Red Mosquito

epilogue wrote:Well, like I said before I think if you take DDL's performance (and to a lesser degree Dano's) out of the movie the whole thing falls apart. It's just window dressing without any real substantive exploration of theme. And it didn't resonate with me emotionally either. So, while it's pretty, it doesn't offer anything interesting intellectually and doesn't work emotionally.

VinylGuy wrote:

epilogue wrote:Well, like I said before I think if you take DDL's performance (and to a lesser degree Dano's) out of the movie the whole thing falls apart. It's just window dressing without any real substantive exploration of theme. And it didn't resonate with me emotionally either. So, while it's pretty, it doesn't offer anything interesting intellectually and doesn't work emotionally.

But why do you feel like that? Because the movie has tons of emotional moments, the ending, the relationship between DLL and his kid, hell the opening sequence with the guy with the broken leg crawling for a penny...it also shows the greed, the violence and its a cruel despiction of the 20th century´s capitalism at its core.

Steve Albini wrote: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.

tragabigzanda wrote:I love TWBB, but I agree with Joe that you take DDL out of that movie and there's basically nothing happening. And everything that does happen with him is extremely one-dimensional, thematically speaking.

That's why I wish there was more of Dano's character. But it's maybe fair to argue that his story was basically explored in depth in The Master.

epilogue wrote:I definitely don't look forward to violence in film, that's for sure. But I wouldn't say it's an automatic deal breaker. The problem is usually the way the violence is used.

Look at something like Promising Young Woman. No Spoilers but there's violence in that film that is used expertly and effectively. It's so powerful and appropriate. So, it's not just the violence.

There are ton of movies that I love that are violent. Ditto with TV shows.

Spoiler: show

Her death is just...meh. Kind of an accident really.

Steve Albini wrote: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.

Spoiler: show

but i needed more. The guy is a piece of shit. It felt those kind of men would kill her in different way. It felt surreal. and the ending was really cheesy and uninspired

Steve Albini wrote: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.

tree_ wrote:With TWBB and Phantom Thread, it's not even necessarily the themes that matter to me, it's all about style and execution. So taking out the performance is a non starter. They're beautiful, maddeningly articulate paintings. You just have to soak these movies in and let them intoxicate you. It's almost like he's challenging himself to make an amazing movie out of "boring" subject matter.