thread for Sean Baker since he allegedly doesn't belong in "ten greatest living American filmmakers" thread

Argue about The Florida Project here.

Well, violently down the middle on Florida Project.

For awhile, yes, Alfred is right that the movie takes for granted that "these horrifying children are charming little dears" and, left-field quips aside, not remotely convincing. Eventually, it settles into truly expert "everyone has their reasons" territory -- many moments of unforced efficiency. (Am thinking of the interlude with Willem Dafoe's son, I think, saying he doesn't want to "do this anymore," and also clearly understanding why Dafoe's character feels compelled to continue. And how the sudden pattern of bathtime play interludes gently invites the audience into a new and unpleasant plot point.)

And it has a knack for portraying squalor in a way that makes it clear how adults can see their environment one way and kids another way entirely. But one of the movie's most obvious but well-realized examples -- the birthday fireworks a half-mile away from the real show -- just underscored how the abrupt ending didn't fucking work. After Tangerine, which had one of my favorite endings in recent years, this was a damp squib. Even taking into consideration how it brings "reality" crashing into a 6-year-old girl's life so violently she has nowhere to turn to but desperate fantasy. But the movie's a lot stronger when it sticks to things like the tourists' helicopter endlessly taking off: exciting to kids, a slap in the face to the destitute adults.

Still, I'll refrain from calling any filmmaker willing to devote serious career energies into depicting the American underclass condescending until we actually have anything remotely like an appropriate proportion of filmmakers devoting serious career energies into depicting the American underclass.

― Anne of the Thousand Gays (Eric H.), Monday, October 23, 2017

And my review.

He transcends the notion of an 'American filmmaker' since he is still so good. Starlet is a must-see as well, btw.

A review that I suspect will be more characteristic of the response to TFP the more mainstream it pushes: https://letterboxd.com/vjmorton/film/the-florida-project/

Frederik, I admire your opinions on ci-ne-mah more than I do on American politics, but I'm having a hard time accepting how anyone can transcend anything – and why this should be a quality to which artists should aspire! – or why we should look for Metaphors For America. Surely films that make such obvious statements should make one suspicious.

The transcendation thing is a joke, don't sweat it :) I meant 'metaphor' in the way that I look for imagery that communicates. That dares to use aesthetics to say something about the world. And that's the same for me whether we are dealing with the US, Denmark, France, etc. When you and Morbs say that I don't know shit about America, my counterpoint wouldn't be that I do. It would be that i don't know shit about Paris or Portugal either, but I still write about Nocturama and The Ornithologist. And so do you. I look to art for - amongst other things - brave, strong personal views of the world. And it has value through it's aesthetic power, not because it is accurate or 'gets it right'. And I do honestly feel like American cinema suffers under a regime of literalness, where people are suspicious of aestheticification.

On a macro level, Frederik is right.

I agree broadly w/ your take Eric.

And I do honestly feel like American cinema suffers under a regime of literalness, where people are suspicious of aestheticification.

i.e. the Sundance ethos. And you're right. But in TFP the aesthetics are put to work in a film as didactic and literal as any Sundance lab project.

I hasten to add the "do you know why I like this tree?" lapses are few and far between in the movie, but they're there. (Another: "I can always tell when adults are about to cry.")

I disagree with Alfred on the conclusion. There are big and obvious metaphors and music and ending, but there's a much more subtle aesthetic, off kilter, non-narrative, scenes going on a bit too long, always seeming just slightly weird, and it's the combination of the two that I love so much. I've been writing quite a bit about Baker, and have been searching for photos that could underline my aesthetic points, but I've repeatedly found that somehow, somewhere, they become edited so they look more 'normal'. Characters are moved to the center. Unimportant stuff - which is what I love about the shot - is cut out. Of course, that could just be bad promotion, but I do find it interesting. He is weirder than he gets credit for.

A wide channel through the middle of mainstream American film is incredibly similar in tone and mood, sure. I think mistaking it as literal is a problem with both producers and audiences; it's the same metaphor and story devices used every time, and we've grown accustomed to them and mistake their use for a reproduction of reality.

I'm all for alternatives but another prevalent mode has been "indie shit that freaks out the norms by showing people living fucked up lives" which can be good at times but isn't a "brave, strong personal view of the world"

Hey, at least it's better than Escape from Tomorrow amirite?!

good intentions now make for sterling cinema

I should really just catch up and watch all the Florida tourist films in one go

xp a heartening evolution for a frivolous medium

i still need to watch Tangerine! i don't know why it has taken me so long. also, i don't think i ever saw Greg The Bunny. also, he was born in summit, new jersey. my dad grew up there. so did Ice-T. Ice-T and my dad. rollin' hard through the suburbs.

his early stuff is all good

cool, he deserves his own thread. like i said elsewhere, Tangerine is one of my favorite movies of the decade so far, and I was letdown by the meandering Florida Project:

Saw it today. In between Fred & Alfred but erring on Alfred's side - my main issue with the movie is it lacks any forward momentum, and the ending feels tacked on and forced. I was intrigued by the helicopter that kept taking off and landing by the motel, and when the cops & CPS came, I got the idea that the girl was going to run and jump into the helicopter and fly away. A beautiful, absurd fantasy of an ending that was making me cry even as it didn't play out. I thought the idea of them seeking asylum in the Magic Kingdom was nice, but again, the movie was so poorly paced & kind of boring as a mood/atmosphere piece. Some things I loved: the colors obviously, Willem Dafoe's performance (yes Alfred, perhaps not the most common landlord, but I've known a few landlords that he reminded me of. he was my favorite part of the movie by far), Baker escalating situations beyond where most directors would stop or cut (the one parent beating the shit out of the other, the pedophile, the johns coming into the room when the kid was there).

