A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

I am inclined to agree to a significant degree with crumbs (as he and I have discussed) and CT, even if I don't agree with y'all on this movie in particular.
As always, I do not require that a movie have strong narrative and really, cherry-picking what "bad" movies do well is a significant hobby of mine. But when something in a movie just outright offends me by how stupid it is, that's hard for me to overcome. Again, I am a person who likes the movie Ultraviolet, because I can pick out lots of fun stuff that happened in that bad movie. But that is not the same for me as Near Dark which is Near Good until it's suddenly, jarringly, not. I think there's a weird Uncanny Valley with movies that are Near Good but then have something awful happen, ya know, like the third act of Sunshine happening, that turns them from a good movie to a bad one and even from very good movie to a terrible one. And I think that is often obvious (Sunshine). But it's a little more nuanced, I think, when we're dealing with lower-budget films where we're already forgiving a number of things going in because we're rooting for the film and then the movie over-performs maybe (probably because of Bigelow or Boyle for example) but then just has a glaring error that makes the whole thing crumble. I think that's different from what we've been talking about, when a movie is actually doing fine and then just shits the bed is totally different from a movie that has a lot to overcome but offers numerous charms. Like, Near Dark is not positive in the way Just Before Dawn is. In fact, in some ways, JBD is actually better than ND because both films ultimately succeed in a number of ways (even though JBD's successes are much more humble) but JBD never stumbles and falls flat on its face and shits the bed and that matters. Is there a lot to like in Near Dark? Absolutely. Is it incredibly disappointing that they couldn't stick the landing? It is. And I think that is one area where I have trouble, when a movie has really given you a lot of promise throughout and then shits the bed. That's much much worse to me, by fa,r than a movie that was never really "good" but has charms too offer.
I'm babbling but hopefully my point was in there somewhere.

I have less issue with what it tried to do than how it did it. I was deeply disappointed in how the tone of the film changed from sober and reflective, to goofy and childish (I still absolutely love the first 2/3s though)


Also, these past few years it has become abundantly clear, Danny Boyle is mostly shit.



I'll always have Trainspotting though. Basically one of the only movies in history that basically just exists to be cool and hip and that I still enthusiastically support.

Fair enough. This is what I was wondering, just how much you appreciated it until it becomes kind of stupid. If you were only on the fence, then I get how a lousy ending can ruin the whole thing.

Wait, what? There was pushback against Last Year At Marienbad making some list? What were the rules? Cause that movie is a ****ing masterpiece and I'll say it, that thing that I never say but I'll say it over this one, if you don't respect LYaM, see more movies.
Sorry, that got me worked-up.

Yeah, there were a few who called it pretentious.

Yes. Just like some great musicians are terrible lyricists. Or some great songwriters can't play their instruments. Or some beautiful records have bad production. You got to look past the layers of what doesn't work. Things can still transcend. It's after all rare that any one piece of art is firing on all cylinders. Usually, to be really great at one thing, you end up sacrificing somewhere else.



The more we can accept the stuff that doesn't work in things we would otherwise like, the more we will start to appreciate more and more things. Horizons broaden. And then the walls start breaking down between us and the things we once though were worthless.


Basically, I've long felt the more receptive we are to more things, the better we will be in the long run. This nonsense about developing a discerning pallette over time, and becoming more reluctant to what we will accept as good, is garbage. The goal should be to like more and more, not less and less. People who have really deep and great insight into why they like the dozen things they actually like, and who then proceed to shrug at the rest of the world, are idiots.

From what I remember, I don't remember anyone ever calling LYAM pretentious in that thread. I think the pushback was mainly for Daisies.

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Also, I might as well utilize this post to remind you all that I'm still on team Sunshine.

As I said in the current countdown thread, I didn't really consider Daisies for my comedy ballot, because for whatever reason I don't really think of it as a comedy. But now, given the extent of the pushback on it, I really wished I had.

