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Post by stephen on Feb 17, 2018 16:46:13 GMT
Punch-Drunk Love was the one that took the longest time for me to appreciate. I'd seen it three times before it clicked with me. It's a brilliant homage to the works of Jacques Tati, with some Ophuls and Cassavetes thrown in for good measure. Not enough can be said about Sandler in it that hasn't been said before; the guy is capable of out-and-out brilliance if he gives a shit. Barry is the sort of character that can verge on unpleasant, but Sandler and Anderson set up an impressive high-wire act that he navigates with alacrity, keeping Barry from becoming a pathetic milquetoast. Watson is lovely, setting up wonderful chemistry with her leading man, and Hoffman damn near steals the show.
Now you're gonna get into what I consider the best of Anderson. His earlier works speak to a savage energy only youthful genius can create, but he's older now, wiser, and much less manic. It served him well in his first few films, but now he moves onto the films that truly put him above and beyond anyone in his generation.
But before that:
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Post by RiverleavesElmius on Feb 17, 2018 20:04:32 GMT
To quote Bill Maher: Thank you for the DUMB opinion! đđ”đđ” While all his films range from "masterpieces" to "quite good", he's easily the greatest filmmaker of his generation & has yet to produce a single bad film, "Boogie Nights" & "Magnolia" blow away everything else he's ever done! "Boogie Nights" is the #1 best film of the 90's for me. He's made since, chronologically, 2 more masterworks (PDL & TWBB), 2 with definite flaws but still captivating & unique ones ("The Master" & "Inherent Vice") and a breathtaking & haunting character study that is just barely shy of greatness but still his best in a decade ("Phantom Thread"). At best, his greatest post-millennium work is half as brilliant as "Boogie" & "Magnolia". Magnolia is his worst film by a mile and comes off as a rather embarrassingly earnest film made by a very young, sad dude. TWBB, The Master, Inherent Vice, and Phantom Thread is one of the strongest streaks in all of film. "Embarrassingly earnest"?? Phhhft, again, thank you for the DUMBEST opinion! Your film tastes are embarrassingly shitty, pretentious & pathetic.
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Post by RiverleavesElmius on Feb 17, 2018 20:08:20 GMT
I look at it as with Boogie Nights, a young PTA brought this freshness and incredible energy to it that works and makes it one of his best. But then when he made Magnolia, it came across to me as the work of a young man who went a little overboard after soaking up the breakthrough success of Boogie Nights and maybe letting that hype get to him, so he ramped up the energy even more and became too excessive. He really thought it was going to be his ultimate masterpiece. I think as he's matured, his films have. I agree with you that starting with There Will Be Blood, he has been on one of the strongest streaks I've seen of any director. Not THE strongest, but one of them. I used to love Boogie Nights but I can't say that I do anymore. Those first 3 films are just so self-conscious, every elaborate tracking shot is impressive but feels completely like a young guy showing off while also borrowing liberally from his heroes. I am always astounded when people love Magnolia though, I think it is a histrionic mess that is so clumsily put together and overstuffed. The singalong sequence is truly embarrassing. It's incredible to me that he's evolved from that kind of a technique to the much more restrained style he's grown into. You must be astounded every single day that so many knowledgeable cinemaphiles don't share your wretched & idiotic tastes in film. Smarter people suuuuck, don't they??? Oh, and the "Wise Up" singing montage is one of the most heartbreaking, audacious & purely brilliant sequences in film history. As masterfully put together as any film.
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Post by HELENA MARIA on Feb 17, 2018 20:11:54 GMT
MY TOP 5
BOOGIE NIGHTS PHANTOM THREAD THERE WILL BE BLOOD PUNCH DRUNK LOVE MAGNOLIA
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Post by moonman157 on Feb 18, 2018 15:18:00 GMT
I used to love Boogie Nights but I can't say that I do anymore. Those first 3 films are just so self-conscious, every elaborate tracking shot is impressive but feels completely like a young guy showing off while also borrowing liberally from his heroes. I am always astounded when people love Magnolia though, I think it is a histrionic mess that is so clumsily put together and overstuffed. The singalong sequence is truly embarrassing. It's incredible to me that he's evolved from that kind of a technique to the much more restrained style he's grown into. You must be astounded every single day that so many knowledgeable cinemaphiles don't share your wretched & idiotic tastes in film. Smarter people suuuuck, don't they??? Oh, and the "Wise Up" singing montage is one of the most heartbreaking, audacious & purely brilliant sequences in film history. As masterfully put together as any film. How's high school bruh?
