Damn Uncut Gems and Dolomite just completely snubbed
The Farewell too.
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Just saw Parasite. Pretty bad ass. My first time in a theater in probably two years and it was fun.
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What did you think about the movie? I forget if we already discussed this. I thought it could easily have been a perfect movie if it had just been about something. If it had expressed any kind of theme. If it had tried to say anything at all. Instead Iâm over here in awe at the execution but finding very little that would reward a repeat viewing.
Sort of like Joker. Man is that a well-made movie, but what is it saying? Is it even trying to say anything?
Having thought more about it, I think itâs a very skilled impression of the sorts of things movies do when they try to say something. But thereâs next to nothing there. I did enjoy it, though.
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I think it was saying something but thatâs itâs very opaque and indecipherable. There are a bunch of things that made me think it was trying to make some cosmic statement that I wasnât able to grasp. The opening and closing shots both being âjourneysâ in Howardâs body through a hole in it HAS to mean something. I donât know what though.
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Fair enough that it might have made the attempt and just didnât work for me.
I compare it to something like The Bourne Ultimatum, which can be seen as just a fun spy/action story but also makes sure to hit you over the head with what it wants to say.
Bourne says it at the end when confronted by Paz, the other Blackbriar assassin now assigned to take out their prize spy. Bourne is moments away from escaping, but only if Paz doesnât shoot him at near point-blank range.
Fortunately, Paz hesitates, saying, âWhy didnât you take the shot?â
And now Bourne spells out the theme of the movie. âDo you even know why youâre supposed to kill me? Look at us. Look at what they make you give.â
The screenwriter Tony Gilroy would go on to repeat this theme when he was brought in late in the game to fix Rogue One: a Star Wars story.
Thereâs no similar moment in Joker or Uncut Gems. Sometimes, the audience doesnât even know what questions they were supposed to be asking until you give them the answer, which is why itâs so important for a character at some point in the story to spell out the theme.
If you donât do that, the vague sense that the story could raise powerful questions and equally powerful answers turns into a tsunami of nihilism.
Thatâs how I felt with both of these movies. I was so in awe at the execution that when they ended without a moment to somehow manifest the theme, I felt like the movies were retroactively worse than if theyâd had any theme at all. Even a bad one.
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I mean, the director claims the point was that you canât tell jokes anymore, so thereâs that.
A little on the nose for a movie called âJokerâ, and if thatâs the point he was trying to make, he messed up badly, imo. I assumed that was just ginning up some cheap heat from the takemonger class, lol if he was being sincere.
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I disagree Joker was a well made movie. The Gary Glitter scene is probably the worst use of music in a film in recent memory. I think it wasnât much better than Suicide Squad and most DC dreck
I think the issue is that I believe it was a well-made but empty movie. Which I guess is one way of saying it wasnât well made, but yswim.
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What was your problem with it? I thought that scene was fine. It seemed like people were making a big deal of it, so I can see calling it overblown or whatever, but I donât see much to object to. Iâd nearly say it wasnât even substantive enough to bother objecting to.
I switched The Joker off after about 45 minutes. Come at me.
Since I didnât watch the majority of the movie and how the story developed, I should probably keep my mouth shut at this point. ButâŚdun wanna.
What I was taking from the story at that point was âthe Joker was made, and wasnât born a psychopathâ. But what I took from the other Joker performances in that universe were that the Joker was all about chaosâŚbecause chaos. There was no reasoning with them and they had no empathy.
Also,
I just plain didnât like the laugh being an affliction thing.
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Agree with all of this.
Also with all the hype I assumed Sandler would get a nod, he was good in it I thought
I was conflicted about [spoiler]. I thought it was a good idea, but they didnât really use it.
After he becomes âThe Jokerâ, or what the movie at least asks us to accept is The Joker, which I didnât really feel⌠whatâs the change we see? He acts kind of fey, basically. Probably the most basic-ass, played-out choice an actor could make there, cliched AF. And what does he do, as The Joker? Counting the âoriginâ scene⌠he shoots some people. Some yuppies and a talk-show host. I get the lo-fi origin story vibe, it worked in Batman Begins, but⌠seriously? The Joker shoots some yuppies and a talk-show host? Why? Whatâs so fucking Jokery about that?
Like I said, I enjoyed it well enough, it just didnât seem to me like it had any particular reason to be a DCU movie starring The Joker.
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Gerwig not getting a nom for best director is so bad. Academy is such a joke. Itâs boomer central.
If weâre talking nominations, IIRC the nominations are decided by members in the respective disciplines - actors nominate actors, directors nominate directors etc - and only the vote for the winner is Academy-wide. So an awful lot of that #OscarsSoWhite etc stuff is misplaced, imo. The Academy at large has no problem giving statues to women, POC, etc. The trouble they face is getting nominated, and the way things are set up, that call is always coming from inside the house.
You are correct which is why women donât get nominated. The director branch is heavily white cis male and old.
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It was just a hilariously bad choice of a song for the moment. Absolutely took me out of the movie. It was as bad as if in the middle of the chase scene in Mad Max or some other action movie climax âlike a virginâ started playing. I enjoy most comic book movies. I think the plot outline for Joker is good. But the back third of the movie (all the interactions with the Wayne family) absolutely falls flat.
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Yeah, fair point. Iâm really more thinking of all the actors banging on about âthe Academyâ vis-a-vis acting nominations. Like, show us your polling card, mate. Put your money where your mouth is.
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