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 :)

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

Enjoyed this a lot but I felt like it didn’t offer much that wasn’t also in Tangerine, like they built a new slightly bigger movie around the bones of Tangerine. Kinda of the way I felt with Uncut Gems & Good Time. But still, really good.

Madison is obv great but I was also really taken with the guy who plays Toros, a really funny performance. Really fun seeing him in a very different role than the meek cabdriver in Tangerine (although he ends up doing the same stuff – running around and screaming at everyone.)

Yeah, I just loved the whole middle act of this. Ani, Toros, Garnick, and Igor are a great screwball team.

During the initial big fight at the house, I was howling at the comic cuts back to Toros in the car listening on speaker phone and already amped up to 10, screaming “WHAT IS HAPPENINNNNG????”

i saw at least one review that was under the impression that Toros was a priest but he is not. He was the godfather of that baby at the baptism.

I loved that it actually took him something like 10 minutes of film time to get to the mansion.

not sure i've seen a movie where the goons are as clearly miserable about the situation and what they're doing as this one.

The scene in the NYC courtroom made me laugh the most. After all that lead-up, the stupefying realization of how screwed they are.

someone compared the movie to Uncut Gems (in terms of the anxiety many of the scenes induces) and I felt that pretty accurate. the confrontation at the strip club where they extracted Vanya spiked my blood pressure. the shift from high intensity comedy to devastating drama was well handled too.

absolutely loved Mikey Madison. just the simple facial expression she makes when she realizes that Vanya truly is what everybody has said he is was perfect.

The first hour? Quite entertaining. Every one of Mark Eydelshteyn's line readings had me doubled over laughing. The Three Stooges were hilarious.

Then the movie goes on for another 70 minutes or whatever. Sean Baker's best, though. Every time y'all say you liked The Florida Project I turn into Morbs.

Red Rocket probably the best of the last four, but a better way to think of it is that they are all very good and rich in different ways.

this does kinda feel long, but the regular shifts in tone and genre keep it self-refreshing (and mean that any given hour will be just as compelling as any other if caught randomly. RIP TV.)


<3 Florida project, screenshot speaks for itself imo

I'm sure someone will post about it in 6 months on the streaming video thread: "anyone see Anora on Hulu?"

Pluto would work — I meant that a viewer can walk in cold at any point and get drawn in by the characters, follow the stakes, and pick up the motivating conflicts for the section they’re viewing… & thoroughly enough to be invested as the locations, stakes and relationships shift in the next section.

That's fair. I don't think Baker understands sex work as much as he thinks, or, rather the appeal of opulence brings out more of what makes him a solid filmmaker (a sense of absurdity, writing to sundry voices) than his representations of poverty.

After Tangerine, none of the films are about sex work, they just have characters, amidst an ensemble, that do different kinds of sex work. (I don’t read that variety as the writers professing the breadth of their authority, but I can see the reading.) eg Mikey’s grooming in Red Rocket isn’t saying anything about porn, it’s talking about his own toxic nature.

The first hour? Quite entertaining. Every one of Mark Eydelshteyn's line readings had me doubled over laughing. The Three Stooges were hilarious.

Then the movie goes on for another 70 minutes or whatever.

otm. final scene in particular was a major dud

RONG! final scene is what ties the movie’s chaos together

^this

nah final scene is sappy tired cliched oscar bait sorry. 'she's a sex worker so she's reverting to transactional mode to assert control of the situation, but ultimately she's vulnerable and collapses in tears at his gentle embrace' gtfoh

Should be final sequence, not just final scene. Igor turned out to be kind of a mensch.

Igor’s arc is the throughline of the second half. The actor keeps getting more and more to do with less dialogue.

(The fucking and crying is post-adrenaline/stress, not her stony hooker’s heart being melted by his soft touch. Both Mikey and Igor are in no place to communicate by sex or by speech at that moment, and neither work.)

i agree it's intentionally ambiguous about whether or not they're falling in love, but it's undeniably a moment of vulnerability, her attempt to take control fails

sic otm

the appeal of opulence brings out more of what makes him a solid filmmaker (a sense of absurdity, writing to sundry voices) than his representations of poverty

i kind of missed the poverty tourism tbh, 'poor person has her life Turned Upside Down when she meets a Very Rich Man' is such well-worn terrain in cinema

nah final scene is sappy tired cliched oscar bait sorry. 'she's a sex worker so she's reverting to transactional mode to assert control of the situation, but ultimately she's vulnerable and collapses in tears at his gentle embrace' gtfoh

― flopson, Tuesday, November 26, 2024 9:35 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk for me it was about realizing that no matter what you do you’re trapped. that was far more complex of a bummer feeling than actual oscar bait imo

also yeah sic otm

i agree it's intentionally ambiguous about whether or not they're falling in love, but it's undeniably a moment of vulnerability, her attempt to take control fails

― flopson, Tuesday, November 26, 2024 7:00 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think this is the right read, but I found it very moving

The last scene works, maybe the movie's best 'statement' about sex work.

the movie's best 'statement' about sex work

what's the statement? that sex work makes young women unable to see sex as anything but transactional? seems kinda conservative and also unearned in the broader context of the film

The fucking and crying is post-adrenaline/stress

if it's just about an adrenaline-stress comedown, why make them fuck at all? they whole last half hour of the movie--igor's puppy dog eyes and chivalry as he chaperones her back--tees up the sex scene. an ending where she's just like "wow that was crazy" and cries, while less titillating, would've made more sense imho

alfred what did you think of red rocket

Fine?

I kept hoping Andrea Arnold had directed.

Ah this is the Anora thread? Loved this a lot

biggest lol moment for me was the TV slowly, ever so slowly, rising out of the slot at the end of the bed post coitus

I kept hoping Andrea Arnold had directed.

I disagree!

You thought it was bad?

More whimsy than fantasy, and for the first time Franz Rogowski annoyed me as a Holy Fool.

Ha, in my case he always kind of annoys me although I usually like the films he's in so this one was no stretch.

His talent for talking as if through a hass avocado shines through.

lol

this conversation about madison and intimacy coordinators is driving me insane

what

did a bunch of posts get deleted?

conversations can happen outside of this message board.

https://www.jezebel.com/mikey-madison-confirms-there-wasnt-an-intimacy-coordinator-on-anora

what does moiHRa donegan think of all this

that article refers to multiple conversations! (none of which have been referenced in this conversation)

I watched The Florida Project the other day. Wonderful film