28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[baby doll]

I haven't seen either in over a decade, but Femme Fatale/Mulholland Dr. seems like a total wtf comparison to me.

I was thinking mainly of how the films' endings reconfigure motifs from earlier in the movie, resulting in a kind of musical theme-and-variation structure that overrides narrative logic.

[Grouchy]

I haven't seen either in over a decade, but Femme Fatale/Mulholland Dr. seems like a total wtf comparison to me.

I'm seeing the angle that both films are non-realistic thrillers about women and identity switch, and both are in a way about Hollywood filmmaking. I know they're wildly different otherwise.

[Irish]

Boogie Nights (Anderson, 1997) - Much like my ignorance of MC's "Basic Instinct" fandom, I had no idea many of you rated this movie highly. What other surprises are you people hiding?

[Skitch]

Boogie Nights (Anderson, 1997) - Much like my ignorance of MC's "Basic Instinct" fandom, I had no idea many of you rated this movie highly. What other surprises are you people hiding?

Yeah I've never felt that it was that good.

[Idioteque Stalker]

Boogie Nights (Anderson, 1997) - Much like my ignorance of MC's "Basic Instinct" fandom, I had no idea many of you rated this movie highly. What other surprises are you people hiding?

"Irish Shits On MCs Favorite Movies" is a thread I would gleefully read, and I say that without a hint of sarcasm.

[Wryan]

"Irish Shits On MCs Favorite Movies" is a thread I would gleefully read, and I say that without a hint of sarcasm.

He hardly needs a thread for that. It runs here and there, unrestrained, all over the hills and valleys of this land.

[Dukefrukem]

"Irish Shits On MCs Favorite Movies" is a thread I would gleefully read, and I say that without a hint of sarcasm.

What movies would be on that list?

Speed Racer
Torque
Spring Breakers
Tree of fucking Life

[Idioteque Stalker]

Yes to Speed Racer
No to Torque (didn't have the staying power)
Why not to Spring Breakers
and that's Tree of motherfucking Life to you sir

[megladon8]

I'm with Irish on Boogie Nights.

[Idioteque Stalker]

Somewhere Mal has intuited a disturbance in the force.

[Irish]

A film isn't what it's about but how it's about it. In Anderson's film, porn represents a temporary haven for lost souls where they can find validation and belonging until their personal flaws, and home video, catch up with them. Showgirls is about selling your body as a commodity. The characters are all either buyers and sellers, and the sellers view each other as competitors in an open market rather than as substitute family members (as Roger Ebert puts it in his review of the film, "nobody white is nice to [the heroine] for long").

With "Boogie Nights," time and place are part of the how, because Anderson's movie is a riff on traditional American values, a sort of Horatio Alger With a Hard-On, the hero finding personal and professional success with an ad hoc family. The golden age of 70s porn is carefully isolated from its social, historical, and economic roots, because Anderson needs the audience to forget the stigma around sex work for his milieu to function. So the sexual revolution is a middle class commodity, second wave feminism doesn't exist (Andrea Dworkin? Who's she?), and AIDs is never mentioned. It's pure fantasy, and a happy one... until it's not. Late in the film, Anderson reminds us of the stigma all at once and to great effect, in a sequence crosscut between Graham and Wahlberg, both of whom are being sexually exploited in an ugly way and to a bad end.

I'll have to watch the film again to be sure, but I don't think the mystery is necessarily what the Russian Formalists would call the dominant--the organizing principle that subordinates every element of a work. For one thing, aside from Stone, there's no other plausible suspect, and I think the ending makes it pretty clear that she did it. It's probably more profitable to approach the film as a melodrama about male sexual hysteria. (It's not for nothing that Dorothy Malone made her last screen appearance in this film.)

How much use do you think Joe Eszterhas has for Russian formalists? And do these formalists have anything to say about Chekov's gun? The movie opens on a murder and then never resolves it. Even if the filmmakers are less interested in the mystery --- I don't think that's necessarily true but even if --- that doesn't mean they can just punt it.

