#Film rants

[gummigvts]

Madly in love with Pearl (2022)

Spoiler warning 🍬

It's such a pretty film to watch from costumes to environment to sound. One of my favourite consistent things in the movie is the roasted pig on the porch since Ruth would not take it in. As things for Pearl go downhill, as she starts to visibly lose her mind, the pig rots with her as maggots multiply inside it and coating its skin; the close-ups of it are uncomfortable and it is generally a warning sign to whoever she brings to the house. For both audience and characters, it pulls on strings to make you feel uncomfortable and disgusted, wondering why its there and what has happend. In a way the pig is Pearl, something that was a gift, that was beautiful on the outside yet as it is left out and exposed to the world it rots from the inside out, being overtaken by grotesqueness.

I love being normal about movies

[carrot-gallery]

i NEED to rant about how badly andrew haigh whiffed the ending of All Of Us Strangers

spoilers ahead

WHAT THE LIVING CHRIST

Okay so not only is Harry dead, but he’s been dead the entire time since right after their first meeting and the whole relationship, the one that supposedly HELPED ADAM MOVE ON and ACCEPT LOVE rather than self-isolating forever was a fucking fever dream???

This movie really had something to say about how new love can make you finally feel the grief of old losses and make you vulnerable and it almost said it SO WELL and allowed Adam to find catharsis and grow and fucking join society

BUT THEN they were like haha sike!! It was ghosts all the way down!! Fucking ghost party motherfuckers!! Nobody was ever alive after minute 10 of the movie except for the increasingly unwell main character!

And the fucking nonsensical ending acts like this is some happy moment of catharsis and unknotting Adam’s trauma— NOT IF ALL THAT SHIT WAS FUCKIGN FAKE IT’S NOT!

You’re telling me a terminally lonely person has a chance encounter with a cute guy who talks about his own loneliness and jokes about suicide and is drinking and asking for company. Okay, not inviting him into your apartment is totally reasonable. But to later find out he KILLED HIMSELF THAT NIGHT????? And ROTTED ALONE THERE FOR WEEKS???? Immediately after you closed your door in his face???? No sane person on Earth wouldn’t be fuckign devastated by that. You would blame yourself. You would be horrified. You would beat yourself up for not at least offering to call someone or having a conversation with him or SOMETHING.

Now is Harry’s death actually Adam’s fault? No, Harry clearly had his own mental health issues. But to go cuddle with his GHOST instead of CALLING THE POLICE????? After you DISCOVER HIS BODY and significantly disturb an ACTIVE CRIME SCENE where he DIED????? That tells me that Adam is deeply, deeply unwell and needs to go to the hospital. This is no longer about his personal journey, he is someone who is NOT OKAY and not in touch with reality.

All the stuff with his parents could have been so beautiful and poignant and moving if at the end Adam had returned to the real world and worked on overcoming his loner tendencies and becoming a part of society. Even if he & Harry hadn’t ended up working out!!! The impact of the relationship would still have had an impact & taught him something & helped him grow. (You know how the characters in Weekend (2011) did, remember that one Andrew?? That movie that YOU ALSO FUCKIGN DIRECTED???)

But to reveal that Adam was never actually having this relationship at all?????? The relationship that his dead mom’s last words were about???? That makes the entire movie pointless to me. Because he didn’t let love into his life & learn & grow & move on. He ends the movie back in a delusion, holding another ghost, asking another figment of his imagination to stay with him a little longer.

Combined with the fever / coughing imagery i GENUINELY wondered at one point whether it’d be revealed that he has like a brain parasite, or he’s actually in jail or a mental asylum imagining this entire thing, or maybe he’s been dead the whole time and is living in some purgatory or a fucked up version of heaven or something.

Andrew Haigh clearly wanted my takeaway from this movie to be “wow he finally let love into his heart” NO!!!!! My takeaway is that he needs to get professional help because he spent the entire runtime of the movie in a state of ACUTE psychosis.

I’ve heard the movie described as having “magical realism” NO!!! That only applies when some parts of the story are ACTUALLY CONCRETELY REAL for everything else to bounce off of! And for 90% of the movie they did this so so so so well and then in the final 10 minutes it’s like!!! Okay well I guess he didn’t go to the nightclub and try ketamine! I guess he didn’t have sex or watch shitty tv or open up to someone about his life! I guess he didn’t heal! For all we know he didn’t even take the train to his parents’ house! Maybe he never even left the apartment! Maybe he doesn’t even live in London!

