There's obviously (and rightfully) a lot of discussion about this movie, but it's almost universally praised as "genius" and "reality bending" and "revolutionary". There are very few critical takes, and most of those aren't taken seriously or are immediately dismissed.

But that puts people in an awkward position: agree with the praise, or be cast as someone who doesn't "get it". There doesn't seem to be any room for, "I understand and appreciate what the movie is trying to do but I question how well it actually does it".

It makes discussing the movie a little frustrating. Criticism is usually met with "you didn't get it" or "they did that on purpose!".

But high concept claims that the movie is really about "truth" and "reality" and "subjectivity" aren't actually counterarguments or defenses.

There are legitimate criticisms of how effectively it explores those ideas. Does the ambiguity necessarily reveal something meaningful, or does it simply manufacture uncertainty by intentionally withholding or manipulating context? And if "manufacturing uncertainty" is "the point", then what is the ambiguity actually revealing? Is it just that "sometimes it's hard to know what's true"?

Do the reenactments deepen our understanding or mostly just add a layer of contrived performance?

Does acknowledging its own manipulation automatically make that manipulation more defensible or credible?

Those questions aren’t evidence that someone missed "the point". They’re questions about whether the movie really earns the significance people are attributing to it.

I’m not saying people should enjoy it less. I'm not even saying I didn't enjoy it myself (because I did). I’d just like there to be room to question its effectiveness without having my understanding of it questioned instead.

Lately I have been seeing more and more posts, tweets, quotes and articles about Gen Z’s decreased interest in sex scenes in movies and TV. This npr article mentions a study that shows that “Generation Z is far more interested in seeing stories of platonic relationships on screen than those featuring sex and romance”. I can understand being against gratuitous sex and romance that is completely unnecessary to the plot. I cannot understand being against nudity and sex as basically “completely unnecessary”. Sex, nudity and romance can be incredible important to the story. It helps show vulnerability, weakness, desire, insecurity, excitement and love. Sex and romance are also such a large part of the human experience to so many people. They are deeply important and connecting to so many people as well.

All of this makes me wonder, can you be anti-sex and anti-romance and still consider yourself a cinephile? Or do you think this would exclude you from too much important cinema that you could only be considered a casual movie lover? I personally think that if you are unable to connect with movies that feature sex and romance, you cannot take in enough of the full cinematic experience to be considered a cinephile

Edit: I was watching Thelma and Louise which features a sex scene between Thelma and JD (a young Brad Pitt). I think the movie is better because it features that sex scene. If it were removed from the movie, it would have been a worse movie because of it. The sex helps sell you on how charming Pitt’s character is to be able to trick Thelma like that. It also shows you how Thelma’s sexual experience was very intense and pleasurable for her, contrasting how sexually unfulfilled she was in her crumbling marriage. It also shows her being excited and giggly after having a great sexual experience, a feeling that (hopefully) many people can connect to. The sex scene served multiple purposes to the movie and if it hadn’t featured that sex scene, the movie wouldn’t have told the full story as well as it did

Edit 2: I think one of the only things that might be an apt comparison, is saying you won’t watch any films with violence or crime in them. If someone said they can’t enjoy any movies with violence or crime, they would be missing out on such a huge portion of influential and popular movies

Edit 3: This post sure has sparked a lot of discussion! Seems most people defending Gen Z think this is mostly an anti-gratuitous sex viewpoint or avoiding nudity performed simply for the male gaze. That is reassuring to me. I hope this isn’t a big generational issue where Gen Z is becoming more puritanical and fanatical

I saw the movie yesterday, one thing that really stood out to me was Hwan Yoon's character.

It would be so easy for them to just make him a one note hardcore Christian charlatan, but there are some interesting things they do with his character to complicate things (even though in the end they are still Christian extremists):

- in the fight in the strip club-turned-church he yells at his followers to not use their guns because there's a baby involved.

- the director could've easily made them all white guys to equate them to white supremacists (hell, their logo somewhat resembles the KKK as well), but he deliberately makes his band of fanatical followers diverse. The director I think said something about how he intentionally made the leader of the Christian cult a "colonized Korean". Reminds me of the choice to make the main vampire in Sinners Irish

- His attempt to deescalate things before the last fight in the mansion. This could read this two ways: either he's genuinely scared of what Latif can do and is just trying to prevent more of his men from dying (even though Latif has a sword and is outnumbered by his men who have guns), or he genuinely feels some kind of empathy/respect for him. He even invites him to share to the followers what Ramadan means to him; I think this invitation is genuine on some level and reflects that he does have some kind of respect for Islam

But I think the most interesting aspect of this is his reaction to the miracle at the end of the movie. A charlatan who doesn't actually believe in what he preaches wouldn't react like that; it's like he's realizing in real time that Latif has received divine providence from God/Allah the same way he received it in Iraq (he even asks Latif "who's praying for you?"). After the miracle he doesn't even try to fight Latif anymore. I think by the end of it all he sees Latif as an instrument of God - the same way he sees himself.

What do you guys think? I thought it was really interesting for the movie to portray a Christian fanatic who, despite being extremist, isn't a one note mustache twirling villain who just wants to kill all Muslims.

I watched it as a teen and found it painfully unengaging, it went right over my head.

Revisited it yesterday and thought it was very good, and respected that it didn’t pander to the naive - it assumes an adult audience who understand politics (be those of municipal government or the mob), and the rat-a-tat dialogue and complex plot doesn’t wait for dummies, like my teenage self, to catch up.

Great performances across the board. Pacino rocks as ever, and Cusack plays his young Southern protege called ‘Kevin’ - exactly like Keanu the following year in The Devil’s Advocate. Weirdly, Keanu’s Southern accent was far more convincing than Cusack’s is here.

Script by three titans - Paul Schrader, Nicolas Pileggi and Bo Goldman - is rich, snappy and fast paced, and along with director Harold Becker (reteaming with Pacino after Sea Of Love) create an unmistakably NEW YORK thriller.

Apparently the original Schrader script was a bigger, darker epic. It feels like that was squeezed into something more like The Firm (1993). It’s a solid 7.5/10 and a must-watch for Pacino and/or Cusack fans, or anyone who needs their Noo Yawk fix.