As far as it representing Florida or America or being a "See? This is real America" - well, I trust the guy that actually lives in Florida. Fred, I think the fantasy of this movie does its subject(s) a disservice. I still liked it, and it confirms Baker's status as one of America's most interesting directors, but I was let down- mostly because I loved, loved, loved Tangerine so much.

i watched about half of Tangerine this morning. it's cool. it would make a good netflix t.v. show. is what i kept thinking. it's netflix t.v. show good. i don't know if i will watch the other half though. i have a lot to watch!

also, i have had to resist the impulse today to greet everyone with "how you doin', bitch".

Tangerine is like 70 minutes long!

really? seemed longer. okay, i'll finish it. i liked it. i just want to talk like that all day now though. and tell people to fuck off.

i was just at the part where they were smoking crack in the club bathroom.

i'll watch it with maria. she'll dig it.

When the woman in line shows off her sobriety coin and Sin-Dee cuts her off, "byeeee."

lol

yeah that bathroom scene iirc is towards the end

Seeing this again :D

Baker salutes his influences

http://www.movingimage.us/visit/calendar/2017/11/29/detail/the-florida-project-and-the-little-rascals

Tangerine was incredible. this looks like Beasts of The Southern Wild. i did not like Beasts of The Southern Wild. am i wrong in wanting to avoid this?

yea the preview gave me the same thought actually

this should've been called Birth Control is a Right

Jesus

what if... the Our Gang kids were charmless shits?

lol Morbs

Our Gang of Assholes

Not far from Victor Morton's take tbh: https://letterboxd.com/vjmorton/film/the-florida-project/

If I was forced to reduce my response down to what I thought about the characters as people, the only one I had no real sympathies for on the whole was whore mom.

LOL, I already linked Vic's review upthread, I see. It seemed to be the one review that said what evidently I thought needed to be said. At the same time as being comfortingly voiced by someone who is on the record as being a reactionary.

My one totally unfair hot take of the year: the little girl doesn't have the chops to pull off the extended pre-code crying jag at her friend's door.

i agree with that but not the over-the-top judgment making the rounds, lol

Baker owes his career to the leads in Tangerine

he should be barred from future filmmaking for the last sequence in this one

Watched this a week after Happy End and thought Haneke would get the mom to go on a killing spree at the nicer hotel - I suppose that would follow Morbs' they were just a bunch of shits hot take. Me and the friend I was with thought it would be a better ending.

Heh, when I was watching Happy End I realised that Haneke is a great writer and director of young people.

my "bunch of shits" comment had nothing to do with morality, those kids were just winners of irritation pageants.

the little girl doesn't have the chops to pull off the extended pre-code crying jag at her friend's door.

She's not an actress and should be taken away from the parents who let her do this film.

Lol, the ending is great!

would you have said so pre-lobotomy, tho

I kept thinking how Haneke, in Hidden, simply packed a young Majid off. Doesn't flinch.

There isn't any point pretending the girl's life is going to be any better.

That's not at all what the film does, though

That's like saying the final reunion between the girl and her father in Pans Labyrinth seemed phony

Of course the other arg is to say we all know it's going to be awful for her so why not pretend. The film never solved the story in any satisfying way.

Xp Fred it had some good things in it. the ending didn't work.

"Of course the other arg is to say we all know it's going to be awful for her so why not pretend."

Well, bingo. Sorry for the snark earlier, then :)

Pan's Labyrinth was in a much more fantastical vein. Only saw it when it came out and I can't say I liked it.

I still haven'tavrnt recovered from what this film has done to my already tenuous liking of children.

Even ppl who are better disposed to this film than some of the ILX film snob krew (ie myself) think the ending is a major mis-step (and doesn't really make sense in the context of the proceeding narrative, where even the children are only really interested in Disneyland as a omnipresent source of income and opportunity).

People being wrong about a film trying something different. Shocking!

I mean, come on! 'Doesn't really make sense'? It comes out of knowhere, the camera changes to an iphone, there's a string cover of Celebrate. It's supposed to be incongruous.

an alt interp of the ending i've seen -- from Victor Morton, above -- is IT'S DISNEY/SOCIETY'S FAULT

"it's a supposed to be incongrous" is cover for how Baker didn't know how to end it.

xpost

Yeah, can't really get behind a review which ends with the author wanting to physically assault the main female character.

Fred you're being a dick, but just for argument's sake - what purpose does the incongruity of the ending serve? What does it add to the film?

People being wrong about a film trying something different. Shocking!

I have yet to see anyone who has issues with this one’s ending frame it in an argument defending doing things the same old way.

When people talk about the ending here do they mean the whole section from social services coming to take her away, or just the bit in Disneyland?

I love this film and I think the ending is """audacious""" and completely unsuccessful. Don't really give a fuck tho, it's 15 seconds of the film

People being wrong about a film trying something different. Shocking!

I have yet to see anyone who has issues with this one’s ending frame it in an argument defending doing things the same old way.

― Fred Klinkenberg (Eric H.), 7. december 2017 14:13 (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, because every reactionary film critic always writes 'This should be done the same old way.'

Fred you're being a dick, but just for argument's sake - what purpose does the incongruity of the ending serve? What does it add to the film?

