Hacker Cinema
Punch-Drunk Love
2002 · Film · 96 min
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
A socially awkward and volatile small business owner meets the love of his life after being threatened by a gang of scammers.
9 positive7 neutralfrom 16 commenters
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16 comments on Hacker News
> I'm an American in my 40s. I've never seen "glorification of scams" in any mainstream culture
Some very popular movies that come to mind (Some of these may not be intended to be glorifying scams, but to many unsophisticated viewers, they absolutely are):
- The Social Network
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- Uncut Gems
- The Godfather
- Scarface
- Ocean's Eleven (and Twelve and Thirteen)
- Emily the Criminal
- I Care a Lot
- Nine Queens
- Punch-Drunk Love
> I've also never seen any sort of "hyper-masculization" shown in a positive light in mainstream culture
More movies!
- The Godfather (again)
- Pulp Fiction
- Fight Club
- American History X
- Gangster Squad
- Django Unchained
- Expendables
- Every Fast and Furious movie
- (Nearly?) Every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie
> it's common to see masculinity referred to as as "toxic" and equated with negative traits or externalities
I think this is (usually?) a misunderstanding. People refer to toxic masculinity, a set of problematic behaviors some men exhibit as part of attempting to appear "manly" that includes traits such as: homophobia, glorifying unhealthy habits (e.g., drinking like a man, don't cry like a woman, mental health issues depicted as "weakness", etc.) They're not referring to masculinity, itself, as being toxic.
Punch drunk love is an amazing film.
Just in case you haven’t seen it:
The director of Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson) actually cast Sandler in a dramatic role a couple of years later (Punch-Drunk Love) that was also received very well. Might be worth checking out if you liked Magnolia (I loved that movie).
For me the equivalent was seeing Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love. I was channel surfing and this came up randomly. It was absolutely captivating, and was easily the best portrayal of mental illness I had ever seen in cinema.
Adam Sandler! That goofy idiot that plays in low-budget comedies that won't even make you laugh once!
Someone on Reddit explained that Sandler is a true genius because he doesn't work too hard, does "fun" low-stress movies, and takes his friends along to "assist" in beautiful tropical locations. All probably as a tax write off.
Brilliant.
Score of 7.5 on IMDB is not too shabby! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/
Yeah that's so true. You can see his acting skills in films like "Punch Drunk Love".
It intrigues me that as time goes on, Jim Carrey will become better known for arty seriousness than for the box-office smash gurning that got him to the screen from late night talk show comic slots.
Like the opposite of Leslie Nielsen: a man now really only recognised for comedy, when he got his start in comedy by satirising his own serious roles in mainstream potboilers.
I only wish for the same for Adam Sandler, who made one film (Punch Drunk Love) that so completely changed who he could be that it might one day, maybe, perhaps, just possibly, correct the damage he did to western culture with Little Nicky. ;-)
I thought it was a good reminder that Adam Sandler can act (also see P.T. Anderson's Punch Drunk Love, admittedly one of my favorite movies), but as a whole "it was just okay". The directors' previous film, Good Time, with Robert Pattinson, was waaaaaaay better, even more claustrophobic and frenetic in how it circles the drain.
I wonder if this event was the inspiration for the pudding coupons in "Punch Drunk Love"
(Barry plans to exploit a promotion loophole by buying massive amounts of pudding in exchange for airline miles)
Great movie!
https://youtu.be/fRgWQUkkyDI
This made it into the plot of Paul Thomas Anderson's movie "Punch-Drunk Love", starring Adam Sandler (2002).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch-Drunk_Love
Really? For me that phrase definitely means "movies starring Adam Sandler". A lot of (most of?) the movies written/produced by Adam Sandler also starred him, but that doesn't exclude other movies. I definitely think of Punch-Drunk Love as an Adam Sandler movie.
Punch-Drunk Love is one of my favorite romantic films! Adam Sandler is a damned talented man, don't get me wrong. That's why I'm even more okay with criticizing his more standard fare. The dude can do better.
I think the key to understanding "how to do the FPS better" is that the first-person model doesn't only have to exist for shooting. It's a very potent set-up because it's "virtual", and limits your perceptions to the scope of the character you're controlling. You could make a game that involves guns but is not strictly a shooter, and therefore has the freedom to give you a certain context into what surrounds your actions.
As much as I love Buddhism in my video games, I feel like your idea might feel too preachy to your average player. But how about this for a set-up? The game starts off as a "sports" shooter game – say, paintball, or something of the sort – and you're a person with a couple bucks and a passion for the game. Ultimately, you get to a point where you're up against people with much better equipment than you, and the game becomes almost a test of masochism: how many times will you try before you give up? But there's a whole other world out there, offering you opportunities to make a quick buck. And whether you pick a live of military service or a life of crime, you're put back into a situation with guns, only now the stakes are infinitely higher. There are no second chances.
A game like that could really play with character development, both by looking at the people who serve along with you, and by making enemies something more than faceless soldiers. Give you the impression, perhaps, that the only people fighting these fights are people who don't have the idle money to play paintball all their lives, and that you're being sent to war against yourself, against people who are pretty much just like you. Except that sometimes, you're fighting for the rich people who want more, and sometimes you're fighting as the underdog, against a group of greedy people who are willing to use violence to get what they want.
Of course, if you're looking to avoid that kind of morality, you can always stick to playing paintball. But you're aware of the fact that even there, you haven't quite escaped from the world as thoroughly as you may have liked...
I know nothing about paintball forgive me
> Have you seen Punch-Drunk Love?
People who say "Adam Sandler Movie" usually think of movies produced / written by Adam Sandler.
Have you seen Punch-Drunk Love? The thing about that movie is that it takes Sandler's film personality, but abstracts it out from the context of blatant comedy and inserts it into a low-key tragedy, with the skill & taste of an auteur writer/director (Paul Thomas Anderson).
It's quite wonderful, and now I'm thinking about what the equivalent for Halo would be. Maybe a game that brings out the tragic aspects of war -- not just as shocking gore, but as sadness and horror. Maybe a game about a Halo warrior's post-war life, a civil Sim-type game interrupted by disturbing scenes of post-traumatic hallucination & paranoia. Or a game that starts out as a shooter and becomes impossibly difficult, until the player's inevitable death, after which the real game begins, taking place in a Tibetan Buddhism-inspired series of post-death liminal states of terrifying scenes of his past sins.
The main character does this to great effect in Punch Drunk Love, which also happens to be a beautiful film that I highly recommend. He purchases pudding to earn frequent flier miles.
Are you sure this is real?
I ask because this anecdote seems to be verbatim from the movie "Punch Drunk Love". Although the movie I mention was released in 2002: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/
Punch-Drunk Love for those of you that don't get the reference.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/