The Shape of Things (2003)
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Drama
Platonic_Caveman — 5 years ago(August 04, 2020 07:15 AM)
Wildman got me thinking of Paul Rudd.
This is his best movie IMHO. It's about an amoral Machiavellian art student who manipulates her new gullible boyfriend and transform him into a new person by design.
While visiting an art museum, a nerdy college student named Adam meets an iconoclastic artist named Evelyn and is instantly smitten. As their relationship develops, she gradually encourages Adam to change in various ways that surprise his older friends, Jenny and Philip. However, as events progress, Evelyn's antics become darker and darker as her influence begins to twist Adam and his friends in hurtful ways.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308878/
Administrator
"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
I GameBoy -
Platonic_Caveman — 5 years ago(August 05, 2020 04:57 AM)
I dunno, something about this film really hit me when I first saw it. It almost made me cry.
It was so intellectually detached of the cynical bitch to do that to such a weak man. She even forced the poor guy to get a nose job. Yuck. It's a chilling movie actually, a romantic comedy turned into a sordid morality play.
There's something Nietzschean about it. I really thought it was shades of
Leopold & Loeb.
Dastardly.
Administrator
"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
I GameBoy -
MovieManCin2 — 5 years ago(August 04, 2020 09:43 AM)
The third of three similar movies by directory Neil LaBute, all three highly rated by Roger Ebert. The First two are
In the Company of Men
(1997), and
Your Friends and Neighbors
(1998). I think I'm going to add these to my Netflix list. Thanks bro.
MAGA! FAFO!
Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. Dumbocraps: evil people who celebrate murder. 
-
Platonic_Caveman — 5 years ago(August 05, 2020 05:08 AM)
I've seen both
In the Company of Men
and
Your Friends and Neighbors
. Great analogy. In the Company of Men shook me to the core with disgust and a feeling of sickness. But it was more the typical callousness of the male animal.
I think the twist in The Shape of Things was the girlfriend's fascist intellectualism. That's why I mentioned
Leopold & Loeb
above. Interesting she was Jewish as well, just like L & L.
Administrator
"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
I GameBoy -
MovieManCin2 — 5 years ago(August 05, 2020 06:09 AM)
Ironically I believe that I've already seen
In The Company of Men
, but it was so long ago I can't remember a single thing about it. So I'll probably have to watch it again, and then view the other two to compare to it.
MAGA! FAFO! Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. Dumbocraps: evil people who celebrate murder. -
StopBanningGigi — 5 years ago(August 06, 2020 03:31 AM)
Overall, I came out of "The Shape of Things" with a feeling of ambivalence toward the main characters. There are no surprises and the cast (again, with the exception of Mol) does nothing to make me empathize with the principles.
In "The Shape of Things," while the two couples have their share of character defects, they seem generally within the norm, until we fully understand what has happened.
Actors have a thankless task in a film like this. All four players are well cast in roles that ask them to avoid "acting" and simply exist on a realistic, everyday level. Like the actors in a Bresson film, they're used for what they intrinsically represent, rather than for what they can achieve through their art. They are like those all around us, and like us, except that LaBute is suspicious of their hidden motives. One person plays a cruel trick in "The Shape of Things," but we get the uneasy sense that, in LaBute's world, any one of the four could have been that person.
