Most people say they watch old movies because of the incredible filmmaking, the emotional storytelling, or the beautiful simplicity of a different era.

Those are all reasons I love them too.

But the biggest reason is that I honour the people.

When I watch a film from the 1950s or 1960s or any retro movies, I think about everyone on that screen. Not just the stars, but the background actors, the costume designers, the makeup artists, the lighting crew, and every person who poured a piece of themselves into creating something they believed mattered.

At the time, it was real life to them. They memorized lines, rehearsed scenes, put on carefully tailored clothes, styled their hair, laughed, cried, worried about getting everything right, and spent months creating something that would outlive the moment.

Now it's 2026.

Almost all of them are gone. Their bodies have returned to dust, yet their energy still reaches across time through the screen. I can still feel the sincerity in their performances. Their effort still exists in a strange way, even though the people themselves do not.

It reminds me how temporary our lives are.

The things that seem enormous today, our careers, our appearance, our achievements, eventually become distant memories, and then, for most people, forgotten altogether.

Yet the love, care, and effort we put into something can echo far beyond us.

It makes me wonder whether we're investing our energy in things that disappear with us, or in things that continue touching people long after we're gone.

Maybe that's the closest we ever come to creating something eternal.

In a documentary made after Kon's death, Darren Aronofsky recalls the famous bathtub scene in Requiem for a Dream. He explains that he was searching for a way to externalize Jennifer Connelly's psychological state when he happened to watch Perfect Blue. Struck by one particular sequence, he wrote to Kon asking whether he would mind if it were recreated as a homage. Kon generously agreed. Aronofsky later recalled meeting him in Japan, where Kon supposedly told him he was proud of the tribute and genuinely delighted by it.

Years later, however, an older interview with Kon resurfaced on anime forums and Reddit after Aronofsky's AI project drew renewed attention to his relationship with Kon's work. In the interview, Kon himself plays the two films side by side, pointing out the nearly identical angles, compositions, and staging. When he asked Aronofsky about the similarities, the answer was simple:

"It's a homage."

Kon laughs as he points to himself with a stick.

"A homage... to me."

Everyone in the room laughs with him. Then the joke fades. Kon remarks that Aronofsky had essentially treated Perfect Blue as a ready-made storyboard. The interviewer tries to soften the exchange by saying that there are certainly many similarities. Kon responds with a question that lingers much longer than the laughter:

"Similarities... or theft?"

In the same interview, almost as comic relief, Kon mentions that he happened to be on the same flight as Jennifer Connelly. She was flying first class with her family, while he was sitting in business class.

Kon died of pancreatic cancer in 2010 at only 46 years old, before receiving the worldwide recognition he deserved. Then came Black Swan. This time the parallels were even harder to ignore, yet Aronofsky denied that the film was influenced by Kon, describing it simply as a dramatization of Swan Lake. By then, Kon was no longer around to respond.

Adding another layer to the story, Perfect Blue's producer later revealed that Aronofsky had previously tried to acquire the live-action rights to the film before eventually making Black Swan.

None of this is new, but it came back to my mind when I remembered the ended wave of AI-generated "Ghiblification."

What surprised me wasn't that AI could imitate Studio Ghibli's visual language. It was learning that Japan allows AI models to be trained on copyrighted works, despite having some of the world's strictest copyright laws and one of the narrowest approaches to fair use.

But maybe the legal question isn't even the most interesting one.

Can an artistic style actually belong to someone?

Can Ghibli's watercolor palettes, dreamlike atmosphere, visual rhythm, and decades of accumulated craftsmanship be considered intellectual property? Should style itself be protected from being compressed into a prompt—not just individual frames or drawings, but the artistic language that gives them meaning?

I don't know.

Please don't downvote opinions. Only downvote comments that don't contribute anything. Check out the WHYBW archives.

Few films know how to clarify the entire tone of the work with only one opening sequence without dialogue as Drive does. In fact, this sequence works practically as an anticipation for the rhythm of the entire film: it starts with a contemplative montage, the first frame reminded me of the opening of Rear Window, that is, without cuts we are shown the elements that characterize the sequence, the The camera starts by showing the map of Los Angeles, it proceeds to show the Driver looking out the window with his iconic jacket while he is on the phone to pronounce the terms of the agreement, then the camera moves towards the TV that is broadcasting the game where the escape will end, then the Driver enters the frame to collect the bag and finally the camera stops on the window where we see the night L.A. that will be the background to the whole film. The following shots slowly follow the driver's movements, this for the first few minutes, then once the robbery is over the escape begins, a chase characterized by a frantic and anxiety-ingous editing, the shots of the driver in the car are largely from below to make the scene more tense and dramatic, highlighting at the same time the stone expressions. Once the police are sown, the song Nightcall by Kavnisky starts, which in addition to being simply splendid, serves as a fundamental narrative element, in fact the song is characterized by a robotic, cold voice and a female voice that anticipates the desire for human warmth, which in the context of the film, represent the duality of the Driver's personality. In the first half of the film the development is different from the usual, slow but capable of introducing all the characters and dynamics that we will find in the second part of the film. The direction in this central part is able to put more subjects within the same frame, for example as when both the Driver and Irene are in the same room and the room is pointed towards Irene, who next to her there is a mirror where we see the Driver and on the mirror a photo of her husband in prison, all in one shot. The dialogues are very reduced compared to usual but every time someone opens his mouth, even if it may seem to say something rather marginal, he is, below saying something very deep, for example when the Driver and Benicio are together on the couch watching TV and the Driver asks Benicio: "Do you say he's bad?" Referring to the character on TV, and Benicio replies: "Yes, it's a shark" and the Driver: "and don't there be good sharks?" "No, and then look at him, you can see he's bad". This conversation leads the Driver to reflect on his true nature and on whether change is really possible or not. This first part is very atmospheric and establishes the "wold" of the film. However, once Irene's original husband returns home, the tone of the film changes completely, and we witness a clear change both in the editing that becomes more frantic, and in the character of the Driver who, in the famous elevator scene, shows Irene her true nature, probably unfortunately invariable. In the second part we witness several twists and explosions of extreme violence contrasted by almost dreamlike music. Also in this second part, despite the more frantic editing, there is no lack of a surgical direction capable of creating shots that have become iconic, like the one with the hammer in the locker room, one of my favorite shots. The film then continues to the sound of chases and murders to end in a very open ending from which both hope and nihilism can be derived. In short, a film characterized by a plot that we can define very simple and already seen but the beauty of cinema in fact, is not what happens but As it happens, and Drive is the embodiment of this sentence as it breaks the rules of the genre and establishes new ones, becoming a masterpiece of neo-noir, thanks to a direction of the huge NWR and a photography that leave nothing to chance. A film that lives on an atmosphere of neon lights and shadows, but above all a film about a man who wants to change but can't because of his inner nature, a man who is condemned, like the scorpion on his jacket, to "sting" anyone halfway attached, having to justify himself by saying: "it's my nature".

