The Brutalist

[MikoTython]

This one looks big, fat & meaty, a slice o' American post-war life from the (surprising?) Jewish angle, welding art, ambition, social ferment & history - right up my alley (>3 hr run time). I'm a-gonna see it in the next few days. This is -exactly- one of those adult-type films I keep winging about there not being enough of in theaters, by the looks of it. Reviews good to very good.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the- ... eview-2024
https://thefilmstage.com/venice-review- ... does-best/

[Pink Freud]

Even though, as an architecture buff, I regard brutalism style as ghastly ugly, I really want to see this in a theater, and I hope the national publicity it's getting prompts the distributor and studio to give it a much wider release than merely NYC and LA. Good thing it has an intermission!

I'm really surprised, given the Adrien Brody character, that there have not been more references to Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and Howard Roark.

[MikoTython]

Even though, as an architecture buff, I regard brutalism style as ghastly ugly, I really want to see this in a theater, and I hope the national publicity it's getting prompts the distributor and studio to give it a much wider release than merely NYC and LA. Good thing it has an intermission!

I'm really surprised, given the Adrien Brody character, that there have not been more references to Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and Howard Roark.

Its showing in Chicago. That sucks if the release is only limited to the largest cities. I doubt this has a lot of common cause w/ the Randos, when I see it will let you know my impression.

[Dicktar]

Even though, as an architecture buff, I regard brutalism style as ghastly ugly, I really want to see this in a theater, and I hope the national publicity it's getting prompts the distributor and studio to give it a much wider release than merely NYC and LA. Good thing it has an intermission!

I'm really surprised, given the Adrien Brody character, that there have not been more references to Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and Howard Roark.

Its showing in Chicago. That sucks if the release is only limited to the largest cities. I doubt this has a lot of common cause w/ the Randos, when I see it will let you know my impression.

It's showing at the Alamo Drafthouse right now. It opens wide on Friday.

[Dicktar2023]

The building under construction in this movie is a perfect metaphor for the film itself. It's designed by a technical genius but it is beholden to too many ideas that never cohere and ultimately the best thing you can say about it is that it is a miracle it exists. And it isn't too ugly. But it is large and opaque enough that someone could wander inside and disappear.

Adrien Brody is brilliant, but I thought all the other actors were actually pretty bad. Felicity Jones is given a total bummer of a character, but her halting attempts at the Eastern European accent don't help. (Why do directors/producers do things like this? They sweat bullets over every period and visual detail of the movie, then they hire an Englishwoman to play a Hungarian?)

Brady Corbet had a famous rant at the Golden Globes about how important it is to give directors final cut. Is that really what people are thinking when they walk out of this? thank God the auteur didn't let anyone tell him to cut anything? Not one second of the 10 minutes spent literally salivating over a slab of marble could be spared?

I'm depressed at what storytelling in movies has become. Netflix and the MCU have blown up the old 3-act story structure, but what has replaced it? Hours of largely interchangeable scenes that can, at a moment's notice, be re-assembled into the first season of a streaming series.

I take it that Corbet, who has made such a big deal over the vintage camera used to film this movie, never really considered this for the small screen. But isn't that more depressing? that even the filmmakers with dreams of IMAX have forgotten how to tell a story that feels like a movie?

[Bighorn66]

Even though, as an architecture buff, I regard brutalism style as ghastly ugly, I really want to see this in a theater, and I hope the national publicity it's getting prompts the distributor and studio to give it a much wider release than merely NYC and LA. Good thing it has an intermission!

I'm really surprised, given the Adrien Brody character, that there have not been more references to Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and Howard Roark.

From the last architecture movie I watched, Columbus.

Casey: Nowhere!
Jin: What is this?
Casey: This is where I went to school.
Jin: That's brutal.

[Pink Freud]

Even though, as an architecture buff, I regard brutalism style as ghastly ugly, I really want to see this in a theater, and I hope the national publicity it's getting prompts the distributor and studio to give it a much wider release than merely NYC and LA. Good thing it has an intermission!

I'm really surprised, given the Adrien Brody character, that there have not been more references to Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and Howard Roark.

From the last architecture movie I watched, Columbus.

Casey: Nowhere!
Jin: What is this?
Casey: This is where I went to school.
Jin: That's brutal.

Great photo of the horrid ghastliness that is brutalism.

My first real exposure to it was the time I attended one service at downtown Los Angeles's "new" Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, strictly to see the building, not to partake in the mythology, and was awestruck at how ugly it was. How do stacked concrete cubes with corner holes for absent rebar come off as brilliant design, particularly outside where it absorbs rainfall stains and mold? It's cold; it's blank; it's lacking in.....anything.

