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 :)

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.