6th September
It: Chapter 2
Queen of Hearts
The Shiny Shrimps
13th September
Downton Abbey
Hustlers
For Sama
Honeyland
Night Hunter
Phoenix
18th September
Ad Astra
19th September
Rambo: Last Blood
20th September
The Farewell
The Kitchen
27th September
The Goldfinch
Ready or Not
Hotel Mumbai
Skin
The Last Tree
Best August film release
0 voters
34% v 33% v 33% - yes!
Crawl
Kind of fun. Kind of stupid. If I was watching it on TV I almost certainly would have turned over and watched Grand Designs instead. Glad I watched it all though. Plus everyone in the screen had a good old laugh at the final needle drop.
Kaya Scodelario was good (and very fast at swimming).
Must have been an absolute nightmare to film as well. Fuck that.
insert Tom Hardy saying “That’s bait” GIF
I love film criticism! Would that I could get a job doing this
https://screenrant-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/screenrant.com/starship-troopers-things-havent-aged-well/amp/?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fscreenrant.com%2Fstarship-troopers-things-havent-aged-well%2F
Watched Hail Satan earlier today. Loved it, great fun. Me and my partner have immediately signed up to the satanic temple.
https://twitter.com/jackallisonLOL/status/1168206708063313921?s=19
agree with this tbh. read take after take today from people on the verge of tears, apparently sincere in their belief that making a film with a bad guy as the main character is de facto “pro-incel propaganda”. this after i listened to a review of children of men last week (think it was discourse collective) in which the hosts concluded the film was “pro breeder” and therefore “reactionary” because it posits having children as “the only solution”. something has gone badly wrong with some people’s ability to interpret art.
oh my god, this ties in perfectly with the joker shit today. why the fuck are these people allowed anywhere near culture, they’re all complete morons.
Okay, here’s a big chunk of in my IMO opinion around this for you:
The thing is Fight Club very definitely has a message of saying, “This shit is really fucked up, this is what happens when you offer a bunch of dispossessed people fascism as a solution to their lives,” and yet it’s absolutely loved by MRAs. A lot of that falls firmly at the feet of Fincher (who I love) because he makes all the fucked up shit so absolutely sexy and compelling.
But I’m not in the business of saying, “Don’t make that, it might be used as propaganda”. It’s tricky though because we know that satire can as easily get appropriated by those it’s satirising rather than making them consider.
And I think the social climate does matter. The BNP/UKIP could never really get a foothold during the years before the Global Crash because there were enough people in a positive position financially etc for this sort of thing not to play. I mean Fight Club was just a satire in 1999 but 10-20 years later it feels somewhat prophetic and a significant pointer to society’s issues.
Without seeing the film it’s hard to really know. Taxi Driver is a very complex tale that doesn’t truly paint Travis as fighting against the administration I suppose. If this film becomes the beaten down ‘good’ white guy against the administration then I can see why it might be seen as the sort of film an incel would appreciate. Not sure if that makes it propaganda though, just maybe a film that you’d worry about why a given person loves it until you’re sure it’s the right reason?
[American History X sort of comes to mind here. I’ve always been a bit guarded about white guys online whose take from that film is anything other than it being anti-racist.]
i don’t know, the takes make me laugh but i also find this weird puritanism pretty creepy. hard to talk about it without sounding like a chud but… the political contortions they’re going through are truly bizarre. the reaction to once upon a time in hollywood from the same quarter was the first time i really noticed it. it feels like condemning films sight unseen because of the damage they “might” do is a pretty slippery slope here. like a woke mirror image of what reactionaries were up to when they’d say marilyn manson was personally arming every school shooter in america, and before that, when john birch weirdos were burning beatles records because they were satanic commies. both kinds of reactionary seem to want to flatten everything to one dimension because they personally are unsettled by nuance and ambiguity. that really sucks for the rest of us who don’t want to live in a world of disneyfied/marvel type culture. i mean, i get that they can only view the entertainment they consume through the lens of how much it validates their own politics and sense of self, but i enjoy parsing an artist’s motives and what they’re trying to communicate with their work, and if their politics suck i’m confident i can work that out on my own. i think i just resent people tripping over themselves to try and scorch me with a take about why movie X is fascist and i am probably a terrible person if i see it and enjoy it.