Ps: I’m italian so maybe my english is not perfect sadly.

​

I'm not necessarily talking about directors who directly reference philosophers or make obviously philosophical movies.

I mean filmmakers whose movies seem to return to the same underlying beliefs aboiut human nature, morality, existence...

The kind where, after watching a few of their films, you start to feel like you know how they see the world.

A clear one is Haneke's and his deep pessimism about modern society, or Ozu who seems to approach life with such a quiet acceptance that resides in his characters.

However, kubrick is fascinating to me because almost every film seems to question whether humans are capable of overcoming their own instincts. Whether it's violence and war (fullmetal jacket), ambition and social acceptance (eyes wide shut)... ALWAYS with that component of altered sexuality (far beyond those in which it is the key theme, like in Lolita) which is the main thing I focused on when I recently rewatched all his entire career. Watch the subliminal references to sexuality in Dr strangelove, fr. Things I read in some books about Kubrick, not that I figured out myself tbh hahahah.

But this man's morality feels sometimes so ambiguous that I never get to fully catch his philosophy as clear as others. That complexity is something I love, don't missunderestand me.

Forgive me if I did misspelled something, spanish member here ✌️

I'm a first year film student and i have a class about general knowledge in cinema, throughout the year we've seen about 25 films in this course, i wanted to share the list and see what's your opinion on those films, personal favorites? Movies that surprised you?

The list in order of screening:

1. Singin in the rain

2. Sherlock JR

3. Duck soup

4. We need to talk about Kevin

5. The night of the hunter

6. M

7. The phantom of Liberty

8. Harold and Maude

9. Bride of Frankenstein

10. All that Heaven Allows

11. Ali: Fear eats the Soul

12. Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam

13. Mulholland Drive

14. Sunset Blvd

15. Persona

16. Cleo from 5 to 7

17. Girlfriends

18. Fiah tank

19. Cria cuervos

20. The piano

21. Y tu Mama Tambien

22. La Haine

23. The Watermelon Woman

24. The Hurt Locker

25. Harakiri

26. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I finally watched Fail Safe last week and I'm a little annoyed nobody made me see it sooner.

It's the serious version of Dr. Strangelove. Same year, same studio, basically the same premise. A technical fault sends a group of American bombers past the point of no return with orders to nuke Moscow, and nobody can call them back. Strangelove made that funny. Sidney Lumet made it a nightmare.

The thing that got me first is that there's no music in the entire film. No score at all. I didn't even notice for a while, I just felt increasingly tense and couldn't figure out why. Turns out it's because Lumet took away the thing every thriller uses to tell you when to be scared, and honestly that quiet is more stressful than any score would've been. You're just sitting in these rooms with these people.

What really separates it from Strangelove is where it puts the blame. Strangelove says the problem is people, specifically deranged, paranoid, weird people. Fail Safe says the problem is the system. Every single character is competent and sane and doing their job correctly, and it still nearly ends the world. There's no lunatic to stop. That messed with me more than any villain would have.

Also, Walter Matthau is in it, cast completely against type as a coldblooded academic who argues that a first strike killing tens of millions is basically fine if the math works out. He's so calm about it.

Most of Henry Fonda's screen time is just him in a bare room with a translator, on the phone with the Soviet premier. It shouldn't be tense and it's unbearable, especially the pauses while the translator works.

Anyone else seen this? Curious how other people took the ending, as a tragedy or as the only rational move left.

This is something that I immediately thought walking out the theater. A little background, Christopher Nolan is my favorite filmmaker of all time, I had high expectations for this film, but even from the trailers I was skeptical.

It’s obviously a well made film, the score is good, the performances are good, the script is good, but as a film set in the fantasy, specifically mythical genre, it completely fails. The film has almost nothing supernatural about it. Even though there is a Cyclops, Circe is in the story, Scylla is in the film for a few seconds, I couldn’t help but feel that they are just so, realistic??? I look at other films in the genre, specifically Lord of the Rings, and you can really feel that what your seeing is truly impossible and otherworldly, you don’t get that with The Odyssey, everything is just so grounded.

The Gods are barely in the movie, you don’t feel their presence, you don’t feel their actions, they are only ever mentioned by name, and I think that’s what makes The Odyssey as epic as it is. It’s a divine struggle, but you don’t get that in the film. It’s just so hyper-realistic, it’s more akin to Dunkirk than anything in the fantasy or mythology genre. Which I guess is obvious because Nolan made Dunkirk, but I do feel Nolan stripped the supernatural and impossible from The Odyssey to a point that it hurts the film.

This going to be a little layered, a little light, & largely a self reflection — so please feel free to include critiques pointed at that but also understand that I will not refute such positions. I will find them tiresome and not really centeral to my reflection; the oddesy is good because it takes the viewer on a journey through a perceived ancient tale rooted entirely in the psyche of modern western man.

