Board 8 > B8 Movie Club Topic 2 - Into the Little Shop of Fargo Willy's Machete Wonderland

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Vote for any and all movies you would be interested in seeing for the next week (~Mar. 26th, NA). The movie with the most overall votes wins. You may rank your votes from most preferred to least (do not rank movies you would not vote for) so I don't have to @ you back in case of a tie. If you do not intend to vote and are fine with whatever wins, please reply with "No Vote" so there is as little of a waiting period as possible. If you list multiple movies in your vote but you are not ranking them, please include "Not Ranked" along with your vote (I will assume they are ranked otherwise). Please vote by Friday, Mar. 26th, 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968)
It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
Perfect Blue (1997)
Waking Life (2001)
When the Wind Blows (1986)

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No Vote

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Murder by Death - 5/10

You know, I was expecting a lot worse but outside of the obvious I didn't think it was all that bad. Not sure if being unfamiliar with the detectives in the movie for the most part, beyond recognizing their names, made for a better movie or a worse one.

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When the Wind Blows (1986)
Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968)
It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
Perfect Blue (1997)

I've seen Perfect Blue, think I gave it a 9/10 on MAL, but that was only a year or so ago so I'll go ahead and put it on the bottom of the list. I really like it but would prefer something new to me.

Waking Life, or at least the trailer I watched on youtube, was really fucking with my eyes. Flashing lights have kind of bothered me for a few years now, haven't seen an optometrist in years so not sure if there's something going on or it's just "You're getting older and you stare at screens all day long".

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kateee posted...

when was the last time you watched it?

Probably over ten years ago, and now that you mention it I haven't seen Clue in even longer so I shouldn't say that's a good movie either

When The Wind Blows (1986)
Waking Life (2001)
Perfect Blue (1997)
It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968)
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It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
Waking Life (2001)


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question for everyone: do you have any examples of movies you significantly changed your mind about after revisiting them after a long time? i think the usual question is something like "what's a movie you loved in your childhood but hated as an adult?" but that drastic of a change is hard for me to imagine (although do share if you have something that fits!)

i just looked over the list of movies i've seen and pretty much every movie i really liked as a kid, i pretty much still like now (The Lion King, Toy Story, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS)

biggest change of mind i've had about a movie is probably still Jennifer's Body but that's still only like a 2 point change

Waking Life
Perfect Blue


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I loved horror movies growing up, but watching a lot of the older Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street movies these days feels like a chore. The same goes for a lot of the old Giant Bug/Creature genre of movies because the monsters are so hilariously fake I can't enjoy them. I used to watch them with my Dad growing up and I can even remember back then him laughing about how bad they looked. I've avoided rewatching Jason and the Argonauts for this very reason, it was one of my favorite movies as a kid but I'm certain I won't feel the same now so I don't want to bother screwing up a good thing.

Really struggling with the opposite, can't think of any movies I disliked at first but ended up enjoying after watching again later, mostly because if I don't like something the first time around it's probably going to be a very rare exception that I bother watching it a second time.

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Perfect Blue

It's been near the top of my watch list for a long time

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Camden posted...

Really struggling with the opposite, can't think of any movies I disliked at first but ended up enjoying after watching again later, mostly because if I don't like something the first time around it's probably going to be a very rare exception that I bother watching it a second time.

yeah i think this would mostly be for classics i checked out when i was younger and just didn't 'get'

No Vote

kateee posted...

question for everyone: do you have any examples of movies you significantly changed your mind about after revisiting them after a long time?

I didn't jive with Burn After Reading when I first saw it. Years later I rewatched it and found it to be one of the funniest movies ever made. Can't think of any other examples similar to this.

I'm sure the other direction would occur frequently if I actually revisited many of the movies I loved as a child. Only one that comes to mind is Pocahontas - rewatched it as an adult and didn't like it at all.

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Murder by Death

This didn't fuckin age well at all, did it? This strikes me as essentially like the 70s version of the Scary Movie franchise. While some of the references are to things fairly timeless (Sam Spade, Hercule Poirot), a lot of the other characters are based on things mostly lost to time, some for very good reason. The fact that they give the mind-numbingly bad parody of a racist Chinese character so much screentime just kills any good will I could've had for it. It barely attempts to make fun of what it's parodying, instead just kind of repeating the same bad decisions of the original work. The film isn't really funny, and there's no real mystery to be had here because it's all just nonsense, and it barely even pretends to be more than that. The "murder" of the murder mystery doesn't happen until about 3/4 of the way into the movie, spending the first hour and change on lazy gags.

