Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Trailer released for Malick's To The Wonder

Bob Gundu said:
Hey Matt, you can add M.Night to that list.
Click to expand...

Too tempting. But to be honest, I kind of liked Sixth Sense, I thought the screenplay was very good. Like Nolan and Aronofsky, M. Night is a technically competent director who has been very overrated by some. But unlike those two he's recently been trashed unduly.

His movies following Sixth Sense were mostly just increasingly dreadful, but I have to give him props for Lady in the Water. It's bad, like really bad, and is a work of almost unparalleled narcissism (the world is to be saved by a writer played by the writer/director if only a nymph called "story" can save his life or something, and I think there's something called a narf--holy shit), but it's also a very honest film that tackles subject matter he cares a lot about. I feel like he gets beat up on enough, whereas Aronofsky and Nolan are showed with underserved praise.

But yeah, M. Night is also no Malick let alone the next Spielberg or Hitchcock.
 
Six Sense was great. I didn't mind even the Village. But you start to see his formula and it becomes predictable. The Happening was a high school first draft level of script. I haven't got over that one yet.

Matt W. said:
Too tempting. So, the trash talk continues... I kind of liked Sixth Sense, I thought the screenplay was very good and, like Nolan and Aronofsky, M. Night is a technically competent director who has been very overrated by some.

His following movies were mostly just increasingly dreadful, but I have to give him props for Lady in the Water. It's bad, like really bad, and is a work of almost unparalleled narcissism (the world is to be saved by a writer played by the writer/director if only a nymph called "story" can save his life--holy shit), but it's also a very honest film that tackles subject matter he cares a lot about. I feel like he gets beat up on enough, whereas Aronofsky and Nolan are showed with underserved praise.
Click to expand...
 
Matt W. said:
Nolan, like Aronofksy, is a pretentious middlebrow hack.
Click to expand...

I don't know if I'd call either Nolan or Aranofsky "hacks". The Dark Knight is one of the best movies of the decade, IMHO. Especially for a big budget movie. And Black Swan and The Wrestler were also both superb.

You make it all sound so easy, as if making a terrific movie is something anyone talented could do, if they just avoided all the pitfalls you seem to see so clearly.

Methinks making a great movie involves a lot of good luck, and working with a ton of terrific people. You do the best that you can, with the best team around you, and pray it all works out. Sydney Lumet suggest as much in his great book, Making Movies. Only once in a blue moon did he realize (as he was watching the dailies), that he was perhaps making a "great" movie. And when he thought he was....he made sure to get out of the way, and just trust his gut, and hope "the magic" kept coming.

Films are elusive things...
 
Ok back to Malick... I have to admit, I really like his work. i often forget it's even a film. My mind wonders in a good way when experiencing his cinematic genius. I always feel satisfied because it requires much of the audience. Great discussions follow a Malick film, and years later I never hesitate at additional viewings. Few filmmakers can do that to me. And I should also mention, that the scores to his films are haunting and mesmerizing. I look forward to his latest.
 
Nick Morrison said:
I don't know if I'd call either Nolan or Aranofsky "hacks". The Dark Knight is one of the best movies of the decade, IMHO. Especially for a big budget movie. And Black Swan and The Wrestler were also both superb.

You make it all sound so easy, as if making a terrific movie is something anyone talented could do, if they just avoided all the pitfalls you seem to see so clearly.

Methinks making a great movie involves a lot of good luck, and working with a ton of terrific people. You do the best that you can, with the best team around you, and pray it all works out. Sydney Lumet suggest as much in his great book, Making Movies. Only once in a blue moon did he realize (as he was watching the dailies), that he was perhaps making a "great" movie. And when he thought he was....he made sure to get out of the way, and just trust his gut, and hope "the magic" kept coming.

Films are elusive things...
Click to expand...

Sorry, I'm going way overboard. You're right about the teamwork thing and I think the team behind Dark Knight (and the team behind Black Swan--I loved the cinematography and editing) are great. I get in trouble for this stuff all the time and of course it's all opinion. There are a million things about the Dark Knight that I think are pure genius: the cinematography; the performances, particularly Heath Ledger's. As craft, excepting issues with the script and poor action direction, that movie is unassailable and I would be very proud to be involved in any aspect of making that film. If I directed it I would be over the moon proud. I'm not saying I could have done better, that's for sure. But I felt that the "bigger" issues of story and some elements of direction left a lot to be desired. I overall mostly disliked the movie, but parts of it were great. I could go on, but it's mostly just contrived plot points, obvious didactic political overtones, and poor action direction and pacing that bugged me. Nolan is a great talent. Probably above average in Hollywood. But when people rank him alongside Malick (or Fincher, or Spielberg, or even Michael Bay and Tarantino), it's just... it's not even close. He's a jack of all trades, but he's not one of the great auteurs.

The flip side is I can find a billion problems wrong with Tree of Life. It's so easy to poke fun at movies that aspire blindly to greatness, but I'd rather see a little greatness than almost anything else.

Sean Penn is useless in it, though.
 
