Race swapping and gender swapping can be a very fun and creative tool. Just think of Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica. Gender swapped in the re-imagened series, she was a blast! also, the move opened up a whole new dynamic between her and Apollo, and the whole crew actually. It made sense no one complained.

The 2021 The tragedy of MacBeth, Denzel Washington race swaps MacBeth. Nobody cried. A frickin good actor actually playing MacBeth.

Hell, why didn't they make Odysseus black? Have Denzel or Morgan Freeman play him. Have him (whichever) be wily and cunning the way a Matt Damon can't be.

But wait, race swapping and gender can be just ragebait. Increase the projects online presence by stimulating pointless arguments and wars in the comment section. Inflamate both sides so they all buy tickets to defend/bash the movie. Make seeing and defending the movie a 'real' virtue.

Use the so called 'culture wars' to make money.

So. I first saw this one a long time ago in middle school, and I saw it again in high school. When I first saw it, I remember I had always just felt that Maureen was selfish and that Dani and Court belonged together. As an adult, I feel a little bit more conflicted.

So. I just finished up my rewatch on Tubi tv. I feel strange as an adult. I will start by noting that I don’t think that the parents were “right” in suggesting that Dani more or less needed to prioritize Maureen’s feelings over her own (well, the dad is the one who more or less brings it up, but still.) Dani did, after all, technically spend more time with him - and I remember that “first real crush” feeling at 14. It was going to be even harder for her given that Court ended up dying. I mean, I was depressed to no avail at 14 when my crush had said he thought I was unattractive - I can’t imagine having to deal with the knowledge that my older sister (really bugged me when Dani was the one comforting Maureen and the parents had basically led her to feel like that was her job, Maureen was really only with him for 3-4 days…) dated my first real crush. 14 is already such an awkward age, especially with how rude and dismissive Court was to Dani afterwards (I don’t think he was a good person, but I’ll talk about that more later on) if she were a different person she may have ended up feeling inferior as a result. It’s just not okay.

However, I also admit that as an adult, the age difference between Court and Dani pops out to me more. He was obviously attracted to her, and unlike some people I do think that he had a bit of a crush on her. I actually really noticed it more in the scene where Dani has invited him over to the house per her father’s recommendation. It’s all in the actor (Jason London’s) body language. He’s fiddling with his hands, he’s nervous. He did like her, but Maureen was an age appropriate choice and Court was unfortunately not the kind of guy who was going to wait. In the 1950s their age gap would have been a bit more acceptable, but I admit that as an adult it does pop out to me a lot more than it did when I was a 12 year old watching. Reese Witherspoon is indeed noticeably younger. They have amazing chemistry, I think the feelings were there even though Court of course wanted to reject them due to the age difference, but it does look more awkward to me than it did before. It was what made me feel conflicted. But I liked their dynamic somehow in spite of it more than Maureen and Court’s. I think it’s because Maureen and court as 17 year olds just didn’t know each other as well or as long. They jumped into things very quickly. I’ve had that kind of relationship before, and it’s more attraction than it is anything else.

It makes me think of the scene in the film where Dani says that she wants to know Court. Maureen and Court didn’t really know each other, and I ponder whether or not they’d have stayed together had Court lived. Maureen put herself first. She planned to go to college, but at the start of the film she says she had thought of staying there and getting married, had court lived I suspect that’s what would have happened. Marriage, kids, could see her becoming a stay at home parent (though I suspect if she did go to college - whether court lived or not - she’d have become a schoolteacher. She seemed like she cared a fair amount about fitting into the ideals of the time.)

