#film rants

[carrot-gallery]

i NEED to rant about how badly andrew haigh whiffed the ending of All Of Us Strangers

spoilers ahead

WHAT THE LIVING CHRIST

Okay so not only is Harry dead, but he’s been dead the entire time since right after their first meeting and the whole relationship, the one that supposedly HELPED ADAM MOVE ON and ACCEPT LOVE rather than self-isolating forever was a fucking fever dream???

This movie really had something to say about how new love can make you finally feel the grief of old losses and make you vulnerable and it almost said it SO WELL and allowed Adam to find catharsis and grow and fucking join society

BUT THEN they were like haha sike!! It was ghosts all the way down!! Fucking ghost party motherfuckers!! Nobody was ever alive after minute 10 of the movie except for the increasingly unwell main character!

And the fucking nonsensical ending acts like this is some happy moment of catharsis and unknotting Adam’s trauma— NOT IF ALL THAT SHIT WAS FUCKIGN FAKE IT’S NOT!

You’re telling me a terminally lonely person has a chance encounter with a cute guy who talks about his own loneliness and jokes about suicide and is drinking and asking for company. Okay, not inviting him into your apartment is totally reasonable. But to later find out he KILLED HIMSELF THAT NIGHT????? And ROTTED ALONE THERE FOR WEEKS???? Immediately after you closed your door in his face???? No sane person on Earth wouldn’t be fuckign devastated by that. You would blame yourself. You would be horrified. You would beat yourself up for not at least offering to call someone or having a conversation with him or SOMETHING.

Now is Harry’s death actually Adam’s fault? No, Harry clearly had his own mental health issues. But to go cuddle with his GHOST instead of CALLING THE POLICE????? After you DISCOVER HIS BODY and significantly disturb an ACTIVE CRIME SCENE where he DIED????? That tells me that Adam is deeply, deeply unwell and needs to go to the hospital. This is no longer about his personal journey, he is someone who is NOT OKAY and not in touch with reality.

All the stuff with his parents could have been so beautiful and poignant and moving if at the end Adam had returned to the real world and worked on overcoming his loner tendencies and becoming a part of society. Even if he & Harry hadn’t ended up working out!!! The impact of the relationship would still have had an impact & taught him something & helped him grow. (You know how the characters in Weekend (2011) did, remember that one Andrew?? That movie that YOU ALSO FUCKIGN DIRECTED???)

But to reveal that Adam was never actually having this relationship at all?????? The relationship that his dead mom’s last words were about???? That makes the entire movie pointless to me. Because he didn’t let love into his life & learn & grow & move on. He ends the movie back in a delusion, holding another ghost, asking another figment of his imagination to stay with him a little longer.

Combined with the fever / coughing imagery i GENUINELY wondered at one point whether it’d be revealed that he has like a brain parasite, or he’s actually in jail or a mental asylum imagining this entire thing, or maybe he’s been dead the whole time and is living in some purgatory or a fucked up version of heaven or something.

Andrew Haigh clearly wanted my takeaway from this movie to be “wow he finally let love into his heart” NO!!!!! My takeaway is that he needs to get professional help because he spent the entire runtime of the movie in a state of ACUTE psychosis.

I’ve heard the movie described as having “magical realism” NO!!! That only applies when some parts of the story are ACTUALLY CONCRETELY REAL for everything else to bounce off of! And for 90% of the movie they did this so so so so well and then in the final 10 minutes it’s like!!! Okay well I guess he didn’t go to the nightclub and try ketamine! I guess he didn’t have sex or watch shitty tv or open up to someone about his life! I guess he didn’t heal! For all we know he didn’t even take the train to his parents’ house! Maybe he never even left the apartment! Maybe he doesn’t even live in London!

