u/Top_Cranberry_3254

...but

I actually voted for Parasite for Best Picture in 2020.

I thought it won out over 1917 and of course The Irishman as the best film of that year.

But over the years, you keep seeing it voted in the top 10, top 20, or top 30 films of all time now lol.

Like what?

It has actually taught me how the average movie goer comes to overrate a movie. As the Oscars were approaching that year, Obama made a social media post (after he was 3 years out of office) saying that Parasite was the best movie of the year. This is what got me to actually see it tbh. I wanted to see what that kind of hype was about. This was in around November or early December. He commented about some social commentary and criticism about upper class and lower class stuff (of course).

So I watched it and I was impressed. I saw the social commentary, enjoyed the dark humor, and was surprised at the twist when it came.

It was a pretty good movie, therefore. It was certainly my vote above 1917, which I felt was a vapid gimmick with very little depth (which it is), despite being an impressive 1-shot cinematographical achievement, And The Irishman was just not that good to win Best Pic. It was good, but nowhere near Casino, Goodfellas, or The Departed.

But now, it seems like every online discourse and voter list has placed Parasite amongst the Top 20-30 movies of all-time. This is clearly being influenced by the average viewers' need for validation from the Academy (in a year with very little competition for Best Picture) and authority (former President Obama was hyping it up on his much anticipated "Best movies of the year" list).

Again, I voted for it for Best Picture adamantly that year, but "Top 20-30 movies of all-time"? Are you kidding? It's a good, entertaining movie, but it has major issues.

First, the initial violent scene at the end feels unearned and comes out of nowhere. It's just abrupt. Shocking, yes, but earned? No.

Second, the epilogue where we learn the young kid is now living in the basement is majorly anticlimactic and also feels unrealistic and unearned. It's too far fetched and doesn't hit emotionally in any way.

I think the problem with these "twists" is that they don't feel earned. They don't hit hard like say The Sixth Sense or Seven do. Yes, they are entertaining and unexpected, but ultimately they are meaningless in that it feels like they are just there for "shock value" rather than earned like in Sixth Sense and Seven. As such, they are ultimately forgettable. You never really see Parasite mentioned in movie requests, for example on this site, on movies with a twist.

As for the social commentary, it has its' merits, but it ultimately still lacks an emotional punch. Looking back the most memorable scenes for me were when the house maid surprisingly returns home and the daughter is doing her thing with the doorbell. Most of the rest of it is forgettable.

See, when you talk about a "Top 10-20 or even 30" movie of all-time, you are talking about a movie that has specific scenes that are so good and unforgettably classic, that they really stand out. Think The Good, the Bad and the Ugly climax, or the end of Shawshank Redemption or The Godfather, or think about even Pulp Fiction or Forrest Gump. Heck, I'm not even a big fan of Fight Club, but I will concede it had classic scenes in it that stand out. Obviously, think Goodfellas and Seven or LotRs trilogy (listing here some IMDB and other lists' top movies consensusly on film critic sites).

Parasite is a good movie, but it is incredibly overrated. Glazing over the sudden nonsensical violence and the anticlimactic ending as if the movie is so perfect it is a definite top 20-30 of all-time feels like people influenced for reasons other than true film merits.

Now, remember, a true masterpiece like Ben Hur (1959) is (today) nowhere to be found in top 20 lists on any aggregate sites, even though it's undeniably a masterpiece. To have a movie like Parasite so far ahead of it is completely delusional. Regarding comparing Ben Hur, the same can be said for lots of movies, like Fight Club, too. But to consider Parasite such a far better film and top 30 of all-time without question, completely glazing it, feels like some sort of group-think brainwashing.

Thank you for listening to my film review Ted Talk.

For example, The Peaceful Warrior kind of movie. Something that is more obscure like that as I've seen almost all of the more common and popular ones.

Is Whiplash like that? Just asking as it seems to be something about a mentor-protege dynamic in a similar way.

Does anyone have any favorite movies to recommend that can inspire you to motivate yourself through an injury like in The Peaceful Warrior?

I'm not a die hard cinephile or an ardent horror fan, and tbh I'm not even one of the biggest fans of Obsession commonly seen on subs, but I do think it's one of the better films of the decade (which is surprisingly a hot take despite its success and box office run in many other film subreddits).

I've seen most of the Oscar nominated and most popular movies of the decade, and very few of them did I feel were as good as the hype surrounding them. But I felt like Obsession was one of the rare undeniably good movies of this decade (I put it in the top 10 I've seen while discarding so many others that we are supposed to think are the best just due to subjective taste and experiences watching so many all time classics from the last century).

