The Florida Project

Started by jenkins, August 14, 2017, 11:49:02 AM

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jenkins



Directed By: Sean Baker (Prince of Broadway, Starlet, Tangerine)
Written By: Chris Bergoch, Sean Baker
In Theaters: Oct 6, 2017 Limited

samsong

miraculous.  go see this asap.

Ravi

Yes, it's astonishing. It's funny and moving, and the actors are amazing. The cinematography wonderfully captures a feeling in each of the various locations in a way that I haven't seen in a while.

jenkins

no it did not even make me cry toward the end. jk yeah it did. 11/10 and this is what i said: we gonna chat about Blade Runner and we gonna chat about that. we gonna chat about this movie and we're gonna chat about life. that's what's up. this movie was all the way up

Yes

It's been a week and I still cannot decide how much I liked this

Dafoe is a soulful treasure even if most of his character background was vague, and the cinematography crackles with sizzling bright colors evocative of childhood innocence

My biggest issue is lack of a more apparent structure, as I think the mother's arc was implied so early on in the most straightforward manner, and the film struggles to establish a forward momentum when it needed to advance the more plot-oriented transitions

jenkins

rather i think a friendship arc was introduced at the beginning, through the children. where the other girl lived--was it Wonder Land? the washing of the car! then when the boy was forced to leave from the friendship--his face gazing out the window. these mechanisms exist outside the adult world mechanisms, which are integrated alongside later, toward the the film's narrative crescendo. as every crescendo, this movie's had to reach its point, and i don't think it exposed itself as a story which would culminate so much as a life with increasing complexities. the magic wristband sidestory was well-crafted, i believe, along with the encounter at the hotel which wouldn't accept them, and the honeymoon visit which was a disaster for the newly married and a typical day for this hotel. it's such a hard question--what really were the types of lives that were being observed here? i can't quite think of another American director who has so well crafted anew the concept of Italian Neorealism (The Children Are Watching Us). the friendship arc that was introduced at the beginning, what a different form it took with the other mother's black eye, and Dafoe standing outside. what was on Dafoe's mind? what could he do? to end the movie with the question of What Could Anyone Do? is really a monumental task, in my opinion. the Fuck You was the highest point of the crescendo and it's the best Fuck You i've ever heard. there was never not a feeling in the movie, there was only sometimes the wonder of what would happen. which i think is very much what that place and context would feel like, and sometimes in fact it's all you hear from narratives about people in this type of life.

Yes

I totally agree the scenes focused strictly on the children burst with magic and joy, which is why I wish it refrained from spending attention on the mother character

I think those scenes would have played better had they occurred in the background and not directly addressed (as when the mother and daughter are taking photos as opposed to the scene with the mother and her friend in the pool explicitly discussing meeting with the men)

jenkins

well the mother was very much in the foreground by the end, and that's why i was able to feel her Fuck You, when she yelled that. it's the most believable reason for yelling Fuck You i've ever heard, as i said. to reach that point i simply had to be inside that character, and i for one appreciate the narrative textures which brought me there. for example the burping contest. was that the beginning of story transition? the to-go food, which was left in a parking lot and the daughter asked "Why?" the perfume off with the security guard! "You're not a cop!" bags busted open, picking up belongings from the ground before running. i did not know what she could do to pay her rent, that i can tell you. and you'd have to show me a movie that better developed this type of character, feeling attached to life instead of story. Maurice Pialat didn't make this movie and he's the only one i know who couldda done it. then the most romantic smoking at night shots i've ever seen, which won't be able to fit into a discussion of the larger stories, since they were pauses for the characters (mother and Dafoe) as much as they were narrative pauses. yet so within these specific characters! that's a tiny little life moment, this movie brims with such moments. i believe this movie has an interior strength that mirrors its complex characters.

now i wish to accept everything that will be said and feelings other people have, believing to have established my belief that this movie was a goddamn force of nature.

modage

I did not care for this movie.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Cloudy

^i think you're in the wrong thread?

with jenkins and all the rest who saw miracles going on, had a crazy experience with this movie. it got the cinema so heated that some guy near the front row stood up and had a really repressed outburst at the end of it, screaming right after the film ended for everybody to shut the fuck up . . .. was afraid he was holding a gun... in silence he stared at the audience, just standing there enraged and sad, emotionally confused. i don't want to spoil anything, but with the film ending the way it did, giving this gut reaction...

cherished this, and cherished every moment with willem dafoe.

pete

I've worked with kids like these and definitely seen a mom like Hallie. this film is incredible. the ending was I'm really not sure about. I kinda wish someone cut out the power to my theater 2 minutes before the film ended. 'cause then it would've been a perfect movie. but you gotta respect what they went for. it was clearly well thought out, just lost the gamble.

spoilers





re: mother's arc - I thought the arc was pretty devastating - you're watching someone who's a child herself, dealing with the realization that she's trapped, and the devastation sets in quietly, scene by scene, where every little means of survival she's garnered is taken away - by herself and by people who're no longer sympathetic to her. any kind of "apparent structure" would've cheapened the film and the story. you're watching someone who's figured out how to tell a story that's emotionally rich and real and empathetic and all the things that a three-act structure was supposed to help a writer achieve, and you're still wondering where the structure was? that's like if a hang glider took you over all of Manhattan and dropped you atop the statue of liberty right during sunset and you're complaining that you didn't get to climb 72 sets of stairs.

Quote from: BigSock on October 14, 2017, 04:35:34 PM

My biggest issue is lack of a more apparent structure, as I think the mother's arc was implied so early on in the most straightforward manner, and the film struggles to establish a forward momentum when it needed to advance the more plot-oriented transitions
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

samsong

personally loved the ending.  played like the 400 blows and the last laugh on pcp.  this ranks as one of the greatest films about childhood that i've ever seen. 

Something Spanish

Wish it was shorter due to it all feeling pretty one-note like and all, but an impressive movie nonetheless. That ending could have arrived 30-minuted earlier with zero love lost.

Tictacbk

Quote from: pete on October 25, 2017, 04:17:44 PM
I kinda wish someone cut out the power to my theater 2 minutes before the film ended. 'cause then it would've been a perfect movie.

This. I loved every second of this movie, right up until that moment. It didn't just not stick the landing, it missed the entire mat.

Drenk

You know, I'm sometimes too cynical for sake and when I read that everyone loves a movie I think "oh...yeah...ok...". And sometimes maybe it makes me enjoying good movies less?

Anyway.

I loved that movie, it just makes me want to write that I LOVED that movie and nothing else, I just want to watch it again.

I understand what pete says about the ending—that they "lost the gamble"—but it made sense to me even if when it happened I was holding back. But it made me wondered why I was holding back and I respect the gamble.

Ascension.