(preface)
I wrestled with the film Wildwood and wrote this essay for myself. I went to post it and was greeted by outside information that clarified many of the answers I had arrived at when working through the film on its own. Then came an epilogue of eureka and glee. I believe this encapsulates why self-reflection is an essential aspect of consuming art and I encourage others to wrestle themselves if we are to survive the coming age.

(the original essay)
Wildwood depressed me. For some reason each step I have taken afterwards has been accompanied by distant screams from within. The voices cry out behind my eyes, “Cast it out so it does not take root!” Thus:

A beautifully crafted hollow image is the most painful to watch. It wasn’t that I didn’t “agree” with everything that happened. I did. I get the movie. It is about the climate catastrophe and the older generation sacrificing the younger generation because of their outdated beliefs. It is about seeing magic in a rationalist world that stops the young from venturing into the unknown. It is about duty and fighting for what you believe in. It is about the fear of death. It is an updated Chronicles of Narnia, where Aslan is an Eagle and Christianity has been exchanged for liberal plant worship.

There was something distressingly inhuman about it, even though it screamed “humanity” constantly at its audience. When you watch it, it wants you to think it is good. Look at how much “art” happened! “It was crafted by human hands! Thousands and thousands of human hands! It was not made by a machine!”

I fear that this is a harbinger of liberal humanist battlegrounds for the coming fight against AI. They think we need to recruit human bodies to form the machine. I.e. a 21st century John Henry. It is a cruel misunderstanding of what art is. Art is never in the labor. Labor is necessary to realize a vision, but if labor is spent realizing something hollow and inhuman, that labor was simply work, not art. If this is the ground we choose to fight on, we will have lost before the battle even begins.

(Unfortunately a majority of the film’s most popular reviews occupy this ground – “the biggest middle finger to generative AI of all time.”)

This film is a contemporary pyramid. In truth, we have never stopped building the pyramids. Our culture is just as obsessed with religious temples as any that has come before, we just have different gods. Films and media are the temples of our time. The religious epicenter of any culture is simply whatever art people care about and engage with. We have exchanged religious services for media consumption, but we are still human. We can still feel truth and belief in the poetic genius when we see it, and we, like every other culture, seek to enshrine and pass down works that testify to where the human condition can reach towards at a given moment.

However, we have entered an era of objectivity. Where the thing must be “good” because it has been quantified as “good” based on empirical evidence. We assess our art as scientists and think the greatest works have the most “art” inside of them. For example, “Each frame of this movie has more “art” than that other movie.” This gets us in an inhuman situation where we forced ourselves to think that the temple must hold a god, because it is objectively “valuable” and formalisticly “beautiful.”

Think of someone in ancient Egypt. How would it feel for this individual to enter that pyramid that had been touched and cared for by all of their community? What if when they stood at the center, they were confronted, not with a god, but by the empty and cruel vanity of man. Standing inside that ornate monument, should this individual justify the pharaoh’s divinity simply because of the amount of death and toil which constructed his magnificent temple? Is it disrespectful to the slaves that gave their lives to build it, to observe something hollow at its center? And is it disrespectful to the slaves that gave their lives to build it, to seek for the pyramid to be torn down?

To the ground. We must destroy our beautiful empty temples no matter how uncomfortable this makes us feel. How can I justify this review to the laborers who spent years of their lives building this film? I can do it by arguing that the alternative is much worse. If we are to survive the coming age, we must be unafraid to reveal what makes us human. We must gather around works of art that do not reflect the vague systematic notion of humanity but works of art that could ONLY be created by a living breathing human being. This film uses labor and technology directed towards an objective surface level – the level of the filmic image. Despite the warnings of the AI bell tollers, we will always “win” against what we have created because the human condition is indescribable. Even words are the fumbling afterthought of something long dead inside our souls. As subjective creatures, we can never be “replaced” because what makes us human cannot be manifest, only hinted at. However, we can be replaced if our battle rests at the objective surface level. We must never forget that our images are nothing without their source, no matter how laborious or formally technical that image might be. We must not worship labor and efficiency because this is the language of capitalism not art.

This film is more like patronage than art. Attempting to artificially realize a “consensus.” Patronage is wanting the world to be thought of a certain way and having the resources to make a mass amount of people see the world in this way. This is the logic of Pharaohs. Winning over the mass, not by touching their soul and shaping what they believe, but by constructing the worlds they are forced to perceive. I fear this film thinks art is just a fake version of the “real” world -- "the real world should become like this fake world because of how beautiful and expensive it was to craft."

This is not acceptable. We must feel the human breath in our art. Create something that is unique to yourself. We are subjective beings. I felt the objectivity of this world in every frame. All the hands on the clay, and all the hands on the writing, all the hands on it. Just too many hands. It is too much. How can any human cry out in this ornate world where the bar to be "heard" is placed beyond the capabilities of the individual? This is not saving us from the machine; this is fighting the machine on its terms. The communal artistic language of the species is slowly being moved beyond the capabilities of the individual artist, into a world of mass toil and expensive technology. And once that happens, we will find ourselves trapped in a fake world unable to cry out.

How painfully this irony slips through the fingers of this film’s makers. The film is about sacrificing the “individual” innocent in an attempt to create a fake version of life. It wears the costume of the savior while it itself holds the knife. This objective quantification art traps our culture’s most vulnerable in a simulation world of beautiful inhuman images and the inability to change them unless they become machines themselves. We are not meant to be willing cogs in an artistic machine. What the hell is happening. Can no one see the insanity of this statement?

I have probably been too hard on this film in particular. It is just painful to watch something that claims it is freeing the young while actively building chains to ensnare them. It was screaming at me to praise it, but the more it screamed at me, the more I wept.

(epilogue)
IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN! THIS MOVIE WAS MADE BY A BILLIONAIRE! I KNEW IT THE WHOLE TIME. It speaks the language of money. I felt it in every frame. It is SUCH a billionaire movie. They are surrounded by formalistic beauty with empty empty teeny tiny souls. HAHAHA. Of course this man thinks art is as many little hands as possible endlessly laboring over his own bland stupid vision. CAPITALISM AS ART HAHA! And we praise it! How about we stop letting vampires tell us about the human condition. I SAID it was a pyramid without knowing any of this. We are all in the pyramid and we praise the Pharaoh for his slave labor! Haha! It is even funnier because it is NIKE who literally uses slave labor. These people are parasites who don’t want to stop sucking but don’t want to feel bad about it. They fund these vanity projects as sleeping pills. The landed gentry want to play artist so they build the fanciest prettiest most expensive stage hahahaha! They are combining technology and art, so only they have the tools to play! They will never win on fair terms so they change the rules! They feel nothing and they think the problem is that the images they look at are not constructed well enough.

