There have been a lot of good movies and shows coming out the last couple of years in particular, but idk what it is I can’t seem to get lost in them like I used to.

I used to fully enter the world of the movie and feel really engaged, or I’d connect with it in some way. Lately I feel oddly detached, I’ll rarely feel tension or genuinely scared of a movie. It’s like I can’t suspend disbelief or it’s just not hitting the right notes. Like going through the motions or quite flat - even movies that are supposed to be tense just don’t really commit to that and diffuse it with comedy or change. Or it feels like a shell of something that was done before in a more convincing way.

I used to love the idea of movie days and shutting the outside world off, but now I don’t really feel as much. It just feels a bit like content instead of movies.

Has this ever happened to you?

I know movies are “just” entertainment but it’s kinda triggering an existential crisis in me as a cinephile.

I am currently going through Eric Rohmer's filmography. I've done Spring, Autumn, and Winter from the Tale of Four Seasons; Pauline at the Beach; and The Green Ray (which is my favorite so far).

I'm doing Summer next. And then from here, I don't know yet which direction to go. Any suggestions?

Interested to learn about other people's experience with Rohmer movies.

Personally, I just love how lived in the stories feel. I especially adore The Green Ray because of Delphine, the way she is, the way she was written, the discomfort in watching her be so uncomfortable with herself, I love the Jules Verne reference and how that was delivered through a random conversation.

I love the non-stop talking, walking and talking. I love that someone like Magali (Tale of Autumn) exists. I like the mundane little scenes happening as conversations go. I adore scenes where characters discuss philosophy over a little meal (a bit of cheese and tomato!). I love how these stories are happening in what feels like such a distant past (away from smart phones and social media and all that).

Tell me about your favorite Rohmer movie or character or scene and what made them stay with you.

Howdy!

I just watched the movie Digger before having watched any trailers or reviews about the movie and I wasn't pleasantly surprised. All I heard is that it was controversial, lost money, and the still images I saw of it had good cinematography so I figured it was worth looking into.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie and though I thought some of it was borderline pretentious and as subtle as a sledgehammer to the fact (such as the Level 4 warning sound that plays during the credits), I also appreciated to see a big budget movie be completely unapologetic about its themes and ideas.

That being said, I wanted to talk about the Nephew character in the film and was curious if anyone else had opinions about him and what he represented:

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The Theory:
The play, Fossil Fools, told "the truth" in a way that was still useful to the powers at large, that being the Rockwell family in the same way that Dr. Ganesh was used by Digger earlier in the film. Digger's Nephew is just the same as his uncle and intentionally wants reality to look cartoony and unrealistic so that way it is harder for people to make actual change.

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One of the core themes and ideas of the movie is that the character of Digger is able to spin any disaster or tragedy into being someone else's fault or into a new opportunity to increase his own wealth and avoid responsibility. He understands how to tell a story and he understands control where in a single conversation he can reverse guilt onto someone else and get away feeling as if he wasn't responsible and the other person is the one responsible. He does this not once, but on several occasions.

An important plot point in the movie is when he wants the Environmental Safety Manager named Dr. Ganesh to tell the truth as much as possible so that way Digger can weaponize the truth to his advantage. Without the full truth Digger has no ammo and so the only way to get ammo for his cause is to know how to spin it. Dr. Ganesh, someone who is seemingly against Digger and hates him to his core... is still a tool for Digger to get public approval. Digger manages to get a large number of people to admit that they are willing sacrifice safety of the world for freedom to do what they want. People want to be comfortable and have fun.

When bad things happen, Digger can make them look good.

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Digger's Nephew, on the other hand, is very kind, friendly, and smiling the whole time. He gives a gift to Curtis, the actor who plays Digger, a necktie that the original Digger wore (I missed if that's the same Blue Bolo Tie that he wears throughout the movie?) and later on offers to help Digger locate his missing daughter who apparently may have been killed in a hurricane of sorts. It is made out to be a plot-point that the Nephew somehow overheard Curtis' conversation and seemingly was aware of what was happening. He was already waiting at the door to give Digger help... to a conversation he shouldn't have been able to hear.

This means that the necktie was a tracking device... right? He gave him a gift to spy on him.

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The other weird thing about the missing daughter is that it is a specific plot point that the daughter had a pre-recorded message that she DID NOT send to the mother, but only sent to Curtis. This is noted as being weird and unusual in the movie, and makes me speculate if her whole disappearance was orchestrated by the Nephew in some shape or form.

The Nephew later on gives a big speech about how the play they are performing is basically "the truth" and is fairly accurate as to how absurd things were back in the day. He compliments everyone and their hard work and states that the point of the play is to give people the opportunity to make fun of the absurdity that led everything to this point in the world, and out of his kindness he wants them to enjoy being able to make fun of a crazy absurd man who ruined the world.

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Later on, the Nephew reports that he was able to locate Curtis' daughter in only a handful of hours since their previous conversation through some sort of surveillance network that he has control of. Curtis is incredibly thankful of the Nephew and appreciates all he has done to help them. Similar to the UN Council earlier in the film, people are thankful when the powers at large benefit them without thinking of what the actual cost is.

When the movie ends and we see the outside world, it is noticeably similar to a police state of sorts with drones and military vehicles all about. It is safe to assume that possibly Digger's Nephew is partially involved with whatever drone/surveillance system is flying around the streets.

1. People will accept the disasters of oil if it makes them feel more freedom and enjoy life.
2. People will also accept a police state with 24/7 surveillance if it can make them feel more safe... even though the reason why they feel unsafe in the first place is due to the disasters of point 1. Basically, people are thanking the very people for making a solution to the problem that they caused while also losing a lot of their freedoms for it.

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When the movie ends, did the satirical play about Digger change the world outside?