I have not seen Sunshine since the theaters, but I remember being warned about the turn in the last part and as such, was not as greatly affected by it. It even seemed like a perfectly fine movie segment. Just not as good as the one that would have continued what we had been getting. Or would have been better grafted onto a version of Sunshine where the first two thirds were more compatible with it. But it was what it was.


Funny how back then, for me it was, "Danny Boyle's doing a space movie." Now it's, "the space movie that Alex Garland wrote before becoming a director."

Yeah, it is true that I was not as enamored of it as I expected to be throughout. I was never a big Bill Paxton fan, at least until later in life (I always thought he overdid it) and, while I always liked Jenny Wright, the male lead actually did very little for me. And I don't know what I expected, I just remember (twice) that I expected more. So then when things went South, I had much less charity for it.
This is why I think I need to revisit it. I remember when I thought Night Of The Demons was an unwatchably bad movie and got into a bit of a dust-up with MASSIVEminiature, who I liked quite a bit, over it as it was either one of his favorites or his absolute favorite. When I re-watched it within the last two years I thought it was perfectly charming for what it was. So I think these more attuned viewing eyes that I feel I have now need to be directed at ND and see if I don't enjoy it a lot more than I did and at least the ending won't be a shock.

The foreign film countdown, to be clear.

I don't find anything about the 3rd act of the film childish or goofy. The filmmaking remains consistently top notch and evokes the themes of the story. Pinbacker only occupies about 10 mins of the final act anyways, so even he were as atrocious as others say (he isn't), he isn't there long.

Nothing in that could or should outweigh the perfection of the scene that is Cappa's Jump, for which the score for that scene alone has been pillaged but never matched in it's original use.

Danny Boyle is a fine director in need of a good screen writer. When he works with folks like Alex Garland, he's great. When he works with Richard Curtis... At least it's better made than the films Curtis himself directed?

THE BLACK PHONE

The broad strokes, performances, payoffs and characters are all well done. Some of the details are sloppy. If you can look past things like an indestructible toilet lid that can pulverise concrete, you're in for a great time. Biggest positive audience reaction I can recall since Avengers Endgame.

4/5

MAD GOD

Imaginative, meticulously crafted, and relentlessly peculiar. Imagine a Tool music video that's 80+ mins long and you're in the right wheelhouse. Phil Tippet is quite clearly mad and the god of stop motion.

4.5/5

And that was the issue I had with their criticisms. Not so mu chi they didn’t like the film, that’s their right and who are we to tell them otherwise? Let them dislike films on their own terms.
The issue I had was, as you noted, they treated the films like some sort of personal attack.

They prefer a more narrative approach? Fine. That’s for them.
I disagree that a 3rd act can ruin a movie, as it Absolutely can, and we don’t have to agree here, and that too, is fine.

Prententious?!!!
It was ambitious, I'll give them that. If being ambitious and on the cutting-edge and trying to advance the art-form is pretentious, then this medium is in trouble.

Oh good. *stops sharpening axe*

Actually, I just found out that Wyldesyde was referring to the foreign film countdown, so it looks like you'll have to resume sharpening your axe.

That's pretty much exactly how I felt. Maybe not childish and goofy (though I agree it kinda felt that way compared to the very introspective and potentially profound mood that had been set) but certainly an ill-advised dissonance from the rest of the film that may have been intentional but that doesn't mean it worked. Like in music. There are no "wrong notes" but the context in which you play dissonance actually matters a lot and when your dissonance doesn't suit the context, you will generally get side-eye from musicians and seasoned listeners. And I gave Sunshine all the side-eye it could handle.
But it's also for me just a brutal failure of delivering on promise. And it's conceptual and not the only Boyle movie I feel this way about. Boyle likes to have his third acts not go quite where you'd expect them, but there is an inherent peril in that. You must deliver. Your concept must succeed or the whole thing falls. The movie, for two acts, really seems to be about, narratively and tonally, something far more interesting than what the third act delivers and, for me, the difference between what it promised and what it delivered was so large that Sunshine actually owes me money.