28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[MacGuffin]

Isn't there a close-up of a rabbit during the dreamy river scene?

That and there's some speculation it's relating to a Blu-ray for The Rules of the Game.

[balmakboor]

I dunno. The rabbit doesn't have "love" and "hate" on its knuckles, it has "wuv" and "ate." I think they're finally going to dig deep into animation with the complete misadventures of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

But if it is Night of the Hunter (which was of course my immediate and therefore maybe too obvious first guess) then I'm happy. We just showed it in our C100 series and the audience got into it to a surprising degree. It's a gorgeously weird movie. Plus, the current DVD has always made me sad. It begins by announcing that it has been modified to fit my TV set, never good news.

[balmakboor]

I feel pretty confident that balmakboor will love In the Realm of the Senses. Seems like his kind of film, considering his love for Salo and Sweet Movie.

While you're slightly wrong with your recollection here -- it is WR I love, not so much Sweet Movie -- you're correct in that I found In the Realm of the Senses quite a bit to my liking. I'll be hanging on to it and watching it a second time in a day or two.

[MadMan]

It looks like Criterion is going to handle a release of The Night of the Hunter!

Glad to hear that bit of news, as I dig it a lot.

He sings its praises. :-/

Oh well, nobody's perfect.

[baby doll]

1976:

1. A Real Young Girl (Breillat)
2. In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima)
3. Carrie (De Palma)
4. All the President's Men (Pakula)
5. C'etait un rendez-vous (Lelouch)

Only seen about 20 films from that year though.

1. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
2. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes)
3. Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May)
4. 1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci)
5. L'Argent de poche (François Truffaut)
6. Le Locataire (Roman Polanski)
7. Migration (Bill Viola) [video]
8. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg)
9. Family Plot (Alfred Hitchcock)
10. Fellini's Casanova (Federico Fellini)

I need to rewatch Carrie, Ici et ailleurs, In the Realm of the Senses, and Kings of the Road.

[dreamdead]

Tati's Mon Oncle is likely my favorite of his trilogy, swimmingly breezy but fully articulate in its critique of what is left behind as societies begin to modernize and industrialize, becoming the Marxist cog in the machine and losiing their humanity. I was prepared to be depressed at how little mobility exists in the film until the final moment, when the father at last reveals his comaraderie with local humor, allowing his son to transplant his affection from a father surrogate to the real thing. Best gag, easily, were the window eyes in the night. That alone was worth the viewing. But the film has the most hope and vision of his films, and feels far more generous in its vision than Playtime does to me. Good stuff.

[balmakboor]

I finally caught up with Tetro today. And you know what? I really wish I was still chasing it.

[Raiders]

Just a head's up that Preminger's masterpiece, Bonjour tristesse, will be on TCM at 4pm EST tomorrow.

[Derek]

But the film has the most hope and vision of his films

I'm gonna need some clarification on what you mean by the "most...vision" because I find Playtime's vision to be far more expansive and, in a way, more generous as well. Playtime celebrates all our imperfections and the follies and absurdity of modern technology and urban congestion. What could be depressing or overly cynical is instead boisterous and full of life. Not to suggest the film doesn't cast things in a negative light, but it accepts what cannot be changed and presents it to us in a comical light, effectively reshaping the way we view our own surroundings and interactions with technology and other people. One could say it's less hopeful than the previous two Hulot films (and if you want real Tati cynicism, check out Trafic, which you should see anyway since it's awesome) because it certainly does not present consumerism and technology in a positive way, but it ditches all semblance of a plot in favor of observance, looking at the all-consuming beast of the modern age right in the eyes and having the gaul to laugh right in its face for 2 hours. Don't get me wrong though - I love Mon Oncle, but I don't think it's on the same level as Playtime.

[Derek]

I finally caught up with Tetro today. And you know what? I really wish I was still chasing it.

Yeah, I kinda wish I could watch it again for the first time too.

[BuffaloWilder]

It gives me a little thrill knowing that I saw and raved about Winter's Bone before Roger Ebert did.

[Milky Joe]

I saw Trash Humpers tonight, with Harmony Korine in attendance. Movie was excruciating, but in a good way. This guy gets so much undeserved hate. He doesn't seem to let it affect him though, so I guess it doesn't matter much.

[baby doll]

It gives me a little thrill knowing that I saw and raved about Winter's Bone before Roger Ebert did.

