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Orphan (2009) 3.5 stars Just saw this on the recommendations of NeuroticErotica and Frontalot, and holy hell were they right. Even knowing the twist ahead of time didn't kill the movie for me (I probably would have figured it out about an hour in anyway); this was just a really well-put together thriller, and probably the best "Bad Seed"-type film I've ever seen. The movie isn't perfect. I hate it when characters' sole role in a film is to be wrong at every turn, and there's a couple of them here. And I'm also pretty squeamish at some of the stuff they had child actors do in this movie. That's probably a topic for discussion that I can't fit in a short review. On the positive side: most of the performances were terrific (especially by all the child actors and Vera Farmiga, one of the most underrated actresses around), Jeff Cutter's cinematography had some really great shots, and the screenplay was had the balls to tread places that a lot of movies wouldn't dare touch. That last part could be a bad thing too, but at the very least this movie will stick in my brain for a long time. Kiss Me Deadly (1955) 4 stars I hate having two reviews in a row where I saw "one of the best [insert genre here] that I've ever seen"...but I have to say that after one viewing of this, it's close to the top of all the film noirs I've seen (an unfortunately short list admittedly). It's preposterous, the plot is hard to follow and stretches logic to the limit, and some of the supporting actors give really stilted performances, but I loved every minute of it. Ralph Meeker is terrific as Mike Hammer, and it's unfortunate looking at his filmography because I think he should have had a more notable career. Hammer is a violent, inconsiderate, misanthropic bastard, and Meeker nails the character. Definitely not the unqualified masterpiece that some other films in the genre are, but it really feels like the embodiment of everything a good noir should be.
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Aug 20, 2009 06:10
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FFD, it definitely helps having read the novel. I don't want to derail the thread into a Watchmen debate, so I'll leave it with this post, but your complaints (Nixon, bad sex scene, everything underscored by a song or by graffiti) are really all part of the novel. Every chapter in the novel is ended with a pop culture song, the sex scene really happens the way it does in the film, and the Nixon impersonator is supposed to be a terrible caricature. I think Watchmen is great from an accomplishment/visual perspective, but my gripe with it is that ... it didn't need to be made. I applaud Snyder for his efforts, and he made some good decisions and did a nice job transferring the novel to film, but it's so loyal to the novel that it feels pointless. But yeah, if you re-read the novel, you'll probably still dislike those things about it, but you'll at least be like, "oh, I guess it does fit in terms of the novel."
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Aug 20, 2009 08:02
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I've seen a lot of pretty good movies lately... Grace (2009) 78/100 A smarter, more developed, layered, and exploratory version of À l'intérieur [Inside]. What that film did for wince-inducing violence/gore and advancing parallels of the home and womb, this film does for metaphors of the act of mothering, giving/sustaining life, and dealing with loss. Every character in this is quite creepy, dealing with loss in their own flawed way, yet they all think they strive for what's best for everyone. Great for a debut film. District 9 (2009) 88/100 A really effective and affective sci-fi piece and blunt social commentary... sometimes too blunt. The film's three acts seem pretty disjointed from each other, like each a different genre, but you are intrigued and enjoying almost every minute of it. The CGI is excellent, and the violence/gore surprisingly refreshing. Not perfect, but really, really good. (The plot and action in the third act is really formulaic, but fun to see unfold.) Do The Right Thing (1989) 92/100 Very nuanced and balanced handling of race relations and community. So many real viewpoints are presented by a wide cast of fun and flawed characters. There's so much blatant AND subtle racial commentary going on; it's really impressive. Spike Lee never was the best actor... Luckily, even though he's the "main character" he doesn't exactly dominate screen time. Da Mayor is the best, hands down. Thirst (2009) 95/100 Park is still in amazing form. I loved almost everything about this film. His visual composition, music, and sound design are all superb yet again. The main characters are existentially tortured and desperate in their own ways. Religious and moral bargaining, faith, vengeance, redemption, humanity, and sacrifice are all explored with alternating humor, repulsion, and indulgence. Funny, beautiful, suspenseful, deep, violent, and fulfilling. See it. Moon (2009) 86/100 Superb acting. After the first act gets the reveal out of the way, the film gets much more engrossing watching the personal interactions and introspection. To quote theficionado "existential paranoia and Cartesian horror... sanctity of memory" are issues you will be faced with, and not bored by, in Moon. Some really cool shots and GERTY is way too compelling. Very impressive for a debut film. Samurai Fiction (1998) 78/100 Nakano succeeds well with a very basic, done-to-death plot by taking it to fun, quirky new places with the over the top characters, comedic indulgences, selective coloring, and compellingly different music. The narration and ambiguous framing story could definitely go... I want to say this has some Seijun Suzuki influences, in the looseness of it. The Hurt Locker (2009) 89/100 Excellent directing and acting. The tension and suspense in several scenes are thick as hell. Does really well to show how this type of combat situation wears on soldiers' minds. Best Iraq War film hands down, and probably the best war film, period, I've seen in quite a while. This is actually shaping up to be a pretty interesting year, movie-wise.
