and the award for worlds slowest elevator goes to...
This movie is legendary. someday it'll become a classic. I don't know why someone is complaing about why they didn't get to explore more of Oppenheimer's character, or what he was. I think that person needs to rewatch this movie. Scene are not snippets, It is complete and well integrated. Yes, they covered a lot ground. Could it have been a miniseries? of course! but saying that this movie fails to integrate different aspect, is completely false. Even character whom had small screen time, did perfect. I think everyone needs to hit theatre, so Hollywood makes more fucking movie like this. which delves deep in character and dark part of human chatacter. Not everything is Pink and happy. I think, you must watch it in theatre decide for yourself. I think I have spent all my penny well. Thank you Nolan.
A round of applause for Westworld! Awesome finale. I loved it a fantastic episode.
This first episode gave me more chills than a horror movie :neutral_face: I'm really looking forward to see the next episodes!
Okay, what the f? How did they pull this brilliant piece of cinema off? I am your standard hater of Disney live-action and I am pleasantly surprised they made me enjoy a Cruella origin film. Wtf. I want that little dog Wink. What a boss.
William: Please Logan, even though I'm engaged to your sister, please help me take my sex robot home with me.
I see many people here complaining that the message of this episode was blatantly obvious and simple, but I don't really think that is the point of the episode.
In my interpretation, this episode was mainly here to tell a story of a tragic character that does immoral things out of desperation whilst also showing glimpses of humanity in his actions, which in no way justify his actions. Similarly, they try to humanise each and every side of this story. Even the big CEO of the company that arguably does a lot of social evil has his big humanising moment, where he admits that it all spun out of control, and I think we can all relate to that.
There is no evil character. It is all a complex web that creates evil, and the point, as I see it, was not to bash into the heads of people to not text and drive, or to stop using social media, but simply to tell a story. A story that utilises the all-consuming technology in our society, and I think it does that job fantastically. It is suspenseful, layered, and incredibly moving.
Funny as hell and delightful rated R content. Was not disappointed.
THINGS THAT MADE THIS EPISODE F*CKIN AMAZING:
- Getting to see the dragons in action was truly beautiful;
- Dany and Yara interaction was GOLD;
- The battle was very very very good. Tense and visually stunning. I couldn't breathe throughout it;
- Ramsey FINALLY being killed and ultimately by Sansa;
- >>>Sansa's character development!!!!<<<<
- Rickon dying as well was awful, but I can't say it was a wasted death nor a bad executed scene.
S06 was worth it mainly because of this entire episode. Still can't believe how good it was. I hope the finale is even better.
In a show with so many characters, one of the most emotional deaths was the guy with one word of dialogue. That's why Game of Thrones is so great.
I hope Speedy's life will be happy and amazing from now on. Beautiful soul :heart:
Well, that was unexpected. But some hints got their explanations: the strange seizures of Sugar, the fact that he can knock back literally litres of liqour without getting sloshed, that debriefing when he was chastised for registering his feelings, that talk "We just observe."
To be honest, I expected some kind of awkward international spy ring who "just observe" because... why, exactly?
I see a kind of wild game the show's creators played:
1. A classic detective noir, if finished like a proper detective story, would probably have left a dry reception, like "Okay, we've seen this 100x times."
2. Secret spy ring or a shady organization... Just observing? Yeah, right, thanks for nothing.
3. At least, this is a twist that's not everyday for a detective noir.
Let's see how our PIA's story unfolds.
It is honestly so refreshing to watch a movie that is trying new things! i was paying attention to everything every second of it. i'm still not sure of how i feel about the ending, but the experience was totally worth it!
This may be the best episode so far! Great intensity, many new hints to the keys to this mystery, and a slight touch of a creepy feel as well (the ticking scene). I enjoyed every bit of this, and I guess I can't resist watching all the rest at once.
Hope this season stays on the track till the end and provides rewarding final episodes.
If Maze and Linda are dating I will lose my shit.
I'm a whore for war room episodes
They paint the world full of shadows... and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn't true. We can prove that it isn't true. In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom in the dark once someone has illuminated it. And who has been so close to doing it as we are right now?
The title seems to have a double meaning. Not only for the 'monster' of the film, but it is also one of those movies that gets under your skin. I can't stop thinking about it.
The film has very unique feel to it, an 80's vibe, a creepy unique premise and a constant feeling of unease, I can now see why this has been getting so much press throughout the horror scene.
A Must Watch!
As Butcher would say, “Fuckin Diabolical!”
Even Homelander was clueless when everyone started exploding haha
The friend zone has been taken to a whole new mechanical level.
This is one of the most poorly written books I've ever read, but I think the show actually has potential to be entertaining. We'll find out next month.