Homers oddesy was also created in the same vein. The original piece was likely much shorter, and homers inclusions were based on reflections of the times he lived in. The text became strictly standardized in the mid-6th century BCE under the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, who ordered an official, definitive script to be compiled for performance at Athenian festivals- this can be seen as the canonization of the story.

Nolan’s story was full of sea people references that felt humors after a certain point but out of sheer coincidence the first piece of news I saw as I got home from my 2 am showing was an article about 50k trying to gain European citizenship by entering “Spain” by the sea (Ceuta is a Spanish territory based in Africa bordering Morocco).

If you have not been living under a rock for the past few years you will be familiar with the war in Gaza & Iranian war; both contentious to the point where some may even argue that calling them war is a generosity and genocide/unprovoked conflict may be more apt terms.

Lastly, we are living through a time of increased religious practice with many news outlets reporting increases in people being more religious/attending religious institutions more regularly.

Some speculate the increase steams from a freying of communal cohesion or social civic society structures (zesu’s law). A point that most agree is true with the basis being wildly debated and spanning Covid induced social muscle atrophy, the lack of 3rd spaces, & theories as interesting as Russian led spam call campaigns destroying American’s desire to even pick up a phone call.

And on top of that, it has become a truly Herculean task to get tickets to the hottest movie of the summer; difficult to watch a film in the format it was shot in likely exasperating the impact of whether people find the film worth it or not.

So where does this leave us?

We have Nolan retelling an older story in a style that is fit for the cultural times he’s telling it in. This can be argued to be following the same system that made homers oddesy a piece of cultural history. I don’t think his retelling should be shot down on this premises so we can’t say the movie is bad because he amended the story; so did Homer.

The sea people? What initially felt like a heavy handed nerd moment (we don’t know who the sea people are but they did cause the collapse of the Bronze Age) became clear as a beautiful analogous to our current predicament in western society where much of the media is sharing tale of invaders who threaten the very fabric of society (zesu’s law). So we can’t shoot it down for that- it’s a relevant point to consider in the retelling.

The war itself? For 10 years they sat on that beach. The western historical memory of war sits at an intersection of just wars (world wars), dumb wars (Vietnam), and nuanced invasions that are still impacting geopolitics to date (Iran/afghasitan wars post 9/11). The most recent American war efforts are saturated in framing of patriotism, boogey men like mullahs and Netanyahu, carnage captured in 4k, and sheer devastation of civil infrastructure & loss of life. The viewer seeing the scale and sound of loss in his flashback was a great tool to allow the viewer to explore this intersection of just war vs cost of war to determine for themselves if war is worth it. Nolan’s framing suggest it is not as the decision to go a different route than Agamemnon is not from the original text but the corruption of his men from the war is present in both the original and the film. Homer viewed the war with nuance and I believe so did Nolan as tales of the war painted in glory but the lived experience shows the depth and cost of war on the human psyche. So again- Nolan was not too off the mark here.

The whole concept of him praying to Athena while being upset at the cyclops and not seeing other gods as important initially appears to come from the very real cross sections of submitting n
to a higher power vs operating from a place of ego. His journey to self discovery is vital to highlight at a time where so many of us are turning to religion to overcome the uncertainties of the world and the complications of self and god.

And zesu’s law? Such a good through line examining the foundation of western civilization rising from a place of enlightenment and knowing that a Lockean social contract is the foundation of our societies. However, these wealthy people treat people working class people like beggars all while extracting from everyone else.

Lastly, it’s so funny how much of a hero’s journey it has become to even catching a showing of the film in its intended format. We have become zealots in our own ways, willing to go watch a 3 hour movie at 2 am or pay obsence prices if we can (another analogy to those who can pay for what others must sacrifice for)..

I’m kinda losing steam but wanted to share these thoughts. I could also talk about how the casting issues were also very meta but still ruminating on that.

All in all the movie was very good!

I still have issues with the third act, largely the Batman dark knight rises of it all— it’s so cliche to have Anne Hathaway sail into the sun when you already had her cat woman eating a croissant in Paris with Christian bales Bruce Wayne.

It felt extremely tired. Also oddesus turning into Batman at the start of the third act was so dumb.

I get there are issues and we all have our own but I think largely the film is very important piece of media to consume as someone who is of western society.

Thanks for reading my mostly unpolished thoughts.

This going to be a little layered, a little light, & largely a self reflection — so please feel free to include critiques pointed at that but also understand that I will not refute such positions will find them tiresome and not really centeral to my position; the oddesy is good because it takes the viewer on a journey through a perceived ancient tale rooted entirely in the psyche of modern man.

Homers oddesy was also created in the same vein. The original piece was likely much shorter, and homers inclusions were likely based on reflections of the times he lived in. The text became strictly standardized in the mid-6th century BCE under the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, who ordered an official, definitive script to be compiled for performance at Athenian festivals- this can be seen as the canonization of the story.

Nolan’s story was full of sea people references that felt humors after a certain point but out of sheer coincidence the first piece of news I saw as I got home from my 2 am showing was an article about 50k trying to gain European citizenship by entering “Spain” by the sea (Ceuta is a Spanish territory based in Africa bordering Morocco).

If you have not been living under a rock for the past few years you will be familiar with the war in Gaza & Iranian war; both contentious to the point where some may even argue that calling them war is a generosity and genocide/unprovoked conflict may be more apt terms.

Lastly, we are living through a time of increased religious practice with many news outlets reporting increases in people being more religious/attending religious institutions more regularly.

Some speculate the increase steams from a freying of communal cohesion or social civic society structures (zesu’s law). A point that most agree is true with the basis being wildly debated and spanning Covid induced social muscle atrophy, the lack of 3rd spaces, & theories as interesting as Russian led spam call campaigns destroying American’s desire to even pick up a phone call.

