TheOriginalTiki
Well-Known Member
@Dark PerGron I'm super curious what you thought of Beau is Afraid. It felt like the kind of movie that's deliberately manufactured to rub the audience the wrong way. I was loving the film in the first half. The apartment break in scene is easily the highlight of the whole damn movie and it happens pretty much right at the top. The production design and attention to detail in the city street was mesmerizing and easily the high point of Ari's skills as a director so far.
I almost equally loved the second section of the movie. Nathan Lane utterly killed it in the 30 minutes he was on screen. I love how that whole chunk of the film is designed to lure you into almost a false sense of security but still has characters like Jeeves and the daughter that bring up the anxiety and still make you feel on edge and as if things could go horribly, horribly wrong at any given moment. I adored everything that was done in the plot line with the parents literally worshipping the dead son. While not technically as impressive as the stuff in the first chunk, the "paint" scene is perhaps the wildest moment in the film from a sheer dramatic tension perspective.
Then we get the chunk in the forest with the play and...it's definitely visually super cool and the production design rocks. Once again Ari really is making leaps and bounds technically with every film. That being said the long winded nature of the "play within a play" set up basically felt like you were watching a short film inside of a larger movie instead of something that felt more naturally connected with the rest of the piece.
The last quarter of the movie at the mother's home is where things really go cuckoo bananas and I start to loose my taste for the film entirely. Essentially my problems are twofold. First I think the message of "yea...the mother really messed him up. Helicopter parents, ammirite???" gets incredibly repetitive and it feels like he's just hitting the same thematic beat over and over. Secondly I thought stuff like the setting of the final scene of the movie, the abrupt last shot, and...ahem...the thing that's in the attic...really added up to just a "Blank Check" mess art house pretension. I really hope now that Ari has this out of his system his next film goes back to the more traditional scares of Hereditary. The anxiety factor in this film was extremely well fleshed out in the first half but all the tension basically feels abandoned in favor of "look how ARTSY we are" nonsense in the second half.
I almost equally loved the second section of the movie. Nathan Lane utterly killed it in the 30 minutes he was on screen. I love how that whole chunk of the film is designed to lure you into almost a false sense of security but still has characters like Jeeves and the daughter that bring up the anxiety and still make you feel on edge and as if things could go horribly, horribly wrong at any given moment. I adored everything that was done in the plot line with the parents literally worshipping the dead son. While not technically as impressive as the stuff in the first chunk, the "paint" scene is perhaps the wildest moment in the film from a sheer dramatic tension perspective.
Then we get the chunk in the forest with the play and...it's definitely visually super cool and the production design rocks. Once again Ari really is making leaps and bounds technically with every film. That being said the long winded nature of the "play within a play" set up basically felt like you were watching a short film inside of a larger movie instead of something that felt more naturally connected with the rest of the piece.
The last quarter of the movie at the mother's home is where things really go cuckoo bananas and I start to loose my taste for the film entirely. Essentially my problems are twofold. First I think the message of "yea...the mother really messed him up. Helicopter parents, ammirite???" gets incredibly repetitive and it feels like he's just hitting the same thematic beat over and over. Secondly I thought stuff like the setting of the final scene of the movie, the abrupt last shot, and...ahem...the thing that's in the attic...really added up to just a "Blank Check" mess art house pretension. I really hope now that Ari has this out of his system his next film goes back to the more traditional scares of Hereditary. The anxiety factor in this film was extremely well fleshed out in the first half but all the tension basically feels abandoned in favor of "look how ARTSY we are" nonsense in the second half.
