There is a lot to love here, in regards to the films imagination and unique use of animation. It's like a Fantastic Planet type aesthetic, lovingly hand drawn, but pushing even further past the limits of what can be conveyed through this particular style (one where there is also lots of static shots where only a few elements are moving, a technique that can't help but be used in lots of lower budget animation to cut down production time and expense). This film, even when standing still, explodes with visual ideas. They are seemingly never ending, mixing different drawing and coloring techinques to create one arresting image after another. As something to put on in the background, it is top notch.

As for the storyline and the films overall effect, it seems filled with some amount of promise, but becomes more and more frustratingly reliant on the kind of narrative cliche's and phoned in emotionalism that you might expect from a film that is screaming against commercialism and commodification. Still, I give it points for the promise.

The version I watched didn't do itself any favors though by tagging on an interview with the director and the lead voice actor, who both come of as self involved dipshits, talking a bunch of metaphysical, quasi science bullshit. It made it clear why some elements of the film come of like such hack work. Because the director is way up his own hipster butt.
 

I tried watching The Living End last year and while I appreciated that it was grounded in a lot of anger and pain from its AIDS epidemic context, I also found it pretty boring the way it played out, to be honest.

How did I not know there is a Painting With John television show in existence.

And that there are three seasons.

This is both a revelation and something that I almost feel I most have dreamed into existence last night

Jinnistan wrote:

It took me a few years before I was hip to the Fishing with John show, so with these streaming services it might be less surprising today to miss these things. 

I just love Lurie so much.

I don't know if you've seen Painting, but it is similar but also very different. It's mostly like sitting in on these private conversations he's having with himself.

And watching him paint is probably the first thing in years that has made me want to get back into that.

He makes a comment in this that he's not so much talented as stubborn. He will not allow what he is making to be bad. Its just about painting and painting and searching and searching, until you find whatever it is your looking for.

This resonated with me very much. That no matter how much it might seem you've slipped off the rails, or what you are making is just a muddle, there is always something still of worth to be found there.

Not to judge her solely on the fact, but I don't think there is a single woman from the era with a more impressive collection of rock star cock.  A woman of exquisite taste.

Jinnistan wrote:

Don't be afraid to post your 4/10 French Dispatch review here, crumbs.  We can work it out.

I knew I was psychic.

I have been waiting days for this post.

No review currently pending.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

Don't be afraid to post your 4/10 French Dispatch review here, crumbs.  We can work it out.

I don't think I've ever written a review of a Anderson film. I think maybe due to the fact that the joys of them are so clear to those who are on their wavelength. But I have frequently addressed the criticism that he sucks because all of his movies are the same. Ironically, sort of like most of the reviews that reject them.

But it's not like I don't get their point, especially from the perspective of someone who doesn't see what is so funny or moving about his kinds of characters, or his kind of references, or his kind of staging. If those characters don't resonate, than it is probably hard to deal with his overly precious craft. Because, without them, what is that craft servicing.

And for me, starting with Grand Budapest, I feel its become clear that what Anderson wants to move towards in his career, is to make this very particular vision of his bigger and bigger and more and more perfect. And by the time of The French Dispatch, I feel that his has filled nearly every nook and cranny he can with his affectations, and to be honest very successfully. But as a result, it's edging out the character. It becomes harder and harder for me to see humans trapped inside of the stranglehold of his vision. With Rushmore, the central figure is Max, clearly. By the time we get to French Dispatch, it's the concepts of how he will inventively stage a scene.

And at that point I think I felt over it. With a criticism that sounds very much like his shitty know-nothing detractors.

All of this said though, a 4/10 for me means a lot of things. It's not just some slag off (or not always). It's by the time we get to 3 that I'm having real problems.

But a 4 can be a variety of things. Malignant was 4, and I was very close to hating that. And at no point did I hate FD. And at no point isn't it clear that FD is a much better movie than Malignant. But Wan hate sometimes has built in points where I at least am engaging with it through my hate. I liked all the examples it was giving me of how to make something that obviously sucks.

Where as the 4 with French Dispatch was a result of feeling very luke warm towards a director I am almost always taken with on some level. It was a disappointment, whereas Malignant was a hate watch. But they both get the same score.

