28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[soitgoes...]

Brendan Gleeson had a weird accent in Green Zone. This is the main thing I took from that film.

I agree, and also [

Show Spoiler

the impeccable timing one-legged Iraqi guy had at the end to follow a firefight through Baghdad and end up right where Damon and bad Iraqi were. Ridiculous.

]

[Yxklyx]

Quick! Everybody rate/rank Svankmajer for me.

The Last Trick - 6
A Game with Stones - 7
Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantasia G-moll - 6
Punch and Judy - 8
Et Cetera - 5
Suita Historia Naturae - 5
Picnic with Weissmann - 7
The Flat - 7
The Garden - 7
A Quiet Week in the House - 8
Don Juan - 7
The Ossuary - 7
Castle of Otranto - 4
The Fall of the House of Usher - 6
Dimensions of Dialogue - 7
The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope - 9
Down to the Cellar - 8
Alice - 7
Virile Games - 5
Meat Love - 7
Darkness/Light/Darkness - 6
Flora - 6
The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia - 5
Food - 6
Faust - 5
Little Otik - 8

[baby doll]

Quick! Everybody rate/rank Svankmajer for me.

Virile Games is awesome.

[kopello]

Quick! Everybody rate/rank Svankmajer for me.

I've only seen one, Alice, which I saw a couple of weeks ago. Fucking weird/10

The way it plays out like some kind of demented nightmare has left a strong impression on me.

[B-side]

Quick! Everybody rate/rank Svankmajer for me.

I've only seen some shorts. Most were good enough. This was helpful.

[Thirdmango]

3 movies I saw for the first time yesterday

Machete
The Warriors
The Unstopables

Movie I watched for the first time the day before

Mad Max

[Spaceman Spiff]

I've only seen some shorts. Most were good enough. This was helpful.

More like UNHELPFUL.

Putz.

But thanks for all the recs guys (even you Brighty).

[number8]

Haven't seen a lot of Svenkmajer:

Alice - 7
Faust - 6
Darkness Light Darkness - 8

[Spinal]

I think I've only seen Little Otik. I was not terribly impressed.

[balmakboor]

Svenkmajer's short films are where it's at.

[Spaceman Spiff]

I think I've only seen Little Otik. I was not terribly impressed.

Seems like the kind of guy you'd like though, given your leanings towards nightmarish surrealism and sexual perversity.

[Mysterious Dude]

I've always preferred the Quay brothers to Svankmajer. I don't remember all of his movies well enough to rate them, but I will recommend Down to the Cellar.

[Grouchy]

I checked out one of Clint Eastwood's first movies as a director, the completely un-famous Breezy. A little topical, but very watchable romance. William Holden, at times my favorite actor, plays an embittered man whose life is turned around by a hitch-hiking hippie girl. You can always tell the direction in which the story is going but I still found a choice selection of scenes that from a drama point of view were very interesting, even in the way they were shot.

Also saw Miss March. I know I've defended "Whitest Kids U Know" before and I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but this was honestly kind of bad. Still has some great laughs, and Hugh Hefner's cameo is solid.

[radioman970]

Don't. They locked the WHYSL-thread and no one started a new one since you and I left. I wonder if radioman will ever show up here.

I was recently wondering if Gladys Knight & the Kuehnepips will ever post on RT again!!! :cry:

This is just like the WHYSL thread! Neat!

My Neighbor Totoro. 10/10
Steamboy. 7/10. Almost epic. I hate grampes hair!
The KING of KONG. This was good. I would have liked more coin-arcade nostalgia, but for what it is, a doc about a rivalry of Donkey Kong players, it's a fun watch. 8/10
Shorts. Spy Kids director with another kid's flick. It ain't bad since it's just what it says, some shorts strung together. 7/10

All those were $3 purchases with the exception of Totoro, that was about $24.

[Skitch]

Welcome radioman!!

I thought Alice was decent, but I really liked Faust. I had no idea he had that many films. Several more are on my queue.

