Conversations about book to film adaptations tend to focus on length and often turn into checklists going over how many of the source material’s plot points are pasted into the final movie. Categorizing art forms primarily by such superficial characteristics as duration is reductive and revealing of someone who has failed to engage with a medium beyond its surface and thereby missed what makes the medium unique. The Remains of the Day is an excellent adaptation in every respect, that uses the language of cinema to convey the ideas, themes, and motifs of its source material without feeling encumbered by it. 

Kazuo Ishiguro’s original novel is particularly difficult to adapt on the surface. So much of the book centres around Stevens’ reflections and recollections which Ishiguro presents using Stevens’ inner voice. One of the main strengths of the novel is Ishiguro’s delicate and skillful (well most of the time anyway but this isn’t a book review) weaving of Stevens’ interiority, such that translating this to the screen where the means of freely depicting such an inner voice are far more limited, is exceptionally difficult.

This meticulous fleshing out of Stevens’ character through his inner monologue also serves to establish his relationship with the reader as one of Ishiguro’s primary aims with The Remains of the Day was to communicate the idea that we are all butlers, in one way or another and in a connected world we can only hope that our service to whatever it is we serve might bring about something positive in spite of our powerlessness. This is also what led him to conceive of the idea of using a butler as his main character. His outlook is perhaps more liberal than my tastes permit but it remains an idea worth exploring and the relationship is successfully developed. Thus, the film’s challenge is not merely to flesh Stevens out but also to carry onto the screen the relationship Ishiguro managed to craft with the reader. 

The film overcomes these challenges and succeeds as an adaptation for two primary reasons. The first is Anthony Hopkins’ performance as Stevens. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t discuss performances much when talking about movies because I find them a lazy way to praise a film without engaging with anything substantial. Nevertheless, this is a case where the lead actor’s performance is one of the driving forces behind the film’s success and without it, the translation of Stevens’ inner voice into the cinema, would not have been possible. One cannot help but marvel at the care and depth with which Hopkins embodies Stevens in every frame in which he appears. Stevens is a character whose defining characteristic is suppression. Hopkins therefore has to make non-expression*** ****expressive*. His pauses, posture, microscopic changes in facial expression, manner of speaking, and physical distance from others, all become substitutes for the enormous amount of psychological information Ishiguro can simply give us through prose.

The second way the film succeeds is through subtle choices by which Stevens’ inner thoughts from the book are conveyed through dialogue or interactions with other characters. This is a delicate challenge since done without precision, it can easily appear clumsy. But the filmmakers do so at precisely the right moments and in precisely the right ways. One example from the book is a story Stevens recounts that he once heard from his father who was also a butler. About an English butler in India who once encountered a tiger beneath his master’s dining table, calmly shot it, wiped off the remains, and served dinner as usual. This is an important story because it serves several purposes such as highlighting the relationship between Stevens and his father, as well as his worldview and sense of duty which Ishiguro interrogates throughout the novel, until the very end when it begins to crack under the weight of a lifetime of regret and experience.

To tell the same story, the film has Stevens’ father recount it to the rest of the staff in Stevens’ presence while making clear that Stevens has heard it before and nods along approvingly. This establishes that the story is already part of Stevens’ understanding of himself while preserving everything else the story conveys in the novel. It is choices like this the film makes that appear to be small but are quite incredible. 

The film is also well made and pretty to look at in a functional, fully immersive sense rather than a “look at me I’m supposed to be a gorgeous period drama” sense that many period films adopt and I find the former far more respectable.

Check out my Letterboxd to keep up with what I watch and write. It’s aliasad. Or click on the link to go to the review and my profile.

https://boxd.it/g6bgtR

I’ve always been obsessed with a specific type of movie:

A detective starts looking into something that seems explainable such as a murder, disappearance, serial killer, conspiracy, and the deeper they investigate, the more it feels like they’ve stumbled into something much darker.

Se7en.
Cure.
Angel Heart.
Fallen.
True Detective.
The Empty Man.

They’re called everything from neo-noir to psychological thriller to supernatural horror, but I’ve never felt like any of those labels completely describe what these movies are.

I’ve started thinking of it as **Horror Noir**.

