Fuck this movie

Good Time (d. Safdie Brothers)

Reprehensible. These guys are supposed to be the next big thing. Film ranked number one in the Film Comment 2017 poll. They think they’ve made a pretty cool loser heist movie with auteur vibes. And then you watch it. Right from the beginning, it’s filled with black figures who are used as props. It doesn’t stop with the dehumanization of black people, including a thwarted underage sex with a young black woman. The film uses black bodies to signify its cool factor by making them act stereotypically and to prop up the white protagonist’s character development. Can’t help but compare it to recently viewed films that aims to portray fully fleshed out black characters and their relationships, in Beale Street and even the female heist movie Widows. There’s none of the humanity here because that doesn’t suit the fulmmakers’ intentions. So what do they intend to do? White losers are cool. Messed up white losers love their messed up bros. There’s an extended monologue about one such loser’s eventful day that is supposed to be hilarious, but with what else is going on, it’s who the fuck cares. The worst sight in the film is seeing a young black man being framed for a crime he didn’t commit with no awareness of what that means. It’s also kind of played for laughs since he reverts to his mother tongue which the cops don’t understand. His dehumanization is complete. It’s a horror film moment passing off as comedy in a white supremacist film. White women don’t come out good either. The only one that’s given a few lines is a hysterical loser cougar. How could critics not see this ugliness? This laziness? This absence of reflection? Because they think the same way as the filmmakers. The film is racist (and sexist) as fuck, and by conclusion so are the huge majority of film critics working today who can’t seem to see what they’re looking at.

#2019 #27