Fuck this episode for making me rewind to check her hand and then not showing both her hands.
Well the game just got 64% less interesting without Cam in the house.
I really can not stand Hisam.
Margot Robbie is a gift to cinema. This movie is a gift to our society. It's enjoyable and fun but part way through it become a pretty good commentary on our society and how men and women treat each other. It talks about capitalism, consumerism, feminism, the patriarchy, men's mental health, and how wrong we get the simple act of living sometimes. I'm sure there's gonna be people who think this is ultra woke, but maybe (and ironically), that's some people need.
We are moving on from Succession into this?
I don't know what this show wants to be, satire or erotic thriller? It was so all over the place that made me confused about what I was watching. This show is like Sam Levinson hitting back at his critics (mocking the intimacy coordinator, portrayal of sex, drugs, etc.) for negative reviews for content he created in the past. Levinson is one of those directors who fancy themselves as provocative when in truth they have nothing original to say and use graphic content to distract viewers from that fact.
The show is just dull and boring. I feel like it thinks it’s more edgy than it is. Is anyone really shocked my nudity anymore?
The acting is so wooden and everyone just seems a bit surface level. The Weeknd has no charisma. You can’t see why Jocelyn is so attracted to him and let’s him do what he wants. And why did they give him the worst hairstyle imaginable? I’m surprised some people liked Lily’s acting. She is not that terrible but she’s just trying too hard with her expressions.Jocelyn and Tedros have all the chemistry of oil and water, and their relationship was given not even 60 seconds to develop. Jocelyn's song was painfully bad, it sounds like they came up with the melody first and then had an AI write the lyrics.
The dialogues are just edgy and trying to go for shock value every second. You can tell this show is written by a male that watches way too much porn.
and that’s why she’s mother!
Ends on cliff hanger. Starts new ep. 5 minutes in its good. next 40 minutes its quite disappointing. Ends on cliff hanger. Repeat.
I went for the laughs and left the movie theater with an existential crisis. I loved it <3
[9.5/10] Is Susie Myerson a friend to the people in her life, or just a mercenary business woman? In the far off, distant year of 1990, combined roast/testimonial by the famed Friar’s Club suggests it’s the latter. The jokes are about her being tough as nails. The stories are about her being a Machiavellian (and persistent) bullshitter and ballbreaker. She’s being championed for these things, even as she’s being softly slated for them, and hearing her whole life’s professional accomplishments laid out in lionizing yet debasing detail seems to lead to nothing but disinterest from the now veteran entertainment legend.
The roast is a fun device. Not only does it allow the producers to bring back Gilmore Girls vets like Sean Gunn and Danny Strong, but it provides the show an excuse to jump around the timeline, giving us glimpses of Susie’s life, and by extension, those in her orbit, long past the main story’s late 1950s/early 1960s timeframe.
Many of those stories are fun, but paint Susie in the light of a manager who took a no-nonsense, “by any means necessary” approach to her job. During the famous triple crown, she pays off caddies, harangues execs, and invents sitcoms on the fly to make three major deals in one day.
When an entitled young hack of an actor demands the world from her, she reads him the riot act and tells him to fuck off. Rumors even fly that she bilked Harry Drake out of his clients when he wasn’t all there. The fellow showbiz muckety-mucks busting her chops seem to admire all of this, but the version of Susie they’re celebrating is slimy, abrasive, and something of a con artist.
And yet, for once, the truth is softer. She did inherit all of Harry Drake's big clients. But not because she got him to sign them over while he was delirious or paid off his daughter. Instead, Harry wanted her to have them because she was the one person he could trust. He saw the way she went the extra mile for Midge, kept her on the right path, and wanted the same for the stars who stayed loyal to him.
Before then, she thanks him for recognizing something in her and helping her get on her feet. Afterwards, she’s the only one who stays by his bedside while he’s dying. And if that weren’t enough, she pretends to be his daughter, not out of some selfish plot to take his business, but to grant him one last measure of kindness and peace in his final moments. The Susy Myerson people don’t know, the part of her life that doesn’t make headlines, are moments like that where she shows appreciation and care for the people who’ve helped make her a success.
Thankfully, that incudes Dinah! One of the small but joyous happy endings The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel offers in its final season is for her, who ends up not only becoming a manager with Susie’s mentorship, but running her whole east coast operation. On a personal level though, she also goes above and beyond a business relationship, to recognize when Dinah is being physically abused and send her goons after the culprit, while also giving Dinah the day off and the time and money to be able to rest and recover. People joke about her mob connections, but she does these things out of kindness. Whatever her faults, she goes out of her way for people, and isn’t just using them to further herself, even the underlings and also-rans with whom she could get away with it.