SUCH a compelling premise with absolutely piss-poor execution. This rivals my disappointment in the final half hour of the Green Knight movie from a few years ago. Let’s just take this carefully constructed story and throw it in the absolute trash so it completely loses the message it was created to tell in the first goddamn place. And for what!!!! For a twist ending???? To be edgy?????? I’m gonna physically fight Andrew Haigh ESPECIALLY because Weekend (2011) was SO GOOD and actually delivered the message its story was intending to tell so I KNOW he can do better I KNOW that fucker can do it right but instead he chose to write Yurtle the Turtle but with Ghosts. The movie didn’t even get any big awards nominations so WHAT was the point TELL ME what the fucking point was of having Harry be dead the whole time. Give me an explanation aside from “ooh spooky” I swear to god *flips table*

#rant #all of us strangers #andrew haigh #andrew scott #film rants #sometimes i wish i could get my film major ex back for like 2 hours so we could swap opinions about movies like this

[leandrocrossard]

something really cool happened today that i wanted to share:

my nephew is 9 years old, and a stereotypical little boy. he likes dinosaurs, minecraft, and ninjas.

today i walked in on him excitedly watching Nimona with my dad. (minor spoiler warning!)

i had never heard of it, but i sat down and watched some of it, just to see why he was so happy.

he started narrating it, anticipating parts of it, almost as if he’d seen it before. he had.

we didn’t get to finish it, but i watched it on my own, because it looked fun and i wanted to see how it ended.

and i loved it. it was a fun, exciting, fantastical adventure about the importance of acceptance people who are different to us.

and it had a very clear queer subplot.

one that my nephew hadn’t mentioned at all in his explanation of the film. his summary was “it’s about a monster who helps a knight that was framed for killing the queen”.

and honestly yeah, that is what the film was about.

before sharing it with us, he had watched it all, engrossed himself in the story, took it in entirely, and the part he cared about most was whether Nimona got her acceptance. he wasn’t indoctrinated, or confused, or questioning anything about himself.

he didn’t bat an eyelid over a gay love confession. he just enjoyed the film, raved about it, made my 60 year old dad watch the movie about the monster who didn’t fit in.

he’s still the same little boy who’s been asking us how to get a girlfriend.

the only thing a movie centred around queer and queer-coded characters taught my nephew was that those who are different to him are not monsters. that’s it.

and that dragons are really cool.

#serena talks #sorry for the rant it just made me really happy #it’s been a long time since i saw the world through a childs eyes and it was great #nimona #nimona spoilers #i’m (mostly) straight and cis but i can’t imagine how beautiful this film is from queer and specifically trans perspective

[doesnotloveyou]

i'm actually very okay with "there was no other way this could end" endings. if they gotta die, let them die. if they gotta break up or go the wrong way or lose something important, let'em. so long as it completes the story. only thing i dislike more than a forced happy ending is a forced bad ending

#writing #storytelling #film #dnly rants #og #goncharov #gonchposting #writing tips #vaguing marvel on main #history

[ophelialoveshandsomemen]

Say what you will about Van Helsing 2004; hate it, love it, be indifferent, But the All-Hallow's masquerade ball went sooooo hard and it had zero right to do so! It's a fun, campy, monster mash movie with wonderfully dated ( and expensive) cgi and non-stop action meant to be a popcorn flick one takes out to watch around spooky season. And it has this* chef's kiss* GORGEOUS 6 minute sequence plopped arbitrarily in the second act, which unexpectedly surpasses nearly every other ball in the last 30+ years of film( notable exception being the Cinderella 2015 ball) for literally no reason other than to be dramatic af.

Like feast your eyes on this Gothic masterpiece!!! Who doesn't want to immediately live in this picture?!??

They used those candles with oil in them so that they would have real candles, real string orchestra( I believe), probably around 100 real life extras( something which is tragically absent in modern film), said extras are all in beautiful fully decked-out costumes( which are in luxuriously dark colours, but nearly no fully black, another thing you cannot say for much modern cinema), REAL CIRQUE DU SOLEIL PERFORMERS for all the acrobatics!!!! Hell, instead of filming in a sound stage, where they could control the reverb and the acoustics and the size of the set and the bloody lighting ( they apparently had a heck of a time emulating the firelight for this sequence) and the temperature( it's very cold in stone churches!) better, they filmed in a Baroque church in Prague! As I said, peak dramatic splendour, jfc...