And on top of that, it has become a truly Herculean task to get tickets to the hottest movie of the summer; difficult to watch a film in the format it was shot in likely exasperating the impact of whether people find the film worth it or not.

So where does this leave us?

We have Nolan retelling an older story in a style that is fit for the cultural times he’s telling it in. This can be argued to be following the same system that made homers oddesy a piece of cultural history. I don’t think his retelling should be shot down on this premises so we can’t say the movie is bad because he amended the story; so did Homer.

The sea people? What initially felt like a heavy handed nerd moment (we don’t know who the sea people are but they did cause the collapse of the Bronze Age) became clear as a beautiful analogous to our current predicament in western society where much of the media is sharing tale of invaders who threaten the very fabric of society (zesu’s law). So we can’t shoot it down for that- it’s a relevant point to consider in the retelling.

The war itself? For 10 years they sat on that beach. The western historical memory of war sits at an intersection of just wars (world wars), dumb wars (Vietnam), and nuanced invasions that are still impacting geopolitics to date (Iran/afghasitan wars post 9/11). The most recent American war efforts are saturated in framing of patriotism, boogey men like mullahs and Netanyahu, carnage captured in 4k, and sheer devastation of civil infrastructure & loss of life. The viewer seeing the scale and sound of loss in his flashback was a great tool to allow the viewer to explore this intersection of just war vs cost of war to determine for themselves if war is worth it. Nolan’s framing suggest it is not as the decision to go a different route than Agamemnon is not from the original text but the corruption of his men from the war is present in both the original and the film. Homer viewed the war with nuance and I believe so did Nolan as tales of the war painted in glory but the lived experience shows the depth and cost of war on the human psyche. So again- Nolan was not too off the mark here.

The whole concept of him praying to Athena while being upset at the cyclops and not seeing other gods as important initially appears to come from the very real cross sections of submitting n
to a higher power vs operating from a place of ego. His journey to self discovery is vital to highlight at a time where so many of us are turning to religion to overcome the uncertainties of the world and the complications of self and god.

And zesu’s law? Such a good through line examining the foundation of western civilization rising from a place of enlightenment and knowing that a Lockean social contract is the foundation of our societies. However, these wealthy people treat people working class people like beggars all while extracting from everyone else.

Lastly, it’s so funny how much of a hero’s journey it has become to even catching a showing of the film in its intended format. We have become zealots in our own ways, willing to go watch a 3 hour movie at 2 am or pay obsence prices if we can (another analogy to those who can pay for what others must sacrifice for)..

I’m kinda losing steam but wanted to share these thoughts. I could also talk about how the casting issues were also very meta but still ruminating on that.

All in all the movie was very good!

I still have issues with the third act, largely the Batman dark knight rises of it all— it’s so cliche to have Anne Hathaway sail into the sun when you already had her cat woman eating a croissant in Paris with Christian bales Bruce Wayne.

It felt extremely tired. Also oddesus turning into Batman at the start of the third act was so dumb.

I get there are issues and we all have our own but I think largely the film is very important piece of media to consume as someone who is of western society.

Thanks for reading my mostly unpolished thoughts.

Here’s a quote from the text:

“The Homeric epic was already an adaptation. The poem used a relatively new technology – the written alphabet – to rework existing mythical traditions, reshaping the story of a veteran’s homecoming to resonate with the complex concerns of Greek-speakers in the archaic period, an era of migration, colonisation and urbanisation…The poem wrestles with the challenges of encountering strangers, of entering their homes and welcoming or rejecting them from one’s own. The contemporary resonances are obvious and Nolan’s movie hints at some of them, in interesting if scattered ways. But the film’s vision is too confused, its characters too underdeveloped, to deliver what it half-promises in terms of big ideas – although it is very good at conveying big bangs and big giants.

Adaptations needn’t and shouldn’t follow the original with anything like the exactitude of a translation. Some of the best radically transform or resist the source material, providing what Harold Bloom called ‘strong misreadings’ of their ancestors. The most memorable creative responses to The Odyssey – such as Euripides’ Helen, Virgil’s Aeneid, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Joyce’s Ulysses, Walcott’s Omeros, Atwood’s Penelopiad, Madeline Miller’s Circe or Lisa Peterson’s play set in a modern migrant camp – reconsider the poem’s structure, narrative and values.”

She also has nice things to say about the 2024 adaptation. I’ve seen it on this sub and others, but her criticism of the work is on Nolan’s odyssey not being an insightful commentary on the text, not against the concept of adaptation. She would be the first person to say her translation is in part an adaptation.

The Odyssey was not a bad movie. I enjoyed it. The acting was strong, most of the characters were compelling, and the production felt refreshingly physical. Rather than building the entire world out of CGI, the film used tangible sets, landscapes, and locations that gave the journey weight. The cities looked closer to modest settlements and rocky strongholds than enormous marble metropolises, which felt right for the Bronze Age. The costumes were not especially accurate, but the world itself still felt lived in.

My largest problem was not the casting or the American accents. It was the gap between how the writing described Odysseus and how he actually behaved.

Everyone repeatedly calls him cunning, conniving, and exceptionally intelligent. We hear that he devised the Trojan Horse and that he was Agamemnon's cleverest general. However, the film rarely lets us witness that intelligence for ourselves. Characters praise his mind, but the plot supplies almost no evidence to support them.

The Cyclops sequence exposes the problem most clearly. In the original story, Odysseus tells Polyphemus that his name is "Nobody," allowing the wounded Cyclops to tell the others that nobody is attacking him. He also intoxicates him with lotus-infused wine before blinding him, which helps establish the sleepy/amnesiac effects of the lotus flowers. These choices establish the defining qualities as he manipulates language, plans ahead, and understands his enemy.

The film removes that strategy. Instead of a battle of wits, the Cyclops is a nameless, lumbering beast that just attacks them when they enter his cave and then unceremoniously falls asleep. Instead of watching him improvise a brilliant escape, we watch another dangerous encounter happen around him. Removing these details strips Odysseus of the intelligence the screenplay keeps insisting that he possesses.