― Akdov Telmig (Ward Fowler), 7. december 2017 14:03 (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That it's jarring is the point. You have to make an active choice whether or not you believe in it, instead of being carried along. And that's a real tightrope to walk, because it's so easy to succumb to sub-Brechtian bullshit. But it walks the line perfectly!

it's at least 45-60 seconds btw

The movie undeniably feeds into at least a portion of the audience's desire to see something/anything change the girl's living situation. And then it denies us of that closure by first making the arrival of protective services a sad little bureaucratic clown show, and then jettisoning the denouement into a wildly speculative fantasy. I'm not saying that it's not audacious. If anything, it's the moment the movie morphs into its both middle fingers up mother-daughter team.

The Bird Flipping Project

Or, if I'm being particularly charitable, it's the movie arguing there actually is no solution.

(I'd rather enter a debate on this movie any day over Three Billboards.)

There is no children!

The alternative of fantasy to the 'same old way' wasn't new either. It was a poor choice.

Alba - it's the Disneyland bit.

I don't see it as a middle finger to the mother-daughter team at all. Social services allowed the daughter to escape..

Perhaps if protective services arrived and exited via helicopter?

Now that would be audacious!

Maybe if Donald Trump had nuked Kissimmee?

I'm going to see this later. I bet I will love it.

My ending was a man a few rows away shouting "what utter rubbish" as the credits started rolling.

good. i should've broken into "Kids!" Paul Lynde-style

Hated most of Tangerine. This was better, but you get the point in the first, what, three minutes, and after that, it just didn't have the strangeness that made American Honey so memorable to me. There were lines people laughed at that I couldn't quite hear.

I loved the ending, though. At first I thought "I've never seen anything quite like this," then quickly realized it's very much in the tradition of The 400 Blows and The Squid and the Whale.

Belatedly caught up with this today. Loved it.

i liked it quite a lot, was unexpectedly deeply affected at the final scene (but not the final minute). started out not at all enchanted by the kids and clearly something changed in two hours where i was weeping. caught myself remembering some aspects of my childhood i haven't thought about in years and years, like a particular blue plastic pitcher that my mom used to rinse my hair in the bathtub. i liked how the things-getting-worse progression was folded into the movie in a way that didn't require "we've arrived at the development that signals Act III" dramatization; the rhythm of the kids' lives is, initially, seemingly unaffected, and then in hindsight you realize that most of the other kids have sort of fallen out of the picture because mooney is out with halley running the perfume hustle, etc. would make a fascinating double feature with paper moon. dafoe was incredible.

my one big gripe was that either halley's script or vinaite's performance is failing to give her much interiority. she only talks to other adults when she's pissed off or conning them, so we mostly see stuff that plays into the "bad mom" stereotyping that the movie is otherwise trying to see around. it's not egregiously awful a lot of the time, but it was kind of weird in that the film seems to want to keep us focused on the humanity of these people in a very precarious situation not often seen on film.

good point about the mother & the pacing

also i was probably just dense but it was only in hindsight on the way home that i remembered the photo shoot with the mom striking sexy poses (and taking down the pictures of the kid) and it was obviously the photo shoot for her sex-work profile, but at the time it just felt like another bonding (but maybe also not-such-great-parenting) scene. thought that was neat.

clearly at some level the movie is suggesting that given the economic constraints on the characters' spatial lives, a conventional interior life is impossible for halley. she cannot have, as it were, a room of one's own. the closest she has is sharing the pool with ashley near the beginning and when that bond is cut her world shrinks down to just her and moonee versus everyone else. whereas bobby (whose room we don't see, but clearly his situation's not that much better off since he also lives here and has this exhausting thankless job) at least has his crappy little back office as some kind of sanctum. i dunno this is kind of an architecty take on the movie but given how much time we spend in this hotel and running along its access galleries and up and down its stairs, and then going up and down this crappy strip of nearby retail, i do think space is important here.

yeah i didn't put two and two together about any of the sex worker stuff until it all came to a head, and only after reading thoughts on here did i realize how much stuff (like the photo shoot) i missed. otm about the motel... idk though this movie just didn't stick with me

continuing the spatial thing, i think one reason the final sixty seconds don't work is that they jerk us around spatially. if what we're seeing is real, it breaks the geography of the movie, where the magic kingdom is emphatically NOT a jogging distance away (previously one had to hitchhike to get within good viewing distance for fireworks; the hotel community can walk only far enough to watch house fires.). if it's fantasy, it's weird: access to this space, for the kids, has not been thematized for the preceding two hours. they don't seem to want to go there - they barely seem aware that it exists actually. they seem satisfied with cows as the climax of a "safari," they don't even play with disney toys (or off-brand knockoffs) and the only children's entertainment mentioned is spongebob....

Yeah, but it's all done so ineptly. This thing was a fucking chore to sit through.

Nah

The ending did turn what was an ok enough film into something that I wouldn't want to revisit.

I think "not a jogging distance away" was fine, as was the them not caring about Disney and simply going there as an escape from the badness that you'd think Disneyland protects you from. You it won't.