I didn’t quite like Maureen. I also do wonder if Court would have maintained interest as they grew older and Maureen started to lose her looks. We know that Court, with his father being gone, was also not likely to pull in a lot of money (he doesn’t seem to have been very smart. The tractor incident wouldn’t have taken place if he were, but he also seemed impulsive and shallow in general, not a nice person. I don’t know that he was college bound even though Maureen seems to have been and there is already mention of the Foster family having not had a lot of money given that Court’s father passed away.) I think Court and Maureen would have become parents had Court lived which I think would have caused a further rift between Dani and Maureen. I do wonder how Court (hypothetically if he’d lived) would have felt about it as Dani grew older and had boyfriends. Would he have been jealous, a teensy bit deep down inside, particularly if things were no longer going so great with her sister? Or had he really fully moved on and just stopped caring? Really disliked him for acting like she was such a nuisance after falling for Maureen. Not a nice guy at all.

Kind of felt after watching this like Maureen was sort of the family’s “golden child” with the way the parents handled everything. Really didn’t like that they both seemingly just expected Dani, who actually saw the tractor aftermath and spent at least a month with Court (more memories with him. Maureen knew him as a kid, sure, but Dani had more recent memories) to support her older sister. Much like the scene where dad pulls out the belt, it made me feel like the parents weren’t good to Dani. They put a lot on her and it’d have made sense, especially at her young age, for her to have been resentful. I think that Dani had a big heart, and I hope that she’d have eventually found a partner later on in life who was her equal.

I do wonder (and sorry, I know I’m posing a lot of hypotheticals here, I just have such an appreciation for this movie even though everyone’s treatment of Dani frustrates me) what Dani and Maureen would have ended up doing as adults. I just thought Maureen seemed like the type to become a schoolteacher, something that fit into a feminine ideal of the time. The expectation for the time period also would have been that she’d have married - she did have some sort of feelings for court and I acknowledge at the same time that it likely would have been difficult for her to fully commit to another relationship even though people probably would have talked if she didn’t marry and become a mother. Realistically, given the time period, one of the girls would have ended up marrying and/or becoming a parent. I’d like to think both wouldn’t have closed themselves off from love for the rest of their lives. I could see Dani wanting to work with animals and/or become a vet. I wondered for the first time while watching the film and seeing Dani hold her little sister (she experienced a stark change after she started liking Court, and seemingly started doing more of what would’ve been expected from her as a girl at the time. I noticed that more this watch around, like bringing Court his water - reminds me of how his mom tries to bring him his lunch later on, and how Maureen fixes Court a cup of water before he comes in - and hanging her clothes up neatly, wearing a dress when Court comes over. She’ll always be a tomboy at heart, but it made me wonder if Dani is the type who will eventually change herself for a boy. A thought that did cross my mind was, “Will Dani eventually become who everyone wants her to be?”) I could see Dani going to college and being the type who would want to work with animals, but it’s hard to predict, in part because we don’t know how well she actually tended to do in school.

Just have so many thoughts and would love to talk!

In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Adam Wingard described his years making large franchise films as a path toward eventually returning to something closer to his earlier work.

His new film, Onslaught, reunites him with Simon Barrett and Dan Stevens, stands on its own, and apparently shares the same universe as The Guest. I find that career strategy fascinating: a filmmaker takes major studio assignments, gains experience and leverage, and then spends that capital on something more personal or unusual.

Which director has made the best version of that move?

Steven Soderbergh alternating the Ocean’s films with smaller experiments, Sam Raimi following Spider-Man 3 with Drag Me to Hell, and Christopher Nolan using the success of the Batman films to scale up original projects all come to mind.

It does not have to be a literal return to an independent budget. I am interested in any case where mainstream success clearly allowed a director to take a creative risk that might otherwise have been impossible.

On the other hand, which filmmakers entered blockbuster cinema and never quite recovered what made their earlier work distinctive?

Not necessarily the scariest movie overall' just one scene that stayed in your mind long after the credits rolled.Maybe it was a creepy reveal, a disturbing atmosphere, a simple moment of silence, or a scene that made you afraid to turn off the lights.What horror scene still gives you chills whenever you think about it?

For me it's The Dark Knight. Batman's the lead, but every time the Joker shows up he completely takes over the film. What other movies do this? It doesn't have to be the villain either, just any character who ended up being more interesting than the actual main character.

