I am looking for movies about life and/or the passage of time- not time travelling, but instead the melancholy, the bittersweet nostalgia of the days passing, brevity of life and the impermanence of things. Topics like how your life decisions impact or alter the course of life, maybe regrets can be part of it too. I think there is a Japanese word for it- mono no aware.

Any recommendations would be appreciated.

So I just watched Take Me to the River tonight. It wasn't what I was expecting because the genre said "thriller" so I thought something crazy would happen but nothing did. The whole movie is filmed in a way where, if you were to read what was happening on paper, you would read about interactions that seem pretty innocent, but from just a few scenes in onwards you get a really strong feeling of unease. The movie actually ended when I figured we were about halfway through and I was surprised to see the credits start rolling.

I thought about it afterwards and thought I mostly understood what happened, except one thing. This was the ultimately revealed backstory of the movie to me: When Keith and Cindy were kids, they would hang out by the river, and Cindy would accidentally do sexual things while her brother was giving her a piggyback ride, and the mom blamed Keith, assuming he was molesting her. Decades later, Keith's daughter happens to do the same behavior (how did she learn to do that??? Happened to have the same quirk, just runs in the family?) and Keith gets revenge on Molly by falsely accusing her son, Ryder, and forcing her to live out the experience of being falsely accused by seeing it happen to her own son, and he even tagged their car with threats like what may have once happened to Keith.

Then I looked at the decade old Reddit thread and they all seem to think that Keith is Ryder's biological father, that "chicken fighting" was a codeword for sex, and the reason Keith freaked out was that he assumed when the girl told him that she and Ryder were chicken fighting (it wasn't explicitly said to anyone other than Ryder) was that they'd had sex. I started to see it a little-- Keith teaches Ryder how to use a gun in a scene that seems like a red herring, but that's the kind of thing that a father would do with his son. The girl saying "they're not my real family" but then quickly taking it back also might allude to Ryder not really being his "father's " child, and apparently there was some "you're not really Jewish" line that I missed.

I guess that's possible but I think what might have happened was that Keith trained his daughter to "chicken fight" and act in a way that implicates Ryder for assault. If he did that, he is a pervert, and maybe the accusations against him weren't wrong at all.

It's hard to say. As a side note, I'm kind of horrified that they had an actual child actress do the chicken fighting scene. I don't think she could have fully understood what it was implied that she was doing when she was coached into that scene.

I did enjoy it though because it was a movie that was all about atmosphere and personally I enjoy atmosphere over plot, but I am left wondering what happened exactly and where the blood in the initial scene came from.

Did anyone else seen this?

Edit: also, I don't know if I'm stupid for this but for some reason I thought while watching it was that the implication was that the mom was trying to kill the brother by squeezing his neck so hard that he would pass out in the river

Edit: I just realized something else that points to Keith really being a pervert. At the beginning, when Ryder is first being accused, Keith said, "I already checked her, no lacerations." The girl is obviously past the age that her father should be looking at her privates. I think the reason Ryder told his mom that she did nothing wrong at the end was because he realized based on the girl (Molly)'s behavior that the mom's accusations were actually true.

I’m especially curious if you know about its scrappy, low-budget identity and the way it built movies around youth culture, genre films, campy and serious horror, and exploitation-era marketing. Do you see AIP as an important, inventive studio? Do you enjoy the old movies about girls, cars, juvenile delinquency, the horror movies etc.?

These days, those movies are kinda relegated to Turner Classic Movies. Some films are regarded as classics. Others are forgotten.

I think Samuel Arkoff helped build AIP into a major force in low-budget genre filmmaking, with a knack for spotting what young audiences might want and marketing films on a shoestring.

Thoughts?

Watching "The Devil Wears Prada 2" got me thinking about how the portrayal of working people in Hollywood movies, and pop culture in general, has changed over the years.

Looking far back, I can think of classics like "Modern Times" and "The Grapes of Wrath" addressing industrialization and unemployment, but I believe it was during the postwar period – let’s say, around the first peak of Marlon Brando’s career – that the ordinary wage earner who's defined by his work became a major protagonist.

Labor isn't at the center of "A Streetcar Named Desire", but Stanley’s brutality is rooted in working-class masculinity. In "On the Waterfront", Terry Malloy doesn’t just hold a job; he “belongs” to the longshoremen. When TV entered the picture, sitcoms about family life helped establish the idea of the dignified breadwinner who could support a home and family on a modest paycheck.

I think Sally Field’s character in "Norma Rae" is an interesting culmination of these trends. Her identity is tied to factory labor, and her victory comes not from escaping the working class but from demanding dignity within it. That movie came out in 1979, and I’d argue that the next economic and cinematic shift came right after Norma’s quest.

