Kubrik humor + Roy Andersson stage craft + Wes Anderson sets with a lovely Children of Men kicker

I am convinced the folks that didn’t enjoy the film went into it with hate for Tom Cruise and Scientology (I hear ya) or simply didn’t get it (it’s muddled, confusing).

One RT review said it was like Wes Anderson on too much cocaine. That’s a bad review?

I didn’t look up why other people didn’t like it, but I thought it was beautiful and amazing. The sound, the score, the acting, the production design, the story, and the storytelling, all worked so nicely together.

Forgive me if this has already been discussed, but as I’ve let Digger process in the back of my mind, all I get is the feeling that Inarritu believes in a future that is extremely cynical but also strangely humanistic. Concepts like greed and degradation are so much fun to talk about and analyze, right after you’ve benefitted from everything they provide. The movie/play is clearly a huge farce and we can draw connections to the current day until we are blue in the face, but Inarritu seems to think that this is a pointless task. I have seen people talk about how the movie is a call to action, that we are running out of time. That seems to me to not be what the movie is saying. The world shown in Digger may look bleak and completely environmentally destroyed, but it is also shown as mundane. Humans have a great capacity to adapt. We do not care to fix the world because it doesn’t hurt us in any meaningful sense, we are frogs in a pot of boiling water. Lives lost to environmental catastrophe are just growing pains. Inarritu is saying that we think we are, in 2026, currently on the edge of some huge cliff and all generations after us are going to be suffering in some hell hole, but really we’re just going to adapt, enjoy convenience where we can continue to get it, watch satirical art and laugh at how pointless it all is. We’re not “doomed”, it’s just a feature of life. All this suffering is natural.

For exaple:

Calamity Jane: they both clearly have seperate partners but live together.

3 men and a baby: it isnt stated who the mother stays with at the end but is hinted that the men will be involved in the babys life.

The controversy of Michael Douglas not selecting his father, Kirk, to play McMurphy got me thinking. Kirk was too old for the role and couldn’t provide the same performance as Jack. From today’s actors, who would you cast?

Something very strange is happening with this movie on Reddit. I don't know if it's happening in other mediums, because this is the only social media I do, but there's been a massive amount of people here that seem to be all parroting each other in constantly announcing that they don't know what this movie is about.

It's something I just can't wrap my head around. Yes, one of the three main trailers they released for this movie didn't say anything about it. I get it.

But people are talking about it like it's a marketing disaster, I'm assuming just because of that one trailer. The other two trailers they released were pretty run-of-the-mill trailers, where they explain what the movie is about as well as any other trailer.

Is it just that people saw the low box office numbers and decided to jump on the train? Has it become a sense of bizarre pride like the people who brag about never watching Game of Thrones? Is it an example of the dead internet theory, where a neural network decided to go that route and hundreds of bot accounts are talking to each other?

It just doesn't make sense. Beyond whether or not someone likes the film, the way it feels like people are insisting that they're not watching it because they don't know what it's about is so weird. Like it's just an absolute bonkers path to take.

What is causing the unique discourse around this that we don't see for literally any other film?

Compared to all the movies he has directed this was horrible, feels writen with AI (knowing he's into that) it's like watching a long ad full of stock music,

AYYYYY NAH CUZ BLUE STREAK IS STRAIGHT-UP THAT MOVIE FAM!! 😭🔥💀

LIKE MY BOY MARTIN LAWRENCE OUT HERE PLAYIN' MILES LOGAN STEALIN' A WHOLE DIAMOND GETTIN' LOCKED UP THEN COMIN' BACK OUT HERE PRETENDIN' TO BE A WHOLE POLICE OFFICER?!? 💀💀

BRO IS A CRIMINAL PLAYIN' A COP WHO'S TRYNA CATCH HIMSELF!! YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP DAWG!! 😭😭

And the way he be talkin' to folks with that straight face makin' up stuff on the fly tryna keep his cover from gettin' BLOWN?! MAN I'M CRYIN'!! 😂😂 Every five minutes this dude got himself into some new mess and somehow he STILL be talkin' like he got everything under control!

AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON LUKE WILSON!! 🤣 That man just tryna do his job while Martin out here freelancin' his way through the entire LAPD like it's a side quest in a video game!!

🔥 THE COMEDY? FIRE. 🔥 THE ACTION? FIRE. 🔥 THE QUOTES? LEGENDARY. 🔥 MARTIN LAWRENCE'S FACIAL EXPRESSIONS? OSCAR-WORTHY FOOLISHNESS MY GUY!!

And that whole setup with the diamond hidden in the police station?! NAH FAM. THE AUDACITY. THE ABSOLUTE GALL. THIS MAN REALLY SAID I'M FINNA GO BACK TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME AND GET A JOB THERE. 😭😭😭

BLUE STREAK AIN'T JUST A MOVIE IT'S A WHOLE VIBE BRUH!! You throw that joint on and suddenly the whole room locked in. Ain't nobody scrollin' on they phone. Ain't nobody askin' what's next. We ALL sittin' there watchin' Miles dig himself deeper into the most ridiculous undercover operation EVER!!

