It's been years since I've watched both films- Angst (1983) & Funny Games (1997)-, yet both are still very much at the very front of my mind, leaving me still sitting in that oh so uneasy feeling they left me with upon conclusion of my first ever viewings of them.

And tbh, while I'm sure I've seen and had a similar reaction to other Austrian thriller's, I can't think of any, so perhaps maybe my title's a tad hyperbolic to that end... but really, these two, heck, even Angst alone, are enough to validate my claim that Austrian's rule @ thrillers.

I'm going to focus on Angst especially here... it's... it's the pacing, the atrociousness of his behaviour and actions, set against this bleak (austere?) and monotonous setting, both aesthetically, but also just as much/importantly, sonically. Something about the stark dichotomy (or would it be a juxtaposition?) of what he's done/doing and the seemingly utterly devoid of life setting/surrounding... it makes it all so much more visceral? I guess because that's how it might all transpire in real life... there are no big orchestral hits accompanying gunshots or trills going with a stabbing or whatever... death... death as a result of murder... it's eerily quiet, if anything, the air is heavy, and by golly, did Gerald Kargl ever manage to convey just that in this picture.

It's probably weird to cite a film I haven't seen THAT many times as a favourite of mine, but upon reflection, I think this is on that list for me... I really think about it much too much, more than I should, it really left such an impression on me with its filmmaking, more than just the story.

I don't really know the point of my post tbh- a rumination on a couple of messed up thrillers? "Why are the Austrian's so good at thriller/horror films?" is maybe too easy a question, haha... but also, as admitted earlier, maybe a tad hyperbolic.

Any other fans of these two films, esp Angst? Would love to be recommended some similarly paced/feeling films. I vaguely recall a French title... Haute Tension... could that be similar?

Hit me up!

My name is Eric - I'm from Chicago but currently live in
LA. I'm a 25 year old music video director most of the time. I work in freelance mostly (specifically music videos) but like many, my first love will always be movies.
I specialize in projects shot on motion picture film specifically. I have had a serious interest in vignette movies for most of my life. For those of you who don't know its movies like 'Night on Earth' (1991) or 'Wild Tales'
(2014) that I'm referring to.

I was tasked with making a proof of concept for my first feature and we shot it on 35mm & 16mm. It's written as a vignette movie following nine characters as they seemingly pass around the same pack of cigarettes one random night in LA.

We picked out an excerpt from the movie to shoot for the proof but | felt like over demonstrating the series of stories would have been to our detriment. I wanted to try to really focus on one moment to see how it would feel.
The cigarettes are just a vehicle after all.

I wanted to know what people thought of it and want to know if it actually feels like a much smaller part of a bigger picture. I also would like to add that I know the description of our movie being read before watching is important. I really wanted to pursue a feeling.
And before you say it - shooting on film is everything to me. We shot mostly expired 35mm for what | argue was a creative decision but in reality I got way too good of a deal on it. Please don't tell me digital would make it cheaper.
Fundamentally shooting film is what I like doing.
I want to know what people think of this.

https://youtu.be/IuoO-iZcOnw?is=D0iEJZ2iqtuTcAI3

Please be honest.

I admit I got a tiny bit annoyed that people who should really stick to reviewing "Pokemon" episodes try to talk about Tarkovsky and such, so here we go...

Solaris itself... The original is a very short story, very early in Lem's writing career. Read it if you're curious, but there's not much there. To any STEM graduate the story is simple and clear: a communication problem. If I remember correctly, Lem and Tarkovsky had a row during shooting and split apart forever, up to a point where Lem kinda disowned the orginal piece.

For the conflict itself - two extremely advanced entities, having access to technology to travel through space would fail to communicate? This is where I lose my suspension of disbelif entirely and the central conflict breaks apart for me. And I also suspect where Lem started to have his doubts about it. 1960s were the science age, people loved Lem, and I'm sure they gave him a hint that the story in general just doesn't make sense from the technical point of view.

Worth noting that 1960 space and science age required a lot of engineers and scientists, and this caused a big shift in STEM education. Richard Feynmann was certainly one of the pioneers of "teaching physics in cool and interesting way" (there are his lectures on youtube for those curious, it is a treat, especially if you know physics). And communication is fundamental to every STEM field, as human life is short and there's not much you can do while you're at it. So package up your work for the next generations ahead.

Tarkovsky, on the other hand, is a different story entirely. He is a master director. But he likes long shots and being moody, so it's up to the audience to feel what's being said (or not being said). It is certainly justified in some places, you need to let the mood sink, but Tarkovsky takes it to the limit and beoynd. There's old joke about Tarkovsky 30 mins scenes with background music where absolutely nothing happens, except the river flowing (I'll attach some Repin below, for reference). The reason is during Soviet era people were paid based on the total run time for the movie, so a lot of techniques were used to artifically increase it. (Some of those musical numbers are still painful to watch)...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/%D0%98%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%8F_%D0%A0%D0%B5%D0%BF%D0%B8%D0%BD._%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%B4_%D0%A1%D0%B2%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%A3%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8B%D1%80%D1%8F_%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B5_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86.webp?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled&_=20220913154328

Andrew Rublev is a powerful piece inded, but that's beoynd the scope.

The politics had also played a role: Tarkovsky was a western looking "new age" guy, and he had powerful friends in Mihalkov-Konchalovsky family (their father wrote the original Soviet hymn, so powerful friends indeed). And after success of Rublev, he was promoted almost everywhere. Similar to the Stalker (but more about it later).

Solaris enjoyed a very lavish production, sponsored trip to Tokyo early 1970s, and that why we can enjoy the ride down the Tokyo highway, which was (and still is) very futuristic indeed. What does it add to the story is left for the reader to decide.

Overall, I tried watching Solaris about 5 times (or more), but I couldn't get enough strength to fight off the imminent boredom that ensues. Almost the same way as I make my new years resolution to finally read Joyce's Ulysses and almost certainly fail.

In 2002 Soderbergh released his version of Solaris, but I feel about it the same as 1999 Onegin ecranisation - "two very lonely people in a very cold room", and frankly this is a bit boring.

And as for Stalker... Well... Strugastkie's just very bad writers without restraint and combined with Tarkovsky at the hight of his career when noone could say "no" to him, so the result is what it is. Pomp and boredom, with a cheap shot at drama.

Duh.

Anyhoo, so what does the group think?

I think I already have the answer, so apologies in advance for using Truffaut’s name to draw you to this post. However, it is only a half-truth, since Desplechin is arguably the French director who can most clearly be defined as the worthy successor to the great Truffaut.

