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Films Stupid People Think Are Clever

Started by Puce Moment, October 26, 2014, 12:56:29 AM

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Mr Banlon


Retinend

Quote from: Mister Six on October 27, 2014, 02:39:06 AM
I think I know what you're saying - he didn't have an official education in film and so was not incalculated with the Official Canon of Proper Cinema. I just want to clarify that he is aware of those directors and movements (his film company is named after Bande à part, FFS), he just doesn't necessarily enjoy them,

Good point. This is why I chose to say "not shaped by" rather than "not aware of" the Official Canon of Proper Cinema. I've no doubt that he's seen it all.

Retinend


phantom_power


Quote from: Noodle Lizard on October 27, 2014, 05:27:33 AM
Nope ... nope, they're all better.  And capture the essence of dreaming (with the exception of Abre Los Ojos/Vanilla Sky, which is more alternate reality than dream).  Throw Mulholland Dr. on there and baby, you got a stew goin'!

But Inception isn't trying to capture the essence of dreaming. It is a plot device.

Retinend

Quote from: gout_pony on October 26, 2014, 12:26:03 PMI think they're just mistaken for cerebral filmmakers because they're both pretty smart. But really I think their pleasures are visceral and intuitive. It makes a lot of sense to me that Herzog can't stand Godard's cinema, for example.

On second thought, what does it mean to say that the films of these widely-regarded-as "difficult" filmmakers are "intuitive"? How does it tie into the dislike of Godard by Herzog? Certainly its intuitive to see that if there are two attractive people on screen, they will be attracted to each other, or if some character is abused, that they will feel sad or vengeful. Obvious interpretations of human portrayed behaviour are "intuitive" but Herzog and Lynch never portray human behaviour with obvious interpretations.

Everything by Kevin Smith. People who think his films are clever are stupid, or at least have terrible, terrible taste.

samadriel


phantom_power

Does anyone thing his films are clever though? Possibly Dogma, but then for what the sort of film it is and the audience it is aimed at it probably is quite clever. It's all relative

Noodle Lizard

I don't know about clever, but some of his films are definitely well-written.  Dogma shows a lot more imagination than you get in most modern comedy films.

But yeah, I've never really heard Kevin Smith films referred to in any of the terms that apply to most of the films named and shamed here anyway.

Sam

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on October 27, 2014, 05:32:30 AM
I'd take that with a huge pinch of iodized kosher salt.  He's a big self-mythologiser, let's remember.

Definitely. He makes up all sorts of shit, mostly for his own amusement, and presumably to alleviate the boredom of being asked the same questions all the time. Whilst I don't believe for a second he's seen as few films as he says, it's still probably a lot fewer than most famous directors. On the other hand, he's probably walked, travelled and read 10 times more than most, all of which he is explicit in acknowledging as contributing to his style.

And though he can sometimes make it seem like he doesn't watch films because he doesn't need to, he's also been on record saying that the prosaic reason is that he's simply too busy making his own films to watch anything. Also I've heard him mention all sorts of directors and films authoritatively so he's seen a lot more than he lets on. For a start he was bessie mates with Lotte Eisner and used to go to her lectures on her film when he was younger.

kngen

Inception, Fight Club and a fair few others should really be filed under 'Films that are perfectly acceptable entertainment but are then spoiled a bit by people going on and on about how clever they are'.

People should shut up, basically.

Buttress

The problem with Inception is not the fact that its dreamscapes aren't appropriately fantastic or anything like that, its the fact that the dreams (even if they are being used as a plot device, it is not as if Nolan isn't trying to represent the chaotic imagined reality of a dream) are so fucking logical. Maybe if Nolan was trying to represent some kind of computer simulation or simulations-within-simulations it might actually make sense given the rather tacked-on logic he clings to when depicting 'dreams'. But let's face it, these are not dreams. And this idea that there can be an 'elevator' of one's unconscious is a little too organised as well - the entire point of dreams is that it is the unconscious running wild, chaining together repressed and disavowed signifiers into some semblence of ordered (but incomplete) narrative. These signifiers come out in the form of a dream (ie. the muddiness, the darkness, the mood) rather than the content as such.