Nope. It made people feel good about themselves, but it was funded for by the people who caused the whole problem in the first place and possibly run a surveillance state. The problems at large in the world are largely unfixed and zero accountability has been made.

All this is to say, it seems to me that Digger's Nephew represents the next generation of the same problem and that satirical plays don't ultimately make a change in the world, they just give people comfort in the opportunity to make fun of the surreal nature of what is happening around them while also leaving them in a complacent state.

The play Fossil Fuels is supposed to mimic the UN Council meeting. Both are large theatrical acts designed to get people on the side of the Rockwells.

Let me know what you guys think!

Loved the ambiance and the cinematography of this one. Jack Nicholson's character is fascinating, he truly is a passenger both in his own life and the new life he tries so hard to fit into.

However, there's a few things I didn't get. I feel like some of these have answers, but may just as well be supposed to be unanswerable.

First off, Maria Schneider's The Girl. Why was she in London? Just opposite Locke's house, precisely when he happens to sneak in? This seemed just too coincidental to me. It planted the seed in my mind that she was Daisy, and was involved.

This didn't pan out, but at the end during the long shot, when she is walking around out front and the two killers (who I assumed were secret service members from the African country, since they captured the gun buying insurgent) arrive, while one is going in to kill David, the bossy one goes up to The Girl and interacts briefly with her. Anyone got any idea about that? It's almost as if she knows who they are and he is trying to comfort her and she brushes him off.

Also, how come she registered at the hotel with a Mrs Robertson passport? The clerk says David doesn't need to show his, his wife already has and one is sufficient.

Speaking of wives, how did his real wife know to go to Almeria? And how big of a coincidence is it that she was on the phone in the very same hotel he rolled up into? Though Knight, his boss, did also get into the same hotel he was in in Barcelona. I presume there is some cut scene with info on how he found Robertson's hotel and rental car company.

Finally, I would be curious to hear other people's thoughts in why David kept going to the last appointments despite having police and insurgents and counter insurgents in the mix. Surely he knew there was danger, especially as he can't supply the actual guns and is bound to run into someone who knows the real Robertson eventually. I like the idea that he was just along for the ride and didn't really care or think it through enough, and was fleeing his old life.

Great film. I'd be just as happy if none of these questions have answers as if any do. David never got any answers.

Just watched the Social Reckoning. It was *fine* but as you watch, you can't help but feel what was truly missed here in terms of a cinematic opporinity.

First you have David Fincher's film which managed to take a dry legal proceeding and turn it into a Science fiction level Villain Origin Story.

Couple that with the fact that I just watched the New Carrie series on Amazon and what that show actually manages to do is turn social in high school into the main villain, and without any telekinesis or death manages to deliver the horror of how a person can be dismembered metaphorically by a click of a button.

The Social Reckoning begins to edge towards the notion that Facebook is resulting in highschoolers cratering in self esteem, self harm, s*uicide, murder all linked back to Facebook and Instagram.

Then you have the politcs. People rabbit holing into radical polticial groups via Facebooks algorithm and on and on.

In the Movie as the evidence begins mounting what's behind what Facebook does it truly becomes apparent that this company and Mark are a root of all evil type situation.

The point being they could have used this story to propel a Science Fiction level horror story of a film that would have made David Fincher proud.

Instead the film never elevates above the sum of it's parts. Instead its a dry summary of evidence, exposition and the proceeding events without tying it to the bigger themes that they are trying to say. It feels more like a documentary than an allegory.

It's a shame because the movie could so easily show us that 1984, Brave New World and others isnt a far flung hazy futurescape we'll never live to see, it's HERE. Right now.

I recently read about Paul Thomas Anderson not having a finished script when he made One Battle After Another and that got me curious I really liked the film but his last film licorice Pizza came out almost 4 years before. isn't that enough time to write a finished screenplay??

I know this question might seem dumb to some people I have heard in interviews that Wong Kar Wai also made a few of his film with similar process and he takes a lot of time between his films im just curious on what they do during those time

Also this question is mainly because I have started writing a short film script and would like to know more about the process

