u/Louisebelcher22

I keep seeing people call films they don’t understand “poorly executed” and then, when pressed, they can’t name a single concrete thing that doesn’t work. At that point, “poorly executed” just means “I didn’t like it” with extra syllables.

If we’re going to use the word “execution,” it should mean something. Execution is the how of a film. It’s structure, blocking, shot choices, performance direction, editing rhythms, how tone is managed, how themes are embedded in the way scenes are built. It’s specific. If you can’t point to at least one scene and say “this choice undercuts what the film is trying to do, here’s how,” you’re just dressing your taste up as “film” analysis.

I’m not saying everyone has to like ambitious, artsy movies that make you think. But “poorly executed” should not be the end of a conversation. If you think a concept got “ruined by terrible direction,” then tell me:
Which scenes are badly staged?
Where does the pacing fall apart?
Where do performance choices clash with the tone?
What specific device (voiceover, framing, possession, whatever) breaks the film’s own logic?

When “poorly executed” is all you have, you’re avoiding the work of thinking. Anyone can point at a film and yell “bad execution”; the smallest effort is to say where and how it fails on its own terms. If you’re not willing to do even that, just call it “not for me, move on and stop pretending you’re offering analysis.

Frank has no healthy blueprint for love or partnership, so he studies romance through a movie star he watches on a screen, a man who is physically “off” (one leg shorter than the other) and yet framed as desirable and adored. That’s the closest he ever gets to seeing a body as “wrong” as his welcomed instead of rejected.

What devastates me is that Ronnie only ever exists for Frank as a fantasy. In Frank’s head, Ronnie is proof that a broken body can be loved. In reality, when they finally meet, Ronnie treats him like dirt: laughs at him, talks down to him, recoils as if Frank is too filthy and deformed to be allowed in the same space.
You can see Frank go through the five stages of grief in seconds lol 😂 . He could have easily pulverized Ronnie’s head the way he crushed those men’s skull outside the club, but he doesn’t. Instead, he dances. He retreats into the only language they “share”: the choreography and elegance he memorized by watching Ronnie on screen.

Seen that way, his lie to the Bride makes more sense, even if it’s **still inexcusable**. He’s not drawing from any lived experience of reciprocal love. The best “relationship scripts” he has are all about control, staging, and keeping the other person trapped inside his fantasy. Lying becomes a way to hold onto the movie in his head. what makes it so brutal when he finally owns the lie, calls himself a “black hole,” a “monster,” and the Bride answers, “so am I”, two people admitting they’re dangerous to others as well as to each other.

That’s very close to what Mary Shelley does with the creature in the original novel. The creature is right that Victor Frankenstein wronged him, created him, abandoned him, denied him any model of kindness or belonging. But in the end, he tearfully admits that this doesn’t excuse the innocent people he killed or the way he wasted his own free will on revenge. He owns the fact that his pain is real and that the way he responded to it made everything worse.
Frank feels like a modern version of that. He is treated monstrously, and he really has been given almost no healthy tools for love. But the movie still shows that the patterns he clings to(idealizing Ronnie, lying to the Bride) are his, and they hurt the one person he actually doesn’t want to “obliterate.” That’s what makes his late self awareness so devastating (him owning the lie and saying “I am a black hole, a monster”): by the time he starts to own his monstrosity and loosen his grip, it’s already too late. He’s destroyed.

Frank has no healthy blueprint for love or partnership, so he studies romance through a movie star he watches on a screen, a man who is physically “off” (one leg shorter than the other) and yet framed as desirable and adored. That’s the closest he ever gets to seeing a body as “wrong” as his welcomed instead of rejected.

What devastates me is that Ronnie only ever exists for Frank as a fantasy. In Frank’s head, Ronnie is proof that a broken body can be loved. In reality, when they finally meet, Ronnie treats him like dirt: laughs at him, talks down to him, recoils as if Frank is too filthy and deformed to be allowed in the same space.
You can see Frank go through the five stages of grief in seconds lol 😂 . He could have easily pulverized Ronnie’s head the way he crushed those men’s skull outside the club, but he doesn’t. Instead, he dances. He retreats into the only language they “share”: the choreography and elegance he memorized by watching Ronnie on screen.

Seen that way, his lie to the Bride makes more sense, even if it’s still inexcusable. He’s not drawing from any lived experience of reciprocal love. The best “relationship scripts” he has are all about control, staging, and keeping the other person trapped inside his fantasy. Lying becomes a way to hold onto the movie in his head. what makes it so brutal when he finally owns the lie, calls himself a “black hole,” a “monster,” and the Bride answers, “so am I”, two people admitting they’re dangerous to others as well as to each other.

