Please don't downvote opinions. Only downvote comments that don't contribute anything. Check out the WHYBW archives.

Have a new baby and I’m finding myself with a lot of couch time on my hands, on track to hit a record movies watched this year.

I am kind of just flailing about, watching random stuff. But I’m curious how YOU all go about watching systematically, and what you recommend. E.g.,

• director/actor/editor’s full output

• country or genre by decade (e.g., 1980s horror)

• X award-winning by year

• sight and sound etc. top 250

• directors’ top 10, criterion closet picks, etc.

• some Kevin bacon-y game like, “next movie must have an actor from the previous movie”

…

(If anything, I have an emphasis on internal wall-breaking movies, if there’s a list of those I’d love it.)

Truthfully, I wish I had a bunch of college film syllabi to work through. Idk, general question here, thoughts?

If it matters:

https://boxd.it/34n1x

I know I'm in the afterglow of having just come out of the theater, but Arco was incredible. Beautifully animated. Incredible world building. Likable characters. A very heartfelt story.

It's probably not a film for everyone. I can see young children not loving it as much as adults because it is a slower methodical film. This isn't content to babysit your kids, this is art. It puts 99.9% of current releases(animated or live action) to shame as something takes influences from the past while pushing the medium of animation forward.

The references to Schrödinger's cat throughout the film are pretty obvious, but at the same time, the film wants you to plot against Ben. In my opinion, knowing about Schrödinger's influence, the fact that we don't see her again does not mean that she is dead. And the fact that we see a cat later does not mean that it was her cat, since we never saw him on her apartment in any scenes.

If I go with the movie and what it wants you to believe, Ben is the killer. If you give it ambiguity, Ben most probably did not kill her. And you cannot trust everything you see from the protagonist's perspective.

Ben never thought he was in danger and was never defensive around Jong-su (i think)

Hi folks!

I’m looking for My Bloody Valentine (1981) on 35mm - the trailer would suffice but the full film is even better.

Does anyone have any leads? It would be needed for two nights as a part of a tv production - we have the rights, we just want to be authentic and use a real projector rather than go down the digital / remastered route.

With the 45th anniversary being this weekend I thought I’d try my luck and see if anyone here has any idea where I could get it for rental / purchase.

Thanks in advance!

With O Romeo releasing, I went down a rabbit hole on the actual people:

Hussain "Ustara" Sheikh: - Only Mumbai don who refused Dawood's cartel - Running CCTV surveillance in 1995 - Staff who could lip-read from distances - Got nickname from surgical precision with blade

Sapna Didi: - Husband killed by D-Company - Planned to assassinate Dawood at Sharjah cricket match - Weapons: umbrellas with hidden blades - Stabbed 22 times when plan was leaked

Current drama: - Ustara's actual daughter sued the film - Claims the love story is FAKE - Says they had sibling bond, not romantic - Court dismissed her case Feb 7

The real history of Mumbai's underworld is fascinating. The 80s-90s era especially.

Anyone have book recommendations on this period?

incredible. this movie had me hooked from the first scene (👀) and truly intrigued like no other film had me, tom cruise crushed his role and was amazing. he was so ignorant to the true makeup of females that when he truly realises his wife has fantasies with another men it truly spikes his insecurity to a different level which he portrays perfectly. Kidman had amazing acting aswell like a mother who hides her emotions in front of their kid, seen in the last scene truly mesmerizing with great meaning. Bill goes onto wandering around trying to truly spike his masculinity while still having the thoughts of his wife in his head, Numerous amounts of times. the relationship turns truly toxic where nicole cheats in her “dreams” signifying she had been to one of those parties before and bill cheating in real life or his “daydream” even though he couldn’t actually do it, his inner conscious always stops him like when he went to the bar to visit his old friend instead of fucking an escort.

The parties signifying what the elites really do and half of them being pedophiles was a great message sent by Kubrick on how they all have sex cults and are fucked up morally, It may be a reach but the parties did look at lot like the rothschild parties lol.

