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doxrus

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Posts posted by doxrus

  2. Posted

    More things I take issue with:

    1) Would you trust your life in cyberspace to a dog, putting his slobber and teeth marks over a vital computer disc?

    2) The filmmaker want us to believe this dystopia is filthy (for the poor, anyway), but I'm not buying it. Even the seemingly grimy street scenes look like a slightly messy theme park. The kids have very theatrically placed smudges on their cheeks, and their subway car-home looks pretty clean to me.

    3) Our hosts mentioned the ripoffs of Indiana Jones, Stars Wars and other films. The street scenes are so blatantly stolen from Blade Runner.

    4) During the escape from Virtual Light HQ, Trace's weak punches have no effect on a guard. Yet he somehow has the strength, with no leverage (he's being held in the air by the guard) to rip a video monitor off the wall and smash it over the guy's head.

    5) One of the "camera-lasers" controlled by Jobe, cuts through a very thick table, but only puts a slice through Trace's shirt and barely scratches his arm.

    6) Note that the headsets for the virtual world demo are called "Eye Phones"

    7) One more line of stupid dialogue: I don't remember who said it, but when the team plans to fight back against Jobe, someone says, "We've got to make him angry enough to destroy himself." What? Why would he do that? This is your plan?

  3. Posted

    So much to unpack in the movie. For starters, here are some dumbass lines of dialogue:

    1) When Peter first sees Dr. Trace, he says, "You're alive! I thought you were dead," obviously expecting some kind of explanation. But Trace just says, "No time for that." How long would it take him to tell Peter how he survived?

    2) Walker to Senator Greenspan: "My lap is your lap, Senator."

    3) When Jobe begins wreaking havoc, one news report concludes with "Few see an end to the continuing chaos." Hey, tell us about the ones who do!!

    4) When his guards begin bailing on him, Walker tries to stop them, with "Stay here! You can't go anywhere!" Huh? What does that mean? Strangely, these lines are looped, by what sounds like a different actor, with an accent, no less.

    5) When Jobe presents his vision of utopia, he says, "Live in Eden. Without hunger. Without famine. Without temptation." Well, I guess if there was no hunger, you'd pretty much not have a famine problem. And no temptation? Are people really yearning for that? Is that all this wondrous cyber world has to offer?

  10. Posted

    So much to unpack in this film:

    1) It utilizes the racist trope of "ethnic" people who utilize or connect with occult forces: The Romanian grandmother who applies the curse; the Black street psychic ("Fixer") who shows Kaz his true nature; and Latinx Sonia, who has visions of the Mangler's attack on her sister.

    2) Denny is rather infantilized. She has dolls on her bed, wears bear-footed slippers, and has a skirt with big appliqued Scottish terriers and fire hydrants.

    3) Denny's position is a metaphor for domestic violence: even when she finds out that her Kaz turns into a monster when aroused, she thinks things will still work out, and that she can "fix" him. He later complains that she's trying to change him, a common male grievance.

    4) Phil's fake monster hand just seems to be a clunky attempt at a red herring - that he's the Mangler but a "regular" man who disguises his crimes as those from a monster. There's no diegetic need for him to use that hand when kidnapping Denny, it's just for the audience. This is all soon dropped when we find he's an actual monster.

    5) Yes, there is a castle in Central Park - Belvedere Castle, of course not as large or elaborate as Phil's.  But how is there a Monster Castle in the middle of Central Park that no one has noticed? ff-th@2x-Belvedere-Castle.jpg.d6891cb1c18514e1950d7373832eb61a.jpg

     

    • Like 4

  11. Posted

    23 hours ago, DrGuts1003 said:

    I was curious how everyone got home after the battle at the castle considering Kaz blew up everyone’s car with that dynamite.

    Did he have absolutely terrible aim? Or does Kaz secretly hate cops?

    He didn't know his own monster strength, and threw it long, past the water.

    • Like 2

  12. Posted

    My first thought on seeing Signor's hair coat was Buffalo Bill's "skin suit" in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (the book was released three years after this film!) Add to that the creepy "hair" hallway entrance to the child slave labor factory, and you have one deeply unsettling, scarifying "children's" film. Wearing body parts of your kidnapped victims? 

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    Why does Connie's pube hair vanish at some point? Did I miss something? Did he command it not only to stop growing, but to recede?

    If Signor was selling all those brushes, were artists everywhere creating magical paintings, too? That would flood the market, and make Signor's paintings worthless.

    If the homeless ghosts felt so grateful to Michael for his largesse and gave him the formula, why did they give him "a scare" to make him bald in the first place?

    Is the Dad mentally ill, or just a bizarre parent? When Michael first becomes bald, Dad tries to comfort him as if he were a two- or three-year-old: instead of just saying, "Don't worry, it will grow back" (as you would to a 12-year-old), he has Michael feel the stubble on his face to explain how hair grows back? And what is with Dad's hair? It's not even a comb-over, it's just an tangled, unruly mess. Perhaps a symbol of his completely messed up life?

    Jason said both of Signor's brothers spoke with French accents. Though it's terrible, the Doctor's accent sounded German to me. Is that supposed to be some kind of a joke: three brothers who live in the same city speak with different accents?

    Signor's child slave labor factory reminded me of THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T. (1953)

    • Like 2

  15. Posted

    23 hours ago, E.Lerner said:

    The implication is that the Masters of Disguise are essentially the Illuminati — capable of invisibly controlling world events. I think that's what they were going for with their iconography and quasi-magical abilities as well.

