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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:How clever does the movie think it is? Its layering of cult vs blood family dynamics for Dani (particularly its mirrored ending/beginning) just aren't as interesting as it thinks it is. Nor are the gore flashes or foreshadowing. It just all felt super overt but trying to come off as some sort of deep symbolism that just wasn't there. For me none of that was enough of a foundation on which to support a fundamentally straightforward, telegraphed story. To me it showed a thing that happened and that was...it? There was nothing there beyond the surface style, which is what I want when someone is given enough weird leeway to play with like a Scandinavian death cult.
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Jul 26, 2019 17:54
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Calico Heart posted:You're kind of intentionally missing the point. The movie obviously has supernatural poo poo going on from the get-go, and they work well heightening the psychological aspects of the rest of the movie. They key point being "working together"" - by the ending we are, sorry, watching a boring cult do boring cult poo poo. It sounds like you are working under the assumption that everyone agrees with you about it being boring, which almost no one here does. veni veni veni fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jul 27, 2019 |
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Jul 27, 2019 01:27
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Segue posted:Its layering of cult vs blood family dynamics for Dani (particularly its mirrored ending/beginning) just aren't as interesting as it thinks it is. Nor are the gore flashes or foreshadowing. It just all felt super overt but trying to come off as some sort of deep symbolism that just wasn't there. "The story was too straightforward for me" is fine and valid, you're welcome to think what you like. I just find that anthropomorphizing the movie and acting like it has personally insulted your intelligence (especially without considering the possibility the film straight up wasn't made with your tastes in mind) is some IMDB-user level tedium. It's the "I want to speak to the manager" of film criticism.
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Jul 27, 2019 02:51
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veni veni veni posted:It sounds like you are working under the assumption that everyone agrees with you about it being boring, which almost no one here does. Yeah, I definitely see how some people might find the very stoic, distanced perspective of the film disengaging. But I was not bored. As for the “grief is the only thing it does well” aspect, hard disagree. Its use of grief and emotional trauma in Dani’s arc is the whole point of the movie. It’s about something very relatable despite being ostensibly about this very alien culture. Many of the best horror films are like that. The Babadook is about postpartum depression and mental health; it’s not supplemental to the film, it is the film. The Exorcist is nothing without Father Karras’ crisis of faith and redemption. Etc etc. You can’t cherrypick these elements at the expense of the whole.
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Jul 27, 2019 04:14
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:"The story was too straightforward for me" is fine and valid, you're welcome to think what you like. I just find that anthropomorphizing the movie and acting like it has personally insulted your intelligence (especially without considering the possibility the film straight up wasn't made with your tastes in mind) is some IMDB-user level tedium. It's the "I want to speak to the manager" of film criticism. Eh, I realize that came off a bit hostile, and my personification of the movie was just shorthand for Aster and the filmmakers in general. I was just trying to explain what my reaction to it was, which is essentially what you said, plus that the filmmakers' attempt to add a thematic depth by playing with horror tropes felt shoddy and shallow. I think it failed at its goal of dressing up its story into something, which seemed to be its earnest goal of using the genre. It's obviously not for me, I was just unsuccessfully parsing my own mind as to why.
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Jul 27, 2019 14:58
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Xealot posted:Yeah, I definitely see how some people might find the very stoic, distanced perspective of the film disengaging. But I was not bored. Yeah. Not liking the cult ending is fine, but I just feel like if someone is going to be so blunt about it being bad, I'd like to hear a more compelling argument as to why. veni veni veni fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jul 27, 2019 |
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Jul 27, 2019 17:52
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Segue posted:Eh, I realize that came off a bit hostile, and my personification of the movie was just shorthand for Aster and the filmmakers in general. And I realize I'm probably just getting old and deep down I think I knew you were just using some comically hostile-sounding hyperbole. I just like that, while CineD might have its own faults, I feel like for the most part it gets away from that kind of thing, nawmean? 
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Jul 28, 2019 00:52
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I will not accept poo poo talking of Hereditary.
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Jul 28, 2019 18:10
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https://twitter.com/ericallenhatch/status/1155606992523800576
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Jul 29, 2019 12:02
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Watched this movie yesterday and loved it, but considering I generally hate horror movies, I can see why someone expecting horror would be disappointed in it. Reading reactions online, I'm mostly surprised at people somehow seeing supernatural elements in the movie, but I didn't really notice anything that couldn't plausibly be explained by the characters being severely under the influence. Also has one of the best renderitions of the visual hallucinations you get from a good acid/mushroom trip, so someone in the FX department clearly did their homework
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Jul 29, 2019 16:31
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Bohemian Nights posted:Reading reactions online, I'm mostly surprised at people somehow seeing supernatural elements in the movie, but I didn't really notice anything that couldn't plausibly be explained by the characters being severely under the influence. Are you sure you weren't reading the Hereditary derail?
