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volutetheswarth
Our Lady of Perpetual Butthurt

Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:37 pm
Posts: 3489
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:25 pm 
 

Most of the complaints about Inception usually stem from the film not being as good as they thought it would be, but that doesn't disqualify it from being a good film. I saw it opening day and because of this I didn't get anyone hyping it up for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. As for not liking Inception because of South Park, I mean, honestly. Matt Stone and Trey Parker didn't watch the film, they just saw a trailer and somebody they work with brought it up to them. They then copied a parody from College Humor (The parody concerns the film being overly complex - which it's not, it just has more than one layer). The whole episode is extremely childish and when they ran out of material they resorted to making fun of the soundtrack. They made fun of something they hadn't even seen. That's just like how bullies make fun of something they don't understand.

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PhilosophicalFrog
The Hypercube

Joined: Thu May 04, 2006 7:08 pm
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:38 pm 
 

Huh? How do you know anything you just said?

Also, no, it was still funny, and very good.

The movie isn't even all that complex, it just contains a shit-load of unnecessary complications. This is exactly what South Park was talking about too.
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lord_ghengis
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Joined: Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:31 pm
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:44 pm 
 

I didn't think much of the South Park episode, but mainly because I'm fucking sick of them doing episodes in the style of movies or tv shows, they write like three wholly original episodes a year these days.
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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:46 pm 
 

Quote:
I think Memento gets a pretty raw deal when people call it a movie that is only interesting when you don't know the twist, kind of like Fight Club in that regard. Sure the twist is pretty shocking and is a big event, but the way he interacts with people is fun to watch, there are a few bits of black humour, and I could watch it over and over without getting bored. These movies aren't The Sixth Sense.


Yeah, I do feel a bit bad saying that about Memento - it is a very cool flick on its own and I generally enjoy it - but I guess I just like some other Nolan movies a little more, is all. I dunno. I just kind of felt that way the last (and second) time I saw it - that it was kind of a one note movie. But that was a few years ago, so who even knows about now.
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volutetheswarth
Our Lady of Perpetual Butthurt

Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:37 pm
Posts: 3489
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:51 pm 
 

PhilosophicalFrog wrote:
Huh? How do you know anything you just said?

Also, no, it was still funny, and very good.

The movie isn't even all that complex, it just contains a shit-load of unnecessary complications. This is exactly what South Park was talking about too.


What does it matter where I get my information, if you want to know perhaps you should actually do some research. "It just contains a shit-load of unnecessary complications." I don't think they're unnecessary in the slightest, they work perfectly well in the confines of the movie. It's funny because there is a vast majority of people who think it wasn't complex enough.

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Evil_Johnny_666
Reigning king of the night

Joined: Wed Jun 06, 2007 8:54 pm
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Location: Canada
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:58 pm 
 

Inception was everything I dislike about modern Hollywood blockbusters. Overpresent boring music that tries to convey emotions that the movie itself failed to, sterile cinematography, annoying special effects with lots of CGI, characters I couldnt care for, plot holes, stupid plot, boring action, etc... The movie itself is not terrible, but it has absolutely nothing interesting in it for me, nothing enjoyable. The film wasnt even complex, it was just stuff put on top of one another. A dream within a dream within a dream, an interesting concept but brought nowhere. The limbo thing felt like it was there because they needed it, when it doesnt really makes sense I feel. And Nolan tried to mess with us at the end, and while you could think of the totem thing and all all day long, it didnt matter at all. The way the dream thing was constructed made the doubt it could have given us impossible. You know, theres pretty much only one thing you can make Russian dolls do, same thing here, unless you pull out something off your ass. Like in Mass Effect 3.

