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At no point in my life have I ever thought about watching Wild Wild West. It has always looked too terrible for words.
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At no point in my life have I ever thought about watching Wild Wild West. It has always looked too terrible for words.
Well, I knocked out a couple of paragraphs on it, so it's not that terrible - but yeah, it does come awfully close. Also, I did point out how I was nine when I saw it - it's not like I had the most discerning taste (while you clearly have more years on me and thus presumably knew better at the time).
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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0



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#415 - Eyes Wide Shut
Stanley Kubrick, 1999



After an argument with his wife about the subject of infidelity, a wealthy doctor wanders into the night and ends up having a series of bizarre encounters.

Unsurprisingly, I did not think all that much of Eyes Wide Shut when I first saw it several years ago. Even at the peak of my interest in Kubrick, I could recognise that it still had his same sense of visual mastery, but the subject matter left a lot to be desired. Clocking in a staggering 160 minutes, it ended up being one of his longest films and based around a story that was alternately sluggish and bizarre thanks to its focus on exposing the banality behind supposedly scintillating subjects such as sexuality, infidelity, and perversion. This was amidst a somewhat thriller-like plot where the situations within the film escalated from the intriguing to the dangerous. Even so, I figured that I'd give it time to breathe and return to it at a later date, and now here I am with a far more favourable opinion. In a clever bit of stunt-casting, the film stars the most famous celebrity couple of the late-90s, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, as a general practitioner and his stay-at-home wife respectively. They seemingly have it all - wealth, a good home, a loving daughter, and a seemingly healthy relationship with one another - but that last one slowly gets picked apart after the duo attend a Christmas party held by one of Cruise's friends (Sydney Pollack). After they get into an argument over gendered double standards in regards to sexual thought processes and especially in regards to infidelity, Cruise decides to leave home and ends up wandering through the streets of downtown New York, having a series of increasingly surreal encounters that lead him to question virtually everything he's ever known about human nature.

I guess it's just as well that Kubrick's final film ended up being what was probably his most dense and difficult work (even in comparison to the disorienting approach to science-fiction he took with 2001). There's a superficially easy to spot plot thread thanks to Cruise's character going through a journey of curious self-discovery, but it's used as the launching pad for scenes that range from lengthy discussions about subjects outlined above to lurid scenes depicting near-incomprehensible displays of eroticism (case in point - the notorious orgy sequence full of figures wearing masks and robes). Throughout it all, Cruise makes a good choice to play a character who is as good an example of the "typical" Kubrick protagonist as you're likely to find with his charming yet hollow persona feeling like the director once again playing a lead's acting weaknesses for maximum effect (see also: Barry Lyndon). Kidman, meanwhile, does the best with what she's got but between her character being deliberately set up as an ill-tempered instigator for Cruise's narrative and the developments that are supposed to make her more complex than that it feels a bit too inconsistent in terms of quality (and it's not helped by her relative lack of screen-time). Otherwise, the cast is populated by some characters that range from the understandably bland to the unforgettably unique.

Though this is technically one of the most mundane films Kubrick ever made (there's no war or sci-fi or supernatural horror), he certainly doesn't skimp on bringing in a lot of recognisable visual trademarks, whether it's the sweeping Handicam long-takes or the way in which still shots are framed. The use of colour is very effective, especially when the colour blue is involved ever-so-slightly in a lot of the scenes (as if to reflect the sheer artificiality of these people's lives). Knowing that the film was (as with most of Kubrick's output) actually filmed in Britain makes his recreation of downtown New York stand out as an uncannily detailed one, with there being just enough changes to make it feel like the somewhat surreal dream reality that it may or may not be intended to be (though interpreting it as a dream sounds kind of boring). There is once again an interesting selection of music, whether it's the signature leitmotif that consists of an arrhythmic two-note melody playing over the most unsettling parts of the film or a typically Kubrickian mix of classical tunes. Though it's perhaps a little on the long side even for Kubrick, it's still a compelling film more often than not (and this is on a second viewing, no less) and its sheer weirdness makes it a good way for Kubrick to conclude his filmmaking career (not like he had much choice in the matter). Still not sure how it'd stack up to the rest of his films, but it'd definitely hold its own regardless.