One of the criticisms back in the day was that the female characters were either murderous, lesbian, or murderous lesbians. The film makes out the women to be probable suspects, but none of the men.

I agree there's a strain of male sexual panic running through the film, although I'm not convinced it was intentional. From the ~40 minutes I saw the other night, there's too many implications that Douglas's character and Stone's are cut from the same sociopathic cloth. Both can't be true, right? Who panics with cold blood?

PS: Non sequitur, but I loathe that Ebert quote. He made a lot of smart observations, and a few dumb ones. That quote is one of the dumb ones.

[transmogrifier]

Boogie Nights is glorious and easily Anderson's best film. The three long-take on-shot tracking shots right at the beginning (high), in the middle (low), and at the end (acceptance) are great examples of using the (now) cliche to great effect.

[Skitch]

I don't dislike it, but I've never found it the great masterpiece everyone else seems to. I guess we have to rank Anderson now?

Holy shit, I didn't realize Boogie Nights was one of the first things he directed. Interesting.

I'd say...

There Will Be Blood
Punch Drunk Love
The Master
Magnolia

My issue with Boogie Nights is theres no one to root for. Every one is an asshole. And therefore I dont care about the characters. I dont feel anything when their lives go to shit.

[transmogrifier]

My issue with Boogie Nights is theres no one to root for. Every one is an asshole. And therefore I dont care about the characters. I dont feel anything when their lives go to shit.

I disagree very vehemently - of course, it is subjective, but I don't find the characters played by Hoffman, Cheadle (especially! C'mon he just wanted to be a cowboy), Macy, Moore, Graham, Guizman, Walters, or Parker assholes at all in this.

Wahlberg and Reilly become assholes due to the drugs and fame, but don't start out that way, and Reynold's character grows dramatically over the course of the film. In other words, ya what now?

[Skitch]

I havent seen it in a while, I'm just relaying my gut reaction from when I did. You're right, I remember Cheadle was a nice guy, but he wasn't much a main character as I recall? The other characters you mentioned I just felt like they were "there". Reynold's may have grown, but I didn't feel anything for his character's life going sour when he spent so much time being an ass.

[megladon8]

Not a criticism of the overall film, simply stating my opinion that Mark Wahlberg us an embarrassingly terrible actor. Boogie Nights is by far his best performance ever, and he is still not good in it.

I am dumbfounded how that man garnered such a prolific career.

[transmogrifier]

Not a criticism of the overall film, simply stating my opinion that Mark Wahlberg us an embarrassingly terrible actor. Boogie Nights is by far his best performance ever, and he is still not good in it.

I am dumbfounded how that man garnered such a prolific career.

He is perfect as Dirk. That is the magic of film - DiCaprio was offered the role first, but I don't think he would have fit, despite being a much better actor. Happy accidents.

[Skitch]

I actually think Wahlberg's acting inexperience plays to his favor in this role.

[baby doll]

With "Boogie Nights," time and place are part of the how, because Anderson's movie is a riff on traditional American values, a sort of Horatio Alger With a Hard-On, the hero finding personal and professional success with an ad hoc family. The golden age of 70s porn is carefully isolated from its social, historical, and economic roots, because Anderson needs the audience to forget the stigma around sex work for his milieu to function. So the sexual revolution is a middle class commodity, second wave feminism doesn't exist (Andrea Dworkin? Who's she?), and AIDs is never mentioned. It's pure fantasy, and a happy one... until it's not. Late in the film, Anderson reminds us of the stigma all at once and to great effect, in a sequence crosscut between Graham and Wahlberg, both of whom are being sexually exploited in an ugly way and to a bad end.

