 Sexy, untamed, provocative, mysterious. These are all words people have used to describe me over the years. They can also be applied to the film Saltburn, which I'm going to be talking about today. Let's begin! For this video, I'm going to do something a little different. It's actually going to be spoiler-filled in the second half. I'll give you a warning. For the first few minutes, though, spoiler-free. You can listen. You won't have anything ruined. I will just give you my thoughts on the film. Very surface-level, won't go into any detail. And then from there, we'll move past it. If you like what I'm doing here, feel free to subscribe to the channel as I post tons of movie reviews, movie roasts, live streams every single week. Would love to have you stick around. You can also like the video, hit the notification bell so they show up in your feed. There's a lot of things you can do. It's up to you whether or not you do them. Okay, Saltburn is a story of decisions as well. Made by one Oliver, who's attending Oxford University. It's a very prestigious university. A lot of very smart individuals go there. I had the opportunity at one point or another. I turned it down in my fantasy and I decided to go to a community college instead. Really a tech college where I could hone my craft and really get the best experience. But this isn't about me. This is about Oliver. And Oliver has big goals. He has lofty aspirations. One of which is to get in the favor of the cool kid on campus, Felix. Felix is your traditional playboy, very tall, very attractive. He was in euphoria. He was in those dumb kissing booth films on Netflix. And I should point out, I watched Saltburn here on Amazon Prime. It's free right now, which Amazon Prime, I guess at some point, decided let's give Adam something for his video purposes to watch. Because typically Amazon Prime video is just an absolute dumpster fire. Thank you Amazon for actually providing something I could watch and hadn't seen in theaters. I am bummed out I miss this in theaters, but we have it now. Okay, my thoughts on Saltburn. I enjoyed it for the most part. I liked it more than I didn't. And it gives me something to think about, which most movies don't do nowadays. I don't think it's the most amazing movie ever. I don't think it's one of the top 10 of the year. But I do think it's worth a watch. Whether or not you'll enjoy it is going to be up to your personal taste. But I can say this, the movie runs well. It is a little over two hours. I didn't feel it because I was intrigued by the mysteries. I was intrigued by this character, Oliver. He's kind of hard to read. He's a tough book to pick up. Which is interesting because Oliver loves to read himself. He picks up a lot of books and that's what we're really going to get into with this character. He's very good at studying people, picking up on little traits, little cues. And that will work into the psyche of the character as this film progresses. Now, I think that the music's great. I think the cinematography is great. I think everything works well. The actors are all solid here. Some of the performances by the rich people are really silly and over the top. And I think that's intentional, so I'm not going to dock it for that. Especially from Rosemann Pike, I believe her name is. I have IMDb up. Let me see if I... Because I'm so bad with character and actor names, I like to have something at my disposal. And I really can't even see her showing up on IMDb. This is just a complete disaster. So I'm just going to say it's Rosemann Pike. It's the actress from Gone Girl. If you remember that little chestnut by David Fincher. She plays the mother of Felix. And really this is... You know, it's a traditional three act story. The first act we have Oliver fitting into the college scene where he really belongs in the college. He's going to meet Felix. He's going to befriend him. The second act is really the big majority of the picture which is these two spending the summer at Saltburn. This beautiful estate. Massive mansion out in the middle of nowhere. And Oliver is going to get injected into the family. He's going to meet the mom, the dad, the sister, the best friend, and they're all going to have the time of their lives. For better and for worse. And then our final act, of course, is the fallout and everything that takes place on Saltburn. This is a movie that's full of some decent symbolism. It's got a lot of foreshadowing. I appreciate the fact that this movie would be even better on a second viewing after you know everything going on. Because even after the first viewing, I thought back on it and I thought, you know what? I like what they did here. I like how they played this out ahead of time. They foreshadowed this. I would like to go back again and watch and see how much really lines up. And I think it will. This isn't like a profound movie by any means. I have seen movies like this before, but I dug the ending. And really, I think that's all I need to say before we get into spoiler territory. This is a recommendation from me with the knowledge going in. It is rated R. There is some sexual acts. There is some gross shock value stuff. There's probably two or three scenes where I thought, wow, okay, we're going here for some reason. It doesn't really, I don't know, I'll get a spoilers, but it doesn't really serve to drive the story forward that much. It really does feel like these are put in just to get people talking and go, oh man, that was really salacious. That was wild. But yeah, it's going to be Taster's choice on this one. Tread lightly, but go in with an open mind and you might find yourself enjoying it like I did. Okay, spoiler time. Oliver, he's psychotic. He's played by Barry. How do you say that? Barry Kefen, coffin. I don't know, Barry Coffin, something like that. Does a great job, great performance here. Oliver starts out kind of showcasing, he's a bit of a bookworm. He's a nerd. He's obviously in this prestigious