Amazing though it might seem to you, this movie sucks and fails. It's like a Hoover with no electrical cord.
It makes German language films like "The Tin Drum" look utterly rational and sensible.
It's a surreal piece of crud that ranks right up there with Zardoz for its incomprehensible and senselessly pointless non-story, both of which have a fairly major star in it as the only reason ANYONE has given either of them the time of day.
The main difference is, Sean Connery at least looked reasonably buff (though balding) for HIS senseless movie. Scarlett didn't bother. She's easily 20# overweight, and she's short enough that that makes a huge difference.
However, seduction did happen...
No, not really. It was more "scripted mesmerism" than it was "seduction":
"Look into her eyes""Now follow like a zombie to your doom"There was nothing seductive about it. No rational individual would have followed her a fraction of where she went. Even a desperately horny male.
If you think these scenes were disjointed I suggest you not watch "Pulp Fiction".
There is a difference between "scenes that have little observable connection or reason" and a non-linear story. While one might not get what was happening in PF immediately, it didn't take too long to Get It. One did not Get It in UtS because there was nothing to Get. It had some interesting and cool photography. Kudos to the cinematographer for that. The director, however, should never be hired to direct a film ever again. Ditto whatever "writer" might have been involved.
This film is not for everyone to enjoy just like people's preference for their favorite color.
This film isn't for
anyone to enjoy unless they're stupid and clueless enough to have bought into all the BS their film professor fed them wholesale.
There's a reason why most film professors are professors, and not directors, just as there's a reason most literary critics are critics and not writers. They both lack actual talent for anything but making up Absolute Bovine Excreta.
My favorite story in this regard is one told by
Jerry O'Connell -- he was cast, when quite young and rather pudgy, by
Rob Reiner to be a supporting actor in
Stand By Me. Years later, he attended college and was in a film class where the professor chose to "analyze" Stand By Me, and kept making various observations about the film to the class, particularly what the director was telling the actors, etc., and what he wanted from them in various scenes -- which O'Connell (by then notably leaner and fairly good looking, nothing like the "fat kid" he played in SxM) was repeatedly and pointedly disagreeing with. Finally, the professor turned on him and demanded how he thought he knew so much more than the professor. He just pointed up at the screen, and identified himself. The professor, of course, had no response. His BS had been called out by someone who literally knew the reality of what the director was asking his actors for, and what the director's motives were, behind at least some of the scenes...
Film professors are usually idiots with no clue. Or perhaps more aptly,
Emperors With No Clothes...
.
P.S.,
Stand By Me? VASTLY better film than
Under The Skin. One of the best coming of age movies ever made. Anyone reading this wants a good film to wash the crud from Under The Skin off their eyes, and is in the mood for a "light coming of age drama", this would be a good choice.
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Shudder1
9 years ago
CorumJI - why don't you stick to simpler films in future, so you can save the rest of us from your ignorance.
A few points;
If you only watch a film because you've heard it may have one of your favourite (female) Hollywood stars getting naked in it then you're missing the point. I'm sure Scarlett Johansson has turned down plenty of other offers to get naked in films before. As an attractive A-list actress, I'm sure numerous producers would love to make money from an opportunity like that, and she has no doubt turned these roles down.
The reason she has chosen a role such as that in Under The Skin is precisely because it is different from most of the generic films being made, and because it gives her the opportunity to explore something different with an exceptionally well regarded director. An actress like her picks and chooses her roles, she doesn't just do whatever comes along so she can stay busy and get paid a few bucks.
The idea that because she might not have been paid as much on this film as some other films, and therefore didn't bother to lose weight, is completely ridiculous. She took a big gamble taking on a role like this at all, and has made herself very vulnerable by going fully nude in a film, so she has clearly completely committed to this project. Probably more so than to most of her previous roles. She and the director are playing with representations of female sexuality, and what it means to look attractive or otherwise, and what it feels like to be 'alien'. Clearly she and Glazer have decided she should look like a natural, attractive woman who might believably be driving around the highlands of Scotland, even though she is clearly still much classier and more 'alien' than the men she encounters - rather than her looking like an airbrushed Hollywood sexy babe - which is clearly all you are capable of thinking about.
Finally your point about why anyone would allow themselves to be 'seduced' by her. Firstly, as I'm sure you've witnessed yourself, any half-decent looking girl in a club, on a dating site, or even on the bus gets endless attention and approaches from men. So it's hardly a stretch to think that someone who looks like Scarlett Johansson would be able to coax men into her van if she asks them for directions.
Secondly, please do at least a tiny bit of research before writing such nonsense. I didn't even need to theorise as I did above, since this film was shot using hidden cameras in the van. Then men she meets are real, and don't initially realise they are being filmed, or meeting Scarlett Johansson. So clearly her 'seduction' works, because those are real men, who fall for it. Only later - during the simulated sexual encounters in the dark space - were they aware they were being filmed. If you're mature enough to consider it, it's quite an interesting dynamic.
Grow up a bit please, if you want to discuss grown up films
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pjmcgill142
9 years ago
...this movie sucks and fails. It's like a Hoover with no electrical cord.
So, it doesn't suck...?
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