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Aug 20, 2009 09:34
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Halloween (2007 - d. Rob Zombie) I finally got around to seeing this, the first Rob Zombie flick I've watched all the way through (I caught part of House of 1000 Corpses when it came out, but I was drunk and don't really remember it). Let's get this out of the way first: No, it's nowhere near as good as the original. That would be basically impossible. However, it is a drat sight more clever, scary, and well-crafted than any of the seven crappy Halloween sequels we've gotten over the years, so that's gotta be worth something (right?). A lot of whiny horror fans were complaining before the movie even came out that exploring Michael Myers' origins in a remake would sully the memory of the original. But I'm not sure anything could tarnish it more than the one where Michael Myers fought Busta Rhymes over the internet. The movie's basically divided into three acts: Myers as a child, Myers as an adult, and Myers Haddonfield killing spree. So really, the remake part only takes up the last third. And frankly, although the slasher portion is competently done as far as these things go, the first two parts are far more interesting. In the original, Myers snapped as a child and was instantly beyond hope or help. Zombie replaces that horror with the horror of a disturbed kid gradually losing his grip, even though everyone around him tries everything to help him (Sheri Moon Zombie was way more impressive and sympathetic than I expected as Michael's grieving mother). Malcolm McDowell is a perfect choice for Dr. Loomis, and in its own way, I prefer his performance to Donald Pleasance's in the original (Pleasance is a great bad actor, but McDowell is a great actor, period). Once Michael escapes though, the movie loses a lot of its forward momentum, in large part because we now have a better idea of what to expect. The movie slips further and further into cliche, and it can't match the creepiness of the earlier scenes (although there's one particularly well-executed jump scare at the beginning of the third act that plays off the viewer's knowledge of the original; I don't usually fall for jump scenes, but this one got me good). Tyler Mane does okay as the adult Myers, although he does that slowly-cocking-his-head-to-the-side thing a few times too many (yes, there is an art to portraying a hulking, mute serial killer, an art that Nick Castle pretty much perfected in the original Halloween). The final girl sequence runs a little long too, but the last frames are pretty great. Overall, this was a decent little slasher movie that's honestly better than it had any right to be. 7/10 To Live and Die in L.A. (1985 - d. William Friedkin) I don't really know what to say about this one. Alright, I'll start with this: What the gently caress did William Friedkin see in Wang loving Chung? I can only assume that he was on pretty heroic amounts of cocaine to think getting Wang Chung to score the entirety of his gritty Secret Service vs. Counterfeiters action flick was a good idea. Jesus. That soundtrack takes the movie down at least two pegs. Other than that unfortunate business, it's a pretty mediocre action flick, albeit a very bloody one. William Peterson and Willem Dafoe both give solid, workmanlike performances (in Peterson's case, it's actually probably his best performance, but then again, he's not a very good actor). The plot has its twists and turns and our hero doesn't play by the rules and there's a pretty great car chase and a nice ending and...I dunno, apart from that car chase, it's all really, really boring. All I could think of was that I'd rather be watching The French Connection. Hell, I'd even take an episode of Miami Vice over this. 4/10 This Sporting Life (1963 - d. Lindsay Anderson) I was introduced to the great Lindsay Anderson through his strange, surreal Mick Travis trilogy with Malcolm McDowell. This is his first movie, and a very different one, taking more of a brutal neorealism approach which works perfectly for its story of a working class Rugby player. The narrative timeline is all out of order and nonlinear, which isn't just a stylistic choice here; with all the scenes of the protagonist getting his head beaten in, you get the sense that this is really how he thinks. Richard Harris plays the lead in an utterly fantastic performance, and he's given great support by Rachel Roberts (a truly underrated actress) as his widow landlady. This movie definitely has a serious "British Raging Bull" vibe to it, though obviously over 15 years earlier. Scorsese definitely had to have seen this one (I know he was a fan of the Mick Travis movies), as did Monty Python (the rugby scene in Meaning of Life is about ten times funnier now). It's a sad, depressing, tragic movie, but it's beautifully shot, perfectly acted, powerfully written, and masterfully directed. One of the best films I've seen in a while. 10/10 Eyes Without a Face (1960 - d. Georges Franju) A nice, creepy French horror flick about a brilliant surgeon searching for a...erm, replacement for his daughter's mutilated face. The results are surprisingly graphic for a film shot in 1960 (keep in mind, that's the same year as Psycho), and they're still pretty shocking today. The film is built up in a way where we get the requisite camera trickery to hide the gruesome images from us as in the Universal classics, leaving it up to our imagination. But when we get to the pivotal surgery scene, all of a sudden the camera isn't going anywhere. In fact, it even pulls in closer on the gory action! I don't know if the bait-and-switch was intentional or just a result of censorship restrictions, but it knocked me on my rear end. There's plenty of non-gory creepiness too, mostly coming from the titular daughter, who wears a Michael Myers-esque blank white mask at all times, just one of the film's many memorable images. Pierre Brasseur and Alida Valli are creepy as poo poo as the loving doctor couple, and the whole thing spirals towards a climax that's both shockingly nasty and eerily beautiful (I only have one small nitpick: it's pretty obvious that those dogs in the end are just playing, and not, in fact, savagely devouring their master). Overall, a wonderfully chilling, artsy horror flick. 9/10
