Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Jul 26, 2023 11:50:01 GMT -8
Incidentally, Barbie has now been logged by over 750,000 users on Letterboxd. It'll likely blow past a million at some point this weekend - easily the fastest film to reach that milestone, breaking the record just set by Across the Spider-Verse (which took seven weeks to get a million logs). This makes me really, really, really not want to see Barbie - the kind of film Letterboxd users race to write the funniest one-liners about and the kind of film that I want to see are... maybe not the same. But I'll report back after I Barbenheimer (a weird portmanteau, as JC notes - should really be Oppenharbie since that seems to be the canonical order)
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Post by ThirdMan on Jul 27, 2023 9:57:37 GMT -8
I mean, it's not a deeeep film, but it certainly has a bit more on its mind than one would expect from a movie based on a doll designed for little girls. And it's definitely aiming to cater to a much wider demographic than just little girls. Heck, a lot of people, of all ages, are just going to see it because they like Robbie and/or Gosling.
Some critics who are trying to play it off as sinister, or filmbros who are characterizing it as aggressively feminist -- I mean, it focuses some of its attention on fairly universal female concerns and ideals, but it's mostly just caricatured (for laughs), lighthearted gender conflict -- are going more than a tad overboard.
You might find it too broad to be funny, but I thought it was a cute little summertime film, and I don't begrudge its commercial success.
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Post by Jeremy on Jul 27, 2023 18:13:56 GMT -8
The key to using Letterboxd is understanding that the most popular reviews on the site all come from the same half-dozen people who write every review as a one-line meme-of-the-week, and that if you simply block those people from popping up in your feed, the site becomes mildly less annoying.
Oppenheimer, for what it's worth, has also amassed over half a million logs on Letterboxd - clearly, these two films have together tapped into a primal sense of excitement among online film fans, which probably would not have been the case if they had been released separately.
(I would just like to remind people that Christopher Nolan ended his deal with Warner Bros. in 2020 due to their decision to put pandemic-era theatrical films on streaming. He then moved over to Universal for Oppenheimer, while WB produced Barbie. Had Nolan stayed with WB, they would be the ones producing Oppenheimer, and would not have released it the same weekend as they did Barbie. In summary, Barbenheimer would never have existed were it not for Covid. Make of that what you will!)
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 1, 2023 18:37:16 GMT -8
So I saw half of Barbenheimer last night. (The pink half, for those wondering.) Some spoilers!
It's... not very good? I mean, I really enjoyed the first 45 minutes - great set design, some creative jokes, and fun performances from Robbie and Gosling, the latter of whom in particular is having just the right amount of too-much-fun. I'm a sucker for stories that explore the dark side of a superficially cute and innocent world (especially one based off a globally recognized toy line), and Gerwig did a good job of melding the perky comedy with psychological angst. It also transitions well to fish-out-of-water comedy once Barbie and Ken enter the real world.
Unfortunately, the film kind of goes off the rails in the second act, due to a couple of major missteps. First is the portrayal of the Mattel execs, particularly Will Ferrell, whose character I absolutely loathed. As soon as this element is introduced, all semblance of reality in the "real" world goes out the window, for reasons that are never fully explained. My guess is that the writers originally intended to make the Mattel folks appear more villainous, but the company itself put a hard stop to that, relegating Ferrell and co. to "goofy and clueless" rather than outright bad guys. Ugh.
This brings us to the other big problem... Ken as the villain? Okay, so the film wants to make its commentary on the gender wars, but nothing about this commentary feels organic or properly set up. Ken's turn from zeta-male hanger-on to redpilled MRA feels forced and awkward, like the movie needed to make its point about gender inequality but couldn't figure out how to build a story around it. Instead, it builds to a lot of fragmented hijinks and heavy-handed monologuing and an unfunny final dance number.
In general, the world-building feels really confused and underbaked. If Antebellum is the dumb version of Get Out, then Barbie often feels like the dumb version of The Lego Movie - trying to blend the real world and a corporate-brand world together without any sense of how the two are connected, or why, thematically, or even whether anything about the internal logic needs to make sense. Which would be fine if this film fully committed to its zaniness, instead of becoming such a didactic drag in its second half.
Anyway, I liked the first almost-half of this film, but it definitely fell short of its potential. Will watch the other half of Barbenheimer next week.
