#Influential Films

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

truly we are in the midst of a Tennaisance

[pjharvey-moved]

most threads posts instagram recommends me are awful but this one is pretty good

[bixels]

Related to your watchthrough of Nadia, have you ever seen Evangelion?

No. (Yes.)

[firelise]

Film & TV I Think About A Lot » Eve's Bayou (1997) dir. Kasi Lemmons

"When I was your age, before I ever did the counseling, I could look at people, complete strangers, and see their whole lives so clear. But when I looked at each of my husbands, I never saw a thing. That's how it always is. Blind to my own life."

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

phantom of the paradise |1974|

[maddie-grove]

One of the annoying by-products of the corset discourse is that, in what I assume is an attempt to “own” a handful of costubers, people will go to bat for period pieces that absolutely don’t deserve it. They’re not all Anne with an E. A lot of corset scenes are, in fact, poorly written gestures at critiquing oppressive beauty standards without doing/saying anything that general audiences will find threatening or conducting any historical research beyond kind of remembering one scene in Gone with the Wind. These scenes are often condescending and lazy, and you don’t have to have any strong feelings about corsets to find them so.

[mariocki]

The Evil Dead (1981)

"Why have you disturbed our sleep, awakened us from our ancient slumber? You will die! Like the others before you, one by one, we will take you."

[fic-over-cannon]

I think part of what makes Jason Todd so compelling is that he’s the perfect horror monster.

He’s Freud’s unheimlich, the return of the repressed. He is Bruce’s failures come back to haunt him. He’s Jason Todd, son of Bruce Wayne. He’s a ghost and the body is the house. He’s his own haunting. There’s a dead boy somewhere in the mix, and the body of the man who he was supposed to become. He is grief and loss and injustice long buried come clawing back from the grave but that horrifies the world he wakes up in. Batman suspected Robin of murder before he died. Red Hood is that suspicion brought to life and doubled down on.

Barbara Creed wrote that the horror movie spectator identifies with both the victim and the monster. Jason is both. He’s a kid murder victim who had a difficult start in life. He’s the man that put six heads in a duffel bag and tried to kill his little brother. Jason’s tragedy is that being a victim made him a monster. He’s Jason Todd, the uncanny son of Bruce Wayne who is both victim and monster.

[jingyismom]

what if I have a kurt russel movie marathon weekend. what if

[questor-thews]

it's crazy that when the cabinet of doctor caligari came out everyone immediately started stealing from its aesthetic and we've just. never stopped doing that

[sleepynegress]

Attention oldheads, horror-lovers, werewolf-lovers, wholesome 80's classic coming-of-age film lovers, murder mystery lovers, and those who used to love Stranger Things (until the Zionist) and want to check all the influences... Silver Bullet, one of my favorite criminally underseen 80's kid movies is free on YouTube!

#ThisIsARec

[stuckasmain]

Early exposure

I mentioned it in my very first posts on 2001 that it’s almost a shame the movie was as influential as it was. Pivotal moments have been spoofed, referenced or parodied into absolute oblivion to the point it’s sort of hard to appreciate the moments in the actual movie. Like the literal title card.

However, at the same time haha joke funny. Anyway here’s the two references I remember the most (not counting parody Hal characters because we’d be here for a million years)

This episode is burned into my fucking memory. It was insane out of context and now in context it’s ridiculously funny because they even have the proper music and the star gate sequence - well wormhole but I digress 

[steaksex]

my homework is watching a boring movie that i dont care about. grueling and evil i need one hundred treats i need five hundred transgenders sucking my penis as a reward for watching a movie for my film class about movies

[metanarrates]

have you ever played the stanley parable? if yes what do you think about it?

i actually played tsp for a college class in video game narrative analysis a few years back! specifically, tsp was part of curriculum so we could discuss choice mechanics, and the illusion of choice in games. given tsp's somewhat unusual approach to choices and endings, it was a great pick for the purpose of class discussions.

i do like the game a lot. i consider it to be an interesting take on choices in games, and it's definitely got the potential to be influential for how future games approach choice. (slay the princess is clearly inspired by it for example lol.) however, given that it's a game devoted to pushing a single concept - what are the limits of choices and endings in video games? - to its limit, it ends up feeling a little sparse as a game. even if it is genuinely clever and funny, it also doesn't offer way too much outside of that. it feels like a semi-joking, semi-serious thesis statement rather than a full game experience to me.

is it a good game? yes. i think something like tsp is necessary for the medium to continue evolving. but it's hard for me to be interested in it on its own merits. it's been three years since I played it and the only thing about it that sticks with me is the possible games in future that could further riff on its concepts

[broke-on-books]

So I just watched Oppenheimer (with my best friend, she's really into physics and wanted to see it with me) and these are my thoughts [with spoilers]

This was a movie that was simultaneously horror-inducing and not horrifying enough in my mind. I cried at about three points during the movie (with the majority of that being for around 10 to 15 minutes straight during the Trinity sequence) for a couple of reasons.

