Black Hat wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 2:41 pm
Wait, didn't The French Dispatch do well? Don't remember how Asteroid City did.
Domestic Box Office (in millions, in constant dollars as of April 2025 per BLS CPI Inflation Calculator)
Rushmore...............$33.7
Royal Tenenbaums....$94.4
Life Aquatic............$40.6
French Dispatch.......$19.0
Asteroid City...........$29.6
Avg First 3............. $56.2
Avg Last 2..............$24.3
If LA was a "big bomb" as Cursed says then The French Dispatch was a large asteroid hitting a planet called Earth and Asteroid City was a smaller one. The LIfe Aquatic did twice the business of The French Dispatch and 37% more than Asteroid City.
If you want to adjust by inflation, Life Aquatic cost something like 3 times as much as French Dispatch or Asteroid City. So yes, relative to the amount of money spent on the film, Life Aquatic bombed and lost Disney tens of millions of dollars in today's money. Also not sure why you're using domestic box office when French Dispatch and Asteroid City made a ton of money overseas (indeed, on par with or more than they made domestically, unlike Life Aquatic)
It’s also completely ignoring the state of the wider market to pretend like getting $20m or $30m domestic for independent films in the post-covid landscape is not extremely positive result less than ten other filmmakers can produce, regardless of spend. Both films overperformed, but Asteroid City especially was viewed as a big success beyond Focus’ expectations (consider films like as acclaimed and come to have as many accolades as Tar and Anatomy of a Fall struggle to get to 5m).
Never Cursed wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 4:42 pm
If you want to adjust by inflation, Life Aquatic cost something like 3 times as much as French Dispatch or Asteroid City. So yes, relative to the amount of money spent on the film, Life Aquatic bombed and lost Disney tens of millions of dollars in today's money. Also not sure why you're using domestic box office when French Dispatch and Asteroid City made a ton of money overseas (indeed, on par with or more than they made domestically, unlike Life Aquatic)
I was interpreting bombing at the box office as lack of popularity and ticket sales. That's not an unusual interpretation. I was referring to the top line and you are talking about the bottom line. That's great... I love finance but most people don't know the difference between a 10-Q and the SEC. The Life Aquatic was more popular with the domestic public but less popular with Disney. The reason I used domestic is because both the marketing and distribution of films as well as the reporting of box office grosses has been more consistent domestically over the past 25 years.
I don't really understand the hair you're trying to split. Is it that "more people went to see Life Aquatic in domestic movie theaters than French Dispatch or Asteroid City?" I would say that that's (a). a difficult claim to substantiate without more information given that it's hard to register the relative difference in ticket costs between 2004 and 2021-2023 given stuff like price discrimination etc., and (b). an apples-and-oranges comparison given the change in size of the home video and streaming markets between then and now. Absent some kind of metric like what France uses where they literally track admissions, I don't think you can really make a strong argument regarding how comparatively "popular" these films were upon release (see also: Ribs' post). Too much has changed about how movies are accessed and when/why people access them. But what hasn't changed is the relative amount of money spent on a film versus what it made theatrically at the time, which is why I can say that Life Aquatic was a serious financial disappointment for its backers regardless of the number of people who saw it in a theater, while French Dispatch and Asteroid City weren't. Thus the former did quite badly and the latter two relatively well.
Never Cursed wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 6:00 pmLife Aquatic was a serious financial disappointment for its backers regardless of the number of people who saw it in a theater...
Walter Kurtz wrote: Sat May 31, 2025 5:31 pmThe Life Aquatic was more popular with the domestic public but less popular with Disney.
Disney should thank their lucky stars they released The Life Aquatic. He made them BILLIONS. The Life Aquatic was such a turkey... a modern-day Ishtar... that they dumped Anderson on his ass and decided to replace him with Marvel. And suddenly there was plenty... and the land was verdant... and gold coins rained down from heaven. All due to Mr. Anderson's Aquatic!
The Austin Film Society (which Linklater cofounded) will be giving this a 35mm run. You never know with Netflix but I assume it won't be the only venue to do so.
A warning if you're catching the 35mm screenings of Nouvelle Vague: I'm not sure if IFC Center is sharing their print with anyone as the scheduling is weird and suggests they could feasibly be doing that, but the sound had problems today, dropping in and out with a lot of pops and rumbles accompanying it. I'm skeptical it's the print because it looked good with minimal signs of wear (unless whatever physical damage inflicted on it managed to avoid the picture frames). It's subtitled, but at the same time having that go on with the sound was distracting.
That aside, I enjoyed the film. It's arguably a slight and frothy movie, not even Linklater's best film this year, but like Blue Moon it also gets across a genuine love for an art form and what makes it meaningful through the central characters' critical viewpoints. (The performances are all very enjoyable as well, a big reason why all this does get over.)
