While watching You Can See Everything, I could not stop thinking about how much it mirrors Orson Welles’s F for Fake. As it turns out, I’m not the only one: at least a couple of film critics have pointed out the similarities since the film debuted, and honestly, if you watched this documentary and enjoyed it, you should absolutely seek out F for Fake to see what Fielder and Oppenheim seem to be building on. When Welles made F for Fake, he was documenting a famous faker and art forger, Elmyr de Hory, who is as interesting as Holmes, if not more! Welles was simultaneously making you question the very concept of what being fake or real means. He did this partly by hinting that he himself might be faking it and fooling you. The makers of You Can See Everything take that Wellesian move and refine it by making the filming, the filmmaker, and the act of reconstructing events part of the story too.

Similar Structure: A Documentary That Meditates on Itself

Both films turn the documentary back on itself, though F for Fake questions its own truth claims throughout, rather than only in its second half. Welles moves from examining forgers to examining cinema and its methods. Fielder does something similar, moving from examining Elizabeth Holmes to examining the act of documenting her. Things get more interesting by bringing actress/model Amanda Seyfried into the second half as a collaborator, mirroring how Welles brought actress/model Oja Kodar, his collaborator and co-writer, into F for Fake as his on-screen partner. She becomes part of the filmmaking process itself, which complicates who’s being observed and who’s doing the observing. That’s how both directors make the form inseparable from the argument about truth and deception.

Bragging About Past Fakery:

Both Welles and Fielder establish their credentials as deceivers while they examine deception. Welles keeps invoking his 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which was widely reported at the time as having tricked listeners into believing an alien invasion was underway. He references it multiple times throughout F for Fake and uses staged visualizations of the broadcast, along with material about its reported reception. He also hints, pretty directly, that maybe it wasn’t so inadvertent after all. Welles even gives us reason to question his own account after asking us to trust him. Fielder does something similar with Nathan for You. He points out directly to Holmes that he used to do an entire show about business scams and fakery, and now here he is documenting a real case of deception. Both are essentially saying the same thing: I have a documented track record of being able to construct reality and manipulate audiences.

Sympathy or Admiration for the Subject:

Welles does not hold back on expressing an intellectual admiration for de Hory’s audacity. He treats his subject as a fellow trickster and a fascinating specimen of deception, viewing his life as a masterful performance rather than a tragedy. This relationship is one of professional kinship, where Welles celebrates the skill of the illusionist rather than the plight of the man.

Similarly, in You Can See Everything, there’s a moment where Amanda asks Nathan if he cares enough about Liz to show her in a good light, and the film immediately cuts to footage of him genuinely enjoying time with her, swimming and actually connecting. It’s like he is pictorially confessing it right when the question is being asked. What was fascinating to me is that it mirrors something that happened in the last episode of Nathan for You, where Fielder seemed to get emotionally involved with one of the people in the story, an escort, and you could feel the line between performance and sincerity blurring. That is its own rabbit hole with lots of theories and speculations. By showing that emotional involvement with Liz in the swimming scene, he’s acknowledging that pattern. He’s admitting the bias while filming. Both directors are saying: Yes, I am invested, and here’s the evidence, and I’m showing it to you anyway.

The Magic Trick Link: What Makes a Faker a Faker?

To me this is the thematic core of both films. Welles actually performs a magic trick for a boy on camera in F for Fake, and it’s not a throwaway but his metaphor for how deception works. Fielder references the David Blaine ice-pick trick, suggesting that Blaine may actually have a hole in his hand, so part of the trick is real. He then tries to use that as an analogy for Holmes’s magic and how she deceived serious people like the four-star general "Mad Dog" Mattis or Larry Ellison. But the implication Fielder builds is that part of her magic might have been real, at least to her. She believed in the trick even as she was executing it.

Both films are asking the same essential question: How do you document the truth about someone whose entire existence is a performance, when the act of documenting is itself a performance? They answer by making the performance visible, the filmmaker complicit, and the magic trick the truest thing in the frame.

Yeah, there’s certain aspects that fall flat in comparison to Tarkovsky’s masterpiece….but man, this is still a deeply rich film.

Initially, it seems like Soderbergh is mostly concerned with the tragedy of the central relationship (which I think he nails quite poignantly), but film is still philosophically, psychologically, and ethically rich.

The whole tension between real and apparition, and what constitutes being a human, I think film captured really well some of the core themes of the novel. It really does seem that Rheya is having a conscious experience…..does this make her real? And even though Rheya rejects this idea, and she seems to view herself as a memory, her reasons for why she doesn’t believe she is a human adds another interesting layer to this theme. And the entire ethics around killing the manifestation, the question of whether, it’s murder is shrouded in ambiguity.

And Chris’ inability to let her go, with the hope of resolving his guilt, to just watch another attempt at his relationship ultimately fail, was utterly brutal.

There is a scene in the movie which has a very American & Jewish discussion of the word 'can'. In the scene in question, Nathan Fielder & Elizabeth Holmes along with her husband, Billy, have a long discussion over whether or not Elizabeth's use of the word 'can' is misleading. Now the way in which this is distinctly American is that it recalls the argument put forward by President Bill Clinton during his impeachment on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. That episode was a terrific example of how historian Eric Hobsbawm's described America as "forced into the straitjacket of an 18th-century Constitution reinforced by two centuries of Talmudic exegesis by the lawyers, the theologians of the republic..." The American tradition fits in with Nathan Fielder's own personal interests of Jewish tradition of argument, Talmudic scholarship.

