SHAMEFUL: The greatest movies you've never seen

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Sucrose: Dec 9, 2009

I just watched Mad Max (1979) for the first time! It was good.

# ? Aug 18, 2018 03:57

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# ? May 16, 2024 09:52

Jurgan: May 8, 2007; Just pour it directly into your gaping mouth-hole you decadent slut

Magic Hate Ball, I haven't seen any of those and have maybe heard of two of them. So, random.org time! [virtual dice rolling] 10, Alice in the Cities.

Drag Me to Hell was certainly a Sam Raimi movie, as you can see his signature in the mix of horror, gore, and camp. The only thing missing was a Bruce Campbell cameo. The movie is a parable about how capitalism turns people who should be allies against one another. Christine is a loan officer working in a bank who is constantly belittled because she is a woman surrounded by men. The movie is very effective in showing the sexism of her boss and coworker without going over-the-top with it. She and Stu, an Asian-American man, are competing to win the favor of their old white boss, and she gets ahead by throwing an old Romani woman under the bus and taking her house. Of course this leads to the woman cursing her, and we get all sorts of bizarre and shocking scares as a result. She also kills a kitten, which is never pleasant but I respect the movie for going there. The height of the movie is the s�ance, where the spirit jumps from body to body, and we get ridiculous shots of a talking goat and a man dancing in mid-air as though held by marionette strings. It�s a scene that calls all the way back to Evil Dead 2, when all the props in the cabin start talking to Ash. In the end, Christine tries to return the curse to the dead woman (who died of� homelessness?), and the shot of her being buried alive in the mud and crawling her way out is an amazing visual sequence. But of course it�s a fake-out, and she gets damned anyway. There�s a cynical worldview in this movie, but I�m not sure any other ending would be honest. The message is that women have to stick together, and stabbing another woman in the back to get ahead won�t save you in the end.

Unfortunately, there�s one big thing that doesn�t work for me, and that�s the �gypsy woman.� Even typing that racial slur makes me uncomfortable, but the characters in the movie use it repeatedly. This woman embodies every centuries-old stereotype of the Roma people. Not only does she have magic powers, she uses them to get disproportionate revenge for relatively small offenses. Taking someone�s house and �shaming� her is bad, but the opening scene shows a young boy cursed for stealing a trinket. I can�t figure out what Raimi was thinking with this portrayal. This is the man who modernized the Greek canon with Hercules and Xena, so you�d think he could come up with some way of redeeming the Roma stereotypes or just avoiding them altogether. I was hoping early on that the Romani group was trying to hold the lamia prisoner and the boy�s stealing the necklace had let it out, which would have been an inversion of the old trope. I suspect Raimi was trying to homage old horror films about �gypsy curses,� but if so, then the execution fell on its face. Instead, we have yet another portrayal of Roma people as dangerous and vengeful outsiders, stereotypes that contribute to their persecution up to this day. It seriously weakens what�s otherwise a pretty good movie.

Rating: 3/4

124. The Rules of the Game- I opened the They Shoot Pictures list, and this is number five. I've never even heard of it.

132. Five Easy Pieces- Continuing the Ebert list, I somehow skipped over this one.

135. Man with a Movie Camera- Fourth wall? Never heard of it.

139. Birth of a Nation: Oh, boy, this is the big one. This is not a movie you watch for fun, but it's a movie that needs to be seen by anyone who cares about film history.

140. Inland Empire: Want some more David Lynch.

144. Eraserhead: David Lynch hasn't let me down yet. I saw parts of this with some friends once- seemed very weird and abstract, almost like German expressionism.

146. Bride of Frankenstein: Like I said, Frankenstein was disappointing, and I don't think the monster would have become an icon without the sequel that is supposedly much better.

147. Stalker: Tarkovsky was a Russian who made a lot of movies.

148. Notorious: More Hitchcock, one of his most... well-known? Infamous? What's the word I'm looking for?

149. The Goonies: So it's like Stand by Me, but with a treasure instead of a corpse? This doesn't sound great, but I'm constantly hearing it referenced.

Okay, tell me what I'm watching!

_{Shame relieved: The Godfather: 3.5/4, The Godfather Part II: 4/4, Taxi Driver: 4/4, Casablanca: 4/4, Duck Soup: 2/4, Pulp Fiction: 4/4, Barton Fink: 3.5/4, Annie Hall:3/4, Rashomon: 4/4, Blade Runner: 3.5/4, Chinatown: 4/4, Nashville: 3.5/4, Goodfellas: 4/4, The Seven Samurai: 4/4, Superman: 2/4, The Exorcist: 3/4, A Face in the Crowd: 3.5/4, The Seventh Seal: 2.5/4, Treasure of the Sierra Madre: 3.5/4, Apocalypse Now: 4/4, 2001: A Space Odyssey: 2.5/4, The Deer Hunter: 3/4, Schindler's List: 4/4, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: 3/4, Young Frankenstein: 3.5/4, Yojimbo: 3.5/4, Brazil: 3.5/4, Hamlet: 4/4, The Aviator: 4/4, Rocky: 3.5/4, Gandhi: 3.5/4, City Lights: 4/4, Battleship Potemkin: 3.5/4, Predator: 3/4, Easy Rider: 1.5/4, Platoon: 3.5/4, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: 4/4, Get Carter: 3.5/4, Full Metal Jacket: 4/4, My Dinner with Andre: 4/4, Lethal Weapon: 3/4, 3 Women: 4/4, Ikiru: 4/4, The Maltese Falcon: 2.5/4, Midnight Cowboy: 3/4, Gattaca: 4/4, Gone with the Wind: 3/4, Jaws: 4/4, The Bicycle Thief: 3/4, Sophie's Choice: 2/4, On the Waterfront: 4/4, North by Northwest: 3.5/4, Stagecoach: 3.5/4, E.T.: 2/4, Nosferatu: 4/4, Lawrence of Arabia: 4/4, Dirty Harry: 1/4, Vertigo: 3.5/4, Rebecca: 4/4, The Pink Panther: 3/4, Children of Men: 4/4, Wings of Desire: 3/4, Metropolis: 3.5/4, Born on the Fourth of July: 4/4, The Bridge on the River Kwai: 3.5/4, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: 4/4, Being John Malkovich: 3/4, Adaptation: 4/4, Bonnie and Clyde: 4/4, Goldfinger: 3/4, A Streetcar Named Desire: 4/4, Dog Day Afternoon: 3.5/4, Leon: The Professional: 4/4, 8 1/2: 3/4, Mulholland Drive: 4/4, 12 Angry Men: 4/4, Safety Last: 3.5/4, Dogville: 4/4, The Rapture: 2/4, Blue Velvet: 3/4, Irreversible: 4/4, Airplane!: 3.5/4, Tokyo Story: 2.5/4, Big Trouble in Little China: 3.5/4, American Psycho: 3.5/4, Dr. Zhivago: 3/4, Leaving Las Vegas:4/4, The Bourne Identity: 4/4, Out of Africa: 3/4, The Usual Suspects: 3/4, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: 4/4, Rain Man: 3.5/4, The Lost Weekend: 3.5/4, Ratatouille: 3/4, City of God: 4/4, Ed Wood: 4/4, Top Gun: 2.5/4, Trois Couleurs: Bleu: 3.5/4, The Hidden Fortess: 3/4, First Blood: 4/4, The Ten Commandments:3.5/4, Patton: 3.5/4, The Bourne Supremacy:3.5/4, King Lear (1983): 2.5/4, Repo Man: 2.5/4, King Kong: 3.5/4, Wall Street: 3/4, The Blues Brothers: 2/4, Trois Couleurs: Blanc: 2.5/4, Trois Couleurs: Rouge: 3.5/4, Animal House: 1.5/4, Ben-Hur: 3.5/4, Gojira: 4/4, Sunset Boulevard: 3.5/4, Falling Down: 4/4, The Night of the Hunter: 3.5/4, Ran: 4/4, The Battle of Algiers: 4/4, Z: 3/4, The Great Escape: 2.5/4, Cries and Whispers: 4/4, Enchanted: 3.5/4, Judgment at Nuremberg: 4/4, Cool Hand Luke:3/4, Scenes from a Marriage: 4/4, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): 4/4, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): 3.5/4, The Bourne Ultimatum: 3.5/4, F for Fake: 4/4, Spartacus: 4/4, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang: 4/4, Sunrise: 3.5/4, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: 1.5/4, Cloud Atlas: 4/4, Throne of Blood: 2.5/4, Forbidden Planet: 3/4, The Day the Earth Stood Still: 2/4, Frankenstein (1931): 2/4, The Straight Story: 4/4, Boogie Nights: 3/4, Dracula: 4/4, The Stepford Wives: 3.5/4, The Birds: 2/4, Drag Me to Hell: 3/4}

Jurgan fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Aug 20, 2018

# ? Aug 19, 2018 21:51

Magic Hate Ball: May 6, 2007; ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

Alice in the Cities

The cynical reaction to this film would be to call it a dry run for Paris, Texas. The connections can be drawn - a man, trapped inbetween states, suffering from some kind of arrested development, escorts a curious child towards, from, through, and away from an increasingly commercialized and industrialized world, learning about the fragility of time, memory, and place and coming to a better understanding of the importance of human connections. But Paris, Texas is a massive, grand opera, while Alice feels more like a folksy, balladic chamber musical. The bittersweetness is more personal - perhaps this is an effect suggested by the black and white 16mm photography (which is beautiful), but it also has a different kind of scope.

Yella Rottlander is kind of a marvel, giving one of the best kid performances I've ever seen. She's unscrubbed and unfussed with, perfectly natural in front of the camera, and we really feel like we understand her developing relationship with Vogler, which is amusing in how mutual it is. He slowly develops a paternal sense, but often it feels more like he's her older brother, annoyed with having to babysit, and at other times the relationship is inverted, and she becomes the inertia pulling him forward from adult diversions. Much of the film is about this development and transfer of shared inertia, and of their gradual construction of a shared space. It's charmingly done, but it's not sugary, and when conflict and melancholy arises, it's deeply felt - Wenders creates an unusual and unique situation, and communicates its intricacies and emotional currents so well that I can't imagine anyone couldn't feel, in some way, some reflection on their own life.

It's also a geographically broad film with a lot of interesting observations about industrial and commercial culture. There are cute, consciously constructed narrative elements, such as Vogler's use of a Polaroid camera and various presentations of screens - in one scene, he destroys a television in his motel room, and in another, Alice slumps in a chair at the airport, so fixated on the built-in coin-op TV that she doesn't hear their flight announcement. When in Germany, Alice laments that older houses are being torn down (they don't make good rent, Vogler suggests), and that the empty spaces "look like graves for houses". Ugly factories and smokestacks clutter the horizon, lurking ominously behind trees. Alice weighs a bottle of milk, and then drinks from it, and re-weighs it - it's a suggestive moment, but it's emblematic of the way the film doesn't hammer its points, instead using them in collaboration with the performances to create little sub-narrative eddies that bolster both the characters and the overall concepts.

I'd like to return to it. Much like Desert Hearts, it's a movie you want to spend time with - it's hard to deny a strong affection for both of the main characters in this film. Ebert talked about films being machines that generate empathy, and this could be considered a prime example. It moves in with you, and when it moves out, it leaves things behind.

