C/D -- Charlie Kaufman

Adaptation, I don't think I made it all the way through. Maybe it's better than I thought at the time, but I doubt it.

Malkovich hasn't aged well.

Eternal Sunshine, OTOH, is brilliant, much better than I gave it credit for at the time. The only one of Kauffman's scripts that has a heart and emotions and human messiness, rather than just reading like a meta-joke or pure formal problem.

Adaptation I really liked. I think there was something profound in it, if that's a good word. Though most of the meta stuff was kinda pointless.

Confessions of A Dangerous Mind made absolutely no sense to me. It's one of those movies where you don't get bored watching it, but after it's over you have no idea what it was supposed to do.

Malkovich is cool for the first half or so, but when the plot turns into a competition of who controls Malkovich it gets kinda farcical and pointless.

yeah he's basically an existentialist. (or maybe a phenomenologist?) i think the woody allen comparison is apt, though kaufman's neuroses feel less corrosive (and therefore possibly less interesting). i like him a lot.

IOW, you wanted to watch a completely different movie?

Adaptation is a total dud. I was on the fence about it until seeing it for a second time.

Well, maybe, the movie started as a relationship between real people, but spent way too much time showing the interaction between Carrey and the imaginary Winslet. I didn't really see what was the point of it.

i mean gondry's hermetic style here is as much as the culprit for me as kaufman's writing. but for christ's sake shallow self-involved hipsters break up all the time and their solipsistic fetishization of their relationships AND their break-ups stay in their own head where it belongs!

i mean i just ask for one "wow these two are kind of pathetic huh?" kind of moment to validate this feeling but it never came.

I would usually agree with you 100% here, but he really does give a startlingly restrained performance in this film - it's a revelation.

Eternal Sunshine, OTOH, is brilliant, much better than I gave it credit for at the time. The only one of Kauffman's scripts that has a heart and emotions and human messiness, rather than just reading like a meta-joke or pure formal problem.

I see what you're saying, but I personally love his first two films for daring to be so meta and formal in an age of formulaic blockbusters. Also, I think they have more heart and emotional resonance than you give them credit for; it's just that those aspects tend to be a bit overwhelmed by the wackiness.

Uhh, that *was* part of the point of it, wasn't it? I mean, they've wiped their memories of their relationship then spend time scrambling thru the mind trying desperately to recover it out of regret. At least thats what I brought from it.

Caveat: I was quite stoned when I watched it, so my attention span was all over the place; I need to watch it again. Or several times, even.

That was the ENTIRE point of the movie.

look im perfectly willing to admit that playing under the covers with a lover* can be a perfect memory you wouldnt want to lose, a real life affirming moment and all that, but on the other hand it is a major cliche and a bit cloying the way it is staged. and this is symptomatic of the ENTIRE movie for me in a sense. elevating the banal and quite boring (come on, their relationship is boring!) visscisitudes of a typical relationship and subsequent break up to the heights of sublimity is just sort of, well, pandering to people's already heightened self-regard in these matters.

in other words: i wanted some objectivity and critical distance but didn't really get any. (tho this appears in the winslet character being a bit of a bitch, but not in the Carey character if i remember)

*I may have this wrong

I guess that must mean I have boring cutsey relationships and I am a neurotic, paranoid writer trying to find validation who is a boring sod.

Or something.

I don't think the point was so much that being in bed with Clementine was the greatest memory Joel ever had as much as it was each memory that was taken away made him that much more desperate to hold onto the ones he had left; the implication was that if he could hold onto at least one memory of her, he could get back all of the others.

Every long-term relationship I know of has extremely rough patches where the very things that attracted you to each other now drive you completely crazy; I thought the movie did a marvelous job of capturing this.

y'know, almost all movies are about imaginary people.

Totally spot on!

And I'm going to watch this RIGHT NOW too!

see one (1) Maysles Bros film

and it panders to people who think their romantic relationships are the ultimate existential experience that can be had. fuck that.
hrm. i can understand where this is coming from. but again, different viewers, different responses. i don't think this re: relationships, but i like the movie. i just thought it was about, well, life, not nec in an existential way.)

i like adaptation too. esp the ending.

hi john.

there was a twilight zone episode that had a woman without a mouth on it, and that gave me nightmares as a kid.

