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Okay... I'm going to address the stinky elephant in the room.

Some of you probably know that, after A24 have had it sat on the shelf for about a year, this got leaked 2 months before it's US theatrical release because it came out on French blu ray.

So being really excited for the It Follows team's latest, I (urm) watched it.

Oh boy, it hurts like heck to say it, but... this film is absolute garbage. It took every ounce of my goodwill to stick through it. I'll admit, it reaaally didn't help that I was done with Garfield exactly 5mins after his great role as Eduardo in The Social Network, and since then find him fucking insufferable. But he can't be completely blamed for this nonsense.

There does appear to be a pattern with tyro-male directors in the US. Especially guys that hit big with a beautifully-formed early feature, then feel compelled to follow with a large-scale, sprawling, often-satirical or genre-riffing, often wildly more expensive, big show-off movie? Think Richard Kelly's follow up to Donnie Darko (Southland Tales, painful), Damien Chazelle dropping the teeth-grindingly cute LaLaLand, even Ryan Johnson following Brick with Brothers Bloom (it ticks all the above boxes, and it's waaay too cute for it's own good, but I do kinda like it) and even Wes Anderson finally striking out with Darjeeling Express (though again I forgive it the many flaws to a point...)
In a way, it feels like they're following in the footsteps of the previous gen's precocious auteurs, Scorsese (NY, NY) and Coppola (One From The Heart) etc, many of whom lost the plot with gigantic passion projects.

The most depressing thing about Under The Silver Lake, though, is it's chosen subject/theme... L.A. and pop culture. If you listen carefully you'll hear ScoJo exhaling so deeply, his whole being sighing with 'who gives a shit??' despondence.

So no spoilers, but yeah- I hated this full-of-itself streak of pointless shit. Couldn't be more disappointed here.

(Btw, Disasterpiece/Vreeland's faux-noir orchestral score is just fine, as far as pastiche goes. Definitely have no particular desire to hear standalone)

Aaw no :( Me and me girlfriend are going to go see it next Saturday and we're looking forward to that.

I remember seeing the trailer waaaaaaay back when and forgot about it until just now, sorry to hear this.

That being said, I actually kind of like southland tales for some reason, and was one of the few people who loved Darjeeling limited right off the bat, but still this sounds very disappointing

NathanLurker wrote:Aaw no :( Me and me girlfriend are going to go see it next Saturday and we're looking forward to that.

Good luck!! ;-)

I genuinely hope that you love it. I just couldn't keep my big mouth shut on this one, heh heh...

Hatter313 wrote:That being said, I actually kind of like southland tales for some reason.

Because it's good.

Kind of shitty to hear @ScoJo but honestly not surprised. I'm in the camp that finds It Follows just fine, but not the modern "masterpiece" that it was made out to be prior to it's theatrical premiere. I much prefer the debut of Robert Eggers, The Witch, although I fear his next film could easily fall into this sophomore slump like many other big hit first feature directors. On the topic of failure films you listed, Southland Tales was such a disaster of epic proportions Kelly never recovered from. I personally love the film in all of it's absurdity and think that many people would appreciate it more if they read the comics as the film tells parts 4-6 of a 6 part story and 1-3 are the comics, a lot of very necessary information in them and puts context to some of the more baffling moments of the film. Darjeeling is great IMO, not his best and also his 5th feature? He's made better and worse since. I'm with you on the Brothers Bloom though, it was a little too cute for it's own good but not really a bad film. I do love Looper though and The Last Jedi so my opinion probably doesn't matter ;)

inksb wrote:Kind of shitty to hear @ScoJo but honestly not surprised. I'm in the camp that finds It Follows just fine, but not the modern "masterpiece" that it was made out to be prior to it's theatrical premiere. I much prefer the debut of Robert Eggers, The Witch, although I fear his next film could easily fall into this sophomore slump like many other big hit first feature directors. On the topic of failure films you listed, Southland Tales was such a disaster of epic proportions Kelly never recovered from. I personally love the film in all of it's absurdity and think that many people would appreciate it more if they read the comics as the film tells parts 4-6 of a 6 part story and 1-3 are the comics, a lot of very necessary information in them and puts context to some of the more baffling moments of the film. Darjeeling is great IMO, not his best and also his 5th feature? He's made better and worse since. I'm with you on the Brothers Bloom though, it was a little too cute for it's own good but not really a bad film. I do love Looper though and The Last Jedi so my opinion probably doesn't matter ;)

Love It Follows, loved The VVitch (thanks to you and other STBCers for spurring me onward), loved Southland Tales (didn't know about the comics), and loved The Box (Kelly's follow-up). And if Under The Silver Lake is as bad as ScøJ's review promises, I'll be seeing that, too. I'm rooting for really bad. Like Snowman bad (another gloriously mismanaged follow-up to an amazing film). So far, this thread is more pos than neg for me.

@Mateo, if you have Southland Tales bluray I think the comics are on there as a special feature. I could be remembering this incorrectly though. I downloaded them digitally and read them. I liked The Box too, I never got the hate surrounding that one.

Mateo Sanboval wrote:

Hatter313 wrote:That being said, I actually kind of like southland tales for some reason.

Because it's good.

I didn't hate it but it just wasn't what I was expecting and it left me underwhelmed by the end. I think I was hoping for a more engaging mystery and the reveal was just...odd.

ScoJo wrote: There does appear to be a pattern with tyro-male directors in the US. Especially guys that hit big with a beautifully-formed early feature, then feel compelled to follow with a large-scale, sprawling, often-satirical or genre-riffing, often wildly more expensive, big show-off movie? Think Richard Kelly's follow up to Donnie Darko (Southland Tales, painful), Damien Chazelle dropping the teeth-grindingly cute LaLaLand, even Ryan Johnson following Brick with Brothers Bloom (it ticks all the above boxes, and it's waaay too cute for it's own good, but I do kinda like it) and even Wes Anderson finally striking out with Darjeeling Express (though again I forgive it the many flaws to a point...)
In a way, it feels like they're following in the footsteps of the previous gen's precocious auteurs, Scorsese (NY, NY) and Coppola (One From The Heart) etc, many of whom lost the plot with gigantic passion projects.

Interesting, there's definitely a podcast/blog/at-the-bare-minimum-a-letterboxd-list to this idea.

The other side of the coin is the guys who go way too big after their first movie jumping straight to franchise blockbusters and losing all auteurship. It's probably easier to name the ones that are evolving at a good pace than not (Jeff Nichols, J.C. Chandor, Denis Villeneuve, errr…)

If nothing else though, Brothers Bloom gets a pass for Rachel Weisz's bum.

A friend of mine and I have a recurring conversation about that exact trend of small indie directors getting handed MASSIVE franchises almost right off the bat. Inevitably they don’t know how to handle them and it doesn’t work out.

> Interesting, there's definitely a podcast/blog/at-the-bare-minimum-a-letterboxd-list to this idea.

I like this idea.

> It's probably easier to name the ones that are evolving at a good pace than not (Jeff Nichols, J.C. Chandor, Denis Villeneuve, errr…)

I like this list!

> If nothing else though, Brothers Bloom gets a pass for Rachel Weisz's bum.

I just watched the trailer for this. Boy I hope the film is different than what that thing proposes because I won't watch it. It looked terrible.

inksb wrote:I just watched the trailer for this. Boy I hope the film is different than what that thing proposes because I won't watch it. It looked terrible.

It's terrible.

The trailer makes it look like post Juno Indie drivel