The Official Movie Thread

Frances Ha, I like this zinger "Rather, it has left him able to make watchable films, but not challenged to make great ones." -- another film made just to say you made it, I guess.
 
i know it sometimes gets lumped in with that genre but i don't think frances ha is mumblecore. way too writerly and professional, doesn't have that DIY improv spirit the mumblecore stuff is known for. mumblecore is derived from cassavetes, jarmusch, linklater etc, baumbach is more of a woody allen/whit stillman wannabe. i guess they both share inspiration from the french new wave but mumblecore is more indebted to rohmer, whereas frances ha has more truffaut than anything else.
 
Watching


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More thoughts on First Reformed...

During his conversation with Philip, Toller says "Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously, hope and despair. A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself."

This comment closely resembles F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Crack-Up, in which he writes "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Fitzgerald's book is a collection of essays on the disintegration/fragmentation of selfhood--a significant modernist theme--and the ways that embracing this fragmentation is perhaps a more authentic practice than trying to portray oneself as a unified, consistent self. Modernity simply reveals that we are all fragmented to the core.

Climate change and environmental calamity have slowly revealed that what we've considered to be a narrative of Western Enlightenment and progress has actually been a long process of societal suicide. It's the revelation that our culture is, at its core, not a unified, consistent set of beliefs and practices--but inconsistent and contradictory, through and through.

I want to think more on the relevance of the First Reformed church, but there's something significant about it being as old as the fucking country, as though its a microcosmic figure. Toller's intellectual angst is emblematic of larger sociocultural uncertainties under modernity--specifically, Western modernity.
 
Np


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You know it's going to be good when there's a country song during the opening credits outlining the plot. Seriously though, it's great. Probably the first movie to use instant messaging as a plot device. The death scenes are so physical and visceral and it's not even really that gory. They just have such fucking impact. The opening scene in the carwash is brilliant. Larraz was one of the best to do it.
 
You know it's going to be good when there's a country song during the opening credits outlining the plot. Seriously though, it's great. Probably the first movie to use instant messaging as a plot device. The death scenes are so physical and visceral and it's not even really that gory. They just have such fucking impact. The opening scene in the carwash is brilliant. Larraz was one of the best to do it.

Yeah i thought the kills were pretty good. Pretty good twist ending too.
 
That's why the name sounded familiar, I know the Troma film of the same name too. :lol:
:lol: The finale with the dog is one of the most retarded things I've ever seen in a movie but I think it's so retarded it transcends into brilliance. It actually wasn't a Troma original, they just picked it up for distribution later on. It was an in-house production for Vista Street Entertainment who is responsible for the infamous long running Witchcraft franchise. Girard did quite a few titles for them. If any movie they released could be considered classily "good", Body Parts is it.
 
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