I enjoyed this one too, and loved the last scene, although the final moments for the other characters felt more like the beginning of the third act, and the whole thing probably could have sweated out 15-20 minutes. Julia Roberts saying "I fucking hate people" and dancing to Too Close with Mahershala... BIG mood.
Re: Civil War - I enjoy ripping on a bad trailer on Twitter as much as the next guy, but it stops being fun when we get into the nitty gritty of plotting/setup that a two-minute trailer can't possibly convey. Same thing happened last week with the Magical Negroes trailer. Hopefully Civil War is more Annihilation than Men.
I did find much of Leave the World Behind a bit too on-the-nose, as you say, almost a creaky stage play, which didn't take away from the fun of watching to see how far Esmail would push the conceit. I loved the Friends trope; thought it was the best thing about it and a fantastic ending.
Thanks for the reco, Vince. I was going to skip this based on ho-hum reviews, but I actually loved it. I'm a cynical fuck, so I loved the ending, and I think he made some wise changes to the book to reach a wider audience (which I normally hate). Hawke/Ali/Bacon got the barbarism side; Rose got the escapism side, but I think Julia Roberts got a bit short changed, is her and the other kid meant to be the socialism side? It wasn't clear to me. Anyway, it's the best she's been since The Best of the Best series. Other than that, solid B+.
Vince, I think the Civil War trailer was using actual war as a metaphor for the political division in our country currently. Not sure how you missed that. It's profound, you see.
Leave the World Behind was perfectly fine. Although, I'd rather have seen a movie about that oil tanker's captain's day than the one we got.
My opinions on films wholly aligns with yours at least 80% of the time, hence my subscription, but I feel like we saw different "Civil War" trailers because I got chills watching it. And an aside, I imagine the "Texifornia" absurdity is purposeful so as to not pick sides in the red vs. blue debate while still making the point that, hey, this is where we're heading if we don't figure out this red vs. blue debate.
I definitely feel like people clowning on the idea of Texas and California teaming up are just buying into culture war branding, since Texas and California are pretty similar beyond that. (I still hate the Cowboys though).
Only thing I knew going in was the ending was abrupt - so I nearly expected it to just end at that shot of the Earth from the moon - but once the girl found the wall of DVDs I knew what I wanted it to be.
I thought it was a great ending. (Tho tbf I did only half pay attention to the rest of the movie.)
i get that the root cause of the apocalypse is deliberately obscured, our experience of the collapse impressionistic, the scattered non-ending ending meant to thwart expectations ... all fine. But in the end an extraordinary bit of geographic license took me right out of the movie.
We see the Sandfords driving hours out of NYC to the nice VRBO house, which is on ample acreage -- ample enough to host a deer stampede, surrounded by deserted cropland, and a short walk to a Hamptons-esque sandy beach on the Atlantic. We are told there's no way to drive out of these after all those malfunctioning Teslas clog up the sole access road.
Yet in the last minutes of the movie young Rose walks a few paces next door to the mansion with the bunker, our POV pulls up and back, and we see it's ... about as close to Manhattan as Park Slope, or Bayonne. Manhattan is being bombed for some unexplained reason, and we're close enough to observe the explosion over, mmm, Herald Square or so.
It's either meant to be hallucinatory, deliberately surreal, or it's a huge ask for the audience. Either way, I could forgive all the other dangling unresolved bits, but it was that shot that had me saying, aw, c'mon, check please.
Early in the film, Media Studies Prof. Hawke says he's gonna write the intro for a former student's second book, which is about how TV is both an escape and a reflection of the world -- apparently a contradiction, but not in her clever analysis (which we don't hear).
For Rose, FRIENDS is an escape but watching FRIENDS is a reflection, because (as we all know) kids these days just watch their screens.
I enjoyed this one too, and loved the last scene, although the final moments for the other characters felt more like the beginning of the third act, and the whole thing probably could have sweated out 15-20 minutes. Julia Roberts saying "I fucking hate people" and dancing to Too Close with Mahershala... BIG mood.
