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Brazil
The Enemy Below - Staring Robert Mitchum
Blue Mountain State - The Rise of Thadland.
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The Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino, 2015)
Tarantino continues his decline into irrelevance with this exceedingly long film about people who express their hate for each other in word and deed. As with most Tarantino films, talking leads nowhere, guns solve everything. The story, to the extent that it matters, revolves around a bounty hunter taking a valuable possession to market who seeks refuge from a severe blizzard in a remote 'Haberdashery' which in addition to selling household goods acts as a bar and restaurant. Having collected another bounty hunter on the way, and a man claiming to be the new sheriff of the collective destination -Red Rock, Wyoming (although the film itself was shot in Telluride, Colorado) -these three people and the prize find themselves in the Haberdashery with four strangers. Half way through there is a plot twist which is intended to send this 'drama' spiralling into a new dimension, but is in fact ruined by the voice over -by Tarantino himself- which explains what is happening, presumably because he couldn't work out how to do it as a film. Indeed, Tarantino's trade-mark cross-references to his own and other people's films becomes the weakest part of his work these days. Most of the plot seems to have come from an Australian tv drama called The Rebel, and while there is supposed to be some context in the left-over soldiers from both sides of the Civil War carrying on their private struggle as criminals and bounty hunters, any attempt to link this to contemporary America is feeble, given that profound is the one concept Tarantino does not do. A graduate student in semiotics will point you to the moments when the inhabitants have to nail the door shut from the inside, as if it were their coffin, which is as deep as it gets. We are told only Minnie sits in Minnie's chair, but when she is on set, someone else is sitting in her chair and she doesn't mind, just as we are told she don't allow Mexicans in her 'crib' yet there is one right in front of her. Joe Gage arrived with four others in a stagecoach, yet wears spurs on the heels of his boots...it is just so sloppy. Or it could be that this is a film about 'brotherly love' taking that as a reference to ties of blood, gangs, the 'hood'...let's just say that I can't be the only person not waiting for the next chapter in the career of this gun-crazy hack.
Mostly agree with your take on The Hateful Eight, Stavros. Thanks for the review, and welcome back (I haven't seen you for awhile). I'll add that for an action movie where everything is settled with gun-play and violence, there is a lot of talking and story telling. The film is broken into a number of well-defined segments, each one filling in or adding to the history of one or more of the characters. In spite of all the action and violence, the story telling functions to slow down the film. Unfortunately the characters and their stories are 'cartoonish' and uninspired. Most people can find more productive ways to spend three hours and seven minutes.
The Danish Girl
You're brutal like Tarantino but, unlike Tarantino, you get to the heart of things quickly! I agree with your assessment though I still watch his movies if only to see and hear actors I like speaking Tarantino's lingua franca. Yes, it's tired and has been since Pulp Fiction but I do get some joy from seeing Samuel Jackson holler essentially the same caveman script time and again. And I definitely enjoy seeing DiCaprio let loose his inner racist or Jamie Fox kick white ass or Kurt Russell as an aged and more voluble Snake Plisken. With Tarantino it's all about the visceral effect derived from watching certain actors expand on innate characters that they don't get to do in other movies. Once they play their Tarantino role it's difficult to imagine them otherwise. And of course, details are somewhat inconsequential - maybe spurs on Joe Gage's boots were used to keep him steady in the stagecoach!Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
For me, watching the latest Tarantino movie isn't much different than listening to the latest Rolling Stones album: you pretty much know what to expect and will get what you expect with maybe a fatter pig and different colour of lipstick.
Kuroneko
Milk
Chi-raq
Pride And Prejudice Zombies
The success of Reservoir Dogs is due mostly to the script and the editing, and at 99 minutes it is a neatly drawn essay on how gangs fall apart, compared to the 187 minutes of The Hateful Eight and the 165 minutes of Django Unchained. On gang cohesion and collapse, Tarantino as usual pinching ideas and motifs from Triad and Yakuza films, where greed or pride is usually the cause of breakdown. If RD is different from the Asian films of Johnnie To and Takashi Miike, it is that in RD the gang is ad hoc, formed of people that mostly don't know each other, but where the strongest figure in the gang, Nice Guy Eddie is revealed as the weakest in the longer term as he recruited the undercover cop, Mr Orange who is the agent of the gang's destruction.Quote:
Originally Posted by runningdownthatdream
In Pulp Fiction, an alternative explores a more personal version in which the gang survives by losing one of its own -Vincent Vega- and by reconciling with an errant member -the one who kills Vega-, although Butch Coolidge is not formally part of the gang. In PF, the leader of the gang, Marsellus remains in place, but with his sexuality compromised more explicitly than in any other Tarantino film. The quasi-homosexual bond between Marsellus and Butch is at the symbolic level announced with Christopher Walken's speech about the 'watch in the ass' -focusing huge importance on the ass as the centre of gravity for Butch just as it is Marsellus' 'black ass' that gets violated in the sex scene, but where the two become reconciled in their liberation.
