The Films of 2020

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
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domino harvey
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Re: The Films of 2020

#26 Post by domino harvey » Tue Apr 21, 2020 2:05 pm

At first I was like, "Well, yeah, I guess 104 minutes is the equivalent of a short film for Lav Diaz"

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: The Films of 2020

#27 Post by knives » Thu Apr 23, 2020 10:45 pm

Since his newest films don't get much light shown on them I thought I should point out Jean Marie Straub's latest is streaming on Youtube (the production company put it up). I linked to the version with english subtitles, but there are several other subtitle options. It's an adaptation(ish) of Bernanos' France Versus the Robots. It continues Straub's post Huillet fascination with turning texts into still lifes though this time with a Kiarostami's 24 Frames conception of still. It's also a much more blatantly political text with Straub's concerns being pretty obvious considering what France has been through in the last year. Though what's more interesting is his continued fascination with multiple takes though this time the difference are quite clear (side stepping the obvious pun). I found the setting and how it evolves to add an emotion to Bernanos' sometimes hyperbolic phrasing.

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Persona
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Re: The Films of 2020

#28 Post by Persona » Wed May 06, 2020 6:08 pm

The Half of It

This is half trope, half unique teen dramedy. Wish it had committed a bit more to its less conventional side, but all the same I enjoyed it and found a few moments quite moving. Lovely final scene where we can almost see the world opening up within Chu's eyes, staring into Wu's eyes (the gaze of the camera and the memory of the writer-director).

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#29 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue May 12, 2020 11:46 pm

Fourteen is a faux-Rohmeresque American indie film that catalogues flashbulb moments in time across a decade of friendship between two women through their early-adult life. The scenes appear random at first but reveal idiosyncratic mannerisms and objective observations on friendship dynamics that sting. They remind us of our own bittersweet relationships and specifically the forced acceptance of the limitations in our ability to change or influence the ones we love. The film is also a meditation on memory, and how the formulation of our experiences are filled with equal parts Big Events and small details. Roles are defined through memory, and after the first third of the film was over, I realized that we are only seeing one perspective of events, and thus one comprehension of a role. Is the 'savior' really carrying the burden we see in snippets across ten years enough so as to identify as such? No, but in the context of her closest friendship she does, and that belief is what matters in validating her own experience. Some moments are a bit much, and incredibly self-fulfilling if taken objectively (boyfriends begging Mara to stand by Jo, etc.) but if viewed as Mara's own fallible memories, which are always subjectively distorted just a tad, the film works much better.

This is a decent outside look at mental health as well, purely detached and desperately seeking a way in to share the pain and help. But just like Mara, we cannot access Jo enough to help, or know the root of the problem. Spontaneous unbroken long shots feel out of place at times, like the one at the train station, but they signify that detachment and encourage the audience's processing to gain mastery over the intent of the frame - to find whatever the filmmaker is asking us to look for - like Mara's own helplessness to bridge the impenetrable walls Jo puts up to bar even the most intimate resources. Norma Kuhling is exceptional as Jo, and I felt a strong kinship to both characters for various reasons. This is a film for the caretakers, the self-destructors, the addicts whose co-occurring disorder was initiated by other mental health issues (around 90% of addicts have co-occurring disorders, so not really a stretch), and the general population of adults who have lived through their twenties on the road to self-actualization, watching relationships and opportunities slip away to the vacuum of time.

And yet there is a tendency for overblown theatrics and masochistic wish-fulfillment for Mara. Dan Sallitt walks a very dangerous tightrope, and there were times where I was bothered by the amount of drama that occurred directly because of the Mara/Jo baggage, a few overexplaining rants that were unrealistic and I often thought about the much-better The Souvenir, which did something similar by showing one side of a powerless dynamic. I have to believe that the film defines neither Mara nor Jo - because to interpret it as such would be a mistake and transform the picture into a piece of condescending trash. Sallitt doesn't convince me that this isn't his intention though, even if on a subconscious level. He binds us to Mara's identity as a savior and reinforces the myth of the 'caretaker' role's grandiose power seeking pleasure in suffering. The film can read as a self-fulfilling prophecy, or the dream of the 'caretaker' in acknowledgement and celebration of their influence along with self-pity. Scenes are too on-the-nose and the reality is that this many coincidences don't arise where the befallen happen to pop up and force the crossing of paths and opportunities for engagement.

