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The Menu

SuicideSquid

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My wife and I watched The Menu - the new-ish film with Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, and Nicholas Hoult, directed by Mark Mylod, who is mostly a TV director on shows like Succession and Game of Thrones.

It was weird, funny, and disturbing, and I highly recommend it to folks around these parts. The film satirizes/skewers foodie culture, but the themes can be very easily transposed onto the audiophile community.

Spoiler discussion:

Ralph Fiennes is one of the top chefs in the world and has had his passion for food beaten out of him by the pretentious bullshit of foodie culture and food criticism and decides to murder all of the guests at his high-end restaurant. The film is hyper critical of the fetish culture around food or around hobbies/interests generally - the film pretty explicitly says "enjoy things, be passionate about things, but focus on the passion for the thing itself, when you make it about how smart and refined you are because you like the right thing, or make it all about the expense and presentation rather than the thing itself, you suffocate the joy out of that thing.

Audiophilia drives me crazy in a lot of ways because it stops being about the enjoyment of music and instead becomes "look how much money I spent on my system" or "look how smart I am because I can detect these tiny variables in sound". Gear is fun. Picking out and setting up a nice stereo system is fun. But ultimately it's a means to an end - enjoying good music - and doesn't say anything about your character or worth as a human being.
 

fpitas

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Jimbob54

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My wife and I watched The Menu - the new-ish film with Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, and Nicholas Hoult, directed by Mark Mylod, who is mostly a TV director on shows like Succession and Game of Thrones.

It was weird, funny, and disturbing, and I highly recommend it to folks around these parts. The film satirizes/skewers foodie culture, but the themes can be very easily transposed onto the audiophile community.

Spoiler discussion:

Ralph Fiennes is one of the top chefs in the world and has had his passion for food beaten out of him by the pretentious bullshit of foodie culture and food criticism and decides to murder all of the guests at his high-end restaurant. The film is hyper critical of the fetish culture around food or around hobbies/interests generally - the film pretty explicitly says "enjoy things, be passionate about things, but focus on the passion for the thing itself, when you make it about how smart and refined you are because you like the right thing, or make it all about the expense and presentation rather than the thing itself, you suffocate the joy out of that thing.

Audiophilia drives me crazy in a lot of ways because it stops being about the enjoyment of music and instead becomes "look how much money I spent on my system" or "look how smart I am because I can detect these tiny variables in sound". Gear is fun. Picking out and setting up a nice stereo system is fun. But ultimately it's a means to an end - enjoying good music - and doesn't say anything about your character or worth as a human being.
I've seen far worse films. Odd but worthwhile.
 

Soniclife

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Decent enough film, but a little too predictable to be great.
 

kemmler3D

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Pretty funny and definitely worth a watch. Agree about the critique of conspicuous consumption and pretentiousness applying almost as well to a certain strain of audiophilia as food.


You can almost imagine Bruno Putzeys as the chef, calling upon some goofball audiophile with no technical depth at all, in the "cook something" scene, asking them "Well? build something!" and then they solder a bunch of crap together at random... :D
 

Bleib

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Wasn't for me
 

raif71

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I saw it but didn't think much about it. The trailer I saw in another movie made me want to see it. I guess that was the appetizer if one may call it that.
 

gorb

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The Menu is probably the most unpredictable movie I've seen in a while. This thriller is filled tension and super dark comedy moments and it's wonderfully carried by the amazing, Anya-Taylor Joy.
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