r/TrueFilm

Poor Things is a film that I've noticed IS VERY divisive among feminist circles. While some see it as a disturbing but powerful look at the way men mistreat and infantilize women. Others see it as blatant p\*do-bait disguising itself as high art.

I personally lean towards the former than the later. The film makes it so glaringly clear these men are gross and abusive that i think coming out of the film thinking its condoning their behavior has me scratching my head. It feels like a take that you have to strip away any and all nuance to arrive at.

I have seen some people leave the movie thinking its a film about sexual empowerment, which is definitely a take that misses the mark. It ignores the obvious issues of the ability to consent (shes obviously not of a "sound mind")

When Duncan tells Bella "you're starting to lose the sweet way you used to talk", I'd say that serves as the films mission statement. The more mature Bella gets the less desirable she becomes to the men around her. Yes its gross, yes its uncomfortable, yes it's disturbing, but thats the way the film wants you to feel. Its a complete condemnation of the way these men view women and treat Bella.

Now, im 100% willing to admit i could be blind to how the movie fails its messaging. But it's one of those cases where it feels like a lot of discourse strips nuance away and a more recent phenomenon in art discourse where people cant separate "a film making be uncomfortable" from a "film being bad"

I can either see 35mm of Saving private ryan in my town or drive two hours to see the searchers in an indie theater in Newport. I haven’t been to Newport in years and thought it could be a fun day out, but the allure of seeing SPR in 35mm has me rethinking. In your experience, does 35mm always enhance an experience to such a degree that you’d rather see a movie you’re not too interested in just for the 35mm? I do want to see Saving Private Ryan, but John Ford is my #1 director so I’m in a pickle

This is one of the most powerful films ever made, and a king among horror movies.

Like The Exorcist, its deviations from routine horror are what make it special.

The first hour of this lean 90-minute punch to the gut is all character development. You forget you’re watching a notorious horror as Ben, Liz and Kristy hang out and go on their road trip. The superb performances and docu-style create a realism that draws you in, your ‘it’s just a movie’ defences are cleverly being dismantled before the nightmare begins.

The shots of the outback combined with what we know is coming creates a subtle dread and spiritual unease. Rural Australia is beautiful, but unsympathetic. There’s evil out there, it just hasn’t manifested yet.

The next masterstroke is the portrayal of Mick - he’s goofy and weirdly funny to begin with, which combines with the mounting panic of the young trio to elicit nervous laughs. With John Jarratt’s commanding performance and Greg McLean’s assured direction, the latter has us in the palm of his hand. The dread grows as Mick’s playful humour gradually gives way to menacing stares and creepy stories about dead animals.

Then the film suddenly plummets like a rollercoaster straight to hell. The suffering of the girls as Mick humiliates and taunts them is what makes this a hundred times more disturbing than countless horrors with lashings more gore. Kristy moans and begs like a young child, she has been psychologically ruined and just wants the torment to end, but Mick ramps up the torture, stuffing her face in his goin and threatening to ‘cut your tits off!’ It’s harrowing.

This is where Wolf Creek casts off the safety net of typical Hollywood horror. Mick isn’t running around with a knife stabbing young women, he rapes them… that’s not ‘fun’. Even worse, he’ll butcher his victims and keep them alive so he can fuck what’s left. It’s a level of evil we rarely get to see, and juxtaposed with his incongruous charming Aussie bumpkin demeanour we’ve got a horror icon for the ages.

For all the criticisms of the film’s violence, we see very little. With Kristy, her bloodied face and groin alongside her desperate screams suggest she’s been raped and tortured. McLean is cueing our imaginations to conjure the worst horrors.

Liz has it even worse. She gets a knife through the back, three fingers severed, and then the infamous ‘head on a stick’ treatment. It’s highly disturbing, but the worst is left to your imagination - what does Mick do to what’s left of Liz to squeeze the information out of her? 🤢 All this is happening to a real person - the character building in Act 1 pays off - this butchery is inflicted on a sweet natured English girl on vacation with her friends 😞

Another masterstroke is the unpredictability. The Strong Final Girl is actually the first to die and has the most savage death. Kristy nearly gets away but Mick eventually catches up with her and puts her down like a pig with his rifle. The film forgets about Ben, then we see him wake up and… escape! He wanders into the outback and is saved through blind luck. This taps into the bigger theme of a chaotic universe well beyond our control.

The final shot is Mick’s silhouette walking into the golden desert until he strangely vanishes. There’s almost something supernatural about him. The film flirts with this with everyone’s watches stopping when they reach Wolf Creek. 

