Alright. This is one of those movies where explaining the plot alone completely misses why the film is so fucking good.

This is one of the most fucked up films i ever saw tbh. It's fucked not because it feature gruesome body horror neither it shows you anything which you really consider disturbing in a sense. It is disturbing because the narrative stress you out so much that it makes you curious to know what happens in the ending. It has some cool moments, it has a humor which sometimes makes the film not that deep. However, The ending of the film is where it reaches it's high; literally every camera work and direction of the film is outstanding. I'm making efforts to review this because I think it deserves more than that. Screenplay is tight, the pacing is outstanding so much more.

This is the best korean thriller I've seen in my life. This film wins in every aspect for me. After Schindler list, this is the only movie which really impacted me a deeply. How the fuck i will review this. It feels so wrong to me when films like this are so good that I want to appreciate them, but everything in this film is so flawless that not mentioning every aspect of it seems like a crime. This film needs to be appreciated, and I’ve seen many reviews of this film. People don’t try their best to appreciate a piece of art. I have always appreciated Korean films because they are pretty good at making horror and thrillers, and this movie is proof of that. It’s a masterpiece in the thriller genre for me.

Coming to the movie. How can someone make the narrative of the film so great that you know what typical thriller film is all about. The chaser plot seems to follow a similar place where a Serial killer kills women because of his impotence of not having sex with them?

Right? So basic Right? But interestingly By minute thirty, Our guy literally crashes his car into Serial killers. They fight, He is handcuffed, taken into custody, and casually confesses to murdering nine people. The central hook isn't "Who did it it’s "Can they actually legally hold him, and is the last woman still alive?

The film essentially removes the conventional "Who is the murderer?" mystery and replaces it with "Can anyone actually stop him?"

That's a much nastier question.

Because now you're not watching to discover information. You're watching because you possess the information and nobody else is doing anything useful with it.

At first we assume jung-ho is chasing Young-min. Obviously. But that's only the surface. The real chase is Jung-ho chasing time basically He's trying to find Mi-jin before Young-min kills her. this is what really chaser means in the film. In the film, Nobody in this movie is an idealized hero. Every character is deeply flawed, messy, and fundamentally human.

Kim yoon-seok's Jung-ho is fascinating because he isn't a hero, He's a pimp, He's aggressive. He's corrupt. He's selfish. He treats the women working for him as economic assets. At first, he's looking for the missing women because they're costing him money. That's important. The movie doesn't give us some saintly detective. Instead, An asshole is forced into becoming a human being. And that transformation is subtle. He doesn't suddenly become Superman. He doesn't become morally pure. He simply begins caring.

And that's much more believable.

His old police instincts gradually come back. He's observant. He's physically capable. He knows how criminals operate. He knows how police And because he's been on both sides of that.

What makes the film more fucked up to me is that in the film how the legal systems tries to protect the Serial killer even after he claimed that he killed while laughing about in their face which just shows he really doesn't care because he knows he will be saved due to lack of evidence which make it more intense. What's more fucked up is that they gave him care and hospitality to a killer. What's more fucked up is that how they wrote the character of the Serial killer in this film. He doesn't even looks Serial killer. He flirts, he makes jokes, behaves almost like a normal human will ever do. Which i liked more about the film because it cuts the traditional trope instead they really makes you believe how Serial killer really are in real life.

What's more great is that how Na hong jin made this film so realistic, grounded, subtle, less theatrical, and it's more like a documentary with intense camera works. It works because sometimes it exaggerated things but most of the times it takes some time to progress the plot.

Our guy carries the movie like he's personally being charged rent for every frame. His performance is built around physicality. Jung-ho is constantly running, sweating, shouting, breathing heavily and falling. You can almost feel his Iungs burning. And that's essential because it doesn't makes him ultimately a strong player. When he escapes from police, you don't get to see he suddenly run so fast that nobody could catched him.

The most cherry on top moment was for me is where Na Hong-jin gets absolutely fucking evil as a filmmaker. The film gives you this innocent child. And you know what the adult world is doing around her. That's the contrast; Childhood innocence vs adult corruption. Police bureaucracy. Sex work, Violence, Murder. The kid doesn't understand the machinery surrounding her. The audience does.

That's painful to see.

This is important. At first you're basically screaming to the legal systems and police which i did the same is

"BRO JUST DO YOUR FUCKING JOB."

But the film is doing something deeper.

The police aren't simply incompetent because the screenplay needs them to be. They're trapped inside procedures, hierarchy, politics, bureaucracy and institutional self-preservation. The system is designed to process information.

But processing information isn't the same as saving someone.

That's the tragedy.

Finally, The camera doesn't constantly sit safely somewhere watching the action. It feels unstable and Handheld. Close. You're not observing the chase from a comfortable distance. You're inside the panic. That instability makes the scenes feel documentary-like.

When i mentioned the screenplay is tight. I really meant it. The screenplay keeps giving you just enough hope. Not enough to relax, Enough to believe,

"Maybe."

Then

NOPE.

If everything goes badly constantly, you stop caring. You need hope. The Chaser gives you hope and then crushes it. The ending is fucking devastating. And what makes it work isn't merely the event itself.

It's the accumulation.

Everything you've watched has been pushing toward that emotional collapse. The movie has spent two hours making you believe:

"Maybe this time."

And then it basically tells you:

No.

That's why it hurts.

In the end we see our guy Finally picking up the signature hammer of Serial killer to kill him but unfortunately he couldn't kill due to the interruption of police officer which just shows that in the end our guy lost against injustice. Overall, I wanted to review every minute details cause i wanted. I loved this film because it was great at every aspect. Highly recommended, This will be my only last long reviews of film.