Also, I did point out how I was nine when I saw it - it's not like I had the most discerning taste (while you clearly have more years on me and thus presumably knew better at the time).
Absolutely. I didn't mean to infer anything with my post other than what it said.



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Absolutely. I didn't mean to infer anything with my post other than what it said.
I didn't think so, but I still feel like I had to explain myself.



I really like Eyes Wide Shut, but for whatever reason, it's a movie I always think higher of in hindsight. I suppose that's to it's credit.



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#416 - House
Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977



When summer vacation starts, a schoolgirl convinces a group of friends to to accompany her to her aunt's remote house.

Well, you have to hand it to House...it's certainly a cinematic experience that is difficult to forget. Despite its rather conventional horror premise - a group of young girls trapped in a haunted house getting picked off one at a time by malevolent forces - its execution in virtually every other regard is extraordinarily unconventional. The first third of the film plays out like an excessively jaunty comedy complete with comical music and the introduction to a series of outsized characters; in the English subtitles on the version I saw, the main cast are referred to by nicknames such as Kung Fu, Gorgeous, and Fantasy, each of which aptly describes their most definitive character trait. In addition to their peppy interactions with one another and also Gorgeous's mysterious aunt (who is clearly going to be the villain from the outset, even if our heroines are oblivious to it at first). The comedic sensibilities constantly bleed into the genuinely horrific parts of the film - though this does sort of rob the film of the ability to genuinely provoke fear or fright, it amply compensates in terms of pure entertainment as the girls encounter all sorts of bizarre circumstances and attacks as they take up residence in the house.

To list all the filmmaking techniques that are invented, discarded, or subverted throughout the film's brief running time would take a good few paragraphs on its own. Needless to say, there is a palpable visual energy to virtually every frame of this film even when it's not engaging in any genuinely supernatural shenanigans. Of course, the main thing that anyone will come away remembering is the sheer creativity behind the visuals. Even the technical shortcomings manage to add to the charm as a lot of visibly blue-screened effects are used, to say nothing of the clearly superimposed effects such as the evil white cat's eyes flashing green whenever it casts a spell. Mixed in with the extremely rapid-fire and deliberately incoherent editing and cinematography, House never fails to lose one's attention. If there is a flaw that stops me genuinely loving this film, it's that, despite its briefness, it does lose its momentum here and there even as the body count grows and the film nears its end. Anarchic energy can last so long even in the case of a film as off-the-wall as House manages to be, but I'd still consider it highly recommended to anyone who wants to see something that is as far from your average movie as movies can possibly get.




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#417 - Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
Neil Jordan, 1994



A vampire agrees to tell his centuries-long life story to a writer.

Interview with the Vampire is another one of those movies that I've seen 100% of the way through from start to finish. I started the book but never finished it, while I've watched virtually all of the film but missed the start. Now that I've had the opportunity to watch the whole thing from start to finish, I have to admit that I do still find the final product a little underwhelming. Granted, it's not without its highlights. It's almost too good watching Tom Cruise chew every possible inch of scenery as Lestat, the mischievious blonde vampire who turns suicidal widower (and eventual interviewee) Louis (Brad Pitt) into a vampire, which prompts a whole bunch of odd-couple nonsense as Louis struggles with the notion of killing and feeding on humans. Eventually, they add young orphan Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) to their company and to go on any further would definitely be taking it into spoiler territory.

