rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
free fire is so shit.
the Q&A with ben wheatley when it ended was better than the whole film.
sub QT-via-martin mcdonagh shoot em up. cynical dumbed down inanity.
someone asked him about QT (though not MM who is a better comparison) and of course he looked a bit offended then pretended, and lied, saying that he was more into the people who influenced QT than tarantino himself. ha.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i wasnt THAT impressed with i am not your negro. i like baldwin a lot but the text the film was working from is a bit all over the place, highly personal, and just a bit meandering, as well as a bit too keen on a sort of over-emotional kind of writing. it has a lot of truth though, you just have to wait for it in between the other bits.

get out is brilliant. and actually kind of tiring by the end of it. i want to see it again.
this also has something to do with my ahem admiration for alison williams.
(not the tiring bit)
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I enjoyed Get Out greatly while watching it, but it didn't stay with me at all.

Problem being that once it became clear that all the white people were evil and all 'in on it', then the film lost a lot of its possibilities. The film's white liberal audience (quite a significant proportion, I'd guess) could then relax, breathe a sigh of relief that it had again been shown that 'racists' can easily be identified as murderous scheming psychopaths, rather than interrogating its own behaviour around race and the complexities of systemic racism/unequal racial privilege as it infiltrates personal relationships (and there were a few brilliant scenes earlier in the movie that sent a genuinely awkward frisson round the cinema I was at - the audience was very mixed). Good film, lost opportunity.

Pity the Baldwin film is flawed by the sound of it. Will still go see it though.
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
cant disagree with any of that.

but i enjoyed it in the first half as a social study (the dinner table scene was brilliant and highly accurate in terms of how most racism often plays out socially, rather than the usual big dramatic showdowns). then as a tense horror-thriller/bit of genre film-making. would it get the audiences it has done if it wasnt also a fun horror movie? i doubt it.

if hollywood was more interested in non-black minority actors, id like to see a different version of get out, this time with a white dude who has an asian girl fetish. lol. someone needs to make it a franchise.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Definitely true that the denouement was led by the need to attract an audience. One thing they could have done differently, while retaining the crowdpleasing ending, would have been to make the Alison Williams character genuinely conflicted. You would have lost the powerful genre 'lost keys' moment where she metamorphoses before our eyes (trying to think of other classic moments in that vein - Viggo Mortensen's transformation in History of Violence comes to mind), but ultimately have gained something greater.

The dinner party scene was excellent - the brother was truly monstrous, in a believable way. There was also a lakeside scene between Daniel Kaluuya and Alison Williams that was fantastic - at that point it certainly wasn't 100% clear (to me) that she was party to her parents' plans.

http://nextshark.com/get-out-film-asian-character-racism-llag/ Tbh I had forgotten about this.

I'm trying to think of any films whatsoever that have explored anti-Asian racism in the US. Man Push Cart comes to mind, but that was an indie film with limited release. I suppose the best mainstreamish example, if we allow TV, might be The Night Of with Riz Ahmed.But racism against characters with Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese heritage...can't come up with any.
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
yeah, theres man push cart. master of none on netflix. a few things here and there. the 2nd harold and kumar movie might be the greatest asian hollywood movie ever :)

some of the blame for that rests on the traditional conversation of race in the US (which then affects the conversation in the uk and what we see on our screens, as we just copy what the US does first, so if you have a lot of commissioners who dont know anything about race to begin with but do watch a lot of tv and film and tweeted 'oscarssowhite' a few times to reassure themselves they were on the right side, then thats just what you get) and some of it just rests on what hollywood deems 'sexy'/dramatically in-your-face when it comes to race on screen. i.e white liberals' fear/fascination with black culture/people. but get out is the first horror about microaggressions which allows for a more nuanced depiction of racism, which I think might open it up a bit more beyond the usual Big Racism which we are used to seeing (civil rights struggles, lynchings, slavery etc, etc). but yes, i doubt most people know about things like japanese internment camps, killings of people like vincent chin, decades of US legislation denying chinese men the right to bring their wives or marry white women, etc etc. i also find it baffling how few 'big' movies there are focusing on native americans (NOT dances with wolves, and not dead man either, for that matter). i would recommend the Exiles actually, which *plug plug* i am showing at deptford cinema next month (its on DVD too).

i need to see the last series of girls. i heard riz ahmed was in there (possibly as a boyfriend, though im not sure).
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Never watched Harold and Kumar actually. Will rectify that this weekend.

I think you're absolutely right with all that. Issues around racism against Asian people or Asian-American people (and against native American people) are neither as widely known about, nor are they considered in the same way. And yeah, I think that has much to do with the lack of wider knowledge of Asian culture, and especially Asian-American culture (the list of Asian American stars is still really short. Someone like Gregg Araki is a genius, but barely known by name, though some of his films might be).

Films that portray microaggressions, and do it well, is an interesting one. I'm gonna give that some thought, because at the moment my mind is going blank (aside from Get Out, obvs. 'The Comedian' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1656194/ has a few great scenes too, iirc).

