28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[StuSmallz]

Great review - time for a rewatch!Thanks, Yxklyx! Also, another thing I noticed during my rewatch, but didn't have the space to mention in my review, is the way that Demme used his technique of having the actors looking directly into the camera to sort of turn the "male gaze" back on the men, so that, instead of having the camera adopting a male/heterosexual perspective in order to leer at the women in the film (and provide some gratuitous eye candy to the straight men in the audience in the process), he instead uses it to adopt the perspecive of the woman being leered at, so that when the creepy cross-eyed guy at the Smithsonian stares at Clarice/the camera like this...

https://i.ibb.co/VCvFCxX/the-silence-of-the-lambs-paul-lazar.jpg (https://ibb.co/GMVZM9g)

...he's also looking at us in the process, making us empathize with Clarice's relatively low position in society, because we have no choice but to feel the same discomfort she does in this situation, even if we're male, straight, or otherwise.

[StanleyK]

I must be one of the only people in the world that doesn't care for The Silence of the Lambs.

For starters, Hopkins is a hammy overactor in just about every role I've seen him in and this is no exception. He chews so much scenery that Lecter isn't scary at all; for reference check out Brian Cox's performance in Manhunter, a much better movie. Then, the film contains ridiculous scenes like Lecter chewing a guard's face off and putting his face on his face to escape a ludicrous makeshift prison, or Clarice shooting the bad guy at the end even though he had night goggles on and was pointing a gun at her back with the element of surprise. On top of all that add the silly psychological explanations and you have a trashy slasher that operates like an arthouse movie. I just can't take it seriously at all.

[Irish]

I must be one of the only people in the world that doesn't care for The Silence of the Lambs.

Booooooooy, Stanley, do I have a movie review for you




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgX0hASKpBU

[Dukefrukem]

I'm kinda on Stanley's side here. For years everyone kept clamoring about The Silence of the Lambs, The Silence of the Lambs, The Silence of the Lambs... and frankly I waited too long to see it so when I finally did see it, I had the same reaction a Stanley did. None of it was really compelling to me, or scary. I suppose Foster's relationship with Hopkins is the most interesting parts and I do like Hopkins, but I can't be bothered with it.

[megladon8]

I think it's really good. But it was bested by Se7en just a few years later, and basically rendered obsolete.

And on top of that, Hannibal (the show) is better in every single way.

[Ezee E]

Never thought it was scary, but a very good murder-detective story.

[Wryan]

I found it more intense than scary.

[Skitch]

I was always sold as it being a horror film as well. After first watch I wasn't blown away, but upon repeat viewings when I realized all the people telling me it was horror can be horrified by PG13 movies, I adjusted my expectations and its a damn good thriller. Definitely not a horror film, imo.

[megladon8]

I would never call it a horror, don't really know why it would be.

[Skitch]

I would never call it a horror, don't really know why it would be.

Because I live in Amish country, and we're discussing pre-internet word-of-mouth reviews by people horrified by most PG13 movies, who avoid anything rated R.

[megladon8]

Because I live in Amish country, and we're discussing pre-internet word-of-mouth reviews by people horrified by most PG13 movies, who avoid anything rated R.

No I get that.

But I've actually seen it classified as horror more than once and that never made much sense to me.

[quido8_5]

Now, this is based off two viewings approximately two decades ago, but I found Silence of the Lambs to be a really good, but not great, film. Although I don’t think its reputation has dimmed since the late ‘90s, early ‘00s, it was widely heralded as a bastion of how sophisticated the suspense/horror/thriller “genre” could be. Moreover, it was viewed as one of the greatest films of all time, one of the relatively few 90s films ranked in the AFI’s Top 100 Films of All Time, putting it at a surprising 65. In a not-uncommon phenomenon, a really good movie became one of minor gripes for me. Probably not fair and why it merits another viewing.

At the time of its release, Demme’s film was also described to me as a horror film and I wonder if this is somehow related to our discussion about modern serial killer films. Part of me wonders if the distinction lies not only with the visual depiction of the violence itself, but also the weight of the act on both killer and victim. Though it harkens back to M and Frenzy, particularly, “modern” serial killer films might be defined by their emphasis on this personified experience from both perspectives. For instance, the centripetal force of Se7en revolves around the murders themselves, with the implications on the characters fleshed out almost ancillary. Much of the film’s impact, for me at least, is the way in which the murders insinuate themselves into my own psyche. We investigate the murders at length, wonder what is the root cause, and, most importantly, reflect on the subjectively horrifying experience of the victim during the act of murder.

This is perhaps why I think Se7en might be a better demarcation of this incredibly random category, because it actually includes scenes that would induce horror (fear, shock, disgust) in a way that Silence doesn’t. While the subject matter of the latter is certainly horrifying, nothing in the content of the film remotely connects to “horror” in my mind. Part of me wonders if people made up for lost time in the horror area with Hannibal the movie (which I think sucks) and Hannibal the TV show (which I think kind of rocks), both of which have very explicit depictions of death from both Hannibal and the victim’s perspectives.

[Skitch]

No I get that.

But I've actually seen it classified as horror more than once and that never made much sense to me.

Yeah thats weird and dumb. Its not horror. Hell, Hannibal (movie) is closer to a slasher horror than SotL, imo.

[megladon8]

IMO Mads is the best version of Hannibal ever. He perfectly melded the creepy predator aspect, with being an incredibly charming and disarming man.

Hopkins always just felt like a creeper and made me wonder how he was ever able to get so close to people. Everything about him was a red flag.

Mads made you fall in love with him before killing and eating you.

[Yxklyx]

I think it's really good. But it was bested by Se7en just a few years later, and basically rendered obsolete.

And on top of that, Hannibal (the show) is better in every single way.

I loved the first two seasons of Hannibal - did not like and even finish the third.

[Skitch]

I finished the third. It was not good.

[StuSmallz]

I think it's really good. But it was bested by Se7en just a few years later, and basically rendered obsolete.

And on top of that, Hannibal (the show) is better in every single way.I don't dislike Se7en (though I do dislike how it popularized that awful trend of movie titles replacing letters with numbers, haha), but for me, it's still a film that took its influence from Silence and went in the wrong direction with it, with the inherent gimmickry of John Doe's "master" plan making it feel almost like watching a two hour version of this at times:


https://youtu.be/NoEzrwZFWHU

As for Hannibal, I liked it a lot, but I still wouldn't rank it as highly as Silence on the whole, since I felt the first season relied too much on standalone "killer of the week" episodes, while the third followed the material of the novels too closely, which had obviously all been adapted before (twice, in the case of Red Dragon), which made it feel staler than it should've. I did like every season, but the second one was the only one I'd say was more or less equal with Lambs.
IMO Mads is the best version of Hannibal ever. He perfectly melded the creepy predator aspect, with being an incredibly charming and disarming man.

Hopkins always just felt like a creeper and made me wonder how he was ever able to get so close to people. Everything about him was a red flag.


Mads made you fall in love with him before killing and eating you.I liked Mads' version of the character a lot too, but nothing beats Hopkins and the way he was able to make Hannibal such a cultural icon, and the complaint about that aspect of his characterization doesn't hold up to scrutiny, IMO; the entirety of time we see him in Silence is obviously after he's already been caught, and the whole world knows what a monster he is, so why would he bother pretending otherwise anymore? There's no reason for him to pretend to be civilized by that point, like he did here before he'd been found out:


https://youtu.be/gHUgvhExOfo

[DFA1979]

Silence is great and all but I prefer Manhunter.

[megladon8]

I don't dislike Se7en (though I do dislike how it popularized that awful trend of movie titles replacing letters with numbers, haha), but for me, it's still a film that took its influence from Silence and went in the wrong direction with it, with the inherent gimmickry of John Doe's "master" plan making it feel almost like watching a two hour version of this at times:


https://youtu.be/NoEzrwZFWHU

As for Hannibal, I liked it a lot, but I still wouldn't rank it as highly as Silence on the whole, since I felt the first season relied too much on standalone "killer of the week" episodes, while the third followed the material of the novels too closely, which had obviously all been adapted before (twice, in the case of Red Dragon), which made it feel staler than it should've. I did like every season, but the second one was the only one I'd say was more or less equal with Lambs.I liked Mads' version of the character a lot too, but nothing beats Hopkins and the way he was able to make Hannibal such a cultural icon, and the complaint about that aspect of his characterization doesn't hold up to scrutiny, IMO; the entirety of time we see him in Silence is obviously after he's already been caught, and the whole world knows what a monster he is, so why would he bother pretending otherwise anymore? There's no reason for him to pretend to be civilized by that point, like he did here before he'd been found out:


https://youtu.be/gHUgvhExOfo

I thought Hopkins was an unbelievable ham in Red Dragon (and Hannibal, for that matter). Just awful, over the top, borderline parody.

At least in SotL he is somewhat reserved, and believable as a physician.

By Hannibal / Red Dragon he is already a caricature of Hannibal.

[Irish]

Now, this is based off two viewings approximately two decades ago, but I found Silence of the Lambs to be a really good, but not great, film. Although I don’t think its reputation has dimmed since the late ‘90s, early ‘00s, it was widely heralded as a bastion of how sophisticated the suspense/horror/thriller “genre” could be. Moreover, it was viewed as one of the greatest films of all time, one of the relatively few 90s films ranked in the AFI’s Top 100 Films of All Time, putting it at a surprising 65. In a not-uncommon phenomenon, a really good movie became one of minor gripes for me. Probably not fair and why it merits another viewing.

This may be overstating it. Despite its success, I dunno if anyone seriously described "Silence" as one of the greatest of all time.

The AFI list was first compiled in 1998 and it's a product of its time. When they updated the list in 2007, "Silence" dropped 9 places.

Rankings and lists are a dodgy proposition, but especially with AFI's methodology. They had "Schindler's List" in the top 10 and "Forrest Gump" close behind "Silence." There's also a few other wobbly selections, like "Sound of Music," "Patton," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," and "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial." Those are all good movies (well, sorta), but best American ever? No way.


Though it harkens back to M and Frenzy, particularly, “modern” serial killer films might be defined by their emphasis on this personified experience from both perspectives. For instance, the centripetal force of Se7en revolves around the murders themselves, with the implications on the characters fleshed out almost ancillary.

Not sure what you're getting at here, because most popular slasher movies, from "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" to "Halloween" to "Friday the 13th" and its sequels, all contain multiple perspectives on serious violence, eg: we see cause and effect from both the point of view of the killer and the victim.

[Irish]

How are we defining "modern" serial killer thrillers? What historical shift occurred in the early '90s that makes The Silence of the Lambs "modern" and Manhunter a "classic" serial killer movie (along with M, The Leopard Man, Peeping Tom, and Psycho)? After all, a lot of the films being cited here as "modern" are already pretty old (Demme's film is now thirty years old), suggesting that the only reason for making a distinction between classic and modern is to tacitly acknowledge that the films in the latter category aren't as good as those in the former (and for all its genuine virtues, Se7en strikes me as considerably less impressive than the films by Lang, Tourneur, Powell, and Hitchcock), and that it's unfair to even compare them. In other words, the distinction here between modern and classic functions to disguise a type of affirmative action for latter day filmmakers who were unfortunate enough to begin their careers after the collapse of the old studio system that nurtured Lang, Hitchcock, Powell, and Tourneur, and after its genres had been largely exhausted.

Suspect he used modern as a rough synonym for contemporary, and meant it sans value judgement, without cultural and historical baggage.

Meanwhile, Turner Classic Movies has shown Joe Dante's "Inner Space" multiple times in the same month, so I think classic has no meaning anymore outside the very personal, eg: "here's an old thing I like."

[StuSmallz]

Now, this is based off two viewings approximately two decades ago, but I found Silence of the Lambs to be a really good, but not great, film. Although I don’t think its reputation has dimmed since the late ‘90s, early ‘00s, it was widely heralded as a bastion of how sophisticated the suspense/horror/thriller “genre” could be. Moreover, it was viewed as one of the greatest films of all time, one of the relatively few 90s films ranked in the AFI’s Top 100 Films of All Time, putting it at a surprising 65. In a not-uncommon phenomenon, a really good movie became one of minor gripes for me. Probably not fair and why it merits another viewing.

At the time of its release, Demme’s film was also described to me as a horror film and I wonder if this is somehow related to our discussion about modern serial killer films. Part of me wonders if the distinction lies not only with the visual depiction of the violence itself, but also the weight of the act on both killer and victim. Though it harkens back to M and Frenzy, particularly, “modern” serial killer films might be defined by their emphasis on this personified experience from both perspectives. For instance, the centripetal force of Se7en revolves around the murders themselves, with the implications on the characters fleshed out almost ancillary. Much of the film’s impact, for me at least, is the way in which the murders insinuate themselves into my own psyche. We investigate the murders at length, wonder what is the root cause, and, most importantly, reflect on the subjectively horrifying experience of the victim during the act of murder.

This is perhaps why I think Se7en might be a better demarcation of this incredibly random category, because it actually includes scenes that would induce horror (fear, shock, disgust) in a way that Silence doesn’t. While the subject matter of the latter is certainly horrifying, nothing in the content of the film remotely connects to “horror” in my mind. Part of me wonders if people made up for lost time in the horror area with Hannibal the movie (which I think sucks) and Hannibal the TV show (which I think kind of rocks), both of which have very explicit depictions of death from both Hannibal and the victim’s perspectives.While the nature of the plot means that a lot of the deaths in Silence are portrayed after the fact from a relative distance, I'd say this scene is still a pretty explicit depiction of death from both perspectives:


https://youtu.be/_0siU7mJy9g

Not saying that it alone makes the movie 100% a Horror movie, but I still absolutely get why some people feel that it at least somewhat fits into that category, you know?

[quido8_5]

This may be overstating it. Despite its success, I dunno if anyone seriously described "Silence" as one of the greatest of all time.

The AFI list was first compiled in 1998 and it's a product of its time. When they updated the list in 2007, "Silence" dropped 9 places.

Rankings and lists are a dodgy proposition, but especially with AFI's methodology. They had "Schindler's List" in the top 10 and "Forrest Gump" close behind "Silence." There's also a few other wobbly selections, like "Sound of Music," "Patton," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," and "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial." Those are all good movies (well, sorta), but best American ever? No way.

AFI's lists are generally trash: hard to understand the logic for rankings and the supported commentary was always lame. Of course, as an adolescent I thought they were somehow objective assessment of film. Given that, I do think that they are indicative of a national (very much American) ground-swell around what makes a film "important". That Silence of the Lambs only dropped 9 places in 9 years is as indicative of its lasting (IMO, inflated) appeal as it is symmetrical.



