I didn't dismiss Rope or say that it's a bad film. Just said shooting it that way was dumb.

You're more optimistic than I am about the number of people who are familiar with the Library of Babel.

Careful.

Yes, it's been trimmed, though only by 9 minutes. The original Sundance cut was 128; unlikely that he added 12 minutes for a festival four months later and subsequently cut it by 20.

Actual line of dialogue: "We're the jelly boys! Our place is here in the back protecting the jelly. What the stuff is, I couldn't tell you, but it's our job to take care of it!"

The break with the hangar is clearly deliberate, didn't mean to suggest otherwise. Wilkinson entering the frame first I assumed to be a very minute timing error, but others have pointed out that it could be very subtle foreshadowing. (Not sure I buy that, but it's clever.)

No, it's basically "Perhaps this material needed to be pushed further into absurdism, in the manner of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth (to which Partisan’s born-into-captivity scenario bears a superficial resemblance). Cassel makes Gregori a compellingly ambiguous figure, but the miniature fiefdom over which he rules,…

Didn't write the headline. However, it's a fair synopsis of what I did write in the opening paragraph, so if it bothers Snugglesaurus Rex, (s)he's probably right that (s)he should avoid me in future.

He said in a recent interview that he thinks the human race will be extinct in 50 years. (!)

Just belatedly realized that I complain that Live From New York! never mentions the Lampoon, then proceed to never mention Second City, which assembled many of the future Not Ready for Prime Time Players before they worked on Lampoon projects. (The film itself does mention Second City, albeit briefly.) Might as well…

I bump my grades up one notch for this site as a general rule, in an attempt to make them a bit more in line with the way other folks grade stuff. Otherwise you'd see one A every couple of years.

Correct.

That's scarily accurate.

Obviously you're not a bowler.

For the record, I haven't seen 7 Days in Hell, which is why it isn't mentioned above even though it seems like an obvious point of comparison.

Tom's apartment is fairly small and ramshackle, but you still have to be doing very well to afford a small, ramshackle apartment on the Upper West Side. (Unless you lucked into some insane rent-control situation, but that's never suggested.) He's comparatively poor, not actually poor.

No, that was me. And I liked this movie more than most critics did (certainly more than Silver Linings Playbook). Now what do you do?

I do agree that Bloody Kids is a much better film. Probably Frears' best, actually (though I like High Fidelity a lot and have a soft spot for The Snapper).

I'd agree about the kiss itself, but they don't really have much sexual or romantic chemistry otherwise (which is one reason why it's surprising when it happens).

You're absolutely correct, though the other Troell films I mentioned that take a similarly sprawling, discursive approach don't belong to that genre (which is why I didn't mention it). And it's not a genre that translates well to cinema, in my opinion, precisely because of the inability to get inside the protagonist's…