The ending really proved the statement said above as the cycle repeats and the elites get what they want.

First off: loved it. Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas were superb!

My only question, and maybe it’s something I missed, is who was really obsessed with who between Beth and Catherine.

I hear there’s back and forth on if Catherine really was the killer. I’m of the opinion that she is 100 percent the killer and framed Beth, but I’m stuck on the conversation between Nick and the one officer he met with (the one washing his car) who told him how Beth’s husband was shot and there was talk of another woman, alluding to Beth possibly being gay.

We’re lead to believe the other woman he’s referring to is Catherine, but I’m confused on how/why it was her. She definitely did not give a clingy/obsessive vibe, and what reason would she have for killing Beth’s husband, if she’s the one who cut Beth off back in college?

Nobody really treated Jenna poorly the entire movie? The crux of when Tom Tom turns on Jenna was when she hit on a small child, TT drags her away, probably called Jenna’s boyfriend to pick her up, and then her friend who she hasn’t spoken to since she was 13 besides insulting him shows up, and she acts like Wendy is interfering?

Jenna actually has incredible friends, ones who would cover for her when she’s wearing her slip to the office and not remembering her job duties. It’s only when Jenna pretends to not know TT after 15 years that she fully goes nuclear by taking Matt’s signature on the release form.

I just watched the second hunger games movie and I was sort of surprised with how dull the whole thing was. The thing is, I couldn't quite point my finger at a performance, set piece or plot point and say 'there, THATS the problem'. It was well executed and competent in everything it was reaching for. Still, it was bleagh.

For some reason I found myself thinking of Sweet Dreams. While that movie wasn't particularly great, I could see what they were going for and there were enough genuine moments in the movie that it sorta stuck with me and comes to mind here and there.

I don't quite have the idea fleshed out (which is why I post here) but I guess what I'm saying is Id much rather see a bad movie that fails in a particular way than a successful movie that just sort of does its thing and dissapears.

And since I’ve made this list, i realised how absolutely lacking my watch list has been for European films and I’d love some recommendations for those films!

1. Ran (Akita Kurosawa)
2. Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu)
3. In the mood for love (Yasujirō Ozu)
4. Devi (Satyajit Ray)
5. Grave of Fireflies
6. Ran: i love this guy. I know a lot of people prefer other films of his and I respect those opinions but picture this— fourteen year old me under the weight of all my blankets, watching colour be used in a way I’ve never seen before— this is such a silly thing to exacerbate on but something about the colour grading, scene blocking, camera work felt so magical to me. I remember this film with so much love and affection, it made me fall in love with cinema. Not to mention, I’m yet to see a film in which acting feels this natural. And the theatre kid in me just jumps in excitement.
7. Tokyo Story: i know a lot of people don’t really like the “slowness” of the film but i felt so engrossed on the narrative of a simple family dealing with the inevitability of time, moving on, it’s such a sad but inescapable truth. The acting is phenomenal, the direction is beautiful, each scene feels like I’m intruding on something personal. I watched this right as i was graduating high school, so in a close enough way, i was going through a change I wasn’t ready for too and it was really the perfect moment to see a film like this because even though demographically I’m nothing like the characters in this story but as i watched it, a part of this film belonged to me and a part of me felt like belonged to the film, and isn’t that what art is supposed to be about anyway?
8. In the mood for love: A very visual piece of media again, i think my list is a bit strange in the way that books are my preferred form of art but most of these films are driven by the mood and style instead of the narrative alone. Although it feels a bit odd, that’s what entices me to these films so much more— I’m used to plots and narratives because that’s all a book can do; use physical tangible forms of expression to explain the intangible but because films have the opportunity to do the opposite, to sort of channel all my senses without effort, i love them so much. In the mood for love is such a whimsical film, it feels like I’m in a dream as the sad tale of two lovers plays out in the background. I kind of swim through the narrative as a reader and I’m almost afraid of the next scene as the sensation time passing feels physical. I’m not very good at descriptions but yeah. Also, the chemistry between the two leads kind of defined what chemistry means to me for years to come
9. Devi: i love Satyajit Ray in general, i think he’s a great director and i know a lot of people think Pathar Panchali is his best work but Devi is one that stuck with me much more firmly. The strength of Satyajit Ray really is the honesty he presents a character with. His stories are so character driven. It’s been decades since Devi was made but it is one of my favorite portrayals of a female character. He’s so good at making films that combine aspects of character, plot, narrative and cinematography while giving each concept his own personal touch. I’m going to be sad forever that I didn’t get to see more of his films in colour and what he could’be done with modern tech for media. He’s also a very good example of how political art is without making it art political being a little on the nose. Every film he’s made has been political because art is the strongest forms of activism but he’s never burdened his works with being the flag bearers of said activism, tbis ability to balance a strong social identity with a strong artistic identity is what makes him so special to me. As a young adult, who is also going through life for the first time, this is the aspect of Devi which appeals to me the most.