Because the workplace movies of the 1980s were less interested in celebrating the little American worker: their characters did not find (or could not find?) comfort in stability but went out into the world to climb the corporate ladder. By the time we got to “Working Girl”, that ladder was often in a glamorous skyscraper office, and this trend was still in vogue (no pun intended) when first “Devil" came about.

It was 2006. The image of the truly despicable corporate leader was still tied to the likes of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street”, and because Miranda Priestly was more of an asshole than a straightforwardly unscrupulous person, the original movie was not required to soften her. There was already a case to be made that Miranda took her work seriously and simply expected nothing but excellence from those around her.

I was prepared for the sequel to find more humanity in its devil because our social understanding of women in positions of power has changed, and so has everyday HR culture. But I naively thought this would be at the center of the story. Simply put, I expected another workplace comedy, only this time we’d watch Miranda having to put up with the “sensitivities” of her Gen-Z interns.

Well, there are some minor jokes about modern-day corporate etiquette: Miranda now has to hang up her own coats instead of throwing them at one of her assistants! But the core of the new movie is neither workplace dynamics nor the humanization of Miranda Priestly, though the character is indeed shown in a more positive and vulnerable light.

The core of this movie is corporate power. While the likes of “The Bear” and “Abbott Elementary” are here to prove that ordinary workers have not disappeared from fiction, their cultural relevance seems to have diminished in the era of celebrity CEOs and tech billionaires, who have dominated mainstream culture for years now.

From “Succession” to “Shark Tank”, we’ve grown comfortable with the image of the billionaire protagonist. Tony Stark, who made his Hollywood debut two years after the first "Devil" hit theaters, even added “genius,” “playboy” and “philanthropist” to the package. Watching someone climb the corporate ladder may no longer be as appealing, interesting or sexy as watching those who have already secured the top job or accumulated immense power and wealth.

I say all this because there are four different billionaire characters in the second “Devil”: the media mogul who owns Runway; this man’s son; the tech entrepreneur who might buy the conglomerate; and that man’s ex-wife. They are peripheral characters, but their presence shapes the entire plot: only their money can ensure the magazine’s survival, and the magazine can’t survive unless it keeps making them money.

The staff is under pressure not just to get Miranda’s steak delivered on time, but to get her the page views she needs to prove that Runway can remain financially viable in the digital age. That really threw me off the movie at first, but I get it: the sequel can’t give us the familiarity of returning home when the home itself has fundamentally changed, both in publishing and in Hollywood.

In the first movie, Miranda seemed to occupy the top of the hierarchy that mattered; twenty years later, Miranda's bosses are part of the picture; the workplace comedy hasn’t disappeared per se, but a new class of "business comedies" has emerged. Both the people who reached the top of the corporate ladder and the people who own the ladder are fashionable.

The movie itself is definitely not as fun or rewatchable as the original. But I can at least understand why they chose to go this way.

I am currently working on a syllabus for a course centered on films made in/by people from former French colonies in Africa and current departments in the Caribbean. For context, I am a new grad student in an Introduction to Pedagogy course, and this was the topic that was assigned to me by my professor for our first exercise in syllabus-making. Obviously, I have some initial thoughts about what to include, but I wanted to get some outside perspectives from those with a lot of passion for film about what they consider crucial to include on a syllabus for this topic. Looking mostly for film suggestions, but would also be open to any Black media studies theoretical texts to look into if anyone has something there. Areas I am more familiar with are Senegal and Algeria, but I'm struggling a little bit with where to start with Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, and Côte d'Ivoire. I'm also open to suggestions from France itself! I just need a list of films/potentially texts to start digging into before narrowing the focus of the course for the assignment.

Edit: I forgot to clarify, but I am not just limiting my search to narrative films. Any kind of experiemental/documentary/essay film would be great too!

I know I’m late to the party, but having now seen one of the most talked-about movies of the year, I sort of wish that Kane Parsons had a stronger script to work with in “Backrooms” because this was an impressive debut for a young director and, most of all, because the movie relies so heavily on his command of the visual concept.

I hear some found it boring, but I was fully invested. I found the atmosphere unsetting, and the unfamiliar logic of that place intriguing at first. I could almost feel some unknown presence around the corner. And then... the script took me out of it to focus on the characters’ pasts, their lingering trauma, their emotional issues, and the usual stuff you’d expect from a psychological horror movie with a therapist as one of the leads.

To be fair, for a story based on a web series based on a creepypasta, this one is better than it has to be. But the explicit connection between the Backrooms and the human mind gives the plot a misguided sense of self-importance (think “Being Charlie Kaufman”) without adding much psychological depth. And after the third or fourth fade to black to signal a character fainting or being knocked out, the difficulties of stretching such a thin premise to feature length became clear.

