Storytelling

Hey! AOL Time Warner! That was a thing.

Solondz is unable to get financing for his movies these days… but on the other hand, you have to ask yourself why we were subjecting ourselves to his movies in the first place. I need more pillows to hide behind while watching this.

Wow, weird desks. You can’t adjust the chairs?

DING DING BITING SATIRE WARNING DING DING

Well, I dunno. It’s such an aggressive movie — it’s designed to get a rise out of people. And the second part of it seems designed to be critic proof — Solondz has already made all the criticism you could make, so ha ha!

I think the only way the two parts work is that the second part tries to defuse any objections you had to the first part? And that’s just ass covering. So it’s no wonder that the featured review on imdb is:

Yeah yeah yeah right.

More confusing are the reviews by actual reviewers:

With things like:

So… that’s… bad?

That’s true.

But I dunno. I admire some of this movie, but it’s hard to make the case why anybody should subject themselves to watching this movie.

Storytelling. Todd Solondz. 2001. ⚃

Holy Motors

Oh, right.

That’s what I want my house to look like!

Nice.

Anyway, after I watched the other Carax movies (one was good, one wasn’t), I watched a couple of the documentaries that were included on the discs, and… well, they made me less excited about watching more Carax movies?

Oh, this is the one where Levant plays that he’s portraying a Bulgarian beggar in Paris…

Or, er, non.

That’s a very pretty factory. The French even has pretty factories!

So this movie is gonna be a series of tableaux where Levant performs a role for a couple of minutes and then it’s on to the next thing? Is that like a comment on film-making?

There’s no doubt that Carax is able to get a lot of talented people on board to do this thing. Like this scene — it lasts for ten seconds, but must have been so much work to put together.

And is this biting satire? Or just kinda… eh?

BITING SATIRE

(As I’m fond of saying: “Satire” is another way of spelling “not actually funny”.)

This movie looks great, but it really feels like the impetus for making this is to see just how far he could push Denis Levant. In the previous scene, you had this gorgeous pietà scene, but with Levant in the Christ role sporting a very rigorous erection for quite a long time (I can’t show you a snap of that here, since this is a family oriented blog)… It really reads as if Carax just wants to fuck around with Levant, making him suffer?

That’s probably way off the mark, but that’s what this feels like.

It’s like the movie is saying something deep like “in life, we’re all playing roles”.

Yeah, it the sets and stuff look great, but the actual images look kinda meh:

Carax was able to sway potential investors concerned with the film’s budget by switching to digital photography, a process of which he strongly disapproves.

Digital.

I kinda wish I liked this movie, because it’s… I wants to be fun? But instead it’s kinda cringe?

I know! I’m so insightful. But it’s like the concept could work, and many of the scenes are quite interesting, but it just doesn’t work.

Holy Motors. Leos Carax. 2012. ⚁

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Eeep!

Anyway, I’m done with my 80s arthouse movie binge, so I was wondering — what’s next? Well, after the 80s, there’s *shiver* the 90s, and the most 90s director there is is Todd Solondz, so I bought all his movies.

And I’ve seen them all before — back then. All I remember is like… they’re all Three Pillow Movies? That is, that’s how many pillows you have to hide behind to not just die from sheer cringe.

OK, I’ve got pillows here, so let’s go.

Hey, wasn’t Solondz’s last movie called Wiener-Dog?

Hey, it that that guy…?

It is!

Yeah, I needed those pillows — this is hard to watch.

But on the other hand, man: Those kids are amazing. I kinda feel like you couldn’t put child actors through something like this these days? And that’s probably good! But, wow, Heather Matarazzo is unbelievable, but it’s not just her — Solondz is just amazing at directing kids.

The movie is kinda genius? I remember it being good, but it’s fantastic.

Welcome to the Dollhouse. Todd Solondz. 1995. ⚅