28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Grouchy]

Re-Animator is a silly film. Offbeat enought to deserve its cult status that I held it up to ever since I first saw it, but I particularly don't find it a very meaningful work. I guess this kind of puts me up in the air about Stuart Gordon, which makes me sad. I really liked Dagon, but I can't imagine it being more "meaningful" than the very influential Re-Animator. I'll see Stuck real soon, he does at least seem to be a very good director.
Also recommended: From Beyond and Edmond.

I'll also claim Stuart Gordon as an overlooked director.

[Sven]

Posted as a potentially unacceptable news item in the appropriate thread. Forwarded here:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/12/18/baz-luhrmanns-the-great-gatsby/

Baz Luhrmann to direct The Great Gatsby. Is this acceptable?

[Watashi]

Posted as a potentially unacceptable news item in the appropriate thread. Forwarded here:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/12/18/baz-luhrmanns-the-great-gatsby/

Baz Luhrmann to direct The Great Gatsby. Is this acceptable?
No, it is not.

[NickGlass]

In Bruges (Martin McDonagh) 65

If this sometimes feels as though it's striving too hard for hipsterism, there are enough genuine laughs and unexpected glimmers of convincingly evinced humanity to elevate this above my middling expectations.

Excuse me Mr. Armond White, but what does "striving too hard for hipsterism" mean?

Also, it appears I'm one of the few who didn't buy into In Bruges' "hitman with a conscious" dilemma. Perhaps it's because I didn't find its dark humor very funny, either, since quite a bit of its humor relies upon a coke-head midget.

[thefourthwall]

Posted as a potentially unacceptable news item in the appropriate thread. Forwarded here:

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/12/18/baz-luhrmanns-the-great-gatsby/

Baz Luhrmann to direct The Great Gatsby. Is this acceptable?

I'm rather excited. Luhrmann is willing to re-envision a story beyond just boring 'faithful' adaptation, so I'm excited to see how he reads this tremendous novel.

Acceptable for sure.

[balmakboor]

This weekend:

As many damn 2008 films as I can possibly fit.

Sounds like force feeding. Usually not very enjoyable and leads to a lot of crap.

[Stay Puft]

Should I watch Transsiberian? There's a copy sitting in my living room (I just arrived home for the holidays). I don't remember hearing anything about it. I didn't care too much for Anderson's previous work, but I find the concept here somewhat enticing. Give me your idiosyncratic feedback, Match Cut.

[Qrazy]

Excuse me Mr. Armond White, but what does "striving too hard for hipsterism" mean?

Also, it appears I'm one of the few who didn't buy into In Bruges' "hitman with a conscious" dilemma. Perhaps it's because I didn't find its dark humor very funny, either, since quite a bit of its humor relies upon a coke-head midget.

Well I don't really agree with your first point, I don't think that's really much of a stretch. Hitmen (in the mafia for instance) usually live by a code and killing a child would conceivably break that code. But yeah I agree with your second point, I was pretty underwhelmed by the attempts at humor. The film's tonal fluctuations didn't work for me at all. I found it to be a competent debut but not much more.

[Qrazy]

I'm rather excited. Luhrmann is willing to re-envision a story beyond just boring 'faithful' adaptation, so I'm excited to see how he reads this tremendous novel.

Acceptable for sure.

I don't think his sensibilities mesh with the novel at all, re-envisioning or not. But speaking of quality re-envisionists I would have loved to see a Kubrick or Welles take on the novel.

[Bosco B Thug]

Also recommended: From Beyond and Edmond.

I'll also claim Stuart Gordon as an overlooked director.
From Beyond's good, prefer Re-animator (of course). More polished and extravagant than RA, but less perverted also. I've also seen Dolls, which is okay.

[megladon8]

Should I watch Transsiberian? There's a copy sitting in my living room (I just arrived home for the holidays). I don't remember hearing anything about it. I didn't care too much for Anderson's previous work, but I find the concept here somewhat enticing. Give me your idiosyncratic feedback, Match Cut.


It's OK. Being a huge fan of Anderson's previous work, I was a bit disappointed.

It's very well acted, but a pretty paint-by-numbers thriller, and its whole theme of taking responsibility for your life and actions doesn't feel as fleshed out or poignant as it could have been.

[Rowland]

Excuse me Mr. Armond White, but what does "striving too hard for hipsterism" mean?Striving too hard for a sort of "cool" irony and self-consciousness regarding the sort of "I'm aware of my genre status" references it makes. As for the coke-head midget, I felt that the movie justified his presence by giving him a believably human presence that his early scenes didn't suggest would be the case. Yes, he proves to be a racist prick, but he is also more than a mere plot device, at least as McDoanagh writes him.

[thefourthwall]

I don't think his sensibilities mesh with the novel at all, re-envisioning or not. But speaking of quality re-envisionists I would have loved to see a Kubrick or Welles take on the novel.

I can see him fleshing out Nick Carraway's character in really interesting ways. I mean one of the great questions of the novel is is Gatsby really great? A two-bit hoodlum with a failed love life? Or is it that Carraway thinks he's great? If Nick was played as the main character rather than Gatsby... I guess I hope that Luhrmann might give the film a more subversive reading...

Plus, the Roaring Twenties? Who better to do lavish, decadent, and over the top?

[Yxklyx]

From Beyond's good, prefer Re-animator (of course). More polished and extravagant than RA, but less perverted also. I've also seen Dolls, which is okay.

Dagon starts off really really well. They nailed the location and all but after a while it jumps the tracks.

[Morris Schæffer]

I'll also claim Stuart Gordon as an overlooked director.

Seen only Fortress, but it was a strong-ish B movie.

[soitgoes...]

I watched Monicelli's The Great War a day or two ago. First the bad, although it was very well made overall it seemed to lack purpose. For starters the film just kind of episodically meanders around until it finally arrives at a quintessential war is hell ending. Secondly it just wasn't as funny as Big Deal on Madonna Street. Despite these complaints I would still certainly recommend it. The cinematography is quality and while it may not be as funny as Big Deal on Madonna Street, Sordi and Gasmann play very well off one another and form a memorable odd couple. Overall it makes for a compelling often funny war film. The next Monicelli's I'll be checking out are My Friends and The Organizer.
Interesting thoughts. I came to some of the same conclusions as you. The main problem for me was perhaps, me. I went into this expecting comedy, laugh out loud comedy. This film never really delivers that, instead it gives us subtlety. Perhaps some humor is lost in the subtitle translation, perhaps it means more to late-50's Italians. Don't get me wrong, Monicelli gives us a great film, just not a great comedy. The scene that stands out was the one of the messenger running across No Man's Land to deliver what could be an important message. A great scene, but it's hard to laugh at.

There are some interesting parallels between Monicelli's Big Deal and The Great War and with Germi's Divorce, Italian Style and Seduced and Abandonded. All four are great, but both directors' earlier works are superior because of the focus on comedy before satire. It is apparent that both directors have more to say, but once the scope gets bigger the comedy gets lost. Perhaps the two latter films could've used more Mastroianni?

[D_Davis]

Watched The Good, The Bad, and The Weird last night. It was okay. Nowhere near as good as the director's other films I've seen - A Bittersweet Life, The Quiet Family, and A Tale of Two Sisters - and not as good as the other big Eastern-Western released this year - Sukiyaki Western Django. The action sequences go on for far too long, especially the climatic battle. It feels like it's a third of the entire film, and it's basically just a chase sequence in the middle of the desert. There just doesn't seem to be anything at stake, and so I simply didn't care about the outcome of any of the action sequences. They were nicely filmed, but they weren't surrounded by anything that added any amount of depth to the characters, nor did I empathize with any of the situations. There were a few quality moments, most of which coming from Kang-Ho Song (Memories of Murder) who is pretty awesome, as usual. Because of the director's previous work, I was expecting greatness, and the film simply falls short.

[Qrazy]

Interesting thoughts. I came to some of the same conclusions as you. The main problem for me was perhaps, me. I went into this expecting comedy, laugh out loud comedy. This film never really delivers that, instead it gives us subtlety. Perhaps some humor is lost in the subtitle translation, perhaps it means more to late-50's Italians. Don't get me wrong, Monicelli gives us a great film, just not a great comedy. The scene that stands out was the one of the messenger running across No Man's Land to deliver what could be an important message. A great scene, but it's hard to laugh at.

Yeah I think we're on the same page, glad you liked it.


There are some interesting parallels between Monicelli's Big Deal and The Great War and with Germi's Divorce, Italian Style and Seduced and Abandonded. All four are great, but both directors' earlier works are superior because of the focus on comedy before satire. It is apparent that both directors have more to say, but once the scope gets bigger the comedy gets lost. Perhaps the two latter films could've used more Mastroianni?

You can never have too much Mastroianni to be sure. I also have The Organizer which teams Monicelli and Mastroianni up again but I haven't been able to find subs yet... nor for Amici Miei Part II. And do watch Amici Miei (My Friends) when you get the chance because although it may not be as strong formally as Monicelli's earlier efforts it certainly brings the hilarity. I need to find my external so I can watch the rest of Seduced and Abandoned.

[Bosco B Thug]

Larisa Shepitko is da shit. I wonder if her handful other films will ever be released here. Is Russian Cinema always this good? I'll get to some Tarkovsky this winter I think.

[soitgoes...]

You can never have too much Mastroianni to be sure. I also have The Organizer which teams Monicelli and Mastroianni up again but I haven't been able to find subs yet... nor for Amici Miei Part II. And do watch Amici Miei (My Friends) when you get the chance because although it may not be as strong formally as Monicelli's earlier efforts it certainly brings the hilarity. I need to find my external so I can watch the rest of Seduced and Abandoned.
I have Amici Miei downloaded, so that'll be my next Monicelli. I'm gonna watch The Railroad Man first, maybe later tonight.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stuart Gordon is sometimes a fantastic director, and always one with a strong eye for the visuals. Out of his work, I've seen:

The Black Cat
Re-Animator
Edmond
From Beyond
Dreams in the Witch-House
Dagon
Dolls

And that's the order in which I like them. The Black Cat is really lovely, and Jeffrey Combs gives his best performance ever. I'm very curious to see Stuck.

[megladon8]

I, too, really like Stuart Gordon. I've never been bored by one of his films. Jen brought Edmond with her, and I'm eager to see it.

I'd rank his films like so...

From Beyond
Dagon
Re-Animator
Dreams in the Witch House
Castle Freak


I also really want to see King of the Ants and Stuck.

[The Mike]

I dove into Gordon recently, and came up less impressed than I hoped.

Love: Re-Animator
Like: From Beyond, Dreams in the Witch House, The Black Cat
Enjoy: Space Truckers, Dolls
Meh: Stuck, Dagon, Edmond
Terrible, yet awesome: Robot Jox
Need to see: Castle Freak, Fortress

[Qrazy]

Two Men in Manhattan - Very disappointing entry for Melville, barely held my interest. There's nothing spectacularly awful about it, it's just paint by numbers.

Black Moon - Incredibly bizarre even for Malle's standards. I left the film feeling that it thought it was communicating much more than it actually was. In equal parts compelling and obnoxious. If it hadn't kept an air of levity about it it would have been a truly onerous experience. Solid cinematography keeps the film watchable and the dream logic flows well enough, but the content of the 'dreams' is lacking. Ultimately much less than the sum of it's parts.

13 Tzameti - A solid thriller with a unique and enticing central concept. When the film is focused solely on the game it is excellent. Unfortunately the larger narrative outside of the game lacks the interest and excitement of the game itself. But Babluani does have a fair bit of talent. He seemingly takes his cues from Melville but still manages to move the french crime genre into new and compelling territory.

