1038 Marriage Story

[mfunk9786]

Could this be Scarlett Johansson's first Oscar nomination? Considering what cancel culture has attempted to do to her over the last few years, it would be nice to see.

[Kirkinson]

Anyone else feels reviews today are preposterously inflated. So many things get scores of close to 100 it is kinda crazy. I find most critically acclaimed films overrated.

If you're talking about Metacritic, which calculates its scores based on how positive or negative individual reviews are, then I don't think it's remotely accurate to say there are lots of movies that get scores close to 100. If you browse their list of movies currently in theaters and organize it by Metascore, there are just a couple movies at 90 before it dips into the mid-80s, with a pretty wide spread of scores after that. Only 30 of the 210 movies listed even have a score above 80 (and if you limit it to movies in wide release, only 4 out of 35 are scored above 80), which seems pretty reasonable to me.

If you're talking about Rotten Tomatoes, that score is based only on the number of positive and negative reviews a movie has, without any consideration for how positive or negative those reviews are, so something could get a score of 100 even if every critic they counted only gave it a middlingly favorable review. So in that case, yes, it may seem like there are too many movies getting scores close to 100, but that's not really because critics are being hyperbolic, it's because the hyperbole is baked into the way the RT score is calculated. That's why the last two Marvel movies, for example, got 94 and 90 on RT, but 78 and 69 on Metacritic.

I would at least agree there are lots of critics who are guilty of hyperbolic tweets from festivals, though there are other systemic problems behind that trend, as well.

[Nasir007]

My time horizon was the recent past, not this calendar year. I was going back about 7-8 years. It's a gradual trend I noticed over a long period of time, not something I picked up today.

[domino harvey]

Could this be Scarlett Johansson's first Oscar nomination? Considering what cancel culture has attempted to do to her over the last few years, it would be nice to see.

She absolutely should have been the first actor to be nominated for a voice role for Her, so she's well-overdue

[Nasir007]

Love this line in the Little White Lies review by David Jenkins - Adam Driver makes for the nicest, friendliest, most lovable gaslighter in the history of cinema.

That's a blurb if you ever needed one.

[domino harvey]

Driver is set to have the best year of any actor this season, with either this or the Report netting him a Best Actor nom and then topping it off with the last Star Wars movie— I could see the narrative carrying him all the way to a win for whichever one he gets nommed (sorry Joaquin Phoenix, not that he cares!)

[The Narrator Returns]

Seeing The Dead Don't Die convinced me that Driver might quietly be the best actor working; you don't think much of his range until you realize how many different modes he's been asked to operate in and how he's never been unconvincing in any of them. He seems like a real mensch too, this couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

[Nasir007]

He is indeed a magnificent actor. I was quite taken by his Paterson performance. I think it is almost impossible to make an interesting character out of a goody two-shoes nice person and give a good performance. So many people fail at this and you have supporting characters overshadowing "nice" protagonists all the time. But he somehow made it a very compelling performance. He was also very good in BlackKKK.

[Black Hat]

Seeing The Dead Don't Die convinced me that Driver might quietly be the best actor working; you don't think much of his range until you realize how many different modes he's been asked to operate in and how he's never been unconvincing in any of them. He seems like a real mensch too, this couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Yeah I can't think of someone I've come all the way around on and in retrospect I see that all I was stupidly doing was smearing him with my loathed brush of Lena Dunham. I have to hand it to her for discovering him.

Baumbach, in some ways represents everything I can't stand, especially about NYC, but I can't help but have immense respect for his writing talent and more often than not find myself enjoying his movies. The Squid and the Whale is, depending on where you land with In the Mood for Love & Mulholland Drive, perhaps the best film of that decade. Even the one he disowned I like a lot, Highball?. About the only one I did not like was Frances Ha as I found that it rang mostly false and worse, unnecessary, if not offensive to a native New Yorker's sensibilities verging on treasonous. This was all the more surprising given how many right notes The Meyerowitz Stories struck, but I'd be an idiot to claim Frances Ha was poorly done or that I can't see why people loved it.

[mfunk9786]

Felix Biederman called Noah Baumbach movies "Tyler Perry movies, but for Jews" on a podcast I was listening to this morning, and that little gem is going to rattle around in my head for a long time now, especially every time I see a spot for this one leading up to its release

[knives]

What does that even mean?