Green Zone brought out lots of indifference in me. The plot feels written to make Miller some sort of saint. Feels odd/off to me.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Last night, I was lucky enough to get into a screening of Kubrick's "lost" first film, Fear and Desire. The George Eastman House from New York presented the film and preceded it with four "lost" short films. The following context was provided by their representative.

"The Skipping Cheeses" (1907)

Review:
A George Melies picture where something stinks up a trolley car, drives everyone mad, and it's revealed to be...a bunch of ambulatory cheese wheels. Wat. Funny enough, although it doesn't make a lick of sense. Its original french title is "Les fromages automobiles," which I thought meant "The Cheese Cars."
Context:
Over three hundred of Melies's films are still lost. This one was patched together and restored by someone at GEH for a masters project.

"A Western Girl" (1911)

Review:
Probably the most efficient, impressive short. A young girl falls for a man from out East, who hopes to strike gold in the mountains. However, he runs afoul of local bullies who hope to steal his promising claim. The film showcases a strong command of the film grammar, utilizing recurring shots and clear continuity, and the actors sell both the story and their emotions successfully.
Context:
This was one of many films produced by Gaston Melies, George Melies's brother. Due to the rampant piracy of the Melies pictures in America, George sent his brother to Texas to both oversee legal distribution and produce new content. Gaston produced a large number of westerns, which were very appealing to people both abroad and overseas.

"Abie Kabibble Outwits His Rival" (1917)

Review:
A charming Jewish stereotype steals a blind customer from his competitor, and he tries to sell the customer a car by sitting the blind man in a chair, blowing a fan in his face, and convincing him they're on the road. Pretty shameless stuff, but it's witty, and I'm a sucker for cartoon bigotry. All things considered, making the central character Jewish is pretty progressive for 1917.
Context:
Abie Kabibble was a huge comic strip success, and William Randolph Hearst thought it could be developed into a series of cartoons that would play after his cinema news reels. Despite his optimism, only two Abie cartoons were ever produced.

"Happy Hooligan Goes to the Movies" (1916?)

Review:
That title may be wrong. This film followed lovable bum Happy Hooligan (a comic strip star, like Abie Kabibble) as he tries to make it in the pictures. However, he keeps mistaking the sets for reality, which leads to him breaching propriety and (naturally) getting punched. This one was pretty lame, mostly because the conceit never builds.

Fear and Desire

Review:
The main attraction.

A disastrous collision of pretentious speechifying, discordant close-ups, and occasionally beautiful photography. The film tracks a small band of soldiers stuck behind enemy lines; they have to decide whether to escape by rafting down a river...or seize the opportunity to kill an esteemed general. The film attempts a Heart of Darkness approach, with the river and forests serving as a reflection of the men trying to fight against - or understand - their worst impulses. The most extreme moments come when future director Paul Mazursky, as Private Sidney, loses his mind and assaults a local woman. He rants and raves and quotes The Tempest, declaring himself a magician and a fish.

Individual moments of the film carry undeniable beauty. The men walk across the forest, shadowed against the bright light of the sun, fog lapping against their legs. Two men sit on a raft, faces hidden, the water reflecting spots of light as they narrate their fears and desires. However, many scenes form from scattered coverage unified by cutaways that don't bridge so much as emphasize the discordant editing. Watching the film, I would occasionally think, "There's Stanley Kubrick," but, for most of the time, I was watching the man make the same well-meaning mistakes most first-time filmmakers make.

In a way, that was kind of soothing. Kubrick always seems so high above most other directors, an unflappable visionary. Here, I got to see him as a scrappy filmmaker wearing his heart on his sleeve, botching things up, learning from his mistakes.

Context:
Apocrypha claims that Kubrick tried to burn all surviving prints of the film, so deep was his hatred of the film (he called it clumsy and embarrassing). However, most of the prints simply disappeared on their own, as the film's release was limited and saw little success. Eventually, the sole surviving print found its way to GEH, and Kubrick begged them to not screen it while he was alive. They honored his request.