Replaced the video with a better version straight from the distributor. 1080p now.
 
would you telll that nolan in the face when he aluld offer you to direct one of his scripts?
Matt W. said:
I don't think grossing nearly double the production budget is really that bad for an art film. Breaking even on New World isn't a "bath." Investors put money into Malick's films as much for the prestige as for the financial return. Furthermore, most films, even in the industry--except maybe comedies and low budget horror--in the $20 milllion to $80 million budget bracket lose money. The vast majority do and on average it's loss. But the industry can't function if it only makes tentpoles, which are generally profitable, so it operates under a model in which 5% of the films make 95% of the profits. But it works.

Most of Woody Allen's films lose money but he still works with the best actors and DPs and keeps getting his films made. If people were only looking for money they'd never invest in any films. With Directors like Malick and Woody Allen, you at least get prestige and festival trips for your dollar. Malick breaks even or better... and on top of that he consistently gets awards (or award consideration) at Cannes and academy award nominations. What producer doesn't want that?

Malick is also one of the greatest directors working. He has grown self-indulgent, however, as do many great directors.

Nolan, like Aronofksy, is a pretentious middlebrow hack. They both work with amazing casts and crews and are reasonably talented (Aronofsky far more so), but Aronofsky dresses up lurid near-pornography as "art" with great cinematography and art design and flashy direction and ZERO psychological depth in either character or form, and Nolan's movies are all dumb face-level cheap tricks with stupid, telegraphed twist endings and vague metatextual themes about cinema and character identification, but it's all SO shallow. He can't block action worth anything and he shoots everything else in lazy steadicam or plain shot/reverse without subtext. He works with amazing people and is obviously very smart, he's just a ridiculously overrated filmmaker. There's some dreadful short he made that's exactly the same as all his other movies, about a guy chasing a smaller version of himself and then a bigger one appears at the end--I don't know. But he sets up some kind of mystery, which keeps revealing itself through little external hints, and then solves it with a dumb twist and that's kind of his idea of cinema--a flashy cheap trick. Both are very talented, Aronofsky far more so, but to cite them as examples of reconciling commerce and art is stupid. They're just marketing cheap commercial junk as art, dressing it up as something it's not. Michael Bay and Paul Verhoeven are better, more interesting directors with similar tendencies and with no pretense. Seriously. Although Bay and Verhoeven also don't have the self-awareness and disconnect from the medium to ward of making very embarrassing films (Showgirls, Hollow Man, Pearl Harbor, Transformers 3).
Click to expand...
 
Cüneyt Kaya said:
would you telll that nolan in the face when he aluld offer you to direct one of his scripts?
Click to expand...

Of course I wouldn't, but if he asked my honest opinion I'd tell him what I liked and what I didn't. The term hack is pejorative, but it doesn't mean untalented; it just means someone who works solely for money or for acclaim. He's a good director, surely above average. I enjoyed Inception, although the extremely literal take on something as inherently metaphorical as dreams seemed very, very silly to me, and the emotional backstory was really shoehorned in. Plus the action was mediocre. But the script was structured brilliantly and the performances were good; cinematography was amazing. Some fun set pieces. Still, I just can't imagine why anyone would hold him in higher acclaim than Malick. And I think, thematically, his movies are empty and a bit pretentious; for Nolan the themes are set dressing for little logic puzzles. For Malick, the themes are everything and his films are really deep explorations of their subject matter.

That's not a knock on journeyman directors, though. I think very highly of Gore Verbinski and if he doesn't choose to explore any deep themes I'll be okay with it. A movie doesn't need depth, it just shouldn't fake it. If Nolan reads this he can take solace knowing he's a very good director on the triple-a list and I'm unemployed.
 
Last edited:
Woah. Whoever called Darren Aronofsky a hack should just leave now.

The Wrestler is one of the best movies I think I have ever seen. The same with Black Swan.

He is probably one of the most underrated directors out there right now but I have faith that will all change once Noah gets released.
 
Michael Millichamp said:
Woah. Whoever called Darren Aronofsky a hack should just leave now.

The Wrestler is one of the best movies I think I have ever seen. The same with Black Swan.

He is probably one of the most underrated directors out there right now but I have faith that will all change once Noah gets released.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more, Michael.
 
Matt W. i couldnt agree more with you concerning Nolan (and i think that The Dark Knight Rises proves it) but i am not so sure about what is going on in Aronofskys head.I really like what Malick is doing and even though he seems to be heading in Tarkovskiys territory ( its very subjective whether that is a good thing) i don't think there is anything pretentious about his films.I thoroughly enjoyed The Tree Of Life and i can tolerate self indulgence more than the pure pretentiousness of post-modern-neo-noir-action-soap-operas-with-a-twist of Nolan.So i dont get the comparison or even the mention on a Malick post.
 
Last edited:
I hope I will be able to see this film in the theatres because I think Malick is a great shooter but after watching The Thin Red Line not too long ago on Blu-Ray I can't help but think maybe I don't really dig his style, it's too unfocussed and over reliant on narration.
In The New World for example I found myself after having seen it a few times watching though it thinking "He could cut all this narration and it would be a better movie" maybe I'm not in the best position to critique what with my some what pathetic filmography worth of V48hours short films but I've just found myself in a place where I'm not sure Malick is as great as people say he is.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top