Hacker Cinema
Sorry to Bother You
2018 · Film · 112 min
Directed by Boots Riley
In an alternate present-day version of Oakland, black telemarketer Cassius Green discovers a magical key to professional success – which propels him into a macabre universe.
22 positive9 neutralfrom 31 commenters
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36 comments on Hacker News
I dunno, 2015, I'm a little weak on this year: It Follows, Creed, Ex Machina, Max Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful 8. I'd watch those again with someone any time, and recommend all of them often. Several on my to-watch list most of which I expect to be good, like Queen of the Desert, While We're Young, Slow West, and The Overnight, just haven't made it to them yet. Not an exhaustive list, just gleaned from some titles I have at hand.
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
It goes on my list of 'dreamlike' movies, they don't always fully add up consciously but you can feel your unconscious going into overdrive while watching them (or maybe there is a surface plot that mostly adds up, like EWS, but there is clearly something going on at a least one other level). The viewing experience is often downright hypnotic for me.
A few off the top of my head, this is a very personal list and I can't even claim that all these movies are 'good' in any particular sense. Just that they put me into this state: * basically anything in lynch's cannon. I'm not always the biggest fan of his stuff, but sometimes they hit me hard. * Cronenberg's Videodrome and it's spiritual sequel Existenz * Donnie Darko & Southland Tales (objectively just an awful movie) * Prince of Darkness * Enter the Void (not for the faint of heart) * Paprika * Solaris (the original mostly, there are some qualities in the remake) * Stalker * Dark City * Sorry to Bother You * The Fountain * 8 1/2 * The Ninth Gate * and certainly Eyes Wide Shut
Sorry to Bother You is a wild movie. The less you know about the plot going into it, the better. (I was not expecting... the thing. You know which one.)
Lenny:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_(bot)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSoOrlh5i1k
https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/comments/5lcfwq/lennys_history_why_he_isnt_creative_commons/
Also, I highly recommend the movie, "Sorry to Bother You":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_to_Bother_You
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU | Official Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enH3xA4mYcY
With David Cross playing Cash's "white voice"!
The Art Of The White Voice by David Cross and Patton Oswalt (Sorry to Bother You):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxZt3sD3rzo
Watch Lakeith Stanfield Use His ‘White Voice’ in ‘Sorry to Bother You’ | Anatomy of a Scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9RQFX28j0
A similar performance is also shown in Sorry To Bother You. I hadn't heard of Rhythm 0 before watching the movie.
The 2010s in sci-fi gaves us:
- Dredd
- Melancholia (may not qualify for some sci-fi fans, I suppose, and I can understand why—it's so very allegorical)
- High Life
- Under the Skin
- Annihilation
- Ex Machina
- Edge of Tomorrow
- Looper
- Blade Runner 2049
- Sorry to Bother You
- Arrival
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The Last Jedi (I know lots of people hated it—I think it's the only more-or-less good Star Wars movie since the original trilogy, and was shocked at the broadly-negative reaction, having come out of the theater thinking "finally, we got a good one, even if it did play the ending way too safe; everyone's going to be so happy!". We're not gonna change each other's minds in HN comments. Agree to disagree.)
And that's just the ones I've seen and thought were somewhere between good and great. And that I could remember or quickly find a reminder of with a quick search. I hear very good things about the new Planet of the Apes series (like, "each entry is better than the last" good) but have only seen the first one. Lots of people liked Rogue One, Snowpiercer, Ad Astra, and Interstellar (I didn't, or at least didn't think they were notably good, but hey, lots of people did). Godzilla, Pacific Rim, and Kong were OK romps. Heard good things about Upgrade and Attack the Block, but haven't seen them. The Martian was OK (some loved it). Inception was alright (again, lots of others like it way more than I do).
How many really good sci-fi movies did the 70s produce? The 80s? I think we're doing fine.
