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Manhattan is kind of a weird one because it was pretty rightly acclaimed (the cinematography!!) and is actually a very good movie...except that it’s literally about Woody Allen dating a teenager. For movies that include him, I’d suggest Sleeper, Annie Hall, or Hannah and Her Sisters, and for those without, Purple Rose of Cairo or Match Point. I also really like Another Woman and Interiors, but I feel like those are kind of deeper dives.
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Jan 28, 2021 04:26
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That’s a good one too. Nasty and funny and dark. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person on the planet who actually likes Alice.
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Jan 28, 2021 06:01
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Tetsuo: The Iron Man Hot diggety! I'd say the first two thirds of this or so are one of the best films I've ever seen, and the last third is mostly a step down, but that's still like 45 minutes of unmatchable cinema bliss. The only thing I knew about this going into it was that it was like Eraserhead on amphetamines, which is fairly accurate in that you get the same level of audio-visual overload but in a more acute, hectic fashion. The use of stop motion reminded me a lot of Svankmajer's Alice, constantly warping and inventing, with a similar kind of claustrophobic audio landscape. You could just release the audio from this film as an album and it would be a satisfying industrial nightmare on its own. As a side note, something I love about older films is how selective foley often was, as opposed to modern techniques where it feels like the foley is like eight hundred layers of room tones and ambient noises. Obviously this is heightened here, because it was a very, very cheap movie, but the total artificiality of the soundtrack, the fact that it's completely expressionistic, peppered with both silence and chaotic discord, is a perfect match for the explosive creativity of the visuals. So much happens at once all the time in this that it's hard for me to select moments to discuss, but some bits stand out to me, such as the sexy car crash saxophone interludes, the eating scene (talk about foley), and the vision of the "metal world" towards the end. This is true expressionism and one of the great examples of what film is capable of as a medium. 10/10 shamezone 1) Cries and Whispers - red movie 2) The Blue Angel - Dietrich movie 3) One Sings, The Other Doesn't - varda! 4) The Deer Hunter - wedding movie 5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite 6) Last House on the Left - violent movie 7) Salesman - real movie 8) Don't Look Now - venetian movie 9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie 10) A League Of Their Own - baseball 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, Late Autumn 8/10, Chimes at Midnight 10/10 Watership Down 9/10, Ugetsu 9/10, Veronika Voss 9/10, The Hidden Fortress 7/10, Close-Up 10/10, Journey to Italy 10/10, L'Eclisse 7/10, Andrei Rublev 11/10, Vagabond 9/10, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 9/10, Shoplifters 10/10, Escape From New York 10/10, Die Hard 10/10, The Last Picture Show 9/10, Mr Smith Goes To Washington 8/10, Saturday Night Fever 9/10, First Blood 7/10, Mad Max 7/10, Come and See 10/10, Friday the 13th 7/10, Predator 5/10, Sicario 10/10, Grizzly Man 9/10, Cache 10/10, The Evil Dead 9/10, Tetsuo: The Iron Man (total: 182) CriminyCraffft gets The Godfather
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Feb 21, 2021 20:31
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One Sings, The Other Doesn't This is a difficult one! Varda takes a sort of epistolary approach, framing the narrative as a series of post cards. While this is befitting of the sumptuous travelogue vibe, it also means that the actual dramatic arc of the two women, Pauline (nicknamed "Pomme") and Suzanne, comes in tiny scattered pieces, and it feels less sprawling and more sporadic. The first chunk is particularly problematic, with a lengthy, dour prologue that's narratively important but also kind of a red herring for a first-time watcher, and the structure of brief glimpses of their lives makes it tough to get close to the characters. Unlike Vagabond or Cleo, this film is less essayistic, so instead of a sequence of focused vignettes, it's more like an assemblage of...well, post cards. We glean what we can. However, it also pays off. As things move along, and time passes (it takes place over a period of about a decade), we start to get a sense of who these two women actually are when certain elements of