How did I read all of this just from watching the film by itself? My soul immediately cried out in pain after consuming something empty. I am sure many of these 5-star reviewers felt the emptiness as well but rationally justified their praise because they want to appear as "pro-art." This whole thing is just like Jessie Plemmons at the end of Digger. That is scary. Wow. What a fun night. This is why you engage with art yourself instead of treating it like a science. Look at how many volunteer to guard an empty temple! HAHA! If you guard something you never have to look inside! We love the pharaohs and want to keep building their temples! According to these comments, Billionaires are the only ones capable of creating "Art in its purest form!" Our lives are really just an extension of theirs! This is what happens when god dies – the men with power move into the temple. Then humanity has toil without even the chance at salvation. And guess what this film tells us – our toil IS our salvation! HAHAHA! AMAZING! And we praise it

You can tell how scared he is based on how beautifully he made each frame. He has meticulously curated his outside to compensate for the chasm that is his inside. If you have something you want people to listen to, stick your neck out. That is what an actual human artist does. This man has hidden himself inside of precisely what our culture is afraid of attacking -- artistic labor. Come out of the dark and look your laborers in the eyes. See how it feels to tell them what you are actually doing, "Your toil for my temple is your only chance at salvation. If you want material art to survive, I am your savior. Your lives and labor are nothing but a costume I wear to seek love from others without having to change myself." Something tells me they won't find it as convincing when coming from your lips.
- Written 25 October 2026

It's literally over performing it's box office expectations for those in the know. It's billionaire funded so it's not vulnerable like a normal film. It about that 100 percent rotten tomatoes score and the guaranteed Oscars it bring to the to Knight family and Nike. I like to hear to discussion of the film itself but acting like it's box office gross vs it's budget is an indication the film failed doesn't know what Laika sets out to do with their movies. I also find a lot of the discussion on reddit has no specific actual critiques, like pacing concerns, but no specific examples of where it dragged or what they didn't like. It feels lazy and performative to shit on a 100 score rotten tomatoes movie like that, without even providing specifics.

I also want to push back it's for kids, not really actually. I heard Laika people talk about how it's deeply an homage to LOTR and Narnia, things our generation if your older grew up with and usually Love when movies grow up those themes, especially with a new or interesting visual style.

Not to mention it's battle scene is one of the best EVER put to cinema and it isn't afraid of dark story beats reminiscent of treasured fantasy by millennials and older people as well, like I don't see anything here that screams "only for kids" if anything it was refreshingly dark for fantasy of this kind in cinema

Haven’t seen much discussion on this and am curious about consensus (or lack)...

Just had a (rare for me) 3rd watch last night and this film continues to reveal so many turns and previously unnoticed cinematic gems, amazing for such a short and simple story. Dialog is extremely minimal and purposeful; intense action delivered with half-glimpses that deliver incredible moments of tension, impact, and emotional punch.

Favorite Joaquin Phoenix performance, or certainly one of them.

It's obvious why she does it in context, but why is it in the film itself?

Context:

3 Samurai and one of the farmers (the one who has been most keen on fighting back against the bandits from the beginning) go to the bandit hideout to cause some difficulty for the bandits before they attack the village. It's hinted at clearly that the farmer had a wife before and is sensitive on the topic, and then during the attack on the bandit hideout where one of the buildings is burned while they're sleeping, it's shown that the farmers wife is alive in the building.

When she's last to leave the burning building, she and the farmer see each other, and then she kills herself out of shame.

Question:
But why is it in the movie? As far as I gathered, the movie is mostly about the different personalities of the samurai, the farmers collective personalities, and how the two groups interact, and how they are working together against a common goal, and the sadness the samurai experience for their nobility of doing something purely for goodness sake. And the cool camera work/acting/the usual Kurosawa stuff.

Was Kurosawa making a comment on how Japanese culture's emphasis on honour isn't that great, because "look how it tarnished what should have been a good victory over the bandits"? I suppose maybe that feels odd to me because in the current day and age it's such an obvious idea that honour deaths are insane that it seems unnecessary to point them out, and times were different in 1950's Japan and earlier.

Maybe it makes the first death of a samurai more impactful because he's trying to save the farmer, whereas if the wife hadn't been there and the farmer wasn't being distressed outside the burning building, it would've been less potent if the samurai just got shot in a regular fight. But then I feel like that cheapens what happens to the woman.

Could also be another layer of suffering the village has experienced through the bandits, highlighting the respectability of the samurai's decision to help them, but that's kind of half the point of the movie, so a bit redundant.

Maybe all of the above.

Is there another cinematic/script writing explanation?

edit: less than 20 minutes and already downvoted without a reason. A move almost as classic as the movie itself.

Yeah, there’s certain aspects that fall flat in comparison to Tarkovsky’s masterpiece….but man, this is still a deeply rich film.

Initially, it seems like Soderbergh is mostly concerned with the tragedy of the central relationship (which I think he nails quite poignantly), but film is still philosophically, psychologically, and ethically rich.

The whole tension between real and apparition, and what constitutes being a human, I think film captured really well some of the core themes of the novel. It really does seem that Rheya is having a conscious experience…..does this make her real? And even though Rheya rejects this idea, and she seems to view herself as a memory, her reasons for why she doesn’t believe she is a human adds another interesting layer to this theme. And the entire ethics around killing the manifestation, the question of whether, it’s murder is shrouded in ambiguity.

And Chris’ inability to let her go, with the hope of resolving his guilt, to just watch another attempt at his relationship ultimately fail, was utterly brutal.

Please don't downvote opinions. Only downvote comments that don't contribute anything. Check out the WHYBW archives.

Edit: My goal is simply to point out the parallels between the two films and, hopefully, help us appreciate both of them even more. There’s no accusation of copying or ripping off here. I’m not sure why some people are getting defensive on behalf of the filmmakers over what was meant to be an appreciation of their work.
Cinema, like all other forms of art, is built on layers upon layers of inspiration, influence, and reinterpretation. We all stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us!