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Aug 20, 2009 17:04
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bad movie knight posted:The Prestige; the former is a decent movie but it just pales in comparison to a similarly staged film from the same summer. Wait you liked The Illusionist more? That's odd I thought the illusionist was horrible and in no way as intriguing as the other. I also hated The Watchmen, so yeah FFD I think you were being too nice 
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Aug 20, 2009 17:07
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Dvlos posted:Wait you liked The Illusionist more? That's odd I thought the illusionist was horrible and in no way as intriguing as the other. I also hated The Watchmen, so yeah FFD I think you were being too nice
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Aug 20, 2009 17:21
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Dvlos posted:Wait you liked The Illusionist more? That's odd I thought the illusionist was horrible and in no way as intriguing as the other. I also hated The Watchmen, so yeah FFD I think you were being too nice What's wrong with The Illusionist? I thought it was a brilliant film, especially since it sums up the entire nature of magic (and possibly film itself) better than The Prestige. I liked how the ending explains the entire film since it's exactly in line with the spoiler hunter Paul Giamatti's character becomes. (Although, I still think The Prestige is a good film - just not as enjoyable)
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Aug 20, 2009 17:26
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Egbert Souse posted:What's wrong with The Illusionist? I thought it was a brilliant film, especially since it sums up the entire nature of magic (and possibly film itself) better than The Prestige. I liked how the ending explains the entire film since it's exactly in line with the spoiler hunter Paul Giamatti's character becomes. (Although, I still think The Prestige is a good film - just not as enjoyable)
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Aug 20, 2009 17:27
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bad movie knight posted:I don't remember very specifically what I didn't like about it (to be honest, I've forgotten most everything about the film), just that it felt dull, uninspired and loaded with great actors who were phoning it in. Bleh. Weird, I felt The Prestige was a bit more wooden. A Fistful of Dollars As with many others, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is one of my all-time favorite films. It's perfection. So, I guess it's about time I watched the other two Leone-Eastwood films. This is not quite as thrilling, but it's a fairly good film. First off, this has a lot of awesome setpieces. The whole sequence with Eastwood escaping the jail is inventive. The final gun duel is perfect. But I felt there wasn't much of an interesting plot and some of the violence just went on too long. Did it really need two lengthy scenes of people getting mowed down? I got the idea after the first 50 casualties that these guys are bad. As usual with Leone, his use of the wide frame is magnificent. I can't imagine how anyone could fully enjoy his films in pan & scan because he almost always puts characters in the frame in such a way that a crop would ruin the meaning. Ennio Morricone's score is his usual best, too. I thought it was hilarious that nearly all of the credits were silly English-ized names to hide the fact this was made in Italy. I'm looking forward to seeing For a Few Dollars More and I also have Yojimbo on queue. Also watched more of Jean Painleve's shorts on the Criterion set. I'm enjoying this set way more than I thought. Even his "dry" science films are fun. I liked the one on proportion, showing a man shrinking and walking in the grass. His sole animated film, Bluebeard, is trippy - down to stunning color and clay heads getting chopped off.
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Aug 20, 2009 17:39
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Chasing Ghosts: Following up a lot of hoopla surrounding King of Kong, I decided to watch Chasing Ghosts, hoping for more of the same. The title is a sort of misnomer. It almost implies that the gaming gods of yesteryear are still chasing that fame and recognition of the past glory days. I guess, in a very small part, they do wish that the fleeing fame had remained... any of us would. Granted, most of them are still huge nerds, and oft times creepy as all get out.. see the art collection scene for reference, but the message I got out of it is that they did move on. It was a macho guy's club (as macho as shooting pixels could be), they were the bad boys of gaming. Yeah, they still talk about the good old days, they still meet up and game at times, but mostly they seem to have jobs, and decent (albeit scant) relationships. If anything, their scores are now the one thing they obsess about. Still trash talking after 25 years, they still claim victory over their respective game. None of them are anything more special than the rest of us, except each of them holds the memory of those few brief shining years of fame. Some of them come off as people out of American Movie, but when the fun was over they got real jobs. Cool little doc with some interesting tales to weave. Worth a watch. 4/5 (I exclude Billy Mitchell from this review, he sucks, and none of the above applies to him.) EDITOR'S NOTE: This poster is a deeply bitter, lonely individual.
