i think it’s really interesting to hear opinions based on like…the processing of stimuli and how we react to it.
like to me, when i watch Robocop, i’m spending 90% of that time laughing my ass off. i can absolutely conceptualize why someone might not enjoy watching it, but it’s a foreign feeling.
it kind of reminds me of a time where i tried to show an ex of mine “Akira.” she couldn’t even finish it; like she legitimately hated how violent it was. now, i’d probably say that she was also projecting a bit of her own growing distaste for me onto this movie lol, but it was just one of those moments where i realized “oh, this person processes information and stimuli in a way that is completely alien to me.” like, i get it, but i’ll never feel it.
my activation threshold for too violent is very subtle – I generally laugh at / don’t mind anything that gets very very close to it, and a slight change of framing or degree can ruin that for me
sure, yeah. i mean i think there are things i find “too violent” and unenjoyable, but i guess it comes with all these particular caveats that i don’t have the mental energy to go through my mind and list right now.
but yes, “framing,” etc. is key. like Salo is “a lot” but it’s also really good about how it frames a lot of what it’s showing.
At this point, it is almost refreshing when something violent does repulse me, if that makes sense.
Like when I was watching Midsommar and a certain thing happened, I was actively offput in a way I appreciated, both in terms of how it was done but also in like “ok, not completely broken about this shit yet”. That’s weirdly affirming for me.
RoboCop is one of my favorite films that I haven’t seen in a long while. I think Rudie is on to something because I probably did see it as a 9 year old and might like it because of that. I was heavily into knights as a kid and RoboCop served that chivalrous walking tank fantasy in a way that was completely unique to me.
I still watch the ED scene where he peppers that guy with a ridiculous amount of bullets every now and then on YouTube! It’s my favorite practical special effects scene in any movie. I often times wish movies would go back to that visceral feel of RoboCop.
I love the dark, cynical social commentary and I don’t think it takes away from kindness and caring… I feel like RoboCop and something like Studio Ghibli movies are two sides of the same coin. I don’t want art to be just one or the other, I really need both and I feel like they’re both helping me be a better person.
Sometimes the world seems cruel and dark and then instead of having a movie talk into your ear about the limitless kindness of strangers (which will feel like the movie is lying to your face in that moment even though you might agree with it and be moved to tears at other times) you just need to wallow in something even darker and more cruel than reality. Then that kinda snaps you out of it. “Well, things are bad but at least they aren’t that bad.”
The fact that right-wingers look at RoboCop, Starship Troopers or Married with Children and go “Awesome” and just don’t get it is so much fun to me. I want to create something like that some day. A great big gotcha. It’s not going to change those people - nothing I know of will - it’s going to amuse me though. Also, I still feel empathy for those people, as wrong as they are, and I wouldn’t mind creating something that brings people together, even if it’s for two completely opposite reasons. This way you can at least have Thanksgiving dinner with your NRA-loving uncle and talk about how awesome RoboCop is instead of arguing over politics.
Barbara Crampton (the girlfriend in Re-Animator, the female scientist in From Beyond, was also in Castle Freak) is producing a remake of Castle Freak, which I’ve never seen despite liking Stuart Gordon because it came out in 1995 and the 90s weren’t the best time for horror. I guess I’ll try to get around to watching it – it can’t be that bad considering I enjoyed Dagon and that came out in like, 2001.
And now I guess they’re also making either a remake of Scream or a reboot or something of Scream but they’re just calling it “Scream”, because I guess already having a movie called Scream as well as a TV series called Scream wasn’t enough. Anyway, Scream never did much for me – it’s just a slasher but now the kids are generation x (I suppose the appeal at the time was that horror wasn’t really in a good spot)! I thought Scream would’ve been more fun if the killers were emulating kills in the horror movies they’ve seen. This would’ve made the horror movie fan a more believable red herring. But I don’t think they really ever do that much in Scream? Scream is mostly just the “babysitter and the man in the house” urban legend by way of A New Nightmare fused with Black Christmas. Anyway, apparently Oliver Stone was one of the final bidders on the original Scream script and it would’ve been interesting to see what the fuck would’ve happened to Scream under his direction (it probably would’ve never been produced, and even if it had, it wouldn’t have been called “Scream” since that was a Dimension decision (it was apparently called “Scary Movie” up until the final minute)).
also the fact that the villains in scream never tried to eat anyone disappoints me.