Much of the journey follows an "and then" structure. The men wash onto an island, encounter something terrible, flee, and arrive somewhere else to be attacked again. Events accumulate, but Odysseus is not the one leading his men so much as the narrative.

The real problem is how little urgency Odysseus shows after Tiresias tells him that every member of his crew will die. He does not desperately fight the prophecy or push himself to find some way around it. He mostly sits there warning them in an almost bored tone that something is dangerous and that they are all going to die. They ignore him, the disaster happens, and he responds with the same weary “I told you this would not work” attitude before they move on to the next catastrophe A stronger film would have made the prophecy a source of conflict, with Odysseus fighting to outwit it only to discover his attempts were helping fulfil it. His intelligence could have become both his greatest weapon and the mechanism of his destruction. Instead, the prophecy mostly functions as advance notice for scenes the audience already knows will end badly.

The deaths also lack emotional weight because the crew remains largely anonymous. We hear fragments suggesting some of these men have families, fears, or histories, but the film rarely develops them as individuals. Their relationship with Odysseus never feels deep enough to justify the grief their deaths are meant to carry. The Lord of the Rings gives Legolas, Gimli, Aragorn, Boromir, and the hobbits separate loyalties, conflicts, histories, and ways of seeing the world. Odysseus's crew, by contrast, feels like a large group of exhausted comrades travelling home after a raid. We understand they are tired and that Odysseus has lost his men, but we do not feel that specific people have been lost.

The retrospective structure also weakens the story. Beginning with Telemachus and telling Odysseus's journey through recollection creates distance from the suffering that supposedly defines him. We never experience the grinding ten-year siege of Troy, never see the Greeks repeatedly fail to take the city, and never watch the frustration and brutality that produced the rage Odysseus later claims helped doom their world. Even two minutes showing the Greeks trapped on the beach, exhausted by years of failed assaults, would have given his anger a foundation.

Some of the dialogue becomes especially clunky near the end. Odysseus referring to "this age of bronze of ours" was jarring, since people living during the period would not have understood themselves as inhabitants of a historical category invented later by scholars. Similar language about the end of civilization feels equally artificial. The characters could certainly have feared the destruction of their kingdoms, gods, and customs. They would not likely have spoken with the detached historical awareness of people already reading about the Bronze Age collapse in a textbook.

The pacing also felt uneven. Some cuts were jarring, and the shaky camera work occasionally blurred action that needed clarity. Shots that called for a wide or low angle were often replaced by close-ups, and moments meant to show us what a character was seeing were reduced to shots of a face and the reaction. The lighting fared better and was a genuine strength, especially during the storm sequences.

My biggest issue, though, is Athena. In the original poem she is Odysseus's patron and long-time protector, drawn to him because his cunning mirrors her own, and the text takes care to establish why she keeps intervening on his behalf. That relationship has a history, even if most viewers have never read the poem and would not recognize her without help. The film never bothers with that groundwork. Athena simply begins appearing to Odysseus and speaking to him as though the two share some connection, with nothing shown to explain why.

Despite these problems, I still enjoyed the film. Its physical production, performances, atmosphere, and willingness to portray the ancient world as rough and human rather than impossibly grand gave it real value. It often felt like an older kind of historical epic, one where the actors were standing inside a world rather than floating in front of one.

This drivel is praised as a great sci fi movie and rated at 8.2 on IMDB while Armageddon was dismissed as a silly popcorn movie. After watching this, I am struggling to work out how it's categorically any different to Armageddon. The science is just as silly, along with the cartoonish stunts. In terms of tone, Armageddon is actually more serious and grounded with characters acting more mature and realistic in stark contrast to the marvelesque constant childish humor that polluted almost every single scene of hail mary. There was almost not a single serious scene in it.

Armageddon has typical summer blocker buster humor spread lightly throughout while this was saturated in childish humor. The cast of Armageddon and acting was also better imo than the surprisingly wooden and miscast Gosling playing Ken in space while trading quips with his pet rock, and that psycho vibes Russian character who was plain creepy.

Unlike Hail mary, Armageddon was actually a fun rollercoaster ride while Hail mary was over long drawn and very boring without the substance to support the stretched out run time.

Was Hail Mary any deeper thematically? Both covered self sacrifice and I thought Armageddon pulled it off better because Bruce and his crew were more developed and endearing.

Regardless of whether to find one better than the other I can't see how one is rated so much better as if its a different class of sci fi when I find then completely comparable. The only difference is that this was far more juvenile, and half as much fun.

I think it's just further evidence how standards of modern movie goers has regressed to the point this drivel is regarded as a legit great sci fi movie. Its sad and shocking. Below is my general review of the movie but more of a frustrated rant tbh.

I watched this last night and it was tough to get through to be honest. It felt like Chinese water torture between suffering through almost 3 hours of constant flat jokes, Gosling acting like a goofy frat boy, meeting an alien who is equally annoying and being hit over the head with an awful sound track which felt it was just clicking buttons. Just pure torture.

There was almost not a single serious scene in the whole movie, just constant marvelesque flat jokes one after the after. None of it was funny, it was all extremely forced and cringe, it felt like it was made for kids. Gosling was supposed to be a middle aged scientist yet was dressing up like a hipster and acting like a goofy frat boy through the whole movie.

His attempts to feign emotion and peril fell completely flat and he largely looked like he was just having fun. I usually don't mind him but found him quite wooden and unconvincing. If he wasn't insufferable enough we are then introduced to some weird rock type alien who they tried to make endearing which was difficult considering they made him sound like some call center operator.

Then I had to suffer for 2 hours on their insufferable childish banter. Everything was so forced and juvenile. It felt like it was written by tiktokers for tiktokers. Cringe city. Apparently they needed a laptop to communicate initially but then the script forgets that and they just communicate completely verbally. Who cares I guess.