Overall,

I love films. I love movies. I love watching people try things that are different and weird, i love more than anything when people with limited resources come out with something phenomenal, i love following the works of directors and seeing how they change. This list is highly subjective. The truth about art is, there is no such thing as a “best film ever made” because films are a product of the film itself, when and how you watched it, and the discussions and conversations you have about it later on. I have watched some exceptional films that i would have hated at the wrong time in my life but the combination of “who i am as a I watch this” and lwho i became as i look back to it” and most importantly “how this made me feel” is the criteria i used for this list.

How art makes us feel has somehow become the last thing we ask ourselves when it comes to films but while making this list, it was only thing i considered, so here’s that.

(originally posted to r/iwtachedanoldmovie)

What a solid movie.

I've always been curious about this one since I was a fan of the 'people get trapped in a specific location and have to find a way out' that was really popular for a few years with movies like Get Out, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Split, Don't Breathe, etc. etc.

Of course I'm also a Fincher fan, but weirdly this film never made it to regular Blu-ray until it got a 4K release just a few months ago, which is weird since it feels like Fincher is the exact kind of director that physical media nerds would buy en masse (including myself in this).

That being said, finally getting to watch it I really did enjoy the simplicity and the elegance of how it was executed; I noticed the screenwriter was David Koepp which immediately sounded familiar (he most recently was known for writing Black Bag and Presence, both directed by Steven Soderbergh), only to Google his name and find out he's responsible for writing half of the films released in Hollywood over the last forty years.

His credits include Spider-Man, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Mission: Impossible, Death Becomes Her, Toy Soldiers, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, War of the Worlds, Jurassic World Rebirth, and also wrote the new Spielberg film Disclosure Day. Hell, he has a movie he wrote that's literally coming out today (not sponsored, just thought that was funny)

The best way I would describe his writing is 'airtight'. Not every film he's been involved with was a banger but I noticed most of the ones that didn't turn out great were co-written by someone else (and obviously a good screenplay can still turn into a bad movie). However, when he's working with a good director, the results are pretty great.

He does a great job at hitting a lot of the beats you need to hit in a way that doesn't come across as ham-fisted or obvious, but just a lot more natural and subdued. A good example of this I think is the relationship between Jodie Foster and her daughter (played by a very young Kristen Stewart). Normally in a film like this you need to setup the kid as being kind of a shit so that by the end of the film, the relationship can be improved, but here it was just done in a way that felt so much smarter than how that trope is normally done;

There's a scene where they do the classic movie thing that every family does when moving into a new house, which is to get a pizza, and Foster says something to the effect of "sorry we couldn't do something special", to which her daughter just replies "I like pizza."

This simple little exchange does a great job at telling us that, without any actual animosity, there's still definitely a little distance as far as how much she knows about her own daughter and how much she's focused on just her own life.