While Tarantino's wholesale pinching of or cross-references to his own and other people's films is common knowledge, less discussed is the gay subtext to so many of his films -how in Kill Bill the women who kill replace guns with substitute dicks, albeit ones made of steel (but not Valerian steel). As Tarantino says it in RD 'dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick'. It does seem to interest him. Joe Gage in The Hateful Eight may be a reference to the Joe Gage who directed Gay Porn films in the 1980s, but as this is a long topic to get into, I offer you this link instead-
http://www.out.com/armond-white/2015...-hateful-eight
That was an enjoyable read - thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I mostly watch film for the entertainment value and a lot of the literary nuances escape me. This may have come from my learning to read at age 5 and using books as a means of escape instead of tools for learning. It took awhile for me to absorb the 'moral of the story' when I read. And when I did, I was mostly interested in the historical significance of what was contained in the book - I read the bible not for spiritual guidance but its historicity. The whole religious thing was lost on me! In many ways I watch film in the same way - to escape. Depending on the presentation (combination of the story and cinematography) I may look deeper. I like David Lean and Sergio Leone and Roman Polanski. To me, most American cinema either tries to shock and awe or twist its tongue into foreign shapes trying to look intellectually muscular and profound. But I guess that's the problem of all johnny-come-latelies trying to establish their own identity.
I asked in another thread but you didn't respond: did you watch Tangerine and what did you think about it?
Sorry , I'm a little late to this party but just got around to seeing "The Imitation Game" and find the fast and loose play with historical , biographical and scientific fact distressing Also , although I must admit I enjoyed the movie and am sort of a Cumberbatch fan from the BBC "Sherlock" series , they portrayed completely wrong .Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I found a few interesting links to that effect :
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/...an_turing.html
http://www.turingfilm.com/short-biog...-andrew-hodges#
You can be as late as you like. On the Enigma codes Poland now wants more recognition for its contribution-Quote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...-a6880906.html
Right , the Polish contribution to breaking an earlier 'Enigma' was significant , and the Poles are now upset ,like many others , about the way " the Imitation Game " handled the history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptan..._of_the_Enigma
Unfortunately , those of us who expected 'the real story' got a flaky pastry instead .
We'll have to wait for someone like a Ken Burns to treat this fascinating and complicated story and personality with the respect for the history of science and biography that it deserves.
Kuroneko
Murnau's 'Faust'
Too many people involved in a complex sequence of events out of which to make a feature film, the curse of all fact-based history films. The focus on Alan Turing was in any case part of a separate campaign to rehabilitate his reputation. Hinsley, whom I mentioned in an earlier post, was given the job by Prime Minister James Callaghan, of supervising the Official History of British Intelligence in the Second World, the result being five volumes in the link below. Hinsley's view -and had he lived I would imagine Turing also would have said it - was that Bletchley Park was a community all of whom played their role and elevating one above the other trivialises the endeavour, and that is without adding in external help from Poles, the French, the Americans...Quote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy
I can't imagine a feature film on the origins of the CIA or the National Security Agency would get it all right and be a great film...?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Britis.../dp/0116309334
Nolan's Interstellar for the 2nd time. A brilliant masterpiece!
This week I watched two films by the Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan -Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2012) and Winter Sleep (2014).
Both films are beautifully shot and set mostly in the rural interior of Turkey in the present day. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia concerns the attempt by the police to find the body of a man who has been murdered. Set mostly at night a small convoy directed by the key suspect drives to various locations because he cannot recall precisely where he buried the body. This becomes a metaphor for a country that was founded on violence having also lost its way, while the closing moments in the mortuary where the post-mortem technician complains about having to use out-dated tools adds to the feeling that for all its economic success, remote rural areas remain as poor and neglected as they were when the Republic was founded.
In Winter Sleep, a retired actor and the manager of a hotel built into the rocks at Cappadoccia (the actor playing the role was in the BBC soap opera Eastenders for a few years) where he lives with a young wife and his sister, is revealed to be part of a family indeed, a 'community' of people who live close to each other but are remote from each others feelings to the point where their concerns -mostly about money, property and facilities for local schools- are either ignored or spurned.