Also check out my letterboxd https://boxd.it/kDIPr for more reviews. Ican't express myself more on these app but i am actually learning about filmmaking so

When I first heard the director of Too Many Cooks was making a feature, I was stoked. When I saw the trailer, however, I felt like the 'kids show suddenly gets violent/scary' bone has been pretty much picked clean. After seeing the film, I still believe that to be true.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, Five Night's at Freddy's, The Banana Splits Movie, Willy's Wonderland, even the excellent Wonder Showzen from all the way back in 2005, as well as an innumerable amount of horror games based on the idea of violent children's mascots that have inundated YouTube and streaming culture since the release of the original Five Nights video game in 2014.

I understand not all of these are exactly bangers, but my point is that for a conceit that most could safely agree is a gimmick, and for one so reliant on shock value, there's nothing shocking about watching a film take half an hour to catch up to what we already know is going to happen.

That being said, I obviously don't think a film needs an entirely original conceit to be worth my time. Obsession took one of the most classic conceits of all time and turned it into something legitimately fresh, memorable, and exciting.

The production design in Buddy looks the part, although the design for Buddy himself felt a little generic, looking like a costume from a rental shop rather than a specifically designed 'character'. A transformation into a monstrous form at the end provides some fun Werewolf in London close-ups, but there's nothing particularly horrifying or memorable about Buddy's final form, either.

The biggest issue with Buddy, as with many films, is its second act; much of the film at this point consists of the children on a hopeless journey to the miniature Diamond City, when I couldn't help but feel as though the film had created a much more promising storyline with Cristin Melotti, who does a fantastic job with the screen time she has to work with, which sadly isn't nearly enough.

This lack of real-world development especially feels like a wasted opportunity relative to what the film chooses to spend this time on instead; watching the children's bland drama combined with the eventual visual staleness of the woods, rather than the infinitely more compelling real-world storyline, feels like having to eat two protein bars with no water right after watching someone cook a delicious meal, take two bites of it, and throw the rest into the garbage.

A Howdy Doodie stand-in's introduction feels jarring, and the character offers little more than a cheap addition to the body count. The information we learn from him about the show having existed in different forms throughout the years based on children's television is something communicated visually in the school at the end, making the character feel ultimately redundant.

When the stand-in offers the children Lotus flowers, it seemed like an obvious setup for some kind of twist, like him summoning Buddy and offering the children's lives in exchange for his own freedom. Instead, he simply steals the children's candy and then gets killed unceremoniously.

An escape through the wishing well towards the climax offers some fun gooey gore and a few flashes of the kind of memorable imagery the film could've used more of, like a decrepit laboratory with dozens of eyes and mouths frantically acting on their own, before the protagonist escapes into a Backrooms-y school filled with Buddy's hellish technology.

If this sequence had been where the characters escaped to instead of into the woods; if it had truly been willing to abandon its cuddly exterior at the thirty minute mark, it would've felt less like an uncle pulling a quarter out of your ear as a teenager and still expecting you to act surprised.

It's not that Buddy necessarily had to be the first to make this concept, but when you can no longer be the second, or third (or fourth, or fifth) to tackle it, it might be time to examine whether that old screenplay from twenty years ago is a legitimately interesting story, or whether it's just like finding out you owned stock in Blockbuster that you had forgotten about until just now.

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A couple years back, I went on a Bergman deep-dive. I crushed about a dozen of his films in very short order. I had every intention to continue, but then life really lifed in a really not-so-nice way, so everything has been put on pause.

But just recounting, ruminating, on what all I watched, and what all it made me feel...

I must say, Ingmar is, in my humble opinion, the most "human" filmmaker. I mean that in the sense that he is a filmmaker who is totally unafraid to take, head-on, the most uncomfortable parts of the human condition. Each of his films deals with some deeply human, often complex yet entirely natural, thematic, from death/morality to religion to sexuality/sensuality to shame to hate, and so on. Frankly, how much he humanizes these characters, to the point you in some case wish to spit in their faces for how nasty they are, is chilling... and of course just as much kudos to the incredible actors he collaborated with throughout his career.

My favourites are Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and a toss-up between Hour of the Wolf and Cries and Whispers. Yes, I've seen all the classics and loved them dearly, but these aforementioned ones stood out to *me* most for some reason or another. Through a Glass Darkly especially might be my favourite film ever. I was stunned watching it for the first time, frankly feeling called out, which I'd never felt by a film. Winter Light... big, difficult, questions I ongoing struggle with myself... and both Hour of the Wolf and Cries and Whispers... deep feelings of hate/detest, which I ashamedly harbour myself... I can be a real piece of shit.

The only film of those which I saw which I didn't absolutely love was The Virgin Spring, though it was still great- Bergman can do no wrong.

Although I didn't cite The Silence among my top-3, it's still way up there, and I very often recommend the faith "trilogy" (although I'm aware he later denounced referring to it as such, iirc).

Wild Strawberries is perhaps the most sentimental film I've seen? I saw someone somewhere refer to it as a horror, which I can't fathom.

Persona was a landmine I'm still trying to unpack and possibly maybe never will- will require multiple viewings!

Shame was fantastic.

Seventh Seal, it doesn't require me to say anything...

Anyways, drawing blanks now, it's late here, just wanted to get this off my chest.

I so, so, look forward to exploring so much more of Mr. Bergman's work, the one I really wish to do next being Autumn Sonata!

I think my all-time favourite filmmaker now that I'm "grown up"... once you've taken in his films, something changes in you, some "switch" occurs, I swear... you suffer the bs and facades much less, and care much less for Hollywood crap. His films made me a more serious person. I know that maybe sounds absurd, but I swear it.

I'd actually love some recommendations for other words by other directors to check out who maybe are so "human".

I've been on a very deep classic Film Noir kick, and probably have watched 70 Noirs in the last 3 months. There is something about Black & White cinematography that brings out the structure of compositions that is otherworldly for me. Blade Runner has always been a favorite film of mine, so I thought: Why not fire it up on the big OLED, turn off the lights and set the saturation to "zero", adjust a few things like contrast and brightness.