Greg McLean hasn’t managed to top this film yet (although I enjoy the bigger budget, more action heavy sequel, where Jarratt seems even more comfortable in the role), clearly everything came together in Wolf Creek. It’s only 90 minutes but I’ve spent 20 years processing the trauma - that takes skill.

I am very well versed in cinema, watched many films from many countries. Recently I watched Tokyo Story and it touched my heart by how simple yet powerful it was. Just a mundane story of an elderly couple and their children. This movie made me think about Hollywood and I noticed that Hollywood literally never produced such simple human stories. Hollywood movies always have to be some sort of spectacle: intense drama, thriller, war, horror, science fiction, etc. But there aren't simple human stories like Tokyo Story or Nights of Cabiria or Ikiru. Why is that so?

It feels weird to write off an entire medium of entertainment like that, but it's really starting to feel like the case. I've tried watching plenty of movies and none of them have really grabbed me at all. That's not to say that I was bored out of my mind while watching them, but they just didn't make me feel a whole lot. What am I missing? Am I just broken? Here's some movies that I've watched:

• The Shawshank Redemption
• Fight Club
• The Matrix
• Star Wars
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Terminator
• Alien
• Blade Runner
• Happy Gilmore
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• Die Hard

The film is about bureaucracy, an administrative system that organizes work within institutions such as governments and companies through a strict hierarchy, a precise division of responsibilities, and written rules. The system was originally created to prevent favoritism and ensure fairness and impartiality, but today it is more commonly associated with excessive complexity, endless procedures, and painfully slow processes.

The film summarizes this system brilliantly at the very beginning. A group of women arrives to file a complaint about sewage water leaking into their neighborhood. When they bring the complaint to the appropriate employee, he passes it to someone above him in the hierarchy. That person then instructs them to go to the engineering department because it's an engineering issue. The engineering department sends them to the health department because it's a sanitation issue. The health department sends them to the sewage department, then to the prevention department, then to the infectious diseases department, then to the roads department, and then to another department, and another, and another... until they finally reach the mayor, who sends them right back to the public affairs department, the very place where their complaint began.

The film also shines a light on the people who manage these bureaucratic procedures, portraying them as if they are trapped inside a giant machine that forces them to function like cogs within it. They have no life outside this enormous machine that keeps them moving. The narrator describes them as dead, always busy, yet accomplishing nothing of real value. One employee hopes another will fall so he can climb higher in the hierarchy, believing that promotion will somehow change his life. In reality, however, he is simply moving from one cog to another so that the machine can continue operating.

But what happens if you tell someone who has spent his entire life as a cog within that system that he has only six months left to live? What would he do then? When you realize that all the time you spent working, building relationships, getting married, and raising children was never truly for yourself, that none of it was what you genuinely wanted, and that you never found happiness through any of it, what do you do? What does happiness mean to you at that moment? And how can a single piece of news, delivered in a single minute, completely transform a person's life, their worldview, and everything they have ever done?

These ideas are presented masterfully through the performances, the cinematography, the dialogue, and the screenplay, all of which leave you constantly on the verge of tears. How can a film released in 1952 possess such emotional power? How did it manage to explain what bureaucracy can do to our lives, how it can manipulate them, and how a single illness can completely change our lives in just a matter of minutes?

I recently rewatched Dead Poets Society, and what surprised me wasn't that I noticed new details—it was that I found myself sympathizing with completely different characters.

When I first watched it, Neil was the emotional center of the story for me. Years later, I still felt for him, but I also found myself thinking much more about Mr. Keating's influence and even trying to understand the fears that drove Neil's parents. I didn't agree with them, but they no longer felt like one-dimensional villains.

It made me wonder whether some films don't really change on a rewatch—we do.

I ended up writing a longer piece exploring that idea, but before I publish/share it, I'm curious what other people think.

Has a film ever changed completely for you as you got older? Which one, and why?

Trap is M Night at his peak. He's proving that he's still got it. The intensity that the plot demands is exactly what makes him a true master of cinema.

For years people claimed he lost his mojo. He lost his way. He lost...his creativity.

Well Trap delivers on every facet and proves M Night is still the greatest mystery thriller suspense director who's ever lived.

This movie has such Great music it could have just been released as a concert DVD.

Is there a better movie at all that's about a concert?

I just watched Akira Kurosawa Stray Dog for the first time, and despite a few elements of the film, it feels really fresh and almost contemporary.