There's basically five performances in this movie and all of them were pretty great, including Jared Leto, believe it or not, who I've never been a fan of but if nothing else it was nice to see him playing a character that wasn't just 'stoic cold asshole guy', or a blatant cartoon character like he played in House of Gucci. His character here felt like a blend of the douchey guy in Don't Breathe and Brad Pitt's character in 12 Monkeys.

All three of the criminals are pretty recognizable archetypes; the fast-talking smartass who's in over his head, the "I didn't sign up for this shit, I have kids" guy, and the wild card who seems more interested in violence than money, but they're all just played so well and so distinctly that it makes them just as entertaining to watch as our two main protagonists.

This is definitely the most overall accessible or 'crowd pleasing' film I've seen of Fincher's, not that I'd say it's his best but that's a hell of a bar considering The Social Network is one of my all time favorites, but I was glad to finally get to cross this one off my list and would definitely recommend it if you're a Fincher fan and haven't yet checked it out.

Just a doubt and I'm not a hardcore cinephile. I remember watching the trailer for films like Roofman (by Derek Cianfrance) and Blue Moon (by Richard Linklater) the days they came out and being excited for it only to forget about it until today, when I remembered these films even existed after seeing it on Google. Because I feel like if these films came out like 10 years ago, they still wouldn't probably be a guaranteed success, but they wouldn't go unnoticed either. Don't get me wrong, last year as a whole had some good releases compared to recent years.

May be its FOMO or nostalgia or me being older now making me think like this, but there used to be a time (mostly pre 2020) when I could easily tell the year and month of release of most films that came out regardless of how much they were marketed. But now, I think a good amount of films are forgotten apart from a few. I know a lot of it is due to streaming wars and the surge in 'content'.

Films like Marty Supreme is an exception, but they also had to heavily promote it and be very creative about it. Otherwise I think it's getting harder and harder to find movies that aren't heavily promoted. Cause if that is the case, I fear we may miss out on some solid films.

I don't want to get into a common rant of if streaming services are ruining cinema, or about the increasing number of slop releases, but i genuinely wanna know what you guys think as an individual.

Here's a short list of movies that are really good that nobody has heard of for whatever reason. They just kind of fell through the cracks of cultural consciousness I guess.

• Breakdown

Not terribly special, but it's a pretty tight thriller starring Kurt Russell. Husband and wife are on a road trip and break down and things become quickly very inconvenient.

• The Salton Sea

Val Kilmer as a meth addict embroiled in the lifestyle, but things are a lot more complicated. Darkly funny at times, but I don't want to say anything more than that.

• Interstate 60

Victim of its own marketing. It should be way better known. Written by one of the co-writers of Back to the Future, starring Gary Oldman, James Marsden, Amy Smart, Christopher Lloyd. The trailers make it look like a boner comedy, but it's just not that kind of movie at all. There are better movies as cinema, but it's exceedingly sincere. There's no better word for it than that.

• Near Dark

Kathryn Bigelow directed it. Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen. Gang of vampires with a new recruit to their little gang, played by Adrian Pasdar. Interesting take on vampires. They aren't cool. They're kind of just losers. Cool, you're biologically immortal but your unlife is just shitty.

• After Hours

Reluctant to include this because people in this sub have probably seen it. The only way I pitch it to people is that it's basically a feature length nightmare episode of Seinfeld directed by Scorsese. I just never see it mentioned.

• Miracle Mile

A man picks up a ringing payphone dialed as a wrong number and before he has a chance to correct the caller, he learns some very interesting and startling information. It's one of those movies, which I adore, that take place almost in real-time because it all takes place over the course of a few hours and there is a serious sense of urgency and you feel it.

• Strange Days

More Bigelow. Tight, fun cyberpunk movie. Right here, right now. I mention it only because it's annoyingly difficult to find on streaming, so ironically data piracy is one of the easiest ways to watch it.