Not sure what you're getting at here, because most popular slasher movies, from "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" to "Halloween" to "Friday the 13th" and its sequels, all contain multiple perspectives on serious violence, eg: we see cause and effect from both the point of view of the killer and the victim.

To be fair, I'm doing a shit job of explaining my point of view (rereading what I wrote, every "I think" comes off as "you know, it's like..."). In these classic slashers, there is an emphasis on the act of killing, with killer and killed being fairly one-sided, often stereotypically so-- this makes them more fun in my experience. In these films, are we really trying to understand the killer as much as the killed? Are we really trying to understand the killed as much as the killer? To stu's point, barring a repeat viewing, Silence may have this "explicit depiction of death from both perspectives." It may be a reach or even arbitrary, but I think this is a perspective that was relatively rare pre-90s. Less substantially, I feel like there is a "modern" serial killer classification that is worth investigating, even if I have a hard time qualitatively or quantitatively nailing down what that distinction is.

[DFA1979]

Suspect he used modern as a rough synonym for contemporary, and meant it sans value judgement, without cultural and historical baggage.

Meanwhile, Turner Classic Movies has shown Joe Dante's "Inner Space" multiple times in the same month, so I think classic has no meaning anymore outside the very personal, eg: "here's an old thing I like."I won't stand for any Dante or Innerspace slander around here. If you're gonna bash the movie at least get the title right.

[megladon8]

Ok can some of you please get your butts in gear and watch Archenemy?

I need people to talk about this movie with.

If it helps, both D_Davis and Lawn Wrangler (remember him?) ADORED it. So I'm not alone.

[Skitch]

LAWN WRANGLER OMG

[megladon8]

Tarantino really needs to shut his damn mouth about Bruce Lee already.

[Dukefrukem]

Tarantino really needs to shut his damn mouth about Bruce Lee already.

Well he was asked a question...

[Skitch]

Tarantino really needs to shut his damn mouth about Bruce Lee already.

Why? Lee wasn't perfect.

[megladon8]

Never said Lee was perfect, and I highly doubt anyone (including his daughter) is making that claim.

But what almost seems like a campaign to sully his name is pretty classless. Lee's daughter is urging Tarantino to stop tearing her father down, and he couldn't care less.

Shouldn't really expect much better from QT, though. The dude has shown many times over he's pretty garbage.

[Skitch]

Never said Lee was perfect, and I highly doubt anyone (including his daughter) is making that claim.

But what almost seems like a campaign to sully his name is pretty classless. Lee's daughter is urging Tarantino to stop tearing her father down, and he couldn't care less.

Shouldn't really expect much better from QT, though. The dude has shown many times over he's pretty garbage.

I know you didn't say he was perfect, I didn't quite mean that, bad wording. But I don't know why Lee seems to be off limits to say anything negative about. The dude wasn't an angel. Maybe he should stop pointing out negative things about Lee, but if hes not incorrect I don't feel it makes him garbage. Maybe uncouth.

[megladon8]

I know you didn't say he was perfect, I didn't quite mean that, bad wording. But I don't know why Lee seems to be off limits to say anything negative about. The dude wasn't an angel. Maybe he should stop pointing out negative things about Lee, but if hes not incorrect I don't feel it makes him garbage. Maybe uncouth.

Sure, but the dude is dead and unable to defend himself. And as Lee's daughter aptly points out, we are currently in a period of time where Asian Americans are being targeted with horrific hate crimes due to a pandemic that idiots are somehow blaming on them.

Maybe this isn't the best time to continue tearing down one of their largest cultural icons? Especially when it's not like he was a murderer. Or a rapist.

You know, like Tarantino's buddy Harvey Weinstein is.

[megladon8]

PLUS...

I find it truly, totally HILARIOUS that Quentin Tarantino of all people would call someone out for being arrogant.

Dude. Come on.

[Stay Puft]

Maybe he should stop pointing out negative things about Lee, but if hes not incorrect I don't feel it makes him garbage.

...but he is incorrect. He was talking mad shit on Rogan's podcast and then tried to namedrop Matthew Polly's book to substantiate his claims, which prompted Polly to go on twitter and clarify that, no, actually, his book doesn't say that. He was trying to draw comparisons between Lee and Manson at one point, for crying out loud. He's an idiot, but that shouldn't surprise anyone about Tarantino at this point; he's left a trail of evidence as long as his career.

[DFA1979]

Ok can some of you please get your butts in gear and watch Archenemy?

I need people to talk about this movie with.

If it helps, both D_Davis and Lawn Wrangler (remember him?) ADORED it. So I'm not alone.

Wow, Lawn Wrangler. That's a name I haven't heard in ages.

And yeah QT should just admit he messed up, apologize and move on.

[DFA1979]

This is also why even though I've only seen Hostel I'd rather listen to Eli Roth talking about film instead of QT. QT comes off as an annoying fanboy, Roth actually seems like someone who would discuss movies with you and fill you in on what you should watch.

[StuSmallz]

...but he is incorrect. He was talking mad shit on Rogan's podcast and then tried to namedrop Matthew Polly's book to substantiate his claims, which prompted Polly to go on twitter and clarify that, no, actually, his book doesn't say that. He was trying to draw comparisons between Lee and Manson at one point, for crying out loud. He's an idiot, but that shouldn't surprise anyone about Tarantino at this point; he's left a trail of evidence as long as his career.Pretty much; I mean, the guy's misanthrophic streak was obvious all the way from the beginning, and the moment in Reservoir Dogs where Mr. Blonde says that it "amuses" him to torture a cop might as well have been said by Tarantino himself directly into the camera, so I'm not at all surprised he's being an asshole about the Lee scene. I mean, he has made some good movies, (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/tag/tarantino/reviews/) but he still seems pretty insufferable on a personal level, regardless of how talented he is a director.

[Irish]

...but he is incorrect. He was talking mad shit on Rogan's podcast and then tried to namedrop Matthew Polly's book to substantiate his claims, which prompted Polly to go on twitter and clarify that, no, actually, his book doesn't say that. He was trying to draw comparisons between Lee and Manson at one point, for crying out loud. He's an idiot, but that shouldn't surprise anyone about Tarantino at this point; he's left a trail of evidence as long as his career.

My God it never even occurred to me that Polly might have a twitter account, lol.


Delighted to get name checked by Quentin Tarantino (one of my fav directors) on @joerogan show. But to clarify, my biography of Lee DID NOT say that "Bruce had nothing but disrespect for American stuntmen."

What I said in my book is that Bruce wanted to change American fight choreography so that the blows would miss by millimeters rather than by feet (aka the John Wayne punch) in order to better sell the technique.

But in the process, Bruce did bang up some of the stuntmen on the Green Hornet, which pissed them off. So they asked Gene LeBell to settle Bruce down.

It wasn't an issue of disrespect but a difference in fight choreography philosophy and style. For further reference, see 'Bruce Lee: A Life,' pgs 186-7.

https://twitter.com/MatthewEPolly/status/1410021611126788103

[Irish]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8CtOqJy6xM

^ Additional context and worth watching if you're a fan of either Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan.

[Skitch]

hahaha that was great. Sidenote, if ya'll want a good read, Jackie Chan's autobiography was pretty fascinating.

[StanleyK]

Pretty much; I mean, the guy's misanthrophic streak was obvious all the way from the beginning, and the moment in Reservoir Dogs where Mr. Blonde says that it "amuses" him to torture a cop might as well have been said by Tarantino himself directly into the camera, so I'm not at all surprised he's being an asshole about the Lee scene. I mean, he has made some good movies, (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/tag/tarantino/reviews/) but he still seems pretty insufferable on a personal level, regardless of how talented he is a director.

Tarantino's a misanthrope because one of his characters is a psychopath? I think that's a stretch.

[StuSmallz]

Tarantino's a misanthrope because one of his characters is a psychopath? I think that's a stretch.No, he's a misanthrope (as a filmmaker) because of the career-long combination of the cop-torturing, the pawn shop basement sodomy, the tongue-ripping, and the three consecutive films he made in a row where someone got shot in their testicles.

= )

[StuSmallz]

Why 1971 was an extraordinary year in film (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210616-why-1971-was-an-extraordinary-year-in-film)

[Yxklyx]

This is an interesting read:

https://lwlies.com/articles/swahili-film-narration-vjs-titanic/

[DFA1979]

I have an old review for Manhunter on my older blog but I think it needs a lot of work. Time for a new, equally lame, review!

[StuSmallz]

https://i.ibb.co/9q1t3GN/screenshot-1853-e1586268972357.png (https://ibb.co/p3Myrnx)

​You can't stop what's comin'.

Against a pitch black screen, we hear the whistle of the Texas wind as it haunts its way across the gargantuan, desolate landscape, and, as the newborn sun slowly creeps its way above the horizon, we hear the voice of a weary, defeated old man say: "I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old... hard to believe".

As the man continues lamenting the seemingly new, incomprehensible brutality arising from the modern world, as if on cue, we see a young sheriff's deputy calmly escorting a handcuffed figure with a particularly odd hair style into the back of his patrol car, placing what appears to be an air tank on the passenger seat before driving away, the unseen prisoner sitting deathly silent in complete darkness all the while, the outline of his obscured figure looming over us like an angel of death. And, as the camera ominously rises away from the sun-baked asphalt, the voice of the old man concludes: "I always knew you had to be willin' to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet somethin' I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say: 'Okay... I'll be part of this world.'".

This is the opening scene of Joel & Ethan Coen's No Country For Old Men, an astonishingly tense neo-Western Thriller, one of the best movies of its decade, and just one of the best movies I've ever seen, period. It tells the tale of three men; Llewelyn Moss, an utterly everyday, blue-collar good ol' boy who randomly stumbles upon a suitcase full of cartel money, Anton Chirgurh, a bizarre, almost alien-like assassin tasked with recovering the stash, and the aforementioned Ed Tom, the tired, weary old sheriff who observes everything on the sidelines, as the film brilliantly utilizes the men's dueling perspectives to illustrate its piercing discussions of the central themes, while the main pursuit wears on, the innocent continually get caught in the crossfire right alongside the guilty, and the bodies pile up all over the state.

Admittedly, while the basic story of No Country isn't particularly innovative on paper, on film, it differentiates itself from any more standard "cartel thrillers" out there (coughSicariocough) through its sheer technical and atmospheric perfection, whether it be the incredibly haunting overall tone, with the specter of death looming heavy over the entire experience, the way that cinematography icon Roger Deakin juxtaposes lovingly detailed, intimate close-ups with shots of the massive Texas plains that are as desolate as the spiritual darkness that envelops the film's characters, or the emphasis on eerily placid moments of complete silence, which are inevitably shattered by the sudden outbursts of carnage, as the film's agonizingly slow, patient pacing takes the sparse prose of Cormac McCarthy's novel, and stretches it out into endless, nerve-shredding eternities.

Besides the constantly amazing sense of tension, Country also distinguishes itself by utilizing McCarthy's musings on the natures of fate, chance, and what seems to be the increasingly worse presence of evil in the contemporary world, interspersing the scenes of cat-and-mouse carnage with genuinely insightful, thought-provoking discussions, as the story contrasts the perception of a more peaceful "Old West" with the horrifying crimes of today, suggesting that, as the film's Wiki put it, rather than triumphing over evil, the best thing the modern heroes can hope for is to merely escape with their lives intact.

This makes No Country the rare Thriller that gives us something to actually think about long after the screen has faded to black for the final time, as its three main characters all serve to contrast each other perfectly, whether it be Ed Tom's utterly conventional (and ultimately defeated) black-&-white sense of morality, Anton's bizarrely-principled amorality that proves to be perfectly adapted to survival in his particularly pitiless day and age, or Moss's central position inbetween those two extremes, neither being "good" enough to keep his nose clean of the whole affair, but also not cunning or ruthless enough to ultimately survive it either. It's a brilliant central trifecta that is strongly supported by the film's minor characters, the relentlessly colorful, salt-of-the-earth Texans who make for equally colorful exchanges that fit in plenty of the Coens' signature pitch-black sense of humor into No Country, simultaneously keeping it from ever becoming too overbearing with its fundamentally dark tone, while also avoiding turning into the dreaded, unnaturally-forced style of "comic relief" that Hollywood so often thrusts upon us unnecessarily.

And of course, I would be remiss in my review without discussing at length what is easily the best character within it, Anton Chirgurh, portrayed in a soul-chilling, Oscar-winning turn by Javier Bardem, who has become one of the newer additions to the cinematic pantheon of great villains, with his unbelievably creepy, monotonic line deliveries, "pageboy"-style haircut that would look laughable on anyone else, but instead serves to make him even more unnerving, and his signature weapons in the forms of a silenced shotgun (yes, you read that right) and a cattle gun that's mostly utilized to shoot open locks, but which gets used for its original purpose (sort've) in a particularly disturbing moment early in the film.

With the inscrutable set of "principles" that he lives by, as an agent of the chaos he perceives as fate, Anton contrasts the other two main characters brilliantly, serving as a complete mirror image of both Llewelyn's everyday normality and Ed Tom's outdated "traditional" morality, helping him become one of the greatest film villains of all time. It makes perfect sense though, since NCFOM is one of the greatest films of all time, becoming one of those rare occasions when the Oscars truly got the "Best Picture" of the year right, as, even considering all of the great movies they've created to date, No Country For Old Men still remains the true magnum opus of the Coen brothers' long, storied career, as far as I'm concerned; "you can't stop what's comin'" indeed.

Final Score: ​10
.

[Yxklyx]

So I just created a https://letterboxd.com/ account - any others here use that? Seems pretty nifty. Any thing I should know about it? I mean it looks really well put together and they don't want any money?

[Ezee E]

So I just created a https://letterboxd.com/ account - any others here use that? Seems pretty nifty. Any thing I should know about it? I mean it looks really well put together and they don't want any money?

They have an annual fee that'll remove ads and give you some cool stats, but yeah. Free!

ericbialas on there. Hit me up!

[transmogrifier]

So I just created a https://letterboxd.com/ account - any others here use that? Seems pretty nifty. Any thing I should know about it? I mean it looks really well put together and they don't want any money?

I'm on there under my Match Cut name. It's a very good site. Find a good group of people to follow and it becomes excellent for recommendations.

[StuSmallz]

So I just created a https://letterboxd.com/ account - any others here use that? Seems pretty nifty. Any thing I should know about it? I mean it looks really well put together and they don't want any money?Yeah, I'm use it: https://letterboxd.com/StuSmallz/

[Skitch]

https://letterboxd.com/Skitch/

[Yxklyx]

https://letterboxd.com/Yxklyx/

[Dukefrukem]

So I just created a https://letterboxd.com/ account - any others here use that? Seems pretty nifty. Any thing I should know about it? I mean it looks really well put together and they don't want any money?

uhhhh it's where I live. https://letterboxd.com/dukefrukem/

[Skitch]

Since I'm in virtual classes all day, I'm back to working on my 2 years worth of back log reviews lol

[Idioteque Stalker]

https://letterboxd.com/Qossuth/

Somebody is masquerading on LB under your MC handle, and they fooled both me and Irish.