I think Eternal Sunshine is basically a good romantic comedy which, in a world where romantic comedies are absolute shite, is a bit of a revelation. It does have some visually stunning set pieces too.

BJM is great. I think it's lazy to criticise it for being Meta. I hate that knee-jerk reaction that people have to something being meta. It's almost as if, because the arm chair critic is clever enough to be able to know the correct technical term - metafiction - then it must be a shallow trick that only stupid people would buy into. BJM revolves around a really interesting idea. Its Metaness is secondary.

pandering to people's already heightened self-regard in these matters

Yes, because without this movie those people would see themselves as they are. Where by 'those people' I mean everyone ever.

See, for the last 20 mins I was all I GET IT AWREADY.

The first 20 mins of the Barris movie are astonishing -- big ups to Rockwell and Clooney -- then it just sorta flops around.

Adaptation really merits repeated viewing, too. crazy brilliant.

BJM revolves around a really interesting idea. Its Metaness is secondary.
I have a problem with this statement, because while it may revolve around a really interesting idea, once you see or hear that idea it's like OK, that's cool, now what? And there's nothing there. A movie has to be better than its synopsis (or gimmick) for me to care.

Eternal Sunshine is as meta and formalist as either of the other ones, but that nakedly emo bullshit core gives me a reason to want to see it again.

I personally love his first two films for daring to be so meta and formal in an age of formulaic blockbusters

It's no stretch for any screenwriter or director with half a brain to be meta. Gimme a formulaic blockbuster any day: at least the stars are prettier.

new project: Steve Carell as a screenwriter, Jack Black as his film blogger nemesis.

http://www.awardsdaily.com/2011/10/about-that-new-charlie-kaufman-screenplay-frank-or-francis/

to HBO, with Keener.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/charlie-kaufman-to-write-direct-hbo-series-starring-catherine-keener-20120521#

Okay, yeah, I'm 100% on board with that.

^well, what happened with this?

New TV pilot:

http://www.deadline.com/2014/01/john-hawkes-michael-cera-to-star-in-charlie-kaufmans-fx-comedy-pilot/

Okay, yeah, I'm at least 92% on board with that.

lol

http://www.clickhole.com/article/cinephiles-rejoice-here-are-9-screenshots-movie-ad-3714

maybe more appropriate for a spike jonze thread though

Anyone read his novel?

“ B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, filmmaker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer)”

Pass.

No but it is being aggressively advertised to me on various platforms

Is there any talk around here about his new movie on Netflix?

I’m only about 2/3 through and had to take a break. But holy shit. It’s kind of incredible.

curious even though i hated anomalisa

same on both counts

Anyone read his novel?

I did. It’s ridiculous and annoying and brilliant and beautiful. I missed it when it was done.

I really disliked Anomalisa too fwiw.

This kinda became a different thing in the last 1/3 or so and I’m not sure how a feel about the turn, but the first chunk of this is pretty incredible. Don’t think I’ve felt or thought this many things simultaneously moment to moment in a film. Really masterful.

Total sucker for Kaufman and can't wait to see this. Somebody start a I'm Thinking of Ending Things thread!

Watched last night. I was pretty stoned, which helped, I think, but I'm not sure I was convinced by what he does at the end.

Yep, same. But I already want to watch this again, and that says something considering how bleak and uncomfortable it is.

Really loved it

Found this completely insufferable. Think the Variety review is if anything not harsh enough https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/im-thinking-of-ending-things-review-charlie-kaufman-jessie-buckley-jesse-plemons-1234748508/

That’s an incredibly facile and surface read of the movie. Like there are so many other things happening beneath the surface that aren’t acknowledged at all.

“a bad-news “Twilight Zone” episode that isn’t telling difficult truths; it’s just a Debbie Downer dud”

c’mon

“In the sheep pen, a couple of lambs have died and are frozen solid, which inspires Jake to tell a lovely story about pigs who got eaten alive by maggots. I think it’s supposed to be a metaphor. (Life is like a pig eaten by maggots — you never know what you’re gonna get!)”

I’m interested to read some actual thoughtful swipes at this, but that Gleiberman review is terrible.

