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Pit Film Club - The Apostle (1997)

Great thoughts Kickball, and I really love the comparison to LTZ, a favorite book of mine as well. Also love seeing the differing opinions that, though I knew we would get, I didn't expect to be this contrasting.

The film takes a cinema vérite approach in portraying privilege, and in terms of the title being completely dishonest it's comparable to Scorsese's The King of Comedy. In its own way the film is deeply funny, but that humor is used by the characters as a sort of crutch, a way to keep the world at arms' length. Every conversation is tinged with acute irony, the characters always relating to each other with a mean spirited disingenuousness. The humor allows the characters to maintain their own inflated sense of self worth without ever having to own up to the fact that they are really just fucking wandering around, aimless, lost in a world that they seem to not be a part of, or understand. The effect of this kind of insincerity that the characters indulge in is at once gratifying and slowly soul-crushing. It's a deeply sad vision of aging men who use irony as a way to view the world, never taking anything seriously, more often just sitting back and watching (such as the scene on the boat when Heidecker watches the girl have a seizure) with no trace of feeling. Their world view has led to a waning of affect, and what we are left with is a deeply ironic film, a portrait of a post-hipster who uses irony to shield himself, or rather because laughter is the only form of emotion that he can understand.

4 stars.
 
did dis dude just seriously sympathize with hitler?
 
I tried to watch it last night. Got halfway through and determined that it was largely a pointless exercise. The worst thing is that the conversations were so random that they ceased to be amusing. The whole homeless people have clean dicks was supposed to be funny, I guess, but I didn't laugh and I actually like obscene, stupid humor like that, at least when it's actually funny. This movie just bored me into apathy and I turned it off at some point during yet another meaningless scene.

If the point is to point out the pointlessness of this guy's life, it seems to me that it could've been done a lot better than it was.
 
I fell asleep watching it... wasn't enjoying it. That's all I've got.
 
is "The Comedy" the movie equivalent of "Wonder Boys" (well outside of the film adaptation of Wonder Boys)?
 
I'll say this... It was leaps and bounds beyond the Master.

I actually really liked it and I think a lot of people who may be talking about the mindless conversation are missing the point that this is the type of bullshit that actually happens and what the fuck is the point?

It was really good but not great and I appreciate that it's something I wouldn't have watched outside of this thread. If I weren't on my phone I may have more to say but overall not a bad way to spend a Monday evening.
 
I think the comparison with Less Than Zero is interesting because I hated that book but enjoyed this movie. Some of these vignettes didn’t work for me and some did. I can say that almost without exception the scenes that didn’t work for me were the ones with his male friends. I think Heidecker is good enough to convey real emotion under his disheveled exterior and I’m not sure the other three are. Wareheim and LCD Soundsystem both strike me as playing too hard at the “I’m a lazy middle aged nobody”. They come across like the guy from 30 Rock with the stupid hats whose gimmick is being a slob and a downer. I really enjoyed the scenes with Heidecker’s brother’s wife and the waitress. He has an energy in his eyes during those scenes we don’t see during other scenes.

I watched this movie by myself and didn’t laugh once. I found a lot of the film amusing but nothing particularly funny. Not a good or bad thing, just my reaction.

I believe that there is a difference between “still” and “boring” and this film stayed in the first camp, if only just. I’ll give it 3 stars.
 
People who haven't done so thus far quickly give your star count and we can wrap up this film discussion and pick a new person/film later today.
 
i'll say 3/5. had some moments that i thought were genuinely funny and appreciated the satire. although... its not that far off base from actual hipsters in williamsburg, in fact it might have been a little kind to how awful they can be with age.
 
I'll give it a couple of stars because of the reaction it's getting. The title of the film is pretty clearly ironic/tongue in cheek. I don't think they viewed what they were saying as funny or interesting (both the characters and filmmakers), and I think the characters were bored with it and themselves and were simply going through the motions in their pointless, aging hipster existence. They had spent their younger hipster years trying so hard to be interesting and push the envelop -- really cutting edge, biting, offensive. Ran out of material as they got older and they just turned into mean, spiteful, stunted old hipsters trying to get a reaction, any reaction from people. We see them at parties with women that are much younger, and hotter, than them, who are new(er) to the hipster scene and find offensive, racist commentary about Hitler interesting -- interesting enough that they will sleep with a fat middle-aged man (which is also a new hipster thing to do). But you get that sense that Heidecker has said similar things about Hitler at countless other parties and is just going through the motions, or that he's been doing this hipster comedy thing so long that it's easy for him to come up with something that gets a rise out of a chick like this -- either way, he's bored with it.

I didn't think it was funny -- I don't think it was meant to be. It is interesting to see the reactions of people who thought certain scenes were hilarious. The movie was a chore to watch.

2/5
 
Shooshmoo said:
I'll give it a couple of stars because of the reaction it's getting. The title of the film is pretty clearly ironic/tongue in cheek. I don't think they viewed what they were saying as funny or interesting (both the characters and filmmakers), and I think the characters were bored with it and themselves and were simply going through the motions in their pointless, aging hipster existence. They had spent their younger hipster years trying so hard to be interesting and push the envelop -- really cutting edge, biting, offensive. Ran out of material as they got older and they just turned into mean, spiteful, stunted old hipsters trying to get a reaction, any reaction from people. We see them at parties with women that are much younger, and hotter, than them, who are new(er) to the hipster scene and find offensive, racist commentary about Hitler interesting -- interesting enough that they will sleep with a fat middle-aged man (which is also a new hipster thing to do). But you get that sense that Heidecker has said similar things about Hitler at countless other parties and is just going through the motions, or that he's been doing this hipster comedy thing so long that it's easy for him to come up with something that gets a rise out of a chick like this -- either way, he's bored with it.

I didn't think it was funny -- I don't think it was meant to be. It is interesting to see the reactions of people who thought certain scenes were hilarious. The movie was a chore to watch.

2/5
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I think you are probably the person closest to me in opinions (even if I liked it a little bit more than you). Well put.

A lot of good discussion on this one, I think we certainly have the ponies to keep on racing. I'm going to choose myDeaconmyhand to pick the next film. He had the most negative reaction (at least of the people that wrote more than a line) so I'd like to see what direction he would like to take this. I'll compile all the points later tonight (keep them coming) and update the first post.
 
Not sure if I can properly rate it given that I watched only half the movie, but 1/5.

Not only unwatchable, but completely unrealistic. I've never known anybody to act the way that guy does in a movie, or if they did, maybe it was once and they were really fucking drunk. To still act like that at the age of 35 without having had the shit beat out of you repeatedly so that your behavior has been modified to something more reasonable seems completely unfathomable to me. It gets one star because it does have some well acted moments, but the movie itself and whatever plot it was attempting to tackle are big fat zeros.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
Not sure if I can properly rate it given that I watched only half the movie, but 1/5.

Not only unwatchable, but completely unrealistic. I've never known anybody to act the way that guy does in a movie, or if they did, maybe it was once and they were really fucking drunk. To still act like that at the age of 35 without having had the shit beat out of you repeatedly so that your behavior has been modified to something more reasonable seems completely unfathomable to me. It gets one star because it does have some well acted moments, but the movie itself and whatever plot it was attempting to tackle are big fat zeros.
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Has moonz ever had the shit beat out of him?
 
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