A few films recently watched.

  On 4/12/2012 at 2:47 AM, lumpenprol said:

Quick question for those in the know: the whole subgenre of horror films where it turns out "there's a huge conspiracy and all the friendly people we know are in fact part of a sinister cult" - did that start with Rosemary's Baby in 1968? Are there any earlier examples? I tend to like these films, pretty damn creepy. Still haven't seen Wickerman...

It's not particularly scary but for a bit of fun I'd recommend Race with the Devil, Blood on Satan's Claw isn't too bad either.

oslo, august 31st - 8/10

'Invaders from Mars' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045917/ was an early "can't trust your neighbors" film, this novel http://en.wikipedia....Devil_Rides_Out which is also a fun film probably helped start the cult craze along with Lovecraft's Dagon and Cthulhu cults in his writings.

i haven't posted in a long time and feel like doing a long self-indulgent blogger post with about 20 films but i'm lazy and embarrassed so i'll just do a couple of the most notable:

synecdoche, ny - 5/5 - i saw this a long time ago but rewatched recently so i feel gushy. AMAZING. 1st or 2nd favorite film ever, not quite sure. one of the most all-inclusive meditations on the enormity of human drama and suffocating existential angst. how quickly and hazily his life passes. how he completely loses hist first daughter. how he completely forgets his second daughter. the house on fire. so many painfully evocative portrayals of alienation and mortality. flawless.

the tree of life - 5/5 - 1st or 2nd favorite film ever, not quite sure. this is the most complete statement about life that i have seen in film. the god/father metaphor and all that follows from it. the tree on the beach. the practical cosmic effects. the sound recordings and score. the capturing of child performances. everything is amazing. except that one fucking CG dinosaur whose foot overstays its welcome and looks ridiculously fake. i don't hate all of the CG, just that one river scene. i don't even understand the point that's being made there, which makes it all the more unforgivable. but i do forgive it, because everything else is perfect.

actually, just to balance out this meal, a couple more:

thor - 3/5 - such icky flaws, but i still had fun. natalie portman's character was completely disposable and boring and i didn't believe in their romance for a second. i didn't understand loki's motivations, or his motivations seemed ridiculous. thor's asgardian posse was underdeveloped and i didn't know anything about them or care about them at all. chris hemsworth was awesome and charismatic and perfect though, the film's saving grace. his blondified hair looked silly, though.

annie hall - 2/5 - i can see why people love it, but i really disliked it. there were delicious, true things about the relationship, but overall i just didn't give a shit about what happened to them. i don't get woody allen. i think he's too smart for me.

eyes wide shut. I've always been hesitant about seeing this because I keep hearing bad reviews, saying it is one of kubrick's worst efforts. I totally disagree, Fucking mind blowing though, I really loved it. 9/10

Silent Night Deadly Night 4: Initiation Haven't seen any other film from this series. Watched it because the director's name (Brian Yuzna, from "Society") rang a bell. Like I hoped, he managed to sneak some level of auteurship into an otherwise pretty awful witch scenario. Weird dialogue, cool effects, psychosexual undertones. I also like how it's basically a film about a woman who emancipates herself from feminism.

Shame Very disappointing. Hunger was one of the best movies of its year, its only flaw being the symbolic and tremendously stupid ending shot (birds flying up from a tree). Shame is mostly the same kind of cheap teenage "poetry" of that shot from hunger. It's the kind of film I'd imagine Darren Aronofsky wanting to make at the age of 17.

Cinematography was great, and I was starting to get into the film with the long-take of a pissed off Fassebender going jogging at night. But halfway that scene it started to feel like some witty commercial and that ruined it.

Demons by Lamberto Bava Italian zombie flick entirely set inside a movie theatre. I don't know what to think of this! The first twenty minutes, with the film-within-the-film are quite amazing; disorienting and surprisingly scary. But then it suddenly loses all its subtlety, with the blaxploitation guy and later samurai swords and motorcycles and helicopters. It's pretty bad, but this being a film about cinema, it felt intentional.

Beyond The Door Cheap exorcist rip-off. But its strangeness gives it a very redeeming dreamlike mood. There are some really uncanny scenes in here which actually make it a more interesting/rewarding film than the Exorcist itself.

Return of the Living Dead 3 Again, Brian Yuzna. Quite refreshing for a zombie picture. I dig the whole self-mutilation/s&m take on the genre. Almost like something Cronenberg would come up with. Only cheesier and less clinical. and in Yuzna fashion, the ending is completely mental.

An interesting week, movie wise. Four trash horror films and one quality arthouse production. And guess which one turned out to be the worst.

  On 4/13/2012 at 8:03 AM, vodor said:

the tree of life - 5/5 - 1st or 2nd favorite film ever, not quite sure. this is the most complete statement about life that i have seen in film. the god/father metaphor and all that follows from it. the tree on the beach. the practical cosmic effects. the sound recordings and score. the capturing of child performances. everything is amazing. except that one fucking CG dinosaur whose foot overstays its welcome and looks ridiculously fake. i don't hate all of the CG, just that one river scene. i don't even understand the point that's being made there, which makes it all the more unforgivable. but i do forgive it, because everything else is perfect.