So someone trolled a little on one of my posts when I said Obsession was one of the best movies of the 2020s, and these are the movies they listed that they thought were better than Obsession (100 of them).

R.M.N, The Blue Caftan, Decision to Leave, Paper Tiger, Resurrection, Mass, Hit the Road, Cloud, Beginning, Sirat, Red Rocket, Red Rooms, The Beast, Annette, Passages, Problemista, The Outfit, Vortex, Souleymane’s Story, The Bastard, Bergman Island, Blue Jean, Afire, Resurrection, On Becoming a Guniea Fowl, Fjord, Sleep, Totem, The Settlers, Between the Temples, No Bears, Homebound, Memory, The Killing of Two Lovers, Mogul Mowgli, Nowhere Special, Sweat, My Sunshine, Stolen, Seven Veils, One Battle After Another, Anatomy of a Fall, Dream Scenario, Sing Sing, Incantation, Ferrari, Kneecap, Titane, Bird, Scrapper, Joyland, Urchin, Happening, The Plague, Sentimental Value, My Father’s Shadow, Master Gardener, Compartment #6, Black Dog, Late Shift, Nitram, Last Summer, Benediction, Another Round, All We Imagine as Light, Sinners, 12th Fail, Marty Supreme, The Boy and the Heron, Soul, Perfect Days, All of us Strangers, The Northman, Drive my Car, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Pig, Hard Truths, The Old Oak, A Normal Family, Aftersun, The Iron Claw, I Saw the Tv Glow, I’m Still Here, May December, Didi, La Chimera, How to Have Sex, Little Fish, The Hand of God, Evil Does Not Exist, His Three Daughters, Return to Seoul, A Thousand and One, Great Freedom, A Hero, The Souvenir Part 2, Rose of Nevada, Chamkila, The Red Point of Marriage, Bruiser.

How many of these does anyone think are actually better than Obsession, which will now become the highest grossing original film of the decade? I just want to see if I'm too caught up in the hype or if these movies are really that much better than Obsession.

So many of the movies that get super high critics' scores, online hype and popularity, and that are nominated or win for Oscars these days are unenjoyable and not nearly as good as they are made to seem or have you believe.

Many people making excuses for this by coming up with some interesting and believable arguments, such as that the key era in anyone's lives when they find and enjoy their favorite movies and music is between like age 18 and age 35, and the charts become a Bell Curve before and after that age range, so let's just acknowledge that. Sure, any art is subjective.

But over the last 10 to 12 years, it really seems like the quality of movies has become so bad that people call movies "masterpieces" or deem them "Oscar worthy" that would belong in the throwaway $1 DVD bin at any local convenient store back in the 90s and early 2000s.

We used to measure the quality of a movie according to a notion that you would buy it so you could rewatch it again whenever you want; not in an avid DVD collector way where some people buy everything it seems, but such a high quality movie that you want to own it. Many Oscar nominees and winners of the 20th century were buyable and high quality.

Today, you look at these hyped and accalaimed movies and it's not only that you wouldn't buy them if they were $20 for a DVD but that you wouldn't even watch them again if you got paid to watch them. It seems none of the ones that are Oscar nominees and popular are anything close to a "classic", where you want to rewatch it over and over again because it's such a high quality story and film. Many of the recent popular movies are so bad that you walk out or turn them off, yet pretentious types who have to toe the line for pop culture street cred defend these movies constantly.

It's not even that these movies are even necessarily "bad". It's just that they are not "good". They are not movies that make you want to watch them again or over and over again. They are an arduous chore to even get through the first time, not because they are overly intellectual, artistic or sophisticated, but because they are just too long, boring, poorly written, and poorly edited. Lots of them have awesome CGI and special effects, but the writing for hte story is just vapid and hollow.

I've watched all of the popular ones of this era, and at best they are a "decent 1-watch" movie. It created a field where subjective taste is more justifiable than ever. The only difference these days is perceived quality due to high critics ratings or Oscar nominations; technically the most acclaimed and award nominated movies are not far above movies that don't get acclaim and awards. It's entirely subjective when the difference in quality is so minimal between what's considered superior and what movies are considered inferior to it.

The same goes for actors, directors, and writing especially. The hyped, acclaimed, and nominated ones are a monumental step down from those who were hyped, popular, and acclaimed in he 20th century (some older ones like Freeman, Eastwood, and others from that generation are still hanging around as seniors, but the new generation is nowhere near as good).

