Post by Martin Stett on Sept 25, 2017 15:52:04 GMT
Hacksaw Ridge (2016) -- I'm conflicted on this one. I really don't know if it is morally okay to laugh a movie like this. It's sort of like taking a a shit on a sculpture that a six year old made all by himself and he's so proud of. The movie is trying to paint Doss as a man of God, and show that his faith and God's protection is what got him through all of this. I appreciate that, truly. But... come on, he's more superpowered than Spider-Man! HE SLAPPED A FUCKING GRENADE OUT OF THE AIR! He dragged a guy on a makeshift sled through a hail of bullets while that guy fired a never ending stream from his rifle! There's another character in this movie that picks up a dead guy in one hand and uses him as some sort of impenetrable shield as he charges headlong into enemy fire, sure in his invincibility (and superhuman strength)! The whole movie is so over-the-top that I feel bad for laughing at something that I THINK was made sincerely. Sometimes, I can't quite tell.... And by sometimes, I mean all the friggin' time. This film is a parody of itself. 7/10 because it's one of the best comedies of the year.
Elle (2016) -- This was a great movie that forgot it had ended and kept running for forty minutes. As a portrait of a victim of abuse, it is an honest, funny, and respectful film. I'm not just talking of the rape, but rather the abuse that she has faced her whole life, and how this shapes her into the person we see. And it honestly paints her as a person that is more than anything she has been through, but is still tied to that past (shades of the characters from Cowboy Bebop seeped into my view of the film). But then... it ends. It ends, but it doesn't end, it keeps going through some sort of bullshit rape fantasies that the movie had studiously avoided -- and frankly, crossed the line from "acceptable use of sexual violence in a film" to "trashy, titillating exploitation." It stops being about the character, and starts being about sex fantasies entirely, rather than as a part of this woman's whole person. It's still a good movie because of those first 95 minutes or so (I didn't have a timer to know exactly when it went downhill, although I know where), and Huppert is better here than I've ever seen her. 6/10
The Emigrants (1971) -- Well, it isn't a bad movie. It kept me engaged for three hours. But there was no one to really get behind, little reason to care about what happened in this movie. As a document of what the voyage to America must have been like for these emigrants, it is interesting. As a human story, it's too dry to really work. 6/10
Elle (2016) -- This was a great movie that forgot it had ended and kept running for forty minutes. As a portrait of a victim of abuse, it is an honest, funny, and respectful film. I'm not just talking of the rape, but rather the abuse that she has faced her whole life, and how this shapes her into the person we see. And it honestly paints her as a person that is more than anything she has been through, but is still tied to that past (shades of the characters from Cowboy Bebop seeped into my view of the film). But then... it ends. It ends, but it doesn't end, it keeps going through some sort of bullshit rape fantasies that the movie had studiously avoided -- and frankly, crossed the line from "acceptable use of sexual violence in a film" to "trashy, titillating exploitation." It stops being about the character, and starts being about sex fantasies entirely, rather than as a part of this woman's whole person. It's still a good movie because of those first 95 minutes or so (I didn't have a timer to know exactly when it went downhill, although I know where), and Huppert is better here than I've ever seen her. 6/10
The Emigrants (1971) -- Well, it isn't a bad movie. It kept me engaged for three hours. But there was no one to really get behind, little reason to care about what happened in this movie. As a document of what the voyage to America must have been like for these emigrants, it is interesting. As a human story, it's too dry to really work. 6/10
