As of now, there won't be a separate thread for the movies. There will probably be a new thread each month.
I think watching Wed/Thurs, and letting discussions start Friday is the best route, as someone mentioned.
Just spoiler tag the posts.
I wont be changing anything else for awhile. We will revisit this stuff in the near future to see what is and isnt working. If you have an idea, PM me. While I'm happy people are exited, I think the suggestions/changes are confusing people. Remember this is meant to be a fun thing.
Kinda ruins the whole point of a netflix club now doesn't it? I was hoping this thread would make people go past their comfort zone and suggest stuff they haven't seen or wouldn't normally watch. If we're just going to drum up hollywood movies with big names that a lot of people probably have already seen, then I might be out after this week.
You want offbeat? Try Rubber which is the best movie about a serial killing tire you'll ever seen or Thankskilling about the serial killing turkey at Thanksgiving. Then there's the straight up shitty b rated movies
I imagine this to be like the film class I took years ago. At first I looked at the movie list and was like seen it, seen it, what the fuck is that, boring, seen it...but once the class started even what was old to me took on a different appeal when discussed and the stuff I thought was boring actually didn't turn out half bad. Given that were getting random nominations stuck into a random picker I think this will be a very pleasant surprise.
I'm sure it'll change with each week. When I think of nominations, I want to pick something that I haven't seen or something I think more people should see. That ranges from Hollywood blockbusters to more offbeat movies.
Yeah I'm a bit confused by this too. I understand that you don't want to spoil it for people that haven't seen it yet, but surely the one place you could talk openly about the movie is in the movie club.
With all due respect, I don't understand the need for spoiler tags. I get why you want to keep it to a single thread, even if I disagree on that point. But mandating spoiler tags is overkill.
If you haven't watched the movie yet, stay out the thread. Isn't that sufficient?
Spoiler tags are totally the norm for this kind of thing when you go into specifics. General observations about the film are fine. In theory, we could set a cut off date where we can abandon the spoiler tags...say Friday?
Spoiler tags are totally the norm for this kind of thing when you go into specifics. General observations about the film are fine. In theory, we could set a cut off date where we can abandon the spoiler tags...say Friday?
I love this idea! I always want to watch more movies, but I'm completely oblivious as to what's good and worth watching... so this will be a great way to pick up some suggestions and talk about it!
I'll probably watch this film the next couple days or so. Might have to skip Horror week, though...
2 stars. The pacing is horrible. I get that during the first half of the film it plays off of the main charater's depression, but I expected it to pick up around when she starts using the drug. She even says that she feels happier, more exited and has an increased sex drive and yet the film lumbers (and the atmosphere is always somber and quiet) as if she was still suicidal. At the very least it should have picked up when the movie turned into a detective drama -- but no. Not even. This is a thriller?!?! I think not.
Side Effects:
Worth a rental.
The film is well done. I'm surprised at how good it is. It's a good thriller, with a deeper plot than I anticipated. I didn't know anything about it going in.
The particular scene where she is at the black tie event and her friend comes up and says "I was going through a rough time and my doctor gave me Effexor and it really helped." It's an all too common occurrence that patients will says, "I heard this is good" and fight with my recommendations because they saw a commercial, read something on google, or had a friend that had a successful treatment with a particular drug.
I loved the ending because watching a doctor be an evil mastermind is cathartic, like watching Dr. Cox on scrubs tell patients off.
Tangent: Dr. Cox is the embodiment of everything doctors want to say to patients but don't.
The particular scene where she is at the black tie event and her friend comes up and says "I was going through a rough time and my doctor gave me Effexor and it really helped." It's an all too common occurrence that patients will says, "I heard this is good" and fight with my recommendations because they saw a commercial, read something on google, or had a friend that had a successful treatment with a particular drug.
The particular scene where she is at the black tie event and her friend comes up and says "I was going through a rough time and my doctor gave me Effexor and it really helped." It's an all too common occurrence that patients will says, "I heard this is good" and fight with my recommendations because they saw a commercial, read something on google, or had a friend that had a successful treatment with a particular drug.
I loved the ending because watching a doctor be an evil mastermind is cathartic, like watching Dr. Cox on scrubs tell patients off.
Tangent: Dr. Cox is the embodiment of everything doctors want to say to patients but don't.
It took me completely by surprised on how it handled the medication part of it. Was totally preparing myself for the more common antidepressant tropes seen in like, House.
It took me completely by surprised on how it handled the medication part of it. Was totally preparing myself for the more common antidepressant tropes seen in like, House.
I also wonder how much money Pfizer gave for this movie as both of their antidepressant drugs (Zoloft, Effexor) were portrayed in a positive light. Drug names could have easily been named as generic sertraline, venlafaxine.
I also wonder how much money Pfizer gave for this movie as both of their antidepressant drugs (Zoloft, Effexor) were portrayed in a positive light. Drug names could have easily been named as generic sertraline, venlafaxine.
Just finished it. Meh, I gave it 3 stars. Like a poster said before me, the pacing is pretty bad. I actually enjoyed the film up until
the stabbing. After that, it sort of unravelled and was a bit hard to follow. Seems like the film had a hard time deciding exactly what it wanted to be thematically and where it wanted to go.
That being said, I really thought the soundtrack was well done. The cinematography wasn't too bad either. Don't know if I'd ever recommend it to someone but I guess if you were looking for something outside of the norm it wouldn't be a bad choice.
I'm gonna chime in and say the film seemed a bit schizophrenic (pun DEFINITELY intended).
