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Friendo, the random number generator says you must watch The Best of Youth. I wish you luck. Reds: It's pretty wild to see an American movie made during the Cold War that seems to be explicitly pro-Communist (though does exhibit disillusionment with how the Russian Revolution ultimately turned out). I liked the movie quite a bit. All the performances are very good. I appreciate the presence of an intermission and it really helps to drive home the different feel of the first half of the movie (jubilation at the victory of Communism) versus the last half (Reed slowly being ground down by a combination of Zinoviev and and his own declining health). The decision to include real life interview footage with contemporaries of Jack and Louise was inspired. The List: 1. Tokyo Story: I don't really know anything about this but it's on a ton of lists. 2. Andrei Rublev: More Tarkovsky. 3. Throne of Blood: Kurosawa doing MacBeth sounds dope 4. McCabe and Mrs. Miller: Just making this my Western slot. 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. 9. The Man Who Wasn't There: This is my Coen slot now NEW 10. The Seventh Seal: Let's do some Bergman. Watched (63): 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, Léon: 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, Stagecoach, Solaris, Reds
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Mar 6, 2019 01:32
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:The decision to include real life interview footage with contemporaries of Jack and Louise was inspired. Yea, I wish more movies did it. Some might find it a little jarring to see talking head interviews in a biopic but it definitely works with Reds. Alfred P. Pseudonym posted: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. "In the past, all a King had to do was look respectable in uniform and not fall off his horse. Now we must invade people's homes and ingratiate ourselves with them. This family's been reduced to those lowest, basest of all creatures. We've become actors!" Ivan the Terrible, Part I - Perhaps the most ambitious and lavish soap opera I've witnessed. It's overly dramatic at times as people backstab, backbite and infight for money and power. Mainly featuring people conspiring against the man who has the audacity to want to rule all of Russia. After declaring himself ruler the Tsar goes on military campaigns to acquire more land. At one point he gets sick but he's obviously not dead and this unearths more betrayals. Many boyars attempt to thwart his plans and ultimately poison his wife. James Bond versus Godzilla (33/64 completed): Godzilla vs. Biollante - Godzilla vs. giant flower. Godzilla in the 1980s definitely went by fast. 2/22/19 Notebooks on Cinema's 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World (93/100 completed): #23 The Mother and the Whore - It's ranked highly on the TSPDT list every year. 12/10/18 #31 The Barefoot Contessa - I've seen so many great films starring Humphrey Bogart and yet there are still many more remaining. 2/22/19 #40 The Wind - I've heard it's another underseen one. 2/22/19 #46 The Crowd – Something about NYC. 12/23/18 #83 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas - An island adventure. 10/20/18 #88 Him AKA El - I haven't seen a Luis Bunuel film lately. 1/16/19 Rolling Stone's 100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years (97/100 completed): #67 Seven Beauties - Sounds like a fresh look at WWII for a change. 9/29/18 #96 My Little Chickadee - I haven't seen a film starring W.C. Fields in a film in a long, long time. 1/16/19 Feels like its time for another catch-all category to throw random films into. Hesitation: new #1 Possession - One of those lauded horror films. 3/7/19
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Mar 7, 2019 07:44
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You can't watch Ivan the Terrible, Part 1 and not follow it up with the completely bonkers (in the best way) part 2.
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Mar 8, 2019 02:26
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Samuel Clemens posted:You can't watch Ivan the Terrible, Part 1 and not follow it up with the completely bonkers (in the best way) part 2. I plan to watch that one within the next few months. Back when part 1 was released people had to wait fourteen years to see part two.
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Mar 8, 2019 23:06
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I FINALLY got around to watching the first 2 Godfathers, and I was surprised how little I cared for the second one. The first is a masterpiece 10/10 loved it, but I just couldn't really get into the second as much, it was good but more in a 7.5/10 way for me.
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Mar 10, 2019 04:13
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RND gives Zogo:quote:#40 The Wind - I've heard it's another underseen one. 2/22/19 Slumdog Millionaire The movie was engaging enough and I liked the cast. The three sets of young actors all worked well together and were believable as the same three characters at different ages. The framing device was weird and extreme. Torturing a guy for suspected gameshow cheating right before he's due to shoot the next episode is nuts and the cops don't have any personal or financial stake, nor are they really framed as the villains after the first half hour, or get any sort of comeuppance for their actions. The final question pissed me off. OK I get that they wanted it to have some personal meaning for Jamal but it was such an easy question and so obviously foreshadowed that I did mentally say "oh gently caress off" when it inevitably showed up. And then Jamal didn't know the answer but guessed anyway and guessed right. I feel like almost any other option would have been more satisfying - if Latika had known the answer; if he'd stuck at 10million; even if he'd lost it but was happy anyway to be with Latika. There is some humour sprinkled about and I did laugh at the call centre and tour guide scenes. I didn't dislike the film overall but I wouldn't say I loved it either. Also saw from my list The Blob 1958 and 1988 double feature Ribbed!  Both films are very typical of their era of monster movie. '58 takes its time building up the suspense. Steve McQueen is a really elderly teenager. His girlfriend screams a lot. The '88 movie has a faster pace, more humour and absolutely revolting special effects, which are the best thing about it. Also a couple really bad composite shots, but never mind. It's really quick to kill off major characters and I was shocked that the Steve McQueen analogue was one of the first victims, not to mention one of the kids. The major plot change of the Blob being a secret weapon was fine, but could really have benefited from some explanation of how the bad guys thought they could contain it to make it useful as a weapon."Let it loose, see what happens" seemed to be the extent of their evil plan. Of the two, I preferred the '88 version, largely because I like that era of horror more than the 50s. Surprising that it was a big flop that's not talked about much nowadays, because it's really pretty solid. E: meant to mention the '58 theme tune. It's amazing. Has there ever been a more upbeat song about a monster? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK5jyVCdXwc  It creeps and leaps and glides and slides...My List: 1) (highest ranked imdb) Avengers: Infinity War Major superhero fatigue. 2) (comedy) Bringing up Baby 😺 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) My Fair Lady Only the biggest musical of all time 5) (foreign language) Cinema Paradiso This forum's namesake 6) (Monster) Critters Best known of the Gremlins knockoffs 7) (Horror) Misery Ow mah legs 8) (sci fi/fantasy) Logan's Run Feelin old 9) (epic) Dr Zhivago Just very famous 10) (wildcard) Quardophenia mods vs rockers Watched (57): 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; Easy Rider; Office Space; Ghost in the Shell (1995); The Kid; Freaks (1932); The Abyss; Ben Hur (1959); Poltergeist (1982); Escape from New York; Once Upon a Time in America; Phantasm; Dracula (1958); Videodrome; Slumdog Millionaire; The Blob (1958); The Blob (1988) bitterandtwisted fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Mar 25, 2019 |
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Mar 25, 2019 17:11
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bitterandtwisted, Watch My Fair Lady next. Watched Gladiator. Entertaining movie. Good job by Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. Loved the scenery. Kind of reminded me of Braveheart. One thing I really noticed was the music by Hans Zimmer. Really well done and a joy to listen to. My List: Fort Apache - This will be my John Wayne spot for now. Sideways - My mom disliked this movie, but I'll give it a shot. NEWEST Jabberwocky - Following up one Terry Gilliam movie with another. Our Hospitality - Another Buster Keaton movie. The Cocoanuts - Working my way through the Marx Brothers movies. This is their first movie. Castle in the Sky - Need to see some more Studio Ghibli. Stray Dog - Starting to run out of Kurosawa films. What a great director. OLDEST Oklahoma - Don't know anything about it. Next on my musicals list. Die Nibelungen - Interested in seeing another Fritz Lang picture. To Catch a Thief - More Hitchcock here. King Creole - A slot here for Elvis, Sinatra, Beatles movies. Starting with one of Elvis'. Dmitri Russkie fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 00:42