Yet another reason why rating things is more confusing than clarifying. And, therefore, pointless.
 

crumbsroom wrote:

And for me, starting with Grand Budapest, I feel its become clear that what Anderson wants to move towards in his career, is to make this very particular vision of his bigger and bigger and more and more perfect. And by the time of The French Dispatch, I feel that his has filled nearly every nook and cranny he can with his affectations, and to be honest very successfully. But as a result, it's edging out the character. It becomes harder and harder for me to see humans trapped inside of the stranglehold of his vision. With Rushmore, the central figure is Max, clearly. By the time we get to French Dispatch, it's the concepts of how he will inventively stage a scene.

I admit that I may be more enamored with Wes' affectations than some people, and I don't necessarily draw such a sharp distinction between these affectations in terms of characters or those in terms of his style (humor, composition, rhythms, etc), but I don't agree that these more recent films are so much without character.  In fact I think Jeffery Wright's 'Roebuck Wright' in particular is a classic Wes Anderson character, as is Bill Murray's Alfred Howitzer, even if this is more of a peripheral presence, it is still a character through which the rest of the film's affectation rests.  (ftr, I find the middle section about the May '68 Paris riots to be the weakest of the film.)

But what I most admire about these latest films - including in most respects Budapest, but not so much Dogs* - is in Wes' narrative innovations, in shifting the focus from a central individual to more ensemble work, from central plotting to overlapping vignettes, to focusing more on themes and compositional symbolism, while still maintaining the integrity of his singular brand of humor, bittersweet sentimentality, and visual ingenuity.  I don't much mind that these elements exude through all of his films, I applaud his consistency.  But I, for one, have never felt disaffected from one of his films just yet.

(edit: * I'm not suggesting that I don't admire Isle of Dogs - I love it, only that it doesn't seem quite in the same realm of complex meta-narrative as the others.)

Last edited by Jinnistan (7/09/2023 10:24 pm)

Rock wrote:

While we're holding Crumb accountable for his wrongthink, I need an explanation for the 3.5/5 rating for Terrifier 2. And from everybody else too. I feel like I watched a completely different movie from everyone else.

It's something I'd rather not like. But there was also an undeniable power in the films two excesses. The violence, which goes well beyond anything I think can be considered entertaining, and actually becomes almost distressing the more we realize (through the character of Art the Clown) that this is being played for pleasure. He is here for an audience. He is implicitly doing their bidding. And treating this kind of carnage and torture as a slow process we are meant to savor, full of comedic beats and pauses for a laugh track to slip in (not literally, but it feels this way), makes the act of watching this film feel like a true window into the cruelty of modern audiences.

The second excess is the length, which in regards to the story at hand, is absolutely unearned. But as one realizes it has been padded out to an art films length, simply for the ability to extend scenes of violence to their breaking point, it begins to feel like more and more of a condemnation of what people are willing to sit through these days. That the type of no attention people who would normally balk at any film being more than 90 minutes, are now savouring every drop of an epic.

This wouldn't necessarily be enough for me to find something interesting about it. But I also remember a handful of scenes being surprisingly effective (in the same way that the opening scene of the original was). And, I also think, that much of the films success relies on the performance of the guy playing Art the Clown. His almost complete detachment from the pain he is causing, and the constant inapprorpiate nature of his mugging, is pulled off really well by the actor. It lives in some kind of nexus between being something we're meant to laugh at, but also meant to be disturbed by, and because neither of these things ever entirely resolve, we are left not entirely sure how we are supposed to be reacting to any of it.

It shouldn't have worked. But it sort of does. I'm not looking very forward to all of the copy cats though.

Rock wrote:

I can appreciate that as a defense, that the excesses of the film allow it to function as self or genre critique. Part of me wishes the film was technically sloppier, in part because I found the visual style kind of awful, but also because it would leave you with just the cruelty. A purer experience. But I look at the praises sung by its fans, and apparently they seem to be lapping it all up unironically. And I dunno. There have been recent horror hits that I’ve been left entirely cold by, but this is a case where I feel the way I’m watching and appreciating these things is fundamentally different than how most horror fans approach these things.

I don't think it's the kind of movie you're losing anything by not liking.

Usually when people don't like something I like I feel a little sad for them. It's the inverse here though.