#1
Post rating: +
Mark Twain's been dead for about a hundred years now, and no one really cares any more about what he turned into magic: just reading and writing about "things." That might be because most essays these days are typically laden with an agenda tied-in to some sort of politics, or morality, or social planning, or some other bullshit that other people usually care about even less than those "things" themselves. But that's not to say the art of the essay is lost completely; it's just that you have to look a little bit harder to find it.

One funny example are movie reviews. (Mark Twain always loved a critic, after all.) Now, mind you, most of us couldn't care less about anyone's "critical opinion" when deciding what to do with their friday night. If you're like me, how lenient a theatre's ticketeers are about allowing you to sneak in with cargo-pockets stuffed with beers is a far more important consideration than whatever dumb film the arthouse happens to be showing. So it might not be immediately obvious as to why "reviews" are such a great form; but really, its spectacular showcase for rhetorical and analytical play. In an age where you can put your clips, quips, and third-grade book reports on twitter, who the fuck actually bothers to write a real honest-to-god essay about a movie? Only someone with something to say, dag gammit!

The key to this form is that you've got a topic that your audience can not only causally relate to - the movie, of course - but also all experienced (physically) in the same way. What's really different, what you're really trying to communicate and why you're bothering to write at all, is to express what's different up here *taps noggin*, in how you see the movie based on your experience in the world. So there's no real reason to drone on about the middling details of the thing itself. "So ok, so you can see in this scene that here that spider pig's stubby pink body is a phallic representation of Bart's inadequacy in the face of his father blah blah blah, whatever..." I'm not talking about any of that "death of the author" crap. What I mean to say is that a great writer can get at the essential truth of a film hardly focusing on the film itself at all!

One of my favourites that can pull off such a trick is Eileen Jones; here's her most recent piece for reference:

http://exiledonline.com/burke-hare-where-ealing-comedies-went-to-die-again/

All over the place? Sure. But what makes writing like this so effective, apart from being so fun to read, with her flippant style synthesizing so well with such an invective wit, is that after you read it, you can understand the film the way she understands the film. And that's one hell of an interesting thing to accomplish.
#2
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#4
Post rating: ~

discipline posted:
have you ever considered that zombie movies are mostly about class warfare, the zombies being the oppressed? makes u think.. especially about all the zombie fangoons out there...



uh, sure. Pretty cynical depiction of the proles, though.

Its interesting, now that you mention it, you can see this type of story playing out most clearly in Land of the Dead, but in a different way than you'd think. In that one, the world has reverted back to a more feudal society, with the rich living in a decedent castle/skyscraper called "Fiddler's Green", while the middle classes work to maintain the status quo. It is only when the aristocracy pushes too hard that the bourgeois throw their hands up and let in the flood of dirty brown bodies to storm the city.

#5
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#6
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#7
Post rating: ~

discipline posted:
I watched a great documentary the other night called AMERICAN JIHADIST.



let's put aside for a second that it's about an african american convert to islam who travels around the world to killkillkill for allah... this film is the perfect distillation of masculinity. isa ali says in the documentary that he stopped keeping track of how many people he killed in 1981... at 173 kills. he discusses his history as a sniper in lebanon, considering for a moment the man on the other end of his scope "looks like a family man" and then blows him away anyhow. he's never been awarded medals or ribbons... no, his only commendations are the dozens of scars all over his body.

you can follow the trajectory of his life from ghetto tadpole to giant ferocious killer shark for god!!! and now he has a wife and kids in bosnia. so here's a guy who fought in every major conflict after vietnam that involves muslims, has lived to be the subject of a documentary, and now he works as a bouncer in adam's morgan d.c. it's really one of the most bizarre stories I ever saw in a documentary, you're like holy moley, guys like this exist?? and they walk around???

but maybe the most interesting part of this documentary is how this distillation of the male drive is dissected at every turn by a panel of white and jewish "experts" on terrorism, psychology, CIA, etc. they embody the ideal of castrated masculinity, this plea to put distance between man and his true nature. their pleading whines about his character, his background, his motivations are cut between shots of him playing mortal kombat with his son or doing the shopping for his wife in idyllic-looking bosnia.

