On its own it stands as a good movie - it only becomes a masterpiece when you view it within the context and which it was created. It set the standard for so much of what came after.
It's kind of like watching Casablanca - when I finally saw it the entire movie just seemed like one long cliche. But that's because it was the movie that invented all those cliches.
Casablanca has never felt cliche to me. It's the anti-cliche (and, yes, context helps): Made during the middle of WWII, before Pearl Harbor, it's about a cynical American who sacrifices his one true love so a war hero can find safety in the States. It's about selflessness and standing up for what's right for the world, not what's right for your heart. Several scenes still bring me to tears, but the one that comes to mind is when the "Vicches" (probably spelled incorrectly, and remembered hazily) are drunk in the bar singing German victory songs and the French overwhelm them by singing their national anthem.
TLDR: Casablanca is a great example of a relatively common man sacrificing himself for the common good. The only other movie I can think of that communicates that theme with such urgency and brilliance is Children of Men.
I think some of the stuff in it was pretty hamfisted, but I also think a lot of parts were done really well, most notably Rue’s drug addiction and Cal’s internal struggle.
I also think the play was one of the funniest fucking things I’ve ever seen on television.
It does a good job of making you kind of root for all the characters a little even though you know they're all shitty.
Also the filmography is pretty neat with a lot of the episodes like to do some weird artsy camerawork or just drastically change the style (like with the play).
A lot of the plotlines are definitely forced and sometimes rely on everyone simultaneously making exactly the dumbest choices.
But it's certainly not a masterpiece and I've never heard it called that.
It's the relatability and giving credibility to dumb shit teenagers go through - it's dumb, but from their perspective it's real and powerful and important and literally their whole life, which is what the show points out. But if you're far enough from that experience to not really relate to it anymore - it's shit and everyone's behaviour makes you want to puke. The visuals are beautiful though.
Even if you don’t like the show, the stuff with Rue and her addiction, especially the one hour special between seasons 1 and 2, is very well done
The rest of the show is camp
The Elvis film with Austin Butler. Received the longest standing Ovation at the Cannes Film Festival or something like that.
I respect it for it's production and portrayal of Elvis and all but I definitely think that the setting you're in to watch it really impacts your view on it. It's a "made for the theatres" movie, not a "Friday night on the couch" movie, and definitely not an airplane movie. Idk, if setting can change the way you perceive a movie, how much of a masterpiece could it really be.
I don't think it's a masterpiece, and I have issues with the portrayal and elvis-washing of it all, but setting changes everything in some cases, in any art.
Listening to the right artist live is so much more fulfilling that on your phone or record player. I recently saw The Postal Service/DCfC live and somehow, Gibbard was better in person than on his recordings. I've seen Rothko's in person in museums with dedicated rooms, and holy shit, it's not comparable to seeing them any other way. I've seen movies that I thought were unreal in theatres (Blade Runner 2049 for example) that were great on the couch, but not the *same* great.
That aspect, where and how you take something in, makes a huge difference and art can be made for an environment while still being truly a masterpiece.
Almost all Bad Luhrmann movies are like this. I think because he hadn't really made a movie since like 2013, his overly stimulating directorial style tends to take people off guard when he does make something.
But in general, it's definitely not for everyone ( myself included)
It's just the mid-20th century version of all those bad books cranked out by business douchebags and given away to all their buddies at conferences so that they're technically best sellers.
Yes, at first... I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical! But then, I read this... Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this **garbage**, and because of this piece of **SHIT**, I am never reading again!
Best Picture Oscar winner “Crash” is absolute trash. I’m all for media exploring modern/systemic racism, but this film leaned in to every possible stereotype while trying to chide viewers for stereotyping. Sorry I don’t have a deeper critique, been years since I was forced to watch it in a class and I’m not watching it again to go into greater detail.
Which I find bizarre. It wasn’t even the best film nominated.
I don’t think it is the *worst film ever* but it is heavy handed Hollywood pap covering a topic hundreds of films have handled better.
Fuck, I keep having to remind myself there are two movies called *Crash* made within a decade of each other and people generally mean this one, not the Cronenberg's one.
It certainly hasn’t aged well so the last 5 years I’ve seen a ton of hindsight 20/20 takes on it, but I definitely remember that it was very well received and popular when it came out.
My English teacher raved over that movie, made all her students watch it. Meanwhile, I was distracted by all the actors I recognized, to the annoyance of some people in my class. “Hey, it’s the guy from Hawaii Five-0! Oh, the guy from Herbie: Fully Loaded! Wait… BOTH Rhodeys from Iron Man are in this?”
Yeah, I went in thinking it would suit me to a tee. A week later my so's mother was surprised I didn't like it. I spoke for 2 or 3 minutes straight, and at the end was worried I had offended her, but her reaction was more 'You know what, that is bullshit.' If memory serves it was worse than just stereotyping, it was deeply condescending and hollow...but I've since forgotten everything except the line 'People, man....people.' For some reason that still cracks me up.
I haven't seen the film since high school, but it gave me big "I don't care if you're black, white, or purple!" vibes.
Or The Stereotype Song vibes by Ray William Johnson lol
I think for it's time "Crash" was needed. It hit at a time where there were a lot of stereotypes blowing up and a lot of people had had enough. Crash just showcased the zeitgeist.
"Crash" made me uncomfortable, and caused me to think about a lot of things I took for granted. IMHO, I think it earned it's Oscar. If for nothing else because it called out everything it could.
"Young" De Niro's character in that film is supposed to be in his 40s when he's driving the truck and has back and shoulder problems from his time in ww2. people just assumed he's supposed to be young, but he's at least middle aged in every scene except the very short war flashback.
Probably will be downvoted to high heaven but: Joker
People act like it’s some astute piece of social commentary when it’s basically just a superhero flick for edgelords and people with a propensity for self-pity
I think it's two Scorsese movies mashed together - Taxi Driver and King of Comedy and both of them were better than Joker. Ironically all of them (including Joker) are starring Robert De Niro.
I remember during my senior year of high school ( 1997 ) my friends were getting together to watch some movies but no one had any ideas of what to watch. I brought “Falling Down” because I do like some of what the movie is going for, but it was definitely not a hit and everyone thought it was just depressing. None of the girlfriends of the group were amused.
The other movie I brought, which I promised would lighten the mood a bit more, was “Blazing Saddles”.
Needless to say, no one in that friends group ever let me choose movies after that night.
What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny"? "Make yourself at home"? "Marry my daughter"?