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Necroticism174
Kite String Popper

Joined: Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:46 pm
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Location: Canada
PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 12:21 am 
 

Memento was pretty good indeed. I also don't think knowing the twist cheapens it in any way. I think Nolan is a good director overall. He was just being slightly overambitious with Inception. My biggest problem with it were the wooden characters. They were all barely developed.
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MacMoney
Man of the Cloth

Joined: Sun Nov 03, 2002 10:17 pm
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:11 am 
 

It's (Inception) an ambitious film, perhaps a bit too much. It runs 2+ hours already and still a lot of the stuff isn't developed enough and a lot of it feels like it's just scratching the surface. The lack of time also is why there's so much exposition through dialogue rather than showing. It was an entertaining flick, but I'm not really inclined to go back to it to sit through all the rather dull action and that romance stuff.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada: A post-western (if you will) about an illegal Mexican immigrant getting killed in a dead-end bordertown. Or rather about dreams, guilt and finally redemption. Tommy Lee Jones - a friend of the immigrant - kidnaps the killer to help him bury his friend at his hometown like he promised. The journey is an odyssey where they meet different sorts of people and we find out that people aren't what they first seem, that they can change. That even vile, unlikable people can realize their faults and change when under tremendous pressure. That they can learn to empathize and care for their fellow man. Or at least as far as the drama requires. The movie meanders on and on a bit too much. The non-linear storytelling mixes the palette quite a bit and doesn't really serve a purpose besides being artistic for artistic's sake.

Lady in the Lake: Robert Montgomery's film noir. With a twist! And what a dumb one it is. Before the movie Doom, before anyone even thought out FPS games, there was Lady in the Lake - a film noir flick based on a Raymond Chandler story with the camera serving as Philip Marlowe's eyes so it seems like all the characters in the film are talking to the viewer(s). The story is good enough - convoluted, but no The Big Sleep - but the filming style renders everything rather drab and ineffective. The way the camera is handled as someone's eyes is very clumsy. Better just forget about this film altogether.

The Company Men: A decent enough film about large manufacturing company downsizing in America. A serious, current topic that is rarely touched upon, but the film ends up relying too much on Hollywoodian melodrama to move the viewer. Blue collar good, white collar bad. All the bosses in top positions are bad and just looking out for themselves. Except for the grizzled, old veteran who started out on the factory floor and has risen to a top position with sheer hard work and caring for the little guy. The selfish, mid-30s corporate climber who has lost touch with his family ends up working at a menial job with his brother-in-law's construction company and ends up finding himself and his family again. Really now? Could this stuff be more cliché? The film is ought-provoking in a way, but merely on a mundane level. What if my job gets cut? Dare one say it; a blue-collar film.

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Calusari
Metalhead

Joined: Thu Apr 27, 2006 1:36 am
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 6:13 am 
 

volutetheswarth wrote:
"It just contains a shit-load of unnecessary complications." I don't think they're unnecessary in the slightest, they work perfectly well in the confines of the movie. It's funny because there is a vast majority of people who think it wasn't complex enough.


I agree. After hearing that 'Inception' was utterly unfathomable, headache-inducing, etc, I was expecting something on a wholly different level to what I eventually encountered. I did enjoy the film, but didn't think it was complex, whether unnecessarily or otherwise. In my view, it's a pretty standard take on a narrative that is very familiar within sci-fi and what I term 'indie surrealism', and even more so in literature of those forms; I'd be surprised if anyone who reads Dick, Vonnegut or Murakami was really stumped by Nolan's approach.

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PhilosophicalFrog
The Hypercube

Joined: Thu May 04, 2006 7:08 pm
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 3:34 pm 
 

volutetheswarth wrote:

What does it matter where I get my information, if you want to know perhaps you should actually do some research.


:lol: k. so you're just gonna be a dick then? fine.

Quote:
"It just contains a shit-load of unnecessary complications." I don't think they're unnecessary in the slightest, they work perfectly well in the confines of the movie. It's funny because there is a vast majority of people who think it wasn't complex enough.


Complexity and complications are two vastly different things. Don't equate them. Besides, I think you're wrong about working within the context, but whatever.

Evil_Johnny_666 wrote:
Inception was everything I dislike about modern Hollywood blockbusters. Overpresent boring music that tries to convey emotions that the movie itself failed to, sterile cinematography, annoying special effects with lots of CGI, characters I couldnt care for, plot holes, stupid plot, boring action, etc... The movie itself is not terrible, but it has absolutely nothing interesting in it for me, nothing enjoyable. The film wasnt even complex, it was just stuff put on top of one another. A dream within a dream within a dream, an interesting concept but brought nowhere.


