The Rules of the Old School French Game

Movie Meltdown - Episode 373 This episode we discuss The Rules of the Game the 1939 French film directed by Jean Renoir. According to many, including The Criterion Collection, it's considered one of the greatest films ever made. So The Meltdown Gang decides to watch it and see if it lives up to it's hype and reputation.And while we admit that the awful thing about life is... everyone has their reasons, we also come to new realizations about... Brian De Palma, is this a parody of the genre or is it just that bad, experimental theater, Hack-O-Lantern, pouty, the 80's porn scene, Hi, Mom!, The Forbidden Room, Tolstoy, it feels like you're apologizing for reading, Chuck E. Cheese, mimicking farce, a lot of it is successfully bleak, that was the eleventh herb and spice, Pre-Columbian art, Akira Kurosawa's Ran, Howard Dean meets Charles Laughton, Friends with Benefits, more movies in the VHS world, well it seemed like the floor was very slippery, Dinner at Eight, Robert De Niro, Wake in Fright, a square married guy, maybe... it wasn't popular because it's kind of about what... popular audience are... and that's just not that flattering, it's the closest thing I've ever seen to watching a dream, not romatizing the working people, John Wayne meets Mister Rogers and Liberace, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, she's not into her marriage, he said he could feel the audience hating it... that's my favorite thing, popular audiences aren't really looking for the mirror held up to nature, even for something to be a comedy there has to be a certain fantastic element to it, Idiocracy, it's like... this is the lives of the rich people, oh by the way they're exactly like the lives of the poor people. Oh by the way, they're also just totally empty, mimicking movies that haven't been made yet, I always like to mention my favorite Inuit action picture, that Gomez grin, growing up on one hour serialized dramas, a snapshot of Los Angeles, petulant, I guess I'm just not ready... to dislike all of humanity, the fact that I haven't been murdered in my sleep is a testament to the human spirit and - oh cool a squirrel!Spoiler Alert: Lots of spoilers contained for The Rules of the Game, so go watch it beforehand for spoiler-free listening."I mean I think we're kind of making a mistake if we're trying to connect to any of these characters on an emotional level... because it really is just a bunch of bored people trying to fill their lives with meaningless distractions... like that's sort of all the movie is."