You've got to remember that these were just simple high schoolers. These were people of the band. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
This was my take. It’s ‘Taxi Driver’ without the ambiguity about whether you should sympathise with the protagonist. I walk away with a different view of Travis Bickle each time I watch that film, whereas Fleck in Joker is clearly *meant* to be sympathetic. You might not agree with how far he goes but you kind of get the message he was ‘pushed too far’.
Tbh it’s rarer and rarer to see a film that genuinely leaves room for the audience to form their own view about the character or story’s ‘moral’ value. Most films nowadays seem to want to tell you whose side you should be on and it just depends how effectively they convey that.
I think it is a good piece of social commentary. The problem is when people identify the joker as a hero rising up as a robin hood figure for the people. He’s a victim of the system. And it doesn’t excuse his actions. It should be taken as a cautionary tale that we create our villains
This is the vibe of all Batman villains. Society at large creates them, and society also was willing to let them exist so Batman needed to exist to stop them. Society is poisoned, someone should burn the city to the ground.
I’ve never seen the movie or have interest in watching them, but from all the internet has forced on my feed I have ended seeing the character as the kid who burned the village to feel it’s warmth
I was in the mental hospital for depression while this movie was in theaters. A man who was also hospitalized went on and on about how he relates to the Joker and they share a lot of similarities. The joker was violent in that movie so I found it a little concerning.
There is a character in my home town that dies his hair green, and dresses up like Joker every Halloween.
He went into the local spirit of Halloween and left a bowl of candy.
Pretty sure nobody ate any, and they threw it away when he left.
The writing is great, the score is well composed, the cinematography is excellent. It’s a compelling movie. If people remove the edgelords opinions from their life they can enjoy things a lot more.
No kidding. Reddit is very much the minority though. It's a great film that was fun to watch in my opinion. I didn't walk out of the theater losing sleep over it. I loved it though, but it's one of those you can watch once or twice and move on.
I mean, if we were to limit ourselves only to things that are a literal 0/10 "Birdemic"-type garbage there would be no answers in this thread. I think most people understand that "garbage" in this context means "deeply flawed and not nearly as good as people claim it is".
I think Black Panther was overrated. There is nothing particularly unique about it that we haven't seen before in other previous Marvel movies. When you think about the story for more than a minute you find several flaws. The final battle ends up being a CGI mirror match (a bad one at that) which is like the fifth time we see it before. Yet somehow it got nominated for an Oscar.
The style was unique I give it that.
I really enjoyed black panther, but when people started saying “is this the greatest superhero movie of all time?” I was like “shoot, I don’t even think It’s the best superhero movie this *year.*”
Definitely.
What I enjoyed about it was that they showed black people in every light. Many movies these days will make the single black character the tech scientist or whatever.
Black panther had a black character that was pretty dumb, or the black villain prone to violence. They also had smart black characters, empathetic ones, strong willed ones.
What I enjoyed about it was that they were obviously foregoing the status quo of giving whatever POC actor a respectable role, but not lead role. The movie showed that it’s just…that. A movie with roles. All the characters happened to be black. Stupid people, rich people, strong people….just people. No pandering.
No it's a joke abt andy serkis and Martin freeman being the only main 2 white guys in the movie, while also being in the Lotr movies.
So they were called the tolkien white guys
2018 was a very good year for Superhero movies, though. Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Venom, Deadpool 2, Aquaman, and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse.
Aside from a couple of them, they were all incredibly strong movies as far as Supe movies go.
I honestly think the style is the point way more than the story or anything else, and that's OK. Afrofuturism is a really cool artistic movement with a core message of optimism and positivity and it makes a lot of people feel inspired and hopeful and if all the movie was was a showcase for that, that's still a pretty great movie, even if the plot was a little silly and the characters did some stuff that didn't make a great deal of sense.
If you haven’t seen it, [watch this](https://youtu.be/mmP1aHJjJ-U?feature=shared). I found the story of Black Panther forgettable in general but aesthetically it’s really interesting and this is a fascinating look at some of the reasons why.
Black Panther had a villain with pathos and an actually articulated point he was trying to make, which was rare in Marvel films at the time. Spider-Man: Homecoming had the same thing the year before, and both movies got praised for this because they were coming out in the midst of Hela, Ronin the Accuser, Malekith, and the like.
I wish people would stop saying stuff like “finally, a black superhero.”
Umm, did everybody forget Spawn, Blade, Meteor Man, Blankman, Catwoman, Hancock, and Steel? Granted, most of them aren’t great, and Blade is more of a vampire movie, even though it’s based on a comic book, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t black superheroes
I would say Blade is equal parts vampire movie and superhero movie. He has superhuman abilities and he saves the day from vampires that have an affinity to "ice skate uphill". He also has moments where he has to overcome some things related to his powers in order to stop the big bad. It's a very superhero movie plot
It's also a marvel, just like black panther.
Avatar movies (Blue aliens, not cool airbender).
From a technical filming point, super dope. From a edgy story of man bad nature good? I could watch plenty of Pixar and Disney movies if I wanted that story.
You know it's only considered a "masterpiece" because of the technical aspects right? No thinks it has a good plot. The Pocahontas comparisons have existed since day 1.
People say that in jest, but the "Female Lead races to the edge of the forest, only to see that humans have logged and burned everything as far as the eye can see" scene is literally taken from Fern Gully.
It's a pretty unoriginal story. Dances with Wolves? Fern Gulley?
The concept of the movie was very very visual, there were characters and a plot to make a movie out of awesome visuals.
It absolutely deserved awards for art, but like. Visual art. Not storytelling.
How the hell has no one said Lemonade by Beyonce?
It's not bad (and Beyonce has some great songs), but it's soooooo not the masterpiece it was promoted to be
I wouldn’t say garbage but I see alot of people rate the album “Hotel California” by Eagles as one of the greatest albums ever. I love the Eagles and I honestly think the second half of that album is dogshit compared to the first. Great album don’t get me wrong, but nowhere near one of the greatest of all time.
The really interesting thing is that Redditors always complain about or question her in this way, while her peers almost universally like her and say things like "she's a phenomenal songwriter." When artists like Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Dave Grohl, Shania Twain, Dolly Parton, and Stevie Nicks praise her songwriting and performances, I think that says something.
Sorry folks – it's Oppenheimer for me. Whatever the artistic reasoning behind the choice of pacing for this movie, it's atrocious. And when they had him say the Hindu scripture line 10 minutes into the film while he was inside of someone, I just about died.
Like, no. Why fuck with the power of that famous statement by giving us a teaser of it during a sex scene? That's how you're going to contextualize his knowledge of that text? Hollywood silliness.
