28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[megladon8]

Spin this shit out, plz.

Huh?

[Spinal]

Should it be seen as "understandable" that a black person kill a white person for saying it? Fuck no.

That is not what I was arguing and I don't think that argument really exists.

[Sycophant]

That is not what I was arguing and I don't think that argument really exists.

Also yes.

[Spinal]

Huh?

The discussion really has little to do with film at this point, so what he's saying is it doesn't belong here. He's probably right.

[Sycophant]

Huh?

I want this out of the FDT if it's not too much trouble to any mods. Alternately, it could just end and I'd be ok with that.

[megladon8]

Continuing in Random Thoughts, then...

[EyesWideOpen]

I want this out of the FDT if it's not too much trouble to any mods. Alternately, it could just end and I'd be ok with that.

The saddest thing is that my original post did have to do with movies and not a single person responded to it. It got taken somewhere else.

[megladon8]

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a very good film.

Anyone agree? Disagree?

[MacGuffin]

I will definitely try to check out Bright Future and Tokyo Sonata.

Have you seen Seance? If so what did you think? And have you seen the original film it was based on, Seance on a Wet Afternoon?

It's pretty good, but I have to see it again. I haven't watched the original.

[megladon8]

[youtube]CoR2CGTKCL4[/youtube]

[Pop Trash]

Winter's Bone was wonderful. Beyond the authenticity of the Ozark landscape and people (and a great cast of unknowns, particularly the lead actress), I loved the way it wove both film noir and feminist tropes into the story without ever once feeling forced or contrived (I'm looking at you Brick). It's just about perfect, with the exception of the 8mm B&W dream sequence; that seemed out of place and took me out of the movie.

[Fezzik]

Is Deathnote related to the anime series? My daughter loved that.

Yes! It's a live action film based on the Manga.

We had to change our schedule somewhat based on Netflix queue gaffes and a power outage:

Yesterday:

Om Shanti Om: Bollywood ridiculousness, of course, but if you go in knowing that, its fun. I really do want to know what's in the water over there, though. Every single woman in this movie is drop. dead. gorgeous. Also, I don't know if it was an injoke for this movie or a Bollywood thing, but they refrained from ever saying "fuck" - they subtituted "fish" every time. "Fish this!" "What the fish?" Was quite amusing.

Night Watch: I may need to pick up the books because the movie was kinda all over the place. I sorta got the idea, but it was just so messy that I am sure something was lost in the translation. Pretty gory in parts, but its definitely a different angle on vampire lore. And its Russian!

Cinema Paradiso: Nobody else in the group had seen it, but they all loved it. I adore the film to death, really, so there's not much to add but...ahh....that ending. <3

Death Note: I've never read the Manga, but I was surprised at how much I liked this. It's not a great film by any stretch, but I was into it. I kept making jokes about how Ryuk looked like an Undead Warlock from World of Warcraft which fell flat since nobody else in the group played it. Bonus: Takeshi Kaga, the Chairman on the original Japanese Iron Chef, plays the Police Chief. His character was pretty cool. So, at one point, I couldn't resist. After he did something slick, I intoned "And today's secret ingredient is awesome." The film was engaging, even if watching a dozen or so people die on screen from heart attacks was a bit unnerving for me right now.


Today:

Day Watch: The Chalk of Fate: The sequel to Night Watch. What a mess. I mean, yeah, I'm sure the mythology is complicated, and explained in the books, but damn, c'mon people, coherence would be nice. There were a few really cool scenes, though, especially anything in the Gloom, and they obviously had a bigger budget than for the first film. Decent, I guess, but I think it needed a better director.

Death Note: The Last Name: The sequel to the first Death Note that covers the second half of the Manga. They apparently ditch a character that a lot of people didn't like from the book and instead keep another alive that they originally kill...so I dunno which version is better. Rem, a 2nd God of Death, is introduced, and I think it ended the only way it could have. I liked it enough that I need to go find the manga. Impressive story, if a bit unsettling.

[StanleyK]

I realized today that I hadn't seen a Kubrick movie in well over a year; I was like, "what?"

To remedy this, I'll go through his filmography again in order, (I'll just skip Fear and Desire) starting with Killer's Kiss. While I didn't love it like I did at first (I have to admit that most of the dialogue and acting is really amateurish, and the ending really feels tacked on), I still think it's a solid, underrated movie; Kubrick has always been good at slowly building tension, and with a short running time he makes the most from a simple story, with an interestingly framed flashback, long wordless passages and (particularly for such a low budget) really impressive cinematography.