This is going to come across as ten times more dickish than I'd like it to, but it did win the grand prize at Sundance. So unless you were on the festival selection committee, it's not like you discovered it.

[balmakboor]

Yeah, I kinda wish I could watch it again for the first time too.

Of course you know that's not what I meant -- or maybe not.

No, other than some interesting stuff involving P&P's Tales of Hoffmann and a few moments here and there that went from nice visuals to sublime visuals, Tetro was a total failure to me. Two things stuck out: the story was totally unengaging and felt like a school play written by a school kid and the lead actor was really bad. He resembled something like a Leonardo Dicaprio without the talent. On top of that, Gallo has never been this flat and uninteresting.

Why does Coppola keep pouring so much creative energy into scripts that don't warrant it? Why does he have such poor instincts for casting? I always think back to the first two Godfather pictures. Crafting great scripts and pitch perfect casting were his hallmarks.

[B-side]

I loved Youth Without Youth.

[Skitch]

I loved Youth Without Youth.

Me too. The Godfather films notwithstanding, Coppola gets a lifetime pass for The Conversation.

[balmakboor]

I loved Youth Without Youth.

I loved the idea of it and the ambition of it more than the execution of it, but, yes, I liked YWY much more than Tetro.

[dreamdead]

I'm gonna need some clarification on what you mean by the "most...vision" because I find Playtime's vision to be far more expansive and, in a way, more generous as well. Playtime celebrates all our imperfections and the follies and absurdity of modern technology and urban congestion. What could be depressing or overly cynical is instead boisterous and full of life. Not to suggest the film doesn't cast things in a negative light, but it accepts what cannot be changed and presents it to us in a comical light, effectively reshaping the way we view our own surroundings and interactions with technology and other people. One could say it's less hopeful than the previous two Hulot films (and if you want real Tati cynicism, check out Trafic, which you should see anyway since it's awesome) because it certainly does not present consumerism and technology in a positive way, but it ditches all semblance of a plot in favor of observance, looking at the all-consuming beast of the modern age right in the eyes and having the gaul to laugh right in its face for 2 hours. Don't get me wrong though - I love Mon Oncle, but I don't think it's on the same level as Playtime.

I will seek out Trafic at some point, since thefourthwall really has enjoyed this one and Mr Hulot's Holiday; thanks for the reminder.

I suppose some of my disinterest in Playtime rests in its refusal to grant us some of the generic pleasures that Mon Oncle delights in. By that, I mean that it doesn't deny us Hulot himself for long, extended sections, whereas in Playtime I kept waiting for Tati to assert his character or move the plot along. This film, perhaps because of its more simple provincial/urban contrast, keeps the delight of the small town visible, when it's such a small, liminal force in Playtime. That kind of overpowering modernity, while central to the point of the latter film, ended up leaving me cold. Here, though, there's a grace and simplicity that always celebrated and which, in turn, allows for a grace of vision to be present. Perhaps worst of all, somehow I just can never get in tune with Playtime sense of unmediated observation, and so the whole affair, while intellectually and theoretically stimulating, never has gotten me emotionally despite two additional attempts at it.

Here, as I stated in the original post, there's something wonderfully celebratory and liberating in Tati's willingness to grant grace to the figure of the father, when he had seemed like a dullard for so long. And though all of the women in the film are materialistic, there's still a contrast in the girl in the building below Hulot. These humanistic touches allow it to come off as far gentler and, indeed, more resonant to me.

[balmakboor]

Seriously, at one time or another I've declared all four of Tati's Hulot movies to be the best. Each locates its successes -- and comparably negligable failures -- in such different places.

[baby doll]

Although I liked Syndromes and a Century better on second viewing, seeing it again clarified (and in some respects strengthened) my initial resistance to the film, as it seems to me that this is the closest Joe has come to making an outright formal exercise. (You get so used to looking at unbroken stationary long shots that when Joe begins to move away from that even slightly in the film's second half, it registers as a violation of the movie's intrinsic norms, like a tracking shot in an Ozu film.) And the fact that it ends in much the same way as Mysterious Object at Noon--that is, suddenly dropping any pretense to being a narrative film--makes me wonder if Joe wasn't simply being self deprecating when he described that movie as a film about nothing at all. There's some good stuff here (the friendship between the dentist and the monk in the first half, the musical performance), but overall, it's pretty slight.