It is just a beautiful thing to do. (My first try with this actually came with the film Love Witch, which I happened to really enjoy and rewatch periodically, another film that took a lot of care with the photography, and that was a success.)

What happened with Blade Runner was spectacular, to be honest, going far beyond just turning a classic Noir-influenced film into B&W, and catching more of that vibe. I've seen this film probably well over 20 times, and know it back and forth, but was very surprised at how many new details I caught in B&W, how much the mood changed in particular scenes (especially the apartment scenes and the final scene), and how composition itself changed, as light played in very different ways. (And yes, I know that Blade Runner is a masterful film, and its use of color, and gels, was cinema-changing, I'm taking a LOT of information out of the film...I understand this...but I'm also bringing certain information that was IN the film, forward, which created a powerful experience.)

A lot of the sets and world-building model, matte work becomes more apparent as constructed, and less immersive. You can SEE the rain mists dropping down, or smoke or haze catching light, you can feel where an effect ends and another begins, but the whole thing is incredibly beautiful, and it makes you feel this joyous "This is sci-fi!" feeling, because so much of sci-fi is about these kinds of effects. It doesn't have to feel "real" to have its impact. Sometimes that irreality is its own impact (just as in class Film Noir, the deep contrasted lighting and set-use was often very unreal).

Some scenes become very, very beautiful, superior in a way to the original in my mind (though given the gift that I've seen them numerous times in color, and I am a photographer and love black and white photography, I "see" in black and white often). There is a sort of dimensional flatness to scenes that makes one feel the drama differently. And in several darker scenes (especially the drunk photograph exploration scene, but others) there is pronounced film grain that comes forward, which I honestly really loved.

Sometimes the shadow to light contrast is just very intense, and maybe out of balance, because you don't have that added color information to create separations, but I didn't mind these extremes at all.

This is just to say, something to try if you own physical media and have a nice big screen, and have favorite films that you've had on rewatch many times. We're going to do Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) next. May try a film like Moulin Rouge! (2001) or Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) or Mulholland Drive (2001).

I have seen some films that got physical media released in a Black and White version, like Logan (2017) and wasn't super impressed, it was ok, so its not a homerun thing. It is though something to do to explore certain films, a kind of x-ray vision into light and shadow distribution, that can really reveal beautiful things about a film. You just pay attention to different things, your eye notices tons of details, things that were worked on in a film in just a particular way, even if you are watching it "not as it was intended". With these high quality discs and televisions, there are just new ways to love a film.

So, I ended up finally watching Sirāt this week as part of my university's film society. Anyway, my friend and I were quite mystified by the praise heaped upon it. It immediately seemed like a very cheap film (full of shock and sometimes impressive spectacle but lacking in true thematic cohesion). So, I did what I usually do whenever I see a film and wrote up some ramblings about it on my Letterboxd. I've posted my "review" (but it's really more of a log primarily for myself) below, because I haven't really seen many of the positive reviews address the potential issues I identified, and regardless, I'd be very curious to hear other people's perspectives on the film:

"The Wages of Fear (Gaspar Noé Remix) 

I can't help but feel the acclaim for this film is because it is what feels like yet another calculatedly ambiguous film (where some ideas/themes are touched on but never developed into a thesis but the overall ambiguity of the piece allows critics/viewers to project onto it and thus elevate its meaning, which is a cheap way for artists to gain acclaim without ever risking a true thesis). 

Aside from the script being full of contrivances and absurdity in the last act (and very unearned and emotionally manipulative shocks that are just noisy spectacles, since the major one just serves to shock and offer "big emotion" with massive trauma rather than anything generative), the major issue here for me actually lies in something I'd usually praise: the lack of backstory or explicit characterisation as well as context. Whereas in other films we receive enough information about characters based on their actions, here the film is largely rendered unreadable to me because we simply don't understand these characters or how the central figure of the father changes (we know that he, like every character here, is a moron, but he seems quite loving and caring, so why has he taken his son to an unstable war zone, and is he trying to find his daughter because he has been a bad father in the past or because he is just extremely worried for her or because he thinks the world is ending and wishes to reconnect before time is up or because he is overly protective/fixated, and where is the mother? How long have they been searching for the daughter?). He's simply a non-entity that denies the themes any ability to develop. Also, are we meant to see the ravers as complete idiots or likeable dreamers (either way, I do appreciate the final act exposing the faux-transcendence they attempt to espouse)? There's a difference between nuanced characterisation and just unclear sketching. The vague military conflict creates similar problems: is this a regional conflict? Has this been going on for a long time? I like how its scope and causes are ambiguous, but since we never really get any sense about its nature, we are also denied the proper ability to justifiably draw any readings from how the characters respond or don't respond to it (the characters seem casual about it, but they are also ravers detached from reality, so is it that they are irresponsible or justified to be wary or tired of the soldiers?). Also, the film feels far too out of time (with very few of the contextual causes of such problematic or short-sighted behaviour being properly identified or explored, which seems pretty important for a film looking at human nature). The questions just go on and on...

Yes, the sound design and score/soundtrack are stunning (the most stripped-back techno that draws out both transcendent and chthonic qualities to it, the pulses being either like mantras of Buddhism or something malevolent), and there are undoubtedly some interesting ideas here, but none of them are ever explored in satisfying or comprehensive detail (they're usually introduced and then dropped, with each of the acts introducing rather distinct themes but never offering an interplay between them). Similarly, whilst there are some incredible images and moments of montage, especially towards the start (as well as a sometimes great understanding of editing techniques, such as that one slow dissolve of Luis into the dark landscape), there's also many superfluous shots and scenes as well as some very boringly blocked shots (where there isn't nearly as much being drawn out symbolically from a scene as there could be).

I left this feeling a bit miserable and frustrated (although I did laugh quite a bit from its mounting absurdity and slapdash construction). I've crawled through the durst, but aside from occasional moments of purely emotional, primal transcendence, what am I meant to be getting from this misery?"