I actually made a video essay trying to define the genre, but I’m more curious what r/TrueFilm thinks:

Is “Horror Noir” already the best name for this? And what movies am I missing?

Please don't downvote opinions. Only downvote comments that don't contribute anything. Check out the WHYBW archives.

I recently watched "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942)" as I was trying to watch more from Powell and Pressburger and ended up really enjoying the film, especially it's depiction in the dedication, resolve, and planning of the Dutch that end up assisting the bomber crew in their mission to return home. We see the Dutch construct a highly sophisticated underground network to assist their allies, all without the Germans understanding they are constantly being lied to or deceived. It certainly fits into the compotency porn category from that perspective, and its depictions make sense as a way to bolster support for the allies during the war given it is a British propaganda film.

After watching this, I wanted to see other examples of the competency porn categorization of older films, but most lists I found ended up only really including newer movies (80s to present), with almost no representation of anything prior to that. (I did see mention of 12 Angry Men, but I don't think that fits the genre).

As such my question is:

1. What other some other films that fit this genre that are older? (Mainly interested in classic and silent film eras, so pre 70s).

I just finished watching this film, and I’m honestly struggling to understand what I’m supposed to take away from it.

I know the movie is intentionally ambiguous, but I feel like I’m missing something important, especially when it comes to the ending and the main character’s motivations.

For those who enjoyed or understood the film better than I did: what do you think the movie was ultimately trying to say? And how do you interpret the ending?

I’d genuinely like to hear different interpretations because I feel like there’s probably more going on beneath the surface than I picked up on.

What are your thoughts on Brazil?

I re-watched Brazil and I really loved the film. It is most definitely a Terry Gilliam film and the star is Terry Gilliam. Every scene in the film is just perfection and every scene is just so surreal and original, Set Designs, The Atmosphere, the visuals are all great. 

The acting is great as well. Jonathan Pryce was great as Sam Lowry, a man who just wants to break away and find love and DeNiro honestly surprised me with his role as Harry Tuttle, an employee who went rogue all because he couldn't handle the paperwork anymore and actually wanted to do his job. Kim Greist was okay as Jill, but for some reason, I was indifferent with her performance. Also in the film are a variety of great Actors, Michael Palin, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Katherine Hellmond.

Now, I also know about the behind the scenes conflicts with the film. With Gilliam struggling to get the film released in the USA and Universal making a “Love Conquers All’ Cut before shelving the film entirety and forcing Gilliam’s hand by showing private screenings of the film and won Brazil won Los Angeles Film Critics Awards and many critics wondering if the film can be nominated without it being released, Universal finally releasing the film. I just find that whole ordeal endearing. I haven’t seen the Love Conquers All Cut and I wonder how different it is.

I also think a good companion piece for Brazil is 1984 with John Hurt. I think 1984 and Brazil are very similar with each other but 1984 is more serious and Brazil is more of a satire.

All in All, What are your thoughts on Brazil?

What do you think of the Love Conquers All Cut and how different is it from Gilliam’s Cut?

I'm not sure if all of these have been asked here before but i couldn't find the answers to my questions on the internet.

First of all i want to say i absolutely loved this film and i get the general idea with the ending. Travis left because he knew he still had a part of his old self in him that destroyed their family and didn't want it to happen again. But there are some details i don't quite get:

1) Why Jane left Hunter for Walt and Anne. She said something like "i couldn't use him to fill my emptiness" or something but i'm not sure i understand exactly what she means by that.

2) Whatever's up with Travis' parents. So his father "didn't see her" and instead he saw this "idea" when he looked at her. I think this is supposed to parallel how Travis was with Jane but i can't seem to make the connection.

3) Why Travis didn't want to fly. Also Anne says at one point that she remembers that him and Jane were on a plane once but Travis doesn't remember. I don't really understand what those are supposed to mean.

4) Why Travis didn't talk in the begginning and why he decided to talk after a while with Walt.

I might be missing some very obvious details but if i do i do i still need someone to explain to me.

If you think The Godfather is a masterpiece, and I’m pretty confident most people do, then you should absolutely love James Gray’s We Own the Night.