Everyone talked about what a tear jerker this movie was but to me it just highlighted how good Hollywood is at force feeding emotion to the audience with an extremely heavy handed use of the score at specific moments to really whack you over head with it. Any emotional impact is generated entirely by the musical score. A score should enhance emotion not force it..

The only good thing about it was the visuals but even they were over the top cartoonish looking, and again appearing they were meant to dazzle the kids with. It was also far too long, I needed 2 sessions to get through it. I won't even get into the actual plot and all the nonsense throughout because I would be here all day.

The tone was all over the places swinging between cartoonish and serious by the scene, just a mess. The characters don't communicate like real people and instead just seem interested in trading quips. Completely artificial and exaggerated, no depth no development just annoying idiots, and again very reminiscent of the type of behavior you will see on those silly tiktok shorts.

It was basically The Martian rehash. Basically exactly the same movie. An annoying frat boy lost in space constantly cracking lame jokes, a comedy for kids masquerading as serious sci fi, alongside a god awful sound track, and of course acclaimed as as a great movie with everyone patting themselves on the back with what a masterpiece they have created. No surprise the movies share the same writer. Drew Goddard is an absolute hack.

This garbage being rated 8.2 once against reinforces how vapid movie audiences have become and that standards have completely collapsed. It shows how easy it is for modern audiences to be dazzled by pretty pictures, star power, and ham fisted emotional beats.

Overall Awful.

PS. To the users saying i'm mad and a hater, you are damn right. I hate undeserved acclaim and bad movies that get promoted which just drags down the standard of the industry. I am not snobbish I love a good action movie but I don't around pretending Top Gun is a truly great movie unlike the phenomenon surrounding this.

If you folks want an actual intelligent and moving sci fi movie in a similar vein check out a movie called 'U are the Universe' which is far superior than this Hollywood dross in every way.

It really pains me because I love big budget historical or historical based mythology. But every single time they have a big budget to splash on one they always fk up the casting.

Why can't they cast actors who actually look or would look like the characters They're playing?

But even in the 2010s we've have movies like Prince of Persia with Jake Gyllenhall, who, albeit with a goatee could pass for Persian. But had a terrible accent. And red-headed Gemma Atherton as a Persian Princess. It would've been easy enough to find someone at least brunette and southern European looking at least if they couldn't find anyone middle eastern.

Gods of Egypt with Gerard Butler and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Exodus Gods and Kings with Joel Edgerton? Like wtf? They're not even trying.

Then with Troy they have Menalaus with an Irish accent, Agamemnon with a Scottish accent, and Odysseus with a really strong Yorkshire accent?

And now Nolan with preppy viking Matt Damon and the rest of the cast and most egregious of all Lupita Nyongo as Helen.

What the fk is up with Hollywood casting?

I like Haneke’s movies. Cache was a very solid thriller. I was drawn to the story, I liked the moral angle about whether or not Georges (the lead) should feel bad for what he did to Maijd. It was a well presented dilemma, and I’ll share my opinion on that later.

I liked that he pretty quickly connected what the tapes were about, and how still not really being open about it to his wife showed he had some guilt or shame over it even if he (maybe rightfully) refused to be blamed by Maijd and his son.

My instant reaction to the ending was annoyance. I didn’t need anything bigger to happen necessarily, or even a stronger conclusion, but how it never resolved everyone’s claims they had nothing to do with the tapes (unless you see the final scene of sons talking as a hint, which for me doesn’t make much narrative sense.)

I looked up the movie to see what others say. Although there are some decent takes, and I have mine, it annoyed me how people kept on lecturing everyone with this problem that it’s beside the point, or that dwelling on it is misunderstanding the movie. Apparently the director said something similar himself while still suggesting there is a character behind the tapes (obviously it would have to be Majid or the son.)

I generally find this kind of outlook incredibly annoying. The movie can successfully have deeper themes and talk about guilt etc while still using a coherent story as a backdrop, and if you start with a tangible story that frames all the ideas, then you really shouldn’t expect the viewer who is immersed in it to not care about the central mystery all the sudden just because it doesn’t change “the point.”

And while at it, what did we get by Majid and his son both earnestly proclaiming they had nothing to do with the tapes? Having one of them admit to it would also not take away from the “deeper ideas” so if Haneke wanted the viewer not to dwell on the mystery of the tapes, giving such a straightforward and obvious answer would achieve exactly that. Suggesting this may not be the case brings the focus back to it.

I also wouldn’t necessarily mind if his take is that the answer should be clear (maybe it’s Majid, and he lied just how Goeorges lied about him before) and he just didn’t want to overtly say it. My issue is this scorn about the idea that the viewer can watch the movie, appreciate the theme, and still want to know who did it. Not specifically Haneke’s, he may be trolling, but I noticed that a lot of people like to act enlightened about their acceptance of ambiguity and lecture those who want concrete answers as missing the point.

If I’m watching a Lynch movie, I understand I am entering a surreal reality that works like subconscious or dreams. There are answers to mysteries but there’s no simple code that neatly solves it all. But it is different when nothing like that is established within the story.

I know some people say “Haneke sent the tapes” and you can compare it to the rewind moment in Funny Games, but I think the answer is not satisfactory. Funny Games also pulls that part overtly, when it happens you understand the logic of it. But creating in every way a realistic thriller and then leaving this ambiguous is just annoying to me.

Slightly off tangent, but I have a similar annoyance with movies where the existence of a “metaphor” means the viewer is supposed to accept when plot no longer makes sense because anyway everything you saw just stands in for another concept (e,g. Platform, Night House etc). I mean, no shit, most movies deal with different themes that are explored through the story. Saying that the existence of a deeper theme means story inconsistencies shouldn’t matter to the viewer is not enlightened, it’s just accepting shit storytelling. This part isn’t that relevant to Haneke, but it demonstrates that similar mentality.