[Watashi]

While much of the supporting ensemble of Frost/Nixon is put to waste (though Rebecca Hall looks gorgeous as ever), it's still the compelling prize fight that Howard yearned for leading to his best film in over a decade. This mostly has to do with Akiva Goldsman stepping down and playwright-scribe Peter Morgan adapting from his own play. I could have used less of the docudrama narrations to give footnote history lesson and rather see more time devoted to Frost's quarrels with the former president. It works better as a journalist piece rather than a straight-edged politics one. Somewhat of an undeclared continuation of All the President's Men showing Frost and his team of "crack" investigators stressed from the immense pressure and impending consequences if Nixon ever got the upper hand. Not much time was given to Frost's research and the inclusion of the ready-made worry-girlfriend Miss Cushing never added to anything but to show off Frost's known playboy antics. Still, whenever Langella steps into the light as Nixon, it becomes utterly captivating. Even in the soft-spoken moments between rounds, Langella embodies Nixon's caged personality of man just wanting the acceptance of others through his deviant-dimmed lenses and like with Stone's presidential biography earlier this year, you can't help but pity the man and his wrongdoings.

[Bosco B Thug]

I, too, really like Stuart Gordon. I've never been bored by one of his films. Jen brought Edmond with her, and I'm eager to see it.

I'd rank his films like so...

From Beyond
Dagon
Re-Animator
Dreams in the Witch House
Castle Freak


I also really want to see King of the Ants and Stuck.
Ooh, From Beyond and Dagon above Re-animator. I'll treat myself to a Dagon re-watch sometime this holiday.

The Squid and the Whale is tighter, more formally cohesive, less oblique, less digressive a film than 'Margot,' but it all felt kind of basic. Not necessarily a deal sealer - on the pro-side, I'm all for matter-of-fact banality; point by point, the film has many moments of nuance; Owen Kline's little brother character is outrageous. But its major talking points (intellectual vs. philistine, Jesse Eisenberg is a dumbass, and in the end: Dad's a douche, Mom's kinda undemanding) are all kind of schticky and Baumbach still wades in the schtick instead of making a point about it. But the last scene, while kind of really blah, proves semi-satisfactory because it wisely leaves both parents absent from it, not undermining the fact that the film's main consistent point is to withdraw respect from, and then place extreme scrutiny on, them.

[Boner M]

The Rain People - Sorta pales in comparison to the rigor of Barbara Loden's similar and superior Wanda, largely because of the inescapable sense of the characters having an allegorical function that feels somewhat out of place here. However, also remarkably melancholy and similar in tone to The Conversation, which I had always pegged as being a bit of an unfortunate anomaly in Coppola's oeuvre. A fairly haunting portrait of waywardness and self-loathing, with outstanding performances from Shirley Knight and James Caan.

[Robby P]

I don't know if we have a thread for "Yes Man", but I don't recommend viewing it. The only difference between this and Liar Liar is that Jim Carrey plays a bank manager instead of a lawyer. Terrence Stamp does some very funny work, though.

[Spinal]

I don't know if we have a thread for "Yes Man", but I don't recommend viewing it. The only difference between this and Liar Liar is that Jim Carrey plays a bank manager instead of a lawyer. Terrence Stamp does some very funny work, though.

http://www.match-cut.org/showthread.php?t=1181&highlight=carrey

[Raiders]

Hmmm, I think people ought to consider seeking out The Tale of Despereaux. Nothing truly special, but the visuals are often times very rich and bold, in particular the fantasy story-within-a-story scenes Despereaux imagines. Much of it feels a little sleepy and subdued and certainly it is a far more magical film than most overblown fantasy films these days (in terms of imagination and tone, it reminded me more of a Bridge to Terabithia). The film unwisely overloads some of the cuteness and action instead of perhaps underlining the characters and streamlining the story a bit more, but in small, earnest measures, it is more than I had expected it to be.

[megladon8]

Hmmm, I think people ought to consider seeking out The Tale of Despereaux. Nothing truly special, but the visuals are often times very rich and bold, in particular the fantasy story-within-a-story scenes Despereaux imagines. Much of it feels a little sleepy and subdued and certainly it is a far more magical film than most overblown fantasy films these days (in terms of imagination and tone, it reminded me more of a Bridge to Terabithia). The film unwisely overloads some of the cuteness and action instead of perhaps underlining the characters and streamlining the story a bit more, but in small, earnest measures, it is more than I had expected it to be.


So can you clear this for me - those screenshots I posted in the movie's thread (in Upcoming)...were they representative of the film's look, or were they just concept images?

Because if it's the former, I want to see it just for its incredible visuals.

[Raiders]

So can you clear this for me - those screenshots I posted in the movie's thread (in Upcoming)...were they representative of the film's look, or were they just concept images?

Because if it's the former, I want to see it just for its incredible visuals.

I believe they're concept art, but they do fairly well represent the style of the film's fantasy-within-the-film that Despereaux imagines as those images are in particular bold and expressive.

[megladon8]

Holy poop on a stick....The Changeling is one scary movie.

I haven't been that terrified in, wow, years. Probably since my first viewing of Session 9.

Smart writing, great performance from Goerge C. Scott, very unnerving photography.

This would definitely be in a "top horrors" list for me.

[Qrazy]

Holy poop on a stick....The Changeling is one scary movie.

I haven't been that terrified in, wow, years. Probably since my first viewing of Session 9.

Smart writing, great performance from Goerge C. Scott, very unnerving photography.

This would definitely be in a "top horrors" list for me.

Damn straight.

[Ezee E]

Heavy Metal. WTF?

Add a new one to the worst movies I've ever seen. Although I guess I'd actually have to finish it. But that ain't happening.

[Mysterious Dude]

Yeah, I remember Heavy Metal being pretty wretched.

[Boner M]

Bubble is a somewhat watchable misfire; intriguing for its odd tone until it is apparent that even that quality is the result of non-committal filmmaking than any kind of rigor. There's also a sense of condescension in the near-comical decrepitness with which Soderbergh portrays his Midwestern characters and milieu, that suggests the presence of a smirking outsider rather than a compassionate observer. The more I think about it, the more the film bugs me.

[Boner M]

Donkey Punch - Inarguably worthless non-thriller whose sole reason for existing seems to be its title and corresponding sequence, which will/has undoubtedly attract a sizable audience of giggling retards. Clearly the work of a young fresh-out-of-film-school lad who enjoys sex, gore, provocation, the sight of people writhing in pain, flashing lights, whatever music NME tells him to enjoy, and who doesn't enjoy humanity very much. Hooray for the magic of cinema!

[Wryan]

Donkey Punchwhich will/has undoubtedly attract a sizable audience of giggling retards.

Likely insulting to giggling retards at large, judging by the film.

[Raiders]

Christmas Holiday viewings:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Wrestler
Il Grido

[Watashi]

Christmas Weekend:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
Valkyrie
The Wrestler
Wendy and Lucy
Waltz with Bashir
Hunger

[Ivan Drago]

Christmas Weekend:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Doubt
The Spirit
Valkyrie
The Day The Earth Stood Still (both original and remake)
Yes Man

[megladon8]

I don't want to sound mean, but damn, Robert Z'Dar is a very, very unattractive man.

At first I thought he was monumentally fat, due to shots I'd seen of his face. It looked like he had huge jowels.

But no...he was actually in amazing shape in the '80s, and it's just that he has an extremely over-sized jaw. It looks like his face is made of plastic, it's so enormous.

[Mara]

I don't want to sound mean, but damn, Robert Z'Dar is a very, very unattractive man.

I suddenly have the urge to watch the MST3K Soultaker again.

[megladon8]

I suddenly have the urge to watch the MST3K Soultaker again.


I've never seen it...but now I must.

I really want to see Maniac Cop and Samurai Cop as well.

[Ivan Drago]

I suddenly have the urge to watch the MST3K Soultaker again.

That reminds me I need to watch the Santa Claus Conquers The Martians episode tomorrow. It's my Xmas tradition.

Crow: "Pills for breakfast? Who are we, Judy Garland?"

[soitgoes...]

Christmas weekend possibilities:

A Christmas Tale
La Commare Seca
The Flowers of St. Francis
Benjamin Button
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Reunion in France
Revanche

[Boner M]

xmas viewings:

Ben Button
Woman in the Window
Platform

[Qrazy]

Possibles:

The Honeymoon Killers
Angel-A
Murder on the Orient Express
The Verdict
They Shoot Horses, Don't They
Time Regained

[transmogrifier]

Boxing Day: TCCOBB and A

[Yxklyx]

Christmas Viewings:

Batman Begins
The Apartment

[Boner M]

Zohan etc - CGI sequences have cheerful sense of absurdity at times, bringing to mind Stephen Chow at his most childlike. Otherwise this is merely Sandler's answer to Da Derp Dee Derp Da Teetley Derpee Derpee Dumb (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwHvbeFdUVE&feature=related), that doesn't push its witlessness far enough for the film to be fun or interesting in a crazy way. It's just kinda boring. Emmanuelle Chriqui's luminescence and John Turturro's performance keep it mildly watchable.

[Ezee E]

Role Models is pretty standard as a story, but the ensemble, Paul Rudd in particular, keep it consistently funny.

[B-side]

Copied from RT:


I thought what Wendy and Lucy did rather well was juxtapose the free-mindedness and independent spirit of Wendy with corporate America and the chains and binds of a world far too dependent on machinery and the likes of technology and money. The car is show as very unreliable, whereas the guy from Walgreen's is wholly reliable. When her freedom is taken away, she loses her dog and everything seems to go wrong. The kid at the store wasn't doing anything wrong by turning her in, but the consequences of adhering so strictly to the rules and attempting to climb the corporate ladder were fairly dire to another, but he's indifferent. You'll notice that there is a short shot of a telephone pole where Wendy hung one of her flyers and right above her flyer was one regarding another dog, but that one offered a reward. Conflict of interest. Which do you look hardest for? You don't know either person or their situation. You go looking hardest for the one that would give you the reward. Such is life. But the film doesn't pity Wendy so much as sympathize and is sort of enraged at the seemingly impossible odds stacked up against ridding one's self of such chains of the modern world and truly allowing yourself to simply be with the ones you love and care about.

[B-side]

Possibles:

The Honeymoon Killers
Angel-A
Murder on the Orient Express
The Verdict
They Shoot Horses, Don't They
Time Regained

I have little doubt you'll love Time Regained. I don't love it nearly as much as Israfel does, but it's quite good.

[megladon8]

John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness has some serious dialogue and acting issues, but damn if it isn't scary. That videotaped dream recording is still super creepy, and the whole film effectively evokes the feeling of an approaching event of monumental power and evil.

I'd rank it my third favorite Carpenter, behind Halloween and The Thing.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Role Models is pretty standard as a story, but the ensemble, Paul Rudd in particular, keep it consistently funny.

I like how we got a predictable happy ending, but they kept it funny instead of sappy and boring. You're right though, it's standard in every way, but remains funny thanks to Rudd and Lynch, and to a lesser degree, Scott.

[Ezee E]

I like how we got a predictable happy ending, but they kept it funny instead of sappy and boring. You're right though, it's standard in every way, but remains funny thanks to Rudd and Lynch, and to a lesser degree, Scott.
Agreed on the ending. There's been too many comedies that start off hilarious, and by the end are just meh. The Apatow films tend to do that a lot, except Step Brothers which I think is the funniest movie this year. Scott surprises me here, he remains one-note as usual, but the dialog was definitely suited for him. Lynch needs to get more roles.

[Yxklyx]

Blind Beast (1969, Yasuzo Masumura)

I've seen and generally liked Masumura's other films. I couldn't stand this one. The main problem is that it's way way way too talky. Everything is discussed - all is revealed through dialogue - including some highly redundant voice-over narration at the start. The second problem is that it's not erotic at all and there are other Japanese films from this time period that are, so it's not like they were going to have censorship problems. It all ends with an ultraviolent talky debacle. The camera does nothing - there is nothing visually appealing about the movie. It feels like it was directed by someone who had never done so before. 1/10

[Grouchy]

People: I'm leaving for a good while. I'll probably be back to posting on March or April.