While watching You Can See Everything, I could not stop thinking about how much it mirrors Orson Welles’s F for Fake. As it turns out, I’m not the only one: at least a couple of film critics have pointed out the similarities since the film debuted, and honestly, if you watched this documentary and enjoyed it, you should absolutely seek out F for Fake to see what Fielder and Oppenheim seem to be building on. When Welles made F for Fake, he was documenting a famous faker and art forger, Elmyr de Hory, who is as interesting as Holmes, if not more! Welles was simultaneously making you question the very concept of what being fake or real means. He did this partly by hinting that he himself might be faking it and fooling you. The makers of You Can See Everything take that Wellesian move and refine it by making the filming, the filmmaker, and the act of reconstructing events part of the story too.

Similar Structure: A Documentary That Meditates on Itself
Both films turn the documentary back on itself, though F for Fake questions its own truth claims throughout, rather than only in its second half. Welles moves from examining forgers to examining cinema and its methods. Fielder does something similar, moving from examining Elizabeth Holmes to examining the act of documenting her. Things get more interesting by bringing actress/model Amanda Seyfried into the second half as a collaborator, mirroring how Welles brought actress/model Oja Kodar, his collaborator and co-writer, into F for Fake as his on-screen partner. She becomes part of the filmmaking process itself, which complicates who’s being observed and who’s doing the observing. That’s how both directors make the form inseparable from the argument about truth and deception.

Bragging About Past Fakery:
Both Welles and Fielder establish their credentials as deceivers while they examine deception. Welles keeps invoking his 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which was widely reported at the time as having tricked listeners into believing an alien invasion was underway. He references it multiple times throughout F for Fake and uses staged visualizations of the broadcast, along with material about its reported reception. He also hints, pretty directly, that maybe it wasn’t so inadvertent after all. Welles even gives us reason to question his own account after asking us to trust him. Fielder does something similar with Nathan for You. He points out directly to Holmes that he used to do an entire show about business scams and fakery, and now here he is documenting a real case of deception. Both are essentially saying the same thing: I have a documented track record of being able to construct reality and manipulate audiences.

Sympathy or Admiration for the Subject:
Welles does not hold back on expressing an intellectual admiration for de Hory’s audacity. He treats his subject as a fellow trickster and a fascinating specimen of deception, viewing his life as a masterful performance rather than a tragedy. This relationship is one of professional kinship, where Welles celebrates the skill of the illusionist rather than the plight of the man.

Similarly, in You Can See Everything, there’s a moment where Amanda asks Nathan if he cares enough about Liz to show her in a good light, and the film immediately cuts to footage of him genuinely enjoying time with her, swimming and actually connecting. It’s like he is pictorially confessing it right when the question is being asked. What was fascinating to me is that it mirrors something that happened in the last episode of Nathan for You, where Fielder seemed to get emotionally involved with one of the people in the story, an escort, and you could feel the line between performance and sincerity blurring. That is its own rabbit hole with lots of theories and speculations. By showing that emotional involvement with Liz in the swimming scene, he’s acknowledging that pattern. He’s admitting the bias while filming. Both directors are saying: Yes, I am invested, and here’s the evidence, and I’m showing it to you anyway.

The Magic Trick Link: What Makes a Faker a Faker?
To me this is the thematic core of both films. Welles actually performs a magic trick for a boy on camera in F for Fake, and it’s not a throwaway but his metaphor for how deception works. Fielder references the David Blaine ice-pick trick, suggesting that Blaine may actually have a hole in his hand, so part of the trick is real. He then tries to use that as an analogy for Holmes’s magic and how she deceived serious people like the four-star general "Mad Dog" Mattis or Larry Ellison. But the implication Fielder builds is that part of her magic might have been real, at least to her. She believed in the trick even as she was executing it.

Both films are asking the same essential question: How do you document the truth about someone whose entire existence is a performance, when the act of documenting is itself a performance? They answer by making the performance visible, the filmmaker complicit, and the magic trick the truest thing in the frame.

There is a scene in the movie which has a very American & Jewish discussion of the word 'can'. In the scene in question, Nathan Fielder & Elizabeth Holmes along with her husband, Billy, have a long discussion over whether or not Elizabeth's use of the word 'can' is misleading. Now the way in which this is distinctly American is that it recalls the argument put forward by President Bill Clinton during his impeachment on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. That episode was a terrific example of how historian Eric Hobsbawm's described America as "forced into the straitjacket of an 18th-century Constitution reinforced by two centuries of Talmudic exegesis by the lawyers, the theologians of the republic..." The American tradition fits in with Nathan Fielder's own personal interests of Jewish tradition of argument, Talmudic scholarship.

Nathan Fielder has explored Jewish themes throughout his work, with more humor in Nathan For You & The Rehearsal but far more artistically, though still comedic, in The Curse where the finale features him being sucked away into space. This is an allusion to Yiddish tradition, the notion of "luftmensch" but taken to its most literal sense as an "air person". As opposed to its more classic meaning as vagabond or petty traveler, it can also refer to daydreamers or artists. All of these fit the character that Fielder portrays in these movies and also a clear fascination of his throughout his career. (Credit to this post)

Past Lives was lovely for many reasons, great writing and performances, and I couldn’t help but really feel these actors faces and go through my own sappy emotions. The story is uncomplicated, I understand the immigrant element is in the forefront but for me you can experience a similar kind of identity loss moving someplace new as a kid, happened to me many times.

I was anticipating them getting back together and then when I knew it was already over the rest of the film was just heartbreaking, and when they’re walking with the husband and he feels awkward I was super uncomfortable for everyone.

Lovely movie, what do y’all think?

Lots of people framed Billy as either a gullible heir or a calculating opportunist, but I think what Billy and Liz are saying is genuinely true: they are building a monument of love.

This doc is an obsessive, high-stakes love story built on an interlocking psychological puzzle.

Why Billy Loves Liz:

If Billy operates with the classic fragile grandiosity of the NPD spectrum, his inner world is inherently vulnerable to slight, humiliation, and the urge for revenge. For a man wired that way, watching the world try to shatter Elizabeth Holmes only for her to stand there like a literal rock is intoxicating. She does not weep, panic, or fold; she simply refuses to register shame. To his fragile ego, that impenetrable calm looks superhuman. She is not a fallen CEO to him—she is a demigod.

