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Serious Movie Discussion XLII
- Thread starter Bullitt68
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Mega post time, but FIRST! One of you bastards should have warned me about His Girl Friday!!! Like, seriously! All I had heard about this movie was "overlapping-dialogue". So I went into it thinking, "oh this is going to be some jolly old time with ear-pleasing conversations as monologed by actors of great charisma and glamour! Just sit back and smell the roses. Let Golden-Age Hollywood wish you away!"
Instead what I got was the most intense, sweat-inducing cacophony of noises I've ever heard!
A milion Diego Sancheze's wouldn't have been able to match that energy. I used to think Hard Boiled was intense. I used to think Fury Road was intense. But half-an-hour into His Girl Friday I'm sitting there cross-eyed and quavering in my sofa at all the lines being burst-fired at me at! I was dazzled to the point of having all of my mental faculties burnt down... and it was like an hour of it left! How the hell do you even assess something like that?
Pretty fucking unique viewing experience I must say.
Cinematic trauma over with... on to the mega-posting.
Went for some early Tommy Lee Jones goodness this time, with The Amazing Howard Hughes. It was a really good TV-movie. Tommy nailed the role. It's basically a rundown of his life, depicting him as an adventurous go-getter, more intrested in functions and technology rather than people and personalities. So somewhat of a heroic portrayl, even though it cultimates with a "even the greatest man means little in the grand scheme of things" message.
The film even included the part when he had a custom-made bra manufactured to accentuate Jane Russell's already prodigious bust. Which happened during the filming of The Outlaw (which I think is a fairly average film btw... Russell's bust aside of course). A very important episode of his life that could never have been left on the cutting room floor... obviously.
Back around Halloween I took the time to watch all of the Universal Mummy movies (I had only seen the two first previously). In the first part of the series, 1932's The Mummy, the part of the titular mummy is played by God... I'm sorry I of course meant to say Boris Karloff (I often get those two people confused). But yeah, I cannot overstate how mindboggingly magnificent Mr Karloff is in this role. His character just dominates every scene. There is so much gravitas to his stare and simplicity of movement. On the subject of inspired casting, Zita Johann is quite the esoteric sexpot I must say, really fitting for the part. The Mummy also benefits from Universals excellent grasp of black-and-white atmosphere, which great aids movies like this one that has mythical connections.
So while the first film is quite excellent indeed, the follow-ups all hover in the area of the average. They all have something that keeps them afloat. The first sequel, Mummy's Hand, is probably the best, sporting a quite decent adventure-yarn. The second sequel, The Mummy's Tomb, is consequently the worst, feeling much like a proto-slasher (I rather dislike how the Mummy just becomes someone's henchman in these later pictures). Mummy's Ghost, the third one, has a mildly intresting reincarnation trope going. While the forth one, Mummy's Curse, is the most uneven and unfocused, but have some definitive highlights that give it a leg-up (like the female mummy emerging from the mud, really striking and evocative).
Lending credence to the theory that I was on some mummy high during Halloween, I also re-watched Hammer's first Mummy movie, as well as The Mummy 1999. Hammer's Mummy is basically a mash-up of all the Universals films... which actually somewhat of a weakness. So much material prevents certain plotstrains from being properly elaborated on. The whole, "Mummy falling in love with protagonists girlfriend" yarn especially feels woefully underdeveloped and therefore falls quite flat when it's introduced in the closing stages of the narrative. Peter Cushing is also -- and I never thought I'd be saying these blasphemous words -- rather uneven in the film. He certainly has his moments, but the boy is just more at home playing more imposing characters than the everyman he's presenting here. Christopher Lee is just GOLD though. He's magnetic acting only with his eyes and posturing, truly laying down another layer on the mummy's identity and gravitas. The picture would be substantially weaker without him.
Lastly with the egpytians, The Mummy from 1999 is still pretty darn good. It gets a lot of help from the fun and fantastical mythology that it constructs around it's setting. It gives the film a lot of fun adventure fluff to work with. I did think the pacing and editing went a bit AWOL during the latter half though.
Around the same time I also celebrated the World Wars by watching one film about each of them. The Blue Max for World War 1 and The Train for World War: The Sequel.
The Blue Max was one of those films that I think could easily have been great if things would have gone a bit diffrent during the production. Instead it falls somewhat below that. It's about a German fighter-pilot (played by George Peppard), who advanced to said position from being a low-level grunt, fighter-pilot themselves tending to spring from Germany's aristocratic stock. Those guys approach warfare with a sportsmanlike, chevalier attitude, very entrenched in the romantic notions of war that dominated in the time before the Great War. While the main character himself is somewhat of a cold-blooded psychopath who only cares about results and personal glory, having become so due to his time in the trenches.
The movie really needed two things. A better lead actor. And more importantly, thematic sharpening. Thematically the movie is about how WW1 destroyed the Old World. The pilots belong to the old-school, gentleman style of warfare that was popular among aristocrats in the pre-modern world. A romantic way-of-life whose illustion could only be substained by allowing grunts like Peppard to handle all the dirty work that goes with war.
Unlike them, Peppard is a modern man, shaped by the horror of the trenches. He's disillusioned and now wants to muscle-in on the aristocratic privileges to get some of that for himself. Intrestingly though, he is essentially -- as mentioned -- a psychopath. So the whole "modern man replacing the aristocrats of old" stick isn't as whole positive as one would expect. But the movie really needed to emphasise this more, explore more thoroughly how a character like Peppard and his ilk was a product of the aristocracy's world and it's social-structures. It needed to illustrate how the brutality of WW1 changed how people thought and felt about the world that proceed it. Instead that whole thing is just alluded to in not very evocative imagery.
