ysbreker

Movie/TV recommendations

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I saw it. Fascinating story told haphazardly. It's one of those documentaries that immediately made me suspicious because the story of how the documentary came to be would be one of the major events and yet is never told.

 

:-( that's a shame. I might hold out for something else then. The Lobster seemed fun. Still maybe I should look for something that won't still get a wider release because of is star power. Hrrrrm.

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The NZIFF is rolling out and while I usually just look through the movie guide whistfully Mum's said she'd pay for tickets for one or two.

So now I've got to sort through the ones that won't get wider releases and pick the winner.

 

check out The Tribe and/or Tangerine! Might see the latter tonight. The Lobster sounds great though

 

 

~*edit*~ : ended up seeing The Stanford Prison Experiment at ifc. pretty riveting and upsetting movie. though i may be biased as it's directed by a fellow UMiami film school alumnus :P

 

It was pretty rightfully scathing all the way through. I was worried it was going to let Zimbardo off the hook ultimately but I think maybe it saved itself on a buzzerbeater, the very last sequence with Ezra Miller's character where he suggests the events of the experiment still harm him, despite the textual recap a few seconds earlier that says no long term effects were observed.

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So I don't know if we've discussed this on another thread, but I just saw the Suicide Squad trailer and it looks fucking abysmal. Oh look how kooky everyone is. Ohhh she's licking a dirty pole. How unappealing.

 

Incase you missed it:

 

 

Me and Lady Squirrel have also been watching loads of The League. It's really, really good. We have no interest in American Football, and yet it's really funny. We like it a lot. I'm probably really late to the game in regards to this show, but it's hilarious.

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I also really enjoyed The League while like you having no interest in the sport.

 

I'm not expecting great things from Suicide Squad but I'm on the fence about Batman vs Superman, I expect it won't be very good but was pleasantly surprised to see Wonder Woman in the trailer. Although that does make me wonder if they're screwing her over a bit there, like Marvel did to Black Widow in the second Captain America movie because it's clearly not just Batman vs Superman if she's in it, unless she doesn't take a side, I guess... maybe.

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all else being equal, if the only MCU I've seen is iron man, iron man 2, Thor, the incredible hulk, and guardians, how many Popcorns less or more will I enjoy Ant-Man versus someone who's seen it all?

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The first episode of the new season of Welcome To Sweden apparently aired last night. Also available streaming on NBC.com. I mentioned it before as a Parks and Rec withdrawal tonic. It stars Greg Poehler (Amy's brother, who I'm sure is tired of being introduced that way), and has much of the same essential warmth and earnestness that made Parks and Rec great.

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I caught the Reluctant Fundamentalist last night on netflix.  It follows the story of a Pakistani guy who comes to the US to work as a financial analyst before 9/11 and what happened to him afterward.  It was a fantastic movie--I I highly recommend checking it out.  I don't want to say too much more because the movie generally goes to places and covers things you wouldn't expect, as well as some you would.

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Wow, I searched, but couldn't find anyone talking about the Pixar movie "Inside Out". I just saw it last weekend. Feels like nobody on Earth's talking about it.

No spoilers in this review!

 

It's a good movie. The stakes never get too high, and it's not a one-in-a-million story, but it's a nice watch.

It's very directly about emotions, and Pixar wears on it's sleeve an objective to make nutritionally healthy movies for children.

The animation is really fun to watch, and the gags and acting are nicely human. Casting Amy Poehler (Leslie Nope from Parks and Rec) as Joy was a perfectly perfect choice.
I felt like the plot had about 1 insightful thing to say on emotions, and it's a shame they managed to dodge anything more interesting in a whole movie starring Anger, Fear, Disgust, Sadness and Joy. I thought their metaphors for personality and emotion were a bit convoluted and shallow.

 

Still contained within the box of being a children's movie, but has slightly more to teach than Big Hero 6, Minions or The Croods.

