Movie Review Thread

[Reika]

[Elle]

What the fuck, world? First there was a nice old australopithecus, the main character in several worthy novels and poems and operas (reg. and soap), the TV star we all love, and even an accidental sadist with a transparently unrequited love for a heartless pianist. They made a dumb movie about her, called it "Lucy". Fine, fine, we said. We have used other names - whoops, wait, we can't return to Elsa now. Okay, there are more names, other abbreviated shells even less-fully-inhabited, made of nothing but straight lines and symmetries. We will choose one of those. Then they made another dumb movie and called it "Elle", except this time, guess which actress stars in the movie? The same crazy person who starred in "The Piano Teacher", AKA the most fucked-up movie of all time that nearly destroyed all of French cinema forevermore. Does Joss Whedon control the cinema world and is he trying to get revenge because I don't get his schtick, even though we communicate psychically from a distance? Not my idea, Joss, not my idea. I'm flying another TIE fighter tonight - you stay out of it!

"Elle" gets a lot of really "deep" reviews about its "powerful" look at "consent", because the opening scene of the movie is apparently a violent, bloody rape which the survivor "controls" by refusing to react "normally". Just fucking move us along to 2017 already because this year is way past done. Let me know when I need to hide my Jews and Sikhs and whoever else the roving bands of white supremacist thugs feel like screaming "You're Fired!" at in the road (real life story). I might delete my account in protest - something one has to do every so often for sheer relief from the existential anxiety - and restart it with another four letter word, less polite.

[Elle]

Hey, guess what else? There is a new Live-Action remake of Beauty and the Beast with Matthew from Downton Abbey as the Beast and Emma Hermione someone as Belle. Scratch both Belle and Emma off the potential names list, btw. Anyway, guess what my old friends, the Feminists, have to say about Beauty and the Beast? It's very "problematic", you see. He is emotionally abusive and scary, throwing things and whatnot. I am afraid that I will literally tear my retinas from uncontrollable spasms of eyerolling and have to have them reattached if I continue reading so much as one more word written by the Internet Feminists about Beauty and the Beast. If they ever come for cap'o'rushes I'm going to start punching people out. I'm so done with this. Fucking Steve Bannon is the chief "strategist" in the White House and Beauty and the Beast is "problematic". Fuck all of this, fuck this year, fuck these people, I cannot take any of it anymore. I am not the smartest person, I am not the best at chess for instance, but wow is this some kind of lifetime of being surrounded by total fucking idiots. In the next lifetime I want to be a moderately-intelligent, well-cared for dog.

Update: settled on a new name! "Nina". Yeah, it's a movie. I've seen it. Probably reviewed it here.

Update #2: Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. Is this some kind of fucking joke? Are there, like, ghosts, and they're sick of us and want to drive us nuts?

[Mike]

Or... you could define your name yourself through your own character and not have to change it because of every little fickle connotation that may be fleetingly attached to it.

I mean yeah, I get it... one bad apple ruined the name Adolph for everyone. But that was a really unique case. He had a to start a world war and a genocide to get to that point. But somehow you're going to let one stupid movie ruin a name you like and that use to represent you? A movie that not everyone saw and that most people don't care about? I don't get that at all.

Lucy was an awesome name. You know what I think of when I hear the name Lucy? I think Australopithecus, I think In the Sky with Diamonds, I think of Mr. Tumnus, and I think of you. Why would you set that aside? Hell, I still refer to you as Lucy with certain people, who all A) know you as Elle now and B) know your real name. For that matter, I didn't mind Green Chelonia, although Lucy is much easier to slip into conversation.

[Kyle]

I just noticed your board titles:



This is brilliant.

[Mike]

Thank you.

You missed 1975-1999 posts: "Not Quite Ezra"

I've always been pretty proud of that. You're the first person in six years to point it out.

[Elle]

Lucy = painful, and if you had ever seen The Piano Teacher you would know why this particular rape movie development is insupportable. Still thinking of a new handle.

[Mike]

So there was a French movie 15 years ago that was moderately well reviewed but that you absolutely despise on some visceral/moral level. Now, 15 years later, there is another French language film by a completely different writer and director that happens to star the same woman as the first one. The new movie is extremely well reviewed (93% currently on RottenTomatoes). I assume you haven't seen the movie, based on your wording above, but based on the glowing reviews and descriptions you have read, you have decided it is horrible. It is a foreign-language film that is only getting a stateside release to put it in Oscar contention, and no one else will actually see this thing. But the name of the movie is Elle, so therefore it is imperative that you change your name. And it seems to be causing something of a mental crisis for you. And somehow Joss Whedon is involved (that part sorta lost me).