Since the visual concept is so powerful on its own, I felt that most of the creative decisions made to shape a more conventional plot weakened the mystery and narrowed the possibilities. That's how I see it, anyway.

Everybody of course has a little bit of cringe at their early creative endeavours — but if you do some research, you will see that there is a lot of evidence to show Eggers finds The Witch near impossible to watch. His directors commentary on YouTube (https://youtu.be/K6FoU_CYlAg?si=b7hguxljhexZXRsk) kind of explains it — he seems very bogged down in extremely obscure historical details that only he and like two anthropologists would ever notice, and a handful of shots/frames that he (and really only he) says are imperfect.

And I don’t mean that he simply thinks it could be better (it would also be strange if he thought it was perfect, no notes) but he seems to think it’s basically trash that shouldn’t exist.

I point this out because The Witch is probably the most technically impressive debut feature in some time, and shows a great deal of control of process — other debuts, while good, often have flaws that even a layman would notice but forgive for being the first of something. The biggest sin The Witch commits according to its director is having the wrong kind of wood seams, and it’s a hanging offence.

The obvious answer is that he is a perfectionist, but IMO it’s not as if his later films necessarily blow it out of the water. I like a few of his movies but I find The Witch to be where he strikes a good balance between historical fidelity and an actual tangible character arc for the protagonist. A lot of his other movies don’t feel emotionally accessible in the same way. His perspective and great dislike for it is therefore interesting to me.

Anyway, posting it here for discussion. Agree or disagree, whatever.

So idk why even tho I love watching movies on my 75 inch tv .I just get more immersed when I am watching it on my tablet I sleep and watch while I am on the way to work or in my lunch break TV is obviously the golden standard but it's just so much more relaxing to watch it on the tablet

I wasn't always like this as I hated anyone who watched movies on their phones since I felt the only true way to experience cinema is through TV or max a laptop

Is Full Metal Jacket now Kubrick’s most misunderstood film?  Does it deserve more appreciation, or is it still too little too late?   

When I was a kid, I used to love Roger Ebert’s reviews.  Today, it seems that most people still agree with Mr. Ebert: that the Parris Island sequence is stunning, but the rest of the movie falls apart.  

To admit my own bias, one of my favourite movies is Eyes Wide Shut. It’s not entertaining in the usual way, but it’s such a re-watchable, engrossing movie. When Kubrick’s final movie came out, it had a polarized reception like most of Kubrick’s movies.  And like most Kubrick movies, it seems to be appreciated a lot more today.

It got me wondering, don’t I undervalue Full Metal Jacket?  Honestly, it’s still a pretty hard movie to wrap my head around.  

I mean this in a loving way, but with Full Metal Jacket, the ‘film-bros’ seem to argue with the ‘normies’ a lot. Duality of man, man. We all have an inner film-bro and inner normie.

The film-bros point out things like:

- It is important to recognize that Full Metal Jacket is actually 3 acts, not 2 halves. Each act is pretty much 40 minutes and segues mi gusta in a clean way:  

• Act 1: Parris Island, from Hartman choking Pyle to Pyle shooting Hartman, and that cold, cold blue light that fades to black  
•  Act 2: Stars and Stripes, from Joker taking pictures of the prostitute with his camera, to the squad pushing another prostitute into an abandoned movie theater - fade to black again
• Act 3: The Sniper, which is characterized from start to end by the redness of fires, from the rabbit-toy explosion to Joker shooting the girl, before the flame-licked Mickey Mouse March (and don’t forget ‘Paint it Black’ in the credits!)

- Or to put it in a more substantive way:

• Act 1: The soldiers are trained by the rough-talking sergeant. The innocent Pyle is broken down and degraded until he turns ‘shadow’, taking vengeance against the sergeant.    
• Act 2: The trained soldiers go to war against another country. We first see the degradation of its people in the female prostitute, but then there are countless horrors. With the journalists and film crew, this section has a big focus on winning ‘hearts and minds’.
•  Act 3: A teenage girl, an innocent in the degradation of her country, has become a killer herself, wreaking vengeance against the soldiers. Then, when the girl begs to be shot, the same sound cue plays as when Pyle shoots himself.  Joker killing the child may be an act of mercy, but he’s turned ‘shadow’ as well.  
•  ‘Paint It Black’ Credits: Fuck. Look at what we’ve done, all of us as people /  But fk, isn’t this pretty rock ‘n roll?      