While The Blue Max was a movie that I think fell short of being great, The Train with Burt Lancaster was one of those movies that I should have loved but didn't for some unquantifiable reason that I for the life of me cannot discern. The story is about Lancasters and his French Resistance buddies struggle to derail a train loaded with all of France's greatest paintings -- it's cultural gold-reserve -- before reacing Germany and being snatched-away by the Nazis. It's a fun premise. And the conflict surrounding the value of art vs the value of human lives is a poignant one. But as I said -- the whole experience never enthralled me as I would have expected it to have done. I still like it though, it's... good.
That said, everything with Paul Scofield's Nazi character (the villian), I did absolute luuuuve. The slavish love which he held for those pices of art, and the cold exterior he has to project to hide that fact, was just candy to watch. Somehow he probably even knew that his opinions where wrong, he was just so enthralled with himself that he couldn't help it. Hell, maybe that's why I didn't love the film. Deep down I was squarely in the Nazi's corner and hoped he would win.
Moving on, Ray Harryhausen's special effects does not enchant every film he made. Some are pleasant enough but still stranded squarely in good-country (20 milion miles to Earth and It Came from Beneath the Sea, for instance). But damit, his evocative imagination in First Men in the Moon just charmed me. It's quite a high feat too, since the rest of the movie is mostly populated with disinteresting Brits that are wonky and jocular in character. But the alien environment of the moon and it's inhabitants are just so cool and striking that it overshadows those aspects. Another feather in Harryhausen's cap.
Speaking of films dominated by special effects, I hadn't seen The Increadible Shrinking Man until now. I definitively think it earned it's classic status. Both parts of the film are good, the first which is about him dealing with the societal backlash of his shrinkage, and the second where he grows so small that he has to contend with tiny animals for survival. It's darkly humorous thought, that his despair and anxiety only lasts until he grows so small that he has to fight for a living. When he has to hunt for food and fight spiders (great freaking duel btw), he's suddenly invigorated again and enlivened by the struggle, now having a mission to live by. Sort of a comment on the primal origins of man.
What else... uhh... to mention films I usually don't mention, An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah err was just a sappy time-waster. People with priviliges being thrown into overtly romantic and quaint affairs. It's so toothless and dull that it makes it hard to get seriously invested. Watchable -- I suppose -- but not much above that. There's Always Tomorrow was better, but not great or anything. It's one of those movies that made me agree with the theory that acting just get's better in black-and-white. And it's handling of a midlife-crisis story and the desire to rekindle your passions -- possibly through ilicit romance -- was much more substantiual in interests in comparison to anything that An Affair to Remember could muster.
The penultimate movie for today is Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks. It is thoroughly striking visually, foreshadowing the griminess and ruggedness of the Spaghetti Westerns yet also being very pictorial in how it shoots the majesty of nature, and so forth. The human drama I'm still somewhat on the fence about. The Freudian overtones are really blatant (the antagonists whom betrays Brando being named "Dad"). But more than that, I think Brando just stretched it out to much. The pacing is just off for this main drama. There are some really striking bits in it though (like when Brando fixes the lotto between him and Dad, or when he uses the "fake jewelry" stick on his love interest). Those are really good character moments, not saying anything overt about Brando's character but still feeding you important bits of information that allows you to paint a vauge picture of his psyche and where his head is at.
Lastly, my zealous fandom of Sword of Doom galvanized me into searching out an earlier iteration of the same story -- Sword in the Moonlight. This one was a full trilogy, and boy was it a mixed bag (There is even another trilogy about the same story, Satan's Sword)!
On the negative side... Ryunosuke is played by a guy in his 50's. But that's the sort of thing I can overlook.
Even beyond that, the characters are really odd though. There are several female characters that basically serve the excact same function in the narrative, and they are all replacements of each other. For example, Ohama, the girl whose grandfather Ryunosuke kills in the beginning, is replaced in the second film with another character that has a very similar function, and that character is replaced several times over too! Which is really jarring since Ohama has the biggest incentive to be involved in Ryunosuke's story, since... you know, he murdered her grandfather on what was basically a whim.
But it's the storytelling that is the biggest problem. This being a trilogy -- the plot is horribly overwritten and jam-packed with sidestories and a bloated supporting cast. But simultaniously, many of the parts that you'd thought would be important and poignant are just glazed over. For example, take the scene where Ryunosuke and Ohama reunite and Ryunosuke realizes that she's the girl whose grandfather he killed. In Sword of Doom, it serves as a cataclysm of Ryunosuke's madness. It marks the finality of the film and a finality of Ryunosuke's sanity. In Sword in the Moonlight... it just means that Ryunosuke gets really mad for one night and the next morning he's fine again. Status Que reinstalled. Which thoroughly ruins the impact of that moment and makes character development really wonky.
The sheer evilness of Ryunosuke's is also mitigated. It's not so much that it's removed, it's more glazed over and hinted at.
On the positive side, the film is really pleasantly directed. There's just something about how it's made that makes it easy to sit through. And there are also some really neat visual flair in the movie too, which is quite evocative. It works to shoulder much of the thematic poignancy of the movie, giving moments gravitas when the human-to-human interactions feel more lukewarm and lacking in edge.