Real dunce shit

Like if you see this as a “bummer town sad sack movie about the impossibility of romantic relationships... and then it gets SURREAL” were you watching this shit over the top of your phone? There is a world of things about communication and relating, internal lives against external, hidden histories, shame and reckoning with the past, this play with the audience over sympathies and feelings about characters, the humiliation and horror of aging, the drifting away and changes of loved ones aging, relating to the world and creating yourself through the ideas of others, peace and solace found in fantasy. To say nothing of the fact that this couple might be some fusion of a grander self or maybe some fragment of the janitor’s psyche or whatever.

Just a ton of shit to chew on that that stupid review doesn’t even care to acknowledge. It’s hardly subtext for Christ’s sake.

Also, it’s legitimately laugh out loud funny at points.

Sounds like he wants CK minus the cynicism and navel-gazery which leaves...

He thought Anomalisa was great though. Easily the worst thing he’s done and knocked my appreciation for him down a few notches. This was a solid correction.

that review completely missed what was completely obvious to me, which is that everything that is depicted is the delusions and confused memory of a man with dementia. which is what I actually had an issue with, because it's basically St. Elsewhere meets Twin Peaks, the Return. . Anyway, despite some of my reservations, I did think it was compelling. I want to know who wrote the poem she recited; and also, is that a Pauline Kael essay about Woman Under the Influence?

Yeah it’s a Kael recital and impression. Solid framing in the Childhood Room shot, because the only two books that I really clocked were Kael’s and David Foster Wallace’s. Which obviously come up later. Also a DVD copy of They Live.

the poem is from the book she picks up in the bedroom - "Rotten Perfect Mouth" by Eva H.D.

thanks! yeah I couldn't see the title or the author on that but I wasn't looking very closely

The Wallace book also has the essay on David Lynch and the making of Lost Highway, from a script describing it as a "psychogenic fugue"...

I WISH I wrote this letterboxd review:

basically an amalgamation of everything kaufman sucks at. he spends the entire film briefly presenting these new philosophical ideas through his tedious dialogue yet never expands on these ideas. one minute he’s talking about existentialism and time, then about female liberation and feminism, then about unreciprocated love/relationships, then about death and aging, then about how desires and fantasies of the impossible (think of simping) can affect you. i’m well aware he tends to try juggling a lot of ideas with subtext and metaphors, but it doesn’t even feel like he tried making something meaningful from this. everything even slightly interesting is put on the backburner for an “epic charlie kaufman mindfuck moment” and pretty much ditches these ideas after it’s given some meaningless monologue voiceover about it. in the last 15-20 minutes or so there’s an abrupt tonal change, but its subtext was the closest kaufman got to elaborate on one of the aforementioned ideas, yet instead there’s just a plot twist that explains why/how everything in the course of the movie happened, and it just doesn’t work for me. i understand the film is supposed to be vague but it isnt concise at all, just messy and shallow. which is why by the end, how everything untangles and plays off doesn’t leave you with a strong feeling about anything, but more of a mild reaction about everything kaufman couldn’t make his mind up on.

https://letterboxd.com/childofbucky/film/im-thinking-of-ending-things/

a couple things I noticed: Kaufman obviously cast Plemmons as an ersatz PSH, and there's a clear visual allusion to Eternal Sunshine at the end (overhead shot of the car in the snowy parking lot)

Antkind was astonishingly awful and this movie was fine, but he already covered all of this material and territory in Synecdoche. he reached the apex of everything he had been working towards to that point, and in the 12 years since he's had nothing new to say. I don't think the impact of Synecdoche can be understated, I still think it's one of the most formally unique films I've ever seen and a movie that really did advance the medium. So my expectations were very high for the book, they cut down to almost nothing, and now this movie is more treading water, not as bad as the book, but with just a few funny sections and nothing moving. SNY is extremely funny too

I've only ever seen the "time avalanche" structure of Synecdoche (50 years in 2 hours, unevenly dispersed) used in one other movie, The Long Gray Line. It really works!

Flappy, I agree with everything you say about Synecdoche, so I'm kind of surprised you hated Antkind that much. It certainly required several mental readjustments, and comedy that dark is always tricky, but I was blown away by it!

Wasn't dark enough. Synecdoche was much funnier. Antkind was insufferable because of the tics of the character. You're essentially put through 700 pages of a Kaufman character's inner monologue, and it is predictably torture. I thought it was a pale imitation of Sabbath's Theater and to think the same guy made Synecdoche makes me very depressed.

