Amph At The Movies (film discussion thread)

Even the host feels bad about his monologue

 

The last prepandemic globes ceremony, 2020, had 18 million viewers, this one had half that, though still better ratings than the last one. So I guess more people saw Koy flop than I expected.

The pop culture appeal of Barbenheimer likely has something to do with it, which should be good news for the Oscars.

 

i've only ever been vaguely aware that the golden globes was even televised.

 

https://x.com/markhamill/status/1744452324356190334?s=46&t=2guiC9wFfTt3YP2kECZYuA

Probably been posted but this is awesome

 

Lady Gaga wears Joker T-shirt as she returns to music studio after wrapping up role as Harley Quinn in superhero sequel



I'd say she's looking forward to the new movie's release.

 

There's been an unfortunate tendency to use the term "dated" in only a negative connotation. But that's part of why we love old movies and old music and old books or whatever. Because it comes from a different time period. Why would I want to watch only movies that look like they were made last year? It's the "dated" look of many movies that make them so visually interesting and even beautiful. It's also why so many modern movies openly attempt to imitate the look of old movies. Ti West's X really captured the look of an early seventies horror movie and I thought it was absolutely gorgeous to look at. I'll take a "dated" horror movie from the seventies over the "polished" look of, for instance, Night Swim, the new one from Blumhouse which admittedly has a very timeless look, but only because it's so visually dull and unimaginative. In ten years, Night Swim will probably still look pretty modern. But it'll also still be boring.

This is even true of special effects, honestly. I haven't seen the new Ghostbusters movies because, honestly, I can't quite wrap my head around watching Ghostbusters busting ghosts that don't have that early eighties special effects feel to them. Yes, the special effects in the first Ghostbusters are very dated; they're also beautiful and I wouldn't trade them for modern CGI for a million dollars.

 

For me Westerns always give away the decade they were filmed in sometimes more than movies set in the present of when they were filmed. If there's such a thing as a completely timeless Western, I've never seen it.

 

I bought three more Criterion Blu Rays on Amazon this morning, and Salo was thankfully not available to purchase because that was next if I followed the Criterion website. Now I never have to watch it, unless it pops up on streaming.

 

Imagine being excited about skipping a Pasolini film.

 

Tarantino and Edgar Wright had a great little discussion about Salo on an episode of Empire Film Podcast a couple of years ago. Edgar Wright was saying that he watched it at home alone by himself and he had to take a break at one point and just go walk around outside. Tarantino said the right way to watch it was in a theater with a large audience; he said when he saw it at a film festival, a woman angrily walked out, screaming that Pasolini deserved to be shot or something.

Edgar Wright then said he didn't know if he'd be up for watching the movie again though and Tarantino said (paraphrasing), "Oh, no, I'm not telling you to watch it again; I'm telling you that you ****** up your one time."

All I know about is that I tried to read the book because I thought it would be very modernist to handwave it and be like, "Oh, how droll that people once found this kind of thing shocking."

I bailed less than ten pages in. I'm not a guy who likes to kink shame, but that book is ****** up; and I was still in the "Simple Passions." There's stuff in the "Simple Passions" section of the book that I found deeply disturbing. Not just gross; I'm not just talking about the usual taboos. Most of that stuff does nothing for me, but it also doesn't shock me. Like I know 2 Girls 1 Cup exists; that's not going to shock me. I am familiar with the documentary Zoo; that stuff isn't going to shock me either. But there were things that shocked me. In Part One of Four.

And it's not as though there's anything to recommend it other than its ******-up content. It's pretty badly written and there's no real plot or characters to speak of; it's just a litany of increasingly disgusting and violent sexual acts performed on, for the most part, children. I get that Pasolini added some depth and subtext there, but I'm just not sure how much gold-plating that turd (ironic metaphor) will stand. I think it's a deeply anti-humanist text.

But, I mean, has anybody read it? I'd love to have a discussion with someone who has read it and is willing to defend its artistic merits. Whatever else I can say about it, I have to say that I didn't finish it and people being morally outraged by works of art they've never read or watched is something I usually hate. Anyway, I feel I have derailed the thread. @Ramza have you seen the movie? Have you read the book and can you compare them?

 

I don’t think I even made it all the way through the Wikipedia summary.

edit: still not.

 

I’ve seen the movie (it’s why one of my lesser used go-to jokes is “MANGIA!” although the actual context isn’t very funny) but I’ve never read anything by de Sade. It’s a harrowing but powerful film, although I understand why it makes people uncomfortable to even think about I still believe it gets dismissed too easily as shock material. Pasolini is making a pretty strong point about fascism and control so I think easing off would’ve been a bit of a coward’s option.

Incidentally I have, um, good(?) news for the woman in Tarantino’s anecdote…

 

Plots and character development are just two optional tools for telling a story in cinema. They can be used effectively, ineffectively, or not at all, depending on what a director is trying to communicate through the art form. Films can be more than just “recorded plays.”

I personally like it when directors take a shot at not using those particular tools, and try other ways. It’s not easy, and it can lead to more disasters than masterpieces, but it’s usually kind of refreshing, even when the results are the former.

In this case, there is something to recommend Salo aside from it being “****ed up content.” Pasolini is deliberately showing us the true essence of fascism and the domination of other people’s wills, unfluffed by heroic imagery, and it’s worth paying attention to as he’s someone who experienced what it feels like to live in a world dominated by fascists. That impression of fascism is just as important to communicate, in my view, as the cold hard facts. And he succeeds in that. And yeah, it’s difficult to watch once, nevermind more than once. But it’s not just “****ed up content” for its own sake. It’s an important piece of anti-fascist art, IMO.