Wow what a show. Loved each episode and really hope we see a season 2 at some point.
Definitely an interesting production. It feels like I am watching a noir film, but in a modern setting. Timeless story and personalities. Self-described addict to movies, which we see glimpses of from time to time, as if to show he imagines his life to be like one, with Bogart. The protagonist is a bit like a relict from the past. Lone gentleman in a suit, driving a vintage car, caring for the vulnerable, dealing with his own demons, longing for a mysterious woman, and who can see right through your deceit. Obvious allusions to the Golden age of Hollywood, but I also sense some inspiration by the French new-wave (inspired by the former). It also simply looks beautiful. I eagerly await new episodes.
EDIT after the finale - I love the topic of trying to understand what it means to be a human, the pensiveness and sensitivity of Sugar, the eerie quietness of every character, even the ones who are supposed to be aggressive.
Poor Things is very pretty, I’ll give it that much. Colors pop, and the watercolor, blurry sky and the scaling but condensed environments of Lisbon and Alexandria both convey the miasma of Bella’s mind quite well. How the background blurs in our young memories and how we remember all the buildings and places that looked large over us but so rarely the walks to them. Those work for me. So much of the rest of the film doesn’t.
I see what it’s going for- it’s hard not to. A journey of womanhood through the conceit of a child’s brain in a woman’s body, when women are treated as children and property to begin with. But it’s so fucking weird, with that conceit, to devote so much time to sex. Sex is an important part of being human for many people, I’m not denying that. But the attention it gets here throughout compared to brief, paltry scenes of Bella reading, seeking knowledge, having an interest in medical science and surgery is disproportional. Especially when the film wants to play her coming home and following in Godwin’s footstep as a culmination of her journey when it’s a facet of the film that barely gets any play in comparison. Angelica Jade Bastien, whose Variety review you should all read, brings up how in a film ostensibly about a cis woman and her relationship with her body menstruation does not come up once. It’s so telling where the film’s true focus lies.
And yes, sex can be beautiful, and conversely so can sex scenes. But the ones here are done dispassionately yet voyueristically. There’s no interiority, no sensuality, no sense of emotion and character felt through them. Compared to films like The Handmaiden they are sterile in heart if not content. It’s a big swing to go from black and white to color, and I can see sex being the impetus for it, sure, but when it’s done like this I don’t buy it. It’s interesting to me that her first time having sex is portrayed like this, with penetration until the man comes, thrice over, and yet her first time with cunnilingus is off screen. I feel like all the sex in this film is similarly narrow and lifeless.
None of what this film is trying to say is new, but much of it is muddled. It wants to rail against the entitlement of men, how they see women as property, how they want them to be exciting and adventurous but only in service of them. And yet it gives Max no grief at all for falling in love with. A child. Literal child, this is not a metaphor, it’s a child’s brain. And marrying her but refusing to have sex with her until marriage because that would be taking advantage, as if marriage would not be taking advantage and has not been used as the ultimate control. On some level the film condemns this, but only in the opposite direction, as part of Emily leaving Max is her frustration over not having sex. It’s baffling that the film seems to take the viewpoint that we ought to let children consent to sex with adults, that it is part of their development and journey to personhood. The film is similarly forgiving to Godwin, who used a woman’s body in a way she would very likely not have consented to all while the film extols a woman’s choice and ownership of her body.
Everything the film has to say about the nature of man and people, about women’s place in society, about sex work, etc, is rote. Nothing here is new, and nothing is heightened by the core conceit. It’s so surface level. And the cast is game enough. Dafoe is Dafoe and that’s always a good time, but I wouldn’t call this one of his greatest roles. Carmichael, much as I love his standup, just is not working here. Stone and Ruffalo are acting for the back seats, and while that has its moments of charm, it’s too much for most of the runtime. And Stone is just. She’s playing into ableist stereotypes for so much of this performance. The film drops the r slur and we’re just gonna pretend that Stone isn’t doing an insulting caricature at the same time? I don’t even want to delve into all the questions raised by the mental disability angle, others could do that better than me, but it’s another level of thoughtlessness and surface level depth.
The score is similarly cloying and overbearing. It insists on a scene rather than being a part of it. It doesn’t enhance it or complement it, it beats you over the head with how the scene is meant to make you feel. I could enjoy the sound of it in isolation, but as a score it’s distracting more than anything else. It’s a bit surprising to me how much this film has been praised as outside of the production design, I don’t see it. I just don’t. For me, this is as much a misfire as Barbie, if not more. Poor things.
The hesitancy of Jeff while giving his number to Claire got me curious. He was leaving his number to the fridge guy at the beginning of this episode as 773-555-0901. He told Claire as 0902. A sad tiny detail.