While the film may have the sort of lavish production values that would suit a story spanning centuries and continents, it's melodramatic to a considerable fault. While the visuals are decent enough for the most part, the score is a major offender with its histrionics being almost enough to put me off a lot - while the old-timey harpsichord suits a lot of scenes just fine, the full-blown orchestra just sounds ridiculous in virtually every instance where it's used to indicate drama and tension. Regardless of whether or not Cruise may be miscast as Lestat, his rampant flamboyance always promises to liven things up - without him, the film starts to sag considerably regardless of the tragedies afflicting both Louis and Claudia. While Dunst does alright playing a character well beyond her years, Pitt's maudlin turn as a self-loathing vampire may have some point but in 2015 the whole "mopey vampire" thing has well and truly run its course. As a result, it's hard to truly give a damn about these characters who have been cursed with eternal life even if it's somewhat understandable. The film then relocates once again and tries to engineer a climax that doesn't feel nearly as cathartic as it thinks it's being. While there are some good moments here and there, they have been realised better in other movies. Ultimately, Interview with the Vampire may have some decent 1990s period-piece horror visuals and an amazingly against-type performance by Cruise, but the storyline is pretty underwhelming for the most part and it's not really what I want out of vampire fiction these days. At least that ending is a good one.




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#418 - Prometheus
Ridley Scott, 2012



In the late-21st century, a scientific expedition travels through space in search of extraterrestrials that made contact with ancient Earthlings.

I have long thought of Ridley Scott as a director who didn't prioritise style over substance so much as prioritising technique over both of those qualities. While that attention to technical detail has contributed greatly to his most beloved and acclaimed works, it also makes it easy for me to take a more impersonal approach to his work and, if the plot and characters of a particular film don't prove sufficiently interesting or engaging (especially on a repeat viewing), then my attention ends up drifting to the artificial side of things and tends to stay there. As a result, my feelings about his filmography cover the preferential spectrum from all-time favourites to boring wastes of time. Prometheus marked the first time that Scott had taken on outer space since his 1979 breakthrough hit Alien, and of course the speculation that this would be some sort of expansion of that film's existing canon ran rampant. While I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is regarding the untagged discussion of spoilers that confirm or deny such speculation, it hardly seems relevant to the film at large. The most positive thing that I can say about Prometheus is that it looks good, which really is one of the clearest examples of damning with faint praise that I've ever given out.

When it comes to plot and characters, Prometheus starts out promisingly enough with the concept of humans putting together an expedition to find an alien race that supposedly had contact with several ancient human civilisations, leading them to plot a course for the co-ordinates common to every ancient inscription. Of course, the film doesn't spend too much time defining its characters all that well - you have the jerkass who only cares about getting paid (Sean Harris), the person begrudgingly financing and supervising the expedition (Charlize Theron), you have the extremely nervous scientific type (Rafe Spall), the laid-back ship's captain (Idris Elba), etc. The two characters of any particular note end up being Noomi Rapace as the chief archaeologist and also Michael Fassbender as the expedition's token android. Rapace gets the most expansion on her background, especially how her perspective balances science and faith even after she deals with various personal traumas, whereas Fassbender's character models himself on the titular character in Lawrence of Arabia as a means of approaching some semblance of humanity despite the fact that every other character still feels the need to point out his objective lack of it. He comes across as a somewhat interesting attempt to graft some of the themes regarding artificial beings from Blade Runner onto an Alien kind of film, though it feels kind of disappointing how Scott and co. seem to be recycling concepts from all two of the other science-fiction films he's done. Besides, in a film that attempts to feature as large an ensemble as this one does, having only two of the characters stand out in any sufficiently favourable way does not say much about how well this film handles its characters.

While the visual effects definitely make for the best part of Prometheus, they are still considerably undone by the poor development of the story. When the film isn't trying to show off its elaborate sets, holograms, and gadgetry, it's too busy getting caught up in some poorly judged plot developments. From one character removing his helmet at the slightest suggestion of breathable atmosphere through Spall's constantly terrified character becoming inexplicably friendly towards alien fauna all of a sudden to characters attempting to evade a large rolling object by running in a straight line instead of to the side, there are plenty of leaps in logic and believability that not even the inherent vagueness of the planet's alien materials can adequately justify. As a result, while Prometheus may have some impressive effects, a couple of characters whose development covers more than one dimension, and a cursory attempt to address themes of faith as a result of its human characters' search for their "creators", it's still a fundamentally flawed piece of work and a difficult film to genuinely appreciate. According to IMDb, this film is currently slated to receive a sequel (produced but not directed by Scott) at some point next year. While a sequel to a film I genuinely disliked sounds like a bad idea in theory, it is at once a slight compliment and a grave insult to this film that a sequel sounds like something that needs to happen to it.




