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moviechatter2526 (155)
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Good but needlessly goofy
Secret Gay Love Story
Flawed Masterpiece and Shockingly Anti-Hollywood
Disappointing
Season 3 Is A Masterpiece
Slower, But in Many Ways Better than the Original
Liked it but Ending...?
Hilarious
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It's woke in the sense that all the men in it are, of course, evil or moronic, or gay. It heavily implies that men's beauty standards are the reason older famous women suffer when they reach a certain age, despite the fact that audiences are made of up of both men and women and women tend to judge other women much more harshly than men do.
Demi Moore is incredibly attractive in this despite her age and the film's attempts to make her seem undesirable; the woman is super fit and sexy and, plastic surgery aside, still has a pretty face, yet we're made to believe that all the men in this universe think she's an old hag. There are no other female characters beyond the two leads, it's just Moore and Qualey vs. Quaid and every other male, and they're all slimy one dimensional pricks, or super flamboyantly gay.
Though I wouldn't say this has the trappings of a "typical" woke bullshit story (no shoehorned minorities or gay/tranny stuff or any other of that shit thank merciful God), it lays the blame for all the lead character's ills on men, which is pretty god damn woke to me, or feminist at least. Either way, utter bullshit, of course.
It was a modern day, moderately budgeted B-movie, nothing more. The film is not meant to be taken seriously, neither in story nor in style. It's so unbelievably over the top, from the acting to the editing to the writing to the cinematography to the story, that it's hard to really regard this as anything more than schlock, which would be fine if it weren't for the super on the nose anti-male holier than thou "OMG can you believe how hard aging female celebrities have it" bullshit it spews from beginning to end.
It's okay at best. AT BEST. The idea was interesting, and the ending was, uh, inspired, I guess, but it's ultimately a fairly shallow one dimensional film with the veneer of social importance. Absolute nonsense masquerading as something more. The director needs to go back to film school so maybe she can learn to hold a shot for longer than 5 seconds, and how to develop characters and write dialogue.
It has a really rough first act; it doesn't get going until about 25 or so minutes in, with the world and characters it paints just being way too off-putting at first. It's also really disjointed and seemingly poorly made initially. The film does get better, but you really have to power through. I almost turned it off.
I think the film is merely "good" with a few scenes that could be considered "great." It's too long by about a half hour, the story isn't too gripping or interesting, and some of the dialogue and how it's delivered is at times bad. But it's also very well shot and gets better as it goes along.
I can see what the film was going for, an examination of death and the paradise that we hope comes after under the guise of a WWII war film, but it doesn't quite get there. Maybe 50% of the way. 60% if I'm being generous. Still, it tries, and it definitely reaches something unique, so A for effort. This isn't the easiest thing to try to capture on film, it may even be impossible, but a lot like The Tree of Life, though it may fail, at least it's trying to say something that is rarely touched on by this medium.
I didn't love the show to begin with, but devoting an entire god damn episode to the main male lead's slow rape was way too much. A quick snippet would have sufficed, or maybe an implication, but a freaking hour long episode? Has any other piece of popular mainstream media depicted such a thing? And hardly any kind of attention or complaint about it when it came out. Imagine if the episode had devoted the full hour to a rape of a woman; you'd never have heard the end of it.
I went into the show not knowing much about it on the strength of Ronald Moore's previous show, Battlestar Galactica, and though I found this too long and plodding and not particularly engaging at times, it was the hour long rape scene that made me not continue.
I originally watched them in the theater sober, when I was a young lad, and loved them, but I've rewatched them over the decades a tad drunk, and you know what? They're brilliant either way. Maybe even more so. A brilliant trilogy of films this is, sober or drunk.
I agree with you. It's not so much that she's black, it's that she's hideously ugly. I don't know why Hollywood insists on casting ugly black women in big roles. Surely they could have found an attractive black woman who could sing and play the part just as well? They do exist. What about the girl who played the mermaid in the live action Little Mermaid film? She's not super stunning, but she's definitely a step up from this one.
It's almost as though Hollywood is run by gays and women who have no idea what physically attractive females look like. Either that or they think black women are all ugly, so they cast whoever.
Woke usually appeals to (or is more tolerated by) women, thus female-centric films (and media in general) that are also woke tend to have a higher chance of success. This also had a built in audience that would go see it no matter what, so it also had that going for it. See also: Barbie.
But most things that tend to be woke still fail, especially when they're not tied to any existing and popular creative properties. And thank God for that.
It still technically exists, unless WB reconfigured it. It's at the center of the Warner's lot in Burbank outside of the sound stages, and anyone can see it if they take a tour. I last was there about 6 years ago and most of the general Stars Hollow area still existed, minus the signs and stuff. The little gazebo thing too is there and is fairly recognizable, along with Kim's antiques or whatever.
Again, not sure if it's all still there, but the general shape of the center of town likely remains untouched and you'd be bound to recognize some of it from the show if you're ever there.
I agree with you about the family drama stuff. The satire is hilarious, I laughed myself silly in parts, but the family stuff is so dull and by the numbers and clunky, it brings everything to a stop when it becomes the main focus, which is most of the time. There's just so much of it. And don't get me started on the gay stuff.
The film could have easily cut 30 to 45 minutes of that crap and been way, way better. There's also the jarring tonal shifts between the satirical and the serious that don't mesh at all. It almost ruined the film.
The film also committed the same error that many recent black films do in that they are obsessed with white people. Just can't get enough of them, either pandering to or making fun of, or both as this film does. All the white people in this film are stereotypical, one dimensional, and buffoonish, yet like a lot of recent black cinema, it can't hide its obsession for their attention and approval. Everything the main character does in this film revolves around it. No agency whatsoever. It's just another "black man struggling in a white man's world" kind of film, only instead of the main character being a gangster or a rapper, it's about a failed novelist. For a film that's supposed to be a satire of such things, it's ironic it ends up being just another in a long line that commits the very sins it's simultaneously harpooning.
Does black cinema that is actually about black people even exist anymore? Are black people even able to or allowed to make such things anymore? Where white people aren't ultimately at the center of the narrative?
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