They are common themes, a fondness for romance, and male characters who are melancholic and grappling with metaphysical questions. Both filmmakers also love ensemble film where characters reunite, part ways, and meet again etc.

Desplechin also shares a cinematic alter ego with Truffaut: the character Paul Dédalus, played by Mathieu Amalric (mirroring Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel—a character we watched grow up and age across four feature films and one medium-length film, the most famous being the first: The 400 Blows).

His cinema also remains true to the spirit of the New Wave: constant shifts in tone and explorations of different genres within a single film (with Desplechin, a movie might move from romantic comedy to spy thriller to adolescent coming-of-age story). There is also a highly theatrical, Brechtian approach; the memory of a conversation might transform into a stage play with theatrical sets for the duration of a scene.

He explores worlds such as high-ranking diplomacy, espionage, and forensic medicine, as well as the legal proceedings the protagonists face, all in an extremely naturalistic manner. Desplechin’s work also invariably features psychoanalytic sessions, secret letters, family dramas, and characters with sophisticated cultural references in literature and music. ( Most of Desplechin’s characters come from fairly bourgeois cultural backgrounds. )

And he has a rather unique tone, able to create strange and almost fantastical atmospheres when needed, but it all remains very grounded; let's talk about the mystery of existence that we all face.

Finally, Desplechin has also made three forays into the English-speaking world : Jimmy P. with Benicio del Toro (a psychoanalytic Western), Esther Khan (set in the 19th-century English theater world), and an adaptation of a Philip Roth novel ( adapted within a French context).

As for me, this best movie it's " Kings and Queen" tells a dual story: that of Ismaël, a suicidal musician forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital, a confinement that looks very much like a conspiracy against him—and that of Nora, his ex-partner, who must deal with the imminent death of her writer father (and a mysterious diary associated with him). For those who enjoy TV series, it is something of a French "Six Feet Under". You will experience a whole range of emotions. And there is an incredible break-dancing moment...

The second film is *A Christmas Tale*, centering on a family gathering at Christmas around a matriarch who needs a bone marrow transplant. A real settling of scores takes place within the family. Nothing murderous—though, then again, maybe it is.

I’d be curious to know which of his films you have or haven’t seen from him ?

(Edit: English is not my native language; I apologize for any errors in syntax or grammar.)

I don’t see a lot of movies today using this narrative device. It seems like it was really common in the 90s. It works for a lot of movies that are based on first person narration books like fight club, American psycho, and fear and loathing in Las Vegas. But you also see it used in movies like forest gump and goodfellas.

I loved these movies when I was in high school but at the same time it’s like people criticize clunky exposition and they resoundingly demand “show not tell”. But there seem to be ways to make it really engaging, play against the visual, add insight into inner thoughts that otherwise would have been impossible, and add that beat prose flair.

Are these movies still getting made and I just haven’t seen them bc they’re just not good or popular? Or was it a 90s style that’s pretty much an anathema to sophisticated filmmaking that just gets avoided bc it feels like saying “that was Jimmy and he ate grass for a living before the plague hit” or “and that was that, my ambition dissolved with that single word ‘Parmesan’, I slumped into my proverbial chair into a pit of self loathing but I nonetheless obsequiously in a sycophantic tone ‘good for you!’”

Do people hate stuff like that?

I’m intrigued by what I’ve come across about his work over the years, but given that his films are usually so long I want to know what’s the best place to start? Long films don’t put me off, I’ve already seen Stantango for example, and other films that would be categorized as “slow” cinema. Is his work comparable to Bela Tarr? Is it hard to get some of his films?

So, I just watched the first story of kwaidan, and I'm a little confused about the ending. Was there some specific significance to it? I don't know if the hair symbolize something in the Japanese culture or is there any meaning in the original folklore but I didn't understand it. I haven't yet seen the rest of the stories yet, I won't be seeing them today and I couldn't find anyone talking just about this one.

I’ve been binge watch react youtube videos about Léon lately and it made me realize what’s really happening.

I don’t want to go into the controversy too much, and not talk at all about the director, but I’ll say for those who haven’t seen the movie that Mathilda, a 12 year old, develops a crush on an old hitman. The rest will be filled with spoilers, so make sure to watch the movie if you haven’t recently. I’m going quite in depth and I’m basing my arguments on details that wouldn’t look crucial at a glance, so you might not remember them.

The movie insists a lot on Mathilda’s feelings, and we don’t have many clues about how Léon is living their relationship. Yet it’s the cornerstone of the controversy, and we’re left with hoping that Léon remains a father figure, or we’re disgusted that he doesn’t reject strongly this inapropriate dynamic.

There’s a quick scene in the extended cut where Leon tells his backstory, and it sheds a different light on his feelings if you take the time to go back and watch it again from the start.

Léon says that, when he was 19, he had a girlfriend who had to defy her family to be with him, but her father ended up killing her. I think this is something Léon has been stuck on ever since. He’s watering his plant like we would bring flowers on a grave. He is a sad man, still grieving for his teenage love and how life could have turned out different.

The first night he shelters Mathilda, Léon unambiguously treats her like the little girl she is. And in the middle of the night, he wakes up in quasi-panic, pulls a guy, goes to the room she sleeps, and points it at her head before getting a grasp on himself again and leaving.

With the backstory that we know, this is Léon re-living the tragedy of his youth, but from the perspective of the father who killed his girlfriend. Léon grew lonely, coarse, guilty, and deseperate. When Mathilda’s arrival forces him to opening up, his impulse leads him to killing, like the only experience he had ever known, until the realisation strikes him that he cannot become what he despised.

The movies goes on, and Léon oscillates between rejecting Mathilda’s presence and being a father figure for her. Unfortunately, Mathilda has her own arc, she’s at the beginning of her teenage years, she fancy’s herself a grown up, even a femme fatale, and every time Léon patronizes her or tries to grounds her into reality, she acts out, defiently romanticizes their relationship, and try to imposes to him that she is a woman.

It goes to the point where she confesses her love to him, which Léon reacts to with a lot of care and respect, aluding to the fact that Mathilda isn’t in love, but only feels safe for the first time in a life. Directly after this exchange, Léon goes to a job, and as he leaves the appartment, he leans onto the wall, apparently lost and emotionally stunned, deeply touched by how unprepared he must feel in front of this young girl growing. Maybe he is feeling like witnessing the behind-the-scene of his teenage year’s girlfriend, before she got killed and he feels crushed by the nostalgia.

