I dare you to anticipate Joaquin Phoenix in Todd Phillips's JOKER (now with something that may or may not be a SPOILER)

The thing with Bernie Goetz, also, is that we know his name because, while I'm sure there were others who did likewise, he was pretty much an outlier rather than part of a larger vigilantism epidemic.

this doesn't go back to the 80s but
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/1999-2016_Gun-related_deaths_USA.png/800px-1999-2016_Gun-related_deaths_USA.png

Death Wish is an interesting one cause the guy who wrote the novel hated the movie -

Garfield was also unhappy with the final product, calling the film "incendiary", and stated that the film's sequels are all pointless and rancid, since they advocate vigilantism, unlike his two novels, which make the opposite argument. The film led him to write a follow-up titled Death Sentence, which was published a year after the film's release.

Shakey post it per capita you dingdong

also I would argue against the "end of Taxi Driver is a fantasy" argument - Taxi Driver feels to me like a specific reaction to Death Wish, showing us a "vigilante hero", but making it clear to the audience that he's a dangerous loony. The first part of the movie puts you on Travis's side, encourages the audience to root him on. And then Scorcese pulls the rug out, panning up to him at the Palatine rally with the shades and the mohawk, making clear that no, this guy is not a hero, he's a nut with a gun. The ending is the punchline - the vigilante hero is still celebrated by the public anyway.

Taxi Driver did notably inspire one shooting

hrrm

xpost That was always my take, but it's been a while since I saw it.

here's the image shakey was probably looking for
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FT_19.08.14_GunDeaths_2.png?resize=640,620

Pff, you can't fool me with that shoddy sharpie work.

mh's graph is much better yeah thx

The ending is the punchline - the vigilante hero is still celebrated by the public anyway

that taxi ride with Sybil at the end though, their exchange feels so unreal and so like something out of Bickle's screwy imagination

I think it’s like how early on in the film he was able to easily charm Betsy and then a series of events caused him to slide towards violence, and now he’s had a reset of sorts and he’s back to some easy level of confidence. That final mirror shot shows he remains a ticking time bomb though.

Taxi Driver did notably inspire one shooting

hrrm

too bad he missed etc

Yeah I never bought the “everything after the shootings is in Travis’ mind” reading

With all of these, I'm always reminded of Anthony Swofford's bit in Jarhead about there being no such thing as an anti-war film - the beauty and grandeur of film still stokes the flame in the people who are going out to commit violence, whatever your intellectual takeaway is supposed to be.

To come full circle, this movie looks dumber than a bag full of breast implants

Vince Gilligan practically put an "I'm a terrible person!" sign on Walter White the last season and there are still subReddits devoted to how he is the hero

I'm always reminded of Anthony Swofford's bit in Jarhead about there being no such thing as an anti-war film - the beauty and grandeur of film still stokes the flame in the people who are going out to commit violence, whatever your intellectual takeaway is supposed to be.

thought this was Coppola's line

In conclusion, Jared Leto should be killed. Then we will call it square, Hollywood

To come full circle, this movie looks dumber than a bag full of breast implants

― brigadier pudding (DJP), Thursday, 5 September 2019 17:12 (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"...or are you just pleased to see me?"

Coppola and others have probably said the same but it's a whole thing in Jarhead (memoir not movie, though I think they referenced it there) as the Marines get ready for deployment, feasting on a steady diet of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.

Truffaut - "I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war."

I think war films from the POV of the losing side in a pointless conflict are arguably much less valorizing of the experience as a glorious one but even then the excitement factor can be present and if the usually-doomed characters go out heroically then it does glorify things.

I thought The Pacific on HBO was fairly good at depicting the terror and grisliness and inhumanity of war, and it wasn’t “rousing” in the usual sense.

Come and See is a horrific experience but it’s another type of war film entirely, from the POV of those on the receiving end of the invading German army.

I read some Coppola thing recently where this came up - his argument was that a real anti-war film would just be a rhapsodic depiction of average people living peaceful, happy lives

a true anti joker movie would just be pee wees big adventure

Apocalypse Now led to a whole generation of “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning” guys at parties.

this looks dope but i'm scared to see it in a theater

Putting aside whether the movie is actually any good or not, I found this interesting
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/joker-joaquin-phoenix-todd-phillips-venice-dc-a9088596.html

The thesis seems to suggest that if you want to make a mid-budget "serious" picture nowadays, you'd better find a superficial way to graft in a franchise superhero.

Truffaut - "I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war."

― Screamin' Jay Gould (The Yellow Kid), Thursday, September 5, 2019 12:39 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is a great quote. Similar seems to apply to mafia flicks and movies about "wall street greed." Also much the same effect with Glengarry Glen Ross inspiring a generation of asshole salesmen.