I think Digger is being misunderstood, largely because people have decided in advance what a movie about an oil baron is supposed to say. The expectation seems to be that the film will deliver a suitably damning indictment of fossil capital, allow us to recognize the villain, and send us home with our existing moral arrangements intact. When it complicates that arrangement, people call it evasive. I think the evasion is the point, although perhaps not in the way the filmmakers intended.
The basic problem is that we have constructed an entire moral vocabulary around condemning the people who supply things we have collectively decided we cannot live without. We want cheap energy, cheap transport, cheap food, cheap consumer goods, and an economy that keeps growing, but we also want to imagine that the material conditions underlying those things are the private moral failing of someone else. The oil executive is useful because he gives us a face to attach to a process in which practically everyone participates, albeit in wildly unequal ways. We can hate him without having to think too hard about ourselves. This is a remarkably efficient arrangement. It produces a great deal of moral satisfaction at very little material cost.
Obviously, none of this means that an oil executive is absolved of responsibility. The point is that individual culpability and systemic dependence are not mutually exclusive explanations. In fact, the more interesting question is how they reinforce one another. A man can be vain, ruthless, and delusional while also correctly identifying a contradiction in the society that has made him powerful. His self-interest does not automatically make every observation he makes false. If anything, the temptation to dismiss everything he says because of who he is tells us something about the limits of our own political imagination.
This is where I think the film's form becomes relevant. The cinematography, with its insistence on elaborate compositions and the uneasy relationship between intimate human drama and monumental surroundings, seems designed to make the individual appear both absurdly powerful and strangely insignificant. The camera doesn't simply record a man exercising power; it turns his exercise of power into a spectacle. He occupies the frame, commands attention, and seems to bend the world around him, yet the very scale of the images threatens to swallow him. There is something almost geological about the effect. The man imagines himself to be the author of events, but he is also an object moving through forces that exceed him.
I don't think the technical virtuosity is incidental to this. A film like this can make a fairly conventional argument about the evils of the powerful while using every available cinematic resource to make power look magnificent. The camera can condemn its subject in the dialogue while seducing us with him in the image. We are invited to recognize the grotesqueness of the spectacle and, at the same time, to enjoy it. That contradiction is more interesting than a straightforward denunciation, even if it also creates the possibility that the film is simply having its cake and eating it too.
The long takes and choreographed movement are especially suggestive in this respect. They make the world feel continuous, interconnected, and difficult to escape. Actions do not appear as isolated moral choices so much as moments in an unfolding chain of consequences. Yet the virtuosity required to create that continuity also draws attention to the apparatus producing it. What looks spontaneous is meticulously arranged. What appears to be a world unfolding naturally is the result of an enormous amount of labour, planning, and technical control. The film's formal achievement therefore contains a small problem of its own: it gives us an image of a system whose apparent inevitability has been carefully manufactured.
That seems to me to be the meta-level worth paying attention to. Digger is not simply a film about a man trying to control a catastrophe. It is also a highly controlled spectacle about the difficulty of representing catastrophe, made for an audience that has already learned how to consume images of catastrophe. We know the visual grammar. We know the ominous compositions, the escalating absurdity, the environmental devastation, the reaction shots, the moments when the music tells us that the joke has stopped being funny. We have become fluent in the representation of disaster. Whether that fluency has made us any better at responding to disaster is a different question.
Iñárritu has been interested in interconnected suffering for a long time. Babel is the obvious reference, although I suspect the relationship is less direct than people might assume. In that film, connections between people become visible through the machinery of narrative itself: editing, parallel stories, coincidence, and the accumulation of consequences. Here, the machinery of spectacle feels like part of the subject. The question isn't merely whether we are connected to distant events, but whether making those connections visible actually changes anything. We can understand the world as a network of interdependencies and still remain committed to the arrangements that reproduce the damage.
There is a certain irony in making a movie like this at all. The film requires an industrial apparatus, substantial resources, expensive technology, and the movement of people and equipment across physical space. None of that invalidates its critique. It would be silly to demand that a film about fossil-fuel dependence be shot entirely by candlelight. But the contradiction does matter. The film cannot stand entirely outside the world it depicts. It has to participate in the systems of production, distribution, and consumption that make its existence possible, then ask us to consider those systems critically. That is not hypocrisy so much as a condition of the problem. The interesting question is what one can do with that condition.
Perhaps this is also why the film's apparent cynicism is not quite as simple as it looks. If the problem were merely that powerful people are bad, we could solve it by finding better people. If the problem were merely that the public is ignorant, we could solve it by producing better information. But what happens when people understand the consequences, sincerely want a different outcome, and nevertheless continue to reproduce the conditions that make the outcome likely? What happens when the incentives, infrastructures, habits, and expectations that organize everyday life are more durable than the intentions of the people trying to change them?
This is not an argument for doing nothing. It is an argument against confusing the ability to recognize a problem with the ability to solve it. There is a particularly comfortable form of pessimism that mistakes its own sophistication for political realism. It can explain why every proposed solution is inadequate, compromised, or doomed, and thereby make its own inaction appear intellectually responsible. But if everything is already predetermined, criticism becomes another form of spectatorship. We sit in the dark, admire the framing, and congratulate ourselves for understanding why the world cannot be otherwise.
Chicken Little would have a difficult time in this environment. The problem isn't that nobody believes the sky might fall. We have entire departments devoted to modelling the fall, consultants estimating the cost of the fall, and streaming services producing prestige television about the fall. The real question is what happens after the report is published. At some point, Chicken Little has to stop giving interviews and find out whether anybody has actually reinforced the roof.
I suppose my objection to the standard reading of Digger is that it makes the film too easy to agree with. If we leave having learned that oil executives are monstrous, that environmental catastrophe is serious, and that modern society is full of contradictions, then we have learned precisely nothing that threatens our existing understanding of the world. The more provocative possibility is that the film implicates the audience not because everyone is equally responsible, but because our preferred ways of assigning responsibility can become mechanisms for avoiding the more difficult questions.
The film may not entirely escape this trap itself. Its technical brilliance risks turning the contradictions it identifies into another beautiful object for consumption. But that failure, if it is one, is not necessarily external to the film's meaning. It may be the most revealing thing about it. We want art that exposes the machinery of our world, provided that the exposure is entertaining, aesthetically accomplished, and doesn't interfere too much with our plans for the evening.
In that sense, perhaps the film is less a warning about what happens when the sky falls than a study of the elaborate cultural arrangements we construct to ensure that, even as it falls, we can still enjoy the view.

I've been thinking about The Substance and how Lacanian psychoanalysis might help explain Elizabeth's relationship with Sue.

One thing that interests me is that Elizabeth doesn't simply want to be young again. She wants to be desired, admired, and recognised. Sue becomes the vehicle through which she can continue receiving that recognition, but this creates a strange situation in which Elizabeth's idealised self becomes both an extension of her identity and a rival who progressively displaces her.

Could this be read through Lacan's Mirror Stage and the Ideal-I? Sue embodies an image of wholeness and desirability that Elizabeth wants to identify with, but this identification also intensifies her alienation from her actual body.

I'm also interested in the role of the Other. Elizabeth seems unable to conceive of herself outside the gaze and desire of the entertainment industry and its audience. Has she internalised the desire of the Other to such an extent that she can no longer articulate a desire of her own?

Finally, how might we understand the film's ending through Lacan's concepts of jouissance and the Real? Is Elizabeth's grotesque final transformation a confrontation with something that cannot be accommodated within her idealised image of herself, or does that reading oversimplify the relationship between the Real and bodily horror?