[Dukefrukem]

Speaking of LB... Anyone ever get some weird comments on a negative review, where it sounds like the person actually worked on the film project?

Happened recently to me and if you look at that member's history, all they do is look for negative reviews of that particular film and defend it into the ground.

[megladon8]

Speaking of LB... Anyone ever get some weird comments on a negative review, where it sounds like the person actually worked on the film project?

Happened recently to me and if you look at that member's history, all they do is look for negative reviews of that particular film and defend it into the ground.

Wouldn't be surprised at all.

I remember back in the day DaMU had a big spat with someone who was OBVIOUSLY Leigh Whannell, because DaMU criticized one of his movies on RT.

[Dukefrukem]

Wouldn't be surprised at all.

I remember back in the day DaMU had a big spat with someone who was OBVIOUSLY Leigh Whannell, because DaMU criticized one of his movies on RT.

Oh yeh. That was for Insidious if I remember.

Edit: Oh wait, it was Boner!

http://matchcut.artboiled.com/showthread.php?3458-Insidious-(Wan-2011)&p=337955&viewfull=1#post337955

[Stay Puft]

I remember back in the day DaMU had a big spat with someone who was OBVIOUSLY Leigh Whannell, because DaMU criticized one of his movies on RT.

The same thing happened to Boner M! I think it was for Insidious, he criticized the movie on an online pub he was writing for and then Whannell went after him using his girlfriend's social media accounts lol.

edit - duke beat me to it and even had the receipts haha.

[Dukefrukem]

The same thing happened to Boner M! I think it was for Insidious, he criticized the movie on an online pub he was writing for and then Whannell went after him using his girlfriend's social media accounts lol.

edit - duke beat me to it and even had the receipts haha.

I thought I remember him talking about it in a stand alone thread but I can't find it. He somehow saw Insidious way before the release date.

Did it go to SXSW or something?

[megladon8]

Shit yeah it was Boner. Sorry, don't know why I thought it was DaMU.

[Dukefrukem]

I thought I remember him talking about it in a stand alone thread but I can't find it. He somehow saw Insidious way before the release date.

Did it go to SXSW or something?

Did I find it?

http://matchcut.artboiled.com/showthread.php?3115-The-2010-Toronto-International-Film-Festival-(35th-Anniversary-Edition)/page10&p=288367&viewfull=1#post288367

[Skitch]

Wow thats lame. On the flip side of that coin, I've been having some really cool interactions with Steven C. Miller on twitter. I've only seen a couple of his films (and didn't care for them). He made a cool post about accepting criticism...I told him I didn't care for the movies I've seen, but his post was really cool and I wished him well. Most on twitter would leave it at that, but he pursued me to name the movies, then he recommended several from his filmography.

I'm a hell of a lot more affable to an artist when they're not an asshole, and he totally could've been. I can't say I'm a fan of his films yet, but I am a fan of the man.

[Stay Puft]

Did I find it?

http://matchcut.artboiled.com/showthread.php?3115-The-2010-Toronto-International-Film-Festival-(35th-Anniversary-Edition)/page10&p=288367&viewfull=1#post288367

Yeah, that's it. The film premiered at TIFF and he was either covering it for an online Australian film journal or his own personal journal or something (I'm fuzzy on the timeline of his work now but I know he's a film critic) and I remember bumping into him at a screening just after it had happened (and I think he showed me the post on his phone but again I'm fuzzy, this was 11 years ago!).

[Yxklyx]

Somebody is masquerading on LB under your MC handle, and they fooled both me and Irish.

I created that one with an old email address a while back and forgot so I deleted that one and renamed Qossuth to Yxklyx. So it's https://letterboxd.com/Yxklyx/ now - and it looks like the network stayed in place and everything carried over in that regard. A really well designed site. I stopped logging my daily watches a few years back - trying to piece things together. Too bad Criterion channel doesn't have a viewing log. What I really like about a log is that it helps me decide on re-watches.

[megladon8]

Wow thats lame. On the flip side of that coin, I've been having some really cool interactions with Steven C. Miller on twitter. I've only seen a couple of his films (and didn't care for them). He made a cool post about accepting criticism...I told him I didn't care for the movies I've seen, but his post was really cool and I wished him well. Most on twitter would leave it at that, but he pursued me to name the movies, then he recommended several from his filmography.

I'm a hell of a lot more affable to an artist when they're not an asshole, and he totally could've been. I can't say I'm a fan of his films yet, but I am a fan of the man.

That's my experience with Zack Snyder as well.

When I got to talk with him a few times about 300 back when that movie was new, man, he is just SUCH a nice guy. Not a single bit of pretension about him. He seems like the type of guy you'd meet at a comic shop and just shoot the shit with for an hour.

Don't think too highly of his movies, but he's a great guy.

[Skitch]

I think only person in Hollywood I consistently hear is nice more than Snyder is Adam Sandler. Thats excellent.

[Ezee E]

I think only person in Hollywood I consistently hear is nice more than Snyder is Adam Sandler. Thats excellent.

Hanx

[Skitch]

Hanx

Keanu

[megladon8]

Keanu

As overdone as the nice guy Keanu memes are, it's really true. Nearly 40 years in the public eye, and not a bad word said about him.

The capybara of Hollywood.

[Yxklyx]

So where can I watch World of Tomorrow?

[transmogrifier]

I humbly offer Jack Black as the nicest guy in Hollywood.

[Ezee E]

So where can I watch World of Tomorrow?

His website has some streaming options (http://www.bitterfilms.com/)

[DFA1979]

So I just created a https://letterboxd.com/ account - any others here use that? Seems pretty nifty. Any thing I should know about it? I mean it looks really well put together and they don't want any money?

https://boxd.it/78jb for me

[Ivan Drago]

https://letterboxd.com/ivan_drago/

Also, La Piscine is a fucking phenomenal film. I loved it.

EDIT: I'd say more, but my Letterboxd profile is above and my thoughts are there, too. But I can post them here for discussion purposes, if you guys like!

[StuSmallz]

https://letterboxd.com/ivan_drago/

Also, La Piscine is a fucking phenomenal film. I loved it.

EDIT: I'd say more, but my Letterboxd profile is above and my thoughts are there, too. But I can post them here for discussion purposes, if you guys like!

https://i.ibb.co/HDCNFpJ/tenor.gif (https://imgbb.com/)

[Dukefrukem]

https://letterboxd.com/ivan_drago/

Also, La Piscine is a fucking phenomenal film. I loved it.

EDIT: I'd say more, but my Letterboxd profile is above and my thoughts are there, too. But I can post them here for discussion purposes, if you guys like!

Why does it say you've only watched 3 movies this year?

[Ivan Drago]

Why does it say you've only watched 3 movies this year?

I must have specified the date I watched those three movies when I logged them. I don't do that a lot tbh. Not sure why.

[Ivan Drago]

https://i.ibb.co/HDCNFpJ/tenor.gif (https://imgbb.com/)

Will do. :)

La Piscine is one of the most sensually tense films I've ever seen. The nuances of the performances from its ensemble leave a lot open for interpretation as far as where characters go, what they do off-screen, as well as what secrets and feelings they're hiding from each other. Meanwhile, director Deray's voyeuristic, fly-on-the-wall wide shots linger long enough on them to allow viewers to feel like basking in their location in addition to the constant, building suspense as they wonder which two characters will have the film's inevitable confrontation. The love scenes are as beautiful in their eroticism as they are revelatory shocking, the jazzy music is romantic and relaxing, and the film proposes thought-provoking critiques about romantic passion, and its effects on ego. Might be a new favorite film of mine.

[megladon8]

Pet peeves of film discussion / crticism:

"Most movies are garbage these days" or other "things were better [insert number of decades] ago".

Not because it's untrue. It's totally true.

What is annoying is that...most movies have ALWAYS been garbage.

We only remember what is worth remembering.

It is also uncomfortably close to one of the most elitist and pretentious film criticism arguments around: if it is old, it is automatically better and more valuable.

[Skitch]

Preach!! Totally agree. The only argument for "more movies today suck" is just that there are more movies. And I'd much rather have more artists putting out more movies than only a select few being able to make a movie.

[StuSmallz]

Pet peeves of film discussion / crticism:

"Most movies are garbage these days" or other "things were better [insert number of decades] ago".

Not because it's untrue. It's totally true.

What is annoying is that...most movies have ALWAYS been garbage.

We only remember what is worth remembering.

It is also uncomfortably close to one of the most elitist and pretentious film criticism arguments around: if it is old, it is automatically better and more valuable.Yeah, I find a lot of the expressions of "Movies suck these days compared to back then!" to be pretty vague and unconvincing, and I think a lot of people tend to ignore the fact that contemporary movies obviously don't have the advantage of the filter of history separating the wheat from the chaff the way that previous decades do, and any notion that Classical Hollywood was all Citizen Kanes is ignoring all of the B-movies from that period that have been completely forgotten about since, you know?

[StanleyK]

Pet peeves of film discussion / crticism:

"Most movies are garbage these days" or other "things were better [insert number of decades] ago".

Not because it's untrue. It's totally true.

What is annoying is that...most movies have ALWAYS been garbage.

We only remember what is worth remembering.

It is also uncomfortably close to one of the most elitist and pretentious film criticism arguments around: if it is old, it is automatically better and more valuable.

While that's true, I think the notion that movies are overall worse these days is tied to Hollywood, which makes the most well-known and widely seen films, and I think it's pretty clear that big-budget tentpole movies are on a consistent decline in quality.

[baby doll]

I'm just sayin', are there any directors working today who are as impressive as Bresson, Chaplin, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Feuillade, Ford, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Keaton, Lang, Lubitsch, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Renoir, Sternberg, or Stroheim at their best?

[Irish]

I'm just sayin', are there any directors working today who are as impressive as Bresson, Chaplin, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Feuillade, Ford, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Keaton, Lang, Lubitsch, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Renoir, Sternberg, or Stroheim at their best?

I saw this discussion earlier and thought, "damn this is like some baby doll bat signal."

And here you are. :D

Anyway, I don't think you need to bring out the heavy hitters. A few months back I watched Don Siegel's "The Killers" (1964), a straight up remake that started out as a made-for-television movie.

But I was absolutely shocked how far Siegel pushed all his artistic sliders to max level. It's a nasty movie and I don't think he's some kind of amazing auteur or whatever, but there was serious craft in the visuals and the motifs.

You don't see that today, especially with streaming "originals" from various services. It all looks like television now, with rapid cutting and sitcom style over-over-two shots, mixed with Apple Store aesthetics and hallmarks of middle class aspirational wealth. Bosch looks like Jack Ryan and they both look like whatever super-thriller is on Netflix.

Aside from commercial considerations (mega telecoms have no business in the movie business), I'd say that's where the movies went bad --- when they became TV and nobody cared.

[StuSmallz]

I'm just sayin', are there any directors working today who are as impressive as Bresson, Chaplin, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Feuillade, Ford, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Keaton, Lang, Lubitsch, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Renoir, Sternberg, or Stroheim at their best?Scorsese, baby.

; )

[baby doll]

Scorsese, baby.

; )I don't think Scorsese himself would agree with that assessment. He's obviously a very fine director, and I think Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, After Hours, and Goodfellas could all be creditably described as great films. That said, I don't think he's an original enough director to warrant comparison with the likes of Griffith, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Ozu, and Bresson--or, among living directors, Godard, Hou, and Straub. He's more a synthesizer than an innovator, appropriating stylistic devices from European art cinema (e.g., freeze frames and iris shots Ã* la Truffaut) and repurposing them so that they fulfill classical functions (representing character subjectivity rather than authorial commentary), and thereby making these devices somewhat less self-conscious. Lurking beneath his stylistic pyrotechnics is an acute sense that the classical tradition is exhausted and there's nothing new left to be done but remixes of old standards--or as Scorsese himself put it, "Whatever you do now that you think is new was already done in 1913."

[Irish]

I don't think he'd agree, either. At least in his public interviews, he's always expressed a degree of humility and a deep respect for the old masters.

While he may not be in their league, he's been much more limited by the commercial market during the bulk of his career.


He's more a synthesizer than an innovator, appropriating stylistic devices from European art cinema [...]

I'd add: documentary technique, commercial advertisement, television drama, and the work of his peer group to the mix, too.

He's pretty shameless about his influences, not afraid to borrow, and good enough to make the result feel fresh.

[Yxklyx]

There was a period in the late 40 and 50s where we got many films that appeared like TV. TV was big back then and movie theaters were losing audiences so they copied what TV was doing. I recall watching an awful film by Renoir that was obviously patterned after TV. Fortunately, widescreen and color was their saving grace at that time.

[baby doll]

There was a period in the late 40 and 50s where we got many films that appeared like TV. TV was big back then and movie theaters were losing audiences so they copied what TV was doing. I recall watching an awful film by Renoir that was obviously patterned after TV. Fortunately, widescreen and color was their saving grace at that time.If you're thinking of Renoir's Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier, that film actually was made for television. (Then again, so were La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV, Martha, France/tour/détour/deux/enfants, The Decalogue, and Nightjohn.)

[megladon8]

I'm just sayin', are there any directors working today who are as impressive as Bresson, Chaplin, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Feuillade, Ford, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Keaton, Lang, Lubitsch, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Renoir, Sternberg, or Stroheim at their best?

I think there are many directors working today who could sit amongst them. A few off the top of my head...

Wes Anderson
Chanwook Park
Bong Joon Ho
Quentin Tarantino
Pedro Almodovar
Steve McQueen
Michael Mann
Darren Aronofsky

Not to mention Spielberg, Scorsese, and Coppola.

[Skitch]

I think Denis Villeneuve movies look nothing like TV.

[StanleyK]

I'm just sayin', are there any directors working today who are as impressive as Bresson, Chaplin, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Feuillade, Ford, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Keaton, Lang, Lubitsch, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Renoir, Sternberg, or Stroheim at their best?

I think we'll only really know for sure when contemporary filmmakers have been dead for as long as these guys have.

[megladon8]

I think we'll only really know for sure when contemporary filmmakers have been dead for as long as these guys have.

Exactly.

[Irish]

https://i.imgur.com/bkbfV6d.jpg

in some instances, i don't think we need to wait

[baby doll]

I think there are many directors working today who could sit amongst them. A few off the top of my head...

