Movie opinions thread (what have you seen, what did you think?)
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At one point I checked out the subreddit discussing the movie and all people were talking about was trying to decipher all the hidden codes in the movie. There was about a year's worth of back and forth until they worked out the symbols representing a set of coordinates that supposedly pointed to a spot in the middle of some national park. Then another 6 months or so of a couple people planning a 3 day hike to the spot, as if they were going to find rich people burying themselves there. Then a couple hilarious updates, as getting to the point required scaling some ridiculous cliff or something. And then... "There's nothing here, guys!" As if that was the point of the movie anyway.
Other than that, about a dozen different threads by first time posters who don't know how to use a search function all saying, "I think Andrew Garfield's character is the dog killer!" followed by a bunch of "Yeah, no shit" responses. Utterly worthless.
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Which do you like more - Brick or that movie?
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Brick. Although I wouldn't necessarilly argue it's a better movie.
oliverclaude
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Interesting that you imply internet... I feel like Fight Club's Tyler was the prototype of today's average internet persona: fueled by anonymity ("Who you were in fight club is not who you were in the rest of the world"), the broadly available cesspool of internet knowledge ("Tyler was full of useful information") and a topless Brad Pitt thumbnail of choice as your avatar ("All the ways you wish you could be, that's me"). All of that about ten years before being online became a natural habit - so In that context, I can see a lot of people still talking about the importance of Fight Club and, yeah, how highly quotable it is.
"A guy came to fight club for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood". So far the theory, but in practice, the outcome was Sam's hairy ass carved out of a web of bottomless news feeds, Tyler's evolution, his real gift to the world. Sure, he's less quotable than '99's Tyler, but that's Tyler AD 2021: an unquotable incel, all dressed-up in Lynchian-styled conspiracies. What's hiding behind the internet persona today doesn't do your laundry anymore, cook your food and serve your dinner. Doesn't guard you while you sleep or drive your ambulances. But that somebody sure is a step closer to hitting bottom, closer than Tyler ever was.
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Cant read those big paragraphs. Write in tweets.
oliverclaude
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Thanks for your reply @realevilwas! You suggested the internet, that
fits to what I think about Tyler being like someone's internet
persona today: an anonymous, superficial troll with an avatar
of all they wish they could be. Pretty ahead of time for '99.
imo @UTSL's Sam is what you'd find behind that avatar irl:
not a waiter or a clerk anymore like in @fightclub, just an
unemployed, scruffy and misogynic incel playing SMB.
#underthesilverlake #onlyasafavortoher #tyler2021
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Fight Club is a time capsule. It's still very visually striking (almost all Fincher movies are) and a few of its themes are still painfully relevant but its VERY much of its time and the fact that a lot of stupid people took away the wrong message from the movie makes it look like a joke long-term. All of Tyler's bullshit philosophizing was supposed to be cringy and embarrassing. He was a mental patient's superhero/cult leader alter-ego and all of the people that followed him were explicitly shown to be morons and meatheads.
Joe Bob Briggs showed Ginger Snaps this evening. The female puberty metaphor was always a little on-the-nose for my taste and some of the dialogue is, not unlike Fight Club, a relic of the late 90s. Still one of the better werewolf movies out there. Not that that's a super high bar.
Also showed Fried Barry which starts out like it's going to be a 90-minute Aphex Twin video made in South Africa but can't quite keep up the pace as it goes on. The title character is a junkie who gets abducted and then replaced by an alien clone and the movie is essentially the mute clone falling in to and out of weird situations in Cape Town. Won't give it all away but shit goes some places for the first half and then it just kind of peters out and becomes E.T. by the end. There are several stretches of the movie that easily could've just been 5 minute music videos complete with no dialogue, pumping bass-heavy electronic music and a lot of quick cuts and fish-eye lens faces. Don't know that I'd ever watch it again but it's definitely unique.
The best part of the movie honestly is the lead actor who looks like the unholy spawn of Peter Weller (bug eyes, gaunt face, walks around like Robocop half the movie) and Bruce Spence (character actor who played the Trainman from the Matrix sequels and a bunch of other stuff.... tall, gangly, weird hair, bad teeth). Dude just naturally looks like an alien trapped in a human's skin and his facial expressions are great. You just don't get people like that as your lead actor in movies much.
Joe Bob Briggs showed Ginger Snaps this evening. The female puberty metaphor was always a little on-the-nose for my taste and some of the dialogue is, not unlike Fight Club, a relic of the late 90s. Still one of the better werewolf movies out there. Not that that's a super high bar.
Also showed Fried Barry which starts out like it's going to be a 90-minute Aphex Twin video made in South Africa but can't quite keep up the pace as it goes on. The title character is a junkie who gets abducted and then replaced by an alien clone and the movie is essentially the mute clone falling in to and out of weird situations in Cape Town. Won't give it all away but shit goes some places for the first half and then it just kind of peters out and becomes E.T. by the end. There are several stretches of the movie that easily could've just been 5 minute music videos complete with no dialogue, pumping bass-heavy electronic music and a lot of quick cuts and fish-eye lens faces. Don't know that I'd ever watch it again but it's definitely unique.
