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Thread: 28 Film Discussion Threads Later

  1. #71526
    Yeah, I was looking at Written on the Wind next because of Lauren Bacall.

    Funny you bring up Putney Swope because I watched Chafed Elbows today. Iron Man's dad was a filmmaker ahead of his time.

  2. #71527
    Producer Yxklyx's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Idioteque Stalker (view post)
    Yeah, I was looking at Written on the Wind next because of Lauren Bacall.

    Funny you bring up Putney Swope because I watched Chafed Elbows today. Iron Man's dad was a filmmaker ahead of his time.
    Funny you mention Chafed Elbows because that mention on letterboxed prompted me to watch Putney Swope - which is a wow film.

  3. #71528
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    All that Heaven Allows was also my first Sirk some...gulp...seven years back. During the past year I've been slowly getting into more of his films from his final one (Imitation of Life) going backwards, and my top five so far:

    1. Imitation of Life
    2. The Tarnished Angels
    3. There's Always Tomorrow (Barbara Stanwyck is so great in his two films she's in)
    4. Written on the Wind
    5. All That Heave Allows (need a rewatch though, as I feel I would click more with it now)
    Midnight Run (1988) - 9
    The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
    The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
    Sisters (1973) - 6.5
    Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5

  4. #71529
    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    I have seen so few of those. Thanks for all the suggestions.
    You should look into November. An underseen movie potentially down your alley.

  5. #71530
    Quote Quoting Yxklyx (view post)
    Funny you mention Chafed Elbows because that mention on letterboxed prompted me to watch Putney Swope - which is a wow film.
    Nice. I thoroughly enjoyed both Putney Swope and Chafed Elbows. The former is more notable for being ahead of its time, and the latter is more notable for its experimental style. Both are very funny in a proto-Adult Swim type of way. It's cool to discover Robert Downey Sr. was such a fun-loving weirdo.

  6. #71531
    And Peng, it's nice to hear that there's plenty more to dig into with Sirk. Written on the Wind will probably be next. There's Always Tomorrow wasn't on my radar before you mentioned it, but Stanwyck is a good draw for sure.

    Reading about Sirk a little, apparently his movies were often marketed as "movies for women," which is so interesting in hindsight. Textually and extra-textually, the dude's movies seem to be goldmines of gender analysis in film.

  7. #71532

    Arrival (Villeneuve, '16)



    ​Why are they here?

    [
    ]
    [
    ]

    Final Score: 9
    .

    Last edited by StuSmallz; 11-04-2021 at 05:38 AM.

  8. #71533
    Replacing Luck Since 1984 Dukefrukem's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Uwe Boll movies > all Marvel U movies
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    I work in grocery. I have not gotten sick. My fellow employees have not gotten sick. If the virus were even remotely as contagious as its being presented as, why haven’t entire store staffs who come into contact with hundreds of people per day, thousands per week, all falling ill in mass nationwide?

  9. #71534
    My favourite Douglas Sirk movies, in order of preference, are Imitation of Life, The Tarnished Angels, Written on the Wind, All That Heaven Allows, All I Desire, and The Time to Love and the Time to Die. I need to take another look at There's Always Tomorrow but it bored me the one time I saw it back in 2008.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  10. #71535
    Quote Quoting Dukefrukem (view post)
    Oof
    Yes...?

  11. #71536
    collecting tapes Skitch's Avatar
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    I need to watch Arrival again. I own the blu, but I was downright traumatized by the first watch. As a parent, it was brutal. Still haven't seen a Denis film that disappointed.