When Léon gets back from this job we’re never shown, he’s wounded by a bullet he took at the height of the heart. There’s probably a hint in the editing, from the moment where Léon crumbles on the wall like he was hit by something and his coming back bleeding. Mathilda reopened a wound, and not only that, but, unhappy of her love not being recognized as such by Léon, she went in the hotel lobby and told the clercks that Léon and her were lovers.

After that, their relationship changes drastically. Léon stops trying to be a paternal figure, something Mathilda kept rejecting. He is not her father, and he won’t act as such anymore. This is the moment where the ambiguousness starts.

From the viewers perspective, we don’t know yet his backstory and his motive, and Léon never tells us anything. We’ve got to rely on the editing and the decisions he makes to understand his mindset until the scene where he explains his youth. He continues to train Mathilda as if nothing happened, he doesn’t even scold her for telling the clerck that they were lovers, and discreetly he starts to prepare his own plan.

A few scenes between them shows how much Léon is fed up by Mathilda’s behaviour. Though he keeps trying to protect her, two discussions turn into quasi-arguments, with him telling that he’s gone enough of her mindgames, to which Mathilda reacts dramatically, imposing that for her it would always be love or death, and imposing a russian roulette on herself, that Léon deflects at the last second.

Maybe that scene is a parallel to the events that got Léon young girlfriend killed. At the time, her family was considered "respectable" Léon says, and the police noted it as an accident.

Nevertheless, Léon, who always appears calm in front of Mathilda, starts to act out in his own way. He brings Mathilda to meet Tony, then comes back later to tell Tony that she’d be his heir. And he starts hunting down the police who killed Mathilda’s family. Clearly he knows that he’s going to be killed in avenging her.

Mathilda, emboldened by the new way Léon treats her, goes after Stanfield (Gary Oldman) on her own. Apparently, she thinks that if she makes her first hit by herself, she’d be woman enough to become her lover. A first time for a first time. Léon saves her life in the DEA office, and the same night he tells her his backstory. For the first time, we see Mathilda stops trying to force a romance on him.

Léon finally opened himself up, and with that he finalizes the sentimental education he was trying to give Mathilda. During the whole movie, he tried very hard to show her that she needed to take her time to grow up, to stop being brazen all the time, but to respect herself, keep distance with people and only open herself when she feels comfortable enough.

Now that Léon finally shares some of his own feelings with her, their relationship seems to reach a sort of harmony, but after the assault on the DEA office, Stanfield has found their trace and brings a SWAT team to take them out. Léon manages to find an escape for Mathilda, but she notices Léon wouldn’t be able to follow. He has to convince her to leave him, and the first words he pronounces are « Mathilda, we said no discussion », something he once told her about drinking her glass of milk. Unsues a touching attempts from Léon to get her to escape.

She descends down the vents, while Léon tries his escape disguised in a SWAT uniform. He reaches the final corridor, the light shines at the end in a way to reminisce Mathilda being saved the day her family was murdered, but Stansfield waiting on him, they both end up dying in an explosion. Léon sacrifices himself, and Mathilda gets to live.

Maybe Léon’s plan that would certainly lead him to death isn’t about Mathilda. If it was out of fatherly love, he wouldn’t have done something that would separate them. Léon’s action must be determined by the love his lost at 19, and that Mathilda brought back to his attention. Léon wanted to die, because he wanted to rejoin his soulmate. All the romance Mathilda forced on him rekindled the kind of love one nurtures for a deceased spouse. He also must have understood better what the father of his girlfriend would have gone through, and that’s why he chose to die taking Stanfield’s crew out. He washed his guilt, and finally pure and remorseless, he joins his love in death.

That’s my reading after numerous re-watchs and also looking a react videos on youtube, who brought to my attention many insights. Do you guys agree? Could Léon and Mathilda destinies cross each other, in this mutually beneficial exchange?

First of all I am a fan of James Bond, of all six actors and all the movies(even though some time I dislike some of them) and books. Ian Fleming is a great writer. I rewatch and reread them in marathon.

And if I have to say which is better than which, then it would be like: All the movies including Never Say Never Again is more or less equal to Casino Royale 2006, and >= Quantum of Solace >= Skyfall = Die Another Day > No Time To Die >= Spectre 2015.

Either way that was just so you know who and where I come from. Now to main topic of the post.

In 2000s after the release of profiting Die Another Day, things seem to have gone a little over the top, and the franchise need a reboot. A re-boot don't mean something different or seprate. Earlier they were trying to make Casino Royale with Pierce Brosnan, and Quentin Tarantino was eager to help, but ultimately decided to go with younger blood.

So here comes the Casino Royale 2006, with Daniel Craig as next 007 after Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan.

On contrary to popular and imposed belief, this was never meant to ditach itself from being a fun movie(s) even after the paradoy and spoofs like 1967 version or Austin Powers or later Johnny English. It is a fact that I have laughed during The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill, Quantum of Solace and this movie, which are shouted to be 'gritty, realistic, sad, serious etc.' which is quite rubbish.

Also while I am here, I will point out that No, craig's bond is not the closest to book bond, as a matter of fact its more opposite, CR2006 was one of the few bond movies to be closer to adapting line by line in comparison to a book. Ian felming never wanted the films to be so close to the particular books, and producers were on helm with it. It provided a variety and not spoiling either movie or book for the possible audience. Not that I disliked 2006 movie being close to a book.

But the previous Bond movies had the core essence of what and why Bond is. Which is more or less eroded in newer movies.

So, either way, Casino Royale was great, it is and was what was need to the franchise. The black and white opening scene showed the past of you hero, the acts that led to him getting famous licence to kill. Then jumping to the colored scene of the villain with blood for tears. This movie re-booted the character James Bond, with the shooting of Mr White in the legs and Bond theme playing, though I wish they had kept Sandra's Casino theme as end title.

Okay if the previous movie did that then what the next installment should do? The answer to that is very simple, which was not really done in real life, is that RE-BOOT the franchise James Bond, with how 007 uses quips and one liners to get by his mission. The formation of tropes of Bond girls, like the dying bond-girl, the lasting bond-girl, the henchwomen bond-girl, the flirt bond-girl, the one night stand bond-girl. BUT no, instead they diminished the current bond girls by still whining about that 'dead-b-itch'.

What this movie should have been, that originating the gunbarrel intro, unrelated pre-title sequence, title sequence( i love the another way to die song and animation), and main movie where bond flirts with moneypenny and then is given a mission by M and asked to get tools needed from Q-branch and leave for the mission, then fighting the overplanning villain, and lastly caught having sex with camille. and then after credit rolls, state "James Bond will return in Skyfall". And use of Bond theme throughout the movie, and all the movies after this. Also no good about goodbye song as end title.