They also say stuff like: 

• Give Stanley some credit:  he was very knowledgable about war. More than half his movies are about it.  Might he be saying something worthwhile about Vietnam, or modern warfare, or the nature of war itself?
• The bombed out city was actually period-accurate to the real destruction in Hué. People are just yearning to see the exoticism of jungles, not the uncomfortable reality of a city that could’ve been much like yours or mine   

In turn, where I think the connoisseurs can be condescending and don’t give the main audience enough slack:

• After ‘Barry Lyndon’,  Kubrick’s movies are genuinely weird and puzzling. E.g. Jonathon Rosenbaum called him the ‘Great Confounder’.  He said Kubrick’s movies weren’t cold but actually full of emotions . . . it’s just that the emotions were “convoluted and elusive”. I’ve noticed the line readings become less conventional and somewhat defamiliarizing: think of that scene wherein Dick Halloran explains the Shining, the gay hotel clerk in Eyes Wide Shut, or the affected delivery that young soldiers in Full Metal announce their dumb, trauma-bonding jokes  
• For Full Metal specifically, the use of language is so crass to hear, but at its brisk pace, the movie doesn’t really stop and invite you to reflect how the grotesquerie of the language shapes the soldiers. It’s a big part of the movie, yet it’s under-discussed with no consensus about what it’s doing, that the language seems to have some sort of disturbing logic in its application.  
• The movie is very lean, but not at all as accessible as Paths of Glory or Fear and Desire.  Maybe it’s so lean that all the elements have to be telegraphed more eloquently, and Kubrick couldn’t control everything to his liking. For example, he actually did create a jungle set - it just wasn’t convincing enough to him. Then he had to shoot the Vietnam scenes before the Parris Island ones, not by choice. And he wasn’t sure how to end the movie himself.

My own take is that Full Metal Jacket is a very thoughtful, anti-war movie. Whether intended or not, Kubrick’s movies were much more moralistic after Clockwork Orange. With Animal Mother, I suspect an intention to show how killing one’s enemies can be heroic or exciting, and in Cowboy’s death, the pathos of friends holding a dead comrade.  But this is always accompanied by the trauma of losing one’s mind:  for the soldiers to function, they have to be thinking yet somehow anti-rational, regressively broken down into weird, infant-men lacking innocence - born again, born hard.

What do you guys think? After what we get in Parris Island, are the yuk-yuks more of a bug than a feature? Are the three acts knotted together well enough? Compared to other well-known movies, do we under-rate what Full Metal Jacket has to convey about war? It’s been almost 40 years since this movie came out, and a little more than 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War. As before, so today. They cover our eyes, but we already know.

Perhaps even more than Cassavettes, Sayles had to forge his own path when it came to financing and definitely didn't have the Hollywood pull Cassavettes had as an actor. Sayles, often working anonymously as a screenwriter-for-hire and then using the income to help finance his productions, very much depended on the individualistic work of writing to get his foot in the door. It's not easy to make a career out of scripts, and I believe his own films have netted him only a marginal total profit. He's always banked on writing for others as income and then done whatever the fuck he wants with the money.

He received the MacArthur Grant, or the 'Genius Grant' in 1983, which I'm sure helped with the self-financing. Quite an impressive feat. He fully-funded his first feature, 'The Return of the Secaucus Seven' as well as 'The Brother from Another Planet'. I believe he financed 'Lianna' himself, also.

Sayles, apart from directing, writing, and editing most of his work, has established himself as an actor's director; he's acted in his own movies as well as other people's, and he seems to have a rapport or understanding of actors that has earned him a very easygoing reputation. I think he's a proper workman of film.

Through this process, he's arguably created two masterpieces 'Lone Star' (1996) and 'Matewan' (1987), and a slew of genuinely great films alongside these. I find that the subject matter of his films is so granular that he's clearly in the business of making whatever he's interested in worthwhile for the viewer, and not at all bothered by what audiences would want from him on paper. It's amazing to see such a writerly filmmaker able to stack up a filmography as varied as his.

What do you think?

I went into this film with a pretty open mind, although I knew it bombed at the box office and received a fairly mixed critical reception.

I will preface by admitting my bias towards Hugh Jackman, as he's one of my favorite actors of his generation.

I'm not really sure what I would rate this movie, because I feel like the more I think about it, my rating increases, so I'm not going to apply a letter grade to this review.

Spoilers ahead:

I thought this movie was incredible. I don't know what exactly I was expecting, but it was certainly not what it was, in the best way. The opening sequence with the girl seeking revenge sets the stage for a character that is empathetic, but unmistakably evil. Kind of makes you wonder throughout the movie whether or not evil requires malicious intent, because Robin Hood breaks that mold. It also sets the tone right out of the gate, and let's you know this movie will not be fun, and probably won't be one for much redemption.