PS:
While I too am quite amazed at Connor's striking ability (and quite un-amazed at his character), I was furrowing my brows quite thoroughly at how Eddie would always dash speedily in at Connor, considering Connor's strongest weapon has always been his counter left. And as you would have it, Connor cracked him hard at several times with it, basically winning him the fight. But that's how Eddie usually fights so there's that too I guess.
Instead what I got was the most intense, sweat-inducing cacophony of noises I've ever heard!
A milion Diego Sancheze's wouldn't have been able to match that energy. I used to think Hard Boiled was intense. I used to think Fury Road was intense. But half-an-hour into His Girl Friday I'm sitting there cross-eyed and quavering in my sofa at all the lines being burst-fired at me at! I was dazzled to the point of having all of my mental faculties burnt down... and it was like an hour of it left! How the hell do you even assess something like that? Pretty fucking unique viewing experience I must say.Cinematic trauma over with... on to the mega-posting.
Went for some early Tommy Lee Jones goodness this time, with The Amazing Howard Hughes. It was a really good TV-movie. Tommy nailed the role. It's basically a rundown of his life, depicting him as an adventurous go-getter, more intrested in functions and technology rather than people and personalities. So somewhat of a heroic portrayl, even though it cultimates with a "even the greatest man means little in the grand scheme of things" message.
The film even included the part when he had a custom-made bra manufactured to accentuate Jane Russell's already prodigious bust. Which happened during the filming of The Outlaw (which I think is a fairly average film btw... Russell's bust aside of course). A very important episode of his life that could never have been left on the cutting room floor... obviously.
Back around Halloween I took the time to watch all of the Universal Mummy movies (I had only seen the two first previously). In the first part of the series, 1932's The Mummy, the part of the titular mummy is played by God... I'm sorry I of course meant to say Boris Karloff (I often get those two people confused). But yeah, I cannot overstate how mindboggingly magnificent Mr Karloff is in this role. His character just dominates every scene. There is so much gravitas to his stare and simplicity of movement. On the subject of inspired casting, Zita Johann is quite the esoteric sexpot I must say, really fitting for the part. The Mummy also benefits from Universals excellent grasp of black-and-white atmosphere, which great aids movies like this one that has mythical connections.
So while the first film is quite excellent indeed, the follow-ups all hover in the area of the average. They all have something that keeps them afloat. The first sequel, Mummy's Hand, is probably the best, sporting a quite decent adventure-yarn. The second sequel, The Mummy's Tomb, is consequently the worst, feeling much like a proto-slasher (I rather dislike how the Mummy just becomes someone's henchman in these later pictures). Mummy's Ghost, the third one, has a mildly intresting reincarnation trope going. While the forth one, Mummy's Curse, is the most uneven and unfocused, but have some definitive highlights that give it a leg-up (like the female mummy emerging from the mud, really striking and evocative).
Lending credence to the theory that I was on some mummy high during Halloween, I also re-watched Hammer's first Mummy movie, as well as The Mummy 1999. Hammer's Mummy is basically a mash-up of all the Universals films... which actually somewhat of a weakness. So much material prevents certain plotstrains from being properly elaborated on. The whole, "Mummy falling in love with protagonists girlfriend" yarn especially feels woefully underdeveloped and therefore falls quite flat when it's introduced in the closing stages of the narrative. Peter Cushing is also -- and I never thought I'd be saying these blasphemous words -- rather uneven in the film. He certainly has his moments, but the boy is just more at home playing more imposing characters than the everyman he's presenting here. Christopher Lee is just GOLD though. He's magnetic acting only with his eyes and posturing, truly laying down another layer on the mummy's identity and gravitas. The picture would be substantially weaker without him.
Lastly with the egpytians, The Mummy from 1999 is still pretty darn good. It gets a lot of help from the fun and fantastical mythology that it constructs around it's setting. It gives the film a lot of fun adventure fluff to work with. I did think the pacing and editing went a bit AWOL during the latter half though.
Around the same time I also celebrated the World Wars by watching one film about each of them. The Blue Max for World War 1 and The Train for World War: The Sequel.
The Blue Max was one of those films that I think could easily have been great if things would have gone a bit diffrent during the production. Instead it falls somewhat below that. It's about a German fighter-pilot (played by George Peppard), who advanced to said position from being a low-level grunt, fighter-pilot themselves tending to spring from Germany's aristocratic stock. Those guys approach warfare with a sportsmanlike, chevalier attitude, very entrenched in the romantic notions of war that dominated in the time before the Great War. While the main character himself is somewhat of a cold-blooded psychopath who only cares about results and personal glory, having become so due to his time in the trenches.
The movie really needed two things. A better lead actor. And more importantly, thematic sharpening. Thematically the movie is about how WW1 destroyed the Old World. The pilots belong to the old-school, gentleman style of warfare that was popular among aristocrats in the pre-modern world. A romantic way-of-life whose illustion could only be substained by allowing grunts like Peppard to handle all the dirty work that goes with war.
Unlike them, Peppard is a modern man, shaped by the horror of the trenches. He's disillusioned and now wants to muscle-in on the aristocratic privileges to get some of that for himself. Intrestingly though, he is essentially -- as mentioned -- a psychopath. So the whole "modern man replacing the aristocrats of old" stick isn't as whole positive as one would expect. But the movie really needed to emphasise this more, explore more thoroughly how a character like Peppard and his ilk was a product of the aristocracy's world and it's social-structures. It needed to illustrate how the brutality of WW1 changed how people thought and felt about the world that proceed it. Instead that whole thing is just alluded to in not very evocative imagery.
