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AluminumBird
Reviews
Dream Scenario (2023)
Video-Screen Narc Personality Culture as a Dream In Itself
Yeah. Not bad. Better than 99% of movies coming out in recent years.
I feel like the spark of the story came organically and then it was developed intellectually. My personal taste is to keep this kind of story more in the realm of the unconscious, (e.g. *Mulholland Drive* as a classic exemplar). OTOH the movie I want probably would have been unpopular.
Also I really like the structure of the story, which feels very dream-like to me. The hero's fortunes turn on the strange, upsetting event - which probably happened about 3am, like they do in dreams LOL...
Anyway, I probably shouldn't harp on the story. It's obviously crafted with a lot of care/attention. It is a very good story.
And really don't have any clue about the business of gathering money to make a movie. You probably can't get business types to invest in your project unless they feel like it makes nailed-down, logical sense.
It is a good story. I take back anything negative I said about it.
Some of the photography was striking and funny, e.g. The lobby of the PR firm LOL.
And I like the intrusive little dream glimpses during waking consciousness.
Apropos of weird, acausal phenomena of the unconscious, the timing of this movie is strangely apt amid the wave of recent developments in academe - all the scandals and retractions. I love the striving, amoral researcher who stole Paul's *Antelligence* idea LMAO!
I also loved the warm, friendly, charming, irredeemably horrible PR guy running the THINK! Agency. LOL that was a good character.
And obvs Paul Matthews was such a good hero. Poor sad sack caught up in it. He's like a 1Mx better version of the scientist in *Don't Look Up*.
Or potentially anyone nowadays. Not that the movie is preachy. It's not snagged on some culture wars point or anything like that. It's just observing and reflecting. You know, like art LOL
All the actors are very good AFAIK. I really don't grok how acting works, apart from noticing when an actor isn't convincing. Everyone I see in this movie is absolutely convincing. Which must be a feat, considering the breadth (depth?) of the world imagined. I guess... IDK. Like I said, I'm mystified by acting. I'm like someone who can't sing or dance or play an instrument watching a legendary jazz combo; I couldn't really guess how meritorious is the performance - I just know that I like it; I'm tapping my foot LOL
Good job!
BTW 6 is a very high score for me. 7 is for all-time favorites. Never given a 10 IIRC.
The Swerve (2018)
proper tragedy
It's a personal tragedy, and IMHO the main theme is integrated/socialized aggression. The hero learns too late to say and do what needs said/done in a proportional, appropriate way.
It's a wonderful feel-bad cathartic tragedy. Really really good.
Also it is full of imagery and vibe. It doesn't fall into the common trap of trying to explain everything away intellectually.
BTW the actor playing the hero nails it. I really went through every upsetting ordeal with her, and it was a roller coaster ride LOL. Good job!
Actually, I suppose all of the actors did extremely well, because I got such a strong vibe from each character from the moment they appeared on screen. They are all like dream characters, and I reacted viscerally to each.
The Basics (2020)
First review?!?! How is that possible?
LOL'ed a lot. Can't remember when I've laughed this hard.
IDK what to critique - it's comedy and it's super funny. Nothing to fix.
Question: do the actors doing the terrible improv have to be great improvisors to do improv that bad?
Never did learn to say Megan right.
I felt like I should be worried for Tiggy but it seems like she's doing well.
I'm beginning to understand why nobody has reviewed this. Maybe good comedy isn't reducible to logical/intellectual analysis. Is there a humor cortex in the brain, like the way music is separate / paralinguistic / para-logical?
How about favorite parts:
we're down to one breathe-right strip.
Tiggy wore a too-big bike jersey to yoga.
I quit my job for this (haunted look... manic laughter)
Text me your address; I'll send you a Keurig.
PINEAPPLE. (standoff look)
Beverly in the bg.
Midsommar (2019)
Needs another editing pass
Edit the exact same movie down to 90 minutes, and it's a 10. I DK I suppose the sluggish pacing helps to sustain the dreamy atmosphere, but 2 1/2 hours just seems abusive for the amount of plot.
I actually thought about the movie quite a bit after watching it. I have some questions. But I DK whether I will watch it again. The runtime is daunting for me, there is a world of difference between two hours and 2 1/2.
I see that his new one is going to be three hours long. Ugh
I really love all the twists and symbols. For example, the way the pre-modern pagan is the actual anthropologist, studying the comparatively devolved, ignorant, postmodern Westerners LOL.
Love the panel painting in the opening shot.
The character names are lit.
Barbarian (2022)
psychology kept me interested to the end
It's very *Psycho* with the house-as-evildoer's-psyche and that character's "inner city" portrayed as a cast of characters. That alone made it interesting enough to keep me watching to the end.
It's scary enough without relying on cheap thrills. I generally dislike jump scares but there weren't enough to ruin my relationship with the movie.
