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Post by pacinoyes on May 9, 2023 9:19:56 GMT
Elizabeth Olsen & John Hawkes in Martha Marcy May Marlene (rewatch)
A couple of great flipside performances by Olsen as a woman who doesn't know herself maybe and Hawkes as a cult leader who knows himself and maybe her all too well Hawkes generates a Rock star level magnetism here and a lot of this film's horrific (and subtle) elements come from Olsen's demeanor, presentation and especially her haunted eyes..........those eyes are used strikingly in the movie poster too even. In the film they convey a fascinating undertow: what her eyes have seen and what she can't unsee and by extension, unfeel...... In fact Olsen gives a performance that mirrors the structure - almost threatening to jump out of her skin even in her quietest scenes - she matches the movie's flashbacks - unsettled and off-balance.....convincingly zombie-like and shattering in a way that seems comprehensive and true, not contradictory and random. Hawkes meanwhile is genuinely creepy and scary here - not just movie creepy and scary .........this is the kind of performance that Robert Duvall could have done and not many others could do as well really........
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Post by stabcaesar on May 9, 2023 13:42:23 GMT
Even in a dated movie and with a subpar screenplay, she shines.
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on May 9, 2023 21:20:36 GMT
Jessica Chastain in Miss Julie (rewatch)Been binging a bunch of her performances before seeing A Doll’s House later this month, and this one is firmly in her top 2 for me... second only to Salomé (which is actually quite similar to this one in a lot of ways). She’s a force of nature here - raw and physically exhausting in a complex role where she takes a real risk with go-for-broke theatrics. What makes it work though is how you’re not always sure how much her theatrics are performative on the character’s part to get her way and manipulate the situation to her advantage and regain power. But she is both manipulative and manipulat able as someone who is so consumed and trapped by unfulfilled desire with no outlet that she looks like she can barely contain herself and knows that she can’t take it anymore, trying to hide her internal agony and the fact that she’s unraveling inside... before giving way to an explosion of unhinged madness and delusion. Over the course of the film, she plays an extraordinarily wide range of emotions: she’s initially haughty, condescending (chuckling with contempt, with mocking dismissiveness), entitled, mischievous, teasing/seductive, and later wounded, shaken, self-loathing, desperate and pleading, scarily venomous, and eventually quietly withdrawing into herself, exhausted, lost, and trance-like... and overall she’s able to expertly navigate the character’s contradictions – conveying simultaneous attraction and repulsion, participating in a kind of self-deception of convincing herself that she’s in love so that she can accept her own attraction to a man of lower class than her. Her performance is made even more affecting by the way her voice is audibly hoarse by the end. This is a big performance, but I also love it for its details too: like the way her fear gives way to excitement at the prospect of leaving with Jean, but shifts back to fear again in the same scene, her anxious movements suggesting torturous horniness like when she’s rubbing the table with her hands and smiling impatiently, her smile fading and face subtly twitching when her past engagement is mentioned, looking away quickly as if not wanting to think about it, the way she reacts to being called a whore as if she’s punched in the gut... In an interview with director Liv Ullmann, she compares Miss Julie to Nora in A Doll’s House, suggesting that the characters go on similar journeys but make different decisions at the end. Very exciting to see Chastain playing both these roles, which make for interesting companion pieces...
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Post by pacinoyes on May 10, 2023 0:27:03 GMT
The whole cast .............but especially Isabelle Adjani in The World Is Yours (2018) - 1st time watch on Netflix
.................Parodying herself in a star turn to marvelous winning effect - in a role that would go well with her winking and smartly played Call My Agent! appearance - emphasizing her cool detachment which intersects with her manic greed ............... Adjani is not just funny and invested in this role - she is the MVP in support - an actress who has played heavy dark drama exceptionally well - she has great comic timing and a greater willingness to puncture her considerable legend.....I mean she gets laughs here just for her look (fringe jackets, rings, long nails!) A fizzy,Tarantino-lite UltraPop French version of an American movie ( Vincent Cassel is here too and it's well played across the whole ensemble) it may not add up to much but it doesn't have to........you're very thankful to spend time with her and the cast-and be very entertained.....even as believabilty goes out the window As fun as it is - there is a scene with her looking through a fence that is quite sad and when the camera locks on her (incredible, all-time) eyes, your heart breaks a little ........yeah she can still do that too.....