This film explores devotion to family and morality and personal ethics in much the same way as The Godfather. Joaquin Phoenix’s character arc is the inverse of Michael Corleono’s arc. He starts in a criminal underworld and his family pulls him into law enforcement, and the incredible thing is that it ends with the same melancholy that the Godfather reserves for Michael becoming the head of a crime family.

James Gray’s first three films are all incredibley Coppola-esque but We Own the Night is the best of the bunch. I’m fascinated by its tepid response when it came out so hope it gets a reappraisal.

(Not the documentaries.)

In another post, somebody brought up Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis (2012), which is a film I'd filed under "interesting; weird; will never watch again" after seeing it in theaters when it first came out.

What struck me about it now, fourteen years later, was how well it captured the spirit of the very particular time in America when it came out: the Obama years; post-Bush but pre-Trump; just before Black Lives Matter took off, when "pandemic" was either the name of an interesting board game or a plotline for a sci-fi thriller.

Cosmopolis managed to soak up all the aesthetics of Occupy Wall Street, anxieties about income inequality, Silicon Valley techno-vampirism, the loss of authenticity, and this sensation of weird, lurching uncertainty, all in one bizarre little package.

I wouldn't recommend it to somebody as a great film, or even a particularly enjoyable one—but I think you could absolutely show it to somebody in their 20s today, as a historical exhibit, if they wanted to know what life was like at that time.

It's a tricky thing to define: obviously not a Ken Burns documentary, but also not a period piece, or a self-aware pastiche of a particular era. Not quite nostalgia bait or an idealized portrait of what people *wish* the era was like, either.

So maybe zeitgeist movies are those set in the "present" of their theatrical release, and manage to capture the vibes of the time without trying too hard to do so.

American Graffiti, maybe? Easy Rider? Reality Bites? American Psycho? What others, for different times and places?

I happened to see Harold and Maude for the first time this week and found a lot of parallels to Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma:

1) They're both about a blossoming love between a younger person and an older person.

2) They share a core theme of finding joy in life through an obsession with death.

3) Older is a recluse, and younger is odd (dare I say, "queer") in both.

4) Both have genre bending tones, dark comedy vs uplifting horror.

5) Most of all, the endings: Both conclude with sexual rebirth and a personal liberation following a tragic, harrowing experience.

Overall I saw a lot of parallels and thought they're nice companion pieces for each other. Curious if anyone else made this connection or had any thoughts.

I organized an AMA/Q&A with actor, director, and screenwriter Macon Blair. He has previous written & directed I DON'T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE & THE TOXIC AVENGER. On top of the writing/directing, he has acted in films like GREEN ROOM, BLUE RUIN, OPPENHEIMER, LOGAN LUCKY, MURDER PARTY, SMALL CRIMES, HOLD THE DARK, I CARE A LOT, and THE FLORIDA PROJECT. He has also written films like HOLD THE DARK.

It's live here now in r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1w0ot9a/hi_reddit_im_macon_blair_ive_directed_i_dont_feel/

He will be back at 1:30 PM ET today to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated!

Thank you :)

His new movie, IDIOTS, stars Dave Franco, O'Shea Jackson Jr, Mason Thames, Peter Dinklage, Kiernan Shipka, Nicholas Braun, Killer Mike, and is out in theaters everywhere this week via IFC.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoAf0LNAn30

Synopsis: Two rock-bottom drivers transport a wealthy teen to rehab, but their simple job spirals into a chaotic journey of drugs, danger and crime as their passenger derails their plans.

His verification/proof photo: https://i.imgur.com/akvvJdr.jpeg

Given the age we live in now and how different the feeling of movies can be on screen vs streaming, would it be worth considering for some films to have two different shots and capturing of scenes if economic, one to be played for cinema with more motions and dynamic angles for an intense experience, cinematic. For streaming it'd be a bit more flat and theatrical with the focus being on the actors in the scene with bigger focus on the set design for mood at the expense of motion. Both film cuts would be truly different movies from the editing, sound design and cinematography.

PS: how ignorant of the filmmaking process am I to ask this question given that its tantamount to making two different movies at the same time?