Worshipping her offers the ultimate resolution to a grandiose savior complex. He isn’t merely marrying an heiress or managing real estate; he is an anointed crusader. By stepping between a misunderstood goddess and an uncomprehending, hostile mob, his life acquires mythic significance. Defending her allows him to strike back at the world’s mockery, turning its contempt into the holy fuel of his mission. He constantly feeds back the exact affirmations she needs, diligently tending the altar of her delusions because her absolute certainty is what keeps his own identity afloat.

Why Liz loves Billy:

The common assumption is that Elizabeth should resent Billy—that a controlling, frantic heir hovering over her shoulder and managing her image would eventually suffocate her. But that fundamentally misreads how her mind operates. Elizabeth doesn't resent his grandiosity; she is utterly in tune with it, because Billy’s particular brand of narcissism provides the exact psychological infrastructure she requires to survive.

Elizabeth is no helpless waif, nor is she a standard calculating con artist. Her cognitive baseline exists on a peculiar, off-world axis where empirical failure simply doesn't compute. But keeping that kind of radical detachment alive in the real world is exhausting work. The entire legal system, the media, and the public were aggressively trying to force her to concede: You lied, you failed, you broke the law.

An ordinary, grounded partner would have urged her to face reality, take accountability, or quietly grieve. That kind of partner would have been poison to her. She would have hated someone who tried to save her by forcing her to see the truth.

Enter Billy. His hunger to play the heroic, embattled crusader means he doesn't ask her to repent—he demands that she remain pure. He takes all the toxic sludge of the outside world—the lawsuits, the press cameras, the mockery—and absorbs it into his own vengeful war against an uncomprehending public. By letting Billy step in and orchestrate the defense, manage the optics, and dominate the practical logistics, Elizabeth buys complete psychological immunity.

Surrendering control to a protective, dominating man isn’t a concession for her; it is a masterstroke of emotional engineering. She happily gives up the mundane steering wheel because it keeps her core fantasy entirely pristine: she gets to remain the ethereal, misunderstood visionary who is merely "thinking differently" while her high priest handles the mud. She loves him because his need to worship a goddess is the only thing on earth that allows her to remain one.

The Monument of Love:

That worship translates into concrete, liturgical devotion. When Billy meticulously captures 3D scans of Elizabeth so their children can still feel her presence during her eleven-year sentence, it functions like an early devotee casting icons of a living saint. His pledge to be outside the prison gates at 9:00 AM sharp every single visitation day isn't just punctuality—it is regular attendance at Sunday Mass, keeping the sacred covenant intact. Whispering about launching a next-generation laser-and-AI venture from their bedroom while the federal intake clock ticks down isn't simple denial; it is reciting the scripture of their shared church.

They constructed a fortress of two against a world they both reject. It is disturbing, delusional, and undeniably romantic: a crusader laying siege to reality itself to keep his goddess untouched.

Crazy romance but hella compelling, 10/10!

In the snow how did you interpret Carlos’s line “What if they don’t find me?” at the end? I wondered whether it refers specifically to Lorca’s remains never being found, or more broadly to the fear of disappearing before anyone knows who you really are.

I’m also curious about the story of the drowned boy. Was it based on a real event or drawn from Lorca’s writing, and how did you understand his appearance in the final snow scene?

One of the interesting things about Fassbinder’s Querelle is how much the extraordinary theatrical visual style can distract from what's happening between the characters.

What's always struck me about the film is how Fassbinder reverses the relationship between Querelle and Seblon in Genet's novel. What do you make of that change?

Then I just came across this short film commentary that discusses many of the things that also occurred to me as a gay man. Did anyone else get the joke at the end of Fassbinder’s film?

This latter-day Nicholson outing directed by Sean Penn and starring a wealth of heavyweight actors in even the smallest roles deserves more attention.

Mickey Rourke, Vanessa Redgrave, Benicio Del Toro, Helen Mirren, Tom Noonan, Robin Wright etc etc, hell Harry Dean Stanton is basically an extra! The cast alone should pull you in.

Nicholson is Jerry Black, a retiring cop who pledges to find the killer of a murdered girl. What follows is a snowy Scandinavian noir type detective thriller/drama… with real staying power.

The source novel has been adapted before but this is the only version that the writer approves of, it doesn’t compromise on the story’s most potent aspects.

The film moves slowly and could have perhaps done with another round of edits to move things along more fluidly, but with so many great actors it’s kinda nice to bask in their talent.

Spoilers ahead for those who have seen it…

I think the idea is that Jerry‘s ‘pledge’ is catastrophically naive, because random chance ends up killing the killer just as he’s on the way to Jerry’s trap. This leaves Jerry tormented forever - knowing he was right but unable to prove it, so he spends the rest of his days alone, drunk and insane, his new life with Lori and her daughter obliterated. The author wanted to show how the comforting structure of detective fiction where justice is done and the killer is caught is too often a lie - the cold and cruel universe we inhabit rarely has time for such romantic ideals - so don’t bet your life on it.

If you haven’t seen it… what are you waiting for!?

After slowly moving away from my admiration and obsession with comic book films and blockbuster films as a child/teen and moving toward appreciating more esoteric and transgressive expressionistic cinema from people like Abel Ferrara, Harmony Korine, Larry Clark, and Vincent Gallo (yes I know they aren’t that obscure, cool) I’ve learned to come to understand film performance in a more insightful way revealing of human nature. Directors like Ferrara and Gallo use performative repetition amidst transgression not to wallow in the exploitative degradation tableaux, but to reveal a deeper human truth that wouldn’t be present in a less repetitive sequence. I can give countless examples of this dramatic posture and its effect, but the best example I can recall is the scene of the kids planning the bully’s murder in Larry Clark’s bully. The audience has already stood the plan in full, so when the characters repeat it for the 11th time, it’s not to impart knowledge, but to visualize both literally and metaphorically what it’s like to genuinely plan out and perform transgressive behavior. Another example would be the scene of Harvey Keitel’s character in Bad Lieutenant demanding the young girl take her pants off. The first time he says it, it’s baffling, the second time it’s uncomfortable, the fifth time it reaches a spiritual level of discomfort, and that’s precisely the point.

