The best movies satisfy both selfs/selves
🪻 yes, thank you. the other stuff is settling.
I like weird movies, but I don’t try or pretend to decode the nuance. I like weird for the sake of weird.
High Rise, Cosmopolis, Mulholland Drive, The Walrus, The Lobster, Ect. Sometimes I enjoy them, sometimes I just enjoy bullying them.
How serious a movie takes itself is everything.
Take Disclosure Day.
That was not a 3/5, it was the worst movie I’ve seen in years specifically because of how self-important it presented itself as. I hated it. It expected you to be wowed, and moved, even though the characters make nonsensical decisions, the scenes are random, its plot makes no sense, and its depiction of aliens have precisely zero scientific or speculative grounding. It should have been up my alley: I love weird sci fi, I am not picky about movies, I think about alien civilization might look like too much. Yet I was actively offended.
I could smell the script writers’ ego in the theatre.
I was agitated after, like I had been tricked into watching Ancient Aliens.
And on the other hand, The End of Oak Street.
It’s 80s suburbia. With dinosaurs.
It is not complicated.
It does not take itself too seriously. It provides a quick setup, and lampshades constantly. And it’s just fun! It’s emotional scenes even landed surprisingly hard.
Not once, not during the whole movie, did I ever think “well, that’s scientifically implausible” or “that’s not a realistic decision” because it is 80s dinosaurs and that is clearly not the point. Hence, the movie was a delight.
So yeah. IMO, that determines which side of the panel I land on.
i thought end of oak street was really good, i really liked it. it was kinda dumb, but i liked that i could just eat popcorn with my hubby and have a good time.
a movie i did not really enjoy was the Odyssey. It was too dark, it was too loud, it had some cool scenes, for sure, but it also took itself just way too seriously. like, I couldn’t get into it for some reason, but Oak Street, i could, idk why.
I really liked Odyssey, but that is a fair criticism. I would add that it felt rushed, too.
Odyssey was so Chris Nolany is hurts. And Chris Nolany precisely means too dark, too noisy, and very serious.
But barring a few silly fights or scenes, I thought it got away with the seriousness better, partially because it was shown, not told. Mostly.
i do wanna say the Hades scene and the Witch scenes were easy highlights for me, that Hades scene really sent chills down my spine with Sinnon and how he had been used by Odysseus.
I do enjoy crappy B-tier movies. But only if it’s clear that the actors have That Special Gleam in their eyes that tells you they had a blast doing it. I can sit through the worst movies ever, and if the actors look like they were laughing and joking when the camera was off, I’ll love it.
If you can tell that every single person on the set hates themselves, each other, and the movie, it will show up in the final print. Don’t ask me how, it just does.
I’d love to hear your top movies for the Gleam
When people ask me about my “favourite movie” or when I rank movies myself, I like to think about what type of movie it is.
Outright fun - Movies which are an absolute romp and will always cheer you up and make you laugh or smile
Cinematographic experience - Movies that really push and define the very medium of cinema. Beautiful, clever, and crafted with absolute skill
Personal impact - Movies which left a lasting impression on me, and made me reflect on life, and being. Movies where you feel like watching them actually changed you as a person a little.
There are so many ways that movies can be “good” it feels unfair to make them fight for just a single podium.
my “favourite movie”
Personal impact - Movies which left a lasting impression on me, and made me reflect on life, and being. Movies where you feel like watching them actually changed you as a person a little.
I think favourite movie fits this more, the others are “best movie” or “guilty pleasure”/“film you watch the most”/similar
I honestly think it depends.
Schindler’s List had a lot of impact on me, for example, but I only ever watched it once and have zero desire to watch it again because it’s so very emotional.
I couldn’t really call it a “favourite” on that basis.
I genuinely think that ‘favourite’ is a linguistically overloaded term which means different things depending on who is asking, and the context of asking. And that’s why I find it useful to split things up a little.
My general framework for critique of basically every form of art can be summarized with two questions:
“What were they trying to do?”
“How well did they do it?”
If you set out to make something that is just trying to be fun without challenging anything and you nailed it, 10/10.
If you’re trying to make something that really has something to say, but it fell short, I’m going to be a lot more critical.
I don’t think it’s any easier to achieve any particular version of this. It’s not any easier to make good art that’s just supposed to be fun than it is to make good art that takes itself seriously. The bar is always the same. I guess it could even be shortened to one question:
“How well did this artwork achieve what it set out to do?”
I think a poorly executed movie with something big to say can be better than a well executed movie with nothing to say. That’s why The Last Jedi is better than the Force Awakens
Some art is good precisely because of a fundamental clash between intention and result. Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” earnestly tries to be a drama, fails spectacularly, and thus becomes an excellent comedy and a fascinating exploration of Wiseau’s psyche. A tragic and undeserved 0/10 by your framework.
Wiseau’s later work tries and fails to replicate his debut’s cult success with intention. It’s all much worse than The Room, but 5/10 in your framework.
“Art is the study of choice” is a phrase that has had me locked in ever since I heard it
🤔 but there are a lot of great works of art that had no intention of it.
An example would help… But my first apprehension is that critique is most valuable when based purely on one’s own interpretation, rather than having the artist tell you outright what they intended.
Like having an author outright tell you the theme of a story, rather than exploring a theme with such clarity that it either comes across or leads to new thoughts in the reader. Something is lost if the creator spikes that football out in the open.
Didn’t challenge me as a viewer
MF wants Dark Souls storytelling in a film.
Oh, you didn’t notice that the object that was on screen for 3 frames? That’s why you don’t get the major plot twist? Git gud scrub
And this comes from someone who quite enjoyed Primer.