What do you want out of vampire fiction?

Obviously I love Interview With The Vampire. At one time it was my favourite film and I love the first three books.

Prometheus was on tv over here last week. I thought about recording it just to see if there was anything I could get from it. In the end I decided against it simply because I have so many thing to watch that a film I've little/no interest in would just be taking up valuable space atm.



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I think both of these films are much better than you have rated them! I was underwhelmed by Interview the first time I saw it. I loved the book and the film was never quite going to do it justice, but it grew on me considerably and I love all the melodramatic 90s vampire histrionics. Prometheus isn't the greatest installment in the Alien franchise, but there's enough there to deserve more than a 1.5.



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What do you want out of vampire fiction?

Obviously I love Interview With The Vampire. At one time it was my favourite film and I love the first three books.

Prometheus was on tv over here last week. I thought about recording it just to see if there was anything I could get from it. In the end I decided against it simply because I have so many thing to watch that a film I've little/no interest in would just be taking up valuable space atm.
Hard to say, really. I really enjoyed Only Lovers Left Alive because it took elements that were hinted at in this story and built a whole film out of it, plus it took the whole played-out "tortured vampire who wishes for death" thing that this film plays straight and played it for black comedy. It's a good response to the kind of familiar vampire stories that Interview with the Vampire played straight. That being said, I don't have much appreciation for the films that just play the vampires as straight-up villains either e.g. John Carpenter's Vampires.

While I generally don't like Prometheus, it'd be hard for me to say whether or not anyone else would get out of it regardless of their tastes. At the very least, the fact that I gave it a second chance made me think that there would be something of worth there, but there's got to be more to a film than just flashy effects and a really good Peter O'Toole impression.

I think both of these films are much better than you have rated them!
I get that a lot.

I was underwhelmed by Interview the first time I saw it. I loved the book and the film was never quite going to do it justice, but it grew on me considerably and I love all the melodramatic 90s vampire histrionics. Prometheus isn't the greatest installment in the Alien franchise, but there's enough there to deserve more than a 1.5.
Yeah, I never finished the book and probably never will at this point, though I remember liking it well enough at the time (which would have been what, early 2007?). As I outlined earlier, I don't much care for vampire melodrama unless it's of the ridiculously hammy kind as demonstrated by Lestat, who basically comes across as a classier, haughtier version of the vampires from Near Dark.

What do you think there is about Prometheus that would deserve more than a 1.5 (incidentally, what rating would you give it anyway?)



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I don't like vampire films, but I do really like Interview With The Vampire. However, it's really Tom Cruise that carries it and elevates for me.


I saw Prometheus a while back, didn't think too much of it. That might be down to the fact that I'm not really an Alien fan either, but I remember it being kind of dull for most of it's running time.
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#419 - Sanjuro
Akira Kurosawa, 1962



A ronin becomes involved with a power struggle between corrupt officials and a group of samurai.

Sanjuro marks the sequel to Yojimbo and once again features Toshiro Mifune as the eponymous character (though this time the title refers to his chosen name instead of his occupation). The basic premise also has similarities thanks to its use of a singular masterless warrior stumbling into the midst of a conflict between two different forces. While Yojimbo generated interest thanks to both sides of the conflict being fundamentally villainous gangs of thieves and murderers that Mifune would play against one another for both profit and justice, here the morality is a lot less ambiguous. Mifune sides pretty definitively with a small group of naive samurai who are concerned with the injustices being done by the local superintendent and his underlings. The resulting film is largely unconcerned with exploring complex themes, instead saving the complexity for the various ploys that Mifune and his companions use to gain the upper hand over the opponents.