SUCH a compelling premise with absolutely piss-poor execution. This rivals my disappointment in the final half hour of the Green Knight movie from a few years ago. Let’s just take this carefully constructed story and throw it in the absolute trash so it completely loses the message it was created to tell in the first goddamn place. And for what!!!! For a twist ending???? To be edgy?????? I’m gonna physically fight Andrew Haigh ESPECIALLY because Weekend (2011) was SO GOOD and actually delivered the message its story was intending to tell so I KNOW he can do better I KNOW that fucker can do it right but instead he chose to write Yurtle the Turtle but with Ghosts. The movie didn’t even get any big awards nominations so WHAT was the point TELL ME what the fucking point was of having Harry be dead the whole time. Give me an explanation aside from “ooh spooky” I swear to god *flips table*

[doesnotloveyou]

i'm actually very okay with "there was no other way this could end" endings. if they gotta die, let them die. if they gotta break up or go the wrong way or lose something important, let'em. so long as it completes the story. only thing i dislike more than a forced happy ending is a forced bad ending

[ophelialoveshandsomemen]

Say what you will about Van Helsing 2004; hate it, love it, be indifferent, But the All-Hallow's masquerade ball went sooooo hard and it had zero right to do so! It's a fun, campy, monster mash movie with wonderfully dated ( and expensive) cgi and non-stop action meant to be a popcorn flick one takes out to watch around spooky season. And it has this* chef's kiss* GORGEOUS 6 minute sequence plopped arbitrarily in the second act, which unexpectedly surpasses nearly every other ball in the last 30+ years of film( notable exception being the Cinderella 2015 ball) for literally no reason other than to be dramatic af.

Like feast your eyes on this Gothic masterpiece!!! Who doesn't want to immediately live in this picture?!??

They used those candles with oil in them so that they would have real candles, real string orchestra( I believe), probably around 100 real life extras( something which is tragically absent in modern film), said extras are all in beautiful fully decked-out costumes( which are in luxuriously dark colours, but nearly no fully black, another thing you cannot say for much modern cinema), REAL CIRQUE DU SOLEIL PERFORMERS for all the acrobatics!!!! Hell, instead of filming in a sound stage, where they could control the reverb and the acoustics and the size of the set and the bloody lighting ( they apparently had a heck of a time emulating the firelight for this sequence) and the temperature( it's very cold in stone churches!) better, they filmed in a Baroque church in Prague! As I said, peak dramatic splendour, jfc...

Think about that a second...They filmed a vampire masquerade in a Baroque Catholic Church( St. Nicholas' in Lesser Town, if you were curious) with amazing over-the-top acoustics and marble statues and real, tiled floors and marble pillars and a choir loft which they very much utilized, covered the pipe organ and the altar with a grand brocade curtain so it wouldn't be so obviously a, you know, a church! And there's a gold gilt elevated and canopied pulpit into which they put two vampire kiddies for, again, the sake of being dramatic.

And the costumes! They remind me of the 25th anniversary Phantom of the Opera Masquerade costumes. Same quality, like they're old, well-cared-for costumes pulled out of a warehouse, instead of fast industry churn-outs. With lots of trim and colour and masks and lace and feathers and..just...ugh.. they are all perfect! Just look at all the head pieces on the ladies and the hats on all the gentleman ( save Dracula of course) and the powdered wigs on the musicians. ANNNNDD! The dresses are historically correct!!!!!! It's the 80's bustle era! Nobody does the 80's bustle era in film anymore and it's a bummer. Oh and one other thing! Anna's ( and other women's) hair, at least here in the ball, is also historically accurate because it's all pinned up! None of those fucken modern beachwaves at a ball! Everybody's got updo's!

Gah, I swear, Dracula in his gold cloak really does things to me in this scene!

By the way, the acrobatics are bonkers in here for just background stuff!! Especially the random guys on unicycles and the dude playing the violin whilst standing on a ball...Like....WHAT?

Anyways, all this to say, that this masquerade ball feels sooo real and tangible and because of that it blows every other film out of the water, and no, I will not change my mind!!!!!

Here's a few more gifs, bcuz, why the hell not, this scene is sexy as fuu*ck?

Alright I need to go to bed now.

