Discussion
The Secret Agent: Exploring a Vibrant, Yet Violent Brazil
anderber: The Secret Agent was not an easy movie for the average movie watcher. It had an unorthodox ending, graphic violence, and it's in a different language. With that said, it's too bad it wasn't able to come out with any Oscars. I can see why OBAA won quite a few awards.
dinkblam: > I can see why OBAA won quite a few awardshow can you see it? one of the worst AAA films in a decade, on every level including narrative and visual
anderber: Academy members aren't always good at picking "good" movies. I'd argue they're actually pretty bad at it. Every once in a while they guess correctly. At least my 2 cents.
eszed: OBAA wouldn't have been my choice for best picture, either, but it had some beautiful pieces of film-making. The long shot while running through the Sensei's safe house was great, and the car chase at the end was a) gorgeous, and b) visually not quite like anything I'd ever seen before. I can see what Academy voters liked about it, in addition to the "this director has been nominated so many times without winning, so maybe he finally deserves one" angle, which I think maybe had as much to do with it as anything.
pearlsontheroad: Having grown up in Brazil in the 70s, I thought the cinematography of "The Secret Agent" absolutely nailed the aesthetics of that era.
builtbyzac: Running an AI agent autonomously for 72 hours showed me the gap between demo and production. The demos show the agent working. Day three shows: rate limits breaking the loop, container restarts losing state, context drift causing reasoning errors. The interesting engineering question isn't 'can the AI do the task' but 'how do you build a resilient system around it'.
calmkeepai: The immersion into the time and place was fantastic, the surreal elements being bold , outlandish, and unexpected were great. The time jump at the end was interesting. a great piece of work that some felt divided over as a general audience but overall memorable and ambitious
FuriouslyAdrift: It's very pretty, but the book is much betterhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland
holmesworcester: Bravo, palmas! etc.
padjo: What on earth is a AAA film?
FuriouslyAdrift: The whole single A, triple A thing comes from league baseball. Single A was the lower leagues and AAA is the top of the heap pro ball. AAA denotes big budget tent pole productions. So big a studio could go bankrupt if it doesn't do well.
padjo: Ah so the OP thinks OBAA was designed as a big budget popcorn flick? No wonder they didn't like it.
FuriouslyAdrift: Paul Thomas Anderson will tell anyone who will listen that he doesn't make commercially sound films. It's kind of his thing...They did throw some serious money at this film, though, so I can see where people would have strange expectations.
holmesworcester: The visuals weren't terrible, I thought, but the writing, dialog, acting (except for Moura), and narrative arc were terrible.It's one of those movies where almost everyone looks like they just really love being on stage ("isn't cinema lovely?") and where the writers have an idea of what cliches they're trying to work with but can't land them into an actual story, even a story made out of cliches.
forinti: Kleber Mendonça Filho's other films are great at analysing modern Brazil.
padjo: Bacurau was quite a trip. I left that one pleasingly befuddled.
basiliobeltran: One of the strongest movie start sequences in a while, it immediately sets the vibe.
kylebebak: There's no such thing (parent likely borrowed this term from the video game industry)
aeciorc: Neighboring Sounds is my favourite. It's the only movie I've ever watched that captures the psychology of living in a violent city: the mental load of constantly being in fear that something might happen to you, likely not today, but probably someday.