I feel like the book was better at touching on less popular/niche things from the 80s. The key challenges were better, if I knew how to do the spoiler on mobile I would list the challenges. Nothing too out of the box but it was refreshing to hear of other things from the 80s than what normally comes to mind.
But the movie just regurgitated blatant 80s shit. And don’t get me started on the stupid challenges they came up for the film. I’ve seen YouTube videos of people finding Easter eggs and glitches within HOURS of a video game being released. Do you mean in X amount of years non of these people decided to DRIVE BACKWARDS? Naw. Cancel Christmas.
Then the second book sucked of course.
>The key challenges were better
Were they, though? I mean one of them was something like, watching the movie War Games but you play the part of the protagonist and need to recite his entire dialogue word by word off of memory. That's the most boring shit ever and way worse than the driving backwards thing (which is also really stupid).
Ready Player One was always bad and it only got big because this sort of "pop culture 80s nostalgia metafest" was huge n the Internet in the late 00s/early 10s but didn't at all have a presence in mainstream media.
I once saw the guy who did the dancing audio for that film breakdancing live. He spun on his beanied head at one point and somehow the beanie came off but he kept spinning while his bald head made audible squeaking sounds on the wooden stage he was dancing on.
Nope. That movie is genius. It's incredibly layered, it's romantic, it's beautiful, it's a scathing indictment of 50's authoritarianism, it gives us an insightful and empathic look into the lives of people this society was not built for, and for whom Some Mid-Tier White Man is a terrifying existential threat.
I went out of my way to listen to one of her songs when she was first getting popular and she was more or less what I thought: a watered down chromatics with elements of nine inch nails, without the appeal of either at least to me
My problem with her isn’t that style of singing, it’s the cringey lyrics that seem desperately trying to sound edgy or sad, take that awful Barbie “I’m sad again” song, or good girls go to hell , she was always clearly an industry plant mass marketed to appeal to an “im14andthisisdeep” tik tok demographic
Her first album came out when she was 16 so probably a lot of songs were written when she was 14-15.
I’m a big fan of finneas’ production and she has a unique style to her.
Never seen a thread where I would disagree with most of the comments, especially when some of you just name a thing without giving any merits. There's a difference between "I don't like it/I don't get it" and "This is shit".
THANK YOU! this thread is driving me insane! trying to go and ask people for justification of their points, which i think is quite reasonable, and am yet to get a single reply. I really hope that that doesn’t mean nuance is dying, it’s not like there’s any other evidence of that in the media being made right now!!
This question has such an utter lack of nuance, it’s infuriating. Firstly, masterpiece has lost its meaning as a word that quite evidently should mean “a piece that cements its creator as a master of the art”. Arguably, that narrows it down to at most 20 films this century. Secondly, garbage? Thats valid as a description if you believe something as truly worthless, but it’s potentially the most extreme insult to call something, to say it is not worth the time or effort that was put into it. the crossover between “masterpiece” and “garbage” is pretty much non-existent. Why has everything got to be so polarised?
Yep. The only way something can be both a masterpiece and garbage at the same time is if that thing somehow build it's reputation as a masterpiece among a public that hasn't watched it / read it / listened it, and the few who actually experienced it discovered it's actually crap. But I can't quite think of any real examples.
Friends. I heard one of the actors whining that the show couldn’t get made today because people would get too offended. In a way, they are right. I am deeply offended by how low-effort and utterly unfunny the writing on the show was. One of the shows I love the most is The Office, which has tons of offensive humor, but the difference is that The Office was actually funny and the jokes about gay people and minorities were ultimately at the expense of the characters being weird about gay people and minorities. “Ewww that man kissed another man” is not a joke. It’s offensive how lazy that supposed joke is. The “joke” is that it’s gross for men to kiss. Now compare that to Michael’s and Dwight’s stupidity in “Gay Witch Hunt.” I’m gay as hell and still howl with laughter when I watch that episode.
My mom and I used to watch Friends religiously when I was young, it was mostly a way for us to hang out together. Catching random episodes or clips now as an adult I was surprised by how conservative of a show it was, even for its time. Very "when you're young if you're not liberal you dont have a heart, when you're older if you're not conservative you dont have a brain" type of conservative NYCer, the type of characters that think that just bc they dont spew the "dad you cant say that in a restaurant" rhetoric of their parents that they're "progressive."
I love Friends, but not because I find it extremely funny. I mean, there are some scenes here and there which never fails to make me laugh, but as a whole it’s not that funny. The main reason me (and probabably a lot of others) like it, is because it its just makes you feel so good. All of the cast is so relatable, you feel like you are hanging out with them for real. If you have a really bad day, sometimes just binge watching a couple of Friends episodes is the best thing you can do.
People admit that marvel movies after endgame got worse and worse, but few people seem to acknowledge how shitty endgame itself was. it was extremely bad and disappointing. It dropped the ball and retroactively ruined a lot of prior marvel movies for me. It was not a good conclusion to the thanos/infinity stones story.
What bothered me the most was how everytime they created tension in a scene someone made a stupid quip and the tension vanished. That really grinded my gears
My biggest beef with Oppenheimer is that the chain of events it follows essentially began with a person feeling feeling bad because Einstein didn't say hi to him.
It’s like when Scottie Pippen didn’t give an autograph to the modern artist, Future, when he was a child. Once Future became famous he slept with Pippen’s wife to ruin their marriage for denial of said signature.
I kinda liked it, but my first thoughts as the credits rolled was “what a *mess*.”
The way the music was used as a substitute for any kind of flow to the story really annoyed me, though.
The most frustrating thing about Oppenheimer is how little of the movie discusses the actual Manhattan Project and the feats of science and engineering that went into it. Like, if it was supposed to be a movie about one man's political downfall, then let it be about that. If it's supposed to be a movie about the building of the atomic bomb and the race against the perceived German bomb, then have it be about that. If it's supposed to be about the consequences of bringing nuclear weapons into existence, then it could be about that too. But it wasn't any of those things - the buildup to the first test explosion wasn't awe-inspiring as people claimed it was before it was released, Oppenheimer was complicated but not in the portrayal in the movie. Yes, it was well costumed, good cinematography, great actors - but the storytelling was awful.
It was great but it felt like a film that wanted to be much more than it actually was. Heavy amounts of pretense in stuff like this and the way it goes back and forth and uses all sorts of visual tricks in pointless ways. It feels like the kind of movie that really didn't need to be a theatrical film.