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Post by wilcinema on Feb 19, 2018 23:37:50 GMT
There Will Be Blood: This movie will never fail to amaze me. It's cinema at its best, perfection on every level. It's the cinematic son to 2001: A Space Odissey: if Kubrick depicted the dawn of man and technological evolution he generates, There Will Be Blood investigates the dawn of America's capitalism and its evolution to greed and avarice. The oil rig becomes the monolith that brings people together and tears them apart at the same time. It's the estranged brother of Gangs Of New York: Scorsese's movie showed how "America was born in the streets"; PTA's movie goes far west, destroys its myth by showing its dark side, and there's no better actor than Daniel Day-Lewis to depict the diabolical forces behind America's history. His Daniel Plainview is one of the most frightening characters in film history, a winking devil, he's what Satan would look like if he were human. His duel with Eli (the incredible Paul Dano) is an unforgettable anthology of feelings, retorts, accuses, that wrench the guts of the viewers. Jonny Greenwood's spellbinding sinister music and Robert Elswit's camera angles and movements give flesh and blood to this incredible story. I will never get tired of watching this masterpiece.
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Post by stephen on Feb 20, 2018 3:55:33 GMT
There Will Be Blood: This movie will never fail to amaze me. It's cinema at its best, perfection on every level. It's the cinematic son to 2001: A Space Odissey: if Kubrick depicted the dawn of man and technological evolution he generates, There Will Be Blood investigates the dawn of America's capitalism and its evolution to greed and avarice. The oil rig becomes the monolith that brings people together and tears them apart at the same time. It's the estranged brother of Gangs Of New York: Scorsese's movie showed how "America was born in the streets"; PTA's movie goes far west, destroys its myth by showing its dark side, and there's no better actor than Daniel Day-Lewis to depict the diabolical forces behind America's history. His Daniel Plainview is one of the most frightening characters in film history, a winking devil, he's what Satan would look like if he were human. His duel with Eli (the incredible Paul Dano) is an unforgettable anthology of feelings, retorts, accuses, that wrench the guts of the viewers. Jonny Greenwood's spellbinding sinister music and Robert Elswit's camera angles and movements give flesh and blood to this incredible story. I will never get tired of watching this masterpiece. Greatest movie ever made. It's an American Faust, a fire-and-brimstone screed against God and greed.
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Post by wilcinema on Feb 20, 2018 22:53:44 GMT
The Master: Is there more bottled anger, sadness, despair in film history than in Joaquin Phoenix's Freddie Quell? Is Freddie Quell a hopeless social reject? How do we judge the Cause for letting Freddie in the "family" compared to the post-WW2 society that chews Freddie up only to spit him out? Is his mental breakdown caused by war? The mystery of Freddie's life lingers from the beginning to the end, as does the foggy past of Lancaster Dodd's. The Master is like a glorious duel between two outcasts. The symbiotic relationship that springs between them, in an atmosphere of doubt, suspicion and mystery, verges on love, brotherhood, hatred, grudge. In an America that has decided to move on from the past without looking back, these two wanderers, modern Leopold Blooms, go hand in hand in a magnificent voyage of discovery. At the end of the movie, they will not be the same people they were at the beginning. But do we really know who they are anyway?
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 20, 2018 23:11:40 GMT
There Will Be Blood - This to me is his best film (so far), a sort of update of Citizen Kane and its themes - the wealth acting as a barrier to the American Dream rather than facilitating it. I love the beginning more than anything, the way it just sort of appears, like it's always been there. The performance is monumental, one of the few that can stand with the best of DeNiro, Pacino and Brando. It isn't my favorite movie of the year (that's NCFOM which relegates it to 2nd, but that was a very great year), to me it has some tonal issues and some other little flaws (I don't like Dano much) but it's grandness overwhelms any small flaws - it's a very American classic.
