28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[transmogrifier]

2003 Love Actually

Never, ever watch this.

[Grouchy]

Never, ever watch this.

Yeah, I have no intention of doing that either.

Peng, dude, lots of great films on that list. At least watch American History X and Edward Scissorhands so you can become a proper person.

[Spinal]

Never, ever watch this.

Heh, my mom tries to get me to watch it every Christmas. I've held out so far.

[Ivan Drago]

Half-Blood Prince is legit one of the more beautiful films released in the last decade or so.

Agreed. It has some of the best cinematography of the decade IMO.

[transmogrifier]

Heh, my mom tries to get me to watch it every Christmas. I've held out so far.

Why does your mum hate you so, Spinal? Were you a bratty kid? I bet you were a bratty kid.

[Watashi]

Love, Actually is fine.

[Dukefrukem]

Love Actually is the fakest movie I've ever seen and I love comic book movies.

[transmogrifier]

Someone here once aggregated all of the YAYs and NAYs by everyone on MC in a given calendar year and did a ranking of most detractors and most consensus wielding votes. I wonder if we can do that again?

Front page of the 2017 Consensus Page:

Me: 10 Yays, 10 Nays

Perfect balance.

[Ezee E]

Front page of the 2017 Consensus Page:

Me: 10 Yays, 10 Nays

Perfect balance.

I felt like it was easier a while back and something changed.

[TGM]

I felt like it was easier a while back and something changed.

A few years back, we had the yearly database threads that compiled everyone's yays and nays for every movie from the whole sub-forum in one long list. But we haven't done that in a while because, well, that thing was a real son of a bitch to maintain and keep up to date, particularly as the year progressed. I passed it on to EyesWideOpen, and then he disappeared, and no one else took up the mantle after that.

[Yxklyx]

Well my appreciation for Bogdanovich has gone down a bit after watching his commentary on Targets. I hadn't realized how much Samuel Fuller was involved in this film - making some key contributions. The commentary also highlights how "inbred" Hollywood is. RIP Milos.

[StanleyK]

Just saw Shame. Someone help me out here: are the scenes with super dramatic sad music (blatantly ripped off from 'Journey to the Line' by Hans Zimmer) over Fassbender having wild three-ways with prostitutes and getting sucked off at a gay bar while grimacing supposed to be comical? Because if they were playing it straight I'm afraid they missed the mark by far. A big letdown after the excellent Hunger.

[baby doll]

Just saw Shame. Someone help me out here: are the scenes with super dramatic sad music (blatantly ripped off from 'Journey to the Line' by Hans Zimmer) over Fassbender having wild three-ways with prostitutes and getting sucked off at a gay bar while grimacing supposed to be comical? Because if they were playing it straight I'm afraid they missed the mark by far. A big letdown after the excellent Hunger.

Just when I had started to forget how lame that movie was, I see this post.

[Skitch]

Question for those of you who can "find" anything on the interwebs and know where to look: Any links to an ABC made for tv movie from 1968 starring Michael Parks called A Hatful of Rain? Supposedly its all lost to time. Asking for someone making Michael Parks doc.

[Grouchy]

Question for those of you who can "find" anything on the interwebs and know where to look: Any links to an ABC made for tv movie from 1968 starring Michael Parks called A Hatful of Rain? Supposedly its all lost to time. Asking for someone making Michael Parks doc.

Wish I could help you, but I only download films from more or less well known sites that he's surely already checked out. Maybe he should contact the production company.

Would you guys mind if I made a thread for a film that's not even on IMDb yet? I swear it exists, I watched it on a film festival.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Save the Green Planet

Oh boy I don't know about this one. It isn't just that the film tries to juggle so many different kinds of stories - paranoia cinema, torture thriller, tragedy/melodrama, with stretches of whimsy - as much that its dominant mode for so long (torture thriller) feels more repetitive than inspired and put me in a bit of a sour mood for the middle. Which then had the cascading effect of me wanting the film to aim higher so as to make up for all the tiresome suffering. Which it did not accomplish, in my eyes, instead gunning for an ending that I'd been praying the movie would avoid since the word "go." I hold nothing but admiration for the creativity/ambition of the film and the committed performances and the overall style. If you love the more outrageous of East Asian genre cinema (Ichi, Tetsuo), this might be worth a try (and it lacks those films' extremity), but the flick didn't do it for me.