Kael still otm about A Woman Under the Influence.

She is. I like it but my biggest problem with that movie though is that Gena Rowlands disappears for the second half, and like all Cassavetes movies, it's too fucking long!

first hour of this is banging. second hour steadily lost me then caught me then lost me again, a little too much absorption of other texts into the text, the poem went a long way but the kael recitation felt very tedious while it was happening, and then the "baby it's cold outside" argument, my god lol. of course i get it. we are in many ways just traces of other people, our ideas just cobbled together from ideas we've absorbed from others and bent through our perspective. but i guess i was disappointed to figure out that the main character is a trace, a compilation of multiple people, very similar to though not as my profound as my disappointment that anomalisa was just about how shitty this one fuckin guy is. i still kinda liked it. kaufman deconstructs experience to the point where it's like we're viewing a life from the inside out. it's never not formally exciting. it's just if the ideas aren't working all the time i slip right out of whatever effect it's trying to have. anyway, always worth it to see toni collette work

circa's posts make me like it more, and i certainly lol'd v hard at the robert zemeckis credits roll in the middle

not gonna spoiler tag this bc i think it's very apparent early on, but i loved the motif of the various names she's called during the movie literally calling her phone. so stressful

i liked this quite a lot (much more than synecdoche), second circas thoughts.

everything is tinged.

the balance of everything seemed right to me, the audience is certainly not spoonfed & has to puzzle out how to contextualize everything similarly to how the main character is tracking where/how things went wrong in his life

i think its exceedingly clever even just the framing conceit of drawing in a diff type of audience w/ "im thinking of ending things" as a break-up movie

how do you do that hidden text thing?

I found most of the film irritating and hamhanded.

jed, click the "show formatting help" link under the submit post button

Alfred knows

No. Both of you are wrong.

My hot take. Irritating, yes. Consciously so. I think everything up until when they leave the house is easily the best thing he’s ever done. So clearly.

I’m not even a big Kaufman fan, but there’s so much to chew on moment to moment. And it’s a masterful tightrope walk. Lot of people shitting on this don’t seem to care to actually reckon with it. How is this “ham handed”? Somehow inscrutable yet obvious.

I like synecdoche but it swings so hard and doesn’t quite hit. The artifice is too clear, distractingly. This did the same things in such a more primal (fuck I hate myself) Kafka way.

Synecdoche is much less dialogue dependent. The ideas he's interested in and returns to frequently are best expressed (imo) visually, with terse absurdist dialogue and as little speeches as possible. Someone or something is taking the piss out of PSH in every scene of Synecdoche. When it's two people just barfing out hyperlinks and suggestions of themes and ideas he's been working through--mostly through images--I wanted to put a fucking gun in my mouth. When illustrated--the always burning house, the fucked up floor in Being John Malkovich and the cave and the dream sequence, the bed on the beach and the childhood home set and all the disappearances in Eternal Sunshine--the stuff he's interested in is really compelling, to me.

When delivered in a car setting that reminded me of The End of the Tour (I was stunned when he actually mentioned DFW), with a pathetic D-level PSH clone gibbering in Plemmons, and again, this just struck me as ineffective and silly and immature compared to his prior work. I was really disappointed. Doesn't even approach the awfulness of Antkind though, Jesus Christ. I'm Thinking of Ending Things has a great case (Plemmons is very good, just given a shit role), the cinematography is particularly great, and like I said I enjoy when the film is freed from that fucking car.

No I don't relate to these sad fanboys who feel they have wasted their lives! I don't find them interesting. At least Caden spent the last 50 years of his life DOING something, even if he never opened the show... I mean, fuck, look at that set! Sets?

But that's really not the issue--it's being monologued at in the most boring fucking possible setting for a scene in a movie. There is nothing more dull than a car conversation.

How are those car dialogues not beautifully suffocating? It’s grueling and entrancing in equal measure. That’s when I immediately knew the movie was special, never felt quite that way watching a dialogue. Their looks, tells, everything, it’s one hundred things.

Those initial car scenes are so elegantly put together. I wish you guys could see what see in it.