The end result is a mixed bag - there's a lot to admire but I found myself giving it too much rope and eventually felt like the ulterior motives were self-gratifying and carried uncomfortable implications. At the same time, as someone who has engaged in both roles we see, I 'get' it and maybe would be eaten this film up ten years ago, when I wanted so desperately to be 'seen' and 'cared about' as a struggling young person, and wanted to be recognized for 'seeing' and 'caring for others' just as much. Today, it's a little much, but I appreciate the big picture of time and universal loss that everyone can relate to. The ending phone call reconnected me to where I'm at today and those reminders of fading connections paralleling inevitable growth is something to be recognized, pitied, empathized with, and celebrated.

And then there is the actual ending, which deflated the wavelength I thought was a humble branch, and the film became exactly what I feared. Unless we do take it all as Mara's skewed interpretation of her own role, but even still, the self-indulgence felt icky.

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brundlefly
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Re: The Films of 2020

#30 Post by brundlefly » Sat May 23, 2020 9:44 am

La Casa Lobo (Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León).

(This played festivals in 2018, but KimStim is doing the “virtual release” thing now, here.)(Trailer.)

The expressive, unsettling meat of this is a jaw-dropping accomplishment in stop-motion animation. The slight narrative – a young girl Maria runs away from a cloistered German society in Chile, hides herself in a remote cabin in the woods – is mostly set-up that draws on the existence of the Colonia Dignidad and self-isolationist fairy tales (most obviously “The Three Little Pigs”) to inhabit a knotted, struggling mindset that’s dealing with personal trauma and imbued cultural hierarchies.

One of those works where the house is the head, where what’s fantasy and what’s delusion doesn’t matter so much as the suggestion that something has happened before and that there’s a lot going on. And the film is restless and rotting; the camera feels like it’s always shaking and pushing forward, everything it shows us is relentlessly breaking down and reconstituting itself. Characters pour across and spill off the walls. There seem to be a few full-sized objects – you wonder about the size of the animators’ workspace – but mostly it’s paint and papier-mâché, masking tape and cellophane. Debris. It looks amazing, but it is elaborately ugly; as hard as Maria works to assemble her fantasies, everything is unfinished and already coming undone.

The colony’s German narrator (the “shepherd of this community”) speaks Spanish, but when he’s the Wolf he speaks German. Maria talks to the Wolf in German, but otherwise in Spanish. There is corruption and decay: Maria’s escaped from “a community that remains isolated and pure” to the isolation and purity of her own room. There’s the confusion of care and control: Maria has reimagined a pair of pigs (that may exist?) into Chilean children, and then into Aryan children. "You will have no reason to escape from here," she tells them. "The only way to be safe is to listen to me." The Wolf is outside, the Wolf is inside.

The one sore point was the way the work coyly uses its framing device, an expository promotional film that introduces Maria’s story as a cautionary tale made from recently restored found footage. Though there are other meta touches (at one point, the TV she’s watching is describing the scene she’s in), the tone is wrong there, and the extra layer of playfulness is both unnecessary and illogical.
Last edited by brundlefly on Mon May 25, 2020 6:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#31 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun May 24, 2020 10:55 pm

Koko-Di Koko-Da: I thought this was interesting, but not exceptional. zedz already explained a good portion of what makes the film successful in the horror thread, and it's impossible to discuss the film outside of spoiler boxes, so
zedz wrote:
Mon Nov 04, 2019 9:03 pm
SpoilerShow
The central conceit of the film is that it takes the "horror movie character wakes up from a nightmare, which then starts to happen for real" trope and turns it into an entire narrative structure, so that a camping couple keep reliving the same ghastly encounter with freakish characters in the woods, but with the knowledge of what had happened (and hadn't worked) in previous iterations, so the husband keeps getting the chance to try new strategies to escape their dire fate. It's very tense, and very strange (there's one reiteration that is radically different, where the focus is on the wife). There's quite a bit more to the film than this, and it's a while before the film arrives at the time loop structure. Each loop is also accompanied by additional flashbacks to what went immediately before, so the film has quite an elaborate narrative structure even without factoring in the weirdest part of it.