their personalities stick around, or change more slowly, while other facets come and go. That's really where the magic comes in, with the slow portraiture. Suzanne moves at a steady pace, while Pomme finds herself going here and there. One keeps trying out new personas and attitudes, the other gradually builds a fully realized version of herself. We can tell when one is tricking herself, and can sense disaster, and we hope earnestly for the success of the other's carefully picked love. Two different people, becoming two different, but complete, people, in two different ways. Varda also points repeatedly to the importance of women supporting one another, and about the value of alternative family structures. The unit that Pomme and Suzanne form is founded on a heavy moment of trust and sacrifice - Pomme lies to her parents about needing money for a school trip to pay for Suzanne's secret abortion - and they remain unshakable through the following years. They also form their own families, finding and creating trust where they can, with Suzanne escaping her horrible parents via help from another local woman, and Pomme on the road with her all-female band. One of the most difficult moments comes when Pomme marries an Iranian man who presents himself as a feminist when in France, but, when she moves with him to Iran, quietly suffocates her by demanding she be a wife and nothing more. And yet, when she returns to France to have their child, she struggles to leave him. Varda's portrayal of this tortured ambiguity is so subtle and complex, and is aided by the time we've spent dropping in on her throughout the preceding years. We are intimately familiar with what she hoped for, what she expected, and what she sees in him, and of the time she's already spent, but also with the agonizing collapse of her self-imposed illusions about her life in Iran. While I suggested earlier that this isn't as much an "essayistic" film like Cleo or Vagabond, where a thesis is analyzed and dissected via clear vignettes, One Sings is convincing in its own earthy way. Varda compares and contrasts the two characters, but all of their experiences point towards the same struggle for liberation, and she ultimately paints a finely detailed picture of what liberation can mean. Pomme and Suzanne work their way from the damp hell of pre-lib France into a sunny feminist paradise, and it never feels false or fake. A quick word on the music and cinematography. The music is pretty good, though most of the songs, like the story itself, are presented in fragments, and kind of blur together. The cinematography, though, is unbelievable, and has the same aura of her other two color films I've seen (Vagabond and Le Bonheur). The winking visual jokes are subdued here, but the photographic observational style is breathtaking, and I can't remember another film that was so sumptously textured. It's also all rendered in the creamy tones that the other Varda restorations have (and that I've seen in many other restorations), which is mostly a boon. The colors are rich - warm indigos and browns, cozy greens, and saturated, appealing teals - but the tint leans hard in some places and sometimes it looks like someone urinated in the film canister (this is particularly noticeable in afternoon scenes - the sky turns an unmistakable pee color). This is a movie that I kind of wish I'd seen before I'd seen it, but having seen it, I'm pretty happy. 8/10 shamezone 1) Cries and Whispers - red movie 2) The Blue Angel - Dietrich movie 3) Daughters of the Dust - movie i want to see movie 4) The Deer Hunter - wedding movie 5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite movie 6) Last House on the Left - violent movie 7) Salesman - real movie 8) Don't Look Now - venetian movie 9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie 10) A League Of Their Own - baseball 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, Late Autumn 8/10, Chimes at Midnight 10/10 Watership Down 9/10, Ugetsu 9/10, Veronika Voss 9/10, The Hidden Fortress 7/10, Close-Up 10/10, Journey to Italy 10/10, L'Eclisse 7/10, Andrei Rublev 11/10, Vagabond 9/10, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 9/10, Shoplifters 10/10, Escape From New York 10/10, Die Hard 10/10, The Last Picture Show 9/10, Mr Smith Goes To Washington 8/10, Saturday Night Fever 9/10, First Blood 7/10, Mad Max 7/10, Come and See 10/10, Friday the 13th 7/10, Predator 5/10, Sicario 10/10, Grizzly Man 9/10, Cache 10/10, The Evil Dead 9/10, Tetsuo: The Iron Man 10/10, One Sings, The Other Doesn't 8/10 (total: 183) CriminyCraffft gets A Woman Under the Influence
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Mar 12, 2021 18:20