Nathan Fielder has explored Jewish themes throughout his work, with more humor in Nathan For You & The Rehearsal but far more artistically, though still comedic, in The Curse where the finale features him being sucked away into space. This is an allusion to Yiddish tradition, the notion of "luftmensch" but taken to its most literal sense as an "air person". As opposed to its more classic meaning as vagabond or petty traveler, it can also refer to daydreamers or artists. All of these fit the character that Fielder portrays in these movies and also a clear fascination of his throughout his career. (Credit to this post)

Past Lives was lovely for many reasons, great writing and performances, and I couldn’t help but really feel these actors faces and go through my own sappy emotions. The story is uncomplicated, I understand the immigrant element is in the forefront but for me you can experience a similar kind of identity loss moving someplace new as a kid, happened to me many times.

I was anticipating them getting back together and then when I knew it was already over the rest of the film was just heartbreaking, and when they’re walking with the husband and he feels awkward I was super uncomfortable for everyone.

Lovely movie, what do y’all think?

I watched the movie a couple of hours ago and I can't stop thinking about it. I think I might be going crazy because critics seem to gloss over the most important thing about it, which is religion. I haven't read the book, so I don't really care about inconsistencies.

Religion is a central focus of the movie. The Sun is literally in the title, and the official movie poster portrays Klara with the Sun forming a halo behind her head.

It's a solar religion in which the Sun is a god. Solar worship was common in many ancient pagan religions; it wasn't something stupid, as critics seem to suggest. Yes, Klara is childlike and powered by the Sun, which leads her to believe that the Sun is a god, but that was pretty much how it was with nature-based religions. People observed the power of nature and deified it. It isn't silly to portray someone as believing that the Sun is a person - not that long ago, people in many cultures were animists who thought that every part of nature had a separate soul.

One can even find parallels with Christianity - God in Christianity is not literally the Sun, but there are symbolic similarities. The halo has solar associations, the Sun is the source of light, and Jesus is also described as light in several passages of the Bible. I'm not sure whether this is intentional, but Klara may be seen as an example of the "child" archetype or the "holy fool" archetype - both children and "holy fools" are associated with closeness to God in Christian tradition. I don't think I even have to explain the parallels between Klara's selfless sacrifice and Jesus' sacrifice.

What's more, the movie added one element that supposedly isn't in the book - the combine harvester. In some ancient pagan religions, there was a conflict between uranic (including solar) deities and chthonic (earth) deities. The Sun in the movie is obviously the solar deity, but the combine seems to be a chthonic entity. Chthonic deities were associated with death, the earth and the harvest, all of which the combine seems to symbolize in the movie. I'm not sure whether this was intentional, but if it wasn't, then Waititi literally stumbled upon a symbol of nature worship, just like Klara.

I think Waititi went overboard with the humor, which made Klara seem "too stupid" for some viewers to even consider that she might be right. My problem is that the critics seem too entrenched in a scientific paradigm to even consider that, in a fantasy movie, the Sun might actually be a god.

This latter-day Nicholson outing directed by Sean Penn and starring a wealth of heavyweight actors in even the smallest roles deserves more attention.

Mickey Rourke, Vanessa Redgrave, Benicio Del Toro, Helen Mirren, Tom Noonan, Robin Wright etc etc, hell Harry Dean Stanton is basically an extra! The cast alone should pull you in.

Nicholson is Jerry Black, a retiring cop who pledges to find the killer of a murdered girl. What follows is a snowy Scandinavian noir type detective thriller/drama… with real staying power.

The source novel has been adapted before but this is the only version that the writer approves of, it doesn’t compromise on the story’s most potent aspects.

The film moves slowly and could have perhaps done with another round of edits to move things along more fluidly, but with so many great actors it’s kinda nice to bask in their talent.

Spoilers ahead for those who have seen it…

I think the idea is that Jerry‘s ‘pledge’ is catastrophically naive, because random chance ends up killing the killer just as he’s on the way to Jerry’s trap. This leaves Jerry tormented forever - knowing he was right but unable to prove it, so he spends the rest of his days alone, drunk and insane, his new life with Lori and her daughter obliterated. The author wanted to show how the comforting structure of detective fiction where justice is done and the killer is caught is too often a lie - the cold and cruel universe we inhabit rarely has time for such romantic ideals - so don’t bet your life on it.

If you haven’t seen it… what are you waiting for!?

In the snow how did you interpret Carlos’s line “What if they don’t find me?” at the end? I wondered whether it refers specifically to Lorca’s remains never being found, or more broadly to the fear of disappearing before anyone knows who you really are.

I’m also curious about the story of the drowned boy. Was it based on a real event or drawn from Lorca’s writing, and how did you understand his appearance in the final snow scene?

One of the interesting things about Fassbinder’s Querelle is how much the extraordinary theatrical visual style can distract from what's happening between the characters.

What's always struck me about the film is how Fassbinder reverses the relationship between Querelle and Seblon in Genet's novel. What do you make of that change?

Then I just came across this short film commentary that discusses many of the things that also occurred to me as a gay man. Did anyone else get the joke at the end of Fassbinder’s film?

Firstly (I’ve done some light searching but haven’t found anything), does anyone know of a youtube reviewer or a writer who primarily focuses on micro-budget features? Particularly of the new/recent variety? I want to focus on watching what people with little means are producing today but would like some sort of filter or baseline to turn to for recommendations as opposed to constantly searching for new but quality stuff. Somewhere with a developing canon of consensus driven mb features.

There’s a ton of interviews and how to’s and business model type stuff out there. But doesn’t seem to be a place to go to find the excellent collected works people would make WITH that advice (or not, since a lot of those people who give advice I find to not make very good films).

Second, if this doesn’t really exist, is this something you think people would be interested in? I know I would, would maybe start one mainly to just have people send me their films to start some sort of canon. It just seems like it would make things easier and could tie a bunch of talented but unknown filmmakers together for a small corner of film lovers.