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Post by ThirdMan on Aug 2, 2023 8:43:49 GMT -8
I'll agree that the filmmakers probably didn't fully know what they wanted to do with the Mattel execs (and were indeed probably restricted in that regard), but a boardroom of all men, and no women, brainstorming ideas of what random Barbie doll designs to introduce to maximize profits is still pretty funny.
And I thought the Kens' interpretation of what it is to be Alpha and Macho was quite amusing (horses everywhere, for some reason, and everyone's playing Matchbox 20 on their acoustic guitar), and it's kind of funnier, to me, that it wasn't set up to any great degree, and only vaguely builds off of Ken's resentment over never fully getting Stereotypical Barbie's attention. The film is dealing primarily in caricature (with both genders), so it's not going to put an enormous amount of effort into fully earned or logical world building, in either reality. One speech from, I believe, America Ferrera, is, as I noted earlier, rather longwinded in nature -- it got big applause from the crowd I attended the movie with, though -- but otherwise, most of the back-half of the film is just big, broad big-screen sentimentality and silliness, and hardly forceful messaging. Any men that get genuinely upset at this film (not saying you are, of course) take themselves, and their "manhood", way too seriously, and deserve to be laughed at.
Anyways, whatever its genuine faults, I genuinely had more fun watching this than the latest Mission: Impossible film. I imagine I'm not alone on that, given how well this thing performed in its second weekend (the word-of-mouth on it appears to be very good).
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 2, 2023 18:16:54 GMT -8
A lot of the Alpha Ken stuff was amusing on the surface level, but it simply dragged on too long and felt like it was trying too hard. I'll admit I just didn't find a lot of the jokes in the second half that funny, particularly once the film became a mishmash of half-baked plot threads in search of a climax. I don't need the world to make perfect sense, but I wish there was a little more effort in explaining why characters are doing what they do beyond "the script demands it." (Why do the Mattel execs follow Barbie to Barbieland? Why do the Kens bother to have an "election" after they've already staged a hostile takeover?)
The political discourse around the film is interesting insofar as the film itself isn't that engaged with its messaging - everything is caked in so much irony that it's hard to read much of anything into the story. Although Ferrera's speech is pretty on-the-nose. (It did not draw much applause in my theater, although one lady in the audience shouted "You go, girl!" which was amusing.)
In any event, it's definitely become a runaway hit - will make over a billion dollars worldwide, and could vie with Super Mario for the top spot of the year. Rather unexpected, considering it was expected to bomb as recently as a month ago - if nothing else, the marketing folks behind this movie are a bunch of geniuses.
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Post by ThirdMan on Aug 2, 2023 19:24:17 GMT -8
I didn't really need to film to have any full-blown villains, but yeah, the Mattel execs coming to Barbieland and doing basically nothing when they got there was certainly a blown opportunity.
Re: why the Kens bothered to have an election after the "hostile takeover" though, well, I think it's pretty well-established by that point that none of them are very bright (heh).
I'll also note that folks who engage in a ton of political discourse over the film are awfully silly themselves, because as you said, everything's caked in so much frivolous irony.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Aug 3, 2023 11:53:16 GMT -8
We're all missing the most chilling part of Oppenheimer: oh no, the Mayor has become a Senator!! (I almost had to stop myself from yelling OMG IT'S HARRY GROENER at the screen. Love seeing Harry Groener in things!)
As for the film itself, I think it kind of dragged a bit until the final hour or so, when it really starts crackling - I think the film is at its most crackling when RDJ's Strauss is (indirectly) going at it with Oppenheimer, and has less timeline juggling to do; the handling of the Trinity test is also quite effective. The Nolanian sound design here is justified for a movie that's literally about a bomb going off, I would say, but I still struggled to hear some of the dialogue here. Ultimately as much as I liked the film I would never want to see it again, personally.
Barbie was also better than I was expecting, although the idea of this film being "subversive" was ludicrous before I saw the movie and is even more ludicrous afterwards. (Did y'all not watch Pleasantville? That's a movie playing in the same territory of this but without the imperative to sell toys layered on top of it.) But I will give it credit, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are absolutely incredible in this film, and there's a lot of fun to be had with the production design here.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Aug 3, 2023 12:04:09 GMT -8
A lot of the Alpha Ken stuff was amusing on the surface level, but it simply dragged on too long and felt like it was trying too hard. I'll admit I just didn't find a lot of the jokes in the second half that funny, particularly once the film became a mishmash of half-baked plot threads in search of a climax. I don't need the world to make perfect sense, but I wish there was a little more effort in explaining why characters are doing what they do beyond "the script demands it." (Why do the Mattel execs follow Barbie to Barbieland? Why do the Kens bother to have an "election" after they've already staged a hostile takeover?) IMO the film didn't want to do any sort of political commentary, and having the democratically elected president overthrown in a coup led by a fur-clad male chauvinist might have been a bit too "real" for this sort of movie.