The problem was actually doing realism throughout, not playing with any fantasy and all of a sudden pulling that up on you. I am very much for seeing the process through when you started already (which casino is otm around not feeling like one). Although, having said that, I was re-watching De Sica's Umberto D. the other night and I wonder if the ending was a similar fantasy that I took for granted (my housemate had issues with it) whereas for Umberto the late late re-discovery of his desire to carry on living, the knowledge that he had his dog and that could be enough till the bitter end...somehow that got through to me whereas what Baker is pulling here shuts the door. So its a problem, but for now I think the scripting of the ending of Umberto D. is by turns inspired and nasty whereas Baker wasn't, and whatever it was happened to be badly executed.

clearly at some level the movie is suggesting that given the economic constraints on the characters' spatial lives, a conventional interior life is impossible for halley. she cannot have, as it were, a room of one's own. the closest she has is sharing the pool with ashley near the beginning and when that bond is cut her world shrinks down to just her and moonee versus everyone else. whereas bobby (whose room we don't see, but clearly his situation's not that much better off since he also lives here and has this exhausting thankless job) at least has his crappy little back office as some kind of sanctum. i dunno this is kind of an architecty take on the movie but given how much time we spend in this hotel and running along its access galleries and up and down its stairs, and then going up and down this crappy strip of nearby retail, i do think space is important here.

This is true, but the exteriors  – the interstate, the other hotels, the restaurant – are shot so anonymously. If this was indeed shot in Kissimmee, the movie doesn't pinpoint the odd randomness of stuff on I-4: a Ponderosa steakhouse next to a five-star Hilton, for instance. Some of this anonymity, I suppose, we can excuse because the film in part is told from the POV of the children. Geography fascinates me most in film, and TFP's failure to reckon with it was one of its disappointments. American Honey comes up a lot because it covers much the same ground (hardscrabble lives in fleabag hotels), but every one of its locations is precisely observed, even from the woozy POV of the drugged-out kids.

As someone who's never been to Orlando, i thought the 'travelogue' elements were OK. It's not his responsibility to scrupulously convey real-world geography in his film.

If the primary mode is (neo)realism, it's a very mannered sort, starting with watchful-angel hotel manager.

It's not his responsibility to scrupulously convey real-world geography in his film.

for the hundredth time, I'm not looking for a director to document reality: it's to get the texture, the weirdness, of reality, most of which this film misses. And, yes, Dafoe is out of De Sica.

The idea that the exteriors are shot anonymously is the stupidest thing you've said about the film so far, Alfred, and that's saying a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsbeXz4Chag

Anonymously? Those buildings are such a big part of the film, the phantasmagory, the way everything is a fake fairy tale, especially the shops. Yeah, the geography is off, probably in reality you don't go from the wizard to the ice cream cone and past the rocket ship (which is also shown a lot), but the film isn't a realistic depiction of the geography in of I-4.

It's not his responsibility to convey the texture and weirdness of reality as well, btw, that's just as dumb. Baker creates his own texture, and that you can't get past that it's not the I-4 you know is you're own problem.

Yes, Sean Baker, super-genius creating and inhabiting his own world.

The idea that the exteriors are shot anonymously is the stupidest thing you've said about the film so far, Alfred, and that's saying a lot:

The thread hadn't gotten personal yet, Frederik, and here you are.

fred! this is shaping up to be a reasonable and grownup thread where people work ideas out with each other. maybe you intend your tone to be that of a friendly joshing over a beer, but even if that's the case such joshing usually derails rather than enhances the conversation ime. and if you're just calling names to call names, grow up.

Okay, I'll calm down, but come on! Look at that clip. That is not 'anonymous', that's a very particular way to depict buildings.

I think the rest of Alfred's post elaborates a particular idea of anonymity different from what you're reacting to. I don't agree with him that it's a problem for the film but I do think he's right descriptively - a lot of this landscape would be true for huge swaths of exurban American. Indeed, that may be part of why I responded to the movie... the ugliness of the swaths of highway-side grass and drainage ditches and the feeling of being a kid hiking across parking lots between strip shopping resonated with this Atlanta-raised tot. See also my connection with the geography of The Lonesome Crowded West, an album which like this film announces in its title that it's about a particular place but ends up mapping out a more widely-experienced sprawl lifestyle. Back in film land, Over The Edge might be another good comparison, looking at a different economic tier entirely. Based on specific events in Colorado but the under-construction 70s version of suburbia looked familiar enough to me...

Well, ok, but as I tried to say earlier, that is kinda just not a legitimate critique. The film isn't obliged to actually depict Florida in any way, even despite the title. It's a mirage, a phantasm, it's a fake. And that is Baker's prerogative.

The idea that the exteriors are shot anonymously is the stupidest thing you've said about the film so far, Alfred, and that's saying a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsbeXz4Chag

I've seen people do more with a corridor. I really wouldn't lose my shit over this? And, given the way the last min was shot, I wouldn't say he has much of a feeling for these things..

imo legitimate critique is that which makes the conversation more interesting. alfred more than passes the test; proclaiming flatly that he doesn't, doesn't.

I've seen people do more with a corridor.

https://theredlist.com/media/database/films/cinema/1960/shock-corridor/019-shock-corridor-theredlist.jpg

Geography fascinates me most in film

I don't think even Manny Farber would've said this.

I don't remember what Farber said about Antonioni.

I meant "the use of geography." I'm not fascinated by shots of, I dunno, hills for their own sake.

That's just it. Unless you're balls deep for spatial a-g cinema above all else, which cool if you are , that's an oddball thing to say you cherish most.

Shots of hills for their own sake = Straub-Huillet's Sicilia!