Jude Law coming off as just a little too much Mr. Untouchable in the end, odd pacing issues and some deliberately left field shyamalan esque twists in the third act. I liked it a bit more when I thought it was going to be a movie about the actual struggles of modern psychiatry, dealing with profit-bound pharmaceuticals, the ethics of consenting to the initial and continued use of a drug which affects your very ability to consent, and just the chaotic and largely unknown nature of psychotropic drugs in general, if only because its a subject I myself was heavily interested in as part of my undergrad. Call it maybe me coming in with expectations early on, but I was a bit let down, though I did follow OP's advice and not look up anything about the movie beforehand, including the "Thriller" genre label which I suppose would have tipped me off to the third act shenanigans and maybe tempered my expectations a bit.
Still, however, as a rather harmless thriller movie it's an alright watch. CZJ and Mara put on largely forgettable performances, and of course Tatum is
literally a nonfactor like 30 minutes in (seriously, it's like some meta acknowledgement that he's just a titillating piece of meat as an actor, lol)
, but Jude Law puts in some decent work as the
?surprise?
leading man. Some neat cinematography shots in the first half which really sold it as a straight drama, classic Soderbergh, yet sadly that cuts off sharply once we get to the hook. Script writing was solid, though
Jude Law's rapid recognition of the conspiracy toward the end of the second act felt rushed, lots of convenient clue pick ups. RM and CZJ as secret lesbian lovers who just up and decide one day to hatch a murder and insider trading scheme? Really? At least Breaking Bad had some humor about its would be mastermind premise. It's a pretty eye rolling reveal, and one which was poorly setup and paid off by the rest of the movie.
The ending is saccharin sweet hollywood but again largely harmless
, especially compared to the hook, and especially in light of the fact that Banks as a dcotor is taking vengeance into his own hands. He gets off scott free even though he comes out with fairly dirty hands himself from the whole fiasco
.
Is there really nothing on an investigation into the rival drug company who set up this scheme? Were they trying for a sequel setup? That's way too huge a hole to leave unnoticed. If they were willing to orchestrate this stuff surely they'd be willing to do far worse to silence potential threats to this and other investments. At 1h45m I would guess a good portion of the script hit the cutting room floor to even get this condensed, though honestly I think there could have been a good deal better fat trimming in the beginning, less selling on her current depression and more setting up the loss of her "life" at her husband's arrest?
As an aside, I don't like the use of spoiler tags in this instance, though I use them because the OP has asked that we do. For one, the movie info is all contained spoiler free in the OP already, so if anyone wants to join in and doesn't want to be spoiled by the rest of the thread before watching it's pretty easy to do so (you don't even have to open the thread as a mod has edited the movie into the actual title visible on the OT forum). Secondly, and most importantly, we'll be watching a movie that's been out for a while, being on Netflix, and that the thread is DESIGNED to talk about in depth. Why on earth would you read this thread and read about the movie before watching it if you're going to be watching and participating in the thread afterward anyway? A general rule to just watch the movie before coming in expecting spoilers is a pretty easy way to negate that, and anyway we probably don't want people coming in and reading and posting without watching the movie as that would negate the purpose of the thread in the first place, no? You don't go to a book club meeting without having read the book and then get incensed when people wanna talk about the damn book. I don't get the impression from the OP that this is supposed to be a movie recommendations thread (and we kind of have one already with the "what are you watching" threads) which might benefit from being spoiler free for random onlookers. Ultimately though I'm not the OP so if that's the way it's wanted then I'll do so but it's gonna make writing decent reviews a pain in the ass.
Just finished watching it and while I found this to be an enjoyable movie, it does seem to have a couple of flaws that have been pointed out above. The pacing is definitely horrible, for one. While I understand the need to set-up the characters and situation before revealing the twist and going into the revenge part of the movie, I felt the first part of the movie dragged a bit.
Another thing that bothered me is the lack of side characters involvement in the revenge plot. The mother and the lawyer for instance are barely in the movie, even though I'd say they were vital in the whole plot to begin with. The mother siding with Emily seemed pretty vital in getting the desired outcome of getting away with the murder and that alone seemed like a huge stretch. What? The mother is going to believe her in a minute based on a single letter? Her son was murdered by this woman, that seemed like a huge leap of faith from the two women that wasn't helped by this character being completely one dimensional. At the very least they could have named the mother (I think she's never been anything other than "Martin's mom" in the movie), shown at least one scene that showed she really loved Emily as her own and have her be involved in the revenge of Doc Banks.
Aside from that, the ending was weird, personally I believe it should have ended at the arrest of Doctor Siebert, I didn't really need to see the other events. Just show the arrest of Siebert and then show Emily in the psych ward taking a bunch of pills and show the end scene of her in the psych ward looking blankly out of the window. All the rest was unneeded there. Doc Banks ending up back in his job with his family seemed a given once the story was out. Him prescribing the drugs was mweh to begin with, and unethical, for that matter.
Plot aside, I really enjoyed Jude Law in this movie, both Zeta-Jones and Mara were very good and Tatum was passable (he was barely in the movie really, so hard to pass any real judgement there), they definitely elevated the movie above its somewhat predictable twists and turns.
All in all I enjoyed the movie as a fun revenge movie, but nothing more, I'll give it 3 stars out of 5.
I spoilertagged the whole thing, because I don't want to selectively spoilertag here and there. I will echo the sentiments most people have here and say that spoilertags aren't really needed, like with every TV-show and movie thread here, once the movie is picked people will avoid the thread until they watch it and then check the discussion I'm sure.