The reason? I'm departing on a road trip through Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia.

The movie talk? Well, I watched the 2007 Final Cut of Blade Runner yesterday. What a superlatively good movie, that one is. And I'm more convinced than ever that Deckard is a Replicant now that I've seen the 4 or 5 seconds of film that Ridley Scott changed and the digitally-enhanced Johnnie Walker bottles.

[megladon8]

Good luck on your travels, Grouchy. Stay safe!

And yeah, Blade Runner is freaking awesome. Some days I would say it's my favorite movie.

[Melville]

The Dardennes' Rosetta was great. Though I prefer the slightly schematic redemption narratives of their other movies, the more open, ambiguous nature of the story in this one worked really well with the intense focus on one character. I'd say the Dardennes are now right alongside Lynch and PTA as my favorite working directors. Now that I've seen La Promesse, Rosetta, The Son, and L'Enfant, what else should I seek out from them?

[Qrazy]

The Dardennes' Rosetta was great. Though I prefer the slightly schematic redemption narratives of their other movies, the more open, ambiguous nature of the story in this one worked really well with the intense focus on one character. I'd say the Dardennes are now right alongside Lynch and PTA as my favorite working directors. Now that I've seen La Promesse, Rosetta, The Son, and L'Enfant, what else should I seek out from them?

I've heard their newest Lorna's Silence is tops but I haven't seen it yet.

[Melville]

I've heard their newest Lorna's Silence is tops but I haven't seen it yet.
I was just scanning over some reviews of it. They seem pretty mixed:
http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006034.html

[Qrazy]

I was just scanning over some reviews of it. They seem pretty mixed:
http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006034.html

Yeah I'm culling the positive reactions predominantly from RT user buzz.

[Yxklyx]

Herzog fans check this article about Bruno S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/arts/design/25abroad.html?_r=1&hp

[Boner M]

I was just scanning over some reviews of it. They seem pretty mixed:
http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006034.html
Hot-from-Cannes reviews are rarely to be trusted; now that it's cooled off, the reception seems to be mostly positive (which I agree with, though it needs a revisit).

[Stay Puft]

Herzog fans check this article about Bruno S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/arts/design/25abroad.html?_r=1&hp

Thanks. This made my day.

[Melville]

They Shoot Horses, Don't They
Thoughts?

[Qrazy]

Thoughts?

I thought it was pretty great and that Fonda especially was amazing. Susannah York and Gig Young were also stand outs but hell Sarrazin was quality too. I really don't have much of anything in terms of criticism for the meat of the film. I thought it was gut wrenching, compelling and powerful stuff. My only complaints were the cutaways to the prison/trial segments throughout. They seemed entirely superfluous to me and also the execution of the opening. The editing at the beginning of the film has a very specific type of 70's (or in this case very late 60's) aesthetic that I find has become extremely dated over time. I don't believe that all 70's aesthetics have become dated but I feel that, that particular style of intercutting has. I also feel that the central metaphor of the film might almost be more powerful without the horse footage. It spells out something which doesn't need to be spelled out in my mind.

[B-side]

Revolutionary Road was... well, useless. It has nothing interesting to say. The whole film feels hollow and without any real reason to exist. It's predictable in the worst possible way. The first half is bad. It consists of little more than stupid and painfully overt references and various ways to communicate the theme of the film. None are interesting or worth engaging with. It's obviously not making any attempt to be subtle, and I understand that, but it's just not interesting. The whole film feels forced and only served to make me wanna watch films that communicate this theme in a far better and more interesting manner. On the bright side(lol), the acting is rather good. Michael Shannon is the highlight. He provides a much needed contrast to the drab proceedings. His character is funny and disturbingly erratic simultaneously. Also, the second half of the film is superior to the first in just about every way, if only because it becomes more sinister. It starts to penetrate areas that are actually worthy of looking into, and it simply just feels more intense and unpredictable, even if it doesn't really play out that way.

[Yxklyx]

Thoughts?

Also, the lead actor Michael Sarrazin looks quite a bit like Peter Fonda. I always wondered if the producers originally wanted Peter in the role - and that would have been extra creepy.

http://www.thecommunitypaper.com/2005/01_27_05/wpeter_fonda.jpg

http://www.northernstars.ca/NSCollection/sarrazin_michael_250_02.jpg

[Qrazy]

And the next incarnation!

http://llnw.image.cbslocal.com/1/2007/02/25/320x240/topher%20grace.jpg

[Melville]

I thought it was pretty great and that Fonda especially was amazing. Susannah York and Gig Young were also stand outs but hell Sarrazin was quality too. I really don't have much of anything in terms of criticism for the meat of the film. I thought it was gut wrenching, compelling and powerful stuff. My only complaints were the cutaways to the prison/trial segments throughout. They seemed entirely superfluous to me and also the execution of the opening. The editing at the beginning of the film has a very specific type of 70's (or in this case very late 60's) aesthetic that I find has become extremely dated over time. I don't believe that all 70's aesthetics have become dated but I feel that, that particular style of intercutting has. I also feel that the central metaphor of the film might almost be more powerful without the horse footage. It spells out something which doesn't need to be spelled out in my mind.
Agreed on all points. The central metaphor would be a bit simplistic/overt even without the horse footage; with the footage, it's pretty groan-inducing. And yeah, the editing at the beginning is awkward and overdone. It's still one of my favorite movies though.


Also, the lead actor Michael Sarrazin looks quite a bit like Peter Fonda. I always wondered if the producers originally wanted Peter in the role - and that would have been extra creepy.
I thought he looked more like Henry Fonda, and I assumed that was an intentional means of tapping into Henry Fonda's "noble everyman" persona (especially in Grapes of Wrath).

[Dead & Messed Up]

I watched a few films over break.

Stepbrothers was fun, if unnecessarily vulgar - this seems like a PG-13 idea bulked up to an R. Some genuine humor does come from the extra fucks and shits, but the best moments are broad physical comedy (the two sleep-throwing presents at their parents) and McKay's usual non sequitur gags (the two agree on being attracted to...John Stamos?). Directorially, McKay again offers little in the way of style. I woudn't have a problem with this, had I not been surprised and delighted by what David Gordon Green brought to Pineapple Express.

Best line: "If we bunk our beds, we'll have so much more room for activities!"

Get Smart was also fun, although it was a little weird seeing Anne Hathaway make out with Steve Carrell. The film tries to justify this by saying she's had plastic surgery, which is about all the writers can do. The movie has some fun sight gags, and I especially liked how the writers managed to slide in their homages to the original (all generate laughs and leave quickly). I wish Hathaway had a little more of the faux-pouty sex appeal of Barbara Feldon, but the film doesn't shame the original, which was a childhood staple of mine.

Best line: "Were you thinking, 'Holy shit, holy shit, a swordfish almost went through my head?'"

All things considered, I think it was a good year for comedy. Those two got some chuckles out of me, Tropic Thunder, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express.

I'd probably rank them:

Pineapple Express
Tropic Thunder
Get Smart
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Stepbrothers

[megladon8]

That was indeed the best line in Get Smart :lol:

[The Mike]

I've seen Step Brothers at least 6 times already. It still makes me laugh non-stop. Watched it today with the family, too.

The theatrical version is much tighter and more enjoyable than the Unrated, however.

[Ezee E]

I've seen Step Brothers at least 6 times already. It still makes me laugh non-stop. Watched it today with the family, too.

The theatrical version is much tighter and more enjoyable than the Unrated, however.
What are the main differences?

[The Mike]

What are the main differences?
The Unrated cut:
* Dinner table scene early on is extended (the whole bit about Fancy sauce is new)
* A little bit more "skin" in the drumset scene
* A little bit more with the fight (scene with Mom called at work, mom getting attacked by dog, doctor talking to receptionist)
* Scene at restaurant extended (Dad's speech about thinking about Derek during sex is new)
* Segment of Job Interview with Andy McKay where they run through their weaknesses is new
* Extended scene with Brennan and the white dog poo
* The entire sex during Christmas lunch sequence and bit about the kids' presents are new
* Battle during credits is extended to include the white dog poo again

That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. Suffice to say, I thought a lot of the added bits took some of the scenes' timing away. Not as bad as the extended cut of Talladega Nights, but slightly annoying.

[Bosco B Thug]

SPOILER FOR ELEPHANT: Didn't like where Elephant decided to end. Why at that last moment does Van Sant decide to move his camera away from his characters? To emphasize the finality of the moment, of course, but at such an arbitrary moment in the events? We don't get to learn the fate of that one last character? I think he sort of failed three of his characters with the decisions that went into that final scene.

A film seemingly made for the "love-it-or-hate-it" label, I'm ultimately on the "love-it" end, with reservations. I don't think I entirely can connect to a film that goes so emphatically (in this case, with such long-take stateliness - which is in some ways very realistic of spacey high school ambience and in other ways sort of forced on characters - it fits perfectly with the blonde kid, but not so much the others, particularly the jock, who gets a nice and long one early in the film) for some sense of verisimilitude. The film has solid ideas behind its experimentalism, looking at how different kids deal with their essential non-existence in the high school milieu (only for the idea to be brought to bare through the horrifying notion of their literal extinguishment from the world) and how violence is the "elephant in the room" and awful solution to an environment of such anonimity. The film can easily be called flimsy and a non-discerning grab bag of emotions and emotional topics, which is a justifiable criticism, but Van Sant makes it work in numerous ways.

[Boner M]

The Woman in the Window exceeded all my expectations; whadda dynamite little film. Without having read any reviews I'll guess that the ending is generally regarded as a tacked-on copout, but I loved it. This is mainly because I've never taken the cynical fatalism of film-noir all that seriously, so to see Lang explicitly acknowledge that the appeal of the genre lies in its feverish nightmare logic is something I can get down with. I liked Scarlet Street fine, but this is simply way more fun.

[Yxklyx]

I thought he looked more like Henry Fonda, and I assumed that was an intentional means of tapping into Henry Fonda's "noble everyman" persona (especially in Grapes of Wrath).

Father or Brother, we've got some incestuous meta-tones rummaging about.

[Ezee E]

Oh yeah, weekend:
Hamlet 2
Burn After Reading (rewatch)
finish up Lost: Season 4

Benjamin Button
Doubt
Valkyrie

[megladon8]

The Cottage was a surprisingly good little horror film, with some great chemistry between the two brothers (played by Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith).

I actually found it ran off the rails a bit in the last 30-40 minutes, when it tried to become a horror/monster movie. It was still good, but it felt like a different movie - like two scripts mashed together just after the halfway point.

Great gore, great humor. I enjoyed it.


And for my very first BluRay viewing, we watched The Orphanage, and it was bloody fantastic.

An expertly crafted paranormal mystery. Wonderful acting and writing, some chilling moments, and a great ending. There were at least 3 or 4 moments throughout where I thought "yeah, I have this figured out"...but no, it was quite a surprise to see how it all tied together.

[Mysterious Dude]

I'm a little surprised at how much I disliked Classe Tous Risques. It's probably the result of misplaced expectations. A French film from the early sixties about criminals and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo pretty much begs for comparisons to Breathless, and it pretty much fails on every level. I think this is the first time I've seen a film with Belmondo that wasn't also a Godard film, and it never occurred to me, for some reason, that he is really unlike a typical movie actor. He is so perfect for Breathless, but he seems utterly out of place in Classe Tous Risques. He looks like such a normal person compared to the other actors, who are not necessarily handsome, but have a certain Hollywood symmetry that Belmondo lacks. Jean Gabin would have been better for the role, if he were a little younger. And actually, with the criminals acting so incredibly reckless and trigger-happy, I was reminded of the 1932 Scarface. Belmondo is a sixties actor trapped in a thirties film.

One thing I adore about Breathless is the on-location cinematography, and there is some of that in Classe Tous Risques, but for the most part, it's a series of soundstages. The world of Breathless is so much more three-dimensional, even when the actors are indoors.

