Movie Critical Analysis.

[Animavore]

Decided to start a thread instead of just putting these in the movie thread all the time.

[felltoearth]

So a thread dedicated to youtube critical analysis as opposed to one that mentions the movie, who you may or may not have seen it with, an ellipsis and the coffee emoji?

[arugula2]

SPOILERS I think. (Edit: italics etc.)
[quote="Animavore";p="2746538"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAFMXrMl23c[/quote]
Just noticed this, and... woohoo! A movie I very much enjoyed.

However, home boy is full of shit. Here's why. (This will not be as tidy as I'd like. Very casual.)

His general point is that Ip Man 4 is consciously more subtle and nuanced in portraying its racism than Ip Man 2 was. Home boy proceeds to smooth out all possible wrinkles in, and to accentuate all favorable aspects of, just about every example he cites. (I only made it to ~3 mins into his Point Number Two, so someone can let me know if he does an about-turn in the final 8, I guess.)

The British boxer (Twister) is over-the-top racist in every scene. Except when, apparently, he's not:

When facing Chinese kung fu, Twister's reaction is mockery stemming from his confidence. His racist action isn't racially motivated. ("The winners have to apologize to the losers?"). Given the chance, he's probably just as big of an asshole to his white opponents, even if we never see that in the film.

How convenient, then, that we don't see that in the film. Let's do something else. Let's assume he's probably not going to be as big of an asshole to his white opponents, because he doesn't believe them to be quite as inferior as his 'yellow' opponents. But lookie here: in this very scene, Twister emphasizes "winners" by pointing to himself, and "losers" by pointing to... 10 Chinese people in front of him. And yes, he's a boxer, so he's going to use first person singular to express his white supremacist views. In a boxing ring. In the context of a boxing match. Between himself and one other person (or a horde of inferior Chinese masters, which is the same thing I guess). That very situational constraint might even be seen as adding a dash of nuance: because if Twister really is talking about his personal prowess as a boxer (he isn't)... then there's a 15% chance that it's moreso personal delusions of grandeur, and less so a belief in the superiority of 'whites' vs 'yellows' - regardless of how many times he himself insists otherwise. And if it's mostly his racism... he's made it pretty damn clear already what racial hierarchy he believes in. The movie makes it a point to drape him in the Union Jack when he enters the ring. And if his fellow Brits seem flustered by his bombast in front of reporters, in every other way they enable & glorify his behavior, not least by oppressing their opponents outside of the ring. Twister's racism is on full display, but that of the polite gentlemen around him isn't. That's nuance. (More on whether politeness = nuance, below.)

How's the gunny different... let's see:

The gunny's response is that of patriot[ism] and disgust. He will conspire with other people to eliminate kung fu from his territory. [...] In other words, for twister, it is 'I am better than you.' And for gunny it is 'we are better than you. [...] The gunny has a belief and an ideology.

Superficial distinction. (And also... false, just on the movie's own terms. Yes, the gunny uses first person plural to express his racism. But the movie disagrees with him on this very point... whenever it zooms in on the pained brown faces of his squad members. Home boy doesn't notice these, but he did notice the pained white faces in Ip Man 2. Curious.) It's superficial because, as a company man, the gunny has to always... always... always pretend that his will is the company's will. At the very least, the grunts beneath him are an extension of his will. In every sense that matters, except for the pronoun, he's overtly racist. A pronoun does not an argument make.

One other example: to highlight the pronoun, he shows a clip of gunny insisting that they're aiming to show the commander that "our karate" is superior to "their kung fu". For anyone who's watched Ip Man, or who's at all interested in the Chinese experience before and during WW2, "karate" here is synonymous with racial superiority. The villains in 1937 were the Japanese occupiers, and "karate" vs "kung fu" in this genre means "superior Japanese" vs "inferior Chinese". That's pretty basic. It would be impossible to represent a gunnery sergeant using any other language to express his racism... that's just as situational as Twister's bombast. It doesn't make gunny's racism more "nuanced", but merely more "appropriate to his profession". Except that he lights the training dummy on fire - iirc after his commander's tacit approval of the program, even. Oh and, he does outright declare the superiority of the white race - hence the pained brown faces. Not subtle. Even "our <something>" is superior to "their <something>" seems like much less subtle racism to me than a boxer bragging about his own personal prowess (especially considering that the kung fu is coming only from immigrant populations, ie Bruce Lee et al, which is why the gunny picks a fight with all of Chinatown). I'm not even sure what home boy is trying to argue anymore.

Politeness:

The gunny, however, works with others. Even when there's a conflict of interest, he can still be polite, simply because he's talking to someone who shares his race and belief.

In that very encounter (which home boy doesn't quote), gunny very clearly gives the white (policeman) guy an ultimatum: either he doesn't interfere with his need to beat the shit out of some Chinese bloke, or he's a traitor to his own kind. Not subtle. I believe he even threatens physical violence against him. Also, the white cop very pointedly does not quite share his belief. He’s ambivalent. His comically racist wife and daughter cajole him into taking action against Wan, which he does only on the supposition that Wan’s daughter is guilty of something. Hence gunny has to threaten/bully him (like his own wife more or less did).

Minor bs:

...staff sargeant never once suggests that kung fu is in any way superior to...

Baloney. Of course he does, by his tenacity in introducing the system to the group, escalating the issue to the commander, and agreeing to fisticuffs to settle the issue. Sure, it's motivated by principled faith in the system and a sense of duty to his group... but... any earnest racist can say the same thing. "Kung fu is superior to karate" isn't as overtly racist necessarily, but come on now. It's suggested. And it's racial, just by dint of its reactionary framing. That's how it always is in these movies... but the sagacious master (in this case Ip Man) only fights to defend the innocent. This other grasshopper went looking for a fight. Well-meaning, yes. But also boastful.