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avnermoriarti
Badass
Friends say I’ve changed. They’re right.
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Post by avnermoriarti on May 10, 2023 6:12:57 GMT
Klaus Maria Brandauer (and Rolf Hoppe) - Mephisto (1981)
I haven't seen this movie in such a long time that I almost forgot what I found so great about it in the first place. Brandauer's Hendrik Höfgen is one of those once in a lifetime roles I think mostly actors are drawn to... an actor in need of approval performing their most desirable role, what's strucks me about the movie and the performace is the irony involved. One thing is to be the tragic Faust, another is the shame to be in Mephisto's shoes, but what happens when you're a Faust who thought was a Mephisto? Is that the bleakest of jokes or what ?... Anyways Brandauer is glorious in the part, beginning as a provincial actor who feels the power his talents offers to him while shouting his desires, he's charming and clever enough to become the most venerated actor in Nazi Germany and yet he slowly feels castrated, for him the life is on the stage until history comes crashing through. Rolf Hoppe as the real Mephisto in this story is also superb.
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Post by pacinoyes on May 11, 2023 11:09:30 GMT
The whole cast but especially - unforgettably Michel Serrault and Romy Schneider - in Garde à vue (1981)TylerDeneuve Serrault is quite simply one of the great actors of all-time you could argue - when he was on his game - there was, afaik - no one quite like him in any country that I've seen - especially the older version of Serrault where he was cleverly comedic, (often) pathetic and he is definitely that here - unorthodox in technique and line readings, and able to convey a deep sadness ........he's a walking ghost type presence..... Schneider is only in 1 scene really but she is unforgettable when onscreen and if you don't know her you can become hypnotized by her - when she says "he taked to her (a child) like he would a woman" it packs quite a wallop......and it also fully conveys a female character with a (flash)back history - it is acted as such with an unsettling, almost unspeakable clarity. Schneider is a Hitchcockian archetype here (as she would have been in the never completed Inferno (1964)) - it's possible to contemplate the whole movie through her ...... The movie is simultaneously brilliant and flat - and much too wordy - but this version has a kind of movie magic to it in the casting and premise - Lino Ventura and Guy Marchand have their own moments of greatness too - Ventura's ravaged and knowing freeze frame close-up - and Marchand's slow burn meltdown ........it's no wonder the American version is simpler, duller and less likely to encourage rewatches ( Hackman / Freeman's just ok Under Suspicion). I've watched Garde à vue a billion times - in pristine versions, on the big screen, at home - versions with bad subtitles, great subtitles .......and it belongs to a different era of cop movies (like The Offence (1973) but seems much more panoramic than that fine movie)......it's best at 2:00 AM on a rainy night ....which matches the movie itself actually - on New Year's where there is no hint of a "better new year" There are a couple of scenes by Serrault that separate him from all who could attempt to recreate the role and what makes him so inspired playing it: When emptying his pockets (after beng ordered to) he smirks absurdly - it is not "on" camera but visible over his shoulder - into the face of Marchand.......later, during an inappropriate comic moment he laughs along with Marchand - to a ridiculous extent - which is quite mocking of him........those two scenes indicative of his character and his behavior - and of humorously, wrongly, tempting fate - come full circle when he is left alone with Marchand. ........and his last line in the movie - a gutteral howl of a character's name - is just about perfect.
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Post by pacinoyes on May 14, 2023 7:22:54 GMT
Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro in Past Lives (2023) -Lee has the role that drives the entire film and has to recede into its fabric but she still dominates .........I could (very) easily see her nodded and if nodded she may win an Oscar - certainly lesser performances have won Oscars anyway.......it is not a performance of showy scenes - it's one of simply being and it's star making.......a complex and changing one too - a performance with a full arc - females are going to see themselves in it. Particularly in her facial mannerisms which speak quite loudly in the silences...... I can't describe how Lee's work is outside of typical "movie acting" too - impossibly lovely, and suggesting strange things outside herself - at one point I thought she seemed "dove like" - she has a poetry, musicality and philosophy in her portrayal (philosophy is spelled out explicitly in the movie too, requiring Lee to embody it as a character). There is nothing attention seeking in the performance...........there is nothing false about it......... Yoo is great also although less vivid as the other 2 ........and Magaro - as Lee's husband has the most uniquely sculpted role - in a part that could be a throwaway, a joke or worse a dumb cliche - I found myself thinking about him sometimes more than even Lee afterwards.....