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Dmitri Russkie posted:Oklahoma - Don't know anything about it. Next on my musicals list. "There's a bright golden haze on the meadow, There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. The corn is as high as a elephant's eye, And it looks like it's climbin' clear up to the sky. Oh, what a beautiful mornin', Oh, what a beautiful day! I got a beautiful feelin' Everything's goin' my way." The Wind - The film opens with a conversation on a train between a man and a woman. Suddenly wind takes the center stage as a ton of dust blows into the train. This is only the first of a TON of references to THE WIND. It's the driving force in the movie in just about every conceivable way: dialogue, action, plot, the ending etc. There's a culture clash as Letty (Lillian Gish) moves west. Most of the characters speak in broken English and are less refined. There's also tension as various characters work through jealousies and envies. The windswept landscape simultaneously brings to mind desolate segments from Greed (1924) and the dangers of harsh elements in Dersu Uzala (1975). Also watched: My Little Chickadee - In one of the early scenes there's a send-up/lampoon of a scene from the famous Stagecoach (1939) with W.C. fields yelling and screaming at Native Americans as they attack the train he's on. Despite this he still seems like the fourth stooge with a high IQ and large vocabulary. He's also a run-of-the-mill conman selling lizard oil. He ends up teaming up with Mae West's character. Her iconic voice is so memorable one wonders if it's real or put-on much like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. I won't go into much detail but it has a smattering of  moments. Kind of larky and flighty as it goes in unexpected places. Everyone outside some of the main characters are just gullible people.James Bond versus Godzilla (33/64 completed): Godzilla vs. Biollante - Godzilla vs. giant flower. Godzilla in the 1980s definitely went by fast. 2/22/19 Notebooks on Cinema's 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World (94/100 completed): #23 The Mother and the Whore - It's ranked highly on the TSPDT list every year. 12/10/18 #31 The Barefoot Contessa - I've seen so many great films starring Humphrey Bogart and yet there are still many more remaining. 2/22/19 #46 The Crowd – Something about NYC. 12/23/18 #83 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas - An island adventure. 10/20/18 #88 Him AKA El - I haven't seen a Luis Bunuel film lately. 1/16/19 Rolling Stone's 100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years (98/100 completed): #67 Seven Beauties - Sounds like a fresh look at WWII for a change. 9/29/18 Hesitation (0 completed): #1 Possession - One of those lauded horror films. 3/7/19 new #2 Dog Star Man - Seems like it might be time to watch this one. 3/28/19 new #3 The Last Seduction - Hailed by many as a great one from the 1990s. 3/28/19
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Mar 28, 2019 06:03
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Zogo, I’ll assign you the oldest entry on your list, which is Seven Beauties. The King’s Speech: This is exactly the type of movie that wins Best Picture. World War II, royalty, disability, it has it all. When divorced from my Oscar related cynicism, it’s a perfectly fine movie. Good performances from Firth and Rush. Having the movie climax with Bertie giving a speech minutes after complaining that he has no real power as King, set against the Nazi invasion of Poland really drives home how low-stakes this story is, which seems to be the opposite of what is intended. Nothing too special here. It’s fine. The List: 1. Tokyo Story: I don't really know anything about this but it's on a ton of lists. 2. Andrei Rublev: More Tarkovsky. 3. Throne of Blood: Kurosawa doing MacBeth sounds dope 4. McCabe and Mrs. Miller: Just making this my Western slot. 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. NEW 8. Akira: I typically avoid anime like the plague but people seem to like this a lot. 9. The Man Who Wasn't There: This is my Coen slot now 10. The Seventh Seal: Let's do some Bergman. Watched (63): 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, Léon: 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, Stagecoach, Solaris, Reds, The King’s Speech
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Mar 29, 2019 03:52
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:The King’s Speech: This is exactly the type of movie that wins Best Picture. World War II, royalty, disability, it has it all. When divorced from my Oscar related cynicism, it’s a perfectly fine movie. Good performances from Firth and Rush. Having the movie climax with Bertie giving a speech minutes after complaining that he has no real power as King, set against the Nazi invasion of Poland really drives home how low-stakes this story is, which seems to be the opposite of what is intended. Nothing too special here. It’s fine. I think this is largely accurate, if a bit snobby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epsa4gQr3uc
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Mar 30, 2019 01:38
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My choice for you:Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:10. The Seventh Seal: Let's do some Bergman. My Fair Lady https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz9_YfIQaz4 I'm not hugely into musicals, especially lavish 50's style ones pushing 3 hours long, but it held my interest and the performances by Hepburn and Harrison are fantastic. Harrison's character was much more of a douche than I expected, which I liked; if he was a kindly patrician like the Colonel the film would be much less interesting. The music is... fine. There's nothing super catchy or memorable in the way that, say, Oliver! had. I know Hepburn's singing was dubbed. Incidentally, Britain remains a classist shithole where everything you do and say and how you say it is a class indicator.  My List: 1) (highest ranked imdb) Avengers: Infinity War Major superhero fatigue. 2) (comedy) Bringing up Baby 😺 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) Wings The first winner 5) (foreign language) Cinema Paradiso This forum's namesake 6) (Monster) Critters Best known of the Gremlins knockoffs 7) (Horror) Misery Ow mah legs 8) (sci fi/fantasy) Logan's Run Feelin old 9) (epic) Dr Zhivago Just very famous 10) (wildcard) Quardophenia mods vs rockers Watched (58): 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; Easy Rider; Office Space; Ghost in the Shell (1995); The Kid; Freaks (1932); The Abyss; Ben Hur (1959); Poltergeist (1982); Escape from New York; Once Upon a Time in America; Phantasm; Dracula (1958); Videodrome; Slumdog Millionaire; The Blob (1958); The Blob (1988); My Fair Lady
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Apr 4, 2019 12:05
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bitterandtwisted posted:1) (highest ranked imdb) Avengers: Infinity War Major superhero fatigue. "I know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you're right, yet to fail nonetheless. It's frightening, turns the legs to jelly. I ask you to what end? Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same. And now it's here. Or should I say, I am." Seven Beauties - With its style on display and memorable lighting throughout this one impressively traverses many styles and genres (too many to mention). Pasqualino's the protagonist and he's been placed into an internment camp. We get flashbacks to some of his hard times in Italy before the war. He tries to defend his family's honor and name. Also observed are some familiar political and financial problems to the modern US. I'm leaving a lot out but it's a strange and disturbing comedy intermixed with the Holocaust. If you watched Life Is Beautiful (1997) and thought it was too sanitized then this may be the adult version you've been searching for. PS The film opens (and closes) in memorable fashion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx2GoEV5yf0 James Bond versus Godzilla (33/64 completed): Godzilla vs. Biollante - Godzilla vs. giant flower. Godzilla in the 1980s definitely went by fast. 2/22/19 Notebooks on Cinema's 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World (94/100 completed): #23 The Mother and the Whore - It's ranked highly on the TSPDT list every year. 12/10/18 #31 The Barefoot Contessa - I've seen so many great films starring Humphrey Bogart and yet there are still many more remaining. 2/22/19 #46 The Crowd – Something about NYC. 12/23/18 #83 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas - An island adventure. 10/20/18 #88 Him AKA El - I haven't seen a Luis Bunuel film lately. 1/16/19 Rolling Stone's 100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years (99/100 completed): Hesitation (0 completed): #1 Possession - One of those lauded horror films. 3/7/19 #2 Dog Star Man - Seems like it might be time to watch this one. 3/28/19 #3 The Last Seduction - Hailed by many as a great one from the 1990s. 3/28/19 new #4 Frost/Nixon - A best picture nominee I keep forgetting to watch. 4/13/19
