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I saw this on edibles in a packed theatre and its baffling failures on every front made me start a film blog. The movie is determined to be incredibly boring for long stretches of time but then abruptly realizes that doesn’t work either and switches back to a silliness that makes the hallucinogenic, surreal dance numbers all the more jarring. You keep getting glimpses of what could have been had Hooper not determined to suck the life out of Cats’s soul for so many long stretches. Back and forth, back and forth in confusion and ennui until the end of time. What I found fascinating was that this movie made me desperately want to see the stage musical. Every time it failed spectacularly, like destroying impressive leaps with inept CGI or suddenly cutting to a background character for no reason, all I could think was how perfectly this would all work on stage where you can choose how to direct your attention and the physicality grounds the absurd premise and costumes. Many movies adapted from the stage still feel tied to it and consequently a bit stilted and static, unable to free themselves entirely to a looser cinematic language: Cats feels like a monkey’s paw twisted everything that worked on stage into an Eldritch language of dread.
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Jan 5, 2020 20:35
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 05:34 |
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Even a week on, I'm still impressed that the Taylor Swift song Beautiful Ghosts is the thing that's stayed with me the most. Everything else is a weird fever dream of stage sequences that don't work at all on film but that one deliberate musical choice that echoes Memory harmonically and lyrically is the sincerest and best fitting sequence, fulfulling an interesting narrative role developing Victoria while still being a dope song. What I'm saying is if you had Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber direct this it would actually have been masterpiece. They basically troll all of Tom Hooper's inept decisions with their contribution.
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Jan 11, 2020 05:26
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Gumball Gumption posted:The problem with beautiful ghosts is that its theme seems to be that the most sympathetic character in the movie doesn't actually have it that bad and Victoria has it worse. Then the movie makes no attempt to reject that or explain why Grisabella is more deserving. That's what's so interesting about it! It's an aborted idea, the only other narrative song besides Memory that actually provides a story structure. But Hooper doesn't know what to do with it so it just sits there unfinished. It's a glimpse into a cohesive Cats world that, being unexplored, makes the rest of the movie even more confusing. And it's a great song.
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Jan 11, 2020 15:27
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So my friend and I watched Zardoz and it was so stunningly bad yet fascinating in its awfulness at the same time that I had this deep sense of familiarity. It was so clearly incompetently made, with each decision being so poor that it never got "so bad it's good" because we were incredibly bored the whole time despite its ambition. At the end, I kept trying to think of where I'd had this feeling of sheer awe at a movie's incompetence before and the answer was Cats. Now Cats may be on a different level simply because its budget and commercial crassness may make it less endearing, but I am so glad I got to experience the most conflicting, gut-punching confusion of my life again with a whole new non-Cats movie. The world is a magical place.
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Mar 1, 2021 05:25
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I mean, Zardoz has at least some novel costuming and we were fully invested in enjoying its outlandishness and horniness, but its misogyny, insane length, horrible editing and messiness made it a lot less enjoyable than we were hoping. If I want to see interesting insanity from that period, I'll watch Lisztomania. Sorry for the derail, but I just thought it was really interesting in seeing something that could have worked fail so spectacularly. Back to Cats, I do wonder if it will develop the cult following like Zardoz and get reappraised with people admiring the ambition. I doubt it since it's a soulless adaptation of an existing property rather than one man's insane overlong acid trip that feels so of its time.
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Mar 1, 2021 22:06
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 05:34 |
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Simone Magus posted:As is Zardoz I know I started the original Zardoz derail, but it's a regressive, silly mess that is overlong and boring for long stretches and the only thing it has going for it is its sheer insane ambition and ineptitude and datedness which are wonderful but really can't save the whole. Speed Racer is a goddamn masterpiece. I saw it at the Cinesphere in Toronto and it was a joy from start to finish.
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Mar 25, 2021 00:18
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