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Post by Nora on Feb 13, 2020 15:54:03 GMT
nostro is our resident film snob on here nora and he's conceited to boot. You have expressed your opinion and backed up your claims intelligently with your own subjective take and yes, given examples of what you saw as unique. While that is subjective too, and I hadn't seen all the films you listed, the ones that I had, I could say I agree with you for the most part. While they may not be entirely original in concept, in presentation, they did give an original and fresh approach to their stories and like many films from last century, were done and told in a way that hadn't been seen before. They set a benchmark. I haven't seen Parasite yet, and I am not going in with any expectations—will go next week—but after reading your take on it, I am getting the feeling it is not going to be a watershed moment.
Ill be interested to hear your opinion. I give Parasite that it had and overall fairly distinct feeling and I still remember couple of scenes from it as having stood out but I still find it fairly shallow and simplistic/unoriginal in the Key msg (classism is bad).
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Post by Morgana on Feb 14, 2020 7:56:23 GMT
Given all the prices and acclaim I was prepared to be blown away. Instead it was sleep inducing. If you have seen the Dennis Quad movie THE INTRUDER, than you have basically seen this movie. I enjoyed it, but don't think it deserves all the hype.
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Post by hi224 on Feb 15, 2020 20:08:34 GMT
as shocking as it is yeah i really do find this movie perfection. yeah ok but why what a out it felt so unique and intriguing ? because it felt like a refreshing take on the way we like to ultimately presune things about others and their given situations without actually walking within their shoes. Classism is merely a jumping off point to also dissect more complex idea like how we react towards others when push comes to shove and we compromise our morality.
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Post by hi224 on Feb 15, 2020 20:09:01 GMT
Given all the prices and acclaim I was prepared to be blown away. Instead it was sleep inducing. If you have seen the Dennis Quad movie THE INTRUDER, than you have basically seen this movie. ehhhhh no.
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Post by Nora on Feb 15, 2020 23:16:00 GMT
yeah ok but why what a out it felt so unique and intriguing ? because it felt like a refreshing take on the way we like to ultimately presune things about others and their given situations without actually walking within their shoes. Classism is merely a jumping off point to also dissect more complex idea like how we react towards others when push comes to shove and we compromise our morality. it still feels quite simple to me overall. Very little depth or novelty in the messaging. I did like the use of Morse code though and the Jessica song. And I still remember a lot of it so that’s always a good sign.
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Post by HumanFundRecipient on Feb 16, 2020 0:22:40 GMT
Given all the prices and acclaim I was prepared to be blown away. Instead it was sleep inducing. If you have seen the Dennis Quad movie THE INTRUDER, than you have basically seen this movie. I needed a laugh. But all I need is to go by the trailer of The Intruder (through memory) to know how wrong that statement is. So forgettable that it didn't get any Razzie nominations.
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Post by Nora on Feb 25, 2020 18:20:50 GMT
Ill be interested to hear your opinion. I give Parasite that it had and overall fairly distinct feeling and I still remember couple of scenes from it as having stood out but I still find it fairly shallow and simplistic/unoriginal in the Key msg (classism is bad). I found the film cleverly written and well acted. It was very black and the direction was fine, but overall, I didn't think it was anything exceptional to warrant all this hype and over-praise. I even found it a tad corny and I wasn't quite connecting with the characters motivations either. If I was supposed to be moved at the end, well I wasn't. It was a bit smart-alecy too. There were more worthy films up for best picture, that I found resonated more in the emotional impact stakes. 6\10 yeah pretty much same . I would go with 7/10.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Feb 26, 2020 8:20:38 GMT
yeah pretty much same . I would go with 7/10. I felt like I was just watching another foreign language film, that I would see at a film festival and enjoying the culture trip, without coming away either too shaken or stirred. It annoyed me more in fact. The carnage sequence near the end, I thought was quite weakly executed too. This was similar in structure to Tarantino's OUATIH, but his was done with much more panache and a more solid wry approach. The son would not have survived his brain trauma, due to being bashed twice with that rock and all the blood. He had brain surgery and then was normal again after that. Wasn't really buying how they all so smugly just managed to worm their way into the Park's lifestyle either. It was too glib. The difference for me is that Tarantino loses the consistency of his tone with the climactic sequence of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, basically shifting from satire to parody. His staging is excellent (dark space illuminating pale would-be killers, perfectly timed editing), and the climax remained suspenseful and potentially chilling even upon subsequent viewings (I saw the film four times). But unlike Pulp Fiction, where Tarantino