10/10

shamezone

1) A Poem Is A Naked Person - more blank
2) Shoah - i will try
3) Rififi - "ice" movie
4) Children of Paradise - vichy movie
5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite
6) Ugetsu - tspdt 1000!!
7) Colossal - recent rave
8) Veronika Voss - fassbinder continued
9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie
10) Yi Yi - family movie

_{[full list] Floating Weeds 9/10, Daisies 8/10, Stray Dog 8/10, Victim 6/10, Man Bites Dog 9/10, Night and Fog 10/10, Weekend 8/10, Jubilee 10/10, Sans Soleil 10/10, Candidate 8/10, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders 10/10, The Freshman 5/10, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers 10/10, Branded to Kill 8/10, In Heaven There Is No Beer? 10/10, Blood Simple 10/10, The Marriage of Maria Braun 7/10, A Day In The Country 7/10, A Brief History of Time 10/10, Gates of Heaven 10/10, The Thin Blue Line 10/10, The Fog of War 10/10, My Beautiful Laundrette 10/10, Blind Chance 8/10, My Winnipeg 10/10, The River 7/10, Odd Man Out 8/10, The Passion of Anna 9/10, Brute Force 10/10, The Rite 5/10, The Piano Teacher 10/10, Ashes and Diamonds 7/10, Meantime 9/10, Carnival of Souls 8/10, La Notte 10/10, Frances Ha 10/10, L'avventura, Again 10/10, A Room With a View 9/10, Laura 8/10, Marjorie Prime 10/10, Ex Machina 8/10, Tampopo 10/10, Pickpocket 4/10, Harlan County USA 10/10, The Spirit of the Beehive 10/10, Heaven's Gate 4/10, A Short Film About Killing 9/10, The Pillow Book 6/10, Desert Hearts 9/10, Alice in the Cities 10/10 (total: 151)}

Jurgan gets INLAND EMPIRE

# ? Aug 20, 2018 18:36

FancyMike: May 7, 2007

Magic Hate Ball posted:

10) Yi Yi - family movie

this

Tremors - The perfect movie for watching on a Sunday afternoon with your dad. Weird that I never did because I remember him talking about loving it after catching a few minutes on tv once. A great creature movie that has aged very well. Except for one shot the effects are all perfect and they still manage to make the movie tense and exciting even though the monsters and people are pretty much never shown in the same shot. Gets going right away, never stops, and is funny as hell, a solid template for what a comedy horror should be. 4/5

List:

Early Summer - watched Late Spring earlier this year and really need to catch up on Ozu

Goodbye, Dragon Inn - been watching a lot of Taiwanese films lately, I should probably check out Tsai Ming-liang. Also it's probably not too relevant, but I loved Dragon Inn

Rio Bravo - know the song, never saw the film

The Music Room - probably not the recommended place to start with Satyajit Ray, but I bought it and should really watch it

Les Vampires - need to watch more silents and I just saw Irma Vep and loved it

Gates of Heaven - documentaries

Tristana - Bu�uel is one of my all time favorites, but I still have a few to watch

The Piano Teacher - should probably give Haneke at least one more shot

9 to 5 - Dolly

The Toxic Avenger - somehow I've never seen a Troma movie

_{Completed(27): A Nightmare on Elm Street [4/5], Vertigo [5/5], Repulsion [4/5], Last Year at Marienbad [5/5], Blade Runner[4/5], Akira [5/5], Rear Window [5/5], A Brighter Summer Day [5/5], Rosemary's Baby [5/5], Close Encounters of the Third Kind [4/5], The Godfather Part 2 [5/5], Citizen Kane [5/5], Godzilla [5/5], Psycho [5/5], The Exorcist [4/5], The Blair Witch Project [4/5], Cl�o from 5 to 7 [5/5], Faces [4/5], North by Northwest [4/5], Moonlight [5/5], The Act of Killing [5/5], Adaptation [5/5], Ran [5/5], Yi Yi [5/5], Funny Games [2/5], Fitzcarraldo [4/5], Tremors [4/5]

letterboxd}

# ? Aug 20, 2018 21:23

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

All right. Since there's no time limit or pressure with this, I'll dive in. Ten, right :

My Shameful List�. Most of these are old since i've been a movie junkie all my life and am 50 years old but will try to put some more modern ones on here. I've started hitting my local library up lately for DVD's to save money and notice a LOT of really good films there. Recently found the "classic" section on Netflix too so probably easy to find the older stuff.

I don't have a ton of free time and have a 7 year old so, when I do, we're always watching Ultra Man and poo poo.

Anyway

Casablanca - I've seen "The Maltese Falcon" and "The African Queen" but can take or leave Bogart. Plus I know the gist of the story and the ending, so just never felt the urgency.

On the Waterfront - I usually like Brando so not sure how I never got to his one

High Noon - Not a huge fans of westerns in general so never piqued my interest but I like GOOD westerns.

The Producers - I usually like Mel Brooks and somehow never got around to this one

Pan's Labyrinth - Sounds dumb but I need to be in the mood to deal with subtitles

The Bridge on the River Kwai - Need to be in the mood for a war movie too. Apparently I'm moody.

The Thin Red Line - Speaking of war movies, this one has been recommended to me and has drawn favorable comparisons to "Apocalypse Now", "Full Metal Jacket" and "Platoon" so I am very interested. Might watch it soon anyway if no one suggests it.

Patton - Another war movie. Was always worried this would be hokey and too "USA! USA!". The people I know who love it tend to be authoritarian types.

Nashville - I like Altman a lot but musicals are a hard sell for me if ti's the main thrust like "Chicago", Showgirls" or "Moulin Rouge"

Double Indemnity - I like caper films and double crosses and poo poo. The description sounds like the Coen' s "The Man Who Wasn't There" which I liked a lot.

So I guess, if I'm reading it right, someone gives me one, I watch it then give them one from their list? Cool thread, btw. Caught a few good recommendations here.

I'm in.

# ? Aug 21, 2018 00:13

Magic Hate Ball: May 6, 2007; ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

Almost - pick a movie for FancyMike, and the person who posts a review next will pick a movie from your list.

# ? Aug 21, 2018 00:28

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

Almost - pick a movie for FancyMike, and the person who posts a review next will pick a movie from your list.

Well poo poo.

FancyMike posted:

9 to 5 - Dolly

This then. Since it's the only one on your list I've seen.

# ? Aug 21, 2018 00:44

Magic Hate Ball: May 6, 2007; ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

hell yeah

# ? Aug 21, 2018 01:12

BeefSupreme: Sep 14, 2007; to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

BiggerBoat posted:

Casablanca - I've seen "The Maltese Falcon" and "The African Queen" but can take or leave Bogart. Plus I know the gist of the story and the ending, so just never felt the urgency.

Boy, there sure are a lot of great choices on your list... But I can't allow you to continue not having seen Casablanca, whether you ultimately like it or not.

Ikiru

Samuel Clemens posted:

There's no film for which "life" is a better excuse to postpone it than Ikiru.

Unfortunately, like several other films I've watched recently from this thread, my viewing of Ikiru was broken up into parts due to a variety of life circumstances. And Samuel Clemens is correct--Kurosawa might smile fondly if someone put living life ahead of watching Ikiru. It is, of course, the central theme of the film: life must be lived. As fitting as it may be, though, I will without a doubt be returning to this film to give it my full, undivided attention. This movie is phenomenal.

The story of Mr. Watanabe, a man dying of stomach cancer, told in two parts (part one, his discovery of said fact and response to it; part two, a series of flashbacks of his final days as recounted by mourners at his wake), the film wrestles with nothing less than life itself: what it means to live, the reasons we have for living and doing what we do, the legacy we leave behind. What happens when all that you have done over the past 30 years suddenly feels meaningless? When the reasons that drove you turn to dust and bitterness?

I cannot adequately describe how moving this film was, particularly in the latter half. The film is long and slow, particularly in the first half, but I cannot think of a single moment you could cut without losing a crucial piece of the portrait of this man and his life. I felt, during the wake as the men are piecing together the events of the last five months of Watanabe's life, as Ebert described in his 1996 review of the film: "Mentally, we urge the survivors to think differently, to arrive at our conclusions. And that is how Kurosawa achieves his final effect: He makes us not witnesses to Watanabe's decision, but evangelists for it." I kept hoping that those men would lose their cynicism, as Watanabe did, and rediscover their vitality. I felt for Kimura, who seemed to be the only one who got it, who saw what Watanabe saw, who was moved by it--who saw how a man could find seemingly impossible resolve to live in the face of his own impending death. I felt his despair, a few scenes later, as he is confronted with the insincerity of Ono's initial fervor to live as Watanabe lived in his final days, and then slowly sinks in the frame and his buried under the mountain of bureaucratic paperwork on his desk. There is so much in that second half of the film. So many sad truths, so much emotional complexity, so much hopefulness, so much despair. I was also deeply moved by both moments in which Watanabe sings: first on his night of debauchery after first discovering his illness, and later, at his death.

The artistry of this film is, of course, exceptional. Kurosawa is considered a master for a reason. I noticed, in particular, exceptionally interesting work in pairing foreground and background action. During one scene, the foreground is a conversation between Watanabe and Odagiri in which the former rediscovers purpose, and the background is what appears to be a birthday party--and moments later, will appear to sing a birthday song to Watanabe, celebrating his rebirth (though we will discover the birthday girl was just out of frame, and enters shortly afterward). In the wake scene, toward the end, as the drunken coworkers of Watanabe have come to realize Watanabe's greatness and fall all over each other, crying out in their drunkenness that they must remember Watanabe forever, Kimura in the background pays his reverent respect to the deceased.

I feel now both as if I could write pages and pages about this film, it's quality, it's complexity, it's deeply emotional core... and as if I need to watch the film 10 more times. There are a great number of powerful moments, ideas, and stories present here that I haven't even touched. This film is great. I don't know how else to say it.

THE WATCH LIST

Days of Heaven (1978): Seeing as Tree of Life is one of my favorite films, and I've seen none of his other movies, I should probably get started. This seems a good a place as any.

Tokyo Story (1953): I keep seeing this all over "Best Films Ever"-type lists, and I hadn't even heard of it until a few years ago. Seems like a good candidate.

Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964): I like musicals, but have seen tragically few of them--and mostly Hollywood musicals, at that. This comes highly recommended.

Le Samoura� (1967): The origin of cool. Or so I hear. The Red Circle and Army of Shadows are also on my list, so I guess I need to move on some Melville.

Zodiac (2007): One of my buddies swears by this as one of the best movies of the last 20 years.

Do The Right Thing (1989): I guess it's time for me to... Do the right thing? And watch this movie?

A Serious Man (2009): I'm a Coen brothers fan, and Chili tells me I need to watch it so we can discuss it. So here it is.

Perfect Blue (1997): Loved, loved, loved Paprika, and I need to expand my animation repertoire, especially outside of the realm of Ghibli.

Boogie Nights (1997): I've seen 3 of PTA's films, and with Phantom Thread coming out, seems like the right time to include this here.

The 400 Blows (1959): I've never seen any Truffaut. I hear this brought up a lot, and it's another one that doesn't excite me on its face, so it lies with one of you to push me forward.

_{The Watched List: Paths of Glory; The Apartment; Solaris; A Touch of Zen; Apocalypse Now; The Iron Giant; Psycho; Cape Fear; Kill Bill: Vol. 1; My Neighbor Totoro; The Outlaw Josey Wales; Before Sunset; The Graduate; A Few Good Men; Out of Sight; The Birds; Ikiru (17 total)}

# ? Aug 21, 2018 08:44

TrixRabbi: Aug 20, 2010; Time for a little robot chauvinism!

