Watched Bo Burnham: Inside. It was pretty good, and I encourage others to watch it, but this part bugged me. It bugged me because of how spineless and trite it is, and maybe that's the point. A visibly aged Bo watches his younger self with contemptuous disinterest. When his younger self launches into talking about how he's experienced others kill themselves, he distracts himself and looks at his phone and only looks back up upon hearing, "if I could kill myself." Every subtle look on his face conveys a bewildered and dismissive message in response, as if to say, "Really? You think this is going to change anyone's mind?" It's a very good visual metaphor and conveys the the sort of internal turbulence someone feeling those emotions expresses.

What bothered me was that it gave none of those raw, nihilistic sentiments about living a voice. The film was and is ostensibly about the experience of isolation and alienation from meaningful human interaction. The extent to which those ideas were raised was forced into the narrow band of "acceptable in polite society" critiques: "Hey guys, my mental health is really bad right now.", "I want to die.", "I want to put a bullet in my head." Nothing vulgar or backed by any emotion other than brief, terse little one-off statements that give no insight into their thoughts. The "I want to put a bullet in my head" comment immediately preceded this scene, but that emotion was immediately defused by a smash cut into, "I just want to say for the record that I do not want to kill myself. I'm not going to kill myself. And if you're out there and you're struggling with suicidal thoughts and you want to be yourself, I just wanna tell you: don't. Okay? Can you not? Please? Just don't, alright? Fucking quit it with the... but, really, don't be yourself."

I think it really cheapened any resonance that the "mental health updates" throughout the film could have had. For context, this scene takes place about half way into the film, but additional mentions about Bo's mental health come up a few more times afterwards, and when the film ends, one of the end cards was the typical "If you or someone you know is struggling..." with a link to a website, as you can see in the video.

It's just... odd. It's a strange sort of self-censorship in a film that is immortalized and most well-known for the scene, "Welcome to the Internet" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU) which contains these verses:

Welcome to thе internet! What would you prefеr?
Would you like to fight for civil rights or tweet a racial slur?
Be happy! Be horny! Be bursting with rage!
We've got a million different ways to engage

Welcome to the internet! Put your cares aside
Here's a tip for straining pasta; here's a nine-year-old who died
We've got movies and doctors and fantasy sports
And a bunch of colored-pencil drawings of all the different characters in Harry Potter fucking each other

Welcome to the internet! Hold on to your socks
'Cause a random guy just kindly sent you photos of his cock
They are grainy and off-putting; he just sent you more
Don't act surprised, you know you like it, you whore

See a man beheaded, get offended, see a shrink
Show us pictures of your children, tell us every thought you think
Start a rumor, buy a broom, or send a death threat to a senpai
Or DM a girl and groom her, do a Zoom or find a tumor in your—
Here's a healthy breakfast option, you should kill your mom
Here's why women never fuck you; here's how you can build a bomb
Which Power Ranger are you? Take this quirky quiz
Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids

It's an odd contrast to be willing to mention unsolicited dick pics, snuff films, and grooming, and yet say nothing more about suicide than "[Bewildered expression]", "[Looks down at phone]", "[Looks back up]", "[Dismissive expression]".

I think a more daring film would have been willing to actually explore those concepts in depth; maybe the smash cut still happens, but instead of saying "Don't." he jumps to the conclusion: "And if you're out there and you're struggling with suicidal thoughts and you want to be yourself, I just wanna tell you: you should do it. You should be yourself right now. Maybe you have people that love you, or maybe you don't. When you're gone forever, your consciousness is annihilated. There's no heaven to walk through the pearly gates, or damnation awaiting in the eternal fiery flames of hell for committing the grave sin of suicide. You'll be dead and gone and experience nothing ever again. Not even an endless void of silence. Nothing."

... but instead, it played things safe. "Don't." "Here's a website." Playing the line about how someone who's suicidal just needs to talk about it and to have someone change their mind is craven. It's a self-purification ritual to exonerate and absolve yourself of responsibility. "I said don't do it. I posted the phone number." Nobody's gonna call the fucking number. I'm sure the Indian call center representative wants to make sure you don't paint your ceiling red.

But would that have made the film any better? I don't know. Maybe it would have made things worse. All I feel is that when you seek to explore the concept of isolation and alienation, and then only present a sanitized and surface level view, you weaken your own exploration of those concepts.