While The Blue Max was a movie that I think fell short of being great, The Train with Burt Lancaster was one of those movies that I should have loved but didn't for some unquantifiable reason that I for the life of me cannot discern. The story is about Lancasters and his French Resistance buddies struggle to derail a train loaded with all of France's greatest paintings -- it's cultural gold-reserve -- before reacing Germany and being snatched-away by the Nazis. It's a fun premise. And the conflict surrounding the value of art vs the value of human lives is a poignant one. But as I said -- the whole experience never enthralled me as I would have expected it to have done. I still like it though, it's... good.
That said, everything with Paul Scofield's Nazi character (the villian), I did absolute luuuuve. The slavish love which he held for those pices of art, and the cold exterior he has to project to hide that fact, was just candy to watch. Somehow he probably even knew that his opinions where wrong, he was just so enthralled with himself that he couldn't help it. Hell, maybe that's why I didn't love the film. Deep down I was squarely in the Nazi's corner and hoped he would win.
Moving on, Ray Harryhausen's special effects does not enchant every film he made. Some are pleasant enough but still stranded squarely in good-country (20 milion miles to Earth and It Came from Beneath the Sea, for instance). But damit, his evocative imagination in First Men in the Moon just charmed me. It's quite a high feat too, since the rest of the movie is mostly populated with disinteresting Brits that are wonky and jocular in character. But the alien environment of the moon and it's inhabitants are just so cool and striking that it overshadows those aspects. Another feather in Harryhausen's cap.
Speaking of films dominated by special effects, I hadn't seen The Increadible Shrinking Man until now. I definitively think it earned it's classic status. Both parts of the film are good, the first which is about him dealing with the societal backlash of his shrinkage, and the second where he grows so small that he has to contend with tiny animals for survival. It's darkly humorous thought, that his despair and anxiety only lasts until he grows so small that he has to fight for a living. When he has to hunt for food and fight spiders (great freaking duel btw), he's suddenly invigorated again and enlivened by the struggle, now having a mission to live by. Sort of a comment on the primal origins of man.
What else... uhh... to mention films I usually don't mention, An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah err was just a sappy time-waster. People with priviliges being thrown into overtly romantic and quaint affairs. It's so toothless and dull that it makes it hard to get seriously invested. Watchable -- I suppose -- but not much above that. There's Always Tomorrow was better, but not great or anything. It's one of those movies that made me agree with the theory that acting just get's better in black-and-white. And it's handling of a midlife-crisis story and the desire to rekindle your passions -- possibly through ilicit romance -- was much more substantiual in interests in comparison to anything that An Affair to Remember could muster.
The penultimate movie for today is Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks. It is thoroughly striking visually, foreshadowing the griminess and ruggedness of the Spaghetti Westerns yet also being very pictorial in how it shoots the majesty of nature, and so forth. The human drama I'm still somewhat on the fence about. The Freudian overtones are really blatant (the antagonists whom betrays Brando being named "Dad"). But more than that, I think Brando just stretched it out to much. The pacing is just off for this main drama. There are some really striking bits in it though (like when Brando fixes the lotto between him and Dad, or when he uses the "fake jewelry" stick on his love interest). Those are really good character moments, not saying anything overt about Brando's character but still feeding you important bits of information that allows you to paint a vauge picture of his psyche and where his head is at.
Lastly, my zealous fandom of Sword of Doom galvanized me into searching out an earlier iteration of the same story -- Sword in the Moonlight. This one was a full trilogy, and boy was it a mixed bag (There is even another trilogy about the same story, Satan's Sword)!
On the negative side... Ryunosuke is played by a guy in his 50's.
But that's the sort of thing I can overlook.Even beyond that, the characters are really odd though. There are several female characters that basically serve the excact same function in the narrative, and they are all replacements of each other. For example, Ohama, the girl whose grandfather Ryunosuke kills in the beginning, is replaced in the second film with another character that has a very similar function, and that character is replaced several times over too! Which is really jarring since Ohama has the biggest incentive to be involved in Ryunosuke's story, since... you know, he murdered her grandfather on what was basically a whim.
But it's the storytelling that is the biggest problem. This being a trilogy -- the plot is horribly overwritten and jam-packed with sidestories and a bloated supporting cast. But simultaniously, many of the parts that you'd thought would be important and poignant are just glazed over. For example, take the scene where Ryunosuke and Ohama reunite and Ryunosuke realizes that she's the girl whose grandfather he killed. In Sword of Doom, it serves as a cataclysm of Ryunosuke's madness. It marks the finality of the film and a finality of Ryunosuke's sanity. In Sword in the Moonlight... it just means that Ryunosuke gets really mad for one night and the next morning he's fine again. Status Que reinstalled. Which thoroughly ruins the impact of that moment and makes character development really wonky.
The sheer evilness of Ryunosuke's is also mitigated. It's not so much that it's removed, it's more glazed over and hinted at.
On the positive side, the film is really pleasantly directed. There's just something about how it's made that makes it easy to sit through. And there are also some really neat visual flair in the movie too, which is quite evocative. It works to shoulder much of the thematic poignancy of the movie, giving moments gravitas when the human-to-human interactions feel more lukewarm and lacking in edge.
PS:
While I too am quite amazed at Connor's striking ability (and quite un-amazed at his character), I was furrowing my brows quite thoroughly at how Eddie would always dash speedily in at Connor, considering Connor's strongest weapon has always been his counter left. And as you would have it, Connor cracked him hard at several times with it, basically winning him the fight. But that's how Eddie usually fights so there's that too I guess.