There have been plenty of great, original movies post-2010 that push filmmaking in some way, they’re just overshadowed by the marvels of the world. Some of my recent favorites:
Tar
Sorry to Bother You
Uncut Gems
Get Out
Tangerine/The Florida Project
Dogtooth
Mad God
2022 - Kimi, After Yang, Crimes of the Future, White Noise, Official Competition, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Tar, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
2021 - Nightmare Alley, The Card Counter, Zola, The French Dispatch, Come True, Don't Look Up, I Care A Lot,
2020 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Mank, The Sound of Metal, Possessor, His House
2019 - Climax, Uncut Gems, Parasite, Vivarium, First Cow
2018 - The Clovehitch Killer, Prospect, Mute, Anon, Mandy, The House That Jack Built, Cam, Sorry to Bother You
2018 had a glut of Netflix sci-fi B-movies that I think are very solidly good if not so great. I think they're underrated so I included them. I might have also messed up on the years.
These are all films I've seen. There are many others that I suspect are even better that I haven't seen.
Just a quick glance at Letterboxd....
Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Both Knives Out movies
Parasite
Nope (probably just in the "good" grouping, not great)
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That's, uh... just from the "popular this week" screen. And only the ones I've seen, so I know they're good. But I'm pretty sure all those are last five years, or close to it.
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Digging back to 2018 and later (we can say 2018 counts since 2023 just started, right?):
Annihilation
Sorry to Bother You
High Life
Midsommar
Uncut Gems (god it's so good)
Jojo Rabbit
The Lighthouse
The Green Knight
CODA
Spontaneous ([EDIT] It seems very dumb but wow is it a gut punch, when you start to think about what you're watching and make some connections to real life)
Red Rocket (small-scale brilliance)
RRR
Watcher
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I just realized I misread you as asking for 5 good ones from just one of the last 5 years, not 5 total from the last 5 years, but I think that gets the point across? Despite my leaving off a whole bunch that may be more taste-specific, not having watched even 1/3 of the films from that span I have good reason to believe are good, not exhaustively mining that timespan (I bet I could double the size of that list without changing how I was selecting them), and also omitting a bunch of more-popular movies that I think were at least decent.
[EDIT] Hell some years you could get to 2-3 good ones just by looking at what A24 produced that year, nothing else.
that movie is seriously a mind fuck ... if you like super crazy movies with sexual undertones (and overtones), check out Sorry to Bother You and Endless Poetry
This is one of the major plot points for the film Sorry To Bother You.
Good film on this is "Sorry to Bother You"
Reminds me of a black mirror coming to life though.
They made a documentary about this called 'Sorry to Bother You' by director Boots Riley. In the movie they renamed Amazon to 'WorryFree' to see how people would react to the idea of company towns in the 21st century. You know, to help people be more objective... The docu is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XthLQZWIshQ
So you're basically telling us they do it to make money, and they're not wrong, it works to make money? I don't think that actually comes as a shock to anyone!
My favorite scene in the movie Sorry To Bother You:
- See? It's all just a big misunderstanding.
- This ain't no fucking misunderstanding, man! So, you making half-human, half-horse fucking things so you can make more money?
- Yeah, basically. I just didn't want you to think I was crazy. That I was doing this for no reason. Because this isn't irrational.
- Oh. Cool. Alright. Cool. No, I understand. I just I just got to leave now, man. So, please get the fuck out of my way.
> I was hoping Amazon was actually making housing for its workers.
In the movie 'Sorry To Bother You' by Boots Riley, they have an Amazon-like entity called 'WorryFree' that does exactly this.
I'm not sure we actually want this (Amazon or other big employers making housing for laborers they employ), especially since these workers are often not labor aristocrats, and therefore will have little bargaining power.
Oh no, I was afraid someone would take me up on that! Hahaha.
No particular order. Since 2010ish. Not an exhaustive list of all good horror in that time frame.
- You're Next. It's a trad home-invasion/slasher kinda thing but... then changes genre. I'll leave it at that.
- Cabin in the Woods. Needs no introduction? Solid humor-horror.
- Evil Dead. The soft reboot. Pretty good for the kind of thing it is, which is an Evil Dead-type movie, of course.
- The Babadook. Great horror for people who like to be scared but don't want gore. Extremely efficient use of a tiny cast and very few locations.
- It Follows. A core concept that's creepy as hell, and some damn fine imagery that will stick with you. Lots of moody, slow-paced (but good!) scenes but... it does follow. Unsubtly very much about the harmful aspects of sex and sexual behavior.
- The Witch (or, The VVitch, as it's styled). If you like frontier-type stuff, with period-accurate dialog, plus horror, this will very likely be up your alley. Nb that here "frontier" means "New England, probably just a few miles in from the coast", not, like, the "Old West".