Every actor in this movie is throwing 100mph, especially Jackman. I think Jackman has the best tortured stare of any actor I can think of, and he carries this film with it. Murray Bartlett is pretty awesome as the leper, and I genuinely didn't even know that was Bill Skarsgard as John, that guy disappears into roles like crazy. Jodie Comer is also pretty great.

There's a lot I could keep saying about this movie that I really like, but I think I'd prefer addressing some of the biggest criticisms I've seen, because I genuinely don't understand where some of these critics are coming from.

First, complaining a movie is a slow burn to me is just beyond stupid. Go watch tiktok. But to elaborate on this a tad, I do think the film's tendency to rely on just looks, ambiguous themes, and a lot of exposition without dialogue probably just doesn't resonate with the modern audience.

Some people were also upset that it "revised" the legacy of a belove folk hero. I'm not sure if these people watched the movie, but that was literally the entire overt plot of the movie... All I can really say to that is go watch it again I guess and try to follow the theme of tainted/exaggerated legends being rooted in historically inaccurate accounts.

Then, one of the biggest criticisms of this movie I keep seeing is that the first half of this movies sets up Robin Hood as an irredeemable character, then the back half of the movie delivers no payoff... I just can't disagree more.

First, to me, Robin Hood in this movie is less of a hero/villain and more of a personification of death, or rather the punishment of vengeance. It's established several times in the film that Robin Hood is almost curse to slay generations of victims that seek him out for revenge, and none ever succeed. One of the core lessons of the movie is to NOT seek vengeance, and to learn to live with the life you have been left with. It's setup as almost a burden of Robin Hood to have to continue to deliver this lesson.

Second, there was payoff. The ending scene establishes a break in the cycle. Robin Hood dies, and leaves Margaret with the false heroic legacy in order to stop perpetuating the vengeance.

To add to this, the costume, effects, settings, were all just top tier.

I love the movie the Silver Linings Playbook, what does that say about me if anything at all?
Im an INFJ if that even matters for context. Im supposed to write alot more than this but its just a brief thing i want to share and i realize this is an impactful film to me. Its not as flashy as my other favorites big budget movies, this movie feels like it has less budget than HER or Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Today's film critics (whether online or professionally) tend to watch and critique movies mainly through an Interpretation lens. They look at the movie as a puzzle to be decrypted, with the goal to find the "true" meaning of the movie. However, there are two issues with this specific way of viewing movies; . . .

1. They risk approaching the common flawed critique of "I Felt Nothing", due to the movie being "shallow" according to them. They can't enjoy something because they venture too much into symbolism, metaphors, etc. Basically, these critics can't open themselves up to the experience.
2. The actual artistic aspects of the movie (what actually matters) like the screenplay, editing, production design, cinematography, etc. either goes unnoticed, or does get noticed but ultimately doesn't matter to such critics.

When evaluating a movie, modern-day critics don't ask questions like . . .

1. How profound is the plot progression?
2. How sharp is the dialogue?
3. How precise are the compositions?
4. How creative is the blocking?
5. How fluid is the editing?
6. How does lighting, color, shadows, etc. enhance the picture?
7. How does the screenplay and direction complement each other?

. . . they rather ask questions like "what does this lamp on the left side of the set represent to the protagonist? What does it symbolize?" And if you try to explain that "actually, this lamp here is to balance out the image composition, to make the set more pretty, or to add a sense of depth," they'll say that your explanation is too shallow and insists that the lamp is a deep symbol. This is basically the whole "curtains are blue" situation in a nutshell.

There are of course more forms of criticism that also have flaws; like moralism, intentions, auteur theory, etc., but Interpretation seems to be the biggest form of criticism that many would cling on.

in 2014, Matt Zoller Seitz wrote an article begging critics to write and critique the filmmaking, and now that we're in the big '26, nothing has changed. Case-in-point, look at the many video reviews and articles discussing the "true meaning" behind the movie "Backrooms."

A good allegory I have to explain this dilemma is this . . .

Two critics -one is a formalist, and one is an interpreter- are tasked to critique a volcano.

The formalist critic looks at the volcano and closely studies its temperature, pressure, PH Value, chemical composition, geological history, magma supply, gas emissions and all others matters that explains what a Volcano is and when it will erupt.

The interpreter Critic simply calls the volcano a god, and calls the formalist critic a fool for missing the Volcano's theological underpinnings and for their shallow critique.

Basically, the best way to fully understand the value or lack thereof in a movie is through formalist analysis.

Hello True filmers!