This is why Lynch is so brilliant at getting at that 'dream' feel - because none of his films/work are strictly dreams as such but are told in the form of dreams - the muddiness, the disparate inconsistent details, the unease and uncanny.

chand

Inception would have been absurdly confusing if the dreams were as illogical as actual dreams though. Been a while since I saw it, but isn't the point of it that in order for people to share the dreams they have to use quite a rigid structure, designed by Ellen Page's character? Some people found Inception difficult to follow as it was, without the curve balls that would be thrown in by incorporating the true weirdness and illogic of dreams. Last time I had a memorable dream, I lived in a house that visually wasn't mine but in the dream I knew it to be mine, and my girlfriend was not my actual girlfriend but someone I follow on Twitter, except she didn't look like either that person or my actual girlfriend. In the dream I didn't question any of the things that were wrong with that version of reality.

I think you could probably do an interesting film about the mechanics of dreams, but Inception is manifestly not meant to be that film, it's a heist movie which uses a sci-fi dreaming mechanic to play with multiple timelines. I don't really get why people would accept the idea that a whole team of people can share a dreamscape with a target to implant an idea into his subconscious, but then draw the line about how inaccurately it represents the fluid structure of regular dreams. It's necessarily an unreal concept and I think that making the dreams less rigidly structured would have over-complicated and cluttered the plot, given how much of the film takes place in dream sequences.

samadriel

I think we're just shooting the shit as to what would have actually made for a clever movie, unlike the actual movie, which sooo wasn't (or if it was, not remotely as clever as Nolan's following among gushing dolts thought it was).

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I think a lot of films people think are clever are just because they feature more than one temporal plane. Throw a chronology that jumps backwards and forwards and whoooah slow down.

Inception had both. I thought it was weak in that the dream states were boring visually, aside the Paris-street flipping moment and the object and the nature of the threat, and the motivations of the enemy weren't filled in. Like a lot of Nolan film it chooses to enter a moral space without having anything profound to say about human nature or in the character's personal journeys.

It's a relatively fun diverting film that isn't really clever. When you slow it down and start unpicking it, it relies on a series of ridiculous paper-thin expediencies.



Pepotamo1985

Quote from: chand on October 30, 2014, 09:37:05 AM
Inception would have been absurdly confusing if the dreams were as illogical as actual dreams though.

Oh, I heartily concur. My original comment (which is where most of the discussion about the mundanity of the dreamworlds 'conjured' in Inception flows from, as far as I can see) was more about how, bar one or two brief CGI setpieces in scenes, there's nothing remotely fantastical, outlandish or...dreamlike about the film, really. Its aesthetics are positively dull, given the subject matter.

However, despite this, I'm perfectly happy with the film having a conventional narrative  - but why isn't there just one scene where they can do something extraordinary, like fly[nb]or any number of other superhero powers?[/nb]? Why don't they try trapping their target in a sex dream, or something? Why do they only ever use conventional guns, and not lazer cannons for instance? Any and all of these additions would've made the film a bit more interesting (if only visually).

Quote from: chand on October 30, 2014, 09:37:05 AM
I think you could probably do an interesting film about the mechanics of dreams, but Inception is manifestly not meant to be that film, it's a heist movie which uses a sci-fi dreaming mechanic to play with multiple timelines.

Of course. And that's the problem, really - it's a slick heist movie elevated to totally unrealistic parapets of intellectual and artistic worth by people who haven't seen intelligent cinema before. I liked Inception, but to my mind there wasn't that much to it to substantively differentiate it from Ocean's Eleven, say. In fact, the whole 'dream' aspect of the movie is so unexplored and ill-explored that it comes across as a contrivance - a setpiece in itself, that serves no real purpose beyond trying to make the film a bit clever.

Quote from: chand on October 30, 2014, 09:37:05 AM
I don't really get why people would accept the idea that a whole team of people can share a dreamscape with a target to implant an idea into his subconscious, but then draw the line about how inaccurately it represents the fluid structure of regular dreams.

Again, I'm/we're not taking issue with the film failing to nail the typical structure of dreams - the issue is that there's virtually nothing in the film that would suggest the plot mainly takes place in dreams, other than us frequently being told this is the case.