Elegance of composition and detail are not the primary components of great art io, otherwise there are some amazing oil paintings of dead things that would qualify, e.g. this:

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/0b/44/16/0b4416711eb115118f1c908fc8e30973.jpg

They're just suffocating. Beyond what I've written in this thread I can only hold up Synecdoche as proof of what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about "elegant composition," I'm talking about images illustrated. This movie has a dearth of stuff Kaufman is dependable for--the ice cream stop goes nowhere--but for an example of what I'm talking about, the Betty Boop cartoons playing on the windshield to the janitor. That's beautiful--not dull car conversations that add up to nothing more than bad breakup riffs, pop philosophy hyperlinks, and relationship/loneliness territory that has been mined clean. The windshield shot is alone here--Synecdoche is filled with them. And these aren't paintings, they're moving images: the flower tattoo wilting and falling off of Olive's arm as she dies, the search blimps over the make believe city, the pink box... There's nothing in here half as compelling as any of that stuff. "A wife shaped loneliness"--come on. That shit sucks. That's just Adele in the first half of Synecdoche! "Everyone's disappointing the more you get to know them." THANK YOU! Excellent. ALL THATS' NEEDED!!! Her behavior says the rest.

Long story short, Kaufman is not Rohmer!

Elegance of composition and detail are not the primary components of great art

Who says? Of course they can be.

I think the car conversations in this were fine - exactly the kind of chat that two youngish, college-educated people who don't know each other that well might have on a long desolate journey together.

more paintings of dead things pls

the ice cream stop goes nowhere

this is the best part of the second car ride imo. actually hits the note of eerie lynchiness

the negative letterboxd reviews make me want to like this movie more bc they're just... too much. everybody seems to think that charlie kaufman thinks that he's better than them (or seem to have gotten their taste insulted by an imported pauline kael review) and i don't get that at all from this movie. they have this same complex about ari aster tho

ppl are extremely obnoxious about Ari Aster yes (not that there aren't legit criticisms or ehat have you)

I see flappy found it "astonishingly awful", but any other thoughts on Antkind? I'm really thinking I might be into a Kaufman novel that even hints at the same territory of Synedoche, but the reviews I've read are (unsurprisingly) divisive.

i am also curious about antkind, prob exclusively bc i heard the main character invents and gets obsessed with a gender-neutral pronoun, which could be and probably is obnoxious but i like the idea anyway

The gender stuff in Antkind is a thin joke played out over 700 pages. The character is a caricature of an over the top overcompensating "guilty white male," and a couple of the main characters are very similar to Sabbath's Theater. That's vibe--neurotic self sabotaging perv.

There are some really cool Synecdoche style images in it, lots of bureaucracy absurdism, the lost film itself and how it's described. If you're a fan of any one of his movies I'd say it's a necessary read. It has been really polarizing, like almost everything he's done (everything?). But my expectations were extremely high: this--and now the new movie--were the first new things from him since Synecdoche (the play Anomalisa had been out there for about a decade, I liked the movie).

Another really frustrating thing about Antkind is that it's always on the edge of getting interesting. He's dealing with film history, film's complicity in evil of the 20th century, how it lies and rewrites history in real time... and then five pages of self-cancelling worrying apologizing for being white or a man or looking Jewish while not being Jewish...

There's a lot in there and I may have skated over greater treasures. Not one I'm eager to revisit. I'm curious about others' thoughts though on the pronoun/white guilt stuff in the book, I just found it dysfunctional at a basic level (an unfunny joke played out throughout).

I'm weirdly more interested in Jim Carrey's Kaufmany-sounding book than Antkind.

I'm really thinking I might be into a Kaufman novel that even hints at the same territory of Synedoche, but the reviews I've read are (unsurprisingly) divisive.

I liked Matthew Spektor’s NYT review.

I'm curious about others' thoughts though on the pronoun/white guilt stuff in the book, I just found it dysfunctional at a basic level (an unfunny joke played out throughout).

My second quote is from flappy bird, not the NYT, if that's not clear.