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Aug 20, 2009 20:26
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Egbert Souse posted:The Scarlet Empress This could describe any von Sternberg/Dietrich collaboration. I've seen The Blue Angel, The Devil Is a Woman, Shanghai Express, and Morocco as well and while the quality of the underlying film varies the images, especially when Dietrich is ons screen, are always fantastic. ClydeUmney posted:Safety Last! Hamlet - 8/10 I really like Hamlet but I'm a little ambivalent about Olivier's alterations. The Oedipal emphasis and a few other more subtle shifts in tone and focus change the story's central themes away from existential and moral crises to insanity and indecision. It's not a huge shift but it's an obvious one and it left me less sympathetic for Hamlet and his predicament, especially since I found Olivier's surprisingly stiff delivery of key speeches unmoving. Nonetheless, it's still a wonderful story and the visuals are magnificent, full of deep focus shots and looming shadows. Also, despite the alterations and the long running time, the pacing is quite fluid, with scenes extended to set the mood but never so long that you become anxious. Key Largo- 9/10 A somewhat different noir film, the vast majority of it taking place in a small hotel and relying heavily on its leads. Thankfully those leads are Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, who give the dialogue some added flair and carry the film wonderfully with a little help from Lionel Barrymore and Lauren Bacall. Combine this with some nice photography and a tight plot with a few surprises and you get a great understated film. There's Always Tomorrow - 8.5/10 I've always viewed Sirk's films as being slightly satirical melodramas and considered the tongue in cheek aspect to be critical to my enjoyment but it's clear he can play the melodrama straight and still make it work. There's still the underlying social critique but it's more subtle and just as effective, presenting a man trapped by social conventions through a plot where the emotional developments are predictable but the actions are not thanks to the fact that the film avoids easy answers. Shoe Shine - 7.5/10 Oh, De Sica, why you gotta be so manipulative? So much of this film is wonderful, the premise, the reasonably good child acting, the social critique, but there's no respect for the audience's intelligence and by the end the message is about as subtle as blow to the head. The story, concerning a couple of Italian shoeshine boys who dream of owning a horse and find themselves in trouble with the law, starts off well but in De Sica's efforts to drive home his messages there are several key plot points that destroy the very realism he tries to create. What's most annoying is that it's unnecessary. Not just because the message is still obvious, but because the same general plot and tragedies could have been done without feeling so forced if De Sica had shown even a modicum of restraint. Mr. Deeds Goes To Town - 8/10 Capra sure can make saccharine messages feel reasonably genuine, and this is no different. Despite a multitude of flaws the film is enjoyable and funny and effectively heartwarming. 3 Women - 8.5/10 A strange, surreal character study. The most intriguing aspect to me was how the characters could switch from being sympathetic to unlikeable and back again just through their interactions with one another. It really made me think about how we perceive and judge people based on a small set of actions and how much a first impression affects our future perceptions. Avanti! - 8/10 On the romance side this is a romantic comedy that follows a whole slew of conventions I don't particularly care for, but what makes it stand out is that it's much more of a comedy than your average romcom. There are a ton of very funny bits, though some are a little dated, and the chemistry between Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills is very good. Salvatore Giuliano - 8/10 I liked this a lot, how could I not with its interesting story and wonderful camerawork, but I wanted to love it and just couldn't. An ambiguous shadowy film about an ambiguous shadowy character, it goes a little too far in paralleling content with presentation. While the general facts aren't hard to follow the details are confusing and there came a point where I gave up trying to understand it all. A large part of the film is centered around piecing together the events of the Portella della Ginestra massacre and while some confusion is understandable, the film shows various versions of events, I found it hard to even understand what some of the versions were and who was saying what, since a lot of characters are only on screen for a few seconds and their roles aren't clear. The Lookout - 7.5/10 A mix of psychological character study and crime film, it's good enough at both to be satisfying but spreads itself too thin to truly excel.
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Aug 20, 2009 21:43
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Kentucky Shark posted:Orphan (2009) 3.5 stars I can't believe that I am actually going to go watch Orphan now just because you guys keep talking about how good it is. fake edit: Netflix does have it yet. Although I now realize it is in theaters and I have been confusing it with that horror flick that came out a few weeks/months ago with the chick who has a twin or something that died and was trying to come back through her. edit: spelling jjack229 fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Aug 21, 2009 |
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Aug 20, 2009 23:56
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jjack229 posted:I can't believe that I am actually going to go watch Orphan now just because you guys keep talking about how good it is. This has been a good year for underrated horror.
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Aug 21, 2009 00:15
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jjack229 posted:I can't believe that I am actually going to go watch Orphan now just because you guys keep talking about how good it is. Orphan is surprisingly good. My only caveats for it: 1) it has child actors/child characters doing things that no healthy sane child ever ought to do, so if that will really offend you then avoid the movie (I normally don't care about things like that, and the movie still made me a little uneasy); 2) if the deepest you are willing to engage a movie is on the level of how predictable/believable the plot is, then you might be disappointed in it. With those in mind, Orphan is one of the most well-directed and well-acted horror/thrillers I've seen in a long time, and it has some really beautiful cinematography and production design too. Oh speaking of good horror films... REC (2007) 3.5 stars Finally got around to seeing this after hearing tons of people around here rave about it. Turns out their praise was mostly well-founded. The fake-documentary style has been done before to be sure, but was done well here. Without that conceit it would probably be an average horror film at best (the plot itself is fairly predictable and the characters do most of the same dumb things we expect of characters in horror movies), but they really make good use of the conceit so that it disguises how by-the-numbers much of it is. The last 20-30 minutes are so intense and frantic that it's easy to overlook the tiny flaws. And drat the last 10 minutes or so creeped me out something fierce.