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The Last House on the Left I'm extremely keen on the collision of music and subject matter that seem to be at cross-purposes. Arguably, the most common use of music in a film is when it's sympathetic to the subject, effectively guiding and amplifying the viewer's response. But I'm almost more excited when it's used jolt us away from what we're seeing, to force us to dissect the intent of the creators and our own reactions. Last House uses this to such an extreme effect that it becomes nearly bewildering, but Craven keeps his use of it consistent enough to retain a satirical edge. What exactly is being satired? It's hard to say, and maybe I'm just being charitable (I've read nothing about it except for its difficulties being distributed) but the film feels, in part, like a send-up of hippie exploitation films. This is something that I've seen touched on in various other movies (Fritz the Cat, for example, which came out the same year), but the juxtaposition of the subject (murder, rape, etc) with the familiar stylistic elements of the late 60s and early 70s (lilting guitar music, jangling banjos, zany bluegrass) is done in such an intense way that it's overwhelming. This also means that the film is essentially a jolly, upbeat comedy about a gang of rascally murder-rapists, and it keeps that conceit up all the way to the final act. It's not told entirely from their perspective, but their perception of the situation is what dominates. Jaunty music plays while they're carrying the passed-out body of one of the girls they've abducted, and while one of the girls is being raped in the woods, a soft, borderline maudlin song plays, her whimpers and cries burbling under it. The two cops who are hot on their trail are constantly beset by comical stupidity and the interference of the distrustful locals, and when it comes time for the parents of their victims to take revenge, it's like Freddy vs Jason. Also, per the John Waters gif above, it uses unknown actors who are all fantastic in how they bring themselves and their mannerisms to the screen. You get a great sense of the time and place from all of them. Sandra Peabody, who plays the lead girl, looks and sounds so much like my mom did back then that it was kind of a trip for me, particularly in the opening scene where she squabbles with her parents about going to a concert. It's a bizarrely lively movie in all aspects, right down to the unexpected inclusion of a reference to Millais' Ophelia painting. I was prepared for almost none of what this movie served me, but I loved all of it. 10/10 shamezone 1) Cries and Whispers - red movie 2) The Blue Angel - Dietrich movie 3) Daughters of the Dust - movie i want to see movie 4) The Deer Hunter - wedding movie 5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite movie 6) The Times of Harvey Milk - milk movie 7) Salesman - real movie 8) Don't Look Now - venetian movie 9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie 10) A League Of Their Own - baseball 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, Late Autumn 8/10, Chimes at Midnight 10/10 Watership Down 9/10, Ugetsu 9/10, Veronika Voss 9/10, The Hidden Fortress 7/10, Close-Up 10/10, Journey to Italy 10/10, L'Eclisse 7/10, Andrei Rublev 11/10, Vagabond 9/10, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 9/10, Shoplifters 10/10, Escape From New York 10/10, Die Hard 10/10, The Last Picture Show 9/10, Mr Smith Goes To Washington 8/10, Saturday Night Fever 9/10, First Blood 7/10, Mad Max 7/10, Come and See 10/10, Friday the 13th 7/10, Predator 5/10, Sicario 10/10, Grizzly Man 9/10, Cache 10/10, The Evil Dead 9/10, Tetsuo: The Iron Man 10/10, One Sings, The Other Doesn't 8/10, The Last House on the Left 10/10 (total: 184) twernt gets Stop Making Sense
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Apr 27, 2021 20:58
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Cries and Whispers "Harold, they're lesbians!" I saw this when I was a teenager and didn't understand it, and all I remembered about it was the scene with the glass, and the Pieta moment (which is also not something I was familiar with until I looked at the wikipedia page). Revisiting it after having subsequently consumed most of the rest of his major works is kind of funny, because in some ways it stands pretty firmly on its own, but is also a perfect pass-through from his earlier, more regimented films to his later, looser ones. It also comes across as weirdly awkward in places. The structure is off-kilter, a pattern that struggles to coalesce, and there were a few moments that felt like something from a very earnest student film (a character sits...thinks...moves her