Think about that a second...They filmed a vampire masquerade in a Baroque Catholic Church( St. Nicholas' in Lesser Town, if you were curious) with amazing over-the-top acoustics and marble statues and real, tiled floors and marble pillars and a choir loft which they very much utilized, covered the pipe organ and the altar with a grand brocade curtain so it wouldn't be so obviously a, you know, a church! And there's a gold gilt elevated and canopied pulpit into which they put two vampire kiddies for, again, the sake of being dramatic.

And the costumes! They remind me of the 25th anniversary Phantom of the Opera Masquerade costumes. Same quality, like they're old, well-cared-for costumes pulled out of a warehouse, instead of fast industry churn-outs. With lots of trim and colour and masks and lace and feathers and..just...ugh.. they are all perfect! Just look at all the head pieces on the ladies and the hats on all the gentleman ( save Dracula of course) and the powdered wigs on the musicians. ANNNNDD! The dresses are historically correct!!!!!! It's the 80's bustle era! Nobody does the 80's bustle era in film anymore and it's a bummer. Oh and one other thing! Anna's ( and other women's) hair, at least here in the ball, is also historically accurate because it's all pinned up! None of those fucken modern beachwaves at a ball! Everybody's got updo's!

Gah, I swear, Dracula in his gold cloak really does things to me in this scene!

By the way, the acrobatics are bonkers in here for just background stuff!! Especially the random guys on unicycles and the dude playing the violin whilst standing on a ball...Like....WHAT?

Anyways, all this to say, that this masquerade ball feels sooo real and tangible and because of that it blows every other film out of the water, and no, I will not change my mind!!!!!

Here's a few more gifs, bcuz, why the hell not, this scene is sexy as fuu*ck?

Alright I need to go to bed now.

#van helsing #van helsing 2004 #dracula #count dracula #cinderella 2015 #I'm on a film rant #masquerade ball #vampire #vampire masquerade ball #practical effects #costumes #gorgeous gorgeous set #baroque church #count vladislaus dracula #cirque du soleil #WHY IS THIS SOOO GOOD???????? #princess anna valerious #kate beckinsale #richard roxburgh #phantom of the opera 25th #very phantom of the opera-esque

[ghost-in-the-corner]

I want to appreciate the outfit Barbie is wearing at the end of the movie, when Barbieland is taken back from the Kens and she walks with Ruth.

It's a simple yellow dress. Flowy, floral, nothing special. Her hair was laying almost flat, and she had a gold locket on. Not something you'd normally see on a Barbie.

It was such a human look. Not glamorous or glittery, no pink. Just an easy, everyday dress an average woman would wear to look flattering. It's so meaningful that when Barbieland is fixed, the Barbie we've been following for the past hour and a half just looks like a regular woman.

#god i wish i had a picture of it #i have another rant incoming so be warned #barbie #barbie spoilers #barbie movie #barbie movie spoilers #barbie 2023 #margot robbie #ken #barbie ken #ryan gosling #film #filmmaking #greta gerwig #barbenheimer #michael cera #will ferrell #america ferrera #simu liu #kate mackinnon #costumes #costuming #corner conversations

[thezangoosler]

viewing the fnaf movie as just a movie doesn't work. you're sabotaging yourself and taking away all the enjoyment from it if you don't think of it as the fnaf movie. if i look at it as just a movie, then yeah, i totally get what the critics are saying. it's so far from the lore of the original games (but since when has that not been a problem in the franchise lmao), the killer doesn't really have a clear motivation, and the ending does kind of come out of nowhere. but if i think of it as the fnaf movie i can actually love it. yes, it's far from the original lore. that's just how fnaf goes. yes, it is a glorified two hour lore dump. but could we want anything more from fnaf? it's literally infamous for the lore. sure, springtrap does kind of come out of nowhere. but the joy and whimsy experienced when he does show up is fucking amazing, actually. i don't care if it's a bad movie. it's the best viewing experience i've had in 2023.

