Board 8 > Movie Club Topic 3 - Murder by Marnie: Hunt for the Blue Hand Stalker Lobster

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yeah I thought LoB was Gilliam for a sec there too, then I was like... wait a minute.

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Brazil
12 Monkeys
The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus
The Zero Theorem
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

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Other than Monty Python I actually haven't seen anything by him until now.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote - 8/10

I didn't care much for it in the beginning and it started off kind of odd, but once he ran back into Javier the movie picked up a ton. It did a fantastic job with showing Toby's slow descent into madness. I loved the camera work and everything.

I wish I could give it a higher score, but there were a few things that kind of bugged me, mainly that I felt like it was fairly disjointed in parts.

I didn't expect the ending at all, so that was really coo.

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Murder by Death - 4/10 - Not quite my tempo.

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I was looking through my list of movies I want to watch to see if I can find something to theme my next set of picks around, and out of 53 movies seven of them are from 1973. Not sure why but apparently that year really appeals to me.

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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote - 6/10

Unfortunately not nearly on the level of Brazil or a Python movie, and much more like Baron von Munchausen - fun production design & costumes, good sense of adventure, but weak story.

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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)

I had no idea what type of movie this was with the way the movie started off. Toby's character and the way he socialized with the people in his director circle or whatever you want to call it, the people who seemed to irritate him, they spoke differently. It was very alien and hard to follow what they were even talking about. That changed once he got on the motorcycle and traveled to the small town where he shot his first film, and that's when the adventure begins.

The High Sparrow as the Don was hilarious. I enjoyed hearing the way he spoke (moreso than the director circle), a true wordsmith. Adam Driver continues to impress me with each character I've seen him play. The plot was kind of basic but the way it got to the end was like poetry. I feel weird that this is my first Gilliam film (that I watched all the way through), but happy that this is the gateway. I really enjoyed this.

9/10

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Saint Maud

7/10

Not a very plot-heavy movie, but I find myself wishing it were a touch longer - I wanted more of the last 30 minutes. Morfydd was incredible, everything looked great, and I thought the editing was fantastic.

It kinda felt like a mix between The Witch (atmospheric religious horror) and The Babadook (atmospheric psychological horror), which are two of my favorite horror films in recent years. I could see myself revisiting this in the future.

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One day I'll have the mental energy for writeups again:

Muppets: 7/10
St. Maud: 8/10

oh geez I haven't posted scores in a while

Enter the Void - 9/10

not perfect but incredibly unique, excellent cinematography and soundtrack, wild ride

The Muppets - 6/10

alright, not really my thing, and I don't have much nostalgia for the Muppets. Had its moments.

Saint Maud - 8/10, bordering on 9

Kind of want to watch this again. Dark and exciting, and loved the ending

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also because I'm curious, average scores for the first round movies (going by what's on the spreadsheet):

1. Fargo: 8.80 (11 ratings)
2. Perfect Blue: 8.80 (10)
3. Cool Hand Luke: 8.44 (9)
4. In Bruges: 8.31 (13)
5. Mother: 8.23 (13)
6. When Marnie Was There: 7.8 (10)
7. The Lobster: 7.78 (9)
8. Hunt for the Wilderpeople: 7.67 (12)
9. Lost in Translation: 7.50 (10)
10. Sound of Metal: 7.36 (11)
11. Thoroughbreds: 7.15 (13)
12. Stalker: 7.14 (7)
13. 45 Years: 6.80 (10)
14. The Love Witch: 6.66 (9)
15. Murder By Death: 3.42 (7)

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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

I want to like this movie a lot more than I do. Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce were both incredible, and I'd probably be willing to watch more of just their characters having more "adventures". I wasn't even sure this would be a comedy going in, but this is one of the funniest movies I've seen for this topic series.The production design is really good, and I love how deep the Don Quixote references are. There are two big problems I have with the movie, though. First, any scene without both of those characters is a big step down in quality; I didn't really find any of the other characters very interesting, and even the director on his own isn't that great. Second, this movie felt longer than it needed to be (in part due to time spent on things I didn't care for). I feel like it would benefit from being a bit faster paced in some parts.

7/10
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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

I feel like there was a story in there somewhere about an artist who uses people up to achieve his goals without regard for what it does to them, but it disappeared somewhere along the way.