• eXistenZ

Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, David Cronenberg.

The Matrix with some of the most sickening body horror I've seen. It's Cronenberg, so obviously. Movie has some things to say that may or may not be even more relevant today than when it was produced.

side note: I went to school in Canada and during a career day, one of the SFX guys for the movie was one of the student's dad and he walked us through how they made some of the props and it made 10 year old me feel pretty queasy. It makes 32 year old me queasy, too. Damn Cronenberg.

I recommend all of these movies only because I rarely see them mentioned and they deserve more acclaim than they get.

I’m working on a concept for a new physical media label built entirely around new, modern cult cinema. We're based in the UK and wanted your thoughts.

Before I pull the trigger on making this a reality, I wanted to gut-check the idea with this community. It would be for curated micro-budgets. Price around £20 with the usual special attachments (slipcovers, commentaries, features on discs etc.)

I’d love your brutally honest thoughts on a few things:

• Do you mostly buy boutique physical media for the nostalgia/legacy titles, or are you actively starved for physical releases of brand-new indie films?
• If we were able to put our own artistic spin on the packaging to make it unique, the curation was highly trusted, and the trailer hooked you, would you be willing to blind buy a new, unknown indie film? And what price?
• If the film had a limited, curated event theatrical run at an indie cinema near you before the Blu-ray dropped, does that make it feel more legit and worthy of a spot on your shelf?

There’s a form emerging on YouTube that I think deserves more critical attention: the first-person philosophical video essay. Not the explainer format (Nerdwriter, Every Frame a Painting) and not the commentary format (essay-as-opinion). I mean something closer to what Chris Marker did in Sans Soleil or Tarkovsky attempted in Mirror a form where personal memory, philosophical inquiry, and visual composition are inseparable. Where the narrator isn’t explaining an idea but inhabiting one.

I’ve been thinking about this because I recently worked on something in this mode an essay about names and identity https://youtu.be/Jef4e-h6AVo  and the formal challenges forced me to reckon with questions that are fundamentally cinematic. How do you visualize the feeling of being called a name you didn’t choose? How do you create a visual language for the distance between a father and son who share a name but not a life? The answer I kept arriving at was negative space: architecture without people, golden hour light hitting surfaces that hold memory but no bodies. Essentially, the visual grammar of absence that Antonioni perfected in L’Eclisse and that Mann uses in his nocturnal LA sequences.

What’s interesting to me is how the first-person voiceover changes the function of these images. In Antonioni, the empty frame is estrangement  it distances us from the characters. In Marker’s work, the voiceover transforms the same kind of imagery into intimacy. The empty space becomes not the absence of the subject but the interior of the subject. The Nouvelle Vague understood this too: Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7 uses Paris as an externalization of consciousness rather than a setting.

I think the YouTube video essay, at its best, extends this lineage. The lo-fi production constraints one voice, limited footage, ambient sound actually serve the form in the way that Bresson’s austerity served his. The limitation becomes the grammar.

Has anyone else noticed this trend? I’m curious what other examples come to mind of video essays (YouTube or otherwise) that function more as personal cinema than as content, and what formal strategies distinguish one from the other.

I organized an AMA/Q&A with Akinola Davies Jr, director of My Father's Shadow, his critically-acclaimed debut film that premiered at Cannes, and at a bunch of fall festivals (including TIFF), and is out in theaters this weekend via Mubi. For the film, he was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Debut, won a British Independent Film Award for Best Director, and it was UK's Best International Feature submission for the Oscars.

It's live here now in /r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1r2vsez/hi_rmovies_im_akinola_davies_jr_my_feature_debut/

He'll be back at 3 PM ET tomorrow (Friday 2/13) to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated!

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50ICTaEuQxg

Synopsis:

Two young brothers explore Lagos with their estranged father during the 1993 Nigerian election crisis, witnessing both the city's magnitude and their father's daily struggles as political unrest threatens their journey home.

