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First Blood's a classic (imo).Quote:
Originally Posted by Yasmin Lee Fan
They should have followed the book a bit closer, and ended it there.
(And talking of copied, i don't know if it's where 1stB got the idea from, but a year before, A Charles Bronson/Lee Marvin film, Death Hunt, had the 'jump off a cliff, into a tree scene').
Yea! Death Hunt. I've been trying to remember the name of that movie. Thanx for that. Rambo died in the book and that would have ended the franchise before it started, but you're right, the book was better. Stallone says he's gonna make one more with Rambo going against the Mexican drug cartels. Also something about rescuing a girl. He's suppose to die in THIS ONE and end it . If he waits much longer, Rambo will die of old age. LOLQuote:
Originally Posted by Jericho
And after that, there's the reboot, then Ghost of Rambo!Quote:
Originally Posted by Yasmin Lee Fan
Let it die, Sly, let it die!
In at least one way, all science fiction stories, with the exception of specifically dystopian ones, are optimistic. They are a representation of the human race advancing forward without self-immolation. And I agree with Trish that whether intended, or not, Kubrick's 2010 fits this optimistic view, especially with the idea that the moons of Jupiter were ready for habitation. Of course, I admit I might have missed some bit of irony on this count, but then irony sort of loses it's impact if it sails past much of the audience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I too liked Boyle's Sunshine with the exception of the bizarre ending, as you note. One of my very favorites of recent years is the sparse Moon. Both the movie and the main actor, Sam Rockwell, are very underrated.
Sam Rockwell is an excellent actor...bit part or major role, he adds to every movie he's in. When you posted this I had to look into it to see if I could get the film...Quote:
Originally Posted by Odelay
...until I realized I saw it already and liked it. Damn vices!!!
Was gonna watch it again,...but once you know how it ends it's pointless.
"Under The Skin"....Amazon Prime.
Was prepared to hate this film...but I thought it was much, much better than the 2 1/2 stars the viewers so far (at least on Amazon) had given it. Probably most people would disagree with me on this, but I liked the movie.
True, Scarlett Johansson's charisma adds gravitas to this movie. And probably more viewers than it normally would have gotten...but it's an interesting film anyway.
...and it's presented without filling in all the details (I'm not sure if the book this is based on helps...since I didn't read it), but I believe the basic story is pretty straightforward...the toughest part, for me, was trying to understand the the language I (somewhat) share with some of my friends across the Atlantic...:D
To paraphrase Nietzsche, 2001 was a film for everyone and no one. I agree, that Dr. Strangelove is a pessimistic film and that Barry Lyndon is not an exemplar of what is best in humankind. Each of Kubrick’s films explores distinct themes and issues. I think 2001 undeniably holds out the promise of an open, infinite future of possibility for the human animal. I found the film exuberant. It celebrates our capacity to learn, to grow and to overcome our preconceptions of the universe and ourselves. I wouldn’t want to go all Nietzchean and say it was an uber-film, or that it was superior or inferior to say, Sunshine. Just exuberant.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Sunshine is an interesting film. Not for the science (as if a mission of that size could reignite the Sun). What draws us in are the moral dilemmas the two crews face as they are forced to redesign their mission. If memory serves the plot features a zealously religious captain who aborts the mission because of his belief that God wants us to die and a democratic vote to kill a member of the crew. Anarchy breaks out, there’s a lot of killing and by some fluke one of the good guys survives and reignites the Sun in the nick of time. It’s a good film because it explores these moral issues. It’s also exciting and suspenseful up to the end. It’s not exuberant about humankind the way 2001 is. All and all it’s a bit pessimistic by comparison.
I just came home from watching 'FURY" and I'm not sure what I think. I liked it and it was gritty and brutal and 'realistic' but I came away somehow feeling like .....I had just watched ....a movie - albeit an epic one. Aside from the scene with the two German women it would have been easy to just wait for the shooting to start again and see how it ends. I'm on the fence and I read the New Yorker review (got it totally wrong) and would like to hear another opinion.