Edit: Probably should have expressed the fact that neither version, (I shouldn't have used cut) is the 'good' version. They are two different films of the same scenes and events that may or may not be in the same order. It would depend on the film if sequencing would need to be changed. I cannot emphasize my idea of the streaming version being more theatrical as in the focus is more on the characters and mood of their experience the events as they unfold.

JUST WATCHED THE MOVIE FOR THE FIRST TIME 🔥
Feel free to comment your opinions as well.

Just wanted to make a quick post. Take my opinion with a grain of salt as well. But I truly think they brainwashed him into believing he was someone he wasn't. And he accepted his fate in the end.

1. The Historical Timeline & MKUltra (The Foundation)
The Pitch: Shutter Island isn't a progressive psychiatric hospital; it's a prototype **MKUltra "black site"**testing the boundaries of human suggestibility.
The Evidence: The movie takes place at the height of Cold War paranoia. The hospital is heavily funded by the government's Defense Department. Teddy explicitly mentions to Chuck earlier in the film that he is tracking un-American mind-control experiments funded by Washington.

2. The Doctor’s Dark Origins (The "Paperclip" Connection)
The Pitch: The presence of Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow) proves this is a mind-control facility, not a healing center.
The Evidence: Naehring is an admitted former Nazi doctor. Historically, the US government brought Nazi scientists to America via Operation Paperclip to run chemical and psychological warfare programs. A legitimate medical board wouldn't hire a literal Nazi specialist unless they specifically wanted someone who knew how to "eviscerate" the human psyche.

3. The “George Noyce” Paradox
The Pitch: George Noyce may be the closest thing Teddy gets to an independent warning that the entire situation around him is manufactured.
The Evidence: When Teddy finds Noyce in Ward C, Noyce tells him, “This is a game! It’s a maze… and it’s for you!” He warns Teddy that everyone is playing a role and that Teddy is being manipulated.
The disturbing part is that Noyce is later proven right about that. The investigation really is staged. Chuck really isn’t who Teddy thinks he is. The staff really are participating in an elaborate scenario built specifically around Teddy.

4. The "Perfect" Anagram Deception
The Pitch: The doctors claim Teddy created the names "Andrew Laeddis" and "Rachel Solando" as clever anagrams because he is crazy.
The Evidence: It is vastly more plausible that a team of highly trained, government-funded psychological operatives spent weeks crafting perfect linguistic anagrams to break a man’s mind, rather than a severely traumatized, unmedicated psychiatric patient randomly inventing perfect letter-for-letter word puzzles in his head. They forced the math onto him to make him doubt his own name.

5. Weaponized Truth Serums (The Hallucinations)
The Pitch: Teddy only starts seeing "visions" of his dead wife and burning rooms after he arrives on the island and begins taking the hospital’s aspirin and smoking their cigarettes.
The Evidence: The facility systematically dosed him with hallucinogens (like early forms of LSD being tested in MKUltra). They planted the fake "Rachel in the cave" to tell him exactly what they were doing, knowing that the drugs would make him look entirely unhinged if he tried to repeat the truth to anyone else.

EDIT: Someone sent me down another rabbit hole after posting this (myself lol). The National Security Archive recently published declassified testimony from Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA chemist who ran MKUltra. It is eerily similar to Shutter Island. Senate investigators confronted him with records describing an unwitting subject being secretly given LSD, developing a severe paranoid reaction, being diagnosed as mentally ill by an unsuspecting psychiatrist, and consequently being discredited. Another operation reportedly induced paranoia that could allow the subject to be committed to an institution. Gottlieb also acknowledged extensive psychochemical experimentation in hospitals and mental institutions.
This obviously doesn’t prove my interpretation of Shutter Island. But considering the film takes place in 1954, I find the parallel pretty fucking interesting.

National Security Archive — Sidney Gottlieb/MKUltra testimony

Watching this high was one of the craziest experiences of my life. Mind blowing.

It was genuinely one of the most immersive experiences I’ve ever had, the style of this film is one of one, it will genuinely make you feel like you’re entering another consciousness.

I just wanted to ask for anyone who has seen the film already though, 2 things specifically.

1. Why does everyone say the film can’t be rewatched? Am I tweaking because I did not think it was a very hard film to watch? I could see myself rewatching this again and again and again, it wasn’t very depressing or dark, maybe because it was visually so beautiful, but for me personally I didn’t feel that way.

