Unofficial Movie recommendation thread. - Page 34

Looking for documentaries to watch. This one was good:

On November 30 2019 01:48 Stroggoz wrote: Space oddysey was awesome, even tho the plot is about as ridiculous as scientology. I'm a big fan of kubrick just from his technique, barry lyndon was one of my favourites.

+1 Barry Lyndon. Also one of my favorites. Just re-watched it the other day. probably Kubrick's most underrated movie.

Parasite - really fucking good

"Parasite" was posted/discussed two pages ago.

I need some movies guys. I want to watch Parasite but it's not out yet. All the best film I watched all year in 2019 came from this thread more or less. Help!

Felt like giving my first Bong Joon-Ho a trial and I went with Snowpiercer. It wasn't bad. Not great. I might watch Okja tomorrow.

Saw this thread on reddit that could be useful if you're looking for recommendations

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comme...ovies_in_theaters_in_2019_here_is_my/

It is helpful but I would love to see his all-time list. I also get the feel that his taste is a bit different to mine. That's the difficult part with movies. I know Loco and I have similar tastes. Or maybe it's the fact that if Loco suggests something I am predetermined to like it more. I watched all of Marion Cotillard's favorite movies. Same with Gaspar Noe. This seems to be how I find the best gems. I used to watch everything on the top x IMDB list and while that isn't a bad start it's pretty basic. I am thinking of watching all of the Palme D'Or winners but that is an overwhelming task. I would probably fare a lot better than watching all the Oscar winners. Hollywood is a sham.

Parasite was pretty good but the Korean moving Burning from a year or two before was better imo

Uncut gems was one of the better movies this year as well. Sandler was actually solid

Don't understand playing GO but somehow I enjoyed watching this movie lol Korean writers just natural storytellers

This is one was actually quite a good one. It reminds me of a Fridrik Backman novel, except much more impactful. Do keep in mind its a satire

And it feels like the entire point of the movie flew way past the heads of critics.. 8.0 imdb rating 50 meta score with most of the reviews being blatantly obvious that these critics either didnt watch the movie or are actually retarded

Finally saw The Irishman. I generally hate movies with long runtimes but I loved every second of this film

I saw 1917. Amazing film. The plot of the film is displayed in "real-time" and it's made to look like one long continuous shot. I'm not quite sure I've seen anything like it before and it was quite an experience. I think it and Irishman are my 2 favorite films of the year so far, not sure which I liked more. Although I will say I watched 1917 in IMAX and I watched Irishman on my cell phone on a plane.

I watched The Lighthouse recently. Was really good. Dafoe and Pattinson were giving probably their best performance ever. Granted that you are bored of the usual hollywood bs and love to see some truly unique stuff

On February 01 2020 14:01 blackjacki2 wrote: I saw 1917. Amazing film. The plot of the film is displayed in "real-time" and it's made to look like one long continuous shot. I'm not quite sure I've seen anything like it before and it was quite an experience. I think it and Irishman are my 2 favorite films of the year so far, not sure which I liked more. Although I will say I watched 1917 in IMAX and I watched Irishman on my cell phone on a plane.

I was wondering if I should see 1917 but I feel tired of ww1/ww2 movies. I've seen practically anything about WW2 and I've read so many books with similiar plots .. stil movies like The Pianist are one of the best things I've seen ever, but Im generally done with war movies. Is 1917 really that good?

If you want to see a more honest ww1 movie i'd recommend gallipoli or paths of glory.

By the looks of this nyt review, this 1917 is perhaps the biggest propaganda film of the year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/08/opinion/1917-movie-world-war-I.html

On February 10 2020 07:02 Stroggoz wrote: If you want to see a more honest ww1 movie i'd recommend gallipoli or paths of glory. By the looks of this nyt review, this 1917 is perhaps the biggest propaganda film of the year. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/08/opinion/1917-movie-world-war-I.html

This article is such bullshit. The only thing I was thinking throughout this whole movie is how horrific it was. The author accuses the film of showing a regard for human life that didn't exist in reality and making it about an uplifting hero's journey. I don't know how the author gets that interpretation if they were paying attention. After the hero delivers his message to the colonel and the colonel reluctantly calls off the attack he says to our hero, "That's it for now. Next week there will be a different message: Attack at dawn. There's only one way this war ends, last man standing." So after our hero goes through hell, gets injured, gets shot at, has his best friend die in his arms, etc. and finally delivers his message we hear that it's meaningless because the men he saved will be sent to their death in the coming weeks anyway. Yeah, that's really uplifting...

Yeah, there's really no moment in that movie when you feel like the soldiers' lives matter or that they are fighting for a good reason. The movie isn't meant to show the nuances of the war, but to make you experience a claustrophobic nightmare at a new level of closeness, and it does it exceptionally well. And the protagonism of the movie even has a speech about how he traded his one and only medal for a drink, and how heroism is vapid and pointless, even if it's just to make your family feel better and bring it back to them. And it's incredibly sincere, because he didn't even want to talk about it before his friend forces it out of him. His friend dies before he can reap the rewards of his own heroism too, making the whole thing feel even more true.