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Post by pacinoyes on May 16, 2023 7:48:36 GMT
Gian-Maria Volontè in The Working Class Goes To Heaven (aka Lulu The Tool) (1971) - directed by Elio Petri (rewatch)
This director and star pulled off an all-time great film and performance in Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and here they kind of pull off something almost as impressive (in a lesser artistic way) - an indictment of capitalism that is verrrrrrrrrrrrry heavy-handed but doesn't ring false and ultimately works as a drama and polemic. This is the kind of thing that is never quite pulled off in American films even when it works ( Nomadland, for one - which looks childish and banal by comparison to this - though it's about as good) because the cultural milieu is nuanced differently and implicitly hopeful - which is harder to write and fully convey ....... In some ways though this reminded me of Paul Schrader's Blue Collar (1978). Volontè gives a performance that is fascinatingly direct but not simple and as this goes on - his character is a conduit for Petri's ideas and Petri's film is really a manifesto with him at the center: Volontè listens great in this movie - after not listening at all at first - often he seems to be invading his fellow actors' space in the frame to fully comprehend or later to be understood. He generates much tension out of very heavy-handed, direct dialog in this naturalistic way - it is not as bravura as their other film together but he is the glue that holds this film together and transcends it......it's a different kind of great acting by a very great actor........... "I need to eat, understand?" he says .............."You can always find food" he is told ..............and there's a whole lot of grey in between those 2 "factual" quotes of "truth"
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Post by pacinoyes on May 17, 2023 7:01:11 GMT
Jack Nicholson - Carnal Knowledge (rewatch)Like Robert Altman - his director equivalent in a way - Saucy Jack defined America through his acting in the early 70s.....not quite the best actor of his era (though you could argue for it) but the most representative of a mood or a cultural undercurrent (69-75). What's particularly true about that is in terms of Ameican masculinity.....and what's more than that how painfully funny and sad it was......Nicholson here - and let's face it - he's way too old as the college student btw - uses his smile and lack of smile to seduce, ingratiate and to indicate a subversion of his own unhappiness........he also uses it to portray how foolish that smile can be - no one played losers who snatch defeat from the jaws of victory like him in this era......playing the loser while seemingly playing the winner I can't think of a performance that is more giddy than he is in the early scenes involving Bergen when he has to have a girl - this girl, his best friends girl, right now. But Nicholson isn't smiling at the end with her......or with Ann-Margaret or even quite with Rita Moreno .......or with Garfunkel......all of his relationships end badly........ and with bad memories too. ........and this is a comedy ffs......and it's funny........ until it's not .....and there's a lot of connection between the way he yells at Moreno for messing up the script with how he yells at Bergen and Margaret for messing up the more subtle "script" he'd like them to follow too. As the movie says ......."bullshit artist"
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Post by pacinoyes on May 24, 2023 7:21:58 GMT
Susannah York in Images (1972) - rewatchI used to say that there are some performances you can guess the director "created" as much as the actor "gave" them - Paul Schrader in First Reformed ....Oliver Stone in Born on the 4th of July ......but Robert Altman so conceptualizes York's performance in this fascinating, baffling movie he is almost a co-actor ......not one of his best but one that I return to a lot. Altman and his cinematographer - GOAT contender Vilmos Zsigmond - create a sort of arbitrary tableau of what they want the actress to convey at any given time ......and while that can seem like a stunt it also - in the context of a horror movie - seems like the gravity that the movie can't provide anywhere else. There is a scene in Images of her sucking on a man's fingers that is simultaneously erotic, sad, and in how Zsigmond shoots it - horrific and lovely .....and "human" actually.....there's quite a contrast in how humans are shot in this movie - and how objects or things are (glass, water, chimes, furniture) That's a lot of context being added outside of the actress - but whoever is "responsible" for the performance - it packs quite a wallop 50 years later.......and in the way we usually judge performances - not the mechanics behind them - a lot of the credit goes to York too.....