#does this even make sense #lmao #its kind of a rant #but pretty much everything i post is kinda a rant #fnaf #fnaf movie #fnaf movie spoilers #???? #five nights at freddy's #william afton #springtrap #i don't give a shit whether or not it's an objectively bad film #i loved it #this movie wasn't made for critics anyway #it was made for fans and people who grew up with it

[archibaldtuttle]

"Fuck CGI all my homies hate CGI here we love practical effects" ok ok ok alright I know I KNOW that I'm being pedantic and nitpicky (which is why I'm making my own post and not adding this to one of those I've seen floating around) but you don't hate CGI you just hate capitalism

CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is a very broad term, but in the context of films it is an 60 year old technique used in a variety of contexts for a variety of reasons. It is not only excessive green screens and bad mocap.

CGI is actually a central part of why practical effects look so much better now than they did in the 60s - I can guarantee that you have not seen one practical effect without the addition of CGI in a film after the 90s and maybe even earlier (excepting micro budget films, and even then). Every squib of fake blood that pops on under the actor's costume is cleaned up in post. And to be clear - this is a good thing! It looks better when it's well done!

What you hate is the overreliance on underpaid, overworked contract workers who are ground into the dirt by big studios with crunch times and wildly unreasonable expectations, that results in catastrophic looking messes. Yes, I also subscribe to "a bad practical effect is better than a bad CGI effect because at least it's there", but there are hundreds of people being exploited for their labor who are honest to god artists and dismissing their entire field is missing the point. A backlash against CGI as a concept could lead to a devaluation of the artists' work - less support from the public isn't exactly what they need. That's exactly what happened after Cats, when two of the actors dared mock the effects on stage during the Academy Awards while the companies which had been crushed by the film were going bankrupt - through no fault of their own.

Pitting those two disciplines against each other isn't only useless it's also just plain wrong - they have been working hand in hand for over 60 years. Know how to recognize the qualities and flaws of both and defend workers in all fields.

#cinema #film rant #cgi #practical effects #film talk

[catgirl-kaiju]

Honestly, I think any director who hurts their actors physically or psychologically because they don't trust them to, y'know, ACT is a hack. No movie is worth hurting someone or allowing someone to be hurt. Like, I like The Shining a lot. It's very creepy and tense, and Wendy Carlos' score is great. But, frankly, I think the film would have been much better if Stanley Kubrick hadn't decided to psychologically torture Shelly Duvall and just trusted her to do the thing he hired her to do.

As it is, Duvall's performance is noticeably stiff because of how terrified she is on set and that's on Kubrick. Not to mention, even if a version of the film made without hurting Shelly Duvall was legitimately worse, a director's vision is no excuse to be cruel. Part of a director's job is working with and directing the actors. You need to be able to work with people, and when you would rather hurt your actors than talk to them you are revealing a deep incompetence in how to do your job.

#rant #film #ethics #movies #the shining #stanley kubrick #acting #director #late night scout

[oogles]

I feel like people don’t have the same genre expectations for horror as they do other genres. “Oh I didn’t like that horror movie because it was too horrific” imagine saying this about any other genre. Like, “I didn’t like that romance movie because there was too much romance” its the GENRE. You’re allowed to not like the genre as a whole, but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to say a movie is bad because it contains the elements of the genre that you don’t like.

Gothic horror by nature contains a lot of themes of abuse, incest, and toxic relationships in general, and its ok to not like those elements. But you can’t demand that gothic horror doesn’t contain any of the elements that define it as a genre. Its like saying you want a cocktail but don’t want to taste any alcohol.