school. He's going to befriend a total psychopath nerd that loves numbers and shouting and very obviously not all together as far as social commentary goes, but he keeps to himself mostly. He understands his place. Oliver doesn't like his place. He doesn't want to be a nerd. He doesn't want to be at the loser table. He is infatuated with a Felix. And I will say after the second act and it starts to pick up and you realize what's going on with this character. I was calling things ahead of time and I was even going back in my mind and saying, yep, he did this. That's how this all got set up. Regardless of whether or not it was a bit predictable, I still like the execution. So it's presenting Oliver as this hapless kind of aloof fool at times. He's in over his head. He's making bad choices with Felix and he loves Felix. He just, he's absolutely head over heels for this guy in a very unsafe way. Like the mental state Oliver's in with this dude is just beyond comparison, beyond the pale. And then you kind of start to realize, well, maybe Oliver's not that into him. Maybe he's just mentally so unstable that he thinks he is, but he's just getting a thrill out of kind of stalking this dude. And then he's kind of getting a thrill out of fucking with the family. And then the real goal becomes clear. He wants it all and it doesn't matter that the family's with them. In fact, he actually despises these people. He pities them. He hates them. And he wants them out of the picture. He just wants salt burn. He's a con artist at the end of the day. He's a fake. He's a fraud. He's a low life. He's a loser. At one point he fakes his dad's death. He tells Felix my dad died because he knows Felix operates in the space where he's got to be the top dog and he wants to kind of nurse these pups back to health and be around the drama. Because the bottom line is this family that Felix is in. What is it? The cat, the catans. They are boring, dull individuals that have so much money and go all over the world. They're in London in one week and then they're throwing a lavish party the next day. They have nothing left to give or receive because they've already done all of it. And so they sit around their giant house feeling like defeated or just pathetically inconsequential. You have a daughter that's suicidal. She's depressed all the time. She kind of pretends she's got this wild girl streak but really has nothing going on. Felix is of course the playboy. He does drugs. He sleeps around but he's still unfulfilled and needs to find someone to latch onto to kind of live through and kind of help champion up which is what Oliver is. That's his project this summer. But what Felix doesn't realize in everyone else in the life is that Oliver is not their project. They're Oliver's project and he's playing them like a fiddle. These people are incredibly easy to take advantage of. A mother that's constantly emotionally strained looking for the next drama to unfold in her life. Looking for someone that she can hook onto to make herself feel more comforting and chat with and that's where Oliver is. She's past her prime in her mind and she needs to feel young again. A father who's not there in the slightest anymore. He's just basically a walking shell and then of course there's Oliver himself who's just looking to get to the top. Climb the rung. Now let's talk about some of the shock value sequences. Early on it's established that Felix's bike is out of air in the tire and oh look Oliver comes along with this nice bike that he can lend him. Later we'll find out that Oliver's the one that actually took the air out of Felix's tire and this was all planned. It was all staged. That was something I predicted later on like oh yeah remember the whole setup. Now what I don't believe they tell us is if Oliver actually got into that college by his own you know goodwill, his own admission or if he also faked his way in there to if he George Santos this situation which I'm guessing he did based on everything else and this is where a second watch would really help uncover some of those mysteries. I do want to watch it again actually but like please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. It's very possible that some of these things are taken out of context or I just don't quite remember them from one watch. So he befriends Felix. They're having this great time together and it's very early to make it clear that man Oliver has a sick infatuation with him. He's not only watching the guy as he's sleeping around. He's trying to kind of make him jealous with women but he doesn't know how to talk to women but that's also intentional like he's just so good at breaking people down by one or two lines of dialogue just damaging their psyche because he knows how frail people are. Oliver's calculated. He's calm. He's collected. At least in the foreground behind the scenes. He's a complete shit show once he gets to salt burn and injects himself into the family. We're going to find out just how sick this guy can be at one point Oliver. Here is Felix jerking off in the bathtub which listen I don't Felix really gets into that by the way. I've never really experienced that myself where you're like so into it but he walks away. Oliver goes in there and he starts licking up the remains. He's licking around the drain. He's slurping it up even just describing it's disgusting but we get to see this unfold and it's quite a sight for sure. This is one of the moments where it doesn't really bring anything to the table. We already know Oliver is obsessed with the guy. This was just shock for the sake of shock in my opinion. Please let me know if there's something more to it. Later on it goes even more extreme. So in the final act after several more scenes of debauchery and playing on the well we should probably bring up the other one. The sister. I think it's Annabelle. She I think it's Annabelle. Whatever the blonde sister of Felix. Oliver has these like a little late night rendezvous