Lol, everything you said in the latter portion of this video was brutal, but pretty much true. 😂 "Up its own ass" is a good way to describe a lot of these arthouse style flicks. There really does seem to be a growing trend in films of this type of replacing traditional, comprehensible narrative with pure symbolism because the filmmakers think this automatically makes the work of higher artistic value. I think there's a happy medium, where a film has a poignant and engaging story, but also has deeper subtext that can be unpacked later. (I think The Dark Knight is probably a good example.) A movie should never do away with immediate meaning in favor of the conjectural and usually entirely nebulous meaning that people will concoct after much agonized cogitation long after the viewing. I'll always love Annihilation; it was probably the best experience I've had in a theater, and is probably one of my favorite movies if I'm being honest. The philosophy and messaging are fairly subtle in their integration, and I found the story engrossing and understandable and the characters relatively rounded. But I didn't really have much desire to see this film; (actually I don't usually have much desire to see any A24 film). The reviews, like yours, were way more lukewarm than anything Garland has done before. I like your take here though, because you didn't just rehash the whole "this movie is a try-hard sjw piece made only to score woke points" angle, but offered deeper criticisms illustrating why making a movie with such a mindset as this one was made with leads to disappointment. :)
Love your comment. Annihilation is also one of my favorite films specifically for the reason you said. It's totally serviceable as its own story but you can read a lot more into it and extract more from it if that's something you want to do. The whole experience of watching that movie for the first time made me fall in love with cinema again. Although I have to note all of Garland's work has been through A24! And yes, I always cringe when people say "IT'S SJW!" as if that's a self-evident critique. It's like an anti-critique because it doesn't say anything about the thing you're talking about, it just signals your own bias. I'm glad you appreciate that nuance. I think more people should take that approach. Appreciate the comment as always!
Great video. I appreciate you calling out that you don’t like this movie not because of the central toxic masculinity theme but because the movie is actually a reductive mess born of self conscious filmmaking that panders to the worst facets of the modern film community.
Lol, everything you said in the latter portion of this video was brutal, but pretty much true. 😂 "Up its own ass" is a good way to describe a lot of these arthouse style flicks. There really does seem to be a growing trend in films of this type of replacing traditional, comprehensible narrative with pure symbolism because the filmmakers think this automatically makes the work of higher artistic value. I think there's a happy medium, where a film has a poignant and engaging story, but also has deeper subtext that can be unpacked later. (I think The Dark Knight is probably a good example.) A movie should never do away with immediate meaning in favor of the conjectural and usually entirely nebulous meaning that people will concoct after much agonized cogitation long after the viewing. I'll always love Annihilation; it was probably the best experience I've had in a theater, and is probably one of my favorite movies if I'm being honest. The philosophy and messaging are fairly subtle in their integration, and I found the story engrossing and understandable and the characters relatively rounded. But I didn't really have much desire to see this film; (actually I don't usually have much desire to see any A24 film). The reviews, like yours, were way more lukewarm than anything Garland has done before. I like your take here though, because you didn't just rehash the whole "this movie is a try-hard sjw piece made only to score woke points" angle, but offered deeper criticisms illustrating why making a movie with such a mindset as this one was made with leads to disappointment. :)
Love your comment. Annihilation is also one of my favorite films specifically for the reason you said. It's totally serviceable as its own story but you can read a lot more into it and extract more from it if that's something you want to do. The whole experience of watching that movie for the first time made me fall in love with cinema again. Although I have to note all of Garland's work has been through A24!
And yes, I always cringe when people say "IT'S SJW!" as if that's a self-evident critique. It's like an anti-critique because it doesn't say anything about the thing you're talking about, it just signals your own bias. I'm glad you appreciate that nuance. I think more people should take that approach.
Appreciate the comment as always!
Great video. I appreciate you calling out that you don’t like this movie not because of the central toxic masculinity theme but because the movie is actually a reductive mess born of self conscious filmmaking that panders to the worst facets of the modern film community.
16:22 just made me want to watch it 😇
It may be more enjoyable if you approach it as a morbid curiosity. Report back.