Good Boys - More like “not good boys” more like! This is shite. Will Forte provides a few chuckles by just being inherently funny at all times. None of the three leads have any semblance of comedy chops though. Don’t know what I was expecting really, looks shite, is shite.
The Mustang - This is a beautiful little film. Absolutely superb central performance from Matthias Schoenaerts with a brilliant supporting turn from Bruce Dern. It’s a little heavy-handed with it’s central metaphor but it really got to me. I love films that shine a light on a small, specific real-life thing that you wouldn’t otherwise know about as well. The Inmate Wild Horse Program seems like a wonderful thing.
Ah, this has popped up at my Cineworld with zero promotion, was going to ask in here if anyone had seen it. Will try and fit in this week if I can.
(Also a couple of others - A Million Little Pieces, which has had pretty bad reviews, and The Informer, which seems to have had middling ones. Three with no promotion in one week must be a record…)
I think it is nice when good films get recognised at the Oscars etc. But it is also quite funny when bad films win everything and people act like the Oscars has ever been a decent barometer of quality.
Yeah, same. The Informer has had a few trailers in some of my screenings of other stuff but the other two just appeared with no warning whatsoever. A Million Little Pieces seems like it will probably be quite bad though.
It will though have much of the same audience and a lot of people who are susceptible to all that origin-tale stuff. I do think it’s a dodgy area tbh, call me a puritan.
ghosthalo mentioned music in comparison but there’s a lot of stuff that was regarded as transgressive at the time that really wouldn’t fly today. Times are volatile and people are getting stupider.
I also hate it when people do instant extreme hot takes over what is or isn’t fascist @safetywink
Agree with you though; art can’t really be separated from politics and culture, but you could at least try to consider the message and the value of the art on its own first before you start tying it into a wider picture. Otherwise everything just becomes a manifesto with different pretty pictures attached to it, rather than a complete piece of work with its own logic and coherence.
The basic law of the Internet and indeed life generally is that people bring their own interpretations to stuff. And any kind of subtle message often gets ignored. There’s essentially nothing that cam be shown that can’t be misinterpreted or co-opted.
It’s always great to hear other perspectives and interpretations you hadn’t considered, but I think Twitter especially (or maybe it’s just the internet and I’m blaming my least favourite aspect) means that you get everyone else’s views. And between all those people it’s likely that every aspect of every film can be pulled apart, meaning that if you spend half an hour on film Twitter/wherever then you can come away with just a list of grievances about a film, rather than a well thought-out analysis that might challenge some of your views. Random complaints can be fun when they’re from your select group of friends or colleagues, but beyond that it’s just overkill.
Obviously the democratisation of the internet is good in parts, it’s not like critics have all the answers or some better viewpoint than everyone else. But they are paid to study and consider films, to put them in context and in relation to each other. And compared to an endless stream of issues coming from random filmgoers, that seems pretty desirable …
Feel a lot of twitter arguing is done in this James O’brien, one step above strawmanning way where you hunt down the worst framed/worded argument of the opposing view, generalise it to be everyone who disagrees with you, dismantle it and claim universal victory for whatever side of it you’re on.