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Apr 13, 2019 06:14
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Zogo, you sold me with "Godzilla vs giant flower", so quote:Godzilla vs. Biollante Avengers: Infinity War Avengers vs the Amazing Bulk. What I liked: The Marvel movies always have likeable heroes, and they continue to be likeable here (at least the ones I was familiar with). I liked that there was a fight in Edinburgh because I live there. I did IT support for that cathedral that gets smashed up. It was funny that Peter Dinklage was huge. There's quite a bit of humour generally and I did crack a smile often. Not so much: The movie does not work in isolation and requires a lot of previous exposure to the MCU. I expect it would be baffling to someone who hadn't seen any other Marvel movies. I've seen most of them, but not all, so I just kind of shrugged when the movie acts like I'm supposed to care about Guy with Gun or Red Guy Who Was in Ultron for 5 Minutes (I assume he had a bigger role in another movie). Most of the heroes have little to do, maybe a couple have the set-up to an arc that might be resolved in the next movie. The action wore thin after a while. So much punching of CG things. My mind started to wander during the big Wakanda battle. I knew the ending going in and that it will be undone in the sequel, so it was hard to care about the stakes. Thanos is just not hugely interesting, which is a recurring problem I have with the MCU - likeable heroes, but boring villains. I feel I'm really making GBS threads on this movie hard, but I honestly didn't hate it. It was watchable enough. Since putting this movie on my list, I watched a couple of superhero movies I thoroughly enjoyed (Into the Spiderverse and Logan), but now I'm back to being tired of them. My List: 1) (highest ranked imdb) Andhadhun Really unfamiliar with Indian cinema in general 2) (comedy) Bringing up Baby 😺 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) Wings The first winner 5) (foreign language) Cinema Paradiso This forum's namesake 6) (Monster) Critters Best known of the Gremlins knockoffs 7) (Horror) Misery Ow mah legs 8) (sci fi/fantasy) Logan's Run Feelin old 9) (epic) Dr Zhivago Just very famous 10) (wildcard) Quardophenia mods vs rockers Watched (59): 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; Easy Rider; Office Space; Ghost in the Shell (1995); The Kid; Freaks (1932); The Abyss; Ben Hur (1959); Poltergeist (1982); Escape from New York; Once Upon a Time in America; Phantasm; Dracula (1958); Videodrome; Slumdog Millionaire; The Blob (1958); The Blob (1988); My Fair Lady; Avengers: Infinity War
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Apr 18, 2019 10:54
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bitterandtwisted posted:5) (foreign language) Cinema Paradiso This forum's namesake "Life isn't like in the movies. Life is much harder." Godzilla vs. Biollante - Some scientists and politicians get the particularly bad idea to start experimenting with cells from Godzilla's skin. Kind of like what transpired in The War of the Gargantuas (1966). The nemesis that is wrought is a mysterious and mystical plant that lets out cries not unlike that of a sad orca. Its roving appendages reminded me of the antagonists from The Evil Dead (1981) and The Thing (1982). There's a lot going on as a psychic girl tries to slow Godzilla down and the Japanese military has also unveiled a new weapon. Godzilla humorously dispatches the new and improved Super X2. Much more could be said but I'm continually impressed as the series goes on. James Bond versus Godzilla (34/64 completed): Notebooks on Cinema's 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World (94/100 completed): #23 The Mother and the Whore - It's ranked highly on the TSPDT list every year. 12/10/18 #31 The Barefoot Contessa - I've seen so many great films starring Humphrey Bogart and yet there are still many more remaining. 2/22/19 #46 The Crowd – Something about NYC. 12/23/18 #83 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas - An island adventure. 10/20/18 #88 Him AKA El - I haven't seen a Luis Bunuel film lately. 1/16/19 Rolling Stone's 100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years (99/100 completed): Hesitation (0 completed): #1 Possession - One of those lauded horror films. 3/7/19 #2 Dog Star Man - Seems like it might be time to watch this one. 3/28/19 #3 The Last Seduction - Hailed by many as a great one from the 1990s. 3/28/19 #4 Frost/Nixon - A best picture nominee I keep forgetting to watch. 4/13/19 new #5 Anand - Some call it the greatest Indian film ever made. 4/23/19 Zogo fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Apr 23, 2019 |
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Apr 23, 2019 06:20
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Zogo posted:#3 The Last Seduction - Hailed by many as a great one from the 1990s. 3/28/19 90's neo-noir erotic thriller. Bicycle Thieves (1948) dir. Vittorio De Sica | Criterion Channel  Recently, one of my comedy podcasts mentioned a comedian who had started a donation drive to help with their medical expenses. They were a month away from full-time employment when they got in an accident. Now they are in pretty bad shape, have a huge medical debt, and they won't be able to accept that job. Comedians typically only get medical coverage with full-time employment--writing jobs, mainly--or through guild membership. "It's crazy", one of the hosts says, "how, when you think about it, most of us are just two paychecks away from total disaster." Bicycle Thieves illustrates the fragility of life under such capitalist circumstances. Antonio, our protagonist, like everyone around him, is drat poor. It's post-WW2 Italy, and crowds of destitute people fight for job assignments every morning so they don't starve. Antonio is given a great job in advertisement--gluing posters--he just needs to show up with a bicycle, which he acquires by selling off the last valuables (bed sheets) he and his wife have. Fate can be cruel, and the bicycle is stolen. Antonio descends into obsessive madness in trying to find justice, capture the thief, and get his bicycle back. It is that or admit defeat and allow his family to starve. It's not just a bicycle that has been stolen. Antonio's masculinity is no longer intact. He can't provide for his wife and children. He can't be his son's hero. He can't do much besides lament. It's the cycle of depressive thoughts that lead an average joe to suicide, to dread existence. There is no justice, just the cold cruelty of uncertainty that drives all of us. Antonio can find the thief, and what? Hope police believe him? Hope he gets his bike back? Beat the man up in front of his child? There's no right answer. This film has defined neo-realism, which (besides awesome 80's horror movies) is what has defined Italian cinema more than other movements. It's grounded documentary-ish style mixed with non-actors in lead roles and mundane story all land in an uncanny valley that makes all the human emotion and the weight of the situation palpable. It's such a fascinating aesthetic to use to tell a story, and it's still being used by modern filmmakers such as Sean Baker, who uses it with sincerity, and Harmony Korine, who's sincerity has more a vulgar bite and manic perversity. I'm happy that this film has supplemental features on Criterion Channel. There's a feature about how the film was written--six or eight friends arguing for hours over cigarettes and wine and coffee, each taking turns to write one of the small episodes--and also one about how Enzo Staiola was chosen for the film and his experience working with De Sica. It's an excellent movie, one I'm excited to revisit. My List City of God (2002; Fernando Meirelles) - (4.23.19) It's been on my to-watch list for 10 years now. The Holy Mountain (1973; A. Jodorowsky) - (12.18.18) I love Jodorowsky Paris, Je T’Aime (2006; anthology) - (12.4.18) Anthology film with a bunch of stars and great directors that I keep putting off. 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; François Truffaut; Criterion - (2.6.18) Another "Film School movie" I have never seen; classic of French cinema 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 | Akira | Y Tu Mamá También | Bicycle Thieves Letterboxd
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Apr 23, 2019 13:02
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I hope you don't mind striking off the most recent addition to your longstanding list, but City of God would be my choice for your next watch, as it's one of my personal favorites. My list: Adaption (2002, Spike Jonze) - Synechdoche, New York was my first taste of Charlie Kaufman's work, and I'm very interested in checking out the rest of his stuff. Come and See ( 1985, Elem Klimov) - A beautiful poster and the promise of a heavy, deep war film put this on my radar immediately, but I've yet to track it down. Solaris (1971, Andrei Tarkovsky) - I've never seen any Tarkovsky, and I hear this is a great place to start. The Seventh Seal (1957, Ingmar Bergman) - Same as above, never caught any Bergman, and this one stands out.
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Apr 23, 2019 19:44
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I’m gonna rush to watch it so I can force you to watch MY favorite movie, Adaptation.
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Apr 23, 2019 19:48
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I'm glad you did, because hot drat, Adaptation was incredible. The way Kaufman lets the script dip and dive between its own meta-narrative while keeping the characters so bitingly real is a joy to watch. Donald Kaufman is a wonderful character, and his influence on the script had me rolling with laughter. There's like five different layers to appreciate every scene in, and the way in which those layers play with and influence each other is often beautiful, and hilarious. There's a palpable humanity to Kaufman's scripts that I absolutely adore. Being John Malkovich (1999, Spike Jonze) - (04/25/19) Might as well replace Adaptation with another Kaufman piece I haven't seen yet! Come and See ( 1985, Elem Klimov) - (04/23/19) A beautiful poster and the promise of a heavy, deep war film put this on my radar immediately, but I've yet to track it down. Solaris (1971, Andrei Tarkovsky) - (04/23/19) I've never seen any Tarkovsky, and I hear this is a great place to start. The Seventh Seal (1957, Ingmar Bergman) - (04/23/19) Same as above, never caught any Bergman, and this one stands out. De-shamed: Adaptation
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Apr 25, 2019 20:06
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Hope you enjoy:Ibexaz posted:
Cinema Paradiso A famous director learns of the death of an old friend in the opening scene and then we see his life story, growing up in post-war Italy and his relationship with that friend, the cinema projectionist, played wonderfully by Phillipe Noiret. I felt the bond between Toto and Alfredo. The titular cinema is shown as a great community hub for the little town and we learn how important it is to them. There's an underlying sadness throughout and theme of "you can't go home again". The movie is a bit on the saccharine side, but I was fine with that. My List: 1) (highest ranked imdb) Andhadhun Really unfamiliar with Indian cinema in general 2) (comedy) Bringing up Baby 😺 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) Wings The first winner 5) (foreign language) 8 1/2 Another movie about movies 6) (Monster) Critters Best known of the Gremlins knockoffs 7) (Horror) Misery Ow mah legs 8) (sci fi/fantasy) Logan's Run Feelin old 9) (epic) Dr Zhivago Just very famous 10) (wildcard) Quardophenia mods vs rockers Watched (60): 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; Easy Rider; Office Space; Ghost in the Shell (1995); The Kid; Freaks (1932); The Abyss; Ben Hur (1959); Poltergeist (1982); Escape from New York; Once Upon a Time in America; Phantasm; Dracula (1958); Videodrome; Slumdog Millionaire; The Blob (1958); The Blob (1988); My Fair Lady; Avengers: Infinity War; Cinema Paradiso
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Apr 29, 2019 13:00
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I gave Shoah my all, right after Filmstruck died, and I watched a couple hours of it before I had to stop. It's very good and very essential but I can't handle it. Maybe at some point in my life I can make my way through all of it, but at the moemnt, I can't. So, now that the Criterion Channel is back, Late Autumn It's hard not to say stupid-sounding things about Ozu films, like that his artistic power rests in his ability to successfully communicate things that are as ephemeral as they are concrete, or that his films are like silk fluttering in the breeze. I didn't really gel with the first half of Late Autumn - I understood it, but it was more interesting than it was engaging (the balance was more equal in another film of his that I watched recently, An Autumn Afternoon, which was thoroughly spellbinding). Late Autumn devotes an awful lot of screentime in its first hour to the bumbling antics of three horny businessmen who set about on a doofus plot to get Ayako, the daughter of their dead friend married, so that her mother, Akiko, who hasn't remarried, might marry one of them. People sit in square rooms and talk about other people who aren't there. But in the second half the payoff begins to unload. Everything that's been set up in the first half, behind what could almost pass for narrative slapstick in the Ozu universe, is suddenly brought into sharp focus and the bittersweet interplay between characters takes on an almost Wagnerian scope. The emotional effect is startlingly cumulative, and Ozu's criticism of the strict Japanese patriachy is as sharp as ever (Ozu, being gay, presumably had a nightmarish familiarity with being needled into wedlock by prodding busybodies). If the first half overdevelops its plot, it has the benefit of allowing us to become extremely familiar with the characters and their subtleties, so when things unravel in the typically Ozu way - pebbles shifting in a pond are more dramatic - we're tuned in to the impact of everything that's being suggested. Every piece of each scene carries huge import, because so much has been stripped away that all the meaning rests on so little. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't merely reading too much into the movie when I felt that, for example, Ozu's use of charming, almost Tati-esque music was meant to be painfully ironic, because that's almost certainly what was meant. This goes in hand with the persistent, overweening smiles of the women in the film, particularly Akiko, the mother, whose only expression is a baked-on grin. "Happiness! We're so happy! Everything is grand!" is what her teeth say, but at the end, when she is alone in her apartment with her ticking clock, and the camera moves (in cuts) out of the apartment into the bare, concrete, prison-like hallway, the pain of her sacrifice is like a howling wind. And what, even, was the sacrifice for? The marriage is presented as a kind of vacuum sealing - we've heard the name of the groom said more times than we've seen his face onscreen, which enhances the ominous mood of the ceremony, the only part of which shown is the photographing of the couple. This all could be crushingly dour and unpleasant, but Ozu is too witty to crush us with his depressive modes, and uses his (again) Tati-esque skills in subtle visual and social gags to keep the mood up. This has the effect of not only making the movie palatable, but of transforming the ending from what could have been a blast of ugly pessimism into an outpouring of empathetic grief on the part of the audience. That's a much more difficult thing to pull off than just making the audience feel like garbage, and it comes about particularly through Ozu's ability to keep us in on his own sense of comedy and observation. In one scene, Ayako goes with her friends on a hiking trip, and Ozu shows them walking down a sunny dirt road into the mountains in perfect lockstep. It's not funny, but it's visually amusing. In another, in one of the best pieces of character humor I've seen in a while, Ayako's friend, Yuriko, rounds on the three businessmen for their meddling, and after a discussion, in which she makes the widower among them promise that he would, in fact, love Ayako's mother, she takes them to a sushi restaurant in celebration and gets them drunk on the most expensive sake and orders the whole menu. They protest, but she promises it's so delicious that it'll be worth it, as long as the widower promises to pay, which, giddy with the situation, he does. The owner of the restaurant then comes down the stairs and asks her if she's taking the day off, and the businessmen realize she's tricked them into paying through the nose at her own restaurant. One repeated piece of visual business I noticed in this film, and that I think Ozu probably employs in his other films, is how often he starts a scene by showing us an empty room adjacent to where the characters are. We look at it for a few moments, and then the stillness is interrupted by a service worker passing through, usually a waitress carrying sake, and then the shot holds again for just as long as before they passed through. Much has been written about his pillow shots, but I'm not sure if any amount of essays can capture the feeling of their appearance in his films. So I'll just stop writing. 8/10 shamezone 1) L'Eclisse - discontent movie 2) Ivan's Childhood - war kids 3) God's Country - louis malle documentary 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) Watership Down - buny [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, Late Autumn 8/10 (total: 156) bitterandtwisted gets 8 1/2 Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 17:39