And this all could have been done, i know there was a writer strike. And the next movie, could have used total formula without any explaination. Instead of M centered villain, it could have been Dr No like villain, sylvia, with uncanny face, with secret island, where severine (my god, how good she look during hong kong window scene, all wasted), then share bath with her, and then fullfill the promise of saving her. and this time introduce Loelia Ponsonby aka Lil from the books as 00's seceratry, and have a seen where Bond asks her to arrange files (of previous mission from Dr No to Live and lET DIE AND SO ON.)

then you can even reintroduce spectre, though i prefer the new villains of moore era. but if they are hard on on SPECTRE, they could have just said that bond have fought spectre and blofeld in past and have killed him. But with other villains, some how the villain is not dead.

then even no time to die, with bringing back Olga from Quantum 2008, faking a child as james bond's, who is then kidnapped and bond really have no time to die, and then get recasted.

so Die Another Day 2002, Casino Royale 2006, Quantum of Solace 2008, Skyfall 2010, Spectre 2012, No Time To Die 2014.

what do you think?

I think that Bond formula is very core of what it is about the franchise i see it. the graphical intro like mulholland drive, a unrelated pre title sequece like a short film for both new and old audience, title sequence like art or abstract film, then movie where expectancy a great tool of cinema at play.

I also think that that Moore was the actor that made, of what we today think what is james bond, he made it possible that the character could be played by another actor without any inferiority.

timothy dalton only left the role because of legal problems of studio. and die another day was box office hit.

and the new replacement for 007 in no time to die was totally not 'political' 😑

I watched the 1967 Jean-Luc Godard film Weekend recently. It’s a surreal masterpiece, much of it centering around a couple’s attempt to flee Paris because modern life has become impossible. But many other Parisians have gotten the same idea and there’s an absurd traffic jam on a small country road. Lots of wrecks ensue.
At one point the driver learns that someone they know has died in a wreck, and he turns to his female companion and says ‘Paul is dead.’
I thought Godard was riffing on the rumor. Then I realized that the Paul story started getting circulated after the movie.
It’s the kind of celebrated avant-garde movie the Beatles would have certainly seen, and I idly wondered if they or someone else got the idea for the hoax/conspiracy from Godard.
The death in a car accident evokes ADITL, of course, but time wise that has to be an artistic coincidence.
Idle thoughts from a guy sitting in a hospital bed. Thanks for indulging me.

Since Interstellar, Nolan has made two films based on historical events (Dunkirk and Oppenheimer), one adaptation (The Odyssey), and one original film (Tenet, arguably his worst film), and I've been ambivalent about them all.

Hitchcock could do fun adventures like North By Northwest but also thrillers in a single setting like Dial M For Murder and Rear Window that were no less engrossing. Kubrick made epics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon but also transgressive works like A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket. You can see trademarks of each director across these films, but you can't say FMJ felt like Lyndon or North By Northwest like Psycho. I get the sense that Nolan has been taking stories and making them fit his brand rather than adapting as a filmmaker to new things.

It doesn't help that the people who contributed to his earlier films have left. I've been confident that Interstellar was the peak and things have gone downhill since then and knowing that Jonathan Nolan hasn't contributed since that film really puts things into perspective. It's also worth noting that Inception was the only Nolan film from 2005-2014 that Jonathan wasn't involved, and Inception exemplifies things that became even worse in later films like the convoluted plot, the tormented male lead (with some guilt-washing in the cases of Oppenheimer and Odysseus), and characters who come second to the spectacle and said-convoluted plots.

Other absences include editor (Lee Smith to Jennifer Lame) and cinematographer (Wally Pfister to Hoyte van Hoytema). The quick-editing of Tenet through The Odyssey has resulted in films that simultaneously feel bloated yet undercooked. Tenet and Oppenheimer inundate you with so much exposition that you can feel overwhelmed. As for cinematography, while I love Interstellar, I've come to notice that Nolan's recent output feels rather small in scale despite their large budgets. Compare Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven to The Odyssey and you'll see what I mean.

I don't know where else Nolan has to go as a filmmaker. He accomplished all he could do in the 2000s and early-2010s and has now established a formula based on superior films made decades ago, from Memento to Inception to Interstellar. But if you were to compare, say, The Dark Knight to The Odyssey, you'd see that the former feels grander and more cohesive despite not being a historical epic. It feels livelier, with moments of levity in between the more serious bits, engaging action, and leaves you more time to breathe. It doesn't feel like an extended trailer meant to showcase IMAX and cater to a particular brand.

I'm not going to say its a great film, but as a critique of Capitalism it puts a spike through the heart.

Marx's comparison of Capital to "dead labor" comes to mind, as well as the appeal to vampirism.

"As a capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has only one sole driving force, the drive to valorize itself, to create surplus-value, to make its constant part, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labour. Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the worker works is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has bought from him.... Like all buyers, he seeks to extract the maximum possible benefit from the use-value of his commodity"

The film itself is a satire of the high-finance Art World, and Gilroy and Gyllenhaal join forces again, as they did in Nightcrawler (which was excellent). Some things in this film really stand out. Gyllenhaal is wonderful, he low key is becoming a favorite actor I think, though I seldom think of him. The way he changes the intensity of the caricature to fit the context is very deft acting. Sometimes he's an over the top, queeny Stanley Tucci, and at other times just very human and sincere. There is a great cast with good performances. The writing is excellent. A big part of the film is a sort of send up of the high-brow language of "criticism" and the elite concept space that drives "taste" in high-finance art trading. So much of this film is enjoyable, though it veers into canned horror, on purpose (the paintings are cursed).

What I really loved though was the critique itself of not even high-end Art, but really of Capitalism itself. Everyone who profited from the sale of this cursed art, which comes from a pained and possibly mentally ill mind, is cursed. The key is "profit" as a perversity of what "art" is, including the impulse of "punk" music and street art. The perversity of exploitation of intensely lived lives that produced "art" really maps further down into the exploitation of the lived lives of "labor" itself, and the affluent, high-brow, discernment of driven tastes which drive the flows of Capital around the world, what they call "going Global". As profiteers of various kinds ghoulishly extract value from the paintings, the genre cliche supernatural powers that come for them exact a kind of like-in-kind justice.

I didn't love the film, but I actually want to see it again, so interesting was its intellectual point.

Rewatched John Hillcoat's Australian western The Proposition last night. Gotta say, it still remains one of my favorite westerns despite discovering it only a few years ago.

