I loved the first part of sinners but I think it benefits from seeing it on da big screen (saw it on la's citywalk imax so truly the biggest available to me). also I appreciate the need for movies to have plot but I'm fundamentally the daughter of someone who exclusively watches hallmark movies,, I kind of just want to hang out and look at pretty pictures
I feel like “the vampires take too long to show up in Sinners” may actually be the opinion the comments section disagrees with me on the most… I didn’t anticipate this.
Nice reviews. I saw both the Korean movies related to Bugonia and The Ax recently. I don't want to see Bugonia because the Korean movie was just such perfect Korean movie craziness that it's hard to imagine it being translated to an American context with the same vibe. I could imagine the concept being appealing to Lanthimos, but his wit is so dry that I feel like it would lose something from the pleasure of the original.
I'm glad to hear that The Ax is a funny book. I laughed a lot at "No Other Choice", but I was seeing it in the theater, and no one else was laughing as far as I could tell. When things like that happen, I worry that maybe my coping skill of finding humor in situations has impaired my sense of tragedy.
Also, as a son of NE Wisconsin, I'm happy to support fiction about the paper industry. The late '90s was when my dad retired from a sales job in the industry, and he was pretty happy he left when he did. What we need now is a Melville who will do for the paper industry what he did for whaling - explain how the fabric of 20th century life has its mythic foundation in the transformation of trees into the most intimate texture of American life.
I want to see both No Other Choice and Save the Green Planet eventually… I’m assuming Bugonia’s success will mean a release of Save the Green Planet from some place or another. I will say while I liked Bugonia I don’t think it was exactly a funny movie. Like you say, it’s very dry.
What people laugh at in the theater is really weird—I have been to screenings of movies where people laughed at really inappropriate moments, which often bothers me. But I’m not sure I’ve ever been the only one laughing at something that’s clearly a joke, except at Shakespeare performances.
I liked the first act of Sinners, because as a white guy born in the last quarter of the 20th century, I haven't marinated in many stories portraying juke joints. It was neat to see an era of history that I've seen "a bunch of" (O Brother Where Art Thou, hard-boiled pulps, Lawless) from a confluence of perspectives (Black, Southern, rural) that I haven't seen much of. The balance of life being hard due to Jim Crow and sharecropping, but also joyful - it was neat.
The comparison for me is Godzilla Minus One. It was neat to see a well-done drama about postwar Japan, and I would've enjoyed that even if it hadn't also been a Godzilla movie.
Which is all to say that for me it wasn't just about establishing the characters and the stakes - it was an enjoyable forty minutes of cinema in its own right.
it’s possible i’m revealing myself to be somebody a little too invested in the vampires… oddly, I also am sort of lukewarm on Godzilla Minus One, which I’ve seen twice now. It’s a good movie which I would rewatch with anybody who wants to see it but I don’t love it as much as other people I think.
Criterion did a salute to new Korean directors a few years back (I don’t recall any movies I didn’t like in that group) and Save the Green Planet! was one of them. Bugonia was disappointing to me because it didn’t seem to do anything with the original source material except put it in English. You could probably see something unique if you watched them back to back, but I think that would be exhausting. I don’t love Lanthimos but I do think he’s unique, so I was disappointed that Bugonia didn’t seem to be.
The Wikipedia article makes it sound like initially this was going to be directed by the same guy, until he had health problems. Maybe it would have felt disrespectful to take it over and then change a lot of things.… I don't know. I did like Bugonia but if it's as faithful as you say then it probably comes down to which you see first.
"You couldn’t set this story in the world of current media because if you killed the person with the job you wanted, the publication would probably just stop having that job entirely. Like good luck taking out the theater critic."
I laughed, but then I was like "Wait, isn't that the final twist in Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound"? But of course, that play is from the '60s.
Hahahaha. It is kind of funny to read this depiction of the nineties as this grim scenario because now we're all like the nineties, golden age of having a job. I guess anything can be a golden age given time.
tbf the solution Office Space offers is to leave your desk job where you can be downsized no matter how hard you work or rewarded for doing nothing and instead go work in construction… like that is a genuinely miserable workspace
I do think the solution provided is kind of interesting. It's like "go build a house. That will solve your problems." But what we all took from the movie was "respect staplers."