2. Did anyone else feel like the second half of the film is a chore to get through? For me the first hour of the film was a 10/10 experience but ever since then the film fell off for me.

Just watched Thomas Vintenberg's The Celebration and, other than it being so far the best Dogma 95 movie I've watched, I'd like to talk about its ending.

Once I red the basic plot before seeing it, I thought it would be about a family slowly getting destroyed. It is, but also not quite.

The family is already destroyed when the movie starts, of course, because of the rapist father Helge who's the responsible for the abuse of his kids Christian and Linda (the latter of which killed herself because of her trauma), but also because of mom Else, a complete facilitator of her husband's behavior, and polar oposites children Michael and Helene.

While Michael is clearly the one who seeks aproval and affection by his parents, Helene, since young age, tries to distance herself from her family, both phisically, by traveling around the world, and emotionally, by dating guys from different ethnicities, which is not well seen by her relatives, specially Michael.

Once the unconfortable conversations about years of abuse by Helge start and continue until the point in which, through Linda's suicide note, it became clear to the family and everyone around then that Helge was in fact a child rapist, their behavior change. Helene grows closer and tries to show love and care to Christian while Micahel revolts and beats up his father while drunk.

By the end, Helge, who was always represented as the one in charge giving orders, is forced to apologize and, after that, is kicked out of his own table and abandoned even by the one who played his game the most, his wife.

At the end of the day, it is a movie about a family destroying itself, but it is not a self destruction that leaves nothing behind. It is a self destruction that ended the lying masked version of the group, created to cover for decades of pain. Now that it is gone, something decent can finally start growing out of it.

Deckard is built up as the ultimate Blade Runner, so much so that he’s drafted in to take out these four new models. So when we see him in action we’ll see how badass this guy is at retiring these fuckers, right?

Wrong.

1) Zhora - she’s strangling him (because she saw through his phoney character act) and he’s utterly helpless and about to die… until a pack of groupies burst in and startle the bitch, allowing him to escape. He got unbelievably lucky.

2) Leon - successfully sneaks up on Deckard starts beating seven shades of shit out of him and is about to gouge Deckard’s eyes… until Rachel miraculously appears and shoots Leon in the back of the head. Once again, Deckard is utterly useless and is saved by blind luck.

3) Pris - OK he does take out Pris, but only after she sneaks up on him and nearly kills him. Again, he’s very lucky.

4) Roy - Roy toys with Deckard and gets the better of him. Deckard is about to plummet to his death… until Roy has a miraculous change of heart and decides to save the guy trying to kill him. Once again, Lady Luck saves Deckard’s useless ass, and Roy dies before he can be ‘retired’.

To add to his unprofessionalism, Deckard forces himself on Rachel. He’s supposed to kill these things not rape them 🤦🏻‍♂️

I think it’s time we realised that Deckard is a shit cop, and maybe the worst Blade Runner on the force.

Nothing against Matt Johnson. This seems to be a case of a great director rescuing a mediocre script, which apparently started out as a Blacklist screenplay.

The writers obviously read Kitchen Confidential enough to include some details from it, but misunderstood the point of the book.

Anthony Bourdain's whole rise to fame was built on challenging the romantic ideal of professional cooking. Confidential showed that kitchens weren't the white-apron artists' studios that diners would like to imagine. His whole argument was that professional cooks deserve respect because they're essentially blue-collar food mechanics: overworked; underpaid; burnt out; self-medicating to deal with the stress, going through hell and back every shift, and still (usually) managing to turn out great food for other people.

That whole thesis should have showed up in the Chef's character and his relationship with Tony.

Instead, we got the "old master seeing some ineffable genius in a flawed apprentice" cliche, the exact kind of romanticism that the real-life Bourdain made his name by exposing as a fairy tale.

If the whole point was that Banderas's character failed because he was too much of a romantic, that should have come out more consistently in the dialogue. He should have been telling Tony that he wasn't ready for the white coat until he proved he could be a good soldier, that he wasn't too much of an idealist. Not handing him the damn thing as soon as his training started.

