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Omar
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Post by Omar on Jan 31, 2006 0:18:21 GMT
Glad you liked it Mick. I didn't think you would.
Even though I consider Dustin Hoffman one of the best actors of all time, I really think that Jon Voight gave the better performance. His Joe Buck was extraordinary. And it's style might be dated, but it's themes are forever universal. When I first saw it, the film reminded me of an updated 60's version of "Of Mice and Men". It remains one of my favorite films.
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Post by Vercetti on Jan 31, 2006 2:40:20 GMT
Primal Fear - (Gregory Hoblit;1996;USA) After a priest is brutally murdered, a lawyer decides to defend the teenager accused.This is a decent drama, not because of it's direction, but the performances. Richard Gere and Laura Linney are pretty good in their roles, being the main support of the film. But it's Edward Norton that ends up stealing the show, in a meticulous performance. Otherwise there's not a lot else to jump for joy about. This turns out to be a pretty overrated film.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Jan 31, 2006 10:05:27 GMT
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Terry Gilliam 1998 US 1st time; VHS A journalist and his attorney, both incredibly high on drugs, arrive in Las Vegas with orders to cover a sporting event. Because his characters are constantly junked up and hallucinating, and because he is probably aware of the film's cult potential even before its release, Gilliam feels he can get away with anything; he does, if you can take two-hours of a dramatically mundane series of surreal sketches. To say it is a self-indulgent mess may be lazy, but no less valid.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Jan 31, 2006 10:08:28 GMT
Glad you liked [ Midnight Cowboy], Mick. I didn't think you would. I also think Voigt gave the better performance as the (almost dislikeably) naive Texan at odds with a new society. I also loved the party scene. While I still liked the film, and thought it worth watching, I'ev notched it down a star.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Jan 31, 2006 20:43:00 GMT
Isn't self-indulgence a good thing?
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Omar
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Post by Omar on Jan 31, 2006 21:06:30 GMT
Isn't self-indulgence a good thing? I guess it comes down to whether or not you like the filmmaker. I think it's a good thing, but the examples I could give would be from filmmakers I liked.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Jan 31, 2006 21:20:43 GMT
But even if the personality being indulged didn't produce art I found to my taste, I'd still think it was a good thing they were indulging themselves. I see that as the most fundamental property of art, self-indulgence. I don't see how it can be used as a criticism, unless that's exactly what it means; "Self-indulgence that results in art I don't enjoy." But the process of indulgence itself is, I think, an absolute good.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Jan 31, 2006 23:03:50 GMT
Odilon Redon, or: The Eye, Like a Strange Balloon, Mounts Toward Infinity Guy Maddin 1995, Canada / UK[/color] 1st viewing; download- A father and son witness two trains colliding from their own locomotive, rescue a young woman and begin vying for her attention. Maddin is an amazing visual stylist, the shadows and the crooked compositions are deeply beautiful and the thing flows with a chaotic energy.[/size] Sombra dolorosa Sorrowful Shadow Guy Maddin 2004, Canada[/color] 1st viewing; download- A woman defeats Death in a Mexican wrestling match and her husband is released from his belly... or something to that effect. Funny, grotesque and hugely imaginative, but a departure into a different, less mesmerizing visual style.[/size]
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Omar
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Post by Omar on Feb 1, 2006 0:54:46 GMT
Le Samourai The Samurai(1967/Jean-Pierre Melville) [First Viewing] After a job goes wrong, a hit-man must rely on his instincts to stay ahead of the police and his employers.A film told with such precision and detail, you would think it was made by it's main character, a perfectionist. The real skill of the film remains within it's writing. Little is said throughout the film, but when words are spoken, Melville has made sure that they perfectly fit the characters that he knows oh so well, in an existential world of gloom, combined with the style of a 40's American gangster movie mixed with French culture and Eastern idealism. It's an almost spiritual film, and a very well made one at that.