BiggerBoat posted:

Nashville - I like Altman a lot but musicals are a hard sell for me if ti's the main thrust like "Chicago", Showgirls" or "Moulin Rouge"

It's not even close. Also, Showgirls isn't a musical.

# ? Aug 21, 2018 15:06

Basebf555: Feb 29, 2008; The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!; Fun Shoe

BeefSupreme posted:

The artistry of this film is, of course, exceptional. Kurosawa is considered a master for a reason. I noticed, in particular, exceptionally interesting work in pairing foreground and background action. During one scene, the foreground is a conversation between Watanabe and Odagiri in which the former rediscovers purpose, and the background is what appears to be a birthday party--and moments later, will appear to sing a birthday song to Watanabe, celebrating his rebirth (though we will discover the birthday girl was just out of frame, and enters shortly afterward). In the wake scene, toward the end, as the drunken coworkers of Watanabe have come to realize Watanabe's greatness and fall all over each other, crying out in their drunkenness that they must remember Watanabe forever, Kimura in the background pays his reverent respect to the deceased.

I really enjoyed your whole review, thank you for writing it.

I quoted that particular portion though because it's always fun to notice instances of John Ford's influence showing through in Kurosawa's work. The through-line there from Ford to Kurosawa and then back to American film with Magnificent Seven and Fistful of Dollars is one of my favorite things in the entire history of movies.

# ? Aug 21, 2018 15:19

Spatulater bro!: Aug 19, 2003; Punch! Punch! Punch!

I anxiously await the review of Nashville from someone who expected it to be similar to Showgirls.

# ? Aug 22, 2018 03:21

Samuel Clemens: Oct 4, 2013; I think we should call the Avengers.

Honestly, Showgirls is probably a better comparison to Nashville than Moulin Rouge.

# ? Aug 22, 2018 03:47

Magic Hate Ball: May 6, 2007; ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

Three hugely disparate and equally incredible movies.

# ? Aug 22, 2018 05:57

bitterandtwisted: Sep 4, 2006

Picked at random:

trixxirabbit posted:

Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

This is Spinal Tap

Mockumentary of a washed up band on tour in America

The film has in incredibly dry sense of humour, which I loved. Christopher Guest in particular as Nigel Tufnel has this deadpan delivery that made me laugh out loud multiple times.

The film shows more of the band's music than I expected, with "archive footage" of them from the 60s to present and this was done really well. We see them change their styles repeatedly over the years. They have a beatles era, a stones era, a flower people era and so on and each time the music is pretty on point. It subtly parodies each genre, but still sounds like something that might have been released back then and shows without telling us this is a band who have spent a long career chasing trends, not setting them.

There's a bunch of things I thought were references to real bands, for example Nigel wearing tartan as a nod to the Bay City Rollers, but when I tried to look it up the results were all "23 times spinal tap happened in real life" so who knows :iiam:

It's short at just 82 minutes, but this is a good length for it. It's enough to get to know the characters and there's not much of a plot so I'm glad they didn't pad it out.

It was nice that they got a happy ending, making it Big in Japan.

My List:

1) (highest ranked imdb) Avengers: Infinity War Major superhero fatigue.

2) (classic comedy) The Producers (1967) I've loved 50% of Mel Brooks' films that I've seen

3) (animation) The Lord of the Rings (1978) The books and Jackson's films were favourites of my childhood/teenage years and I'd like to see this oddball one.

4) (Academy Award winner) Slumdog Millionaire I've enjoyed Danny Boyle's other films

5) (foreign language) Cinema Paradiso This forum's namesake

6) (Monster) Dracula (1958) I've never seen a Hammer Horror

7) (Horror) Martin Romero didn't just do zombies

8) (sci fi/fantasy) Ghost in the Shell (1995) I don't know much anime

9) (epic) Ben Hur (1959) Probably the first thing that comes into my head when I think of the term 'epic film'

10) (wildcard) Death Race 2000 My mum didn't let me watch this as a kid

_{Watched (38): Taxi Driver; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; The Iron Giant; Platoon; American History X; City Lights; My Neighbour Totoro; Rashomon; Duck Soup; Friday 13th (1980); Birdman; Frankenstein (1931); Time Bandits; Carrie (1976); King Kong (1933); Das Boot; The Blair Witch Project (1999); The Sting; Annie Hall; The Bridge on the River Kwai; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari; Godzilla (1954); Bicycle Thieves; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974); The English Patient; Scanners; Forbidden Planet; Deliverance; The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Life is Beautiful; Minority Report; Rosemary's Baby; On the Waterfront; Solaris (1972); Driving Miss Daisy; Eraserhead; M (1931); This is Spinal Tap}

# ? Aug 22, 2018 11:22

BiggerBoat: Sep 26, 2007; Don't you tell me my business again.

Spatulater bro! posted:

I anxiously await the review of Nashville from someone who expected it to be similar to Showgirls.

I wrote "Showgirls" but I was thinking of Dreamgirls.

# ? Aug 22, 2018 12:00

Magic Hate Ball: May 6, 2007; ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

Yi Yi

Filmstruck helpfully reminded me that I'd actually watched about two hours of this last year. I remembered having seen part of it, but not a whole two thirds. As I watched it, pieces of it came back to me, but I had the interesting experience of re-engaging from a slightly different perspective - last year I remember sort of enjoying it, but watching it this time I experienced a wash of emotion I don't think I felt the first time around. Maybe it was because I watched it right after seeing A Brighter Summer Day, which is a much bigger film with an intensely evocative period atmosphere, so coming "down" to the more mundane daily realities of Yi Yi made it seem smaller and less immediately grabby. But Yi Yi is evocative in its own way, and I'm glad I'm present for it.

One of the main concerns in the film is the most basic question of how to live. Characters are constantly fronting with their personalities and dealing in both the construction of diverting trivialities and the more serious walls that encircle their lives. Yang's writing allows us to see both the facade and the inner workings behind it, and, by running so many characters through the film at he same time, lets us compare them with others. We get to make judgements, and sometimes have those judgements challenged by the awareness of how a person can be conflicting and conflicted, can be sometimes aloof and sometimes tender. He provokes us into empathy, into wanting the best for the characters and urging them towards the kindest actions.

The tides of personality, observing their shifts and choices, are the action of the film, supported by sturdy, multifaceted visual metaphors and an undercurrent of probing philosophy that asks: what is the true center of life? Characters are often shown in windows, only in silhouette, or with the lights of the city laid over them - everything happens at the same time, everywhere. There's a sense that the characters are straying from what really matters by becoming embroiled in their own fraudulent rituals, but Yang doesn't give us a clear answer, though I'm not sure who could. There are moments of suggestion throughout that create a textured outlook - one character says, "It's really not as complicated as I thought", and another says (something like) "mountains are beautiful, and trees are beautiful, so we must be beautiful too". The challenge is knowing yourself, and cultivating something good within yourself, and bringing that good to other people.

NJ, the film's (most prominent) main character, confesses to another character that his first love brought an understanding of music into his life. When she left his life, the understanding of music stayed. This connection, broken and reformed, is central to the film, and we feel we can see what he means on his face and in his interactions with others. Bernstein, in a television program, discussed the experience of listening to music as being trapped, with the music, in time. A piece of music is a sculpture, but we can't look at it all at once. As soon as a note happens, it's gone, and the chance to hear it again, in that particular moment, goes with it. The film's title is a visual pun - one horizontal stroke means "one", one horizontal stroke over the other means "two", so the film's title comes out as "one after the other". One second passes after the other, one life passes after the other. Two lives together make a singular form - two ones, and one two.

"Every day is a new day", a character says, and it would feel cheesy in another movie, but Yang strikes such a consistent tone here that it instead feels profound. Another character suggests that, since the movies were invented, we live three times as long, as movies show us twice what life does. Like in many of the great films, Yang has cultivated something good, and has found a way to transmit it to the rest of us.

10/10

shamezone

1) A Poem Is A Naked Person - more blank
2) Shoah - i will try
3) Rififi - "ice" movie
4) Children of Paradise - vichy movie
5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite
6) Ugetsu - tspdt 1000!!
7) Colossal - recent rave
8) Veronika Voss - fassbinder continued
9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie
10) Late Autumn - spare movie

_{[full list] Floating Weeds 9/10, Daisies 8/10, Stray Dog 8/10, Victim 6/10, Man Bites Dog 9/10, Night and Fog 10/10, Weekend 8/10, Jubilee 10/10, Sans Soleil 10/10, Candidate 8/10, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders 10/10, The Freshman 5/10, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers 10/10, Branded to Kill 8/10, In Heaven There Is No Beer? 10/10, Blood Simple 10/10, The Marriage of Maria Braun 7/10, A Day In The Country 7/10, A Brief History of Time 10/10, Gates of Heaven 10/10, The Thin Blue Line 10/10, The Fog of War 10/10, My Beautiful Laundrette 10/10, Blind Chance 8/10, My Winnipeg 10/10, The River 7/10, Odd Man Out 8/10, The Passion of Anna 9/10, Brute Force 10/10, The Rite 5/10, The Piano Teacher 10/10, Ashes and Diamonds 7/10, Meantime 9/10, Carnival of Souls 8/10, La Notte 10/10, Frances Ha 10/10, L'avventura, Again 10/10, A Room With a View 9/10, Laura 8/10, Marjorie Prime 10/10, Ex Machina 8/10, Tampopo 10/10, Pickpocket 4/10, Harlan County USA 10/10, The Spirit of the Beehive 10/10, Heaven's Gate 4/10, A Short Film About Killing 9/10, The Pillow Book 6/10, Desert Hearts 9/10, Alice in the Cities 10/10, Yi Yi 10/10 (total: 152)}

bitterandtwisted gets death race 2000

Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Aug 22, 2018

# ? Aug 22, 2018 18:54

BeefSupreme: Sep 14, 2007; to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

Basebf555 posted:

I really enjoyed your whole review, thank you for writing it.

I quoted that particular portion though because it's always fun to notice instances of John Ford's influence showing through in Kurosawa's work. The through-line there from Ford to Kurosawa and then back to American film with Magnificent Seven and Fistful of Dollars is one of my favorite things in the entire history of movies.

Thanks for the kind words. I was just thinking about that after I wrote it and remembered your discussion of Ford's work in The Searchers (a film I love) from a page ago. Good stuff. It was also interesting watching this after watching the Every Frame A Painting segment on Kurosawa--I noticed myself consciously looking for movement in different parts of the frame, watching for the beginning/middle/end sequencing of individual shots (like the one he uses as an example in that clip, and that I mentioned in my review: Kimura standing up, then sinking incrementally behind a tower of papers), trying to notice the staging of groups for effect, etc. It was definitely interesting to have some sense of a director's calling cards and be able to track and note their effectiveness during the course of a film.

# ? Aug 22, 2018 20:47

BeefSupreme: Sep 14, 2007; to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

Magic Hate Ball posted:

3) Rififi - "ice" movie

Just rewatched Mission: Impossible recently, so, because of the tangential connection you get this one.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

I knew very little about The Umbrellas of Cherbourg going into it--it's French, it's a musical (though a strange one), and... Well, that's about it, really. In reality, though I have obviously heard of and about French New Wave cinema, I have seen none of it. This was a weird, moving, and exceptional introduction to the movement.