  12. #71537
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    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    My favourite Douglas Sirk movies, in order of preference, are Imitation of Life, The Tarnished Angels, Written on the Wind, All That Heaven Allows, All I Desire, and The Time to Love and the Time to Die. I need to take another look at There's Always Tomorrow but it bored me the one time I saw it back in 2008.
    We have a pretty close film match-up for once with this ranking, excepting There's Always Tomorrow and just switching your last two.
    Midnight Run (1988) - 9
    The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
    The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
    Sisters (1973) - 6.5
    Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5

  13. #71538
    Quote Quoting Skitch (view post)
    I need to watch Arrival again. I own the blu, but I was downright traumatized by the first watch. As a parent, it was brutal. Still haven't seen a Denis film that disappointed.
    I wasn't fully satisfied by Sicario, but everything else I've seen from him has been at least very good, and Arrival is at the top of that pile as his best movie to date, if you ask me. I mean, I already thought it was very good the first time I saw it (which held a special significance to me personally, since I saw it with my sister, who was pregnant with her first child at the time, which give an extra relevance to the film's themes), but it only improved upon rewatch since I had a better grasp on the story machinations, with those last five minutes in particular really putting it over the top for me, since I genuinely teared up a bit during them this time:



    <3
    Last edited by StuSmallz; 11-06-2021 at 07:31 AM.

  14. #71539
    Quote Quoting StuSmallz (view post)
    everything else I've seen from him has been at least very good, and Arrival is at the top of that pile as his best movie to date, if you ask me.
    My favourites are still Maelström and Un 32 août sur terre (i.e., the early, funny ones), perhaps in part because I saw them first, back in my teenage years. (I haven't seen Maelström in more than fifteen years, but when I re-watched Un 32 août sur terre a few years ago, I found it looked even better than when I first saw it in the early 2000s.) I'd put Polytechnique slightly behind those films (it's very Official Canadian Cinema), although one could probably argue it's a more successful film on its own terms than Villeneuve's more freewheeling early work. I liked Incendies overall despite some improbable plot developments designed to hammer home the film's thesis. I liked the beginning and ending of Arrival but the middle sections mostly drag. Blade Runner 2047 has some cool visuals but I couldn't get interested in the plot. Enemy is thoroughly awful, a pretentious dirge about characters that are impossible to believe in. I haven't seen Prisoners, Sicario, or Dune and I'm in no rush to see any of them. Given that nearly a decade passed between Villenueve's second feature and his third, it's not surprising that he would turn careerist, but I still find myself wondering about the kinds of films he might've made in a more hospitable production climate. Would he have made a masterpiece by now? We'll never know.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  15. #71540
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Sorry, what do you mean by "careerist"?
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

    "Rick...it's a flamethrower."

  16. #71541
    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    Sorry, what do you mean by "careerist"?
    Prioritizing success within the film industry. Villeneuve made his first films towards the tail end of a period of relative openness in Canadian cinema, where it was possible to make films that were pretty weird and uncommercial while still working within the system. Films like Léolo, The Saddest Music in the World, and Cronenberg's Crash represent the upper limit of strangeness that the official institutions were willing to tolerate at this time; on the other hand, Egoyan's Calendar couldn't be made inside the system because it was shot in an active war zone without a script (the funding for that film came from Germany and Armenia, not Telefilm). This period of openness came to an end in the mid-2000s when the Conservative government announced that they weren't going to spend public money on art films nobody was watching and the industry shifted to producing Hollywood-style movies that nobody watches. (Tellingly, John Greyson hasn't made a feature film since 2003.) Polytechnique and especially Incendies are the kinds of films that tend to win local industry awards because they're Serious Movies About Important Subjects (the École Polytechnique massacre and the Lebanese Civil War, respectively), and the latter film's international success paved the way for Villeneuve to make films in Hollywood. In other words, it's what's called in the industry a "calling card film": a film that exists primarily to showcase its director's talent and attract investments for subsequent, bigger-budget projects. From the perspective of his career, Villeneuve made all the right moves: not only was he able to continue working (and for almost a decade following Maelström, it was a real question whether he would ever make another film), but he was able to make it in Hollywood directing big-budget special effects movies. Not surprisingly, his later films are a lot tamer than his early ones, but then under the circumstances, he's probably as adventurous as is possible for a filmmaker in his position to be. The alternative would be to work outside the system, as Guy Maddin mostly does, but to do so would be financially disastrous. When Maddin taught a class at the University of Toronto in 2020 just before the pandemic, he said on the first day that he only took the job because he needed money to pay the rent.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  17. #71542
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    Very interesting, thank you!

