Films Recently Watched

Post Tenebras Lux is one of the cooler-looking films I've ever seen. I like Reygadas.

I watched First Reformed since someone in this thread mentioned it being one of the best films of the past 10-20 years. Ehhh... It’s one of those “good... in theory” movies. 

  On 9/30/2020 at 4:51 PM, iococoi said:

The God of Cookery ..hilarious HK fun

On the list! Think i'll just have to work my way through most of Chows and Lee Lik-chi's stuff - Love on Delivery was wonderful.

  On 10/5/2020 at 3:54 PM, Candiru said:

I watched First Reformed since someone in this thread mentioned it being one of the best films of the past 10-20 years. Ehhh... It’s one of those “good... in theory” movies. 

Saw First Reformed (2017) also recently.
I kind of agree with you.
Thought it was okay.
It has some interesting ideas about faith and environmentalism.
I like the feelings of melancholy / feelings of helplessness in the movie very much.
Also the character arc.
However, I think that the later part of the movie doesn't do the premise and concept too much justice.
It derails at a place where it shouldn't. Maybe the metaphor becomes too real? I dunno.
On the other hand, I keep thinking about the movie. Maybe I like it more than I'd like to admit.

On "First Reformed":

This feels like a dream project of sorts for Paul Schrader. He wrote a book once on "Transcendental Cinema" (focusing on Bresson, Dreyer and Ozu) and I think this film was...if not his attempt at replicating this style, was certainly an homage to it (the ending leaves no question). 

I also feel this film doesn't totally work. There's too many references (I counted Bresson, Melville, Bergman and even Antonioni's "Red Desert") that take things all over the place. Ethan Hawke does about as well as one could with the role. There's an interesting thread of an ascetic "purity" of the clergy and its place/marginalization in a modern culture. I think it's the resolution to that (or lack thereof) that I found to be a hinderance.

With that said, the final shot is simultaneously an affirmation of as well as a provocation to Bressonian values that got a chuckle outta me.

  On 10/2/2020 at 2:26 AM, Nebraska said:

this was GREAT. if you don't know (or remember) the story, i suggest going in blind. if you do, i suggest watching it 

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Watched it last night. Dunno how I felt about this? I was kinda waiting for a shocking twist, but it just turned out to be a super tragic story with way too many personal videos posted to Facebook.

  On 10/5/2020 at 7:49 PM, MaartenVC said:

Saw First Reformed (2017) also recently.
I kind of agree with you.
Thought it was okay.
It has some interesting ideas about faith and environmentalism.
I like the feelings of melancholy / feelings of helplessness in the movie very much.
Also the character arc.
However, I think that the later part of the movie doesn't do the premise and concept too much justice.
It derails at a place where it shouldn't. Maybe the metaphor becomes too real? I dunno.
On the other hand, I keep thinking about the movie. Maybe I like it more than I'd like to admit.

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Welp, guess I’ll be a radical eco-terrorist now but pussy out last minute. Why? Because there’s some vague esoteric shit the director needed to get off his chest. Enjoy! 

Paul Schraeder is definitely hit/miss for me but I loved First Reformed. What I liked about it was seeing Ethan Hawke wrestle with some big ideas that you would never expect him to wrestle with in real life. I thought his performance was excellent, too. I liked the tone, the look and the pace of the movie a lot. I also liked (however flawed) that the movie was voicing an overall impressionistic feeling of our current culture, exploring the conflict that arises when reality doesn’t exactly match up where religion, capitalism and humanity intersect. 

Let's Scare Jessica to Death

Wow, I didn't know cocaine could make films but this one was high as fuck. The lead actress's face is so puffy and she's got the permagiggles throughout most of the film. Everyone is breath yelling their lines bc they snorted too many. It wasn't scary, let alone to death? Worst fake lute playing ever. Thanks Criterion for suggesting this. Definitely one of the shittiest so bad it's good grindhouse films I've ever seen. 2/10

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. (Is that what it's called?) The new/last Tarantino film. Crap. Looked nice. The scene where they are watching DiCaprio on the telly was good. 2 hrs of nothing to set up the moronic and obvious finale. Total waste of everybody's time.