My only note after one casual viewing is the over-intellectualized/logical plot. The writer wasn't afraid to employ the supernatural/metaphysical/magical/whatever - e.g. The doors in the house - yet the movie dragged us out to a bar just to (I think?) feed us a crucial bit of exposition in dialogue. Also there was too much physics fighting for my taste. Again, this is something that usually precipitates my abandonment of a viewing, but there wasn't enough to bother me. Also the final fight was counter-logical enough to make it interesting. So I guess C+ on this issue - passing grade.
I just had the idea that maybe it's better for everything to be ultra-logical outside the house; it's only with proximity to the... special feature of the house that things go all dreamy. IDK... that wasn't my feeling at the time, but maybe I will come to feel that way as I re-watch?
I suppose this movie would be perfect for me if it were built on the physics engine of *Mulholland Drive* or *Holy Mountain* or some such.
I really liked this movie and kept thinking about it all evening and into the next day. I will rent it when it is available via streaming. It will probably go into my rotation of Spooktober favorites - along with *Psycho*.
The Outfit (2022)
Pretty good entertainment.
I just wish they had stopped the big reveals when all the plot points were wrapped up. I don't know that I *needed* to know half of what I learned about Leonard/"English". Definitely didn't need more monologues about his motivating trauma after all his motivated actions are all settled and over. I watched this in the theater and after my half gallon of soda or whatever it is, I NEED TO PEE. Movies really need to keep the internal story coming in sync with the plot or let us go.
Otherwise, it was pretty good. I assume this was a stage play prior to being filmed. Feels like going to a good theater production.
Pleasure (2021)
From the theatron of Athens to the shabbiest rented offices in Los Angeles, heroes take decisive action.
Bella goes through a staggering range of transformations and fortunes, even though she is a porn star at the beginning and a porn star up to the end.
What does her mom tell her? "There are bad people everywhere; you just need to learn to handle them." LOL a disembodied voice on the phone, like one of Shakespeare's ghosts. Well, Bella handles them. Not stacking bodies like Macbeth, but the psychic cost seems to be nearly as high.
The opening scene is a real puzzler - for me, at least. I remember that she is wearing that coat of many colors that she had in Las Vegas, so it's near the end of the linear timeline.
I will say that some of this is hard to watch. But I suppose the extremity of the horror makes Bella's journey that much more epic. I would recommend against watching if you are at all sensitive to emotional-physical-sexual abusiveness or disgusting body stuff.
It just occurred to me that Bella doesn't necessarily step out of her royal ascendancy into oblivion/annihilation. When Ava tells her, "(sorry) for what?" apparently sincerely, it could be the case that Bella, shrewd strategist that she is, can see what she will become if she continues to be inured to the horrors of the career, and so she just checks out and does something better with her life.
And her one friend (that she loses - there's the tragedy)... her one friend explicitly tells her she should be doing something better with her life. She probably did.
I'm still on Bella's side at the end. She becomes a monster, yet the moment she sees herself reflected in the dead eyes of Eva, she instantly exits. The ending is especially good. It cuts the thread in just the right place.
Maybe I should give one more star for this movie. IDK. Maybe I will if I'm still thinking about it and rewatching it in five years. Anyway, it's for sure worth a watch, especially for a club/group discussion.
Donny's Bar Mitzvah (2021)
The most willfully stupid, crude thing I have ever seen.
OMG this is my new favorite comedy. It's been a while since something shook this much laughter out of me.
I feel like I haven't seen anything exactly like this before. It's going for cheap laughs in every frame, while still being rooted in not-too-far-from-earth character motivations.
My least favorite part was the Party Pooper plot. Too many most-favorites to list. The end credits might have got me harder than anything.
Anyway, thanks to the film makers for creating something for adults in the 2020's that is so silly and fun.
Range Roads (2021)
Really good little character study.
This movie is obviously informed by psychology; I couldn't say much more than that.
The opening shot shows the car driven by the parents of the hero streaming toward the foreground/POV like a missile. In the background there is a giant field of windmills, motivated by the unseen force of wind, and on the left edge of the frame there are power lines carrying the resulting energy toward the foreground.
Title Card
First scene with the hero is a David Lynch type dream-IRL with the hero at the center, contained in a rich network of characters and symbols.
The movie artfully moves from dream to the waking world of the hero gradually. She talks to her therapist about a literal dream, which breaks into the movie about half way through, again seamlessly, artfully.
It's all well executed. The whole film radiates meaning without clobbering you with messages. Very well done.
I do wish for more visual beauty in the photography, but I think the look is a choice, not a lack of skill. The movie probably does require the hometown to feel like a drab, unwelcoming gulag, out in some liminal never-always-nowhere-everywhere. It is the literal landscape of her adolescence, yes, but also the internal landscape of her unease/trauma/whatever.
I want to see more from this filmmaker. Also makes me want to study more psychology LOL.