hands...). However, it's also highly layered. There's the fundamental critique of class and gender expectations in how the sisters (and their husbands) treat Agnes's maid and de facto caregiver, essentially letting her do the hard work and then swooping in to take advantage of the moments where they might feel useful in a facile sense, and then coldly dismissing her. In the final scenes, the characters are wearing mourning and winter garb at the same time, big black fur hats perched on their veiled faces, almost no skin showing at all, literally shielded from one another by the fashion of their high culture. This after all the scenes of brilliant white dresses against blood-red wallpaper, and clammy skin in dark hallways, comes as a punchline. They are shut up forever. It also lingers on the difficulty of making basic connections, even among the sisters, let alone the wives and their husbands. Ullmann is particularly nervewracking here, her character locking herself in a childhood state, but fooling nobody. In one of the opening scenes, Ullmann's character is woken from her vigil over Agnes by her other sister. She sits upright, smiling innocently, and says "I fell asleep!". She tosses and turns in her childhood bed, gazing at a painting of her deceased mother (also played by Ullmann). She can be forgiven for anything, she seems to think, if it is to be assumed by others that she is incapable of managing responsibility. In a flashback, her lover, the doctor treating Agnes, makes her look at herself in a mirror. The camera zooms in on her face, on her watching herself as he tells her, in painful detail, all of the things about it that are terrible, that indicate the vicious nature underneath. Because Ullmann is a masterful actor, her silent reaction is like an aria, and what we witness is terrifying. I thought several times while watching this about my husband's grandmother's death a couple of years ago. She was a lively, outrageous old woman with vast reserves of boundless energy, whose body suddenly gave out on her. She spent her last weeks being dosed by her daughter (a nurse) with morphine as her organs shut down, cloistered in her hot, dark bedroom, the shades drawn. You have to wonder, sometimes, about the value of the past. If your last moments are wracked with agony, what does a sunny memory of an afternoon of love matter? Furthermore, how can a person, who is still living, give themselves over entirely to someone whose life is at an end, if it hasn't already been functionally snuffed by suffering? Agnes does. Her devotion is one of the most purely moving acts in any movie I've seen. Special mention to Ingrid Thulin, who plays the elder daughter. She's just really good in this. 10/10 shamezone 1) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - doll movie 2) The Blue Angel - Dietrich movie 3) Daughters of the Dust - movie i want to see movie 4) The Deer Hunter - wedding movie 5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite movie 6) The Times of Harvey Milk - milk movie 7) Salesman - real movie 8) Don't Look Now - venetian movie 9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie 10) A League Of Their Own - baseball 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, Late Autumn 8/10, Chimes at Midnight 10/10 Watership Down 9/10, Ugetsu 9/10, Veronika Voss 9/10, The Hidden Fortress 7/10, Close-Up 10/10, Journey to Italy 10/10, L'Eclisse 7/10, Andrei Rublev 11/10, Vagabond 9/10, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 9/10, Shoplifters 10/10, Escape From New York 10/10, Die Hard 10/10, The Last Picture Show 9/10, Mr Smith Goes To Washington 8/10, Saturday Night Fever 9/10, First Blood 7/10, Mad Max 7/10, Come and See 10/10, Friday the 13th 7/10, Predator 5/10, Sicario 10/10, Grizzly Man 9/10, Cache 10/10, The Evil Dead 9/10, Tetsuo: The Iron Man 10/10, One Sings, The Other Doesn't 8/10, The Last House on the Left 10/10, Cries and Whispers 10/10 (total: 185) Basebf555 gets Casablanca (my real movie shame is that I don't really like it) Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jun 4, 2021 |
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Jun 4, 2021 21:23
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I feel like F For Fake is the perfect movie version of just sitting around with Orson Welles listening to him tell you about random stuff, which he was apparently extremely good at and could do for hours.
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Jun 25, 2021 18:16
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Barry Lyndon is basically Failson: The Movie, and if they weren't both so goddamn long I'd say it would make a great double feature with Eyes Wide Shut.
