Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Aug 10, 2023 19:48:02 GMT -8
I'm going to politely but firmly push back on the "oh, Oppenheimer's ending is sooooo outdated" tack you all are taking.
1) Just as a reminder here, there is a war going on in the world right now in which one of the countries at war has nukes and has publicly mused about maybe using them. We are three years removed from a Presidential administration whose policy on mutually assured destruction was "you know, let's keep that on the table." The Cold War is over but anxiety about nuclear war is very much not - regardless of the movie's aesthetic merits, "nukes are world-endingly dangerous" is a moral whose truth cannot be understated!
2) The movie is literally called Oppenheimer, and is shot entirely from Oppenheimer's perspective - you can (and should!) take the final scene as a view into the mind of a man who spent the last two decades of his life knowing that he had hoisted a Sword of Damocles over the entire Earth. And a wildly effective view, I might add.
3) The debate around artificial intelligence we are having in 2023 is almost identical to the one the world had post-Hiroshima, and many of the people involved are expressing similar regrets. It's hard not to draw parallels with our current moment (and this is in part what makes that ending so powerful, again, imo)
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Post by ThirdMan on Aug 10, 2023 21:53:22 GMT -8
I just wanted to be clear that I'm not on the "outdated ending" train that some others are. I generally agree with all of Quiara's points here.
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 11, 2023 15:36:33 GMT -8
I definitely agree with point #2, in that the film works best as a glimpse into Oppenheimer's mind, and that final scene is most effective in the moment - Oppenheimer thinks himself responsible for an object that could bring the world to Armageddon, a thought that will likely haunt him for the rest of his days.
But while it is true that some real-world ramifications from the birth of the atom bomb still remain, the fact that it's no longer seen as a foremost threat to the world ("he brought us to the brink of nuclear war" is likely not in the top critiques that any political analyst will level at the former POTUS) is in fact a sign that some of the fears which pervaded the four decades following Hiroshima were exaggerated. And since the end of the Cold War, plenty of other global threats have taken the place of nuclear war, both in the minds of civilians and the movies they watch - climate disaster, economic collapse, and yes, the rise of AI.
I'm not saying nuclear weapons won't bring about the end of the world (nor that, given the current trajectory of said world, I don't occasionally wish it would). But I don't think it's a stretch to say that the end of Oppenheimer has more in common with 1983's The Day After than any major studio release from the last couple of decades.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Aug 11, 2023 17:19:41 GMT -8
I definitely agree with point #2, in that the film works best as a glimpse into Oppenheimer's mind, and that final scene is most effective in the moment - Oppenheimer thinks himself responsible for an object that could bring the world to Armageddon, a thought that will likely haunt him for the rest of his days. But while it is true that some real-world ramifications from the birth of the atom bomb still remain, the fact that it's no longer seen as a foremost threat to the world ("he brought us to the brink of nuclear war" is likely not in the top critiques that any political analyst will level at the former POTUS) is in fact a sign that some of the fears which pervaded the four decades following Hiroshima were exaggerated. And since the end of the Cold War, plenty of other global threats have taken the place of nuclear war, both in the minds of civilians and the movies they watch - climate disaster, economic collapse, and yes, the rise of AI. I'm not saying nuclear weapons won't bring about the end of the world (nor that, given the current trajectory of said world, I don't occasionally wish it would). But I don't think it's a stretch to say that the end of Oppenheimer has more in common with 1983's The Day After than any major studio release from the last couple of decades. It's not a stretch necessarily, but it still retains its power (especially as we discussed, in the context of the movie), because the threat remains ever present. MAD is very far from being bulletproof. The presence of other potentially existential disasters doesn't change that. I do think it's a stretch to say that the fears following Hiroshima were exaggerated though, considering just how many nuclear close calls there really were. Much more than most people realize.
And yes, I'm a Tenet defender. It's nifty and really quite clever once you wrap your head around it! Surprised that Jeremy ranked Memento so low, though....that's always represented classic Nolan to me.
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 13, 2023 18:14:47 GMT -8
Yes, probably "exaggerated" was the wrong word to use re. post-WWII fears. Just saying that we can look at it differently now with the benefit of hindsight.
And it has admittedly been over a decade since I watched Memento, but it left me quite cold overall. Perhaps someday I will give it another whirl and it will impress me more. (Can't say I have interest in ever sitting through Tenet again, though.)
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Post by ThirdMan on Aug 14, 2023 11:02:35 GMT -8
I think that Memento is an expertly-made film, but I'm not going to argue with anyone who would characterize the film itself as cold. And the fragmented structure plays into that, to be honest, because it's toying with the audience's ability to thoroughly connect with the lead character by not giving them emotional continuity. I mean, I find it emotionally-involving, but I can certainly see why some folks wouldn't.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Aug 16, 2023 19:28:43 GMT -8
Incidentally, I thought Talk to Me was... kind of bad? There's some really subtle touches in the first half of the movie, where there are some understated but IMO very cool shots of just, two gal pals having fun on the bed together (this is not a euphemism for lesbian sex btw). But I had a hard time caring about these characters, and the last half hour of the film is a bit obvious, right?
