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Does anybody else think Before Midnight sucks?
  • Pretty straightforward question. I like Lindtaker's work, haven't seen it all, but Dazzled, the first Before and Bernie are IMHO good stuff. Unquestionably Before Sunrise left a mark to anyone from my generation, late 70's. Yesterday saw Before Midnight and I was truly shocked, what an awful pile of shit!!!!

    I haven't seen anything so bad (pretentious, egotriptic, falsely engaging, totally lack of soul, boring, completely shallow, un-cinematic, frozen/stagnated, deprived of humour, etc.) and completely opposed to what I perceive as art, be it of any kind, in a long long time.

    As I may be going crazy, does anyone else felt... some sort of something similar?

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  • Not having the budget to create Oscar bait, filmmakers now resort to making Palme D'or bait. That's what you get for going to too many film festivals who treated you like an artiste!

  • I had a weird Sunday where I showed Before Sunrise on DVD, Before Sunset on 35mm and Before Midnight as a DCP. So yeah watching all 3 back to back there was an weird element to it.

    I must admit, I feel the digital world had an impact. Both sunrise and sunset were 35mm and almost all single reel, midnight is Alexa. Nothing to do with visuals ( though look at the beautiful highlights in sunset, ooft) but the constraints just aren't there?

    Truly a point open for debate, I'm just thinking out loud. But what I can say, and will cause a huuuge debate is that I ran all 3 back to back and nothing could even touch the 35mm.

  • This night will finish watching it.

    I like 'Before Midnight', intelligent, withe a great story and superb performances, Ethan Hawke is magnificent and for me I see that director has a great sense of humor. It is also brave with these long sequence shot. Although I've only seen the director 'A Scanner Darkly', dont know his style, but in this film I see reminiscences of Woody Allen with intelligent and caustic dialogues.

  • I haven't seen it yet but if Before Midnight evokes Woody Allen with the two leads kvetching about their kids thenit's definitely lost the magic of the first two films.

  • @jleo I don't know what are you talking about, but also in most things I'm quasi illiterate what somehow compels me to trust my instincts and rely in sensitivity. cheers mate

    @rrsduncan ohhh how I would have loved to be there and be able to see such an historic and storic display.
    There is this image, with all matter that made it possible (light, colours, shapes, and grain) which is burned into my soul… a woman lying on a field looking at us, powerfully fragile, fiercely naked of any boundary whatsoever, true thus free. Tarkovsky's Zerkalo

    @Manu4Vendetta Before Midnight is all about intelligent dialogs. Now substitute "intelligent" for "void", 'cause to me this film's an exercise in emptiness and I mean shallow tiresome - case someone buddhist is around :P

    It is all so well constructed, again "well" in sense of organic movement deprivation. A German army on cocaine and LSD couldn't have twistedly rationalized so much. Lindtaker is supposedly to have written story parallel to a woman, Amy I think was her name, he met and then lost contact and then she died in car crash. I have this theory that what started as a kind of homage to the encounter has gangrene into a total mental jerk off. So as long as Jesse and Celine keep living apart it is romantic and engaging the world but when they finally live LIFE together and form a family it becomes only me me me me problem problem problem bla bla bla bla me me me me etc…. where's the love, where's the passion, where's the art for fuck sake?!! ... Nowhere because Lindtaker never got to form anything REAL with her and now keeps writing away a story which is a zombie

    I am really down on how this guy fucked up; of course is my very personal point of view. They even talk of Henrry Miller, ja ja ja… it is the most strange thing but I happen to be reading Miller's book about Greece (The Colossus of Maroussi) and I can tell you one thing: in 1 paragraph of this book there is 10.000 million times more life and light than in the whole of this torturing flick. Miller is all about being present and living and engaging (past, present and future melted) what surrounds him… how many shots are there in BM that show beauty, the sacredness, the dramaturgy of story's surrounding greek landscape, camera is full-time facing protagonists self-absorb with their little story. Oh yeah let's face them 20 minutes in a car (watch Kiarostami Ten and learn man!) and 'cause we're really cool lets steadycam their faces off for another 20 minutes while they keep mumbling, what, show anything else, no way, remember we're really cool. It has already been done Richie (1 unique shot for 100 minutes, an entire film, 2 months rehersals), 11 years ago Russkiy kovcheg by Sokurov

    I read Miller and my heart beats fast, I get to see that sunset sinking in the Mediterranean and smell the fields of Mandra. When Miller describes his friend Katsimbalis or a place he is in love, completely surrendered to the experience and most incredibly he manages to transmit that with fucking words!!!

    Woody Allen in his worst day would make something much more meaningful and surely more humorous than this. It is all so predictable and BORING. She leaves 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 she comes back, she lives again 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 she returns ahhahgg! They don't even fuck, what a torture man. Even Ingmar Bergman and his drowning deep, hyperdepressing, existentialist couple's dialogs are fun to watch in comparison.

    I can see the work that must have taken to put up this film, to create a labyrinth of never ending dialogs and I can see talent giving good performances (never really liked Julie Delpy much but here she really gets into my nerves). That sadness me even more. I could even imagine this as a kind of ironic critique, an ode to a couple's self-indulgent boring shit… as if poor Cassavetes had drink to a coma and they managed to write a screenplay solely from his brainwave graphs... but then it is very badly done, absolutely no sense of rhythm and… lately and though may sound pretentious, don't think Lindtaker has what's needed (starting with distance) to make fun of his own masturbatory exercising. Ok fuck culture, they said it so.

    Probably to some people this movie will make sense, if I was a couple therapist I'll totally show it to my patients, ja ja ja, but I'm not and this film ends up representing a life style and a way of being in the world I pretty much don't emphatize. I've seen ridiculously high rates in the USA but, for instance here in Portugal, the rated very very low

    @Alienhead my friend, they turned the magic of discovery into a flatulent mouth porn XD

    Ok... ufff, had to take it out of my system. Hope nobody takes me seriously, probably it is just jealousy and my frailties speaking. Que no joder, que la peli apesta!!! je jeje... to me it really sucks

    gashô

  • haven't seen it, but from what you describe it sounds like handheld-like image turned into dialog. I hate handheld-like image in 99% of the movies that use it. in my opinion, it's purpose is to camouflage the lack of meaning. handheld image style makes it almost impossible to keep the sense of presence that you are talking about. well it actually hides the fact that there is no presence, just tries to make the boring stuff move faster, to keep your brain busy with image stabilization, and trick your mind that it's less boring and meaningless than it actually is

  • I'm surprised it has such a high rating on RT

    http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/before_midnight_2013/

    Some screenwriting gurus teach that movie dialogue is not the same as real life dialogue, but the Before Midnight script was based on conversations between the director and the stars, using their real life experiences....

    I've sat through many movies like Bela Tarr's Man from London where a guy is just slurping soup for 15 minutes with no dialogue. The whole movie is like that. Luckily at film festivals, if you find it boring, you can walk out and go to another one!

  • Without a doubt, it is absolutely the worst movie I have seen in years. I don't know how it got its rating, but it is a shallow, unfocused , narrow piece of tripe. The only possible comment it makes , is that the current rating system is a flawed, corrupt and completely non-objective forum.