I agree in general, but House of Cards was some community theatre level accent work. I only watched the first season and a half before deciding life was short, but he was never scary. Just ridiculous. Some of that might have been the script. Still, though. 

Huh? Its not about authenticity, its about human connection. The couch for her was a status symbol, more important than her connection with her husband.

Why does everyone assume that we’re supposed to think the video is profound as the audience? I guess the musical cue is serious, but it’s a video being made by a sullen, overdramatic teenage boy. Of course it’s dumb.

I still think this is a great movie, and my favorite of that year. And I don’t think the movie endorses Spacey’s crush with Suvari’s character, it always seems creepy and his character is supposed to look pathetic in his efforts to look cool. And yeah, the guy turned out to be a creep, and he deserves the…

I could be way off base but I feel like the distinction is that stuff should be used as a way to make connections. The car for him is a way for him to connect with himself. His opinion is that cars are just cars (like couches are just couches) so he should get the one that gives him a connection to himself or…

That’s fair enough, but I’m not sure the movie really fully gets into the hypocrisy of him buying the car he always wanted because it makes him happy, vs. him saying that his wife just loves that couch because it’s a THING and THINGS can’t make you happy. I’m not sure I catch the distinction-slash-purity that…

It pains me, but I will say one thing in defense of this movie at this point; he’s not mad just because his wife doesn’t want to get beer spilled on the couch. He’s mad because his wife prioritises the importance of not spilling beer on the couch over being affectionate with him — essentially, that for her…

Unpopular opinion: Am I the only one who thinks the creepy stuff Spacey has done in his personal life should have zero effect on people’s judgement of his performance in this film?

The short version of this article, that we read over and over again, is movies that explore men’s experience or how they feel obviously suck. Those experiences are invalid and unworthy of stories. We must go through the back catalogue and be sure to purge those stories from the canon.

I agree generally with this, but I have a suspicion that Six Feet Under undermined American Beauty as well.

This is some major revisionism. In 1999 critics LOVED American Beauty. It was the #1 movie for many critics, “top” or otherwise. So to pretend the film has always somehow being triumphed when it shouldn’t have is nonsense. People genuinely liked it on initial release because of how different it was. It,…

I like Jesse and think AB is only a decent movie, but I really am not a fan of this “we didn’t know how well we had it” brand of criticism when you’re looking at a movie that critiques materialism. It just seems disingenuous to criticize a story for being out of touch, when pretty much every single story that…

If it didn’t look exciting, no one would join. It’s not consumerist, though. It’s taking advantage of consumerism to finance the endeavor. But it’s not putting the money into anything “modern life” would consider valuable. It’s using it to bring destruction to modern life. Yeah, it’s an old house that is…

Oh absolutely, and I’d argue that Clueless ultimately inspired the Teen Movie Shakespeare boomlet–even moreso than Romeo + Juliet, which is a very traditional Shakespeare film underneath the MTV trappings.

I did see it on opening, based on the director and was startled, by how twisted the perceived film message became for a certain demographic, but it is STILL getting misinterpreted years later!

Hard to believe that people got Fight Club so wrong. I didn’t see it in the theaters because, based on the marketing and the critical reviews I saw at the time, it seemed to be just a glorification of violence done purely for shock value. When I saw it on video later I remember thinking that it wasn’t at all what I…

And the jokes don’t stop landing throughout. It’s not just one of the best movies of 1999 it’s one of the best comedies of the decade, and far preferable to the bloated and gormless Apatow bilge that was just over the horizon.

Hm, I’m not sure I agree with any of that. lol What didn’t age well about middle class people complaining about their jobs? Wait I do agree that the ending didn’t make a ton of sense. Just because the building burned down doesn’t mean that the company still wouldn’t notice that it was missing $250,000, or whatever it…

Totally right. He worked a white collar office job because that’s what he just kinda wound up doing. If you compare Peter with some of his coworkers (Samir and Michael, the “case of the Mondays” lady) you can tell he has a misery related to work they don’t.

Office Space is a great time capsule of the “end of history” feeling of the 90s. The economy is great! 9/11 hasn’t happened yet! We’re only sort of at war in the Middle East! The only thing we have to deal with is the crushing ennui of office work! Imagine showing it to a Gen Z kid who’s only known the hell of…