When I heard the word musical, I immediately constructed in my head a composite of a wide range of American musicals: animated, classic Hollywood, stage, operatic, etc. I knew vaguely that this was an atypical musical, but that did nothing to dispel my notions of what a musical was. This film is undoubtedly a musical, but the complete lack of discrete songs or dance numbers or any of the other markers of musicals was initially unsettling. It is honestly easier to describe as a non-musical: it's a movie, but the people sing their lines instead of saying them. It took some getting used to, and I am still not sure how I feel about it beyond the context of this film.

Within that context, though, I found this movie to be powerfully emotive. The story here is simple: young lovers Genevieve and Guy are separated by circumstance, and must deal with life's realities quickly (war, pregnancy, marriage, sadness, and more). This film is overwhelmingly melancholic--or, at least, was for me--even in it's joyfulness. As we meet these characters in the film's opening, despite the bubbly romance between the two, their interactions are tinged a subtle shade of sadness. Genevieve has yet to tell her mother about Guy; conversations reveal quickly some mismatched dreams of the future, and it becomes readily apparent that the two of them are quite young, both literally and figuratively. (As I'm writing this, I'm thinking more about the relationship between Genevieve and her mother, and how each is in some sense the inverse of the other. Genevieve is young and immature, and doesn't understand a great deal [as her mother points out], but wants desperately to be in the world of maturity--to marry, to start a family--and sadly, she will prove her immaturity by action. Her mother, on the other hand, wants to return to immaturity, scarred by the death of her husband, perhaps, or her life. She wants to be young, to be concerned with fashion, to find love... And yet, will have to reveal her own true maturity as her daughter's life requires her to. The scene where Roland reveals his true intentions, and Madame Emery suppresses her own desires in deference to her daughter's needs... drat. I think there is more going on in this film than I thought, at first.)

That this film refrains from chastising its characters is remarkable. I can imagine a Hollywood tale needing to moralize every moment of this film, villainizing Genevieve for marrying another man, or Guy for starting a relationship out of desperation, or both of them for the teenage pregnancy... And yet, the movie does none of that. These are the facts of life, it says, the decisions that these people make. And here is how it turns out. It allows for the powerful final scene, as Guy and Genevieve reunite--or, perhaps more accurately, recross paths--and uncover a complex emotional soup. It is a moment that we, the viewer, have been waiting for, and that our characters probably have, too, even if only subconsciously. And for a moment, there is uncertainty--could something happen? But just for a moment. Their lives have diverged. And so, their story, and the movie, ends.

The form of this film is as instrumental in advancing its themes as the story itself. It is undeniably beautiful, painted in a panoply of vibrant color, perhaps in the way that young love makes the world seem brighter--and, similarly, every word is sung, tinged with powerful emotions both happy and sad, as life is when love is involved. I found the cinematography to be excellent and the editing to be interesting, as well. One sequence, in particular, is likely to stick in my head for a while: Guy's departure on the train. Guy leaving the station on the train, Genevieve following, repeating "je t'aime" as if it will cease to be true if she stops singing it, Guy (and the camera) sliding away from Genevieve, now stationary on the platform, still in Cherbourg. I'm tearing up right now as I rewatch that scene. drat.

This is a very good movie. It is certainly unusual, if you come at it (as I did) as if it is going to be something like a Hollywood movie musical (which it is not). It is hauntingly beautiful, hopeful, tragic, melancholic, joyous, and timeless. Also: French really is a beautiful language.

(Also, man, love doomed love is a powerful story--In the Mood for Love, The Cranes Are Flying, The Notebook (even though I strongly dislike that movie), Casablanca... Lotta material on that subject.)

THE WATCH LIST

Days of Heaven (1978): Seeing as Tree of Life is one of my favorite films, and I've seen none of his other movies, I should probably get started. This seems a good a place as any.

Tokyo Story (1953): I keep seeing this all over "Best Films Ever"-type lists, and I hadn't even heard of it until a few years ago. Seems like a good candidate.

Schindler's List (1993): If you want to make me sad for at least 3 hours or so

Le Samoura� (1967): The origin of cool. Or so I hear. The Red Circle and Army of Shadows are also on my list, so I guess I need to move on some Melville.

Zodiac (2007): One of my buddies swears by this as one of the best movies of the last 20 years.

Do The Right Thing (1989): I guess it's time for me to... Do the right thing? And watch this movie?

A Serious Man (2009): I'm a Coen brothers fan, and Chili tells me I need to watch it so we can discuss it. So here it is.

Perfect Blue (1997): Loved, loved, loved Paprika, and I need to expand my animation repertoire, especially outside of the realm of Ghibli.

Boogie Nights (1997): I've seen 3 of PTA's films, and with Phantom Thread coming out, seems like the right time to include this here.

The 400 Blows (1959): I've never seen any Truffaut. I hear this brought up a lot, and it's another one that doesn't excite me on its face, so it lies with one of you to push me forward.

_{The Watched List: Paths of Glory; The Apartment; Solaris; A Touch of Zen; Apocalypse Now; The Iron Giant; Psycho; Cape Fear; Kill Bill: Vol. 1; My Neighbor Totoro; The Outlaw Josey Wales; Before Sunset; The Graduate; A Few Good Men; Out of Sight; The Birds; Ikiru; Umbrellas of Cherbourg (18 total)}

BeefSupreme fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Aug 24, 2018

# ? Aug 24, 2018 09:24

Magic Hate Ball: May 6, 2007; ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

Rififi

Sometimes a movie writes another movie, and in the pantheon of author-films, Rififi is notably prolific - is there a heist movie that doesn't have a piece of this in it? But it doesn't lose any of its power for how often it's been copied. It's like finding the master tape after listening to bootlegs for your whole life and suddenly hearing all the intricacies and subtleties that were buried under six layers of generation loss. But enough about other movies! Rififi is good enough to exist on its own.

Mostly I love how much detail is here. Every character has all their little bits and pieces to them that we get to see, which is fun, every scene has all of its information and diversions - the way we're introduced to one of the key players, a younger man who has a boy and a wife, is particularly impressive. We get the absolute sense of who he is, who his wife is, how they relate to each other and to their kid and to the circle of criminals in just a minute or two, and all of this information is carried forward and informs every scene they're in. It's extremely good.

Obviously the crime itself is noteworthy. It gets a whole thirty minutes right in the middle of the movie, thirty wordless and entirely gripping minutes. It's also not the climax, but the axis of the film, and it does a good job of filling out the fall after the rise. Some films make the inevitable descending of fate feel cheap, but in Rififi it feels like a completed theme. Crime takes these people out of their lives, making them more than other people, but when it collapses, the contrast is harsh - they couldn't merely live, and maybe, when they're dying, they wish they could.

Crime movies aren't my favorite genre but Rififi is a pretty sterling example of how it can go right.

9/10

shamezone

1) A Poem Is A Naked Person - more blank
2) Shoah - i will try
3) Bob le flambeur - flaming bob
4) Children of Paradise - vichy movie
5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite
6) Ugetsu - tspdt 1000!!
7) Colossal - recent rave
8) Veronika Voss - fassbinder continued
9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie
10) Late Autumn - spare movie

_{[full list] Floating Weeds 9/10, Daisies 8/10, Stray Dog 8/10, Victim 6/10, Man Bites Dog 9/10, Night and Fog 10/10, Weekend 8/10, Jubilee 10/10, Sans Soleil 10/10, Candidate 8/10, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders 10/10, The Freshman 5/10, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers 10/10, Branded to Kill 8/10, In Heaven There Is No Beer? 10/10, Blood Simple 10/10, The Marriage of Maria Braun 7/10, A Day In The Country 7/10, A Brief History of Time 10/10, Gates of Heaven 10/10, The Thin Blue Line 10/10, The Fog of War 10/10, My Beautiful Laundrette 10/10, Blind Chance 8/10, My Winnipeg 10/10, The River 7/10, Odd Man Out 8/10, The Passion of Anna 9/10, Brute Force 10/10, The Rite 5/10, The Piano Teacher 10/10, Ashes and Diamonds 7/10, Meantime 9/10, Carnival of Souls 8/10, La Notte 10/10, Frances Ha 10/10, L'avventura, Again 10/10, A Room With a View 9/10, Laura 8/10, Marjorie Prime 10/10, Ex Machina 8/10, Tampopo 10/10, Pickpocket 4/10, Harlan County USA 10/10, The Spirit of the Beehive 10/10, Heaven's Gate 4/10, A Short Film About Killing 9/10, The Pillow Book 6/10, Desert Hearts 9/10, Alice in the Cities 10/10, Yi Yi 10/10, Rififi 9/10 (total: 153)}

BeefSupreme gets Schindler's List, not because I'm a sadist but because it's just a good movie.

# ? Aug 24, 2018 20:01

Zogo: Jul 29, 2003

Magic Hate Ball posted:

4) Children of Paradise - vichy movie

Next one for you.

Sense - It's constructed well and shows some futilities of war. It's set in and around the Third Italian War of Independence. A European war going on just a little after the conclusion of the American Civil War.

The battle segments are sparse but the sprawlingly large cast (at times) and the opening opera setting were memorable. Tons of soldiers dressed to the nines in Austrian military uniforms. However, a love affair between an Italian Countess and Austrian Lieutenant is the focal point that steals the show. It runs throughout the film as dysfunctional love is shown in its many forms as it runs the gamut: forbidden love, obsessive love, mad love, stone cold crazy love.

I suspected that the LT was a womanizer and that things would end in tragedy. He eventually demands �� from the Countess to pay off a doctor who will lie and get him out of the service. In doing so, she betrays her country and her husband. So when she realizes that the LT is hiring prostitutes with some of her money (that was supposed to go to the war effort) she doesn't take it well to say the least.

Finally, the LT also reveals that he's an informer and all these revelations culminate in a memorable scream: https://youtu.be/62cpbv11pHo?t=1h44m44s

So she's enraged and decides to report him to the authorities as a deserter...deserters get execution. All's fair in love and war, you know...

As Pat Benatar once said,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGVZOLV9SPo

Also watched another similar film:

Hiroshima, My Love - The film opens with some argumentative narration between a Frenchwoman and Japanese man going through a short-lived affair. She's in town working on an anti-nuclear film. They share some philosophical musings on love, memory, war etc. I was reminded a little of Sunless AKA Sans Soleil in that nobody can remember everything or really much at all (in the noospheric sense).

I've often thought more films should use this setting. Imagine living in an area nearby where an atomic bomb detonated. It'd be amazing. A total change of perspective.

Despite both of them being married he stalks and chases her through the night and implores her to stay in Hiroshima. She eventually opens up and recounts her earlier affair with a German soldier during WWII and her eventual mental breakdown in Nevers, France. She thinks it was true love but perhaps it was just pining for temporary magic that would eventually be realized as fraudulent love.

It's kind of an atypical film in that it focuses on some aspects of war that just aren't touched on for too long. How so very many people who live through wars are permanently scarred rather than going along with the more popular narrative of sexing up the end of the wars or characters partying if they survive. No, it's fifteen years later and these characters are still heavily damaged. Ultimately, another WWII film with new perspectives to ponder.

Like in Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais once again demonstrates impeccable and flawless camerawork.