 

i do not believe any CG is used in tree of life. it's all models etc right?

from wikip:

  Quote

 

After nearly thirty years away from Hollywood, famed special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull contributed to the visual effects work on The Tree of Life. Malick, a friend of Trumbull, approached him about the effects work and mentioned that he did not like the look of computer-generated imagery. Trumbull asked Malick, "Why not do it the old way? The way we did it in 2001?"^[22]

Working with visual effects supervisor Dan Glass, Trumbull used a variety of materials for the creation of the universe sequence. “We worked with chemicals, paint, fluorescent dyes, smoke, liquids, CO₂, flares, spin dishes, fluid dynamics, lighting and high speed photography to see how effective they might be,” said Trumbull. “It was a free-wheeling opportunity to explore, something that I have found extraordinarily hard to get in the movie business. Terry didn’t have any preconceived ideas of what something should look like. We did things like pour milk through a funnel into a narrow trough and shoot it with a high-speed camera and folded lens, lighting it carefully and using a frame rate that would give the right kind of flow characteristics to look cosmic, galactic, huge and epic.”^[23] The team also included Double Negative in London, under the supervision of Paul Riddle, who handled the astrophysical aspects of the segment. Fluid-based effects were developed by Peter and Chris Parks, who had previously worked on similar effects for The Fountain.^[24]

 

not sure on the dinosaurs though. cannot remember how they looked

favourite film ever? i thought it was ponderous

God Bless America - obama_not_bad.jpg/10

The dinos and quite a bit of things were CGI in The Tree Of Life

super was not a film i enjoyed, exactly, felt too much like a cheap rip of kickass, which was cheap enough to begin with, but goddamnit ellen page does something to my groin the whole time im watching her.

especially when she starts raping people

  On 4/13/2012 at 7:46 PM, messiaen said:

super was not a film i enjoyed, exactly, felt too much like a cheap rip of kickass, which was cheap enough to begin with, but goddamnit ellen page does something to my groin the whole time im watching her.

 

especially when she starts raping people

i recommend you watch Hard Candy (nah i don't really... well, maybe... nah)

naaaaaaaahhhhhh

@tauboo

Love your avatar. Archer ftw.

synecdoche, new york - 8/10

punch drunk love - 7,5/10 doesn't need any explanation, it's a great movie, adam sandler not acting like a turd is pretty ok

god blessa america - 7/10 i don't get the bad reviews complaining about it's bad cinematography, but i would love this thing directed by Oliver Stone

nostalghia - 6,5/10

possession - ok i saw it, twas ok, i think the exagerated theather like acting ruined it a bit for me 6,5/10

citizen kane - 6/10

perfect sense - this movie could have been explored in such an awesome way but instead it turned into hollywood crap, deserves a watching none the less 6/10

the american friend - 6/10

the five obstructions - i'm not sure i followed it correctly but it was pretty interesting 6/10

mission impossible 4 - well, who would have guessed, fun movie 6/10

chopper - 6/10

barton fink - meh pretty annoying 6/10

shame - yes it's a shitty film, well directed, sometimes, but it's one of those who's trying to be shocking but afterall is just some random formatted bullshit 6/10

into the abyss - 5,5/10 there's no point in the asked questions

contraband - if i give it a 5 after rating shame with 6 i'll definetely sound like i'm trolling but i'm not 5/10

lars and the real girl - 5/10

LA confidential - boring trash

lord of the flies 1963 - i'm not the biggest fan of old movies but this one sucked pretty hard 4/10

immortals - lol looks like it was filmed in a theater with bad lightning and then filled with pretty ok sometimes great CGI 4/10

half nelson - 3/10 so unbelievable

intruders - .../10

the moth diaries - 1/10 just for Lily Cole

wow, just wow......Citizen Kane gets a 6 from you??? and the five obstructions? whatever...............

sorry i don't have a major degree in movie rating, my bad

do you guys rate the movies by how muchoyou like them, or how good they are? is there a diference?

i tend to rate them by comparison, i compare the five obstrutions with synedoche and yeah a 6 it's pretty fair... oh, and it's a documentary, maybe i shouldn't even rate them in the same thread cause for me, it doesn't make sense...

i couldnt read the yellow on white text

edit: ok i can but i dont wanna

  On 4/13/2012 at 8:08 PM, tauboo said:

  On 4/13/2012 at 7:46 PM, messiaen said:

super was not a film i enjoyed, exactly, felt too much like a cheap rip of kickass, which was cheap enough to begin with, but goddamnit ellen page does something to my groin the whole time im watching her.

 

especially when she starts raping people

i recommend you watch Hard Candy (nah i don't really... well, maybe... nah)

 

naaaaaaaahhhhhh

 

no dont its awful

  On 4/13/2012 at 7:29 PM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

The dinos and quite a bit of things were CGI in The Tree Of Life

oh well

  On 4/13/2012 at 7:17 PM, Benedict Cumberbatch said:

 

not sure on the dinosaurs though. cannot remember how they looked

 

 

favourite film ever? i thought it was ponderous

the dinos were definitely CG, as were the single celled guys. the cosmic/space stuff was practical effects, though.

i can see why you might find it ponderous, but i enjoyed the slow pace. i found it delightfully atmospheric and savored every frame and sound. i think the deliberate pace is perfect for what it's trying to convey, much like 2001 a space odyssey. but 2001 is fatally flawed, imo! that's a different topic.

Hey awesome, with the new classic WATMM theme, I can read TIMJ's shitty reviews!

i too wish there was a theme that made your reviews unreadable, they make me cringe in the most awful way... i mean, i really like your reviews of movies that you consider bad, i share lots of opinions with you but damn, when you like a movie, you sound like a winy little bitch that juts got an ipod...lol

that was zaphod and he was trolling.

  On 4/13/2012 at 11:12 PM, eugene said:

that was zaphod and he was trolling.

Belly - wtf/10 , is it just me or do they not make movies like they used to? The movie is seriously sloppy in some parts, but highly entertaining and stylized in others. It kind of reminds me of a more sexy good looking version of Blow about black drug dealers mashed up with the visual look of the Cell. I enjoyed it but the story becomes pretty incoherent at certain points.

the plague dogs-8/10

good but the book's better

eXistenZ - /10 - I was grinning with glee the entire time. Was perfect...