3
votes
Midweek Movie Free Talk
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
well, @winther -- the time has come to talk about The Beast / La bête (2023).
First, I really liked the first half of this film. That title card was my favorite in a long time. The last half of the movie was a slog for me. I didn't hate it, but it felt like a lot of time on one time period vs the others. It also felt like a mix of Lynch, Herzog, and even a little Malick -- in a good way. I liked the overall ideas, but ultimately it felt like it would have been an excellent Black Mirror feature.
The general premise could definitely have been a Black Mirror episode, but this is way too artsy for that. This is really the kind of film that will give people vastly different experiences but those are usually the most interesting films, at least compared to those that are just universally loved. I found this to be borderline brilliant, though not quite.
I was hooked from start to finish, even though it has its slower periods where the plot doesn't go much anywhere and I was to an extent sort of waiting for it to get going, I never knew exactly where it was going to go next. It constantly caught me by surprise, but I never lost the connection with the narrative. I wasn't expecting everything to be completely explained or neatly tied together in the end, as it is clearly not that kind of film, but I was waiting for something to become clearer in the end. I found the ending to be very fitting and show that ultimately the film is about how technology dehumanizes and ultimately destroys human relationships. It is a fitting theme for the whole current zeitgeist on AI.
The comparison to Herzog and Lynch is apt, but it doesn't reach the levels of those filmmakers.
At first I thought it was going to be like Eternal Sunshine with lots of jumping around, etc. Its definitely stuck with me more than I thought it would.
But yeah, overall I think I'm pretty much with you wrt the ending. For me, the pace was just off.
It does have the familiar pacing problem that seems to creep into most modern films that are more than 2 hours long. Somehow 100 to 120 minutes are good, and long epics clocking in at 3-4 hours are also fine, but the ~2:20 runtime very often have pacing issues and feels at least 20 minutes too long. I felt the same with Anora, The Substance and Poor Things. All good films, but they all have a period where the film seems to just repeating its thematic premise and I am waiting for it to make its next move so to speak. In The Beast it also got to a point where "Yeah, I get it. The three timelines are connected. No need to show the exact same scenes play out multiple times.".
Letterboxd Wrapped came out:
241 Film Logged // 67 Films Reviewed // 451 Hours Watched
Most Watched Actor: Willem Dafoe // Most Watched Director: John Huston
Highly Rated 2024 Films: Dune Part Two (5/5) // Anora (5/5) // The Substance (4.5/5)
Most Watched Week: April 1-7 (14 Films Watched)
Most Watched Day: Sunday (62 Films)
First Watch of the Year: Summertime (1955) // Last Watch of the Year: The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Milestones: 50th Film: The Best Years of Our Lives // 100th Film: Dickson Greeting // 150th Film: From Here To Eternity // 200th: Vox Lux
Most Watched Theme: Moving relationship stories // Most watched nanogenre: Gory, Thrills, Haunted
That's a really cool feature. I wish IMDB had something like it but since letterboxd doesn't have TV shows*, I won't migrate. Despite it seeming like a much better site
*announced a year ago but still not implemented for some reason
Soldier - 7/10
Seems underrated. It's a simple straightforward action/sci-fi flick, Kurt Russell starring. Feels like an 80's Schwarzenegger or Stallone movie but pretty fun all the same.
Hitman - 7/10
I have a soft spot for this movie. I watched it like 10 times when I was in my teens - it was one of only a few dozen dvd's I had. It's been about a decade since I last watched it though so it was fun to remember everything. It doesn't pretend to be anything it's not, it's just a lot of dumb fun that I have nostalgia about!
Hitman: Agent 47 - 1/10
I barely even knew this existed but decided to do a twofer. I had low expectations going into it but good grief, everything was awful. Not a single saving grace. It was a chore to get through and I actually don't know why I watched until the end lol
There is only one other movie I have ever rated 1/10, Primer. It's an interesting premise, but it's completely unheard of to need graphs and half a dozen rewatches to understand it. Makes for a true turd. I would rather watch literal garbage.
La Femme Nikita 3/10
I know no superlative for how badly this movie suffers from the born sexy yesterday trope, and for the crazy woman trope. Both some of the worst tropes I know. She is either screaming, crying, or laughing hysterically - at best she is dissociating. All over the place in almost every scene. A disjointed movie overall. It felt like it wanted to go in half a dozen different directions just like its main character. Not much about it made sense to me outside of maybe the first 20-30 minutes which were pretty good.