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Race Realists posted:I meant the actual antagonists, not just their afflication. Like, what MADE them want to seek the power the comes with being in the Drug Game? Do they have any families? Any other method of employment? You're looking for a richer, subtler, more complex film here. Police actioners aren't really known for John Sayles-like socioeconomic observations. When they start doing that, they become dramas. In a way, you're disappointed that there isn't any serious crime drama or thoughtful explorations of race in what amounts to a stylized, grim-dark Lethal Weapon movie. Love Rat fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Dec 13, 2017 |
# ? Dec 13, 2017 21:30 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 12:55 |
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Love Rat posted:You're looking for a richer, subtler, more complex film here. Police actioners aren't really known for John Sayles-like socioeconomic observations. When they start doing that, they become dramas. i guess you're right. its like... those Found Footage segments dedicated to the gangster characters couldve been put to good use, is all
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# ? Dec 13, 2017 21:46 |
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Race Realists posted:I meant the actual antagonists, not just their afflication. Like, what MADE them want to seek the power the comes with being in the Drug Game? Do they have any families? Any other method of employment? I think it's self-evident that neither you nor I actually has any difficulty surmising the myriad of reasons that lead people to join gangs, as well as understanding that there must indeed be a confluence of reasons. Like, do they have families? Well, sure, but in communities with high rates of unemployment, poverty, and incarceration, there are inevitably more 'broken homes,' as it were. And, of course, gangs and cartels present themselves as a family. Or, are there no other means of employment? Well, sure, there are means of employment, but employment does not mean a living wage or dignity. And, again, gangs and cartels prey upon the very natural apprehension that people have that the only things that matter in a capitalist society are money and power. And that's to say nothing of the horrific psychological effects that poverty and hunger can have on any one individual. When you learn from a very early age that your life and the lives of those around you have no intrinsic value, it's very easy to gravitate towards illicit lifestyles, because the value of not just the lives of others but your own life is not even a question. The problem is not that End of Watch does not suitably convey the motivations of the antagonists, or express their rationale for their behaviors and personalities. The problem is precisely this ideological obsession with the humanity of an individual overcome by negative social and cultural forces which are treated as somehow independent from the functioning of an otherwise just world. The truly terrifying notion is that there is no just world, that the antagonists of End of Watch are far past the point of 'humanizing' themselves for an audience that doesn't exist. Race Realists posted:i guess you're right. its like... those Found Footage segments dedicated to the gangster characters couldve been put to good use, is all Again, though, what you are implying as "good use" for the found footage conceit is for the film's antagonists to humanize themselves for an audience that might be prejudiced to believe that they are simply bad people from uncivilized cultures and broken homes. But the audience of this footage are the cartel members. They are not putting on airs for anyone, they are using the medium to affirm their own values (or lack thereof) to themselves. They are not the subjects of a documentary. They, like their police counterparts, are making propaganda.
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# ? Dec 13, 2017 22:04 |
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Love Rat posted:You're looking for a richer, subtler, more complex film here. Police actioners aren't really known for John Sayles-like socioeconomic observations. When they start doing that, they become dramas. It's almost as if police actioners are an inherently shallow, reactionary genre.
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# ? Dec 13, 2017 22:04 |
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Race Realists posted:the problem with this is that the film does a frankly AWFUL job of the Sinaloa in terms of characterization: They have NO character, NO real motivation other than Race Realists posted:I meant the actual antagonists, not just their afflication. Like, what MADE them want to seek the power the comes with being in the Drug Game? Do they have any families? Any other method of employment? So the real question is, why do the police not care about any of the things you do? Why are the motivations of the antagonists unexplored while we get to see what makes every cop in the precinct tick? Why are structural problems pushed out of view while violence against the police is portrayed in a lurid and heightened manner? (These are all criticisms of the police by the filmmaker.)
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# ? Dec 13, 2017 22:26 |
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Race Realists posted:I meant the actual antagonists, not just their afflication. Like, what MADE them want to seek the power the comes with being in the Drug Game? Do they have any families? Any other method of employment? That's not what the movie is about, it's not The frickin' Wire
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# ? Dec 13, 2017 22:45 |
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Race Realists posted:I meant the actual antagonists, not just their afflication. Like, what MADE them want to seek the power the comes with being in the Drug Game? Do they have any families? Any other method of employment? Chapo Trap House is an entertaining podcast with absolutely wretched media analysis outside the direct optics of politics. If you can't parse that the one scene with the police abandoning their abusive rigid power structure to deal with someone else like another suffering human being needing to take their aggression out on anything, then I don't know what these kinds of "just askin' questions" questions is going to net you.
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# ? Dec 13, 2017 23:56 |
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Because it ruled and made crazy bank, op https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25ZRKNpq48 Spending equal time with the cops and gangsters would have been redundant, and doubled the run time; Ayer is an extremely concise storyteller. Calling it now, when Bright drops (and is awesome) peeps will be all chirping "whats with this fantasy of racial violence i guess David Ayer is a racist and thats all there is to it"
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# ? Dec 14, 2017 00:04 |
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How much does it rule that we have an entire thread predicated on the OP repeatedly asking why they call him Big Evil? Asking why his evil's big. Things of that nature
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# ? Dec 14, 2017 00:13 |
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Catfishenfuego posted:It's almost as if police actioners are an inherently shallow, reactionary genre. Yes precisely. I'm a fan, and even I'm aware of that.