The Master - Another very great one, 2nd best of the year here too (behind Amour) and 2 towering leads (and PSH is lead too), so many little moments stand out - the ship is called the "Alethia" - Greek for "truth".......the way Hoffman loses it when he can't control it (if you already know the answers to your questions, then why ask, PIG FNCK!), the unsaid passages between Lancaster and Freddie. It's about the need for order and when we don't have it, we seek it, either we create it or we try to adapt to what someone else has created for us.....because someone must know how to live.......the not knowing would be too much after all.
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Post by stephen on Feb 21, 2018 15:07:35 GMT
There Will Be Blood - This to me is his best film (so far), a sort of update of Citizen Kane and its themes - the wealth acting as a barrier to the American Dream rather than facilitating it. I love the beginning more than anything, the way it just sort of appears, like it's always been there. The performance is monumental, one of the few that can stand with the best of DeNiro, Pacino and Brando. It isn't my favorite movie of the year (that's NCFOM which relegates it to 2nd, but that was a very great year), to me it has some tonal issues and some other little flaws (I don't like Dano much) but it's grandness overwhelms any small flaws - it's a very American classic. The Master - Another very great one, 2nd best of the year here too (behind Amour) and 2 towering leads (and PSH is lead too), so many little moments stand out - the ship is called the "Alethia" - Greek for "truth".......the way Hoffman loses it when he can't control it (if you already know the answers to your questions, then why ask, PIG FNCK!), the unsaid passages between Lancaster and Freddie. It's about the need for order and when we don't have it, we seek it, either we create it or we try to adapt to what someone else has created for us.....because someone must know how to live.......the not knowing would be too much after all. Dano was a bit off-putting the first time I saw it, because I felt like he hadn't gotten enough time (four days!) to really get into the meat of Eli's character before putting thrust into the ring with Day-Lewis. I had been wishing at the time that someone like Joaquin Phoenix had taken the role (completely unaware of what was to come with him and PTA), but as time went on, I realized that Dano's portrayal of Eli as a sniveling coward using religion as a shield was actually pitch-perfect. You wanted to smack the shit out of him for much the same reasons as Daniel, which empathized you with an otherwise alienating monster. I think Blood is a more ambitious offering than No Country, and while I think the Coens had a more watertight script at hand, I chalk that up more to McCarthy than anything else, as the Coens really did little beyond pruning the Ed Tom Bell stuff from the novel (wisely, I might add). No Country's my runner-up that year, though, and one of the greatest films of all time to boot. It just so happens to have come out the same year as the best movie ever made by my reckoning. So glad you agree that Hoffman is co-lead. I genuinely don't get how anyone could argue he's supporting. If Dodd were female, it wouldn't be up for discussion.
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Post by stephen on Feb 21, 2018 15:21:16 GMT
The Master is the first time that Anderson freed himself from the shackles of his heroes. There is no sign of Altman, Scorsese, or Kubrick here. Maybe the slightest tinge of John Huston, but only obliquely. The Master is entirely an organic creation from PTA's own mind, and I would argue that its closest antecedent is actually an author rather than a filmmaker, for it evokes the feeling of the very best of John Steinbeck.
Freddie Quell is one of the all-time great characters, and Joaquin Phoenixâs performance is nothing short of revelatory. Perpetually stooped over, his face a perpetual maze of twists, sneers and snarls, Phoenixâs Freddie Quell is a physical embodiment of turmoil and rage. Weâve heard of great actors inhabiting their roles, but Phoenix doesnât inhabit â he exists. There is not a trace of Joaquin in this performance; only this leering, sex-crazed, boozed-out ex-sailor. Itâs the kind of performance that reminds us that the best artists are a little crazy. Heâs symbolic right down to the name; the word âquellâ means to stop or to calm, and Freddie is anything but calm. He is more than a ticking time bomb â he is full-on Hiroshima-level destruction, barely contained in his misshapen figure. This is a performance that will be studied the same way Brando was, and one can write book-length essays on Freddie Quell and not capture a sliver of what Phoenix did.
