Mrs. Instigator and I watched this movie on a slow Saturday.


It was described as "gripping" and "tense" and it was NOT. Basically a slice-of-life tale of a young teen growing up on a river. No one learns anything, and the action is pointless. it was filmed nicely, but every single secondary story thread was left to die on the thread vine.

Then, to get the taste out of our mouths, we watched this


I enjoyed it more than the first one, but they made Khan Nooyen Singh into some sort of action baddy, and frankly, it could have been any damn bad guy. It did not need to be the iconic Khan. Cumberbatch was wasted in this. Khan should be a more cerebral enemy, not bang bang blast punch kick jump ninja shit. plus, I HATE THE FAKE, SUPERFLUOUS LENS FLARE.

All of those descriptions are totally wrong. It wasn't necessarily a bad movie and at if it was lile half an hour shorter and had a narrator or some more story development it could possibly have been great. There was a lot of potential in that film noirish cinematography.. of course that essentially they filmed the whole thing just driving up and down Sunset Blvd bugged the shit out of me but they did it in a way that unless youve been there a lot or really paying attention no one would notice. But i did..

I don't know what it is but I really don't like Jake Gyllenhaal. Maybe because I'm always being told how great he is.

He somewhat reminds me of Johnny Depp: not a terrible actor, but if born slightly less attractive, he'd spend his entire career in supporting roles.

dammit, man, i have that rental ready to watch one of these days.

maybe i'll like it cuz we have sort of opposite tastes in movies, ha ha ha.

It was 50/50. The kids in it are awesome, especially the main kid's friend. The story just loses itself. Let me know.

watching it all I coul;d think about is this Primus song https://youtu.be/953PkxFNiko

^^ i can't open youtubes for another 15 minutes! my satellite internets are in 1992 until 8am...

Ghost Protocol was awesome.

i watched some weird anime shit called KITE

it's supposed to be a movie, but it's only 45 minutes long (huh?)

it's kind of creepy-- it's about child-molested assassins who kill child molesters

yes, there is a great sense of satisfaction in seeing creepos die of exploding bullets

but the story is kind of absurd and the animation rather nonexistent and i think it's more of an excuse for people who like to fap while looking at "adult" anime of little girls with big tits

just... weird

netflix predicted i'd give it 4/5 but it's definitely a "do not like" sort of non-movie.

That's what happens when Japan is forced to censor all their porn, they just put it all in their animation. At least that's what I've heard, and why if you watch live action porn from Japan they pixilate or blur out the frontal nudity.

right, a lot of it is suggested/implied but still creepy-- old creeper cop standing over a scared little girl on the bed. it's meant to suggest trauma of the young girl, but then the "grownup" version of the girl (looks the same) is there w/ tits hanging out and i'm like "wtf is the intention here?".

this thing is from the 90s.

o wait wait i found a wikipedia entry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite_(1999_film)

looks like lucky for me i missed 15 minutes of hardcore cartoon rape. kindly keep them, as i won't be needing them. ufff...!

It is their morbid fear of pubic hair. Honestly, that is what they do not want to show....

okay so i finally watched this last night and i have to ask WATT??

movie was great! i think you missed some things-- all the stories wrapped well. everyone learns. maybe too subtle?

a lot went over my head!

everyone learns? Learns what?????

I hate "slice-of-life" movies, especially indie ones where there is no real plot and only endless scenes of people making anguished faces remembering bullshit we are supposed to care about. wrapped up? are you crazy man? that kid witnessed a fucking slaughterbloodbath, his hobo friend gets killed (as far as he knows), his life is over as he knows it, and all is cool cuz there are cute girls in the apartments he moves into with his mom?
the subplot of his folks divorcing? jesus christ what a load of shit.
Fuck everyone in that movie. Fuck a movie set in the backwoods of texarkana border that includes absolutely no black folks or hispanic folks.

Pointless navel-gazing. I can't stand that shit.
The best character was the main kid's friend, and the whole weak ass subplot of his uncle and shit was pointless.

It tried hard to be about something and was about nothing.

Everytime I think about it I hate myself more and more for wasting 2 hours of my day off in this drivel.

haaa haaaa haaa

your rants are hilarious.

that doesn't make them true for me though, but i enjoy the comedy.

that wasn't the story.

********** WARNING SPOILERS *************

the story was ellis the next mud in the making. old-school romantic who lives in the river, ready to fight for a lady's honor, gets used and abused by women who play that angle. the girl the boy kisses is older/more experience and is just toying with him. same shit with mud, as blankenship explains.

mud learns to finally call it quits.

the kid...?

the kid who "ain't no townie" finally learns to accept that his old life is getting torn apart, and to stop idealizing/romanticizing the "one" girl that he "loves".

acceptance of change is learning.

the girls outside his mom's apartment don't mean "all is cool", they mean "you don't need to cling to the user/abuser who plays with you". of course it also means "oh... girls..." because he's 14/15 with a brain full of semen (haven't we all been there?)

the divorce is a metaphor for the rip in history of the PLACE. the mother wants city, the father wants a riverboat, they cannot stay together. the houses get torn down. the life that they've had for generations is over. the apartments are new and shiny. life changes, history moves "forward," individuals have to live through them.

and mud and his girl are sort of the same thing-- mud lives in the island, the girl lives in the motel, they can't stay together. theme & variations. like music.

and the struggle of the river life vs. the city is the old nature vs. civilization-- since gilgamesh and enkidu.

the divorce is also the propellant for him to really go after this "true love" shit that his parents are failing at-- it provides him with motivation to overvalue his "romantic" attachments in the face of domestic failure.

the old man blankenship who left civilization must at the end go deeper into nature to help his wildling son. he wanted quiet at the edge but he has to give it up and help mud go back to where he came from and he's not being hunted.

it's all really very carefully constructed, and yes, real life doesn't work like that, first act, second act, third act, theme and variations, but to request journalistic/scientific realism from movies is what hitchcock called moronic logic.

the movie works, and it does so beautifully. good writing, acting, camera, everything. there is no pointless navel gazing except the one i think you're projecting onto it.

************** END SPOILERS *************

maybe you're right. It still seems pointless to me. Like I said, I don;t give a fuck about other people's "slice of life" stories. I love symbolism in film but I hate metaphor.

I think this comes from being a visual artist BTW... It's why I hate/rarely understand poetry.

yeah it's not a slice of life though. there is clear exposition and massive drama and tension and confrontation and blam-blam bloody resolution. definitely a clear plot from start to finish.

symbol and metaphor are pretty much the same thing, making one thing stand for another, though technically there are distinctions about how they operate-- association vs. replacement. maybe the divorce is actually a symbol because it stands for a different sort of breakup. anyway it's the same theme, playing at a different level-- river life, city life, each set of players goes through it. hey, even ellis and neckbone split, though they're still friends.

i get it that the movie doesn't speak to you because maybe you have little interest in the interior states of people and their emotions, and prefer ideas that are "outside" of them, but it does not follow that the movie itself sucks. it'rs a really well made movie. even if the subject matter didn't interest me, i'd have to recognize it's just really well made/shot/acted.

sort of like i'm not much interested in champagne but i recognize the skill that goes into making it and quality it can achieve.

"wow this is a really nice bottle of champagne. now where the fuck is the scotch?"