grudlian.

"If God's on our side, he'll stop the next war"

Yeah, that's how I normally hear it. I should have said "to me, Oscar worthy means..."

"Oscar worthy" means the best movie (or whatever the category) of the year or realistically in the conversation for best of the year. People obviously disagree on what that means or what comes that includes. Sometimes it's a really tough year with a lot of great potential nominees; sometimes it isn't. I really hate hate hate "can you believe X hasn't won an Oscar????" Were they the best any year? Give me the year they should have wom and what their competition was. Consistently great doesn't mean you're the best and second best doesn't win Oscars (setting aside that the Oscars make poor decisions occasionally).

It happened! Paul pronounced my name correctly! I also want to add that libraries often have free streaming services. They don't have the library of Amazon Prime, Netflix or Hulu. They have had some hard to find movies that How Did This Get Made has covered. So, you should definitely check out your local library (but do not check out the lone copy of Snowman that's been sitting there for months until I can borrow it first).

In this case, the manipulation is that it's there to serve emotion but it makes no logical sense. To use Paul's example, look at old man Ryan's scenes. The family goes to Arlington cemetery with him but they are 20 feet behind him the entire time? Why? The real answer is it looks good to have him framed that way on screen. But logically, the family wouldn't move in a singular clump except for Ryan several feet away. At least not for any length of time. Why does it seem like Ryan has never told this story to his wife? I get that a lot of people come back from war never telling their story. I had two grandfathers and a grandmother who never said a single word to me about WWII and one grandfather had a small shrine in his living room to his platoon. So, I get it but it seems unusual that a man who lost three brothers, had a mission to specifically save him never mentioned it? It doesn't ring true to me. But he just so happens to have this breakdown here? He brought his whole family to Arlington cemetery and never told anyone? I think it works in the moment but doesn't hold up to any analysis. Or straight up going from old man Ryan's eyes to Tom Hanks? We all think that's Tom Hanks in the beginning. It's basic transition and Spielberg knows that and knows what he's implying. We can say that is a twist or some other defense but it really is just lying to the audience. Why? To make their deaths shocking and, in my mind, more "emotional." The movie does this a lot by trying to evoke emotion that it hasn't really earned. I could say "in this scene it does X and in that scene it does Y to trick the audience into feeling something that feels false" but it's easier to say "manipulative". I get all movies do this to an extent. A swell of strings can heighten emotion and that is technically manipulation. There's a difference between "enhancing" and "manipulating" in my mind. This movie is manipulating by lying to us or doing things that are emotional but not logical.

Yeah, all movies manipulate but Spielberg in particular. It's just that he's especially good at it. So, we (normally) either don't notice or don't care. There's the story about Jaws where someone told Spielberg the tank wouldn't physically explode like that and Spielberg's response was something like "I've had them for two hours. If I say it explodes, they'll believe it."

It's manipulative but every Spielberg movie is. It's arguably what he does best. I agree with every criticism everyone had of this movie but it really worked on me this viewing. I think I just needed a really maudlin, schmaltzy movie when I watched this. I suspect I'll probably forget most of this in a few weeks because, even though it worked, I'm not expecting much long term impact. I definitely saw this in theaters and I genuinely didn't remember much of anything (I didn't know everyone died, for example, which is kind of the whole point). I was also kind of meh about the movie in general.

I'm glad whoever did this didn't put them front and center.

I'm going to feel very dumb watching 4 Twilight movies if I can't make the HDTGM Classics in April.

Is Saturday an option? I've never seen Cool As Ice and I can make it on Saturday if there is a willing host. If not, no big deal.

I won't be able to attend this rabbit show. So, it doesn't matter to me. If we're doing Twilight next month, I'm going to at least try to watch the first three between now and then.

I just want to jump on the rabbit complaint train. The is some weird formatting that cuts off the edges of the chat so I miss the first/last few characters of everyone's responses. I sent a help request to rabbit and they never responded. I've tried resizing every window and it never fixes it. I can still mostly read everything but it's annoying since their old format seemed to work just fine. Are we talking about Breaking Dawn for this week or for next month?

There is a lot of truth in the queen's attitude here. I don't know about Queen Elizabeth's beliefs personally but just people in general have this attitude of "my great great grandmother was Cherokee. So, let me weigh in on the plight of the Native American people." As for the ginger thing, I have a close relative who has claimed being oppressed because they are left handed. So, the movie was less tacky than that at least.