That’s very close to what Mary Shelley does with the creature in the original novel. The creature is right that Victor Frankenstein wronged him, created him, abandoned him, denied him any model of kindness or belonging. But in the end, he tearfully admits that this doesn’t excuse the innocent people he killed or the way he wasted his own free will on revenge. He owns the fact that his pain is real and that the way he responded to it made everything worse.
Frank feels like a modern version of that. He is treated monstrously, and he really has been given almost no healthy tools for love. But the movie still shows that the patterns he clings to(idealizing Ronnie, lying to the Bride) are his, and they hurt the one person he actually doesn’t want to “obliterate.” That’s what makes his late self awareness so devastating (him owning the lie and saying “I am a black hole, a monster”): by the time he starts to own his monstrosity and loosen his grip, it’s already too late. He’s destroyed.

Half the people being recommended look like they’re in their early 20s. Jacob Elordi is literally playing an 18y/o in Euphoria right now, I just can’t see him as Bond.
Timothy chalanamaler looks like a Victorian child.
Callum Turner doesn’t feel serious enough either. He comes off as too boyish, and I don’t buy him as the lead in an action franchise like James Bond. His vibe is too soft, his face is too sweet, and there’s no edge there. Bond is a presence, a personality, and I just don’t see that in him.

Pirates of The Caribbean is one of my favorite childhood movies. I rewatched Dead Man’s chest recently. I forgot how great Bill Nighy’s enunciation was lol 😂

The whole movie:

No one, absolutely no one.

Davy Jones:

“Doo Youurrhuh fearrrhuh Deathhuh”

“Damn youu, Jackssh Sparrrhowwhuh”

“Ahh Lovehhh a Dreadthfull Bonddtddhuh”

“ShhEEe Prettendded to love Mehuh”

“ShhEEe Bettrayedth MEEEUh”

I just need a movie on his whole character, he’s my favorite!

It’s been a great year for horror movies and TV. Feels like when things are uncertain, people lean into horror more, maybe because it lets you deal with fear in a controlled way

I’ve been turning over Poor Things in my head for a while and I keep getting more bothered by it, especially after seeing The Bride!.

Poor Things is widely discussed as feminist, but to me it feels like a very male version of feminism: Bella’s “freedom” is almost entirely sexual, routed through sex, sex work, and a kind of quirky, consequence free nudity. The film claims to be about a woman’s experience but avoids most of the thresholds and banal horrors of womanhood. The camera and narrative return obsessively to her as a sexual object, and the brothel arc in particular sits strangely close to a fantasy of exploitation as empowerment.

Then I watched The Bride! and it felt like I’d been handed the inside of a woman’s head instead of an idea of womanhood curated for male pleasure. Even in the experiment scenes, the way her body is framed is different: they cover her chest, the surface level SA is treated as horrifying rather than sexy, and nudity is not used as part of these two scenes. The movie felt like it was made for me as a woman: it’s about chaos; about what it’s like to be assembled out of other people’s expectations and then told to be grateful for it.

The Bride! leans into the contradiction of these expectations. The world wants her to be creation and abomination, monster and angel, innocent and seducer, muse and threat, fragile and indestructible, an object and an author of her own story. That’s how womanhood has often felt to me: a constant demand to embody opposing roles at once (Madonna/whore, victim/criminal, too much/not enough, desirable but pure, loud but obedient, confident but not 'too much, sexual but not 'slutty,' a victim but never inconvennient), and then be punished for whichever side you land on in the moment. The film lets that female rage spill out rather than smoothing it into something palatable.

Side by side, I keep wondering: when a “female liberation” story by male creators is so focused on a woman’s sexual availability, is that feminism or a refined male fantasy? Is Poor Things evenreally critiquing the male gaze, or mostly indulging it under the shield of “she’s choosing it”? And does The Bride!’s chaotic rage actually feel more feminist to you, or does it ever feel like the film is confusing female rage with depth?

I watched Poor Things a while ago and the more I sit with it, the more upset I feel. It’s been talked about as “feminist,” but to me it feels like a very male idea of feminism: almost the entire “female experience” is reduced to sex, sex work, and quirky consequence‑free nudity, while things like menstruation or the constant push‑pull of being “too much/not enough” don’t exist at all.

Then I watched The Bride!(2026) and it felt like the opposite. Even in the experiment scenes they cover her chest, the SA is handled as horrifying instead of sexy, and the nudity is separated from assault. The movie felt like it was made for me as a woman: the chaos, the contradictions, the sense of being pulled in every direction at once. The world wants her to be creation and abomination, monster and angel,creation and abomination, innocent and seducer, muse and threat, fragile and indestructible, an object and an author of her own story. That’s how womanhood has always felt to me, always too much and never enough at the same time, and The Bride! let that rage finally take up space.