Wes Anderson
Chanwook Park
Bong Joon Ho
Quentin Tarantino
Pedro Almodovar
Steve McQueen
Michael Mann
Darren Aronofsky

Not to mention Spielberg, Scorsese, and Coppola.I think what I've already said about Scorsese could easily apply to most or all of the directors you've listed: None of them are especially innovative, nor are any of them in possession of a living tradition as Ford, Hawks, and Lubitsch were. Even at their most entertaining, Almodóvar's pastiches of Mankiewicz and Sirk, Anderson's lifts from Salinger and Malle, and Mann's post-neo-noirs are like attempts to temporarily reanimate a dead organism by administering periodic jolts of electricity. In other words, their films belong more to the past than the future.

[baby doll]

I think we'll only really know for sure when contemporary filmmakers have been dead for as long as these guys have.I don't see any cause for waiting. It's not Scorsese's fault that he's the inheritor of a dead tradition (at his best, he's probably as good a filmmaker as it is possible to be in a stagnant culture that makes it all but impossible to imagine a future different from the past), but time and hindsight isn't going to magically transform him into Max Ophüls.

[Skitch]

Pink Floyd is weak because they're just aping what Beethoven already did.

[Irish]

No, bdoll's comparison is more like the one between Led Zeppelin and Muddy Waters

And while you could find a similarities throughout someone's oeuvre, the old guard weren't as flagrant about obvious riffs and repetitions the way the new hollywood kids or their Gen X peers are --- cf: "Bringing Out the Dead," "Dracula," "Twixt," "The Departed," "Wolf of Wall Street," almost everything Tarantino, Almodóvar, and Anderson has ever done, etc.

[megladon8]

I think what I've already said about Scorsese could easily apply to most or all of the directors you've listed: None of them are especially innovative, nor are any of them in possession of a living tradition as Ford, Hawks, and Lubitsch were. Even at their most entertaining, Almodóvar's pastiches of Mankiewicz and Sirk, Anderson's lifts from Salinger and Malle, and Mann's post-neo-noirs are like attempts to temporarily reanimate a dead organism by administering periodic jolts of electricity. In other words, their films belong more to the past than the future.

But you are also often extremely negative towards films that make modern innovations (whether they are technological or formative) and compare them unfavorably to older works and artists.

So is it not just that you, personally, live in the past with this art form?

[Skitch]

But it is a bit apt because hes saying the ones who did it first are the only ones that count. Film is a relatively young art, especially when compared to music. Why is it so impossible that in a hundred years BD's grandchildren will be saying the same about the director's hes scoffing?

[baby doll]

But you are also often extremely negative towards films that make modern innovations (whether the technological or formative) and compare them unfavorably to older works and artists.

So is it not just that you, personally, live in the past with this art form?I'm not sure which modern innovations you're referring to, but for what it's worth, I find Pedro Costa's films innovative and I like them.

[Irish]

But it is a bit apt because hes saying the ones who did it first are the only ones that count.

Lemme put it another way: It's like making a comparison between "One-Armed Swordsman" (or any Golden Harvest / Shaw Brothers / wuxia) and "Big Trouble in Little China."

It's entirely possible to enjoy "Big Trouble," while recognizing it also essentially lame as fuck.

[Irish]

Also gotta say, there's shit Godard did in "Goodbye to Language" that makes the rest of the people we're talking about look like schoolboy try-hards.

But then, as noted, Godard has never been forced to bend to the commercial market the way Scorsese and Tarantino have.

[baby doll]

But it is a bit apt because hes saying the ones who did it first are the only ones that count. Film is a relatively young art, especially when compared to music. Why is it so impossible that in a hundred years BD's grandchildren will be saying the same about the director's hes scoffing?If something's been done, why do it again? Of course, unlike Scorsese, Beethoven was the inheritor of a living tradition and an innovator. Certainly Haydn and Mozart threw down a challenge for subsequent composers--"What's left do be done now?"--but at the time Beethoven arrived on the scene, Viennese classicism wasn't completely exhausted, whereas the classical Hollywood cinema was already moribund when Scorsese began making films in the late 1960s. Scorsese is undoubtedly a talented filmmaker but an individual talent without access to a living tradition can only do so much.

[Irish]

If something's been done, why do it again?

/laughs in george lucas and steven spielberg

[Skitch]

I think if BD had it his way, they would've stopped making movies decades ago.

[baby doll]

I think if BD had it his way, they would've stopped making movies decades ago.You raise an interesting point: do we really need new movies? I would answer yes, but we need traditions that are suitable for the present. I should stress that traditions like classical Hollywood cinema and the postwar European art cinema were, in their time, extremely generative, but in addition to having been more or less used up, they no longer speak to the world we live in (hence, the anachronistic quaintness of a film like Michael Haneke's Happy End, which assumes that the conventions of 1960s art cinema are still an adequate means of representing the present). As you say, cinema is a relatively young medium but contemporary movies feel very old.

[quido8_5]

I have a bias toward more "classic" movies, maybe somewhere between 20s-50s. Full disclosure: it's doubtful that any filmmaker in the last 20 years will have the same estimation for me than some of the filmmakers listed by BD. At the same time, it is a bit of a reach to say that many of the modern directors are simply aping the past. Many of the filmmakers previously mentioned make art that is different, if reliant upon previous filmmakers. Although I don't think comparing early, hugely influential fine artists is the best comparison, it's worth noting that many contemporary filmmakers incorporate previous strategies with their own unique style.

If building upon past artists' work is boring, then what is the point? It certainly is a good question whether or not we need new movies. However, we only need new movies if they offer something different. People like Scorcese are using past techniques toward a different goal. Does that make him better than the greats? No. You can't redesign the triangle. It's more relevant to look at how contemporary directors build upon as well as create new avenues, of art. It's a big tent. FWIW, very few contemporary directors line up IMO, but those that do: Kiarotstami, PT Anderson, Ceylan, Tarantino (ugh, but true), and Nolan (double ugh). All of these filmmakers seem to be doing something artistically important and different. Of course they're standing on the shoulders of giants, that's how progress in any field happens.

[megladon8]

Should we have just stopped making films with sound after The Jazz Singer?

Was colour played out after The Gulf Between?

[Irish]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI

^ Relevant and interesting

Whatever I think about his movies, he always strikes me as the smartest guy in the industry when I see him interviewed

[Irish]

You raise an interesting point: do we really need new movies?

No. Not really.

I'm only half-joking.

I think the future of entertainment will be some weird combo of YouTube vids, Twitch streams, Fortnite dances, and VR porn --- and projected so the images are the size of your living room wall.

[Wryan]

I think the future of entertainment will be some weird combo of YouTube vids, Twitch streams, Fortnite dances, and VR porn --- and projected so the images are the size of your living room wall.

I've seen this Black Mirror.

[Peng]

Going to bed without update on Bob Odenkirk is upsetting.

[megladon8]

Going to bed without update on Bob Odenkirk is upsetting.

Agreed. That was jarring to read about.

[baby doll]

Should we have just stopped making films with sound after The Jazz Singer?

Was colour played out after The Gulf Between?I can't tell if I'm not making myself clear or if you're deliberately mischaracterizing my argument because you don't have a good counter-argument. In any case, when I talk about traditions like the classical Hollywood cinema or postwar European art cinema, I'm not talking about individual techniques like sound and colour but a menu of narrative procedures and stylistic options capable of generating a wide variety of films--in other words, a paradigm. (For example, in classical Hollywood cinema, a director might cover a dialogue scene in a single two shot or break it up into a series of shot/reverse shots.) As a paradigm, classical Hollywood cinema was flexible enough to accommodate a broad, but not unlimited, range of stories and styles. (In contrast, Soviet montage cinema--which lasted less than ten years--could accommodate a much wider range of techniques but only a limited number of stories.) However, sometime around 1960, the classical paradigm more or less petered out as a living tradition--either because it was largely used up or because changes in American society had rendered it an anachronism or both--and most of the films of the New Hollywood era that are regarded as classics today (Bonnie and Clyde, 2001, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Badlands, The Conversation, and Taxi Driver being only the first half-dozen titles that come to mind) tried to reanimate the paradigm by hybridizing classical narration with art cinema. This doesn't mean that Scorsese is a bad director or that his films aren't worth seeing--only that one shouldn't succumb to what Mark Fischer has aptly described as "the relativistic illusion that intensity and innovation are equally distributed throughout all cultural periods." It's no insult to Scorsese to recognize that, as good a director as he is, he isn't--and can't be--as great as Kazan, Preminger, Ray, et al., nor can any other contemporary American filmmaker working in any proximity to the commercial mainstream.

[Peng]

Agreed. That was jarring to read about.

oh thank god

1420517903456165891

[StuSmallz]

I don't think Scorsese himself would agree with that assessment. He's obviously a very fine director, and I think Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, After Hours, and Goodfellas could all be creditably described as great films. That said, I don't think he's an original enough director to warrant comparison with the likes of Griffith, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Ozu, and Bresson--or, among living directors, Godard, Hou, and Straub. He's more a synthesizer than an innovator, appropriating stylistic devices from European art cinema (e.g., freeze frames and iris shots Ã* la Truffaut) and repurposing them so that they fulfill classical functions (representing character subjectivity rather than authorial commentary), and thereby making these devices somewhat less self-conscious. Lurking beneath his stylistic pyrotechnics is an acute sense that the classical tradition is exhausted and there's nothing new left to be done but remixes of old standards--or as Scorsese himself put it, "Whatever you do now that you think is new was already done in 1913."Yeah, but that's an appeal to authority, and a lot of artists tend to be pretty humble about their art anyway, so Scorsese underplaying his quality as a director doesn't convince me anymore than all the movie scholars who consider him one of the greatest directors of all time (don't get me wrong, I'm happy that they feel that way, it's just not part of the reason why I personally feel he's a great director). At any rate, as for the point about Scorsese being more of a "remixer" than an innovator, it's irrelevant to me how original a director's style is or not; the only thing that matters is the quality of the final product they create with their choices, so I don't care if Marty took the dolly zoom from Vertigo for the scene in the cafe in Goodfellas or not, because the only thing I care about is that that was an effective, striking aesthetic choice for that moment, and contributed to the movie standing right alongside the greatest works from any other director, whether they be past or present, as I'm concerned.

[Irish]

that's an appeal to authority

wat


it's irrelevant to me how original a director's style is or not; the only thing that matters is the quality of the final product they create with their choices,

You're describing a craftsman, not an artist.

In the Western tradition, greatness is directly linked to innovation.

[baby doll]

Yeah, but that's an appeal to authority, and a lot of artists tend to be pretty humble about their art anyway, so Scorsese underplaying his quality as a director doesn't convince me anymore than all the movie scholars who consider him one of the greatest directors of all time (don't get me wrong, I'm happy that they feel that way, it's just not part of the reason why I personally feel he's a great director). At any rate, as for the point about Scorsese being more of a "remixer" than an innovator, it's irrelevant to me how original a director's style is or not; the only thing that matters is the quality of the final product they create with their choices, so I don't care if Marty took the dolly zoom from Vertigo for the scene in the cafe in Goodfellas or not, because the only thing I care about is that that was an effective, striking aesthetic choice for that moment, and contributed to the movie standing right alongside the greatest works from any other director, whether they be past or present, as I'm concerned.I find this a rather peculiar argument: namely that Scorsese's derivative remixes are just as great as the work of more original filmmakers because he's adept at swiping ideas. First of all, I think this overstates just how derivative Scorsese's films actually are. It was never my argument that Scorsese's pastiches of classical Hollywood and European art cinema are as mechanical as, for instance, Woody Allen's appropriations of Bergman and Fellini in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and Celebrity (although Casino comes close). On the contrary, my point is that Scorsese's eclecticism in swiping from a range of sources is a large part of what makes him a relatively lively filmmaker in the context of the New Hollywood period and its aftermath (for the most part, a pretty depressing era in American moviemaking)--a point Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson already put their finger on in the mid-'70s when they wrote that Taxi Driver ravishes "the auteur box of Sixties best scenes, from Hitchcock's reverse track down a staircase from the Frenzy brutality, through Godard's handwriting gig flashed across the entire screen, to several Mike Snow inventions (the slow Wavelength zoom into a close look at graphics pinned on a beaten plaster wall, and the reprise of double and triple exposures that ends Back and Forth)." At his best, Scorsese is about as exciting as a filmmaker can be without access to a living tradition, but in the absence of a tradition capable of generating new stories and styles, he's unable to do anything truly original. Hollywood cinema is dead and Scorsese is a sort of Dr. Frankenstein, stitching together parts from different corpses and trying to reanimate them. The results are frequently entertaining but it strikes me as rather astonishing to claim that they equal the work of genuinely innovative filmmakers like Hitchcock, Godard, and Snow for the reasons I've already stated: If something's been done, there's no need to do it again, and in doing it again anyway, Scorsese fails to find a mode of representation suitable for the present. He's American cinema's greatest cover band.

[StuSmallz]

I think what I've already said about Scorsese could easily apply to most or all of the directors you've listed: None of them are especially innovative, nor are any of them in possession of a living tradition as Ford, Hawks, and Lubitsch were. Even at their most entertaining, Almodóvar's pastiches of Mankiewicz and Sirk, Anderson's lifts from Salinger and Malle, and Mann's post-neo-noirs are like attempts to temporarily reanimate a dead organism by administering periodic jolts of electricity. In other words, their films belong more to the past than the future.Also, I think you're selling a lot of contemporary directors short, particularly Michael Mann (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/tag/mann/reviews/), since, even you exclude the films of his that obviously don't come close to the category (like Last Of The Mohicans), his work still isn't particularly Noir-ish, even in just the "Neo" sense of the term, as the similarities between his movies and the genre tend to be pretty surface-level and unintentional, IMO. And, more importantly, the general tone of his work also tends to distinctly lack the strong sense of cynicism and distrust that's a defining feature of most Noir; I mean, the entire plot of Thief hinges on Frank initially trusting Leo enough to go to work for him, even after the rocky start they had to their interactions, and the affable front Leo puts up which is clearly insincere, a level of trust from a protagonist that would be unheard of from, say, Robert Mitchum in Out Of The Past.

[megladon8]

Speaking of new and innovative films...

Watched Mandy last night.

Holy wow.

