I saw a review on TikTok where the woman said she felt like this movie was just yet another installment of Garland’s need to teach men through the suffering or torture of women, and I think that thread needs to be pulled a lot more. Not that I necessarily agree with it but it absolutely merits a big conversation.

She’s not a final girl, though. She’s the sole protagonist.

I really want to know what Carol Clover thinks about this movie, if indeed she deigns to watch it. The horror movie just seems like a squidgy vehicle for male critiques of maleness, especially when the discomfort of Men (at least for this male viewer) is consistently tinged with other things.

I just don’t see how you classify that as dead? For example CDPR’s Cyberpunk which I am playing through for the first time now, certainly does have “Wow! Cool Future!”. But it also has a lot of exploration into every other part of what Cyberpunk is. This is especially so the more you deviate from the main plot.

Integrity is *fine* and I’m all for it. But creators should create first and worry about integrity or legacy or whatever second.

I understand the uncomfortableness with what feels like gatekeeping, and I’m sorry you had such a powerful reaction. It was not my intent.

This isn’t “we can do things differently”, or “there’s room for new interpretations amongst the old”, that is saying “we should stop doing X because I think Y is better”. I think that kind of thing is gatekeeping, and it calls for something I strongly disagree with in artistic expression - to stop a particular kind of…

I viscerally, knee-jerk hate this. While also largely agreeing with it. Part of the problem is that I don’t like the likely-unintentional gatekeeper aspect.

Agreed, there’s an unintentional corollary in Isaiah’s argument that if the modern works are ‘doing it wrong’ then people who like those modern works - for whatever reason - are ‘enjoying it wrong’. It’s hard not to read this notion of a ‘wrong’ form and a ‘right’ form to the genre as gatekeeping.

Oh no. I was going to skip this one (I still haven’t finished Elden Ring) but I do love a grappling hook. Sigh. Bye money.

I love that this comment section seems to be evenly divided between “polygraphs are bullshit” and “green screen is bullshit.” And for once in my life I agree with pretty much everyone. At the risk of being a bit on the nose: no lies detected. 

Yeah, her defense was a little odd. I don’t think anyone is taking away from the costume and set design or stunt work in Marvel movies...

Please, film nerds, just let me and my fellow Marvel dorks enjoy our three-hour spurts of repetitive explosions in PEACE!

I can’t help but think that some clever accounting at the corporate level has screwed the developer out of their royalties. For instance, the promotion budget could be insane, in service of franchise ambitions, in a way that makes a successful game appear to break even.

Also, and I know I’m pretty alone here, but I didn’t hate Thief 2014. It wasn’t stellar, all the previous games were better, and you know, Dishonored exists. But I stuck with it until the end and wouldn’t mind an improved take coming back again.

Now, I have to think about why the ACLU would ghost write someone’s supposedly personal essay about domestic violence. This looks bad for both Heard AND the ACLU.

It took them almost 15 years to actually get to a movie generally considered to be an outright failure (“Eternals”).

The placebo effect is one hell of a drug.

Latenna the archer, effectively a stationary turret, can be really good situationally (like when you can put her somewhere the boss can’t reach).

Take a second and reflect: How wild is it that there’s a movie in theaters right now whose basic premise is “Jude Law and Mads Mikkelson are exes waging a clandestine magical war to work out the baggage of their relationship,” and yet somehow, no one actually seems to give a shit?