I recently watched Gus Van Sant’s Last Day’s and he even takes this dramatic principle to another level. In the penultimate sequence, seeing Michael Pitt’s Blake (Cobain), play a song on the guitar for what felt like ten minutes, no cuts, no camera movement, and just being forced to bear witness to this individual expressing his shame and isolation in the purest and most communicative form he can was moving in a way that a film has never been before. The emotions in that duration were so raw it felt like I was witnessing something I hadn’t been permitted. And it reached an uncanny level as when I finally shed a tear the scene instantly ended. It makes me wonder how a director like Gus can be so tapped into the feelings of both the audience and the character it becomes alchemical and hypnotic.

With that being said, I’d like to share what I believe to be the best film performances following this “method” (if you can call it that) of self expression. Would love to hear some of your favorite/ best performances as well, and why those specifically.

Robert DeNiro - Raging Bull
Daniel Day Lewis - There Will Be Blood
Marlon Brando - The Godfather
Leonardo DiCaprio - The Aviator
MatthewMcConaughey - Dallas Buyers Club
Phillip Seymour Hoffman - The Master
Al Pacino - The Godfather Part II
Casey Affleck - Manchester By the Sea
Tony Leung - In The Mood For Love
Martin Sheen - Apocalypse Now
Christian Bale - The Machinist
Robert DeNiro - Taxi Driver
Edward Norton - American History X
JK Simmons - Whiplash
Harvey Keitel - Bad Lieutenant
Brendan Fraser - The Whale
Ellen Burstyn - Requiem for a Dream
Natalie Portman - Black Swan
Cate Blanchett - Blue Jasmine
Jake Gyllenhall - Nightcrawler
Jesse Eisenberg - The Social Network
Sean Penn - Mystic River
Tom Hanks - Forrest Gump
Anthony Hopkins - Silence of the Lambs
Joaquin Phoenix - Joker
Choi Min-sik - Oldboy
Denzel Washington - Malcolm X
Austin Butler - Elvis
Michael Fassbender - Steve Jobs
Hillary Swank - Million Dollar Baby
Daniel Kaluuya - Judas and Messiah
Jodie Foster - Silence of the Lambs
Andrew Garfield - Hacksaw Ridge
Leonardo DiCaprio - The Revenant
Ryan Gosling - Bladerunner 2049
Scarlett Johansson - Marriage Story
Emma Stone - La La Land
Jack Nicholson - Cuckoo’s Nest
Miles Teller - Whiplash
Michael Pitt - Last Days
Jason London - Dazed and Confused
Leo Fitzpatrick - Kids
Justin Pierce - Kids
Lakeith Stanfield - Judas and Messiah
Timothee Chalamet - Beautiful Boy
Jeff Goldblum - Deep Cover
Laurence Fishburne - Deep Cover
Rudy Youngblood - Apocalypto
Christina Ricci - Buffalo ‘66
Sean Penn - State of Grace
Gena Rowlands - Opening Night
Mia Goth - Pearl
Glen Howerton - BlackBerry
Vincent Gallo - Buffalo ‘66
Evan Rachel Wood - Thirteen
Dore Mann - Frownland
Tupac Shakur - Juice
Christina Ricci - Prozac Nation
Bijou Phillips - Bully
Zoë Lund - Ms.45

I watched the movie a couple of hours ago and I can't stop thinking about it. I think I might be going crazy because critics seem to gloss over the most important thing about it, which is religion. I haven't read the book, so I don't really care about inconsistencies.

Religion is a central focus of the movie. The Sun is literally in the title, and the official movie poster portrays Klara with the Sun forming a halo behind her head.

It's a solar religion in which the Sun is a god. Solar worship was common in many ancient pagan religions; it wasn't something stupid, as critics seem to suggest. Yes, Klara is childlike and powered by the Sun, which leads her to believe that the Sun is a god, but that was pretty much how it was with nature-based religions. People observed the power of nature and deified it. It isn't silly to portray someone as believing that the Sun is a person - not that long ago, people in many cultures were animists who thought that every part of nature had a separate soul.

One can even find parallels with Christianity - God in Christianity is not literally the Sun, but there are symbolic similarities. The halo has solar associations, the Sun is the source of light, and Jesus is also described as light in several passages of the Bible. I'm not sure whether this is intentional, but Klara may be seen as an example of the "child" archetype or the "holy fool" archetype - both children and "holy fools" are associated with closeness to God in Christian tradition. I don't think I even have to explain the parallels between Klara's selfless sacrifice and Jesus' sacrifice.

What's more, the movie added one element that supposedly isn't in the book - the combine harvester. In some ancient pagan religions, there was a conflict between uranic (including solar) deities and chthonic (earth) deities. The Sun in the movie is obviously the solar deity, but the combine seems to be a chthonic entity. Chthonic deities were associated with death, the earth and the harvest, all of which the combine seems to symbolize in the movie. I'm not sure whether this was intentional, but if it wasn't, then Waititi literally stumbled upon a symbol of nature worship, just like Klara.

I think Waititi went overboard with the humor, which made Klara seem "too stupid" for some viewers to even consider that she might be right. My problem is that the critics seem too entrenched in a scientific paradigm to even consider that, in a fantasy movie, the Sun might actually be a god.

Firstly (I’ve done some light searching but haven’t found anything), does anyone know of a youtube reviewer or a writer who primarily focuses on micro-budget features? Particularly of the new/recent variety? I want to focus on watching what people with little means are producing today but would like some sort of filter or baseline to turn to for recommendations as opposed to constantly searching for new but quality stuff. Somewhere with a developing canon of consensus driven mb features.

There’s a ton of interviews and how to’s and business model type stuff out there. But doesn’t seem to be a place to go to find the excellent collected works people would make WITH that advice (or not, since a lot of those people who give advice I find to not make very good films).

Second, if this doesn’t really exist, is this something you think people would be interested in? I know I would, would maybe start one mainly to just have people send me their films to start some sort of canon. It just seems like it would make things easier and could tie a bunch of talented but unknown filmmakers together for a small corner of film lovers.

Thoughts?

I’ve seen people aggressively defending Digger. A twist around every turn, a lecture for every topic. But as critics have pointed out, it tries to have five cakes and eat them all too.

My experience was really exhausting. They change the direction every 20 minutes. First, we are presented with a tycoon who ignores all warnings to stop digging. We then hear about the disaster, striking almost immediately. Rockwell gathers with the others in charge, and the movie shifts: now, instead of protecting the people, they want to protect their public image with a firewall. We are then pulled to the twist.

