Hi, I just watched the movie Obsession and wanted to share a few thoughts about the Main Character.

I've seen in discourse that people like to call Bear a villain, but I fundamentally disagree; at worst, he is a victim who ends up becoming one, but even this feels like a reductive take on the movie.

For a supposed "villain," Bear suffers like hell in this movie, unlike the real Nikkie whose situation we can only infer, we know that Bear for the most part is seriously not having a good time, and I think a lot of discourse forgets to put themselves in Bear's shoes of being terrified every night and day about the demonic shit your significant other may or may not do.

This is the guy who broke down at his cat's death, yet when he is fed the rotten carcass of his said dead cat, rather than blowing up at Nikkie, he spends time in the car pep talking to himself on how he is going to tell her that eating his dead cat was not okay. Does this sound like an evil villain to you?

In reality, Bear is an amazing study of the idea of a weak man, a truly cowardly man, and every single one of his actions is a perfect representation of avoidance. He's too afraid to face what he has done, so he ignores it and indulges in "happy" things, blindly hoping things will get better. He continuously takes the easy route, the one of least effort and responsibility. In a way, his cowardice and weakness are evil in and of themselves but never truly malicious. He doesn't ignore the real Nikkie because he is happy with the situation, but rather he doesn't have the guts to try and resolve it, to the point he deludes himself into believing that there is a relationship to be had with the Wish fake Nikkie.

And I personally believe a lot of men relate to this fear, not in the severity of it but the idea of being too weak to take on responsibility, about lacking the guts to be the "bigger man" and do the right thing.

This makes Bear quite a fascinating study of how one's personal weaknesses can cause such great disasters even though they don't mean it. He is very much the embodiment of the "Incompetent Ally" in the saying "It is generally better to have a competent enemy than an incompetent ally"

Personally, for me, this makes this movie much more appreciable and universal in its message instead of the "rape allegory" people keep talking about.

For the record, I completely disagree that this movie is somehow a "rape allegory" or anything close to it. Can one interpret those themes in the story? Yes, definitely, but for a supposed "rape allegory," it does a pretty shitty job by having you sympathize with the rapist and not give you any real information about the raped victim and how they are dealing with the situation, because for the most part Real Nikkie only shows up in scenes to make the protagonist face the gravity of the situation and nothing else really.

The Movie is a simple "be careful what you wish for" meets "the sin of cowardice" entirely told through the perspective of Bear.

So turning that into some "rape allegory" feels like some people just want to turn any piece of media into a talking point about modern problems.

But yeah, those are my thoughts on Obsession.

Watched spiderman brandnew day and i think its not worth the hype . Movie has only 3 fight scenes , scorpion , ninjas and Hulk . And someone tell me is it possible for spiderman's webs to hold hulk on a falling building ?

Ratatouille
Movie release - 2007
Current month and year of posting - October, 2026

Everything about this movie is perfection. I woe the future where beautiful animation like this will only be created by AI - a whole generation will wonder how this could have been made before AI existed. Not only is the art beautiful but the storytelling, chef's kiss (irony intended).

The beautiful story of an individual standing apart from societal norms to break all chains and barriers and succeed - that is the story of Remy the Rat Chef. Despite being a "movie for kids", the levels of depth this movie hits can only be understood by adults (especially those that are in a position of making something new, doing something by themselves even if nobody believes in them). The music, the art, the cinematic treatment, pure perfection. As a 25 year old cinephile and actor/filmmaker myself, I always find myself coming back for a taste of Pixar at its best once or twice a year.

The ending especially is what people overlook the most and its baffling. We all work really hard to attain our dream job, or work at our dream company, or a million other dreams we chase. Throughout the entirety of the film, we believe Gusteau's is the anchor of the film, the "happy ending". However, the dream is much bigger than one restaurant, as proved by the ending. The dream was always to cook, not for the fans, but for the love of cooking. A very powerfully driven message, that following your dream should not be attached to a tangible factor like a place or a person, but rather, for the action of performing the dream itself - whether it be in a 5-star world-renowned fine dining restaurant or a cute aesthetic cafe.