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Magic Hate Ball posted:I gave Shoah my all, right after Filmstruck died, and I watched a couple hours of it before I had to stop. It's very good and very essential but I can't handle it. Maybe at some point in my life I can make my way through all of it, but at the moemnt, I can't. That's okay. At one point I meant to ask you if you were struggling with that one because it can be extremely challenging in a handful of ways. This one won't be nearly as hard: Magic Hate Ball posted:4) Chimes at Midnight - shakespeare movie "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Robert Shallow." The Last Seduction - A man (Bill Pullman) brokers a $700,000 cocaine deal in NYC. But it's clear he's a fish out of water doing this line of work. There isn't much pretense here as things unfold so organically and unpredictably as we follow his wife the flighty seductress (Linda Fiorentino). She starts off as a conwoman but quickly turns frightening and diabolical with her schemes. Almost a master manipulator. It fits in nicely with 1980s films: Against All Odds (1984) Body Double (1984) Body Heat (1981) and the slightly newer: Bound (1996) For its subject matter there's a decent amount of humor here also. One thing I wasn't fond of was the overbearing music (both diegetic and non-diegetic). James Bond versus Godzilla (34/64 completed): Notebooks on Cinema's 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World (94/100 completed): #23 The Mother and the Whore - It's ranked highly on the TSPDT list every year. 12/10/18 #31 The Barefoot Contessa - I've seen so many great films starring Humphrey Bogart and yet there are still many more remaining. 2/22/19 #46 The Crowd – Something about NYC. 12/23/18 #83 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas - An island adventure. 10/20/18 #88 Him AKA El - I haven't seen a Luis Bunuel film lately. 1/16/19 Rolling Stone's 100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years (99/100 completed): Hesitation (1 completed): #1 Possession - One of those lauded horror films. 3/7/19 #2 Dog Star Man - Seems like it might be time to watch this one. 3/28/19 #4 Frost/Nixon - A best picture nominee I keep forgetting to watch. 4/13/19 #5 Anand - Some call it the greatest Indian film ever made. 4/23/19 new #6 Manos: The Hands of Fate - A strange title. Some call it the worst film ever made. 4/30/19
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May 1, 2019 05:13
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Thanks Franchescanado for pointing out this thread, it's exactly what i was looking for. I hope I do this correctly Zogo and don't ruin any existing system but I would suggest watching The Barefoot Contessa. It's been SEO ranked out of existance by the Food Network show but it is a good film to watch and take in everything they did back then, and how they viewed the industry in the mid 50s I was going to just list a director but I do think that there's just a large amount of films I've never seen before that'd I'd like to cut down on and enjoy Going off of my perceived no brainers List with some additions. I might be late in getting back to this thread as I have to watch movies usually alone which happens about once a week..For reference of personal tastes I love wuxia and kung fu films, with my favorite film of all time being A Touch of Zen or 5 Deadly Venoms.1. Larence of Arabia - It's three hours long I believe and it occupies the space in my brain that PC games do; I can't decide which version of it is best to watch for visual fidelity. I heard the best thing to do is sit about 6 inches from the screen also while watching it which seems....odd? 2. Paths of Glory - Another Kubrick film I haven't seen. I heard it was enjoyable and entertaining, just haven't watched it as it wasn't easily attainable to watch. 3. Seven Samurai - I have a weird love for Akira Kurasawa's Dreams but I have never watched any of his other movies. I have watched movies that say they are heavily inspired by seven samurai such as magnificant seven . 4. Citizen Kane - Yes, I know. It's not because its black and white, but it was just never a part of my culture growing up and I never heard it talked about other than when video games claimed to be them. 5. Floating Weeds - I saw that clip of Roger Eberts commentary over it and fell in love with what I was watching. I never went through with watching it as I didn't think there was a blu-ray version released and I couldn't stomache watching a DVD in 2018. However it appears it's on criterion channel!! 6. Hidden Fortress - I picked this up from a Crtierion sale after hearing how great it was and how it inspired Star Wars, but I haven't watched it yet as I felt I needed to tackle Seven Samurai, Rashoman and others first. 7. Literally any Alfred Hitchcock movie ever - Yeah. Never saw even a single one. I don't even know where to start. I 9. Stalker - A goon favorite to recommend, I bought it on criterion when it came out but I haven't gotten around to watch it. 10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - I don't believe this movie is any good, I could be very off, but I remember walking out of a Terminator 2:3D screening in Tampa Florida in 2017, seeing the theatre was playing this film again and said "man I gotta watch that someday". Hence why it's on here. Thank you all very much i'm very excited!!! I have a list of additions for the future also, including any Woody Allen movie and others. Empress Brosephine fucked around with this message at 00:30 on May 3, 2019 |
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May 3, 2019 00:21
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Empress Brosephine posted:7. Literally any Alfred Hitchcock movie ever - Yeah. Never saw even a single one. I don't even know where to start. This seems like the most shameful so start with Psycho (1960). "No one really runs away from anything. It's like a private trap that holds us in like a prison. You know what I think? I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch." The Barefoot Contessa - A very wealthy producer and his cronies hunt a dancer from Madrid (as they want her in movies). Things don't go smoothly as she has both a reluctancy to go to Hollywood and a humorous phobia concerning shoes. It was unique in that it features narration from three separate men who knew the Contessa at various points. The overlapping stories almost make it episodic. And the dialogue is rich enough to be in a radio drama or book. So very quotable and filled with zingers. It's a little like A Star Is Born (1954) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) but its world-weary analyzation of the industry goes even further. It's so cynical it might be off-putting to some as we never see the characters enjoy themselves even in the midst of all their fame, glory and success. Jealous millionaires shrieking at one another as just one example. I won't go into all the details and harebrained schemes but things end tragically in another one of those patented shocking endings. James Bond versus Godzilla (34/64 completed): Notebooks on Cinema's 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World (95/100 completed): #23 The Mother and the Whore - It's ranked highly on the TSPDT list every year. 12/10/18 #46 The Crowd – Something about NYC. 12/23/18 #83 Tabu: A Story of the South Seas - An island adventure. 10/20/18 #88 Him AKA El - I haven't seen a Luis Bunuel film lately. 1/16/19 Rolling Stone's 100 Maverick Movies of the Last 100 Years (99/100 completed): Hesitation (1 completed): #1 Possession - One of those lauded horror films. 3/7/19 #2 Dog Star Man - Seems like it might be time to watch this one. 3/28/19 #4 Frost/Nixon - A best picture nominee I keep forgetting to watch. 4/13/19 #5 Anand - Some call it the greatest Indian film ever made. 4/23/19 #6 Manos: The Hands of Fate - A strange title. Some call it the worst film ever made. 4/30/19 new #7 Summer with Monika - I feel like I've seen thirty Bergman films but there are still other acclaimed ones I've missed. 5/11/19
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May 11, 2019 21:54