Full disclosure: I've also spent the last couple of months locking down a girlfriend.
Last edited:
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Watching a new movie, "Hell or High Water". It has Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster and Chris Pine in it. It's about two brothers in West Texas that decide to rob banks so they can try and save their family farm, but a Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) decides to go after them before his retirement. REALLY good so far.
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Currently watching a movie that came out in July, 'Nerve,' and really enjoying it.
It's just plain fun, the cast is good, the stars have chemistry, its shot very well, and I'm hoping it ends just as strong as its began.
It's just plain fun, the cast is good, the stars have chemistry, its shot very well, and I'm hoping it ends just as strong as its began.
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Just finished it, and its a great flick.
And I'm glad I avoided reading reviews because they're mixed, but despite the logical flaws (like cops apparently have no interest in the illegal activity) that were required for the plot, I really enjoyed the entirety of the 90 minutes.
And Emma Roberts might be on the verge of being an A-list star. She's a great actress and like Jennifer Lawrence she earns her roles through the merit of her performances, not because she's beautiful. (And not because her aunt is Julia Roberts).
And if you guys haven't seen her in Scream 4, that was another flick she completely stole the show. 10/10 performance in that one.
And I'm glad I avoided reading reviews because they're mixed, but despite the logical flaws (like cops apparently have no interest in the illegal activity) that were required for the plot, I really enjoyed the entirety of the 90 minutes.
And Emma Roberts might be on the verge of being an A-list star. She's a great actress and like Jennifer Lawrence she earns her roles through the merit of her performances, not because she's beautiful. (And not because her aunt is Julia Roberts).
And if you guys haven't seen her in Scream 4, that was another flick she completely stole the show. 10/10 performance in that one.
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Just watched 'Excision'.
9/10
I knew nothing about this film when I bought it. I had a £5 Amazon voucher to use and it sounded interesting.
Annalynne Mccord is amazing in it (she's actually pretty but really transforms herself in this, a bit like Charlize Theron in 'Monster'), as is Traci Lords as the mother.
Hard to explain other than saying it involves a messed up teenage girl obsessed with surgery, a cuckold father, a domineering mother and a sister who is dying of cystic fibrosis.
Mccord and Traci Lords are outstanding in this, I highly advise everyone to seek this out.
9/10
I knew nothing about this film when I bought it. I had a £5 Amazon voucher to use and it sounded interesting.
Annalynne Mccord is amazing in it (she's actually pretty but really transforms herself in this, a bit like Charlize Theron in 'Monster'), as is Traci Lords as the mother.
Hard to explain other than saying it involves a messed up teenage girl obsessed with surgery, a cuckold father, a domineering mother and a sister who is dying of cystic fibrosis.
Mccord and Traci Lords are outstanding in this, I highly advise everyone to seek this out.
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Just watched 'Excision'.
9/10
I knew nothing about this film when I bought it. I had a £5 Amazon voucher to use and it sounded interesting.
Annalynne Mccord is amazing in it (she's actually pretty but really transforms herself in this, a bit like Charlize Theron in 'Monster'), as is Traci Lords as the mother.
Hard to explain other than saying it involves a messed up teenage girl obsessed with surgery, a cuckold father, a domineering mother and a sister who is dying of cystic fibrosis.
Mccord and Traci Lords are outstanding in this, I highly advise everyone to seek this out.
Ariel Winter from Modern Family is in it? Seems like a change of pace...
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Yeah she plays the sister with Cystic Fibrosis.
Annalynne Mccord is super hot in reality but is confusing in this film because one minute she looks pretty rough and the next you're thinking "actually there's something about her".
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Just watched 'Excision'.
9/10
I knew nothing about this film when I bought it. I had a £5 Amazon voucher to use and it sounded interesting.
Annalynne Mccord is amazing in it (she's actually pretty but really transforms herself in this, a bit like Charlize Theron in 'Monster'), as is Traci Lords as the mother.
Hard to explain other than saying it involves a messed up teenage girl obsessed with surgery, a cuckold father, a domineering mother and a sister who is dying of cystic fibrosis.
Mccord and Traci Lords are outstanding in this, I highly advise everyone to seek this out.
Different strokes for different folks, but I had to turn that shit off about halfway through when I tried to watch it.
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I think it's one of those 'love or hate' films. I don't think there's going to be any middle ground for most people who watch it.
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Yeah, it is definitely on the strange side. It was reminding me of May a little bit (which also didn't do much for me). Not sure if you've seen that, but you might enjoy it if you haven't.
Horror has, in general, been a complete bummer to me. Excision wasn't any worse than most newer ones I've tried to watch.
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Haven't been able to watch many films recently as I have been busy with uni. Three most recent I have watched a Through a Glass Darkly by Bergman and The Fire Within and My Dinner With Andre by Malle. I really liked all three of them.