    And that is kind of disgusting about Maddin. I can't believe a Canadian staple like him is struggling.
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

    "Rick...it's a flamethrower."

  18. #71543
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    My favourites are still Maelström and Un 32 août sur terre (i.e., the early, funny ones), perhaps in part because I saw them first, back in my teenage years. (I haven't seen Maelström in more than fifteen years, but when I re-watched Un 32 août sur terre a few years ago, I found it looked even better than when I first saw it in the early 2000s.) I'd put Polytechnique slightly behind those films (it's very Official Canadian Cinema), although one could probably argue it's a more successful film on its own terms than Villeneuve's more freewheeling early work. I liked Incendies overall despite some improbable plot developments designed to hammer home the film's thesis. I liked the beginning and ending of Arrival but the middle sections mostly drag. Blade Runner 2047 has some cool visuals but I couldn't get interested in the plot. Enemy is thoroughly awful, a pretentious dirge about characters that are impossible to believe in. I haven't seen Prisoners, Sicario, or Dune and I'm in no rush to see any of them. Given that nearly a decade passed between Villenueve's second feature and his third, it's not surprising that he would turn careerist, but I still find myself wondering about the kinds of films he might've made in a more hospitable production climate. Would he have made a masterpiece by now? We'll never know.
    As far as his pre-2015 efforts go, I think I should probably prioritize Incendies first; anyway, as for what I have seen from him, Sicario wasn't bad, but it still didn't live up to its full potential, because the particular detachment of Villeneuve's style made it be a not particularly thrilling, well... Thriller (one scene of a particularly intense confrontation was filmed entirely in a medium shot, when it cried out for at least one close-up), so it couldn't help but feel a bit like No Country For Old Men Junior as a result. His style's definitely better suited to big, ambitious Science-Fiction like Arrival, which I found engaging even through the mid-section, since I dug its slowly-unravelling mystery, and explorations of language, and how the nations of the world would likely react in such a scenario. And, as for 2049, I had some problems with its length, pacing, and tone, but still found it extremely impressive on a sensory level, with its overwhelming sights and sounds, and I found the ideas and concepts it explored very compelling as well. Anyway, I don't imagine you'd like Dune if you didn't like it, since it's a slight step down, but it's still pretty good anyway, so, yeah... he's been doing quite well lately, if you ask me.
    Last edited by StuSmallz; 11-08-2021 at 07:32 AM.

  19. #71544
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    Prioritizing success within the film industry. Villeneuve made his first films towards the tail end of a period of relative openness in Canadian cinema, where it was possible to make films that were pretty weird and uncommercial while still working within the system. Films like Léolo, The Saddest Music in the World, and Cronenberg's Crash represent the upper limit of strangeness that the official institutions were willing to tolerate at this time; on the other hand, Egoyan's Calendar couldn't be made inside the system because it was shot in an active war zone without a script (the funding for that film came from Germany and Armenia, not Telefilm). This period of openness came to an end in the mid-2000s when the Conservative government announced that they weren't going to spend public money on art films nobody was watching and the industry shifted to producing Hollywood-style movies that nobody watches. (Tellingly, John Greyson hasn't made a feature film since 2003.) Polytechnique and especially Incendies are the kinds of films that tend to win local industry awards because they're Serious Movies About Important Subjects (the École Polytechnique massacre and the Lebanese Civil War, respectively), and the latter film's international success paved the way for Villeneuve to make films in Hollywood. In other words, it's what's called in the industry a "calling card film": a film that exists primarily to showcase its director's talent and attract investments for subsequent, bigger-budget projects. From the perspective of his career, Villeneuve made all the right moves: not only was he able to continue working (and for almost a decade following Maelström, it was a real question whether he would ever make another film), but he was able to make it in Hollywood directing big-budget special effects movies. Not surprisingly, his later films are a lot tamer than his early ones, but then under the circumstances, he's probably as adventurous as is possible for a filmmaker in his position to be. The alternative would be to work outside the system, as Guy Maddin mostly does, but to do so would be financially disastrous. When Maddin taught a class at the University of Toronto in 2020 just before the pandemic, he said on the first day that he only took the job because he needed money to pay the rent.
    Yeah, 2049 in particular feels about as "challenging" a movie that Hollywood's likely to release these days with that sort of budget, and that's with it being a sequel to a well-known older film (and its box office failure means that we're even less likely to get much more like it). Still, like I said, I think he's been doing well recently, and I'd rather he keep doing good sequels/adaptations of well-known properties than get swallowed up by the MCU, or offer up blatant nostalgia porn like JJ Abrams, you know?