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Post by Vercetti on Feb 1, 2006 1:00:17 GMT
Glad you loved it, Omar. Possibly the best Crime Drama/Suspense ever.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Feb 1, 2006 19:55:30 GMT
Isn't self-indulgence a good thing? Absolutely. My use of it was in describing the film, prefixing the term "mess." It could have just as easily been "a colourful mess." La dolce vita is a self-indulgent masterpiece; Fear and Loathing is a self-indulgent mess.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Feb 1, 2006 20:20:05 GMT
January update. I saw 60 films last month. 49 were first-timers. Six were on the big screen. In the order of viewing: Good Will Hunting Gus Van Sant 1st time; VHS Performance Donald Cammell / Nicolas Roeg 1st time; TV Irréversible Irreversible Gaspar Noé 3rd time; DVD Solaris Steven Soderbergh 1st time; DVD Scanners David Cronenberg 1st time; VHS King Kong Peter Jackson 1st time; big screen Crash David Cronenberg 1st time; VHS eXistenZ David Cronenberg 1st time; VHS Spider David Cronenberg 1st time; DVD Fa yeung nin wa In the Mood For Love Wong Kar Wai 2nd time; DVD 2046 Wong Kar Wai 2nd time; DVD Night of the Living Dead George A. Romero 1st time; VHS A Busy Day Charles Chaplin 1st time; DVD Caught in a Cabaret Mabel Normand 1st time; DVD The Star Boarder The Landlady's Pet George Nichols 1st time; DVD The Pillow Book Peter Greenaway 1st time; VHS Elephant Gus Van Sant 2nd time; DVD The Truman Show Peter Weir 1st time; VHS Brokeback Mountain Ang Lee 1st time; big screen The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola Nth time; DVD The Brown Bunny Vincent Gallo 1st time; DVD Folowing Christopher Nolan 1st time; VHS Lawrence of Arabia David Lean 1st time; VHS Nashville Robert Altman 1st time; VHS Once Upon a Time in the Midlands Shane Meadows 1st time; DVD Shane's World Shane Meadows 1st time; DVD Shane's World Shane Meadows 2nd time; DVD Thief Michael Mann 1st time; VHS Ali Michael Mann 1st time; VHS The Last Waltz Martin Scorsese 1st time; VHS No Direction Home: Bob Dylan Martin Scorsese 1st time; VHS Dinner Rush Bob Giraldi 1st time; VHS Masked and Anonymous Larry Charles 1st time; VHS Morte a Venezia Death in Venice Luchino Visconti 1st time; VHS Week-End Weekend Jean-Luc Godard 3rd time; DVD The Circus Charles Chaplin 1st time; DVD City Lights Charles Chaplin 1st time; DVD Die Große Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner Werner Herzog 2nd time; VHS How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck Werner Herzog 2nd time; VHS A King in New York Charles Chaplin 1st time; DVD The Fatal Mallet Mack Sennett 1st time; DVD Twenty Minutes of Love Charles Chaplin 1st time; DVD Krótki film o zabijaniu A Short Film About Killing Krzysztof Kieslowski 3rd time; DVD Frozen Juliet McKoen 1st time; big screen Happiness Todd Solondz 1st time; VHS Five Easy Pieces Bob Rafelson 1st time; VHS Rock 127 Reza Haeri 1st time; VHS The Searchers John Ford 1st time; VHS The Knockout Charles Avery 1st time; DVD Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Michel Gondry 2nd time; DVD One Hundred and One Dalmations Clyde Geronimi / Hamilton S. Luske / Wolfgang Reitherman 1st time; VHS Memoirs of a Geisha Rob Marshall 1st time; big screen Rushmore Wes Anderson 1st time; VHS White Heat Raoul Walsh 1st time; VHS The New World Terrence Malick 1st time; big screen Bad Timing Nicolas Roeg 1st time; VHS Jarhead Sam Mendes 1st time; big screen Midnight Cowboy John Schlesinger 1st time; VHS Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Terry Gilliam 1st time; VHS Dawn of the Dead George A. Romero 1st time; VHS
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Feb 1, 2006 20:24:32 GMT
And so ends January: Dawn of the Dead George A. Romeo 1978 US 1st time; VHS Shortly after the events of Night of the Living Dead, a pair of policemen, a pilot and his pregnant wife become trapped in a shopping mall full of zombies. Grossly overlong action film with comic asides and some brilliant moments; it also happens to be an interesting social comment, in which the humans tear into each other instead of working together, and are almost undone by their own greed--Romero has the two minorities in the film, the black guy and the pregnant woman, the only two to survive.And so begins February: MunichSteven Spielberg 2005 US 1st time; big screen Five Mossad agents are employed secretly to hunt down and eliminate the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the death of the Israeli Olympic team in the 1972 Olympics. Accessible if not entirely authentic, watchable if not entirely worthy of its dumbfounding praise, Spielberg's revenge thriller is an overlong, tedious film with a message all about the complex implications of revenge itself. In this respect, it may be a fitting allegory to today's world, but struggles to convince for the most part.Bad TastePeter Jackson 1987 New Zealand 1st time; VHS When a small New Zealand village is overrun by aliens, four dumb humans come to the rescue. No elaboration is necessary other than the title, which says it all, really. A crescendo of deliberately bad jokes and gory special effects. Most reviews come with a "not for the squeamish" warning; to be disgusted by this film would be to fail to acknowledge its ultra-low, bad effects. It's more of an insult.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Feb 1, 2006 20:55:40 GMT
How long was the version of Dawn you watched? 140 minutes or so?