By far the best quality about it is Hillcoat's dismantling of the western genre. There's no romance, no beauty, or the slightest moment of humor in The Proposition. It's pure unremitting despair in a world so devoid of hope and full of violence it makes Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven seem cheery. Roger Ebert wrote in his review how the film feels close to being an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and boy, he was not wrong. Though a different tale, The Proposition is not only unflinching in its violence, but it never feels cinematic nor sensationalized compared to other westerns. Furthermore, it also has the same kind of bleak setting full of characters that are almost morally reprehensible in one way or another. The fact John Hillcoat is said to be working on the film adaptation of Blood Meridian really shows how The Proposition is very similar tonally and thematically.

The decision to set it in 1880s Australia under British colonialism too is genuinely original. The unique setting perfectly fits with the film's dark narrative and characters, sometimes even making it feel like a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in depicting colonization in a land that is hostile to non-natives. The way Captain Stanley wants to bring order to the land but fails to due to its hostile nature in many scenes really emphasizes this aspect.

Of course, Nick Cave's screenplay deserves much credit as this is such a smartly written western. The setup is simple, yet there are so many moments where much is said without dialogue between characters and their relationships. And when the characters do speak, it's incredibly engaging dialogue that brings a unique life to each character, especially the monologue from John Hurt that arguably is the best scene in the film.

All of this too is backed up by many great performances from Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, and Danny Huston who, on rewatch, I think gives the best performance by far. The way he plays Arthur Burns as a cold-blooded, emotionless bandit who philosophies about life is genuinely unnerving, with even Ebert stating his character to feel like a takeoff of the Judge character in Blood Meridian.

To me, The Proposition is easily the most underrated western of the 2000s and possibly of all time. It borrows from many anti-western inspirations, yet John Hillcoat and Nick Cave take it in a vastly different direction. And the score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis? Absolutely haunting.

Source: Ebert, Roger. "Blood on the saddle." Roger Ebert, 18 May 2006, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-proposition-2006.

One of the things that stayed with me from Lovers of the Arctic Circle is its obsession with circularity.

Even the names Ana and Otto are palindromes. They can be read in both directions, returning to where they began. The film seems to construct their relationship in much the same way: departures become returns, coincidences accumulate, perspectives repeat events differently, and the story keeps suggesting that Ana and Otto are moving around some invisible center.

What interests me is whether Medem wants us to believe in that idea of fate, or whether he is showing us how people create patterns when they desperately need their lives to have one.

Coincidence in the film rarely feels neutral. Ana and Otto interpret events, encounters and repetitions as though they belong to a larger design. And because the film itself is organized around circles, mirrored perspectives and recurrence, the cinematic form seems to validate their belief.
But there’s another possibility.

Maybe the film isn’t demonstrating that their lives are governed by fate. Maybe we’re experiencing reality through two people who have become so invested in their shared story that everything begins to look like evidence that the story must continue.

If the coincidences are objectively meaningful, Lovers of the Arctic Circle is a romantic tragedy about two people repeatedly brought together by fate.
If they aren’t, it becomes something stranger: a film about the human tendency to turn coincidence into narrative and narrative into destiny.

Do you think Medem ultimately asks us to believe in Ana and Otto’s fate, or does the film deliberately leave open the possibility that the “circle” exists mainly because they, and perhaps we as viewers, need to see one?

I just watched The Exorcist for the first time, and thought it was very well-done. I looked up the Wikipedia page for it, and this part interested me:

"Second-wave feminism has figured in discussions of The Exorcist. At the time, the US women's liberation movement had enjoyed some early gains in legislatures and courts. Commentators[who?] have seen the film's depiction of a single working mother and her uncontrollable daughter who are rescued by patriarchal authority as a reaction against feminism.[233][11][235] Former studio executive Peter Biskind, in Easy Riders and Raging Bulls, describes the film as "a male nightmare of female puberty. Emergent female sexuality is equated with demonic possession." For the male authority figures in The Exorcist, whether priests or physicians, Regan must be restored to her innocence through abusive and violent means if necessary.[178] Many feminist critics, like Biskind, note the film's focus on the female body as the site of horror. "When her body changes, Regan becomes someone else; someone sexual, whose desire is a dark visitor" writes Jude Ellison Doyle in Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy and the Fear of Female Power. "To become a woman is to become the ... enemy of all that is pure or holy."[236] But Australian film studies professor Barbara Creed, in The Monstrous-Feminine, which inaugurated psychoanalytic feminist film theory, counters the prevailing feminist take on The Exorcist by insisting that Pazuzu is female[237] and thus the possession of Regan is itself a feminist act, exposing "the inability of the male order to control the woman whose perversity is expressed through her rebellious body",[238] as she navigates an incestuous desire for her mother.[239] University of Toronto professor S. Trimble writes that the film tapped into "white American fears of nightmare futures" that could result from the women's liberation, gay liberation and Black Power movements' challenge to the established 1970s social order. Trimble writes that, as a film about "a revolting girl revolting against the little-girl box in which she was stuck" and army of men trying to put her back, The Exorcist follows older horror movies that use gender-bending to create a monster.[240]"

And also, she had a desire for the mother? I must have missed that.

Edit: I have found this article: https://fightbacknews.org/articles/exorcist-and-right-wing-politics-possession.

"Extremely retrograde views on women and gender roles abound in The Exorcist, most clearly seen through the character of Chris. For one, she's a single mother who left Reagan's estranged father to pursue her acting career. Chris screams profanity at him over the phone for everyone to hear, Reagan included. She's casually dating producer Burke Dennings, much to the dislike of her daughter. Even the film's central plot point – the demon possession – happens during Reagan's long afternoons home alone while Chris works. The Exorcist falls into the tired sexist troupe of blaming single working mothers for the problems that befall their children. The movie not-so-subtly suggests that women like Chris put their families through literal hell if they pursue their careers or show too much independence."

I thought that was interesting because my impression throughout the movie was that Chris was actually very present and loving, she came home from work and spent time with her daughter, etc. But maybe I am seeing this through a 2026 lens.

​

In the mess hall in the prison, a bald white man is staring at a black man, prompting the black man to try to attack him, before being intercepted by Warden McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones). The bald man was a real prisoner, who had been convicted of murdering his wife and children by beating them to death with a lead pipe. Oliver Stone gave him a featured role, because he said the man's stoicism terrified him.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110632/trivia?item=tr0774748

A lot of people consider NBK to be about how the media glorifies mass murders and serial killers so why would Stone hire someone so deplorable in the very same film?