I've maybe seen about 2-3 movies that would be considered ones you want to own, or buyable, if they came out in the 90s or early 00s, and even those are a little inferior to the greats of that prior era.

This is, of course an unpopular opinion, so present strong aruments and be polite. Art, after all, is subjective.

First time watcher here of Ben Hur (embarrassing, I know- where has this movie been on my watch list?).

Out of all the older movies I've seen (and I've seen many), for some reason I never got around to it. Maybe it was the long run time (3 hours, 42 minutes), or maybe it's not as recommended on lists compared to other classics these days.

Well, was I in for a surprise. This is easily in my top 3 classic movies of all time, instantly, and it's automatically in my top 50, a timeless classic that lives up to its great reputation.

It's basically Gladiator's grandfather, but better in many ways (better writing, better original characters, and more epic in scale). I love Gladiator, btw.

Prince of Hur, Judah Ben grows up wealthy and friendly with the Romans, particularly the tribune Mersala (played excellently by Stephen Boyd). The old childhood friends reunite as adults with opposing political views about the Jewish people (Mersela fearing a rebellion, and Judah Ben Hur refusing to side with Mersela's peace plan).

An accident occurs, and Judah is imprisoned with his mother and sister, and he is forced into slavery. While enslaved, he saves the general's life in a battle in Macedonia. Thus, promoted to his adopted son, while winning chariot races back at Rome, he is finally granted freedom to return to Judeah. Once there, finding his mother and sister might be dead, he vows revenge on Mersela.

The scope and scale for the time in 1959 is absolutely breathtaking, amazing cinematography captured by Robert Surtees. The acting is marvelous and superb from all cast members. The characters, character development, dialogue, emotional beats, and philosophical themes are outstanding. Even though it runs over three and ahalf hours, you never lose immersion for one single scene, which is just unbelievable, especially for an old movie. The score is also excellent for its time.

As if all of that isn't good enough, we get a historical epic with famous historical figures sprinkled all throughout the narrative. Loaded with excellent and unforgettable scenes and moments, Ben Hur is a classic movie that, for me, lived up to its renowned fame and popularity. While most of the spiritual themes are on the nose, there is plentiful mixture of broad philosophical insights scattered about the dialogue.

Wyler uses surprisingly profound artistry and symbolism (one that particularly stood out was the rainwater flowing scene at the end turning red to clear among the rocky hills) for a 1959 film, making it breathtaking, mesmerizing, and unforgettable. One of the most powerful movies ever made, imo. It feels like more than a movie, if that makes sense. This sounds hyperbolic, but it feels like an out of body experience because of the grand epic scale of the whole thing; it's more of an experience than a movie in some ways, a timeless masterpiece.

I was glad to have spent a boring summer night watching this epic classic- one of only 15 films of all time I rate a perfect:

10/10

Most people are familiar with director David Fincher, and most people think his best movie is Seven or Fight Club.

But because the final 10 minutes of The Game is so controversial among viewers, the film is comparatively discarded as inferior.

Yet, everything else about the film is perfect. It's also Fincher's most mature movie in that it follows a wealthy middle aged investment banker in his midlife crisis and search for meaning.

The first 2 hours of the movie are perfect, with relentless tension and suspense as Michael Douglas' Van Orton gets led into a nightmare at the recommendation of his dubious and estranged brother played by Sean Penn.

Douglas' Van Orten has everything a man can ask for in life, except for love, since he is recently divorced, and a social life, since he is up tight and so career oriented he has no time for anyone else. Fincher creates a world where the wealthy are so bored with their corporate success that they essentially pay corporations to abuse and torture themselves just to get a thrill.

When a person has all the power in the world and everything they ever wanted, yet also deal with human relationship disappointments, some would go to great lengths to find deeper meaning and fulfillment in their lives (tens of millions of dollars in the bank account? Why not be the star of your own movie production just to feel an adrenaline rush and escape the day-to-day and bad memories of past relationships?).

Despite being a thiller, The Game presents comedic elements thanks to Michael Douglas' amusing nuanced performance as he has to deal with a world that blurs the lines between reality and fiction. Watching a control freak like Douglas' Van Orten get humbled and his life upended by a coordinated corporate scheme is a tremendously entertaining and elightening experience and ironic in showing how people who have it all get so bored, they'd pay the corporate system to humiliate themselves just to feel something different, or awaken themselves from the mundane routine.