What's most disappointing is that it's actually a good concept. I'd be all down for a movie taking shots at famous detective characters, and there's plenty to choose from (it makes me laugh to think of the likes of Encyclopedia Brown and Mystery Inc. competing with perhaps Dexter and Adrian Monk), but it requires some actual thought to be put into the situation and mystery aspects. What we got felt mostly thoughtless.

3/10

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kateee posted...

do you have any examples of movies you significantly changed your mind about after revisiting them after a long time?

I despised the Harry Potters almost my whole life until I watched them over the summer last year again and now I think they're friggin' amazing.

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kateee posted...

question for everyone: do you have any examples of movies you significantly changed your mind about after revisiting them after a long time? i think the usual question is something like "what's a movie you loved in your childhood but hated as an adult?" but that drastic of a change is hard for me to imagine (although do share if you have something that fits!)

The first time I saw No Country for Old Men I thought it was boring and didn't care for it, but now it's in my top 10 movies.


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kateee posted...

i just looked over the list of movies i've seen and pretty much every movie i really liked as a kid, i pretty much still like now (The Lion King, Toy Story, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS)

Pretty much same. Ace Ventura, The Mask, a lot of Jim Carrey movies, I still love now. TMNT I absolutely know I still love. One movie that I fondly remember for some reason is Dick Tracy. Ill have to revisit it and see if I still enjoy it as much as I did as a kid.

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tyder21 posted...

I didn't jive with Burn After Reading when I first saw it. Years later I rewatched it and found it to be one of the funniest movies ever made. Can't think of any other examples similar to this.

I'm sure the other direction would occur frequently if I actually revisited many of the movies I loved as a child. Only one that comes to mind is Pocahontas - rewatched it as an adult and didn't like it at all.

i had a similar reaction to Burn After Reading but i didn't include it because the difference between watches wasn't as huge for me.

i was never actually into Pocahontas as a kid though so it doesn't really apply for me. i think my Disney rotation was really just Lion King - Robin Hood - Winnie the Pooh

Snake5555555555 posted...

I despised the Harry Potters almost my whole life until I watched them over the summer last year again and now I think they're friggin' amazing.

was it a book thing? i was never into them because i was just too used to the books. and i know the whole 'adaptations should stand on their own' thing but my mind actually can't reconcile the differences lol

Johnbobb posted...

The first time I saw No Country for Old Men I thought it was boring and didn't care for it, but now it's in my top 10 movies.

when did you first see it? it's so fucking intense that 'boring' seems so weird applied to it looking back

SwiftyDC posted...

Pretty much same. Ace Ventura, The Mask, a lot of Jim Carrey movies

actually should check out Liar Liar again at some point. really more my teenage years than childhood and not one i absolutely loved but i'm curious how it's held up since i actually remember being blown away at things like the pen scene.

kateee posted...

when did you first see it? it's so fucking intense that 'boring' seems so weird applied to it looking back

Around the year it came out or so, I think I was like 14 or 15? Then I saw it again years later in college, on a big screen in a film course, and it seemed like a completely different movie than I remembered

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Oh, definitely Van Damme movies. They were awesome as a kid, but seeing them as an adult theyre kinda cringe but still entertaining.

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Johnbobb posted...

14 or 15?

oh yeah that would do it i think.

when i think of myself at 14...

oh noooooooooooooo

kateee posted...

was it a book thing? i was never into them because i was just too used to the books. and i know the whole 'adaptations should stand on their own' thing but my mind actually can't reconcile the differences lol

No I actually haven't even read the books. I just thought they were stupid and I'm not typically a big fan of fantasy or sorcery-type stuff.

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our next movie is Perfect Blue (1997) directed by Satoshi Kon.

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who has not seen Perfect Blue yet by the way?

and i guess for everyone: have you seen Satoshi Kon's other works?

cool batch anyway this week. only seen Perfect Blue but i was down to rewatch it anyway so would have been fine with anything. was thinking about doing an animation nom at some point also.

I have not seen Perfect Blue.

This will be my first Satoshi Kon movie, after a quick google search.