This pretty much sums it up. Also denotes the difference between complexity and complication.
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Necroticism174
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Joined: Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:46 pm
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2012 11:18 pm 
 

So apparently they're remaking Leprechaun, because that's necessary.
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So good. Makes me want to break up with my girlfriend, quit my job and never move out of my parents house. Just totally destroy my life for Satan.

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AppleQueso
Veteran

Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 11:02 am
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 1:02 am 
 

Necroticism174 wrote:
So apparently they're remaking Leprechaun, because that's necessary.

...seriously? What?

They'll remake fucking anything won't they?

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Zelkiiro
Pounding the world with a fish of steel

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:30 pm
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Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 1:07 am 
 

AppleQueso wrote:
Necroticism174 wrote:
So apparently they're remaking Leprechaun, because that's necessary.

...seriously? What?

They'll remake fucking anything won't they?

Did you hear that they're remaking The Ten Commandments?

Apparently that Cecil B. DeMille asshole wasn't satisfied with his 30s classic, so he's remaking it into a special effects-laden sellout movie. I'll bet he's gonna do it in color, too, the bastard.
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volutetheswarth
Our Lady of Perpetual Butthurt

Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:37 pm
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Location: Australia
PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 2:19 am 
 

They're remaking everything these days, nothing is sacred. I imagine Back To The Future and Se7en will be next.
Speaking of Cecil B. Demille, did anybody see Cecil B. Demented? It was directed by John Waters and starred Stephen Dorff. Now that was an unusual film. I still can't make up my mind whether I like it or despise it, it had some pretty funny wtf moments.

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AppleQueso
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 5:44 am 
 

volutetheswarth wrote:
They're remaking everything these days, nothing is sacred. I imagine Back To The Future and Se7en will be next.


As much as I despise the idea of a Back to the Future remake (it's one of my all-time favorite movies after all), I have to admit, if it takes place in 2015 and involves the main character going back in time 30 years to the year 1985... that'd be kinda interesting. Kinda.

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Necroticism174
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Joined: Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:46 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:44 am 
 

I would prefer Black to The Future.
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theposaga about a Moonblood rehearsal wrote:
So good. Makes me want to break up with my girlfriend, quit my job and never move out of my parents house. Just totally destroy my life for Satan.

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Zelkiiro
Pounding the world with a fish of steel

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:30 pm
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Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 4:41 pm 
 

Necroticism174 wrote:
I would prefer Black to The Future.

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Deucalion
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2007 11:29 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:19 pm 
 

Necroticism174 wrote:
So apparently they're remaking Leprechaun, because that's necessary.


Apparently, WWE is involved. Let's hope Hornswoggle (or whatever his name is) isn't the leprechaun.

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AcidWorm
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:18 pm 
 

lord_ghengis wrote:
I didn't think much of the South Park episode, but mainly because I'm fucking sick of them doing episodes in the style of movies or tv shows, they write like three wholly original episodes a year these days.

Yeah that and their parodies are almost never funny for me. They often start off ok but then they just keep exaggerating and making it more and more over the top that it gets so stupid and boring. This is the formula for almost every episode for me. The only episode of the last season that I enjoyed was the crack baby athletic association one (and even that wasn't great) and I saw all of them.
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Vlachos
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:57 am 
 

volutetheswarth wrote:
It's funny because there is a vast majority of people who think it wasn't complex enough.

Who are these people?
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IanThrash
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Dec 26, 2011 10:56 pm
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:01 pm 
 

Vlachos wrote:
volutetheswarth wrote:
It's funny because there is a vast majority of people who think it wasn't complex enough.

Who are these people?



chuck norris
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Necroticism174
Kite String Popper

Joined: Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:46 pm
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 10:22 pm 
 

Are you 12 years old?
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So good. Makes me want to break up with my girlfriend, quit my job and never move out of my parents house. Just totally destroy my life for Satan.