he says himself he's got a great life and has been blessed (though he references the life after this one as being what he's after) and despite his history of utter bloodshed he seems to be for all purposes a pretty normal family man with a healthier outlook on life than most. yet his masculinity, his trajectory is at every turn in the documentary being attacked by this panel of academic experts in turtlenecks sipping port in front of a fireplace wondering about his mother.... LITERALLY!

anyway it's available on netflix streaming and it's only an hour so you should totally watch it.



I can't even tell anymore, is this advanced internet trolling or are you genuinely this crazy?

#8
San Francisco
Post rating: -
I am a huge advocate of Rotten Tomatoes and check it before watching every movie. I usually do not read the full reviews but do skim the excerpts provided on RT. I try to avoid watching movie trailers (which I think usually spoil and diminish the film).

It is rare that I find myself disliking a well-reviewed film, and films which are poorly reviewed can be somewhat painful to watch. I am extremely grateful to film critics and the creators of rottentomatoes.com for significantly improving my film-watching experience and aiding my love of film.
#9
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~

SomeIsraeliFuck posted:

discipline posted:
I watched a great documentary the other night called AMERICAN JIHADIST.



let's put aside for a second that it's about an african american convert to islam who travels around the world to killkillkill for allah... this film is the perfect distillation of masculinity. isa ali says in the documentary that he stopped keeping track of how many people he killed in 1981... at 173 kills. he discusses his history as a sniper in lebanon, considering for a moment the man on the other end of his scope "looks like a family man" and then blows him away anyhow. he's never been awarded medals or ribbons... no, his only commendations are the dozens of scars all over his body.

you can follow the trajectory of his life from ghetto tadpole to giant ferocious killer shark for god!!! and now he has a wife and kids in bosnia. so here's a guy who fought in every major conflict after vietnam that involves muslims, has lived to be the subject of a documentary, and now he works as a bouncer in adam's morgan d.c. it's really one of the most bizarre stories I ever saw in a documentary, you're like holy moley, guys like this exist?? and they walk around???

but maybe the most interesting part of this documentary is how this distillation of the male drive is dissected at every turn by a panel of white and jewish "experts" on terrorism, psychology, CIA, etc. they embody the ideal of castrated masculinity, this plea to put distance between man and his true nature. their pleading whines about his character, his background, his motivations are cut between shots of him playing mortal kombat with his son or doing the shopping for his wife in idyllic-looking bosnia.

he says himself he's got a great life and has been blessed (though he references the life after this one as being what he's after) and despite his history of utter bloodshed he seems to be for all purposes a pretty normal family man with a healthier outlook on life than most. yet his masculinity, his trajectory is at every turn in the documentary being attacked by this panel of academic experts in turtlenecks sipping port in front of a fireplace wondering about his mother.... LITERALLY!

anyway it's available on netflix streaming and it's only an hour so you should totally watch it.

I can't even tell anymore, is this advanced internet trolling or are you genuinely this crazy?



maybe you need a vacation in the crazy tank to figure this question out amir

#10
Post rating: ~
your right, i love hte review form, one of the few things i can zone out and read for hours and hours and hours
#11
San Francisco
Post rating: ~
This troper agrees.
#12
Post rating: +

lungfish posted:
I am a huge advocate of Rotten Tomatoes and check it before watching every movie. I usually do not read the full reviews but do skim the excerpts provided on RT. I try to avoid watching movie trailers (which I think usually spoil and diminish the film).