That's the only one I've seen, and I agree that it's too long - by about a half-hour. Though I don't think it hurts it much, it just results in some repetitious scenes in the mall. I think the restored footage was mostly at the beginning, with the world in chaos; the news station and the police raid on the tenement building, which I think is all great.
Glad you liked it. Day is the best of them.
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Post by Vercetti on Feb 2, 2006 3:47:54 GMT
Boys Don't Cry - (Kimberly Peirce;1999;USA) The story of Teena Brandon, who moved out of her hometown and masqueraded as a man called Brandon Teena.A very powerful drama that is well directed, and is given that extra boost from it's cast. This is Hilary Swank's best performance, well deserving the Oscar she won. Chloë Sevigny and Peter Sarsgaard are also very good, especially Sevigny, though both are very convincing. The music suits the mood of the film very well, as well as the dark feel to it. The tagline comes across as a cliche drama, but the film proves otherwise.
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jrod
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Post by jrod on Feb 2, 2006 8:19:28 GMT
Broken Blossoms My favorite silent film. The last half hour or so is pretty intense. I find it especially gripping during the second boxing scene Battleship Potemkin The Odessa Staircase scene is one of the most memorable scenes in cinema. Sadly I saw its exact copy in a bad movie The Untouchables first
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Feb 2, 2006 20:40:37 GMT
Gone in Sixty Seconds Dominic Sena 2000 US 1st time; DVD An ex-car thief is blackmailed into stealing fifty cars in one night. Fast-paced action film set in a world driven by cars; the only obstacles in this life are car crashes, or getting crushed in the back of an automobile. Slick, speedy, thrilling.Day of the Dead George A. Romero 1985 US 1st time; VHS A small group of militants and scientists in an underground bunker, the former wanting to wipe out the zombies, the latter wanting to preserve and train them, end up fighting with one another instead. Romero's further exploration of humans outdoing themselves in their usual self-destruction mode. There are interesting elements to be found here: the notion that the dead are evolving, even becoming sympathetic, while the living are taking big steps backwards, and strictly against the prospect of allowing these things to evolve into humanistic creatures--given the outcome of such evolution, perhaps it's a good thing.SubUrbia Richard Linklater 1996 US 1st time; VHS A group of twenty-somethings drink the night away in a car park, and are visited by a friend, who is now a famous rock star. Always-engrossing conversational piece which shows its theatrical origins throughout (it was originally a play); interesting, believable characters are the key here, and the acting adds a whole new complexity. A philosophical gem.
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jrod
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Post by jrod on Feb 2, 2006 23:35:47 GMT
Misery 1st Viewing I used to read a lot of Stephen King when I was in jr high, and this was among my favorite of his books. The movie was well made, but the story just doesnt translate as well on film Breakfast at Tiffanys 1st Viewing Pretty solid romantic comedy movie, but nothing too special in my opinion. Now I got the fucking song with the same name stuck in my head.
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Post by Driver on Feb 3, 2006 17:18:57 GMT
21 Grams (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2003) A tragic accident interwines the lives of 3 very different people.This film was just amazing. The acting, the shots, everything. Special mention to Benicio Del Toro, in what I've seen as his best role yet.
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