[3dender]

The building under construction in this movie is a perfect metaphor for the film itself. It's designed by a technical genius but it is beholden to too many ideas that never cohere and ultimately the best thing you can say about it is that it is a miracle it exists. And it isn't too ugly. But it is large and opaque enough that someone could wander inside and disappear.

Adrien Brody is brilliant, but I thought all the other actors were actually pretty bad. Felicity Jones is given a total bummer of a character, but her halting attempts at the Eastern European accent don't help. (Why do directors/producers do things like this? They sweat bullets over every period and visual detail of the movie, then they hire an Englishwoman to play a Hungarian?)

Brady Corbet had a famous rant at the Golden Globes about how important it is to give directors final cut. Is that really what people are thinking when they walk out of this? thank God the auteur didn't let anyone tell him to cut anything? Not one second of the 10 minutes spent literally salivating over a slab of marble could be spared?

I'm depressed at what storytelling in movies has become. Netflix and the MCU have blown up the old 3-act story structure, but what has replaced it? Hours of largely interchangeable scenes that can, at a moment's notice, be re-assembled into the first season of a streaming series.

I take it that Corbet, who has made such a big deal over the vintage camera used to film this movie, never really considered this for the small screen. But isn't that more depressing? that even the filmmakers with dreams of IMAX have forgotten how to tell a story that feels like a movie?

I was torn between the "masterpiece" plaudits and the 3.5 hour runtime... I feel untorn after your review, so thank you.

[Dicktar2023]

The building under construction in this movie is a perfect metaphor for the film itself. It's designed by a technical genius but it is beholden to too many ideas that never cohere and ultimately the best thing you can say about it is that it is a miracle it exists. And it isn't too ugly. But it is large and opaque enough that someone could wander inside and disappear.

Adrien Brody is brilliant, but I thought all the other actors were actually pretty bad. Felicity Jones is given a total bummer of a character, but her halting attempts at the Eastern European accent don't help. (Why do directors/producers do things like this? They sweat bullets over every period and visual detail of the movie, then they hire an Englishwoman to play a Hungarian?)

Brady Corbet had a famous rant at the Golden Globes about how important it is to give directors final cut. Is that really what people are thinking when they walk out of this? thank God the auteur didn't let anyone tell him to cut anything? Not one second of the 10 minutes spent literally salivating over a slab of marble could be spared?

I'm depressed at what storytelling in movies has become. Netflix and the MCU have blown up the old 3-act story structure, but what has replaced it? Hours of largely interchangeable scenes that can, at a moment's notice, be re-assembled into the first season of a streaming series.

I take it that Corbet, who has made such a big deal over the vintage camera used to film this movie, never really considered this for the small screen. But isn't that more depressing? that even the filmmakers with dreams of IMAX have forgotten how to tell a story that feels like a movie?

I was torn between the "masterpiece" plaudits and the 3.5 hour runtime... I feel untorn after your review, so thank you.

You were torn about how to feel about it, or whether to see it?

[3dender]

The building under construction in this movie is a perfect metaphor for the film itself. It's designed by a technical genius but it is beholden to too many ideas that never cohere and ultimately the best thing you can say about it is that it is a miracle it exists. And it isn't too ugly. But it is large and opaque enough that someone could wander inside and disappear.

Adrien Brody is brilliant, but I thought all the other actors were actually pretty bad. Felicity Jones is given a total bummer of a character, but her halting attempts at the Eastern European accent don't help. (Why do directors/producers do things like this? They sweat bullets over every period and visual detail of the movie, then they hire an Englishwoman to play a Hungarian?)

Brady Corbet had a famous rant at the Golden Globes about how important it is to give directors final cut. Is that really what people are thinking when they walk out of this? thank God the auteur didn't let anyone tell him to cut anything? Not one second of the 10 minutes spent literally salivating over a slab of marble could be spared?

I'm depressed at what storytelling in movies has become. Netflix and the MCU have blown up the old 3-act story structure, but what has replaced it? Hours of largely interchangeable scenes that can, at a moment's notice, be re-assembled into the first season of a streaming series.

I take it that Corbet, who has made such a big deal over the vintage camera used to film this movie, never really considered this for the small screen. But isn't that more depressing? that even the filmmakers with dreams of IMAX have forgotten how to tell a story that feels like a movie?

I was torn between the "masterpiece" plaudits and the 3.5 hour runtime... I feel untorn after your review, so thank you.

You were torn about how to feel about it, or whether to see it?

Whether to see it

[Pink Freud]

Writer/director Brady Corbet famously declared at the Golden Globes how directors MUST have final cut. One wonders what COULD have been snipped from this long, long movie without hurting it. I now wonder how long the original cut was.

