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Ipickthiswhiterose

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  1. Not mentioning that the 1st and 3rd highest grossing movies in history are a pair of films that barely-hide both heavy environmentalism and vicious critiques of both colonisation - especially the colonisation of the Americas - and corporatism.
  2. Would "It's just like Alice Through the Looking Glass" be better for you? You clearly want a song and dance. Did you give Alice Through the Looking Glass a song and dance? Presumably not really because contextually it wasn't really surprising and had been expected for a while. Just as this contextually isn't really surprising and has been expected for a while.
  3. I wasn't watching movies regularly at the time and missed the early DCEU days, but when I eventually watched Man of Steel in about 2018 I was surprised to learn how it had been perceived. It's hard to do a Superman movie due to the inherent challenge of generating stakes and an engaging characterisation for a cultural icon - just as Disney rarely puts Mickey Mouse in high profile narrative stories; and I don't love Superman anyway, nor Snyder. But it struck me as being a pretty good effort and maybe the second best Superman film. And also I'd just second that this weekend doesn't seem the same as The Flash because what was unique to the Flash was the MASSIVE hard sell that was being given to the movie by industry figures who were unironically trying to hit a "One of the Greatest Superhero Movies" narrative. Whereas this was poorly treated by Disney from the off, is trying to be a bit of fun nothing more, and has been expected to perform poorly for ages - more comparable to Shazam 2 than the Flash.
  4. I think the first 2 episodes definitely do yes, and are really good. Then it gets lost IMO in the trip to Pakistan shmozz. Hopefully the Marvels does and looking forward to seeing it later today. But even if it does that there's still the embraced by other audiences, hitting a zeitgeist and being very well received elements to go - which it seems not to - to get itself to the success territory that Spider-Man can get just by showing up. And while female production might help drive something towards female gaze, or at least perspective, it's far from guaranteed depending on what's going on a studio level. Black Widow and She Hulk had a lot of those elements, but they were both fighting against them a lot of the way.
  5. I think one thing that's interesting is that *conceptually* Ms Marvel should be no more a "kids" thing than Spider-Man. They are the same age and have many adolescent qualities and both have *potential* to be both relatable on the positive front and annoying on the negative. Heck, if anything, Peter Parker can take the greater lean towards the whiny. I think that's where cultural history and gender dynamics of the past cast waves into the future. Ms Marvel can't trade on nostalgia, history, pop culture iconography, common knowledge, historically successful former iterations and general visibility. VERY few female characters can, because most figures that have had the time to develop that status are male (...Most not all before anyone jumps in on that). We've seen that in Black Panther that kind of dynamic can be overcome if a HUGE proportion of the previously underrepresented demographic come on board AND the film is a big hit with other audiences AND was previously introduced amid an already established popular event AND you hit the cultural zeitgeist at exactly the right time. But female audiences have never indicated they would act like that over this kind of film - they're more likely to act that way over a Barbie, Mean Girls, Twilight, Titanic or Mamma Mia that operate from a fundamentally female gaze, which is hardly surprising. But they 've never had the guts to go genuinely female gaze with any of these movies - even the one with actual female leads - an notably the closest they've come is WandaVision that was ACTUALLY successful.
  6. People clearly watched Exorcist Dominion, thought that it was impossible to make a worse horror movie. Then watched FNAF and realised it could, actually, get worse. Resulting in Exorcist not plummeting quite as one might have expected. FNAF has clearly made its money and been a big success but surely they must look at the numbers and realise it could have been so much more if they'd made, y'know, an actually good film that appealed beyond the already captured. Taylor Swift with a fantastic hold. Anecdotally - yes, after watching those two garbage movies with my buddy twice in consecutive weeks and saying to each other "should have just gone to watch Taylor Swift" both times we ended up actually doing so both weeks. It has become a genuine option among non fans in the desert we're currently in. Especially after the Halloween options turned out so bad. Surprised but not disappointed by the shallow KOTFM hold. Think people are just waiting to be in the mood for this, giving it some staying power.
  7. Five Nights At Freddy's performance is fantastic and great news for theaters. Admittedly from my perspective I don't know that it could have possibly happen to a less deserving film (maybe Minions, Burton's Alice and the Lion King remake, but those ones' undeserved successes were even more slam dunks than this). Its sheer tedium is perhaps what surprises me most. I thought 'fun' would be the bare minimum. But nope, enough folks are eating it up that there's a megahit going. And bad films doing very well is better than no films doing very well. Speaking of horrendous horror films, Exorcist seems to have comfortably justified its budget, even if it has far from justified the money for the rights. Very surprised by this one's relatively decent performance. Names are still bigger than quality, it seems. Taylor Swift still crushing it. It wish I'd contributed instead of wasting my time on the above two films.
  8. But that even more emphasises that the movie should have been an ensemble film and that the two star leads have unjustifiably dominated the film. I don't know if it was a production demand, actor demand, or genuinely Marty's vision. But the choice to make the 2 star leads so dominant in the movie strongly undermines the rationale of the rest of the film. Wolf of Wall Street completely justifies being a one man tour de force led by one guy. This is fundamentally undermined by it. It's not about the DeNiro or DiCaprio performances themselves, they are both very good, it's about this story and this production seemingly being suited to a wide scale ensemble movie, and instead being shoehorned into a star vehicle regardless of the impact.
