SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: WEEK 114: Coherence

[Yotsuya]

Nice watch! Whole movie had a fresh feel. I got the impression, that script was bluffing it’s way through many of its twists, but I’ll try to read some theories tomorrow.

 

[MusterX]

Nice watch! Whole movie had a fresh feel. I got the impression, that script was bluffing it’s way through many of its twists, but I’ll try to read some theories tomorrow.

Well there was no script.....so in a way you are correct. The actors were skilled in improvisation and were given a set of plot points each day to get to but they were allowed to get there through improvisation. The fact this film was made with no real script and only 50,000 dollars is incredible.

 

[MusterX]

This is my first week in the club and my first movie so i hate to be negative but i just did not like this film at all. It started off like a worse version of cloverfield and just got more convoluted and dull.
I'm not going to waste peoples time being negative, this just really was not to my taste, no disrespect to the OP....also i chose this film too before i found out i was ineligable to vote, it sounded good..

You can't compare it to Cloverfield. Coherence had a budget of 50 thousand dollars, Cloverfield was a 25 million dollar movie. People liked Cloverfied. IMDb gave it 7/10, Rotten Tomatoes 77%, Meta gave it a 64. Likewise though, and for much less money, Coherence was well received with an IMDb of 7.2/10, Rotten Tomatoes 88%, and Metacritic 65.

So both were good movies but not to your taste. I can respect that but I got my eye on you now. I have to figure out what your taste in films is.

 

[MusterX]

Interesting movie, I like all of the theory behind it.. and I also love physics. So all of the explanations above are all happy for me to read. I enjoy it. Cool movie, but a little strange at times. I think 6/10.

Super strange and impossible to nail down with one theory. There was a lot going on even when it seemed like there wasn't. I think its borderline brilliant to take quantum mechanics and then make a movie about it with no script. Its almost like a film made by chaos theory.

Chaos theory
Chaos theory is the field of study in mathematics that studies the behavior and condition of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions—a response popularly referred to as the butterfly effect.

The director supplied plot points to the improvisational actors and it almost becomes like a butterfly effect as each actor tries to build toward those initial plot points. Similar to the movie The Butterfly Effect with Ashton Kutcher we see a protagonist that is trying to alter something bad that happened in the past.

 

[Deus Ex Machina]

You can't compare it to Cloverfield. Coherence had a budget of 50 thousand dollars, Cloverfield was a 25 million dollar movie. People liked Cloverfied. IMDb gave it 7/10, Rotten Tomatoes 77%, Meta gave it a 64. Likewise though, and for much less money, Coherence was well received with an IMDb of 7.2/10, Rotten Tomatoes 88%, and Metacritic 65.

So both were good movies but not to your taste. I can respect that but I got my eye on you now. I have to figure out what your taste in films is.

I actually really liked cloverfield until they showed the monster...i always thought it was like being on ground level during a godzilla film..sadly the shit monster ruined it.

I am not comparing effects etc with cloverfield, your point on budget etc is fair, but i feel that around this time there were a lot of 'dinner party gone weird' films and coherence was just not outstanding in any way.

Oh yeah, you will never pin down my taste in films, even i don't understand it. I love all manner of film, from highbrow to trash, as long as a film has something interesting about it i'll watch it.

 

[Agent Mulder's Hair]

This is one of my favorite movies ever. Felt like a modern Twilight Zone episode.

 

[MusterX]

This is one of my favorite movies ever. Felt like a modern Twilight Zone episode.

I said at the beginning of this thread I felt Coherence was one of the most thought provoking films of the last decade and I'm sticking by that. What was accomplished for 50 grand here is amazing especially considering Hollywood often fails to produce using millions of dollars.

 

[Agent Mulder's Hair]

I said at the beginning of this thread I felt Coherence was one of the most thought provoking films of the last decade and I'm sticking by that. What was accomplished for 50 grand here is amazing especially considering Hollywood often fails to produce using millions of dollars.

I think people overlook a LOT of things going on the movie. There are layers upon layers upon layers. It's absolutely brilliant. And entertaining as well. It's seriously in my top favorite movies of all time. Easily.

I wish the director would come out with something else. Dude's got talent.

