Quoting Ivan Drago (view post)
Why does it say you've only watched 3 movies this year?
I must have specified the date I watched those three movies when I logged them. I don't do that a lot tbh. Not sure why.
Last Five Films I've Seen (Out of 5)
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse (Mackesy, 2022) 4.5
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (Crawford, 2022) 4
Confess, Fletch (Mottola, 2022) 3.5
M3GAN (Johnstone, 2023) 3.5
Turning Red (Shi, 2022) 4.5
Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) 5
615 Film
Letterboxd
Will do.
La Piscine is one of the most sensually tense films I've ever seen. The nuances of the performances from its ensemble leave a lot open for interpretation as far as where characters go, what they do off-screen, as well as what secrets and feelings they're hiding from each other. Meanwhile, director Deray's voyeuristic, fly-on-the-wall wide shots linger long enough on them to allow viewers to feel like basking in their location in addition to the constant, building suspense as they wonder which two characters will have the film's inevitable confrontation. The love scenes are as beautiful in their eroticism as they are revelatory shocking, the jazzy music is romantic and relaxing, and the film proposes thought-provoking critiques about romantic passion, and its effects on ego. Might be a new favorite film of mine.
Last Five Films I've Seen (Out of 5)
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse (Mackesy, 2022) 4.5
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (Crawford, 2022) 4
Confess, Fletch (Mottola, 2022) 3.5
M3GAN (Johnstone, 2023) 3.5
Turning Red (Shi, 2022) 4.5
Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) 5
615 Film
Letterboxd
Pet peeves of film discussion / crticism:
"Most movies are garbage these days" or other "things were better [insert number of decades] ago".
Not because it's untrue. It's totally true.
What is annoying is that...most movies have ALWAYS been garbage.
We only remember what is worth remembering.
It is also uncomfortably close to one of the most elitist and pretentious film criticism arguments around: if it is old, it is automatically better and more valuable.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Preach!! Totally agree. The only argument for "more movies today suck" is just that there are more movies. And I'd much rather have more artists putting out more movies than only a select few being able to make a movie.
Yeah, I find a lot of the expressions of "Movies suck these days compared to back then!" to be pretty vague and unconvincing, and I think a lot of people tend to ignore the fact that contemporary movies obviously don't have the advantage of the filter of history separating the wheat from the chaff the way that previous decades do, and any notion that Classical Hollywood was all Citizen Kanes is ignoring all of the B-movies from that period that have been completely forgotten about since, you know?
Last edited by StuSmallz; 07-26-2021 at 06:35 AM.
While that's true, I think the notion that movies are overall worse these days is tied to Hollywood, which makes the most well-known and widely seen films, and I think it's pretty clear that big-budget tentpole movies are on a consistent decline in quality.
I'm just sayin', are there any directors working today who are as impressive as Bresson, Chaplin, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Feuillade, Ford, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Keaton, Lang, Lubitsch, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Renoir, Sternberg, or Stroheim at their best?
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
I saw this discussion earlier and thought, "damn this is like some baby doll bat signal."
And here you are.
Anyway, I don't think you need to bring out the heavy hitters. A few months back I watched Don Siegel's "The Killers" (1964), a straight up remake that started out as a made-for-television movie.
But I was absolutely shocked how far Siegel pushed all his artistic sliders to max level. It's a nasty movie and I don't think he's some kind of amazing auteur or whatever, but there was serious craft in the visuals and the motifs.
You don't see that today, especially with streaming "originals" from various services. It all looks like television now, with rapid cutting and sitcom style over-over-two shots, mixed with Apple Store aesthetics and hallmarks of middle class aspirational wealth. Bosch looks like Jack Ryan and they both look like whatever super-thriller is on Netflix.
Aside from commercial considerations (mega telecoms have no business in the movie business), I'd say that's where the movies went bad --- when they became TV and nobody cared.
Scorsese, baby.
; )
I don't think Scorsese himself would agree with that assessment. He's obviously a very fine director, and I think Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, After Hours, and Goodfellas could all be creditably described as great films. That said, I don't think he's an original enough director to warrant comparison with the likes of Griffith, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Ozu, and Bresson--or, among living directors, Godard, Hou, and Straub. He's more a synthesizer than an innovator, appropriating stylistic devices from European art cinema (e.g., freeze frames and iris shots Ã* la Truffaut) and repurposing them so that they fulfill classical functions (representing character subjectivity rather than authorial commentary), and thereby making these devices somewhat less self-conscious. Lurking beneath his stylistic pyrotechnics is an acute sense that the classical tradition is exhausted and there's nothing new left to be done but remixes of old standards--or as Scorsese himself put it, "Whatever you do now that you think is new was already done in 1913."
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
I don't think he'd agree, either. At least in his public interviews, he's always expressed a degree of humility and a deep respect for the old masters.
While he may not be in their league, he's been much more limited by the commercial market during the bulk of his career.
I'd add: documentary technique, commercial advertisement, television drama, and the work of his peer group to the mix, too.
He's pretty shameless about his influences, not afraid to borrow, and good enough to make the result feel fresh.
There was a period in the late 40 and 50s where we got many films that appeared like TV. TV was big back then and movie theaters were losing audiences so they copied what TV was doing. I recall watching an awful film by Renoir that was obviously patterned after TV. Fortunately, widescreen and color was their saving grace at that time.
If you're thinking of Renoir's Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier, that film actually was made for television. (Then again, so were La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV, Martha, France/tour/détour/deux/enfants, The Decalogue, and Nightjohn.)
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
I think there are many directors working today who could sit amongst them. A few off the top of my head...
Wes Anderson
Chanwook Park
Bong Joon Ho
Quentin Tarantino
Pedro Almodovar
Steve McQueen
Michael Mann
Darren Aronofsky
Not to mention Spielberg, Scorsese, and Coppola.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I think Denis Villeneuve movies look nothing like TV.
I think we'll only really know for sure when contemporary filmmakers have been dead for as long as these guys have.
Exactly.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
in some instances, i don't think we need to wait
I think what I've already said about Scorsese could easily apply to most or all of the directors you've listed: None of them are especially innovative, nor are any of them in possession of a living tradition as Ford, Hawks, and Lubitsch were. Even at their most entertaining, Almodóvar's pastiches of Mankiewicz and Sirk, Anderson's lifts from Salinger and Malle, and Mann's post-neo-noirs are like attempts to temporarily reanimate a dead organism by administering periodic jolts of electricity. In other words, their films belong more to the past than the future.
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
I don't see any cause for waiting. It's not Scorsese's fault that he's the inheritor of a dead tradition (at his best, he's probably as good a filmmaker as it is possible to be in a stagnant culture that makes it all but impossible to imagine a future different from the past), but time and hindsight isn't going to magically transform him into Max Ophüls.
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
Pink Floyd is weak because they're just aping what Beethoven already did.
No, bdoll's comparison is more like the one between Led Zeppelin and Muddy Waters
And while you could find a similarities throughout someone's oeuvre, the old guard weren't as flagrant about obvious riffs and repetitions the way the new hollywood kids or their Gen X peers are --- cf: "Bringing Out the Dead," "Dracula," "Twixt," "The Departed," "Wolf of Wall Street," almost everything Tarantino, Almodóvar, and Anderson has ever done, etc.
But you are also often extremely negative towards films that make modern innovations (whether they are technological or formative) and compare them unfavorably to older works and artists.
So is it not just that you, personally, live in the past with this art form?
Last edited by megladon8; 07-27-2021 at 09:07 PM.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Posting Permissions
forum
Reply With Quote
