Films where there is no hope.

The Road (no hope for us) and Melancholia (no hope for the planet).

By the time you get to those situations, I guess the difference between the two is negligible.

I found The Road to be much more hopeful. The father and son are carrying the fire still. And the son falls in with a good family in the end. They teach the boy about God and give him a family. Sounds hopeful to me.



If you're paying attention, the father was running from the solution to his problem. The father was dying and needing someone to take over parenting for him. His solution (the family) was in pursuit of him for quite some time. The wicked flee when none pursueth--the father's wickedness was in turning away from the rest of the mass of humanity in a desperate attempt to be purely prudential. He makes a fetish of the fire he carries (or rather, that carried by the boy who is still innocent and wanting help others) and it almost costs him his son's life. We live, we die. The father can't accept that and he clamps down so hard on making sure his son survives that he hardens his heart to the rest of the world, becoming something cruel and ruthless. But the son is rescued.



Melancholia, on the other hand, is just depressed bathetic bullshit that Lars von Trier generated like some edgy teenager who thinks he can get away with praising Nazis in provocateur mode.

Gotta second The Elephant Man, First reformed, Midnight Express, and Leaving Las Vegas

OK, I just looked up First Reformed and was confusing it with another film. I was confusing it with Boy Erased for some reason. First Reformed looks like something I sjhould be adding to my watchlist though. I should say that I think there is a glimmer of hope for Walter in The Woodsman

I seen two NO Hope movies in prep for the War Countdown.
The Grey Zone (2001) Son of Saul (2015)
Based on the same story also bleak.

Yeah First reformed is a really low-key gem of a film, that kind of was just swept under the rug for some reason. Also Ethan hawks performance is really Powerful.

Uwe Boll

A bunch of cannibals wouldn't miss on a hot dog.

In The Silence of the Lambs, there's no hope for Dr. Chilton. He's somebody's dinner.

Even though it's great, I don't see Elephant Man as being a film without hope. While his condition may be incurable, the whole film is about him not allowing it to shape his humanity. And being able to make choices regarding his own fate.


Definitely not a happy movie, but not really entirely hopeless. In fact the film defies the notion of abject hopelessness in defining Merricks condition

Son of Saul is a great film.

I thought it was flawed. I hated the way it was shot with background images often being blurred and the camera often a close up of Saul's back or face. That usually indicates that the film maker didn't have the money for proper sets, which is why they shot tight. That type of camera work made it feel like they weren't actually in a concentration camp to me. I never bought into the story so it had no effect on me.

I thought The Grey Zone was better and it did effect me. However the dialogue sounded like it all came from the pen of one writer...not so much in what they said but in how they said it. Everyone spoke with the same cadence. In short...several words reply...back and forth...between two actors. It sounded like the writer was imitating the famous dialogue between Bogart and Bacall in To Have and Have Not. On the other hand the story had way more punch and resonances than Son of Saul. The scene were the Jews are locked in the showers and what we see are the huge steel doors as screams begin to rise into a mournful wail was powerful! That scene alone makes the movie worth watching. And the scenes of all the dead people being shoved into the ovens was all too real. Have you seen it?

Ah I felt the opposite. I felt that it was a good directorial choice to try and push the boundaries and do something a little different. It felt like we were immersed into what the central character was experiencing. I felt claustrophiobic, which was the point I think.

Not seen that one. I'm not a great fan of Hollywood actors playing Europeans, and speaking in the English language.

I agree that the film makers were going for a claustrophobic filming with their choice of camera work. It just didn't work for me as I'm attuned to watching the background and sets and usually when any film shoots 'tight' I don't like the results. Pandorum did that type of shooting too. But I can see it could work for other people.


How do you feel about Europeans playing Americans? I do wish they had used a mostly unknown cast as it's hard not to see the movie star first...and I'd wish they had spoken Hungarian, Polish, Yiddish and German instead of English for more realism. Though I do think the actors did a solid job and Schindler's List was also in English and was well received. The Grey Zone is not a perfect movie, but it will make an impact.

I don't particularly like it. Any casting as you say should be authentic as possible. It completely takes me out of a film if a German soldier in 1939 has an American accent.

It's the reason I couldn't take the TV Show 'Chernobyl' seriously. The worst example is cheeky cockney Bob Hoskins playing a Russian in Enemy at The Gate. It's laughable.

It's interesting in American films we often have British actors playing Germans, Russians, Romans etc and I guess their British accents makes the audience think they are something else. Kind of crazy but I've seen my share of British actors as Germans, last one was James Mason as Rommel in The Desert Fox (1951)...Good subject matter, but poorly made movie, done without any focus...Yet I have to say I liked Mason as Rommel.

I mean obviously I'm not suggesting that films such as 'Paths of Glory' should never have been made. It's one of the greatest ever. I just feel that film-making should really have moved on to a place where the realism of the film outweighs a big name casting choice / English speaking cast.

You're always going to have your big budget blockbusters that will be made in the English language (Sch List and Gladiator etc) or they'll bomb at the box office because your average cinemagoer is so narrow-minded. But it's a huge negative for me.

I think the stoic reaction the main character had throughout the film was largely the point of it (he's no longer impressed by the atrocities committed around him; they've become an everyday reality), so I didn't mind the camerawork in the context of the film. Though it took me a bit of time to get used to it, it's a clever way of pushing that concept to the forefront.

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Yeah that makes logical sense that the lead character is in a state of shock and maybe the blurred background is him shutting out the horrors around him...but still I didn't care for it. Did you see The Grey Zone? I think Cricket gave it a I wouldn't go that high but I'd say it's a for me.

In the TV show, he got to taste his own leg, and was quite pleased about the cooking.