 

[Yotsuya]

Well there was no script.....so in a way you are correct. The actors were skilled in improvisation and were given a set of plot points each day to get to but they were allowed to get there through improvisation. The fact this film was made with no real script and only 50,000 dollars is incredible.

By script I meant the drafted plotline, but I’m not sure what that means exactly in this case. I skimmed through some comments before watching, so I knew there was a lot of improvisation, but I did not realize the extent. Cool project and no wonder it felt so fresh. Four pages quantum physics talk made me expect a very tight premise, but instead I got a movie in which the drama and mood were in very good coherence.

 

[MusterX]

By script I meant the drafted plotline, but I’m not sure what that means exactly in thais case. I skimmed through some comments before watching, so I knew there was a lot of improvisation, but I did not realize the extent. Cool project and no wonder it felt so fresh. Four pages quantum physics talk made me expect a very tight premise, but instead I got a movie in which the drama and mood were in very good coherence.

Understanding why the characters did what they did is pretty easy, especially with Emily and Mike. Emily was obsessed with changing the past in which her life was taken from her, or her presumed life. She couldn't accept that it was her play, and she was the lead, and it was taken away and some "lesser person" got famous on it while she faded away. I'm not sure if that envy or anger or some other emotion but she suffered from it even at the beginning of the movie when it was brought up in the dinner scene she got that resting bitch face afterwards that lets you know a woman is not happy.

Mike was obviously self loathing. He was a recovering alcoholic and the only thing he could think of to do when dimensions are turning inside out is to go and kick his own ass. In fact it was so much a part of who he was that we saw that play out multiple time in multiple houses, always Mike wanting to do self harm. He banged his friends wife, he just was not the type of person you want to deal with but when we first see him he is the one throwing the dinner party and appears to have his shit together. It was his fear of going back to drinking that caused all his inner turmoil.

 

[Yotsuya]

Damn, no way I'll have time to read all those comments. From now on I really need to try to watch the movies at first day. I agree with some comments, that there were pretty annoying stuff in the plot at times, but it all kind of melted together when it was revealed, that there are 5.000.000+ realities interacting. Maybe the story just followed some of the most ridiculous ("You banged my wife in all possible realities!!!") and smart (alternates who figured out right away what was happening and came up with photograph box + random object idea while others were still in total wtf state) varieties.

 

[Yotsuya]

Understanding why the characters did what they did is pretty easy, especially with Emily and Mike. Emily was obsessed with changing the past in which her life was taken from her, or her presumed life. She couldn't accept that it was her play, and she was the lead, and it was taken away and some "lesser person" got famous on it while she faded away. I'm not sure if that envy or anger or some other emotion but she suffered from it even at the beginning of the movie when it was brought up in the dinner scene she got that resting bitch face afterwards that lets you know a woman is not happy.

Mike was obviously self loathing. He was a recovering alcoholic and the only thing he could think of to do when dimensions are turning inside out is to go and kick his own ass. In fact it was so much a part of who he was that we saw that play out multiple time in multiple houses, always Mike wanting to do self harm. He banged his friends wife, he just was not the type of person you want to deal with but when we first see him he is the one throwing the dinner party and appears to have his shit together. It was his fear of going back to drinking that caused all his inner turmoil.

Heh, it's not quite Mulholland Drive, but definitetly good stuff for improvised 50k production!

 

[MusterX]

Heh, it's not quite Mulholland Drive, but definitetly good stuff for improvised 50k production!

Interesting you bring up Mulholland, which was another one of my movies that the club watched. We had a really involved discussion about that one. I believe that its Lynch's Magnum Opus, its Lynch at his peak and may be the best film of the 2000's.

 

[Yotsuya]

Interesting you bring up Mulholland, which was another one of my movies that the club watched. We had a really involved discussion about that one. I believe that its Lynch's Magnum Opus, its Lynch at his peak and may be the best film of the 2000's.

Lynch's best for sure. TOP-10 film of the 2000's easy.

 

[MusterX]

Damn, no way I'll have time to read all those comments. From now on I really need to try to watch the movies at first day. I agree with some comments, that there were pretty annoying stuff in the plot at times, but it all kind of melted together when it was revealed, that there are 5.000.000+ realities interacting. Maybe the story just followed some of the most ridiculous ("You banged my wife in all possible realities!!!") and smart (alternates who figured out right away what was happening and came up with photograph box + random object idea while others were still in total wtf state) varieties.

