It insists upon itself.
Precisely
The first one is… Fine. The other two are a fuckin slog.
I’d say the 1st and 3rd are blehh, and the second is okay
Does that one show a bunch of Italy? I didn’t mind that.
Anybody ever read the Godfather book? It’s… kinda weird. Every time a new character is introduced, it’s goes into their sexual history. Like, do we really need to know Rocko is an attentive lover with a string of girlfriends that he has no trouble keeping satisfied before he goes and kills some dude?
And then there’s a part of the book that is about… How do I put this…
a woman getting a pussy tightening surgery.
It’s the bridesmaid that Sonny fucks in the closet at his sister’s wedding. She sought out Sonny, as did all the other women “with big mouths and wide hips” because he had a legendarily big cock and it was her only hope to get any pleasure, on account of her gigantic pussy and all.
After he dies, she tried to commit suicide. Not because she cared for him, she just figures she’ll always be alone because no one else in the world will have a cock that will be adequate to work with her ginormous pussy.
But much later in the book, she’s living at the family casino in Nevada, and her doctor boyfriend finally talks her into having sex and discovers her pussy is huge and convinces her that he knows a great plastic surgeon that can fix it. It walks through the consultation and surgery and everything. Not in explicit detail, but, like, it’s so weird.
And there’s weird comments like (not a quote) “Don’t worry, doll. I do great work. I’ll fix you up so nice he’ll be calling me every day to thank me.” Shit like that.
And it worked. After she has the surgery and they have sex, her doctor boyfriend immediately proposes to her.
So, anyway, yeah… I don’t know why they left the great pussy tightening subplot out of the movies.
From Here to Eternity is like that. The book is truly a great piece of literature, but the movie (made in the 1950s) excises pretty much everything worthwhile in the book. Just as one example, the book has a character who can’t get any contact with women in pre-war Hawaii so he starts getting blowjobs from gay men in parks. Eventually he builds up so much guilt from this that he shoots himself in the head in the barracks. I can’t remember whether the character was even in the movie but obviously no hint of those activities show up. There’s also the main character taking up with a prostitute who is magically not a prostitute at all in the movie.
The book has so much stuff like this in it that I can’t understand why they even tried to make a movie out of it in 1953.
Everyone in this thread is wrong.
You DON’T like suck on strangers’ balls!
So are you😃
This sentence is a lie.
God damn, i’ve never seen a comment that was more fucking correct than this. Bravo.
I feel like a lot of these films are important because they did something first. The problem is that it doesn’t mean that film did it best.
I’ve always talked about The Rolling Stones like this. I respect what they did, but I was born when rock had really gone beyond it. The Beatles too for the most part. Even a lot of '80s punk. I wanted faster, heavier, more technical. All the old stuff just felt basic to me, but I know it’s a matter of perspective.
The Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, these guys were inventing the sound of rock. I think they’re fantastic musicians. But Rush and Pink Floyd stand out more to me as timeless art.
Those artists arrived much later than the invention of rock. It was invented by Chuck Berry and other black artists in the US during the 50s.
I didn’t think my point needed a “history of music” lesson attached. The rock bands of the 60s were taking the experiments of swing and blues musicians from the decade prior and refining them into the aggressive, over-driven and distorted arrangements. Not “rock & roll”.
The Stones could write one hell of a catchy, riff, hook, and chorus tho. Their sloppy musicianship (im being generous) is part of their charm.
Im sure they invented a sound as much as any of the other groups that get credited with that nonsense.
And then there’s movies like Dr Strangelove, where I had no idea that old movies could be that entertaining still. Though it has been at least a decade since I watched it, I bet it still stands, even if it invented the iconic “ride a nuke like a cowboy” image.
Also the whole Soviets built a doomsday device but didn’t tell the world about it, which reality copied (eventually they told the world).
I have the opposite issue. I tend to only enjoy older films. Recent films tend to have this digital colour-graded look and a style of editing (millions of 1 second cuts) that make them pretty much unwatchable for me.
I really love films that take their time, both in plot and character development, as well as in how shots develop to establish the scenes. I also have a passion for photography and for me that’s a really big part of films. I want to see beautiful photographs that took a lot of time and experience to set up (and wait for the right moment, in the case of outdoor scenes). I love practical effects that were built and painted by hand, explosions rigged with real explosives, much more than CGI.
