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Yeah I can tell I'm gonna have trouble with this movie without subtitles. I don't know that it's mainstream enough to have any cinema releases that would include them, though. (UK here, still got another two weeks to wait)
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Jan 17, 2015 11:18
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:37 |
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I thought this was really great. Not quite on the level of the book or on PTA's last two, but one of the best of 2014 nonetheless. I admit I probably would have been confused had I not read the book and gone into it expecting a regular mystery, but at the same time everything is all there, it's just not what the movie cares about the most. Phoenix once again disappears completely into a role and proves why he's my favourite living actor, and Brolin was of course impeccable, but Martin Short absolutely stole the show with his turn. Fantastic score, cinematography, and colours. Still suffers a little from (as the book did) introducing certain pivotal characters way too late, and I would have appreciated an adaptation that was a little more wacky/kinetic as some have mentioned, but I'm still really happy with what we got. Like a poster far earlier on said, it may not be the exact adaptation I expected or even wanted (and like another poster said that brothel sequence early on probably came closest to the tone I would have loved the most) but it's still another excellent PTA work. Someone asked this earlier but it got overshadowed by that dumbass who can't handle the idea of seeing a movie more than once: what are peoples' interpretations of the final scene? It's the one thing I still can't figure out thematically, and how it ties in to the rest. I had trouble with the weed eating scene as well, but I think I have a handle on that now. I see it as Bigfoot doubling down on being part of "the system". I certainly got the sense, from his acting attempts and his browbeating wife, that he wasn't truly as straight-laced and hippy-hating as he comes across, especially when he knows the LAPD's hired goon is responsible for the death of his partner. There's a part of him that is clearly attracted to that lifestyle, just as Doc clearly enjoys the crime-solving and has an authority fetish. I think Doc sees it in him, too, at least a little. However, just as the system grinds up the counterculture so does Bigfoot choose to quash those sides of him, knowing either consciously or not that they can never win. So the door-kicking and weed-eating are a statement, a 'this is my side, and I'm sticking to it'. I think that's why Doc sheds the tear during that scene, because he's sad someone who could have been a kindred spirit has been swallowed up again by the enemy. Maybe he knows the second he finds the heroin in his trunk. I do also like the idea he was just sad about his weed though.
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Feb 2, 2015 10:45
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Also the line "technically Jewish but wants to be a Nazi"
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Feb 5, 2015 02:47
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