Through a Glass Darkly was really interesting, the first one in his 'faith trilogy'. I had seen Winter Light before this and it was very similar in the style which makes sense, slow moving and very austere (in terms of the cinematography and the plot as well). Obviously Karin's illness is the heart of it, and how this affects the other family members, so when it came to how we were supposed to interpret the visions she has I wasn't exactly sure how to take it initially...ok she has schizophrenia, but given that it's meant to be part of the faith, or gods silence trilogy as I have also heard it called, then there is obviously a religious element. The thing that struck me was that in the past someone like Karin would probably have been considered some sort of religious mystic whereas in the modern day she's clinically insane...I thought there was some symbolism here. From what I have read about Bergman (son of a Lutheran father) it seems like the religion of his father and his childhood vs the atheism of his adulthood is something he grappled with throughout his life. I suppose it's common sense since he made so many films in which religion is a theme. So with these two conflicting strands (faith vs atheism) that's how I interpreted the film. First of all Karin's visions are comforting to her, she is waiting to see God and seems genuinely happy, when the moment of revelation comes when she actually sees God in her vision He is actually a horrifying spider. So perhaps Bergman is getting at what he sees the as irreconcilability of genuine religious faith (which Karin has initially, even if it's just her illness) and the modern world. I've seen similar ideas in some of the articles that I read, but given that the final conclusion that 'God is Love' it's not a hopelessly atheistic film either.
The Fire Within was a fairly bleak and austere film as well, about a man who decides to kill himself and his last two days before that. I have to say that right until the end I was thinking that Malle was going to have the main character, Alain, avoid actually doing it but it was almost refreshing (if that doesn't make me seem too morbid) that the film ends as it does. I suppose the crux of it is why an intelligent, good-looking man who was successful with women (the characters constantly make reference to how handsome he was when he was younger) and who clearly has a lot of friends who care about him would want to kill himself? Of course at the point of the film he is a recovering alcoholic, who is heavily in debt and has been in a clinic for the past few months, but how did he get to that point? I suppose this is explained to some degree through Alain's interactions with the outside world, he seems to suffer from some sort of existential despair...he says at one point that he "started to drink while waiting for things". His interactions with other people don't do anything to dissuade him it seems, everyone else seems to be playing a character when they see him almost (the two women at his old hotel only say after he has left how bad he looks, the barman jokes about how he used to come in early in the day for a pick me up and it's the same sort of thing with all his friends. He's also disappointed with one of his closest friends Dubourg who has become a bourgeois family man and lapses into drunkenness at a party where everyone feels extremely shallow and fake. Now I am not sure if the sympathy is supposed to lie with Alain, who wants something more, and the problem is actually with society in general or whether the problem is actually Alain (he's obviously an extremely flawed character too). I suppose the answer is supposed to be complicated. Anyway, I really enjoyed it…or found it interesting at least, enjoy is the wrong word haha.
Finally I watched My Dinner With Andre on the recommendation of a friend. Again I really liked it, though it did drag a bit in a points, which is understandable given that nothing technically happens in the film. It’s literally just a conversation between two old friends. It’s fantastic how the film holds your interest for the most part though given that that’s all it is, it’s the way the conversation develops. At the start it’s kind of awkward, with Wally not really want to be there, but as Andre discusses the experiences he has had over the past few years (including bizarre theatre experiments in Poland, new age retreats in Scotland, living in the sahara desert, seeing visions and so on) Wally and the viewer both get sucked in. It really is great acting and I found I was genuinely interested in what he was saying even though you know he's acting. Wally barely speaks initially, but as the conversation continues flowing (with more wine being consumed I noted lol) then it becomes more of a philosophical back and forth. This was the most interesting bit for me as they discuss things like the nature of society, ‘seeing’ reality as it vs. just living life as repetition, science vs mysticism and things like that. All very high minded stuff, Andre seems to have changed his perception completely and thinks the kind of experiences are important for people to escape living monotonous lives. It’s interesting then that Wally, who at the very start of the film expressed a dissatisfaction and who seemed to agree with Andre’s critiques of society then starts extolling the virtues of a simple, everyday life. I suppose this is a reaction to what Andre was saying, when he reflects on his simple life in comparison with the sorts of things Andre has been describing. The other thing I was thinking while watching was that for all this high browed criticisms of society and it’s flaws the fact remains that it’s two New York intellectuals discussing this in a high class restaurant (while a strange waiter constantly serves them and refills their wine glasses), I thought that perhaps there was an element of parody in the film as well. Again though, lots of interesting stuff in it, especially for a film in which nothing happens, even if I don’t want to try and literally work out what Malle ‘meant’.
Through a Glass Darkly was really interesting, the first one in his 'faith trilogy'. I had seen Winter Light before this and it was very similar in the style which makes sense, slow moving and very austere (in terms of the cinematography and the plot as well). Obviously Karin's illness is the heart of it, and how this affects the other family members, so when it came to how we were supposed to interpret the visions she has I wasn't exactly sure how to take it initially...ok she has schizophrenia, but given that it's meant to be part of the faith, or gods silence trilogy as I have also heard it called, then there is obviously a religious element. The thing that struck me was that in the past someone like Karin would probably have been considered some sort of religious mystic whereas in the modern day she's clinically insane...I thought there was some symbolism here. From what I have read about Bergman (son of a Lutheran father) it seems like the religion of his father and his childhood vs the atheism of his adulthood is something he grappled with throughout his life. I suppose it's common sense since he made so many films in which religion is a theme. So with these two conflicting strands (faith vs atheism) that's how I interpreted the film. First of all Karin's visions are comforting to her, she is waiting to see God and seems genuinely happy, when the moment of revelation comes when she actually sees God in her vision He is actually a horrifying spider. So perhaps Bergman is getting at what he sees the as irreconcilability of genuine religious faith (which Karin has initially, even if it's just her illness) and the modern world. I've seen similar ideas in some of the articles that I read, but given that the final conclusion that 'God is Love' it's not a hopelessly atheistic film either.