I was wondering how it would play stylistically given the subject matter, and the result is an effective and thoughtful balance that quotes some of Godard's ideas while detailing the production in a fairly straightforward manner. For me at least, it gave the impression that the filmmakers did understand what was so great about Godard and the French New Wave while making their innovations still feel timeless and fresh in contrast to the film's conventional framework. It might've been tricky to pull off because I could see how the approach could backfire and appear too stodgy and boring, but it worked for me.
hearthesilence wrote: Sun Nov 02, 2025 1:54 am
I enjoyed the film. It's arguably a slight and frothy movie, not even Linklater's best film this year, but like Blue Moon it also gets across a genuine love for an art form and what makes it meaningful through the central characters' critical viewpoints. (The performances are all very enjoyable as well, a big reason why all this does get over.)
I was wondering how it would play stylistically given the subject matter, and the result is an effective and thoughtful balance that quotes some of Godard's ideas while detailing the production in a fairly straightforward manner. For me at least, it gave the impression that the filmmakers did understand what was so great about Godard and the French New Wave while making their innovations still feel timeless and fresh in contrast to the film's conventional framework. It might've been tricky to pull off because I could see how the approach could backfire and appear too stodgy and boring, but it worked for me.
I felt similarly. The film is solid, quite funny at times, but its straightforward approach to covering the production makes the whole project feel thin and even hollow. It's cute and harmless but doesn't take any risks, ironically in celebrating Godard's risky tactics to filmmaking! The key to what makes the film work so well when it gets locked in a rhythm, and what could have made it succeed even greater, is in its style of humor. The jokes are less 'laugh-out-loud' but deliver lots of chuckles, and I was craving more opportunities for uproarious laughter. The heartfelt respect for Godard's process overwhelms the idiosyncratic elements involved, and that makes the film less playful, and safer, than it could've been. I enjoyed it, but it also kinda feels superfluous without an edge to make the film excel as its own special project with something to say. During my viewing, I found myself just wanting to watch Breathless instead.
Saw this over the weekend, rather underwhelmed. If a viewer doesn't know Breathless when they go in, I hope
it spurs them to see the film. Otherwise, I was never unaware that I was basically watching a very good simulation
of a specific time and place. Heaven knows what Godard would've made of it (I can't remember what his comments
were when Redoubtable came out). Strangely enough, my mind kept drifting to King Lear while watching
this... don't know why.
therewillbeblus wrote: Mon Nov 03, 2025 11:17 pm
Yeah, that was the best pull quote ever. I just think he would've appreciated that movie more because it took risks
The movie’s main take on the material comes in two strands: 1) The Cahiers crew is a bunch of lads. Lads who quote Sartre instead of baseball stats but lads nonetheless. They only show their love for each other indirectly through quotations and little games, and their earnest friendship and sense of play is what Linklater admires the most. 2) The vertigo that comes with doing something risky without the hindsight of history. It’s less the fear of looking foolish than it is the reality of being a buffoon in the moment and being okay with that. Everything is told non-psychologically, from the outside, essentially a comedy of manners of boyish intellectuals and their scrappy work ethic.
That’s a fine idea and it even sounds like a solid Linklater movie. The anti-Godardian glossy realism he goes with for the style is surprisingly unobtrusive and sometimes immersive in its way. The problem is that it’s all very repetitive and can’t integrate into its easygoing workplace comedy the anxiety that should give the movie its comedic and dramatic edge.
In the first strand, Godard feels jealous, left behind, and overwhelmed, aware that he himself is not entirely sure of what he’s doing and that it could end up as the embarrassment of a lifetime. The moment at Cannes where Godard is uncomfortable and disappointed by the warm reception Les 400 coups is met with, promises a funnier, more trenchant movie. In the second strand, Seberg is the main character and her struggles with Godard’s adversarial methods and power plays, as well as the social hurdles of being both a star and a foreigner (missing Irma Vep, anyone?) are sometimes, beneath the half-assed complaining and teasing, a serious strain on her self-image; especially when she starts being won over by his tricks, losing herself in the spontaneity of the hotel room sequence and rebelling against his direction by improvising the enigmatic ending and out-Godarding Godard. But at this personal breakthrough, an intriguing idea for a climax and characteristically underplayed by Linklater, we part with Seberg for the rest of the film and the next scene is instead Godard monologuing about why he wants jump cuts in the editing booth. (We don’t get any dubbing shenanigans?)
