I didn't go dumpster diving on Twitter; I noted the insane online reaction to Richard Brody making accurate critiques of a lot of people's VERY SPECIAL THING and used a tweet to illustrate it. Remember: you are not the stuff you like.
Is referring to Rotten Tomatoes dumpster diving? To the fact that it's the best reviewed movie on IMDB and Letterboxed? I dont' know, I think I've pretty firmly established that this is a movie people are showering with immense praise, and my own personal opinion doesn't jibe with that much love.
But who am I calling delusional? People are free to disagree with my takes. What I object to is the common internet behavior of undermining the very purpose of criticism themselves in defense of something they enjoy. Look at some of the other tweets in that very thread. https://twitter.com/tnyfrontrow/status/1507128845207588874
I disliked this movie intensely. I found it way too busy and it never really seemed to move. An incredibly claustrophobic watching experience. But I suspect part of my dislike was fed by disappointment - after the reviews I was looking forward to this a lot.
I just want to say that, without realizing this was a movie title, I was prepared to read Freddie's ultimate magnum opus when I saw the subject line in my email today.
It’s a work of essentially hypnotic fiction and it was successful in getting a certain set of overly thinky people to fall under a spell and let go. I don’t know if that’s art or therapy but it seems like success.
I personally knew I was being duped by it couldn’t resist falling into its spell and cried all the way through it.
I went with two 14 year old boys who thought it was okay, maybe twice as long as it should have been, and those YA tropes were getting really obvious by the end don’t you think yeah?
I think I enjoyed the movie marginally more than Freddie, but I agree with his thesis here. I also think the film fundamentally suffered from the heightened expectations.
There’s also a very good Michelle Yeoh performance in it, which I think elevates the material. But Yeoh is an incredible screen presence, and she’s capable of so much more. I watched Crouching Tiger last week, in which she takes a very cliche theme -- warriors who keep a calm face but beneath burn deeply for each other -- and somehow turns in a captivating performance that I couldn’t take my eyes off.
The acting was all around excellent. If anything it’s more interesting to talk about because it’s by no means a failure as a film - there’s great stuff in the production. But then it just doesn’t cohere.
Woke people really really REALLY love this movie more than life itself. And yes, there's a lot of incredibly overbearing fans like in that tweet you shared. They're so annoying that they threaten to turn you off of the movie itself. A similar thing happened to me with Get Out.
And yet....I really like this movie a lot. Borderline love. It does a lot of fascinating things with the multiverse concept, like each universe representing a path Evelyn could have taken in life. Speaking of which, Evelyn is how you write a "strong" female character. Give her real dimensions and struggles to overcome. It's a stark contrast to the Great at Everything From the Jump characters like Rey (Star Wars) or Captain Marvel.
And believe it or not, there's a VERY anti-woke YouTube channel called The Critical Drinker, and he loved the movie too! https://youtu.be/FmnzpHu2Tjc
I liked it and found it entertaining. Honestly, just knowing her husband was Data from Goonies was enough, but it has an interesting (admittedly occasionally chaotic) storyline and I enjoyed watching it.
That said, I can understand how others might not and it is probably not for everyone.
Someone finally said it [meme from Jerry Maguire]. It was good! And ambitious and inventive and funny and largely fun to watch. Not a remake and by directors I hadn’t heard of! It had kind of schlocky ending. I was touched, but I also tear up when I watch YouTube clips of October Sky. Definitely too long. B+
What? I mean, I disagree with the person you’re responding to, but there is a major character named “Waymond” because it’s a joke about the fact that he speaks with a strong accent. In the context of the film I found that pretty funny, but can you not imagine a world where someone found that offensive?
And, yeah, a lot of the visual humor around Deirdre was expressly centered on her being a big, not-conventionally-attractive, somewhat masculine-looking woman. I didn’t find it offensive, because she was in keeping with the rest of the visual lunacy and Jamie Lee Curtis’ acting brought a lot to the character. But why would it be homophobic to say, “I found it offensive that I was expected to laugh at this big ugly woman for being a big ugly woman”?
Rick and Morty is at least thematically consistent. R&M highlights the absurdity of trying to find meaning in a meaningless world. EEAAO tries to preach the same message, but contradicts itself with all the cheesy messaging around loving your family and being nice. The directors of EEAAO don't even believe in the nihilistic ideas they're trying to push onto us. It's all bullshit. It's the kind of confused philosophy of an angsty teenager who just discovered Camus and spends an inordinate amount of time on r/atheism.
Isn't the elephant in the room that the minority representation inevitably results in grade inflation/affirmative action? If the immigrants in the film had been Polish the movie wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the attention and it wouldn't have nearly as rabid a fan base.
I don't like the movie because I don't think it's very good. And isn't one of the points of this article that stans of the movie just can't accept that some people think the movie is awful and insist on attaching some kind of external motive to any criticism?
I think the inclusion of the "Chinese girlfriend" is egregious and I don't see any other possible justification than tokenism. What relevance could your significant other have to the quality of a movie or a book or whatever?