The Fire Within was a fairly bleak and austere film as well, about a man who decides to kill himself and his last two days before that. I have to say that right until the end I was thinking that Malle was going to have the main character, Alain, avoid actually doing it but it was almost refreshing (if that doesn't make me seem too morbid) that the film ends as it does. I suppose the crux of it is why an intelligent, good-looking man who was successful with women (the characters constantly make reference to how handsome he was when he was younger) and who clearly has a lot of friends who care about him would want to kill himself? Of course at the point of the film he is a recovering alcoholic, who is heavily in debt and has been in a clinic for the past few months, but how did he get to that point? I suppose this is explained to some degree through Alain's interactions with the outside world, he seems to suffer from some sort of existential despair...he says at one point that he "started to drink while waiting for things". His interactions with other people don't do anything to dissuade him it seems, everyone else seems to be playing a character when they see him almost (the two women at his old hotel only say after he has left how bad he looks, the barman jokes about how he used to come in early in the day for a pick me up and it's the same sort of thing with all his friends. He's also disappointed with one of his closest friends Dubourg who has become a bourgeois family man and lapses into drunkenness at a party where everyone feels extremely shallow and fake. Now I am not sure if the sympathy is supposed to lie with Alain, who wants something more, and the problem is actually with society in general or whether the problem is actually Alain (he's obviously an extremely flawed character too). I suppose the answer is supposed to be complicated. Anyway, I really enjoyed it…or found it interesting at least, enjoy is the wrong word haha.
Finally I watched My Dinner With Andre on the recommendation of a friend. Again I really liked it, though it did drag a bit in a points, which is understandable given that nothing technically happens in the film. It’s literally just a conversation between two old friends. It’s fantastic how the film holds your interest for the most part though given that that’s all it is, it’s the way the conversation develops. At the start it’s kind of awkward, with Wally not really want to be there, but as Andre discusses the experiences he has had over the past few years (including bizarre theatre experiments in Poland, new age retreats in Scotland, living in the sahara desert, seeing visions and so on) Wally and the viewer both get sucked in. It really is great acting and I found I was genuinely interested in what he was saying even though you know he's acting. Wally barely speaks initially, but as the conversation continues flowing (with more wine being consumed I noted lol) then it becomes more of a philosophical back and forth. This was the most interesting bit for me as they discuss things like the nature of society, ‘seeing’ reality as it vs. just living life as repetition, science vs mysticism and things like that. All very high minded stuff, Andre seems to have changed his perception completely and thinks the kind of experiences are important for people to escape living monotonous lives. It’s interesting then that Wally, who at the very start of the film expressed a dissatisfaction and who seemed to agree with Andre’s critiques of society then starts extolling the virtues of a simple, everyday life. I suppose this is a reaction to what Andre was saying, when he reflects on his simple life in comparison with the sorts of things Andre has been describing. The other thing I was thinking while watching was that for all this high browed criticisms of society and it’s flaws the fact remains that it’s two New York intellectuals discussing this in a high class restaurant (while a strange waiter constantly serves them and refills their wine glasses), I thought that perhaps there was an element of parody in the film as well. Again though, lots of interesting stuff in it, especially for a film in which nothing happens, even if I don’t want to try and literally work out what Malle ‘meant’.
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It took me some time to figure out that I've actually seen The Fire Within. Honestly, from what I remember about my reaction, I just thought it was a big slew of pretentious navel-gazing
. That's not to say that I'm disintrested with the subject matter, I just didn't think that it was presented very well. It's your quintessential heavy-handed approach when trying to be "deep" and "serious". So I didn't enjoy it as much as you did (and unlike our Ordet discussion where I said the excact same thing, this time I'm not lying so to moderate my tone
). That's an interesting sentence. My assessment of Alain was more that he was depressed because he could not live up to his old self. He could not be the go-getter he was in his youth. He did not want to grow up and become an adult like his friend did. It was that failure to forever remain young that made him depressed.
However, a sentence like "waiting for things" would more indicate that he is yearning for some improvement. What would that be? Love? Some purpose in life? I don't really remember the film showing us that he had such concerns. It was more the fact that he wasn't in his "prime" anymore.
I don't really remember having any thoughts about The Fire Within being a commentary on society. For me, it was always more Alain as a person. How his depression arose from not wanting to change, to not grow up and all that. He is constantly obsessing about his youthful exploits and cannot help but compare himself to that (isn't there some internal monologue about how he cannot satisfy women anymore?).
I looked up the closing quote:
To me, that reads more like a man who feels like he hasn't got it anymore. He wishes to be remembered. To be known as some socially important, powerful person whose persona is an force upon other. This is the "tie" that he talks about, the powerful links he exudes upon other people and how they see him. But his current "abilities" are not sufficient to project such an persona anymore. He does not have the charm or energy anymore to keep these ties taut to the other people around him.
He cannot party, drink or sleep like an animal anymore -- and therefore he cannot impress people anymore.
Only through the shock and trauma of a suicide, can he cause such an effect. Only by killing himself, can he permenantly imprint himself on the people around him. "leave an indelible strain" and all that. In his youth, the force of his person could maintain that. When he is older, only death can achieve that.
I grew up in a staunchly anti-Bergman household. So I haven't actually seen that much of him. One day I'll go on a Bergman jihad though. And the Sherdog Serious Movie Thread will burn in it's wake.
Another movie that I'd like to see.
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I hope your household was ostracized from and ridiculed by the society around you.