Well, at least my appreciation for Breathless has been renewed. I know that not every French film from the sixties has to be a New Wave film. I get into the same kind of trouble when I expect every German film from the twenties to be Expressionist.

[dreamdead]

Lou Ye's Summer Palace is breathtaking in its handheld cinematography and editing, where images gain an importance through their repetition. Images of Yu Hong resting on the university steps are simple but effective recurrences of isolation, and the film's spanning of time manages to make the political personal with ease. Spanning the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 up to 2004, it's an understated affair that couples sex and revolution in myriad ways, but always comes back to interrogating how the personal is affected by these transgressions of culture. Its critique of the alienating affects of Chinese culture is valuable to understanding the climate that Jia Zhang-ke and others also indict.

Joachim Trier's Reprise, meanwhile, is phenomenal. Perhaps it's attuned a little too much to twentysomethings who yearn to impact the world, a fact that makes me wary of overly praising it, but this is a film that understands film history, is engaged with ideas, and is thoroughly cinematic in its rendition of them. It's wonderful to hear the Contempt score again, however fleetingly, and Trier and fellow writer Eskil Vogt fashion a wealth of singular characters and locations, all while invoking a tapestry of Godardian effects. And Viktoria Winge makes the most perfect contemporary Anna Karina figure, full of heartache and grace. One of the few films certain to be viewed again soon, so that I can again enter its world.

[Rowland]

Back from the dead.

Chris Sivertson, director of the notorious I Know Who Killed Me, had his first feature, entitled The Lost, released on DVD this year, so I'm counting it as an '08 release. Anyway, it isn't as batty nor as interesting as I Know Who Killed Me, but it is as a whole the superior picture, and the two combined paint a promising picture for the director as a future talent to watch, assuming he drops some of the tackier techniques he is obviously fond of (though they admittedly lend the pictures a certain charming appeal), and he is ever allowed to direct again after IKWKM was torn to shreds primarily for the Lohan factor and its anachronistic tendencies.

[megladon8]

Hey isn't that one of the films based on the novels of Jack Ketchum?

I've been reluctantly interested in checking out one or two of them, namely The Girl Next Door which has made several "top horrors of the 2000s" lists.

But I find his work to be almost entirely shock-based, with no real literary value of any kind, so I imagined the films would be like that too.

[number8]

Watching Baraka on Bluray. :eek:

[Boner M]

Dumont's The Life of Jesus is such a perfect debut, and a perfect statement of intent, that his subsequent features seem almost redundant. His ability to capture the mundane like it's never been captured before, to give us new eyes, to make everything seem alien and beautiful simply through the power of his compositions, is perfectly apt in detailing the banal lives of his characters, who are blinded by their own prejudices to the same beauty and ineffable sense of mystery that we're privy to. In that light, I don't think the title of the film is so much a crude way of inviting such an allegorical reading (though there are parallels) so much as an invocation of the sense that one often has to believe in something bigger than themselves, or to simply take a fresh look at things, in order to be spiritually repenished (if that's the correct term). Dumont's ability to echo earlier shots at crucial moments in the film is beyond reproach, especially during the final scene, which outlines the transcendental power of this kind of un-ornamented, Bressonian style of filmmaking better than any contemporary film that I can think of.

[number8]

Watching Baraka on Bluray. :eek:

Christ, seriously. This has got to be the best disc ever produced.

They need to start shooting movies on 70mm to accommodate the Bluray transfer.

[Ezee E]

Christ, seriously. This has got to be the best disc ever produced.

They need to start shooting movies on 70mm to accommodate the Bluray transfer.
Was Cameron shooting 70 MM, or is it just the 3D deal?

[dreamdead]

Rolf de Heer's The Tracker is mighty, mighty good. Nice juxtaposition with the match-cut drawings that evoke most of the film's violence, and the music is a solid commentary on the film's themes, serving almost as an interior monologue throughout. This is what Luhrmann's Australia wanted to be with its aborigine storylines; darkly comic yet always serious.

The artistry here means that Bad Boy Bubby is finally getting added to the queue...

[The Mike]

Hey isn't that one of the films based on the novels of Jack Ketchum?

I've been reluctantly interested in checking out one or two of them, namely The Girl Next Door which has made several "top horrors of the 2000s" lists.

But I find his work to be almost entirely shock-based, with no real literary value of any kind, so I imagined the films would be like that too.
The Girl Next Door was definitely a shocker. If that's your take on the books (which I haven't read, so just guessing), you might not like the flick either. It's basically the sadistic cousin of Stand By Me.

[Melville]

I'm thinking of blind-buying Ruiz's Time Regained. Good idea or not good idea?

[The Mike]

I'm thinking of blind-buying Ruiz's Time Regained. Good idea or not good idea?

If you don't like it, you'll never get that time back.

[/rimshot]

[Winston*]

I am rewatching A Fish Called Wanda. Pretty sure this is one of the greatest movies of all time.

[Wryan]

I am rewatching A Fish Called Wanda. Pretty sure this is one of the greatest movies of all time.

Spot on.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I am rewatching A Fish Called Wanda. Pretty sure this is one of the greatest movies of all time.

I just started watching a film on "Battle Planet." It's on the Sci-Fi channel. Zack Ward just had an extended conversation with his feminine-sounding astronaut suit.

Now I'm drinking and watching a film called "Battle Planet."

[Boner M]

I showed A Fish Called Wanda to my new co-workers a few months ago and they didn't laugh once. They are awful people.

[B-side]

I'm thinking of blind-buying Ruiz's Time Regained. Good idea or not good idea?

Good idea.

[Boner M]

Didn't love The Young Girls of Rochefort as I'd hoped to. Had too many draggy portions where I just felt like I was staring at it. Then again, I've been in my usual shitty seasonal mood recently, so that worked against my experience of it. Some might say it should've picked up my mood, but I usually find it's the opposite with these kinds of films.

I'll give it the benefit of a doubt & a largely positive score as I fully imagine embracing it in a better context.

[megladon8]

Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers was brilliant and terrifying.

Can't believe it's taken me so long to see this one.

[megladon8]

Dave was pretty good, actually. Got preachy at times, but had some very good scenes and dialogue, and Kevin Kline steals the show, as he so often does.

[Amnesiac]

Kevin Kline steals the show, as he so often does.

http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/050620/14429__west_l.jpg

[Melville]

Good idea.
Have you read any Proust? How does it compare?

Anybody else seen Time Regained?

[Mysterious Dude]

I don't remember much about Time Regained, except that I found it damn-near unwatchable. Almost as unwatchable as I find Proust unreadable.

[Ezee E]

Reading Ebert's initial reviews, and than his "reconsiderations" make me appreciate Scorsese's movies even more.

Anyone Scorsese fan should check this out. Especially for more analysis of his smaller films.

[Spinal]

My son is watching The Iron Giant in the next room and I can only hear the audio. It's still nearly making me tear up.

[Melville]

I don't remember much about Time Regained, except that I found it damn-near unwatchable. Almost as unwatchable as I find Proust unreadable.
So if I find Proust (at least Swann's Way) compelling, profoundly evocative, and eminently readable, which I do, can I expect a similar reaction to Time Regained? The reviews on Amazon seem to offer conflicting answers.

[Spinal]

Dave was pretty good, actually. Got preachy at times, but had some very good scenes and dialogue, and Kevin Kline steals the show, as he so often does.

Can you steal the show when you're the lead? You are the show.

[Winston*]

Match Cut crazies, you were right. Speed Racer is fantastic.

[Watashi]

Match Cut crazies, you were right. Speed Racer is fantastic.
Yes.

[Winston*]

Got to admit I was a little disappointed there was no scene where a volcano erupts and the racers have to outrun fast moving lava but it's a minor quibble.

[Spinal]

Got to admit I was a little disappointed there was no scene where a volcano erupts and the racers have to outrun fast moving lava but it's a minor quibble.

Saving it for the sequel.

[Boner M]

I'm watching Speed Racer tomorrow night. Fear my wrath.

[NickGlass]

My cinephile friends--you know, in "real life"--are also equally divided between the lovers and the haters, but I'm still scared to see Speed Racer and decide for myself. I fear I'll have a negative reaction and then come here just to be accused of not loving cinema and blah blah blah.

I do thoroughly enjoy playing MarioKart, though.

[Ezee E]

My cinephile friends--you know, in "real life"--are also equally divided between the lovers and the haters, but I'm still scared to see Speed Racer and decide for myself. I fear I'll have a negative reaction and then come here just to be accused of not loving cinema and blah blah blah.

I do thoroughly enjoy playing MarioKart, though.
When ever would we accuse you of not loving cinema? Heh.

[Ivan Drago]

Eh, I thought Speed Racer was entertaining but not much else. What do you guys see in it that I don't?

[MadMan]

Me, I'm just waiting for all of the discussion on Speed Racer to finally end. Then I'll see it. Maybe.

Hell Ride is enjoyable, but forgettable. It tries too hard to be an old school, low budget film in the Grindhouse style and kind of fails in that regard. I liked it more than I should have. Only Madsen and Vinnie Jones have actual fun with their roles and just ham it up because they can.

The Living Daylights is the only good Bond film Dalton made. Good for him. The villains really sucked, though, but hey the Russian chick was hot. I liked some of the action sequences and its now the second film I've seen involving Afghanistan in the past two months.

Is there anything really true about 21 (okay, maybe a few things)? I think I'll go read the book. The movie was alright, but its clear at this point that Spacey has gone the Di Niro/Pachino route and is phoning it in. He should just retire from movie making. If he hasn't already unofficially.

About Schmidt demands a longer, halfway decent review. Damn good movie, a truly depressing funny movie that makes me want to see more Alexander Payne. Maybe I'll rent Sideways and Election sometime. Also sports an awesome Jack Nicholson performance. Is also better than Chicago. When Chicago won best picture that year, I simply gave up caring about the Oscars. I'm better off that way.

200 movies seen in 12 months. Wow. I may just quit now, but I do have The Way of the Gun (I rented it for the hell of it) and Duck You Sucker to watch still.

[Pop Trash]

About Schmidt demands a longer, halfway decent review. Damn good movie, a truly depressing funny movie that makes me want to see more Alexander Payne. Maybe I'll rent Sideways and Election sometime. Also sports an awesome Jack Nicholson performance. Is also better than Chicago. When Chicago won best picture that year, I simply gave up caring about the Oscars. I'm better off that way.


Rep. I never understood why this is the least liked of Payne's films. It's my favorite of his and one of the best films of this decade, as far as I am concerned. I'm sure I'll get crap for saying this but I think its as good a reflection on mortality and aging as Wild Strawberries and Ikiru, albeit in a more serio-comedic Americana way. It's also the best Nicholson performance since Five Easy Pieces.

[number8]

I wanted to put Speed Racer in JPP's top 10 over Slumdog fucking Millionaire, but no one agreed. It turned into a long argument and I finally conceded. At least most of the list are my picks.

[number8]

Hell Ride is enjoyable, but forgettable. It tries too hard to be an old school, low budget film in the Grindhouse style and kind of fails in that regard. I liked it more than I should have. Only Madsen and Vinnie Jones have actual fun with their roles and just ham it up because they can.

Too kind. It was downright terrible.

[balmakboor]

To me, Speed Racer was an exhilarating cartoon that unfortunately stuck real actors in front of us from time to time. The only actor I enjoyed was Christina Ricci, but that's mostly because I've been stalking her ever since watching Buffalo 66.

It is a great looking movie, that's for sure, especially on Blu-ray.

[Spinal]

Eh, I thought Speed Racer was entertaining but not much else. What do you guys see in it that I don't?

My only expectation was that it be entertaining. What more did you want it to be?

[Winston*]

You didn't enjoy Tim Curry version 2.0 (the new and improved Tim Curry), fasuzopow?

