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Julia Cafritz recommended Safe (1995) in Movies (curated)

 
Safe (1995)
Safe (1995)
1995 |
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Todd Haynes’s gorgeous 1995 metaphor for the AIDS crisis, Safe, is no less timely today. Julianne Moore turns in an amazingly subtle performance as a rich white lady struggling with a mysterious autoimmune disease who retreats to a wellness community. Her character predates all the gluten free, anti-vaxxer, yoga-obsessed, Goop-reading, Lyme-diseased ladies of today and shows what empty, sad, colorless lives their “authentic selves” are left to lead . . . Namaste, motherfuckers. While Safe is all muted colors, on the other side of the spectrum, there’s the in-your-face brash vision of Terry Gilliam’s 1985 masterpiece Brazil. His plastic-surgery-victim women are camera-ready for a 2016 The First Wives of Beverly Hills reality show. I love this movie’s intoxicating mix of humor and horror."

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Julia Cafritz recommended Brazil (1985) in Movies (curated)

 
Brazil (1985)
Brazil (1985)
1985 | Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi

"Todd Haynes’s gorgeous 1995 metaphor for the AIDS crisis, Safe, is no less timely today. Julianne Moore turns in an amazingly subtle performance as a rich white lady struggling with a mysterious autoimmune disease who retreats to a wellness community. Her character predates all the gluten free, anti-vaxxer, yoga-obsessed, Goop-reading, Lyme-diseased ladies of today and shows what empty, sad, colorless lives their “authentic selves” are left to lead . . . Namaste, motherfuckers. While Safe is all muted colors, on the other side of the spectrum, there’s the in-your-face brash vision of Terry Gilliam’s 1985 masterpiece Brazil. His plastic-surgery-victim women are camera-ready for a 2016 The First Wives of Beverly Hills reality show. I love this movie’s intoxicating mix of humor and horror."

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Avatar (2009)
Avatar (2009)
2009 | Action, Comedy, Mystery
"𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬."
The story has been criticized up and down for being about as basic as can be, as well as being somewhat subtractive of the real life parallel this is generally aiming for - and I agree wholeheartedly. But let's be honest here, nobody goes into this for its merits as a piece of storytelling - which it isn't even necessarily bad at on the whole - it just rushes into and through everything too quickly (that goes double for a movie of this length). No, this is front-to-back pure, rich spectacle. Movies since have tried to emulate it but none have even come close to reaching the grandiose scope, immaculate attention to detail, and luxurious world-building. There's so much on the screen all at once you could almost get lost, as if you were right there in this massive, vibrant splashpad of late 2000s blockbuster merriment. And those last thirty minutes of rock-solid PG-13 fantasy violence just take the cake, holy *shit* they rule (remember when these used to end in half-hour long epic battle sequences where you could actually see and even care about what was going on?). Mechs fighting giant fantastical animals, soldiers getting pincushioned left and right with massive arrows, huge flying creatures shot-putting military aircrafts into the sides of cliffs... had a smile the size of Texas across my face the whole time - that's as good as those things get. Plus this is another entry into my Joel-David-Moore-is-underrated collection because he outacts the entire cast of A-listers here. As beautiful as the day it came out, but perhaps in a different way reflexively.