I'm not suggesting that the stans for this movie are racist, I'm suggesting that a good part of the reason there are stans is misguided concerns about "representation".
Plus how is the original tweet problematic? The guy who posted it is a professional film critic. His job is having an opinion about movies.
I think he’s making a big assumption that people like it is because they’re Chinese and not because the story is compelling. I think the poster is projecting their feelings on everyone else’s reactions. It’s likely that there are multiple reasons why people appreciate the story.
There’s no really evidence that people like it more because of the ethnicity of the family. It’s like the commenter has a feeling about the movie and then working backwards from that.
I think you saw the same thing with "Crazy Rich Asians" which was somehow supposed to be an empowering cultural milestone for minority viewers instead of merely being a horribly mediocre comedy. Look at the tweet that Freddie referenced in the article--why point out specifically that your girlfriend is Asian? What possible relevance could that have other than box checking?
They might have pointed out their girlfriend was Asian because it meant the film had a personal emotional resonance for them. A Chinese friend of mine said she was deeply touched by the portrayal of the Asian mother-daughter relationship; would that be box ticking?
Films with diverse casts get bonus points from critics, which directly translates to higher scores on Rotten Tomatoes. I think that's what he's saying.
I think it's possible to recognize that the movie was clearly going for, and got, attention and praise for its use of race in casting, while at the same time recognizing that it's a fine picture.
This is a bizarre response. Like, flat out incoherent. I genuinely have no idea what point you're trying to get across. It seems like you're talking to some made up person in your own head. What does this have to do with my point?
Tons of outstanding actors do mediocre or bad movies. And while their performances often elevate a given film, it can't outright turn a bad one into a good one. Not saying this one is bad, I haven't watched it. I'm just saying that having a great actor in it (like Yeoh), doesn't automatically make a movie great as well.
Telling the story of Wong is great. But again, an interesting and relatable story also does not automatically make a movie great. There's another film coming out next year about Indira Gandhi, one of the most influential and powerful women to ever live. But that doesn't mean the film is going to be great, it could still suck.
Great actors alone do make films great. Great story alone does not make films great. Even massive popularity alone does not make films great. Excellence is not determined by any democratic means, it's determined by quality by those who know and understand how to measure that quality. Otherwise, my drunken scribble on a bar napkin would be considered a Picasso.
Nah. I think it stems from people not having a depth of cinematic knowledge and thinking the cast and themes in this movie is 1) ground breaking and 2) novel.
I think I would rather go watch some old black and white classic though rather than watch something that's completely mediocre just because it was made in the current year.
I agree, and I fell for the hype, saw it at home. But I found it an interesting retelling of an old story. I like some of the actors in it. That said, I wouldn't watch it again, some of the sequences were too overdone for me, and I think I could have written a better ending.
And you cant watch "Casablanca", "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Searchers" or "Apocalypse Now" every night.
Yeah, but have you seen "Spirit of the Beehive" or "Sorcerer"? If you subscribe to the Criterion Collection you could spend weekends for the rest of your life watching their movies and still not make it through their catalog.
Not the first one, but are you talking the movie with Roy Scheider driving the truck thru the jungle loaded with old dynamite? Oh, hell yes! About the darkest movie I've ever seen. I'll check out the collection.
Yeah, exactly that one. It's the second movie based off of a French novel called "Wages of Fear". I don't think Criterion has it but they have the earlier black and white French movie.
I watched the first half of Chungking Express (a movie with lots of Minority Representation) and thought it was meh, and watched the second half of Chungking Express (also more Minorities) and thought it was great. Explain that!
I get feeling this way. I feel it sometimes too. The problem with this type of criticism is that it’s not actually a criticism of the movie but a criticism of the audience manifested as a projection of what truly resides in their hearts, which you can’t possibly know. Ironically, many of the responses you’re getting are the same thing: diagnosing your inner motivations rather than responding directly to your argument—which again, to be fair to them, isn’t really debatable because it’s based on a periscope into the hearts of other viewers rather than the art. Ie: Like so much of “the discourse,” this thread isn’t at all about the thing it’s about.
For what it’s worth, I thought the movie was shallow and pretty, which people generally want to like, and since it gave zero offense in any direction and remained utterly within the modern zone of artistic safety, it was easy to roll with that instinct. For me, the movie was swinging way, way too big for the Kindergarten teacher thesis “be kind”.
Maybe I am severely misremembering the movie, but I didn't interpret the central thesis as just "be kind" at all. I saw it more as Evelyn, who is incredibly bitter and depressed about all the lives she could have led, and sinking into nihilism and despair, having to find peace with the choices she did make, and figure out her own purpose in a indifferent world that has no inherent meaning. And I guess kindness is a part of that, but not nearly the only thing.
Thank you. The first part was so lovely and heartwarming, then it became a hot mess quickly. It held so much promise, then just failed to live up to it.