[Scar]

Blockbuster is shipping The Happening today.....

[Ezee E]

I wanted to put Speed Racer in JPP's top 10 over Slumdog fucking Millionaire, but no one agreed. It turned into a long argument and I finally conceded. At least most of the list are my picks.
Nice top ten still. Many of mine are on there. Missed out on JCVD though. :(

[number8]

Nice top ten still. Many of mine are on there. Missed out on JCVD though. :(

Yeah, my personal list would probably be the same. Just substitute Slumdog for Speed Racer and rearrange it a bit.

[Yxklyx]

I liked Batman Begins more than the The Dark Knight. Is that the consensus around here?

[Scar]

I liked Batman Begins more than the The Dark Knight. Is that the consensus around here?

Nope.

[Yxklyx]

Nope.

Where is The Dark Knight thread anyway? I searched for Dark Knight and the thread doesn't appear. The Dark Knight's story and character motivations just didn't make sense a lot of the time, Batman Begins was simpler and pulled it off better.

[MadMan]

Too kind. It was downright terrible.I guess I'm at this point where a movie really has to try hard to make me hate it or think of it as not worthy of receiving a passing grade at most. But then I try to avoid certain movies that do not appear worthy of my time (like the recently released The Spirit, for example). Due to money and time constraints, naturally.


Rep. I never understood why this is the least liked of Payne's films. It's my favorite of his and one of the best films of this decade, as far as I am concerned. I'm sure I'll get crap for saying this but I think its as good a reflection on mortality and aging as Wild Strawberries and Ikiru, albeit in a more serio-comedic Americana way. It's also the best Nicholson performance since Five Easy Pieces.Thanks. And all of the films you mentioned I'm interesting in watching, if only additionally to make some comparisons and such.

Stepbrothers was utterly hilarious, and is one of the funniest of the year. I'm also going to see Hamlet 2 tonight, and after that I'll only have Pineapple Express left to view in terms of 2008 comedies. At least for the ones that seem to be worth viewing. My favorite part was the "What are you doing?" "I'm burying you" scene, which was also one of my favorite line exchanges too.

[trotchky]

I watched In The Company of Men last week and I am still thinking about it. Its final shot has to be one of the most powerful and, not so much meaningful, but packed-with-meaning, I've ever seen. I'm not sure if I love or hate the film, I'll need to watch it again, but it sure gives you a lot to think about.

[thefourthwall]

Saw The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)--it was a family thing and it was either that or Marley & Me. I didn't have much agency in the choosing, accept I flat out refused to see Yes Man, and you all were no help (nobody here has commented about either).

It wasn't actually too bad. I haven't seen the original, so I can't compare. It seemed a bit green in its message, certainly no more than Wall-E, though not as heartwarmingly so.

[Bosco B Thug]

Watched three of Match-cut's more disputed films in a row. Definitely keeps you on your toes.

The Mist - I still find it an exceedingly well-crafted film dramatically. The ending is a misfire in execution, but in concept (which is half the execution), it still has the power to expand meaning in the film. I still feel Darabont is underestimated in his attitude towards the material... that his film is more even-handed and fair in its treatment and ultimate conclusions about its characters and parable than people give it credit for due to its on-the-nose surface. Its greatest asset is how well mapped-out and deliberate its story progression is (still love its use of fade-outs). It feels as if the film can be broken up into chapters a la Dogville: "In which the Biker Man ventures outside and Mrs. Carmody gets a penis scared into her," "In which David and Mrs. Carmody provoke Andre Braugher into disbelief," etc.

The Fall - Excellent real-world scenes, occasionally awful/overlong/uninteresting fantasy sequences. Very impressive performances by the girl and Lee Pace. It is good that it leaves Roy's personal problems pretty vague and Hollywood-petty (stunt accident and unswayed girlfriend) or the film's overall message about sacrificing self-absorption to aid the magic of cinema for the sake of underprivileged and needy children would be more problematic and come off as simplistic (moreso).

Southland Tales - Don't have anything insightful to say about this one (there're some good and extensive reviews out there that really break down the film too its pros and cons). But briefly: an admirable effort in many ways, but overall, just flat and unrevealing. I liked its championing of the apolitical virtues of the sexy and/or confused younger culture and Timberlake's disaffected, sad narrator. His musical sequence is the best scene. Can't say I understood its metaphysical aspects, like the 4th dimension stuff and time travel. The megazeppelin climax is boring, although the initial tracking shot isn't bad.

[Ezee E]

I've decided to watch a few Scorsese films after reading Ebert's book on him.

Raging Bull is first, and I believe this is the third time I've seen it now, and I like it even more than I did before. Every scene in that movie now matches up to the boxing scenes. Whether it's the relationship between Jake and his brother, or his wife, there's such a sense of dread there. Despite all things, I have a bit of sympathy for Jake, who is paranoid the entire movie about his wife, but was right. There was a reason for that paranoia.

The use of slow motion on the gangsters also took my attention this time. They were brief shots, but effective. They owned LaMotta. They were able to decide if he would win or lose. They also took advantage of his wife while he was out fighting. He knew it, but didn't. Fascinating stuff.

Might do a rewatch of Kundun and his New York Stories segment as well.

[Boner M]

The first half hour or so of Speed Racer = exuberant, silly awesomeness, with probably the best business tour scene in the history of movies. The rest isn't exactly bad, but I don't think the epic length was warranted, as the plot is rote and boring and should really just have been a threadbare excuse for the film's aesthetic and cheery set pieces, even though the mountain chase and ensuing fight scene are a highlight. Still, the scenes with the monkey are enough for me to approve of the film's cult here.

[balmakboor]

Saw The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)--it was a family thing and it was either that or Marley & Me. I didn't have much agency in the choosing, accept I flat out refused to see Yes Man, and you all were no help (nobody here has commented about either).

Considering the things people around here watch, there's certainly no need to sound so ashamed for seeing something like The Day the Earth Stood Still.

I find it odd that so few mentions have been made of Marley and Me. It was one of the must sees of the season for my family. I was talking to a swim mom last night and mentioned that I'd just reviewed it for the paper and she wanted to know what I thought. I said it was pretty good and very sad. She said with alarm, "No! They don't kill the dog off do they?"

I swear. The average moviegoer has no idea what it is she's about to watch. There was a row of little tykes in front of me and they looked absolutely traumatized by the final 15 minutes.

[Ezee E]

Considering the things people around here watch, there's certainly no need to sound so ashamed for seeing something like The Day the Earth Stood Still.

I find it odd that so few mentions have been made of Marley and Me. It was one of the must sees of the season for my family. I was talking to a swim mom last night and mentioned that I'd just reviewed it for the paper and she wanted to know what I thought. I said it was pretty good and very sad. She said with alarm, "No! They don't kill the dog off do they?"

I swear. The average moviegoer has no idea what it is she's about to watch. There was a row of little tykes in front of me and they looked absolutely traumatized by the final 15 minutes.
Ha, at work, there were a few guys talking about this and how they brought their sons/daughters to it, not knowing what happened at the end, and they were bawling too.

[dreamdead]

The Mist - I still find it an exceedingly well-crafted film dramatically. The ending is a misfire in execution, but in concept (which is half the execution), it still has the power to expand meaning in the film. I still feel Darabont is underestimated in his attitude towards the material... that his film is more even-handed and fair in its treatment and ultimate conclusions about its characters and parable than people give it credit for due to its on-the-nose surface.

I can agree with most of this. The chief annoyance for me is how three-dimensional Darabont tries to make the rest of the characters, versus how one-dimensional Harden's Mrs. Carmody turns out. While you note the film's tendencies toward parable, I don't think Darabont gets far enough into her character to justify the rest of the film's actions with her. She's one step removed from The Happening's old woman, and that's not good. That said, you're right about the ending. It's almost there. Had he sustained that energy for another few minutes before the big reveal I think it would have worked.

Myself, I took in Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales yesterday. Pretty solid throughout, with good cinematic vastness and techniques after the needless subjective-cam in the film's beginning (when Josey is knocked out and his house set aflame). I like the basic ways in which Eastwood keeps things humorous, but wish so many of them weren't dependent on the old Indian Lone Watie becoming a comic character. Too often he's reduced to a punchline, though he is given enough dignity that it's not egregious. Otherwise, solid filmmaking.

[Raiders]

Rolf de Heer's The Tracker is mighty, mighty good. Nice juxtaposition with the match-cut drawings that evoke most of the film's violence, and the music is a solid commentary on the film's themes, serving almost as an interior monologue throughout. This is what Luhrmann's Australia wanted to be with its aborigine storylines; darkly comic yet always serious.

The artistry here means that Bad Boy Bubby is finally getting added to the queue...

Sweet. If I may: http://www.match-cut.org/showthread.php?t=647

[megladon8]

Sunshine was incredible on BluRay.

That is all.

[Ivan Drago]

I swear. The average moviegoer has no idea what it is she's about to watch. There was a row of little tykes in front of me and they looked absolutely traumatized by the final 15 minutes.

...what happens? I'm never gonna see it so I'm curious.

[megladon8]

...what happens? I'm never gonna see it so I'm curious.


It's a movie about a dog, and has a very sad ending.

Put two and two together.

[Ivan Drago]

Put two and two together.

Twenty-two?



Sorry, that joke was terrible.

[balmakboor]

...what happens? I'm never gonna see it so I'm curious.

Is this a subtle way of saying I should've used spoiler tags?

[Ezee E]

Is this a subtle way of saying I should've used spoiler tags?
I think he's being sincere in his questioning.

[Ezee E]

25 Films Put into the National Registry today:

1) The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
2) Deliverance (1972)
3) Disneyland Dream (1956)
4) A Face in the Crowd (1957)
5) Flower Drum Song (1961)
6) Foolish Wives (1922)
7) Free Radicals (1979)
8) Hallelujah (1929)
9) In Cold Blood (1967)
10) The Invisible Man (1933)
11) Johnny Guitar (1954)
12) The Killers (1946)
13) The March (1964)
14) No Lies (1973)
15) On the Bowery (1957)
16) One Week (1920)
17) The Pawnbroker (1965)
18) The Perils of Pauline (1914)
19) Sergeant York (1941)
20) The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
21) So’s Your Old Man (1926)
22) George Stevens WW2 Footage (1943-46)
23) The Terminator (1984)
24) Water and Power (1989)
25) White Fawn’s Devotion (1910)


Haven't heard of majority of them.

[thefourthwall]

5) Flower Drum Song (1961)


I heard a conference presentation on this, which made me want to see it. This increases my desire--but first the other film mentioned in the presentation: The World of Suzie Wong (Quine, 1960).

[balmakboor]

I think he's being sincere in his questioning.

Yep, I figured that out when he PM'd me. I described the ending to him.

Here is the review I wrote btw. I could've come at the movie from quite a few different directions, but that darn 600 word limit always puts the kabosh on things.

---

There is a scene in “Marley and Me” that happens all too often in the lives of pet owners. Babies are crying. Parents are fighting. Life is a mess. And the dog is being, well, a dog. What’s the solution to the situation? The dog has to go.

My wife and I have had a fair amount of experience in the world of animal shelters and humane societies, enough at least to hear a sad litany of tales of woe from people dumping their pets on a shelter’s doorstep. “I didn’t know it would get so big.” “It was my kids’ dog and they moved out.” “It keeps having puppies.” “I got a new sofa and it no longer matches my dog.” I’m not kidding. That last one is true.

“Marley and Me” is not a great movie. I do think it is a good one though. It kept me entertained for most of its two hours. It made me laugh, sometimes hard, more than a few times. It made me cry at the end as it did seemingly everyone in the audience. When you bring your kids, consider preparing them for a story telling the entire life of a dog and not just the happy puppy times. Ultimately, as a lifelong pet owner, it made me think.

