[PIRATE]
jellobyte
Plex Pass
4seguendo
4followers
Iscritto/a 2025
- The Drama
The ending is much sweeter than I expected but in a really good way. This is a movie about empathy and what it actually looks like. There’s a common disingenuous dialogue happening today where those who want to appear morally righteous assert themselves as feeling empathy or being “empaths”, but once you present them with someone’s suffering that makes them uncomfortable, you realize that it’s just a performative farce. This movie shows exactly that, and then shows you what true empathy looks like. I think it’s valuable in that way. Pattinson is great as always. I’m not a fan of Zendaya but her performance here was pretty solid, I’ll admit it.The Drama - March Comes in Like a Lion
This is a terribly sad and cruel movie. It’s also a slog to get through but it still manages some very evocative photography. There’s little dialogue and what is spoken feels surreal, and much of the imagery is obviously pointed, and I’m sure I could decipher the symbolism if I spent the time to do so, but I just don’t feel any desire to. The choice to have little sound other than silence is a choice that forces the audience to throw away their moral judgement and feel the tragic nature of these two characters. This really excels at conveying heartbreak in the context of a forbidden, utterly hopeless and doomed relationship, and its minimalism definitely helps.March Comes in Like a Lion - Mikey and Nicky
Cassavetes and Falk are in their absolute prime together here. I didn’t realize until afterward that this was directed by Elaine May. The entire time I assumed it was Cassavetes himself because the direction feels exactly his own, but it seems May borrowed his style here on purpose. Intense and intimate and alive. It’s so slick and stylish but it spares no cruelty all the same. A truly sad tale showcasing a long friendship between two men who I’m sure called eachother brothers, deteriorated by pride and mental illness and an unwillingness to abandon their machismo. It’s presented as a movie about gangsters, but it’s not. Not really.Mikey and Nicky - The Brown Bunny
An exercise in mood. Possibly the loneliest movie I’ve ever seen. It builds its austere and stripped atmosphere for the entire duration, right up until the infamous final scene. I wasn’t prepared for it; I knew the controversy but seeing it in context to the rest of the film makes it devastating. It left me with a crushing sadness that I’d never felt before in a movie, not a sadness this raw. I’d also like to stress just how beautiful this movie is captured. Every shot of it could be a photograph. The motor bike on these endless salt flats. The small town you grew up in. The rest area you share with someone you intimately remember from a dream. The bare hotel room washed bright to expose your failures and sins. The people you’ve been before. You’ll love it or hate it depending on who you are. You’ll have to watch it for yourself to find out.The Brown Bunny - Seeking Mavis Beacon
I decided to check this out because I found the premise interesting and I noticed that the music was done by Fatima al-Qadiri, but turned it off after 20 minutes because the documentarians and their subjects are so obnoxious and unlikeable that I couldn’t stomach any more. Truly a shame.Seeking Mavis Beacon - The Antisocial Network
The archival footage of Otakon was really cool to see, as was the interviews with guys like WT Snacks. As a documentary though, I think it paints its subject with an overly broad brush. It sort of condenses and simplifies 4chan’s history, the first half being pre-cancer /b/ and the latter half being Jeffrey Epstein’s baby /pol/. For a movie about 4chan, they spend the second half of the movie really just talking about QAnon and Donald Trump. But boards besides /pol/ exist, and many of them still operate much in the same way that they did in 2004. I also found it strange that moot was not in the movie. He’s in the archival footage of course, but there’s no interview with him at all, so the documentary is already missing the foundational perspective on its subject. I’m not sure why he wasn’t included, there was no disclaimer or anything stating that he declined to participate in the film. Maybe I was just expecting something different. I was really hoping to see more of an exploration about chan culture and early memedom, or even more about the specific cultures of other boards on the site. I also wished they’d conducted an interview with Hiroyuki, considering he was the creator of 4chan’s predecessor and is its current day owner. Instead what we received was mostly philosophizing in place of real documentation, which wouldn’t be too bad if said philosophizing wasn’t shallow or so narrow that you’ve heard it a million times before.The Antisocial Network - Die My Love
Really drab and not in a way that’s compelling or makes this memorable. Also incredibly slow, which I usually have no problem with if there’s good payoff. I’m a very patient viewer. Imagine a spiritual remake to A Woman Under The Influence, but make the characters really unlikeable and hollow instead of endearing and fully-written. Then throw in a really ugly CGI ending and we’re left with this total slog that has nothing to say. Even worse is that Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson are some of the greatest actors of their generation, and it’s obvious they could have great chemistry if they were given a competant director and writer, instead it’s wasted here. Truly disappointing.Die My Love - Little Otik
Such a fun film. A dark Czech fairy tale brought to life with freaky stop-motion. I love the emphasis on food and the unsettling closeups. There’s a distinctive tone here that uses camp in the best way. This is the first movie I’ve seen from Švankmajer and it definitely won’t be the last.Little Otik - Backrooms
Truly excellent. My first reaction to hearing that this movie was in development was similar to if you’d have told me that they’re making a Ben Drowned movie: a cynical eye-roll and groan. Another great internet creepypasta birthed from the 4chan cauldron of id, transformed into a plasticized, limp and mass marketable product. I had no question in my mind that this would have a chance of being good, let alone this good. I would go so far as to say that not only is it good, it’s the best movie I’ve seen this year, and that would include Obsession, this movie’s twin sister in terms of hype, conversation and being the theatrical debut of a very young filmmaker. This movie had every opportunity to be a waste—to squander a great idea at any turn—to run out of steam or not nail the ending or being unable to present a compelling story. Instead what we received was captivating, atmospheric, rich with detail and subtlety, and above all truly unsettling and original. There are no tired clichés here. I was certain that this would be like Silent Hill, where the brilliant and extremely layered horror of the games would be destroyed and paraded around to every theater in America, destined to the Dollar General bargain bin of DVDs. I was wrong, and I was wrong because this director understands what makes the source material work. Just watch it, and watch it again. And again.Backrooms - Human Traffic
After seeing the junglist vinyl shop scene, I got excited for this. It’s got a great soundtrack but everything else is very thin and overall feels totally aimless. The culture and vision and details are there but everything else is empty. I feel like this is one of those movies that was a total cultural touchstone for those invested in the UK rave scene in the late 90’s and that’s cool. I just don’t think it’s a good movie.Human Traffic - Where Is the Friend's House?
A beautiful film in which a boy suffers through a round-about journey to save his classmate from the cruelty of being denied an education. The adults in the film either don’t care or don’t understand his loyalty to this good deed. Much like all of great Iranian cinema, the ending is a simple poetic beauty.Where Is the Friend's House?