It is a B+ movie but the fact that no other blockbuster B+ movie has come out in the last couple of years is part of why people hype it up. A salad looks as tasty as a steak if all you've been eating is shit. The fact that movies in general suck now means that any movie that doesn't suck even a little will be graded on a curve and hyped to kingdom come. That and the weird internet stan stuff you touched on
When the MCU formula became a money printing machine in the mid-2000s, major studios decided making independent movies simply for the benefit of telling unique stories wasn't worth the hassle unless they could guarantee some award buzz. I agree with you that these types of movies used to be more common but now feel like some special event.
Right. On. We grade on this years curve. This may have been a retelling of an age-old story, and used a number of usual movie tropes, but it was cleverly done, the acting was good, and it was better than most of the dreck that gets thrown at us.
The truth is there is almost no worthwhile cultural output in this society anymore. I cannot believe Freddie pays any attention to all this pop culture dreck. It is a waste of talent.
I completely disagree. I mean it’s all subjective but I found it just a really affecting movie and it just hits really hard for certain people who might relate to those feelings of alienation from other people.
I think your critiques are valid. I just don’t see it the same way that you do. I know that’s not very satisfying but I guess it really landed definitely for me and I found it really emotionally affecting. I think the chaos almost felt liberating
It’s interesting - reading through the various comments on here, it seems to be that some are preoccupied with various (mostly valid) critiques of the film: whether the thematic elements are consistent/hold up, the cultural significance of its style, the quality of the performances and filmmaking, its conviction, whether it commits “ethnic narcissism” - which I just…lol. Yes, I’m Asian American (and British) to be completely transparent, and to have watched American entertainment centered around White and Black people most of my life, that idea is practically gaslighting in my opinion. “Ethnic narcissism”…Christ. There has only been a handful of Asian American entertainment! What universe (ha…) are some living in? And are we supposed to completely deny that very real part of us when creating art so others feel satisfied and centered? Anyway, lastly, some are emotionally affected by the film, and to me, that’s the most important element. We seem to find that frivolous, a bit of an afterthought and undermine its power…it’s quite depressing (and foolish).
I think the sensory experience is very real and I know what you mean here - everything you said made sense to me. Wrestling with extremes, with contradiction, with the absurdity of life (!), with the very nature of our human emotions at any given time is a chaotic ride and having it mirrored back to me was, well, oddly soothing, validating and yes, liberating. I’m not Chinese American but some of the cultural expressions like the clumsy and funny ways it showed how some of us struggle(d) to grasp the English language, filial piety, emotional restraint, etc, run in alignment with me and my family.
I first loved it, thought it brilliant, was considering others opinions and now I am back to my initial experience after some more thought, a comedown, and time…I really do love it.
>And are we supposed to completely deny that very real part of us when creating art so others feel satisfied and centered?
Ironically I would say part of the message of this movie is to answer “yes!” to this question. Evelyn has to struggle with Joy’s cultural assimilation and sexual orientation because of her own ethno-cultural background; no background, no problem. As most people would, she finds that background important to the extent that it manifests as the assumed beliefs of other people. She thinks Gong Gong can’t handle Joy having a girlfriend, so she calls the girlfriend a friend rather than a girl-friend. She secretly thinks Gong Gong was right about Waymond, so she feels conflicted about Waymond. Some of the plots even imply Evelyn herself may have repressed a bi-/pan-gender attraction. It’s because Evelyn assumes a certain reality and weight lies behind how others will react to a situation (particularly Gong Gong, who is her literal father but also the symbolic, Freudian father figure/superego) that she disregards the feelings of those closest to her.
The paradox is that she already made another choice, when she disregarded Gong Gong’s stance on Waymond. Rather than viewing that choice as a ground that allows her to claim agency over her own actions, Evelyn has stayed guilty about it, and leads a frustrated life.
Race and social mores that divide human communities work in the same way. We can't always help when people impose them on us, but we are responsible when we impose them on ourselves and other people. We always have a choice.
We have responsibility for each other but there are inevitably going to be boundaries if you find yourself the only one who is extending themselves. Also, it’s a little different when talking specifically about art.
Also: Loving artwork does not always mean you agree with it. Not necessarily saying this is my situation with this film but just as a side note.
I didn't say that the movie committed ethnic narcissism. I said a subset of its fans were ethnic narcissists and viewed the film through the lens of ethnic narcissism.
I don't doubt that some of the admiration of the movie is sincere. I'm equally sure that the quality of the movie is at best a secondary consideration to its cast and setting. "Representation" is just a polite way of referring to the kind of ethnic narcissism that defines conflict in a heterogeneous societies. A movie with your ethnos is an extension of yourself, so of course it must crush the opposition. Naturally as I said it helps if the movie is good. But even if it's not you can wield your identity like a club to ensure the critical consensus benefits your in-group.
People getting defensive about the above - ask yourself how much you'd disagree with this if I was talking about white bros who get mad about (for example) the female remake of Ghostbusters. That was the prevailing narrative, only it was (mostly) about gender and not race, that they boosted the original and scorned the remake because they were men who didn't want women taking "their" representation. This is what's happening here, too.
