tbh i couldn’t hate it even after feeling gradually like i lost interest towards the end. there was too much stuff there that i did like. a lot of great ideas and images that kind of went nowhere. but i like the ridiculousness and the dark humor. it’s the kind of movie i want to see when i see some random newer indie movie. my main complaint is it wasn’t weird enough… and also too adolescent. Inherent Vice and Mulholland Drive feel like very Adult Movies… this felt like a child’s movie.
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i miss la so much ;-;
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I like this movie a whole lot; it captures the vibe and shallowness of a very 2019-sort of internet dude. He’s shallow and terrible and a lot of the movie is unsatisfying around him but that feels intentional to capture the frustrated vibe of the times…an attempt to invest meaning through conspiracy into grinding mediocrity.
A lot of people I know who didn’t like it are people who spent a lot more time on twitter. People who had more than enough of their fill of This Guy. I’ve got just enough remove that I recognize it all but I’m not exposing myself to it, so capturing that vibe and world feels useful.
Southland Tales is a good comparison, and it sits near Spring Breakers as a tale of America at a time, place, and vibe.
Pacing is kind of off; the Music King scene has so much energy but then it sputters out afterwards, but that also feels appropriate for the scene and the character’s ability to miss opportunities.
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When this movie came out the trailer definitely made me recall the frequent, awkward experience one has in LA where you end up stuck in a conversation you can’t get out of with someone who seems normal at first but you quickly realize their brain has been totally corrupted by the film industry, mountains of cocaine, and possibly like some sub-scientology-level occult belief system
at the time I was too fresh out of LA to be interested in recreating that experience but at this point there is actually something kind of nostalgic about it
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agh!
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I honestly think Andrew Garfield has this exact energy in everything he has been in though, so I guess that’s part of it.
i guess under the silver lake just feels like it’s punching down to me.
southland tales is messy and sprawling and excited about all the things it’s doing. and i think the other films that are interested in present day america, like spring breakers or american honey, or even like the ~edgier~ teen drama genre (palo alto, euphoria, etc) are at least curious about presenting that culture/those scenes on their own terms. the beach bum feels way closer to it than spring breakers as far as the more recent korine films go.
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not really related, but now im thinking of la and im gonna get stoned and watch some laida lertxundi films
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I suppose this is right, but it’s most invested in revealing a character type currently invested with broad cultural currency, the soft, smart-ish, nerd lacking only a bit of ambition and closely built on a lot of internet protagonists, and cementing them as a villain type - pulling out the misogyny, the self-centered-nature, the paranoid conspiracizing, the ability to ignore real problems readily solvable in favor of abstracted intellectual quests or something more romantic. I think it’s a worthwhile project to snapshot the cultural heel turn This Dude took.
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Maybe this feeling is misplaced, but I have always presumed California socialites like those depicted in that film have an essential, material stability and indifference toward this fact which has always, to my mind, placed them in a social ladder kind of sense well above me. If Under the Silver Lake is punching down, then I need to recalibrate what I think is up and down.
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Whether it’s The Dude (1998) or This Dude (2018) I think these movies are not about the protagonist’s psychology as anything but a product of circumstance. They have more character than e.g. Oedipa Maas as a concession to film but not much more.
Southland Tales sidesteps this by giving Santeros literal schizophrenia and supernatural importance so the inherent egocentrism of a shaggy dog protagonist is substantiated but ultimately subverted.
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i’m watching justice league snyder cut for some reason and uhh
it’s kinda interesting i guess? i don’t have context but i enjoy it at face value for the most part lol
it’s long as fuck though i’m like 1/3 thru haha
this thing in particular doesn’t feel quite as unpleasant to me personally as marvel for some reason, but i haven’t seen most of the giant tentpole marvel shit, just little glimpses here and there
ww84 on the other hand was dire
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if you couldn’t tell i’m really not a “movie” person but since my hand don’t work for fuckall i’ve been brought around lmao
so i’m watching bizarre shit, i realize i have no goddamn taste
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i want to agree with this. but the film itself kind of feels like the teen version of a Big Lebowski or Inherent Vice or Mulholland Drive. it’s like a boring scenester kid’s view of the deep and dark underbelly of LA, where all characters are actually just the same few recurring boring white kids in this guy’s social circle recast as shadowy figures he’s encountering. it’s not even clear if the main character comes from a more well off family or not (in reality he would have to, but this is not trying to be reality i guess?). it’s the LA of the band Wavves or whatever. the grittiness is stripped out because everyone’s just living in a gentrified Nowhere Land and yet it’s still trying to be gritty and channel the place because they have some faint inkling that they should. a kid gloves re-imagining of meatier stuff that existed before it. diminishing returns, man. you could try and do something with that but they don’t really. and it makes me sad.
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I think we have the same read but I get a lot out of the slow deflation, illustrating the non-place and non-people more effectively because it’s structured like it might go somewhere
Maybe Brick is a comparison more on its level but also unflattering.
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can’t believe how good tomisaburo wakayama has been in all these. I’d only seen him before as ogami itto and zatoichi’s brother, which was a similar dead eyed ronin character. He’s much better utilized in these wild man yakuza roles, but also makes him more impressive in lone wolf & cub for how restrained he is in comparison. he was really great in Bakuchi-uchi socho tobaku / Big Time Gambling Boss, a chivalrous yakuza movie yukio mishima loved for it’s resemblance to ancient tragedies. his character would be the shit stirring bad guy in another movie but in this one he’s more likeable than the scumbag bosses and it’s satisfying to see someone in one of these movies not just go along with getting screwed over out of tradition, even if he’s doomed by his raging pride. also very amusing and likeable in his silk hat boss role in the red peony movies and now in Japan Organized Crime Boss he’s the heroin shooting coke sniffing maniac street gang leader that gets used as canon fodder by the big syndicates
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I keep trying to give the “Snyder is good actually maybe even despite himself” counter-revolutionaries a chance but I watched Army of the Dead and it was just absolutely dire start to finish, a miserable movie with no charisma, no panache, and no cinematography.
Not even the snyder true believers liked army of the dead though
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