Under the Skin (2014) dir. Jonathan Glazer

Andy Murray

would have been a totally different film if glen michael had taken the lead role as glazer originally intended

― bizarro gazzara, Tuesday, September 1, 2015 9:50 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so it became a film about the abject feminine by accident? /reductive

no it was a joke

They've painted blue feet on the right side of the escalator. Everything is wrong today

totty the robot haring around the countryside on a motorbike

One thing confused me in this film : she picks up a guy with a hibs scarf who has a glaswegian accent

And as the dudes are mainly on secret camera he must actually be a weegie hibee

Yes, in the confusion stakes, that whole space alien thing was, in comparison, a doddle

uh oh

Er, I am not being sarcastic. I am quite taken with the idea that the REAL weirdness of the film is to do with football

Apologies. I was constructing some dread internal lambast but <150 posts in 12 years is quite unbelievable restraint and I bow to your mastery

Neil would you just... touch me

once a month is ample

Perhaps we shall draw Pope Neil into an argument which triples his net ILX contribution and draws him tragically and inexorably down to our level

Hooooooly shit

otm

Great film

good movie imo

Missed it 5 years ago but it’s in my top 10 of the decade now, damn

Such a striking and iirc ultimately sad movie.

It remains my favourite film of the decade.

It’s very good but I really found it too hard to watch and couldn’t finish it. Beach scene fucked me up.

(also what club would be playing "sandstorm" in this decade...)

― lex pretend, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 9:59 AM (four years ago)

lol lex.

Great film and whoever it was upthread who said it was Patrick Keiller-esque was otm.

Dang, everyone's so weepy about the baby scene! Maybe someone came by and saved the baby!

I thought this, but the SJ character hears on the radio that a man's body was found and the mother and child are missing and they've called off the search 'cos of fog, which seemed like an unnecessarily cruel bit of info.

One of the few films I've been majorly excited about that actually exceeded my hopes - that opening sequence blew my mind and there's not a wasted frame after that.

beach scene was very tough to take. kinda stunned that someone called it "hilarious" upthread, unless that was supposed to be a joke.

Extremely tough, and also the most shockingly alien in perspective. Kicks the film into high gear.

has anyone else read the book? it's very very different but also good.

Same cinematographer for his 2020 Auschwitz film, some 6+ years in development. I fear that because nothing has been reported on summer 2019 production, that it'll be pushed to 2021...

The comparisons to Kubrick are more apt looking at the Glazer's whole ouvre, in the concerns (Kubrick also planned an Auschwitz film), stunt casting, framing, pacing, and intervals between films.

Yep I've read the book too - I'm glad I didn't see a lot of that stuff on screen actually. I'm impressed with Glazer planting the same seed in a different medium and letting it mutate. Strongest Kubrick influence perhaps.

Birth seems like his most Kubrickian, and best probably, don't know that I'm looking forward to him making an Auschwitz film tho

my first viewing of this, at the tail end of a multiplex run, was hysterical. to be clear it had run in multiplexes in scotland because it was filmed in glasgow and i guess there was "local interest". mass walkouts, people around me all asking what the fuck they'd come to, people accusing others in their party for having asked them to come to see it. the best was a boxer guy that i recognised from my own gym shouting how shite it was as he noisily left the auditorium.

i fucking love it.

you could barely concentrate on the film for all the noisy hilarity going on.

beach scene was very tough to take. kinda stunned that someone called it "hilarious" upthread, unless that was supposed to be a joke.

I’m not a film guy but even my dumb ass recognized this shit was transcendent.

What’s weird is that the beach scene didn’t disturb me as much as it did many others (although I also didn’t find it “hilarious”, wtf) but the scene of the guy watching the other guy get sucked out of his skin and then watching the empty skin float around in the void is one of the most disturbing nightmare images I’ve ever seen in a movie. I have a super vivid memory of watching it in the cinema and feeling paralyzed with dread.

yes. I also thought the scene with attempted sex was memorable, and the cake scene where the SJ character is looking at it and wondering, what the hell is this?

Seriously tempted to show this in the film club I'm doing.

do any women like this movie? just curious

cause like I can't imagine it being as big a hit/making as much of an impact with an actress less hot than The Scarjo, and that seems ironically problematic maybe? haven't figured it out yet, but I did like this movie

Well the big joke is that these dudes are willing to follow a woman who looks like scarjo into what looks like a crack den if they think they’re gonna get laid, though you could certainly argue maybe that would be true with any moderately attractive woman though making it her I think does make it funnier

My wife was def into this movie
Xp

It's not really a comedy though, is it? I don't think I laughed once during the whole thing, although, like I said, I really liked this movie! It's good, but I didn't laugh. Certainly never like "lol they're falling for her cause she's moderately attractive at least" cause I mean what's funny about that. That's just human nature. If you're a straight guy, haven't you ever fallen for someone super hot who actually talked to you for a little bit? And from the moment that started to happen, weren't you sorta on the clock to figure out whether this clearly hot person is worth being talked to by your obviously superior intellect? And should you feel ashamed about it if you decided she is? I never found a "big joke" in this movie, but it did make me feel ashamed of all the times I ever thought with my balls, and it did feel like some sort of feminist masterpiece that I'll probably always be under and never really understand.

this didn't seem comedic to me at all.

I've only seen it once but the motorcyclist seemed like some kind of alien handler who was ultimately in a position of control

stephanie zacharek liked it:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2014/04/02/under-the-skin-is-alluring-creepy-and-great/

the genius of the movie for me was its showing a view of human empathy from a completely outside perspective, thought it was moving

I know women who rate it pretty high, I obv can’t speak for their precise reasons but it takes on stuff like the male gaze and gendered power dynamics pretty explicitly.

Scarlett Johansson being in it obviously helped the movie get made & get seen, but I think it’s one of those cases where that also works artistically. There are obv many different layers and readings that can be brought to bear, but the larger context of viewers being aware of her as a giant movie star and international sex symbol is definitely at play in how the movie is operating and what its doing, imo

I mean I just thought it was funny that she led these dudes into this sketchy as fuck building and they blissfully went along. It’s funny because it’s ridiculous and yet totally believable.

Poll: Would you walk into black water for Scarlet Johanson?

Y
N

I've been to places that look like where she takes the men but I am from Glasgow ymmv if you have lived bougiely only