<His point about Master Wan.>

(I skipped forward a few minutes.) I can't find a script, but iirc, when he says "animals will never be grateful" Master Wan is slily alluding to Bruce Lee (and by extension to his master, Ip Man), not to white people. So because the video implies otherwise, that's dishonest - or else I'm remembering wrong. But Master Wan's entire character arc is one of fervent compliance with the white supremacist status quo (which would also explain his disdain for Bruce Lee, who is teaching kung fu to Americans, hence challenging a taboo). Master Wan is a Chinese Uncle Tom. Home boy notes that Wan is very harsh and unforgiving to Chinese dissenters. Uncle Tom explains that too. Home boy notes how Wan doesn't seem bothered with the fact that his daughter is a cheerleader... but then doesn't bother trying to explain this. Uncle Tom has this covered. Home boy also seems to leave out the major point of conflict with his daughter: that she dared stand up for herself when accosted by a group of baby white supremacists at her school. Ie, that she rocked the boat. She was supposed to stand and take it.

It's interesting also that home boy, when claiming (imo dishonestly) that Wan "would cast out Bruce Lee for being friendly with white people", is showing a clip of Bruce Lee being greeted by a brown person... walking in a group with other brown faces in it... all of them Bruce Lee’s students. Curiouser and curiouser. In this movie, all the brown characters are sympathetic... even the cop. All the brown characters undermine the machinations of the white supremacist status quo... sometimes by merely showing pain on their faces, other times through more direct means. But to make the movie fit into his contorted logic, one subtle thing home boy has done to these brown faces is, interestingly, to whitewash them.

[arugula2]

To be clear, I used “Uncle Tom” not in the original sense, but in the modern colloquial.

Sorry if I killed your thread - I was moved by the spirit. Keep 'em coming.

[theropod_V_2.0]

Saving Private Ryan:

In several scenes near the end of the film the coward dude has .30 caliber browning machine gun ammo belts wrapped around his neck, but the primers have been removed.

RS

[LucidFlight]

arugula2 and I have talked about this one before....


Sicario

During the opening scene, Emily Blunt's character shoots full auto burst with her M4 at a dude in the house. Full-auto in close-quarters battle is a bad idea in situations where they might be hostages present. The selector switch would be a total 180 from its safe position, so definitely not unintentional.

I know this film gets panned for accuracy, but, surprisingly, it's still enjoyed by many despite its odd mix of seeming to depict realism whilst missing the mark in a lot of ways.

This guy seems to like it, though.



(That's how I know so much about the M4 now. See, I'm an expert, me.)

[arugula2]

Ah ya, my final impression was that it's an otherwise good movie, with Blunt's character incompetently written or directed.

[arugula2]

I've had A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night bookmarked on Hulu for months, and I'll get to it... anyway, Mark Kermode's take showed up on my YouTube, and I've only listened to the first 2 minutes, in which he refers to two early Kathryn Bigelow movies, and how much he "absolutely loves" Near Dark, her 1987 vampire flick, calling it one if his "favourite films of all time". This has sent me into another rabbit hole because I'm a Bigelow fan, but I've only seen ~2 of her movies.

[arugula2]

Correction: it’s not on Hulu. I had it bookmarked on Kanopy & Hoopla. It’s also on Shudder & Mubi, I guess.

[Animavore]

I haven't watched this yet, it only just released, I wasn't that bothered by this movie but it was nothing special and the ending was a mess.
I expect this to be a hot take and probably the video that's gonna end up really putting Renegade Cut on the map and maybe not all for good reasons.

[Animavore]

Ok, so that's two disappointments from YouTubers whose content I usually enjoy in one day. I didn't find this video very compelling. It's not going to change any minds. I think the best part of it was in addressing the arguments against it, on the argument of "wimminz" he said he wasn't going to dignify it with a response.

[Fallible]

[quote="arugula2";p="2748808"]I've had A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night bookmarked on Hulu for months, and I'll get to it... anyway, Mark Kermode's take showed up on my YouTube, and I've only listened to the first 2 minutes, in which he refers to two early Kathryn Bigelow movies, and how much he "absolutely loves" Near Dark, her 1987 vampire flick, calling it one if his "favourite films of all time". This has sent me into another rabbit hole because I'm a Bigelow fan, but I've only seen ~2 of her movies.

[/quote]

This film is owned by us. That is all.

[arugula2]

I've started it. Now the unpausing-pausing begins. I think I'm watching 15-20 movies this way.

[arugula2]

Covid-19 put a wrench in the library's DVD-delivery system, so the order I'd placed for Jodorowsky's Dune (2013 documentary) has been on hiatus since about February. I've been having to peck at YouTube's offerings, and this one seems informative at least, an analysis of the "most influential movie that was never made" with background on Jodorowsky's methods and collaborations. In 2 parts (so far):



I wish I could get my digital hands on Jodorowsky's book on the subject. But it looks like it was never published. Maybe Villeneuve's adaptation will knock some sense into whoever has access to it.

convo with Jodorowsky's Dune director Frank Pavich:

[Mike_L]

A brief (one-and-a-half minutes) video, showing Emilio Ruiz del Río's ingenious use of miniatures and forced perspective on the set of the 1984 Dune...

[arugula2]

Part 2 of that Unmade Masterpieces thingy:

[arugula2]

I think this qualifies, barely. It's hilarious with just audio <- I recommend that.

[Animavore]

Do we really need another critique of Zach Snyder?



Yes. Yes we do.

[arugula2]

I’ve been planning a rewatch of Batman v Superman for some time. I wonder if there’s a “Snyder cut” without Cavill in it.

Added: and Eisenberg.

[JustStarDust]