That same attitude, of course, extends to Midge. In a 1973 Hawiian wedding that Midge wants to break off, Susie tries to draw lines. She’s having a beautiful time and loves the peace and quiet of it all. Professional problems? You got it, Midge. But this is personal. It has to stop somewhere.
Except it doesn’t. It’s Susie who has to explain to the latest celebrity beau why he’s being left at the altar. It’s Susie who has to tell Grand Funk Railroad that their name is confusing and they won’t be playing tonight. It’s Susie who has to endure a comical scene where Abe and Rose go on about how expensive the cake they bought their daughter was. This goes beyond being a manager. This goes beyond business. This is the act of someone who cares.
And I guess, I have to begrudgingly admit, that also includes Joel. He is one of Susie’s greatest challengers here. After noting that she’s in with the mafia, and being wise enough from his dad’s operations to know there’s a second set of books, he’ll do anything to stop the mob from “owning” Midge. So what does he do? He offers himself instead, letting them get their hooks in his nightclub business by way of “financing” in exchange for leaving Midge alone.
Now let’s be real here. This is a stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid plan. It works (more or less) because this is, despite some raunchiness, a generally bright and warmhearted show. But god help me, the answer to someone you love being in the mob is not to get your family in deeper with the mob. We like Frank and Nicky, so we’re apt to buy that they’re men of their word. But in reality, even the gilded reality of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, making deals with the mafia only ends badly for everyone. It’s a dumb solution to a problem that ought to, by all accounts, only make things worse.
And yet, taken in the aspirational tone of the show, this is Joel’s greatest redemption. I still don’t love the guy. I still find him kind of grating and entitled in his own way most of the time. But for someone who didn’t appreciate what he had with Midge, and who didn’t seem to respect her or the life they’d built or her talents as a stand-up, this is an act of him throwing himself in front of this bullet train so that he can protect her, and ensure that she can pursue her career free and clear of the mob’s influence, and not for nothing, the noblest thing he’s ever done.
Maybe that’s the answer for Susie and an improved, if not exactly enlightened Joel. He’s an obnoxious jerk much of the time, but when it counts most, when he has a chance to show he cares about Midge in a way he didn’t when they broke up, he not only seizes it but stays quiet about it for decades so as not to burden her.
With that, Joel is what breaks up Susie and Midge. The prison sentence we learned about a couple episodes back turns out to be the product of an FBI sting for his mob ties. Many of these flash forwards have prompted the audience to ask what could possibly break up Midge and Susie after all they’ve been through. The answer is satisfying. Whatever their issues, Midge cares about Joel. Her seeing him go to jail for her, to help cover for a problem Susie got into, would be a final straw, something big enough and harsh enough that it would change how Midge saw her manager.
It made Susie look more like George from The Gordon Ford Show. Most of this episode is about the future, but the one detail that advances the story in the present is Susie helping stage a coup to get George ousted (and with him, the rule against employees appearing on the show) and get Mike installed as the new producer. The smoking gun is George sitting on Gordon’s network contract so that he can feather his own nest. For all his gladhanding, for all he plucked Gordon from obscurity, he was just using the guy to further himself, putting his needs before his clients.
That's what Midge effectively accuses Susie of. And Susie has things to answer for. I like that several things that have been floating around in the background of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel come to the forefront here. I wondered all through last season how getting in with the mob would come back to bite Susie. Well, now it gets the partner of her number one client sent to jail. It sees Susie kicking thirty percent of Midge’s earnings to the mafia rather than to her. Even Susie’s seemingly pointless gambling problem comes back! With the suggestion that she’s forcing Midge to take tough casino gigs to settle her debts and square up with the wiseguys who own them.
Midge throws it all out there, accusing Susie of doing something worse than lying to her -- using her. When Susie tries to say they’re friends, Midge kicks it back in her face, chalking up the first time Susie ever used that phrase with her as a dodge, a sop, another con from a master of manipulation. In a fiery back-and-forth worthy of being compared to the Gilmore Girls’ “Friday Night's Alright for Fighting” family blow-up, the worst view of Susie comes from the person who arguably knows her best, which makes it sting all the more.