AND TO THE FILM'S DETRIMENT!! Like, wouldn't it have been really funny if the Barbies' divide-and-conquer plan towards the film's climax hinged on introducing racism into Barbieland?
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Post by ThirdMan on Aug 3, 2023 23:20:33 GMT -8
As for the film itself, I think it kind of dragged a bit until the final hour or so, when it really starts crackling - I think the film is at its most crackling when RDJ's Strauss is (indirectly) going at it with Oppenheimer, and has less timeline juggling to do; the handling of the Trinity test is also quite effective. The Nolanian sound design here is justified for a movie that's literally about a bomb going off, I would say, but I still struggled to hear some of the dialogue here. Ultimately as much as I liked the film I would never want to see it again, personally.
Barbie was also better than I was expecting, although the idea of this film being "subversive" was ludicrous before I saw the movie and is even more ludicrous afterwards. (Did y'all not watch Pleasantville? That's a movie playing in the same territory of this but without the imperative to sell toys layered on top of it.) But I will give it credit, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are absolutely incredible in this film, and there's a lot of fun to be had with the production design here.
Like I said, I do think Oppenheimer feels like it's spinning its wheels in the middle section a bit, when the focus briefly shifts to trying to suss out a mole/spy. The sound design of the film is undeniably loud (particularly at the beginning), but unlike with, say, Interstellar and The Dark Knight Rises prologue (before they re-recorded it) in IMAX, I didn't have any difficulty hearing any of the dialogue. Mind you, I watched it in a regular theater, because the IMAX screen in my area seems booked up for the foreseeable future (which is quite impressive for a film of this nature, I must say). And I can absolutely see this being a one-viewing kind of film, even if someone quite enjoyed it, because it's not really trying to be an overt "entertainment" that compels many repeat viewings. And yeah, Robbie and Gosling are both very good in Barbie. Gosling is very much in his wheelhouse playing clueless-but-generally-non-threatening lunkheads in comedies: add the metrosexual element, and he kills it.
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 4, 2023 15:22:04 GMT -8
Barbie was also better than I was expecting, although the idea of this film being "subversive" was ludicrous before I saw the movie and is even more ludicrous afterwards. (Did y'all not watch Pleasantville? That's a movie playing in the same territory of this but without the imperative to sell toys layered on top of it.) But I will give it credit, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are absolutely incredible in this film, and there's a lot of fun to be had with the production design here.
I got Pleasantville vibes from the early goings of this film, although thematically, it seemed more in the lane of The Brady Bunch Movie (mocking a seemingly anachronistic pop-culture touchstone while also celebrating it.) And while I'm not expecting the film to take as many awards as Gerwig's previous movies, I would not be surprised if it wins the Oscar for production design. Oh, I'd say Gerwig and co. definitely intended for this movie to be a sparkly pink bomb chucked right into the nation's culture wars, even if it plays everything tongue-in-cheek, from the Citizens United spoof during the Barbie Supreme Court* scene to the climax where women save the day by showing up to vote. The problem with the messaging isn't that it's anti-men so much as it's too unfocused to feel much pro-anything. *I laughed quite hard at the scene where Barbie first shows up in the real world and mistakes a group of swimsuit models for the Supreme Court. (Also, given the current evolving trajectory of American politics, including MeToo fallout, pushes for diversity, and the gender gap in average lifespan, I expect we will have an all-female Supreme Court by 2050.)
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 9, 2023 18:17:54 GMT -8
Saw the second half of Barbenheimer this week (I'm amazed at how many people sat through both films back-to-back, regardless of order). It's pretty good! For the most part.
There are several things worth commending here - the sound design is top-notch, the score is terrific, the use of IMAX is understated but innovative. And the cast is phenomenal - not since From the Earth to the Moon has there been assembled such an incredible Who's Who of Hollywood's top middle-aged white guys. Murphy deserves much credit for shouldering the center of the film, but he's got great supporting talent in Damon, Downey, Affleck, and many more.
