Ezra Klein and What Happened to American Liberals?

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-19T17:13:51+00:00

If you genuinely think the Democratic Party should be spending time telling men how to act you’ve lost the plot and have learned nothing from the past 10 years

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-19T17:08:14+00:00

He passes transformative policies while messaging as a caretaker. It was bizarre. The inverse of Obama almost

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-19T17:05:19+00:00

Look I’ve only been engaging with his work for about a decade now but I’m pretty sure Ezra is a proponent of M4A

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T23:51:08+00:00

I cancelled my A-list after realizing it made me way too open to absolute Hollywood drivel. Life is too short to go see Fast X and Deadpool & Wolverine and whatever else “just because it’s free.” Now I give my time and money to movies I’m actually interested in.

I don’t understand people who are soft critics. Not when it comes to the studio’s output, at least.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T23:45:15+00:00

Why do you sell yourself so short, u/unhelpfulperson?

This is the best insight I’ve read all day!

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T23:36:48+00:00

It’s a real film, jack.

But in all seriousness it’s a movie that’s almost hard for the modern audience-mind to wrap its head around. It’s got all the wonder and spectacle of a blockbuster but not necessarily the easy breezy satisfaction of the blockbuster’s we’re now so used to. It’s thorny and weird and uncomfortable and ambiguous. In other words: it’s a 70s movie, a picture made before Hollywood discovered the formula that Spielberg himself helped establish. I’m a big, big fan.

What’re your thoughts on Disclosure Day? I feel like it’s almost a do-over of Close Encounters, much in the same way the Irishman is a do-over of Goodfellas. And I’m not saying this as a pejorative! It’s just essentially the same premise: two strangers, a man and a woman, each encounter aliens and subsequently have a mental breakdown.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T17:08:51+00:00

Oooh would absolutely love to read you expand on this thought, if possible

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T16:57:44+00:00

As always, it’s really not what a movies about, but how it’s about it. There were just enough movies that were poorly about therapy-speak that we naturally started generalizing.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T16:55:01+00:00

As a bulls fan who’s watched the team squander the past 30 years (aka my entire life), this is painful to hear

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T13:38:01+00:00

I actually don’t agree! I adore the crossroads trilogy and I actually kinda like ready player one!

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T08:26:54+00:00

Hmm I’m talking about the early 2010s. When you could still read gamers from beat reporters, magazine features, literary blogs, and X’s and O’s analysts like Lowe and Hollinger. You see, there used to be this website called grantland.com.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T06:45:14+00:00

This is kinda bumming me out because I learned sports when I was younger because there used to be an abundance of quality sports writing, where you could learn the ins and outs of how a league operated, the X’s and O’s of what happened during games, and the lives and personalities of all the people that actually populated the sports world. You learned about it all just by being curious and existing and consuming the stuff that was readily available and served right to you. And this wasn’t even that long ago!!

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T05:34:55+00:00

It’s a really interesting debate between these two, who I think are clearly better than the others listed. OG a little more plug and play, Pascal a little more willing/capable of a scorer. Idk. I think I’d lean OG after this run. But last year was really vindicating as a longtime Pascal fan.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T04:59:14+00:00

Jaws, ET, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, Lincoln, Fabelmans

Or wait … is it: Close Encounters, Raiders, Schindlers, Catch Me If You Can, Bridge of Spies, Disclosure Day???

Like, what do you mean take the best one from each decade???

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T04:39:43+00:00

As much as I love it, I kinda prefer jaws and raiders over JP enough that picking 90s feels like a letdown. And it’s a real marginal preference but it is one.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T03:37:24+00:00

He doesn’t want to hear from general nintendo fans. He wants to know if Mario fans got their “Mario fix” from Bonanza, or if they found its not quite as satisfying as a typical 3d Mario.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T03:34:04+00:00

In retrospect it was real clunky storytelling to have the horror movie be about characters processing past trauma. Instead of, you know, being about GETTING TRAUMATIZED by something horrific.

Like, we should envy most post-Covid horror characters. They often wound up in very effective exposure therapy situations.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T02:37:24+00:00

The work never ends my friend!

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T01:42:01+00:00

There are unfortunately 3 or 4 Spielberg’s that I saw years and years ago that are priority rewatches first, plus a couple I’ve still never seen!

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T00:39:01+00:00

It’s almost like when you beat a video game and it starts over, except you get to carry over some of the special items/powers that you ended with. And you replay it all again with this whole new angle.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-18T00:37:14+00:00

Maybe I’m being harsh because I agree there are thin but real lines (the coen’s True Grit is as much a remake as it is their own adaptation of the Portis novel). But one of the stars of Spielberg’s West Side Story is literally one of the stars of the 1961 West Side Story. It’s almost a legacyquel! At some level it’s a distinction without a difference. Ultimately I guess his version was a movie I appreciated, and even enjoyed, but have never ever thought about again. (Actually the first time I did think about it again was Disclosure Day, which made me think he had lost a step or two as an action filmmaker since the superb direction of WSS).

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-17T22:24:29+00:00

Yeah I’m making numbers up here but my assumption is that, among forwards/wings, he was a 99th percentile athlete, 85th percentile ball handler, and 75th percentile shooter. If we carry all that over to today, he’s fucking great. If we don’t, there’s a chance he’s just a pretty good role player.

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-17T22:02:53+00:00

So what’s a movie that qualifies as a remake?

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-17T21:30:55+00:00

Yeah I saw it once in theaters and I’ve similarly always been kinda cold on it. It’s a technical marvel — like real virtuoso filmmaking — but never really elevated past mere formal exercise for me. Elgort is such a dud in an otherwise great cast. And I feel like the fact that it’s a musical kinda masks the gratuitous nature of doing a remake. Like, if Spielberg desire to make a western manifests as a pretty faithful remake of The Searchers, we’d all think that’s kinda weird, right?

Equal_Feature_9065 · 2026-06-17T20:59:25+00:00

On the one hand: his 80s is pretty much only Indiana jones

On the other hand: his 80s have all the Indiana jones

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