Birdman

Started by jonas, June 12, 2014, 03:41:16 PM

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ono

Quote from: Frederico Fellini on November 07, 2014, 10:08:48 AM
"not just a "palate-cleanser" between your 8-hour masturbation sessions to satantango or whatever"

:yabbse-thumbup: Should be on the poster.
Should be on the marquee.  Remember when updating that was a thing?

03


pete

I liked a lot of it but I don't know, it didn't end very well. I wanted to love it. I also wanted to love Whiplash. It's been a pretty disappointing season thus far.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Alexandro

I was pleasantly surprised by it. I really didn't know what it was beforehand and it kept getting better. That eternal fight within artists between vanity and true aspirations, the cynicism was refreshing I felt. The final scene worked for me because it kept that ambivalence. Really unique movie.

Pedro

I love this movie and it's my pick for best of the year.  Samsong, I want your full review!

The "one-take" concept could've been a cheap gimmick but it works perfectly.  There is a manic quality throughout, but the film knows when to take a break.  I thought the pacing was spot on.  The energetic and beautifully timed tracking shots are complimented by plaintive, still moments where the camera lingers on a facial expression or a small detail.  The performances are uniformly excellent.  That scene where Keaton and Norton meet for the first time is hilarious, intense, moving, all at the same time. 

I keep missing opportunities to see it again, and I hope I get the chance.  I'm surprised we're not talking more about this.

Spoiler
I have mixed feelings about the ending, too.  Cutting to credits after the standing ovation would have been dark and ballsy.  It felt like a natural endpoint.  That being said, the critical reaction to the play was an important part of the film.  I don't know.  I bet I'll think differently about it after the next viewing.

Axolotl

probably the worst 2014 film that i saw of my own volition. don't even know where to start with this pretentious(in the dictionary definition sense) piece of shit, peddling in the worst kind of preemptive self-awareness that's self-satisfiedly oblivious of being the very thing it pretends to condemn.
Whatever the small battalion of writers who wrote this thing do in the future I'm going to avoid like it's the bird flu.

Axolotl

Everything about it felt insincere and fake to me. Even the jokes which could be funny fell flat to me because the director has zero sense of humor. I didn't give a shit if the movie decried or extolled hollywood movies or method acting because the movie itself wasn't interested in it, what it was interested in was ensuring that it itself was above everything and in making sure we knew we were watching a masterpiece.

8 hour masturbation session to Satantango seems divine though.

polkablues

The movie was the movie equivalent of the play they were putting on in the movie. Nicely staged, well-acted, a few shades overwrought, some questionable artistic decisions, subtle as an aluminum baseball bat, but ultimately effective. It's the sort of movie that spends the bulk of its running time yelling its themes at your face, which gets a little exhausting. But there are also transcendent moments, like the rehearsal scene between Keaton and Norton, which illuminates the process of acting as well as anything I've seen in a movie. And if that little liquor store with the hanging lights is a real place, I want to live near there so I can shop there every night and take slugs of whisky and have epiphanies.

Edward Norton has never been better than he is in this film. Sadly, Emma Stone has never been worse. Just a monumental miscast.

Also, side thought: did this movie remind anyone else of Living in Oblivion? It's been years since I've seen it, but there were quite a few moments that reminded me of it (I don't recall the actual line, but at one point Galifianakis and Keaton are talking about a dream sequence having dwarfs in it, which almost has to be a direct Living in Oblivion reference).
My house, my rules, my coffee

Alexandro

The only film it really reminded me of is 8 1/2, which is also a film about nothing except artistic anxiety, and which fires in all directions like a madman. 8 1/2 is also a film that "doesn't amount to much", as some of Birdman's detractors have complained.


RegularKarate

I didn't like Birdman

Reel


polkablues

My house, my rules, my coffee

Reel

I definitely walked out of the theater thinking "yeah, I just saw a movie"

03

it was totes a movie.

pete

I don't know, it seems like most of American cinema spent the year catching up to television. For example, two of the most acclaimed films - Boyhood and this here Birdman - are in their own ways covering very well-tread tracks in television.

for Boyhood - this technique of watching characters grow imperceptible before our eyes is like the nature of any tv show or sitcom that runs for more than five seasons. I think someone on youtube made a Boy Meets World recut of Boyhood to prove that point.

And this here Birdman - it just feels like this material has been covered so much more efficiently and vividly by many many episodes of Louie, but without that sanctimonious gotcha with the theater critic or the attempt at magical realism in its ending.

also Whiplash - many reality shows have turned ordinary subjects into thrillers before.

I'm not saying these films are without their own merits or achievements, but I think the exoticness of the material/ premise, which is usually what the critics celebrate first when they talk about these films, isn't really all that exotic if you just watch Hulu for a few hours.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton