Arrival
Selfish sack of shit sees into the future, where her and that Marvel dude have a kid, only for her (the kid) to die slowly of cancer. “BuT i HaVe ThE mEmOrIeS!¡”, and you tortured an innocent child who didn’t have to exist because YOU FUCKING KNEW SHE WAS GOING TO DIE OF CANCER, YOU BITCH!
Strongly suggest you read the “story of your life”, it’s freely available on the Internet (or check it out from your local library!)
It doesn’t add terribly much, but there is a little bit of clarity/another perspective on the mechanics of the aliens, it’s similar to certain characters from dirk gentlys holistic detective agency.
The movie uses the bootstrap paradox model of time travel: there is only one timeline, and events can’t be changed, because any attempt to change the timeline had already happened. She only was able to see her child’s future because the child was born. If she had made a different decision in the future, she would never have seen the visions in the past.
See also: Terminator 1 (not the sequels,) Predestination, 12 Monkeys, Tenet
The ending to 12 Monkeys is my favorite time travel movie ending ever.
I thought the point was the inevitability of it all. She could see it, but couldn’t change a thing. At least that’s how I perceived it at the time. Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
There was a line towards the end: D: “Why did Dad leave?” M: “He said I ‘made the wrong choice’”
My interpretation was that she could have prevented it, but chose not to.
So I’ve read the short story it’s based on several times (The Story of your Life by Ted Chiang) and it’s more explicit about how it works. It’s only possible to comprehend Heptapod writing if you can think like they can. Likewise learning their language also helps you think like them, which is also pretty true about real languages
Heptapods do not have a linear observation of time. They observe their entire life simultaneously. However that doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in free will or choice. They come to Earth because they know at some point in the future the humans will be important. Amy Adams’ character in learning Heptapod also learns to view time non-linearly. It’s not permanent and tends to come and go the more immersed she is in the language. That’s how she knows the secret phone number to call the Chinese general, that’s how she knows what will happen to her daughter, and her marriage. However since she knows it like a Heptapod does, she has no desire to change it. Like how Abbott doesn’t try to stop his own death
I think it is seeing time as the result of the free will, and acknowledging that the decisions that will be made are those that you will make at that point in time, not that some external force predetermined what your choice would be. So time is still linear, but it is linear based on the decisions you will make that you experience simultaneously with decisions made at other times that might not be the same because of free will.
She chose of her own free will with the context of knowing how it would play out. She couldn’t change the future any more than she could change the past, because she was experiencing both at the same time.
I have the same objections, but I still think it’s an excellent movie. I like how they made first contact feel authentically weird, and didn’t try to turn it into a special effects extravaganza.
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AI. I found it hollow and depressing.
I think I got about 2 minutes into Forrest Gump before I had to turn it off. Cannot stand that fake accent Tom Hanks has in that movie. And yes, that’s a hill I will die on.
Forrest Gump is super racist revisionist history, where a low-IQ white male accidentally causes all sorts of large political and social historical events that were actually initiated by black people in real life. Plus there’s a ton of other messed up sexist/racist portrayals throughout the film. It’s a pretty awful film. And it stole the Oscar from Shawshank Redemption!
I thought it was pretty great, and still do. But Shawshank was better, no argument from me. A great year of movies.
Same here … as a story it also feeds that false mentality of “you can do anything as long as you try”
It’s a work of fiction that everyone knows is fiction but they really really really want it to be true, even though it is so far removed from reality.
Citizen Kane is a horrible, boring movie.
It was his sled. It was his sled from when he was a kid. There, I just saved you two, long, boobless hours.
I get this reference
I agree. I had to watch it for a film class in college. So boring. It maybe was good in its time, but terrible in the early 2000s.
I don’t think that’s a particularly new take. Lots of people find it boring, but recognize its importance because it’s the first place you ever see a ton of filmmaking techniques that are considered standard today. Welles basically invented modern filmmaking with Citizen Kane.
That’s the thing. Citizen Kane was a fantastic, groundbreaking film. So innovative that bits and pieces were copied and remixed over and over until they became trite and predictable. Now it just seems trite and predictable.
TV Tropes used to call this the Seinfeld is Unfunny effect, but has since renamed it to Once Original, Now Common.
The basic idea being that things that are groundbreaking at the time eventually become copied so much that people looking at the original don’t understand why it was such a big deal. My favorite examples are The Matrix (absolutely blew my mind in the theaters, but my kids think it’s just ok) and Golden Eye for the Nintendo 64 (I couldn’t believe how incredible it was to zoom in with a sniper rifle and see people moving on the other side of the map, but playing it today it looks laughably bad).
