My coworker was telling me how well Jerry Maguire stands up today and I forced myself to remember the major beats of that piece of shit:
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Big company bad and evil; small start up good and pure.
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Being principled always pays off in the end.
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Everyone can make it if they try hard, believe in themselves, and believe in each other.
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We can have perfect interpersonal relations if we just learn to balance work and life appropriately, and it’s up to us to accept that challenge.
Fuck this movie. More importantly fuck people who like this movie. Jerry would have turned out just like his old firm buddies (even if the major plot points largely stay the same). Everyone in this movie is actively trying to exploit each other in the beginning. And even though it’s totally inconsequential to how bad these people are in their shitty lives, if you ask me the most unbelievable part is when Jerry and Bridget Jones get back together at the end.
Not buying it.
Tell me about the shitty liberal movies that are renting space in your head.
Enola Holmes. The movie centers around women’s suffrage - it’s been a while but I keep thinking about it
- the mother is depicted as crazy for taking direct action and associating with activists and her plot ultimately fails. I think she abandons her family too
- The boy who Enola falls for can vote and ultimately is the pivotal vote to give women suffrage
Same goes for Fantastic Beasts 3 which ends in a vote
I just watched the 3 fantastic beasts movies a few days ago and they all suck but the last one is a fucking disaster holy shit. If you haven’t listened to it I recommend the episode of the Shrieking Shack podcast where they review that movie. The rest of the podcast is pretty good too
Summing up their discussion of that vote scene. “So there’s a bunch of fascists at this vote. The candidates are up at the top of the stairs, and they bring this baby deer out, and the deer has to choose a candidate and it chooses the fascist guy. And it looks legitimate, it’s announced that it’s legitimate, and then some guy shows up and says ‘Actually that’s the wrong deer, this is the right deer’ and that deer chooses the non-fascist, and all the fascists just go ‘Welp, I guess we lost!’ Like, why would you think the fascists wouldn’t just start beating people up? ‘I mean I came here prepared to do fascism, but then the deer didn’t pick him! Well actually the deer did pick him, but that was actually the wrong deer. Yeah, I know, crazy right? How do I know it was the wrong deer? Oh that random guy showed up and told us!’”
As far as I understand, which is not far because this movie was incomprehensible gibberish, the magic deer shows them who’s “pure of heart” but then for some reason they vote and they just trust all the fascists to vote for the pure of heart person. As if they wouldn’t just go “Yeah no he’s an asshole and that’s why I like him”
Fantastic Beasts 3 which ends in a vote
I haven’t watched it but that’s too fucking perfect lmao :peltier-laugh:
It’s amazing considering that for all of their flaws the original books at least end with a violent political confrontation where the Nazis have to be defeated in order for things to go back to normal.
the mother is depicted as crazy for taking direct action and associating with activists and her plot ultimately fails
Is she? The male characters treat her as crazy but I feel like the audience is supposed to emphasize with her whole thing.
I could be misremembering. I feel like she was at least portrayed as foolish for failing
I watched this movie on Netflix a couple of months ago called I Care a Lot. It’s from 2020; It’s got Peter Dinklage in it, it’s listed as a comedy, drama, thriller, LGBTQ… And it’s fucking monstrous. Here’s the storyline off imdb:
Poised with sharklike self-assurance, Marla Grayson is a professional, court-appointed guardian for dozens of elderly wards whose assets she seizes and cunningly bilks through dubious but legal means. It’s a well-oiled racket that Marla and her business-partner and lover, Fran, use with brutal efficiency on their latest “cherry,” Jennifer Peterson - a wealthy retiree with no living heirs or family. But when their mark turns out to have an equally shady secret of her own and connections to a volatile gangster, Marla is forced to level up in a game only predators can play - one that’s neither fair, nor square.
