented more strongly, such as in the scene you sent me where Ainsley appears to have won the argument based on the tone of its conclusion. It's not attempting to approach truth when he does this, right?
In general terms: First, I'm not conceding that your "Marvel film" is feigning depth. Second, despite my emphasis in my own work on authorship, I don't buy into the age-old auteur theory fallacy that "Film X is automatically superior to Film Y because Author X made Film X." The name on the film may get me to it, but as soon as the credits roll, there's going to need to be a hell of a lot more there for me than just that name.
I love Scorsese, and his name will eventually get me to Silence, but I just can't imagine there being anything else there past his name.
Damn it, now you've got me turned around. I quoted your discussion with Rimbaud. What other post are you referring to? Point me in the right direction and the multiquoting can commence.
Man I was going to a million times. Just kept evading me. I also find that, despite my democratic approach to film, stage adaptations I find hard to get up for. Especially very faithful ones, because what ends up being important is performance, and I really don't care all that much about it.
Same thing I mentioned before: If it worked for me but didn't for you, did it work or didn't it?
Specifically, while it's undeniably an "era-specific reaction," even people binge-watching the X-Men franchise 20 years from now will likely have a very similar "Holy shit, this is different" reaction. Added to which, I cannot disagree strongly enough about the violence post-opening being "tepid." That shit was brutal beginning to end, man, and it was awesome.
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