It all varies for me, I mean there are prob films where I didn't give a shit about the characters or plot but walked away satisfied that it'd given me something to think about in terms of space. Or color, or politics or whatever. I found That Thing You Do basically enjoyable but mainly appreciated it, and think of it, as a study in how the addition of a good drummer turns a mediocre band into a great one. Good rock crit insight, well-told in a filmic way.

imo legitimate critique is that which makes the conversation more interesting. alfred more than passes the test; proclaiming flatly that he doesn't, doesn't.

― the pleather of pleather paul (Doctor Casino), 18. december 2017 16:17 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's this idea that kinda... infuriates me. Film critique shouldn't be 'interesting' if it means it fails to be accurate. Which is not to say anything about Alfred, but it's an idea I see a lot. Taibbi also wrote recently that the worst thing an intellectual could do would be to fail to be 'interesting', and I disagree so much. It's much worse being wrong. And I'd say the idea that The Florida Project isn't doing anything with space and geography is simply wrong. So much of the film is told through architecture and buildings and space and weird angles.

While posting on here is not a test to be passed or failed (lol) in that shot there are no 'weird' angles. When I saw the youtube it seemed lazily framed (Straubs are a good ref ponint for this), like they are pleasant static shots but they are never held for long (the very first shot) and Baker doesn't repeat the trick after the kids buy ice-cream as the camera just follows what the kids are doing. Seems bored and yet the buildings have that character and grotesquery by which concentration on them could reveal more of their character. We are left not knowing. I don't think much is ever done with light or shadow either.

The best thing is the choice made to film the buildings in the first place but he isn't doing anything much at all with them.

Look at the curve of the pavement. He uses a wideangle lens and lets it distort the buildings. That is quite unusual. Look at the balloon to the right of the shot, while he shoots the shop straight on that still leaves the composition off kilter.

Fair enough, I saw the cut balloon to the right not the pavement so much - the problem, still, is he doesn't hold it for long enough. I really didn't see enough of these moments to build anything like a comment on what he was looking at.

Its not bad - just wouldn't go ape over it, in terms of its look.

Different strokes, but I very much go ape :) I love it, and I love that he just does it and then leaves it, if he held it too long it wouldn't work the same. It's not Ulrich Seidl, and I don't need it to be Ulrich Seidl. It's not about getting the character of the space, really letting it live, it's about creating a new space, a distorted, off kilter, unstable space. It's kinda ugly by design. Just like the final sequence wouldn't be so good if it wasn't done on ugly iPhone. One of the things I've noticed trying to write about Baker is that I can never find screenshots for my articles that are actually from the film, because the press office clearly 'cleans them up', so to speak.

Check this image, from his Starlet:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SGkPrwCtpCk/UKeBiqDk1wI/AAAAAAAAD24/4hszoZk9mUs/s1600/starlet+8.jpg
It's the person sitting on the chair in the background, the fact that the electricity towers in fact aren't symmetrical, the interplay between things that are clearly well composed - the bench is placed right in the middle of the frame - and things that don't fit. I love that shit. I just absolutely love the cinematography of Sean Baker ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't need it to be Ulrich Seidl, and yet for that shot to take more of an effect it could be slower. Except that could then fuck up with the rhythm in which the story is told. I never noticed the ugliness except as an aesthetic that is already in the place, but you could just capture it if you shot it straight.

i need to see Starlet

The visual aspect is where I actually do agree with Frederik, who is able to verbalize it better than I am.

Far more so here than in his last one, arguably.

yes and I do admire that composition he selected

lol yeah it looks great obv, maybe play it at 0.5 speed if you're not good at noticing stuff

i also like the exterior view of the motel's balconies and people on them... bcz it recalls Lewis's The Ladies Man.

unforch not as funny

frederik b mostly otm itt and mostly p chill when he gets attacked generally imo (caveat: I don't frequent the US politics threads)

Haters are just jealous at how much time Frederik B gets to dig deep into festival fodder.

lol I'm very unjealous of that myself

I grant some of the haters could just be miserable people.

Actually if I see it this again it will be on fast fwd.

Happy to be bitter.

Board description.

not sure i want to see the kids being MORE hyperactive tbh

i saw this last night. this movie has gone BIG in France; it's playing at pretty much every cinema in Bordeaux, including the big commercial chains. i had something similar to Dr C's response

for the first half hour I'm like huh, this is it? did not think the kids were especially great; who in the world spits like that in a spitting contest (you sniff and hock a loogie as every fule kno); the mother is aggressively stupid and unpleasant (though always loving with her daughter); dafoe too much of an angel; events occur, drift away, shapelessly. is this some kind of tone-poem? and then i guess about an hour or so into it somehow the accumulation starts taking on an awful inertial logic. it's a creeper. by the end i was a mess. halley's mouth filling the whole screen, yelling "fuck you" at the world. dafoe helpless, casting lamely about for some control or authority or ability to make things better ("i'll get those fixed by the end of the week" "...ok?") And you know this is probably not even that unusual for dafoe. it must have happened many times.

the ending maybe wasn't great but I'm not sure what would have constituted a "great" ending. one weird effect of it was that my chest was full of sadness and pain (i thought the crying jag was excellent by the way and totally believable) and suddenly the credits are there. i guess that's what happens when you skip the denouement. i can't stop thinking about it in any case.

by the way for you guys saying these kids have never displayed any interest in going to disneyworld, so the ending felt contrived? i feel like you're.. missing the conceit of the entire movie?? these kids grow up in the shadow of what is bought and sold as every child's ultimate wish. of COURSE they know about disneyworld. of COURSE the have asked to go there. but from the earliest age they have come to learn that they can't. because those wrist bands cost $1700 for four. disneyworld is a foundational aspect of their existence, always looming as something they can't have. so they block it out. pretend it's not there. they know exactly why those fireworks are happening. they know it's not for jancey's birthday. it's this massive unstated thing in the kids' lives that's intimately bound with money and inequality. so that last sequence for me was, yeah, maybe a fantasy sequence (it's the only time we hear non-diegetic music) but whatever it is, it's jancey (that just autocorrected to "hanley" lol) deciding she's had enough of this, she's had enough of not getting what she wants, enough of kids being told what they can't have. so i dunno.. maybe not a "great" ending (again not sure what that would have been) but not untrue to the movie's themes or its characters.

