Have you seen todays filmmakers? It’s really not a low bar when most of them can’t even do that

I remember being really into this movie when I was in college. I think there was something I connected with, feeling numb and disengaged from the world with a lot of bottled up emotions that your family really doesn't understand or refuses to engage with. I was obsessed with the soundtrack and gushed about the movie whenever asked

I came back to it a little later, older and better adjusted emotionally. I think there's still something there very honest and true at the heart of the story, but I see some cracks now I didn't notice before. Some shots seem to exist for their own sake, and while they're beautiful, they don't quite feel organically incorporated into the film. Similarly, there are some needle drops that last maybe two seconds and feel out of context; thinking specifically of the Colin Hay lyrics while the camera flies up awkwardly to a top-down shot; another example: the Theivery Corporation slo-mo walk seems to exist to look cool but doesn't connect with anything before or after it.

Likewise some ideas seem to be thrown out but never elaborated on, or if so then only superficially. There's a strong undercurrent about Mark, his aspirations/potential, and his relationship with Andrew, but we don't get a payoff for any of it. We learn about Sam's epilepsy, but it's never followed up on, making it seem like it was just context for the helmet scene.

The ending was always a mixed bag for me, but leaning away from enjoyment as I age. Of course I cheered when I was younger when they stay together, but having been through my own relationship experiences now, it seems a little too neat and Hollywood. It fits the film's message of "Live your life now! Chase your joy!" but at the expense of its subtler lesson of "make time to process your trauma before it damages the relationship around you" as exemplified by the father.

Still, there's a lot to like about the film. Jim Parston's scene is great. Peter Sarsgaard's Mark is believably chill but smarmy, yet friendly enough that you accept him anyway. The "getting pulled over by an old high school acquaintence" scene is hilarious. And the scene with Braff and Ian Holm is cathartic; very well done by both actors.

All in all I still found it enjoyable, but some of the critiques are valid (if sometimes overblown).

Ok 2 things; first, I think she lives as well, and I’ve even said the director said as much earlier. But I did think she had a cough at the end of the film- but I’m more than happy to admit I’m wrong on this if that’s not the case. There’s 0 chance I’m sitting through any of that again.

I too am the type of whore who prefers a burger

the best thing about it by far is the soundtrack

> What does the protagonist brother-in-law do to make enough money to own a castle and golf course?

It was family land passed down for generations. It is a clearly a manor. The staff were sent home after the wedding for the end of the world.

Everyone knows about the "death dance" and he is just a disbeliever that is trying to keep his chronically anxious and depressed wife and sister-in-law from being even worse due by ignoring it/being skeptical. He is obviously a liar, though, and believes it is coming.

It is almost as though they all suffer from melancholy.

A "coughing fit"? You need to watch the ending again. I can't even find a moment where she chokes or coughs, let alone a whole fit. She sits down, panting (from exertion and adrenaline), gasps at the explosion, gets out the burger, takes a bite, wipes her mouth with the menu, takes a second bite, and a clap signals the cut to credits.

Anyway, this is moot because the director said the fan theory was wrong. Margot survives.

If you say so. I mean, firstly, there’s not that much violence in his films, it’s just the moments are memorable and make an impact because they often feel out of place, but violent directors include Tarantino, Lynch, Fincher, Cronenberg, Pekinpah, Verhovan, De Palmer, Miike, Stone, Scorsese, Noe, and Haneke. I think you’re pressed to say the bar is low just because a film has violent parts in it. This isn’t an argument to say he deserves to be in the above tier of directors, but I’d argue he is more than he isn’t. Compare him to the hundreds of other violent directors the world has already forgotten because they have no talent, I think he has a promising back catalogue.

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You’re delusional if that’s all you reduce his works down to. He crafts ambiguously layered characters very well. Most hacks in Hollywood can only think of protagonists in a black or white mindset and spell it out for you but Zahler crafts very morally ambiguous themes in his work and can directly make you uncomfortable in the protagonists he expects you to watch because he doesn’t make it easy for the audience to see his characters as good or bad. Many of the best scenes in his movies are just pure dialogue moments as well.

Dragged Across Concrete was legitimately Tarantino level writing with the large cast of multilayered characters and most of the film has no action so it’s straight up ignorant to say all Zahler does is make “intensely violent” movies.

Wonder how many walked out during the Booty Sweat scene in Tropic Thunder

Sid Haig in the opening scene should have let you know that it was going to get crazy.

Watch CODA instead.

The young boy was the only character I cared about when the planet ended. I get that the movie is about depression, but having all of the adult characters be entirely without any redeeming traits was a bit on the try-hard edgelord side for me.