    But they're just one family, with a closely guarded tradition that even Pistachio was unaware of. It's a conundrum: they're involved in international events, yet their numbers are small - the film presents Fabbrizio as the only working member of the clan. Not exactly a global network. And if they've worked around the world for centuries, you'd think they'd have lost their accents. Also, if you're a super secret spy family, why not blend in to your surroundings, rather than stand out in this way?

  16. Posted

    Okay, the Disguiseys are supposed to be Italian. Pistachio was probably born and raised in the US. But one of them impersonated Abe Lincoln. This means that they'd been in the United States for at least four generations before Grandfather (Harold Gould). What gives? Are there American and Italian branches of the family? Did they come to the US in the early 19th century, then return to Italy late in the century? Incidentally, Harold Gould is only 17 years older than James Brolin, and Brolin only 15 years older than Carvey. Those Disguiseys breed young. But Pistachio is going to be the outlier, at least 47 when he has a kid with Jennifer. 

     

    • Like 3

  17. Posted

    I've survived through so many awful films, but I couldn't stomach this one after about 15 minutes, and had to turn it off. The misogyny and overdetermination of June's "ugliness" was just too much to bear.  And - who the hell holds a torch for their first grade crush, not having seen them since then? Is this guy so pathetic and out of ideas that his best plan is to chase after someone from elementary school? 

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    On 8/4/2019 at 9:21 AM, Cameron H. said:

    Team Sanity is definitely taking a more analytical approach to the film, and Team Fred is absolutely more emotional. Logically, we should be separating the debate from quality and content. If we did that, I’m sure we would all agree that the movie isn’t particularly well made. We would also probably (mostly) all agree on the writer’s intention. The problem is that these two things have become inextricably linked in the debate, because for Team Fred, the message is more important than the quality and vice versa for Team Sanity. No one is really going to give up their position one way or the other because it all comes down to what’s more important to the individual.

    Yes – we’re having parallel debates which can never meet. The minute someone says, “This film means a great deal to me” regardless of its actual artistic merit, or defends the film's (ostensible) flaws as integral to that meaning, there is no response, and the critical discussion is over (You can't say, "No, the film doesn't mean that for you")  If we want to meet on common ground, we need to agree: what kind of discussion is this?

    • Like 3

  20. Posted

    20 minutes ago, Rollo Tomasi said:

    I’m not sure how serious Paul and Casey were being in their defenses of the mom, but it definitely isn’t necessary to side with the mom to be Team Sanity.  The main reason (in my view) to be Team Sanity is that whatever interesting ideas or noble intentions the filmmakers had, they didn’t execute them well.  The movie wanted to be a broad zany grossout comedy and an empathetic exploration of the difficulties of childhood (and how those difficulties bleed into adulthood), but for me those two goals undermined each other and made for a strange and unpleasant movie.

    Team Sanity is not siding with the mom, or Charles, or anyone. We think the film is crappy, and is not actually presenting any of the themes Team Fred says it does.

    • Like 7

  21. Posted

    Regarding whether Fred is in young Lizzie's mind or an independent entity - Fred does some things that would not have been possible for Lizzie to accomplish. For example, the massive amount of mud Fred dumps on the dining room table. And if we look at young Lizzie's behavior from her mother's point of view - Lizzie is not just acting out or misbehaving, she is seriously disturbed if not completely unbalanced. Yes, her family life isn't the greatest, but it's not as if she's living the life of Sybil or Carrie.

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    9 hours ago, Rollo Tomasi said:

    Yes, there were times during the podcast when I felt like we were being gaslit by June and Jason.  Two co-hosts of a bad movie podcast were acting like they were unfamiliar with the prospect of a movie undermining its own intentions or being internally inconsistent.  I don't doubt that we were supposed to believe that Fred was an extension of Lizzie's psyche, but as Triple Lindy notes above, the movie is constantly undermining that by portraying Fred as a wacky mischief maker with his own rascally agenda coming from some alternate universe of imaginary friends.  (I would guess it was also on their minds to leave enough existential independence for Fred to do a Drop Dead Fred 2.)

    IMAO, there are two possible explanations for June and Jason's apologia of the film. One, that they really believed what they were saying, and only dug in their heels in deeper when challenged by Casey and Tall. I can understand an aggressive and passionate defense of FORBIDDEN GAMES or PAN'S LABYRINTH, but this film? It just doesn't deserve the effort.  Or, two, it was all an act, and perhaps as mentioned elsewhere here - all of HDTGM is just an put-on. Really, are we to believe that June has based her entire career on this film? Can we accept that the screenwriters (Davis and Fingleton) and director (de Jong) were somehow able to create the masterpiece that June and Jason describe, when they exhibit nothing even close to it in the rest of their careers?

    • Thanks 1

  23. Posted

    Team Sanity. I think June and Jason are defending the movie based on its themes, not on the filmmaking. Because they love the themes so much, they're far too forgiving of the film's lousy writing, acting, direction, etc. And they're also giving the screenwriters too much credit for what they perceive the film to be saying. Do they really believe that the writers of HURRICANE HEIST - and not much else - have this much insight into female psychology and gender relations? And when challenged by Paul and Casey on points they can't defend, they just fall back weakly on "It's only a movie."

    • Like 2

  25. Posted

    After Joe "kills" his father, Pete (Peter Fonda) says they're going to bury Mike in potter's field, which as everyone knows (except maybe the screenwriter), is a graveyard for unknown or indigent people, often with unmarked plots. The next scene is a normal funeral at a regular cemetery, with a standard headstone for Mike. This is not potter's field.

    • Like 5
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