Rate The Last Movie You Saw

Lol I admit I was not a fan of Tree of Life either. I thought that I would Love it. I love ambitious films, but the movie literally had me falling asleep. Yes the cinematography was good(duh, it's Malick) but the constant whispering and lack of cohesion definitely made it seem pretentious. I hate using that word, but in this case it's true. I still give it a 6 or so because of the creation of life scene and the photography, but it's not a great film though.I didn't react strongly to it either Guap.

Yeah movie was definitely hardcore. Got any recommendations to films similar to it? I've seen most of Lynch's films,2001,Persona,etc. Looking for something that'll blow my mind.

I understand that Malick appeals to a specific set of tastes, and is very polarizing, ergo your distaste of the constant whispering. What i don't get is how you don't find the film cohesive. There are some individual shots that come from nowhere (I think specifically of an image of a levitating Jessica Chastain, though that seemed perfectly in context on later viewings), but altogether the film is one of the most emotionally cohesive films I've seen. It follows emotional continuity rather than spatial or scene based continuity. I think another movie like this is Inland Empire, which has a plot that doesn't even pretend to make sense, but it makes complete emotional sense and has a cathartic climax. I don't understand how Lynch does this, but I think the way The Tree of Life follows emotional continuity is fairly obvious.

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Mubi

Well, I watched it, found it pathetically bad and hated it when I read Ebert's review of it: why so many people love that thing?

Look at 8 minutes of it:

It's pathetically bad and amateurish. Looks likes a satire of an art movie.

I think it works as a satire for some time after 30 minutes it becomes simply boring.

My thoughts on Steve McQueen, and I think that McQueen fits that bill better than Malick. Until Malick's recent influence on bad art movies like Upstream Color and Ain't Them Bodies Saints, art films tended towards a much different aesthetic that Malick's. The editing in Malick's films is very rapid when considering the rigorous, long take aesthetic that has become nearly synonymous with art films. The pillars of art filmmaking today from what I can tell are Kiarostami, Hou, Tarr, and Jia, all of whom are characterized by their use (to a lesser extent Kiarostami, though he experiments with it regularly) of the long take. Malick has no care for that and his films have become more chopped up as he's gotten older. McQueen fits the bill by incorporating these into his films, but not incorporating it into his usual aesthetic. Malick seems to me unusually spiritual for typical art house fare, and has a very optimistic view of life more in line with Hollywood's than modern art films.

Altogether, he seems to me to match up more with silent film than anything else. He uses very little dialogue and his sounds are typically disconnected from the image. In this sense, Malick seems to be what sound film might have been if people listened to Eisenstein. I'd love to see a defense that argues Malick to be just like mumblecore though.

And yes, I love that terribly cliche ending on the mythological beach, filled with all of his loved ones. I think its just as cliche as you do, and I think that about the big bang sequences too. Malick isn't so much of a philosopher as any of his characters are, and that's the point. (sorry for talking so much about McQueen, he was a good specific example to tie to my point.)

Other Tarkovsky's films are not as hard hitting in the same sense as Stalker. The Mirror is even more impressive but it's only a collection of scenes without a driving plot (he stated it is as so). Though Solaris is also quite similar to Stalker being a depressing science fiction film. If you haven't watched it you should, it's one of my top 50 favorite movies.

Another mindblowing eastern European film is Visitor to a Museum. I included it into my top 25 of the 1980's. Some said it is a mix of Eraserhead with Stalker. So it might be right up your alley there.

Several anime series that are unknown to non-anime fans are very hardcore in that sense. Specially Abe's work (Technolyze, Lain, Haibane Renmei) I would put all those series in my top 50 films if they were classified as so, Lain and Technolyze are probably the most mind blowing of these 3. NGE is also quite hardcore during it's last 10 episodes but it's first 12-13 episodes are conventional action anime for teenagers (though people in this same forum classified it as "as if Lynch directed a giant robot TV show", but it is also much more depressing than Lynch's films).

I was speaking in more general terms than you do when talking about art films. I think you are alone in suggesting that The Tree of Life is not an art film.

Again, art is subjective and some people might love it. But I didn't have a strong reaction to that movie and I started hating it only after I found out that many critics considered it "the movie of the decade" while I only watched something that felt quite amateurish. It looked like a satire of Tarkovsky's films. And note that I was extremely impressed by all of Tarkovsky's films.

When you say that The Tree of Life is a satire of an art film, it implies a model of an art film to satire.

Tarkovsky's films sometimes feel like an (unintentional) satire of Tarkovsky. The less said about McQueen's first two films, the better.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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The same has been said of Hitchcock, Godard, Lynch, Malick, and pretty much every distinctive director I can think of.

I watched Kick-ass 2 Last night just for a laugh and I thought it was brilliant. The entire concept has grown with the audience, lots of sex, violence and foul language but however crude it is it is still awesome!

Beasts of the Southern Wild:9/10 so impressive!
i don't know why "Quvenzhane" didn't win the oscar!she was deserved it.

Begotten


Brilliant.



(beat)



Not!

Wasn't disturbed, that's not it. I mean they kept hitting the dude in the penis with sticks, and there was a bush in dire need of trimming, and Mother Earth gives God's dead corpse a handjob, and there were rapey scenes, and a certain ammounts of fluids, but that's cool. No, my problem is that I felt the pretentious, you know? It's not a movie I regret watching, and I mostly got the symbolism before going to Wikipedia about it, but it all just felt so unnecessary. I loved the twitchy movements, I always love twitchy movements. I think they're creepy as ****. But nope, that was no masterpiece. I sorta expected quite a bit more. But it also not the piece of **** "you will want to rip your eyes out after watching it" some others painted it to be.

It was barely interesting enough for me to stick with it. It's obviously influenced by Brakhage, but it should have been a 20 minute short because at this length, I thought about giving it less than the I did.

Heat (1995)

I wasn't expecting to like it, but I did. Although the runtime was a little too long, I thought it used every one of its minutes effectively. Unfortunately, it's not a movie I'll be adding to my collection, as I don't think I'll be watching it again. I read that Nolan drew inspiration from this for the Dark Knight. Looking back, I can see the influence.

7/10

Are you talking about the movie above, or the movie "It"?

Begotten, obviously.

I guess I'll be watching Brakhage. I want ma weird.

Just saw Capote. A solid 7.5/10

Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favorite actors. He accomplished such a strong performance in Capote. Really enjoyed it.