Good shout on the Fireworks scene.

I buy that reading, Tracer, thanks.

Nice post. As I said above, I loved the ending--more than anything else in the movie. I didn't even think for a second about the plausibility (which you make a good case for)--I was just caught up in the look of it, and for the breaking-free aspect of it, a kind of ending that I usually find moving. Too many examples to cite: the ending of The Perks of Being a Wallflower would be a recent favorite.

it's the place where all things are good, where no one is sad. where else to go when everything's closing in? what if the adults are wrong? what if we CAN go there?

i watched tangerine last night. it was only okay. felt like the plot was being stretched out way too long. Could have been about 20 minutes long really. Actors were good, well except for the guy who played the pimp boyfriend. nothing particularly illuminating about its treatment of trans sex work. also the soundtrack was really irritating.

not best review

lol

sorry to disappoint

😉

I love tangerine (and films that stretch 20 minutes of plot generally)

That's still too much plot. Unless we're talking a 3+ hour film.

50% of this film was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MziZpcVkOB8

Busy Drag Queen just replaced Twin Peaks S3E8 on my top 10 list.

dvdscr of The Florida Project has leaked, that's my night's entertainment sorted.

TFP is still playing in DC for at least one more week. The idea of this movie fills me with grim flashbacks to American Honey and other glass-bottom boat tours of the American underclass. Should I make the effort and go see this?

Just see it and then spread your personal gospel about it.

I loved American Honey and thought this much shorter film was a gruesome farrago, so.

Having seen this, I stand by "glass-bottom boat tour of the American (and other capitalist economies') underclass."

I find it so weird that this 'glass-bottom boat tour' accusation has in general been so much stronger this time than it was when he did Tangerine.

Poor, badly clothed kids that live in the constant stress of housing + food insecurity are having so much fun tho.

There is barely any substance or emotional gravitas to the mothers or the kids imo, just the put upon hero played by Dafoe, who tries to help these "irresponsible scratter" mothers as far as he can within his job remit, he's the lone responsible adult. The unrelenting Yellow Smartie OD exuberance of the kids becomes very wearing as well. I think the A White comment about the class condescension in this movie is bang on tbh.

Some of y'all just don't like kids... 😳

Hey, some of my all time fave movies heavily feature children, like Germany Year Zero and Killer of Sheep. But not this.

ya i know i'm mostly being facetious (tho there are people itt who straight up said they don't like kids), i didn't think the kids were engaging enough to carry a movie without direction

Lol, soz I should have noted the emoticon!

I found The Florida Project agonizing for the exact reasons Alfred did. The movie gravely mistakes histrionics for drama; I suspect Baker's approach to directing the kids (and some of the adults) amounted to "just scream a lot and occasionally throw a tantrum and it'll be great." I liked Defoe well enough, though I have to wonder if I just appreciated the break his character provided from all the noise (the scene where he handles the creep hanging around the kids was good, the only moment in the film where I felt any real tension). The ending was laughable.

I'd say I'm baffled by the praise this film has been getting, but I'm not really: Baker scores points for being one of the very few American filmmakers these days to pay attention to poverty (I don't think the movie is condescending, exactly, just shrill to the point that empathy becomes nearly impossible). But this movie was so annoying that I actually might think less of Tangerine in retrospect.

Man, Red Rocket is one of <the> Texas movies. So grimy and gross and perfectly of its place.

Fun Fact: that donut shop isn't in Texas City, but actually about 100 miles west in a refinery city called Groves that's a little south of Beaumont/Port Arthur. It looked kinda familiar to me, so I dug a little deeper and it's just two blocks down from this old Cajun Dancehall & Seafood joint my Dad liked to day trip to see Swamp Pop bands.

This was a good fucking thread

100 miles west East

tracer hand with by far the best posts itt. the film nails the sickly quality of living poor on the outskirts of other people's dream vacation, stuck where other people go to escape. it would be unbearably corny if the characters talked about disney, outside of using it to run a scam. it also captures the ambivalence of knowing and living with people whose troubles are both unfairly thrust upon them and self-inflicted. just because you sympathize with poor people doesn't mean they can't be completely obnoxious, i should know i've been one. absolutely wild to me that anyone could come to the conclusion that the movie would be less condescending if the mom were less shrill, less grating, if she didn't lash out. imagine how fucking treacly TFP would have been if she were an angel beaten down by a hard life, if the irritants of her circumstances hadn't seeped into her. or if the kids with nothing to do and no supervision weren't innane little delinquents pouring stream of consciousness nonsense--and spit, and ice cream--from their mouths. so many little details rang true.. even the look of the pervert was perfect (i live a few miles from a waffle house that's across the street from an RV park imfamous for its sex pests.) but its not a perfect movie, dafoe's character was enjoyable but too soft. the ending was good tho, totally believable depiction of the desire for social mobility in the minds of children who don't know what class is but know that something is wrong

my only issue with tracer's take is that little kids absolutely do spit like that, hawking loogies is an acquired skill

yeah I actually watched TFP recently for the first time and thought it was pretty good

thank you karl...arlk. sadly i never learned how to hock a loogie but i'm a soft middle-class kid, i feel like these kids would know. but point taken