[Irish]

I find this a rather peculiar argument: namely that Scorsese's derivative remixes are just as great as the work of more original filmmakers because he's adept at swiping ideas. First of all, I think this overstates just how derivative Scorsese's films actually are. It was never my argument that Scorsese's pastiches of classical Hollywood and European art cinema are as mechanical as, for instance, Woody Allen's appropriations of Bergman and Fellini in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and Celebrity (although Casino comes close). On the contrary, my point is that Scorsese's eclecticism in swiping from a range of sources is a large part of what makes him a relatively lively filmmaker in the context of the New Hollywood period and its aftermath (for the most part, a pretty depressing era in American moviemaking)--a point Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson already put their finger on in the mid-'70s when they wrote that Taxi Driver ravishes "the auteur box of Sixties best scenes, from Hitchcock's reverse track down a staircase from the Frenzy brutality, through Godard's handwriting gig flashed across the entire screen, to several Mike Snow inventions (the slow Wavelength zoom into a close look at graphics pinned on a beaten plaster wall, and the reprise of double and triple exposures that ends Back and Forth)." At his best, Scorsese is about as exciting as a filmmaker can be without access to a living tradition, but in the absence of a tradition capable of generating new stories and styles, he's unable to do anything truly original. Hollywood cinema is dead and Scorsese is a sort of Dr. Frankenstein, stitching together parts from different corpses and trying to reanimate them. The results are frequently entertaining but it strikes me as rather astonishing to claim that they equal the work of genuinely innovative filmmakers like Hitchcock, Godard, and Snow for the reasons I've already stated: If something's been done, there's no need to do it again, and in doing it again anyway, Scorsese fails to find a mode of representation suitable for the present. He's American cinema's greatest cover band.

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to baby doll again."

Great post.

[Dukefrukem]

Anyone want to have a MC movie night (watch party)? - https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/jolt

https://www.amazon.com/Jolt-KATE-BECKINSALE/dp/B097QD44P9/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jolt&qid=1627580900&s=instant-video&sr=1-1

Sat night? 745:PM EST start?

[Skitch]

I think if you guys would really believe all films of the last few decades have been derivative or unneeded or what-have-you, you would have stopped watching new films by now. Whats the point?

[quido8_5]

Speaking of new and innovative films...

Watched Mandy last night.

Holy wow.

Yes. That movie is bonkers! The pace is unrelenting, just ratcheting up the insanity and violence until the credits roll. Everything is turned up to eleven. And, no matter how insane things get, Cage's performance is enough to sell it. He just inhabits that character. One of his best performances, I'd say.

[baby doll]

I think if you guys would really believe all films of the last few decades have been derivative or unneeded or what-have-you, you would have stopped watching new films by now. Whats the point?A film doesn't have to be a masterpiece to be worth seeing.

[Skitch]

A film doesn't have to be a masterpiece to be worth seeing.

By your estimation, when was the last masterpiece made?

[baby doll]

By your estimation, when was the last masterpiece made?I haven't seen many new movies since the start of the pandemic, but Pedro Costa's Vitalina Varela and Joshua Gen Solondz's (tourism studies) (both 2019) strike me as being at least viable candidates (although having seen them only once it's perhaps still too early to say for sure).

[Skitch]

I haven't seen many new movies since the start of the pandemic, but Pedro Costa's Vitalina Varela and Joshua Gen Solondz's (tourism studies) (both 2019) strike me as being at least viable candidates (although having seen them only once it's perhaps still too early to say for sure).

I also never give masterpiece status after one watch...but don't you think its still worth having new movies if masterpieces still trickle out?

[baby doll]

I also never give masterpiece status after one watch...but don't you think its still worth having new movies if masterpieces still trickle out?I think it's worth watching new movies even if masterpieces don't trickle out.

[Irish]

Anyone want to have a MC movie night (watch party)? - https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/jolt

https://www.amazon.com/Jolt-KATE-BECKINSALE/dp/B097QD44P9/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jolt&qid=1627580900&s=instant-video&sr=1-1

Sat night? 745:PM EST start?

Yes, please!

[megladon8]

Yes. That movie is bonkers! The pace is unrelenting, just ratcheting up the insanity and violence until the credits roll. Everything is turned up to eleven. And, no matter how insane things get, Cage's performance is enough to sell it. He just inhabits that character. One of his best performances, I'd say.

I completely agree.his best performance since Bad Lieutenant, and one of his all time best.

That bathroom breakdown scene was just...something else. A crazy actor at the top of his crazy craft.

The movie bounced seamlessly between being dreamlike and nightmarish. Absurd and horrific. Every aspect of the film is dialed up to 11.

It actually hit me very hard, emotionally...

I spent a good 10 minutes straight crying quite heavily. From the second we see Mandy start burning, right through until Cage is in full in revenge mode. I was a wreck.

Then that shot at the end of him in the car, covered head to toe in blood, grinning like a maniac. A man completely gone. No longer human. I really saw no other option for his character past the credits, except suicide.

Brilliant stuff.

[Skitch]

RE: MC movie night

Damn I literally just finished watching that lol. But I would love you hear your takes on it!

[DFA1979]

WarGames (1983, John Badham)


https://youtu.be/hbqMuvnx5MU

Matthew Broderick foolishly almost starts WW3 with a super computer. There are funny moments and one liners that almost make you forget that we really trust machines to do way too many things and it's probably not a good thing if humans are not still involved. Even then a person may think the computer is right even if it is actually wrong or projecting say, a simulation of nuking Las Vegas. Oh and it's rather bleak that the fate of humanity rests on a slack high school kid and a burned out scientist who is fine with the end of mankind as we know it.

Just never forget that humanity is ever so close to killing itself off, while the world would keep on spinning. Sure better 1980s nuclear war movies exist however this one cleverly draws you in with the seemingly wholesome approach and then let's the horrifying truth slowly dig in. I'm not sure why people are so nostalgic about an era where at any moment or minute humanity would decide to annihilate themselves. "The only way to win is not to play," or however the famous line goes. I'll remember that later on when the US decides to start another war.

[DFA1979]

People don't make me tap the sign aka "Match-Cut: Where People Believe Cinema Died in 1975." None of you are old enough yet to come across as a bunch of grumpy old men. Also come on there has to be black and women directors who have made great films, too. I don't think I saw any of them listed on the last couple of pages.

[Ezee E]

In on a MC Movie night. Sundays would be best but a Saturday in August might work.

[baby doll]

People don't make me tap the sign aka "Match-Cut: Where People Believe Cinema Died in 1975." None of you are old enough yet to come across as a bunch of grumpy old men. Also come on there has to be black and women directors who have made great films, too. I don't think I saw any of them listed on the last couple of pages.Dude, my avatar is of a film directed by a woman (one coincidentally released in 1975).

Also, making a judgement that certain things were of superior quality in the past doesn't necessarily make one either grumpy or old. Would any respectable critic argue that there are contemporary paintings as great as Las Meninas, operas on par with Le nozze di figaro, or novels as pleasurable as Pride and Prejudice? It's not uncommon for art forms to go into decline or to die out altogether. To point out that there are no contemporary filmmakers as impressive as Mizoguchi or Tati is not to claim that there aren't great films being made today, much less that cinema is dead (the classical Hollywood cinema is not the whole of film), but simply that creativity is not spread evenly across all periods and places. Not all cultures can be ancient Athens or Renaissance Italy.

[StuSmallz]

wat



You're describing a craftsman, not an artist.

In the Western tradition, greatness is directly linked to innovation.How is that a superior method for judging the quality of a work of art, though?

[StuSmallz]

I find this a rather peculiar argument: namely that Scorsese's derivative remixes are just as great as the work of more original filmmakers because he's adept at swiping ideas. First of all, I think this overstates just how derivative Scorsese's films actually are. It was never my argument that Scorsese's pastiches of classical Hollywood and European art cinema are as mechanical as, for instance, Woody Allen's appropriations of Bergman and Fellini in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and Celebrity (although Casino comes close). On the contrary, my point is that Scorsese's eclecticism in swiping from a range of sources is a large part of what makes him a relatively lively filmmaker in the context of the New Hollywood period and its aftermath (for the most part, a pretty depressing era in American moviemaking)--a point Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson already put their finger on in the mid-'70s when they wrote that Taxi Driver ravishes "the auteur box of Sixties best scenes, from Hitchcock's reverse track down a staircase from the Frenzy brutality, through Godard's handwriting gig flashed across the entire screen, to several Mike Snow inventions (the slow Wavelength zoom into a close look at graphics pinned on a beaten plaster wall, and the reprise of double and triple exposures that ends Back and Forth)." At his best, Scorsese is about as exciting as a filmmaker can be without access to a living tradition, but in the absence of a tradition capable of generating new stories and styles, he's unable to do anything truly original. Hollywood cinema is dead and Scorsese is a sort of Dr. Frankenstein, stitching together parts from different corpses and trying to reanimate them. The results are frequently entertaining but it strikes me as rather astonishing to claim that they equal the work of genuinely innovative filmmakers like Hitchcock, Godard, and Snow for the reasons I've already stated: If something's been done, there's no need to do it again, and in doing it again anyway, Scorsese fails to find a mode of representation suitable for the present. He's American cinema's greatest cover band.It makes sense for me though, because I don't feel that either innovation or "unoriginality" (or whatever term you prefer to use for it) in filmmaking are inherently positive or negative qualities on their own; what ultimately determines that is the final result they have have on their specific movie, so it all goes on a case-by-case basis for me. If originality results in a better movie than a more "inspired by" approach (and I can think of a number of examples where that's the case), then the more original method is obviously the preferable approach, but the same naturally goes for the opposite scenario as well, and I'm not going to watch something like 'fellas, and think to myself "You know, that was one of the greatest movies I've ever seen, but Marty took some stylistic devices from other movies, so I'm going to decide that he isn't as good as the people who directed those, even though the movie he made is just as great as those, or any other movie I've seen from any other director", and to evaluate it otherwise strikes me as a bit of putting the cart before the horse, so to speak.

[DFA1979]

Dude, my avatar is of a film directed by a woman (one coincidentally released in 1975).

Also, making a judgement that certain things were of superior quality in the past doesn't necessarily make one either grumpy or old. Would any respectable critic argue that there are contemporary paintings as great as Las Meninas, operas on par with Le nozze di figaro, or novels as pleasurable as Pride and Prejudice? It's not uncommon for art forms to go into decline or to die out altogether. To point out that there are no contemporary filmmakers as impressive as Mizoguchi or Tati is not to claim that there aren't great films being made today, much less that cinema is dead (the classical Hollywood cinema is not the whole of film), but simply that creativity is not spread evenly across all periods and places. Not all cultures can be ancient Athens or Renaissance Italy.

Kind of weird you didn't mention her. Also yeah you all come across to me as a bunch of crabby old timers. I've heard the whole cinema is dead thing for years and it's a tired decades long cliche. I think MST3K helped show that they made plenty of old crappy movies before 1980. I bet they had terrible art in ancient times but ok dude.

[baby doll]

Kind of weird you didn't mention her. Also yeah you all come across to me as a bunch of crabby old timers. I've heard the whole cinema is dead thing for years and it's a tired decades long cliche. I think MST3K helped show that they made plenty of old crappy movies before 1980. I bet they had terrible art in ancient times but ok dude.I have no doubt they did have terrible art in ancient times, but that is irrelevant to my argument. I'm not arguing that all art from previous eras is superior to all contemporary art (I'm not an idiot), but simply that art has a history, film included. Robin Wood has likened the classical Hollywood cinema to the Elizabethan theatre as a period of intense creative activity, but that doesn't mean that every classical filmmaker was as great as Howard Hawks anymore than every Elizabethan playwright was a great as Shakespeare; only that the material conditions were in place in Elizabethan England and classical Hollywood for Shakespeare and Hawks to flourish. But no golden age lasts forever, and a contemporary filmmaker like Scorsese has to operate under conditions that are much less favourable to the production of great cinema than Hawks did (for one thing, Hawks wasn't required to impose himself on the public as a capital-A Auteur in the way Scorsese has had to). To point this out isn't being crabby; it's simply acknowledging objective reality.

[Dukefrukem]

Anyone want to have a MC movie night (watch party)? - https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/jolt

https://www.amazon.com/Jolt-KATE-BECKINSALE/dp/B097QD44P9/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jolt&qid=1627580900&s=instant-video&sr=1-1

Sat night? 745:PM EST start?

The hardest thing is accommodating time zones. is 8PM too early for west coast people?

This is a test run to see how it works.

[megladon8]

The hardest thing is accommodating time zones. is 8PM too early for west coast people?

This is a test run to see how it works.

We will be there as long as we can get a decent connection!

[Dukefrukem]

We will be there as long as we can get a decent connection!

Awesome that's 5!

[DFA1979]

I have no doubt they did have terrible art in ancient times, but that is irrelevant to my argument. I'm not arguing that all art from previous eras is superior to all contemporary art (I'm not an idiot), but simply that art has a history, film included. Robin Wood has likened the classical Hollywood cinema to the Elizabethan theatre as a period of intense creative activity, but that doesn't mean that every classical filmmaker was as great as Howard Hawks anymore than every Elizabethan playwright was a great as Shakespeare; only that the material conditions were in place in Elizabethan England and classical Hollywood for Shakespeare and Hawks to flourish. But no golden age lasts forever, and a contemporary filmmaker like Scorsese has to operate under conditions that are much less favourable to the production of great cinema than Hawks did (for one thing, Hawks wasn't required to impose himself on the public as a capital-A Auteur in the way Scorsese has had to). To point this out isn't being crabby; it's simply acknowledging objective reality.

Dude I'm not Irish I'm not going to argue semantics with you or whatever. Don't feel bad though I still think you are a better poster than Wats ever was.

[baby doll]

It makes sense for me though, because I don't feel that either innovation or "unoriginality" (or whatever term you prefer to use for it) in filmmaking are inherently positive or negative qualities on their own; what ultimately determines that is the final result they have have on their specific movie, so it all goes on a case-by-case basis for me. If originality results in a better movie than a more "inspired by" approach (and I can think of a number of examples where that's the case), then the more original method is obviously the preferable approach, but the same naturally goes for the opposite scenario as well, and I'm not going to watch something like 'fellas, and think to myself "You know, that was one of the greatest movies I've ever seen, but Marty took some stylistic devices from other movies, so I'm going to decide that he isn't as good as the people who directed those, even though the movie he made is just as great as those, or any other movie I've seen from any other director", and to evaluate it otherwise strikes me as a bit of putting the cart before the horse, so to speak.Goodfellas is probably Scorsese's greatest film, and one of the supreme achievements of post-1960 Hollywood cinema, in large part, I would argue, because it represents Scorsese's most successful synthesis of the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema and European art cinema. The narrative is frankly episodic (and thus non-classical), essentially a series of annotations on mob life, and as a result, Scorsese and Pileggi's observations on the subject have a freshness that would not be possible had they opted for a more classical structure. Yet, the film doesn't feel like an art movie because it is constantly in motion, achieving a narrative momentum that eluded Scorsese in choppier efforts like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ, with the voice-overs functioning as a bridge from one episode to the next. Moreover, Scorsese's borrowings from other directors here are more purposeful and less distracting than his citations of Welles and Visconti in The Age of Innocence and Godard in Casino, where they mainly serve to paper over giant holes in the script (if the audience believed in and cared about relationship between Robert DeNiro and Sharon Stone in the latter film, Scorsese wouldn't have had to phone in Georges Delerue's score from Le Mépris to generate a sense of poignancy that the threadbare plot fails to provide for itself). In Goodfellas, Scorsese doesn't merely lift the dolly/zoom effect from Vertigo as an empty homage but repurposes it, to show the walls literally closing in on the characters. Yet, all that granted, is it as impressive as the best Hollywood films of the studio era or the best postwar art movies? That seems to me a rather high bar to clear and I don't think the film quite reaches it. In hybridizing the two modes, Hollywood cinema and art cinema, it loses the narrative unity of the former while sanding the edges off the latter. In the '50s, this would've been called mid-cult, domesticating modernist art in order to make it palatable to a mass audience and thus lacking the genuine vitality of both high modernism and mass culture.