But of course you can't say that in public, that the whole tantrum here is at best tangential to any supposed objective (or even subjective!) critical take on the film, and is almost entirely driven by identity. Indeed, we have to gingerly tiptoe around the conflict and pretend not to notice it. (The climactic concert scene in Turning Red sees an intergenerational Asian squabble literally destroy a massive arena while people run around vaguely confused but ignoring the cause - an extremely revealing scene.)
As much as I love film, I just don't go to "the movies" or subscribe to streaming anymore because I'm not going to wade through this surrogate ethnic warfare and pretend it's normal. I'll stick to personal recommendations from friends and old movies.
A gender-racial spoils system masquerading as an artistic ecosystem, if you can keep it.
Edit: Freddie is fond of saying "you are not the stuff you like", and I see it in response to someone else on this thread. I'm not going to insert myself into that one-on-one discussion, but I will note it here instead. Yes, these people are the stuff they like. They are telling you that and they are perfectly clear about it. It's usually ethnic, it's sometimes gender-based, and (in one example on this page) it's generational. But they regard this movie as an extension of themselves and their own status for the simple reason that... well... it is!
Literally the first sentence of my post contradicts what you're accusing me of. I'm sure there are some people who genuinely love the movie for what it is.
Go back and read deBoer's article. The issue isn't that people like it--heck, deBoer liked it and thought it was B worthy. The issue is rabid fans who can't accept that not everybody likes it and attack critics who have a negative reaction.
I truly loved it; I actually felt it landed the point slightly more subtly that in a multiverse nothing matters, and yet it is the defiant human way to insist that it matters anyway, and that’s all we have. Excellent performances, funny throughout. Oversincere in parts? Sure, but I’m a little amused that Freddie (who has been frustrated by the constant irony backed with no substance of the media class, would “wince” at a movie which veers away from that.
This said, I’m not the sort of asshole who would shame someone for having different tastes from me.
If anything, I felt like it was too easy to follow. I felt like I was given all this frantic sound and fury for a trite, simple emotional conclusion that had actually not been clearly set up by the first half. At no point was I going, “What is going on?” but at many points I was going, “Oh. That’s it?”
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand EEAAO. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head.
(Also, I don’t care about the multiverse-hopping thing, which is obviously a gimmick to make the film funny and little else; I didn’t need it to be consistent. Honestly, that seems to me to simply be asking the wrong question.)
The movie spent endless amounts of runtime describing how a plot mechanic works, but you want me to exempt that plot mechanic from criticism because it's just a gimmick?
I guess? If the plot were the point--if this were hard sf--then of course. Or if it were a more realistic film in other ways, then one could be jarred from suspension of disbelief. But here the mechanics are so subsidiary to the absolute ridiculousness of the premise that it feels more like picking nits.
Now, criticizing it for spending too much expository time on what’s obviously a gimmick is of course a reasonable stance.
Yeah, I'm in the latter camp. I really enjoyed the first 30-45 minutes, but when I realized I was getting the same explanation again and very little new, relevant information had been conveyed for 20 minutes or more, I started to lose steam.
The thing is, putting that much time into the exposition tells me, the audience member, that it's extremely important that I understand this. Hammering into me three or four times the precise way this mechanic operates says, "Knowing how this mechanic operates is going to matter later." And then it doesn't. The zany, unpredictable, you-make-up-the-rules-ness of it is the point, not the actual mechanic. But if that's the case, why did I sit through the explanation of the mechanic so many times??
I think the answer is simply that the filmmakers had more ideas for zany scenes using the mechanic and needed another reason to fit them in. Some of those zany scenes were quite funny. But there came a point where it was clear the emotional momentum of the first quarter was never coming back. The ultimate answer thematically was, "It DOESN'T matter! HOORAY!" and I was like, "Okay, so why did you use all the film language at your disposal to tell me it was so important, then?!"
The thirst-crazed horse trying to drink fire. The anemic eating soil.
But then who would read their tweets?
I didn't go dumpster diving on Twitter; I noted the insane online reaction to Richard Brody making accurate critiques of a lot of people's VERY SPECIAL THING and used a tweet to illustrate it. Remember: you are not the stuff you like.
Is referring to Rotten Tomatoes dumpster diving? To the fact that it's the best reviewed movie on IMDB and Letterboxed? I dont' know, I think I've pretty firmly established that this is a movie people are showering with immense praise, and my own personal opinion doesn't jibe with that much love.
Well, no, that's true. It's a subjective thing.
But who am I calling delusional? People are free to disagree with my takes. What I object to is the common internet behavior of undermining the very purpose of criticism themselves in defense of something they enjoy. Look at some of the other tweets in that very thread. https://twitter.com/tnyfrontrow/status/1507128845207588874
I disliked this movie intensely. I found it way too busy and it never really seemed to move. An incredibly claustrophobic watching experience. But I suspect part of my dislike was fed by disappointment - after the reviews I was looking forward to this a lot.
