Aha, problem solved! I have whitelisted QT3, though I don’t think you serve adverts anyway?
And the justwatch site will come in very handy, thanks. :)
Oh, thank God. I’ve been wondering if anyone managed to make a decent site like this. For awhile I used canistreamit, but eventually it just seemed totally unreliable.
Thelma is going on my watchlist!
I like to think of Thelma as what a comic book superhero origin story should be.
I place a fair amount of blame on the father.
SPOILERS. Folks really shouldn’t be reading this thread if they haven’t seen the movie.
Exactly, @marquac, which is why it was my over for Captain Marvel!
Blame makes it sound like he did something wrong. But one of the reveals in the movie is that he was doing the right thing. His tragic flaw was not following through in that first scene. All his advice to Thelma, everything he tells her, the medication he gives her, the restrictions he puts on her about drinking, keeping track of her activities while she’s away, how he reprimands her for belittling others, all of that is about controlling her impulses. At first, you think it’s for religious reasons. But when you watch the movie a second time, it’s clear that his comments are meant to protect people from Thelma. Just like he did with Thelma’s grandmother, who eventually willed cancer on herself out of guilt for, presumably, doing to her husband what Thelma will do to him. “They never found his body,” the grandmother’s nurse says, “only the boat.”
The father is the only person who could have saved everyone. He fails because of his compassion and love for his daughter.
-Tom
I guess I didn’t really think of them as ads. They only appear at the end of reviews, and we don’t make any money off them unless someone actually watches the movie or buys the game by clicking the link. But if they’re obtrusive, I don’t mind if folks block them.
-Tom
Hulu.
Saw this last night and I thought it was fantastic. It doesn’t peak until the end, when you realize this is a horror movie from the monster’s PoV. And the monster wins. Having the two girls walk off hand-in-hand, ‘happily ever after’ is a real twist of the knife.
More recco’s like this, please!
Given how much I liked Thelma, I think I’ll only be able to manage one a year at best. :)
-Tom
Correction:
“The[y] are variously celebratory”
Perfectly put.
It’s all the more horrifying because of the way the words of her father about her daughter feeling superior to others echo with modern history.
I have rarely disliked a protagonist in a movie as much — and yet came out glad I watched it.
Usually one can feel sympathy toward the Barry Lyndons. But there is nothing in Thelma that I could relate to. Such a cold and cruel character, only like a child can be.
Burn the witch!
So I really loved this, but:
did it bother anyone else how easily this could be read as having a strong anti-homosexual message? Dangerous sexual urges held in check by religion, only to be unleashed upon the world by the urban college environment with its permissive attitudes, alcohol, and parties? Also, the threat that she’ll use her terrifying powers to turn other people gay, too.
This sounds like revisiting the movie from what you know about it. When I was watching, I was on the contrary reading it as a strong pro-homosexual message — until the story started to make sneakily sense halfway through like it was discussed in the thread: common sexual urges held in check by religion, only to be finally freed by the liberating urban college environment and the natural process of experimenting with one’s self. Afterward, the fact the main character is a monster/serial killer/abducter and happen to have a same sex sexual interest didn’t strike me as being some sort of agenda: it could have been a shark for all that matter.
I’m not saying the film is trying to make a point about that–just that it would be easy enough to read it as having that message that I’m a little hesitant to recommend it to some people I know because I’m pretty confident they’ll read it that way and come away with a strong negative reaction.
Am I the only one on the side of Thelma here?
If you are, I’d be very interested in hearing your take.
To me, she came off as monstrous. It felt like the origin story for a super-villain with potentially world-ending powers.
I don’t think you can take this as an anti-gay message. Anyone inclined to do so will never even get to the end, as the relationship is portrayed positively for most of the movie. It’s too subtle to be fodder for the right wing.
(EDIT: I have no idea why the spoiler tag isn’t working, but I am way too out of the loop to figure it out on my own.)
I thought this was not only pro-queer, but obviously so. It’s a coming out story, including the way she has to come out to herself.
I love the way this movie used the cinematic language of horror films to tell a story that isn’t really about horror. It’s using that voice to tell the story because it’s scary to come out. It has way more in common with Take Shelter than any proper horror movie.
When you put in spaces between paragraphs, it disrupts the spoiler action apparently.
-xtien
Ooooh! Duly noted. :)
Finally caught this on Hulu and loved it. I was confused about the ending, specifically why does Thelma “cure” her mother so she can walk again?
There are a lot of thematic elements related Christianity running through Thelma, as you might expect given the character’s backstory. Among them is healing and forgiveness.
Also, Themla indirectly crippled her mother. A sense of guilt might figure into why she forgave her mother, but punished her father. Note that her father was the one who used to hold her hand over an candle flame to demonstrate how Hell felt. Hmm, I wonder if that might figure into his fate? But did Thelma know it was her mother who insisted she be taken out into the woods as a child?
-Tom