And still, when we return to the Testi-Rostial, something changes. Midge offers a video greeting. And in it, with the time to reflect and reminisce, she realizes that whatever their problems, Susie was always there for her. She was the person who went above and beyond to look after Midge not just as a business associate, but as someone who cared. She saw something in Midge, like Harry saw in her, and helped that fire burn hotter and brighter until the world could ignore it no longer. She fixed wedding disasters and staged talk show coups to clear the way, and rescued Midge’s third favorite hat. These are not the acts of a user; they’re the act of a friend.
But there’s something more too. Susie has seemed ambivalent to so much celebration, barely tolerating this dog and pony show. Only, Midge’s video has power. It is part apology, part expression of gratitude, but also part a recognition of something there that neither of them necessarily realized. When Midge couldn't go through with the wedding, she said that her beaus couldn't make her laugh. She’s cycled through boyfriends and husbands like chewing gum, looking for genuine love. And yet, years later, when she’s celebrating her manager, she talks about how Susie always did make her laugh, how Susie, in deeds not in words, showed her so much of that love. It’s a quiet sign of a quiet truth.
Susie isn’t a craven showbiz snake who treats her clients like expendable meal tickets and her supporters like stepping stones. She’s always been the one who recognizes the human beings beyond the business. And for Midge especially, she’s been more than a friend. She’s been a partner.
Funny as hell and delightful rated R content. Was not disappointed.
One of the best compliments you can give to a movie is that it takes you and wouldn't let you go before the end credits. That's what Max Mad did to me. The whole movie is so intense that my eyes were glued to the screen. The cinematography is gorgeous and make a world come to life. The main characters feel real and you can rely to them. I like it when a main characters isn't the 'invulnerable' hero, so you feel more tenses in the scenes because 'it could go wrong for him'. All this is directed in a perfect way. All of the action is filmed with a steady cam, thank god! No shaky cam but steady and wide shots which make the action scenes a real experience. I have no real faults with this film, I loved it from begin to the end. So I would recommend it for everyone who wants an awesome 2 hours.
The last episode was a lot more hyped up, but I feel this episode was even more nerve wracking.
That scene with Dom searching the Red Wheelbarrow basement was longest 2 minutes of my life.
Sometimes a show can make you realize, you weren’t just supposed to be skipping along and watching each episode as they come. You were supposed to take a minute, and enjoy the side quests. We aren’t supposed to watch a tv show for the destination.
That footage of the very good dog riding down the escalator is a special gift that the extra 30 minutes gives us viewers.
Loved the music, the behind the scenes, and the locations choices, but the pacing, editing and whole aesthetic was just not for me.
Xavier really likes to say if I’m being honest
Props to the man randomly spinning on the street. Now that's a unique bit of local flavor for the episode!
We will eventually need this episode to remind us that everything's going to be alright. so, don't you worry about a thing. Brilliant Episode. Probably the best of the series. A true Masterpiece writing.
Was that class they showed an actual college class? "We Texans are the best and everybody else sucks"? Yikes!
A two and a half hours boring, depressing mess. In short, Zack Snyder.
And the dream sequences take more screen time then the actual BvS fight. Who thought this was a good idea?
This is a beautiful story, exquisitely performed! If you are not able to suspend disbelief and see truth in fantasy, I grieve for you, because you miss out on gems like this film. This story deals with loneliness, kindness, friendship, love, courage and nobility. As well as ambition, prejudice, corruption of power, cruelty and powerlessness. Guillermo del Toro wove a sensitive and beautiful story set in a sterile and cruel world. The performances are wonderful by a talented and accomplished cast. The production design brilliantly captures the romantic tension of the piece. I highly recommend this film and give it a 9 (superbly beautiful) out of 10. [Fantasy, Drama, Romance]
9.5/10. There are times when I feel jaded as a viewer. When it seems like despite the breadth of films out there, that I know most of the tricks, to where while I can appreciate a film's achievements in sort of a detached way, when I can even be engaged and invested in something, it doesn't necessarily reach me in the way that movies did when I first started watching them. The scope of appreciation has widened, but the emotional resonance feels muted, because I can't help but see the strings.
And then a film like Room comes along.
And Jack sees the expanse of sky for the first time. And Joy hugs her parents after not seeing them for seven years. And Robert can't even look at his grandson. And Nancy tells her daughter that she's not the only one whose life was destroyed. And Joy tells her mother that if she hadn't been taught to be nice, she might never have gone with Nick. And there's a supreme, heartbreaking look of guilt on her face when a reporter asks if she should have given her son up while in captivity. And Jack walks in on his mother's suicide attempt. And Nancy hears her grandson say "I love you." And Jack sees a real live dog, and makes a real live friend, and cuts his hair to give his mother his strength.
