Omni's Random Video Noise

Hullo

02-28-16

Originally Posted by Cole416

American Psycho is not a perfect movie.

I've yet to see a perfect movie.

Originally Posted by Cole416

I did actually laugh out loud at that part, and didn't feel like it was out of place or worthless.

I didn't say it was. I just think it was too long for too little.

Originally Posted by Cole416

It's a pretty memorable scene and one of the first that comes to mind to people when I ask if they had seen it.

I'll agree it's memorable.

Originally Posted by Cole416

You shouldn't like the characters.

You miss my point here. I shouldn't like them as people, but I should like them as characters.

I don't like The Joker from The Dark Knight as a person, but I love him as a character.

It what makes me want to watch him. It should be the same way with Patrick Bateman, but scenes in which he's fun to watch make up only a fraction of the movie for me.

Originally Posted by Cole416

Thats the message the film is trying to get out there. All those yuppies think they have such great lives with their money, clothes, haircuts, friends, even business cards. They all blab about nonsense and it doesn't seem like anyone gives a rats ass about each others' personal lives. They just use each other to boost their egos. They don't even know each others' name!

I mention this in my original post. I don't think the movie does the concept any better than any other of the many movies that tackle the same concept. The only point in this regard that I think American Psycho excels in when Patrick flips out over a business card. THAT'S the kind of absurdity I wished was consistent throughout the movie.

Originally Posted by Cole416

He's a wannabe because hes a vet who most likely has PTSD.

That an assumption.

Originally Posted by Cole416

You might not even think vigilantism is necessary, but you're not him.

You miss the point again here. Vigilantism is "always" necessary, the question is at what convinces the main character to become one. Another element to vigilantism is catharsis from seeing justice done, however that catharsis is inversely related to the degree of injustice we're tackling.

The movies I listed all do a better job at making be empathize with the main character in this regard.

Originally Posted by Cole416

He saw a girl (prostitute) trying to get away from an abusive pimp and decided that something was needed to be done.

Sure enough, but the build up to this and the execution feel way off to me.

Originally Posted by Cole416

I thought the relationship with Cybill helped emphasize how out of touch Travis is with reality.

It only made me think of how unrealistic and stupid Cybill is.

Originally Posted by Cole416

she probably thought he was cute for approaching her like that.

She probably hasn't lived in the city for very long. Or she's been sheltered her whole life. Or she's stupid.

Originally Posted by Cole416

As for the attempted assassination of the Presidential Candidate, I sort of agree. I thought it helped with the development of Travis.

What did it develop?

Originally Posted by Cole416

It showed he was unstable and could explode

Like I said, DONE WAY BETTER IN OTHER MOVIES.

Originally Posted by Cole416

Maybe it's because he didn't think the Senator did a good job of doing anything w/ his advice about the scum.

He's getting ELECTED, HE HASN'T HAD A CHANCE TO DO ANYTHING YET!

Originally Posted by Cole416

I thought it was still a pretty good scene in the film.

Even though the entire scene is anchored in "maybe" motivations?

Originally Posted by Cole416

"Nicest and most genial pimps" - still a pimp. Scum to him is what he does, not how he acts about it.

How he acts about it factors into that injustice thing I was talking about. In The Brave One, it's bad enough to have your fiance killed in front of you, but if you were to distinctly remember the perpetrators laughing while they did it, it'd leave a stronger impression on you.

Originally Posted by Cole416

Honestly, I think you just need to remember he's a Vietnam war vet and that definitely made him, for a lack of a better word, crazy.

That isn't conveyed at all. At least not as much as it should.

Originally Posted by Cole416

He's not gonna do rational things that you or I would do in that situation.

No, but it should seem rational to him. Just because he does things doesn't mean they're automatically justified, they need to make sense as things he would do.

We get an inner monologue from Travis several times throughout the movie and yet it's completely absent during scenes like the assassination attempt. Where's the sense in that?

It's not like the inner monologue was telling us anything of significance we couldn't already infer before, so why now, when we need it does it go away?

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Thursday Next

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

02-28-16

Originally Posted by Omnizoa

You miss my point here. I shouldn't like them as people, but I should like them as characters.

I think this is a really important distinction, well put.

Omnizoa

Hullo

02-28-16

Originally Posted by Thursday Next

I think this is a really important distinction, well put.

Originally Posted by Omnizoa

Likability is pretty important for me to care. Even if they're total bad guys.