I'm honestly not sure what to think about this film. I was not on the wave length it wanted me to be on at any point. When weird shit is going on, I'm trying to understand what's logically actually happening or if this is all a fantasy or something and this is supposed to be figurative for the characters. When actual characters we know are there and it seems like it's supposed to be "real", I'm trying to accept we are in some kind of fantasy adventure delusion or something, not real life. These elements just never came together for me in a coherent way and so I always felt entirely disconnected from what was going on. The weird stuff never felt fun enough to just enjoy it for being crazy, but at the same time it kept everything too weird for anything to feel like it mattered.

The only credit I can really give it was that I liked Adam Driver. Maybe there's some deeper layer of film making that's lost on me in this movie, but overall, I did not enjoy watching it.

3/10

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@SwiftyDC your turn to recommend!

Before Sunrise (1995)
American Animals (2018)
We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Inventing the Abbotts (1997)
City of God (2002)

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We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
American Animals (2018)


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We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
City of God (2002)
Inventing the Abbotts (1997)
American Animals (2018)

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Vote for all movies you would be interested in seeing for the next week (~May 21st, NA). Rank your choices. If you do not intend to vote for whatever reason, please reply with "No Vote" so there is as little of a waiting period as possible. Please vote by Friday, May 21st, 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

Before Sunrise (1995)
American Animals (2018)
We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Inventing the Abbotts (1997)
City of God (2002)

@jcgamer107
@Johnbobb
@lucifiere
@Raka_Putra
@Seginustemple
@tyder21
@ViolentAbacus
@Xeybozn

Before Sunrise
We Need To Talk About Kevin
American Animals
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We Need To Talk About Kevin
City of God
Before Sunrise

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We Need to Talk About Kevin

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We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
City of God (2002)

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City of God
Before Sunrise
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Inventing the Abbots
American Animals
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City of God (2002)
American Animals (2018)
Inventing the Abbotts (1997)


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Saint Maud

Another tightly controlled slow burn from A24's boutique horror shop. The genre has been branching in an interesting direction in both style and content recently, pairing sleek and classy-looking productions with restrained and minimal stories often focused on the female aspect of horror. Unfortunately I don't think Maud hits as hard as her contemporaries in this arena. Morfydd Clark gives an unnerving performance but we kind of know where her character is going from scene one and the story takes no real twists or turns to get there. It ends up being a well-executed but bare-bones character study and cautionary tale of god as self-image. However it's a promising start for Rose Glass (excellent name, right?), who I believe is the first director we've had who's younger than I am.

The highlights for me were the subtle distortions on Maud's face in her moments of rapture, the shot of her in the dark at Amanda's birthday party, and the way the scares hit on the off-beat. It's interesting that the character is isolated from organized religion, this lack of community seems to amplify her connection to the divine. One thing I didn't quite track was the meaning of the large bug she saw crawling around throughout the movie. Was it merely a sign of delusion? Guilt or grief? I'm sure some broader Christian iconography slipped by me too.

Self-immolation is becoming a familiar trend after Hereditary/Midsommar. What is it with people burning themselves? I guess for Catholics it's purification by fire which is not nearly as cool as Tibetan Buddhists doing it in political protest without moving a muscle. Chad Buddha > Virgin Mary 6/10
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Seginustemple posted...

One thing I didn't quite track was the meaning of the large bug she saw crawling around throughout the movie. Was it merely a sign of delusion? Guilt or grief? I'm sure some broader Christian iconography slipped by me too.

My take is that it's just meant to be an inverted representation of God vs what you would normally expect. Reduced back to old testament pestilence.

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Inventing the Abbotts (1997)
We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Before Sunrise (1995)
American Animals (2018)

i always thought Kevin was some comedy every time i saw it listed on a stream site or wherever

City of God is really good though it's probably one of my more recent rewatches that's popped up in this topic

my whole fucking schedule's been thrown off for a bit but it'll hopefully stabilize soon

changing vote

We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Inventing the Abbotts (1997)
Before Sunrise (1995)
American Animals (2018)

next movie is We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) directed by Lynne Ramsay

@Camden
@jcgamer107
@Johnbobb
@lucifiere
@Raka_Putra
@Seginustemple
@Snake5555555555
@Suprak_the_Stud
@SwiftyDC
@tyder21

@ViolentAbacus
@Xeybozn

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Time Bandits and Holy Grail were childhood favorites of mine so I'm fascinated by this film's meta angle. It's been in development hell since I was born and tracks so closely with the themes of those early works of Gilliam's - time-traveling, larping, parody of historical fiction, it's own history adding a chronological dimension to the story. The director is compelled to go back and polish off old ideas. Somehow I still didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition to show up.