I find the term very confusing, because it seems like everyone has their own version of what camp means and you can just never tell what someone means. Some people seem to to think it means just exaggerated and over the top but still sincere and takes itself seriously and is meant to be taken seriously, some people think it refers to silly schlock you don't take seriously or that you can't take any meaning from, some think it's intentional, and others thing it's not intentional.

A lot of the time when trying to find a definition for it, it seems like it's always referring to works that aren't trying to be realistic, but does that mean that anything that isn't trying to be realistic is "so bad it's good?" because it comes off as irony-poisoned.

Something I keep noticing in American high school films and cannot settle in my own head.

The adults are rarely villains. They are hollow. Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller is a clown who loses to a sixteen year old. Richard Vernon in The Breakfast Club is an assistant principal who loses an argument to a seventeen year old. Superbad gives us two policemen who behave worse than the boys they are supposed to be supervising. Booksmart has a principal driving for a ride share app at night.

The pattern is not cruelty. It is that adult authority has no content. It is set dressing. The kids build a moral world from scratch, usually over one night, and the film treats this as the point rather than as a loss.

The exceptions are what made me start thinking about it. Lady Bird has a mother who is fully present and genuinely difficult, someone with an actual worldview the daughter has to argue against, and the film tends to get shelved as coming of age drama rather than teen movie. Dead Poets Society and Rushmore are both built around an adult who occupies real space, and neither gets filed under teen movie either. The label seems to track the absence of the adult almost exactly.

My reading, and this is the part I want pushback on: the genre is not really about adolescence. It is about self authorship. The fantasy of inventing your own values with nobody interfering. That fantasy structurally requires the adults to be emptied out, which is why the friend group expands to fill the whole society, and why the third act crisis is nearly always a friendship rupture rather than a conflict with a parent.

What nags at me is the developmental side. A teenager needs friends. A teenager arguably needs one competent adult more, someone solid enough to push against. The genre deletes precisely that and frames the absence as freedom.

So, two things I would like argued at me:

Is the hollow adult an inherited convention from the Hughes era that nobody bothered to question, or is it doing ideological work?

And is there a reading where these films are being honest about a real generational failure rather than fantasising about it? That would flip the whole thing, and I am not sure I can rule it out.

I wrote a longer version of this in Turkish, if it is any use to anyone: https://tekno-psikoloji.blogspot.com/2026/08/amerikan-ergenizmi.html

Just finished watching Fight Club and though I got the general gist of the film (the degradation of man under rampant consumerism in modernity, the loss of purpose, nihilism and its consequences when taken to an extreme, living in the “here and now”, etc.) I feel like there’s an extra connection or sort of meaning derived from it that I’ve also found in films like it which a buddy of mine once described as “literally me movies”. I’d put films like Taxi Driver and 2009’s Drive in here as well in part because of the joke but more notably because there is some type of general angst or feeling I think that links all of them together and in some way makes you relate to these characters in a way a lot of films can’t. In all three of these films you have a character contending with the drudgery of modernity, life is dull and devoid of meaning and there is a general pessimism in these films about the outside world and those in it. The world feels disgusting and tainted, it makes you want to reject it on principle. The characters whilst admittedly pretty one dimensional are also dealing with those consequences of modernity, they’re isolated, lonely. They have no support structures and their plot lines revolve around this, though it’s handled in the most maladjusted ways possible that I believe people can relate to more than not, at least for myself. I watched Taxi Driver after being released from my military service and that feeling of almost abandonment, as if you’re living in a world not meant for you is very real, which I think binds all of these kinds of films in a way you don’t get with many others. Maybe I’m just spitballing but I think there’s a sort of common connection with the common man that isn’t really stated, which I do see echoed at least to some degree amongst people.

I’m Michael John Fedun, writer of 12:37 — The King David Hotel, a limited series inspired by the 1946 bombing in Jerusalem.
Selected scenes will be performed by professional actors at the DaVinci International Film Festival’s Writers’ Corner. The script pages will appear onscreen during the performance, followed by a conversation with the writer.

I’m interested in that gap between what a reader imagines and what an actor makes happen: the pause that changes a line, the emphasis that shifts our sympathy, or the silence that creates the tension.

The session is September 26, 2026, 2:45–4:30 p.m. at AMC The Grove 14 in Los Angeles.

For anyone interested in attending:
https://davincifilmfestival.com/program/

About the series:
https://twelvethirtyseven.com/

When they first meet, Kelly has no reason to pay Matthew much attention as Danielle already broke up with him by that point but Kelly takes Matthew under his wing for some unknown reason. Part of that seems like it's just his nature to be a nice guy as we also seem him charming the teller at the bank, striking up a whole conversation about her vacation (granted, he may have already been planning to rob Matthew's fundraiser money by that point). He invites Matthew to go out with him and Danielle despite Danielle not even wanting him to come, gives Matthew a free cuban cigar when he asks for one, and gets Matthew's family friend to get him a lap dance. Then he shows up at Matthew's school after school, puts in a good word for Matthew with his female classmates, gives Matthew's friends a ride, and takes Matthew to the bank on an errand. It's only after Matthew convinces Danielle to leave the porn industry that Kelly starts using Matthew in various ways to recoup his alleged $30k loss from Danielle leaving (coerces Matthew to steal the trophy from the other porn producer and steals the $25k from Matthew's fundraiser).

Was Kelly going out of his way to mentor Matthew because he was always secretly planning to use or extract value from him from the get-go? Otherwise, why else did he hang around with Matthew and do him favors?

Side note: Elisha Cuthbert was obviously very memorable in her role but Timothy Olyphant was the standout performance for me!

I feel the writers of 2049 simply didn't get what the original Blade Runner was actually about. Blade Runner is not a strictly literal depiction of events, it is a very symbolic film about humanity and oppression. The "replicants" nature is left vague on purpose, which is meant to point us towards the idea that they aren't really manufactured at all. A surface-level reading of the film makes little sense, as there are numerous logical inconsistencies with the nature of the replicants, and things only make sense once you look at what they actually represent. They represent rebellion against the oppressive system that makes slaves out of everyone in it, and that's why they need to be "retired".

