The Movie (and TV show) Watching Thread

[John Dule]

but the script accomplishes nothing by elevating these mundane slice-of-life black stories at the expense of the very funny, very original black story that audiences paid to see.

Couldn’t this be read as a bit of a meta-point to the film? The former are the same kinds of stories Ellison is trying to write about, while the latter is (admittedly a more bespoke version of) a heavily “racialized” narrative that ultimately lets non-black libs feel good about themselves for being an empathetic ally.

I don’t necessarily disagree with you that it doesn’t end up working - I think I was happier with the family stuff than you were but it definitely could have been done better - but I do think that the dichotomy is intrinsic to how Jefferson envisioned this film.

The effectiveness of that is going to heavily depend upon whether the family drama is interesting to the audience-- and I'm generally not a fan of slice-of-life drama that has nothing larger to say. And the movie is going to be about race no matter what, given the overarching premise. Trying to subvert that fact with an uninteresting series of racially neutral subplots (none of which have any payoff) almost made it feel like it was running away from the social commentary it had promised to make.

Also, I might be misremembering this, but I don't think Ellison was writing about "black stories" at all. He tells the bookstore employee that "the blackest thing about this book is the ink," which I took to mean that it was just pure literature and wasn't connected to his own experiences at all.

[John Dule]

Since it was nominated for BP, I watched the Barbie movie last night. It was funny at points, but I honestly didn't like the ending at all. I'm not sure what the message was supposed to be about male/female relations-- it seemed almost pessimistic about our ability to put aside our differences and treat one another as equals, and that left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe there's something I'm not understanding about it, but I'd rate it as mediocre for that reason. The jokes were also pretty hit-and-miss.

The final line of the movie is also extremely dumb. I don't know if that was supposed to be a subversion of "girl power" tropes or if it was genuine, but either way it didn't work.

[John Dule]

When I rewatched Gone With the Wind a few months ago, I found myself wondering what a remake of that film might look like. The idea I settled on was this: A retelling of the classic story, but with the shadow of slavery always lingering prominently in the background. For example, Scarlett might hear the screams of a slave in the fields and then shut the window-- just to drive home to the audience how indifferent the Southern characters are to the suffering around them. Then I quickly realized that this was too obvious, too gimmicky, and laying it on a bit thick.

The Zone of Interest is my half-baked Gone With the Wind remake idea, only with slavery swapped out for the Holocaust. And while I appreciate seeing what this concept looks like onscreen, my concern about the premise being a gimmick was correct. This is a movie that very quickly establishes its central idea and then proceeds to spin its wheels for the rest of its runtime-- even coming in under two hours, it's clear that there's not enough material here to fill a feature film. I love films with a message, but this movie has only one thing to say, and every single scene conveys that exact same message in the exact same way. Without any variation on the theme, the entire experience feels stagnant.

Nevertheless, as an experiment with this particular premise, The Zone of Interest has artistic merit. I recall complaints earlier last year when Killers of the Flower Moon came out-- those viewers tragically lacking in media literacy argued that because the story was told from the perspective of the oppressors, it was inherently flawed. The Zone of Interest proves that a story can completely focus on the perpetrators of an atrocity, completely ignore the victims, and yet still do their story justice. The very fact that the viewer experiences this narrative through the perspective of the oppressor is the entire point of the film. It forces us to contemplate our decisions in our own lives, and to realize that our roles in society cannot be justified simply because they make us comfortable or provide for our families. Qualities like being a "family man" or "hard-working" or "loyal" exist outside the moral dimension, and the movie makes this point with precision accuracy. My one complaint is that this message could've been conveyed in a short film, and it would probably have been even more effective in that format.

[John Dule]

Watched Morbius last night. It's obviously bad, but it's also not in the bottom ten superhero movies released in the past ten years.

[John Dule]

Watched Morbius last night. It's obviously bad, but it's also not in the bottom ten superhero movies released in the past ten years.