Unlike Triangle, or something like Source Code, there's no internal narrative explanation for the looping structure: it's just the narrative form of this particular film. Psychologically, of course (and the same is true of Triangle to some extent), it's a form that expresses how one can obsess over what one could have done differently when confronted with a personal tragedy.
SpoilerShow
For me the two 'reveals' in this film each staggered different ideas with varying success. The first was the initial acute predicament of the loop causing a traumatic response in trying to 'fix' the current situation. This seemed to take on a social critique of patriarchal cultures' (of which I believe Sweden is one) facades of masculinity. The husband, who has been unable to keep his daughter safe, his wife happy, and then his wife safe, all but crumbles in his POV re-births. The scene where he runs to the car, grabs the knife, and waits to pounce and save his wife only to hesitate with terrified paralysis, is cringe-worthy. He quietly screams "No" to himself with crippling shame. This is the bitter truth of human beings' capacity for weakness regardless of gender or societal role.

The more interesting 'reveal' was not that the couple was reliving this traumatic event, but that this was a waking nightmare of purgatory aimed at serving a greater purpose to address the traumatic event from three years prior. The music box theme is playing on the radio, the characters who kill them were on the music box, etc. They cannot escape their fate until they actually look at one another and honestly embrace, supporting one another and facing their own emotions.

So is this 'camping trip' state in a dream, concocted by the ghost of their dead daughter (who, by the way, died how?) or analogous to the therapeutic process the couple needs to move on? It doesn't really matter, and I loved the ending for that. Unlike zedz, I don't think this sets itself apart as that much more original than its sister films. I think that the narrative explains itself just as much as Triangle does, except ending on a cryptically optimistic note. As much as I appreciated this on a therapeutic analogy a la I Am A Ghost (though nowhere near as complex) I'm not sure I prefer it to the desperate Sisyphus ending of that and Triangle (and now that I'm thinking about it, I Am A Ghost seems like the most similar film to this one).

I do want to know what is up with the puppet show, and the significance of the 'rooster' (the first lines I believe are "my/the rooster is dead"). The visualization in the silhouette of a beautiful creature, doomed to be trapped in a cage until the rabbits let it go free, could resemble the life cycle of coping with grief; the weight of holding onto the daughter destroying that beautiful memory from being liberated until the parents surrender to acceptance. I don't know, that's the best analysis I got. But that switch-up to the wife wandering into the woods to watch the puppet show was the highlight for me.

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Dr Amicus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#32 Post by Dr Amicus » Sun May 31, 2020 3:47 pm

Trolls World Tour (Walt Dohrn) - As noted elsewhere, got to see this on the big screen, which may have made this more impressive than it really is. Surprisingly OK, very much in the vain of the first film but introduces new groups of Trolls who each perform one type of music (Classical, Funk etc.). The Rock queen wants to unite all trolls under Rock and wipe out other music, our heroes from the first film try and stop her. And that's it - but it still manages some neat stuff amongst the brightly coloured mayhem. It's hard to object to a film where the point is that difference is good, and there are some interesting digs at pop's history of cultural appropriation - also, it looks pretty good with a pleasantly tactile fabric appearance. It could have been a lot worse - but I suspect I'd have much rather gone to see Onward!

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Re: The Films of 2020

#33 Post by Mr Sheldrake » Mon Jun 01, 2020 10:42 am

Blow the Man Down

An entertaining female-centric noir set in a small fishing port on the coast of Maine. Sophie Lowe and Morgan Sale are very good playing sisters who stumble upon a layer of corruption beneath the surface of their sleepy town. The filmmakers don’t confront the moral implications of that corruption. They keep a jaunty tone and there are several neat twists to distract from any qualms. Margo Martindale is sensational as the ferocious local Madame whose days of glory are running out. A Prime Original.

beamish14
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Re: The Films of 2020

#34 Post by beamish14 » Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:01 pm

Murder Death Koreatown (Director: Unknown)

I think I’ve just witnessed the birth of a new sub-genre: cringe horror. This film is exceptional and special in many ways, and its brevity and the depth of its creativity made me frequently pause it to savor what I was watching. A micro-budget marvel that recalls, yes, found footage horror, but also subverts what we accept as our reality in the same masterful way as Wonder Showzen, Everything is Terrible, and Damon Packard. Taking place within the confines of a small section of L.A.’s Koreatown, the anonymous filmmaker(s) show instead ask us to look at the strata of the urban microcosm. Immigrants, dreamers in search of fame, the chronically homeless, the unemployed but housed are all trapped in a panopticon under the restless eyes of the police state. Finding relief leads to death or insanity, another scratch mark on the uncounted numbers of disappeared. A major new work that needs to be seen, hopefully multiple times.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Films of 2020

