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Foxtrot – 2017 Maoz
- Even if it’s not a glowing success (not in my top 10 of 2017 after one watch) I appreciation Maoz’s formal approach—everything is very carefully set up- every sight gag and joke is told with a greater whole in mind and a thought out aesthetic approach to back it up
- There’s absurdism in every joke—the girl on the truck with the ice cream in this awful war zone area, the camel passing by on the road, the fox trot dance (I thought the second fox trot dance at the end of the film was way too on the nose) by a soldier with a gun, the out of date equipment, the painting of the tropical landscape, the potted meat, the playing war in the video game while at war, raining on your day dressed up… even when it goes dark with some of the more tragic moments there is an absurd fate to it that, if you’re being dark and recognizing it’s fiction, can be cause for comedy (at least akin to like the fate in A Serious Man or something)
- Long overhead slow tracking shots- reoccurring and I appreciate the aesthetic
- The porno book/Bible study story monologue is brilliant—love the Roger Rabbit/Jessica Rabbit joke as well
- Paced and stylistically driven
- Foxtrot is a metaphor for standing in place—there’s a philosophy
- Matching scars on the two grieving parents
- The graphic art sequence didn’t hit me right- felt out of balance with the rest of Maoz’s approach
- Recommend but not in the top 10 of 2017
Drake2018-05-14T20:03:26+00:00
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How far down the list you’ll go in Foxtrot? Top 15, 20, 25 maybe of 2017? It’s a film I find a hard time to evaluate.
Also, a familiar person of mine asked me today a very interesting question ” Can video games be considered art ? or if not now maybe in some years ?”. What’s your opinion?
@Cinephile– Yeah- I think at least 20. I think it is solid, but there are plenty of films from 2017, even outside of my top 10, like Baby Driver, Meyerowitz Stories, Logan– that I’d get to before
I’m not of that opinion on video games– at least that i know of. But i’m not a gamer. I haven’t played a video game in 10 + years so I’m probably not the person to ask. Sorry.
@Drake— Although I’m not a gamer also, my son plays video games and I’m with you that they’re not art. The only game I think has cinematic power is Red Dead Redemption 2, which I discovered recently and was blown away by how beautiful it was.
Art is a very loose term. I would classify video games as, close to art but more entertainment if you know what I mean. Sports are similar. Through video games and sports we experience emotions that rival or even top those experienced while watching video games. You mentioned on the 1975 page that you are Greek. Are you a football fan? If yes, the moments of frustration, excitement and happiness you must have felt during Euro 2004, would be the same as watching a movie. Same with video games. Whether you considered sports/video games as art, does not really matter. English is a complicated language and art is a very broad term
I think it depends on the game. I don’t know that you could call a sports game or a fighting game or a racing game art… beyond admiring the visual artists responsible for the appearance of the game. However, there are games that engage in sophisticated storytelling, formal experimentation, and hybridity with cinema that I think are worthy of consideration in such terms. I’m far from an expert and typically only have time to commit to maybe one game or two in any given year, but in the past few I would look at something like Red Dead Redemption or God of War as art. And I’m not certain how one wouldn’t.
— I’ve been thinking about this one actually. I think digital art is art and at some level certainly a video game is creating a world just like cinema. I’m changing my answer. It may not be something I’m interested in personally but yeah. Certainly it took time for some to consider cinema art, also the same for photography