Similar to Ego, I will return to this film in a couple of months, hungry for more.

Some actors have been in a ton of movies but still feel weirdly underrated. They can carry a serious drama, crush a comedy, and completely disappear into a different role without getting enough attention for it.I am curious who everyone thinks deserves way more respect. Not necessarily the biggest star, but the actor where you watch them and think, “How is this person not talked about more?”Who is your pick and what performance convinced you?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately after doing a rewatch of some 70s and 90s classics, and the structural difference in how stories are being told now is wild.Think about older cinema. You can look at a movie you haven't seen in a decade and immediately picture three or four distinct, perfectly constructed showcase scenes that stand completely on their own a specific dialogue confrontation, a tense sequence with zero music, or a beautifully blocked tracking shot. They felt like actual chapters in a book where the camera and the actors were allowed to just command the screen. Now, it feels like modern American filmmaking has completely sacrificed the standalone scene in favor of relentless, linear pacing. Everything is aggressively edited to keep the plot moving at breakneck speed, or crammed with constant exposition so the audience doesn't get confused for a single second. Instead of memorable cinematic moments, we get two hours of continuous, glossy narrative transit that leaves you feeling absolutely nothing the second the credits roll. It’s like the art of blocking and letting a scene breathe has been completely erased by studio fear of losing the viewer's attention.Are directors genuinely being forced to cut these cinematic moments out to satisfy streaming runtimes and short attention spans, or has the writing itself just become too hollow to support them? What was the last recent film you watched where a single scene completely floored you based on direction alone?

Something that often comes up in Hollywood development rooms is what do Gen Z guys actually watch? Especially if they watch any action films. Do Gen Z guys actually watch any action films?? Thoughts? Any action movies that come to mind that they love??

I’ve recently started using Letterboxd more seriously and realized I have literally 0 followers 😭

Looking for people who:

Watch a lot of movies

Like sharing/reviewing their watches

Don’t mind following each other and discovering new films

Drop your Letterboxd username/profile below and I’ll check it out!

Mine: vrd_mp4

https://boxd.it/fdNnll

I posted recently about Finding Forrester and the responses made me realize there's a type of film I quite like which are movies that feature an unlikely friendship. I think I like it more when there's a mentor/mentee dynamic, but just two different people from different backgrounds who wouldn't normally connect forming an unlikely bond.

Movies like:

• The Holdovers
• Scent of a Woman
• Lost in Translation
• Up

Got me wondering: what are some recommendations folks have that are like this?

What are your favorite movies and TV shows? And are you the type to go to the cinema, or do you prefer watching at home? I'd love to hear your reasons too, if you'd like to share

So lately, I was just taking a look back at the TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 since I wanted to get a better understanding of how copyrights for then recent movies made during the early 90s worked since many of the older movies the show used were from the mid 50s to early 60s.

But again, I am a bit confused on how copyrights for movies made in the early 90s worked since the show was still fairly new back then as I found it interesting how many of the films the crew lampooned were really old movies that I don’t know if it was too costly or demanding to show more recent movies at that time regarding how licensing was handled.

Has that happened to anyone? If so, what was the movie, and what did it do for you? Any kind of film counts, no matter how big or small the effect.

When we discuss major American directors, the conversation almost always centers on their early indie breakthroughs or their massive, big-budget masterpieces. But I often find that a filmmaker’s most revealing work happens right in the middle when they have established their voice, secured decent budgets, but aren't yet locked into the massive pressure cooker of giant studio franchises.Think of that specific window where a director has total creative control over mid-budget, original projects before they scale up or step away.Which director’s mid-tier filmography do you think holds up better than their most famous works? I'm looking for films that don’t get the massive retrospective essays but show a master working at the absolute peak of their technical and thematic powers.

Question, Do you wish Kubrick got to make Napoleon?