Right, a roulette wheel of possibilities but like a bubble, only affecting that group of people. There may have been millions or billions of other bubbles with different people but we were looking in on the same group. I'm not even convinced there were other full standing realities with those "other people." It may have just been all the various possibilities that ones life could take and they were seeing what those other possibilities were like. I don't know.

Obviously Mike was a reformed screw up who didn't want to lose the life he had, and Emily was the opposite, she desperately wanted a different life. I think those two characters are the main ones and that is why it was Emily trying to explain to Mike what was happening. Mike liked his life, he was an actor, he didn't drink anymore, and he had a good woman who loved him. Emily had nothing, or at least in her perception of things she had been robbed. Interestingly though is that both sort of come to ruin in the end. What does that say? Is it commentary on how tenuous life really is? That good or bad can end or begin in an instant?

 

[the muntjac]

This is my first week in the club and my first movie so i hate to be negative but i just did not like this film at all. It started off like a worse version of cloverfield and just got more convoluted and dull.
I'm not going to waste peoples time being negative, this just really was not to my taste, no disrespect to the OP....also i chose this film too before i found out i was ineligable to vote, it sounded good..

Meh, don't sweat it. The worst thing you could do is be disingenuous with your review. If you don't like something, then do tell us all about it.

One of the first few films we watched when I joined was Sound of My Voice, and it was another one of these mind-bender mystery type movies. I didn't like it at all, and I proceeded to shit all over it. Heck, even my first movie in the club was Vertigo, a Hitchcock classic, and I was lukewarm about it. So, basically right out of the gate, I wasn't throwing around good reviews.

My point is, as long as you're civil with your discussion, don't worry about giving something a negative review.

 

[the muntjac]

Btw, where the heck is @Tufts? Did she fall off that castle?

 

[MusterX]

Meh, don't sweat it. The worst thing you could do is be disingenuous with your review. If you don't like something, then do tell us all about it.

One of the first few films we watched when I joined was Sound of My Voice, and it was another one of these mind-bender mystery type movies. I didn't like it at all, and I proceeded to shit all over it. Heck, even my first movie in the club was Vertigo, a Hitchcock classic, and I was lukewarm about it. So, basically right out of the gate, I wasn't throwing around good reviews.

My point is, as long as you're civil with your discussion, don't worry about giving something a negative review.

I've been with the club since week 1 and there are a few things I've learned about nominating films.

1. The films have to be relative in strength to one another or you will have 1 movie that is obviously better than the other three and the voting will not be competitive.

2. Selecting movies that everyone has already seen is no fun for anyone so its best to select movies that are more obscure, but then the rub on that is it is tough finding good movies that people generally have not seen.

3. Run time matters. You can get a long run time movie to win, I did with Mullholand Drive, but it can also make people not want to vote for the film that is 2.5 hours long.

4. Not all movies spawn discussion. If you want good discussion then you have just added another layer of difficulty when nominating films.

In other words, not all weeks are equal around here and it takes some time to really home in on your personal methods of selection.

 

[MusterX]

Btw, where the heck is @Tufts? Did she fall off that castle?

Tufts may be in transit from one country to another and recovering from an overseas trip, I have no idea. Or maybe dropped off and will never be heard from again. Sometimes I wonder about people that disappear on the internet. We always think they cancelled their account or whatever but sometimes they get hit by a dump truck.

 

[Deus Ex Machina]

I've been with the club since week 1 and there are a few things I've learned about nominating films.

1. The films have to be relative in strength to one another or you will have 1 movie that is obviously better than the other three and the voting will not be competitive.

2. Selecting movies that everyone has already seen is no fun for anyone so its best to select movies that are more obscure, but then the rub on that is it is tough finding good movies that people generally have not seen.

3. Run time matters. You can get a long run time movie to win, I did with Mullholand Drive, but it can also make people not want to vote for the film that is 2.5 hours long.

4. Not all movies spawn discussion. If you want good discussion then you have just added another layer of difficulty when nominating films.

In other words, not all weeks are equal around here and it takes some time to really home in on your personal methods of selection.

Yep, you definately can't please everyone, though my first week selecting could well unite the group....albeit in hatred lol.