I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly, I’ll describe a movie though.
The Harder They Come-
Seems to be a crime movie set in Jamaica, but there is a scene early in the film where the protagonist is in a movie theater watching a western. The audience is cheering on a last stand shootout.
Later at the end of the movie when the protag has become a criminal and is in a desperate shootout, the film cuts showing an audience watching the movie and cheering and booing. I might have interpreted this wrong but it seemed to me the movie was a western in a unusual setting basically, and was commenting on how we like seeing criminals in shoot outs in westerns.
Are there other movies that dissect genres like this?
I’m not sure if I completely understand the question because I haven’t seen the movie you’re referring to. However, the first thing I thought of was Anguish.
I thought that Across The Universe comprehensively covered everything that people my age (about 30) think they know about 1968–all learned from movies of course.
The Japanese movie Tampopo has some meta moments that discuss food in cinema; I don’t know if I’d say it dissects the genre though.
Last Action Hero is more of a dissection of the action genre (with some comedy) than an action movie itself. It was a box office flop, I think because it was still marketed as an action film, and the audience didn’t expect what they actually got.
Mentions of Across The Universe and Last Action Hero put smiles on my face. I love them both.
I don’t know if this fits, but it’s another love-it or hate-it film like those. Without having seen a trailer or reading a review or even a synopsis, I went to see Harmony Korine’s recent film Spring Breakers* I assumed it was going to be a weirdo indie take on Spring Break-type movies. A bit of it certainly was, but to a much greater and far more interesting extent than even I expected. IMO it was an arty, hypnotic, gritty, sometimes moving, sometimes frightening, sometimes funny, very violent, continually surprising and often shocking (to me) crime drama set during Spring Break, not about Spring Break itself.
So would that be a “Spring Break” movie dissected with a gritty crime drama dissected with an uber-indie flair?
Oh dear god I loved it too. It’ll be one of my favorites of 2013.
WATCHMEN famously dissected the comic-book superhero genre (so skip ahead to the next post if you haven’t read it or seen the movie): cue a third and fourth term once Nixon wins the war in Vietnam and covers up Watergate, since various American supers naturally have no problem killing people for the gent in the White House; one exception is the Brilliant Inventor superhero, who’d long since quit upon correctly realizing that he’d of course make a bigger difference as a celebrity CEO than as a masked weirdo in tights; and so on, right down to spelling out that a godlike entity who doesn’t age and walks across the sun while watching subatomic events play out – what, like he’s going to dress up like an ordinary man who holds down a regular job and pals around with Lois and Jimmy? He has nothing in common with those people; give a guy like that maybe twenty-odd years before he understandably leaves the solar system, never to return.
Best of all, the comic-book movie includes a self-referential quip that “I’m not a comic-book villain,” right when a classic trope gets laid out and dodged.
The villains in Crocodile Dundee 3 were con artists who were purposely making lame action movie sequels as some kind of tax scam. (That gave the movie some unexpected coolness points.)
McCabe and Mrs Miller was much, much more of a takedown of Westerns than Unforgiven, IMHO … and it came 20 years earlier.
I consider Rubber to be one of the ultimate (and wildly entertaining and surreal in a good way) dissection movie, IMHO it appears to be criticizing not only films and their tropes, but also the Hollywood Machine behind it all, including the audience in general being whining critics about the crap film they’re given, but never really turn their eye on the fact they get crap films is because they keep showing up for the abuse, hoping to finally get lucky and be entertained.
But really, it’s just a quirky, mock horror B movie, about a telekinetic tire that can kill people with its mind. But this is all really the skeleton to provide all the meaty meta characters, some who don’t know they’re in a movie, and some who do like the sheriff constantly breaking the 4th wall. Let alone the “audience” watching the whole “movie” from afar with binoculars.
The trailer gives you a taste, but it’s been be of my current favorites. The opening monologue alone by the sherriff is brilliant. It should be on Netflix Streaming too.