Then again, this Von Trier.

It's actually a really fantastic cheese to use for cheese sauces in a pinch because American cheese is made with sodium citrate, which emulsifies the cheeses together, so its perfect for something like macaroni and cheese or a mornay sauce. Granted a restaurant of their caliber might straight up have sodium citrate.

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I mean, those are all good qualities for a director to have, but kind of a low bar to set

PTA and James Gray have been flopping on nearly every movie theyve
done for a decade. I genuinely don’t think commercial success means shit. I think Hollywood just likes filmmakers who follow their agenda and kiss their ass. Zahler is not one of those people.

Edit:

Apparently Zahler just went into production last November on a 3 hour black and white film about an animatronic puppet. Just nobody reported on it because Hollywood and the agenda led media doesn’t value real talent.

Just like the Disney’s remake, both Pinocchio movies have a terrible messaging for kids which is that it’s ok to lie to get yourself out of an unfavourable situation.

Plenty of Netflix/Amazon/etc shows are still shot there

All the likes. This film was so much exciting and different. Do you javelin any recommendations for other films like this?

What's funny to me is that his next movie was called Dragged Across Concrete, yet that action happens in Brawl in quite vivid detail.

I think the hate for the film today is people that weren't in college/young adults in the era that film came out don't get it.

Looking at the film through a 2023 mindset makes it look like a terrible movie because the worldview of the younger generation has changed.

Everyone and I mean EVERYONE I went to college with at Florida State I knew loved that movie.

Why?

It was the first movie that spoke to us. That weird transitional generation of people who were born in the analog world and then when we got to middle school dial up internet and email and AOL instant messenger came into our lives.

Our whole world changed in 2 years.

We were also the first generation of kids that were en masse put on drugs for hyperactivity, etc. We were the last generation of latch key kids.

Our parents were absent a lot of the time and we had to figure out how to cope with a world that changed so fast.

It sounds dumb to people born after say 1990 but to those of us born in the mid-80s...the world got fucking weird.

We went from watching Saturday Morning Cartoons to having a Cartoon Network 24/7.

We went from Records and Tapes to CDs to Napster in 10 years.

We went from 8-BIT Nintendo to PS2 in 10 years.

We went from calling your friends on the phone or the night before saying I'll meet you at the telephone pole at 9am in the summertime to sitting on AIM and being the first generation of teenagers with internet drama.

Mentally we were all fucked up because life changed so quickly from the analog world to the everyone is connected world.

Our parents couldn't even begin to cope with the world changing either so when we acted out it was easier to put us on a drug than figure out how to deal with it.

The movie is about this guy trying to not live feeling numb anymore. Just as he makes the decision to get off ALL the drugs he was on, his mom dies. There's that scene in the movie where he talks about the necklace and his mom hugging him and talking about trying to cope. If he was all doped up he would have passively observed it, instead he was actually feeling his feelings.

In Natalie Portman, he feels something about her and he's drawn to her and he spends the whole movie trying to figure out what it is. What it is, is he's attracted to her and falling for her and since he isn't all doped up anymore, he's coming off the chemicals and learning to just feel his feelings again and sort them out.

If you watch his character arc from his numb reaction to that shirt that matched the wallpaper where he just looks numb and dead inside to getting angry and protective over Sam near the end of the movie he's learned to feel his emotions and he's saying things and acting on them.

Him running back to Sam saying I don't know how this is going to work but I want to be with you is his final transformation into a real human moving on with his life. Had he abandoned her in the airport and not gone back to her, he'd be living a numb life just like he would have if he was still on the drugs. By going back to her, he was choosing to live more dangerously and be open to getting hurt and not numbing his emotions.

It's also why the conversation with his dad was so important in the movie. Had he chosen to stay on the drugs, he and his dad would have just been shadows but because he wasn't feeling "numb" anymore, he had the tough conversation with his dad and engaged him for the first time as as adult.

Trying to look at this movie with a 2023 won't make any damn sense.

For those of us who lived through that timeframe..it speaks to us differently.

I haven't watched the movie in a long time but its still on my DVD shelf. As a now late 30-something with a wife and kid it's a reminder to me to not make the same mistakes my parents did and engage my kids way better than my parents did. it doesn't mean my parents didn't love me, it just means they didn't do a good job helping me process my emotions and who I am. I want my kid to be able to cope with life and be productive and not go through a lot of the pain my generation did. She'll go through other types of pain than I did.

Bone Tomahawk is "Just Guys Being Dudes: The Movie" until the third act. It's more or less a comedy, then everything goes to hell. I love this flick