Rate the latest movie you've seen.

[Shiranu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfFF-PP78iA

I'll probably be renting this tomorrow. I've always heard my family say that Carter was, "The greatest man to be a president, but one of the worst presidents to be president", and I have always admired his work since leaving office so I want to know more about him. The fact that he was a fellow music-phile has only made me more intrigued.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Fun thing was that "rock and roll" was still considered a tool of Satan by a lot of people in his home state. Bluegrass, on the other paw...

[drunkenshoe]

I feel like that's what I said if it were passed through a game of chinese telephone, written down, xeroxed, and then xeroxed the copy, and then xeroxed that copy.  :P

LOL. No, not really. You don't think that these movies are some sort of a manual for explaining life and existence of our species, do you? From your reaction, it seems you don't, and hence 'You passed'.

I'm still stuck in defensive mode here.  They're not bad movies, are they?  I mean, they really made a splash when they came out.  And it's a nice to change of pace to have a movie where one thing is going on at a surface level and something else is going on underneath the surface.  Good for watercooler discussion and later, video essays (especially the Architect's speech lol).  Is that a bad thing?

And top 100 might sound like a huge acclaim given the thousands upon thousands of movies out there, but that's 2 movies a year for a span of 50 years.  If I did it that way, there'd be quite a few pretty mediocre films on the list.  I dunno if I've personally seen more than 300 different movies in my life.  So just getting me in the seat really improves its chances.

OK. I first started write a long one about 'autonomy' of art, work of art, time...zeitgeist... etc. and then deleted it. LOL Yeah, no. It's going to get very long and bore you and anyone who accidentally attempt to read it out of their minds. I'm just going to describe a summary of what I felt when I've first seen it 20 years ago and what I thought afterwards about the culture it created. Just a note, what you are asking includes huge, high concept questions in disgusie regarding my field from 'are they bad movies' to 'the embedded good ideas' in them. Because that's what this movie attempts. But not going that way.

Matrix is a dystopian action movie. The movie itself is an introduction of a new technology in cinema. Beyond the visual effects, it doesn't offer a new, original idea or a story, not just as a concept, but also in cinema. If you remove the action it is a simply an inferior form of the cave story told by a man called Plato, 2500 years ago. Before that Indian Vedas...and some other monks in far east belief systems very long time ago. Jostein Garder's famous book for children, Sophia's World. (I'm skipping Alice purposefully, not necessary.) Philip K. Dick himself, not just as a writer but as a person, who really believed that we lived in a matrix. Most importantly, Freidrich Nietzsche who has spent his life trying to find the roots of modernism and in that search, perhaps he is the one who came the closest yet imo, not to the answer but at least a brief description of the brutal reality that with heroes, saviours and gods humans can only accomplish shit. That's a real person lived who made out some parts of the matrix, if you will.

And that's why I see it as an inferior , a backwards expression of the original ancient idea. Because it is a hero's journey to the Olympus to save the world. We are in deep shit because of this plot. The difference in telling is the successful make up of its pretense of challenging 'literal' qualities as opposed to its metaphoric ones which are just visual effects. So it is a very surface level work pretending to be deep, imo.

If you'd stripped the movie from the visual effects, a little amount of people would've known about it. So the content, the embedded ideas are not what sold the movie. That's what people forced later. I think the reason why the Matrix wasn't sold for a specific generation -I'm their youngest I guess- is that because at least in our circles -we watched movies in cinema like crazy- we had seen Dark City just anew. I'm not saying this because it is the menu. I understand that it's become another counter culture to push Dark City against Matrix. I found Dark City a good movie but I wasn't affected by it either. That's not my problem.

Back then when the movie was out, a lot of older, learned people had a good laugh about it on 'what a good matrix of bullshit culture itself got started to be built' by this movie and I had found that exaggerated then. I was like, 'yeah it is inept... chill, it is just entertainment, right?' Right. I was what? 25? Well, history only proved how right they were so far, I'm afraid.

Art is so powerful, maybe the most powerful thing in imitating reality, it changes everything because it changes human perspective and perception; reception of reality. Because art is consisted of human bullshit. When most people think about art, with the letters of a,r,t in their mind consciously, they mostly think about something that happened in the past or happening somewhere else, something that occurs/happens independetly from them that they could choose to interact, get included or not. Unfortunately, this is not true, esp. in harsh way at where we arrived. The visual culture of today. 

So, the problem here is that something going beyond its quality, purpose, meaning without surpassing or exceeding any mark. I'm not using the word 'hype' because considering 1999, one of the reasons of the success of Matrix is that it didn't have the traditional hype to begin with. So it also provides a fake sense of historical consciousness with its content in a time, when humanity was about the change century for the first time in modern life. 

There is a never ending debate -noone actually knows when it started contrary to the written sources- on art's so called autonomy. You are probably familiar with it. Wether it has autonomy or it had once upon a time but why doesn't have it anymore... blah blah too long...but doesn't matter which camp you argue from, it doesn't change the consequences and infleunce of an entertainment product when it stops just being that.