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darkeningday
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 6:31 am 
 

The Skin I Live In was a deliciously subversive Cronenbergian nightmare. Definitely Almodóvar's finest film in years, and easily the best film I've seen so far this year. If you like disturbing yet poignant character dramas (think Dogtooth on a Hollywood budget), look no further than this. I'm definitely no fan of Antonio Banderas, but I thought he was electrifying in the lead, and I doubt a woman exists who could pull off the female lead with more gusto than Elena Anaya. SEE IT.
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lord_ghengis
Still Standing After 38 Beers... hic

Joined: Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:31 pm
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:26 pm 
 

Well it took me two tries, but I finally managed to sit through The Tree of Life. What a gorgeous, terrible movie. Easily the most drawn out thing I've ever seen, with little to no plot for the majority of the run time. Through the middle to late stages there is a little story about a son rebelling against his strict father, but for the main part it's all about how this family views their connection with God, and until the end I suppose it could be taken quite philosophically, but in the end the message of "Nature is cruel and life goes on and is much bigger than you, so don't let anger, regret and loss destroy you" (Which seems to be the main purpose of that extended formation of the universe bit, which does look cool [Except for the shitty dinosaur CGI], but I will say it's not pointless, without it, it's pretty much a cripplingly slow and generic boy-rebels-against-parents-due-to-hard-circumstances movie, in a sense that segment justifies the overblown and pretentious meandering somewhat.), gets switched to "Nature is cruel and life goes on and is much bigger than you, but if you follow the way of 'Grace' (Clearly meant as God, there's heaven and everything) and let God into your heart and you will forgive everything and live in joy.", which pretty much just makes this a movie about Christianity and cuts off most types of interperetation. The only interpretation is "Live by mans laws and be the master of your own life, and you will suffer, be jealous, be cruel, but live a peaceful, loving life with God and all your worries will wash away", that's it, there are no other interpretations.

I will admit that it is gorgeous, every shot is perfectly framed and every detail designed to be as beautiful as humanly possible. But that doesn't make up for how ridiculously overblown this is. For starters, The first 15 minutes give the set up, from a future perspective what the meat of the movie is about, you learn that there are two ways of living, Nature, becng materialistic and left important, Grace being reserved and loving, you learn that the family have a dead child and the three main characters all react to this in different ways and have other issues too there is virtually no dialogue for this, but at least it gets it's point accross. Films like Rabbit Hole discuss this issue with far more thought and better watchability. Next up is the 25 minute scene with the formation of the universe and a bunch of whispered questions for God, which makes me ask why dies all the narration need to be fucking whispered. I guess it's meant to be like prayer or something. The scene is beautiful, the music is a little overblown, but it is undeniably impressive. It runs a very long time, but I guess that's kind of the point of showing the age and massiveness of the universe. The most contentious stuff here is the heavy handed metaphors taken with the dinosaurs, basically using sharks going after blood as a metaphor for the way of "Nature", and the friendly dinosaur who takes mercy on the dying prey dinosaur reflecting the way of "Grace", which is meant to show that things have always known the way of God or some shit. The dinosaurs have very poor texture rendering, which is a pity because the movement is very realistic.

Then you get another 20 minutes of home movies of children growing up, again with no plot or dialogue so by the time the story actually rocks up the whole thing has been pretty well worn out. The story itself is ok I guess, all quite predictable, still really drawn out and artsy with every scene have six or seven unnescessary seconds of looking off into the distance or camera trickery between every single cut. And there are a lot of cuts, no scene in the entire film plays out in a simple continuous motion, constantly chopping around and dissecting the flow to make it look all meaningful despite having no substance. I'm not sure why people spoke up the wife's acting for Oscar buzz, she doesn't speak much and she's rarely out of the background of the film. Obviously the film is all about said meaning and moral of the story, so the actual plot would only have taken up about 4 pages of script (Which would have topped out at around 9 pages probably), and the rest being all ethereal shots of streams and trees while people whisper the same old shit to God. Seriously, all the questions to God are "Why me?" "Did he deserve it?" "Why do you do this?" "Are you there?" There are hundreds of these for two and a half hours! This line of of questioning why the film could be giving an atheistic approach to the film to be interpreted, which goes out the window in the final scene.