"Ida"...on amazon
A young Polish nun (a very pretty actress named Agata Trzebuchowska) is forced to visit her only relative - an aunt - before she takes her vows. She learns her parents were Jewish which leads to a journey of discovery...providing enlightenment for one...and closure for the other.
Each frame is artistically filmed in gorgeous black & white. The film is both beautiful and brutal in a minimalistic sense...especially when it comes to dialogue...but you are given just enough.
I really liked this film, but it's style isn't going to be for everyone.
The One I Love Official Trailer #1 (2014) - Elizabeth Moss, Mark Duplass Romantic Comedy HD - YouTube
not bad. if you're looking for something different, give it a shot.
I only watched it because i heard a joke about it, Twilight.
A love story about a young girl torn between necrophilia and bestiality!
I really don't think I'm its target audience!
Never thought of it that way :) .... hmmm .... so it just got me to thinking .... do werewolf penises have a knot (e.g. bulbus glandis) as do other canines? Not that I'm interested ... you know ....sexually ...Quote:
Originally Posted by Jericho
signed
Perplexed
Bulbus Glandis, is that what its called?...One lives and learns!
I am happy...That's going to be my "insult of the day" tomorrow!
Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
If you look again at Kubrick's films you often find that he makes a cinematic statement of futility using the same technique : in Paths of Glory there is a tracking shot taken from behind the head of Dax (Kirk Douglas) as he moves through a trench so that he appears to be walking ahead but not advancing; in 2001: A Space Odyssey Dave Bowman to keep fit runs around the inside of the residential quarter which is a constantly rotating sphere so that he appears to be running on the spot; in The Shining, young Danny drives his toy car on corridors that look identical and even the rhythm of the car is repeated as it crosses the edge of carpet so that his entire ride seems to take him nowhere. The narrative of futility can be found in Full Metal Jacket, where in the first half of the film a foul-mouthed drill-sergeant creates a killing machine which ends his life, but which in the second half of the film is all but wiped out as it struggles to kill a lone sniper who when found appears to be a teenage girl. The cure that is supposed to re-habilitate Alex into society in A Clockwork Orange fails because society itself has not changed, and inflicts on Alex the violence he inflicted on it in the first part of the film.Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
At the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 'the Dawn of Man' sequence, an 'early human' is seen learning how to kill, but is not shown learning how to create, is not shown sharing goods and services, above all, has no religion and is not shown loving anyone, co-operating, or being compassionate -the weapon that is flung into the air becomes the spaceship having leaped over the intervening period of human history to begin a narrative which leads back to the origin of man as a cycle of futility without meaning or purpose. The science that has created space travel has led man back to Earth, not Jupiter; the portal through which the ages pass, the Ka'ba of time, does not change, it is there as a painful, ear-splitting reminder that nothing changes, that we are doomed no matter how far we think we have advanced. In the Odyssey of Homer, Odysseus participates in a war that destroys his fleet, is waylaid for seven years on the way home, and when he returns home to find his wife besieged by suitors thinking him long dead, he slaughters them -a cycle of slaughter that only ends when the gods intervene -but as Kubrick has no god, there is no mercy for man. There is only complete futility.
George Steiner, either in one of his books or in a lecture I recall, began by saying 'Absolute tragedy is very rare', and went on to point out the humour in Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear and that there is also a fool in Othello though the part is usually excised by producers. Completely bleak and hopeless texts Steiner argues, run against the need humans have for at least a chink of light, some element of hope -thus at the end of The Trial, K on the verge of his execution sees a light in the distance and imagines his death being witnessed for the crime that it is. In the bleak films of Bresson there is, nevertheless, the Catholic sensibility that implies death is a release from earthly life into a beautiful eternity. Kubrick is the ultimate pessimist, a man whose films piss on life and offer nothing but dejection.
I’d rather not forward an umbrella view on the entirety of Kubrick’s filmography. Instead I'll take the movies you mentioned singly, or in groups.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket are anti-war films. Of course they are going to feature the horrors and idiocy of war and warn us of what the future could be if we continue the practice.