Fight Club has the same place, same quality. At first glance, it looks like it is all about thinking out of the box, doing something extraordinary; getting the better of the system, solving it (?) in different conceptual levels. You understand how did we arrive from there to the last Joker, don't you? I get there is so much to unpack here, I just hope to get my main point.

There is this imaginary tipping point in human history -like the concept of first art- that we know it took place, probably many times at different places, probably independent from each other, probably earlier than we think. So that point represents the struggle of human intelligence, it is some sort of an end and the beginning at the same time. And much later we called what existed before that generally pre-historical and what started after that, historical.

Because we have realised that when we develop written thought, when we start to cut the cords from verbal thought we entered to the second greatest split. So, we wrote all of those myths and fairy tales down and so they made the first plots. All we do is playing with those plots. Textual thinking is another level of alienation supporting human ability of thinking. All the tales about opening your eyes and seeing the real world gains another level of meaning as in understanding it. In its earliest shape, Adam and Eve and Steve... OK, yes Steve has to eat the apple. When somebody says apple, you think a red apple don't you? Including this cliché Matrix have all the myths in it.

The thing is Steve has already eaten that apple long time ago. He climbed to Mount Olympus, slapped Zeus on his ass, killed every monster along the way, sat in the cave watched the shadows, went out and became blind, then started to see again. Rinse, repeat. This was a very long time ago. But Steve is still there. He is living through a nightmare, stuck in a hedgehog day because whenever somebody wants to tell something more complicated than a romantic comedy, they resurrect Steve and send him to an odyssey. Matrix is the best example of this. Pretending to be different, enlightening, much bigger and beyond while it is telling the old wive's story.

So to me, Matrix takes this ancient enormous scope, dips it in heavy sauce and sells it as an original, enlightening, revolutionary interpretation of that idea. It's not. It's another episode of poor Steve. Steve is sick of it all. His middle name is Brian. :p 

And because of that, the scope and the materials... it is not just a movie anymore. It hasn't been for some time.
It's become this toy box full of basic five 3d shapes that children play with. The box says you can build everything with it but it is a lie. Because 5 basic shapes is very limited, and we are not children anymore. Aren't you sick of building castles? Nobody lives in castles anymore. They are not affordable. They make good ruins, nothing more.

[Baruch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfFF-PP78iA

I'll probably be renting this tomorrow. I've always heard my family say that Carter was, "The greatest man to be a president, but one of the worst presidents to be president", and I have always admired his work since leaving office so I want to know more about him. The fact that he was a fellow music-phile has only made me more intrigued.

Fake Wiki bio?  Never thought he would be a focus of that.  He was and remains a Christian.  If you share music with him, you might be Evangelized.

[Baruch]

Fun thing was that "rock and roll" was still considered a tool of Satan by a lot of people in his home state. Bluegrass, on the other paw...

Those people behind him in the picture don't look like Rockers to me ;-)

[drunkenshoe]

A Million Ways to Die in the West. Absurd comedy, modern romantic comedy in 19th century...tiny bit bordering meta.

Not bad. OK.

[Hydra009]

LOL. No, not really. You don't think that these movies are some sort of a manual for explaining life and existence of our species, do you?

No, not at all.  At best, they reference some smart ideas.  Something to think about and a step up from the ennui of standard popcorn flicks which don't even do that.  But definitely not some philosophical code to live by.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cGrg2Gh4gg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYO413hHwgk

[Cassia]

Watching Fury with Brad Pit. Wasn't expecting much....but now the tank is busted and an SS brigade is headed to the crossroad...Not gonna end well I fear, but a good flick.

[Hydra009]

Watching Fury with Brad Pit. Wasn't expecting much....but now the tank is busted and an SS brigade is headed to the crossroad...Not gonna end well I fear, but a good flick.

Wait, there's SS in that one?  SPOILERS!  :P

[Cassia]

Wait, there's SS in that one?  SPOILERS!  :P

I may as well give it all away then. Vladimir Putin himself rides up (shirtless) on a horse and saves the day. He's so fine.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Watching Fury with Brad Pit. Wasn't expecting much....but now the tank is busted and an SS brigade is headed to the crossroad...Not gonna end well I fear, but a good flick.

Did you notice "Lucius Malfoy"?

[Cassia]

Did you notice "Lucius Malfoy"?

Did not...always a sign of an acting job well done. Then again, I totally missed that Ted Danson was in "Body Heat" until like the fourth time I watched it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Did not...always a sign of an acting job well done. Then again, I totally missed that Ted Danson was in "Body Heat" until like the fourth time I watched it.

He was the colonel with the facial scar that said "I know you, I know what you do."

[SGOS]

Watching Fury with Brad Pit. Wasn't expecting much....but now the tank is busted and an SS brigade is headed to the crossroad...Not gonna end well I fear, but a good flick.

What I remember about that film were the tank battles in the evening with images of tracer fire that I will never forget.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What I remember about that film were the tank battles in the evening with images of tracer fire that I will never forget.

They used the same system as Star Wars IIRC. I actually applauded in the theater.