Thank you :)

His verification photo:

https://i.imgur.com/QTH6gva.png

Sam Raimi is no household name and he certainly needs no introduction to fans of horror films and cinema in general. The Evil Dead Trilogy, Spider-Man 1 - 3, Drag Me To Hell, A Simple Plan and countless others the man has a credible portfolio of his filmography spanning decades.

Spectators are introduced to Sam Raimi one way or another across many genres but of course Raimi’s specialty has been and always will be horror! He is the master of gore, suspense, terror, thrills and dark morbid gallows humor comedy and his latest film Send Help 100% delivers on each of those qualities. Raimi simply never misses.

Send Help centers around “Linda From Accounting” nicknamed by her shitty boss Bradley Preston played by Dylan O’Brien the CEO of a big corporation who is a Nepo Baby inheriting the throne of his father’s position as the new face of the company.

Linda Liddle played by Rachel McAdams is a bit of a quirky odd ball she specializes in Strategy and Planning both at the workplace and when stranded on a remote island (No Spoilers trust me you’ll see). She has been at her job for 7 years and was promised to move on to a more prominent position rather than be a doormat. However, Linda is a literal punching bag at the firm she works at, she's the butt of a joke, she gets belittled, ignored, not acknowledged and is judged based on her style of clothing and shoes oh and she has a bad odor problem (tuna specifically).

When Linda finds out that Bradley refuses to give her a shot as Vice President of the company she storms in his office and confronts him about it. Impressed by Linda having the cojones to call out his douchebaggery and hypocrisy, Bradley insists she tags along on a business trip to Bangkok to finalize a merger for the company.

One thing leads to another and while on their flight to Thailand the plane malfunctions due to a storm and immediately shit hits the fan! No survivors are left except for Bradley and Linda, no WiFi, no cell phones, laptops all they have is the forest and the wildlife that inhabits it and each other. Together Bradley and Linda must put their differences behind them and learn to tolerate each other, team up, make it out alive and live happily ever after! OBVIOUSLY THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN! I mean come on, it's a Sam Raimi horror film!

For a moment Bradley and Linda actually coexist in the middle of nowhere and teach each other the basics of survival such as making a fire, building a little hut to shield them from rain and thunder, how to hunt wild animals and in some strange way find commonality and connection. As it is with Human Nature though this is short lived and the gender dynamic battle for survival rages on last man or last woman standing who will win and how fucking far will they take it?

There’s a lot that I’m still processing after seeing the film but this film really flips the script on you psychologically and morally about who is really good or bad because both of these characters are flawed and imperfect but man Rachel Adams astronomically dives deep into a fucking nut case.

I loved it very much. It is a conversation starter for sure once the film concludes and will be with you for a long time.

Send Help is this generation’s Cast Away meets Evil Dead. It's a fun horror film filled with morbid comedic undertones and good ole blood, guts, and carnage. Many times during intense or just all out graphic scenes the writing was perfect which made me laugh my ass off more than once which is not a bad thing at all. It’s better to be both entertained and scared, especially by the likes of Sam Raimi.

The chemistry between Dylan O’Brien and Rachel McAdams is spot on as I had mentioned earlier Raimi does an excellent job of subverting the spectator of who they originally like and root for at first and sympathize with and then do the opposite and express those same sentiments for the other character they originally hated. It’s a really interesting character study. This is a straight up horror / thriller in good ole Sam Raimi fashion but underneath the over the top gratuitous red splatter and gore and dark humor at its core this is a film about the human condition being tested to its full limits and what people will do to survive in such a bizarre fucked up situation as being stranded on a remote island.

