BIRDMAN MOTHERFUCKAS (2014 film feat. Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, et al)

i enjoyed a lot about it, but honestly i found the back-and-forths between keaton, norton and stone way more engaging than all the surreal psychological meltdown stuff. though in that I didn't find the cgi as gratingly superfluous as it was in black swan.

keaton did a good job but i just found his character so much less interesting than norton's and stone's - the irony of casting keaton is i don't believe being a forgotten superhero would drive him to a suicidal breakdown

wish they'd just let him be a b-level actor with a-name recognition facing off against an a-level actor with b-name recognition, and not been so overwrought about it

(referring to their characters i mean, not keaton and norton themselves)

"obstinately unfunny"

http://cinema-scope.com/currency/easy-virtue-alejandro-gonzalez-inarritus-birdman/

As a thtr dude I think you'll like it Morbs

hah i'm not sure i qualify as such

As a dude who likes thtr anyway, you might get something out of the movie, even just for the realistic backstage at the St. James.

Opens this weekend here. Local male critics ecstatic.

were they also ecstatic over Babel and Biutiful?

Edward Norton MUCH more interesting than Keaton.

this was good, but i am that dumb everyman fool who still loves Keaton from those days so of course I would like it

the last half hour was a nothing -- it just ran out of movie

Edward Norton MUCH more interesting than Keaton.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, November 1, 2014 4:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this

tho i m/l liked this; crix raving are prob the 1s who most have to endure all the marvels so i cant really hate

the last superhero movie i saw was Iron Man and this was a fantastic movie imo

It was OK until the last half hour, when it simply ran out of movie.

this is good

35 minutes of this was a pretty good Ed Norton movie, the rest was pretty much bullshit

wasn't he good?

Not only was his character more interesting than Keaton's, he did a more entertaining job of playing off his real-life persona. You feel this more acutely when Keaton really takes over in the back half.

And fuck that "for the lols" lesbian kiss scene and the writing for basically all of the supporting characters, but esp the women

And fuck that "for the lols" lesbian kiss scene

I'd had a grudge against the director ever since Biutiful, because of the incestuous Chinese brothers plotline. Yes, that movie was a sexed-up expansion of the Dardennes Freres formula of globalization and its discontents, but overegged puddings, thy name is González Iñárritu.

As for Birdman, my instinct has been to take the initial shot of Keaton levitating as a signifier of XTREEM Unreliable Narrator. This might explain the differences in the shots that don't include Riggan.

30 minutes of this was quite enough. First walkout in years.

walked out of turdman into Mockingjay which I thought was exquisite so there you go

Come on. This was great.

x2 - great.

I really liked this movie a lot

yes this was completely satisfying, in ways Interstellar wasn't. I'm sure MockingJay is good but they're not really the same kind of thing are they.

to be sure

Eh.

i loved how close to the actors' faces we were the whole time. i'd see it in 3d.
it was pretty hollow though. it felt like the script needed a few more drafts. i cringed pretty hard every time emma stone started talking about the internet-it felt like pandering to the olds. i wanted it to either be more intense or more funny. i guess, seeing as it's inarritu, i should be thankful there were any jokes at all.

Blech. This thing was trying to do way too many things at once, pulling none of them off, and trying way too hard to be cool and with it. It just irritated me, and left me wanting to cleanse the palate with some Italian neo-realism or some such ... Which I did, a week later (Rome, Open City).

keaton did a good job but i just found his character so much less interesting than norton's and stone's

fully disagree. Norton's and stone's characters speak in cliches (tho all parties p obviously & playfully aware of it imo). Keaton was great.

this was great. last five seconds a copout spinning top obv.

see for me the playfully aware of their own clichedness thing kind of went 360 degrees and the whole film just ended up not rising above. felt like a lot of the movie was trying to deflate their egos and deconstruct the myth of Macho Serious Actor Man while at the same time totally buying into it. best line obv: "you hate bloggers!"

oh and best thing about this was definitely the drum beats

^

there should be way more drums in movies, i've been saying this for years

oh and best thing about this was definitely the drum beats

― flopson, Saturday, 10 January 2015 01:11 (1 hour ago) Permalink

^^
This

In retrospect I wish the film had ditched the play and just focused on the drummer.

random thoughts on this - yes, its all very virtuoso and stunning and wow as it appears to be a single take for pretty much the first 80 or so minutes but the movie just felt like a lot of directorial dazzle but nothing really else going on. you did get a bit more into the characters in the last half hour but then it was just tired (not that it doesnt have a point, but it hardly seemed novel) cynical commentary on internet stardom/modern celebrity/viral videos. i like films about actors/the stage/hollywood as much as anyone, but it didnt ever really go as deep enough into keatons character as it could have, and it didnt feel as cuttingly funny as it prob should have been to send anything up, so the whole thing felt a bit weird to me. impressive as a piece of filmmaking but not as a piece with anything esp rich to say. far too concerned with how it looks than making the material resonate beyond being a way to show off fluid editing and staging. also innaritu i think lacks humour or the ability to not take himself/his subjects seriously which also hampered its prospects as satire. but still, keaton was good. i forgot how much i used to like him.

also, did the critic woman have to be SO plain evil? i mean, that was just plain malice. would have liked to have seen more on the themes she was discussing with keatons character. but i think the film was just too busy, trying to idk, appear busy/jittery/chaotic/anxious.

felt like a lot of directorial dazzle but nothing really else going on.

This is my general feeling about Inarritu, but I liked Birdman more than his other films cos at least it had some good jokes in, and his 'interconnectedness of all things' hokum seems to work better as farce than tradegy.

i dont want to make any great claims for this, it's just ok, but i feel like it's possible to see this film as a kind of self-critique or joke at its own expense? as if wearing its shallow pretension on its sleeve, or virtuosity as a value in its own right. maybe im reaching.

perhaps the problem with that interpretation is how you take the final scene/shot.