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Post by stabcaesar on May 24, 2023 18:13:51 GMT
This trio do so much by doing so little. #mood
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on May 25, 2023 20:59:55 GMT
Griffin Dunne in After Hours. He plays up the meek non-risk taker perfectly which makes his eventually snapping not only hilarious, but feel rightly earned as you see how he reacts from scene to escalating scene.
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Post by pacinoyes on May 28, 2023 8:15:19 GMT
Dirk Bogarde in Despair (1978) rewatch This movie - a minor Fassbinder imo - but one if you're on its exact wavelength you may argue is a major one - based on a Nabokov novel, starring a major male actor (not a thing for Fassy, at all) no less..... This movie has a great opening - a specialty in Fassbinder's films: - of cracked egg shells - eggs being mixed with milk - a sort of visual joke while simultaneously lovely and light....... yet you are not sure what is being made.....such is the case with confections......and movies. That opening leads to yet another Fassbinder speciality - the "multiple" layered shot - we see a branch obscured in rain ouside a house that turns into a shot from the house behind glass and faces.......that sort of trickery is in itself dazzling and in itself the meaning: things, hidden, willfully obscured, perspectives altered or withheld. Despair is then in that mode throughout - very annoying and somewhat clever - Bogarde cracks up (get it?) - he becomes less and less sane as things go on .......you are not sure what to make of the movie which is illogical, baffling and yet fascinating in how it's conveyed.......what to make of him and the machinations of the plot......make no literal sense but a kind of artistic one A sort of "in a world gone mad you, to survive, must be mad too" and Bogarde gives something of a delicate, complex and dazzling turn as a guy who is willing to look - and be - quite foolish and broad (which almost never works when it should).......though you may wonder to what purpose? This entire film could be made as a more serious tragedy ......that it is not, is one of its better jokes. The kind of movie that is genuinely divisive - yet Bogarde really is not if you think of the part - with mirrors, lies, denying (or loss) of reality, political and personal..........there is no way to argue with how he plays this part.......even if you can't quite tell what part this "actor" (Bogarde and the character) is actually playing.
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Post by pacinoyes on May 30, 2023 10:35:01 GMT
Jean Hughes Anglade - The Wounded Man (1983) - rewatchAt a time - in the 80s mostly - it must have seemed that Anglade - sort of a precursor to Vincent Cassel and an heir to Patrick Dewaere was the French equivalent to DePac ......in the way Mickey Rourke was talked about by some .......but unlike Rourke - overrated in the 80s imo - Anglade really had the work for a decade + - Killing Zoe, Queen Margot, Betty Blue, Nelly and Mr. Arnaud......Anglade sort of prefigured the "next big thing with detours / burnout" thing in French movies - a bit like Romain Duris but Duris is still a big deal and Anglade eventually became less of one....... But when he hit screens - he was a fascinating mix of things - wildly undisciplined, vivid, beautiful and upsetting..........and beautiful is the key word in this movie - his debut. A gay coming of age (sort of) story when being gay was actually transgressive and had stereotypiical impulses akin to "male toxicity" (whatever) - where debasement, murder. loss of identity is not just possible - but given the exact circumstances - likely. This movie - told with a great deal of sensitivity but not too far removed from the exploitation of unforgettable American movies like Cruising (1980) and in a different way Fingers (1978) from the era where a movie didn't need to have "representation" or make you feel good about what you are watching.........go watch the new Queer Cinema of Empowerment (whatever, again) because this is far more like Fassbinder's cynical take..... The ending of this movie - long and dialog free is one of those rare things where the narrative is conveyed in physicality by Anglade and changes multiple times - not the POV - the narrative - and what is being communicated to you A performance that is a mess of counter impulses and counter behavior - Anglade's character - a quite bad brother, son, person ......but not the worst person..........and not the most suffering either.......although maybe he is. Looking like the guy who should have played Johnny Thunders if he was French - he is remarkably spontaneous here in the way that only a "new" actor can be - his eyes see everything in this movie ........his mind doesn't quite see things so quickly ......there's some terrific long sequences where we see him stare (one I like is how he looks longingly, while walking at a bike near the end of the film in a distant long shot - we still notice anyway)........and sometimes what's staring back is ......actually.........nothing....... a void.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Jun 3, 2023 2:19:30 GMT
Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley in Sanctuary. Qualley gets to let loose a lot more and is obviously having fun hamming it up in the last third of the movie. But when she’s in dominatrix mode she really commands the screen. Abbott has a bit. Ore complex of a character and really shines when he finally embraces his insecurities.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 3, 2023 10:10:47 GMT
Volker Spengler in In A Year of 13 Moons (1978) - multiple rewatches
There are no safe spaces. Not in life.......not in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's sensitive yet unflinching film - one of his most personal and weirdly ambitious in themes and visual palette. It is the cinematic equivalent of picking at a scar until you slowly bleed to death..... I recently wrote in this thread how Vilmos Zsigmond and Robert Altman seemingly "created" Susannah York's performance in Images (1972).........and I could maybe argue Fassbinder does that here in a different context: Placing Spengler in front of us in lushly composed - and carefully constructed - almost clinical shots, he is in effect orchestrating a precise environment to feel his suffering directly ........and his suffering is what is on display, make no mistake. Some people would say this is just Misery Porn but I would say Fassbinder - one of my favorite filmmakers - avoids that tag by his depth of feeling (and often humor, even here in an awful way) and a willful perversion of what he shows us too and context (I would say Lynne Ramsay makes Misery Porn myself ..) Several scenes or plot points are not merely in "bad taste" they are grotesquely so - Spengler, a butcher......... visits a shop where the slabs of meat: hacked, bloody, severed. There is a simple scene in this movie with Spengler's daughter and his ex-wife where he is in effect - and with stunted, attempted love - "rejected" by them (he utters a shattering, sad line " Lately I've been wearing men's clothes") that is played out as a paper moon like decoration hangs overhead ..........the celebration of the event (her birthday), turned into a warped digression on fatherhood, stability, sustainability and self-delusion for Spengler and those who are close to "her" (Elvira but originally Erwin) A tremendously relevant movie .......even though in typical Fassbinder button pushing style it's bound to be absolutely hated by everyone likely to champion it as such a film in the first place. Spengler is acting at odds with the film's cold, unfeeling scenic designs - and he (not a real life transsexual btw) gives a performance of great weight, piercing insight ........and humanity. Nothing that is in the suicide note at the end is either self-pity or dramatic .......it rather seems utterly, horribly........"right" A brutal experience......
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 4, 2023 6:49:24 GMT
David Hemmings in Blow-Up (1966) - millionth rewatchBlow-Up is not only one of the greatest films imo - it is also of course the movie that spawned 2 movies I like even more - The Conversation (1974) and Blow Out (1981). All 3 take a basic premise introduced in Blow-Up and use it for a different narrative - The Conversation for privacy and its moral implicatons and Blow Out for political dread and in Blow-Up for the transient nature of "reality" itself. All 3 of those make these films never "outdated" - they all - disturbingly - seem more and more relevant every year .......and Hemmings is in a way outside his own narrative: Alone for much of the movie - his interactions with others are often a game, in the way his life is a game - sexual, childish, self-involved - ultimately devoid of consequence and therefore meaning too. He has to hold our attention and we share his thoughts so we get "what he sees" and thinks about what he sees and processes it. A tough part to play - in an all-timer film that gets taken for granted way too much in how the performance gets more and more interesting the more you see it.......as a stand in for the filmmaker himself and just think how many movies where a character "represesents" the director turn into films where nothing happens.........in the great Blow-Up it's rather tthe opposite: You may think there's nothing there ........but it is.........or it was..........and at the end.....he........and it...... then........disappear
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jun 4, 2023 17:49:18 GMT
<-------
William Holden in Stalag 17.