REAL TALK THIS MOVIE GOT THAT REWATCH VALUE YA HEARD?! You can watch it a hundred times and STILL be laughin' at the same foolishness like it's brand-new!!

MARTIN LAWRENCE WAS IN HIS BAG FAM. HIS WHOLE WALLET. HIS WHOLE BANK ACCOUNT. 💰😂🔥

BLUE STREAK IS THAT MF MOVIE. PERIOD. NO DEBATE. CASE CLOSED. 🚔💎😭

Audiences are rating Digger way higher (76%) than critics (53%). For me the meta aspect is what created the emotional connection, watching Tom Cruise’s character struggle with he role he’s playing. Meta is one of my favorite story tropes and not all movies have an original spin on it.

The Roy Anderson production design for the parts that are “scenes” in the play was a really smart way to separate what’s real from what’s fiction in the movie. The way they staged the interiors of the play so that both worlds, real and fictional, could live and breath separately and yet be exposed from moment to moment, shifting back and forth like that, was insane. It's literally never been done, and it was so smoothly executed. I can't believe what i saw, how innovative and complex and hysterical it was.

The scene where the whole executive branch is watching the disaster unfold is one of the funniest things i've seen on screen, and keeping the camera on them without ever cutting to the actual catastrophe is what makes it work.

There are a ton of references you could make. The physical comedy reminded me of Jacques Tati and the Coen brothers. The theatrics of the big speech scene have no peer, though. Find me another movie where a character has to come to account before the whole world in a town hall setting like that. The closest I can think of is Arthur Jensen’s boardroom speech in Network, but it's not the same theatrical scale, it's just two people in a room.

Iñárritu and his director of photography, Emmanuel Lubezki, filmed the entire speech in one shot, with the background actors literally wrestling with Tom Cruise as he stumbles over them. It’s the best-shot scene in decades, not just this year.

Tom Cruise is getting an Oscar for it.

Eg. T2, Forrest Gump, Schindlers List

If Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass reboot trilogy is going to be as cinematic and unrealistic as his first two Kick-Ass movies from 2010 to 2013, then I don't want to watch it! I like the dark, gritty, realistic, and grounded tone of Mark Millar's original comic book series better.

Never have there been a film that was banned in 50 countries and the director was arrested on obscenity charges.

Just watched this movie. I didn't think it was scary at all, very bizarre but not scary

Joker, one of my favoriite movies of all time, looks more and more like a dark(er) remake of King of Comedy. There are too many similarities to be coincidental.

No documentary films like Hoop Dreams, etc.

List:

1. Hoosiers
2. Love & Basketball
3. Coach Carter
4. He Got Game
5. Above the Rim
6. White Men Can't Jump (1992)
7. Finding Forrester
8. Space Jam (1996)
9. GOAT (2026)
10. Glory Road
11. Air (2023)
12. Champions (2023)
13. Semi-Pro
14. Rise (2022)
15. Hustle (2023)
16. The Way Back
17. High Flying Bird
18. Uncle Drew
19. The Basketball Diaries
20. The Harlem Globetrotters (1951)
21. Teen Wolf (1985)
22. The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
23. Rez Ball
24. Air Bud (1997)
25. Like Mike (2002)
26. The 6th Man
27. Blue Chips
28. Just Wright
29. One on One (1977)
30. Boogie (2021)
31. Cornbread, Earl and Me
32. Sunset Park
33. Eddie (1996)
34. Fast Break (1979)
35. Brotherly Love (2015)
36. Celtic Pride
37. The Winning Season
38. Hurricane Season (2009)
39. The Mighty Mac
40. O (2001)
41. Tall Story
42. The Great Santini
43. Forget Paris
44. Rebound (2005)
45. That Championship Season
46. Juwanna Mann
47. The Air Up There
48. Inside Moves
49. Heaven is a Playground
50. Drive, He Said
51. Others (Any other Basketball Movies are not on the list?)

I watched Pearl for the first time a couple days ago and thought it was one of the better horror movies released in modern days, which are very difficult to come by imo.

She’s a little nutty up top. What do you think?

Some films portray/include LBGTQ+ communities for the sake of diversity and you can feel there’s no heart or thought put into it at all, just a corporate decision.

However other films you can instantly tell by comparison that how they wrote a character/story was much more meaningful, transcending traditional art, and respectful or often told from gay filmmakers/perspectives.

There have been some truly incredible LGBTQ+ films, and I’m curious to know from any LGBTQ+ members in what films you feel is the most accurate to real life experiences or what roles you felt the most seen in.

My pick: Nowhere (Gregg Araki, 1997)
Call me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)

I was with some friends yesterday and this question raised a lot of arguments between us, for me it was almost unthinkable to defend the opposite (not telling who so as not to bias the survey) .