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A lot of the fun comes from the script. On seeing Drew Goddard in the credits, my reaction was "Ah, that's why."

With adaptations, it's all about what is kept and what is cut. A different script writer would have ignored certain things as silly unneeded detail. Loved the Leather Goddess of Phobos reference.

I'm a fan of the album, and Pink Floyd in general, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this is a superior adaptation. This is one of the flat-out most disturbing films I've ever watched; the animated sequences are consistently horrifying, and even the live-action footage is so surreal that it feels as though you've fallen into a twisted dreamland.

I'm not sure how I feel about the film, or the album for that matter, morally. Comparing the hardships of being a rock star to, among other things, the Holocaust is out of all proportion, and the consistent misogyny is rather hard to take. That said, in terms of evoking a visceral reaction it's a masterpiece.

Oh, and the music is good too.

Last edited by Abbie (2015-10-11 18:51:13)

I don't really get where you come from about the Holocaust and the misogyny. The dictator is a very effective metaphor for Pink's self-hatred and guilt. It's evidently blown out of proportion, but it completely makes sense since it's Pink's final descent into complete madness. Ever been so angry with yourself you started thinking how awful a person you were? Here we're talking about someone who's lost everything in his life because of himself, but ultimately because of the traumatic events throughout his life that damaged his personality and made him slowly unable to have interactions with other people (a wall built brick by brick between him and everyone else). Everything about it makes sense, including the misogyny I'm guessing you got from Young Lust and the whole arc with his wife, which is exactly what you'd expect from someone who starts their adult life socially damaged, the rock star fame only aggravating it.

Although dramatized, I find this album really easy to relate to, especially since major parts of it were inspired by Roger Waters' life (who among other things lost his father gone to war as a child - no wonder he's been an active anti-war activist for decades). It really makes you think about the importance of events in your life and how you can gain perspective by analyzing them and yourself.

I completely agree about the film though, and I think it's a miracle that it existed in the first place since it was developed at the peak of Waters and Gilmour's differences (which would lead to Waters ultimately leaving Pink Floyd). Alan Parker notoriously had great difficulties working with Waters as well. And yet we got this amazingly disturbing piece. The animations combine perfectly with the music to create a living nightmare that stayed with me for a long time after I was done watching it.

I've never seen the WWII aspects as comparisons, but more of a constant reminder as to what the first brick in his wall was. No matter what he's feeling at that present moment in time, he's still the little boy who's father went away to die.

Fun fact: I first saw this film on VHS after getting beat up by three teenage girls.

Okay, I understand your point of view better. But keep in mind these are deliberate exaggerations to better convey Waters' criticisms on one hand, and a global twisted imagery kept throughout the film on the other.

And I think never having it balanced makes the film completely surreal in a good way. You don't really get the chance to analyze Pink as a person. I think you need to know and understand the lyrics of The Wall in the first place to really get this film. I don't believe that's a bad thing because I see it as a surreal experience that completes the album. I'm not sure the film can be fully (or even partially, really) appreciated by someone who doesn't know the album, but I think it's meant that way.

I almost went to its theater showing last month in Paris but couldn't. My brother went and told me it was really great.

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. And chances are it will be in a Steve Jobs biopic.

It may be an issue of existing standing sets not, well, existing. Just like many old SF/Fantasy movies took place in modern day because it was cheaper than creating a new world, so just renting a warehouse is going to be cheaper than rebuilding some Chinese town. What sets do exist may be priced out of the reach of low end productions.

CARTEL LAND

A group of men, faces shrouded in bandana's and heavily armed, drag several barrels into the Mexican desert.  The begin the hours long process of making several pounds of Crystal Meth.  They self identify as members of a Michoacan Drug Cartel.  "We would like to have nice jobs, like you, but we can't  So we do this," the apparent leader says to camera.  The sun rises, and the cartel meth cooks load their finished product into a van and drive off. 

This is the cold open to this documentary.  At the end of the film, we will see them again. 

