For my movie, I pick The Road. One of my favorite books ever and the translation to the screen was really well done. During these desperate COVID times, this is a good film to help us explore the human condition in the most extreme of circumstances. Do we move on in our new world blindly? Or try to hold on to the past while attempting to just survive? Or decide not to go on at all? What extreme practices will we adopt in this new world? I look forward to discussing this movie with many of you.
It's apparently available for free on Pluto TV but I haven't confirmed. I'm going to bed
Wow, what an exciting day. I really love the book, I've read it twice. I've only ever seen the movie once all the way through, but I do often feel pulled to re-visit it again. The reason I've resisted that pull is because I didn't want to crowd out the book's space in my head. Perhaps this is faulty logic.
Regardless, I'm excited to revisit this one now.
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.
Last edited by tragabigzanda on Sat January 10, 2026 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I re-watched the movie earlier this week. I like the marriage flashbacks OK enough. I think one of the most compelling scenes is the one where Charlize Theron is taking off her winter clothes and walking into the night to die while Viggo begs her to stay. Unfortunately, it is immediately undercut by a heavy-handed voice-over narration that tells us something about how "she died somewhere in the dark, blah blah, there is no other tale to tell." Totally unnecessary, and rather annoying. The voice-overs were universally terrible, overly flowerly, coming across as trying too hard to communicate that this is an important movie based on a book by a literary icon.
Outside of the voice-overs, I don't have a ton of specific complaints, but I also don't have much that sticks in my head or really engaged me. Overall, there are some good bits and images, but I don't think this movie is a success. There are many other post-apocalyptic movies that I prefer.
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.
Last edited by tragabigzanda on Sat January 10, 2026 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