[DFA1979]

I miss Sauron (good dude, posted on my blog actually a coiple years back), Raiders (would love to talk about Southern Comfort with him), Rowland, Izzy Black, Boner, Barry, Father Barry, B-Side (have him on FB though) and Sycophant.

[Irish]

How is that a superior method for judging the quality of a work of art, though?

It isn't, necessarily. Just different.

But then, you're also arguing with an academic (baby doll), while rejecting Western tradition. Makes it difficult to find common ground.


Robin Wood has likened the classical Hollywood cinema to the Elizabethan theatre as a period of intense creative activity, but that doesn't mean that every classical filmmaker was as great as Howard Hawks anymore than every Elizabethan playwright was a great as Shakespeare; only that the material conditions were in place in Elizabethan England and classical Hollywood for Shakespeare and Hawks to flourish.

I think about this a lot, in terms of how it's nearly impossible to have great artists in a culture that does not appreciate art. (And how this trickles down to criticism, too, because you can't have great criticism without great art.)

[Irish]

The narrative is frankly episodic (and thus non-classical), essentially a series of annotations on mob life, and as a result, Scorsese and Pileggi's observations on the subject have a freshness that would not be possible had they opted for a more classical structure. Yet, the film doesn't feel like an art movie because it is constantly in motion, achieving a narrative momentum that eluded Scorsese in choppier efforts like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ, with the voice-overs functioning as a bridge from one episode to the next.

Just to add-on to this:

The script isolates those annotations in a quasi-documentary style, which is brilliant. Every bit of ponderous exposition is offloaded into the VO, Ray Liotta taking you aside and spilling secrets. The visuals are mostly reserved for dramatic action. You go back and forth between Liotta whispering causes into your ear while you can see the effects with your own eyes.

This scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-jhmkcOGAA), in particular, which introduces Paulie and explains how the mob functions, has a documentary feel to it. The VO delivers expository details that sound like facts while the visuals have a home movie quality.

[Yxklyx]

Reddit has some gems:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/ouyli5/watching_a_movie_that_was_shot _in_this_exact/

[Dukefrukem]

Anyone want to have a MC movie night (watch party)? - https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/jolt

https://www.amazon.com/Jolt-KATE-BECKINSALE/dp/B097QD44P9/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jolt&qid=1627580900&s=instant-video&sr=1-1

Sat night? 745:PM EST start?

Still on for tonight

[megladon8]

Of course there is a big storm brewing here now. I may not be able to connect. I'll still try my darnedest.

[Irish]

Still on for tonight

I will be there

[Ezee E]

Not tonight. Sundays are better for the future.

[Dukefrukem]

Here's the Watch Party link - https://amz.onl/1whHJfW

[Irish]

Anyone want to have a MC movie night (watch party)? - https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/jolt

https://www.amazon.com/Jolt-KATE-BECKINSALE/dp/B097QD44P9/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jolt&qid=1627580900&s=instant-video&sr=1-1

Sat night? 745:PM EST start?

STARTS IN 5!

COME ONE COME ALL!

[Ezee E]

Watched a few random clips of The Truman Show recently. Great acting and production all around...

But...

Who would've actually watched this show over the course of 30 some years? No way it would have a large scale audience.

[Skitch]

Survivor has 40 seasons and almost 600 episodes. I've never watched one, but there it is

[StuSmallz]

Goodfellas is probably Scorsese's greatest film, and one of the supreme achievements of post-1960 Hollywood cinema, in large part, I would argue, because it represents Scorsese's most successful synthesis of the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema and European art cinema. The narrative is frankly episodic (and thus non-classical), essentially a series of annotations on mob life, and as a result, Scorsese and Pileggi's observations on the subject have a freshness that would not be possible had they opted for a more classical structure. Yet, the film doesn't feel like an art movie because it is constantly in motion, achieving a narrative momentum that eluded Scorsese in choppier efforts like Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ, with the voice-overs functioning as a bridge from one episode to the next. Moreover, Scorsese's borrowings from other directors here are more purposeful and less distracting than his citations of Welles and Visconti in The Age of Innocence and Godard in Casino, where they mainly serve to paper over giant holes in the script (if the audience believed in and cared about relationship between Robert DeNiro and Sharon Stone in the latter film, Scorsese wouldn't have had to phone in Georges Delerue's score from Le Mépris to generate a sense of poignancy that the threadbare plot fails to provide for itself). In Goodfellas, Scorsese doesn't merely lift the dolly/zoom effect from Vertigo as an empty homage but repurposes it, to show the walls literally closing in on the characters. Yet, all that granted, is it as impressive as the best Hollywood films of the studio era or the best postwar art movies? That seems to me a rather high bar to clear and I don't think the film quite reaches it. In hybridizing the two modes, Hollywood cinema and art cinema, it loses the narrative unity of the former while sanding the edges off the latter. In the '50s, this would've been called mid-cult, domesticating modernist art in order to make it palatable to a mass audience and thus lacking the genuine vitality of both high modernism and mass culture.Well, while I obviously don't feel 100% the same way that you do about post-Classical movie-making on the whole, I can still respect your personal take on it, and while, from my experience, I'd put the peak of Hollywood as taking place a little bit later (http://matchcut.artboiled.com/showthread.php?7234-Stu-Presents-1967-1980-A-History-Of-New-Hollywood!&p=593661&viewfull=1#post593661) than you would (during the period in-between the studio control of the Classical era, and the emphasis on mass market blockbusters of modern Hollywood), I do agree that Hollywood peaked some time ago, at least (and it's not the only form of art I feel that way about; heck, I did an entire series (https://globaldominationisdead.wordpre ss.com/tag/golden-age-of-metal/) on how I think Heavy Metal peaked for about a decade from the mid-80's to the middle of the 90's).

Anyway, regarding the importance of innovation in movie-making, while I don't automatically tie it to overall quality, there are examples of "unoriginal" movies that I've been critical of, because their unoriginality specifically lead to them feeling uninspired on the whole, like the failure of something like American Gangster to feel fresh as a Gangster movie, which was already an over-crowded, increasingly stale genre at the time, or the way that The Force Awakens mostly just takes influences from previous Star Wars (as opposed to the way that Lucas and company mixed influences from fairly diverse sources to avoid feeling overly derivative), or even the way that Scorsese has walked over the same ground he himself trod before at times, like how Casino felt like a vain attempt to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle of Goodfellas (as opposed to the way The Irishman "recycled" certain elements he used before in order to view them in a new light). So, while it's all still on a case-by-case basis for me, I can still empathize with your take on things.

[DFA1979]

Watched a few random clips of The Truman Show recently. Great acting and production all around...

But...

Who would've actually watched this show over the course of 30 some years? No way it would have a large scale audience.

The Simpsons, Survivor and Gunsmoke come to mind. Also the Bachelor and Bachelorette shows.

[Ezee E]

The Simpsons, Survivor and Gunsmoke come to mind. Also the Bachelor and Bachelorette shows.

But I mean, who would've watched THIS show? From what I remember, it was an entire channel just dedicated to him right? Everything was pretty drama-free too in a Leave it to Beaver plot, except that he was afraid of water and his dad had disappeared.

I'm obviously looking into it more than I need to, as the movie works in its own world, but just playing devil's advocate to the premise. Like, if it was a complete flop, what do they do to Truman?

[quido8_5]

Found Sweet and Lowdown at a used bookstore for 95 cents and purchased immediately. Had a great memory of watching it as a teenager. Held up much better than remembered. Performances are fantastic all around, which it was initially heralded for. Aside from the performances (which are all exemplary), what seals the deal is Allen's immaculate direction and fully confident incorporation of fiction and non-fiction. It's all up in the air as it should be. Nothing in this film is to be trusted, but everything is soluble and easily perceived as a potential reality. The last half-hour is heartbreaking and magical, both of which serve to administer an emotional wallop that is rare.

[transmogrifier]

Woody Allen is actually an underrated director. He knows how to block a scene and he works with good editors. Mostly he gets his reputation from his scripts and work with actors.

[transmogrifier]

Fuck me it is nice to watch movies that totally nail their climaxes, having them (a) build on what has come before in an organic manner and (b) be shot and edited with rhythm and style.

(Aliens and Rosemary's Baby, for the record).

[Dukefrukem]

Fuck me it is nice to watch movies that totally nail their climaxes, having them (a) build on what has come before in an organic manner and (b) be shot and edited with rhythm and style.

(Aliens and Rosemary's Baby, for the record).

Yup. Movies that set up their own third acts rule.

[megladon8]

Rewatched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood last night.

Think it might jump into my top 5 movies seen this year.

It's incredible.

[Mal]

Gonna rewatch it with my parents this weekend and make frozen margaritas.

[DFA1979]

But I mean, who would've watched THIS show? From what I remember, it was an entire channel just dedicated to him right? Everything was pretty drama-free too in a Leave it to Beaver plot, except that he was afraid of water and his dad had disappeared.

I'm obviously looking into it more than I need to, as the movie works in its own world, but just playing devil's advocate to the premise. Like, if it was a complete flop, what do they do to Truman?Seems like it had a pretty loyal fanbase. Also I'm sure people asked those same questions when The Real World premiered, too.

[DFA1979]

Rewatched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood last night.

Think it might jump into my top 5 movies seen this year.

It's incredible.
I love that movie a lot. Saw it in a packed theater on a hot Thursday, was glad I got to see it opening weekend and witness everyone else reacting to the last act.

[Dukefrukem]

Reminder: MC Watch Party will be held this Sat night. The goal is to watch a movie that no one has seen. Random movie will be chosen by RNG.

If you would like to participate let me know.

Possible Movies On the Random List:

1 Identifying Features
2 Blood Hands, Empty Pockets
3 Veins of the World
4 Cowboys
5 The Wolf of Snow Hollow
6 Lapsis
7 West No More
8 Concrete Cowboy
9 Train To Busan: Peninsula
10 Money Plane
11 IP Man 4
12 Greyhound
13 Dick Johnson is Dead
14 The Life Ahead
15 The Painted Bird
16 The Empty Man
17 Mulan
18 Black Bear
19 Wolfwalkers

[Ivan Drago]

Haven't seen it, but I've heard enough about The Painted Bird to guess that'd be one hell of a dour watch party.

[Skitch]

No one has seen Ip Man 4, what is wrong with you people :)

[Ezee E]

Train to Busan, please. I might be able to do this one.

[quido8_5]

I love that movie a lot. Saw it in a packed theater on a hot Thursday, was glad I got to see it opening weekend and witness everyone else reacting to the last act.

One of the moments in a film when I definitely wished I had been in a theater. *That* scene showed that Tarantino still had the ability to create situations that are as outrageous as they are enjoyable. Crowd pleasing in a way that is exciting instead pandering. I wasn't watching, but a friend told me that the Academy Awards showed that scene in one of their clips.

[DFA1979]

One of the moments in a film when I definitely wished I had been in a theater. *That* scene showed that Tarantino still had the ability to create situations that are as outrageous as they are enjoyable. Crowd pleasing in a way that is exciting instead pandering. I wasn't watching, but a friend told me that the Academy Awards showed that scene in one of their clips.

I'm guessing it was Brad Pitt high as shit. When he said the horse line I died laughing. Still pretty hilarious.

[quido8_5]

I'm guessing it was Brad Pitt high as shit. When he said the horse line I died laughing. Still pretty hilarious.

Haha, this a great scene indeed. I was referring to the flamethrower.

[DFA1979]

Yes that part was fantastic, too.

[Ivan Drago]

Where do you guys recommend I start with Yasujiro Ozu's work? He's a filmmaker I've read a lot about but have never seen his films before so I'd like to clear up that blind spot.

[Scar]

Watched Manhunter for the first time in 20 or so years. To say my taste in film has matured is an understatement.

[Skitch]

Watched Manhunter for the first time in 20 or so years. To say my taste in film has matured is an understatement.

I'm not sure if you mean that you liked it better or worse lol

[baby doll]

Where do you guys recommend I start with Yasujiro Ozu's work? He's a filmmaker I've read a lot about but have never seen his films before so I'd like to clear up that blind spot.Whatever you can get your hands on. I've yet to see a bad Ozu movie.

[Scar]

I'm not sure if you mean that you liked it better or worse lol

Ha. I’ve gained more appreciation for the style. The finale was always awesome, but when you see Lambs when you’re 13 and don’t watch Manhunter until after Hannibal, you expect Hopkins as Lecter, and seeing Brian Cox threw me.

Anyways, I certainly like it much more these days.

[Paranoid Android]

Where do you guys recommend I start with Yasujiro Ozu's work? He's a filmmaker I've read a lot about but have never seen his films before so I'd like to clear up that blind spot.

I started with Late Spring and it felt like a good jumping off point.

[Idioteque Stalker]

I started with Late Spring and it felt like a good jumping off point.

I haven't seen any Ozu since I was a teenager, so take this with a grain of salt, but I remember preferring Late Spring to Tokyo Story.

[Ivan Drago]

Thanks for the recs so far, guys!

