SPOILER WARNINGS: If you’re going to watch this movie, don’t read this blog article, because I’m nattering on about stuff you don’t want to know before watching it.

OK?

You’ve been warned.

Here goes:

It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve seen that logo? And… never in faux metal, fortunately?

Is that Harry Styles? I thought this was with Alec Baldwin, but I was probably thinking of that other movie…

I guess it’s back in the 60s, because they didn’t have light or saturation back then.

50s?

Yum

So this is some kind of sci-fi movie?

Anyway, I’m watching this because it seemed to be universally critically panned for being to weird, and I’m all for that. I mean, I never read reviews before watching a movie, but that was my impression from various headlines that’s flashed before mine eyes…

So we’re talking some kind of virtual world?

Now there’s a song where the lyrics are going “Life would be dream” or something, so I guess.

I hope there’s a twist here beyond the non-reality of the movie. Perhaps the twist is gonna be that it’s real?

Foreshadowing! Subtle!

The lighting here is just odd. Even outside, in bright sunshine, it just seems like everything is too dark.

That’s a Chris, right? I can never remember what their names are… the Chris that’s in Star Trek?

The performances are swell.

Oh! Is this just a straight-ahead horror sci-fi movie, a la The Prisoner? Horror movies should have more obvious titles.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles tribute scene. Isn’t that the same colour bathtub?

Gotta have some eyeballs.

I really wanted to like this, but it just drags on and on. It’s been almost an hour now, and I feel there’s been material for, like, half as much screen time as that.

But I still have vague hopes that there’s be more than just the obvious Stepford Wives/Westworld/Prisoner rehash this seems like it is.

I’m just profoundly bored.

Oh oh oh, now I’m back to my second theory — the twist isn’t that there isn’t a twist. This is really the 60s and the protagonist is insane.

No! Now I get it. This is a post-apocalyptic thing — they’re all decanted embryos living in a gated city, and outside it’s all gnarly.

I’m sorry, I’m making this sound more interesting than it is… It just has no urgency. I think there might be a fun movie in here somewhere, but it just drags and drags. Even in the major dramatic showdowns, there’s like no stakes, and there’s nothing urgent, and it’s just hard to care.

And now it’s even darker!!!

Well… that plot twist was not what I expected. I mean, it was generally what I thought at the very start, but not that this was all about manosphere internet assholes and stuff. But that’s a somewhat better twist than I expected, really.

But it’s still not actually that … terrifying? And it fucking should be.

Shouldn’t that Porsche be going faster than those other cars?

I know, I have the most insightful, deep criticisms.

I think he’s exaggerating. There’s an 80 minute fun movie in here somewhere, but you’d have to work really hard to get at it.

Hmmm:

But the movie is only tangentially interested in its clichéd narrative. The breakthrough to reality and self-actualization are perfunctory and stuffed into the last half-hour of the movie more as obligation than consummation. This is a Hollywood film with big-name actors; it’s got to have a plot and a resolution. It can’t be “Eraserhead.”

I’m not convinced. I think it’s just a very clichéd movie that doesn’t work even at the obvious level.

Don’t Worry Darling. Olivia Wilde. 2022. ⚁

The seldom-seen down-overhead storage shot.

It feels like it’s been weeks since I watched a movie, but it’s… only been four days? Huh. OK, last week was a busy week…

I like the colours here. They’re very un-2014 — not desaturated with touches of colour-graded hues poking through.

Oh! It’s an anthology film? But one director? Well, that’s fun, too.

The first bit was the most Spanish thing ever. But very short and efficient.

Yeah!

These are excellent questions.

The second bit was totally shocking because… there was no twist! I didn’t even know that was legal!

Oh my god. The third thing is the most excruciating thing ever.

But funny.

It’s a nightmare scenario, but both people involved are assholes, so…

So are all these stories about the same? About revenge? The airplane one was definitely about that… oh, and the restaurant one was about revenge. And I guess the car one, too? And this is about some asshole not wanting to pay a parking ticket (because it unfair)… are all the people here assholes? Hm… 1, yes. 2, no. 3 and 4: Yes. So I guess it’s not about toxic masculinity, but just revenge?

Well, if this one is going to be about revenge.

Yup.