Last edited by Omnizoa; 02-29-16 at 02:27 PM.

Omnizoa

Hullo

02-29-16

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Fantasy Horror / English / 1983

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
I Review Your Favorite: Locke (Derek Vinyard):

Originally Posted by Mr Minio

You better not review mine.

Mr Minio's favorite is Werckmeister Harmonies which seems to be circus-related. This reminded me of The Devil's Carnival which I didn't care for, but was made by the same guys behind Repo: The Genetic Opera which I really liked. Made me want a really good dark carnival-themed movie, preferably one where the dark carnival represents hell or some kind of purgatory. That's when I found this.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
The potential's all there. The concept is solid, the story is more than reasonable but... it just never clicked with me.

Perhaps the setups felt too obvious, perhaps the carnival itself didn't give off the atmosphere I'd wanted, or perhaps Mr. Dark just never came across as the compelling central villain he was intended to be.

I've never read the book the movie's based on, but I wonder if I'd have preferred it.

Certain story beats feel way off.

For one, the two main characters are kids, and likewise the movie uses this as an excuse for them to act stupid. Repeatedly.

And for second, the notion that this carnival travels under the facade of a friendly traveling business in entertainment is routinely broken over the writer's knee for all sorts of contrived character dialog.

The two kids never tell anyone what they see happen at the carnival until it's too late and Mr. Dark starts hunting them down, and even once Mr. Dark starts hunting them down, he still seems concerned about maintaining the illusion that his carnival is legit even though he's literally walking around town with a parade of people he's kidnapped behind him.

During the penultimate scene of the movie Mr. Dark gets his best moment to shine as a villain by trying to compel main character #1, Jim's, dad to tell him where he is, EVEN THOUGH BY THIS POINT WHAT'S THE POINT IN FINDING THE KIDS TO SHUT THEM UP IF YOU'RE REVEALING YOUR EVIL PLAN TO DO IT, and the best he can come up with is to try and haggle years back into his life.

His whole strategy is to rip out pages of a book one by one and with each page torn out, that's another year Jim's dad could have got back if he'd have only stopped him and agreed to hand over his son.

Thing is, this presupposes that Jim's dad values his son less than a few years of life and a book. Maybe they thought that because he was a librarian that would irrationally compel him to lose sight of his priorities? I DON'T KNOW it's dumb.

Sure enough Jim's dad never stops him, but Jim gives himself away which just sours the whole moment.

EGH. This movie could have worked, but it's not terrible, so it's just a whatever movie for me.

Final Verdict:

[Meh...]

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cricket

Registered User

02-29-16

I can't believe I'm just noticing this thread now. Looking real good.

Omnizoa

Hullo

02-29-16

Originally Posted by cricket

I can't believe I'm just noticing this thread now. Looking real good.

Thanks!

Omnizoa

Hullo

02-29-16

Mad Max: Fury Road

Action / English / 2015

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
A combination of having watched Locke, which is the only other Tom Hardy movie I've seen and the Oscars which I didn't vote for since I'd only seen Star Wars 7 and Mad Max this year. If I had voted for anything, it'd have been Mad Max though.

Feels like more than enough excuse to watch it again. Right?

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Anytime I describe this movie to someone with the phrase, "and they've got this one truck dedicated to war drums and one guy with a double-necked flamethrower electric guitar to provide backing music" and the person I'm talking to responds with anything other than, "that's ****ing awesome" you're clearly not an action movie person.

What else can I say, really? This is the only movie I've seen since Inception which sold me on the trailer AND lived up to it.

I'm not a car person. I literally have never driven a car in my entire life and desert settings put me off a lot of movies, but THIS... THIS WAS AWESOME.

Sure I can poke holes in it left and right. You can hardly call it "Mad Max" for one. It's not really about Max since Furiosa's character is front and center most of the time and you can hardly call him "Mad" without the completely useless hallucinations he has about characters we never explore and backstory that never factors into the plot.

This isn't Tom Hardy's movie, let's be honest. Locke was Tom Hardy's movie, this was Charlize Theron's movie and for once we get a pretty badass female protagonist rockin' it out.

She even delivers the killing blow to the bad guy which is just as, "OOOOOHHHHHHH!!!!!" as it needs to be.

Immortan Joe isn't quite as hateable as other lower-key villains since most of his villainy is just extremely chauvinistic shock material. The "breeder wives" and tanks of breast milk honestly just gross me out and I'm glad the story never turned into a "war against men" even though it would have been extremely easy with a couple bad lines of dialog.