What keeps that destruction from exploding and polluting everything into a barren waste is the yin to Freddieâs yang: Philip Seymour Hoffman. Lancaster Dodd is a complete departure for any character heâs done with Anderson, and yet he still brings elements of Phil Parma, Dean Trumbell and even the craps player from Hard Eight to the Master. There are even traces of Daniel Plainview in Dodd; in one scene, when confronted by a critic seeking to pick apart the Causeâs logic, Doddâs face sets in a decidedly Plainview-esque glare, and in that moment, we are more afraid of Hoffman than we have ever been, as the normally affable actor rarely evinced such chilling power (Before the Devil Knows Youâre Dead comes closest.).
And then there's Amy Adams. It's easy to ignore her in the face of the loud, bombastic acting going on, but the next time you watch it, pay special attention to what Adams is doing. It's masterfully subtle work, careful to keep out of the way of the gnashing teeth gobbling up the scenery . . . but then you notice that she's carefully stowing away the crumbs for later, parsing them out with doleful intensity. Peggy Dodd should be ranked alongside the best Lady Macbeth portrayals; even if there isn't an "Out, damned spot!" scene for her, you see her as the true power behind the throne and it's terrifying how someone so gentle-looking can pull the strings so effortlessly. I'm not the world's biggest Amy Adams fan, but I will defend her nomination here forever.
The filmâs look is reminiscent of the big films of the 1950s, with blues and greens standing out gorgeously. After the unremitting bleakness of PTAâs previous film, this one is almost uncompromisingly opulent. And Jack Fisk once again gives us incredible set design, giving the feel of the era like few can. Aided by Jonny Greenwoodâs haunting arrhythmic score, peppered with a few choice songs from the â50s (Jo Stafford and Ella Fitzgerald croon over some scenes), Anderson revives a world decades past in a vibrant yet nostalgic manner.
There are those who will accuse the film of being elliptical, or of not being sure what it wants to be. I think that such critics are actually faulting the film for not being what they had expected it to be â namely, an expose on Scientology or on religion as a whole. Thatâs not what Anderson has done here. Heâs presenting us a study of the inner workings of the human mind by giving us the id (Freddie), the ego (Peggy) and the superego (Dodd). Itâs not a film that you will be able to fully know the ins and outs of; I've seen it six or seven times and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface.
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Post by Sharbs on Feb 21, 2018 16:55:08 GMT
Dano was a bit off-putting the first time I saw it, because I felt like he hadn't gotten enough time (four days!) to really get into the meat of Eli's character before putting thrust into the ring with Day-Lewis. I had been wishing at the time that someone like Joaquin Phoenix had taken the role (completely unaware of what was to come with him and PTA), but as time went on, I realized that Dano's portrayal of Eli as a sniveling coward using religion as a shield was actually pitch-perfect. You wanted to smack the shit out of him for much the same reasons as Daniel, which empathized you with an otherwise alienating monster. I think Blood is a more ambitious offering than No Country, and while I think the Coens had a more watertight script at hand, I chalk that up more to McCarthy than anything else, as the Coens really did little beyond pruning the Ed Tom Bell stuff from the novel (wisely, I might add). No Country's my runner-up that year, though, and one of the greatest films of all time to boot. It just so happens to have come out the same year as the best movie ever made by my reckoning. So glad you agree that Hoffman is co-lead. I genuinely don't get how anyone could argue he's supporting. If Dodd were female, it wouldn't be up for discussion. I couldn't agree with you more regarding Dano. Being a part of a Christian group, somewhat akin to the one that's represented in the film, from ages 18-21; I also think it was spot-on and when I first watched this right after moving back home from college his performance stayed with me the most.