[MacGuffin]

Although I liked Syndromes and a Century better on second viewing, seeing it again clarified (and in some respects strengthened) my initial resistance to the film, as it seems to me that this is the closest Joe has come to making an outright formal exercise. (You get so used to looking at unbroken stationary long shots that when Joe begins to move away from that even slightly in the film's second half, it registers as a violation of the movie's intrinsic norms, like a tracking shot in an Ozu film.)

Dismissing the movie as an "outright formal exercise" is general—I happen to like Joe's use of doubling. It's a very meditative approach and I think it goes very well with Joe's subtle camerawork.

And the fact that it ends in much the same way as Mysterious Object at Noon--that is, suddenly dropping any pretense to being a narrative film--makes me wonder if Joe wasn't simply being self deprecating when he described that movie as a film about nothing at all. There's some good stuff here (the friendship between the dentist and the monk in the first half, the musical performance), but overall, it's pretty slight.

I'd need to see some sort of evidence, but I can't believe he just said in an interview The movie is not about anything! Typically in interviews like that, when the movie has a very languid feeling or takes a very distanced approach to its material, the director often talks about the movie's general theme. With Syndromes and a Century, I'd always imagined it being about reflection on the past (and more specifically, his parents); I'm sure Joe'd agree.

[baby doll]

Dismissing the movie as an "outright formal exercise" is general—I happen to like Joe's use of doubling. It's a very meditative approach and I think it goes very well with Joe's subtle camerawork.

I'd need to see some sort of evidence, but I can't believe he just said in an interview The movie is not about anything! Typically in interviews like that, when the movie has a very languid feeling or takes a very distanced approach to its material, the director often talks about the movie's general theme. With Syndromes and a Century, I'd always imagined it being about reflection on the past (and more specifically, his parents); I'm sure Joe'd agree.

I'm just quoting Chuck Stephens' 2004 review of Tropical Malady in Cinema-Scope. And just to be clear, Joe was referring to Mysterious Object at Noon, not Syndromes and a Century. But as for the latter, like any representational film, it can't help but have a theme (or subject); however, the story is so slight that I found it hard to think of any thing but the style--which I grant is meditative, but I can't say that what it was meditating on much captured my imagination. Simply having a general theme--let alone one as broad as the past (putting aside the fact that both stories are ostensibly set in the present, whether or not they were inspired by Joe's parents, which is inside baseball as far as I'm concerned)--doesn't make a film any more interesting, and I'm hard-pressed to think of any movie (notwithstanding some of Stan Brakhage's abstract films) that doesn't have a theme, either general or specific.

Maybe that's terribly vague, so I'll try for something more specific. One part of the movie is set in the country, and is primarily about a female doctor and a pathetic soldier who's in love with her; the other part is set in the city, and is primarily about a male doctor whose girlfriend wants him to move with her. As I said earlier, both parts appear to be set in the present. Sometimes we see variations on the same scene, so in the first half, the dentist and the young monk become friends, but this doesn't happen in the second half. Maybe Joe is making a point about how personal relationships are determined by where people live, or maybe I'm misreading the film. Either way, the substance of what actually happens to these people in both parts of the film is never more than mildly interesting. When the old monk talks about how he used to torture chickens as a child, it's pretty cute, but in terms of narrative, nothing terribly exciting happens.

But of course this isn't really a narrative film, so what about the style? As I've noted, Joe sets up an intrinsic norm in the first half of the movie, and then playfully violates it in the second. However, though his long takes are elegantly composed and as meditative as you could ever want, his staging of actors is brutally static, particularly when we're looking at the same scene a second time but from a different stationary camera angle. And though some of the dialogue takes place offscreen, he's not doing anything terribly imaginative with sound either. (That said, the film has a good score and the musical performance is the best thing in the movie.) Like I said, the movie feels to me like a formal exercise, yet on a moment to moment basis, the film does as little for me aesthetically as it does as storytelling.

[Sven]

I love coming across the odd treasure here and there on Netflix Instant Watch. Andrew Davis's The Package is fantastic. I love that Dennis Franz can play, with equal conviction, both belligerent dirtbags and noble crimefighters.

[MacGuffin]

Sven I thought you should know I was reading about Ravenous the other day somewhere and decided I wanted to rent the movie. I know you champion the film.

[Sven]

Sven I thought you should know I was reading about Ravenous the other day somewhere and decided I wanted to rent the movie. I know you champion the film.

This is an awesome story. Great film. Yes, please check it out.