That's a plausible interpretation, although it's not clear to me whether you think the film is critiquing the porn industry itself or whether it's critiquing the stigma around sex work (e.g., Julianne Moore losing custody of her son and Don Cheadle not being able to get a loan). Personally the latter strikes me as the more plausible interpretation, but in either case, those meanings aren't immanent in the subject matter itself; as you point out, the film deliberately frames its subject in such a way that we sympathize with Moore rather than her ex-husband (which is not to say that we think it's a good idea for her to get custody). Likewise, the meanings that I attribute to Showgirls (or indeed any film) aren't immanent in the subject itself but depend on how the subject matter is framed by the film.

How much use do you think Joe Eszterhas has for Russian formalists? And do these formalists have anything to say about Chekov's gun? The movie opens on a murder and then never resolves it. Even if the filmmakers are less interested in the mystery --- I don't think that's necessarily true but even if --- that doesn't mean they can just punt it.

One of the criticisms back in the day was that the female characters were either murderous, lesbian, or murderous lesbians. The film makes out the women to be probable suspects, but none of the men.

I agree there's a strain of male sexual panic running through the film, although I'm not convinced it was intentional. From the ~40 minutes I saw the other night, there's too many implications that Douglas's character and Stone's are cut from the same sociopathic cloth. Both can't be true, right? Who panics with cold blood?

PS: Non sequitur, but I loathe that Ebert quote. He made a lot of smart observations, and a few dumb ones. That quote is one of the dumb ones.

I never claimed Eszterhas ever read the Russian Formalists, only that the concepts they developed--and in particular the concept of the dominant--are useful for analyzing narratives. In this case, I would argue that melodrama is the film's dominant, which deforms and subordinates the mystery plot (as evidenced by the dearth of suspects)--although as I said earlier, I think the mystery is resolved insofar as it's pretty obvious that Stone did it.

As for the suspects all being women, it was never my desire to claim the movie is politically correct. The film posits a fairly stark binary in which men are the upholders of law and order and female sexuality represents chaos. As is common in Hollywood films, Douglas as the protagonist represents a mediating figure between these two poles: a cop with poor impulse control--hence, the implication that he and Stone are, as you say, cut from the same cloth insofar as both have murderous impulses. It's probably not accurate to label Stone's character a sociopath since the murder in the opening sequence isn't premeditated, and there are other moments where her icy demeanour starts to crack. Insofar as the film is a mystery, the central question isn't whether Stone did it but when she's being sincere and when she's giving a performance: In the scene where she says, "Everyone I care about dies," is she genuinely sad or is she acting in order to deceive Douglas?

[DFA1979]

It forever changed Jefferson Starship's Jane for me.

Hah, same.

[DFA1979]

Is Van Helsing the best Stephen Sommers movie?

[

Show Spoiler

No.

]

But is Van Helsing my favorite Stephen Sommers movie?

[

Show Spoiler

No.

]

Rep for making me laugh out loud.

Also Irish and baby doll can be the site's Siskel and Ebert.

[DFA1979]

Boogie Nights (Anderson, 1997) - Much like my ignorance of MC's "Basic Instinct" fandom, I had no idea many of you rated this movie highly. What other surprises are you people hiding?

Aww I love that movie. Would have to see it again to review it properly.

I have not viewed Femme Fatale but I should as I like De Palma a lot as a director.

[DFA1979]

What movies would be on that list?

Speed Racer
Torque
Spring Breakers
Tree of fucking Life

Heh I like Torque, love Spring Breakers and I think The Tree of Life is one of the best films of 2011. I have little desire to watch Speed Racer. No way it lives up to the hype you folks have molded around it.

[DFA1979]

Jason Takes Manhattan is one of my all time favorite movies. Is it a good or great flick? No, but I like it a lot. Yes there is a difference between favorite and best and we've been over this so many times I'm just gonna let it go.

The film in my avatar btw is one of my all time favorite movies, too. I love The Omega Man but it is not even remotely a great film. Good cheesy fun, sure, and there's nothing wrong with that.

[Yxklyx]

Boogie Nights is a good solid film - a re-watch improved it a great deal but it's no masterpiece, just a good solid film.