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Besides Perfect Blue I've seen Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paranoia Agent, and Paprika, mostly all due to Gauntlet Crew. I wouldn't mind watching World Apartment Horror sometime which he wrote.

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kateee posted...

who has not seen Perfect Blue yet by the way?

and i guess for everyone: have you seen Satoshi Kon's other works?

Only Satoshi Kon film I've seen was Memories, which he wrote for (he wrote the best segment by far)

I have seen Paranoia Agent though, which I loved

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SwiftyDC posted...

This will be my first Satoshi Kon movie, after a quick google search.

sadly Kon's only had four features: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika.

he also had an tv anime series (Paranoia Agent / Mousou Dairinin) featuring the one and only Shonen Bat.

Also had a manga (Opus) which i would still recommend despite never being finished.

Snake5555555555 posted...

Besides Perfect Blue I've seen Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paranoia Agent, and Paprika, mostly all due to Gauntlet Crew.

Did the Gauntlet Crew ever do Memories in one of the anime rankings? Kon directed the first segment in that one (and it's the only thing he directed you didn't mention).
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if anybody is interested here is a one-minute short he directed called "Ohayo"

his last work i believe (that was finished).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4KIZD1cTJI

Looking at his filmography, I've seen Perfect Blue and his section of Memories, though Paprika has been on my list to watch for a while.

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Xeybozn posted...

Did the Gauntlet Crew ever do Memories in one of the anime rankings? Kon directed the first segment in that one (and it's the only thing he directed you didn't mention).

yup, it was in the last one, around Summer 2020 I believe? Did pretty well, mostly just for Kon's segment

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I had skipped that project unfortunately.

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I've watched all of his feature films and loved them, basically. Still need to watch Paranoia Agent.

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Perfect Blue

Much like Stephen King's Misery, Perfect Blue is on its surface an examination of the relationship between public figure & the fanatical, & how any privacy, sense of creative passion, and even identity becomes prey to the vultures of gossip and consumerism. Whereas Misery kept events relatively grounded yet seen through the lens of this intense adoration, Perfect Blue punches deeper and deeper into the psychological dread of what it truly means to be the celebratory figure in question. Mima, the pop idol loved by many, makes the decision to quit singing and become an actress, a move largely disliked by that same crowd. From the beginning of the film, you can see the psychological manipulation on display through the gossip of crowds and the marketplace manipulation of so-called collector's items, as if Mima is no longer a person but a commodity ready to be bought-and-sold to the highest bidder. Indeed, Mima is consistently devalued as an individual; rarely are her own feelings brought into account and even things that feel like her own decisions, such as the filming of a rape scene, are just manipulations of what she simply believes she wants. These abstract feelings manifest themselves into what seems like reality for Mima, both through the Mima's Room blogs and her doppelganger, a sprite-like version of Mima with girlish skips and playful intonation that keeps bringing up past memories Mima is so desperate to escape from. This psychological assault can be quite brutal to watch; seeing this form of impostor's syndrome brought up in such a surreal and unnatural manner is compelling and a genuine fear for anyone no matter what field of work they may find themselves in.

It's these layers of reality Perfect Blue ultimately explores so well. Mima's impostor syndrome is absolutely real, but there's no fantasy to be found here. Instead, it's Mima, being gaslighted by her agent Rumi, a former faded pop idol herself, now seeing herself in some way as Mima and wanting her career to turn out perfectly in a way Rumi's own career didn't. This comes down to perfectly replicating Mima's room (which the film cleverly spends time on establishing shots to help the viewer guess the twist early), writing the Mima's Room blog thanks to being so close to her subject in question, and hiding blood-stained clothes from Rumi's killings. It's sickening to think the one Mima trusted the most turned out to be her worst enemy, but it also forces us to examine are own prejudices and pre-conceptions on who we can trust the most. Me-Mania, the security guard who continually appears to stalk Mima throughout the film, is a convenient culprit thanks to his deliberately creepy and ugly appearance, and while he is to blame on some level, is just as much a victim manipulated by Rumi, using his intense fandom to her advantage. Additionally, Rumi's killings can be seen as an attack on dominating male figures in the entertainment industry for controlling Mima, but ironically, through these actions controls Mima's life more than they ever did. This sort of dynamic is rarely explored in fiction and almost never with the same horrific depth as Perfect Blue, going beyond the simple relationship of celebrity/fan and looks more closely at the relationship we have with parental figures, and how they may not always have our best interests at heart even if all signs point otherwise.