I just want to say that, without realizing this was a movie title, I was prepared to read Freddie's ultimate magnum opus when I saw the subject line in my email today.
I came hear to make the same comment. Forgot it was a movie too, and came here prepared for some bleak existentialism.
Absolutely, same here. I was like "Oh yes, Freddie's taking it up with the universe".
I concur and I'd argue Freddie now owes us this magnum opus otherwise false advertising. :)
It’s a work of essentially hypnotic fiction and it was successful in getting a certain set of overly thinky people to fall under a spell and let go. I don’t know if that’s art or therapy but it seems like success.
I personally knew I was being duped by it couldn’t resist falling into its spell and cried all the way through it.
I went with two 14 year old boys who thought it was okay, maybe twice as long as it should have been, and those YA tropes were getting really obvious by the end don’t you think yeah?
I think I enjoyed the movie marginally more than Freddie, but I agree with his thesis here. I also think the film fundamentally suffered from the heightened expectations.
There’s also a very good Michelle Yeoh performance in it, which I think elevates the material. But Yeoh is an incredible screen presence, and she’s capable of so much more. I watched Crouching Tiger last week, in which she takes a very cliche theme -- warriors who keep a calm face but beneath burn deeply for each other -- and somehow turns in a captivating performance that I couldn’t take my eyes off.
The acting was all around excellent. If anything it’s more interesting to talk about because it’s by no means a failure as a film - there’s great stuff in the production. But then it just doesn’t cohere.
Woke people really really REALLY love this movie more than life itself. And yes, there's a lot of incredibly overbearing fans like in that tweet you shared. They're so annoying that they threaten to turn you off of the movie itself. A similar thing happened to me with Get Out.
And yet....I really like this movie a lot. Borderline love. It does a lot of fascinating things with the multiverse concept, like each universe representing a path Evelyn could have taken in life. Speaking of which, Evelyn is how you write a "strong" female character. Give her real dimensions and struggles to overcome. It's a stark contrast to the Great at Everything From the Jump characters like Rey (Star Wars) or Captain Marvel.
And believe it or not, there's a VERY anti-woke YouTube channel called The Critical Drinker, and he loved the movie too! https://youtu.be/FmnzpHu2Tjc
I liked it and found it entertaining. Honestly, just knowing her husband was Data from Goonies was enough, but it has an interesting (admittedly occasionally chaotic) storyline and I enjoyed watching it.
That said, I can understand how others might not and it is probably not for everyone.
Someone finally said it [meme from Jerry Maguire]. It was good! And ambitious and inventive and funny and largely fun to watch. Not a remake and by directors I hadn’t heard of! It had kind of schlocky ending. I was touched, but I also tear up when I watch YouTube clips of October Sky. Definitely too long. B+
I'll be honest and say I was kinda hoping you'd rag on it more, because I couldn't even finish this movie length rick and morty episode
Rick and Morty episode is being too kind- Rick and Morty is able to make jokes without resorting to ethnic / butch lesbian humor.
What? I mean, I disagree with the person you’re responding to, but there is a major character named “Waymond” because it’s a joke about the fact that he speaks with a strong accent. In the context of the film I found that pretty funny, but can you not imagine a world where someone found that offensive?
And, yeah, a lot of the visual humor around Deirdre was expressly centered on her being a big, not-conventionally-attractive, somewhat masculine-looking woman. I didn’t find it offensive, because she was in keeping with the rest of the visual lunacy and Jamie Lee Curtis’ acting brought a lot to the character. But why would it be homophobic to say, “I found it offensive that I was expected to laugh at this big ugly woman for being a big ugly woman”?
Rick and Morty is at least thematically consistent. R&M highlights the absurdity of trying to find meaning in a meaningless world. EEAAO tries to preach the same message, but contradicts itself with all the cheesy messaging around loving your family and being nice. The directors of EEAAO don't even believe in the nihilistic ideas they're trying to push onto us. It's all bullshit. It's the kind of confused philosophy of an angsty teenager who just discovered Camus and spends an inordinate amount of time on r/atheism.
>It's the kind of confused philosophy of an angsty teenager who just discovered Camus and spends an inordinate amount of time on r/atheism.
Yes I sorta thought that was the villain's point of view and the conflict was resolved when her mom convinced her to be more normal.
Isn't the elephant in the room that the minority representation inevitably results in grade inflation/affirmative action? If the immigrants in the film had been Polish the movie wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the attention and it wouldn't have nearly as rabid a fan base.
I don't like the movie because I don't think it's very good. And isn't one of the points of this article that stans of the movie just can't accept that some people think the movie is awful and insist on attaching some kind of external motive to any criticism?
I think the inclusion of the "Chinese girlfriend" is egregious and I don't see any other possible justification than tokenism. What relevance could your significant other have to the quality of a movie or a book or whatever?
I'm not suggesting that the stans for this movie are racist, I'm suggesting that a good part of the reason there are stans is misguided concerns about "representation".