Seven is too dark and depressing, and Fight Club is too longwinded and heavy handed. The Game is Fincher's best movie and a borderline masterpiece.

What are your early bold predictions for the 2027 Oscars (for 2026 movies)?

1. Obsession is going to shock doubters on reddit. Nominations and wins:

• Best Picture
• Best Actress
• Best Original Screenplay (Win)
• Best Casting
• Best Actor
• Best Editing (Win)

2. Matt Damon will NOT win Best Actor; Tom Cruise wins

3. Odyssey gets 10+ nominations, but only wins Best Casting

4. Dune 3 snubbed in Best Picture, but wins Cinematography and Special Effects

Name your bold predictions for this upcoming Oscars:

I'm a 43M.

By age 36-39, I had already experienced everything I wanted in life. Think of having a long bucket list with about 50 things on it, and 47 of them were satisfactorily accomplished, except there were only 3 left.

The 3 left on the list were your least, but still valuable and you wish to do them, yet they are also things you have the least control over. You don't want to compromise your soul and morals to get them (ie- lie, lie to yourself, put yourself in a bad situation, put yourself in bad environments, jeopardize your health, finances, etc). And you have high ideals so you don't just want to do the final 3 things on your list the wrong way either, like just do them to do them, bc like the 47 things before them, you want them to be ideally experienced and enjoy them without regrets.

But this ideal leads to stagnation bc no version of those final 3 things is close to ideal. You keep searching and looking but nothing is up to standards.

Now, bored, you start a new hobby in the interim that becomes addictive and not in a good way (ie- gambling, stock trading). You get so caught up in it that you forget where you started.

What more is there left to do when you've already lived all of your dreams and goals and there isn't much left to do that would ever compare to how good and vibrant those experiences were? Do you just accept a boring life? Or do you "force" adventure on yourself like traveling the world? I don't like to waste time and money on things that I know I'm only lukewarm on as far as interest level. I don't want to start a new business because I've already done that and am content with my experiences. The world is so different than when I started (while I'm way more fulfilled than when I started). They say to "stay hungry", but you dont want to forcefeed stuff you don't like the taste of into your life just to "stay hungry". I only like to do things I'm passionate about but I'm running out of things I haven't done or still want to do.

Not a full dystopia, but a relative dystopia that could and probably will get worse due to inertia....

Everyone wants to act like Covid 19 and the ramifications and consequences, and lockdowns, and inflation currently, and this AI takeover either never happened, isn't still affecting them, or is just life as usual...That's before we even get into people living to stare into their phones at pictures of themselves (like narcissism on Arnold or The Rock level steroids) all day, every day, desperate for a dopamine hit by getting "likes"- many of which at this time are by bots and fake accounts, while betraying their spouses or significant others (technically having an emotional or sexually attracted fling with a person online is still cheating and betrayal), showing pictures of their kids to strangers who they don't even know and will never meet while giving out all their personal information just to gain some narcissitic attention and supply from the whole world lol, and living to impress strangers with their social media pictures or videos lol. This is just the tip of the iceberg as the cost of college education is vastly more inflationary than even the baseline inflation increases since the 80s.

Now, there are still obviously positive aspects of life. The sun still shines, exercise and food are still good, pets, basic entertainment still exists, but this is simply not the world that we were raised and educated to live in back in the early 2000s to mid 2010s. This has gone off the rails lol.

1. The stock market is engineered.

We all know about politicians and insider trading. There is actually a whole subreddit devoted to tracking their stock picks, and more often than not, their picks "coincidentally" go up shortly after their buys, and Trump's own picks are up like 100%-200% in this current year alone.

Moreover, the market was declining up until March 30th, and the war in Iran was only escalating with rising oil prices (that most reporters were on TV saying would cause a recession if it continues, which it did for several more weeks). Yet, the market suddenly rose to absurd levels between April 1st and June 1st as Trump kept saying, "We won. They are finished. Oil will come down very soon".

None of it made any economical sense. Anyone aware of what rising oil does combined with inflation in such a situation like the blocking or the Strait of Hormuz and conflict going on there, knows the market should have takned and we should have been in an official recession, but somehow the market kept pimping to absurd levels (since then most stocks have dropped to 1 year or 2-3 year lows, btw, after they shot up to joke levels of ATHs during that run for no reason).

