Yeah the bond movies aren’t great.
Hearing a poker player explain why the poker scene is awful ruined Casino Royale for me . He has a statistically incredible hand and it is a great idea to go all in and that he gets shit for being a hot head during it is insane. Also explaining to the accountant woman the basic fucking rules is so insulting.
I’m a fan of Quantum of Solace, in addition to the others mentioned.
Critical opinion seems to have walked back around on it, too. And I wonder if that’s because Spectre sucked? or maybe time away from Casino Royale has revealed that QoS is actually a solid action movie? I dunno, but i always liked it. Its a lot more simple than Casino Royal, but all the parts are still moving right, for me.
Skyfall was messy. I think maybe it either needs an alternate edit, or maybe swap a few scenes with reshoots? It felt at times contrived and also old fashioned in a bad way. I havent’ seen since it released, however. And just a couple of days ago, I had thought about re-watching it. Adele’s song for it is good.
Spectre is dumb because it skips back to old cheesey style bond and that’s not what i’m here for.
I don’t actually mind roger moore that much but I did think it was very strange that spectre was basically a roger moore movie and didn’t telegraph that at all
Be sure to follow up Casino Royale with Quantum of Solace immediately.
This is a minor spoiler but I’ll go ahead and blur it anyway. Another thing about Quantum of Solace is that bond does not sleep with the main girl.
I suggested to daphny we watch the new gaspar noe film CLIMAX which i absolutely loved. its his best movie. like 80% of it is people writhing around and screaming and moaning to dance music. its so oppressive and disorienting, i love the lighting, i love the soundtrack, i love the camera constantly rotating and how so many shots are from completely fucked up angles, ITS SO OVERWHELMING its fantastic. i would have loved to see it in theaters and ill never watch it ever again. big thumbs up if you love ECSTASY AND OTHER CLUB DRUGS
OH DAMN VERONICA BEAT ME TO THE POST but holy shit i would absolutely watch that movie again, at least the extended dance scenes, even if the movie is technically one extended dance scene
at first, when it was doing a mini interview segment with each of teh dancers/characters i was like, oh. this is entirely too many people to keep track of im going to be overwhelmed and confused BUT NO IT IS EXACTLY THE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE TO KEEP TRACK OF AT A PARTY. whenever the camera would move around to one part of the building to another, if i entered a space where i saw a character before i would be like ‘hmm i wonder how they’re doing’ and usually i would get some kidn of audio queue of exactly what they were up to
so the premise of the movie, if you dont know is a bunch of french dancers who move around like
JESUS TEH DANCING WAS SO GOOD. i would have been fine if it was just pumped up pina. that would have been enough but NO
the lighting seperated the acts ina great way, you move around from place to place in the building and it feels like theatre, and everyones bodies were placed like setpieces. people would stand in places and move teh fuck around, just because it looked great
the camera getting more and more dizzying as the night progressed was SO GOOD
THE SONG THAT PLAYED IN THE TOP DOWN DANCE SCENE RULED I gotta go find it. also the way the dancers focused on changing their bodies altitude/verticality (LIKE WAHTEVER THEY GOT UP AND DOWN A LOT. MORE THAN THE REST OF THE MOVIE because it looked super cool from above) mesmerized me
theres so many good subtitles of [DISTANT MOANING] [DADDY VOCALIZING] [ALL SCREAMING] [FRUSTRATED GRUNT] whoever subtitled this movie rules
anyway someone spikes the punch. thats it. thats the movie.
theres a 42 minute long take in this movie and its really fucking good. the cinematography and editing definitely elevate it a lot, it wouldnt nearly be as compelling if it was shot any other way
What the Bond movie with Grace Jones and Christopher Walken? Because I remember that one being… something.
a view to a kill, in which roger moore was older than his love interest’s mother
pauline kael’s review mostly addressed how many horses were injured in the making of the film
Have people talked about Parasite ITT yet? I Just saw it and thought it was… “Good.” I mean, it’s a great movie. I left feeling kind of mystified why this film in particular is having this kind of impact though. I think I liked Snowpiercer better? I haven’t seen many of the other Bong Hits though.
It seemed really reminiscent of the Cohen brothers movies that I both enjoy and am simultaneously kind of irritated by, where you get this weird blend of the filmmaker’s affection for their characters combined with their interest in making them consistently do horrible shit and make bad choices and get punished for it. Like, I definitely “get” it, or at least I feel like I do. But watching this helped me crystallize a thought I’ve had about these Cohen brothers films and also Parasite, which is that if I have to watch a movie that has a kind of bleak message about how we live in a society or something, I prefer movies where you get the sense that the characters have themselves learned something by the end of the movie, rather than those where the audience is supposed to have learned something but the characters themselves are still in the dark. It seems… smug somehow? I mean, this is the literal ending seen of Burn After Reading so I know it is deliberate, I am just not a huge fan.
it was actually my favourite Bong by far largely because I thought he actually stuck the landing rather than having the last act descend into bitterness
I dunno, leaving the son believing all he has to do to fix things is become rich enough to buy the house is pretty bitter to me!
i think bong feels just as bad about that as you do.
i know! it’s not that i don’t like bleak endings, i am just more drawn to ones where the characters also understand their circumstances (even if the circumstances are fucked) i guess i just like it when people in movies learn things
yeah the decision to make him, like, a needy chauvinist is really something imo
I absolutely love every scene he has with vesper because he’s a piece of shit but he’s so clearly trying at something, it’s a really good performance
also she was like 25 in this movie geez
I feel the opposite, character development in general is like the 3 act structure in that it’s become too ubiquitous to the point of stiffling narrative media and as a result I actually tend to enjoy more things that either don’t include them or try to subvert them
In Parasite the best part was actually the poor father being overwhelmed by the injustice of it all and stabbing the rich father seemingly out of nowhere BUT immediately regretting and forgetting why he did it
Burn after reading had no respect for its unfortunate characters, unlike Parasite, which is a pretty big deal
my friend wrote a good article about parasite
This is good, thanks for sharing. I think this is sort of similar to my take on the movie, except I don’t know if I think this is like a failure of the movie so much as it is the point of the movie.
Like, based on the ending it seems to me like the latter point is exactly what the movie is illustrating, it’s just that the characters themselves never recognize this. That’s why the takes on the movie that say it’s about “class warfare” to me are kind of missing the mark, when instead it seems to be about a kind of irresolvable class predicament that can cause suffering (unfairly distributed suffering) but not actually change anything.
I don’t think it is the responsibility of the movie to depict a successful revolt, so that’s why I wouldn’t call it a failure. But the thing that kind of rubbed me the wrong way about it is that the story is told so that the audience, who is likely (overseas at least) to consist of people who have more in common with the Parks than the Kims, is able to realize the futility of Ki-woo’s resolution to get rich and buy the house at the end, but Ki-woo himself is deprived of that understanding. It just seems kind of patronizing.
ah geez there’s a lot to talk about with movies I like
@daphaknee @iguferon just fully agreed on everything with climax, it’s noe’s best imo! the movie is literally get a bunch of actual really great dancers to just do their thing for 2 hours while noe does his thing for 2 hours and it’s a damn miracle that there’s a coherent thread of anything that emerges from it but it does and it’s somehow really powerful? the idea of like, nationalism and unity slowly devolving into everyone being alone and some people being comfortable with it and some people being completely unable to handle it because everyone’s trying to figure out who spiked the damn punch after the rehearsal is something that he apparently didn’t intend but whatever I’m 100% into it
nika still listens to the soundtrack! I also told her that I don’t think anyone at my work could actually handle the movie much less like, get anything from it
I will post about parasite next