[B-side]

I thought the live action Death Note movie was terrible.

[DavidSeven]

Dinner for Schmucks was torturous. Absolutely painful. Carrel is nearly unbearable in this, and his performance sucks away most of the goodwill he had left with me as a comedic performer. Rudd seemed completely disengaged.

[Derek]

Dinner for Schmucks was torturous. Absolutely painful. Carrel is nearly unbearable in this, and his performance sucks away most of the goodwill he had left with me as a comedic performer. Rudd seemed completely disengaged.

Ditto. I chuckled a few times, but boy does this thing draaag. Why, oh why, was it nearly 2 hours long?

[Sxottlan]

Caught most of Vertigo tonight on a movie channel. It suddenly sparked a memory.

Didn't some rock band do a music video that spoofed Vertigo? Instead of Midge's character, they had a real effeminate guy.

I want to say Foo Fighters, but I really don't remember now.

[Sven]

A little bummed that Intermission was such a disappointment.

[Rowland]

the few I've seen are his very best and I have nowhere to go but down from here. :sad:

You might surprise yourself.

Cure ****
Pulse ****
Serpent's Path ***½
Bright Future ***½
License to Live ***½
Eyes of the Spider ***½
Seance ***
Barren Illusion ***
Retribution ***
~Doppelganger **½
~Charisma **
~Loft *
Guard from the Underground *

~These three require re-viewings. I'm pretty confident in my memory of the bottom one sucking.

I hope more of his rare stuff is widely released. If anyone with Netflix is feeling adventurous, he also directed a short entitled House of Bugs for a Japanese horror compilation. He didn't write it, so I haven't exactly prioritized it, but I'll probably check it out eventually for the sake of completionism.

[Dukefrukem]

Time to start rating the movies I saw over the weekend. It's amazing, when you don't play video games, I actually have time to watch movies.... funny how that works.

[B-side]

The opening scene of Ruiz's The Golden Boat reveals a pair of feet walking amongst empty pairs of shoes on a New York street. Eventually, those shoes stumble upon a man sitting on a curb. The man on the curb says, "This, my son, is not my place," then proceeds to stab himself in the abdomen. The strangeness does not stop there, I assure you. This is by far the most bizarre of the Ruiz's I've seen, perhaps of any film I've seen. Adding to that strangeness is the risible dialogue and hilariously inept acting. Knowing Ruiz, this could very well be some odd experiment in parody. The previously mentioned "man on the curb" kills randomly out of some misguided sense of duty. The protagonist has his life and apartment invaded by strangers with various missions of their own. A laugh track plays a few times throughout the film, at one point after the line "There are plenty of gentlemen in the world," or something similar to that. Oblique angles and unique framing are Ruiz's bread and butter, and he certainly doesn't disappoint in that department, though the film does look pretty cheap. Shot on a shoestring budget, it was our dear director's first American film, and maybe he felt he had an obligation to his fans to not dumb it down, and thus we are left with this near-nonsensical foray into fatalism, art, identity and acting.

[number8]

Dinner for Schmucks was torturous. Absolutely painful. Carrel is nearly unbearable in this, and his performance sucks away most of the goodwill he had left with me as a comedic performer. Rudd seemed completely disengaged.

I agree with this:

http://www.slate.com/id/2260340/

[dreamdead]

Godard's Made in U.S.A. already bears signs of not being interested in sustaining its generic narrative, folding in its noir/political mystery for more esoteric semiotic games and experiments with sound. And while these latter traits have been around in even Godard's most traditional filmmaking, something here is still plenty unique. Some of it's the most basic issue of gender roles, with Anna Karina being both the victimized and the victimizer, dual roles accentuated by the divorce she and Godard had two years prior, but other bits suggest a general sadness of how politics really can't escape its binary of left/right political framework. It's a film that tries to shatter binaries, to suggest the liminal ideas behind language, but it remains more caught than it would first believe in its structural system.

Everyone Else, meanwhile, is highly recommended to anyone seeking adventurous fare about romantic relationships. Plenty of philosophical musing, beautiful studies of the sexes, and with an ending that will leave you questioning what has come before...

[NickGlass]

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a very good film.

Anyone agree? Disagree?

I disagree. I think it's a great film.

This is the type of film I would love to see in a dark field, projected on a large screen. The woozy atmosphere is so palpable, and perfectly complements the hazy, mesmerizing mystery at the core. It's my favorite type of mystery: one where it's hardly significant what the mystery is about, or if it will ever be solved.

[MacGuffin]

Picnic at Hanging Rock is on Netflix Instant Watch. Hmm...