The Mexicans (or Mexican-Americans) I know in Los Angeles largely thought it was a good movie but if you live in Mexico City, you might know better.
Film Oscars 2025
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Jamie (@Vault Dweller) are here to celebrate rare back-to-back victories for Manchester United! They analyse the late win in the Europa League vs. Rangers and then try and find things to analyse in a pretty dour game vs. Fulham. They also chat about the latest Marcus Rashford news, and look at the latest transfer news.
The Mexicans (or Mexican-Americans) I know in Los Angeles largely thought it was a good movie but if you live in Mexico City, you might know better.
My reply is related to the review bombing on IMDB which is mostly coming from Mexicans.
Do you have a source for that?
Fair enough. If that's accurate, and not something that could be easily manipulated, then I stand corrected.
American Beauty did not age well. It's problematic (the Kevin Spacey - Mena Suvari relationship) and seems to think a 40 year old going through a midlife crisis and trying to bang his high school daughter's friend is good character development. Then the neighbor kid with the video camera and his dad's homophobia, and the gay neighbors, and Spacey getting a job as a fry cook, etc. It's really a pretty bad movie.
I'm not really talking about movies that lost out to better movies (for which you basically could argue that it happens every year if you want). I'm more just talking about the general reception of a film. Not a single aggregated score that I've seen shows that Emilia Perez is a well liked film, and it's not even particularly well reviewed. I know voting for Academy Awards (at least for Best Picture) favors movies that gets many standout votes (or at least used to do that). This could explain why it shows up everywhere, but other than that I can't really explain it as it just seems that it's not generally well liked by just about any metric. And that obviously makes it polarizing.
I don't think most of those you mention (apart from Crash and Green Book) are that polarizing. They're pretty much across the board well liked movies. Even Crash and Green Book, that certainly have a lot of critics and are quite controversial picks in that regard, are on an aggregated level fairly well liked movies. Emilia Perez just doesn't seem to be in any way, that's why I'm a bit surprised it got that many nominations.
I’m very surprised. I think there was some last minute flipping a “V” to the Trumpers with voting for a movie starring a transgender actress. It will probably get wiped out at the Oscars because the protest nomination already sent the message.
I’m accepting already that Demi Moore wins Best Actress, maybe it gets Cinematography? Editing? When a musical is a big crossover it’s something like Chicago or Wicked, this isn’t even one for musical theater nerds.
I think the imagery in Emilia Perez lends itself to an insane trailer. I was excited to see it based on the trailer, but the film itself didn’t live up to the expectations.
This is all portrayed as bad/problematic in the movie itself.
I wouldn't say its "good" or that the movie portrayed that as a good thing, in fact I'd say the contrary. It was a somewhat honest and realistic situation that does happen sometimes. I knew then and I know now cases pretty close to depicted in the movie - a 40-something parent having an affair with a friend/classmate of their offspring (the cases I personally know the friends were all over 18 though under 25). I never thought the movie was endorsing that or portraying it as good, just that it happens and when it does happen, people in the social circle that hear about tend to want to know details. It's a bit like Lolita. I don't think Nabokov is ever endorsing Humbert or presenting it as good, but it is a story that is interesting.
That makes sense. But I’d add that the filmmakers themselves not only let/force the audience see Suvari strip down to her knickers but also they use her naked torso as the poster art for the film. It’s a little bit like saying Pretty Baby isn’t endorsing child prostitution while at the same time having to show a naked 12 year old Brooke Shields, you know, for authenticity. American Beauty wasn’t a mediation like Lolita on an obsession, in my view, it was a very male oriented spin on getting out of a listless marriage and career.
You could very well be right though. I just didn’t like the movie.
Pretty poor considering the last 20 years of film
I really liked some of these (Slumdog, Departed, No Country, CODA, Spotlight, EEAAO) and I appreciate others without feeling really jazzed (Oppenheimer, Argo) but it is an oddly unexciting bunch. Some were outright bad. Compare that to 1970-1984 when when we were getting Apocalypse Now, Five Easy Pieces, Midnight Cowboy, Patton, Godfather, French Connection, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Cuckoo’s Nest, Cries And Whispers, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, Barry Lyndon, Network, Deer Hunter, All That Jazz, Star Wars… holy effing shit. Something is missing!
Pretty poor considering the last 20 years of film
Most of those didn't win Best Picture though. First half of 70s was obviously very strong in terms of BP winners (French Connection, Godfather, Godfather Part 2, Cuckoo's Nest) but then it's not exactly brilliant picks every year, with stuff like Rocky, Annie Hall, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire and Terms of Endearment winning.
You heartless automaton. Rocky is the quintessential crowd pleasing underdog tale. Annie Hall is great. Ordinary People was a cerebral film with great performances from all three leads (Sutherland, Moore, Hutton). Chariots Of Fire perfected the formula for boring-ass English movies about English people being English in heroically English ways. My wife loves, loves, LOVES this kind of movie. We joke about it. If it's got an English person making tea, she's in. And Terms Of Endearment kinda sucked ass except for Nicholson.
Apart from Chariots of Fire they're all good to great films as far as I am concerned. It's not that they're bad, not at all, it's just that they're not considerably better (or better at all) than the counterparts from later years.
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