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Post by stephen on Feb 21, 2018 16:57:45 GMT
Dano was a bit off-putting the first time I saw it, because I felt like he hadn't gotten enough time (four days!) to really get into the meat of Eli's character before putting thrust into the ring with Day-Lewis. I had been wishing at the time that someone like Joaquin Phoenix had taken the role (completely unaware of what was to come with him and PTA), but as time went on, I realized that Dano's portrayal of Eli as a sniveling coward using religion as a shield was actually pitch-perfect. You wanted to smack the shit out of him for much the same reasons as Daniel, which empathized you with an otherwise alienating monster. I think Blood is a more ambitious offering than No Country, and while I think the Coens had a more watertight script at hand, I chalk that up more to McCarthy than anything else, as the Coens really did little beyond pruning the Ed Tom Bell stuff from the novel (wisely, I might add). No Country's my runner-up that year, though, and one of the greatest films of all time to boot. It just so happens to have come out the same year as the best movie ever made by my reckoning. So glad you agree that Hoffman is co-lead. I genuinely don't get how anyone could argue he's supporting. If Dodd were female, it wouldn't be up for discussion. I couldn't agree with you more regarding Dano. Being a part of a Christian group, somewhat akin to the one that's represented in the film, from ages 18-21; I also think it was spot-on and when I first watched this right after moving back home from college his performance stayed with me the most. Indeed. I still slightly prefer Dillon Freasier (one of the great child performances of the century, that one), but Dano is extraordinarily underrated and gets under your skin so effectively.
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Post by wilcinema on Feb 21, 2018 17:49:10 GMT
Inherent Vice: Atmospheric, mysterious, hilarious, complex, complicated, theatrical, cinematic. Some of the adjectives that can apply to Inherent Vice. It's a character study, it's a police investigation, it's a noir story, it's a history lesson, it's an inside joke. This movie is all of these things, and it's perfect as each and every one of them. Imbued in the atmosphere of the late 1960s, it tells of a tormented and celebrated time in American history. The sex revolution, the drugs revolution, the Charles Manson hysteria, the FBI meddlings. Labyrinths of truths and lies, pyramids of schems, things you can sometimes see the start of but never the end of. Adaptations of Thomas Pynchon novels were deemed impossible. Paul Thomas Anderson goes beyond that. Graced by one of the most amazing ensembles in recent memory, punctuated by some of the most brilliant music Greenwood has ever written, and supported by PTA's most challenging script, Inherent Vice is not just the best film of 2014, as I believed then. It's one of the masterpieces of this century.
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Post by stephen on Feb 21, 2018 17:55:22 GMT
Inherent Vice is a shaggy-dog story of the highest order, a wonderfully kooky pulp romp through sunny southern California in 1970, the year after the moon landing and the Manson murders. Fear and anxiety have supplanted the mellow grooviness of the Summer of Love, Nixonâs sweaty grip on America is ever tightening, and everyoneâs looking over their shoulder. Itâs both the unlikeliest and yet most perfect setting for a mystery story, and Andersonâthrough Pynchonâhas cooked up a doozy.
Some would call Inherent Vice cluttered; certainly, a few critics lobbed the moniker âIncoherent Viceâ in its general direction (for what itâs worth, Anderson apparently loves that title). And in true Pynchonian fashion, in the end we ask ourselves: does the plot threads even matter in the end? In one scene, Doc infiltrates a hillside hangout for anti-Nixon activists in hopes of locating a surf-rock sax player who may or may not be dead; in the next, heâs snorting coke with a whacked-out, velvet-laden dentist with a taste for barely-legal tail. These scenes can come off as the ramblings of a paranoiac on acid, yet Anderson keeps us fixed on one point the whole way through: Doc himself, who (like the audience) is just along for the ride.
The ballooning conspiracies and double-truths are nonetheless evocative, especially when tinged with that groovy haze that permeates everything (to quote The Steve Miller Band, Doc is a smoker, a toker, a midnight joker). The vibrant, almost trippy colors populated by production designer David Crank and costumer Mark Bridges add to the surreality of it all. Robert Elswit, who lensed all but one of Andersonâs previous ventures, lends a quirky yet somber air to the proceedings; even as the mystery unfolds and threatens to crash on our heads like a tsunami, the mood is strangely relaxed.
The performances certainly do a lot to enhance it. Joaquin Phoenix, who comes off as a Pynchon character writ large as it is (right down to the name), is as perfect casting for the part as you could want. His carefree slouch and perpetual âFar out, man!â stare belies an intelligence and nobility that make Doc perhaps Andersonâs most accessible protagonist to date. Heâs also Andersonâs most observational lead as well; the rest of the ensemble that orbits Doc operate at such a glorious level of unabashed zaniness and rambunctious humor that they make Sportello himself seem normal. Chief among them is Brolinâs Bigfoot, clearly channeling Sterling Haydenâs crazed general in Dr. Strangelove in a brilliant send-up of the rigid moral guardians that tried to stamp out the Sixties. Owen Wilson, who would have made a fine Doc in his own right, fits in this Andersonâs milieu as easily as he does with the other auteur named Anderson. Newcomer Waterston is entrancing, with a languid line delivery that is both soporific yet riveting. Benicio del Toro, Martin Short, Jena Malone, Reese Witherspoon . . . all make their impact in glorious little nuggets and none overstay their welcome. (I must make special mention of Hong Chau, who plays a sensual masseuse-cum-sexpot named Jade; her brief performance was one of the highlights of an already delightful experience.)