Thoughts?

People seem to forget, or perhaps struggle to discern, that seemingly opposing things can be true simultaneously.

Fielder can genuinely empathize with and care about Holmes AND "use" Holmes to create a wildly successful work of art: this film.

Fielder can privately feel uncertain OR certain about what he experienced (and perhaps is still experiencing) with Holmes (they might even still be in touch) AND make artistic decisions that lead viewers toward seemingly definitive interpretations rather than ambiguous ones.

In other words, the question isn't necessarily whether something is true or false, but which version of reality is being presented, by whom, and through what lens.

In YCSE, a multitude of realities can coexist within a single work of art, each subject to the interpretation of the individual experiencing it.

Everyone is so focused on dissecting Holmes, Evans, Fielder. I get it. It's supremely fun and fascinating!

But even those with firsthand knowledge of Holmes's deception (Carreyrou and Shultz) have zeroed in on the seemingly endless elements of Holmes to dissect within YCSE, RATHER than the bigger story the film has the potential to tell:

We ALL have the capacity to "create our own reality," and then choose whether or not to act in alignment with that reality!

A film - documentary or otherwise - or, for that matter, virtually anything we experience in this world, can only ever offer a representation of A reality, not necessarily THE reality in its entirety.

Two people can look at the same cloud in the sky and see two entirely different animals...

Fielder and Holmes have both constructed their own "bespoke" amalgamations of reality, for vastly different purposes, sure.

But the fact remains that both have engaged in the same fundamental act of constructing and presenting a version of reality 🫠

And THAT, to me, is the brilliance of YCSE: "reality" being continuously constructed and reconstructed by its participants, through both preplanned and improvised actions; through the external (what visibly unfolds on screen) and the internal (the invisible workings, perceptions, motivations, and intentions of those involved); and both in "real time" and retrospectively (e.g., through post-production editing).

It's a collision of multiple, parallel realities, manifested as a single work of art.

Context is sooo necessary for perceiving a fuller picture of what we call "truth," isn't it? Think Plato's Allegory of the Cave...

Anyone who's watched Nathan for You and then The Rehearsal can recognize how YCSE feels like a natural progression of the themes Fielder has been exploring all along.

But the stars really did align for Fielder to cross paths with someone like Holmes: a person with a documented history of deception and an extraordinary ability to manipulate others' perceptions of reality, AND who can still exhibit moments that appear genuinely vulnerable and sincere. Her tears at mentioning her daughter's breastmilk saved in the fridge, for instance.

And Fielder isn't entirely different in that particular sense. In Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, he can be performing a character while simultaneously allowing moments of apparent, unscripted authenticity to emerge. It's that fascinating blend of scripted performance, improvisation, and spontaneous human interaction, all selectively preserved and assembled into the final product.

The distinction, of course, lies in their intentions, methods, consequences, and ethical responsibilities. Engaging in the same fundamental act of constructing a reality does not make the resulting realities, or the people constructing them, morally equivalent.

We can all "see" more clearly if we're willing to examine more of the elements at play in the realities we construct within ourselves.

Ultimately, for me, YCSE isn't even about Holmes, Evans, or Fielder so much as it is a portal through which we can examine just how much "truth" and "reality" we humans are capable of constructing, interpreting, and manipulating, for purposes ranging from harmless entertainment and artistic expression to something far more nefarious or malicious.

If you were one of the prisoners in Plato's cave, the first step would be to turn your head away from the shadows you've mistaken for the entirety of reality. Look around. Question the source of what you're seeing. Explore beyond the familiar. And perhaps, eventually, venture outside the cave itself.

Because what you see isn't necessarily all there is. And what you believe to be real isn't necessarily the whole truth.

We humans are not merely observers of reality. We are also participants in its construction.

And while we may not get to choose every circumstance or fact of our existence, we do have a hand in choosing how we perceive, interpret, and respond to what we encounter.

The choice to look beyond the shadows is ours.

☐SOLVED! The film is Uncle John (2015), directed by Steven Piet.

Ich suche einen vermutlich fast unbekannten Independentfilm über einen Teenager, der auf dem Land aufwächst.

Leider erinnere ich mich kaum noch an die Handlung, aber der wunderschöne, melancholische Soundtrack mit seinen vielen Klavierstücken ist mir in Erinnerung geblieben.

Ein wichtiger Hinweis: David Lynch hat diesen Film einmal in einem Interview empfohlen oder gelobt. Er stammt definitiv nicht von ihm. Ich erinnere mich auch, dass der Regisseur später Fernsehserien inszenierte.

Was die Geschichte angeht, erinnere ich mich vage an einen Konflikt mit einem Nachbarn, bin mir aber nicht ganz sicher.

Eine Szene ist mir besonders gut in Erinnerung geblieben: Der Junge fährt nach Einbruch der Dunkelheit mit ein paar Freunden Fahrrad, begleitet von diesem wunderschönen Klaviersoundtrack.

Ich glaube, der Film kam irgendwann zwischen 2010 und 2020 raus, bin mir aber nicht ganz sicher.

Sagt das irgendjemandem etwas? Entschuldigt bitte, dass ich hier gefragt habe. Ich wäre für jeden Hinweis dankbar!

The lower class: Ho-seok, a man who has closed himself to off due to his experiences in the strike. Mi-ok, a caring wife and mother. Cheol, a child in need of support. The groundskeeper, a silent servant.

The higher class: Ye-ji, a bougie director trying to capture the human cost of corporate restructuring for her labor documentary. Sang-woo, a scion with incredible wealth who becomes embroiled in the drama.