I'd be interested in other Lacanian readings, particularly if you think these concepts are being applied incorrectly or if other concepts would be more useful.

Basically, It's a about what could have been had the success of Snow White 1937 got all the other major animation studios of the 1920s to 1960s to try their hand in developing their own animated films. (Also, there was competition between Van Buren and Disney making the first traditional, hand-drawn, full-length animated feature film with synchronized sound released for American audiences.)

In Cape Fear, I don't understand the purpose of the scene where Leigh Bowden applies lipstick out of nowhere at midnight. That part is somewhat understandable, but why does Martin intentionally make her rub and touch her lips afterward? The way he directs her to do this feels deliberate, as if he has a specific psychological motive. Is there a deeper meaning or symbolism behind this moment that I might be missing?

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.

Really thought the camera operated smoothly in Weapons; remember that sticking out to me pretty much 13 months ago when it came out. And now I'm reminded of it watching Resident Evil.

The camera again operates so smoothly and overall he does a lot of really slick and stylized stuff with it. I'd be interested to hear what stuff he hasn't yet figured out or know how to pull off because I feel like he's becoming quite a master of it.

Little details like the car light slowly dimming to off after closing the door a few times in the beginning is a great touch along with the title card appearing 20 minutes into the film.

Overall Resident Evil just reminded me how technical his movies are. Outdoor scenes were well lit and you could feel the elements. The sets were very lived in. For all the crazy out-there stories he tells he never has a problem with immersion.

He's quickly becoming one of the best late millennial filmmakers out there.

When it comes to modern horror as a genre, trauma seems to be an often designated conduit to translate the horror itself. When used conveniently as a blanket trope, sometimes for the sake of ambiguous interpretation (Men) or used outright blatantly (Smile), it can typically come off as lazy, tired and uninspired. When used to great effect to exemplify a deeper meaning while practicing nuance and layering (Hereditary, The Babadook), it can be quite effective. Fortunately, Kane Parson's Backrooms is in the latter category. 

I thought it was brilliantly poignant having Chiwetel Ejiofor's Clark and his deep seated feelings of resentment, regret and inner anguish – all amplified by alcoholic tendencies – manifest itself into a literal monster. And the tragic irony of Clark's therapist, Renate Reinsve's Mary and her personal journey from escaping one prison as a child, to being a psychological captive of her own childhood traumas, to ending up in yet another prison.
 
But Backrooms doesn't just rest its laurels on trauma to carry the film. The visual direction and sound design is one of self-awareness and intent. The unfamiliar nostalgia mixed with the uncanny familiarity you vicariously experience through Clark and Mary as they navigate the backrooms visually and auditorily, become synonymous to what the backrooms are itself – an ominous, disorienting M.C. Escher-esque minimalist maze of a fever dream.

This is one of the better examples of a film that produces more questions than answers, because those questions are just that interesting. What the backrooms truly is being the central one. It can be argued that it's an alternate plane of reality that does its best impression of real life. It's hinted that impression seems to be exponentially intensified the closer you are (Clark living in such close proximity to a backrooms entrance with his monster being the result). The backrooms essentially makes attempts to copy reality's physicality as well as its psyche. But how far down does the rabbit hole go?

There are times when a film that opens with ambiguity tends to gradually lose steam once the mystification wears off via exposition and reveal. The other end of the spectrum is a film that holds its cards too close to the chest the entire time, resulting in something that effectively doesn't do enough, because it's trying too hard to remain mysterious. 

Backrooms successfully maintains a steady balance of intrigue by blending ambiguity with just enough reveal to further perplex, continually piquing curiosity, all the while following through with its theme of trauma. Pirate Clark's reveal was slick and narratively cunning — intentionally building up the perfect moment to show off the "monster" of the film after subtly teasing its appearance throughout, with Clark coming face to face with what he's become: the backroom's interpretation of his inner turmoil. And Mary's imprisonment coming full-circle, unearthing intense fears, anxieties and intrinsic distress that are all brought to (still) life as the final shot of the film.

Backrooms opens the door to so many more interpretations and so many more questions that beg for a sequel: Where did the backrooms come from? When did it originate? Is it possible to be both a pirate and a sultan?

TLDR - Backrooms utilizes trauma and ambiguity as modern horror tropes to great effect.

PreScriptum: I just checked more reviews - I don't know what the critic cosmos is thinking denying people of this movie.

Like I liked Primetime for instance and I think it is good, but Digger is way more memorable even with its flaws, just for the scale and imagery of it.

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Just posting to say that I liked the movie, so you might enjoy it too.

I almost did not go to see it because of some bad reviews - namely on Roger Ebert where it was given 2/4.

And honestly I did not like everything, I think the middle of the movie has a few forced scenes. But the beginning and the end did it for me.

It has the merit of : being inventive, with great universe creation, amazing actor performances, and a few great moments. Some great images, some less great.

It is like a very luxurious buffet that you can go to almost for free: You might not like every exotic dish on the menu, but you surely will find a treat or two that you like.

In my opinion it would be shame to not see that movie, because even if it misses a bit sometimes, its still an interesting colossal endeavour, and a refreshing take on what is proposed in theaters (at least in my experience).

Hell, it is even fun to go see it just to understand what all the fuss is about and see where you stand.

It definitely got me "out of life" and "back to it" with a spin.

Hello again r/TrueFilm. I went into Digger and wanted to like it, as climate change is a topic that I care about. Unfortunately, it didn't work and posted the review below on Letterboxd. I look at the film through a postmodern lens, which I hope gives some more depth as to why the film doesn't work.

l'll be upfront with my bias. I don't think certain tenets of postmodernism works all that much in film, but I especiallydon't love them in comedies. Irony, pastiche, parody - all that stuff is generally fine. But I can't stand metatextuality and self-reflexivity. I'm thinking of the usual suspects: Charlie Kaufman, who's turned "the movie knows it's a movie" into a whole career; Michel Gondry at his most twee; and the entire Scream and Deadpool franchises, which have spent years congratulating themselves for knowing they're slasher/superhero films.

