Films Recently Watched

  On 12/24/2020 at 3:09 PM, Taupe Beats said:

Samuel Fuller's "The Steel Helmet".

Sam Fuller is so good! White Dog will forever be in my top ten.

Revisited the movie The Falcon and the Snowman. I always felt a feeling of warmth from the introduction of snippets of real life events during the opening. Towards the end of the film during the Interrogation, the images of the falcon flying has me thinking about the artwork from BOC. If anyone seen this 1985 film, perhaps one would get this thought as well. 

  On 12/22/2020 at 12:02 AM, Stickfigger said:

Real talk : Nolan launched Tenet in the middle of a pandemic so he had something to blame for it's terrible performance

  Quote

Ti esrever dna ti pilf, nwod gniht ym tup

Missy Elliott

  On 12/9/2020 at 10:24 PM, iococoi said:

Pusher (1996)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117407/

intense

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i watched the first 2 Pusher films recently, they're way better than any of Refn's later works

Clouds of Sils Maria

Binoche is great, as always (the list of directors she's worked with might be the most impressive I've seen). On that note, there's not a bad performance in this film (I'm not huge on the character Chloe Grace Moretz plays but she did as good as anyone could with the role). There's a lot of ham-fisted takes on generation gaps with the ultimate attempt at a one-sided acceptance unearned. 

Kristen Stewart is also great in this film. There is something so effective with her performance that shows how a relationship that's not romantic at all can have the same tensions and intimacies.

As well, the cloud sequence is as pretty and indulgent as you'd want. Now I'm even more curious about the time-lapsed cloud shot in Herzog's "Heart of Glass".

Just watched Soul. Best Pixar film ever. Really enjoyable and playful take on existentialism. It has that cheesey kids Disney-esque vibe to it, but with more than enough content to satisfies Adults too! Hits all the right notes.  Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the soundtrack too~

thought it was pretty blah. Although the tront music was good

“Blah”? Really? Thought it was ...

Surprising.

Not “surprisingly good” but plain “surprising”. “Surprising” that Pixar/Disney would make a movie that wasn’t in the slightest suitable for kids.

Some sequences I even thought were quite good, such as the English dude in the ship.

+1 did not regret spending time watching this.

As far as the sound track is concerned: they had the good sense to let someone else do the jazzy bits. These were not great but definitely serviceable - and much more important to the movie than the two note illbient pap Trent & Atticus barfed up.

A River Called Titas

If you like the cinematography of Andrei Tarkovsky films, that alone makes any Ritwik Ghatak film worth watching. I am ignorant to the political history this film is a parallel for (Bengal partition) so there were quite a few character motivations that baffled me (I also think this film now holds claim to the meanest mother I've ever seen as well). Will be rewatching this. Great performances across the board, loved the music, and to reiterate, the cinematography is great.

Dry Summer

I fucking loved this movie. Its politics are obvious but they don't beat you over the head with it and still present a thoroughly entertaining story. The Osman character is Bluto from Popeye in the flesh, perfect casting! Even though the stories are different, I keep comparing this to Wages of Fear for the entertainment value. With one major warning:

The Last Stand (2013)

www.imdb.com/title/tt1549920

... had to stop after 7 minutos - unwatchable. can not believe the dir. did 'saw the devil' and 'a bittersweet life'

Why do people like Hamilton?

terminators 1 & 2 b2b , /10.

Watched this last night and loved it.

ok so i watched tenet, i'll just put this in spoilers

Nolan saved cinema. We're saved!

nolan reversed the pandemic

Best new2me viewings from 2020

  On 1/1/2021 at 9:29 AM, prdctvsm said:

terminators 1 & 2 b2b , /10.

watched T2 last night have not seen it in so long. Its the only movie besides McCabe and Mrs. Miller that can still make me cry. Does this mean I am soft?

Checked out the Coen's 2004 remake of The Ladykillers. Really enjoyed this one and not quite sure why it seems written off. Performances were great and art design was on point. Never a wasted moment as far as I can tell.

Going to rewatch this again soon. 

  On 1/1/2021 at 8:40 PM, Alcofribas said:

nolan reversed the pandemic

Just watched Inland Empire for the first time. I was expecting it to be more terrifying. Not as much scary as it was surreal.

I didn't fully understand what was going on, but from what I hear it's one of those films that needs to be viewed repeatedly to be properly digested. Interesting to see Terry Crews make a cameo though.

  On 1/3/2021 at 7:43 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

Checked out the Coen's 2004 remake of The Ladykillers. Really enjoyed this one and not quite sure why it seems written off. Performances were great and art design was on point. Never a wasted moment as far as I can tell.

Going to rewatch this again soon. 

This is interesting. I have not seen it but want to check it out now. I watched Intolerable Cruelty and the Hudsucker Proxy last year and enjoyed them both but when I read the wikipedia page for them it seemed like a lot of critics and people wrote those off as well.

  On 1/3/2021 at 12:17 PM, bupkis said:

This is interesting. I have not seen it but want to check it out now. I watched Intolerable Cruelty and the Hudsucker Proxy last year and enjoyed them both but when I read the wikipedia page for them it seemed like a lot of critics and people wrote those off as well.

Sacrilege (not from you but the critics). The Hudsucker Proxy was one of my favorite films for years after it came out, even though I haven't seen it in quite a while. It's whimsical in the best sense of the word, and it looks gorgeous as well. Wonderful little flick IMHO.

Hudsucker Proxy is one of the Coen's best imho. 

And is anyone genuinely surprised that Tenet is a bad film? Did you not see Inception?

i saw this dingformung post in a different thread:

"FlightClub isn't an anticapitalist/anti-consumerism movie, it just tries to come off as one. In the end it promotes capitalist values: You need an army of stupid workers for the rough work that see you as their authoritarian leader to achieve something (kind of like every corporation), you need creative destruction to keep the machinery working, etc. Tyler Durden isn't a rebel, he is a modern entrepreneur. They should do a remake with Elon Musk playing Elon Musk."

perhaps i'm missing something but isn't the film taking the piss with ideas like this? isn't it about a delusional, schizophrenic guy who is engaged in an ultimately pathetic quest to rebel that is tragically infused with his own adolescent, inane views about society and life? 

fans of this movie obviously think the violence is cool, that tyler durden is bad ass, etc; detractors claim he's toxic, fascistic, etc. imo the movie's own take on him is revealed pretty consistently - i mean he's literally a salesman, this is a totally on the nose trait. there's a useful scene where the two of them get on a bus and jack points out this calvin klein add with some buff shirtless guy and says something like "oh is this how a real man is supposed to look?" and tyler goes "haha self improvement is masturbation." but the whole fucking movie that's exactly what tyler durden looks like, shirtless with an impossibly lean body completely unsuitable for "real" life, training a bunch of men to "improve" their lives.

idk, i think fincher has been pretty consistent in his characterization of masculinity as pathetic and broken. my take on fight club is that it's portrayal of the hyper-macho militancy is definitely ironic. tyler durden isn't making all these corny adbusters observations of the world because that's what fincher thinks is cool - his character is meant to be a juvenile reaction against consumerism that is ultimately just a kind of darker spinoff of mainstream consumerist culture. it's led by a salesman who has the figure of a supermodel. and this is because tyler is not a real person but an incoherent offspring of a pathetic, broken dude's psyche. 

wondering what people's thoughts are on this if anyone cares to share. it's been years since i've seen this movie but i regularly see it being discussed from an un-ironic position and this always surprises me.