I just completed the set by watching Madame Web. My housemates and I pirated a camcorder recording off a Bengali website that had random pop-up ads for cricket gambling websites during the most serious scenes in the movie, which really enhanced the experience. This was a fun time, and I seriously advise everyone to watch this with some friends (provided you don't pay a dime to do so).

[John Dule]

I'm seeing Dune II in about 45 minutes. In the meantime, some thoughts on Drive-Away Dolls, the latest Coen Brother movie.



In interviews, Ethan Coen has described Drive-Away Dolls as a raunchy lesbian B-movie that's not trying to say anything particularly deep. As embarrassing as it is for such a seasoned director to set the bar this low, it's even more embarrassing that he still failed to clear it. This movie is a mess; it feels more like a rough cut for a test screening than a finished product, and it pales in comparison even to the scores of lesser imitators the Coens have spawned. March has hardly begun, yet it's hard to see another movie taking the title of 2024's Biggest Letdown.

The blame is not entirely on Coen. This movie was co-written by his wife Tricia Cooke and based on an idea she had almost 25 years ago (which might explain why the story feels so stale). Cooke, who served as the Coens' editor on The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou, clearly cobbled together a rudimentary pastiche of plot points from the Brothers' best movies when assembling this premise. From the MacGuffin briefcase to the incompetent hitman duo arguing in a car, every hallmark of the Coens is present here-- albeit in the most low-energy form imaginable. This is probably why Ethan Coen executes this task with the sullen resentfulness of a man whose wife has asked him to do the dishes.

A bad premise can sometimes be saved by compelling performances, but that is not the case here. Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan lack chemistry, and unlike the Coen's better leads, they don't balance out their cartoonishness with any genuine emotion or heart. The characters are a standard Odd Couple pairing, but defined in the broadest possible terms. Qualley's foulmouthed dive-bar lesbian is a groan-inducing caricature. Her accent is ridiculous, and her constant use of Southern phrases like "honey girl" turn the character into a one-dimensional self-parody. Viswanathan, playing an uptight office worker, is given little to do aside from looking uncomfortable and exasperated; to accomplish this, she falls back on the same two or three facial expressions. Their comedic timing is off, and at no point do their line readings feel like anything but recitations from the script.

The contrast with similar Coen creations like H.I. McDunnough or Ulysses Everett McGill could not be starker-- while those characters were indeed laughable cartoons, they were also given opportunities to show genuine emotion, self-reflection, and regret. No such layered characterization is present here. These characters undergo no growth, nor do they make any significant decisions in their own story. Their involvement with the plot is mostly passive, which in turn creates a passive viewing experience.

One might expect a movie conceived by a professional editor to at least be well-edited. One would be wrong. Drive-Away Dolls is plagued by cuts that break the flow of the story, embarrassing PowerPoint-style scene transitions, and strangely edited sequences that seemingly omit huge chunks of the story. In one scene, Viswanathan is shown speaking to the police. Suddenly the film cuts to her in jail, never showing the rest of the interaction. Qualley, back at their hotel room, notices she's missing and looks concerned. Immediately after this, both characters are shown driving away in a car-- apparently Qualley found out her friend was in jail, went to get her, got her out, and checked out of the hotel off-camera. The sequence is incredibly jarring, and even more so given how little payoff it ultimately has.

Every time I've seen a Coen Brothers movie in recent years, I've hoped against hope that their next outing might be better. But after seeing this hastily assembled student film, I think I'll have to give up on that. This movie represents an obscene lack of effort (and quite frankly, disrespect for its audience) that has no precedent in either of the Coens' filmography. The takeaway is clear: Cooke should stick with editing, and Ethan should stick with Joel.

[John Dule]

Was gonna make this my sig but now I'm using it to declare jihad on the mods for blocking me from adding signatures for six months.

[John Dule]

Anyone here seen the John Brown biopic series The Good Lord Bird? I'm four episodes in right now. Ethan Hawke's performance is fantastic, but I'm a little iffy on some of the choices the show made in its portrayal of Frederick Douglass. Also, why is the thing told from the perspective of a fictional transvestite?