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Aug 21, 2009 05:47
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State of Play Starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, and Jeff Daniels, State of Play is a thriller based on a scandal that blows up once a young woman is killed and two reporters frantically try to put the pieces together before it's too late. This movie is chock full of cliche and an annoying tell me how to feel score. I had a feeling just from it having Ben Affleck in a leading role that it might be pretty silly, but the decent IMDB score (7.6) and the remaining great cast convinced me that it might actually be a decent thriller. There is no good thriller here though, just a waste of 2 hours. Unless you enjoy bad acting, convenient plot holes, and cheesy "save the newspaper industry, corporations/politicians are the evil" pandering, don't see this movie. I don't even think my mother would enjoy this movie because Russell Crowe is now fat. 4/10
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Aug 21, 2009 08:37
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Michael Clayton- I neither hated this as much as some goons did nor did I love it as much as some critics did. I liked the sound of thriller that goes back to the 70s style of low action scenes, but more suspense and character development, but the problem with this one was that most of Clooney's character changes occur off-screen and the only suspenseful scene in the movie is spoiled by the first 10 minutes of the film showing you what happens. However, there's some nice acting here, it's decently shot, and the plot doesn't contain too much logical fallacy. 7/10 Rob Roy- I didn't like this as much as some others did, either, but the final sword fight was indeed cool. Perhaps it just seems to pale because I watched it after a similar "England is putting the Scots down" movie, Braveheart, but it seemed a little too slowly paced for something that doesn't really contain that many interesting characters or a labyrinth-esque plot. Still, decent enough. 7/10 Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut- I've never seen the original, so I can't compare, but this was surprisingly swift in pace for a 3+ hour movie, full of eye-popping visuals, stunning battles, an awesome cast (finally, Jeremy Irons gets to be in a good movie again), and a "point" that Scott makes without over-stressing it. 9.5/10 True Romance- Very enjoyable, perfect storm of Tony Scott's love for violence and Quentin Tarantino's love for dialog. I think my main disappoint is how Christopher Walken's character has a fantastic introduction, then disappears from the movie. 8.5/10 Legacy- lovely David Hasselhoff movie where everyone seems to be overdubbed in post. Tries to be serious about the topic of genocide while being an action movie, fails. 3/10
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Aug 22, 2009 01:46
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Overnight Documentary about the the rise and steep fall of the director of Boondock Saints, Troy Duffy. Holy crap, the guy had the entire world in his hands, and he crushes it, stomps on the pieces, and then defecates on the powdery remains. Pissing off Harvey Weinstein is a very bad thing. Amazing.. the guy just implodes, and they catch it all on film. You gotta check it out. 5/5
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Aug 22, 2009 01:50
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Overnight's great because it's eight-two minutes of compressed schadenfreude. It's really wonderful, the first third sets him up as this horrible douchebag, swearing at his parents and making an rear end of himself, and then we get the glorious downfall. He's like a reverse Godzilla.
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Aug 22, 2009 02:33
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District 9 - Easily one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time. It really does have everything. The story is constantly moving and remains entertaining throughout, and the special effects are top notch. It also finds the perfect balance of violence. Any more and it would have been too cartoonish to take seriously, any less and it would have felt like it was holding back. ***.5/****
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Aug 22, 2009 03:38
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CaptainHollywood posted:District 9 - Easily one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time. It really does have everything. The story is constantly moving and remains entertaining throughout, and the special effects are top notch. It also finds the perfect balance of violence. Any more and it would have been too cartoonish to take seriously, any less and it would have felt like it was holding back. ***.5/**** If it's as good as you say, what did you deduct half a point for?
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Aug 22, 2009 05:50
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STEVIE B 4EVA posted:If it's as good as you say, what did you deduct half a point for? I just found it a bit weird that in the whole movie, no one on the "good side" died. (aside from a few nameless aliens) The movie has endless "no-names" dying, and several "villains". But this is because there aren't that many characters to root for to begin with. The deaths themselves while "cool" don't have any emotional punch. That's not to say there's no emotion in the movie. Everything revolving around Wickus was great. The movie just lacked good side characters (aside from Christopher). Then again, it really doesn't matter in the long run. I thought it was great regardless.
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Aug 22, 2009 06:16
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Rififi (1955) 3.5 stars A few months ago I saw Le Cercle Rouge for the first time, and now I realize that it took a lot of its cues from Rififi. The dialogue-free heist scene is masterful here, possibly the best of its kind that I've ever seen (surpassing Le Cercle Rouge's heist in my eyes). The plot outside of the heist was pretty standard and predictable, but that's par for the course in this genre. Overall this was a really engrossing and extremely well-executed film.
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Aug 22, 2009 10:05
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Mysterious Skin I was a really big fan of Brick and have been itching to see 500 Days of Summer. After hearing some good reviews on it I gave it a shot. This movie was difficult to watch. Some of the scenes were just more than I wanted to see and there were places I fast forwarded through. The acting was great and the characters felt believable. It's a brutally honest depiction of child molestation and how damaging it can be for everyone involved. It was uncomfortable to watch, especially keeping in mind what these child actors might have known about the scenes they were involved in. As hard as it was for me to continue watching it, I still wanted to see how all the pieces fit together and if the characters ever got any peace, even though I knew I wouldn't like what I was going to see (visually). It's a good movie but one that I will never watch again. 6.5/10
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Aug 22, 2009 15:43
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Amaterasu posted:It was uncomfortable to watch, especially keeping in mind what these child actors might have known about the scenes they were involved in. I don't know if this makes you feel any better, but Gregg Araki purposely filmed the scenes with the kids in such a way that the kids didn't know what the scenes were about. (Their parents knew in advance, of course.) If you watch those scenes again, you will see that the way it's cut bears this out.