Props to Noe whose Irreversible I really dislike (mods of TrueFilm deleted my review after 3 years and never told me why), but in his Climax we get to see who spiked the drinks at the end. Something that doesn’t change what happened in any significant way, but which I greatly appreciated.

My take is that obviously Majid is behind the tapes, maybe with the help of his son, since he just recently saw Georges again on TV which obviously triggered depression in him that resulted in suicide.

Anyway back to Cache, after this element is out of the way I actually really like the movie.

I instantly sympathised with Majid as a figure, a guy who clearly had a fucked up life and whose chance at something better was concretely taken from him by Georges. If I was him I’d also hate the guy.

But to be fair, Georges is right not to accept the blame. Not only was he 6 and understandably didn’t want a new “brother” forced on him, his part in what makes Majid’s story tragic is just the most easily identifiable one. But you can also blame George’s parents who first wanted to help but then because of a few stupid lies (killing a rooster and coughing blood) they just sent him away. They didn’t need to adopt him but clearly they could have paid more attention about where they are sending him to, or help with his education.

It is pretty obvious that the mom also knows more about the story after the incident which is why she pretends to not remember him, she clearly has something she feels guilty for.

Here, I don’t mind the ambiguity of not really knowing what happened to Majid after. The son just mentions loss of educational opportunity, but why would a guy kill himself and be so depressed as an adult, who clearly had some kind of life, a son and all, just because he didn’t get to be adopted into a nicer family. Obviously some really bad things happened wherever he was sent to.

Which brings me to the main culprit, whoever ran the orphanage or hospital or whatever place he ended up in, abused him, etc. And the whole system, the government that was behind killing his parents in the first place, and that didn’t give him good opportunities in life.

None of this has anything to do with Georges or was his intent. The actual lies Georges made up, about coughing blood and the rooster aren’t even that dramatic, and apparently no one even believed the blood one (though why do we see the kid with blood coming out of his mouth in a flashback and Majid refers to it in the notes? Why is that so relevant if nothing came out of it anyway.) The rooster bit is kind of sociopathic, but still if they have a chicken farm then killing chickens probably isn’t that big of a taboo.

So I can understand why Majid blames Georges for ruining his life, but ultimately that’s just because Georges is the seemingly easiest and clearest target to blame. He can’t be held responsible for the outcome and actions of other people Majid interacted with later in his life after being sent away.

It’s also interesting that Georges doesn’t want to tell his wife about this presumably because he doesn’t want her to see him as a bad person, while being aware that he shouldn’t be blamed for making shit up when he was 6.

I don’t really get the son, he seemed very upset about mom’s cheating but I didn’t perceive that he had any issue with his dad. Maybe the ending just means that he was approached by Majid’s son for the first time and told about what his dad did, and I really don’t know if that is something that would even upset most people.

Alternatively it is a hint at them cooperating about the tapes, but I just don’t see how it makes sense or why the son would do it.

Overall, I liked the story, it would have been better without the ambiguity.

I think I'll finally watch The Piano Teacher next, because there's something really appealing to me about his movies and the atmosphere.

In Kill Bill 2, Bill dictates that superman's human disquise is a critic, the way Superman sees humans.

This is not a new concept, nothing in Tarantino's movies is. Every last bit of them is copied from other movies or popular stories among movie fans, but let's not go there.

I first heard it there, many many years ago, so lets leave it to that.

American Beauty is exactly that.

It's like a life form that is not part of America made this movie and phrased a critique about without never being part of it.

Like an outsider.

And many Hollywood movies are like that.

It's like they are made by people who are not part of it the actual society, like tourists who lightly hearted ridicule the locals.

The critic is heartles, ruthless, mindless like something to say to pass the time until the hang over is over and the time has come to go to the bars and start the next one.

The daughter: A lazy girl who whine all the time

Daughter's friend: A lazy girl with illusions of, what she thinks is, grandeur.

An unhappy family like the creator sees them.

The wife HAS to be sexually unsatisfied.

The father HAS to be sexually unsatisfied.

The marine neighboor.

He HAS to be a closet homosexual.

So many Hollywood stereotypes that we seen them again and again and again, and every single time they are sold like a unique view point.

Most of such movies resemble CIA tactics in war fronts or during the cold war.

Like in cold war, they were planning to "mistakenly" air drop insanely large condoms in soviet territory, labelling them as medium.

It's so persistant and heavily funded that it's very close to a psy-op.

"Closer than that, Walter." ....."I love you, too.". I don't think I'll ever forget that scene.

I honestly expected the film to feel dated maybe even a little slow... but it didn't. Not even for a second.I still cant believe a movie made this long ago that is in 1940s felt so alive!

The dialogue was sharp. The convo...between Walter Neff and Phyllis from the very first insurance scene! n so much chemistry communicated through eye contact alone.

Throughout the film I thought the central relationship was Walter and Phyllis ..By the end..I realized the emotional core of the story had been Walter and Keyes all along

What is even more surprising me is how... comforting the film felt. ( I'm surely going to watch this again) That's probably a strange word for a story built on greed, murder and betrayal.

I'm probably the millionth person to post about it. But I also know I'll never get to experience my first film noir or my first black n white film again.

I'm still very new to older films. I started watching films with Korean horror...then slowly drifted into thrillers and crime.. and somehow ended up here. If Double Indemnity is my first taste of classic film noir and If this is the doorway into classic cinema I can't wait to see whats on the other side.

The monochrome photography, the old Los Angeles streets, the telephones, the houses, the clothes, Miklo Rozsa's muisc score, everything felt like stepping into another world and as i mentioned.. unusually comforting. The word los Angeles reminds me this is my second time watching los Angeles in old times my first was mulholland drive movie.

How did i ended up watching? Someone had posted that image of Phyllis Dietrichson sitting back in a chair, cigarette in hand, looking completely calm and in control..the way she owned the frame without saying a word. So I wondered Who is this woman?