[John Dule]

Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
director Rose Glass

7.5 out of 10

Very very good. If you wondering if you should see it, ask yourself if this sounds good to you: gay A24 neo-noir 80s acid western.

Also, this is one of those movies that has at least one thing if not more that could be considered a big spoiler, so try to go in to the movie knowing as little as possible.

I liked this too. Not sure if it was the script or for muscle mommy reasons though.

[John Dule]

I finally watched Bone Tomahawk, which has been on my watchlist for years. First off, it operates on a very narrow budget, and it shows. The flat, digital cinematography detracts significantly from the movie's callbacks to classic westerns, and its attempt to reconstruct the genre suffers for it. The lack of extras, especially in the scenes in Bright Hope (a town that apparently has a population over 200, from which only four people can be rallied for a posse), is conspicuous. Some of the supporting performances, particularly Lili Simmons, ring hollow and do not feel period-accurate. It was shot in 21 days-- obviously in the same southern California terrain that M*A*S*H once tried to convince us was actually Korea.

But once it gets underway, the movie is extremely compelling. Zahler knows the limitations of his time and budget and knows exactly where to focus as a result: subtle character moments, dialogue, and crafting a sense of impending doom. When the money shot comes, it's far more impactful as a result. Even I (warped as my mind is by the horrors of the internet) found myself watching the end of this movie bug-eyed and slack-jawed. That takes some doing.

I also appreciate the film for its unapologetic disinterest in "subverting expectations," "deconstructing tropes," or introducing plot twists for the sake of plot twists. It is a character piece-- it hones in on the interactions between its limited cast and builds the stakes of their story with a relentless commitment to graphic, violent realism. It ignores multiple opportunities to indulge in cynical nihilism or postmodernism-- not to say that those themes don't have their time and place, but the movie understands that audiences are getting bored with them. You don't have to enjoy right-wing tribalist tales of men and horses to recognize that this is a strong installment in that genre.

I maintain that the movie's many flaws break the immersion at times (more than its fans care to admit), but that doesn't change the fact that this is an astonishingly solid first effort from an untested director, and on a shoestring budget no less.

[John Dule]

I watched Jerry Seinfeld's "Unfrosted" movie last night. It's possible that I only found it tolerable because it was such a welcome distraction from studying for finals, but I did not hate it. As dumb as this movie is, it's ultimately far less offensive than something like Air-- another soulless film about the creation of a product, but one that had the gall to actually take its inane subject matter seriously. Turning this burgeoning "genre" into a farce is completely welcome-- and after Air exclusively filmed Michael Jordan with over-the-shoulder camera angles (echoing Jesus in Ben-Hur), treating pop tarts with the importance of the space race barely feels like an exaggeration.

I'm also not put off by Jerry Seinfeld's bad acting. I think he's come to accept how stilted he sounds and now fully embraces it, and the result is borderline experimental anti-comedy that will elicit several chuckles. His performance has the same energy as a cheesy pre-recorded Oscars sketch, which is entirely appropriate for this material.

The problems arise when the movie abandons its commitment to the premise and wades into distracting side plots, almost all of which rely upon the most tepid, predictable humor imaginable. With the mere knowledge that JFK makes an appearance, any audience member who knows the first thing about Kennedy could predict half the jokes in that scene. Far too much screen time is devoted to Amy Schumer, multiple cringeworthy SNL cast cameos, and a shockingly outdated and unfunny sequence parodying Alien. As a result, the movie feels astonishingly long despite its 90-minute runtime.

There are some gems in the supporting cast-- Dean Norris as Nikita Khrushchev and Christian Slater as a member of the milkman mafia are particular standouts-- but they receive too little attention for the movie to be worth seeing. I was also surprised that Jerry Seinfeld of all people happened to create perhaps the only effective parody of January 6th I've seen yet (mostly because the comedy here wasn't being used as a Trojan horse for breathless moral panic). But overall, the few good clips will be available on YouTube, and the rest is not worth your time-- as is regrettably true for so many modern comedies.