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# ? Dec 14, 2017 05:35 |
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Films in general are reactionary, regardless of genre. And sometimes a film can be consistent with dominant ideology in some ways, but transgressive in others. The burden of interpretation, however, is upon the spectator. There is no reading of End of Watch as reactionary. All we have is a series of loosely related claims about the superficial content of the film (it's about cops, human traffickers and cartels are portrayed as bad, there's a lot of poor people of color in SoCal), and the fetishistic understanding of MAGA as merely 'bad thoughts' that intuitively ties it all together. Again, this is like "the ad campaign of 13 Hours leans on rightist conspiracy theories," where the actual text is irrelevant.
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# ? Dec 14, 2017 07:08 |
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Race Realists posted:the problem with this is that the film does a frankly AWFUL job of the Sinaloa in terms of characterization: They have NO character, NO real motivation other than eh, cartels in real life make movies of them torturing rivals to death by sawing off their hands and ripping off their faces, they don't really need a lot of characterization and motivation to be the bad guys in a movie about LA cops. their motivation is whatever poo poo cartels get up to. the movie kind of makes a point that both sides dehumanize the other - the gang member fighting with Brian is the only time they ever really reach across the aisle, otherwise they just seem to hate each other. which is fairly realistic, i'm not certainly not a gang member but i've lived in enough lovely areas of California to have been around drug dealers and they will never see cops as anything other than the people out to get them. i also don't think this movie is all that MAGA-ish, they get totally hosed up by overwhelming forces at the end. i mean our first introduction of Brian's character is that fist fight with the gang member; it's futile violence. by the end of the movie his partner is dead, and he's been shot multiple times. they killed a bunch of gang members, sure, but earlier in that movie we were showed other cops busting up a party absolutely full of gang members so it's not like they made much of a difference.
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# ? Dec 14, 2017 13:45 |
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Colors is the superior version of this movie anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZvatzKVM2g Blood In Blood Out does the galaxy brain version of these movies by making the cops and criminals blood related. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgXh-jXG-Vk American Me is the universe brain version of this genre because it follows the criminals exclusively instead of the cops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS-kGp0Fjho e: Fuuuuck, watching that trailer for American Me again, this movie should have loving Godfather status in the echelons of movie history. This should be Olmos' legacy instead of fuckin' Battlestar Galactica. ruddiger fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Dec 14, 2017 |
# ? Dec 14, 2017 16:11 |
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Colors, titular track aside, is awful.
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# ? Dec 14, 2017 16:14 |
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Tumble posted:i also don't think this movie is all that MAGA-ish, they get totally hosed up by overwhelming forces at the end. This is one of the key parts of copaganda; look how dangerous this job is, look how much our guys put on the line. I think the opening scene, where Gyllenhaal is gleefully giving his stormtrooper monologue over a scene of him visibly excited about blowing a guy away, promises a more biting movie than the rest of the film is willing to deliver on.
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# ? Dec 14, 2017 16:29 |
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sean10mm posted:So what WAS the worst major Hollywood film in the AMERICA gently caress YEAH genre since 9/11? Act of Valor is the correct answer here
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# ? Dec 14, 2017 17:18 |
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Colors, titular track aside, is awful. Wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUzip4dyOx4
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# ? Dec 15, 2017 02:37 |
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Duvall is amazing as always.
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# ? Dec 15, 2017 03:03 |
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lol you're gonna LOVE bright
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# ? Dec 15, 2017 10:02 |
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sean10mm posted:So what WAS the worst major Hollywood film in the AMERICA gently caress YEAH genre since 9/11? zero dark thirty buries its cia-aligned politics beneath a thick veneer of Prestige so i'd say it's more insidious than clint eastwood's stolz der nation
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# ? Dec 15, 2017 13:13 |
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R. Guyovich posted:zero dark thirty buries its cia-aligned politics beneath a thick veneer of Prestige so i'd say it's more insidious than clint eastwood's stolz der nation It's at least an entertaining film though, if you just watch it without any regard for real world events or politics. American Sniper is just an extremely mediocre and predictable biopic that also happens to have disgusting politics.
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# ? Dec 15, 2017 15:30 |
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Well, Clint's got another hot jam coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBkQcPAvS6o I don't know what to say about this. I'm they're all very nice dudes, but we're straying into some real GREEN BERETS territory here.
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# ? Dec 15, 2017 20:00 |
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DrVenkman posted:Well, Clint's got another hot jam coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBkQcPAvS6o Well at least in this case it's a real life situation where a few guys legitimately did do something heroic and they saved a bunch of lives.
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# ? Dec 15, 2017 20:04 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 12:55 |
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edit nvm
Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Dec 15, 2017 |
# ? Dec 15, 2017 20:09 |