Digger amazed me. I went in without knowing anything, and I don’t know the last time a movie managed to change my perspectives and surprise me like this.

I also read and heard many criticisms later, and I want to comment on the one I find the most bizarre.

But first an overview of common problems people seem to have with it. Anything related to people’s dislike for Tom Cruise or his involvement with a movie like this doesn’t interest me too much. I don’t care about his personal life and find him to be an excellent actor, like Digger clearly showed. Overall there isn’t much to discuss here, if you just can’t watch Tom Cruise that’s fine but that also means you don’t have anything to say about Digger.

Second criticism is also something I can’t really debate, and that’s the fact that some people just didn’t like the experience. Either because the first part (satire) was too corny to them, and even if that was the point, it still wasn’t pleasant to watch; or because the second part (meta commentary) took them out of the movie where they could no longer care about the satire plot or had a good reason to care about the meta/ making the play plot either yet. Or because it looked ugly, and again, even if that is on purpose, it doesn’t make it pleasant. Those are the basic things I saw mentioned a lot.

Personally, I totally enjoyed the satire part for itself and was immersed in the story. When the meta segment took place, it made me curious to see where it’s going, while still being interested in the plot of the satire play too. And I thought it all looked very cool and unique. But I can’t convince anyone about what they find corny, boring, or unpleasant to watch, and I agree that the awareness that something is a purposeful choice doesn’t necessarily change the experience. My experience was just the total opposite, it pulled me in from the start and then just kept being more than that.

The third criticism is something I heard a few times and kind of annoys me, it seems more like a reaction to marketing (hiding the twists.). I heard a few people say how the big “twist” , by which they refer to the first twist that tells us the satire is actually a play, should have been known from the start, or how it was underwhelming. The structure of the movie clearly fits into three parts, the reveal of the play sets the second part in motion, and I am surprised by how many times people who talk about their disappointment with this twist totally forget to even mention that this sets the stage for the second twist that leads to the third part of the movie. For me, the first reveal had an interesting destabilizing effect where I realized there was more to what I thought I was watching, but the second reveal was the real shock and put everything in place.

So I am not sure why anyone would think that changing this flow would have been better in any way, or act like the movie blew its big twist after the first 15-20 min as if the second and more important one never happened. The sequence is so clean and makes perfect sense, so I don’t get this.

But my biggest disconnect is with people who seem stuck on the second part of the movie as if the third one never happened. I keep seeing the movie getting accused of wanting to be a satire but removing itself from being a satire by shifting to meta commentary about satires.

In fact it seems most posts here about this movie are super focused on what the movie says about satires and their power, or lack thereof, even implying that the movie’s main focus is commenting on Don’t Look Up or something. While obviously that commentary is an element the meta segment seems to be focused on, the movie then does the complete opposite from this perceived removal when it tells you that all the events seen in the satire actually happened.

This completely changes all the implications. Cruise’s character now 20 years later may have issue with some parts being too much of a caricature or unrealistic, but you as viewer would think that the overall criticism is that the whole satirical play is unrealistic and exaggerated, just to learn that the actual plot, the most extreme part of it, is completely real.

And then it really doesn’t matter if Digger is a cartoonish villain, or if he was actually a bit more charismatic and refined, or if he was on a plane with the president or not, because the most outrageous elements of his life and actions aren’t even a question, they happened.

Instead of staying in the meta space of examining satires while making a satire, the movie pulls you into a realistic drama where it clearly stands behind its story. It’s no longer a satire or a meta movie, it’s a tragedy.

It had a profound effect on me, that final switch of perspectives. It was sad and shocking, and I really can’t remember the last time I was surprised like that.

Even if it didn’t manage to affect you that way, I don’t get how anyone can blame it for not being brave or for hiding behind a meta satire, criticizing in a way that tries to avoid criticism etc. There’s no bigger statement it could have made then it did by declaring it was all real. It’s obviously not trying to remove itself from its message, it totally dives into it, and just in the moment when you think you get what it’s doing.

I mean, that scene where they are debating the point and validity of the satire (and I disagree that it was done in a way that made the director seem incompetent or the satire total trash), just to hit you with the facts that everything you were watching happened, you realize as a viewer that you didn’t even understand the actual issue of pt 2. They live in the post Digger world so for them it makes sense to debate the approach the play took, but for the viewer, you basically learn that the actually important part (plot of the play) never even was a question.

Anyway, I am not explaining anything with the post that the movie doesn’t explicitly say, and I am sure everyone who saw it got it, but that’s why I don’t get why this is what it gets shit for.

I watched A Few Good Men recently, and there's something about the ending that I found more interesting than Jessup's famous confession. Earlier in the movie, we learn that Dawson was punished for disobeying orders to bring food to another Marine. So he was clearly capable of breaking the rules when he thought it was the right thing to do. But when Santiago was targeted with a Code Red, he followed orders.

That's what makes the final verdict interesting to me. Dawson and Downey are cleared of murder, but they're still found guilty of conduct unbecoming a Marine. Downey doesn't understand why. Dawson eventually realizes they should have protected Santiago.

What bothers me is that these men were trained to obey, and then punished for doing exactly that. I'm not saying they shouldn't be held responsible. They absolutely should. But the military system that taught them to act this way also bears responsibility. For me, that contradiction is one of the most interesting parts of the movie, and it gets a little overshadowed by Nicholson's courtroom scene.