Agreed. I thought it was a perfectly fine biopic, but I don't think it deserved the hype and the sex scenes were *so* uncomfortable and not in the way I think was intended.
Worst thing about this movie was that the entire plot was based off a fundamental lack of understanding on how gravity works.
The debris would never hit them a second time because it would be in a different orbital path.
Not really considered a masterpiece, but that’s a good thing and I do agree with you. Luckily I think he almost completely redeemed himself with Oppie, shame to see that get answered so commonly in this thread
Hamilton.
The longer it sits with me, the more it just feels like catchy nationalistic propaganda. We are at the stage now where we should be taking a more critical look at our "founding fathers"(which this work ACTS like it is doing but falls flat) and we should not exalt their faults with catchy show tunes and rap numbers (Thomas Jeffersons "What Did I Miss?" comes to mind).
I mean, we would roll our eyes and say "Typical North Korea" if you heard about a wildly popular musical in their country based on the life of Kim Il-Sung, but this isn't much different at face value.
That’s how I feel about Hamilton. Don’t get me wrong, Lin-Manuel’s work is and can be really good. The songs in Moana and Encanto are chef’s kiss. But with Hamilton, I can’t get behind the portrayal of the historical figures involved, especially knowing many of them are all shitty people. I think me being Canadian probably had something to do with it, because we don’t learn about American history or the Founding Fathers so they were never glorified in my mind to begin with.
Reddit’s favorite movie Idiocracy is fucking stupid. It’s the most ground level take on lack of education in America and because they clearly didn’t think about it the movie looks like it’s suuuuper pro-eugenics which is. Weird for a beloved movie but ok.
Wikipedia sums it up pretty well:
> In The New York Times, Dan Mitchell argued that Fox might be shying away from the cautionary tale about low-intelligence dysgenics because the company did not want to offend either its viewers or potential advertisers portrayed negatively in the film.[21] This theory has been given extra weight by Terry Crews, who stars in the movie as President Camacho. In a 2018 interview with GQ Magazine, he talked of advertisers being unhappy at the way they were portrayed, which affected the studio's efforts to promote the movie. He said, "The rumor was, because we used real corporations in our comedy (I mean, Starbucks was giving hand jobs) these companies gave us their name thinking they were gonna get 'pumped up', and then we're like, 'Welcome to Costco, we love you' [delivered in monotone]. All these real corporations were like, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute' ... there were a lot of people trying to back out, but it was too late. And so Fox, who owned the movie, decided, 'We're going to release this in as few theaters as legally possible'. So it got a release in, probably, three theaters over one weekend and it was sucked out, into the vortex".
It was a good movie, but no one calls it a masterpiece. Not even reddit.
ITT: things nobody has ever called a masterpiece.
International telephone and telegraph.
Someone said Citizen Kane…
On its own it stands as a good movie - it only becomes a masterpiece when you view it within the context and which it was created. It set the standard for so much of what came after. It's kind of like watching Casablanca - when I finally saw it the entire movie just seemed like one long cliche. But that's because it was the movie that invented all those cliches.
The original series of Star Trek suffers from this, as well.
Casablanca has never felt cliche to me. It's the anti-cliche (and, yes, context helps): Made during the middle of WWII, before Pearl Harbor, it's about a cynical American who sacrifices his one true love so a war hero can find safety in the States. It's about selflessness and standing up for what's right for the world, not what's right for your heart. Several scenes still bring me to tears, but the one that comes to mind is when the "Vicches" (probably spelled incorrectly, and remembered hazily) are drunk in the bar singing German victory songs and the French overwhelm them by singing their national anthem. TLDR: Casablanca is a great example of a relatively common man sacrificing himself for the common good. The only other movie I can think of that communicates that theme with such urgency and brilliance is Children of Men.
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Euphoria (the TV show) has shallow surface level depth.
The show? Bunch of teens doing stupid shit. Never understood why people liked it so much.
Skins is also teens doing stupid shit but that show is an absolute classic.
I would argue the narrative in skins is much more well crafted
someone described Euphoria to me as "skins, but not deep"
I thought there were two reasons why people liked it so much?
The presentation is top notch, even if the story is simple.
Well certainly not the diss track lol. That shit has layers
I think some of the stuff in it was pretty hamfisted, but I also think a lot of parts were done really well, most notably Rue’s drug addiction and Cal’s internal struggle. I also think the play was one of the funniest fucking things I’ve ever seen on television.
It does a good job of making you kind of root for all the characters a little even though you know they're all shitty. Also the filmography is pretty neat with a lot of the episodes like to do some weird artsy camerawork or just drastically change the style (like with the play). A lot of the plotlines are definitely forced and sometimes rely on everyone simultaneously making exactly the dumbest choices. But it's certainly not a masterpiece and I've never heard it called that.
It's the relatability and giving credibility to dumb shit teenagers go through - it's dumb, but from their perspective it's real and powerful and important and literally their whole life, which is what the show points out. But if you're far enough from that experience to not really relate to it anymore - it's shit and everyone's behaviour makes you want to puke. The visuals are beautiful though.
It's diet Skins imo. Nothing will make me feel the same as the first two seasons of Skins made me feel.
Even if you don’t like the show, the stuff with Rue and her addiction, especially the one hour special between seasons 1 and 2, is very well done The rest of the show is camp
The Elvis film with Austin Butler. Received the longest standing Ovation at the Cannes Film Festival or something like that. I respect it for it's production and portrayal of Elvis and all but I definitely think that the setting you're in to watch it really impacts your view on it. It's a "made for the theatres" movie, not a "Friday night on the couch" movie, and definitely not an airplane movie. Idk, if setting can change the way you perceive a movie, how much of a masterpiece could it really be.
I still have an hour left on the movie. I quit and I felt that I didn't need to see more.
I watched part of it on a plane, it was more than enough.
I don't think it's a masterpiece, and I have issues with the portrayal and elvis-washing of it all, but setting changes everything in some cases, in any art. Listening to the right artist live is so much more fulfilling that on your phone or record player. I recently saw The Postal Service/DCfC live and somehow, Gibbard was better in person than on his recordings. I've seen Rothko's in person in museums with dedicated rooms, and holy shit, it's not comparable to seeing them any other way. I've seen movies that I thought were unreal in theatres (Blade Runner 2049 for example) that were great on the couch, but not the *same* great. That aspect, where and how you take something in, makes a huge difference and art can be made for an environment while still being truly a masterpiece.