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Post by urbanpatrician on Jun 5, 2023 7:14:52 GMT
Well well, what can I say about Kieslowski's work of art? The first 50 minutes were more captivating to me than the last 50 minutes, but I like the unfoldings. It kept producing layers and layers to where the judge has an entire life before this movie that I would've liked a prequel to. If there's one thing I would change... is that I don't really care about that young law student, and I don't know how he's relevant to the main story. If anything, that married neighbor's house had the more intriguing secrets and I would've liked that to have went further, because I think that's the more central reason behind Valentine and the lawyer's acquaintance. But nonetheless....... can't argue with a classic when I see one. I think I only prefer Chungking Express definitively in the year.... but that's just the kind of movie to love in every kind of way possible. I would say the only other movies I might even consider on Red's level is Portrait of a Young in 60s Brussels, Pulp Fiction, and To Live.... but it's better than the other main classics of a year considered stacked. Irene Jacob is my new Best Actress win, but........ obvi.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 5, 2023 12:27:09 GMT
Margit Carstensen and Karlheinz Böhm in Martha (1974) - rewatch but never in this original, restored - longer - version ...........which is far superior to what I had seen before: On Youtube under the title Martha (1973)Javi , MsMovieStar who are (I think?) our two biggest Buñuel fans iirc and TylerDeneuve who will l think may appreciate the insane camp aspect of its premise Of the (many) things I hate about the world - one is the fairly recent "negative" connotation of the word "aggressive". Aggressive things are some of the best things: Punk Rock, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, real political discourse........my frequent and borderline rabid posts on MAR about Tennis. But when aggressive is combined with "cool observational" as Rainer Werner Fassbinder does here - now that's something you don't often see and which, as done in this movie, can be harder to discern. Maybe "unrelenting" is a better word than "aggressive" because the narrative of Martha bursts out in a way that builds on each prior scene(s). I have seen "almost" every Fassbinder film but this one I saw in a shorter cut, years ago and what once seemed choppy and unformed now seems so fully realized - it is either precisely horrible or horribly precise in its effect (it is 116 minutes in its full cut for German TV). Telling a Douglas Sirk grand soap opera in a pitch black comic Buñuel aesthetic - this movie is almost impossible to believe in how cruel it treats the title character - Carstensen deserves battle pay and God knows how many worry lines she gained by her reactive shots. Böhm - in a performance that makes his sociopathic work in Peeping Tom (1960) and Fox and His Friends (1975) seem like just a few small lapses in behavioral manners - is the sort of part that is usually withheld to a brief role - here it's much more prominent. You can basically consider this the "Klaus Kinski" role but this time - more restrained, better looking and well dressed........how did Fassbinder not work with Kinski btw.......? He is incredibly menacing in this movie - in a role that is sort of like Robert Redford playing Snidely Whiplash.............Carstensen meanwhile is Fassbinder's (maybe?) most suffering female lead - and think about that - that includes Effi Briest - for one - ffs (1974) - the same year! Nora Helmer also (again, 1974 - wf) for another........... of his many films that circle this material. Parodying soap opera plot lines and his own work already (!) - the character is mistreated by her mother, father, husband, boss, "friend" (ha!) - to an astonishing degree - this film is like the pre-credit sequences in Fassbinder's merciless "The Merchant of Four Seasons" (1971 / 1972) where the lead character (male in that case) suffers at a soul killing job, while feeling depressed and unloved and his mother - who flat out tells him that he should have died in the war - and that's all in the pre- opening credit sequences Even more than Sirk - I was reminded of the 1950 movie - Paid In Full - which has a rather insane plot where family and birthright and legacy are all intertwined but here Fassbinder - uses "family" to present something as suffocating, threatening and foolish - the suggestion that Martha "wants a baby (wtf)" by this man is so gloriously insane, you can't help but laugh Martha has sequences that are incredibly specific and modern - body shaming, animal cruelty (um), astonishing levels of male toxicity (all straight this time, so you can't accuse him of self-hating homophobia - though you could accuse him of Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy) - it is anti-marriage, anti-family .......while being anti-virginity (um, again), anti-booze, anti-wealth: so much so it portrays the illusion of upper class dignity as a repulsive lie to merely conceal people at their absolutely most vile. Impossible to fully read as "just" a weeper of a movie or a pitch black horror / comic sketch against the futility of human existence and also a parody (?) of the Suffering Tragic Woman Genre in Literature / Film........you watch it to see what is coming next and it is highly watchable.........every scene here holds a hideous "how is he going to top that(!?!) quality. Visually ingenious: the early "romantic" meeting is shot all swooning and lush - gorgeously captured by Fassbinder's frequent lenser Michael Ballhaus (Goodfellas among others) - but this has an ending series of scenes that is played exactly like it "would be" in a romance film - yet in its composition and sequential order it plays on you exactly like a horror film. Actually you can read the ending as a forerunner to one of my very favorite movie endings: Argento's The Stendahl Syndrome (1996) where irony, is both obviously present or depending on how you take it ........not present at all...... Arguably one of Fassbinder's best or at least the exact film he wanted to make .........certainly one of his most perverse .........and both of those things run deep in his filmography Not to be missed if you are a Fassbinder fan.......to be avoided at all costs otherwise.........