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Watched Ant Man tonight.  Good movie!  It's probably up there as one of the better MU movies for general fun, and anything that gets into daughter/father stuff is always going to hit me harder.  As far as tackling any interesting or challenging themes, it's really lightweight though. 

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:tup:

 

So I've never seen this movie bob guy before, but this review isn't that great. Mainly because he spent the first 6 or so minuets just saying how bad it was without actually explaining why it was bad. Just a string of expletives and metaphors describing how bad it was without explaining exactly why it was bad. And the high level of spite and vitriol made it uncomfortable instead of funny. He was clearly very offended by this film. When he eventually got to why it was bad, they were pretty good reasons. But he's also right. This film will make gang-busters, and there's nothing we can do about it. How depressing.

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Yeah I hate this style of video, but I'd like to see a real person say some interesting things about recycling pop-culture into dollar-bait.
Seems like a topic I'd be interested in, I like to hear the idea deconstructed.

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It's funny seeing MovieBob being talked about on Polygon. His style of videos can be pretty entertaining and I've liked his pop culture series before. But yeah this one did get kinda tired with all the vitriol being flung about without much said of the movie until the second half. Also, he talks about the movie not being classy and then uses an abortion joke in the same breath? What?

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Is there any youtuber that provides nuanced criticism that comes from a place of deep knowledge and appreciation for cinema? They are almost always "epic takedowns!" And the like, or going over all the plotholes or something equally asinine.

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Every Frame A Painting is a channel that makes great video essays about film form. Probably my number one pick.

 

Matt Zoller Seitz's full filmography series about Wes Anderson is absolutely killer. Here is the one for Rushmore.

 

You also can't go wrong with Art of the Title, even though it's not on youtube, and not exclusive to movies.

 

Film criticism on youtube is probably a lot more practically difficult than written criticism, I can understand how complementing a thought-out spoken essay with visuals can be super challenging and why few good channels exist. It's just unfortunate that the compromise between thinking about film and being appealing to an internet-level attention span is these trivial scene by scene critiques of story points. These videos get so many views, I really hope that people don't go into films thinking that being hypercritical of these things is a proper way to interpret the quality of a movie.

 

They may also just be harmless entertaining videos, i hope.

 

edit: I also realize that all of the things I linked may not be exactly what you were looking for in terms of, channels that actually review movies that come out in a thoughtful way. WOOPS!

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The one film critic that I know and love is Mark Kermode. He's pretty well known, I think. His knowledge is deep and he really appreciates the art form. He has a 6 music podcast with simon mayo, as well as his reviews get put on youtube.

 

Idk. Give it a shot.

 

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Kermode is a good example (

), except that he came from radio first. I wouldn't call him a YouTube critic any more than I'd call This American Life a podcast. Still definitely worth checking out.

 

The answer to "Why isn't there more good thoughtful ______ criticism on YouTube?" is because good and thoughtful criticism isn't really rewarded by that medium, or by most internet mediums. And the amount of time and effort to make a video essay is already so huge that if it isn't going to go viral and be viewed by a shitload of people it's probably not worth the effort. It's much easier and more alluring to just make a super-cut of people getting punched through windows or something.

 

Even the beloved Every Frame A Painting* is only popular because it largely focuses on established critical darlings (usually genre films that primarily appeal to the 18-35 year old men) of the past 25 years. No viewer is challenged by being told why their love of Edgar Wright is justified, or why David Fincher is important. It's well-made, but limited in it's scope.

 

I think if you want really good video essays on film, there are two routes to go. For historical context, there's plenty of documentaries that cover the history of film, film movements and filmmakers. The best of these is probably The Story of Film: An Odyssey by Mark Cousins, and Los Angeles Plays Itself is also excellent. And for specific critiques, commentary tracks by people who didn't make the film are always enlightening. On that tip, a lot of Criterions and special editions of older movies will have good commentary tracks from critics or historians. If Steven Soderbergh does a commentary track, listen to it, full stop.