That’s something I’ve noticed with most of his films- they standout amongst other films from the 40s-60s as having some contemporary feeling quality about them. I don’t feel like I’m watching a black and white film from the 40s or 50s.

I was blown away the first time I watched Seven Samurai, I had the sense that it could be made today and it wouldn’t feel out of place.

I’m curious what your guys’s thoughts are on this?

How do you think Obsession would’ve worked as a series?

I believe it was a an amazing movie. If it were a series it would’ve been amazing, an absolute masterpiece. Like how the wish originated, whats the back story of each of the characters the person who was on the call. Wouldn’t have been a long series just a 1-2 season show. I think the cast carried it out brilliantly.

Okay so I finally watched Send Help. Went in expecting some horror because a friend hyped it up as one, and I gotta say , there's basically none of that here. It's more of a workplace-drama-meets-survival-thriller thing with some dark comedy sprinkled in.

Rachel McAdams though? She's genuinely the reason to watch this. She's fully committed, goes from awkward office employee to someone way more unhinged, and honestly carries the entire film on her back. Every scene she's in works.

Dylan O'Brien, on the other hand, just didn't land for me. His character is supposed to be this insufferable, entitled boss type, but the performance felt one-note the whole way through. I never bought into him as a real person, more like a cardboard cutout of rich guy who's bad at his job.

The story itself has some real logic gaps too. Like, they end up at this huge, fully-stocked house on the island with zero security, zero explanation, nobody looking for them properly. I get that movies need shortcuts sometimes, but this one leaned on them a bit too hard.

It's not a bad watch exactly, and McAdams alone makes parts of it worth sitting through, but it just didn't come together for me.

I really adore this movie, and I'm hoping to understand more about it, beyond just seeing these charming characters find their way to being with each other. Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai are really wonderful with the way they express themselves, but what really fascinated me were how their characters - Li Qiao, and Li Xiao-Jun, came from specific parts of mainland China. Li Qiao came from Guangzhou, which she says has similarities to Hong Kong. Whereas Li Xiao-Jun was a northerner, who seems simpler in nature, contrasting Li Qiao's (and perhaps Hong Kong's?) more financially-centered goals to build wealth.

They both seem to find a deep connection within Teresa Teng's music, and Li Qiao, and other immigrants from the mainland hide their ties to avoid being othered. I could tell that within this more capitalist driven environment, Teresa Teng's songs really stood out as sincere, and sweet. There are some gaps in my understanding, since I am not from Hong Kong or China, and I'd really like to understand the deeper aspects of this story. Was there meant to be a parallel between the complicated turns in their romance, and Hong Kong & mainland China? I know certain directors like Wong Kar-Wai, and Hou Hsiao-hsien have done this in their movies and their countries, which is why I noticed it.

I'm also wondering if there was any significance in the US being the setting of the last act, given it might be more capitalist in nature compared to so many other parts of the world. It's interesting how something simple yet good like Teresa Teng's music playing on the news, is what ended up uniting them, even though the chances in such an environment are low. Really hoping to hear more of everyone's thoughts about this! Thanks in advance :)

Please don't downvote opinions. Only downvote comments that don't contribute anything. Check out the WHYBW archives.

Hi all, just watched Lav Diaz’s Magellan. It was slow and beautiful and the rustling leaves, lapping waves, tropical rains etc. had me leaving the cinema feeling peaceful and contemplative. But also weird, because why do I feel like this after seeing a movie about the horrors of colonialism?

Which got me thinking- Lav Diaz as an example of how “slow cinema” is a genre with its own assumptions and common traits just like any other genre, but it seems to be seen as more “elevated” within the US/EU circuit (it’s slow, therefore difficult, therefore good) akin to eating your cinematic vegetables. Of course there are lots of non-western “slow” directors (Kiarostami, Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming-Liang, etc) but they always appeal to US/EU audiences (screen at Cannes, are on criterion, etc). As if these films were made always in response to the US/EU gaze, instead of completely separate from it.

(This is why it was so jarring to me, coming out of Diaz’s film. He’s a Filipino director but it just seemed like this slow, European gaze was not the right tone for a movie about settler colonialism. Idk though, it is a bit more nuanced than that)

So my question is, what are examples of good cinema that falls outside of this US/EU circuit? For example, Bollywood, k-drama, Japanese pinku, etc are not really made with these audiences in mind, but their own. Any other good examples, films I should watch, things I should read?

I just watched No Country for Old Men, and I really liked it. It's the first movie in a long time where I didn't even pick up my phone once. But I have to say that I found the ending a bit disappointing.