Spoilers for Holy Grail in case it's considered a twist that the ending reveals it's all a historical re-enactment set in modern day. It's really similar to what's going on here, the delusions are just more powerful for Quixote and Sancho, bordering on the literal time travel of Time Bandits /spoilers. I actually liked how ambiguous it was about this, suggesting a point where the delusion approaches the real thing as long as disbelief is suspended. Isn't that the magic of movies? Is this about the past, the present, are they the same in a pretend space? Are they both Don Quixote?.

Yet while this is an explicitly meta movie on multiple levels, I'm not sure if the surface story actually works that well. Longtime Gilliam collaborator Jonathan Pryce does a great job as the titular character and Adam Driver continues to charm with his goofy persona and exciting pec cleave but I'm not about any of the other characters. As some others have said the story feels disjointed at times. I agree with CoolCly's take that it got halfway to a message about an artist using people up but never followed through on it. And I suspect the plot of Don Quixote is not exactly the most riveting baseline to start from, but I fully admit I haven't read it. I understand it's cultural relevance as a parody of chivalry and delusion but I regret that the details are lost on me. I feel like I understand the film as it relates to Gilliam's work very well but have little familiarity with its connection to Miguel de Cervantes' classic novel so this one might merit a re-watch if I ever get around to the proper homework. 7/10
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We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
City of God (2002)

I've actually watched _Kevin_. I'll need to remember what I thought about it and maybe watch clips to refresh my memory though.

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Been meaning to rewatch WNtTaK for years now

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kateee posted...

i always thought Kevin was some comedy every time i saw it listed on a stream site or wherever

I keep thinking it's a movie about Kevin James who has moved back in with his parents or his married sibling or something.

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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote - 7/10

So I went into this movie expecting it to be the opposite of what it was. For whatever reason I was under the impression that the main character was going to find himself in the actual world of Don Quixote, accidentally killing him and having to take his place for the duration of the movie. Hijinks ensue. Pleasantly surprised that that's not the case.

I think the biggest criticism I have is one already brought up by Xeybozn, which was also my main criticism from In Bruges earlier on, is that once 'Don Quixote' and 'Sancho' are nowhere to be found in a scene I just kind of lose interest.

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We Need To Talk About Kevin - 8

"Like Donald Trump, huh."

I quite liked this movie, even with John C Reilly in it. He's past the point of no return for me where I have trouble watching him in non comedy roles at this point because even the sound of his voice puts me in 'want to laugh' mode, like I'll be watching him trying to be serious and my mind is just going Catalina Wine Mixer, Catalina Wine Mixer...

Tilda Swinton was great in this though, no surprise that she won some awards for it.

I think the only part that was hard to believe about it was Franklin not seemingly thinking there might be more of a problem with their kid, who was something like 9 at the time I believe, still wearing diapers. I can see most of the other stuff being handwaved away with a 'he's just a kid' or 'he'll grow out of it' or something, or even just not believing something in general, but he's farther away in years from needing to use one than he is needing to use an incognito window for that.

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And for the first time in a while I think I'm completely caught up.

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We Need to Talk About Kevin

This isn't a bad movie, but I liked the book better. I know it's unrealistic to expect everything in a book to make it to a film adaptation, but there's just so much stuff cut out that it felt more like a highlight reel of just some of the bigger moments. It really doesn't help that I think the story just works better in written form anyway. Good performance from Tilda Swinton, though.

6/10
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We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)

Character Battle!!! Henry (The Good Son 1993) VS Kevin (WNTTAK 2011)

Interesting choice with the way the story is told. Is this how its told in the book? The child actors were the highlight for me. How the hell did they get these kids to act that way. It was super creepy. Especially how Kevin flipped the switch and acted differently around the Dad. Very Childs Play/Chuckie-esque.

Tilda Swinton did a great job portraying a completely broken mother. Was she a bad mother? I dont know, maybe, she didnt really want the child and was kinda selfish about it. She basically was winging it like all first-time mothers. She didn't stop being a mother though. If it was me, I wouldve probably put my foot down when needed, I wouldnt let a child run my life. But I dont have kids, so

Maybe Im weird but I wanted to see more of the damage. Like a Carrie scene in the school gym. I was expecting it the whole movie, kinda let down.

7/10

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Xeybozn posted...

We Need to Talk About Kevin

This isn't a bad movie, but I liked the book better. I know it's unrealistic to expect everything in a book to make it to a film adaptation, but there's just so much stuff cut out that it felt more like a highlight reel of just some of the bigger moments. It really doesn't help that I think the story just works better in written form anyway. Good performance from Tilda Swinton, though.