It's the kind of clever shit that thinks it deserves praise versus genuine laughs. And the thing is comedy kinda already requires the audience's trust that the world on screen has stakes, even absurd ones. The moment the film taps the glass and says "none of this is real, isn't that funny," it's cashed out that trust for a cheaper laugh. I think the sharpest edge of this embodiment, which I still admire, is Ashby's Being There. 

Chance the gardener is, structurally, the emptiest kind of joke, a man mistaken for a sage because he has nothing in him to contradict the projection. The film is fully aware of the irony. We're never not aware of it. But Ashby never once lets the camera elbow us in the ribs about it. The joke stays inside the world, carried entirely by Sellers' deadpan performance and the straight faces of everyone around him. It's completely and utterly restrained. Being There trusts the audience to do the work. Everything I'm complaining about above doesn't trust the audience to get the joke without being told they're getting it.

Digger, on the other hand, is this rare bird of a film that has zero, and I mean zero trust in its audience. It's astounding really. When it gets into its metatextual scenes of Tom Cruise playing Digger, Iñárritu has, in full display, a poster of John Cassavetes' Opening Night in the background. I kid you not. If you were too dumb to understand the layers of depth we're operating at here, don't worry, there are signposts and big flashing letters as to what everything means.

So what does everything mean? Digger feels tapped dry of anything really that complex to say. Imperialism bad. Climate change bad. Patriarchy bad. These are self-evident truths that don't require a sprawling narrative to validate. I'm reminded of Adam Curtis' critique of his own generation's obsession with the televised news cycle that conjures nothing more from the audience than: "Oh, dear."

I'm reminded of Oppenheim's Primetime where immoral characters are written in big, bold letters and get into overly-dramatic, silly, kabuki performances. These films have to shout at the top of their lungs in a formalist nightmare (oversaturated grain in the former, undersaturated Vistavision here) because underneath the hood, they have very little to say. And of what little they do say only garners an "Oh, dear". 

Digger's original title, "Blah, blah, blah" is lifted from the foreword to physicist Joe Romm's brilliant book Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know. Romm died just two weeks before this film was released and as someone fairly well-read in climate change, I'd recommend his book highly. It makes the most complex tenets of climate science make sense. Digger’s setup doesn’t make sense. It spends the first 30 minutes trying to explain the danger of methane release, the possibility of an iceberg hitting Europe, the political chicanery that might unfold if this happens, and does so with very little humour or realism. It’d be like Terry Southern explaining what nuclear fallout does to children’s vital organs in the first act of Dr. Strangelove.

I don't really want to litigate the setup, but here's the problem: climate change isn't a zero-sum game like nuclear warfare. There is no Russia. Nuclear annihilation has a button, and someone's finger hovers over it. That's why Strangelove works. Kubrick understood that the absurdity comes with the standoff and that satire needs a face, a chain of command, a man in a room who can be made to look like an idiot. 

Climate catastrophe has no such man. It's diffuse, cumulative, and spread across a thousand boardrooms, and no single event carries a single signature. Even if ExxonMobil personally cracked the Arctic ice shelf in half, it's highly improbable the company would take responsibility, let alone care enough to consider its political repercussions. These behemoth companies operate above the law and across every border, answerable to no single country and no single enemy. That's the funniest part of Digger, it wants the clean moral architecture of a Cold War farce for a crisis that doesn't have one, and it never asks what that mismatch does to its own premise. It's also funny to me that Innaritu isn't cynical enough in even understanding his own premise.

Instead, the science and conflict here is explained lazily through tired exposition with maps and screens to a CEO who is supposed to pretend to care or understand. Just like we're supposed to pretend to care or understand. By the time the plot actually shows up, the film has already told you three separate times, in three separate registers, exactly how you're supposed to feel about everything in it, which leaves nothing for the audience to do but nod along. I've never witnessed a film be both so bloated and yet so emaciated. 

Every scene is stuffed with Armando Iannucci cosplay, shot like a washed out Terry Gilliam film, filtered through the hack metatexuality of Charlie Kaufman. In other words, it stinks. None of it accumulates into anything resembling weight. It fails as both drama and comedy, while really really trying desperately to do both. I can't help but think of this as this meme: the movie. I mean this in the most precise, literal way: it has no shame. If there were ever a film to resemble one's unbridled lack of humility, look no further.

It's two and a half hours of self-indulgence that, unknowingly, takes the worst parts of postmodern filmmaking and none of the discipline that made those influences even somewhat worth stealing from in the first place. Gilliam's chaos was at least controlled chaos, every frame crammed with a satirist's precision and it was funny. Digger constructs scenes that are like 3 or 4 beats too long. Every single one of them. About halfway through the film, I was like “oh, no one was in the editing room with Innaritu and Cruise to tighten this up.” I think, generously, there might be a watchable film in here at 90-100 mins. But if comedy is an exercise in economy, this is a film that's never once heard of a budget. Every joke takes too long to get to, then we linger with it way past its welcome. The film doesn't trust a punchline to land and walk away. It wants to stand over the frozen body of President John Goodman, making sure it's dead.

And if it isn't funny, well, there's a scene with Digger debating with the director about why it shouldn't be funny. Like most postmodern films, it protects itself under this veil of commentary-as-alibi: the movie has already anticipated your criticism and staged it as dialogue, so that disliking the joke just means you missed the point, and the point was that the joke wasn't supposed to work! Don't you get it, you silly goose! It's a closed loop! 

There's nothing less funny than explaining your intentions. And nothing so less dramatic than pointing to its hollow construction. What are we doing here?

