Movie Discussion! - Page 255

On July 24 2013 23:41 Dirkzor wrote:
Question: What movie would you think that most people would like if you recommended it?

To explain: I don't want _your_ personal favorite, but the movie you think most people would enjoy - think everyone or maybe just people in this thread.

On July 24 2013 23:49 Dirkzor wrote:
The question wasn't meant to be easy =)

Edit: You don't like Fight Club? Why? (Just curious...)

On July 24 2013 23:55 corumjhaelen wrote:

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fight-club-1999
I don't always agree with Ebert, but here he's close enough to what I think, and he says it better and in a less abrasive way.
Most of the humour also flies over my head, also a reason why I respect Tarantino's talent, but don't enjoy his movies that much. I also think Fincher is talented btw.

On July 25 2013 00:09 Requizen wrote:

I don't quite understand this review tbh. He praises the acting, muses on the "bait and switch" nature of Tyler's philosophy (which is kind of the whole point of the movie), and talks about how brutal the fight scenes tend to be - which to me is generally a good thing. Brutal movies should be brutal, not afraid to show blood and pain.

Fight Club is one of my favorite movies, though I doubt I would recommend it to everyone. People tend to focus on the wrong things about it. It's not an anarchism movie, in fact the entirety of act 3 is about how that fucks everything over. It's not a mindless beat-em-up, though it does boast some pretty good fight scenes. It's a view on the base and primal desires of men stuck in a rote, 9-5 job that they can't stand, the need to drink and fight and fuck. At a dumb level, it's a show-and-tell of how good it would feel to give into those desires, and then whiplash you into realizing why you don't. On a bit of a higher level, it's about the internal struggle that one has with those, using Tyler Durden as a heavy handed metaphor of our primal urges and why it's nice to give into them occasionally, but one must keep them in check.

I mean, the book does it a lot better, but the movie is a fine interpretation. It's not a perfect movie, it's not deeply intellectual, but it still ranks for me by doing its best to be more than it is on the surface.

On July 25 2013 00:13 corumjhaelen wrote:

Yeah, it's a movie that shows the world seen by your average 14 yo. Fascinating.

On July 25 2013 00:24 Requizen wrote:

Uh, I guess if that's how you want to view it? This is the sort of dismissive and uncommunicative attitude that makes people think you're shitposting.

What about it is for 14 year olds? I'll tell you what, after working a desk job with shitty co-workers and bosses for several years now, I wish I could go ahead and beat the shit out of someone with my bare hands, break things for the hell of it, and threaten people who act like shit towards me. It's exactly the type of escapism that appeals to someone chained to a desk.

Sure, when I first watched it as a high-schooler it was all "hurr durr boobies and punching people haha", but the idea and plot of it stand on their own. The brutality of some scenes and explicit parts serve to frame that mindset, and highlight what we all know but don't want to admit is right under our thoughts in our subconscious. It's not violence and masculine grandstanding for the sake of violence and masculine grandstanding, it exists (like all of Chuck Palahniuk's works) to throw a spotlight on the ugly, base human side that we work so hard to cover up, and in the end give us a reason to keep it in check.

Like I said, it's not the most intellectual movie I've ever watched, but it's far from a stupid one.

On July 25 2013 00:32 corumjhaelen wrote:

Hating working at a deskjob is one thing I can understand, and it can and should lead to many things, but wanting to become mindlessly violent because of that ? If that's really the case (I doubt it), you should see a psychologist.

On July 25 2013 00:39 Requizen wrote:

...are you just purposefully dodging the point? I thought you were above ad-hominem here, come on. Id-level desires are part of human nature, you want to scream at your boss when he insults you for something you didn't do, you want to punch that guy who cuts you off in traffic, you want to sleep with every hot chick you see because that's the way men's bodies are programmed. The film is more or less a satire, showing how awesome it is to fight and fuck and scream, but it comes around and shows that, in the end, nothing good comes of it.

The way you're talking about it makes me think you watched the first half where they're just fighting and running around acting like teenagers and then walked out of the theater. Act 3 pretty much deconstructs the entire thing.

On July 25 2013 00:41 ne0lith wrote:
I think any argument is pointless if what you got from Fight Club is that the main character goes crazy because he hates his job. You're just one of those hipsters who has a problem with movies that are too mainstream and generally viewed as being good from what I can tell from your posts.

On July 25 2013 00:43 corumjhaelen wrote:

I'm seeing a psychiatrist, it has helped me a lot me dealing with my anger and what disatisfies me in my life. I really doubt thinking that sort of thing is sane at all you know.
Also you're the one who doesn't get what I'm saying. Either the movie promotes mindless violence and nihilism like in the two first part, then it's dumb and dangerous. Either it "deconstructs" this attitude, and says that mindless violence and nihilism is stupid or whatever, then, it's just absolutely uninteresting.

On July 24 2013 23:41 Dirkzor wrote:
Question: What movie would you think that most people would like if you recommended it?

To explain: I don't want _your_ personal favorite, but the movie you think most people would enjoy - think everyone or maybe just people in this thread.

On July 25 2013 00:54 Requizen wrote:

So anything that has to do with the brutality of human id and animalistic nature is either dumb or boring? I mean, sure you can have that opinion, but honestly I think it's one of the most fascinating aspects of human life to look at. Because for all we are as people, for all our civility and smiles and culture, at one point we were killing each other with rocks and swords and guns and everything else we could get our hands on. Humans have committed the worst atrocities on the planet to ourselves and everything else in ways that Mother Nature only WISHES she could. And that isn't gone because you or I wear a tie.

I guess that sort of introspection doesn't appeal to everyone, but I love it. Internal struggles with our primal selves, the desire to appear as best as possible to others, and what happens when we follow one over the other, these are the sort of character arcs I like a lot.

On July 25 2013 01:05 corumjhaelen wrote:

Not at all, for instance Nietzsche is a pretty interesting guy who deals with that sort of things, but he has a more developped and ambiguous, almost point of view on violence, which means it actually forces you to think about it.
The problem here is that I don't think anyone above 14 can really think the alternative Tyler proposes makes any sense at any point. It looks dumb from minute 0. The movie could have been interesting if nihilism and violence were a real temptation, then it could indeed try to deconstruct it. For me nevertheless, there is nothing really to deconstruct, the movie is just stating the obvious, there is a violent part in men, but it doesn't shed any light on what consequences this has. For me Fight Club really says absolutely nothing, which doesn't make it really dumb (there are way worse movies out there), but I fail to see what other seem to see in it.
I'm not saying that we need someone reading Nietzsche during the movie by the way, I think the movie needed to justify Tyler's attitude a lot more, to make it, more subtle.

On July 25 2013 01:11 Domus wrote:


Is has a nice style to it, good mood of paranoia.