I think there is an issue with attention spans though. The modern films that I mentioned above seem to be ideal for people with short attention spans, whereas older films tend to be boring for these folks. This makes it hard for films to appeal to both audiences!
This video makes some great points about how movies don’t feel real anymore. Digital color grading is part of it, but the very short version is that movies don’t give us the sensory information or speak to us in the visual language that we need to feel like the movie is real. Watching the video gave me a whole vocabulary for how to critique failings in modern movies.
Wow thanks for this! It’s so helpful to learn about and have a language for describing why these new movies feel so wrong to me. I’m going to watch this after work and share it with my film club!
Fully agree about the attention span stuff. I kind of think TV drove it initially, especially animation.
After a season or two The Simpsons started to pick up pace, and for its time it was kind of frenetic. South Park picked up that ball and ran with it. Then when Family Guy came along I thought this is nuts, and I wondered if there wasn’t an active effort to erode attention spans on a large scale.
There are plenty of other examples outside animation, but I picked those because they’re still well known.
I consider myself fortunate to have seen the progression first hand. And to have had an older boss way back who had an infectious love for well made art, particularly in films.
I found Sinners to be nice and slow moving for most of it, plus Pluribus the TV show is slow and but l both are cinematic. They are fewer but not gone.
Not only do I love the Godfather and The Godfather Part 2, but this past weekend my wife and I watched the Godfather Epic. It’s the first two movies edited together in chronological order. It’s a bit more than 7 hours in one movie.
It would probably kill you.
Yesterday afternoon, my wife had a doctor’s appointment at the hospital. When she was in the lobby, someone was playing the Godfather theme on a piano. Then I see this post. The universe can seem weird sometimes.
I got to watch this! I didn’t know it existed!
Also, check out The Offer on Netflix. It’s about the making of the godfather. Was a fun watch.
The Godfather is far from being a difficult movie to watch. It has a rich story, plenty of action, great scenes,… You want serious stuff? Try Nouvelle Vague French movies from Eric Rhomer or Jean-Luc Godard, German or Finnish movies where absolutely nothing happens and it’s just people eating soup. Try Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise. It’s great, it’s a classic, but you’re going die out of boredom if The Godfather is already too much for you.
Yeah, some of these criticisms are bad just on their face. Godfather is too slow for you? Come on. Is Rambo to slow for you as well? What about Speed?
Some of this just feels like kids who just graduated from watching Paw Patrol deciding they should veto what anyone else puts on the TV.
If you want to throw a fit because everything isn’t Marvel, I guess that’s fine for you. But don’t be shocked when you’re not invited back to College Movie Night.
Try Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise. It’s great, it’s a classic, but you’re going die out of boredom if The Godfather is already too much for you.
And if you survive that you can move right on to Eraserhead.
But I can’t watch the Godfather and doomscroll at the same time, so it’s objectively bad.
You know what my favorite food is? A plain pepperoni pizza. Absolutely love it.
You can take me out to dinner to the fanciest restaurant: five Michelin stars, the best trained chefs, the most expensive ingredients, the perfect ambience… and it would be utterly wasted on me. Because nothing beats a plain pepperoni pizza.
Some people are like that with movies. Even movies which are objectively some of the best ever produced in the history of cinema, will have people who don’t like them. And that’s perfectly fine.
Plain and pepperoni are two different things!
In a similar vein, I’m a sausage pie guy. Give me some ground sausage on pizza and I’ll eat that for life. Anytime I get together with people, there’s always the “what toppings” discussion, and people bring their fucking bullshit to the table, and I say get sausage, and people go mehhh mehhh mehhh, and you know what? Everyone eats the goddamn sausage, and were left with olives and mushrooms, and peppers and onions, and fucking Hawaiian.
So I appreciate it. The classics are classics for a reason.
I think they meant it like “plain ol’pepperoni pizza”
Well, it’s just pain compared to some other options :D
I love sausage on pizza though! Meatballs, minced meat as well. And I recently discovered ‘nduja, ever had that? Tastes great on pizza. It’s a spicy, spreadable pork sausage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Nduja
I do also enjoy a Hawaiian on occasion though…
You might want to actually try one of those fancy restaurants, you might be surprised.