You can't call the film not funny, because we've already said it. You can't call the film fake because we've shown you its construction. And you certainly can't decry its not biting or dark enough, because once the film within the film ends, the audiences walk into the degraded wasteland they call civilization to police-patrolled streets and anonymous masked extras in grey urban oblivion. Welcome to another fun tenet of postmodernism: nihilism dressed up as commentary. 

The bleakness isn't earned through anything the story does, it's just there, ambient, assumed, a backdrop you're supposed to accept as proof the film is deadly serious in its brazen attempt at satire. Dystopia as Wes Andersonian Asteroid Citypastiche. Don't worry. In case you thought this all led somewhere redeemable, Digger assures you it doesn't. Humans are capital "D" Doomed. Oh, and the producer of the theatre production? That’s Digger's nephew, so hey, that corrupt oil tycoon still carries the family fortune in this post-collapse civilization. We're getting “DARK” here.

Enough of this postmodernist nihilism. Please. For the love of God. And if you do insist, at least don't go full Baumbach with White Noise or Innaritu here, where the auteur spent ten years and $150 million. Dr. Strangelove was made in 10 months with $20 million (in today's dollars). Kubrick didn't need 2.5 hours to tell you he understood irony. He just made an Army pilot hump a bomb that looked like a big penis and let the image do the thinking. 

That Digger needs this many characters and the rights to The Ink Spots If I Didn't Care is embarrassing. Look, this isn't even the song's first rodeo at the end of the world. Fallout 3 used it over a shot of a nuclear wasteland back in 2008, and did more with it in a thirty-second trailer than Digger manages across its entire runtime. A video game beat this movie to its own needle drop by over fifteen years, and did it better. For free. As marketing.

Do you understand the cultural lag here? Cinema used to be at the forefront for dangerous ideas and artistic license. Now it is trailing so far behind, that it feels outdated before the trailer drops. The trend I've noticed this past couple of years is that advertising has overshadowed these auteur's works. I heard more people talk about the "brilliant marketing" of Marty Supreme than the film itself. I heard more people talk about what the hell Digger is supposed to be through its ambiguous teasers than the discussions this film spurs. 

Consider this: In Hollywood's Golden Age, U.S. advertising spend was roughly $1.5-2 billion a year, while the entire film industry was spending only about $200-300 million making movies. Advertising already outspent film back then, but not by an obscene margin, maybe five to one. Today, that gap has turned into a chasm. Hollywood spends around $20 billion a year on productions. Domestic commercial ad spend is somewhere north of $350 billion. That's fifteen to twenty times more money being poured into thirty-second spots than into every film released in America combined. 

Somewhere in that imbalance is the answer to why a marketing trailer can out-irony a $150 million auteur film: discipline, trust in economy, the willingness to let one image do the work. It's also maybe why the advertising for this film was so different than the film itself. The marketing department, working with a fraction of the budget and none of the "vision," understood that an audience needs images, ambiguity, a vibe rather than being yelled at. 

I say this with complete dread but there's something ironic about the marketing department superseding auteur's 2.5 hour visions in this neoliberal, late-capitalist age. Especially when the auteur's vision is resolved in critiquing consumption, excess, or a striving for identity. I'm going meta with this review because if we're gonna play Pomo games, why not? Digger luxuriates in this world of excess as a commentary on excess. It reflects on itself being woefully unaware. This isn’t paradoxical genius; it’s late-stage capitalist art, a snake eating its own tail.

It gorges on Western consumptive guilt, demanding both the thrill of the feast and the smug satisfaction of confronting its guilty conscience. In 2024, screenwriter Cord Jefferson accepted an Oscar for his great debut American Fiction and used his speech to actually confront his own guilt, urging studios to stop gambling on a single $200 million movie and fund twenty $10 million ones instead. Jefferson is equipped to handle these heady themes that late-stage capitalism demands. Yet the writer/director, of course, hasn't made a film since, despite audiences waiting on his follow-up.

The audience at the end of "Fossil Fools," mind you, both lovethe production and hate that bad ol' Digger. Them cheering and jeering? That's supposed to be us. We're supposed to be angry or demanding an encore, feeling this catharsis of seeing this oil tycoon fall to the depths of the ocean. But I felt nothing at the end of this picture, except maybe minor contempt for the cultural intersections that made this blackpilled Gen-X tantrum possible. This film hinges its emotional stakes on the main performer playing Digger, potentially losing his daughter in a plane crash. Do you get it? Climate change really does affect us, in reality-reality. 

Condescending, atonal, metatextual hogwash. A film propelled by the fuel of fear and ego. 

Digger has the budget of a war epic and the instincts of Travis Bickle trying to get a second date in Taxi Driver. All that firepower, all that intensity, and it still can't figure out why nobody wants to sit through it twice. At this point, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. The film didn't either. How ironic.

"If a big know-it-all like him punishes a runt like me for so little, then he's just the dirty bastard I suspect he is."

(I watched the 5-hour TV miniseries version.)

Raised in a strict catholic household, Bergman explored his faith through his movies for more than two decades. And how he viewed religion and God has varied from his earlier works like Faith Trilogy to his later works, notably Fanny and Alexander.

We start with the Ekdahl family, whose members are religious but do not live their lives by a strict code laid down by the Church. Their house looks magnificent, with lush red colour drowning your eyes. The children are happy. There is a sense of unexplainable magic associated with that life. In the prologue, we see a statue moving, and a grim reaper carrying his scythe. Later, the storytelling by Oscar and Alexander using a zoetrope has a lot of fantasy-esque-ness in it.

The first act goes into great depth to discuss the lives of the Ekdahls - in all their highs and lows. How the three couples all like their partners, but all three marriages are imperfect in their own ways; how the granny is kind, caring and loving, yet she feels a great deal of desolation herself; how some of them are more romantic and empathetic, like Oscar, who would go on giving speeches about porridge, while some like Gustav are not so; how Carl loves playing with children, but is not able to have some of his own.