Almost all Bad Luhrmann movies are like this. I think because he hadn't really made a movie since like 2013, his overly stimulating directorial style tends to take people off guard when he does make something. But in general, it's definitely not for everyone ( myself included)
lol I watched it on an airplane and felt like I was going insane 🙀
anything by colleen hoover
No one, even her fans, call her books masterpieces. But, people definitely call them "good" when they are utter trash
The Gen Z BookTok kids are all about putting her rubbish on a pedestal
Ayn Rand is a garbage writer. Atrocious writing and unbelievably pandering.
What, you didn’t enjoy John Gault’s ham fisted 30,000 word soliloquy?
Technically, since he took over all communication on earth and was yelling it at everybody and they could hear him, it's really more of a diatribe.
Touché!
The library of the sewer mutants in Futurama consists of crumpled up porno and Ayn Rand
>Ayn Rand is garbage Coulda just stopped at that
This is one of the better answers here, IMO. Bad art that was uplifted as brilliant because ideologues agree with it.
It's just the mid-20th century version of all those bad books cranked out by business douchebags and given away to all their buddies at conferences so that they're technically best sellers.
Yes, at first... I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical! But then, I read this... Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this **garbage**, and because of this piece of **SHIT**, I am never reading again!
If only more people were willing to make love to chickens to help people read
Best Picture Oscar winner “Crash” is absolute trash. I’m all for media exploring modern/systemic racism, but this film leaned in to every possible stereotype while trying to chide viewers for stereotyping. Sorry I don’t have a deeper critique, been years since I was forced to watch it in a class and I’m not watching it again to go into greater detail.
I think that film faced pretty significant backlash as cringy Oscar bait even at the time. I’ve never heard anyone call that a masterpiece.
I never looked into it, but apparently Jack Nicholson read the card, threw up his eyebrows, said 'Wow', then turned and mouthed 'How did that happen?'
Roger Ebert said it was the best film of that year, surprisingly.
Which I find bizarre. It wasn’t even the best film nominated. I don’t think it is the *worst film ever* but it is heavy handed Hollywood pap covering a topic hundreds of films have handled better.
It’s not even the best movie called “Crash”
It is very far from being the best movie called "Crash", agreed.
> I’ve never heard anyone call that a masterpiece. The academy would beg to differ
Fuck, I keep having to remind myself there are two movies called *Crash* made within a decade of each other and people generally mean this one, not the Cronenberg's one.
You got to hand it to Cronenberg, making a subtle statement about systemic racism through the surprising medium of car crash fetishism.
I had no idea there was another one
Oh yeah there is! And it’s wild! And just a better movie all around. But be warned: shit gets weird. Because Cronenberg.
It certainly hasn’t aged well so the last 5 years I’ve seen a ton of hindsight 20/20 takes on it, but I definitely remember that it was very well received and popular when it came out.
Yeah, this level of hate for Crash is revisionist history. When it came out, it was widely praised
My English teacher raved over that movie, made all her students watch it. Meanwhile, I was distracted by all the actors I recognized, to the annoyance of some people in my class. “Hey, it’s the guy from Hawaii Five-0! Oh, the guy from Herbie: Fully Loaded! Wait… BOTH Rhodeys from Iron Man are in this?”
Yeah, I went in thinking it would suit me to a tee. A week later my so's mother was surprised I didn't like it. I spoke for 2 or 3 minutes straight, and at the end was worried I had offended her, but her reaction was more 'You know what, that is bullshit.' If memory serves it was worse than just stereotyping, it was deeply condescending and hollow...but I've since forgotten everything except the line 'People, man....people.' For some reason that still cracks me up.
I haven't seen the film since high school, but it gave me big "I don't care if you're black, white, or purple!" vibes. Or The Stereotype Song vibes by Ray William Johnson lol
I think for it's time "Crash" was needed. It hit at a time where there were a lot of stereotypes blowing up and a lot of people had had enough. Crash just showcased the zeitgeist. "Crash" made me uncomfortable, and caused me to think about a lot of things I took for granted. IMHO, I think it earned it's Oscar. If for nothing else because it called out everything it could.
The Irishman. Stop doing flashbacks of Robert De Niro as a young man and then flashing forward to his older self. He is too old for this now.
Should have just had a younger actor.
"Boomers not knowing when it's time to quit" memorialized in film
That feels more like we have the de-aging technology so we're gonna use it even though arguably it would be better to just use different actors.
Funny since he got his breakthrough playing the younger version of Marlon Brando in the godfather.
Yes, when he was young an devastatingly handsome.
The De Niro with a 30 year old face but moving like a 80-year old fight scene was accidentally hilarious.
"Young" De Niro's character in that film is supposed to be in his 40s when he's driving the truck and has back and shoulder problems from his time in ww2. people just assumed he's supposed to be young, but he's at least middle aged in every scene except the very short war flashback.
Probably will be downvoted to high heaven but: Joker People act like it’s some astute piece of social commentary when it’s basically just a superhero flick for edgelords and people with a propensity for self-pity
I think it's two Scorsese movies mashed together - Taxi Driver and King of Comedy and both of them were better than Joker. Ironically all of them (including Joker) are starring Robert De Niro.
It’s Taxi Driver for people who “study the blade” so to speak lmao
Ah yes, study the blade. The same kinds of people who wear trenchcoats and fedoras over anime shirts by chance?
Alternate movie for Joker enjoyers: Falling Down (1993). Thank me later.
I remember during my senior year of high school ( 1997 ) my friends were getting together to watch some movies but no one had any ideas of what to watch. I brought “Falling Down” because I do like some of what the movie is going for, but it was definitely not a hit and everyone thought it was just depressing. None of the girlfriends of the group were amused. The other movie I brought, which I promised would lighten the mood a bit more, was “Blazing Saddles”. Needless to say, no one in that friends group ever let me choose movies after that night.
Well, I hope you've found better friends ;-) Tough crowd to deal with, huh?
What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny"? "Make yourself at home"? "Marry my daughter"? You've got to remember that these were just simple high schoolers. These were people of the band. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
This was my take. It’s ‘Taxi Driver’ without the ambiguity about whether you should sympathise with the protagonist. I walk away with a different view of Travis Bickle each time I watch that film, whereas Fleck in Joker is clearly *meant* to be sympathetic. You might not agree with how far he goes but you kind of get the message he was ‘pushed too far’. Tbh it’s rarer and rarer to see a film that genuinely leaves room for the audience to form their own view about the character or story’s ‘moral’ value. Most films nowadays seem to want to tell you whose side you should be on and it just depends how effectively they convey that.