interwove all sorts of wild, outrageous elements in a virtual orgy of sex and violence and a mix of parody and homage while somehow maintaining a remarkably consistent, pitch-perfect tone, he could not quite achieve that feat all the way through the end of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. He comes close, but for me, there is a bit of a disjunction in the climax, even as the climax is excellent as a stand-alone piece of filmmaking and had been foreshadowed earlier. It does not ruin the movie, and I actually liked the picture a little more on my fourth viewing (on Halloween), elevating my estimation of the film from "good/very good" on the first three occasions to "very good" the fourth time. But Parasite, which I also viewed four times (once in November and three times in February, including last Friday), in my opinion, does maintain a pitch-perfect, consistent tone while balancing different agendas and aspects, smoothly transitioning from a comedy to a tragedy and doing so in a way that is totally logical. The massacre in Parasite embodies this achievement, operatically blending lyricism and nihilism and, much like the climax of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, showcasing wonderful editing. I feel that Parasite constitutes one of four "great" feature films among 2019 releases. (I will soon start a thread about my personal "best of" from 2019, as my way of doing it is different from the "top five" approach of another thread regarding the subject. I will also including links to my "best of" from 2018 and 2017, which I will post in one of the other forums at this site.) Parasite is not flawless; as you may be indicating, the idea that the rich family would not have been able to figure out that the four new hires constituted blood relatives is not necessarily credible. And you are certainly correct that the son would not have survived his injuries. Most likely, too, the authorities would have found the underground basement passage, even if the family had not known about it. But these narrative flaws barely registered with me, and certainly did not bother me, during any of my viewings, and the reason is probably because Parasite is a black comedy in the greatest sense of the term and writer-director-producer Bong Joon Ho never loses the tone or clunks the gears, as Tarantino does in the final act of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (yet not in Pulp Fiction, which is nothing short of amazing and arguably amounts to his best movie, although I am a major admirer of Django Unchained as well).
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Post by Nora on Feb 27, 2020 13:56:30 GMT
Toasted Cheese - “More importantly, I did not care. It came across as a bit zany to me and I did not find it at all satiric, nor restrained enough to make any emotional impact resonate as it could have.” Same. Exactly the same.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2020 12:36:21 GMT
When people start throwing insults at others it usually means they're out of arguments.
Also, if you regularly watch Asian movies Parasite doesn't feel weird at all. If you don't then certain actions might come across as weird, yeah.
Anyway, Bong deserves all the attention he can get and if Parasite makes people more aware of Asian movies then more power to him, because this guy has been delivering the goods on a constant basis. Imo Parasite isn't his best movie (that honor goes to Memories of Murder and Mother), but it's still great.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2020 20:58:46 GMT
When people start throwing insults at others it usually means they're out of arguments. Also, if you regularly watch Asian movies Parasite doesn't feel weird at all. If you don't then certain actions might come across as weird, yeah. Anyway, Bong deserves all the attention he can get and if Parasite makes people more aware of Asian movies then more power to him, because this guy has been delivering the goods on a constant basis. Imo Parasite isn't his best movie (that honor goes to Memories of Murder and Mother), but it's still great. Well, for me, it wasn't about not being used to Asian films, I was big on Asian movies in the 90's, namely those by Chinese director Zhang Yimou. His films were far superior than what Bong gave us here, well as far as I'm concerned. I got the tone of the film, I just didn't really connect, or get enthralled by the film or theme. I also think it has a confused and murky message and not sure what the importance of the films theme is that hooked in with the Academy members so much. What movies of Yimou are we talking about? I enjoy his movies too, but you really can't compare them because they're are pretty far apart when it comes to style and substance. Bong always has some sort of social critique in his movies and especially in Parasite. I'm surprised you didn't 'get' it, because it is pretty clear.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Mar 14, 2020 8:13:50 GMT
I have seen OUATIH twice. I never really thought about a shift in tonality in this film regarding satire and parody of what was presented climatically, but isn't this Tarantino's usual calling card? Django Unchained and Inglorious Basterds stick in the mind here, when he starts to go over-the-top violent comic mode. OUATIH was so much more restrained in comparison to these 2 films. It was an anticipated and even somewhat telegraphed climax, but one that I knew was going to deliver the goods and even in a sense, act as a retribution and "if only" scenario to how history was factually written. With the 2 characters and how they were portrayed, I can't really see it being done any differently, taking place in the Tarantinoverse.
