The Wicker Man - The Blu Ray has a really nice transfer, film still holds up well, I haven’t seen it for a while so didn’t notice whatever the differences are.
Maitresse - Gérard Depardieu plays a burglar who gets caught red handed thieving from a dominatrix’s flat. He ends up falling for her and moving in with her where he helps her with some of her “goings on”. Quite a good film but some if it made me cringe.
The Town - Watched it this afternoon, very good crime thriller set in Boston about some armed robbers. I was quite impressed. Watched the longer cut of the film, didn’t seem like two and a half hours.
Yesterday I saw Ron Howard’s Best Picture winning A Beautiful Mind (2001), a biopic of schizophrenic, Nobel-prize winning Game Theory mathematician John Nash, as played superbly by Russell Crowe. Expertly directed by the always professional Howard and shot by the great Roger Deakins, it provides an insight into a troubled genius that really makes us understand the “beauty” of his mind. Jennifer Connelly’s performance though, rewarded with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar seems generous, for a part that is essentially that of a caring, dutiful wife and mother. Otherwise, I was completely engrossed by the picture, which is bolstered by a wonderful James Horner score.
Thanks Colonel. I really want to like these eighties’ Argento flicks, but I must say his later works are more fatuous than his earlier films. Damn, I still think Cat O’ Nine Tails is a very good Argento on par with The Bird with a Crystal Plumage and Tenebre. I also watched Phenomena by Argento a couple of days ago and again - there was some great stuff in it, but the film ultimately couldn’t surmount its cheesiness. Those fetishistic dialogues concerning being a vegetarian and loving insects are so fucking dumb and out of place that they virtually butcher everything else. The finale is spectacular and outstanding though. I have yet to see Inferno.
The Devil Probably (1977) - 9/10 - Wow, that’s a bleak one. Its storytelling is somehow frayed, but I found it so compellingly creepy and simultaneously charming that I couldn’t dislike it. I know it’s considered to be a lesser effort by Bresson, but it’s got to be of my favourites.
Pigsty (1969) - 4/10 - I advise Bill san Antonio not to view this one. It’s even a more hardcore Pasolini film - those who cannot digest Teorema are bound to loathe this film. Though I don’t dislike it (I actually enjoy it quite a bit), I must concede that it is decidedly a style-over-substance material. I love the landscapes and the atmosphere, but they cannot make amends for a lack of strong story.
Dark City (1998) - 5/10 - Seriously, a classic? Yeah, it’s nicely shot, but it is also very overrated. The director just gleaned various elements from other SF classics and crammed it into this bucket of CGI bullshit.
L’Argent (1983) - 9/10 - Damn, it is so intransigently lugubrious that it left me dumbfounded, but it was a great one.
Easy Rider (1969) - 9/10 - A wonderful film. Nicholson is great.
anyway
watched Elysium yesterday
a sf flick with a ringworld like space station, i’ve been waiting for something like this last 15 years since i’d read Larry Niven sf novel, you fuckers, so finally someone incorporated the idea into the movie - well, not completely, but close enough to make me happy
great visuals btw, story is okay and Kruger is one of the best villains i’ve seen in sfs in few years
now i really recommend myself to get some of the Halo games finally
I liked some parts of it, but ultimately it turned into a glistening and tawdry piece of CGI extravaganza filled with some existential musings utilised in order to cloak the film’s general lack of substance. The pacing was also very weird - neither bad nor good. Overall, it wasn’t tedious for me, but it often made me scratch my head.
Hey there y’all! It’s been a while since I’ve posted on the forum. Life has been pretty hectic in the past few months, but things have somewhat settled down and I now have more time to waste on the web! ;D
Of course if there’s one thing that didn’t change ; it’s my movie viewing habits. Since I’ve last posted here, I discovered the great Samuel Fuller (not that I didn’t know of him, I just hadn’t seen anything from him) and just today I’ve watched another of his flick.
House of Bamboo (1955) While the usual Fuller flair is present, I’m afraid this is one of his weakest effort. Not that it’s a bad film, I’m beginning to think he’s incapable of such a thing, but House of Bamboo possess one grave flaw : Robert Stack. He delivers the single worst performance in a Fuller film I’ve seen so far, he even outsucks Bella Darvi. It’s not outrageously awful, but it’s incredibly bland and if there’s one thing the usual rough and though Fuller lead can’t be, well it’s bland. A Richard Widmark (coincidentally he was the bad guy in the film that inspired this one) or a Gene Evans would have sold it. Hopefully his performance becomes less grating as re-watches go by because there’s lot to enjoy here. It looks stunning, the story his suitably hard-boiled, Robert Ryan and Cameron Mitchell are fantastic and there’s many great scenes scattered throughout (Ryan’s introduction, Mitchell’s death, the last standoff, the list goes on). Funny, Fuller’s two “worst” films so far are both in color, have very weak central performances and have Mitchell as a supporting actor (which is sad, I’m beginning to love that guy and he deserves at least one great Fuller). Next up, China Gate!
[size=12pt]The Road [/size] - 2009 - John Hillcoat
First of all i must start to say, I haven’t read the book, and regardless of all considerations I make I did like the film.
For a PA kind I film, I really liked the plot or the scrip or whatever, there’s no zombies no monsters from space, just imagination, you never real get to know what happened maybe a natural disaster, you just know.
The cannibalistic society that emerges from its scary but somehow realistic and that its the most scary thing of the film, it’s how realistic and possible the kind of non society that results after gigantic natural disaster aftermath are. My sister have read the book and said that that aspect was the most terrible one.