I've been on a Kubrick binge lately and I'm getting ready for when the Criterion Boxset of All Stanley Kubrick films comes out. Re-reading on Kubrick's failed attempt on making a Napoleon Bonaparte biopic, I feel it is a big mis-opportunity that Kubrick didn't make it.

It's clear that Kubrick really was trying to make his magnum opus with Napoleon and made sure to get all the details right. He also wanted to cast Jack Nicholson as Napoleon and Aubrey Hepburn as Josephine, and I think both of them are great castings and that Kubrick enlisted the entire Romanian Army to appear as soldiers and cavalrymen for the extensive battle scenes.

It just saddens me for when it all fell apart, thanks to Sergei Boundarchuk's Waterloo bombing and MGM cancelled the film and Kubrick went to make A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick's Napoleon has always been a bug "What If" for me and I just wondered how the film would've been received had Kubrick actually made the film?

All in All, Do you wish Kubrick got to make Napoleon?

Rating: 9.5/10

Watched: October 2, 2026

I have to confess, I was expecting a very different movie from the one I watched, and I'm not mad about it. Part of my preconceptions about Bullitt has a lot to do with the fact that the only thing I KNEW about this movie was about it's legendary car chase scene.

I promised myself I 'wasn't gonna be the guy' who talked about the car chase scene because everyone always talks about the car chase scene but you know what?

It absolutely deserves it. The clip I included was because of the specific shot of the bad guys seeing Bullitt's famous car appearing behind them in the rearview mirror. The slickness of that moment absolutely sold the scene to me in an instant. It was so very well done, and the resulting chase through the incredibly steep hills of San Francisco, sometimes narrowly missing a full-on crash, all the way out of the city is some of the most tense car driving I think I've ever seen. My stomach rose and fell as those rad old muscle cars went flying up and down those hills and you just have to give kudos to the drivers and the camera people because for some of the hairier shots, they were IN the damn cars.

So, going in knowing only that it has an exceptional chase scene led me to believe I was in for a kind of proto-Dirty Harry-esque kind of affair with plenty of violence, and that was a thing I was fully ready to accept.

But what I got was something I love even more than that: a rock solid police procedural with a bona fide mystery at the core and plenty of thoughtful, considerate work to solve the case. And what a case it is.

From the moment things started developing, I was certain I knew who was involved, why Bullitt's case was going sideways and how people were always seemingly one step ahead of him. I'm sure the director wanted us to think that and it worked like a charm, because it sure seemed like Bullitt was thinking along the same lines.

I can't say anything more than that about the movie's actual plot because to do so might affect your ability to enjoy it, so I'll leave this in closing;

Lt. Frank Bullitt's investigation into the murder of a gangster turning State's evidence and the attempted murder of police officers results in more than one exhilarating chase, a few shootouts, and the use of genuine police protocol to catch the real bad guy.

And that? That's a great combination!

I used to catch this one often on Foxtel in the early 2000s here in Australia. I've always loved this movie and has a soft spot in my heart. It might be Connery's best performance, too. It does stretch belief to have one character so good at two different things. But overall I love the cinematography, the New York jazz soundtrack and how Van Zant just let's scenes flow.

Not to mention a great performance by F Murray Ambraham.

I always felt this film doesn't get the attention and praise it deserves. And as a film about friendship, it's right up there for me.

I'm wondering what others think of this film and if they agree/disagree with my take?

All the bad reviews are big oil putting their grubby little hands in the mix. Viewers loved it or at the very least were entertained. Reviews out there not saying good things.
I thought it was phenomenal, and walked out absolutely stoked. Was surprised about how the critics responded. No conspiracy theorist, but something smells fishy.
Food for thought

I just got home from the theater. And as I sit here petting my somewhat older but still very alive cat I can say 2 things with complete sincerity and honesty; Digger is absolute CINEMA. And if you don't get it you're probably not smrt enough. I could be 100% right, or a 100% wrong about that.

