Films you've seen recently and would unreservedly recommend:

[IdleRich]

He seems too dumb though doesn't he?

Maybe no-one is at their best when they get physically assaulted on the bog though.

 

[sus]

Rebel Without a Cause, Sunset Boulevard and Invasion of the Body Snatchers are in there too. He's even watching Body Snatchers on TV at one point, iirc. They also use locations from some the films.

Maybe Long Goodbye?

 

[sus]

[The dog killer] is, we learn in Comic Man’s conspiracy zine, most likely acting in tribute to an aspiring silent comedy star of the early 20th century. Faced with the impossibility of achieving his dreams, this would-be Chaplin directed his energy towards a festering jealousy of trained showbiz dogs, displacing all of his disappointments and failures onto these creatures that he believed to have taken the glory that was rightfully his.

Given what we know of Sam's own thwarted ambitions, another pointer toward him (or a Shooting Star!)

 

[version]

That would explain his issues with women and equating them with dogs too.

 

[sus]

This is a fun one

 

[IdleRich]

That version and the Donald Sutherland one are both cool I think.

 

[sus]

I will say, the bullet in the reservoir, when it kills her and she bent back just like the Playboy cover

I thought that was a genuinely beautiful scene, one of the few stand-outs in the film.

 

[version]

His response to the songwriter telling him there's no rebellion is to murder him with Kurt Cobain's guitar.

 

[version]

I wonder—I wonder if part of the obsession with conspiracies, with discovering an all-powerful cultural monopoly/conspiracy elites, can be read as him trying to find a justification for his own failures. If he wants to be a songwriter, or an actor, and has instead ended up in "the bad version of the life I was supposed to live," well?

“The idea of (the REM) scene is that Sam is surrounded by the younger generation,” Garfield explains. “It’s ‘old music’ night. But ‘old music’ night is 90s and 00s music. It’s a vintage throwback to ten years ago.” After the chorus, the realisation hits Sam: he’s if Peter Parker wasn’t bitten by a spider, he’s if Eduardo Saverin never co-founded Facebook. Garfield agrees. “It takes Sam the whole film to realise: ‘I guess I’m not cut out for this shit. I guess I’m a failure. I guess I’m ordinary. I guess I’m not special. And I guess that’s OK.’”

 

[IdleRich]

I will say, the bullet in the reservoir, when it kills her and she bent back just like the Playboy cover

I thought that was a genuinely beautiful scene, one of the few stand-outs in the film.

I was wondering about that... presumably that just can't mean anything beyond looking cool though can it?

 

[IdleRich]

His response to the songwriter telling him there's no rebellion is to murder him with Kurt Cobain's guitar.

Songwriter was a bit too easy to take down for my liking.

 

[sus]

did anyone notice that Sam smokes cigarettes from the fictional brand Morley, which was introduced in the the X files

 

[version]

I was wondering about that... presumably that just can't mean anything beyond looking cool though can it?

There's obviously a sex/death thing going on at least. He says that cover's the first thing he ever masturbated to then she pretends she's going to sleep with him in order to tell him what she knows before getting murdered and dying in the same pose. She also dies under Silver Lake.

 

[sus]

There's obviously a sex/death thing going on at least. He says that cover's the first thing he ever masturbated to then she pretends she's going to sleep with him in order to tell him what she knows before getting murdered and dying in the same pose.

Right

And they drone-spy on a sobbing blonde (a Sarah lookalike, for whatever that's worth)

Or he finishes, in the sex scene with the nurse-costumed actress, right when they announce the disappearance of the billionaire, and show close-ups of his daughters crying

Tragedy & sexual arousal are all tied up in exploitation and bad taste

 

[IdleRich]

There's obviously a sex/death thing going on at least. He says that cover's the first thing he ever masturbated to then she pretends she's going to sleep with him in order to tell him what she knows before getting murdered and dying in the same pose. She also dies under Silver Lake.

Yeah that should make it the most important scene right?

 

[version]

When he eventually watches that old film his mum keeps recommending, the actress says something about always looking up and never looking down and at that point he leaves his apartment and the conspiracy and goes to the parrot woman. The parrot woman's only ever seen on her balcony and Sarah, the girl who disappears, is on the ground by the pool when we see the two of them arguing at the beginning.

 

[IdleRich]

Is it the cover he pulled off over though or just that magazine? I didn't quite catch the specifics.

 

[IdleRich]

When he eventually watches that old film his mum keeps recommending, the actress says something about always looking up and never looking down and at that point he leaves his apartment and the conspiracy and goes to the parrot woman.

And the actress did the painting at the party before he meets that girl.

 

[version]

And the actress did the painting at the party before he meets that girl.

He wakes up in front of her headstone after eating that drugged biscuit and chasing one of the brides out of the crypt club too.

 

[IdleRich]

So she's significant but I don't really get how.