Synopsis
A portrait of the lives of a disparate group of patrons and employees at an American watering hole today.
2020 Directed by Turner Ross, Bill Ross IV
A portrait of the lives of a disparate group of patrons and employees at an American watering hole today.
Davis Guggenheim Jonathan Silberberg Turner Ross Bill Ross IV Michael Gottwald Josh Penn Nicole Stott Daniel Patrick Carbone Chere Theriot Zachary Shedd Bryn Mooser Matthew Petock Kathryn Everett Minette Nelson David Eckles Matt Sargeant
코피 터지고, 돈 떨어지고
🎵 is that all there is, is that all there is?
if that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
let's break out the booze and have a ball
if that's all there is 🎵
the handheld fuzziness of the images, the bleeding glow of the dive bar lights, the hazy, multi-layered room noise sound design—one of the best stylistic and sonic approximations of bittersweet drunken melancholy i've ever seen. a nation's last collective hangover. "i'll be seein' all you weirdos again."
a fantastic bizarre mesh of reality and fiction all set within the realm of people and what it is like to truly be in a community, and what it means to leave that place which you just want to call home. i so needed this: i havent verbally spoken to anyone outside of my family for about 4 months and i havent hung out with friends properly with what feels like longer: and the guise of loneliness has been bellowing me to the point where the contact of humanity feels long forgotten. and this reminded me of a time post isolation where i could form my own family, and could really be happy. i miss it so fucking much.
Another mesmerizing experiment from the Ross Brothers, this film contrives and evokes like their Tchoupitoulas, setting barflies loose in a made-up Las Vegas bar on its last night. Greetings from the end of the world.
Derek Jarman’s WILL YOU DANCE WITH ME? for ugly straight people: a behaviorist experiment via a staged fly-on-the-wall documentary, this time about the kind of bar where there are probably literal flies on the wall.
Jarman’s film, for which he built a gay club in early-80s London, gains unspeakable poignancy in hindsight for the looming AIDS plague; the Ross Bros couldn’t know they were making this on the cusp of another pandemic that would similarly wipe out spaces like the Roaring 20s Cocktail Lounge, but they build in a sense of impending finality anyway—not just the entire Last Call conceit, but even the name of the bar suggests an impending crash, and even if Kenny Rogers hadn’t died between the…
The most truthful, contemporary thing I've watched in a long time. The Ross brothers unwittingly capture a time and place and community of oddballs that won't be seen again as their staged bar celebrates its close the night before the 2016 election.
Solely from the technical side, it's impressive that Bloody Nose never devolves into a cacophony of music and glasses and people talking. The sound mixing is a feat. It's a little unbelievable that this isn't 100% a documentary.
Divided into chapters by states of drunkenness, interrupted by the TV channel, the Ross brothers reveal the deepest pits of their patrons without ever intervening.
As morning approaches, that emotional clarity blurs back into hangover headaches, and it turns out there isn't much to be said at all. Eventually, everyone leaves, off to wherever else it is they go. Over a montage of Polaroids taken that night, Peggy Lee sweetly sings, "Is that all there is?"
Forever baffled why screenwriters attempt complicated plots when hanging out with some sad people in a bar is all a movie ever needs to be. With the immediate intimacy, the vulnerability, the laughs with a thick haze of melancholy, these are movies that can't help but find moments of truth or reach an emotional epiphany because there is nothing but truth in a room full of people getting liquored up and the end result of that can only ever be a terrifying emotional epiphany. This is what every movie should strive for, something Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets does relentlessly, seemingly with little effort, the ultimate sign of mastery. Throw in that the bar is closing, and all the metaphors one…
So what do we have here? And does it matter?
Fiction, I’d argue, best captures the universal, while documentary—like journalism—details the specific. If Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is a singular achievement, it’s in the way the movie manages to do a little bit of both.
This is reality fabricated to brilliant effect. For all appearances it’s a documentary about the last day of operation of an off-strip Las Vegas bar, The Roaring ‘20s, with an affectionate lens cast over its staff and clientele. Except, in reality the bar is not in Vegas and the people are only actors. But the illusion is a material one, and it gets to the spirit of reality through heavy improvisation (and drinking) on everyone’s part. And I loved it.
There’s something timeless about bars like this. While on the outside the world hurtles on, on the inside the people are suspended in amber, lost to time, until the day comes when the world circles back and closes in and…
any movie that uses the best song of all time (Peggy Lee's is that all there is) will make me smile real big
The debate over how “real” or fake this movie is reminds me of Mitchell Block’s 1973 short film “...No Lies”. It’s effective and evocative in its storytelling, regardless of its origins.
Peeeeeeeete! Quick get in the Delorean! It's your future Pete! Gosh it's so fucking boring Pete you gotta get in this Delorean!!
Don't know what to think of this, but I highly doubt that by mere coincidence, the tv on the bar would be playing heavy on the editing film masterpieces like Ivan and Potemkin for the day they were shooting this heavy on the editing film
So much can happen in a single night when the drinks flow freely. Most of it comes across as gibberish from an odd bunch of locals who have a dysfunctional relationship with the bottle and each other, but the effect is warmly sad and bittersweet. What more could one expect from a gang of alcoholics?
Spellbinding in ways I'm having a hard time putting into words. Experiments like this shouldn't work so perfectly, but this is something else.
I wanted to feel everything more, but “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” is still a pretty fascinating slice of life documentary that chronicles the free flowing words, actions and drinks at a nighttime bar in its final moments. This took a really interesting approach in that there are hired actors in those pseudo-documentary so sometimes it doesn’t feel as genuine as it should, but it’s definitely an interesting approach to this unique style of filmmaking. There’s a lot of fun to be had in here too.
Loved this queasily melancholic film. Man, what I wouldn’t give to go to a grotty bar right now 😭
a fantastic bizarre mesh of reality and fiction all set within the realm of people and what it is like to truly be in a community, and what it means to leave that place which you just want to call home. i so needed this: i havent verbally spoken to anyone outside of my family for about 4 months and i havent hung out with friends properly with what feels like longer: and the guise of loneliness has been bellowing me to the point where the contact of humanity feels long forgotten. and this reminded me of a time post isolation where i could form my own family, and could really be happy. i miss it so fucking much.
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