A few films recently watched.

Kumare

Absolutely loved it!

  On 8/29/2012 at 11:36 AM, autopilot said:

so hard to jerk off to eyes wide shut

I just watched Salo and felt the same way.

Taxi Driver 9/10 - until yesterday i'd only seen bits and pieces of this movie, and im really glad i finally took the time to watch it all the way through. My only complaint, and it is extremely minor is that the very final scene of the movie diminishes the impact of that intense showdown. I was hoping the movie would literally fade out into the credits while Deniro was mimicking shooting himself i the head. It makes me wonder if the studio forced Martin Scorsese to put in a happy ending.

Also fun to see a movie as influential as Taxi Driver after watching all the movies it inspired. I was even surprised that parts of Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness seemed to pull from Taxi Driver. So many shitty weightless movies about people having breakdowns have tried to emulate the power of Taxi Driver and failed. Deniro was at the peak of his acting ability when Taxi Driver was made, i don't think i've seen a better performance out of him.

One thing I love about Taxi Driver is that it's shot and structured so subjectively (I haven't seen it for ages, but isn't there a scene where the camera glitches out for half a second while Travis revises the direction of his internal monologue?) that you can chalk the ending up to Travis being delusional and basically the filmic equivalent of an unreliable narrator.

filmic, lol

Yeah I wouldn't say it was a happy ending, very little has changed with De Niro's mental state and I felt it was heavily implied that it was only a matter of time until he plotted another attack.

an incredibly pretentious exercise in filmmaking. i'm not even sure what to make of "what happened" because i lost interest so many times. i also found leonardo di caprio extremely mis-cast (and this is coming from someone that likes him as an actor)

when Scorsese tries to be purposely dark, he usually fails ala Bringing Out the Dead.

drawing flies - what a cool modest little movie. jason lee plays a guy who slowly goes insane, taking his friends with him on a sasquach search while pretending they're just going to his uncle's cabin. it's very minimal, done around shooting mallrats so the cast is reprised, for kevin smiths money. but it's not really like smith's flicks, although it is kinda talky. cool, low-budget b&w movie. nothing groundbreaking or timeless, but fun to watch.

  On 9/1/2012 at 12:51 AM, Nebraska said:

that image is why i still haven't bothered giving that film a go

The Big Lebowski

8/10

That part where The Dude punches the roof of his car while driving made me lol so hard.

  On 9/1/2012 at 12:36 AM, tec said:

Yeah I wouldn't say it was a happy ending, very little has changed with De Niro's mental state and I felt it was heavily implied that it was only a matter of time until he plotted another attack.

true, i guess i literally thought he had died (with that extreme neck wound) but was surprised when he didn't.

I think what also impressed me about the film is how popular it got with so much controversial stuff in it. Watching harvey kartel try to sell Deniro on fucking Jodie Foster with the line 'you know she's 12 years old, she'll make your dick explode' was pretty impressive. I wish more mainstream movies today were able to get away with this stuff without being Cannes pandering psycho sexual thrillers (lars von trier, etc). The MPAA really fucked everything up

agreed 100%...(re MPAA, not Taxi Driver, hehe...thought the end of TD made the whole thing kinda shit)

anyone seen die wand (the wall) yet?

red/liked the book when i was in 6th or 7th grade, but the film?..

..just curious

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1745686/

berberian sound studio

really good highly recommend, for the sheer beauty of the soundscapes and the imagery.

8.5/10

Meet the Feebles.

Very sick and kinda juvenile.Loved it.9/10

beyond the black rainbow

an amazing dream/nightmare straight out of a broken acid trip time machine. all fucked up and awesome.

don't go expecting anything, just enjoy the show.

12/10

paul - pretty cool sci-fi comedy. i laughed. what's the deal with british making overtly atheit films in the us? it's not as bad as the invention of lying but wow. that probably killed so much good reviews in the states.

Snow white and the huntsman - could have found someone better than the twilight chick and it might have been a decent film.

Interview with a hitman - low budget film with Luke goss. Pretty boring story and slow paced lost interest in watching it after an hour.

  On 9/2/2012 at 11:03 PM, chaosmachine said:

beyond the black rainbow

 

an amazing dream/nightmare straight out of a broken acid trip time machine. all fucked up and awesome.

 

don't go expecting anything, just enjoy the show.

 

12/10

I agree in full. it's an awesome experience. amazing music.

i wish i wouldn't have had such extremely high expectations on beyond the black rainbow for months before i saw it, i probably would've enjoyed it more. i still think it was an awesome film, but mostly because of the visuals and the music. mostly style, little substance.

my new strategy for movies is to read as little about them as possible. i don't even like watching trailers.

-----

a.i.

this kinda felt like a bunch of films stuck together. darker than i was expecting. ending is contrived, but still got to me.

sad/10

Think the last film I watched was Black Dynamite, for the fourth or fifth time.

Released in 2009, but looks like it was filmed in the '70s because it was shot on Super 16 film.

It's a spoof on blaxploitation films from the '70s. Michael Jai White plays the main character, Black Dynamite, who is a Vietnam veteran/ex-CIA agent/pimp. There are deliberate inconsistencies throughout the film for entertainment purposes, and memorable lines of dialogue.

One of the best scenes in the movie is when Black Dynamite confronts Richard Nixon (played by James McManus). I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen the movie yet, but it's pretty hilarious.

My rating: 9/10

There is also an animated series based on the film which is currently aired.

Yeah I like AI quite a bit, and on second viewing (recently) I thought the ending actually improved and didn't seem so saccharine (though it was still contrived, the whole "can only live for a day" part, or whatever). But I really liked the future-AI beings carving him out of the ice of a new ice age.

The part of that film that I hate is actually the "flesh fair" carnival. It's just really loud and annoying and dumb (plus the "weird for the sake of it" moon part). I dock the film points for that, and for the antiseptically, decidedly non-sexy Sin City part of the film. It's like Kubrick wanted to add this grimy, sex-bot-addicted inner-city scene, and then Spielberg came in with his typical asexual tendencies and filmed it all too clean and too clear - like Lucas did when trying to imitate Blade Runner in the Star Wars prequels. All color and movement but not believable or real feeling. I did like Gigolo Joe or whatev, but that whole segment didn't hit the right notes.

Still like the film, reminds me of a golden age sci-fi novel, pretty pure in that regard.

  On 9/2/2012 at 9:49 PM, rixxx said:

berberian sound studio

 

really good highly recommend, for the sheer beauty of the soundscapes and the imagery.

 

8.5/10

this sounds fantastic! going to have to keep an eye out for it.