Also I thought about posting my Letterboxd review for Yi Yi in the Battle of the 00s thread given that's where it's being talked about, but I'd rather post it here for discussion purposes:

Yi Yi is an almost three-hour long Taiwanese epic that follows a family over the span of a year after their grandmother suffers a stroke following a relative's wedding. The incident provokes them all to try and make their lives more fulfilling in different ways. While Magnolia makes real life into a cinematic spectacle through powerful monologues and Biblical parallels, Edward Yang's final film makes it a spectacle just by filming it as it unspectacular, yet equal parts arduous and beautiful at the same time. The travels and experiences of each family member as well as the connections and reconnections they make along the way are photographed with powerful intimacy in gorgeous compositions as if the audience is eavesdropping on them from afar, while the sound design and mixing immerse viewers from scene to scene in its diegetic atmosphere, and the performances are powerful in their naturalism. Yi Yi is a film that provokes nostalgia and wistfulness, proposes thoughtful ideas about how people experience life, and tells sobering truths about mortality and regrets as well as the consequences of one's choices. That said, it's also a poignant reminder about how lovely the act of existence is, and one of the best films I've ever seen.

[megladon8]

Hmmm...I really didn't like The Hateful Eight very much.

[Yxklyx]

Hmmm...I really didn't like The Hateful Eight very much.

Yeah, all that setup for THAT ending?

[StuSmallz]

Hmmm...I really didn't like The Hateful Eight very much.Me neither; so many dialogue-spewing caricatures... SO many!

[megladon8]

The dick sucking stuff was just...wtf level 10,000.

Many of the individual parts are impressive. The photography is gorgeous, the performances are fantastic all over. But QT is at his most self indulgent and...kinda gross.

The N word use is just too damn much. Dude, you have a problem.

[Dukefrukem]

MatchCut Watch Party tonight. 8PM EST. Feature: You Cannot Kill David Arquette

Movie chosen at random from five MC watch queues.

Let me know if you want to join.

[DFA1979]

Ha. I’ve gained more appreciation for the style. The finale was always awesome, but when you see Lambs when you’re 13 and don’t watch Manhunter until after Hannibal, you expect Hopkins as Lecter, and seeing Brian Cox threw me.

Anyways, I certainly like it much more these days.

The third viewing I noticed some more things I didn't catch the other two times. The score and color schemes particularly but also how intense the film mostly is throughout. It really centers on a lot of smaller details that are nailed really well, too.

[DFA1979]

Huh I loved The Hateful Eight but I did figure it wasn't one of QT's more well liked movies due to its length and being mostly a slow burn movie.

[Irish]

https://i.imgur.com/cOCMFdc.png

Kids today have no appreciation for the classics ...

[Skitch]

Crocodile Dundee 2 > Crocodile Dundee

[Lazlo]

https://i.imgur.com/cOCMFdc.png

Kids today have no appreciation for the classics ...

Glad I could play my small part in it!

FWIW Dundee II is too long/slow, lacks the humor of the original, repeats a few too many of the original's beats, and the villain is woefully unthreatening. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Dukefrukem]

That's a random movie Mal watched.

[Scar]

https://i.imgur.com/cOCMFdc.png

Kids today have no appreciation for the classics ...

*cough* Mike’s older than me. Which site is that? One I should’ve joined ages ago?

[Scar]

Guessing LetterBoxd. Find me at ScarOfWar. I’ll continue to update it during down time.

[megladon8]

I'm megladon8 on Letterboxd if anyone wants to add.

[StuSmallz]

https://i.imgur.com/cOCMFdc.png

Kids today have no appreciation for the classics ...I'm just surprised that Mal was that "kind" to (what I presume is) the original version of Hobgoblins; I mean, I had the benefit of Mike & the bots' riffs to get me through it, and even then that... thing Rick Sloane unleashed on the world was still pure agony to get through, and one of the worst movies they ever featured:


https://youtu.be/Mn36h2r4efo

"I'm sorry sir, but, there's been an accident at the studio..."
"...we made Hobgoblins."

[Ivan Drago]

"My fajita plate was REALLY HOT AND I TOUCHED IT!!" :D

[Idioteque Stalker]

I watched Happiness today. Been intrigued for a long time but always put it off because I've never been a fan of Solondz and this movie in particular has quite the reputation for being... well... super Solondz-y. Anyway, I loved it. The cast is perfect -- anything less than 100% commitment from the actors would've been horrid with such a deranged script, but they were totally dialed-in, resulting in scene after scene of disturbing and hilarious highlights.

[StuSmallz]

"My fajita plate was REALLY HOT AND I TOUCHED IT!!" :DOoh, the smell of all that smoldering back hair...

[DFA1979]

https://i.imgur.com/cOCMFdc.png

Kids today have no appreciation for the classics ...

Crocodile Dundee II was decent enough. Never saw the Clint movie. Hobgoblins is awful and the MST3K episode featuring it is gold

[Ivan Drago]

Ooh, the smell of all that smoldering back hair...

He filed an insurance claim for 700 pairs of red shorts.

[StuSmallz]

He filed an insurance claim for 700 pairs of red shorts."Look at that guy wave that gel in front of the light!"

[quido8_5]

Soliciting suggestions for a streaming movie less than 2 hours in duration.

[Skitch]

Soliciting suggestions for a streaming movie less than 2 hours in duration.

Umm...if youre in the mood for action/thriller, Bastille Day aka The Take on Netflix. Idris Elba whippin ass and taking names. Its not A++ or anything, but I enjoyed it.

[Yxklyx]

Soliciting suggestions for a streaming movie less than 2 hours in duration.

My favorite go-to with limited time is The Set-Up clocking in at 73 minutes. It should be on Criterion for the rest of this month.

[Peng]

Instagram scam seemingly designed for Film Twitter: posing as director Apichatpong Weerasethakul to ask you for travel money back from Cannes, with a promise of filming UNCLE BOONMEE 2 in return, LOL.

1432645259490594820

Full translation (Jei is Apichatpong’s actual Thai nickname):


Hello, this is Jei Apichatpong. I’m sending this from my personal IG. I see you like indie films and post-rock music. Listen… actually I am not back from Cannes yet. Can I bother you for 1,000 bahts so I can fly back to Thailand? If I arrive back there I will start shooting “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives 2� just for you specially.

Long live cinema!

[Ezee E]

Film Twitter, "WORTH THE RISK."

[quido8_5]

Instagram scam seemingly designed for Film Twitter: posing as director Apichatpong Weerasethakul to ask you for travel money back from Cannes, with a promise of filming UNCLE BOONMEE 2 in return, LOL.

1432645259490594820

Full translation (Jei is Apichatpong’s actual Thai nickname):

Now this is making me wonder what Uncle Boonmee Who Can Remember His Past Life 2 would look like.

[Peng]

Uncle Boonmee 2: Recall the Electric Boogaloo

[quido8_5]

Instagram scam seemingly designed for Film Twitter: posing as director Apichatpong Weerasethakul to ask you for travel money back from Cannes, with a promise of filming UNCLE BOONMEE 2 in return, LOL.

1432645259490594820

Full translation (Jei is Apichatpong’s actual Thai nickname):

Now this is making me wonder what Uncle Boonmee 2 would look like.

[Ezee E]

Uncle Boonmee needs to cross over to the DCEU.

[megladon8]

Can I suggest Terror at Blood Fart Lake as an MC group viewing?

It's free on Prime.

[Skitch]

These Lone Wolf and Cub movies are amazing.

[Skitch]

Looking for something to watch in background at work the other day (I usually see whats starting on Pluto)...and came across Run Silent, Run Deep.

Sweet Christmas what a picture!

[StuSmallz]

https://i.ibb.co/vk5FCCn/total-recall.jpg (https://ibb.co/fHRgVVw)


Get ready for the ride of your life.


Whether fairly or not, Action movies are often stereotypically thought of as one of the least-thought provoking film genres out there, which is a stark contrast to the way Science-Fiction is typically perceived, with its speculative tales about what science, technology, and the future in general may hold in store for the human species and experience, serving as a sort of "escapism" that is nonetheless still rooted solidly in our day-to-day reality. However, in 1990, Paul Verhoeven built on his previous moviemaking experience to make the two seemingly polar opposites meet in fairly spectacular fashion with Total Recall, having his cake and eating it too by getting to indulge in tons of gratuitous, non-stop bloody action, while still also finding time to intellectually stimulate us with its intriguing "real or false?" reality narrative, with the film, to paraphrase Tom Breihan (https://www.avclub.com/with-total-recall-schwarzenegger-got-to-blow-things-up-1798254972), getting to blow up characters' heads AND viewers' minds at the same time.

Set in the year 2084, it tells the story of Douglas Quaid, an Earthbound construction worker who has recurring dreams/nightmares of visiting Mars, which inspires him to make that dream a reality (sort of) by visiting Rekall, a company that specializes in implanting memories in people's minds, in order to get the escape from his mundane daily life he so desperately pines for. However, the procedure goes haywire, causing Quaid to seemingly uncover an interplanetary espionage conspiracy in the process, and forcing him to get his "ass to Mars" for real, all the while dodging bullets, traitorous wives, and the tantalizing possiblity that none of it is even happening for real.

Of course, even without that final detail, Recall would still be memorable for a number of other aspects, such as its unique, endlessly imaginative vision of the future, with a new detail coming pretty much every moment to help further build its futuristic world, whether it be robotic taxicab drivers, holographic decoy emitters, or gigantic X-Ray walls, the latter rendered with then-groundbreaking CGI effects. However, that's balanced out by the film's non-stop showcase of practical models, prosthetics, and animatronics otherwise, which give Rob Bottin's various creations a much-needed tactility, and help to render a surprisingly vivid sense of body horror here in the process (courtesy of David Cronenberg(!) and Alien screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's contributions to the production), to the point that people apparently approached Marshall Bell for years afterward and non-jokingly asked him to lift his shirt so they could see "Kuato" for themselves.

But of course, the most fascinating aspect of Recall is courtesy of the involvement of the ultimate "what is real? Sci-Fi scribe himself, Phillip K. Dick, whose 1966 story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale provides the basic skeleton onto which the meaty, Arnie-signature thrills are laid on top of here, nicely balancing all the mindless action out with a relentless, conspiracy-laden plot and a rich abundance of ideas, with the many narrative rug pulls never feeling unnecessarily convoluted, even as the bursts of exposition come at us as rapid-fire as the automatic weapons do at Quaid. It's the kind of movie where it's possible to read pretty much every detail one way or the other, making for endless possibilities, which results in a nice meta-commentary on the very nature of film itself, since, why does it matter if everything is really happening here or not, since we don't care if every other movie ever made is technically a false reality of its own?

Add onto that a nastily fun sense of humor (can you say, midget prostitutes with knives?), and a strong influence on similar films since, with its reality-warping narrative and surprisingly progressive, egalitarian gender dynamics setting the stage for multiple genre-redefining actioners, whether they be the basic story of The Matrix, or the now iconic post-apocalyptic partnership between Max & Furiosa in Fury Road, and Total Recall will definitely give you the "ride of your life", and then some.


Final Score: 8
.

[Irish]

It's the kind of movie where it's possible to read pretty much every detail one way or the other, making for endless possibilities, which results in a nice meta-commentary on the very nature of film itself, since, why does it matter if everything is really happening here or not, since we don't care if every other movie ever made is technically a false reality of its own?

???

confusedemoji.jpg

[StuSmallz]

???

confusedemoji.jpgWhat? It's a pretty self-explanatory point.

[Dukefrukem]

What? It's a pretty self-explanatory point.

I thought it was pretty clear about the ending.

[Irish]

I agree that it's clear about the ending, but disagree "it's possible to read pretty much every detail one way or the other."

For one, the movie doesn't take its premise too seriously. It's content to be dumb fun. It might make a weird suggestion here and there, but really it's just biding its time until the next 3-titted mutant appears or the next set piece gets rolling.

For another, Arnold is too big a presence, both figuratively and literally, to sell the idea the character might be delusional, regardless of what's said in dialogue. This is the same guy from "Commando" and "Predator." He's a movie star. All of these qualities work against the movie's supposed ambiguity. Arnold's limitations as an actor don't help, either.

Also, these strike me as wild assertions:


why does it matter if everything is really happening here or not,

since we don't care if every other movie ever made is technically a false reality of its own?

The first makes action-suspense virtually impossible, ie, it matters because otherwise nobody would be caught up in the story.

The second
- depends too much on the word technically
- only applies in certain narrow contexts (people absolutely care when it comes to true crime or biopics, for example)
- brushes aside suspension of disbelief as an essential tool of fiction

[DFA1979]

Total Recall is great and all but in the end it's a ultra violent sci-fi action movie that had a really Hollywood ending. I will say that the film is one of Arnold's best roles, or maybe even his best. I've been a fan of it for years. Not sure why a remake exists, although hey Hollywood loves to do that predictable sort of thing.

[StuSmallz]

I thought it was pretty clear about the ending.Even though, if I had to put money on it, I would bet that the events of Recall are all in Quaid's head, since there's stronger evidence for that than it being real, there's still a consistent "plausible deniability" to its details, such as the unexplained bead of sweat creeping down Dr. Edgemar's face, which leaves the door cracked open just enough that doubt can creep in, which is more interesting than just straight-up confirmation one way or another.
I agree that it's clear about the ending, but disagree "it's possible to read pretty much every detail one way or the other."

For one, the movie doesn't take its premise too seriously. It's content to be dumb fun. It might make a weird suggestion here and there, but really it's just biding its time until the next 3-titted mutant appears or the next set piece gets rolling.

For another, Arnold is too big a presence, both figuratively and literally, to sell the idea the character might be delusional, regardless of what's said in dialogue. This is the same guy from "Commando" and "Predator." He's a movie star. All of these qualities work against the movie's supposed ambiguity. Arnold's limitations as an actor don't help, either.

Also, these strike me as wild assertions:

The first makes action-suspense virtually impossible, ie, it matters because otherwise nobody would be caught up in the story.

The second
- depends too much on the word technically
- only applies in certain narrow contexts (people absolutely care when it comes to true crime or biopics, for example)
- brushes aside suspension of disbelief as an essential tool of fictionNo, the movie doesn't take its tone too seriously; that doesn't mean that its treatment of the premise isn't serious, and the comic relief of "Consider that a divorce" doesn't cancel out the constant exposition dumps and double crosses that you have to pay close attention to in order to follow the plot, along with the overall ambiguity and thematic depth it contains as a whole. That's what makes it a clever movie; you can choose to look it as just another Arnie actioner on a surface level, where the only point is to be entertained by the constant automatic weaponry and shattering panes of sugar glass, but doing so would be dismissive of the intelligence underneath all that, and having a sense of humor doesn't automatically turn it into Snakes On A Plane; to bring another Verhoeven movie into the mix, that would be like saying Robocop has nothing to say about Capitalism because its fake commercials are so goofy. The humor in both movies is the sugar coating on the (red) pill to help them be fun and smart at the same time.

