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Post by cheesecake on Jul 15, 2020 0:05:45 GMT
Relic (2020). Dug the shit out of this. The sound design was next level and this had atmosphere for days. Definitely on board for whatever Natalie Erika James makes next. What are your thoughts regarding category placements? There's shift of focus but I lean towards Mortimer and Heathcote lead, Nevin supporting. I guess I could see a case for all three as leads though. What about you? And did you like it?
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Post by cheesecake on Jul 15, 2020 0:08:44 GMT
What the hell does this even mean? I dunno stephen - maybe just quote the part of my post that covers that more (below in bold), how long have we known each other now - you know the way I post for Godsakes - it is stream of consciousness - it never has to makes literal sense pal that's my whole Raison d'être! ........the last half hour of this movie is "me and mommy and grandma" have a big girl hug......it's about as scary as watching your mom brush her mom's hair while talking about baking - when what this movie needs is a distinctly masculine POV that is missing almost entirely from every aspect of it (just 2 male characters, one a benign one, and the other a benign one who has Down's Syndrome also)......... this film has a sensibility that is utterly at odds with the genre it's working in.......and I didn't find it refreshing or interesting, I found absurd. I have never seen a more "gentle horror film" which is somewhat like "non-alcoholic beer" on my "Why??" list....... Really hated it ....and I suspect I'll be one of the few........92% on RT but 48% audience score.......closer to the latter........ One third atmospheric setup, one third tantalizing twists and one third abysmal "symbolic" garbage about the nature of aging, adulthood and motherhood, the circle of life and many other you know distinctly non-horrific things. Wastes a lot of good stuff early on......that could have easily been resolved by having an actual ending.Why does it need a masculine POV? I found the lack of that incredibly refreshing.
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Post by cheesecake on Jul 15, 2020 0:09:28 GMT
The Watermelon Woman (1996). This is such a fascinating blend of fact and fiction and makes for a hell of a debut from Cheryl Dunye. Tackles a lot in a short running time and is very funny and insightful throughout.
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Post by mhynson27 on Jul 15, 2020 2:19:04 GMT
What are your thoughts regarding category placements? There's shift of focus but I lean towards Mortimer and Heathcote lead, Nevin supporting. I guess I could see a case for all three as leads though. What about you? And did you like it? Yeah, that's what I was leaning towards too. Honestly, was fairly disappointed by it. One thing I will say is that Mortimer did an amazing job with the Aussie accent.
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Post by mhynson27 on Jul 15, 2020 9:26:14 GMT
Almost Famous (re-watch)
I still think Fugit is the MVP.
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Post by Pavan on Jul 15, 2020 14:05:15 GMT
The Red Shoes (1948)-
A young ballerina who's only ambition in life is to dance gets caught up between unexpected things. Choosing between art and personal life is a difficult thing and it is well depicted. My only gripe is the over the top ending that sort of came at me rather swiftly. While it made sense plot wise, i'm afraid Powell & Pressburger didn't get the desired effect. At least the ending didn't work for me. The rest of it is pretty darn good. Beautifully shot in technicolor with great camera and optical effects for it's time. The ballet sequence with it's wonderful choreography was a treat to watch- 8/10
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 15, 2020 17:51:33 GMT
Mr. Jones (2019) 7/10 (maybe a tad higher)Way too long (140 minutes) from Agnieszka Holland that lacks her coherent eye for drama but has some of amazing passages - that indicts Stalin, the Communists and the agriculture program that of course played out with horrific results. Peter Sarsgaard as the reporter dupe - the villain of the piece - sorry the Pulitzer Prize winning villain of the piece - is quite strong. This could have been a masterpiece and its best sequences sort of suggest what Holland had in mind ........but it falls short of that and short of Holland's best work........but still an important movie and worth a watch.
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Post by Pavan on Jul 15, 2020 20:06:36 GMT
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)-
A young woman who enters a wealthy man's household as his fourth wife, gets caught in it's customs and conflicts. Gong Li's character is pretty special here with it's three dimensional nature that's carefully written and executed. She gave an equally understated and memorable performance. I loved that we don't get a clear look at the master, reducing him to just a man who treats woman as robes he wears and discards and nothing much of value.