with her and early on it's established that she has her period. That's not going to stop Oliver from going down under still and making out with her and it's a mess. It's a complete mess. Another scene that's shock for the sake of shock. I guess it's establishing just how much Oliver is willing to do and how crazed this guy is that he doesn't care about any of this. Fine I suppose but again not really necessary but it gets people talking gets people out to see the movie. And it separates itself for sure. You know salt burn because of these couple scenes so fair play. In the final party for Oliver they're giving him a birthday going away party because the dad's starting to realize that hey this guy's kind of breaking our family dynamic down even more so than it already was. Oliver is going to confront Felix who's pissed at him. They're going to go through this maze that Oliver has already studied because they have a replica of the maze in the library and he checked it out. He's very good. He has a photographic memory. He's very good at picking up things. So he goes through this maze and they kind of jump ahead. Felix has died off camera. How did it happen? Did he kill himself? Did he drink too much? It's obvious Oliver did this. And this is where the movie kind of is not sloppy but I think feels it's more clever than it actually is because it's obvious Oliver's behind this stuff but they're going to kind of slow reveal this in the final couple minutes of the film and at that point it's pretty clear that not only did he have a hand in killing Felix but he also had a hand in killing the daughter or the sister I should say and he had a hand in the dad's death and the mom's psyche being completely broken to the point where she's going to reach out and find, well I guess she doesn't reach out. He plays the mom in a way where he puts this flat up for sale. He knows she's looking to get away from the estate for a while and he places himself in a location where she's going to be because he knows she's going to want him back in her life. They ended things messy. He was kind of unceremoniously kicked out of the family without her knowing. He was paid a bunch of money and now that he has her back in his grasp she's going to go back to Saltburn with him and he's going to quickly take care of her as well. He just maybe established how he did it whether he poisoned her or he... I don't know actually. I don't know what happened that I missed. How she was injured or became very ill if it had anything to do with him in this case or not but he is going to very much speed the process up and unplug her breathing tube and finish the job which therein gives him sole ownership of Saltburn because he's been with her now for several years. I believe she's going to give him the rights to the estate and we will end this film with a beautiful dance-off where he's going through the different rooms naked, fully naked, head to toe, penis dangling in the light, spinning around, doing circles. It's very fun. It's very, very, you know, sexy I guess for some, not for me but and not my wife. My wife's like, please, please fast forward. Like this is the end. This is the end of the movie. The final shot of the film is this box with four characters in it, sort of a marionette-esque type, you know, contraption that you can move the limbs around very seamlessly, very simply I should say and on top are four rocks. These rocks represent the different members of the family. This was a callback to earlier where he had told Felix that his father had died. Oliver and Felix are sitting on top of the bridge at the school on campus and Felix tells Oliver of a tradition that when a family member dies, you write their name on a rock and you throw it into the water below. Felix does this, writes his dad's name on the rock, tosses it, and it doesn't go into the water. It actually hits the side on the pavement which Felix points out, oh man, now what? This is a great foreshadow. Now I don't know if Felix did this intent, or I'm sorry, if Oliver did this intentionally or if it was accidental but either way it just told audiences the dad's not actually dead. This didn't go in the water, father's very much still alive. When this film ends though, Oliver has gone into the water and collected all four of these pebbles of the different family members that he had a hand in killing and he sets them on top of the different characters on the box. His master plan has been completed, he has the house, he has the money, he has it all. Whether or not that love for Felix was real or not, Oliver would eventually tell himself no it wasn't. He loved him, he hated him, he despised him and he killed him. So maybe, you know, from someone looking in, Oliver possibly did love this guy to a sick, crazed degree or Oliver just looked at him like a project. Can I actually fall in love with someone? Can I be so wrapped up in a person's life that he'll fall for me? Can I convince him? Can I be like him? And ultimately that would ring hollow. It will not happen, so he killed him. There's probably other interpretations you could take to this. I don't claim to be a master at the psyche of a psychopath. That's not really my thing. I don't know what the intention entirely was from a writer's point of view on Oliver, but it was a fascinating character arc, I'll say that much. And I do think a lot of it was more shock value than it was story value, but it's interpretive, I suppose. And that's what makes Sulperin a fun watch. It's easy to talk about with people. You can go into the whys and the reasons. You can try to break down the plots. It's just a lot deeper than your, you know, typical surface level action movie or thriller or mystery or whatnot. And I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. Okay, that was a lengthy something or another. I hope it made any sense. Let me know if you saw Sulperin. Leave a comment if you're on YouTube. 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