James Bond versus Godzilla (32/64 completed):

Academy Award for Best Directing (89/91 completed):

1929 The Divine Lady - A love story of some sort. 2/27/18

1928 7th Heaven - Not to be confused with the TV show featuring the pedophile dad. 8/10/18

Notebooks on Cinema's 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World (82/100 completed):

#62 Trouble in Paradise - Something about thieves. 7/27/18

#76 Van Gogh - A film about the last days of the eventually famous painter. 7/13/18

#77 An Affair to Remember - Still have some Leo McCarey films to see. 8/15/18

#82 The Party - I haven't seen too many Blake Edwards films. 7/13/18

#85 A Star Is Born (1954) - There's a 1937 version and a 1954 version and a 1976 version and a 2018 version. And I haven't seen any of them. 6/14/18

#93 Lola - I have seen Run Lola Run but not Lola Mont�s or this one. 8/15/18

Netflix's 20 Years. 20 Movies. (16/20 completed):

new 2011 The Lincoln Lawyer - The most popular rental of 2011 and I haven't even heard of it. That's funny. 8/27/18

new 2007 The Bucket List - I remember Roger Ebert raging about this one but that evidently didn't stop it from being the most popular rental of 2007. 8/27/18

Zogo fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Aug 28, 2018

# ? Aug 28, 2018 05:46

Ratedargh: Feb 20, 2011; Wow, Bob, wow. Fire walk with me.

Zogo posted:

#85 A Star Is Born (1954) - There's a 1937 version and a 1954 version and a 1976 version and a 2018 version. And I haven't seen any of them. 6/14/18

Sure, why not.

Call me a killjoy or say I have a shriveled heart. But I kind of hated every second of Harvey. I didn't find Elwood charming and I didn't find the screwball elements of trying to commit him to an asylum amusing. I found it shrill, annoying, and endlessly repetitive. I try to keep an open mind, and it's considered a classic, but I was irritated and disinterested in all of it.

Elwood's philosophy of being endlessly pleasant is admirable, and takes a path perhaps we can all aspire to, but (and this is possibly on me) I found myself immune to its charms, such as they are. I'm kind of at a loss about what to say other than I didn't enjoy any of this. Perhaps that's unsatisfying as a criticism...but I've often struggled with older comedies or older films with a certain comedic bent (Bringing Up Baby and Duck Soup, for instance...though an earlier era) and this had a similar effect where I just wanted it over. If you love this movie, I am jealous because I bet it brings great joy to its fans, but I'm not one of them.

LIST O SHAME

1) 35 Shots of Rhum - Man, Claire Denis' movies are relatively tricky to find. This one is easier than others...so I'll start here.

2) The White Ribbon - It's taken me a long time to get into Haneke, but I want to keep going.

3) Paprika - Anime from the creator of Perfect Blue, which I was a fan of. Figured I should see another.

4) The Exterminating Angel - I've barely dipped my toe into Bunuel's filmography.

5) Starlet - Sean Baker before Tangerine and The Florida Project.

6) A Bright Summer's Day - This is 4 hours long. Regardless of how acclaimed it is, that's a mighty commitment.

7) Topsy Turvy - Ahhh Mike Leigh, looks less downtrodden than some of his work, but I'm still generally a novice with him.

8) Joint Security Area - I've seen, and loved, most of Park Chan-wook's movies, but haven't seen this one.

9) All That Jazz - Bob Fosse is a blind spot.

10) La Silence de La Mer - Jean Pierre Melville is excellent. I've liked everything I've seen.

_{SHAME BE GONE (PART DEUX): Top Secret!, Yi Yi, New York New York, Rio Bravo, Dogtooth, Song of the Sea, The Fog, A Touch of Zen, Walkabout, Starman, Young Girls of Rochefort, Cl�o From 5 to 7, Sansho the Bailiff, Harvey (Total: 14)}

# ? Aug 31, 2018 19:00

bitterandtwisted: Sep 4, 2006

Try this

Ratedargh posted:

10) La Silence de La Me

Death Race 2000

In the distant future of the year 2000, America's favourite sport is running people over in cars.

It's camp, it's colourful, it's full of humorous scenes like Calamity Jane facing a matador. The five race teams are visually distinctive with their own car gimmicks. It's a bit like the Road Warrior in style, but more cartoony.
It's fairly low budget but the budget is used where it's needed. I think there's just one matt painting in the whole film, but it does the job of setting up that this is a future city and that's fine, you can spend the rest of the cash gluing fangs to the cars. Or Frankenstein, who we're told has had almost his whole body replaced piece by piece after the many crashes he's been in is revealed to look... perfectly normal under his costume because it's the future and surgery is really good.

The violence is less gratuitous than I expected, the tit shots exactly as gratuitous.
David Carradine's Frankenstein is a lot more nuanced than I expected and I really liked his performance. The resistance lady is so bad, like comedically so, and I was sure they would have her gently caress up everything, die graphically and doom the resistance, but while the plan fails at every point and she accidentally wounds her granddaughter, it all works out

I'm not sure about ending it with Frankenstein becoming president and instantly banning the thing that made him popular enough that that could be remotely credible. But I liked his character and I like a happy ending so I'm fine with it.

Good wholesome fun.

My List:

1) (highest ranked imdb) Avengers: Infinity War Major superhero fatigue.

2) (classic comedy) The Producers (1967) I've loved 50% of Mel Brooks' films that I've seen

3) (animation) The Lord of the Rings (1978) The books and Jackson's films were favourites of my childhood/teenage years and I'd like to see this oddball one.

4) (Academy Award winner) Slumdog Millionaire I've enjoyed Danny Boyle's other films

5) (foreign language) Cinema Paradiso This forum's namesake

6) (Monster) Dracula (1958) I've never seen a Hammer Horror

7) (Horror) Martin Romero didn't just do zombies

8) (sci fi/fantasy) Ghost in the Shell (1995) I don't know much anime

9) (epic) Ben Hur (1959) Probably the first thing that comes into my head when I think of the term 'epic film'

10) (wildcard) Easy Rider Sounds like the sort of thing I'd like

_{Watched (39): Taxi Driver; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; The Iron Giant; Platoon; American History X; City Lights; My Neighbour Totoro; Rashomon; Duck Soup; Friday 13th (1980); Birdman; Frankenstein (1931); Time Bandits; Carrie (1976); King Kong (1933); Das Boot; The Blair Witch Project (1999); The Sting; Annie Hall; The Bridge on the River Kwai; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari; Godzilla (1954); Bicycle Thieves; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974); The English Patient; Scanners; Forbidden Planet; Deliverance; The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Life is Beautiful; Minority Report; Rosemary's Baby; On the Waterfront; Solaris (1972); Driving Miss Daisy; Eraserhead; M (1931); This is Spinal Tap; Death Race 2000}

# ? Sep 4, 2018 10:37

Magic Hate Ball: May 6, 2007; ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

Children of Paradise

The only thing I knew about this movie going into it - that it was shot under the Nazi occupation of France - I forgot almost entirely within thirty minutes. It's so utterly absorbing and compelling that it completely takes over your thought process and totally envelops you. I think a lot about Robert Wilson's suggestion that visible falseness onstage is more gripping than purported realness, because, by taking away the need for the audience to convince itself that the fake realness onstage is real, they can more easily engage with what's happening. Children of Paradise works like this. There's no pretense of this being a realistic film - it opens with a curtain rising on the action, and we're immediately treated to a bustling street scene with a magnificent series of tracking shots depicting the Parisian version of the Vegas strip, with strong men lifting barbells, tightrope walkers, and fraudulent sideshow attractions. We're conscious of the way the film is conscious of itself, making self-comments, and it doesn't falter because it's extremely charming. We want to be charmed by it, and it charms us. I love that. I was immediately ready to hear what it has to say.

Which is a lot! There are many interludes where we're given the privilege of enjoying the actual acting the characters do, but even those scenes are significant to the plot. When Baptiste first displays his talents for mime, not only are we wowed by his actual abilities, but it develops his character and his feeling towards Garance, an actress (who we first meet naked in a bathtub, which is not insignificant - this is a movie about costumes, after all). This double function is constant. The script glitters with poetry and humor, and the characters are consistent, showy, and engaging. They're fun to watch, they make sense, and what they say has dramatic weight. I'm not sure if there's a single line in the film that should be removed, and they talk almost constantly. It's three hours of people who won't shut up, and I wish it was five or ten.

Something that took me by surprise was the nearly absolute moral ambiguity of the characters. There are five or six main characters, and they're all difficult people with shadowy interiors, which prevents the film from being merely tragedy or farce or romance. Baptiste, the mime, is more than just a lovably innocent and underestimated comic genius - he has a frightening capability for obsession (and, as we see in more than one scene, violence), and struggles to truly empathize with others. Garance, the actress he falls for, is witty, worldly, and flighty, which is highly charming, but as the film progresses, the source of her charm curdles and we discover that she's a broken person. Even the villain of the film presents a challenge to the audience: he's so wonderfully and uniquely villainous that his cruel mechanisms become narratively satisfying. One character dreams of playing Othello, which is extremely fitting, as it contains one of Shakespeare's most entertaining villains. What do we, the audience - who is referred to so many times in the film - get from watching something terrible happen in an entertaining way? Why do we enjoy grappling with these conflicting people?

The answer seems to be that the enjoyment is the point itself. Children of Paradise is scented with irony - these characters find it difficult to distinguish reality from fiction, sometimes literally - but is also earnest in its depiction their struggles. It wouldn't work if it didn't believe in its own poetry, which is the balance to its own bite - instead of being merely bitter or caustic, it's deeply felt as much as it is funny and sharp. It believes itself, so we believe in it. In the second half of the film, Garance, suffering from lovesickness, sits in a shaded box at the theater and listens to the people in the cheap seats ("paradise", in French theatrical terminology) roar with laughter at the onstage exploits of Baptiste, who has crafted a play that is clearly about his unhealthy love for her. She tells the person in the box with her that she wishes she could still laugh like that, all at once, not thinking about it - it's hard to laugh at your own life when it means so much to you. The children of paradise, the people who exist on account of our desire to see them. Garance and Baptiste and the rest wouldn't exist without us, and they wouldn't suffer, but here we are, watching them, delighting in the finely crafted complexities of their lives.

I give tens out a lot in this thread, which is kind of the point, but I wish I could give this one, like, a special ten.

