sycasey 2.0

My experience with this movie over the years has let me to a working theory. It might just be my own projection, but I think it might be true for a lot of people: When you're a kid you identify with Marty. When you're an adult you identify with George. The movie works either way, which is the genius of it.

Evan makes the argument that you can't just watch one of the movies and feel like you got everything, but I disagree. It's very easy to watch just the first Back to the Future and feel completely satisfied, and I say that even with the "To Be Continued" tag added to the end. Even with that you just feel like it's a reference to old Flash Gordon type serials suggesting future adventures, which perfectly fits with the Lucas/Spielberg blockbuster school of filmmaking of the time. You don't necessarily NEED to see the next entry, though, because every major story point is wrapped up within the original running time. As Evan noted in the podcast episode, Back to the Future works like a Swiss watch. It's a perfect piece of storytelling: lean and propulsive, but also character-based and thematically coherent, lending it additional depth. All of the lead performances are note-perfect: Fox, Lloyd, Glover, Thompson, and Wilson never step wrong. Zemeckis might have never done a better job of perfectly marrying his technical wizardry to the story at hand. It's also one of the most rewatchable movies I own, because of how well-structured and executed it is. I start tearing up when George lays out Biff, then extends his hand to Lorraine, every time. The climactic action scene still gets your heart racing, even though you know what will happen. Easy yes for the first movie. Part 2 has a lot of interesting stuff in it, but Amy is right that almost everything memorable is in the first half, and probably mostly in the first third. Revisiting the school dance from Part 1 is an interesting technical exercise, but the emotional heft is not there; it's just Marty running around trying to get stuff. This gets at where Part 2 fails: you just don't care about the characters. It's probably true that this middle episode is largely the inspiration for Rick & Morty, but that's the problem: Doc behaves almost exactly like Rick Sanchez, only unlike in the cartoon that's not done to make a satirical point. Upon this most recent viewing, I was struck by what an asshole he is, just yanking Marty and Jennifer here and there with no regard for his prior principles re: time travel and the ethical implications. The cliffhanger ending falls flat because this movie fails to make you care about Doc's fate. There are a lot of cool ideas and design elements here, but it doesn't work as a story. Thankfully, Part 3 rights the ship by returning Doc to a principled man who agonizes when faced with a situation that makes him want to abandon his principles. It's nowhere near as packed with details as Part 2, but it also takes the time to set up the characters and deepen the relationship between the leads. It's got more heart, and it works better as a stand-alone story. Marty's character trait of not wanting to back down from a challenge is introduced much more organically here than in Part 2 (Buford Tannen coming up with more creative ways to call him a chicken), and I think it's paid off well despite how clumsily the previous movie started this little sub-thread. Yes, it's mostly an excuse for Zemeckis to get to make the Western he wanted to make, but there's enough emotional and thematic content here for Part 3 to justify its own existence. So how does this shake out? Part 2 is more interesting to think about and discuss after the fact, but not all that much fun to watch. Part 3 is a more functional story and easier to watch, but not as interesting to talk about. Neither is a Canon movie. Part 1 only!

There's no name, it's just "You are the winner." But yes, definite bingo point for that.

I'd argue that Part 2 is better for the "mythology" of the series or whatever, but Part 3 works much better as a stand-alone movie. Regardless, only Part 1 is a truly great movie on its own.

It's going to take a lot to convince me that anything other than just the first movie is Canon-worthy.

Good movie, but I'm not seeing where it's Canon-worthy. Cronenberg has plenty of other films that are more deserving. It's not a hugely influential movie, and there are plenty of other "devil-child" horror films with more cultural cache. The argument in the podcast was that it was an interesting film about a "woman protagonist," but is she? I'd argue that within the structure of the film we are meant to see Art Hindle as the main protagonist (driving the investigation into his daughter's injuries), with the wife and psychologist as the antagonists preventing him from getting what he wants. Yes, it's true that the wife is eventually revealed as the one who controls the monster children, but I'm not sure how structurally that places her in a different position than a Bond villain. The villains, however interesting, are not the protagonists of the Bond movies. Anyway, The Brood is worth seeing as an early Cronenberg entry that showcases some of what he can do, but let's be honest: his 80s work is where it's at.