To me, the movie spends its entire runtime reinforcing two ideas: no one is special, and the rules you live by won't save you forever.

We see this with the story about the ox ("one day the ox won't dodge the bullet") and with Carson Wells. Carson made it so far because of the way he lived, but eventually those same rules failed him.

Then there's Chigurh.

By the end of the movie, everyone loses except him. He never gets betrayed by his own philosophy, never truly faces the consequences of it, and never dies to reinforce the idea that no one is untouchable. Yes, he gets injured in the car accident, but he still escapes, completes his mission, and walks away.

I think a stronger ending would have been for Chigurh to die in that car accident. It would have reinforced the movie's own message with a perfect anticlimax: great villains don't always die in an epic final showdown. Most of the time, death just... happens.

Instead, the ending left me feeling like the movie says, "No one is special... except Chigurh."

Lighthouse has been a favorite for awhile but finally recently saw Persona and was blown away. Not overhyped at all, aged amazingly. I see why Eggers praises Bergman so much but it almost changes the way I see Lighthouse.

It's definitely its own thing in it being the male psyche side of things and the Greek mythology. But even the foghorn in both is so similar it's hard not to feel like Lighthouse is a bit derivative.

I still love it but I suppose it's more a testament to how good Persona is 60 years later. The lighting is insane, the abstraction, the acting, the taboo subject matter. But I'm sure this has been beat to death.

To be clear I still feel The Lighthouse and The Master are two modern masterpieces that contend with the classic 60s/70s films I love. Might be too early to tell but I believe they are.

Watching this and wondering why Jim Garrison of New Orleans would be prosecuting the perp for Kennedy’s assassination? It seems like that would have been in Dallas. Was it because that was the US District court that covered Texas, or was it some other reason.

Other thoughts on the Film invited. Surprised Garrison was not killed as words so many witnesses and people involved in the investigation of Kennedy’s death.

Also, is there a similar theory about Robert Kennedy being killed by the establishment or was his assassin Sirhan acting alone?

I'm looking for making-of documentaries that work well as standalone films and are not just curios for fans of the original movie.

The only examples I can really think of are Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse(Eleanor Coppola, 1991) and Burden of Dreams (Les Blank, 1982).

Preferably, auteur based ones that have strong personal style rather than just being adequately made featurettes.

Every comment response of someone who didn't like obsession is always "You missed the point"

How can anyone miss the fucking metaphor for this movie if literally every scene is the exact same fucking thing?

How can a movie with no plot development after the first 20 minutes be widely viewed as the best horror movie in the past decade? It's insane to me the hyperbolic nature of horror Fandom and how they think they are so fucking smart at understanding the most obvious metaphors

The story follows a simple office worker who, after getting off a train, finds himself trapped inside a long corridor. Every time the protagonist walks to the end of the corridor and turns the corner, he is shocked to discover that he has returned to the exact same starting point again, as if the place is imprisoning him inside an endless loop.

As a concept, it's excellent on paper. It immediately hooks you because you want to know the origin of this place, what it represents, and if you understand its symbolism, you'll really appreciate the film and what it's trying to do. But the problem is that it's a Japanese film. What do I mean by that? Have you ever watched anime where everything is shown clearly to the audience, and naturally you're waiting for the protagonist to react like a normal person, but instead the main character keeps acting clueless as if nothing is happening? If that's not clear enough, let me give you an example. Imagine there's a monster standing in front of you, and every time you turn your back on it, it moves. Any normal person would stop turning their back on it in an attempt to survive, because that's simply the logical thing to do. Not here. The protagonist keeps turning his back on it over and over again, and every time he turns around he makes a shocked face, then turns his back again only to discover that the monster has moved.

And this isn't just one or two scenes. The entire screenplay is written this way, as if it treats the audience like idiots, while the people inside the film are even dumber. As a result, you can expect the acting and dialogue to follow the same pattern. Since neither the dialogue nor the acting is particularly good, don't expect the characters to be engaging. Yet by the end, the film still wants you to sympathize with them and care about them.

But honestly, I can't lie and say the storytelling didn't change my opinion of the film after the first hour. Yes, it still delivers those same stupid clichés, but it introduces new characters, shows us this place from their perspectives, starts providing answers, develops the main character further, explains the foundation of the idea and why this place exists, and ultimately helps you understand the symbolism of the location and what it truly means.

On the other hand, the directing, cinematography, and color palette were consistently very good from beginning to end.