Movie Forums Top 100 of the 2010s - Group Watch

I can't speak for Miss Vicky maybe she'll post more about her thoughts... But for me there's been times where I had a visceral reaction of straight up hatred for a character and it wasn't because they were dull or boring. Often it's also because I hated the movie. The last time I hated characters and wish they would just die was Magnolia. Well here's an excerpt of what I said about it:

Magnolia, So, I set through three hours of caterwauling potty mouth by hyperactive cartoonish characters only to find out
I really, really hated this. I've never spent a longer three hours of my life watching such bombastic characters and badly written dialogue. Not everyone, everywhere punctuates every other sentence with F**** but in Magnolia every character spoke the same way and had the same rage dialogue delivered in monologue style. That made it clear to me that only one person was speaking through all of these characters, which then caused me to see everyone in this movie as actors and not the people they were suppose to be portraying. I never once felt anything for anyone. Though I was disappointed that William H. Macy didn't end up killing everyone in the movie.

Aw, I love Magnolia

Sorry!

I really was livid during my viewing of it, luckily I don't throw things at the TV screen

Reckon this was directed at me.


I have seen movies with unlikeable characters like Gone Girl, Night crawler, etc (at the top of my head) whom I still ended up enjoying. Not here though. I just couldn't stand Gina.

It wasn't directed at anyone in particular. I just thought that it was funny that there were three reviews in a row that noted not liking the main character, because the character is so obviously meant to be unlikable.

Like if three reviews in a row of American Psycho said, "Patrick Bateman was a real sociopath" and I remarked "I think we should be worried if anyone watched American Psycho and thinks Bateman is a nice guy."

It was in no way a criticism or disagreement with anyone's reviews.

My biggest issue with Gina is that she goes beyond being unlikeable and is straight up irritating - not just to the characters around her but to me as a viewer.

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I have to admit, the one time I did like her just a bit was when she

I mean, that is some A+ trolling and a fitting retribution for any guy who would reject using birth control.

She's definitely a lot to take, but a character who almost compulsively messes up that way is kind of compelling to me. Sort of like Robert Pattinson's character in Good Time.

The next host is...

Takoma11
@Miss Vicky
gbgoodies
WrinkledMind

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Nomination #23

I've heard of this one, but I haven't given it much priority. Curious what I'll think of it.

Movies are very much a spiritual and an intellectual experience for me. But probably above both of those things, movies are an emotional experience. So I believe for art to have any real value, we have to be honest about our reactions towards it. And this means you can never be wrong in your emotional response. This would include hating something because the characters are unlikeable, regardless of it being the films intent. I certainly did when I watched In the Company of Men many years ago, and it hardly mattered much to me that I was supposed to hate the characters. I was aware that this was the films design, but it didn't matter. That hate bled over towards the movie, and once that happens, what can you do other than just keep hating.



But just because it is kind of antithetical to the purpose of art to deny our emotional response to a film, this doesn't mean that somehow all critiques are created equal. Because of course they aren't. Film criticism is an actual thing. It demands we engage with the actual intentions of the film, how the film elicits its influence on the audience, or fits into the evolution of cinema as an artform. And in regards to our finicky emotions, criticism should do its best to pinpoint the cinematic techniques it succeeds at or flubs in getting us to respond emotionally.



Film criticism is a skill that becomes honed over time and experience and can't just be replaced by anyone's whims. We shouldn't be democratizing thought to the point where even things that were never thought upon in the first place qualify as thinking. Emotions and criticism, while undoubtedly related, are still very, very separate things. Any attempts to play otherwise, and say everyones opinions are equal, is the equivalent of putting a child's shitty drawing up on the fridge as if it is actually any good...except we're all adults here, and we are still drawing like shit, and we are still demanding to be rewarded for it. It's something we should be too embarrassed by to even contemplate.



Now to be clear, I don't actually think those who hate Thirst Street have done this in this thread (as in offering up their response as a fully formed film critique). It seems to me that those that don't like it are simply saying 'not my kind of movie' and that's fine. It's definitely not going to be a crowd pleaser. Gina is unlikeable. Gina is annoying. And some people aren't going to want to spend time watching someone in a movie that they would loathe to be in the same room with in real life. The hate is understandable.


As for my personal feelings on the movie, I didn't rewatch it as I planned, but I think Takoma probably covered anything I would have anyways. While Gina is definitely a chore at times to spend time with, there are more than enough overt and not so overt ways the film tries to get us to at least understand why she has become like this. And while the film never really asks us to entirely sympathize with her (some actions, of course, are well beyond being sympathetic no matter her reasons for them), I think there is something valuable in a movie like this in the way it at least postulates the notion of having empathy for her. To recognize in her many of the same frailties we might too possess, and that we thankfully can manage much more successfully than she does.