[dreamdead]

Been a couple weeks without time for any movie watching, but we got back into things with the 1983 German film Angst, which is a minimalist serial killer thriller. It's all simultaneously evocative and mundane, with so many overhead and odd camera angles spent without cuts, and something that Gasper Noe references in different interviews as a fundamental influence on EtV and other films of his. Not the biggest Noe fan, but the treatment of style as substance is something that resonates here, and the film builds out an uncomfortable reflection of the lead's psychology. It's on Prime for those interested...

Also, does anyone use Shudder as a streaming service? Any under-the-radar films worth exploring there for a limited time subscription?

[Dukefrukem]

Also, does anyone use Shudder as a streaming service? Any under-the-radar films worth exploring there for a limited time subscription?

I thought I recalled someone mentioning this in one of our streaming threads.

[Grouchy]

Been a couple weeks without time for any movie watching, but we got back into things with the 1983 German film Angst, which is a minimalist serial killer thriller. It's all simultaneously evocative and mundane, with so many overhead and odd camera angles spent without cuts, and something that Gasper Noe references in different interviews as a fundamental influence on EtV and other films of his. Not the biggest Noe fan, but the treatment of style as substance is something that resonates here, and the film builds out an uncomfortable reflection of the lead's psychology. It's on Prime for those interested...

Also, does anyone use Shudder as a streaming service? Any under-the-radar films worth exploring there for a limited time subscription?

I loved that film.

[Irish]

Also, does anyone use Shudder as a streaming service? Any under-the-radar films worth exploring there for a limited time subscription?

"Cold Hell," "Alleluia," "Let Us Prey," "Missions," "Beyond the Walls."

If you're into foreign, semi-obscure titles then the catalogue is worth exploring.

Check out Sam Zimmerman on twitter. He works for Shudder and is very good about letting his followers know what's new on the service and what people are excited about.

[Dead & Messed Up]

His Girl Friday had me involved and laughing through almost all of it, but I got a little bummed at the end when the film so cavalierly gets rid of Ralph Bellamy's bland husband-to-be. That seemed mean-spirited, to create a punching bag for the two leads to use as a chip in their do-I-love-you? poker game. I know "the sap" is a common trope for these sorts of movies (and The Philadelphia Story that same year did something similar with its hapless Jimmy Stewart), but the whole situation left a bad taste in my mouth after otherwise appreciating the film's joy in its dialogue/escalation/farce. It doesn't help that Hildy's falling back in love with Walter at the end doesn't play like renewal so much as relapse.

Probably taking this all too seriously, and I briefly thought this might be a lack of exposure to Howard Hawks, but then remembered I loved To Have and Have Not and own Rio Bravo, so maybe this one just didn't work for me. I similarly felt a little underwhelmed by The Lady Eve last year, which was also chock-full of lickety-split banter and double entendre and featured that great performance by Barbara Stanwyck but also left Henry Fonda a bit out to dry - he was just playing soft-faced reactions to her, and he did it well (he's Henry Fonda), but he was left so far in her dust that at times he felt almost redundant as a character.

[Maybe it's that I want these characters to be tested more in terms of their selfishness and high opinion of their own cleverness? Or for there to be more to Bellamy's blandness than just "Ugh, mama's boy."]

But this is hitting too hard on a film that I was mostly enjoying (enjoying very much). One of the things I miss about this era of films is that directors like Hawks could plant the camera on a master wide and let the actors work, and each passing second where the actors are sharing the shot and the frame simultaneously (and paradoxically) makes me aware of the craft while also pulling me deeper into the plausibility of the interactions. I mean, this dialogue is the opposite of naturalistic (it's like a machine gun that shoots out witticism and rejoinder), but the actors play it naturalistically with how they overlap each other, the ease of their familiarity and body language. It's hard to not feel like something was lost in the development and eventual ubiquity of shot-reverse-shot.

[This isn't to sell the camerawork short, as it subtly tracks with the actors and finds fresh composition and framing.]

[Dead & Messed Up]

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors - Fascinating; excellent camerawork; enigmatic symbolism layered into earthy realities of wet grasses and misty hills makes for a film that in my mind evokes (predicts) Aguirre and Excalibur (in its own way), even if neither carries its interest in the struggles of everyday living.


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[Lazlo]

My buddy and I started a new podcast earlier this month. It's called The Cruise Cruise and it's about Tom Cruise. Like, we're going on a cruise through Cruise's career. Each episode we review a different Cruise movie. We've done two, All the Right Moves and American Made and are having a big time with it. Check it out if that sounds like a cool thing to you. I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts:

iTunes
Google Play

[Skitch]

I will do that.

[Lazlo]

I will do that.

Rad, thanks!