I didn't get any sense of mood, existential powerlessness or otherwise from Inherent Vice, the movie. It felt to me like the film was suffering under the attempt to cram all of the plot into too small a space; I thought Joaquin Phoenix wasn't quite right for Doc, and I found, for the once and only time, that the period setting in a PTA movie didn't feel remotely authentic. It also doesn't help that I feel like Josh Brolin is the decade's most overrated actor. I didn't think he worked at all in this one. I'd like to see a PTA Mason & Dixon movie too, but I think it would have to be pretty long––too long for standard commercial release, I imagine. Though given how long action movies have become in the last decade, it's surprising more art movies haven't moved into the same space.therewillbeblus wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2019 9:02 amInteresting- I mean, I don’t think anyone can really capture the experience of Pynchon, which is why even someone as ambitious as PTA abandoned his Mason & Dixon adaptation, my favorite and one I’d still love to see; but I thought he did a remarkable job replicating the experience for the viewer as the mystified and existentially powerless character and reader of one of his novels together at once. To each their own, indeed
I like the overrated list a lot. I don't think The Act of Killing or The Master belong on it, but I generally can go along with what he's saying. But I can imagine going to see The Act of Killing a few weeks after it came out and feeling frustrated by the movie. But I think there was a pivotal scene Glieberman missed, where Anwar gets brought back to his killing grounds and starts throwing up, overwhelmed by what he has done. It was really interesting to see how Anwar, the only one of the gangsters who hadn't really done well for himself financially, was the only one to express any real measure of guilt over his murdering past––though you could also see the others made uncomfortable by confronting it. Still, I thought it said something about the power of the human mind to justify oneself after-the-fact that the other gangsters felt no guilt, no shame, no regret.DarkImbecile wrote: ↑Mon Dec 30, 2019 2:43 pmFor a twist on the best-of-decade lists, Owen Glieberman's 10 most overrated films of the 2010s in Variety is an attack on the "art-heads" and "bohemian purity brigade" who set the cinephilic consensus, includingSpoilerShowThe Master - "Anderson's most insanely acclaimed head-scratcher"
The Act of Killing - "horrifying... but not in the way it wants to be"
Under the Skin - "directed... with a twilight portentousness that's at once draggy and repetitive"
Margaret - "It's too damn long."
One thing all of these lists are doing for me is making me feel like I have to see Margaret.