Instead we get about 3 to 4 outstanding male characters and nearly twice as many female characters with all of them cooly slipping into the logic of the world with their resourcefulness and mechanical improvisation.

The improvisation is huge point in favor of this movie since everything we see looks like it's been cobbled together from scrap or designed to fulfill unconventional functions out of practicality from the warboys with traffic signs for literal shields to the War Rig dropping it's plow to dreg up sand to put out the fire on it's engine, it all clicks.

The CG is really sneaky in this movie too. Plainly a lot of practical effects went into this movie which goes a long way to selling the action, but it's so prevalent that CG ranges from nearly impossible to notice to very obvious.

The really obvious CG is generally brief though and some of the best CG you need to take double takes to notice like- wait a second, Charlize Theron's missing an arm!

My biggest complaints would easily have to be the needless grossout moments of both Max and Nux eating CG critters. No thank you to that.

Still, they account for less than 60 seconds of this two hour hype train of a movie, so I can barely make a fuss about it.

All told, Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the greatest action movies I've ever seen. It's like if The Road Warrior and Speed had a baby. And it was perfect. Perfect in every way.

REWATCH UPDATE:
It's fairly evident on a rewatch that beyond the intentional silliness, there's a fair amount of unintentional silliness besides, stuff that really doesn't help the movie.

A couple action moments blow by so fast that I honestly didn't even grasp what happened, but at worst, reminded me of Sex and Fury 2.

There's this brief area of the movie right around the build to the climax when Mad Max has his premonition about getting shot in the face by the Masked Man where everything kinda slughs apart. Why does that even happen? That part of the movie could have been removed entirely and it would have made more sense. He sees danger, has a momentary flashback, shields his face, survives a crossbow bolt.

That's all well and good without the completely unnecessary foresight scene.

This Masked Man is also the one who manages to stab Furiosa with the gear shift dagger... which she throws, one-handed, over her shoulder, while she's driving, and kills a guy. What the ****!? You want something like that out of Stallone or Schwarzenegger you at least need a few feet of clearance to windup first!

Now, I'd be willing to forgive that as a moment of adrenalized badassery, if it weren't shortly followed by the Masked Man picking up the dagger and stabbing Furiosa with it, only to be defeated by Dying Grandma STABBING HIM IN THE FACE WITH BULLETS.

YOU CAN'T DO THAT. YOU CAN'T DEFEND YOURSELF WITH A HANDFUL OF BULLETS, THEY'RE ROUND CYLINDERS OF METAL, NOT CALTROPS.

It'dve been more realistic if you full-on poked the guy in the eyes with your fingers instead of trying to mash the equivalent of marbles in his face.

It's a shame too because this whole mess happens right around when Furiosa gets stabbed which I think is the best part of the movie, and now I'm suddenly distracted by the thought of, "Who the **** is this masked guy who's suddenly the most dangerous character in the movie and his mere presence warps the laws of physics?"

I dunno, it's weird. Still think the movie's ace though.

Final Verdict:

[Friggen' Awesome]

Last edited by Omnizoa; 10-24-16 at 10:02 PM.

gbgoodies

I'd give her a HA! and a HI-YA! Then I'd kick her.

03-01-16

Originally Posted by Omnizoa

Mad Max: Fury Road

[Friggen' Awesome]

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
A combination of having watched Locke, which is the only other Tom Hardy movie I've seen

Originally Posted by Omnizoa

WHAT'D I THINK?
What else can I say, really? This is the only movie I've seen since Inception which sold me on the trailer AND lived up to it.

Wasn't Tom Hardy in Inception?

Originally Posted by Omnizoa

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
A combination of having watched Locke, which is the only other Tom Hardy movie I've seen and the Oscars which I didn't vote for since I'd only seen Star Wars 8 and Mad Max this year. If I had voted for anything, it'd have been Mad Max though.

I think you mean Star Wars 7, not 8. Star Wars 8 doesn't come out until 2017.

Omnizoa

Hullo

03-01-16

Originally Posted by gbgoodies

Wasn't Tom Hardy in Inception?

You're right, I totally forgot. He wasn't the central character though.

Originally Posted by gbgoodies

I think you mean Star Wars 7, not 8. Star Wars 8 doesn't come out until 2017.

Yeah, I realized my mistake a few hours ago.