Ah, you're involved with Deptford Cinema. I was planning to go along and volunteer there, because I really liked the look of the programming (unlike some of the shite programming at allegedly independent cinemas - another Martin Scorsese season, how interesting etc) and the political edge to it (I think they showed that doc about ACT UP, if I remember correctly? And I see Reds is playing next week - great film). I had to leave south London unfortunately, but I'll def make it along there sometime. Maybe to see The Exiles.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
Movies 2016

Here is a list of movies I enjoyed in 2016, roughly listed by release date (youngest on top):

Arrival

The Neon Demon

Paterson

High-Rise

Tangerine L.A.

Hail, Caesar!

The Lobster

Trumbo

Black Mass

Anomalisa

The Big Short

The Revenant
 

you

Well-known member
I watched Snowtown and Hounds of Love recently. Both exceptional albeit harrowing Aussie slow burners.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Why is Australian cinema so often so bleak and so sadistic? Those two, Jindabyne, Wolf Creek etc etc.

That last scene of Hounds of Love is pretty spectacular, though (plus the nod to Silence of the Lambs)
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Is Australia a violent country IRL? It seems like it might be a bit like one of the Southern states in the US. A lot of rural backwater towns, poverty, illiteracy, crocodiles and Toady Rebecci smoking fags in the playing field at Erinsborough High.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Is Australia a violent country IRL? It seems like it might be a bit like one of the Southern states in the US. A lot of rural backwater towns, poverty, illiteracy, crocodiles and Toady Rebecci smoking fags in the playing field at Erinsborough High.

Apparently the murder rate is a bit lower than in the UK. Interesting that the Hounds of Love director chose the story because it was a way to make an impact on a limited budget and (in the main) a single location - maybe that's a major driver of the trend, talented directors from a relatively small film industry, but one with a good record of crossover to Hollywood, trying to get attention. It does seem that the country has an abnormal number of talented directors (and actors too?), but maybe I just see the good stuff.

Wake in Fright is a good documentary account of Australia, of course.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Never watched Harold and Kumar actually. Will rectify that this weekend.
Oddly enough we watched that for the first time this weekend too. Or at least it was on in the background as we made ourselves increasingly drunk... It seemed to have a few pretty funny bits but I'm afraid I can't provide much in the way of analysis on how it relates to and reflects anti-Asian prejudice in the US.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
Oddly enough we watched that for the first time this weekend too. Or at least it was on in the background as we made ourselves increasingly drunk... It seemed to have a few pretty funny bits but I'm afraid I can't provide .much in the way of analysis on how it relates to and reflects anti-Asian prejudice in the US.

haha.
it doesnt really, not explicitly.
its just a fun stoner movie, starrring two ppl who you would never expect to see leading a funny stoner movie.
their characters do shift from the first film to the second though, from nerdy asian stereotypes to cooler weed-addled heroes.
there is also the fact you have kumar being mistaken for a terrorist, and then as the title suggests, escaping from guantanamo, which does put something vaguely political into a teen movie that you might not usually get.
they are fun genre movies ultimately, but you have to look at them in the context of asian representation in the west to get deeper (if i can say that about movies like this lol) enjoyment beyond that out of them. on a simpler level, it was a mainstream hollywood movie with two asian male heroes, which is not something you get every week (or every year/decade even).
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Watched "Manchester by the Sea", it was very good but what is always hard about a film that attempts to be very down to earth, true to life, etc. is that melodrama and artifice stick out a mile. So despite all that was good about it I keep thinking about what a misstep it was to use Albinoni in that particularly harrowing sequence. This was also my problem with "I'm Daniel Blake", which (though it might be unrealistic) felt very plausible to me most of the time, which made the implausible bits a sourring experience.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
I am gonna watch Alien Covenant next tuesday. Despite having very low expactations, I am gonna pull through.

OK went on with it...

And now I am disappointed that I wasn't disappointed with it (how's that for meta-naging) , actually I quite enjoyed it :)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Watched trainspotting 2, despite seeming dated by using the same tricks as the original (and Ally Mcbeal) did, and having a terrible soundtrack, Igloo apart, I liked it. As an affectionate indictment of a generation and as a moving reflection on ageing and time as a one way street, it works.
I was won over by the scene in the Protestant club. It was such good fun I dropped my defences after that.

Impossible, if you watched the first one when it was released, not to reflect on 20 wasted years, on an individual, a political, a cultural and a societal level. Hard not to feel sad about our pointless wastrel generation sloping towards middle age and death. Twenty years of non-achievement, wasted lives, wasted opportunities, wretched world that only gets worse, studded with small tragedies, acts of negligence, sins of omission, an averting of the eyes, an inability to act, comfort blanket of addiction pulled over the eyes.

An impotent generation suddenly crow footed, lined, creased, potbellied, halfway to death, dreams deferred indefinitely, mired in cynicism, hobbled by romanticism, dancing alone to a record you liked 20 years ago, parents dead perhaps, or unforgiven, the relationship stunted, stuck in amber, shot through with adolescent rage. Unable to go back, unable to go on, with neither the beauty and vigour of youth nor the attainments of age, seeing death in the dark corners, sick with guilt, haunted by the ghosts of our former selves.

And what memories would you hold onto? A few good nights on the lash with the boys? Nights when the drugs really worked and you got a glimpse of something better, but every time you open your eyes you’re right back where you started, just a little older and a little sadder.

Finally watched T2. It was good, but not as good as this review.
 
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