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Aug 22, 2009 16:13
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Amaterasu posted:Mysterious Skin Yeah... it's a bit too brutal and the kids involved must have known what was going on. Very sick, especially with child actors involved, so I can't recommend the film to anyone unless I want to come off as a pedo.
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Aug 22, 2009 16:56
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ZenMaster posted:Yeah... it's a bit too brutal and the kids involved must have known what was going on. Very sick, especially with child actors involved, so I can't recommend the film to anyone unless I want to come off as a pedo.  scroll up one post
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Aug 22, 2009 17:02
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ZenMaster posted:Yeah... it's a bit too brutal and the kids involved must have known what was going on. Very sick, especially with child actors involved, so I can't recommend the film to anyone unless I want to come off as a pedo. Even if the child actors were aware of their scenes, you wouldn't be a pedo if you recommended this movie. It doesn't glamorize pedophilia; it may not demonize it to the extent that other films do, as Neil sees the coach as his first love, but it certainly does due diligence in showing the devastating effects it has on their lives. Brian retreats into himself and becomes almost asexual, with a fixation on the paranormal that borders on unhealthy, while Neil becomes a male prostitute who engages in increasingly risky behavior until he's finally raped and beaten within an inch in his life. I don't know what pedophile would get off on seeing the consequences of their behavior; if anything, it's the anti-child porn, completely devoid of anything explicit until it starts focusing on how the molestations affect their lives. What a great film.
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Aug 22, 2009 17:34
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I knew "The Life Before Her Eyes" (2007) received terrible reviews, but I saw it was directed by Vadim Perelman ("House of Sand and Fog"), and I heard that it starred Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood, who are usually decent, and I read about the school-shooting survivor plotline and I wondered "how bad can it be?" The answer, unfortunately, is "one of the ten worst movies I've ever seen." "Life Before Her Eyes" spends much of its running time as a below-average drama, with ridiculous characters, wretched dialogue (teens who talk nothing like teens, or people, for that matter), and an awkward parallel structure (flashbacks to the day of the shooting contrasted with the adult life of one of the survivors, filmed haphazardly for reasons Perelman mistakenly thinks will later be made clear). However, in the final five minutes, it blasts into the stratosphere of retardation, uncorking the most poorly conceived and incompetently executed twist imaginable. I couldn't make any sense of it, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, where I found a synopsis written diary-style by some semi-literate teen. At least it elucidated what happened, though the explanation only made the ending more maddening. I can only recommend "Life Before Her Eyes" to people who want to heckle a laughably bad movie in a genre that doesn't usually lend itself to such amusements. 0.5/5
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Aug 22, 2009 19:22
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Shoot the Piano Player Truffaut's riff on film noir, but new wave style. There's unpredictable plot turns throughout, a great sense of humor, and nifty camera/editing. Charles Aznavour is charming as a local bar's ivory tickler, who's in love with one of the servers who also moonlights as a hooker. His brother, who initally seems to be the story's focus, turns to him for help after a botched robbery. While he refuses to help, he's still flung into problems with some gangsters. There's a lot that goes on (and too much description would spoil the movie), but it's a fun movie. One sequence with Charlie and his girl kidnapped by thugs is the antithesis of what you'd expect. There's also clever homages to Hitchcock (Charlie's escape from the thugs is right out of North by Northwest). Raoul Coutard's cinematography is often natualistic - dim nights on city streets, handheld whip pans, and often frenetic editing make this a good companion to Godard's Breathless. (Also, this has the funniest random cutaway gag I've ever seen in a film. The Family Guy writers could only wish they could be this clever.)
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Aug 22, 2009 19:47
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Summer Interlude (rewatch) - It was quite well-reviewed at the time and Bergman himself was fond of it, but I'm still not too crazy about this one. There's a few interesting things. Gunnar Fischer's photography is wonderful, I believe it's the first instance of the denial of God in a Bergman film, and the beginning and the end are quite good. But everything in the middle is rather pedestrian. The romance just isn't very compelling, except for a few moments. Birger Malmsten (in his 8th Bergman film) was 31, and it's stated that Maj-Britt Nilsson's character is 25. But they act, and are spoken to, as if they were much younger and more inexperienced. It's all a little too teenage-soapy. Rating: 6 Un chant d'amour - As a homosexual who spent most of his life in prison, it's not really surprising that Jean Genet would make a film about homosexual longing in prison (and authoritarian suppression of it). Some of it is really lovely... the ways in which the prisoners communicate is a poetic representation of forbidden love. But a lot of it is kind of silly, or make the subject matter just makes me feel that way. I kept thinking of ways that I would make it better (and I don't just mean editing out all the wang). Rating: 6 The School Blown Away By the Wind - An 8-minute short by Makhmalbaf, about a tiny classroom run out of a tent in the middle of a field. It reminded me an awful lot of the school scene from Gabbeh, and I wondered if maybe they were shot on the same day. I feel like I'm missing some context here, I don't know enough about Iranian schools to understand the significance. Rating: 5 Portrait Werner Herzog - 1986 autobiographical short covering the man and his work. The idea of making a movie about yourself is pretty damned egotistical, but Herzog's always been a little bit full of himself (although deservedly so). The problem is there's not much of interest here, just a couple of those wry Herzog observations. The best stuff is already available in Burden of Dreams. Rating: 5 Blood and Black Lace - This'll probably be my last Bava, at least for a while. I've seen all the ones recommended to me, and a few others besides. This one is probably the closest to my understanding of what giallo is... kind of a whodunit thriller/slasher flick (often with a killer who wears black gloves) with a sense of grand guignol. I thought all the elements were well done, especially the score, and the movie was a bit of fun. But it didn't really push any of my buttons. My favorite is definitely still Black Sunday. Rating: 7 Play Time (rewatch, Blu-Ray) - This has got to be one of the best looking discs I've ever seen. The image is crystal-clear and wholly lifelike, what a pleasure to behold. And the movie grows on me more and more each time I see it, always discovering new things (also, this was the first time I noticed that some of the background extras are dummies or cardboard cut-outs). I've even warmed up to Barbara... I used to think of her as a bland counterpart to Hulot, but now I affectionately look forward to seeing her. What a great film. Rating: 10