 

*On a much more petty note nothing drives me up the wall like suggesting one artform's power by comparing it to another. "Every Frame A Painting" feels as worthless a statement as "Tupac elevated rap to the level of poetry" or some nonsense like that. Every frame isn't a painting. Every frame isn't even a photograph, really, not the way one actually views them. Also, the popular Twitter account "One Perfect Shot" doesn't feature shots, it features frames. Little things.

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I think it's worth pointing out that MovieBob doesn't normally do the angry youtuber thing. In fact the pixels review was the angriest video I've seen of his. His videos in general are fairly entertaining if sometimes under thought, but he's recently started a long-form series called "really that good" where he picks movie from the 80's or so that's considered a classic and unpacks why it works beyond just nostalgia reasons.

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"Every frame a painting" might be silly when examined literally but it's just a catchier version of "make every shot count/actually think about every shot," which is a perfectly fine mantra to keep in the back of one's filmmaking head. Whatevs. My film 101 prof used to repeat loudly "EVERY SHOT NEEDS TO BE SOMETHING YOU'D HANG ON YOUR WALL."

 

Also I saw Tangerine on Monday, SO GOOD.

 

the scene where Sin Dee puts makeup on Dinah in the bathroom was beautiful and had me extremely verklempt.

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"Every frame a painting" might be silly when examined literally but it's just a catchier version of "make every shot count/actually think about every shot," which is a perfectly fine mantra to keep in the back of one's filmmaking head. Whatevs. My film 101 prof used to repeat loudly "EVERY SHOT NEEDS TO BE SOMETHING YOU'D HANG ON YOUR WALL."

 

Also I saw Tangerine on Monday, SO GOOD.

 

the scene where Sin Dee puts makeup on Dinah in the bathroom was beautiful and had me extremely verklempt.

 

I'm definitely being petty, but I think film students already tend to over-focus on individual elements (usually the ones that you don't need experience, historical context or human empathy to appreciate) and not actually think about how films work as synthesis, as alchemy. Hence the people who make the prettiest compositions get the most attention and you have a hundred thousand Royal Tenenbaums and Fight Club posters on a hundred thousand dorm walls. So it annoys me anyway.

 

Speaking of me being petty, your professor was being ridiculous because you can't hang a shot on a wall. Unless you do it via a TV or monitor, like an art installation. Also, the desire for a beautiful shot shouldn't overwhelm it's contextual function. That's how you get nonsense like Zach Snyder movies.

 

Ok I'm sorry, just being stupid, I'm done.

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yeah, that's why I used all caps for my shouting professor.

for what it's worth, pretty much the whole point of most of Zhou's series is to examine said contextual functions of techniques. Hopefully now that he's established a following he can explore more slightly obscure territory like in his recent Lynne Ramsay piece.

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Even the beloved Every Frame A Painting* is only popular because it largely focuses on established critical darlings (usually genre films that primarily appeal to the 18-35 year old men) of the past 25 years. No viewer is challenged by being told why their love of Edgar Wright is justified, or why David Fincher is important. It's well-made, but limited in it's scope.

 

I don't know if I'd agree with this. I'm not super tied into to movie criticism, but I'd never heard of somebody like Satoshi Kon before watching Zhou's video on him. And while Michael Bay is certainly famous, he's no critical darling and I hadn't seen anybody break down his style like that before.

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I don't know if I'd agree with this. I'm not super tied into to movie criticism, but I'd never heard of somebody like Satoshi Kon before watching Zhou's video on him. And while Michael Bay is certainly famous, he's no critical darling and I hadn't seen anybody break down his style like that before.

 

There's Lynne Ramsay and Satoshi Kon in one hand, and Michael Bay, David Fincher, Steven Spielberg, Edgar Wright, Akira Kurosawa, Jackie Chan, and Martin Scorsese in the other. I'd say my "largely" qualifier is apt. 

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