Red Mosquito

BurtReynolds wrote:The Boy and The Heron.

I liked it and the animation was great, but it isn't in the top half of Ghibli movies. Everything felt too disconnected and arbitrary for me.

Jorge wrote:Put me staunchly in the Bottoms-is-great camp. Hilarious one-liners throughout, great physical comedy. I love how the camera moves, its vivid colors, that climactic brawl set to Charli XCX's great music. The crazy tonal shifts! I think it's really cleverly written but also so many of the laughs for me came from Rachel Sennott's delivery. Extremely Gen Z humor but it really works most of the time. Big fan of this one

tree_ wrote:have ya'll seen Happiness (1998)? This is pretty great

Jorge wrote:

tree_ wrote:have ya'll seen Happiness (1998)? This is pretty great

I have complicated feelings about Todd Solondz... Happiness is probably his best

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.

Jorge wrote:Sorry, I meant to say that I do like Happiness. It's his other movies that I'm iffy on. Especially Palindromes

tragabigzanda wrote:Welcome to the Dollhouse was awesome. Hated Happiness and Storytelling. Stopped watching after that.

epilogue wrote:Dollhouse, Happiness and Storytelling are all brilliant as far as I'm concerned. At that point I was ready to call him one of my all time favorite filmmakers. But then things got... let's say uneven. I still haven't seen Palindromes or Weiner-dog.

Tree, if you're interested "Life During Wartime" is a sequel (of sorts) to "Happiness". A lot of the same characters are in it but played by different actors. It's nowhere near as dark and unsettling, so it may not be what you're looking for. But it's there for you if you want.

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:

epilogue wrote:Dollhouse, Happiness and Storytelling are all brilliant as far as I'm concerned. At that point I was ready to call him one of my all time favorite filmmakers. But then things got... let's say uneven. I still haven't seen Palindromes or Weiner-dog.

Tree, if you're interested "Life During Wartime" is a sequel (of sorts) to "Happiness". A lot of the same characters are in it but played by different actors. It's nowhere near as dark and unsettling, so it may not be what you're looking for. But it's there for you if you want.

Thanks, but if dark and unsettling were removed from Happiness I don't think I'd like it. Maybe one day, though.

tragabigzanda wrote:

tree_ wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:Welcome to the Dollhouse was awesome. Hated Happiness and Storytelling. Stopped watching after that.

Why did you hate Happiness? I thought you liked this kind of humour.

I haven't seen it in years, but my recollection was that it didn't really humanize the wierdos in any sort of challenging way, felt like shock value for shock value's sake.

There's a movie called The Woodsman where Kevin Bacon plays a child molester. It's quite a bit more formulaic, but it does a much better job of creating empathy for someone so damaged, IMO.