Both films are long and very very slow, and stylistically related to Bergman and Tarkovsky. I found them understated and at times quite dull, which may be deliberate. I would only recommend them to people who enjoy these 'meaningful' films unless you have trouble sleeping at night, in which case either one will send you to sleep after at least an hour and a half.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1827487/
Winter Sleep
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2758880/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_1
Y'know you're little too cynical sometimes! While not disagreeing entirely with you about Once Upon A Time in Anatolia, I did rather enjoy it. The silences, the panoramas, the darkness all combined to make it somewhat like a fairytale. But one must be in the mood for alone time to really get into it........shut out the outside, turn off the lights, put on the headphones and just become an observer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Far from being cynical, the problem is that I was not moved by the films, I do understand the landscape and the use of time, but there is a gap or an emptiness in the films which could not be filled -for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by runningdownthatdream
Snow White and the huntsmen
"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" a troubling mix of humor and war depicting the addiction of an embedded journalist to the hazards of her job. It has it moments. I give it 2 1/2 stars (out of four).
Hush, about a deaf writer who lives in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, and then she gets a psycho slasher problem.
Yeah, I was either going to watch that or "The Hallow"...I chose the latter. It had some potential but it was wasted and, at a playing time of 1hr. 32 min...it was about 32 min. too long.Quote:
Originally Posted by BlüeKarma
Did you think Hush was worth it ?...I might still watch that next.
The Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn, 1976)
I came back to to this film after a gap of many years recalling it when I first saw it as a flop even though the promotional material for the film declares that Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson are 'a dynamo combo who set the screen ablaze...'. The film concerns the last days of horse rustlers in an age when modernisation and the rule of law is making their line of work hard and expensive. A local land baron hires a 'regulator' to stamp out rustling, and this pits Brando, as the eccentric regulator, against Nicholson with fatal results. Much comment on the film has claimed Brando spoiled the film, ranging from self-indulgent over-acting to changing the lines, but the real problem is Arthur Penn. In a series of films beginning with Bonnie & Clyde and continuing with Little Big Man, Night Moves, and this film, Penn tried too hard to make deeply meaningful films about people who lose control of their lives, but did not know how long a scene should be and repeatedly failed to dig deep enough to give his movies depth. Too many scenes in this film drag on for no purpose, the dialogue sounds at some points improvised, because it was, at other times stilted and theatrical. This mars a lot of Penn's work, and makes this film tepid when it ought to be hot, sluggish when it should be fast. The final confrontation between Brando and Nicholson is an abrupt moment which suggests there was a major cut in the final edition as there is no real confrontation at all. That Brando prior to it holds a conversation with two horses while waving around some carrots also implies that by this time Penn had lost patience with the 'World's Greatest Screen Actor' and just wanted to end it all as quickly as possible. One wonders what Clint Eastwood in his best western days would have made with this story. The quality of the print on the dvd was not good either and the music inappropriate.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074906/
Talking of westerns, I see there is a new re-make of The Magnificent Seven, itself a re-make of Kurosawa's film Seven Samurai which with Rashomon and Throne of Blood ranks as his best films. The John Sturges western was good but not a patch on the Japanese original, but why do we need yet another version? Answer, we don't. What is next for a remake? Jaws? Citizen Kane? I just don't know how they get the money for it when there is such a lack of decent original films, just franchises and re-makes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/movi...seven-trailer/
.......remakes are needed for one simple reason: revenue. Why bother take a risk on the unknown when you can easily remake a popular original with tweaks to make it relevant to today's audience and likely assure yourself of a flood of money? I would expect every large budget film goes through a process of quantification, focus group studies, assessment for cultural significance, etc before it's greenlighted. Is it coincidence that movies with similar themes seem to appear in bunches? Look at the number of films about artificial intelligence released over the past few years as an example - it's relevant because a lot of influential tech people are involved in the space and making it a reality - e.g: Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Google self-driving cars. The singularity is coming!Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I bet there are people in the film industry dedicated to going through back catalogues and doing assessments on which films could be remade for significant profits. It's shameful but totally in-line with the millennial mindset which is to imitate the things they heard or saw in their youth and apply their pop-culture memes to totally destroy whatever artistic value it originally had.