Animal shelters are overflowing because so many people give pets as gifts – tied with a bow – with thoughts of a cute puppy or kitten dancing in their heads and forget that a life lasts a lifetime. And, as if a conscious response to these tough economic times with news stories of pets left to starve in foreclosed houses, this is where “Marley and Me” – both movie and book – locates it heart.

It’s a plea to all future pet owners to think first. It may seem like a good idea now. But what happens when you have a new baby next year? Or what happens when the kids grow up and have boyfriends and girlfriends to occupy their time? What happens when they leave for college? What happens if you take that job offer and move across the country?

Actually, another reason shelters are so full is many people don’t seem to understand the value of spaying and neutering – also touched on in “Marley and Me” during one of its funniest sequences – but that’s a whole other box of puppies. Maybe, someday, a copy of “Marley and Me” on DVD will be standard issue when taking a new pet home. It wouldn’t be a bad idea.

While watching the movie, I found myself ruminating on a sad truth. Compared to humans, dogs (and cats and horses and hamsters and …) live very short lives. When I was young, I had a dog named Princess. Those years were filled with good times that seemed like they would never end. Most of my memories from that time involve Princess. Looking back though, she was with me for such a short time and, the older I get, the shorter it seems.

Yet, to Princess, those years were everything. We also get a strong sense of this with Marley. He lived a long and happy and fulfilling life with the Grogan family and he changed their lives immeasurably. But, they will go on to experience much more life and most likely many more dogs while Marley becomes just a fond memory.

After things settled down, the Grogans did not try to solve their problems by getting rid of Marley and we can all be thankful for that, especially the Grogans.

[Ezee E]

Almost makes me want to see it fas. Nice work.

[Russ]

I'm subpar..

The 1,000 Greatest Films (http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films.htm), courtesy of They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

Subpar cinephile: I've only seen about 287, less than a third. :|

Subpar human being: I spent half an hour counting them. :crazy:

[Melville]

I'm subpar..

The 1,000 Greatest Films (http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films.htm), courtesy of They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

Subpar cinephile: I've only seen about 287, less than a third. :|

Subpar human being: I spent half an hour counting them. :crazy:
It takes less time to count if you download the excel spreadsheet they provide.

I've seen 477. Has anybody here seen them all? I'm guessing Qrazy is closest.

[Raiders]

Nice to see films like The Ascent and Shock Corridor falling out in favor of... Tootsie.

[Russ]

I'm guessing Qrazy is closest.

I wouldn't bet the farm on that. (no offense, Q)

[Melville]

I wouldn't bet the farm on that. (no offense, Q)
Who would you bet on? Do either of us have farms to bet?

[Russ]

Who do you think is closest?Israfel, babydoll, etc, or one us old(er) farts: do I really need to name names?


Do either of us have farms to bet? To have a farm you should own land and grow stuff on it. Under those loose terms, I probably qualify. You?

[Qrazy]

I've seen 750. Still a ways to go.

[MadMan]

35 minutes in my friends and I gave up on Hamlet 2. I think this year has seen the most amount of movies I've given up on (something like 4 or 5, perhaps). I was willing to go on, but even I was wondering if the movie got any better or not.

The Way of the Gun is a strange kind of action film. The main message is fairly obvious, but there were moments that seemed a bit odd, and it surprised me with some of the turns it took. Its a decently made action film and there's some talent involved, yes, but I'm not sure if the actual film was a finished product or something half assed. In the hands of a different, more skilled director this movie really could have been something perhaps.

[Melville]

Israfel, babydoll, etc, or one us old(er) farts: do I really need to name names?
Yes. Names must be named. Israfel is really knowledgeable about movies, but he seems like he probably spends more time reading and thinking about them than actually watching them, though he's obviously seen a ton of them too. babydoll is all about the canon, so he probably is a good bet.


To have a farm you should own land and grow stuff on it. Under those loose terms, I probably qualify. You?
Certainly not.


I've seen 750. Still a ways to go.
Jeez, I thought you'd be closer than that by now. Have you finished the 1001 movies to see before you die list yet?

[Watashi]

I have the 1001 Movies To See Before You Die book. One of the best Netflix fillers out there even though it has a couple of questionable entries (Top Gun... WTF).

[Melville]

In case there are classic-WB-cartoon aficionados around here who don't read the RT forums, Alex Weitzman has a pretty good countdown of the best looney tunes cartoons (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=663317&page=1) going on.

[The Mike]

25 Films Put into the National Registry today:

1) The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
2) Deliverance (1972)
3) Disneyland Dream (1956)
4) A Face in the Crowd (1957)
5) Flower Drum Song (1961)
6) Foolish Wives (1922)
7) Free Radicals (1979)
8) Hallelujah (1929)
9) In Cold Blood (1967)
10) The Invisible Man (1933)
11) Johnny Guitar (1954)
12) The Killers (1946)
13) The March (1964)
14) No Lies (1973)
15) On the Bowery (1957)
16) One Week (1920)
17) The Pawnbroker (1965)
18) The Perils of Pauline (1914)
19) Sergeant York (1941)
20) The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
21) So’s Your Old Man (1926)
22) George Stevens WW2 Footage (1943-46)
23) The Terminator (1984)
24) Water and Power (1989)
25) White Fawn’s Devotion (1910)


Haven't heard of majority of them.I think it's safe to say A Face in the Crowd is the best flick on that list. :cool:

[Raiders]

758.

I beat Qrazy! Ha!

[Ezee E]

I started counting films despite never even seeing a frame of it.

Let me restart at work tomorrow when I can concentrate more, heh.

[Russ]

758.

I beat Qrazy! Ha!
Old fart.

[Melville]

758.

I beat Qrazy! Ha!
Well, you have a few years on him. We obviously need to prorate the scores according to age.

[Ezee E]

Replace old with wise(r), and you'll make yourself feel better instantly.

[Raiders]

How old is Qrazy? I had always thought of him as around my age.

[Melville]

How old is Qrazy? I had always thought of him as around my age.
I think he's in his last year of university, which would put him at...22 or 23?

[Ezee E]

I think he's in his last year of university, which would put him at...22 or 23?
That makes me very wise.

[Raiders]

I think he's in his last year of university, which would put him at...22 or 23?

Hm....

...

Wait! I miscounted. It's actually 995!

[Melville]

That makes me very wise.
Your avatar keeps making me think that you're a screaming six-year-old.

[Ezee E]

Your avatar keeps making me think that you're a screaming six-year-old.
People thought that even before that avatar came up I bet.

[Melville]

Pierrot le fou was a great menagerie of pop-art genre deconstruction, explosions of color, and literary and philosophical references, perfectly combined to create a postmodern view of the classic doomed romance (intellectual man devoted to abstractions, woman devoted to "pure living"). The shot where Karina looks into the camera and tells Belmondo that she will never leave him brings a very poignant layer of self-reference too, considering her breakup with Godard.

I think it's replaced My Life to Live as my favorite Godard film.

[dreamdead]

I'm subpar..

The 1,000 Greatest Films (http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films.htm), courtesy of They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?


I've seen 418 of them. I laughed when I rolled past Starship Troopers. Of all of Verhoeven and they choose that one. Hilarious.

The Italians broke any ability for me to get to 500.

[balmakboor]

I've seen 534 after tossing out about 75 that were just too long ago.

I was an extra in one. Cutter's Way. Yay.

[megladon8]

I've seen 245 of them.

[Rowland]

National Treasure > Indy 4

[Derek]

Pierrot le fou was a great menagerie of pop-art genre deconstruction, explosions of color, and literary and philosophical references, perfectly combined to create a postmodern view of the classic doomed romance (intellectual man devoted to abstractions, woman devoted to "pure living"). The shot where Karina looks into the camera and tells Belmondo that she will never leave him brings a very poignant layer of self-reference too, considering her breakup with Godard.

I think it's replaced My Life to Live as my favorite Godard film.

So much correctness in one post, so little rep to give.


National Treasure > Indy 4

Can we assume a defense of Turteltaub as auteur is in the works?

Sorry, couldn't resist after the Siverston silliness. ;)

[Rowland]

Sorry, couldn't resist after the Siverston silliness. ;)Eh, I stand by my assertion that Sivertson is a more interesting and promising budding talent than most of the hacks that muck up the horror scene.

[Derek]

Eh, I stand by my assertion that Sivertson is a more interesting and promising budding talent than most of the hacks that muck up the horror scene.

I'm only poking fun. I agree that I Know Who Killed Me was unfairly bashed and odds are many critics were thinking up Lohan zingers on their drive to the screening, but the fact that it's a moderately interesting failure doesn't make up for it still being a pretty bad film.


As for the TSPDT list, I'm at 708. I've seen 444 out of the top 500, so at least I've seen most of the good ones.

[Ivan Drago]

Pierrot le fou was a great menagerie of pop-art genre deconstruction, explosions of color, and literary and philosophical references, perfectly combined to create a postmodern view of the classic doomed romance (intellectual man devoted to abstractions, woman devoted to "pure living"). The shot where Karina looks into the camera and tells Belmondo that she will never leave him brings a very poignant layer of self-reference too, considering her breakup with Godard.

I think it's replaced My Life to Live as my favorite Godard film.

I've been meaning to see this. Godard's one of my favorite filmmakers.

And I've seen...148 films on that list. I've got a looong way to go.

[Rowland]

You Don't Mess With the Zohan (Dennis Dugan, 2008) 60

Despite traces of Sandler's typical frat boy pandering, this is an essentially sweet-natured comedy, spilling over with generosity and a disarmingly sincere call for tolerance. The middle act sags, many of the running gags fizzle, and appearances by assorted Sandler buddies distract more often than they amuse, but much can be forgiven when you're treated with gonzo gags like Jon Turturro attempting to put out a blazing fire as if it was his opponent in a fist-fight. As a whole, this is probably the most spirited movie Sandler has released in over a decade, and its whimsical way with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will do more to promote understanding and pacifism in the popular culture than any number of morose, earnest art house pictures. The method by which Zohan's father wolfs down hummus in an early scene gets my vote for the year's funniest throwaway joke.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

509 seen of the TSHDT top 1000. 24 years old, should knock it off by 30. Yay

Other irrelevant list-quests.

Rosenbaum's 1000: I am at 350
Criterion Collection: 375 (out of 465 spine #)

[Boner M]

Just watched my last film for the year, The Merchant of Four Seasons. Not one of the better 'binders, social commentary is a bit too crass, and all the suggestive framing isn't as nuanced as in his later films. Still, the somewhat amateurish, stagey execution has an urgency that's often enthralling, and the the final scenes make for a great pessimistic encapsulation of 2008.

[MadMan]

I've seen 418 of them. I laughed when I rolled past Starship Troopers. Of all of Verhoeven and they choose that one. Hilarious.

The Italians broke any ability for me to get to 500.I've only seen 170 off that list. The rest I'll get to, oh, eventually :P

[Amnesiac]

I recently watched The Age of Innocence and The Earrings of Madame De....

The Age of Innocence was pretty good. As usual, Day-Lewis gave a pretty captivating performance. I wasn't totally enthralled by the love-triangle story-line but overall, I thought it was pretty engaging. I don't know if I'd say the same thing if Day-Lewis wasn't at the forefront...

Pretty devastating ending, too.

And speaking of devastating endings, The Earrings of Madame De... definitely had one, as well. Somewhat ambiguous, too. The ending came off like a really jarring and drastic tonal shift but I still found the whole thing pretty refreshing. I wasn't expecting the story to get resolved in violence and death but somehow, it worked.

Over-all, the story was pleasant, although I may see where some people are coming from when dismissing Danielle Darrieux's Madame as being a bit vacuous. I didn't feel that the characterization crippled the movie or anything as I totally bought their clandestine relationship, but I feel that this might have been mostly due to the charm of Vittorio DeSica's character. It was a love story based around impulsive infatuation, sure, but it doesn't mean it didn't work. With themes like fate and destiny so overtly placed into the film, it was pretty evident that the story wasn't concerned with a well-developed, realistic relationship... it's an affair-movie, and some slightly vapid infatuation usually finds a justifiable place in affair-movies. Plus, her husband was made out to be a pretty unlikable character, so it was easy to see why the Madame would be so quick to look elsewhere.