#horror #horror movies #rant #genre films #gothic horror #thinking mostly about crimson peak

[edensbuttercups]

Your honour, they're in love ✨ Appearing once every few decades to post art I'm proud of (happy 2024 I guess, let's see what it has in store)

Insta post: here!

#I loved this film so much #if anyone wants to rant about it to me please hit me up #I love these nerds #rwrb #rwrb movie #rwrb fanart #rwrb alex #rwrb henry #alex claremont diaz #henry hanover stuart fox #prince henry rwrb #red white and royal blue #fanart

[randobambo]

Hadn't watched Nimona until tonight. I had heard bits and pieces about it but was otherwise blind to the plot of the film. I honestly was not expecting the movie to go THAT hard with its themes, and the fact that it hits closer to home now than when it was released is quite haunting.

#honestly fuck Disney for trying to bury this film #they knew what they were doing and it came back to bite them in the ass #anyway 10/10 movie #nimona #rave #rant #text post #randobambo

[kaysteahouse]

Mcu Steve Rogers is so insanely queer it enrages me

"I'd figure I'd wait...for the right partner."

"Kinda hard to find someone with shared life experience."

"Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky."

Stf up and go kiss your best friend

#i rant about these films all the time to my friends #because mcu marvel cant handle blatant queer rep but puts out a story like Bucky and Steves.... #steve rogers #bucky barnes #stucky #steve rogers x bucky barnes #captain america #winter soldier #the winter soldier #james buchanan barnes #james bucky barnes #mcu #marvel #stevebucky

[marykatewiles]

Don’t Sleep on Headless

Hey everybody. Real talk time. If you want @shipwreckedcomedy to be able to keep making stuff, if you want to support female/POC indie creators, you need to watch Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story. We NEED you to watch and share it. 

Headless is it for us. We pulled out all the stops for this. This show cost us a quarter of a mil to make (thanks to you!). The four of us at Shipwrecked paid ourselves none of that. We’ve worked on this show for three years now. This is what we gambled on.

The response to the show thus far has been so positive, and we’re so happy! But even for the small channel that we are, and even with the INCREDIBLE cast who gave their time to be a part of this project, the views we’ve been getting on this show are fewer than we hoped. 

I remember a few weeks into The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Hank Green made a vlog talking about how the show wouldn’t be sustainable if it didn’t start getting more views. And it really helped! And that’s where we’re at. We can’t keep doing this if we don’t grow. 

Don’t get me wrong, we are going to continue to put out Headless until Halloween and make it the absolute best show we can. But if we can’t grow as a company, we can’t keep making shows like this. It just isn’t sustainable for us. 

We really thought this was gonna be the one to do it. We thought this was gonna be the thing to take us from small creators with less than 50K subscribers and a handful of views to a real, bona-fide channel with reach and influence that pulls the kind of viewership on our projects to match the amount of work we put into them. And I think it can be! It looks good enough to be on any streaming network. It makes me laugh every thirty seconds. But we are a small group and we NEED word of mouth for this show to succeed.

Shipwrecked is primarily female-run, making narrative content in a space where other (more successful) creators are predominantly male. I’m sorry to harp on this, but I can’t help but feel like we have to work so much harder to get the same amount (or a fraction) of attention. 

The episodes we have yet to come in this show are so wild, so wacky, so Intense, and so heartfelt. SO many people put their hearts and souls into this show. I believe it can catch fire and become one of the most successful digital series out there. But WE NEED YOU TO WATCH IT. 

The story we have playing out over the next few weeks is Shipwrecked at its most Shipwrecked. We have some surprises and reveals up our sleeves that I think you are really going to love. More than anything, we love unfolding a big story over a period of time and bringing people along for the ride. I’m so excited for you all to see what we have in store, and I promise you are going to want to do what you can to experience it in real time.  