The remake of Point Break should put a stop to all that! :hide-1:
The Big Short (Adam McKay, 2015)
Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 2015)
I watched these two films back to back on dvd last night. Both are fictionalised documentaries and neither delves deeply into their subject matter. In The Big Short, the events leading up to the financial crisis of 2007-08 are presented through the dynamics of investment bankers who have realised that they are sitting on a mountain of unsustainable debt but can make money if they take a risk and bet the family firm on one colossal bet, rather like those casino films in which the gambler having won a million in 20 bets places the whole lot on one final number. The film is remarkable in providing no political context for an economic environment dominated by cheap mortgages, low interest rates, and an absence of regulation in the private investment banking sector. Four Presidents -Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush are absent from the narrative, as is Congress, yet it was changes to the law that facilitated much of what happened in 2007-08, so on this basis alone the film does not tell 'the whole story' and is anyway produced with the superficial energy of a comic book, and the subject is more important than that.
Spotlight is a tepid, spineless account of the exposure of a sustained culture of child abuse in Boston which took place within the Roman Catholic communities over 40 years (or more). That this was sustained through a cover-up of known incidents within the church becomes the main focus of the Boston Globe reporters investigations even though the film barely touches on the priests themselves, as only one retired priest is ever seen being asked about the abuse. The actual perpetrators and the clergy who covered it up are replaced by a vague 'system' of lawyers and courts where, again, Boston politics is absent, other than as an invisible handmaiden to the Church which, it is implied, could do what it wanted in Boston. I don't know about that, but the absence of politics and a confrontation of the church hierarchy lets this film down, more concerned as it is with its moral fibre. It is also odd that campaigning lawyer Garabedian should present himself to one of the reporters as an outsider being Armenian, when the Boston area has, or used to have one of the largest Armenian communities in the USA.
4/10 for both films, soon to be found in a charity shop near me.
Nice Guys
Same here, really enjoyed it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Absarokah
Over Your Dead Body (Takahi Miike, 2014)
Those of you familiar with Miike's films about what it is that causes families, gangs or crime syndicates to fall apart, or heal, will recognise this film as being close to Audition (1999) but without that film's depth, I almost wrote 'cutting edge' (!). The film suggests a tired Miike producing a moral tale in which infidelity carries with it risks that could be avoided. In this case a play about feudal Japan being filmed fuses with the real lives of the actors. A disappointing film given Miike's previous work.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2916416/
If you enjoy thrillers where the girl gets beat half to death but wins using "Final Girl" power, yeah it's a decent watch.Quote:
Originally Posted by fred41
The Nice Guys. A 70's era, noir detective comedy with impeccable timing. Loosely based on an old pulp novel by Brett Halliday (Davis Dresser). Reminiscent in some respects (but not an attempt to copy), The Great Lebowski or Get Shorty. There are homages to Laural and Hardy, I Spy and probably a lot of other stuff I missed. It's a fun plot and a lot of laughs.
Too bad "Audition" was chilling.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Attachment 939211
Fitzcarraldo (1982) (Before the Millennial ADHD bullshit fucked up cinema)
Not having seen Star Wars since the first film and its sequel at the time, The Empire Strikes Back, and intrigued by the rave reviews for the latest version -The Force Awakens, I decided to go back and watch all seven films in sequence beginning with the first The Phantom Menace. The crucial problem for me is that there is a mis-match between the production values and the story, with writing so bad and acting so atrocious the whole experience is a test of credibility and endurance. We know George Lucas poaches ideas and tropes from Zen Buddhism, the Brothers Grimm and who cares what else but the central dynamic of good people attracted by the dark side has no real moral depth -the same people urged to reject the hate and anger of the dark side even when they have done so have no problem killing hundreds if not thousands of people, and who are these people? We never really know, except there is an 'us and them'. You then have to deal with a hairy ape whose tone of voice or rather, bark never changes, a wheelie bin with added computer that can negotiate stairs and jungle floors no problem, and almost the lowest moment of all in Return of the Jedi when a modern high tech army is defeated by some teddy bears in the woods. And it isn't even satire. Above all this is some of the worst writing and the most wooden and atrocious acting you will ever have the misfortune to see with Haydn Christensen taking irrelevance to a new level of disinterest. At least in The Force Awakens Daisy Ridley makes a good job and lifts the film to a point where you at least don't lurch for the STOP button on the remote. Across seven films there is little to interest an intelligent human, as it is mostly a set of cartoon inflated motion pictures mimicking 1970s space invader video games. There will be at least one more film in this franchise, but one hopes it will be the last.