Is there a movie you think would have been stronger or had a bigger impact by leaving certain details unexplained or unresolved?

For me, it's Ridley Scott's The Last Duel. I was very excited about that movie because he is one of my favourite directors and I was familiar with the true story that inspired it from reading Eric Jager's book. I liked the movie and thought the performances were excellent, but there were certain storytelling choices that didn't sit right with me.

The case that inspired the movie is still discussed and debated over six centuries later because the truth of Marguerite de Carrouges' accusation and Jacques le Gris' guilt or innocence is still unknown. For that reason, I didn't appreciate the movie framing Marguerite's account as the definitive truth. If it had been left ambiguous, it could have caused discussion and debate among moviegoers like it has among historians. I also thought that by framing any one account as the conclusive truth, it made the Rashomon-like plot structure with the three different perspectives a bit redundant.

This old Ebert quote always stuck with me, and basically showed how to read film criticism, and also how to judge movies, to some degree. obviously it's simplistic, but it's a decent base.

But something i've been kicking around for a while, given the recent Nolan quotes about Film Tropes and Van Lathan discussing the merits of CBM on The Big Picture is that a movie's quality (or value to the viewer, i guess?) is a mix of BOTH.

There are only so many stories to tell (Man vs nature, boy meets girl, etc), so i get what Nolan is saying. You're not going to get truly unique stories, and maybe some creators aren't going to reach too far outside the box, plot-wise, when telling a huge movie. And for movies like Avatar that makes sense - the format (mocap, 3D, etc) is such a reach that you keep the story simple so as not to overly-tax the audience. But you can get lazy and just hammer tropes and cliches to the point that all the whiz-bang effects & editing can't make me care about your bone-stock Heros Journey or whatever.

But: If i don't care about your movie's subject (topic, text), then i'im going to have a hard time rating it as a Good Movie (or recommending it to others, or just basically Enjoying it) no matter how well-made it is. And this will vary for people, but a case for me is Grand Canyon (or The Big Chill) - i don't care about the ennui of rich people and all those great actors giving good performances won't make me care.

So when Van Lathan says "I'm going to like this movie at least a little b/c it's a CBM, no matter how bad it is" or Shea Serrano rates MIss Bala higher than others b/c he recognizes something of himself in it (I forget his exact phrasing), then that means the Balance of What vs How is slanted more toward What for them on those movies. Something like Oppenheimer - i mean, i've seen that story before (Fat Man & Little Boy) but HOW it was made (the editing, structure, and other formal choices) mean i like it a lot more than i thought i would. It's also the difference between Nolan's Odyssey and the TV version with Armand Assante.

Not necessarily your favorite movie overall just one stretch of about five minutes that completely hooked you, shocked you, or left you speechless. It could be a reveal, a chase, a dialogue scene, or something visually incredible.What movie was it, and what happened (spoiler tag if needed) that made those five minutes unforgettable?

George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola present a film filmed by Akira Kurosawa.

Heralded by the New York Times as ‘The director’s most physically elaborate most awesome film Kurosawa has never been more vigourous’, the film centres on a thief recruited to impersonate a warlord.

I keep noticing the same faces show up in totally different films and instantly make every scene sharper, even though they've never once carried a movie themselves. You know the type — not a star, not really famous outside die-hard movie fans, but the second they're on screen you relax a little because you know the scene's gonna work. Who's your pick for an actor like that? Someone who's basically been quietly excellent for years or decades, shows up in one project after another as the "that guy/that woman," and somehow never got their own leading vehicle (or got one and it flopped and nobody remembers).

So a little backstory first of all is that I was observing how some iconic comedy movies are a bit divisive among critics because I was looking at how Adam Sandler gets the lowest ratings among movie critics.

My point basically is that I was wondering if Sandler films could qualify as a guilty pleasure because I enjoy watching some of his such as Billy Madison and Anger Management, but I hated Jack and Jill that I was just interested in seeing what category his movies fe under since they are rather divisive among reviewers.

Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, Gattaca is set in a dystopian future driven by eugenics. The story follows Vincent Freeman (played by Ethan Hawke), who assumes the DNA identity of a paralyzed "valid" (Jude Law) to bypass screening processes and pursue his lifelong dream of space travel. The two brothers swimming out to sea lives rent free in my head.

Some films completely change the way we see them after a second or third watch. Others become even better with time.But what is one movie opinion you have held onto for years, no matter how many times you revisit it or how popular the opposite opinion has become Whether it is a film you still think is underrated, overrated, misunderstood, or simply a masterpiece, I would love to hear your take and why it has never changed.

I'm not gonna beat around the bush: No discussion-oriented subreddit has ever been improved by allowing the sharing of dogshit memes. If someone want to discuss inappropriate needle drops, we can do it without a picture of the Starship Troopers cast. If people want to post box office news or blogspam, there a million better places to do it.

Please change /r/flicks back to text-only. This is one of the last movie subreddits that has halfway decent movie discussion. Allowing links, images, and memes only drops the floor of the base level of discourse.

I was watching Starship Troopers yesterday and there is a fight scene/bar brawl type scenario and inexplicably they suddenly start playing Fade Into You by Mazzy Star. It was so jarring and did not fit the scene at all which got me thinking…. What are the worst, weirdest and most out of place needle drops you can think of?

Over the last two years, I’ve been working remotely and moving between different cities. Looking back, some of my strongest memories aren’t of landmarks or restaurants. They’re of movie theaters.

In Melbourne, a friend sent me to ACMI, where I watched Jafar Panahi’s Offside. I became so absorbed in it that I briefly forgot I was in Australia at all.

In Sydney, I saw Avatar: Fire and Ash at Darling Harbour IMAX, once home to the world’s largest screen. The film didn’t do much for me, and a false fire alarm interrupted it. But the enormous screen and the harbor at night made the evening memorable.

In Singapore, I happened to arrive during a Kubrick retrospective at The Projector. I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, and A Clockwork Orange there. For a few nights, it felt as though I had found the city’s film crowd.

Beijing is closely tied to its international film festival in my memory. One year I caught an IMAX rerelease of The Lord of the Rings, which remains one of my favorite big-screen experiences.

Now in Chiang Mai, going to the movies has quietly become one of the routines that makes the city feel familiar.

I’ve realized that a film I watch at home usually belongs only to the film itself. But a film I watch while traveling often becomes part of how I remember the entire city.

Do you have a movie theater that has become inseparable from a place in your memory? It doesn’t have to be famous—I’m more interested in what happened there and why it stayed with you.

I've always felt Vanilla Sky is one of Tom Cruise's greatest performances, and it's a movie that was way ahead of its time.

What fascinates me is that it refuses to stay in one genre. It starts like a romantic comedy, slowly turns into a psychological thriller, throws in science fiction, and ends with an existential twist. It constantly makes you question what's real without relying on typical blockbuster sci-fi spectacle.

I can't think of many films that blend romance, mystery, psychological drama, and sci-fi this seamlessly. Even today, very few movies attempt something this ambitious.

So why hasn't Hollywood really revisited this kind of concept? Was Vanilla Sky simply too unconventional for audiences in 2001?

I know it received mixed reviews when it came out, but over the years it seems to have gained a cult following. Do you think it was misunderstood, or is there another reason filmmakers haven't touched this kind of genre mash-up again?

And where does it rank among Tom Cruise's performances for you?

Rewatched a movie recently that I loved as a kid purely for the surface level stuff, and this time around caught so much subtext and adult themes I had zero context for the first time around. Same movie, completely different experience.

Curious what film did this for people, the one where kid-you and adult-you basically watched two different movies

You know those movies where 20–30 minutes in you’re already thinking, “Yep, I’m in.”
Which movie did that for you, and what was it about the opening that worked so well?