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Aug 22, 2009 20:31
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FitFortDanga posted:Play Time (rewatch, Blu-Ray) - This has got to be one of the best looking discs I've ever seen. The image is crystal-clear and wholly lifelike, what a pleasure to behold. And the movie grows on me more and more each time I see it, always discovering new things (also, this was the first time I noticed that some of the background extras are dummies or cardboard cut-outs). I've even warmed up to Barbara... I used to think of her as a bland counterpart to Hulot, but now I affectionately look forward to seeing her. What a great film. Rating: 10 I can probably rent the DVD, but to watch it in HD, the Blu-ray will cost me like $40. Now that I think about it and type that out, I won't buy it on Blu-Ray since I haven't seen any of Tati's stuff yet. So never mind that, but my original question stands!
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Aug 23, 2009 00:11
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Catrel Stevens posted:Would you recommend this as an introduction to Tati/Hulot? An introduction worth the price of the Blu-ray? There isn't any throughline between the stories. The only thing is you wouldn't have as much fun spotting the "fake Hulots".
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Aug 23, 2009 00:35
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Egbert Souse posted:(Also, this has the funniest random cutaway gag I've ever seen in a film. The Family Guy writers could only wish they could be this clever.) I know exactly the shot you're talking about, and I totally said almost the exact same thing when I saw the movie. All the funnier for its complete out-of-nowhere nature.
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Aug 23, 2009 02:16
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EDIT: Sorry for the double post. Did not even look to see who was before me. Duck You Sucker! One of Sergio Leone's more overlooked films, Duck, You Sucker (a.k.a. A Fistful of Dynamite) is probably my least favorite Leone to date, but that's less because it's bad and more because the others are so great. Sucker is mainly the tale of Juan Miranda, a Mexican bandit who finds himself getting involved with the Mexican revolution against his will, largely due to his relationship with John Mallory, a former IRA member. The result is easily Leone's funniest film, with Rod Steiger's Miranda a profane, low-class reluctant hero who's more interested in making money than any causes. Fascinatingly, while most films would push this sort of character into accepting ideals and becoming a better person, Sucker all but endorses Miranda's viewpoint. In one of the film's most telling sequences, Miranda says to Mallory: quote:The people who read the books go to the people who can't read the books, the poor people, and say, "We have to have a change." So, the poor people make the change, ah? And then, the people who read the books, they all sit around the big polished tables, and they talk and talk and talk and eat and eat and eat, eh? But what has happened to the poor people? They're dead!
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Aug 23, 2009 03:22
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STEVIE B 4EVA posted:I don't know if this makes you feel any better, but Gregg Araki purposely filmed the scenes with the kids in such a way that the kids didn't know what the scenes were about. (Their parents knew in advance, of course.) If you watch those scenes again, you will see that the way it's cut bears this out. I assumed they probably did it to some extent. They were never in the same frame when something serious was happening with the coach. But even then just knowing these kids were being told to say or do certain things like when the younger child is keeping the other kid's mother from tattling on him about the fireworks makes it really disturbing in context. One day they'll probably watch that film as a whole and god knows what they'll think of the whole experience in retrospect.
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Aug 23, 2009 03:32
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Mr. Hulot's Holiday is the best to start off with on Tati. Not quite as expansive as Mon Oncle or Playtime, but as funny. Playtime First time I saw this, it was a bootleg of the BFI DVD from my library. While it graciously had the uncut version, the video quality was poor (non-16x9, PAL ghosting). Still, the genius of Tati's epic comedy still shone through. This spin around, the benefits of 1080p allow more of the gags to be appreciated. I don't think any other film becomes funnier with the presentation quality. There is no plot, the dialogue is disposable, and the bulk of the film is bathed in dull gray and blue hues. I was happy to see fleeting splashes of other colors. I think it's hard to describe this sort of film because it's a watching game. As usual with Jacques Tati's films, you have to watch a few times before noticing a gag because he might put ten gags into a shot simultaneously. In one shot during the nightclub "scene" (more of a "half" of the movie), the apparent joke is the terribly chaotic dancing that no one seems to match tempos with. Then I noticed imprints of the gaudy chairs on the backs. There's a lot of gags I never noticed the first time around. Barbara shrinks down a bit when she enters the nightclub when she notices the native Parisians are all wearing black and she's wearing green. Or the obvious telegraphing of the "Slam Your Doors in Golden Silence" gag ending. I never noticed that the CEO slams the door at the end, completely inaudible. This time, I watched with some of my relatives and they laughed at things before I did - while I pulled the opposite. Who needs interactive movies when you have Tati? I'd still like to see this in a theater, but this is prime BluRay material. The uncompressed sound really enhances the obnoxious hums inside the office building, not to mention the nausea-inducing organ music in the expo building.