Anyway, Arnie's screen presence is the reason why the film was able to sell the possibility of Quaid's delusion, because he was played by the biggest Action hero (and just one of the biggest stars period) of that era, and yet he's still claiming that Melina has to be a real person just because he dreamed about her before he went to get his mind-fantasy implanted in his head; I don't care how big a star the guy is, if he's making arguments like that, then there's something seriously fishy about his general mindset.

As for your first point about my assertions, that depends entirely on the specifics of the particular movie. I mean, if it was impossible to enjoy a movie featuring false narratives, then obviously no one would like Shutter Island since it's not just suggested, but explicitly confirmed in that film that Teddy's entire investigation was just a product of his personal delusions... and yet, a lot of people (myself included) still manage to like it anyway.

As for the second one...
-What does that mean, depends "too much" on the use of technically? As in, my point would work better if it somehow depended on that word less? It's a binary choice, since the term is either 100% present in that sentence, or completely absent; there are no shades of grey in-between those two.
-But it does apply here, since Total Recall is obviously a fictional story (along with a ton of other movies in that "narrow" context), and it even applies to true-life movies as well, because, regardless of what real basis a historical movie may have, they still feature actors pretending to do things and be other people just as much as any other work of fiction does (so, even though Abraham Lincoln was a real person, Daniel Day-Lewis pretending to be him is still just as false as Arnie playing Quaid).
-No it doesn't, because whether a movie effectively wields suspension of disbelief in its specific context is a seperate issue from the artificial nature of cinematic storytelling, which is what I'm talking about.

[StuSmallz]

Total Recall is great and all but in the end it's a ultra violent sci-fi action movie that had a really Hollywood ending. I will say that the film is one of Arnold's best roles, or maybe even his best. I've been a fan of it for years. Not sure why a remake exists, although hey Hollywood loves to do that predictable sort of thing.A movie suggesting that its "hero" was just living a fantasy inside his own head, and gets lobotomized at the end is a Hollywood ending?

[DFA1979]

A movie suggesting that its "hero" was just living a fantasy inside his own head, and gets lobotomized at the end is a Hollywood ending?

Except the movie didn't really suggest any of that. The hero wins, gets the girl and they look off into the sunset. How is that not a Hollywood ending?

[Skitch]

Hmm...I'd say both of you are right and wrong.

Sorry I'm not spoilering for a 30 year old movie...

Arnold does say at the end he's afraid this was all in his head because it was exactly the spy mind trip described by Recall (and the "doctor" who tries to make him take the pill says same), but while he was unconscious at Recall they say they never got around to implanting it. So from Arnold's POV it is a legit concern, but if we believe what the movie tells us, they didn't implant the fake spy trip and he "popped his memory cap" as they say.

So it's a Hollywood ending for the audience, but a permanent nagging concern for Arnold lol

[Dukefrukem]

Hmm...I'd say both of you are right and wrong.

Sorry I'm not spoilering for a 30 year old movie...

Arnold does say at the end he's afraid this was all in his head because it was exactly the spy mind trip described by Recall (and the "doctor" who tries to make him take the pill says same), but while he was unconscious at Recall they say they never got around to implanting it. So from Arnold's POV it is a legit concern, but if we believe what the movie tells us, they didn't implant the fake spy trip and he "popped his memory cap" as they say.

So it's a Hollywood ending for the audience, but a permanent nagging concern for Arnold lol

Well said.

[Irish]

No, the movie doesn't take its tone too seriously; that doesn't mean that its treatment of the premise isn't serious, and the comic relief of "Consider that a divorce" doesn't cancel out the constant exposition dumps and double crosses that you have to pay close attention to in order to follow the plot, along with the overall ambiguity and thematic depth it contains as a whole. That's what makes it a clever movie; you can choose to look it as just another Arnie actioner on a surface level, where the only point is to be entertained by the constant automatic weaponry and shattering panes of sugar glass, but doing so would be dismissive of the intelligence underneath all that, and having a sense of humor doesn't automatically turn it into Snakes On A Plane; to bring another Verhoeven movie into the mix, that would be like saying Robocop has nothing to say about Capitalism because its fake commercials are so goofy. The humor in both movies is the sugar coating on the (red) pill to help them be fun and smart at the same time.

I rewatched the other night and I'm closer to DFA's opinion than yours. It's a fun movie. Insanely violent. Great special effects. But that's about it. It's not particularly clever or sophisticated. The plot isn't hard to follow; it's mostly 2 hours of run-and-gun action. So I think you're giving it more credit than it deserves.

My biggest issue now with the so-called ambiguity is that Arnold-as-Quaid always expresses confidence in his present reality, in who he is and what he's doing. Anybody who contradicts that (Stone, Dr Edgemar, Cox) is either obviously unreliable or downright evil. Quaid doesn't believe Stone or the doctor, and he flat out rejects what Cox shows him. Since this is mostly an Arnold action movie, there's not a lot of incentive to interpret events differently than the hero does.

Either way, it doesn't matter. The story Verhoeven told remains the same regardless of which interpretation you pick.


Arnold does say at the end he's afraid this was all in his head because it was exactly the spy mind trip described by Recall (and the "doctor" who tries to make him take the pill says same), but while he was unconscious at Recall they say they never got around to implanting it.

I get what you're trying to say, but ... Quaid never expresses anxiety about his identity. He pushes back pretty hard whenever anyone tries to sell him on something other than the "Quaid" persona, and he stays that way throughout the film. He doesn't talk about his situation either, or reference anything anybody has told him. (I mean... he doesn't really have time, because the bad guys are constantly trying to kill him.)

The closest he ever comes to what you're talking about is in the final scene, when Quaid and Melina look over the newly oxygenated Martian landscape.

Her: "Wow, it's incredible. It's just like a dream."
Him: "I just had a terrible thought. What if this is just a dream?"
Her: "Then kiss me quick, before you wake up."

It's played pretty light. Arnold isn't an actor with a lot of nuance to him. Like DFA said, it's a very Hollywood ending.

[Skitch]

I get what you're trying to say, but ... Quaid never expresses anxiety about his identity. He pushes back pretty hard whenever anyone tries to sell him on something other than the "Quaid" persona, and he stays that way throughout the film. He doesn't talk about his situation either, or reference anything anybody has told him. (I mean... he doesn't really have time, because the bad guys are constantly trying to kill him.)

The closest he ever comes to what you're talking about is in the final scene, when Quaid and Melina look over the newly oxygenated Martian landscape.

Her: "Wow, it's incredible. It's just like a dream."
Him: "I just had a terrible thought. What if this is just a dream?"
Her: "Then kiss me quick, before you wake up."

It's played pretty light. Arnold isn't an actor with a lot of nuance to him. Like DFA said, it's a very Hollywood ending.

I didn't say he expresses anxiety about his identity, he's very clear wants to be Quaid and that "Howser is an asshole".

That end scene is what I was talking about, he pauses because he had a bad thought that maybe it was all a dream...I said, if we believe what the movie tells us, it clearly is not. But Quaid wasn't awake for that information.

[DFA1979]

I really love Total Recall. But that's cause I'm a huge action movie fan. It does indeed have what could be considered Arnold's best performance though.

[Irish]

Arnold does say at the end he's afraid this was all in his head

I didn't say he expresses anxiety about his identity,


???


That end scene is what I was talking about, he pauses because he had a bad thought that maybe it was all a dream...I said, if we believe what the movie tells us, it clearly is not. But Quaid wasn't awake for that information.

Quaid gets the same information we do and rejects it immediately, every time.

Here's the final scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG2WIb-r4hA). Dialogue starts around 2:30 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG2WIb-r4hA&t=149s). He doesn't pause. Arnold's line reading is flat, betraying no emotion. Neither character seems troubled by the idea they might be living in a fake reality.

ETA: I think it's a fun idea to play around with but ultimately meaningless in the context of the film. Arnold really prohibits a deeper read, as does the movie's emphasis on near constant action and violence.

[Skitch]

You are misunderstanding everything I'm saying lol. "hes afraid its all in his head" I meant he's afraid hes at Recall, lobotomized as the "doctor" said, and that nothing after Recall was real, nothing to do with his identity.

The pause I meant wasn't physical, or about his reading, I mean as a person he stopped for a sec and was like "oh shit what if isn't real". I don't see it as a real possibility within the film/plot/story as presented.

[Irish]

You are misunderstanding everything I'm saying lol.

lol I understood you just fine


he's afraid hes at Recall, lobotomized as the "doctor" said, and that nothing after Recall was real, nothing to do with his identity.

Whether he's actually still at Recall is connected to his identity, and everything he does in the movie is in some way an expression of that identity.

He also never openly doubts he's Quaid. Even when Cox shows him proof he's not, he rejects the idea immediately.

Either way, Quaid never really has an "oh shit" moment. He never even tells anybody about the weird shit that's happened to him (like shooting his wife and the creepy doctor in the head, after they tried to convince him he was having a psychotic break.)


The pause I meant wasn't physical, or about his reading, I mean as a person he stopped for a sec and was like

Sooooo ... where is this pause in the actual movie, then? Does it happen off screen or... in your imagination?

[Skitch]

lol aight, Irish...I've taken enough bait for today.

[Irish]

lol aight, Irish...I've taken enough bait for today.

...

Dude. Just fuck off.

[DFA1979]

Hey now only I'm allowed to be an asshole around here. And mostly when I'm drunk.

[StuSmallz]

Except the movie didn't really suggest any of that. The hero wins, gets the girl and they look off into the sunset. How is that not a Hollywood ending?The movie literally shows a headshot of Rachel Ticotin on the computer at Rekall as Quaid is ordering his "dream girl"; how on Mars is that not evidence of everything after that point (including the end) being part of the fantasy?
Hmm...I'd say both of you are right and wrong.


Sorry I'm not spoilering for a 30 year old movie...


Arnold does say at the end he's afraid this was all in his head because it was exactly the spy mind trip described by Recall (and the "doctor" who tries to make him take the pill says same), but while he was unconscious at Recall they say they never got around to implanting it. So from Arnold's POV it is a legit concern, but if we believe what the movie tells us, they didn't implant the fake spy trip and he "popped his memory cap" as they say.


So it's a Hollywood ending for the audience, but a permanent nagging concern for Arnold lolI wouldn't necessarily say that we disagree on this question, since, while I still think there's more evidence than not that everything after the visit to Rekall is the fantasy implant, there's still that plausible deniability I mentioned to indicate otherwise. And, that includes the point you bring up, since it and a number of other moments takes place entirely outside of Quaid's perspective, which is an odd thing to include if the fantasy's supposed to be entirely from his PoV, but if the movie took place just from Quaid's perspective the whole time, that might've been too much of an indication that it's all a fantasy (since there are already so many indications of that as is). To me, that scene was probably put there to fool us into thinking it might be real (and then again, maybe part of his mind experiences the entire fantasy from a "3rd person view" so he understands everything, not just the portions from his PoV?). At any rate, it's quite clever either way, since the moments from outside Quaid's perspective not only provides us as the audience with vital exposition, but also counterbalances the opposing pieces of evidence that indicate it's a fantasy, which is why it's still so much fun to ponder either possibility, even over thirty years later.

[Yxklyx]

Is the original theatrical release of the Star Wars trilogy (from the 70s/80s) available anywhere on HD?

[Skitch]

Is the original theatrical release of the Star Wars trilogy (from the 70s/80s) available anywhere on HD?

Its been recreated by nerds online. Otherwise the closest you can get is laserdisc.

[StuSmallz]

Fellowship of the Rings' Introduction to the Shire Is Perfect (https://gizmodo.com/the-fellowship-of-the-rings-introduction-to-the-shire-i-1847725838)

[Yxklyx]

Its been recreated by nerds online. Otherwise the closest you can get is laserdisc.

I think I ask this question every year and the answer is the same :(

The CGI stands out like an eyesore (it does not mesh with the rest of the movie) - and they changed the early Solo shooting scene! One of my friends saw the first one like 30 times (back in the 70s) and could recite every single line of dialogue in the first movie.

[Skitch]

That's okay I love talking about it! And every time it's brought up, I'm told I'm wrong, there are dvds. Yeah but the dvds are either full screen or otherwise altered, be it new scenes or color grading. The laserdiscs are the last widescreen true releases of the original theatrical.

[Idioteque Stalker]

Is it just me or do Italian movies more often go by their Italian titles, whereas movies in other European languages more often go by their English translations? Antonioni's trilogy for instance: if someone asked me for my thoughts on The Adventure, The Night, and/or The Eclipse I wouldn't immediately know what they were talking about.

"Have I seen The Sweet Life? Uh, don't think so... Oh! La Dolce Vita!"
Alternately: "Have I seen À bout de souffle? Oh, you mean Breathless!"

Can anyone explain why it is popular to translate certain titles but not others? Do directors, screenwriters, and distributors have any say in what people around the world ultimately call their films, or does the audience/critical community end up deciding organically? Why did people used to call it My Life to Live, but now call it Vivre Sa Vie?

[baby doll]

Is it just me or do Italian movies more often go by their Italian titles, whereas movies in other European languages more often go by their English translations? Antonioni's trilogy for instance: if someone asked me for my thoughts on The Adventure, The Night, and/or The Eclipse I wouldn't immediately know what they were talking about.

"Have I seen The Sweet Life? Uh, don't think so... Oh! La Dolce Vita!"
Alternately: "Have I seen À bout de souffle? Oh, you mean Breathless!"

Can anyone explain why it is popular to translate certain titles but not others? Do directors, screenwriters, and distributors have any say in what people around the world ultimately call their films, or does the audience/critical community end up deciding organically? Why did people used to call it My Life to Live, but now call it Vivre Sa Vie?The North American/British distributor picks the English title they think will sell best. (Duras' Le Camion was distributed as The Truck in the US and The Lorry in the UK.) When Criterion changes a title after acquiring a film--changing The Bicycle Thief to Bicycle Thieves, or My Life to Live back to Vivre sa vie (which still amputates the film's subtitle, Film en douze tableaux)--it's usually because the standard English title was inaccurate ("Vivre sa vie" literally means "to live one's life").

[baby doll]

Speaking of inaccurate foreign titles, I remember seeing this poster a Tokyo subway station and thinking this was a much better title than Furious 7.

https://precious-japan.ocnk.net/data/precious-japan/product/01Book/277SkyMISSION/SkyMISSION_8.jpg

[megladon8]

It is wild how great Jaws is.

It's one of a small handful of films across history that, even with all its praise and legendary status as one of the GOAT's, it is still underappreciated.

It's just... *chef kiss*

[Skitch]

It is wild how great Jaws is.

It's one of a small handful of films across history that, even with all its praise and legendary status as one of the GOAT's, it is still underappreciated.

It's just... *chef kiss*

It has so many wonderful moments that have nothing to do with a shark. The table scene where father and son make faces...