- Bone Tomahawk. Action-horror that is set in the Old West. Not exactly a piece of fine film-making but it pretty much does exactly what it sets out to do, and does it well, which makes it a success in my book.
- The Void. Carpenteresque creature work and Lovecraftian baddies. Excellent example of a throwback horror movie that aims to feel like it was made in another decade.
- The Girl with all the Gifts. Some people liked this a lot more than I did, so I'm including it. I thought it was just OK. Basically a zombie movie, kinda.
- Krampus. I'm not usually into Christmas-horror, which tends to be sub-b-grade garbage and otherwise just isn't to my taste, but watched this because I kept seeing it recommended, and... wow, it's actually good. Careful that you get the right film, there are a bunch with similar titles and I'd guess most of them are terrible. This is the 2015 one directed by Dougherty.
- Get Out. I'd call it just OK (I don't... think I was supposed to find as much if it laugh-out-loud funny in the final act, as I did?) but accept that I'm probably wrong about that, given the overwhelmingly-positive reaction.
- Train to Busan. Maybe my favorite zombie-hoards type of movie I've seen.
- Sorry to Bother You. If you like genre-bending and lots of absurdism in your horror, this one's for you.
- Happy Death Day. Slasher x Ground Hog Day, with that concept explored for just about all it's worth. Relatively light-hearted (it'd almost have to be) but not without tension. Sequel's less good—not awful, but a big step down. Same director made a similar film, "Freaky", that's another mash-up concept, and is quite good.
- It Comes at Night. Uh... if you really like movies that make you kinda wish you'd never watched them, not because of, say, realistic gore, but because they sorta make your soul hurt, this is a very good movie of that kind. But maybe don't, though?
- One Cut of the Dead. Brilliant concept, fun throughout. Not in any sense a traditional zombie movie, and I would 100% recommend it to people who usually don't like zombie movies. Don't spoil it, go in as cold as possible. It's one that is much better if you know almost nothing about it before you start.
- Game Night. Horror-adjacent, at least. Not amazing but another one that I watched after being repeatedly assured by many people that it was much better than it looked like it would be (it looked pretty bad), and it was.
- Hereditary. I hated this one but it's another where my opinion is way, way in the minority. Lots of people love it.
- Colour out of Space. If you can tolerate, or actually enjoy, Nic Cage, and like Lovecraftian horror, this is worth a watch. Good FX work.
- The Last Matinee. By-the-numbers slasher set in a Uruguayan movie theater, in the 90s. Great kills, the right kind of gross, good set-up/pay-off, good at making you care enough about almost everyone that you're sad when they get got. Requires tolerance for subtitles.
- Caveat. Tight little small-cast film (I think it was a during-the-pandemic production, maybe?). Very stupid-sounding premise that ends up making enough sense in the film itself, and a lot more by the time it's over.
- Vicious Fun. I probably like this one more than it deserves, but I do like it. Horror-comedy, heavy on very winking-at-the-camera references to other horror films and the genre itself. It gets a little bit of the bad kind of indie-feeling in some of the shot choices and acting, but the way it keeps delivering even when you think it's winding down or running out of tricks is outstanding. Did not go the direction I thought it would, judging just from a short description of the plot.
- My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To. Probably the art-housest film on this list, so keep that in mind before deciding to watch it—you're not in for a standard horror experience, though there is tons of tension and definitely some murderin'. Very good, though. Strongly recommend avoiding spoilers as discovering what the movie's about is a big part of the experience.
- The Haunting of Hill House. OK, so it's a self-contained season 1 of an anthology series, not a movie, but it's (like The Babadook) a really good watch for people who like horror but not a bunch of gore or a sky-high body count. Creators seem to both know what themes are and how to use them for horror, which wouldn't be impressive in an ideal world, but is in this one.
The, "Could not be made today," line of thinking is overblown. I predicted around 2015 that a movie in the style of "Falling Down" could never be made with a black lead. Less than 2 years later, Get Out was released. And as far as scandal-worthiness goes, I think if Sorry To Bother You got past the salacity filter, we're doing pretty good.
I concur. Sorry to Bother You was a really good movie. It is often missed how good this movie actually is. I feel like there needs to be a louder conversation on how brilliant this movie is in so many ways.