The meanest thing I could say about this movie is ‘Has extreme Don’t Worry Darling energy’.
I have never seen a movie more desperate to justify itself. It’s trapped in this endless neurosis over what it is- a blockbuster Barbie movie in 2023 by an acclaimed art house director that is fun but also deep but also earnest but also self aware but also but also but also. Every point it raises it brings up a counterpoint to before the audience can, every frame is trying to prove it’s not just product but art. It’s never just Barbie. It’s never confident or even comfortable in its skin. You cannot for a second be immersed in Barbie because it’s not a story so much as a visual dissertation without a central thesis, it’s a student film riffing on the big dogs hoping it’s underdog audacity will carry it but given a budget in the millions. It so desperately wants you to like it, to know it’s in on the joke too.
Everythng is an ouroboros here: an endless loop of argument and counterarguement feeding itself. Isn’t it shitty how the Mattel boardroom is full of men? Ah, but isn’t it cool how Mattel’s acknowledged it with this niche? And it’ll mythologize Barbie’s creator but uh don’t worry she did tax evasion we know that, now let her impart into Barbie the experience of all women. Barbie helps women, Barbie hurts women, Barbie is told to be everything so isn’t she just like women, but it is better to be a creator than the idea, and in the end, hasn’t Barbie helped all these women? Oh uh why is this blonde white Barbie the centerpiece of it all and helping not only her diverse Barbie friends but a Hispanic woman and her daughter? Don’t worry we’ll have the daughter call her a white savior! But don’t worry we’ll have the mom say she’s not! It’s fascinating to watch, honestly. It’s a film that wants to prove to you so so bad that it works but it doesn’t and it knows it doesn’t and it knows you knows. It’s Gerta Gerwig wrestling with taking this job for an hour and a half.
The cast is more than game and able. Margot Robbie is doing her damndest to find the heart and soul in this role, and there’s one scene with an old lady near the end of the first act/beginning of the second that actually works, for just a moment, more than any of the big third act soliloquies or montages with emotional ballads. And as someone who’s seen Blade Runner 2049 and Drive, this is the best Ryan Gosling performance I’ve seen. The man commits and delivers a surprisingly compelling and entertaining antagonist. The movie can’t quite reconcile what he’s done with his ending, or tie it into the themes- is Ken letting go of Barbie and the need to define himself for or against her symbolizing the need for men to do the same, and if so, why play it so lightly and sympathetically?- but that’s not his fault. And the supporting cast are entertaining, but you just can’t have big laughs with a movie that feels like it’s constantly checking in the corner of its eye after every joke to see if you’re laughing, grin stuck in place. It’s not as funny or as smart as it wants to be, and the sad thing is, it feels like it knows that too.
There is some great set design, cinematography, dazzling choreography, popping colors, and some fun high points. But I can’t imagine many kids liking it. And we’ve seen how conservatives have taken this movie. And anyone’s who’s progressed beyond the politics of. Well. A feminist blockbuster Barbie movie will find it cloying or condescending or just incredibly basic. It’s aimed at a very specific crowd who will buy what it’s saying, the liberals who see corporate feminism as progress, who agree that it’s just about a little change sometimes, who are ready for something just a little more complex than a SNL sketch. I don’t regret seeing it, because I was deeply engaged the whole time seeing it struggle at war with itself, in pain for its whole existence. It’s not a boring movie by any means. It wants to say everything before the audience can say it first. It’s the endpoint of The Lego Movie and Enchanted- the corporations interrogating and justifying themselves, and the cracks in this formula are too large to ignore. It wants to be so much, and the attempt is as darkly mesmerizing as a fly thinking it can somehow and someway metamorphize into a butterfly and suffocating and struggling in its makeshift cocoon, but this is one Barbie that fundamentally just cannot break out of its box.
If you're looking for an action and "turn brain off now" film, just don't watch it and spare us the 6-7 hearts review.
I for one, am very tired from 500$m crap like Indi Day and Marvel's poop. So I was very excited to watch this one.
This one is more like Spielberg's Encounters from the Third Kind. It's more about the characters in the film and the amazing journey they go through. It's mostly about the human behavior that will make you think.
While it's not an End of the World aliens movie like Battle: Los Angeles, it still offers great amount of military presence and plenty of stuff that's going on.
So if you actually want to care about an intelligent movie and use your head - go. Otherwise, go watch an X men.
Highly recommended for some audience 10/10.
2-feb-2017 edit: Just came out on Bluray and I saw it again. Definitely keeping my rating.
Watching again at July-2023, excited towards Dune II : Excellent. Excellent film. So called plot-holes listed here are negligible when the overall product is really thoughtful and masterfully crafted.