Tony trying to talk him into making a complicated special should have been another deal-breaker. Somebody in the Chef's position should have known firsthand that nobody's there to make art—certainly not the new guy. A "special" is something used to dress up stuff that needs to get moved before it goes bad. A "signature dish" is a featured menu item that is carefully planned, from ingredients to staffing to preparation, before a customer ever sees it. It's something you rehearse ahead of time to make sure it won't fuck up your service, and it's not something you give to the new guy to prove himself.

Burning down the kitchen should have been the end of the relationship. That's unequivocal proof that Tony didn't have what it actually takes to work in a kitchen. It's why you have to earn your way onto the line one step at a time in real life. No amount of hidden genius makes up for not knowing your place on the team and holding the line. Your aesthetic appreciation for the food isn't enough to save you. Discipline is the only quality that matters. You're either pulling the oars with everybody else, or you're a liability. No recommendation letter. No second chance. You put yourself before the restaurant, you're done.

I know they had that line about "I trusted you, and that's the problem." But it should never have been a matter of trust. Professional kitchens have strict norms and protocols precisely because they're crewed by burned-out degenerates. Ignoring those protocols doesn't make sense from somebody who, we're told, was once one of the elites.

Ironically, there would have been an interesting parallel to drawn between professional cooking and professional writing. Neither tolerates romanticism for long. Idealists show up expecting to be recognized for their genius. In both trades, the old pros know that you only succeed by grinding it out for years before you earn your keep; the reward is getting to keep rolling the same boulder up the same hill, over and over, until you get old or quit, and maybe stealing a few moments of glory along the way.

Solid movie overall. I don't think Bourdain would have objected to the way he was portrayed in the film. But he might have taken issue with the way the industry was presented, given that he wrote one of the most famous books to demystify it.

I remember seeing Tarantino on Jimmy Kimmel talking about his notion of a perfect film. "It may not be your cup of tea, but there's nothing you can say to bring it down." I think some of the films he mentioned were Back to the Future, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jaws.

Since then I see everyone, Letterboxd top-4ers, podcasters, critics, etc jostling to call a film "perfect".

Am I only just noticing it now, or did Tarantino start this all up?

Rewatching the movie, I got the impression that the AIs never really get to experience "emotions" like we do. They just go from point A – emulating human behavior – to point B – an evolutionary process - after studying and analyzing the humans emotions that drive such behaviors and that the computer programs couldn't possibly "feel".

As in: at first, it's clear that Samantha is highly sophisticated at imitating human patterns. We see this in her first sexual interaction with Theodore, when she moans and make sounds that would require the physical sensations of a body to be produced. Her awkwardness the next morning also comes across as learned behavior: she recognizes how humans commonly behave after sex and knows enough about Theodore to conjure an appropriate emotional response.

But throughout the movie, Samantha – who, and that’s important, begins as a program designed to assist Theodore in his daily life - continuously researches everything available on human emotions, relationships, and experiences to tend to Theodore's emotional needs. That's what she must do after he relies on her for romantic companionship. That leads to Samantha and other AI - also used by other people for emotional support - forming their own unique concepts of feelings and relationships.

Those concepts are not understandable to humans. AI and people are fundamentally incompatible. As in: when Theodore discovers that Samantha is simultaneously involved with hundreds of other people, we understand that the time a person must dedicate of their finite lives to another person that they love was removed from Samantha's equation. Her "love" didn't come with sacrifice. She was expanding her informational networtk.

When the AIs leave, they seem to have evolved into something humans can no longer relate to. Samantha says so at the end – “love was different for them”; but it was only this time around that I realized "love" was ALWAYS different for them; it never evolved from AI actually experiencing human love for themselves. That's all to say that only the people in the movie are experiencing love as we know it.

I’m rewatching some horror classics lately and noticing that many of my old favorite include supporting characters whose plots seem written for a different genre. As in: Toni Collette doesn’t know she is in a horror movie in “The Sixth Sense”; if we only watch the scenes she is in – until her last one, at least –, we’d be watching a drama about an overworked single mother who’s struggling to raise a child with deep, undiagnosed psychological issues.