I think in re critic we should not discount that she's right

yes

rly tho (I watched it again btw) there is no way anyone in this can be treated as a reliable narrator and if for you that means you care less about any of em or dont think it hits the targets its aiming for then that may be that. imo it was even better second time around, once you have the conceits straight in yr head right from the getgo

This is my general feeling about Inarritu, but I liked Birdman more than his other films cos at least it had some good jokes in, and his 'interconnectedness of all things' hokum seems to work better as farce than tradegy.

my response + Emma Stone + Edward Norton

"This is my general feeling about Inarritu, but I liked Birdman more than his other films cos at least it had some good jokes in, and his 'interconnectedness of all things' hokum seems to work better as farce than tradegy."

maybe, but it just felt like someone who has never told a joke in their life, really trying to convince you that they actually do have a sense of humour

bound to win quite a few oscars though - no way they would let a film like this get away without winning

im tempted to watch it a 2nd time, though if you want to watch a jittery film, something like after hours does it with genuine mania

I mean, Norton was more feral hence interesting than Keaton, even with the tanning booth shit they saddled him with.

for all the knowing stuff from emma stone about not appealing to young people, the film does feel like its lazily catering to people over 40, with its scornful view of the internet, social media, superhero movies, etc etc. theres nothing new being said about any of its themes in here.

Birdman doesn’t have much to say about art except that actors are creepy assholes, superpowers are fun, and a correlation exists between nasty criticism and martinis drunk from stemless glasses.

Norton is at least equal cliche to Keaton

"this movie" has nothing to say about the internet. Keaton's character does.

Antonio Sanchez definitely killed it. And the part where you see Nate Smith playing his parts is better than all the drumming scenes in Whiplash.

it's great and pompous

yes, and it's a celebration of pomposity

not as funny or good as either Black Swan or Maskerade though

I just finished watching it. First impressions:

It was ridiculous without being funny. It tried to play both sides of the street at once and failed as both a drama and a comedy. It did succeed in being pretentious.

It was reasonably accurate in its satire of theater people, but theater are not only an easy target, but their personal inadequacies are irrelevant to what makes the theater worthwhile, so who cares?

The only actor who figured out how to rise above his role as it was written was Ed Norton. The rest of the cast dutifully delivered the caricatures that the script demanded.

I didn't enjoy that review

I enjoyed this film quite a bit. Not sure I'd watch it again, though.

i watched this for the first time last night, the 4th movie i'd watched during an 11-flight, and i was mesmerized. i thought the first 30-minutes or so in particular were really good. i was really surprised that someone upthread walked out after that, but i guess if you're not into birdman after the first half an hour you might as well go grab a taco or whatever. hard to believe all the hate in this thread but i guess i was just more pulled in by its technical achievements. on reflection, the script was sometimes weak but the performances and the way it was shot are so good that they could be reading dog food ingredients and it would still be pretty good. the plot is sometimes a little silly, but everything dips into the surreal so that seems natural. i can understand why some would recoil at its pretensions but it also introduces bob sagat and then kills him off within a minute, as michael keaton admits to the murder while walking back to his dressing room. it's not exactly people whispering in a t malick movie (which i also enjoy fwiw)

anyway, 2 jet-lagged thumbs up, way up

otm otm otm

Thought this was okay. Sat down wanting to be completely drawn into and absorbed in a film after kind of a stressful/distracting day. If it never really got me there, I never wanted to turn it off either. Some nice images, some nice scenes, Keaton was fantastic but it didn't add up too much and the ending felt underthought even before found out it was kind of a late addition. I think the hype, awards, and budget do it a disservice - this is a minor, semi-weird, doesn't-quite-work film and that's not a bad thing, but pumped up to masterpiece status it inevitably feels like the emperor with no clothes.

The thing I come back to is Norton telling Keaton his script has him saying the same thing four times without being sure what the line's really about, and then we have this film where characters say and do the same things over and over. Not sure what to take away from it but it's surely intentional and I think a version shot in flat black and white - or a stage play version - it'd start to feel much more clearly like some kinda Waiting For Godot thing, with Actors wanderiing around repeating hollow dialogue that's meant to come off as discomfitingly detached from normal human behavior etc. Not saying it should have been that, mind.

The Birdman voice was hilarious though. You could tell he really got into the spirit of the schlocky cliche of the comic book split personality - he sounds like Bale's Batman more than his own but the best lines all sounded like they came straight from such classic garbage stories as the Invisible Woman battling her S&M alter-ego Malice, etc.

Best movie I feel like arguing with anyone who says otherwise

It's shallow, showy guff.

Makes a point of it in fact

It makes a point of being guff?

I'm possibly enjoying it on a shallower level, or maybe a deeper one, idk.

Criticism based on relative perspective totally invalid if the piece works consistently from either obv

Inarittu is probably the worst thing that has happened to film in the last twenty years.

Fred not entirely offbase

Sonsabitches have sent in the big guns huh

so how about you tell us what you think is so great about this movie, then we can knock down all your points?

Xp

Renowned film critics

keaton was amazing otherwise this movie sucked

Norton was my pick

To aimless- it worked. But what it aimed for and was funny and touching while not being overly kind on any of its idiot characters.

Norton also my pick

Inarittu is probably the worst thing that has happened to film in the last twenty years.

Did he come up with that thing where the camera slows down and circles around during action sequences and then speeds up? Did he do the "Last Resort" video?

just gonna

Iñárritu

carry on

'Iñárritu' is probably the worst thing that has happened to film critics in the last twenty years.

Don't see u throwing many fadas my way man but u do u xp