And it turns out that Vittorio DeSica has some pretty great screen presence. That was a nice surprise.

[Bosco B Thug]

I can agree with most of this. The chief annoyance for me is how three-dimensional Darabont tries to make the rest of the characters, versus how one-dimensional Harden's Mrs. Carmody turns out. While you note the film's tendencies toward parable, I don't think Darabont gets far enough into her character to justify the rest of the film's actions with her. She's one step removed from The Happening's old woman, and that's not good. That said, you're right about the ending. It's almost there. Had he sustained that energy for another few minutes before the big reveal I think it would have worked. Yeah. Probably even one more monster sequence, then the rescue force. That might've been perfect actually.

I was thinking originally, though, that I just wanted something more than the punchline (Drayton's reaction). Whether that be giving us an even-handed look at the soldiers (e.g. a soldier tending to Drayton and seeing what he just did - it just comes off kind of silly how the soldiers just walk by him as he's screaming his head off at the end) or a more The Host-esque ironical look at swaggering soldiers with their state-of-the-art weapons - then it would've really driven home the layers the ending provides. As the film is, though, I get enough a sense of "swagger" in the military's appearance that I think the ending ultimately succeeds.

Regarding Mrs. Carmody, I think she's handled very well, which made it easy for me to just accept her character. A point is made to emphasize that she is truly terrified before she becomes militant, that she's not just religious but has a destructive sense of pride which she displays in her vindictiveness against the Laurie Holden character, and her sermonizing is very convincingly written. I'd say extensively researched, but I'm not much of a Bible scholar.


I started counting films despite never even seeing a frame of it. Ugh yeah, that counting was unbearable. I pushed through, though. I've seen about 350.

[balmakboor]

I've been watching a string of Godard's lately and my favorites are certainly My Life to Live, La Chinoise, and especially Pierrot le fou. But I watched Hail Mary last night not expecting much and totally loved it. Maybe it won't hold up like those others, but it is currently one of my favorites.

I watched Notre Musique the other day and loved the first section, loved the last section, and was bored out of my skull during the loooong middle. I guess I have no idea what Godard was saying with this one.

[balmakboor]

This little thing probably inspired me to start making films more than anything else lately.

http://blogue.nfb.ca/film/Very_Nice_Very_Nice/

[Qrazy]

Yes. Names must be named. Israfel is really knowledgeable about movies, but he seems like he probably spends more time reading and thinking about them than actually watching them, though he's obviously seen a ton of them too. babydoll is all about the canon, so he probably is a good bet.


Certainly not.


Jeez, I thought you'd be closer than that by now. Have you finished the 1001 movies to see before you die list yet?

No, I've been mostly watching films outside those two lists and Criterion for about 9 months now. It just started becoming a bit of a chore, but I"m still slowly working on it. I'm actually closer to Raiders number with They Shoot Pictures but I didn't feel like counting them all so I rounded down. I started back up on Criterion recently, have 80 to go there (not counting laserdiscs and eclipse). 160 to go on 1001 films to see before you die.

[Ezee E]

I find trying to see movie after movie on the Criterion Collection exhausting, and not as fulfilling as spacing them out from time to time. Can't really explain it, except for the possibility that the occassional mediocre movie reminds me of how good the great movies really are.

[Qrazy]

I find trying to see movie after movie on the Criterion Collection exhausting, and not as fulfilling as spacing them out from time to time. Can't really explain it, except for the possibility that the occassional mediocre movie reminds me of how good the great movies really are.

I've stopped watching the extras nearly as much as I used to. I regret that but I guess I'd just prefer to see more movies than to take the time watching the extras.

[Ezee E]

I've stopped watching the extras nearly as much as I used to. I regret that but I guess I'd just prefer to see more movies than to take the time watching the extras.
I never watch extras, unless its bloopers on a comedy movie.

Should I be embarassed about that?

[Qrazy]

I never watch extras, unless its bloopers on a comedy movie.

Should I be embarassed about that?

Perhaps not embarrassed but you are missing a lot of interesting content.

[Ezee E]

Perhaps not embarrassed but you are missing a lot of interesting content.
I've seen enough content from the old DVDs and never really found extras to be very beneficial. Commentaries are rarely interesting, as its typically the director not even knowing what to say.

[Watashi]

For Spinal,

An early rave for LVT's Antichrist:


I’ve just seen a very early print of Lars von Trier's next feature, set to premiere on September 11. 2009. A movie that initially annoyed me, when I heard of it, three years ago.

Three years ago I was among those who were baffled to hear, that Lars von Trier wasn’t going to complete his latest trilogy right away. Complete and utterly in love with both his Europe trilogy and his Golden Hart trilogy, I was already getting hard by the thought of how he might finish his latest, the American trilogy. Dogville being one of my all-time favorites I initially worried as the mom of a junkie, that he couldn’t continue this trilogy without Kidman. But Manderlay proved that Lars can make anybody act radiantly to a degree were you want buy a rubber finger and cheer as if your life depended on it. Which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s seen Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves or Björks performance in Dancer in the Dark! Also loving Manderlay, and Bryce Dallas Howard in it, I couldn’t wait for the third installment of the Americana trilogy. Was he going to make Wasington with neither Bryce or Nicole, just one of them or perhaps with both? And what would the overall moral point of the trilogy be? So I was very disappointed when I learned he was going to postpone the final chapter, or maybe drop it altogether. Instead of Wasington we were promised a straight forward, no crazy rules or messing about, horror, starring major Hollywood actors. At first the idea bored me, but slowly my disappointment vanished in the hope that this could possibly be the final breakthrough, that would make LvT the household name I’ve always felt he deserves to be. Something that he’s seemed to avoid on purpose through his whole career.

After making the Europe Trilogy back in the eighties, where he perfected his esthetic brilliance, Lars was headhunted by Spielberg and the likes to do Hollywood movies. But refusing to direct anything he hadn’t birthed himself, he missed this opportunity to reach a larger audience. And instead of continuing his visual style, that had made him a festival darling, he decided to go in the opposite direction, writing and directing the handheld-shot TV horror-series Riget (the Kingdom). He continued this visual technique in his next feature, Breaking The Waves, which won him the Grand Jury prize at the Cannes Festival. But being pissed he didn’t win the Golden Palm, he famously “dropped” the prize while leaving the stage. While not winning him the prizes he felt it deserved, Breaking the Waves won him a new audience. Still an artsy audience, but larger and certainly more mainstream than his old following. And now the world wanted to show whatever he put out, and therefore he decided to make the second series of Riget for one of the smallest markets on the planet: Danish television. Subsequently he founded “dogme95” and made the intensely brilliant “Idioterne” (the idiots), and after this, the mainstream audiences seemed to have forgotten about him again. Except the likes of me, who were just reaching the right age to begin opening their eyes to less mainstream movies, and were blown away by The Idiots. A movie that was brilliant on so many levels, that you didn’t even have time to fully judge whether you actually liked the movie or not. Inventing Dogme95, a movement all about “spassing” with the conventions of moviemaking, and then writing and directing a movie about people spassing as humans in social context, while not crediting yourself as the director – is just too much for me to even comment on. Then he made Dancer in the Dark, a musical so grim and dark in its themes that it was sure to make anybody depressed. Dancer won him the Golden Palm, and now he was on everybody’s lips again. He got Nicole Kidman for the lead in his next feature, and just when I thought there was no way around getting the mass appeal I felt he deserved, he announced that he was going to let his next trilogy be played out on a soundstage, with chalk outlines as the only set pieces. And at the same time, he decided to call it the American Trilogy, thus pissing off anyone who had been pissed of that Dancer in the Dark took place in America, even though von Trier, due to his phobia of flying, has never been there.

It seems there is always some kind of controversy surrounding von Triers movies, which clouds his brilliant subtexts. This always bothered me, although I know that he does this very knowingly. A true provocateur. At the same time, the controversy is what’s fun about being a von Trier fan. So was antichrist going to be any different, although we had been promised a straight forward horror? To anyone who has seen his straight forward comedy (and not many has) The Director of it All from 2006, that question is easy to answer: No.

In short, Antichrist is about a psychiatrist, played by Willem Dafoe, who decide to take his wife, played by Charlotte Gainsbourgh, to the one place she fears the most, to help her overcome the grief of their son's accidental death. That place is Eden Forrest, where they have a small cabin, where she once wrote a thesis about the persecution of witches in the middle ages. While trying to understand why such tragedy could happen to them, the couple opens their eyes to the possibility that the nature of the world is to be evil. And more so, that the nature of humans is evil. And without giving away too much, I can tell you that her thesis comes to play a major part in their discovering. And although this was the first screening of Antichrist ever, before any effects, before its initial editing was supposed to end, before any major sound-editing and so on, Lars von Trier's way of showing the evils of nature was extremely beautiful. Never has anything this gruesome been shown in such a poetic way. A beauty I haven’t seen in a von Trier movie since his Europe trilogy. But the movie was also a tour-de-madman, into von Triers viewpoint on the human nature. Although the style was very atypical of late von Trier and very atypical of early von Trier, it sort of mixed the two von Triers, and everything on screen SCREAMED von Trier. Already in the six minute opening sequence of the movie, which was filmed with a high speed camera and shown in super slow motion, black and white images, to opera music, the movie denied itself of any chances of getting an MPAA rating less than NC-17.

Initially being just another movie about someone going to a cabin far from civilization and then coming in contact with something supernatural, Trier excels and makes it a beautifully poetic movie, with so much written between the lines that I am not going to pretend that I fully understood it all after this first viewing - much like the before-mentioned The Idiots. Luckily Antichrist also worked on its own terms as a horror movie, and while it didn’t scare me as much as I hoped it would, it made me physically ill, due to gruesome content that borderlines gore, except it seems to artsy to be allowed such a label. But I mean gruesome!! Take Hostel and mix it with The Piano Teacher, and you’re close to an idea of what you have in store. And I am positive that the final edit, and the special effects and sound departments will do the trick, and the fright-factor will be upped for the final cut. In all circumstances, this is a movie to look forward to, if only for the tour-de-madman into the fucked up mind of von Trier that will leave you shaking your head in disbelief of what you are witnessing – even if you’re a LvT fan, who expects the unexpected.

Antichrist is a brilliant mixture of the old Trier and the new Trier. Intensely beautiful pictures that speaks more than a thousand words, but also content and subtext that speak a million words of their own. I seriously doubt this film will make him a household name, but I have hopes that this will be one of his biggest hits. The gore alone will make it a hit with certain audiences, but still the story has so much depth and finesse, that it could be a contender for some major awards.

Anyways, I can’t wait to see it again.

Happy new years from this anonymous Dane.

[B-side]

Fucking fantastic. I can't wait. That's easily among my top 3 most anticipated of 2009.
______________________________ ____________________

I'm acquiring Lamorisse's White Mane right now. I needed a push to watch it, and I got it.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

And it turns out that Vittorio DeSica has some pretty great screen presence. That was a nice surprise.

Well considering he was an actor before he turned to directing, I would hope so :lol:

[Amnesiac]

Well considering he was an actor before he turned to directing

Yeah, I didn't know that. I don't know if that makes his screen-presence any less surprising, though.

[soitgoes...]

Scattered Clouds was good, not great. A bit disappointing since I wanted Naruse's final film to be something of a masterpiece to cap off a wonderful career. From a technical standpoint, the film is great. The weak point was lead actress Yoko Tsukasa who is a step down from Naruse regular Takamine. Naruse, whose films are very much about the emotional struggles of the female in Japanese society, gives us a very wooden actress, especially when paired with an animated Yuzo Kayama. For late career Naruse Yearning still stands as his best.

[soitgoes...]