The best part of the movie honestly is the lead actor who looks like the unholy spawn of Peter Weller (bug eyes, gaunt face, walks around like Robocop half the movie) and Bruce Spence (character actor who played the Trainman from the Matrix sequels and a bunch of other stuff.... tall, gangly, weird hair, bad teeth). Dude just naturally looks like an alien trapped in a human's skin and his facial expressions are great. You just don't get people like that as your lead actor in movies much.
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Paper Tigers was silly. Trailer made it look better than it was. Three washed up king fu students find out their sifu died and investigate it. Should have been so much more.
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You didn't get enough sleep last night.
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AAPI month.
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Once in a while, not often, M will actually watch one of the 100s of DVDs he buys:
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983, gah, almost 40 years since this was released!):
Classic British nonsense. Some bits are better than others, but good overall (I liked the liver "donation", Roman Catholic guy with dozens of children "sperm is sacred" musical number, sex education class instructor with a literal demonstration on his wife, leaf suicide animation, and the fat dude who wouldn't stop projectile vomiting in the restaurant until he exploded, etc.) An old business building being used as a pirate ship to attack skyscrapers in the USA (and then sail off the edge of our flat world) was a bizarre concept/visual. The film got several involuntary laughs out of me and I'm not much of a laugher. I also rewatched the scene with the convicted criminal being chased to his death off a cliff by an army of topless women, multiple times, for scientific purposes (much better than our sacred Trumpster Fire GIF). I suspect a bit of the humor in some of the sketches may be lost on me since I'm not English and don't get all of the cultural references (boarding schools, actor/actress names, etc.) 9/10 stars.
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983, gah, almost 40 years since this was released!):
Classic British nonsense. Some bits are better than others, but good overall (I liked the liver "donation", Roman Catholic guy with dozens of children "sperm is sacred" musical number, sex education class instructor with a literal demonstration on his wife, leaf suicide animation, and the fat dude who wouldn't stop projectile vomiting in the restaurant until he exploded, etc.) An old business building being used as a pirate ship to attack skyscrapers in the USA (and then sail off the edge of our flat world) was a bizarre concept/visual. The film got several involuntary laughs out of me and I'm not much of a laugher. I also rewatched the scene with the convicted criminal being chased to his death off a cliff by an army of topless women, multiple times, for scientific purposes (much better than our sacred Trumpster Fire GIF). I suspect a bit of the humor in some of the sketches may be lost on me since I'm not English and don't get all of the cultural references (boarding schools, actor/actress names, etc.) 9/10 stars.
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About time you watched a decent movie.
Meaning of Life is great but Life of Brian is probably my favorite. I saw The Holy Grail at one of those interactive screenings once which I thought would be fun but it was god awful. Imagine an entire theater full of the nerds from the Simpsons episode where Homer goes to college reciting every single line in unison.
Still love the movie though.
I feel like Monty Python is a nerd thing of the past though which is a shame.
Meaning of Life is great but Life of Brian is probably my favorite. I saw The Holy Grail at one of those interactive screenings once which I thought would be fun but it was god awful. Imagine an entire theater full of the nerds from the Simpsons episode where Homer goes to college reciting every single line in unison.
Still love the movie though.
I feel like Monty Python is a nerd thing of the past though which is a shame.
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Mel Brooks movies > Monty Python
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History of the World > Life of Brian
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I used to make my dad rent Spaceballs every week from Blockbuster when I was a kid until he finally bought me my own VHS tape. Then I got it on DVD, then I got it on Laserdisc because ridiculous movies deserve a ridiculous movie format. Then I bought it on Blu Ray, and just today I read that it got released on 4K Blu Ray last month. Straight to Amazon, ordered that shit.
Mai_Lover
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At the space diner, you can see the Millennium Falcon parked outside.
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You kind of lost me at Amazon though. 4kBR and LD I understand. Next level after that is the original reel.
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Nah, I'll just wait until 8K discs are a thing.
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Missed the FIGHT CLUB discussion. I actualy like this movie as something to put in before I go to sleep (to fall asleep to) .
I do not think it's a good movie, but I do think its a wonderful piece of late 90s pop art. Chuck is a pretentious writer, not a fan. I think the movie did the whole concept of Fighr Club better justice than the Trent Reznor Monologue source material. I think this is one of Brad Pitt's best roles. I think it's a great commentary on the often disturbingly homo-aggressive cringe factor of the modern male who so desperately wishes he was cool and tough.
Sadly, as others have said, the movie was interpreted as SOUL POETRY by the exact people it was mocking, and the directive and cinematic decisions were very dumb at times, not exactly the most solid thing, but something I consider a good quality bedtime 90s pop movie, along with Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, and Gregg Araki's Teen Apocolypse trilogy.
I do not think it's a good movie, but I do think its a wonderful piece of late 90s pop art. Chuck is a pretentious writer, not a fan. I think the movie did the whole concept of Fighr Club better justice than the Trent Reznor Monologue source material. I think this is one of Brad Pitt's best roles. I think it's a great commentary on the often disturbingly homo-aggressive cringe factor of the modern male who so desperately wishes he was cool and tough.
Sadly, as others have said, the movie was interpreted as SOUL POETRY by the exact people it was mocking, and the directive and cinematic decisions were very dumb at times, not exactly the most solid thing, but something I consider a good quality bedtime 90s pop movie, along with Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, and Gregg Araki's Teen Apocolypse trilogy.