It’s free. It’s fun. It’s spooky. It’s funny. If you want Shipwrecked to be able to continue to make shows like this - original content, inspired by literature, with a mysterious twist and fresh humor - help us make Headless a success. We need you to take us there - we can’t do it on our own. ♥️💀🎃

Subscribe to Shipwrecked Comedy - support female driven literary inspired cinematic narrative content!

#headless: a sleepy hollow story #headless series #my twitter rant #brought to tumblr #shipwrecked comedy #literary adaptation #webseries #independent film #digital series #sean persaud #sinead persaud #sarah grace hart #william j stribling #ginny di #krystina arielle #parvesh cheena #joanna sotomura #mary kate wiles #jon cozart #christopher higgins #joey richter #corey lubowich #brian rosenthal #john rubinsten #gabe greenspan #corey dorris #matt mercer #ryan garcia #lauren lopez #curt mega

[franki-lew-yo]

Finding Dory was going to have Dory leave on her own and Nemo and then Marlin were going to then go after her, WHICH MAKES MORE SENSE.

Marlin was going to meet the Tank Gang and Gill officially.

The Tank Gang were the over-the-top A-Team of fish and would have helped Marlin and Nemo get to California.

Monsters University was going to open with Mike and Sully meeting in first grade where it would have established they hated each other as kids.

Incredibles 2 was going to show Honey's face and reveal she was also a super.

Incredibles 2 was going to open with a memorial to the fallen supers.

I will never not be mad about these obvious but infinitely better choices for storytelling being axed from the final films while Toy Story 4 gets to exist. It's criminal (not really).

For all my issues with Dreamworks and their apparent recent slump in quality, I'll give em this, they have direction. Maybe you don't like that direction, but it still has something going on.

Pixar's sequels hurt because the studio straight up had a list of 'rules' of storytelling and it's decided to up and throw all that away with the rest of Disney's quality in the last few years. For shame.

#pixar #pixar films #finding nemo #finding dory #monsters inc #the incredibles #rant #disney critical #disney criticism

[anghraine]

Sometimes I think about looking for SW content and then the first thing I see is "Padmé isn't really Leia's mother because of Breha" which is just ?????? in terms of the Lucas films.

Like, Padmé did nothing that would lead Leia to reject her. Dying is not a renunciation of her motherhood. When Leia is asked by Luke (who invariably identifies their birth parents as his parents) about her "real mother," Leia doesn't correct him but simply responds with a description of Padmé that, contextually, could only come from impressions via the Force that she mistakes as vague memories. Luke does not share these impressions; there is a special tie between Leia and Padmé. There's nothing wrong or improbable about Leia having feelings about that.

Breha is also Leia's mother, but this does not require Leia to reject Padmé nor make it probable for her to do so. And the conversation about Padmé in ROTJ just does not suggest a rejection from Leia at all.

I suspect that Padmé is basically being packaged in with Anakin, whom Leia has very good reasons to reject. But Padmé is not Anakin. Leia does not have to relate to them in the same ways and it doesn't seem at all likely from ROTJ that she does.

#i don't think padmé and leia are super alike (nor that luke and padmé are) #but the idea that dying young in tragic circumstances erases padmé's motherhood is so weird #there is /nothing/ in the films to suggest this #and particularly not wrt leia #anghraine babbles #anghraine rants #sw fanwank #star wars #padmé amidala #leia organa

[thecsquirrel]

I am looking forward to the think-pieces that put They Cloned Tyrone into conversation with Sorry to Bother You and Atlanta regarding the use of satire, the surrel, magical realism/enchantment, and the absurb.

Additionally, there's a through line from the use of satire in TCT to the parodies of films like Undercover Brother and Black Dynamite that all hinge on the very real and horrific experimentation done on Black people in the US and the larger Diaspora.

All in all, it's just the right mix of humor, satire, and mind-fuckery.

#they cloned tyrone #john boyega #teyonah parris #jamie foxx #dir: juel taylor #satire with a side of xfiles #Undercover brother #black dynamite #I know someone has written a dissertation on the use of satire in Black film #rants and rambles