It's Hip To Be Square In Ruben Ostlund's Successfully Uncomfortable Dark Comedy The Square

The modern-day idea of art being created solely for the sake of pushing people's buttons has taken on a negative connotation and that's really not unwarranted. You've got countless animated and live-action TV shows trying to ape the bawdy humor of the likes of South Park and Family Guy whose only concept of comedy is just saying stuff that they think will make people made but just makes them look tired and ignorant (this also applies to Family Guy) and numerous further attempts by modern-day art to hit back at a non-existent "politically correct boogeyman" come off as similarly having nothing to say beyond "I M EDGY BROOOOOOO".

Broken Souls Find Momentary Comfort And Longer-Lasting Pain In Persona

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #16
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #28

Let it never be said that Ingmar Bergman does not start off his movies in a manner reminiscent of the immortal Smash Mouth lyric "...hit the ground running." The very first scene in Persona is an abstract compilation of seemingly unrelated footage playing off, some of it grisly, some of it silly, before we see a nameless character emerge from a hospital bed and approach a giant screen. Then the opening credits start up, kicking off the plot proper. Once that was all over, I kind of just had to pause for a moment and figure out what on Earth I had just watched. The fact that the film itself just casually goes about its business after that perplexing opening sequence. Okee-dokee, I guess that's the kind of motion picture I'm in for?

No One Escapes The Invitable In The Seventh Seal

Rare is the work of fiction that doesn't at least notice the presence of death. Some of the most famous large-scale blockbusters of the past few decades like Harry Potter and Star Wars have their entire plots motivated by loss, parents are always biting the dust in animated Disney fare and the 1957 Swedish motion picture The Seventh Seal revolves its entire story around a personification of death following around one man, Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow), in the time of the Crusades. This is also an era where the Black Plague is ravaging the land, taking countless people's lives and leaving many in a state of understandable panic.