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It took me some time to figure out that I've actually seen The Fire Within. Honestly, from what I remember about my reaction, I just thought it was a big slew of pretentious navel-gazing
Well as a pretentious navel gazer it was right up my street haha
That did cross my mind, that his friends are passing him and 'growing up' whereas he is unable to. Perhaps that's right, no doubt that the film did emphasis that he wasn't in his 'prime' as you say. But it seemed to me that he started drinking while he was younger, ie. he was looking for something then too but is still unable to find it, or that he was able to distract himself with it when he was younger whereas he is growing older and his friends are becoming more adult (or 'bourgeois' as he would have it) and he can't do that any more...yearning for something as you suggest. I think that he was yearning for something, it's deliberately vague what that is/was...some sort of purpose in life perhaps, but that now that he is older, has been through 'treatment' and can't distract himself with drink he decides to kill himself...
Yeah I see what you are saying, when I talk about society I guess I mean Alain's perception of society really. It did strike me that a lot of the other people in the film seemed to be playing some sort of character as I said, whether or not some of what Alain thinks is genuine, or whether it's all just some warped perception of society. I guess it depends on your own views to a degree, not sure exactly what Malle is getting at.
Yeah, the final quote did throw me a bit and I can definitely see what you mean. Alain was definitely extremely cynical of the people, but it seemed much more 'cruel' than he had been up to that point, to leave her with "an indelible stain", almost a means of getting back at her the only way he can.
I grew up in a staunchly anti-Bergman household. So I haven't actually seen that much of him. One day I'll go on a Bergman jihad though. And the Sherdog Serious Movie Thread will burn in it's wake.
To be fair at least you grew up in any sort of household, my parents think I am some sort of freak when I request they get me a Tarkovsky blu ray as a christmas present lol.
Another movie that I'd like to see.
I definitely recommend it, fair bit of navel gazing though
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Nocturnal Animals- pretentious as all hell...a few compelling scenes does not a great movie make. The thing that bothered me about this one was the same thing that bothered me about the film The Words with Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana...the story within the story is supposed to be this monumental thing, but it really doesn't resonate to that level.
What I will say is that Adams, Gyllenhaal, Linney, Taylor-Johnson and the rest of the cast really deliver quality performances. Also, Michael Shannon absolutely steals the show.
Hacksaw Ridge- thought it was a very good movie. The early half of the film seems like pretty standard biopic type stuff, but Garfield, Palmer, and Weaving are so good that it really elevates the material. The second half, when the war scenes start in earnest, is effectively brutal and chilling. The sequence where the American soldiers first scale the ridge and start slowly advancing toward the enemy is one of the most ominous scenes I can recall in a recent film.
Goes without saying, but Gibson is legit.
What I will say is that Adams, Gyllenhaal, Linney, Taylor-Johnson and the rest of the cast really deliver quality performances. Also, Michael Shannon absolutely steals the show.
Hacksaw Ridge- thought it was a very good movie. The early half of the film seems like pretty standard biopic type stuff, but Garfield, Palmer, and Weaving are so good that it really elevates the material. The second half, when the war scenes start in earnest, is effectively brutal and chilling. The sequence where the American soldiers first scale the ridge and start slowly advancing toward the enemy is one of the most ominous scenes I can recall in a recent film.
Goes without saying, but Gibson is legit.
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Been meaning to watch this, sounds good.
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Yeah. The early sentimental stuff seemed rather uninspired. One gets the impression that Mel Gibson just has a fascination for war and bloodshed but no such thing for peace or intimacy. That moment where Doss and his father conversed by the grave got me a little bit, but other than that is was mostly standard fair.
It sort of lacked that defining touch. Take say, Pearl Harbor (and I swear to God this will be the only time that I ever mention Pearl Harbor as a positive example of anything). There you have the scene where the main characters calls the creepy old guy a German, and the guy responds by telling them about what he saw in the war and how he wishes none of them ever will have to go through that. That was a chilling, foreshadowing scene done very economically. Here it's just "I'm an regular Joe and I love my girl!"
Yeah the entire build-up to Hacksaw was done really well. Even better since the battle itself lived-up and exceed those manufactured expectations.
Oh they're downright harrowing. That scene when they storm Hacksaw Ridge is just unrelenting in it's ghastliness. Escapades of gore and mutilations. Very reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan.
I did think the action-y elements where rather jarring though.
Like Doss kicking away a grenade midair. Or dragging the guy as he's firing back at the Japanese. Or that guy using a legless torso as a sheild. And so on.
The harakiri-scene was also intresting to me. It seemed to compare Doss zeal for saving lives with the Japanese veneration of death.
The message of the film, Doss's personal nonviolence, was a good one. It's one of those things many people can find sympathy for. But, well, it's not excactly "well-explored" in the academical sense. So Doss cannot kill at all but is just fine with all of his buddies doing it? Like... he doesn't even question that once? Nor that his logistical support enables others to take lives? So in fact he is indirectly contributing to killings taking place?
It's an emotional message but not a very intellectual explorative one.
I also saw the action movie The Accountant this weekend. Surprisingly good, actually. Ben Affleck plays a hitman of the autistic variety, moonlighting as his real passion, being an accountant. The whole "autistic people are not good socially" humor could have come of as rather cringy but it was played so mellow that it became rather endering. Good filmmaking too, none of that modern hyper-editing or hyper-pacing bullshit. It had sort of oddly structured, slow-burn feel -- but it worked!
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