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Aug 23, 2009 03:50
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Play Time is really fun in a theater (where I first saw it, actually), not only because of the detail when it's projected large but because, like you said, people would notice gags before I did, so in any given scene there'd be scattered laughter, and that's the cue for everyone to quick! find the joke! It's great. Anyways, I just saw the Blu-Ray, and it's definitely a must-have. Finally everything is crystal-clear, the dialogue is much more audible (not that Criterion's recent DVD was particularly bad, these are just the things that Blu-Ray brings to the table with any film), the colors are brighter. It's fabulous, and the film is just as grand. It strikes just the right blend of cynicism and warmth, the latter of which was lost in the nauseatingly downbeat Trafic. For the entire first half we are introduced to this shiny new world of right angles and farting furniture, and Hulot is boxed in and so is the audience, and then in the second half the walls (somewhat literally) come down and the people are people again. Never is the film mean-spirited in its jokes; sure, the restaurant fails, but in the best way possible. And whenever I feel down I know I can turn to the final "carousel" scene for a boost. A desert island film if there ever was one. 10/10
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Aug 23, 2009 05:36
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district 9 (2009) While I really enjoyed the movie, I found many elements of the plot and the setting to have been poorly realized. a few for instances: 1. If D9 is really swimming in alien guns and mech suits that bleed starship fuel, why didn't the main prawn dude extract his goo from that lot instead of hunting around for scraps for twenty years. 2. why didn't the prawns use their guns to steal catfood from the bandits instead of trading? They are frequently seen using violence to get things they want. 3. why didn't the corporation just lobotomize a bunch of prawns and hook up a taser to their arms to get them to fire their weapons? if they had to wait for a hybrid to come along before they could think of that then they are very dumb. nevertheless I really want to see more from this director. I also enjoyed the main character immensely and I hope he gets more roles. 4/5
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Aug 23, 2009 05:47
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The Searchers Finally saw this all the way through, on BD last night. John Wayne and a part-Cherokee kid he rescued years ago spend 5-6 years looking for a girl who was kidnapped by Comanches, and also trying to avenge the deaths of their family. Let it never be said that all westerns glorified revenge, as the price of revenge seems pretty high compared to the reward. I thought it was a bit of a cop-out that they wouldn't commit to exactly what the kidnapped girl's feelings were about her "rescue". Late in the film when they first encounter her, she says the Comanche were "her people" now. But at the end, she seems to welcome her "rescuers". Also, the fight scene at the wedding near the end of the film, while quite funny, seemed out of place within the rest of the film. The BD version looks pretty nice for an old movie. The snow scenes when Wayne and the Cherokee first encounter the US cavalry are very pretty, and reminded me of Doctor Zhivago. 4/5 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button I like the gimmick of a man aging backwards. It was an interesting storytelling device, and as a person who has been thinking alot about aging recently I thought it was fascinating to re-imagine the contours of a man's life in that way. When I found myself in the position of seeing the teenage Button and thinking about his imminent death, and the life experiences he'd already had by that point in the film, it was a surreal moment. But I can't quite pick up on what I'm expected to take from this movie. It was a serviceable love story about generational differences. Button, because of his unique biology, couldn't participate in his own generation's coming of age. He was too "old" to be with his peers when he was young, and he was too "young" to be with them in old age. It strikes me that it would be a terrible existence, completely detached from any shared experience with your natural peer group. Nonetheless, he is briefly able to connect with his lifelong love. At the end of it, I feel like it gave me some interesting thoughts, but I feel like I took the movie and just put it in context with my own thoughts and experiences rather than letting the movie give me its own message. Maybe that's a mark of a great movie that I'll find as I continue to age and have more context and experience in which spare ideas can settle. So I'm not sure whether to mark it down or up for that. BD was quite good; sharp picture, and it gives life to the textures of the nice costuming and sets. Not really demo material, since the film lacks any obvious showpiece shots, but a consistently good-looking picture that handles dark scenes as well as any BD I've watched. 4/5
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Aug 23, 2009 06:18
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Aetilus posted:district 9 (2009) 1. He might not have been able to easily acquire enough weaponry seeing as it was highly sought after, also he did have weapons in his friend's shack and I assumed he had extracted fluid from them. Alternatively, the fluid isn't that big of a component in their weapons (I don't know, I'm kind of reaching with that one.) 2. Because they're pretty gullible and simple and seem to go out of their way to avoid violent confrontations most of the time, it's only when they're pushed or they have the advantage in numbers (which they lack the ability to organize, for the most part) that they seem to get violent. 3. Because they were trying to make the weapons work with humans.
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Aug 23, 2009 08:12
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