So the opening scene shows Marla Grayson(Rosamund Pike) winning a court case where a distressed white guy framed as a weak, neglectful, mama’s boy is no longer allowed to see his mother. Marla has her in a rest home and the movie is framing everything as if Marla is the good guy. The weak white guy spits on her after the case, calls her a fucking bitch, we then find out Marla is a lesbian with a girlfriend, has her own very successful guardian business; In the first 15 minutes the movie checks all the neoliberal boxes as a White Yass Qween fighting the white man. But then we find out, that actually, Marla is a fucking monster and is taking advantage of these people, working with a doctor to find wealthy people who don’t have anyone that can stand up for them when the doctor recommends them for guardianship and Marla comes in and liquidates their life. It even shows her having a collusive relationship with the management of the care home she’s sending these victims off to.
Here’s where it’s supposed to get funny:
spoiler
Marla’s doctor friend recommends to Marla a woman who is really fine, but has no one to stand up for and then we see the evilness of Marla and her process. She swoops into court gets guardianship without the lady knowing what’s going on and totally wrecks her life… and just as we’re supposed to see how horrible Marla is we find out that actually the lady wasn’t alone, she was in hiding as the mother of a big Russian Mafia guy who faked his own death in Peter Dinklage. OMG! THE HILARITY! Peter Dinklage says give me my mother or I fucking ruin you… and not only does the movie frame Marla as a victim making her evil pale in comparison to Dinklage, but eventually Marla gains the upper hand and the fucking movie frames her as a a hero for it. A Yas Qween White Lesbian Woman who defeated the scary russian mobster! Hooray! She even earns his respect and they go into a partnership to expand her business of ripping off old people!
But wait! Remember that loser who couldn’t see his mother from the beginning of the movie? His mom died and that pathetic piece of shit never got see her again, so just as Marla is cresting the peak of her ascension, this pathetic, sexist, piece of shit comes along (regularly calling her a fucking bitch) and shoots Marla. And I shit you not the ending scene fades out with us seeing Marla’s girlfriend crying for her! It feels like we’re supposed to feel bad that Marla dies! Seriously, if you don’t plan to watch it check out the ending scene and tell me Marla is the bad guy.
It was like Neoliberalism the movie. Whether it meant to be or not. Fucking drove me crazy watching it. Reminded me of something Thomas Frank said about the reason no one really got in trouble for the 2008 crash was because the neoliberals didn’t care about the moral implications, they were impressed by the convoluted intricacies by which they worked around the rules.
I hated that movie so much. Not only is the ideology paper deep, the shooting is terrible, the writing is bland, and (as you say) the ‘heroes ’ are exclusively pieces of shit. Also it was like three different stories wrapped up and sold as one. Dog doo film making really
I would really like to know what the point of making it was? Were they really trying to make us feel for her? Or was the true intention supposed to be that the throwaway white guy was the real hero all along and we’re just supposed to hate lesbian girlbosses? It’s such a weird fucking movie. Why was it listed as satire? As crypto-neoliberal propaganda. WTF!!!
I have literally no idea. I hated everyone in the movie except the ‘villain’ (the dude who had his mom stolen, but was mean about it?). More than anything, I want to be a fly on the wall of Dinklage’s office after he read the script, but before he accepted the role. What was my man thinking???
Sound like the writer had in mind a dark comedy where everyone is terrible, and the director decided that actually one of the terrible people was the good guy.
I watched that and I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to think the main character is a likeable slay queen girl boss. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to think she’s a sociopath lol.
Then they probably shouldn’t have repeatedly tried to frame her as sympathetic and a hero, which is my point. Check the comments on that YouTube clip of the ending. It’s not just me.