Hallucinatory it may be, but certainly, Anderson shows a level of comfort with the settingâall of Andersonâs films have, with the exception of Hard Eight and Phantom Thread, taken place in California, each one focusing on a different era of the stateâs history in the twentieth centuryâand his ode to Pynchonâs whacked-out worldview goes down real mellow.
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Post by wilcinema on Feb 21, 2018 18:09:01 GMT
Man, that is some beautiful description! I too thought about this history fil rouge in Anderson's filmopgraphy, now that I've rewatched in sequence. There's There Will Be Blood, set at the turn of the century up to the foreboding of the Great Depression; there's The Master, set in post-WW2 America; then Inherent Vice, in 1970; Boogie Nights, in a key time between the 1970s and 1980s; and Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love in contemporary ages. In his very own way, he has depicted recent American history, without pulling punches or keeping it safe. And it makes sense that his latest movie is set in England: after investigating America, he shoots a movie in America's progenitor.
I must say that this general rewatch, besides being long overdue, was like witnessing the birth and the evolution of a genius. I've grown to love PTA even more than I did. And in a few hours, I have my Phantom Thread screening! Pumped up.
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Post by stephen on Feb 21, 2018 18:12:34 GMT
Man, that is some beautiful description! I too thought about this history fil rouge in Anderson's filmopgraphy, now that I've rewatched in sequence. There's There Will Be Blood, set at the turn of the century up to the foreboding of the Great Depression; there's The Master, set in post-WW2 America; then Inherent Vice, in 1970; Boogie Nights, in a key time between the 1970s and 1980s; and Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love in contemporary ages. In his own way, he has depicted recent American history in his very own way, without pulling punches or keeping it safe. And it makes sense that his latest movie is set in England: after investigating key times in America's history, he shoots a movie in America's progenitor. I must say that this general rewatch, besides being long overdue, was like witnessing the birth and the evolution of a genius. I've grown to love PTA even more than I did. And in a few hours, I have my Phantom Thread screening! Pumped up. Get hype, son. Phantom Thread feels like nothing else he's done, and yet at the same time, it feels the perfect progression for a filmmaker of his caliber.
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 21, 2018 18:18:28 GMT
Inherent Vice -
This is I think his weakest though it still has enough charms to recommend. I don't really like these kind of surreal pieces particularly in the mystery/detective genre where I think if you stick to the plot (old fashioned I know) you get all kinds of thematic resonance (if, of course, you have a good plot, see Night Moves, etc.) - I'm willing to subvert the genre as far as say The Long Goodbye, but this is far loopier than that to me and like I said I'm pretty old fashioned with this genre. Still.........
I didn't read the book but I assume it does a pretty faithful job and it is enthusiastically played by all with several laughs peppered throughout. I'm not sure why I should invest in it, but I enjoyed spending time with it, even if it doesn't add up to much for me.
7/10
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Post by stephen on Feb 21, 2018 18:21:06 GMT
Inherent Vice - This is I think his weakest though it still has enough charms to recommend. I don't really like these kind of surreal pieces particularly in the mystery/detective genre where I think if you stick to the plot (old fashioned I know) you get all kinds of thematic resonance (if, of course, you have a good plot, see Night Moves, etc.) - I'm willing to subvert the genre as far as say The Long Goodbye, but this is far loopier than that to me and like I said I'm pretty old fashioned with this genre. Still......... I didn't read the book but I assume it does a pretty faithful job and it is enthusiastically played by all with several laughs peppered throughout. I'm not sure why I should invest in it, but I enjoyed spending time with it, even if it doesn't add up to much for me. 7/10 It's definitely a film that demands a second viewing. The novel is even more byzantine (Anderson takes my Adapted Screenplay prize simply for having the balls to tackle Pynchon and then streamline him while losing none of the sheer what-the-fuckery of it all), and yet it is easily Pynchon's most accessible work. I heartily recommend it, especially with the prescribed accompanying '60s soundtrack that devout Pynchonites compiled online. I think you might take to it much more readily if you give it another go.