There's a reason why so many people missed the satire of "Starship Troopers."

I read some Coppola thing recently where this came up - his argument was that a real anti-war film would just be a rhapsodic depiction of average people living peaceful, happy lives

― Οὖτις, Thursday, September 5, 2019 12:48 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otfm

It is to my surprise, then, that Coppola hesitates to call the film “anti-war”. “No one wants to make a pro-war film, everyone wants to make an anti-war film,” he says. “But an anti-war film, I always thought, should be like [Kon Ichikawa’s 1956 post-second world war drama] The Burmese Harp – something filled with love and peace and tranquillity and happiness. It shouldn’t have sequences of violence that inspire a lust for violence. Apocalypse Now has stirring scenes of helicopters attacking innocent people. That’s not anti-war.”

He pitches his own alternative, by way of counter example: “I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film. An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike.”

if you want to make a mid-budget "serious" picture nowadays, you'd better find a superficial way to graft in a franchise superhero.

Audiences at “Bonnie and Clyde” are not given a simple, secure basis for identification; they are made to feel but are not told how to feel. “Bonnie and Clyde” is not a serious melodrama involving us in the plight of the innocent but a movie that assumes—as William Wellman did in 1931 when he made “The Public Enemy,” with James Cagney as a smart, cocky, mean little crook—that we don’t need to pretend we’re interested only in the falsely accused, as if real criminals had no connection with us. There wouldn’t be the popular excitement there is about outlaws if we didn’t all suspect that—in some cases, at least—gangsters must take pleasure in the profits and glory of a life of crime. Outlaws wouldn’t become legendary figures if we didn’t suspect that there’s more to crime than the social workers’ case studies may show. And though what we’ve always been told will happen to them—that they’ll come to a bad end—does seem to happen, some part of us wants to believe in the tiny possibility that they can get away with it. Is that really so terrible? Yet when it comes to movies people get nervous about acknowledging that there must be some fun in crime (though the gleam in Cagney’s eye told its own story). “Bonnie and Clyde” shows the fun but uses it, too, milking comedy out of the banality and conventionality of that fun. What looks ludicrous in this movie isn’t merely ludicrous, and after we have laughed at ignorance and helplessness and emptiness and stupidity and idiotic deviltry, the laughs keep sticking in our throats, because what’s funny isn’t only funny.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/10/21/bonnie-and-clyde

I tried looking for guidance on this going back further than Taxi Driver, and re-reading Pauline Kael's review of 'Bonny and Clyde'. A fantastic piece if you ask me, but (from 1968!) very much of its time. The parallel I thought I'd find about how bad an influence it was drew a blank, I did not find it at all. Because 1968 is not 2019. And 'Joker' is no 'Bonny and Clyde'. Kael's musings on America make me feel how much America and the world has changed. That there was a time when "some part of us wants to believe in the tiny possibility that they can get away with it. Is that really so terrible?" was a daring stance that needed to be expressed, whereas now it's the opposite. And yes, that is really terrible. Truth has surpassed fiction, and where Kael attributed liberation to going full "stop worrying and love the bomb", against the current at the time, nowadays it's the other way around.

But people also feel uncomfortable about the violence, and here I think they’re wrong. That is to say, they should feel uncomfortable, but this isn’t an argument against the movie. Only a few years ago, a good director would have suggested the violence obliquely, with reaction shots (like the famous one in “The Golden Coach,” when we see a whole bullfight reflected in Anna Magnani’s face), and death might have been symbolized by a light going out, or stylized, with blood and wounds kept to a minimum. In many ways, this method is more effective; we feel the violence more because so much is left to our imaginations. But the whole point of “Bonnie and Clyde” is to rub our noses in it, to make us pay our dues for laughing. The dirty reality of death—not suggestions but blood and holes—is necessary.

This is both beautiful and of a completely different time. How 'far' we've come. Rubbing our noses in violence has lost all affect.

So, yeah, I tried but this really is not helpful at all. Not at trying to find a historic parallel, at least. But it is realising things have turned upside down in fifty years. And do read Kael's review, it's worth the while, regardless.

There's a reason why so many people missed the satire of "Starship Troopers."

Starship Troopers was incredible

robocop and starship troopers basically laid out the blueprint for America in 2019

otm x2

Golden Lion

I'm already dreading hearing about this film for the next six months

Starship Troopers was incredible

yes

I'm already dreading hearing about this film for the next six months

yes

I'm already dreading hearing about this film for the next six months

Glad we’re already on it

lol

Thanks, Lucretia Martel

holy fucking shit it won the golden lion

Wow

Eh, Venice is the mens club of the arthouse world. Roman Polanski won runner up award. Anyone who is surprised by this hasn't paying attention the last few years.

Their last two winners sucked so this actually makes sense