Blackkklansman. OK sorry Quentin. This was a lot worse than your movie.

Top Gun. Never seen this before. Pretty wholesome stuff. Didn't really know what was going on in the flying bits. Love the Volleyball stuff.  Contemplating watching Cocktail now.

Birds of Passage.  Excellent. 

  On 10/6/2020 at 6:31 PM, Atop said:

Wow, I didn't know cocaine could make films 

Aside from the music being really basic... This was alright 

2019 top 5:

1. Ad Astra (Gray)

2. The Nightingale (Kent)

3. Judy & Punch (Foulkes)

4. The King (Michod)

5. Love, Antosha

Nothing else has stood out as excellent for me really

Jesus fucking Christ the latest Guy Richie film sucks balls. FFFFUuuuuuu!!!!

jess franco's typical 'gorgeously lit' but 'nowhere going' script treatment is given to the ilsa character with some really bizarre choices in character development eg. lina romay's character goes from prisoner to domme. not an official ilsa film but i suppose it's typical of these clones

the devil all the time was dope

  On 10/10/2020 at 12:40 AM, Ivan Ooze said:

the devil all the time was dope

Oh another one by António Campos... I like his movies... Have you seen Simon Killer? Give it a shot... I'll watch this one as soon as I can, looks promising... 

  On 10/10/2020 at 6:18 AM, Tim_J said:

Oh another one by António Campos... I like his movies... Have you seen Simon Killer? Give it a shot... I'll watch this one as soon as I can, looks promising... 

it's realy good and it's on netflix. i havn't watched any movies of this dude, thanks for the recommandation!

wow, this was pretty nutty. even for a paul morrissey film. 

udo kier out of ten

  On 10/6/2020 at 6:59 PM, perunamuusi said:

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. (Is that what it's called?) The new/last Tarantino film. Crap. Looked nice. The scene where they are watching DiCaprio on the telly was good. 2 hrs of nothing to set up the moronic and obvious finale. Total waste of everybody's time.

 

I really recommend watching this.  

watched the new netflix david attenborough doc. it's a must watch. 

  On 10/11/2020 at 9:58 AM, ignatius said:

watched the new netflix david attenborough doc. it's a must watch. 

 

 

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Yeah, me too. Interesting mixture of devastating facts and steadfast optimism, but I'm not sure I agree with his positive outlook in the end.

  On 10/10/2020 at 4:23 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

it's realy good and it's on netflix. i havn't watched any movies of this dude, thanks for the recommandation!

I've only seen his film "Christine". Rebecca Hall and great musical selections are about the only redeeming qualities of this film for me.

Ironically my issues with the film somewhat align to the documentary "Kate Plays Christine" but I loathe that doc as well. 

The former takes far too many liberties to explain an unknown. The latter seems purpose-built to moralize about how awful it is to take such liberties. At least the former has an excellent lead. The latter is a low-worth thought-experiment.

  On 10/11/2020 at 12:06 PM, IDEM said:

Yeah, me too. Interesting mixture of devastating facts and steadfast optimism, but I'm not sure I agree with his positive outlook in the end.

that was my thought.. it's hard to find the optimism. he had to provide a path forward though or it would've just been a horror movie. i think the human race is difficult to move in that direction w/o massive changes in leadership and education. a lot of people just don't get it or don't care. 

i also watched "Kiss the Ground" on netflix recently which is a few years old doc about top soil and how important it is to trapping carbon and how it's being ruined by modern farming techniques. It's worth watching. some good info in there. It's a bit "hollywood hippie" at times but overall has good science and is one of those things that fits in to the "we should do this to fix things" plan of attenborough.  getting people to move to a plant based diet (or lab grown meats) and to stop having a ton of kids is a big ask for a lot of people even if it's the right thing to do. 

part of me was thinking "well, i'm glad i don't have kids and will be dead before all this shit peaks" and feeling really sorry for all the young people and anyone just being born. 

this film is like the 2nd part of this; basically recycling the same sets and (most) of the same actors. a very tawdry take on the dracula story with lots of low brow horrorerotica liberties taken.