I’m curious how other women with fully developed frontal lobes felt about these movies. Did Poor Things feel feminist to you? Did The Bride! resonate at all, or did it feel too messy/“artsy”?

I’ve noticed that a lot of “best acting” clips and Oscar bait performances are just men screaming. Think “I abandoned my child” from There Will Be Blood, the argument in Marriage Story, etc.

I love Daniel Day Lewis, but his work in Phantom Thread is miles more interesting to me: all the control, pettiness, tension, and vulnerability are right there without him needing to yell.

It feels like audiences and awards only recognize “big” emotions (anger, breakdowns) as great acting, especially for male characters, and almost ignore subtle stuff like tension, loneliness, sadness, grief, desire, yearning, insecurity, or joy.
Christian Bale in The Bride! is another recent example for me. It’s such a quietly devastating performance he’s carrying loneliness, yearning, desire, and this exhausted depression that almost tips into hallucination, and it’s all in the way he moves and looks at her. The little fountain moment, where he stoops to pick up pennies, wrecked me because it’s such a small, sad image of this supposed “scary monster” trying to build a life out other people’s wishes.
And in Phantom Thread, food is basically their love language. The breakfasts, the mushrooms, the way Reynolds eats her meals, there’s no nudity, but you can feel all the intimacy, control, and desire in those scenes. It’s acting that lives in tiny, controlled choices rather than big outburst.

Do we overrate shouting and underrate restrained performances?

I haven’t read Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” yet, but I’ve been reading Gilles Deleuze’s essay “Bartleby; or, The Formula” to understand its relation to The Bride! (2026), which centers the “I prefer not to” formula. Looking for perspectives from those who know Melville’s text.

The film’s premise is of a Woman who is killed and brought back to life to become a bride for Frankenstein’s creature. Throughout the movie, we see her trying to piece together her personality and identity while swerving and ducking all these titles people are trying to pin on her: the victim, the monster, the angel, the whore, the Madonna, the creation, the aberration.

These are the parallels I am seeing:

1. The formula as refusal of binary choice
From Deleuze: Bartleby saying “ I prefer not to” represents “Being as being, and nothing more. He is urged to say yes or no. But if he said no (to collating, running errands…), or if he said yes (to copying), he would quickly be defeated and judged useless, and would not survive.”
In the film, the first time the Bride says “I prefer not to” they don’t listen to her they force her to swallow an oyster. To me, she is defeated here because she’s been forced into the binary. Then she gets possessed by Mary Shelley, which forces her to fight back. This shows her taking a stance, and that gets her killed because she talks back and is seen as rebellious.

2. Advancing and withdrawing
Deleuze writes that Bartleby “ does not refuse, but neither does he accept; he advances and then withdraws into this advance, barely exposing himself in a nimble retreat from speech.”
Throughout the film, she is being overdefined by others from the outside: mother/Madonna/whore, victim/monster/muse, too much/never enough, etc. Her personality is being assembled on screen out of fragments while everyone else keeps insisting she already means something. Just like Bartleby, she advances then retreats because these are other people’s definitions of her, of what she should choose, and she just “prefers not to.”

3. Contamination and revolution
Deleuze’s essay says: “Bartleby pulls a trait of expression, I PREFER NOT TO, which will proliferate around him and contaminate the others, sending the attorney fleeing. Aristocracy and revolution.”
In the film, the Bride does this in a scene in a room full of aristocracy. This incites a revolution where other women start revolting.

4. The ethics of choosing
Deleuze’s line “choosing is the Promethean sin…” applied to this film helps you see how the other characters’ choices about the Bride are ethically wrong. The line “resistance to tyranny is obedience to God” from the film makes her constantly swerving away from those labels like a kind of faithfulness to something in her that can’t be reduced to lover/monster/criminal/victim.

My questions for those familiar with film theories or who’ve read Bartleby:
How do these parallels hold up against Melville’s original text? Does Bartleby function this way in the story? What am I missing by not having read it yet?

Only critical/analytical responses please I’m interested in substantial film discussion, not whether you hate Melville or the movie.

Thx to u/kevin_v for bringing this film theory to my attention.

I haven’t read Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” yet, but I’ve been reading Gilles Deleuze’s essay “Bartleby; or, The Formula” to understand its relation to The Bride! (2026), which centers the “I prefer not to” formula. Looking for perspectives from those who know Melville’s text.

The film’s premise is of a Woman who is killed and brought back to life to become a bride for Frankenstein’s creature. Throughout the movie, we see her trying to piece together her personality and identity while swerving and ducking all these titles people are trying to pin on her: the victim, the monster, the angel, the whore, the Madonna, the creation, the aberration.

