Who wants this?
Messed up on a Warner Archive sale and accidentally ordered two. Can't send it back so I'm offering it free of charge for whoever is paying attention. The first PM gets it, otherwise congrats to my local library.
Who wants this?
Messed up on a Warner Archive sale and accidentally ordered two. Can't send it back so I'm offering it free of charge for whoever is paying attention. The first PM gets it, otherwise congrats to my local library.
Interesting. For most of my 20's, that was my basic philosophy of watching movies. But this year, I'd like to watch the movies on my top 100 that I haven't seen since before 2009 (the year I started logging the date of every movie I watch). I have 43 movies to go.Quoting transmogrifier (view post)
Finish out Linklater's Before trilogy with a rewatch of Before Midnight, in anticipation of rebuying them later this year as a Criterion set.Quoting transmogrifier (view post)
Otherwise, I expect I'll likely do a rewatch of several different Linklater and Malick films. Also, finish Shoah.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
I'm also trying to watch more documentaries. I viewed Man On Wire tonight and found it to be magnificent and beautiful.
BLOG
And everybody wants to be special here
They call your name out loud and clear
Here comes a regular
Call out your name
Here comes a regular
Am I the only one here today?
I finally discovered a movie that is impossible for someone to hate.
[]
The Before Criterion isn't a done deal yet. Hawke mentioned in an AMA the other day that they are working on the rights and it is tricky, but they want it to happen.Quoting dreamdead (view post)
I also plan to revisit some Linklater, including Slacker and Dazed & Confused, which I loved the first time.
Shoah is 9-hours of required viewing for everyone who appreciates any type of film. It pairs well with Come and See from the same year, but I would find a nice comedy or five in between.
My resolution is to (of course) make a dent in my Criterion project .. more to reduce the stacks in my living room than anything else.
I specifically want to venture more into classic Asian cinema, like Suzuki, Mizoguchi, Ozu and the Naruse's that I haven't seen.
Got a taste of Sundance, albeit, in Salt Lake City. Nonetheless, it is very organized, smooth, and on time.
Tickets were easy to get, but you definitely have to be quick to purchase them as the Park City and "big shows" will sell out within eight hours of being on the site. Probably less. I didn't try purchasing until eight hours or so.
Every show started immediately on time, with just a quick message from the host, a brief short, and it begins. Unlike AFI Fest, which was never less than 15 minutes late (and up to a hour late in some cases).
The Salt Lake City portion is all over the city, so you definitely don't feel any festival buzz. I know this is COMPLETELY different in Park City, so it makes me excited to try it out next year.
Ended up doing a rewatch of De Palma's Femme Fatale over the weekend since Sarah had never seen it. The utter ridiculousness of the plot was more apparent this time through (and yes, Romijn is sexy during her striptease in the bar basement, but why does Banderas possibly have sex with her there, given what he knows about her character at that point), but man, is the camera ever alive, fluid, and just generally ballsy. The abrupt reboot and demand for a happy end 2/3 of the way through is far more valuable than Haneke's similar move in the earlier Funny Games, and the last five minutes are just a dazzle of expertly set up dramatic stakes.
Biggest critique: man, that's a lot of black Frenchmen that want to kill our semi-heroine. Awkward to think about in racial representation, de Palma.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
I watched Romancing the Stone for the first time in ... sheesh ... at least 20 years. By today's standards, this film is as sexist as sexist can be. It's not just sexist, but it's strangely sexist. All of the accusations about white-male-dominated Hollywood apply tenfold to this movie. It's rather uncanny. To wit:
Kathleen Turner plays the lead character, Joan Wilder, a successful romance novelist whose only hope is to find the man of her dreams. She's pulled into a world of adventure and intrigue, just like one of her romance novels. So, over the course of said adventure, she meets a dashing rogue played by Michael Douglas. Here's where it gets really bad.
Douglas's character overcomes obstacles by sheer manly man force of manly willpower. He sees what needs to be done and he does it in a manly manner.
Turner's character overcomes obstacles purely by accident, up until her final climactic obstacle, an angry dude with a knife. She kinda, sorta wins that fight by accident, too. Granted, they may have been trying to give her an arch where she goes from frumpy meek Turner to stands-up-for-herself Turner, but her transformation is less psychological and more physical. Her dress rips and her sexy, sexy legs come out. She lets her sexy, sexy hair down.
DeVito is very funny, but underused.
5/10
Edit: Oh! OH! This made me laugh sadly (shut up, it's possible): Michael Douglas gets first billing, even though Turner is the lead. Talk about lame.
Last edited by Spun Lepton; 02-05-2015 at 02:18 PM.