The Shining is Kubrick’s treatment of the classic haunted-house story. The outdoor labyrinth mirrors the house’s soul-trapping interior to dark effect. So with this cinematographic mood setting technique is Kubrick telling us that all human endeavor is pointless and leads nowhere? Why is Jack (presumably from whom Danny inherited his shine) possessed and unable to escape the haunting maze that leads nowhere, while Danny and his mother get to play the modern day Theseus and Ariadne? Instead of saying life leads nowhere, suppose Kubrick is saying, “Life is a Labyrinth.” That interpretation holds out the hope that those who shine, those who examine their lives and seek the life worth living, might indeed find a path through the maze.
I pretty much agree, at the moment, with your synopsis of the Clockwork Orange. The film can be mapped almost one-to-one onto the book by Anthony Burgess. In the few years over which the story takes place, society hasn’t changed. Is Burgess saying society will never change...can never change; or is Burgess advising that our society should beware of utilizing the sort of techniques this dystopian society tried to use on Alex?
Where Clockwork is filled with humans violating humans, there is none of that in 2001. Who are the “bad guys” in the year 2001? There aren’t any. The most violent scene in the film 2001 is proto-man learning to use tools to commit murder and mayhem. After a prehistoric battle for a watering hole, a bone bludgeon is tossed victoriously into the sky. The camera follows it. As it rotates millennia pass by and it morphs into a space craft. The complexity of human thought, science, philosophy, art and technology are traced in this scene to the first time some “one” got the idea that an object (a bone) can be lifted from its context (source of marrow) and used to serve another function (bludgeon). That bone tool was used to kill tapirs (in the film) for food and to murder other tribes to hoard resources. Certainly nobody is unaware of the double-edged power of tools to do good and ill. Even the written word double edged. Yet in the year 2001 the film depicts a human species that had apparently subdued (for a time) its warlike tendency. We see scientists from different nation-states in friendly (though guarded) conversation. We see corporate types and military types and we sit in on one of their banal meetings to learn that the governments of the day have decided to keep secret the a possible discovery of extraterrestrial contact for fear of the panic that may ensue. So the world Kubrick depicts is not a perfect one. But what Kubrick holds out for us is the possibility of other transformative discoveries. He doesn’t know what those discoveries will be, or even how to point in their direction. How could he? But he does seem to indicate that those discoveries won’t be technological; they won’t be an extension of the tool idea that we’ve been tweaking and playing with ever since the first ape discovered the bone bludgeon. The technological singularity will not be the next big step in the evolution of thought. David Bowman is Kubrick’s Odysseus. This Odysseus doesn't go to war. He does embark on a transformative voyage and he returns to his world transformed. The Earth is his Penelope. This time Odysseus will not be slaughtering his wife’s suitors. But his story promises to transform our understanding of ourselves. Kubrick’s story is the story of that story, which is yet to be lived and told.
I don't like most of the movies by Kubrick that most people like (Clockwork, the Shining, and Full Metal Jacket). But I did enjoy Paths of Glory, which was a pessimistic piece but the pessimism fit well with the overall theme which was that in warfare people prove themselves to be contemptible cowards even while prosecuting cowardice. The more of that martial ethic a general pretends to possess the more hypocritical and self-serving he will tend to be.
I also think that the longer Kubrick's movies got the more dead space they contained in order to compensate for a lack of character development. I found certain moments in quite a few Kubrick movies to be fun to watch and memorable, but most of his movies failed to captivate for their entire duration; they were made in the service of a grand idea but lacked the support of a good narrative. I hate to admit but I watch movies for the story, for the interactions among characters and I found most of his movies to be sterile and slow...The Shining is an exception in that it didn't have much of a message but I thought it was boring as hell and not suspenseful. Very memorable scenes, but dead space and without the elaborate creepiness, not much happening except a man going crazy in a place where others have before him...
I also did like Dr. Strangelove. I realize that it does fall prey to the critique that it is cynical just for the sake of cynicism. But there was a real story there, and I thought humorously outlandish characters. I bought the satire and even think it might have been somewhat prescient (though nothing like that came to pass, it did capture the increasing and accelerated stupidity of the cold war in the years that followed).