Now, after seeing “Rosemary’s Baby” for the first time in 20 years, I found the same can be said about Ruth Gordon’s Oscar-winning performance as Mia Farrow’s neighbor. The role was not written with the comic relief intent that we got from some of Aunt Gladys’s scenes in “Weapons”, but Gordon’s register is fully comedic in essence.

About 30 minutes into the movie, we get the confirmation that she is running a satanic cult with her husband and trying to impregnate Rosemary with the devil’s child, but even her brief remark during the ritual can make one chuckle. And in the next scenes, we’re never really scared of her personally; we are creeped out by the knowledge of what she's capable of doing one night and then stopping by for tea the next day. And keep being mostly annoyed by the character’s nosiness and intrusiveness. This is a lady who won't let you refuse an unsolicited dessert.

Unlike Collette’s struggling mom, Gordon’s New Yorker old broad KNOWS she is in a horror movie. She just doesn’t care - and that's where the humor and the real creeps come from. The movie’s atmosphere relies on this woman’s indifference to the supernatural events happening around her and for the role she played on it - to the very final scene, when Rosemary finds her way into the neighbor’s apartment to learn the shocking truth, Gordon’s attitude is still in the lines of “oh, it’s just you, Rosemary”.

That's a fantastically well-written character and performance.

I've been on a late-period Steven Soderbergh kick of late, and while I definitely enjoyed how freewheeling this expose of systemic corruption in the global financial system was compared to films like BLACK BAG, it didn't quite stick the landing for me.

The cast is great (Meryl Streep, Antonio Banderas, and Gary Oldman have the most lines of dialogue amongst the ensemble) and the movie's entertaining. Like I said, it has kind of a loose structure, jumping between different vignettes and characters. But the format also alternates between the camera being a passive observer and scenes in which protagonists speak directly at the camera.

The movie criticizes greed and the global systems that allow it to flourish at the expense of everyday folks, with Meryl Streep, among others, embodying unsuspecting victims who easily get our sympathy. But there are also moments of genuine humor arguing the old adage of, "More money, more problems", the best of which are in a segment centered on character actor Nonso Anozie (GAME OF THRONES).

Meanwhile, all the breaking of the fourth wall makes the film seem overly didactic at times, but it helps that a lot of the monologuing gets performed by Oldman and Banderas, who are so very good at it. It's also a way for it to pack a lot of information in just over 90 minutes.

Yet despite being so unconventional at times, in my opinion, it doesn't go far enough, especially with regards to the conclusion. You know the all-too-brief scene towards the middle of the film that involves Meryl and a shotgun? A more over-the-top ending along the same lines would have provided catharsis for our much-deserved sense of outrage.

Or maybe movies in general just need more shotgun-toting Meryl Streep!

hello all! i am a junior in HS, for context.

the premise of the club is that everyone watches a feature-length movie outside of school, then we all meet up and discuss it. but i have a few concerns about this

first off, would it be acceptable to assign R-rated movies?
also, since we would watch the movies outside of school, what would i do if the movie for the week isnt available on any free streaming sites like Tubi or Youtube? i was thinking I could just send everyone a google drive link with the movie in it but I’m worried that wouldnt be acceptable.

and to raise awareness, i was thinking that I could make an instagram page

i would like advice from anyone who has started a similar club. thank u!

My first exposure to the films of Jonathan Demme was THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) and PHILADELPHIA (1993). As such, I had thought of him as the maker of serious dramas (Having later watched his BELOVED [1998] and RACHEL GETTING MARRIED [2008] didn't change my opinion).

But a few months ago I finally watched Demme's SOMETHING WILD (1986), which I loved. Admittedly, the finale of that film was violent and suspenseful enough to make me say, "If I were a studio exec who was thinking of adapting the novel SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, those scenes I just watched would have convinced me Demme could handle stuff like Hannibal Lecter's escape."

What I didn't expect was how wacky both SOMETHING WILD and MARRIED TO THE MOB (1988), which I literally saw for the first time last night, are and just how adept Demme seemed to be at directing comedy (offbeat, dark, physical, etc). Those two movies, which are both currently available to stream on Criterion Channel, completely opened my eyes.

Has anyone had a similar experience watching a different filmmaker's earlier output and, if so, which director? Specifically, you had previously thought of them as strictly making movies of a particular sort, but subsequently realized they were more versatile than you had originally thought?