But also maybe it’s better to not bother and be happy with what you gotOh I’ve been to some :D
One time our boss took us to a fancy restaurant that had a Michelin-starred chef owner. We did some ad work and publicity for him, so this was sort of a thank you, and a way for him to go all out and make a surprise menu to try things. Basically, we were dining for free there.
They go all out. Nine course meal. And as you’d expect, that means giant plates with tiny portions.
Now, thing is… our company is more of a steakhouse crowd.
Halfway through, they serve a perfect steak. Cooked to heavenly perfection. Best steak I’ve ever had in my entire life. And garnished with gourmet fries. They serve those in this tiny ramekin, intended to share. Basically, everyone gets a handful of fries.
One colleague sees the steak, grabs three ramekins and proceeds to load up his plate. He promptly flags the waitress and asks ‘hey, can you get some more fries?’.
Waitress comes back with some more. Colleague again: ‘hey uh, you wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of curry sauce?’ The look on her face was priceless. That was not a question this restaurant had ever had. ‘I’ll go ask… the chef’
Luckily the chef had a good sense of humor about him: out comes this wild, tattooed, giant bearded mountain of a man carrying the biggest kitchen knife I’ve ever seen. ‘WHO’S THE FUCKER WHO JUST ORDERED CURRY SAUCE IN MY RESTAURANT??’ Colleague meekly raises his hand. Chef hands him the bottle of curry sauce he was holding behind his back 😂
And then, sometimes, you watch it years or decades later and it clicks. And other times you are just convinced everyone who likes it are saying so because critics like it.
If you are a user of any mind altering substances, or have any interest in starting, it might be worth giving the movie or show another try in that state. Assuming your chosen goodies leave you coherent and able to form memories, lol.
And it’s not just to put you in a good mood, though that certainly helps. Maybe it’s just the spicy neurons in my case, but being high can qualitatively change the experience of how I relate to characters. (not extreme like empathy on / empathy off, sometimes things might just land different)
Casablanca can suck it from here to eternity.
OG Nosferatu (1922) was pretty good though. And the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Casablanca is unironically one of my favourite movies! It’s better than most of the chaff coming out in cinema today.
It builds tension on so many levels throughout its length, while also being funny and evocative. It puts admirable people in vulnerable places where they rely on other uncaring and self-motivated individuals, and then does it again with higher stakes. When tension is at its maximum its then deflated all with a single line callback to the start of the movie.
Citizen Kane
Can you name 3 movies you actually liked?
Are you asking rhetorically?
I liked a lot of things. Would be hard to name 3
They didn’t say your favorites. Just name three. For instance, I’ll name three that I like, but aren’t necessarily my favorites:
- A Knight’s Tale
- Ready Player One
- Ron’s Gone Wrong
Shawshank, good will hunting, the martian, and bonus: the core lol.
I enjoy all of those, except The Core, because I’ve never heard of it. 😄
Edit: Oh, and my bonus is Caveman, starring Ringo Starr, Dennis Quaid, and Shelley Long!
Watch the core. It’s great. Extra entertaining if your background is in science or engineering.
The tone of the movie is serious, but it’s basically its own parody which is great.
Sounds great! Thanks for the recommendation!
I’ve already added caveman to my list as well
I think I nodded off like 3 times when watching Dune. It’s just so damn boring.
Citizen Kane is no Citizen Kane.
you have been spoiled by the cinematography of the modern age. almost 100% of all the camera tricks from the last 70 years of film history came from Citizen Kane.
without Kane you wouldn’t have Star Wars, Ms Doubtfire, James Bond, Conan The Barbarian, Terminator, Superman, X-Men.
Sometimes a film isn’t just about the story. sometimes the film is the story. This is why film is considered one of the mediums of classical art.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a film renders us speechless.
you have been spoiled by the cinematography of the modern age. almost 100% of all the camera tricks from the last 70 years of film history came from Citizen Kane.
Yup. I think Citizen Kane’s story is mid, but the cinematography is absolute divine. The more I think about Citizen Kane, the more I see why it’s a classic. While watching the movie, it didn’t feel like an old movie at all! The extreme low angle shot is still in my mind many years after watching Citizen Kane.
Yeah this is also seen by Birth of a Nation. Fucken racist shit where every “person” involved deserved to by hanged and speared but it also was very innovative from a filmographic point of view.
Without some caveman rubbing sticks together we wouldn’t have fire. That doesn’t mean rubbing sticks together is better than a Bic lighter.