6/10

Is there more to why everyone in town hates Tilda Swinton beyond 'Related To Kevin = Bad'?

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SwiftyDC posted...

Interesting choice with the way the story is told. Is this how its told in the book?

The book is told as a series of letters written from Eva to Franklin well after the school shooting. So the split timeline between flashbacks and Eva's life after everything is about the same. Dropping the framing device does kind of ruin the twist that Kevin killed Franklin and Celia, though. Neither of them showing up in the "present" scenes makes it really obvious because it's the simplest explanation and there's no reason to think otherwise.

Also the book has a lot more detail about exactly how the shooting went down, since you seem disappointed that the movie didn't cover that.

Camden posted...

Is there more to why everyone in town hates Tilda Swinton beyond 'Related To Kevin = Bad'?

Not really, no. But it's less about "she's related to Kevin" and more about "she's Kevin's mother". Essentially, they kind of think that what happened is mostly her fault for raising such a terrible person. Obviously she must be an awful person for him to have turned out like that, right? (OK, it's obviously not that simple but that's their logic.)
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We Need to Talk About Kevin

Haven't read the book, but I thought it was an effective if somewhat flawed movie experience. Kudos to the casting/directing/young actors for the dead-behind-the-eyes continuity of the Kevins, he really makes your skin crawl. Excellent villainy. Tilda is great as the battled mother who somehow doesn't visibly age during Kevin's life.

The flaw for me is that the character behavior/motivations often just seem unbelievable. Usually with these kind of parental anxiety/bad egg horror films there's a supernatural bent to place us in a surreal space (Omen/Exorcist/Eraserhead) and here it seems like realism is implied but not quite realized. It's like if you took a 'kid possessed by the devil' story and replaced the devil with nihilism - I like that premise but it leaves toddler Kevin's overly cunning manipulations with no real explanation other than the inference that the mother is completely unreliable and paints herself the victim of an initially innocent child, but I don't think that tracks with what we're shown. The mom/dad are the 'trips-while-being-chased' of parenting technique. So many bad decisions. I'm no parent but in classic horror fashion they made me want to yell advice at the screen: "Give him some chores already, where are the boundaries and discipline?" "Why are you training him with a bow? Make him join a team sport!" "Oh god don't keep a hamster around him!" The vacant dad is just way too oblivious, he almost had it coming. And no way would Kevin get out in two years on some Prozac excuse, that seems completely unrealistic.

I couldn't tell if it was obliquely commenting on gun culture (via bow/nerf/squirt gun) or if it was specifically omitting real guns to sidestep that, or if they weren't even thinking of that. But I've never heard of a school shooting with a bow and arrow so I'm inclined to think it's the former. It's sort of an American epidemic (see: prominent flag in the gym at the end), even my high school went through a shooting. It's sad how much this feels like it's a post-Sandy Hook/Elliot Rodgers text but really it's just post-Columbine.

Real twist-of-the-knife ending, too. A mothers forgiveness knows no bounds? The redemptive power of prison? I mean, breaking the kids arm was what potty-trained him so is it saying you gotta break a bad egg to make an omelette? It's an extreme example to make a case for corporal punishment if that. For me it's simply easier to take the "beware having kids" message out of it...8/10
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@Camden your turn for recommendations!

First Cow [2019]
The Vast of Night [2019]
Ping Pong [2012]
High Plains Drifter [1973]
Alphaville [1965]

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Alphaville [1965]
First Cow [2019]
The Vast of Night [2019]

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Alphaville
High Plains Drifter
The Vast of Night
Ping Pong
First Cow
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Vote for all movies you would be interested in seeing for the next week (~May 28th, NA). Rank your choices. If you do not intend to vote for whatever reason, please reply with "No Vote" so there is as little of a waiting period as possible. Please vote by Friday, May 28th, 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST

First Cow (2019)
The Vast of Night (2019)
Ping Pong (2012)
High Plains Drifter (1973)
Alphaville (1965)

@jcgamer107
@Johnbobb
@lucifiere
@Raka_Putra
@SwiftyDC
@tyder21
@ViolentAbacus
@Xeybozn

interesting batch here!

The Vast of Night (2019)
First Cow (2019)
Alphaville (1965)
Ping Pong (2012)

The Vast of Night
High Plains Drifter
First Cow
Alphaville
Ping Pong

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