  9. If I'm not too late: 1. Barry Lyndon 2. Lawrence of Arabia 3. Ran 4. Candyman 5. Double Idemnity 6. Parasite 7. Sunset Boulevard 8. La Strada 9. The Passenger (Antonioni) 10. Sweet Smell of Success 11. Don’t Look Now 12. A Town Without Pity 13. Bicycle Thieves 14. Five Easy Pieces 15. Chinatown 16. The Man Who Wasn’t There 17. In the Bedroom 18. Damage 19. The Pledge 20. Election 21. Unfaithful 22. Throne of Blood 23. Miller’s Crossing 24. The Fly 25. Uncut Gems 26. A History of Violence 27. The Northman 28. Alfie (Caine version) 29. A Place in the Sun 30. Network
  10. Think there are two factors here: Some of the super frontloaded instances (Friday 13th remake being the most obvious, the Halloween trilogy being another) are of long standing franchises with an audience that either fully KNOWS that they are fans or that KNOWS that they have no interest in seeing the film. Another I think are legacies of the 'The Devil Inside' era of production companies perfecting the horror movie trailer at the expense of the actual horror movie. I think there were a few instances, of which that was the most obvious, where supercool trailers combined with copout 'lol, we got you in the theatre and made our money - what you gonna do about it' narratives and endings really stung audiences for a while with horror films, especially anything that seemed found-footage or possession aligned. I think both of those dynamics have largely dried up and/or have reached their end and that's why we've seen a relative end to the frontloading.
  11. Not sure what's supposedly baffling about Haunting In Venice existing. First one was successful. Second had everything against it and still churned out 140m and apparently good post-cinema life and the nature of whodunits and adaptations is that they will ALWAYS have a long shelf life and be thrown on TV station programming in the afternoon decades later. And it was being made for a lowered price tag. Murder mysteries are good to have in the portfolio and they tend to come with a pretty solid floor, especially in the long term. As evidenced by, despite the doomposting, it having an opening weekend better than the far more ostentations DOTN. Oh and also....it's really good. Plus loads of people would love that film just for the Venicecore of it.
  12. Just because nobody else has answered I'll give my perspective... I think Clockwork Orange is the easiest of these to answer. It's Dystopian Fiction which IMO is its own genre and tends to end unhappily by its nature. Since the Dystopia itself is the backdrop, the film is about a society, systems and ideas more than the protagonist, even if we follow their journey. If Clockwork Orange is a tragedy then Brazil, Twelve Monkeys, Moon, Dark City and, of course, 1984 are all tragedies. Brokeback and CMBYN is where I think there's just a grey area between 'tragedy' and 'sad film'. For me, both films are just too winding and involve too many complex, layered choices that are made for a variety of reasons by an array of characters rather than a single flaw or element to count as tragedy. But equally I understand that people who have a looser definition would include them.
  13. So Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Medea, Oedipus, Electra, etc that follow this format are all not tragedies? Or all of the examples the OP gave (other than West Side Story which I'll get back to later) that also follow that format? How can one watch Uncut Gems and not perceive that as someone making the flaw over and over again and it being a version of comeuppance despite how invested we become? Parasite shows exactly the notion of starting with one mistake (lie) and then doubling and doubling down on it. Having the flaw and it manifest multiple times is probably what I mean. But yes, tragedy IS comeuppance - and relatively deserved comeuppance (at least *dramatically* deserved comeuppance even if not literal) at that. Villains don't have single fatal flaws, they have several and in many cases are knowingly villainous (which removes the possibility of tragedy altogether) and are generally too omniscient to be tragic. And anyway in some cases stories that centre the villain are indeed tragedies - hence Macbeth who is more villainous than he is heroic but that doesn't make the story any less of a tragedy. Categorisation convos are a cul de sac, of course they are, but I do find them enjoyable.
  14. IMO Literally the entire point of Hereditary is that it's fatalistic. There's nothing that any of them could have done and retrospectively Paimon has a presence in the whole film. It's them versus a higher power they can't control and they had no chance of understanding (unlike Rosemary's Baby where its them versus a - for the duration - theoretically defeatable cult until the cult achieve their goals). Hence the topic of the son's lesson in the film relating to "what if it turned out they never had a chance?". And the séance is far too late in the film IMO to represent an instigating tragic action. By your own definition of the other films, they are at best issues with modern society, not the tragic figures themselves (well, that's true of DMTH anyway, not sure how that links to the drinking before surgery in KOASD). Neither of the downfalls are shaped by or related to their failings (which aren't even failings in the case of DMTH, just literally doing her job). They are just cruel and unusual punishments for single incidents, one of which isn't even a flaw. Downfall films, yes, not tragedies. In Candyman and Don't Look Now, the protagonists are engaged with and doubling down on their fatal traits the entire film. Constantly trying to resolve things while making them worse and going further and further to secure their own fates. Their fates aren't even sealed until very late on in the film and the result of phase upon phase of action. Same with the other examples given. Conversely. in DMTH she has her fate sealed in the first 10 minutes, and Hereditary and KOASD had their fate sealed before the film started.
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