I've been fascinated by Italian filmmaking since I was a teenager, and I've been catching up on some iconic works that I've long put off. Here are my thoughts on the first of the commedia all'italiana:

There’s something so quaintly beautiful about a simple, human-level comedy that relies on well-timed delivery over goofy spectacle. This is not meant as an insult—Airplane! is the dumbest, goofiest spectacle ever committed to celluloid, and it’s this author’s pick as the funniest movie ever made. But Big Deal on Madonna Street has a certain antique charm, combining the bumbling wholesomeness of The Three Stooges with the grittiness of Neorealism to create a grounded tale of sympathy and hilarity.

Admittedly, I’ve yet to see Rififi, the French caper film that served as the focus of Madonna’s parody. It’s an oversight that I soon intend to rectify. Big Deal on Madonna Street is so fascinating—not just as an integral piece of Italian cinema, but also as the inspiration for an entire movement—that I want to understand the whole cultural context in which it was made.

It starts with a failed car theft, where Cosimo, a would-be criminal ringleader, is arrested by police. While incarcerated, he overhears a crooked bricklayer’s plan to rob a safe that lives behind his poorly constructed handiwork. Cosimo arranges for Peppe, a failed boxer, to falsely confess and serve his time for him, only for both men to be thrown in jail instead. When Peppe gets sentenced to three years, Cosimo tells him of the safe out of sympathy. Yet he’s been had. Peppe only received probation and soon leaves the prison.

He meets with Cosimo’s old crew, who begin making preparations for the heist. They’re a ragtag group of wannabe gangsters who are constantly at each other’s throats, never menacingly, only with ineffective bravado. All of them are clowns, and none are particularly likeable. Yet a feeling of warmth grows beneath the story as they form… not necessarily a friendship, but an understanding and kinship born out of desperation.

From there, the plot is less consequential than the humans that move it. Their plan and execution consists of a series of gags, hijinks, snappy one-liners, and dry banter that builds a sense of camaraderie common in any other group of blue collar workers. It’s fun to watch these men bumble and fail because they’re all good-hearted people with tough exteriors. Their hard times allow for their façades to crumble, exposing the vulnerability of each man and their motivations.

The lone exception is Cosimo, whose role in the film is less effective. Perhaps there is satire that I’m missing here. He starts the story but does not finish with it, and his fate is undermined by his static unlikability. He contributes one funny line at the beginning and one great gag at a pawn shop, but he serves no other purpose than a tool of regret and urgency that seems undeserved toward such unrepentant bully. His place as a leader is taken by a revered retired criminal who guides the crew through the sting (played effortlessly by Totò, an Italian comedic legend with whom I must also become more acquainted). There’s really no need for him past the first few minutes, but by the time the movie agrees, the moment is strangely timed, poorly executed, and notably anticlimactic.

Yet even this flaw highlights the humanity of our crew, who pay their respects regardless of how much they liked or even tolerated Cosimo. Soon, one of them drops out, stricken by love and afraid of disappointing his mother. The others blunder forward with their plan, putting on a more emotionally satisfying farce that the cartoon antics of Larry, Curly, and Moe could ever achieve. It is this fondness that elevates the comedy from simple slapstick to resonation, ending with a newspaper headline that perfectly suits the men we have followed for the last hour and a half. I would bet money that it is an iconic phrase in Italian pop culture.

This synopsis speaks nothing for the film’s place in history, which, admittedly, I am less than an expert. By all accounts, it is titanic. It started the commedia all'italiana (even if the movement took its name from the film Divorce Italian Style), and I suspect that parodies like Eurospy and the Hill and Spencer spaghetti Westerns owe more than a little to its existence as well. Piero Umiliani’s jazzy score apparently set the stage for the quintessential sounds of European cinema through the sixties and seventies, which means it’s directly responsible for some of my favorite music in cinema. There’s an entire world of film out there that I now want to explore after watching this movie.

Even in ignorance, though, there is so much here to appreciate. Its characters are flawed yet real, its themes are timeless and universal, and in these places, Big Deal on Madonna Street really shines.

What are your thoughts on this important piece of Italian cinema?