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Jul 1, 2021 19:14
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Don't Look Now isn't on the Criterion Channel anymore so I watched: Salesman "Money is being made in the bible business. It's a fabulous business, it's a good business. All I can say to people who aren't making the money, it's their fault." These frightening words are spoken towards the start of the film at a convention for bible-sellers by a kind of nightmarish, soft-faced bully manager. He has the perfect temperament and style for the role - friendly, joking, kidding enough to make you feel like he's your well-meaning older brother, but under this are rings and rings of sharp, gnashing teeth, each one stamped with a dollar sign. He travels with the four salesmen featured in the film, coralling them from place to place and cajoling them to action with just world platitudes like the one above. Like a lot of great documentaries, Salesman acts as a pocket-sized mirror to a vast system of problems. The bully manager, for example, is a perfect summation of not just the toxicities of capitalism (if you can't produce, it's your fault, and when capitalism tosses you aside to die, it's your fault) but of the dismal lie of postwar America. The idea that anyone could be self-made, that all you had to do was take advantage of everything America provided, and you would doubtlessly be flung upwards into comfort and happiness, and that if you couldn't...it's your fault. And because it's your fault, it's not the responsibility of the system to take care of you once you've failed. Another reflection: on the ever-present fiery collision of capitalism and theology, of religion being all stick and no carrot, wielded with the purpose of sapping funds from suckers. Buy, and be blessed. Sell, and be saved. Four salesmen, four pathetic losers, struggling to scrape chump change out of suburban pocketbooks, lingering in living rooms and endlessly needling housewives with chintzy picture plates of Jesus. You can't hate them, just pity them, because the Maysles do such a good job of illuminating them as people, suffering and hoping like anyone else. It's also a fantastic snapshot of the era, from the hairstyles to the houses, the sturdy, snowed-in homes in Boston and the brand-new Florida bungalows, the unrestrained accents in the children and the parents, the loping speech rhythms. One salesman is sent to pursue leads in a Florida town that's bizarrely themed, like a section of Disneyland, to random Arabian Nights imagery. The camera whizzes past intersection signs - Alibaba St and Sesame Rd - and the salesman circles back, lost, to the fake Middle-Eastern arches of the city hall. Elsewhere are couches populated by wives and their husbands, TVs playing sappy Christmas programs. This was really an era in which everything was figured out, everything was coming to you at the push of a button, everything was informed, cultured, and ready-to-eat. Viewing it after so many years of decay, those same brand-new Florida bungalows now rotting and going underwater, those ludicrous picture-plate bibles long ago tossed (heirloom my rear end), those ways of speaking and ways of knowing people phased out, is surreal and discomforting. On the surface are many indicators of a passed society, but below that are all the same worms. 10/10 shamezone 1) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - doll movie 2) The Blue Angel - Dietrich movie 3) Daughters of the Dust - movie i want to see movie 4) The Deer Hunter - wedding movie 5) The Tree of Wooden Clogs - mike leigh's favorite movie 6) The Times of Harvey Milk - milk movie 7) The Long Good Friday - hoskins movie 8) Nomadland - recent movie 9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie 10) A League Of Their Own - baseball movie [sub][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 Watership Down 9/10, Ugetsu 9/10, Veronika Voss 9/10, The Hidden Fortress 7/10, Close-Up 10/10, Journey to Italy 10/10, L'Eclisse 7/10, Andrei Rublev 11/10, Vagabond 9/10, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 9/10, Shoplifters 10/10, Escape From New York 10/10, Die Hard 10/10, The Last Picture Show 9/10, Mr Smith Goes To Washington 8/10, Saturday Night Fever 9/10, First Blood 7/10, Mad Max 7/10, Come and See 10/10, Friday the 13th 7/10, Predator 5/10, Sicario 10/10, Grizzly Man 9/10, Cache 10/10, The Evil Dead 9/10, Tetsuo: The Iron Man 10/10, One Sings, The Other Doesn't 8/10, The Last House on the Left 10/10, Cries and Whispers 10/10, Salesman 10/10 (total: 186) Twernt gets Hoop Dreams Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Jul 2, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 23:02
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I don't think the de facto main character sells any, but the others do sell a few, or at least close a sale. Also, as someone who has done arts telefundraising/ticket selling, it's really funny how little the industry has changed. Not only were we told we were doing a good thing ("you're helping the arts!"), but the degree to which the job itself was essentially a big roulette wheel was constantly downplayed by daily meetings where we were told that following the script = success!