[dreamdead]

Time to single myself out. I never really found Life of Brian to establish a consistent streak of humor. There's worthy gags throughout, but somehow the absurdity never reaches a point to validate the material. Possibly, my reaction comes down to the areligious approach that the film has. I am struck at how the film acknowledges Jesus in the opening and then doesn't do much else with that fact. That is to say, on some level, the film leaves Judith available as a spiritual surrogate for Brian, championing his martyrdom (however oblivious she is, which, to me, leaves the film confused about whether it's atheistic or agnostic. I'd be interested in readings that try to reconcile the film's faith (or lack of it).

[Qrazy]

Time to single myself out. I never really found Life of Brian to establish a consistent streak of humor. There's worthy gags throughout, but somehow the absurdity never reaches a point to validate the material. Possibly, my reaction comes down to the areligious approach that the film has. I am struck at how the film acknowledges Jesus in the opening and then doesn't do much else with that fact. That is to say, on some level, the film leaves Judith available as a spiritual surrogate for Brian, championing his martyrdom (however oblivious she is, which, to me, leaves the film confused about whether it's atheistic or agnostic. I'd be interested in readings that try to reconcile the film's faith (or lack of it).

Why does it have to be firmly one or the other?

[Grouchy]

I never really found Life of Brian to establish a consistent streak of humor.

This is one of the saddest sentences I've ever read.

I don't think Life of Brian has anything serious to say about religion, by the way. I think it uses the Bible more as literary inspiration, same as the Grial legend.

[dreamdead]

Why does it have to be firmly one or the other?

I like things I like to be consistent?

I don't find it all that inflammatory, but nor do I find it all that rabble-rousing. But I usually don't end up neutrally on Monty Python, so I'm hoping that someone has a good take on the film. The whole "You're all different!" speech comes off as a sidestep to me, when I'm interested in how they view faith...

[Dead & Messed Up]

On Life of Brian...

The story goes that, after Holy Grail, someone asked them what their next film would be, and Eric Idle immediately said, "Jesus Christ - Lust for Glory." They all thought the idea was hilarious, to the point that they studied up on the New Testament, but they all agreed that Jesus was a pretty nice guy. One might argue that the film accepts his divinity, as we see the Holy Star above his much-more-impressive manger.

I like the observation that their three features all have one character in common: God.

[Winston*]

I'm hoping that someone has a good take on the film.

It's really, really funny.
/all that matters

[transmogrifier]

Time to single myself out. I never really found Life of Brian to establish a consistent streak of humor. There's worthy gags throughout, but somehow the absurdity never reaches a point to validate the material. Possibly, my reaction comes down to the areligious approach that the film has. I am struck at how the film acknowledges Jesus in the opening and then doesn't do much else with that fact. That is to say, on some level, the film leaves Judith available as a spiritual surrogate for Brian, championing his martyrdom (however oblivious she is, which, to me, leaves the film confused about whether it's atheistic or agnostic. I'd be interested in readings that try to reconcile the film's faith (or lack of it).

You think too much. The film is hilarious.

[Raiders]

Not looking to beat a dead horse, but yeah I'm not sure what else there is to look for in the film. It isn't really about religion any more than Holy Grail was about the British Empire.

[Qrazy]

I like things I like to be consistent?

I don't find it all that inflammatory, but nor do I find it all that rabble-rousing. But I usually don't end up neutrally on Monty Python, so I'm hoping that someone has a good take on the film. The whole "You're all different!" speech comes off as a sidestep to me, when I'm interested in how they view faith...

I don't really understand your complaint that the film is confused about whether or not it's atheistic or agnostic. Why can't the film just lean towards atheistic sentiments but still leave the issue somewhat open?

It doesn't seem inconsistent to me to say... They may or may not be a god... but there probably isn't.