Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

This is really well put.

I have a really strong aversion to satire/mocking/whatever that's just a reproduction of the thing. It's just so damn easy to simply reference something. It's the character equivalent of putting a paper sign with someone's name on a piñata, or repeating what someone says in dUmB GuY VOiCe. I don't think it's asking too much that our satire say something more than "can you believe this shit?"

I say this as someone who still really looks forward to Rian Johnson's films, by the way, albeit less than I used to.

Right. In Knives Out, you are invested in the plot because Marta has been accused of a crime. Finding out who did it isn't just about solving a murder, it's about exonerating someone who is being railroaded in no small amount due to her social status relative to the people around her. I don't know if any of you follow Angela Brown on YouTube, but she just did a video about the "traps" that people set for their housecleaners, and it's just gross behavior.

But in Glass Onion we don't find out

Whatever.

Heh, just teasing, man.

You thought she was as PARTICULARLY the most shallow?

I think she is shallow relative to the role she's meant to play in the whole thing.

She's probably the best developed character aside from Blanc.

Relative to her role in the story.

One sentence after the quote:

Re: The public educator vs the oligarchs comments: I am having trouble seeing Helen as being particularly strong or clever. It's Blanc's plan to have her infiltrate the group and impersonate her sister, and also Blanc that keeps her from coming apart at the seams after they arrive. While she knocks the initial interactions with the group out of the park, she does so under guidance from Blanc and then manages to get drunk, stagger around, and finally get shot, only getting saved by the tongue-in-cheek and overly used book in the pocket that happens to block the bullet trope. Not sure if Johnson thought he was being clever using that trope, but I thought it was kind of dumb. I even remarked to my wife when she got shot that "Hey, maybe she had something in her pocket and isn't dead."

In Johnson's defense, it's difficult to lean so far into paying homage to various other works, in this case pretty much every locked house mystery and book, while not borrowing too many overused tropes, but I wonder if he thought he going the wink-wink-nudge-nudge route, or if he was just being lazy. I found myself being constantly reminded of other films, from the Poirot stuff, to Clue, Murder by Death, and when the boat couldn't make it until low tide, even April Fool's Day - perhaps the first meta locked house flick?

I think the actors did the best they could with the roles that were written, but this wasn't anywhere near as clever or tightly scripted as Knives Out as far as I am concerned.

Lastly, I always have trouble swallowing these over-the-top indictments of the rich and in this case, the heritage of fine art such as The Mona Lisa, when the stuff is written by elitist filmmakers with massively inflated egos, who look down their noses at their audiences as they wag their jewel-encrusted fingers at us. This is the type of nonsense that has YouTube grifters and self-appointed (pseudo) intellectual internet personalities claiming classic paintings should be burned because the pigments in the paint were mined or gathered by marginalized workers. Johnson does manage to slay a variety of odious archetypes across the entire spectrum, but I can't hap but wonder if this guy is a Barton Fink, thinking he is making film for the common man, afterward taking a swim in his luxurious infinity pool after cracking a bottle of Dom to celebrate his cleverness.

Anyway, despite all this, the film was fairly entertaining and not overlong, but like Tacoma, I didn't find much to care about.

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I thought that it wasn't so much an indictment of the rich as an indictment of people who have power (and wealth is one form of power), especially power gained through questionable means, and how in-service they are to money as opposed to their values. Whatever their professed commitments (men's rights, sustainable energy, scientific ethics), they are all willing to compromise them for money. Miles isn't the problem, and he REALLY isn't a problem if his wealth doesn't keep a bunch of people on his side and willing to obfuscate his blatant wrong-doings.

It's part of why the end of the film kind of doesn't work for me. We're supposed to, what

I think that the movie needed a way to genuinely bring these characters into conflict with each other, and it never quite gets there.

I'm pretty sure I watched a movie.


Ummmmmmmm

Gummo


I kept having things remind me of this movie so something was telling me to revisit it. It's been maybe twenty years. Twenty years since this movie angered me and confused me and made me fall in love with it. And it turns out that twenty years was clearly a pittance in dulling Gummo's blade.This movie is still a son of a bitch.



It is still profoundly upsetting. Deliberately pretentious. Still stinks of being a giant **** you to any kind of moderate cinematic sensibilities. It's mean and cruel and ugly and stupid.


But what often gets overlooked, and I now noticed more than ever, now that I'm gentle and middle aged, is how delicate and sensitive and sad a movie it is. And how its atrocities only cut deeper once you begin to realize it actually has a soul.


Possibly top 5 movie ever made. This and Passion of Joan of Arc have got to duke it out. Not that it matters who wins. Gummo is going on the list no matter what.

I should rewatch that one soon. It was initially among my favorites, but it fell out some time ago for whatever reason. I'm sure a rewatch will bounce it back into 10/10 territory though.

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I thought it would be an easy movie to fall out of love with.

I first saw it when I was in my early twenties, and I thought it was pointlessly provocative garbage.

But I thought about it all night. And went back.

It eventually became one of my favorite things from the 90's. I worried it wouldn't hit quite as hard anymore. Or I would go back to thinking it was pointlessly provocative. But somehow it now seems even better than when I was falling deeply deeply in love with it during those early days of loving it.


It's a masterpiece. And, no, I have no way to back such a claim up. But it is.

And the scene of the drunks destroying the chair in the kitchen is still one of the greatest depictions of violence I've ever seen in a movie.


And it's just a chair.

Gummo is a movie, much like Punk Flamingo’s and Salo, that I know I need to see but makes me wary. Maybe someday….

It's been some time since I've seen it, but the best way I can describe my love for the film is that, in spite of all the atrocities the characters commit and are exposed to, they're able to passively accept their situations and find ways to get by them just fine. The bathtub scene near the end is a prime example of this. Everything about it is gross, yet Tummler seems mostly nonchalant throughout all of it. Therefore, if he isn't disturbed by his situation, why should I? I also really enjoyed the friendship between Tummler and Solomon. In spite of their age differences and how Solomon has friends of his own age, they still get along really well with each other.

I'd recommend watching the opening ten minutes. If you find them repulsive, you likely won't care for the film, but if you find it intriguing, you might enjoy it.

Good point.

They aren't that scary.


Regardless, Gummo is the best of them.