While there's so much else to discuss and talk about with this film and its various themes and commentary on the entertainment industry, Perfect Blue to me definitely stands out the most for its truthful viewpoint on celebrity culture and in general, just finding peace in doing what you want to do purely for yourself. It can be tough to break away from all the screaming influences in your life, but in the end, like Mima does, you can carve out your own path, it just may end up being more violent than you had anticipated.

9/10


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did anyone else notice the slight screen shaking at times? was that just me imagining it

Yes I noticed it too, I believe it's deliberate to mimic a handheld filmed look.

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Perfect Blue - 9

My memory is bad, this I know, but for a movie that I watched not all that long ago it felt like I'd forgotten a lot of it.

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Snake5555555555 posted...

I believe it's deliberate to mimic a handheld filmed look.

yeah that was my first thought too. well actually my first thought was there was a small earthquake lol

Perfect Blue

The cuts/transitions here really fuck with you and the whole movie is a trip. Lot of layers and aspects I love such as the blurring of fiction and reality. What really elevates an animated film for me is when I feel like it actually utilized the medium in a unique way that couldn't be replicated with live-action. and here it's not like Paprika level but there's some stuff here. Not to mention, some of the more brutal scenes are easier to take in because it's animation. Despite this, the character design in Kon's works are more 'realistic' than other hyper-stylized anime characters and it makes the scenes hit harder when they do happen. Like when I first watched this years ago, simply describing the screwdriver scene to a group of friends got a visceral reaction.

The main thing for me in the movie is the blurring of fiction and reality. and it's funny because in the movie, Mima does not even know how to work a computer and the Internet but the theme about your 'real' self and perception of yourself by others only grows more relevant as time goes on because of social media and the emergence of nontraditional 'celebrities' like youtube and twitch which actually emphasize the 'personal connection' aspect of online relationships. Super Eyepatch Wolf did a video on that. One of my favorite shots is near the end when Mima is being chased by Rumi and it shows Mima-Rumi effortlessly skipiping but the mirror shows the older woman sweating and out-of-breath running.

The movie is also just 80 minutes and accomplishes a lot more in that time than much longer and more boring movies.

9/10

guess the one last thing I'll touch on is the Black Swan comparison. Aronofsky bought the rights to the film (the famous bathtub scene is also in Requiem) and obviously knows about the film and there's definitely similar themes/aspects. That being said, he has said that BS was not inspired by PB in a Q&A
and i'm not even sure I believe him. Not inspired? Like...not even a little? Black Swan is literally my favorite movie of all time (at least currently) and has been for years; the Perfect Blue comparison does not devalue Black Swan in any way for me but I figured it might come up since I'm sure more people have seen it than Perfect Blue.

https://www.flixist.com/monday-movie-trivia-aronofsky-bought-perfect-blue-rights/

Oh I knew about the comparisons but had no idea Aronofsky had actually bought the rights. That does make things a little more fishy.

BTW I love your comparison to modern day internet culture!

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Snake5555555555 posted...

Oh I knew about the comparisons but had no idea Aronofsky had actually bought the rights.

you know what, i'm actually going to have to take that back and add "allegedly" for now because while i have heard that bit before, i just tried to find a source for that claim and could not find anything besides the imdb trivia (which is not sourced, how the fuck is that allowed). every article/page that talks about it does not source the claim that he actually bought the rights and it just leads back to the same unsourced claims. now i wonder if this is another case like The Lion King and Kimba where unsubstantiated claims just get repeated throughout the internet and everyone just takes it as fact.

so after a little more searching this is what i found:

http://konstone.s-kon.net/modules/notebook/archives/60

Kon's blog where he mentions meeting Aronofsky. if i google translate the page, there's a section where it says Kon "heard Aronofsky bought the rights" for a potential live-action remake. If that's what it actually says and there's no denial, i guess that's the source? but no mention of the $59,000 figure that's thrown around as the amount for what the rights cost.