I find it very interesting to think of how kids today are growing up with some of the most discussed films being Poor Things, Nosferatu, One Battle After Another, Backrooms, The Substance, Oppenheimer, The Odyssey, etc. These are very artistic, strange films compared to what was popular when I was growing up.

Maybe I'm overestimating how popular these films are, but they seem genuinely trendy among young people and online. I'm imagining what my perspective on cinema would be if I'd grown up on films like that, rather than discovering them much later when I *decided* to look more deeply into cinema.

Of course there's still Marvel, Disney, Tik Tok, brain rot, etc. To be concerned about, but I could imagine a new wave of really interesting, sophisticated films coming from Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

What do you think?

Today I watched "Hope" by Na-Hong Jin,  when I saw the trailer I knew this movie will have very very bad CGi and eventually it was true. There was one scene where alien was running and a tear fell from her eye, that scene's CGi was so worse it made me remember Indian TV serials. Na just pushed us into the scene without any context, In starting it was hard to grasp the emotions of characters, but gradually it settled. The movie was very inconsistent (up and down and up and down). I was expecting something like "The wailing" but it's ok if it's different. Performance were good, I liked the dialogues. I liked the Invincible guy(Chief's grandfather's brother's grandson -second cousin).It's a decent watch. The main problem was for me that I couldn't understand the bigger picture, what was this trying to say that both civilizations are on a verge and they're hoping to come out of this tragedy they're suffering from, or am I dumb or was there a big metaphorical meanings. If someone knows please explain or Na was trying to say something like Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut).........

I got into Nathan Fielder years ago from a random video essay on Nathan For You, and somewhat naively, I never felt it was in bad taste. The most memorable characters: The Bill Gates impersonator, the private investigator, the small dick sports car guy, the guy who drinks his grandson's piss. In a sense they were kind of bad people, or at least a little deserving, and that's why it felt ok to laugh at them. And the others, my mind just kind of brushed them off because Nathan takes a lovably submissive role in any interaction. 

Then he takes the same concept and applies it to Benny and Elizabeth and I start to see a different perspective. It starts with a jeering feeling: she's a bad person and Billy is probably silly, stupid, or as bad as her for being with her. Then Nathan is talking to her father, we're laughing at how funny the interaction is, and suddenly he drops that Elizabeth was sexually assaulted. In a flash, you realize this is horrifying. We keep laughing at this whole situation but slowly the reality sets in as a family gets torn apart right in front of our eyes, and there's this perverted, voyeuristic, almost manic feeling to it that made me feel really fucking weird and disgusted.

You realize this whole situation is fucked and everyone’s been laughing like wolves. It's heartless to make fun of a woman as she's being pulled away from her family, especially if were to believe her act that shes markedly autistic and doesn’t even understand the most obvious joke of all time. And then there's the flip side, where she might be performing for us and for Nathan. Meanwhile I still felt empathy for these people, even Benny, who is revoltingly manipulative and narcissistic.

Although Nathan seemed to have walked the line quite tastefully, there’s one moment in particular that I found very gross. On the day she’s going to jail, he’s cracking sex jokes and giving her gag gifts. Does does he or Lance or any of the crew have not a shred of empathy for a family that is likely never gonna be the same again? 

The obvious devil on your shoulder is going to say, “Yeah, but she’s evil too. She defrauded people.” okay? Does dehumanizing and torturing someone become OK just because they are not your definition of a good person? This is a much more callous and deep and cutting and fucked up version of Nathan for you. 

I started to feel a little bit of hope when I saw Amanda Seyfried. She's kind, beautiful and composed in a way that almost sets you at ease. She’s right, she’s doing the right thing. The mythologically correct thing. She tries to empathize with Elizabeth, she gets into politics with Benny at the dumpling dinner, and she does everything politically and optically right. But then you start to think “Why the fuck does she look like she’s having so much fun.”

In the recreation, when Elizabeth says she gets bullied in jail because of Seyfried's show, you see a crack in Amanda’s veneer. The perfect performance fades and all of a sudden she starts grasping at reasons why Elizabeth is guilty and reveals herself to be just as opportunistic as Elizabeth or even Benny but she’s better at following the rules and presenting herself as pure and good. She had very little thought in her own effect on this person. She, just like us, thought: Elizabeth Holmes is bad so it doesn’t matter what I say about her. Kind of emblematic of how our politics feel right now. 

And then Elizabeth herself. I almost want to believe that she is the manipulative person that the entire media has portrayed her to be, because the flip side of that is so shockingly disturbingly depressing: This fucking Benny guy is just one of the many men who has been completely taking advantage of her doe eyed love and has led her like a lamb to the slaughter into this horrible mess.

I usually say I watch movies to be entertained, or to get some insight into why we do the things we do. This made me feel disgusted at the real people, the characters, the production, the audience next to me giggling, and myself for sitting there, and yet, somehow that ends up being profound and beautiful and layered. I’ve not seen art this good in a long time.

I made this canvas over the past couple days. Each image represents some of my favorite movies. I realized after making it that I should change the color of the word “cinema” in order to create contrast because currently it all blends together too much with it all being white. Problem is I can’t decide on a color and I’m worried because once I do it there’s no going back.

Also I know I butchered my boy rob pat in “the drama” image lol

Imgur Canvas Art Piece