I’ll have to read this Westlake, great recommendation. I’ve only read a few, but he’s surprised me by being great each time, even following his own formulas.
I have read that his books fall pretty squarely into “funny” novels and more hard-boiled novels, like the Parker novels he wrote as Richard Stark. I’ve only read the latter, so I think maybe The Axe could be a good one to try for funny
I watched "No Other Choice" directed by Park Chan-Wook this year. Which I learned at the end was a modern retelling of The Ax by Westlake. I am reasonably fond of his Dortmunder books.
lol I would have watched a full nother hour of setup. Slowwwwwwwwly dustily walking and strumming our tense, sexy way to sunset. Idk, I found it a really suspenseful opening stretch! Loved the "let's put on a show!" energy (the practicalities of ordering all the supplies, setting the place up) and not knowing which menaces would pop out again later--there's a 3.5-hr version of this film where the Chicago gangsters also show up, you know? THE MAN WHO ATE AL CAPONE.
That is sort of what I expected when I first watched it. I don't recall the movie's explanation for why the Klan only shows up the morning after, but I figured they would try to terrorize the juke on opening night, run into the vampires, and we'd get some fun conflict there as Remmick asserts himself as a problematic ally. It also gives the horde of vampires more to do in the final showdown as a lot of them seem to be milling about avoiding the heroes until they fulfill their character arcs.
Yes, ok, this is the criticism I definitely agree with. But would've been hard to do in the time allotted without giving Remmick more focus than I really wanted him to have--too high a percentage of the screen time. Still, if we could have a very long movie, that would be a VERY satisfying long movie.
yeah I guess the thing is I don't mind a long setup if everything is going to come into play later, but in this case it didn't really feel like it did. Something where all those ominous warnings about Capone came to fruition etc.
No Other Choice, the Korean film based on The Axe, is maybe my favorite movie of the year. Sinners is in my top 5, tho.
I loved the first part of sinners but I think it benefits from seeing it on da big screen (saw it on la's citywalk imax so truly the biggest available to me). also I appreciate the need for movies to have plot but I'm fundamentally the daughter of someone who exclusively watches hallmark movies,, I kind of just want to hang out and look at pretty pictures
I feel like “the vampires take too long to show up in Sinners” may actually be the opinion the comments section disagrees with me on the most… I didn’t anticipate this.
Nice reviews. I saw both the Korean movies related to Bugonia and The Ax recently. I don't want to see Bugonia because the Korean movie was just such perfect Korean movie craziness that it's hard to imagine it being translated to an American context with the same vibe. I could imagine the concept being appealing to Lanthimos, but his wit is so dry that I feel like it would lose something from the pleasure of the original.
I'm glad to hear that The Ax is a funny book. I laughed a lot at "No Other Choice", but I was seeing it in the theater, and no one else was laughing as far as I could tell. When things like that happen, I worry that maybe my coping skill of finding humor in situations has impaired my sense of tragedy.
Also, as a son of NE Wisconsin, I'm happy to support fiction about the paper industry. The late '90s was when my dad retired from a sales job in the industry, and he was pretty happy he left when he did. What we need now is a Melville who will do for the paper industry what he did for whaling - explain how the fabric of 20th century life has its mythic foundation in the transformation of trees into the most intimate texture of American life.
I want to see both No Other Choice and Save the Green Planet eventually… I’m assuming Bugonia’s success will mean a release of Save the Green Planet from some place or another. I will say while I liked Bugonia I don’t think it was exactly a funny movie. Like you say, it’s very dry.
What people laugh at in the theater is really weird—I have been to screenings of movies where people laughed at really inappropriate moments, which often bothers me. But I’m not sure I’ve ever been the only one laughing at something that’s clearly a joke, except at Shakespeare performances.
I liked the first act of Sinners, because as a white guy born in the last quarter of the 20th century, I haven't marinated in many stories portraying juke joints. It was neat to see an era of history that I've seen "a bunch of" (O Brother Where Art Thou, hard-boiled pulps, Lawless) from a confluence of perspectives (Black, Southern, rural) that I haven't seen much of. The balance of life being hard due to Jim Crow and sharecropping, but also joyful - it was neat.