Plus how is the original tweet problematic? The guy who posted it is a professional film critic. His job is having an opinion about movies.
I don’t agree with that at all.
I’m interested in the ideas behind that sentiment, could you please elaborate?
I think he’s making a big assumption that people like it is because they’re Chinese and not because the story is compelling. I think the poster is projecting their feelings on everyone else’s reactions. It’s likely that there are multiple reasons why people appreciate the story.
There’s no really evidence that people like it more because of the ethnicity of the family. It’s like the commenter has a feeling about the movie and then working backwards from that.
I think you saw the same thing with "Crazy Rich Asians" which was somehow supposed to be an empowering cultural milestone for minority viewers instead of merely being a horribly mediocre comedy. Look at the tweet that Freddie referenced in the article--why point out specifically that your girlfriend is Asian? What possible relevance could that have other than box checking?
That tweet isn’t a universal feeling. It’s just one person’s take.
They might have pointed out their girlfriend was Asian because it meant the film had a personal emotional resonance for them. A Chinese friend of mine said she was deeply touched by the portrayal of the Asian mother-daughter relationship; would that be box ticking?
Films with diverse casts get bonus points from critics, which directly translates to higher scores on Rotten Tomatoes. I think that's what he's saying.
The ancient Polish martial art of Bezwzględny Następstw has been unforgivably overlooked for too long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkYjdPCyYjk
Do odważnych świat należy.
I think some people just enjoyed the movie a lot
I think it's possible to recognize that the movie was clearly going for, and got, attention and praise for its use of race in casting, while at the same time recognizing that it's a fine picture.
This is a bizarre response. Like, flat out incoherent. I genuinely have no idea what point you're trying to get across. It seems like you're talking to some made up person in your own head. What does this have to do with my point?
Dude. Do! The! Work!
Tons of outstanding actors do mediocre or bad movies. And while their performances often elevate a given film, it can't outright turn a bad one into a good one. Not saying this one is bad, I haven't watched it. I'm just saying that having a great actor in it (like Yeoh), doesn't automatically make a movie great as well.
Telling the story of Wong is great. But again, an interesting and relatable story also does not automatically make a movie great. There's another film coming out next year about Indira Gandhi, one of the most influential and powerful women to ever live. But that doesn't mean the film is going to be great, it could still suck.
Great actors alone do make films great. Great story alone does not make films great. Even massive popularity alone does not make films great. Excellence is not determined by any democratic means, it's determined by quality by those who know and understand how to measure that quality. Otherwise, my drunken scribble on a bar napkin would be considered a Picasso.
Nah. I think it stems from people not having a depth of cinematic knowledge and thinking the cast and themes in this movie is 1) ground breaking and 2) novel.
Ugh, this comment should be wearing a fedora
Tipped to one side of course.
If there was a “laugh” reaction, I’d be all over it.
I’m from Brooklyn and I resemble that remark!
There's a ton of mediocre crap that gets released every year. What makes this one so special?
Old story, cleverly retold. They ran out of steam towards the ends, but most movies do.
I think I would rather go watch some old black and white classic though rather than watch something that's completely mediocre just because it was made in the current year.
Read the thread.
If you do you might find some discussion about interesting movies.
At the very least it should answer your question about what kind of movies I actually do watch.
I agree, and I fell for the hype, saw it at home. But I found it an interesting retelling of an old story. I like some of the actors in it. That said, I wouldn't watch it again, some of the sequences were too overdone for me, and I think I could have written a better ending.
And you cant watch "Casablanca", "Lawrence of Arabia", "The Searchers" or "Apocalypse Now" every night.
Yeah, but have you seen "Spirit of the Beehive" or "Sorcerer"? If you subscribe to the Criterion Collection you could spend weekends for the rest of your life watching their movies and still not make it through their catalog.
Not the first one, but are you talking the movie with Roy Scheider driving the truck thru the jungle loaded with old dynamite? Oh, hell yes! About the darkest movie I've ever seen. I'll check out the collection.
Yeah, exactly that one. It's the second movie based off of a French novel called "Wages of Fear". I don't think Criterion has it but they have the earlier black and white French movie.
I watched the first half of Chungking Express (a movie with lots of Minority Representation) and thought it was meh, and watched the second half of Chungking Express (also more Minorities) and thought it was great. Explain that!
Not a real big fan of Wong Kar Wai honestly...
I get feeling this way. I feel it sometimes too. The problem with this type of criticism is that it’s not actually a criticism of the movie but a criticism of the audience manifested as a projection of what truly resides in their hearts, which you can’t possibly know. Ironically, many of the responses you’re getting are the same thing: diagnosing your inner motivations rather than responding directly to your argument—which again, to be fair to them, isn’t really debatable because it’s based on a periscope into the hearts of other viewers rather than the art. Ie: Like so much of “the discourse,” this thread isn’t at all about the thing it’s about.
For what it’s worth, I thought the movie was shallow and pretty, which people generally want to like, and since it gave zero offense in any direction and remained utterly within the modern zone of artistic safety, it was easy to roll with that instinct. For me, the movie was swinging way, way too big for the Kindergarten teacher thesis “be kind”.