Omnizoa

Hullo

03-01-16

Turbo Kid

Action Comedy / English / 2015

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
It's one of the movies that popped up while I was searching around for Mad Max since it's also rooted in 80s post-apocalptic fiction. And given that poster, how could I not?

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
The crazy blast of retro sci-fi nostalgia I got from this movie's combination of themes, visual aesthetic, and soundtrack were ALMOST enough to make me rate this movie higher. The movie even made me laugh a couple times and after seeing it I desperately want to see more movies follow in it's footsteps and pay homages to those "totally rad" movies of the past the same way Black Dynamite parodied and exemplified the blaxploitation genre.

Turbo Kid is not a parody though, and I'm going to rate it harshly because I feel it shot itself in the face by failing to understand a basic distinction in the sort of tone the medium it's trying to imitate is supposed to go for.

On one hand, the opening of the movie plainly plays up to the 70s/80s/90s impression of child wonderment. Our main character is still a kid at heart and despite living on his own out in the wasteland he spends most of his time collecting comic books, playing with toys, and pretending to be a superhero. It honestly reminds me of a lot of early Spielberg movies back in the day like E.T. and The Goonies.

A strong emphasis is on retro sci-fi/superhero comic book themes.

All of this clashes with what seems to be an attempt to blend these ideas in with more adult action movies of the time like The Terminator or Mad Max: Road Warrior.

This SOUNDS like it could work, after all what movie might better encapsulate all of the various influences someone might have growing up in 80s USA with relatively liberal freedom over what they watched or read?

THE PROBLEM IS that adult aspect goes WAY BEYOND The Terminator's level of violence, it's goes clear into the 90s with Story of Ricky type ****, it gets REALLY graphic.

And that's the thing, why is my Spielbergian whimsy getting mixed up with a horror movie gore? THERE'S SO MUCH BLOOD and I hate gratuitous blood geysers in even REGULAR action movies.

Here, they don't even take the opportunity to make it any sort of joke, like the creator legit wanted to make this really cute nostalgia piece, but he's just seen Dawn of the Dead one too many times.

We get piss, we get kicks to the nuts, and we bisect so many bad guys that they literally stack up. Is that supposed to be funny? I'm not laughing at that. I'm really NOT laughing at that.

You know if Turbo Kid wanted to maintain their tone, they still could have been bloody, there's plenty you can do with PG-13 violence.

But even as someone who utterly loathes the age rating system, I'm appalled to see what might otherwise be a fun-for-the-whole-family throwback action-adventure-comedy feature a scene in which someone's intestines are graphically dragged out of him with a bicycle wheel.

****in' sick.

Final Verdict:

[Meh...]

Last edited by Omnizoa; 05-28-16 at 07:18 PM.

Omnizoa

Hullo

03-02-16

Imaginaerum by Nightwish

Psychological Drama / English / 2012

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
After watching Mad Max: Fury Road I thought, "gosh there are a shortage of epic metal movies". Then I found Imaginaerum which I had been meaning to watch. A symphonic metal band's concept movie? Sweet.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Considering Ink, Imginaerum is the sort of the movie that should be right up my alley, and for precisely that very reason I'm also going to be very critical towards it.

The basic premise is that a man lies demented and dying on his hospital bed and as his daughter finds resolution in his death due to their strained relationship, he battles nightmarish abstractions of his past.

The band, Nightwish, themselves appear throughout the movie lending a rocking soundtrack to some of the more dramatic plot beats, but they're mostly out of sight while the characters themselves wax back and forth about their predicaments.

The events that unfold are interesting and there are a few surprises here and there intermixed with a degree of charm and horror in equal measures. Mostly it feels like an adventure with a point. And I like that.

What few things I might complain about would be the sometimes questionable CG, particularly on our snowman/bogeyman character who never seems entirely real. Other uses of CG are very well done, but this bit seemed off, and I don't think it helped.

Another thing is our main character's daughter (whatever her name is) changes her a tune a bit too quick. She hates on her dad pretty hardcore, but she takes very little convincing to turn around which bothers me.

Some of the symbolism is a bit too on the nose.

It's tough to go much deeper without a rewatch which I'll probably do at some point, but for now I'm going to look up Nightwish, because as much as I like this movie, it must have REALLY SUCKED to see it piss 3 million dollars away at the box office.