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Nikan
Based
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Post by Nikan on Jun 5, 2023 22:48:29 GMT
Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts in This Sporting Life (1963).I knew this wasn't going to end well for them yet what happened devastated me. Oh, the agony ...
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 10, 2023 18:32:22 GMT
Margit Cartensen in Fear of Fear (1975) - rewatchWorking my way through some Fassbinder's - and this is very much like (the even better, more specific) Martha (1974) which I reviewed in this thread about a week ago. Essentially a film about something "unfilmable" - capturing an unspecified mental illness which it does not seek to define - it may be schizophrenia, post-partum or bipolar or .....the movie suggests something modern, inherent and unspeakable about current life patterns that pushes the character to this madness in some imperceptible ways (in shopping, marriage, child-birth, motherhood). Has elements in it of Safe (1995) .....and for the sort of "male POV" film - the 1981 masterpiece In The White City (1983) touches on some of this...... Cartensen is aces here because she doesn't let the character become unclear - what is happening to her is fuzzy in the details but she is precise in the acting details.......a marvelous scene with her with head phones on - lost in a private world from her neighbors and her daughter is particularly sharp. A bit obscure on the ending too - but it is explainable if you rewatch the last couple of minutes and Fassbinder employees his dazzling visual trickery as in Despair (also reviewed above) and Nora Helmer of mirrors, glass, windows, reflections, reality vs. self-perception or our perception(s).
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Post by stabcaesar on Jun 13, 2023 18:22:53 GMT
Iconic bitch
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 13, 2023 18:26:25 GMT
Iconic bitch Waaaaaaaaaaaay ahead of its time........goes quite deep into a very specific kind of mental illness in ways you didn't really see until about 20 years later........
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 15, 2023 5:15:47 GMT
Chrstian Bale in American Psycho (2000) - rewatch "You're a fncking ugly bitch - I want to stab you to death and play in your blood" - says Bale - the barroom mirror capturing first what we will soon know for sure - after an ingenious set-up that shows food, dancing (with gun shot moves), money, business as conduits to an implied grisly violence in the commonplace. Bale is hilarious and frightening and in his acting tones - slight variations on a conceptual style - he conveys a delicious irony - exceedingly controlled but barely in control at all. He also has an exact specificity in his line readings which makes them sad / funny.........."because..I .....want ....to........fit..... in" Indeed One of the funniest jokes in the movie - and in how Bale plays it - is that his "peers" are as awful as he is - well sorta - and he loathes them too - until he gets it out of his system I mean....... Bale is also on point in how he depicts the sensuous nature of "things" - the finer things in life - that do not penetrate him - the clothes, accessories, fragrances, music, meals - he treats them with such reverence it approximates a kind of unsettling loathing too. It's those things that make it truly special work and not a one note stunt ........his performance fascinates when the movie becomes tiresome - and if you think of Bale's career before he made American Psycho - he was just waiting for a role like this: conceptual, chameleon-like, and visceral - using his body but also using his body specifically against his psychologically-tinged behavioral choices too....... He just killed this role - no pun.......
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