What was the best film you watched this week? (23/07/2018 - 29/07/2018)

The way this works is that you post a review of the best film you watched this week. It doesn't have to be a new release, just any film you have seen over the last seven days that you feel is worth talking about. Here are some rules.1. Check to see if your favourite film of last week has been posted already.2. Please post your favourite film of last week.3. NO TV SHOWS!4. ALWAYS use spoiler tags. Report any comments that spoil recent / little-known films (e.g. Mission: Impossible - Fallout) without using the spoiler tag.5. Comments that only contain the title of the film will be removed!Here are some great comments from last week's thread:Magnolia (1999) – Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. I was a bit skeptical going into this movie. I had only watched 3 PTA’s work before this, Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and Punch-Drunk Love. Despite the raving praise from most critics and fans, it seems to have a big share of its dislikes/haters. “Pretentious”, “it never quite gets to the point”, “it’s too far up it own ass/indulgent/too long” and “it doesn’t deliver on what it teases/promises” are things that I’ve often heard about it, not to mention PTA himself saying that he would cut 20 minutes from it. Having seen it now, I can’t help but disagree with this notion, well perhaps disagree is the wrong word, I can see and understand those points of views, I just didn’t feel the same way. Even though I watched it when I was very tired, any other regular movie might have just put me to sleep, let alone a 3 hour one, but this one kept me engaged all the way through, right from the start, it grips you, from the narration to the title cards with the songs and introduces characters where it demands you to be focused from 10 seconds in. Full with an ensemble cast whose story are told all at the same time, it’s a modern melodrama done right, and now that I’ve thought about it, it weirdly reminds me of Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life, although they do not have much in common in terms of characters or themes. It wasn’t until roughly when there was 40 minutes left in the movie where it finally hit me, where I felt like I understood what the director and the movie was trying to portray and say. It took me way too long(to be fair I was quite tired) but it’s obvious, just like most of PTA’s other work, it’s a movie about family, mainly the relationship dynamics between parents and children, and how these dynamics can come to form us, for better or worse. It’s about the lies we tell, it’s about how we act, about being nicer human beings, forgiveness, regret and doing the right thing. Then the frogs came down, I was confused, still am. The first thing that comes to my head(like I imagine most people) is the story of Moses and how god sent down frogs in the form of rain to punish the Egyptians, but I do not see how this biblical story plays into the story of this movie at all, but just like the characters, I just accept it after a while, and move on with the movie. (after doing some further research it seems that PTA didn’t even intend this to reference to the exodus story, but added references to it later on after some people asked him if that was what he was referring to) It's full of stories loosely intertwined leading you to think(mainly through the narrator) that these things will come together and we’ll have some kind of payoff, crazy coincidences like the ones that he tells in the beginning. It never pays off of course, but it also feels incredibly unimportant and irrelevant, because it is, ultimately a misdirection, or so I think. It always feels bad to try to reduce a film to a certain theme, to simplify it, but in the end, Magnolia is about family, parent and children relationships in particular and how that forms us into what we are, and how that past is never done with us, even if we are with it. At its core is Stanley who is going through the same things that most of this movie’s characters have gone through, and maybe it’s only me, but perhaps there is hope for change, even if his father seemed to shut it down quickly. Despite its ambitions, and certainly the ambitions of the director who said: “I really feel that, Magnolia is, for better or worse the best movie I’ll ever make”, it ultimately feels more intimate and personal than it does ambitious or epic, which is fine with me, despite it’s clumsiness sometimes. 9/10. Like many people, I know about the infamous quote of PTA expressing his opinion of David Finchers Fight Club, where I learned that PTA’s dad died from cancer, something that I can’t help but connect to this movie, in which 2 different dads are both dying of Cancer. You can tell that it is a very personal story to him, and I can’t help but wonder about his relationship with his father, if it’s anything like what we saw in the movie. For some reason throughout the movie I just assumed that Steve Carell was the narrator, was confused when I turned up to be wrong lol.Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini) - Indigestible. There’s a type of film where the allegory is so incredibly obvious, that it’s meant to stand out and overpower the surface story. The Seventh Seal is a notable example of this. It’s true here in this film, but both the story and its noted allegory takes a back-seat to the still-disturbing shock elements that this film is most infamous for. Again, this is an obvious allegory for fascism and the abuse of power, and the repeated depraved sexual and violent acts that go on and on throughout the film, almost comes off as too simplified and trite. But then again, you look around at some of the developments going on in our world today, and apparently this message is unendingly relevant, and makes one wonder if it does indeed need to be told in such a basic and clear manner. The plot—what little trace of it—revolves around four men in a position of power who kidnap a group of young men and women and inflict increasingly sordid and violent acts of debauchery, torture, and humiliation to them. Overall, the directing is exceedingly well-done even though it’s such unrelentingly disturbing material. It’s well shot, lit, and staged, and the violent and sexual acts come off as very realistic, which could not have been easy to shoot or act through. The world building is exceptional as well. It takes place in a single palace, but it practically becomes its own character, with its own unique aesthetic, especially as we’re repeatedly returned to familiar rooms and places, whose often clean and elegant appearance creates such a stark contrast to the terrible sexual and violent acts that take place within them. In this, you could perhaps see a larger trace of a theme that links the environment with the human body, and the focus on anal penetration and feces. The movie The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover had one of the best integrations of this type of symbolic link between an inter-connected set design and the human body, with the multi-linked kitchen that mimicked the stages of the human digestion system, each with its own separate functions. Undoubtedly, that movie was probably influenced by this movie. In art, the expulsion of urine or feces, can often be symbolic of getting rid of negativity; of the dark and unwanted portions of your life. It doesn’t look like that was really apparent in this film though, as the main intent was to hammer in the shock value, and keep its allegory front and center at all times. It also didn’t seem like this film was possibly implicating and linking us--the viewer--in voyeuristically indulging in this film’s numerous horrors of depravity, similar to what the four libertines do. I’d think for most people, the accumulated effect of all of this, actually creates further separation and distance from what we’re watching and the characters that do enjoy these horrible acts. This movie has definite historic value, and its message, unfortunately, seems to be timeless in its application. I’m not so sure, if I’d recommend this as something essential that you need to see though, since few people are going to get any enjoyment while watching it. This is a distorted reflection on one extreme end of the human condition, but it is a reflection on us nonetheless. Its message is so blaringly obvious, yet so consistently repeated and endemic throughout human history, that perhaps the only way to get us to truly examine this about us, is to bluntly and forcibly drag us through the grime and muck of it all, as this film attempted to do.For further expansion of the rules, please read this link.Have fun and play nice! via /r/movies https://ift.tt/2LA6TsA