When this twist came, I didn’t realize it was a play. I thought the twist was that they were in an underground facility, safe from the crumbling world, with the rooms to entertain them (because a hideout that looks like a backstage would be really boring, especially when they’re so rich) but them still wishing to preserve their public image. The set design works perfectly for this. From the beginning it looks surreal and artificial, like they’re trying to create a perfect but lifeless world. There’s a very evident contrast with the gritty outside world we see on the TVs. The movie had a great chance if it was instead about an underground facility, and their music (which sounded natural but naive, fake) and cinematography could’ve really helped the contrast. Those stakes were wasted.

A play really doesn’t make sense here. They spend a lot of the time in interiors, and Iñárritu justifies it with a modern, polarizing play technique called Live Cinema, where the insides are filmed and projected outside. This requires niche outside knowledge to understand, especially for a technique that contradicts the structure of a traditional play. Iñárritu was really just trying to find a way to realistically justify so much time spent in interiors in a play.

Iñárritu tries to justify everything in this film, while avoiding sincerity. The jokes aren’t funny? That’s the point, it’s supposed to be stupid. The characters are caricatures? That’s the point, it’s supposed to be shallow. The movie hurts your ears? That's the point, it's supposed to be loud. Even Digger’s actor in Fossil Fools dislikes the use of the Live Cinema technique and the shallowness of the characters and the overall indifference to the craft, but Kenneth wants to make something for the audiences. Iñárritu is so scared to make an actual message, so he hides it behind satire. In the end, he makes a satire of shallowness in modern satire, while making an equally shallow film, except it's justified because it's aware of the fact.

The film really does try to get a message about everything, and it becomes very exhausting to follow. Every 20 minutes they switch focus: careless tycoon, then media manipulation, then it’s a play, then the Indian guy is trying to save the world, then it’s the audiences’ fault, then Digger’s actor gets mad at the play and Kenneth explains this is about his family, and then the audience gets their entertainment, and then they are in a fascist landscape, and then we are the audience. The film points fingers at everyone, the characters, the elites, the audience, and you, and it gives a lecture about each of them. It's everybody's fault and nobody can fix anything, so why bother trying?

This movie only accomplishes to get you to laugh with the physical comedy, but not the satire itself. The movie instead prioritizes lecturing which you struggle to keep up with, which is really exhausting. It's literally preaching its message to you, with the only excuse for "subtlety" being the convoluting meta-narrative. Satire is supposed to be quick, sharp, and witty, giving both laugh and truth. Instead it lectures you, and the only funny parts in the movie are the quick comedy it satirizes and rejects (and even those moments rarely are done well and get you to laugh). After about an hour of the movie and five lectures, you think three hours have gone by, and the films still preaching about something subject to change. It's extremely exhausting to keep up with, especially when you have ten different noises fighting you.

The movie is loud. The audio mixing is horrendous. It is an assault on your ears. You could hardly make out what the director and Digger’s actor were arguing about. There is either another twist or there is angry bickering, so the movie can never come to a definitive climax. Apart from the beginning, the movie never escalates neither deescalates, and emphasizes nothing.

The characters were horrible, too. As I said, the movie avoids all sincerity, and this is especially true with the characters. They are treated like caricatures, even outside the satire. They only attempt to humanize Digger’s actor, who has a daughter at home, but that really means nothing. She is brought up once and we don’t form any connection with her or any of the other characters. And Kenny’s character is even worse. He acts submissive, and I thought he was just a servant. He doesn’t even know Digger’s actor. But really, he bought the rights to the play! HE is the main man of the show!

The movie fails to emotionally resonate and fulfill the sincere role every satire movie needs. It’s cynical and misanthropic; it mocks everyone, including the viewer, and makes it seem like we’re too far gone to solve this problem. It tried to make itself bulletproof, by justifying every decision as satire, and every preference as accounted for by the satire. But in the end, it’s an emotionless, miserable movie that neither makes you hopeless (because there’s nothing to care about anyway) nor incited, a movie that’s aggressive, meaningless, and nonchalant.

☐SOLVED! The film is Uncle John (2015), directed by Steven Piet.

Ich suche einen vermutlich fast unbekannten Independentfilm über einen Teenager, der auf dem Land aufwächst.

Leider erinnere ich mich kaum noch an die Handlung, aber der wunderschöne, melancholische Soundtrack mit seinen vielen Klavierstücken ist mir in Erinnerung geblieben.

Ein wichtiger Hinweis: David Lynch hat diesen Film einmal in einem Interview empfohlen oder gelobt. Er stammt definitiv nicht von ihm. Ich erinnere mich auch, dass der Regisseur später Fernsehserien inszenierte.

Was die Geschichte angeht, erinnere ich mich vage an einen Konflikt mit einem Nachbarn, bin mir aber nicht ganz sicher.

Eine Szene ist mir besonders gut in Erinnerung geblieben: Der Junge fährt nach Einbruch der Dunkelheit mit ein paar Freunden Fahrrad, begleitet von diesem wunderschönen Klaviersoundtrack.

Ich glaube, der Film kam irgendwann zwischen 2010 und 2020 raus, bin mir aber nicht ganz sicher.

Sagt das irgendjemandem etwas? Entschuldigt bitte, dass ich hier gefragt habe. Ich wäre für jeden Hinweis dankbar!

People seem to forget, or perhaps struggle to discern, that seemingly opposing things can be true simultaneously.

Fielder can genuinely empathize with and care about Holmes AND "use" Holmes to create a wildly successful work of art: this film.

Fielder can privately feel uncertain OR certain about what he experienced (and perhaps is still experiencing) with Holmes (they might even still be in touch) AND make artistic decisions that lead viewers toward seemingly definitive interpretations rather than ambiguous ones.

In other words, the question isn't necessarily whether something is true or false, but which version of reality is being presented, by whom, and through what lens.

In YCSE, a multitude of realities can coexist within a single work of art, each subject to the interpretation of the individual experiencing it.

Everyone is so focused on dissecting Holmes, Evans, Fielder. I get it. It's supremely fun and fascinating!

But even those with firsthand knowledge of Holmes's deception (Carreyrou and Shultz) have zeroed in on the seemingly endless elements of Holmes to dissect within YCSE, RATHER than the bigger story the film has the potential to tell:

We ALL have the capacity to "create our own reality," and then choose whether or not to act in alignment with that reality!

A film - documentary or otherwise - or, for that matter, virtually anything we experience in this world, can only ever offer a representation of A reality, not necessarily THE reality in its entirety.