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Jul 2, 2021 16:25
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Suspicion is iconic if just for that glass of milk.
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Aug 9, 2021 15:58
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I find it easier to vibe with the subbed versions, which feel more subdued to me for some reason.
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Aug 9, 2021 16:37
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Just watch the video of David O Russell having a tantrum on-set and move on with your life.
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Nov 22, 2021 00:01
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 The Tree of Wooden Clogs This might be the best film about spirituality and faith that I've ever seen. I can see why Mike Leigh holds in such high regard - much like in his own movies, the characters here are drawn with clear strokes, and then are set free to develop, slowly changing through repetition and variation. It's a bit daunting to approach as a movie, being over three hours, with limited dialogue and subdued cinematography, but the observation of the people is what fills the time. We get a wonderful sense of their community, their beliefs, and their personalities, and it never feels dour or trudging. Small moments, like the illness of a cow, take on mammoth dramatic proportions because we've spent so much time becoming intimately familiar with these people and how such small things can make or break them. The soundtrack works in a similar way, and contributes to the theme of faith. There is, from what I recall, only one real nondiagetic musical element, which is a series of Bach organ pieces. They are, like the lives of the characters, austere, and it's also fitting that this kind of music is likely the only kind of music, besides their own singing (of which they do some), that they would hear regularly. It floats over the flat landscapes and the ragged interiors, often just a solitary note followed by two or three in somber harmony, but, as is typical of Bach, these spare harmonies sound like echoes from heaven, an earthly reflection of a kind of purity that we can't comprehend, and as such, are laid over with a gentle melancholy. There is very little to be faithful for, the music seems to suggest, but what there is is absolutely essential. There is also a repeated touching on the human connection element of spirituality. The building all the characters live in is owned by a rich landlord who exploits their poverty, and this comes into play in various ways, including the title of the film - a child's clog breaks, and the father, in need to good carving wood, is forced to chop down and steal one of the landlord's trees. These things are woven into the film's spare tapestry, and in a worse film could come across as cheaply anecdotal or even flismy proselytism, but because it works on such a small (and long) scale, the points come across organically. We come to really, deeply understand the sense of community between these people, and how this network of giving, and forgiving, is what, on the most basic level, keeps things going. A note on the restoration used by Criterion: it loving sucks! I've seen many lousy Ritrovata restorations (particularly The Color of Pomegranates), but this has to be the most appalling so far. There are almost no scenes that look remotely passable - at best, they do a decent job of capturing the dewy freshness of a morning, or the yellow, dusty heat of midday, but elsewhere scenes are crushed with weird, muddy shadows and pukey teal highlights. The scenes in the church are some of the worst offenders. Apparently there's an alternate restoration that's much better, and I would absolutely suggest seeking it out if you intend to watch this. 11/10 shamezone 1) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - doll movie 2) The Blue Angel - Dietrich movie 3) Daughters of the Dust - movie i want to see movie 4) The Deer Hunter - wedding movie 5) The Sixth Sense - ghosts!! 6) The Times of Harvey Milk - milk movie 7) The Long Good Friday - hoskins movie 8) Nomadland - recent movie 9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie 10) A League Of Their Own - baseball 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, Late Autumn 8/10, Chimes at Midnight 10/10 Watership Down 9/10, Ugetsu 9/10, Veronika Voss 9/10, The Hidden Fortress 7/10, Close-Up 10/10, Journey to Italy 10/10, L'Eclisse 7/10, Andrei Rublev 11/10, Vagabond 9/10, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 9/10, Shoplifters 10/10, Escape From New York 10/10, Die Hard 10/10, The Last Picture Show 9/10, Mr Smith Goes To Washington 8/10, Saturday Night Fever 9/10, First Blood 7/10, Mad Max 7/10, Come and See 10/10, Friday the 13th 7/10, Predator 5/10, Sicario 10/10, Grizzly Man 9/10, Cache 10/10, The Evil Dead 9/10, Tetsuo: The Iron Man 10/10, One Sings, The Other Doesn't 8/10, The Last House on the Left 10/10, Cries and Whispers 10/10, Salesman 10/10. The Tree of Wooden Clogs 11/10 (total: 187) Zogo gets My Life To Live