[leandrocrossard]

something really cool happened today that i wanted to share:

my nephew is 9 years old, and a stereotypical little boy. he likes dinosaurs, minecraft, and ninjas.

today i walked in on him excitedly watching Nimona with my dad. (minor spoiler warning!)

i had never heard of it, but i sat down and watched some of it, just to see why he was so happy.

he started narrating it, anticipating parts of it, almost as if he’d seen it before. he had.

we didn’t get to finish it, but i watched it on my own, because it looked fun and i wanted to see how it ended.

and i loved it. it was a fun, exciting, fantastical adventure about the importance of acceptance people who are different to us.

and it had a very clear queer subplot.

one that my nephew hadn’t mentioned at all in his explanation of the film. his summary was “it’s about a monster who helps a knight that was framed for killing the queen”.

and honestly yeah, that is what the film was about.

before sharing it with us, he had watched it all, engrossed himself in the story, took it in entirely, and the part he cared about most was whether Nimona got her acceptance. he wasn’t indoctrinated, or confused, or questioning anything about himself.

he didn’t bat an eyelid over a gay love confession. he just enjoyed the film, raved about it, made my 60 year old dad watch the movie about the monster who didn’t fit in.

he’s still the same little boy who’s been asking us how to get a girlfriend.

the only thing a movie centred around queer and queer-coded characters taught my nephew was that those who are different to him are not monsters. that’s it.

and that dragons are really cool.

[burningvelvet]

jacob elordi and margot robbie starring in yet another whitewashed wuthering heights adaptation which is going to further destroy the public perception of this classic literary work by misleading people into interpreting it as a common bodice ripper bc no one cares about nuance or meaning and all anyone cares about is profit... crying shaking throwing up!!!

it's also really ironic to imagine what heathcliff himself would think about how he's portrayed in media. he hates everyone and would hate more than anyone the fans who romanticize him, just as he canonically hates isabella for adoring him and wanting to believe that he's better than he is — that he is the romantic hero she's made him out to be. how ironic is it that most fans of the work embody isabella? and on that note, how much do you want to bet that isabella will be written out of the story along with most of the other characters plotlines, like how the colonial rhetoric is written out by the fact of elordi's mere presence?

heathcliff is such a wonderfully written character and one of the most iconic in all literary history. he doesn't deserve this chronic mistreatment and neither do any of the other characters. least deserving of all is emily brontë herself who would be continuously disappointed if she were misfortunate enough to have to bear witness to these adaptations. she's actively rolling in her grave as we speak and the producers are parodying heathcliff digging her up so that she can share in the torment they insist upon...

[nokkiart]

As a long time httyd fan who has been heavily involved in the fandom since the first movie and who has spent years working in the animation industry, I’d like to share my thoughts on the new httyd movie. Keep in mind, this is just my personal opinion and it's completely fine if you disagree with me. I just want to say a little something about all this that really bothers me.

The core reason that Dreamworks and Universal made this film is that it’s a quick and easy cash grab for them. Thats it. They don’t care about telling a good story or making a “better” version of the original movie for fans or even having an accurate portrayal of the characters/story. It’s purely about money. They know that fans of the original film will go see this movie, whether it’s good or bad. And those guaranteed ticket sales are all that matter to the studios. And with Universal, it has the added bonus of being a cheap promotional and merchandising opportunity for the new HTTYD land in Orlando that opens around the same time that the film is premiering in theaters.

And to help the studios make even more money out of this, they are using non-unionized VFX companies around the world to make this film, so that they can get cheaper labor and push the artists to do more that would be against American union standards. The same thing has probably happened with the costuming and fabrication for the filming, hence why the costumes look un-weathered and the sets look cheap. They don’t want to pay for the extra time and effort that it would take to make the practical bits of the production look good.

On top of all this, Dreamworks has already announced that they’re shutting down all their in-house animation projects in favor of using AI and outsourcing projects to cheaper international non-union studios.

With all this in mind, I just can’t support this film and I will not be seeing it in theaters. And I hope that others will do the same.

The only way to stop all these horrible “live action” remakes (which are actually just realistically animated remakes) is to not buy tickets to see them. Money is all that matters to these studios, and if they don’t make any money off of it, then they will stop and try something different. Maybe they'll even go back to focusing on original stories!