one person on the wiki editing page says this:
"I think I discovered the source of the frequently repeated but miscited meme about Aronofsky paying to use a Perfect Blue scene in Requiem for a Dream. In Perfect Blue director Satoshi Kon's blog cited above, he notes that the budget of Aronofsky's Pi was at an independent-film level of about 6 million yen. Someone seems to have badly misinterpreted Kon's words to mean that Aronofsky paid US$59,000 (roughly Pi's budget) to use a Perfect Blue scene in Requiem for a Dream."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ABlack_Swan_(film)

putting aside whether Aronofsky actually bought the rights for $59,000 or not, denying Perfect Blue as an inspiration is still a little eyebrow-raising. like, okay even if you weren't directly thinking about the movie when writing yours, not even acknowledging a possible unconscious inspiration? when the Requiem bathtub scene exists?

i care a lot about accuracy so i'm not going to say definitively. even the link i originally posted notes that the original article for the Q&A is gone so the writer had to repost the relevant part. when talking about the Stalker cancer thing, i specifically worded it that "the sound designer believes the set directly contributed to the medical issues" rather than like a fact that had been medically verified as that was the only source i could find at the time.

Snake5555555555 posted...

BTW I love your comparison to modern day internet culture!

so Super Eyepatch Wolf did a video on Perfect Blue where he basically talks about the concept (social media and online personas vs. 'real selves') which i'm actually not going to link just in case because the thumbnail is kind of spoilery and people have embedded links on.

rewatching the movie this time around, i just got reminded of a bunch of headlines and stories i had seen post-first watch. obviously, the problems with social media have been apparent and brought up way before but i was specifically thinking about youtube and twitch. like, how many stories have I seen about fans who think it's okay to literally go to someone's house because they think they know them just because they watch their videos/stream? how many female streamers feel like they have to hide their relationship status because of a certain subset of fans? and like i said before, pretty much every aspect of twitch culture just reinforces the 'personal connection' aspect of these streamers. like how the norm is to personally thank every individual user who subscribes to their channel.

kateee posted...

One of my favorite shots is near the end when Mima is being chased by Rumi and it shows Mima-Rumi effortlessly skipiping but the mirror shows the older woman sweating and out-of-breath running.

See, this scene actually has me wondering. Earlier in this scene, we see idol-Mima bouncing around effortlessly on rooftops and ducking through all sorts of obstacles and... realistically, Rumi is a middle-aged, heavy set woman. Even if we accept that what we're seeing her do is a warped perception of Mima's mind, that still means Rumi is rapidly chasing her and jumping across the rooftops and it's hard to suspend disbelief enough to accept that that's something Rumi would be capable of. I mean hell, I'm a big guy in my 20s and I sure as hell couldn't do all that. In a movie where it's hard to tell what is and isn't real I can't help but wonder if that scene was exactly what we were led to believe it was.

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so anyway

Perfect Blue

I am a sucker for a good bent-reality, unreliable narrator thriller, which is exactly what this is. I had been meaning to see this for a while, in part because I loved Paranoia Agent and in part because I love Black Swan, and the film definitely held up to that high expectation. Mima is entirely engrossing as a protagonist, the same way Nina was in Black Swan (though I really love the use of the idol-Mima who, due to the nature of the medium, was able to have a much larger, more supernatural role). In particular, seeing her bounce along at insane, unrealistic speed was so satisfying (and reminded me a lot of Lil' Slugger's effortlessly quick and nimble movement in Paranoia Agent) and made her that much more terrifying.

Throughout the buildup of the film, the soundtrack stood out a lot. Eerie, quiet chords juxtaposed with loud, grating sounds really just amplified the tension. Then, around 2/3 in, the film just starting flying rapid-fire through dream sequences and red herrings in such a way that we're left wondering what is true and what isn't, much as Mima is, and it just works so well.

9/10, and I'd definitely say it's on the higher end of that.

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Johnbobb posted...

made her that much more terrifying.

yes good point!

Johnbobb posted...

In a movie where it's hard to tell what is and isn't real I can't help but wonder if that scene was exactly what we were led to believe it was.

what if being chased across the roof or whatever was in her mind and idol-Mima actually took the stairs or something lol

i suppose i'm less concerned about what really happened and just love the shot as a way to convey the motif of the difference between fiction and reality which is my favorite aspect of the film. the mirror shot also happens previously in the room but including the detail of the physical actions makes it so much better

on another note, what if the truck at the end just changed into the other lane when it was literally the only car on the road?