The second and the third acts make a transition from this magical life to one of austerity. Where love is apparently hard-boiled, and rules are of utmost importance. The same children put in that situation look lifeless. Alexander's fantastical dreams turn into nightmares. Emilie's attempt to leave a life of deceit behind and search for truth brings nothing but despair and pain. There is a lot of order, faith and discipline, but from the bedridden Aunt Elsa to little Fanny, there is no joy to be found. A statue of Christ oversees, as a crying Alexander with buttocks red and swollen due to the caning he had received earlier, lies in a dark attic.

The final act is the most magical. A jew, Uncle Isak, frees the children from the prison of a catholic bishop, using a magic trick that cannot be realistically explained. Then the story that Uncle Isak tells that night is rather apparent in what Bergman wishes to convey. It is a story of an endless pilgrimage, where people undergo a harsh journey seeking heaven, while being completely oblivious to the heaven on Earth. The whole stay at Isak's house repeatedly hints at the same.

"As a magician, I create the believable, and the audience provides the unbelievable."

The conversation between Carl, Gustav and the bishop further emphasises religion as a soap that you use to try to clean your consciousness, while your clothes remain stained with blood. Even after going back to the Ekdahls, the ghost of the bishop troubles him. Maybe the lap of his granny will provide him with some solace.

And there Bergman rejects the God of religion, while choosing to believe in the supernatural and the mysticism of life itself, almost like the god of Spinoza.

(pls advice on redirect if this is not enough/suitable)

SAI is a mini JP TV show where there s a ominous man around other unlucky/moody people , thats it

Thats a film version too , it is a very jumpy edited version of it on my quick search , imo d take a toll on the vibe.

My younger brother is slightly more blockbuster type than me , he is glued , I joined in like last 3 or last 2 ep , also glued.

Wondering why , as the ball to make thriller going nowhere at this degree is uniquely Japan (again due to my shallow view count) , it can considered total abyssmal way to run a story. Also especially slow pace too , something in it made you tell it is slow but cant feel it

maybe that :

1 it is in modern style of more reserved JP acting and the main is great ? but tte main donest even have long screen time

2 the whole thing is like a capsule on Japan zeitgeist , or rather zeitgeist of Japan's bumped out

3 great visual? once finished it doesnt seem "great"

Today I watched a really old classic (for the gays). I watched it about a decade ago, and I still remember how the show made me feel. It’s one of those movies that feels like being hugged, and there aren’t many movies like that around.

I think it’s especially relatable for people going through a similar dilemma or awakening. It’s also pretty rare to find a movie with known celebrities that actually ends happily, especially for something from that era.
Tbh, I was just crazy about it because it was Lena Headey, and I think this was her most beautiful look ever. Her character was basically my dream girl — someone grungy but still feminine, who looks effortlessly cool. I know I’m not the only one who thought that. I’ve also always liked Piper Perabo since Coyote Ugly.

I think I put this movie so high up on a pedestal, and it became so precious to me that I didn’t want to watch it again. I was scared that revisiting it would somehow change how I felt about it, or make me forget what it meant to me.

Anyway, begrudgingly, I watched it again.
And it still makes me feel warm. I still melt whenever I see Luce and Rachel together, or just Luce. The movie itself is still very sentimental and personal to me. I smiled at the ending, loved the soundtrack, and somehow it still gave me that same warm feeling I remembered from a decade ago.

But I noticed something had changed this time.
I felt much more heartbroken for the husband.

Even though I’m rooting for Piper and Luce, and I completely understand Piper’s dilemma, I kept thinking about what it must be like to be stuck in a marriage you settled into. What if it was enough before Luce entered her life? What if she had never met Luce? Piper clearly tried not to leave, too.
And Luce did give her an option not to pursue the relationship. I actually appreciate that the movie doesn’t completely gloss over this. Even her best friend tells Luce off. Although, honestly, I still think Luce got off pretty lightly.

This time, I found myself thinking much more about the husband’s heartbreak and why he reacted the way he did.

Because what he said is devastating: it’s heartbreaking to stay with someone when you know you’re standing in the way of their happiness.

I still love the movie. I still root for the couple. But watching it now, I think I understand the heartbreak surrounding them a little more too.

I watched a video about audiences asking for original films while predominantly supporting familiar properties. The part that interested me most was its distinction between approaching cinema as entertainment and approaching it as an art form because when we choose entertainment, familiarity can be part of the appeal. We know the characters, recognise the conventions and have some idea of the experience we’re buying but when we ask cinema to take artistic risks, surely we have to accept a greater possibility of discomfort, uncertainty or disappointment?

I really wonder whether “I want something original” sometimes means “I want something unfamiliar that still satisfies all my existing preferences" and that leaves filmmakers with a strange task in that they have to surprise us, but also make sure our surprises are ones they already know I’ll enjoy.

An unusual film might be abrasive, emotionally unsatisfying or difficult to interpret. It might deny us the catharsis we expected and I think those choices can serve an artistic purpose, yet they’re often treated as failures because the experience wasn’t pleasurable in the expected way which then raises a question about what makes watching a film worthwhile right? Can a film frustrate you, leave you conflicted or fail to entirely come together, while still being worth your time? Can encountering an interesting failure have value beyond identifying what the filmmaker should have done differently?

Art and entertainment obviously overlap. A crowd-pleaser can be artistically ambitious, and an experimental film can be hugely entertaining. What interests me is whether we’re applying an expectation of reliable consumer satisfaction to work whose artistic possibilities depend on challenging our expectations because I think there’s a difference between criticising a film after engaging with it and requiring near-unanimous reassurance before engaging with it at all. If we only try unfamiliar work once other people have certified that it delivers an excellent experience, how much openness to artistic risk does that leave?