That’s the power that we hold as audiences. Our wallets help drive the decisions that the executives make. So support unique storytelling and gorgeous cinematography in movies. Support indie films. Support animators as they're fighting for fair pay and better contracts. But don't support a mediocre shot-for-shot remake riding on the coattails of an already successful film.

And I just want to wrap all this up by saying I have absolutely no hate towards anyone that has worked on the new film. Toothless looks incredible and I know the artists and creatives involved in this project did the best they could with what they were given.

But I also know that those same artists have so many more brilliant ideas that they would’ve loved to be given the creative freedom to do. I just wish hollywood would be willing to take a chance and let them do it.

[platossoulmates]

one thing i see often about movie cherik specifically is people assuming erik is staunchly anti-telepathy but this is simply not true. there are multiple times when erik tells charles to stay out of his head, yes, but these are all moments when he is exceptionally angry. we know erik likes that charles thinks there’s good in him, and we also know he disagrees. he tells charles to stay out when he believes his anger will make charles see his true nature.

but there are also moments where he welcomes charles inside his mind. when they train in first class, charles asks “may i” and wiggles his fingers, and erik agrees without hesitation despite having no idea what charles plans to do. he trusts him. multiple times throughout the prequel movies, when he is without his helmet, he brings up the fact that charles could make him do whatever he wishes. he is joking, but the fact that he can joke about it at all shows just how deeply he trusts him. he never shows disgust or mistrust towards charles ability- in fact his whole fight is that no one should have to hide their mutation

even when he puts the helmet on the first time, he says “sorry charles, it’s not that i don’t trust you” he simply knows that he is disappointing him- knows that without the helmet, charles would be able to stop him, but also knows he wouldn’t, and is therefore saving them both from the what ifs when he chooses to wear it

tldr; erik never actually had a problem with charles inside his head! and it drives me crazy when that’s the whole basis of fics even though erik trusts charles more than he has ever trusted anyone else from the very moment they meet

[ghost-in-the-corner]

I want to appreciate the outfit Barbie is wearing at the end of the movie, when Barbieland is taken back from the Kens and she walks with Ruth.

It's a simple yellow dress. Flowy, floral, nothing special. Her hair was laying almost flat, and she had a gold locket on. Not something you'd normally see on a Barbie.

It was such a human look. Not glamorous or glittery, no pink. Just an easy, everyday dress an average woman would wear to look flattering. It's so meaningful that when Barbieland is fixed, the Barbie we've been following for the past hour and a half just looks like a regular woman.

[thezangoosler]

viewing the fnaf movie as just a movie doesn't work. you're sabotaging yourself and taking away all the enjoyment from it if you don't think of it as the fnaf movie. if i look at it as just a movie, then yeah, i totally get what the critics are saying. it's so far from the lore of the original games (but since when has that not been a problem in the franchise lmao), the killer doesn't really have a clear motivation, and the ending does kind of come out of nowhere. but if i think of it as the fnaf movie i can actually love it. yes, it's far from the original lore. that's just how fnaf goes. yes, it is a glorified two hour lore dump. but could we want anything more from fnaf? it's literally infamous for the lore. sure, springtrap does kind of come out of nowhere. but the joy and whimsy experienced when he does show up is fucking amazing, actually. i don't care if it's a bad movie. it's the best viewing experience i've had in 2023.

[thereweredragonshere]

Listen there are a lot of things that piss me off about the hidden world (it's general existence being the main one) but the whole notion of 'Hiccup gave Toothless his freedom'

????

HUH

WAY TO MISS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE FRANCHISE??? WHAT??? WHAT DO YOU MEAN??? HAVE YOU WATCHED GIFT OF THE NIGHT FURY??? HELLO???

And no hate to any thw enjoyers, everyone has an opinion. My opinion just so happens to be that it sucked and should be put to death (I will say the animation was amazing, if not a bit too polished)

[frankbankinternational]

Frank talking about his major frustration with the film, Home Alone.

Via Mikey Way's Instagram stories

[archibaldtuttle]

"Fuck CGI all my homies hate CGI here we love practical effects" ok ok ok alright I know I KNOW that I'm being pedantic and nitpicky (which is why I'm making my own post and not adding this to one of those I've seen floating around) but you don't hate CGI you just hate capitalism

CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is a very broad term, but in the context of films it is an 60 year old technique used in a variety of contexts for a variety of reasons. It is not only excessive green screens and bad mocap.