Re: Civil War - I enjoy ripping on a bad trailer on Twitter as much as the next guy, but it stops being fun when we get into the nitty gritty of plotting/setup that a two-minute trailer can't possibly convey. Same thing happened last week with the Magical Negroes trailer. Hopefully Civil War is more Annihilation than Men.
I appreciate the attempt to onomatopoeically transcribe the iconic Friends theme song only to have it look like childish Dutch jeering
Is there any other kind of Dutch jeering?
Are they ever not jeering?
I did find much of Leave the World Behind a bit too on-the-nose, as you say, almost a creaky stage play, which didn't take away from the fun of watching to see how far Esmail would push the conceit. I loved the Friends trope; thought it was the best thing about it and a fantastic ending.
Thanks for the reco, Vince. I was going to skip this based on ho-hum reviews, but I actually loved it. I'm a cynical fuck, so I loved the ending, and I think he made some wise changes to the book to reach a wider audience (which I normally hate). Hawke/Ali/Bacon got the barbarism side; Rose got the escapism side, but I think Julia Roberts got a bit short changed, is her and the other kid meant to be the socialism side? It wasn't clear to me. Anyway, it's the best she's been since The Best of the Best series. Other than that, solid B+.
It's so funny that one of the big end reveals was that Havana Syndrome was real
Vince, I think the Civil War trailer was using actual war as a metaphor for the political division in our country currently. Not sure how you missed that. It's profound, you see.
Leave the World Behind was perfectly fine. Although, I'd rather have seen a movie about that oil tanker's captain's day than the one we got.
My opinions on films wholly aligns with yours at least 80% of the time, hence my subscription, but I feel like we saw different "Civil War" trailers because I got chills watching it. And an aside, I imagine the "Texifornia" absurdity is purposeful so as to not pick sides in the red vs. blue debate while still making the point that, hey, this is where we're heading if we don't figure out this red vs. blue debate.
I definitely feel like people clowning on the idea of Texas and California teaming up are just buying into culture war branding, since Texas and California are pretty similar beyond that. (I still hate the Cowboys though).
I don't even watch the NFL anymore, yet I still drop in on occasion just to make sure the Cowboys are suffering.
loved the movie!
leave the world behind :-)
Only thing I knew going in was the ending was abrupt - so I nearly expected it to just end at that shot of the Earth from the moon - but once the girl found the wall of DVDs I knew what I wanted it to be.
I thought it was a great ending. (Tho tbf I did only half pay attention to the rest of the movie.)
i get that the root cause of the apocalypse is deliberately obscured, our experience of the collapse impressionistic, the scattered non-ending ending meant to thwart expectations ... all fine. But in the end an extraordinary bit of geographic license took me right out of the movie.
We see the Sandfords driving hours out of NYC to the nice VRBO house, which is on ample acreage -- ample enough to host a deer stampede, surrounded by deserted cropland, and a short walk to a Hamptons-esque sandy beach on the Atlantic. We are told there's no way to drive out of these after all those malfunctioning Teslas clog up the sole access road.
Yet in the last minutes of the movie young Rose walks a few paces next door to the mansion with the bunker, our POV pulls up and back, and we see it's ... about as close to Manhattan as Park Slope, or Bayonne. Manhattan is being bombed for some unexplained reason, and we're close enough to observe the explosion over, mmm, Herald Square or so.
It's either meant to be hallucinatory, deliberately surreal, or it's a huge ask for the audience. Either way, I could forgive all the other dangling unresolved bits, but it was that shot that had me saying, aw, c'mon, check please.
As a West Coaster, it all worked perfectly.
Like being able to watch the Golden Gate Bridge being bombed from Fresno.
Early in the film, Media Studies Prof. Hawke says he's gonna write the intro for a former student's second book, which is about how TV is both an escape and a reflection of the world -- apparently a contradiction, but not in her clever analysis (which we don't hear).
For Rose, FRIENDS is an escape but watching FRIENDS is a reflection, because (as we all know) kids these days just watch their screens.
I'm just hoping this is Alex Garland's one for them, before we get his one for me.
It just looks so on the nose and dumb. I also hope we don't lose A24's output to stupidity.