re: The Cabin in the Woods. TulaneLSU's 2011-12 movie review thread

Making observations on human nature and human history is not moralizing. I believe bringing such observations into a review, opening a review with a theme of such and tying it into the theme of the movie, adds to the review as it gives added substance to it. When one reads my restaurant reviews on the Food Board they do not merely talk about the food. They also discuss the cultural background of the food and the geographic significance, the Eretz Orleans, as I will now call it. To discuss just the food or just the plot of a movie is, IMO, boring. It leaves something totally unfit, totally lacking, totally void of what I want to read.

If adding thought, pertinent thought, to a movie review is bad, then paint me bad. I am not going to give you film jargon as some reviewers in national publications do. They do so because their thought is empty and they want to impress with words foreign to others, words specific to their guild. Even on The Arts Board, you see a less professional jargon arising, with repeated use of words like pretentious, flat, deconstruct, noir, arthouse, flawed masterpiece, transcendant, I get it, smug, contextualized, well, I'll stop there. The point is, if I were writing reviews that didn't make people think or didn't have substance in them, I wouldn't have people begging on the Help Board for me to be banned. Nor would some of the wiser members of the boards thank me for opening up certain movies to them, allowing them to see it in a new light.

There is much truth to the statement that every story is a sermon. I believe it because every time we put something in a narrative, we express some worldview. We moralize in some way or another, even if we do our best not to moralize. Finding connections in a movie between its message and the message of some of the great thinkers of history is not a bad thing, and it should not be seen as such, unless you are proudly a cultured despiser of culture.

Why would anyone put as much effort into trolling as TulaneLSU does? Either he really is uber-religious ie insane or he is a pathetic slob with absolutely nothing better to do.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Politics isn't business. Politics is personal and often paphian. The Donations of Alexandria was the culmination of a grudge between Mark Antony and Octavia. The subsequent battle a testament to Antony's love for Cleopatra. Iraq II was fought, at least in part, for family vengeance. Lilliput and Blefuscu are excellent examples of the pettiness and personal nature of political warfare. Political espionage is just as personal in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

The movie does its best to be a pretentious, transcendent arthouse masterpiece. But the film is easily deconstructed, and behind it we find a flawed, smug, contextualized, and flat attempt to be a Euro spy film noir. I get it, as much as a bald, fatuous, angry, and over-the-hill votary to himself who believes that by condescending praise his intelligence is made superior to his superior. The film, as much as I enjoy independent films, is not good. Oldman is decent enough, playing the demure introvert, saving his words for daring and correct conclusions character to whom he is no stranger. His character is the only character that has any depth and his performance the only that isn't awful. Tom Hardy, however, has come on strong of late, and I look forward to following his career.

I have not read the book, nor do I plan to because this film has nothing important to add. The film is hard to follow because there are too many characters who play essential roles. There are too many names to keep track of. Even for a person of my intelligence, I found it to be an overload of information. If you miss any of it, you miss the picture. Keeping track of the plot and characters is hard enough, and I can only imagine the director did this to the audience because he hoped that we would be so focused on the instruments in the film to miss the film itself. I assume we're supposed to learn about each character, to play a game of Clue: Who is the mole? By the middle of the movie, however, I didn't care. Why? Because no character outside of Oldman's had any depth. They were all simply there. And just as the recent Conan film jumped from scene to scene as fast as LSU fans turned on Les Miles, so too does Tinker Sailor Soldier Spy jump from character to character. The result is an apathy for all of the characters. I didn't care who died. I didn't care who was a traitor and why. I didn't care.

In the climatic scene, where the mole gives his reasons for treachery, I did not care. The climax for me was entering the film and it was a steady descent from there. And thank the heavens I did not care because as we await his reasons, expecting a shocking sockdolager, we get the reasons of a college-aged flibbertigibbet. If any critic rates the film highly, it's because of prejudices because the film is atrocious. 2/10

A well deserved 6/10. And until you see it, you should withhold judgment.


I should probably qualify what I mean by atrocious. Considering the potential of this film, the final product was atrocious.

Another awful, self-impressed review.

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The movie does its best to be a pretentious, transcendent arthouse masterpiece

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Pray tell, how does it try and do that? What are the qualifications for a TAM?

And if you had trouble keeping up with the movie, maybe you're simply not as observant as you think. Maybe if you keep stuffing your reviews with five dollar adjectives and literary allusions you can convince yourself of some higher worth.

As much as I love you for your role in bringing true love into my life, I find your inability to see an allusion to something so recent and close in internet space a bit bewildering.

Mixing Antony and Cleopatra, the Iraqi war, and Gullivers Travels all in a row? Mixed metaphor/allusion is a pretty evident no-no. Maybe it would have been okay if you made Cold War references, not allusions protracted between centuries of one another. Instead it comes off as a parading of your own self amused knowledge, and adds little to nothing to the organization of your review.

Seldom are your claims backed up (ie here, the art house claims). Your organization is consistently terrible.

God is speaking through me, by the way. Pay attention

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There are too many names to keep track of. Even for a person of my intelligence, I found it to be an overload of information.

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I guess obviously then there's no hope for the rest of us to understand it.

Damn...Freaux's alive. I thought you retired.

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Damn...Freaux's alive. I thought you retired.

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Just a busy time of year. I am still alive. Actually, I was riling people up in the sci fi thread if you missed that, haha.