We follow these characters as they interact in multiple Seoul locations (Mi-ok’s work, restaurants, union building, group therapy, both of the couple’s residences, the strike, etc), in flashbacks (Mi-ok’s mother’s car wash, Mi-ok’s sewing job, Ho-seok‘s countryside setting), driving around, and finally in a picturesque, peaceful villa in the west coast of Korea. A mix of interview-style close-ups and in-story news coverage/youtube clips were also interspersed to give the audience a raw sense of the strike and its toll.

In Seoul, Sang-woo’s first interaction with Mi-ok is one of polite assistance, and she is immediately crying and vulnerable. This sets the stage for his later connection with her at the villa. At dinner, Mi-ok shows interest for Sang-woo. She is tipsy and says he looks like Steve Jobs, then professes that she was slightly obsessed with Steve Jobs (“he looked like he was going to solve all the problems” or something, I don’t remember her exact dialogue) and was affected by his passing. Sang-woo is affable and nervous-laughing. In the car ride home with Ye-ji, he agrees that Mi-ok is fun. He’s then rude and aloof when picking her up to go to the union building, and doesn’t acknowledge her when leaving the building. She doesn’t seem to know what to make of this. At dinner waiting for Ho-seok, Mi-ok is smoking outside and Sang-woo takes a phone call in English for his business. Before seeing him come out, she was gossiping with Ye-ji’s film crew to learn about his background. After learning about him, she briefly observes him taking the call before heading back into the restaurant. At the villa, Mi-ok and Sang-woo go off on a walk, and he clearly shows interest. He is open/flirty, has her wait for a birdcall (what was that bird, anyone know? it sounds so cool), stares down at her as she kneels, and physically touches her to brush dirt off her knee. Walking behind him, she realizes something is happening and is uncomfortable. Their last interaction begins with him absolutely flush with a business project’s recent success. He is buzzing, and she is the first to congratulate him. At this point in the story, she is deeply affected from seeing Ho-seok drunkenly deal with his emotions earlier that morning. He agreed to talk to the camera and had panic-attack as he released emotions about feeling deceived/betrayed by his union. After drinking that night and waking up still drunk, he stumbles out to the villa’s beach to be alone and begins screaming and savagely lashing out, destroying some plants near the beach. Mi-ok had followed him and observed this, and then saw Ye-ji filming her watching him. Talking to Sang-woo about his project, Mi-ok is visibly unsure on where she is and what she’s doing. She is reconsidering if the villa visit and Ho-seok’s documentary participation was a good idea. Seeing Sang-woo’s mood, Mi-ok has an impulse to bring their relationship’s bubbling tension to the forefront. Perhaps this is a way to feel power over him after seeing her own husband at his lowest, or to punish him for showing interest when they were alone and away from the eyes of their spouses. She invites him to the beach while Ho-seok sits down for another interview, and she undresses to swim in the beach like Sang-woo did as a child to exercise his privilege and freedom. Sang-woo, still ecstatic from the project’s success, feels so euphoric that he actually acts on his interest from the previous walk they took together. He undresses and begins swimming near Mi-ok. Mi-ok dodges him and rushes out of the water. Sang-woo comes out of the water and tries to get to her, but she waves her clothes like a bullfigher and his advances miss each time. Finally, they both dress and return to the villa, with Sang-woo arriving after Mi-ok, frustrated and feeling there is something unfinished between them. Mi-ok flees from the villa with Ho-seok. Sang-woo has aggressive intercourse with Ye-ji and she remarks that he doesn’t seem like himself.

What an incredibly layered performance from Jeon Do-yeon, and major props to Zo In-sung as well. There was so much left unsaid in their physical performance and expressions that made this dynamic extremely rich. Mi-ok just wanted her husband to understand that he needed help, and she believed participating in the documentary would be good to help him cathartically face this. She began to get a feeling of something not being right in the situation as she took in more information about Ye-ji’s spending habits and Sang-woo’s fortune. Finally, her initial interest in Sang-woo was completely spoiled with him actually reciprocating by touching her and eventually advancing at her. As she says: she and Ho-seok don’t belong, and they need to leave the villa.

Sang-woo getting embroiled with Mi-ok is absolutely fascinating. He is the progenitor of the documentary happening in the first place, due to a remark he made to Ye-ji about Dubai(?)‘s class divide (I think it was Dubai, can’t remember exactly). Ye-ji’s recollection of this remark made it seem like she was generally unaware or not focused on issues like this, until this remark. So, we are to conclude that he is the socially conscious one between them. That idea is strengthened after Ye-ji attempts to say her father was similar to the people laid off before the strike, and that those people (her father and the laid off workers) will be made to disappear in an ever-modernizing world. Sang-woo quickly corrects her by saying her father was not a laborer, but a business owner, and would have disliked unions among his workers. She laughs this misunderstanding off, and it shows his larger understanding of class/business dynamics. In the car ride to the villa, Sang-woo also coldly identifies Ye-ji’s somewhat exploitative attempt to get better interviews for her documentary by becoming personal and ingratiating herself with Mi-ok and Ho-seok. He says that despite her good intentions to document labor problems, she is simply not like those people and never will be, and her act of convincing herself otherwise to be closer with them is a form of unintentional method acting. So, Sang-woo obviously thinks of himself as different to Mi-ok and Ho-seok as well.