It's a gorgeous movie, so I can sort of see why some people want to make it out to be hugely moving and meaningful, but the message offered is so very simple and pretentiously blown up to unbearable levels I can't see how it could be considered to be so important and thought provoking.
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Diamhea
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:31 pm 
 

Watched Good Morning Vietnam (1987) last night. Good flick.
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Call_From_The_Tower
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:31 am
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:09 pm 
 

darkeningday wrote:
The Skin I Live In was a deliciously subversive Cronenbergian nightmare. Definitely Almodóvar's finest film in years, and easily the best film I've seen so far this year. If you like disturbing yet poignant character dramas (think Dogtooth on a Hollywood budget), look no further than this. I'm definitely no fan of Antonio Banderas, but I thought he was electrifying in the lead, and I doubt a woman exists who could pull off the female lead with more gusto than Elena Anaya. SEE IT.

I really enjoyed The Skin I Live In as well, except for
Spoiler: show
the ending, which I felt kind of cheapened the whole film. The problem I had with it was that the ending was so predictable after a certain section of the film, in that you knew that she (or it) was going to turn against him and betray him. I actually thought the film should have ended after she had defended Banderas' character when the other surgeon began asking questions, with her obediently sitting on his lap. Would've made for a much more unsettling resolution than her simply turning on him, if not quite so bloody.

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Expedience
Metal freak

Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2008 4:22 am
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 7:26 pm 
 

lord_ghengis wrote:
Well it took me two tries, but I finally managed to sit through The Tree of Life. What a gorgeous, terrible movie. Easily the most drawn out thing I've ever seen, with little to no plot for the majority of the run time. Through the middle to late stages there is a little story about a son rebelling against his strict father, but for the main part it's all about how this family views their connection with God, and until the end I suppose it could be taken quite philosophically, but in the end the message of "Nature is cruel and life goes on and is much bigger than you, so don't let anger, regret and loss destroy you" (Which seems to be the main purpose of that extended formation of the universe bit, which does look cool [Except for the shitty dinosaur CGI], but I will say it's not pointless, without it, it's pretty much a cripplingly slow and generic boy-rebels-against-parents-due-to-hard-circumstances movie, in a sense that segment justifies the overblown and pretentious meandering somewhat.), gets switched to "Nature is cruel and life goes on and is much bigger than you, but if you follow the way of 'Grace' (Clearly meant as God, there's heaven and everything) and let God into your heart and you will forgive everything and live in joy.", which pretty much just makes this a movie about Christianity and cuts off most types of interperetation. The only interpretation is "Live by mans laws and be the master of your own life, and you will suffer, be jealous, be cruel, but live a peaceful, loving life with God and all your worries will wash away", that's it, there are no other interpretations.

I will admit that it is gorgeous, every shot is perfectly framed and every detail designed to be as beautiful as humanly possible. But that doesn't make up for how ridiculously overblown this is. For starters, The first 15 minutes give the set up, from a future perspective what the meat of the movie is about, you learn that there are two ways of living, Nature, becng materialistic and left important, Grace being reserved and loving, you learn that the family have a dead child and the three main characters all react to this in different ways and have other issues too there is virtually no dialogue for this, but at least it gets it's point accross. Films like Rabbit Hole discuss this issue with far more thought and better watchability. Next up is the 25 minute scene with the formation of the universe and a bunch of whispered questions for God, which makes me ask why dies all the narration need to be fucking whispered. I guess it's meant to be like prayer or something. The scene is beautiful, the music is a little overblown, but it is undeniably impressive. It runs a very long time, but I guess that's kind of the point of showing the age and massiveness of the universe. The most contentious stuff here is the heavy handed metaphors taken with the dinosaurs, basically using sharks going after blood as a metaphor for the way of "Nature", and the friendly dinosaur who takes mercy on the dying prey dinosaur reflecting the way of "Grace", which is meant to show that things have always known the way of God or some shit. The dinosaurs have very poor texture rendering, which is a pity because the movement is very realistic.

Then you get another 20 minutes of home movies of children growing up, again with no plot or dialogue so by the time the story actually rocks up the whole thing has been pretty well worn out. The story itself is ok I guess, all quite predictable, still really drawn out and artsy with every scene have six or seven unnescessary seconds of looking off into the distance or camera trickery between every single cut. And there are a lot of cuts, no scene in the entire film plays out in a simple continuous motion, constantly chopping around and dissecting the flow to make it look all meaningful despite having no substance. I'm not sure why people spoke up the wife's acting for Oscar buzz, she doesn't speak much and she's rarely out of the background of the film. Obviously the film is all about said meaning and moral of the story, so the actual plot would only have taken up about 4 pages of script (Which would have topped out at around 9 pages probably), and the rest being all ethereal shots of streams and trees while people whisper the same old shit to God. Seriously, all the questions to God are "Why me?" "Did he deserve it?" "Why do you do this?" "Are you there?" There are hundreds of these for two and a half hours! This line of of questioning why the film could be giving an atheistic approach to the film to be interpreted, which goes out the window in the final scene.