Thanks! Sounds worth checking out at least.

its main purpose is to show how awful he is. It’s all fake; he’s a terrible human being!
― Cherish, Monday, September 14, 2020 2:17 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hmmm yeah maybe i should stay away

It wasn’t very funny, true, but its main purpose is to show how awful he is. It’s all fake; he’s a terrible human being!
― Cherish, Monday, September 14, 2020 5:17 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I figured as much -- was beating a dead horse for me. But the book is obviously using repetition and accretion for something, idk what though. And I keep bringing up Sabbath's Theater, but I probably would've liked Antkind more if I hadn't read the former, because Mickey Sabbath is a very similar character--physically and mentally--and there's some overlap with the Tsai character in Antkind (certainly the soiled panties). So a lot of the self hatred perv stuff fell flat for me because I'd read another thick book about the same thing last year. I don't read as many books as I would like to... when will there be time enough at last... 😔

Antkind is often funny tho. I love when he asks Ingo if he's read any of his monographs and Ingo, without missing a beat, replies "Of course. It's on my nightstand."

Brad--and anyone else interested in this aspect of the book--read the first 30-40 pages if you can. The joke and its entire extent are played out by then

I completely forgot the thing about this movie that I liked the most: It references Anna Kavan's book "Ice" at least twice, maybe more than that; there's also a fair amount of it that has the same feel of that novel. I feel often like the only person who has ever read any of her books, she's really under appreciated, so it was nice to see that kind of very public mention.

great book, I perked up there too

found this almost exactly equal parts riveting and annoying, which is a neat trick I guess

at least it was an admirably impenetrable way to toss a few of Netflix's millions into a snowy trashcan

I definitely agree w/ flappy that Synecdoche was his peak and the ultimate iteration of The Kaufman Thing, this convinced me he'll never top it

something that occurred to me a couple days after watching:

when they're in the car and she notices the abandoned house with the brand new swing-set outside and he responds irritably, he's frustrated because she's noticing design flaws in his own imagination. despite her being a figment of his imagination (or whatever) she has agency which threatens to derail his fantasy. i've had similar things happen to me in dreams, where some part of my brain suddenly becomes aware that it's just a dream, while another part feels disappointed or annoyed that the ruse is up

one thing i didn't like about the ending was i felt like the build-up of layers of chaotic meta-psychological navel-gazery was just getting started; it would've been fun if it had continued to tie itself into knots for another 30 mins instead of just bursting into song

I definitely agree w/ flappy that Synecdoche was his peak and the ultimate iteration of The Kaufman Thing, this convinced me he'll never top it

― Simon H., Saturday, September 19, 2020 12:12 AM (eighteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

haven't watched any of them recently enough but i found the end of synecdoche dragged on foreverrrr. i think being john malkovich and adaptation are my faves

flops i'm with you on the ending

also thanks for reminding me about the swingset exchange, one of my favorite parts of the movie

i was totally waiting for like, the names from the credit of the movie set in the diner to show up as characters

one thing i like about charlie kaufman movies is they seem really fun to write. i saw or read an interview with him where he said the usual line about how 'writing is excruciating torture', which is prob true, but i like to think that i'd have a blast if *i* were writing a CK-style screenplay

one thing i like about charlie kaufman movies is they seem really fun to write. i saw or read an interview with him where he said the usual line about how 'writing is excruciating torture', which is prob true, but i like to think that i'd have a blast if *i* were writing a CK-style screenplay

Synecdoche is a great movie about one of my favorite themes: trying to determine the correct way to lead "the examined life" (and how you completely destroy your life when you fuck it up)

I wanted to love this but

same. by the time the Kael recitation started the roomie and I basically exclaimed "oh, come on!" in concert.

especially since the Kael review has sharper writing than Kaufman offers.

I wondered aloud if the movie was overlong on purpose as a supremely meta reference to the revie. I think that was when I really turned against it, lol

The horror-movie setup & lighting & camera-work made the first half of this weirdly tense. I watched this with my wife and she was sure a jump scare was coming any minute ("Don't go in the basement!" etc.)

I can see the ending of Synecdoche as dragging, but that last scene with the old woman? The slow fade to white? the in ear command to "DIE"?

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/498/077/88e.png

Too on the nose

Maybe for you but it hit me in the gut! I was 16 when it came out but damn, still does!

Synecdoche is also his funniest movie

OTM

I love the overeager actor that doesn't age yet continues working with Caden thru Death of a Salesman up into Caden's 70s in the warehouse(s).

"I shall walk more... ambivalently."
"Yeah that's good, use that."

