Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Jesus Saves To Disk

2023-Nov-22

Even though there is now an official decoupling between this blog and the rate of updates that I put into the repository it is sourced from, I still find myself not exactly jumping on to the keyboard to start writing down my thoughts about whatever I just saw on TV. While I am watching, or reading, and playing, or simply experiencing, I am very aware of the terminology being thrown around in my head. A lot of times I make an effort to leave down a mental note for when I do find myself in the mood to express myself in a published medium.

Often these notes are forgotten when I do find the occasion to write a blog entry. Books are an easy answer. They require, relatively, much more effort than any of the things usually remarked on here at fredlambuth.com. Movies come and go despite me finding them amusing. Only the truly memorable ones stick out enough for me to conjure up an opinion on them when I am thrust upon a word processing screen searching for material to set my critique’s sights on. Good or bad, the memorable ones are the movies I want to talk about.

That movie The Triangle of Sadness meets that requirement. I saw it a few days ago. The film started a bit cloying with no direction and nothing really hooking me in enough to normally push past what seemed tedious filmmaking. I heard the movie had tinges of class warfare so I sat through hoping to find some of that. There was much of that, however I don’t exactly think the movie used those ideas other than to tell a mildly absurd tale of the rich, not so rich but rich relative to the world Westerners, and third world poor.

A very intimate scene of fabulously dressed rich folk fine dining on a yacht during stormy seas was the standout quality of the film for me. I had yet to have seen anything but gross out comedies make an effort to point the camera at people vomiting. The camera does not hold back from capturing long scenes of passengers sloshing about in their own filth. That type of storytelling is what put this movie into the realm of ‘memorable’ despite me not finding myself satisfied when the movie ended.

The third act did provide some more class warfare shenanigans that played well on film. It felt different enough that the theme of gender roles now became the topic being analyzed among the characters in the film. What I found unsatisfying is the lack of answers on really anything that was invoked by the story. Cinematically I think the very last few minutes of the film are a result of some quick editing to rapidly deal with a filmed ending that got cut for some reason. If not that, then for some artistic reason I do not agree with.