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Zogo posted:This seems like the most shameful so start with Psycho (1960). I don't know why I waited but Psycho was tremendous and may be one of my favorite movies of all time right now. I think the best thing too is that somehow the "twist" was never spoiled for me either so that was nice. I think my favorite thing about the movie is that it doesn't feel that old except for the very beginning in the hotel room. Of course, i'm sure there's been papers and all kinds of examinations of the film throughout history, but Anthony Perkins was amazing of course and I can't sing his praises enough. Thanks for the reccomendation...is Psycho 2 really as good as people say it is? How was the Bates Motel TV Show? For your suggestions Zoto I reccomend...if that's the correct word...Manos:The Hands of Fate. I don't know if its against the rules to reccomend the MST3K one but I think that's the correct way to watch it the first time...but if you want to try it without the commentary then god speed. Here's my new list: 1. Lawrence of Arabia - It's three hours long I believe and it occupies the space in my brain that PC games do; I can't decide which version of it is best to watch for visual fidelity. I heard the best thing to do is sit about 6 inches from the screen also while watching it which seems....odd? 2. Paths of Glory - Another Kubrick film I haven't seen. I heard it was enjoyable and entertaining, just haven't watched it as it wasn't easily attainable to watch. 3. Seven Samurai - I have a weird love for Akira Kurasawa's Dreams but I have never watched any of his other movies. I have watched movies that say they are heavily inspired by seven samurai such as magnificant seven . 4. Citizen Kane - Yes, I know. It's not because its black and white, but it was just never a part of my culture growing up and I never heard it talked about other than when video games claimed to be them. 5. Floating Weeds - I saw that clip of Roger Eberts commentary over it and fell in love with what I was watching. I never went through with watching it as I didn't think there was a blu-ray version released and I couldn't stomache watching a DVD in 2018. However it appears it's on criterion channel!! 6. Hidden Fortress - I picked this up from a Crtierion sale after hearing how great it was and how it inspired Star Wars, but I haven't watched it yet as I felt I needed to tackle Seven Samurai, Rashoman and others first. 7. The Searchers - I love Disney Parks, and there used to be a ride called The Great Movie Ride at Disney MGM Studios that had clips of this movie on a ginormous screen. I always enjoyed watching the little clips of it but never watched the full thing. 9. Stalker - A goon favorite to recommend, I bought it on criterion when it came out but I haven't gotten around to watch it. 10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - I don't believe this movie is any good, I could be very off, but I remember walking out of a Terminator 2:3D screening in Tampa Florida in 2017, seeing the theatre was playing this film again and said "man I gotta watch that someday". Hence why it's on here.
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May 12, 2019 22:27
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Empress Brosephine, you get Citizen Kane, a movie I love and can watch again and again. Returning to this thread after a long hiatus I have watched both La Pointe Courte and Ganja & Hess. Here's what I wrote about La Pointe Courte when I watched it back in November: Admittedly rough around the edges, but literally inventing the modern cinema isn’t always gonna be smooth. I kept thinking his had to be from like 1962, but nope, Varda really did start the New Wave, define the blueprint for decades of artistic filmmaking, and also more or less handed Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard their careers on a platter. And yet it’s treated like a footnote, even within Varda’s own filmography where it’s overshadowed by Cleo from 5 to 7. Make no mistake about it, without La Pointe-Courte modern filmmaking would look completely unrecognizable. Whether it’s the conversation between the couple or the shots of cats lingering (which come to think of it remind me of Jean Vigo) or the way the movie just ends on a shot of four old men in a brass band dropping their instruments (not even a cut to black), this movie is the patient zero of the New Wave. Blessed be Varda. I finished Ganja & Hess this morning. It's a gorgeous, spellbinding film. Like Melvin Van Peebles before, Bill Gunn has created an avant-garde narrative expression of black American social strife. It's soulful, anguished, and utterly unique. I followed it up by watching Kathleen Collins' Losing Ground, which features both Gunn and Duane Jones in major roles, though a very different kind of film. Together they make for a nice double feature, probing troubled relationships (and in each Duane Jones steals Gunn's girl!) Here's my list with my remaining Halloween films added in. I've dropped Point Break because I bought tickets to go see it in the theater next month, which will be a fitting way to finally watch it. My List: Ciao! Manhattan (1972) - Another Warhol star, featuring Edie Sedgwick shortly before she died and released posthumously. (Added 4/23/2017) Les Rendez-vous d'Anna (1978) - From the ever underrated master, Chantal Akerman. (Added 7/6/2017) The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) - A major silent era classic that's been a blindspot for me for too long. (Added 3/13/2018) Audition (1999) - A light romp. (Added 4/24/2018) Someone to Watch Over Me (1987) - The Ridley Scott Slot. I don't think I've ever heard one person ever bring up this movie in conversation or on the internet ever. But it's got good reviews! (Added 5/30/2018) Alexander Nevsky (1938) - Sergei Eisenstein is probably one of my favorite filmmakers but I still have seen much of his later sound work. (Added 6/2/2018) Gaslight (1944) - I’ve read enough thinkpieces about the concept, I should probably see the original. (Added 6/9/2018) Carol (2015) - Harold, they're lesbians! (Added 6/16/2018) Black Devil Doll From Hell (1984) - Hypertrash! (Added 9/19/2018) Trouble Every Day (2001) -  (Added 10/3/2018)Eyes Without a Face (1960) - Another long overdue one. Very shameful. (Added 10/12/2018) Watched: Fort Apache; Damnation; Ran; Ordet; Purple Rain; Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages; Napoléon; Yi Yi; Faces; The Blood of a Poet; The War Room; Sanjuro; The Testament of Dr. Mabuse; Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key; Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace; Flooding with Love for the Kid; Soylent Green; The Most Dangerous Game; Street Trash; The Avenging Conscience; The Spook Who Sat By the Door; Bringing Up Baby; The Life of Juanita Castro; The Hour of the Furnaces; Au hasard Balthazar; Surname Viet Given Name Nam; Seconds; My Dinner with Andre; The Thin Man; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace; The Passion of the Christ; Grand Illusion; Fanny and Alexander; Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake; Starship Troopers; Little Lord Fauntleroy; Last Summer; Total Recall; The Blood of Jesus; I Shot Andy Warhol; Manchester by the Sea; Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome; The Viking; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; Of Gods and the Undead; The Hitch-Hiker; Nerves; The Phantom of Liberty; As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty; The Duellists; Kiss Me Deadly; Heat; The Civil War; Forbidden Planet; Cairo Station; Tetsuo, the Iron Man; Legend; Sansho the Bailiff; Society; The Blot; The Wicker Man; Creature from the Black Lagoon; The Amityville Horror; The Cat and the Canary; La Pointe-Courte; Ganja & Hess (TOTAL: 68)
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May 12, 2019 23:35
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Empress Brosephine posted:Thanks for the reccomendation...is Psycho 2 really as good as people say it is? How was the Bates Motel TV Show? I haven't seen the TV show but if you generally like 1980s horror movies I think Psycho II is fine. It's not groundbreaking or anything like the original though. I still need to watch the third and fourth films actually. Empress Brosephine posted:For your suggestions Zoto I reccomend...if that's the correct word...Manos:The Hands of Fate. I don't know if its against the rules to reccomend the MST3K one but I think that's the correct way to watch it the first time...but if you want to try it without the commentary then god speed. Yea, it's okay to recommend certain cuts/versions of a film although it's never been a requirement to fulfill that as it could be difficult in some instances. I'm just going with the original version of it.