#35 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:39 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:30 pm
Reverend Drewcifer wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 5:10 pm
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/a ... n-features
That's enough internet today.
Corona Zombies is the subject of The Cinema Snob's latest video and somehow is even worse than could be imagined. It is a little bit of new footage but the rest of the film is a re-dubbed 'comedy' version of Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead(!) and the terrible mid 2000s film Strippers vs Zombies. Apparently it is 'directed' by Charles Band, but this is a far cry from Trancers! Or even the Gary Busey starring The Gingerdead Man!

I mean even disregarding the insensitivity in the current situation, it makes one feel sorry for Hell of the Living Dead as well for not deserving to be treated in such a manner!
And now we have Corona Zombies 2: Barbie and Kendra Save The Tiger King!

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domino harvey
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Re: The Films of 2020

#36 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jun 11, 2020 1:21 am

Never Cursed wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 11:17 pm
Josh Trank's Al Capone biopic Fonzo is now called simply Capone and has a first trailer. In a move that shows that the distributor (the same as of hit films Billionaire Boys Club, The Professor And The Madman, and Gotti) has nothing but confidence in the pic, it will be released May 12 directly to streaming
Highlight reel of Hardy in this movie (NSFL). With all that congestion, they should have just gotten Neil Hamburger to star

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Dr Amicus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#37 Post by Dr Amicus » Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:55 am

Days of the Bagnold Summer (Simon Bird) - Another trip to our local socially distancing cinema, just the three of us no problem on that front. Anyway, this is a delightful little film covering the fractious relationship between a moody teen metalhead and his long suffering mother who are forced to spend a summer together when hid father, who lives in Florida with his new wife, lets him down at the last minute. My 12 year old son loved it - especially the lack of major subplots to distract from the character comedy - as indeed did Mrs Amicus who, like the mum in the film, is a library assistant (big laugh from her about spending most of the time unjamming the photocopier). The whole thing is played just the right side of caricature - even Rob Brydon and Tamsin Greig's clearly more overtly comic characters - and a largely static camera gives free range to the performances and just underlines the stuck-together relationship that centres the film. The film pretty much goes where you expect it to go (a shout out however to a wonderful series of low key gags about a nascent band that are unexpected) but is done so well, and at under 90 minutes, that that's not a problem.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#38 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 16, 2020 12:01 am

The King of Staten Island: I haven't liked an Apatow film since high school, and can't stand Pete Davidson, but watched this purely out of love for Bill Burr. He's good, but the movie isn't. If you're not entranced by Apatow's dramedy shtick, you already know that this will have rigorously forced jokes and contrived pathos, and unsurprisingly I thought the film was ending only to check and find there was an hour left to go (you'd think I would have learned by now). There are a few hardy laughs like in most of his films, but they're so obviously concocted, and professed with a spoonfed tempo so that the audience knows exactly when the punchline is coming, that I felt coerced and tricked following a chuckle.

What bothers me most about this narrative, and it's something that has becoming glaringly clear with age, is its self-deprecation is a facade for wallowing in self-pity and egotistical attention to one's hardships and growth. This is autobiographical in all the wrong ways, and these self-reflexive tales that used to emotionally move me, now borderline-offend as I make my way through my 30s. It's one thing to want to be seen and validated, but another to go about it this way, which feels disrespectful by manipulating audiences. I dunno, this didn't have much of a chance, but I laughed enough times in his last few films even without liking them to open up, and it may be the worst one yet (I haven't seen This Is 40). The Explosions in the Sky track intruding in a certain scene in the last act was infuriating, and I almost turned it off, but after wasting two hours I figured I might as well give it 15 more minutes. It didn't stick the landing.

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Reverend Drewcifer
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Re: The Films of 2020

#39 Post by Reverend Drewcifer » Tue Jun 16, 2020 11:39 am

This is 40 is a real low point.