I just watched Paweł Pawlikowski's "Cold war", and am looking forward to seeing Fatherland as well as Ida. But I was just wondering, do the subreddit know of any other films like his? European "meditations" (damn that's a pretentious framing, but I'm sure you understand where I'm going with it) on European history? Preferably more recent ones. If we go further back there are films like Rossellini's "war trillogy", or Wajda's movies, Kieslowski's tricolor films. Two of these three are polish directors it occurs to me. Fassbinder's Marriage of Maria Braun is kind of a historical tale of Germany too. The Heimat TV-series. Please add more if you know of any!

Ingmar Bergman’s Swedish classic Persona premiered 60 years ago today, on October 18, 1966.

Going into this review I would first like to preface that I do not fully understand this film. But… I also do not believe anybody truly does. “Persona” is a film with no direct explanation or reasoning for the events that are depicted throughout its runtime. Parts of the film seem somewhat random, out of place, and overtly radical such as the opening projector montage. Although that montage doesn’t make much sense I think it’s truly brilliant and one of my favorite opening scenes of all time. It’s random, intense, and made me feel deeply disturbed, setting the tone of the film perfectly.

The film focuses on the story of a nurse named Alma (Bibi Andersson) taking care of an intentionally mute patient named Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) in an isolated seaside cottage. Throughout that loosely told story are several central themes such as identity, public mask vs. private self, grief, guilt and the burden of creation. All of those themes are roughly introduced in the somewhat random prologue with the projector and carry on throughout the primary story with Alma and Elisabet. Although the crucifixion, spider, killing of a lamb and a boy waking up in a hospital and seeing a wall with two blurry women on it seem unrelated to the overall story of the film it serves as a brilliant introduction to the tone and some of the general themes the film covers. “Persona” is a perfect example of how art doesn’t have to be fully understood to be enjoyed.

I was extremely fond of how Ingmar Bergman depicted themes of identity in this film. Towards the start of the film (before they go to the cottage) Alma and Elisabet are in a hospital room and Elisabet tears up a photo of her son. Later on in the film (at the cottage), Alma finds Elisabet’s husband outside calling for Elisabet. She greets him and takes advantage of him mistaking her for Elisabet and sleeps with him. After that interaction, Alma confronts Elisabet about why she tore up the photo of her son at the start of the film and starts to tell the story of Elisabet’s life for her and how after a failed abortion she gave birth to a boy whom she despises, but who craves her love. Right after those scenes is an iconic composite shot of each of their faces forming a single head. Sven Nykvist’s cinematography really stands out here. By utilizing an extreme close-up for the faces merging together Nykvist creates an intimate and claustrophobic atmosphere reflecting the psychological erosion.

 Through describing Alma taking on the “persona” of Elisabet, pretending to be her, and a literal shot of their faces molding together, Bergman shows how these identities we display to the public are maintained only through distance, and through minimizing that distance the personality differences shatter as well. It shows how we as human beings are porous vessels and are immensely affected by the desires, judgements and personalities of the people that surround us. 

“Persona” has a very unique sense of isolation, paralysis, and physical disintegration which I think are the result of Ingmar Bergman’s personal crisis at the time. While writing “Persona,” Ingmar Bergman was hospitalized with severe vertigo and depression. Throughout the film, you can see how Bergman’s psychological troubles at the time are reflected in the two lead characters, each having their own mental struggles. I believe that Ingmar Bergman’s hospitalization interrupting him when he was at the peak of his career directly influenced his decision to have Elisabet Vogler go intentionally mute during a huge stage production.

“Persona” is by no means a story that anyone can fully grasp. It’s riddled with various details and aspects that are never explained, and that’s not particularly a bad thing. The film ends with Alma leaving the cottage, a film crew capturing her, the boy in the opening montage being shown once more and the projector from the beginning coming to a halt. I believe that the intent of Ingmar Bergman showing the film crew was to strip the film of its own mask, breaking down the fourth wall. Obviously, there are people who are sure to disagree and interpret it differently but that’s the beauty of ambiguity; everybody has their own interpretation. “Persona’s” inability to be dumbed down to a single explanation is a testament to its brilliance.

I think part of why this film is so important today is because it covers the harsh reality of the difference between our public and private selves which is even more relevant in the digital age where we can all carefully curate a digital persona of how we will be perceived.

At any point Nathan spoke to Elizabeth Holmes, she was speaking to a Judge of public opinion.

Nathan mentions "I do not have a background on the science of the matter" yet he does not follow up with expert opinion, he does not examine the evidence or the claims present, nor does he interact with anyone else within the company that has experience with Holmes.

No mention of whistleblowers no mention of the litigious actions she took on employees. Nothing on the patients that with false blood samples. And building a board with no scientific scrutiny required... this is so much more than what was presented.