The theory is that the "casino owner", who is familiar with how to rig money games, rounded up his Wall Street CEO's and worked out a deal, convincing them that in order to defeat Iran, in a war that should have never started to begin with, he needed the markets to remain at ATHs (all time highs) because the only way Iran could win was by shutting down Hormuz (which they did and tried) to spike oil prices and cause a global and US recession. So with unlimited, filthy rich deep pockets, they engineered the market to run up to defy the IRGC.

TLDR; Due to all of the in depth technology, AI, and power in the gov, they can manipulate the stock market "at will" whenever they want, whether for insider trading to help their buddies, or to try to win a war that never should have begun.

2. Nancy Guthrie's abduction had to do with retaliation from the Sinoloa cartel.

Whether it was Samantha or her sibling and her husband, someone got in too deep with the cartels, likely involving drugs, and that is what the cartels do when people don't "pay up". They target their family members as retrubution.

Odyssey continues to take the internet and movie world by storm, and I'm astonished. I'm actually a pretty big Nolan fan-liked Oppenheimer, even liked Tenet, and favorite movies of his of mine are Memento, TDK, BB, and Inception. I really wanted to like The Odyssey and saw it on opening day, very excited, took time out of the afternoon to see it.

Movies like this used to get roasted all over back in the early 2000's and 90's. The material is untrue to both Homer's original AND the female translator's material from which the movie was adapted. She has publicly criticized the film, even though she wrote the translation it is adapted from.

The biggest irony of the problem imo is that it's not the casting of Lupita as Helen or Paige (who was one of the more competent actors in the movie), but of Matt Damon as Odysseus.

I'll get the good thing out of the way first: in the final 30 minutes, Damon actually was pretty good. That's it though- pretty good. It's when he is back at Ithaca. Now, he was helped by a better portion of the script- the kind of stuff that works in itself, as he wanders around in a cloak, unrecognized.

However, Damon's acting is literally the worst I've seen as a whole in a critically acclaimed movie in a long time, if not ever. I literally was cringing during most of the first 3/4ths of the movie. I just saw a clip on reddit of the cyclops scene, and I double checked to see if maybe I was being too hard on his performance, but after seeing the brief clip, it brought back the memories of why I felt the way I did about his acting instantly. I cringed.

It's the basic description of bad acting: wooden line delivery/phoning most of the lines in/no color or "chewing into the role"/ no loss of normal baseline level personality/ emotional reactions that don't match the scene and what is going on in the scene/ "unbelievability" as the character.....but it was also his accent and "mannerisms". Like anybody who thinks it was good acting doesn't know acting or is just a defensive Damon fan for some reason.

The problem with it starts with casting him to begin with, tbf. This was a "favor" kind of choice. Nolan and him must be closer than other actors that could have been cast in this role. Damon's acting completely took me out of it and I could not suspend my disbelief with his appearance, his line delivery, his accent, or his emotional "lack of depth". In fact, I could not believe what I was even seeing from him because it is literally some of the worst acting from a praised and critically acclaimed movie that I ever saw. If this was the early 2000's, radio hosts and comedy shows would be roasting him imo.

But today, he'll probably get nominated for the Oscar and might even win it.

Edit: Not surprised at all by all the downvotes as both of my original critical reviews of The Odyssey quickly rose within minutes just like this with upvotes, and then the BOTS moved in instantly and downvoted it to below 0.....Well, today, those posts are upvoted into the 100's with many genuine and wholehearted comments filled with people who agree. The astoturfing can only go so far. The studios aren't paying the bots that well.

Wow, I'm currently watching Troy (2004), and it's really simple quality. The actors are "ACTING", every actor is "in character", not talking like they are on the subway in New York.

Orlando Bloom, the older men actors are all acting. They are putting emotion and gravitas into their lines. They look like "men" in ancient Greece.

The background extras in the staged fight and battle scenes are so well choreographed. There are swords, horses, and chariots. All the scenes are expertly shot and capture the time period- the blue skies, the beaches of the Mediterranean, not some dark, gloomy haze fogging every scene.

The armor looks like it would in ancient Greece, and the Music is so intense and intriguing leading into scenes. Epic music.

Anyone who is glazing over The Odyssey giving it way too high scores needs to just watch Troy to learn how to make an ancient Greek epic.

There is no Orlando Bloom acting like Orlando Bloom. No actors are talking like they are walking the streets of Boston or New York. Nobody is pretending to be Batman or Darth Vader. And I'm not even the biggest fan of the movie Troy, but comparing it to The Odyssey, it is so much more gratifying as a depiction of ancient Greece and the time period of The Iliad and Odyssey.