Blumf

Guys, guys!

It's obvious Inception a subtle satire on the executive classes! DiCaprio and team spend their time hacking into business leader's dreams, only to find that said leader's dreams are mundane and limited in imagination and scope.

You see?

Satire!

Dusty Substance

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on October 26, 2014, 03:13:11 PM
Another thing that gets me about Inception is how uninspiring the dreamscapes are. No flying, lazer guns or time travel or alien planets or fucking or anything remotely interesting, oh no.

Fuck. Yes.

After I'd seen Inception, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and had a conversation that raised that very question. Why are Nolan's on-screen dreams so grey, washed out and uninspiring. Imagine what Gilliam or Jeunet could've done with Inception's story. Cronenberg had done, essentially, the same thing in 1999 with eXisTenZ and that was far more dream-like and on a much lower budget. The Matrix may be riddled with plot holes and, yes, it does kind of belong on that Esquire list, but at least it was entertaining and had undeniable visual flair.


Pit-Pat

I'm not sure it's all that fair to have a go at Inception or the Dark Knight (less so The Dark Knight Rises) because people think they're cleverer than they are.

The point should be, IMO at least, that even though they're probably not comparable with Lynch or Jeunet or whoever in the intelligence stakes, they have been a hell of a lot cleverer than the vast majority of blockbusters, looking at stuff like the Transformers films.

They've also been influential in making summer blockbusters more intellectually interesting. You'd never have got a Captain America sequel ruminating about governments using terrorism to justify increasing their power if The Dark Knight hadn't made over $1bn.

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: Pit-Pat on October 30, 2014, 01:42:32 PM
The point should be, IMO at least, that even though they're probably not comparable with Lynch or Jeunet or whoever in the intelligence stakes, they have been a hell of a lot cleverer than the vast majority of blockbusters, looking at stuff like the Transformers films.

A comment more about the supremely awful nature of most modern Hollywood cinema, surely?

Quote from: Pit-Pat on October 30, 2014, 01:42:32 PM
You'd never have got a Captain America sequel ruminating about governments using terrorism to justify increasing their power if The Dark Knight hadn't made over $1bn.

What's the connection there?

Pit-Pat

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on October 30, 2014, 01:44:23 PM
A comment more about the supremely awful nature of most modern Hollywood cinema, surely?

Possibly, but a step up is still a step up. The majority of directors whose names are being mentioned here make films for select audiences rather than "the masses".

Quote
What's the connection there?

A film which was arguably more complex and intellectually interesting than most blockbusters showed that blockbusters don't need to be completely mindless to make a vast amount of money.

The point is that Nolan's films may not be the most intelligent of all time, but they're blockbusters that are more interested in exploring ideas than the majority of mainstream blockbusters.

Mark Steels Stockbroker

In focussing so much on Hollywood, have we missed the rich seam of pisspoor British films? I would argue that Zed And Two Noughts (fab title aside) is just a stupid person's idea of an "art film".

Buttress

I would say the modern semi-'intelligent' (or serious) blockbuster is more of a step sideways than necessarily forward. I think its interesting that they're portraying a lot of class struggle stories, but its also in such a way as to diminish the problem to something of government concern or certain greedy individuals or some impossible organised elite, etc.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Mark Steels Stockbroker on October 30, 2014, 11:37:01 PM
In focussing so much on Hollywood, have we missed the rich seam of pisspoor British films? I would argue that Zed And Two Noughts (fab title aside) is just a stupid person's idea of an "art film".

This Is England... Shane Meadows has made precisely one good film and I'm not sure even that one is all that good.

Pit-Pat


Sam

And Room for Romeo Brass. And twentyfourseven.

Dead Man's Shoes is pretty much a masterpiece. This is England is solid but by no means his best work.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

A Room For Romeo Brass is akin to some of our best independent films. It really does stand up. Terrific social realism.

This Is England is where it becomes contrived and stylised.

Puce Moment

I don't think Shane Meadows is an especially good director for this thread.

A better example would be Ridley Scott. Blade Runner is a perfectly good film, but the people who go on about it like its Stanislaw Lem novel.....ugh.


olliebean

The fucking Secret. Also that What the Bleep Do We Know bollocks.