The subject (Holmes) came to A24 and Nathan Fielder with a documentary pitch and succeeded in their idea of a documentary that 'teaches people her human story'

This isn't a good documentary. Nathan is an unreliable narrator, but worse he is careless and reckless in his approach- and this is why he ends up confused. He never had a clear thesis coming into filming- because the idea isn't his.

I don't understand why people are celebrating this film like it's a good thing.

Edit: So you all know- I have since wided my scope of understanding for what constitutes a documentary- thank you for the discussion. Sorry if I come off a bit mean- not trying to- but c'mon we're having fun here.

First off let me say this is not something that I set out to do from the beginning, and so for parts of it the connections may seem a bit forced. I’ve been vegan since 1994 and I’ve seen tens of thousands of movies, and often after seeing a move I’ll start thinking of a “vegan angle” to it… I finally gathered them all together in a list and put them in an order that makes sense, at least to me.

Since images are not allowed here is a link:
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Row 1: Delicatessen — Ravenous — The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover — American Psycho

Consumption becomes a claim to power when another being’s body is understood primarily through what it can provide. In Delicatessen, the butcher turns prospective employees into provisions for his tenants: employment, commerce, and neighborhood solidarity sustain an arrangement whose victims disappear into its benefits. The vegetarian underground makes that apparent necessity contestable. Ravenous gives consumption a more expansive justification: eating people literally produces strength, allowing the predator to mistake the rewards of violence for evidence of its legitimacy. Manifest Destiny extends this appetite across a continent. CTWL locates the same entitlement within domestic and commercial ownership: the gangster treats his wife, the restaurant, and its occupants as possessions subject to his appetites. When his wife’s murdered lover becomes a prepared meal, the distinction between possessing someone and consuming them becomes brutally literal. In Psycho, restaurant culture and bodily violence inhabit a world where surfaces receive meticulous attention while individuals remain interchangeable. The opening’s bloodlike sauce makes elegant presentation momentarily indistinguishable from injury. Consumption conceals the encounter it depends upon: someone lived before something became available for consumption.

Row 2: No Country for Old Men — The Texas Chain Saw Massacre — The Silence of the Lambs — Eyes Without a Face

The distinction between ordinary practice and atrocity becomes unstable when familiar techniques are applied to unfamiliar victims. In No Country, the protagonist begins by hunting animals and becomes prey himself, while his pursuer’s cattle gun transfers the technology of slaughter into human encounters. Chain Saw develops that transfer through the handling of bodies: a person is struck, hung on a meat hook, and stored as flesh. The spectator’s horror depends on recognizing procedures whose customary victims rarely receive comparable identification. Lambs extends bodily appropriation into eating and clothing: one killer consumes people, while another treats their skin as material for his own transformation. The FBI agent’s childhood attempt to rescue a lamb interrupts that entitlement with an attachment to the creature marked for slaughter. Returning the lambs from symbols of her trauma to frightened animals makes their suffering matter beyond its role in her development. In Eyes, the surgeon’s effort to restore his daughter turns other women into sources of replacement skin; experimental dogs inhabit the same apparatus of confinement and bodily use. His daughter’s release of the animals rejects an arrangement under which one cherished life warrants the sacrifice of others. Affection becomes dangerous when it grants unlimited permission.

Row 3: The Face of Another — Au hasard Balthazar — Woman in the Dunes — The Fountain

The meanings assigned to bodies can determine whose suffering becomes recognizable and whose remains available for use. In Face, disfigurement alters the protagonist’s social existence, while a manufactured face restores access to recognition without resolving who he is. His treatment exposes the dependence of sympathy on an acceptable surface; his subsequent behavior complicates the assumption that recognizable appearance guarantees moral character. Balthazar moves this problem from appearance to allegory. The donkey becomes a Christ-like figure bearing humanity’s sins; returning him to a donkey reverses that movement, revealing the ordinary condition of beasts of burden beneath the sacred interpretation. His exhaustion requires consideration without first becoming redemptive. Dunes reverses the position of an insect collector who becomes a captive laborer: the man accustomed to determining another creature’s movements discovers that food, shelter, and developing attachments can coexist with coercion. His adaptation does not retrospectively authorize his capture. In Fountain, devotion to a dying wife recruits an experimental animal and an extraordinary tree into the struggle to preserve a particular human life. The conquistador’s body eventually nourishes the vegetation from which he sought immortality. What he approached as a resource becomes the world to which he must surrender his own body.