I like and follow your analysis. But sometimes an allegory is so subtle or attenuated that it might as well not even exist. The boy escapes, the possessed father isn't able to. Why? Maybe because if he catches Danny he will kill his own child which is even too unpalatable for Kubrick. I find the analysis of the Shining to be more compelling than the movie was. Ebert said that the significance of Nicholson's picture on the wall at the end was to show the evil spirit had been there all along. When I saw the picture on the wall, I said, "what the fuck is this"? I'm sure you're both right in your analyses but for me that kind of processing does not take place while I'm watching a film (other senses are being engaged at the same time and there's a continuing stream of information I have to account for)..in film I think symbolism works well when the symbolism is visual and only one or two clicks away...or in a novel where the idea can be expounded upon.Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
Since you're using "The Shining"as an example, it's worth noting that Stephen King absolutely hated the Kubrick version.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
The book was flawed, but like most of King's works...worked on the reader's empathy using King's ability to make a reader invest in a character and emotionally connect. Kubrick doesn't seem to have this ability...or doesn't care to use it. The movie was cold and the characters overacting too comical to take seriously...as a matter of fact, there wasn't a likable character in the movie.
I didn't like the film...but I did like the book...to an extent.
I can't read a book after seeing a movie, but I do look forward to movies of books I've liked. I can understand King's complaint as the characters didn't have much emotional range other than the obvious emotions of fear and anger.Quote:
Originally Posted by fred41
One book I did read after seeing the movie was Black Dahlia...the movie was so bad it didn't ruin the book for me, which was quite fun, though dark.
Arthur C. Clarke also hated Kubrick's version of 2001. Clarke would've preferred a more literal reading.
I agree that usually the film will ruin the experience of reading a book, and vice versa. The Tolkien books ruined the movies for me and the movie Catch 22 ruined the book (though I believe people when they tell me the book was better). I read Clockwork after I saw the movie and was amazed how close the two experiences were to each other.
I will often read a book after a movie, for possible enlightenment, when I didn't quite understand the film...or there were just too many holes to fill in. I read Clarke's book after the movie...and I suspect many people did when the movie first came out - judging by the slack jawed look on other people's faces after the film was over...lol. Reading it helped a lot.
I believe I read " A Clockwork Orange" after the movie also...but only to see if there was more to it ...and, for me, there wasn't. I did see it in a theater for the first time...but it must've been a special presentation - a midnight show perhaps or a university film festival - because I was only 9 when it came out and I believe I was in my late teens when I first saw it.My friends at the time liked it - but for all the wrong reasons (though probably the same reasons a lot of male teens liked it ). I didn't like it . Again...there was no one to like in the film. I realize that's kind of the point (and it's clearly intentional on Kubrick's part - in all his films)...but it's not the kind of entertainment I prefer in a motion picture.
I'll probably give these films another viewing one of these days to see if my perspective has changed with age.
Being a nerd in school I read the Tolkien books in my early teens. When it comes to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I would have to disagree with you Trish...I think Peter Jackson did an excellent job with the material...so much so that I watched them repeatedly.
...but "The Hobbit" is a different matter altogether...I don't know what the fuck he is doing there. Did he lose his mind? Is he hooked on opium or heroin?
...I don't know, but it's not good.
Oh,...I did like "Full Metal jacket"...again there was no one to really like and the characters were somewhat cartoonish...but here, to me, it worked.
[QUOTE=trish;1550966]I’d rather not forward an umbrella view on the entirety of Kubrick’s filmography. Instead I'll take the movies you mentioned singly, or in groups.
--But my point is that Kubrick repeats himself throughout his oeuvre -this is not uncommon, think of the recurring themes in the films of Ozu and Bresson and you can see how this works. Moreover, as I tried to point out, Kubrick also repeats specific shots which appear to suggest people are simultaneously moving and going nowhere, it happens more than once for it not to be an important motif for Kubrick.
Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket are anti-war films. Of course they are going to feature the horrors and idiocy of war and warn us of what the future could be if we continue the practice.