Watched this a week after Happy End and thought Haneke would get the mom to go on a killing spree at the nicer hotel -

The Cannes win today reminded me I’ve never watched a Sean Baker movie, so I just watched Tangerine — it’s good! Which seems to be the thread consensus on a quick scan. Obviously The Florida Project was uh divisive, I’ll give that a look at some point. Only one post itt about Red Rocket, more thoughts on that?

prob some micro-chat in here: Legend Of The Ten Zings - the 2021 ILX Film Poll Results Thread

I loved Tangerine! One of my favorite films. And that it was shot on an iPhone is astonishing.

I started watching The Florida Project with two friends, who both bailed when they realized it was a chaotic story about drug abusers and sex workers and their out-of-control children in a dismal motel outside of Disney World in Orlando. Seeing the unsupervised children run amok in that film almost did me in. Thankfully Willem Dafoe was there to look after them. Baker imagined a magical ending for them, which was kind of thrilling, but I wasn't convinced

Red Rocket was more mainstream and more comical maybe, but was ultimately about a lying aging porn star grifter. It was an interesting film, but I wasn't that sympathetic to the main character

The Florida Project is probably my favorite, but I haven't seen most of his work. (He's got eight features, at least a couple of shorts and quite a bit of TV work, and I personally don't know anything about them beyond his four most recent features, including the one that just won the Palme d'Or.) Thrilled for his win, hopefully this gives him even more opportunities. I know he's managed to thrive on incredibly low budgets and limited resources, but if he's got anything in mind that needs a whole lot more to make it happen, I hope this opens the door for him.

I liked Red Rocket but haven't seen anything else by him. My wife watched The Florida Project without me and liked it.

this should've been called Birth Control is a Right

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, December 6, 2017 8:48 PM

still lol at this

The Cannes win today

US director Sean Baker's Anora wins Palme d'Or at 2024 Cannes Film Festival

He dedicated the award "to all sex workers past, present and future," while also thanking the film's star, Mikey Madison, and Samantha Quan, his wife and producer.

...Jury president Greta Gerwig, the director behind the smash hit Barbie, called Anora an "incredibly human and humane film that captured our hearts" when announcing the award that was handed out by George Lucas, of Star Wars fame.

Yeah "human and humane" was definitely my feeling about Tangerine. The basic story could have been told in a way that just made everything about it seem awful, but it wasn't awful because there was a strong sense of agency for all of the characters. However fucked up they may have been, and however obviously marginalized in various ways (including the Armenian cabbie), they were all granted a sense of being complex and self-directed people at least within their circumstances. I wasn't expecting it to build to essentially a screwball comedy everybody-in-a-room-yelling ending, but it was legitimately funny and felt weirdly empowering to the characters to have it end that way rather than on some tragic note.

Also always a delight to see James Ransone, and interesting that the woman who played the Donut Time manager is co-producer on most of Baker's films.

Red Rocket was more mainstream and more comical maybe, but was ultimately about a lying aging porn star grifter.

...grooming a 17-year-old girl, among other things. What's amazing about it is how far he draws you in with that premise.

Some more Red Rocket talk starting here: Trump Films (the Best Films)

Plax comparing TFP to Busy Drag Queen was, in retrospect, a devastating blow

I've reread this thread and it's interesting to see all of the different points of view. Looking back, regardless of how I've felt about his films, they've all been memorable

I'm looking forward to Anora, it sounds like a leap forward

really enjoyed tangerine, didn't want it to end, very funny

only one of his i've seen is red rocket, which was great - like a less stressful safdie bros movie. they seem like an obvious comparison, at least for that movie about a magnetic shithead frantically trying anything to keep his life from collapsing.

Moonie is great in Florida Project but tangerine a league above

Looks like prince of broadway is on YouTube but where to watch four letter words?

Hey everyone,
For those who might be wondering why the post about Sean Baker's FOUR LETTER WORDS (2000) is gone, well, Sean messaged me so I had to delete it, the good thing is that we'll be able to see the proper Director's Cut next year! 🙌🤩 Thanks for the support, Sean! 🫶 pic.twitter.com/tiRWnxjjBa

— Jon W. (@rarefilmm) June 9, 2024

Karren so effortless in Prince of broadway

Got to see “take out” and it seems like the least of the lot so far, but only his second feature so understandable. Just a lot of repetition. Watching “starlet” later.