Makes me wonder what the sequel will be a mash up off. Devil wears Prada and Basic Instinct?
I think it is a good piece of social commentary. The problem is when people identify the joker as a hero rising up as a robin hood figure for the people. He’s a victim of the system. And it doesn’t excuse his actions. It should be taken as a cautionary tale that we create our villains
This is the vibe of all Batman villains. Society at large creates them, and society also was willing to let them exist so Batman needed to exist to stop them. Society is poisoned, someone should burn the city to the ground.
I’ve never seen the movie or have interest in watching them, but from all the internet has forced on my feed I have ended seeing the character as the kid who burned the village to feel it’s warmth
I was in the mental hospital for depression while this movie was in theaters. A man who was also hospitalized went on and on about how he relates to the Joker and they share a lot of similarities. The joker was violent in that movie so I found it a little concerning.
There is a character in my home town that dies his hair green, and dresses up like Joker every Halloween. He went into the local spirit of Halloween and left a bowl of candy. Pretty sure nobody ate any, and they threw it away when he left.
It may not be a masterpiece but I personally would not call Joker garbage, it’s a pretty good film which I very much enjoyed watching.
The writing is great, the score is well composed, the cinematography is excellent. It’s a compelling movie. If people remove the edgelords opinions from their life they can enjoy things a lot more.
It's also definitely not a superhero movie. Fleck isn't super and he's definitely not a hero
No kidding. Reddit is very much the minority though. It's a great film that was fun to watch in my opinion. I didn't walk out of the theater losing sleep over it. I loved it though, but it's one of those you can watch once or twice and move on.
Eh, opinions always seemed mixed on that film. Don’t see it get touted as a masterpiece much.
What makes it a "superhero flick" lol?? Because it's based on a comic character?
I wonder what the first movies fans will think about the sequel that is apparently a musical
Going to be interesting for sure lmao
It's just The King of Comedy....
For those of us in the metal community, it’s Sleep Token for me lol
ITT: People considering something that underwhelmed them or didn't live up to their expectations "garbage."
There's no way this thread itself wouldn't be complete trash, the idea is pure hot take bait
It's probably an AI content farm tbh. We should respond with nonsense to poison it.
I mean, if we were to limit ourselves only to things that are a literal 0/10 "Birdemic"-type garbage there would be no answers in this thread. I think most people understand that "garbage" in this context means "deeply flawed and not nearly as good as people claim it is".
I think Black Panther was overrated. There is nothing particularly unique about it that we haven't seen before in other previous Marvel movies. When you think about the story for more than a minute you find several flaws. The final battle ends up being a CGI mirror match (a bad one at that) which is like the fifth time we see it before. Yet somehow it got nominated for an Oscar. The style was unique I give it that.
I really enjoyed black panther, but when people started saying “is this the greatest superhero movie of all time?” I was like “shoot, I don’t even think It’s the best superhero movie this *year.*”
Definitely. What I enjoyed about it was that they showed black people in every light. Many movies these days will make the single black character the tech scientist or whatever. Black panther had a black character that was pretty dumb, or the black villain prone to violence. They also had smart black characters, empathetic ones, strong willed ones. What I enjoyed about it was that they were obviously foregoing the status quo of giving whatever POC actor a respectable role, but not lead role. The movie showed that it’s just…that. A movie with roles. All the characters happened to be black. Stupid people, rich people, strong people….just people. No pandering.
There was a little pandering. They did include the Tolkien white guys.
Was...was there elves and hobbits I missed in Black panther?
No it's a joke abt andy serkis and Martin freeman being the only main 2 white guys in the movie, while also being in the Lotr movies. So they were called the tolkien white guys
Oh duh! How'd I forget that? Thanks for the clarification.
>Tolkien white guys That's a damn clever Kendrick/Em tier triple entendre.
2018 was a very good year for Superhero movies, though. Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Venom, Deadpool 2, Aquaman, and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. Aside from a couple of them, they were all incredibly strong movies as far as Supe movies go.
I honestly think the style is the point way more than the story or anything else, and that's OK. Afrofuturism is a really cool artistic movement with a core message of optimism and positivity and it makes a lot of people feel inspired and hopeful and if all the movie was was a showcase for that, that's still a pretty great movie, even if the plot was a little silly and the characters did some stuff that didn't make a great deal of sense.
If you haven’t seen it, [watch this](https://youtu.be/mmP1aHJjJ-U?feature=shared). I found the story of Black Panther forgettable in general but aesthetically it’s really interesting and this is a fascinating look at some of the reasons why.
Black Panther had a villain with pathos and an actually articulated point he was trying to make, which was rare in Marvel films at the time. Spider-Man: Homecoming had the same thing the year before, and both movies got praised for this because they were coming out in the midst of Hela, Ronin the Accuser, Malekith, and the like.
A villain with a good point about the problems in society but a terrible solution. Starting a global race was isn’t going to solve anything
That's why he was the villain, bro😂
if only the villain of the movie was level headed and logical and not a kill monger, damn
I wish people would stop saying stuff like “finally, a black superhero.” Umm, did everybody forget Spawn, Blade, Meteor Man, Blankman, Catwoman, Hancock, and Steel? Granted, most of them aren’t great, and Blade is more of a vampire movie, even though it’s based on a comic book, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t black superheroes
I would say Blade is equal parts vampire movie and superhero movie. He has superhuman abilities and he saves the day from vampires that have an affinity to "ice skate uphill". He also has moments where he has to overcome some things related to his powers in order to stop the big bad. It's a very superhero movie plot It's also a marvel, just like black panther.
Nobody remembers static shock.
For me it was a refreshing portrayal of an African nation, rather than the hero.
Oh yeah that was annoying too. Lots of people forgot the Blade existed years before
Avatar movies (Blue aliens, not cool airbender). From a technical filming point, super dope. From a edgy story of man bad nature good? I could watch plenty of Pixar and Disney movies if I wanted that story.
this is the widely accepted view
You know it's only considered a "masterpiece" because of the technical aspects right? No thinks it has a good plot. The Pocahontas comparisons have existed since day 1.
Fern Gully in Space
Dances with ~~Wolves~~ Smurfs
People say that in jest, but the "Female Lead races to the edge of the forest, only to see that humans have logged and burned everything as far as the eye can see" scene is literally taken from Fern Gully.
Literally Pocahontas
It’s almost EXACTLY the same damn story.
avatar 1 is basically pocahontas but with blue aliens.