✨10/10 ✨

shamezone

1) A Poem Is A Naked Person - more blank
2) Shoah - i will try
3) Bob le flambeur - flaming bob
4) Chimes at Midnight - shakespeare movie
5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite
6) Ugetsu - tspdt 1000!!
7) Salesman - real movie
8) Veronika Voss - fassbinder continued
9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie
10) Late Autumn - spare movie

_{[full list] Floating Weeds 9/10, Daisies 8/10, Stray Dog 8/10, Victim 6/10, Man Bites Dog 9/10, Night and Fog 10/10, Weekend 8/10, Jubilee 10/10, Sans Soleil 10/10, Candidate 8/10, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders 10/10, The Freshman 5/10, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers 10/10, Branded to Kill 8/10, In Heaven There Is No Beer? 10/10, Blood Simple 10/10, The Marriage of Maria Braun 7/10, A Day In The Country 7/10, A Brief History of Time 10/10, Gates of Heaven 10/10, The Thin Blue Line 10/10, The Fog of War 10/10, My Beautiful Laundrette 10/10, Blind Chance 8/10, My Winnipeg 10/10, The River 7/10, Odd Man Out 8/10, The Passion of Anna 9/10, Brute Force 10/10, The Rite 5/10, The Piano Teacher 10/10, Ashes and Diamonds 7/10, Meantime 9/10, Carnival of Souls 8/10, La Notte 10/10, Frances Ha 10/10, L'avventura, Again 10/10, A Room With a View 9/10, Laura 8/10, Marjorie Prime 10/10, Ex Machina 8/10, Tampopo 10/10, Pickpocket 4/10, Harlan County USA 10/10, The Spirit of the Beehive 10/10, Heaven's Gate 4/10, A Short Film About Killing 9/10, The Pillow Book 6/10, Desert Hearts 9/10, Alice in the Cities 10/10, Yi Yi 10/10, Rififi 9/10, Children of Paradise 10/10 (total: 154)}

bitterandtwisted gets The Producers

Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Sep 5, 2018

# ? Sep 5, 2018 21:04

Ratedargh: Feb 20, 2011; Wow, Bob, wow. Fire walk with me.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

Children of Paradise

I give tens out a lot in this thread, which is kind of the point, but I wish I could give this one, like, a special ten.

This movie is an absolute masterpiece. Definitely deserves a special 10/10.

# ? Sep 6, 2018 01:19

bitterandtwisted: Sep 4, 2006

MHB gets

Magic Hate Ball posted:

1) A Poem Is A Naked Person - more blank

The Producers (1967)

Hollywood Accounting the movie.

Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder make a great paring as the washed up producer and timid accountant out to create a flop and pocket the production costs.

The investors Bialystock scammed weren't some corporate suits, but innocent little old ladies whom he seduced, one at a time. Leo excuses this in a big courtroom speech as giving them a thrill and making them feel attractive, and they're all in the background seemingly agreeing so there's not much payoff for that beyond the spectacle of him doing sexy role play with old ladies.

The Producers lacks the fourth wall breaking or anachronisms I associate with Mel Brooks, but I like that the world the characters inhabit is treated realistically (of course the contemporary setting reduces the scope for those jokes).
The jokes are less wacky or rapid-fire than most Brooks films, and the humour more character based.

The film doesn't really satirise Nazi ideology, just the imagery and theatricality, but that's still a worthwhile thing. Lindsey Ellis did a video on this subject and the power of ridicule which I'd recommend

Note to self: never rent off Amazon Prime if SD is the only option. This is the second time I've done it and both times the picture quality has been distractingly bad.

My List:

1) (highest ranked imdb) Avengers: Infinity War Major superhero fatigue.

2) (comedy) Office Space gently caress Printers

3) (animation) The Lord of the Rings (1978) The books and Jackson's films were favourites of my childhood/teenage years and I'd like to see this oddball one.

4) (Academy Award winner) Slumdog Millionaire I've enjoyed Danny Boyle's other films

5) (foreign language) Cinema Paradiso This forum's namesake

6) (Monster) Dracula (1958) I've never seen a Hammer Horror

7) (Horror) Martin Romero didn't just do zombies

8) (sci fi/fantasy) Ghost in the Shell (1995) I don't know much anime

9) (epic) Ben Hur (1959) Probably the first thing that comes into my head when I think of the term 'epic film'

10) (wildcard) Easy Rider Sounds like the sort of thing I'd like

_{Watched (40): Taxi Driver; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; The Iron Giant; Platoon; American History X; City Lights; My Neighbour Totoro; Rashomon; Duck Soup; Friday 13th (1980); Birdman; Frankenstein (1931); Time Bandits; Carrie (1976); King Kong (1933); Das Boot; The Blair Witch Project (1999); The Sting; Annie Hall; The Bridge on the River Kwai; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari; Godzilla (1954); Bicycle Thieves; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974); The English Patient; Scanners; Forbidden Planet; Deliverance; The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Life is Beautiful; Minority Report; Rosemary's Baby; On the Waterfront; Solaris (1972); Driving Miss Daisy; Eraserhead; M (1931); This is Spinal Tap; Death Race 2000; The Producers (1967)}

# ? Sep 7, 2018 13:05

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

bitterandtwisted posted:

7) (Horror) Martin Romero didn't just do zombies

You're in for a treat.

Nashville, (1975) dir. Robert Altman

I should have been more prepared for how overwhelming Altman's masterpiece would be .

There's something like 24 main characters in this film? Each of them with a narrative and an arc, distinct personalities and musical personas.

There's something like an hour of musical performances, ranging from country to gospel to folk.

I'll admit, I'm not the biggest Altman fan. I love his appreciation of chaotic staging and his sense of space. His confidence in his actors and his allowance for the majority of the dialogue to be improvised gives the characters a shade of reality not seen in most films. His sound design is interesting, with over-lapping dialogue, music, background noise, but I find it kind of impenetrable. I have ADHD. I smoke pot. I'm going to miss what's going on in one of his films; it is an inevitability.

Thankfully he's never too interested in plot. It's a tapestry of character dramas. In a way, it's like a Christopher Guest filmed filtered through neorealism, with the absurdity slightly more grounded. It's easy to see where P. T. Anderson found inspiration in his early films, especially Magnolia.

Despite the density of character arcs and the all-show/no-tell of story delivery, the major themes manage to break through. There are achieved dreams that seem to be slipping away, jealousies between performers and lovers, foolish amateurs that are willing to be manipulated to have their dreams achieved, families collapsing, managers in love with the money, hippies in love with the music, politicians trying to make their name during the bicentennial, and media trying to make sense of it all. The music flows through all of them and leads them to their fates.

I was a little disappointed with how little of the humor hit me, but it landed a few times, like the reporter's junkyard monologues.

The music didn't grab me much either. I loved a few of them, "I'm Easy", of course, and "It Don't Worry Me", Lily Tomlin's gospel song at the beginning, the Billy, Mary & Tom song at the club... but, again, it's the first time I've seen it, so I'm sure more would stand-out on rewatches. I'm absolutely fascinated by the amount of music in the film, the way it's filmed, and how its integrated. It is given more attention than the dialogue. I love it. I wish a modern film could take that mentality and create a musical like this.(I guess Altman did that with Prairie Home Companion, which I haven't seen?)

And of course, editing all of this together into compelling coherency is impressive to say the least.

Overall, a great movie that I'll revisit eventually.

My List

The Last Detail (1973; Hal Ashby) - (9.10.18) Ashby's follow-up to Harold & Maude, which I love.

Come and See (1985; Elem Klimov) - (8.14.18) Highest rated movie on my Letterboxd watchlist. Great poster. I guess this will be another heavy war movie.

The 400 Blows (1959; Fran�ois Truffaut; Criterion - (2.6.18) Another "Film School movie" I have never seen; classic of French cinema

Bicycle Thieves (1948; Vittorio De Sica; Criterion) - (1.21.18) The mandatory film school movie.

Sideways (2004; A. Payne) - (11.19.17) Can it really be as good as everyone says it is? I liked Nebraska and About Schmidt

Akira (1988; Katsuhiro Ōtomo) - (8.31.17) I wanted to add some classic animated movies I haven't seen, this being the BIG one I've missed out on.

Stranger Than Paradise (1984; J. Jarmusch; Criterion) - (8.25.17) I love everything I've seen of Jim Jarmusch, which only amounts to 5 films. This is his first film. I've only seen the first 15 minutes.

Philadelphia (1993; J. Demme) - (8.21.17) Trying to fill in my Jonathan Demme gaps. A huge moment in Tom Hanks's career that seems to have been forgotten by modern audiences. (Currently on Prime)

In Cold Blood (1967; R. Brooks; Criterion) - (6.29.17) I've read the book, which I enjoyed. I know the movie looks great, I've seen the famous window rain show. I own it on blu-ray.

Fitzcarraldo (1982; W. Herzog; Criterion) - (6.23.17) The other big Werner Herzog narrative I haven't seen.

_{COMPLETED: Aguirre: The Wrath of God | Casablanca | After Hours | Schindler's List | Ikiru | F for Fake | Raging Bull | The Seventh Seal | Treasure of the Sierra Madre | Lawrence of Arabia | The French Connection | In The Mood For Love | Stalker | Tootsie | M. | The Thin Red Line | Network | The Godfather Part 2 | Monsier Hulot's Holiday | Nashville}
Letterboxd

# ? Sep 10, 2018 13:26

friendo55: Jun 28, 2008

Franchescanado posted:

Akira (1988; Katsuhiro Ōtomo) - (8.31.17) I wanted to add some classic animated movies I haven't seen, this being the BIG one I've missed out on.

I need to see this again myself, after loving it my first time through. Enjoy!

Beauty and the Beast (1946)
It's really really tough to watch this and not think of the 1991 Disney animated film I grew up with... plus that new 2017 live action remake. But when I try and put myself back in 1946, it's pretty remarkable the things they were able to pull off - the different castle tricks and the look of the Beast. Because of that Disney comparison, it's fun to note all the differences between the kid-friendly version and this one (the castle isn't quite so cheery and inviting!) But on a downside, it also has that constant sense of "I've seen this before" and didn't leave me with any lasting impression. It's a film I respect more than enjoy, and if I saw this before the Disney film, I may have different things to say.

LIST

Amy [2015 - 128mins] - (2018.05.19) - don't know much about her or her music but have heard great things about this film. (documentary)

The Best of Youth [2003 - 366mins!] - (2018.05.01) - if I'm ever going to commit to watch this one, it'll be from this list. (unwatched DVD)

Cria Cuervos [1976 - 110mins] - **NEW** (2018.09.09) - this has been ignored on my shelf for years... I need the motivation to see it. (Criterion)

An Education [2009 - 100mins] - (2018.07.16) - love Carey Mulligan & always heard great things but never make it a priority. (21st Century shame)

Irma La Douce [1963 - 135mins] - (2018.05.17) - another 2+hr Lemmon/Wilder collaboration .. & Shirley MacLaine returns! (Lemmon/Matthau)

The King of Marvin Gardens [1972 - 103mins] - (2018.05.24) - Jack Nicholson, Ellen Burstyn & Bruce Dern.. should be good! (blind-bought boxsets)

The Little Foxes [1941 - 115mins] - **OLDEST** (2018.04.21) - from one of Bette's later roles in 'Sweet Charlotte to one of her earlier ones. (Bette Davis)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller [1971 - 120mins] - (2018.08.01) - another western I've heard tons about but won't make a priority otherwise (western)

Ordinary People [1980 - 124mins] - (2018.08.12) - I never hear anyone talk about this one.. or I'm really good at ignoring it because I've yet to see it (Best Picture winner)

Your Name [2016 - 106mins] - (2018.08.04) - noticed that I'm 86% done the IMDb Top 250 list... let's get this thing completed. (IMDb Top 250)