Clearly for some though, this empathy doesn't happen. Some viewers just stop at being annoyed by her and check out. Which is their prerogative. You can't deny our emotional response. But I think if I have any sadness about the (mostly understandable) hatred Gina elicits in so many viewers, its that people seem very reluctant to see anything of themselves in her. Now its possible that everyone else out there is so well adjusted with whatever neurosis' they may have that Gina is a completely alien creature to them. They don't remotely understand the shame of being pushed in a corner, or not fitting in, or being desperate for some kind of inclusion to the point that irrational behavior is just bubbling beneath the surface. But I think an awful lot of the time that maybe, at least for some, its is our resistance to her is we don't want to recognize these negative elements of hers in ourselves. I know for me, when I first watched Welcome to the Dollhouse, I could barely tolerate the experience. I hated that girl. I just wanted to shake her and make her be at least a little bit normal. To stop digging one social hole after another for her to fall into. But after further viewings I realize my hatred of her was a recognition of 'oh, shit, was that me in highschool'. And in a lot of ways it was. And in every way, at the time of that first viewing, I didn't want to be reminded of it. But now that I'm a clearly well adjusted and normal human being, I have come to embrace that weird girl inside of me, and it is probably one of my favorite comedies from the last thirty years. And while I still don't like her, I empathize with her. Maybe in the same way I wanted others to empathize with me.



Anyways, as always, I'm diverging all over the place. Basically, to sum it all up, I think Thirst Street is a pretty great film that is by design always going to have a pretty limited audience (I shudder to think how Silver's other film Stinking Heaven would go over if this movie was too cringe...I definitely saved some lives). And its fine that some people are going to hate it. But this hate also can't help me feel a sense of loss at the potential these kinds of aggressively unpleasant characters can have for us. They offer us the ability to connect with the uglier elements we hide within ourselves. And, through doing this, it allows us to have some kind of kinship with people whose behavior or personality might instinctively put us off. Maybe not enough to ever be friends with them, or even particularly like them. But at least to tolerate and empathize with all the sad ways people can be broken in this life.

Lady Mecbeth is a pretty good film. Love me some Miss Flo, who’s become a must watch actress for me.

Now, if I can only forget her appearance in Black Widow…..

Lady Macbeth was one of the first movies I rewatched in preparation for this countdown. While I don't love it the way I love the other two films I picked, I think it's a gorgeous movie with a really amazing central performance.

I watched Lady Macbeth. Florence Pugh is great, but I didn't find the story all that interesting. It was fine, but I don't think I would rewatch it at any point. .

Your review of it a little while back put it back on my radar. Excited to watch it this week.

Lady Macbeth, 2016

Katherine (Florence Pugh) is a young women married to a much older man named Alexander (Paul Hilton), who seems to only enjoy her companionship to the degree that he can humiliate and control her. The couple lives with Alexander's father, Boris (Christopher Fairbank), and Katherine faces constant reproaches at the hands of both men. But when Alexander and Boris are both called away, Katherine begins an affair with a worker on the property called Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). Enthralled with both her sexual liberation and her role as mistress of the house, Katherine begins to take steps to make her power more permanent.

A slightly muted period piece with themes and layers about control and power, lush costuming, and great performances? Just inject it directly into my veins, already!

Yes, this is the kind of film I really love. True to her namesake in the title, Katherine's defining characteristic is her cold-bloodedness, but her story is given a bit more nuance because of the nuances of power and the precariousness of her position due to her social class and gender. Ultimately, Katherine is able to overcome these barriers to power, but at great, great cost to others.

The initial feeling you get toward Katherine is one of sympathy. On their wedding night her new husband orders her to stay confined to the house. When she objects that she likes walking outdoors he orders her to undress. When she is nude, he sizes her up and then makes a point of going to bed without her. Her life is a series of humiliations and pain punctuating a dull everyday existence of sitting alone in the home's living room, her waist painfully cinched for an audience of, well, no one.

But a real turning point, and the moment the film lets us know quite firmly that Katherine's is not the worst lot, is when Katherine finds the house's maidservant, Anna (Naomi Ackie) being sexually assaulted and humiliated by some of the male laborers, led by Sebastian. Katherine's takeaway from this horrifying scene is not sympathy for Anna, but rather sexual intrigue as she sizes up Sebastian.