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Post by JangoB on Feb 21, 2018 23:53:14 GMT
I'll do each one of them briefly:
Hard Eight - PTA doing a bit of Mamet, a bit of Scorsese, a bit of Tarantino and yet his own self does definitely break through. Putting that aside, it's a real strong debut feature showing a young director with undeniable talent do a really good job with a small but engaging character piece. The direction is assured, the acting is great and it's just a little gem. Still, the great ones will come later.
Boogie Nights - PTA doing Scorsese with a bit of Altman and Tarantino in there and yet it is very much his thing. And it's a brilliant movie. Yes, it is in many ways about a young hot shot showing that he can be as great and as fired up as the masters but the film itself is actually amazing so the showing off is warranted. The characters are unforgettable and it's an amazing rollercoaster ride through a very unusual world that is presented without mockery or condescension but with absolute love. Love it.
Magnolia - PTA doing Altman with a bit of Scorsese in there and yet there's more and more of him in this one compared to the previous flicks. Which is understandable since this is very much him dealing with his own experiences and emotions through cinematic form. And this movie's like a hurricane - it just sweeps you up and doesn't let go for three hours straight. It's a beautiful emotional experience which is not afraid to look ridiculous or overcooked. For me it doesn't but I kinda get those for whom it does.
Punch-Drunk Love - Even though PTA was inspired by Tati, I think this is the movie where he really found himself and the first time he made a truly 100% PTA film. It's a film about love unlike any other. Rarely have I seen a film that has been this great and on point about portraying what goes on inside a person's head. Every cinematic trick is used for a purpose - to make us feel like we are inside Barry Egan's mind, and it works spectacularly. It's just unlike any other thing out there.
There Will Be Blood - An astonishing, overwhelming work of art that is just one of the great cinematic experiences I've had, and with a truly titanic performance at its centre. And I want to specifically stress how fantastic the filmmaking on display is - PTA has always been tremendous with his camerawork and here he and Elswit do some really incredible things. This movie looks like it belongs in a class of its own - you can't say it's stylized to look like a film from any decade of the past and yet it looks nothing like its contemporaries. The photography has such a specific look and feel to it that it, like with "Punch-Drunk Love", seems that this movie is just in a class of its own.
The Master - I think this is the most PTA movie PTA has done to date. Like Stephen, I also feel like this is the film where there isn't even a shade of his favorite filmmakers - it's purely his and his vision. There's a reason he says that this is his favorite film of the ones he's done. And it is endlessly haunting. Starting with this film, his work began having this magnificent strangeness that I can't quite explain but that keeps calling me back to it. I've seen this film a bunch of times and I'm sure there'll be more because every time it opens itself up in ways that are completely new. I hope PTA's upcoming works maintain that quality. Even if I can't quite explain what it actually is.
Inherent Vice - Totally captivating. It's such a unique experience, I can't get enough of it. So many moods and feelings, so many genres in one, and yet it all is binded by this haunting air of melancholy that I just can't stop thinking about. It's funny, bizarre, gripping, surprising but ultimately it's strangely sad and moving. And that's what keeps drawing me to it.
Phantom Thread - A gorgeous experience, and a film that feels like a blood relative (sister from another mother?) to "The Master" in many ways. Once again, I can't help but stress how marvelously peculiar and strange it is, and how that's exactly what keeps me thinking about it all the goddamn time. Incredible work from PTA behind the camera too - it's as fine looking a movie as anything I've seen in a long time.
I think he's the best filmmaker working now (overall Spielberg is my favorite director but I'm talking specifically about the current period) and I just can't wait to see what he'll be cooking up next.
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oneflyr
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Post by oneflyr on Feb 24, 2018 22:27:06 GMT
Phantom Thread will probably go down as his crowning achievement.
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