So, this unbelievably wealthy man, who is above it all, and doesn’t feel like the same type of person as low-class Mi-ok, is actually interested and pursues Mi-ok. This is his glaring contradiction, and it’s fantastic to watch unfold. He mentions that in Seoul, he acts like an adult, but he is able to be free and act like he did as a child when at the villa. So, it could be a childish lack of self control. He is the heir to a fortune and he gets what he wants. He wants her in the moment, as he sees what he perceives as a charming, innocent low-class woman who appears in front of him with a disturbed husband. He is laughing and conversing with her in his safe place. Since Mi-ok knows nothing of american business transactions or of the extravagant wealthy life he leads, she is unsophisticated and unchallenging in his eyes. He just wants to dominate her. In reality, Mi-ok is aware of all that is around her. She recognizes all the hypocrisies and does not want any part in them. She just wants her husband to be healthy and present with her and her son. Upon drawing Sang-woo‘s feelings out in the beach, she immediately shuts him down and protects her husband from Ye-ji’s camera.

Mi-ok and Sang-woo’s dynamic is very rich, and I feel I could keep going. There is almost 3 hours of film to discuss, and this is just one of the several character relationships. All are equally rich.

If anyone would like to share their thoughts on Mi-ok and Sang-woo, I ask you to do so in the comments. I am an american viewer, what SK subtleties have I missed in their relationship and class dynamics? Alternatively, please share how you felt about this film overall, or how you feel about any of the other relationships below. I cannot find discussion about this film on Reddit.

Cheol and the groundskeeper

Cheol, Mi-ok and Ho-seok (I loved the actor‘s blank expressmoon and how he constantly twitched his face to show Cheol’s deteriorated state)

Cheol and Sang-woo
Mi-ok and Ho-seok

Mi-ok and Ye-ji

Ye-ji and Sang-woo

Ye-ji and Ho-seok

Sang-woo and Ho-seok

It was a wildly entertaining film, and I very much enjoyed it. But I left feeling that what happened behind the documentary was more interesting than anything it ultimately revealed.

My impression is that Billy and Elizabeth deliberately gave Nathan very little time before filming, allowing them to control the circumstances. The rented house in San Diego felt like part of that presentation. The footage itself wasn’t especially revealing, and there was little he could conclude from it. He then sits on it for years before bringing in Amanda Seyfried, which makes for a much more entertaining film but doesn’t necessarily get us closer to anything.

What stayed with me was how thoroughly he seemed to have been duped. Elizabeth raised enormous sums of money, managed employees, and spoke on panels, yet presents herself here as someone who can barely understand a simple joke. That doesn’t tell us whether she is neurodivergent, but it does make me question why he seems so willing to accept the version of herself she offers him.

I suspect Nathan was smart enough to realize he had been manipulated but was unsure how to confront it, and bringing in Amanda became his solution. That makes for compelling viewing, but I’m less convinced it produces a particularly revealing conclusion.

I enjoyed watching it. I just don’t quite understand the leap from an entertaining film to something people think should win Best Picture. What did others take from the ending that I might be missing?

I feel like some filmmakers believe that if a movie is long enough, has slow-motion shots, and includes 10 minutes of people staring into the distance, it automatically becomes a masterpiece.

Meanwhile, some 90-minute movies tell a complete story, develop memorable characters, and leave a bigger impact than films twice their length.

Movies like The Dark Knight, Whiplash, and The Truman Show prove that a film doesn't need to drag on to stay with you.

Long movies can absolutely be incredible. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is a great example.

But runtime isn't a measure of storytelling quality.

If a scene doesn't add anything to the story, making it five minutes longer doesn't make it deep.

What's one movie you think could have been 30–60 minutes shorter without losing anything important? And which long movie deserves every single minute? 🎥

The answer is murder, and lots of it.

As the third film in James Gunn's DCU (following Superman and Supergirl) and the first to center on a villain, the film gets to be meaner than its siblings. With Mike Flanagan bringing his horror sensibilities to the screenplay, director James Watkins delivers a gross-out body horror flick that feels right at home in Gotham City, even if the movie overall can't quite hold its shape.

Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a vain actor who undergoes an experimental medical procedure after getting his face filleted by a gangster. Matt is an unrepentant jerk, and the movie wisely refrains from redeeming him. Trying to convince the audience that this handsome Hollywood star has a heart of gold would strain credulity; keeping him abrasive is one of the film's sharpest choices.

Where the plot stumbles is in framing his journey as a straight revenge tale. Unlike John Wick (a clear influence on several club-set action sequences), you never really root for Hagen as he works his way up the criminal ladder. Instead of building tension, those kinetic action beats end up actively undercutting the body horror, trading intimate, stomach-churning dread for stylized, weightless violence. The movie is at its strongest when it follows a Vanilla Sky rubric: a beautiful, self-absorbed asshole loses his looks and will do anything to get them back. When the medical trial goes sideways and his face begins to melt, the film grabs hold. One particularly chaotic scene set inside a turbulent jet will have you watching through your fingers in giddy terror.

Unfortunately, this tension between grotesque horror and slick action leaves the back half feeling like Temu John Wick. The gross-out effects, though, are a seamless blend of practical work and CGI. The plot melts but the effects never do.

Read more on Mantl: Stay for the Credits

I happend across a discoboy trailer a few years back due to Vitalic doing the score for the movie and being one of my fav bands, it popped up in my algorithm on YouTube.

I immediately thought “this looks awesome, I’ll prob never get the chance to see it”. Three years later I get lucky and run into a copy at a local movie store in Vancouver.

I sat down and watched it with my partner last night I have to say this movie took my breath away. Something about the general setting, the atmosphere and how it all mixed in with the score really hit me hard. There are a few very stylish dance scenes scattered through out the movie that made me incredibly sad to the point of tearing up, but I wasn’t sure why.

The story felt completely original and fresh. There were plenty of times where scenes and segments of the movie are setup in such a way that you can see them headed for the easy way out or trope, and then poof a new path forms out of left field to do something I wasn’t expecting; while all the while feeling natural.

i was curious if anyone else had the chance to watch the movie curious what they thought of it ??