It is rare that I find myself disliking a well-reviewed film, and films which are poorly reviewed can be somewhat painful to watch. I am extremely grateful to film critics and the creators of rottentomatoes.com for significantly improving my film-watching experience and aiding my love of film.



someone please develop a stalinist version of rotten tomatoes where i am told which new movies are appropriate for viewing and rate them on some sort of scale from mildly to totally nourishing to my revolutionary bolshevik body and psyche

#13
Post rating: ~
eileen jones has an awesome new article hahaha

http://exiledonline.com/rin-tin-tins-rich-bitch-biographer/
#14
Kurdt
Post rating: ~

noavbazzer posted:

lungfish posted:
I am a huge advocate of Rotten Tomatoes and check it before watching every movie. I usually do not read the full reviews but do skim the excerpts provided on RT. I try to avoid watching movie trailers (which I think usually spoil and diminish the film).

It is rare that I find myself disliking a well-reviewed film, and films which are poorly reviewed can be somewhat painful to watch. I am extremely grateful to film critics and the creators of rottentomatoes.com for significantly improving my film-watching experience and aiding my love of film.

someone please develop a stalinist version of rotten tomatoes where i am told which new movies are appropriate for viewing and rate them on some sort of scale from mildly to totally nourishing to my revolutionary bolshevik body and psyche



http://llco.org/category/movie-review

#15
Post rating: ~
lol, great line here:

The idea that love conquers the banality of one-dimensional life under imperialist capitalism is a kind of pop version of Marcusean utopianism.
#16
Post rating: ~
:)
#17
Post rating: ~
new eileen jones obliterates scorsese's new kid flick

http://exiledonline.com/hugo-scorsese-makes-nice/
#18
el area metro
Post rating: ~
does llco have the old mtm reviews on there too? because those were awesome (you can still see them on the old mtm website)
#19
Post rating: ~

discipline posted:
have you ever considered that zombie movies are mostly about class warfare, the zombies being the oppressed? makes u think.. especially about all the zombie fangoons out there...



I actually read somewhere that the original night of the living dead was based on a true incident at a Pittsburgh military testing facility. Some chemical designed to kill cannabis plants leaked into a morgue and the corpses started to twitch and become "reanimated" from what sources claim. So I think Romero's movies are also a critique of the war on drugs.

#20
el area metro
Post rating: ~

MadMedico posted:



lol oh ok yeah tottally dude...

#21
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: ~
the buffalo beast's old movie reviews are still my favorite for their genre tags like "vampirism as a gay/AIDS metaphor" or "Stockholm syndrome romance"
#22
:morF
Post rating: ~
the exiled is one of the few websites where i bother to look at the comments

http://exiledonline.com/american-movies-are-dead-so-party-down/#more-35155

The previous decade was riddled with years bearing little of value. There’s nothing unique about this year; it’s rather the progress of the disease that distinguishes it. Don’t worry; we’ll all be entertaining each other on YouTube soon, hoping for affiliate pennies. Then the human race will reach its apex: a planet of asocial hominids staring into screens, masturbating in hyperbaric chambers.

#23
el area metro
Post rating: ~
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/movies/review.php?f=long/gravefireflies.txt

lol heres a MIM review where they say grave of the fireflies isnt recommended because it doesn't "attempt to explain the causes of wars and how they can be avoided in the future."

it's pretty hilarious that someone can 'not reccomend' one of the most beautiful / sad animated films i've ever seen just because it doesn't like promote class struggle or some shit. this is like the IWC review of Inception where he said it was shit because it contains NO MENTION OF CLASS STRUGGLE as if that's what made it a shitty movie...

edit: i dont know why i wrote mim earlier
#24
Kurdt
Post rating: ~
and what's the deal with feminist film criticism? it's like they're totally pushing some specific previously marginalized agenda rather than appreciating a masterpiece of gonzo like cum guzzling street sluts on trampolines vol. 32 on its own terms
#25
el area metro
Post rating: ~
wow i really don't appreciate your hyperbolic and sarcastic remark, dude!
#26
Post rating: +
Zombie movies are about a radical change in life style and values, and the opening up of countless new opportunities. I like the zombie theme, but not necessarily because I want to kill the zombies themselves. They're just a catalyst, and a fun excuse to build fortifications. What's really important is how humanity will be organized, our lives ordered, and how it differs from the present.