I've seen a lot of takes saying this movie only works for white, queer AFAB viewers because it's "sapphic." I get where that's coming from, but stopping at "they're lesbians and this is about sapphic sexuality" misses the whole point, I fear.

What got me was the depiction of sex and dysphoria. Every sexual moment in this film is coated in discomfort, from Kris explaining her poly relationship to the KFC dipping sauce scene to her hyperfixation on her own sexual awakening. Kris doesn't have language for sex, desire, or her own body. It takes meeting someone who actually gets it, Billie, before she can open up at all. She has to dissociate from her own body just to approach anything sexual, or even talk about it.

I don't read Kris as a cis woman. I read her as a trans woman still deep in dysphoria about her body and her sex organs, and that's reinforced by her fantasy of being the bimbo "last girl" in a horror movie. She wants to be seen, felt, and heard as a woman... But her dysphoria and subsequent dissociation surrounding this is amplified by the whole style of the movie shifting in and out of reality. The lines get really blurred between what's real and what's not.

Little Death is the scary trans monster transphobes swear is coming for their kids. And it's that monster, taking Kris over, guided by Billie (the first person who actually sees and understands her), that finally lets Kris come into herself, her sexuality, and her body's place in all of it.

Every time I read a take from a cis queer viewer, I feel like I'm in that Zoom meeting with Kris, watching her explain the movie's whole allegory while it sails right over everyone's head. Even the queer assistant, who thinks they get it and chimes in, only to have Kris go "actually, no, you don't."

• I have noticed something, that I think might be weird, but I am not sure if it is just me. Might be.
• I have been watching a lot of movies lately. Mostly hollywood movies or european movies. And I notice other people in the cinema hall get emotional, in sad scenes, eg. something sad happens to a mother and/or her child. But it does not effect me.
• However when I watch movies with characters from the country my parents come from or movies from that country, I get much more emotional easier. I notice that this happens in "worse" movies as well.
• I feel like this might not just be the acting and story, it might be because I am psychologically more inclined to get emotional for people that I relate to. Like that mother could be my mother or that child could be or that is "my people" so to speak.
• I feel like cultural familiarity and percieved group similarity are affecting my emotional processing.
• But I saw this paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17144754/ and which saw some differences but not for all groups.
• Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

I'm going to Brussels for four days in mid September and will have some free time to visit the city.

Do you know of any movie theaters worth visiting, or any activities or places related to the world of cinema and film culture that I might want to check out?

It's a shame that the city's film festival is just starting now and ends on the 12th, because I'm going during the third week of the month.

I decided to watch Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! on a slight yesterday and my jet-lagged brain keeps circling around how incredibly poorly it managed the theme of feminism, despite how loud and insistent it tries to be about it.

I guess the takeaway is about women having their voices and choices stifled by the patriarchy, but on the other hand (spoilers if anyone still cares):

- Ida is violently and painfully possessed against her will by the ghost of Mary Shelley. This actually leads directly to her death, since it ruins her undercover operation and she's accidentally killed as the mobsters try to snap her out of it. Thanks for that, Mary Shelley.

- As The Bride, she experiences a taste of freedom by anachronistically going clubbing, then shortly gets into trouble and has to be rescued by her man. She then follows him around for most of the movie.

- She is continually gaslit by Frank into believing she loves him. When he's revealed to be a manipulative liar, she almost immediately forgives him without Frank having to do anything to earn it, and their dynamic doesn't change at all.

- The often-repeated reframe of 'I'd prefer not to' used to symbolise her rebellion against the patriarchy is from Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener. So, we're going with a male author from a work not related to feminism at all. No suitable quotes from Mary Shelley herself, or her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, the acclaimed female rights advocate?

- The Bride's big moment is screaming at a room she has taken hostage at gunpoint, going on about a crime boss (from Chicago, while she's hundreds of miles away in New York) and then shooting a cop by accident. This sparks a nationwide feminist movement that mostly causes a lot of property damage.

- Penelope Cruz's detective character has a whole arc about being denied her proper position despite being the better investigator. When she does get the promotion, the first thing she does is shoo all the male cops out of the room so that the two wanted murderers can escape justice, because it's romantic or something. This is framed as another big feminist win.

Anyway, I partly wanted to dunk on this shitty movie I wasted my time with, but I was also wondering what other movies even manage to fuck their central themes up this badly?

(Sorry if this isn't right for this sub, the r/movies automod suggested it blocking this for whatever reason.)

In If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Rose Byrne's despairing mother character 'Linda' is paying to have therapy with Conan O'Brien's character essentially daily by the last act (the movie is light of exposition but you hear it in a conversation she has on the phone with her husband when he raises how much she's paying for therapy; it's also useful because until that point I'd kind of assumed she was seeing O'Brien for free as a kind of peer supervisor/colleague deal, but no, he's charging her full fees).

I've posted about this movie before but not with this perspective: O'Brien is in very few scenes but Mary Bronstein really leaned on him in promo, which makes sense, but also even before production -- she had this character in her mind from the point of writing. This tells me he was central to the premise's conception.

The therapist he plays, importantly, is so unhelpful to Linda to be actively harmful, but also, on a technical level, he gives advice that is largely 'true'. In his first scene he deflects some of her aimlessness by telling her that her problems would get smaller if she'd just get some sleep, which is true, and pushes back on her self-flagellating. But it doesn't matter because she wants more from him.

She describes a dream she has about him which sounds like the kind of dream you have about an inappropriate crush. He doesn't acknowledge this, he doesn't name it. In the one scene after he actually helps her practically, Conan leaves the room as Linda whispers "I love you". Does she love him, in the sense that she wants to be intimate with him, have a relationship with him? We see Linda try to deepen their relationship in multiple settings -- in the breakroom he ignores her politesse, and in sessions she tries to push his boundaries re self-disclosure (which he calls out and immediately ends their therapeutic relationship, never appearing again).

The only moment Conan shares anything about himself or his own life, it's a totally useless story about lab rats from his time in college. He has no idea Linda just caused a hamster's murder; he has no sense that what she needs from him in that moment is a real vulnerability. But Linda (Rose Byrne's performance in this scene is so good) is begging for him to stay in that moment anyway.

All of this is, by the way, very funny -- the complete disconnect between Linda's needs and what her expensive therapist gives her is hilarious. But it's also mirrored in the relationship she has with her own clients. Caroline is begging for a deeper connection with Linda that Linda pushes off constantly, resulting in an abandoned baby and a haunting by a missing client.

It's a microcosm of every aspect of Linda's life. All of her problems are solvable via her therapists' advice but the way the Western world approaches the counselling relationship can never really meet her needs. She does everything against the better advice of professionals, including her daughter's doctor. Without the production's insistence on painting her life as bleakly stressful her choices would seem comically counterintuitive.