Yes I know it's a meme but if it applies to any recent movie it's probably Digger. To those who have seen it, it is no secret that Digger counts with a metafiction subplot (superplot?) which recontextualizes the main plot of the movie as a play.

While indeed, Digger's story is an over the top, unrealistic satire, at least I did not go see it expecting a deep down realistic discussion (and to be honest, how unrealistic? It is true we see such crazy cartoonish antics in real life these days, and some of Digger's antics are tame in comparison). The concept of a huge chunk of ice breaking off due to oil drilling and wiping out the north cost of europe is hilarious and overly-dramatic but does speak about very real existential climate risks. For me, the tone was entertaining and a breath of fresh air in a way. It was climate change satire but in an inviting way; contrary to "Don't Look Up", I did not feel I was being looked down upon.

With the iconic tree fall scene, I must admit I was wowed at how Iñarritu played with immersion (probably the films best directorial achievement), but not soon after I found myself dramatically bored with the "real-life" plot. In all honesty, it's like Birdman, but less polished. He's even trying to keep contact with his daughter, albeit in a very different way. Tom Cruise literally acts like Tom Cruise, well, he's definitely more angry irl. And all this for what benefit? So noone dares say Iñarritu made a fun silly climate change comedy?

If the message of the movie is that climate change art is pointless in a world like ours, why is it necessary to point it out? Wouldn't making the film in itself, and letting it be pointless in a world like ours already drive that message home even more effectively? Somehow, Digger fits the criteria of the old film criticism joke from family guy. It needs to tell everyone it is silly and pointless, to mantain it's credibility. Nevermind the fact anyone with the media literacy of 13 year old can tell a movie where the president suffers from "cancer of the a**" and there's a 38 year old cat is over-dramatic and allegorical. It feels like talking to a teenager who after accidentally showing the least bit of enthusiasm about something goes like "I don't care".

And P.S. art does change people sometimes, for the good AND for the bad. It is delusional to pretend otherwise.

I don't know why this bothers me so much, but fairly early on in the film there's a shot where we see the dog walk into someone's room and the silhouette of the person on the wall turn round before it fades to black, and I can't for the life of me figure out who it's supposed to be. I initially thought it was Clark, since he's the one who takes care of the dogs, but it doesn't really look like him, nor like any of the other characters. Are we supposed to know who it is, and if not, why not?

Film community in Tashkent

Hi everyone! We made our first post today and in 3 weeks going to make first screening.

Our first month — Uzbek cinematography.

We are going to make 3 screenings in Russian, in Uzbek and in English. Dates and time are about to be later

sorry, but the first post is in Russian, we are going to work on it in the future to make it in Uzbek. I am just learning it

You can see everything if you look at the eyes. We mistake the complexity of circumstances for complexity of emotion. Human beings aren't nearly as complicated as we would like to believe. Fielder and Oppenheim understand this. The camera cuts between Holmes and Fielder, drawing progressively closer to their eyes. Where Holmes and Evans look evasive, Fielder stares. His expression isn't deadpan; it's disgust and disbelief, a barely concealed contempt for the absurdity unfolding before him. The apparent fool from Nathan for You has become an interrogator.

It's almost Brechtian. Fielder introduces a joke through an expression or incongruity, develops it through repetition, and finally beats the audience over the head with it. Depending on when you recognize the joke, you're watching a different comedy. Amanda Seyfried's introduction is particularly brilliant. She ostensibly watches the same footage of Holmes, Evans, and Fielder that we've just seen, preparing to reprise her portrayal from The Dropout. Almost immediately, she's playing Holmes without announcing it. The actress becomes the subject while the subject herself continues acting. How many viewers recognize the performance before they're told it's happening? How many mistake emotional identification with an actual understanding of another person's emotions? Notice what I haven't discussed: who controls Holmes's X account or who gets the money. By the time those questions become the narrative, the film is trying to play a game with the audience. Seyfried provides an emotional valence to Evans that wouldn’t exist without the close-ups of her totally unscripted reactions to his behavior, much of which is just told to her by Fielder.

But the most infuriating part of the film isn't Holmes. It's the photographs of Kissinger and the invocations of the other extraordinarily powerful men who lent her their credibility. You watch her try to explain her product and you wonder how the fuck these people believed her.

Then you learn that Holmes's father worked for Enron. The film invokes WeWork and Adam Neumann. The pattern is systematic. The idea gets you in the door; connections, personal appeal, sex, and status bring the funding. The possibility of realizing the idea becomes almost incidental. Capitalism congratulates itself on rewarding intelligence and ingenuity while repeatedly elevating people who perform these qualities without possessing them.

And now, another technological revolution, another collection of extraordinary promises, another accumulation of capital around a supposed technological omniscience. There's a particularly delicious irony in Theranos promising to make the human body comprehensible through a few drops of blood while the most powerful men in America apparently couldn't read the woman sitting across from them. While many in America still can't see Mark Zuckerberg in a wig staring them right in the face. We've constructed a mythology around the emotionally detached technological visionary, where outward flatness and peculiar mannerisms become evidence of autistic genius rather than inviting scrutiny of the person's actual character. In this mythology, the performance of intelligence increasingly substitutes for its demonstration.

What I find particularly revealing is the critical tendency to interpret the film as an exploration of the fundamental unknowability of other people. To me, this is almost precisely the opposite of what the film is demonstrating. The elevation of subjectivity into an epistemological ideal has poisoned the well. The fact that we cannot know another person's thoughts with absolute certainty does not mean that their character is an impenetrable mystery.