For me it’s David Letterman. What he did was wild in the early eighties until others emulated him. History always needs to be viewed in context
The Dark Knight
You didn’t get it… It was about sending a message
Your favourite movie is absolute garbage and is only liked by tasteless philistines. The plot is obvious, the actors are hamming it, the direction is bland, and everything looks fake and pompous.
My favourite movie, on the other hand, is a masterpiece with a clever scenario, excellent and subtle acting, a work of genius by the director and the technical team. And one of the best soundtracks, too (it’s Universal Soldier)
Dude I’ve all but forgotten about this. For whatever reason, I loved this movie when I was younger. I also got it constantly mixed up with another similar movie that came out around the same time like Hollywood enjoys doing, but enjoyed Universal Soldier more.
You really have to love the fact that people are getting downvoted in this thread for their own fucking opinion…
OPPENHEIMER
Oh god same! I genuinely don’t understand all of the hype it’s gotten!
Honestly this is pretty much every Christopher Nolan movie for me. I’ve seen most of them and they range from meh to okay. I’m extremely confused as to why he’s so popular and respected.
He tends to make the audience feel clever (even though you dont need to be) and he makes studios a ton of money.
Yup, also I laughed at the scene near the end where Einstein just appeard on the lawn with a book in his pajamas. No one else laughed. So that wasn’t awkward or anything.
The longer I wait to see it the more likely it is to actually be good, I just can’t imagine it being good.
Turned it off after 45 minutes, it felt so artificial and pretentious. I mostly enjoyed his other films.
I liked it. But I’m surprised it’s gotten all of the accolades that it has.
Barbie.
I’m a woman and a feminist. I’m a fan of Greta, and of everyone they cast in that movie.
I was bored for most of it. The parts that were meant to be poignant, I thought completely missed the mark. It was a waste of an opportunity.
I don’t understand the hype. Margot is a gem, one of our exports I’m actually impressed by, and I think her unfailing charm won a lot of people over to this. I think most of us would happily watch Margot read the phone book.
But I found the movie to be dull and shallow in its attempts for depth.
I feel bad because most of my female friends really hold it up as something I don’t think it is. I keep my mouth shut.
I was in the same page as you, but I think I understood it at the very end, literally at the last scene. I understood that the message is something along the lines of “women should be allowed to be just women, without anything remarkable about them”. It kinda just tries to make that point, right? Women are just people. They are not objects, nor super heroes. They don’t need to be special.
The main goal of feminism is equality right? Well, women today are asked to be a lot of things that men are not asked to, to be exceptional, to break their chains, and fight. To be better than they are now, to change and fight back. And all that is exhausting, sometimes you just need to go to your ginecologist, not change the world. And that brings you happiness and fulfillment. Leave women to be whatever they want to be, don’t put on them YOUR expectations, let them be free. Stop telling women how they should live their lives, let them pick whatever they want. They are just humans. Men are allowed to be regular humans with flaws and virtue, women are not.
I think that’s the message, or I completely missed the point there lol. I don’t think it’s not deep. You could argue that maybe it’s a message a little dangerous, sure. A very individualistic message, even alienating, but what would you expect from something financed by capitalists. The revolution will not be televised. Personally, I found it a little refreshing, sometimes it feels like we are changing one social mandate for another, but in the end we cannot choose freely anyways, just obey. I gave me one or two thing to think about.
Those messages came through to a degree (good write up by the way) but to my mind they didn’t go far enough. Then the comedy was so light touch too.
It all just felt like a first draft of something that might have been hilarious, entertaining and thought provoking. But didn’t land any of those things well. So I thought, couldn’t it have picked one of the 3 and done then well?
When the credits rolled I just said ‘k’. Because I didn’t really take anything away from it. Even without the hype for months, my expectation was built more by the cast and director. So I was just disappointed. I wasn’t even entertained.
Oh, I’m totally with you there, there were about 2 or 3 jokes that I enjoyed, and every thing else was kinda bland. I think I was overhyped.
I’m not sure if was meant to be “deep”, I think it was meant to be a bit satirical and a lot of tongue in cheek. I don’t think they were setting out to make a masterpiece, but a sharp take on mid life crisis and societys demands of women, including the monotinization of their escapism driven by corporate (men) stooges.
I’m not sure what opportunity was missed in a movie about capitalism utopia as portrayed by glamour dolls.
I’m not sure what opportunity was missed in a movie about capitalism utopia as portrayed by glamour dolls.
Set ups for the punchlines that seemed to come out of nowhere, even a hint as to why having Barbieland go back to a matriarchy was better than something balanced to follow up on the whole Kens being second class citizens. Not that I wanted to spend more time on the Kens, just like a line or two that addresses the weird situation that they explicitly set up.