I'm not going to make this a long post so I'll break it down into two short paragraphs of what I liked and disliked about the movie

Like: I actually enjoyed this movie much more than I thought I would? I didn't have super duper high hopes going into it because Oppenheimer isn't really the kind of movie I'd typically watch or enjoy from what I'd seen of the promo beforehand (I was honestly worried I'd bored) but I'd say that mainly wasn't the case. I'd say that the Trinity test sequence was utterly chilling and really technically done so well, I loved that they showed the light so intensely and had it go almost silent for a good few minutes (honestly between 3-5) before shocking the audience with the noise of the blast. I also think the monstrosity of everyone involved was done in a very realistic and human (and therefore terrifying) way. Like the scenes where the people on base at Los Alamos were cheering and celebrating and lifting Oppenheimer up before the American flag after the test were just so deeply chilling and just disturbing to me. I think I whispered 'you motherfucker' under my breath at least 30 times to 10 different characters while watching this movie

Dislike: My main dislike here is really that I couldn't tell how much of the racism present in this movie was actually intentional on the part of Nolan and the writing team. Like I think with many things the answer is likely somewhere in between the two extremes, but this movie is one that for me is really difficult to pin down where I think it stands on that issue. I really wish I was still in my film study class because I'd honestly like to know what my peers and teacher would think about it. Because I feel like the shying away from actually showing the affects of the bomb (not a SINGLE Japanese person is ever heard or seen in this movie) and tests (Native Americans are mentioned twice but their reactions to the Manhattan Project or the repercussions of the tests on the natives and other nearby communities are never/barely addressed) is an effective and powerful way to show the reality of the racism of Oppenheimer and his contemporaries but the way it is presented in the movie makes it almost impossible to distinguish where the line lays behind Oppenheimer's bigotry in text and where the biases of Nolan and Hollywood come into play. And even IF Nolan's exclusion of Japanese, Native, Hispanic, and other perspectives was entirely intentional (to showcase Oppenheimer's biases and story in his own eyes) it STILL raises the question of what stories Hollywood finds worth telling. Like the story of this kind of human monstrosity in the face of curiosity is one that I believe has worth to tell, but is it worth telling at the exclusion of other perspectives of this event and the sheer human suffering it caused? And what does it say about our culture that this is the perspective of the event Hollywood decided to put millions of dollars and thousands of hours behind? These are just some of the questions this movie makes me want to ask.

The previous paragraph was supposed to be about all my dislikes of the movie and instead just covered the majority of what I have to say over the main one, which for me was my central conflict as I watched this movie. However some other more minor gripes are as follows:

1) I didn't like they had like 30 to 45 minutes worth of the senate confirmation/security clearance trial stuff after the Trinity test sequence. I found this part of the movie unpleasant to sit through as I couldn't really find it in myself to care or have any sort of empathy or compassion for Oppenheimer after watching him build test and hand over bombs that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Like I was not remotely interested in his problems after that to be real with you all.

2) didn't appreciate the Florence Pugh sex scenes to be honest. Like I guess I get that they were a part of the story and Oppenheimer's relationship with her character and their affair is important to his story but to be honest. I was 100% perfectly content NOT having to see her boobs and 3 times was definitely a little much for me

3) why were the parts with Robert Downey Jr in black and white they literally happened after the colored parts. Also I just really didn't like these parts of the movie to be honest. They weren't the parts I was there for and to be honest I didn't care too much about what happened to him

4) this isn't fully a dislike but I have complicated thoughts on the prometheus analogy in that I both like it and think it doesn't work for oppenheimer especially in the way they tried to apply it. Idk I won't get into it because I'd like this post to end sooner rather than later and my thoughts aren't the most organized on this matter

5) I was pissed when they did the cut to the scientists and the scientific community as those who would never forgive oppenheimer with the scene with Einstein by the lake. Like THAT'S what he told him? Screw the scientists what about the world!!!!!!! What about humankind!!!!! This was the last scene of the movie and they made up for it the teensiest bit with the "I think I already have [started a chain reaction that will end the world]" but if ANY TIME is when to talk about the world and the future and repercussions on humanity and oppenheimer's legacy to HUMANITY. it was that scene. Literally smh here

Anyways those were some of my thoughts, I'd thought I'd put them out there because I have a lot of lingering things I'd like to discuss and say after seeing this movie, many of which I didn't see talked about on this site after a quick cursory search. Feel free to reply/comment/add your own opinions etc.

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

city lights |1931|