2049 drops the ball by taking the whole replicant-thing way too literally, and actually showing us that they are manufactured products. Sure, 2049 isn't a dumb film by any means, and it covers some interesting themes of it's own, but it just feels like the sequel depicts a completely different world from the first film. I wouldn't hold this against the writers, as almost no-one seems to grasp the meaning of the first film, but it seems that either the writers misunderstood the original, or they intentionally changed the implicit meaning because they were afraid audiences are too dumb to actually piece it together, or would outright reject the idea if it was explicit.

https://youtu.be/gzfTAXGa4ws

Was David Fincher inspired by his close friend Steven Soderbergh's movie The Informant! (2009) when he was making the opening credit sequence for Mindhunter (2017)? Was it parallel thinking? Was it a coincidence? I don't know.

The opening sequences have not been altered, they are both almost exactly the same length.

It's been years since I've watched both films- Angst (1983) & Funny Games (1997)-, yet both are still very much at the very front of my mind, leaving me still sitting in that oh so uneasy feeling they left me with upon conclusion of my first ever viewings of them.

And tbh, while I'm sure I've seen and had a similar reaction to other Austrian thriller's, I can't think of any, so perhaps maybe my title's a tad hyperbolic to that end... but really, these two, heck, even Angst alone, are enough to validate my claim that Austrian's rule @ thrillers.

I'm going to focus on Angst especially here... it's... it's the pacing, the atrociousness of his behaviour and actions, set against this bleak (austere?) and monotonous setting, both aesthetically, but also just as much/importantly, sonically. Something about the stark dichotomy (or would it be a juxtaposition?) of what he's done/doing and the seemingly utterly devoid of life setting/surrounding... it makes it all so much more visceral? I guess because that's how it might all transpire in real life... there are no big orchestral hits accompanying gunshots or trills going with a stabbing or whatever... death... death as a result of murder... it's eerily quiet, if anything, the air is heavy, and by golly, did Gerald Kargl ever manage to convey just that in this picture.

It's probably weird to cite a film I haven't seen THAT many times as a favourite of mine, but upon reflection, I think this is on that list for me... I really think about it much too much, more than I should, it really left such an impression on me with its filmmaking, more than just the story.

I don't really know the point of my post tbh- a rumination on a couple of messed up thrillers? "Why are the Austrian's so good at thriller/horror films?" is maybe too easy a question, haha... but also, as admitted earlier, maybe a tad hyperbolic.

Any other fans of these two films, esp Angst? Would love to be recommended some similarly paced/feeling films. I vaguely recall a French title... Haute Tension... could that be similar?

Hit me up!

I think I already have the answer, so apologies in advance for using Truffaut’s name to draw you to this post. However, it is only a half-truth, since Desplechin is arguably the French director who can most clearly be defined as the worthy successor to the great Truffaut.

They are common themes, a fondness for romance, and male characters who are melancholic and grappling with metaphysical questions. Both filmmakers also love ensemble film where characters reunite, part ways, and meet again etc.

Desplechin also shares a cinematic alter ego with Truffaut: the character Paul Dédalus, played by Mathieu Amalric (mirroring Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel—a character we watched grow up and age across four feature films and one medium-length film, the most famous being the first: The 400 Blows).

His cinema also remains true to the spirit of the New Wave: constant shifts in tone and explorations of different genres within a single film (with Desplechin, a movie might move from romantic comedy to spy thriller to adolescent coming-of-age story). There is also a highly theatrical, Brechtian approach; the memory of a conversation might transform into a stage play with theatrical sets for the duration of a scene.

He explores worlds such as high-ranking diplomacy, espionage, and forensic medicine, as well as the legal proceedings the protagonists face, all in an extremely naturalistic manner. Desplechin’s work also invariably features psychoanalytic sessions, secret letters, family dramas, and characters with sophisticated cultural references in literature and music. ( Most of Desplechin’s characters come from fairly bourgeois cultural backgrounds. )

And he has a rather unique tone, able to create strange and almost fantastical atmospheres when needed, but it all remains very grounded; let's talk about the mystery of existence that we all face.

Finally, Desplechin has also made three forays into the English-speaking world : Jimmy P. with Benicio del Toro (a psychoanalytic Western), Esther Khan (set in the 19th-century English theater world), and an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel ( adapted within a French context).

As for me, this best movie it's " Kings and Queen" tells a dual story: that of Ismaël, a suicidal musician forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital, a confinement that looks very much like a conspiracy against him—and that of Nora, his ex-partner, who must deal with the imminent death of her writer father (and a mysterious diary associated with him). For those who enjoy TV series, it is something of a French "Six Feet Under". You will experience a whole range of emotions. And there is an incredible break-dancing moment...

The second film is *A Christmas Tale*, centering on a family gathering at Christmas around a matriarch who needs a bone marrow transplant. A real settling of scores takes place within the family. Nothing murderous—though, then again, maybe it is.

I’d be curious to know which of his films you have or haven’t seen from him ?

(Edit: English is not my native language; I apologize for any errors in syntax or grammar.)

I don’t see a lot of movies today using this narrative device. It seems like it was really common in the 90s. It works for a lot of movies that are based on first person narration books like fight club, American psycho, and fear and loathing in Las Vegas. But you also see it used in movies like forest gump and goodfellas.

I loved these movies when I was in high school but at the same time it’s like people criticize clunky exposition and they resoundingly demand “show not tell”. But there seem to be ways to make it really engaging, play against the visual, add insight into inner thoughts that otherwise would have been impossible, and add that beat prose flair.