Jon Brion's score is perfect and I can't imagine the movie without it

i started antkind & im enjoying

found this almost exactly equal parts riveting and annoying, which is a neat trick I guess

― Simon H., Friday, September 18, 2020 11:57 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

at least it was an admirably impenetrable way to toss a few of Netflix's millions into a snowy trashcan

― Simon H., Saturday, September 19, 2020 12:07 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

More people should post about this movie because I'm not sure what I made of it but everyone so far otm. The Tulsey Town bit was my favourite, nearly leaned over into 'actually menacing' rather than flirting with it in an uncomfortable way. I liked Jessie Buckley's sort of drunk persona in the high school and the dumpster full of drink cartons was super-creepy to me.
All the lengthy quotations and reiterations of online opinions just remind me of that Little Britain (sorry) sketch where the romantic novelist is trying to fill pages: ""Do you know the Bible?" said Lord Harper. "No," said Geraldine. "I've never even heard of it." "Oh, it's really good. Let me read it to you," said Lord Harper. "Oh, OK then," said Geraldine. "Chapter One. Genesis. In the beginning God created heaven and earth..."'"

I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since watching it nearly two weeks ago, which I take as a good sign.

My problem with this is what it did with the weird/surreal. Commonly in art that deals with the weird either it's part of all the characters' world and they don't notice it as the proverbial fish don't notice the water they're swimming in (as in Synecdoche) or it's used to discomfit and disorientate the protagonist - and the viewer. This film doesn't take either of those paths. When a character in one scene is an ancient and bed-ridden old lady and immediately afterwards is a dancing housewife, and the protagonist obviously notices it but doesn't lose her shit, you know that for all the grand themes of death, aging, relationships etc, that the world we're in isn't real and nothing is at stake. My favourite bits were probably the two car trips, which realistically and painfully depicted her relationship crisis with just enough of a weird edge to keep you on your toes.

Question: who did she turn into in the second car trip, after the Kael monologue, discussing some book (I forget which)?

I haven't thought about it much since September which is a bummer

I go back to September all the time

do you remember

https://i.imgur.com/NYyGITK.jpg
i was your Butch

ack hueg!

Lol

She was very good, much better movie on the whole even if it was unsuccessful or uneven than Wild Rose, the only other thing I've seen her in

I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since watching it nearly two weeks ago, which I take as a good sign.
― A White, White Gay (cryptosicko), Sunday, October 11, 2020 4:25 PM (two months ago)

I started I'm Thinking of Ending Things a couple of months ago, stopped 20 minutes in--just wasn't in the mood--finally watched it this week. (Not in one sitting, though I of course restarted.) Cryptosicko's comment is pretty much where I am right now: I'm fairly sure I won't forget it, and there are strange films I forget immediately. I don't think I'd started the third season of Fargo yet when I made the first attempt, so I didn't know Jessie Buckley--she had some kind of year there. This is a lazy way to approach the film, I know, but I think my two favourite parts were when it felt like it was about to turn into a horror film: the scratched-up door to the basement, and the whispered warning from the Tulsey Town server.

I haven't read the novel the film is based on, but I have seen it classified as horror. I suspected that Kaufman heavily, er, Kaufmanized the source material, but this makes me curious to read how this material might play with a more genre-specific orientation (though, again, haven't read, so I have no idea if that's what the novel actually is).

the novel is definitely horror

"psychological horror" i guess

yeah, Horrorible

oh I thought you meant Antkind. hold fire on the author of I'm thinking of ending things

didn't love I’m Thinking of Ending Things while watching it the first time but it has stayed in my mind and I now want to see it again

My partner audibly hating every second of it made it hard for me to form a considered opinion.

i watched what the theater claimed was the official big screen debut of Ending Things with Kaufman there to talk, preceded by his new sad-poetry-slam-meets-john-wilson short Jackals and Fireflies.

i got to ask Kaufman a question that's been on my mind with most of his movies which is if his intent is to leave the audience playing with the puzzlebox and trying to keep up with his story or if he means for us just to try to hang on and enjoy the immediate ride. He said his goal was for people to appreciate the moment to moment experience of the film and not get caught up in the details, which gives it a framework for response on his terms: Jackals and Fireflies was not much to write home about but I found Ending Things equal parts disturbing, frustrating and very very good. Gonna have to see it again. It's very much an existential horror film with a knockout cast.