And I wince and I laugh and I cry and I gasp at this beautiful, devastating, intimate, life-affirming film. This is why we make movies. I love popcorn films, with the fights and flashes and epic feel, and I love the big dramas, with their scope and their sense of grandness and the talent on display, and I love those classic film comedies that mix the absurd and the irreverent and the memorable into a single hilarious package. But the films like Room simultaneously so small and so personal, yet so powerful and affecting, have a special place. These are, as Robert Ebert once put it, the empathy machine that is film working at peak efficiency, taking us into the lives of people who have suffered and been unfathomably wronged, and carries us with them as they carve out a way forward.
I didn't know I wanted a film that feels like a cross between Oldboy, Life Is Beautiful, and Boyhood, and yet the elements Room shares with each--the sense of isolation, the loving way in which a parent tries to distract their child from a continuing tragedy, the slice-of-life, impressionistic depiction of a young boy's innocence--come together to form something absolutely tremendous.
That last facet of the film, the fact that it filters the entire experience through young Jack's eyes, is a stroke of brilliance. There's a matter of factness, a certain directness or even blitheness to the way children experience the world. Using Jack as the lens through which Room tells its story renders those events not only realer, but plainer, imbuing them with the unvarnished perception of childhood. The way the film is able to get into Jack's head, to allow the audience to view these horrors and steps to recovery through his eyes, is its greatest strength and most impressive achievement.
By the same token, Brie Larson as Joy deserves all the accolades she's received for her performance here. While still a prisoner, she carries herself with such an air of both utter resignation and quiet resolve, someone who's been beaten into submission but carries on with whatever she has left. And once she returns home, the guilt that consumes her, the anger that she has for the world that kept turning without her, are palpable in every moment without fading into overwroughtness.
The film can essentially be divided into those two halves. The first is the story of Jack and Joy in Room, of the way that Joy makes unbearable circumstances livable for her son, the way that she copes and shields Jack from the horror around him, and how Jack strains and struggles to understand the idea of the world beyond those four walls, to where he can, eventually, help the two of them escape. The second half is far less intense, but still endlessly intriguing and affecting. It's a quiet domestic story about how people recover from that sort of trauma, both Joy who feels the opposite of survivor's guilt and second guesses herself, and Jack who is exposed to a big scary world, the depth and breadth of which is entirely alien to him.
But throughout both halves, there is such a pure emotional truth in each moment, from the simple joys that Jack enjoys within the home he doesn't realize is a prison, to his anger and resistance at having that fantasy shattered, to Joy's dispirited but resolute attempts to keep him happy and healthy, to the realistic, painful difficulties parents and children face when rebuilding a family seven years after a tragedy, to the wonder and fear a small boy has for what lies beyond the garden gate, and the unmitigated joy at every step taken toward some cobbled-together normalcy. Room is a beautiful, heart-wrenching, intensely personal film, that takes an unflinching yet uplifting look at how people cope and come back from the worst that our world has to offer.
I read this comment about the movie which said "It felt like reading a good book, which is the highest compliment I can give to a film." and I couldn't be more precise .
i think some people might be missing the point. yeah they they didn't end up flying off together happily ever after, but they did both get what they both needed.
Dom is last seen sitting in the plane, passed out. this is important because earlier it stresses the point that she has basically not had any kind of meaningful sleep or rest in like 5 years. this is her finally feeling some level of peace, and being in a place where she is not afraid of the worst and able to fall asleep peacefully.
Darlene has been so co-dependent it is crippling to her when she is forced to be alone. she runs off and has a panic attack in the bathroom, but wills herself to accept that she can be ok on her own and this serves as a turning point in her growth and ability to move on and be ok whether she is alone or not. she needs to be able to be alone before she can be with someone.
edit 12/11:
also forgot to point out what i believe to be an intentional play against the stereotypical scene in which the two would have united at the last moment, with a catchy pop song to go along with it by an artist who has been arguably borrowing from the 80s in a large portion of her catalog. and from what i can recall, but i could be wrong, the fact that you hear little to no current pop music as a part of the soundtrack in any way remotely similar to how it is used in this scene, serves to support the intended play against such cliches in other films/shows.
Finally, a good sequel. Good god the animation, it's so beautiful. And the action was so smooth. Also, Pixar better gives us a short movie about Edna babysitting Jack-Jack.
That invisible car payoff was so good.
Not gonna lie, I'm a little upset that the Morningstar incident didn't involve a veggie burger. That being said this might be one of my fave Parks & Rec ever. The last 10 minutes were just spectacular.