--The sense of futility is critical to Paths of Glory -not just because that is what the image of the First World War has become since the 1960s -and the European rather than the war elsewhere, eg in Africa and the Middle East- but emphatically in the final scene following the executions and the scene in the cafe when Kirk Douglas leaves, knowing that the slaughter will begin again the following day -no advance for mankind, condemned to destroy itself, as it does in Dr Stangelove.
The Shining is Kubrick’s treatment of the classic haunted-house story. The outdoor labyrinth mirrors the house’s soul-trapping interior to dark effect. So with this cinematographic mood setting technique is Kubrick telling us that all human endeavor is pointless and leads nowhere? Why is Jack (presumably from whom Danny inherited his shine) possessed and unable to escape the haunting maze that leads nowhere, while Danny and his mother get to play the modern day Theseus and Ariadne? Instead of saying life leads nowhere, suppose Kubrick is saying, “Life is a Labyrinth.” That interpretation holds out the hope that those who shine, those who examine their lives and seek the life worth living, might indeed find a path through the maze.
--Again, the last moments of the film in which the photo suggests Jack has always been in the Outlook tends to reinforce the idea that we are condemned to live our lives over and over again without 'correction' as it is put to Jack, in a toilet, obviously -to me 'the shining' itself is window dressing much as David Lynch introduces bizarre and freaky people and scenes into his dross just to divert the attention of the audience (rubbish like Twin Peaks on this basis could have gone on for years)
Where Clockwork is filled with humans violating humans, there is none of that in 2001. Who are the “bad guys” in the year 2001? There aren’t any.
--but the pretend human, HAL, is not a nice guy. Doesn't he kill all the astronauts in deep hibernation?
The most violent scene in the film 2001 is proto-man learning to use tools to commit murder and mayhem. After a prehistoric battle for a watering hole, a bone bludgeon is tossed victoriously into the sky. The camera follows it. As it rotates millennia pass by and it morphs into a space craft. The complexity of human thought, science, philosophy, art and technology are traced in this scene to the first time some “one” got the idea that an object (a bone) can be lifted from its context (source of marrow) and used to serve another function (bludgeon). That bone tool was used to kill tapirs (in the film) for food and to murder other tribes to hoard resources. Certainly nobody is unaware of the double-edged power of tools to do good and ill. Even the written word double edged. Yet in the year 2001 the film depicts a human species that had apparently subdued (for a time) its warlike tendency. We see scientists from different nation-states in friendly (though guarded) conversation. We see corporate types and military types and we sit in on one of their banal meetings to learn that the governments of the day have decided to keep secret the a possible discovery of extraterrestrial contact for fear of the panic that may ensue. So the world Kubrick depicts is not a perfect one. But what Kubrick holds out for us is the possibility of other transformative discoveries. He doesn’t know what those discoveries will be, or even how to point in their direction. How could he? But he does seem to indicate that those discoveries won’t be technological; they won’t be an extension of the tool idea that we’ve been tweaking and playing with ever since the first ape discovered the bone bludgeon. The technological singularity will not be the next big step in the evolution of thought. David Bowman is Kubrick’s Odysseus. This Odysseus doesn't go to war. He does embark on a transformative voyage and he returns to his world transformed. The Earth is his Penelope. This time Odysseus will not be slaughtering his wife’s suitors. But his story promises to transform our understanding of ourselves. Kubrick’s story is the story of that story, which is yet to be lived and told.
--Although this is a persuasive reading of the film, I think you are importing your own ideas into it. It is actually and pointedly irrelevant that mankind has advanced to technological supremacy if the end result of travelling through space and time is to end up where we began, on earth. It is there in the music for a reason, and the key to me is what Kubrick leaves out, particularly human compassion and religion, he just can't deal with it.
What I think is interesting is that you can make a successful film about unlikable people, but in the film overall if there is no alternative option it can be too bleak -hence the point Steiner makes about 'absolute tragedy' being the one that is interesting. Can humans take such emptiness? Now and then, perhaps. There is a lot of sadness in Ozu's films, but also a lot of tenderness and love; there are also acts of compassion in the 'Dollars' films Eastwood made which are mostly about nasty people, so it can be done. But I agree there is something cold in Kubrick's mentality. And it is cold enough right now!Quote:
Originally Posted by fred41
True, but a lot of that depends also, I think, on the strengths of the personalities, moral or not, of the characters in question. A strength that a viewer can often get behind, creating true antiheros, such as in the aforementioned 'Dollars' films.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I don't believe I've ever seen any Ozu films...I will have to give them a look Stavros. Thanks.