The comparison for me is Godzilla Minus One. It was neat to see a well-done drama about postwar Japan, and I would've enjoyed that even if it hadn't also been a Godzilla movie.
Which is all to say that for me it wasn't just about establishing the characters and the stakes - it was an enjoyable forty minutes of cinema in its own right.
it’s possible i’m revealing myself to be somebody a little too invested in the vampires… oddly, I also am sort of lukewarm on Godzilla Minus One, which I’ve seen twice now. It’s a good movie which I would rewatch with anybody who wants to see it but I don’t love it as much as other people I think.
Criterion did a salute to new Korean directors a few years back (I don’t recall any movies I didn’t like in that group) and Save the Green Planet! was one of them. Bugonia was disappointing to me because it didn’t seem to do anything with the original source material except put it in English. You could probably see something unique if you watched them back to back, but I think that would be exhausting. I don’t love Lanthimos but I do think he’s unique, so I was disappointed that Bugonia didn’t seem to be.
The Wikipedia article makes it sound like initially this was going to be directed by the same guy, until he had health problems. Maybe it would have felt disrespectful to take it over and then change a lot of things.… I don't know. I did like Bugonia but if it's as faithful as you say then it probably comes down to which you see first.
"You couldn’t set this story in the world of current media because if you killed the person with the job you wanted, the publication would probably just stop having that job entirely. Like good luck taking out the theater critic."
I laughed, but then I was like "Wait, isn't that the final twist in Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound"? But of course, that play is from the '60s.
Hahahaha. It is kind of funny to read this depiction of the nineties as this grim scenario because now we're all like the nineties, golden age of having a job. I guess anything can be a golden age given time.
I think about that a lot w/r/t "Office Space".
tbf the solution Office Space offers is to leave your desk job where you can be downsized no matter how hard you work or rewarded for doing nothing and instead go work in construction… like that is a genuinely miserable workspace
and tbf on my end, the only time I’ve seen Office Space, I was only half paying attention to it at a high school cast party circa 2001
I do think the solution provided is kind of interesting. It's like "go build a house. That will solve your problems." But what we all took from the movie was "respect staplers."
I’ll have to read this Westlake, great recommendation. I’ve only read a few, but he’s surprised me by being great each time, even following his own formulas.
I have read that his books fall pretty squarely into “funny” novels and more hard-boiled novels, like the Parker novels he wrote as Richard Stark. I’ve only read the latter, so I think maybe The Axe could be a good one to try for funny
Yeah I want to read more now!
I watched "No Other Choice" directed by Park Chan-Wook this year. Which I learned at the end was a modern retelling of The Ax by Westlake. I am reasonably fond of his Dortmunder books.
I’d never read any Westlake before but I will read more now.
He's a good writer but I find his books hit and miss. Some way better than others.
lol I would have watched a full nother hour of setup. Slowwwwwwwwly dustily walking and strumming our tense, sexy way to sunset. Idk, I found it a really suspenseful opening stretch! Loved the "let's put on a show!" energy (the practicalities of ordering all the supplies, setting the place up) and not knowing which menaces would pop out again later--there's a 3.5-hr version of this film where the Chicago gangsters also show up, you know? THE MAN WHO ATE AL CAPONE.
imagining a version of the ending where both the gangsters and the Klan show up while the vampires are all dancing… I would have enjoyed that lol
That is sort of what I expected when I first watched it. I don't recall the movie's explanation for why the Klan only shows up the morning after, but I figured they would try to terrorize the juke on opening night, run into the vampires, and we'd get some fun conflict there as Remmick asserts himself as a problematic ally. It also gives the horde of vampires more to do in the final showdown as a lot of them seem to be milling about avoiding the heroes until they fulfill their character arcs.
Yes, ok, this is the criticism I definitely agree with. But would've been hard to do in the time allotted without giving Remmick more focus than I really wanted him to have--too high a percentage of the screen time. Still, if we could have a very long movie, that would be a VERY satisfying long movie.
yeah I guess the thing is I don't mind a long setup if everything is going to come into play later, but in this case it didn't really feel like it did. Something where all those ominous warnings about Capone came to fruition etc.