Peter-H
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Re: The Films of 2020

#40 Post by Peter-H » Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:07 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Jun 16, 2020 12:01 am
What bothers me most about this narrative, and it's something that has becoming glaringly clear with age, is its self-deprecation is a facade for wallowing in self-pity and egotistical attention to one's hardships and growth.
I think I know what you mean, what would you say are some other movies that do this?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#41 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jun 16, 2020 3:12 pm

Peter-H wrote:
Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:07 pm
therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Jun 16, 2020 12:01 am
What bothers me most about this narrative, and it's something that has becoming glaringly clear with age, is its self-deprecation is a facade for wallowing in self-pity and egotistical attention to one's hardships and growth.
I think I know what you mean, what would you say are some other movies that do this?
Hmm I guess given my restrictions of "self-deprecation" there aren't a lot of good examples that immediately come to mind. Tiny Furniture, many mumblecores (especially some of the Swanbergs), and a case could be made for Marriage Story though I thought that one was fine. I know there are "better" examples that I can't think about offhand. You could probably throw in a good chunk of Apatow's catalog.

Though outside of that specific autobiographical catchman signifier- my issue is really with audience manipulation, and selling a character as pitiable rather than having it earned. I see this in the films of Ken Loach, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was a frustrating one, and even a film I wanted to like, Fourteen, really descended into this "look at me" self-pity, as I wrote about more in depth upthread. Unfortunately, one of my last group-movie viewings pre-COVID was being forced to watch Tall Girl with a group of my girlfriend's friends, and all of these films more or less read like that one to me. I know it's a subjective line that allows a film to 'deserve' its empathy rather than tactfully drain its audience of it, but my point is that as I get older I find myself seeing through a lot of those films and detaching from the star-eyed romantic lens of these narratives, from Oscar-bait tearjerkers to dramedies that beg the audience to empathize so hard that the histrionics show. Part of the reason I hate Betty Blue so passionately is that I think that film does this while also taking swings at mental health and the opposite sex to fight for the deserved self-pity narrative, doing more harm than your typical of one of these films in the process- yet narcissistically blind to those consequences.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#42 Post by beamish14 » Tue Jun 16, 2020 3:49 pm

Like Paul Feig, Apatow's movies completely repel me. I just detest their brands of humor, and both of them are glaringly terrible in
their capacities to make their works aesthetically interesting in any way or know how to judiciously edit material.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Films of 2020

#43 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:26 pm

Alice et le maire (Nicolas Pariser)
Anaïs Demoustier rather unexpectedly won the Cesar award for Best Actress for her perf as a philosophy grad student hired by a socialist mayor to reinvigorate him as an ideas person. The film works best when it plays out my own greatest personal horror, being thrown into a job you don't fully understand with expectations that aren't explained and no clarity as to what you should be doing. I've lived this film's first act, though perhaps not in specifics, and fallen upwards like Demoustier, so I found a kinship to her protag that likely would not be there for most viewers who haven't. I thought the film had a lot of ideas of its own that it could never really follow through on, and it feels a bit like a highlight reel for a season of television edited down to feature length with all the necessary sinews and connecting parts elided. Perhaps even more shocking than Demoustier's win is that Fabrice Luchini as the mayor wasn't even nommed-- this is an especially strong perf in how it contrasts with much of Luchini's usual instincts, and I enjoyed how unreadable he remained for much of the film. The movie is a mess, but he and Demoustier make it work, though I'm not sure Pariser really thought through the implications of the film's literary punchline...

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knives
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Re: The Films of 2020

#44 Post by knives » Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:30 pm

Usually I'm not into your French recommendations, but that set up and your description of it sounds so much like my life that I'm for once super interested.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Films of 2020

#45 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jun 25, 2020 10:19 pm

The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has sued Netflix for copyright infringement... because their version of Sherlock Holmes respects women (I was skeptical that it was clickbait too, but that’s actually in the complaint verbatim)

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#46 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jun 26, 2020 11:11 pm

Tommaso

I want to preface this by saying that I generally cannot stand Abel Ferrara’s cinema, but what he does in this film with equal measures chaotic (at times surreal) narrative style and rhythmic raw depictions of experience just hit all the right notes for me. We loiter in moments that are colored as banal yet emotional, whether sexual intercourse or a walk in the park. These are the truths of the mature self-actualized adult who finds depth and pain, and all of life's offerings, now in the ordinary.