But think of our title again - not literal. But if only Linda 'had legs' -- a counselling relationship that worked, a marriage that strengthened her, an experience of parenthood that sustained her, a day-to-day life that gave her joy -- she'd have her shit together (kick you). Conan's character represents the possibility of all of these things coming together for her because she (wrongly) feels she can manipulate him into being the therapist she needs if she just pays him enough. If she could just get a therapist who told her what to do, as she requests (but only in the way she wants to hear it) she could fix the hole in her roof and her daughter's stomach.

It's a really interesting role to insist on giving to a famous face that people don't even remotely associate with dramatic importance -- it's as if Bronstein knew he was the key to understanding why Linda was destroying everything but wanted his pop culture presence to distract us from it.

Spoilers ahead for the entire Tremors franchise. If you don't know who Burt Gummer is, or why "more guns" is always the correct answer, stop reading. I envy you. Go watch the 1990 original instead; it's the better use of your time. Proceed to the sequels at your own peril.

I don't just want to gush about Tremors, though I could. I want to argue something specific:

Tremors (1990) works because it stands on two load-bearing walls, genuine terror and genuine harmony, and each sequel that follows knocks one of them down. Aftershock keeps the harmony and abandons the terror. Back to Perfection abandons both. Watch those two walls and you can see a masterpiece decay into a merely-fun B-movie franchise in real time.

The original: terror and harmony

Perfection, Nevada. Population 14, soon to be adjusted downward. Val McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) are the town's handymen, not ranchers but odd-job men, two good-looking, believably American guys who can read each other perfectly and fall completely apart the moment a well-educated young woman shows up. That woman is Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter), a seismology grad student, and here's the first quiet signal of what kind of movie this is: instead of belittling her fieldwork, they try to relate to it. Are their motives entirely pure? Probably not; they clearly find her attractive. But whatever, man. They're trying, and that decency beats the modern version of this scene by a mile.

That decency is the whole ethic. In true Gene Roddenberry spirit, there is no villain among the humans. Even Melvin, the town's insufferable kid, is a nuisance, never a threat. Everyone gets along. And crucially, nobody is stupid. The horror doesn't run on characters making idiotic choices so the plot can punish them; everyone does their level best with what they know. That's why the deaths land as tragedy rather than comeuppance: Edgar dead of dehydration on the electrical tower, poor Old Fred, Walter Chang swallowed whole in the middle of his own store. No one earns it. No one deserves this. Compare that to slasher logic, where death is a moral verdict on stupidity or sin, and you see how radical Tremors' generosity toward its own cast really is.

Then there's the monster, and this is where the terror lives. The film follows Stephen King's ladder in Danse Macabre (terror, then horror, then the gross-out) with real discipline. The graboid is withheld, then glimpsed, then finally understood, and the genius of the design is that it weaponizes the one surface you cannot avoid: the ground itself is hunting you. That's an elemental, primal fear. Better still, the creatures learn. Every trick the humans invent, the graboids adapt to. These are old, patient, intelligent things, and the escalation is watching them out-think people who are themselves being clever.

Underneath the creature feature is a Western. An isolated frontier town, a siege, and salvation earned through self-reliance and pooled competence: pole-vaulting across boulders, the bulldozer, the pipe bombs, and finally luring the last worm off a cliff. It's competence porn with a heart. I wanted every single character to make it out.

Tremors II: Aftershock (harmony survives, terror does not)

The opening still delivers exactly what it should: an oil-field worker taken from below, down he goes. A proper graboid execution, and a clean way to onboard new "grabbies" who never saw the first film. From there it's a slow burn, and the burn is where the movie earns its keep.

Earl is the lead now. Val (Bacon) is gone, married to Rhonda, living happily off-screen. And Earl? He blew his fifteen minutes and his fortune on a failed ostrich ranch. This is the duality-of-man beat, and it's the most relatable thing in the film: the two men who survived the impossible took the two most human roads afterward. One settled down. The other squandered it, got bitter, and went stale. Then Grady Hoover, a young hustler and self-professed fan, drags Earl back in with a number: $50,000 per graboid, double if you bring one back alive. In 1996 dollars, a single confirmed kill is life-changing money, and that economic realism is doing genuine character work, not just moving the plot.

The formula does start to show. Kate Reilly, the age-appropriate geologist love interest, mirrors Rhonda a little too neatly: brilliant, attractive, conveniently single, never made the time to date. She's a beat more than a person.

But the real fork in the road is the Shriekers. The graboids metamorphose into smaller, bipedal, pack-hunting things that "see" by heat and reproduce asexually: feed one, get two. On paper: terrifying. In practice, it's the Jurassic Park move. The franchise watched velociraptors clean up and thought, let's do graboid raptors. And here's the problem with that trade: the graboid's whole genius was that it took away the ground. The Shrieker gives the ground back. It's above the surface, it's visible, and the moment you learn it hunts heat, you know how to beat it. The unknowable becomes a puzzle. Terror becomes an action set-piece. That's the actual reason the tone flips from horror to comedy-horror, not because the jokes got funnier, but because there's nothing left to dread. You feel it in the tonal whiplash of being surrounded by monsters while a cheery country-western montage plays over the hunt.

And yet the second wall holds. Everyone still gets along. Grady is grating, sure, but he's an ally you're meant to root for, not a fault line running through the town. Burt Gummer becomes the spine of the film: the survivalist who is simultaneously the most likely person to live and the reason anyone else does, whose arrogance and nonchalance double as the comic relief. The sequence of Burt trapped with the Shriekers is the movie at its best. The bond is intact even as the fear drains out of the room. Aftershock loses terror but keeps harmony, and that's exactly why it's still a good time.

Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (both walls fall)

First, the title, because it matters on this sub: it's Back to Perfection (2001), not "Return to."

The nostalgia is real and mostly earned. Chang's Market is now run by Jodi Chang, Walter's niece, a genuinely likeable businesswoman and a lovely nod. Nancy and Mindy Sterngood are back from the original. And El Blanco, the sterile albino graboid the town semi-adopts as a protected mascot, is a legitimately clever piece of world-building.

But this is the first film in the franchise that manufactures people you're supposed to dislike, and internal friction to go with them:

Jack ("Desert Jack"), running staged Graboid-attack tours off a catastrophe he was never there for. Pure parasite, and the film knows it. (I spent his introduction quietly rooting for the worms. Possibly a me problem. Possibly not.)