REWATCH UPDATE

Imaginaerum really is best served with a second go-round since this movie is so densely packed with foreshadowing, symbolism, and parallels that a fair amount of it is liable to be forgotten by the time enough information is revealed for the audience to piece together.

Having seen it again, most everything becomes clear and I was able to enjoy it a fair bit more than the first time.

My criticisms have also shifted a fair bit as well.

The daughter's heel-face turn is easier to buy now that I think about it. The only questions I find raised now are general logical continuity questions like...

How come the snowman is still outside their window after what must be decades? I get that Nightwish comes from Finland and Finland is notoriously cold...

But even if you buy zero snowfall for that entire length of time, this line of reasoning only extends to people who make that mental leap to Finland. In most countries SNOW MELTS.

Also, nothing on the mother? At all? Just that HUGE coincidence?

Other things would be a couple scenes that don't appear to inform the audience of anything such as when Tom wakes up in the orphanage in his old age. This scene doesn't really seem to do anything other than very pointedly drawing attention to the snowman, toy soldier, and arabesque. Alright, that accomplished... closure? It wouldn't be so bad if this scene weren't already bookended by scenes that served the same purpose better.

A few moments also feel torn apart from the story and forced, lockstep, into presenting a musical sequence. This is more to do with editing, and honestly it's pretty nitpicky all things considered. The soundtrack's still kickin' and it does get pretty emotional by the end even if it doesn't quite earn tearjerker status from me.

Altogether, Imaginaerum is a fine movie and while I'm yet reluctant to really really make an exception of it, it's EASILY a recommendation for anyone who enjoys metal, dreamlike surrealism, and a story about letting go of grief.

Final Verdict:

[Pretty Good]

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Omnizoa

Hullo

03-02-16

Death Race 2000

Action Comedy / English / 1975

WHY'D I WATCH IT?

Originally Posted by Swan

Next he's going to give the 2008 Death Race a

or something.

Nah, that sounds boring, let's watch Death Race 2000, eh?

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*

wudafuq did i juss wahch???

Well, it was OBVIOUSLY a satire of... something... I think...

Is this The Running Man? Is this supposed to be like the Running Man? Alright...

This whole movie is weird. We spend the first half of the movie following around what anyone would naturally assume is the bad guy only for him to turn into the protagonist by literal process of elimination and all throughout we're given this bizarrely twisted perspective of the world which inexplicably felt more believable in The Hunger Games.

We get cartoony plots, strange dialog, and surprise twists in the form of dead-on-arrival puns. A HAND GRENADE? Really? And they say it so casually like OF COURSE his hand is also secretly a grenade! Jus' go with it, jus' go with it!

I can only assume this was supposed to be some sort of comedy, but everything from the obviously fake blood to the plastic looking cars to the double agent x double agent romance just made me go, HUH??

I was less baffled by Being John Malkovich!

At least now I know where The Tooncinator got his stock car explosion clip.

Final Verdict:

[Meh...]

Last edited by Omnizoa; 05-28-16 at 07:20 PM.

Omnizoa

Hullo

03-02-16

The New Barbarians

Action / Italian / 1983

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Cited as one of Turbo Kid's biggest influences, it's supposed to be an Italian Road Warrior knock-off. And once again, given that poster, how can I not?

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
Well, the inspiration is certainly obvious. Turbo Kid borrows a lot from The New Barbarians.

Despite being an obvious Mad Max knock-off, or perhaps BECAUSE it's an obvious Mad Max knock-off, The New Barbarians somehow manages to be better than both Turbo Kid and Death Race 2000 when it comes to it's action.

Turbo Kid suffered from an oversaturation of violence that was over-the-top, always gruesome, and always bloody. Lots of CG blood.

Death Race 2000 suffered from most of it's violence being fake to an almost cartoonish degree. Lots of really obviously prop blood.

The New Barbarians restrains itself to realism by barely using any blood, never being overly graphic in it's depiction of gruesome deaths, and smartly limiting it's gruesome deaths in the same way Fury Road does so when one actually does pop up, you're not already desensitized to it and expecting it.

The action is easily the best thing the movie has going for it though, so as much as will argue that it's a better movie than both Turbo Kid and Death Race 2000 as a whole, it has neither the nostalgic charm or comedic edge of those movies.

I don't think it really needs them though, as I said Death Race 2000's attempts at humor don't really work and Turbo Kid's graphic bloody violence ruins it's more childish ambitions. That said, The New Barbarians doesn't exactly offer anything else in exchange.