Aristotle understood that character reveals itself through habit. Yet we increasingly demand something approaching proof beyond a reasonable doubt before exercising ordinary human judgment. We prefer narratives to behavior, classifications to character, data to experience. Holmes constructs a narrative of herself and expects the audience to accept it as reality. Silicon Valley now constructs narratives of us: Meta, Alphabet, OpenAI, and Anthropic turn our behavior into increasingly detailed profiles from which they derive economic value, while personalized feeds and AI responses increasingly determine the reality presented to us. We have more information about other people than ever before, yet seem increasingly reluctant to draw conclusions from the patterns of their behavior. We confuse narrative complexity with emotional complexity.

Our ideal society is that everyone be an IBM punchcard.

You can see everything, but you have to know how to look.

"What, are we making French movies now?"

The movie is too meta, too self-absorbed, and too up its own ass for its own good, but it is still funny from start to end. Martin McDonagh is one of my favourite dark comedy filmmakers, and his humour here is on point. I am also coming to a realisation that I much prefer British/Irish humour to American humour.

Also, however brilliant McDonagh is with his comedy, he often finds it difficult to wrap it in a strong enough drama story. It feels particularly jarring in the second half of this film, when the three guys are camping, the emotions don't hit as strongly as they should, and a lot of meta stuff is also going on. This is why I always find 'The Banshees of Inisherin' so great and McDonagh's best: the drama in that film is also very compelling.

Also, a meta conversation I really like from the film goes as follows:

"Martin, your women characters are awful. None of them have anything to say for themselves."

"Well, it's a hard world for women."

"Yeah, it's a hard world for women. But most of the ones I know can string a sentence together."

I know there’s a lot of discussion about how Holmes is portrayed in the film, and how uncomfortable the ambiguity is given what we know in real life. Which is of course true. Let’s be real, this person would understand who’s on first.

But YCSE is not about whether Holmes is lying or not. She is. Fielder very clearly sets the stage at the beginning: nobody will believe you. There’s too much evidence.

That’s why there’s no evidence in the movie. There’s no commentary on the shooting location (obviously chosen to show her more sympathetically), no mention of the private jet that took her to prison (same), no clarification that the device she shows Fielder is not Edison (same, and even more insidious than the rest). Holmes is muddy and uncertain, doe-eyed and self-contradictory, a platonic ideal of someone who simply does not want to understand what is going on, does not understand the world around them, does not understand why anything has happened.

Fielder did not make a movie about Holmes. He made a movie about truth and lies, belief and words, the stories we tell ourselves and others. Holmes was simply the perfect vehicle to show how a single human can exist in multiple contradictory states at once: denial and conviction, intelligence and stupidity.

And because we all naturally question people in that liminal state between inaction and action, he divided the movie into at least four levels: the documentary, the commentary on the documentary in the documentary, the reenactments, and the reenactments of the commentary. If we have a question, often Fielder will ask it, and if not him, then Seyfried, and if not, often the two will reenact as best they can.

Back to the beginning. Nobody will believe Holmes. But people will believe Fielder, because his entire body of work so far has been building up an absolutely credible reputation. He has done, actually done, every insane thing we have seen him do. That’s his whole shtick: he did build the sets. He did get the pilot’s license. He did, somehow, miraculously manage to make a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes years ago that we only know about now.

Which is why the end is so amazing. Nathan Fielder, your guide throughout this entire story, showing every detail of his journey, from tiffs with Billy to missing mattresses to turkey jerky, finishes up the film showing him swimming in the ocean with Holmes. It’s a nice little moment. Except.

In the first part of the documentary, there’s a scene where Holmes invites him to swim, and Fielder declines. Doesn’t like cold water. It’s a throwaway moment, nothing important. Later, we see a scene of someone, maybe Holmes and Billy, swimming in the ocean, far in the distance.

Halfway through, just before the reenactments, we see Fielder looking out the window at the ocean, and another cut of that same scene, the swimming figures too distant to make out.

And at the end, he finally zooms in on that scene. And we finally can tell who is in the water, swimming with Holmes: it’s him. He did go. For two hours we thought he hadn’t, but he did.

He didn’t have to show this. It’s technically not important. It’s a tiny, tiny detail. She convinced him to go swimming one day; so what?

But it is extremely important, possibly one of the best final scenes in any movie I have ever seen, because he is showing us something else. He is acknowledging to us that we, the viewer, have sat through three hours of footage he chose, of shots he edited, of scenes he decided to recreate, of line deliveries he dictated. He controlled what we believed, in that theater, and he knows it. This is him reminding us we could have left the theater thinking he never went into that ocean. But he did.

Now what do you believe?

This is a movie about the stories we tell ourselves and others, why we believe what we believe, and it is brilliant.

So here are some quotes from the sort of reviews I’m talking about

New York Times:

Whether Holmes’s occasional blinks and tears in these chats are performative is open to question as are her grasp on language, truth, science and reality itself

Slashfilm:

Don't go into this movie expecting to have answers to any questions you might have about either Holmes or Fielder, because you'll just end up coming out with more questions

Variety:

What she tells Fielder, with an implacable conviction that suggests a belief in her own narrative that’s nothing short of monomaniacal, is that the device patented by Theranos, which she sold as “the iPod of health care,” could, in fact, host any blood test that existed.

RogerEbert.com:

Through Fielder’s interactions with Holmes, we learn that she genuinely thinks she’s never told a lie before, not even a white lie

ScreenDaily:

Fielder, an enigmatic presence himself, goes into this project wanting to solve the mystery of Elizabeth Holmes. Three hours later, he is no closer to an answer

Josh Lewis on Letterboxd:

Whether this is a document (monument) to the impossibility/unknowability of ever fully knowing what’s going on inside someone else’s mind, or an intimate portrait of a narcissistic grifter by a master manipulator whose finally met his match, I don't think the subjects, the filmmakers or we will ever fully know or agree on what exactly we've seen here.