_{De-shamed Pt2: True Romance (4/5), The Right Stuff (3/5), Syndromes And A Century (4/5), Still Life (3/5), My Cousin Vinny (2.5/5), Doctor Zhivago (3.5/5), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (4.5/5), Peeping Tom (4/5), Shadow of a Doubt (4.5/5), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (4.5/5), Only Angels Have Wings (4/5), Umberto D (4/5), Anatomy of a Murder (4.5/5), Only God Forgives (1.5/5), Missing (3.5/5), Howl's Moving Castle (4.5/5), Rio Bravo (4/5), Cloud Atlas (3.5/5), Children of Paradise (4/5), That Obscure Object of Desire (5/5), The Fountain (3/5), Malcolm X (4/5), Warrior (4/5), American Movie (4/5), Being There (4/5), Leaving Las Vegas (4.5/5), Rope (4/5), Ed Wood (4.5/5), American Hustle (2.5/5), The Man Who Knew Too Much (3.5/5), Mister Roberts (4/5), Charley Varrick (4/5), A Face in the Crowd (4.5/5), Farewell My Concubine (3.5/5), Slacker (3.5/5), Drugstore Cowboy (4.5/5), Love and Death (3.5/5), Fantastic Mr. Fox (4.5/5), A Scanner Darkly (4/5), Marketa Lazarova (5/5), A Clockwork Orange (4.5/5), The Fly (5/5), Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (5/5), King Kong (5/5), Gilda (3.5/5), Airplane! (4/5), Nobody Knows (4.5/5), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (4.5/5), Dark Victory (3.5/5), Dead Man (4.5/5), Shane (4/5), Fail-Safe (4.5/5), It Should Happen To You! (4/5), I Killed My Mother (4/5), Bringing Up Baby (5/5), Happiness (1/5), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (2.5/5), Russian Ark (4/5), Don't Look Now (3.5/5), Rome Open City (4/5), Let the Right One In (4.5/5), Woman in the Dunes (5/5), Brief Encounter (4.5/5), Night of the Living Dead (5/5), My Dinner with Andre (4/5), Inland Empire (1/5), A Matter of Life and Death (4.5/5), Broadcast News (4.5/5), The Last Detail (4/5), Run Lola Run (4/5), Chimes at Midnight (2/5), The Conformist (4.5/5), Castle in the Sky (5/5), Watership Down (4/5), Sophie's Choice (4/5), Ordet (2/5), Born on the Fourth of July (3.5/5), The Young Girls of Rochefort (4.5/5), Patton (4/5), Mon Oncle (4.5/5), The Big City (4.5/5), Only Yesterday (5/5), The Silence (4.5/5), Life Itself (4/5), Chicken Run (4/5), Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (4/5), The Last Emperor (3.5/5), In the Heat of the Night (4/5), Animal Crackers (3.5/5), Avanti! (3.5/5), Grizzly Man (4/5), Lola (4.5/5), Safe (4.5/5), Paprika (4.5/5), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (4.5/5), My Darling Clementine (4/5), Cactus Flower (4/5), Wings (4/5), Beauty and the Beast (1946) (3.5/5), [Total:198]}

# ? Sep 10, 2018 21:03

Magic Hate Ball: May 6, 2007; ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

A Poem Is A Naked Person

I'm eternally fascinated by the textures achieved in Les Blank's films. They're like vivacious time machines, the amount of feeling you get from them is so strong. My favorite element of Poem is the way you get a sense for the space in time where the film takes place (72-74), for all the clothes and the haircuts and the ways of speaking. Hippies are a couple years gone, so people hang on in these spare wooden rooms with their disjointed philosophies and fleeting grasp on free love - time is a mutagen. You can smell the fabrics and the bare pine walls, and you can feel mindspace of these people, both the people in Leon Russell's circle and the Oklahomans around him.

In my Yi Yi review I mentioned Bernstein's suggestion that, when listening to music, we are trapped with the music in time - it's a sculpture that has to be experienced from beginning to end, and we can't see the entire thing at once. This concept is central to the film, which makes frequent discursions into the concept of our place on earth and in this (that) time, and accepting that we can't see every tomorrow. One of the film's subjects, a drummer, lays out what is probably the simplest and most meaningful possible philosophy: to cherish the effort that people before us have made to make our present better than theirs, and to try to put the same effort towards making the people who live in tomorrows we won't witness more comfortable than us.

What does this all have to do with Leon Russell? Theoretically, not a lot. As it turns out, Russell was not particularly happy with the production of the film, which meant that Blank spent much of its production focusing on everything but Russell. So everyone else gets to put their nose in, and, in a typically Blankian fashion, the tapestry is arguably much richer than any standard-issue documentary about a popualar musician would probably be. We understand the time, the place, the cultural atmosphere. Blank compares the interior sphere of Russell's life - groupies, musicians, artists - with the people who live in the area, and we find out that they're just as kooky as the loopy post-hippy bluegrass troupe. It reminded me a lot of Morris's Gates of Heaven, which broaches the similar topic of what people do between birth and death.

It also reminded me of Demon Lover Diary, a (fabulous) documentary shot by two filmmakers on an ill-fated trip to assist in the making of Demon Lover, somewhere in Michigan. The people in it talk so frankly, and so openly, and I thought numerous times throughout this film about how people have changed in how they present themselves. It's a different set of mannerisms, something left behind in the past. And there's a nice irony to this movie that it's the people with the most unobserved lives who get all the attention and turn out to be the most interesting. Russell comes across as kind of a cipher, like he's too distracted with being an image to offer the same fascinating and direct answers that everyone else does. Everyone else just is.

Something I wondered, as I watched it, was what, exactly, put Russell off the film? He functionally buried it after it was finished, and is clearly not pleased with having to put up with the filmmakers around him. This reticence actually makes him look worse - not only is he absent from the movie, and difficult throughout, but he left a legacy of distaste, which colors his presence in the film that's hard to ignore. Is the film suggesting he considers himself to be messianic? Are we meant to find him predatory? One sequence has a snake eating a chick, which is interspersed with footage of Russell and his groupies, which is quietly mean-spirited. This ambivalence from Blank is weirdly perplexing, but, again, it's another texture. We feel the questionable space Russell inhabits, and we feel Blank's discomfort.

Blank considered this to be his masterpiece, which is interesting. There are times when the movie is, frankly, dull, which are usually when Russell takes center stage for a performance. One sequence features water rippling and clouds moving for the entirety of a song. Blank features many, many other performers in the film, not to mention countless people who aren't Russell, talking specifically not about him, and they're all more captivating, which might be one reason he rejected the movie. Russell gets one or two good songs in here and there, but every time the film returned to the oddball inhabitants of Russell's circle and of the city, my attention picked up. As oddly engaging as the palpable tension between Russell and Blank (and the film) is, it's the wandering interviews and observations that make the movie, just like everybody who isn't famous makes up the world.

8/10

shamezone

1) L'Eclisse - discontent movie
2) Shoah - i will try
3) Bob le flambeur - flaming bob
4) Chimes at Midnight - shakespeare movie
5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite
6) Ugetsu - tspdt 1000!!
7) Salesman - real movie
8) Veronika Voss - fassbinder continued
9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie
10) Late Autumn - spare movie

_{[full list] Floating Weeds 9/10, Daisies 8/10, Stray Dog 8/10, Victim 6/10, Man Bites Dog 9/10, Night and Fog 10/10, Weekend 8/10, Jubilee 10/10, Sans Soleil 10/10, Candidate 8/10, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders 10/10, The Freshman 5/10, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers 10/10, Branded to Kill 8/10, In Heaven There Is No Beer? 10/10, Blood Simple 10/10, The Marriage of Maria Braun 7/10, A Day In The Country 7/10, A Brief History of Time 10/10, Gates of Heaven 10/10, The Thin Blue Line 10/10, The Fog of War 10/10, My Beautiful Laundrette 10/10, Blind Chance 8/10, My Winnipeg 10/10, The River 7/10, Odd Man Out 8/10, The Passion of Anna 9/10, Brute Force 10/10, The Rite 5/10, The Piano Teacher 10/10, Ashes and Diamonds 7/10, Meantime 9/10, Carnival of Souls 8/10, La Notte 10/10, Frances Ha 10/10, L'avventura, Again 10/10, A Room With a View 9/10, Laura 8/10, Marjorie Prime 10/10, Ex Machina 8/10, Tampopo 10/10, Pickpocket 4/10, Harlan County USA 10/10, The Spirit of the Beehive 10/10, Heaven's Gate 4/10, A Short Film About Killing 9/10, The Pillow Book 6/10, Desert Hearts 9/10, Alice in the Cities 10/10, Yi Yi 10/10, Rififi 9/10, Children of Paradise 10/10, A Poem is a Naked Person 8/10 (total: 155)}

friend55 gets McCabe & Mrs Miller

# ? Sep 11, 2018 05:26

Zogo: Jul 29, 2003

Ratedargh posted:

Elwood's philosophy of being endlessly pleasant is admirable, and takes a path perhaps we can all aspire to, but (and this is possibly on me) I found myself immune to its charms, such as they are.

I've always found James Stewart's character to be very memorable. Elwood P. Dowd reminds me of guys like Chance in Being There (1979), Peter in Office Space (1999) and The Dude in The Big Lebowski (1998). A progenitor in the pantheon of characters who remain laid back and just don't care while everyone around them is panicking.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

It also reminded me of Demon Lover Diary, a (fabulous) documentary shot by two filmmakers on an ill-fated trip to assist in the making of Demon Lover, somewhere in Michigan. The people in it talk so frankly, and so openly, and I thought numerous times throughout this film about how people have changed in how they present themselves. It's a different set of mannerisms, something left behind in the past. And there's a nice irony to this movie that it's the people with the most unobserved lives who get all the attention and turn out to be the most interesting. Russell comes across as kind of a cipher, like he's too distracted with being an image to offer the same fascinating and direct answers that everyone else does. Everyone else just is.

That's how things go a lot of the time. Many famous people become so invested in their personas that they can no longer speak honestly about things any longer. Stultification etc.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

2) Shoah - i will try

The Catastrophe. Basically six movies for the price of one.

A Star Is Born - Another one of those classic films that I'd missed seeing before. It's so grandiose and colorful that I wish I could've seen it in 3D. Not something I usually say for a film.

Norman Maine (James Mason) goes through many drinking problems. Acting recklessly over and over again in too many ways to mention. In the midst of one of his stupors he stumbles upon Judy Garland's character. Judy Garland brings passion and some of that rare movie magic: https://youtu.be/gNDu75gEiIo?t=1m13s

It shows the good and the bad of stardom in a candid way. One star rising and one star falling. Another tale as old as time e.g. Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck. A star is born but a star has to die.

Also watched:

An Affair to Remember - Nickie Ferrante (Cary Grant) and Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) meet on an ocean liner. Their relationship starts off with a lot of chitchatty cynical flirtation. And they have to fend off a bunch of busybody patrons and photographers that are annoying them on the trip back to NYC. Celebrity problems and its various pitfalls etc.

The highlight was during the visit with Nickie's Grandmother (Cathleen Nesbitt) in Villefranche. At this point she encourages them to pursue a serious relationship. The issue is that both of them are already in relationships. So they make a pact to rendezvous in six months at the top of the iconic Empire State Building if they both still want out of their prior commitments.

Unsurprisingly, some issues and accidents happen and both lead characters are secretive about them. Terry is hit by a car and Nickie sets out to start a career in painting. So things do not go smoothly and both characters have to make sacrifices to get out of their original relationships.

There are so many ways to tell a love story and this one succeeds for the most part...especially with its romantic ending.

