Rate The Last Movie You Saw

I watched it about two or three years ago.
It seems you’re giving the film way too much credit. Much more then it really deserves.
No longer laughing. Just shaking my head. With a prolonged shrug of indifference.

I'll also add that while the level of grime is in part a result of the low budget production, having seen Lustig's pre-Maniac efforts, it's very much a deliberate artistic choice as well. The Violation of Claudia, despite the, uh, questionable title, is surprisingly elegant, like an explicit, low budget Belle du Jour. Will give that one a recommendation for more adventurous viewers.

Also, tried looking for a gif of Joe Spinell laughing, but could only find close-ups of his contorted, sweaty, wide-eyed face with nary a hint of a smile. What a beautifully hideous man. Can't name many more actors whose ugliness has been as cinematically compelling.

Serpentine!!

Fair enough. I enjoy procedurals/mysteries, and I thought that it did a good job of balancing the episode-by-episode mysteries and also the longer character/plot arcs. It did some fun stuff with the source material, both adhering to it and departing from it in a way that made certain elements unpredictable in a nice way.

If it's generally not your thing, cool. It's just that with many network shows I always feel it takes a few episodes to get its sea legs.

The film is anti-Elaine not in the sense that she fails in her mission, but in the sense that she is so obviously wrong-headed and selfish. She has crafted a desire and a world-view that are in opposition to each other, and she pursues her goals with little or no regard as to how her actions will harm (or kill!) others, male or female. She is narcissistic and demented. She is at best an anti-hero and at worst an outright villain. The only thing that complicates things (in a pleasant way, I think) is that the society that she is opposing--that of patriarchy--is also deeply messed up and demented in its own way.

I'm not saying that misogynistic films are allowed to slide and feminist films are critiqued. I'm saying that the criticism that the character didn't grow or that we didn't get to know them well enough is being applied to The Love Witch, but I have never seen it applied to a film where a male anti-hero/villain is the one running around wreaking havoc.

I also feel like the two critiques I most frequently hear of the film are oddly in opposition to each other. I'm not sure how a movie can be "just about style" and at the same time too serious about its themes.

Having seen the film, I totally get why it's polarizing. The pacing is weird (I liked it, but Rock obviously though it just dragged). There is a specific effect that comes from the stilted deliveries and on-the-nose dialogue that I mostly enjoyed, but I can see how it would be off-putting. I don't mind those criticisms. It's the "it only cares about style" or "Not enough nudity" type criticisms that bug me.

About a week after Sly's show in Harlem, he was one of the acts invited to the Newport Jazz Festival (July, 1969). Why, I don't know. We were on the bill too (Zappa/Mothers). Most everyone was disgusted with him because he tried to incite a riot and have the fans tear down the fences at the festival. I'm sure he was on drugs, but the guy was a real a**hole.

That’s fair, but I wasn’t complaining about the lack of nudity, although I kbow it isn’t directed at me as such.

It’s style isn’t the problem so much as to me, it was a tad too serious for how it represented itself.

I doesn’t find it boring, like Rock, because, again…..Ronson. I wish we could have gotten more insight into her life with the cult.

God bless you for caring for your mom until the end. I'm sure she was grateful that you tended to her.

The Player (1992)

The benefits are terrific. The trick is not to get killed. That's really the key to the benefit program.

Peter Falk is a damn treasure.

Oh man, every line he says is comedy gold. Truly an all-time comedy performance.

Between Columbo and Wings of Desire the man lives in my heart.

Also "If the car's gone . . . I'll give you another cookie anyway. 'Cause I love ya."

And I’d say you’re not giving it nearly enough credit.

I’ll take that shrug as passive admission that you were wrong about the comparison to Taxi Driver. I accept.

Elaine is a classic femme fatale. Her appearance and sex appeal are in her arsenal but the film portrays her and her ideals as deeply flawed (to put it lightly) and doesn’t seem to agree with any of her assertions.*

Trish isn’t used as a paragon and the film is all the better for that. The film isn’t trying to sell an ideology as being “correct,” as it’s not propaganda. But she is clearly intended to be more relatable in her scoffing at the idea Elaine spouts about giving men whatever they want, whenever they they want it, including constant sex.*

Instead, Trish is used as another victim of desiring to be the seductress. The film is a take down of virtually everything Elaine stand for and how much we desire people like her. The movie flat out makes loving her lethal.

Antifeminism literally means against feminism. Not really sure where to go on that note if there isn’t agreement.

I did do a little bit of reading into it does seem I was in error on missing the comparison. So let me extend the apology, since it seemed like this became personal for you, which wasn’t my intention. I would like to point out that ad hominems were uncalled for earlier. This was on both of us, as well when I responded to yours with a similar response.
*
This wasn’t about being “right”. Even so, I should have measured my response a bit better with the “laughable” remark. Because I phrased it in such a way that it lead to that conclusion.

I still didn’t care for the film, but maybe I should revisit it, keeping in mind the info you’ve given. Thinking on it, from what I remember, I think the comparison is still tenuous at best, but a rewatch might confirm that.

Fair enough?

Aye. Tis fair enough indeed.

You should also check out the remake. It’s among the more effective remakes out there and is stylistically worlds apart from the original. Feels more like something influenced by Refn than Lustig and Elijah Wood gives a pretty surprising performance.

I’ve heard of the remake, and I’ll probably catch it sometime after I rewatch the original.
Beyond The Black Rainbow is tap for tonight, and I’ve really been looking forward to that.

I disliked BTBR the first time I watched it. My love for Mandy pushed me to rewatch it. I still think it’s got issues with pacing and narrative but I did enjoy it a good deal more. Just be prepared for a fairly standard horror/sci fi narrative to be told in the slowest, most garishly stylish way possible.

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49008607

Quo vado? - (2016) - Italy - (aka Where Am I Going?) - rewatch

I found Quo vado? to be just as humorous the second time around as the first. To say Italians are fond of Luca Pasquale Medici's Checco Zalone is quite the understatement. This film broke Italian box office records, but many of the records they were breaking included other Zalone movies. An extremely funny character.

6/10

Yet she survives and can go on doing what she’s doing till the end of time.

If you want to be simplistic, sure. As was demonstrated during the ‘nepotism’ discussions, vastly diverging definitions exist for all these concepts.

Even ardent feminists disagree passionately on what feminism itself is (see second wave, third wave, TERFS, ad nauseum, ad infinitum), so saying antifeminism is an opposition to feminism is simply not saying anything at all. Some feminists would disagree that they are even for full gender equality.

I quite like this statement (which was applied to feminists where I got it from): “Activists and thinkers in both camps have sought to control the field of discourse by defining their opponents, while resisting definition themselves.”

Antifeminism, by contrast, posits that there are inherent biological and sociological differences between men and women which shouldn’t be ignored and should be used as a basis for shaping policy. Antifeminism also rejects the idea that women in any way have it ‘worse’. In many ways, antifeminism is actually a much better defined thing than feminism itself, which is why it’s simply unreasonable to see it as an ‘opposition to feminism’ and nothing more. To this end, there is not even yet scholarship that looks at international antifeminist mobilisation through the backlash framework. (Yes, I have references). Which would have made sense, you know, if it had been just ‘against feminism’.