Also, the movie is Australian, and they speak Australian, which some people would say is the same as English. And they are wrong. What does a girl gotta do to get subtitles at the theater??
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 17, 2023 7:25:34 GMT -8
I liked Talk to Me quite a bit, although I agree that the Australian accents and vernacular made some dialogue a bit hard to follow. (I had a similar problem watching Housebound a few months ago - yeah, that film's from New Zealand, not Australia, but it all sounds the same to my dumb American ears.)
But I love horror films that blend the supernatural with the personally traumatic - part of why I think Hereditary is perhaps the scariest movie of the past decade. Talk to Me is clearly trying for the same angle, and while it doesn't quite succeed as well, it does feature some effective interpersonal drama (helped by a strong central performance from Sophie Wilde) and some outright shocking moments. True, the ending is kind of obvious, but the various twists and turns it took to get there were not.
Seems to be a sleeper hit, by A24 standards - it's this far made $36 million at the box office, which already puts it in their all-time Top 10.
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Post by otherscott on Aug 30, 2023 12:31:10 GMT -8
I'm a little late to comment on the Barbenheimer train, but I mostly agree with Jeremy on Barbie. The movie isn't all that good in the back half. I actually didn't mind the plot with Mattel execs as the comic relief rather than the villains, but the messaging in the back half had way too many messages firing about both femininity and masculinity in a very unsubtle fashion in a movie that is supposed to be a comedy that I left with my head spinning a bit about what the overall point they were trying to get across was.
I really liked Oppenheimer, it probably moves into my top Nolan movie spot ahead of Dunkirk and Inception. It's interesting that I originally heard the last message from Einstein as them preventing the chain reaction that would lead to the world's destruction rather than causing it, and I think the idea of mutually assured destruction helps support that too. I think the movie does a good job both dealing with the horrifying nature of the bomb, but also realizing that Oppenheimer's role was just to become the first to build it, and if he didn't someone else would.
Anyways, one of those movies were very good, and it wasn't the one with the dolls.
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Post by ThirdMan on Aug 30, 2023 19:13:08 GMT -8
Well, as Cineplex is offering $10 movies this weekend, even for IMAX showings, I might finally get around to seeing the IMAX presentation of Oppenheimer, which actually has a few seats available in the middle/back of the theater screen now. I'\m not positive, but I may have fallen asleep for a minute or two in there at some point on my first screening, given my weird sleep patterns, and I'd like to be sure. Yes, it's not the sort of film I'm necessarily going to watch again and again in the coming years, but I'd be more than glad to give it at least one more look before putting it to bed.
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Post by Jeremy on Aug 31, 2023 5:09:04 GMT -8
I should add that my mom also kind of enjoyed the first half of Barbie and lost interest during the second half. She fell asleep somewhere around America Ferrera's girlboss speech and woke up in time to see the Kens dancing to a giant musical number and wondered what the heck was going on.
I don't have much interest in watching either Barbie or Oppenheimer again, but I'm glad they gave movies a much-needed shot in the arm this summer (especially before the strike screws things in the fall).
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Post by ThirdMan on Aug 31, 2023 12:25:10 GMT -8
I don't know: I think the overarching theme of Barbie is pretty straightforward. It's about trying to live up to a series of culturally assigned and/or expected gender roles, and all the messy contradictions that come with that. It really should leave one's head spinning, to a degree, because it's a confusing and often overwhelming thing many folks deal with, on one level or another. The over-the-top parodic nature of it makes the relative unsubtlety more appropriate and, heck, palatable, IMO. Clearly the movie is registering with a fair number of moviegoers (it's now the highest-grossing picture in Warner Bros. history), beyond being just a bright and silly summertime diversion, amidst a sea of mostly unnecessary franchise sequels.
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Post by Jeremy on Sept 1, 2023 14:43:46 GMT -8
I think the message of Barbie just muddles itself in too many layers of irony and Internet meme fodder to really work, certainly not at the level it needs to. But it is certainly striking a chord - probably helps that it's a 60-year-old globally popular brand that has never had a theatrical release before, but whatever the reason, it's about to become the highest-grossing film of the year. And obviously a great boon for Warner Bros, which clearly needed a lifeline after the historic bomb that was The Flash.
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Post by ThirdMan on Sept 1, 2023 22:38:48 GMT -8
I think the message of Barbie just muddles itself in too many layers of irony and Internet meme fodder to really work, certainly not at the level it needs to. But does it really NEED to? Heh.
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Quiara
Grade School
Posts: 775
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Post by Quiara on Oct 27, 2023 15:26:45 GMT -8
So how about that Killers of the Flower Moon?
My take: it was pretty good, but I would have liked it more had it leaned into the subtle humor I associate with Marty, or the severe/beautiful cinematography I associate with Westerns. There was a lot of ado about how the film represents its Osage characters, but I feel like a lot of that material was tacked on to the beginning and end of the film in ways that made me wonder how the movie would have played out had Marty really "gone native," so to speak, and wove that spiritualism more authentically into the narrative. There's nothing wrong per se with transplanting his gangster shtick into interbellum Oklahoma, but I was distinctly underwhelmed here.
And yes, it is absofrickinlutely too long!!
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