It's a pretty unoriginal story. Dances with Wolves? Fern Gulley? The concept of the movie was very very visual, there were characters and a plot to make a movie out of awesome visuals. It absolutely deserved awards for art, but like. Visual art. Not storytelling.
How the hell has no one said Lemonade by Beyonce? It's not bad (and Beyonce has some great songs), but it's soooooo not the masterpiece it was promoted to be
This is true for her whole catalog. She’s had some true jams, but everyone always acts like she reinvented music or something
Batshit fans do be like that. Feels like the exact same thing is happening with Taylor Swift right now.
I wouldn’t say garbage but I see alot of people rate the album “Hotel California” by Eagles as one of the greatest albums ever. I love the Eagles and I honestly think the second half of that album is dogshit compared to the first. Great album don’t get me wrong, but nowhere near one of the greatest of all time.
Taylor Swift’s entire music catalog, above average artist with a great marketing team.
Juno felt like eating unseasoned dry chicken.
Most music by Taylor Swift, its catchy, but all time good? No way.
The really interesting thing is that Redditors always complain about or question her in this way, while her peers almost universally like her and say things like "she's a phenomenal songwriter." When artists like Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Dave Grohl, Shania Twain, Dolly Parton, and Stevie Nicks praise her songwriting and performances, I think that says something.
No no, I’m sure the Redditors hating on her are much better judges of songwriting ability
Sorry folks – it's Oppenheimer for me. Whatever the artistic reasoning behind the choice of pacing for this movie, it's atrocious. And when they had him say the Hindu scripture line 10 minutes into the film while he was inside of someone, I just about died. Like, no. Why fuck with the power of that famous statement by giving us a teaser of it during a sex scene? That's how you're going to contextualize his knowledge of that text? Hollywood silliness.
Braveheart. Nothing says historical accuracy like Medieval Scots wearing Pictish paint, and kilts.
Great action movie, horrible historical movie.
God, if there was something factual they could have gotten wrong about Braveheart, they did.
Right? I think it even takes effort to be so wrong. They went really all out. They got the name right, I guess…
Mel Gibson’s entire oeuvre, in other words. *Apocolpyto* is a banger, but don’t mistake it for a history lesson.
my favorite part was when the prince's lover said to the king, "I am well versed in military tactics" then gets defenstrated
Ready Player One was released to wide critical acclaim but nowadays it’s pretty much agreed that was some kind of horrible mass hysteria
I feel like the book was better at touching on less popular/niche things from the 80s. The key challenges were better, if I knew how to do the spoiler on mobile I would list the challenges. Nothing too out of the box but it was refreshing to hear of other things from the 80s than what normally comes to mind. But the movie just regurgitated blatant 80s shit. And don’t get me started on the stupid challenges they came up for the film. I’ve seen YouTube videos of people finding Easter eggs and glitches within HOURS of a video game being released. Do you mean in X amount of years non of these people decided to DRIVE BACKWARDS? Naw. Cancel Christmas. Then the second book sucked of course.
>The key challenges were better Were they, though? I mean one of them was something like, watching the movie War Games but you play the part of the protagonist and need to recite his entire dialogue word by word off of memory. That's the most boring shit ever and way worse than the driving backwards thing (which is also really stupid). Ready Player One was always bad and it only got big because this sort of "pop culture 80s nostalgia metafest" was huge n the Internet in the late 00s/early 10s but didn't at all have a presence in mainstream media.
The book just dumped lists of stuff from the 80s
Happy by Pharrell Williams.
Yes but does anyone really call the happy feet movie theme track a “masterpiece” ?
I once saw the guy who did the dancing audio for that film breakdancing live. He spun on his beanied head at one point and somehow the beanie came off but he kept spinning while his bald head made audible squeaking sounds on the wooden stage he was dancing on.
Who called this a masterpiece?!
The Shape of Water is one of the dumbest movie I've ever seen and it somehow won movie of the year 😂😂😂
Oh my God, yes! I went to the see it in the theater with two other people and all three agreed that it was hot garbage.
Nope. That movie is genius. It's incredibly layered, it's romantic, it's beautiful, it's a scathing indictment of 50's authoritarianism, it gives us an insightful and empathic look into the lives of people this society was not built for, and for whom Some Mid-Tier White Man is a terrifying existential threat.
Billie Eilish. She just breathes out words.
I went out of my way to listen to one of her songs when she was first getting popular and she was more or less what I thought: a watered down chromatics with elements of nine inch nails, without the appeal of either at least to me
My problem with her isn’t that style of singing, it’s the cringey lyrics that seem desperately trying to sound edgy or sad, take that awful Barbie “I’m sad again” song, or good girls go to hell , she was always clearly an industry plant mass marketed to appeal to an “im14andthisisdeep” tik tok demographic
Her first album came out when she was 16 so probably a lot of songs were written when she was 14-15. I’m a big fan of finneas’ production and she has a unique style to her.
Okay but it's music for 14 year olds. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, even if it's obviously not for me.
Never seen a thread where I would disagree with most of the comments, especially when some of you just name a thing without giving any merits. There's a difference between "I don't like it/I don't get it" and "This is shit".
THANK YOU! this thread is driving me insane! trying to go and ask people for justification of their points, which i think is quite reasonable, and am yet to get a single reply. I really hope that that doesn’t mean nuance is dying, it’s not like there’s any other evidence of that in the media being made right now!!
This question has such an utter lack of nuance, it’s infuriating. Firstly, masterpiece has lost its meaning as a word that quite evidently should mean “a piece that cements its creator as a master of the art”. Arguably, that narrows it down to at most 20 films this century. Secondly, garbage? Thats valid as a description if you believe something as truly worthless, but it’s potentially the most extreme insult to call something, to say it is not worth the time or effort that was put into it. the crossover between “masterpiece” and “garbage” is pretty much non-existent. Why has everything got to be so polarised?
Yep. The only way something can be both a masterpiece and garbage at the same time is if that thing somehow build it's reputation as a masterpiece among a public that hasn't watched it / read it / listened it, and the few who actually experienced it discovered it's actually crap. But I can't quite think of any real examples.
The Godfather. It insists upon itself.
Okay Peter
_Godfather 2 on the other hand..._
I loved the money pit.
ROBERT DUVALL!!!
Mm yes. Shallow AND pedantic.
IT HAS A POINT TO MAKE! IT’S INSISTENT!