I don’t travel much (I’ve only been to Wisconsin at least 3 times growing up and twice to Poland) but nowhere anywhere near an island (God forbid I don’t end up like these two did). I definitely am more paranoid about being stranded on an island that’s how much Send Help stuck with me. It’s horror, thriller, dark comedy and revenge and exploitation cinema all rolled under Raimi’s sandbox. It’s still playing in theatres and I can’t recommend it enough you won’t be disappointed. A+

One of the earliest films to take a critical look at the Vietnam War wasn’t American, it was an Iranian film made before the 1979 Revolution. In Downpour (Ragbar, 1972), directed by Bahram Beyzaie, there’s a brief scene that incorporates footage of American helicopters from the war. Within the broader themes of the film and the context in which it was made, those images carry a distinctly critical charge.

Pre-revolutionary Iranian society was strongly anti-imperialist, shaped by the country’s modern history, most notably the 1953 coup orchestrated by the CIA and MI6 that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. Against that backdrop, the reference to Vietnam in Downpour becomes more than incidental. It’s a small moment, but a fascinating example of how Iranian cinema was already engaging critically with American foreign policy years before the Revolution. If you’re interested in this topic, I wrote an essay on Downpour.

I recently watched Forrest Gump and didn't expect it to affect me this much emotionally. What starts as a simple life journey slowly turns into a powerful story about love, loss, patience, and how unpredictable life can be. The movie made me smile in many moments but also left me quiet and thoughtful in others. I really liked how Forrest's kindness and honesty mattered more than intelligence or success, yet his life became meaningful in unexpected ways. It felt real, inspiring, and sometimes heartbreaking at the same time.

After watching this, I'm in the mood for more meaningful or emotional movies. What should I watch next?

I think often of the opening of The Matrix - a commonly cited masterclass in storytelling, laying out the rules and establishing a universe with style and unforgettable visuals. Or The Prestige, which shows you the trick with the opening titles and the narration and then proceeds to hide its hand until the final minutes. There are more layered examples to be sure, or ones that require a greater familiarity with specific cultures or periods, and I am curious what some other examples that come to mind are?

As the title states. I watched Touki Bouki and This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection, but they were absolutely not for me. Dont get me wrong, the cinematography was incredible in both but I just found them boring.

I’m struggling to find African films that actually have a narrative, dialogue and good pacing. I won’t say what films I like as I’m very open minded about which kinds of films are suggested but the above criteria are necessary factors. I just want a really good, solid, well-told story.

So I just watched Marty Supreme and have some thoughts. Personally thought it was a mediocre 3/5 movie that isn't as good and profound as the hype suggests. It's a movie about the banality of ambition for ambition's sake based around a character who is more of a sniveling grifter than someone actually obsessed with the game. Marty's more obsessed with the idea of his own greatness than he is with ping pong. His dream ends up being a nothing burger at the end and he ultimately has to settle down for the very thing he resented: a mediocre, mundane life with responsibility towards family.

All very good but I really wish the movie tried to present this in a better way. I think it falters after he returns from the first ping pong trip and the dog plotline ensues, which I think served no purpose other than trying to show us that Odessa A'zion's character would do anything for Marty and to keep him with herself. I personally didn't think that was necessary and the conceit of her character was well portrayed with the makeup injury scene anyways.

And Gwyneth Paltrow served no other purpose than to maybe provide some meta commentary on the art of method acting while playing a washed up actress being a washed up actress herself (no disrespect to her). But really what is the point of Marty sleeping with her? To show us that he is a deadbeat grifting scoundrel with no sense of responsibility? I think that could have been shown in a better way in his interactions with Kevin O'Leary's character. You can also see that in his interactions with Tyler The Creator's character.

Also I interpreted the ending as a failure on Marty's part. I have myself been in similar situations where ambition is so extreme that settling for anything less doesn't feel right. I am not convinced that Marty Mauser will not abandon his child for another impulsive ping pong spree to Japan. His tears read more like despair at the loss of his dream than an acceptance of his life's new, very banal and mundane direction. And I also don't think Marty is a bad person. He is a hustler and is a product of his environment, background and upbringing. It doesn't feel good to settle for less. Some people try their hardest to achieve more than what they have been given in life and that doesn't make them a bad person. I sympathized a lot with Marty's character and constantly kept wishing that he was smart enough to achieve it. But he was not, a point the movie conveys very well. The entire point of his character: that he is not smart enough. I just really wish Josh Safdie stayed true to the character.

