Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched (2013-2016)  (Read 973636 times)

Sandy

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8880 on: August 24, 2016, 09:24:51 PM »
The Lobster



So I took this quiz,

http://quizly.io/quiz/what-are-your-6-distinguishing-personality-traits

because I'm curious about what I'd say if I were introducing myself on my first day at The Hotel. I already took the animal quiz and came out as a swan and am okay with that. I guess I could live as a swan if I really had too. But, I'm at a loss as to my "most distinguishing trait." I feel undue pressure to get this right... Nose bleeds? No. Heartless? Never. Near sighted? Very.  Walk with a limp? Sometimes... I don't know! So I was hoping the quiz would help. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how accurate the answers are. Outgoing as number one?! Heck! I picked librarian for dream job! As far as I'm concerned, that makes the whole thing highly suspect.

Your 6 distinguishing personality traits are: (1) outgoing, (2) energetic, (3) positive, (4) friendly, (5) cooperative, (6) charming. You tend to spread your positive energy wherever you go and this is what attracts so many good friends. You know a thing or two about how to cooperate and talk to people and have a trusting nature. You love the company of others and you won’t step back from helping people when you see an opportunity. People just love to be around such a positive person like you!

But! it's all so complimentary, that I can't help but love the quiz and feel like it's giving me a great big hug. And boy do I need it after watching The Lobster. Being plopped into this world, unsettles me to no end. Absurd laws, reflect our own absurd expectations we put on ourselves and the constraints make me want to run away into those woods, but it's just as absurd there. At first I'm hoping the forest leader is using reverse psychology to get people together through barriers, which is the perfect way to do it. "What keeps a couple apart?" is the premise to all great love stories, but alas, the leader is just as caught up in her own rigid ideas, so a real romance is doomed there too. Or is it? As horrific as the ways and means of getting around the system are, I can't help but be moved by the lengths two people in love will go, to be together. It's a curious journey to take with them... That's it! Curious is my distinguishing trait! Which explains why this "curiouser and curiouser!"movie may be my favorite for the year.

Oh, and if you know what tucking my hair behind my ear, a hiccup and tripping while I walk mean, and you're of the curious persuasion, we can see where it leads. ;)

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8881 on: August 24, 2016, 11:25:44 PM »
The film is generally described as dystopic. I sometimes wonder if it is a flaw in who I am as a person that I'm kind of like "seems pretty ideal to me." But then, I'm comparing it to dating websites, and nothing is worse than dating websites.

pixote

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8882 on: August 25, 2016, 01:53:41 PM »
I moved the bulk of the discussion of The Lobster to the spoiler thread, so you can discuss the film more freely. (I haven't seen it yet, so I'm not clear what's a spoiler and what's not, but I'm saw reference to "the ending" and got typically nervous.)

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Sandy

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8883 on: August 25, 2016, 02:21:35 PM »
thank you, pixote! :) I wasn't sure how to transition over there.

hope I didn't spoil anything.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8884 on: August 25, 2016, 03:33:03 PM »
typically nervous

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don s.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8885 on: August 25, 2016, 04:30:04 PM »
Hell or High Water

Urgh.

My dad liked it. My very smart friend Darrell who teaches film in college liked it. And Rotten Tomatoes has it at "98% fresh." But the characters are paper-thin, the dialogue is eye-rollingly corny, and the social commentary is facile and heavy-handed. There's one terrific action-packed set piece towards the end, but the rest was painful.

Dad and Darrell owe me $3.75 each.
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pixote

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8886 on: August 25, 2016, 04:31:42 PM »
All I want for Christmas is to go to the movies with don, Darrell, and don's Dad.

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don s.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8887 on: August 25, 2016, 06:08:40 PM »
All I want for Christmas is to go to the movies with don, Darrell, and don's Dad.

I should probably point out that we all saw it separately; I just happened to talk to them this past weekend. But in the unlikely event that my dad and Darrell and I are ever in the same place at the same time, I'll give you a heads-up.
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verbALs

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8888 on: August 26, 2016, 12:19:12 AM »
Hell or High Water

Urgh.

My dad liked it. My very smart friend Darrell who teaches film in college liked it. And Rotten Tomatoes has it at "98% fresh." But the characters are paper-thin, the dialogue is eye-rollingly corny, and the social commentary is facile and heavy-handed. There's one terrific action-packed set piece towards the end, but the rest was painful.

Dad and Darrell owe me $3.75 each.
What were their reasons for liking it?
From what I've seen from two MacKenzie films, paper thin characters seems unusual but it's by the guy who wrote Sicario so he may write in broad strokes and representations. Would that description fit the bill?
I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore. - Banksy

verbALs

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #8889 on: August 27, 2016, 04:24:53 AM »
Dheepan

"Hear the cries in the refugee camps
Those crying children are the Tigers of tomorrow
"

Brooklyn left me considering that the story of the Syrian refugee in Germany should get a similar treatment. The sweetness of that story felt non-judgemental, which is required in this modern context. British artists weren't telling Brexit stories, to help us understand our feelings at the time, as if they completely missed the ineffable mood of the times; a service art renders. A key to a door, that otherwise remains closed, to one's understanding, of how people fit with the world as it changes around us. Brooklyn isn't an issue movie. Not because it doesn't elucidate upon important subjects, but because it is cinematic. It tells a story, and we can think about its wider implications later, if we want. Dheepan is similar, if a little more apparent for how it can help with the intractability of the state of the refugee crisis in Europe today. Audiard distances the film. The struggle continues, but the war isn't with the west, and these soldiers aren't the enemy within; so, emotionally, I am not at odds with it. Perspective is maintained, and objectivity isn't overwhelmed by an implied threat, if this were the story of Syrians or Libyans.

Audiard takes care to interface these refugees with French society as it exists on a sink estate. They slip into the servant role of the jobs the locals wouldn't want. It gives them an opportunity, yet at the same time, their position will appear degraded, close to crime. How close, also, can they get to this new society from their position at the bottom? Audiard mirrors their watchful pose; like they are viewing a movie through the window. Little they can do but work and watch. Audiard makes a movie not a documentary. Whether Dheepan is lucky to escape a war or not, somewhat depends on who Dheepan is, which the film reveals. The character stripped of identity by his refugee status, as emphasised by the story, reasserts itself. Once a soldier, always a soldier? Certainly a difference between children playing with guns and a real soldier. It's clear why this Tamil context works better than an Arab one would; bearing in mind that Audiard is quite practiced in that perspective. More distance aids empathy and doesn't confuse it. The Tiger appears from the jungle but one doesn't take its teeth to be bared at "us".

The ending with England as a place of warming sunshine, choral, heavenly music and a welcoming integration of people, as opposed to the bleakness of French council estates made me laugh. Merci Jacques, welcome to the promised land, huh?

My thought about Rust and Bone was that, "Jacques Audiard is assembling a collection of choice, complex violent men." However quietly they may want to live, its the proximity to violence and their reactions, which define them, tellingly.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2016, 04:34:18 AM by verbALs »
I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore. - Banksy