It's a gorgeous movie, so I can sort of see why some people want to make it out to be hugely moving and meaningful, but the message offered is so very simple and pretentiously blown up to unbearable levels I can't see how it could be considered to be so important and thought provoking.


Good post, very throrough analysis. The movie has improved for me on repeated viewings in some respects and weakened in others. I too had problems with the seemingly Christian "message" at first, but quickly disposed of the idea that it is trying to put across any impartial or objective moral. It is really just presenting the experiences of several characters and the voiceovers help to show these experiences through their own eyes. I think everything in the film serves to emphasize that - the whispering shows it's more of a self-dialogue rather than narration, and the movement of the camera is unique, not handheld or static but floating as if representing a disembodied consciousness searching for a foothold. I don't think it is saying "be nice to people, don't be selfish, follow the good road". It just describes a problem most people deal with in their lives and shows one person's mostly internal journey in resolving it. The transcendent ideal which is being sought all along doesn't have to be God, but if you want to think of it as God that is within the realm of interpretation. It could have been more open-ended but to be honest I'm glad to see a film which offers something other than blurred ambiguity.

The acting is by far the worst part of the movie, I mean it wasn't bad but there's a limit to what you can do with actors like Brad Pitt.

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Under_Starmere
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 1:58 am 
 

The Tree of Life had its merits but it definitely wasn't the best Malick film. The ending verged so thoroughly into trite New Age territory that it kinda lost whatever unspoken power had been building up to that point, which honestly wasn't that much. I might watch it again at some point in the future, but I don't feel particularly compelled to. The subject matter and the acting, etc, weren't gripping enough to get me totally involved throughout.

Just checked out Drive tonight. Again, had its merits, but toward the end the story just petered out into a whole lot of nothing.
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Calusari
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 2:29 am 
 

Under_Starmere wrote:
Just checked out Drive tonight. Again, had its merits, but toward the end the story just petered out into a whole lot of nothing.


Really? For me, the
Spoiler: show
inconclusiveness
of the ending was what lifted that film out of the ordinary; while a few deft touches here and there - like Gosling's character having no name - made it more than an ordinary heist film, those last few scenes retrospectively changed my perspective on the entire film. I hadn't even wanted to see it at first, since there are few things that I hate more than movies about men driving fast and doing little else, but of course Drive turned out to be far more. The
Spoiler: show
sheer, unremitting bleakness
of the conclusion transformed it into a meditation upon the genre and that dreaded thing, the human condition, in general;
Spoiler: show
the uncertainty of the Driver's fate and the thought that most of the film's action had been an exercise in futility
made it both more contemplative and more realistic than stereotypical examples of the genre. It's a trend that I think has become more prominent in recent action films, and is something I welcome. Btw, I didn't know if those were spoilers or not, but I thought I'd tag them just to be safe. That's one film I don't want to ruin.

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Necroticism174
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 2:35 am 
 

I found Tree Of Life tremendously boring too.
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marktheviktor
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 2:42 am 
 

Necroticism174 wrote:
I found Tree Of Life tremendously boring too.


Most all of that director's films are excruciatingly boring i.e. The New World and The Thin Red Line.

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lord_ghengis
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:32 am 
 

Ha I tried to watch the New World once, but my girlfriend was around and she shut it off after about twenty-five minutes. Malick seems to really hate words.

@Expedience, I would look into that sort of viewpoint because you have some interesting thoughts in there, but there is no way I'm watching that movie ever again.
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darkeningday
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 4:04 am 
 

marktheviktor wrote:
Necroticism174 wrote:
I found Tree Of Life tremendously boring too.


Most all of that director's films are excruciatingly boring i.e. The New World and The Thin Red Line.