The bulk of the film, is no about those men, however, even though the presence of the Knights Templar Cartel can be felt throughout the breadth of the film.  Instead the main characters are two leaders of separate Vigilante groups on both sides of the border.  In the US, Tim "Nailer," Foley leads the Arizona Border Recon through the Altar Valley, looking for someway to disrupt the Cartel's use of drug mules who bring the aforementioned meth into the country.  In Mexico, Dr. Jose Mireles leads the group he founded, the Autodefensas, in a town by town campaign to force the Cartels out.  This film is the story of both groups, and in that is it's greatest strength and possibly it's greatest weakness.  I say possibly, because I'm not sure what the intent of the filmmaker was.  Conversely, I grapple with wether the intent is relevant to the finished work.  Normally, I find intent to be less relevant, but it is this wholly original film that I find myself needing the intent cleanly defined before I can render an opinion. 

Some context is necessary, and it can be properly analogized by the main characters themselves.  Nailer was an out of work construction worker with not a whole lot better to do than start patrolling the border.  His group is successful in so much as they make plenty of citizens arrest of drug mules (who, as Nailer himself points out, are just hapless victims of the cartels) and hands them over to BPE and ICE.  Most of the scenes featuring Nailer are tense, though that has most to do with the editing and scoring of the film.  For while Nailer and his men are dressed in full Battle Dress Camouflage and armed to the teeth, they see surprisingly little action.  We do see a few arrests, but they are positively calm affairs compared to the hellscape that Dr. Mireles and the Autodefensas encounter on the daily. 

Dr. Mireles is a kindly looking literal grandpa who runs a charitable medical practice.  He also has seen way too many friends and family members be executed, tortured, and raped by the Knights Templar Cartel (and the several preceding cartels before them, as the Doctor points out).  He rose up in arms as a last resort, and through sheer force of will began to loosen the grip of the Cartels on half of southern Mexico.  By nature, the scenes featuring Mireles and the Autodefensas is inherently more compelling.  Credit to first time director Matthew Henieman for shooting his footage while being shot at several times through out the film, as he embeds with the Autodefensas for their countless raids on Knights Templar holdings.  In an early, completely otherworldly scene, the Autodefensas apprehend a captain of the Knights Templar (we know his name because the film interviews one of his rape victims in the preceding scene) and are interrupted by the Mexican Army.  The Army immediately seizes the Autodefensas guns, and is about to arrest them when Dr. Mireles jumps on a PA system and informs the town that the Autodefensas are about to be arrested.  The ENTIRE town comes to their aid, verbally berating the Army in its complete failure to help in the fight against the Cartel.  One woman of the town, who I will refer to as the Best Person Alive, is completely fearless in condemning the Army, scraping her machete along the concrete as she advances on a tank.  Sensing that the situation is about to completely escape them, the captain of the Army tells Mireles, "I'm going to give you your gins back, and I'm going to let you go.  Whatever happens here today...is on you."  The Army retreats, and the Autodefensas leave the adoring and thankful town. 

You might be thinking that Dr. Mireles story is entirely more compelling then Nailers.  You would be right.  Part of this is due to the extremely graphic material on the Mexican story.  The verbal accounts of murder are one thing.  Seeing a funeral with coffins only 3 feet long is another, and still images of hanged and beheaded Autodefensas is entirely another.  That only reinforces the conundrum of this film.   From a purely narrative standpoint, the story is horribly imbalanced.  Mireles faces down gunfights and assassination attempts daily.  Nailer largely looks like he's camping.  It's impossible for the film not to suffer for it, as the audience is constantly waiting for Nailer's segments to end so we can get back to Michoacan.  But in the way it suffers for it's pacing, it may succeed as meta commentary.  Wether Heineman intended too, his two main characters also serve as avatars for how their respective cultures engage the topic of immigration.  The fact that the American vigilante is engaging an enemy that is not at all that threatening is telling.

The movie doesn't really arrive at an end.  Instead, the same drug dealers we met in the beginning also close us out.  That might be the most poignant part of the story.  Regardless of the efforts of the two vigilante groups, these drug dealers are less conquerable bad guys than they are people caught in the thralls of poverty, desperate to do anything to avoid it.

Is something wrong with me? I saw the new Fantastic Four movie and didn't hate it.

After enjoying Jurassic World, Terminator Genysis and, hell, even TMNT, I feel like something is broken.

Recommend me a bad movie guys, I need to recalibrate my sensors.

Watch - no really don't! But for calibration... this IS BAD!