Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

One of my favorite songs of all time.

It's one of those gateway songs for me which opened the door to appreciating so many more things.


I knew nothing of The Specials when my friend played the video for it. There was just such an odd quality of the melody and those voices singing together that took over my brain. It was at a time when all I thought that mattered in music was The Beatles, and then suddenly there was this.


Not long after my uncle made me a mixed tape of punk and post punk and this song was also on it, along with Concrete Jungle. Game changer.

I agee with you!

Wow, the Knives Out sequel is terrible. Whatever good will I had for the upcoming series of films, poof. No more. Awful. Hated it.

I don't have too much interest in seeing the sequel, but out of curiosity, how did you feel about the first one?

I enjoyed it a great deal. Gonna rewatch it soon because my wife wasn’t able to make it to the showing at the theater.

I felt it had a weaker first act than Knives Out but once the pieces click into place, it becomes sturdier and more entertaining.

There were no pieces to click. Nothing that happens in the plot could possibly make that flat shit work for me. Just dead on screen. The awfulest.


Even talking about it is depressing me.

I thought the first one was pretty great.

Why was it awful?

I was maybe 11 or 12 years old, in the first days of MTV, when this video would run often (since they didn't have that many videos to play) and it got stuck in my head as another of those "oh, this is what music sounds like" (when most music really doesn't sound like this at all) formative moments for me. Probably didn't hurt that my older brother was listening to The Clash about this time.
But people who know me know, if Wooley's getting irritable, at work or in some other situation, you can put on "A Message To You Rudy" and he will chill out, because Wooley cannot help but be happy when he hears it.

Without having the film in front of me and being able to point at it and say 'are you looking at this bullshit?', they easiest way to explain it is that there are some movies that have an almost uncanny valley effect when I am watching them. I can see what the director is trying for, but mostly what I see is how they are only partially the way there. It almost looks like a half decent movie, it almost seems like a half decent performance, it could have been an amusing joke or a cracking bit of dialogue, but it just slides beneath goodness. And for me beneath even acceptability. When I find scene after scene trapped in this limbo between being an actual good movie, or at least being weird or strange or even bad enough to be an interesting one, it is a ****ing agony to watch. It puts me on edge. I can smell its failure. And the stink of Glass Onion is still all over my fingers the next day.


It's fitting it named itself after one of the all time worst Beatles songs.

Off the top of my head, the only scene that sort of worked in Glass Onion is (SPOILER, sort of) when Daniel Craig ruins Norton's game. The arrow was a nice punch line to that bit. But the rest....just kill me.

Always too much talk of arrows in my threads.


The quickest way to my heart, it seems.

What’s something that was specifically awful

Its existence?


Nearly the entire thing was not to my liking. What was awful was the cumulative effect of how unsatisfying I found it. It's not about a specific scene.It's about its overall and aggravating nothingness to me.



Could I go and put it on again and find a moment to try and articulate what I specifically don't like. I guess. But its not the kind of thing that would be particularly well explained through this format. I'd be pointing at a look, or a edit that came one moment too quick or one moment too slow, or a line that was just read in a way where I could see the script in their eyes. It's the equivalent of asking me to explain how I knew someone was lying to me by finding the specific thing they said that was untrue. But all I can do is point to the person and not understand why you aren't seeing how the way they are fidgeting with something in their hand or how they won't look me in the eye or how there was an intonation in their voice says more than I could ever do about the things they were saying.


My relationship to art is about instinct. Even though I from time to time can break somethings down into specifics of what works or what doesn't, some films don't fill me with the urge to do this. My instinctual dislike of them is enough. Some movies I hate like this may be technically accomplished. They may be playing at saying larger things about culture. But unless these are incoporated in a way that make me want to dig deeper or think longer, I find it pretty dull to raise these elements to the forefront of the discussion. Because the aren't terribly important to me. To me they are at best the skeleton or the eisel that holds up the emotions and the actual art. More often than not, I like things I can't put my finger on. And I dislike things I don't have any interest in touching.

I watched the film today and I thought it was decent, but no where near as good as the first. The more I think about it, the less I like it. Ultimately the analogy of the Glass Onion works quite well for the film as a piece of work itself in this case.



I didn't dislike it though, but can see why people would. It feels like Johnson got all the wrong ideas about why people loved the original.

+Rep for so eloquently explaining how your mind instinctively arrives at such conclusions about some movies as a whole without you necessarily being consciously aware of the individual elements that get you there. Definitely something I can relate to.

__________________

I'm happy if people like it. Or simply don't dislike it as much as me. And I certainly don't expect anyone to have the same aggravation towards it since I'm looking for something from films that other people seem not to be that interested in. Or can at least find it in very different kinds of movie than me.




Thanks.



I get the need for some to want to break a movie down into its pieces and talk about it as all its bits lay all over the table. Those aren't pointless conversations, they have value, they can even sometimes inform my own opinion if they offer me a new window to look at the movie through. One that allows me the chance to at least feel it.


But, at the same time, I feel this process is pretty horrible at finding the 'soul' of a film. And that's obviously, partially, because a soul is invisible. Or maybe doesn't even exist at all. But that is the mystery and the chase that makes art so captivating and essential. That makes it so much more than a way to kill a couple of hours or entertain ourselves. For me art is the nuts and bolts of all existence. The one thing that humankind should be proud of. Probably the only thing.

I had a Netflix double-bill today of this and Del Toro's Pinocchio. Christmas time always sees me catch up on all the major 2022 releases as I try to put together some sort of "best of the year" list.

I thought this was mildly entertaining but underwhelming. [I[Pinocchio[/i] I thought was superb, a fantastic reimagining of the original where the changes enhance the story and match perfectly with the director's style. I'd definitely recommend that.

I'm thinking Decision to Leave tomorrow with my brother, which is probably my most anticipated film of the year.

Indeed. Although increasingly these days as a critic/reviewer I find myself getting something similar to imposter syndrome where I'll read an excellent critique and I feel like I have little left to say that I can articulate anywhere near as well. It's frustrating because I used to enjoy writing at length about films but seem to struggle nowadays beyond generic stuff and hitting on the basics of what I liked and disliked. I like the style of this thread and how you communicate your thoughts on stuff.

Indeed.

It's a beautiful song from a band that only made great things. Every song on the first album is a smash. Even their somewhat maligned second album is fantastic to my ears, top to bottom.

Let those insecurities be your fuel. They'll probably never go away, mine certainly never have, but that gives you the need to push further and further towards something that feels more personal. More honest. I've had a few gigs writing about film and music before and my growing discomfort with what I found generic about my thoughts just forced me to not settle and find something that worked better for me. It forced me to fail a lot, but failing is also sort of fun if you trust yourself (and, yes, sometimes also very frustrating, but nothing can be all good...not even failure)



Now, this is also a double edged sword. Because the more personal your approach gets, the more push back you receive. Some people will hate it. And maybe sometimes they are right. But again, fun!



Really, I think the key is to find the balance between the relatively generic approach most people actually want to read, and the things you want to personally write about (a balance I have never been able to master because I'm as stubborn as a mule and don't cater to anything anyone says, almost exclusively to my own detriment). But that does seem the way to find both longevity and satisfaction in an incredibly difficult line of work.


Being a critic is extremely hard. At least being a good one is (being a bad one is extremely easy, and if you ever find yourself thinking it's an easy gig, that's the hint that you're probably one of the bad ones). So if you're struggling, you're on the correct path. At least as far as I'm concerned.