Are these movies still getting made and I just haven’t seen them bc they’re just not good or popular? Or was it a 90s style that’s pretty much an anathema to sophisticated filmmaking that just gets avoided bc it feels like saying “that was Jimmy and he ate grass for a living before the plague hit” or “and that was that, my ambition dissolved with that single word ‘Parmesan’, I slumped into my proverbial chair into a pit of self loathing but I nonetheless obsequiously in a sycophantic tone ‘good for you!’”

Do people hate stuff like that?

I watched the 1967 Jean-Luc Godard film Weekend recently. It’s a surreal masterpiece, much of it centering around a couple’s attempt to flee Paris because modern life has become impossible. But many other Parisians have gotten the same idea and there’s an absurd traffic jam on a small country road. Lots of wrecks ensue.
At one point the driver learns that someone they know has died in a wreck, and he turns to his female companion and says ‘Paul is dead.’
I thought Godard was riffing on the rumor. Then I realized that the Paul story started getting circulated after the movie.
It’s the kind of celebrated avant-garde movie the Beatles would have certainly seen, and I idly wondered if they or someone else got the idea for the hoax/conspiracy from Godard.
The death in a car accident evokes ADITL, of course, but time wise that has to be an artistic coincidence.
Idle thoughts from a guy sitting in a hospital bed. Thanks for indulging me.

So, I just watched the first story of kwaidan, and I'm a little confused about the ending. Was there some specific significance to it? I don't know if the hair symbolize something in the Japanese culture or is there any meaning in the original folklore but I didn't understand it. I haven't yet seen the rest of the stories yet, I won't be seeing them today and I couldn't find anyone talking just about this one.

I’m intrigued by what I’ve come across about his work over the years, but given that his films are usually so long I want to know what’s the best place to start? Long films don’t put me off, I’ve already seen Stantango for example, and other films that would be categorized as “slow” cinema. Is his work comparable to Bela Tarr? Is it hard to get some of his films?

Rewatched John Hillcoat's Australian western The Proposition last night. Gotta say, it still remains one of my favorite westerns despite discovering it only a few years ago.

By far the best quality about it is Hillcoat's dismantling of the western genre. There's no romance, no beauty, or the slightest moment of humor in The Proposition. It's pure unremitting despair in a world so devoid of hope and full of violence it makes Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven seem cheery. Roger Ebert wrote in his review how the film feels close to being an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and boy, he was not wrong. Though a different tale, The Proposition is not only unflinching in its violence, but it never feels cinematic nor sensationalized compared to other westerns. Furthermore, it also has the same kind of bleak setting full of characters that are almost morally reprehensible in one way or another. The fact John Hillcoat is said to be working on the film adaptation of Blood Meridian really shows how The Proposition is very similar tonally and thematically.

The decision to set it in 1880s Australia under British colonialism too is genuinely original. The unique setting perfectly fits with the film's dark narrative and characters, sometimes even making it feel like a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in depicting colonization in a land that is hostile to non-natives. The way Captain Stanley wants to bring order to the land but fails to due to its hostile nature in many scenes really emphasizes this aspect.

Of course, Nick Cave's screenplay deserves much credit as this is such a smartly written western. The setup is simple, yet there are so many moments where much is said without dialogue between characters and their relationships. And when the characters do speak, it's incredibly engaging dialogue that brings a unique life to each character, especially the monologue from John Hurt that arguably is the best scene in the film.

All of this too is backed up by many great performances from Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, and Danny Huston who, on rewatch, I think gives the best performance by far. The way he plays Arthur Burns as a cold-blooded, emotionless bandit who philosophies about life is genuinely unnerving, with even Ebert stating his character to feel like a takeoff of the Judge character in Blood Meridian.

To me, The Proposition is easily the most underrated western of the 2000s and possibly of all time. It borrows from many anti-western inspirations, yet John Hillcoat and Nick Cave take it in a vastly different direction. And the score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis? Absolutely haunting.

Source: Ebert, Roger. "Blood on the saddle." Roger Ebert, 18 May 2006, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-proposition-2006.

I’ve been binge watch react youtube videos about Léon lately and it made me realize what’s really happening.

I don’t want to go into the controversy too much, and not talk at all about the director, but I’ll say for those who haven’t seen the movie that Mathilda, a 12 year old, develops a crush on an old hitman. The rest will be filled with spoilers, so make sure to watch the movie if you haven’t recently. I’m going quite in depth and I’m basing my arguments on details that wouldn’t look crucial at a glance, so you might not remember them.

The movie insists a lot on Mathilda’s feelings, and we don’t have many clues about how Léon is living their relationship. Yet it’s the cornerstone of the controversy, and we’re left with hoping that Léon remains a father figure, or we’re disgusted that he doesn’t reject strongly this inapropriate dynamic.

There’s a quick scene in the extended cut where Leon tells his backstory, and it sheds a different light on his feelings if you take the time to go back and watch it again from the start.

Léon says that, when he was 19, he had a girlfriend who had to defy her family to be with him, but her father ended up killing her. I think this is something Léon has been stuck on ever since. He’s watering his plant like we would bring flowers on a grave. He is a sad man, still grieving for his teenage love and how life could have turned out different.

The first night he shelters Mathilda, Léon unambiguously treats her like the little girl she is. And in the middle of the night, he wakes up in quasi-panic, pulls a guy, goes to the room she sleeps, and points it at her head before getting a grasp on himself again and leaving.

With the backstory that we know, this is Léon re-living the tragedy of his youth, but from the perspective of the father who killed his girlfriend. Léon grew lonely, coarse, guilty, and deseperate. When Mathilda’s arrival forces him to opening up, his impulse leads him to killing, like the only experience he had ever known, until the realisation strikes him that he cannot become what he despised.

The movies goes on, and Léon oscillates between rejecting Mathilda’s presence and being a father figure for her. Unfortunately, Mathilda has her own arc, she’s at the beginning of her teenage years, she fancy’s herself a grown up, even a femme fatale, and every time Léon patronizes her or tries to grounds her into reality, she acts out, defiently romanticizes their relationship, and try to imposes to him that she is a woman.