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Jul 29, 2019 16:52
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veni veni veni posted:Are you sure you weren't reading the Hereditary derail? We have had a couple people in this thread read literal meaning into her being able to understand swedish around the maypole and someone doing some sort of sci-fi style hive mind thing to explain why they cry together.
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Jul 29, 2019 16:55
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veni veni veni posted:Are you sure you weren't reading the Hereditary derail? Little bit of column A, little bit of column reddit And yeah that whole understanding each other without using "real language" is like babbys first acid trip
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Jul 29, 2019 16:58
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Saw this again over the weekend. There's a lot of parallels, I think, between Midsommar and Annihilation. Themes of unhappy relationships, and how trying to manage them, trying to achieve some level of happiness in a situation that can't really be controlled, leads to people making terrible and self-destructive choices.
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Jul 29, 2019 17:19
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Yeah for sure. Annihilation somehow feels even more bleak though. God Annihilation is so loving good.
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Jul 29, 2019 18:12
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veni veni veni posted:God Annihilation is so loving good.
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Jul 29, 2019 18:51
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Alex Garland isn't interested in doing the Annihilation sequel which makes me 
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Jul 29, 2019 21:39
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I get where he's coming from though and I'm ok with that. He rewrote it as a self contained story. I listened to an interview with him a while back and he said he has no interest in sequels in general. He likes movies to complete stories and I respect that. That's is really what I want to see when I go to the theater. Not part of a series. he also said he's never watched one of his own movies which is weird as gently caress lol.
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Jul 29, 2019 21:49
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I absolutely loved Midsommar. For me personally, this resonated more strongly than Hereditary, although I'm not sure I would recommend this over Hereditary to people. At least not as the first of the two to watch. I had an rear end in a top hat boyfriend just like Christian, so the final action was indeed cathartic for me. In fact, as soon as the May Queen idea was revealed, I immediately hoped that the movie would end with Dani being made the May Queen and having the option to choose to sacrifice Christian, and I got my wish! Rawr I'm a monster. One thing I noticed and wanted to ask those who watched twice, since I'm not sure if I'm mis-remembering: I kept an eye on the flower above Dani's head to see at which points it's fluctuating, because I figured this was a shorthand for her level of lucidity. In the scene where she makes her choice, it didn't look like it was moving anymore, so I thought this made she made that choice while fully lucid. Am I just mis-remembering that moment? One other aspect I enjoyed: the approach of the anthropologists to the culture they were joining/attempting to dissect/invade was pretty spot-on to me. It was an easy explanation to the "why don't they just leave?!" question that always hovers over these movies, and the couple who weren't anthropologists and/or anthropologist-adjacent having the strongest reactions to what they're seeing also made sense to me. Also, as a grad student, when Christian told his "friend" Josh that he was outright stealing a portion of his thesis, after Josh had done all the preliminary work to even have this opportunity to study this culture, I leaned over to my movie buddy and whispered what an absolute dick. You don't do that to your fellow grad student! As for Christian's Big Scene, for me, regardless of how or why he originally decided to go along with the sex ritual, which I think the movie is trying to strongly imply he did, his expressions during that scene made it pretty clear that this was not what he consented to. The scene is definitely filmed as a horror comedy, but it's also tragic because that happens to him and you can see the moment(s) he's NOT into it, and then he stumbles around in a confused and shamed daze, finds the blood eagle, and then is paralyzed without a voice for the rest of the movie. I felt terrible for him, even as I felt catharsis for what Dani had chosen to do. Rawr, monster. boo_radley posted:Saw this again over the weekend. There's a lot of parallels, I think, between Midsommar and Annihilation. Themes of unhappy relationships, and how trying to manage them, trying to achieve some level of happiness in a situation that can't really be controlled, leads to people making terrible and self-destructive choices. This is really interesting! I may need to check out Annihilation again to see what similarities I notice.
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Jul 29, 2019 21:59
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Donovan Trip posted:Alex Garland isn't interested in doing the Annihilation sequel which makes me That seems extremely good. I read the books before the movie and I liked them fine but they are really just roadside picnic and not much else. The movie figured out a really powerful set of imagery and themes to lay over the first book and made something really special. But you aren't going to squeeze another movie out of that mold. The plots of the second and third books just aren't about what the first book was made to be about in the movie. Nothing would follow in any way I care about. Like I wanted to read about the director of the program in the books because that fit with what the book was doing, it was very process oriented and cared a lot about the overall mystery of the world and the organization of the study, I absolutely have zero interest of any kind of annihilation 2: now it's about the director of the project. Nothing about that sounds even remotely good.