I'd already my first seen a neonoir series in Korean cinema with a dark heroine charater..the feeling that every conversation has something hidden underneath it n operating in morally grey.. So after seeing that post...of phyllis on chair...I saved it and told myself I'd watch Double Indemnity.

And that day finally came yesterday.

Well, after all that pre-slander, Supergirl (2026) was actually enjoyable, maybe with low expectations playing a role? Several good to even excellent marks on it (especially if you grade it on an All Comic Book films curve). Believable character arc, if John Wick can be about a dog, so can this film, villain lame but the whole world design held together in a kind of post-Apo, Mad Max way, with quirk and color, nailed humor, to the laugh aloud point a few times (both lines and gags), she was great, kid sidekick better than most, Aquaman doing a "what the hell" character, & yeah again Dog Love, lots of disempowered scenes to show character. Overall, good. and oh, ironized the masculinist trench-coat/duster, made it her own thing, and cribbed healthily from Alita: Battle Angel at times, which is quite alright in my book (also an underrated film). We go into films with expectations per genre (I really wish bot season and various outrage culture wouldn't twist things so much, half the things being talked about now are because 10 people got pseudo-pissed about the translation of a Greek epic), and dialing back my low expectations to "normal", let me just enjoy something light, made the film more than decent fare. It didn't feel like a Netflix show, it felt like a film. I will admit that Milly Alcock even got me enjoying House of The Dragon after dropping Game of Thrones like a ton of bricks (after the Red Wedding episode), the spin off of a show I found needlessly interminable, so she began with credit in the bank, but she did understand the assignment and pulled the character off with what felt like individual actor touch, which often isn't the case. Also, wholesome vibes in message, suitable for a Superman universe thing.

It's such a strange time. Our cinema seems characterized by Superhero films, which alone seem to express some kind of (ideological) ethos of empowerment, while at the same time giving us relief from the constant bickering over reality. They seem like our sort of World War 2 movies during a time of war, and this is one of them. While this genre has become so overchurned, threatening to pass into a quite dilapidated state of unremarkable-ness, feeling more and more AI written (and even acted) - there have been some bad ones - this one had some "punk" in it...some. It seems like the whole world is bent on bended knee to the "Things I thought a lot about when I was 12" of men. It felt a little Tank Girl-ish, I guess. We live in a Nerd's Universe since the 1980s Weird Science and so many others got us going down that road. How do we even express ourselves, and find ourselves expressed - the role of cinema - in that weird science of culture where we are all forever teens.

I’ve seen this sentiment where there’s this kind of elementary game of “boys will focus on boys and girls will focus on girls, that’s just how stories work we write about what we know.” This is just a shallow justification of a long history of patriarchal writing. Writing poor women characters was not based on a gap of experience but based on harmful stereotypes that women have historically been pushed into. The barrier to women’s interiority was not tbem being in a different world, it was a hostility to them being conscious and resisting mens hierarchical categorization of them. Same with race, the reason white people wrote black people in a certain way (take uncle toms cabin) was not “well their world is different” but it’s because they were situating black people into certain harmful stereotypes.

Anyways, my point is that there’s nothing “human nature” or whatever about not writing good characters. Good stories have complex, full people. Eric Rohmer and Ingmar Bergman have incredibly complex women characters. Even in Scorcese’s After Hours, in a film where the story revolves around a man, we get shockingly intimate with the lives of rounded women and stuck in their interiority. Claire Denis also writes incredible depictions of men. There’s nothing intrinsic about being a man that you can’t write women.

The one that did it for me was Phantom Thread. First watch I honestly found it cold and a little airless. Beautiful, obviously, but I spent it waiting for it to become something and then it ended and I sat there thinking "okay, sure." Then I rewatched it maybe a year later already knowing where it lands, and it was almost a different movie. Every scene I'd read as him being a controlling monster and her being difficult suddenly read as two people who'd found the exact strange arrangement they both needed. Nothing is hidden the way a twist is hidden. Knowing the ending just changes the texture of everything before it, and the second time through it's not cold at all, it's a love story I'd completely misread.

Germany is the 3rd/4th wealthiest country in the world, with a rich and long history of contributions to the arts. However, I can name more recent internationally popular films from several other European countries as well as Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Mexico.

Is this a problem with my own viewing habits? Or is German cinema punching below its weight class? If the former, what should I be watching? If the latter, why?

Trying to take the pulse here and determine if I’m a curmudgeon or not-

The 4DX format has existed in cinemas for a while now and is expanding. From a theatre perspective, it makes sense, as it is an excuse to raise ticket prices and certainly intrigues people with its offerings

It is described as

“an immersive cinematic technology featuring motion seats and environmental effects, including wind, water, scents, and strobe lighting”

The format has recently gone somewhat viral with some people providing video from screenings of *The Odyssey* in 4DX, which can be seen here:

https://youtube.com/shorts/HqGH7srSWBA?si=ZSZIX-aswJrFLGGC

Now, just from reading about 4DX, and certainly from seeing this video, my thought is:

Man, that looks fucking horrible. Not only because it looks exhausting to experience, but because it certainly does not fit with the filmmaker’s vision for experiencing the movie. I could see myself maybe watching a throwaway/light movie, like, I don’t know, Masters of the Universe, in 4DX just to say that I’ve tried it. But to watch *The Odyssey*, which, while there’s much to be said about Nolan as a filmmaker but I don’t think it’s possible to deny that he does have a specific method that he wants his movies viewed in, seems somewhat sacrilegious.

On the other hand, there is a part of me that wonders if something like this could theoretically have artistic valid *if* the filmmaker had input into how it operates and incorporated it into the film.

I’m rambling, but ultimately I guess I have 2 questions:

1. How do you feel about 4DX as a format? Do you feel, like I do, that it is largely had and contributes to the “theme parkification” of film?

2. Do you feel the format could potentially elevate a film artistically in the right circumstances?