Movie

Just had that happen to me with the latest Andrew Scott movie. Person I was watching it with noped out because of the queer sex scenes and it really dulled the highs and lows of the movie for me afterwards. Wish I would have just watched it by myself so I could have my experience untainted by other’s weird hang ups about sex and “political views”

"I'd Say the Odds are Good but the Goods are Odd."

Drive Away Dolls is the latest film from Ethan Coen but the first without collaboration from brother Joel. While Joel whittled away with a stark, black and white adaptation of Macbeth starring an utterly joyless Denzel Washington, Ethan’s film wouldn’t feel out of place alongside a 70s B-movie double feature. Dolls is replete with cheesy transitions, awkward close-ups, obnoxious neon, vintage Coen accents, and a welcome-but-not-quite-good-enough use of Maggot Brain. It’s also a mixed bag of indulgent violence, puritan degeneracy, and half-baked characterizations.

The film follows Jamie and Marian as they drive to Tallahassee, inadvertently picking up precious cargo belonging to a group of shady individuals who have killed to keep it in their possession. The film is an interesting but sometimes tedious clash of black crime farce and melodramatic lesbian dramedy, devoting infrequent time to either story for proper depth or development.

Positives first. The film is funny. Not always funny, not quite funny enough, and garishly lacking the type of transgressive abrasiveness to make the material shine…but in general, it’s funny. Though the characters aren’t drawn intricately, their details (both from the script and the performances) are emphasized and repeated to build adequate rapport with each other and the audience.

Dolls is also stylized, in a perplexingly cheap but modestly endearing sort of way. The gimmicky transitions and trippy, spacey moments help build vital momentum to keep the first half breezy and engaging. However, Coen’s parlor tricks wane and drag when the plot thickens and the film must carry itself on the merits of its own internal logistics and validity. When that time comes, the Dolls implodes.

Again, Dolls is a grinding mishmash of crime comedy and lesbian dramedy, an interesting conceit which never works with itself to create unity or continuity. The stories of disparate, often as jarring and incongruent as the smash-cut transitions which hold them together like staples through skin. The material feels like a first draft or an untalented mockery of a Coens brothers’ script. The heart, patience, and icily detached bemusement of their earlier work has been augmented into the dishearteningly ubiquitous trend of smug, self-righteously assured moral congratulation.

Every creative choice tugs and struggles against the others, but the real letdown of Dolls is its faux dedication to irreverence in its superior first half. When the plot kicks in, when our leads are finally given true agency in regards to the bigger picture, everything becomes easy.

What should be an elongated sequence of comedic tension and unpredictability quickly upends itself to give our intrepid little heroes the necessary resources for a clean, bland getaway. The tension deflates; the comedy deflates; the interest deflates; the irreverence inverts, praising Jamie and Marian as ideal ideological models. It’s disappointing and honestly unexpected, but maybe Ethan’s been watching South Park recently – in the end, he managed to make it gay and make it lame.

Overall, Drive Away Dolls is tough to criticize or praise too fervently because it’s a film of halves. The first half is tonally breezy and characterizations (both heroes and villains) are striking but not overbearing. In the second, the tone and treatment of protagonists is eye-rolling. In the first half, the stakes are high, the style is laid back, and the journey is leisurely. In the second, the stakes are obliterated, the style is forced, and the journey feels like a ham-fisted means to an end. See it as a curious counterpoint to Joel’s Macbeth, but don’t go in expecting Fargo.

5/9

Basically title. Recently had a break up and today I can feel the sadness in my chest. I want to get it out of my chest but as a male, I'm cursed with inability to cry. So please suggest sad but good movies where you cried a lot. I'd prefer non romantic ones for obvious reasons.

One such movie where I cried a lot was Schindler's List

Thanks in advance!

As the title says…. I’m home alone tonight as husband and kids are out. I love a movie based on a true story so please give me some recommendations.

I can never hear "Don't You" by Simple Minds without thinking of The Breakfast Club (hate the song, love the movie).

"Under Pressure" by David Bowie and Queen is now permanently associated in my mind with The Magicians (as well as "Take On Me" by A-ha).

And I will never hear "The Power of Love" without immediately picturing the intro to Back to the Future.

Whether it's a hidden message you're convinced the director left, or a fan theory that flips the whole plot on its head, what's the wildest but also "kinda makes sense" scenario you've heard or had for a movie?

One of my favorites that made me rewatch the film was this one about The Shining that says that the Overlook Hotel is actually Hell and Jack was trapped there...! Another one that was kinda funny tho was this one about Kevin McAllister from Home Alone that grown up to be Jigsaw (lmao)!

Tell me that movie that when you feel sad or just boring you watch and makes you feel good.

It can be in a good way like its rare concept,choreography

& can be in a bad way like Worst plot ever, atrocious choreography

Just something that never been done ever since. Just that one time.

Some example imo:-- Terminator 2, hardcore henry, upgrade.

For its great plot, camera prospective & choreography (serial number wise)

U can go off-topic if u want &

suggest some one of a kind horror/comedy/sci-fi but keep it on topic for most part

For me, it was Gremlins. I think at four years old I first watched it. It was the first time I had viewed anything "scary."

I remember the scene with Mrs Peltzer alone in the home with the gremlins, the YMCA Stripe scene, and the department store segments being really terrifying at that age.

I loved it though! And it made me want to seek out scarier movies...!

What film did that for you?

Yes, I specifically said 'film-adaptation' because whenever this discussion gets brought up, people clamour for uber-faithful TV shows, and not actual movies. It makes sense too, since a lot of the more beloved properties have had years to develop plot and lore, and truncated telling of it could very well result in it being ruined (as has happened numerous times before)

But despite that very valid concern, what are some books, short-stories, articles, video-games, TV-shows, films or even memes/copy-pastas/creepy-pastas, that you think would still benefit from a feature-length adaptation by hollywood?