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May 23, 2022 21:00
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The Sixth Sense By the time I was old enough to see this, I knew the twist, and so I just never got around to seeing it because nothing else about it compelled me. That's the problem with films that are notable for having a twist - you develop the impression that everything else about it is secondary to the twist. Sometimes you're right, but a film that's good and is capped with a decent twist remains watchable even if you know how everything is upended. In a lot of ways, The Sixth Sense is a fairly good film in its own right, but I found myself deeply enjoying it in the same way that I enjoy Columbo, where you obtain pleasure from seeing how things move towards a predetermined conclusion. Part of me is sad that I'll never get to experience it the way audiences did when it premiered, which must've been pretty amazing, but Shyamalan has so much fun using the language of film to create a kind of alternate universe movie up to the point where Willis realises he's been (spoilers, I guess) dead the whole time that deconstructing this fakery becomes its own form of entertainment. There are some fairly obvious moments, like the scene at the restaurant where his wife doesn't talk to him and we're meant to believe she's being standoffish because he was late to their anniversary dinner, but also more subtle touches. I think my favorite was when he appears at Cole's house, sitting opposite his mom in the living room, when Cole comes home from school. The way it's shot is perfectly standard film shorthand that implies that he's been there for a little bit and they've been talking, even though she never says anything to him or even acknowledges him at all. The viewer is trained to understand this as Willis's character does. This all ties in to the suggestion that the dead don't know they're dead, because they only see what they want to see, and I was thrilled by the way that the medium of the film is used to convey that, and the idea that we, in our lives, are unable to see outside of our own perspectives. Willis shows up in a scene via a shot that suggests he's always been there, though we later know that that's not the case - he wasn't in the scene until the film put him in the scene. We often move through our lives in the same way, always in the moment, always having been here, oblivious to the bigger picture. As a film, on its own terms, it's not perfect. If it was the straightforward drama thriller it pretends to be, it would be maybe a little flimsy, though the relationship between Cole and his mother, played (and knocked out of the park) by Toni Colette, is wonderfully rendered. There's also the gradual development of Cole as a kind of benevolent helper of ghosts, which has a certain Stephen King/Roald Dahl spirit to it that comes to a head in a scene (the funeral) that's both blissfully silly and dramatically gripping. And, again, in that scene, is the idea that we aren't able to conceive of what we don't know. Unless someone tells us. 8/10 shamezone 1) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - doll movie 2) The Blue Angel - Dietrich movie 3) Daughters of the Dust - movie i want to see movie 4) The Deer Hunter - wedding movie 5) Amour - elderly movie 6) The Times of Harvey Milk - milk movie 7) The Long Good Friday - hoskins movie 8) Nomadland - recent movie 9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie 10) A League Of Their Own - baseball 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, Late Autumn 8/10, Chimes at Midnight 10/10 Watership Down 9/10, Ugetsu 9/10, Veronika Voss 9/10, The Hidden Fortress 7/10, Close-Up 10/10, Journey to Italy 10/10, L'Eclisse 7/10, Andrei Rublev 11/10, Vagabond 9/10, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 9/10, Shoplifters 10/10, Escape From New York 10/10, Die Hard 10/10, The Last Picture Show 9/10, Mr Smith Goes To Washington 8/10, Saturday Night Fever 9/10, First Blood 7/10, Mad Max 7/10, Come and See 10/10, Friday the 13th 7/10, Predator 5/10, Sicario 10/10, Grizzly Man 9/10, Cache 10/10, The Evil Dead 9/10, Tetsuo: The Iron Man 10/10, One Sings, The Other Doesn't 8/10, The Last House on the Left 10/10, Cries and Whispers 10/10, Salesman 10/10. The Tree of Wooden Clogs 11/10, The Sixth Sense 8/10 (total: 188) escape artist posted:5. Magnolia Always wanted to, but never did And now you will!