This sounds very interesting and I've never heard of it. Not sure how well Neil Young and Devo go together but this came out the same year Trans did which is the most Devo-ish album of Neil Young's career. So, this could work.

Shallow Grave is a great one. Probably my favorite Danny Boyle movie.

They bring up that the movie should have showed the wedding but this movie came out a week before their wedding. Their engagement was announced in November 2017. That means this movie, from conception to release, was done in under five and a half months. I don't know a lot about how long a typical Lifetime movie production but that's very fast for a regular movie. It doesn't excuse the movie's faults, but it does explain most of them.

I hadn't seen this since I was in high school. I also probably would have been very welcoming of a Mrs. Robinson to put my thoughts in perspective. To be honest, I didn't like the movie much back then. A lotr probably sailed over my head but I had a very "that's it?" kind of reaction to this classic. I expected to like it a lot this time and it fell kind of flat. I can see the quality. I can understand it all intellectually but it didn't grab me emotionally. I never laughed. I wasn't ever moved by anything. It was just there despite the quality of everything.

Please, no

Does anyone know how directe any of this was? As someone who doesn't follow the royal family or Harry or Meghan, a lot of this was surprising to me (for example, I didn't know Meghan was an actress or biracial). I assume all the private conversations are made up but I assume gossip columns covered all their public stuff right? The part about Kate Middleton saying they can't have opinions is, I believe, based in truth. The royal family isn't supposed to publicly express opinions on governmental matters. I think it works similarly to the US and how Ruth Bader Ginsburg commented on Trump becoming president. It's not illegal but it's a very big break in traditional decorum.

I don't actually ever watch the ceremony because I hate award shows. I just check the results. I did watch Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper perform on youtube though because I love that song. That was really nice.

Also, as Cameron said, I don't think anyone is a villain or evil in this movie even though she is sexually assaulting Benjamin in my mind. I just wish this had been addressed. They mention Benjamin being creepy but Mrs. Robinson gets a tossed off "Ben is prey" but gets a lot of "sexy and confident"

I think she's doing grooming behavior that a lot of child molesters do. Ask for something innocent like a ride home, then up the stakes a bit every time they finally agree. I admit that Ben is old enough and intelligent enough. But I think he's not emotionally intelligent enough. Maybe he's just socially awkward but he seemed emotionally stunted to me (not that I have any credentials to dismiss that). I don't like getting too far into the gender reversal since it's 1. a reliable dog whistle for men's rights activists and 2. ignoring the difference in power dynamics between the genders. So, there isn't a 1:1 comparison in my mind but, as Cameron has said and you've acknowledged, we probably would react differently if they were reversed. Despite all that, I also think the movie wants the audience to think this is initially what Benjamin wants and is good for him. Mrs. Robinson is a matronly version of a manic pixie dream girl. Benjamin secretly wants a woman, any woman, to come on to him because he's incapable of being the man he wants to be. So, even though he verbally says no, I think he wants it to happen (and I'm very aware of how dangerous this all is but I think the movie intends us to think it).

Keeping in mind I don't particularly like this movie, I think what is here in the movie is interesting. I don't know that it needs to pick a side to come down on. I don't think it needs to comment on anything. I think it has some great character moments and the way characters clash whether that's generation, society, gender, experienced/naive, etc. I think it's presenting a lot of good stuff. I don't think it needs to judge the characters or their actions. I think the is enough here to enjoy even if it's not explicitly condemning the characters.

Are these nominations a joke? I'm kind of busy at work and can't do a long list of complaints. I'll say this though: Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody, Vice and Black Panther for best picture? Get real.

I don't have an inherent problem with "why him" being asked. I agree with you about them having shared emotions and being kind of rudderless. That's a perfectly fine reason to make a film about two broken people finding each other. But their commonalities would only be apparent to either of them after the relationship started. They definitely didn't know that before they start having sex. I think the "why Benjamin?" is answered the same way most sexual assaults can be answered: they thought they could. Mrs. Robinson might have wanted a dozen better looking guys. She knew she could get Benjamin whereas she might think Benjamin's more desirable peers were more likely to rebuff her advances. Again, I don't have an issue with a movie addressing any of these things. I have an issue with why didn't Amy and Paul discuss the sexual assault in this at any length. And it seems like no criticism I've ever seen of this movie ever brings it up. And I know Paul knows better because stuff he's said in HDTGM episodes. I'm sure Amy knows better (and I think that's part of the stuff she's hinted at by having problems with the movie) but I'm only familiar with her work on Unspooled. So, it's disappointing.