While it still very much feels like any of Kurosawa's other films from this particular era, there's something about Sanjuro that doesn't engage me in the same way as the other ones. There is a cursory exploration of the nature of violence as some characters are willing to openly criticise Mifune's tendency towards favouring bloodthirsty solutions and force him to at least think about less lethal answers to the group's problems. It does guarantee the odd interesting moment - at the very least, that ending is a worthwhile conclusion - but otherwise it feels like this might just be my least favourite of all the Kurosawa films that I've seen so far. Of course, with a director and cast as talented as the ones featured here (Tatsuya Nakadai pops up again, though he is almost unrecognisable due to this being the first role I've seen him in where he has a balding topknot instead of a full head of hair and a topknot - I guess that might be to distinguish him from the gun-toting hothead he played in Yojimbo) this is definitely an instance where a least favourite doesn't automatically equate to a bad film.




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#420 - Friday
F. Gary Gray, 1995



Over the course of a single Friday, two friends - one recently fired from his job, the other a two-bit drug dealer - spend their time hanging around in their neighbourhood.

When I first saw Friday many years ago, my initial feeling about it was that it was like an African-American version of Clerks. There are certainly plenty of similarities - the 24-hour timeframe, the confinement to a small area, the two twenty-something leads that are alternately a miserable straight man dealing with relationship problems and an irresponsible slacker who annoys people - but Friday definitely has enough personality to strike out on its own ground. Its setting in a street in South Central L.A. results in a cast that is almost entirely black (save for a pair of Latinos and one Asian, but the briefness of their combined appearances still make them exceptions that prove the rule), which of course plays into a film that starts off relatively light-hearted. The seeds are sown early on with pothead drug dealer Smokey (Chris Tucker) ending up in debt to his boss (Faizon Love) to the point where it could literally cost him his life, while the local neighbourhood bully (Tiny Lister) is constantly dropping by to coerce both Smokey and his best friend Craig (Ice Cube) into either helping (or at least not preventing) him commit his own petty crimes. Amidst all that, Craig has to contend with his newfound unemployment and the fact that he is caught between his shrill, demanding girlfriend (Paula Jai Parker) and his affections for his sister's friend (Nia Long).

The film does a decent enough job of incorporating hood politics into an otherwise goofy stoner comedy, enough so that the second half where the threats of drive-bys and beatdowns don't feel like too much of a shock as the tensions bubbling under the street's somewhat peaceful surface finally explode. Even the inconsistent moralising that permeates the film (Smokey's rampant pot-smoking, though it does end up endangering his life before too long, is still compared favourably to the pathetic life of the neighbourhood crackhead) isn't too much of a problem - at the very least, it doesn't detract from the amusement on offer. Cube and Tucker make for decent enough anchors (with the latter naturally stealing the show with his trademark loudmouth wackiness) to a story that is full of memorably quirky characters, from John Witherspoon as Craig's cantankerous father through to Bernie Mac as a cheerful pastor. There are plenty of great instances of both verbal and physical humour, even if a lot of it does get a little scatalogical (such as Smokey's attempt to relieve himself, which had me laughing so hard I couldn't breathe the first time I saw it). The direction is competent and the soundtrack is full of good tunes. All things considered, Friday isn't quite as good as I remember it being but it is still a very solid and dependable comedy that I will not hesitate to watch if I get the chance.




I preferred Sanjuro to Yojimbo.

I've only seen Friday once, I think, sometime in the mid/late 90's, but I remember enjoying it quite a bit. Never tempted by the sequel(s), though.



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Friday gets 3.5 but Interview With the Vampire gets 2?
http://img.pandawhale.com/post-38657...*-gif-SOGE.gif

It's a shame this website is so hard on swearing, otherwise this would be perfect.

EDIT: But to give you a serious answer, yes.