I'm not too keen on either of those films, but Days of Heaven is in my top ten movies of all time. One of the few films I have yet to find a flaw in.
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Expedience
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:36 am 
 

I'm shocked. What films do you guys like then? I've watched The New World and The Thin Red Line about 5 times each and never get bored for a second.

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darkeningday
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:37 am 
 

Lars Von Trier pre-Antichrist. That's pretty much it.
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Expedience
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:43 am 
 

Why pre-Antichrist? I think his best are Melancholia and Breaking the Waves. Some of his earlier stuff is incredibly tedious, I think Dancer in the Dark and Dogville require either enormous perseverance or drugs to sit through.

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darkeningday
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 6:04 am 
 

I found both Antichrist and Melancholia pretty much appalling in every way, although Melancholia was the lesser offender. I even rather enjoyed the "measuring stick" portion, which was about the only extended metaphor that didn't feel incredibly forced and pretentious. Sadly, the awful cast, glacial pacing and--frankly--awful concept still made it an absolute chore to get through.

It's been years since I've seen Breaking the Waves. I remember it was labored and overlong, but effective by the end, and while I'd probably consider it among his lesser films, it's about 400 plateaus higher than his recent offerings.

Dogville/Manderlay and Dancer are perfect films. I'll never understand how anyone who's serious about film can't revel in their flawless exercising of the craft. From the radical subversion of "the great American play" Our Town in Dogville, to the careful side-stepping of the boundaries of Dogme 99 in Dancer, Von Trier took film to an entirely different level. Shame he's unlikely to ever do it again.
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Expedience
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 6:26 am 
 

It's puzzling to me why you like Dogville but not Antichrist. Both are what I would call subversions of traditional themes, Dogville the American Dream and Antichrist the biblical myth. Which is why I'm not a huge fan of either film - It just seemed like he had the idea of inverting the plot elements of certain stories and making films out of that. I'd sooner watch Antichrist though, just because it's shorter.

What do you think of Riget (Kingdom)? I quite liked that series.

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Under_Starmere
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:47 am 
 

Calusari wrote:
Under_Starmere wrote:
Just checked out Drive tonight. Again, had its merits, but toward the end the story just petered out into a whole lot of nothing.


Really? For me, the
Spoiler: show
inconclusiveness
of the ending was what lifted that film out of the ordinary; ...The
Spoiler: show
sheer, unremitting bleakness
of the conclusion transformed it into a meditation upon the genre and that dreaded thing, the human condition, in general;
Spoiler: show
the uncertainty of the Driver's fate and the thought that most of the film's action had been an exercise in futility
made it both more contemplative and more realistic than stereotypical examples of the genre. It's a trend that I think has become more prominent in recent action films, and is something I welcome.


Hmm. I can see where you're coming from here, and I guess if you look at it as a genre piece it seems a little more interesting, given the points you mentioned. Except I didn't view it in terms of fitting into any one genre, really, whether heist or action or...whatever. I honestly didn't know what genre it was even supposed to be, if any, going into it (which is ideally how I tend to approach films), so all I could do was judge it by what it offered. It had this odd feeling like the writer just decided, 2/3 of the way through the screenplay, that he didn't feel like bothering anymore,
Spoiler: show
so he simply killed off a bunch of characters in sequence, knocked all the pieces off the chessboard and then at the last page got up and left.
Not to mention that the last clash in the film was laughably tepid and riddled with illogical points.

Also, I could've done without the cloying "hero" theme song. Yeah, we get it, he's meant to be a good guy, no need to literally tell us that ad nauseam via soft pop. I read several people here on MA gushing about the soundtrack, but I thought it hurt more than it helped.

Anyway, yeah, as heist/action films go, it stands out and seems like something more, but as an overall piece of art it left me wanting.

EDIT: After talking with my girlfriend a bit more about Drive, we touched on the interpretation that
Spoiler: show
the main character actually did die at the end, and that the final shots of the film portray a metaphoric "drive into the dark," which I suppose feels marginally more fulfilling, but still doesn't raise the film to any great height.
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Necroticism174
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 12:50 pm 
 

Antichrist was mostly awesome because of the many unnecessary close ups of Willem Dafoe's abnormally large penis.
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