Dafoe is magnetic, meditating on the mysteries of his experience, participating actively with enthusiasm, focusing on a task, accepting ennui, posturing toward existential crises, and considering how to manage his emotions. He practices the principles of his recovery imperfectly, saying one of the wisest statements I’ve heard in cinema very early on, yet struggling like the rest of us to practice the wisdom with ease: “If you’re only doing emotional things that you feel safe with, it’s for you. You’ve got to go beyond yourself… When we do things and forget about ourselves, and we’re just doing that action in a pure way, that’s when we get closer- in a pure way to experiencing the beauty of life.” This could be the definition of his Higher Power in AA. It wouldn't be far off from many others' definitions of "spiritually-fit," or "God-moments."

Addiction is part of Ferrara’s story, and the portrayal of the life of a man in recovery is very subjective to his autobiographical experience but also honest in its universality. Dafoe falls into pockets of resentment or self-indulgence, contests with marital difficulties and issues of powerlessness and domination. He doesn’t suggest the answers to life’s mysteries because he doesn’t have them, nor does he express a crisis in loud movements or theatrical exposition. An instant of dysregulation may not look much different than the look on a father’s face drifting off into space with his daughter in the park, because that’s reality- but Ferrara engages us in a holistic exercise that examines Dafoe and his exchanges with his milieu from every possible angle. The camera glances at body language, movements of characters across a physical space toward another, basks in the beauty of physical human bodies or inanimate spaces just as it does the blankness of things. Meaning becomes the subjective experience, and Ferrara refuses to color these for us. That’s not how life works.

That's not to say that the spiral into delusion doesn't become self-centered in the general sense, or propelled upon us. I'm sure this will draw parallels to the same conversations people love to have over the protagonist in Diary of a Country Priest's own questionable absorption with emulating Christ and looking for sympathy indirectly, but I think that misses the point- at least if left there in a state of viewer-judgment. One might criticize this film as self-obsessive but its self-pity is innately drawn from appropriate wells. The AA shares use the real lingo to deconstruct relationships on topic with the selfish side of the program, which isn’t a ‘bad’ thing. There is a truth in “keeping one’s side of the street clean” and focusing on the self rather than another’s flaws. That egocentricity is healthy, and directly contrasts the toxic masculinity that balks at self-awareness or professes narrow-minded answers. However, Dafoe does not practice a 'perfect program' or live his life harmoniously, just like anyone in or out of recovery, and his fallibility is marked by his own admitted obsessive thinking that "neurotic, dualistic, unrealistic way of thinking only gets us into trouble, but we do it all the time." He says this to himself, but cannot escape himself, and exhibits behavior that wallows in the only perspective we can default to: our own. This is such a subjective account that the stylized jumps in reality, just like the most docu-drama shots, are inherently created by Dafoe, and the filmmaker himself, based on his own neuroses rather than an offensive reality.

If anything, he is most critical of himself, and his impositions of control on others to get on his wavelength (whether his wife or a homeless man on the street), before reverting back to a meditative understanding of powerlessness, is a repetitive process most in recovery will be familiar with. There is a humility present in this introverted diary, which does not alleviate Ferrara/Dafoe of his character defects, but validates the skewed emotions he has while admitting their right-sized value of actual importance. But if he didn't descend into the self, that would be even more disingenuous and inauthentic, and would frankly be even more problematic in sugarcoating the ability to practice what one preaches- and that would be unfairly professing to be Christ. Feeling sorry for yourself and getting outside of yourself to empathize with others, rinse cycle repeat- that's the program. The greatest respect comes as he demonstrates his most intense regression later on, acknowledging that emotional sobriety is not linear like time sober. There is no 'right' and 'wrong' here, there just 'is'- and part of that is amends and going back to the base to contemplate one's actions, accept them, and turn around to commit to betterment and growth in this transient moment, just right now. Because tomorrow, who knows. Easier said than done, and near the end we sense that he may want to give up- but children and dancing are emblems of a higher power that can perhaps restore him to sanity- especially Ferrara's own, in real life.