Most of the horror of what Katherine does isn't centered on her victims (though obviously there is one really big exception to this!), but for me the way that she so easily shunts the blame onto those with less power, usually Anna. When Katherine drinks all of her father-in-law's favorite wine, Anna must report to him that the wine has run out. Unable to sell out Katherine, Anna must settle for telling Boris that she doesn't know where the wine has gone. Angry, Boris forces Anna to crawl on the ground like a dog. Katherine looks on with barely contained mirth. While we the audience might be okay with Katherine seeking revenge on the men who have made her life miserable, you can't help but be appalled by the impact that she has on Anna's wellbeing.

Her relationship with Sebastian likewise goes on a crazy arc of shifting power. In the beginning, Sebastian is very forward with her. He picks her up in the out-building and she must push him off of her. Later he boldly breaks into her bedroom. But whereas Sebastian walks around with quite a bit of swagger, he is totally unprepared for the shamelessness with which Katherine will pursue her own desires. Katherine is chided several times in the film for being "shameless", and she actually discovers that her lack of shame (or guilt, or remorse) is her secret, sociopathic superpower.

If I had one criticism of the film, it would be that Katherine's endgame didn't seem that clear to me. Sure, we know that she is ruthless. An early warning comes when she tells Sebastian that she's rather he die before he not believe she loves him. Not that she'd rather die than be apart, but that she'd rather see him dead. But where does this ruthlessness come from? We get hints that she is not from a wealthy family. She speaks very little of her mother. Toward the end I just started to wonder what she actually wanted. And, hey, maybe this was just a case of someone rolling down a hill with no brakes, having to merely dodge obstacles to stay alive. Even at the end I wasn't sure about how she felt regarding . There's something a bit unresolved about the character, but not in a productively ambiguous way. The same thing is true, in a lesser way, of the character of Alexander. Like, he won't even have sex with her for a formality? Maybe the implication is that .

Pugh's performance is really excellent. Ackie's performance is a really strong foil---the stronger Katherine becomes, the weaker Anna becomes, to the point of literal muteness. Jarvis brings confident boisterousness to Sebastian, something that starts to crumble as he realizes the lengths to which Katherine will go and the smothering effect of her love.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, I thought that the costumes were great. In particular the blue dress Katherine wears often. The lush colors of her clothing only call attention to the fact that she is almost completely socially isolated, dressed up only for a husband who won't sleep with her. I really liked the direction of the film and especially the editing (such as that hilarious smash cut from Katherine passionately making love to Sebastian to her sitting composed in the living room being served tea with the local pastor).

A strong film and noteworthy for Pugh's excellent lead performance.

i watched lady macbeth. idk, didn't really like it too much. i can vibe with sparseness and cruelty in my indie period dramas but this one was just a bit too vapid and lacking any psychological insight. i was mildly positive on it for most of the runtime but then the ending really didn't work for me and kinda cemented what the film had been lacking. like the whole time the characters are just these remorseless cyphers in a wholly amoral film– not an inherently bad thing– but then the ending introduces the idea of them maybe having a moral compass and it just doesn't register at all because they'd heretofore only been these distant symbols of oppression and empowerment, not individuals with inner lives. however, i will say that there is a degree of richness in its individuated power dynamics that's somewhat impressive for something this sparse and lacking in specificity. also a solid performance from florence pugh, barring the miscalculation of playing her character as something of a sociopath from the start, robbing the audience of any real transformation. altogether not a bad movie but not a successful one. +

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I don't know that she necessarily has an endgame, except to hold onto what she has for as long as she possibly can. I think while she does seem to take some pleasure in the cruelties she inflicts on the others around her, the driving force for her is desperation and self-preservation.

As to that last spoiler? My assumption would be that it would end up being another victim, but I kind of like that the movie doesn't tell us.

I agree that the film doesn't really do a very good job of letting us understand his motivations (though I'm not convinced that we need to know them), but I got the impression that it was an arranged marriage - likely arranged by his father - and that it wasn't so much Katherine that he hated but being forced into the situation, and she became the target of his misdirected anger. So his refusal to consummate it may have been done in spite to his father. But at this point I'm just guessing here.

I guess that I was just a little surprised that

I totally agree that the marriage is arranged. And maybe the implication is that [spoilers]he is exclusively into Black women? But at the same time he is willing to masturbate while looking at her. And, yeah, maybe he's just spiting his father and Katherine is a convenient target for his anger.

At the same time, he could have been almost completely hands-off with a child and it would have given Katherine something to keep her busy. Him withholding from sex (even just "get it over with" sex) seemed a bit odd to me.


But I should say that these were relatively minor complaints. They were what maybe kept if from being a .

Just finished Lady Macbeth, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It won't make my ballot, but it's still very good.