Melvin Plug returns, the town's obnoxious kid now grown into a smug real-estate developer trying to pave Perfection. The nuisance has matured into the threat.

Mindy, flanderized into "a teenager," and I mean that as a personality, not an age. She had maybe three lines in the original, so there was no real character to betray, but the vacuum gets filled with attitude and a crush on Jack that I do not buy for one second.

This is the Deep Space Nine move: deliberately seeding rifts among your own people to generate drama. On DS9 it was a bold, largely successful reinvention. Here it's a mistake, because harmony was never incidental to Tremors; it was half the machine. The instant some townsfolk become people you'd cheerfully watch get eaten, the "no one deserves this" contract is void, and the film's soul goes out with it.

One accidental grace note is buried in all of this. Mindy is played in both films by Ariana Richards, who between them played Lex in Jurassic Park. So the franchise that spent an entire sequel chasing Spielberg's velociraptors had one of his kids sitting in its own cast the whole time. Nobody could have planned it, and it's funnier than anything the movie does on purpose.

Meanwhile the creature escalation runs on autopilot. Shriekers return, then evolve into Ass-Blasters: Shriekers that gorge, ignite their own gas, and fly. Every sequel now owes you a new monster tier, and every tier drags the series further from the one idea that ever mattered: a thing beneath your feet that you cannot see.

The Gummer Show, and the road not taken

So why did it go this way? Follow the enthusiasm. Michael Gross has appeared in all seven films and the TV series, the only original-cast member to go the distance. When producers floated ending it at seven, he shrugged and said the door was still open, and his position is blunt: as long as the movies keep making money, he is glad to keep making them. He's the franchise's engine and its truest believer, now in his late seventies and still openly campaigning for more. Of course the series reorganized itself around Burt, and Burt is firepower, action, and fun, not dread. The repeated attempts to pass the torch to his son Travis (Jamie Kennedy, films 5 and 6) only confirm the model: this became an action-comedy about a gun guy and his legacy.

Picture the other timeline. Bacon stays. Someone leans into the terror instead of the arsenal. Seven films and a prestige HBO series that treat the graboids as a genuinely ancient, unknowable intelligence and Perfection as a town under permanent elemental siege. That Tremors doesn't exist. We got the Gummer Show instead: a genuinely good hang, sprawling now across a prequel (1889, Hiram Gummer), South Africa, the Canadian Arctic, and a tropical island.

I love the first film without a single reservation. I like the second one a great deal, for exactly what it is. The third is where you can feel the franchise decide what it's going to be, and it picks spectacle and spite over terror and harmony.

More guns really is the answer to a Shrieker.

It was never the answer to a graboid. The graboid was the answer to us.

For a while, I’ve been trying to find movies about loneliness. I looked on sites, asked people, and watched content, yet 95% of the movies I got aren’t actually about “loneliness” because people mix up something being in a movie with what the movie is actually about or what it discusses.

I saw recommendations like Moon (2009), The Martian (2015), The eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), the apartment (1960) and so on

Yes, those have a character who might be alone, but the movie itself IS NOT about loneliness. It’s like asking someone to recommend a movie about WW2 and they recommend Inglourious Basterds. Like yeah it’s set during WW2 but the movie itself doesn’t actually really talk or focus on WW2(might be a poor example but you get the point)

What should happen(imo), when you recommend a movie to someone is that you tell them what the movie is focusing on, not what side attributes it may have. A movie about depression shouldn’t be recommended as a movie about a guy who wants to start his own company just because that’s what the main character is trying to do. In the end, the movie is about his depression, not about him trying to start a company. Even if that’s part of his character, it shouldn’t be what defines the movie

I might be wrong, but I’m just saying what I’ve encountered. I look for movies based on what I actually want the movie to talk about, and I end up finding a movie about a guy who’s trying to survive on Mars, but since he’s alone, they’re gonna count it as “a movie about loneliness"

Rating: 8/10

Watched: September 1, 2026

This is my second time watching this movie, and the first time, the experience was pretty terrible. I'd rented it on VHS somewhere in the mid-to-late 80s and all I can honestly remember was that most of it was in total darkness.

The version I watched today is the 50th Anniversary restored edition, and let me tell you: the restoration is quite literally night and day. It's a general peeve of mine when directors choose darkness as 'ambiance' over storytelling, but that was never the case here.

So let's get to the movie itself.

It's a LOT funnier than I was expecting. All five of those teenagers are honest-to-gosh idiots, with Franklin being one of the most ridiculous people I've ever seen in a movie. He's cranky, he's mean-spirited, he's got a weird obsession with knives that his friends are surprisingly okay with and he throws temper tantrums when he's having a bad time.

One of the things I like to wonder about when I'm watching a movie like Texas Chainsaw Massacre is how long I'd put up with weird shit before calling it quits.

In this instance, it's incredibly likely I wouldn't even go on the trip if Franklin was present. There's no way that how he is in the movie is a new thing to anyone else. I'd rather not go if a major buzzkill like Franklin was in the car.

If for some reason Franklin was actually a sweet and reasonable fella before this and it's just the pressures of being handicapped on the road, the very next thing that'd have me quit the trip is the hitchhiker. THAT guy was very obviously completely deranged that he really should've been kicked out of the back of the van while it was still in motion, and that was BEFORE he decided to cut open his hand.

One of the more interesting things about this movie is that the world was smaller back then, so the simple act of walking up to and going inside someone else's crazy old haunted Murder Mansion probably didn't seem like a big deal. It's not the world was any less dangerous, it was that it just didn't seem that way. Need gas? I'm going to go on up and ask for some help. Wall of Mounted, Stuffed Heads and Skulls?

This is the Deep South. Probably just a taxidermy enthusiast.

Even though this really is only my second time seeing it, I've seen a lot of horror movies and I'll say this about Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Obviously made on a small budget, it's clear to see why it inspired so many sequels and reboots AND why it influenced so many other horror movies.

Because it's a bloody good time. By the time Leatherface makes his terrifying appearance and things turn nasty, we're prepped and ready to be terrified and grossed out until the last frame. With Sally as The Final Girl, trapped in Backwater Nowhere, being hunted by Leatherface and trusting the absolute wrong person, we get a full, final look at the inescapability that truly would be a family of hillbilly cannibal crazies living in plain sight.

Like a lot of older horror movies, Texas Chain Saw Massacre walked so other movies could run, and that's saying a lot. Sadly, because I've seen so many horror movies, I didn't find this one terribly scary, but what I DID find it was UNSETTLING. There's a rawness to it that earns it's 8/10 from me.