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May 13, 2019 04:43
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I haven't read it myself, but apparently the Psycho 2 novel is a scathing meta attack on the people attempting to make the movie sequel, with the story being about Hollywood producers and directors being knocked off. e: Have seen the sequels, though. 2 and 3 are recommended. It's crazy that they work at all. Teenage Fansub fucked around with this message at 06:33 on May 13, 2019 |
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May 13, 2019 06:25
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Teenage Fansub posted:I haven't read it myself, but apparently the Psycho 2 novel is a scathing meta attack on the people attempting to make the movie sequel, with the story being about Hollywood producers and directors being knocked off. It’s funny how quickly Hitchcock became canonized and the idea of a Psycho sequel could be sacrilege. The film was only 23 years old when Psycho II was made, so comparatively it would be like doing a sequel today to something from 1996 (let’s say, for example, Independence Day or Mission: Impossible, or if you want something more prestige it’d be like doing a TV series of Fargo). And at the time Hitchcock had only been dead 3 years and his last film was 7 years prior (the distance today from the first Avengers movie for context). And through most of his career Hitchcock was seen as a pop filmmaker who exemplified Hollywood, he was a TV character with his show and his films were largely seen critically as fun and well made thrillers but not serious art, well up to the release of Psycho. Of course, after Psycho comes out is when the Cahiers du Cinema crowd in France begin hailing him as one of the greatest all time filmmakers, and people like Godard and Truffaut are finding international acclaim with “serious art films” and telling people their influence was Hitchcock. When Truffaut’s interview book with him comes out in 1966 (when he still has a few more films left in him) he finally becomes seen as a serious, *important* filmmaker worthy of total canonization. Of course we would look at filmmakers like the Coen Brothers similarly today, though they’re alive to sign off on a Fargo spinoff. And Psycho is such a singular, world changing film that it still stands tall in people’s minds that a sequel is, at the very least, unnecessary if not sacrosanct. That said, I agree Psycho II and III are surprisingly solid movies. Nothing on par with the original but fun and engaging 80s horror fare. Psycho IV is pretty bad though and I haven’t watched Bates Motel. edit: It’s worth adding Hitchcock was also boosted by the Cahiers group’s auteur theory gaining popularity in America through Andrew Sarris in the late 60s, and Hitchcock was one of the first filmmakers to have the label ascribed to him. TrixRabbi fucked around with this message at 14:38 on May 13, 2019 |
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May 13, 2019 14:33
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Perkins gives an all-time great performance in Psycho II though, so it's worth seeing for that alone. It's every bit as interesting and layered as the original but in a different way.
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May 13, 2019 14:55
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Awesome thanks for the thoughts and stories...really enlightening and fun to read will tackle Citizen Kane soon!
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May 13, 2019 15:31
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Chimes At Midnight The Criterion Channel doesn't have subtitles for this movie yet, which is a big problem. Theoretically watching, and therefore hearing, Shakespeare is preferable to reading Shakespeare, because there's so much interpretation that has to go into the delivery, but while this is a huge step up from the scratchy 16mm print I saw in Seattle a decade ago, the combination of low-rent sound, detailed dialogue, and an interpretation of the spoken text that I might call "fresco expressionism" means I really did not understand at least a third of what was said. Nonetheless, it scans! This is partially due to the basic functions of a Shakespeare play where, even if you don't get the finer points, the overall plot is hinted at enough that the things that are meant to be impactful, are, but also because of the terrific performances and incredible directing. The cinematography communicates as much as the dialogue, the way the characters are placed is deeply suggestive and highly spacially literate, and the overall effect is so theatrical that it almost feels exotic:  The imagery overall is an embarassment of riches - frenetic, mystical, earthy, grand, everything you could want from this setting is here in its most amplified form and it never feels formless, which is incredible given how piecemeal the production was. Welles seamlessly weaves a narrative out of the fragmentary story of Falstaff who, in the plays, is a recurring fat joke and, eventually, made an example of in one of those great scenes of cruelty Shakespare and his ilk were so fond of. By laser-focusing on Falstaff, Welles mines him for all of his pathos and this film is, primarily, a nihilistic tragedy. It has the bitter undercurrent of a Dogme 95 film, but it also has Welles's literally tremendous humanity at the center of it, and his love of Falstaff keeps the film from becoming an oppressive slog. It's a deeply complex and extremely well-realized film. Welles uses Shakespeare's text not only to make a great Shakespearian film, but to dig deeper into Falstaff's character and all of his facets - aging, loneliness, pariahism. Hal, kinged, turns to Falstaff and rebukes him, having lost his humanity to the crown whose primary use in the film is to inflict grueling wartime slaughter (in one of the greatest battle scenes ever - it was hilarious going from this to watching the new Game of Thrones episode). He later, in a clever piece of textual recontextualizing, pardons Falstaff, but by this time the effect of the monolithic monarchy has already played out. Welles uses Falstaff to attack not only the cruelties of the state, but the way empathy is degraded when human selfishness moves beyond the personal sphere and becomes regional, political. What divides Hal from Falstaff in that moment but the crown? What use is a system if it isn't kinder than the people occupying it? 10/10 shamezone 1) L'Eclisse - discontent movie 2) Ivan's Childhood - war kids 3) God's Country - louis malle documentary 4) Othello - shakespeare movie (welles) 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) Watership Down - buny [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, Late Autumn 8/10, Chimes at Midnight 10/10 (total: 157) TrixRabbi gets Alexander Nevsky
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May 14, 2019 04:40
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Hope you enjoy this nice family movie about bunniesMagic Hate Ball posted:
8 1/2 A famous director finds himself in a creative dry spell. He spends most of his time juggling his love affairs and avoiding making decisions about the movie. It's poignant, humorous and very surreal. There are dream sequences, flashbacks, and scenes where it's not clear at all what is real. Characters from Guido's past appear in the present, ageless and unchanged. Interesting use of music and silence and it's a beautiful film to look at. The narrative is not difficult to follow, but there's a lot going on here and it would I think benefit from a second viewing to fully appreciate it. My List: 1) (highest ranked imdb) Andhadhun Really unfamiliar with Indian cinema in general 2) (comedy) Bringing up Baby 😺 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) Wings The first winner 5) (foreign language) Aguire, the Wrath of God Never seen a Herzog 6) (Monster) Critters Best known of the Gremlins knockoffs 7) (Horror) Misery Ow mah legs 8) (sci fi/fantasy) Logan's Run Feelin old 9) (epic) Dr Zhivago Just very famous 10) (wildcard) Quardophenia mods vs rockers Watched (61): 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; Easy Rider; Office Space; Ghost in the Shell (1995); The Kid; Freaks (1932); The Abyss; Ben Hur (1959); Poltergeist (1982); Escape from New York; Once Upon a Time in America; Phantasm; Dracula (1958); Videodrome; Slumdog Millionaire; The Blob (1958); The Blob (1988); My Fair Lady; Avengers: Infinity War; Cinema Paradiso; 8 1/2
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May 15, 2019 11:05
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bitterandtwisted posted:
Something I watched recently referenced this...I can't remember what it was but it was interesting to see that even 40 odd years later it still has a appreciation to it from people. Personally, I think its more of a watch once to experience it then forget it forever type of thing, but its worth checking out. This is your pick My recent selection was.... Citizen Kane Wow. Like Psycho, not too much that can't be said about this movie that hasn't already been said but let me add my voice into one thing...what the gently caress was up with that peacock near the end! Scared the poo poo outta me. Anyways, I enjoyed the film. It hasn't aged too too badly, although I don't think in modern times people would be so invested over a big name moguls last words as they were back then...but the more I thought about it the more I realized that if Steve Jobs went this same way with some mysterious phrase as his last words then it would've been no different. It was interesting to see Kanes turn from everyman, friend of everyone to his ego taking entirely over and forcing the opera singers bad performances down everyones throat. I enjoyed it and was very enjoyable to see a movie from early 40s that wasn't full of stereotypes or ridiculous acting...everyone seemed real or close to it and not a farce like how Stagecoach treated its characters only two years later...maybe the medium matured that quickly? I don't know but its interesting. Clever uses of sound mixing and transitions also in the film that mustve been a nightmare to complete back then. My new List: 1. Lawrence of Arabia - It's three hours long I believe and it occupies the space in my brain that PC games do; I can't decide which version of it is best to watch for visual fidelity. I heard the best thing to do is sit about 6 inches from the screen also while watching it which seems....odd? 2. Paths of Glory - Another Kubrick film I haven't seen. I heard it was enjoyable and entertaining, just haven't watched it as it wasn't easily attainable to watch. 3. Seven Samurai - I have a weird love for Akira Kurasawa's Dreams but I have never watched any of his other movies. I have watched movies that say they are heavily inspired by seven samurai such as magnificant seven . 4. Any other Orson Welles besides Citizen Kane - I've never seen anything he's done except for this I realized. That includes things he's been in. I heard The Third Man is pretty great also. 5. Floating Weeds - I saw that clip of Roger Eberts commentary over it and fell in love with what I was watching. I never went through with watching it as I didn't think there was a blu-ray version released and I couldn't stomache watching a DVD in 2018. However it appears it's on criterion channel!! 6. Hidden Fortress - I picked this up from a Crtierion sale after hearing how great it was and how it inspired Star Wars, but I haven't watched it yet as I felt I needed to tackle Seven Samurai, Rashoman and others first. 7. The Searchers - I love Disney Parks, and there used to be a ride called The Great Movie Ride at Disney MGM Studios that had clips of this movie on a ginormous screen. I always enjoyed watching the little clips of it but never watched the full thing. 9. Stalker - A goon favorite to recommend, I bought it on criterion when it came out but I haven't gotten around to watch it. 10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - I don't believe this movie is any good, I could be very off, but I remember walking out of a Terminator 2:3D screening in Tampa Florida in 2017, seeing the theatre was playing this film again and said "man I gotta watch that someday". Hence why it's on here.