It is your name and your brain, and I obviously have no say in the connections and associations you make, so if you feel this is important for your sanity, I support you. In fact, if you would like me to enable name-switching on the boards so that you don't have to create a new account, I can do that.

[Elle]

Yep, as soon as I think of a new name I'll fix it, no need to worry about the account. It's not a question of whether the movie is good or bad; for all I know it's very clever. However, I know the plot and the source material, and the actress, and the director, and the director's past issues portraying women of all kinds, and it has to be hacked off at the root. No, pulled up at the root like a stray piece of poison sumac. No more Elle for me. I did consider the name Joss but that seems excessively rude even for me. BTW in the earlier movie she rapes her own mother. Just to give you a sense of what we're dealing with here.

[Reika]

I'm gonna be blunt here, Elle. You're being silly. Lots of people have names that are in common with exceedingly bad/unfortunate things. A friend of mine's hubby is named Benito.

[Elle]

I know but it doesn't matter. The die is cast. I don't understand the way all of this works but I have to follow the muse where she leads.

[Reika]

[Mike]

Well, you'll save yourself a lot of heartache if you can find an acceptable name that A) suits you and makes you happy, B) sounds like a name and C) doesn't already exist.

[Phoebe]

I've been watching all 7 Star Wars movies in the order originally presented, so my kids could see them too. I found that movies 2 and 3 did not hold up well, until the very end of 3 where the mask is born. 1 is terrible for its own reasons, but has a certain excitement about it due to the novelty. Carrie Fisher is more important than I had realized. 7 is good but the noise and pace compared to the others is so different.

[Reika]

Saw Doctor Strange this weekend and thought it was a very fun movie with an excellent cast. I know there were complaints about Tilda Swinson as the Ancient One, which were justified regarding whitewashing, but she did a great job.

The magic effects were pretty trippy in parts.

[akiva]

[Mike]

Don't know if this is real, but someone said that the decision to not put an Asian ultimate spiritual master in a mountaintop monastery in Tibet may have been done to avoid offending China. Although, you know... maybe just avoid Tibet.

[Reika]

I'm not sure what the real reason is, I'd seen several different responses, but I really did like Swinton in the role.

[Phoebe]

It must be on the old forums, but I remember watching Last Tango in Paris at some point a few years back and reviewing it here. Apparently some new interview with the director has raised the issue of whether Maria Schneider, who plays the main character, was actually raped on film, and now people (famous ones taking to twitter, or various "news" articles) are responding as if they think she was either raped or else had no idea the entire scene was going to happen. However, she knew a scene like this was going to happen, according to her own words describing these events, but did not know Brando (her co-star) and Bertolucci (the director) had decided the night before to use the stick of butter in the scene.

Some people think she must have been raped onscreen, because Bertolucci said he wanted her humiliated reaction as a girl and not as an actress, and that's why they surprised her with the butter idea right before filming it. The reasoning seems to be: what else could humiliate someone besides actual anal rape? Other people reason that it is no big deal and she had no reason to be upset by it. I am not sure which group of people makes me sadder. I am bothered - perhaps because facts seem to matter so little at the moment - by the idea that even this poor dead woman, Schneider, is not permitted to have her own factual truths about her own life. Her feelings and statements are being revised to match contemporary outrage; she cannot be listened to in her own right! She was pressed into acting out a powerful, uniquely humiliating scene in which her (insane, difficult) lover asks her to retrieve a stick of butter, and when she brings it he uses it as a surprise lubricant for her surprise rape. She said she didn't know that the scene was going to play out like this and felt "a little raped" by it herself. It really bothers me that people are unable to see why a person might feel this way, rightfully so, even if she was not actually attacked right there on the set, or even if she knew that a sexual scene with certain basic elements was going to be filmed. The changes they made to this scene, in which she is extremely vulnerable and being asked to portray something profoundly difficult, transformed the meaning and tone of the whole performance. She felt like they sprang this on her and wouldn't even console her afterward. Why wouldn't that experience be very upsetting? Why wouldn't it feel violating, to the point that she was angry at the director for years afterward? Brando also complained about the way he was treated during the movie.

TL;DR: some people mad because they don't think she had a right to be upset at all; other people mad because they insist she was actually raped, even though that's not what she said. Phoebe tired of both these kinds and their dumb notions.

[Cazmonster]

I wish there was someone who could hunt down bastard directors, like this guy and break one of their knees. The lady went through a lifetime of suffering after being humiliated for a few seconds of the bastard's idea. Him living with excruciating pain and a limp that won't heal would be fine by me.