[John Dule]

Zendaya is an attractive girl...but looks a bit too much like a girl still. I wouldn't want to see her naked! I'm relieved she didn't do that.

I must be one of the few who is immune to Zendaya much ballyhooed charisma and charm.
As an actress I find her just adequate and as a woman I believe she looks like a teenage boy. In the first MCU Spiderman movie I thought initially that she was a lesbian with whom Peter would have to fight for his crush's affections, hence why she was constantly breaking his balls.

I thought this would make her more attractive to Greeks.

[John Dule]

A few things I've been watching lately:

Challengers: A solid sports drama elevated by its editing choices. I really dug the Michael Mann-esque pulsating electronic music, and the nonlinear storytelling actually made sense here instead of merely being a lazy gimmick. I don't really buy into the Zendaya hype, and she feels a little young for this role, but credit where credit is due: she nails this character.

Agora: A movie about Hypatia from 2009 that I decided to watch because I was interested in the history being depicted. It's slow and a lot of the supporting cast is pretty mediocre, but I have a soft spot for films that depict lesser-known eras of history. It also doesn't hurt that the plot is literally an anti-theist "resist the mob" story ripped from the annals of the past, and it triggered thousands of terminally online Christians who were infuriated at the movie's (accurate) portrayal of their attitudes towards women in STEM.

Gotti: The infamous Travolta biopic about John Gotti that is notoriously among the worst movies ever made. I didn't find it to be quite as bad as some have said, but that's mostly because there's nothing exceptional about it whatsoever. When the plot makes sense, it's boilerplate mafia drama told in the driest way imaginable. But for most of the runtime, it's a confusing parade of Cats-like character introductions that have no payoff or purpose. Very rushed, boring, and pointless.

The Patriot: Dumb movie watched exclusively by drunk uncles who catch the second half on TV.

Mother: This is a 2009 film from the director of Parasite and Memories of Murder... and I daresay, this might be his masterpiece. If you loved Parasite, I sincerely recommend you check this out immediately. It explores similar terrain to Bong Joon-Ho's other films, but I think this one does so with much greater thematic weight and pointed social analysis than even Parasite (which is saying quite a lot). I loved this movie, and would go so far as to say it's now among my all-time favorites.

Absolutely Anything: Godawful Simon Pegg vehicle with a generic premise, terrible title, and possibly the worst poster I've ever seen for a film (seriously, google this). It's basically Bruce Almighty, but catering to the Reddit atheist subculture that BRTD obsesses over. The low budget is apparent in every scene-- for a movie with the title "Absolutely Anything," very few things actually happen, which is probably due to budgetary constraints.

Easy Rider: Recently watched this for the first time. Made me decide to grow my hair out.

Comrade Kim Goes Flying: North Korean propaganda film I watched with my housemates for fun. Loved the scene where a character says "We exceeded today's coal production quota by 50%!" and everyone cheers. The rest is pretty tame.

[John Dule]

Furiosa is furiously good. Saw it in IMAX at the Metreon in San Francisco.

I'm not a huge Mad Max fan, but I might see this just because I respect George Miller and I hate to see his stuff bomb.

[John Dule]

Just saw Furiosa. First off I just want to say, yes, Immortan Joe is a horrifying deformed wasteland mutant who controls an authoritarian death cult, keeps a harem of slave-wives, and hoards water while his subjects starve. But you have to understand that— like it or not— we live in a two-warlord system. You can fantasize all you want about some alternative third “green place,” but we all know that when the time comes, you’re going to have to choose the lesser of two evils.

This is why I support Immortan Joe. Say whatever you want about him, but he is NOT Dementus. He has experience running the Citadel and he knows how to get things done. His reign has brought with it guaranteed employment for the War Boys, and under him I never had to fear that my daily gruel ration would be halved. In contrast, Dementus brings with him nothing but misery and chaos; at least with the Immortan, life in the wastes will be miserable in a predictable way. Don’t compare him to the almighty, compare him to the alternative.