With Parasite, I had read a little about the film, without fully knowing how the story would play out, the tone was very black and the film even managed to create an undercurrent of tension underneath it all, but I just cannot buy wholly into how the climax was delivered and I wasn't really shocked, nor was I really amped up, like the feeling that OUATIH generated in me. More importantly, I did not care. It came across as a bit zany to me and I did not find it at all satiric, nor restrained enough to make any emotional impact resonate as it could have. It is difficult to portray violence on screen in its truest form, as ugly and terrifying. Sometimes the less is more approach can make this happen, (Texas Chainsaw Massacre - 74', Manhunter - 86', Silence Of The Lambs - 91'), then sometimes the over-the-top gory representation may be the only method to work in well. Joon-Ho gave us something in between and it looked fake. The blood looked like the hot sauce they put on their pizza and the man with a skewer of bbq sausages sticking out of him, just seemed to play out absurdly to my perception I am not sure if this was the intention here.
Yes, the climax of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood certainly represents "Tarantino being Tarantino." However, as you may be indicating, most of Hollywood is more subtle and restrained than most, if not all, of the director's previous movies. Thus the climactic splurge shifts the tone in a bit of a disjunctive manner, whereas in Django Unchained, there had been extreme and egregious physical abuse over the course of the narrative. (I actually have not seen Inglorious Basterds, along with Death Proof and Jackie Brown. I have viewed all of Tarantino's other directorial feature films in the theater, all within the last seven-plus years and in most cases more than once. My first two screenings of Pulp Fiction came in 1999; I have now seen it five times, three times in the theater since 2013.) ... definitely. As I wrote last August: You may well be correct, and I have harbored that thought myself. There may have been no other way for Tarantino to handle matters; that said, the tonal slippage is still transparent in my view. To again quote myself in that post and thread: I would probably agree with that part, but I believe that the climactic violence of Parasite is supposed to be surreal—lyrical nihilism, if you will. I found it somewhat satirical yet also genuinely tragic—especially with the bleeding daughter calling for her father, while the wealthy father is concerned for his young son yet oblivious to the people who are bleeding and dying, even as he again proves rankled by the lower-class smell. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) strikes me as the best example. Mystic River (Eastwood, 2003) would be another, and so would the Indian village massacre in Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970). I would say that there is some deliberate absurdity— Parasite is a farce yet a socially profound one, and its distinctiveness comes in part from how organic the blend happens to be (in my view, anyway). The notion of the blood resembling the hot sauce never occurred to me, but that visual likeness may well have been deliberate. Part of what I find compelling about Parasite is the movie's commentary not just about class and poverty, but also acting and performance and emulation, with its notion that perhaps the acting that we witness in movies is not far removed from real life, and that real life is more "performative" than one might imagine. One could draw an analogy to North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959), which I last week viewed for the eighth time and the fourth time in the theater in the last three years. More obviously yet more tragically, the line between reality and projected desire is similarly blurred in Parasite.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2020 0:57:29 GMT
Yes, but Hollyweird had to give some kudos to a foreign film or receive backlash or be called racists.
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Post by Vits on Mar 22, 2020 20:51:43 GMT
Yes, but Hollyweird had to give some kudos to a foreign film or receive backlash or be called racists. 🙄
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Post by kuatorises on Mar 22, 2020 22:32:50 GMT
I haven't seen it yet, but wouldn't be shocked if I felt the same way. It's not uncommon to watch those award circle movies and come out of them feeling, "So, that's it, huh?" I wasn't impressed with the Tarantino movie at all.
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Post by kuatorises on Mar 23, 2020 12:31:11 GMT
I haven't seen it yet, but wouldn't be shocked if I felt the same way. It's not uncommon to watch those award circle movies and come out of them feeling, "So, that's it, huh?" I wasn't impressed with the Tarantino movie at all. Parasite is worth watching, but for me, it is not something I was bowled over by and would actively seek to view again. I would OUATIH though. That's the thing. You can come out of a movie both liking it and thinking people have massively overrated it.
I wanted to like OUATIH, and did for about half the movie, but had no interest in the Manson storyline. It felt unrelated to the first half of the movie.
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Post by Nora on Mar 24, 2020 11:40:27 GMT
That's the thing. You can come out of a movie both liking it and thinking people have massively overrated it.
I wanted to like OUATIH, and did for about half the movie, but had no interest in the Manson storyline. It felt unrelated to the first half of the movie.