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Jun 26, 2022 02:58
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The Long Good Friday I don't recognize any of the plays that the screenwriter Barrie Keeffe wrote before writing this movie, but I wasn't surprised to find out he had been a prolific playwright. The Long Good Friday is full of the kind of thing that good plays make hay out of, namely, tasking the audience with the job of not just perceiving, but tracking the inner lives of the characters it's watching. This is in no small part aided by the superb performances at its centre (Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren), and also by its genre, which is a typically wary and pessimistic take on the mobster genre that was so popular in the 70s. We know that these characters are, at all times, doubting each other, so we're extra watchful of how they cast themselves in their interactions. This also plays into the basic language of film, which I found delightful. A movie protagonist, even one as crude and cruel as Hoskins plays here, garners audience sympathy simply by being in focus. Hoskins's portrayal of the cockney mobster Shand has its volcanological elements (muscle reigned in, fiery glares) but also a tremendous amount of pure pathos. In one of his early scenes, while hosting a party for an American mobster on a boat, he stands in front of the Tower Bridge and delivers what's meant to be a rousing speech about the waterfront-restoration project they're meant to be starting on together in (questionable) anticipation of the 1988 London Olympics. But he doesn't have the voice for it, or the coolness, so he barks it out like a high school football coach struggling through a pep talk. It's a little funny, and a little sad. In this way, we're kept blind to the fact that he really is going to lose it all. The signs are all there from the beginning, but the movie plays tricks on us to keep us rooting for him, that he's going to pull it all together. But by the time Mirren finds herself struggling to explain away the bomb that just detonated in front of his American mob guests as a gas leak, a whiff of tragic farce has entered. There isn't going to be a hat trick - well, there is, but by the time it happens we're well aware that it's misguided buffoonery. So when Hoskins gets into the car in the end, and a scene plays out that I recognized as iconic even without knowing that it's known as iconic, we're fully primed for the full emotional impact, and it lands with nuclear force. If there was anything I wished for more of from this movie, it's directorial panache. There are many stand-out moments, but these are balanced by a lot of oddly pedestrian filmmaking, and it's a shame it's not able to fully maintain the electrifying visual crackle to match pace with the breathless, tangled script. Nonetheless. 9/10 shamezone 1) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - doll movie 2) The Blue Angel - Dietrich movie 3) Daughters of the Dust - movie i want to see movie 4) The Deer Hunter - wedding movie 5) Amour - elderly movie 6) The Times of Harvey Milk - milk movie 7) The Amityville Horror - home movie 8) Nomadland - recent movie 9) Alexander Nevsky - ice movie 10) A League Of Their Own - baseball 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, Late Autumn 8/10, Chimes at Midnight 10/10 Watership Down 9/10, Ugetsu 9/10, Veronika Voss 9/10, The Hidden Fortress 7/10, Close-Up 10/10, Journey to Italy 10/10, L'Eclisse 7/10, Andrei Rublev 11/10, Vagabond 9/10, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 9/10, Shoplifters 10/10, Escape From New York 10/10, Die Hard 10/10, The Last Picture Show 9/10, Mr Smith Goes To Washington 8/10, Saturday Night Fever 9/10, First Blood 7/10, Mad Max 7/10, Come and See 10/10, Friday the 13th 7/10, Predator 5/10, Sicario 10/10, Grizzly Man 9/10, Cache 10/10, The Evil Dead 9/10, Tetsuo: The Iron Man 10/10, One Sings, The Other Doesn't 8/10, The Last House on the Left 10/10, Cries and Whispers 10/10, Salesman 10/10. The Tree of Wooden Clogs 11/10, The Sixth Sense 8/10, The Long Good Friday 9/10 (total: 189) Zogo gets The King of Marvin Gardens
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Sep 10, 2022 19:40
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