James Bond versus Godzilla (32/64 completed):

Academy Award for Best Directing (89/91 completed):

1929 The Divine Lady - A love story of some sort. 2/27/18

1928 7th Heaven - Not to be confused with the TV show featuring the pedophile dad. 8/10/18

Notebooks on Cinema's 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World (84/100 completed):

#62 Trouble in Paradise - Something about thieves. 7/27/18

#76 Van Gogh - A film about the last days of the eventually famous painter. 7/13/18

#82 The Party - I haven't seen too many Blake Edwards films. 7/13/18

#93 Lola (1961) - I have seen Run Lola Run but not Lola Mont�s or this one. 8/15/18

Netflix's 20 Years. 20 Movies. (16/20 completed):

new 2013 Captain Phillips - Modern day piracy on the high seas. 9/13/18

2011 The Lincoln Lawyer - The most popular rental of 2011 and I haven't even heard of it. That's funny. 8/27/18

2007 The Bucket List - I remember Roger Ebert raging about this one but that evidently didn't stop it from being the most popular rental of 2007. 8/27/18

Rolling Stone's 100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years: 90/100

new #37 Faces - I've heard a lot about this one. 9/13/18

# ? Sep 13, 2018 21:59

Ratedargh: Feb 20, 2011; Wow, Bob, wow. Fire walk with me.

Zogo posted:

I've always found James Stewart's character to be very memorable. Elwood P. Dowd reminds me of guys like Chance in Being There (1979), Peter in Office Space (1999) and The Dude in The Big Lebowski (1998). A progenitor in the pantheon of characters who remain laid back and just don't care while everyone around them is panicking.

It's funny, because I don't much like Being There, either, and a lot of it had to do with that element of the character. With Peter and The Dude, they're shaken into panic often...they're not as one-note in their depictions as carefree man-children. It gives them, in my mind, greater depth and it makes them more interesting characters. I know hating on Being There is blasphemy (as is Harvey), but they both irritated the hell out of me.

# ? Sep 15, 2018 15:19

bitterandtwisted: Sep 4, 2006

Zogo:

zogo posted:

#62 Trouble in Paradise - Something about thieves. 7/27/18

Martin
It was not easy getting a copy of this at a reasonable price. Lots of sellers were wanting �50 or more for a used DVD and I saw one for about �130. I ended up taking a gamble on a cheaper copy that was "slightly scratched" and fortunately it played. I assume the rights holder is a greedy rear end in a top hat who'd rather make no money than release it for less than he's demanding. Anyhoo...

A young man believes he is a vampire and goes to live with his cousin, who intends to save his soul and then destroy him.

It's left ambiguous whether Martin is a vampire or just deeply disturbed. His cousin Cuda believes it, along with all the vampire legends for which he is mocked by Martin. Martin doesn't believe in magic, but he does believe he is 84 years old, which is never contradicted. Cuda's granddaughter, Christine, absolutely doesn't believe it and blames Cuda for warping Martin's mind. Cuda believes it is a family curse as it's affected numerous family members over the generations - as mental illness can.

What is explicitly a delusion of Martin's is his romanticised view of what he does, shot in black and white, with willing victims calling to him and mobs with flaming torches, and there is frequent use of cuts that contrast the fantasy and the mundane, ugly reality, where his victims fight and swear as they struggle against him.

Martin is a monster. He's a murderer and a rapist and the violence is extremely sexual and disturbing. Yet he is completely sympathetic and there's an innocence and even a tenderness to his character, in particular in the relationship he builds with the lonely housewife. She confides all her emotional problems to him and likes that he says very little and has no advice or opinions and it seems like she could be his salvation but no, the ending's cruel irony has the one person whose life he improved (however briefly) inadvertently causing his death.
His friendship with Christine also shows his humanity, laughing when he shows her magic tricks and sadly remarking that she'll forget him when she leaves town for good.

It's a slow and sombre film, with lots of shots of a run down Pittsburgh and a melancholy score.
I looked up John Amplas who played Martin as was surprised to see he hasn't had much of an acting career, mostly just other, smaller roles with Romero. He was great in this.

This is one of the best and most interesting vampire films I've seen.

My List:

1) (highest ranked imdb) Avengers: Infinity War Major superhero fatigue.

2) (comedy) Office Space gently caress Printers

3) (animation) The Lord of the Rings (1978) The books and Jackson's films were favourites of my childhood/teenage years and I'd like to see this oddball one.

4) (Academy Award winner) Slumdog Millionaire I've enjoyed Danny Boyle's other films

5) (foreign language) Cinema Paradiso This forum's namesake

6) (Monster) Dracula (1958) I've never seen a Hammer Horror

7) (Horror) Freaks (1932) It's an interesting concept

8) (sci fi/fantasy) Ghost in the Shell (1995) I don't know much anime

9) (epic) Ben Hur (1959) Probably the first thing that comes into my head when I think of the term 'epic film'

10) (wildcard) Easy Rider Sounds like the sort of thing I'd like

_{Watched (41): Taxi Driver; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; The Iron Giant; Platoon; American History X; City Lights; My Neighbour Totoro; Rashomon; Duck Soup; Friday 13th (1980); Birdman; Frankenstein (1931); Time Bandits; Carrie (1976); King Kong (1933); Das Boot; The Blair Witch Project (1999); The Sting; Annie Hall; The Bridge on the River Kwai; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari; Godzilla (1954); Bicycle Thieves; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974); The English Patient; Scanners; Forbidden Planet; Deliverance; The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Life is Beautiful; Minority Report; Rosemary's Baby; On the Waterfront; Solaris (1972); Driving Miss Daisy; Eraserhead; M (1931); This is Spinal Tap; Death Race 2000; The Producers (1967); Martin}

# ? Sep 18, 2018 13:15

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

Martin isn't cheap to own, but there are good quality rips of it floating on YouTube.

# ? Sep 18, 2018 20:42

Alfred P. Pseudonym: May 29, 2006; And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss goes 8-8

Finding my last post

# ? Sep 19, 2018 05:10

Alfred P. Pseudonym: May 29, 2006; And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss goes 8-8

bitterandtwisted, give Easy Rider a go.

It only took me 18 months, but I watched The Hudsucker Proxy. This was a really fun little movie. Definitely not the Coens' best movie, but still very good. The dialogue is very snappy and all the mid-century mid-Atlantic accents really make it pop. All the performances are great. I always enjoy when the Coens do comedy. The Extruded Plastic Dingus is like the quintessential Coen joke.

I have also watched other movies from my list in the last year and a half:

Barry Lyndon: This is probably the weakest Kubrick film I've seen, but it's still great. Barry's a wonderful rear end in a top hat and the cinematography is stunning. I watched this like a year ago, so I don't have much else to say at the moment.

Stalker: I was lucky enough to catch a screening of this in a theater a while back and it absolutely blew me away. Everything about this movie is amazing. From the opening credits, I knew I was in for a ride. The change from sepia to full color as the characters enter the Zone was a great choice and the interplay and philosophical discussions between the characters are always thought-provoking without ever feeling contrived.

The List:

1. Tokyo Story: I don't really know anything about this but it's on a ton of lists.

NEW 2. Solaris: One good Tarkovsky deserves another.

3. Throne of Blood: Kurosawa doing MacBeth sounds dope

4. Stagecoach: I should watch more John Ford

NEW 5. Lolita: This one seems essential but I can never work up the nerve

6. The Life Aquatic: I have never seen a Wes Anderson movie.

7. North Dallas Forty: I've been told that this is the best football movie ever made. I like football and movies.

8. The King's Speech: I borrowed this from the library a few weeks ago but the DVD was scratched and gave out halfway through. I liked what I did see, though.

NEW 9. The Man Who Wasn't There: This is my Coen slot now

10. Reds: This seems up my alley and I've been meaning to watch it for years and just haven't gotten to it.

Watched (60): Goodfellas, Rear Window, Rashomon, The Searchers, Lawrence of Arabia, American Psycho, The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, Unforgiven, Once Upon a Time in America, Blue Velvet, Schindler's List, Vertigo, First Blood, The Sting, Annie Hall, Twelve Monkeys, The Deer Hunter, Rain Man, Chinatown, Glengarry Glen Ross, Patton, Brazil, Casino, Scanners, Black Swan, Superman, Spartacus, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Seven Samurai, Double Indemnity, The Thing, Aguirre The Wrath of God, Badlands, Planet of the Apes, Shane, L�on: The Professional, Trainspotting, The Conversation, Miller's Crossing, A Fish Called Wanda, City of God, Psycho, Singin' in the Rain, Witness for the Prosecution, Se7en, The Wild Bunch, Oklahoma!, Cool Hand Luke, Paths of Glory, The Night of the Hunter, Blood Simple, Eyes Wide Shut, Memories of Murder, Sunset Boulevard, City Lights, The Artist, The Hudsucker Proxy, Stalker, Barry Lyndon

# ? Sep 19, 2018 05:33

TrixRabbi: Aug 20, 2010; Time for a little robot chauvinism!

Mr. Pseudonym, watch Stagecoach.

:spooky:

�SPECIAL SPOOKTOBER EDITION! :spooky:

Okay so I still haven't watched my current assignment (La Pointe Courte), but it's almost October and I'm almost in Complete Horror Mode. So I'm going to do something I wanted to do for awhile and do a special All Horror version of my Shameful list. It will be shorter than the regular 10-item list since I plan to run with it through the month, so hopefully y'all can help me finally check off some of the major horror classics I've missed out on.

My List:

Audition (1999) - I think I first learned about this one through Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments special, which I remember watching in middle school. But I was always too much of a wimp for it. Can I handle it now? (Added 9/19/2018)

Black Devil Doll From Hell (1984) - Hypertrash! (Added 9/19/2018)

The Cat and the Canary (1927) - Silent horror. Wanted to watch this since college but never got to it. (Added 9/19/2018)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) - One of the classic creature features, and a drat shameful one to be missing. (Added 9/19/2018)

Ganja & Hess (1973) - I saw Spike Lee's pretty poor remake, but never the original. (Added 9/19/2018)

The Wicker Man (1973) - Another abysmal remake I've seen without the classic. (Added 9/19/2018)

# ? Sep 20, 2018 01:21

Magic Hate Ball: May 6, 2007; ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this

I don't need to finish Shoah to tell you that you need to watch The Wicker Man, it was far and above my favorite discovery during horrorfest last year.

# ? Sep 20, 2018 03:19

Jurgan: May 8, 2007; Just pour it directly into your gaping mouth-hole you decadent slut

Magic Hate Ball posted:

I don't need to finish Shoah to tell you that you need to watch The Wicker Man, it was far and above my favorite discovery during horrorfest last year.

Agreed, I really enjoyed it. It won't be as good if you've already seen the remake, since you know the basic plot and there won't be many surprises, but there's still a spooky atmosphere.

# ? Sep 20, 2018 04:43

Alfred P. Pseudonym: May 29, 2006; And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss goes 8-8

Jurgan posted:

Agreed, I really enjoyed it. It won't be as good if you've already seen the remake, since you know the basic plot and there won't be many surprises, but there's still a spooky atmosphere.

Christopher Lee owns in that movie

# ? Sep 20, 2018 05:37

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# ? May 16, 2024 09:52

bitterandtwisted: Sep 4, 2006

Wickerman was great. It was filmed largely around Newton Stewart, where I went to school.

Britt Eckland posted:

[Newton Stewart]had to be the most dismal place in Creation... one of the bleakest places I've been to in my life [...] Gloom and misery oozed out of the furniture.

Yay a famous person visited my hometown

# ? Sep 20, 2018 09:39

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > SHAMEFUL: The greatest movies you've never seen

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