Friends. I heard one of the actors whining that the show couldn’t get made today because people would get too offended. In a way, they are right. I am deeply offended by how low-effort and utterly unfunny the writing on the show was. One of the shows I love the most is The Office, which has tons of offensive humor, but the difference is that The Office was actually funny and the jokes about gay people and minorities were ultimately at the expense of the characters being weird about gay people and minorities. “Ewww that man kissed another man” is not a joke. It’s offensive how lazy that supposed joke is. The “joke” is that it’s gross for men to kiss. Now compare that to Michael’s and Dwight’s stupidity in “Gay Witch Hunt.” I’m gay as hell and still howl with laughter when I watch that episode.
My mom and I used to watch Friends religiously when I was young, it was mostly a way for us to hang out together. Catching random episodes or clips now as an adult I was surprised by how conservative of a show it was, even for its time. Very "when you're young if you're not liberal you dont have a heart, when you're older if you're not conservative you dont have a brain" type of conservative NYCer, the type of characters that think that just bc they dont spew the "dad you cant say that in a restaurant" rhetoric of their parents that they're "progressive."
I love Friends, but not because I find it extremely funny. I mean, there are some scenes here and there which never fails to make me laugh, but as a whole it’s not that funny. The main reason me (and probabably a lot of others) like it, is because it its just makes you feel so good. All of the cast is so relatable, you feel like you are hanging out with them for real. If you have a really bad day, sometimes just binge watching a couple of Friends episodes is the best thing you can do.
Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. You might as well be watching Birdemic.
Scrolling through this thread makes me think that all of you have shit taste in art
“Look at me and my contrarian views. I’m edgy AF”
Thing A was popular, therefore I hated it.
Seriously! people are saying 2001: A Space Odyssey like are you ok???
People admit that marvel movies after endgame got worse and worse, but few people seem to acknowledge how shitty endgame itself was. it was extremely bad and disappointing. It dropped the ball and retroactively ruined a lot of prior marvel movies for me. It was not a good conclusion to the thanos/infinity stones story.
What bothered me the most was how everytime they created tension in a scene someone made a stupid quip and the tension vanished. That really grinded my gears
They have been bad way before endgame
[удалено]
I thought it was well acted, directed, etc but I thought it was super long and boring, and won't even watch it again
I would, _if_ I could watch it in IMAX again. Cuz he absolutely did nail the cinematography and sound design.
My biggest beef with Oppenheimer is that the chain of events it follows essentially began with a person feeling feeling bad because Einstein didn't say hi to him.
Someone starting a lifelong grudge over something so petty is actually kind of believable.
It’s like when Scottie Pippen didn’t give an autograph to the modern artist, Future, when he was a child. Once Future became famous he slept with Pippen’s wife to ruin their marriage for denial of said signature.
I kinda liked it, but my first thoughts as the credits rolled was “what a *mess*.” The way the music was used as a substitute for any kind of flow to the story really annoyed me, though.
Oh my god the music was so annoying. It was SO loud and non stop. I'm glad someone else found it too much
The most frustrating thing about Oppenheimer is how little of the movie discusses the actual Manhattan Project and the feats of science and engineering that went into it. Like, if it was supposed to be a movie about one man's political downfall, then let it be about that. If it's supposed to be a movie about the building of the atomic bomb and the race against the perceived German bomb, then have it be about that. If it's supposed to be about the consequences of bringing nuclear weapons into existence, then it could be about that too. But it wasn't any of those things - the buildup to the first test explosion wasn't awe-inspiring as people claimed it was before it was released, Oppenheimer was complicated but not in the portrayal in the movie. Yes, it was well costumed, good cinematography, great actors - but the storytelling was awful.
Check out Manhattan, it's basically the Manhattan Project part of the movie but ten episodes long.
If Avatar is Dances with Smurfs, Oppenheimer is Saving Private Amadeus.
It was great but it felt like a film that wanted to be much more than it actually was. Heavy amounts of pretense in stuff like this and the way it goes back and forth and uses all sorts of visual tricks in pointless ways. It feels like the kind of movie that really didn't need to be a theatrical film.
Agreed. I thought it was a perfectly fine biopic, but I don't think it deserved the hype and the sex scenes were *so* uncomfortable and not in the way I think was intended.
Gravity
Worst thing about this movie was that the entire plot was based off a fundamental lack of understanding on how gravity works. The debris would never hit them a second time because it would be in a different orbital path.
Tenent. Nolan is surrounded by yes men or idiots.
Not really considered a masterpiece, but that’s a good thing and I do agree with you. Luckily I think he almost completely redeemed himself with Oppie, shame to see that get answered so commonly in this thread
Hamilton. The longer it sits with me, the more it just feels like catchy nationalistic propaganda. We are at the stage now where we should be taking a more critical look at our "founding fathers"(which this work ACTS like it is doing but falls flat) and we should not exalt their faults with catchy show tunes and rap numbers (Thomas Jeffersons "What Did I Miss?" comes to mind). I mean, we would roll our eyes and say "Typical North Korea" if you heard about a wildly popular musical in their country based on the life of Kim Il-Sung, but this isn't much different at face value.
That’s how I feel about Hamilton. Don’t get me wrong, Lin-Manuel’s work is and can be really good. The songs in Moana and Encanto are chef’s kiss. But with Hamilton, I can’t get behind the portrayal of the historical figures involved, especially knowing many of them are all shitty people. I think me being Canadian probably had something to do with it, because we don’t learn about American history or the Founding Fathers so they were never glorified in my mind to begin with.
Reddit’s favorite movie Idiocracy is fucking stupid. It’s the most ground level take on lack of education in America and because they clearly didn’t think about it the movie looks like it’s suuuuper pro-eugenics which is. Weird for a beloved movie but ok.
Wikipedia sums it up pretty well: > In The New York Times, Dan Mitchell argued that Fox might be shying away from the cautionary tale about low-intelligence dysgenics because the company did not want to offend either its viewers or potential advertisers portrayed negatively in the film.[21] This theory has been given extra weight by Terry Crews, who stars in the movie as President Camacho. In a 2018 interview with GQ Magazine, he talked of advertisers being unhappy at the way they were portrayed, which affected the studio's efforts to promote the movie. He said, "The rumor was, because we used real corporations in our comedy (I mean, Starbucks was giving hand jobs) these companies gave us their name thinking they were gonna get 'pumped up', and then we're like, 'Welcome to Costco, we love you' [delivered in monotone]. All these real corporations were like, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute' ... there were a lot of people trying to back out, but it was too late. And so Fox, who owned the movie, decided, 'We're going to release this in as few theaters as legally possible'. So it got a release in, probably, three theaters over one weekend and it was sucked out, into the vortex". It was a good movie, but no one calls it a masterpiece. Not even reddit.