So are we SURE that this ship isn't just populated by porn actors on some kind of intergalactic tour? Just consider the evidence: 1. No one can wear an outfit that isn't unusually revealing. 2. Students are interested in boning each other at the weirdest times (including while standing over a corpse). 3. The only artificial life form on board (Shoe Head) is strangely obsessed with having sexual organs. 4. Their holodeck seems to have a pre-programmed setting featuring naked women talking about pre-marital sex. 5. Everyone on board seems totally incompetent at science or military strategy or whatever else they are supposed to be doing. Maybe this is actually a troupe of porn actors. Some of them are students learning the craft. You thought it was just a bad joke when the professor screamed "You pass!" at the end of a sexual encounter with a student? Nope, that was literally part of the class. These folks travel around in their spaceship giving performances at various locales, and the one time they got curious about exploring something down on Earth they wound up bringing a famous undead serial killer on board. Bad luck, that.

Only used in the Jason X trailer, but given the podcast content, I think this needs to be here.

Tough vote for me this week. I do like this movie a good deal and found it just as entertaining this time as I did upon my original viewing in 2007 (U.S. release). I disagree with a lot of Amy's take on the aesthetics. I would argue that a lot of the atonal choices in The Host are intentional: the music acting in counterpoint to the content of the scene, the tone swinging wildly from high-stakes drama to broad comedy, etc. This is a film about confusion and incompetence in the face of existential terror. Bong doesn't want you to know exactly how to feel at any given moment, so he's keeping you on your toes. I'll admit that it's a risky high-wire act to make a film this way, and I won't say it's 100% successful in every scene, but in this case the director also flashes so many impressive formal chops in terms of shot selection, editing, framing, and the actors' performances that I come away with the impression that he largely got what he wanted. The only thing I do think they'd do better with a remake are the effects. Even for a 2006 film I thought the effects were sub-par (just compare this to War of the Worlds or something), but I also largely forgave this element because of The Host being a foreign film with a much lower budget than the typical Hollywood blockbuster. I'm surprised the budget wasn't brought up at all in the podcast episode, given all the carping about how the monster looked. They made this thing for only about $11 million! The effects don't look that bad when you think about it having about 1/10th the budget of a Spielberg movie. So anyway, I like this movie a lot and would easily give it a recommendation to most filmgoers. Does that make it Canon? Not necessarily. The Host is very good, but I don't think it's an OUTSTANDING movie clearly at the top of its craft. Nor do I think The Host is particularly influential; it's a riff on classic monster movies more than an influence on future ones. I'm also not entirely certain it's Bong Joon-Ho's best film. It is, however, one of the most popular films to come out of South Korea and make a sizeable dent with Western audiences, and it's extra impressive that it does so while delivering a fairly scathing criticism of the U.S. government and its foreign exploits. Given all of that, I'll say The Host is a major milestone for Korean cinema and a solid gateway for appreciating filmmakers from that country. For that reason I vote a soft yes.

Well, looks like Suspiria will not match Z as the next unanimously-supported entry.

I liked this a lot when I saw it in theaters. But is it Canon? We'll see!

This movie is so clearly a major influence on all of horror cinema that i'd say it's a yes even if I didn't personally enjoy it. The designs and audio-visual filmmaking strategies found here are essential Canon. But I did enjoy it and find it effective, despite the overall narrative not particularly holding together. I think that, as with David Lynch, there is a kind of functionality WITHIN the scenes that works beautifully, even if the larger context is missing. I remember watching Mulholland Dr. when it first came out. I couldn't have told you exactly what was "happening" in a logical sense at any point in the movie, but within any individual scene it was very easy to follow the characters' decisions and emotional journeys, because they were simple ones and easily tracked: an actress trying to get a role, a director being threatened to cast someone else, a guy being scared by a monster behind a restaurant, etc. It was the same with Suspiria. Even if you couldn't explain the whole plot from start to finish, the individual scenes always seem to work: you understand the characters' emotions and the decisions they make based on those, and that makes it work on a simple, primal level. I'd argue that being able to understand it on that base level makes it all the more unsettling when the structure of the movie itself seems to spin off its axis and become unhinged. The film draws you in and then twists everything up. It's a great reminder of why movies work by speaking to an emotional truth and are not logic puzzles.

This movie really was a great time capsule of the weird mishmash of popular musical styles that was the mid-to-late 90s.

Some more Virtuosity gems:

Let's also just take a moment to admire the fashion choices for Denzel Washington in this movie.