Not many best picture winners of late, well for me, have been ones that have really wowed me to want to watch again. From this millennial, there is only 1 that I don't mind repeat viewings of and that is Chicago and I came to this film late in past 4 years.
From the 60's up untill 1999, there are plenty that I admire as winners.
I enjoyed the Manson parts the most in OUAIH. I didn't really like DiCaprio's character, but Pitt was always interesting to watch whenever he was onscreen.
same for me with OUATIH. Manson and Pit parts very interesting, Pitt and Leo together fun, Leo alone scenes boring.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Apr 11, 2020 9:47:52 GMT
same for me with OUATIH. Manson and Pit parts very interesting, Pitt and Leo together fun, Leo alone scenes boring. I don't even get why Leo was nominated for an Oscar, when there was much better and stronger contenders in the leading men department: Paul Walter Hauser, Christian Bale, Taron Egerton, Matt Damon. ... maybe because he emoted, and also because he played an actor, and he played an actor acting, at that. Plus, as I have written before, part of the problem with the awards circuit is that the various voting bodies tend to choose most everything from the same small pool of anointed movies, ignoring the rest of the year's cinematic offerings. DiCaprio's performance grew on me over the course of my four screenings, and he is certainly quite effective. However, I always recognized Pitt's performance as the genuine standout. Richard Burton once said that his Where Eagles Dare (1968) co-star, Clint Eastwood, was part of a lineage of "American actors," including "Spencer Tracey" and "James Stewart," who feature a sort of "dynamic lethergy," where "they appear to do nothing" yet actually "do everything." Increasingly, one might say that Pitt fits that description—especially in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Apr 12, 2020 3:37:25 GMT
... maybe because he emoted, and also because he played an actor, and he played an actor acting, at that. Plus, as I have written before, part of the problem with the awards circuit is that the various voting bodies tend to choose most everything from the same small pool of anointed movies, ignoring the rest of the year's cinematic offerings. DiCaprio's performance grew on me over the course of my four screenings, and he is certainly quite effective. However, I always recognized Pitt's performance as the genuine standout. Richard Burton once said that his Where Eagles Dare (1968) co-star, Clint Eastwood, was part of a lineage of "American actors," including "Spencer Tracey" and "James Stewart," who feature a sort of "dynamic lethergy," where "they appear to do nothing" yet actually "do everything." Increasingly, one might say that Pitt fits that description—especially in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. They make what they do appear effortless, but that is not an easy task within itself. They just fit like a glove into their craft and manage to hold it all together with a self-assuredness and confidence which ultimately transcends the material and makes them masters. Eastwood brings this into his directing as well.
I have only seen Hollywood twice at this stage, but would have no qualms about watching it again. DiCaprio was very good with the character he worked with, and he is top tier as well, I just didn't get any emotional punch from his presence here, not like the other actors I mentioned. Pitt was bubbling away underneath the surface, DiCaprio didn't come away with the same level of nuance. Damon did something special with his performance in FvF I feel, and while there was no real backstory to his character like Bale's, it was in the sense of giving of himself that came through and it has been nice to see him mature into middle age. His face speaks a thousand words.
My feelings about Damon in Ford v. Ferrari are similar; as you indicate, there is surprising depth and nuance to the performance. Ironically, though, someone that I know feels that Damon is slightly miscast in the part, in the sense that he is a New Englander playing a Texan in this film and that his Texas swagger is not quite authentic. I had already seen Ford v. Ferrari twice before we discussed the movie, and her observation had never occurred to me. When I viewed the film a third time, I sort of saw what she meant—perhaps Damon's Texas accent is not the best, and there is arguably an inscrutable, Emersonian quality to his portrayal that suggests the actor's New England roots rather than a modern-day quasi-cowboy. Then again, perhaps Damon's real-life character, Carroll Shelby, proved Emersonian as well. Either way, his performance is sturdy. And I enjoyed reading the first part of your post—well-phrased.
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Post by Aj_June on Apr 12, 2020 11:35:23 GMT
I usually only keep to movies of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, De Sica, Marcel Carne, Mizoguchi, Wilder, Kobyashi etc etc. when I want to see a good movie. Otherwise I just see mindless action thrillers or horror stuff and also enjoy them. I saw Parasite with intention of seeing a quality movie and I enjoyed it immensely. I recommended it to many people and some of them were not in Korean movies. They all enjoyed it. As for finding the movie overrated - I am fine with everyone's opinion. Overrated or underrated is based on our subjective judgement and everyone is not alike. If you or anyone finds it overrated then I am perfectly alright.
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