Fucking censors mangling direct quotes.... Do NOT "be yourself." K I L L... Yourself!

>>133078
I've seen that guy posted elsewhere on the internet before (years ago) and his humor really never clicked for me. I remember him as some happy-go-lucky guy that looked like he was 12 so it's weird to see him with a beard and long hair being serious. He reminded me of silly 00s internet humor, although a bit dated by the time he did it. So it's a whole movie of unlinked skits or something? I don't know how the suicide clips relates to an internet song.
Comedians swerving into serious territory isn't something I generally like too much. I've never really seen any of them do it well, they seem to add humor where it shouldn't be and can't take things seriously enough, perhaps because they feel pressured to perform due to their reputation and career. There's the saying about the jester being the only one allowed to speak truth in front of the king (or however that went), but I don't think it really applies to most of these people.

I'm not sure what the last movie I saw was...

>>133081
>So it's a whole movie of unlinked skits or something?
Essentially, yes. Typically 3-5 minute scenes, but some are really short, less than 30-45 seconds. I wouldn't call them "skits." There's not really any punchlines. They're all loosely connected in that they're about isolation and alienation. The film is set during the COVID lockdowns and, according to the film, Bo never leaves his house for nearly a year, and doesn't until the very end whereupon he's locked out and wants to go back inside. This was probably my favorite scene. It was completely out of left field, but it's amazing in recreating the exact sort thing he's critiquing.

>I don't know how the suicide clips relates to an internet song.
Between the scenes you would consider "worth watching", are shots of the disorganized and cluttered room Bo lives in. They're moments where you can faintly glimpse into the mind of the author and empathize with the same feelings during the pandemic of loneliness, and cabin fever. Maybe these concepts don't translate well to an audience that wasn't bothered during the pandemic and not being able to go outside or interact with people...

Watched Robocop 1 & 2, both films were enjoyable, very enjoyable.

Death in Venice is the kind of film that people think cinephiles go wild for.

It's about a troubled artist that goes down to the titular city for a vacation and runs into a boy so incredibly beautiful that it fucking destroys him. You'd be tempted to compare this to Lolita, but it's a totally different story: the two never interact, it's more about the mental state of the guy and his reaction to the sublime (done through commendable acting), as well as a depiction of a luxurious setting at the same time that a cholera outbreak begins to tear it down. But it's very hard to say that anything happens, it's mostly walking around in very normal situations with only a couple scenes where the guy actually talks about what he's thinking, there's no narration or anything. Ultimately, he drops dead from cholera, sitting in a chair at the beach, unceremoniously.

One review Wikipedia quotes says that some shots "could be extracted from the frame and hung on the walls of the Louvre or the Vatican in Rome" and given how much they have been reproduced and reposted (particularly those from pic's scene) I absolutely agree. I downloaded the book it comes from and found its rebuttals quite funny:
>Other critics afflicted with private blind-spots have called Death in Venice boring, tedious, slow, devoid of action, pointless, without catharsis, etc. All of which, I humbly suggest, indicates more about the shallowness and obtusity of the individual critic than about the intrinsic qualities of this superior film.
>Death in Venice is not a story about a pretty teenager and a dirty old man. It is superficial to carp about "nothing happening,” "lack of confrontation,” "absence of catharsis.” For here we are faced with a complex and sophisticated mood piece, relentless in its pursuit of esthetic truth. The boy and the man never converse; why should they? Their unique communion is not based on the banalities of social intercourse, nor is it founded on coarse physicality.
Lol, lmao even. It's not wrong, but, you know, it's not a film I would recommend to anyone ever. He also downplays the homosexuality in favor of more abstract ideals, that part I do disagree with. Ebert's review is better.
I also watched a 2021 documentary where they explain how he was impacted by it and the situation in general, how a kid was given global fame and thrust into a situation he didn't understand while being objectified for his beauty at the same time that they told him how he was losing it just a few months or a year later, it's a shame but it's also normal, sadly. It happens.

>>133078
>>133082
Inside is indeed very raw, often very vulnerable, willing to take 4-dimensional jabs at many things (one of the most powerful is How the World Works) and particularly himself, with lots of existential dread, but it's clear suicide was simply not something he wanted to tackle in depth. As he says, he's lost friends to it, and the problem is that doing something like directly telling people to kill themselves would undoubtedly make him responsible for at least a couple more excess deaths. Seems to me that's a boundary he didn't want to push.