re: Under the Skin (2013) Scarlett Johansson

yea I really need to watch it again

It's just so beautifully done

The scene that really sticks out is when she left the baby on the beach. It's just so terrifying, yet so simple

Obtuse strictly for the sake of being "that type" of movie. Wouldn't classify it as a mind frick movie so much as a cluster frick movie. Even Scar Jo nekkid seemed pushed.

Oh I understand completely. But, if you would like to debate definition and opinion I'm game. But you sir start with a distinct advantage. I am no where near the Cinematic Sage you purport yourself to be so clearly I would be shamed in your first pithy response. So, I accept your assumption that my vocabulary is woefully lacking and will not engage in said debate resulting in you having more time to defend 'dat shitty movie.

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Anna Kendrick

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dem knock knees doe

I thought it had a semi straight foward plot, this is what I got out of it.




SPOILERS


Scarelett Johansson and the motorcycle guy are obviously aliens. At the first of the movie Scarlett comes to earth and is replacing the other woman/alien whom it shows at the first of the movie looking dead.

This woman was here before Scarlett and had her same job, luring men back to the alien lair to have whatever done to them that they do, appeared to be some sort of harvesting.

The first woman eventually saw that there were good things about earth and it's people and refused to continue doing her job which is why Scarlett replaced her.

This same thing eventually happens to Scarlett, culminating with the deformed guy which is why she lets him escape and goes on the run. She knows what happened to the first girl will happen to her if the motorcycle guy finds her. Also she wants to experience more of earth, tries the food, listens to the music, has sex ect.

Ending is very sad.

I think it's a great movie, and the music in it is crazy/amazing. I give it a 9/10.

that's pretty much what I got

You can see at the very beginning when she's getting the old alien's clothes, she has a tear. She's learned what it's like to be human

To be honest, I was a little disappointed when I watched this movie, primarily because the opinions of people I generally respect led me to anticipate more that the move actually delivered. The mistake the movie-makers made was taking a good premise and excellent cinematography (even if the latter was almost painfully European in execution) and trying to sustain it as a set piece over the space of one and a half hours. I very much appreciate thoughtful, moody, intelligent movies -- you should see my movie collection -- but only if I don't feel like the people involved are taking advantage of my appreciation by offering me less than meets the eye.

It wasn't a bad move, mind you. Far from it. But it made one of the gravest errors a movie of its ilk can make -- blatant self-indulgence. The same movie could have been compressed into a half-hour without an loss of fidelity, to use a technical metaphor. "Under the Skin" definitely had promise, but it ultimately came across as having pretensions toward being an art-house film without the substance to back said pretensions up. It's always a risk you're going to take when elevating style over plot/dialogue, and if you choose to take that risk, you'd best be damned certain your style repays the audience's patience with you.

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so your biggest problem with the film is that given the subject, it was a feature length film and not a short film?

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Well, no, that was only one of my observations.

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I'm curious to know exactly why you think it lacked substance.

The movie asks what it means to be human, what it means to have emotions.

It's pretty straight forward. We see an alien learn what it means to be human. We see a hunter and a seducer of men become the hunted. Does having emotion make us weak?

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That's almost precisely why I think it was attempting to stretch out a short movie into a long one. Note that I'm not saying I'd prefer a short movie. I'm saying that they needed more substance to justify the length. I certainly understood it just fine. Compared to some of my other favorite movies, it's pretty straight-forward.

Other than puzzling out what the general situation is -- a puzzle, I concede, was made easier by the fact I knew going in what the general situation was -- the movie relies on our willingness to indulge the cinematography, mood, music, etc at the expense of actually exploring the theme to any particular depth. It can essentially be summarized as "alien encounters humans, alien eats humans, alien starts regretting." Which is fine in itself except that the various mise-en-scenes don't really offer any new revelations or insights. In other words, there's not an enormous amount of intellectual differentiation or exploration after a while; ergo, the plot grows repetitive on a thematic level. This flaw emphasizes the role of the cinematography and music to the point where one starts to realize that these aspects are frequently compensating for rather than enhancing the movie's story and themes. The issue of lack of substance is primarily a complaint about the director's indulgence in repetition, not about the basic ideas and themes behind the movie itself.

My counterexample would be Tarkovsky's "Solyaris" (or the Clooney one, if you prefer, which I feel is unfairly maligned). For a considerable portion of the film, pretty much nothing happens. It's an atmospheric mood piece. But not a single aspect is redundant or unnecessary. With "Under the Skin" I had to force myself to ignore the atmospheric machinations of the director precisely because I found a large portion of it descending into tautology. Had it been a shameless slice-of-life piece, it would have been easier for me, ironically-enough.

Look, I liked the movie at the basic level. Hell, I own it on DVD/Blu-ray (I prefer to own hard media whenever I can. I'm not down with the purely digital revolution.) It was ambitious in its conceptualization, if not always in its execution, and, yes, it's easy to get lost in the mood even if I had to force myself to ignore the machinations. So don't get me wrong. On a 10 point scale, I'd score it a solid 7.5. But it could have been so much better.

That's all fair enough, and I certainly wouldn't try to discourage anyone from enjoying the movie as is. I was just articulating my own issues with it. I've spent enough time defending my enjoyment of such movies as "Synecdoche, New York", "2046", and "Enter the Void" that I have no room to talk when it comes to personal preferences not being to other peoples' taste.

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That's an awesome movie, so we agree there.

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Ah, a fellow Kaufmaniac!

Actually, I'm not that obsessed with him, but I do like pretty much every movie of his. I've watched SNY a half dozen times and it never gets old. It's still pretty damned long, so I have to plan ahead if I'm in the mood to re-watch it, but it never gets old.

Since, unlike my sweetie and certain of my "friends", you didn't curse my name at the very mention of the movie, I'll re-watch "Under the Skin" within the next couple of days with your (and those of others here, but mostly yours) comments in mind and see if further evaluation alters my opinion.