The late-speech about anger and drawing energy from outside of the 'self' (yet still remaining self-focused), stated by who I imagine is his sponsor, addresses the video I've linked a few times here that summarizes the science behind will power pertaining to life broadly, but based in addiction studies. It also expands upon this idea to become one of the most beautiful truths in film history, finding a complicated web in simple terms. As a person I'm close to, who is a member of this same fellowship, always says: Come at every situation with love and compassion, and things will generally be okay. Ferrara is eerily speaking my language here and ultimately he surprised me the most by making a movie that undoes all the irritating attributes I find in the rest of his work, in committing to the exact opposite attitudes. Yet the fantasy he engages with at the end directly confronts his past cinematic explorations, repurposed as an externalization of his unmanageable emotions and defaults into self-pity, including an image of self-destruction that is equally self-aggrandizing related to Christ! "Egomaniac with an inferiority complex" as they say in the program. I don’t know if I’m ready to call this the greatest film ever made about the recovery aspect of addiction specifically, but if it’s not, it’s damn-near close. It's certainly a rare picture of the complex contradictory nature of humanity, which is a language everyone willing to self-reflect can speak.

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soundchaser
Leave Her to Beaver
Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2016 12:32 am

Re: The Films of 2020

#47 Post by soundchaser » Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:03 am

I don’t know if this counts as a “film” of this year, but I had to watch it so you have to hear about it.

Eric Andre’s stand-up special is one of the worst of its genre I’ve ever seen — fifty minutes of crass, cringeworthy jokes well over ten years old (“711 was an inside job”? Seriously?), easy “political” lines deliberately designed to get applause from the audience (“legalize everything” is neither a brave stance nor a particularly funny one!), and the screaming. Oh my God, the incoherent screaming that seems to end every bit as if it’s a punchline in and of itself.

Speaking of punchlines: hope you’ve done a lot of drugs, because Andre seems to think recounting all the times he got *really high, bro* is inherently hilarious. If that doesn’t do it for you, let him regale you with the story of having his asshole eaten out by his ex. Or make himself out to be the good guy in a situation where he makes a 3 AM booty call only to get into a conflict with his conquest’s new boyfriend? It’s just baffling to me that anyone could find that bit funny.

Now, I should come clean: I’m a little prudish when it comes to some of the subject matter here (just personally speaking), but I can appreciate a good Aristocrats-style joke when it’s well structured, cleverly delivered, or sufficiently entertaining in its own right. The material on display has none of that going for it. It’s unbearable. I’ve seen isolated bits of The Eric Andre Show that have made me chuckle, but stand-up is clearly not his forte.

It absolutely kills me that this special was filmed in New Orleans, because there’s so much to this city other than this shitgibbon’s insistence that it’s a terrible place to get cocaine. Oh, and he plays a Big Freedia song in the intro, so I expect a ton of transplants and/or tourists who think they know everything about New Orleans culture™️ will eat this up.

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domino harvey
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Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: The Films of 2020

#48 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:24 pm


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soundchaser
Leave Her to Beaver
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Re: The Films of 2020

#49 Post by soundchaser » Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:13 pm

Color me amazed to find that’s not common parlance.

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Reverend Drewcifer
Joined: Sat Mar 09, 2013 5:16 pm
Location: Cincinnati

Re: The Films of 2020

#50 Post by Reverend Drewcifer » Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:42 pm

The Ghost of Peter Sellers. Peter Medak never really set the world on fire, though to hear him speak about it, he was on the path to all-timer status before Peter Sellers roped him into Ghost in the Noonday Sun, after which Medak became gunshy and too insecure to reach the heights of The Ruling Class again. I don’t buy it. Medak had a short run of satiric British whats-its like The Ruling Class and A Day in the Death of Joe Egg and was building a nice but very small career for himself. Sellers, meanwhile, had a debris field a mile long behind him, and his status as “the most bankable comedy star” according to Medak in his documentary necessitates multiple asterisks to qualify. That Medak was sold on filming at sea with no script, as well as a star capable of scorched-earth childishness, tells me that this director was - at best - not ready for primetime, and was at worst a marshmallow naïf with no idea how badly he was about to get roasted. Either way, Medak’s self-assessment in the documentary is pitiable, and his for-hire status in the years after his encounter with Sellers seems an inevitability no matter what damage Ghost in the Noonday Sun did to his self-confidence. At one point, Medak is remonstrating with Piers Haggard and Joseph McGrath. Imagine that: Medak in the company of the guys who made The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu and The Magic Christian, wondering what the hell went wrong.

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