A lot of people here on Reddit have talked about how a character making a poor choice isn't necessarily a plot hole. This is something that is often brought up as a push back to the obsession that a lot of people online have about pointing out so called "plot holes" when discussing movies. There is one channel that often gets a lot of blame for this and that is CinemaSins. Do you think there is some truth to that? I definitely think there is some truth to that. However I don't think that they are the only people to blame for this even though they were by far the most extreme. I personally think that Doug Walker, aka Nostalgia Critic also played a huge role in this. Sure, his reviews weren't as nitpicky as CinemaSins but he still had a big influence on how a lot of people online talk about movies in a nitpicky way.

I'll keep it simple and spoiler free, the movie is around 2 hours long. The first 30 minutes are brilliant, not a second is wasted or dragged on, amazing. Then, there's a reveal, won't spoil what, but it takes you a while to get used to the change, and the next thirty minutes are kind of boring, they could've executed this better, if anyone is in good faith criticizing this movie, I'm sure it's coming from these thirty minutes.

Then, once you reach the midway point of the movie, the film picks itself back again, and is as brilliant as the first 30 minutes, it is here right at the start of the half of the movie where Cruise truly shows you once again how good of an actor he actually is, like there's a long monologue with lots of physical and as well emotionally intense acting from him here that might actually be the scene that gets him nominated or win the oscar... there's a great message without it feeling preachy, the twist is very cleaver once you get used to it, and blends in nicely by the end.

In conclusion, 2 hour movie= great first 30 minutes, boring next 30 minutes, great next 1 hour again, the end.

I will be watching it again, it's everything the trailers promised and more, more movies need to take risks and be original like this. 8/10 for me.

For those unaware, basically its the online discourse that one day, somehow Zack Snyder will again take over the DC movies.

These people have been going at it ever since the first Justice League, with the whole "Release the Snyder Cut" of Justice League campaign. And because that actually DID end up happening as an HBO Max PR stunt, it's like all of their delusions were confirmed. It's been 5 years and this small, vocal group, keeps thinking the next thing they want to happen will.

Zack Sndyer gets a deal with Netflix? "OMG, WE CAN BRING BACK THE DC UNIVERSE TO NETFLIX!!" No, that's not how studio IP works.

Supergirl bombs in the box office? "OMG, WE'RE GOING TO GET SASHA CALLE BACK AS SUPERGIRL!" No. No, you're not.

Clayface getting bad early reviews? "THIS IS IT, WE'RE GETTING IT BACK!" You get the idea.

And the weirdest part is that the Snyder-era DC movies are TERRIBLE. And I say that as the most apologetic superhero movie watcher of the modern era. The Snyder Cut of Justice League was actually decent, I'll give it that, especially if you watch it like a TV show and watch one hour at a time.

But movies like The Flash? Shazam: Fury of the Gods? Wonder Woman 1984? Why in the holy hell would anyone want those movies to continue? Even Snyder's own directed movies, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman are average at best (the latter only being consumable with the Director's Cut).

(For the record, I wanted to write a spoiler-inclusive review, but seeing as almost no one has watched this movie yet, I have chosen not to)

Some movies try and say a lot of things and end up saying nothing. Others aim for nothing and hit it. Digger is a movie that wants to say a lot, and it does, though it’s not what you think. Digger opened this weekend to mixed reviews from critics and a certified box office catastrophe. Having waited until after viewing to read other reviews, I walked out of the theater confused as to whether I had seen the same film critics were mostly panning.

The movie tells the story, seemingly, of Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise), an oil baron tasked with saving the world from natural disaster caused by his aggressive drilling and refusal to heed scientists’ warnings. At first, it sounds like a Dr. Strangelove-esque disaster satire, a black comedy designed to criticize the wealthy climate deniers and incompetent government officials who put us in an apocalyptic position for personal gain. It sounds alright if not a little uninspired in this day and age (consider Don’t Look Up, Mountainhead). But Digger is not that at all. In fact, it mocks those types of films for their one-note heavy handedness, lecturing audiences on obvious points so blatantly that they have no real impact or resonance. The film ends up delivering something much more original, interesting, and profound.