Its main uncertainty is how to handle Godard’s character. A classic Linklater narrative has always been a nervous protagonist who gets presented with various role models and life philosophies until, finally, he finds the courage to start to speak, usually awkwardly, for himself (Waking Life, Boyhood, Everybody Wants Some!!). That seemed like it was also going to be his way into this story as well when Truffaut, Chabrol, Schiffman, Rossellini, and Melville all, back to back, offer him unfollowable advice on making his first feature. But after his nerves in the first few scenes wear off, his affect doesn’t really change for the rest of the movie: impish, aloof, aphoristic. He always has the right thing to say, and he never really alienates anyone with his unruliness. It seems like he does already know he’s Jean-Luc Godard, when maybe the movie’s best idea was that he didn’t, and that he was creating mighty big shoes for himself to fill. (Good JLG accent, though, and I liked the comment by Molly Haskell, who knew him to some degree in the 60s, that the imitation was perfect except for the fact that he smiles regularly, which “Godard never did.”)
I laughed a few times. The recreations were impressive and casual, in great-looking b&w. I think I was entertained by it; being so invested in the material, I was kind of too disoriented to tell. But it seems like Linklater turned in a well-made lark without committing to a meaningful stance on his subject.
Edo Choi wrote:What question does Linklater’s latest film Nouvelle Vague, an account of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s legendary debut feature Breathless (À bout de souffle), pose? In The New Yorker, Justin Chang reports that Linklater considers the film part of an informal cycle of artist studies alongside Me and Orson Welles (2008), Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019), and this year’s earlier Blue Moon. Indeed, the first two and Nouvelle Vague were written by or alongside Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo Jr., while Blue Moon was penned by Robert Kaplow, author of the source novel for the Welles film. Typically for Linklater, none of these films adopts the same dramatic form or register. The earliest embeds a coming-of-age drama within a backstage comedy. The second is, on one level, an abrasive Woman Under the Influence scenario and, on another, a winsome mother-daughter tale, both wrapped in a quirky parody of tech culture. Blue Moon is a tragicomedy about a man of theater that wryly obeys the Aristotelian unities. Finally, Nouvelle Vague is a simultaneous behind-the-scenes caper and period pastiche. What unites these movies is a particular thematic throughline. One of Linklater’s widely acknowledged themes is the question of time and specifically, per Jones again, “whether to seize the moment, clarify it, or just live it.” Seen through this lens, the four suggest chapters in the stages of the artist’s life. With its story of a young man’s initiation into the world of artists, Me and Orson Welles would constitute chapter one (call it “boyhood”). Nouvelle Vague, depicting an artist’s flowering, is chapter two. Where’d You Go, Bernadette, a crisis of creatively stalled middle age, chapter three. And Blue Moon, which deals with decline and death, the fourth and, perhaps, final chapter.
I thought this was fun, cute, and diverting. I'm neither a fan nor a hater of Breathless or Godard, but it was great fun watching this petulant, arrogant, pontifical, but driven young man try to achieve his vision. Of course, we all know how things turned out for him, but the movie stops before anyone beyond the core Cahiers crew has seen his film. Despite the handheld camera, you could almost be forgiven for thinking this was a Wes Anderson film. The cute little introductions of each individual, no matter how inconsequential to the narrative, are really endearing, and the parade of figures like Bresson, Rossellini, Melville, Demy, Varda, et al really gives you a sense of how Godard was coming out of a milieu that fostered his experimentation, yet he was still his own iconoclastic filmmaker.
The black-and-white photography is really lovely—believably scratched and dusty, with reel change markers—and it comfortably incorporates some period stock footage without it standing out. I really adored the guy playing Belmondo, Aubry Dullin. He looks so much like him, and also has that certain easy masculinity and charm that Belomondo had. Honestly, I liked the whole cast (except for some slight reservations about Zoey Deutch, but I aways found Seberg grating so I guess it's great casting).
I’ll echo the positive sentiments. Such a fast one hour and forty five minutes for the cinematic faithful like us. An absolute gift. Linklater and his team are magicians for making it feel so authentic. Makes you want to immediately pop in Breathless once it ends.
It was entertaining as far as it goes, but I didn't think much of it. Personally, it would've been more interesting
if they'd used the making of Breathless as a template story and shot the film in modern-day Paris using the
same technical and budgetary limitations that Godard had at his disposal at the time.
I thought this was delightful and a good brother of redoubtable. It helped tremendously to watch this with my non-cinephile wife who kept me tethered to the themes and emotions of the story rather than having it be a fun trivia night.
With all apologies to del Toro I can’t imagine a better Frankenstein film this year. The first act is all about Godard’s insecurities regarding his place in the crew. A true junior member who wants to turn everything about himself into a masterpiece. The creature he is molding for his revolution is some lame true crime drama that at first and most powerfully through its American star revolts against him. Spoiler
It’s obviously intended as a big moment, but I only really got the movie at the end when Seberg finally revolts by following through on Godard’s words. He’s completely castrated to go back to a line earlier in the film as she does finally become Patricia and says no to her creator as such.
The themes and structures of both biopics highlight Godard as a man in need of control due to his desire for chaos and always failing personally if not professionally due to this.