 

Oh, no, she knew; that's what she was saying. Or at least that's how Tarantino was telling it.

My comments about their being no plot and no characters and about it being nothing but ******-up content were all specifically in relation to the book, which does occasionally just switch into listicle format as it details the acts being committed. I'm aware that Pasolini's film is considered an anti-fascist work. I don't know if people who have read the book completely would argue that the anti-fascist angle is either implicit or explicit in the book. I couldn't say, but I suspect that those elements in the film are almost entirely Pasolini's addition.

I've never read a summary of what content appears in Salo, but I suspect that he did, in fact, ease off on the content as depicted in the book. Maybe I'll check out the Wiki summary of the movie and see, but I doubt that he depicted the very worst parts of the book. I certainly hope he didn't.

EDIT: I did read the summary on the Wikipedia and I will say that, assuming the summary is accurate, it does leave out at least two of the most significantly ******-up sexual acts from the book.

 

Same comment applies to the book. Plot and character development are just a couple things that one can use in writing a story. They are not necessary.

 

That's true, but I'm more pointing out that those are two of the things that might potentially recommend the book. If it had particularly great character development or a riveting plot, I might have been more able to stomach the repellent content. But it has neither in my opinion. That, taken on its own, does not make the book bad. But it certainly does not help an already bad book become better.

 

To be clear, I have no doubts Pasolini was transforming the work and making omissions where he thought they were necessary for his point (On the flip side, I sort of doubt De Sade included a scene where a guard giving an anti-fascist salute is gunned down rather than subjected to something horrific in what I might tediously call “the thesis statement of the entire movie,” mostly because De Sade lived before fascism was an articulated political ideology), or even, yes, in a potential deference to taste or feasibility. My point was that Pasolini was not interested in presenting a sanitized look at fascist power structures - which anything less than horrifying atrocities absolutely is - and I very much think that he chose to adapt The 120 Days of Sodom specifically because he knew the power of some of its images and themes, deliberate or accidental, as it related to his chosen subject. Hence why Salò is not a straightforward adaptation and changes the setting and presumably other key details.

And like, bluntly, I have seen movies where grotesque **** for the sake of grotesque **** occurs. The vibes are simply different. That kind of guides my read here.

 

Exactly. It simply doesn’t feel like grotesquery for its own sake. You can tell the difference. This ain’t schlock horror.

 

Yeah, that all makes sense. It's still a movie I could potentially see watching at some point, even though I had the reaction I did to the book. Pasolini is overall a filmmaker I haven't explored that much and I should correct that at some point.

 

Check out the Trilogy of Life (Canterbury Tales, Decameron, Arabian Nights) if you’re apprehensive about jumping into the deepest possible end, that’s kind of like the kindler, gentler version of his… let’s say really idiosyncratic stuff.

 

When I put together my best films list(s?) at the end of the year, I’ve kind of settled on how I want to do it now. I don’t rank them, though if there’s two or three that rise definitely to the top, I might mention it. Otherwise, I will do an unranked list of anything from my top ten to my top twenty. They have to hit a certain level of quality; there are a lot of movies that I like or even like a lot, but I try to limit this list to movies that I downright love. I will occasionally include a film or two from the previous year, especially if it didn’t come out in my area until the current year. I did that with one movie this time and I’ll point it out.

I’m going to split it into two posts because I have so many, because here is my 2023 Top 19 Movies. Before the list itself, here are five movies from 2023 that I most regret not being able to see yet. I think two of them may be eligible for my list next year due to their release dates in the States being in 2024; regardless, my five biggest movie misses in 2023.

All of Us Strangers
Eileen
Godzilla Minus One
May December
The Zone of Interest

2023 Top 19, Part 1

Anatomy of a Fall



Sometimes a couple is a kind of chaos.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.



I looked for you in Temple. I looked for you in Church. I didn’t feel you at all. Why? Why, God? Why do I only feel you when I’m alone?

Asteroid City



I’m not coming back, Augie. Then you take a picture and start crying and I say, “I hope it comes out.”

And I say, “All my pictures come out.”

Barbie



Do you guys ever think about dying?

Beau is Afraid



Push forward. Pray that you learn valor and are given luck.

Bottoms



I really value when people use violence for me. It’s actually one of my love languages.

Evil Dead Rise



Mommy’s with the maggots now.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3



There are the hands that made us and then there are the hands that guide their hands. My beloved raccoon.

Infinity Pool



Maybe think of it as a gift. You said you were looking for inspiration. There’s something to the experience, isn’t there?

Okay, there’s the first nine. I’ll post the next ten later. I try not to meditate through the year on what exactly my top films list will be at the end; I always hope it will be eclectic. This year it definitely was and I think that’s already obvious. If you look at what movies are right next to each other on this list, due to the alphabetical listing, none of those movies are even remotely like the ones they're next to.

 

Bottoms is a real gem. I'm so glad Edebiri is getting recognition for the Bear. She can do it all.

 

It has come to my attention that I somehow left The Boy & the Heron off the running list I keep throughout the year of the movies I've seen and thus, when I went back to that list in order to make this list, it wasn't there and I forgot about it. Thankfully, my list was a top nineteen, so there's room to just slot it in that 20th slot. It should definitely have been in that post I just made.