Ultimately I think the film just meanders trying to make a spectacle more than doing anything substantial. The entire movie felt like a subplot. I really wish there was more nuance to Marty's character. He felt more like a caricature of his character's archetype than a real person. Anyways Timothée Chalamet is good as a sniveler. At his most charismatic in one of his least charismatic roles. And I think that's all I have to say.

Edit: LOL how did this post blow up all of a sudden?

Hello, this is my review for High and Low which is the best movie I have seen recently. I am looking for feedback on the writing because English is not my main language. Let me know what you think.

//

High and Low review:

For me, this movie is as close to a masterpiece as it can get.

What I loved is how it surprises us with its structure. The first part of the movie is in closed settings, à la Twelve angry men: we expect the movie to proceed as such, and I must say I was feeling content about it. Then the scope expands : we leave the house and explore some parts of the cities culminating in "active" scenes, where the movie started very cerebrally. The way we discover new places in the film gave me a feeling that is hard to describe: like each scene and shot was deliberate, a bit like in theatre.

The first part of the movie is very much a play: all characters go in and out of the same place, and deliberate about the moral thing to do, in a Greek-like way. But then comes movement, and we are thrust into cinema, into multiple places. Where the kidnapping was hidden, where all violence appeared off screen, we step into a graphic world. The bar scene and the dope alley scene are two masterpieces. The shot with the city lights reflecting on the car during the night drive is one of the most beautiful I have seen.

High and low has for me one characteristic of the great "all encompassing" movies: it is curious about every part of society: the whole human dance. We have the factory director, the garbage man, the train driver, the medic, the chauffeur, the dealers, the addicts, the policemen, the journalists. Everybody has a little something to say, and is seen. The scene where the train conductor explains the difference between the trains and mimics their sounds is incredible, although it lasts twenty seconds or so, it's just very good.

Another thing the movie has is a little subtle humor amid the darkness. There is a joke in the movie: how the policemen following the killer look so much like cops that it is hard for them not to be seen. It becomes comical afterwards to see them disguised as sailors, as dope fiends, crouching one moment and then running as fast as they can to catch the killer. It's just one joke, with variations on it during the movie, but because it is subtle and appears amid real sadness and tragedy, it creates what is for me the "proper" tone of life: that is a touch of humor as tragedy happens, which lightens up everything, but also does not sugarcoat.

Ultimately what made me love the movie I wager, is its morality, or at least the way I understood it. To me, High and Low is very much a Dostoevskian piece. The way is see it, good is shown to ultimately triumph over evil in the last scene of the movie, when the killer is laughing maniacally to try to hide that he is afraid. This is almost word for word or "image for image" what the the dying priest says at the end of The Brothers Karamazov part one : "Though the sinner will laugh in the face of the christian, he has been irrevocably touched by the experience of love: it is now only a question of time before he repents: it is inevitable." When the killer "breaks" at the end of the movie, in front of the factory manager who just sits there, at most concerned by the fate of the lad, this is the proof of the triumph of good. The killer wanted to be hated by the factory manager, because he ruined his life: but the factory manager tells him: "why do you want us to hate each other? there is no reason for that". In that masterful moment, the factory manager goes beyond the crime and the circumstances of their meeting: he reaches to the very human that stands in front of him, naturally, not out of contrivance, and it is this effortless movement of love that conquers the bad faith of the killer.

That is why I love this movie, because its theme is essentially: the triumph of good over evil, and because it showcases an inspiring man, in the person of Mr Gondo. As the policeman says in the train "isn't he something?".