Yeah I mean I definitely think it’s odd if someone’s claiming a film is deliberately supporting fascist ideals, but I don’t think criticising a film for having those notions is a bad thing, any more than it is to criticise a rom-com for how much it normalises dangerous fantasies about relationships. I mean that’s the same thing: someone just wanted to make a feel-good movie but it turned out it was a capitalist screed, etc.
I mean you’re taking issue with Disney/Marvel there but then this is actually DC who’ve made this, who’ve also made some impressively terrible comic stuff like Dawn of Justice. And whether they wanted it or not, Disney made The Last Jedi which has created an interesting (IMO) wave of discussion about politics within such films and laid bare a lot of the ways in which the MRAs/etc. literally blind themselves to truths in order to claim a film supports their views of how stuff is wrong.
Fundamentally, there are a lot of people out there (on Twitter mainly now I suppose) who seem to have just decided that everything they say needs to be turned up to 11, because everyone’s at that volume. As such I see increasing amounts of hyperbole that swamps genuine points someone wants to make because they’ll only get ‘numbers’ by forming up behind a dogma. And this is also shit because when stuff that actually deserves a full out there level of ‘fuck you’ comes up, like cops killing black people, it’s less visible. Sorry, gone a bit off-topic there.
I might see Joker at the flicks if my mate wants to I suppose.
Anybody else feel like this has been a properly shite year for films? Fucking everything is some big ticket franchise thing. Only thing I’ve watched that isn’t is Booksmart, and I’ve pretty much stopped going to the pictures because I can’t bear more Disney stuff.
Already been conned by some controversy to go see a tarantino film this year. Absolutely No chance I’m falling for it and seeing a batman film too
Burning was brilliant. That and the Maradona doc are the only 2019 releases I’ve absolutely loved (off the top of my head)
I feel like a hypocrite because the thing I’ve most enjoyed this year was Bumblebee. The bloody Transformers film warmed the very depths of my soul.
Bumblebee was technically 2018 wasn’t it? But it was an easy-to-like film, very much framed in the classic John Hughes style but with robots.
I actually think Captain Marvel was as much fun as Bumblebee, TBH. We watched it again last night and I thought it was stronger on a second viewing. Most of the stuff that didn’t quite land for me the first time was improved.
There’s been good stuff in amongst the DisneyMarvelMegaBeasts that I’ve enjoyed
Burning (worth mentioning again. So good)
If Beale Street Could Talk
Border
High Life
Us
The Sisters Brothers
Woman at War
Minding the Gap *
Mid 90s
The Favourite *
Eighth Grade
Beats
Late Night
Thunder Road
Midsommar
* 2018? Can’t remember but possibly on the cusp.
Same for that excellent rock climbing one
This looks good, heard very little about it which surprises me
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/50-years-of-the-troubles-a-journey/episode-guide
As listed by @AcceptanceIII there’s been plenty outside the Mouse House worth investigating (and some inside too). Minding the Gap and The Favourite were both 2019 releases in the UK, and Burning is my film of the year so far (my thoughts: ‘Burning’ review by Sam Bourner • Letterboxd).
Here’s my standout 20 so far (not in order):
A lot of these had very limited cinema releases but quite a few are easily available. Minding the Gap is still on iPlayer (BBC Three - Minding the Gap: An American Skateboarding Story), Joy and All Good are up on Netflix after their festival runs the previous year, Island of Hungry Ghosts is on BFI Player, Hale County… is up on Amazon.
There’s so much great cinema out there, and we’ve still got For Sama, Ad Astra, The Farewell, Monos, Atlantics, Marriage Story, So Long My Son all to come in the UK, outside of big hitters like Irishman, Sorry We Missed You, Beautiful Day in Neighborhood and Little Women.
Viva Cinema!