CGI is actually a central part of why practical effects look so much better now than they did in the 60s - I can guarantee that you have not seen one practical effect without the addition of CGI in a film after the 90s and maybe even earlier (excepting micro budget films, and even then). Every squib of fake blood that pops on under the actor's costume is cleaned up in post. And to be clear - this is a good thing! It looks better when it's well done!

What you hate is the overreliance on underpaid, overworked contract workers who are ground into the dirt by big studios with crunch times and wildly unreasonable expectations, that results in catastrophic looking messes. Yes, I also subscribe to "a bad practical effect is better than a bad CGI effect because at least it's there", but there are hundreds of people being exploited for their labor who are honest to god artists and dismissing their entire field is missing the point. A backlash against CGI as a concept could lead to a devaluation of the artists' work - less support from the public isn't exactly what they need. That's exactly what happened after Cats, when two of the actors dared mock the effects on stage during the Academy Awards while the companies which had been crushed by the film were going bankrupt - through no fault of their own.

Pitting those two disciplines against each other isn't only useless it's also just plain wrong - they have been working hand in hand for over 60 years. Know how to recognize the qualities and flaws of both and defend workers in all fields.

[grim-ghosty]

I want to rant about some people in this fandom coming out of the woodworks saying that Brozone is toxic or some shit like that.

Did we even watch the same movie? Like seriously?

I think one of the biggest things these people overlook is this scene here.

This is his brother’s face after he said that he had to take care of himself after his grandma died. Are you going to tell me that they don’t feel any regret or guilt for leaving?

And look how shock and sadden they are to learn that Branch built the bunker for him and his brothers. They 100 percent feel guilty for telling him they're going their separate ways and for blowing off his feelings.

They also were in the heat of the moment. They were already mad at each other and said things they didn't mean. like shit man, I've said shit that I didn't fucking mean and instantly regret it. That's just being human.

There is also the end of the movie when the brothers are together again. Even if it's a brief scene, you can see how they're trying to reconnect, to be a family again, one step at a time.

And I will say it again, NO ONE IS DISMISSING WHAT BRANCH'S BROTHERS DID OR SAID, but you can't deny how much Branch's brothers love and care about him and each other.

How they all reacted to seeing Branch again after so long and finally listened to him in the end. How Bruce sent a postcard to John even tho he was still mad at him. How Clay hugged John after saving Floyd and asked him to join his book club (seen by John reading a book that looks like the one Clay is holding when he was asking Branch) and how he apologized to Branch (I do agree that the apology was lack luster), saying he can't wait to get to know him more. How they all risked their lives to save Floyd.

There is way more I can say, but I'm not going to waste my time anymore than I already have.

[oogles]

I feel like people don’t have the same genre expectations for horror as they do other genres. “Oh I didn’t like that horror movie because it was too horrific” imagine saying this about any other genre. Like, “I didn’t like that romance movie because there was too much romance” its the GENRE. You’re allowed to not like the genre as a whole, but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to say a movie is bad because it contains the elements of the genre that you don’t like.

Gothic horror by nature contains a lot of themes of abuse, incest, and toxic relationships in general, and its ok to not like those elements. But you can’t demand that gothic horror doesn’t contain any of the elements that define it as a genre. Its like saying you want a cocktail but don’t want to taste any alcohol.

[franki-lew-yo]

Finding Dory was going to have Dory leave on her own and Nemo and then Marlin were going to then go after her, WHICH MAKES MORE SENSE.

Marlin was going to meet the Tank Gang and Gill officially.

The Tank Gang were the over-the-top A-Team of fish and would have helped Marlin and Nemo get to California.

Monsters University was going to open with Mike and Sully meeting in first grade where it would have established they hated each other as kids.

Incredibles 2 was going to show Honey's face and reveal she was also a super.

Incredibles 2 was going to open with a memorial to the fallen supers.

I will never not be mad about these obvious but infinitely better choices for storytelling being axed from the final films while Toy Story 4 gets to exist. It's criminal (not really).

For all my issues with Dreamworks and their apparent recent slump in quality, I'll give em this, they have direction. Maybe you don't like that direction, but it still has something going on.

Pixar's sequels hurt because the studio straight up had a list of 'rules' of storytelling and it's decided to up and throw all that away with the rest of Disney's quality in the last few years. For shame.