I Pit "Babel" (with spoilers)

[Astroboy14]

@SmartAleq

…just so we can see a cute Japanese girl flash her snatch. I am NOT BUYING IT!!

Hell, I am now!! Had no interest before…

[SmartAleq]

@Astroboy14

Hell, I am now!! Had no interest before…

Man, did they ever miss a trick in the advertising for this movie–“Come for the characterization, stay for the snatch!”

Might’ve won more Oscars that way!

@Fiveyearlurker

It’s not like she had a hangnail and he was demanding a medevac unit! She was shot! Damn right I’m going to get on the phone and try to get a helicopter, battleship or unicorn out there to get my wife out if she is shot!

The part I found cringeworthy was the complete idiocy they both showed–okay, she’s been shot and that’s a bad thing, no argument here. However, she was not bleeding out, the vet dude sewed her up fairly effectively, they had a perfectly good bus within HOURS of a hospital, and numbnutz Brad lets the air conditioned, CLEAN, perfectly operational bus leave without him and Cate who by that time was pretty stabilized and would’ve been even better off if they’d looked through luggage for a bottle of hooch to sterilize her wound with–pack it real good with the pretty likely CLEAN cotton underwear to be found in the same luggage and then drive a few hours to the fucking hospital. Deal, you know? Don’t go batshit asshole demanding something you’ve already been told isn’t available. That’s just stupid entitlement attitude talking and it makes me pissed off. They gonna medevac out the goatherd kids in a chopper? No, because they’re NATIVES, they don’t have an EMBASSY to call, shit just happens and they deal with it–I should feel, like Brad & Cate do, that because they’re Americans with money they should get things that are out of reach of any reasonable definition of normal services available in the place they decided to go touring in? Well, I don’t.

If you can’t handle what might happen to you in a third world country don’t go there! Don’t run around trying to make the entire world conform to your expectations because you didn’t think things through and it went badly for you. Cope, with some dignity!

[flyboy]

@Astroboy14

Hell, I am now!! Had no interest before…

No amount of snatch can make this movie worth watching. Besides, I had a better view of snatch when Britney went panty-less.

[FriarTed]

@flyboy88

No amount of snatch can make this movie worth watching. Besides, I had a better view of snatch when Britney went panty-less.

Yeah, but how did the Babel girl’s compare with Brit’s, because Brit’s was just not that appealling?

[MichaelQReilly]

@Jodi

But this doesn’t follow from anything I said. I never said every film must be about Something Important, or that every film about Something Important must therefore be Great. I said that disregarding content and plot (what a film is about) in favor of style is frequently a defense of poor movie-making. Not every film must be about Something Important, but every film worth watching is about Something – and that Something isn’t style. I am no fan of movies that elevate style over substance.

On the contrary; this relegation was accomplished by elevating “style” over plot – precisely the sort of ordering of importance that I deplore. So I’m not really certain what “mindset” you’re referring to, because it certainly isn’t mine.

:rolleyes: What I really enjoy about film discussions is the rapidity with which self-professed cinephiles become patronizing.

The audience, for one. People do not enjoy being confused. They do not enjoy being patronized, bored, or condescended to. A medium that relies on communication to an audience should not be given a gold star or elevated to High Art when it fails in the fundamental act of communication. Not all art must be comprehesible to everyone, but audience-based art should be comprehensible to the audience. If it isn’t, that doesn’t mean the audience is stupid; it means the medium has failed. This is not to say that there is no place for Waiting for Godot, but it’s a pretty small place and Waiting for Godot is already in it.

Aaaaand out comes the patronization and the condescension. Audiences are too stupid to recognize good film when they see it. Except not YOU, of course. You’re smart. That’s why you enjoy “film.” That and the opportunities it gives you to dismiss others as “spoon-fed” while you congratulate yourself on undertaking a “more difficult” task that is of course beyond them.

The fact of the matter is, that great films almost without exception have BOTH style and substance. They do not attempt to elevate HOW the story is told over the story itself, because THAT is the hallmark of bad arthouse films.

With a film having BOTH style and substance, I have no problem with a person wanting to look beyond the story that is told to engage in or examine how the story is told, and the ways in which the “how” adds to the story itself. But a quote like “It’s not so much what a film is about as it is how a film is about what it is about” reads as nothing so much as the elevation of style over substance, and I strongly disagree with it.

But, gosh, maybe I’m not to be “trusted” with anything more complex than simple cause and effect. I’m sure I would completely agree with you if only I was as smart as you. :rolleyes:

I just wanted to congratulate you on what was one of the most well thought out, best written rebuttals that I’ve ever read on this board. Bravo.

[flyboy]

@FriarTed

Yeah, but how did the Babel girl’s compare with Brit’s, because Brit’s was just not that appealling?

Of course it was a bit skanky, but at least you didn’t need a machete to see it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that look

[Astroboy14]

@flyboy88

No amount of snatch can make this movie worth watching. Besides, I had a better view of snatch when Britney went panty-less.

Nonsense! It takes a vanishingly small amount of snatch to make anything worthwhile.

[Sitnam]

I really liked Babel. The movie is about how communication keeps close people apart. I’ll spare you the biblical reference, but what this movie is about is people all want the same thing, yet treat those in which they can’t communicate with disdain. The distance someone living in your home feels when your native language isn’t their own. The distance cultures have to span for simple trust in others humanity. The distrust you immediately feel for those from a different culture and a different language. You hate the movie, that’s fine, but it spoke to me.

[Cubsfan]

That movie was a fucking trainwreck.

[UncleRojelio]

@Stinkpalm

That movie was a fucking trainwreck.

Seconded.

This one and Syriana are at the top of my most recent ‘WTF List’.

[denquixote]

@UncleRojelio

Seconded.

This one and Syriana are at the top of my most recent ‘WTF List’.

That’s interesting, I did not like Syriana all that much because it was such a downer, but I did not question it’s right to exist like I do with babel.

[Astroboy14]

Did Syriana have any snatch?

[lissener]

@ArchiveGuy

I disagree vehemently. It is this type of thinking that elevates every middlebrow mediocrity to Great status simply because it’s about something important, whether it be the Holocaust, AIDS, genocide, the evil of war, etc. Very often, these types of films get away with remarkably lazy filmmaking, because it’s so obvious that the Message is the Movie.

Thanks, AG, for so succinctly stating my objection to such insufferably selfrighteous movies as Schindler’s List, The Pizzle of the Chrizzle, Crash, Babel, ad nauseum.

[Sitnam]

@UncleRojelio

Seconded.

This one and Syriana are at the top of my most recent ‘WTF List’.

I’m sorry you two can’t appreciate a movie beyond the complexity of XXX.