The film is also easy on eyes with it's splendid costumes, red lanterns and symmetrical framing. Zhang's masterful direction is full of visual cues that carries the movie forward and says things without having to utter a word- 8.5/10
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 16, 2020 11:17:19 GMT
The Calm (1976) rewatch 7.5/10One of those pre-Camera Buff early Kieslowski movies where he worked out his style and refined his artistic sensiblities. This is only 70 minutes long and it functions as a set-up for stuff he'd deep dive into later - and his career is as great as anyone's ever - love, community, a living wage, corruption and irony functioning side by side and within each other in waves. Jerzy Stuhr a Kieslowski regular stars here and without him you may not fully recognize this as Kieslowski. In these early films you feel an awful lot at stake already and a lot less beautifully than his later bravura style - close ups here feel agonizingly all too real.
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 16, 2020 19:28:36 GMT
The Rack (1956) - 6.5-7/10. "Most rumors crawl, this one flew." This is a strong Rod Serling idea with emotional cross-currents dealing with guilt, understanding (lack thereof), fatherhood, the service. Except for Walter Pidgeon as the father whose perf feels pushed out, this is well-acted by all and especially Newman when he takes the stand.
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Javi
Badass
Posts: 1,532
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Post by Javi on Jul 16, 2020 20:23:32 GMT
Children of Paradise (1945) - Can't believe I'd put this off for so long. If not the best, the most French film ever made? (Made during the Occupation with a sensibility that's like an affront to the Germans). Might be described as a tragic farce, though that doesn't begin to describe its intricacies and many pleasures. Artforms within artforms—breathes theatre, music, literature, acting. Shows how life, rather than imitating art, catches it off guard. And it poses a question: by what right does a culture separate tragedy from farce? Spiritual, romantic love—in the form of sublime Jean-Louis Barrault—turns out to be no more elevated than vulgar, "common" love... and considerably more cruel. Love, not death, is the leveller that reduces everyone to fools. And Arletty's performance as the courtesan with the world at her feet ensures we're happy, willing fools. Penned by Jacques Prévert, a contender for the greatest screenplay ever written if you ask me.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 16, 2020 21:20:25 GMT
Any fans of this? Decoy (1946) - ~7/10 Preposterous.......nasty ........cheap-ish noir BUT ....... with a greeeeeeeeeeeeeat femme fatale turn from Jean Gillie who makes this weirdly fascinating and of note. This is less than 80 minutes which is insane when you know the plot - just know it involves many implausibilities one of which is that you could involve this many people in under 80 minutes. This plot is utterly weird for noir too and the performance from Gillie is one of the great "what a bitch!" turns in movies I think I've ever seen and I never saw it until today - it got recommended to me from my movie club - finally they recommended something worth seeing
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Post by Viced on Jul 16, 2020 21:55:27 GMT
On paper, this could have been incredible as both a Vietnam allegory and a look at the history of racism in America... but in execution, it leaves a lot to be desired. The group of racist scumbags aren't even interesting... and their "maybe we shouldn't even be doing this" moments just come off phony. Bronson's Chato has like 5 lines and we don't even see his reaction to some major plot points. Jack Palance's character (who puts on his old Confederate uniform to hunt the half-Apache) was unique enough to maybe have turned this into a good movie... if the direction of his character actually went somewhere interesting instead of strangely remaining enigmatic. Disappointing... dry... but kind of fascinating I guess.
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Post by JangoB on Jul 16, 2020 23:45:15 GMT
Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire which was a total hoot! Although many consider him to be wooden, I gotta say that I love Gary Cooper and this movie is yet another example of why. He just had this heartwarming charm to him which I find endlessly enjoyable. And Barbara Stanwyck once again proves that she was and always will be one of the very greatest actresses of all time. And so utterly sexy too.
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Post by Christ_Ian_Bale on Jul 17, 2020 10:12:55 GMT
First rewatch of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood since awards season ended. As I suspected, it's still flawless. Makes me want to go back and revisit its absolute shit show of a thread.
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Post by Miles Morales on Jul 17, 2020 12:23:34 GMT
Pulp Fiction - 10/10
Took me way too long to get to it, but I finally watched it today and it was excellent. Inglourious Basterds still better though.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 17, 2020 17:36:35 GMT
We Are Little Zombies (2020) ~7/10 (maybe a bit less) Interesting film about coping with loss - this has some of the same power of Ponette in a completely different way - zany, colorful and vivid it looks like a kids film and covers how kids deal with loss, grieving and misrepresentation. Some of this is sort of great ..........but it's at least 30 minutes too long at 2 hours (wtf) and is so energetic it actually wears you out.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jul 17, 2020 19:07:41 GMT
I started rewatching Moonlight... *sigh* I don't think I ever really loved it. I think I mostly loved the idea of it. There was something even back in 2016 holding me back from loving it and I'm more clear-eyed about that than ever. I only watched the first section before just putting it down but the criticisms I've felt over the years all kept flooding back in force. Chiron ("Little") has no personality. The mother character (who's supposed to be the story's autobiographical element) feels horribly contrived and the performance never feels authentic or lived-in for a damn second. Not a goddamn second. She feels like a prop in this narrative, functioning in the script as a neglectful mother and as a handy signifier of Juan's internal conflict but Harris never manages to find depth in these situations or finds a way to carve out an idea of this damaged woman in between operating at these extremes. Juan is the most interesting character to me and I remember back in 2016 being disappointed when he exited the narrative.