When you watch the movie, you get the impression it has an origin story like that. What to do with a castle and a freak? You can come up with a bunch of great ideas right off the bat, so it’s just disappointing to watch the movie and realize that this is really what they committed themselves to.
i admittedly have never seen any of his movies (except space truckers, which is irrelevant to the concept) but i always sort of resented stuart gordon as the cinematic steward of hp lovecraft. his take on ‘lovecraftian’ has always seemed so boring to me.
oh wait i have seen dagon, i forgot he made that one too. it’s a little better, but not much.
I really prefer Re-Animator to Dagon, for the two Lovecraft adaptations I have seen of his. Re-Animator does more work to reinterpret Lovecraft and what you get is campy and ridiculous, while I just thought Dagon was a snooze fest. From Beyond seems like it could be good too.
On the topic of violence, cruelty, and evil in film, I saw Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance recently. I had already seen the two latter films in the Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance trilogy, but I was really disturbed by the way that violence is framed in this film. From what I understand, many American film critics dismissed the film as pointlessly violent, but I don’t see it as hollow at all. There are very real personal and societal reasons for why the characters do what they do. It was hard to watch but I have a deep respect for the artistic choices that were made.
I’ve actually been meaning to bring up New Korean Cinema. Criterion Channel added a collection of films and I’ve been working through them with my dear friend. One thing I appreciate about this group of films is the attention to characterization. People who show up for just five minutes carry themselves with this whole attitude. They’re complete characters that you only catch a glimpse of.
I was wondering if there were any fellow fans among us. Most of my watching has revolved around four directors: Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, Na Hong-jin, and Kim Jee-woon. The two all-time greats in my eyes are Park and Na. I’m frequently amazed at how much story those two can plot into their work and still maintain momentum.
yeah, i guess this is what i don’t like? i mean i get the appeal of stuff that is campy and ridiculous, but… i also feel like lovecraft is already sort of campy and ridiculous, but in a … different way. idk.
i don’t think i’ve ever witnessed anything adapting lovecraft that i felt got it ‘right’ so maybe the problem is me.
I get what you mean. I enjoy the over-the-top colorful camp of movies like Re-Animator and the recent A Color out of Space adaptation. But even when I saw that Color… movie last year (last movie I saw in theatres!) I was a little disappointed that it invented all this other campy content when the original story is plenty quaint. Something about the moments in Lovecraft stories where the horror is unveiled, and you can tell it’s supposed to be a moment of maximum horror, but it’s not quite there so you have to allow yourself get caught up in the over-dramatic presentation of it. I think most adaptations have wanted to do that work for you, force you into reacting like a terrorized spectator of horrors instead with nasty gore or some visceral slapstick comedy. Which, I guess, is the style of blockbuster movies. Putting you in the moment, closing the gap between seeing and feeling. I think getting rid of intellectual imagining parts of Lovecraft stories is no slight change, though it may kind of seem like it is at first.
I’ve seen Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring. That movie had some great poetic moments and a beautiful setting though I kind of hate the conceit of the third act. I’ve…heard of some of his other movies and I don’t know if I can follow him down this road.
I consider him the weakest out of the four, for sure. But! I was thinking about the gun dealers in A Bittersweet Life when I made my point about good characterization. I think he can pull of some scenes really well but the plots usually come out disjointed. I actually just watched The Foul King last night and it’s a pretty good example of his strengths and weaknesses. The wrestling scenes are phenomenal but every scene outside of the ring drags the plot to a crawl. My favorite film by him is The Quiet Family which is very different from his later output.
My hot take is that Bong Joon-ho puts at least one incredibly stupid element into each of his movies. Sometimes that stupid element is the entire premise of a film!
Yeah there’s certainly problematic elements in 3-Iron as well but I would still recommend. It’s almost completely dialogue free also if/when you’re ever in the mood for that.
(Edit: There’s no extreme content like that Moebius review describes).
Crocodile is about people who live by (CW - suicide) fishing suicides out of the river and ransoming their bodies back to the families. ‘Uncompromising’ and original seems to be his style.