Even the beloved "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" was originally a marathon. According to IMDb.com, "According to editor Paul Hirsch, the original cut of this movie was three hours and forty minutes long. He and John Hughes edited it down to two hours. This version was test screened, and it was probably used to edit trailers for the film, which is why they show a lot of deleted scenes. The movie was then edited again down to one hour and thirty-three minutes for theatrical release. According to Hirsch, a two hour version still exists, but he doesn't know where it is."

My favorite editing story is about the Sun Myung Moon-financed Korean War bomb "Inchon", in which David Janssen's entire (substantial) role was excised, in part because he died before his looping was done, so they brought in Rich Little to finish his lines, then threw his entire role into the crapper. Janssen was still paid $300K...in cash, like everyone else. Geez, the IMDb.com trivia section alone of "Inchon" would make for a great magazine story.

[Dicktar2023]

You were torn about how to feel about it, or whether to see it?

Whether to see it

Maybe I've overstated the case. It's worth seeing. Its run time is excessive and the pace is slow, but it never feels torturous (in the manner of, say, Killers of the Flower Moon). There is some wonderful visual filmmaking and a couple of scenes of real power.

But yes...structure-wise, its three chapters play like three consecutive season openers of a streaming series. There is never a firm central conflict and almost no character arcs. Each chapter ends in the middle of a dramatic moment that could have come with a card that says "insert 8-10 episodes here".

There are quite a few good-great scenes, they just never add up to anything.

[3dender]

You were torn about how to feel about it, or whether to see it?

Whether to see it

Maybe I've overstated the case. It's worth seeing. Its run time is excessive and the pace is slow, but it never feels torturous (in the manner of, say, Killers of the Flower Moon). There is some wonderful visual filmmaking and a couple of scenes of real power.

But yes...structure-wise, its three chapters play like three consecutive season openers of a streaming series. There is never a firm central conflict and almost no character arcs. Each chapter ends in the middle of a dramatic moment that could have come with a card that says "insert 8-10 episodes here".

There are quite a few good-great scenes, they just never add up to anything.

Thanks for clarification... just tough to commit that much time to any movie these days, esp. if I'll be sacrificing the visual reward by watching it on my tv. I'm part of the problem I guess of people who just don't watch nearly as many movies anymore.

[Dicktar2023]

You were torn about how to feel about it, or whether to see it?

Whether to see it

Maybe I've overstated the case. It's worth seeing. Its run time is excessive and the pace is slow, but it never feels torturous (in the manner of, say, Killers of the Flower Moon). There is some wonderful visual filmmaking and a couple of scenes of real power.

But yes...structure-wise, its three chapters play like three consecutive season openers of a streaming series. There is never a firm central conflict and almost no character arcs. Each chapter ends in the middle of a dramatic moment that could have come with a card that says "insert 8-10 episodes here".

There are quite a few good-great scenes, they just never add up to anything.

Thanks for clarification... just tough to commit that much time to any movie these days, esp. if I'll be sacrificing the visual reward by watching it on my tv. I'm part of the problem I guess of people who just don't watch nearly as many movies anymore.

Yeah...it's a borderline call. I think anything worth seeing is worth seeing on the big screen, and this is a movie that definitely knows how to fill a frame. But is it worth an entire afternoon?

I think hardcore movie fans won't regret making time for it. And it's going to be talked about a lot in the next few months.

Personally, I'm glad I watched it all and I'm not sure I would have finished it if it was just on my TV, competing for my attention with my phone, cats, other movies on my movie-to-see list, etc.

[GelatinousEndive]

Personally, I'm glad I watched it all and I'm not sure I would have finished it if it was just on my TV, competing for my attention with my phone, cats, other movies on my movie-to-see list, etc.

This is my problem with watching things at home, there are so many distractions. That’s why I prefer the movie theater yet I can’t think of the last time I’ve been to a movie theater at this point. Wait, we went last summer to see a film that I won’t mention because y’all will just jeer at me. And before that—maybe a year.

But certain films have more impact on me if I’m immersed in the dark theater with no distractions.

The cats can be very distracting. My one little fuzzball all is so cute I have to stop watching and lean over to hug/kiss/pet her.She is an alluring lass.

[Dicktar2023]

Personally, I'm glad I watched it all and I'm not sure I would have finished it if it was just on my TV, competing for my attention with my phone, cats, other movies on my movie-to-see list, etc.

This is my problem with watching things at home, there are so many distractions. That’s why I prefer the movie theater yet I can’t think of the last time I’ve been to a movie theater at this point. Wait, we went last summer to see a film that I won’t mention because y’all will just jeer at me. And before that—maybe a year.

But certain films have more impact on me if I’m immersed in the dark theater with no distractions.

The cats can be very distracting. My one little fuzzball all is so cute I have to stop watching and lean over to hug/kiss/pet her.She is an alluring lass.

No movie should have to compete with my cats.