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Jul 29, 2019 21:59
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veni veni veni posted:I get where he's coming from though and I'm ok with that. He rewrote it as a self contained story. I listened to an interview with him a while back and he said he has no interest in sequels in general. He likes movies to complete stories and I respect that. That's is really what I want to see when I go to the theater. Not part of a series. While Dredd is a great movie, and operates on its own completely, there is an entire scene that serves only to set up a sequel. I wonder if he didn't write that, or if the studio forced it in. edit: I guess that scene also established the one character as being psychic. but surely there could have been a less sequel-baitey way to do it. The Pirate Captain fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jul 29, 2019 |
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Jul 29, 2019 22:13
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Wait he made dredd too? Guy can't catch a break at the box office.
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Jul 29, 2019 22:21
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Technically he only wrote it and some other guy directed, but he totally directed it
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Jul 29, 2019 22:44
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Woah. That makes total sense. When I rewatched Dredd recently I actually thought it had a vibe that really meshed with his other movies to the point that I sort of forgot he didn’t direct it. Turns out he did.
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Jul 30, 2019 19:34
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went to see this with my friends, we were the only people in the cinema which ruled because i dont think i could have lasted the whole 150 mins without being able to laugh and riff stuff i liked: i think the opening is really, really strong and much more interesting than the rest of the film. dani's characterisation as someone crushed by sadness but trying to keep smiling made her the only 2d character and her panic attack sequences are really good. the opening with a real world tragedy and also during the call the camera is just close on the MCs face so you really get sympathetic to her, this is real good horror technnique. I actually think pretty much everything up to the shroom trip is masterful suspense/horror. visually its great, audio is great stuff i didn't: it REALLY dragged. it sorta feels like they started out with a bunch of plot threads and added more to be kinda like "okay so they stay because anthropology i guess" "okay this guy is learning the runes and crazy bible" but then dont actually amount to anything, the plot and script feel like drafts. especially after the first messed up thing they witness there is this 25 minute sequence where every character kinda explains why theyr gonna stay even though it makes no sense and its one of those moments where the writer is going "okay cmon, we all know they have to stay" and thats fine, but it goes on forever and doesnt make any more sense at the end of that. it also has some insanely clunky lines that made us all laugh out loud like it was The Room or something, i forget the exact line but lovely boyfriends line talking about the shocking horrifying thing they just saw "of course i remember what happened. i'm very shocked" completely without any emotion. and later the great line "when i was a little boy my parents got all burned up" my friend turned to me and said he didn't think there was a script and most scenes were improv and that hung over the rest of the movie in general i couldnt tell if the boyfriend was a bad actor or had been given a bad script cause his characterisation is all over the place, hes sorta a cartoon bad boyfriend which i think was fine but then he also suddenly cares about his dissertation like 2 hours into the movie and then it doesnt matter anyway. the whole penultimate sequence with him its hard to tell what the gently caress hes even thinking about the situation. as said, all the characters other than dani are 1-dimensional. horny guy, bookworm, bad boyfriend, mysterious swede. thats not too uncommon for a horror but it'd be nice to at least make them 2D like Dani. maybe the boyfriend dissertation was an attempt to give him an extra D by making him care about anthropology? who knows cause that whole plot thread coulda been cancelled TLDR so i'd say, great visuals and audio, strong opening. shaky plotting and very thin characters and not scary at all. the ending works though plot threads and themes are discarded along the way.
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Jul 31, 2019 15:48
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Christian’s undersold reactions to the attestupa are very much intentional
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Jul 31, 2019 16:48
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Respectfully disagree - I think the writing and acting both sold Christian's complete sociopathy and moral cowardice.
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Jul 31, 2019 20:23
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It kind of weirds me out how Christian's malevolence seems to fly over so many people's heads ITT. He's the actual monster of the movie; at least the cultists (mostly) don't know any better.
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Jul 31, 2019 21:23
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I think the black comedy turn at the end of the opening where he’s “trapped” with her does a lot of the damage in that regard.
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Aug 1, 2019 00:09
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I disagree about the dialog, Christain sounded exactly like a dumb idiot college bro desperately trying to sound smart.
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Aug 1, 2019 01:22
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What's the meaning of "Tengen Toppa" or whatever the thesis guy was trying to look up on Google?