Dredd.
Like most sci-fi flicks it depicts a fairly bleak terrestrial landscape. Overcrowded cities, exploding crime rates etc., etc.
But I liked it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVIba2N6MTA
Hi everybody,
Last two i watched were just recently.
I watched this movie.
It's based in North America. They don't say in which year it takes place, but, they do say it's the 74th annual games. Before the games ever started, they say there was an uprising and a war and a rebellion which all led to the games being formed.
Gives me something to think about with all the fema camps and all the New World Order talk.
And...
youtube.com/watch?v=csSZ-YmZwGc
It's pretty scary when the media reports how this movie will be made in to a musical. They really want us getting used to this whole idea.
Babe,
xoxo
The last three I watched: Guardians of the Galaxy (finally got round to seeing it, great fun), Non-stop, and Valhalla Rising, which was really interesting. I'd still like to go see Interstellar.
Of late:
Blade
Zulu
Birdman 2014
The best thing I can say about Birdman is that it was an interesting mash up of things, styles and performances. Beyond that, there was nothing that made this movie into any kind of cohesive narrative. Predictably, a movie about inside Hollywood, inside Broadway, and celebrity is a hit with the critics (93% Rotten Tomatoe rating). But the movie bounces around all 3 themes and a couple of more that after awhile it just seems pretentious.
One of the draws for me in the first place was the concept of Michael Keaton riffing on his own experience playing a comic book character from years ago, but that gets lost quickly in this movie. They did some interesting things around the sets (narrow hallways in a Broadway theatre) with a camera following the characters around in long continuous shots, but just as they lose focus thematically, they also lose focus cinematographically, as they eventually abandon the claustrophobic sets and close camera shooting.
The movie didn't work for me but it seems to have a lot of fans in the industry considering the award nominations it's been receiving.
One last thing... I don't normally go for the skinny look but Emma Stone is simply drop dead gorgeous. The fact that she would pop up every 3rd or 4th scene definitely made the movei more watchable.
The Imitation Game 2014
'tis the season to watch overrated movies... I guess. I gotta believe that Alan Turing's real life story is much more interesting than this Hollywoodized version. Was hoping for more than the conventional plot - picked on nerd saves the world. This is also why I'm sort of reluctant to see The Theory of Everything because I suspect Stephen Hawking's real life bio is more interesting than the way Hollywood depicts it.
By the way, Merry Christmas to all.
Gone Girl, St. Vincent & The Theory of Everything
The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies
Haven't seen it... but curious as to whether it's the "worst" movie.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWhlZr5UcSQ
I watched 2 recent music documentaries on Netflix. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, is about cult 70's Memphis rock band Big Star (fronted by former Box Tops singer Alex Chilton), and their inabilty to achieve success despite releasing great, critically acclaimed albums which became highly influential to many bands that came later on. The Punk Singer is about former Bikini Kill and Le Tigre singer Kathleen Hanna. She was a co-founder of the Riot Grrrl punk movement, and is married to Adam Horovitz from Beastie Boys. The movie also reveals her current battle with a debilitating case of Lyme Disease which sidelined her music career. Both were very good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFAGUbJPXOI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMbLzaVkn2s
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Not as good as the recent film but still worth watching - i couldn't help but like Caesar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpSaTrW4leg
Cary Grant & Sophia Loren - Houseboat
Classic filled with adventure, romance and humor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD3CDrKWNIE
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Just as much fun as the first and I liked the new story Frank Miller wrote for this one. I hope Robert Rodriguez adapts To Hell and Back, too, maybe bookending it with one or a few of Marv's other one-shot stories.
I'm going to watch the latest Planet of the Apes movie later, actually.
Just saw The Interview. Over the top but I thought very funny.