Maybe I am severely misremembering the movie, but I didn't interpret the central thesis as just "be kind" at all. I saw it more as Evelyn, who is incredibly bitter and depressed about all the lives she could have led, and sinking into nihilism and despair, having to find peace with the choices she did make, and figure out her own purpose in a indifferent world that has no inherent meaning. And I guess kindness is a part of that, but not nearly the only thing.
Thank you. The first part was so lovely and heartwarming, then it became a hot mess quickly. It held so much promise, then just failed to live up to it.
It is a B+ movie but the fact that no other blockbuster B+ movie has come out in the last couple of years is part of why people hype it up. A salad looks as tasty as a steak if all you've been eating is shit. The fact that movies in general suck now means that any movie that doesn't suck even a little will be graded on a curve and hyped to kingdom come. That and the weird internet stan stuff you touched on
Great comment b
When the MCU formula became a money printing machine in the mid-2000s, major studios decided making independent movies simply for the benefit of telling unique stories wasn't worth the hassle unless they could guarantee some award buzz. I agree with you that these types of movies used to be more common but now feel like some special event.
Right. On. We grade on this years curve. This may have been a retelling of an age-old story, and used a number of usual movie tropes, but it was cleverly done, the acting was good, and it was better than most of the dreck that gets thrown at us.
The truth is there is almost no worthwhile cultural output in this society anymore. I cannot believe Freddie pays any attention to all this pop culture dreck. It is a waste of talent.
Except "Tiger King", of course. Why, that even topped the Kardashians.
I completely disagree. I mean it’s all subjective but I found it just a really affecting movie and it just hits really hard for certain people who might relate to those feelings of alienation from other people.
But what do you think of the actual critiques I made of the movie?
I think your critiques are valid. I just don’t see it the same way that you do. I know that’s not very satisfying but I guess it really landed definitely for me and I found it really emotionally affecting. I think the chaos almost felt liberating
It’s interesting - reading through the various comments on here, it seems to be that some are preoccupied with various (mostly valid) critiques of the film: whether the thematic elements are consistent/hold up, the cultural significance of its style, the quality of the performances and filmmaking, its conviction, whether it commits “ethnic narcissism” - which I just…lol. Yes, I’m Asian American (and British) to be completely transparent, and to have watched American entertainment centered around White and Black people most of my life, that idea is practically gaslighting in my opinion. “Ethnic narcissism”…Christ. There has only been a handful of Asian American entertainment! What universe (ha…) are some living in? And are we supposed to completely deny that very real part of us when creating art so others feel satisfied and centered? Anyway, lastly, some are emotionally affected by the film, and to me, that’s the most important element. We seem to find that frivolous, a bit of an afterthought and undermine its power…it’s quite depressing (and foolish).
I think the sensory experience is very real and I know what you mean here - everything you said made sense to me. Wrestling with extremes, with contradiction, with the absurdity of life (!), with the very nature of our human emotions at any given time is a chaotic ride and having it mirrored back to me was, well, oddly soothing, validating and yes, liberating. I’m not Chinese American but some of the cultural expressions like the clumsy and funny ways it showed how some of us struggle(d) to grasp the English language, filial piety, emotional restraint, etc, run in alignment with me and my family.
I first loved it, thought it brilliant, was considering others opinions and now I am back to my initial experience after some more thought, a comedown, and time…I really do love it.
>And are we supposed to completely deny that very real part of us when creating art so others feel satisfied and centered?
Ironically I would say part of the message of this movie is to answer “yes!” to this question. Evelyn has to struggle with Joy’s cultural assimilation and sexual orientation because of her own ethno-cultural background; no background, no problem. As most people would, she finds that background important to the extent that it manifests as the assumed beliefs of other people. She thinks Gong Gong can’t handle Joy having a girlfriend, so she calls the girlfriend a friend rather than a girl-friend. She secretly thinks Gong Gong was right about Waymond, so she feels conflicted about Waymond. Some of the plots even imply Evelyn herself may have repressed a bi-/pan-gender attraction. It’s because Evelyn assumes a certain reality and weight lies behind how others will react to a situation (particularly Gong Gong, who is her literal father but also the symbolic, Freudian father figure/superego) that she disregards the feelings of those closest to her.
The paradox is that she already made another choice, when she disregarded Gong Gong’s stance on Waymond. Rather than viewing that choice as a ground that allows her to claim agency over her own actions, Evelyn has stayed guilty about it, and leads a frustrated life.
Race and social mores that divide human communities work in the same way. We can't always help when people impose them on us, but we are responsible when we impose them on ourselves and other people. We always have a choice.
We have responsibility for each other but there are inevitably going to be boundaries if you find yourself the only one who is extending themselves. Also, it’s a little different when talking specifically about art.
Also: Loving artwork does not always mean you agree with it. Not necessarily saying this is my situation with this film but just as a side note.