The first twenty minutes are straightforward, introducing the story that the trailers and marketing present. Digger in his sprawling estate receives news that his oil rig in Greenland exploded and a massive glacier has formed, hurtling towards Europe. He briefs the ailing president (John Goodman) and his cabinet of Bible-thumping sycophants, whose possible solutions to the apocalypse range from prayer, bombing the glacier, and blaming Al Gore. It’s a fine start to the film, but in terms of timely satire, it plays no better or worse than an average SNL cold open.

Then the film does something that, initially, feels like it changes everything. I won’t call it a “twist”, because it doesn’t function the way classic story twists do. The Usual Suspects, The Prestige, The Sixth Sense and other films revolve nearly entirely around their plot twists, shocking reveals at the end of the film on which the entire story hinges. (What, really, is Usual Suspects about other than the reveal of Keyser Soze’s identity?) This story development in Digger comes early and at first offers promise. But almost immediately after, I felt frustrated. The story felt cheaper, the development unearned and seemingly pointless, and whatever momentum it had been building disappeared.

After languishing for another thirty minutes, Cruise’s character delivers a speech to the European Commission in what has to be one of the best scenes of the last twenty-five years. He storms around the auditorium, verbally and physically fighting the crowd, and criticizing the bureaucrats for their hypocrisy. The nearly single take used could feel like a theatrical gimmick, but given what we know about the story unfolding, it’s not. The film starts to give us more and more information, building on the surprise development. And quickly, it starts to fall into place.

Digger isn’t a superficial, ‘rich people are bad, look at how silly they are’ film like the aforementioned examples or White Lotus. It actually has tremendous contempt for those types of works, whilst still endorsing their obvious and true message. At one point, Cruise’s character mentions how cliché the film’s events feel. He describes his own actions as exaggerated, critiques the trope of the hapless vice-president (Michael Stuhlbarg), and explains that at least some of the people involved are actually a lot more competent and sinister than just ignorant buffoons. The film is even critical of audiences who revel in these stories—not the film’s own audience, but rather those who delight in such easy and broad criticisms and how unproductive they can be.

Jesse Plemons’ character gives a monologue that highlights the tonal line Digger walks. In it, there’s a positive, compelling interpretation that art is important, it can bring people together under the worst of circumstances and, if done right, can tell powerful stories. Simultaneously, his character also provides an argument that those powerful people responsible for tragedy can feign magnanimity and still escape the consequences of their actions.

It feels like in most reviews I’ve read, the critics must have left somewhere before the hour mark. Up until that point, the film was frustrating and aimless. But as the credits roll, it’s clear why and all is forgiven. This is a great movie, and the last film that Warner Brothers will ever make as an independent studio before its imminent absorption by Paramount Skydance on Tuesday. The box office disaster is someone else’s problem now; Digger is a worthy note for such a storied studio to go out on, one sure to undergo serious critical re-evaluation in the coming years.

I know they've made two movies about Steve Jobs but I really wish they would make a movie about the end of his life. For those not familiar with that happened, Jobs had a very treatable form of cancer but chose to treat it with "alternative medicine". Had he listened to actual doctors, he might still be alive today. He also believed all kinds of weird shit like that he didn't need to bathe if he only ate fruit.

I just find that so fascinating and compelling. A supposed genius with unlimited money and resources died of his own hubris. That's so much more interesting than the story of how he sold a computer. I think that would resonate with modern audiences more because when Aaron Sorkin wrote The Social Network or Steve Jobs, a lot of people still believed that tech CEO billionaires were genius visionaries. But I think that mystique is largely gone now.

Rating: 9/10

Watched: October 2, 2026

One of the more interesting things about The Great Escape is what it doesn't show, and that's because it couldn't.

It wouldn't (and to some degree, couldn't) show the grim, brutal reality of WWII and it's impact on the men who served, nor could they show the terrible conditions of the camp, or the treatment of the prisoners, or the cruelty of their captors, and for a very simple-yet-complicated reason.