I'm just wondering if I missed when anyone explained to Parker how he could extract the "soul orb" or whatever from Sid's body. He wastes so much time firing his gun at a computer program that is unaffected by bullets that you assume he just doesn't know how else to deal with this thing. Maybe there is one throwaway line about having to remove Sid's "program" from his body (I assume this was ADR-ed in later), but no one tells Parker that it's in the back of Sid's neck, right? Yet at the crucial moment, he KNOWS. He just knows.

In honor of Virtuosity:

I will say that the difference for me in Wolf of Wall Street is that Scorsese's presentation does more to make it clear that he is satirizing the culture and implicating the audience, especially the final shot of the expectant audience members listening to Belfort's speech. We see how the lead character makes choices and brings the negative consequences upon himself. But Scorsese is also a more precise and considered filmmaker and seems to have a better handle on cause-and-effect than I saw in Martyrs.

I am enjoying the podcast guest's engagement here on the forum. More please!

Looks like you can find it on some legitimate free streaming sites, if you don't mind it being interrupted by ads. http://tubitv.com/movies/326260/suspiria https://www.popcornflix.com/movie/18-46520584-8fc4-4181-abd5-8ba50d45199d-suspiria/details

I agree with Amy that the filmmaking in the middle section is not super-impressive. Maybe that's because I'm not a filmmaker like our esteemed guest, but while I appreciate the discussion of color grade, my larger issue with this section is editing and mise-en-scene. I found it a long parade of extreme close-ups and unmotivated quick-cut " " editing, and it made me slump in my seat and check out of the movie for a little while. I don't see how the filmmaking helps tell the story here, apart from making everything feel "intense." The other problem for me is that I don't see why all of this is necessary to make the point seemingly made at the end of the film, about enduring pain and torment for the sake of seeing something previously unknown. No one endures anything until forced to do so; the whole segment is about people trying (and failing) to escape a bad situation. The movie is constantly throwing new plot turns and character details at us in this middle section, but to me it feels scattershot, like a filmmaker throwing things at the wall. It's not a satisfying A-to-B-to-C build towards a climax. The last segment in the basement dungeon is better, but also feels like a completely different movie about a methodical torture chamber, almost entirely divorced from the frantic revenge plot we'd seen to that point. This all gets me to the larger issue I have with this movie, which is that while there is an interesting intellectual discussion to be had from the material presented in it, I don't see a consistent process or approach from the filmmakers to lead us to that discussion. There are a lot of interesting strands, but the movie doesn't pick any of them up until very late, and then doesn't tie them together with everything that happened in the earlier scenes. What I get from Laugier in Martyrs is a general assumption that just because he made you FEEL something, that's enough. Yes, I felt true disgust and horror while watching this movie. But to me that's not the end goal, that's just a tool to get the audience to a larger point you want to make about life, art, humanity, etc. I can see that in the work of some of the other filmmakers mentioned in the podcast (Noe, Denis, Von Trier, etc.). I can also see that in some other classic horror films that I'd easily support for Canon status. I don't see that in Martyrs. It's a no. P.S. It seemed to be taken as a given that this was an influential film for modern filmmakers. First of all, that seems like a shaky claim for any film from 2008. But secondly, what other films have shown clear influence from this? The most notable element would seem to be the torture chamber at the end, but Saw was four years ahead of this and a lot more culturally impactful (if maybe not as good a movie). What new cinematic trends came out of Martyrs?

Thanks to Paul for choosing me as the winner this week, however I must make another correction . . . It's not the first time I've been chosen for the honor. Paul also selected me as the winner for noting that the guy who played the uncle in Airborne was also an actor on Saved by the Bell.

Just watched this movie. This warning doesn't tell the half of it. Yeesh.

Yeah, some of this argument bugged me a bit, this idea that Castle was a more worthwhile filmmaker because of his sincerity and also being "first" to get there before Hitchcock. Isn't this just like the Internet commenter who is proud of saying "First!" on a YouTube video? To me it's much more impressive to see Hitchcock doing the same thing (being a schlocky audience-pleaser) but doing it MUCH better than anyone else. I'm also bothered by the glossing-over of the story problems in this movie, with comments like: "Castle isn't a big-picture guy." To me that's a big problem, if a movie doesn't have a clear unifying purpose. I think you can make an argument for this having a more meta-textual "big picture," with people on screen speaking directly to the audience and the movie basically pausing itself to ask that the audience imagine the Tingler being a real thing. But even given that, the inconsistent motivations of the characters are a problem. Anyway, that all probably sounds harsh, so I'll also note that I did enjoy this movie. I also see many reasons why it's not exactly near the pinnacle of all-time great and/or influential movies.