I also can understand why the film wasn’t such a great success, not appealing enough to the big public, it clearly lacks the Michael Bay element for that matter, no zombies no explosions, no conventional horror also with gore, and not also a indie type of film, for the intellectual public.
Still I liked the way the story was put into the screen, making the focus in the relation father and son, the all film centers about that. It’s a bleak non hope film, except for the love of a father to his son, only those who have sons can understand that. There’s a terrible scene where the father is ready to kill his son, just to save me from being eaten by others survivors, very powerful stuff.
Apart from the low key story, I still thing it’s a well directed film taking in account the specifications of the story.
Still the best part of the film its the acting Viggo Mortensen is great and also the kid, also the small parts are fantastic, specially the old man played by Robert Duvall. I have my doubts about the flashbacks it takes a bit the focus from the main powerhouse of the film.
There’s lot of comparisons made between other PA film, but a single one could be made with most of the well known PA films, no doubt it’s a very singular film.
Also the ending looked a bit out the bleakness of the film, a message of hope, I didn’t like the ambiguous message in such a direct film. The most terrible thing was the fact that the family accepted the kid just to eat him.
In a few years I will watch this film again, and will put me down again.
Bad Cop - These sort of DTV films are often shit or hidden gems, this was neither but wasn’t too bad, runs at a good pace and has some pretty good action sequences, a few of which wouldn’t have got past the BBFC a while back.
[quote=“I love you M.E. Kay, post:10648, topic:1923”]Hey there y’all! It’s been a while since I’ve posted on the forum. Life has been pretty hectic in the past few months, but things have somewhat settled down and I now have more time to waste on the web! ;D
Of course if there’s one thing that didn’t change ; it’s my movie viewing habits. Since I’ve last posted here, I discovered the great Samuel Fuller (not that I didn’t know of him, I just hadn’t seen anything from him) and just today I’ve watched another of his flick.[/quote]
Welcome back and welcome to the world of Samuel Fuller, one of most iconoclastic directors of the '50s and beyond! I’m particularly looking forward to Masters of Cinema’s Blu-ray release of White Dog next year.
Time was also flying when I was watching it, but nevertheless whole time I had this feeling that I had watched exactly the same movie before, only that time it was called Heat.
@tomas: If you’ve liked Elysium, see District 9 from the same director if you already haven’t. Both movies lie on basically the same idea, but for me Elysium was good for only about half of movie. I was sitting at the cinema thinking, “ok, let me think what would be typical hollywood ending for this movie”, and guess what, I guess it exactly. District 9 has more special indie feel. But both movies have very distinct special effects style, that is instantly recognizable and looks much more real than all of the usual CGI junk. “Gunfight” scenes in Elysium are breathtaking.
Yeah, Pickup on South Street is great! I kept expecting Richard Widmark’s character to become a little less cynical as time goes by, but he’s a “don’t wave the flag at me” type of guy through and through. Plus Jean Peters and Thelma Ritter are amazing.
Watched China Gate (1957) yesterday. I understand it’s not exactly a fan favorite, but I thought it was simply stellar. A captivating story of a man coming to term with his own racism, full of great Fuller-ian dialog. It contains some of my favorite drama in any of his films I’ve seen so far (the tree-house confrontation is something to behold) and is full of splendid little touches. And you can’t beat that casting ; Angie Dickinson, Nat ‘King’ Cole and Lee Van Cleef (playing a very interesting communist villain). Bowl of rice, bitter tea, is this all the good Earth has to offer me?
Well I the biggest Fuller fan around, but I have to agree with Staton, after the Big Red one the B movie of B movies, he did his main project the work of a life time. So the films ater that are not the best one he made. Still I think white dog was an ambitious project not in production but in thematics a clever film, Street of no reurn was just an weak effort to make one a modern version of those classic B noir films Fuller was famous for.
Through a reasonably complex number of moves which began further up this thread as I read Yodlaf’s approval of the new(ish) transfer of the magnificent original The Wicker Man and which continued as I perused a couple of documentaries about the movie on YouTube, I finally wound up watching the much-derided 2006 Neil LaBute remake starring Nicolas Cage, because I’d never bothered with it before and in a Wicker Man frame of mind I found myself thinking, “Hey, how bad can it be?” Well, it was pretty fcking bad, right there. Zero tension, zero sense, zero reasons to give a fck about anybody on the screen, zero sense of fear, or threat. But all of that “nothing” means that the film has to be filled up with something, and that something is Maximum unintentional comedy and Maximum Nic Cage chewing the scenery. Want to see Mr. Cage running about in a bear outfit? Want to see him commandeer a bicycle at gunpoint (“Step away, from the bike!”)? Kick a schoolgirl into a wall (WAY more hilarious than it sounds, btw)? Scream “NO! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAARGGGHHH!”? Well, it’s all here. Actually, those are the only four bits worth seeing, and I’ve given those away now. So, sod it.
If you’ve managed to avoid it this long, keep it that way.
Happines of Katakursis
-Takashi Miike’s over the top musical/comedy/thriller. Even in Miike’s standard’s this film is crazy as hell. I’m not even sure if I liked it or not…
It’s even a more hardcore Pasolini film - those who cannot digest Teorema are bound to loathe this film. Though I don’t dislike it (I actually enjoy it quite a bit), I must concede that it is decidedly a style-over-substance material. I love the landscapes and the atmosphere, but they cannot make amends for a lack of strong story.