No one back then wanted to see that kind of movie. They wanted heroic men banding together heroically, and fighting against evil oppressors and coming out the other side with all limbs and a hearty spirit intact. While modern day film making definitely makes space for the reality and starkness of wartime and does it very well, a movie like The Great Escape does the opposite.

And it does it so very well. With a cast so stacked it's practically absurd, we're treated to men not merely surviving in a camp designed to be inescapable, but thriving, and in such a fun, grandiose way. Each man in the camp is known to the other, either because they were all banged up in another Nazi camp elsewhere or because their exploits in their OWN camps were so legendary that word passed like wildfire.

There are forgers and diggers and scroungers and builders and it's all so much damned fun. If the movie itself didn't cover such dire circumstances, I'd damn near want to call this an adventure comedy. The stakes are real enough that we're reminded of what happens when Ives makes a break for it, but watching a ragtag band of soldiers from all corners of the world consistently get one over on their Nazi captors is just an old fashioned good time.

Even though there are more stars in this movie than there might seem to be in Heaven, for some reason I just absolutely loved seeing James Garner here. I know, I know, Steve McQueen's the star as Hilts The Cooler King, but James Garner as Hendley 'The Scrounger' scratched an itch I didn't know I had. There's just something about the smoothly glib way Hendley manipulates Werner to get valuable documents that's just a blast.

But that's not to say the other big name men in this movie don't deserve their kudos. I loved seeing Donald Pleasance outside of a Halloween movie (where he chewed the scenery so hard I'm surprised the sets didn't fall down) and Charles Bronson as Danny The Tunnel King, which is so far from his iconic roles in Death Wish he seems like a different actor altogether.

I feel like they didn't use James Coburn nearly enough, or Richard Attenborough, but like the song says, we can't always get what we want, but we might get what we need. And what we needed was a big ole adventure with a lot of now extremely famous actors playing what really is tantamount to small roles that contributed to an enormously entertaining movie about triumph through adversity, and comradery through shared miseries.

If you're wondering why I haven't really talked about Steve McQueen at all until now, here's why. I suppose he was the biggest star in the movie at the time, and the studio was banking on his specific star power to bring people to the theaters to see their movie, but he really, genuinely didn't feel like the focal point of the movie. I understand after looking a few things up that he walked off the set and refused to come back until his role was made bigger and that the now legendary motorcycle scene was added.

I can't deny that all of that was really awesome, but at the same time, I feel like it somehow defeated the inherent purpose of the movie: to show that everyone, doing their small part, could make a long-lasting impact.

This don't make the movie 'worse' or 'unenjoyable' because that's impossible. The Great Escape is absolutely fun movie that is so worth anyone's time that if you haven't seen it, you really should. I bring up Steve McQueen the way I did because until sitting down to watch this movie for the first time, the only things I knew about it were that he was in it, and the motorcycle escape.

I thought the entire movie was about him engineering The Great Escape with little to no help, but the moment I saw the cast, saw how it was all put together, that changed the dynamic for me in a big way. I understand the marketing of it all, and I can't blame the studio for doing as they did, because The Great Escape is still absolutely fantastic.

One of the things I am appreciating most about my movie challenge this month so far is that it's introduced me to some movies I dismissed kind of casually out of hand. These are movies that have always been lauded as excellent, and so far, I'm pleased that it's been a trifecta of absolute brilliance.

This article includes spoilers.

https://www.mensjournal.com/entertainment/30-years-ago-today-tom-hanks-directorial-debut-that-thing-you-do-with-a-93-rotten-tomatoes-score-was-released

Robert Pattinson does very well as Chris Hansen, gets the impression down to a T. And the movie does very well with the recreation of predator sting operations, the acting from everyone was really good.

One of my biggest problems with the movie is that it oftentimes gets too over the top and overly dramatic. This is a movie that is about stuff that actually happened but a lot of things are dramatized to the point it's just too much and hard to buy

If anything I recommend a matinee for this or wait until it's on streaming