I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember thoroughly enjoying Romancing the Stone.
Think about this: Christopher Reeve got THIRD billing in Superman.Quoting Spun Lepton (view post)
“What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, er... an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks and that's all.”
Madness.Quoting Scar (view post)
Watched Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern, which has always escaped my attention due to being out-of-print when I went through my early-00s crush on his work. This is among the best of his films, balanced around a gender point-of-view that uses cinematographic distance from the main 1920s master to highlight his central authority over his various mistresses, the horrible situation that the practice of mistresses forced upon Chinese women (who could not trust any loyalty among their fellow mistresses), and even the degree to which maids were preyed upon. There are just remarkable shots that the film orchestrates, such as the build-up to Gong Li's winter approach to the barred-off room where hangings have occurred. The final scenes with her madness make sense on a thematic level, but are undercut by a neutralization of Li's energetic gaze.
Solid, solid film. I'm sad that Zhang Yimou's post-Hero holds no appeal to me after watching this...
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
I haven't seen it but The Flowers of War could be good.Quoting dreamdead (view post)
The Princess and the Pilot - B-
Playtime (rewatch) - A
The Hobbit - C-
The Comedy - D+
Kings of the Road - C+
The Odd Couple - B
Red Rock West - C-
The Hunger Games - D-
Prometheus - C
Tangled - C+
Rewatched the Dutch version of The Vanishing, since Sarah hadn't seen it. I'd forgotten so much of the film's narrative structure, so the shifts to the kidnapper and the skill of his predatory nature were doubly fascinating. Not sure that the egg motif is necessary beyond offering a beautiful final image, but the core concept of obsession leading to self-destruction remains devastating. The film does a marvelous job documenting why Rex pursues Saskia past any logical point--and the recording of a quotidian family life assume greater dread when we see how Lemorne practices on his family.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
Also known as The Vanishing.Quoting dreamdead (view post)
One of my very favorite movies. Utterly captivating from start to finish.
Coming to America (Landis, 1988) **
The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019) *1/2
Us (Peele, 2019) ***1/2
Fugue (Smoczynska, 2018) ***1/2
Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013) ***1/2
Shadow (Zhang, 2018) ***
Oslo, August 31st (J. Trier, 2011) ****
Climax (Noé, 2018) **1/2
Fighting With My Family (Merchant, 2019) **
Upstream Color (Carruth, 2013) ***
I was browsing through Netflix last night and rewatched Starship Troopers. Man that movie is filled with awesome political satire.
Yes Starship Troopers is hilarious. And very entertaining.
I liked that they added a bunch of Friday the 13th movies because of Friday the 13th. Too bad they have only 1-4 and then 6-8 but no Part 5.
Other than that 'actress' with spectacular tits, Part 5 kinda blows. Part 4 is where it's at.Quoting MadMan (view post)
Ratings on a 1-10 scale for your pleasure:
Top Gun: Maverick - 8
Top Gun - 7
McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 8
Crimes of the Future - 8
Videodrome - 9
Valley Girl - 8
Summer of '42 - 7
In the Line of Fire - 8
Passenger 57 - 7
Everything Everywhere All at Once - 6
I kind of like Part 5. I enjoyed viewing Part 4 again Friday night. Gordon is the best dog in the series.
So Cameron's The Abyss. Always good stuff when the female lead is called a “bitch” twice before she's even introduced, constantly told to keep her pantyhose on as a joke, and then called a “bitch” again to revive her from death.
Oh, 1980s mainstream Hollywood films. How I don't miss you. At all.
A decent film is in here. But goodness, the gender politics, which aren't even central to the film, undo so much.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
You can spin that so many ways dreamdead.
My frustration with this character arc is that there's never any acknowledgement that the characters voicing these words feel guilt over casting Lindsey in this light. At one point Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's character) refers to herself this way, and so much of the film is about her sublimation from an independent, separated spouse of Ed Harris's character into a far more conventional, albeit smart, version of the conventional secondary wife character. It's demeaning and feels so era-specific in everyone's acceptability of the language--in the sense that the film suggests that of course a woman who's independent and prizes her accomplishments more than her husband is a "bitch"--that it just undercuts the happy ending structure of the final thirty minutes.Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember the frustrations said by Ed Harris before she's introduced, and took the arc as ironic. He goes through self denial in WANTING to hate her, for the obvious divorce reasons, fights with himself to get rid of his wedding ring, and then when she's finally introduced, she's actually nice, smart, intelligent. The "bitch" defibrillator scene is Ed Harris's character's going back to those opening remarks, mocking himself, when he realizes she's not the bitch he called her out to be.