I didn't say that the movie committed ethnic narcissism. I said a subset of its fans were ethnic narcissists and viewed the film through the lens of ethnic narcissism.
I’ll keep it simple: I know exactly what you mean.
I don't doubt that some of the admiration of the movie is sincere. I'm equally sure that the quality of the movie is at best a secondary consideration to its cast and setting. "Representation" is just a polite way of referring to the kind of ethnic narcissism that defines conflict in a heterogeneous societies. A movie with your ethnos is an extension of yourself, so of course it must crush the opposition. Naturally as I said it helps if the movie is good. But even if it's not you can wield your identity like a club to ensure the critical consensus benefits your in-group.
People getting defensive about the above - ask yourself how much you'd disagree with this if I was talking about white bros who get mad about (for example) the female remake of Ghostbusters. That was the prevailing narrative, only it was (mostly) about gender and not race, that they boosted the original and scorned the remake because they were men who didn't want women taking "their" representation. This is what's happening here, too.
But of course you can't say that in public, that the whole tantrum here is at best tangential to any supposed objective (or even subjective!) critical take on the film, and is almost entirely driven by identity. Indeed, we have to gingerly tiptoe around the conflict and pretend not to notice it. (The climactic concert scene in Turning Red sees an intergenerational Asian squabble literally destroy a massive arena while people run around vaguely confused but ignoring the cause - an extremely revealing scene.)
As much as I love film, I just don't go to "the movies" or subscribe to streaming anymore because I'm not going to wade through this surrogate ethnic warfare and pretend it's normal. I'll stick to personal recommendations from friends and old movies.
A gender-racial spoils system masquerading as an artistic ecosystem, if you can keep it.
Edit: Freddie is fond of saying "you are not the stuff you like", and I see it in response to someone else on this thread. I'm not going to insert myself into that one-on-one discussion, but I will note it here instead. Yes, these people are the stuff they like. They are telling you that and they are perfectly clear about it. It's usually ethnic, it's sometimes gender-based, and (in one example on this page) it's generational. But they regard this movie as an extension of themselves and their own status for the simple reason that... well... it is!
Literally the first sentence of my post contradicts what you're accusing me of. I'm sure there are some people who genuinely love the movie for what it is.
Go back and read deBoer's article. The issue isn't that people like it--heck, deBoer liked it and thought it was B worthy. The issue is rabid fans who can't accept that not everybody likes it and attack critics who have a negative reaction.
"Ethnic narcissism"--what wonderful phrasing.
See: https://secondcitybureaucrat.substack.com/p/why-group-narcissism
I truly loved it; I actually felt it landed the point slightly more subtly that in a multiverse nothing matters, and yet it is the defiant human way to insist that it matters anyway, and that’s all we have. Excellent performances, funny throughout. Oversincere in parts? Sure, but I’m a little amused that Freddie (who has been frustrated by the constant irony backed with no substance of the media class, would “wince” at a movie which veers away from that.
This said, I’m not the sort of asshole who would shame someone for having different tastes from me.
If anything, I felt like it was too easy to follow. I felt like I was given all this frantic sound and fury for a trite, simple emotional conclusion that had actually not been clearly set up by the first half. At no point was I going, “What is going on?” but at many points I was going, “Oh. That’s it?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand EEAAO. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head.
Fair point! I'm just being snotty because it's Monday.
(Also, I don’t care about the multiverse-hopping thing, which is obviously a gimmick to make the film funny and little else; I didn’t need it to be consistent. Honestly, that seems to me to simply be asking the wrong question.)
The movie spent endless amounts of runtime describing how a plot mechanic works, but you want me to exempt that plot mechanic from criticism because it's just a gimmick?
I guess? If the plot were the point--if this were hard sf--then of course. Or if it were a more realistic film in other ways, then one could be jarred from suspension of disbelief. But here the mechanics are so subsidiary to the absolute ridiculousness of the premise that it feels more like picking nits.
Now, criticizing it for spending too much expository time on what’s obviously a gimmick is of course a reasonable stance.
Yeah, I'm in the latter camp. I really enjoyed the first 30-45 minutes, but when I realized I was getting the same explanation again and very little new, relevant information had been conveyed for 20 minutes or more, I started to lose steam.
The thing is, putting that much time into the exposition tells me, the audience member, that it's extremely important that I understand this. Hammering into me three or four times the precise way this mechanic operates says, "Knowing how this mechanic operates is going to matter later." And then it doesn't. The zany, unpredictable, you-make-up-the-rules-ness of it is the point, not the actual mechanic. But if that's the case, why did I sit through the explanation of the mechanic so many times??
I think the answer is simply that the filmmakers had more ideas for zany scenes using the mechanic and needed another reason to fit them in. Some of those zany scenes were quite funny. But there came a point where it was clear the emotional momentum of the first quarter was never coming back. The ultimate answer thematically was, "It DOESN'T matter! HOORAY!" and I was like, "Okay, so why did you use all the film language at your disposal to tell me it was so important, then?!"