  20. #71545
    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    Very interesting, thank you!

    And that is kind of disgusting about Maddin. I can't believe a Canadian staple like him is struggling.
    From what I hear, it's pretty much impossible to make a living as a filmmaker in Canada, which is why most Canadian filmmakers have day jobs (Greyson heads the film department at York University) or go to the US (not only Villeneuve but also Jean-Marc Vallée). The thing about Maddin in particular is that he works in this ambiguous no man's land between the commercial mainstream and hardcore experimental cinema, and he's had something of an on-again, off-again relationship with Telefilm his entire career. He got a completion grant for Tales of the Gimli Hospital only after principal photography was complete (and to get that, he had to submit a script for a film that had been shot without one), and The Saddest Music in the World got funded because it was based on a story idea by Kazuo Ishiguro, had several big stars, and Atom Egoyan was an executive producer, whereas for most of his other films he's had to find alternative sources of funding: Brand upon the Brain! was produced by a not-for-profit film company in the US and The Green Fog was commissioned by the San Francisco International Film Festival. (He wound up posting the latter film on his Vimeo page because he was so frustrated with how the film's distributor was handling the film.)
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  21. #71546
    Last Seen:
    Pantheon, S2 (C. Silverstein, 2023) ☆
    Pantheon, S1 (C. Silverstein, 2022)
    Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garc?a (S. Peckinpah, 1974)
    Crouching Tiger, Hidden, Dragon (A. Lee, 2000)
    Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (J. McNaughton, 1986) ☆
    Blowup (M. Antonioni, 1966) ☆
    Io capitano (M. Garrone, 2023) ☆
    Raging Bull (M. Scorsese, 1980)
    Network (S. Lumet, 1976) ☆
    Sideways (A. Payne, 2004) ☆

    First time ☆

  22. #71547
    Anyone doing anything special for Noirvember this year?

  23. #71548
    I'm the problem it's me DFA1979's Avatar
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    All That Heaven Allows is a near great flick. I haven't gotten around to other Sirk films, yet.
    Blog!

    And it's happened once again
    I'll turn to a friend
    Someone that understands
    And sees through the master plan
    But everybody's gone
    And I've been here for too long
    To face this on my own
    Well, I guess this is growing up

  24. #71549
    I'm the problem it's me DFA1979's Avatar
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    That's too bad about Canadian cinema. Art is great yet it may not pay the bills, I guess.
    Blog!

    And it's happened once again
    I'll turn to a friend
    Someone that understands
    And sees through the master plan
    But everybody's gone
    And I've been here for too long
    To face this on my own
    Well, I guess this is growing up

  25. #71550
    I'm the problem it's me DFA1979's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting StuSmallz (view post)


    ​Why are they here?

    [
    ]
    [
    ]

    Final Score: 9
    .

    Heh I gave that movie a 10/10. Review for it coming whenever I feel like it or get around to it.
    Blog!

    And it's happened once again
    I'll turn to a friend
    Someone that understands
    And sees through the master plan
    But everybody's gone
    And I've been here for too long
    To face this on my own
    Well, I guess this is growing up

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