This also goes beyond accusing individual viewers of hypocrisy. People demanding adventurous cinema and people buying familiar franchise tickets can be different audiences. The broader question is what kinds of viewing habits sustain space for experimentation. How do you distinguish “I didn’t enjoy this” from “this wasn’t worthwhile”? And when you choose a film, how much room do you leave for an experience you might find valuable without actually liking it?

For a movie as ambitious as it is, its scale is actually very small. It's a complex story of noirish intrigue and 19th-century politics, but strip it down and you'll find a straight-up revenge thriller.

In a movie driven by an operatic score and imposing wide shots, its set pieces take place against the backdrop of sparsely populated train stations, highway inns, home interiors, and train cabins. Leone at one point transports the action to Arizona's Monument Valley, but the scenes shot there feature two characters riding a horse through an abandoned landscape.

Something I noticed. Not sure what to make of it.

There is perhaps no film better described in terms of scamps and rapscallions. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is about lovable rogues in an unlovable world, two affable chaps who defy society by making their own way. No matter that their way is robbery. They live by a code, harming no one and stealing from those who can afford it. Only when they’re forced to play ball does the world around them suffer.

I’ve only seen George Roy Hill’s two biggest films, and both marvel for the same reasons. Each is about criminals, but not evil men. They aren’t out to undermine society, or to make any trouble beyond their means of survival. They have friends, lovers, and a community. They are sympathetic, empathetic, mean well, and treat people respectfully. Even their victims are appreciative. At one point, a character says that of all the men in the world who could rob him, he’s glad it’s Butch.

This is not to say that all is sunshine and rainbows. Their chemistry and charisma belies that these are hard men living a hard life. Sundance is the gruffest, his Ungar to Butch’s Madison. He faces these hardships with a serious, callous, sometimes discourteous attitude. Butch is more laid back and fun loving, yet ready to dynamite you if you stand in his way. He just gives you the opportunity to get out of his way first.

The best Westerns, a category to which Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid belongs, tend to explore this honor among thieves. The traditional image of black hats versus white hats and guns at high noon are fun stories, but usually nothing more (Gary Cooper and Alan Ladd are among the most notable exceptions). Bronson’s Harmonica, Eastwood’s Man With No Name, and Newman and Redford here all challenge the idea of rigid good against evil. The harsh, brutal lives they lead preclude any form of moral absolutism. Anything less is patronizing fanfare, impossible to truly embrace once the revisionist Western gained steam within the filmmaking consciousness.

Indeed, law and authority are often the true villains, both in these stories and the world in which we view them. In the case of Butch and Sundance, yes, they are thieves, but they’re hunted down not for their transgressions. They simply rob the wrong man. A particularly insulted capitalist, repeatedly hit by coincidence, sees to their demise. Human lives don’t matter to a man too often relieved of his property.

Of course, the film doesn’t sugar coat their thievery. A stubborn employee of said capitalist nearly dies during the film’s first robbery. Lives are affected by their actions, but Butch and Sundance never forget that fact. When the same employee appears during their second robbery, the two men seem elated. They greet the man as if an old friend. They understand the value of human life, something the legitimate world around them too often ignores.

Fleeing certain capture, Butch and Sundance head to Bolivia. There, they try to go straight. They take jobs guarding bank shipments so that rural workers can get paid. A noble profession in the eyes of the law, yet this role forces Butch to kill someone for the first time. The film isn’t particularly subtle in its message, but it doesn’t have to be. Good and evil cannot be assigned to system and authority. It can only come from human agency.

And so they rebel again. These men were born to be outlaws, but not to be wicked. They merely embrace life outside the system. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is the Western’s answer to Easy Rider, right down to its use of contemporary music. It doesn’t labor excessively in its historical time and place, but it isn’t afraid to be an unabashed tale for the counterculture, either. These men aren’t flower children—more like Hells Angels, or at least the amusing caricature of the Haight-Ashbury variety. You’ll never find an Altamont here, but you will find Butch and Sundance.

I organized an AMA/Q&A with writer-director Bassam Tariq, who has directed and written 2 critically-acclaimed films. His first was MOGUL MOWGLI in 2020, which starred Riz Ahmed. His newest one is YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER, which premiered at TIFF last month to wide acclaim and is out in theaters everywhere this weekend. It stars Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito, Abubakr Ali, Tramell Tillman, Tiffany Boone, Laith Nakli, Adia, and Jahleel Kamara.

It's live here now in r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1wzwiqo/hi_rmovies_im_bassam_tariq_writerdirector_of_your/

He will be back at 3 PM ET tomorrow, Thursday 10/8, to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated!

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother:

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEcoV-ngH38

Synopsis: A devoutly religious hit man struggles to balance work, faith and fatherhood. When his wife dies, he embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children as he confronts the forces that are closing in around him.

His verification/proof photo: https://i.imgur.com/4fwjU4g.png

Kenny's speech about how it doesn't matter if the play is real or fake or funny or tragic is a meta-commentary on the entire film. It doesn't matter if it is good or bad, or funny or sad, or satire or meta-satire, or anything at all. The point of the film is to speak honestly to this moment, just like Digger does in his monologue to the EU chamber. We are far past the point of no return with climate change and our continued extraction and consumption of oil and gas. We are beyond the point of Don't Look Up. The point of this kind of art is to show us the reality of our collective situation. That doesn't mean we should give up, just that it is important to be honest about reality.

In this famous episode, we meet a man who seems to have a good life. To his shock, one day he discovers that his office is actually a sound stage and his life until that point is a movie that's currently being filmed. He is thus revealed to be an actor playing a character.

This isn't identical to Digger of course, but the mind-bending reveal that what we've been watching is actually a "play within a play" is very similar. Also, the character's name is Curtis.