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Jimmy

By Jimmy
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Benji
Benji

First, just because you're offended doesn't make you right. Second, again, it is a LONG STANDING TROPE NAME BECAUSE OF SHITTY WRITERS. If you want to take o

apsham
apsham

Getting offended for other people and trying to police what other people are talking about - like you're some kind of high moral authority that everyone else's posts should be judged by.

apsham
apsham

Here's the thing. Every single time something comes up - there's a section of this community that is representative of the internet community in general tha

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Benjamin Hall Of Famer

Benjamin

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25 minutes ago, Ziggy Srardust said:

I'm just disappointed because it seems like the other 3 are incredibly smart and capable and Leslie is all "Well I know these streets and I can borrow a car!" And? Why am I letting you bust these ghosts with me Leslie Jones?

I'd be more worried about Kate. Anyone who's smart can see that the wig is the problem!  :shifty:

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GoGo Yubari Hall Of Famer

GoGo Yubari

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1 hour ago, Ziggy Srardust said:

I'm just disappointed because it seems like the other 3 are incredibly smart and capable and Leslie is all "Well I know these streets and I can borrow a car!" And? Why am I letting you bust these ghosts with me Leslie Jones?

I would have found it more unrealistic if I hadn't just been in NYC and gotten lost in the subways on like three separate occasions. Even if her skillset is just "never getting lost in the New York subway system" that's still probably worth it.

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Jimmy Hall Of Famer

Jimmy

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4 hours ago, DFF said:

I just read the review for Knight of Cups on RogerEbert.com, and it has gotten me wondering what everyone on here thinks of Terrence Malick? Genius, or just pretentious? Both?

I'm definitely an admirer and I think he's a genius, I manage to get a lot out of his films even if I'm not completely engaged in them. I've still got The New World and The Tree of Life to watch, but I'm a huge fan of Badlands and To The Wonder. I was less taken by The Thin Red Line when I watched it, when I was admittedly a lot younger. I feel like watching his films outside of a cinema is kind of a disservice to his stuff, because it's so cinematic. A cinema in London is actually doing a retrospective of his work, and I think I'll do my best to catch a few. His stuff is slow, mediating but absolutely beautiful and atmospheric, and I wouldn't go as far as to say his work is pretentious, but it definitely won't be for everyone. 

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JasonM World Champion

JasonM

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Spoiler warning for a film from 2014, so don't read past the first sentence upcoming if you don't want to be spoilered.

So I watched 'Fury' the other day, the tank-film with Brad Pitt. And I'm extremely conflicted about whether i loved the film, or hated it a lot.

I have spoilered it... for spoilers, and also because it's a lengthy little writeups about both what I loved and hated about the film, so read at your own peril.

There's the cast, which is downright phenomenal and perfect. There's the acting, which is also harrowing and poignant in a way that really no other WW2 film has ever managed to do. Rather than romanticising the war, it instead paints the grittiest and nastiest possible picture in showing that WW2 is the deadliest war ever for a reason.

But then it slowly started going off the rails for me. First of all, Ayer's fetish for exploding bodyparts became downright slapstick and ridiculous at a certain point, which every battle scene needing at least one or more heads/legs/arms/bodies exploding in ridiculous gore that for me felt too over-the-top and took me right out of the scenes.

There's a scene early on where a tank is hit by a Panzerfaust from a German kid-soldier, and it ended with the commander of that tank, on fire, managing to somehow grab his sidearm and shooting himself through the head. It was jarring, and instead of making it more 'gritty', it instead undermined the tones because in no situation could a man on fire make the conscious decision to shoot himself, they would be too much in shock and writhing in pain to even contemplate anything other than scream for help towards his comrades. At that point, I was already having doubts about the film.

Then the first big action scene happened, with the tanks storming an entrenched position. In a way this was the least offensive action scene in the film, and despite some issues with combat logic, the battle was gory and bloody (Plus exploding head because nazi's apparently don't duck or get out of the way when a tank is slowly chugging in their direction...). The scene that followed was jarring, but in a good way as it showed that the Americans were just about as depraved as the Germans are.

At this point the film goes along quite well, at least until they face off against the Tiger tank. And I want to preface the following rant by saying that I can easily suspend my disbelief in a lot of films, yet the Tiger scene managed to throw me right out of the film in the worst way. The Tiger shows up, and everyone knows Tigers are killing machine tanks that take no shit from puny little Shermans (lets ignore the fact these Shermans had 76mm cannons that could go up against Tigers at this stage in the war). The first 'mistake' both the Sherman's and the Tiger made was to fire whilst driving (Rule of cool, so I won't hold it against them.), Also, another exploding head, yay!

So the Sherman's storm the superior Tiger, and the Tiger does the only logical thing when you're in a superior tank with a superior gun against multiple weaker targets... You charge straight ahead at them and close the distance so that you give the weaker enemies a fair shot at making a kill, pure combat logic... Well, the two non-hero Sherman's go up in flames as expected, Fury & Tiger have a little ballet until Fury gets two shots on the ass and kills the Tiger, gunning down the people coming out of the tank for good measure because fuck Nazi's.

The tank scene is ridiculous, but at this point it's well within taking liberties for the sake of having a sweet action scene.

The town/city scenes are actually pretty well made, and like before the Americans show they're about as depraved as the Germans... Yet Fury Commander and Rookie show their human sides to make clear they're not utter monsters... PS: As expected, in the short action scene a GI got his leg blown square off, because war is hell and Ayer needs to show off his fetish...

[rant-start]

The film goes on, until we get to our climax where Fury is stranded at the middle of a crossroad with a broken thread that can't be fixed. To make matters worse, they're low on supplies and there's 2000 highly trained SS troops coming their way toting plenty of Panzerfausts to turn the little Sherman that could into dust.