To me it just seems like the same energy as people watching breaking bad or the sopranos and thinking the protagonists of those shows are meant to be heroic. I’m not saying it’s a well made movie or anything, but people having no media literacy doesn’t mean the creators intended her to be an inspirational character 🤷♂️
I got so viscerally mad at the lead character in the movie, and so for better or worse this movie made an impression on me. I was so disgusted with this character it had me wondering if the movie was actually good. Like, to evoke such a reaction. The elder abuse was particularly angering as it was kind of played for laughs and i guess we were supposed to think it was kind of okay because, like you said, Russian mob. On the other hand, it’s probably more like a rorschach test or something. What I saw was abhorrent but others might’ve found themselves titillated by the extreme self interest and terribleness of the characters. Like Scorcese making movies that he claims are scathing indictments of his subjects and you are supposed to hate or something, but most people see it as normative and good (and tbf, that is a pretty reasonable impression to develop in a world under capitalism). I agree with your takeaway one hundred percent
I know this always makes the list in these types of posts but a couple of my nerd friends that I used to play WoW with were super enthusiastic about Ready Player One and had both read the book. The book at least showed what a hellscape the future is going to look like with people eating gruel as the mega corporation tries to vacuum up as much Capitol as possible. The movie threw even that fairly lukewarm imagery out the window and shows people getting pizza delivered by a drone. Then it all gets thrown out the window when they win the prize money and the protagonist gets a cute girlfriend.
The Pursuit of Happyness and any other rags to riches movie tends to have bad moral takeaways. Poor down on his luck door to door salesman keeps trying hard and one day succeeds, can’t move his shitty bone density scanners, has to sleep in a subway bathroom with his kid, takes an unpaid (!!!) internship despite his clear impoverishment and against his wife’s wishes, and through gumption and the power of a relatively decent rate of profit in the 80s, he makes it because he wore a suit to his last interview and solved a rubix cube I think. Awful, very liberal boomer brained.
Isn’t it based on a real guy though? I mean I know they’ll have a shitty message regardless but the real guy seems to be a pro bootstrapper so I’m not sure how you’d frame a biographical movie that’s opposite of what the person believes in
not sure how you’d frame a biographical movie that’s opposite of what the person believes in
wolf of wall street did an ok job of that although mainly because Jordan Belfort doen’t believe hold any convictions or principals so strongly they interfere with his greed
You could emphasize the role of racism prior to his getting lucky as a stockbroker, emphasize the role his wife played while he wasn’t getting paid (providing free childcare, show how the private medical system influenced him to drop his previous interest in training as a physician to trying to sell medical equipment before meeting a guy driving a Ferrari who convinced him to pursue being a stock broker, etc.
A lot of bootstraps type stories are about how am individual rose above their circumstances by their own ability- but none of us are really able to do that, it’s up to the community as a whole and/or random fate. And there’s plenty of this guy who tried and tried and screwed their family over and in the end, they have nothing to show for it. It’s a choice to pick the 1 who succeeded over the 100s that don’t.
I heard an interview on the radio with a famous singer who advised that if you want to be a singer you should commit fully and have no backup plan. Which is alright for him he made it but what about all the people who tried that and failed they don’t get radio interviews
the framing ignores the fact that there are still many poor down on their luck people
Can we call Legend of Korra a movie for the purposes of this thread?
commits false flag terrorist attack on cities
furthers ethnic tensions
sells weapons to government in response to terrorist attacks
gets found out and imprisoned
prison is low security with luxury amenities
not the bad guy, just a comic relief side character
main characters only mad for a few seconds
marries submissive secretary
I love how basically the first scene of the show is a guy in a park saying “I’m tired of being oppressed by all the magic users in this city” and our main character, the most powerful magic user of all, beats him up with magic. And keep in mind that both the city government and police force are made up entirely of magic users. Amon was right, Zaheer was completely right.
also one of the guys we’re supposed to feel bad for having his magic taken away is a mobster who sets fire to people for fun and until it happens he keeps yelling about setting fire to people.
not sure why the audience was expected to think there’s a man who should have power over fire
I guess the point is that bending is sort of a deep intristic part of a person. Taking someone’s connection to the element is like chemically castrating a person.
