What movies are you watching?

[Farmer John]

I figured if I was ever going to watch the new Avatar, I should see it on the big screen in 3D, or else what’s the point? So that’s exactly what I did. And you know what? I’m glad I did. I enjoyed it.

The same things I would have said about the first movie once again apply here. A wonderfully immersive experience that, at least temporarily, makes me a believer in 3D. A story that is serviceable enough, but hard to care too much about. (Although it did manage to pack a bit of an emotional punch at the end)

It truly is impressive how far the technology and special effects have come, even since the first Avatar. I just wish James Cameron was putting this much effort into something I cared a little more about.


The weirdest part of the whole thing was Jemaine Clement showing up and speaking in a high-pitched American accent.

[Anders]

Enemy

First time, might not finish it today.

[Anders]

This was intriguing, but also very strange.

[tree_]

whats with the spider

[Anders]

It’s when he realizes that his wife is now in control, just like his mother used to be.

[JuanHamm]

Isn't it alluded to earlier in the movie that it takes place in a reality where giant spiders exist?

[lennytheweedwhacker]

I thought it’s a sequel to Arachnophobia?

[Farmer John]

The spider is Pennywise.

[Anders]

Spoiler for Enemy

Spoiler: show

First off, "Adam" and Anthony are the same person.

Anthony is a college professor who used to be an actor.

He creates "Adam" as a character, one with the opposite personality of his own.

When Anthony's mother mentions that he has a respectable job, she is talking about him being a professor. She mentions blueberries, which Anthony likes but the character "Adam" doesn't.

She also mocks Anthony's acting career. This is the key to understanding the movie.

Let me repeat that: Anthony's mother mocking his acting career is the key to understanding the movie.

"Adam" talks about control at the beginning, to his class. How information is withheld, etc. Then he is shown with his girlfriend, who withholds information from him.

"Adam" is in a relationship with a controlling woman, which echoes Anthony's relationship with his controlling mother.

Anthony has created an entirely new personality to go with his job as a professor. He has done this because his lifelong dream - mocked by his mother - is to be an actor. His mother convinced him to become a professor, which he resents her for.

His wife is shocked when she sees "Adam Bell" on the website, because this is when she discovers that he has the job under a pseudonym.

Likewise, when she goes there and looks shocked when she sees "Adam," she is shocked not because this person looks exactly like her husband, but because her husband is acting like he doesn't recognize her.

This review is correct about the car crash, in my opinion: the entire thing was imagined by "Adam" in order to kill off his real personality, Anthony.

At the end, "Adam" is going home, not to Anthony's apartment. But he's acting like "Adam," and when Anthony's wife - who is, in reality, his wife - mentions school, and initiates sex with him on the couch, she has figured out that her husband Anthony has been teaching as "Adam" in some strange split personality/subconscious fulfillment of his dream to be an actor.

She has taken control of the relationship at this point, and "Adam"/Anthony realizes that.

That's why she appears as a spider.

Explaining this requires no mythology: female spiders kill and devour male spiders after mating.

All of the spider imagery in the film represents Anthony's controlling mother. The spider being squashed by the woman in the scene at the beginning represents Anthony trying to escape his mother's control.

Which he temporarily does, until his wife finds out... and turns into a spider.

And

Spoiler: show

Enemy appears to say that even though Adam has done away with Anthony — and Mary, an innocent bystander who represents some sort of purely sexual relationship, in the process — he still has a ways to go before he can reconcile these two facets of womanhood. And note the names: Mary, the mother of Christ; and Helen, the catalyst for the Trojan War.

Adam’s name is noteworthy; you might remember that, in the Book of Genesis, Adam, the first man, was created in the likeness of God. God then took a rib from Adam and using it made Eve. Adam and Anthony’s scars are on their rib cage.

[JuanHamm]

Brother, sometimes a giant spider is just a giant spider

[Anders]

Sure, but this wasn’t that kind of movie. It had a lot of dream sequences.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[epilogue]

I read the Saramago book (which I goddamn LOVED) on which Enemy is "based," but haven't seen the movie yet.

[Simple Torture]

I assume this thread has been over Tar already, but, boy, did my jaw hit the floor at the ending.

[tree_]

I don't think i'm going to watch it. I'm over great movies. I'm all in on AI seinfeld now.

[Anders]

August: Osage County

Meryl Streep is great in the start of this movie so far. Never seen it before.

[Anders]

Think she should have gotten the Best Actress Oscar that year. Stellar performance. Good movie.

[Jorge]

M3gan is really one of the worst, most boring movies I have seen in a while. Every now and then it would give me glimpses of another, better, more fun and interesting movie that it could have been, but then it quickly reverts back to blandness. Looks and feels like a TV movie. Bad and not worth watching

[Farmer John]

Babylon was absurd. I loved it.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Babylon was absurd. I loved it.

Yes. It was absurd.