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May 15, 2019 18:28
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I thought it was pretty great, so The Third Man it isEmpress Brosephine posted:
The Lord of the Rings (1978) I had pretty low expectations going in, but I was pleasantly surprised at how good this was. It was interesting to see the similarities and differences between this and the Jackson films. Both were clearly made by fans of the books so it's natural to see recurring lines of dialogue, but there were also certain scenes, like the Hobbits hiding under the tree roots from the black rider that are shot very similarly. Both have a stylised prologue with voiceover giving the history of the Ring. Why is everyone pronouncing Saruman as "Aruman"? I did like they included a line where Frodo threatens to use the Ring against Gollum, which was missing from Jackson's films. I think it's important to let the audience know the ring of power has power beyond granting invisibility. The character designs are... not great. Very generic, dated and ugly to look at. Boromir is a barbarian for some reason and Gimli just looks like a regular sized human. There's heavy use of rotoscoping and at times it's just barely disguised live action, particularly during the battles. It's unusual, but I found it strangely effective. This was a solid, ambitious attempt at a full adaptation and I am saddened it wasn't completed. My List: 1) (highest ranked imdb) Andhadhun Really unfamiliar with Indian cinema in general 2) (comedy) Bringing up Baby 😺 3) (animation) Grave of the Fireflies Ghibli's not let me down so far 4) (Academy Award winner) Wings The first winner 5) (foreign language) Aguire, the Wrath of God Never seen a Herzog 6) (Monster) Critters Best known of the Gremlins knockoffs 7) (Horror) Misery Ow mah legs 8) (sci fi/fantasy) Logan's Run Feelin old 9) (epic) Dr Zhivago Just very famous 10) (wildcard) Quardophenia mods vs rockers Watched (62): 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; Easy Rider; Office Space; Ghost in the Shell (1995); The Kid; Freaks (1932); The Abyss; Ben Hur (1959); Poltergeist (1982); Escape from New York; Once Upon a Time in America; Phantasm; Dracula (1958); Videodrome; Slumdog Millionaire; The Blob (1958); The Blob (1988); My Fair Lady; Avengers: Infinity War; Cinema Paradiso; 8 1/2; The Lord of the Rings (1978)
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May 16, 2019 12:15
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bitterandtwisted posted:
Honestly, you're the first person I've come across that anything good to say about this movie. It was sort of completed by the team that did the old Hobbit cartoon, called "Return of the King" I think.
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May 16, 2019 13:49
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BiggerBoat posted:Honestly, you're the first person I've come across that anything good to say about this movie. I can totally get why it's not liked by many, especially the art style, which is so unappealing. I wouldn't recommend it to most people, but as a fanboy of the books going in with no great expectations I kinda enjoyed it 
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May 16, 2019 14:32
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Empress Brosephine posted:It was interesting to see Kanes turn from everyman, friend of everyone to his ego taking entirely over and forcing the opera singers bad performances down everyones throat. I enjoyed it and was very enjoyable to see a movie from early 40s that wasn't full of stereotypes or ridiculous acting...everyone seemed real or close to it and not a farce like how Stagecoach treated its characters only two years later...maybe the medium matured that quickly? I don't think it's an issue of age, though Citizen Kane did bring quite a few narrative innovations, so much as that the two films belong to very different genres. Citizen Kane is a character study, and you obviously need a complex character to make that work. Stagecoach is an action film with a mere 90-minutes running time. You can't introduce nine multi-faceted people and provide thrilling setpieces in such a short time span, so the script relies on the audience to fill in a lot of the blanks, which is why each character in the film serves as a stand-in for a western archetype and/or one of America's social classes, making them very intuitively accessible.
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May 16, 2019 22:59
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Samuel Clemens posted:I don't think it's an issue of age, though Citizen Kane did bring quite a few narrative innovations, so much as that the two films belong to very different genres. Citizen Kane is a character study, and you obviously need a complex character to make that work. Stagecoach is an action film with a mere 90-minutes running time. You can't introduce nine multi-faceted people and provide thrilling setpieces in such a short time span, so the script relies on the audience to fill in a lot of the blanks, which is why each character in the film serves as a stand-in for a western archetype and/or one of America's social classes, making them very intuitively accessible. Kane was also the first film to really introduce a lot film making techniques that we now take for granted.
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May 17, 2019 00:28
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BiggerBoat posted:Kane was also the first film to really introduce a lot film making techniques that we now take for granted. I recommend Roger Ebert's commentary track for Kane. He points out how a lot of the shots were composed using special effects that we might not even notice today. Things like panning up a pillar and then cutting to a shot of a papier mache model of a headto make you think it's a giant stone bust atop the pillar, or shooting Kane in close-up immediately after a crowd shot to make you think he's giving a speech to a lot of people.
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May 17, 2019 17:23
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Funny to contrast it with Stagecoach too, as quite famously Welles loved and watched Stagecoach dozens of times -- often asking more experienced filmmakers about specific shots and elements of the movie -- as he was preparing to make Citizen Kane. They're very different movies, of course, but on a note about "ridiculous acting," think of how a film like, say, John Wick or Mad Max: Fury Road is acted versus how a film like Moonlight is acted. Apples and oranges, with styles and characters playing to their specific stories. Stagecoach is an expertly directed film that knows exactly the types of performances it wants from its actors in order to tell its particular action/melodrama story.
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May 17, 2019 19:26
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