For sure. Or look at things like Knives Out or Thor: Ragnarok. Solid comedies both and mass-market successes.
The notion that people can't be funny anymore just because they can no longer use particular groups as punchlines is just lazy. A great example is Get Out. It's a lot of things, but it can reasonably be called a comedy: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/jordan-peele-get-out-golden-globes-comedy
Or look at Sorry to Bother You: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_to_Bother_You
I thought both of these movies were hilarious, and they worked with extremely "challenging" social topics.
As an old, when people start talking about movies were only funny back in the day, I suspect they just imprinted on whatever was funny in their youth. Time moves on, and humor has to move with it.
Booksmart was the first thing I thought of too when he said, “since 2012, the only successful comedies have been animations aimed at young children.” (edit: I mean to say, you can still see movies with originality even if they're not "successful" i.e. blockbusters)
In 2018 when I originally got AMC A-list subscription, I tried going to 3 movie a week at first, so I went to a lot more movies I was unsure about but they were very original and memorable, but they weren’t super popular (at least I was the only person I personally knew who had seen it).
Sorry to Bother You ($18 million)
Blackkklansman ($93 million)
Eighth Grade ($14 million)
Crazy Rich Asians ($238 million)
> Sorry to Bother You is a 2018 American dark comedy film ... The film follows a young black telemarketer who adopts a white accent to succeed at his job. Swept into a corporate conspiracy, he must choose between profit and joining his activist friends to organize labor.
> Is there no end to Amazon's dominance?
Check out the Boots Riley directed movie Sorry To Bother You [1], they have a big company in that movie, called WorryFree, that is similar to Amazon where they offer lifetime labour contracts, it’s a very promising future! /sarcasm
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=XthLQZWIshQ
To me, "everything is political" is a bumper sticker version of the assertion that what is and isn't "political" in the sense of "political statement" is often way more subjective than we sometimes recognize it is.
If a coworker talks about his husband, is that a political statement? To some people, absolutely, right?
How about someone mentioning a concert that they've gone to, for an artist that's outspokenly political one way or another? Just a concert, right?
What about talking about a great movie or TV show, if those are, I don't know, "Sorry to Bother You" or "Lovecraft Country"?
Can you mention that you went to a gun show, or a shooting range?
Can you recommend a Jordan Peterson book?
Can you put an NRA logo on your car?
What about a BLM logo?
What about on your T-shirt?
If a coworker goes through a gender transition, how does that get handled in a way that everyone, across the board, considers apolitical? Good luck with that: the very act of transitioning is, to a significant portion of the population, itself political.
So, I mean, sure, not literally everything is political, but if you give the statement a bit more of a generous reading than "Come on, are you saying ice cream is political? Harrumph!", you can see the point being made.
(Also, re: ice cream: what about Ben & Jerry's?)
Commenters here gave great recommendations. I'll try mentioning the unmentioned.
- Gifted (2017):
Drama about a single man raising a genius girl. Some small bits of the film explore about the responsibility of extraordinary people vs their right to feel like normal human, but most of the film is about the human aspect of it.
- The Wind Rises (2013):
The Ghibli Studio film dramatizing the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of Mitsubishi A5M fighter aircraft and its successor, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. This is one of Ghibli film that is more grounded to reality than the others.
- Sorry to Bother You (2018):
Black Comedy Drama about a young black telemarketer who are really good at his jobs, gets involved in a huge corporate conspiracy where he must choose between profit and joining his activist friend.
- Don't fuck with cats (2019):
Documentary about people over the internet brings down the infamous murderer Luka Magnotta.
- The Great Hack (2019):
A great documentary for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
- Justice League (2017):
Please don't flag, I'm not joking! The film itself didn't change anything. It was a little under my expectation. What happens following the release of the film, though, is the gem. The snydercut movement is a very rare phenomenon where a significant amount of people actually take action against disappointment from a change in a film's direction. Long story short, fans investigate how it could be and uncovered a great deal of what they think a miss-handling of a film production. It opened a window where we can see how moviemakers and everyone involved has their own political agenda and some actually falls for what they do. The movement is actually successful considering it has the power for the film industry to react and the fans seems to get what they wanted.
You're near Oakland, right? Have you seen the movie Sorry to Bother You? If not, I think you might enjoy it. It's an Oakland focused telemarketing spoof, and one of the better things I saw last year: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sorry_to_bother_you_2018. It's not perfect, but it's definitely original.