Anyway, now that Parasite has won a bunch of Oscars... remember when whammbot said this was to be understood as a direct reflection of Korean culture? My response was this:

On September 02 2019 02:28 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On August 27 2019 01:44 whammbot wrote: Yeah it really threw me off how that part of the story seemed to drive x character to that. But like I said, Korean movies are a direct reflection of their culture which is why they're so damn interesting and puzzling at times. Same goes for other "foreign" movies in Hollywood. Korean movies though are very unapologetic and brutally honest which is probably why a lot of their movies get a lot of attention Babble. There's nothing unique to "Korean culture" in there. It's a film that explores class warfare/the consequences of social stratification (the gaming logic and the precariousness and desperation it breeds) privilege and patriarchy. That is happening nearly everywhere. The weird thing is that this is a poker website and most of us played poker, i.e. lived like parasites for as long as we could for the same obvious reasons these people lived this way, so it shouldn't be hard to grasp this movie. What's ironic is that a bunch of you guys complain about leftism--which offers this same critique--yet that movie's core messages completely goes right over your heads. There's also the theme of trying to flee from debt creditors in this movie just like Burning (which was my favorite movie of the year). It's meant to remind people that in such a predatory society their fates can be sealed due to circumstances outside of their control.

And this is what the director Bong Joon-Ho said about it:



original interview:

On September 03 2019 04:21 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On September 02 2019 07:10 Liquid`Drone wrote: Joker hardly seems like a superhero movie. One of the reviews I read drew strong parallels to taxi driver - none to any superhero movies. It's not part of the 'DC continuum', it's a standalone movie, and I don't think there are any superpowers featured. yep, it seems very much like driver. I think its the perfect timing in the random-shooter era, this explores in a teatrical way the process of societal alienation driving someone with ultra violent dispositions into genoncidal actions empowered by anger. Many narrowsighted people will think its just a white-guy-to-shooter movie not realizing in its core its an alike process in many hate-driven ideologies like white nationalism, islamism, radical feminism, antifascism why weep for humanity when you can bring it down and rebuilt it anew, the intoxicating scent of anger makes you feel so powerful and driven, it shut downs all the sorrow, all the sadness, insecurities and doubts, the ultimate drug.

There is nothing in Joker that suggests that he had "ultra violent dispositions". His character is represented as someone who was just minding his affairs and who was sublimating/coping largely successfully (nonviolently) despite all of the pressures he was facing throughout all his life, up until he could literally no longer afford to live. What drives him over the edge is not so much the getting beaten up and excluded as the loss of his job and the social programs cuts. Even the therapist--the person whose role it is to act as the last resort when all other support systems fail--is living too precariously and is too depressed to be able to do her job properly. He's also given a gun by someone who doesn't give a shit about him or the kind of trouble he might get into, while he himself is self-aware enough to know that he shouldn't be allowed with a gun.

The point of the movie is clearly the exact opposite of what you say it is. It is meant to show that anyone who is pushed too far for too long in an endlessly heartless and hostile environment will to turn to violence, they don't need to be "predisposed" to it. He wasn't hate-driven; he wanted to do stand up comedy and indiscriminately make everyone laugh. He loved to bring joy to sick children -- the only people that are more vulnerable than him. A hate-driven ideology by definition excludes certain groups of people based on some hierarchical notion. Anti-fascists literally only exist to oppose this logic. It's like saying firefighters and pyromaniacs are driven by the exact same thing. You don't see firefighters where they are no fires, and you don't see anti-fascists where there are no fascists. Even when you disagree with the tactics they use, it doesn't make logical sense to consider anti-fascism a hate-driven ideology when it literally only ever appears in an effort to resist one.

The failure of the Joker character is the failure of his society in maintaining systems of reciprocity and mutual aid all throughout the society. It is the failure of an economic system motivated only by profit-accumulation despite its consequences on the well-being of its members. The Joker character is only made possible through the artificial scarcity that is imposed by the system and the enormous wealth inequality that is maintained and furthered by the social darwinistic forces of such a society.

The revolt we see is one of directionless destruction and decay. It doesn't put forth anything new, and fails to unite people against common threats. This is the greatest failure of the movie; it indulges itself into a passive nihilism rather than an active one, or some alternative programs to build something new from the ashes. In other words, the revolt only exists to fortify capitalism and its "all for one" logic. When you have violent revolts without any coherent vision to create something to replace it, it only serves as release valve for the anger of the people within it-- for a little while-- until they are smashed and capitalism assimilates them back.

On February 11 2020 02:46 Loco wrote: Yeah, there's really no moment in that movie when you feel like the soldiers' lives matter or that they are fighting for a good reason. The movie isn't meant to show the nuances of the war, but to make you experience a claustrophobic nightmare at a new level of closeness, and it does it exceptionally well. And the protagonism of the movie even has a speech about how he traded his one and only medal for a drink, and how heroism is vapid and pointless, even if it's just to make your family feel better and bring it back to them. And it's incredibly sincere, because he didn't even want to talk about it before his friend forces it out of him. His friend dies before he can reap the rewards of his own heroism too, making the whole thing feel even more true.

Agreed. The film has no obligation to show the nuances of war but it also makes brilliant use of the time it allots for it. I'm reminded of a piece of dialogue at the start of the movie when they encounter the Lieutenant in command just prior to crossing No Man's Land.

Lt.: Are you our relief?
LCpl: No, sir.
Lt.: Then when the hell are they due?
LCpl: I don't know, sir, but we have orders to cross here.
Lt.: Settle a bet for us, what day is it?
LCpl: Friday.
Lt.: well well well, none of us were right. This idiot thought it was Tuesday.

So much can be gleaned from these few sentences of dialogue. You can feel the depression of the soldiers there, sleeping in the dirt, being so disoriented they have no idea what day it is or when their relief will come or which day will be their last.

That same Lt. is also extremely sure that the 2 boys are being sent to their death and nonchalantly tells them, "Don't worry, there's a medal in it for sure. Nothing like a scrap of ribbon to cheer up a widow." Not exactly the level of regard for human life the author accuses the film of having.