So starlet … Great ending. the sex worker stuff is almost an afterthought? The protagonist could have easily have been a barista or writer

Whenever I get Chinese these days I’m thinking about take out

Baker really has a passion for defending the rights and dignity of sex workers, and I really admire him for that. Like Jonathan Kaplan, a rare major male American filmmaker with a strong feminist ideology in his works

Red rocket I think is the least of the bunch

Tangerine > Broadway > Starlet > Florida > Rocket

Want to see four letter words tho. Someday

Of course I forgot Take Out

Tangerine > Broadway > Starlet > Florida > Take Out > Rocket

ANORA: ho-lee shit. back up the fucking awards truck for mikey madison

I'm excited to see it

screening in two weeks

can’t stop thinking about this. I lost it a few different times, including both when she and the failson got engaged, because I thought it was beautiful and at THAT LAST SHOT when see for yourself. I was sitting in my seat in a daze for 5 mins when it ended

Can't wait to see this

Waiting this to materialize within in 8-10 miles of where I live

(Or less even)

Brody:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/anora-is-more-for-show-than-for-substance

I haven’t seen this yet but this is a weird review. It sounds like Brody wants the actors to improv off the scenery or something? i would have thought that being “bound to dramatic logic” is something a director would strive for - indeed demand

And.. “The silent working class” is a “woeful convention of commercial filmmaking”? Setting aside the grammar problem, I’m not sure that “the silent working class” gets very much of an airing in commercial filmmaking? Certainly not enough to be annoyed by it??

Brody can be so either willfully obtuse or bizarro-world contrarian that I've really got no use for him beyond as a sort of surreal alternate-universe barometer for aliens.

the actors have to do most of the work, in Baker’s stead, to create the characters, who are, in substance, little more than the appearances and the mannerisms with which the actors endow them—and the rest of the work has to be done by viewers, in the form of emotional labor, to fill in the remaining blanks by way of their own rooting interest.

I could keep going but it just becomes totally nonsensical by the end. Surprised the NYer is okay with this poor level of thinking and writing - particularly about such an important filmmaker

I haven't seen the film yet, but Brody often criticizes a film that, in his view, either does too little to explore or suggest the characters' interior life or the world beyond what's shown on-screen. With the latter, it doesn't necessarily have to be the greater world we live in, it could be as small as a film that flows as if very little that's meaningful happens outside of the scene we're watching. I don't agree with the way he applies these arguments much of the time - it could very well be a 50/50 split of when I am in agreement - but the overall idea is sound. It probably explains why he's championed cinema vérité documentaries much more vocally than most critics from major publications - that idea is either baked into the concept of direct cinema or unavoidable without resorting to more intrusive methods that define a lot of documentaries today, for better or for worse.

I've cited him approvingly on occasion but as a writer he has trouble with the connective tissue of his ideas: paragraphs collide with each other. Often he just sounds addled.

he does not know how to watch a fucking movie

he's championed cinema vérité documentaries

Is that why he championed that bigfoot movie? Maybe he thought it was a documentary.

If you didn’t know better you’d think Brody was describing Barton Fink. I have a feeling that Anora… would not be mistaken for a Coen Bros movie.

Lord knows what he’d make of Kieslowski lol

Is that why he championed that bigfoot movie? Maybe he thought it was a documentary.

Which bigfoot movie? (Totally unaware there was one outside of Harry and the Hendersons.)

I think it was called Sasquatch Sunset? God knows there are probably fans on ilx, but I haven't seen it and never will see it.

I love brody because when we agree, I think he’s the most astute observer working, and when we disagree, I want to tear my hair out. I don’t think this review is his best work — I have a hard time making sense of his issues here

cool movie but i think i liked it less than his last few. lost me when it went full Oscar Bait Mode in the last third but until then it had the juice

loved the messy enervating cassevetes-style everybody screaming at each other dirge it descends into when they’re looking for vanya. i also respect the fake out they pulled in promoting this. all the trailers made it seem like it was gonna be about getting assasinated by russian gangsters, instead it’s about getting shouted at by your armenian godfather

also brody sucks sorry guys

My local guys didn't like it -- will watch next week.

Absolutely awesome movie

I love recommending Tangerine and people are like what?

Anora in 35mm is a wonderful experience. Glad he gives a shit about celluloid

Oh damn. Gotta take a week off and hit that

This mfer never misses

I think The Florida Project is a condescending failure -- and I liked Tangerine.

I wouldn’t call it a failure but it’s definitely on a lower tier

Wow. The Florida Project is pretty stunning. Maybe Willem Defoe’s best performance ever, or at least neck and neck with Light Sleeper.

dudes been in too many movies or something , I can’t see him as a character anymore. he’s always “Defoe”

Only there to progress the plot

Watch The Loveless and Auto Focus back to back

Having been to the Kissimmee area many, many times on my way to Disney, and having stayed in those motels, Baker anonynimizes them; it could be Topeka.

Dafoe's the best thing, agreed.

Saw Anora yesterday and really liked it. It did drag slightly with repetitiveness in the last third of the film (which seemed to be channeling something like Uncut Gems perhaps) but it was a minor flaw. He's particularly good at filming and using locations, so for example you get an almost immersive sense of the griminess and seediness in some scenes or the sheer jarring banal emptiness of a gated mansion.

Wow. The Florida Project is pretty stunning. Maybe Willem Defoe’s best performance ever, or at least neck and neck with Light Sleeper.

Also saw Anora yesterday. I had pretty high expectations, which I'm not totally sure it met, but I did like it a lot.

I thought it was really good. Not as good as Red Rocket though imo

ya as good as mikey madison’s performance was (and it was really great imho) the role was a bit one-note (shouting “shut the fuck up motherfucker” a thousand times), simon rex in red rocket was a masterpiece of shapeshifting skeeviness

i thought it was exceptional, exceeded my expectations.

my wife is armenian and half the men in her family look like Toros and the other half like Gornik so that added to our appreciation.

last scene of this made me cry

I sat there like half hyperventilating and half sobbing

i don’t think i even knew i was crying until i was halfway through the walk home

the whole microtonal play of emotions in the last twenty minutes of this was really something