That sounds like the Worry Free work houses in the movie "Sorry to Bother You".
OMG, I just realized this statement from CEO Crist:
> "My goal is to continue growing Chef as a company that transcends numerous U.S. presidential administrations. And to be clear: I also find policies such as separating families and detaining children wrong and contrary to the best interests of our country,"
Is basically a paraphrase of the psychopathic CEO's statement in the movie _Sorry to Bother You_. To me, the most genius gut-punchingly funny part of the movie (which is full of genius laugh out loud and cringe-inducing parts).
"See? It's all just a big misunderstanding."
"This ain't no fucking misunderstanding, man. So, you making half-human half-horse fucking things so you can make more money?"
"Yeah, basically. I just didn't want you to think I was crazy. That I was doing this for no reason. Because this isn't irrational."
"Oh. Cool. Alright. Cool. No, I understand. I just, I just got to leave now, man. So, please get the fuck out of my way."
Very relevant film about the topic: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5688932/
Sounds like Worryfree from 'Sorry to Bother you', strange to think that film is utopian in that unskilled labour isn't replaced by robots
There is a movie about it called "Sorry to bother you":
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5688932/
It is more about modern sharecropper capitalism I agree but WorryFree is the endgame of the sharing/gig economy, basically people fed up with hustling in the gig economy or sharecropper systems can become slaves and have their worries handled for them (dorm, food etc) almost like a mix of prison mixed with dorms at work like Foxconn.
In the movie Cassius "Cash" Green, the main character, works as a telemarketer and all the telemarketers are looking to unionize but there is little control or solace in any work in their look at modern society.
Throughout the movie, when the work is a complete hustle, WorryFree draws these people in by marketing that they don't have to worry about the hustle anymore, just become a slave to make the hustle easier. In the future of Sorry to Bother You, you can either be a sharecropper/hustler/sales or slave.
Here's a look at all the elements in the movie regarding modern economies and their drive for cheap labor and ultimately pliant slaves [1] Boots Riley, who created the movie and was previously a rapper, made one hell of a movie director/screenwriter debut, it is already a cult classic.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorry-to-bother-you-really-happen-partial-spoilers/
The movie Sorry to Bother You has a satirical look at the sharing economy gone awry. In the movie a controversial company called WorryFree exists that promises lifelong security where people willingly become slaves to live in dorms and survive without worry but for free. The movie is excellent.
Wow this is straight out of a major plot point in "Sorry to Bother You" (which was a great film if you haven't seen it).
That really speaks to the horrors of America, given that in Japan, as a white male foreigner with command of "hai", "arigato" and on good days, "ah, so desu ne", I definitely got the sense of being put up with - albeit more so in Tokyo than elsewhere.
But at the same time I can sympathize in that street interactions in California have grown openly hostile across the board. The level of polite hospitality is so low and paranoia so high that it is actually hard to go outside and do business without ending up in a confrontation of some kind. Just the other week I was crossing the street in SF after seeing a movie[1] and a lady(a white lady) crossing the other direction gave me the finger and screamed "fuck you, fuck you" for no reason I could fathom.
We passed, and then I had a feeling of deja vu and thought, "didn't that happen the last time I saw a movie here too? Does this woman just go around in the evening cursing out strangers for self-care?"
And that is the kind of thing that sounds dreadfully believable for SF these days. The privilege spares me from most avenues of material loss, but that's hardly something to be proud of.
[1] The film was Sorry to Bother You, if it matters. I enjoyed it
Ok a few weeks ago. That’s what I meant. It registers as nothing to me.
You’re right. We haven’t heard. And until we do, we have every reason in the world to doubt it. Google is an utterly dystopian black box surveillance machine and these people have no clue.
This is so far from Marxist class consciousness it’s a joke. Means nothing and will accomplish nothing. This is isn’t even student body politics. They know not the first thing about community or conviction on the level of systemic worker oppression. And you don’t know what conviction is.
Don’t get your point about average Googlers. I didn’t use that phrase.
I really recommend everyone here look at Boots Riley’s new film ‘Sorry To Bother You’.
Sorry To Bother You was my favorite movie this year.
A film that can combines fun and avant-garde is a rare thing, and it does so brilliantly.