[domino harvey]

If that’s a gem, God save us from the dross of that podcast— based on that comment, the wit speaking it appears to not understand either of the directors he invokes nor their audiences, which is impressive in its own way I guess. Tyler Perry movies exist for a specific black American audience that feels underrepresented on-screen and speak directly to their concerns and issues and do so with an authenticity of voice that makes their questionable artistic merit secondary. In contrast, I don’t know any way of reading “Baumbach makes movies for Jews” that makes sense based on their content or audience

[mfunk9786]

100% expected exactly that response, so I appreciate you taking the time to go through the motions of typing it out!

[Jack Kubrick]

Felix Biederman called Noah Baumbach movies "Tyler Perry movies, but for Jews" on a podcast I was listening to this morning, and that little gem is going to rattle around in my head for a long time now, especially every time I see a spot for this one leading up to its release

It takes a Jewish person to know the community!


This is Chapo Trap House, keep the outrage in check with that level of irony that sounds smilingly sincere.

[knives]

100% expected exactly that response, so I appreciate you taking the time to go through the motions of typing it out!

Could you please answer my question though. I legitimately can't make heads or tails of that comment. What about Baumbach's films are Jewish for example? I don't think he's ever had an explicitly Jewish character. I also don't know how you could say there exists a significant Jewish audience for his films in the way there is for Perry.

[mfunk9786]

He was speaking from a cultural perspective as an NYC resident, not from a religious and/or global perspective - and not derisively either, I should add

[knives]

So he means that Baumbach makes films for New Yorkers and just said Jews as an antisemetic short hand?

[mfunk9786]

You'd have to ask the Jewish guy who said it

[domino harvey]

Right after he asks Ann Coulter about feminism or Milo Yiannopoulos about gay rights?

[mfunk9786]

Sure. Right after those.

[Black Hat]

Come on guys, it was a pretty obvious joke and not a particularly hard one to make at that. These types of reactions are exactly the kinda thing Chappelle was talking about on his latest special.

DH, that was one hell of an artful way to explain Tyler Perry's oeuvre.

[knives]

You'd have to ask the Jewish guy who said it

Who the person is that's talking has nothing to do with if a statement is dumbly prejudice. Ignoring how saying Jews is a gross thing in the context I still don't get what he is trying the say by that statement. Perry seems to be being used a just a pejorative without any thought. They literally are as different as possible with Perry being a prolific, multi-disciplinary artist with significant commercial success, but little critical who shows on screen types of characters and theme that almost never appears (the only contemporary example beside him I can like of is Black Nativity). Alternatively, Baumbach has a sparse career limited to film with little commercial success, but significant critical who shows in screen types of characters and theme that is a regular object of movies.

Basically, I'm trying to find out what you see as a statement worth respecting and instead you've mostly been answering with jokes.

[mfunk9786]

It really is a wonder that we don't have more users here.

[Finch]

Walter Chaw loved it and sight unseen, I'm really wishing Netflix would drop their resistance to Blu-Ray pressings of films like this one.

[Nasir007]

It really is a wonder that we don't have more users here.

This is a hypocritical post from someone who has routinely attacked other people, put them down, and purposefully assumed bad faith. Such behavior is revolting and you must think about whether you are not contributing to the environment that is uninviting.

I have been personally singled out and attacked by this user several times - twice today. I come across an article about Tarantino and shared it in good faith, not knowing about the retraction. Yet this poster immediately assumed bad faith and called it trolling. And when people call out this poster, they wonder about why more users don't post here.

I think this forum is quite lovely and people are generally at liberty to say what they want with freedom and with the assumption of good faith and sincerity. Except for this poster which has consistently sought to attack, demean, and lower the level of conversation into name calling and discussing people instead of ideas. I try my best to ignore this user, despite repeated attacks.

The rank hypocrisy is nauseating. Especially given the fact the this poster is an admin.

What is going to be my reward for calling out the hypocrisy of this poster who has consistently attacked other users and thereby discouraged other posters to post here at all. Ban me?

I guess this is a use case for the tolerance level of this forum and how much do you really want new people here and how open and tolerant this forum is.