These are the parallels I am seeing:

1. The formula as refusal of binary choice
From Deleuze: Bartleby saying “I prefer not to” represents “Being as being, and nothing more. He is urged to say yes or no. But if he said no (to collating, running errands…), or if he said yes (to copying), he would quickly be defeated and judged useless, and would not survive.”
In the film, the first time the Bride says “I prefer not to,” they don’t listen to her they force her to swallow an oyster. To me, she is defeated here because she’s been forced into the binary. Then she gets possessed by Mary Shelley, which forces her to fight back. This shows her taking a stance, and that gets her killed because she talks back and is seen as rebellious.

2. Advancing and withdrawing
Deleuze writes that Bartleby “does not refuse, but neither does he accept; he advances and then withdraws into this advance, barely exposing himself in a nimble retreat from speech.”
Throughout the film, she is being overdefined by others from the outside: mother/Madonna/whore, victim/monster/muse, too much/never enough, etc. Her personality is being assembled on screen out of fragments while everyone else keeps insisting she already means something. Just like Bartleby, she advances then retreats because these are other people’s definitions of her, of what she should choose, and she just “prefers not to.”

3. Contamination and revolution
Deleuze’s essay says: “Bartleby pulls a trait of expression, I PREFER NOT TO, which will proliferate around him and contaminate the others, sending the attorney fleeing. Aristocracy and revolution.”
In the film, the Bride does this in a scene in a room full of aristocracy. This incites a revolution where other women start revolting.

4. The ethics of choosing
Deleuze’s line “choosing is the Promethean sin…” applied to this film helps you see how the other characters’ choices about the Bride are ethically wrong. The line “resistance to tyranny is obedience to God” from the film makes her constantly swerving away from those labels like a kind of faithfulness to something in her that can’t be reduced to lover/monster/criminal/victim.

My questions for those who’ve read Bartleby:
How do these parallels hold up against Melville’s original text? Does Bartleby function this way in the story? What am I missing by not having read it yet?

Only critical/analytical responses please I’m interested in literary discussion, not whether you hate Melville or the movie.

I haven’t read Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” yet, but I’ve been reading Gilles Deleuze’s essay “Bartleby; or, The Formula” to understand its relation to The Bride! (2026), which centers the “I prefer not to” formula. Looking for perspectives from those who know Melville’s text.

The film’s premise is of a Woman who is killed and brought back to life to become a bride for Frankenstein’s creature. Throughout the movie, we see her trying to piece together her personality and identity while swerving and ducking all these titles people are trying to pin on her: the victim, the monster, the angel, the whore, the Madonna, the creation, the aberration.

These are the parallels I am seeing:

1. The formula as refusal of binary choice
From Deleuze: Bartleby saying “I prefer not to” represents “Being as being, and nothing more. He is urged to say yes or no. But if he said no (to collating, running errands…), or if he said yes (to copying), he would quickly be defeated and judged useless, and would not survive.”
In the film, the first time the Bride says “I prefer not to,” they don’t listen to her they force her to swallow an oyster. To me, she is defeated here because she’s been forced into the binary. Then she gets possessed by Mary Shelley, which forces her to fight back. This shows her taking a stance, and that gets her killed because she talks back and is seen as rebellious.

2. Advancing and withdrawing
Deleuze writes that Bartleby “does not refuse, but neither does he accept; he advances and then withdraws into this advance, barely exposing himself in a nimble retreat from speech.”
Throughout the film, she is being overdefined by others from the outside: mother/Madonna/whore, victim/monster/muse, too much/never enough, etc. Her personality is being assembled on screen out of fragments while everyone else keeps insisting she already means something. Just like Bartleby, she advances then retreats because these are other people’s definitions of her, of what she should choose, and she just “prefers not to.”

3. Contamination and revolution
Deleuze’s essay says: “Bartleby pulls a trait of expression, I PREFER NOT TO, which will proliferate around him and contaminate the others, sending the attorney fleeing. Aristocracy and revolution.”
In the film, the Bride does this in a scene in a room full of aristocracy. This incites a revolution where other women start revolting.

4. The ethics of choosing
Deleuze’s line “*choosing is the Promethean sin…*” applied to this film helps you see how the other characters’ choices about the Bride are ethically wrong. The line “resistance to tyranny is obedience to God” from the film makes her constantly swerving away from those labels like a kind of faithfulness to something in her that can’t be reduced to lover/monster/criminal/victim.

My questions for those who’ve read Bartleby:
How do these parallels hold up against Melville’s original text? Does Bartleby function this way in the story? What am I missing by not having read it yet?

Only critical/analytical responses please I’m interested in literary discussion, not whether you hate Melville or the movie.