Indeed, anyone can say “those movies sucked.” But expressing the existential horror of experiencing such a dearth of creativity requires real talent.
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Some of this review isn’t quite accurate, Spoiler: Other people do show up in a couple earlier reviews. Although one of them’s ultimate resolution may be relevant to this review. Unless his mind is so broken that he’s forgotten that he killed and devoured his cameraman.
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I know Beauty lies in the Eye of the Beholder and all that, which is why it’s ok to say I will NEVER watch one of these movies because to my eye these two are, frankly… extremely … how to put it… Unfu… they just don’t do it for me. Please make them go away, I don’t want to see their mugs on the side of a bus ever again!
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How should he have killed himself to escape that movie review purgatory?
Why don’t you ask the parents of the children who died of gunfire yesterday, I’m sure they could relate to this reviewers fictional frustration more than you or I could…
FFS, dude. I’m sufficiently sickened by the most recent example of our national insanity despite your attempt to make it seem otherwise by suggesting that laughing at a bit of black humor is equivalent to callously disregarding the victims of real life violence.
Are we really going to label everything even peripherally related to something tragic as taboo? A person standing on the ledge of a building contemplating suicide is used quite often as a setting for comedy. No more?
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I understand we are talking about matters of taste. You found the piece funny, and I did not.
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The piece itself is commenting on matters of taste. somebody out there must’ve like the film, otherwise it wouldn’t have been released. They are trying to dramatize the bad taste of the film, by one-upping its aesthetic, and showing us something in even worse taste. It’s a comedic technique I’ve seen people get away with, and even killing themselves in a darkly humorous way. It’s a risky move for any comic writer to attempt, and I think it’s only good manners to point when it doesn’t.
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Tastes evolve over time. I tried re-watching the first Ghostbuster’s movie, and Bill Murray harassing Sigourney Weaver is nowhere near as funny now as it was then.
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Just last night, I watched a darkly comic suicide, on The Magicians. They gave it a lot of context, it was a real character who we’d had a chance to get to know for many episodes, and while funny, it also hurt to watch. There was some context to it, it’s part of a 3 season and counting epic drama, and not a five minute skit about another work.
They also had the good taste to post a flyer for the national suicide hotline. Not that I personally needed that info, but it virtue-signalled an acknowledgement that this is hard stuff to be mixing into our entertainment.
5) I tried finding the BB-linked article on writing about suicide, that came out after Robin Williams hung himself. (Best practice is not to portray a suicide as having solved a problem, “he’s in a better place”, that sort of thing. - but I couldn’t find it.
6) what I found instead was links to Aaron Swartz and Chelsea Manning and Logan Paul… it seems the conversation around suicide is evolving.
7) not fast enough.
I feel like quite a few comments in this thread overblow the connection between the film and the review. As if the literal hell Rosenthal finds himself in during this review is somehow supposed to be a commentary on how bad this particular movie is.
This is a movie review where the movie reviewer realizes that he’s alone, he’s never left the building, never seen another human being. He coughs up a key and exits only to find himself in an geometrically impossible space of hellish sounds and lights. He is finally overcome with despair and shoots himself only to have the review continue. None of that has anything to do with the movie. You’d have to change extremely little to make this a review of the Godfather or the or Citizen Kane; the horror of the situation he is in doesn’t actually change if the movies are pretty good.
I still suspect he didn’t like the film, though.
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This is the first time I can remember disagreeing with you. I thought the horror of his situation is that he’s expected to review an endless parade of crappy movies (and none of the caliber of the two you listed).
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All I could think of:
I don’t know, I’d have to go back through some of the older reviews and think about the ways in which they use the movies as launching points for absurdity. My two previous favourites were: 1) the review of the Rise of Ultron where he spent the review complaining about how they could have fit lots more super heroes on the screen (circling empty pieces of sky, and such) which is clearly commentary on the movie; 2) the review of The Force Awakens which is clearly a commentary on the fact that the film is primarily about nostalgia (the review is him recalling losing his virginity while watching the first star wars at a drive in).
I’m probably importing my own bias: I watch these reviews for their own sake and pretty much never care about the film being reviewed.
That said, I stand by my claim that they could do essentially the same review of a movie that they were saying was great instead of a movie they were saying was terrible. Say something about how while they were being awed by the movie they suddenly started to wonder if the quality of the movie wasn’t there to distract them from something and they’re off the races. Still, it would be a different review, and this one certainly was a comment about how bad the movie was.
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