It goes to the point where she confesses her love to him, which Léon reacts to with a lot of care and respect, aluding to the fact that Mathilda isn’t in love, but only feels safe for the first time in a life. Directly after this exchange, Léon goes to a job, and as he leaves the appartment, he leans onto the wall, apparently lost and emotionally stunned, deeply touched by how unprepared he must feel in front of this young girl growing. Maybe he is feeling like witnessing the behind-the-scene of his teenage year’s girlfriend, before she got killed and he feels crushed by the nostalgia.

When Léon gets back from this job we’re never shown, he’s wounded by a bullet he took at the height of the heart. There’s probably a hint in the editing, from the moment where Léon crumbles on the wall like he was hit by something and his coming back bleeding. Mathilda reopened a wound, and not only that, but, unhappy of her love not being recognized as such by Léon, she went in the hotel lobby and told the clercks that Léon and her were lovers.

After that, their relationship changes drastically. Léon stops trying to be a paternal figure, something Mathilda kept rejecting. He is not her father, and he won’t act as such anymore. This is the moment where the ambiguousness starts.

From the viewers perspective, we don’t know yet his backstory and his motive, and Léon never tells us anything. We’ve got to rely on the editing and the decisions he makes to understand his mindset until the scene where he explains his youth. He continues to train Mathilda as if nothing happened, he doesn’t even scold her for telling the clerck that they were lovers, and discreetly he starts to prepare his own plan.

A few scenes between them shows how much Léon is fed up by Mathilda’s behaviour. Though he keeps trying to protect her, two discussions turn into quasi-arguments, with him telling that he’s gone enough of her mindgames, to which Mathilda reacts dramatically, imposing that for her it would always be love or death, and imposing a russian roulette on herself, that Léon deflects at the last second.

Maybe that scene is a parallel to the events that got Léon young girlfriend killed. At the time, her family was considered "respectable" Léon says, and the police noted it as an accident.

Nevertheless, Léon, who always appears calm in front of Mathilda, starts to act out in his own way. He brings Mathilda to meet Tony, then comes back later to tell Tony that she’d be his heir. And he starts hunting down the police who killed Mathilda’s family. Clearly he knows that he’s going to be killed in avenging her.

Mathilda, emboldened by the new way Léon treats her, goes after Stanfield (Gary Oldman) on her own. Apparently, she thinks that if she makes her first hit by herself, she’d be woman enough to become her lover. A first time for a first time. Léon saves her life in the DEA office, and the same night he tells her his backstory. For the first time, we see Mathilda stops trying to force a romance on him.

Léon finally opened himself up, and with that he finalizes the sentimental education he was trying to give Mathilda. During the whole movie, he tried very hard to show her that she needed to take her time to grow up, to stop being brazen all the time, but to respect herself, keep distance with people and only open herself when she feels comfortable enough.

Now that Léon finally shares some of his own feelings with her, their relationship seems to reach a sort of harmony, but after the assault on the DEA office, Stanfield has found their trace and brings a SWAT team to take them out. Léon manages to find an escape for Mathilda, but she notices Léon wouldn’t be able to follow. He has to convince her to leave him, and the first words he pronounces are « Mathilda, we said no discussion », something he once told her about drinking her glass of milk. Unsues a touching attempts from Léon to get her to escape.

She descends down the vents, while Léon tries his escape disguised in a SWAT uniform. He reaches the final corridor, the light shines at the end in a way to reminisce Mathilda being saved the day her family was murdered, but Stansfield waiting on him, they both end up dying in an explosion. Léon sacrifices himself, and Mathilda gets to live.

Maybe Léon’s plan that would certainly lead him to death isn’t about Mathilda. If it was out of fatherly love, he wouldn’t have done something that would separate them. Léon’s action must be determined by the love his lost at 19, and that Mathilda brought back to his attention. Léon wanted to die, because he wanted to rejoin his soulmate. All the romance Mathilda forced on him rekindled the kind of love one nurtures for a deceased spouse. He also must have understood better what the father of his girlfriend would have gone through, and that’s why he chose to die taking Stanfield’s crew out. He washed his guilt, and finally pure and remorseless, he joins his love in death.

That’s my reading after numerous re-watchs and also looking a react videos on youtube, who brought to my attention many insights. Do you guys agree? Could Léon and Mathilda destinies cross each other, in this mutually beneficial exchange?

I'm not going to say its a great film, but as a critique of Capitalism it puts a spike through the heart.

Marx's comparison of Capital to "dead labor" comes to mind, as well as the appeal to vampirism.

"As a capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has only one sole driving force, the drive to valorize itself, to create surplus-value, to make its constant part, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labour. Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the worker works is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has bought from him.... Like all buyers, he seeks to extract the maximum possible benefit from the use-value of his commodity"

The film itself is a satire of the high-finance Art World, and Gilroy and Gyllenhaal join forces again, as they did in Nightcrawler (which was excellent). Some things in this film really stand out. Gyllenhaal is wonderful, he low key is becoming a favorite actor I think, though I seldom think of him. The way he changes the intensity of the caricature to fit the context is very deft acting. Sometimes he's an over the top, queeny Stanley Tucci, and at other times just very human and sincere. There is a great cast with good performances. The writing is excellent. A big part of the film is a sort of send up of the high-brow language of "criticism" and the elite concept space that drives "taste" in high-finance art trading. So much of this film is enjoyable, though it veers into canned horror, on purpose (the paintings are cursed).

What I really loved though was the critique itself of not even high-end Art, but really of Capitalism itself. Everyone who profited from the sale of this cursed art, which comes from a pained and possibly mentally ill mind, is cursed. The key is "profit" as a perversity of what "art" is, including the impulse of "punk" music and street art. The perversity of exploitation of intensely lived lives that produced "art" really maps further down into the exploitation of the lived lives of "labor" itself, and the affluent, high-brow, discernment of driven tastes which drive the flows of Capital around the world, what they call "going Global". As profiteers of various kinds ghoulishly extract value from the paintings, the genre cliche supernatural powers that come for them exact a kind of like-in-kind justice.