Two people can look at the same cloud in the sky and see two entirely different animals...

Fielder and Holmes have both constructed their own "bespoke" amalgamations of reality, for vastly different purposes, sure.

But the fact remains that both have engaged in the same fundamental act of constructing and presenting a version of reality 🫠

And THAT, to me, is the brilliance of YCSE: "reality" being continuously constructed and reconstructed by its participants, through both preplanned and improvised actions; through the external (what visibly unfolds on screen) and the internal (the invisible workings, perceptions, motivations, and intentions of those involved); and both in "real time" and retrospectively (e.g., through post-production editing).

It's a collision of multiple, parallel realities, manifested as a single work of art.

Context is sooo necessary for perceiving a fuller picture of what we call "truth," isn't it? Think Plato's Allegory of the Cave...

Anyone who's watched Nathan for You and then The Rehearsal can recognize how YCSE feels like a natural progression of the themes Fielder has been exploring all along.

But the stars really did align for Fielder to cross paths with someone like Holmes: a person with a documented history of deception and an extraordinary ability to manipulate others' perceptions of reality, AND who can still exhibit moments that appear genuinely vulnerable and sincere. Her tears at mentioning her daughter's breastmilk saved in the fridge, for instance.

And Fielder isn't entirely different in that particular sense. In Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, he can be performing a character while simultaneously allowing moments of apparent, unscripted authenticity to emerge. It's that fascinating blend of scripted performance, improvisation, and spontaneous human interaction, all selectively preserved and assembled into the final product.

The distinction, of course, lies in their intentions, methods, consequences, and ethical responsibilities. Engaging in the same fundamental act of constructing a reality does not make the resulting realities, or the people constructing them, morally equivalent.

We can all "see" more clearly if we're willing to examine more of the elements at play in the realities we construct within ourselves.

Ultimately, for me, YCSE isn't even about Holmes, Evans, or Fielder so much as it is a portal through which we can examine just how much "truth" and "reality" we humans are capable of constructing, interpreting, and manipulating, for purposes ranging from harmless entertainment and artistic expression to something far more nefarious or malicious.

If you were one of the prisoners in Plato's cave, the first step would be to turn your head away from the shadows you've mistaken for the entirety of reality. Look around. Question the source of what you're seeing. Explore beyond the familiar. And perhaps, eventually, venture outside the cave itself.

Because what you see isn't necessarily all there is. And what you believe to be real isn't necessarily the whole truth.

We humans are not merely observers of reality. We are also participants in its construction.

And while we may not get to choose every circumstance or fact of our existence, we do have a hand in choosing how we perceive, interpret, and respond to what we encounter.

The choice to look beyond the shadows is ours.

I recognize there’s a lot to unpack here—enough for a PhD dissertation—but I would love feedback, particularly from people with a background in psychology.

I also recognize there’s the world of reality and the universe created through cinema. A film’s edit can alter how we view a subject, interpret a sentence, or understand an entire situation. That distinction is part of what fascinates me here.

First, my claim of BEST FILM of 2026. I’d go as far as to say the last DECADE. For the last decade or longer, American cinema has heavily relied on franchises, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and theme park–leaning films to sustain theatrical exhibition, while anything considered “smaller” or “niche” has increasingly been pushed toward streaming. I ain’t gonna hate on the superhero genre, but I recognize a resulting deficit in the narrative forms offered in American theaters. Who knew a documentary could feel like such a theatrical event?

Now—to the film.
Spoilers ahead.

The moments that gave me a psychological jolt:

• The stillness of Holmes, her tears, and the extreme close-ups in this cinéma vérité style. What does that combination create psychologically in the viewer? We feel closer, but are we understanding more?

• Her father’s revelation in the kitchen about his daughter’s r*pe at 13—and how profoundly that shifted my interpretation of Holmes’ behavior.

• Billy seemingly dismissing this conversation and bringing the focus back to himself. Was I watching discomfort, protectiveness, or a need to control the conversation?

• The mother never speaking. In a culture where women have so often spearheaded conversations about sexual violence, while men have diminished them, the father speaking and the mother’s silence stood out to me. Whatever the explanation, that reversal affected how I read the scene.

• Holmes breaking down while watching Amanda Seyfried’s portrayal of her in THE DROPOUT, creating this sensation that Seyfried was the new villain.

• Then meeting Seyfried—and eventually hearing her call to action to go after Billy Evans. Suddenly, my sympathies were being redirected again.

• That dinner scene. Amazing. Evans seemingly wanting to dismiss Seyfried as some irrelevant actress; Seyfried holding her own, clearly appearing semi-drunk, acknowledging past tweets about a man I won’t name. Their political differences quickly become apparent, yet BOTH seem to be protecting Holmes from their own perspectives. Each appears to believe they see something the other doesn’t. WOW. Just wow.

• Evans’ apparent grift on Holmes and his constant sniffling. Yes, my mind went there—is he doing…??? But that also made me question how the film’s use of sound was encouraging my suspicion.

• Finally, Seyfried and director Fielder unpacking what to believe. What are we ultimately left thinking about any of these people—and how much do we understand anyone’s motivations, including theirs?

I know, I know. A lot to focus on and unpack.

But the thread connecting these moments is how often the film changes whom I trust—and why.

I think many of us can relate to this on a personal level. Who here has become a loved one’s power of attorney, or watched someone else take on that responsibility, only to have everyone’s expectations and relationships shift? You can find yourself trying to protect someone while questioning their decisions, the people around them, and eventually your own judgment. When does helping become controlling? When does protection serve the protector?
Then there’s the game playing. When do we interpret someone’s aloofness as vulnerability, and when do we interpret it as manipulation? Why do so many people in this world of future tech seem to lean into doublespeak—or something that feels like downright fraud?

I typically think of the psychological thriller as fiction with roots in classic film noir. This documentary, I wasn’t expecting.

Is the film a continuation of Holmes’ criminal grift? Is it revealing someone shaped by an environment that rewards selling a future before it exists? Could both be true—and what would that say about where society is headed?

I’m particularly interested in hearing from people with a psychology background about these dynamics, while recognizing that we’re discussing an edited portrayal of real people. How do you distinguish empathy, projection, manipulation, and protection here? And did the film help you understand its subjects—or reveal how readily our own sympathies can be redirected?