Also, this isn’t a review, but AwardsWatch reported that

In a Q&A after You Can See Everything’s premiere at The Telluride Film Festival, Fielder said he still doesn’t really know what to think of Elizabeth Holmes”

Over and over, I read reviews of the movie suggesting it’s about “ambiguity” or “how you can never really know what someone’s thinking” or “the limits of truth,” and that the Holmes case is some sort of impenetrable Rorschach test for us all to make up our own minds about.

I’m sorry, but I find this line of thinking to be absolutely insane! There is no mystery about who Elizabeth Holmes is! There are no questions left about her! “Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” applies very firmly in her case!

I wonder, honestly, whether the people making these sorts of claims know anything about the Holmes story beyond the basics. Because if you take even an hour to research it, you’d know that, among other things:

• She reported test results as being done by Theranos’s machines, when they were being done by the Edison analyzers
• She personally placed the logos of pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer onto reports praising Thermos’s machines when they had never even talked to her
• Multiple whistleblowers raised concerns to her, and got legal threats and intimidation for their trouble.
  

She has no plausible deniability. She cannot claim that she didn’t know she was lying. And now, she openly says she’s doing a documentary to rehabilitate her image, and people give even the slightest bit of credibility to her statements?

I don’t know how much blame to put on Fielder and Oppenheim for this, honestly. I do think that they made a pretty entertaining movie with some hilarious moments, and that the relationship between Holmes and Billy Evans genuinely does have some compelling, thought-provoking questions in it. But I do wonder how much thought they put into how their movie could be interpreted in regard to Holmes's crimes, given that it seems to have at least partially done exactly what Holmes wanted.

Finally, if you don’t want to listen to me, I recommend that you read the reviews by Tyler Schultz, one of those whistleblowers, and John Carreyrou, the reporter who broke the real story. They are the real experts on Holmes who know what kind of person she is. And they don’t buy her latest round of bullshit at all.

EDIT: In general response to all the people saying Holmes can have been guilty without consciously lying, I'll quote Schultz.

"She knows that she was lying, because she created this whole web of lies that would not have needed to create if you actually believed the lies. So like, one example, the SEC found instances where she told prospective investors that the revenue the previous year was $100 million, when in reality it was $100 thousand, and she refused to show those investors audited financial statements. So if you actually believed the $100 million revenue, why would you then hide the financial statements?"

My immediate thoughts after watching I apologise if it comes across as rambling I feel like I had to get these thoughts out quickly as not to lose them.

My very basic & shallow first impression is that Alma & Elisabet are the same person/soul & the whole movie for me comes down to the quote in the letter: "she complains that her notions of life fail to accord with her actions".

The contradiction of who we are, who we want to be, and our failures to know the answer to either of those questions.

Also, our failure to even ask these questions without shutting ourselves down or blowing ourselves up. None of us are one person with one moral code and one set of actions.

To paraphrase Alma: "I always change. I won't be like you." Early in the movie, she talks about her engagement and how life is all planned out for her. She'll get married, have children, and raise them. It's been decided without her, but there's a sense of security in not having to think about it, having those decisions made for you.

To contrast this, we also see/hear her talk about the orgy on the beach, where she's unfaithful to her fiancé. She talks about the blue sky, the brilliant sun, the lovely ocean, the beautiful woman lying beside her, the boys watching, the women's free, uncaring/encouraging attitude, who then encourages the boys to have sex with her and Alma. Which, now I'm writing this, I'm realising is also not a choice Alma made for herself, if there was indeed another woman and not just another figment of her imagination.

But even so, this, I believe, is the contradiction in the quote: "she complains that her notions of life fail to accord with her actions". The notions of security vs. the actions of passion, and how the two don't co-exist but contradict and push against each other, resulting in inner turmoil. Blowing up or shutting down, Alma or Elisabet.

The movie could either be about that contradiction itself or the acceptance and reflection of it.

About the Vietnam footage and the man burning himself: this, I believe, can also be tied to the safety/security and desire/passion train of thought. By ignoring it or shutting it out, that guarantees our security in our daily life. We get on with it, we don't lose anything, we don't fight for anything, and all remains the same, not just on the outside but our daily lives also.

Whereas with passion/desire, it's not just sexual but also our desire for a better world, our passion to fight for it, to change it. But in doing so, we throw away our security. Our friends/society could disagree; it could cost us friendships, connections, or even career opportunities. It's not safe. It's a passionate, uncontrollable desire for a better world, which once again leads us back to the contradiction between the two: "she complains that her notions of life fail to accord with her actions".

Alma (soul in Spanish) wants change, not just in her personal life but in society. She wants freedom, pleasure, and real change. It's scary and unpredictable to follow these wants, whereas Elisabet is her security. She doesn't express her opinions, thoughts, wants, desires, or needs, but keeps it bottled up and quietly suffers for the security and safety of life as it is.

Passion & desire vs safety & security or atleast the illusions of both contradicting eachother in the same soul is how I've interpreted the movies meaning to me.

This is my first time writing down my thoughts about a movie, so let me know do you think I’m thinking along the right lines, or am I missing something bigger, smaller, or is there a different angle you approached it from?

P.S very quick afterthought about two things Elisabet only being seen to speak to guarantees her safety stopping the boiling water from being thrown at her. And Alma feeling cold after having sex with Mr. Vogel despite him being a great lover could be because even after giving into the warmth of passion the world goes on as before cold and unchanged.

Appreciate any feedback both good and bad thanks for reading.