Holiday weekend viewing possibilities:

Sorcerer
Vengeance
Wife
An Autumn Afternoon
This Land Is Mine
Charley Varrick

[Ezee E]

Steve Coogan took what could've easily been a horrible movie in Hamlet 2 and made it almost work.

[Watashi]

It needs to be posted here too.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn234/Badabing00/Joaquin-1.jpg

[Boner M]

w/e

Wendy & Lucy
Un Flic
The Last Days of Disco

[Winston*]

Ghost Town is a great plane movie and an extremely mediocre actual movie.

[Derek]

It needs to be posted here too.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn234/Badabing00/Joaquin-1.jpg

That picture is amazing. Joaquin Phoenix's Zach Galifianakis impersonation is staggering.

[Wryan]

That picture is amazing. Joaquin Phoenix's Zach Galifianakis impersonation is staggering.

Nice.

Did you see the standup when he shaved his beard? It apparently came after his normal set (with his normal face) and he went backstage and shaved and later came out to introduce Patton Oswalt with a clean face and different clothes. And he adopted a soft, slightly lilting NC accent. It was mind-blowing, tho he cracked a few grins. On a side note, I've heard the beard isn't real.

[Wryan]

And here's Zach stretching his Kaufman legs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk1s9MBFBjo

[megladon8]

I love P. Diddy's expression looking at Phoenix.

[Ezee E]

The Last Days of Disco[/b]

Not out on Netflix over here. :(

[eternity]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DNI94BXMj4&eurl=http://neoavant.com/2009/01/2008-the-cinescape/&feature=player_embedded

2008: A Year of Drama

[Amnesiac]

Has anyone here seen any of the films in Paul Almond's trilogy?

That is: Isabel, Act of the Heart and Journey.

[Ivan Drago]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DNI94BXMj4&eurl=http://neoavant.com/2009/01/2008-the-cinescape/&feature=player_embedded

2008: A Year of Drama

I was sold the split second Hoppipolla began.

[Sxottlan]

The Reader was good, not great. Interesting to see Germany more than a decade removed from the war, although I didn't see as much as I would have liked. I liked how Hannah ends up being this ghost that never goes away for Michael, the war still following many Germans well into the 80's. Hannah is a bit of cipher though. Some of her reactions are a bit odd and are never explained, such as her reaction to her promotion at work. I liked the choice that Michael made that burned Hannah for life. The ambiguity over whether it was because he was ashamed to admit his relationship to her or, perhaps, because she left without saying good-bye?

Beyond that, pretty straightforward. Not much style, but loved the shot of Winslet washing her hands as it's pouring rain behind her.

[Sxottlan]

BTW, Turner Classic Movie's way of saying goodbye to those who died in 2008. Very classy: http://www.awardsdaily.com/?p=5397

[soitgoes...]

In anticipation for next week's consensus, I wanted to watch another Friedkin film, and I settled on Sorcerer. Not due to any knowledge I had of said film, but rather by it being the highest rated film on IMDb of his that I haven't seen. Two things surprised me: First, there was no sorcery, wizards, goblins of any kind. As a matter of fact the title had very little to do with the film in any way, outside of the eponymous truck. Secondly, this was a remake of Clouzot's Wages of Fear, a rather decent remake at that. Clouzot did a better job at catching the tension, and I believe Friedkin's film gets bogged down right at the get go with his 4-part prologue. I imagine his vision on how to end the film required at least one portion of the prologue, and his not wanting to give away the film's ending necessitated the other three. Still this leaves the viewer with fifteen or so minutes of waiting which hindered the overall flow for me. Still Friedkin's film does have a good deal of tension, and I also feel he pulled off the better ending.

[Ezee E]

Weekend:
Revolutionary Road
Frost/Nixon

The Last Wave
Towelhead
Cruising

[Raiders]

Weekend:

The Day of the Outlaw
My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument
The One-Armed Swordsman

[Ezee E]

I haven't seen any films by Vincente Minnelli, and his consensus is coming soon. Where do I start with him? The Pirate, Lust for Life, something else?

[Raiders]

How cool could it have been to have a superhero film about a belligerent asshole? A movie as sick of boy scouts and/or disturbed and determined do-gooders as I am. But, Hancock is not that movie. The first mistake may be in casting Will Smith, who simply doesn't have the capability of playing a jerk for too long since well, he's Will Smith and we can live in the comfort of knowing he will turn good eventually. The second mistake may be in the film's simply redonkulous last act where the filmmakers show not only do they wish to redeem Hancock's poor behavior, but to make him nothing less than an ubermensch for all little boys to idolize. I enjoyed the film's opening act, but the bigger the movie got, the more ho-hum it became until finally I just had to laugh off the disappointment.

[Raiders]

I haven't seen any films by Vincente Minnelli, and his consensus is coming soon. Where do I start with him? The Pirate, Lust for Life, something else?

His best film is The Bad and the Beautiful, so you could start there. It really doesn't make too much difference. I would say simply start with Meet Me in St. Louis.

[Yxklyx]

I haven't seen any films by Vincente Minnelli, and his consensus is coming soon. Where do I start with him? The Pirate, Lust for Life, something else?

Cabin in the Sky
Meet Me in St. Louis
An American in Paris

[Scar]

Well, just like with Lady in the Water, The Happening wouldn't play in my PS3, so I'm gonna take that as a sign, and leave it at that.

[Ezee E]

Well, just like with Lady in the Water, The Happening wouldn't play in my PS3, so I'm gonna take that as a sign, and leave it at that.
You're missing out on some good hilarity.

I think it might be on youtube though.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I started out my new year with King Kong and Them! yesterday. It was a good start.

King Kong has a very curious ecology, when you think about it. Exactly one monstrous member of each species, living in careful equilibrium for what might be hundreds, if not thousands of years, suddenly all try to kill each other.

Them! has some pretty cheesy monster effects (those eyes need more glitter), but it's genuinely fun, and the suspense with the ant screams is palpable. Also cool to see James Whitmore forty years before he was Brooks in Shawshank.

[Rowland]

Ju-On/The Grudge-director Takashi Shimizu's Reincarnation performs a disconcertingly effective leap from a laughably inept pre-credits sequence and an unpromising first-act comprised of unimaginative recycled elements to a third-act that proves deliriously ingenious and unexpectedly compelling. I haven't seen a movie recover so well from sheer mediocrity in some time, so kudos to Shimizu for saving face in the home stretch and putting on a good show. I could see this guy maturing into a formidable genre talent, so I hope he keeps it up and leaves behind those Ju-On movies.

[thefourthwall]

Smart People is entertaining enough. I love to see how Hollywood portrays English professors and uses critical buzz words. Dennis Quaid did a pretty good job portraying the unhappy Wetherhold whose tightly wound misery even spills to his shuffling walk. Ellen Page also has an admirable performance as an overachieving, love-starved teen. Despite these two, the story it self just doesn't have quite enough depth and while it stays on the right side of the cliche line, it was close to it.

Mr. Hulot's Holiday is a wonderful French comedy that shows characters like Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean are far from original, and I enjoyed this far more. While the title Hulot has a knack for getting into scrapes and disturbing the general piece about him, it is most unconsciously done, and he does it with some assistance from a cast of characters who also make missteps, resulting in the physical comedy that needs very little dialouge. I watched this because I'm interested in seeing Tati's Playtime but wanted to start the Hulot films from the beginning, so as to have the complete narrative. Rather than a chore to get to my goal though, this film was utterly enjoyable.

[Amnesiac]

I was sold the split second Hoppipolla began.

His 2007 video was much better.

[Raiders]

BTW, Turner Classic Movie's way of saying goodbye to those who died in 2008. Very classy: http://www.awardsdaily.com/?p=5397

Yeah, the TCM Remembers stuff is always good.

[Pop Trash]

I haven't seen any films by Vincente Minnelli, and his consensus is coming soon. Where do I start with him? The Pirate, Lust for Life, something else?

I watched Meet Me in St.Louis and Some Came Running for a film class and enjoyed both quite a bit.

[Wryan]

Classy as always, TCM. Strange about the one, solitary use of Estelle Reiner's zinger. Sure, I love it, but odd to interrupt the rest to single it out, even if it was the "biggest" thing she was known for.

Also, it saddens me to see these and always respond at least once with, "Damn, I forgot _____ died." These are meant as tribute and memoriam, but we forget pretty quickly in many cases. I know, there's just too many and I agree. But still it saddens me.

[soitgoes...]

Heaven's Gate is a mess. A fantastic mess, but a mess nonetheless. It certainly doesn't warrant a label of "disaster" or "worst movie ever made," as some have claimed.

[Ezee E]

Bizarro news:

Arcade Fire is scoring Richard Kelly's new film The Box.

He's allegedly doing this movie for the studio, but I have a feeling it'll be better than Southland Tales

[chrisnu]

Will catch at least two of Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Reader and The Wrestler this weekend.

Oh yeah, and Che. The whole thing. :)

[dreamdead]

I think I'll finally dip back to '05 and catch up with Kings and Queen this weekend.

[megladon8]

The Shining is a great movie that also happens to be totally un-scary.

[Ivan Drago]

Bizarro news:

Arcade Fire is scoring Richard Kelly's new film The Box.

:eek:

As a lover of Kelly's last two movies as well as an Arcade Fire fan I find this news to be AWESOME.

[thefourthwall]

The Shining is a great movie that also happens to be totally un-scary.
:eek:

I was freaked out by this film, and I first saw it as an undergrad. Even REM's song "Shiny Happy People" gave me the creeps for awhile afterward.

[Raiders]

The Shining is a great movie that also happens to be totally un-scary.

Hm, I'm usually one of those people who is not very easily spooked, but I find this to be a very unsettling and horrifying film. Not out-and-out scary in the "boo" sense, but it isn't trying to be.

[megladon8]

It's certainly disturbing and unsettling, but the horrifying part I just can't feel the same about. I love watching the movie, as I said...I may even watch it again in the next couple of days.

I couldn't help laughing a bit at some of Jack Nicholson's eye twitches and little idiosyncrasies. I didn't see a man going insane, but Jack Nicholson playing a man going insane. I love the guy, but he's another actor who developed a kind of "schtick" with several performances. This is why I also didn't find his Joker very menacing...it was still just Jack Nicholson with make-up.

[thefourthwall]

This is why I also didn't find his Joker very menacing...it was still just Jack Nicholson with make-up.

I sure would not want to meet Nicholson in a dark alley late at night; I truly believe he is unbalanced.

[transmogrifier]

The Shining is a great movie that also happens to be totally un-scary.


Change one word, and you're spot on.

"great" to "medicore"

[Ezee E]

I've watched it many a times, probably once a year now, and unsettling it certainly is. So much so, that I still find it scary at times, but a good amount of it being because of its use of music, the smooth camera movements, and the closed-in nature of it all. Jack just brings it all together.

[Sxottlan]

Ju-On/The Grudge-director Takashi Shimizu's Reincarnation performs a disconcertingly effective leap from a laughably inept pre-credits sequence and an unpromising first-act comprised of unimaginative recycled elements to a third-act that proves deliriously ingenious and unexpectedly compelling.

I think it was precisely at the beginning of the third act when I bailed on it. I kind of liked what I saw (it was cut on on the Sci-Fi Channel), but I started to tire of the person wandering off on their own deal.

[Qrazy]

Heaven's Gate is a mess. A fantastic mess, but a mess nonetheless. It certainly doesn't warrant a label of "disaster" or "worst movie ever made," as some have claimed.

Which cut did you watch? I have a 4 and a half hour cut I guess I'll watch in the not too distant future.

[Qrazy]

The Shining is a great movie that also happens to be totally un-scary.

It's one of the very few horror movies that genuinely unnerves me.

[soitgoes...]

Which cut did you watch? I have a 4 and a half hour cut I guess I'll watch in the not too distant future.
Director's Cut. The 217 minute version.