I'm going to mega-post now. But I haven't seen either Solaris, Stalker or 2001 since the last one. I don't know what I did to deserve this.
Also, my PC died since the last mega-post. So a lot of my write-ups vanished into the void of cyberspace with it's death So, unfortunately, I'll have to just breeze bye several pictures since I don't remember what I inteded to say about them.
Wings of Desire wasn't the only artsy-fartsy German picture that I saw this time. I also broke into the Rainer Fassbinder ouvere with
World on a Wire from 1974. Amazingly, it has a premise similar to that of the
Matrix, with a computer-simulated world where programs embody the characters and all of existence. Again, this was 1974, the Matrix was considered mind-bending for it's time in the early 2000's. How freaking rad must that have been in the 70's?
I liked it a lot but I also had a lot of gripes with it. The running-time approaches four hours and tedium does set in. Fassbinder's style is also gaudy as fuck. It's one of those films where most things just looks tawdry and ugly on purpose.
Still, Fassbinder won me over. There is this motif with mirrors running through the film and for a bit I got all "there's too much fartsy in my artsy here Mr Fassbinder!" but then -- in one critical scene -- it all become worth it and I admitted that Rainier had won this round! And despite its plodding length, the ending does make the journey heartfelt.
Getting all the arthouse fluff out of the way early... Guys, what the fuck was 1979's
Quintet all about!? It's a post-apocalyptic story (of the world-freeze variety) by Robert Altman where the last generation of earth waste away their time by playing a game called Quintet, starring Paul Newman.
Fifteen minutes in I thought I could be watching a hidden classic but... Jesus Christ does this film become drab and devoid of any momentum. It's one of those films where the world-building is striking and the ideas profound and interesting to explore but god damit does the film make it all dull and unwatchable. It's not helped by the fact that the game of
Quintet is never explained at all. One of the biggesst screw-ups I've ever seen based on the films potential.
Also, to simulate the cold world Altman decided to smear the edges of the camera's lens with vaseline. That has to be one of the most baffling director-decisions I can think of.
On to recent times, I finally watched
Manchester by the Sea. While I wouldn't call it splendid I would call it great. I definitively didn't expect so much comedy in it. But I actually really identified -- on a personal-experience level -- with the films exploration of depression. There are many shoots in the film where Casey Afflec just stares at an empty landscape, looking out a window, gazing at the moon, because he just can't deal with the weightiness of interacting with other human beings (like when he's with the solicitor). That feeling of being alone with the landscape, unable to engage with the world or other human beings, really connected with some of my own experiences. Plus in the many little dysfunctional interactions Casey has with his nephew. He feels that he has obligations towards the kid that grounded in some genuine affection, but he's so fundementally emotionally detatched on a human-to-human level that he can't properly deal with the guy. That sort of depiction of what depression does to feelt really acute to me.
Moving on to more high-spirited yarns, the amazing auditory acting of José Ferrer is becoming a recurring motif in my deranged ramblings, and by Zeus almighty was he amazeballs in
Cyrano de Bergerac! Seriously, is there line or verse his majestic voice cannot perfect? Ferrer portrays a (literally) long-nosed poet-musketeer whom has mastered both avenues of his craft to a legendary degree and figuratively gleams with a zest for life. He won the Oscar for it, and damit did the force of his performance earn it.
Though... to my shame... I must admit that the very first thing I thought of when seeing the lenght of that nose was "oh so this is where Steve Martin got the idea of
Roxanne from".
Staying with films released within living-memory, I also saw
The Babadook. Essie Davis starring performance sort-of reminded me of Isabelle Adjani's zaniness in 1981's
Possession, in that both films featured an actress really diving into the deep end of the insanity poll (although Adjani took a deeper dive, but that's still one mind-boggling statement in-and-of-itself considering how luny Essie is in this film). But yeah, The Babadook was really enjoyable in depicting a woman cracking under maternal pressure.
Moving on, I watched the two
Infernal Affairs sequels. Neither came anywhere near close to the original and both felt like rather jaded cash-ins. The first one is constructed as a prequel, and is definitively the better one. Yeah it's a wonky backstory that is bolted-on to the original story and doesn't really add anything in terms of character that was essential. But at least it's a solid on a stand-alone level, and it looks good visually.
The third Infernal Affairs films felt straight-out superfluous though. It takes place during, and after, the first film, basically an epic exercise in padding and trying up loose ends (and of course it jumps all over the place narratively). It's one of those movies where stuff happens but there is no story. Like, there is this whole lengthy segment in the middle of the film that is solely about following the main characters when they're with the psychiatrist girl. It's downright ridiculous, with them engaging in hypnosis and shit! A really porous attempt to squeeze the last bucks out of the series. At least the second one had a story.
Hey remember
Titanic? I saw the earlier 1958 filmatization
A Night to Remember. It's really good but I think Cameron's version edges it out.
A Night is only 90's minutes long and the 1999 film just benifits from having so much more airtime to enliven the story.
But other than that, it's startling just how much the two films parallels each other. At least in the actual
depiction of the Titanic sinking, with events being downright copied (like the musicians playing during the ships descent). Thematically though, while Cameron's version focuses more on the romance and tragedy -- an excercise in well done emotionalism -- the narrative of
A Night To Remember is much more about how you
handle said catastrophe. It has this idea about how stoicism, professionalism and a sense-of-duty can bring about heroism and nobility even in such dire and hopeless circumstances.
Damit,
Rebecca might not be Hitchcock's best film, but it's certainly up there! The middle part where Joan Fontaine's loses her grip on reality and becomes psychologically unraveled is just marvelous. Like that part where the maid opens up the man-sized window and steps aside, as if planting the thought of suicide in Joan's mind, is just fantasticaly done. Splendid gothic atmosphere as well. So yeah, one of Hitchcock's bests.
Moving on to films I definitely should have seen earlier,
Carlito's Way! Definitely another great gangster film from De Palma, his sumptuous visual sense was out in full-force and some scenes were really iconic. Pacino looked oddly out-of-place in his all-black get-up (though that may be the point) but still delivered at his lofty standards. Sean Penn's complete transformation as the lawyer was damn fun as well.
I had a ton of shit written down about
The Falcon and the Snowman and
Nothing is Sacred before the PC fried. Can't rememeber what I inteded to say excactly but both are really good. Nothing is Sacred was a fun one and Falcon and Snowman was a really taut, gripping crime-drama.
Same deal with the anthology film
Flesh and Fantasy, unfortunately. Good film overall with that quintessential eerie feeling when dealing with the quasi-supernatural. One thing I do vividly remember though, is the middle-episode starred Edward G Robinson, and bizarrely enough, parts of it is heavily reminiscent of his Fritz Lang noir films
Woman in the Window and
Scarlett Street, despite coming out a couple of years earlier, complete with Robinson becoming enchanted by a portrait of a woman in a store-window amidst a great surrealistic part of the episode. Robinson's episode was the best though the other two starring Betty Field as a Mardi Gras shut-in and Charles Boyer as a high-wire circus performer alongside Barbara Stanwyck were really good too. Funnily enough, the framing story is just dropped midway through.