Row 4: Dead Man — Ghost Dog — Under the Skin — Cloud Atlas

The familiar positions of observer, hunter, and moral judge become unstable when humans lose their presumed authority over other lives. In Dead Man, the wounded fugitive touches a dead fawn’s wound, mingles its blood with his own, and lies beside it. The animal’s death ceases to be scenery: their wounded bodies establish a kinship that does not depend on the fawn possessing human abilities. Ghost Dog makes that recognition less morally reassuring. The hitman’s care for pigeons and confrontation with bear hunters coexist with his profession, exposing how an ethical code can protect certain lives while authorizing the destruction of others. His contradictions raise the question of how convictions acquire their boundaries. Skin deprives humans of the authority to draw those boundaries: men entering apparently intimate encounters become bodies captured and processed within purposes they cannot comprehend. Their vulnerability makes the consumer’s position reversible. Cloud Atlas organizes bodily use into an entire social system. Manufactured workers serve customers before their own bodies are recycled into food; the function imposed upon them becomes the justification for denying that their lives could exceed it. Their awakening exposes the circularity of the arrangement: being created for exploitation cannot establish that exploitation is their proper destiny.

Row 5: Never Let Me Go — Ex Machina — Blade Runner — The Lobster

Institutions preserve their authority by deciding which demonstrations of inward life will count—and whether recognition will change anything. In NLMG, the clones’ artwork is collected as evidence of their souls, yet the society benefiting from their organs retains the power to disregard that evidence. Their sensitivity can be acknowledged while their destruction continues. Machina places the examination itself inside an owner’s controlled environment: the inventor confines his artificial woman and arranges the conditions under which a visiting programmer encounters her consciousness. The programmer’s desire to rescue her becomes entangled with an expectation of personal attachment; her independent purposes expose the limits of sympathy that anticipates a reward. Blade Runner gives manufactured beings an existence defined by compulsory labor and a deliberately restricted lifespan. Their demand for more life exceeds the commercial purpose of their creation, while “retirement” disguises killing as the disposal of obsolete equipment. Lobster makes classification itself an explicit punishment: failure to satisfy society’s requirements results in expulsion from humanity into animal existence. The protagonist’s dog is already his brother, preventing species appearance from settling the question of who remains within. Those required to prove their personhood face an authority whose own right to judge remains unquestioned.

Row 6: Cow — Okja — Chicken Run — Babe

The movement through human predation, captive bodies, and manufactured lives arrives at the animals whose exploitation those analogies have made newly visible. Cow follows a dairy cow through a system that organizes her reproductive life, separates her from her calf, and ultimately disposes of her. Remaining close to her makes production perceptible as a lived experience rather than an inventory of outputs; ordinary care cannot cancel the authority exercised over her body. Okja concentrates sympathy through a girl’s relationship with one animal, then confronts that attachment with a slaughterhouse full of others. The rescue is real, but its success leaves the machinery—and its remaining victims—in place. Chicken Run makes escape collective: the chickens recognize that their insecurity arises from the farm’s purpose, not merely from an unusually unpleasant owner. The conversion from egg production to pies reveals how quickly a supposedly protected productive life becomes disposable when a more profitable use appears. Babe secures an individual reprieve by demonstrating an unexpected talent, exposing both the possibilities and limits of recognition through usefulness. The pig’s survival leaves a question for every animal unable to herd sheep: why should continued existence require exceptional performance?

Thoughts? Any films you would add or remove?

I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere but it would seem to not be a coincidence at all Lance Oppenheim released Primetime within a month of You Can See Everything. The same director is taking apart the convention of media and how it's perceived, along with the obvious parallels of how the subjects of dramatized non-fiction (fiction based in non-fiction?) feel/are impacted by the work.

I don't really know if I had any thoughts or feelings about Chris Hansen before seeing Primetime. Living through To Catch a Predator, I always thought it was a at best low brow, at worst extremely exploitive. However I never really associated the show with the man. After seeing Primetime, I can't help but think Chris Hansen's greed and willingness do nearly anything on the show to gain notoriety/fame portrays him as a bad guy.

Compare this to Elizabeth Holmes' portrayal in The Dropout and how she claims it has impacted her in negative ways. Now is Elizabeth Holmes a malevolent person? That's a whole other topic. But she clearly feels helpless to this portrayal in media as inaccurate to actual events. Even Amanda Seyfried admits as much - That it's just a movie and isn't expected to be completely accurate to the actual events.

Just really had me re-evaluating how the real Chris Hansen felt about his portrayal.

In many modern films, some of the most shocking and well-known scenes contain little or no dialogue. Instead, directors rely on ambient sound, or total silence, to build internal tension and move the narrative forward. Think of films like A Quiet Place, or the works of Andrei Tarkovsky, where sound (or its absence in many cases) forces the audience to pay attention to the subtle physical acting, rhythm, and environment. Do you prefer current or old movies?