EDIT : To be clear, primer is the film that gets explained by the diagram below. The parts that are in the film are in yellow, not blue.
I loved Primer, best time travel movie by far.
Usually don’t like time travel movies, thru feel like lazy writing, but Primer nails it.
I personally believe that both things can be true at the same time. Like, one of my favorite movies of all times is The Blues Brothers and I love that movie so much because it has no other pretense than showing you a good, fun, absurd way to enjoy music. Does it challenge the viewer at any time? Nope. Is it a lot of fun, possibly the most fun you’ll ever get from a movie (if you’re like me)? Yep.
I think the only bad movie I really liked was Snowpiercer. It has to be the worst Sci-Fi I’ve seen. Why are they on a train? Why does it have to move? Why does it have to go around the world? Why does it go around the world in a year? If they have infinite energy why not use to… you know… heat some building? Nothing makes sense but damn does it deliver the message well. Such a cool vibe.
I can’t stand any of the modern “Sci-Fi” like Marvel. For me it’s just like watching someone play video game. All the CGI means there’s no acting, no suspense., just sequences of events. Yawn.
I don’t think superhero movies should really be thought of as sci fi. They are rarely truly about the fictional advanced technology they use, and they often contain magic elements as well. Though, most of the MCU fails on superhero metrics too IMO.
I don’t really consider them Sci-Fi but sadly studios count them as such and because of that you have very little real Sci-Fi movies now.
Why are they on a train?
it’s an allegoryThe train has to keep moving or else it stops generating power. If they stop the train the wheels freeze. As for why a train it wasn’t suppose to be a lifeboat for humanity it was suppose to be a tourist attraction which is why it goes around the world.Source: Took it once back in college and lost an arm. 2/10 the place smelled awful.
Obviously a simple tourist attraction would not be designed to be fully sustainable for years and years. If they had time to adapt the train to be self sufficient they would have time to build a circular track that doesn’t go over bridges and stuff. And the “moving to generate power” thing obviously also doesn’t make sense. It supposed to be some sort of magical perpetuum mobile. But again, doesn’t matter. The movie was still great. Even the show was good.
It was advertised as a perpetual mobile machine, but as we found out that was a lie. It was originally just a luxury train cruise, but then the freezing started so they repurposed it to be a self sustaining life raft. But once again, nothing lasts forever.
It seems like the biggest issue with the movie you might have is lack of detail, you can read the source material. It’s not that ridiculous that eccentric billionaire converts their over engineered luxery cruise line to survive the apocalypse.
Nope, it is a perpetual motion machine (https://snowpiercer.fandom.com/wiki/The_Engine) which is psychically impossible.
It’s not really that important. If you consider Snowpiercer train technology physically plausible… that’s cool. For me it’s all incredibly silly but the movie still works. It’s clear it was just an allegory and the world is absurd on purpose. They didn’t want to create an almost correct world so they created a crazy one.
They’re on a train because it’s a metaphor for society and also because trains are cool.
Of course it’s a metaphor. Metaphor doesn’t explain the science behind it though.
And I love both of them.
Brugge is a terrible movie, give me Cocaine Crabs from Outer Space any day.
Some movies are bad but entertaining - see Adam Sandler and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Some movies are just bad.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day is high cinema and I will not be accepting arguments to the contrary.
Movies that are bad but entertaining: Evolution (2001) with David Duchovny is fantastic, but it’s absolutely a trashy movie lmao
Arnold didn’t do much actual acting in the terminator movies though :P
I don’t remember when he talked about it but Arnold claimed that he read the script. loved it and then bumped into Cameron at some event. He started talking to him about the role like “the actor should not look at the gun as he reloads it, he should do everything automatically by touch” and other things that he thought will make the performance look more like a robot. Cameron was like “why don’t you play it?” but Arnold never played a bad guy before so he wasn’t sure the role was good for his career. Eventually he agreed and the rest is history…
So yeah, you would think that him looking like a robot in the movie was because he wasn’t acting but it’s actually the other way around.
He was also great in Total recall, Predator, True lies… Those are timeless classics (do you remember the remake of Total Recall with Farrell? Yeah, nobody does) not despite Arnold starring in them but, at least in part, because of it.
I love total recall. It’s horrendous but I love it. Same with kindergarten cop.
It’s been too long since I’ve seen terminator but I will have to give him credit on predator.
You take that back, it took gravitas and talent to walk menacingly in a rigid fashion, wear sunglasses indoors, and speak fewer words than a 3rd grade English paper.
T2 is an interesting piece. There are some cheesy lines and gratuitous fan service, but it’s also a very tight nail biter of a sci-fi thriller. It’s 137 minutes but you wouldn’t know it if you’re in the theater.
I presume the gp was referring more to things like commando or true lies.
Or jingle all the way, or predator, or 6th day or batman, or…
The man has certainly made a lot of fun-but-garbage movies…
Punch Drunk Love and Billy Madison are also high cinema! One a bit more than the other, but they’re both above a 6/10 for me which is raaaare
adam sandler ones are not the former, just bad
What are you looking at swan??
I try to do both, is something fun but doesn’t really push the envelope probably a 6/10. There’s nothing wrong being a 6/10, people act like its the worst rating when factually it’s still good.
We need to destigmatize low positives.
I feel like I can’t get out of the former category. But idk if it’s really a bad thing; freeing, when I realized I was only really watching movies to feel like I was part of culture, abd I could just, not.
I’m hypercritical of film but I can definitely enjoy things too.
I remember watching Disclosure Day. It was so bad, the tone was wildly inconsistent, and the dumbest choices were made at every opportunity. But I was laughing the whole time.
