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Old 09-11-2016, 01:14 PM   #174
teh b0lly!!1
Braindead
 
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i'm not the kind of guy to point to movie reviews to assert my point about a film, but to be fair, it did appear on quite a few 'best movies' lists at the time. not saying that that, in and of itself, is a reason to like it, of course - but it's not like it's some shitty film i talked up. it does, however, seem very polarizing indeed, so.

but disregarding that, i guess your main complaint was that although it's visually on par, the plot was not compelling enough to carry it. i guess that's a valid point, but i don't agree. not every movie is about having a beautifully written, sharply outlined, driving plot. this film, to me, is about communicating an experience. i thought it was visually hysterical - just a crazy creative, stylish picture, that took the boring 'alien from space kills ppl' angle and made something compelling out of it. a lot of the more abstract shots still stick with me (like that raging, pulpy red flood racing across a trough, for example).

but even separately from that, what i liked about this movie is that i felt like it talked about what it feels like to be a stranger. what's it like to be an outsider. if you look at it just as a knee deep alien movie, yeah, it's pretty bland. but the way i perceived it, the narrative is all about a person who is cast into a certain mold that they grow out of, and once they do, they find themselves unsuitable for the environment they want to be a part of. they're unequipped for it. they don't understand it (the comic talking about spoons on tv at the bus guy's house comes to mind). they try to eat that chocolate cake and enjoy it and be like everybody else but - hurl, it doesn't compute.

and then that rape scene in the end, when scarlett is finally showing signs of vulnerability, of emotional\physical fatigue - comes this brutal monster of a person, viciously violates her, and sets her on fire. watching that scene made me feel insult. that's brilliant cinema to me.

lastly, i liked finding out post-watching that the dialogue was almost entirely 100% improvised, and that the gentlemen depicted in the film were shot using hidden cameras. that as a movie talking about someone who is alien to this world, it took this route of curiously seeing what actual people were going to act like, from a directorial standpoint of inferiority (not having control of the situation). that's pretty meta filmmaking. it feels right.

Last edited by teh b0lly!!1 : 09-11-2016 at 05:07 PM.

 
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