On the downside... I really started to feel the three-hour runtime after a while. Much of Robert Oppenheimer's story is compelling, but the film feels quite tonally dry (I laughed at just a few lines - the darker the humor, the better, it seemed) and at times repetitive, what with all the expository talk about moles and adultery. The messaging around the bomb and the psychological impact it has on Oppenheimer is the most compelling aspect of the film, and I kind of wish it had been given more of the central focus.
Which brings me to controversial territory: with the exception of the final scene*, the last 40 minutes of this film did not work for me at all, particularly as I just didn't feel invested in the Senate hearings or in Strauss' caustic relationship with Oppie. Much of the film builds to the Trinity test, and once we're past that, there's only so much more energy the story can summon up. The scene in the Oval Office would have made a compelling endpoint (even if Gary Oldman's performance as Truman is a little too broad), framing Oppenheimer's trauma and self-doubt in much larger perspective. But alas, the film continues on, and on.
Still, I'd say this is two-thirds of a great movie. Certainly better than Barbie (but of course, being a man I would say that) and definitely one of the gutsier summer blockbusters I can think of. And it was quite eardrum-rattling in IMAX, without making me nauseous like the last act of The Flash did.
*And even that movie-ending message feels at least 30 years out of date.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Aug 10, 2023 7:11:22 GMT -8
I'm going to strongly disagree--for me, the last hour was the best, most interesting part of the movie. The lead-up to Trinity was masterfully executed, and the scene with the cheering crowd at Los Alamos was chilling and haunting in all the right ways, certainly putting to rest any concerns about Oppenheimer not taking the victims of the bombings seriously. But. The messy politics of the early atomic age aren't a story that's been covered before--it's the story that the Manhattan writers were really itching to tell before it got axed. It's probably what inspired Nolan to make the film in the first place, and it's vitally important to how Oppenheimer created something he then lost control over--not to mention dragging his family through a public circus out of a misplaced desire to be a martyr (as if doing such a thing meant a damn thing to anyone). All super rich stuff, greatly enhanced by the non-linear structure which allows the film to get to the point sooner. And the final scene may be out of date, but it's also painfully true. That particular answer to Fermi's Paradox still looms large.
Ranking it within the Nolan filmography... 1. The Prestige 2. Memento 3. Oppenheimer 4. Dunkirk 5. Inception
6. The Dark Knight
7. Tenet
8. Interstellar
9. Batman Begins
10. Insomnia
11. The Dark Knight Rises
12. Following
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Post by ThirdMan on Aug 10, 2023 10:23:59 GMT -8
Yeah, I found the final third of the movie the most compelling as well. I think part of it was that, to the best of my recollection, it got a bit more linear, structurally, by that point, so it allowed me to feel the drama more immediately, because the movie was "all caught up". Which is not to say that the non-linear structure that preceded it wasn't creatively successful (it was), only that the final section brought it all home for me. I also found the closed-door non-trial trial, rendered over the course of the film, to be hugely compelling, with great tension in Oppenheimer trying to defend his life and loyalty to his country, while the government officials were basically gaslighting him and his lawyer (them not being privy to the "evidence" against him because it's "classified", etc.). As for Nolan's oeuvre, I think my Top 4 include Dunkirk, Memento, The Dark Knight, and Oppenheimer (in whatever order), with The Prestige and Inception alternating in the fifth and sixth positions, depending on my mood. It seems as though Incandescence liked Tenet more than most. That would be near the bottom of my list, because IMO, it was a fun concept that didn't have an emotionally meaningful story or theme to support it. I'll need to revisit it at some point, though, as I only saw it once, in a theater (where the dialogue was, indeed, rather inaudible at times): maybe it has a few hidden layers? Regardless, Tenet is probably some Michael Bay fans' least favourite movie ever, because so much stuff gets unblowed-up real good.
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 10, 2023 17:59:11 GMT -8
I get what the Senate hearing scenes were going for, but I just found them to be rather dry and lacking on a script level. Maybe Aaron Sorkin has spoiled me on courtroom-style scenes, but I expect it would have helped if the buildup wasn't so insanely long. In any case, they definitely helped re-earth my longing for a third season of Manhattan.
Tenet is easily my least favorite Nolan film, regardless of how much or little gets blown up in it. I'm a touch cooler on his filmography as a whole than many folks, but he has done some outstanding work over the years, and his status as one of the few directors to fill theater seats based on name ID alone is nothing to sneeze at.
I posted my ranking of his filmography last year, but here it is again, updated:
The Dark Knight The Prestige Dunkirk Batman Begins Inception Oppenheimer Interstellar Memento Insomnia Following The Dark Knight Rises Tenet
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