And that's as far as I got. It's not a bad movie by any stretch, I think it's actually pretty good, but I just didn't feel like finishing it yesterday. It just feels like a bummer, thinking you love a movie but then realizing that you never really did. 2016 is a weird year for second takes. Manchester and Silence didn't hold up so great on second viewings, and I don't think I love La La Land anymore either, but I'm gonna see and find out...
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 17, 2020 19:31:11 GMT
The Shout (1978) rewatch 7.5/10. Jerzy Skolimowski’s mystic mystery-horror is deeply fascinated with the force of objects - ordinary things like rocks and belt buckles become supernatural and soul-sucking here - and Jerzy uses a range of techniques to unsettle small moments, with Roeg-quick editing (a flash cut during a shake of a t shirt to inflect a feel of violence) and a magnification of sounds, which is literally John Hurt’s job in this movie, blowing out the sound of marbles, cigarettes, etc, for some jacked sonic potential. Alan Bates is the disruptive stranger - a favorite trope of mine (don’t forget Jerzy cowrote Knife in the Water) - who is telling t/his story (forgiving hyperbole, he admits) to Tim Curry during a cricket match between doctors and patients at a mental hospital. That we can’t tell the two apart is a neat wink from Jerzy who’s interested in this confusion of the British quaint and has always been interested in exiles, surreally detailed social edges, moral pauses, etc. But here the inexplicable, the religious/cultural undertones, and Bates’ wickedly terrific perf, give this a darker whole, a terrifying lingering pull.
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Post by Pavan on Jul 17, 2020 20:11:01 GMT
Paris, Texas (1984)-
Takes sweet time to get into things and even got me wondered where this was going but an emotionally charged later half where the film's soul lies, beautifully complements the mundane first half, together rounding up for a bittersweet and powerful ending. I like the way the last conversation was shot- 7.5/10
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Post by Pavan on Jul 18, 2020 16:00:51 GMT
The Killing Fields (1984)-
A friendship that survived the Cambodian civil war and subsequent genocide. A very powerful subject. Well shot but there's some room for improvement in the direction department. Cast did a great job especially Haing S. Ngor who gave one of cinema's most memorable performances- 8/10
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 18, 2020 16:24:20 GMT
Path to War (2002) - 6 or 7/10, long-winded HBO pic but very solidly acted by Michael Gambon, Alec Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, and a few supporting players Bruce McGill and a cleverly casted Philip Baker Hall. Gambon as LBJ says at one point " Shit, it's a hot one alright." But he isn't talking about the weather. This is a Vietnam movie, mainly about the LBJ sweat-out of it, that is discussive and almost completely set in neat rooms, men around tables making decisions and having to make decisions. John Frankenheimer adds some handheld flavor, graining exteriors, an occasional split-diopter to make me happy; he's been shooting behind ears way before Mann made it cool! This would be Frankeinheimer's last movie and fits it'd be for TV since he started out there in a big way; as Coppola's recent book asserts, he was a God of live-tv, making it cinematic and immediate. 14 Emmy noms and 4 wins ain't too shabby.
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Post by Viced on Jul 18, 2020 20:27:02 GMT
I like the idea of a desert noir/neo-western/lost gold hybrid... but this was stunningly dull. If this had one clear protagonist instead of a bunch of boring duds, it might've been a little bit better. Only 78 minutes yet padded with unnecessary flashbacks and weird musical numbers. Already forgot most of the plot tbh.
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Post by Pavan on Jul 18, 2020 21:00:51 GMT
Cabaret (1972)-
An entertaining musical with interesting characters, romance and rising social-political tensions in 1930s Germany. Liza Minnelli's explosive performance is even overwhelming at times. Technically solid film too- 7.5/10
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Post by Miles Morales on Jul 19, 2020 14:09:11 GMT
Fight Club - 10/10
Sorry, can't talk about it.
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