So the hero's do what any hero would do, they're gonna make a stand to make sure the Nehtzees aren't going to make it to the city...
So the Heroes bunker down, set a trap, share a few stories before the storm comes. It's also night in like five minutes even though it was bright outside just a few minutes ago, but we gotta set a mood here.

The SS come over the hill, they spot the little Fury that could. And they got a bunch of choices to make.
A: Don't take any risks, and start pelting that thing from range using the Panzerfausts they were toting in their establishing shot.
B: Don't take any risks, and move around the tank with a wide berth and completely negate it as a danger.
C: Take all the risks, magically forget that they have anti-tank weaponry until the last few minutes, and just go full on Human Wave on that one tank they could so easily avoid, costing them over two-thirds of their unit for practically no gain other than a 'moral victory' over those dirty American pigs.

You can probably guess what decision the 2000 elitely trained SturmStaffel soldiers made... Yeah.

And at this point the film turns into a total shitshow that defies every sense of common sense in favour of just a good old-fashioned Hollywood killfest where the five tankers lay waste to over a thousand Germans who so expertly try to rush a single piece of armour that otherwise posed no real danger. Because Germans are dumb, and Americans are smart and brave and awesome, and we need more dakka to kill these Germans that are running at our tank like a bunch of lemmings on crack.

As the battle rages on, the germans finally remember they had anti-tank weaponry at their disposal all this time. So they crack open a few crates (even though they were physically carrying Panzerfausts earlier?), and they finally start using some sense of logic in their actions (not really, most troops still run around like headless chickens. Especially after the German commander made a big speech before sending them out on a true WW1-style blind charge). And in using their rockets we get a nice exploding chest as our first hero perishes to those nasty Germans.

At this point the battle starts to slow down, Hero's start dying one by one (someones chest explodes by being directly hit by a panzerfaust, cuz. Ayer). Brad Pitt makes a final stand to show how much of a badass Brad Pitt is (because he is), and he's taken out by multiple shots from a sniper, before falling back into the tank where he and rookie share a few parting words as the Germans toss in a few of the longest-fused grenades in the world, giving Rookie a chance to escape from the bottom hatch and avoid the explosion that kills Brad Pitt (Rest in Pitt brave soldier), rookie hides as an SS soldier sees him but ignores him because not all SS are evil, and we need that aesop after all.

Rookie goes back into the tank, and somehow Brad Pitt (and all others that died in the tank) are practically unscathed after two grenades exploded in a small metal box on wheels. Because you can't un-blemish Brad Pitt, after all.

And the film ends with the now harrowed and scarred rookie being led away by the cavalry to what hopefully is a mental hospital where he can recover from being in this film...

[/rant]

Closing stuff:
Now, you might be reading this, and you might be saying 'why is this guy ranting so much for a film he hated so much', but there's the hiccup. I didn't hate the film, I feel it had one of the strongest and best acting-casts in recent memory. All five of the main characters had good and bad qualities, some more bad than others, but they truly felt like humans that had gone through three years of utter hell together and would die for each other just the same. The film showed the brutal and un-glamorous side of the war, and showed that the Allies weren't the perfect chivalrous do-gooders that entertainment pictures them to be. 

It showed me that a guy like Shia LeBeouf (despite him being insane) has insane acting chops, and the dialogue between all the characters was downright top notch and humanized them whilst at the same time harrowing you through their actions.
But in the same way the characters and acting make the film phenomenal, the action scenes instead do the exact opposite by being just absolute utter dogshite without any coherent structure or soul to them. They make no sense, they have no flow, it's like a complete 180 compared to the non-action scenes, it's there because someone felt the film needed action scenes rather than it being a character-drama. It's gore for the sake of gore, it's action for the sake of action, it's shit exploding for the sake of shit exploding, and no real 'soul' in it's action. It's the Saving Private Ryan opening scene turned up to 11 'just cuz', and every action scene is that scene up to a point where it burns me out at how stupid those scenes are because it shits on common human logic (That's not even accounting for the non-existence of realistic military tactics, which in a way can be defended on the sake that it's an action flick first and foremost)... This is the first film that has managed to shatter my disbelief, and i've watched everything from Plan 9, to Star Trek 5, to Uwe Boll and Michael Bay stuff, many of which I've enjoyed for one reason or another.

At the same time this is one of my most favourite movies, and my most hated movies I have ever seen. And I can't decide whether I should hate it or love it more...
And I had to get this massive rant off my chest because I am so extremely conflicted right now...
 

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DFF Intercontinental Champion

DFF

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16 hours ago, Jimmy said:

I'm definitely an admirer and I think he's a genius, I manage to get a lot out of his films even if I'm not completely engaged in them. I've still got The New World and The Tree of Life to watch, but I'm a huge fan of Badlands and To The Wonder. I was less taken by The Thin Red Line when I watched it, when I was admittedly a lot younger. I feel like watching his films outside of a cinema is kind of a disservice to his stuff, because it's so cinematic. A cinema in London is actually doing a retrospective of his work, and I think I'll do my best to catch a few. His stuff is slow, mediating but absolutely beautiful and atmospheric, and I wouldn't go as far as to say his work is pretentious, but it definitely won't be for everyone. 

I don't think I've watched any of his films, but I am aware of them. I've been meaning to watch Tree of Life for a while. The Knight of Cups reviews I've read so far are hilariously split - both RogerEbert.com and IGN gave it a score of 4. RE was 4/4, IGN's 4/10! The former pretty much gushed with aloof fanboyism and the latter was like 'it looks pretty but is intentionally impenetrable'.

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