The story is so stock that the bad guy's motivations can be basically explained away as "they're godless homosexuals who love death".

At least I THINK that's what I'm supposed to be getting out of this.

I won't go into why the whole lack-of-women thing doesn't make sense here, but I will say that a homoerotic undercurrent becomes a homoerotic OVERCURRENT by the end of the movie.

After the barbarians (all men) are offhandedly called queers, the villain anally rapes the protagonist and the protagonist gets back at him by literally shoving a drill up his ass, which somehow causes him to explode.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF- brilliant.

Final Verdict:

[Meh...]

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Gideon58

Registered User

03-02-16

Originally Posted by Omnizoa

Taxi Driver

[Just... Bad]

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
The Gunslinger45 posted the "Are you talkin' to me?" scene to foster's Movie Quotes thread and it reminded me that I still haven't seen Taxi Driver. People also don't have enough reason to hate me either.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
It's strange that a movie like Taxi Driver, with a reputation for "greatest movie of all time" nearing that of Citizen Kane (another movie I haven't seen yet), feels so... weak.

Taxi Driver has honestly got to be one of the weakest vigilante movies I've ever seen. Isn't the point of a vigilante movie supposed to be for me to root for an underdog character who takes the law into his own hands? How can I do that if I don't like the character?

Robert De Niro as a nearly unrecognizably young Travis Bickle comes across as... a self-righteous wannabe in a bad way.

Before we're even given any reason to think vigilantism might even be necessary, Travis monologues about "all the scum on the streets" as if he was Rorschach or something.

I don't recall Rorschach wanting to "clean up the queens" though. >.>

Thing is, Rorschach is already a vigilante. Travis isn't yet. So we have to see what provokes him to become one.

Apparently one scene in which a hooker stumbles into his cab and gets dragged out by a pimp is enough for him to buy multiple guns, design a fancy hidden-gun-esque device for his arms, and then idle until the end of the movie to confuse the **** out of me with his motivations.

He talks up one woman which is just agonizing to watch.

Why would any sane woman agree to a date with someone who creepily stalks and approaches you for you looks alone? RED FLAG.

Then once they're on a date, Travis admits that he has an irrational hatred for her friendly co-worker, likely out of jealousy. RED FLAG.

Then he convinces her to see a porno. OOOOHHH!!! Step BACK! THAT'S CROSSING THE LINE! And here I thought you actually liked me for my personality and political beliefs!

The woman actually works for a senator's political campaign and despite having what seems to be a pleasant exchange in his cab, Travis's first target seems to be the senator himself. Why? What possible excuse could he have to kill the senator? What, does he believe it might somehow allow him to see the woman if there's no candidate for her to work for? Where's the dialog for that? What, why, how, when???????

He talks to probably one of the nicest and most genial pimps I've ever seen and suddenly he comes away with "that guy is the sickest worst scum of the earth", WHYYYY??? Haven't you seen worse by now?

I read that Travis is supposed to be "mentally unstable" which seems to be only reinforced by the medicine he's taking. Without that he might as well just be some random douchebag. And I hate saying douchebag, but really what does it add to the story to make him "mentally unstable"?

Okay, so this is the story about a mentally ill taxi driver who's unrealistic standards provokes him to almost shoot a politician and kill a few thugs to help one girl and impress another who left him? Save his go-go-gadget guns, I'm not impressed.

I liked the noir elements of the movie, the music and attention to detail really helped set the mood, but I was so distant from the characters that everything felt unnecessarily drawn out. Travis's "death scene" is followed by a nearly 3 MINUTE collection of pan shots away from his body which just goes to serve as probably the most egregious example of padding.

He doesn't even die either, which is sorta good. At least the vigilante lives to vigilant again... I guess?

I can think of a bunch of movies that did a better job of giving me reason to empathize with the vigilante:

The Brave One
Falling Down
Taken
Kick-Ass
The Crow
Batman Begins
V For Vendetta

Hell, friggen' DARK MAN, as stupidly cheesy and hilariously over-the-top as it is, did a better job making me feel bad about the hero and want him to beat the bad guys.

I love Taxi Driver, but even I always wondered why when Travis finally gets a date with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), he takes her to a porno movie...that's just not right.

Tugg

Registered User

03-02-16

I'm with Omnizoa on "Taxi Driver". We really don't get to see what motivates Travis to lash out.

Omnizoa