The movie became a culture war wedge issue, you just couldn’t have an intelligent discourse about it in movie critic terms.
It had some good parts, but the ending kinda felt like everyone just boxing up their genders again as the status quo instead of being a society that valued people for more than just their genitals. I kept waiting for the part where they realized equality was what they should strive for to help lead the human world in the best direction.
The queer-coded Allen felt a bit on the nose for 2023, too. I liked parts of it, but it felt very…20th-century feminist and straight to appeal to larger audiences.
I think the part with Margot and the grandmotherly lady at the bus stop was my favorite part. Peaceful, sweet, and exactly where the movie felt like it was heading in a good direction (in addition to the heaven and tearoom scenes). The musical parts were a great reminder of the movies from long ago, and also a great step in the right direction.
I liked Allen so much. Only cool character that isnt overacting
I’m a man but have the same take, excited about everyone involved and the themes and the style, but it just kind of limped its way through the stereotypical story with a lot of preaching at the audience. My wife actively hated it and didn’t even finish it, bailing out when the mom went on her rant about how unfair everything is which was true but executed really badly.
I did really enjoy Kate’s Crazy Barbie or whatever. If the rest of the film had that kind of nuance and comedic timing it would have been fantastic.
The Lighthouse
There’s a difference between being subtle, metaphorical, and artistic vs. being boring, confusing and inexplicable. Also, the dripping cum was just gross.
It’s like a few influential “smart” people claimed to like it, and everyone else just jumped on the bandwagon.
I enjoyed it for its ferocity. I think there was a parallel to be drawn with lighthouses - as the viewer you’re being assailed by relentless waves breaking against you.
Not everyone’s cup of tea no doubt. But I thought it was good. Muttered wtf a few times while watching it but I think I’ll probably watch it again.
Molly’s Game. I feel like it had a massive case of unintentionally unreliable narrator with none of the upside of intentionally doing that.
Donnie darko
Fifth element
Inter stellar
Don’t look up
Can’t stand any of them, I’m pretty sure there’s a connective thread, but it’s a bit winding and knotted.
Godfather. Omg so boring. I fell asleep every time i tried to watch it
I never understood the boring argument, and I’ve read it quite a bit online. Every scene has a ton going on.
It starts with a banger wedding outside while the don hears about somebody’s daughter being savagely raped. Theres also a short conversation about Fontaine and the movie exec being a dick. Bam, hagen is in Hollywood. You wonder what the family has up their sleeve, bam horse decapitated head in the bed.
Business meeting about drugs, sonny goofs, wonder how that will go - assassination attempt. Hagen held captive. Luca sleeps with the fishes. Don in hospital, another assassination attempt thwarted, scene full of tension the entire time.
Michael decides he’s in the business now, they plan the attack, then bam middle of the movie you have an incredibly long tense scene of a drive and dinner that you know is going to end in violence.
I mean all of that is just in the first half of the movie. It’s buildup action buildup action repeat. This is not some slow character study alone… It’s a master class of character study with plot plot plot.
It’s almost ridiculous how much plot there is to be honest. After all of the above there’s Carlo abusing Connie and sonny beating the shit out of him. There’s Carlo doing it a second time as a trap and sonny getting fucking annihilated by gunfire. Michael escapes to Sicily, gets married, and his wife is murdered in a car bomb meant for him.
The cherry on top is Michael murdering the heads of the other families in one of the best climaxes of all time
Sorry for the rant. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. I just don’t understand the boring argument, this is not a slow movie lol
I feel the same way about the Bourne Supremacy (or whatever the second Bourne movie was). I paid to see it in theatre twice and both times I fell asleep about halfway through. Tried watching it at home much later when it was on HBO or something and fell asleep at the same part. It literally just puts me to sleep 🤷🏻♂️
M3gan and Cocaine Bear
I found cocaine bear interesting on a vfx level, otherwise dumb comedy, nothing really in terms of story
I really wanted those movies to be stupider.
Lord of the rings. Over the years i tried watching it again and again but i either fall asleep of stop caring and do something else halfway through.
Not to be that guy, but are you watching the extended editions? I used to also not enjoy the movies until I gave the extended editions a chance. Much better pacing
Just saw the extended edition. I can’t see what people enjoy about it. The dialogue is sharp but the story is abysmal.
I always thought the theatrical editions would be easier for first-timers, but I’ve never tested that theory. Interesting to hear that you felt the opposite.
Thoughts on the books? (if you’ve read them)
I’ve tried reading the books twice and watching the films once. They’re just so fucking long.
(I’ve read lots of books with a similar number of pages without thinking they’re too long, and smaller books that I’ve also got bored of)