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Aug 3, 2019 11:00
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Spermando posted:What's the meaning of "Tengen Toppa" or whatever the thesis guy was trying to look up on Google? I think it was this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84ttestupa?wprov=sfla1
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Aug 3, 2019 12:30
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Am I wrong in saying the discussion about Christian cheating or not seems like a very american one? Because he was so unambiguiously raped and whether he accepted a drink beforehand is just like, irrelevant. Anyway, the scene where Dani speaks "swedish" is just gibberish, for the people who mentioned that earlier. All the rest of the swedish dialogue was the real thing, so it was pretty noticable when she started going abal dabal dooble (got a lot of laughs in my theater)
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Aug 3, 2019 23:01
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Crimpolioni posted:Am I wrong in saying the discussion about Christian cheating or not seems like a very american one? Because he was so unambiguiously raped and whether he accepted a drink beforehand is just like, irrelevant. No it's a goon one. I am American and also find it very unambiguous.
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Aug 4, 2019 00:38
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veni veni veni posted:No it's a goon one. I am American and also find it very unambiguous. I think you'll find many non-goon Americans do think unironically that a man can't be raped. These people are shitheads, but still...
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Aug 4, 2019 01:17
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Crimpolioni posted:Am I wrong in saying the discussion about Christian cheating or not seems like a very american one? I mean, he was clearly unambiguously raped in any standard if you took this movie to trial court. But in horror movie logic and language a guy starting the movie wishing he was sleeping with other girl ending the movie sleeping with other girls, but in a dark cult ceremony is supposed to form a story arc and not be two unrelated events. He got exactly what he wanted, but dark and twisted. Since he's in a narrative fictional story. If this was just an arbitrary set of real events then it's unconnected and he was just regular raped since the cult wouldn't know he had wanted to go to sweden and sleep with other women.
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Aug 4, 2019 16:37
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Doc Fission posted:Saw this for the second time and absolutely loved it. Not being in suspense or prolonged dread over what happens really highlights the inherent humor in the movie. It felt like an elegant homage to campy slashers: friends go mysteriously missing one by one with the flimsiest explanations for their absence! Everyone has too much petty internal poo poo going on to pay attention to ill omens, AND they're just unlikable enough that you don't care if they die! Every death is blatantly telegraphed in in-universe visuals! A dude is bludgeoned to death with a hammer by three people who take turns! The cult sex! THERE'S A FOOT STICKING OUT OF THE GROUND! The movie has tremendous aesthetic currency that serves as beautiful window dressing to some really madcap comedy. I appreciate it as a thriller and as #art but I think it’s undeniably very, like, 1980s slasher. It’s delightful. I'd already been imagining "Ari Aster's Friday the 13th" and getting a kick out of the idea... and then by coincidence I rewatched the original Friday the 13th yesterday and discovered that's already pretty much what it is! Honestly the first Friday probably resembles Hereditary and Midsommar more than it does some of its later sequels. I wish I could find whatever review or article where I'd first read someone describe the "particularly American" horror trope to play like another film being interrupted.
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Aug 5, 2019 02:02
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Spermando posted:What's the meaning of "Tengen Toppa" or whatever the thesis guy was trying to look up on Google? if you dont want to pay the tenbuxx you can read my tumblr rips anyway movie was a tad long but uhhhh once again like Hereditary I am still trying to figure out thoughts on it
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Aug 5, 2019 11:44
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I saw this a couple of days ago. I liked it, though I didn't find it very scary nor all that disturbing (until the end). I did keep me thinking. One thing that struck me is whether Pelle is manipulating the Hårga's. Near the end, the elder tells Ulf and Ragnar something like "in providing newbloods, you have volunteered your own bodies for sacrifice" and then he commends Pelle for his unclouded wisdom or whatever. So by providing a May Queen, Pelle escapes being sacrificed as well, instead of Ragnar? Would provide another level to the scene where he tells Dani he is so very happy she came along. Him being "unclouded" and kissing Dani also hints that they may be/have been chosen to mate, as they put it. Would also explain why Ulf tries to pass his interaction with the British woman off as a date. Like she was his candidate for May Queen but her more successful relationship meant she wasn't as susceptible to indoctrination and had to be sacrificed the normal way, which also meant his life was forfeit. So, Pelle gets rid of Dani's douche boyfriend, lets some sucker fellow cultist get burned alive, takes a step up in the hierarchy and gets to bone the American chick he's been into. Win-win-win for him I guess, until it's time for retirement.
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Aug 7, 2019 14:57
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So the Bear Suit has to be a reference to Wicker Man
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Aug 9, 2019 01:29
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