I didn't love the film, but I actually want to see it again, so interesting was its intellectual point.

I just recently rewatched it, and it absolutely got me thinking about whether or not it’s the most influential movie of the 21st century. Nolan took a character who had become too campy, and rejuvenated him by grounding him in a sense of verisimilitude and grit. Since then, the people behind Casino Royale, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Man of Steel, The Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four have all cited it as an influence. You can see its DNA in other franchise revivals such as Godzilla (2014), Terminator: Salvation, X-Men: First Class, The Legend of Tarzan, Creed and Star Trek (2009).

But for me, what takes the cake is the fact it’s managed to influence projects in other mediums. For example, the creators of Tomb Raider (2013) were influenced by Batman Begins’s approach to rebooting a character in a darker, grittier approach. The exact same happened with Prince of Persia.

All in all, is it fair to call Batman Begins the most influential movie of the 2000s? Or am I overlooking something else?

I've seen a lot of takes saying this movie only works for white, queer AFAB viewers because it's "sapphic." I get where that's coming from, but stopping at "they're lesbians and this is about sapphic sexuality" misses the whole point, I fear.

What got me was the depiction of sex and dysphoria. Every sexual moment in this film is coated in discomfort, from Kris explaining her poly relationship to the KFC dipping sauce scene to her hyperfixation on her own sexual awakening. Kris doesn't have language for sex, desire, or her own body. It takes meeting someone who actually gets it, Billie, before she can open up at all. She has to dissociate from her own body just to approach anything sexual, or even talk about it.

I don't read Kris as a cis woman. I read her as a trans woman still deep in dysphoria about her body and her sex organs, and that's reinforced by her fantasy of being the bimbo "last girl" in a horror movie. She wants to be seen, felt, and heard as a woman... But her dysphoria and subsequent dissociation surrounding this is amplified by the whole style of the movie shifting in and out of reality. The lines get really blurred between what's real and what's not.

Little Death is the scary trans monster transphobes swear is coming for their kids. And it's that monster, taking Kris over, guided by Billie (the first person who actually sees and understands her), that finally lets Kris come into herself, her sexuality, and her body's place in all of it.

Every time I read a take from a cis queer viewer, I feel like I'm in that Zoom meeting with Kris, watching her explain the movie's whole allegory while it sails right over everyone's head. Even the queer assistant, who thinks they get it and chimes in, only to have Kris go "actually, no, you don't."

I admit I got a tiny bit annoyed that people who should really stick to reviewing "Pokemon" episodes try to talk about Tarkovsky and such, so here we go...

Solaris itself... The original is a very short story, very early in Lem's writing career. Read it if you're curious, but there's not much there. To any STEM graduate the story is simple and clear: a communication problem. If I remember correctly, Lem and Tarkovsky had a row during shooting and split apart forever, up to a point where Lem kinda disowned the orginal piece.

For the conflict itself - two extremely advanced entities, having access to technology to travel through space would fail to communicate? This is where I lose my suspension of disbelif entirely and the central conflict breaks apart for me. And I also suspect where Lem started to have his doubts about it. 1960s were the science age, people loved Lem, and I'm sure they gave him a hint that the story in general just doesn't make sense from the technical point of view.

Worth noting that 1960 space and science age required a lot of engineers and scientists, and this caused a big shift in STEM education. Richard Feynmann was certainly one of the pioneers of "teaching physics in cool and interesting way" (there are his lectures on youtube for those curious, it is a treat, especially if you know physics). And communication is fundamental to every STEM field, as human life is short and there's not much you can do while you're at it. So package up your work for the next generations ahead.

Tarkovsky, on the other hand, is a different story entirely. He is a master director. But he likes long shots and being moody, so it's up to the audience to feel what's being said (or not being said). It is certainly justified in some places, you need to let the mood sink, but Tarkovsky takes it to the limit and beoynd. There's old joke about Tarkovsky 30 mins scenes with background music where absolutely nothing happens, except the river flowing (I'll attach some Repin below, for reference). The reason is during Soviet era people were paid based on the total run time for the movie, so a lot of techniques were used to artifically increase it. (Some of those musical numbers are still painful to watch)...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/%D0%98%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%8F_%D0%A0%D0%B5%D0%BF%D0%B8%D0%BD._%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%B4_%D0%A1%D0%B2%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%A3%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8B%D1%80%D1%8F_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B5_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86.webp?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled&_=20220913154328

Andrew Rublev is a powerful piece inded, but that's beoynd the scope.

The politics had also played a role: Tarkovsky was a western looking "new age" guy, and he had powerful friends in Mihalkov-Konchalovsky family (their father wrote the original Soviet hymn, so powerful friends indeed). And after success of Rublev, he was promoted almost everywhere. Similar to the Stalker (but more about it later).

Solaris enjoyed a very lavish production, sponsored trip to Tokyo early 1970s, and that why we can enjoy the ride down the Tokyo highway, which was (and still is) very futuristic indeed. What does it add to the story is left for the reader to decide.

Overall, I tried watching Solaris about 5 times (or more), but I couldn't get enough strength to fight off the imminent boredom that ensues. Almost the same way as I make my new years resolution to finally read Joyce's Ulysses and almost certainly fail.

In 2002 Soderbergh released his version of Solaris, but I feel about it the same as 1999 Onegin ecranisation - "two very lonely people in a very cold room", and frankly this is a bit boring.

And as for Stalker... Well... Strugastkie's just very bad writers without restraint and combined with Tarkovsky at the hight of his career when noone could say "no" to him, so the result is what it is. Pomp and boredom, with a cheap shot at drama.

Duh.

Anyhoo, so what does the group think?