Well, anger…

I’m not sure this movie quite works. I think we’re supposed to identify more with these characters, and it’s hard, because they’re all assholes. Even that woman in the second bit could have removed the rat poison food from that asshole eating it… I mean, just pretend stumble?

Is this just a didactic morality play film? “Never get angry?”

Man, I don’t want to do spoilers or anything, but the parking ticket guy turning into a folk hero (after getting his revenge) is possibly the lamest thing ever in the history of movies.

And are the tales getting longer and longer?

The fifth bit seems oddly complicated. There’s a bunch of asshole characters, and a fall guy… so is this bit going to be about somebody committing revenge on the fall guy? That’s not even ironic.

But worse, this bit is positively tedious — it’s taking so long to set up whatever’s gonna happen. The first four bits were efficient, at least.

Perhaps it’s the guy paying off all these people who’s going to get the revenge…

But it’s so boring that it’s hard to care.

Nice!

… oh! I guessed the revenge ending. SORRY Well, it was obvious, so.

That was absolutely dreadful. Well, not… totally. The scene the older guy discovered he was being scammed was great. But otherwise…

OK, the final bit is gonna be half an hour… I hope it’s better.

Yeah. It’s very much like reading a Spanish comics anthology from the 70s (after everybody had fled Argentine for Spain and worked there). The stories are bitter, sad, “ironic” one-liners. Which was understandable then, totally. This feels like a mostly annoying retread.

But it’s well shot, and the performances are really good. I mean, astoundingly so. So the director is obviously talented… and hasn’t done a single movie after this one. (But there’s a couple in production now, almost a decade later, according to imdb.)

Now that’s revenge!

This just isn’t that funny. It’s even more boring than the fifth bit.

It’s annoying that rottentomatoes doesn’t have a way to sort by rating, because this is 94% fresh and you have to wade through so many positive reviews to get to the good ones. I mean negative ones.

Man, that was a bad segment.

This movie started off strong, but every segment wasn’t quite as good as the preceding one, and we ended with segments that were (respectively) tedious and beyond tedious. So:

Wild Tales. Damián Szifron. 2014. ⚁

I’ve seen all of Andersson’s movies over the past few years — but in approximately reverse order. So I’m now back to 1975!

He didn’t direct a movie after this for 25 years, so I’m guessing this is gonna be the best movie ever.

OK, I’m pretty proficient in Swedish, but some slang is beyond me. And I’m not sure whether some of the utterances are supposed to be absurd, or whether they make sense. Like, these guys just mest and that guy sitting there said “jämna plågor” which (non-idiomatically means) “even pains”, which… er… doesn’t mean much…

And unfortunately there’s not Swedish 1975 Slang Search Engine!!! Who knew!

This is a fascinating film. I would never have guessed that it’s from the 70s — it has a sort of eternal/modern quality thing going on. So perhaps it seemed very old-fashioned in 1975?

Oh wow:

The reviews were very negative with almost no exception, calling it pretentious, old fashioned and reactionary on the level of a high school student caught up in French films from the 30s.

So I guessed right about people at the time finding it old-fashioned. But I don’t get a 30s vibe, either.

This is a very strange film, and I have no idea where Andersson is going with this. I mean, much much weirder than his 2000s films — they’re more stylised and clearly arteesteeque. This is like a normal film, only that none of the scenes make any sense.

So I guess it’s not an idiomatic problem:

“These people are evasively walking around each other, saying curious things of the type ‘we are destruction people’ and ‘we live like migratory birds’ and in the end I get the impression that Roy Andersson has got his whole philosophy of life from some film club that has gone through the dark French pre-war cinema with him, you know the one in which Jean Gabin always got shot right on the final step towards liberation.”

Well… it’s a Swedish movie from the 70s… I think there was a law about boobs.

Yes, I feel like that guy.

“wat”

This movie is, like, about that guy there, who seemingly has no personality to speak of, who meets these other absurd people, and then nothing happens.

It’s the sort of thing where you’re (I mean I’m) thinking “perhaps this is brilliant and I just don’t get it?” But I suspect that this is just shite. But it’s shite in a way that’s really original.

Hm:

Andersson admitted that the film contains flaws, and he said that the main reason for them was that he was not completely in control of the production, and therefore he had to compromise in several scenes.

I’m totally open to the idea that this is a work of genius, but I kinda don’t think so? So:

“Giliap”. Roy Andersson. 1975. ⚁